The heavy music landscape is often a place of catharsis and healing, but for Bodysnatcher, Florida’s premier dealers of crushing hardcore, the objective for their latest record is anything but: pure, unadulterated violence. Following up on their previous successes, the band just unleashed their new full-length album, Hell is Here, Hell is Home, on April 10 through MNRK Heavy, marking a pivot away from the introspective “overcoming” themes of their past and instead leaning into a relentless sonic assault that the band describe as their meanest work to date.
The shift in direction was a conscious choice fueled by the band’s long-term collaborator and producer Will Putney. During the year-long writing process, Putney challenged the group to shed any lingering sentimentality.
“We went in with about 15 demos that took about a little over a year to put together and came out the other side with ten of the best songs that I think we’ve ever put together,” guitarist Kyle Carter explains. “We kind of were instructed by Will, and he really wanted it to be the most aggressive, unapologetic thing. Because sometimes we’ll write lyrics about overcoming or more sad topics, and this time he was like, ‘Let’s just give them straight aggression every song, no apologies. Let’s do vengeance. Let’s do the meanest thing that we could possibly do.’ So that’s what I think we accomplished.”
This visceral energy is anchored in real-life experiences, even if the lyrics don’t always offer a literal roadmap of the band members’ lives. By sharing the lyrical duties among the members, Bodysnatcher ensure that every track is grounded in a genuine sense of frustration or anger. “We all write lyrics. We all do a few songs each usually, so there are songs—like the one we most recently came out with called ‘Violent Obsession.’ It came from talks that I’ve had with my wife about her previous relationships in her life.” He continues, “It talks about abuse, abusive relationships, and wanting to get back to that person, kind of obsessing over exactly what you wish you could do to that person. So they come from real places, but a lot of the time on this album, they’re not quotable for real-life instances, if that makes sense. They come from real places.”
The visual identity of the album further mirrors this “underdog vs. the world” mentality. The cover art features a striking scene of a hyena in a lethal struggle with a snake, set against the backdrop of a burning church. The choice of the hyena was intentional, representing an animal that is often viewed as a scavenger, but possesses an incredibly high success rate in the hunt.
“I wanted an animal, for sure. I wanted an animal, and I wanted the burning church, because there are a few different instances in the album where we talk about religion and stuff like that,” Carter says. “I was just doing some research on different animals, and the hyena came up with being kind of like the underdog type animal. Thematically, with the lyrics, we are kind of the underdog in the situation, but hyenas have a very high success rate of hunting. It kind of speaks for itself; they’re the underdog, but they fucking win. And then the album art itself is like, the hyena’s ripping the head off of it, but the snake is also wrapped around its neck at the same time. In the moment—in the battle—they’re both kind of losing.”
The band is currently testing the new material on their first-ever headlining tour across Europe and the UK alongside Ingested, Psycho-Frame, and Big Ass Truck. While debuting new music live is often a nerve-wracking experience for a band, the early response has been overwhelming. “It’s always fun and stressful playing new songs because you don’t know if they’re gonna translate how you want them to,” he admits. “You don’t know if people are gonna mosh to it until they do or they don’t, and you don’t know if it’s gonna catch on as fast as you want it to catch on with catchy lyric parts. But we found out on the tour we’re on right now … our newest single, ‘The Maker,’ people are already screaming the lyrics at the end of the song. There’s, like, a chant thing that happens at the end, and people are already catching on. The song’s only been out for a few weeks now, so I can’t wait for the States.”
Looking ahead, the band have no plans of slowing down. Immediately following the album release, they will join the prestigious Chaos & Carnage tour in May, bringing their brand of Florida hardcore to the masses across North America. Despite the exhaustion of the road, the creative wheels are already turning. While they plan to take a brief hiatus in June to recharge, Bodysnatcher expect to start writing again soon to stay ahead of the curve.
“I try to give myself a little bit of a break for at least a few months,” Carter explains. “We go on Chaos and Carnage in May and get home early June, and then from early June, we have a few months of kind of a break. In that break, I think I’ll start writing again just to get ahead of it, just because it is such a long process. If you don’t get ahead of it, then you’re kind of scrambling at the last minute, and I don’t want to do that. I’m not sure if it’ll be an EP or a record, but I feel like it’ll be a record.”
Fans can expect plenty of surprises when the needle finally drops on the full record. While singles like “The Maker” have set the stage, the band has intentionally held back some of the album’s most potent moments, including a massive collaboration with Scott Vogel of Terror.
“I’m very excited for people to hear track two called ‘Rise and Coil,’” he adds. “That one is my personal favorite still; we kind of have kept it a secret and haven’t chosen it as a single. I’m also really excited for people to hear the song with Scott Vogel on it from Terror. It’s one of our collective favorite songs of the album, and we purposely didn’t put that one out as a single either, just because it feels like a better surprise for whenever the album comes out. I’m really excited for those two just to see the overall opinions.”
Hell is Here, Hell is Home is out now and you can order it from MNRK Heavy. Follow Bodysnatcher on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for future updates.
Photo Credit: Amber James
