BLOODY PANDA: 'Summon' Details Revealed

New York City experimental doom metal act BLOODY PANDA has completed work on its new album, "Summon", for an August 11, 2009 North American release via Profound Lore Records.

Fronted by Japanese siren and accomplished visual artist Yoshiko Ohara, whose death-defying wails have at once drawn comparison to Diamanda Galas, Björk and Jarboe, BLOODY PANDA creates unique, affecting heavy music that combines visceral power, pained beauty and devastating emotion. Since its formation in 2005, BLOODY PANDA has skillfully combined the brutal with the entrancing, generating buzz with the UG metal sect and the indie set alike, each drawn to the band's super-strength songs, funeral doom arrangements and the sight and sound of a petite woman chanting and screaming in both English and Japanese alongside four imposing musicians sporting executioner's masks.

Recorded at New York's Excello Recordings and Secret Weapon Studios with engineer Jason Marcucci (FLAMING LIPS, THE WHITE STRIPES) and the band's Josh Rothenberger, "Summon" is a nightmarish, cryptic trip that boosts BLOODY PANDA's disturbing cinematic vision of terror and frightening ferocity to altogether new spheres. The follow-up to the band's acclaimed debut, "Pheromone", "Summon" is described as "the aural equivalent of a Takashi Miike film translated into doom metal." The album is an artful time-stretching opus that morphs through a vast cornucopia of both darkened sound and disturbing tone.

"Summon" will be issued as a two-disc, CD/DVD release; the DVD bringing to life an abstract visual interpretation of the 20-plus-minute BLOODY PANDA track "Miserere". Filmed in various Brooklyn locales and coupled with footage captured in Jatiluhur Dam, Indonesia, this optic translation is a very dark and mysterious offering that features world-renowned Butoh dancer Yuko Kaseki. "Miserere" was shot and edited by BLOODY PANDA's Bryan Camphire, Blake McDowell and Josh Rothenberger, all of whom are also New York City-based filmmakers.

"'Summon' spans two years of work — not just songwriting and recording, but also collaborations with different percussionists, studios, guest musicians, dancers and video artists," comments BLOODY PANDA guitarist Josh Rothenberger. "The final piece of the puzzle was Profound Lore, a label that has the attention of not only the metal world, but of the experimental art community as well; making it a good home for this release; the most important relic we've given birth to thus far."

"Summon" track listing:

01. Gold
02. Pusher
03. Saccades I
04. Saccades II
05. Miserere
06. Grey
07. Hashira

An excerpt from the new BLOODY PANDA track "Miserere" is available at this location.

BLOODY PANDA will launch a month-long North American tour on July 21 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania- The 27-city trek will run through August 21 at the Union Pool in Brooklyn.

BLOODY PANDA performing on June 27, 2009 in New York City: