Cursed Earth Take Us Through Their Star-studded New Mixtape

Featuring guest vocalists from members of Kublai Khan, Justice For The Damned, Make Them Suffer, The Amity Affliction, Venom Prison, Cast Down and Aversions Crown, the latest release from WA outfit Cursed Earth, The Deathbed Sessions, is huge.

Guitarist Kieran Molloy took us through the band’s mixtape track by track.

Fear (feat. Matt Honeycutt, Kublai Khan)

The original demo for this song was called Beast Mode. I sent this song and Tyranny Forever to Matt to choose his song, but it was very obvious that Fear was perfect for him. He called in a favour with a mate and wrote the lyrics and tracked at Suite 2E in Austin, Texas. Doing a video across different continents seemed like a cool challenge so we got Matt to perform his song and we green screened him as an apocalyptic demon king for the music video.

Rock Bottom (feat. Nick Adams, Justice For The Damned)

When I moved to Sydney I started demoing songs with Nick Adams. We recorded guide vocal tracks for Tyranny Forever, Torch, Burn and wrote and recorded Rock Bottom together. We were both in a similar situation at the time, having lost members of our bands who had let us down, so we vented about it and moved on.

Deathbed (feat. Booka Nile & Sean Harmanis, Make Them Suffe)

Around the time that we started searching for a new vocalist, early 2018, I was talking with Sean about how we planned on moving Cursed Earth forward. We were auditioning with vocalists all over Australia and because of the limited amount of time I had to spend in each place, it seemed like a good idea to come in to sessions with some songs written. 

We decided to sit down together and throw ideas around. During the first three or four sessions we wrote Tyranny Forever and an unreleased alternate version of Fear called War. Sean heard the demo for Deathbed and asked if he could take it home and write lyrics for it on his own time. When he sent his demo through the first thought was how cool it was and how much it sucked that no one would get to hear a final version of his song with his vocals. That was the genesis of the whole project. The final version with both Sean and Booka was recorded during the sessions for Make Them Suffer’s single 27.

Torch (feat. Joel Birch, The Amity Affliction)

Torch came together really late. We really liked the demo but it didn't feel like it fit with the rest of the songs we were releasing. It structurally was more of a "standard" Cursed Earth song than the others and we were struggling with an angle for it that would feel interesting. 

We had finished the record and handed the masters to our label when our manager Adrian was talking to Joel and mentioned that we were working on a mixtape and that Matt was on it. Matt and Joel are boys from doing the last Warped Tour together and I think he was excited about the idea. Joel hit us up about halfway through the Misery US tour and offered to jump on something. He sent through some lyrics he'd been writing, which became the verses of the song. The idea was interesting to us because it was such a curveball from what most people would expect from Joel.
I sat down with Nick Adams and mapped out some phrasing, the choruses and a hook and he ended up recording it a couple weeks later on the Sunshine coast at Heliport Studios.

Tyranny Forever (feat. Larissa Stupar, Venom Prison)

When we split with our vocalist, we still had shows booked with Parkway Drive, as well as Hyperfest, Unify and Download Fest. We'd already discussed internally about having Larissa guest vocal on one of the album tracks when we were finished writing so a mutual friend put us in contact to discuss whether she was interested in coming to Australia to fill in for the remaining shows we had booked. A few of the shows decided it wasn't worth keeping us on so it ended up not being viable but everyone was still excited to do something. Tyranny Forever ended up being recorded during the sessions for Venom Prison’s new album, Samsara.

Operation (feat. Jack McDonald, Cast Down)

This song and Burn were our audition songs and both have versions recorded in every major city in Australia. I'd written and recorded the vocals for it on the same day as the first demo was done and lyrically it never really changed. This version was recorded with Jack on the Sunday of Unify weekend 2018 in Lochlan Watt's lounge room in Melbourne. Jack’s band Cast Down are one of the most interesting hardcore bands to come out of Australia in a few years so it's cool to give him some shine on this alongside some heavyweights.

Burn (feat. Mark Poida, Aversions Crown)

Burn went through many iterations with many vocalists but Mark was the person we kept coming back to. He absolutely dominated our performance at Unify last minute in 2018 and the song seemed to be tailored for him. He ended up recording it in about 30 minutes in his bedroom.