Tribal Gaze has been on a roll. The band recently released a music video for “Twitching on the Cross” from its upcoming split with California’s Deadbody. Plus it’s been working on the much anticipated follow-up to 2022’s critically acclaimed debut album, The Nine Choirs.
When the Observer caught up with Tribal Gaze last month, the band had just embarked on the first of three back-to-back tours with heavyweights Brujeria, Nails, 200 Stab Wounds and Mammoth Grinder. Guitarist Quentin Stauts hopped on a call as the band waited for the blinker on its van to be replaced somewhere in Tennessee.
Reflecting on Tribal Gaze’s trajectory, Stauts says he counts the band as lucky to be where it is today.
“We've all been friends for like 15 years — and we met Ceez [drummer Cesar De Los Santos] in 2021 — but everybody else, we've been friends since 2009 or something like that,” he says. “We never thought we'd get to do any of the cool stuff we got to do, so we're just super fortunate.”
Tribal Gaze formed during the pandemic in Longview, around two hours east of Dallas, Stauts says. The band viewed it as a fun COVID-19-era project but didn’t really envision playing gigs.
Then the group laid down a demo, and Stauts shared it with his friend Chad Green from Frozen Soul.
“He was like, ‘Hey, I actually like this a lot. I think I could maybe send this to some labels, and maybe actually have this get put out the right way,’ which I didn't even know what that meant at the time,” Stauts recalls. “So he kind of came in and helped give some direct on to it.”
The band released its debut EP via Desert Wastelands Productions and played its first show at Wrecking Ball, the Dallas metal fest, Stauts says.
Maggot Stomp, which put out The Nine Choirs, then took an interest, he says. Eventually the band got connected with producer-engineer Taylor Young (Twitching Tongues, God’s Hate), who worked on the LP and praised it as “absurdly crushing.”
The Young-Tribal Gaze connection continues, Stauts notes.
“We decided we would do a split with Taylor's band, Deadbody, and then we're scheduled to go track the next full-length in January with Taylor again.”
Tribal Gaze’s Split with Deadbody
Stauts says that Tribal Gaze switched it up for the Deadbody split, which is set for release in mid-November.“We wanted to experiment with having a little bit more groove and less focus on — I don't want to say heavier parts — but just like, less chunky parts, less mosh parts, and almost just a little bit more flowy riffs,” he says.
That’ll serve as a solid complement to Deadbody’s side of the release, which Stauts describes as chunkier and more chaotic.
For Tribal Gaze’s second album, the band vows to return to the heavier side of its repertoire.
“I think we took the heavy stuff that we liked on the first LP, and we cranked it up to 10 for the second LP,” Stauts says. “But the split is kind of just a fun groove time.”
Tribal Gaze's Second LP
With an EP and album under its belt, Tribal Gaze didn’t want to “beat the same horse into the ground” for the second LP, Stauts says. While writing the next record, the band adhered to an evil aesthetic with a fresh influence: video games.“So we’ll be like, ‘Let’s write a song about this video game,’” Stauts says. “Once we've got the main frame of it, we'll take it and make it a little bit more broad so it's not so specific to the game — we'll just use it as like a foundation — and then from there it could range from war, it could range from fictional battles and stuff like that. You know, aggressive themes.”
Picking the right album art is important to the band. Look no further than The Nine Choirs’ grotesquely stunning cover — depicting a distorted angel by Japanese surrealist Yu Sugawara. The artwork for the next full-length will be “just as crazy” as its predecessor, Stauts says.
As long as Tribal Gaze gets to gig and go on tours, they’ll be happy, Stauts says. They’ll keep working to make their own favorite death metal album, and hopefully listeners also like it.
“Our only goal is to get the album back and be like, ‘This is every kind of riff our favorite bands didn't get to write,’” Stauts continues. “Or, you know, ‘This is what we wish somebody else would put up.’
“We try to make songs that we're massive fans of.”
Catch Tribal Gaze on Tuesday at Trees, 2709 Elm St. Doors open at 7 p.m.; show starts at 8.
