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Post Author: Sjimon Gompers

QUAL

Beach-side basking with Qual; photographed by Maru.

Lebanon Hanover’s William Maybelline, oka QUAL, is readying the follow-up to the earth-smashing Cupio Dissolvi EP with the unforgiving & unrelenting new second album The Ultimate Climax courtesy of AVANT! Records. Maybelline makes music that exists in the worlds of the wastelands where your favorite former genres would stood. In the world of QUAL you walk through the Romanesque ruins where the trad artifices once stead like towering ziggurats—now reduced to rubble & pillars that speak to the former empires of the moderns & the ancients. William picks up the pieces of what once was & hoists them into the oblivion of the artistic realm of the unknown & as of yet uncategorized.
Following up the recent single “Black Crown“, QUAL brings down the house with hyper-gabber’ed out track that will shake your abode from its very foundations. The track in question is the menacing “Existential Nihilism” that sorts of feelings in an on-the-couch therapy sort of session with William getting things off his chest in spoken verses pitted against nu-industrial Euro aesthetics. With tense synth narratives mixed in the gabber beat-based rhythms, Maybelline entertains the climactic cataclysms that are sent into a void of the unsettling & unnerving that shatters the track’s rising anxiety into the ether of nothingness. The synth progressions & William’s brooding delivery burrow deep into the psyche as the beat sequence will jolt you like one cup of coffee too many. QUAL’s William Maybelline penned an exclusive introduction to both the new single & the inspirations behind the new album:

“Existential Nihilism” is just some mad gut feelings I was getting during a visit to my parents place in northern England. Some very negative gut feelings, where I felt even euphoric in a very negative way…I felt completely weird right to the bottom of my heartworms. I had many mixed feelings on living and dying obviously and greatly missing my lady. And naturally I happen to be getting flashed by some gabber that I was devouring and I think, being there at the same time reminded me of my youthful rave days.
As for the album, thats some epic plethora of electronics I was dealing with…my life was constantly up and down and constantly going through many changes. Machines were coming and going, I was living between UK, Germany and Athens. Joined with non-stop traveling my head was spinning off the edge. Some great and some tragic events were happening whilst all along the way, The Ultimate Climax took shape.


QUAL’s The Ultimate Climax will be available February 28 from AVANT! Records.