On their debut album, ‘Suicide in The City,’ Birmingham group Cauldron deliver a ferocious and frantic brand of metalcore that stylistically leans into the genre’s 2000s sound. However beyond the sturdy rampages of ‘Standing In Awe Of A Monument’ and ‘Rejection Pact’, the introspective ‘Are We?,’ and the melodic flashes on ‘The Meeting Place,’ and ‘The View from the Balcony,’ there is a more complex story behind ‘Suicide in The City’.
Inspired by the conceptual work of Coheed and Cambria and My Chemical Romance, ‘Suicide in The City’ partly paints a narrative about a group therapy session in Seattle, while being intertwined with the mental health struggles of vocalist Frazer Cassling. “The story is laced with things I needed to write to myself. During this time I was diagnosed with OCD, and this really changed the shape of where the album was going. The lyrics are ultra-personal, whilst being really story-focused,” explained the Cauldron vocalist. From scouring the lyrical content of songs such as ‘I Forgot You Existed (Seattle 1)’ and ‘Futile‘ are interlaced with Cassling’s troubled mindset, reflecting on his own experiences of therapy.
Threaded together by a foreboding cloud of bleakness and hopelessness, ‘Suicide in The City’s narrative introduces us to the group’s therapist Tristram St. Claire, and the various participants of the therapy session. Through the characters developed by Cassling, he was able to channel his thoughts as he struggled during the lowest time of his life.
“Really it’s an allegory for everything going on at the time, and there’s so much in it that’s a mirror image of what was happening in my real life, not directly but through metaphor,” he clarifies. “It was much easier to process things through a series of characters than it was to actually have to just verbalise these things myself and say ‘this is how I’m feeling.’”
Whether it’s characters with no memory, living in a fantasy world, or being riddled with guilt, ‘Suicide in The City’ is a tale of murder, false promises, escapism, disassociation and more. Oh, and there’s a robot too. It’s a thoroughly ambitious concept that Frazer Cassling is working on expanding into a novel. However, to give you an insight into the fictional Seattle Cassling has created on ‘Suicide in The City,’ the Cauldron frontman introduces us to the intriguing cast of characters.
Tristram St. Claire
The therapist with an agenda. Tristram leads the group therapy practice where the majority of the key players meet once a week. With a seasoned history on the therapist’s couch as a patient, and a prestigious academic background as a student of psychology, Tristram is one of Seattle’s finest practitioners in his field. However, a chequered past including an unsolved murder; of which he is a suspect, hints that maybe Tristram isn’t all that he seems.
Emilio Mendoza
Killing yourself to live. These were the words Emilio and his partner Johanna took to their graves, or at least tried to. After a night of chaos set to be their last night on Earth, the couple fall asleep under the stars in the Eastern Washington Desert whilst a poison takes hold of their systems. However, unaccording to plan, Emilio wakes up. His story is one of consequences, punishment and, in contrast, faith.
Rosalie Bergum
An actress without a story to tell. Permanently disabled from a failed murder attempt, Rosalie attends group therapy in hopes to re-piece together her life. Sadly, Rosalie often prefers to live within a fantasy world of her own design. One where she is not a forever scarred victim of domestic abuse, and instead a world-renowned actress married to the famed and acclaimed R&B singer, Patti LaBelle.
Grace Hunt
Grace often feels like she doesn’t belong. Not just in the group therapy sessions, but in the world in general. Forced from her peaceful and idyllic youth in North Bend, Washington into a tumultuous and brutal adolescence in Seattle, Grace struggles to come to grips with a city that seems to hate her with a passion. Her only comfort is a therapist who seems to understand her more than she understands herself.
Michael Forthwright
If you’re looking for Michael, you can be sure to find him on the straight and narrow. Always on time, and always ready to greet you with a firm shake of the hand. Michael is so robotic, he is often remarked on as being similar to a wind-up doll. Covered head to toe in wrappings that disguise brutal burn marks from an office fire, Michael is the poster boy for physical trauma, for lack of a better term. Weirdly enough, Michael has not once mentioned the fire in session, and instead only talks about his wonderful wife and how she’s cared for him.
John Doe
A blank slate, John woke up in a hospital bed without a single memory, his only knowledge is of how to function in the most basic ways. Guided through his reawakening by his good friend Cady, John attends the practice with a mild hope of reclaiming the memories he has lost. However, soon enough John attracts the sights of a jealous individual who would like nothing more than to reawaken a new.
EC-135
In a sub-story that runs alongside the story of the city, EC-135 is a robot that keeps on walking no matter what.
‘Suicide In The City’ by Cauldron is available now on The Coming Strife and Ephyra Records.
Find Cauldron on Facebook, Instagram, X, Bandcamp, and Spotify.
