London metal trio URNE will release their new and second studio album A Feast On Sorrow on Candlelight Records/PIAS on August 11. Their new album is a stark rumination on the grim inevitabilities of disease, dementia and deterioration in old age, felt intimately by Urne frontman, Joe Nally.
Frontman Joe Nally: “There were a lot of dark times, losing people is a horrible thing; when the reality hits, it shocks. I was full of pent-up emotion – anger, confusion – and I could only seem to release that through aggression. This is much darker. There were quite a few ‘fun’ elements to our first LP Serpent & Spirit. There aren’t many of those here.”
Alongside mercurial guitarist Angus Neyra and newly-recruited master drummer James Cook, the mission was to create something definitive. Unexpectedly, they’d be assisted in that by Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier – already a vocal fan of the band – who invited the Londoners to record at his Silver Cord studio in Brooklyn, New York and came onboard to produce. From blistering opener The Flood Came Rushing In and the brutalist introspection of To Die Twice to epic 11-minute pillars A Stumble Of Words and The Longer Goodbye/Where Do The Memories Go, the blend of wreckage and release is utterly breath-taking.
Joe Nally concludes: “The personal story I’m telling in this album is still ongoing, but it feels like I’ve been able to say what I needed to say. It was an incredibly cathartic experience to be able to write this album, to scream it, to hear it back. I’ve got my emotions out. I’ve got my meaning out. I’ve got my message out. What I needed to do is done.”
