Dermabrasion

Taken from their new LP Pain Behaviour, Toronto death rockers Dermabrasion share a new video for Grim Sister and also announce a run of Irish tour dates in Dublin, Cork and Belfast. Listen here.

The driving beat and electronic post-punk of Grim Sister lines up somewhere between the intensity of Alien Sex Fiend and the bravado of Motorhead. The raw vocal energy builds with the intensity of the band’s pounding drums and delivers a distinct and commanding sound. The track can flow next to Ministry’s Halloween, Boy Harsher’s Pain, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult’s After the Flesh or any mixtape built for underground dance clubbing once time slips into nothing except purposeless numbers on a clock face and midnight eventually disappears into sunrise.

Scrape the scum and grime off the floors of every bar and basement in so-called Toronto that dared host a mob of unruly hardcore kids or sweaty, undulating goths and you get Dermabrasion — in sound and spirit, a ‘sonic palace of noise’ as Louder Than War blessed them.
For just over a year, the duo have peddled their fleshy post-punk in and around their home town with a deceptively ferocious live show that has landed them supporting slots for the likes of Vision Video, Lydia Lunch Retrovirus, Special Interest, Pixel Grip, Nox Novacula and Front 242’s Patrick Codenys.

Dermabrasion’s 2021 demo EP Lunate marked a return to form for members Adam Bernhardt and Kat McGouran who started writing and performing together in 2015 with defunct Toronto punk band WLMRT. The five tracks on Lunate with a low-fi production that smacks of early Sisters of Mercy recordings offered only a haunting, shadowy outline of what the pair now bring forward with their full-length debut, Pain Behaviour.

Released earlier this year on Toronto-based Hand Drawn Dracula, Pain Behaviour chews up and spits out sonic motifs across 10 tracks that piece together a collection of influences reflecting the years both musicians have spent skulking around their city’s nightlife. The beer-flavoured ghouls smoking outside venues that no longer exist; the backed-up toilet smell hanging in the nightclub air together with fog, lasers and Siouxsie.

Produced by Josh Korody (Fucked Up, Breeze, Beliefs, Traitrs) and mastered by Noah Mintz, Pain Behaviour completes the baleful statement Dermabrasion first uttered with Lunate. Korody’s experience with electronic music helped hone the band’s sound to a menacing edge they call “death rock and roll,” swinging equally in the directions of first wave and contemporary post-punk, industrial, NWOBHM and meathead rock.

Brooding grooves like album opener Halberdier and Goblin Dance want to allure like a California darkwave fest poster while primitive progressions like those of Proving Grounds and Sleepless betray a willful lack of discipline for the sound to ever fully wrest its claim to punk. Hardcore riffs dressed for goth night at the sports bar.

A fascination with the corporeal form and the occult threads through the lyrical subject matter in what McGouran describes as a “mid-concept.” With allusions to Roman Catholicism, LaVeyan Satanism and genre fiction, the songs on Pain Behaviour investigate shame, power, duty and the responsibility of simply inhabiting a human body.

While needling, existential questions appear on several tracks, the full pastiche of the band’s ersatz dogma is best demonstrated in the wicked anthem heralding the album’s halfway point, Magic Missile. Over a thunderous kick drum and snare hits that crack like a whip, the query curls like smoke: When the gods falter, what size are the faults?

Check out the new single Grim Sister, taken from the album Pain Behaviour below:

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Pain Behaviour tracklist:
01. Halberdier
02. Grim Sister
03. Goblin Dance
04. Proving Ground
05. Betrayer Moon
06. Magic Missile
07. Sleepless
08. Psychic Event
09. In the Time of Queens
10. Blight

Dermabrasion live dates: 
May 22 – Dublin, Ireland – Fibber Magees Basement w/ Joe Maxi
May 24 – Cork City, Ireland – Fred Zeppelin
May 31 – Belfast, Ireland – Fibber Magees w/ Anal Lobotomy, Joe Maxi

Hand Drawn Dracula | Website 

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