substAnce D is the highly addictive, lethal drug in the book (and soon to be major motion picture movie), A Scanner Darkly, by sci-fi author Philip K. Dick. Dick is best known for writing the books on which Blade Runner and Total Recall were based.
When LA based band, Black, were forced to come up with a new name, they looked to Dick for inspiration. Dick wrote of the future, the band is the future of aggressive music. Dick wrote of the weakening human condition, the band couldn't agree more. Dumbness, despair, desertion and death? Add dark to that list and you have the band's music. An angry, pissed off cry of how the music biz and LA suck. It's the band in the studio making a cacophony of 100% pure uncut, addictive crystal meth music that's definitely not FDA approved. Fuck 'em all.
substAnce D was formed in Los Angeles in 1992. Then known as Black, their self-titled debut was released in Europe in 1994. Black was a two year record in the making. Guitarist Michael Parnin daylights as a sound engineer who has worked with such bands as Marilyn Manson, Limp Bizkit and Coal Chamber. So Parnin would stay late at work, wait until everyone else left and then invite the rest of the guys to whatever studio he was working at to record. Most of Black was done at about 3 am in the morning on someone else's booked studio time. Originally thought of as just some rough demos, it was these recordings that got released in Europe and eventually put out by FAD records in late 1998 as Black under the new band name substAnce D. FAD quietly released the album, to get the name out and had them tour with label mates, Pissing Razors. Afterwards, they got them in the studio (legitimately) to work on a new album.
It's been almost 6 years since new material has been written by the band. Six years of living in LA as struggling musicians, seeing the obsession society has with power, money, sex and drugs. Addictions, their new album, out September 21st on Noise, is a look at the human wasteland of junkies, the walking brain-dead and fixated self-absorbed, bloated so-called individuals. Hook laden guitars, mind altering bass and dizzying drums are linked together with chronic soundscapes, rolled and twisted into one big trip. Addictions was brought to life through an amalgamation of old school analog and today's cutting edge computer based technologies. The band recently acquired a computer software system that is allowing Parnin (who produced and engineered the record) to link songs together and add background samples of the frustration, despair and decline of civilization. Addictions is poised to set a new standard in heavy music. It's a sound collage of manic proportions, its down and out in Beverly Hills, escape from L A, Blade Runner and lastly a (horrifying?) look into the future, all in the key of D.
