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Kadeem France is really good at his job. While performing with
Loathe, his guttural screams and concussive growls reach into the human psyche to awaken something from our deep evolutionary past, something primal and aggressive. That voice, when combined with his commanding stage presence, turns France into a brooding, kinetic ringmaster for our inner beasts.
But in conversation, a very different Kadeem France emerges: easygoing, self-effacing, even downright cheerful. “When people speak to me offstage, they don’t expect me to be as outgoing as I am,” he says with a laugh. His musical influences may be dark, but he discusses them with a playful grin, clearly in love with what he does: “We’re big fans of horror and anything that shakes you to your core. But I’m numb to like 90% of
Album review: Loathe – The Things They Believe
Liverpool metallers Loathe challenge the boundaries of their musical universe with surprise instrumental offering The Things They Believe…
Words: Sam Law
Sometimes, you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt.
A year on from the release of their astonishing second album I Let It In And It Took Everything, Liverpudlian alt.metallers Loathe should have been on the mother of all victory tours, giving their complex, cathartic sound full life in packed live arenas around the world. Instead, they’re stuck at home, frustrated by a stratospheric trajectory so cruelly cut short, and pent up more than ever having not yet truly expunged the tribulations of that record’s tortuous creation alongside their fans. Rather than dipping into defeatism, though, they’ve adopted and plumbed the aspect of their sound best suited to life in lockdown.
The Things They Believe‘ – a name borrowed from the film adaptation of
30 Days Of Night, according to the band – is a solely instrumental, sample-loaded, ambient experience, with saxophones from
The 1975’s John Waugh Sideman on two tracks and plenty of layered swirling atmos to wash over you. If anything, it’s an “escape record”; a form of dark and moody ambient escapism from our stranger-than-fiction world. For how do you sum up a year like 2020 in a few lyrics? That’s easy: you don’t. You create sounds emblematic of the day-to-day.
I dig how this album art is in-line with the design aesthetic of ‘I Let It In And It Took Everything.’
Loathe take us inside their universe-expanding new album, The Things They Believe
We sit down with Loathe for an exclusive interview about their new, surprise album The Things They Believe
Words: Sam Law
Photos: Paul Harries
When Kerrang! sat down with fast-rising metal collective Loathe at the tail-end of a turbulent 2020, the band identified three lingering feelings from the year during which they managed to break through while the whole world was in stasis.
There was frustration, obviously, at not being able to strike in the live arena while the twisted metal of second album I Let It In And It Took Everything was still hot. There was a sense of clear-minded gratitude, with enough perspective on their minor inconveniences – compared to those whose lives had truly been upended by the COVID-19 crisis – to be thankful. More than anything, though, there was a sense of growth – personally and as a collective – which had brought into focus their deep-set goals, whi