The Colorado-based Excommunion were one of the too many unsung heroes of the underground ‘dark’ death metal scene. MIA after only one monstrous full-length, ‘Superion’ in 2001, their vocalist Christopher ‘Christbutcher’ Clark moved to Finland in January 2007 after a tentative reunion with his first proper band Dethroned fell apart. But in no way did this mean he gave up completely.
“I started looking the very day we had set it in stone that we were emigrating. I emailed like-minded musicians who were in the area and eventually put together our first line-up, although it seemed at first that the north Savonia region in the middle of Finland was the wrong place to play death metal!”
Even if it took Maveth three years to come up with their first EP (‘Of Serpent And Shadow’), that recording and its follow-up ‘Impious Servant’ proved to be of such high-level that they soon got re-released together on one single CD by Nuclear Winter Records in 2011. And with their now first proper full-length, ‘Coils Of The Black Earth’, ready to hit the stores later this year through Dark Descent, Christbutcher feels he’s come full circle.
“At first, I made a conscious decision to use all the old riffs I had floating around that never fit my past projects,” he says. “You can really talk about ‘total old school worship’ since some of the riffs trace back to 1992-94. The opening salvo for ‘Forge Of Gadrial’ was written when I was 14 years old! But, as time progressed I also spoke with some of my old band mates and got permission to use unrecorded riffs from those projects as well. So, in the end, I guess it’s a bit of a mix of absolutely everything I’ve done in the past, while still retaining its own identity.”
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