EXCLUSIVE: First Review of Sonic Mayhem's Doomsday Album
Just shy of three years ago, this blog featured a piece about a trailer for an upcoming album by Sonic Mayhem. Filled with mechanized, audio-visual fury, it was a high concept and very bold way of advertising a new music release. Doomsday has just dropped, and the end result is an engaging piece of aural malevolence which stands up to the visceral, visual assault which heralded it.
Sonic Mayhem may be more familiar to some as Sascha Dikiciyan, the composer whose oeuvre includes the video games Quake II, Mass Effect 3, Borderlands 1 and 2, Hellgate: London and Tron Evolution. Sharp eared fans of Sascha's will undoubtedly hear the DNA (and nanobots) of these games' soundtracks within the sounds of Doomsday, but one need not be a gamer to appreciate the cyber-industrial sound.
The thrice repeated number of the opening track's binary code title foretells of the beast within. The piece quickly transforms from moody into something even more sinister, building to an evil crescendo that cuts into the set's first, epic collaboration.
On "Futureland", Sonic Mayhem teams up with Aussie synthwave duo Power Glove, which brings a deliciously John Carpenter-esque vibe to the song. Easily one of the stand out tracks on the disc, this one is definitely best enjoyed when played loud. Or while driving at night. Or both.
The title track and centerpiece to Doomsday follows. (Have you been listening to the edited version above while you read? Good.) Sonic Mayhem unleashes his entire arsenal on this one. Starting off sounding like something Programs would hear in the darker recesses of the Game Grid, the song explodes into a percussive attack that evokes equal parts Gibson-cyberpunk ethos and Reznor-industrial aesthetic; all while never devolving into mindless self indulgent noise.
The follow on number is the second Doomsday collaboration. This time, Sonic Mayhem matches his aural palette with the angelic vocal talents of Judith "Malukah" de los Santos. If you've spent any time on YouTube over the last several years, you've undoubtedly heard Malukah's stunning renditions of songs from the game Skyrim. On "Bleed Forever", we get to hear Malukah's talents shine further as her vocals blend harmoniously with a more restrained futuristic pulse from Dikiciyan.
"Genesis" rounds out the album's originals with a healthy dose of Sturm und Drang (storm and drive). The piece revisits sonic textures and modes from the earlier pieces with originality instead of repetition, and is all at once melodic and abrasive. This is another great example of what makes the music on this album work so well. Yes, it's loud, caustically so in places, but it never loses it's musicality. This is further exemplified with the set closer; an "Off World Ambient Mix" of the title track, which is stripped down to reveal these deeper layers, and has enough differing elements from the original that it stands very nearly on it's own as a unique piece.
Sonic Mayhem has gone all out with multiple formats of Doomsday, including digital, vinyl, CD and a "Producer's Edition" (music production fiends, brace yourselves) featuring high rez Wav files, audio stems of all the tracks, two custom plugins for Ableton Live, three custom Kontakt sample libraries, 256 custom presets for NI's Massive and Absynth, plus over 700MB of custom loops, pads, drones, guitar riffs especially recorded for the producer's edition. Oh yeah, and two bonus music tracks, all for a very reasonable price.
While it won't appeal to more mainstream listening tastes, Sonic Mayhem has made sure, with just six tracks, to appeal to a very wide, and passionate swath of music fans. If you count yourself among the musically adventurous, let Doomsday get in your ears, and under your skin.
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