A couple years back, we spotlighted The Anix's sultry cover of the Deftones' alt-metal classic "Digital Bath." Since then, the one-man electronic-rock project of musician and visual artist Brandon Smith has released a bunch of new music, and now he's joined forces with musician Amir Derakh of fellow electro-rock band Julien-K for moody new track called "ANTILIFE."
Musically, the song has a retro goth-rock vibe that's presented with the energy of contemporary industrial and alt-metal. It's got a grand chorus that transcends the steaminess of the instrumental arrangement, which is loaded with digitized guitar crunch and glitchy vocal effects.
Listen to the world premiere above via YouTube.
"I've been inspired by the artistic talent of Amir Derakh for two decades now, ranging from the custom signature guitars he has produced, futuristic color choices, and his incredibly unique guitar tone," Smith tells us. "His signature tone can be described as an electrocuted guitar signal, surging and explosive, completely cutting edge and able to penetrate through even the heaviest mixes. Drenched in chorus, phasers and delay, the tone is part alien and part human, and un-mistakenly his own."
He continues, "I had ["ANTILIFE"] nearly complete, with synthesizers taking over the lead positions in the songs, but it wasn't quite giving the track the edge and frequency range I was looking for. Amir and I have become friends over the last couple years and I had been waiting for the right track to ask him to join me on. This was it!"
"Amir played all lead parts on the track including a six-string bass on the verses which give the song a Joy Division/The Cure vibe, then the chorus explodes into a huge rock section with these electronic sounding fuzzed-out lead guitars. I wanted the song to feel nostalgic but modern in production. I had Mike Marsh (Chemical Brothers, Depeche Mode, Crystal Castles, The Prodigy) master the track to bring out additional tones and bass to ensure it slams as hard as possible!"
