Stream Terror Cell's post-metalcore debut LP 'Caustic Light'

Richmond’s Terror Cell formed in 2019 with members of Black Matter Device, Crucial Rip, and Dismantle the Architect, and — following a demo, an EP, and a split with Iron Price — they’ll release their first full-length, Caustic Light, this Friday (10/7) via Fisher King Records (pre-order). Across the album’s nine songs, they incorporate everything from chaotic mathcore to towering sludge metal to atmospheric post-rock, and it all comes together to create one tremendous listen. Speaking about the album, guitarist/vocalist Joey Woodard says:

Writing Caustic Light was a lot of experimentation compared to our older material. I think we felt a lot of growing pains in the early writing process because we knew we wanted to do something a little different than the EP without sounding like a different band; We played around with some different tunings for guitars and added a few new pieces of gear to the equation. We all used to play in various other projects, both together and apart from each other that were all a bit more technically demanding, so the mission statement of the group from the start was to be kind of a break from that and keep things more on the simple side of things and jam on songs that we didn’t have to think too hard about. I think since none of us are involved with other projects like that anymore, we all kind of subconsciously decided to flex those muscles just a little bit more this go around for certain sections. We also went about writing this in a far more collaborative fashion. The EP and split songs were a bit more like ‘hey here’s a riff, what comes next; or ‘here’s half of a song, where do y’all want this to go’ and more of a start to finish group writing situation, and I think that was really beneficial to the songs feeling a bit more organic. Lyrically there isn’t really a big overarching theme or anything. We’ve always been a pretty vocal lefty band, and there’s definitely still plenty of that here along with a bit more in the way of personal experiences with loss, isolation, and depression than on previous releases. I think a lot of those experiences kind of shaped what I was bringing to the table in terms of writing instrumentally, which then kind of dictated the lyrical content or at least my headspace when writing certain tracks.

The album’s not officially out until tomorrow, but a full stream premieres right here: