GROWTH interview online. New album out now.

I spoke with LUKE FRIZON from Melbourne band, GROWTH, about the new album, ​‘The Smothering Arms Of Mercy’, the first in a trilogy of album focusing on the issue of mental health. Press release, videos, and links below.
If you'd prefer to read the interview, click here.

PRESS RELEASE-
​Australia’s progressive music specialists Wild Thing Records recently welcomed Melbourne post-traumatic prog-death metal three piece, Growth, to their label roster. The band plan to release a trilogy of albums, through Wild Thing Records, that explore the very human aspects of connection, trauma, despair, and the fragility of hope.
Growth began as a reflective space for brothers Tristan (guitars/bass/artwork) and Nelson Barnes (drums) who were united after returning to Australia after a decade apart pursuing music overseas. Tristan returned to come to terms with his personal demons and after receiving a mental health diagnosis that hit with closure and terror all at once, he became a recluse. Isolated and debilitated, he expressed his pain through writing. Meanwhile, vocalist Luke Frizon (ex Jack The Stripper) had withdrawn from life to enter a period of recovery after reaching rock bottom, seeking to reconnect with himself and make meaning of hopelessness, trauma and loss.

​A chance meeting on a mutual first outing from respective isolation sparked a discussion about the empathic aspects of music and quickly led to a partnership and Growth was formed.
The result is The Smothering Arms Of Mercy, a claustrophobic narrative of total spiritual collapse written while in psychiatric care and thrown over nine suffocating acts.
The album marks the first part of a trilogy aimed at going beyond expressing emotion - illustrating pathways of recovery while acknowledging the most dread-filled aspects of it. 
Trauma shapes us into grotesque forms, but we can reshape ourselves better. We need the right tools, space, and kindness. Our monsters are horrific, but they are familiar.  Recovery and all its implications, however, are often alien. Recovery appears brutal, extreme, terrifying. And that is why we must tilt towards it.

Recorded in Melbourne, produced and engineered by Growth. Drums engineered by Troy 
McCosker (Ne Obliviscaris) and mixed/mastered by Fredrik Nordström (Opeth, 
The Haunted) in Gothenburg, Sweden, SAOM highlights the extremity of grief and asks the listener to reflect on their relationship with loss and vulnerability. 
Growth represents the flourishing of life even amidst total wreckage. Connection in all its forms, and our constant strive to communicate in a raw manner.  Bare to the world. Visceral and honest. Pain can be the source of your renewal. Learn to greet it as a friend. 

Click the cover to order the album.

The Smothering Arms of Mercy Tracklisting
01. Cigarette Burns
02. The Treatment For Melancholy
03. Fortress Of Flesh And Bone
04. Our Lady Of The Hanging Heart
05. Lead Us To Our Glorious Times
06. Darkly, It Tightens Its Grip
07. Soul Rot
08. Something Follows
09. Gird Your Loved In Armour While Yet You Wither