Godeater: Never Say Die
Scottish tech metal masterminds GODEATER made seismic waves with their debut album All Flesh Is Grass back in 2019, confidently announcing themselves as one of the hottest prospects in the scene. Just as they were getting their stride that slight inconvenience known as COVID-19 stuck a spanner in their spokes.
Rather than let this flatten their momentum the band focused on the much anticipated follow-up. “2020 was a bit of a washout for everybody. Short of not being able to play shows and the uncertainty of when things were coming back it was actually a really good period for the band,” admits guitarist Ross Beagan. “I just ploughed into writing. I had a lot of time to be creative. 2021 wasn’t as great because I was thinking ‘well, we have this record but what do we do with it?’. Our first show back was Bloodstock Festival which was a nightmare in itself as we didn’t get confirmation that we were playing until like two weeks before. We had to practice really hard and the anxiety of going back out into the open world again was tough.”
What we now know to be Vespera is a significant step up in the evolution of the band, taking their already established sound and introducing a whole host of exciting elements to the table. The emotions experienced throughout the course of various stages of lockdown and uncertainty seeped into the DNA of this effort.
“I started writing this album before All Flesh Is Grass even came out,” explains Ross. “I tend to have an idea of what kind of direction I want to head in pretty early on and then just work towards that. The only reason it took so long was having discussions about whether it would be the right time to bring a new album out during a pandemic. I knew I wanted to write something really aggressive as at the time I wasn’t going through a particularly good phase and I kind of funnelled that into this album and you can kind of hear that in the record. It’s got a greyish shimmer over the whole thing. I used to find it difficult to finish songs as there was no real sense of urgency when I wasn’t in a band but as soon as we formed GODEATER and started to have deadlines I really needed that as I could have tweaked everything until the cows came home. There are still bits on this album that I listen back to and wish I could’ve changed but there is no point dwelling on it as it is now a time capsule from a point in my life and I just want it to be out there.”
The album art for Vespera takes a minimalist yet very evocative approach and can be interpreted in many different ways. This vision is brought to life amongst the string of music videos that coincide with the release. “The meaning of the concept kind of stems from the idea that you can ultimately bury your head in the sand but it won’t help you. It’s not going to hide everything and it will catch up with you eventually,” discusses Ross.
“It also resumes the theme from our first album as well about humanity and their approach to waste and power, in both senses of the word, like political power and how it isn’t for the people, it’s for personal gain. This is exactly what Backwash is about if you read the lyrics. The orb shown in the videos is representative of something which makes everything feel at ease, a distraction which is comforting but the more they focus on it the more it starts to fall apart and the more they try to clean it, it won’t fix it. It’s kind of a metaphor of a difficult conversation staring you in the face and no matter how much you try and avoid it, it won’t go away. We worked with Calum McMillan again for the videos and he’s very hands-on and very creative. If something isn’t particularly working he’ll experiment with ideas until something clicks. This approach made our visual presentation so much stronger and tied everything together.”
Whilst things are looking up for GODEATER there have been a lot of elements going on behind the scenes which have threatened to derail the band. Thankfully Ross was far too stubborn to let all of his hard work be for nothing. “The year we’ve had as a band has been absolutely brutal, I don’t know if you’ve seen the photos of us playing live recently, but two people who were in the band aren’t anymore. We have a new vocalist so the band is still steaming ahead. We very much wanted to keep the announcement of the lineup changes until after the album release as we didn’t want it to take away from all the hard work that has been put in. I also don’t want to diminish anyone’s contributions either.”
Vespera is out now via self-release.
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