Confessions Of A Traitor keep the faith with new album ‘This Pain Will Serve You’

Interview by Steve Harrison

Photo - Oli Duncanson

It’s certainly a ‘gift’ I admire when artists can truly express deep personal pain and emotions through their music and lyrics, generating a raw intensity that musically rips through your soul and challenges your internal perspectives on how we deal with significant personal suffering and  loss.    

The new album from Confessions Of A Traitor ‘This Pain Will Serve You’ set for release on 16th May via Facedown Records, is an inspiring album that looks to define humanities resilience through adversities. Bold and challenging, yet eloquent and sincere, both lyrics and music coalesce to provide an auditory journey that is brutal yet soaring!

Now that seems a lot to get to grips with, so we sat down with vocalist Stephen MacConville to explore the intricacies of the album.

‘I think it's certainly quite a different direction with a lot of what we have already done in the past. I think when we set out to do the record, I was very much like….when I listen to a record, I want to hear dynamics. I want to hear difference.’ explains Stephen ‘ I tend to find that I jump from artist to artist depending on what I want now, rather than listening to a full album. So if I want something hard and heavy, yeah, I am the worst musician to talk to from a consumer perspective, like, our guys talk about like, the dynamics, you know, the album takes you on a journey. I'm like, I want the bangers. ‘ he laughs ‘I want that. And I want variation between them.’

‘If I want to listen to hardcore, I listen to Knocked Loose and Kublai Khan or metalcore I want Make Them Suffer  or Currents. And then if I want like a bit of a ballad, I'm going to go for Bad Omens and Dayseeker. And I will do that. So I was like…well, why don't we put that in our record to try and keep people engaged with it and we went more into the heavy and hardcore, the opening and closing songs.’

‘They're two minutes a piece and they're just kind of balls to the wall, heavy, no singing, just raw. And then a little bit in the middle is a bit like, oh, it's a bit ethereal, a bit  way more melodic. There's tracks on there that there are no screaming in whatsoever! Which is a first for us. And then you've kind of got what people will expect from us from other aspects of the record.’

Elaborating on the approach to writing the songs Stephen explains ‘I always say to the guys, like, because they're like, they'll listen to this album back to front …. I will just select whatever I'd like, I'll be halfway through a song. And I'm like, Yeah, cool. Done with that, next one, I'm awful’ he laughs ‘I cannot stay fixated on it nd that's why I think shorter tracks are doing really well for me at the moment.’

‘I do remember being like, every time Jack, who writes the music, would come to me with a demo, because Jack and I are the primary songwriters when it comes to do it. So he'll do the predominance of the music, the guitars, drums, and then he'll bring it to me, I'll do the lyrics, melodies. And then I'll do some of the production stuff in the background. So what I tend to do is restructure elements of the songs, so it'll come back in, then I'll present it back to them. I'll be like, right, guys, this is how I envisage the song. And it's always like a minute and a half shorter than it was in the first place.’

 ‘Where was that section, I was like, I just cut it in half….it was too long, it lingered too long. I'm like, Listen, for me as a listener,  I'm more engaged if I'm kind of hooked into the next section very quickly. So yes, yeah, I I've certainly taken a bit more creative liberties with this record.’

There are also a number of collaborations on the album, Stephen adds ‘Yeah, yeah, a lot of it is like, how can we work with some really cool people. And how can we spread our message through the scene as well? For me, like a lot of the collaborations that are on this record are people that I truly hold dear and revere, like I have a huge amount of respect for. I mean, the Hail Mary collaboration with Convictions, they brought us out to America for the very first time in June of 2023. And I was like, I'd love to do something with you guys. I think we share, you know, the same values, the same faith, and you know, we want to spread the same message. You think about the amount of collaboration tracks and it's like, perfect, well, you know, let's do it, let's come together and let's spread our message across as many people as possible.

‘And the Holy Name and Heal the Hurt one actually came from me going to the Loud and Proud Festival in Germany. And I was going as a punter, and they're on the same record label as us. And Tommy, the singer reached out to me and he said, Oh, I don't scream anymore. We've got a load of features on our record. Can you come up and sing? So I actually went to be as you know, a crowd member and ended up performing a half an hour set with them on stage so yeah and then afterwards we were just chatting and Trevor who sings in Heal the Hurt I was like oh yeah we should do something together’

The new album both lyrically and visually in the videos that have been released for the songs off the album as singles are littered with religious lyricism and iconography, and I wondered whether it was from a personal perspective or from other band members, or whether it's using religion as a construct or concept for the album.

‘My parents were Irish. So born and bred in Cork and Dublin. And I went to Catholic school, Catholic College, Catholic University. So I didn't really know anything else up until the age of about 22. My, my cousin was the Archbishop of Cardiff. So we're very ingrained in this kind of religious upbringing. Yeah, it's obviously kind of, I guess, form the foundations of a lot of my formative years.’ 

Stephen tells me. ‘And what I, what we're singing about is, like a lot of the realities of life. Yeah how things affect us and how I myself am kind of journeying through; and there's certainly a bit of a I'd say a topic. I see people discuss us online because a lot of Christian bands tend to do worship music yeah, no we don't do worship music, we talk about things that affect us and how my faith has guided me through this so we're obviously signed to a Christian label in the States.’

‘And, you know, that says enough for what it is and what I write about. So it's a big piece of who we are. But at the same time, it's also a foundation for what we write, how we go about it, and the kind of message that we want to spread, which is, you know, a lot of life is very, very tough.’

There is no doubt the band tackle key issues head, including some of the most contentious well publicised issues within religion, Stephen explains.

‘It's how you come through the other side of it. So there's always a positive message laced through the difficult conversations or the difficult topics we talk about. We released a song in April last year, just before we headed out to the States, called Hail Mary. And that's about my parents' upbringing and how the schools that they went to, they were monasteries and convents led by monks and nuns in Ireland, and they were physically, emotionally and sexually abused by the clergy within the walls.’

‘But that song directly talks about the inherent incestuous child molestation within the Catholic Church and other churches throughout the world. And it's a lived experience and the irony was when we released that song, everyone got really angry they're like ‘oh you know you're this is not correct theology and you're saying the wrong things’ and it's like you are the exact type of people that this is talking about because you will deny it and you would rather put your energies into protecting somebody who says they're Christian who does abhorrent things, rather than call it for what it is and dismiss them or put them away.’

‘So yeah, it was really interesting. And it really cut the wheat from the chaff when we released that song. And it was like a stake down the middle of the scene when we did it. And I'm really proud that we did do it. Because the night before, I was so nervous about it coming out.’

‘Christian bands tend to do worship music yeah, no we don't do worship music, we talk about things that affect us and how my faith has guided me through this’

Photo - Oli Duncanson

Expanding on the lyrics in the song ‘Hail Mary’  and referring to the line ‘…abused in the house of god!’

‘I thought that was the line that people were going to pick up on and be really angry about. And it wasn't, it was the intro line ‘Hail Mary full of grace. I must reject your embrace.’ ‘Yeah. I was like, I was like, come on, and then they put blinkers on and they're like, ‘No, no’. So, hey, listen, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. And it sparked a conversation.’

‘And for me, one of the most important things, and I didn't actually realize this was going to happen, when we toured the States in May last year, we had people coming up to the merch stand and telling me their stories of church hurt and child abuse. And at first, I did not know what to do with it. Now, I'm a very outgoing, very extroverted person, very confident. And it floored me and I am very, very, very infrequently left speechless.’

‘But after a couple of days of it, I was like, I think this is exactly why we wrote it.’

There is a clear sense of deep reflection of tragedy and grief, poignantly and respectfully created throughout the whole album, including songs ‘Noble Bloom’ and ‘Still Haunted’ that have a significant personal meaning to the band and their journey that is apparent to the album title, ‘This Pain Will Serve You’.

 Stephen explains the reasons why the album release was actually delayed. ‘ We had a couple of tragedies in the band. Hence where some of the songs have come from. So within a very short period of time, one of our guitarists, Jake, his mum got diagnosed with breast cancer. And then about two months later, Jack's mother got diagnosed with brain cancer. And unfortunately, it was terminal,  and this was within this period of time where we're writing and recording as well a U.S tour with tickets flying out; so Jack, you know, made a very difficult decision to not come with us and ultimately made the right decision and then she passed away when we came back. Jake's mom's doing absolutely fine. But to have those two things happen simultaneously, you know, that doesn't happen too often. And it's an incredible tragedy.’

‘Jake and Jack have shown incredible strength throughout this process, and obviously, the duress for Jack has been even more tremendous, because I've never seen a stronger man. The respect I have for him is tremendous.’

‘…. the four songs in the middle of the record, the kind of more melodic one, actually, Still Haunted, Noble Bloom, and there's a song called The Love You Left Behind. So Still Haunted is about a friend of mine whose partner died by suicide, and then Love You Left Behind and Noble Bloom, and actually Starve, are all about Jack's mum and how he was dealing with the trauma of the terminal diagnosis’

‘Jake and Jack have shown incredible strength throughout this process, and obviously, the duress for Jack has been even more tremendous, because I've never seen a stronger man. The respect I have for him is tremendous.’

The poetic eloquence that is evident in the lyrics for such deep rooted personal tragedies must have carried such a significant responsibility to develop.

Stephen responds ‘ I said to Jack, I said, can you, you know, through this process, I said, just record how you feel, write down everything that you're feeling, because he was like, Oh, I want to do something, but I don't know what to do. Jack actually does write a few of the lyrics. And yeah, he, he wrote probably about three or four pages of like, just genuine feelings of how he felt the anger, the regrets, like all of this.’

‘There is actually somewhere out there probably on my laptop somewhere, is another rendition of it where they are all of what he has said verbatim, right? But it kind of lost a little bit of creativity because it was so raw.’

‘……a prime example is that Noble Bloom itself, the name of the song has come from his mum's name, Alison and in ancient Greek, it stands for nobility or noble. And she has, she would always have white lilies in the house. Oh, okay, well, the flowers were always in bloom, that name comes from nobility. So then kind of round and it was like noble bloom. So that's where the name came from and then I was like, well, start to link it into the idea of like a blossoming and dying flower.’

‘I just took that raw emotion and channelled it into a little bit more of a metaphor. But then, you know, you've got lines in there, like, I can't watch the blossom die. And it's like, oh, that acceptance. So the chorus is the acceptance if I can't bend the will of heaven. Then I guess I'll say goodbye. So it's like, this is happening, it's God's plan, she is going to go. And then halfway through the song, there's this minute of like, oh my God, I can't watch this, I can't do this.’

‘So however much you get through the stages of acceptance, and he was forced through it in such a short period of time, that there are those glimmers of like, this is horrendous, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen. So it's the levels of mixed emotion and how he dealt with them. And like I said before, I'm so incredibly proud of him and the things that he's done and the fact that he's going to be reminded of her every time he plays that song.’

‘But again, there's that level of catharsis, there's the honour and everything around it. Yeah, it's certainly, it's been a journey and I think for the record's sake it has done, it's done wonders.’

‘I feel like my songwriting has progressed, I've got more determined to write songs that are even harder to deal with. So yeah, we played Still Haunted and Noble Bloom for the first time about three weeks ago live, and none of us could look at each other. Because I'll choke up because I need to be able to sing these lines. Jake's doing the backing vocals and he's doing the choruses and I can't look at him. We're singing songs about Jack's mum, Jack can't look at us. Seb's trying to hit the drums and he can barely see the cymbals. So yeah, it's true. But that's, again, what I love is these are just raw emotions. And I think it's important to talk about them.’

‘This Pain Will Serve You’ is definitively an album that explores complex and raw emotions of grief and loss and the journey of the healing process.

"This record is a heartfelt tribute to those who have experienced profound loss — to those who continue to grieve the ones they love. It stands as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, inviting listeners to find comfort and solidarity in faith, hope, and the shared experience of grief. We grow from trauma — we let it serve us." - Confessions Of A Traitor

‘This Pain Will Serve You’ from Confessions Of A Traitor is set for release on 16th May via Facedown Records. Shortly after release the band will be heading out on their first co-headline run in the United States, with 22 shows over 25 days.

For album pre-orders and up to date details on Confessions Of A Traitor, you can check them out here