From Aural Pressure.
To survive in an overcrowded tank teaming with bigger fish the baby fish needs to be strong and resourceful or it will surely die. This is an aquatic metaphor for all you fish keepers out there. Out of interest the fish species in question are from the family Cichlidae. Bet that will have 99.5% of you scratching your head in bewilderment. Read overcrowded tank as 'musical genre', bigger fish as 'established artists' and baby fish as 'debutant' and it all makes a kind of illogical sense.
Although to be fair to Egan S Budd, who records as Xiphoid Dementia, he has released a couple of tracks on three compilations and a 3" CDR on the Soulworm Editions record label so strictly speaking "Embalmed In Purity" isn't his debut recording but it is his first full length debut release. With so much competition around a recording needs to be either highly original in concept and sound or to have unusual packaging, preferably a combination of both, to stand out from everything else currently available in the market place. Egan cannot be faulted on the packaging. This limited edition (don't get me bloody started on frigging limited editions again) of 120 copies housed in a Perspex (well it looks and feels like Perspex) DVD case with a nice informative, although very difficult to read, inlay card. Possibly I need new reading glasses. Must go to Specsavers. Even better is the first 55 copies which comes in a hand made stitched white bandage cover. Definitely different and unusual and a huge plus point in its favour.
Music wise "Embalmed In Purity" is 6 tracks and 70+ minutes of aggressive black ambient that sounds a little like a melding of Maeror Tri & Stratvm Terror...if you can imagine what that would sound like. The soundscapes, for want of a better word, are nicely developed and realised with suitably evolving passages that expands on the bleak isolation and desolation that they ultimately invoke. Not the newest or original of concepts it has to be said but "Embalmed In Purity" has that certain 'edge' to it so often missing from similar recordings. Gliding seamlessly from Industrial hum and clamour to spatial black segments with ritual overtones (which sounds strange yet is so cohesive and perfect), onto grunted distorted vocalising and back again the music is a compelling mixture which justifiably cannot be ignored.
As full length debuts go "Embalmed In Purity" is a highly rated and worthwhile addition to anyone's collection and if Aural Pressure marked recordings out of 10 then this is surely worthy of a 9. Swim Egan swim. I foresee you with the big fishes in no time at all.