There’s something profoundly therapeutic about music, whether it’s writing it, listening to it, playing it, or experiencing it live from a crowd. For Nathan Ellis, frontman and vocalist of The Casket Lottery, music has been that one constant variable throughout his life. When the world feels like it’s literally flipped on its axis, he can always come back to it. While that doesn’t always mean a reckoning will be made, it’s a way for him to shut out all the noise. Feel The Teeth, out Aug 29 on Iodine Recordings, is a record that was made in the spirit of commiseration. It’s an ode to the resilience of humanity amidst a crumbling infrastructure.
Feel The Teeth is still packed full of bangers, but it’s coming from a group of musicians who have lived, learned, and aren’t interested in sugarcoating anything. “I wish I could say that this was more of an optimistic viewpoint, but it’s not; it’s fatigue. It’s the fatigue album, it’s just more questions, like, is this the new norm? Is this really where we’re at? I can’t help but feel tired and exhausted and I wish I could say I landed someplace with it that felt good, but unfortunately, that’s just where I’m at in life. Not to be too much of a bummer, but it just seems like a really fucked up chapter that we’re all in together right now, and I don’t know that we’re on our way out of it, I don’t know what’s next,” admits Ellis.
Ellis and the band have gone through a lot of changes over the past few years. In fact, there were moments along the way to making this album that he wasn’t sure if The Casket Lottery would make it to the finish line. This new album comes five years after their last full-length, Short Songs for End Times, which was originally postponed due to COVID. After the delayed release, the band subsequently went through a rough patch on tour and in the aftermath, founding member Stacy Hilt decided that he would step away from the band. This was a hard blow for Ellis because they were the only two founding members left and had been playing alongside one another for nearly a quarter century.
At the time Hilt parted ways, the band was so much more than a career or passion project; it was enmeshed in every facet of their lives. Losing a key member like that shook the foundation of what The Casket Lottery was built on. Despite his conflictions, Ellis could not walk away. With transparency, he says “I was like, am I done? After talking to Stacy and figuring out what was next, I just had to keep going because I don’t know what else to do. But that was a really tough pill for me to swallow, trying to figure out if it is weird for me to keep doing this, but I think with this batch of songs wrapped up, it was like, this is obviously a Casket Lottery record. Regardless, I’m so glad that I saw it through instead of giving up, because I was really close.”
Everything that Ellis went through after the world shut down five years ago has forced him to come to terms with many things, one of the most important being his identity both as a musician and a bandmate. Feel The Teeth marks The Casket Lottery’s debut release with its current lineup, featuring Gene Abramov on bass, Jeff Gensterblum on the drums, guitarist Terrence Vitali, and of course Ellis. This project has brought out the best in each of them and even if it doesn’t have one clear promising theme, the end result speaks volumes to their dynamic and ability to bring this album into existence against the odds. If one thing is for sure, The Casket Lottery is here to stay and they cannot wait to get on the road to play these new songs live.
Feel the Teeth is out on Friday from Iodine Recordings, and you can preorder it here. Follow The Casket Lottery on Facebook and Instagram for future updates.
Photo Credit: Carina Spencer
