PREMIERE: “When We Heard Converge’s ‘The Saddest Day’ We Were Shocked” – Cloudburst

It’s been a minute since we’ve had the pleasure/honor to help premiere a fucking phenomenal record by another one of our favorite Asian hardcore bands. This time we have one of the most intense chaotic hardcore bands, Cloudburst outta Indonesia, dropping their brand new EP ‘Corridor of Chaos’ exclusively on our site. Huge thanks to the band and their label, Samstrong Records, for their faith in what we can do for them.

The first time we wrote about this heavily Botch/Converge influenced band was back in 2016 where we wrote:

Indonesian metallic hardcore band Cloudburst release first track off their upcoming album Crying Of Broken Beauty. This is a sonic blast to your fucking face! Dope Converge/Botch inspired aural vengeance that will have your ears glued to the track throughout, and when that blues riff-guitar solo comes on the complete mindfuck that this band takes you on is complete. You will finish the track and then remember you didn’t take a breath the entire song.

First wrote about Cloudburst (2016): https://uniteasia.org/indonesian-metallic-hardcore-band-cloudburst-release-new-track-ffo-converge-botch/

That specific collection of chaos, excellently entitled ‘Crying of Broken Beauty’, was their first full length which didn’t leave our ears for MONTHS after its release. Upon the release of that record, the band was written about all over the world including in Decibel Magazine and Metal Hammer, and of course TONS of love right here on Unite Asia.

Many tours locally and regionally later, the band is here today to celebrate the release of their brand new EP.

According to Samstrong Records, “The EP consists of 5 tracks of in-your-face, take-no-shit music that will wake up the NON-BELIEVERS.”

Cloudburst will also be announcing bigger plans in 2022 including massive tours.

For now…go check out the new tunes further below and read up a little bit on this awe-inspiring band through the interview we did with Okta, the vocalist.

Thank you for your time!

Cloudburst: https://www.instagram.com/cloudburstchaos/

What’s up fellas! So stoked to hear the new collection of chaotic/dark hardcore you guys are infamous for! Let’s go back to the beginning briefly. How did this band get together and what was the main inspiration to start this?
What’s going on man! Thanks for the opportunity. In 2008, Me and Yudha, the drummer, found out about this band from Massachusetts called Converge. The first song we ever heard was “The Saddest Day” and when we heard that song we were shocked that this kind of music existed. At the time people here were mailing listening to MTV emo/post-hardcore bands, you know which ones we’re talking about. It was right then and there we decided to form a band that was more influenced by this sound.

Unfortunately, we could not find the right people, because the music is too harsh and noisy for them. It was not until 2011 when we found Ridho as a bassist and Adhi as a guitarist then we went by the name Unrest from 2011 until 2013. At the end of 2013, we found out that a lot of people got us mixed up with another band called Unrest from Jakarta, so we decided to change the name. I suggested “Cloudburst”. Cloudburst is “a sudden and heavy rainfall”, which perfectly summed up our music and stage presence, and that was it – it was decided that we go under the moniker of Cloudburst from then on.

Our first release was a split album with Warmouth and then our debut full-length ‘Crying of Broken Beauty’ was all with this lineup. In 2017, Mahreza went to Russia to get his degree in his film studies, so Yogi came and filled in. This lineup birthed our self-titled album in 2018 and our brand new Corridor of Chaos EP we’re premiering here.

From an outsider’s perspective, it certainly seems that your band released music at the right time and was pretty universally loved from the getgo. How’ve you enjoyed the reception?
Samstrong Records has a huge part in this. They are the best underground record label here in Indonesia right now (maybe ever). It is nice to be loved and I think that’s part of human nature. People love to be accepted.

After your first record, you hit the road outside of Indonesia correct? What was touring around other parts of SE Asia like?
Yeah, we went to Singapore, Melaka, and Kuala Lumpur. Made Dharma from Deadly Weapon/Sunlotus filled in on guitar. It was Patto from Atomic Death that arranged the SEA dates for us. He’s a very cool guy, we opened for them when they toured Jogjakarta in 2015. The good man, Lee from Abrasion arranged the show for us in Singapore, Syahir and Talib from Revulsion Records arranged the show in Melaka and Pdoih from Split Tongue helped us arrange the gig in Rumah Api, Kuala Lumpur. Honestly, we were overwhelmed with the reception. We even had a really good friend of ours out in Malaysia, Nik Ezani, who traveled 3 hours by bus to come watch and hang with us in Melaka. We also crashed at Tiong from Tools of The Trade‘s house in Kuala Lumpur. Needless to say, it was a very memorable chapter of our lives. One we’ll never forget.

When it comes to more of that chaotic style of music, often the lyrics and themes can be lost in the intensity of the music. What are your lyrics typically about?
We talked about “The Saddest Day” from Converge earlier. Aside from a musical standpoint, I never knew that extreme music could have lyrics like that. The thing I love about Jacob Bannon’s lyrics is how his first couple of lyrics read more like traditional emo/hardcore songs. But somewhere around ‘When Forever Comes Crashing’ and ‘Jane Doe,’ it’s almost like he threw off all of the chains and just decided he was going to do his own thing. When I read his lyrics in Jane Doe like ‘Heaven in Her Arms’ and the title track, that’s about the closest I’ve ever felt to being inside someone’s head.

“Death was just a simple glance across a dim lit room
And those eyes did it
Those three words did it
Those three words killed him
And I surrender to it all”

When you read a good writer like Dax Riggs and Robert Smith, you definitely feel like you’re in their head and he doesn’t have control of it. You’re literally riding along on his stream of consciousness. There’s a freedom in that sort of writing that is really attractive to me. I did not want to write songs about social injustice or social consciousness or anything like that’s become the default hardcore topic, since I am definitely an amateur at that sort of thing, and we have other bands that do that.

Your new EP is about to drop! What was the process for working on these songs? When did songwriting begin? Was there any impact from covid? Etc.
Actually, we never had the intention to release an EP. We want to released an album, with longer songs and duration. But there were some contractual issues so we decided to “leak” some of the materials into an EP and push the album back to 2022. We started working on new material on and off in May 2020. Actually covid helped us since we all worked from home so we had time to think about themes and riffs. The problem was when we wanted to record the songs and due to crowd restrictions, we couldn’t enter the studio in 2020 so we had to wait until the situation was less dangerous. We recorded this EP in Watchtower Studios in four days, two days in May 2021 and two days in October. Bable Sagala once again handled mixing and mastering duties.

In terms of lyrics on the new album – what are the themes?
I have been reading a lot of books lately because I have a lot of free time working from home. I read about Chaos Theory and all that. It is fascinating to me that a lot of things that happen around us are basically just random things in order. So, this Corridor of Chaos is just us trying to put this Chaos in order. Corridor is like a room, it has four walls, it has limits, it has boundaries, so we make chaos intentionally on purpose. We have chaos in these songs, but we put it in order.

Every album is like a photograph of the band at that time. So this is a photograph of right now.

Every album is like a photograph of the band at that time. So this is a photograph of right now.

Let’s talk about the artwork too. From all the artwork I’ve seen from Indonesian bands, they NEVER mess around with their visuals. Everything is very well thought out – from cover art to merch as well. So for your new release tell us about the art and artist.
Ridho, our bassist, is the source of all our artwork. He did everything since our second album. The burning car cover for the self-titled record, our t-shirts, the inlay/booklet design, he did everything except the split with Warmouth (which was done by our friend, Ibay) and our first album (made by our good friend also, Tomi Herseta).

As far as the meaning, Ridho says that he thought of just one word ‘chaos’. And with that word he wanted to try something with a different color palette as the typical black and white/grayscale colors were no longer interesting. That’s where the idea for the rabid dog, chains, and explosions in a green-ish color came from.

And with that…go blast these new jams and support a killer band on a killer label!