Track By Tracks: COLPOCLEISIS - Elegant Degradation (2023)

1. Degrade:

One of the first tracks written for the album and a really important piece of the puzzle. Though only a couple of simple sections, the idea to bookend the album with versions of this track came to us. Just two words in this one “Degrade….Decay”. If you’ve seen us live over the past couple of years, you’ve probably heard this one kicking off our set.

2. Discumblobulated:

The 3rd of 4 singles were released ahead of the album. This one is violent and straight to the point. We debuted this at Bloodstock 2021 and it’s been a live favorite ever since. After seeing the response the songs have been getting a life, we changed the tracklisting to have this as the first proper song.

Staying within the typical slam and brutal death world, this one is all about sexual degradation and bodily fluids. A lot of them! We tried something new on this one with bassist, Joe adding some backing vocals to give a little punch to the final section. We expect to see many punches thrown as we take this song out on the road with us!

3. Six Feet Chunder:

One of the later songs finished for the album, this really feels like an extension of the Fallopian Fallout album. Very simple and with a linear structure, this one is all about the caveman slams.

This was written at a band jam with everyone throwing riff ideas around. Joe kicked off the song and Ste added a Korpse inspired riff and the rest flowed together easily from there.

Lyrically, this song is about cannibalism and then progressing into self-cannibalism.

4. Toxoplasmosis:

After finishing up some shows including a Feb 2020 appearance in Moscow at Coyote Brutal Fest, we were all set to begin the writing process for this album. Of course, in March 2020, the pandemic shut the entire world down and derailed plans….

With our practice space shut, and the band spread across the country, it was impossible to get in a room and jam like normal. So some of these songs were written with Ste and Joe on guitar and bass with ideas sent and discussed over weekly Zoom calls.

Toxoplasmosis was one of the early songs to come from this method. It came to life when we jammed it together with Lewis adding the gore grind style drum beat something new for us. It was a natural choice to then get Lewis to add some Gutulax-style vocals over the top too.

Tied in with pandemics, this song is about the Toxoplasmosis parasite and studies of how this affects behavior and causes reckless and dangerous choices.

5. Evangenital Obliteration:

Whilst we had a few guest vocalists on the album, this one felt more like a collaboration than a feature. We knew we wanted to do something with our tour mates and fellow Reality Fade artists, .357 Homicide and this song worked best. Jon, Jake, and Mat’s vocals were all spliced, chopped, and cut up over this one, which is aptly all about self-mutilation and eunuchs.

This hasn’t been played live yet, so we’re saving it for when we next play with .357 Homicide and can get all 3 vocalists together on stage.

6. Flagellating at the Slab:

Flagellating was the last song written for the album. Once this was complete, we knew we were done.

The song name pays homage to Devourment’s ‘Masturbating at the Slab’ and musically it was very much inspired by that Butcher the Weak album and relentless, slamming style. Lyrically it touches on religious servitude and flogging as penance.

Recently added to our setlist, this one is sure to go down as a live favourite.

7. #ProlapsoVaginal:

During lockdown we were all struggling a little to collaborate musically as we had done in the studio before. Joe threw together a really short but aggressive track on Guitar Pro just as a demo, exploring new software to support the writing process.

Musically it was a little departure from previous releases but it fitted into the overall concept. With Jon adding some gutturals it became quite clearly a Colpocleisis track.

Lyrically, this song has quite an interesting origin story. Our band keeps being tagged in Colpocleisis surgery stories on Instagram, mostly from South American doctors promoting their latest surgical success. We noticed how funny the Spanish to English translations were on the captions. The idea came about to write a song just using these translations for lyrics.

There’s my new favourite term for a vagina in the lyrics: “Population Wallet”. That seems like a new band name waiting to happen! Recording the vocals was fun as I was trying to hold it together whilst our engineer laughed away in the control room at the lyrics. Then visitors were coming to the studio and joining in.

We sequenced the track as a bit of a palate cleanser between the big slams of Flagellating and Third Degree Gurns. Blink and you'll miss it though

8. Third Degree Gurns:

We revisited this song from the 2020 EP, ‘Human Dignity Violated’. Whilst we were happy with the original recording, this one feels closer to how we play it live, with the slowed-down tempo on the final slam just hitting a little harder.

Chris from Crepitation stayed with the band and traveled with us to the studio, so we stuck him in the booth to get some of his signature vocals on the final slam too.

This was actually written with the original lineup based on a tale told by a friend of the band about a heavy session! The topic of drug abuse worked well within the Elegant Degradation concept, and everyone loves a good pun.

We’d hoped to get the previous singer, Marc to do guest vocals on this one, but it couldn’t come together this time around.

9. Corpocleisis:

The title was initially a bit of an in-joke with the band after they saw my professional portrait photo on LinkedIn! The song is about being cogs in the corporate wheel, slowly degrading day by day, grinding away to make other people richer.

This was the last song tracked in the vocal sessions and we had just enough time to get Neil Hudson to step away from the desk and into the booth to record some brutal vocals. He dusted off some of his brutal inhale vocals to trade off against Jon and then they join together for the closing mantra “I am a slave, I am enslaved”.

10. Do Not Resuscitate:

Lyrically this was largely written in a flurry of stream of consciousness, whilst browsing a bookstore. The most personal song with some dark lyrics about mental health is here. There’s a very long riff in the middle that made no sense to me and took more takes than any other section to record!

Within the album context, this is the penultimate song and all hope is lost at this point. It rings out into the final song…..

11. Decay:

As noted above, we decided to book the end of the album with the Degrade/Decay songs so that album's opening riff is reprised here. This one is about the decaying process post-death, with human detritus left to the elements. The album comes to an ends as the final words fade out - Degrade, Decay, Erase