Atrament.

May 15, 2016

Two of us are also now active in a new Oakland-based band called Atrament: Mattia on Vocals again and James on guitar. They are also the ones who started the project. Our friends Chad Galey (from Necrot, Rude, Mortuous, Caffa, and ex-Vastum) and Sam are on drums and bass respectively. Atrament play reckless D-Beat with strong crust, black, and death metal influences coming from bands like Darkthrone, Doom, Discharge, Dismember, etc. The band plays live from time to time (only locally up until now) and has released a debut demo tape in late 2015, while their debut album was recently released on vinyl (early March 2016) on Broken Limbs Recordings (US) and Argento Records (EU), while a cassette version was released by Sentient Ruin. You can get their stuff on Bandcamp. Enjoy.

<a href="http://atrament.bandcamp.com/album/eternal-downfall">Eternal Downfall by Atrament</a>

“Wound Empire”, our second album, released February 10, 2015 (10 years ago today). Released on/by: Cassette tape: @SentientRuin and @AnOutRecordings (US, out of print) CD: Church of Fuck (UK, out of print) LP: Fragile Branch Recordings (US), @VendettaRecs (DE), @7DegreesRecords (DE), @recordsshove (IT) - out of print On this release Abstracter was: Donovan Kelly: bass Emad Dajani: drums Robin Kahn: guitar Mattia Alagna: vocals Recorded and mixed by/at @earhammer510, Oakland CA / Mastered by by/at @audiosiege, Portland OR / Artwork and layout by @viraloptic / Photography contributions by @neji_maki_dori and @lightfromabyss. On this release we kept carving our path, finding our way, and developing our skills, style and concept. Back then Abstracter was still the first truly serious musical project for all of us, so much growing, learning, and musical self-research was underway. Some of the first elements that became staple with the band later first emerged here: we were able to refine the dissonant guitar approach which influenced us so much from Godflesh as well as from the various black metal bands we loved and decided to incorporate into the song wring as well, and influences from crust bands like Amebix, Dystopia and His Hero is Gone pushed us in a darker and angrier territory and helped us fully establish our dystopian and apocalyptic concept. These three different aspects remain (greatly evolved) in the band to this day and are the key to the “abysmal” sound that would come later through ulterior learning curves, musicianship development, and evolutionary steps. “Wound Empire” made us improve as musicians and gave us the first accomplished voice to our ideas, visions, and desires of self-expression back then. Maybe one day we will reissue the album. Big thanks to all and anyone who checked out and supported the album back in early 2015 when it was released, and to anyone who’s stuck with us to present day throughout our (admittedly) enigmatic and shapeshifting musical journey. Who knows what will come next, but you will find out very soon.