apanthropy

GRIDFAILURE
Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III
Nefarious Industries
To Be Released: 10/3/2025

Rating: 86/100

“Natural disasters, war, famine, the wholesale assault and rape of human empathy, men fighting over scraps of flesh in ruined shells of burnt-out cities, the needle is inserted deep into the darkest place of the consciousness. It’s an ugly record, one that is trying to the senses, it pushes on the listener, it crashes and lurches forward like an overwhelming intrusive thought.“

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1 – Subdividing the Survivors
2 – Extermination Level Eventuality
3 – Hybrid Warfare in Defense of One’s Habitat
4 – Anthropophagiae Nationis
5 – Drunk on the Blood of My Neighbor
6 – Vestiges
7 – Ration Distribution/Processed for Storage
8 – Communal Taxidermy
9 – This Was More than Just Killing…It was Art
10 – Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III: Acquiring a Taste
11 – Maria
12 – Necrotizing Fasciitis
13 – End in Sight
14 – Species Deconstructivist
15 – Transmissions Cease
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A running series of nerve-scraping concept albums, a massive list of collaborators, and an 82-minute runtime, New York’s GRIDFAILURE delivers a harrowing and abrasive display of heavy industrial and dark ambient on Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III. Fifteen radical cuts dealing with the ultimately unavoidable downturn of humanity and the collapse of the world around us. Natural disasters, war, famine, the wholesale assault and rape of human empathy, men fighting over scraps of flesh in ruined shells of burnt-out cities, the needle is inserted deep into the darkest place of the consciousness. It’s an ugly record, one that is trying to the senses, it pushes on the listener, it crashes and lurches forward like an overwhelming intrusive thought.

Written primarily by David Brenner, the creator of GRIDFAILURE, and helped into its painful existence through a massive list of collaborators, including Steve Austin from Today is the Day who appears on five of the tracks, Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III at its spiritual core is a post-industrial and dark ambient mass of sound, but it incorporates structure into its otherwise formless existence through various systems of audio experimentation and genre-bending displays of everything from classical to folk to black metal.

‘Subdividing the Survivors’ sees violin, piano, and the sound of pouring rain over top the faint screams of a frightened mob. ‘Extermination Level Eventuality’ features unsettling multi-layered vocals accompanied with a minor acoustic riff, strings begin to build and flay as the song transitions into pounding, mechanized black metal in the vein of Gnaw Their Tongues. These abrupt shifts from song-to-song and internally within each track only serve to keep the listener in a constant state of acute tension.

‘Hybrid Warfare in Defense of One’s Habitat’ strikes with the aggressive posturing of early Genocide Organ, harsh distorted vocals abrasively rake the listener over top the sound of automatic gunfire. Freeform jazz-like movements creep in and pair together in an unlikely combination with a heavily distorted drum beat which features a pulsing electronic bass drum and the insect-like tapping of a heavily echoed hi-hat.

‘This was More than Just Killing…It was Art’ retains the genre-bending assault through a blizzard of distorted and layered vocal tracks, weak and diminished bursts of keys and guitar weep in the background.

The crown jewel of the record is the 15-minute outburst deep into the album, the title track ‘Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III: Acquiring a Taste.’ For nearly a quarter of an hour, the listener is accosted by various means of extreme frequencies tied to shaky violins, pounding freeform drums, and distorted spoken word.

There is no place of shelter within the record, not even on the final track, the dreary ‘Transmissions Cease,’ which plays like one final plea from the blasted and devastated leftovers of the human race, huddled together, starving and reeking of shit, as morse code and theremin desperately search for signs of life left on the planet. It is a fitting and miserable end to this staggering 82-minute display of audio hell.

One may shy away from the nearly hour and a half runtime, but again, this is not an album that begs for attention, this is not an album that has commercial ambitions, this is not an inviting record. By design, this is the audio equivalent of having an eye slowly pulled out of its socket.

This is an uncompromising listen whose punishment is exasperated the louder the volume is set. While never reaching truly scathing and abrasive frequencies one would hear on many power electronics albums, it is the construction and delivery of the track that makes it such a demanding listen. Fans of MZ.412, Brighter Death Now, and Gnaw Their Tongues will want to seek this out. This is the soundtrack for the death of the post-industrial society.

Label: Nefarious Industries
Band: GRIDFAILURE

AJK