Location: New York, New York
Country: USA
Genre: Experimental
Full Length: Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III
Format: Digital album, limited edition cassette
Label: Nefarious Industries
Release date: October 3, 2025
It’s been a few years since “When the Lights Go Out Volume II” and “When the Lights Go Out Vol. III” by Gridfailure were spotlit here. Back then, this project gave me the idea this was not your typical ambient project. As nightmarishly bizarre as Abruptum is dark and violent, and old Mortiis is cold and solitary, this David Brenner-led ensemble seeks other avenues into your mind to disconcert you, generating specific discomfort and dismay, literally to the point of primal dread.
Corban Skipwith stated Gridfailure has the potential to scare you out of your wits if you listen late at night when it's black as pitch outside and everyone is sleeping, probably with more agreeable ideas on their minds. He went on to explain that the project's work seemed tailored to one's deepest hidden fears and apprehensions, as it gave him the creeps in all directions.
When you cross paths with Gridfailure again you’ll be propelled headfirst over the thin barrier between rationality and lunacy, and it will as always take a considerable amount of time to return. “Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III” sees Brenner handling more instruments than his previous recordings.
Along with Steve Austin of Today Is The Day on vocals, guitar, and extra lyrics, he collaborates with his most manifold lineup to date. His list of studio collaborators this time includes musicians who have worked with David Bowie, Hasard, Xtinguish The Code, Cardinal Wyrm, and Chrome Waves, as well as artists who have accompanied him during live performances.
The increased amount of musical instruments and studio collaborators bring this record closer to conveying a narrative than Brenner’s previous Gridfailure efforts. Said narrative continues to illustrate humanity's proclivity for self-destruction, which by now has resulted in the extinction of the ecosystem on a worldwide scale and widespread misery.
This impression is clear from the beginning, and as you listen you can imagine a scene so bleak and devoid of hope it makes “Blade Runner” look like “Legally Blonde”. Brenner and his partners elevate Gridfailure’s creativity while atmosphere, programming, effects and the most horrid vocals ever heard make the lyrical and musical images even more palpable.
With minimalism, dark ambient, post-punk, goth, folk, techno, black metal, industrial, experimental jazz, chant, Americana and classical, the disastrous scope of man’s lost war against a world he created is replete with images of disasters, starvation, moral perversion of every kind, homicide, cannibalism and tribal warfare, not to mention the increased reliance on artificial intelligence.
This is more than an apocalyptic event, it’s slow extinction of every human being on earth. It’s the sonic equivalent of humanity fading out. Even as life itself is falling apart at the seams, there's still a crawling suspicion that the worst is yet to reveal itself with Griddfailure’s next album. –Dave Wolff
Lineup:
See Bandcamp link
Track list:
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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