Pharmakon announces new album, Bestial Burden
Margaret Chardiet, a.k.a. Pharmakon made some impressive noise last year with her Sacred Bones debut Abandon. The momentum and acclaim she achieved on the strength of that album led to touring with Godflesh and Swans, and this fall, she’s gearing up to follow-up that intense and basically terrifying debut. On Oct. 14, Pharmakon will release new album Bestial Burden via Sacred Bones. The cover image that you can see above is actually inspired by a real-life event in which Chardiet was forced to cancel tour dates to have emergency surgery, and left her temporarily bedridden with one of her organs missing.
“After seeing internal photographs taken during the surgery, I became hyperaware of the complex network of systems just beneath the skin, any of which were liable to fail or falter at any time,” she says in a press release. I thought of my corporeal body anthropomorphically, with a will or intent of its own, outside of my will’s control, and seeking to sabotage. I began to explore the idea of the conscious mind as a stranger inside an autonomous vessel, and the tension that exists between these two versions of the self.”
Bet this is going to be pretty nightmarish too, which can only be a good thing. Check out the tracklist and trailer for the album below.
Pharmakon Bestial Burden:
1. Vacuum
2. Intent Or Instinct
3. Body Betrays Itself
4. Primitive Struggle
5. Autoimmune
6. Bestial Burden
Jeff Terich is the founder and editor of Treble. He's been writing about music for 20 years and has been published at American Songwriter, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb, Spin, Stereogum, uDiscoverMusic, VinylMePlease and some others that he's forgetting right now. He's still not tired of it.