One very exciting act riding amongst the tides of the current new wave of British Death Metal is London’s Mutagenic Host. Having delivered the deathly goods with the release of their highly anticipated 2025 debut album ‘The Diseased Machine’, the band also recently unleashed their two track tape ‘Grotesque Union/Chimeric Vestige’. I had the pleasure of writing articles for both releases, which can be found on our website. Mutagenic Host has been rapidly gaining traction within the modern Death Metal universe for their exquisite blend of technology-concerned savagery. The band fuses the marching fury of a classic act like Bolt Thrower, with their own concoction of apocalyptic ferocity. The themes and atmosphere summoned by their unsettling music feel all the more poignant given the recent developments in global technology, and the rise of AI. I caught up with the band’s vocalist, Ash, to learn a bit more about the steel-clad cyborg realm of horror that is Mutagenic Host.
Hi, Ash! Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us. Mutagenic Host has had a hell of a time these past 18 or so months, would you mind first telling us a bit about how the band first started?
Hails, just wanted to echo comments I’ve made before about this publication; it’s immaculately organised, well written, and has good taste. Thanks for having us.
The Host consists of Jack Thompson (Guitar), Dan Bulford (Guitar), Edgar Swales (Bass), and George Kinsella-Pearn (Drums). I started the band as a vocalist which is fairly rare in death metal. I’m a writer by trade so the effort and the focus on world building comes from that. Mutagenic Host as a name has multiple definitions. It can be classified as a mutated individual who is the host of a disease or it can be an army under mutation. A ‘host’ is an archaic definition for an army. Thankfully, we aren’t that self absorbed that we created it that way and the breakdown of the definition came after. We were all very pleased with the outcome, after the fact.
The band itself was born out of the living horror that was the pandemic. Just to note before I carry on, this band was never set up or since seen as a pandemic band (neither are we anti-vaxers to be clear). I think it’s likely the most single impactful event since the second and first world war. The breakdown of society during that time punctured the veil in such a visceral way that it was hard to re-assimilate. Whether that was incestuous political grifters that laughed in the face of the public who had lost loved ones, the absurdity of civility thinned to procedure; humanity reduced to signage, or the loss of livelihoods under contradicting policy overseen by men that not only spunked the countries PPE up the wall, but were caught putting their unmasked members in their secretary. But that made a huge impact on me, and the rest of us, to make a band that was a vehicle to make nasty aggressive music that displayed the true intention of mankind beyond the clichè’s of religion and satan worship. We saw all of that as a bit of an end of an era, and the future was now.
You released your debut album; ‘The Diseased Machine’ last year, it seems to have caused quite the splash within the Death Metal scene. How was the experience of putting together an album for you as a band?
It was some of the greatest creative collaboration as a group and as individuals we had ever experienced. The album as a notion was being considered and talked about since Spring 2025, due to some really incredible seminal live performances with some excellent death metal talent, and it wasn’t until November of that year that we started really getting together. Our previous guitarist Sammy Tuhino had a flat in Seven Sisters so we were meeting there once a week in the grim dark of winter in London at his place writing it all out. Dan Bulford was on bass at that time, he was always a guitarist in the band anyway. Sammy later left, Dan became our other live guitarist and Eddie Swales joined on bass. But we had these three great guitarists who all bought something different and they clearly had been backed up for a while and just unleashed some exceptional song writing that became ‘The Diseased Machine’. We didn’t keep a single riff we did not think was absolute mustard. That set the tone of the band in terms of song writing in general. No self indulged wankery, no mid repreductions, no holding back. This mixed with the absolute force of our giant drummer who’s probably the most formally educated musician GK Pearn, and my venomous words and growlings and we’d created an album we are all still incredibly proud of.
So, obviously, the band puts a lot of emphasis on Sci-Fi themes involving deadly machines / mankind’s downfall. How do you think this has found its way into your music? And are you at all influenced by things happening in the world right now?
We’re all nerds that love 70s/80s/90s scifi & fantasy. Big magic and Warhammer fans. So like all of that seeps into the music of course. I think as predominantly millennials in this group, we lived through the cultural heyday of all of that and it’s just second nature to us. Thats kinda what MH is you can either take all the cool sci-fi shit and the heavy groovy tunes, or you can look a little deeper. As a generation we knew the world before the internet and we are also completely defined by it. I think if anyone has the credentials to determine the existential threat that unbridled and unknown technological advances pose to humanity, I’d like to think it’s Millennials. I think it’s a deep understanding through witnessing the transition, and being reshaped by it in real time. So when the fuckin tech bros like Elon Musk open Pandora’s box on technology the world isn’t ready for yet, it’s fairly plain to see what kind of detrimental effect that’s going to have on the whole world, especially the poorer parts of society and the nations that are beset on all sides by warmongering shit cunts that want to blow up schools with children in. I mean do I really need to say more at this stage. The world is run by feeble, insecure men, who would rather hoard wealth in their underground bunkers than see any form of true progression, well, in the Western world anyway.
I love the artwork for ‘The Diseased Machine’, it strikes me as slightly Dan Seagrave / ‘Effigy Of The Forgotten’-esque. How did this image come to grace the cover of the record?
Well, you nailed it haha. That was of course a very key image in briefing the artwork. The artwork was created by Mark Cooper and he did an exceptional job. I love that we made a pink death metal album cover to be honest, I think that’s fairly rare also. But the actual imagery is taken from the music itself. Well it’s the complete end of the world building. It’s when AI has completely taken over. That huge mechanical monstrous entity is AI made and is harvesting biological matter for fuel from the machine made flesh fields you see in the artwork. We made the album so that the audience could choose whether to get down with the cool sci-fi shit and the heavy tunes, or they could delve a bit deeper and unearth some current issues that are very prevalent, as it’s allegorical.
It seems like the last few years have seen the rise of a large number of very talented new Death Metal bands in the UK. You have amazing acts such as Slimelord, Celestial Sanctuary, Vacuous, Coffin Mulch, Cryptworm, and yourselves, to name just a small few. I get the sense that we are in a really interesting time for the Death Metal world not just in the UK, but globally. Do you think there is a particular reason for this? And are there any other bands out there that you think our readers should definitely be checking out?
I think it’s a tumultuous timeline we are in and that naturally seeps into music. There’s also these natural peaks and troughs where you get a wave of new talent writing sick shit. All those bands you mentioned are incredible musicians and incredible people. It’s an honour to brush shoulders with them. I mean you’ve covered them really. That new Cryptworm release is mega and Slimelords other band Cryptic Shift’s latest release is just insane. The whole Scotland scene is popping with Suffering Rites, Grave Ghoul, Abysmal Decay, but most importantly from that scene, Jaundice. Those kids are fucking shit hot, we loved having them on our tour, death metal is in good hands for the future with them. Smouldering Tomb from Brighton were great live when they supported us also.
I’m very much looking forward to finally seeing you perform live at London’s Incineration Fest next month, it’s such an incredible event! Have you got much set in stone for tours/gigs during the rest of 2026?
We have some very sick shows lined up. We are announcing Monday that we are supporting 200 Stab Wounds in London, as well as two other pretty high quality death metal shows that we can’t wait to play. But most importantly, we are writing our second full length album and that’s in full swing as we speak!
And lastly, for a bit of fun… if Mutagenic Host was to play a gig alongside any three other bands in existence, who would you pick?
Gorguts, Gorefest, THE CORPSE.
