Voraath (Vore-ath) could be considered, thinking man’s extreme metal incorporating long, strong detailed storylines involving humans, entities, deity’s and inter-dimensional creatures and beings. It’s as hardcore and mosh pit ready as death metal can be, if you can imagine a circle pit or wall of death on the Enterprise in Ten Forward.
The new North Carolina based group is expanding a new breed of metal complete with their own self-created multi-verse with things you’d need to go to the theater to see in scale. Bassist, Paul McBride, Drummer Joshua Ward, new vocalist Chelsea Marrow and guitarist Tylor Kohl have created this concept. The band comes with a built in extreme pedigree featuring members of Xael, Rapheumets Well, Implosive Disgorgence, and Sweet Blood with Marrow fronting Visitant.
The band was developed from their love of ‘80s sci-fi movies and video games, with tribute to Mass Effect and The Elder Scrolls among other inspirations. “We wanted to create this entire multi-verse,” Ward says, who handles drums, composing and anything else needed. “The album starts pretty simple. We’re hunters on a dystopian earth about 140 years into the future and all kinds of crazy stuff has happened with 80% of the population suddenly (gone). People think the rapture happened. First it’s confusing because even from our POV, we don’t know why all this happened.”
The story they’re telling talks about the aftermath of these events including inter-dimensional beings, entities and multiple worlds. Ward further explains, “All these religions pop up praising these entities as scavengers or messengers of god or alien beings. Really, they’re these inter-dimensional beings trying to drain energy from our star and murder our population but there’s a much deeper story as to why they’re doing this.”
The story takes place from their POV, “We’re hunters who’ve been contracted to retrieve an artifact. We don’t know what it is, even in the story. We get there and end up in this complex story we didn’t mean to get in.” The artifact is some sort of weapon used by this inter-dimensional race that killed 80% of population. They all exist on Earth due to unexplained rips in time and space. “We get ourselves way over our heads.” The whole story’s dipped and/or drowned in sci-fi lore.
You’ll see them wearing their storyline armor in future promo shots and live shows. They donned it for their most recent show, taking it, in storyline from some weird creature they accidently blew up, giving them a tactical edge.
They’re very happy and fortunate to have found like-minded musicians sharing a common bond and mission. ”It’s hard to bring the mission together with the music, wear the costumes, believe in the storyline and try to make this work as a team,” Ward says. Due to the very specific lyrical stories and narrative agenda it was crucial to find musicians sharing the same creative interests and ilk.
Their most recent video “Siren Head” is based on a character by artist Trevor Henderson. Ward’s son introduced the band to it through YouTube videos. “He would watch these horror shorts and one popped up called Siren Head and I was like, what is this? I’d never seen anything like it. Our guitar player’s daughter loves Siren Head. Our kids like it, let’s write a song about this creature. It was some odd death metal family bonding.” Ward says the characters pretty bad, but they like to pretend there’s a good version of him.
Voraath is still a very new concept and band. One of their earlier videos “The Barons” showed their guerrilla style work ethic, sneaking into a factory for a few hours to shoot, walking out with performance footage and no police interference.
“Amon the Judge” was easy to film especially with no budget. It told the story of soldiers from a mercenary camp raiding their village murdering people they cared about.” Ward says it partially deals with PTSD and what people are capable of under heavy emotional stress and complicated situations.
The album’s done and they’re shopping it around waiting for the right bite, another single will be released before the album drops. The audition for a new vocalist was easy Ward called Marrow and she came. Marrow says she didn’t hesitate. “I was like, yeah. I’m there. I moved to the Carolinas from Nashville. We’re about to be really busy.”
In Visitant’s video for “Dematerialization,” Marrow covers her face with soil and dirt. “That was all real and I inhaled so much dirt it was disgusting. It was wet top soil. I wanted to get the rest of my band mates into it. I wanted to dehumanize myself as much as possible. People don’t realize it was me, though tattoos are hard to hide in that aspect. I was pretty much laying in the dirt. My drummer (Anthony Lusk-Simone) cut up some masks and stuff to add some evil stuff in it.”
Visitant has a real visceral place in her heart encompassing the embodiment of suffering one could say. “My grandfather was on his way out at that time and that was my way of portraying something very visceral, natural and bleak looking. No exact plot. I was focusing more on the visuals. It made shooting much easier.”
For the love of gaming, she also joined a who’s who of death metal vocalists on the Doom Eternal soundtrack. “We created a death metal choir with Mick Gordon. It was an incredible experience. I drove to Austin, Texas to do that. It was 20-24 of us, including James Dorton from Black Crown Initiate, Sven from Aborted and a bunch of other people.”
It could’ve been a death metal version of Hear N’ Aid. ”It was really cool. They separated us just like a choir, females on one side, males on the other and we did tons of different noises for the game and chants.”
Though Voraath’s in its infancy a video series explaining every song’s storyline and narrative in between is coming. A very detailed, intricate story told in bits and pieces over time as their multi-verse comes to life. A digital booklet will also be available telling the story.
The Voraath-Verse they say hosts many specific languages respectfully going full nerd. “We came up with this embrallic language thing. Voraath in this language means, a vengeful act, denoted from the entity, we fight. This entity causing Voraath in the story, it means those who enact vengeance.”
The story and concept could be compared to Indiana Jones meets Judge Dredd or according to Ward like Prometheus meets Mortal Kombat then meets the game Fallout.”
Movies like Predator inspired them along with The Elder Scrolls. Ward said the depth of the lore in Elder Scrolls was very inspiring. When people listen to their music they find out there’s tons of depth to everything they’re explaining. “Even though we’re on this planet as hunters there’s a multi-verse with these celestial beings called the A-Ti.” They’ve already developed a couple hundred planets in storyline.
Marrow envisions props on stage and actors with an interactive, theatrical presentation and approach. They also have self-created creatures in the works when space allows. Eventually they’ll have their version of an inter-dimensional, super galactic Eddie.
They’re meeting with a company that makes monsters, for their next video, customizing a big creature bringing it to life. It’s something they can use in the future and start building their stage aesthetics with. It’s eventually gonna be one big alien invasion set to riffs, growls and blast beats.
Mission 2617 The Red Village Incident is the albums curious, ambitious and specific title sounding like something from any red-shirted generation of Star Trek. “It’s like a video game when you see it. These creature’s murdered villagers, in the story we don’t know this yet, we’re brought in by a friend saying people have disappeared in the village. We don’t know that this friend’s been beguiled by this creature. He thinks he had a baby with this woman who’s really an inter-dimensional deity. None of it exists, the baby doesn’t exist and he feels she used him to lure us there. We had this artifact that a bunch of creatures want. She lured us there to murder us. It represents the betrayal of a friend on top of having to fight a big creature.”
Marrow’s a perfect fit for the interstellar job doing both growls and clean vocals, “I’m trying to be more comfortable with my cleans. I spent the last ten years doing harsh vocals. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been into metal. I was a guitarist before I was a vocalist then ended up with an injury that prevented me from playing for awhile. I dropped my instrument in my former band and started doing my own style of vocals.” Her inspirations include Angela Gossow and Kittie among others.
They’ve covered quite a bit of the country so far from North Carolina to California and a northeastern run, down the Atlantic. They have a lot of shows planned in the future and would love to tour with Fleshgod Apocalypse, Septic Flesh, Cattle Decapitation and Nile among others.
Growing up Ward was a big fan of Dimmu Borgir drummer Nick Barker and Francisco from Fleshgod Apocalypse sharing his love of drumming and writing music. While Marrow admires the other Fleshgod Francesco for his vocal patterns along with vocals from Goatwhore, Vader, old In Flames and Ihsahn.
In early September they film the next video with a release in October. Artworks in progress, with the title The Hunters Hymn, it doesn’t exactly growl or scream extreme metal but it’s definitely gonna kick ass!
Seeing them live will be an experience. Each outfit has its own vibe based on band member. Marrow’s has a witching road warrior vibe while others members prefer a more tactical approach, while Ward’s is well worn and war torn. The masks are mesh with their own designs on each one and their armor, everything’s costume. “Our guitar player’s wife makes all our clothing,” Ward says. “We have a friend who makes leather armor.” They’re taking masks to a different, not often treaded level, preferring distinguishing-hunter red lights to individual expressions and faces.
They’re a metal sci-fi odyssey. Stay tuned for all other things to come. “We’re ready to not just bring you music but an entire universe.” Their mission is to boldly go where no death metal band has gone before with an Intellectual wall of death, and a thinking man’s mosh pit.
Website – www.voraath.com
Facebook – www.facebook.com/Voraath
