It is under the gray cloud of the past year that enigmatic blackened death-doom collective, Cult Burial, was born. Today they reveal their crushing new single “Parasite”.
Despite their doom roots, Cult Burial is anything but slow moving. Having formed in early 2020 in London the project rapidly developed, with the group starting from scratch and finishing an EP and an album within four months. The result is a punishingly heavy record that seeks to draw some of the darkest elements from the textures and atmospheres of less heavy music. This desire for crushing sounds has driven Cult Burial to the next demented level, setting them distinctly apart from many of their contemporaries.
The project formed when mastermind Simon accidentally acquired a baritone guitar after a heavy night of drinking. Within days he fell in love with the incredibly heavy sounds of the instrument and found some collaborators to work with. Quickly they pieced together their head turning debut EP, Sorrow.
After releasing their critically acclaimed debut last year, Cult Burial seeks to continue to plumb the depths of the human experience. This project is the sort of DIY experience that fuels the underground. It is ambitious, powerful and one of a kind. Now, Cult Burial are wallowing in the murk, conjuring new madness and waiting for their next chance to strike.
Ferocious and uncompromising in their execution, CARCASS’s ability to intricately dissect the innards of death metal, and display them for us to sonically understand has been their point of excellence for over three decades. Last December (2019) the band released their first single in over 5 years “Under The Scalpel Blade,” followed by a 4 song EP entitled Despicable (October 2020), setting a potent precedent for the full length album to come in 2021: TORN ARTERIES. With the album title itself referencing an old demo created by original drummer Ken Own back in the 80’s, TORN ARTERIES sits as a bookend on the modern side of the CARCASS discography, connecting directly back to where everything began over 30 years ago.
The album artwork also rings reminiscent of the grotesque photography that appears on classic CARCASS album covers like Reek Of Putrefaction of Symphonies of Sickness. Artist Zbigniew Bielak traveled outside his normal wheelhouse to bring forth a time lapsed set of photos showing vegetables shaped like a heart, rotting over time upon a white plate. This form of artwork was influenced by Japanese Kusôzu, meaning: ‘painting of the nine stages of a decaying corpse.’
“It’s very clean, white, which we’ve never done before,” explains Vocalist and Bassist Jeff Walker, “it doesn’t look evil, or typically death metal, but I like how clean it is; almost like a coffee table book.” This new album presents images, lyrics, and sounds that so distinctly scream CARCASS, but ferry us into a new era of production, songwriting, and art all together.
“I think as our 7th album, it does stand out from the others both sonically and stylistically,” explains Walker. “You can definitely tell that it’s CARCASS; when you drop that needle on the vinyl, when you hear that guitar tone, you can tell it’s Bill Steer, but each album is always a product of its time.”
The general approach to writing hasn’t changed much over the years for CARCASS. “There’s no real designed method,” analyzes Walker, “no one’s writing a song, coming in the room, and saying: ‘this is how the song goes.’ A lot of these songs are written around a rhythm, or an idea: have we ever had a song with this type of intro? Have we ever had a song with this type of drumming? If we didn’t care, we’d do the same generic, verse-chorus song writing bullshit, but we don’t want to repeat ourselves. We’re always trying to remain creative and have a valid purpose in what we’re doing.”
With TORN ARTERIES, each track stands unique from the rest in its approach to guitar, bass, vocals and drumming, along with all the finer details. Filthy and dominating guitar work creates thick layers of tone and melody, piling on top of each other like the weight of dead flesh in tracks like “Kelly’s Meat Emporium.”
“The working title for Kelly’s was originally ‘Stock Carcass,’” laughs Walker “we knew that one was a real meat and potatoes track for the album.” Meanwhile the elevated speed and catchy beat in “Dance of Ixtab” tell a robust and airier story, one that is certain to get a reaction from live crowds. “We built this song around the beat,” explains Walker, “we had an approach to each song that was a definite idea. It’s all about ‘what haven’t we done before?’”
Curious about the lyrics? CARCASS bets you are, but don’t expect them to be an easy puzzle to solve. Over the years metalheads the world over have referenced CARCASS’s complex, bizarre, and gore filled lyrics with affection, humor, and fascination. This time around will require fans to actually purchase the physical album, and closely examine the artwork in order to place the lyrics in their proper order. “I’d rather people spend time actually going through the record, listening to it, taking the words out as they hear them, and from there try to draw their own conclusions of what the lyrics are, instead of delivering them on a plate,” chuckles Walker.
Recording and Production for TORN ARTERIES wasn’t as simple as sitting down for a few weeks and knocking it all out, but rather spread out over the course of approximately 1 year bouncing back and forth between England and Sweden. Initially, drummer Daniel Wilding did session work in Sweden at Studio Gröndahl with David Castillo while guitars were recorded at The Stationhouse with James Atkinson in Leeds, England. Eventually needing some form of residential location to finalize vocals, bass, and other guitarwork, the band headed back to studio Gröndahl in Sweden to continue work in a very relaxed atmosphere with Castillo. “There was no real big plan to do it this way, the process just organically grew on its own,” says Walker.
Most will find that the only real struggle when indulging in TORN ARTERIES is fighting the desire to start it over the second it finishes. It covers substantial new ground for a band with such a reputation, while still retaining that addictive, time honoured CARCASS sound that has come to represent the face of true death metal.
Enigmatic doom metal outfit, Rat King, looms on the cusp of their upcoming opus, “Omen”. Drawing from the depths of gloom, Rat King’s latest endeavor delves into the stark and pallid recesses of the mind and the fallible nature of mankind.
Formed in 2016 in Evansville, IN, members Andrei Stirbu (Lead Guitar), Kyle Wilcher (Drums/Lead Vocals), Jason Wilcher (Rhythm Guitar/ Backing Vocals), and Nick Graman (Bass), learned together and grew together as a band. Drawing inspiration from their metal forefathers Black Sabbath, Windhand, Conan, Electric Wizard, Sleep, and Kyuss, the band has explored heavier and darker themes throughout their evolution.
“Omen” s a largely heavier and more orchestrated body of work than their previous releases, including their debut EP “Barren” (2017). The album is driven by haunting, emotive vocals, an increasingly rare commodity in a metal scene so committed to harsher styles of singing. The low tuning and methodical pace of each track draws the listener into the shadows and holds them to the very last note.
“Omen” marks the defining moment in the band’s upward trajectory as they push forward into 2021 with more singles, more shows, and more doom on the horizon.
Tommy Stewart's Dyerwulf have just released a video for "Shadow In the Well". The song is from the upcoming album Doomsday Deferred which is out on September 3rd via Black Doomba Records.
Tommy commented “‘Shadow in the Well’ is based my great-grandmother sharing some country folklore when I spent summers with her at her old farm complete with outhouse, no electricity, and a well. She told me that if I threw a rock in the well, the images would show what’s coming to me someday in the reflective ripples.”
