Track By Tracks: Sumeru - Summon Destroyer (2018)

1. Inanis Kultus:

Inanis Kultus is my shitty latin (maybe wrong!) translation of ‘Void Cult’. Its a kind of cheap way (done on purpose!) of describing the characters of this album, their understandings and how they see the world. 

In a way I wanted to be clear about what sort of void and emptiness were talking about on this album and I didn’t want things to come across in a nihilistic way. This track sounds dark as shit but its neither a negative nor positive intro, its just stating a view, and so the chanting here is of a Buddhist text, ‘The Heart of The Perfection of Wisdom Sutra’. 

It talks about the emptiness of all phenomena and their constituents, that nothing has an inherent self nature or is separate from everything else (among other things!).  For me its pointing to reality, to enlightenment, to the essence of 'Summon Destroyer’ and how amazing this insane universe is. Painfully all embracing. 

2. The Temple:

This is a pretty old song for us now, still within that kind of stoner metal big riff domain. We added some stuff in before and after we recorded the bulk of the song to darken it up, but its pretty much in that big riff territory still. It usually opens our set when we play live.

  

Regarding the words, I write a lot of lyrics based on my Zen meditation practice and my interest in the various meditative traditions and lyrically here I use a lot of the traditional Chinese Zen language.

Its hard to explain, but maybe if you can read the words from a state where your mind, or consciousness, was not in any way separate from the entire universe, then you can kind of start to understand it all, Im trying to write from that realisation. In this track were again laying some context/foundation for the rest of the album. Were at the 'Temple of our Essential Nature’, about to set off on this journey.  

  

3. Summon Destroyer:

Probably the best written song on the album in my opinion. Its starting to explore more of that blackened sound, has some heavy doom parts but its still melodic. It has plenty of cool riffs and doesn’t ever get boring, at least for me! Here the characters of the album are really brought forth in this kind of ritual sacrifice of life. This is us really, moment to moment, but we don’t realise impermanence as simply just how things are. We’ve made death and decay an outcast, we’ve built a wall around it, as the lyrics say. If we can summon this as a truth of the nature of life, then were free. That kind of explains the cover artwork too I guess. Theres all this death and decay being embraced and in the background theres these beautiful clouds with some light shining through.   

4. Embrace The Cold:

In writing the lyrics here I wanted to bring out a realm of decay and ruin characterised by those feelings of mysterious that we sometimes feel for certain events.

It may be something as simple as sitting by a fire, but that moment can have great depth if were open enough. Modernity kinda shuns such sensibilities and I believe that a lack of awareness leads to ignorance, so I wanted to write something about embracing our more ‘mysterious' side. We have this image of some darkened character sitting by a hearth in a hut on some wintery moor and the songs always asking if we can hear and feel the deeper mystery in the midst of this scene.   

5. Kala Ratri:

A short midway album interlude that relates directly to the following track, 'Durga! Durga!’. Kala Ratri is one of the forms the goddess Durga can take. As its also a destructive form, its again bringing it back to one of the themes of the album, of time eating away everything. Kala Ratri also has connotations of darkness and night, so its bringing the second part of the album to daylight in a way, and moving into the more positive light of what Durga is all about. 

6. Durga! Durga!

Quite a brutal track in parts but it still has a expansive quality to it that kind of embodies the Durga calling in this song. As mentioned before, Durga is a goddess. She is a positive force, and I think that comes through in the post-metalish parts of the song. You’ll also find some double kick sections thats kinda new to our sound and the big chug section kinda reminds me of Bolt Thrower somehow, which is fuckin great, cause we sound nothing like them. I guess the message here is that out of darkness comes immense power and initiative, so don’t be afraid of your dark side, embrace it.  

7. Rivers of Lethe:

Little bit of a Motorhead tribute in this one. I wanted more of a D-beat vibe here but the verses came out sounding a little more cleaner, but what can you do! the breakdown sounds huge, I really dig that riff a lot. 

Lyrically I’ve started to play around with more Euro ‘Pagan’ themes. Maybe the first time I’ve done this. 

The 'Rivers of Lethe' is a great metaphor for ignorance and they’re also know as the ‘Rivers of Unmindfulness’, which I like also. 

Were carried away by so much bullshit in our lives and in so many ways were lost, at least especially at this point in our human develop. Not completely lost, but were pretty fucked. 

8. A New Ritual:

This is a tricky one for me lately, because I wrote these lyrics long ago and added in things over the years, then Matt took the lyrics and arranged it in his special way, and I think he really brought it to life.

I originally wrote this song for a woman and he’s kinda brought it back to that in a way that points to a turning towards the divine feminine and embracing that force. It seems Side B deals a lot with feminine energy now that Im reflecting on it.

Musically we’ve got a bit of Sabbath worship here with some Dirty Three vibes coming in on the intro to the song too. I actually wish we fuzzed out the guitars a little more in the chorus, and just went a tad bit more overboard, but its a great presentation of a kind of old Sumeru song nonetheless.