Red Ankh Black is OUT NOW, two hours of our darkest themes, melodies, and styles–but not always all at once, of course, or we’d be betraying Red Ankh’s odd dynamics! Continuing from the Classics Comp and Red the challenges of piling up instrument layers, mixing guitars and drums harsh without having them compete for space too much, and mixing vocals low so they don’t overtake the instruments, but remain intelligible. Out on Bandcamp, Youtube, Spotify, and many other streaming and retail sites. Enjoy!
From Red Ankh: We lost the mojo! Turns out, when ya take on albums this ambitious, the last 10% takes the longest. Also, we decided to write a new song for Black, pretty spontaneously, and with its base composition done it’s a whopping 18 minutes long. And then we got mega burnt out and needed a break from hearing these songs. But with a burst of inspiration, Bronze and Gloricia II are finally done and up on Youtube! Here’s to hoping more inspiration comes in the shadow of our perilous future.
Jake Kussmaul of Music Existence interviewed Shyft to discuss the latest Red Ankh album, and so on! It’s always good to emphasize the process in this results-and-ends-driven world, and to talk at length about what we’re passionate about.
Here we here we go go go! At long last, the first of the two central Red Ankh albums, Red, is finally finished! 101 minutes of weird melodic heavy goodness, and the most ambitious Red Ankh release yet. Out now on Bandcamp and streaming services EVERYWHERE!
As promised, Red Ankh has dropped 11 complete rerecordings, 1 new remix, and 7 new covers in the form of their Classics Compilation 01. Two hours and forty-four seconds of Red Ankh’s finest work, on new equipment, using new techniques, and this time with the whole band contributing vocals. From now on, they make what they imagine, not held back by technical restrictions. RED ANKH LIVES, BETTER THAN EVER.
This one’s on Spotify and the other major streaming services and digital retailers February 1st, 2024.
They haven’t forgotten about the Red/Black rework, and that’s coming up next!
From Red Ankh: We’ve got the mojo back. Since 2014 we’ve released some major works pretty quietly via Shyfted Minds: the reconstruction of Red Ankh’s instrumental album UNIVERSE in 2015, a couple Synthetic Experiments EPs in the same year, the steamcore horror booms album Cing of Cogs in 2016, the hardcore compilation album Down the Road of No Return in 2017, and the giant rebuild and expansion of the [Feind] album plus its counterpart album [Shyft] in 2020, focusing on gritty, dark industrial aspects of a handful of genres and the limits of synthwave, respectively. These dropped on Bandcamp and Spotify but as soon as they did we put them down to focus on fiction writing and interpersonal stuff, having bursts of focus on a new Red Ankh album here and there, nearly finishing a few songs. After a couple major life changes we wound up with the resources to build a decent sound studio and the time and motivation to use it, so in April of this year it was the Red Ankh project’s turn to start getting something big ready for release, after ten years since the last fresh album. It’s strange to see that in writing. Ideas for Red Ankh are always turning over in our heads, and we’ve never lost a draft–they’ve just been waiting–so it doesn’t feel like that could possibly be right, ten years since Shadow. But here we are, with new tools, new skills, finally ready to finish the flagship Red Ankh double album that we started way back in 2006, finally ready to finish Red/Black.
The old drafts of albums Red (featuring the above song Gloricia) and Black were just under 70 minutes each, and we’ve only expanded some arrangements since then. They’re folky, they’re symphonic, and they got the big overdrive kicks. We’re all contributing our voices this time, our new grasp of philosophy to the lyrics, and the technical quality of things is going to be vastly improved over previous releases. And it doesn’t stop there. Some day, we’d like to rerecord all old Red Ankh releases (again, for some of them), but for now we’re simultaneously working on a compilation album of some of our favorite Red Ankh tracks (featuring the above version of Tahztey Greaggor), ones we thought could gain a lot from rerecording with current resources. On top of that, we’re also working on Red Ankh versions of old underground industrial/synthpop favorites from the 90s and early 2000s that have gained enough traction to be released on the compo. Much to do, much excitement to do it with!
Red/Black is about 80% there, and we hope to drop a couple more singles soon. The classics/covers compilation is maybe 70%.
And then… we’ll see how much momentum we have left for finishing the eclectic cyberpunk/folkprog synth metal album, Green.
Red Ankh is still plugging away at revising their old albums for rerelease, but some thing came over them and they jumped back from the on-deck Green album to UNIVERSE, the instrumental, many-genre-blending album from two thousand five, the one written between This is Our New Age and Bronze. UNIVERSE is comprised of four long pieces that progress through organic styles of music, with a hard core/gabber alternate version of a refrain section thrown in for good measure! The first track of this album, A Little Bit of Every Thing, is the second fifteen minute plus track to be written under the Red Ankh name, the first being Made Zon from their second album, MASTER SYNTH. A Little Bit of Every Thing is twenty-six minutes and twenty-seven seconds long, which also means that it beats out both A Change of (Speechless) Reasons and Bittersweet in length, making it the longest Red Ankh song to date!
More than any thing else, A Change of (Speechless) Reasons, released as a single track in 2010, was inspired by UNIVERSE. As such, UNIVERSE and A Change of (Speechless) Reasons are together the most diverse Red Ankh releases to have been released so far, though where the former borrows from electronic genres as IDM, drum ‘n’ bass, and trance, UNIVERSE downplays its use of synths to leave more room to explore classical, jazz, and an assortment of folk genres. CAN YOU DIG IT? Click above image to acquire this monster for FREE!
You may have spotted a couple of tracks by Divebomb on Predaking’s last release, his huge double album Dark Days. This is his side project for slower hard core- or regular hard core, for those who find his 190bpm+ works to be too hectic! We’ll have you know that the first Divebomb solo EP is finished, mastered, and ready for release. Expect to see it up for free down load early next week.
It should come as no surprise that K.H.D. is at it again with some thing big. Keep your eyes peeled.
Red Ankh’s Gray is an industrial and metal themed double album showcasing Shyft’s industrial trance side in between Red Ankh’s regular weirdness attuned to industrial metal, or some thing like it. It appeared as a limited, mostly instrumental release back in 2008 and had new life breathed in to it with many new vocal recordings, updated mixing, and remastering in 2013. The release promo video teased you with the prospect of a remix EP, which experienced much delay. Now we are happy to announce that Gray: The Gabber Mixes EP (an enthusiastic nod to Fear Factory) is currently scheduled to be released during the third week of March! You can expect to see Red Ankh’s guitar-infused tracks remixed in to hard core dance music by Shyft, K.H.D., Dustrict, Imil, Tilduh, 1nsane, and Chromǯ.
Yep, it’s finally here, the rerelease of Red Ankh’s ‘Gray’ double album. Bammo, industrial influenced progressive metal. Get your cyber hands on it here. This is the first time we are actually asking for money, since money is getting tight over here and time is getting even tighter. It is only ten dollars for one hundred sixty minutes of music, or fifty cents per track with the exception of the tracks Tundrome, Zarkerovense, and Secto, which are free. If you like my music enough to have it but not enough to support me with a means to make more of it in the future, you will be able to find it at places like the Pirate Bay soon enough.
Red Ankh’s Blue album has been remastered and released to the greater public. Red Ankh’s Blue Two is complete. This is the future of chip tune and metal. The discography section has been updated accordingly. Each album holds eighty minutes in thirteen tracks. That is twenty six songs spanning two hours and forty minutes. There are cute as hell NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Atari sound chip based synths. There are a range of unconventional vocals. There are Progressive journeys. Uplifting anthems. Loud guitars. Stomping beats. Exactly four gabber kick drums. It’s a magical journey through all of your favorite video games that never existed, in your choice of high quality audio format. Yes. Magic helmet- AND I WILL GIVE YOU A SAMPLE!
Shyfted Minds 