Produced and mixed by Matt Goldman (Underoath, The Chariot) and mastered by Troy Glessner (August Burns Red, Underoath), “V”, the newest power offering from mathcore and metalcore tinged progressive post metallers BLACKSHAPE is a bold, adventurous and courageous offering. Equally focused and epic, the track marks a noteworthy teaser of their debut full length, a study in maximalism—written and recorded as one continuous loop, plunging listeners into a complex journey of heavy, beautiful math.
BLACKSHAPE is an instrumental, post-mathcore band from Salt Lake City, UT. “We’re a four piece with Scott Shepard and Joe Woit on guitar, Josh Dunn on bass, and Perry Burton on drums.” – comments the band. “We’ve been friends for years and played in several other projects together. We all knew we had this itch to play some heavy/mathy stuff, so we slowly started putting ideas together.
At first, it was a long distance project for several years, lots of flying into town here and there to bounce riffs and ideas off each other, but it really solidified into an actual band about 3 years ago when Joe moved to Utah and Perry turned down a job with SpaceX.
After that, we really focused on making our ideas into songs and our songs into an album which we were lucky enough to make with the legendary Matt Goldman. He’s made so many records we love from Underoath to The Chariot, and we’ve been pretty honored to have him be part of the process. We can’t wait to share the whole record early next year.”
Artwork by Maddison Colvin
𝑊𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑎𝑠 “ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑦, 𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑢𝑙 𝑚𝑎𝑡ℎ.”
Asked about the background and inspirations behind their sound, BLACKSHAPE continues: “We’re big fans of Deftones and other heavy bands that infuse their music with atmosphere and melodic elements. That juxtaposition of heaviness and beauty is kind of our thing. Our first single “III”, and our new single ‘V’, are pretty relentless, but our record as a whole is full of dynamic shifts and peaks and valleys. We try to create a sense of relentlessness and tension in our songs, so that when the riff lands or gives way to a moment of beauty, there’s this sense of relief—like you just made it through something.
For our first record, it was important to us to remove as much context for the listener as we could, and allow listeners to experience the songs and album in their own way without any narrative influence from us. That’s why we assigned the songs numbers instead of names and made it (mostly) instrumental. There is one message buried in the dark hallways of the record, but that’s to be discovered later on. Our hope is that when someone listens to BLACKSHAPE, they’ll go on a journey, hear, see and feel the things they need to, and drive faster if it’s playing in their car.”
