My wife walked in from her shift, strolled into my office, and asked, “What are you listening to?” When I replied, she shot back, “Brain Tourniquet? Nice try on the name.” She’s onto something—the moniker has swagger. Even if Brain Tourniquet’s abrasive sound isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, you have to respect the mark they leave on the scene.
I’m into it, though. The DC-based powerviolence squad Brain Tourniquet constantly pushes the boundaries of extreme music in gnarly new directions. Take 2023 as an example: they released …An Expression In Pain, a 20-minute album anchored by an 11-minute title track, while the other tracks hover around a minute apiece. I wrote a hardcore column about catching the band at a warehouse venue that has since vanished, and they played that 11-minute piece in its entirety, live and unedited.
Today, Brain Tourniquet pushes forward from that LP with Sinking Deeper Into Madness, a concept album built around a lobotomy premise. It sounds completely unhinged even before its grand finale, a six-minute doom‑scuzz cover of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” that drips with ooze. Here’s Bandcamp’s take on the concept behind the LP:
Sinking Deeper Into Madness chronicles a nameless protagonist whose family pressures him to undergo a lobotomy after a manic episode. The protagonist ultimately chooses to go through with the procedure and experiences intense waves of joy, fear, guilt, and remorse until his mind collapses into utter emptiness.
Hell yeah, bring on the void! Dive in below.
Sinking Deeper Into Madness is out now on Iron Lung.
