The Supreme Sonic Chaos of CABAL

The Supreme Sonic Chaos of CABAL

CABAL present supreme auditory chaos in its finest, most intensive hour.  Based out of Denmark, CABAL meshes genres such as black metal, djent, and hardcore, coming up with a sound that as compelling as it is unearthly.  The band toured the States just prior to the COVID-19 virus bringing live shows to a halt, and has recently unleashed a devastating new album entitled Drag Me Down via Long Branch Records.  Highwire Daze sent inquiries to the CABAL battalion to find out more about this sheer force of sonic intrigue.  Read on…

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in CABAL, and how long the band has been together.
My name is Andreas and I’m the vocalist of CABAL. The band has been around for something like five years by now.

Where is the band based out of and what is the local music scene like there?
The band is based out of Copenhagen, Denmark. In terms of metal the music scene is really in bloom, not only in Copenhagen but in all of Denmark. We have a bunch of really great bands that are making a name for themselves both domestically but also internationally, bands like; Lifesick, Møl, Baest, Siamese, Konvent, Ghost Iris and many more. It’s quite a cool time to a be part of the Danish metal scene these days.

Is there any overall story or concept behind the Drag Me Down album title?
The overall story behind Drag Me Down boils down to accepting the suffering and sacrifices that life demands and willingly being dragged down by doing so.

Select two songs from Drag Me Down and what inspired the lyrics.
Unbound is a song that’s very personal to me, it’s basically about realizing that even though you share blood with someone, they aren’t necessarily worth calling family.

The title track Drag Me Down is another song where the lyrics come from a very personal place, it’s actually about pursuing this whole musician life and accepting all of the sacrifices that comes with that.

Who did the cover art for Drag Me Down and how much input did you have on it?
The cover art was a collaboration between two our good friends, Nikolai Lund and Allan Kristiansen – Nikolai took the picture and Allan did the editing. We had quite a bit of input on the cover art as we came up with the idea for picture and had an overall idea of how we wanted to bring it life beforehand.

How did Matt Heafy from Trivium become involved with the recording of Bitter Friend?
It turns out that Matt is a legitimate fan of the band, we saw him post about our debut album when that came out and then we ended up playing a big Danish metal festival called Copenhell alongside Trivium. We ended up just hanging out with Matt after the show and came up with the idea of having him jump on a song.

Jamie Halls of Polaris is another guest on the title track Drag Me Down. How did that come about?
Jamie actually hit us up on Instagram wanting to buy some merch and I recognized his name and we ended up just chatting for a while and then when Polaris played Copenhagen last fall, we brought him out to the studio to record his feature.

What could one expect from a live CABAL show?
A lot of heaviness and high energy rowdiness.

If CABAL could open for any band either now or from the past, who would it be and why?
We would probably have to go with Meshuggah on this one. They are our songwriter Chris’ absolute favourite band and one of the main reasons that we exist in the form we do.

How did your tour in the States with Ingested go and what were some of the highlights? It seems like the tour ended just right before the world was shut down due to Covid-19…
It went very well, we had a really good first tour in the states, good attendance, good crowd response and all of the other bands we’re just really nice to hang out with, so it couldn’t have went much better.

Band Members:
Chris, Sakhi, Malthe, Nikolaj, Andreas

(Interview by Ken Morton)

CABAL on Facebook