Track By Tracks: Sorrow Enthroned - Illicit Infantile Surgical Procedures (2023)

1. Shit Custard:

I have always appreciated death metal records that start off with a bang, without any long intros, and pure brutality right off the bat. I felt like this song was a good way to start the album, it is about a serial killer cutting the feces out of his victims and baking them as yummy treats. The opening riff is very slam inspired and there's a faster section in the middle after a small atmospheric breather. I was on psychedelics one night and as I was falling asleep the words “shit custard” popped into my head and I immediately knew that was going to be a song title and the lyrics grew from there.

2. Kingdom of Festering Rot:

This was the first song I wrote that ended up on the record, I came up with the main riffs in September 2022 and kept tweaking them over time so it's been a little while. It isn’t too complicated of a song, and lyrically it's about retaining consciousness after death while rotting in the grave. This song is very much morbid angel worship especially in the verse sections.

3. Black Rays of Unlight:

Lyrically this song is about the hypothetical scenario of how the fall of “Lucifer” may have been interpreted literally. It talks about his contact with the first human tribes and his teachings which caused the advancement of our consciousness as a species. I had a few black metal-style riffs that I liked and so the themes kind of fit together, and the melody is balanced by the heavier verse riffs.

4. Illicit Infantile Surgical Procedures:

My personal favorite is lots of palm-muted brutal death metal riffs. Also old school cannibal corpse sounding. It's about a group of surgeons working for a shadow government who harvest organs and meat from live infants to sell on the black market. I wanted the lyrics to be repulsive to match the energy of the song and album.

5. Into Hell…:

This track and the next track are connected, this was a tribute to the faster morbid angel songs and kind of thrash a little bit. It's one of the harder songs for me to play, but there's a breakdown in the middle and the end is slow. The ending is actually inspired by the black sabbath, it's that classic flatted 5th interval that’s been emulated by every artist trying to sound evil since the 70s. this song is fast and aggressive, and with this record I wanted the listener to feel like they are burning in hell with each song, and I almost made this the album title. It's about a priest in the underworld close to satan casting spells in order to seduce men into hell once they die.

6. …Unto Me:

Basically a sequel to the previous song, this also keeps up the energy and faster pace. Once the humans reach hell they're tortured relentlessly by legions of demons and that’s all the song is about.

7. They Who Hold the Doctrines of Devils (Instrumental):

This is a little synth break, trying to sound like haunted house music. I came up with this in a few hours one night, it was the last track I made for the album. The vibe kind of carries into the next song and sets the mood.

8. Lord Satan:

Ayin is the Hebrew letter associated with the Tarot card The Devil. This symbolizes the aspect of human consciousness that seeks to “destroy the universe to create a new heaven and earth”. In other words, it is the desire for something beyond the current state of the individual, and the striving towards the seemingly unachievable. It is placed in the world of Yetzirah, the intellectual mind, and is therefore loosely associated with Air, and thoughts. It is more directly related to Capricorn, the leaping goat exalted upon the mountaintop where none but him may pass. A lot of the words in the lyrics rhyme with the long (EE) sound heard when pronouncing Ayin. The Devil Tarot card is Atu number 15, a type of materialization of the number 5, and the number of words in the first verse. 5 symbolizes the perfect soul ruling over the blind forces of the four elements(subconscious forces and impulses), and pictured on the card are a man and a woman chained to his feet. It is a frightening image to the uninitiated, but the secret occult meaning is that the chains are not locked, and therefore the bindings are instead called love. The number 3 is representative of a type of perfect unity that is ideal for creation. So the perfect man and woman who are in control of the lower forces of their nature may commune with the perfect image (devil) that is beyond the conception of masculine and feminine forces (man and woman or the left brain and right brain. 5+5+5). Ironically, Satan has nothing to do with this. This name comes from ShTN of the Hebrews meaning adversary or accuser, nothing more than a concept or force or idea, and a god of the South, of fire. The song title is the opposite of the literal meaning of the song though the interpretation is the same. Musically it's sludgy.

9. Onward, The Tomb Awaits:

Another song with some black metal riffing, this is about suicide and the afterlife. I imagine what it's like when the conscious mind separates from the body. Free from restriction of matter and weight, the soul could potentially wander anywhere, and continue to experience a type of “life” with emotions and memories, and sensations intact. I feel like a lot of our souls are searching for this freedom. But also it invites the idea of utter cosmic loneliness, the vastness of infinity nothing more than an impassible desert, with no form to take refuge in. Also, it is a take on my personal struggle, where it feels like I'm drowning, and then for a time being able to overcome my depression until it inevitably returns. Life is death and then there is death beyond death.

10. Filth:

A sister song to the title track. The shadow government is lazy and only has people clean the operating room once every few weeks, so the baby corpses get messy and decompose. This is their story. Musically the song is very slam-inspired with chromatic palm mutes and alternating drum patterns. Theres also a solo at the end which I don’t usually do much of.

11. RED BLEED MORE RED:

Total caveman song, one of the things I love about slam that I feel isn’t talked about much is the use of counterpoint, which is essentially taking one musical idea or theme and mutating it throughout the song. I tried that here, and really it is a progressive degeneration of the riff right at the beginning. the tempo progressively drops down to 44 bpm, and the rhythm patterns shift but it is all essentially one riff just shifted around.

12. Sadness and Emptiness (Instrumental):

This is an outlier on the album, it has not many similarities to the other tracks. It's an instrumental tech death song with lots of melodeath influence as well. It's atmospheric and personally for me invokes feelings of sadness and also emptiness. The tapping riffs add energy sometimes though.

13. Limp Limbs:

This would be a great song to murder someone to. It's pretty much all death metal riffs with some slams and pig squeals at the end. Pure aggression and anger is the force behind this song, and it explores and sympathizes with the mind of a serial killer. This was another one that took a long time to make, I started writing it last year with basically just one riff that evolved into an entire song.

14. O Mother Night:

The idea of cryptids has always intrigued me. There are stories of people seeing things in the woods like bigfoot, but also more threatening creatures described as having humanoid shapes yet disfigured or disproportionate, or mixed with animal features. These stories of ungodly howlings at night, of livestock being mutilated, or having their blood drained(like the Mexican chupacabra). A lot of them also resemble grey aliens, again with mixed features of human and animal. It is a worldwide phenomenon that’s been recorded since as far back as humans have existed. The inspiration from the song comes from the thought that maybe instead of them being different species they are all one shapeshifting creature, with the ability to exist in multiple places at once, travel from one place to another, be immune to death and disease, and may even be the cause. The lyrics explore the mind of this hypothetical creature and sympathetically associate with it in the most primal sense. As an eternal being giving reverence to its mother, the eternal night of space smothers the light of the sun and thrives in darkness.

15. Ageless, Still I Am (Morbid Angel cover):

Covering a song from such an esteemed death metal band is super intimidating and I can only hope I did a fraction of justice. This song has always resonated with me, from Trey Azagthoth’s tremolo riffs to the lyrical execution and concept by Steve Tucker, I feel like it's been stuck in my head for the last 8 years since I first heard it. there was no way id be able to figure out Trey’s solos, he's the greatest death metal guitarist in my opinion so I tried to emulate the energy as best as I could.