Few albums feel as raw, unfiltered, and emotionally immediate as A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared by Low Before The Breeze. Blending elements of screamo, black metal, and harsh noise, the record is more than just a sonic statement. It’s a reckoning. In our conversation, the band reflects on transforming personal trauma into art, navigating themes of religious guilt, grief, and abuse, and the catharsis found in creating something so brutally honest. What follows is a candid look into the heart of an album that doesn’t flinch.
ATN: A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared draws from incredibly personal experiences. How did you navigate turning those moments into music without feeling exposed?
LBTB: To tell you the truth, that feeling of exposure is present; when these songs were just things played live there was a sense of anonymity, but now that the music is in the wild in a permanent sense it feels very different. There was a lot of thought put into how much of myself I wanted to share lyrically, but at the end of the day it was almost as if I couldn’t NOT write about these aspects of my life.
ATN: How did the themes of religious guilt and personal loss influence the sonic choices on the record?
LBTB: That’s an interesting question! I think the cinematic and frantic moments can both draw from those themes for sure; it almost feels natural to attempt to convey such large themes with large musical moments. But the largest direct impact sonically would be on the track “Keep His Name Sacred and Pure”, which was built around a poem I wrote in the hospital while waiting for my father to come out of a life saving surgery – the words were cut up to create a beat, so in a sense this track was built around grief.
ATN: Was there a track that felt ‘the most emotionally difficult’ or perhaps the most necessary to write?
LBTB: “Collected Messages of Abuse” ticked both of those boxes. There was a lot of mental anguish spent by the entire band over if it was appropriate to include actual voice messages of the person who had abused me, but in the end it felt important to take back that piece from her and put everything out into the open. I feel so lucky to have bandmates that supported me not only in writing the song, but also in standing behind the creative decision.
ATN: “Cadaver Synod” and “Night Wept” both dig into intense themes. Can you talk about what brought those songs into focus for the band?
LBTB: “Cadaver Synod” was the original title of the record, and a song that truthfully did not want to be written – it probably took 15 months to finally be considered “completed”. Lyrically, it really encapsulates all of the themes of the record, the themes of the rest of the songs were birthed out of relation to that one track.
“Night Wept” on the other hand, was written about as easily as any song of ours has been – over the course of a few weeks the band just chopped away at the initial ideas until we had something we felt proud about. Lyrically, the song deals with a very isolating and personal moment, but again, it’s that support of the entire band that allows me to feel comfortable enough to talk about something so painful openly.
ATN: The title A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared is vivid. What does that image represent to you?
LBTB: The title serves as a metaphor for the time period of healing that came after some traumatic events in my life. Essentially the idea was that I spent a period of time isolated and finding myself in the wake of said events, and eventually was able to emerge from “my hole” and reintegrate into the world.
ATN: You brought in several guest vocalists for this record. What made you want to collaborate, and how did you choose who to bring in?
LBTB: We are lucky to have a lot of very talented friends, many of whom have vocal ranges far beyond that of anyone in our band. There’s something special about having a friend deliver a line you have written and allowing them the freedom to impart their style in a way that you would have never imagined on your own.
ATN: Sasha Schilbrack-Cole contributed both vocals and the cover art. What’s the relationship between the music and that visual piece?
LBTB: Sasha has long been a favorite artist of ours, and has even tattooed me a couple of times. He worked closely with us to create art that represented the lyrics and general vibe of the songs, and we are all incredibly stoked on how it turned out. The art piece so starkly represents the feelings of romantic dissonance that come up often in the lyrics, and really serves to enhance everything into a cohesive piece.
ATN: What was it like working with Conner Ray, Simon Small, and Erol Ulug on the production side? Did they push you in any unexpected ways?
LBTB: Each of these folks deserve an award for how much patience they had with us along this process. We have tracked with Conner at Sobek Sound before, but never anything as encompassing as a full length record. His guidance helped us achieve a level of performance that we otherwise would not have been able to pull out of ourselves.
Simon is a literal mastermind when it comes to mixing – he went over and beyond to bring our performances to life and allow them to be perceived in new and interesting ways. We cannot sing him / Tunnel of Reverb enough praise, nor will we ever stop.
Erol’s work mastering brought everything to life and he did it efficiently and with little need for notes. I can’t imagine any reason we would want to work with anyone else in this regard.
ATN: You’re known to blend screamo, black metal, and harsh noise. How do you balance those elements while still keeping things cohesive?
LBTB: For us it is just a process of “what sounds good?”. There isn’t a lot of thought into what kind of part or song we want to do, but instead it’s more of an attempt to create something that we would want to listen to ourselves. As a group, we have a wide range of interests, from harsh noise to Americana to hip-hop, and those things tend to have a way of making an appearance naturally.
ATN: How important was it for you to preserve the raw live energy in the studio, and what were the biggest challenges in capturing that?
LBTB: Our live show is something that is very important to us, and up until this record we have always felt that it was the big thing that differentiated us from similar bands. Being more comfortable in the studio this time around really allowed us to focus on bringing a similar energy into our recordings this time around, and (fingers crossed) I hope that it translates for the listener the same way that it has for us when we’ve listened back.
ATN: Do you see this album as a kind of closure, or does it open new doors artistically or personally?
LBTB: Speaking as the lyricist, finally getting this out into the world does provide some sense of closure – I made a decision to craft a record around some of the worst experiences of my life and that has in effect forced me to confront those moments on a nearly daily basis. I would be lying if I said that it hadn’t taken some sort of toll on me, but in the end I think it was a positive experience.
ATN: You’ve mentioned personal trauma as a creative driver. Has your relationship with those experiences changed through making this record?
LBTB: The more that you confront something, like an experience with domestic abuse, the more you’re able to process that moment. For myself, the amount of time spent discussing it, be it with bandmates, in interviews, with loved ones, etc., has led to an ability to remain calmer when thinking back on them than I ever had been before I started this process.
ATN: Looking forward, how do you envision Low Before the Breeze evolving from here, both sonically and thematically?
LBTB: We are so excited for where things will go from here. Creating a full length record felt like such a hurdle, and now that we have done it almost anything feels possible. We look forward to expanding our sound beyond our basic influences, and digging further into what interests each of us individually and as a collective. Speaking for myself, I would love to delve further into the electronic and noise related elements of our sound. Where we will go thematically is still vague, but it will continue to be a case study of how we perceive the painful parts of the world around us.
SAME 3 QUESTIONS WE ALWAYS ASK
ATN: Artist / band that you feel is the most underrated and why?
LBTB: There is no reason that Billy Woods is not the largest musician on the planet, I refuse to stop talking about his art until he is.
ATN: Artist / band that you would like to collaborate with and why?
LBTB: We have a dream of working with Edmonton based lo-fi artist, The Exit Bags. Aside from being fans of his two records, it would just be very cool to merge two drastically different styles of music and see what comes out.
ATN: Artist / band that you would like to tour with and why?
LBTB: We will take as many tours with fellow Atlanta band, Apostle, as they will give us. We adore their music, we adore them, and the seven of us just have fun together.
Read our review of A Hole Beneath The Home We Shared HERE.
