Interview by Kris Peters
Melbourne blackened post-metalcore outfit RUN today dropped a surprise EP, True Heaviness Is Time. The band's second offering, True Heaviness Is Time is a dynamic and powerful tour de force that grips as it slams from peak to peak, tackling the pain of existence with an aural violence powered by positivity.
Featuring guest vocals from Joel Birch of The Amity Affliction, John Floreani of Trophy Eyes, and Sophie Jest of R.U.B, there's a multitude of diverse sounds on display within the band's own unique take on heavy music - a classic 2000s metalcore sound infused with modern post-black metal.
Vocalist Lochlan Watt sat down with HEAVY to discuss the EP.
"We put out our debut release in 2020 as a studio project that I was spearheading with a producer and a session drummer," he explained of RUN. "From there it had evolved over a few different line-ups into a full band. Then in 2023 we put out a couple of singles as a bit of a testing ground for that, and now finally we have our second EP, True Heaviness Is Time, which is out now."
We ask him about the secret nature of the EP drop.
"People seemed to be really excited about the surprise Bring Me The Horizon album last week," he replied. "I work in this industry and see bands doing the same thing over and over again in terms of having pre-orders and release rollouts and stuff, and I thought because I'm not beholden to anyone else or any record labels with this, why not do it a little bit differently? We've released three of the singles so far, so people have already got 50% of the EP because it's six tracks. If we were to announce the EP now and then say it's coming out in a couple of months… I feel like that would be a little deflationary. You would lose a bit of the excitement. Maybe we could have announced the EP a long time ago while we were rolling out these singles, but the way that the artwork is set up, it slowly reveals the bigger picture throughout the singles. I think it's a more exciting way to do it. You get a little taste of what the bigger picture is with each single, then now, BOOM, you can see the full picture, and you understand what we were doing."
In the full interview, Lochlan discusses the relationship between the seasons and the EP, runs through each of the songs individually and explains more about them including where they fit into the EP, talks about the guest artists and how and why they became involved, the limited vinyl run that has the bands debut EP as the B side, upcoming shows and more.