Asheville, North Carolina outfit Mo’ynoq have spent the final decade dispelling the parable that black metallic solely comes out of the frozen north, infusing their model of USBM with an environment that recollects their residence within the southern United States. Three years after their final launch, 2022’s A Place for Ash, Mo’ynoq are again in motion and so they introduced buddies, fellow Asheville black metallic trio Urocyon.
Each side of the cut up have a distinctly American sound, drawing their influences from USBM stalwarts Krallice, Ash Borer and Nachtmystium. Listeners searching for tight, no-bullshit black metallic will discover lots to understand on Mo’ynoq and Urocyon’s new cut up, which you’ll stream under forward of its April 18 impartial launch. Decibel additionally spoke with each bands to get deeper perception into the writing and recording course of.
It’s been roughly three years since both band launched new music. Have each of you been engaged on these songs since your final launch?
Mo’ynoq: Sorta. This band usually writes as a collective so items of those songs had been floating round our rehearsal house for a number of months, nevertheless it wasn’t till we had this cut up as a purpose that they had been totally developed.
Urocyon: Now we have. Our songwriting course of is a bit sluggish resulting from obligations in our private lives, and we can be perfectionists. The Sentient Curse was initially written for our previous band, Shadow of the Destroyer, however we by no means recorded it and solely performed it reside as soon as earlier than we disbanded. Urocyon determined to exhume and rework it for our three-piece setup, which took a while to grasp.
How did this cut up come to be? Are Urocyon and Mo’ynoq simply two bands that exist in shut proximity to 1 one other?
Mo’ynoq: We’ve been discussing doing a cut up with these dudes since earlier than Urocyon’s former mission, Shadow of the Destroyer, disbanded. When Dave Kaminsky joined on guitar in November of 2023, this grew to become a approach for us to be taught to jot down collectively and collaborate with our Appalachian boys concurrently.
Urocyon: We grew to become good buddies with Mo’ynoq round 6 or 7 years in the past by our previous band, in order that they had been excited and supportive when Urocyon got here to be. We reside throughout the state from one another, however play reveals collectively as usually as we will and have talked about doing a cut up collectively for years; it simply took some time to come back to fruition.
Urocyon, that is solely your second launch. Do you continue to really feel such as you’re discovering your musical identification?
Urocyon: To be trustworthy, not likely. The three of us have been taking part in music collectively since 2011, so we had a reasonably strong thought of what we wished to do with Urocyon.
What are the songs on this cut up about? Are the 2 sides thematically associated?
Mo’ynoq: Our songs on this cut up broaden on quite a lot of the themes we usually deal with: particular person struggling and abnegation as a way of grappling with the issues which might be past our management. Our mutual motivation for this cut up was to showcase black metallic from North Carolina whereas working with our buddies.
Urocyon: No, there’s no theme between every band’s songs. That might’ve been cool, however the primary causes behind doing this cut up had been to do a launch with buddies’ bands that we each love and to spotlight NCBM usually. Our songs are each primarily about man’s wanton destruction of the earth and its eventual inevitable ecological collapse.”
