Polish black metal quintet Outre have tapped into some seriously dark energy on their sophomore album, Hollow Earth. An unrelenting torrent of black metal corrupted by potent strains of death and sludge, the atmosphere on Hollow Earth is suffocating, dark and evil, hardly letting off the gas pedal over the course of seven songs. Decibel spoke with bassist Marcin Radecki about the new album, which you can stream in full below, before its official release on Debemur Morti.
Hollow Earth has a haunted sort of sound. Were you focused on occult or supernatural themes?
This time we didn’t focus on some certain topic as in case of Ghost Chants or Sein/Zeit, but there is still a common background of our lyrics. A leit-motiv of Hollow Earth is overwhelming spiritual solitude. Mankind is just a small episode in wheels of time, in the process of vanishing, weak standing in front of nature forces, heading towards self-extinction.
What is the writing process like for Outre? Do you prefer to do a split before your larger releases, or is that just coincidental how previous releases have lined up?
There is no pattern, we have no release calendar or something like that. We planned to release Hollow Earth last year, but due to the tour with Ulcerate we had to postpone entering the studio and focus on tour preparation.
How do you feel Outre has evolved since your debut full-length, Ghost Chants?
I think a lot. Our sound evolved to [become] even more uncompromising and direct form than we expected and actually aimed to achieve while we started Hollow Earth recordings. Our previous records are simply incomparable to what we do nowadays.
-According to Metal Archives, you’ve had some lineup changes recently. How has that affected the band?
Yes, we had few line up changes but now it’s stable for the past year and I don’t expected any further changes. Finally the bands has all full-time members that let us focus on the most important things—music.
