EMBRIUM: TIMEKEEPER

ALBUM REVIEW BY DJ ALEX KAYNE

Regardless of what Metal genres are your mainstays, if you have an open mind, then one cannot help but enjoy riding the delicious crests, dips, swells, vocals, and riffs brought up from the San Francisco Bay Area’s blackgaze killers Embrium .

 Their new opus, Timekeeper, is a deeply engaging, musical expedition of intertwined guitars, coupled with soft and hard explosions hiding in the ether, reinforced with an earth-shattering rhythm section. Timekeeper will simultaneously draw in your conscious and subconscious – though at first you may not realize it. 

Mosahefu’s dreamy, liquified, beautifully pitched voice is the perfect counterpart to Jade Forsythe’s razor edged, cochlea-shattering scream vocals. What is glaringly apparent while listening to this record is that it is composed and built with immense care by deadly serious, accomplished musicians. Their track arrangements are extremely well thought out and handled, and their level of execution is a master class exhibition of flawless craftsmanship. 

 Each track is a staggering exercise in propulsion versus restraint, pitching and yawing between light and dark. The result is an unmitigated assault on your central nervous system, melding the diametrically opposed offerings of black metal, shoegaze, and other fitting, tasteful elements in masterfully precise doses. 

 One is easily wholly captivated and immersed in the band’s transcendent, mysterious, tumultuous storytelling of their own personal mindscape. Jade and Mosahefu exchange vocal salvos while the guitars revere in their own power, pushed forward by cavernous bass guitar vibes and defiant drumming delivering all the right fills and accents at the right time. All the while myriad sounds and lush reverberations imbue the entire album with an otherworldly glisten. In its total chaos, it all makes perfect sense. 

 A few track samplings: 

“THE END OF THE LANE” ushers in a portentous enchantment of floating, lush guitars, conjuring a hazy scene (at least in my imagination) of after a dirt road’s sudden halt, walking barefoot across a soft, sprawling meadow, over not-quite-dry leaves, unreasonably drawn toward something hiding in an ethereal mist. The foreshadowing is apparent; however, the dancing melodies and the rustling of the leaves seem to form a weird sense of safety. I cannot turn back but… just what lies ahead?

 “THE WITCHENING” gives us more pulchritudinous, interwoven, structured guitars. Spiritual tones tease, and chords appear out of nowhere that coalesce into a slow build, suddenly the rest of the band bust in to propel this track into its rightful place with Jade and Mosahefu’s compelling intonations leading the way. Symphonic elements fly through during the unfolding of this sojourn, building towards its climax as Jade’s acrobatic vocal warfare cuts and slashes with reckless abandon.

 “HYPERION” Hyperion’s stoic, apocalyptic visceral environment and its rising and falling incantations are pushed aside by hellish incursion. Shades of Bathory here, a winding guitar soliloquy twists, bends, and paints a compelling melodic counterbalance against Jade’s outcries, Mosahefu’s serious wailing, and the returning haunting chants held therein.

 “ECLIPSE” sneaks in bearing atmospheric swirls. Rich, chunky, sharp guitars kidnap you ears and hold your mind hostage with a beautiful verse from Mosahefu. The earthquake that follows, and for the rest of the record, really signals that Embrium have invited you to personally step into and explore to the very edges a universe the band has fluently created and essentially live in.

 By the time “TELEVATORS” arrives (a tastefully done Mars Volta cover), you realize that “Timekeeper” and the astounding, miraculous, cinematic sonic journey you have taken with Embrium has made your heart and mind richer.  10/10.

EMBRIUM BAND INTERVIEW:

MOSAHEFU: VOCALS/GUITARS
JOEY MENICUCCI: VOCALS/GUITARS/BASS

ALEX: We have two very special guests with us today for Metal Insider, from the San Francisco Bay Area blackgaze metal killers Embrium, we have Mosahefu and we have Joey with us to talk about the brand-new album Timekeeper. Here they are. Welcome!

MOSAHEFU: How’s it going?

JOEY: Hey, hey. What’s up, Alex?

ALEX: What inspired you to become a musician and how did this kind of music come into your universe?

JOEY: I started playing music probably thanks to my mom because, when I was 10 years old, I was hanging out with some kid that was getting me in too much trouble so she’s like, “You need a distraction, how about guitar lessons?” And so, she enrolled me in guitar lessons and it just stuck and I loved it and I was learning how to play all the awesome metal tracks that I was listening to when I was 10, 11 years old so my guitar teacher was really good at keeping me going by just exposing me to music and teaching me music that I enjoyed listening to so it was kept me going.

And then just in terms of the Blackgaze genre, I got Mosahefu to thank for that so maybe she can get into some of the bands that inspired her because those got passed on to me, a lot of Shoegaze and Blackgaze.  Alcest and Nothing and bands like that that, when Mosahefu was starting Embrium and I was witnessing it from the outside as she was putting ideas together, started hearing about these bands and I was like, “All right,” and then I was just like, “Oh, okay. I needed this in my life, thank you for that, that was good.”

ALEX: Before that, like growing up and stuff…

JOEY: Growing up, starting out when I was a kid, it was a lot of new metal. This was in early 2000 so I was getting into Disturbed and Slipknot and Static-X, those were some of the first, I guess, what I would consider the first metal bands that I listened to. And then from that I went into power metal, I discovered DragonForce and Judas Priest and Iron Maiden and stuff and so I was like, “Okay, now I want to shred. Cool, good to know! So that was definitely a big guitar inspiration part of my life, yeah, and then it just got a little bit heavier from there. Then I discovered a little bit of metalcore and then went into death metal and then I discovered the band Fleshgod Apocalypse and I realized that I really like orchestral metal. I love orchestras and death metal and the marriage of the two so that just led me… And I was in school band and stuff and doing some music stuff in college so I was exposed to a lot of that kind of stuff.

So, orchestral metal really got me going for a long time, it still does. And then, yeah, now it’s a lot of Blackgaze and Shoegaze and bands that experiment with a lot of different sounds and combine metal with other genres is really what I like and then progressive metal, all just the weird time signatures and anything weird is pretty much good for me.

MOSAHEFU: Well, I started on my guitar journey a long time ago. I started taking lessons when I was seven here in the Bay Area at a well-known music store called Gelb Music and, at the time, I was super into the Beatles as a lot of us start on our music career and I did that for about 10 years. And then from there, I made a promise to myself that I always wanted to be involved in music in some way or some capacity and going through college, graduating and get my first job or whatever. At some point, I think in 2013, I was like, “I’m going to work in the music industry full-time as much as I can.” So, I started working in San Francisco Guitarworks as a shop manager doing guitar repairs and stuff then I was at EMG Pickups for a long time, bounced around. Gimme Radio, Seymour Duncan and a lot of different places but I always wanted to get back to making my own music.

So, in 2019, I was like, “Fuck, I really like Blackgaze metal, I really like Alcest as well as Swallow the Sun, and Agalloch,” a lot of bands like that. Background wise, I grew up listening to thrash metal, Metallica was my first band and, we’re in the Bay Area, huge thrash metal scene. I also really melodic death metal and the Scandinavian scene a lot and black metal and stuff so, yeah, it all came together to start Embrium and I wrote a couple singles before the pandemic started and then a friend of ours, Jade, she’s screamer in Embrium, gave her those tracks and she killed it and I was like, “Shit, we got a project, sick.”

JOEY: Looks like we got a band!

MOSAHEFU: Yeah, yeah, it was awesome.

ALEX: How did you become a PRS pulse artist with Paul Reed Smith and all that?

MOSAHEFU: Yeah. So, when I was in high school, I was shopping at Gelb and I saw this really cool CE 22 model that had birds on the frets or on the inlays and I was like, “Oh, my God, that’s so sick, there’s birds,” and that just started the love story for me with PRS, I’ve always loved them. Back in, it was 2019, they started the PRS pulse artist program and I applied and they were kind enough to accept me and I’ve been a member ever since. And just coming from inside the music industry, I would say that they’ve got one of the best artist programs I’ve ever seen, they actually give a shit about their artists which I love. And not to say that other brands do not but I feel like I actually feel like a part of the family even though I’m on the lower artist here so, yeah.

ALEX: PRS guitars, they really do sound different than anything else. Paul Reed Smith this is a special kind of guitar maker able to capture something that no other guitar company has.

MOSAHEFU: Yeah, yeah. We’ve got quite a few now actually. Joey’s got his … He’s got a Custom 24 model I gave to him as his wedding gift and then I have an SE model, two CE models, I just bought another one recently. So, I think they’re multiplying like rabbits at this point so, the guitarist conundrum, I would say.

ALEX: That brings me to another question. When you guys record, do you change guitars around or do you write songs on a specific guitar, sketch it out on acoustic maybe? How does that thing happen? Do you change guitars to get different sounds for different purposes?

JOEY: Well, it depends. For Timekeeper, we did a few things. For myself, I’ve recorded pretty much all the guitars on my PRS, on the Custom 24 because that quickly became my studio guitar, it played super well and it was a great kit. So, thank you again to my lovely wife for that one. Yeah, that guitar, it’s so great, it does everything. And yeah, we put some Bare Knuckle pickups in there so it was just really cool, we put some silos into there, that’s Rabea Massaad’s signature pickup from Bare Knuckle and they’re super awesome. So, that was really cool.

But most of the guitar swapping, there was one song that was just in a different tuning so we used a Warmoth guitar that Mosahefu built which maybe she can talk about that. And then, yeah, most of the other fun guitar swapping was done by Mosahefu so maybe I’ll let her just talk about what guitars she used because there’s some pretty cool ones. But for me, all of my love is for PRS and, currently, I’m using Music Man on stage but only because … Well, I love both of those brands but the PRS is too precious to bring around to any bar…

ALEX: You don’t want to take that out of house.

JOEY: Yeah, I know.

ALEX: I’m a drummer. My DWs don’t leave the house.

JOEY: Yeah, smart man.

ALEX: So, tell us about some different guitar tones and stuff that you wanted to get for certain purposes on the record. What weapons do you use to achieve that?

MOSAHEFU: Yeah, totally. So, I like to trade things in and out as much as possible. I think between Joey and myself, we’ve got about 14 guitars. I’m personally a humbucker person just because I really like … I like a single coil tone for clean parts but I just like humbuckers primarily and I like getting all different kinds of ones and all different kinds of configurations. I know, for some of the songs on the record, for Dream Hunters or I think even for Awakened, we mix it up a little bit. I have a Gretsch Anniversary model I’ve had for about 25 years now that’s got Filter’Trons in it and that’s just, when it comes to cleans, that thing, it fucking rips, it’s got beautiful cleans. I also built a Telecaster last year or the year before when I was at Duncan that’s got Pearly Gates in it and that’s a really good one. Since they’re mid-range pickups, really good for cleans. But for all the heavier rhythm parts, we wrote the whole album, or at least for me, I wrote it on the Seymour Duncan Black Winters which are inspired by Amorphis’s Black Winters Day.

And then my Warmoth which Joe was just talking about, it’s got the Bare Knuckle silos in it. And we’re Bare Knuckle artists now so we’ll probably continue to make the swap over eventually for some of our more live guitars that we want to get that sound on. But yeah, it was, whenever the opportunity arose, we’d pick one and pick another. For acoustics on the album though, we borrowed a few acoustics from my old coworkers at Wood Street Guitar Repair. We don’t have any really solid acoustic players in the arsenal right now and that was great. My old coworker, he re-fretted both of them, he’s done neck resets on both of them, they both have stainless steel frets, so they were just studio ready. It was awesome to be able to use that in a pickle I guess you could say.

So, yeah, I like to experiment with a lot of different things, I’m not super dear on just anyone particular guitar in general. But my PRS CE Dustie Waring model from Between The Buried and Me, that’s my number one guitar so try to do most of the heavy stuff on that one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALEX: So, for Timekeeper, when did the writing start? Was it right after Flight of the Damned?

MOSAHEFU: Yeah. I think the Witchening and Hyperion, we started writing those pretty much right after the first self-titled EP came out and I think we were just eager to get started. But there was a four-year period between the self-titled EP and the album and that was really just because we were coming out of the pandemic, trying to find places to do shows, but a lot of places weren’t open in 2021 so we were like “Eh,” and then putting songs together, but a lot of it really came together in the last year and a half. Especially after 2023, my dad passed away so I was just like, “You know what? It’s time to finish this fucking album,” and, yeah. So, we went gung ho and, early 2024, finished up all the songs, started practicing, record the whole album in two months and then we were full speed ahead.

ALEX: How do you guys build a song?

JOEY: Especially for Timekeeper, a lot of the music was written, like Mosahefu said, over a number of years so it was really cool because a lot of songs started differently. There was not really one process for each one so we had … So, a lot of them, Mosahefu would start, she would say, “Hey, I got this cool idea,” and she would send it to me and it’s like, “Hey, see what you can do with it.” So, yeah, a lot of it was a combination of Mosahefu would start something and I would finish it. Or a couple of them, I wrote just inspired by the bands I mentioned earlier, I was like, “Man.” Because that time, this was getting exposed to the Blackgaze genre so hearing a lot of music and ideas for the first time, I got super inspired so it was just like, “Oh, man, I want to write a song that sounds like this band.”

So, a couple of them came from that but, yeah, usually it starts with … Either it starts with a Mosahefu riff and that a whole song is birthed from that or, yeah, sometimes it’s a riff or even just a tone. I’ll just dial in a cool tone and I’ll write just a lead or I’ll think of a cool chord progression and then something will just blossom from that so, yeah.

ALEX: How did you come up with the name Embrium? Is that from the Dragon Age, I think?

 

MOSAHEFU: Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah.

ALEX: Flowers from the Dragon Age.

MOSAHEFU: Yeah. I love Dragon Age, it’s one of my favorite video game series. I think when we were thinking about a name for this project, I was like, “Oh, Embrium sounds kind of sick.” I’m not a Embrium herb enthusiast or anything, I just, yeah, I just thought it sounded sick. I really like band names that are easy to say and remember and easy to read, I think that’s a big one especially in metal. Sometimes you get the tree branches and you’re like, “Man, that band is sick but I have no clue what they’re called or how to say their name or” … Try to keep it simple, yeah.

ALEX: I think it actually really embodies what the band sounds like and that’s pretty cool. The name sounds like the band.

MOSAHEFU: Yeah. We have one of the songs on the new record, The Chantry, that’s roughly based on Dragon Age as well. We try not to be too on the nose about the influences in terms from a vocal lyrical perspective. All the songs on the album are inspired by some of my favorite books and comics and video games and stuff and I like it when the lyrics are nondescript, so you don’t really know but, for people that really know, they’re like, “Oh, shit.” For example, Hyperion is about this sci-fi series by Dan Simmons and, if you read the Hyperion Cantos, you’ll know what the lyrics you’re talking about a little bit but it’s obscure enough that it doesn’t have to be an insider thing only, I think.

ALEX: Yeah, I knew nothing about it but, in general, I got the sense. I think the band does a really fantastic job of melding beautiful and dangerous and juxtaposing those two elements. Also, when you add in some of the other subject matter that you guys do like the dangers of magic, struggle of life, time, time is what life is made of so how you use time wisely or not wisely is an important thing. And I think those subjects melded with the sonic atmosphere that you guys create, it’s really cinematic, a cathartic kind of feeling, an ethereal feeling. I think you guys were able to meld those things together perfectly especially on this record.

MOSAHEFU: Thank you, we really appreciate that. We really went back and forth quite a bit about … Blackgaze is a weird genre because it’s black metal and shoegaze and there’d be times when, Joey and I, we’d be talking about a song and I’d be like, “Oh, it needs to be more Black Metal,” or, “Oh, this needs to be more Shoegazey,” and it was this really … It’s hard to walk that line because, even Blackgaze itself, there’s so many different bands in the genre and they all sound different. I really like Alcest and they sound pretty chill sometimes and sometimes they sound really intense. And then there’s bands like Harakiri for the Sky which are a little bit post-metal. So, it was hard walking that line and I’m glad the intention came across.

ALEX: How much fun was it making the two videos, Eclipse and Hyperion?

MOSAHEFU: Oh, yeah, they were great. So, I have to give Joey some credit for Eclipse, he was the creative mind behind all the narrative in Eclipse and I was really just like, “Can’t we just kinda have it be all performance?” And he was like, “No, trust me, a narrative would be sick,” so I’ll let him speak to that process. But for me, I had never made a music video before so it was a lot of fun and Eclipse is a fucking, in my opinion, one of my favorite songs in the new album, I think it’s a real banger. And yeah, I think it just speaks to how sick the music video was and, yeah. Did you want to add something about that, Joey?

ALEX: The video is real powerful. Go ahead, Joey.

JOEY: Oh, yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah, I got to give props to the band and to Rob our videographer I just  had a big idea because, yeah, Mosahefu wanted it to be a little bit more performance based which was a great suggestion and I did a little bit of a trust me bro kind of thing. Because it was also my first music video and I’ve never created anything like that before so I had all these big ideas and they had to be whittled down to what was actually reasonable, there were some crazy ideas I had. I was like, “I want to make this hourglass explode, can we legally explode things in this building we’re going to shoot at? So, it was a whole lot of me having wild ideas and so I got to give props to the band for letting me chase a vision for that and we’re all really stoked with how it came out and, yeah, it was really cool. And there’s some input from other people too, it was a lot of … Our other vocalist, Jade, once the idea came out, I said, “Hey, Jade, can you design a spooky, evil, ghostly entity or something?” and she was like, “Oh, my God, yes.” She’s all about the witchy evil mystical stuff so it was totally up her alley. So, I came up with some cool ideas but it was the band really took it and ran with it and Rob did a great job adding his flavor to it. So, it was definitely a labor of love from the group and we’re super stoked with the way the Eclipse video came out.

ALEX: Tell everybody where we can order the record and where can we find out everything we can possibly find out about Embrium.

MOSAHEFU: Yeah, totally. So, our website is the best place to head over to, that’s https://embriumofficial.com. We’re also on Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and Bandcamp and all. Not quite on TikTok these days, jury’s still out for me on that one. We have a really fantastic vinyl that the album is getting released on. It was always a bucket list for us. Joey was in a folk death metal band before Embrium and I think they were always trying to release an album on vinyl. So, for me, it was a huge bucket list and we were able to do one on this cool ethereal tide variant so it’s blue and orange and green. And that was one thing I took with me from my Gimme Radio days is just I love splatter variants, they’re a lot of fun. And it’s always fun to open one and be like, “Oh, it’s so different and unique.” I like standard black too but the variants are sick but, yeah.

ALEX: The cover is a really gorgeous cover and it’s got this open spaced element in there and the hands are broken apart and then there’s some of the sand from the Timekeeper. It’s actually floating around in space, those could be stars too but to me it looks like, “Oh, that’s loose sand that came out of the glass or whatever.”

JOEY: Hey, man, that’s a high compliment seeing what’s behind you right now. I think you’re a bit of a connoisseur, right? (looking at Alex’s record collection)

ALEX: Yeah, your record will be on the shelf as soon as it arrives here.

MOSAHEFU: The guy that did the album art for Timekeeper, I don’t know where he’s based out of but I found him on Instagram a couple years ago and I had just been saving his art and I was like, “Hey, man, do you want to collaborate on this?” His name is Yasin and I really have to give a shout out to him because we really made him do quite a bit. He’s doing all the album layouts and all this stuff and his art’s really sick, I’m really happy we got to work with him. And especially now where there’s this conversation around AI art and bands and blah, blah, blah, I wanted to make sure that we had somebody in there that was still working by hand. That means a lot to me because art is really, really important to me and I was supporting local artists and artists from abroad too.

ALEX: You can tell that that is a hands on, you can tell that that’s real art just by looking at it. It’s too natural to be AI so it’s a really cool cover.

JOEY: I think the secret to telling if it’s AI is that there’s the right number of fingers on each hand, that’s tell-tale sign.

ALEX: Do you guys have any plans to tour behind the record and put a plan together to go out there and kick some ass?

MOSAHEFU: Yeah, that is definitely on the docket for 2025 and beyond. So, we spent a lot of time, while we were writing the record, we also put together a live rig which we’ve nicknamed Gail and Gail is this portable back line for all the audio stuff. And Joey can speak more about the setup there but, yeah, it was made so that we could easily take it around and the idea is to do some West Coast

runs and Weekend warrior stuff. We really would love to play Decibel Metal & Beer Fest especially with the beer so we’ll ask those kind folks in there, see if we can make that happen. And I think Europe would always be the goal if we can get out there. We’re going to be in Finland in August for a friend’s wedding and they’re celebrating at Helsinki Metal Festival so we got to make those connections but that would be fucking sick.

ALEX: Festival season is great. You’d probably have an easier time jumping onto the festivals, you know?

MOSAHEFU: Yeah, we’ve looked at playing Northwest Terror Fest a couple times and then a couple of these smaller fests out in Seattle and I think … Yeah. So, we’ll see. We’re totally down, we just want to make sure our rig is mobile enough to make that happen. And for the time being, all of Embrium is based in the Bay Area so we can make that happen in a moment’s notice.

ALEX: What do you guys like to do on your downtime? If you have any downtime at all to …

JOEY: Well, obviously, as you can tell, definitely not video games. We definitely don’t name everything about this band after anything from video games. So, Mosahefu mentioned our live rig that we nicknamed Gail, that’s from Baldur’s Gate III. So, Mosahefu and I have just started our second play through of that, super fun game. But aside from all the wonderful nerdy stuff of video games and everything we like to do, we’re outdoors people, we like to go on hikes and do all that stuff. Mosahefu is a green thumb, she’s a gardener so she likes to grow us some delicious foods from the earth and, yeah.

ALEX: Very cool. Well, we would love to see you guys come in to New York and kick some ass.

MOSAHEFU: That’s totally on the docket.

JOEY: Hell yeah.

MOSAHEFU: Is Saint Vitus Open again?

ALEX: No, Saint Vitus has been closed for a while, but I just spoke to one of the owners not too long ago, a couple of days ago, they’re looking at opening a bigger space somewhere. So, they have some plans and I’m sure, when they do, it’ll be a big announcement but they’re looking to find the right spot. It’s going to be bigger and better than the original Saint Vitus.

MOSAHEFU: Hell yeah. That makes me so excited. I’m really bummed I never got to go to the last one. After working at Get Me Radio! for a couple years, I was like … I heard so much about  Saint Vitus and all these photos we were publishing on socials and all this stuff, I was like, “Man, this place looks fucking sick.” When it closed I was like, “Ah, I waited too long, man.” It’s one of those things where you think it’s always going to be there, we’ll keep our fingers crossed. I’m sure you’ve heard about the Bay Area, so many venues have closed here in the last five, 10 years. We went to one of the last shows they had at Slim’s and I think the last night was Cult of Luna and Intronaut and Emma Ruth Rundle. And it was funny, we’re friends with Sacha Dunable and I went backstage after their set and we took a shot with the singer from Cult of Luna and we were like, “What should we toast to?” And off the top of my head I was like, “Let’s toast the Slim’s,” and then literally the next day, it closed and I was like, “Oh, fuck, did we curse it or something?”

JOEY: Thanks a lot, Mosahefu.

ALEX: You gave them the whammy. You guys came up with a cool craft beer…

MOSAHEFU: Yeah. So, I have a buddy I went to high school with, his name is Kyle Bozicevic and I actually have a really funny backstory about this. So, I remember it was 2006, we were both in college and I came home not very far away. I moved to San Francisco but I’m from Redwood City but they’re only 30 minutes away from each other. And we’re hanging out at a buddy’s house just chilling, having a couple of beers and I was like, “Hey, man, good to see you. How’s school going?” And he is like, “Yeah, I don’t know, I think I’m just going to drop out.” I was like, “Oh, that sucks. What are you going to do?” And he is like, “I think I’m just going to make beer,” and I was like, “Sick.”

So, him and his sister started a bar in San Carlos, California called Ale Arsenal and, actually, I think their uncle is best friends with the guy that drew Eddie or something for Iron Maiden so that’s a fun connection. I’m not speaking too well to the backstory on that but it’s cool. And then Kyle started brewing his own beer and opened Alpha Acid a couple years ago or it must’ve been about almost 10 years ago now and, yeah. So, we reached out to him about doing a collab with a song from the record, Dream Hunters, and so, yeah, it’s a Dream Hunters blonde ale and it’s pretty good. It’s a nice, easy drinker, it’s not … I’m not personally a fan of chocolate stouts or double IPAs, I just wanted something that we could start with the show that everybody would enjoy and not be like, “Wow, this shit tastes bad,” so, yeah.

JOEY: The oyster stout by Embrium.

ALEX: I want to wish you guys the best of luck. Timekeeper from Embrium, Blackgaze metal masters from San Francisco. Just go to embriumofficial, pick up this record if you’re into the Blackgaze thing or even if you just … It really goes beyond Blackgaze, it’s more of an ethereal, cathartic experience, I think, very atmospheric. It evokes a lot of emotion, it conjures up a lot of feelings. If you like going on that kind of journey, you’ve got to love this band, man.

MOSAHEFU: Thank you, we appreciate that. It’s been great talking to you, Alex.

ALEX: Yeah. Thanks for spending time with us here inside The Slaughterhouse. We’ll see you, hopefully, in New York City. Maybe at the new Saint Vitus, that would be awesome.

JOEY: Thanks, Alex. See you.

EMBRIUM IS :

MONIQUE (MOSAHEFU) HERNANDEZ: VOCALS/GUITARS
JOEY MENICUCCI: VOCALS/GUITARS
JADE FORSYTHE: VOCALS
MATT BAIRD: DRUMS
AYANI HAYASHI: BASS

Written and Transcribed by DJ ALEX KAYNE for METAL INSIDER.
©2025 RockMachine Media, World Rights Reserved.

To hear the audio version of this interview on www.slaughterhouseradio.com

Feature Image Photo Credit: Kristin Cofer