A New Chapter of Brutal Honesty Moodring Releases ‘death fetish’

Moodring symbolises transformation. The musical entity’s name hints at volatility, colour, emotion, and temperature in flux. Nowhere is that more evident than in death fetish, a defining album for a haunting and defiant new chapter. For founder and frontman Hunter Young, this is more than a record. It’s survival, reflection, and metamorphosis. It is art made from the raw materials of pain, purpose, and persistence. Unable to tour and unwilling to compromise, Young focused on writing and recording new music. death fetish is the sound of transcendence, an artist refusing to disappear, even as the light fades. For all its darkness, death fetish is not a surrender. It’s a reclamation. It’s Young taking back control of his narrative, body failing, mind racing, still creating, still here. Hunter Young talks to Hi Fi Way about the album.

Congratulations, were you excited for release day?
I am. It’s been a long time coming, so I’m just glad it’s finally out.

Is it a feeling of relief, triumph, that it’s finally out in the world and people can listen to it now?
I’ve kind of already gone through that, so now it’s more so I get to watch what people think about it, for better or worse. Now I get to have the fun people‑watching experience and see people come to their own conclusions. I know what it is from making it and living it, but now I get to watch people make their own assumptions and tear it apart or love it or vice versa, and I think that’s an interesting place to be in.

Absolutely. In terms of this being released, how do you celebrate that? Do you have a little bit of a celebration?
Honestly, I’m going to keep working on other music and that’s about it, so that’s okay. Yeah, I don’t do a whole lot for fun. I just work on music and watch movies. Maybe I’ll get a nice dinner and watch a movie or something.

For this particular album, did you approach it any differently than anything else?
Oh yeah, definitely. With stuff I’ve been going through health‑wise and will go through health‑wise my entire life, we had to approach it a lot differently and be careful of energy expenditure, energy in versus energy out, and we truly took a step back and thought, fuck what anyone thinks, we’ll just do whatever we want. I want to keep, as the entity that is Moodring, I want that to continue to be the theme going forward, even into maybe newer and more extreme or less expected territories.

Given your own personal journey, do you find the whole song writing experience almost like a cleansing process, to articulate how you’re feeling and put it into words?
Definitely when it’s good. When it’s bad, it makes me feel way worse. If I’m not coming up with good stuff, or what I deem good, that’s obviously subjective, but when I’m missing the mark or not getting the ideas out, then it makes me feel ten times worse. But when it’s actually flowing, then yeah, it’s very cathartic and therapeutic, if you will.

Having such a strong debut, did it get you thinking about how you wanted to approach this album? Was the vision clear early on in terms of what you wanted it to sound like?
I just knew I wanted to let whatever was going to happen more than anything, more than being like, okay, I like these sets of sounds, let’s stick to this. On any given day, if we started something, we just let it flow. Some of that didn’t make the record, some of it did. I recently realised a lot of what didn’t make the record might be better than some of what did make the record. But hindsight’s 20/20 or whatever the cliché is. I think Stargazer as a debut was strong in a sense, but I think it was a lot more safe than death fetish, and that’s something I have a track record of. My first label release is always more safe than the second one. It’s kind of the opposite of the sophomore slump. If anything, by record two I always want to push the boundaries more and go where I personally desire versus the debut mindset of “what do people want?” I’ve thrown that out of my brain entirely.

The songs that didn’t make the album, is that something you’d revisit later, maybe a part two, or EPs, so they don’t get confined to the archives?
I definitely have no intention of doing any type of deluxe or anything like that. I think getting the eyes on this record as it exists is more than enough without it being a sales pitch. But I actually have recently, within the last three to four weeks, been going back to those older songs and starting to sing over them and see how I feel. There’s a couple of them I really like, and I would like those songs to see the light of day, hopefully this year.

Did the ideas come quickly once you started sitting down and working through songs?
Yeah, always. I always have this thing where if I don’t finish a song, or at least the grand scheme of a song, within a day, there’s a high possibility that song will never exist.

The album title death fetish, is there a deeper meaning, or something particular you were going for with a title like that?
Yeah, I was diagnosed with illness and was learning how to live with it and struggling with my own mortality a lot. That’s what that album title references and what most of the songs are about.

Did you expect so much of your personal lived experience to come through lyrically, or did it just evolve that way?
It was a natural process. It definitely wasn’t a premeditated thought.

How was the studio experience? Was there a sense of excitement as the songs started coming together and taking shape, or was it almost like an extension of that therapeutic process for yourself?
The studio experience is my house. Yeah, when we’re done with the song, I went in my room and had to think about the song more. There’s no getting away from it, so there’s no ever getting away from work. I know you’re not supposed to work where you live, but that’s kind of how it goes here. As sad as the record is and as hard as it was to make due to physical and mental limitations, I still very much enjoyed it.

Were there any particular songs that surprised you with how they turned out compared to how they started?
Yeah, Anywhere But Here sounded completely different. It was almost an entirely industrial rock track, and then it ended up being one of the more straight‑up rock songs on the record, and it’s one of my favourites personally. That song changed a lot.

Were your own musical heroes and influences significant for you on this album?
A little bit. Not too, too much though. I try my best not to listen to other artists when I’m writing because we all rip off things accidentally, subconsciously. So I do my best not to listen to stuff, but when stuck and in need of inspiration, there’s always the vast majority of the internet to go listen to.

What was your reaction when you put the headphones on for the first time and listened to the album start to end like a fan would?
I said, “This sounds too good. We need to go back and redo the entire thing and make it sound way more real.” Then we did that, we trashed the entire thing, not song‑wise, but the way it sounded. It was very produced and polished and it sounded amazing, but it didn’t sound human, and I think the album’s very human and I wanted to convey that.

Is it hard to take off the producer/writer hat and actually enjoy it for what it is? Is it hard to listen without criticising yourself?
Maybe at one point it was, but not so much anymore. I’ve definitely gotten over that hump and I can appreciate it for what it is.

So now that the album is out and done, what’s next for you? I know you’ve got your own battles at the moment, but are there any prospects of touring, even on a small scale?
No. The idea of even playing shows is pretty out of the question. All I can do is keep creating as I can, and yeah, I don’t intend to stop releasing music with the project. I want to keep releasing frequently. I never want this big of a break ever again.

Interview By Rob Lyon

DEATH FETISH – OUT NOW
https://bfan.link/death-fetish