The Elysian Grandeval Galèriarch

Infant Annihilator was founded in 2012 by guitarist Eddie Pickard and drummer Aaron Kitcher, and they discovered vocalist Dan Watson on the internet after writing the instruments for their debut album The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution. The album was released on 12 December 2012. Watson resigned from his vocalist position in late 2013 and Infant Annihilator went on a temporary hiatus. They had almost finished writing the nearly 18-minute song "Behold the Kingdom of the Wretched Undying" at that point, but writing for their next album halted shortly after Watson's departure. A year later, in late 2014, while he was playing for fellow UK band Desolated during their first US tour, drummer Aaron Kitcher met vocalist Dickie Allen in person for the first time. The tour line-up included the band Traitors, who had brought Allen, a close friend, along with them on the tour. Hearing Allen's vocals in person convinced Kitcher that he was a good fit for the band, prompting them to bring him on as their new vocalist.[2][3][4]

With a new vocalist, Infant Annihilator resumed working on the album, teasing on social media that they were still active. They eventually revealed that they had acquired a new vocalist and were working on a new album.[5][6] They also released a lyric video and a guitar play-through video for "Soil the Stillborn", vocal recording session updates, and the music video for "Motherless Miscarriage" on their YouTube channel to promote the album.

The process of writing and recording for The Elysian Grandeval Galèriarch was different than it had been for their previous album The Palpable Leprosy of Pollution. Previously, Kitcher and guitarist Eddie Pickard had communicated with Watson exclusively via the internet, utilizing the typical internet band practice of individual members being separated by distance when recording and exchanging ideas and files via the internet. For the previous album, the instrumentals were written and recorded by Kitcher and Pickard in England and the lyrics and vocals were written and recorded by Watson in the US, with the two of them never meeting Watson.[2][7]

In contrast, for the recording of The Elysian Grandeval Galèriarch, Kitcher and Pickard travelled to Kirkbride Recordings in Florida and stayed there for a month to record Allen's vocals, happy to be able to give direct input and ideas while recording (which they were unable to do with the previous album due to only communicating and exchanging files with Watson online). Allen wrote half of the lyrics, with Kitcher and Pickard tweaking them to fit the theme of the album's concept. Dillon Becker—former bassist of Traitors and current vocalist of the Floridian progressive deathcore band AnimalFarm—also contributed to a large portion of the lyric-writing. After the lyrics were written and finalized, the vocal recording process took 2 weeks to complete.[2]

The album was leaked approximately five days prior to its official release date, prompting Infant Annihilator to choose to upload the official album stream to YouTube four days early.[8] The Elysian Grandeval Galèriarch was officially released 29 July 2016 and was their first album to chart, making it onto several Billboard charts, including the Top Heatseekers, Independent Albums, Top Album Sales, Top Rock Albums, and Top Hard Rock Albums charts.[1]

When asked of the origin and meaning of the album's title, drummer Aaron Kitcher said "To be perfectly honest, we just really wanted an album to have the abbreviation 'The EGG' haha. It took a good while to find a set of words that not only had that abbreviation, but also sounded good and made sense with the concept of the album. "Elysian" – celestial/divine; "Grandeval" – ancient ... "Galèriarch" ... a fusion of the word "galère" which means a group of undesirable people and the suffix "-arch" which changes the meaning to the leader of a group of undesirable people. So we have the celestial/divine ancient ruler of a group of undesirables. In this case the undesirables are a religious cult."[2]

Kitcher went on to explain the theme behind the lyrics on the album: "The lyrics are pretty much summed up by the title—it's all about a line of divine leaders of this horrendous religious cult who gain power by committing the most vile acts possible, mainly on children/infants. The lyrics talk about how the first leader came about, how he started his cult and, of course, goes into graphic descriptions of the horrible acts that are committed."[2]
Of the lyric writing thought process, Kitcher said "It’s kind of continuing on from the theme of the first album, but taking a step back and telling the bigger picture. The way that we went about writing the lyrics was with the mindset: 'if it is physically uncomfortable and sickening for us to write, then we are on the right track.'"[2] Vocalist Dickie Allen said "... for the new Infant Annihilator album ... I was trying to be as vulgar as possible, keeping the same feel as the first album but honestly stepping it up a notch."[4]

The Elysian Grandeval Galèriarch is a deathcore album, and has been described by critics as having stylistic similarities to various other deathcore and death metal bands, including Cattle Decapitation, Rings of Saturn, Ingested, Acrania, Archspire, Annotations of an Autopsy, and Agoraphobic Nosebleed.[9][10][11][12] Critics also noted some down-tempo influence stemming from Kitcher's and Pickard's other musical project, the down-tempo deathcore band Black Tongue.[11][13][12]

When gifted a vinyl signed by vocalist Dickie Allen, rapper Post Malone stated of the album "This is my favorite vinyl that I have ... This record is super killer ..."[17][18] On another occasion, Malone was seen wearing an Infant Annihilator T-shirt bearing the artwork from the album.[19]