The Infernal Sea: The Bastards Of The East

“Even if you delete religion, I think humanity will still find other ways to persecute each other,” declares D.L., the anonymous plague doctor-turned-vocalist of British black metallers THE INFERNAL SEA on a baltic Monday evening. “I don’t think we’ll ever be able to live in harmony. I just think that is the nature of humanity.”

If you were banking on bright prospects for the future, you may want to revisit the past and reconsider your options after experiencing Hellfenlic. Following album-length explorations into The Black Death on 2016’s The Great Mortality, and the Knights Templar on 2020’s Negotium Crucis; THE INFERNAL SEA turn their time travelling tour of British history towards Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General.

Known for the deaths of over 300 women accused of witchcraft between 1644 and 1646, Hopkin’s reign of terror is written into British folklore. But for D.L., the prejudice of the Witchfinder General is but a vehicle for connecting the problems of the present to their roots in the past.

“He believed that what he was doing was right, and he had the support of the Church, and he condemned everybody to death, male or female, if they had slightly a hint of witchcraft about them,” he explains, analysing the past before hitting the present. “What I’m trying to get to is all this stuff that’s going on has happened in the past, and I feel humanity and mankind hasn’t really learnt from anything through the past. We keep making the same mistakes; we’re still going to war, we predict that there’s pandemics every so many hundred years yet we do nothing about these things. History is showing that people haven’t really developed that much, we’re still assholes if that makes sense.”

THE INFERNAL SEA aren’t just world-weary fans of mediaeval history. Hellfenlic’s sordid subject matter is closer to home than history might have you think, as the band and Hopkins share a hometown. “We just wanted to express and tell a story about something that happened from our area, and the Fens are quite desolate and bleak, and rich in history, but people just think of the East of England, and Norfolk, and that there’s nothing there but fields, and rightly so, there is nothing but just fields, but it’s really depressing and bleak round here and telling that story really encapsulates the area we’re from, and complements the music we write.”

Whilst heavy music and Hopkins aren’t strangers, his tales are usually saved for a single song. Digging deeper into British history, and local folklore, Hellfenlic aims to “explore his mindset, where he was at, and how delusional he really was”. Whether it’s him at the peak of his powers on the frantically anthemic Bastard Of The East or plagued by paranoia on Black Witchery, THE INFERNAL SEA worked meticulously on the details to bring Hopkins rise and fall to life, including D.L.’s vocal takes.

“I wanted to explore new territory with the vocals and really push them. I didn’t want to have a whole album of just one style of vocal, I wanted to layer it up and express the demonic nature of how delusional he really was,” says D.L., who tried to method act his way into the role. “I wanted to play that character, and each song has its own subject, so it allows you to get in that particular mindset.”

Those mindsets meant THE INFERNAL SEA could strip back every step of Hopkins journey, and soundtrack it musically as much as lyrically. Hellfenlic invites you in to experience it, evoking flurries of feelings throughout.

“The album starts off quite ferocious, and then it drops a little bit for Witchfinder and it slows down a bit, and it starts picking up the pace again as he starts to get more erratic. Bastard Of The East is very driving, that’s him at his full swing, and Black Witchery is more about his paranoia, he felt like he was cursed by a coven of witches that sent a mystical bear into his room, like the guy was clearly delusional. As it calms again, Frozen Fen is isosteric and horrible, it’s pure hatred and anger now these witches have pissed him off, and Messenger Of God is a nice closure, it’s him going ‘this is what I’m doing, I’ll prick the flesh and expose the lies and banish Satan from you’.”

As much as Hellfenlic burns down villages with its black ‘n’ roll hellfire as expected, cut open the belly of this beast, and it’ll gush out blood-soaked melodies. There’s something eerily accessible about the album compared to its predecessors, and for THE INFERNAL SEA, it was a conscious decision.

“We were very conscious about writing something that was a little bit more accessible, but still sounded like THE INFERNAL SEA,” he says, but before you can say that’s not very black metal of them, hear him out. “We took on that mentality of fuck it, why does it matter what anybody else thinks? As long as we like it, and it gels as a song, and it doesn’t feel like it’s just been shoehorned in, and worked, we’d run with it. Our mantra was if DARKTHRONE can do it, then we can do it, because they always push the boat and go for some really weird, bizarre stuff sometimes.”

This approach lends itself to their aims as a band. THE INFERNAL SEA aren’t just black metal kids, they’re fans of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and they grew up on punk. They want their fans to be the same, too. “We want to win over the metalheads, we want to win over the punks, we want to cross-pollinate across the different genres. We want to win them death metal kids over, and the grind kids, we don’t want to just play to black metal kids.”

Playing to a diverse audience is a key aim in THE INFERNAL SEA’s mission. With Hellfenlic, there’s an agenda that lies underneath its immersive storytelling. “If I can educate people to look up this stuff, because we don’t get taught this at school, isn’t on the curriculum anymore, or I don’t think it ever was, and it’s a nice bit of education.”

Education is at the heart of all THE INFERNAL SEA do. It’s the crux of their band, from the aesthetic to the songwriting. It’s the fuel to their fire.

“This country is rife with history, a lot of it bad, but it’s rife. The good thing about what we do is we don’t glorify any of this, we’re not praising anything any of these people have done. These are all horrific events by horrific people that have all been sanctioned by the church, and we’ve always been anti-church anyway, but it just shows the power they had, and still have, but it is kind of dwindling; we just want to educate people around these issues.”

Hellfenlic is out now via Candlelight Records.

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