Myopic At The Graves

Myopic & At The Graves releasing collab LP (stream the sludgy "Through Veins of Shared Blood")

Myopic is a trio from DC and At The Graves is a one-man band from Baltimore, and now they’ve teamed up to release a collaborative album, A Cold Sweat Of Quiet Dread, on March 12 via Grimoire Records (pre-order). “We’ve been writing as a three-piece for all our releases, and At The Graves has been a one-man band for years, so it’s been a fun challenge to combine our sounds and write for as a four-piece with three vocalists,” says Myopic bassist/vocalist Nick Leonard.

The first taste of their collaboration is album opener “Through Veins of Shared Blood,” which is a crushing sludge song with flashes of black metal fury and hardcore attitude. “This one is about the feeling of not asking to be born and unwillingly being subject to the pressures and molds of society,” says ATG’S Ben Price. “I made up a new tuning and brought the resultant riffs to practice, and they all got severely morphed into what the song ended up being. We worked especially hard on this one (it went through many permutations) but I think we were all very stoked about it.”

“This was one of the first songs Ben brought to this project,” Nick continued. “Like all of our songs, it went through a lot of evolution before reaching its final form, though the main riffs still make up the body of it. It was one of the first to get finished and played live before we recorded the album. Lovingly given the working title ‘Banger’ for its crushing riffs.”

“I think of this song as sort of a sandbox that helped us find the style and direction for the rest of the album,” Myopic vocalist/guitarist Sean Simmons adds. “The rhythmic riff that you first hear at :55 was one of the first standalone riffs Ben brought to the table. Figuring out what to put before and after to turn the riff into a song was a fun challenge for everyone, and sort of kicked off the learning curve of making each band’s style become complementary to each other.”

And drummer Michael Brown adds, “Fun, challenging, and explosive song. I love the triplet modulations in this song. It was also the first song we played live as a collaborative!”

It premieres right here:

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