Old school death metal band Memoriam formed in early 2016 with Bolt Thrower vocalist Karl Willetts and Benediction bassist Frank Healy. The band have unveiled information about their forthcoming debut album, For The Fallen out on March 24 via Nuclear Blast. The album will consist of eight tracks and it is available for pre-order in both digital and vinyl formats.
The artwork was created by Dan Seagrave (Benediction, Hypocrisy, Suffocation, etc.), who stated the following details behind his designs:
“Starting from the bands thoughts on visualising a kind of funeral procession with a theme of combat, war and in conjunction with the title »For The Fallen«. As with all my works, I then attempt to make the information evolve in my minds eye, and allow imagination to take over those elements. But retaining the core concept. The painting thus depicts.
A funeral procession moving through a long war torn cityscape. Twisted shards of towers & buildings. A cathedral facade stands defiantly, yet riddled with destruction and decay. At closer inspection the structures all seem to be infected with an element of natural decomposition, as if organically inclined to fade with the demise of the season.
The season itself lost in a timeless void. The figures appear as remnants of once soldiers, now strange in their gathered mass. Drawn forwards by the drifting momentum of the procession. Unaware of their emaciated state they follow the commander.
The commander’s elongated appearance is tattered and almost creature like, with the combat style elements and gas mask falsely presenting as a costume.”
Oath Zine Serbia interviewed Andrew Andy Whale and Karl Willets of Memoriam, asking details behind each track of the album, including how Memoriam initially formed.
“Memoriam came about at the end of 2015, after the death of BT’s drummer Martin Kiddie Kearns. BT decided to put the band on hold whilst we all came to terms with the tragic loss. It was a real low point for me in my life personally and a dark place to be in. I decided that I could simply not sit around and wait for the future of BT to be decided, I had to do something to express my feelings of sorrow, and loss. This is the reason I approached Whale and asked him if he was interested in going into the rehearsal rooms and jamming out some cover versions of songs that had influenced us back in the late 1980’s when BT was formed. We got our mate Frank involved as we had always talked about doing a band together for many years and also got Scott Fairfax who had recently completed a tour of South American playing guitar with Benediction, so we knew that he got on well with Frank.
We had our first meeting in the Pub in January 2016 where we discussed what we would like to do and what songs we would like to play cover versions of and it all has grown from there. We started rehearsals in February 2016 and the band has developed at an incredibly fast pace over the past year!
Initially we were struggling to come up with a name that fitted what we were doing, it was like you’d come up with an idea, Google it and find that the name had been used 20 times previously. The name kind of organically grew from what inspired us to form the band in the first place following the death of Kiddie. The music we are creating is a form of Memoriam, a way to express my feelings of grief and loss lyrically the only way I know how.”
The track by track guide:
1)“Memoriam”
“Memoriam is an intro song and sets out our intentions, this song is dedicated to Kiddie and is really a eulogy to him.”
2)“War Rages On”
“Really about getting on with life, and dealing with the issues that life throws at you.”
3)“Reduced To Zero”
“A comment on the world in which we live in with the rise of right wing nationalistic xenophobia.”
4)“Corrupted System”
“This is our punk/hardcore track – again about the world we live in influenced by things such as Brexit and Trump etc.”
5)“Flatline”
“The experience of dying, and the journey it takes.”
6)“Surrounded (By Death)”
“About being surrounded by death literally, I wrote this in the wake of Lemmy’s death, it just seems that we are constantly in life.”
7)“Resistance”
“It’s about not taking any shit from anyone.”
8)“Last Words”
“The closing track on the album, it is an epic sounding song that is written from the perspective of a letter home from the trenches, exploring the feelings and emotions that a soldier has before he faces death by going over the top.”
You can read the full interview below:
