Posted on: July 25, 2009 Posted by: anfnewsacct Comments: 0

NYC experimental Doom Metal pack BLOODY PANDA has completed work on its new album, entitled SUMMON. The record will see an August 11, 2009 North American release date via Profound Lore Records.

Fronted by Japanese siren and accomplished visual artist Yoshiko Ohara, whose death defying wails have at once drawn comparison to Diamanda Galas, Björk and Jarboe, BLOODY PANDA creates unique, affecting heavy music that combines visceral power, pained beauty and devastating emotion. Since its formation in 2005, BLOODY PANDA has skillfully combined the brutal with the entrancing, generating buzz with the UG metal sect and the indie set alike, each drawn to the band’s super-strength songs, funeral doom arrangements and the sight and sound of a petite woman chanting and screaming in both English and Japanese alongside four imposing musicians sporting executioner’s masks.

Recorded at New York’s Excello Recordings and Secret Weapon Studios with engineer Jason Marcucci (Flaming Lips, The White Stripes) and the band’s Josh Rothenberger, SUMMON is a nightmarish, cryptic trip that boosts BLOODY PANDA’s disturbing cinematic vision of terror and frightening ferocity to altogether new spheres. The follow up to the band’s acclaimed debut Pheromone, SUMMON is described as “the aural equivalent of a Takashi Miike film translated into doom metal.” The album is an artful time-stretching opus that morphs through a vast cornucopia of both darkened sound and disturbing tone.

SUMMON will be issued as a two-disc, CD/DVD release; the DVD bringing to life an abstract visual interpretation of the 20-plus minute BLOODY PANDA track “Miserere”. Filmed in various Brooklyn locales and coupled with footage captured in Jatiluhur Dam, Indonesia, this optic translation is a very dark and mysterious offering that features world-renowned Butoh dancer Yuko Kaseki. “Miserere” was shot and edited by BLOODY PANDA’s Bryan Camphire, Blake McDowell and Josh Rothenberger, all of whom are also New York City based filmmakers.

“SUMMON spans two years of work — not just songwriting and recording, but also collaborations with different percussionists, studios, guest musicians, dancers and video artists,” comments BLOODY PANDA guitarist Josh Rothenberger. “The final piece of the puzzle was Profound Lore, a label that has the attention of not only the metal world, but of the experimental art community as well; making it a good home for this release; the most important relic we’ve given birth to thus far.”

The track listing for BLOODY PANDA’s SUMMON is as follows:

1.) Gold
2.) Pusher
3.) Saccades I
4.) Saccades II
5.) Miserere
6.) Grey
7.) Hashira

An excerpt from the new BLOODY PANDA track “Miserere” can be digested here, while the premiere of the new song “Pusher” can be heard today via Brooklyn Vegan. Check it out now at this location.

BLOODY PANDA will launch a month-long North American tour on July 21 in Bethlehem, PA. The 27 city trek will run through August 21 at the Union Pool in Brooklyn. A full listing of upcoming BLOODY PANDA tour dates follows this message. The official “SUMMON Tour” admat can be viewed here.

BLOODY PANDA features Yoshiko Ohara (lead vocals), Josh Rothenberger (guitar), Bryan Camphire (bass, vocals), Blake McDowell (keyboards, organs, vocals), Richard Schwarz – drums, percussion and Gerry Mak (Tuvan Throatsinging, overtonal chant).

BLOODY PANDA is available to speak with interested media now. To chat with the band / request a review copy of SUMMON / attend a live performance, simply contact Carl Schultz at ACTION! PR via any of the means listed below. Updated BLOODY PANDA news and tour information will be made available via the band’s online domain: www.myspace.com/bpanda, the Profound Lore Records website: www.profoundlorerecords.com and the ACTION! PR website: www.action-pr.com.

“We strongly urge you to catch BLOODY PANDA, a local quartet whose demos sound like Keiji Haino murmuring karaoke Khanate in his own private torture garden. (For those who don’t speak Doom, that translates as “really heavy, slow and creepy.)” – TIME OUT NEW YORK

“It slowly built up to a nice sort of dirgy, slow hardcore sound like a more raw Neurosis…big and cinematic sounding. Then this little Japanese girl wanders out onto stage looking kind of lost. I’m pretty unprepared when she hunches over and starts “chanting”…Slow and melodic but about an octave lower than you’d expect for someone her size. I was pretty much hooked from that point on. You couldn’t take your eyes off her.” – MUSIC FOR ROBOTS

“full of so many harrowing twists and turns, we’re left both unsettled and awestruck. Metal fans, you’re looking at one of the finest doom albums to come out in recent memory. Indie fans, if you dig this, welcome, you’ve officially crossed over to the dark side for good.” – POPMATTERS

“A different kind of doom metal comes from this Japanese female-fronted New York outfit. Busier than most bands of its ilk, BLOODY PANDA play dense, despairing songs that tumble, clatter and drone through the ether.” – MTV NEWS

“BLOODY PANDA champions the haunting female Ohara, Japanese specialist in disfiguring the vocals of competing male doomsters in both languages. Fierce decimation and crushing chords combined at times with bitterly gentle chants keep the bleak undertow of hopeless demise” – THRASHER

“caked with crust and is defined by long, slow, trance-inducing songs that could double as funeral hymns. Yoshiko Ohara wails and howls as though she’s in a perpetual state of mourning, and it’s the perfect complement to the doom and gloom riffs.” – CMJ

“Extinction-level doom…The trump card is Ohara’s wail, which reminds me of the mysterious Japanese voice in Blade Runner in a lower register. This is the music going through Roy Batty’s head as he utters his famous “attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion” speech. Time to die, indeed.” –DECIBEL

“BLOODY PANDA deal in doom rock…expect heavy, slow and creepy jams with a Japanese female frontwoman.” – THE L MAGAZINE

BLOODY PANDA tour dates:

July 25 Wilmington, NC Soapbox (w/ Dark Castle)
July 27 Savannah, GA The Wormhole
July 28 Gainesville, FL The Atlantic
July 30 Miami, FL Goo (w/ Dark Castle, Maruta)
July 31 TBA
August 1 Atlanta, GA Drunken Unicorn (w/ Dark Castle, Withered)
August 2 New Orleans, LA Hi Ho Lounge (w/ EYEHATEGOD)
August 3 Baton Rouge, LA Lacey’s House (w/ Thou)
August 5 Little Rock, AR Downtown Music (w/ Zucura)
August 6 Nashville, TN The End
August 7 Indianapolis, IN Casa Del Kotex (w/ Black Arrows Of Filth And Impurity)
August 8 Chicago, IL White Star Bar (w/ Giant Squid, Grayceon, Lord Mantis)
August 9 Columbus, OH The Summit (w/ Lord Mantis)
August 10 Pittsburgh, PA Howler’s (w/ Giant Squid, Grayceon)
August 12 Buffalo, NY Mohawk Place
August 13 Toronto, ON Wreck Room
August 14 Montreal, QC Katacombes
August 15 Portland, ME New Systems Laundry (w/ Ocean)
August 16 Boston, MA Church
August 18 TBA
August 19 TBA
August 20 Baltimore, MD Talking Head
August 21 Brooklyn, NY Union Pool

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