This album is a nostalgic tribute to growing up in the 90's with nu-metal as the first genre I latched on to, moved away from for nearly 20 years, and then came back to with more appreciation and love for the genre than I did as a kid. A lot of different sounds from the genre shape this album along with influences from other heavy music like industrial metal, grind, and metallic hardcore.
Each song on this album represents its own 'episode' like a sci-fi anthology with different perspectives revolving around cybernetics, time travel, mechs, and body horror. The vibe of Terminator 2 crossed with Hellraiser, Robotech, and Deus Ex.
Credits
Garry Brents - instruments, lead vocals, FX, production
Pixel Art Cover by Cristian 'AbueloRetroWave' Aranda
Written & Self-Produced between November - December 2022.
Mastered in April 2023 by Angel Marcloid (Fire-Toolz) at Angel Hair Audio angelhairaudio.com
Guests:
Adam Bailey - additional high vox on 2, 3 (Narakah)
Aki McCullough - additional high vox on 2, 7, 8 (Dreamwell)
beeb. music - vocal intro on 8
Billy Hinton - vocal intro on 8
Christian Degn - vocal scream intro on 2 (Moray)
Fire-Toolz - additional high vox on 4, 5
Ilya Mirosh - lead clean vox on 9, 10
Kierzo - additional shouting vox on 8
Leo Ashline - vocal intro on 8 (Street Sects)
Lizzy Venom of The Watchyrz - vocal intro on 8
Mike Gardell - vocal intro on 8 (Miséricorde)
Mr. Rager - DJ scratches on 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Diego Juarez)
Nick Hertzberg - ending vocal shouts on 10 (Wet Cassettes)
Sakura Pups - additional high vox on 7
Schuler Benson - additional low/high vox on 2 (Trocar)
Stilgar - additional clean vox on 5, 10 (Thecodontion)
The Ember, The Ash - additional low/high vox on 2, 9
tttlllrrr - DJ scratches/sampling on 10, 11
VoidDweller - additional shouting vox on 8, lead vox & lyrics on 11
Press
Memorrhage is not only an exercise in genre but a meditation on perspective. In these songs, a downtuned dumbness scratches a '90s itch, for sure, but also imagines another path. For Brents and so many others, nu metal's angst-ridden viscera was the draw — primal screams, chugging riffs, maybe a funky rhythm section masquerading as metal. The lyrical style, too, offered a vehicle to vent frustration — an unfiltered expression with nothing left to lose.
Tales of crazed, frayed circuitry and Jnco jeans. Songs of post-human despair and wallet chains. A record where Baudrillard violently collides with Woodstock ’99. The self-titled debut record from Memorrhage is as much a piece of speculative fiction as it is a loveletter to nü-metal, industrial metal and cybergrind. A stylistically cold, inhuman monument to atomization, as well as one of the best records you’ll hear this year.
Author: Brad Sanders. Mapping Garry Brents’s Chaotic Musical Universe
There’s no denying that Memorrhage is a damn good time, and you can feel Garry Brents enjoying the hell out of himself right through the speakers. It’s a love letter to nu-metal, sure, but it’s a damn good album independent of that, and if the nu-metal label bothers you then just forget about that. This is some of the most fun I’ve had listening to metal in 2023, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for Memorrhage.
Memorrhage tells a story through its 11-track run of time travel, cybernetics, and body horror. There are elements of early 2000’s metalcore, hip-hop, industrial death metal, speed metal and more in the sound, and each element makes the others shine more brilliantly throughout this beast’s runtime.
With great hooks, mixed vocal deliveries, chunky riffs and plenty of pace this debut by Memorrhage will inject a wilful revision of some classic albums for listeners just as it has for the creator. With half a second album already written this looks like another Brents project which is ferocious in quality and volume of output.
Some of the best projects are born out of a deep love of a specific time and sound of that time – it inspires and molds us, usually spider-webbing us off into new directions of discovery. Nu metal was that for a lot of people of my generation, but it’s persevered thanks to the younger generations falling for the old stuff as we did decades ago and some new-school cats doing their own things with the tenets of the genre.