The long awaited full length debut from the Sheffield quartet consisting of Liam Knowles (vocals, bass), Luke Scrivens (vocals, guitars), Adam Kossowicz (drums) and Ari Malekpour (guitars), Erosion / Avulsion is far more than just the complex sum of its myriad parts. Whilst motifs and thoughts of a whole slew of acts such as Deafheaven, Thrice, Oathbreaker, Envy and more coalesce and intertwine, the real wonder of the record lies with how this dynamism articulates the album’s themes. Bound by wonderful lyricism and livened by musical chemistry, this is a record that animates the whole spectrum of emotion. Beauty, pain, horror and everything in-between coalesces fluidly much akin to the genres that serve as the musical foundations of this record. And as result, Erosion / Avulsion ultimately proves to be not just one of the best debuts of 2024, but one of the best albums of all year.
With that in mind, and with Erosion / Avulsion out now via Church Road Records, we got in touch with Liam to break down the record, track by track.
Defanged
Most of the songs happened really organically, but ‘Defanged’ was the only song where we specifically sat down and said “let’s write something really heavy.” Adam uses hammer blasts on this track which are more traditionally found in death metal, and the way it just kicks in with no preamble makes it hit really fucking hard, especially as the opening track. Unintentionally, it has ended up feeling like a bridge between our older material, which was more overtly metal, and our newer material. For that reason, it was the obvious choice for the first single.
Funny story; Adam couldn’t be there for the second day of vocal recording, and we said “don’t worry, we won’t make any drastic changes” but then Luke added that whole clean vocal section at the end on the spot in the studio. That part was originally screamed by me like the rest of the track, but our producer Joe suggested we try something different and he was definitely right because Luke’s section really elevates the song. Lyrically, this one is Luke’s first foray into a more socially-conscious / bordering on political track – it looks at the misdirection of anger and blame towards the most vulnerable in society, for problems caused by those in power.
Death Curl
‘Death Curl’ was inspired by Birds In Row; we wanted to play around with something that felt a bit ramshackle and shuffling like their track ‘Noah’. We built this song around the baritone guitar to give it an additional sense of depth and darkness. It’s the only song on the album where Luke does all of the lead vocals, both the screaming and the singing. It’s also the only track on the album with a guest vocalist. When we were writing the more fast-paced backing vocals in the verses, we had always said that Andy Calderbank from Pleiades would nail those parts because they’re so suited to his almost rap-like delivery, so we were thrilled that he agreed to come into the studio and lend us his voice.
The “death curl” is what happens when a spider dies; it folds in on itself and submits to death. The song expands on this idea of submitting to your struggles, be those personal or societal, as the two are so often intertwined. It’s suggestive of a kind of shame, unhappiness and inability to change anything about the state of the world and the effects of that internally. The album has political songs and it has personal songs, but this one is a little bit of a bridge between them.
Still Sickness
The song that has been through the most changes since its original inception is definitely ‘Still Sickness’. It started out as a much straighter song with a simple, driving rhythm, maybe more akin to a post-metal song. At one point it had a vocoder part! The band is split on this coming back – Ari LOVES the idea, Luke HATES it, Adam and I are indifferent. The bare bones of this song actually came from a solo song that Luke wrote when he was much younger, but then we added blastbeats and gang vocals and secret hidden polyrhythms (thanks Ari) to make it the song what it is today. Lyrically, this song is about coming out the other side of a mental health crisis but being aware that it’s still looming; Luke illustrated this beautifully with the metaphor of having clawed out of the earth, but still being caked in dirt.
Related: Hidden Mothers – Erosion / Avulsion | Album Review
Caton Green
‘Caton Green’ is a tone poem to the lush green landscape of the Lune Valley in Lancashire where Ari’s late mother grew up. It wasn’t always supposed to be an instrumental, and actually started life as something a lot scrappier and more screamo-adjacent, but once it took shape it didn’t feel like it needed vocals. Instead, we used a Sigur Rós-esque lead piano part to add colour and shape to the song. Mostly it was born out of Ari really wanting to build a song using particle reverb, which he hadn’t used since ‘Beneath, To The Earth’ on our debut EP. This is a fun one for me because there’s bass tapping, which is difficult to sneak into our sad songs!
The Grey
The vast majority of the time, our songs start out with an idea from Luke which then gets built upon by the rest of us. Guitars-wise, Ari always says “Luke is melody, I’m harmony” but on ‘The Grey’ we swapped those roles around and Ari wrote the majority of the song. Luke actually really struggled with this change in dynamic at first, but we think we’ve ended up with a really interesting centrepiece for the album. There’s lots of chugs, odd time signatures, and pick scrapes in here, mostly because Ari was listening to a lot of Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza when he wrote it. There’s even a little bit of slap bass! Fun fact; when we play this live, Adam improvises the drum part in the middle section each time, so if you’ve seen us more than once in the last year or so you’ve likely heard multiple slightly different versions of this song. Lyrically, Luke views this as a sort of sister piece to ‘Defanged’ as the two songs deal with very similar themes.
Grandfather
‘Grandfather’ is almost definitely the biggest swing on the album, and the song that will likely surprise people the most. Originally, Luke had written this song for himself and he played it to us at practice, where we all fell in love with it and pleaded with him to include it on the record. He recorded it live, singing and playing at the same time, which makes it feel really organic and authentic. Originally it was going to be recorded on a steel resonator guitar, but that felt a little too on the nose in the end.
The song was born out of Luke doing a deep-dive on his family history and the working class struggles they all lived through – the workhouses, the migrations searching for work, the pits and back breaking jobs in industry. It is essentially an imaginary conversation between Luke and his ancestors – his grandad, Billy Scrivens, is the one specifically referenced by the song’s title. He was a shaftsman in the mines of North Staffordshire (AKA The Potteries) from the 1950s until the 1980s. It asks the question – is the world / my life now what you were working towards? Is it what you imagined it would be, or is it better / worse?
Violet Sun
‘Violet Sun’ also started out as a much softer song in an open tuning, based around a simple chord pattern, but was made more tense and foreboding by instead choosing to hang on one that chord for so long. Ari’s lead guitar part also loops for pretty much the entire song which adds to the oppressive, uncomfortable vibe of the track. We actually wrote the entire song and then wrote the intro last, which was unusual for us, and when recording it we realised that Ari’s old man wrists can’t handle that fast palm-muted part so he has “adapted” it for the live setting. Luke wrote the lyrics to this one in a single sitting and views it as a sort of internal dialogue.
I reckon this is our most vocally-complex song, as it has a bit of everything. Cleans from Luke, screaming from me, gang vocals, call-and-response parts, even a sort of choral part at the end which was lots of fun to record. Lyrically, this is probably the most personal song Luke has ever written, but it has ironically ended up being the most-memed – if you had the Violet Sun cider at ATG 2023, or the Violet Hun ice-cream sundae at ATG 2024 you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about. There are no guest vocals on the album version, but the end part of this song really lends itself to having guest vocalists join us on stage for it. We’ve had Andy from Pleiades do it, we’ve had Ed from Copse / Devil Sold His Soul do it, who knows who we’ll rope in throughout 2025!
Haze
‘Haze’ is the oldest song on the album – we’ve been playing it live since 2021! We played a version of ‘The Grey’ back then as well but that one has changed a lot since then, whereas ‘Haze’ has remained in its original form. It’s the song that really showcases the extremes of what we do, as it starts out incredibly soft and delicate, but ends with the most intense and overblown part we’ve ever written. Adam’s fast drumming in the mid-section really gave this song an unexpected direction, as I think it would have been easy to keep the pace down given how it starts. Ari has also snuck loads of hidden jazz into this one, he was listening to a lot of Metronomy at the time and stole a few chords from them to make his parts really shine.
It was interesting to see this song in particular come together in the studio because of how much subtle textural stuff is in there, that we maybe hadn’t really appreciated when just playing it at practice or at shows. Lyrically, this song is about the relentlessness of a disordered mind. It was the obvious choice for the last song on the album – how could we follow that monolithic ending? It also makes for an excellent set closer – we will likely end our gigs with this song for as long as it stays in the set.