Gabriel Bruce: "There's certainly more value in worshipping Kanye West than a fantasy God..."

Describing the album as a "mixtape", Bruce admits he revels in the scattered approach, blending rock, punk, industrial, soul, and pop together. Come All Sufferers is a complex, high-concept album with lots to explore. It slithers through goth and slinks through gospel.

His luxurious baritone is still the esoteric centrepiece, keeping the album cohesive - but rather than bathing in introspection, Bruce swaggers around with sinister intentions and debonair malice. It's melodramatic; it's ostentatious; it's often surprisingly hilarious and unashamedly sexy.

Stream the album below, and read our Q&A with Bruce about the album, art, religion, and celebrity.

Could you tell us a bit about Come All Sufferers?

It's a comedy about the end of the world.

The album was made during a period of mental and physical pain – a bad breakup and an infamous incident involving a fossil – but you still managed to make an album you consider a comedy. Did you use the album as a form of release?

I think I've always dealt with sad things and scary things with humour. I really like Shakespeare – I know it's a cliché, everyone likes Shakespeare – and there's so much humour in his tragedy... I mean Hamlet is hilarious!

So it's almost a coping mechanism, this use of humour?

Yeah, I guess so. I think it's a really beautiful human thing to do. I mean when things are awful it's still funny when someone farts – you could be locked in a bank vault guarded by guys with guns, and someone would fart and people would laugh.

Does Come All Sufferers tell one long story or is it more patchwork?

It's definitely linear. The original idea came from me thinking about how would someone who believes in God approach the end of the world, or how would someone who doesn't believe in God approach the end of the world. How would a romantic approach it? How would a misanthrope approach it? Each song is a vehicle for a different character to tell the same story.

There's a lot of religious imagery in the lyrics and song titles – do these songs reflect your relationship with God or religion in any way?

I love the beauty of mosques and churches, I love the music, and I think communal singing is a very powerful thing that people should do more often... but I hate organised religion. I hate the idea of God. I hate what people have done in the name of Christianity and what people continue to do in the name of various Gods which aren't real. I think it's loathsome.

But it is part of our culture, and the stories are fascinating. I care a lot about the art. There's a song on the album, “Gates Of Babylon”, which is about the destruction of art. To me, that's the real value of these religions – it's the culture. Human culture is very important to me, and there's spirituality just in that, in that it's collective, it's something outside of yourself, it's something you work on communally. I think that's powerful.

But I don't believe in God, no.

How did you react to the destruction of ancient temples and artefacts in Palmyra and Mosul by IS?

That's what I'm talking about in “Gates Of Babylon”. There's a part where I sing: “Some Gods get blown up, some Gods get maimed / some Gods get faxed, despatched to Pakistani bazaars...” which is about what's happening there. There's the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan too, which was such a hateful, hateful act. Many human beings made these things, spent hundreds of years building these things, only for someone to destroy them. It's like Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries all over again. It's abhorrent destruction of beautiful human endeavour, and the least important part of all this is the made up part – the God – because it's fantasy. The bit that's real and tangible is beautiful, and it stems from human creativity – that's what's bigger than us, and that's what gets destroyed by man's folly.

Back to the album, and there's one track that really stands out: “Kurt and Kanye”. How does it fit into the religious imagery/end of the world ideas?

False idols, maybe? For me, there's certainly more value in worshipping Kanye West than a fantasy God because Kanye makes great art. So did Kurt Cobain. That song is about people that I feel should be worshipped – and I do. I do worship Kurt Cobain. He's a genius. He's a saint.

You get this canonisation of great people, like Kateri Tekakwitha, a wonderful Iroquois Indian, who was canonised and then exhumed... she was just basically a nice person. Kurt Cobain was a good guy, who had a particularly hard time, and we essentially canonised him with all our tributes. I think it's funny how these figures do replace religious figures.

Will that advance further in the future do you think?

Yeezus will be a reality! Maybe Jesus Christ was just this crazy Kanye-esque guy who just walked around in his sandals rapping, waxing lyrical, stickin' it to the man... we need Yeezy to rise.

So you've got this massive Hyde Park show with Florence and The Machine coming up - how are you feeling about it?

I recently did some shows with her on her European tour and she's selling out these 20,000 capacity venues, which is pretty mad... but she does an amazing job, and the whole band play amazingly. The offer to play the same Hyde Park show came up, and at this point I didn't have a band, but I saw that Kendrick Lamar was playing and I was like 'fuck, I gotta see Kendrick' but I couldn't afford a ticket so I just took the gig...

Come All Sufferers is out now via Virgin/EMI.

Gabriel Bruce plays BST Hyde Park on 2 July, and you could be going - we're giving away a pair of tickets.