Holy shit. I love it when I stumble upon something like this. "Toiling Through Worthless Masses" is the debut EP from Infertile Crescent. This project is the evil little brain-child of Chip Smith, a multi-instrumentalist in his mid 20s, who we are LUCKY to have putting all of his energy into Infertile Crescent. I mean, this thing is under 15 minutes, but still somehow feels like a complete story; a bleak and disgustingly tangible walk down a shit-slime drenched sewer. Parts of it remind me of a raw black metal atmosphere, parts of it are reminiscent of Bell Witch, and most of it churns, chugs, and slams you to death.
Right away I noticed the tones of the guitar. The perfect, fuzzy fit for how this project feels. The heavy parts feature chugs that have to be palm muted by god, (satan?) himself. To compliment it all are these wonderful drums. They provide a perfect warmth to the mix and a luxuriously tight feeling snare but still with a full sound. Then I learned that it was Joey Pelletier behind mixing and mastering this, and thought 'ok he may know a thing or two about how to make a drum kit sound pretty perfect' and everything else does too!!
Chips vocals, creative writing, and awesome artwork (both by Chip, and the cover art, by Vlad Mashynskyi) all help to wrap this up nicely and make it one of my favorites of the year!!
Click HERE to let it play while you read the interview below!
I’m Chip. I’ve been playing music for about 10 years but have been passionate about music my whole life. I’ve been in several bands since then, but Infertile Crescent is my one man passion project so I do all writing, instruments and vocals in the band.
I’ve been playing music for about 10 years now, or since I was 15. I originally started playing drums after listening to a bunch of Calculating Infinity by Dillinger Escape Plan. My family and the people I grew up around are very music oriented so I grew up with a lot of musical influence. My brother introduced me to metal when i was a preteen and I kind of just went down the rabbit hole from there.
The EP "Toiling Through Worthless Masses" is insanely heavy, groovy, brutal, doomy, sludgy, dissonant and everything else. It really does have so much going on, and thanks to the wonderful production, we can sit back and really enjoy this without any confusion or straining to hear certain things. Can you speak on this? How did we get here?!
Honestly, the type of music I write just comes naturally to me. There’s less thought behind the writing with Infertile Crescent. I just open my DAW and let it happen. Writing Infertile Crescent is kind of my comfort place. I feel like I’m truly me when I’m working on this project. Thankfully, as far as production goes, I have some wonderful people around me who are talented and help me make things sound brutal. Joey Pelletier mixed and mastered “Toiling Through Worthless Masses” and completely understood the direction I was looking to take it. This project is purely me, and writing the music is kind of like writing an autobiography to me, as corny as that is
I love the art and the font choice, even the movement of light when I let the youtube video play.
I’m very inspired by lost/cursed and generally off putting media. The samples, imagery of the band, and how I present it is just as important to me as the music itself. Just like the music, the imagery is a piece of me and comes fairly naturally. I feel like the music wouldn’t be the same without all the other things that come along with it. If you haven’t gone down the rabbit hole of disturbing media, and you’re a horror fan, I would strongly suggest giving it a go.
For this project, I pull a lot of my inspiration from experimental death metal, black metal and similar genres. Bands like Portal, Blut Aus Nord, Xasthur and the likes have probably been the bigger influences. I’m sure there has been a month or two span of time where I nearly only listened to those three bands. Apart from those, there is a slam/brutal death element to the music that is inspired more by slam as a whole and not any particular bands. However, Wormed, Infertile Surrogacy and Grieve are some bands that did provide inspiration to my sound. Honorable mentions would be mathgrind and anything generally f***ed up. I’ll listen to harsh noise if it hits the spot.
As far as physical copies and merch go, it really just depends on the demand for them. I would be more than willing to release merch and physical copies if people are interested in buying them. I’m planning to release more music, and already have a new release in the works. I think I’ll always work on this project in one way or another.
Thank you Chip for taking the time!
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