Video: A Behind-the-Scenes Look Into the Writing Process for Whitechapel’s New Album

When Whitechapel burst upon the scene in 2008 with their Metal Blade debut (and their 2007 Candlelight release before it) they were lumped into the then-cresting deathcore scene. Whether that grouping was fair or not — and listening back to This is Exile right now I’m going to say it was a little of both — I think the argument that Whitechapel did little to differentiate themselves from the herd at that time, at least for jaded oldsters like us, still stands.

But since then Whitechapel have grown up a bit and matured as songwriters with each successive release. The biggest jump came on 2012’s self-titled record; “I, Dementia” was the first song that release made me take notice: those riffs!!! Are there some deathcore tropes present? Absolutely. But we’ve long argued here on MetalSucks that there is nothing inherently wrong with deathcore, or breakdowns, or any style of metal… it’s what you do with it. It’s the motion of the ocean, not the size of the wave, know what I mean? If you’re writing songs as good as “I, Dementia” you’re winning in all respects. We’ve long held in high regard bands like The Red Chord and Ion Dissonance; we’ve got no axe to grind with deathcore itself, just the masses of generic bands in the genre (which is a lot of them).

And so: I am genuinely curious/excited to hear Whitechapel’s next album! I share in my hetero life partner Axl’s assessment that it feels weird saying that, but ’tis true.

Whitechapel are in the studio right now as we learned earlier this week from a 15-second clip of new music the band posted on Instagram. Check out the following three-minute Toontrack-produced studio report in which the band members discuss how they write and demo music, recording technique and what role Toontrack’s products play in that process. The album will be out next year via Metal Blade.