frozen soul are one of the best up and coming Death Metal bands on the scene today. Their debut Crypt of Ice was widely regarded as one of the best albums of 2021, coupled with their touring presence, a merch game that doesn’t quit, and their wonderfully goofy Wrecking Ball Metal Madness filmed as old-school became concert. The recording was direct to VHS and included transitions that included their own Wraith of Death as well as performances by creeping death And entanglement. Next up is the band’s second album, Glacial Domination.
I spoke to vocalist Chad Green and guitarist Michael Munday about everything from mental illness to the writing process for the new album. We broke down the album almost track by track frozen soul‘s sound comes through in old, new, and sometimes unpredictable ways. You have worked with both trivium‘s Matt Heafy and Gost to get some fresh ideas and even wrote a full synthwave track that can be used as a nice transition between the early and later parts of the album, creating a metamorphosis-like effect. The guys are really excited to hear what their fans have to say about the new record, one that will push the band beyond their normally subarctic and slow-paced comfort zone. Read below for more information.
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Chad, what’s it like spreading the message of mental illness through your music and who are Frozen Soul?
Chad Green: What can I say; it’s something nobody wants to go through. I wanted to talk about mental health issues, some of the things that I and other members of the band struggle with. frozen soul is one of those things we do to help us with things like this. The cold issues help us fight that, even though there’s been a lot of crazy stuff over the past three years. My brother died and one thing led to another and I do that with every single show. My mind just lets my mouth go and speaks from the heart and I appreciate all of you who will be listening.
Y’all super busy, stray dogs, merch and even a direct to VHS show during COVID.
KG: And we’re doing it again; We did two live festivals and the last one we did we filmed and our friend Tanner, who filmed the cutscenes for the original Wrecking Ball Metal Madness, is filming some for this one too. We’re going to do the same thing for an hour to an hour and a half, lots of silly stuff. We had a lot of fun doing it the first time. One of the funnest things we’ve done together.
Their merch game is one of the best out there. I have two of your shirts as they are. My illness is my t-shirt collection; my wife is willing to neuter me due to the sheer amount of clothing i have appropriated over the years.
KG: The same thing. My closet is overflowing. I literally have trash cans of clothes under my bed because I don’t have room for more of them.
I thought Glacial Domination sounded like the next step for the band as a whole and the second half felt like a “cold” suite.
KG: We had a plan to have a mix of songs on the record, like “Wir sind frozen soul, and this is us, and these are some songs where we explore new things. It ended up being very good for the first half of the album and especially the opener of “Invisible Tormentor”. frozen soul Song, and then Arsenal of War, shows a bit of the new sounds, and Death and Glory is an old one frozen soul Rail. “Morbid Effigy” is a bit of both, and then the title track, the first jump we made while recording that, is a bit more melodic. We tried to vary it, but the older stuff was early and the newer stuff was later; As you listen further you will hear more of the mix within each track.
Even the transitions between tracks help respect the slow build of the music and overall intentionality.
KG: In general, we like creating the atmosphere. I’m really looking forward to hearing what the people who buy the vinyl in particular have to say about the record cover to cover. Michael and I have been listening to the album as a single file since mastering. I know we both listened to that religiously. We want to know how it sounds overall. We designed it that way.
Generally I avoid pre-release singles so as not to pollute the overall sound for me.
KG: I’ve often heard from people that they don’t want to listen to the single because they want to hear everything the way it was intended. Social media and the content is something that needs to be there.
In terms of the album, can you shed some light on the leaps you made in the second half of the album as a whole?
<Michael Munday: The two tracks that follow the title track, “Frozen Soul” and “Assimilator” come together as one cohesive piece despite being listed as two separate tracks. We took it and ran with it as far as we could, one of our favorites to pick up.
What makes this suite stand out from anything you’ve recorded before?
MM: How meticulous it is. What we did with the guitars and the vocals—Sometimes we buried the vocals and allowed the guitars to come through and focus on the instrumentation, especially on the solos, which we didn’t have before.
KG: With those two “one track” songs, it was the first thing we did as a concept for something else, in this case John Carpenter’s The Thing. We have some things related to the film that take a different perspective, like revenge, depression, anger, paranoia, all themes from the film and the book. It was a leap forward for us that morphed and became a milestone during recording. Even the samples were made by Gost. It was a place for us to experiment with all of our instruments and explore some themes to give the fans something more than just the word “cold”. We really wanted to deliver frozen soul as a band.
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Frozen Soul_Promo_Shot
Copyright: David Marchbanks
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Speaking of revenge, are we talking Best Served Cold?
KG: “Best Served Cold” is definitely the song that will have you getting yours when the opportunity arises to do business, but not in a reactionary way. Musically this was one of my favorite songs we wrote, one of the first we wrote after Crypt of Ice. Our drive to do something new with the band.
MM: Yes, that was the first completely finished song we had for Glacial Domination.
KG: This song was very similar to one of the first songs we wrote together, which was “Hand of Vengeance”; I think we did better this time. Lyrically things repeat themselves but they change; Show a bunch of thoughts that went into this frozen soul for who we were and for loving writing songs that we love and fans want to hear again and again.
Was there any intention with the last two tracks, “Abominable” and “Atomic Winter” as the last two? What was behind the order of the tracks?
MM: One thing about “Abominable” is that it was a song we co-wrote with Matt Heafy trivium. He brought us the main riff and then we put our spin on it. He helped us develop a fast riff that took us out of our comfort zone. We don’t usually write riffs like that. It was a Wacken-esque stadium track with people singing along with us.
KG: It’s definitely the song that was a challenge for us to write; we’re not used to writing songs like that. We really got obsessed with this song by the end of the day, even though we were initially worried about it. The best thing Matt brought to the table was really showing us our potential as musicians and as people. We can take risks and experiment and incorporate other things into our music and it doesn’t have to be just one thing over and over again just because we’re comfortable doing it. A lot of people I’ve spoken to have hailed this as one of their favorite tracks on the album, which makes me happy, although a little surprised. frozen soul is our life; We’ve suffered to try and do things, so we worry a little when we take risks. I think it turned out great. “Atomic Winter” then starts and it’s a fun song and it has riffs that Michael and I have had for years.
MM: We wrote the first riff before we started recording but the rest is from the Crypt of Ice sessions which we didn’t know what to do with. We needed another slobberknocker from a track that was just plain fun based on the layout of the rest of the album. I jokingly said during recording that it sounds like King Kong vs. Godzilla. So that’s what this song is about.
KG: This was born out of pure fun, just the two of us writing. It was ass fucking in the next few. No structure; it’s death metal; just do what you want. Everything fitted together, so we found a home for it. This song is Crypt of Ice but made more innovative. It turned out great. Sure we wrote it as a clash of the titans, but that’s from the perspective of someone witnessing the carnage. Everything is burning and destroyed, but I welcome this god of destruction.
I know you guys are playing Decibel Metal and Beer Fest on Friday; how do you feel about it
KG: I know that after the show we’re having a listening party at the Brooklyn Bowl next door, an official event for our Berried in Ice beer, a collaboration with 3 Floyds, before we leave for Pittsburgh the next day.
Any final thoughts?
KG: One thing I want to address is the song “Annihilation” which is a full synthwave track. It’s not Death Metal, but it has that spooky 80’s horror vibe. That’s because we were working with some samples and they ended up not working and we were at our producer’s house playing around on the keyboard and this song was born. We added it to the album and kept it as a separate track from Glacial Domination. We really resonated with that and it turned out to be very special, just another sign that we’ve amplified it for this album. I’m really excited about what people have to say about the record.
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Glacial Domination is out May 19 through Century Media.
We also have a magenta/black marble variant of the album available for pre-order on the BV webshop.
Glacial Domination variant
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https://www.invisibleoranges.com/frozen-soul-interview/
