Drowning Room “The Divinity Syndrome” 7”

Strangely enough I had literally ripped my copy of this 7" to write about on the site a mere week before a copy of the limited edition repress showed up in the mail!? I had absolutely no idea that upstate NY's Drowning Room had done a (Final?) reunion show at the start of 2009, but apparently they did, and as a result the always awesome Trip Machine Laboratories did a small repress of this absolutely outstanding EP, "The Divinity Syndrome", which they originally released in 1996. To my dismay, I never really had any Drowning Room material back in the day aside from a compilation appearance or two (coincidentally I had only recently come across the original pressing of this 7", which I bought for a couple bucks), which clearly didn't do the band justice. The four tracks herein have a serious Bloodlet meets Starkweather thing goin' on (again, strangely enough, the label says the exact same thing in their webstore), with a mix of strained sneers and tactfully peculiar singing over all sorts of riffs and tempos, from the occasional burst of straightforward metallic hardcore power chords to a dominant force of darker and more melodic metal-based influences—intermittently accented by grungy or mildly rock-influenced flourishes. But let's face it, any band that can be compared to Bloodlet and Starkweather is well worth checking the fuck out, so... I'm not even gonna say anything else. Listen for yourselves:

Drowning Room "The Divinity Syndrome"

The repress contains modified cover art alongside the same lyric insert as the original, and the records themselves are hand-numbered out of just 103 copies, so... act fast!

Get It

Trip Machine Laboratories
Interpunk
Very Distribution

For awhile there it was rumored that Trip Machine was thinking of doing a Drowning Room discography CD, and holy shit would I flip out over that! I've had a hell of a hard time tracking down any of the band's other material, so if anyone out there can provide me some information on their complete discography, or hook me up with mp3's of some of their other work, I'd hugely appreciate it. This 7" is completely awesome in every way, so I'm really bummed that I never truly looked into these guys back when they were fully functional...