Aussie death metal unit Psycroptic have been operating in  the higher echelons of their chosen genre for some while now, but we here at Sentinel Daily feel that their 2022 release,  Divine Council, is one of their best. So, of course when we put together the list of albums for our year-ending These We Have Loved feature, DC was at it’s head. Read on as Scott Adams talks to vocalist Jason Peppiatt about one of Australian metal’s albums of the year…

Congratulations on the Divine Council album – it’s been a constant on my stereo since I found it in my Inbox! Are you pleased with the overall reaction the album engendered now that the dust of release time has settled? “Cheers! Yes, we’re really stoked on the feedback the album has received! Its great that this far into our career,  people are still really enjoying our new stuff and it feels that we are still managing to stay relevant in a saturated scene. It was a really good feeling to get the album released as it was completely finished and submitted to the label over a year ago, so it was so good to get it unleashed onto the world”.

We’ll look more thoroughly at the individual tracks on the album later – but can you give those of our listeners without much grounding in the sound of the band a bit of a background to Psycroptic? Where does the album sit for you in the band’s canon overall? “No worries! We basically started out as a tech death band in ’99 and were pushing the boundaries of speed and technicality for the first four albums of our career, but as we got a little older and matured as song writers we put a lot more focus on groove, catchiness, big choruses and basically writing songs that would be really good in a live environment while still keeping true to our signature sound that we’d developed over time. I feel this latest album of ours sits exactly where it needs to in our catalogue, it’s the perfect expansion in my opinion on the ideas we explored on As the Kingdom Drowns and it’s progressed just far enough”.

And can you tell us a little about the personnel on this album? “The album was written by Joe, Dave (the brothers Haley, guitar and drums) and myself. We had Amy Wiles doing backing choir vocals on some choruses similar to what we did on ...Kingdom because we really loved the effect it had on that album to really make those choruses sound big and epic, so we thought we’d stick with that formula. We also did something different this time around and added Jason Keyser of Origin in as a second vocalist throughout the whole album. People did find this to be a little confusing as to why this was done, but the reason being that some overseas tours I can’t always do and Keyser is the guy that steps in to do these tours so we thought it would be fitting for him to put his voice on the album”.

Talking of touring, it seems to be getting back to some sort of normal, gradually – will you be able to spend much time next year touring the album? And do you think the pandemic-enforced layoff seems to have made fans hungrier for live music or are people feeling their way back into things? And is overseas travel going to be cost prohibitive moving forward for bands like Psycroptic? “We just got back from a six-week American tour which was really awesome!! It was nice to get back out on the road after such a massive break from it. We’ve a few offers in the pipeline for next year but at this stage we are just sort of taking it as it comes really. I feel like the fans that came out to our American shows were really hungry to see us again and go to live shows but I do think that now travel and touring has opened back up that the market is getting saturated with everyone wanting to get back on tour as soon as possible and unfortunately people don’t have the money or time to go to every show that’s coming through their home towns”.

Could you give us a brief insight into each of the tracks on the album? It starts with Rend Asunder. “A hard hitting song that Dave Haley wishes we never wrote because the kickers are relentless for the whole song”.

Fools Errand is next. “This was the song I actually didn’t really like too much when it was first written, but by the time it was finished I ended up loving it. Its got some really techy yet catchy riffing in it and the big choruses which I like very much”.

Track three is This Shadowed World. “This is the blasting song on the album. All our later releases end up having a fast blasting song that’s more reminiscent of the sort of songs we were writing in the early part of our career”.

Next up is Enslavement. “I think this is one of the fan favourites off the album! Its very different to our usual stuff in the way that it heavily features orchestral elements that we wouldn’t normally have so prevalent in our songs”.

What about Ashes of Our Empire? “THRASH!!! This song is just thrash through and through and I fucking love it!”.

The Prophets Council – tell us something about this one. “A really dynamic song in my opinion, varied tempos and big choruses”.

Awakening is track seven. “This is the dark, atmospheric piece on the album, I feel we always have one and I always love them! Joe always seems to craft amazing stuff like this”.

The penultimate track is A Fragile Existence – what can you tell us about this one? “This song was originally released on The Watcher of All EP that we did a couple years back and we decided we wanted to feature it on the album as we thought it was a really great fit in the track list”.

Exitus rounds things out. “An epic song that was pretty much crafted around the chorus. When Joe first sent me this song it was one that I found really moving. A lot of work went into this one to really capture the feeling that we were trying to envoke”.

How do you think 2022 has been overall for our kind of music? Outside of Psycroptic, who else have you been listening to this year? “I think its been a great year for metal in general! All the albums everyone recording while in lock down are all starting to roll out now and I’ve been seeing a lot of my friend’s bands have been releasing amazing albums. The latest Revocation release is sick, Origin released a fucking intense masterpiece. It was also a sick year for underground black metal and I reckon the new Obituary album is gonna be fucking awesome when that drops!”

What is it about metal – and death metal perhaps in particular – that enables it to mutate year-on-year yet still retain it’s freshness? DC as an album doesn’t deviate from the DM template over much, yet still sounds raw, fresh and VERY exciting – what’s the trick? “I think with all extreme metal the freedom to experiment is what makes it so special in general. I think bands just need to be convincing and truly believe in what they are doing rather than just going through the motions with it to really create something special”.

Anything else you’d like to tell the readers of Sentinel Daily about the album? Or the band in general? What are the band’s plans for 2023? ” Check out Divine Council if you haven’t already and hopefully you enjoy what we are doing! With any luck we’ll start writing again early next year and hopefully shows will continue to go ahead!”

Cheers!