NEPA Scene Staff

Wilkes-Barre metalcore band Mind Power debut album of ‘Self Torture’ with A Life Once Lost frontman

Wilkes-Barre metalcore band Mind Power debut album of ‘Self Torture’ with A Life Once Lost frontman
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From a press release:

Today, Wilkes-Barre metal/hardcore band Mind Power released what will undoubtedly be one of the heaviest records of 2021, “Self Torture.”

Featuring vocals from Robert Meadows, the ex-frontman of Philadelphia metalcore band A Life Once Lost, and a lineup that includes former members of Ligeia and Wilkes-Barre bands Dead End Path and Bring the Heat, “Self Torture” was originally produced as quarterly digital-only releases by the band. The 11 tracks read like a book that’s woven from those releases with a cathartic, brutally honest and, at times, self-deprecating voice.

The album also includes guest appearances from notable metal standouts like Norma Jean’s Cory Brandan, Darkest Hour’s John Henry and Michael Schleibaum, The Red Chord’s Mike McKenzie, and Most Precious Blood’s Rob Fusco, just to name a few.

Remastered by heavy music heavyweight Alan Douches, Mind Power’s first physical release is as heavy and earnest as the red-and-black splatter vinyl is beautiful. It is available now from Jump Start Records, a Philadelphia-based indie label that has been releasing punk, ska, hardcore, and reggae since 1996.

To celebrate, Decibel magazine premiered Mind Power’s new music video for the track “Mess” today, saying, “In the midst of a pandemic winter, dive into the depth’s of Mind Power frontman Robert Meadows’ mind on a bleak journey through darkness and snow in an almost tortured existence beyond dealing with the daily reality of COVID. Written before the pandemic, ‘Mess’ could have easily been a diatribe on the daily life we’ve all come to know all too well the past over the past year, yet here we are.”

“The song is about my battle with depression, substance abuse, living a life in which you just don’t want to exist. We all feel it,” Meadows told Decibel.

“Some of us talk about our problems and others bottle it up. I bottle it up and keep it to myself; it’s easier not to involve others with how I really feel. This is my life and I can choose to do what I want with it.”

See NEPA Scene’s 2014 live photos of Dead End Path here and Bring the Heat here.