Loathe took an unusually long road to their latest album, ‘A Stranger To You’, but according to the band, that extended wait was largely the result of an obsessive approach to getting the record right.
The alternative metal outfit finally released the long-awaited album this past July, marking their first proper full-length since 2020’s ‘I Let It In And It Took Everything’. In a new interview with Metal Hammer, the group opened up about the lengthy gap between records and the perfectionism that ultimately shaped their latest effort.
Rather than stepping away following the success of their previous album, Loathe vocalist Kadeem France explained that the band remained consistently focused on writing and refining the material.
“We’ve not stopped working on this record, because we had to get it right. It’s been a cycle of writing songs, throwing them out and trying a different approach. It’s easy to shit out a half-decent song, but, if you don’t believe in it, it means nothing.”
Vocalist/guitarist Erik Bickerstaffe echoed that sentiment, admitting that the band’s desire to follow up their acclaimed previous record resulted in plenty of second-guessing.
“I think we were conscious of not wanting to fuck this record up, so there was this extreme sense of second guessing everything.”
That painstaking process ultimately produced ‘A Stranger To You’, a record that Bickerstaffe hopes listeners will experience as a complete body of work rather than simply picking out individual tracks or stylistic elements.
“I really want people to go in and process this album from start to finish. It’s like a recipe. If you just pick out the ginger and eat it on its own, you might hate it. But if you put it all together – like sushi – it changes everything. It’s the same with genres – you might think you hate a certain sound, but, once you’ve tried it as part of a bigger piece, you might love it.”
With ‘A Stranger To You’ now finally out in the world, Loathe can put the lengthy writing and recording process behind them and allow the album to speak for itself.
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