Bristol’s Epimetheus: A Conversation on Perseus 9 and Doom

Transmission 304: Interview with Epimetheus

Emerging from the Bristol underground, Epimetheus have moved past stoner-rock tropes toward a sound defined by tectonic weight and atmospheric drift. Their debut album, Perseus 9, arrives as a self-released launch on 6 February 2026. The record preserves a raw aesthetic where pedal clicks and room bleed are vital.

Title: Perseus 9
Artist: Epimetheus
Release Date: 2026-02-06
Genres: Doom Metal, Shoegaze, Space Rock
Label: self-release
Description: Epimetheus discuss their debut album Perseus 9. Bristol doom metal meets cosmic paranoia and Greek mythology. Self-released on 6 February 2026.

Ben Price, Cillian Breathnach, and James Jackson construct a “bath of sound” influenced by the cosmic paranoia of Philip K. Dick and the dense textures of shoegaze. It is a grounded interpretation of the fantastic, where Greek mythology meets the cold vacuum of deep space.

Why did you choose the name Epimetheus, the titan of hindsight?

[Cillian] We were deliberating over a name change for a very long time. We relaunched the project after lockdown and wanted to grow up a little bit. Our previous band name was Mandalorian, which was no longer a niche piece of Star Wars lore, but instead a massive television show that we couldn’t really use.

We were looking at different things. Greek mythology is inherently interesting. Sorry, Ben.

[Ben] No, I was fiddling with my audio settings. Sorry.

[Cillian] That’s okay.

The aspect of Greek mythology is always compelling because myths that have stood for that long will always resonate on a deeper level. Epimetheus was one that we hadn’t really heard before we started looking into it. It is a bit more of a niche side of things.

There is an aspect of the “act first, think later” thing that goes well with Doom Metal as an approach. It is funny to have that contrast; he was a bit of an idiot compared to the thoughtful and agile Prometheus, whereas we are a big slab of silly guitar riffs. We aren’t trying to come across as funny, but that aspect is an interesting contrast. Prometheus would be a “root one” name for a band, whereas Epimetheus is a funny inversion of it.

[Ben] I originally suggested the name. To be slightly reductive, Prometheus is intelligent but a bit weak, whereas Epimetheus is strong but a bit dim. I thought that was humorous for a Doom Metal band, where the point is to just hammer riffs at people for upwards of six minutes at a time. It was amusing to me and I wasn’t particularly bothered if nobody else got it. I have had to explain it to people many times, but that is part of it for me.

How did the three of you meet and start playing together?

[Ben] We have been playing together in one capacity or another for about 10 years. We met while we were studying in Birmingham University. Cillian Breathnach and I formed a band together about 11 years ago.

We have grown together as musicians, starting 10 years ago playing dad rock covers in pubs without a drummer, through being a silly stoner rock band, to where we are now. It has been a really nice journey for the two of us. We struggled initially to find a permanent drummer.

James Jackson, who is not here, was one of the drummers we played with in our early days, but he was busy doing musical theatre stuff at the time. We couldn’t get him to commit to the band full-time because he was doing lots of stuff. Eventually, his calendar became freer. We asked him to be in the band all the time about two years into playing together, at which point he could commit. We have been playing as a three-piece ever since.

Prometheus is intelligent but a bit weak, whereas Epimetheus is strong but a bit dim. I thought that was humorous for a Doom Metal band, where the point is to just hammer riffs at people for upwards of six minutes at a time.” — Ben Price

How has the Bristol music scene influenced your development as a band?

[Cillian] Massively so. It is a very open scene in terms of genre. There are niches where metal will happen in some venues and punk in others, but in general, most venues are open to everything. A lot of bills will be shared between metal bands and non-metal bands.

When we first restarted the project after COVID, we were playing with one particular promoter who was doing a battle of the bands. It was not a metal battle of the bands; it was just an open thing. For us, having that onus to appeal to an audience of people who might not necessarily be there to see metal—let alone doom metal—meant our mission was to make them realize the things anyone can get out of that kind of music.

Bristol has a large group of people who are really open to seeing all kinds of music. It reflects the way younger music fans discover music through Spotify or other means and like all of it together. Less people are siloed by genre. Bringing those extra influences in and having fun on shows meant we really had to road-test these songs. Except for Held No More, we road-tested them all as much as we could.

As songwriters, we were making people who were there to see indie rock not leave during a 10-minute song about space. If we could pull that off, it was beneficial for our development as performers and songwriters. Being a three-piece, there is room for me to do things that aren’t rhythm guitar. We were true to the live experience on the record; we don’t have rhythm guitars under the solo because we found ways of making our playing engaging as a three-piece.

Venues exist in Bristol in a way that is not completely unique, but smaller venues are having a hard time across the world right now, specifically in the UK. The fact that Bristol still has multiple options to fill a room and play music in a real capacity is amazing. We want to sound like people in a room playing instruments, and the best way to get good at that is to do it.

A warning system failed. To what danger is the title referring?

[Ben] That is the opening line of the first track from the album called Earthbound. We thought it would be fun to have narrative lyrics that tell a story. The story of that song is that an alien spacecraft, a UFO, crash-lands and is discovered by someone driving under the influence through a desert. The “system fail” aspect is from the perspective of the spacecraft about to crash. There isn’t much more to it than that. Some other lyrics on the album are ostensibly about science fiction but say more, whereas that is just a story about space.

[Cillian] We had been writing songs that try to encapsulate a personal moment in a sci-fi context, like being isolated or repeating the same circles in Perseus 9. For that one, there were sci-fi influences in line with B-movies that we carried over from when we were a sillier band. We were reframing the classic gray alien landing in the desert from a crashed UFO. We were trying to recontextualize the Roswell mythology. It is the desert rock of us having a space element collide with it. It serves as an opener to the album; it has big down-tuned guitar riffs, but there is an upward-seeking element as well.

[Ben] I like the idea that it is similar to what we had done previously. It opens the album and lays the groundwork for us to build on what has come before.

Our mission was to make them realize the things anyone can get out of that kind of music… Less and less people are siloed by genre. Bringing those extra influences in and having fun on shows meant we really had to road-test these songs.” — Cillian Breathnach

Why do you choose an aluminum neck baritone for your specific tone? Cillian, this is for you.

[Cillian] The baritone aspect and the aluminum aspect were a happy confluence. Before, I was experimenting with very low guitar tunings. This was over COVID when I wasn’t playing in a band and there wasn’t a need for it to be usable. It was just fun to tune a guitar as low as possible. A baritone helps with that. I have always loved guitar gear—my day job involves writing about it—so I had an interest in putting together my own guitar.

Fender guitars are designed to be modular. I had a Squier, which is a budget thing, and I thought it would be cool. I had seen aluminum necks being played by Steve Albini and Stephen O’Malley and thought it was an interesting look. The aluminum thing is loved by people who like noisy rock tones because of the sustain. I decided on a baritone conversion, which extends the scale length and keeps the bridge in the right place, so I could have control over the pickups.

When we came to play together, if I tuned to drop F and Ben stayed in C standard, we had this weird thing where we almost play as a chord. I get an extra string tuned effectively in between where a normal guitar would be and where the bass is. As a three-piece, that extra slot in the middle is awesome. When we are doing riffs, I can vary the thickness across the length of a song.

It came out of experimentation. It is objectively a cool piece of gear and people at shows ask what is going on. That is great encouragement. As soon as people wonder what you are doing with your guitar, they might stay and listen to see if it is justified. We hope we land that promise. Not many people see those instruments.

[Ben] It offers interesting opportunities because the aluminum neck counteracts the tuning and the Orange amps we use. The tuning is low and the amps are mid-range heavy, but the aluminum neck offers a brightness that means it isn’t too muddy. It is still quite clear.

From a songwriting perspective, quite a lot of the time on the album, I am actually playing in a higher register than Cillian. You take the bass-guitar relationship and switch it on its head. Live, it offers the audience a difference in texture. Sometimes doom metal can lack texture, and we wanted to keep the songs and the experience feeling fresh. It has worked out really well.

[Cillian] It was synchronicity. It led to emergent songwriting from the tuning. Bristol‘s fertile local scene means people want to explore new bands and want a reason to go to the next show. Other bands will come up and say it’s awesome. If people can see what makes you stand out, it means we get more opportunities to play with cool people.

It is an atmosphere that is not aggressive, but heavy. It is a bath of the sounds that really gets you nodding.” — Cillian Breathnach

Which artists or filmmakers have shaped your approach to Atmosphere?

[Cillian] From a guitar perspective, the extremes are My Bloody Valentine and Sunn O))). It’s that wall of sound thing where every delay pedal I own is on at the same time and whatever I play turns into a big wash. It sounds like sci-fi because it evokes an actual physical space. For the droning thing, there is the knowledge of how to make a single guitar chord musically compelling through harmonics, feedback, and playing as loud as possible. We like to fill the room with sound. It is an atmosphere that is not aggressive, but heavy. It is a “bath of sound” that gets you nodding.

[Ben] We lurch between two atmospheric bases: one influenced by My Bloody Valentine, the other being more in Sleep or Sunn O))) territory. I like to think we walk the line between them. We want our sound to be really wide. A lot of metal right now sounds narrow and compact, which is the opposite of how we want to sound. We want the record to have space and width, like a big, expansive room.

It feels like a natural extension of early Black Sabbath records where there is space between the instruments. When mixing the record, I wanted it to sound bigger and less compressed. I went back to formative things from the late 70s or 80s where each part is very distinct.

[Cillian] Another band we mainlined was Kowloon Walled City, who are experts at making the space between notes miles wide. They were a big influence on using a recording aesthetic where you can tell it was all recorded in a room. Some songs have pedal clicks left in the tracks because we wanted to evoke the aesthetic of a band explicitly playing this stuff.

You mentioned films. It’s like being in a room where someone is showing you something on a film projector; there is that clack of the projector keeping you grounded while you look at a bigger space. I always had 2001: A Space Odyssey in my head. The shots last for two minutes in that film. In Perseus 9, the chorus isn’t a difficult riff; it is big, crushing movements between power chords. You don’t need a lot going on to evoke vastness. Doom metal can achieve that. There is something bleak about the huge miles between you and Jupiter. It is a lofty thing to try and achieve by shifting between C sharp and C, but if you have that tension in your mind, it comes through in the way you play.

[Ben] It would be misguided to think about our tone as much as we have and then not let the chords ring. We want to give the sound the space to do its work.

Is the album a linear narrative or a series of vignettes?

[Cillian] Definitely the latter.

[Ben] There isn’t a through narrative. I would not call it a concept album, but you could loosely link the tracks thematically as a series of vignettes. I wanted them to be science fiction influenced, but I used that as a vehicle to explore personal moments obliquely. Science fiction allowed me to talk about personal things in a more generic way.

Are you working on new material right now?

[Ben] We have jammed a few ideas, but we are focusing on getting this record out there before we put pen to paper formally for anything else.

[Cillian] Given the way we write, if inspiration strikes in the practice room, the best things come from the three of us in a room trying to bring something out of a session. We leave it, come back to it, and do it again until it’s a good song. That approach can just happen. We aren’t actively trying to like think about the next step in terms of like new material just yet because it would be remiss not to give this album space to exist. Writing hits us more so than we hit writing.

[Ben] It will be nice once we have launched this record to get back in the room without an agenda and see what comes out. Some people are good at creating under a strict deadline, but we aren’t.

[Cillian] There is a reason we have been playing together for so long and this is our first full-length record. It doesn’t work for us to bash out loads of songs. We left these in the oven for a long time on stage, and they are better for it. That process continues. I have spoken to people who prefer live versions of songs because the band kept writing them after the record came out. That will inevitably happen, but at some point, you have to hit record. We chose the right time for that.

[Ben] We learned a lot about the recording process from doing this album. Engineering duties were performed by Stan Braddock and mastering was handled by Chris Fielding. There were delays we might be able to avoid in the future. It won’t be the last you hear from us, that’s for sure.

[Cillian] Oh, yeah, that’s for sure.

Photos courtesy of Epimetheus

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others