Mind Eraser

Previously did a blurb on them, giving them the full essay treatment

The human mind is an ugly thing. For every beautiful triumph it has produced, there are ten more atrocities to its credit. Inhumanity is all around us. Thomas Hobbes staked his reputation on the proposition that man's natural state was evil. Niccolo Machiavelli created an entire school of thought on how to manipulate man's evils to work for you. In truth, the driving force of humanity comes from our innate desire to destroy others. A great deal of our technological advances came from research done during wartime. We landed on the moon in a campaign to beat the Russians, not because man had long dreamed to walk on the moon. We were summoning the spirit of Napoleon, not Jules Verne. We are horrible creatures. Selfish, ambitious, and avaricious. There is a reason why so much of our contemporary existence is mired in things that serve to dull our minds. Drugs, prescribed medication, television, ESPN, all of it. Marx would tell you all of this adds up to part of the superstructure and it is a negative feature of society. If Hobbes saw today's superstructure, he would be relieved that there is something keeping all of this potential evil busy. The worst thing in this world is an idle mind. It doesn't wander so much as it does sink.

Boston's Mind Eraser focuses on man's shortcomings. Their themes coupled with their aesthetic could be argued as "evil" but in a much different vein than a great deal of their contemporaries. Unlike black metal acts who write about occult themes or d-beat bands who write about abstract wars, Mind Eraser asserts that the greatest evil of all is the organ inside your skull. What makes it all the more distressing is that this evil is real for everybody. Not all of us will ever be close to a war nor do all of us believe in ghastly spectres, but all of us have done something wrong to someone in our lives. We will likely do something wrong to someone again. That's the nature of the beast; the beast being us. The human brain fails us more in our lifetime than any other organ. If you believe everything you've read to this point, you'd agree that it is because our brains were built to fail.

On the band's debut album Cave, songs like "Internal Dialogue" and "Don't Find Me" highlight the horrors of the human psyche. The album offers commentary against people and the narrator himself (vocalist DFJ). The second album Glacial Reign, features more of the same themes from the first album. The artwork is a homage to Rudimentary Peni's Death Church which is most appropriate considering Nick Blinko, the band's vocalist, famously served time in a mental institution. The band furthered their work into a two song LP entitled Conscious Unconscious which explored the topic of psyche. The band also released an EP titled The Prodigal Son Brings Death touching on other topics with songs like "Insertion" and "Withdrawal Symptoms".

Musically, the band's lineup of Chris Corry, Brendan Radigan, and Craig Arms produce a sound that does well to sonically capture what goes on in the brain. Everything from the fast parts (mania) to the grating breakdowns (depression). The members' talents allows for a lot of interesting mid-tempo parts. This can be likened to something of an even keel state. Mind Eraser musically goes beyond simple powerviolence. It can be compared to a sonic representation of bipolar.

Mind Eraser's discography are documents to teach a psychology class. They don't mince words about what people are. There are no illusions about silver linings. A man can love a woman, but he can also kill his brother. A nation can join hands and sing merry tunes, but it will likely happen on the bodies of millions. There is no love. There is no happiness. Everything is transitory. Your mind is a weapon that will never be happy. It will consume and take until there's nothing left to take from. We are all backstabbers, junkies, liars, users, and abusers. All Mind Eraser's music does is eliminate any denial or illusion we may have had about that fact.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/de9do6v8208wpko/Mind+Eraser.rar