Deep in Chicago’s underbelly writhes the stoner-doom trio, Plague of Carcosa. Initially launched as a solo bedroom project by Mark (who also goes by Johnny Carcosa), the moniker served as a vehicle for him to explore the sprawling soundscapes of dense, droning music. He put two releases out into the world by himself, The Color Out of Space and Ritual I; the first a massive slab of reverberation tinged with Hindu-based guitar scales, and the second, an hour-long improvisational piece. Shortly after Ritual I, he dropped the track Hastur. But he wasn’t alone.

He recruited long-time friend Zack, guitarist and sometimes bassist for Plague of Carcosa, as well as Jason, their new-to-doom metal drummer. It is in Hastur where plumes of stoner-influence begin to cloud Plague of Carcosa’s short—but expanding—discography. With a new fifteen-plus minute behemoth brewing and other tracks yet to come, the nascent collective are well on their way to becoming gargantuan conjurers of doom and despair.

This interview is in a new format for FCU. It’s a recorded conversation between myself, Mark, and Zack. This was unbelievably fun to do and a nice way to break up the pace of the traditional text-based interviews I’ve been doing here on the website. Hopefully you folks enjoy it enough so that it pushes me to do more of these in the future. You can listen to our conversation below, which includes a snippet of Hastur.

* * * * * *

Thank you again, Mark and Zack, for your time. And thank you readers for listening. You can visit Plague of Carcosa’s Bandcamp page and grab their songs for free; though if you can kick them a couple bucks, please do, as they are soon going into the studio to record a new song.