Ether Dome by Hermit Kingdom

Link to Ether Dome: https://owlripperrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/on006-ether-dome


Hermit Kingdom, from Kyle, Texas delivers 39 minutes of torrid, intense heavy electronics, crunching obscure rhythms, experimental and crackling noise, bookended by tense dark ambient tracks, and is "a concept album inspired by the Victorian / 19th Century fascination with death and its preservation, both literal and metaphorical.

The album deals with the juxtaposition of the advances of the Industrial Revolution against the medical practices of the time, which were not far removed from that of the Medieval period.

As one can deduce from some of the track titles, literal preservation of human material (for study) is addressed along with social and sentimental preservation of death evident in the postmortem photography of the time.

The title “Ether Dome” is a reference to the operating theater in which ether was used for the first time as an anesthetic during surgery (Boston 1846), as well as to metaphorically address the numbness much of 19th Century society had toward death, pain, and suffering (i.e., in medicine, child labor, food adulteration, etc.).”

released April 15, 2022