Ov Sulfur’s Chase Wilson Talks Debut LP ‘The Burden Ov Faith’ (INTERVIEW)

Photo credit: Blaqk Rabbit

Las Vegas-based Blackened Deathcore band Ov Sulfur are gearing up to release their debut full-length album, The Burden Ov Faith, via Century Media Records on March 24th. They have previously released the 2021 EP Oblivion. While the new album is not a departure from their previous work, it is something of a statement of identity and carries a degree of seriousness in its themes that suggest a band who has made strides in terms of self-knowledge. It’s also a collection of songs that brings in some lively collaboration from friends such as Alex Terrible, Left to Suffer’s Taylor Barber, Howard Jones of Light the Torch, and more.

Far from being a stripped-down debut, Burden Ov Faith feels like it’s carefully and fully orchestrated and collaboration just adds to that feeling of intention and craftsmanship. The band have also released a series of videos so far supporting singles and have continued to collaborate with MM Custom Fabrications on bringing forth emotional and harrowing visual art to accompany their tracks. With a current lineup of Ricky Hoover on vocals, Chase Wilson on guitar and vocals, Ding on bass, and Leviathvn on drums, they’ve also started playing live shows with very full sets drawing from their EP and new album. I spoke with Chase Wilson about the development of their debut full-length, orchestration, and collaboration with other artists. 

Hannah Means-Shannon: When you put your first EP together, did you start by recording singles or did you dive right into making a whole EP?

Chase Wilson: We kind of knocked the singles out first, then jumped into recording the rest and put it all together. We released three singles before putting out the six-song EP. 

HMS: That makes a lot of sense, particularly when it comes to logistics of getting people together in a studio. I’m aware that must not have been easy when putting together this full album over the past couple of years, not to mention making several big videos with the band together. Is everyone local?

CW: No, actually. Our EP lineup was all local, so it was easier to get people in a room. For this one, we have people from all over. Our bass player is in Arizona, our drummer is in Pittsburgh, our new touring guitar player is in Virginia. Me and Ricky are here in Vegas. It’s been a lot of remote business sending things back and forth.

HMS: Someone in the band must be a planner and organizer! [Laughs]

CW: You’re looking at him! Between me and our manager, we kind of organize everything together. I feel like I have more control over my band than over my life sometimes. Luckily, I’m a good planner. It’s hard, but we get it done.

HMS: I feel like this is quite a serious album in many ways. I don’t think any one track was just a fun idea. They all seem to have a forward-facing idea or emotion that you’re trying to get across. I think you’re also making a statement about yourselves as a band. Did you feel that way when you were writing it?

CW: Whenever I write music, it’s always an outlet for me. I’m always feeling what I’m writing. You can tell if I was angry. You can tell if I was frustrated. You can tell if I was sad. The last few years for me have been both great and terrible for me at the same time. Stuff with the band has been going awesome and I couldn’t be any happier with that. But there have been things in my personal life I wasn’t as stoked about. I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t use music as an outlet. I think about how I feel and what want to convey when I’m writing. 

Ricky, being the lyricist, actually picked up on a lot of those emotions very well. A vocalist’s job is to do that and portray his message in the songs, but he kind of hit the nail on the head for all of these songs, which was kind of nuts. 

HMS: There is a close relationship between the lyrics, the vocals, and the music on these songs. They each focus on a particular state of mind. Did you bring up key ideas to Ricky or was it just his reactions to the music?

CW: It was all his reactions to the music. With “Earthen,” you can tell there’s a sadness and a somberness about it, and he used that as a tribute to his nephew, who died from cancer. To pick that for that song was exactly right. He did very well with his choices for lyrics. That was the first song I actually wrote for this album. 

HMS: I was wondering about that song since I wasn’t totally sure of the situation. Obviously, at the end of the video for that song, we see real photographs of young people and tributes to them. We see some information about different medical organizations. That song feels like a tragedy anyway. I can see why it fit well. Are you all hoping that it will raise conversations or discussions about childhood illnesses? Or just give people a chance to think and talk about what they’ve been through losing loved ones?

CW: Yes, absolutely. Ricky, at the end of the day, just wanted to give his nephew a tribute. He had actually been out of music for a very long time, and he had said that he wanted to do a tribute to his nephew if he ever got the chance to do music again. He said that a few times to me, and this is the song he picked. We have tons of people coming to us about losing someone and I want people to be able to connect with our music. Our main thing for the band is religion hate, and it’s very clear what the message is in a lot of our songs. But we wanted to do something that could relate to people not just from an atheistic point of view,  but in other ways. As you can see in the lyrics, it’s the idea: “What kind of God would test a child?” People from all walks of life can relate to that. It’s just a very unfair thing.

HMS: It’s a very universal thing. It’s more of a natural question that arises, like a cosmic question, when we see senseless suffering. That video stands out, also, because it has just one narrative that goes all the way through, which sets up the tribute at the end. Was there a conversation about making this movie-like?

CW: Yes. We let Ricky take control of that because it was so close to him. He worked with MM Custom Fabrications, Missy, who did all our music videos. I think it was a little different for her as well because she does a lot of special effects, like the video for “Death Ov Circumstance.” I knew that Ricky had a vision in mind to reenact what transpired. When I saw it, I bawled my eyes out and said, “Run it.” We decided not to even have band performance in the video because we didn’t think it would do as much as Ricky’s own performance. It was quite an experience for sure.

HMS: Is the sequencing on the album important? I get the feeling there’s some thought behind it.

CW: “Stained in Rot” has that crushing Metal riff at the beginning. It’s a good way to start the album out. Then you have a track like “Befouler” that’s a complete, fast, ass-beater of a song. You keep going down and there’s no real stopping point. We have that interlude in the middle that kind of mellows out. Then it comes right back in with a breakdown that puts you right back into it. Then we end with a 7-minute song which is the title track. It was all about feeling, really.

Putting these songs together is what felt the best for us.

HMS: I feel like the way that the album is put together mirrors the structure of one song, in a way. That makes it feel quite complete. The album definitely doesn’t mellow at the end!

CW: That last track is actually one of my favorites. 

HMS: This album also shows some development in terms of vocal approaches, almost using screaming vocals and melodic vocals like two different instruments. There’s also some similar dualism in the way that the guitars act on the album. That’s all there in the title track. It gets so quiet in places! 

CW: The guitar is only one instrument in everything we do. Obviously, we have orchestral parts, and we have drums, but we actually also use more percussion. Even the bass will quiet down in certain parts. I think about the entire composition of songs rather than just the guitar, or the vocals. I think, “What are good stopping points? What are good vocal breaks? What would be a great melody on top of a breakdown that’s heavy?” It’s all about these pieces. I know a lot of guitar players who just want to shred. 

But I think it’s more important that you look at it as a composition, as a whole. Maybe you put the ego aside and shred in some parts, as we still do, but at a certain point, it’s tastefully done and not too much. I think people will relate more to that than showing off on every instrument. I’m more of a groove person and if the flow and the groove of a song are great, you could be hitting open notes and it could groove. That makes a better song than some of these epic guitar parts. Sometimes the best climax of a song is something that goes completely silent and then you come in and crush it. I feel like, as a guitar player, and as someone who composes in a Pop structure, you have to look at everything as a whole. One thing is only one part of the whole machine.

HMS: Trying to deliver what Metal music is most known for is understandable, since you don’t want to let fans down, but at the same time, you can’t deliver something that’s unsustainable or that doesn’t actually convey what you want or need to convey. What’s on your mind has to be captured in that structure, too.

CW: Absolutely.

HMS: You all couldn’t have created this 7-minute track unless you took the approach that you just described, either. It allows for more structure.

CW: One hundred percent. I’m a self-taught player and I write in a Pop structure. But what I can do is make sure that I start with a solid structure and compose around that structure. We might change riffs around it, but everything has a reason for being there. With that last track, it’s one of those things that just worked out. We ended up cranking that one out in one night. We had a friend pass while we were writing the album. Matt and I were pretty close with him, and it impacted both of us. We sat down and pretty much agreed that this one was going to be for Jerry and that he would want that song to be an epic. And that’s pretty much what it is.

HMS: That song’s quite a tribute. You also have some great friends joining you on several tracks on the album contributing different things. Did you write the music first and then think about who you might like to invite to be on the album, or did they help write stuff?

CW: It was kind of lucky. We knew that we wanted a bunch of friends and collaborators on our debut album. I feel like it’s so cool to have that these days and have people from other bands come in and do their take on a song that you created. With Taylor Barber, he’s a good friend of the band, and he did “Unravelling.” We didn’t write these parts with any certain person in mind. Once we had the people in mind, we found the parts that were best for them. 

I know a lot of people do write with someone in mind, but that could be shooting yourself in the foot if they aren’t able to do it. I’d rather have an album done and then find parts of the songs that fit peoples’ personalities. With Alex Terrible, he reached out to Ricky and said he’d do a song [“Befouler”]. Howard Jones is someone I had no idea that we were get and he’s my favorite vocalist of all time [on “Wide Open”]. 15-year-old me would die if he knew we’d get him. It is lucky but we also thought a lot about where theses people could be placed, and I think we made some good decisions on that. 

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