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The apex of LoHud/NYC-based GRIDFAILURE‘s unraveling five-album concept series, Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III continues to follow the death of our planet’s ecosystem and humanity’s renaissance of self-mutilation. Marauding factions, societal collapse, revenge, organ harvesting, nuclear warfare, widespread contagion, unfathomable storms, cannibalism, and other grim topics poetically permeate this intense anthology which fully realizes this extreme, anti-genre, experimental vision more than any prior release from GRIDFAILURE to date.

The first three albums in the arc – Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery I, II, and III – span the current unraveling of society, oblivious to the ongoing Anthropocene in which we’re immersed, the violent chapters of this triptych embody a harbinger, prophesizing the post-apocalyptic terrors to be told on the impending closing chapters of the album series – Teeth Collection and Drought Stick.

The subtitle for the first chapter of this ominous GRIDFAILURE sequence was "Survivor’s Remorse", the second was "As Resources Are Depleted So Are Morals", and now Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III bears the subtitle "Acquiring A Taste" as humanity embraces and exalts this downfall. Depicted within Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III is the mass-enslavement of populations, rampant cannibalization, prevalent desire and addiction to homicide, and more, amidst ever-worsening extreme weather disasters, with humanity losing the war we’ve waged on our own planet. With over eighty minutes of GRIDFAILURE’s demoralizing and confrontational battery, the record expands the project’s genre-bending experimentalism, with bizarre and theatrical excursions into jazz, classical, techno, folk, black metal, Americana, and more infused into its merciless post-industrial foundation. As with the rest of the series, Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery III infuses material spanning GRIDFAILURE‘s existence, with recordings dating back to 2015, and elements recorded outdoors during extreme weather events.

Collectively the three records include contributions from Steve Austin (Today Is The Day), Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum, Ionophore), Mac Gollehon (live/session for David Bowie, Duran Duran, Onyx, Blondie, Héctor Lavoe), Benjamin Levitt (Megalophobe, GRIDFAILURE-live), Richard Muller (Giant Spider, GRIDFAILURE-live), Greg Meisenberg (A Fucking Elephant, Dead Register, GRIDFAILURE-live), Lane Oliver (Yatsu, Diminishing), Jeff Wilson (Chrome Waves, Deeper Graves), Christopher Henry (Fuck Your Birthday, Humans Etcetera), Graham Scala (US Christmas, Interstitia, Bleach Everything), Dan Emery (Thetan), BJ Allen (Zero Trust), Clayton Bartholomew (Mountaineer), No One (T.O.M.B., Dreadlords), Morgan Evans (Walking Bombs), Hazard (Hasard, Les Chants Du Hasard), Pranjal Tiwari (Cardinal Wyrm, S.C.R.A.M.), Jared Stimpfl (Secret Cutter, Orphan Donor), Natan Vee (Cardinal Wyrm, Fyrhtu), Mike Giuliano (Big Happy), Josh Thorne (Cadaver Industry), Joy Von Spain (Eye Of Nix, To End It All), BJ Allen (Zero Trust), Chuck Schaaf (Deadbird, ex-Rwake), Dave Small (Cutworm), Alex Haber, Rosa Henriquez, Pete Tsakiris, Isaac Campbell, Rob Levitt, and more.

"GRIDFAILURE is sickness given aural form as the experimental project of madman Dave Brenner (ex-Theologian), and marks a departure from his death industrial treatments in favor of hallucinogenic sound collages bringing to mind legends like Nurse With Wound, early Current 93, or a number of experimental film soundtrack composers from Japan or Italy. Compared to his first album however, Sixth Mass Extinction Skulduggery I takes on a much more straightforward, vocal industrial noise approach with a general emotion of hatred and bitterness pervading the record. […] Each track is meant to reflect a different stage in the decay of the human race, realistically reflecting the current events facing humanity today... This adds a very welcome element of diversity to the recording as it truly feels like a story unraveling, though the tone is very much consistently dark from the very beginning of “Sandy” up to the inevitable cliffhanger “Exsanguination of the Utopians”." - The Covenant

"The Earth cries out. The Geotrauma is echoed in human suffering and violence. Our every utterance and effort at progress goes stifled and unheard. Sometimes, mere Heavy Metal feels inadequate to express the true horror of this world. Reality is infinitely complex and requires great deals of abstraction to communicate it’s terrible truths. This is where GRIDFAILURE comes into play. A leviathan of Noise and Power Electronics, Industrial drones and field recordings, GRIDFAILURE brings the schizo-horrors shambling into the burning light for all to hear." - CVLT Nation

"Brenner is increasingly working in the realm of high tension, and this new video is another step in that increasingly blossoming direction. Something about “Post-Attack Habitat” has a nineties-throwback feel to it, probably nestled somewhere between the fish-eye lens and the high-tempo overstimulation of apocalyptic visions..." - Heathen Harvest

"GRIDFAILURE makes brutal, ugly psalms for people gravitating to the seedy underbelly of the heavy-weird musical landscape. Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery I marks the first of five new albums, a series of concept records serving as a lit match to the gasoline-drenched house of cards that is our borrowed-time of life on Earth." - Ghost Cult Magazine

"Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to peer out of a foxhole and look across a wasteland covered in filth that used to be, say, your neighborhood? If you have pondered doomsday, you’re in luck. GRIDFAILURE offer a take on a catastrophe that we can’t fully see but is only getting closer. […] The piece opens with haunting vocals from To End It All’s Joy Von Spain before launching into a relentless build into misery driven by a straightforward musical undercurrent that’s been mangled before it reaches the listener." - Captured Howls

"Forever pushing the envelope and forever ushering forth noise of the utmost quality, GRIDFAILURE offers perhaps their most ambitious album yet. Through the fifty plus minutes of run time, each track traps you in a world that is and has been ravaged by nature’s unbridled decimating wrath that ultimately leaves humanity on the brink of utter destruction. Without light, without hope and with plenty of harrowing minutes that tick off the clock, GRIDFAILURE provides you with a record that is truly striking and perception altering." - Cadaver Garden

GRIDFAILURE makes music that is as harsh and unsettling as it is hypnotic so it is quite apt that their dystopian noise has yielded their crushing, latest album Sixth Mass-Extinction Skulduggery II on Nefarious Industries during these uncertain and unprecedented times.” - Echoes and Dust

"...I can say with confidence that GRIDFAILURE is a very peculiar and original project with its own stylistic direction and approach to sound." - Musique Machine

"It really is that dark and unnerving and coated in the type of misanthropy that makes you ashamed to be a human being. Skulduggery II is not a dystopian album; it’s a prophecy. This is a work of art that transcends music and dares to peer into the abyss." - Scream Blast Repeat

"Mass extinction, dystopian government and the downfall of humanity are no longer abstract ideas of a distant future...they are staring us right in the face like hungry wolves. They are as real as the air we breathe. Right now there’s no better time for a project like GRIDFAILURE, the one man industrial noise/drone machine headed up by PR whiz Dave Brenner. GRIDFAILURE has had an unbelievably prolific career, participating in more splits and Eps than you can shake a human femur bone at. But with Sixth Mass Extinction-Skulduggery II, Brenner has pulled out all the stops and created the most massive ode to miserable, end-times sound yet." - Dr. Abner Mality, Wormwood Chronicles

"...a hushed and terrifying unsettled arrangement of off kilter tones, screams, tools, and thought patterns that you just know are going to end in the worst possible manner. […] If Rapoon was more pissed off and Merzbow had more control, this is where GRIDFAILURE firmly sits." - The Doorway To

"This is a record with a lot of free space, but in these long moments there’s nowhere to relax; instead, these are long periods of tension, hammering home the aesthetic, relentless." - Discovered Magazine

"Red Tide Baptism sounds positively mellow and understated compared to follow-up track Farmer Suicide, with the type of vocals that make your average black metal band sound like Lady Gaga…" - The Sleeping Shaman

"It’s very eclectic and diverse, defying genre descriptions with the use of traditional instruments along with more unusual ones such as accordion, theremin and didgeridoo in addition to field recordings. Ambient soundscapes are sometimes peaceful, other times filled with tension and chaos. Vocals are buried deep in the mix. Atmosphere and emotion drive the avant-garde and experimental compositions, with numerous guest appearances from members of bands such as Vastum, Chrome Waves, T.O.M.B., Deadbird and more." - Heavy Music Headquarters

"Ever the apocalypse-renderer, dark ambient and harsh noise artist GRIDFAILURE seeks to illustrate through shouting, scraping, blistering and boiling collages the intensifying brutality between men as increasingly barren, nutrient-void fruits of the Earth dry up beneath their feet. With this second part of a five album conceptual undertaking there is a sense of drying, of those chasing down increasingly toxic pools of water that lose there potability with each passing week." - Grizzly Butts

"...the sonic encapsulation of erratic spurts of physical pain. It’s like the soundtrack to moments after the most raging parts of a crisis have unfolded and surveying the wreckage is essentially all that’s left." - Captured Howls

"Sounds that are this experimental, are extremely hard to pigeonhole into a fixed category. I sat here for a time wondering how to explain what I am hearing; until I decided not to. What I can tell you, is that this work is a collaboration of many parts. A gear in the machine. It was created over four years, and as such, contains segments that vary greatly from one another. Parts are noise. Harsh and cold – difficult to listen to. Others are more drone-like. More in a shoegaze and dark ambient vain. Then there are segments played on guitars. It ends as abruptly as it began, and is an experience in itself." - Modern Free Press

"Another dose of noise-fueled misanthropy from New York... with this new album the powerviolence largely takes a backseat in favour of crawling, serpentine slithers of dystopic noise, all dredged from the nether regions of protagonist Dave Brenner’s fevered mind, ready to be transplanted into the part of your mind reserved only for the most hideous, upsetting visions. […] Such is the skill with which sounds and moods are manipulated, the end result is the soundtrack to each listener’s own private hell. That’s a devil of a trick to pull off, but somehow GRIDFAILURE have managed it here. Hats off." - Sentinel Daily