Embryoroom – Ravaged by ...

Review -Alexei Monroe

There will be many albums dealing with this catastrophic year, but American Cannibalism has already made many of them obsolete.

This sonic ‘journal of a plague year’ is an instant classic and will define the future history of this time. This achievement is all the more impressive because of its subtlety. It weaves its spell without obvious samples and soundbites, using only minimal elements. The whole lengthy album is swathed in highly atmospheric production.

Its both muffled and insidious, gradually getting under the skin rather than mounting a full frontal assault. If electronic ritualists PWOG were to reactivate in response to current events it might sound a little like this. Sinister tones are stretched and allowed to resonate over time while distanced percussion maintains the tension.

The result is a sense of quiet, creeping catastrophe and sorrow. For a release to discuss current events without feeling cheap or exploitative is already an achievement but to do this and to produce such memorable music in the process is doubly so.

Review – Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg. “Deep dark truthful mirror music of future electronic production pulled straight from the heartlands of dystopia to breach shiny happy chromium illusions via pristine sounds. Massive. Deep. Immaculate production. An epic record.”

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Review- Jacopo Nuvolari Arts Editor 1883 Magazine

Tenebrous, riveting and thickly laden with relentless beats that hit like a hail of bullets, Edward Quist aka Embryoroom’s latest and much-anticipated album, American Cannibalism, is an all-enveloping musical tour de force into America’s darkest hour.

Reverberating from the recesses of a dystopian future where Coney Island has been turned into a concentration camp and slaughterbots swarm and kill undisturbed, Quist’s album cuts into the living flesh of a wounded Nation to expose its many contradictions and frailty.

American Cannibalism comes at a time where the line between reality and fiction in the US becomes dramatically thinner by the hour. Caught in a tense immobility, its days filled with uncertainty and upheaval, the once Beacon of the West is seen floundering in the eye of the storm, torn apart by divisions and bitter rivalries, confounded by a sense of looming dread.

Stirred and consumed by a galling rhetoric of war, enfeebled by a perduring epidemic, the US stands at a consequential crossroads, where it must choose between regaining its moral compass, or plunging towards further discord and democratic instability.

A deep, exceptionally engaging listen, American Cannibalism is the ultimate musical commentary on present-day America, one that capably conveys the drama of a Nation faltering under the weight of its own incongruity.
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