Distant

There’s more than just brutality in the breakdown for Dutch/Slovak deathcore ensemble, DISTANT. Heritage, the quintet’s Century Media debut and third installment of bone crushing, thick-as-concrete heaviness, takes their trademark “Downtempo/Deathcore” and pushes it into the red. It’s got all the subtlety of being run over by a tank – repeatedly. “It’s low and slow,” smirks vocalist Alan Grnja, describing the band’s sound. “Musically, lyrically, we try and travel the uncharted and come up with something you can only call DISTANT.”

DISTANT has become one of the prominent faces of European Deathcore. Melding together brutal death metal, slam, noise and beatdown with a hyper-dissonant orchestra of impending doom, they’ve come eons since their origins as metalcore obsessed friends in Rotterdam and Bratislava. “I wasn’t the original singer,” says Grnja. “I was in a different band in Slovakia with DISTANT’s drummer [Jan Mato] and we were supposed to go on tour with DISTANT but we ended up breaking up. DISTANT, who were playing a very heavier style of metalcore at the time, asked me to join and that was really the start of DISTANT.” With the release of 2017’s Tsukuyomi EP (named for the Japanese god of the moon), the band gained international acclaim, leading to a deal with Unique Leader Records and the unleashing of their debut fell-length, Tyrannotophia. 

With that, DISTANT (rounded out by bassist Elmer Maurits and guitarists Nouri Yetgin and Vladmir Golic) took an immersive approach to their hell bound sonics and thought-provoking lyricism and began weaving a fictional universe and story in sound that would end up as the 2021 self-published novel, The Rise of Tyrannotophia. “We all are pretty much nerds,” says Alan. “Movies, anime, video games. Most of the inspiration I get is from playing games like Devil May Cry Final Fantasy, Doom or movies like Event Horizon, Predator, Prometheus, basically, cosmic horror. I wanted to put that sense of imagination and mystery into the band.” 

Inspired by tales of the dark ages and the occult, over a clutch of singles and EP’s including 2020’s Dawn of Corruption and 2021’s full-length, Aeons of Oblivion, the DISTANT’s fictional “Tyrannotophia” cycle became further fleshed out. It tells the story of Tyrannt, a mythical character banished into his own mind by a god-like father. “It’s all happening in the main character’s head and he’s essentially fighting seven lords that are all aspects of his own personality.” The concept behind DISTANT’s deluge of sound has also been translated to the written page in Rise of Tyrannotophia, a self-published novel penned by Alan and Elmer. As much as previous records, that also serves as a jumping off point for DISTANT’s clear-cut next step with 2023’s Heritage.