Arrogant Bastard
After Stasis Cocoon I knew I had to delve into this discography. Remarkably this one-man metal project dropped a helluva record a mere 18 months after releasing this equally exceptional death metal opus. Wish I wasn't experiencing such a drastic financial drought, I would love to pick up a CD or two.
Gordon Skramzy (Nathan)
As a fan of all of the music Garry makes, he's outdone himself with this one. This is incredible.
Favorite track: Glimpse the Unthinkable.
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Rot
Revive
You thought your world was over; it's time for spores and slime
Renewal by means to deform, miscreation by design
Mutate all remaining life, my plagues redesign mankind
Why stop at the sign of moss when wolf's bane and dark yarrow reigns?
Noxious revival, befouled sanctity
Noxious revival, leaves to veins
You thought we were the same, but your vision was tame
Renewal by means to reform? Transmogrify in vain
Noxious revival, befouled sanctity
Noxious revival, oozing brains
Worms coil around new flesh in the mire and muck's excess
Plume of poison gas arise, the hive mind
Rise
Breathe it in
Become my plague engineers, devout to the hive mind desire
Weaponized tangles of man and mire, this rock is just the beginning
Hurling through the cosmic twine, what's yours will become mine
Noxious revival, worlds redefined
Noxious revival, human decline
Machines?!
Retreat
Tyria calls the black witch moth, from the desolate plane of Yagxic
Wings of cosmic black and baleful flight, a celestial stench of toxic deluge
Fungal magic germinating with hate, potent against organs and machines
Artificial evolution
Versus cabalistic assimilation
Noctai, enchanter of disease
Knowledge against flesh and circuitry
The battle between Servym's Network and Moss Deceptiva escalate
Androids tangled in virulent charms, acidic slime devouring wires
System breach detected
Activate pyrite spellbomb
Voidslime counters activated ability, there's nothing you can do
The damage is done, witness the melted steel
Rebuild
Reshape
Transmute
Sallow Moth of an unlikely kind, spawned in tumultuous times, cocoon alloy of arcane twine, shaped anew divine
Behold an ostensible nature...and contrivance
A Mothlord in stature...improbable alliance
Ability to speak in any language, to reshape as a convincing image, infiltrate the nest of deception, first salvage the graves undetected
Servym's visions, bring to light, Mothlord hive, prepared for flight
The winged eclipse fills the sky
The prized apparatus leads the fight
Rise
Pierce
Piercing through Noctai's spells, unhinged
Caught by surprise
Retrieve lost lives
Brought back by silk, androids saved from pit filth
Divert fungal traps, scavenging ooze, and structural collapse
Winds of rebuke
Draw near, casting a death cloud
Million wings stir the foulest of breezes
Caustic Moths and Plague Stingers with haste, Servym's ship quickens the escape
Phasing out of death clouds, flickering into the void
Back to the sphere of safety, silence the odds of exploit
Deploy phantasmal images to snare spells from Noctai and Tyria's forces of despair
Alert, a caustic caterpillar found its way inside
Break asunder
We must escape to the wilds, flicker to another plane quickly
Deprived all their tricks, crumble the vestige, crash to a planet to settle the wreckage
Canopy spiders, reaching up high
Straggling mothlords, fall from the sky
Glittering strands of a complex web, catching broken wings, and flesh scraps of machines
Crawl...
Legs...
Spiders' webs
Breached hull, cantrip for a sentinel
Voices of resurgence reach before they eat
Protection from the green terrors until...
Eight legs of steel
Spin massive webs
Of whispersilk
(Centuries ago, Servym ordered the expedition of the Scry to seek primitive worlds for...)
(...technological colonization. One discovery was a verdant planet inhabited mostly by giant spiders, insects, and benthic creatures. Only few signs of human life.)
Strands of web reach far beyond the lair to alert the approach of prey
Ship's descent onto a sylvan mountaintop...but to their dismay
Everything it sees it considers food, a forest-wide network not easy to elude
Defense Grid activate, surveying the woods elaborate
Crew now detects acid from the web, a disastrous mental misstep
Prey pursued, prey subdued
None survive, bodies dissolve
The few behind, burning with anger
Engine overloaded, using its power to strengthen the grid
Communication with home has been severed and years grind away
Deconstructed ship
Main bridge became a crypt
Remaining parts forged into a steel spider
With the help of native conjurers
Treetop village in tandem with the rhythm of the wild
The Arachnoid trawls the planet seeking to compile
Signs of life from the cosmos
Signals emit from Servym's Console...intruder alarm!
Behold a light in the sky, and dusty wings foreign to the eye, natives of this world alert descendants, but what they seek is vengeance
Crash, webs lash
Fear, Servym is here
We watch...the spiders weave...we haunt...you cannot leave
Flashback to our ancestors, left for dead, distress signals severed
Must avenge the fallen and abandoned, crawling steel has you surrounded
Reap the past everlast
Sequestered and choked, they've gone for the throat, spiders and worms convoked, Servym is dead
Mothlords stave off, into the bog, the Sallow Moth casts a blinding fog
Glimpse the unthinkable, retraced the imprint from an erratic portal
Glimpse the unthinkable, powerful auras cast out a signal
The descendants and natives evaporate by photolysis, every crawler's movement dampened by a silkbinding matrix
A circuitous discovery with unexpected results, an auspicious proclivity, soon to engulf
A golden glow in Cocoon Subject Zero, their power overflows, Tyria is next
Glimpse the unthinkable, the Mothlords from home sense a power unheard of
Glimpse the unthinkable, Moss Deceptiva has scried the fog from afar
Approach
Fog settling, no human life remaining
Confusion increasing, surviving Mothlords fleeing
Blinded with newfound power
Cryptic command
A cyclonic rift emanating from its core
An aether mutation set in stone to make way for a battleground
Plague Engineers arrive, Noctai and Tyria in sight
A feeling of dread washes over them as they see Servym's head, but no evidence of other death
Only the aura of the Sallow Moth shows itself
A serene sunset of omens
Prismatic in certainty
Descent of the engineer's plague
Unfazed
Veil of Summer
Transcendent
A mesmeric orb
Exhausting all opposition
A merciless eviction
Splitter of heavens
The grand extraction
A glory so barren
Cocoon liberated
about
50% of profits will be split between nonprofit wildlife organizations, racial justice organizers, and NAACP Legal Defense fund.
This album continues the backstory from Deathspore (chapter can be read on that EP's page).
The following chapter is a more in-depth telling of this album's story-driven lyrics:
CHAPTER II: THE LARVAL HOPE
Servym and his artificers have reluctantly joined forces with the arcane Mothlords to create the Sallow Moth, a genderless fusion referred to as Cocoon Test Subject Zero by his laboratory. Its primary purpose is to infiltrate the Moss Deceptiva and restore balance to the spore-infected worlds.
Tyria and Noctai grow in power and villainous wealth, increasing their mutated collection of worlds and civilizations. A team of Servym's soldier androids attempt to infiltrate one of their colonies on a freshly infected planet to gather intelligence and extract any semblance of technological scrap and artifacts from this planet that the Moss Deceptiva have little to no use for. Tyria and Noctai get the best of the infiltrators through the power of scavenging ooze, virulent charms and acidic slime creatures that are able to seep through the strongest of steel. Servym predicted his initial plan might go awry only to test how strong the Moss Deceptiva's death magic have become, so he commands Sallow Moth to lead a secondary rescue fleet of androids to infiltrate.
The sheer speed and mystical power of the Sallow Moth is enough to overcome the death mutations with ease and retrieves Servym's desired scraps and artifacts from the colony's nest undetected. It forms a protective sphere of safety around itself, the artifacts, and the rescue fleet as they exit the atmosphere of the planet. Unknown to them, Noctai had enchanted the artifacts with microscopic caterpillars shrouded in protection from any technological detection. As the crew boards their ship, a swarm of plague insects approach violently, forming death clouds of poison gases. If only the crew could hear the sound of the plague stingers, they could field a plan of escape in time. However, the Sallow Moth innately senses the encroachment and immediately phases the entire ship out of this plane.
Through a dizzying flurry of black holes and temporal distortions into another galaxy, the ship's bridge suddenly bursts into flame from an explosion. Noctai's microscopic caterpillars, caustic in nature, caused the sudden explosion on the bridge of the ship. The ship hurls through a dense atmosphere, crash landing as a crumbling vestige through canopies of tall forests. The wreckage finds itself near the top of a sylvan mountain with much of the crew injured and the hull nearly decimated. A sense of shock and bewilderment wash over them as they try to process the sudden planar travel and crash-landing onto a primitive, verdant planet. Communication systems are weakened and nearly nonfunctional. Soon after realizing this, the faintest sound of webs lash towards the crash site. It's coming from all directions, causing panic and increasing confusion. The Sallow Moth manages to sever some of the webs but there's too many to stop. Part of the crew swiftly become entangled in webs, slinging and retracting into the depths of the forest in a matter of seconds. The rest of the crew manage to enable what's left of the security system, activating a laser defense grid that surrounds the crash site.
They soon realize this planet is infested with its own security system. Giant spiders, insects, and benthic creatures. In their predicament, the Sallow Moth devises a plan to use nature magic by conjuring sentinels, esoteric birds who are naturally resistant to spiders and insects. From thin air, wings descend and wash from the sky over their crash site like a vaporous phantom. The sentinels soar through the forest wide network into caves of spider nests. The sentinels paralyze them and retrieve the almost-eaten crew. As the birds gather them in their clutches, a heavy metallic sound shovels through dirt nearby in quick succession. Eight legs of steel spin massive webs towards the sentinels nullifying their efforts.
Centuries ago, Servym ordered the expedition of the Scry (ship designed for deep space exploration) to seek primitive worlds for technological colonization. The manifest was divided equally: human and android, groomed to cohabit and work together. One discovery was a verdant planet. Only few signs of human life were detected, but enough to intrigue the helm of the Scry. This planet is the same one that the Sallow Moth and crew are coincidentally stranded on in present time. The inner core of the Sallow Moth contains equal parts magic and artificial intelligence, which in itself contains a small mapping and history of Servym's past expeditions. When the Sallow Moth opened the temporal distortion to another plane, it subconsciously selected a familiar destination. The crew accompanying it had no prior knowledge of this planet or the history of its ancestors discovering it, at the behest of Servym covering up past failures.
[[Flashback]]
The crew of the Scry were in awe of this green world full of life and potential. Potential to turn it into a whirring cityscape of machines, factories, tourist trappings for human travelers, and the like. Of course, this has always been Servym's primary goal when discovering primitive worlds. The crew set base atop a mountain to survey and digitally map the region. Most of the crew quickly succumb to the same fate as most do when arriving to this world: becoming food to spiders, other insects, or devoured whole by the giant creatures in the oceans. Webs lash around the ship's hull to prevent it from budging. Acid is detected in most of the spider webs when the Scry's remaining crew try to hatch an escape. Distress signals were sent to Servym but he ignored them in a panic, a lost cause easy to abandon. The ship's hull quickly dissolves, communication severed, and the main bridge eventually became lost to time as a crypt. Few of the Scry were quick enough to escape to the wilderness opposite of the spider caves. This group comprised of 4 androids and 2 humans. After miles of fleeing, they stumble across villages in the treetops. They are home to native conjurers and shamans of this planet, serving nature and spellbinders with the monstrous insects of the forest. The origin of their existence on this planet is unknown.
Years pass as the Scry's survivors completely assimilate with the natives. In that span of time, they had salvaged their ship's parts and brought them to the shamans to assemble robotic spiders as a way to strengthen the forest's security system from further advanced civilizations reaching the planet. The shaman's magic was strong enough to keep these creations not only operational but robust without any form of charging electricity on the planet. An ulterior motive was for these creations to serve as beacons to reach Servym and gather signs of life from the cosmos. The survivors, even the androids, eventually grew to loathe Servym, his command of technological colonization and greedy nature. However, the communication signals in these Arachnoids were never strong enough to reach Servym's console and too shrouded in shaman magic to receive signals from distant galaxies as far as Servym's primary home. The human survivors eventually passed on but their descendants have carried their wishes and way of life as the centuries pass.
[[Flashforward to current time]]
The Arachnoids quickly dispatch the sentinels and begin to pursue the Sallow Moth, but it begins to form a glowing orb from its hand to slow down the steel spiders. The Arachnoids' communication circuitry wakes from dormancy as the Sallow Moth's power heightens, causing a power surge to send signals to Servym's console. The bursts of signals also flash to other reaches of the multiverse, to the attention of the Moss Deceptiva and the Mothlords. Servym, intrigued, boards his new planar vessel and fast travels through the galaxies to reach this planet with a fleet of Mothlords and androids for protection. On the periphery of the spider caves, the descendants of the Scry alert the natives that a ship with Servym's markings has landed. They prepare for battle. Servym is horrified by the crude realization of what the Scry's descendants made of themselves. He immediately orders the android soldiers to eliminate them and help Sallow Moth escape, but to his dismay, the Arachnoids overwhelm them and prove to be a distraction for the Sallow Moth and Mothlords. The descendants, along with the native shamans, cast out more spiders and worms to surround Servym before he could escape. His body sequestered in acidic webs and partially melted down into dismembered pieces for the worms to eat. His bloodied head remains as a trophy. The Mothlords struggle but are able to stave off the monsters into a nearby bog, using their magic to deepen the swampfloor as the Sallow Moth casts a sensory-depriving fog over them, clutching its orb brazenly. The fog suddenly transmutes into a blinding white light, an unprecedented form of magic. The Sallow Moth became enveloped with a golden glow as the orb in its hand grows brighter and warmer. Completely mesmerized by the light, the natives and descendants gradually and gently vaporize by photolysis, molecularly decomposing by the commanding light with no trace of flesh or material. No human life remains on this world. Android flesh dissolves and circuitry disintegrates. The animals and creatures of the planet don't perish, but are dampened into a slumber by a silkbinding matrix as steel nerves sprout like ropes from the Sallow Moth to protect them from its newfound power. The small fleet of Mothlords panic in confusion as they're unaffected. However, they flee the planet in horror. This powerful magic causes a catastrophic rift in the galaxy as the light grows larger, soon to engulf.
Tyria and Noctai finally reach the planet with a horde of plague engineers in hopes to control the light and cast it into darkness. A feeling of dread washes over them as they see Servym's head preserved in sallow silk, but no evidence of other death, no corpses to count. Only the aura of the Sallow Moth shows itself, becoming a prismatic omen for the Moss Deceptiva, and perhaps most existence. The death magic of Tyria and Noctai prove to be mere scratches on flesh compared to the power of the Sallow Moth's mesmeric orb. Their plague engineers, the ones who resemble past Mothlords, attempt to trick the Sallow Moth by mimicking their past selves to avoid being touched by the light. Only for a moment this ruse acts as a dimmer, but soon a veil of light grows even stronger and brighter as the Sallow Moth mercilessly evicts them of existence. Tyria and Noctai exhaust their magic and resources to try and keep the light at bay, but the reaction of their spells against the Sallow Moth causes an aether mutation, shrinking them into minuscule insect versions of themselves. Like tiny moths to a flame, they hurl into the everflowing mesmeric orb. Every being in the multiverse feels the glowing presence as the orb's light begins to transcend and reach the stars. Across the multiverse many vanish and dissipate, exiled whole by the light. Those who remain alive temporarily fall into a deep slumber as if the Sallow Moth retains a semblance of mercy. Is it mercy? Or is it inevitability blanketed by false hope and unearthly sadism. This grand extraction and transcendence fills the Sallow Moth with unbridled glory. The Cocoon, liberated.
credits
released January 15, 2020
Garry Brents - Instruments, Vocals, Lyrics, Production
Guests:
Armando Puente Jr - Guitar Solo on Track 1
Andrea Taylor - Robotic speech on Track 2
All music written and recorded February - April 2018. Vocals recorded November 2019.
"..This is a concept album that rips, without ever feeling like an overwrought mess. After reading the lore and listening a few times through, character names and concepts began to emerge through the lyrics. For those that want to explore the story, there is a lot to enjoy here. For those that just want ripping death metal, there is a lot to enjoy here." - Your Last Rites yourlastrites.com/2020/02/24/sallow-moth-the-larval-hope-review/
"..epitomises and combines some of the very best aspects of Death Metal – the bold, infectious riffing, the primal, uncompromising energy, the deep-rooted respect for the genre’s legacy and history – with a more forward thinking and subtly proggy outlook which prevents it from ever becoming stagnant or sluggish." - NO CLEAN SINGING www.nocleansinging.com/2020/01/22/sallow-moth-the-larval-hope/
"..totally fresh and inventive, actually, and even the vocal performance offers tons of dynamics to maintain attention across The Larval Hope‘s six songs." - Invisible Oranges www.invisibleoranges.com/umr-12620-212020/
est. 2016. Concept project from Garry Brents. Story/themes inspired by Sci-Fi/Horror/Fantasy i.e. Swamp Thing, Hellraiser,
Macross, & MTG. Story revolves around conflicts between celestial humanoid nature-preserving moths, tech-obsessed human/android civilization hungry for space colonization, and a defected faction of moths who mutated into malicious scavengers & sorcerers who thrive on chaos....more
Definitely my favorite punk release in the last decade. Only 1 song is streaming from this on bandcamp, though. Find it on Spotify or YouTube. It's dirty. It's fucking good. Sallow Moth
My other lore-based solo project Gonemage. An alternate reality dream dimension of black metal, 8-bit/chiptune, and indie rock/shoegaze leanings. Sallow Moth
My custom Guitar Impulse Response Pack (IR's) for DI recording using VST amp sims. A variety pack including HM-2 tones, Marshall-esque Thrash tones, Sludge, 5150-esque DM tones, & more. Free/NYP! Sallow Moth
supported by 121 fans who also own “The Larval Hope”
never been a big death metal fan but this is actually super accessible for the genre, has fun concepts, and personally i'm always a fan of albums with short tracklists and huge runtimes (for individual songs) Great time, good jumping on point for newbies too. alienasu