Following the band’s second studio Album Shape / Shifting [Dedstrange Records 2022] comes their unforgiving 3rd album Net Prophet, releasing on Dedstrange September 8th 2023.
“Neural transmissions of crisis on the eve of WEB 3.0”
The band states, “Best Western stumbles into the saloon we call ‘late capitalism’ and points its drunken finger at the ‘virtues’ of progress. Imagine line-dancing to the gun club at McDonalds with a thin deranged guitar creeping into your conscience.”
Net Prophet finds the band moving deeper into the vaporous territory of 21st-century excess, where power casually corrupts even more absolutely and the mental netscape is more deranged in the membrane than we ever knew possible. A world on the edge, where imminent ecocide and violent social upheaval lurk beneath every minute mental distraction. The doomscroll gets longer and the attention span shorter as a disconnected global internet life takes over with its scepters of promise and looming evasiveness.
The sound is rich in variety from the darkwave pulsing synths of “Lichtenberg Monologue” reminiscent of Shape / Shifting’s “Tomahawk” to the growling, slow-driving bass of “A New Dawn” which harks back to the band’s S/T 1st record, albeit with a synth instead of guitar. Even with the stark contrasts of murder-punk “AR-15” and jangle-pop “Purgatory Mall” the record never strays from the prime colors of the band: Vox, Drums, Bass, Guitar, Synth.
Recorded live in the Berlin studio Monoton, the record demonstrates the band in its prime – tightened up and influenced by their extensive touring, who have honed their sound from simple elements into a rich wall of noise.