Memoriam: Onwards Into Battle!

There are few personalities as integral to the UK death metal scene as esteemed vocalist Karl Willetts. The esteemed vocalist cut his teeth in inarguably the most important death metal to hail from British shores, performing on every BOLT THROWER album except 2001’s Honour – Valour – Pride. That’s a run of strength most could only dream of achieving. But while BOLT THROWER hung up their claymores in 2016, the Willetts legacy lives on. Forming as a tribute to the late, great Martin ‘Kiddie‘ Kearns shortly after BOLT THROWER‘s end, Willetts has led MEMORIAM through a trilogy of records going from strength to strength. Now the band are back with their hotly anticipated fourth album in five years – To The End. 

“We started off 2020 with a packed schedule of gigs to promote Requiem For Mankind – we had shows lined up pretty much every other weekend of the year, then the world ground to a halt and life as we knew it ceased to be, we’ve all been cast into this void of nothingness. It was difficult to adjust to because we were looking forward to getting on the road and playing all these shows, but you have to adapt – and in many respects it worked out quite well for us. We managed to concentrate and focus 100% on getting this new album together.” Willetts explains on the impact of COVID’s deathblow to live music on MEMORIAM, and it’s blessing in disguise for the creation process of To The End.

“In my experience, you’re busy all year doing gigs and then when it comes to doing a new album you shut down for six to eight weeks to focus on that task. I usually only get the finished songs a month or so before going into the studio. This time around we obviously had so much more time – Scott [Fairfax, guitars] had all the songs completed by about April which gave me ample time to focus on writing the lyrics as we weren’t due in the studio until October. That time and space let us get totally ahead of the game – so much so I had the opportunity to demo my vocals, something I’ve never had the opportunity to do ever in my career.”

The lack of a looming deadline removed any sense of rush for MEMORIAM. There was no urgency to finishing the album, and that gave Fairfax the space to experiment, push himself more creatively, resulting in the most varied album of MEMORIAM‘s discography so far. “I think the key word to describe To The End is diversity.” Willetts muses. “We went into this album from a place of confidence because Requiem For Mankind totally defined us as a band. With the previous albums, we were working our way to that point, trying to piece the jigsaw together. That is MEMORIAM. This time around we could have quite easily done a carbon copy and been quite happy with that, but we wanted to carry on experimenting and trying different things. That’s really evident, I think, there’s so many diverse songs on To The End – Mass Psychosis jumps to mind, something totally different to anything else I’ve done in my career, or Each Step (One Closer To The Grave), which has a big, epic doom metal sound which I actually found really difficult to write lyrics for as it’s totally different from what I’m used to.”

This challenging of creativity is vastly important for Willetts. At this point in his career, with a back catalogue as esteemed as his, it would be very easy to tread the same old ground and get reasonably successful results. But, as he explains, pushing the limits of your creativity and abilities is one of the most vital parts of growing as an artist. “That’s the essence of what [making music] is all about, the creativity and the challenge, and that’s what I find most alluring. That’s what I enjoy most, the song writing process, pushing forward and trying new things – sometimes it doesn’t work, but you have to be brave enough to try. Even at this point in my career it’s a great challenge to be writing in ways I’ve never done before… It’s great to be able to learn new things and to be open to learning new things after doing this for so long.”

The extra time to work on the album and Fairfax‘s more varied song writing proved to be a perfect storm when it came time for Willetts to write the lyrics of To The End. He’s well known for his career-long lyrical theme of warfare, and while there are plenty of opportunities to charge headlong into battle To The End also sees his most diverse lyrical performance thus far. “The first nine sets of lyrics I wrote were all strongly politically motivated and inspired by the issues we’re facing in the world today like the COVID pandemic and more importantly the rampant rise of racism across the planet, Brexit and in particular the Black Lives Matter movement was really in the forefront of my mind.”

“It came to the point where I’d written my first draft of lyrics. I was happy with what I’d written but I asked myself ‘Do I want to write an album that’s entirely of a political nature?’ And that’s not really what I want to do. It’s essentially for me to have some political content on there, but I didn’t want to release an album of nine songs that were rampantly, overtly ramming a political idea down your throat. So I rewrote some of the lyrics and injected some of the themes I’m a bit more comfortable with – I can write songs about warfare in my sleep!”

For all the changes, the evolutions, the new directions and artistic challenges To The End represents for MEMORIAM, there is a comfort in continuation as well. When Distorted Sound last spoke to Willetts (issue DS50), he talked at great length about the triptych of MEMORIAM‘s cover art for the first three records – each piece of artwork building to a trilogy, telling the story of the funeral procession of a fallen hero. Esteemed artist Dan Seagrave returns to the MEMORIAM fold for the artwork this time, starting a whole new trilogy, a new triptych.

“It’s well documented that the band was born from Martin‘s death, he was the catalyst for the band. MEMORIAM came from a place of sorrow and grief. The first three albums explored those feelings in the lyrical themes, and in the artwork. For The Fallen showed the coffin of the fallen hero being carried across a ravaged battle-scape, The Silent Vigil showed him laying in state and Requiem for Mankind showed the coffin being lowered into the ground. The coffin was always the focus of the artwork, so we were wondering where we would go with this aesthetic moving forward.” Willetts explains, giving context on the triptych before offering an insight into how this visual theme will continue for the band.

“Four years on, I’m in a different place from when we did the first album and I was thinking about the old idea of celebrating life through death metal. I thought this would be a good opportunity to go George Lucas on everyone, and explore the life of this central character on our covers. To The End‘s album cover features this central figure very much alive, just before the battle in which he dies – this is the endpoint of his life, but the beginning of a new trilogy of albums where we explore his life in reverse.”

Some someone as integral to UK death metal as Karl Willetts taking the helm, MEMORIAM are always going to have detractors – some will be dismayed they don’t sound enough like BOLT THROWER, some will say they are too close to BOLT THROWER, but without the spark. But to focus on the past glories of one member of the band, however incredible they may be, does MEMORIAM a great disservice. Not that they care, though; with their most varied and artistically diverse album to date, the Englishmen are proudly carving their own path, charging onwards in battle and proving that UK death metal doesn’t start and end with the storied exploits of Willett‘s former band.

To The End is out now via Reaper Entertainment Europe. 

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