Memoriam Debut Album “For The Fallen”

When BOLT THROWER drummer Martin “Kiddie” Kearns passed in his sleep on September 14th, 2015, the members of Britain’s longest standing death metal band were absolutely bereft.

Three weeks after, bassist Frank Healy, of UK death metal legends BENEDICTION, lost his father. All that sorrow left a massive hole in the hearts and minds of the Midlanders. The untimely demise of Kearns forced BOLT THROWER to go on an indefinite hiatus, while Healy was seven years removed from BENEDICTION’s last full-length, Killing Music. Key members of both bands needed an out. A way to cope with the emotional hardship. So, vocalist Karl Willetts and Healy teamed up with ex-BOLT THROWER drummer Andy Whale and riff-master Scott Fairfax to form MEMORIAM.

The crown jewel of MEMORIAM’s achievement is, of course, debut album, For The Fallen. Recorded over two weeks at Hellfire Studios with producer Ajeet Gill, For The Fallen has a massive yet underground sound – somewhere between yet beyond Transcend The Rubicon and The IVth Crusade. It’s the kind of full-length that’s a rarity today. From ripping opener in ‘War Rages On’ to midway killer ‘Flatline’ to the epic closer ‘Last Words’, For The Fallen has a classic yet contemporary sound. While fans and critics can appreciate the end results, getting it right took four weeks of mixing and re-mixing.

“It took some time for us to get the final mix exactly how we wanted,” Willetts reveals. “We had a specific sound that we had in mind and it was difficult to translate that idea into the final mix. But we got there in the end. I think that as we have all been around for some time and knew exactly what we wanted from the album it took us a bit longer than we anticipated to achieve this, but we are really pleased with the final product and the hard work that we all put into its creation has really paid off.”