By Keith Walsh
With a band leader named “Host_Revenant” you might expect something weird. And you’d be correct. Dyoxidon is a project from Colorado, a western U.S. state. From the first moments of their new release The Decaying Multiverse, the apocalyptic message hits you in the ears with an intimidating wall of sound. Phil Spector productions were nothing like this.
The themes are said to involve hostile aliens, artificial realities, and other dystopian unpleasantness. Not that you’d know upon first listen, as the narrative is buried in the mix in undiscernible ways. There’s loads of extreme distortion from guitars, bass, synth, drums and vocals, but these sounds rarely rise up to the surface where their timbres can be recognized.
An 8 track set, The Decaying Multiverse is incredibly unique, in its own way. As the album progresses, rhythms and melodies occasionally emerge, if ever so slightly. When conservative critics called the Beatles and other early rockers ‘noise,’ well, bless their hearts. And while most classic rock is usually easily understood at face value, The Decaying Multiverse is an extended metaphor. As per Marshall McCluhan, the medium is the message.
Described by Host_Revanent as industrial black death metal, the album really isn’t for the faint of heart, as the sounds feature everything from multiple layers of audio that result in something like a white noise wash across the entire reproducible audio spectrum, along with obscured drums, static guitars, and guttural vocals that suggest demons, aliens, or monsters of some sort.
There’s an actual album buried in here somewhere, with verses, choruses, melodies and rhythms. The Decaying Multiverse by Dyoxidon is a deliberate musical cypher, disguised as a social commentary. I’m still undecided, but I’m thinking it might just be something we need to hear. I certainly enjoyed it a something refreshingly different, on my best speakers.
‘The Decaying Multiverse’ on Bandcamp
Dyoxidon On Facebook
DYOXIDON is:
Host_Revenant: Guitars, Bass, Vocals, Synth Programming, Drums Programming
Additional Artists: S. Wyatt Houseman (Helleborus, Akhenaten): Additional vocals (Tracks 1 and 4)
Jeremy Cuchiara (Ob Nixilis): Additional Vocals (Track 2)
Manuel Moreno (Ob Nixilis): Additional Vocals (Track 2)
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