Distant announces its third album.
Formed in 2014, the Dutch band mixing Deathcore and Beatdown has made a name for itself in the local then international scene. After signing to Century Media Records, Alan Grnja (vocals), Nouri Yetgin (guitar), Vladimir Golic (guitar), Elmer Maurits (bass) and Han Mato (drums) release Heritage.
Acid Rain, the first track, develops an oppressive atmosphere with dissonant and disturbing tones before Paradigm Shift places its jerky riffs accompanied by the virulent screams. The dry and heavy groove is as crushing as catchy with its modern effects and explosive moshparts, then Born of Blood takes over with soaring samples to create an intense contrast with the omnipresent violence. The vocal diversity punctuates this abrasive track which only stops to let The Grief Manifest make us shake our heads with an energetic and motivating sound, which still offers some more soaring and polished leads to nuance the rage. The band follows with Exofilth, the first track unveiled, built on raw efficiency coupled with an impressive and intriguing atmosphere, then with Argent Justice, an ambitiously devastating composition where we find vocalists of Suicide Silence, Emmure, Abbie Falls, Acranius, Angelmaker, Bodysnatcher, CABAL, Carcosa, Crown Magnetar, Paleface, ten56 and Worm Shepherd. As you might expect, the very long track is incredibly effective, revealing a demented, intense and continuous vocal diversity before letting us breathe with a dark final which leads us to The Gnostic Uprising, a much more raw track that knows how to make room for dissonant and chaotic samples. A Sentence to Suffer revives the aggressive rage the band perfectly wields while adding epic samples to this basis created to motivate pits, while Human Scum returns to the roots of Deathcore combined with the band’s modern additions to create a wave of violence. Heritage, the eponymous track, fuels an ominous atmosphere to welcome Will Ramos (Lorna Shore, The Big Six, ex-A Wake in Providence), creating a devastating duet leading us to Orphan Of Blight and its more melancholic atmosphere the band skillfully mixes with its aggressive basis. The album ends with Plaguebreeder, a composition anchored in jerky and extremely effective Old School sounds which will undoubtedly unleash the pits without forgetting to place some disturbing elements.
If you don’t know them yet, Distant is one of those bands that will crush every bone in your body before leaving you on the ground. Heritage is neither their first nor their last misdeed, but one thing is for sure: it defines the band’s ambition.
95/100
Few questions to Elmer Maurits, bass player for Distant.
Hello and first of all, thank you very much for your time! Could you please introduce yourself and the band Distant without using the usual music “labels”?
Elmer Maurits (bass): Hi, it’s Elmer Maurits, bassist of the band Distant. We are a Deathcore band from The Netherlands and Slovakia.
Heritage, your third full-length, will be out soon. How do you feel about it? Do you already have some feedback?
Elmer: So far, we have released 4 singles of Heritage already. Starting with Exofilth in the summer, followed by Human Scum, Orphan Of Blight and lately Argent Justice. The feedback we received on those tracks has been really insane. Even with the broad spectrum of musical influences and genres that are portrayed in these songs, we received nothing but love and anticipation for the full album.
How would you sum Heritage up in only three words?
Elmer: Energetic, structured, powerful.
How did you deal with the composition process for this album? Did you notice some changes between this album and the previous one?
Elmer: Yes, took a different approach for the writing of Heritage as compared to Aeons Of Oblivion. First of all, with Aeons Of Oblivion we were in the midst of the pandemic, making it uncertain how long things would stay locked down and how we could make use of that time to write an album. Hence the combination of multiple EPs on that album. Now with Heritage, we had planned out on writing together for the summer of 2022. However, due to visa issues our guitarist Nouri was not able to attend our spring 2022 USA tour, freeing up his schedule to start writing already. The second big difference is that we incorporated working with a producer directly from the start of working on this album. Howard Fang (known from Within Destruction) gave us excellent feedback on the structure of our songs, helping them improve over previous albums.
The album is a compendium of breaks, moshparts and massive vocal parts, what led you to the Deathcore/Beatdown universe back in time? Which bands could you quote as your inspirations?
Elmer: We were all very much fans of the first wave of Deathcore bands when they emerged. Attending Deathcore and Beatdown shows back in the late 2000s and early 2010s is what motivated all of us to start playing in bands. And this combined love for bands from that era inspires us still to write music with those influences. Examples like Suicide Silence, Impending Doom, Despised Icon, but also beatdown bands like Nasty
The song Argent Justice is definitely one of the most ambitious tracks I heard about in a long time, gathering so many vocalists. How did you ask everyone to participate, and how did you manage to create a room for each of them?
Elmer: Back during the pandemic we missed doing live collaborations and therefore back then released Argent Debt, which features 5 guest vocalists. For this album we wanted to do something similar but step it up a notch. We therefore took a long time to think and discuss about who we wanted to collaborate with and even wrote the parts in the song to that vocalists’ musical direction. We have some sort of connection to all the vocalists on this track. Either by touring with them, having worked with them or paying some tribute to their influence on us. Or of course a combination of these factors.
Do you already have some plans for the band’s future?
Elmer: We are a band that likes to plan things out, so yes we are working far ahead already. But mainly first this will include a year full of touring.
Are there any musicians or bands you would like to collaborate with? Whether it is for one song, an album…
Elmer: Many, as we love doing collaborations. We are now working on some more out of the box ones though. But we can not comment on the specifics of that yet.
With which bands would you love to tour with? I let you create a tour (or just a single show) with Distant and three other bands!
Elmer: That is a hard question as we love so many bands! Mostly, it needs to be a heavy band that is fun to hang out with. Lorna Shore would fit that description, but also Extortionist and Bound In Fear.
That was the last question for me, so thank you very much for your time and your music, last words are yours!
Elmer: Thank you! Enjoy listening to Heritage and keep an eye out for a show in your area!