British metalcore outfit Employed To Serve are lining up their fifth studio album for an early 2025 release through Spinefarm. The group once again worked with producer Lewis Johns (Rolo Tomassi, Funeral For A Friend) on this outing and spoke to Kerrang! about the experience.
That discussion took place a few months back and has just newly been published digitally by the aforementioned publication. In it, the band shared some insight as to what fans can expect from this follow-up to 2021’s “Conquering“. Guitarist/vocalist Sammy Urwin stated:
“The biggest takeaway we had after ‘Conquering‘ was that there was a lack of contrast. I love it, but since that was our first album with the new line-up and leaning into our metal influences more as the band, it was kind of a full-on assault. This new album is still intense, but I feel like we’ve added in more subtle nuances that were more apparent on ‘The Warmth Of A Dying Sun‘ and ‘Eternal Forward Motion‘. There’s guests on it we can’t say yet, but they’ve added to that, too.”
Vocalist Justine Jones added:
“Not that I wasn’t happy with the record or anything, but we were starting to get used to working together. We’ve been playing together for a couple of years now, so it was a really nice thing going into this record. I’d say we’re more metal now, in a more traditional sense.”
As for what influenced the sound of this new record, it would appear that Scandinavian melodic death metal was a key starting point. Jones stated: “We’ve got the Scandi-metal sound on there. There’s a big In Flames influence.” Urwin chimed in: “I wanted to explore melody even more than we have in the past. We’d been listening to a lot of bands like Soilwork and In Flames.” Furthering that line of conversation, Jones added, “‘Love Metal‘ by HIM as well. And Sammy’s forever listening to Dio.”
