Old Man Gloom's first new album in six years Seminar VIII: Light of Meaning is a bittersweet affair. On one hand, the new song "EMF" is an absolute rager stripped down of from the band's usual lengthy song runtimes. On the other hand, this will be Old Man Gloom's final album with contributions from bassist Caleb Scofield. Scofield passed away in 2018 after an automotive accident.
Drummer Santos Montano explains Scofield's role in the new record.
“We have a bunch of songs that Caleb wrote coming on this record. And some of them are even tracks that he did multi-tracks at home, just on an iPad. And so we’re gonna be including those songs on this album.”
“…Caleb‘s wife was generous enough to give us the iPad and let us take all the stuff off of it and there were 15 songs on there.”
Old Man Gloom also said "We’ve made a decision as a band: We’re gonna reverse-gloom you this time" regarding the new record. This is likely in reference to when they announced Ape of God as one record in 2014, it turned out to be two, and there was an edited third version that was sent out to reviewers to keep the ruse going. So we'll see what happens.
Seminar VIII: Light of Meaning is out May 22 and was tracked with Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Isis), Randall Dunn (Wolves in the Throne Room, Sunn O))), Earth), and Kurt Ballou (Converge, High On Fire, Trap Them). Pre-order Seminar VIII: Light of Meaning here.
