Hymns For The Converted With PHIL BOZEMAN From WHITECHAPEL

Interview by Kris Peters
Knoxville deathcore outfit Whitechapel have spent too long locked
down allowing the creative juices to flow and are set to explode
with the release of their ninth studio album Hymns In Dissonance
via Metal Blade on March 7.
While Hymns In Dissonance follows 2021’s Kin chronologically, the
new album is somewhat of a sequel to This Is Exile thematically,
the three-word title Hymns In Dissonance representing that
correlation. The band started composing the new album at guitarist
Zach Householder’s studio in June of 2023, following their
headlining tour for The Valley. The collective stuck to a strict
weekday schedule, the structure allowing for maximum creativity and
minimum burnout. Householder also produced Hymns In Dissonance,
which allowed the musicians to seamlessly switch gears from
preproduction to recording the full album without skipping a
beat.
While it seems like a long wait for fans of the band, Hymns Of
Dissonance is an ode to the past while taking strides into the
future, promising to more than satisfy the musical hunger of
long-term fans without alienating those picked up along the
way.
Vocalist Phil Bozeman joined HEAVY to fill us in.
"For fans that discovered us within the past couple of years, it
will probably be a bit of a newer sound for them," he measured when
asked about the sonic intensity of Hymns In Dissonance. "But for
people who have followed us for longer than that - from the early
days - it's gonna be… it's gonna be familiar territory for
sure."
We press Bozeman on that notion and ask if the album's musical
direction is something the band sits and discusses in the creative
process.
"Being in a band it's very…" he paused, searching for the right way
to express himself. "Things come in waves. We're very inspired by a
lot of different types of music, a lot of it being hard, death
metal and stuff like that, but I think that we were all just having
that itch to write something really heavy and extreme again. This
is the 40-year-old version of us coming up with that instead of the
young kid version, the 21-year-old version of it."
In the full interview Phil further discusses the musical nature of
Hymns In Dissonance, the writing process which involved working to
a schedule, how he personally defines heaviness in music in the
modern age, the decreasing universal focus on having to get a flow
to your albums due to streaming and the current trend of singles
over albums, the lyrical thread of the album and the central
characters, road testing the music live and more.


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