Canada’s All Else Fails recently unleashed their EP The Incident At Black Lake, one of the darkest records they’ve ever written, it comes from a place of despair and torment as vocalist/guitarist Barrett Klesko battled with his inner demons. The music video for the latest single “Devour The Sun” ft. Seedy Mitchell (Sleepwraith, ex-All Else Fails) is an allegory about Klesko's descent, rending the spaces between conscious suffering and unconscious turmoil. 

He explains the track in more detail:

“A child from a beautiful nameless place travels across existence. It was born in warmth and life, from an engine of creation, and its only need is to share who it is with whatever it comes in contact with. The child drifts, older now, and comfortable at first to be pulled along by the forces around it, buffeted across the ether, fulfilled by the simple act of experience. Over time, however, discontent begins to grow. Who was it? There must be a purpose beyond drifting endlessly in the black. Its questions turn to screams and cries in the heavens, but the black has no answers. Eventually, devoid of solace, its voice becomes quiet and its mind despondent. Musically this song follows an unconventional narrative. It ebbs and flows, thrash riffs turn to piano-esque clean parts. Soaring melodies devolve into full-bodied guttural torment before becoming ethereal whispers.”

“Devour The Sun” is about losing one’s purpose, becoming adrift and formless, buffeted by the uncontrollable winds of the common world, and unable to find solid footing. It is being swept into the wild, so far from one’s roots that they are barely a twinge of traumatic memory in the maw of the unknown. It is loud, it is quiet. It follows its own unusual structure while pulling the listener along its flow.

On this new EP, All Else Fails wrote until they felt that this selection of songs was complete, and then went into the studio. It’s much more personal lyrically, more direct, and in our current era, more relatable. There is a lot of chaotic energy in the recording, but they have placed every distorted chug, every strange gurgle, detuned synth, erratic glitch, or doom-inducing bass drop carefully.

The Incident At Black Lake is out now; order on Bandcamp.

Tracklisting:

“I, Defiler”
“The Corpse Inside”
“Flesh/Excess/Wealth”
“Crystal Mountain”

“Flesh/Excess/Wealth”:

All Else Fails live:

September
17 – Red Deer, AB – The Vat 

(Photo Credit - Barrett Klesko – FadeBack Studios United)