The best metal is effortless. It shouldn’t need a thousand subgenre qualifiers; it should just have riffs, melody, and an aggressive beat. Yet it can’t just be a thrashy cliche—it needs to be original and thoughtful. Cloak check all those boxes, and while they’ve had a slow climb into the spotlight thanks to COVID, they are finally getting the recognition they deserve.
“We started writing in the beginning of 2020,” vocalist and guitarist Scott Taysom says about their latest album, Black Flame Eternal, out now via Season of Mist. “We were working on some demos, and then the pandemic happened, so we just went full force into writing. It took us about a year and a half to write the full record. It was definitely the most intricate piece of work that we’ve done, everything from the songs to the promo pictures and the artwork, and the videos as well. It was just a really all-encompassing thing for us. We had to sit on the record for about a year before it comes out, but now we’re really happy with the finished product.”
With this musical evolution comes an evolution of form and lyrical material as well.
“Cloak have always been a spiritually based band,” Taysom explains. “We write a lot about the darker side of spiritual and religious life, and the black flame represents spiritual pain. There’s a metaphor of fire on the record. Fire is something that can spread and burn wild, and eventually, it dies out, just like life dies out, but if the spirit is strong enough, then it can live forever. That’s where the Black Flame Eternal title comes from, looking at it as a spiritual flame.
“It’s taking that theme and putting it towards the overall scope of the record,” he adds. “It’s very much a journey lyrically, and like all our records, I think it has a clear middle, intro, and outro. There are themes of empowerment, the self, will, and strength, and I think during the times we’re facing, that’s a big thing for people spiritually and mentally, so that’s what we’re trying to express.”
However, Taysom is quick to point out that they aren’t going for an all-out hopeful message. It’s still a dark record, just a powerful one.
“I don’t know if ‘hopeful’ is the right word, but it’s about a message of strength at a time when you’re forced to be strong. I think this record really stands as an expression of self-will.”
Now, the band are reveling in a busy tour schedule and more writing and future planning. When it comes to their plans for the future and the bands they see as their peers, they love the scene they are a part of, but they consider themselves outside of influence.
“Honestly, I don’t really find many influences from my peers, even if I like the bands,” Taysom admits. “To be honest, it’s not something I look to for writing influence. I think I look more towards older bands—people like Glenn Danzig or Bathory, Metallica, Iron Maiden. Those, for us, are the big inspiration, and a lot of second wave black metal, of course, is important to us as well. There are a lot of good bands right now—almost too many happening at the moment, and it’s hard to keep up! But we’ve said before, a lot of the inspiration for our material comes from inwards rather than outwards. We can look at ourselves to know what we do best.”
So while the band are clearly on an upward trajectory, they’re also feeling really good about the moment in time where they are right now.
“I think this is by far our most important record,” Taysom concludes. “I think the third record for many bands is a statement, a monumental piece in their career, and I hope that this one for us as well. I think going into this, we wanted it to be a statement, something to really define us even more. When it resonates with people, that’s even more powerful. I think we’re most proud of this record, and we’d like for it to stand as a monumental third piece in the band’s history.”
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Photo courtesy of David Pharham
