New album, “Under The Under”, out on March 27th!
Below rock bottom under the weight of truth.
Yet in facing truth there is a spark that reveals there’s more to you than your darkest place…
Over half a decade on from the release of their debut album, The Smothering Arms of Mercy, Melbourne progressive-death outfit Growth have re-emerged with Remember Me As Fire, the first new music from the long-awaited second chapter of their planned trilogy aimed at going beyond expressing emotion, illustrating pathways of recovery while acknowledging the most dread-filled aspects of it.
That second chapter, titled Under The Under is planned for release via Wild Thing Records.
The gap between releases has been deliberate….and necessary. Where The Smothering Arms of Mercy was written from within collapse, sickness and isolation, Under the Under exists in the far more uncomfortable space that follows: what happens when survival is no longer the question and you’re forced to confront who you are once the wreckage settles. In the bands own words, healing, is not gentle. It is an ugly process. Chaotic, disorienting and often more confronting than the pain that preceded it.
Growth began in 2017 as a reflective space for brothers Tristan Barnes (guitar/bass/artwork) and Nelson Barnes(drums), and vocalist LF, later joined by Nick Rackham (bass) and Ben Boyle (guitar), to explore trauma, mental illness and grief without romanticising them. The project was never intended as catharsis for its own sake, but as a way to illustrate recovery in all its brutality. not as linear progress, but as something fractured, cyclical and deeply human.
If The Smothering Arms of Mercy was a document of total spiritual collapse, Under the Under is about the ugliness of its reconstruction. Shame, fear, memory and the quiet violence of choosing to move forward regrdless.
Growth does not offer solutions but instead offer honesty and an invitation to sit with the questions most of us spend our lives avoiding.
