British metal band Jonestown, who formed in 2013 and quickly wrote and recorded their debut EP, “The Erebus and the Terror”, have announced their signing to Long Branch Records – as well as a brand new track, which you can listen to below. Within their first two years Jonestown performed at a variety of well known UK festivals and supported various established metal bands from around the world, as well as getting off to a fast start with their heavy yet accessible brand of metal.
This gave them the confidence to enter the studio with Daniel Kerr at Avenue Studios to record their debut album “Aokigahara”, named after a forest at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan; a place believed to be haunted by ancient spirits and a notorious site for suicides. At the time of recording they thought they merely had a collection of songs rather than a cohesive album, however it’s release resulted in a swathe of media attention from some of the biggest metal publications. Notably being included in Metal Hammer’s top 50 albums of the year 2016, along with being three of their editors’ debut album of the year. Since then the album has amassed over 1,000,000 streams on Spotify and other online music providers as word-of-mouth spread about Jonestown.
The release and resulting accolades caught the attention of newly established record label Siege Music and an offer of a worldwide album release. This, in turn, caught the eye of promoters and festivals around the UK resulting in a busy and varied show/tour schedule to promote Aokigahara.
Despite the self-awareness of the daunting task ahead of them, Jonestown found themselves drawn to continue the songwriting process for the follow-up to Aokigahara in early 2017, entering the studio in the winter of the same year. Jonestown chose to work again with Daniel Kerr at Avenue Studios as they felt his insight and understanding of the band’s sound and identity was an integral part of the overall success of the previous album. When writing “Dyatlov”, Jonestown wrote 30 demo tracks and meticulously worked through a process of elimination until they felt they had a perfectly distilled collection of songs which told a cohesive story. They found that when writing the album, they naturally covered many different styles and sub-genres, both within and outside metal, taking influences from obvious contemporaries such as Gojira, Lamb of God, Slipknot, Strapping Young Lad and Meshuggah whilst also taking inspiration from external sources such as film scores and progressive rock. “Dyatlov” is lyrically about the internal and external war and the individual’s inability to win yet still continue regardless.
