Indiana, America doom metal band The Gates Of Slumber return with a new album out on Svart Records from 29th November.
The self-titled album will be the band’s first full length offering since The Wretch back in 2011. The first taste from their upcoming sixth album came with the single ‘Embrace the Lie’, an ode to the lying news media and political talking heads, and that’s now followed by ‘Full Moon Fever’.
”If my memory serves me right, ‘Full Moon Fever‘ was the first song for the new album,” commented founding band member Karl Simon. “The music was written around about when Tom Petty died. And yes, the song is dedicated to him. Not inspired by his music per se, but I was always a big Petty fan and yeah. Figure it out on your own time… The first set of lyrics I did for the song had more of a comical feel to them. More of a Motörhead treatment. A werewolf chasing cars and shit like that. But that’s not the feel I wanted for the song in the end.
“The band was always meant to be a serious band. But I would be denying the truth if I said that it didn’t have a lot of tongue in cheek. And that wasn’t what we wanted to do with it at all. Part of the fun is playing it straight. So, I reworked the lyrics a few weeks before we actually recorded the album. I have to pat myself on the back. I think the break down is one of the best bits I ever came up with.”
Available here you can check out the video for both singles here at RAMzine.
Simon formed The Gates of Slumber back in 1998. Various people were in and out of the group between 1998 and 2001, then the Blood Encrusted Deth Axe demo was recorded with Jamie Walters of Boulder on drums and Dr. Phibes/Athenar (later to form the cult black metal band Midnight) on bass. In 2003 Jason McCash took over the bass duties and was a long-time member of the band until his untimely demise in 2014, after which Simondecided it was time to call it quits.
That was until 2019, when metal festival Hell Over Hammaburg wanted to bring the band back on stage to perform at the festival’s 2020 edition. Simon reformed the band with its original member Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass and got back to work.
“We’d been asked several times to play Hell Over Hammaburg. But there was no we to play. The germ of the idea started. We started re-learning songs from the first LP. It wasn’t too long into the rehearsals that we started coming up with new songs.”, said Simon.
After a reunion tour was finished, covid kicked in to slow down the process. Half of the album was already written but the remaining half took its time, and the songs were left to stew in their juices. With bastard heavy songs honoring the doom metal greats Saint Vitus and Penance, straight forward bangers, lyrics inspired by the Black Death and John Carpenter’s The Fog, The Gates of Slumberalbum.
“I never intended to pick up with The Gates Of Slumber ever again in 2014. While I did start the band and wrote most of the first album it was never intended to be a one man show,” said Karl Simon.
The Gates Of Slumber is available via Svart on exclusive black/white marble vinyl, limited transparent blue vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms.
