Caskets Reflect On New Album ‘The Only Heaven You’ll Know’

‘I’m anxious dude! Obviously because I want people to like the album, but I want people to relate to the stories in the songs. I want them to be able to take something away from it or from a song that can help them or help someone that they know that’s going through something. Do you know what I mean? We all listen to music in one way or another. We do it for an escape or to help feel seen or heard or a bit of guidance. So that’s what I hope people take away from the album.’

Matthew Flood, vocalist of Yorkshire metal band Caskets, is extremely deep and candid today, arguably the most he’s ever been. Not only in our chat, but also the band’s third album due for release this Friday, November 7. The album titled The Only Heaven You’ll Know drives the band into musical soundscapes only dabbled in previously while reaching into the depths of Floods background, spirit and soul that will startle, delight and ultimately inspire you. This stripped bare version of Floods, daunting yet exhilarating is the man we get today.

‘If I’m honest, doing these interviews that I’ve done over the last month or so has really helped my confidence in it being okay for people to hear it now. I’ve spoken to legends like yourself about these things within the album, and I’ve had some really, good conversations. It’s helped me a lot in one way or another to be fine with making myself so vulnerable to whoever it is that’s listening to the songs.’

This album dabbles in a few musical elements that pushes the band out of their comfort zone while simultaneously being the heaviest they’ve ever sounded, all a culmination of three albums worth of hard work, touring and embracing their core selves. Opener Lost In The Violence brings pop synths, Sacrifice has an ambient beginning and a guitar that will make you weep while What Have I Become is strangely upbeat. It’s all still Caskets and metal though.

‘I wanted to incorporate more genres or aspects of music that we all love as individuals in the band growing up. We wanted to mesh more. We wanted to elevate our sound, but we didn’t just want to elevate our sound just for the fucking fun of it, or just to create a wider audience. We wanted to use different types of music or sounds that actually meant something to us, because then it feels more real. I really love acoustic music and I do love pop music. A lot of the last two albums ranges, the vocals are way up there. I mean, a lot of it is on this album, but there’s still a lot of more baseline poppier melodies and pitches in this new album. I really wanted to do that in this album, I just wanted to bring in something else from my past musically that I think 1) would’ve added to our sound and 2) that would make me happy to do musically. I can’t just whip out an acoustic guitar whenever I want with the band or start singing fucking Backstreet Boys! So, there are a lot more popular elements, especially vocally and Ben’s into a lot of eighties synth stuff, so we wanted to make sure that we added a lot more synth based elements in there too.’

Flood has stated previously that this album is an album of confessions, an album of the complicated human character he is. This means being extremely vulnerable, fortunately, his bandmates are with him each step of the way.

‘It is easy in the sense that we’ve been in the band now for seven, eight years. It is easy in a sense that they know me now, they know who I am, the stuff I’ve gone through and vice versa. So, it’s not hard for me to tell them, listen, this song’s about my struggles with faith or this song’s about my past addictions. That’s not a struggle. The struggle is building up the courage to be able to tell anyone, because a lot of the stuff that I sing about in this album, it’s a lot of stuff I’ve not really spoken to anyone ever about. That’s why it took me three albums deep to be able to start talking about it because not even my mum knows about lot of this stuff!’

‘It took me a while to 1), build up the courage to start writing about it. Then 2), it built up a little bit more courage for me to tell the boys about what it’s about because a lot of it is so on the nose from what I’ve experienced in my brief time in the industry. There’s a very, very fine line between something being heavy, real ,emotional and poetical and it being too on the nose. To raw and out there to put out as an album because a lot of it’s about me and my shit. They’re still a part of the music, a part of the sound. I mean, they still help me hone in the melodies and stuff like that. So them having the trust in me for us to go for it, I think that’s where the scary part of it is. We’re all like brothers now.’

The stark expose of the man also creates the theatrics of the music that the band and Flood play up to expertly.

‘There’s a lot of emotion in every song and every song has its own story. There are some songs and some meanings that were a lot, I hold a lot in my heart emotion wise and stuff than others. We were very conscious about the dynamics of the vocals and we knew that the big parts, the big epic parts, like the meaning and the lyrics, the emotion needed to be something really special. Really heavy and something that’s really air catching. We wanted the meanings to be a bit more moody and a bit more grounded. In one aspect we were really thinking of it like that, but in another way, we really wanted to make it fun, not just for me to sing, because I wanted to do that anyway. I wanted to bring these more poppy elements and I wanted the dynamics to flow more rather than everything just being super up there. We wanted to make it fun writing the album in the studio as a band. We still had it in our heads that we wanted to make sure that the big bits that we wanted people to take notice of as to say needed to be the most emotionally evoking, bleed your heart out moments.’

We didn’t have time to discuss Make Them Suffer pollinating all over Our Remedy, one of Caskets wildest rollercoaster of sonic emotions ever, or the swinging rhythms of Make Me A Martyr. Or Matt’s childhood faith bleeding through on The Only Heaven You’ll Know. What we did get was a chat with someone brave enough to reframe his journey, with the courage to exhibit and perform this for the world to feed off how they will. This album is more than just a man’s words sung over some music. It’s a reflection of Matt Flood’s psyche – great and powerful, soft and vulnerable, yet compelling and brilliant.

Interview By Iain McCallum

THE ONLY HEAVEN YOU’LL KNOW (ALBUM) – OUT NOVEMBER 7
https://bfan.link/the-only-heaven-you-ll-know

On tour with We Came As Romans, tickets from Destroy All Lines…

Also playing at Life’s A Beach, tickets from Destroy All Lines…