Exocrine: Broadening Horizons
French outfit EXOCRINE have been blazing a white-hot trail of devastation in their wake for a number of years and have just unleashed another phenomenal collection of impeccable musicianship in the form of fifth album The Hybrid Suns. When we asked frontman and bassist Jordy Besse how it felt to finally get this release out in the open he jokingly responded with, “it hasn’t really sank in right now, I think I’m still recovering from Hellfest! The weather was trying to kill us!”
Like many bands, EXOCRINE have no intention of becoming stagnant or complacent and are always trying to push the boundaries of their sound to new heights. They are confident they have achieved this with The Hybrid Suns. “This album is definitely a fast one and a lot more epic maybe?” Explains Jordy. “We don’t want to retrace the same steps as we have historically. There are no slow songs on this album that’s for sure! It’s a pretty challenging process but we don’t want to stay in the same place, we want to improve. Whether it is production or our song-writing we are always happy to take that risk. It makes it more fun. We make sure we can play everything from every album as a band. That’s our rule.”
Interestingly, Jesse doesn’t wait until the song structure is already in place before laying down his vocal tracks. He is ready to get stuck in at every stage of the process. “Sylvain, our guitarist usually leads the way in terms of composing but we all work together throughout the process. I write lyrics during the composing and sometimes it influences the riffing and the writing and even the artwork plays a great role in that. I try to find punch lines and strong sentences within my lyrics and work on my placement of the vocals. This album is actually the end of this particular saga for us. We’ve put a few hints dotted around the album to kind of tie the albums together. We aren’t sure what direction we want to take going forward but we want to keep surprising ourselves and this means doing something different than our Sci-Fi influenced material.”
The artwork has always been a proud part of any creative output from EXOCRINE and The Hybrid Suns is no exception. This time, however, they decided to switch it up and follow a different direction with their intended artistic vision. “Caelan Stokkermans has been responsible for our artwork and our previous albums have been quite dark but this time around we wanted something more beautiful and clean,” explains Jordy. “We feel like he did a great job, we always allow a lot of freedom and put a lot of trust in his vision and he has never disappointed.”
Whilst the world seems to be opening up again and allowing more freedom with regards to live performances, it is still proving to be far from straightforward for some bands. EXOCRINE are hoping this won’t provide a stumbling block in their mission to broaden their horizons. “Things are easing off with regards to COVID restrictions but obviously there are still issues in the world like the current situation in Ukraine. We’re hoping this album can open doors to North America and we want to get out there and see more people,” confirms Jordy.
“I hope this album can do that for us. I feel that people who don’t particularly listen to technical metal will like this album because we try to put a lot of contrast in the songs and we hope new listeners will appreciate that. We were working on a French tour but it’s become quite a difficult land for metal music. Everyone is rushing to shows after COVID but one of the organisers from Paris has had to cancel some shows so it’s still strange times. We’re not afraid but it’s complicated because a lot of venues have closed, particularly in my hometown of Bordeaux. We had five venues and only a few have survived. Things have obviously become a lot more difficult after Brexit too so we are going to speak to some bands who are a bit more experienced in this kind of thing than us and see what we can figure out.”
The Hybrid Suns is out now via Unique Leader Records.
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