Following the release of their 2016 EP Speak in Tongues, Shawn Tucker and Sean-Patrick Nolan of Toronto post-punk band TRAITRS are preparing to release their first full-length album Butcher’s Coin with the premiere of the gothic rock and cold-wave infused track “The Suffering Of Spiders”.
“We’d talk for hours about certain albums that give you goosebumps, chills, a feeling inside that can’t be explained and we wanted to attempt that”, says singer/guitarist Tucker on capturing the record’s sound and feeling.
With “The Suffering Of Spiders”, TRAITRS were indeed successful in this endeavor; conjuring a classic post-punk bassline into guitars that burn like a midnight frost, or the ember of a clove cigarette.
Ironically, in seeking inspiration for the new album, the duo began to turn away from their classic Goth and post-punk influences and began experimenting with a more electronic sound.
“While writing and recording demos I was listening to a lot of experimental electronic artists,” says keyboardist Nolan. “Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Prurient and Pharmakon were where the inspiration initially came from.”
The result is a dark, mournful album that while still sounding like the bands early influences (The Cure, Sisters of Mercy) has a more industrial edge to it and surprising cinematic influences.
“The concept is that the songs represent an old torturous house and the different hurt filled lives that lived through it for generations, like a collection of loosely connected horror stories. But as the writing progressed the album took a life of its own and became much more like John Carpenter’s In The Mouth of Madness where it played on your darkest emotions and what started as fiction soon the feelings became reality. “
Butcher’s Coin is out May 19th on Pleasence Records, Manic Depression, and Alchera Visions.
