Lo! - The Gleaners (Track By Track Preview)
The Australian heavy music scene is heating up with the incoming release of Lo!'s highly anticipated fourth studio album The Gleaners - out tomorrow. It's shaping up to be a good fantastic Friday because we've grabbed the inked-up Jesus himself, frontman Sam Dillon, to share with us a preview of the album via his own words with a special track by track.
Below, we find out more about the record's tracklisting and internal dialogue, with an essential guide to each song's inspiration, meaning or just a simple fun fact worthy of note. Hook in and get ready for tomorrow's big release from Australia's premiere sludge-meets-metal-mad men!
1. Our Fouling Larder
'Our Fouling Larder' was written as part one of a two-part track, so it bleeds into the album’s second track, 'Salting The Earth'. This track begins with the haunting notes of 'Gods of Ruin', the very last track on our 2017 album Vestigial. This track speaks to the planned obsolescence that we’ve embraced as consumers and our blatant greed towards natural resources, and the very toxic Eurocentric view of our world. In this song, our feast of the West is truly rotting. I received the instrumentals for the entire album from Carl [Whitbread, Lo! guitarist], and this track was always flagged from the start as being the intro to The Gleaners.
2. Salting The Earth
'Salting The Earth' is part two of the two-part track set up by 'Our Fouling Larder', and it’s a rapid-fire sermon that hints at the core characters The Gleaners goes on to explore. “Salting the earth” was a practice that was employed by invading armies in newly conquered villages, where the viable crops or fertile lands that were left after a war or an invasion were salted in order to thwart attempts to feed survivors. It’s a pretty cunning and nasty way to make sure your enemies don’t rebuild. We continue this practice in our modern times, both literally through mass land clearance and also unsustainable agricultural techniques, and that’s figuratively forcing our uninvited expertise and signal boosting when we weigh in on issues that are not ours to claim. White fragility is a really common phenomena of our modern world that we live in.
3. Deafening Bleats of Apathy
This song was inspired by the Australian bushfires that happened over the last few years and how the apocalyptic levels of loss, both to nature and man, have been miraculously forgotten by our leaders. But those flames still burn in the eyes of our nation, and the scars in our landscape that we see every day. The most harrowing sounds sometimes can be that of silence in the face of wrongdoing.
4. Rat King
A rat king is a rare monster that’s created by nesting rats that, through crammed and overpopulated conditions, become entangled in their own tails. As a result, they slowly starve to death, unable to free themselves or work together to survive, and traditionally, this is seen as a poignant symbol for greed, plague and societal disease. In this song, there’s a line “Consumption as saviour”; this complex makes us all rat kings bound together by our greed. And the Rat King, one of the album’s core characters, is given its due here too.
5. The Gleaners
'The Gleaners' uses the sampled voice of German director, actor and author Werner Herzog, who is well known for portraying individuals in conflict with nature. The album’s key theme and character, The Gleaner, is explored in this track. And as we must glean through the facts and lies that are left for us to piece our own truths from the ruin, so too the choices we make create each link in our chain that we figuratively carry with us for better or worse.
6. Pareidolia
The definition of pareidolia is: the perception of apparently significant patterns or recognisable images, especially faces in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines. So, when someone would say they see the face of a man on the moon - it’s not there, it’s just a series of craters, but you add significance to it that isn’t proven. Scientific meaning or higher importance is placed on false findings without proof or investigational challenge. Each new tyrant hopes to create fear, loyalty and distrust this way. But how many white lies are necessary to keep us in the field and not storming the castle?
7. Kleptoparasite
Kleptoparasite’s definition is a bird or insect, or other animal, which habitually robs animals or other species for food. Europeans are kleptoparasites, we rob First Nations not only of their land, but also their very voices and culture. And we are what we eat.
8. Cannibal Culture
This track is another introduction of another core character: the Caucasian Vulture. It’s a hatefully vile anthem on the mass exploitation, appropriation and dilution of other cultures committed by non-people of colour, often naively or without thought to the devastating and intergenerational effect that they will have.
9. Mammons Horn
The meaning of 'Mammons Horn', for me, was the wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion. And Mammon is also the demon and devil that personifies greed in biblical terms. Greed’s horns are calling to us all - are we doomed to march to this tune? On the closing number of this album, all core characters, Rat King, Caucasian Vulture, The Gleaner and White Worm Saviour, are addressed and held accountable throughout the epic album closer, which also features guest choir vocals by Nick Rackham and Beth Allen.
Track By Track by Sam Dillon @samraptors
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Lo! – The Gleaners tracklisting
1. Our Fouling Larder
2. Salting the Earth
3. Deafening Bleats of Apathy
4. Rat King
5. The Gleaners
6. Pareidolia
7. Kleptoparasite
8. Cannibal Culture
9. Mammons Horn
