Sweden’s post-hardcore/black metallers THIS GIFT IS A CURSE have set May 11th as the release date of their debut full-length “I, Guilt Bearer”. The album will be released by Discouraged Records in Scandinavia and co-relased with Bloated Veins (DK), Braincrushing Records (FR), Enjoyment Records (UK) and Monotonstudio Records (GER) in respective countries. Hailing from Stockholm, This Gift is a Curse play a combination of hardcore and sludge with great influences from both the occult black metal-scene as well as drone soundscapes.
The band’s singer JJ told ZT working on the album was a very personal experience: “We just wanted to make a record that could as close as possible represent what we do live. We wanted it to feel wearyingly raw, living and organic. Like blood and mud – and tar.
The record works as some kind of therapy both lyrically and the whole emotional tension. For me to be able to be a somewhat of a “happy” person I need the “art” of the band to work as my reliever- where I can transfer all my agony or guilt related feelings into, like some kind of metaphysical box or a room where I can put it all away. And when I need to deal with it I can step into that box and throw it all up and smear it all out on the walls. I work in the psychiatry field and I study behaviorism at the university since many years back, so I have things “stacked up” so to say. All from reading journals and case files from my line of work as well as what I read in books and life. But this is just my mood and what I see, but I guess everyone going to see their own visions in our storm of noise – or just shut it off.
The underlying theme of the album is humans as bearer of their own created agony related to the clash between human nature and human social/culture, as well as individual “guilt-ridden” emotions and morals surrounding it. And how humans try to fight this or just cope with it. I guess this can come off as very pretentious so. Fuck you all. The record is about the “hell” that we all carry around within us. And to always stroke life with the Left hand and carry the Black halo with pride. By the way, fuck all “dark emotional hardcore””.
Tracklist:
1. The swarm
2. Inferno
3. Att hata allt mänskligt liv
4. The Crossing (the song is available for streaming at THIS LOCATION)
5. Deciever
6. 1901
7. Head And Arms
8. The Sound Of Broken Bells
9. I Will Swallow All Light
