Brazil’s Deafkids are volatile. Society, technology, Christianity, capitalism, consumerist culture, propaganda, mass apathy, psychological slavery, and blind conformity on a local and a global scale have, in their own unique way, contributed to this end result. And since the 2012 EP, 6 Heretic Anthems For The Deaf, Deafkids has faced this all-consuming chaos head on by blasting out slab after slab of unremitting ferocity. While 2012’s 6 Heretic Anthems… EP and the split with O Mito da Caverna are primarily D-Beat debauchery and devastation, the 2013 LP The Upper Hand was more diverse, blending multi-layered noise with doom-heavy tempos and oppressive atmospherics.
With the d-beat spirit fully assimilated into their sound, the material on 2015’s Over The Days... Somewhat Damaged EP and the 2015 split with Time Killer saw the experimental side of the band coming into full force and by 2016, Configuração do Lamento saw a band that had metamorphosed into something extraordinary. Like Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Deafkids had become that metaphor for all things ugly in the world, that monstrous vermin in the corner that no one wanted to face. 2018’s Espiral da Loucura and the Permanent Dystopia: Configuração do Lamento Remixes providing further uneasy listening as the beast continued to mutate. And here we are in 2019 with another sonic assault about to be unleashed upon a much-deserving world.
The band may have changed with every release and the rage may very well remain, but with Metaprogramação, they’ve found new ground, a new dimension. It seems that the fire and the fury in their earlier releases has somehow destroyed some unseen wall and, in the rubble and the dust and the ostensible disorder spread-out before them, lie patterns, secrets, maybe even truths beyond the merciless physical and social forces that they have long been battling. Twisted, twisting, and discordant, a barrage of pulsating and penetrating noises, hypnotic and heavy rhythms, and neck-broken guitar squeals, squeaks and snorts reverberate in the heavy air. Psychotic, psychological and psychedelic, the tracks dissolve and merge and re-emerge in wave after wave of multifaceted and schizophrenic assaults.
Yet what to most would appear to be chaos makes much more sense than the everyday. Out there, the “real” world is that place where countless and conflicting forces work on the individual, simultaneously demanding that the subject somehow resolve the irresolvable whilst willingly submitting to the destructive programming. Yet here, in the realms revealed by Metaprogramação lie the keys to de- and re-programming. An album like no other from a band like no other, this is one experience that one should submit to.
Words by Jason Guest
- Released by Neurot Recordings on 15 March 2019
- Check out Deafkids’ back catalogue on Bandcamp here
- Follow Deafkids on Facebook here
- Neurot Recordings website
- Neurot Recordings on Facebook
- Neurot Recordings on Bandcamp
Track List:
- Vox Dei
- Alucinações de Comando
- Pacto de Máscaras
- Mente Bicameral 04:20
- Estímulos Alucinatórios Verbauditivos I
- Templo do Caos 04:37
- Espirais da Loucura I
- Raíz Negativa (Não-Vontade)
- Camisa de Força (Inferno ou Sem Saída?)
- Vírus da Imagem do Ser
- Estímulos Alucinatórios Verbauditivos II
- Espirais da Loucura II
- A Experiência Holotrópica
