Caskets Reveal Their Favourite Songs From New Album 'Reflections'

Caskets returned today with their new album, Reflections, and with it, broke the stereotype of the “difficult second album”.

Packed with stunning melodies, emotional and sonic heaviness and a confidence that shines throughout the record, the Yorkshire five-piece effortlessly blend alt-metal and post-hardcore influences.

Having recently visited Australia as the international opening act for Windwaker’s Love In The Dark Australian tour, Caskets are ready to find new fans with their accessible yet dense music.

Kill Your Stereo’s Tyson Beable caught the band at the Brisbane leg of Windwaker’s tour, recalling the “perceptible buzz” amongst the punters who poured into the room just for the UK lads.

Beable’s gig review added, “Caskets didn't disappoint, winning over new fans (including myself) with their electrifying performance. Brisbane gave a hearty welcome to the band, and they returned the favour with a blistering set.”

To celebrate the release of Reflections, out today on Sharptone Records, Kill Your Stereo caught up with guitarist/songwriter Benji Wilson and guitarist Craig Robinson and found out their favourite songs on the record.

SILHOUETTES

• BENJI: One of my favourites off the album is Silhouettes. It’s a very “pop” track, it’s got loads of electronics on it, and it’s in a major key as well. It doesn’t sound quite “happy”, but it’s got tons of vocal hooks. We were struggling to pick what the chorus would be because everything is so catchy in the song. And it’s so well layered; it starts from a slow build and just gradually gets bigger and bigger. It’s definitely not a single vibe, but I think it’s a killer track; people are gonna love it.

HATE ME

• CRAIG: I think the hardest thing for me doing this is not calling the songs by their demo names; I’m still doing it in my head right now! But it’s track #9 on Reflections called Hate Me. Why it’s not a single is completely beyond me, I can already see the music video in my head. Anyway, it’s not. But it’ll be a good surprise for people when they actually get the album in their hands.

• BENJI: It’s a big shift away from our regular sound. It is heavy. And it’s a little bit of a head-bobber. 

TOO LATE

• CRAIG: Another one for me is Too Late, which we’ve been playing on this run so far; it’s the first set of shows where we’ve done the song. And it’s been interesting to see how it goes down because, obviously every other song you play, everyone’s heard it and knows it already. We’ve been playing two of the new songs on this Australian run so far, and Too Late’s been going down really well, which is nice because when you put a new track into a set, you have no idea how it’s gonna go.

• Too Late’s been great, which I thought it would do anyway. A couple of us were like, nah, we can’t play that, no one’s heard it before. But when we’re doing support slots, it was originally like: we’re gonna do the singles, so everybody knows every song. It’s kind of an “automatic win” kind of thing. I guess it was a little bit of a risk to include Too Late, but it’s doing really well.

• BENJI: It’s paid off; it’s got a wall of death moment in it as well, which has been going off.

GUIDING LIGHT

• BENJI: I also have to include Guiding Light. It was the first track we wrote for the album, which was pretty much written while we were doing the drums for Lost Souls. We did that down in the studio somewhere near Birmingham, and I had nothing to do because they were doing drums. So I went: right, I might as well write some more music! And we knew as soon as we got it to the full demo stage that it was definitely gonna be on the next album. We literally didn’t change anything from the demo. It was just like: that is it! That’s the song; there we go. And we always kick our set off with it as well because it’s a nice, bouncy track. I think for me, that’s my favourite one.

MORE THAN MISERY

• CRAIG: I’d include More Than Misery as well. We’ve already put that one out as a single, and it’s also got Telle [Smith] from The Word Alive. When we finished that song, when I first listened to it, I was like…even before we had the guest on it, when we just got everything done, and before we had that section slotted in, it was like: yeah, this has gotta be a single!

• BENJI: It combines all of our elements as well, it’s got electronics in it, and it’s got the heavy stuff there too. We knew we wanted features on the album, but we were debating which ones to put them in. And More Than Misery was the obvious choice because it’s got that big heavy breakdown in it.

• CRAIG: The sickest part about all of that is we got Telle doing the feature on the song, which sounds fucking awesome. It’s so good; it’s sick. And then it comes to doing it live, and everyone’s just like: right, well, you’re gonna have to do that live! And I’m like: cool, it wasn’t good enough for the album, but good enough for live (laughs). So I’ll just get on with that, shall I? Telle’s not available every night.

• BENJI: You do have a lot of screams on the album.

• CRAIG: They are layered. That was a joke, by the way; there was no way I would’ve ever suggested a full screaming section for me to do. No chance! Maybe on the next album, or not at all at this point. That’s too much of a jump (laughs). We made a point of doing the feature on that section because the vocals are so different to what [vocalist] Matt [Flood] does. 

·        BENJI: And I just hope everybody loves the album as much as we do!

Reflections is out now via Sharptone Records. You can listen to the album below.