You don’t get much meaner than Languish. This four-piece death metal outfit has been pulverizing skulls since 2014, with its members hailing from other esteemed Arizona heavies Gatecreeper, North and Territory; Languish has been an entity of destined greatness since inception. Their debut album, 2015’s Extinction, was ten songs of roiling, grinding, doom-laden darkness that staked its creators as a monstrous reckoning force. Their live sets are rituals shrouded in an aural miasma, with each member lending their unique apocalyptic voice to their hammering end-time chorus. All this while their voracious sound dislodges the audience’s spines and rattles the foundations of whatever unfortunate venue attempts to contain them. Yeah, Languish is that fucking mean.
This Halloween, Languish will once again cloak the world with their uninviting shadow with their second album, Unworthy. Set to arrive following their recent signing with the storied Prosthetic Records, this 15 track monster escalates the misanthropic ante set by Extinction with walls of towering, gnarled riffs, bone-to-dust crushing drums and unhinged, deeply feral vocals. Today we offer but a blood-tinged taste of Unworthy’s madness by inviting you to the “Unholy Land.” This bestial track tears through its two minute length with urgent savagery, opening with teeth-baring grindcore only to rend into surging death metal breaks in its final breaths.
Art by Matt Mutterperl.
“Unholy Land is really about the possibility of a utopia on earth being destroyed by the upper class before we even have a chance at establishing it. All the greed and destruction and evil done by these rich fucks who care about nothing but accumulating more wealth for themselves, they just want to hoard gold like Smaug the dragon,” said drummer Zack Hansen on the meaning behind the song. “They’ve destroyed Eden, they’ve denied the majority of the planet a chance. We just want health and happiness for humanity and there are enough resources to spread around but the billionaire class won’t allow it to happen. They’d rather the earth burn and we all suffer, they just look down at our dead utopia and laugh.”
“In my mind this whole record is a giant ‘fuck you’ to the creators of our destruction, to industry, to capitalists, to bankers, to politicians,” Hansen expands on the album’s overall theme. “You fucked us all. I’d rather burn their palaces and mansions to the ground and dance on the ashes.”
“The song itself is unique because it just has this heavy intro that transitions into a really fun D-beat part followed by a killer death metal riff, and then they alternate back and forth while switching the number of times each part repeats, followed by another huge heavy riff,” Hansen added on the track’s pummeling structure. “It’s a killer D-beat/death metal track that showcases the best of Unworthy. We refuse to follow traditional song structure and the song is confusing as fuck to play live and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
During the recording of Extinction, Languish consisted of Hansen and guitarist Matt Mutterperl, a pair, who musically had no discernible direction aside from a desire to craft grindcore and punk music. With the addition of vocalist Sean Mears and bassist Ryan Bram, Hansen elaborates, the band’s overall scope widened. “Sean is an experienced tour dog now and gets to see so many fucking legends up close, and Matt and I also have years of touring under our belt and got to see how bands like Intronaut and Conan function,” Hansen recounted of the members’ histories.
With their lineup realized, Languish is ready to evolve with the focused, brutal and ever expansive work they’ve prepared to unleash on this unsuspecting world: “There are still grind elements but we’ve brought so much more of a death metal feel to it. Unworthy was a group effort and we feel we have an amazing group of musicians who have crafted a solid fucking record.”
Unworthy is available for preorder from Prosthetic Records, to be released on October 26th. Their backcatalog and merch can be purchased on Languish’s Bandcamp.
