For Aaron Sadrin, the creative force behind the French musical project Heartlay, the work has always been a conduit for rupture and rigorous introspection. In a previous conversation, Sadrin had noted that Heartlay was “undergoing a full reinvention on many levels.” That process now appears to have found its definitive shape in ‘The Alteration,’ a new album that functions as a methodical excavation of the self.

Speaking about the work, Sadrin presents a portrait of an artist grappling with the very nature of change—how it is absorbed, how it is processed, and how it can be captured in sound.

The result is a work built on a central tension: a creative philosophy that relies on instinct and describes the artist as a passive “vessel,” yet is realized through a painstaking, manual, and almost archaeological production process.

The Shape of Unwanted Change

The album’s title, ‘The Alteration,’ is not a new theme but rather the codification of a career-long concern. “The idea of ‘alteration’ has been a core subject of what I have been doing with Heartlay since the beginning,” Sadrin clarifies. “An alteration can be either positive or negative, depending on how you respond to it. It is what ultimately shapes you as a person. I wanted this album title to represent what Heartlay is about.”

This new work centers specifically on the imposition of involuntary change, a focus prompted by Sadrin’s personal history. “The idea of the album is about how to deal with the world when change is initiated in an unwanted manner, as often happens in life,” he explains. “How do you stay pure at your core while going through bad events, betrayals, and so on? How do you respond to the events that alter you?”

To capture this, Sadrin moved toward a rawer form of expression, stripping away theatricality for confession. “It is probably the most confessional album I have made,” he notes. “I wanted the album to be extremely personal, so I had to be very raw in the lyrics. I often felt naked while writing these songs, almost embarrassed. The music I make has always been about honesty, but this one goes even deeper into what is in my head.”

Excavating the Personal

This turn toward the personal is most evident in the album’s unique production, a process of “sonic archaeology” that involved capturing and deconstructing sounds from Sadrin’s own past. “I am a huge fan of uniqueness, and recording my own sounds helps achieve that,” he states. “I recorded my cellar to capture the atmosphere of the place where I grew up, started making music, and basically built myself as a person.”

This excavation extended to more unsettling spaces. “I also recorded sounds in the building’s basement. As a kid I had many nightmares about that basement because it is very deep and extremely dark. I left a portable recorder there for hours, then listened back to what it had captured.”

The resulting field recordings—the impacts and ambient sounds from these deeply personal locations—were then woven into the music, becoming the foundational texture of the album. “Many of the impacts and strange soundscapes I created came from those recordings,” he says. “What is interesting is that it is not just me saying, ‘this song is so personal.’ I am inviting the listener to hear what my life sounded like, so to speak. How could it be more personal than that?”

This personal archive was combined with another form of excavation: the deconstruction of historical 90s-era sample banks. “I collect old sample banks. I like searching for the oldest, rarest, dirtiest, and weirdest sounds I can find,” Sadrin says. “The fact that no one uses these sounds anymore makes them more motivating to use. Combining them with my own recordings gives me a sonic palette that differs from what most people use today.”

The Servant and the Architect

This methodical, almost intellectual, process of sound design exists in paradox with Sadrin’s long-held description of his creative impulse. He has often described his role as that of a “vessel,” one driven by an external, inexplicable force.

He struggles to reconcile these two ideas—the active architect and the passive servant. “Creating music feels like doing a puzzle in which you build the pieces,” he offers. “My mind is active when I do it, but it also feels like something beyond me helps, because ideas arrive like little miracles. I just have to follow them and translate them as accurately as possible with my skills, expertise, and tools. I am a servant to my ideas.”

This passivity, however, applies only to the initial impulse. The songwriting and performance are the “cathartic part,” while the production and sound design remain a “more intellectual, cerebral exercise.” When writing, he notes, “Instinct is at the core, it leads to memories and metaphors in the lyrics.”

This instinctual approach extends to his vocal delivery, which famously shifts between melodic singing and aggressive screams. He does not view them as separate characters, but as a reflection of a singular, complex self. “They represent any person’s mood swings and emotional shifts,” he states. “Experimenting with different vocal approaches often leads to songs that feel stronger than if I stuck to just clean vocals or screams.”

A Skepticism of Labels

This resistance to simple classification defines Heartlay’s entire trajectory. Since the project’s formal beginning with the 2017 album ‘Close to Collapse,’ Sadrin has maintained a consistent two-year release cycle, though he insists it was unplanned. “It just happened because that is the time I need from creating an album to releasing and promoting it,” he says. “It is prone to change though, since my interest in the album format is diminishing. Right now I focus more on giving full attention to one track at a time… Perhaps ‘The Alteration’ will be the last Heartlay album for some time.”

This evolution is also sonic. The project’s sound has incorporated heavier elements over time, particularly on ‘Sovereign Sore,’ but Sadrin remains deeply skeptical of the “industrial metal” label often applied to his work, even as he builds an album from the genre’s historical sample banks.

“I do not think much about how my music is labeled,” he says. “When people say we are industrial metal, I am like, ‘Really? Industrial metal is Ministry, not us.’ But I am not bothered… I just do not really care about fitting into a specific genre. What the music expresses is more important.”

His view of his own history is equally unsentimental. The early EPs, ‘Injection’ and ‘Remedy,’ are dismissed as formative sketches. “I call them demos now,” he states. “I think of that era as pre-history. They helped define what Heartlay is about, but I do not feel they really count as part of the band’s official catalog. History really began for me with the release of ‘Close to Collapse’ in 2017.”

Resonance Over Visibility

That sense of history is now fully controlled by Sadrin himself. ‘The Alteration’ was released on An Exile, his own label, a move made to protect the work. “It allows me to be completely free creatively, and this freedom is something an album like this definitely needs,” he says. “We enjoy being a self-contained entity… We will only sign with another label the day I think it is really worth it.”

This autonomy extends to the project’s visual identity, which is handled in-house. He sees Heartlay as something larger than a musical act. “It is not just a band, but an idea. In this context, the idea lives through a band or musical project, but it could be adapted into a book, a painting, and so on.”

This idea is fed by a wide array of non-musical influences—Butoh dance, German Expressionist cinema, and Nietzschean philosophy—though he insists their impact is largely unconscious. “The overall work is tinted by these influences,” he reflects. “I could not pick one specific thing.” He likewise feels little connection to his home country’s artistic lineage, noting he has drawn “far more inspiration from artists and movements in Japan, North America, Britain, or Germany than France.”

Ultimately, this self-contained entity is not concerned with broad appeal, but with a specific, profound connection. Sadrin’s definition of success has shifted entirely from his early days. “Visibility is one thing—but resonance matters more,” he asserts. “If the work reaches someone, not necessarily many people, but deeply, that is success. The deepest reward is when someone says, ‘This is special. This made me feel understood.’”

When asked how a feature’s interpretation of the album—that it “was not merely composed, but fundamentally altered into existence”—sat with him, Sadrin offered a quiet confirmation. “That is the state of mind the album was conceived in. I am glad to see people interpret it that way and reflect the same vibe I had when making it.”

It is a vibe that lingers long after the music stops. When the process is over and the catharsis is complete, Sadrin is left not with resolution, but with a lingering, visceral residue. What remains, he says, is “The silence, with a troubled feeling from the intensity that just happened. And lots of dirt and sweat.”