Interview by Kris Peters
For nearly two decades metal outfit Carnifex have managed to push themselves musically further which each release.
Although fitting snuggly into their chosen extreme metal genre, the band have also experimented both within and outside of the conventional parameters of their music, peeling back layers while simultaneously structuring new passages along the way.
With their ninth full length studio album Necromanteum set to be unleashed on October 6, Carnifex have tapped into another realm both musically and thematically, exploring the supernatural and sordid tales of nightmares and inner conflict unlike ever before.
It is much less introspective and personal than their previous offering Graveyard Confessions, with orchestrations and atmospheric landscapes drafted into the sonic landscape to create a sense of foreboding lyrically to match the musical output.
Frontman Scott Ian Lewis joined HEAVY to explore Necromanteum even further.
"I'm pretty stoked," he smiled when asked about the new album. "I'm excited to get the full record out there. I know we've got a couple of singles, but I'm still a whole record kind of guy so getting the record out to the fans is really what I look forward to the most"
We ask Lewis to dive deeper into the musical nature of Necromanteum.
"It's a bit different to the last one," he measured. "I think a big part of it is we've got a new member - Neal, our new guitarist - so we wrote this album as a five piece, compared to writing Graveside Confessions as a four piece. We were able to work with an outside studio. We worked with Jason Suecof at Auto Hammer out in Florida and we also worked with an outside... I guess composer is the word for all the orchestral arrangements, which we had never done that before. And then lyrically and kind of the themes of the music are pretty different. It's a much more outward looking record. Kind of more universal themes compared to the last album which was very inward looking and kind of more of a self assesment, where this one is an assessment of the space that we all share."
In the full interview, Scott talks more about the musical side of the album, the singles released and how they reflect the album as a whole, having Tom Barber from Chelsea Grin guest on Death's Forgotten Children, the central themes throughout the album, what sort of research he did, the pros and cons of self producing an album, Neal and what he brings to Carnifex, using an actual orchestral arrangement, their upcoming tour and more.