WHITECHAPEL announces 'Hymns In Dissonance' album, shares video for title track
16-01-2025
Knoxville, Tennessee death metallers WHITECHAPEL will release their long-awaited new full-length album, “Hymns In Dissonance”, on March 7 via Metal Blade Records. In celebration of the announcement, the band now releases a video for the title track of the new record, directed by My Good Eye Visuals.
Watch “Hymns In Dissonance” below.
“There is nothing nice about ‘Hymns In Dissonance’, from the riffs, to the lyrics, to the overall vibe of the album,” says guitarist Alex Wade of the band’s latest output. “We attempted to write our heaviest album to date. We wanted to put out something that was shockingly menacing and brutal.”
“The album follows the story of a cultist who is gathering worthy people to join his cult,” Wade further elaborates, “and there are moments in the storyline where the cult followers are singing an evil hymn to open a portal for the head cultist to enter.”
WHITECHAPEL has released a standalone single, “A Visceral Retch” last September. The single followsed the band’s most recent Metal Blade release, the album ‘Live In The Valley‘, from January 2024, after the album ‘Kin‘, from 2021.
Watch “A Visceral Retch” below.
Comments WHITECHAPEL vocalist Phil Bozeman, “‘A Visceral Retch’ is a song that fans of ‘The Somatic Defilement’ will latch on to immediately. It was one of the first songs we had in the chamber to work with. This song came to light thanks mostly to [guitarist] Zach Householder. He showed us and we all immediately said, ‘yup, that’s it.’ Zach is notorious for very dark and horror-like vibes so this album is right in his wheelhouse. The song is disturbing. Imagine being put in a situation of survival by gluttonous, mammoth demons that give you a choice. Eat the demons’ waste, eat each other, or starve to death. The twist, you’re against the people you love the most. It’s a way to find the ones that are truly evil people to build and strengthen their cult. It also represents how horrible people can really be, when push comes to shove.”
The “A Visceral Retch” video was directed by My Good Eye Visuals.
The band’s dynamic, brutal musicality serves as a soundtrack to the compelling lyrical story that vocalist Phil Bozeman vividly imagines.
“‘Hymns In Dissonance’ is a mockery of the true nature of what hymns are,” Bozeman explains. “Hymns are melodious and harmonious. Dissonance is the opposite of melody and harmony. Dissonance represents evil. The tracks on the record are the hymns, which represent the seven deadly sins, beginning from track three to track ten. Tracks one and two are the introduction.”
The lineup’s timely and terrifying vision was first unveiled in the fall of 2024 with the single “A Visceral Retch” inciting frenzied fans to call the song “a version of WHITECHAPEL we have never heard before. Can’t explain how absolutely goddamn brutal this song is. This is a total dream come true.” The title track is the LP’s second single.
WHITECHAPEL, who formed in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2006, has seen the core lineup — vocalist Phil Bozeman, guitarists Ben Savage, Zach Householder and Alex Wade, and bassist Gabe Crisp — intact since 2007, with the exception of drummer Brandon Zackey, who has been playing with the band since 2022. While “Hymns In Dissonance” follows 2021’s “Kin” chronologically, the new album is actually somewhat of a sequel to “This Is Exile” thematically, the three-word title “Hymns In Dissonance” representing that correlation.
The band started composing the new album at Householder‘s studio in June of 2023, following their headlining tour for “The Valley”. The collective stuck to a strict weekday schedule, the structure allowing for maximum creativity and minimum burnout. Householder produced “Hymns In Dissonance”, which allowed the musicians to seamlessly switch gears from preproduction to recording the full album without skipping a beat. The guitarist shadowed producer Mark Lewis a lot over the last five WHITECHAPEL albums and bringing that influence inside the band is a full circle moment for Householder and WHITECHAPEL.
“Hymns In Dissonance”, which features cover art by European tattoo artist Rob Borbas (Grind Design), will be released on CD and digital formats as well as vinyl.
“Hymns In Dissonance” track listing:
01. Prisoner 666
02. Hymns In Dissonance
03. Diabolic Slumber
04. A Visceral Retch
05. Ex Infernis
06. Hate Cult Ritual
07. The Abysmal Gospel
08. Bedlam
09. Mammoth God
10. Nothing Is Coming For Any Of Us
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