CALGARY, CANADA — Post Death Soundtrack — the ever-evolving, shape-shifting solo project of Calgary musician and vocalist Stephen James Moore — announces the release of BARREN MOTHER OF ALL, a monolithic, vicious double album and the third and final entry in a trilogy of 30+ song epics that began with IN ALL MY NIGHTMARES I AM ALONE and continued with GRIST. Available now exclusively on Bandcamp ahead of its wider streaming release, it carries, from the very first press of play, something that is difficult to name and impossible to ignore — a real, tangible sense of threat.
This is not a record that wants to be comfortable. It was not designed to be.
BARREN MOTHER OF ALL takes its title from a quote by Indian guru Nisargadatta Maharaj: “Consciousness is only a concept. Therefore, I call the entire manifestation, ‘The child of a barren woman.'” That paradox — something vast and undeniable built from something that cannot exist — runs through the album’s entire conceptual architecture.
Moore tackles the all-consuming void, the catastrophic path humanity is currently on, and the unflinching honesty of someone experiencing a genuine depth of despair, shapeshifting, and rebirth. The album serves as anarchy — aimed at provoking an inner uprising, an internal reckoning with the forces bearing down on all of us from outside and within.
“The musical approach is meant to act as anarchy,” Moore says. “I wanted to be really brazen and reflect the inner spirit. Most of the vocals are one take and many of the songs were written and recorded within an hour. I wanted to capture the energy of the moment. Iggy Pop is one of my heroes — I take inspiration from him being so incredibly loose and free.”
Equal doses of industrial, trap, witch house, post-punk, gothic rock, noise, metal, 80s horror soundtracks, and dystopian psychedelia combine into a devilish brew that refuses to stabilise or settle. The album blurs industrial abrasion with witch-house murk, post-punk tension with goth-rock theatre, blown-out noise with metal heft, synth-horror camp, and chemically altered psychedelia — all moving in the same dangerous direction.
“I’ve got a living womb and a buzzing hive. You want to kill the Queen, yet I’m still alive. My babies all in formation. There’s no contemplation. If you approach the hive… that’s a SITUATION.”
The Queen metaphor runs throughout — Moore sending his baby bees to battle against random chaos, positioning himself as a figure of radical, reproductive, unstoppable force. Confrontational. Theatrical. Completely sincere.
The Covers and the Only Guest
BARREN MOTHER OF ALL includes covers of PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, The Doors, and Rage Against the Machine — and the highlight is a raucous reimagining of Beastie Boys’ “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,” among Moore’s favourite songs and one he has long wanted to properly reclaim.
The album’s only guest is Shenzie — Moore’s black cat — who can be heard chirping on “District 8.”
IN ALL MY NIGHTMARES I AM ALONE established the trilogy’s template — 30+ songs of uncensored chaos, frustration, and outpoured beauty, a tour through danger, mental illness, and the darkness we avoid. GRIST deepened the philosophy — named for Ram Dass’s concept that all of life’s experience, trauma, transcendence, and suffering is “grist for the mill of awakening” — hunting, laughing, mourning, and challenging listeners to step into their true selves without fear.
BARREN MOTHER OF ALL completes the arc. It is the void at the centre of all of it, stared at directly and documented without blinking.
