GosT’s Baalberith Talks Negative Fan Reaction on Shift Away from Synthwave

GosT ringleader Baalberith (né James Lollar) appeared on a recent episode of The MetalSucks Podcast to discuss his new album, Rites of Love and Reverence, his mindset on following up Valediction after getting some harsh feedback from long-time fans, the need to be adventurous as a musician as he grows as a person, and the positive side of not touring during the last year, among other topics.

On the negative feedback some long-time fans voiced when GosT released Valediction in 2019, a departure from GosT’s previous synthwave / darksynth sound into more varied post-rock territory, he said:

“Well, [‘Valediction’] did really well critically, which was weird, ’cause it was kind of the first one I released that did that well, but I got some pretty harsh feedback from old, longtime fans. Which was expected, it was a total departure production-wise. We tried to create a completely different sound with that and it had more dynamic, it wasn’t as compressed and crushed. So [on ‘Rites of Love and Reverence’] I wanted to move things [further] in that direction but incorporate the older production values and some of the things people really liked about say, ‘Possessor.’ So sonically, that’s where I started as far as writing the new one goes.”

On the process of handling every element of the recording process himself in the past, but working with a producer on the last two records:

“I’m kind of a control freak since I started this without working with producers. ‘Valediction’ was actually a harder process for me to just kind of let go. I learned a lot on producing vocals while we were working on ‘Valediction.’ I mean, I learned more than that, but as far as what I used on ‘Rites of Love and Reverence,’ it was a lot of the vocal techniques. 

You can stream the full episode right here or in the embed below.