Gatecreeper surprised fans on January 13 with a new EP called An Unexpected Reality, which explored the grindy side of the band and closed out with an 11-minute death-doom track.
While the EP is pretty lengthy, vocalist Chase Mason tells Revolver it shouldn't be viewed as the follow-up to the band's 2019 album Deserted. Mason later added that An Unexpected Reality was purposefully a detour from Gatecreeper's usual sound, and isn't a some stylistic change warning shot.
"Part of the reason why I wanted to do this record was that I wasn't motivated creatively yet to do the next Gatecreeper full-length," he said. "At the point of writing this record, Deserted had only been out a couple months. I wasn't ready to sit back down and create a new full-length because there's obviously a lot of expectations, internally and externally, for our next record. Deserted did pretty well and we want to continue to top our last album. So I wanted to do something that was a little bit different to motivate myself — almost putting more restrictions on us, by making music in a specific style. Those restrictions brought out a little more creativity.
"So the reason it's not the next Gatecreeper album is because I don't want it to be seen as, 'Oh, Gatecreeper are changing their sound." It's not that. It's more of an exploration. We're putting some stuff out there that is not traditionally what we would be doing. Maybe some of those new things will trickle down and we'll use some of those tools for our next full-length, but I don't want people to see it as the new Gatecreeper album. It's a detour."
Stream An Unexpected Reality below an grab a copy here.
