A new project from Jrail Schoeberl and Chayse Burmeister reaches back to early-2000s metalcore not to imitate the past, but to make it breathe again.
Temple Of Soil does not feel like an accident. It feels excavated.
Not polished into lifeless perfection. Not assembled by committee and fed into the content grinder. Excavated. Dragged up from somewhere old, emotional, and still very much alive. The new project from Jrail Schoeberl of Pray for Villains and Chayse Burmeister of God Cult began, fittingly enough, not with some grand rollout plan, but with a cover of Killswitch Engage’s “Rose of Sharyn.” Burmeister asked Schoeberl to come record it. They had fun. A suspicious amount of fun, really. Enough to realize there was more waiting in that sound than one tribute track could hold.
Built from chemistry, not cosplay
Temple Of Soil matters because it does not sound like a side project put together just to pass time between other bands. It sounds like two musicians finding a language they still believe in.
Schoeberl says both he and Burmeister have a real love for early-2000s metalcore, and that affection shapes everything about the project. But there is a difference between loving an era and trying to mummify it. Temple Of Soil does not come across as nostalgia tourism. They are not borrowing the style as a costume. They are speaking in it fluently because it still says something they need to say.
The division of labor helps. Burmeister handles the music. Schoeberl handles the lyrics and vocals. One builds the machinery. The other lights the fire inside it. That keeps the project focused, and it explains why the first two songs feel less like random singles and more like a deliberate mission statement.
Two singles, one identity taking shape
The first two Temple Of Soil singles, “Know My Worth” and “Infinity”, do a sharp job of introducing what this project wants to be.
Schoeberl describes “Know My Worth” as exactly what it sounds like. It is about getting out of a bad situation because you are worth more than the place, person, or pattern trying to diminish you. That could mean a toxic relationship. It could mean a dead-end job. It could mean anything in a listener’s life that has gone from burden to cage.
“Infinity” widens the lens. Schoeberl says the song is about making your life what you want it to be and grabbing every opportunity you can, but telling that story from a cosmic perspective. That gives the track a different kind of scale. If “Know My Worth” is about escape, “Infinity” is about expansion. One plants its feet. The other lifts its eyes.
Together, the songs map out the emotional identity of Temple Of Soil. This is not a project built only around aggression. It is built around movement. Resolve. Growth. Even uplift, a word that can get mangled into mush when people talk about heavy music. Here, it sounds sincere. Schoeberl says the lyrical content is generally uplifting, but not in some watered-down, motivational-poster sense. He wants listeners to feel the lyrics. He wrote them to be relatable on purpose because, in his words, music should touch the soul.
Why early-2000s metalcore still hits
Temple Of Soil leans hard into the energy of that earlier metalcore era, and Schoeberl is specific about the ingredients. Think Killswitch Engage, Soilwork, and Throwdown. Melody. Groove. Speed. Heaviness. Earworm riffs. Catchy hooks. Beautiful solos.
A lot of modern heavy music acts like beauty is suspicious, as though melody might somehow weaken the punch. Temple Of Soil seems to understand the older truth. Melody is not the opposite of heaviness. It is what gives heaviness shape. It lets the impact linger. It gives the aggression somewhere human to land.
That is part of why early-2000s metalcore still carries so much emotional voltage. It understood contrast. It knew that breakdowns hit harder when they are paired with release. That clean vocals can feel like revelation instead of compromise. That songs do not need to choose between force and feeling if the writing is strong enough.
Temple Of Soil seems determined to stay in that lane. Not because it wants to relive the past, but because Schoeberl believes that era got an essential thing right. It made people feel something.
Familiar faces, different blood
People coming to Temple Of Soil through Pray for Villains or God Cult are not walking into a clone of either band. Schoeberl makes that clear, and listener reactions apparently back it up.
One repeated question has been whether it is really Burmeister playing all that guitar. Another has been whether that is really all Schoeberl on vocals. Apparently, some listeners forgot Burmeister can solo, and others did not realize Schoeberl had that much range in him, both screaming and singing.
That is a useful early sign for the project. Temple Of Soil is already surprising people who thought they knew what these musicians sounded like. That means the project is not just reshuffling existing parts. It is revealing different strengths.
Schoeberl puts it best when he says Temple Of Soil is going to feel familiar and different at the same time. That is the sweet spot. Too close to existing work and it becomes redundant. Too far removed and it becomes unrecognizable. This seems to be landing right in the tension between those extremes.
The themes get bigger from here
The first two singles establish the emotional core of Temple Of Soil, but Schoeberl also hints at what is coming next, and the scope gets much broader.
Future songs, he says, will take on the realization that the rich and powerful control everything, while the people at the bottom outnumber them and could overthrow the whole system if they ever chose to. Another upcoming song focuses on killing the ego and doing better raising the next generation than those who came before.
That adds more weight to the project’s name. Temple Of Soil starts to sound less like a cool phrase and more like a worldview. Soil is where things decay, but it is also where things grow. It is humble, dirty, mortal, and necessary. A temple suggests reverence, ritual, and structure. Put the two together and the name starts to carry a strange kind of spiritual gravity.
That lines up with what Schoeberl keeps returning to. Soul. Relatability. Purpose. This is music that wants to hit hard, but it also wants to connect. Not through vague posturing, but through themes people can actually inhabit. Personal worth. Opportunity. Class power. Ego death. Responsibility to whoever comes next.
That is a bigger emotional and philosophical range than many new heavy projects manage to show this early.
The stealth drop that forced the project forward
One of the best details in Temple Of Soil’s early story is how little certainty there was at the beginning. Schoeberl says he and Burmeister did not know what this would become. Would it be a live band. Would it just exist online. Would it turn into anything at all.
So they quietly released the first single without even inviting people to like the social media pages.
That is either confidence, chaos, or the exact sweet romance between the two. In this case, it worked. Schoeberl says the response was overwhelming enough that they decided to keep going. That is refreshing. No fake scarcity. No months of mysterious teaser posts with meaningless symbols and grainy fonts. Just music, released into the wild, and enough of a reaction to make the next step obvious.
Now the plan is more defined. Temple Of Soil intends to release one single a month until the first live show. When that happens, the project will also release remastered versions of the songs to build more momentum. Schoeberl says he and Burmeister have assembled a secret lineup of musicians for live performances, though the two of them will continue writing the music themselves in order to protect the project’s core vision.
No pool noodles promised, but no doors closed either
For fans of Pray for Villains, one obvious question hangs over all this. What will the live show actually look like.
Schoeberl has already been asked whether the new project will bring back pool noodles, silly string, beach balls, and all the other beautiful nonsense people associate with a more chaotic live presentation. His answer is sensible. He says he is a big fan of letting the music dictate what it needs.
That may be the most encouraging answer he could have given. Temple Of Soil has not even started live rehearsals yet because the writing is not finished. That means there is no point in deciding too early whether the stage show needs spectacle, restraint, or something in between. The songs have to lead.
That kind of patience is rare. Plenty of bands decide on the gimmick before they decide on the identity. Temple Of Soil seems determined not to make that mistake. There is apparently already an offer on the table for an unannounced show, arriving the day after the first single dropped, and Schoeberl says a first performance will likely be announced soon. But the tone here is not reckless. It is measured. They want the show to become what the music actually needs, not what nostalgia expects from it.