Gatecreeper surprise drops ‘An Unexpected Reality’
Arizona metal greats Gatecreeper will release their much-anticipated follow-up to 2019’s “Deserted” on Wednesday, Jan. 13, the band announced a day before the album hits the streets.
In a press release, singer Chase Mason explained, “I think the social media environment has just fried our attention spans. Trying to hold someone’s attention for two or three months with a typical album roll-out doesn’t seem feasible with everything else currently going on in the world.”
Despite his thoughts on fried attention spans, Mason added that “An Unexpected Reality” is meant to be experienced as a whole, in one listen.
“We didn’t wanna break it up or release a couple songs ahead of time as ‘singles’ or whatever,” Mason said.
The album shows different sides of Gatecreeper’s personality
Written, recorded and soon to be released during the COVID-19 pandemic, “An Unexpected Reality” offers two sides of Gatecreeper’s musical personality.
Side One consists of “seven short, sharp shocks,” according to the press release, that have a total running time of less than seven minutes, representing some of the fastest songs they’ve ever shared.
Side Two is an 11-minute track called “Emptiness,” the slowest, most funereal song they’ve ever released.
“I’ve had the idea to do a record like this for a while,” Mason said. “In 2020, we were supposed to be touring all year. Once everything got canceled, we decided it was the perfect time to turn this idea into a reality.”
Mason brought a new list of influences to the table for “An Unexpected Reality,” ranging from grindcore and Scandinavian hardcore to funeral doom and black metal. Side One takes its cues from Napalm Death, Totalitär, Terrorizer and Master, while the funeral doom of “Emptiness” was informed by the likes of Mournful Congregation, Paradise Lost, Evoken and Katatonia.
The format of “An Unexpected Reality” was partly inspired by Black Flag’s “My War,” a 1984 release with fast, thrashy songs on Side A and three long, sludgy tracks on Side B.
“When I was getting really into sludge and stoner metal like the Melvins and Eyehategod, they always referenced the B-side of ‘My War’” Mason says. “Hearing bands talk about not just a record but a specific side of a record, I thought that was really cool and it always stuck with me.”
How the album was influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic
One song on the album, “Superspreader,” was clearly inspired by the COVID-19 experience.
“That song was written when Arizona was the number one COVID hotspot in the world,” Mason said. “The whole record was actually recorded during that time as well.”
“Sick of Being Sober” finds Mason, whose recovery from addiction is welldocumented, wishing he could have some chemical assistance getting through the isolation.
“The title is purposefully trying to be extreme, but it’s pretty much me fantasizing about relapsing,” he says. “I felt like I would be having a much more comfortable time being locked down and not doing anything if I had some sort of chemical buffer.”
Mason made it clear that he sees this release as an experiment more than the next proper Gatecreeper album.
“This release was an opportunity to experiment and expand on different ideas within the Gatecreeper formula,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily signify a new direction for the band, but we’ll definitely have a couple new tools in our toolbox moving forward.”