Distant: Dawn Of Corruption

Deathcore has evolved significantly since its inception, introducing a range of different stylings to the initial blueprint. One particular field which has grown in popularity is the down tempo variety which has allowed the genre to sound more demonic and downright evil than ever before. 2019 witnessed the full-length debut of the devastating force known as DISTANT, a release which spring-boarded them into the spotlight almost instantaneously.

“We were very surprised with how well Tyrannotophia was received as the songs on there were kind of all over the scheme,” explains frontman Alan Grnja. “We had like some beat down songs, some faster songs, some more technical songs so every inch of that album was different and we kind of just went off the deep end with it to see what would work best. It went really well and opened a lot of new doors for us like new touring opportunities so it was definitely a good first step. It was also our first experience of delivering something with a deadline and it was really stressful at times since we don’t live in the same country. I would have to record stuff myself and the guys would need to record their own parts too and we would kind of have to wait for each other to finish what we were working on before we could proceed. We found out our time management skills were really bad! Since then we’ve learned to schedule everything a lot better and now we’ve really got the hang of it. Our drummer lives in Slovakia but we somehow make it work.”

Despite being one of the key components that has brought DISTANT their notoriety, Alan was not the original vocalist. In fact, it was almost by pure chance that they crossed paths at all. “It’s quite a funny story how I became to be a part of DISTANT. I broke up with my old band who were actually supposed to tour with DISTANT and since I’d already booked everything to go on tour they said I could just come along for the ride as tour manager,” admits Alan. “Halfway through the tour the band approached me and said ‘you know the guy who is with us at the moment? He’s just a fill-in vocalist. What are your thoughts on filling the spot?’ and I just kind of went for it. I had just left school and had no worries and now it’s been like four years!”

Just over a year has passed since the release of Tyrannotophia, rather than wait around and become complacent with their accomplishments DISTANT decided to strike while the iron is hot and follow up with another crushing release in the form of EP Dawn Of Corruption, a release which would be more streamlined and focused. “This time round we decided to focus on having less songs and focus on the structures for each song and everything that is happening in the background, make sure that they don’t feel rushed and that they feel expansive,” discusses Alan.

“We worked a lot on the orchestration this time round and with Dawn Of Corruption you should expect a lot darker record than Tyrannotophia. It follows the same concept but this time round we have a fully-fledged theme and world which it is situated in. We’re actually working on a book to coincide with the concept so there is plenty of stuff in the works. Dawn Of Corruption is just a ruthless, dark and really atmospheric record and it’s definitely our best work to date. It sounds a lot more mature and I’m really proud of it. That is something that I don’t say a lot as I’m quite a perfectionist and I’m rarely satisfied with everything but I’m really proud of this and I hope people enjoy it as much as we do. We had this release planned but the lockdown came in handy and we were able to focus more on it and deliver it a bit sooner. It was always the plan to release it this year though. We are no longer in the age of long album cycles. The attention span of the listener is getting shorter and shorter with the sheer amount of music at their disposal and releases going on everywhere and people are on the internet 24/7 so time passes even more quickly. We wanted to make sure that we maintain a presence in their minds.”

As well as the music itself the band have poured a lot of effort into creating an environment and conceptual narrative in which this release will inhabit. To ensure that they achieved this vision they recruited two guest features who they knew would be a great fit to assist in this endeavour. “We wanted to keep it to a minimum so that it meant something and wasn’t just us latching onto people for the sake of it,” states Alan. “We went with Jason from INGESTED and Mendel who was formerly part of ABORTED as we knew they’d be perfect to help us tell the story. The lyrics are all very story driven and are from different points of view from the characters within the story so we wanted to make sure they fit in with this concept. This will all become clear with the release of the book and I’m really curious to see what people think of that. I’ve been eyeing up having Jason featuring on a track for a while now. We spent a month on the road together and we have a really close bond because of that and I knew he would really get into the spirit of what we’re trying to achieve.”

Dawn Of Corruption is out now via Unique Leader Records.

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