New Band of the Week: State Of Deceit

Welsh band State Of Deceit have crafted a deliciously powerful yet engaging thrash and groove metalcore sound that they describe as “intense, heavy and mosh-able.”

The quintet of Pete Scammell (vocals), Gareth Morgan-Jones (lead guitar), Jon Russell (rhythm guitar), Davide Santini (bass) and Matthew Toner (drums), who fail from south and west Wales, joined the band at different times but all did so through the website JoinMyBand.

On the sound they’ve honed, the band tells us: “Imagine putting a bit of metalcore, a bit of thrash and a dash of groove into a blender, and mixed with a whole load of heavy metal. Turn the blender on and just enjoy that thick heavy metal smoothie.”

Our first taste of this was their recent single Demi-God, which calls out evangelical corruption and hypocrisy. It opens up with a chugging guitar riff that continues under gruff vocals, then clean vocals join in for an intriguing blend of heavy and light vocals through the chorus of “Pay penance to the ungodly hoax, Bow down to the maker infect (hail messiah), The word of God (hail messiah), You violate God’s church, God sends you down (send us your toll and thy soul).”

A second chorus ends with a cry of “God sends you down,” which ushers in more intense guitars then a rolling riff and huge drums give way to a big breakdown of crushing guitars and drums. A little pause tees up the return of the chugging and more vicious vocals, before a cheeky guitar solo sets up a heavy outro.

On the track, the band told us: “It’s been incredible so far, we got stopped by someone at our practice place just because they like it so much! If you’ve not listened, why not?! If you like groove, heavy, metaly breakdown goodness it’s for you, a touch of clean with the grit you know us for!”

Demi-God comes from State Of Deceit’s debut album Stalked By Daemons, which was released last month. On the album, they told us: “I’m not sure we can put into words how excited we are from the brink of almost not being a band, through to finding new members, re-recording the songs and adding more songs to the listing to make a full album. It’s been a hell of a rollercoaster, taking us three years to write and record this album, but it’s definitely been worth it. This is what we’ve been working large parts of our lives towards, a piece of work that’s riffy, hooky, and most of all moshy, we couldn’t be me more proud of it.

“From the album as a whole, I think it’s got something for everyone. If you like a good lead Gareth has got some pretty sick leads in there. If you like break downs, there’s spades full of them. If you like hooky cleans we’ve got them and most of all if you like riffs, it’s just full of them from start to finish. We’ve even managed to squeeze in the classic ‘slow’ song in there for all you ballad lovers, but it’s got our unique twist on it as ever!”

The album is packed with more groovy, thrashy goodness, including the intense Stalked By Daemons, Guarded By Angels, which you can check out in the video below, and Suffer Me, the band’s take on more melodic approaches in the excellent Hate Within and At What Cost?, and the wild final track Digital Tattoo.

But a personal favourite track from the album is Withered, which opens up with a delicious fast-paced guitar lick and driving drums. That drops into heavy guitar chords and powerful vocals that end with chugging guitars, and the opening lick returns for an intense chorus led by the vocals “Week after week, All time to waste, Dreams await a damned fate, Blossoms withering on a vine, How many times did we demonstrate, Forgiveness claimed time after time.” Check it out in the video here:

The State Of Deceit sound has been influenced by a range of different styles of metal. Pete is big into his core metal music and loves Fit For a King, Jon loves Pantera, Garth loves Children Of Bodom, Davide likes to dance to Architects and, apparently, Matt likes to sing some Westlife.

And on what inspires them to write music, the band explains: “We get influence from everything around us for lyrics, musically we write stuff we want to go hard live. This album has been focused around the title, Stalked by Daemons, and each song relates back to it. From mental health, and cults to political injustice, and even an Armageddon song!”

State Of Deceit’s debut album Stalked By Daemons is out now through Eclipse Records. You can also see the band play the Rocking Rons Merry Metalmas 2023 Christmas show at The Bunkhouse in Swansea on 22 December before playing The Great Southern Weekend at The Attic in Southampton on 19 January then The Anvil in Bournemouth on 20 January. They also have plenty going on behind the scenes, so stay tuned for plenty more soon.

You can follow State Of Deceit on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, and check out their music on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and YouTube. And check out more new bands through their label Eclipse Records.