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Grief Ritual have been grinding away in the UK scene for a little while now but they kind of hit the reset button with the release of the fantastic Spiritual Disease EP back in 2022.
Playing a vicious and ambitious brand of blackened metallic hardcore, the band have supported a load of proper heavy hitters over the past couple of years and now they’ve got the brilliant Church Road Records in their corner for the release of their debut LP, Collapse.
As you’d hope, the album is a step-up from that already killer EP, conjuring an imposing and suffocating sound that draws comparisons to bands like END and Heriot while tackling huge themes of genocide, capitalism, climate destruction and the rise of the alt-right, to name just a few.
Vocalist Jamie Waggett and bassist Dave Marcovecchio had loads to say about the making of the record, and even more about the issues at its heart.
2022’s Spiritual Disease EP was something of a ‘reboot’ for Grief Ritual, what did that record do for you as a band and how happy were you with the response to it?
(Jamie Waggett, vocals): Spiritual Disease was kind of the first thing we’d done with our new line-up to a point. It was just shortly before Dave joined, but Dave’s played those songs and helped to support it later on. We recorded and wrote that just after we’d all come out of COVID, and during COVID we’d had a couple of lineup changes and decided that basically the direction the band was going wasn’t really what we wanted.
So we started looking at what had been good about the band previously, and looking to stretch that and work on it and improve it and add more elements in. And that’s really what we’ve done.
With Spiritual Disease, we wrote those songs in probably about a month or two months’ time, so it all really came around fast, and through that we managed to get shows with Knocked Loose and Gatecreeper and Fuming Mouth and stuff like that, which was great. So, Spiritual Disease was us moving in the direction we wanted to go in, being a bit more hardline in what we were speaking about, and musically being a little bit more expansive, but also still keeping the crux of what we were trying to do originally.
How did you feel about the step up to a full-length? Was there anything that you felt you were particularly able to explore with the longer format?
(Jamie): It sounds too simple but you’ve got more space and more time, especially when you’re a band like ourselves where not all of our songs are going to be like a minute or two minutes long. We’ve got a little bit more strength in some of our longer material so there is that facet where you’ve got that ability to really hone in on some different subjects.
Spiritual Disease was about austerity in the UK and living under 15 years of Tory [UK Conservative Party] government and the mental health side of things, which we’ve touched on on Collapse, but with the full-length I think we’ve explored a wider world and opened things up, which is what we wanted to do from day one really.
(Dave Marcovecchio, bass): The album means a lot to me because as Jamie said I joined after Spiritual Disease had been written, so although I love playing those songs they were written before I arrived, so the album has been a great opportunity to bring some more of the influences from bands I’ve been in previously, which is a bit more on the death metal and black metal spectrum.
We’ve all got our own very disparate influences and our own individual tastes, and it’s been really nice to throw that all together and explore where that crosses over and come up with something that still sounds like Grief Ritual but kind of pushes the sound a little bit more and expands upon it and builds on it.
I notice on this record that you have brought in some more industrial influences at points - particularly on tracks like Consumed and Swine - where did that come from for you guys?
(Jamie): Dave and myself are both really into that kind of music. For me, it’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a while and I’ve had some other solo projects that I’ve done which have been more noise-based, so when this band originally started I did want to include that, but we just never really got around to getting that into the music in a way that worked.
With the full length, like I’ve touched on, there’s more breadth to have those influences. Working with Jake, our producer at Just Noise Audio, really helped with that, because he’s into that music but in a different section as well; where my influences are '80s, '90s and also a bit more modern, like Author & Punisher, Chelsea Wolfe type things, he’s got more of a grasp of different sides of that.
(Dave): It was great working with Jake. I always describe him as our George Martin, if you will. We come in with these ideas and these concepts and he was instrumental in realising some of them and bringing them to the forefront. It’s just nice to work with someone like that, who you’re on the same wavelength with, so that we can bring these ideas to him and say "what if it sounded a little bit more like this?"
To have someone who gets exactly what you mean when you say that is great. Some of my favourite memories of making this album were piecing together some of those more experimental bits in the studio with Jake, because it was just such good fun exploring that space.
Were there any other specific influences on the sound of Collapse?
(Jamie): We wanted to make it sound as big as possible, because I think the type of music we create, although it’s very heavy in places, I think there’s a lot of scope in there where it’s soundscape-esque almost, so we really wanted to explore that and build on that. Especially live and on the record I think we’ve done that where we’ve brought in things like industrial but also bits that are kind of more post hardcore, in terms of the heavier side of that.
I’m a big fan of All Else Failed and bands like that, and Godflesh as well for the more industrial side of things. I think on the record you can see those influences as well.
How important is the element of having a cohesive aesthetic e.g. in your videos and on your socials etc.?
(Jamie): I’ve always been quite visual in terms of artistry and that’s something I really enjoy doing. With Spiritual Disease, a lot of that was blue and that was kind of influenced by the fact that we were under Tory government, even though it’s a slightly different blue to them because I just wanted it to feel a bit more oppressive and darker.
With Collapse the red didn’t come around because of the Labour government, it was actually decided way before that, but it felt like as a color in itself the red signifies danger and a lot of other things like that - like anger and things. I wanted something that would show that in the basest form, and then if you want to touch on that and explore further you’ll see that there’s other stuff going on beyond that, like the lyrics and it all ties in together.
Having everything so red I think shows up a lot, especially on social media where a lot of people post just in black and white, or there’s no coherent statement because there’s just so much being thrown at everybody constantly by different platforms. So it was really important to me to have that singular colour or a focus of colours that all go into each other and all match and are part of the same palette, and from that there’s been other influences as well in terms of things I like artist wise, like Francis Bacon and the more folk horror side of things as well where some of the videos are kind of quite dark in that kind of respect.
(Dave): It’s kind of wanting to extend it beyond just the confines of the 30-40 minutes of music. I admit it’s definitely a bit of an old fashioned attitude in this day and age where everything’s very focused on singles and content and lots of little releases rather than a whole album, but I was quite excited at the idea of making it this broad thing that’s bigger than the album itself, so there’s tendrils of it coming from the music to the design of it, and that similar language and consistency leading into the videos as well, just making this whole package.
To some degree even in the live shows we’re using a lot more interludes and a lot more moodiness now than when we were touring Spiritual Disease. So just in every facet and avenue and every creative outlet of the band there’s this consistency in this vision so that all of it is Collapse, not just the CD or the record or when you put the music on, but the videos, the presentation, the style - it all has its own equal place.
How important is it for bands like yourselves to continue to champion issues that matter to them and continue to speak out on them?
(Jamie): The world as it is is pretty horrific, so I think it’s really important that if you're a musician or a band or an artist that you do write about what’s important to you, and even if it’s not necessarily in your work, you speak about that. Obviously, artists can do whatever they want, they can be whatever they want, and I’m not going to say that people need to do that, but I do think it’s really important if they do feel that they can speak coherently about those topics.
For myself, I don’t know everything, I’m not massively clued up on everything that’s going on, but there’s definitely areas that are really important to me and as I’ve grown up as a person they’ve become more and more important, so I feel especially when I’m making music and I’ve got the opportunity to speak about those things, whether it’s in lyrics or just saying a little bit between songs at a show or getting the chance to speak about politics and society in general in an interview like this, it’s really important to get your point across, because the way things are going horrendous isn’t really the right word because it’s so beyond that now.
[In the UK] we’ve had like 15 years of austerity with the Tory party, now we’ve got Labour, who for me are basically the Tory party as they were under David Cameron, but in red. There’s been so much happen in the UK and the world in general, like the US and Ukraine and Russia and Taiwan and China and Hong Kong, where you kind of think ‘where’s it going to end? how far is it going to get pushed?’ especially from the authoritarian right side of things… it’s like politics is just like a pantomime now, where there’s all these people with almost no foibles and no shame.
You look at what’s going on just in the last week or so, with Elon Musk and Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, and it’s like where previously all these parties have used trans people and migrants as a political football, now it’s people who’ve been abused as children. A lot of these people, especially Badenoch and Jenrick and Farage, were all around when this was happening, they were in the Tory party, and there were no investigations going on then.
And then that Elon Musk basically seems to be running the USA, or will be soon, is just so bizarre because he’s not a good person. He’s probably as far right as you can possibly get and he’s got so many strange ideas. He’s a nepo baby originally, so he’s got his money from his dad, and then every company has been involved with he’s taken over from someone else and then claimed it as his own. I’m sure he’s got some ideas, but the way it’s going it just feels like it’s gonna cause more wars, which for him, obviously, is great, because it means more money into the military, more money into himself.
(Dave): There’s just such a pervasive sense of unreality in politics and the news at the moment. It’s become pro wrestling, basically. It’s characters and theatre and flamboyance, and I think art is an antidote to that, because art is truthful. It might not be a truth you agree with, someone could present their truth that might not be your truth - that’s fine - but I think it is important now more than ever for at least a bit of sincerity out there in the world and a bit of honesty and something that people can latch on to emotionally that’s cathartic and comforting and not just like, there’s something you should be mad about, here’s something you should be mad about, here’s something you should be mad about’ all the time.
Last year you passed your 100 show marker, how do you think your live experiences have made you a better band, and what do you think is gained from playing on such a wide variety of bills?
(Jamie): I think it’s important. Obviously we’re a heavy band, but we don’t really fit particularly into one pigeonhole, so although we say we’re a metallic hardcore band or a post-metal band, within those genres themselves there’s so many different aspects. For us it’s always been about trying to play with as many bands that we think are cool or are going to give us the opportunity to speak to different audiences…
Some bands just get stuck playing with one type of band - you’re playing to the same people every time, and that can be really fulfilling, but I’m very much about growth, especially in music, and pushing forward and pushing things as far as they can go, so any band that I’ve been in I always want to explore different avenues and try and play to different audiences.
We’ve been lucky enough to play black metal all-dayers and death metal all-dayers, but we’ve also played trans rights all-dayers, which is something that’s really close to my heart. I really like to be involved in the queer community because I’ve always wanted to make space for those communities within our music. I want our shows to be safe spaces for everybody to enjoy and just have fun at a heavy show and be with their mates and stuff.
(Dave): I’ve not been in a band like this before where there’s been such diversity in the crowds and in the gigs and stuff. We’ve played with bands as wide-ranging as Underdark on one end of the spectrum and then a band like Death Goals on the other end of the spectrum. That’s two completely separate worlds there but it still works with us on the bill.
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Are there any cool bands you want to shout out from Birmingham or the UK in general?
(Jamie): It’s gonna be a bit Church Road heavy, but Church Road themselves - incredible label, all the bands are great. For ourselves, playing with Burner was amazing when we got to do that, they’re lovely people. Lowen, their album that came out last year I think is incredible, the Hidden Mothers album is amazing as well. Not a Church Road band but Cage Fight as well - we’ve got Rachel on one of our songs and she’s an incredible vocalist, they’re a great band and they’re lovely people as well.
(Dave): Worn Out - excellent band, really looking forward to having them back over as well. Vicarage from Bristol are a fantastic band in a similar kind of vein if you like it just oppressively heavy, and just other Bristol pals like Embodiment.
Do you have any concrete ambitions for Grief Ritual going forward?
(Jamie): I’d just like to push it as hard as possible. Hopefully, as the year goes on, we’ll get to announce some more shows and some bigger festivals and bigger dates, but I just hope Collapse is received in the way it’s been intended where it’s listened to by people who are gonna enjoy it and people who won’t enjoy it at all.
(Dave): I’m a relatively humble man, my ambitions for this year are for the album to be received well, to play some cool shows, and anything else on top of that is a bonus really.
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Collapse is out on January 31st via Church Road Records (US pre-order | EU pre-order).
Grief Ritual on social media: Facebook | Instagram
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