Presentation has always been a central facet of Church of the Cosmic Skull‘s approach, arguably no less crucial to it than the lush vocal arrangements or tight-knit songcraft that have played out in such classically progressive fashion across their two prior albums, 2018’s Science Fiction and 2016’s Is Satan Real? With their third offering and first to be self-released through their own semi-real imprint Septaphonic Records, Everybody’s Going to Die, they bring their delivery modus to a new level entirely on all fronts, from the writing and execution of the material to the artwork for the album by Zorad, to the release method, to the theme and narrative creating of a kind of journey through a dogma of cosmic self-realization, or, as they put it, “The Psychic Ascension to Humanity,” played out across what they call ‘The Seven Objects’:
– Recognise the hallucinatory nature of reality
– Investigate all aspects of the reality-hallucination
– Receive all phenomena with equanimity
– Celebrate and uphold the freedom of art, science and thought
– Meet mistakes with forgiveness and determination
– Do what you want, with love in your heart
– Maintain focus on the unity of all living beings
To lead the listener through these precepts, Church of the Cosmic Skull — guitarist/vocalist/principal songwriter/producer Brother Bill Fisher, vocalists Sister Caroline Cawley and Sister Joanne Joyce, legkick-prone key specialist/vocalist Brother Michael Wetherburn, bassist/vocalist Brother Samuel Lloyd, and the actual-brothers Brother Joseph Stone on viola and Brother Laurence Stone on drums — have put together a complex release method. Sure, there’s a vinyl release impending, with various special versions available to order from “night black” to “exploding crystal,” “nuclear meltdown” and “cosmic rainbow” — the latter seems the most aesthetically appropriate, given the band’s penchant for color despite their all-white stage costumes — but they’ve also found a means to add complexity to a digital release, often seen as a kind of dumping of tracks onto Bandcamp and other streaming outlets. In Church of the Cosmic Skull‘s hands, even this becomes a work of carefully crafted ideological and creative construction.
They’ve dubbed it ‘The Path,” and essentially it’s a means of introducing the willing participant to the songs of Everybody’s Going to Die one at a time. Since the digital release Nov. 29, if one wants to listen to the 37-minute LP in full, it’s available, but they’ve also made it available through “The Path,” which is a process of signing up through their website and receiving a series of emails from Brother Bill that, with each one, bring an individual track stream and a new step along the purported ascension to humanity, tracing the voyage of a kind of inner-stellar pilgrim, The Protagonist (and eventually The Sorcerer), until at last the final manifestation, accompanying album-finale “Living in a Bubble,” is a stepped-outside view of the multiverse and reality as a series of subjective bubbles created by those living within them. From: https://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2019/12/10/church-of-the-cosmic-skull-everybodys-going-to-die-review/
