Thy Art Is Murder To Descend On Froth & Fury

Australia’s prime deathcore band Thy Art Is Murder have been non-stop since the release of the enormous album Godlike last year. An album delayed with ‘production’ concerns that eventuated with bizarrely two releases with two different vocalists however it also spawned a gigantic work rate that matched the album’s production as the band tore up the globe. Knotfest was the first and last time anyone on these shores saw the band with new vocalist Tyler Miller, I speak with guitarist Andy Marsh how does a band roll from such a big change, touring and the first Australian first to the changes.

‘I think we put out a couple of videos on the afternoons after the festival appearances showing how crazy it was. The crowd activation was what I would expect from a festival, an outdoor one for sure. And the feedback was awesome. It’s been pretty good everywhere we’ve played.’

The Australian headline tour coincides with a spot on Adelaide’s Froth & Fury Festival however that doesn’t mean a lesser performance form a band that is always going at one hundred miles per hour.

‘I don’t think that there should be too much difference between the festival set and the touring set. I’d have to check with my production manager, but I think it’s basically the same set time as we play. So I mean, the only difference is if it’s a shorter set then we’ll drop a couple songs, but otherwise we’ve got our light show that’s all programme time coded to the set, so it’ll more or less be the same. We’re bringing in the full production that we have for the headline shows. It should be a nice one. And then usually festivals have a bunch more extra lights than what venues have, so it might even be a little bit cooler.‘

The upcoming Aussie tour features other Froth & Fury Festival touring mates in Great American Ghost and Brand Of Sacrifice who Andy eloquently gushes over.

‘They’re one of the rising stars of modern deathcore I would say. They have a lot of modern elements. They’re a little bit more different to how we kind of play the genre. There’s a lot more electronics, keys and synths and stuff like that. The singers are absolute star. This Kyle Anderson kid, he’s got these crazy dreadlocks, he looks very iconic on stage, has a crazy voice. So we met them there. We share the same agent in the States, so he was like, ‘Hey, this band is really cool, can you put ’em on your tour?’ I was like, yeah, yeah, of course. And they were awesome.’

‘Great American Ghost I started working with five years ago, I own a record label in Australia called Human Warfare and we put out their record ‘Power Through Terror’, I think February 14th, 2020 I reckon was the release date. So I’ve known those dudes for years and massive, massive fan. I honestly don’t know how they’re not one of the biggest bands in metal today. The songs are huge, the riffs are huge, the drums are huge and I just see it as my duty to try and support them where I can because they’re fucking insane and everyone’s missing out.’

No interview on this album run cannot at least vaguely mention the chaos around the release of last album when previous vocalist CJ McMahon, an enigmatic character who many adored, was vacated from his role to be replaced with Aversions Crown’s Tyler Miller the day after the record was released. If you’re looking for salacious gossip, you won’t find it here though.

‘It was psychotic. Yeah, so I mean I was on my honeymoon when it happened. It didn’t exist. I worked for about two whole weeks, which was the duration of my honeymoon.’

‘I feel like it’s been pretty good. It’s not really for me to say. I mean I can only focus on the process and I’m definitely process oriented as opposed to result oriented. I’ve been in the business long enough now that we understand that there’s a cyclical nature to record releasing. There’s a cyclical nature to genre popularity and so sometimes the band will be doing really good, sometimes it won’t be doing as good. Sometimes it’ll be sitting in the middle. Sometimes it’ll be flying high and it’s important not to get caught up by that and just focus on doing what you know how to do and what you can control.’

‘We’ve been pretty happy the last thirteen months with this album cycle. We do the tours, we work on new music and outside of that there’s nothing that we can do about it. So if I have no input over how that happens, why should I have a feeling about what’s happening? I just have a feeling about what we’re doing.’

‘Godlike’ was the band’s first independent release on own their own label, ‘Human Warfare’, which allowed the band to focus on what they wanted, while hurdling the inevitable issue of personal change without label interference.

‘It is very liberating. I mean for a few different reasons. When you have these large organisations, they start to move a little bit slower because they have all these processes in place and boxes to tick. So, it did give us flexibility in the album campaign that we could see how we felt that the traction was going and make an decision, not at the last minute, but go hang on, this song performed really good. We’re going to let it run a little bit longer. We might let it run an extra two weeks before we put another song out.’

‘Whereas with some of these big labels and distributors, you might be locked into release timelines eight weeks out, twelve weeks out. You’ve built the release programme and this song’s going to come out on this day and you get to a song that’s performing really well and you think let’s just let it run. And you go, oh, we can’t, we’ve got to move on to the next thing because we can’t change the schedule. So it gave us flexibility in that regard. It allowed us this sort of synergy to combine or use the music release schedule to coordinate with touring schedules. It gave us flexibility in other ways like that. Also, a lot of financial flexibility, which in the modern day of music and streaming and is a little bit of a bonus for a band like us that has no singing.’

Which brings us to what happens after Australia, and the next jaunt to Latin America, is done for the band.

‘We already have other new material that’s kind of in the bank. The way that this last record was made, as most people are aware, is we had a very limited time frame to put the finishing touches on the record. So we couldn’t get into the weeds of exploring Tyler’s vocal range or what kind of dynamic he could bring to the table. That’s something that we’ve got these songs banked up. It will give us a bit of an opportunity to spend some time going what other things can you do with your voice in terms of the music creation? I don’t think there’s much stylistic change that he would input onto us. Sean and I just make music that we like, but for sure in the past we’ve kind of done it with a vision of how the vocal will sound. I guess the first kind of step will be making the music that we make and seeing what he does differently and working with him on that and seeing what ideas he brings into the table and then we can adjust course moving forward.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Thy Art Is Murder at Froth & Fury Festival at Harts Mill, Port Adelaide on Saturday November 9. Tickets from MoshTix…

Also on tour on the following dates…

Tickets on sale via thyartismurder.net