by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Just over a year removed from the blistering intensity and depraved indignation of NINES MECCA, Buffalo’s Science Man returns with Mince’s Cane, another voyage into the outer realms of psychedelic hardcore. The chaotic solo project of John Toohill (Ismatic Guru, Alpha Hopper), Science Man is mutant experimentation gone awry, a transmission of disgust from the gutter, as enthusiastically weird as it is forever menacing. It’s a hardcore band, to be sure, but Science Man has become as much an art project, with a cinematic component that’s been increasingly engrained in Toohill’s work. What began with NINES MECCA continues with Mince’s Cane, due out April 14th via Swimming Faith Records, another visual album that pairs each track’s corresponding music together together to form a surrealist narrative, part psychedelic nightmare, part low budget horror film. Science Man kicked it off last month with “Give To The Plague,” the record’s first single and the start to a new demonic video odyssey.
That video pulled us into a literal box of mysterious terror and visions from the occult. Clearly it’s not the kind of trinket that should be left lying around and with new single “Colored Smoke,” someone is doing something about it. The song is a sonic assault of unnerving hardcore stampedes, disjointed rhythms, and shredding riffs all played at maximum speed. The track bounces between pummeling sludge and buzzing aggression, festering in filth with a deranged ferocity. Directed by Toohill and Lindsay Tripp, the video finds an ominous figure clad in mask and robe taking hold of the box, traveling dystopian landscapes to bury it away from the reaches of whomever might be after it. Is it a noble quest or one of catastrophic beginnings? Only time will tell.