Whitechapel Frontman Discusses Revisiting Traumatic Childhood on New Album, Kin
Whitechapel vocalist Phil Bozeman was our guest on a recent episode of The MetalSucks Podcast to discuss the band’s new record, Kin, the challenge of revisiting his childhood for its lyrical themes, how his perception of reality has changed dramatically as he grows into his 30s, and more.
Bozeman hasn’t been shy about addressing how his own personal trauma influenced the lyrics on Kin (as well as the band’s previous record, The Valley), and he elaborated on that topic and process quite a bit in our talk. He explained:
“It’s been really cool cause I’ve had to dig through my past. A lot of it is kinda blurry and [some of it is] kind of vivid but as I dug deeper into it, I was able to remember things and certain key moments. It was pretty difficult just because, again, I didn’t remember much. I remember a lot of stuff but there’s still a lot of stuff I don’t remember. So going through it and really just refreshing myself was pretty challenging.
“But it was obviously very worth it. I just think it makes for a great story. For the sake of storytelling, it’s good for a lot of people to read and relate to if they’ve gone through similar experiences (or different ones that they can relate to on a different level). It was a pretty daunting task.”
Bozeman continued:
“The problem that some people have is that they don’t want to face these problems and they want to forget about things that happened. People just want to forget the bad stuff and they don’t want to face it and tackle it, and I think that’s a really big mistake that people make.
“Because when you don’t face it, it’s going to sit dormant and then it’s going to come and explode one day. That’s what I did with all the stuff that’s happened to me. Even prior to writing the albums, I’ve accepted it and moved on for years now. Many, many years.
“But as far as just telling a story, it was about remembering and those specific moments. I think that people, for whatever reason, just don’t want to face things and accept things so they just bury it. And that’s just so unhealthy, in my opinion.”
Kin is out now and available here. You can listen to our full chat with Phil below or here.
