Photo by Tomás Robertson
“While the music is crafted in such a way that it is intentionally bleak as can be, it is meant to inspire from deep within if you let it.” — Everything Is Noise
Dark ambient funeral doom outfit LOCUSTS AND HONEY today reveal their video for “Leathern Cord.” Now playing at Everything Is Noise, the track comes off the duo’s debut LP, Teach Me To Live That I Dread The Grave As Little As My Bed, set for release on May 24th on their new label home of Toronto, Ontario-based Hypaethral Records.
Rising from the boggy marshes of the United Kingdom, LOCUSTS AND HONEY conjures a sonic maelstrom that traverses the realms of darkness and despair. Rooted in the fertile soil of early ’90s doom (Corrupted, Winter, Esoteric), infused with the raw essence of black metal (Strid, Darkthrone), and bathed in the ethereal embrace of cinematic soundscapes (William Basinski, Henryk Górecki, Coil), vocalist Stephen Murray’s anguished growls, which invoke memories of Lee Dorian, are intertwined with the melancholic melodies of multi-instrumentalist Tomás Robertson to cast a spell of sorrow and fury upon all who dare to listen.
Teach Me To Live That I Dread The Grave As Little As My Bed is a meditation on death and living well, inspired by the bog bodies of Ireland and Denmark – people of the Iron Age who were sacrificially hanged and found extremely well-preserved in peat. Crafted with meticulous care, this opus of dejection comprises a one, sprawling twenty-eight-minute odyssey broken up into six movements
Writes Everything Is Noise, “Boasting dense pummeling chords and piercing leads, deeply reverberating bass tones, and horrendously atrocious (in the best of ways as it suits the music) vocals, you’re left feeling as if you’ve been sucked into a vacuum of nothing but harsh noise. One thing I especially admire about the music video is how the grainy effects of the camera complement the crustiness that comes from the distortion and high gain of the guitars. Together on top of the creeping pace of the track, it completes this aged aesthetic of pure agony and melancholy, mirroring the life events that everyone will eventually experience at some point throughout their lives.”
Adds Murray, “While the inspiration for ‘Leathern Cord’ began with mummified bog bodies such as the 2,400-year-old Tollund Man, the footage for the video — shot on Super 8 by Tomás — takes us to a different site of ancient ritual, the 5,000-year-old Calanais Stones on the Isle of Lewis. Both the people performing human sacrifice in iron age Jutland and those tracing celestial bodies across the neolithic Outer Hebridean sky clearly had a firm purpose, likely spurred on by an equally firm set of beliefs. Yet now, whatever those beliefs might have been or how ardently they may have held to them, they did not weather the centuries as well as the bodies and stones themselves, and there is nothing left of them save mystery.”
Watch LOCUSTS AND HONEY’s “Leathern Cord” video at THIS LOCATION.
Since their inception in the Autumn of 2023, LOCUSTS AND HONEY has transported listeners into a realm where shadows reign supreme; where each haunting note is a dagger to the heart and each mournful chord a lament for the lost. Prepare to be enveloped by their harrowing embrace as they unleash their debut LP upon the world, casting a pall of darkness that lingers long after the final note has faded into the void.
Teach Me To Live That I Dread The Grave As Little As My Bed was mastered by Greg Dawson at BWC Studios, renowned for his work with luminaries such as Thantifaxath, Panzerfaust, and Olde and will be released on limited edition vinyl (100 Peaty Bog and 100 Black) and digital formats.
Find preorders at the Hypaethral Records webshop HERE or Bandcamp HERE where first single, “Traitor To Love,” can be streamed.
Teach Me To Live That I Dread The Grave As Little As My Bed Track Listing:
- Surfeit Of Lampreys
- Leathern Cord
- Confraternities Of The Cord
- Beauty And Atrocity
- Traitor To Love
- Damnation Of Memoriae
Founded in 2012, Hypaethral Records stands as one of the preeminent labels in the realms of doom and blackened metal. The LOCUSTS AND HONEY LP will stand shoulder-to-shoulder alongside releases by atmospheric doomsayers QAALM, suffocating drone from Gates, and the raw blackened crust of Ramlord.
LOCUSTS AND HONEY:
Tomás Robertson – all music
Stephen Murray – vocals, lyrics
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