“WITH THE CONSTANT ASSAULT OF THE MODERN WORLD AND ITS EVER-SHIFTING GOALPOSTS, IT FEELS AS THOUGH WE CAN’T MAKE HEAD NOR TAIL OF OUR EXISTENCE BUT IT’S ENJOYABLE IN ITS ABSURDITY, SO WHY NOT? I’M NOT DOING ANYTHING ELSE…” – MB (MALTHUSIAN)

Existential dread abounds across Malthusian’s deathly-dark and deeply-unsettling second full-length invocation, ‘The Summoning Bell’ – a depraved and delirious Death Metal offensive exuding immense intent, adulation and authority. MB, the twisted mind behind this uniquely warped creation, contemplates old masters, new beginnings, the sound of death, the colour of music, introducing fresh evil into the world and what it’s all about.

Dark tidings stir once more in the Malthusian camp and there’s much news to impart – new line-up, new label, new album for starters! Are you feeling reenergised and excited about the next chapter or behind the scenes have the last few years been something of an arduous process or trial?
“It’s a mixed bag and, with the length of time it takes to go through these things, you experience a series of emotions. We haven’t jammed since we recorded, due to me wanting to step back from it after it being such a consuming part of my existence for the last few years. It is still a constant, but more time has been taken up by just doing the more menial aspects of getting a record together, getting the layout done and stuff like that – the less ‘Heavy Metal’ parts… Well, obviously, they’re all very important, but not energising in and of themselves…
“Also, as far as playing goes, T has a few things going on with Adorior at the moment, so we’ll get back jamming this month, and then throw a shape on the live aspect. I’m looking forward to getting back to it and getting the record out. It’s been living in me and been on the offing for quite a while – some of it would have started before the last split so you’re going back four years or whatever it is. So, at times, it’s laborious, but overall, it’s something I feel is deeply rewarding and enjoyable: I don’t have to do it, like, you know? Even if I often feel that I do and it’s something that is beyond my control. It needs to come to life.”

Let’s begin with the change of personnel – two in, two out since you recorded ‘Across Deaths’. Well, TMK replaced AC not long after the debut was released but PG is no longer involved now either – who is his replacement on bass and how pleased are you with the new recording / performing line-up? Has the dynamic of the band been affected, recalibrated or bolstered in any way?
“TMK had joined before ‘Across Deaths’ even came out and AC had said when he was leaving ‘get T to do it’, so that was an easy choice. Plus he had filled in for me for a US tour back in 2015 so it was the only choice. PG went maybe three or four years ago, but it always kind of felt like it was coming anyway. Myself and JK would jam regularly and PG would come occasionally; however, there was not the same level of motivation for him. He’s a guitarist first and foremost but it was fine, that’s the way it was. He’s an absolute beast live and still a great mate to us all.
“I had the album written by the time we got FB in place. Federico Benini – a less than Irish name – is Italian and also plays in Akercocke. He’s based in Dublin and we’ve known him for quite a few years. He’s been in Ireland for a number of years now and I was very aware of his capabilities. He used to pop up at gigs in London back when we were touring around the time of ‘MMXIII’ and ‘…Hengiform’. He played in a Brutal Death Metal band, Unfathomable Ruination, based in London, and another called Putridity, out of Italy. Very technical playing. He was also a member of Centurian as well, Dutch-based band who had a good buzz about them 20 odd years ago. I approached him about doing it and he was on for it immediately. We went for a jam … well, we went for a few pints first, to iron out the creases…
“The lads had initially wanted to carry on with just the three of us, for the recording anyway. Given that T had played bass with Grave Miasma and he currently does with Adorior, he’s well fit for it, but I wanted someone more involved as far as the bass was concerned. Also, given that the opportunity was there, my preference was to have a bass player rather than a guitarist playing bass which is often the case. Who knows how that would have worked out? Well, T did play bass on some of the demos, which was a lot of fucking downstroke, and that sounded vicious but we’ve moved on from that…
“F is beyond solid and constantly full of ideas, so myself and himself went out jamming, to go over the songs, for a few weeks. I had sent him playthroughs and none of it was much of an issue to him. He picked up on it easily and, as I said, was full of ideas and is just an incredible musician. Throughout the album, the bass playing is more intricate and adds an extra trippiness, which I think if T had been doing it, it would have been more straight-up aggression, which would have certainly worked, but I prefer the extra weirdness that F brings. He has definitely brought a new dynamic to the sound and we’re more than happy with how it worked out.
“Now we have to start jamming the tunes out, and get them ready for the live setting. PG was an absolute powerhouse onstage so the live show will have changed somewhat as well and that’s something we’ll be working on. Given that he was a beastly, maniacal presence, an untamable lunatic, I’ve got a bit of work to do to compensate for his absence.”You’ve signed to Relapse – certainly a heavyweight Death Metal label – for the imminent release of the second full-length. How did this development come about and what was the deciding factor in your decision to team up with Relapse? Do you consider factors like publicity, distribution, reaching a wider audience, maybe the prestige of being associated with an iconic label?…
“It’s been a long back and forth with Relapse, since before our demo was actually fully released. I don’t know if they got the promo or just heard ‘Hallucinogen’, which was the first song we released, but they got in contact with us – that was 2013 – about us signing. We were flattered. I would have been obsessive enough about Relapse around the 2002 period. The closest city to me in the west of Ireland stocked plenty of the Relapse stuff in a shop called Zhivago – Nile, Suffocation, Origin, Nasum, Neurosis, Mastodon, High on Fire, Regurgitate, Pig Destroyer, Cephalic Carnage and plenty more. A lot of crazy stuff which was good for my young, melted brain.
“We had initially discussed with Relapse, at the time of the first offer, as to whether they would be interested in doing a split-release. Darragh would carry on in Europe and Relapse would do the US, but that wasn’t something that they were willing to entertain so we stuck with Invictus .
“As I said, it was a compliment but it just didn’t seem like something that we should do. At the time, we were more than happy with Invictus, things were going well and it just didn’t seem like a good time to go rocking the boat so no regrets about not doing that. We had a busy couple of years between the demo, the EP and then onto ‘Across Deaths’, so I’m still happy with the decision we made…
“For the split we did with Suffering Hour, I felt it was the end of an era in a lot of ways. I had stuff written for the album before that, for which the intention was to be a more full-on, attacking, visceral sort of Death Metal more so than the … I don’t know what the fuck you’d call the other stuff we were doing, just warpy, black death doom, so I felt that split was a perfect time to put an end to that period. We also got AC on it, doing some vocals before his move to Australia, solidifying that feeling. The way that was written, there were some new ideas in there, the freedom of doing a split, but in general it felt like we were bookending something…
“With this new album, we had been looking into a couple of other labels. Dark Descent wasn’t a massive player for us with ‘Across Deaths’ so we were looking to go with someone else for the US.
“For this, we had sent demos to a another label and they were onboard for the US, but Relapse had been in touch, so, it just felt like, even though there was no real desire to move on from Darragh – Invictus has released some of my favourite albums and continues to punch well above its weight – if we were to do this, the main motivation was for something of a new chapter. I think the music is somewhat different while still holding onto the traits that make us Malthusian. That’s my opinion but I’m obviously too involved to be objective. However, the few people that have heard it have all shared that sentiment.
“There are the obvious benefits of a bigger label like the publicity, distribution, wider audience, etc. – they are secondary to the music but also important. We had done well with our previous arrangement. Well, to a degree. We got buried on Dark Descent but that’s just the way that goes. We were more than capable of holding our own but Relapse is a step up and all that comes with that.
“Obviously there is a good association being on their roster and it is certainly iconic. Along with the bands I mentioned above, I was obsessed with Nile, ‘Catacombs’, ‘Black Seeds…’ and ‘In Their Darkened Shrines,’ when I was in school. They also put out ‘Human Waste’, ‘Despise the Sun’ and the two comeback albums by Suffocation, Disembowelment, Incantation have always been there, as far as I know, and Obituary now, as well as newer bands that I’m not too up to date on and countless in between. At the time, one of the few people I discussed it with, outside of the band, was my old man – he didn’t get the gravitas of the offer due to having absolutely no interest in heavy music, but I was flattered and ya, there’s the iconic reputation so we’ll see can we sully that.”

The masterful new album, ‘The Summoning Bell’, was recorded at Priory Recording Studios in November under the expert eye / ear of Greg Chandler. What was it like working with Greg – a very professional, painstaking and perfect(ionist) process, I’d wager – and how pleased are you with the final results recording / production-wise?
“Delighted with it. Greg has the patience of an absolute saint which I think you definitely need to be an engineer; it’s not something I could do. He was amazing and it’s exactly what we were going for. I’m a massive fan of Esoteric going back over 20 years. I saw them with Reverend Bizarre and Electric Wizard in Tilburg in 2004… while indulging in all things Holland is known for; that was the first time I’d seen Esoteric, just after ‘Subconscious Dissolution into the Continuum’ had come out, which remains my favourite release. An LP I gave a tip of the hat to on the Suffering Hour split with the title ‘Dissolution of Consciousness’.
“In more recent times, he’s done the Qrixkuor stuff, including their new one, the last Adorior – that’s not the sound we were looking for but it was definitely something that played into the decision as it sounds perfect. He’s great at his job; the sound is amazing. It’s something we had toyed with before anyway – T had tracked with him for the Adorior album and he said it was a perfect, relaxed environment, he knows the music, he knows what it’s supposed to sound like, there’s no pressure. As professional and perfectionist as he is, it’s hard if you’re fighting against my lack of professionalism or perfectionism when it comes to guitar!  But, joking aside, it all came together perfectly.
“I would have liked to have separated the mixing from the tracking, because you are just too ‘in it’. Myself and T stayed there for the two weeks and you can’t be in any way objective about it after living there and it being all you hear everyday. I would in future take some time apart from it between the tracking and mixing. We did a couple of days of mixing, Greg was then going to America so two weeks later we came back to it but from the out, he already had it sounding mouldy. There was one minor-ish change to the guitar tone to just give it more low end and we were away.
“It was a very easy process. He knows what he’s at. I find it hard to articulate at times what exactly I want a sound to be. I find every time we’re doing it – and I think it’s across the board – it’s just difficult to fully describe how you want something to sound without a lot of wasted superlatives, but it was a very straightforward process with Greg and that’s essentially it.”

Having an actual physical band is important to you as opposed to the modern method of members emailing their parts in. Actually, it’s a farce really that some bands aren’t actual bands… Did you make the record the old school way, as ‘live’ as reasonably possible? Were you all able to congregate together much for rehearsals / discussions, pre-planning etc. like a proper, traditional band prior to entering the studio?
“I’m not playing guitar over the internet, that’s just not there for me. It had been suggested at one point that T send over some guitar bits and stuff but – I don’t know if it’s just me being a selfish cunt about it – I wasn’t warming to the idea. Myself and JK would practise together, so that would have been the process of writing it, and T would be over every couple of weeks depending on other stuff, although there was the plague and everything in between. That was ideal for me and JK, we were just jammin’, had no work but getting paid plague dole and just living the life of Riley, so we put together plenty of ideas and all of the title track and ‘Eroded…’.
“Then when we started going back to work, it seemed a bit more laboured again and you maybe start losing interest but our attitude was ‘such is life, let it happen’ because we knew we were going to do it in our own time, rather than forcing anything – that is not the nature of how I’d play or write, or how we are as a band, or ever were. It’ll always be that way.
“Now, I wouldn’t rule out going over a few things on guitar going forward or whatever but my enjoyment comes from going out to a room and feeling the music; our music moves so it’s palpable and I need to experience that. To just get that enjoyment and excitement out of it when a piece comes together, that is important to me.
“So, when F got involved, he was there constantly, flying it, and was very enthusiastic and full of ideas, so that was inspiring and definitely brought a new excitement to me, which comes back to that energised feeling about things.
“Writing-wise, with these things you just watch it take its shape, you direct it if you feel something isn’t going the right way, sometimes you ditch stuff, other times something comes together without much tedium. ‘Red Waiting’ and ‘Amongst the Swarms of Vermin’ were parts of the same song at one point … the intro of ‘Red Waiting’ and certain bits of ’Amongst the Swarms…’, so we just felt that wasn’t working. You take them apart and it’s got a mind of its own almost and just comes back together in different forms. While there’s rehearsals and discussions to an extent, in general, you know when something’s going right, I’ve found. That might be different if you’re jamming constantly, but the way we do it I’d always have something ready to jam with. There is a full track, actually, that I’d forgotten about that we had more or less finished and then there were plenty of sections that just got discarded along the way. Par for the course.
“Recording-wise, we just go into a studio and record the music. JK lashed it out… There’s not really any discussions. If JK says he wants to do the songs starting with the first one and going straight through, I’m happy to do that. He’s got the most physical task and we’ve got an easier one where we’re not just fucking limbs flailing, so that’s the way we did it … happy to do it that way. Obviously, if something is fucking you off, just move away from it for a while… The end of ‘…Swarms…’ is just relentless blasting – I had suggested to JK to take a break at one point but he was having none of it, so we fucked off to the shop and got beer and came back and he just put it down. None of us wanted to hear a poxy blastbeat again. You’re listening back to the tapes too and by then I think there was just nine minutes of straight-up blasting, you’ve got some scratch guitar, there’s slight variations, but it is essentially – and that was the intention – to just put the head down and think of Ireland.”

‘The Summoning Bell’ is a wonderfully chaotic and caustic journey, but there’s nevertheless noticeably more clarity in the sound this time around. As much as I enjoy the murkiness of the debut, there’s an enhanced element to being able to hear and fully appreciate everything that’s going on. You weren’t happy with the sound on ‘Across Deaths’ – what was it about the debut that irked you and was resolving or avoiding a repeat of this issue one of your priorities for the follow-up?
“For ‘Across Deaths’ the whole fucking process was cuntish, back and forth… The recording of it was fine, could have been done better from our point of view, we should have been sticklers for detail and stuff, I think we might have been slightly cocky about the whole thing … went in, recorded it, ‘it’s fine’… The writing process, some of it was amazing, some of it seemed drawn out and annoying, there was personal shit going on at the time as well. Was only talking to AC about it the other day. Everything became a pain in the hole with it but there it is in all it’s mangled glory
“It was a year after we recorded it before we got it fully mixed. The first attempt at mixing it was in the completely wrong direction altogether, not by choice of our own but it’s just the way these things go. Then we sent it on to that fucking specimen in New Zealand. Initially, what we got back, we were just worn out listening to it –  going on for months and months and couldn’t ’t find an out – there was a discussion at that point which was more about the intention rather than the sound and it seemed after months of back and forth and not working out, that seemed like the right way to go about it.
“But there’s riffs there that you should be able to hear, that should be landing more, it just became one swell of undefined fucking… like the start of ‘Telluric Tongues’, that’s brilliant because it’s cutting in and just keeps chopping away and obviously there’s loads of bits I like off it, but we all would have preferred a more defined sound with it. We were coming off the back of ‘…Hengiform’, which was big in sound – and we weren’t particularly happy with that at the time, either!,- but we obviously gave the green light to these things, different with ‘Across Deaths’ because it was just painstaking and at that point you just want to get it out because it felt like we were sitting on something. There’s plenty of sections and good bits of it but overall I just think it could have been better.
“So there definitely was an intention, which I think we fulfilled with DgS from Suffering Hour as producer on the split, ‘Time’s Withering Shadow’, and that was more in line with what we wanted to do going forward. We were so happy with the sound on the split that we had discussed with DgS that he might produce an album after that, even though nothing was yet in any way ready. But the production on the split was something we wanted to do again; he was only starting off as well and he has produced some great stuff since – including his own band, Aberration, he did that new Ritual Ascension and sent me on some other stuff as well, so he’s definitely got his chops up now. But, at the time when it came down to it, we figured we should probably go with Greg. So we had been moving towards a new sound, well we didn’t intentionally ever fucking move towards the sound of ‘Across Deaths’ in the first place but we wanted to move away from that.
“There’s an association with a lot of bands as well that wouldn’t have been the intended sound or outcome, nor is it something we listen to. The association with Portal, which I can’t hear, was rife. Admittedly, I was well into Portal, ‘Seepia’, ‘Swarth’, ‘Outre’’ are amazing records, but I’d stopped listening to them as much at that point and I was tired of the lazy association. I’ve talked to Horror [Illogium] about it – when bands are compared to Portal. He said he had found it more irritating when bands try to take off the look rather than the sound… That’s neither here nor there but there were a couple of factors at play and ultimately one of them is that, for what we are doing, there’s no point writing a riff if you can’t fucking hear it. ‘Across Deaths’ doesn’t lean fully into the more atmospheric side nor does it have a clean enough sound to be on the other end of the spectrum.. We all love those real headbangers when a riff drops in. Writing stuff that’s thrown into a mess just seems counterproductive, really.”Your obsession with two distinct waves or timelines of Death Metal is apparent on the new record. It provides a perfect balance or bridge between more classic and seminally-evil-sounding DM like old Incantation, Morbid Angel and Deicide and the more modern-day barbaric, cavernous dissonance of the likes of Antediluvian, Teitanblood and maybe also Swallowed. The old meets the new… Are these the bands / eras / styles that inspire and influence you most?
“Yes. Immolation should be pretty high up on that list as well. Incantation for me is more of a recent thing; when we first released the demo, because people were comparing Dead Congregation to Incantation so much and a lot of the music that followed after Dead Congregation sort of fit into that narrative. So I was always aware of them since first being on the internet and the logo struck me as a kid and stuff, but I’d never really listened to them…
“Going back in time, Immolation along with Morbid Angel and Deicide would definitely have been my go-tos and I’d still listen to all three a lot. Alongside endless amounts of other Death Metal bands old and new. ‘None So Vile’ was also a major player when I was just getting into Death Metal. Deicide were the first Death Metal band I’d heard a full album of in 1998, with ‘Serpents…’, but only in recent years did ‘Legion’ click for me and that just blew me away. When that clicked, I was just obsessed with it. Amazing that, for me anyway, it’s always one of the older bands or albums that does that to you, and that it’s more often than not an album you were always aware of, but that’s the one that gets its teeth into you. That is a fucking violent album. The self-titled and it are both ten out of ten but ‘Legion’ is just frantic violence from start to finish.
“Morbid Angel has just always been there. And Immolation in the same way.
“So newer bands like – well I’d hardly call them new at this point – but Antediluvian, Teitanblood, Swallowed are all influences for sure. We don’t try to write music like them, they are very much of their own style, but I can take influence from them in the way it resonates with me and at this point I’ve pretty much found the sweet spot between the old and the new – not an intentional thing but from writing music with my influences and not changing much from the foundations of the band.
“On this one, there was a more conscious effort to have more riff-based, direct, aggressive, violent music. The more modern bands that come to the top of the pile all sound the same to me. Or the majority of it – there’s obviously always exceptions – and I just found that it’s not what I want to listen to. They’re all fucking interchangeable.
“There could be a contrarian streak in me as well, but I think it remains within the confines of what we always set out towards … it’s just a different balance of the same components, really.
“Amongst an endless amount of others, those bands you mentioned are certainly influential. ‘Diabolical Conquest’ would have got considerable attention in the last couple of years. That’s ferocious and has a great balance between the doom and the death, potentially my favourite Incantation album. There’s a comfort in going back to the ones you know, as well. I always check out new stuff and I enjoy a lot of it but also like to revisit older stuff. As I said, the first three Nile albums were massive when I was a teenager and going back to them is still incredible to me…it stokes that nostalgia of fresh, young ears being exposed to a total assault. A potentially sketchy combination of words right there.” 

On a similar buzz, I grabbed the first four Niles on vinyl myself to plug a gaping hole in the collection over the past 18 months or so and they are incredible…
“..mind blowing and unparalleled. My first death metal show was Nile in ‘03 on the “In Their Darkened Shrines” tour. I had lost interest by the time ‘Annihilation of the Wicked’ came out but in having revisited them in recent years went back to that and it does a lot more for me now than it had previously, but the drumming on the three previous and the drum production is second to none – Pete Hammoura, Derek Roddy and Tony Laureano – and then I just found George Kollias’ drums on ‘Annihilation…’ just too clicky for me but I’ve warmed to that. Watched some of the making-off videos for…I can’t remember what album it was, one of their more recent ones, and that was enjoyable but I’m sort of set up with the first three, and then if I need something different I can tip into the fourth one because it’s still new to me, comparatively.
“These older bands that still have it are sort of ingrained in you and there’s a nostalgic aspect to it as well, which seems like a good retreat when you’re just being bombarded with shit. We still have these to go back to and the multitude of others that aren’t yet unearthed for whatever reason. ‘Legion’ was just sitting there waiting for me and that’s the one that blows me away, that’s not a newly-found gem or whatever, it was just there in plain sight all along.”

As well as being respectful of the past but at the same time existing very much in the present, your own character shines through in abundance on ‘The Summoning Bell’. It’s doomy and oppressive, very dark and unsettling, evil-sounding and sick, with otherworldly vocals / vomits and stellar musicianship to boot. I’d say this record is a statement of intent – would you agree? It really feels like you have emptied your heart and soul into it. I probably need to emphasise the word intent because intent is something that’s so blatantly missing from 99.9 per cent of what I’m exposed to these days and I think that’s where the depressing mediocrity is stemming from. But there’s intent in this. I’m not sure what the intent is but you can feel that there’s a fierce drive behind it…
“At just shy of 40 years old, I’m not really angry about the state of music or whatever else but, if I can do something about it, there is intent there to put something worthwhile out. I wrote the split myself and given that this is just me writing again, obviously along with JK, I get to control the narrative completely and the music I like in this style or want to create is intentful, dark, evil and aggressive. Unsettling is what I want, be it in the fast bits or the slow bits. There’s too much of this bouncy fucking chuggy shit which to me is at complete odds with what my vision of Death Metal is. It goes back to the whole onstage in combat shorts and band t-shirts thing and just bouncing around the place and having a good time … that’s not my intention.
“You’re supposed to be taken on a journey, taken elsewhere, it’s fucking horrifying music, and that is the absolute (sadistic) intent. I’m not trying to give a ‘fuck you’ to modern Death Metal. I obviously care a lot but I don’t care that much. I’ve a job to go to and a life to live and these people and bands mean nothing to me, but I do wish nothing but horror upon their poser false existence. Everything that you addressed is everything that I intended, and from the initial feedback we’ve had I think my intention has come to fruition. Everything is in it; it’s a very draining process, especially as you get older and people are doing different things, you’re trying to corral people, members are in different countries and stuff like that, so when you get time to do it you put everything into it. To bring some new evil into the world, I don’t always know if there’s room for it, but we’ll make some fucking room.” 

Wish I could take a leaf out of your book and try to not get worked up about trivial matters that are irrelevant to my own immediate surroundings but everything gets on my nerves these days.
“I’m not immune to it at all, actually. At different times, things get to you differently, you know, but fuck it, these are things that are out of our control, I try my best not to get wound up about it. It’s good to put yourself into something that’ll distract you from the banal.”

You channel a multitude of tongues on ‘The Summoning Bell’ – yet they are all your own. The dramatic vocal delivery at the end of ‘Eroded into Superstition’ sounds uncannily like Mark of the Devil, who has the most recognisable voice in Black Metal … or so I thought! I’m assuming Death Metal or Black Metal vocalists don’t practise their singing in the shower, so were you surprised or taken aback by the versatility, range and pure hideous malice you managed to project into the microphone?
“No, I know what I can do. This seems like it was a glaring similarity that I just missed out on at the time because you had mentioned it, and Joe [Joseph Deegan – Slidhr] also brought it up so I said it to T and he was like ‘it’s absolutely there’. It seems I couldn’t see, or hear as the case may be, the forest for the trees. But that’s a compliment, and I’ll happily accept it. He’s an incredible vocalist … some say the most recognisable voice in Black Metal!
“Vocals-wise, I had done different things throughout different releases; we had separate roles in what we were doing. I generally just stuck to the lows with the odd high doubled up on something else, so that’s a big difference going from the three vocalists to one. T will do some live vocals but we figured for the recording it was probably better I record them all and take it from there. That was a mutual agreement, it wasn’t just me saying ‘I’m going to do all the vocals’. During that conversation we had come to the conclusion that that swirling triple vocals of the past wouldn’t fit in on this anyway – maybe at times but not to the extent of what it was previously, so I layered some but far more modestly.
“That vocal recording was torture. I redid a lot of it. We had gone back to Greg’s house to shower for the first time in a week as we’d been staying in the studio. JK was gone, F had left, it was just myself and T so we took off to Greg’s with the best of intentions. We cracked into a few beers and it wasn’t long ‘til the whiskey made an appearance. We lashed through a litre of it, making the following day a particularly rough and horrible one. T had one tune left to put the rhythm tracks down on, and was then supposed to start the leads but that was vetoed. He got the track done and suggested I do the vocals which was fucking ghastly. The hangover was still a fresh hell so there could have been some of that seeping into the horrors of it all. I redid all the lows the next day just because I’d broken into something else, so I just decided I was better off to do them all again. The highs, I think all of them are still there, and that specific bit in ‘Eroded…’, I’m pretty sure I did that on the maligned day after a poison of whiskey.
“But, no, I absolutely knew what my capabilities were and I had planned out the sections. That line, that section, was more or less off the cuff, though. The bit prior to that, I’d intended to do more of the more maniacal style, but it all worked out, I think.
“Contrary to how the song goes, ‘whiskey you’re the devil, you’re leading me astray’, on this occasion I was led to where I was supposed to be. Albeit still somewhat astray. It definitely helps the song move into the intended direction, into chaos – again back to the unsettling, evil sound – but no, I haven’t tried it in the shower. It’s all Waylon in the shower.”

What is the summoning bell? It makes me think of the inevitability of death / Death, for whom the bell tolls, a call from the Grim Reaper himself… The call of the cold grave. End of days, very apt in these dark and dystopian times. Every man who lives will be equal or level at the end. Is that the general idea or is there any other overarching theme or concept behind the record?
“It’s open to interpretation. The concept was taken from the Samuel Beckett play ‘Happy Days’ – as with all Beckett work, a bleak and vague expression of the banality of life and the menial tasks and habits that we endure to give life a sense of purpose. Hoodwinked by our ultimately inconsequential existence. Beckett’s ever present existential dread and despair grabs me. There are also a number of other Beckettian themes on the record so, as already alluded to in regards to the music, it took a shape of its own. Along with the photograph that the artwork is based on, all these things tied in perfectly, so there is an overall loose narrative bringing the album together with ‘Isolation’, ‘The Onset of the Death of Man’ and ‘In Chaos, Exult’. Some of these things arose naturally, as I left myself open to them, but the overall intention was realised. It is somewhat loose; but I understand it, and that’s enough as the author of it. Everything else is open to interpretation by whoever’s listening, reading or looking and that is the terrible beauty of it.”

So it’s not necessarily death and the end but as much existential strife and dealing with banality and searching for purpose in the mundane…
“It could be anything, It is just about the never-ending absurdity of life. Littering your day with various nothings to make it seem like you have purpose – anything to get you through a generally meaningless existence. There are obviously things that give certain meaning but overall we don’t know what we’re at, we don’t know where we are, we don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know where we came from. There has to be a comical look at that as well, which I think is an inherently Irish thing – the tragic comedy at all times – which I find is prevalent in a great amount of Irish work in the arts. There’s a recurring theme of that throughout, be it in movies, our music and our writing. Make of it what you will.”

If you think back to your former self of a year or two ago, you probably felt then like you had truly arrived. And maybe have that feeling again now. And always in the present. We generally like to believe we have it all figured out but we don’t really ever arrive – we’re always lost…
“That’s it, we’re just settling for whatever we can to sort of appease ourselves in this notion that we’re doing something and we’re going somewhere. If you even look back at your younger self, the music you listened to, you thought you knew it all then, and now even nostalgia doesn’t make that palatable. It’s just a constant journey, constantly changing, viewpoints changing, knowledge being garnered but always back into the swirling chaos we go. There are fundamentals of being a decent person, but there’s so much more going on at all times, which we’re being bombarded with 24/7 – more often than not against our will – that we are not genetically equipped to deal with. With the constant assault of the modern world and its ever-shifting goalposts, it feels as though we can’t make head nor tail of our existence but it’s enjoyable in its absurdity, so why not? I’m not doing anything else…”

The album is cinematic in scope and scale, drama and tension ebbing and flowing, building to a climax, with a very clear beginning (ominous), middle (apocalyptic) and end (deathly still) – I would say a journey that has to be experienced in its entirety from beginning to end in order to be fully appreciated. Did you compose and arrange it this way on purpose or what more can you tell me about the structuring / flow of the record?
“Yes, all of it planned. I’d have taken influences from many different places. There’s parts in the intro where a motif is carried on in the outro; the middle is supposed to bridge the gap – I enjoy a cohesive journey of an album. I assume having the three-minute intro will annoy certain people but in this day and age they simply don’t have to listen to it. That is an intended annoyance to people who are treating music as disposable as they do now, we’re all guilty of it at different times, but the intention is to set a tone and ask listeners to apply the patience that’s needed to appreciate something that has been meticulously created, in the face of the world we live in with attention spans that have dwindled to a non-existent state.
“With the tunes, the last one written was ‘Between Dens and Ruins’ and I knew exactly what kind of tune I wanted to write for that. As it was coming off ‘Red, Waiting’ I knew what I liked and I knew what I wanted, so that one is the most recent example I can use. I think there is always an intention and a plan underneath; then you put the pieces together and just see how well they fit. I always knew ‘Red, Waiting’ would be the first full song because the intention was to attack coming out of the gates, and the flow was very important to me. A lot of the newer albums that we listen to – or that are coming out – it just seems to be a lot of the same thing regurgitated throughout 40 minutes. In some styles that works brilliantly but in others even the songs are interchangeable, on albums that are interchangeable, by bands that are interchangeable. That’s not what I want. It’s not what I listen to, it’s not what I write.
“I think it flows well. It’s an awkward length really because it’ll have to be put out as a double LP as it’s 56 minutes or so, but the journey is in place and while it’s obviously a wider scope than previous endeavours, and we’ll see what other people think, I’m content with it and it’s exactly how it is meant to be.”

With its eerie coastal setting, Mitchell Nolte’s scorched earth / crooked path of black earth painting for the front cover is a perfect accompaniment to the music. The original picture it’s based on is perhaps a little Grim Reaperish due to the wielding of a large scythe across the old man’s back… Can you provide any further insight into the conception and significance of this remarkable image? Who is the old man in the picture and where is he going?
“That original is set somewhere in Kerry. Regarding the Grim Reaper theme you mentioned, that might be what the wider audience sees, but I don’t think that was the intention of that picture … that’s not what I see. I see a man on a path that’s undefined. He’s going to work or coming from work but the landscape is so inherently fucking Irish it all comes together amazingly for me. I sent that picture on to Mitchell and we had decided against the scythe for the very reason you mentioned – that it creates a focal point that isn’t the intention of the piece, at least not through my perception of it.
“In the same way, it ties in with the summoning bell: again, I don’t know where he’s going, and I don’t know where he’s been. There were obviously a couple of things I wanted to change. There used to be – and still is but to a much lesser extent – an old bonfire night in the west, which was the 23rd of June, an old pagan celebration. All the islands in Galway Bay used to have bonfires on them so as boats were coming in they would see this amazing sight. I figured while the image has the sea in it that I could bring that fire into the background of the picture as well. It’s a fine line to keep it within the realms of a Death Metal album but I think it is suitably bleak and, as discussed, the not knowing – of him, of us, of everything – all ties in perfectly. Some of these things were serendipitous but the path and the vision was set.
“JK has synaesthesia, so he can see riffs come to him as colours and stuff like that – he’s a freak – but he didn’t know initially because obviously he just thought everyone had it and that’s how people see the world, and then years ago I was talking about a documentary I had seen on BBC about synaesthesia and he chirps up ‘aw yeah well I have that’. He said when we were over with Greg, because I was slightly unsure about the album cover, that in his broken fucking brain it thematically all comes together – the music suits the artwork – in that way, so I’m going to take his word for it. He’s going to be over the barrel on it!
“There’s also more art that Joe has done for the inner sleeve. We have an illustration for each song – separate to ‘Isolation’, ‘Onset’ and ‘In Chaos’ – and they all tie in as well with the overall theme, the story, again in my head at least, and if not to other people then they are just very good distractions. Which works as well. I have to keep some of it to myself.”

Photo credits: Graham Martin, Kate Mooney