Kostolom is the epic second LP from the duo Alex Terrible and Jack Simmons’ band Slaughter to Prevail. The album expands on the dynamic extremes of their 2017 debut, Misery Sermon — pairing Alex’s dark, cathartic lyrics with Simmons’ pummeling riffs and tense, cinematic solos. “We wanted to make each song for us stand out in a different way,” the guitarist says. “On some of the songs, we focused on wanting to keep it uptempo, building to a breakdown as the focal point. Other songs it was about groove or the chorus — ‘how can we make this melodic?’ The albums we love the most have those dynamics, and we want to use them to make each part hit harder.”

The songs evolved over several years, the first demos constructed shortly before the release of Misery Sermon. And they finally finished the material in late 2020, with everyone (Alex, Simmons, bassist Mikhail Petrov, guitarist Dmitry Mamedov) having tracked their respective parts at home. (Evgeny Novikov recorded his drums at a nearby studio in Moscow.)

Tracks like “Made in Russia” and “Head on a Plate” pile-drive their detuned riffs straight into your skull, offering a platform for Alex at his most menacing. But the frontman also stretches out across the record, adding clean choruses to anthems like “Baba Yaga” and “Your Only.”
Alex’s words — largely sung in Russian, with occasional bursts of English — are also more balanced than the bleak song titles may suggest. “The lyrics,” Simmons says, “are quite personal to anyone who listens, I think — of personal struggle, keeping a positive mental attitude and going through the shit to have a better life and achieve your goals.”

As always, Slaughter to Prevail aim to provoke you, even as they empower you. “We want something that causes an emotion — whether it’s good or bad, disappointment or excitement or whatever,” Simmons says. “We don’t want something that’s stereotypical.”