Sludge worshippers Garganjua are streaming their new album Through The Void exclusively with Metal Hammer.
The album will be released on May 11 via Holy Roar Records.
Speaking to Metal Hammer, vocalist and guitarist Scott Taylor desribed the album a a journey that "came from a very difficult place."
"With the last album (2016's A Voyage In Solitude), it dealt with life and death and the conscious nothingness of humanity. Through The Void, almost without realising it, delved deeper. The music is just a reaction to the surroundings of your world at the time, I guess."
To dig a little deeper into the band's aforementioned reactions to the world around them, here's Scott's track-by-track guide to Through The Void.
Crushed Beneath The Tide
"I remember writing the opening section of Crushed Beneath The Tide, eyes closed, just repeating the same guitar part over and over and even then, feeling completely adrift from anything around me. It just has this colossal and lost atmosphere to it. There was an eerie and heavy feeling around this time; the song is essentially about the weight of the world that we sometimes carry on our shoulders, and it becoming too much. But on reflection, there is also a fleeting hope under the surface, but it's being suffocated. This feels like the heaviest song we have written."
Adrift
"After being crushed by the waves, you're left floating in a vast, empty space with nothing but time to think, not knowing if you'll survive. It's the time where you just give yourself over to the emptiness and let go.
"This is more of a simple, stripped-down song. I remember writing the solo at the start of the song first. Laying in bed, I couldn't sleep and just had this melody in my head, so got up, found a guitar, and worked out what I wanted and recorded it on my phone. Then built the chord progression and song around that. It seems like a backwards way of doing it, but it inspired me differently."
Through The Void
"Through The Void was the first song we had – this was built a little backwards, too. The last five minutes were written first. It's really simple, but it was all about the progression. Adding to it, taking away from it, it's basically five minutes of the same foundation but just keeps building. The first half of the song tells the story. This song became such a huge thing for us all; the kind of track where we could truly lose ourselves while playing. This is essentially why we do what we do.
"The song ended up being quite emotive for a number of reasons and very cathartic. Naturally, this is what lead us to release it as the single."
A Distant Shore
"A Distant Shore, along with the title track, felt like we were really stretching our legs as a band musically. Both went in directions we hadn't really explored previously. It's more progressive in nature, but still in keeping with the rest of the album's vibe.
"We experimented with instrumentation too with acoustics and violins which was something we hadn't done on previous releases. To me, it just has a very epic feel to it and sat perfectly as the last song on the album.
"Whilst again, lyrically, it comes from negativity, the music lends itself to a hopeful conclusion, but more of a distant hope. It's there, but you're not quite there yet."
Through The Void is released May 11 and available to pre-order now.
