Get ready for your two minutes hate.
Hellmouth, Detroit’s blackened hardcore heathens, are dropping their new album, Gravestone Skylines, on 11/16 and wanted to give us a brief yet throttling listen to one of its tracks, “Exodus.”
But the real news is that the band will be releasing a limited vinyl version of the album with the ashes of a burnt bible pressed into the records. Here’s guitarist Alex Awn:
“The concept of burning a holy book and sending its ashes off to the pressing plant to include in a limited run of the new album presented itself to us when we were in NYC earlier this year. Vinnie [Fiorello, Paper + Plastick Records founder] did some research and found out it could be done, so we were pretty excited about it. As far as we know this is the first of its kind. I’ve heard about a company that presses your own ash into a record after you’ve been cremated but since we’re not dabbling in corpse desecration or body-snatching, a bible would have to suffice.”
“We procured an old German bible from the late 1800’s to sacrifice for the new album. It had scribblings and notes in it that dated it to the turn of the 19th century which was interesting. It was heavy, leather-bound and was sealed w/ a metal clasp. The type was set in a gothic script and it had some 3 color images on the recto pages. There was a lot of craftsmanship and man-hours that went into producing the book. Having said that, I wouldn’t get too misty-eyed on the fine craftsmanship of the book b/c it was the content we were focusing on and the rivers of blood left in its wake. The bible was set up w/ 4 candles representing the members of Hellmouth, we lit the candles, doused the book in gasoline and set it ablaze. The fire looked beautiful as it licked the pages, causing them to curl, wither and give off copious clouds of jesus-smoke. It took a couple hours to get through the huge tome, but eventually it smoldered and we collected the ash to send to Vinnie the following day. The best part of the evening was watching Jeff [Uberti] accidently throw flaming trails of infernal gasoline around my back yard onto dry leaves and grass. Or Jay [Navarro] picking up the burning bible for a photo op. That’s the shit we’ll remember. Fuck the bible, the torah, the qur’an, and the bhagavad gita. No Gods, No Bastards.”
So there you go. These guys won’t be coming to a church near you, but be on the lookout for Gravestone Skylines and some of the most blasphemous vinyl ever released. Hail not Jesus.
