Whitechapel: Venturing Deeper Into The Valley
Since their arrival on the scene, WHITECHAPEL have progressed from promising young upstarts to solid genre frontrunners. Evolving from being a devastatingly heavy deathcore outfit to incorporating a mouth-watering blend of melodies, hooks and fascinating themes. The Valley shook the world to its core with its gripping narratives and the introduction of vocalist Phil Bozeman‘s captivating clean vocal work, further cementing their status.
“You can’t deny he has an amazing singing voice. Our fan base have seemed to really embrace it and we feel like it creates a bit more of a theatrical presence within the music,” explains guitarist Ben Savage. “It allows for these big cathartic build-ups in the songs and it’s beautiful because it tells a story. We really want to paint pictures in your head when you’re listening. We want it to be like ‘oh this sounds like a storm’ and ‘this part sounds like smoke bellowing out of a fire’, something to that extent. We’re excited to see how we can explore using that in future material.”
The Valley delved into some very personal subject matter for frontman Phil Bozeman, detailing his turbulent childhood and the struggles his mother had endured, some of the lyrical content was inspired by her own journals. “When we wrote The Valley we didn’t have the concept in mind. Phil has this gift, as he can listen to music and he sees scenarios and stories in his head,” discusses Ben. “It’s very interesting and very exciting for us. We try to make the best material we can so we can tell the story in the sound before he lays his vocals down on it and it is threaded together.”
Building on their hugely established momentum the hotly anticipated follow-up entitled Kin aims to be an expansion of this journey. Further exploring into the dynamics and emotive elements whilst still staying loyal to their core sound which has brought them so much adorating throughout their career. “It’s a continuation of what was presented in The Valley, a continuation of the story and that is reflected in the music, the lyrics and the story telling,” states Ben.
“The Valley was short stories where each song had its own tale to tell but this album is just like a big saga from beginning to end and that’s something we’ve never done before so we’re really excited about it. We were nervous at first but once we started writing songs and getting together in a room to go through the material we grew in confidence. We’ve been doing this for 15 years and have released seven albums before this one so we kind of know the drill by now. It starts off as a bit of a daunting task but once you start cracking the stress kind of falls by the wayside. We usually come together with all of our ideas and material that we have collected individually and see what we think would be the best ideas to bring forward, make a few deposits in the riff bank! Then it all becomes a bit of a distillation process, once you get a couple of songs written and you start to see the bigger picture.”
The drummer who is known by many but matched by few, Alex Rudinger began filling in behind the kit for their 2019 Chaos And Carnage US run of touring but the chemistry has been so effective he has now become a fully-fledged member of the band. “Having Alex in the band is great as he brings a lot of positive energy and he has so much passion for his craft,” admits Ben. “He’s always playing drums! He’s such a hard hitter which works very well being a metal drummer. You’ve got to have stamina and be in top form and he brings a lot to the table.”
As it the case with many of the hardworking musicians throughout the world the majority of WHITECHAPEL‘s touring plans went awry with the arrival of the pandemic. They are hoping they will be welcomed with open arms when it is more feasible for them to return to the stage. They have a lot of lost time to make up for and are excited to get stuck into playing tracks from both The Valley and Kin to as many people as possible.
“We have a lot of love for the UK,” declares Ben. “We had a headline tour planned for 2020 but that got cancelled so we were really bummed about it. the UK have always been big supporters of us, our first record label was Siege Of Amida and they brought us over to Europe for the first time and we have fond memories of playing Download so hopefully we can head back there real soon. It’s kind of weird right now as we’re having to make an educated guess as to when things may return to normal.”
Kin is out now via Metal Blade Records.
Like WHITECHAPEL on Facebook.