FUMING MOUTH SEEMED unstoppable. Merging early 90s death metal with late 90s metalcore to deadly effect, the Massachusetts act cratered the earth with a series of monstrous early releases. Three weeks before they were due to record their second album, however, everything changed when singer, guitarist and mastermind Mark Whelan was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.
“The first thing I said was that I just wanted to play one more show,” says Mark.
The band entered “battle stations”, with Mark viewing each milestone - chemo, remission, finding a bone-marrow donor - as a campaign victory. And while the process was painful, exhausting and uncertain, it also gave him the opportunity to rewrite expansive new album Last Day Of Sun, musically and conceptually.
“I was going crazy stuck in aroom all day and the doctors and nurses encouraged me to play guitar,” he remembers. “It was a way to occupy my time while I was really high on drugs.”