Out now is I, the debut album from Haunted Plasma on via Svart Records.
Featuring Juho Vanhanen (Oranssi Pazuzu, Grave Pleasures), Timo Kaukolampi (K-X-P), Op:l Bastards) and Tomi Leppänen (Circle, Aavikko, K-X-P),
Ahead of that were released two singles and accompanying videos, the most recent being ‘Machines Like Us’, featuring Mat McNerney on vocals. Word has it, “every chord and sound predict our frightening future, which we will inevitably face in one way or another”.
You can check out the video by Kalle-Erik Kosonen here at RAMzine.
“‘Machines Like Us’ is a song that pulsates and sparkles hypnotising lines of code straight into the nervous system. It presents a bittersweet vision of a machine intertwining with the human consciousness”, Haunted Plasma‘s guitarist Juho Vanhanen said of the song.
Described as a powerhouse of futuristic synth in symbiosis with the super violent atmospherics of kosmische black metal, Haunted Plasma is “man meets machine” in a cybernetic wasteland, set to a conceptual backdrop of William Gibson and Phillip K. Dick style mind-melt. The creatives at the heart of Haunted Plasma’s sound, cite Terry Riley, Massive Attack, a contemporary take on krautrock hypnosis, psychedelic black metal and 90s techno, resulting in an orgy of mutant sound.
“We are liberated futurists, embracing free-form and natural composition, mirroring the merciless forces of cosmic creation. We have a motto to stay true to our feelings, to spawn a sound that’s never been heard before. Servants of music. Energizing, radical and pure,” said the collective.
Guest vocals on the album are contributed by Mat McNerney (Hexvessel, Carpenter Brut, Grave Pleasures/Beastmilk), Ringa Manner (Ruusut, The Hearing) and Pauliina Lindell (Vuono, Dust Mountain).
The first single from Haunted Plasma’s cascading debut, ‘Reverse Engineer’, was a creepy, slowly erupting, synthetic nightmare, of a downloaded being waking up in the wrong future. Ghostly vocals demand the listener to “give us what we want” in an Orwellian glimpse into the current dystopia we live in, where information is controlled, and thoughts are bought and sold. As vocalist McNerney intones the words “technology of power” he describes the threat of a malevolent and omnipresent artificial intelligence, as much as describing the oppressive and electromagnetic sonar pulse of Haunted Plasma’s sound itself. As they themselves noted: “Psychedelic guitar hypnosis from Vanhanen snakes around Kaukolampi’s molten and morphing synths, while Leppänen’s uncanny man/machine rhythms pull our strings and animate their other-worldly mechanisms.”
You can check out the video to ‘Reverse Engineer’ here at RAMzine.
The debut album from Haunted Plasma will be packaged in a tip-on sleeve, swirling fog artwork, complete with 12” booklet and pressed on 3 exclusive vinyl colours: 300 copies on standard black wax, 200 copies in amber + black smoke and 500 copies of turquoise/black marble The album will also be available on CD and digitally.
Click here to secure a limited physical edition of the album, and here for digital editions.
