Known for his work with Aziola Cry, Jason Blake isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to his Warr. Used by artists such as Trey Gunn, Markus Reuter, Finbar O’Hanlon, and Colin Marston of Behold…The Arctopus fame, Blake has proven himself to push the envelope and go beyond the Aziola waters with his ambitious album, Subsequent Ruins.
With Marco Minnemann on drums, the album is a modern retelling of the pied piper story of Hamelin. What Jason has done is an amount of research of the main character’s insane story by hypnotising children, and having them jump towards their doom.
The music paints a portrait of the story with its bleak, dark, and terrifying imagery behind this person’s obsession of sending children to their death with his music. And Blake himself has captured the portrait in six compositions that’ll keep you on the edge of your seat.
For him to be a part of Trey Gunn’s family with the 7d label, he fits right in with Sonar, Crystal Beth, Stick Men, and Security Project. And that’s a combination like no other.
The laid-waste atmosphere on the children’s death, just hits your stomach throughout ‘Follow I (Emanated Hook).’ Marching time bombs, clock ticking midsections, and a gruesome scenery, Blake is very much a mundy detective, trying to put the pieces together on what has occurred in this horrific tragedy.
But then on ‘Follow II (The Coercible Leash)’, you can just imagine this ascending staircase coming over the horizon, as the clues start to add up, more and more, revealing the insane behaviour the Piper has done to the children, and the scars on the back of the victim’s families will haunt him until he croaks his last breath.
Meanwhile, ‘Pretense of the Herd’ will make you want to take your surfboard and hit the waves on the south beaches in Corpus Christi, and prepare yourself to be knocked out with a brutal pounding that Marco does on his drum kit, adding one punch after another. The last section becomes a burning fire where the duo goes into this chanting frenzy, combining Rush, Van der Graaf Generator, and Hawkwind thrown into the mix with an intense workout routine.
The 10-minute outbreak of ‘A Bleak Outcome’ becomes an infernal machine where the brutal forces of nature, will make you shit your pants, nonstop. You have this metallic flower growing rapidly as Blake and Marco bring in the Lateralus-era from Tool, like a wolverine whose high on angel dust!
Track by track, Subsequent Ruins is as top notch as its crystal ball, revealing the tragic consequences that Blake envisions. And where will he go next? We may never know.
