“That one scene in that one horror exploitation film that, no matter how many times you rewatch it, always makes you squirm in discomfort? That’s us. That’s what we do. We consider our music as the audial equivalent of that metallic taste of fear on the back of your tongue.”
If Sunlight’s Bane’s rather grim description of their own music isn’t enough to convince everyone that 2017’s most gruelling and glorious new band have arrived, then their quite simply stunning debut album should be left to do the talking. A foul and filthy blackened grind explosion, The Blackest Volume (or, to give it its full title, The Blackest Volume: Like All The Earth Was Buried) takes the blueprints of the likes of Nails and Black Breath but drags their foulness even further into the gutter, adding occasional but impactful flourishes of post-black metal soundscapes for added spinechills. It’s big, bad and gross as fuck, and we bloody love it.
“When we started, most bands we knew were playing in d-beat dark hardcore or grind bands,” continues frontman Nick Holland of the Detroit mob’s beginnings, “but Michigan never really caught onto that and most seem to have moved away from hyper-aggressive genres now. We were simply old friends and acquaintances whose former bands had all fortuitously disbanded at the same time and who decided to start something new, and unlike any of our former projects.”
Originally coming together under the banner of Traitor before switching monikers, Sunlight’s Bane sought to stitch some blackened nihilism into the kind of pulverising grind and hardcore that has become a hallmark of the underground in recent years. The result is an album that deserves to be held up as one of the crown jewels in one of metal’s most fruitful modern scenes.
“While there are obvious grind and black metal outfits that inspired us, most of our early influence came from friends and their own bands,” explains Nick. “Michigan bands, now mostly broken up or defunct, like Hoodrat and Discerned, shaped our earliest years together.”
Smashing the crap out of their local scene eventually led to Sunlight’s Bane signing a deal with Innerstrength records, and with their debut opus now out there for everyone to consume, they plan to waste no time in taking their noise around the world.
“We’ll play anywhere that will have us,” pledges Nick. “The foreseeable goal at the moment is simply to tour on our debut album and force it into the ears of anyone that we can.”
Once you let Sunlight’s Bane into your speakers, you won’t want to take them off any time soon. You need this band in your life.
THE BLACKEST VOLUME: LIKE ALL THE EARTH WAS BURIED IS OUT NOW VIA INNERSTRENGTH
