Primeval

Editors’ Notes After delivering two well-received full-lengths, UK death metal upstarts Venom Prison decided to revisit their earliest material. Both originally released in 2015, the Defy the Tyrant and The Primal Chaos EPs captured the first compositions from the band, but didn’t quite hold up for the members over time. “We were kind of just falling out of love with our old songs,” vocalist Larissa Stupar tells Apple Music. “I think that happens to a lot of bands when they develop as musicians and songwriters—you think that your old songs just aren’t as good. So we had the idea to rerecord them and make them sound the way we always dreamt they could.” As such, Primeval features rerecordings of the all the songs from both EPs, plus two brand-new tracks. Below, Stupar takes us on a trip down memory lane.

Usurper of the Throne
“This is the first song that Venom Prison has ever written, and it was written in mine and [guitarist] Ash's living room. We lived together in Germany at that time, and Ash just recorded the guitars for it in the living room, so it was really loud and I'm surprised the neighbors never said anything. I think we have a lot of feelings about this song because this is what started this whole journey. We never really anticipated to be where we are right now with the band. This is the beginning.”

Life Suffer
“This song was inspired by Leo Tolstoy. I've suffered with depression for a long time, and sometimes you feel like living is just suffering. That kind of links to Samsara, our last LP, as well. So we live this constant life of suffering and it's just so overwhelming sometimes that you feel that there is absolutely no meaning in your existence. This is basically what this song is about.”

Mortal Abomination
“This one was really fun to record again—especially for the guys, because they changed some of the guitar bits and it was one of the main songs that we were able to improve. And when I was recording the vocals, it was just so amazing to hear the quality of the song for the first time. But this song is, again, just about how abominable life is.”

Path of Exile
“This one is about finding your path in life. Before starting Venom Prison, myself and Ash used to be in hardcore bands—Wolf Down, which is the band I played in, and Ash played in Brutality Will Prevail. We just separated from those bands a couple of months before we started writing songs for Venom Prison. So this is about just finding yourself again and finding what you really want to achieve in your own life, and just separating from everything that held you back in the past and moving forward.”

Defy the Tyrant
“Ever since Venom Prison has been a thing, we’ve managed to incorporate these religious themes. I'm an atheist, but I grew up in a Christian household. My parents are Protestants, so I had to study the Bible for my confirmation and things like that. I always found the Bible really interesting, even though I don't believe in God or any other supernatural beings. As an anarchist as well, the belief in a higher being and the belief in God is kind of a way to enslave yourself on this planet. So this song is basically about the torture of religion and everything that especially Christianity has brought, from the Crusades to colonialism to just completely destroying life.”

Babylon the Whore
“I always love playing it live, and rerecording it has meant a lot to me because that was the first song that we recorded when we did the Primal Chaos EP. That year I moved from Germany to the UK and was readapting to everything. In the Bible, the Whore of Babylon is basically this woman that is destroying everything holy by seducing everyone with riches and alcohol and drugs. But for me, Babylon the Whore is the liberator from religion. She’s a figure that I always thought of as being this strong woman that saves us from the lies of God.”

Daemon Vulgaris
“Musically, this song is heavily inspired by Carcass. They’re definitely one of my top three favorite bands ever. So we just wanted to go further with the whole UK death metal thing, and just being inspired by Carcass is something that’s come out of it. The song is about how we as humans destroy this planet and assume it will live on.”

Narcotic
“‘Narcotic’ is basically about people who believe everything they're being fed by the media and the government, and they’re just not questioning anything. I think it's quite dangerous if you don't have a critical mind—you should always question everything, especially if it's the media or the government. Don't just believe and follow blindly.”

The Primal Chaos
“This is another song that I always used to really enjoy playing live—but we haven’t really played it since we released Animus, I believe. So it's been a while, and this is another one that I would love to play again. The song is about how everything that we know as a capitalist society comes from greed, and that capitalist ideas have destroyed this planet and basically corrupted humanity. So the ‘primal chaos’ is the start of all evil, basically.”

Defiant to the Will of God
“This is a new song, and it’s about abortion. It’s a pro-choice song. I think it’s really important that women have the choice and the opportunity to terminate a pregnancy, especially if it's unwanted. And in any circumstance, I think women should have the right to decide over their own bodies. And I think that anyone who is pro-life and is not vegan is a hypocrite, because if you think that all life is sacred, then the life of all animals should be as well.”

Slayer of Holofernes
“As I said before, I like taking figures and stories from the Bible and giving them the meaning that I think they have for myself. Judith, the slayer of Holofernes, is someone who is not really talked about, and I feel like in religion and Christianity, we tend to forget about these female protagonists that are actually pretty brutal and really cool. She basically went and risked her life and seduced this tyrant who was about to destroy her whole city and kill everyone—and she cut his head off. Which is pretty fucking sick, if you ask me. She’s definitely a hero. For me, she’s another feminist figure.”