#shrinkwrap killers

[dreamsofconsciousnessmetal]

Dead By Dawn [Weekly Mixtape 194]

The Cyclist Conspiracy | King Diamond | Dark Meditation | Wytch Hazel | Shrinkwrap Killers | Altar De Fey | LEATHERS | Patriarchy | lowsunday | Today Is The Day | V-Sor, X | Black Honey Cult | Urban Heat | Hooded Menace | Dripping Decay

Direct Download [hold + "Save As"]

Music On This Mixtape:

The Cyclist Conspiracy: "Calice dei Fantasmi" taken from the album "Back to Hermetics and Martial Arts Vol 1"

King Diamond: "Halloween" taken from the album "Fatal Portrait"

Dark Meditation: "I Am The Hunter" taken from the album "Where the Darkness Bleeds"

Wytch Hazel: "The Demon Within" taken from the album "V Lamentations"

Shrinkwrap Killers: "Those Zombies Are Not In Costume" taken from the album "Feed the Clones Pt.2"

Altar De Fey: "Obituary" taken from the album "Under A Waxing Moon"

LEATHERS: "Phantom Heart" taken from the album "Reckless"

Patriarchy: "Die Like Everyone" taken from the album "Manual For Dying"

lowsunday: "Spiders Web" taken from the album "Ghost Machine (2025 remaster)"

Today Is The Day: "I Got Nothin'" taken from the album "Never Give In"

V-Sor, X: "Angel Skin" taken from the album "Sun Shooter"

Black Honey Cult: "Dead In Me" taken from the album "Black Honey Cult"

Urban Heat: "Goodbye Horses" taken from the EP "Goodbye Horses"

Hooded Menace: "Save a Prayer" taken from the album "Lachrymose Monuments Of Obscuration"

Dripping Decay: "Trick Or Treat" (Halloween cover) taken from the EP "Ripping Remains"

[nofatclips]

Transfixed by a Zombie by Shrinkwrap Killers from the album Parents + FBI = Cahoots

[dreamsofconsciousnessmetal]

Bay Area grinders Deathgrave (featuring super producer Greg Wilkinson on guitar) have a new split with Black Ganion from Japan. DEATHGRAVE /\ BLACK GANION is out now through Transylvanian Recordings.

Bandcamp ⎜Instagram

You can watch my recent interview with Greg Wilkinson here.

You can listen to my 2023 interview with Deathgrave bassist Fern Alberts here.

[nofatclips]

I Think the Sirens are Coming For Me by Shrinkwrap Killers from the free Transylvanian Recordings NÜ Release Sampler

[dreamsofconsciousnessmetal]

Dreams of Consciousness Podcast Episode 389 features an interview with Greg Wilkinson.

[cover photo by Fern Alberts]

Watch on Youtube Listen on Youtube Music Listen on Apple Podcasts (IOS) Direct Download [right click + "Save As"]

[photo by Fern Alberts]

Music In This Episode:

"Fuck It We're Gonna Get Paid" "A Feral Clone's Revenge" taken from the album PARENTS + FBI = CAHOOTS

"Feed The Clones" "The Space Lab is Completely Trashed" taken from the album Feed The Clones Pt. 1

"We Are Not The Champions" "Earth s Destruction Is Near" "Solar Cemetery" "665 The Neighbor Of The Beast" taken from the album Feed The Clones Pt. 2 linktr.ee/shrinkwrapkillers

Shrinkwrap Killers on Bandcamp Shrinkwrap Killers on IG

Shrinkwrap Killers on the Carbonized US webshop

[dreamsofconsciousnessmetal]

Shrinkwrap Killers is a solo project from death metal super producer Greg Wilkinson (who also plays in Deathgrave and the resurrected Autopsy), that allows him to get away from blastbeats to indulge in some synth-heavy post punk. The project's fourth album Feed The Clones Pt. 2 will be released June 13th by Carbonized Records.

[photo by Fern Alberts]

Bandcamp ⎜Instagram

Pre-order here.

[dustedmagazine]

Shrinkwrap Killers — Feral Rats Have Become Our Only Pets (Iron Lung Records)

Feral Rats Have Become Our Only Pets by shrinkwrap killers

Shrinkwrap Killers is a one-man garage punk project from Oakland’s Greg Wilkinson, better known to some listeners of the Bay Area’s absurdly fecund underground music scene as Greg Brainoil — or perhaps as The Evil Wizard of Rock. Operating under cover of various aliases and personas, Wilkinson has made a bunch of music (with his longtime sludge band Brainoil, and recently with death grind miscreants Deathgrave) and has significantly contributed to the production of many, many more excellent records as owner and chief engineer of Earhammer Studios, including releases by some excellent north Cali bands like Noothgrush, Body Void, and Cliterati. Where he found the time to write and record these songs is anyone’s guess. Playing mostly in the melodic mode of California punk bands like the Joneses and Channel 3, the Shrinkwrap Killers generate 90-second blasts full of tuneful riffs and rollicking verses. At its best, the project recalls the Buzzcocks at their most acerbic and the Cramps at their most playfully campy.

Some Shrinkwrap Killers’ songs remain — deliberately and delightfully — invested in the short-term pleasures of the gag. “This Building Sucks for a Zombie Apocalypse” and the record’s title track rocket past, intent on having as much sardonic fun as possible. Wilkinson has built quite a toolbox as a producer, and the songs are sharply executed, toothache-inducing confections of midnight-movie fluff. If that were all Shrinkwrap Killers had to offer, one could nod pleasantly at the record and move along. But some of the songs provide compelling satiric bite, along with all the musical sweet stuff. “Shotgunning O’Douls & Kicking Dicks” sounds like the sort of vaguely ironized, knuckle-dragging nastiness you can trace through American punk, from the Dictators to the Meatmen to Drunks with Guns. The song concerns COVID-period impotence, and it converts its willful stupidity into an effective expression of frustration. As Wilkinson notes, “the virus is everywhere,” lockdown conditions keep asserting themselves and there’s nothing much one can do about it. “Shotgunning O’Douls” is a useless, perverse and moronic notion. But after a few months, the cabin fever of quarantine can make the perverse and moronic seem downright diverting. 

Other songs present more ambivalent messages. For sure, 2020 has been a mess — but it’s tough to say exactly at whom the vitriol of “Stolen Electronics to Shove Up Your Ass” is directed. There’s a pleasing disconnect between the song’s thematic violence and its peppy musical poppiness. Moreso than any other tune on Feral Rats…, “Stolen Electronics to Shove Up Your Ass” recalls the candy-colored grooves of the Bay Area’s garage-rock renaissance, c. 2008 to 2010 — especially the Fresh & Onlys’ Play It Strange. But the lyrics gesture toward a confused complex of desperation and indignation. Who is the lyric’s I-speaker, and why does he want to sodomize looters with those titular “stolen electronics”? Likely the song follows the ironized narrative logic of most of the other tracks on the record—a familiar rhetoric for Frisco-area punks since the days of the Nuns and Dead Kennedys. But one wonders about the relative utility of irony in times like these. What do we want out of underground culture? Cathartic fun or coherent politics? While we debate the point, Wilkinson will probably produce another dozen or so records. Rock on, you Evil Wizard. 

Jonathan Shaw