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Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
"Music is Poison" limited edition live album:
-housed sturdy 300gsm vinyl sleeve
-full color printed inner-sleeve
-orange vinyl 100 copies
THIS IS A PRE-ORDER, SHIPPING ORDERS AROUND THE 28TH OF JUNE!
Band: Mephistofeles
Title: Music is Poison
Specification: Full set recorded live at Santiago de Chile on Friday 6th, 2018. Tracklisting:
Side A
1.Transylvanian Funeral
2.The Night Stalker
3.Whore
4.Curse Of The Knife
Side B
5.Chains Of Agony
6.Trash Lord
8.Evil Beauty
9.White Butterfly
Includes unlimited streaming of Music is Poison
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
shipping out on or around June 28, 2024
9 remaining
Purchasable with gift card
€21.99EURor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
"Music is Poison" limited edition live album:
-housed sturdy 300gsm vinyl sleeve
-full color printed inner-sleeve
-sea blue vinyl 200 copies
THIS IS A PRE-ORDER, SHIPPING ORDERS AROUND THE 28TH OF JUNE!
Band: Mephistofeles
Title: Music is Poison
Specification: Full set recorded live at Santiago de Chile on Friday 6th, 2018. Tracklisting:
Side A
1.Transylvanian Funeral
2.The Night Stalker
3.Whore
4.Curse Of The Knife
Side B
5.Chains Of Agony
6.Trash Lord
8.Evil Beauty
9.White Butterfly
Includes unlimited streaming of Music is Poison
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
shipping out on or around June 28, 2024
Purchasable with gift card
€21.99EURor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
"Music is Poison" limited edition live album:
-housed sturdy 300gsm vinyl sleeve
-full color printed inner-sleeve
-black vinyl 200 copies
THIS IS A PRE-ORDER, SHIPPING ORDERS AROUND THE 28TH OF JUNE!
Band: Mephistofeles
Title: Music is Poison
Specification: Full set recorded live at Santiago de Chile on Friday 6th, 2018. Tracklisting:
Side A
1.Transylvanian Funeral
2.The Night Stalker
3.Whore
4.Curse Of The Knife
Side B
5.Chains Of Agony
6.Trash Lord
8.Evil Beauty
9.White Butterfly
Includes unlimited streaming of Music is Poison
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
Written by: Gabriel Ravera
This album embodies our first international gig ever. It was recorded the 6th of April in Santiago de Chile on a venue called Ritual Electrico. The story goes as Francisco (from the Chilean psychedelic band Arteaga) contacted us through an email requesting what were our conditions in order to play live in Chile… Once we sorted that out with him, we just travelled and it was a great experience. We met our friend Vicente Zamorano (Golden Dawn Recordings) who released a couple of our albums on tape back on 2017. We stayed at his home with his parents, they were pretty cool. His mum was a nurse back in Vietnam and his dad was a Demolition Derby off-duty driver.
We were staying a couple of days at Vicente’s lair when one night Ivan (Mephistofeles’ drummer, duh) went to the bathroom to brush his teeth with a toothpaste that he found next to a dog’s litter. He just thought that it was an odd place for Vicente to put the toothpaste. He accidentally used some “Tooth-paste for dogs”. He said that it tasted like shit and no matter what he did he smelled like canned dog food during that day. The funny thing is that the toothpaste tube had the picture of a dog and was branded “Mr. Paws”.
Another funny one is that the day that we were returning to Argentina, we had a BBQ lunch at Francisco’s place together with Arteaga. We smoked so much weed man, we could barely open our eyes. Francisco had a Bong that was a figurine of Freddy Krueger where you were supposed to put the weed on his wank and blow him from his hat. Our flight was scheduled for 5 pm… it was 4 pm and we still had a Ziploc bag full of weed that we needed to smoke before leaving! As it was getting late, we just jumped on one of Francisco’s monster trucks from his private collection, we did some sick donuts on his front lawn and then we exited the highway doing a burnout with the rear-end wheels, straight into the airport. We were still smoking from Freddy Krueger as all of this was happening, and to be honest, I still can’t remember what happened from the airport gate till I got back home. My brain isn’t working well since that day.
Written by: BIlly Goate
Documenting a gig in Santiago, Chile on Friday the 6th, 2018, Music is Poison marks the midpoint of our journey and is, in fact, Mephistofeles’ first major gig outside of Argentina.
“Transylvanian Funeral” commences with brash bass swagger and corrosive guitar feedback. The familiar opening riff is meted out with pathological attack. It feels like one of those uneasy nights when vampires are craving blood, but then it could all be phantasmagoria. Sometimes the recording maxes out, but such instances are not dissimilar to the sensory overload one experiences during a live show. Slow dirging, colossal notes, and cursed vocals let us know, “The sky above is turning black.” It’s going to be one maniacal night at the mausoleum.
We have a chance to hear “The Night Stalker” next, which opens with a swinging mix of guitar and cymbals (bass and drums soon follow). It’s got the verve of someone prowling around the streets in the dead of night, seeking a worthy victim. A second, more ominous theme enters, and this time a victim is in sight. Sure, it’s a sick and twisted thing to write a song about, but in so doing Mephistofeles exposes the bloodstained underbelly of our hyper-individualized, pleasure crazed culture.
“Whore” kicks off with a series of pummeling guitar notes, reinforced by bass and drums, before settling into its inebriated rhythm. The song’s subject is speculative, of course, but lyrics seem to hone in on a generation of pill poppers that have whored their lives out to addiction. “Here, take this and die. One more pill to die.” And then comes the fateful chorus, which seems especially resigned to this narcotic enslavement: “So I won’t be the same for long.”
The guitar riffage on “Curse Of The Knife” comes at you like a sharp and eager blade, bending, twisting and cutting from every angle. Following the manner of Black Sabbath, Mephistofeles executes a slow, dire A-section, followed by a boisterous, galloping B-section, complete with stout bass rhythm and wild soloing.
“Chains Of Agony,” taken from the 2019’s Satan Sex Ceremonies, makes for a fitting bedfellow with Sleep’s Dopesmoker. It crawls along, marking its path with wide strokes and elastic notes while recounting the “demonic slow burn of dungeon flames.” It’s not hard to imagine those very flames licking your own impaled torso, culminating in terrified cries of “Oh no!” I don’t think the song has sounded any dirtier than this.
I’m not entirely sure what “Trash Lord” is about, beyond it being a “dark acid hell.” In this song, the mysterious Trash Lord is petitioned, not to save but to destroy (“Oh, Trash Lord kill me”). Is this the bottom of the Downward Spiral, that final, ghastly (but relieving) moment when “black coloured blood” is consumed by the earth? The bass pounds away like a migraine, as the guitar works out this encounter with dubious divinity. Dig deep enough in the refuse and you might find something that’ll get you high…or help you die.
Next, Mephistofeles return to their first album for one of their most fucked up tracks: “Evil Beauty.” Like Electric Wizard’s “We Hate You,” it takes the point of view of its subject, who seems to especially delight in making others bleed.
The set concludes with the bouyount “White Butterfly,” which bobs and weaves and flutters about as “the sky turns black and a strange kind of star arises.” As the lyrics suggest, drug abuse is less about thrills and more of an act of spite -- a defiant middle finger in the face of God and man (“white powdered nose inhaling everything I hate). Over time, the promise of opium blossoms withers away, as intoxicants become less and less affectatious at quelling anxiety (“the sound of hate still keeps coming from inside”). We can feel the agitation in the song’s protracted solo, reveling in what remains of the high while loathing his wretched state.
credits
released November 18, 2023
Band: Mephistofeles
Title: Music is Poison
Specification: Full set recorded live at Santiago de Chile on Friday 6th, 2018.
Tracklisting:
Side A
1.Transylvanian Funeral
2.The Night Stalker
3.Whore
4.Curse Of The Knife
Side B
5.Chains Of Agony
6.Trash Lord
8.Evil Beauty
9.White Butterfly
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Color Trails is on my headphones, the eerie, lonesome guitar floating above the deep drone of the bass, the synthesizer giving voice to a counter-melody. Writing this has re-written history for me. My "Mount Rushmore" of guitarists is being re-arranged. My mind has been altered, my perception sharpened. My entire sense of the history of the heavy underground has undergone a substantial revision. Scott Spiers
