The evolution of As Paradise Falls has been a dark roller coaster of pure emotion in the pursuit to find where they truly fit in the world as people… and as a band. They never expected anything out of the ordinary, but fate had much more in store for them. After the unexpected passing of their guitarist Glen Barrie in 2015, they managed to claw their way back from immense tragedy and have proven through thick and thin that this band is anything but ordinary…
Hailing from Brisbane, Australian deathcore metal outfit As Paradise Falls burst onto the scene with the release of their EP Save Yourself in 2014. The band quickly made a name for themselves as the EP burst into the #5 position on the iTunes metal chart. The band took Australia by storm on their first national tour, and quickly followed up with a run through New Zealand and additional dates across Australia throughout 2015. In November of that same year while the band was recording their second album with producer Shane Edwards (Northlane, Trophy Eyes, Hellions), guitarist Glen Barrie tragically died in his sleep. After taking some time to grieve the loss of their brother, they regrouped in 2016 and finished the full-length album Digital Ritual and signed a worldwide deal with Eclipse Records in 2017.
When Digital Ritual was released in July of 2017, the album quickly took the metal scene by surprise, receiving overwhelmingly positive critical acclaim from dozens of magazines, blogs and websites. HEAVY gave the album 4/5 stars saying “Digital Ritual stands on its own merit as an excellent addition to metal collections… they are the real deal” , while Metal Hammer called the album “an expansive slam-fest full of giant choruses and circle pit bait” and Hysteria Mag said the band was quickly jostling for Australia’s top deathcore spot and everyone should “get on it”. The band quickly landed their single “Dead Message” a placement on Spotify’s Deathcore playlist, and while accumulating over 325,000 plays they toured across Australia numerous times, and supporting bands such as Miss May I. Things happened fast for the band and they kept busy well into the following year.
In 2017 APF joined forces with Eclipse Records to release their debut album ‘Digital Ritual’ which took the industry by surprise with a diverse album that was heavy at the heart whilst exploring the diversity of Metal/Metalcore genres. Touring Australia multiple times and performing with the likes of Miss May I (USA), the first album from As Paradise Falls gained traction and was a hit with their fans with the lead single ‘Dead Message’ clocking up over 300,000 spins on Spotify alone.
Mid 2018, APF dropped off the radar and halted the progress of the band with no explanation. In the next year or so the members of APF would take a timeout to grieve the loss of their brother Glen Barrie and do some soul searching on their future both personally and as a band. Mid 2019 it was clear that APF would be left with the founding member Danny Kenneally and rejoining him would be original vocalist Ravi Sherwell. Together as a 2-piece, they wrote the future sound of APF with no boundaries and no rules, just raw emotion poured into the music to conceive their 2020 single ‘Bleed For The Crown’ and forge a new breed of heavy music. Afterwards, 2021 Brought in a new concept for APF. The idea was to channel the raw emotion and make heavy music aggressive again. The raw aggression is something they believed was missing from modern day heavy music, something that UK Grime artists were capturing better than heavy artists.
With the influence of this modern Grime & Hip-Hop, old school Deathcore and a futuristic look on how their music should be perceived, Danny & Ravi created the ‘Madness / Medicine’ EP off of the back of ‘Bleed For The Crown’, a 5 track EP that would defy what a 2-piece band is capable of. Once again, APF teamed up with longtime friend & producer Shane Edwards (Northlane, Trophy Eyes, Hellions) at Studio 28 in Thailand where the 5 tracks were transformed into a modern day monster. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Danny was unable to travel for the mixing/mastering process and resorted to utilizing Facetime and streaming from his home studio to assist with the final process of the EP.
As Paradise Falls is a band that has redefined what the Australian metal scene is capable of, and the ‘Madness / Medicine’ EP is a new breed of Metal/Deathcore that has raised the archetype of heavy music. APF’s earth shaking EP was released on September 23, 2022 via Eclipse Records.
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