Progressive metal outfit Growth are releasing their debut album for Wild Thing Records “The Smothering Arms of Mercy” on December 4.
The album is the first of a three-part series of albums that explores the very human aspects of connection, trauma, despair, and the fragility of hope.
With each member of the band battling personal demons of their own as well as collectively, the members – brothers Tristan (guitars/bass/artwork) and Nelson Barnes (drums) plus vocalist Luke Frizon - decided to document their struggles through music, ultimately hoping to allow others to appreciate that such afflictions are shared by others, and, more importantly, beatable.
Luke sat down with HEAVY for an enlightening chat that reveals more of Growth’s journey to do just that.
"It's a semi-autobiographical narrative that I put together when undergoing diagnosis and treatment for personality disorder,” he explained of the album. “What I was trying to illustrate with that was... I tried to take the symptoms and the experiences and the feelings and the essence of what was happening and tried to broaden it out in terms of scope so that it could be easily... understood... It's telling that story of where things go in a more negative sense and it's telling the tale of this singular character that is trying to experience relationships and experience connection but is also feeling pursued by this very dark and hungry creature. It's not clear which character is which within this because I didn't want to give any particular identity because I guess one of the biggest aspects of some of these personality disorders is you don't feel a stable sense of personality in the first place. Combining that with the writing that Tristian was doing instrumentally for the album was coming from a very pressed place in his own right. He was feeling extremely isolated and had received his own mental health diagnosis on the autism spectrum and was finding it very hard to deal with that and connect with people so he was trying to channel that into the playing of this in his own right. That was occurring completely separate to the story I was writing so when we met we decided to put them together and have these two experiences at once.”
In the full interview Luke discusses the album in greater length, what they hope to achieve from it, the next two albums and how they tie in, how the writing and recording process helped the healing process and more.