WHITECHAPEL is pleased to present their latest video for “Hate Cult Ritual.” The punishing track comes off the band’s long-awaited new full-length, Hymns In Dissonance, out now on Metal Blade Records!
Hymns in Dissonance sees the band reinventing themselves, going darker, deeper, and heavier than ever before. “We attempted to write our heaviest album to date,” says guitarist Alex Wade. “We wanted to put out something that was shockingly menacing and brutal.”
Longtime fans will detect hints of the past within the brutality. To wit: the riff-tastic “Hate Cult Ritual” is the only song on the album with Drop A tuning, the tuning the first three WHITECHAPEL albums used. Additionally, Hymns In Dissonance finds vocalist Phil Bozeman living through his “past times,” or as he states, “the music that brought me here. Brutal, dark, aggressive, heavy music. Death metal, black metal, speed metal, etc. I truly believe that your roots call you back at some point in your life and this is that point in my life.”
The band’s dynamic and plainly vicious musicality serves as a soundtrack to the compelling lyrical story that Bozeman vividly imagines. “Hymns In Dissonance is a mockery of the true nature of what hymns are,” Bozeman explains. “Hymns are melodious and harmonious. Dissonance is the opposite of melody and harmony. Dissonance represents evil. The tracks on the record are the hymns, which represent the seven deadly sins, beginning from track three to track ten. Tracks one and two are the introduction.”
Of “Hate Cult Ritual,” Bozeman notes, “The sin of wrath: this song portrays the overwhelming rage of the cult. Planting the seed of evil within the core of the earth to be birthed from soil. All the rivers and oceans are diseased which nourishes their unborn lord, roaming the earth and murdering all opposers.”
Adds Wade, “I was inspired a lot by Bloodbath when writing this one and felt like Phil nailed the vibe vocally contributing to that. There is a ferocity and evilness to this track that I think really sets it apart from the rest. No breakdowns, just pummeling riffs with evil chanting over the choruses.”
Watch WHITECHAPEL’s previously released video for “Hymns In Dissonance” HERE and “A Visceral Retch” HERE.
WHITECHAPEL, who formed in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2006, has seen the core lineup — vocalist Phil Bozeman, guitarists Ben Savage, Zach Householder, and Alex Wade, and bassist Gabe Crisp — intact since 2007, with the exception of drummer Brandon Zackey, who has been playing with the band since 2022. While Hymns In Dissonance follows 2021’s Kin chronologically, the new album is actually somewhat of a sequel to This Is Exile thematically, the three-word title Hymns In Dissonance representing that correlation.
The band started composing the new album at Householder’s studio in June of 2023, following their headlining tour for The Valley. The collective stuck to a strict weekday schedule, the structure allowing for maximum creativity and minimum burnout. Householder produced Hymns In Dissonance, which allowed the musicians to seamlessly switch gears from preproduction to recording the full album without skipping a beat. The guitarist shadowed producer Mark Lewis a lot over the last five WHITECHAPEL albums and bringing that influence inside the band is a full circle moment for Householder and WHITECHAPEL.
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