Every month, Metal Injection will be highlighting an artist that has captured the attention of the masses; and it’s not a growing artist, but an artist that has begun to make their own mark on the scene. This month, Metal Injection welcomes Moodring.
Lambgoat, Kerrang!, Rock Sound, Revolver, and many, many more have nodded towards Hunter Young‘s solo endeavour, Moodring and the forthcoming record, glowing commentary surrounding the singles that rip deep into the reality of chronic illness, praising both the musicality and content. But, the general public haven’t seen much of the project’s frontman Hunter Young. And for good reason… for the very reason he wrote death fetish. Young is sick. Pretty fuckin’ sick. And he won’t get better.
“I have ME/CFS, and it’s hell. I have fibromyalgia. I’ve got POTS, I’ve got – you go down the list of the acronyms – I’ve got it,” Young tells Metal Injection over the phone, “I crash all the fucking time. And they tell you, the more you do it, it’s going to become more permanent. I’m just like, ‘am I not supposed to live?‘ I guess I’m supposed to be grateful that I can still see the sun. [But] the entirety of my other band is currently in my house right now, getting ready for tour – and I manage that band and produce those records – and it’s so much stimulation [that] I feel like I’m gonna fucking die.”
Young is best known for his work as the frontman of PSYCHO-FRAME, a modern deathcore unit that was packing up in the background to head off to the UK as an opener for Bodysnatcher as Young sat on his sofa and described what it was like to have both his bands and his day job as a producer in jeopardy as practicing and impromptu writing sessions options are flown out the window; “It’s a weird thing to say, but I don’t necessarily play for fun anymore. I don’t go, ‘oh, guitar, I’m gonna pick that up and play for hours.’ Because I can’t. So now it’s like, my relationship has changed to I’m only doing it if I’m creating to try to get something done, or at least get my head around an idea that I can see through later. I’m not walking around the house singing for fun.” With what limited physical means he had, he continued to develop an outlet for the creativity he could no longer regularly contribute to his other projects.
“I was diagnosed during the 1st session for that record – it happened in the middle of it. The guy who I co-produced the record with, Austin Coop, is one of my best friends, and I told him, ‘hey, I have to go to the doctor. I’ll be back in a little bit.’ But when I came back, it was like someone had been metaphorically shot, essentially.” Young half-laughs, but it feels weighted. Because, just like that, in a moment – his life changed, a root cause discovered, but learning new life required to continue living as much as possible, “I sat back down and said, ‘I can’t do this like today. I need to grieve.’ So, we stopped and the next time we came back [to record] I had become more used to [ME/CFS], at least more mentally used to it. But the record went from being a fun record to very dark, really quickly.”
A cocktail of fear, unease, disbelief, grief, and rage intoxicated Young throughout death fetish as he grappled with the fact that the thing he had been doing since he was 12 was destructive to his body – “I played my first show when I was 12 years old, and I was writing songs when I was like 12. I dropped out when I was 15 or 16 to go on tour with one of my first bands” – and his life is literally now stationary. It doesn’t stop Young, his years in production coming in handy as he commits to the one thing that he swears he was born to do, “Music in all capacities – whether it’s the business side or audio side – creating it is how I survive. But it took a really fucking long time. I’ve been making records for almost 20 years now. There was just something innate in me that just convinced myself, ‘you have to do this or you’ll die.’”
Matching the flurry of emotions that play throughout death fetish, Young experiments with different techniques, pulling from different genres that he grew up being exposed to, ranging from goth-industrial to punk to nu-metal to black metal, “I had a super early exposure to cool shit. I graphically remember seeing just the most CDs I’ve ever seen in my entire life in my mom and stepdad’s closet, and I would just go in there,” staring in disbelief at what each album held before him and, “I realised I liked music more than anything from a really young age.” Finding joy in exploration and pulling from the corners of his memory different sounds, Young allowed himself to toy with sonic expectations throughout death fetish, the gothic industrial aspects glaring in some parts and his metal upbringing forefront in others.
The emotional intensity was mirrored by the vigorous recording process, doing as much for moodring as his body allowed, “[Coop and I] did it across 3 sessions because he was out in LA and I’m [not] and there’s only so much I can do at a time. The idea of me doing a record from start to finish in a month – how I used to – is kind of unheard of.” Learning more about his chronic illness throughout the writing process of death fetish, Young was faced with questions and concerns he never thought he would have, especially so early in life, “Even with my disease, I had never heard of it until I was diagnosed with it. And then I found millions of people with it. I mean, literally millions. There’s some who are way healthier than I am and then others who are way more sick – they can’t tolerate light, sound, and I see glimpses of that and that’s the scary thing. When I get that low, I’m like, ‘oh, fuck, what if I don’t come out of this?’ Because some people don’t.”
With that fear in the back of his mind, seeing all the potential health complications for others possible, it became a point for Young to talk about his own experience with being ill, the reluctance and even fear he found when the topic was broached in general with friends, loved ones, or the general public, “I had to make the record, I had to make the record for myself whether people acknowledged what it was about, or liked it or not,” Young sighs, “It’s hard to put up a mirror and tell other people like, ‘hey, this can happen to you,’ because no one wants to acknowledge that. No one wants to acknowledge that COVID happened at all.”
Moodring is a vessel for the pain and grief of learning the life you had created must change, that things in life can be taken away in the blink of an eye. A timeline of emotions that document the journey of not just Young, but any person who becomes ill: “And so to to be like, ‘hello, I’m permanently sick.’ People have a really hard time dealing with taking a look at their own mortality, which I always struggled with, even before getting sick – I was forced to take a look at it and I think it’s the most human thing we can experience.”
So, face your fears, and your mortality, alongside Hunter Young on moodring’s upcoming LP, death fetish, out March 27th via SharpTone Records. You can pre-order the record here.
