Saskatchewan Post Metal Band The Basement Paintings Release Their New Album "ANTIPODES"
Conceived in the near hypothermic prairies of Saskatchewan, The Basement Paintings overall sound can be categorized into ambient and post-rock genres. Drums and bass pound the low end of the frequency range, while the slithering reverberations of the string section widen the spectrum to exhaustive levels of grandiosity.
Forming in the winter of 2011, The Basement Paintings quickly got to work recording a full length debut album which was released in March of 2013 along with a video for the single "Desert Surfer". The follow up EP, titled "Time Lapse City" was released in March of 2014. Featuring a collaboration with Aaron Harris (ISIS, Palms), the EP marks a major step in the evolution of the band, and the refinement of their sound. This stacked roster earned them a spot in “Ominocity’s Top Local Albums of 2014”. The band’s next release, “Mystic”, was an attempt to abandon their prog and metal roots, and enter the vast, desolate wilderness of drone induced comatose. Their sophomore effort earned them a nomination on "Saskatchewan's Top Albums of 2016" ballot.
The band has just released their brand new full-length release “ANTIPODES”. This album explores themes of diametrically opposed ideologies, access points to the collective consciousness, and glimpses of divine interconnections. “ANTIPODES” refines and expands on the sound of the bands previous releases with rich guitar tones, visceral drum patterns and trance-like journeys through metal, psychedelic, and progressive landscapes.
From the band: “We thought a lot about dualities and society getting stuck in one mode of thinking, leading to problems (hence the WWII statue on the album art to represent people taking ideology to an extreme and where that leads). The name antipodes means exact opposites, and also was used by Aldous Huxley to describe the different regions of the mind that can be reached through various methods including religious experience, meditation, drugs, etc. We hope the album encourages or aids people in exploring different areas of their psyche and the collective psyche”.
Listen to “ANTIPODES” below, stream it on Bandcamp, and connect with The Basement Paintings on their social media.