Sentient Ruin is proud to renew its long-running collaboration with Virginia-based industrial metal nihilists Hold Me Down, who reach the milestone of the second full-length album, christened under the name “Devour” and designed as further progression of their dismal exploration into the outer realms of synthetic sonic abandon.
The punishing sophomore album has been introduced by expert industrial music authority Regen Magazine who give us a glimpse into the work via an exclusive wold premiere of the track “Living Meat”, underlining how “with its corrosive rhythms and relentlessly distorted riffs and vocals, the track builds on the overarching themes of alienation, confusion, and dehumanization“ - you can read the full feature and check out the song HERE.
What unfolds on this second mechanized auditory assault from the Richmond voidscapers is an all-corroding synthesis of industrialized terror harkening back to formative years of extreme industrial music when bands like Swans, Throbbing Gristle, Skinny Puppy and Godflesh were looking for new pathways to transform their times’ confusion and alienation into an oppressive audial dehumanization. A torrential onslaught of pounding drum machines and atonal guitars creating a physical and mental cage of submission, within which the listener is trapped and cornered, only to be further punished by a white, colorless, and sterile burden of noise. The only human thing toiling within the ashen framework of this stark and dystopian cyberscape is vocalist Jim Gullickson’s devastated voice, the last spasm of humanity disintegrating within the aseptic turbulence of a paranoid, life-draining contraption. The way the album is built and conceived is intended to mimic human sensory dismantlement, or its destruction from within, similarly to how our digitalized society erases individuals leaving only empty shells. The senses are used as sensors to gain access to the listener’s humanity, into which an injection of sterilizing sequences and nerve-eating samples are inserted to scrape the consciousness clean. A new era of post-industrial enslavement and banishment of any human thrive has just cast its purifying shadow across the organic frailty and insignificance of man.
Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Hold Me Down emerged from the local industrial and art metal scene when vocalist and noise musician Jim Gullickson linked up with local industrial musicians David Hoefer and Ben Rinehardt, who around then had just begun laying the foundations for their next endeavor. Gullickson had just put on hold is previous band, black/sludge/industrial duo and early Sentient Ruin alumni American, and in order to keep his momentum going was looking for the next outlet to give voice to his creative impulses and passion for underground industrial noise. The band debuted unleashing a punishing blight of mechanized death and throbbing industrial in the form of their self-titled 2019 debut Sentient Ruin demo tape, a deadly revisitiation of the sounds pioneered by iconic machinists such as Godflesh, Genocide Organ, Skinny Puppy, and SWANS, but with a modern, deconstructed edge. The quickly sold out demo tape featured seven tracks of total nihilism sequenced and synthesized to pound and drone to the beat of inhumanity, while subtle touches of harsh noise, power electronics, and black metal amalgamated in the mix completed a sonic assault of absolutely mind-defiling cruelty. This release cemented the band’s sound and laid the groundwork for their annihilating and acclaimed debut full-length LP “Powerless”, also released by Sentient Ruin on MC/LP/digital formats in mid 2022. Sporadic live appearances followed, hinting at the band’s elusive nature and recluse existence mainly as a studio act due to their highly deconstructed and experimental constructs. Within this seclusion, Hold Me Down’s further development into the outer realms of desensitizing industrial punishment progressed, with the band’s formula assuming even more alienating and inhuman lineaments, as the sophomore full-length album “Devour” began casting the ominous shadow of a summer 2025 release, to reveal Hold Me Down’s most punishing and towering work to date.