AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS — “IN THE GLOW OF THE VATICAN FIRE”

(written by Islander)

The lyrics of most extreme metal songs are often an after-thought, both for the bands and for fans and “critics”. They’re often written after the musical core of the songs has solidified rather than intertwined with it from inception; they’re usually difficult to hear, since vocals usually function as simply another instrument that adds fuel to the emotional fires; and if we’re being honest, the words are quite often uninspiring and forgettable.

The extensive lyrics of In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire, the forthcoming tenth album from the Connecticut-based “avant-sludge metal” outfit When the Deadbolt Breaks, are a startling departure from those norms. This writer had them in hand and decided to read all of them before listening to anything from the album. They left me shaken.

The lyrics are eloquently harrowing, words made into rapiers and torches, singing of violence and terror, of pain and death (and a longing for death), of bloodied innocence and the spread of hatred through farcical faith, of red eyes and crimson waves and chasms open wide.

There is an ancient, mythic quality to many of these lyrical tales of horror and apocalypse, a rendering of deficits in humanity whose tone reminds us they’ve always been there, and no reason to think they’re going away. And you can quite clearly hear most of them.

Equally eloquent (and equally disturbing) is this description of the album’s themes that appears in the promotional materials provided by Argonauta Records, which will release the album tomorrow (June 27th):

Inspired by man’s infinite capacity for cruelty, In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire evokes the numbing of human compassion, the sorrow of dead leaves, and the eternal rage of scorned gods. The band’s music is a feeling, an involuntary and instinctive recoiling from horror. It is the sound of emotions corrupted and driven to their extremes. It is the silent cry of the dead astronaut in space. It asks one simple question: When your soul dies, what will it leave behind?

When the soul dies, the animated meat is left behind to walk the earth in blind circles, mechanical life awaiting decay, feathered beings in the dark eating clay. In this space, WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS lurks, a paper-thin sheet of ice covering a blackwater lake, salivating for the weight of the unsuspecting.

You see?

Well, we don’t know at what point in the songwriting process the lyrics were conceived, although the fact that Aaron Lewis is both the band’s lead vocalist and its guitarist creates the possibility that the words and music were conceived in tandem. But whether that was the case or not, the music on In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire is every bit as harrowing and intense as the lyrics and the description of them quoted above — but it also has the capacity to melt your heart.

What makes the music so harrowing is a confluence of varying factors, many of them on display in the new album’s epic-length opening song, “The Scythe Will Come” (one of four ultra-long tracks on the record). Its overture is tremendously haunting, thanks to vocalist Amber Leigh‘s high quavering wails and the immense ominous movements far below them. Aaron Lewis‘ singing, eventually joined by Amber‘s, are also haunting. But upheavals are building as the drums begin to rumble.

Brutally grim subjects call for brutally grim music, and When the Deadbolt Breaks have that covered. The reverberating pulse-and-moan of the chords is gargantuan and craggy, and both the riffage and the drums slug damned hard too as the vocals fly above them, accompanied by eerily woozy instrumentation.

This slow build of a song continues building: The singing gives way to piercing screams and cauterizing shrieks. The psychedelic guitar-work grows more and more disorienting. The rhythm section sound like an avalanche. The band also pull back from the catastrophe they’re making, allowing strummed acoustics, a gently murmuring bass, and Amber‘s entrancing croon to briefly hold the floor, but then everything rumbles, wails, warps, and screams again, providing a stunning finale, heavy enough to fracture pavement and piercing enough to lacerate minds.

The ensuing seven songs are no less predictable or adventurous than the opener. Even the two short ones that follow the opener, “Deus Vult” and “Coffin Walls“, throw the listener through calamitous gauntlets with multiple sources of devastation and danger. Those two are simultaneously ruinous and elaborate. They again provide a showcase for the wide-ranging vocal talents of Aaron Lewis and Amber Leigh, a startling combination of singing, roaring, and shrieking. They again generate humongous bowel-loosening low-end heaviness and bone-smashing drum assaults, but are less hallucinatory than some of the opener’s many phases.

This seems like a good place to quote again from the promotional materials, because these first three songs bear out the words:

Long, sprawling songs encompassing both the hideous and the beautiful, the chaotic and the structured, the dissonant and the harmonious. The band weaves tapestries of sound and emotion – dirty, decomposing motifs interspersed with moments of psychotic frenzy, marked by sudden, unexpected shifts in mood, perspective, and tempo. Some of these interruptions evolve into extended and repeated sections, others are nihilistic sonic cul-de-sacs that dissolve into wet ashes.

At this point, five songs still lie ahead, including three more extravagantly long ones. Without dissecting each one in detail and thus severely testing your patience, we’ll tell you that they are again very much musically in harness with the lyrical themes and the previews quoted above.

Depending on where you are, the songs channel rage and ruin in headlong berserker assaults and bomb-dropping diversions; they give sorrow beautiful and heart-breaking forms, some of them folksy and tender, others like pale ghosts; they create unnerving nightmares, unreal and malignant, an assortment of heaving musical monstrosities and busy red-eyed fiends; they dose the mind with narcotics and hallucinogens; sometimes they slow and sound soulfully jazzy (revealing yet another aspect of Amber Leigh‘s remarkable talents), and sometimes they make you want to bounce ’til your legs give out or feel like you’re crawling through a blasted field of gutted corpses.

And, well, there’s even more than that — the album is a seemingly endless cornucopia of experiential surprises, though they do fit together surprisingly well — but we should probably step aside and let Aaron Lewis have the last word before providing the premiere music stream.

“Putting art out to the universe is both thrilling and terrifying. We put a tremendous amount of effort into making this album and hope that the listeners hear the blood, sweat, and tears which went into it. We hope that you enjoy the journey, no matter where it brings you.”

WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS – Album Lineup:
Steve Wieda – bass, backing vocals
Amber Leigh – vocals
Aaron Lewis – vocals, guitar
Rob Birkbeck – drums
Joaquin Gouin – additional vocals on “The Deep Well”

MORE NEWS:

2025 is this band’s 25th anniversary, and they’re celebrating it not only with the release of this new album but also a “Summer of Darkness” tour throughout the East Coast of North America. Here are the currently confirmed dates, with more to come:

7/17/2025 Nostalgia – Bethpage, NY
7/18/2025 Bovine Sex Club – Toronto, ON
7/19/2025 The Mansion – Kingston, ON
7/20/2025 Quai Des Brumes – Montreal, QC
7/22/2025 Abandoned Building Brewery – Easthampton, MA
7/23/2025 1st Republic Brewing – Essex, VT
8/23/2025 Cherry Street Station – Wallingford, CT
8/29/2025 The Cellar – Hamden, CT

MORE DETAILS:

In The Glow Of The Vatican Fire was recorded and mixed by the band at Room SevenZeroEight, mastered by James Plotkin of Plotkinworks (Earth, Khanate, Pelican), and completed with cover art concept and inspiration by MR and layout/design by Bill Kole.

Argonauta will release the album on CD, 2xLP, and digitally this Friday, June 27th. Physical preorders are live at the label webshop, here:

https://www.argonautarecords.com/shop/

WHEN THE DEADBOLT BREAKS:
https://whenthedeadboltbreaks.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/WhentheDeadboltBreaks
https://www.instagram.com/whenthedeadboltbreaks

ARGONAUTA:
https://www.argonautarecords.com
https://www.facebook.com/ArgonautaRecords
https://www.instagram.com/argonautarecords