Keeping Your Head Above The Surface With TRISTAN BARNES From GROWTH

Melbourne based progressive death metal outfit Growth began in 2017 as a reflective space for brothers Tristan Barnes (guitar/bass/artwork) and Nelson Barnes (drums), and vocalist LF, later joined by Nick Rackham (bass) and Ben Boyle (guitar), to explore trauma, mental illness and grief without romanticising them. The project was never intended as catharsis for its own sake, but as a way to illustrate recovery in all its brutality. not as linear progress, but as something fractured, cyclical and deeply human.
On March 27, Growth release their first album in more than half a decade, Under The Under. The gap between releases has been deliberate….and necessary. Where The Smothering Arms of Mercy was written from within collapse, sickness and isolation, Under the Under exists in the far more uncomfortable space that follows: what happens when survival is no longer the question and you’re forced to confront who you are once the wreckage settles. In the bands own words, healing, is not gentle. It is an ugly process. Chaotic, disorienting and often more confronting than the pain that preceded it.
Under the Under is an album that documents six stages of recovery - not as levels to be celebrated, but as thresholds to be endured. Across the record, Growth interrogates the dignity we attach to suffering, the comfort of identifying solely with trauma and the terrifying possibility that we might be more than the stories that have kept us alive.
HEAVY sat down with guitarist Tristan Barnes to find out more. Under the Under is set for release on March 27 via Wild Thing Records. Pre Orders available now https://orcd.co/undertheunder. Growth will be touring Australia in August as part of the epic Psycroptic & Rivers of Nihil tour.


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