Max Michaels is indeed a busy man. In-between promoting Movement Frequencies, his own label of dark Industrial and Gothic Rock acts, DJ-ing for local clubs, and promoting his own magazine of dark rock news dubbed MOVEMENT, he’s working hard to create horrifically phantasmagorical images to titillate and inspire. Recently, Max has placed his creations into a new book of photography entitled GROTESQUE - a concept release that also includes a musical score for each individual photo, as artfully and lovingly created by Grim Faeries versus Asp Beat Battalion. The project has quietly been winning fans, including filmmaker Darren Lynn Bousman (SAW II-IV, REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA), and muscians such as Ogre (Skinny Puppy), Rogue (The Cruxshadows), and Fango favorite Voltaire.
I recently experienced GROTESQUE first-hand, and Michaels has provided some exclusive photos to share with FANGORIA.
The score sets the tone with “Mechanistic Embryo”, with it's clanging thunderous and gut wrenching synth. “Incubator” is a spooky and frightening track that sets your skin crawling with eerie distorted female vocals. “Heritage of Pain” is lurid and gritty as the images of circuit board bacteria glint back with the backdrop of this luscious and spooky riff.
“Deep Sea Marmoset” echoes and slowly dives into darker waters while Max’s biologically manipulated genetic creation ungulates with grace and beauty on the page.
“I am the monster inside of you” trips and clangs with metallic cacophony while the bio-mechanical horror is ripped away before you. The album closes out with “War Eternal” guttural and vulgar sounding synth, ripping it up to the horrors of war played out before you.
Max’s work of art is generating a buzz in the dark rock scene with his work. At first glance it’s bio-mechanical and genetic anomalies seem more like structures built by hand. Each seems so expertly crafted that one would think they were constructed rather than painstakingly painted with digital brush. With the addition of the musical score, the work takes on a truly visceral edge that either moves you to fall in love with his work or to remand yourself to an asylum. A true work of craftsmanship manufactured with Swiss precision out of flesh and circuitry.
While I would give this project 3.5 Skulls on the Fango scale, I highly recommend that you explore it first-hand, to see and hear it for yourself.
http://www.movementmagazine.com/publishing/grotesque.html
http://www.movementmagazine.com/
www.myspace.com/movementmagazine
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