For a long time, the Death Metal genre seems to have been a fairly static affair. Apart from a few exceptions in the form of bands like Atheist, Cryptopsy and, of course, Death, most of it has been mostly of a regressive nature anyway. Very slowly, this seems to be changing. It is with sophisticated, boundary pushing, maybe even genre-redefining Death Metal bands like Altars, VoidCeremony and Faceless Burial that are offering some new and attractive impetus to the genre. I recently asked Faceless Burial guitarist Fuj about his idea on the overall matter as well as a bit of a deep dive into the band’s latest album, the great ‘At The Foothills Of Deliration’…
Hi guys, welcome to The Whispering Darkness. ‘At The Foothills Of Deliration’ has been out for about half a year now. How do you look back at the creative processes around the album? And, maybe a trick question, you also don’t go asking a father if he likes his just-born daughter, but… are you satisfied with the overall outcome of your new album?
I am not familiar with that turn of phrase but I think I would like my just-born child plenty! In its fresh state I have not yet had an opportunity to fail it as a parent and maybe the weight of crippling responsibility hasn’t fully set in yet so it can only go downhill from there. The creative process for ‘Foothills’ was a lot of trial and error working out what sections worked together and just what felt like constant practices to see if we could actually play the parts we had written. The actual tracking of the album haunted my mind long before and after it was completed. Now that enough time has passed I can enjoy the record and I think time is a beneficial aspect for this album as it seems people get more out of it with repeated listens.
Something I also mentioned in the review for ‘At The Foothills Of Deliration’ and experienced again when I went through all of Faceless Burial’s releases again in the run-up to this interview, it is obvious that you guys have changed quite a bit in sound while the core of the band was kept completely intact. How would you characterize your own developments?
We appreciate the enthusiasm to stay up-to-date with the band’s output! Especially from the extremely rough fetal stages. We have all learnt a lot since the early days in both individual capacities and as a band. Even with all the tricks and tips we have picked up from the professional acts we have been lucky enough to support and tour with I think we still maintain that essence of stress and urgency – and we may not ever be able to fully shake that quality. But maybe that’s a key factor of the band, even though the material may sound technical at times and like we know what we are doing, we are definitely struggling and sweating it play it!
The music of Faceless Burial is definitely and firmly rooted in technical Death Metal and especially on your latest album, ‘At The Foothills Of Deliration’ sounds not too far removed from those great early Suffocation records – without sounding like an exact copy, by the way. What would you, yourself, consider your main musical influences and how do they crystalize into your music?
Well the classics are a classic for a reason and yes, we collectively love those suffocations records. Mid-late career Death feels fairly coded into my DNA at this point, one of those things that has only gotten better with age along with Alice In Chains, Rush, Immolation and Dio-Sabbath. When trying to write riffs I like to try and keep an even balance of catchiness/melody while keeping it angry sounding at the same time which is usually achieved by my ineptitude to actually play something I’ve written to the standard I envision, mixed with poor technique and zero practice at home (I’ve become really lazy with that in the last year or so). We try not to be too derivative of any one thing, but accidents happen 🙂
Let’s get to the nitty-gritty of your latest offering a little. If you’d look back at your discography and compare it to your previous albums and EP to your most recent one, I think it is fair to say that the complexity is growing a bit to the expense of “the riff”. But that complexity does require some intense sessions of song writing, I guess. I, as a non-musician, am very curious to know how you write such complicated and elaborate songs. How does that work?
We didn’t intentionally set out to “level-up” with each release it just kind of occurred naturally. I think it is due to becoming more comfortable within the band over time but also the desire to push those comfy limits. With each record we set a new benchmark with what we could achieve from a performance point of view. So maybe in 10 albums time we’ll be ready to record something really sick – however by that stage I assume we will have transitioned into an amateur prog-rock band.
In terms of writing it is definitely a group contribution. Once we assemble half a songs worth of material and it sits together nicely that is usually enough to build off to create reoccurring themes and melodies. I think a good 40% or so ‘Foothills’ was written in the first two weeks of Covid – kind of a stream of consciousness whenever I was noodling around on guitar, the ideas were raw but they were there and once we got together to work on them that’s when it really started taking form.
What meaning is behind the album’s title? Similar to your previous work, ‘At The Foothills Of Deliration’ seems to address more than just the standard death, gore and destruction. Is the lyrical content of your work of specific value to you?
Alex is the lyrics-wiz so there isn’t much I can illuminate for you on this topic. A lot of the early lyrical content came from Alex’s cooked dreams – he doesn’t sleep much and when he did it was never very restful. Some inspiration for ‘Foothills’ (in particular Side B which is thematically linked from a lyrical point of view) came from the Strugatsky brothers’ book Hard To Be A God, which I guess he was reading instead of sleeping and that must’ve had an impact on the psyche. My basic analysis of the album title is appreciating the vague line between the lucid mind and losing your shit indefinitely.
And, following on from the previous question, here in a general sense, Faceless Burial’s music is quite complex and intelligent, do you think it should be accompanied by equally clever lyrics? And is lyrical content at all something you care about?
That is nice of you to say – Thanks! We try to keep the tunes interesting, probably more for us than the listener actually haha. Making music can be quite a self-indulgent circle-jerk of a pastime so it’s always nice when folks enjoy the tunes. I appreciate a record with a nice layout where you can really go through the details of the cover, insert and lyrics while listening to the music. It’s a fun activity. So, I guess for me that’s one of the primary enjoyments of metal records, and it’s important to have some awareness on how unintentionally humorous the content can result in without going full satirical – guitar music is funny but its also sick.
Judging on the slowly growing number of quality bands that play this rejuvenated form of technical Death Metal, we can perhaps very cautiously draw the conclusion that this form of Death Metal is gaining some popularity. As an active participant in this game, do you observe a similar trend? And how would you rate your own contribution to this?
Yeah, Death Metal appears to be very in these days. There’s a seemingly endless list of serrated squiggly logos out there and I guess we’ll just continue to contribute to the over saturated market of bands all influenced by the same 5genre-defining bands yet producing something half as good. I don’t think we have made enough of a dent in order to influence anything/anyone ourselves, maybe we should do bucket hats or make one of those lyric videos where the text just vibrates with heaps of attitude.
You have been around since 2014 and are still together as the original three-piece, something that deserves a compliment in itself, but you also keep a steep and steady working pace. How do you explain the chemistry between you and how does that translate into your music?
The band has a great synergy on a personal level and a pretty strong work ethic too. The vibe is so strong that the idea of ever introducing another person on second guitar or something (as sick as that would be in theory) is actually quite daunting. That’s like 9 years’ worth of in-jokes and lingo to catch up on… and then I guess there’s the songs too. We have accepted the power-trio format so we will just roll with that until the reformation tour in 30 years and we’ll just hire session shredders to do the hard work or by that point there will probably be a sentient AI that can do the job way better than we ever could.
All three of you are also active in a lot of other bands, not necessarily all of them can be labelled heavy let alone put in the metal category. Can you say something about the possible influence these bands have (had) in the process of forming the musical identity of Faceless Burial?
That’s correct, we have all played in various non-heavy projects – I won’t list any in case we lose precious metal-cred. I think the most prevailing aspect of this is how you approach songwriting and melody and applying certain pop characteristics to writing metal tunes. I wouldn’t recommend writing a pop song with a large breakdown and heaps of divebombs though.
Faceless Burial drummer Max is also bashing some skins in Internal Rot, a band that has named themselves after a song of one of my all-time favorite Grindcore bands, Hemdale. As a lover of Hemdale (and therefore also Internal Rot) I am very curious if there is any news to report on this front.
Max is actually the singer/fly kick purveyor in Internal Rot and Christoph is on drums. I believe they have some things on the go at the moment – maybe some new recordings, few shows coming up! And yes, strong Hemdale appreciation.
The past couple of years I have been very intrigues by some good number of quality bands from Australia. How do you look at your own, native scene? Do you recognise my observation and are there any Australian bands that you think are absolutely amazing and that we should definitely keep an eye on, or maybe even give them a spot on our pages?
Absolutely! There are many great bands operating down here at the moment. A surface-level scan of my brain has brought forth the following names:
Vile Apparition
Gutless
Contaminated
Miserable Creature
Shitgrinder
StarGazer
Mournful Congregation
Judging on the wide range of different bands you are (or have been) active in, I can imagine your current playlists can feature just about anything. So, out of my curiosity and regardless of musical style, what were the last records you have bought or listened to and liked a lot?
Been on a fairly metal diet for a while now but here’s some LP purchases from the last few months that I can remember off the top of my head:
Sumerlands – Dreamkiller
Tangerine Dream – Phaedra
Aphrodite’s Child – 666
Ozzy Osbourne – The Ultimate Sin
Mournful Congregation – The Exuviae of the Gods – Part I
Daeva – Through Sheer Will and Black Magic…
Hallas – Isle of Wisdom
Mortuous – Upon Desolation
Miasmatic Necrosis – Apex Profane
You seem to come out with a new record about every two years, which probably means you’ve already started writing new songs a bit. Can you say something at this (very) early stage how the new material will differ from ‘At The Foothills Of Deliration’?
Needed a break after ‘Foothills’ as that kind of destroyed everyone’s brain but we have started noodling around with some new ideas. At first glance it feels a bit more complicated haha but who knows what shape it will take in the end. I have a slight urge to write one real long track and go from there but I should probably stamp out that urge.
Apart from the above, is there anything else we can expect from Faceless Burial in the coming months?
We are going on a European tour with Mortuous which is kicking off early June. And a short South East Asian tour with Anatomia – also in June! Going to be a busy month. Lots of shows, lots of merch etc etc
Then finally, we have come to the end of this Q&A, if you feel I have left something very important unexposed, feel free to fill it in here because the last words are yours.
Thanks for having me I hope the answers were somewhat informative and mildly entertaining.
