Wearing metal t-shirts pays off.
The death metal rising star of 2021 is definitely Texas band Frozen Soul. They landed a contract with Century Media for their debut, and are already being compared with their idols Bolt Thrower. Bara Metal asked the frosty questions, Michael Munday [guitar] gave the icy answers. We chilled. And then we thawed.
First one – are you all vaccinated yet? I heard the US is moving on fast.
– We’re all very fortunate and are fully vaccinated. The U.S. has been on the ball with rolling it out. Right now in most of Texas its fully available to everyone 16 years and older.
Good for you! I read that a comic book shop and a game of Magic: The Gathering are a part of the start of Frozen Soul. Tell us about this day!
– I played a lot of Magic at this shop called Generation X Comics & Games in Bedford, Texas, and one day when I walked in I noticed Chad had on a Slowly We Rot print on the back of his shirt, so I knew I had to talk to him cause he was into death metal too. I’d seen him at shows before and asked if he wanted to play a couple of games and we shot the shit over music for a bit, then we both played a standard tournament that night but I can’t remember if either of us did well or not – ha ha! A couple weeks or so after that I had asked if he would be interested in jamming some heavy shit and we got started up pretty soon after that.
By the way – is ”Frozen Soul” a trading card in Magic? I thought it was a Yu-Gi-Oh! card.
– It isn’t a card in Magic, but it definitely is in Yu-Gi-Oh!
Thanks for clearing that up! Wraith of Death is my favorite song of the album. And yours?
– For me personally it would be Encased in Ice. Why? It was the first song we wrote as a band instead of just Chad and I and it has some of my favorite riffs I’ve written. It’s one I’m very proud of for sure!
What would you say are the pivotal moments in your short career that made the giant Century Media contact you?
– The most pivotal moments for me would have to be our tours/live shows. We make sure that our energy on stage matches the energy of the music so that way we can put on a great show and get the crowd into it. It made people talk about us a lot and the word of mouth caught CM’s ear.
And the smaller companies, e.g. Southern Lord, Dark Descent, 20 Buck Spin… did they not contact you? Did you turn them down?
– Century Media was the only label that reached out to us about a recording deal. We actually had intended to send a press kit to Relapse Records in hopes of getting signed by them, but CM had reached out to us before we sent the press kit to Relapse.
So what does a big label like Century Media actually do for you? Put you in top of Spotify lists? Take over and run all of your social media? Putting your name on beer cans?
– They push our record out to media outlets like radio, magazines, youtubers, and advertisements on social media. We have total control over our own social media and just have fun with it. We actually do have our own beer coming out here pretty soon from Division Brewing in Arlington, TX that’s gonna be very frosty!!
What is it like debuting an album during a pandemic like Covid-19?
– It’s been a very surreal experience to say the least – ha ha ha. On the upside, we got to put all of our focus and attention into getting it released and have some extra content to put out for it, but on the downside there’s no shows and tours to support the album release, so we don’t really get to see people’s reactions and responses to the album out in the wild. It’s also been a lot harder to keep people’s attention because this album release being driven by the internet, and there’s so many things on the internet competing for everyone’s attention all at the same time.
The cover art from Velio Josto is great – there is one detail I wonder about, among all the skulls there is clearly one or two faces, one with a black bandana or something. Is that bandana guy the artist himself?
– It may or may not be Velio, but I will say that I can really relate to the bodies in the bottom left of the cover.
Bara Metal 
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