Earlier this month, Philadelphia sludge eulogists Quiet Man launched their debut LP. The Ravenous Lesson is a churning collision of harsh distortion, art-house doom, and Neurosis post-metal. The promo textual content initially grabbed me with the promise that Quiet Man are “bringing the darkness again to psychedelia.” Then I rapidly realized that the band was a newly conceived identification for the promising God Root challenge. As their new identify implies, the band wields quiet as a weapon in addition to distortion (see: “From Tomorrow’s Lifeless Hiss”). Harrowing and deeply textured, it’s an album nicely value a deeper dive with an attentive hear. Under, play the album and skim the track-by-track contextual information written by Quiet Man vocalist/bassist Ross Bradley.

“We attempt to give listeners a variety of meat on the bone with our music, and we’re big followers of references–AKA ripping shit off,” Bradley quips. “The stuff on The Ravenous Lesson has a variety of traces and phrases that we collected and pulled from books, music, motion pictures, comics, etcetera that I feel are fairly attention-grabbing and add somewhat extra context to the songs. We thought it could be cool to interrupt down just a few of these and discuss concerning the songs individually. I feel it’s sit-down document so hear and/or learn alongside if ya bought the time and revel in!”

“Stress to Burrow”
The primary tune is about watching the individuals you like falling prey to chaotic drug use. This one is de facto private to me (Ross). I had a dream about somebody very near me lastly succumbing to a really lengthy battle with drug habit and a variety of the imagery was taken from that dream. It’s heartbreaking not understanding what to do and it’s one thing that folks wish to ignore and fake doesn’t exist. It lives underground. A giant working theme is the murdering of our planet and on this tune, we draw some parallels between that societal self-destruction and private self-destruction each of that are being perpetrated by companies however are being blamed on the people. The road “Leaning with intent to fall” is a reference to a Dystopia tune of the identical identify additionally about habit.

“At Working Temp”
A noisey passage that introduces sounds from numbers stations, encoded and normally automated messages despatched to espionage brokers over shortwave radio frequencies. These transmissions will outlast all life on Earth.

“From Tomorrow’s Lifeless Hiss”
[This song] can also be about ecological genocide. My elements had been written whereas I used to be studying concerning the poisoning of water and air from lead mud and fracking and I used to be feeling the load of this uninteresting poisonous ambiance that’s slowly killing all of us for another person’s revenue. It’s surreal to dwell in a dying place. I feel everybody feels it a minimum of subconsciously. The road asking “Is man a most cancers on the Earth?” is supposed to poke at among the eco-fascist bullshit that comes from the identical anti-life impulses because the machines it claims to struggle towards. “Raise till I break” is definitely a line stolen from “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind. They use it to speak about meth, however right here it’s a part of a plea to really feel one thing vibrant once more. The entire album that tune is from is an unimpeachable basic and darkish as fuck. Very related.

“Set to Boil is the New Normal”
This depicts the Army-Industrial Advanced as we all know it at this time as a form of supermachine that has constructed itself up over centuries out of the bodily machines, on-paper hierarchies, and industrial relationships that make up America. The bodily implements of destruction develop alongside the summary methods of commerce and empire throughout generations. It’s about viewing at this time’s Army-Industrial Advanced because the end result of a course of that’s occurred over many successive generations and as a challenge that we’re all a part of, whether or not we prefer it or not.

“The Submit Deserted”
We used sounds from shortwave stations together with the “useless hand system” which is a continuously maintained sign that’s meant to set off nuclear retaliation within the case that there’s no one left alive to “push the button”. The quiet riff is a riff I (Ross) wrote laying on my flooring throughout one of many worst days of my life so it felt appropriately apocalyptic haha.

“The Ravenous Lesson”

“Hic Rhodus” is from a latin phrase “Hic Rhodus, hic salta.” The phrase means one thing like “Right here is Rhodes, Soar right here”. It comes from one in every of Aesop’s fables the place a person is boasting that he can bounce farther than anybody in existence and all of the individuals again in Rhodes noticed him do it. Another person challenges him by saying mainly, “That is Rhodes now, Soar right here and show it dickhead.” The place we took it from was truly this e-book “Towards His-story! Towards Leviathan!” which is a set of inexperienced anarchist essays. It basically is used there as a plea to cease speaking about what to do and simply do one thing. We’re drowning. There’s no extra time to attend, that is the time to leap.

There’s one other (secret) line in the course of the noise part uttered however buried within the combine which is taken from the very last thing you hear on the Crass document “Christ the Album” (among the best of all-time, lyrically and musically) which is “I need you to sense your individual energy.” We’ve got the flexibility to do one thing. Whether or not it’s to abstain from violence or set the machine on fireplace, now we have the ability.

“All Alongside We Had been Stunning Radiant Issues”

This can be a recontextualization of a really hopeful and galvanizing quote from Emma Goldman’s Dwelling My Life: “I need freedom, the appropriate to self-expression, all people’s proper to lovely, radiant issues. Anarchism meant that to me, and I might dwell it despite the entire world — prisons, persecution, all the pieces. Sure, even despite the condemnation of my very own closest comrades I might dwell my lovely excellent.” The sounds decay into pulsing equilibrium. What comes subsequent?

Order The Ravenous Lesson on a number of codecs HERE

Observe Quiet Man for information and updates HERE