Sydney nu-metalcore rising starts Broken Earth release reflective new single Covenant, just in time to welcome it to their live set at Feels Good Festival in October.
Covenant takes a look inward and thematically details the process of acknowledging fault and embarking on a road to recovery. Where previous single BREATHE was about removing outside toxicity and abusive behaviours, Covenant talks about working to remove one’s own negative attributes and move on from a version outgrown.
Covenant is the second single released this year from Broken Earth and continues to showcase their sonic evolution and is a testimony to the band’s dedication and musical prowess, marking yet another crushing addition to Broken Earth’s destructive repertoire.
We sat down with vocalist Raphael Smith to chat about their latest release.
HEAVY: You’ve just released your new song “Covenant”, could you tell us a little bit about it?
RAPHAEL: Absolutely! It’s the second song after Breathe that we recorded with Mark last year but was actually initially written in late 2019 – the same time we wrote “Black Skies”. The song is a metaphorical take on the battle of self vs self, when coming out of an episode in your life where you don’t like the person you see in the mirror. I used religious imagery from my childhood to draw on as a way to highlight how big and scary change can feel when you’re stuck in a comfort zone that’s slowly killing you, and how reaching out and leaning on others has helped me grow out of those dark moments. I wanted to create this metaphorical tale in the lyrics surrounding it as I loved watching those kinds of dark fantasy movies like The Black Cauldron growing up where the surrounding environment is hostile and mystical in ways that the viewer or main character doesn’t really understand – but pushes through anyway.
How does the new single differ from previous releases? Did you do anything differently with this one?
It was written actually at the same time as Black Skies – however obviously we wanted to work on it a bit longer as at the time as writers it was a bigger artistic departure bringing in more melodic and ambient elements. I think the biggest departure would be the fact that there’s actually quite a bit more melody and singing in it while still keeping the same heaviness and groove elements that we’ve always loved.
Your video clip takes on a horror aesthetic, is there any film in particular you drew inspiration from?
We took aesthetic inspiration from movies like Blade, The Crow, The Matrix and The Exorcist. Our director Colin was really good at connecting the story being told in the lyrics to something that could be easy to visually represent.
If Broken Earth could write the soundtrack to a horror film, which would you choose?
I’d love to write a banger for a Saw or Evil Dead movie, something about gore that bodes well for Youtube montages with ridiculous breakdowns.
If you could collaborate with anyone, who would you pick?
This changes on the regular but at the moment I would love to collaborate with Courtney LaPlante from Spiritbox or Lochie Keogh from Alpha Wolf. Both have really unique and versatile vocals that I’d love to hear on a Broken Earth song.
Where can listeners catch you live? Will you be playing Covenant at your next few shows?
We absolutely will be! You can catch us supporting Volumes playing at Feels Good Fest October 8th, Halloween AM//PM Sydney October 28, and then playing with our good friends in Without Belief for their debut show in Melbourne November 3.
