Hear instrumental metal duo Sarattma’s wild, progressive new track, “Sublingual Excavation”

On August 12, instrumental duo Sarattma will release their debut album, Escape Velocity, via Nefarious Industries. Comprising drummer Sara Neidorf (Mellowdeath, ex-Brian Jonestown Massacre, Aptera) and guitarist Matt Hollenberg (Cleric, John Frum, John Zorn), the group creates unpredictable yet technically dazzling feats of progressive metal. Today, they’ve shared “Sublingual Excavation,” an explosive yet brooding track that takes a number of unexpected avenues, from moments of sludgy, Mastodon-like crunch, King Crimson-style rhythmic complexity and even some jazz-fusion-like passages. It’s a wild ride, and one that’s a lot of fun to take for that matter.

Drummer Sara Neidorf says in a statement, “As an instrumental band, language isn’t something we involve very heavily in our working process. It comes later or in brief spurts in the interims. Illness is something that really exists outside of language. It’s always struck me as absurd when a doctor asks me to rate my back pain on a scale from 1 to 10. Like there’s no way I can do that accurately; it always feels like a lie. The most extreme is the ineffable. Wouldn’t I be unconscious before reaching a ten? When my mother was in her final months of life with stage 4 ovarian cancer, there were times she could not remember the most basic words. Once she asked me to bring her “the clear thing” when she wanted water. The clear thing, which was not clear, which was the most essential sustainer of life but whose name had been forgotten and rendered foreign to her existence which was one of sustenance on a severely compromised level.  This song is about searching, exhuming, in the depths of expression and connection, where words fail us, where all systems of meaning lose their footing.”

Hear Sarattma’s “Sublingual Excavation” below.

Escape Velocity will be released on vinyl in a limited run of 250. Find more info here.