Video Premiere: Cinemartyr’s ‘Stab City’ Brings the Noise and Dildo Drumming.

With a background that goes back eight years, consists of a stack of albums and initially took root in a country on the other side of the Atlantic, New York’s Cinemartyr is the present-day embodiment of not being able to sit still. Formed by Shane Harrington back in 2012 in his native Limerick, Ireland, the band didn’t really take flight until the guitarist/vocalist/composer moved to Brooklyn and hooked up with Amber Moon Voltson (vocals/guitars), Aaron CT (bass), and David Goldman (drums) and the quartet began irreverently exploring their musical whims while thumbing their collective nose at continuity and linearity.

Debut album, 2012’s Invisible Ink for Sketching Ghosts has been described as “sombre experimental rock”, follow up Dreams During Hibernation came in 2015 and presented more like an avant-garde film soundtrack. A year later Uncaused took on a more indie/folk approach and 2017 saw Suffer New York Love exploring ambient and noise experimentation. Last week, Holy Noise Records issued the band’s latest, Death of the First Person which sees them shape-shifting towards a brand of noise rock that makes as much use of melody and soundscapes as it does spazzy loft party rhythms and red-lining mid-range guitar. Think Daughters, Netherlands and Fugazi knocking boots with mop-topped psychedelic freaks Amon Duul II and Harmonia.

Today, we present a video for one of the new album’s tracks, “Stab City,” a glorious bang up of noodle-tap guitar, Lightning Bolt-inspired drum calamity and Gravity Records slash n’ groove. The video makes for an interesting three minute representation of the tune with dildo drumming, a literal hacked up guitar and a unicorn headband strap-on making all making appearances.

When we asked Harrington for some insight into the song and video, he replied by saying:

“‘Stab City’ is an old nickname for my hometown, Limerick, in Ireland. It had a big problem with knife crime while I was growing up. At one point, it was referred to as the ‘Murder Capital of Europe’ by the press due to the per capita murder rate. Of course, all of this did nothing to help matters and only added fuel to the fire. It’s doing better nowadays and there are really great people there. ‘Stab City’ is kind of a derogatory term now and something everyone there would rather forget I’m sure. I didn’t give the song this title to throw my hometown under the bus, but simply to catalogue a time that I lived through and experienced firsthand. I grew up in a neighborhood in the middle of it all and saw and experienced a lot of visceral, negative things as a child. Among other things, I witnessed an attempted murder at about the age of 11. The experience of living there had a very direct effect on me and I think, if anything, art can be a sort of controlled exposure therapy. So something that was completely out of my hands as a kid becomes a concept I can suspend and analyze as an adult, say in the form of a song. I can look at the darkness with a bit of distance and lightness. It’s an old story; the thing that almost breaks you makes you. I am weirdly thankful for some of the trauma I experienced growing up, in that it lit a fire under my ass to create.”

Death of the First Person has been available just shy of a week, so we’re not sure any of the super-limited five “Blood/Piss/Cum bundles” that coincided with the album’s digital release, are still available. But if you’re in the market for a release with “one vial of fluid extracted from the artist’s body, front and rear album art prints signed, numbered and dated by the artist, hard copy, ink printed Death of the First Person ‘zine, flash drive containing all ten tracks from the album in various formats, a signed letter from the artist, and digital download codes,” then hit up the band below or at Holy Noise. Note that each of the packages will have a different body fluid. Yummy!

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