“The Illusion of Our Choices In A World of No Options” isn’t a throwaway title—it’s the hinge around which Abrupt Decay’s latest full-length grinds forward. Born from a conversation about privilege with a patient at vocalist Grant Matthews’ day job, the phrase captures the contradiction of comfort in the West against the stripped agency faced daily by people elsewhere.
That tension—between self-perception and systemic theft of autonomy—runs deep across the record’s 45 minutes, tracked in April at Oodelally Studios in West Kelowna with producer Jordan Chase.
The album, featured in one of our recent weekly roundups, is not structured for trendy Spotify playlists. There are no singles, only a deliberately arranged whole. Contributions from Jay Breen (Trench), Reece Prain (Diploid), Danny Mathews (Cel Damage), and Colter Cuthbertson (Killing of a Sacred Deer) sharpen its edges, while noise manipulations from new member Gill add an unsettling backdrop. Cover art by Jérôme “Trëz” Oudot, designed in collaboration with Lab.13, frames the chaos.
Matthews started Abrupt Decay in 2017 as a private outlet while drumming in another band. The project’s first record surfaced in May 2022, intended as little more than a personal release.
But an unexpected response—promoters calling the next day, coverage from outlets, and eventually a groundswell within Calgary’s hardcore scene—shifted its course. Momentum carried through a 2023 EP, a Wax Vessel reissue, touring, and a lineup adjustment that saw Gill’s introduction. That addition transformed their sound, with harsh noise and sampling opening space to revisit and reframe both old and new material.
Still, survival wasn’t guaranteed. Family emergencies, work stress, and a canceled tour nearly ended things in 2024, with Matthews pushing for dissolution. The rest of the band resisted, and when Chase offered to record, the project found its footing again. Sessions with live drums, tube amps, and the pressure of a “real studio” gave the album weight without sanding off its jaggedness.
Inside, old riffs resurface—material written as far back as 2017 but unfinished until now. Those fragments don’t feel like ghosts; they fold into the present identity of the band. Multiple voices—Matthews, guitarist Noah, bassist Owen, and guests—give the record its range, avoiding repetition and keeping intensity unpredictable.
We spoke with Abrupt Decay about the band’s accidental beginnings, rebuilding from collapse, revisiting early material, how noise became a permanent fixture, the spark Chase brought into the process, Calgary’s current hardcore ecosystem, and what comes next.
See the full interview below.
You’ve said this project was never supposed to be a “real band” at the start. When you think back to that first record in 2022, do you remember the exact moment where it stopped being just an outlet and started feeling like something alive you couldn’t just switch off?
I think the day after we released the first record. We ended up getting asked by 5 different promoters to play shows in Calgary and Edmonton. That immediate attention really shocked me, I had never expected anyone beyond a few friends to listen to it. We had coverage from a few music outlets and that really helped cement a name for us as well. It was just so immediate and surprising, I never would have imagined that that was how the first day would have gone.
When you were first pulling friends in to play the release show, what was the vibe in the room – was it more “this could be fun” or “oh shit, we’re onto something”?
Definitely more of a “this could be fun” vibe. It took us probably a year to get really locked in with each other. The initial first practices were really loose, and our first show was really bad hahaha. We ended up taking 6 months off to regularly practice and get things down before we tried playing another show. AD songs are deceptively hard for typical “core” style music, so we wanted to take care to actually get it to the point where we were stoked on it live.
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Fast-forward to the new LP – parts of it come from ideas you had in 2019–2020. What’s it like revisiting those older fragments with the person you are now? Do they feel like letters from a past version of you, or do they slot right into the present voice of Abrupt Decay?
It feels like they were able to slot right in. For example, the riff of He Had It Coming, track 5 on our new LP, was written in 2017-2018 for another band that I was in that ended up dissolving. I couldn’t ever figure out what to do with it vocally at the time. I found the riff again on an old computer that I was digging through last year. I listened to it and immediately got the vocal cadence for the pre chorus and chorus in my head, and knew that it had to be on the record. No Blessings and Surreptitious were songs that were already started around the LP1 era, and I revisited them in 2024 and we ended up liking them a lot. Shout out Reece from Diploid and Danny from Cel Damage!
How did bringing Gill in for the noise elements change the way you approached songwriting? Did it open new spaces in your head for how songs could move, or did it force you to rethink things you thought you already had locked down?
It definitely opened some new spaces for me. I was dipping my toes into those kinds of elements on our previous releases. Finally letting go and embracing that I grew up on bands like The Devil Wears Prada and Slipknot was so liberating, and led to some of my favourite moments on the record. It also gave us a chance to revisit songs that we’ve already released and see what layers and samples we can add to old songs live. It’s been super cool, and I think all of us have been so stoked on it.
I know you had moments last year where you almost called it quits. When you look back now, what do you think kept the band breathing through that quiet stretch? Was there a single spark that flipped you back into writing mode?
The thing that kept us alive was Colton, Noah, Owen, and Gill demanding that we keep going hahaha. I was really digging my feet in, I brought us all into my living room and told everyone that we should break up. I was going through a lot of frustration with work, and had a bunch of family emergencies that resulted in a lot of stress. We had to cancel a tour with our friends in Single Wound which really sucked.
It was a really brutal time for me. Luckily, I think about 80% of the record was already written by this point. After a few months of getting it back together mentally, we were able to get demos for the record together in October. Demoing was able to motivate me to write the last little bit of the record before the end of the year!
Jordan Chase enters the picture almost like a plot twist. What did he bring to the table that made you feel this record had to happen right now, and had to happen with him?
It was almost marvel-esque in the way it happened haha. It felt too good to be true. I had really admired Jordan’s work with bands like Trench and World of Pleasure.
Our previous producer Scott was a close friend and did a fantastic job on our first releases, but Scott primarily produces alternative rock. He had a pretty loose idea of what “core” was before we started recording together. Jordan just knows how to write and think like a band like us is supposed to. He understands hardcore and grind and math, and was able to make a record that sounds polished but not perfect.
Every single production choice was conscious, we had a lot of revisions and we couldn’t be more stoked with how it came out. He was also in a lot of bands that I looked up to from back in the 2000s-2010s. Shout out Shreddy Krueger and Secret and Whisper!
Recording at Oodelally with full drums and tube amps for the first time – did that change how you performed in the room? Did you feel more pressure to “capture” something or was it just pure fun?
I don’t think there was a single moment that really felt like “pressure” regarding any of the instruments. It was a ton of fun. Everyone had practiced so hard and was so locked for recording. Colton knocked out the drums in two and a half days, and that left a ton of time for everyone else. After drums, we recorded pretty randomly. It’d be a few hours of guitars, then bass, then vocals, etc. Noah and Owen were super locked, and my voice was feeling really good after the first few days. I ended up getting overconfident and doing too much, and blew my voice in the studio from pushing when I should have rested. I ended up having to fly back after a few weeks to record the last few songs, but the timeline was easy and things went really smoothly otherwise!
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There’s a lot going on vocally on this album, from feral highs to more restrained moments, plus all those guest spots. How do you decide when a song needs another voice in it, and how do you make sure it still feels like an Abrupt Decay track at its core?
Lyrics and vocals are what made me so obsessed with this style of music, and I am drawn to bands like Code Orange and The Armed with multiple voices that can express different arrays of emotion. It’s really convenient, Noah has super deep lows that I can’t hit, and Owen has these shrill, Frankie Palmeri-esque high screams that I can’t replicate. That allows us to cover a lot of ground vocally. Guest spots were thought about after all of the vocals were done. We just wanted to get a bunch of our friends and bands we love on the record!
The album title, “The Illusion Of Our Choices In A World Of No Options,” reads like it came from a pretty heavy place. Was there a single thought, conversation, or moment that sparked it, or did it build over time while writing?
It came from a conversation I was having with a patient at work in 2023. We were talking about privilege, and how lucky we are to have what we have here. She brought up how much we take for granted every single day, when so many people in the world don’t even get a choice of if they get a day away from labour, or cook their own meal, or clothe themselves. About how we sell ourselves the lie that we have choices when our western world steals those same choices from people all over the destitute parts of the world. I thought about that conversation for a long time after, and somewhere in those thoughts the title of the record just kind of manifested in my head.
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You’ve mentioned being obsessed with harsh noise and grind – what is it about that kind of chaos that feels like home to you?
When I was a teenager, I found Mathcore index on Facebook and that group exposed me to most of what I listen to and love nowadays. I never had a lot of friends growing up (shocking, right?), and finding out that there was a community based on music for mentally ill people was genuinely life changing for me. It came into my life right when I was leaving Mormonism, and I was able to replace the community that I lost with a new one. I found bands and projects like Dillinger and through the group, and then was able to just dig further and further into grind and noise. I made a lot of friends, many of whom I still have, just through this weirdo, awful music. It’s felt like home for over half my life, and I think it’ll be that way for a very long time.
The Calgary hardcore scene clearly welcomed you early on. What’s it like right now compared to when you first started showing up? Any under-the-radar bands or artists from Calgary people need to check out before the year’s out?
Calgary is doing extremely well! Just tonight we had 150 kids for 4 locals/1 touring band, and consistently have shows doing really well here. I’d love to give a huge shoutout to our friends in Tranq, Trench, Dying Remains, Snakepit, Serration, Solar Plexus, and Induced Trauma. What Calgary really needs is more bands. So start a band!
Speaking of that – who are some artists you’ve discovered in 2024 or 2025, anywhere in the world, that have really blown your mind lately?
I’ve been really loving this artist called Lip Critic from New York lately. Insane experimental cerebral hip hop with two drummers. What’s not to love? For heavy music, I’ve really been loving the new Psycho-Frame LP and fromjoy EP, and I’m still completely obsessed with the Candy LP from last year.
When you think about taking this album on the road with Kaonashi and into next year’s US plans, what kind of energy or reaction are you chasing from the crowd?
Mic grabs. We have a million guest spots and big vocal parts. There’s 3 mic’s on stage. Just grab one. I don’t care which one it is, if you know a part just get up and go do it. Also, an unbelievable amount of violence.
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And looking past touring – without giving too much away – where’s your head at for the next release you’ve already started? Is it about pushing the chaos further, or peeling things back in unexpected ways?
Definitely pushing things further. This band might experiment with noise rock and metalcore with singing elements, but the primary goal is to always be heavier. The reason we have these experimental moments is to add contrast to the record, to make the heavier moments feel heavier. I’ve already started pushing the scary and heavy parts into places I didn’t know really existed with some of the new songs I’m working on. I’m very excited to show folks what happens after this!
This October, Abrupt Decay will take the new record across Canada with Kaonashi, their first proper full-time touring push. A U.S. run is planned for 2026. For Matthews, the future is about pressing heavier and scarier extremes, with noise and contrast serving only to make the crushing moments more severe.