Australian metal trio GROWTH stream new video
Australian metal trio GROWTH have released their video for new single 'Soul Rot', taken from their stunning debut LP, The Smothering Arms of Mercy, which will be released 4th December via Australia’s progressive music specialists Wild Thing Records.
Watch the 'Soul Rot' video, directed by Caligula's Horse's Adrian Goleby, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZZGwQP7B6Y
Stream 'Cigarette Burns', previous single 'Something Follows', and pre-order the record here: smarturl.it/growthmercy
Front man Luke Frizon explains; “Despair will reach a point where you no longer identify with any positive solution. Ideals of safety and opportunity feel beyond alien, they’re mocking you as they dance out of grasp. It feels like closure only exists in the space where life doesn’t. Images of a hopeless end, once flickering and nightmarish, coalesce and call invitingly to your mind’s eye.
Our character in this story has heard such a call and is falling in love with the promise of release it brings. The sense of control over their fate is back, horribly within reach. Paralysed with fear, trapped, embittered and alone, they look fondly towards the end even as it stretches hungrily towards them..."
Luke says of the video: “'Soul Rot' is such a pivotal point in the album, sound and theme-wise, that we really wanted you to see how this can appear and feel. The video almost wasn’t made due to the heavier lockdowns in Victoria we were under.
Enter Adrian Goleby to save the day. We tasked Adrian with this video up in Brisbane, and he and his team smashed it! Psychosis, Mark Rothko colour schemes, Kubrick, kabuki theatre (look at the eyes); we jammed a chaotic mix of influences in there. There are also several hidden references to the' Cigarette Burns' video. Ed did a fantastic job as our lead man too. While I’m sad he didn’t drink the motor oil I recommended, the waterboarding more than made up for it. Seeing that last sentence typed out on the screen gets me thinking that people should really stop asking for my artistic recommendations."
GROWTH will release a trilogy of albums that explore the very human aspects of connection, trauma, despair, and the fragility of hope.
Even the strongest pillar caves. Even the iron heart shatters. GROWTH's debut release, The Smothering Arms of Mercy, is the first in their narrative trilogy that details in honesty the extremity of recovery from mental illness. Mercy delivers a ferocious depiction of suffering, designed to draw the listener in with the Barnes brothers' paralysing and traumatic vision, suffocating and vulnerable all at once.
Self-recorded, produced and engineered in Australia, with drums engineered by Troy McCosker (Ne Obliviscaris),and mixed & mastered by Fredrik Nordstrom (Opeth) in Gothenburg, Sweden, the landscape presented in Mercy is nightmarish-dense with jarring time signatures, grinding abrasiveness, and wistful post-metal passages, and led by the visceral howling of vocalist Luke Frizon detailing a vivid story of hope and loss drawn directly from lived experience.
GROWTH began as a reflective space for brothers Tristan (guitars/bass) and Nelson Barnes (drums) who were united after returning to Australia after a decade apart pursuing music overseas. Tristan returned to come to terms with his personal demons and after receiving a mental health diagnosis that hit with closure and terror all at once, he became a recluse. Isolated and debilitated, he expressed his pain through writing. Meanwhile, vocalist Luke Frizon (ex Jack The Stripper) had withdrawn from life to enter a period of recovery after reaching rock bottom, seeking to reconnect with himself and make meaning of hopelessness, trauma and loss.
A chance meeting on a mutual first outing from respective isolation sparked a discussion about the empathetic aspects of music and quickly led to a partnership and GROWTH were formed.
The result is The Smothering Arms Of Mercy, a claustrophobic narrative of total spiritual collapse written while in psychiatric care and thrown over nine suffocating acts.
Luke Frizon delves deep in to 'Something Follows'' meaning:
"There's a crucial moment in this album I wanted to get across here. Our figure in this has realised they are losing in a pursuit they don't understand-some force seeks to devour them. When in a state of despair, we find ourselves snared by the ideas it brings forward-punitive, brutal, painful. Quietly enraged by that pain, awash in the injustice of it all-the most awful outcome is when we fuse that rage with that suffering. The force lurking around the corner in this case is the end. Now, that's not where you want to be. Something Follows shows us what our figure will be faced with when forced to reach that decision either to collapse, or make one last push to break through."
The Smothering Arms of Mercy will be released on 4th December via Wild Thing Records
Pre orders are available now via
smarturl.it/growthmercy
Watch the album trailer here
https://youtu.be/ELn64sx3XOg
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Tracklisting
01. Cigarette Burns (07:53)
02. The Treatment For Melancholy (05:09)
03. Fortress Of Flesh And Bone (07:10)
04. Our Lady Of The Hanging Heart (06:31)
05. Lead Us To Our Glorious Times (05:12)
06. Darkly, It Tightens Its Grip (07:00)
07. Soul Rot (05:28)
08. Something Follows (07:09)
09. Gird Your Loved In Armour While Yet You Wither (11:09)