Ricky Hoover had a problem. The frontman of deathcore bruisers OV SULFUR had expunged himself lyrically on debut record
The Burden Ov Faith – a hard-hitting, blistering attack on organised religion – but now the time had come for a follow up, he was suffering from writer’s block.
“He felt he’d said all he wanted to on The Burden Ov Faith,” explains guitarist Chase Wilson, “and he wanted to take a more subtle approach than the confrontational, in-your-face style of that album. He asked me for some ideas, and I said ‘well, we’ve already written Wither and Seed for the record, why not write an album about endless suffering?’”
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That one question set the foundations for
Endless, OV SULFUR’s sophomore release and, while not a direct sequel to its predecessor, focuses on the concept of everlasting life – something many walks of faith preach – and the flip side of that coin. “We expanded that question to ‘what if you had to deal with those things for the end of time?’ What would that feel like? Would you go crazy?” Chase continues, “and that was when we wrote Evermore, which became the centrepiece for the whole album because it goes over the idea of eternal life and the downsides to that.”
Stylistically, Endless largely consolidates OV SULFUR’s abilities at creating pummelling, symphonic deathcore, but there are already seeds coming in of other influences, from the straight up death metal of CATTLE DECAPITATION to the frosty, symphonic black metal stylings of DIMMU BORGIR and CRADLE OF FILTH. “Me and Levi [Xul, drums] would send stuff back and forth,” reveals Chase, “and he sent some things where he’d said ‘I don’t know if this fits, but I’d like to use it’ and I fully agreed; it shouldn’t fit, but the overall, sonic amalgamation of things meant it worked.” Chase knows that things could have easily gone the other way, though. “It was a risk doing all of these styles,” he admits, “but I feel as if we managed to combine them into one sound, which is awesome.”
There is no greater example of this than on the aforementioned Wither and the closing track Endless//Loveless, which are a significant departure from OV SULFUR’s regular sound. Wither is a melodic, emotionally weighted song that starts with a voicemail message from Ricky’s late grandmother and finishes with a soundbite of Chase’s late grandfather. “I lost him in 2023 before we went on tour with CHELSEA GRIN,” the guitarist explains. “He was around in the Rat Pack era, did some work as an emcee for clubs and he’s a huge reason why I’m a musician. After I lost him, Ricky lost his grandmother and I then lost both of mine, so it was very cathartic when we were recording the song. When we’d finished, the rest of the band were off celebrating the completion and I started to break down in my corner because I’d finally made the song I’d wanted him to hear.”
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Endless//Loveless, meanwhile, brings in acoustic guitars and, for all the darkness on of the album, provides a glimmer of hope. “It’s still sad,” Chase explains “but the chorus does indeed offer hope. I wrote that about a former relationship where my partner was struggling with me being away so much and this was a kind of lover letter from me to her saying ‘Hey, I understand and I get this, but I’m trying my best’, and it didn’t work out, but the song came out of it and I couldn’t be happier for that!”
Conversely, there’s the opening track Endless//Godless, which is essentially two huge breakdowns. “I just wanted to make something that was pure deathcore and fucking ridiculous!” Chase laughs. He also agrees when Distorted Sound offers up the idea that, in the most complimentary way possible, it’s ‘dumb but fun’. “Absolutely it’s that! It’s caveman
music, it’s banging stones against each other!”
Like The Burden Ov Faith, Endless has some guest vocalists in the form of INGESTED’s Josh Davies, CARCOSA’s Johnny Ciardullo and DISTANT’s Alan Grnja, but Chase was keen to ensure the band didn’t lean on them. “We didn’t want to go overboard; we wanted our music to stand on its own. The last album had some bucket list guests, but we didn’t want to overload this one. But we still got some of our friends to be on the record, which is super awesome to me!”
OV SULFUR are heading out across the States as main support to the mighty ORBIT CULTURE from February to April and Chase is stoked to be on tour with a band he describes as one of the best modern metal bands around. He’s tight lipped on dates after that, understandably, but should OV SULFUR make it to these shores, they’d be well worth your time catching.
Endless is out now via Century Media Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS127 here:
