With the UK continuing to produce some of the very best modern metalcore on the planet, Leeds quintet Caskets have quietly – but forcefully – also thrown their hat into the ring in recent years. Frontman Matt Flood once considered giving up on music entirely, but now he’s coming to terms with a firmly upwards trajectory…
Having excellently captured the sound of modern metalcore on their 2021 debut Lost Souls, Leeds quintet Caskets have made an understated but absolutely assured breakthrough these past couple of years (over 100 million streams since the record’s release is no small feat). Indeed, the whole thing is still something that frontman Matt Flood finds “fucking madness”, with Lost Souls taking the band across Europe, and to America and Australia. But their success is no fluke: they’ve been gathering pace with an ever-swelling fanbase, and a collection of meticulously-crafted heavy bangers to suit.
And so we come to second album Reflections. While its predecessor was a collection of songs based upon Matt’s struggles, the band’s upcoming collection embodies all things Caskets, with each member bringing more to the table than ever before. Here, Matt lifts the lid on the full-length, as well as reflecting (pardon the pun) on the dreaded imposter syndrome that comes with success, and how the group learned to become more vulnerable with each other…
Hello, Matt! What can you tell us about the meaning behind the title Reflections, and also where it might take the listener?
“We didn’t want to make another Lost Souls – that album was primarily about my shit and what I was going through in my past. I wanted this album to have everyone’s voice in it, and that’s the whole reason why we called it Reflections, because we wanted each song to be a reflection of one of the five of us, and write something they’ve been through so that everyone has a voice. The boys chipped in more with lyrics and vocal melodies and stuff like that. I think it helped to open more of a vulnerable dialogue with each other, and to get that genuinely across with the lyrics.”
Has that also brought you all closer as a band?
“Yeah, 100 per cent. It first came from all the touring we did directly after COVID – we went to America and we were living with each other in a little tour bus for seven weeks. You learn everything about each other, and you learn how to wind each other up and piss each other off. Just going through that touring experience brought us closer together and I think that’s what paved the way for us to have this more vulnerable dialogue with each other, which then spilled over into our writing for this new album.”
Do you think the Caskets sound has evolved as a result, too?
“Yeah, I think we’ve added loads of more elements to our sound, and we’ve tried to bring in more of our own personal influences. Benji [Wilson, guitar] is really into ’80s synthwave and John Mayer and stuff like that, and so we tried out different elements to create a more rounded picture of the whole band and why we’re all doing this, rather than just me and why I’m doing this.”
You had the chance to work with The Word Alive’s Telle Smith – how did that come about, and how was the experience?
“Telle and I have spoken online for a few years, and we wrote More Than Misery to have a feature on it. I thought it’d be really cool to get Telle on it to do screaming because he hasn’t really done that much screaming as of late. I thought having him was a really cool idea, and the boys did, too. So we just put it out there to him after talking about it on Twitter, and he sent it back straight away. And what he did is literally what you hear on the album. It was fucking dope and he’s insanely talented.”
You’ve got over one million monthly listeners on Spotify and you’ve done some huge tours. You’ve arguably been a bit under the radar to lots of rock and metal fans, but can you feel a buzz happening now?
“There’s something going on in the fans, you know? I was like 27 when I joined this band, and this was going to be my last run at this – if it didn’t work out, then I wasn’t going to bother again. But when we did the first EP I was like, ‘Okay, this has potential,’ and then we released it and it did really well. Ever since then I’ve felt some kind of imposter syndrome, and it’s weird because this is your dream to be where you are, but you end up questioning whether you’re doing things right and whether you’re doing things the way it should be. But on the other hand, everything’s going well, and it’s really cool to have this buzz around us.”
How important is it to you guys not to lose sight of everything you’ve achieved so far?
“I feel like if we don’t keep our heads straight on what we need to do next, then what we have right now will be gone. This industry is absolutely cut-throat, and if you release a bad album or something like that then you can be gone. It’s amazing on one hand, but it can be a little overwhelming sometimes, you know? I guess that’s just because I’ve still not gotten used to being where we are right now. To me, we’re a bunch of boys from North England just trying to do the band thing!”
It’s been a promising first half of the year, but what have you got planned for the rest of 2023?
“We’re supporting Blessthefall on the 10-year anniversary tour [of Hollow Bodies], which is amazing. We’ll be in the States for four or five weeks – that’s fucking madness!”
Caskets’ new album Reflections is released on August 11 via SharpTone
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