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Post Death Soundtrack set April 16th release date for new full-length album, ‘Veil Lifter’

By Kath Galasso on April 4, 2024

POST DEATH SOUNDTRACK’s fourth full-length release Veil Lifter is a tempestuous, 10-track Molotov cocktail channeling doom, grunge, hardcore, and thrash into a crushing new record. Following the orchestrated industrial soundscapes of their third album, It Will Come Out of Nowhere, Jon Ireson and Stephen Moore have taken a sharp turn to an unruly organic live sound. This fresh ‘doom grunge’ approach is driven by those who first inspired them – Alice in Chains, Black Sabbath, Nirvana, and The Stooges, as well as artists who are redefining heavy music for a new age – Russian Circles, Windhand, Queens of the Stone Age and YOB. Sludgy riffs, hardcore fury, hypnotic grooves, and empyrean ambience work in union to conjure a singular affecting vision. Veil Lifter is a relentless charge throughout, capturing the unwelcome outsider mentality of a threatening pack of hyenas.

Thematically, Veil Lifter is provocative, incisive, and wholly uncensored. A rousing invocation of spiritual weaponry. A meditation on mental illness and its underlying prevalence throughout the collective psyche. A bold expression of terrifying realities and a prayer of sorts. ‘Veil Lifter’ is taken from an Eastern philosophy-inspired phrase, “lifting the veil of ignorance”. The name points to the intrinsic beyond the countless external forms and ideas that mask it. Shamanic visions, shadowy dreamscapes, a scorched Earth, and a relentless drive for solace lead the protagonist to retreat to the icy waters underground before facing the mountain of renewal and unbecoming.

Steve: “Veil Lifter” is very much the album I’ve always wanted to make. The album is intended, as all my work is, to be completely uncensored, unashamedly dark, raw emotionally, and therefore, cathartic and freeing. It was literally written from deep within the shadow during nearly impossible times. Isolation, depression, addiction, chaos, burned bridges, health failures, and strangely, perseverance and the resilience of the inner witness. So in many ways, it’s an invocation of protection and spiritual weaponry at a time when it was greatly needed.

Much of it is written in heavy metaphor and dream language, as I’ve always felt it’s more powerful to paint a picture rather than be overly direct. Ideas from Advaita, the Gita, Zen and philosopher’s like Krishnamurti find their way into the concepts and lyricism here and there, but for the most part, this is a purely raw album intended to evoke deeply personal emotion, as it was written from a truly dangerous place..

“Veil Lifter” is dedicated to the memory of my hero and wonderful Father, Ted George Moore, who I know would be proud of what we’ve created.

Jon: Steve had amassed a treasure trove of guitar parts that he would send me daily. A lot of slow dirges with some faster hardcore-inspired stuff mixed in. That inspired the new direction for this record. We knew it was going to be a pretty big change ditching all the electronic production stuff we had done on our other records but when you listen to a song like ‘Bridge Burner’ off of the last album, you can see the direction we were heading.

The bones of the songs came together very quickly, arranging all the drums, rhythm guitars and some of the bass in two crazy week-long bursts. The album really came to life once we started adding Steve’s great vocal layers, added some fuzzy melodic bass lines to move the plot along, and the icing on the cake was bringing in Casey Lewis. He had worked with Steve on several projects before and his intensity, personality, and feel make the record really punch.

About visceral tracks like “Lowdown Animal”, Moore adds” “The hyena has become a kind of symbol for the band, With lions, tigers, and bears, you have a good idea of what to expect from their brute strength. But hyenas represent the outsider, the unwelcome drifter, the cursed sneak. We’ll sneak up, surround the mighty lion and take it down while laughing.”

Veil Lifter will be released on digital platforms on April16th. A limited edition vinyl run is also expected at a slightly later date.

Stream the album’s lead single, the haunting, doom-heavy “Icy Underground” on Spotify.

Stream the vicious grunge metal anthem “Lowdown Animal” on Spotify.

Pre-order the full album on Bandcamp. Full lyrics are also available at Bandcamp.

Veil Lifter Credits:
Stephen Moore: Vocals, Guitars, Lyrics
Jon Ireson: Bass, Additional Guitars, Production
Casey Lewis: Drums
Engineered by Jon Ireson
Drums recorded by Casey Lewis
Mixed and mastered by Casey Lewis at Echo Base Studio
Album art by mrgn_studio

Online:
Bandcamp
Spotify
Facebook
Instagram
Apple Music
Youtube
Soundcloud
Official

Artist Bio:
Vancouver-based psychedelic doom grunge duo Post Death Soundtrack crafts a dense electric symphony of heathen guitars, brazen bass, and a bubbling cauldron of vicious sounds. The score to the untamed plains of the subconscious. This lays the groundwork over which the inimitable Steve Moore showcases his crushing vocal performances. In each piece, he takes from his hall of faces to embody the essence of a theme, be it scathing fury or enlightened ambivalence. Balancing ferocity and serenity, surrealist absurdity and earworm familiarity.

Conceived in grubby back rooms and underground clubs of inhospitable Calgary, Canada, Post Death Soundtrack initially took inspiration from the same forces that drive young obstinate bands in cities like DC, Austin, and Detroit. The cognitive dissonance between the forces that run their town and the forces that run their lives. The original duo of KENNETH BUCK and STEVE MOORE took aim squarely at the hypocrisies of government, religion, and mainstream ideology with blinding rage but also tongue firmly in cheek sarcasm. The debut album, 2008’s Music as Weaponry, pulls together the wild, brash industrial of Skinny Puppy and Ministry with the hypnotic trip-hop textures of Portishead and Massive Attack to deliver an engrossing indictment of Western culture and an offer to rise above its trappings.

On the heels of the release of Music as Weaponry, JON IRESON was recruited to the lineup, adding his own brand of mesmerizing psychedelia to the mix. Ireson’s affinity for 60s and 70s psychedelic rock, as well as the nebulous electronica that came out of Britain from the likes of Underworld and a techno-age David Bowie, allowed Buck and Moore to take their vocals further down the rabbit hole to fever dream mantras and mad hatter ravings. COLIN EVERALL was brought on board to fill in on drums for a handful of rare live dates but would also end up contributing his haunting piano piece ‘Through the Gates’ over which Moore takes the listener on a perilous journey to the “other side”. Their second LP, 2016’s The Unlearning Curve, turned the lyrical focus inward while showcasing the band’s new “psychedelic industrial” sound.

In 2019, It Will Come Out of Nowhere expanded upon The Unlearning Curve’s signature sound with sludge metal elements adding even more gravitas. The group, now streamlined back to a duo, has Ireson at the reins of the sprawling production while Moore takes us on a trip through his tempestuous psyche. The 11 unforgiving tracks explore when calamity comes knocking unexpectedly on your door inspired by betrayal, divorce, personal loss and other blind-sided knocks to the ego. Doom, hip-hop and Indian raga all leech into the groundwater giving the album an unparalleled sonic breadth.

Post Death Soundtrack in 2024 takes on a completely different form, abandoning all electronics in favour of a raw, guitar-driven Doom Grunge sound as evidenced in lead singles ‘Icy Underground’ and ‘Lowdown Animal’. The latest music features the band as a power trio with Moore’s unmistakable guitar style backed by Ireson’s raucous bass lines and the powerhouse live drums of CASEY LEWIS. Their fourth full-length record entitled Veil Lifter offers unparalleled moments of fury, enormity, and transcendence. Featured tracks ‘The Die is Cast’, ‘Killer of the Doubt’, ‘Immovable’, and ‘Hammer Come Down’ showcase the band larger in scale and consequence than ever before. Veil Lifter releases on April 16th, 2024.