Images by Nikola Jokanovic //
Dead Mall take no prisoners in SUPERLIMINAL.
Over the last five years, the groundswell around Dead Mall has steadily built off the back of their unrelenting heaviness and reputation as a fucking fun live experience.
The Newcastle quintet’s debut album is 11 tracks of pure power laid down on a bed of hardcore, while swaying into alt-rock, punk, and emo — with even a little nu-rock record scratching thrown in for anyone old enough to have lived through the heydays of Korn, Bizkit, and co.
SUPERLIMINAL is anthemic and non-stop. These guys don’t give you a moment to collect your thoughts — it’s riff after riff, and before you know it the album’s done in a wave of chunky guitars, huge vocals, and half-time breakdowns. Naturally, you circle back to give it another rinsing immediately.
So what’s behind all the music? Check out their track-by-track below for the BTS:
‘PROPERTY DAMAGE’
Ticks all the Dead Mall boxes. This one is a collective favourite, and combines every sonic element you can hear throughout ‘Superliminal’. The video we made was in Ruairi’s garage, after he picked up a green screen while also buying some new VHS gear. His roommate also had a motorbike in the garage.. so we just put two and two together.
At the very end of the track you can hear some sort of distorted rumbling – that’s actually Joe snoring on Darcy’s couch while we were tracking some scratch vocals at around 2am one night. Possibly the most productive thing we recorded that evening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfaVooTdDVg
‘GASOLINE’
Tows the line between humour and morbidity, with lyrics inspired by the works of SNL hall-of-famer Jack Handy. Despite the song having a more melodic focus (leaning into the prior works of Ruairi’s other band Jacob) Gasoline is always a highlight of the live show.
The song was originally titled ‘Common Sense’, trying to mirror the tone of ‘Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy’. The Gasoline section was added after the initial tracking and was then re-titled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg2rWEk8Xfg
‘100% PURE POISON’
The title is taken from 70’s soul group ‘100% Pure Poison’, but you’ll hear no disco on this song. The tone is dark and the riffs are heavy, plus there are turntable scratches, it’s real mature.The music video by Thommy Crowe is incredible. The detail put into his animation is seriously impressive, textures built from scratch and a one of a kind vision.The chorus lyrics are taken (almost verbatim) from 80’s sci-fi flick ‘Cherry 2000’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ3Ytf6RnYQ
‘SUPERLIMINAL’
A pop-tinged powerjam that finds the sweet spot between snarling, crooning and belting it out at full volume. There’s hardly a moment of respite, with a 2-step tempo that just won’t quit. To quote Casey Kasem ‘This is some serious Tony Hawk ass music bro’.
The video by Nikola Jokanovic was incredible, as per usual (he also did the video for ‘GASOLINE’). After Adam and Ruairi developed the initial concept (lyrics as interpretative visuals), we let Nikola run wild with it. It was a blast to film, and the majority of the footage was shot at the DM residences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4VGoL6mjAU
‘HESHER’
This track was originally called ‘riff city’ – for obvious reasons. We then changed the name to Hesher – which is the all-time greatest term for ‘headbanger’, and one we’re trying to bring back into circulation. It’s also the name of the first Nickelback album, which we’re also trying to bring back into circulation.
‘UNDER THE GUN’
Tongue in cheek rap-rock that’s less Limp Bizkit and more Insane Clown Posse. Have you ever heard a more polite way to address the angel of death? ‘Dear Grim Reaper, if you please’.
The first verse describes in detail, a bomb recipe you’d find in a book like ‘Homemade Explosives for Dummies’. And just to be clear, do not shake up a bucket that’s filled with sandpaper, fireworks and matches. In the studio, Ruairi thought the Titanic line was the funniest lyric he’d ever written: ‘I assure you sir, the Titanic is unsinkable. You wanna bet now? Hand me the microphone.’ He also really pushed for saying the word ‘curriculum’ as ‘curriculumEN’, but was outvoted 4-1.
‘CORRIDOR VIOLENCE’
This was the first song written for the album – both musically and lyrically. We actually played the track at our first ever show back in 2022.
We initially just had the riffs that Joe had written, and were trying to find some inspo for lyrics in Darcy’s garage. We found a book from Jordan Belfort (AKA the Wolf Of Wall Street) and started to think about what his mindset would have been after he had ruined his life and then tried to become an inspirational speaker.
The beat at the end was a collaboration between all of us. Ruairi played his 808 live on recording for the first time, and shortly after started his new project Model Audio.
‘NO LIGHT’
A slight detour in the Dead Mall cannon that’s more melodic, politically charged and firmly centred in the groove. There’s a steady build of layered vocal harmonies and guitars that demonstrate the attention to detail that Darcy (guitarist/producer) puts into every song on the album.
Being a different style of song, we had trouble finding the right verse. The final version was one that Ruairi had written the morning of. At the time, he was watching a lot of ‘The Curse of Oak Island’ – a bizarre experiment in reality television that’s essentially about destroying native land, which became the basis for the song.
‘EVICTION NIGHT’
‘Oh Brother what have I done’, this one’s all about ‘Big Brother’. Not the George Orwell version, the Gretel Killeen version.
Ruairi has applied 3 or 4 times over the years. Mostly, he was into the idea of making the audition tape. he always used a VHS camera and one single tape, and would edit it so that when it cuts, you’d see a glimpse of the old auditions, or random footage that made him look even more insane.
The line ‘No one’s gonna spoil us’ is a reference to The X Files – ‘Oubliette’. Also, an “oubliette” was a medieval dungeon where they would leave prisoners to die; Oblier, ‘to forget’.
REAL WORLD
This one was written by Joe (who always writes the music – but this time he did the lyrics too). It’s much more upbeat than our usual output, with probably the catchiest chorus we’ve ever recorded.
This is one of the tracks we worked on endlessly after the main guitar parts and drums were recorded. We all live in a similar area in Newcastle and just about any time we would be hanging out at the pub (shout out to the Ori) we would end up back at Darcy’s house, playing around with different sounds until the early hours. If you listen closely you’ll hear a bunch of jangling in the background throughout the song – It’s a sample and we’re not 100% sure what it is, some sort of pots and pans being banged together? Who knows. Brings everything together nicely though.
DEBT (THE FIRST 5000 YEARS)
This one is more on the emo/pop-punk side of the punk spectrum – one that all of our other bands (Split Feed, jacob & Lamphead) tend to live in.
The track is about compulsiveness in every sense of the word, but particularly in relation to money. When we were trying to find a name for the track, we knew we wanted it to be something related to debt. We were all sitting around in Joe’s attic, and Ruairi piped up asking how long we thought debt had existed.. after a quick google search he discovered it was 5000 years old, and that someone had written a book about it (thanks David Graebar).
