The San Francisco-area death metal quartet Succumb have captured an entrancing fever dream on their new album XXI, a September release from The Flenser. Moving through the churning, grueling record could be compared to dragging oneself, bruised and bloody, through a graveyard, while struggling to hang onto a sense of reality. The inward drive pushing the record along proves powerful, but the riffs remain destructive.
Musically speaking, the wrenching guitars, searing bass lines, and blasting drums—alongside menacing vocals from vocalist Cheri Musrasrik—suggest existential anguish. XXI depicts both the all-consuming devastation of suffering and reaching beyond that point into the twisting, somehow perceptibly close cosmos. It’s also convulsively heavy and sports a broad, somewhat staggering mix, like a sonic rockslide.
From the heavy-as-hell album opener “Lilim” onward, the record just doesn’t stop (well, until it’s over, but in the meantime, its energy stays consistently up). Mostly, XXI moves quickly, which keeps the metaphorical (or literal!) adrenaline associated with the listening experience high, even as Succumb employ ominously uneasy rhythms.
The straightforward death metal vibes remain strong throughout XXI—but a lot else goes on as well, from the looming atmosphere that opens “Maenad” to the cascades of incinerating instrumentation that help kick off the following track, “Okeanos.” Going on from there, other standout elements (among a great deal) include the grindy/ crusty track “Aither,” which appears sixth on the record.
Succumb evoke mysticism via the expanse of their sonic ambition across XXI, which feels electrifyingly volatile yet strong, like settling into blistering mania. Simultaneously, the record seems poised to bowl onlookers over. It’s a wild ride, with entrancing freshness built right into the experience.
Below, check out what vocalist Cheri Musrasrik and guitarist Derek Webster have to say about the new album, including inspirations from a 2009 Norwegian grindcore record and “the ancient worship of the elements and their importance.”
The new album is compelling. It’s been a bit since your last release, so in practical terms, what was the general process like of this new album coming together?
Musrasrik: We had more time to dedicate to working on song structures as well as vocal patterns and placements. Being able to spend more days in the studio gave the album a further sense of definition and allowed us to match our original intentions and vision for it. Getting the chance to focus on vocals more made me much more satisfied with the finished product.
Webster: I would say the process is largely unchanged. Everything we do begins with a riff, and it goes from there. I’m not the type of guitarist who maps a song out on GuitarPro before showing it to everyone else. Instead, I usually have a general skeleton of the song laid out in my head and let things evolve naturally through the collaborative process. The main difference between this album and our debut, as far as the writing process goes, is that it felt a lot more meticulous this time around. With our debut, we were excited to be working with The Flenser, so we rushed straight to the studio and just blasted that one out. While we’re happy with the result, we knew we were capable of so much more.
There’s a formidable, sonic range across XXI. What ideas would you say weighed on your creation of the sounds of this record? In terms of something as specific as tone or as broad as just the general vibe, is there something particular that you were after—some particular way that you wanted it to sound?
Musrasrik: One aspect of this album that I really enjoy is the pacing. Longer and more intricately structured tracks are broken up and interrupted by shorter, more grindy tracks.
Webster: Our intention was to make an album that felt more hysterical, more frantic, while still retaining a clear focus. With a song like “Lilim” opening the album, we aimed to overwhelm the listener right from the jump, instead of building things up with a dramatic intro. I love the way albums like [2013’s] Passages into Deformity [by Defeated Sanity] and [2009’s] De Anarkistiske An(n)aler [by Parlamentarisk Sodomi] waste no time in absolutely kicking your head in, so that’s what I wanted to emulate with “Lilim” and really set the tone for the whole album.
Do you feel particularly plugged in to, say, any particular dissonant/ experimental death metal community or the like? Relatedly, do you find a fair helping of current projects to be inspirational, in a general sense?
Webster: Having toured with Pyrrhon in 2018, I do feel there is a kinship between us and the N.Y. scene in general. I always have respect for any band that tries to push the genre forward or find new avenues of expression within the art form, especially in 2021 where ripping off Portal or Gorguts is pretty routine, and on the other side of that coin, you have bands lazily calling themselves Coffin Stuff or whatever. As for current bands I find inspirational, off the top of my head I would say Spirit Possession, Tetragrammacide, Internal Rot, Rebirth of Nefast, and Concrete Winds are all amazing in their own right.
There can be an intriguing interaction between general exploration and personal catharsis within extreme music. For this record, would you say that one of those tends to outweigh the other? Or is it some of both?
Musrasrik: Writing lyrics for the album felt like a slog at first. The pandemic was a less-than-inspirational time for me, and writing anything at all felt difficult. After turning things over in my head, I reached a point where the album allowed me to process my thoughts on the state of the planet and more. In that way, it was more of a cathartic experience.
Webster: I do believe it is a little bit of both for myself personally. Like I said earlier, I do appreciate bands who seek out new avenues of expression. For us, it doesn’t really feel as though we’re “exploring” in any way because we’re simply drawing from what inspires us. Creating something that is so personal to us—well, therein lies the catharsis.
Thematically, some of the lyrics seemed to point to mythological themes. What interested you and would you say that you were after in exploring these ideas, if something comes to mind?
Musrasrik: While watching the recent psychic warfare by our government and media, laws passing that send us back into the dark ages, abject greed that threatens life on Earth, yearly fires in California and other drastic natural disasters that seem to get worse, I started to think a lot about the Unabomber and ecoterrorism. I wanted to talk about the ancient worship of the elements and their importance. Each track is an allegorical expansion on one element: earth, air, fire, or water. I wrote about Lilith, the Orphic poems, ocean and nature deities, Dionysus, Arthurian literature, fly agaric as soma, and the cosmic egg.
I also became fascinated by the thought of murdering missionaries—8 Trigrams refers to the Boxer Rebellion—as a person born on a small Pacific island that had their largely magico-religious, mythological, and land-worshipping beliefs replaced by boring, moralizing ones.
Would you say that the live experience—or even just the home listening experience—figures prominently in the way that you construct the songs? The tracks definitely leave a strong impression. So relatedly, is there something particular that you hope would shine through for listeners?
Musrasrik: My approach to making music is always about performing and the energy exchange that takes place between us and the crowd.
Webster: Our songwriting process is very much centered around sweating it out in the practice space, and we record everything together in the live room, so in that regard we try to make the listening experience and the live experience as similar as possible. We want to convey raw, violent energy.
Listen to “Okeanos” here:
For more from Succumb, find them on Bandcamp.
Photos courtesy of Succumb and Christian Shepherd
