Black Magnet - Body Prophecy (2022)

With the release of Black Magnet's debut album Hallucination Scene in 2020, a new industrial metal power emerged from the unlikely landscape of Oklahoma City. After anxiously waiting out the pandemic, the band returned to the road in late 2021 and now drop Body Prophecy, the second full length burst of machine-driven mayhem and electronic deviance. On Body Prophecy, mastermind James Hammontree welds the frenetic vitality of post-punk and metal energy with driving synthetic club beats, factory force physicality and alluringly stark melodic pulses. Tracks like "Floating In Nothing" and "Violent Mechanix" feature both intensely catchy hooks and hammering brutal noise. "Sold Me Sad" is a quietly deranged lullaby that takes an atmospheric turn. The throbbing drug-addled lurch of the Manson / Reznor-esque "Incubate" is, at the end of the album, treated to a completely re-imagined and extended club style remix by scene legend Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Zonal, etc). For all it's harsher, scraping atmospheres and pummeling aggression, Body Prophecy always remains an eminently tight, memorable album molded for the stage and constructed to keep bodies in motion and listeners transfixed.