Decibel #201 - July 2021 by Red Flag Media

MONSTER MAGNET TRAINING FOR DYSTOPIA

HELLOWEEN THROW AWAY THE KEYS

DAR

ENSLAVED BEYOND THE PERMAFROST

E D I E VA L

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AMENRA

JULY 2021 // No. 201

Beyond Critical Mass

EXTREMELY EXTREME

July 2021 [R 201] decibelmagazine.com

upfront

features

reviews 63 lead review Dripping with pustule gore, quickly rising Northwest newcomers Cerebral Rot show Album of the Year potential with sophomore release Excretion of Mortality

8 metal muthas Love from within

16 silver talon Clawing forward

28 helloween Smashing, pumpkins

10 news Explore beautiful downtown Hatröss

18 bushido code Live by the axe

30 q&a: monster magnet Dave Wyndorf has the soundtrack to the devolution

12 low culture He still doesn’t like it when we call him daddy 13 no corporate beer Last call 14 in the studio:

spirit adrift

The future is indeed bright

20 red fang Get to the point 22 vincent crowley Evil never dies

34 enslaved Ground control to Major Ivar

24 crypta Quelling nerves

38 the decibel

26 somnuri A new wave you want to catch

hall of fame Legendary duo Satyricon look backwards to their bleak Norwegian heritage to kindle their bright future together on Dark Medieval Times

64 album reviews Releases from bands that are looking forward to the (hopefully) live 300th Issue Show, including Cirith Ungol, Fear Factory and Portal 80 damage ink Questions need answers

AMENRA Strength in Weakness COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY JEROEN MYLLE

Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. © 2021 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1557-2137 | USPS 023142 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

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REFUSE/RESIST

July 2021 [T201] PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

alex@redflagmedia.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

albert@decibelmagazine.com

AD SALES

James Lewis

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

james@decibelmagazine.com DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SALES

ART DIRECTOR

Aaron Salsbury aaron@decibelmagazine.com

Michael Wohlberg

michael@decibelmagazine.com

Back at the start of this mess—you know exactly what I’m talking about— I had zero interest in ever watching a livestream concert. The wound of having to postpone our 2020 Metal & Beer Fest: Philly and being forced to cancel the 2020 Decibel Magazine Tour the day before it was scheduled to begin was still fresh when the first metal livestreams of the pandemic were announced. At the time, these new events felt like a reminder of what was lost, rather than recognizing a new format that could virtually unite still-grieving music obsessives. To their credit, Norwegian legends/Decibel faves Enslaved recognized the latter well before most and curated an ambitious cinematic “tour” featuring four distinct livestreams shot in different locations last summer—you can read more about it in Sean Frasier’s excellent piece in this issue. Before long, heavy hitters like Clutch, Behemoth and Amorphis were embracing ticketed streaming performances while sites like Metal Injection developed their free Slay at Home collaboration series with less established acts. Still, I wasn’t able to get over my own bullshit until last October when Obituary announced a streaming concert series, which included full performances of their death metal classics Slowly We Rot and Cause of Death. Having previously booked the band to play Cause of Death in full at the most recent Philly Metal & Beer Fest in 2019, I grabbed a virtual ticket, knowingly in danger of descending into a new sublevel of nostalgia. It may have taken “Chopped in Half” (in full!), but I was now fully on board with concert streams as a legitimate live music placeholder. Within a few weeks, the skeleton of Decibel’s 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream came together. Over the next several months, dozens of artists, engineers, directors, record labels and longtime friends invested their time and energy into contributing to a massive project that Decibel art/show director Mike Wohlberg elegantly fashioned into a program that not only celebrated 17 years of the magazine, but nearly everything about the underground metal community that spawned it. I never imagined that a streaming event could actually make me feel something, so thank you to everyone who tuned in, participated in the online chat, or texted/emailed us about the show. Now, please, get vaccinated and take care of your neighbors, and maybe—just fucking maybe—we can all be in one room together again staring at our phones before you know it.

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

Patty Moran

CUSTOMER SERVICE

patty@decibelmagazine.com

COPY EDITOR

Andrew Bonazelli

BOOKCREEPER

Tim Mulcahy

tim@redflagmedia.com

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph

Online DECIBEL WEB EDITOR

Albert Mudrian

DECIBEL WEB AD SALES

James Lewis

albert@decibelmagazine.com james@decibelmagazine.com

Vince Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Louise Brown Chris Chantler Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Chris Dodge Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Jonathan Horsley Courtney Iseman Neill Jameson Sarah Kitteringham Scott Koerber Daniel Lake Andrew Lee Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Justin M. Norton Andy O'Connor Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Joseph Schafer Rod Smith Matt Solis Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky Bradley Zorgdrager CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

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To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia PA 19107. Copyright ©2021 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PRINTED IN USA

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READER OF THE

MONTH smaller bands, you help encourage the next incarnation of the scene and help spread the word about a lot of undiscovered talent! Most recently, I’ve been getting into black metal act Departure Chandelier, for example. We know you have Opeth and Skid Row tattoos. Any other band-related ink we don’t know about?

Chris Wheeler La Prairie, Quebec

You’re a schoolteacher in the Montreal area. How have your young students been doing at this point in the pandemic?

I teach high school kids from grades nine through 11, and it’s been getting better on my end. At first, it was hard to juggle “how” to teach online with two small kids in the house and everything else in between; but with time, things have fallen into place. As for my students, it’s been frustrating somewhat for them because here in Quebec each grade alternates one day out of two from being at school to learning at home. That complicates things when you have assignments to hand in, distractions at home, work, etc. So, you

6 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

have to be hyper-organized and -motivated, which at times can be challenging. I sympathize. I try my best to be accommodating and understanding of their point of view. It’s not easy for them. Amenra are the cover of this issue. Do you prefer when Decibel goes more underground with our cover stars, or do you think we’re pushing it too far?

No, not at all! As a HUGE Metal fan, I’m ALWAYS searching for more obscure acts. I’ve been dedicated to extreme music since 1992, so for me it’s exciting to “dig and explore” the small crevasses within the scene. By reading and hearing about

Yes, absolutely! Around my left forearm is the cover to Testament’s Souls of Black album, while my right shoulder and upper arm has Italian power metal band Operatika’s The Calling cover in full color. Not all of my music tattoos have any special significance. Some are purely aesthetic and I love the way they look. My next tattoo won’t be music-related, however. It’ll be the head of the Frankenstein monster with a small ink bottle and quill to represent my love of literature. Our 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream airs shortly before this issue goes to print. Are you tuning in or what?

I most certainly will! I wouldn’t miss it! I’ve seen a couple of the packaged Decibel Tours with At the Gates and Carcass as they rolled through Montreal, so it’ll be great to tune in on the 30th for the 200th issue show! It’s also an honor to support the magazine and the people who make it possible every month! Of course, seeing the awesome bands perform is a given, too.

Chuck BB is the illustrator of the graphic novels Black Metal, Vol. 1, 2 and 3 For more info and art, head over to chuckbb.com

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while thinking of more Trivium cover-related jokes for the next 100 issues.

Because not all of us were spawned in the darkest recesses of hell

This Month's Mutha: Brenda Morotti Mutha of Eric Morotti of Suffocation

Tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a bit of a rebel at heart. A mix of hippie-dippy and biker chick! Music has always been a big part of my life. (My saving grace in many ways.) It’s not surprising that I married a musician and had these two amazing boys. I’ve always been passionate about encouraging others and finding ways to be of service. Especially with young people. My nature is to nurture. We understand your Instagram handle is “metalmommorotti.” How have we not interviewed you for this series before?

I have inherited the title of MetalMom because I’m always helping young people through hardships and encouraging them to find their passions and pursue their dreams. But I tend to keep a low profile. Eric’s brother Stevie drums for Obey the Brave. When did the boys first express an interest in drumming, and were you always comfortable giving them the proper space to practice?

The boys were raised in the country with a house full of instruments. Their dad had a recording studio and they were kept busy creating music. As they got older, our home became the place for all the kids to come jam. I’d count the sleeping bodies in the morning to see how many pancakes I needed to make! [Laughs] 8 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

When Eric joined Suffocation in 2016, were you aware of that band’s popularity and legacy?

I had no clue who Suffocation was at the time. I liked the heavier side of music, so it didn’t take long to see these guys had mastered their art. How big they were never really mattered to me. What did matter was what kind of influence they would have on my son. And I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know these guys and they’re genuinely sweet dudes. Eric tells us he brought you on an extreme metal cruise and you were “not prepared for it.” Please elaborate!

The cruise was amazing! The energy, the sense of family, um... the insane partying, the incredible connections I made there! I was so elated when Eric invited me to join him as his guest! We were always close, but this brought us to a whole other level. Wow! So blessed. What’s something most people wouldn’t know about your son?

Well, he’s super bright. Funny AF. GREAT at everything he tries—except bowling. He was a star hockey player. Has a huge heart. Always helps the underdog. Fiercely loves his family, and dirt bikes. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Cerebral Rot, Excretion of Mortality  Fear Factory, Aggression Continuum  Spirit Adrift, Forge Your Future EP  Satyricon, Dark Medieval Times  Horrendous, Decibel’s 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream set ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Flipper, Album - Generic Flipper  OFF!, Wasted Years  Perverts Again, Our Big Party  Metallica, Master of Puppets  L7, Smell the Magic ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Khemmis, Hunted  Cannibal Corpse, Violence Unimagined  The Crown, Royal Destroyer  Judas Priest, Firepower  Blazon Stone, War of the Roses ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Midnight, Decibel’s 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream set  Khemmis, Decibel’s 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream set  Full of Hell, Decibel’s 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream set  Horrendous, Decibel’s 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream set  Wake, Decibel’s 200th Issue Show Extremely Ex-Stream set ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Steel Bearing Hand, Slay In Hell  Human Obliteration/Vile Species, Split  Year of the Knife, Internal Incarceration  Blood Has Been Shed, Novella of Uriel  Drowningman, How They Light Cigarettes In Prison EP

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Laurie Shanaman : a i l s  Opeth, Blackwater Park  Dreams of the Drowned, Missed Springs EP  Witching, Vernal  Henrik Palm, Poverty Metal  Lankum, The Livelong Day

VOIVOD

Eric Forrest (r) with Belalcazar 

Tom Gabriel Warrior 

Into Their

Hypercube Death by Metal filmmaker announces new VOIVOD documentary

elipe Belalcazar knows what we all know: Voivod rule.

But the man behind 2016’s Death by Metal documentary about the late Chuck Schuldiner is doing something none of us have done: He’s making a movie about the legendary Canadian prog-metal trailblazers. Although it hasn’t

exactly been a secret—look up #voivodfilm on Instagram or Twitter—Belalcazar hasn’t officially announced the documentary, which will be called Voivod: We Are Connected, until now. ¶ “Voivod is such a cool band, but I’ve always struggled to succinctly explain why they’re awesome—they’re not a simple concept,” begins Belalcazar. “From unlikely origins in northern Quebec at the height of the Cold War, roving across space and time warning of ghosts in the machine, the way visual art and music intertwine in the Voivod story sometimes makes me feel like I’m making the sci-fi film of my favorite comic book. This is a story I’ve been wanting to tell for a long time, and the opportunity came up to do it.” ¶ Belalcazar says that the movie is about a quarter of the way in the can, with interviews already done 1 0 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

Luc Lemay 

with the likes of Tom Gabriel Warrior, Luc Lemay and former MuchMusic VJ George Stroumboulopoulos, as well as interviews with current and former Voivod members. He says he wants to have the film “wrapped and ready to screen by fall/winter 2022.” It will be the end of a journey that started in 2016. (See www.facebook.com/voivodfilm for more updates.) “I got in touch with Away [drummer Michel Langevin] through mutual friends late in 2016, but they were on the road and writing The Wake,” he says. “I, too, was just completing the Death doc, so we talked over the following months about what we like in films and how we both envisioned this documentary.” Belalcazar had a solid draft of the movie written by March 2019, and made final revisions based on band feedback; he filmed the first few

interviews and then COVID hit, putting things on pause. Belalcazar says that the band has been very helpful and involved, giving him access to the “VodVault,” and being fully integrated into the movie’s development process. He says that he is “looking to do right by the band and their legacy” with the film. As for what he took away from the Death doc that he’ll bring to this one? “Technical stuff aside, I’ve come to realize that human-interest stories transcend barriers, and if we want to break out of the mainstream-imposed metalhead tropes, it’s important to tell metal stories with honesty. Viewers need to see and hear our heroes navigate both their accomplishments and their worries, because they are people, too, just like us. Sometimes we forget that—we are connected in more ways than we realize.” —GREG PRATT

We Can Print “Better” Merch was having a conversation with a friend

who runs a label that’s gained a fair amount of financial success over the last few years, to the point that a lot of his releases sell out on the first day, sometimes within minutes. You would think that sort of success would make someone happy, right? It’s the culmination of hard work and a love for the craft—the whole reason people get into running a label in the first place, right? Wrong. He’s fucking miserable and has gotten to a point where he no longer wants to even run the fucking thing. Why would someone want to walk away from what was probably their initial goal? Because of bands. Because of fans. Because running a record label is a thankless fucking job that consumes your time in greedy chunks and takes a shit on the carpet, the kind you need to call in a steamer company or a fucking priest to completely sanitize. As musicians, we are given to bouts of ego— whether any lying prick says otherwise—and some of us have an easier time not expressing that outwardly than others. So, we’re not going to discuss the polite ones; rather, it’s the assholes I want to look at. I should probably rephrase that last bit. When (some) bands fall into modest success, they tend to think they’re golden children, infallible images of Christ; and thusly, they get fucking demand-y with labels because they can’t understand that other people also need those resources. I’ll give you an example: When I ran Blood Fire Death in the early ’00s, I released a particular project’s album that did exceptionally well—Terrorizer-album-of-the-month kind of shit. This project had a second record in the can almost immediately, but went with another label because it was a bit more than a lateral move. That label, however, refused to drop every release they had on the docket in order to get this one out at an unreasonable speed. So, the project came back and informed me that I could release their second record, which I stupidly 1 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

agreed to. A few weeks later, the project turned on the fucking waterworks that I had other releases scheduled before them. They then went to the parent label (of which my label was a subdivision, or whatever the fuck) and bitched incessantly to them. The parent label, seeing the money that would be lost if this project dropped out of my fingers again, pushed back every single release I had in the pipeline to accommodate this fucking display of childish bullshit. We’re into three decades since this story and if you figured out who it is, chances are this has happened to you. Time is a big, dumb fucking circle. The other side of this coin that just fell into a urinal are the “fans.” Proprietors have limited resources because the majority of (interesting) labels are done as a side thing, out of love of the music. Those resources are time and money. Labels cannot afford to print a million of a given release so that everyone who wants one can buy it (not underground labels anyway), and because of that, there are a ton of people parked by their phones at the start of pre-orders, ready to buy and then flip these releases to gullible trust fund kids who are OK with paying $400 for a record that came out Tuesday. And while flippers are another story entirely, it’s the reaction of normal people for whom these records are now out of reach that can be rough, ranging from fucking obnoxious to downright abusive. And let’s not forget the overly entitled contingent that doesn’t understand why a record they ordered an hour ago hasn’t been flown by drone and placed directly in their hands—never to be actually played—when the drone really should fly the fucking plastic right up their privileged ass. The moral of the story, in both cases, is to fucking be patient, show some grace and appreciation, even some empathy for the first time in your miserable life. Because the more quality labels that say “fuck it” and leave the game, the more room for scammers and labels that spend too much money on PR, smearing their bland, vanilla “blackened” bands everywhere the eye can see and the nose can smell.

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN crafts a monthly journey through

MORBID ALES BY CHRIS DODGE

Give Indianapolis’ Black Circle a Spin

on’t get caught watching the

paint dry.” —Hoosiers (1986) I was in Indianapolis last in 2008, and at that time, watching paint dry was about as exciting as things got. I was in town to play a fest, and I recall not drinking because the cheap beer was so wretched. More recently, a year of COVID lockdowns may have kept the pace slow for business overall, but the team at Black Circle Brewing has done a stellar job of speeding things up to solidify this city’s spot on the craft beer and metal map. Since 2016, this indie Indy brewer has expanded the minds, ears and palettes of Midtown with a flagship tasting room and live music venue, hosting searing performances from stalwart tune-crushers. Event Manager Dustin Boltjes is no stranger to heaviness, being the former drummer for Skeletonwitch, currently jamming with Demiricous, Sacred Leather and Chrome Waves. Boltjes expounds, “When [owner] Jesse Rice opened our doors, his intention was to also create a live music venue. In Indy, there’s not a lot of smaller-size clubs for independent touring bands to play, so we wanted to really focus on developing that side of our operation. And Indy itself has an amazing

Welcome to the inner circle  Black Circle’s many brews as well as their socially distant yet in-your-face drag and comedy shows put a fresh coat of paint on Indianapolis

local metal and punk scene, so organically we just kind of became the spot in Indy. We, the staff, are all die-hard metal and punk fans, but also musicians and artists as well. We want to create an intimate place to see not-so-intimate bands. We are a 200-capacity room and have had everyone from Death Angel and Metal Church to Eyehategod, Monolord and Weedeater, to name a few. We pack in like sardines, and rage and have a killer time.” With the dedication to incredible tuneage comes a parallel commitment to fine brews. Says Boltjes, “Our brewmaster is Phillip Ginn. He’s been with us since the beginning. He definitely loves getting adventurous, but still remaining within the realm of just cranking out good, solid beer. No ‘Fruity Pebbles/marshmallow fluff’-type beers, really. He’s one of the best in the city. Our flagship beer is definitely the Pixel Punk. It’s an American style Pale Ale with Mosaic and Centennial hops. This was the very first beer that we started brewing, and has since served as one of our most popular beers.” After sampling a smattering of Black Circle delights, one standout for me was the Loom mixtape beer. Loom is the moniker for their sister location where the actual Black Circle brewhouse lurks, along with an internet café and laundromat. The “mixtape” is a rotating style, and I was lucky enough to try Spaceships Over Glasgow, a transcendentally satisfying wee heavy. During the pandemic, Black Circle toughed things out by not only offering delivery, but delivery by your choice of a drag queen, a local comedian or their in-house horror movie night emcee Dead Ed (Boltjes in disguise). “As much as we are rooted in the punk and metal scene, we are very much rooted in the LGBTQ community as well,” Boltjes says. “Under normal operations we have weekly drag shows, [and] also host live weekly comedy shows. We also have a mug club called Button Mashers, a video game reference, and there is a tier you can purchase to actually collab and create beer with our brewmaster. “We are back open and are going to start having outdoor shows again,” he concludes. “We are not out of the woods just yet, but there is a light at the end of this tunnel.”

A quick note to loyal readers, this issue will be my last at the helm of the Decib el beer column. During my short tenure here, Albert & Co. have been nothing shor t of supportive and accommodating for my inane, inebriated ramblings. I appreciate all of the positive feedback these past few years, not to mention the occasiona l gratis brew. I’m hanging up the type writer, but I’m still thirsty and will continue to stalk tasting rooms worldwide. If you see me around, never hesitate to join me for pint or four. Destroy ever y bottle, keg and can—No Corporate Beer!

RIPPLE MUSIC

VOID VATOR

BOSS KELOID

POOBAH

SUN CROW

FEAT. THE SONG " MR. DESTROYER "

WWW.RIPPLE-MUSIC.COM RIPPLE MUSIC.BAND CAMP.COM D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 1 3

SPIRIT ADRIFT

STUDIO REPORT

SPIRIT ADRIFT ALBUM TITLE

Forge Your Future ENGINEER

Ryan Bram MIXING/MASTERING

Christopher “Zeuss” Harris STUDIO

Homewrecker Recording Studio, Tucson, AZ STUDIO DATES

March 24-29 RELEASE DATE

Summer 2021 LABEL

Century Media

IT’S

late March 2021. The sun is shining.

Between a COVID-19 era rock and repeated spins of Iron Maiden’s pivotal “Stranger in a Strange Land,” American heavy metallers Spirit Adrift are expeditiously rampaging through Homewrecker Recording Studio in Tucson. There, Nate Garrett (vocals/guitars/ bass), Marcus Bryant (drums) and Preston Bryant (keyboards) have spent the last six days tracking a 20-minute EP—their first worldwide release for Century Media. “This has been easily the easiest and most fun recording session we’ve ever had,” Garrett says. “Enlightened [in Eternity] probably would have been, had our dogs not just died. That one was really easy logistically, but incredibly difficult in other ways.” Thankfully, no animals perished while the three-song EP was under engineer Ryan Bram’s (Gatecreeper) expert tutelage. The group has also employed the services of venerated mixer/mastering ace Christopher “Zeuss” Harris (Queensrÿche, Overkill) to handle the output. The knob-twiddling duo are part of Spirit Adrift’s sonic strategy of “bigger and better.” “We went back to Ryan Bram for tracking because last time was so easy,” says Garrett. “The different factor this time is we’re going with Zeuss for mixing and mastering. I was obsessed with Crowbar’s Sever the Wicked Hand. I've been curious

to hear how Zeuss will make us sound. So-called ‘ear candy’ is a big thing with us—we record wild stuff and mix it real low, almost subconsciously. Top-tier producers like Quincy Jones preach on introducing new elements constantly within a song, even if it’s subconscious. We’re big proponents of that.” Musically, Spirit Adrift’s new material follows 2020’s acclaimed Enlightened in Eternity. Of the 10 songs Garrett demoed, three will be on the new EP, while one of the tracks will carry over to the band’s upcoming as-yet-recorded fifth studio album. Math wizards will be quick to point out six missing songs—and they’re right. Garrett tossed them out in favor of the next 10 songs he’s got on deck. “I think it’s fair to call the EP an extension of Enlightened in Eternity,” Garrett says. “‘Ride Into the Light’ is my favorite song we’ve done up to this point. These songs are better than anything on the last album. At least to me. And the title track of the new EP might even be better than that song.” —CHRIS DICK

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

DEATH METAL NEW JACKS UNDEATH COMPLETE SECOND LP IN AS MANY YEARS Rochester, NY-based goremongers Undeath are almost done tracking their sophomore full-length at Headroom Studios in Philadelphia. “All five of us are down here in the studio sweating it up and smelling like shit, laying down some sick *Corpsegrinder voice* DEATH METAL,” reports lead guitarist Kyle Beam. The nowadays-quintet isn’t ready to reveal the title of its forthcoming album, but Beam has assured us that “first and foremost,

1 4 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

the [new] album is just better,” elaborating, “better riffs, better arrangements, better lyrics about fucking dying.” Recently added bassist Tommy Wall agrees: “Everything is taken to the absolute extreme. The riffs are [...] much more brutal, the hooks [...] much catchier, and the leads shred [...] much harder.” Once again recorded with engineer Scoops Dardaris— who calls the album “the catchiest Undeath record yet”—Undeath’s new album will be out on Prosthetic “later this year if all goes well,” according to the band. So, get ready for what drummer Matt Browning, the artist behind their alreadylegendary album covers, calls “a death metal album that is like no other being released this year.” —DUTCH PEARCE

SILVER TALON

ortland-area gothic power metal shredders Silver Talon took three years to deliver their debut album, Decadence and Decay. While the record is worth the wait, that long interlude could have been avoided—if it weren’t for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, that is. Lead guitarist Sebastian Silva, a native of Mexico who had been living in America for 14 consecutive years as a DACA recipient, found himself barred from re-entry to the country after undertaking a European tour with Silver Talon’s sister band, Unto Others (then known as Idle Hands) in 2019. A U.S. tour with King Diamond (buoyed by a bit of coverage in publications like Decibel) earned Silva an artist visa, but not before derailing Silver Talon’s long-gestating plans to follow up their initial EP, 2018’s Becoming a Demon. ¶ “Good lord, what a clusterfuck that was. The visa process for artists in this country is a mess and needs serious reform,” writes co-lead guitarist Bryce VanHoosen. “Unless you’re a sizable artist, or on a sizable tour, kiss touring the USA goodbye. The visa process for DREAMers, or folks who came to the States as children, is even worse.” 1 6 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

He estimates Silva’s visa issues, alongside delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, added six months to Decadence and Decay’s production time. VanHoosen pressed on while Silva relocated to nearby Vancouver, B.C., composing Decadence and Decay with vocalist Wyatt Howell while the band’s lineup shifted. “In that time, we added Devon Miller on guitar, who initially was going to fill in for Sebastian on the handful of shows we had booked in 2019,” VanHoosen explains. “That relationship obviously worked extremely well because Devon was added as a permanent member. Luckily, Canada isn’t too far away, and Sebastian could get into that country just fine, so any full band activities—such as the filming of the ‘As the World Burns’ video—had to be done there.” During that writing process, VanHoosen focused on improving one particular aspect of Silver Talon’s sound: catchiness. “Since I’m a

complete glutton for punishment, I read album reviews,” he admits. “One of the complaints people had with Becoming a Demon was that it took a couple listens to really get into it. To me, that means maybe the hooks weren’t as developed as they could have been—so that was, of course, something we focused on a lot for Decadence and Decay. We did pre-production for every song and listened and analyzed, rinsed and repeated, until we felt it was as good as it could be.” With a refreshed rhythm section, a triple-lead guitar lineup and a suite of must-sing choruses, Silver Talon’s long-gestating debut succeeds in large part by making strengths out of setbacks that would capsize most bands. The resulting album dutifully picks up the torch from northwestern darkened power acts like Sanctuary and Nevermore, and carries that flame toward an uncertain, but hopefully brighter future. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

PHOTO BY PETER BESTE

Northwesterners power up via regional supergroup

BUSHIDO CODE

Hardcore lifers honor the roots of the samurai and old-school metal

he best place to start is often at the beginning, and that’s exactly what Pennsylvania crossover outfit Bushido Code did on their debut album, The Ronin. After spending their lives touring and performing in hardcore bands like Fury of V, Choose Your Weapon and xRepresentx, the quintet revisited their earliest influences, from Death, Obituary and Suicidal Tendencies to Sick of It All, Megadeth and Testament. ¶ Despite the obvious hardcore elements to their sound, vocalist Mike Ledet explains that they didn’t make an active effort to include those influences. “I think the hardcore part of our sound is embedded in us,” he admits. “I don’t think we purposely did it; it just kind of blended. I think we wanted to be a metal band more than anything else.” ¶ The Ronin continues the story of Dai Shi, a fictional ronin samurai—one not sworn to any feudal lord—traveling through time in search of death by way of battle. Bushido Code established the story of Dai Shi on a pair of EPs, The Dying Virtues, that explore the tenets of samurai’s bushido code, 1 8 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

and The Ronin puts Dai Shi in modern times. That said, Ledet says the samurai’s story is ongoing. “In my mind, it’s an adventure,” he posits. “It’s a story that can go on forever and ever and ever. You can just create different scenarios and apply it to life.” Despite the emphasis on the past and influence from films like Shogun Assassin (the same film sampled on GZA’s Liquid Swords), Bushido Code are very much concerned with the here and now. The Ronin is an opportunity for the members to address issues they see in the world today, of which Ledet says there are many. By writing about Dai Shi, Bushido Code are able to take a different look at ideas like honor, loyalty and respect while also checking out their own reflections. “This is also about me looking at myself in the mirror, at my

shortcomings,” Ledet tells Decibel. “It’s not just one-sided. You have this fantasy, which is cool, and this imagery, which is cool, but it also has a hint of reality behind it.” The fantasy elements found in Bushido Code’s music comprise the band’s love letter to heavy metal characters of the past, like Iron Maiden’s Eddie or Megadeth’s Vic Rattlehead. Ledet recalls being a fan of Maiden after seeing their mascot in so many different adventures—something that Bushido Code strive to recreate in their music. “We want to give back what we got from it,” Ledet concludes. “It stopped being selfish for us a long time ago. I gave up on the idea of being a rock star when I was about 15 years old; otherwise, I definitely wouldn’t have played hardcore music.” —VINCE BELLINO

Serena Cherry (Svalbard) presents her new black metal project NOCTULE with their debut album “Wretched Abyss”!

Out May 28th V I N Y L / D I G I T A L

•L A MENTING A DEAD WOR LD• Denver, CO's doom/sludge trio ORYX present their mesmerizing new album and Translation Loss debut “Lamenting a Dead World”! Mixed and mastered by Greg Wilkinson (High On Fire, Graves at Sea, Necrot) with artwork by Ettore Aldo Del Vigo!

• OU T N OW • V I N Y L / D I G I TA L

HELLISH FORM R

The Vermont-California two piece known as HELLISH FORM present their Translation Loss debut full length. The combination of crushing funeral doom intertwined with beautiful drone soundscapes. “Remains” features the stunning artwork of Cauê Piloto with mastering by James Plotkin (Khanate, Scorn, Zombi).

OUT JUNE 25TH V I N Y L / D I G I T A L

Translation Loss is excited to announce our newest signing, Philadelphia's very own death/doom purveyors, CAGED! We're also making the band’s crushing 2020 release “Stricken by Continuance” available on vinyl for the first time!

VINYL OUT JULY 30th • DIGITAL OUT NOW

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RED FANG

ne of the first results you get when you do an Internet search for Portland barnburners Red Fang is, inexplicably enough, an article titled “Red Fang: Are They Good?” Nobody would know the answer to that question better than the band’s own guitarist, David Sullivan, who thinks that yeah, Red Fang are pretty good! ¶ “I gotta search for that now,” he laughs. “I think we’re good. I think a lot of people expect a band to have one sound that they know and they want the band to stick with that. And for a band, or any artist, that becomes boring very quick. I mean, we aren’t technical wizards for sure, and that’s not what we’re trying to do. I like what we do, I think it’s fun, and I like that we aren’t stuck in one little pattern over and over. We aren’t afraid to mix it up.” ¶ Red Fang initially rose to prominence in the wake of bands like Baroness and Mastodon, groups that took more traditional metal styles and tossed them into the muck. While their presence on Relapse and that label’s distinctive graphic design got them lumped in with those acts,

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the truth is that they’ve always had their own thing going. Nowhere is that more apparent than on Arrows, their fifth fulllength. Originally slated for release last year, but delayed for obvious reasons, it treats the listener to 13 churning strikes of sludge punk, including a reconfigured Fraggle Rock cover from a scrapped tribute compilation. It’s a more direct approach—one that Sullivan compares to one of his favorite bands, minimalist art-punkers Wire. “We always tell ourselves, keep it simple,” he says. “It doesn’t need to be a concerto. Arrangements can be really simple and work. But we wrestle with that. Sometimes we go a little crazy.” Nowhere is that truer than on the happily dazed “Fonzi Scheme,” which even works strings into the

recording. Sullivan cites that, the title track and “Unreal Estate” as his favorites. Still, it all comes back to that core philosophy—even the album title was chosen because it was so straightforward. Just because they play it straight with their arrangements doesn’t mean they take themselves seriously. From the neon cover art to their anarchic videos, Red Fang want their audience to have a blast along with them—and it’s still fun for the quartet after all these years. “I kinda thought that I would get tired of stuff, but like, the song ‘Prehistoric Dog’ is on our first record and we play it at pretty much every single show and I’m still not tired of it,” Sullivan enthuses. “I still really enjoy playing all of our stuff live.” —JEFF TREPPEL

PHOTO BY JAMES REXROAD

Portland sludge punkers get right to the point

VINCENT CROWLEY

2019, the sacrilegious institution known as Acheron called it quits. As mastermind Vincent Crowley puts it, “I felt I did everything I wanted to do in that band. Acheron will forever be labeled as bluntly Satanic and anti-religious. And it was indeed! Venturing beyond that realm in that band would not have been fair to the fans who expect a specific album type.” Therefore, taking inspiration from King Diamond’s example, cutting his own path beyond the walls of Mercyful Fate, Crowley has created a project under his own banner. ¶ Upon listening to the project’s new album, the listener is presented with a panoply of heavy sounds blended together. According to Crowley, “you will hear influences of everything from doom, death, black, thrash and classic heavy metal within the songs. And yes, even some hard rock, inspired by bands like Black Sabbath, Candlemass and Trouble.” Still, he notes that “most Acheron fans will resonate with the new band,” as the songs retain “many hints of Acheron because I am remaining a part of the songwriting team.”

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On the whole, the music shakes out to something between Acheron’s last few albums and the likes of My Dying Bride and October Tide, as the evil of Acheron gives way to more of a menacing melancholy. However, there are multitudes within this as well, as the guitar solos and many of the progressions do indeed recall classic heavy metal and doom. Additionally, some creepier, colder guitar lines still find their way in, an echo of the black metal past. All along the way, Crowley himself guides the sonic narrative with his well-enunciated growls and snarls. In terms of subject matter, Crowley moves logically from Acheron’s focus on Satan to other archetypal symbols of darkness and the macabre. He cites the works of Poe and Lovecraft, along with the “cinematic history of horror films” as the major themes for the

band’s subject matter. Specifically, the new album, Beyond Acheron, “is somewhat of a concept album based on all the songs revolving around death.” He adds that “the album title metaphorically symbolizes” the notion that “through death comes new life.” Reflecting on his many years in the extreme metal underground, Crowley proudly proclaims that “music has always been an essential thing to me,” and he’s “even more excited and hungry with this new band. It is a breath of fresh air and something I’ve wanted to do for many years.” Even with the new album ready to be unleashed, Crowley assures us that, “We are already working on many new songs for our subsequent works. We are the beast that has come out of the river of woe called Acheron!” —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

PHOTO BY DIA ALDRIDGE PHOTOGRAPHY

Former Acheron main man rises again in new, doomier eponymous project

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MORK ‘KATEDRALEN’

Mork resumes its ascension through the ranks of the Scandinavian black metal scene with their fifth chapter, Katedralen. Features guest appearances from members of DARKTHRONE, KAMPFAR & SKEPTICISM. AVAILABLE AS CD, GATEFOLD BLACK VINYL LP AND DIGITALLY

CANDLEMASS ‘GREEN VALLEY LIVE’

The Swedish doom metal gods perform their classic tracks during lockdown. Includes ‘Well Of Souls‘, ‘Bewitched’ and more, plus new track ‘Astorolus’. Liner notes from founder Leif Edling. AVAILABLE AS DOUBLE GATEFOLD VINYL AND A 2 DISC CD+DVD FORMAT

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CRYPTA

Ex-Nervosa frontwoman channels anxiety into death metal attack

ernanda lira performing live is intensity personified. Onstage, the ex-Nervosa frontwoman dominates with steely confidence, pummeling her bass with sweaty ferocity as she roars like Satan owns a majority share in her lungs, flashes horns like a heavy metal parking lot, wags as much tongue as Gene Simmons and strikes metal poses that resemble demonic yoga. So, when Decibel tracks her down to discuss Crypta, her new band with drummer Luana Dametto (also ex-Nervosa), it’s a shock when she reveals how her inner demons almost had her walking away from music entirely when she walked away from Nervosa. ¶ “I have crippling, clinical anxiety, which makes everything worse,” she admits. “When I left Nervosa, I was having fucked-up, catastrophic thoughts like, ‘That’s it. I’m done. I’ll never play or perform again. I’ll just disappear off the face of the earth.’ I’m lucky we had Crypta because if I had to start a band from scratch, I don’t know if I would have been resilient enough. But Crypta was already going and helped to overcome the pain, sadness and grief of leaving Nervosa. ¶ “Basically, our relationship wore out,” she explains of her and Dametto’s departure. “We weren’t really friends by the end, but that’s pretty common—

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it happens with friendships, marriages and bands. Nervosa was something I helped build for a decade, and when I started noticing things crumbling, I was pretty terrified. We all felt it, but I decided to make the sacrifice.” That was April 2020. A year earlier, Lira and Dametto joined with Netherlands-based, ex-Burning Witches guitarist Sonia “Anubis” Nusselder (“We were both fangirls of her and knew right away we wanted her in our band!”) to form Crypta as a side project to blow off steam as the Nervosa situation deteriorated. The aggressive thrash that was second nature to the bassist/vocalist and drummer was pushed in an even more aggressive direction by death and black metal, and quickly became their main focus. A year later, after the addition of Brazilian guitarist Tainá Bergamaschi (“She came out of nowhere. We’d never heard of her, but she hit us up online. Honestly, at first we were kind of intimidated by her boldness”), the band’s debut,

Echoes of the Soul, was complete. Having impressed the brass at Napalm Records with her work ethic in Nervosa, it was an unsurprising—to everyone except the overly anxious Lira—that Crypta found a home with the German label. “I had a good relationship with Napalm, and they wanted to hear what we had, but when we announced the band, they signed us right away,” Lira explains. “I was expecting we’d have to do a demo or an EP. I never thought it was a done deal. “If you look at where Nervosa are today, it’s obvious a lot of things were done right,” she continues about lessons learned and what she wants to do differently with her new band. “In Crypta, we’ve talked about what we don’t want to have happen, especially on the business/ management side. Of course, there are many things we need to work on and we’re still getting to know each other, but right now the place we’re in is nice.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

SOMNURI

Don’t sleep on this Brooklyn-based post-sludge trio’s sophomore crusher

efarious wave, somnuri’s second full-length, unleashes tighter and leaner than the Brooklyn trio’s selftitled 2017 album, yet also oxygenates better: more space, more air. Harder, proggier, cleaner, they lend their selfproclaimed ’90s influences a live crackle beginning on opener “Tied to Stone,” a bashing evocation of early Relapse standards such as Remission and Surrounded by Thieves infused with Northwest doom grunge. ¶ “Probably ZZ Top [Tres Hombres], Drab Majesty, Absu, and I think that Arctic Monkeys record just came out at that point,” details singer/guitarist Justin Sherrill of his playlist while Nefarious Wave tracked in NYC. “For this record, we all wanted it to be sludgy and heavy while clearly differentiating textures. I play a baritone and I wanted the big, ugly chords to maintain clarity. The bass tone was also way meaner-sounding and thick.” ¶ Sherrill, drum constant Phil SanGiacomo, and 2019 bass replacement Philippe Arman kept distanced at the start of COVID-19, but established a pod several months in and remained productive. Notably, the latter’s addition to the band allowed harmonic expansion from the debut, 2 6 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

with “Desire Lines” and “Watch the Lights Go Out” drawing out elegiac deliveries by Sherrill and dark cloak harmonies courtesy of Arman. “I distinctly remember both those songs not being received well at first,” writes the frontman. “It really took the full vocal realization on top of the instrumental to get the big picture. I’d wanted more [harmonies] on the first record, so when Philippe became available, it really seemed like another chance to add a dynamic player and complimentary voice, independent from my own. Hearing him add harmonies that weren’t originally there really propelled the songs altogether. We went back and had him add vocals to ‘In the Grey.’” That penultimate track peaks Nefarious Waves, flexing the musculature Somnuri demonstrates throughout: delicacy, expulsion, retching vocals set against monastic harmonies. All the sound be-

tween the cymbals’ sonic arc boots hard and blazes up the fretboard in a roar. “I really like layers: a bunch of melodies on top of each other and things that you can listen to over and over to keep finding little nuances,” offers Sherrill. “We all have such a wide range of influences. That’s the secret weapon in this band.” And what about that group name, anyway? “When we were tossing around potential band names, I could only come up with joke names,” admits the bandleader. “Like, just the worst/best dad puns. I consider it a gift, really! We ended up with Somnuri, which roughly translates to ‘sleeps.’ The meaning resonated with me as I’ve experienced a ton of sleep paralysis.” Immobilization applies to a pandemic, but never Nefarious Waves. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

• THE •

• OF THE •

Seven key members unlock

HELLOWEEN ’s

potential on rousing self-titled comeback BY A D R I E N BE G R AND • PHOTO BY FRAN Z SCH EPERS

eavy metal fans are notorious romantics: We love our icons, we take

tragedy hard and we’re total suckers for a good comeback story. And metal lore is riddled with the latter: Deep Purple in 1984, Iron Maiden in 1999, Judas Priest in 2005, Celtic Frost in 2006, Accept in 2010, Carcass in 2013. Helloween’s “Pumpkins United” tour in 2017-2018, which brought back key members Kai Hansen and Michael Kiske for the first time in nearly 30 years, had fans euphoric, but many could barely dare to dream that this expanded version of the German power metal kings could manage a new album. How does a band juggle that many personalities, that many songwriters, that many egos? ¶ “It’s a conglomeration of ballistic insanity,” laughs Hansen, who, after decades of leading Gamma Ray, is back on his first Helloween album since Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II in 1988. Jokes aside, all seven members—guitarist/vocalist Hansen, vocalists Kiske and Andi Deris, guitarists Michael Weikath and Sascha Gerstner, bassist Markus Grosskopf and drummer Daniel Löble—left all egos at the doorstep to create the aptly titled Helloween, their finest work in 33 years. That’s no mean feat, considering Helloween had already put together an extensive discography since the 1990s—10 albums, to be specific—with the core trio of Weikath, Grosskopf and Deris. 2 8 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

“This album has all the trademarks of 30 years of Helloween,” says Löble. “Helloween now has all the distinct voices of all three eras together in songs on one record. It doesn’t matter what song we come up with; we will always have the perfect suitable voice for it.” Interestingly, not even the band knew if an album was a possibility when they were touring together three years ago. “I think when we found out that this was working on a personal level, an album would be possible,” offers Kiske, who makes his long-awaited return after 1993’s divisive—and disastrous—Chameleon. “We just got along very well. It was in the back of our heads anyway that this was a possibility, but we had to start the tour to see if we’d kill each other or if it works out.” For such an ambitious record, Helloween is free of clutter. Each songwriter is allowed to shine,

It was in heads f our ility, o k c a b e h t possib to see a s a w s i h that t start the tour to d a h e w t u b KILL

’D IF WE HER OR T O H C S K EA R O IF IT W T. U O M IC

I HAEL K

and the vocal duties are neatly divided, to the point where the democratic nature of this collaboration is rather stunning. “We were never a band that could pre-arrange where a record was supposed to go,” explains Kiske. “Everybody writes songs and it turns out the way it’s supposed to. All these ideas have their own kind of will. I was surprised by how quickly we had too many songs. It didn’t take very long at all to get the album together.” “We didn’t want to recreate another Keeper,” adds Hansen, whose biggest songwriting contribution is the album’s rousing closing epic “Skyfall,” which will have fans bouncing off the walls in excitement. “I threw away a lot of ideas I had for the album because they were either too far out of the range I would see for Helloween, or it was too much Gamma Ray, too much me. I definitely had a focus on the age of Helloween, the glory days that I was part of.”

Regarding the variety of styles these songwriters bring to the table, Hansen says, “Andi is the type who tells you how things should be and what to do, Sascha is always struggling to find the truth in life, Weiki has the fantasies of being almighty, and then there’s me, who’s always somewhere out in space. It’s pretty funny to see that. There’s one thing in common that unites us: this kind of spiritual freedom.” But how the hell does a band juggle three lead singers on a single album? “When we were sorting out vocal parts, that’s what we were going for,” says Kiske. “If it’s a part that sounds better from a shouter, Andi does that a lot better than me. If it’s something more operatic, then I would give that a try. That’s the good thing about it: If I don’t feel good about a part, I could just pass it on.” “And if it’s a part that needs a dwarf on acid,” laughs Hansen, “then it’s probably me.”

As they enter their 50s, the members of Helloween no longer have time for the kind of trite drama that ambitious musicians in their early 20s might dwell on. That maturity lends itself exceptionally well to the new album, and, as Kiske adds, it bodes well for the future. “We’ve all changed,” he says. “Weiki’s not the way he was in the ’80s, I’m not the way I was in the ’80s. We still have a little bit of the old spirit, but it’s a very different band now. It’s like when you have two people talking at a table and a third person comes along—the whole spirit changes. Everybody experiences that. You make a new spirit with everyone who comes in. The band is a lot more colorful now; there are so many more possibilities. You look at all those Helloween records after Kai and I were no longer part of it—they’ve done so many records that were so different. Now, I don’t think there’s anything we can’t do.” D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 2 9

interview by

QA j. bennett

DAVE WIT H

WYNDORF MONSTER MAGNET’s main man on the pandemic, Gen Z and the band’s killer new covers album

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t’s a Tuesday afternoon in New Jersey, and Dave Wyndorf is in high spirits. pandemic, I noticed how often the word “dysto-

Not only does Monster Magnet have a shit-hot album of killer covers on the way, but he just got his second vaccine shot. “That’ll be the ticket to actually tour,” he says. “Being a live rock band is what it’s about these days because the tail wags the dog. It’s not about making the album—it’s about touring. The only way bands can make money is on the road.” ¶ As for the covers album? It’s called A Better Dystopia, and it’s a lysergic extravaganza packed with the heaviest and weirdest proto-metal deep cuts and garage-psych meltdowns from the late ’60s, early ’70s and beyond. From underground titans like Hawkwind and Pentagram to deeply obscure freak squads like the Cave Men and J.D. Blackfoot, the album sees Monster Magnet reimagining some of the cutout bin relics that made them the rock ‘n’ roll powerhouse they are today. ¶ “I can take people not liking my original stuff, but there’s no excuse for a covers record to be bad,” our man says. “You had all the songs in the world to pick from and you couldn’t make a good record? What the fuck is wrong with you?” How have you been holding up during the pandemic?

As long as you don’t get sick, you win. For me, it’s pretty easy. I’m pretty much a hermit when I’m not on tour anyway. I either see everybody in the world all at once or nobody. I just kinda climb back into my hole and read a bunch of books. And made an album to pass the time. But probably somewhere around the eight-month mark, that’s when the brain starts to really fry. [Laughs] Aside from that, I’m okay. This whole thing could’ve been a lot worse. It could’ve been an absolute mega-killer virus, and it wasn’t. It’ll be a weird story for us to tell one day, like, “Remember that?” Are there many anti-maskers in your area?

Oh, there’s plenty of dipshits walking around. It’s part of the nature of today with the way telecommunications are. Everyone speaks at once. Whoever thought that would be a good idea should have their head examined. It’s never a good idea to have everyone speaking at once. That’s such a great way to put it.

That’s all it is. We can’t handle the emotional feedback of everyone talking at once. We can’t handle it in politics, and we can’t handle it in culture. That’s why everything’s such a mess. The tech is just too much for them. God forbid you actually stand back from an argument for two seconds and think about it. It’s reduced everyone to behaving like children. And the politics is absolutely off the charts in its insanity. There are no good guys out there. There’s just loud, blathering, emotional feedback echoing and panicking people. And for some reason, we all check in on them all the time. It’s awful. PHOTO BY GENE SMIRNOV

Monster Magnet were in Europe in March 2020, right before lockdown. What was your experience like?

Corona was just biting at our heels the whole time. We left Milan—two days later, Milan falls. We left Spain—three days later, Spain goes into lockdown. And all of us without having it. I can’t believe we toured Europe all that time and nobody got it. When I got home, I told everyone, “It’s coming. Everybody, get ready.” But people wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t even cancel my tours correctly because promoters were so angry at me: “What are you trying to do, scare people?” I’m like, “Dude, look at the newspapers!” Was doing a covers album a product of the pandemic, or were you planning on doing this anyway?

It’s a product of the pandemic for sure. I’ve always had a covers record in my back pocket—I think most bands do—but it’s the kind of thing you avoid most of the time if things are going well. They’re fun to do, but they’re not fun to support, you know? “Why’d you do a covers album? ’Cause you couldn’t write any songs?” That sort of thing. But it was a perfect time for a couple of reasons. One, to save my place in the world of rock while rock is shut down. Better to do this than put out a new record and just have it sink because you can’t tour. And the other is to try a new production technique, which is basically everything in-house, in a small rehearsal space. No big mixer, no big outlying costs. Because it’s getting expensive to do it the old-fashioned way, as much as I love it. And it was fun to do. How did you decide on the title A Better Dystopia?

Watching TV or being on the internet during the

pia” came up in mainstream media. Now, that’s not a word you hear in the mainstream that often. But I do remember when I was a kid in the late ’60s and early ’70s, that’s what they said. At that time, the Vietnam War was still going on, LSD was everywhere and scaring the shit out of the parents, Altamont happened, the Charles Manson murders, the Cold War, there were riots in America every fucking week. The SDS was around—there were people bombing stuff. The media couldn’t take it and started screaming “dystopia.” So, this is my second officially decreed dystopia. Which one had the better soundtrack? The old one. No contest.

Yeah. Pop culture was way more on top of things in the late ’60s and early ’70s than they are now. You look at the output of the Trump era and the output of rock and American culture? You wouldn’t even know you’re living in the same fucking world. We’re all a bunch of pussies. People have given up on defining their era by their art. Everyone now thinks they can define their era with their own words. “I’ll just go online and tell them how I feel!” But dude, I don’t want you to tell me how you feel. Show me with your art. But no, everyone’s just tweeting and Instagramming away. So, here we’ve got this amazing time in world history, and what do we have to show for it? Tiger King? People keep comparing today to the late ’60s and early ’70s, but it’s obviously so much different because of social media.

When you look at the culture surrounding all the upheaval, it was reflective immediately back then. After the riot on the Sunset Strip or the shooting at Kent State, people were putting songs out about it six weeks later. So, I was interested in the paranoia of the early ’70s. I was a kid back then, so I just thought it was cool. If I was grown up, I probably would’ve recognized it as a nightmare. So, that’s what this record is about—catching that sense of paranoia. The songs are chosen for their rock-ness, but also because they’re kinda schizy. A lot of the guys in these songs are talking about their brains, you know? “My brain!” Did that kind of tone help you narrow down the track list?

That, and my own vocal limitations. There are some songs I would just totally suck at. There are some I crossed off the list right away because I knew I couldn’t do them justice. I wanted to make sure this was not only a cool covers record—cooler than most—but I also wanted to make sure it felt like it was coming from D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 3 1

Dsytopia brandished  Wyndorf (center) has seen better dystopias in his life

I don’t want you to tell me how you feel. Show me with your art. But no, everyone’s just tweeting and Instagramming away. So, here we’ve got this amazing time in world history, and what do we have to show for it? Tiger King? the same place as we are. Could these have been Monster Magnet songs? Yeah, they could’ve been. I’ve certainly been inspired by them in the past, and I’ve probably stolen more from them than I even realize. You cover Pentagram’s “Be Forewarned.” Have you had any interactions with Bobby Liebling?

No, I never did. But I always tried to meet him when we were out on the road because I wanted to see what it looked like when you’ve been doing it for that long with no money. I’ve seen Pink Floyd and what they look like—they’re flying around on private planes with their personal chefs and stuff. It’s easy to grow old and do it that way. But this guy is like Lemmy or something, so I wanted to see it. But I never met him. You also cover one of my all-time favorites, Jerusalem’s “When the Wolf Sits.” How were you first exposed to that song?

When I was a kid, all I did was look for records. I was a complete mutant. I started buying records from a local record store when I was 11. I’d go in all by myself and look at the album covers, look at the instrumentation, and look at the song titles to try and figure out if I would like it. I didn’t realize there were magazines on such things yet. But back then, the magazines didn’t give you much information—not in advance, anyway. So, I’d be going to these seedy record stores and cutout bins—this is 1970, 1971— 3 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

looking at the covers and stuff and going, “This looks like it could be good. I hope it’s heavy!” With Jerusalem, it’s got a guy with a sword on the cover and it says “produced by Ian Gillan” on the back, so I figured I’d be okay. I don’t think Ian brought his A game to that one, but every song is amazing. You and [Monster Magnet guitarist] Phil Caivano had a cover band called Hard Attack when you were teenagers, and here you are covering “Learning to Die” from that album, so you obviously go pretty deep with the band Dust.

Very deep. I bought the first Dust album when it came out—same thing with Hard Attack. Again, it was one of those albums that I bought from looking at the cover and assessing the instrumentation. “Okay, no keyboards—good!” [Laughs] That’s the kind of logic you have when you’re a kid. And, of course, Dust was instantly legendary, right up there with Atomic Rooster and Uriah Heep. Then Hard Attack came out and it was way better. In my mind, they were as big as Led Zeppelin. I was like, “How come nobody’s talking about Dust?” That’s when, as a kid, I started to realize that you could be really good, but nobody would know who you are. You do a Cave Men song called “It’s Trash,” which I’ve never heard before. Was that another record store discovery?

It might’ve been on a Pebbles compilation,

because that song only came out on 45. I think they were just a bunch of kids from Florida in 1966. But that song is amazing. Why don’t people sing like that anymore? It really is a lost art.

It’s funny—we’ll go over to Europe and there’s always some people in their 20s at our shows. I’ll talk to them, and they’re a lot hipper than the people in their 20s who come to our shows here. The Americans will say, “I don’t listen to that kind of stuff because it’s a different generation and they’re old.” And I’m always like, “They weren’t old when they sang it!” [Laughs] They don’t realize that. I mean, when I listen to Bix Beiderbecke, I don’t think, “He’s 150 years old.” It’s so stupid. But the kids that do get it, it opens their minds. They’re able to pull from all these eras and they’re writing cool songs. Most younger people operate in a much tighter echo chamber, though. It’s strange. You can hear almost any song at the press of a button, but most people seem to stay in one lane.

I think that just shows you which people really love music and which people like music, but don’t go nuts over it. They’re not like you and me, who might walk past a record shop and go, “Honey, can you spare a couple hours while I go stick my head in a box?” [Laughs] Most people don’t understand that.

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CHRONICLES of the

NORTHBOUND NORWEGIAN METAL LEGENDS

reflect on THE BAND’S BIRTH, their recent CINEMATIC TOUR and THREE DECADES of CONSTANT EVOLUTION by S E A N F R A SIER • photo by ES TER S EGAR R A

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MAY 1991.

Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson

roll out of their rehearsal with their teenage death metal band Phobia and go for a stroll. In three decades, the friends will be celebrating their 30th anniversary as the primary songwriters in Enslaved. Like their forefathers in Bathory, Enslaved helped establish black metal and Viking metal as genres teeming with creative possibilities. But genre expectations would never keep Enslaved anchored to the ocean floor. The band continues to sail new musical territory with each new offering. But in 1991, the duo’s lifelong passion project is just the whisper of an idea. ¶ It’s springtime in Haugesund, and Phobia’s future is murky. The lineup is in disarray as their drummer prepares to depart for the United States to be an au pair for a year. “Basically, to be a babysitter—how metal, right?” Kjellson laughs. ¶ During a walk to Bjørnson’s father’s house, the two friends discuss the possibility of a new project. Inspired by the simmering Norwegian black metal scene, the young musicians plan to depart from death metal and expand their songwriting horizons. Darkthrone were doing just that after Soulside Journey, and Immortal would soon follow suit. But embracing the Satanic symbology prevalent within the genre didn’t feel authentic. “Instead, we decided to go the way Quarthon [of Bathory] had pointed us towards with Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods,” Bjørnson mentions. “That focus on Norse mythology has since become a critical aspect of the band.” “I remember saying during that talk that we should do something new, we should sing in Old Norse,” Kjellson recalls. “Ivar was enthusiastic, like fuck yeah. So, from that conversation we had a lyrical platform and foundation we could build upon.” Soon after, they attended a gig featuring a who’s-who of personalities that would shape Norwegian black metal’s golden age. Members of Immortal, Emperor and Old Funeral conspired over beers about future band and recording plans. Bjørnson and Kjellson chatted with Immortal guitarist Demonaz about their unnamed band’s concept. “Demonaz mentioned he had a really great name for us: Enslaved,” Kjellson says. “Mainly because [Immortal] had their song ‘Enslaved in Rot.’ We thought, ‘Yeah, that sounds cool.’ [Immortal] were basically a technical death metal band back then that sounded like Immolation

more than black metal. But we decided that was a cool name and went with that right away. “During that same period,” he continues, “the artist who did the Enslaved logo was with the Old Funeral guys and drew the first sketches of our logo on that trip as well. The logo was made before we even had a first three-piece rehearsal. We were like, ‘We have no songs, but we have a great logo!’” April 2021. Enslaved formed as spring sizzled into summer, bursting with creativity and endless possibilities. But Norwegian winters have influenced far more extreme metal albums than gentler seasonal changes. It’s freakishly fitting that, as Bjørnson and I chat on Skype, snow and ice are uncharacteristically freezing the American Midwest in late April. The last time we spoke, Enslaved had three special events booked in London to celebrate their 25th anniversary. Each evening would highlight a distinct chapter in the band’s odyssean discography. But circumstances are understandably different as their 30th anniversary approaches. It’s now over a year since the anxiety-amplifying uncertainty of the pandemic’s earliest days, but the impact endures in live music.

“Here in Norway, March 12th [of 2020] was the official start of Armageddon when everything closed down,” Bjørnson revisits. “We were supposed to leave for London because I promised my daughters that, since they endured me being away on tour, I would take them there, and we had to cancel for safety purposes. [My daughters] have never been there, but it’s their favorite city from the movies they’ve watched. I don’t think I’ve seen that many tears in my life before.” Faced with shuttered venues and a forced touring hiatus with no known end-date, Enslaved accepted an invitation to play as part of the Verftet Online Music Festival in Bergen, Norway. While some heavy bands were experimenting with livestreaming to connect with fans, Enslaved were one of the highest-profile extreme bands to broadcast a set during the plague age. “It was such a weird day and night in that room,” Bjørnson comments. “There wasn’t much known about COVID still, so we had representatives from the national health authorities to make sure we were following guidelines. It felt like a rocket launching, except we had no NASA education. We were like grade schoolers pushed into the command center.” Playing a full set to cameras without a live crowd’s immediate feedback and enthusiasm was an alien experience. But after the feed ended and the amps were unplugged, the roar of the fans was replaced with a torrential wave of social media notifications. “We realized a lot of people were watching, and there was still a connection being made,” says Bjørnson. “After the show we had a beer, and all the comments across the world started rolling in; bing bing bing. They were mostly saying the same thing: Thanks for 60 minutes of normal. And that was really rewarding. “It was a strange experience, but it was crucial because it changed our perspective for the rest of the year,” he continues. “Instead of thinking something was taken away, we wanted to view it as an opportunity opening up. We saw streams online already, and we noticed this whole thing was like filming it on the stage. But pretending there’s a crowd wouldn’t work for us. So, D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 3 5

There wasn’t much known about COVID still, so we had representatives from the national health authorities to make sure we were following guidelines. It felt like a rocket launching, except we had no NASA education.

we were like grade schoolers pushed into the command center. Ivar Bjørnson

we remembered some of our favorite things are Pink Floyd videos from the ’70s, especially Live at Pompeii where they truly make the most out of the format.” After the success of that livestream, the band decided that, with touring still an impossibility, they should schedule more virtual performances. What unfolded was a massive three-part series they called Cinematic Tour 2020. Like the referenced Pink Floyd performance, their sets were filmed with contemplative patience and subtlety. The cameras glide and hover like lurking spirits. The band decided they also wanted to reward fans for their support in such unprecedented times and use fan voting to compose the set lists. “In the past, we had biased polls between one thing we would like to do, and basically another thing we would like to do,” Bjørnson chuckles. “But this time, there was a sense of gratitude from us and we wanted to truly give something back to the fans. So, we offered basically our entire discography.” “We played a lot of songs that have never been played or haven’t been played for 20 years,” Kjellson adds. “Last year—in some weird way—we were more active in the rehearsal 3 6 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

space than we have been for many, many years. Because, in normal years, we have one rehearsal, then we go on tour or hit summer festivals. We don’t spend much time in the rehearsal space apart from that. So, last year, it felt like we were back in the ’90s, doing rehearsals every day for 14 days in a row.” Speaking of the ’90s, there’s a very passionate contingent of Enslaved fans who champion their first couple records, but are less interested in the band’s three-decade arc. The selectivity of those fans doesn’t faze Enslaved; they also favor certain eras from some artists. But seeing songs from their usual set and newer material selected was satisfying. “There are people who have been very vocal online who want us to do strictly old stuff and basically play Frost on repeat,” Bjørnson shares. “It’s the same as other lobbyists: They seem bigger than they really are because they only have one thing we’re doing, while the rest of us are engaged with a variety of things. You see that with a lot of special interest groups—I guess I’m calling Frost diehards a special interest group now. We do respect them a lot, but it turns out there was a lot of new material voted for, and that made us feel great.”

The band’s Cinematic Tour 2020 is being released as a multi-disc DVD set with versions on CD and vinyl as well. Just like Enslaved reconsidered their approach to livestreaming, they approach the physical release with thoughtfulness and care. They have a special edition of the box set handcrafted by a single artisan, so no two boxes are the same. The type of lumber and metal used to construct the items changes with each box. Every wooden box is also branded with the purchaser’s name burned into the wood grain. Enslaved have referred to themselves as “an old ship” in the past. The imagery is poignant, especially considering the wooden boat anchored off the rocky coastline on their Blodhemn album cover. The waters surrounding most bands eventually get too treacherous to navigate further. Waves threaten to capsize. Sea beasts may attack in the night. But Enslaved’s Viking longboat has serenely cut through the dark waters for three decades. That harmony extends through the project’s lifeblood, back to the band founders daydreaming about their nameless new band as teenagers. Their youthful objectives were simple, and have become even simpler with time. “We wanted to get a record deal and release a vinyl album, and we did that fairly early,” Kjellson notes. “Hordanes Land was released in 1993, and that was a huge milestone for me. Holding my own 12-inch record with our logo on it was one of the proudest moments in my career. “But I’ll be totally honest with you,” he continues. “I was a 17-year-old boy when we started Enslaved, so my future plans and visions probably didn’t last longer than a fortnight. Maybe get enough money to buy booze for the weekend. Try to score some girls and drugs or whatever, and buy records. The main goal was to write great songs we could enjoy ourselves and would want on a turntable, and it’s the same philosophy we have now. We try to make our own contemporary favorite music and not repeat ourselves.” “The goals were the same as it is today,” Bjørnson concurs. “Just create something for ourselves that combines our favorite artistic expressions, and share it with anyone who wishes to be a part of it. I think that’s what keeps us strong after 30 years. We have zero fatigue, and we feel more up for it now, even. It’s still as vibrant as it was when I was 15, because it’s such a simple goal. It’s turned into a livelihood we’re able to do with our best friends, and that’s pretty fantastic. That’s what I wanted to do then, and that’s what we’ll keep doing.” Enslaved have started releasing tour dates and festival appearances as the world crawls from the shadows of the pandemic. Asked whether they’ll focus on playing songs from their last release or tour with a 30th anniversary set, Bjørnson confirms they’ll be primarily supporting the Utgard release. “We will probably save those retrospective celebrations for the 50th anniversary,” Bjørnson laughs.

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the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

interviews by

albert mudrian and jon rosenthal

Cåstlevænia the making of Satyricon’s Dark Medieval Times

here is a castle in the distance. The road that takes you there is fraught with terrors. Proceed

carefully and take in as much atmosphere as you can. This is the story of Satyricon’s debut album, Dark Medieval Times, a later entrant into the Norwegian scene’s early days, although the relatively new duo of Sigurd “Satyr” Wongraven and drummer Kjetil-Vidar “Frost” Haraldstad (the latter of whom had officially joined the band for The Forest Is My Throne a year before) had already begun to make waves with their demo efforts. Having been in talks with various labels like Osmose Productions and Candlelight Records, it was Satyr’s idea to self-release Dark Medieval Times on his own label, the fledgling Moonfog mailorder. Pairing up with avant-garde and progressive rock label Tatra Productions, Moonfog Productions was publicly born with this first CD release, very suddenly skyrocketing Satyricon into fame within the black metal community. Taking the creative helm, Satyricon is Satyr’s creative force first and foremost, with Frost contributing visually and acting as the project’s strong, percussive backbone. A child of the end of the progressive rock era, Satyr took an atypical approach that set Dark Medieval Times apart from the outwardly stylistically conservative (but not really) black metal scene that surrounded his band. Featuring riffs in atypical time signatures, lengthy classical-andfolk-inspired passages (a first for a burgeoning scene) and a heavier, more textured buzz when compared to other albums of its time, it was through Dark Medieval Times that black metal began to discover a more progressive version of itself. A primarily atmospheric record, featuring raw guitar tone DBHOF199 and lengthy progressions that feed into each other, it’s through Satyricon’s full-length debut that they discovered their first bouts of musical personality: a Kittelsen-esque adventure through the darkness of the medieval era and beyond—something that would follow them to the turn of the millennium, after which came an about-face Dark Medieval Times in style with Rebel Extravaganza’s more urban-inspired sound in 1999. MOONFOG PRODUCT IONS As Satyr and Frost reflect on their debut album in this new retroMARCH 1994 spective interview, we recommend curling up in your favorite chair, putting on your copy of the new reissue (or an original if you have the They got medieval on your ass first excess dough), and really losing yourself in the atmospheres Satyr and Frost created all those years ago, being sure to marvel at just how relevant they still are almost 30 years later. Enter the castle beyond.

SATYRICON

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DBHOF199

SATYRICON dark medieval times

“There was something comic book-like about what ended up on the cover. We went ahead and followed through for the last time in our career. I’ve never approached things the same way since, and that’s probably from experience and age.”

SATYR The second demo, The Forest Is My Throne, was recorded in March of ’93. Can you talk a little bit about the changes in the band’s lineup between then and the time when you recorded Dark Medieval Times? SATYR: In 1991, there was a band that had no name and no songs they’d written themselves. They were basically one guitarist, a bassist and a drummer looking for more people. I answered that band’s ad very much in the same way as how the other guys in Metallica answered the infamous “Lars Ulrich ad.” It was just this note on the wall in some gear store in downtown Oslo. That band was more about camaraderie and fascination for metal music than being on the path to something. Less than a year into it, I tried to turn it into a black metal band. Maybe a little bit of thrash, a little bit of death. Do it the real way. Then there was no longer a band of buddies just playing metal, so we lost some people on the way. In the middle of ’92, I was writing the music, and I hadn’t really done any of that up to that point. The group of guys we were at that point was falling apart; it wasn’t quite clear to me who was going to join me in turning it into what I wanted it to be: a proper band. [Laughs] In the The Forest Is My Throne stage, I was the only person who was certain [to] make it through to the other side of this tunnel we

were in. For instance, Frost was happy to continue to do this, and I think the overall experience was this was a good match. Do you want to be in a band in between playing soccer and chess and hanging out at the mall, or do you want this to be pursued seriously? It was pretty clear to me who wouldn’t be joining me on this journey, but it wasn’t necessarily that clear to me which one of these guys had a perspective lasting more than a year or two. I’m not sure what happened to the other guys I started playing with in ’91. I know someone said that Haavard [“Lemarchand” Jørgensen] showed up in Ulver, but this isn’t entirely true because he went completely undercover and had absolutely fuck-all to do with music. After his disappearance, he showed up in Ulver and then he was more or less gone again. I was asked the other day whether the bass player, Vegard [“Wargod” Tønsberg Bakke], whether it was correct he became a UN soldier. It wouldn’t surprise me, but I don’t have the slightest clue. I think trying to see if this was the right constellation, basically Frost and myself, was basically something that we were looking into from November ’92 to March/April 1993. The demo led to the conclusion it’s going to be the two of us. I started writing the material in ’92, so the demo was a demo in the traditional sense you would J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 4 0 : D E C I B E L

make a demo: a real demo, really setting yourself up for the recording of the actual thing. Dark Medieval Times was also very much a result of that process that lasted through late ’92 and the first quarter of ’93. Frost, do you have any recollections of the moment when you decided you wanted to be a full-time member? He was only credited as a session member on The Forest Is My Throne. SATYR: I find the session member thing was on paper. Should Frost decide this is not something he wants to do and should I decide after the studio experience that this isn’t working out at all, he hadn’t sold himself as a Satyricon member and I had not introduced him. In my heart, the defining moment was really the very first time we played together, probably at the time of Frost’s first jam with Haavard, Vegard and myself. Frost told me in hindsight he wasn’t prepared, but when I listened to him play, it was more like, “I would play that beat myself.” It felt right, so we weren’t really considering his timing or his groove. Does it feel black metal? Yes. Is this part what was missing? Yes. That was the defining moment. Finally, someone who is hearing this type of music the way I hear it. FROST: I imagine when I got to team up with Satyr and the then-members of Satyricon,

SHIRTS

E V I S U L C X E

P A T C H E S

NSORSH IP *S M IL E FO R CE

F L A G S BEANIES

DBHOF199

SATYRICON dark medieval times

I was very insecure. I wasn’t sure whether I should have tried to become a musician or just stay a devoted fan of music. I was very into the genre of black metal. I found it to be very intriguing. I found it to be the one really important thing in my life. But I had never cared much to be very musical about what I did. It was all about sensing the energy and the physicality of what extreme metal was about. Eventually, as I got very profoundly into black metal, it was also about feeling some of these dark, sinister energies that, for me, constituted black metal. Behind the drum kit, I could somehow get in touch with it. I eventually came to a point where I couldn’t get much further and would have to start thinking musically about things. My approach was so unconventional and got to a point where it didn’t make much sense. When I was asked to team up with Satyr, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. As I started to understand what Satyricon was about, there was a growing sense to me: This was actually for real. Perhaps there would be a way in here, after all. Satyr was actually willing to give me a chance after hearing me play. He was generous enough to let me continue to try out and eventually let me take part in the band. I felt I should seize the chance and come up with something together. Hence, I started to seriously rehearse quite a bit. I managed to [make] some progress, and pretty quickly. That made it possible for us to continue working as a band, and even if it took a while before I could call myself a member or feel like a member or deserving enough to call myself such a thing, things were moving pretty quickly, and I felt Satyr’s principals and ambition. At some point, that kind of won me over and I was convinced I should try to devote myself and see if perhaps I could become some sort of musician anyway, instead of just a devoted fan. On Dark Medieval Times, there’s one holdover from The Forest Is My Throne: “Min hyllest til vinterland.” What about this song in particular did you feel necessitated its inclusion? SATYR: I don’t think the other songs on the demo are any lesser than any of the songs on the actual album; they are slightly more generic black metal and less uniquely Satyricon. That was the whole point with that process. This reminds me: I think there were few people who managed to listen with a filter when they spoke to Euronymous. He was very uncompromising and very extreme when it came to his points of view on just about anything. I think some people buy everything he was saying without being critical, basically. There were other people who weren’t really listening to the core of his message, because some of the things he

said were so extreme, everything seemed a little unrealistic and extreme for the sake of being extreme, which led to people thinking everything he said was nonsense and “far out there.” One of the interesting things Euronymous said was that it was very important, with the Norwegians spearheading black metal, that each needed to have their own unique sound. It couldn’t just be great. He would point out the vast differences musically between similar bands, and I agreed with that. I thought my really heartfelt connection [was] with Norwegian folk music’s tonality, which can be grim, dark, sad, lonely, melancholic, all these strong emotions, yet not expressed anywhere near Bathory’s first album. I thought my heartfelt connection with this was something I could perhaps implement, and that would be what makes Satyricon more than just a “good” black metal band, but something uniquely Satyricon. The song you mentioned had such qualities; that was the background for my way of thinking. Every album was an actual album and not a compilation of songs. You would never sit down and say you liked one or two songs. You listen to the album as a whole. I had a bit of a laugh with friends, talking about how it was. Even if there were songs you didn’t like, you would try to get into those songs. As a listener, you would invest in each album. That’s part of the considerations you make, what fits into the totality. Those types of considerations and thought processes are something we’ve had all the way from Dark Medieval Times to this day. Dark Medieval Times had more acoustic folk influence than any Norwegian black metal album before it. Where were your influences coming from? SATYR: My approach was the heartfelt connection to Norwegian folk music. If you asked me to name important ambassadors for Norwegian folk music throughout Norwegian musical history, I’d struggle to name a handful. It’s just the way it speaks to my heart in the same way Italian feels a certain way to me, even if I don’t speak Italian myself. Norwegian folk music is straight to my heart. There are some differences: Norwegian folk music isn’t just Norwegian folk music; it depends on where in Norway it came from and what era/time it comes from. It was obviously the darker stuff that resonated the most. Another interesting thing I liked about it was I always enjoyed the unexpected turns in Norwegian folk music and its highly unconventional rhythmics or lack of rhythmic structure, which is something I use to this day in Satyricon. For me, implementing this in the music wasn’t hard—it comes quite naturally—but back then, the way it was expressed and integrated in the music was with bolder letters and more exclamation marks. J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 4 2 : D E C I B E L

Frost, did you have a connection to this Norwegian folk music growing up like Satyr did, or did you approach those elements in a different manner? FROST: When I heard these folkish elements in the songs and themes Satyr was making for the first time for Dark Medieval Times, I thought they made sense and they were intriguing. I almost immediately thought of them as parts of Satyricon’s musical identity, something that was truly ours, really, in a similar way in any of the other Norwegian bands. I usually liked all those things right away, even if I didn’t frequently listen to any kind of folk music. I liked some more medieval-type ballads and was familiar with folk music without really being drawn to it or thinking much about it. It was just something that was there. Many Norwegians have had it as part of their musical background or upbringing or something. It sneaks in, somehow, for most Norwegians, I suppose. At least that’s how it was. I’ve come to think later on, when we re-released Dark Medieval Times, people wonder about where it all came from and where that particular expression came from. I haven’t really thought about it other than what I just told you; I just learned it was part of Satyr’s writings or compositional style from the very beginning. I immediately liked it and thought of it as a Satyricon-identity type of thing. When I started to think a little more about this just recently… it just came from out of thin air, recently, but I connected to it, too, and I came to think that—knowing how much Satyr has always been drawn to experiences out in nature, to be in the woods, to be up on the mountains, to feel the mood, to feel and sense everything and be in touch with nature in its various forms, and also knowing how he is easily getting in touch with history, culture, with folklore and what belongs to the past and where all of these elements interconnect—then I can also think Satyr would be the kind of guy who would almost sense the spirits of old folk melodies form our country and sense their connectedness to nature, to history and to culture. That’s almost instinctively or intuitively linked to him as a composer. Now, when I think it over, it explains where this all comes from.

Unlike many records of the second-wave Norwegian scene, Dark Medieval Times was not recorded at Grieghallen. What led you away from that studio? SATYR: We recorded on the peninsula where I lived due to a super-tight budget. This was something that was funded by local authorities. Just two rehearsal rooms and a recording studio available at a very sympathetic rate. This was very much a case of, “This is just about what we can afford!” To make this come together in a better way after the recording, we worked with someone who had no past experience with

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SATYRICON dark medieval times

“It was all about sensing the energy and the physicality of what extreme metal was about. Eventually, as I got very profoundly into black metal, it was also about feeling some of these dark, sinister energies that, for me, constituted black metal.”

F RO ST this type of music. I figured this was maybe something we could mix at Grieghallen. We worked out a deal with Pytten [Eirik Hundvin]— we mixed a couple songs, and I think these two songs and their mix turned out better than what actually ended up on the record. I’m glad I called it off. Pytten had some very fixed ideas. He wasn’t receptive. If you have a 17-year-old artist coming in, full of energy and enthusiasm, having written all the music, you might want to try and focus on, “What can I do to help this guy fulfill his vision? How can we blend reality and the way he sees this?” I’d say, “I want this part to sound epic,” and he’d say, “But it’s not epic! It can’t be done!” Which is obviously the wrong approach. He should have said, “How do you see this being epic?” But he’d immediately dismiss it. I thought, “Fuck this guy!” On the second day, he said, “Well, since you don’t like what I’m doing, then maybe you should just try and mix this yourself elsewhere.” As I said, the two songs we did, like from a balanced point of view, they’re certainly better than what the record ended up being like, but this was the right decision because that way of working was not right for me. I think everything following after Dark Medieval Times wouldn’t have been as

good as it turned out if it wasn’t for the fact that I ended up in this “screw this, we’re just going to do this all ourselves” situation. I was very happy about this, because all of a sudden, we were back to the community-funded crap local studio, but we were having fun. We were saying, “Okay, maybe this part will fade out, and that part will fade out. How can we physically reach all the faders?” We didn’t have any automation—we had to get a piece of wood from the studio backyard and had two people hold it on one side and the other side and physically move the faders at the same time. The charm and the ownership and the learning process and how all the cool stuff you’ve done, that’s all you, but also the stuff that didn’t turn out so well, it’s still you. Dark Medieval Times was originally supposed to come out on No Fashion Records. What happened with No Fashion that didn’t pan out, and when did you make the decision that you would start your own label and self-release? SATYR: No Fashion was a bedroom label. They run into financial problems, so either they don’t pay bands the royalties they owe or they can’t pay studio bills... The studio was forced to threaten to cancel without payment. So, that was J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 4 4 : D E C I B E L

the way of really finishing that, taking money out of Frost’s study loan and borrowing some money from my father. Then we could pursue work and finish the record, but I didn’t consider our contract valid anymore. I spoke to various labels, Osmose Productions and Candlelight Records, and it certainly led to missing out on Satyricon with contracts and calendars. Imagine, there I was, having completed Dark Medieval Times. I just wanted to get the record out there and not sit around and wait because some guy had some sort of logistic concerns. Tatra Productions was a Norwegian label that was held in very high regard in Norway’s underground for its avant-garde music releases. Some of those releases I felt were very good, and I felt it would be a more prestigious thing for us to get our record released through Tatra than those extreme metal labels. It would say something about the quality of what we are doing that a non-metal label would want to put out our black metal record. I turned up with a Dark Medieval Times tape and knocked on his door, and he was not happy about it. I remember how extreme his contempt was. That Monday he called me, and there was no process or pompous explanation:

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“I’ve listened to your record throughout the weekend and I like it a lot. I’d like to release it. The only problem I ended up talking to you about is: I don’t have any distributors who sell metal music. I’m not sure how to fix this, but I want to release the record. I need your input as to how.” I had this small underground black metal mail order, Moonfog Productions, and always thought it would be cool to one day turn it into a label. Then we set up a distribution system exclusively for Dark Medieval Times, and then we could release the next Satyricon records like this. I am a part of the Norwegian black metal community and, you never know, some people in these other bands might want to be a part of this. Did you have any apprehension about going out on your own, being the label’s first release and essentially being the band’s label?

No. I would never have dreamt of doing anything similar to what Satyr did. I had more than enough trying to get a grip on the drums. I followed the process from the sidelines. Satyr gave me regular updates either through the rehearsal space or the phone, and I started to understand eventually that Satyr was one of these really pioneering spirits in a broader sense. Today I think of him as a builder of empires, and there is no sarcasm at all. That was the first time I started to understand that side of him, in addition to wanting to make Satyricon become a band to be reckoned with and a band to have an identity and style to stand on its own. He would also be the type of guy who would go so far as to actually start up a company in order to realize the band’s plans, and to me that was very telling of what kind of guy he was. Now, in hindsight, it’s very easy to see it was telling about his type of personality. It makes sense now, but back then it was really the first glimpse of that side of him. I think it gained him quite a few respect points. FROST:

Before Dark Medieval Times was actually released, I read a fanzine interview where Fenriz was talking about the album. I’m paraphrasing, but he said something like, “Every other Norwegian black metal band should just give up playing after hearing this album. That’s how good Dark Medieval Times is.” That raised my expectations. Do you remember the reactions from the press, fans, or your peers when the record was released? SATYR: I imagine this album made it overseas in 1994. The first physical copies that made their way to record shops, was… probably late 1993. Back then, there were no coordinated campaigns, there wasn’t any press. You would... as soon as the record was done, it would be manufactured. It wasn’t like today with long lead time; it was probably 10 to 12 days later and whoever started

Calling the Kittel black  The original cover art (above) vs. the reissue cover featuring art from Norwegian black metal favorite Theodor Kittelsen

selling the record was the record’s release date. Afterwards, I gave up school, I gave up work, I gave up everything as soon as we made this deal. I couldn’t imagine myself being a part-time musician. Once you had someone who actually wanted to put out your records, then you were a recording artist. Even if it’s your calling in life, it is a profession. Whatever feedback I got was the guy in charge of putting out these records saying that this is selling. If you were to ask me about the reactions on The Shadowthrone and Nemesis Divina, I’m not sure I remember much about that as well, aside from people showing up for shows in large numbers when we did Nemesis and records kept selling, budgets increasing. The first time I noticed anything about reactions was really on Rebel Extravaganza because it was so divisive. FROST: I think it would be very difficult to add anything to Satyr’s story without subtracting from it. I think that was very telling. To be honest with you, I cannot really remember lots of reactions or reviews or that sort of thing from early on. I think I started to see some of those at a later point, but I remember people around me seemed to like Dark Medieval Times. Several of these were black metal people, and they kind of knew what we were doing. Some of them had heard our demo, but I remember quite a few seemed to be a bit surprised and didn’t want to say too much because they were a bit envious. Perhaps they had bands of their own. But some of them were very positive and some others [who] didn’t want to say that much seemed to at least understand the impact of Dark Medieval Times. Sensing that was very rewarding. J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 4 6 : D E C I B E L

The cover art was drawn by Jannicke WieseHansen, who also made logos for Immortal and Enslaved, but it’s actually being replaced on the reissue. What is your relationship with that original cover today? SATYR: I was physically present when she made that drawing, and it was my decision to go ahead and follow through. It’s difficult when you can’t draw yourself and sit next to a person who is trying to be inside your head. Very difficult, especially if you don’t know each other that well. I felt it became a little bit banal, but I felt I was trying to persuade myself this was it and I really tried hard to appreciate it, even if it didn’t turn out the way it was in my imaginary universe. When you are 17 years old and you have no budget and no experience, you typically make the mistakes I made and you follow through. I was sitting there thinking about this Theodor Kittelsen drawing that was always going to be a part of the inner cover: I should make that the front cover. I do feel probably also part of the mistake was also I felt loyalty to part of the process. It wasn’t really her fault; it was my fault, and I just tried to follow through. I ended up not going for the Kittelsen drawing on the front cover and went back to my original cover of having it inside the release. Once we got the actual album, it just did not feel right. The front cover on an emotional level was the Kittelsen drawing. It is interesting, in hindsight, to look back at my choice of choosing to print the first Dark Medieval Times shirt with the Kittelsen drawing, and the second one was with the actual front cover. The Kittelsen sits much better with how I visualized the

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Middle Ages, Norway, nature, the plague, war, darkness, poverty and all these things that make the old Norway so dark. There was something comic book-like about what ended up on the cover. It was a serious source of motivation to me when we were doing the reissues to fix the front covers. We went ahead and followed through for the last time in our career. I’ve never approached things the same way since, and that’s probably from experience and age. It puts you in a better place when it comes to making tough decisions. I’m not looking for someone’s approval or disapproval; it’s more fixing those things that never felt right and this entire process of making these reissues. That’s actually what pleases me the most: We actually, finally started to sort these things out that were important to me. Norwegian black metal almost became famous in Norway for the way it used Theodor Kittelsen, a native Norwegian artist. A book incorrectly stated the first time Kittelsen’s art was used in Norwegian black metal music was through Burzum’s Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, but it was released the year after Dark Medieval Times, and this association with Kittelsen is something I feel strongly about. It was also important to me to point out as Satyricon that I take much pride in not copying other bands, showing people we never were or never have been the kind of band who goes, “That’s a great idea, we should do that!” We were the first to do that. Is there anything about the actual recording that either of you would consider changing if you had the chance? FROST: I think we just have to accept the music the way it is. You could always do some slight improvements and changes to the sound of the albums, which is what Satyr has done, but the songs themselves have to remain as they are. It makes no sense for us to start to tweak what we did in our late teens. The songs remained, and starting to make changes to the songs would make it necessary to start from scratch again, look into basically everything and improve on everything and bring in what we have today. That just doesn’t make sense to me. These songs might have many flaws, but I still love each of them. They were created, rehearsed and recorded with our hearts and souls. We did the best we could at the time. These songs also carry the spirit of Satyricon at the time, and they carry the zeitgeist. I wouldn’t change any one of those songs. SATYR: The things we have done with the audio were pretty much the only things we could do. When you have something which has already been mastered, people don’t really understand the difference between remixing and remastering. Remastering, you aren’t changing the mix;

 Gruesome twosome

Satyr (top) and Frost at the beginning of their now three-decade partnership

you’re just having a go at the mastering process, which is about compression and sequencing and EQ and spacing between songs. Sometimes you have the original mixtapes like we did with Nemesis Divina, but you’re not remastering; you’re doing a new master since you’re starting from scratch. With Dark Medieval Times, we had no tapes. We were in a situation where we had to do the master from a CD, but the thing is it’s been mastered. Unless you want to mess up your record, there’s not much you can do. I think we did all we could do in improving the record. Very subtle tweaks, like adding some analog EQ in the midrange of the guitars, which gives the guitar a bit more of an organic warmth and analog feel. You can add slightly more stereo width, which makes it sound a bit bigger. How do you view the legacy of Dark Medieval Times today? On the last tour, you played “Walk the Path of Sorrow” every night, so surely there’s a connection to the band’s formative years. SATYR: All the good things which happened with Dark Medieval Times headed into the future. But also, the confidence that comes with doing everything yourself. I consider Dark Medieval Times very much where it all started through all the processes you go through as an artist. As for the quality of the songs and the performance the way it is, I know there are things I could have done much, much better now, but I don’t think I could have done it better when I was making J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 4 8 : D E C I B E L

it. I have to accept it for what it is. It ticks the boxes it needs to tick. The most important things in music are: It is performed with honesty, integrity, and with emotion. Dark Medieval Times does tick all those boxes. It is honest. It is performed with passion, fire and intensity, and that’s basically all you can ask an artist for. For me, the legacy of an album is not really how it has been perceived by others or received; it’s what it’s done for me as a musician and my development as a human being, and as an artist. FROST: To me, what the album has truly left in me is a particular feeling and a particular vibe. As these albums are now being re-released and brought back to attention, what really strikes me is it is an album I don’t really listen to… it is an album I feel. And it’s the only album that works that way for me, probably because it is our very first album. It was special being able to record and release it! I remember being in the studio recording it; it was the first time the songs began to belong together. It was a collection of songs, but I was able to feel the spirit and soul of the album. It was almost physically present in the studio, like I could touch it or sense it. It had a very eerie, mysterious, dark vibe, and it felt more than something you can listen to. It must speak in a very particular way to others. There must be something there that I can sense which others who like the record also feel. There is a very particular spirit of what Satyricon did in the studio for the first time, and the spirit we as the musicians of the album brought to it.

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Service Providers How Belgian post-doom collective

A MENR A

continue to break genre conventions en masse STORY BY

DANIEL LAKE PHOTOS BY

JEROEN MYLLE 5 0 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

BECOMING THEIR SCREAM OF DESPAIR Last year, American photographer and videographer Bobby Cochran

band’s spiritual drive up to this point. But to understand the shape of that story, we’ll have to unearth Amenra’s youthful roots and trace the brutal lines of that scarred trunk, across those gnarled limbs all the way out to the fruit they have since borne.

completed and released A Flood of Light, a 100-minute documentary constructed from candid footage, live performances and interviews that acts as a career-spanning retrospective of Amenra’s two decades of existence. The film is a black-and-white masterpiece of mood and message, WITH EYES SO BRIGHT a clear indication of where the Belgian collective stands at the nexus In the mid-to-late ’90s, vocalist Colin Van of community, communication and communion. Its delicate, hovering Eeckhout was a teenager whose interests skateboarding with friends and engagsoundtrack (punctuated every 20 minutes or so with a metallic explo- included ing with the local hardcore scene. “We had a sion) syncs with its splicing of imagery—cityscapes, natural vistas and very strong scene here, and bands like Congress, artistic manipulations of both—to emphasize the scope of Amenra’s Blindfold [and] Liar were the most influential introspective ambitions. That scope is vast and ever-widening, and if it ones,” he recalls. “A large amount of smaller doesn’t precisely suggest that music is equivalent to the band’s life, it bands followed their lead, and I can say we were one of them. It was local bands that fueled our certainly makes clear that the members’ lives give Amenra its purpose. enthusiasm to start to write music. For us, a lot And even that purpose is expanding. of it was straight-edge-inspired, animal rights… “They’re increasing their dynamics over time,” praises Steve Von Till, guitarist/vocalist for scene legends Neurosis and curator of Neurot Recordings, the U.S. label that released the Amenra records labeled Mass V and Mass VI. “Their live show is so simple, but powerful, pounding the same kind of riff and rhythm in different contexts, over and over again, like they’re constantly perfecting the same song. It becomes more like a chant, a prayer, with heavy guitars. They’re spiraling around this core that they’re seeking, and they get closer as time goes on.” Amenra’s bassist Tim De Gieter expounds upon this point: “This is a band that doesn’t make music using a style figure or a mold to

make batches of songs so that they’re easy to digest. The emotion, the lyrics, the sensation when playing dictate the layout and sonics of the songs. It’s something primal, raw, honest, real. To me, that’s what people look for in Amenra and what drives me when playing—using your instruments as a tool to connect with yourself and others.” In 2021, Amenra seek to challenge themselves and those inside their musical sphere with yet another grand declaration, the Relapse-backed De Doorn, which translates from Flemish as “The Thorn.” De Doorn is simultaneously another turn ’round their self-plumbing spiral and something of a conceptual departure from the DECIBEL :

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pretty much trying to make our lives here mean something. There was a positive angle to our frustrated teenage delusion.” All of that adolescent energy manifested in Van Eeckhout’s own band—alongside guitarist Mathieu Vandekerckhove and bassist Kristof J. Mondy—called Spineless, who made a couple records before realizing that their perspective was shifting while some of their peers stagnated. “Most bands at that time were focused on hatred,” says Vandekerckhove of the musical environment that these young men were straining against. “We went looking for ways to translate what was deeper inside of us and turn the pain and fragile vulnerability into music; how to handle and embrace that feeling. For me, D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : 5 1

A M ENR A

the album Worn Path from Lash Out meant a lot. That’s where I discovered music could have a deeper meaning.” Like so many of us in our 20s, these members of Spineless were allowing new artistic domains to crack open their own worldviews, and they struggled to process it all into a whole that made profound personal sense. In this pursuit—as in many that would come later—they leaned on each other. “Our bass player started studying free graphics, etching, screen-printing, etc., at the arts academy in Ghent,” says Van Eeckhout, “and we felt like we had to step up our game. Music and its creation might be one of the most complete arts out there—mixing sound, poetry, performing arts and all the visual arts. We wanted to create the perfect artwork, a ‘gesamtkunstwerk,’ German for ‘total work of art.’ We wanted to align everything we did. Contentwise, I felt like I needed to pull it closer to my own skin, make it as personal as I possibly could, so I would come as close as possible to the truth, to what really mattered to me. I stopped following the scene’s unwritten laws.” “Colin and KJM [Mondy] always shared their discoveries with me,” Vandekerckhove recalls. “For some reason, they felt I was also in search of that. I remember that we were sitting in someone’s car in the parking lot of our rehearsal space and KJM was letting us hear all the new music he found. Back then, it wasn’t so obvious to find new

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bands or music. There was no internet, so it was a lot harder to find whatever you were looking for. It was the zines and tape trades that spread the music and ideas we learned to adore.” The three turned away from Spineless— though not ever entirely away from their DIY hardcore lifestyle—and Amenra was formed with the intent to write and perform more melodic and impactful music in the vein of their new discoveries. Tool, Neurosis, Crowbar, Acme, Breach, Isis, Coalesce, Botch and Converge all became fulcrum points on which this new band hoped to balance their burgeoning ideas. Alongside their new musical loves, they were breathing in the confrontational artwork of painter and materials expert Anselm Kiefer, ritualistic performance artist Hermann Nitsch, experimental tableau photographer Joel-Peter Witkin and outré fashion designer Alexander McQueen. These external forces hammered at Amenra’s sensibilities and provided frameworks for exploring their own creative impulses, but the sound that would evolve needed to come from a much more personal place.

DEATH, IN BLOOM “My father’s death in my late teens made me become a more spiritual being,” Van Eeckhout reveals. “I sought something to hold on to, strength to keep my feet. I found that strength in Amenra, in its brotherhood, its power in volume, its solace in vulnerability. Songs

became prayers directed to those we lost. I had already lost a big part of my family back then. Live shows became our masses, moments of self-reflection, to look for reason within doubt, answers to questions that may never come. It became my own soundtrack to a lifelong quest. We did not only build our own scene; we built a fortress from friendship.” Thus, Amenra became a vessel for loss, but also a bastion of love and a source of meaningful relationships. Through their use of religious language and imagery, Amenra also became an instrument of reclamation, a means by which its members could fill spiritual voids and rejuvenate the symbols that had been exhausted by centuries of religious orthodoxy. “I was raised an atheist or agnostic,” says Van Eeckhout. “There was no mention of anything religious or spiritual at all in my family. My grandmother had her crosses on the wall, statuettes with candles and the like, but my parents did not baptize me or anything. There was the occasional funeral I attended at church and that was that. At school, when others had their religion classes, we had something like an ethics and morals class. We were baptized as free-thinking people. The absence of force-fed religion probably kept my interest or curiosity alive. Catholicism was by far the most present religion in our region. The graveyards, the multiple churches in our villages—every couple of meters, there was a small chapel to

A M ENR A

I sought something to hold on to, strength to keep my feet.

I FOUND THAT STRENGTH IN AMENRA,

in its brotherhood, its power in volume, its solace in vulnerability. COLIN VAN EECKHOUT worship. Our calendar was based around saints and religious holidays. It was a part of the history of our native soil. It was omnipresent. Its iconography was imprinted in our DNA. It was ours whether we welcomed it or not. “Yet, all of this organized religion lost its original intent of being a moral guide. In essence, all religions were a means to not make humans eat one another. Little did they know, for some it meant just the opposite. Writing everything down in words and rules made it too vast, too narrow. It imploded and lost its power, its true strength. I wanted to reclaim the symbols of our ancestors, make them mean something again and mold them into ours.” Vandekerckhove began life from a different position, but grew to think much more like Van Eeckhout. “I was raised Catholic, but I knew soon enough that was not going to be my path to follow. Their ideology was not how I saw the world.” Van Eeckhout delves deeper into his appreciation for ceremony, as long as it could remain woven together with a vibrant personal meaning. “I also believe that my father’s membership to the Freemasons lodge in Kortrijk, and my adoption by that lodge, made a very strong impression on me. The beauty and necessity of ritual in a human life became apparent to me. I remember I arrived first at rehearsal someday—[in our rehearsal space] above my father’s workspace [at] an old electronics warehouse in

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Gullegem—and wandered around the attic. I stumbled upon a dead dove and took it with me. I ended up nailing it to a wooden cross I had found somewhere on a garage sale. And I hung it above our rehearsal room door. ‘De Duvve,’ we called it; it became our first symbol.” In a former cattle stable at an old farm in Aalbeke, Amenra recorded the six demos that their friends at the Anvil of Fury record label would release as Mass I. The songs were fashioned as prayers and were Amenra’s attempts to formulate farewells to people in their lives who death seemed to be collecting all too greedily. Well, all but one. “The only song that somewhat stands out in its content,” Van Eeckhout laments, “is ‘Ode to a Broken Doll.’ This is where I tried to convey my resentment towards the rapist of my then girlfriend, my fury toward everyone and everything that gets [in the way of] me or my loved ones.”

EMBRACING YOUR FELLOW MEN This first mass is raw and destructive, not too

distant in its final form from the hardcore that still made so much sonic sense to the foursome. But they were hungry, and they clamored forth with another set of songs that became Mass II, and a short time later they conjured the even more deeply seated emotional excavations of Mass III. Concurrently, it was becoming apparent that Amenra would not subsist only on the aesthetic inclinations of just its few members.

Instead, the band thrived as part of a community of artists of every stripe, and Amenra could employ the contributions of the entire fellowship to better fulfill the needs of everyone involved. With the inclusion of Bjorn Lebon on drums, Lennart Bossu on guitar and Maarten Kinet on bass, the musical palette was expanding, but so was the band’s holistic vision for itself. “There was always a clear vision of what needed to happen, when and with whom,” Van Eeckhout explains. “To get there, we got help from friends and people who crossed our path, creators who were doing the same thing we did, yet were using a different art form. Bram Cluyse was the first person who grew closer to us and helped us out with graphic work, as well as Dwid Hellion [Integrity], who helped us out with our first visuals and videos. The ‘Strength and Vision’ idiom by Neurosis did mean a lot to us. We needed to become a strong entity instead of a gathering of individuals. We needed to focus on the collective, become a machine.” This collective needed a name, so Amenra expanded its influence into the so-called Church of Ra. “It was around 2003 that I saw the group of people around us growing in numbers,” Van Eeckhout continues. “We all worked for the greater whole; they helped us build our world to whatever capacity. I realized that solely talking about Amenra members as its creators would not do the others any honor. It would feel like stealing someone’s contribution to the whole.

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A M ENR A That is how the Church of Ra formed itself. Likeminded artists, side projects of Amenra members and the bands of friends that helped us out in any way became fellow travelers as we took them under our wing. Everyone who contributed with blood, sweat and tears was more than welcome, as long as they stayed kind at heart.” So, while Amenra’s lineup has changed steadily over time, the nature of the Church of Ra means that the band never really loses members; rather, they simply give their friends a place to create and contribute, then allow them time away from Amenra’s spiritual intensity to attend to their own lives when necessary. Shunning the hiring-firing business model adopted by so many bands, Amenra make a space for their collaborators when the opportunity arises, and they tighten the belt when the humans involved require it. This all became particularly important during the band’s work on Mass III. “KJM and our drummer, Bjorn, had just become fathers,” says Van Eeckhout. “We all feared that their newly acquired title would jeopardize their time with the band. It threw a different dynamic into the band. KJM made the tough decision to take a step back, as he claimed that he would most likely only hold us back. Bjorn hesitated and promised himself he would give it his best. This all brought me off balance. The fact that my friends were no longer only sons, but now fathers also made me go even deeper into my thoughts about what the relationship between a father and a son really is. In between the Mass III songs, you can hear the heartbeats of KJM’s and Bjorn’s unborn sons, sampled from the ultrasounds. We felt our new blood needed to be a part of what we were creating at that time.” But the bonds formed by the Church of Ra meant that, when Mondy left behind his bass duties, he remained an integral part of the project’s visual ethos. He is the originator of the band’s Tripod, a cyclic sigil formed from three crows’ claws. The Tripod has become one of Amenra’s most potent symbols, even as it is joined by the many other sculptures, tableaus, paintings and film montages that establish the band’s iconographic bent. And after Mass IIII took shape, released by Hypertension Records in 2008, Amenra’s performances really went into overdrive, taking advantage of all the multimedia concepts they had amassed up to that point.

FLASHES OF GLORY AND PAIN “It was around 2009 that we first came close to

our original intent for the band,” Van Eeckout says. “We played the Royal Theatre in our city, Kortrijk. The show is now known as the 23.10 show, and it got released on DVD. Mathieu, our guitar player, had put hard work into our live visuals, together with his then-girlfriend Tine Guns. Lennart’s girlfriend did the lights, and an assembly of befriended dancers and performance artists joined us onstage to tell our story as we

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intended it. The show ended with what then felt like the most sincere sacrifice I could make—my crucifix suspension. There’s more about that show in the documentary.” Cochran’s documentary records a fantastic array of symbolic performances, encapsulated in modern dance, various props and costuming choices, as well as Van Eeckhout’s aforementioned bodily disfigurement for the purposes of ritualizing pain. One image shows a series of hooks—which have been weighted with fistsized stones dangling off the ends—being thrust through the skin of the upper torso, then left to drag on the bearer’s flesh. Another image shows similar hooks at intervals through Van Eeckhout’s back and arms, by which he was hoisted into the air in a cruciform pose. Both “sacrifices” are meant to represent human perseverance through pain, proving to the victim and his audience alike that pain can be endured and overcome, and nothing less than physical torture can measure up to the sheer power of the human spirit. It had become clear that while music was Amenra’s portal through which they could touch the world and process its grasp on them, the writing and recording of new music was only the smallest pinprick compared to what they could accomplish in person with a crowd thirsty for catharsis. “There is a physical aspect to the songs,” De Gieter insists, “which is an essential part of how Amenra connects with its audience. From the heavy parts moving tons of air in a room to the quiet parts where you can almost hear the people at a show breathing, it brings a certain sense of tangibility. You just can’t recreate this by blasting the albums in your car or at home. It’s almost like [how] a picture can show you what a certain place looks like, or even invoke a feeling, but without you being there actively experiencing it with all your senses, it remains nothing but a picture. In this sense, the records are more of a way to document and archive the songs rather than a display of what experiencing Amenra really is like.” “Whereas in its original intent, it has only been created to mean something for ourselves,” Van Eeckhout points out, “songs become vehicles to other people. Writing became a coping mechanism at times; it’s where we got the therapy we then needed, through screaming, or vast volume whatever. Shared grief. Finding and taking power over your life, when all odds are against you. I’ve hated the writing process, I’ve hated recording and I don’t actually like playing live either, but I love it when I see all the pieces come together. It does give a sense of accomplishment that is unmatched. A collective artistic endeavor might be one of the hardest journeys to embark upon, but in all honesty, I believe it’s one of the most beautiful and rewarding ones possible.” It’s Amenra’s prowess as a live force that prompted Neurosis to bring the Belgians out on tour so that more people could connect to what the Bay Area stormwielders had experienced

during their time in Europe. “Americans need to know about Amenra,” says Von Till. “We wanted to bring them over so that people would be able to feel that power. That was the best promotional move we could offer them here. Something they’ve obsessed on is making sure that the presentation is right. Live, they crush. Everybody in the audience’s head is going to be moving to that rhythm that they lock into, the hypnotic strobes and the projection. Obviously, I’m a fan of such things. I love it when they go way out there on a conceptual idea and do whatever it takes to make it happen. I love how inspired they are, and how they’ve got a whole group of people around them to join in when they need the extra hands to bring those multifaceted, multimedia performance art things to fruition. It’s not a small task to pull it off and have it not seem pretentious or overcooked.” Having grown as artists and as musicians on the global stage by 2010, Amenra positioned themselves to be in more control than ever over their expansive and massively cathartic brand of heaviness, which by now also included significant stretches of quiet and acoustic passages. The band’s range and confidence had leapt forward, and stasis—which had never really been a problem they had grappled with—had become simply impossible. They signed with Neurot Recordings and pushed themselves to achieve even greater heights. “We were honored to have received recognition by people who unknowingly lead us [on our] way,” says Van Eeckhout. “That also implied there were higher expectations than ever. We had always been hard on ourselves, but this time around it reached new levels. I remember us not being sure of anything anymore.” The sessions for what became Mass V groaned under the weight of that uncertainty; producer Billy Anderson was not nearly as exacting as the Belgians were of themselves, and that fact—alongside Amenra’s members splitting time between the studio and their young families—caused occasional tensions during the process. Add in one race to a hospital to treat some terrifying burns sustained by photographer Stefaan Temmerman in a gasoline fire, and much of the experience surrounding Mass V appears to have been fraught. Vandekerckhove had written much of the band’s music during the band’s first 15 years, and after five albums, his energy to create new arcs for the band to follow was beginning to flag. By the release of Mass V, though, Amenra had brought on Levy Seynaeve to play bass, and he proved to be “the breath of fresh air we all needed,” as Van Eeckhout puts it. “Levy was a fan of the band for years before he joined us, and he was able to absorb the music from a whole other angle than we did. He had an outsider’s point of view, and that was very interesting to explore. He took the most part of [writing] Mass VI, which was the toughest nut we ever had to crack. Five studio albums, two live albums and an acoustic EP in,

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A M ENR A From the heavy parts moving tons of air in a room to the quiet parts where you can almost hear the people at a show breathing, it brings a certain sense of tangibility.

YOU JUST CAN’T RECREATE THIS BY BLASTING THE ALBUMS IN YOUR CAR OR AT HOME. TIM DE GIETER we had a hard time reinventing ourselves without losing ourselves. Some of us had a writer’s block, others felt uncertain or lost. It had become easier to start a new band on the side than to write a follow-up album for Amenra. We tried, but nothing was ever good enough.” Seynaeve wrote most of the new mass’s music at night, but he also mostly locked himself away from contact with the rest of the band for long periods of time. Van Eeckhout found himself navigating a medical horror, finding out that one of his sons had a tumor that would require surgical removal. Lebon’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and died not long afterwards. A new mass was truly required, which Amenra released in the fall of 2017. Tragedy continued to close around the band, and in the process, gave them further reason to reach deeper and offer the world even more towering monuments to grief and vulnerability.

AMENRA FOREVER For the first time in 20 years, Amenra are releasing a record that is not a mass. “The masses came to life following an accumulation of turmoil in our personal lives,” Van Eeckhout reminds us, “and here it was not necessarily the case. We were asked to play a big national event here in Belgium that commemorated the ending for the first World War. We worked on the project with butoh dancer Imre Thormann and video artist Tine Guns. And then in our 20th anniversary

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year, 2019, we held several fire rites throughout our country, which we also continued to write for. One was a ritual for the inhabitants of the city of Ghent in Belgium, where they could burn their unacknowledged losses, putting their notes in a wooden statue by artist Toni Kanwa Adikusumah. A similar night was held later in the year in Menen, where the city honored us with a six-meter-high bronze Amenra statue by sculptor Johan Tahon, which also got revealed by way of fire and flame. We built a big wooden structure around the statue, covering it, and we set the structure alight so the statue would arise from the flames. During the event it was so hot in the center of the fire that it made the statue glow red. It was a very intense moment.” Beyond the unprecedented writing conditions for the new record, there were further interruptions to Amenra’s process that stimulated growth and improvement in preparation for recording this album. De Doorn is just as crushing and crystalline as anything the band has achieved before, and it shows a deftness of ebb and flow between tension and release and plaintive invocation that proves Amenra are closer to their core nature than could have been captured on their previous records. Seynaeve has faded back into the greater Church, giving up his full-time position to De Gieter. The baton of primary songwriter has again changed hands, this time falling to guitarist Bossu. De Doorn is a special entry in Amenra’s catalog, for various reasons.

“Albums will always be reflections of our personal experiences throughout a period in time,” says Van Eeckhout, almost as a truism. “I definitely see [these songs] as related movements, more than any album we have ever written. It is a listening journey, especially for Flemish- or Dutch-speaking people. The storylines fold into one another. As Lennart was the main writer of the album, there is one heartbeat throughout the songs. It is the album that needed to be written.” “It was interesting writing these pieces of music with the [fire] rituals in mind,” says Bossu, “because you have to take into account certain key moments in the rituals and make those coincide with silent parts or outbursts in the songs. I had expected that when we would translate this into recorded songs, a lot of adaptation would be necessary, but the truth is that we’ve hardly had to change anything, because these songs sounded best in their original state. “De Doorn was assembled out of a mix of existing and new ideas,” Bossu continues. “We had, for instance, already recorded an embryonic version of the first track, ‘Ogentroost,’ with Billy Anderson during the Mass VI sessions, and I also had the riffs for ‘Voor Immer’ in mind for a while, but the occasion to actually play them with the band never felt as right as [it does] now. The other tracks were new creations. To me it has been especially rewarding to have Caro Tanghe from my other band, Oathbreaker,

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A M ENR A contribute her vocals and see these two separate entities perfectly come together on this album.” Oathbreaker are another stunning entity to take part in the Church of Ra collective, and if you somehow missed their 2016 album Rheia, tunnel out from under that rock, go check it out and prepare to be steamrolled. Tanghe’s elastic vocals against the concussive instrumental performances feel like a sped-up and even more cohesive version of Cult of Luna’s Mariner collaboration with Julie Christmas. Her airy offerings on De Doorn never quite take center stage (at least, on this version of these songs), but their persistence across the record add a consistently bright dimensionality to the music that plays beautifully off of Amenra’s downcast fervor. De Doorn also marks the band’s full embrace of their native tongue, which tugs the sound of the record in all new directions. “I had started to write in Dutch/Flemish,” Van Eeckhout explains, “because the [fire rites] were set to take place in Belgium and the witnesses would be mainly Flemish-speaking. We’ve also had some Flemish covers on the acoustic shows in the last few years, and I think all of this helped me to develop a certain affinity for my own language. I know English is the most accepted language in music—when you’re younger, everything that’s not English sounds ridiculous to you— but with age I started appreciating my mother language more. I can go much deeper, be much

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more poetic, have multiple meanings, layered messages. Belgium is a small country and we have three languages; I think that’s a part of our system. As I wrote, I started to realize that this is us. It cannot be more Amenra than singing in Flemish. It cannot be closer to us. It sets us apart from everyone else.” Rennie Jaffe, current label manager at Relapse Records, was ready to celebrate this new breakthrough with the band. “I’ve been a fan of Amenra for well over a decade,” he says. “I think the first record I bought was Mass III in 2008. As time went on, as so often happens in this world, our paths crossed more and more often. Colin and I started casually communicating a few years ago, and those casual conversations evolved into discussing what Amenra releasing records with Relapse might look like. There’s always been an intensity to Amenra’s music and artistic approach. It wasn’t really until we [at] Relapse had the opportunity to see the band a few times that we realized how special they were. The records were always excellent, but live they really channel an unparalleled energy. I think the new record is their best recorded expression yet of how incredible they are live. What sets them apart is that they take [their] influences and run them through very honest and personal musical filters. So, whereas a lot of bands are inhibited by their influences—they may not be able to step out of the shadow of the bands that informed them—Amenra take those corner-

stones and use them to build a true expression that is as intense and original as any other band making heavy music today.” Bossu says that “when listening to Amenra, you need to be prepared to let go of the conventional vision of what a song is or should be, and just let yourself be taken along for the ride. I am probably stating the obvious, but [when] listening to music in general, there is a lot of value to be gained if you stop expecting to be ‘entertained’ by every second of it. If you accept that not every moment has to be super heavy or pretty or exciting, and let yourself be challenged by, for instance, a super monotonous, drawn-out section of a song, the reward of listening can be all the greater.” In the Flood of Light documentary, Van Eeckhout characterizes the act of performing Amenra’s music as a brawl against an invisible foe, and he suggests that when everything flows in the right direction, winning that fight can feel like singlehandedly righting the world’s wrongs. That feeling is bolstered by the overwhelming support he gets from the rest of the group. When asked about his growing comfort with using his clean tenor voice, he calls them out explicitly: “Band members push me by strengthening my confidence. Or they allow me to try new things and grow in them. The level of trust within the band is unmatched.” As Vandekerckhove so succinctly puts it, “Friendship is the main pillar in Amenra.”

PERTURBATOR LUSTFUL SACRAMENTS

“Lustful Sacraments“ – the long-awaited fifth album by Perturbator. The reigning master of cyberpunk guides us on a dystopian odyssey through the underbelly of hedonism, addiction and madness.

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INSIDE ≥

66 CIRITH UNGOL Somewhere between Ephel Duath and Gorgoroth

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

68 FEAR FACTORY Revive once again 68 GO AHEAD AND DIE Quality father/son time 72 INHUMAN CONDITION From beyond and back 76 PORTAL Got the time tick tick tickin' on my head

Funereal Fog

JULY

CEREBRAL ROT’s mist-covered Northwest metal

is a masterclass in shadowy death/doom decomposition

Band named after Massacre song

Band named after the Cure song

Band named after Iron Monkey song

Bands brave enough to name themsleves after Keygen Church LP

erebral rot’s debut album, Odious Descent Into Decay, landed at #31 on our Top 40 Albums of the Year list in 2019. Compared (by myself, actually) to “Symphonies of Sickness CEREBRAL stretched out on the rack by Hooded Menace,” Odious Descent first ROT proved its strength by way of an unexpectedly crushing live perExcretion of formance during Cerebral Rot’s 2019 tour with Fetid (with whom Mortality they share guitarist Clyle Lindstrom). Now, here we are two years 20 BUCK SPIN later, and the sophomore album from the Seattle-based goretet is getting the Mark Rudolph treatment. ¶ Some albums are objectively good, and this 48-minute cesspool steam bath + limb-rending beatdown is an instant classic, objectively speaking. Doing nothing more than simply improving since Odious Descent, guitarist/vocalist Ian Schwab and company have given radical new meaning to the term “sophomore slump” with this modern masterpiece of decomposition and vulgar art. Like its title suggests, Excretion of Mortality leaves its listeners slumped over, stupefied and drooling.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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On Excretion of Mortality, Cerebral Rot sound, more than ever, like a band from the past that has time-traveled to record in a modern studio— likely with Detto Vincent Detto behind the board once again. Not only are Cerebral Rot’s riffs like secreted artifacts from a bygone era, the mix on this album makes Odious Descent’s production sound like some tinny affair in which every instrument is isolated and unaware of one another. It’s not that bad, but Excretion of Mortality buries it with sickening haste. Dominating unquestionably from its very first moment, Excretion of Mortality’s eponymous opener starts like an alarm warning all within earshot that some real death metal is coming through. Monstrously heavy, twisted up by weird riffs and dense with emotionally detached doom, “Excretion of Mortality” sets the tone for the rest of the record. No bells or whistles; nothing resembling filler either. When was the last time you heard a 50-minute album that was straight riffs and thoroughly crushing? The closest thing to a reprieve comes at the end of brutalizer “Bowels of Decrepitude,” when the band simply lets a note ring out for about 10 seconds before “Drowned in Malodor” resumes the violent death/doom downpour. The 11-minute closer, “Crowning the Disgustulent (Breed of Repugnance),” begins with a nauseating, almostout-of-tune, undistorted guitar melody before hatching into a track so hype and headbang-commanding it’s hard not to wish this was a double album. Except it’s the perfect closer. After a six minutes of instrumental death metal excellence, Schwab’s gruesome howls come barreling up from the barrage, like some phantom lord stirred from its slumbering depths. Classic stuff all around. Cerebral Rot will make you feel like you’re hearing death metal again for the first time. —DUTCH PEARCE

THE ABSENCE

Coffinized M-THEORY

When flash meets bang

Given pop culture’s current tendency to equate quality with star power/bells and whistles, Tampa’s the Absence could be metal’s Kardashian-like superstars, were they to name-drop. Ex-members have ties to Havok, Nocturnal Rites, Meshuggah, Sanctuary and Arch Enemy, to name but a few. Present members have ties to Venom Inc., Soulfly, Cavalera Conspiracy, Hot Graves, Wombbath and Soilwork, to name but a few. Dudes keep busy and their names in lights, but more importantly Coffinized demonstrates that they’re as adept at writing excellent songs as networking. 6 4 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

Case in point: “Aperture Expands,” a to-thepoint, head-and-hip-shaker rooted in classy melodi-Swedeath, with loads of tasty ‘n’ technical melodies, stirring leads and basslines sounding like Alex Webster ODing on Prozac. That’s followed by “Faith in Uncreation,” which slingshots between early Arch Enemy on a staccato bender and mid-paced minor-key moroseness that washes the mood with an epic, dissonant triumph. What’s most notable is that these stellar moments are the album’s final two tracks. If anyone offering up more from a subgenre that cannibalized itself into boredom over a decade ago can maintain our interest for 40-plus minutes, something special is pumping the gears five albums in. You’ve probably heard the main riffs in “Future Terminal” and “Choirs of Sickness” hundreds of times, but the former’s chorus is the apex of anthemic, and the leads and bass work in both are simply sublime. Vocalist Jamie Stewart rules in the fields of enunciation and clarity (growling division), and the fancy string work combined with Jeramie Kling’s flashy fills on “Radiant Devastation” and “Discordia” altogether sees Coffinized, from start-to-finish, leaving the majority of melodic death metal’s recent history chewing dust. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

ADUANTEN

Sullen Cadence EIHWAZ

Arte Ventunesimo Secolo

This isn’t what you’d expect from key members of Panopticon, Obsequiae, Vex and Horrendous teaming up for a joint venture. This is especially true when they name-drop bands like Novembre, Katatonia, Joy Division and the Chameleons in a single sentence. Indeed, we’re not talking recent either, ’cause the four songs on Sullen Cadence feel particularly early-to-mid-’90s, when Novembre and Katatonia were advancing similar formulas on Wish I Could Dream It Again... and For Funerals to Come..., respectively (though it’s probably fair to say Aduanten have a slightly more aggro lean). Vocally, the inspiration definitely falls between vintage Tompa Lindberg and Micke Broberg. Dual vocalists Tanner Anderson (Obsequaie) and Damian Herring (Horrendous) continually and expertly menace the stately atmospheres of Vex guitarists Ciaran McCloskey and Michael Day. Songs like “The Drowning Tide” and “Palace of Ruin” have a distinctive European flair, especially melodically. The groove/ lick between 1:20-1:40 in “The Drowning Tide” and the melancholia between 3:49-4:28 are wellworn in their nostalgia, but are nonetheless an absolute delight to experience.

The title track is more experimental. Keyboard-driven electronics and mantilla-ed whispers add mystery before Aduanten sharpen the knife at 3:35 with burst-beats and fast-trem riffs. “The Corpses of Summer” pivots on a similar axis, but moves in at a different angle at 1:38. There’s a little nod to Icon-era Paradise Lost in the riff plateau, which quickly succumbs to a middle-gait motif that flies into brief introspection in its coda. Indeed, Aduanten are the surprise of 2021. Sullen Cadence is a crossroads to everything that mattered between 1993-1995 thrust cleverly into the morass of today. —CHRIS DICK

BOSS KELOID

Family the Smiling Thrush RIPPLE MUSIC

Boss, baby, you’ve come a long-ass way in a decade

Rush took nearly 40 years to evolve the Cream-y derivative of their debut into the free-thinking art rock of Clockwork Angels. British quartet Boss Keloid bridge the same musical expanse in one-quarter of said stretch, trudging from the American West Coast sludge ‘n’ slam of first two LPs Angular Beef Lesson and The Calming Influence of Teeth to the sustained liftoff of arch English prog on Family the Smiling Thrush. Predecessor Melted on the Inch soundtracks a band saying Yes, but their fifth full-length documents the transcendence of enlightenment in one liquid gush. Nine-minute opener “Orang of Noyn” begins East of Kashmir in cataloging man’s hubris on Earth behind the cochlea ownership of guitarist Paul Swarbrick and his Thayilian power chords (“No knowledge is power / if the power’s polluting your brain”). Follow-up “Gentle Clovis” cranks to 11 on the dial, but when the dropout occurs in that oh-so-crisp U.K. manner, Marillion giggle somewhere in the mix. Alex Hurst delivers clean gut intonations and a yeoman’s bellow as Ste Arands and Liam PendleburyGreen bash and thumb respectively through an ever-wondrous maze of stately shred. “Hats the Mandrill” begins fusing the album into the epic beginning at Swarbrick’s pickguard. A quasi-industrial sheen via his spidery drillwork modernizes Boss Keloid’s timbre for the digital age. “Smiling Thrush” high-steps anthemically as the band bears down in gleeful pre-millennial Ozzfest neck-wrenching, a simulated organ broil ferrying the titular bird between worlds. By the back nine, you’ve regressed to searching for Singles on Netflix. That’s Family the Smiling Thrush—a reptilian tail-whip of harmony, symmetry and total selfalignment. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

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CIRITH UNGOL

Half Past Human M E TA L B L A D E

Better than Half Past Dead

If there’s anything that notoriously divided metalheads can agree on, it’s that Cirith Ungol objectively kick ass. Nobody has ever successfully copied these old-schoolers’ pulpy mutant metal, so it’s always good to have more of it! Thankfully, they’ve used the pandemic to give us just that. The Half Past Human EP brings four obscurities from their early days roaring to glorious life. While there’s technically nothing new here, the current lineup (and modern technology) makes these freshly recorded versions sound better than any previous incarnations. “Route 666” originated on the 1978 Orange Album demo, but that was before Tim Baker added his inimitable pipes to the group. His feral screech elevates it above its bastardized boogie rock roots here. “Shelob’s Lair” spins its web in the more progressive doom style the band adopted on 1984’s King of the Dead. If you possess a deluxe subscription to this very magazine, you’ve heard Decibel Flexi single “Brutish Manchild” and its atavistic beatdown, but that doesn’t make its stop-start structure any less unpredictable. The title epic feels the most standard of anything here—while a fine song, its straightforward approach doesn’t seem as uniquely Cirith Ungol. There’s a reason these songs never made it onto any of their proper full-lengths, but even Cirith Ungol’s cast-offs thrill in unexpected ways. Half Past Human makes a good companion to both last year’s Forever Black and the essential B-sides compilation Servants of Chaos. A minor addition to the Legion, but a worthwhile one, nonetheless. —JEFF TREPPEL

EMPTY THRONE

Glossolalia W I S E B LO O D

DRUM MACHINES HAVE NO SOUL; THAT’S WHY THEY NEED TO STEAL YOURS.

longer content to revel in the neon-soaked glow of Night City, PERTURBATOR joins the black celebration to perform his heretical Lustful Sacraments [ B LO O D MUSIC ] . Still recognizable as the work of the maestro behind stone-cold classics Dangerous Days and Uncanny Valley, the ever-popular post-punk influence seeps into his synthetic soundscapes like a dark specter, stripping away the formerly intricate exoskeleton. While the album isn’t as immediately immersive as its predecessors, James Kent’s strength still lies in his intuitive ability to zoom in and out of the narrative to paint a fuller picture of his characters and environs. These shadows on the cave wall may be more elusive, but no less gripping once their claws close around your heart. The mastermind behind the achromatic Master Boot Record has added red to his digital palette. The result? KEYGEN CHURCH ’s baroque symphonies of the night on ░█░█░░█░█░█░ [ SEL F- R EL EA SED] . As you can probably tell from that literally unpronounceable title, his fascination with digital artifacts and coding cryptography remains. If you aren’t interested in that stuff, that’s okay—the spooky organ-andguitar-preset bombast makes for a delightful repast for those who prefer their metal by candelabra light. Or those who just really like the Castlevania series from Alucard’s nocturne in the moonlight onward. The disturbing digital collage adorning the cover of GLOOM INFLUX’s Twilight [ SELF REL EAS ED] appears pieced together from clip art, video game backgrounds and landscape photographs. Similarly, Luc Leclerc’s music combines chiptunes, shred guitar and slamming darksynth production into a supremely satisfying journey through the most fucked-up Mega Man game never made—Evisceration Man got left on the cutting room floor of the NES titles for some reason. The cover of Men Without Hats’ “Antarctica” makes total sense as synth metal. HIDE don’t exactly obscure the purpose of Interior Terror [ DA IS] —it’s right there in the title. It’s basically the audio equivalent of getting chained to a pipe in a filthy basement by a dominatrix who has a LOT on her mind, and also a wrench. Synth stabs and broken-down field recordings provide little respite.

In thy dreams

Pedigree can be a doubleedged sword. Case in point: black metal-infused death metallers Empty Throne. With members hailing from bright-stars like Possessed, Abbath, Decrepit Birth, the Kennedy Veil and Angerot, the cognoscenti’s expectations are naturally high. Not that Empty Throne are dilettantes on their Wise Blood Records debut. Far from it, actually. Debut EP, Glossolalia, is class (in parts). The three songs on offer expertly bludgeon the tenets of Christianity with invincible force and unstoppable impunity—the stuff Glen Benton perfected in 1990. Though the short 6 6 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

bio mentions At the Gates, God Dethroned and Dark Tranquillity, those influences are fairly subdued. Rather, Empty Throne are closer to Poland’s Lost Soul, Sweden’s Aeon or France’s Benighted. Sure, there’s melody here and there, but it’s treated as an accent, not a primary driver. Take the ending of “That Day Has Come” and the middle of “My Flesh the Temptation” as examples. For their respective better parts, Empty Throne batter, beat and bruise death metal’s rulebook. Then, Mike Pardi (guitars) transitions stately, if forlornly menacing melodies like he’s one of the Törnkvist brothers.

But that’s kind of it. Glossolalia is, for the most part, competently played and executed death metal, but it’s hardly memorable. Things just kind of blow by, a smorgasbord of extremity wildly aching for refinement (or the opposite) and variation. This is also true of C.R. Petit’s vocal delivery: heavy and brutal, yet devoid of feeling—the overlapping effect that is spilled all over Glossolalia plays itself out within minutes. Empty Throne don’t have far to go to challenge the status quo. Whether they choose to do that after this is another matter entirely. —CHRIS DICK

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GHASTLY

Mercurial Passages 20 BUCK SPIN

Tampere death trip

Ghastly are the kind of band that gets reviewers bending themselves into knots, concocting clever metaphors to describe their psychedelia-tinged doom-sludge. The promo for the Finnish death metal outfit’s latest release, Mercurial Passages, might sum it up most succinctly, dubbing Ghastly “death metal for altered states of consciousness.” In 2018, Ghastly’s sophomore album Death Velour won the band a fan base with a sound that argues, actually, a trip to hell on ’shrooms could be fun. Now, also released on 20 Buck Spin, Mercurial Passages more fully exhibits a mastery of essential death metal, all the while twisting that into a kaleidoscope of spiraling, hypnotizing melodies that make listeners dizzy—and they like it. Vocalists Gassy Sam and Johnny Urnripper (with Ian J. D’Waters handling most everything else) seem to have

hallucinated some hidden realm of the underworld that they unveil through this record’s seven tracks. Mercurial Passages comes in fast with opener “Ouroborus,” which you can almost visualize as a brutal stampede of traditional death metal being twisted into infinitely repeating patterns. It marches almost defiantly a beat behind where a more straightforward band would pace it, keeping you locked in until the next thrilling tempo change. Indeed, tracks like “Out of the Psychic Blue” (raving from manic to anthemic) and “Parasites” (pummeling staccato punk-meets-black metal, right into snake-charmer-esque riffs) use tempo changes as a storytelling device, akin to Dismember’s Like an Ever Flowing Stream or Autopsy’s Severed Survival. “Sea of Light” doesn’t quite nail that satisfying contrast of melody and rage, but it may be the album’s only weak spot. Ghastly finish strong with the nightmarish “Dawnless Dreams” and “Mirror Horizon,” an apocalyptic

FEAR FACTORY, Aggression Continuum 8 Selling the drama | N U C L E A R B L A S T

It may be too late to not look back in anger for Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell, whose re-severed alliance last year once again turned metal blogs into a cross between TMZ and Tiger Beat, but fucking hell if the partnership didn’t squeeze out one last killer fruit. Aggression Continuum is easily the band’s best offering since Mechanize dropped over a decade ago, and is a similar mix of fast industrial riffage, pitch-perfect choruses and smartly interwoven keyboard

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flourishes. If Bell and Cazares broke over creative differences, it sure isn’t apparent anywhere on these 10 perfectly wrought, diverse-within-thewheelhouse tracks. Yet, while it’s a great thing that this record will receive the wide release it justly deserves, it also weirdly makes the case that Aggression Continuum should be a swansong and not a transition to a new lineup. Yes, Cazares’ playing and compositional approach is singular and instantly recognizable. The iconic nature of Bell’s bad cop/

opera that ties all the death, doom, sludge, hardcore and psychedelia together in one terrifying package. —COURTNEY ISEMAN

GO AHEAD AND DIE 7 Go Ahead and Die NUCLEAR BLAST

Father of the year, in both 2021 and 1986

Let’s compare two different family dynamics. Case #1: Offspring spends inordinate amounts of time cranking/playing along to Discharge, Hellhammer, Possessed, Broken Bones, Napalm Death and GISM. Family patriarch hears this and says, “Damn, let’s form a band, write and record an album, and have our ultimate father-son project propped up by your mom brokering us a deal with Nuclear Blast!” Case #2: Offspring does the same. Family patriarch hears this and, after/during necking a bottle of Johnnie Walker, screams, “Turn that shit off, you uncool faggot” (a direct quote, by

good cop vocals is crystal clear here as well, however. Maybe live it’s a different story, as Cazares has somewhat cattily suggested, but the studio work is on point, period. If Fear Factory are going to end or go into hibernation until Bell and Cazares can patch things up for a 30th anniversary Demanufacture tour, why not end on an album that burnishes the band’s legacy? Obviously, the pair doesn’t want to stay together for the good of the kids, but it’s hard to imagine any rebound vocalist heading up this household. Though they may butt heads, you cannot deny—or replicate—the magic they make together. —SHAWN MACOMBER

the way!) before administering a beating with a reinforced leather strap as mom blathers on in the background about her Satanic sprog. I’ll let you decide which came from the household led by Max Cavalera and which was a snapshot from my youth, though it’s not hard to figure out seeing as I haven’t just released my debut album under the Go Ahead and Die banner. Igor Cavalera (Max’s youngest son) has, however, leading his pops and Khemmis/Black Curse drummer Zach Coleman through a morass of power chords buzzing like obese bumblebees, a drum sound that’s hopefully tagged as “Bruce Day” on the sound grid and a sensibility acknowledging that we really should be worrying about inhaling slag runoff, volcanic dust, musty humidity and practice space black mold, not COVID. No vaccines necessary; just the willingness to surrender to the filthy tritone warble of “Toxic Freedom,” skirt along the edge of punk madness with “I.C.E. Cage” and accept that decrying societal ills while running Schizophrenia and Morbid Tales through a dirt bath on “Punisher” is a good thing. Old-school heads may encounter bits of tedium rooted in familiarity during the album’s second half, but any negativity that Go Ahead and Die generates should be mitigated by the thought of thrusting this actual profamilial, anti-injustice project before moralistic Focus on the Family asshats and watching their conservative rationalizations crumble. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

HANGING GARDEN

Skeleton Lake LIFEFORCE

Fall, fall, fall, fall

Metal’s history is littered with acts like Finland’s Hanging Garden. Bands with ample songwriting talent, the ability to craft enveloping atmospherics and convey a wealth of emotion—and yet, they never ascend to the same regarded status as other artists who have similar skill sets. Timing, perception, push—three added requirements outside of competent musicianship when it comes to gaining greater exposure. It’s unclear, therefore, whether the seventh LP from Hanging Garden will do anything more to raise this melodic doom (sometimes death) metal band’s standing, which is unfortunate. But anyone familiar with their Finnish take on the gloom at the core of Katatonia or mid-period Anathema will no doubt find plenty to enjoy on the immersive Skeleton Lake. At their heaviest, Hanging Garden are on par with their fellow countrymen in Amorphis or Insomnium—they can write riffs that are 7 0 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

POWER LOAD LIVES! The last time Power Load, uh, loaded up on the best of the worst (and some of the best), the world and Decibel were vastly different things. Well, frilly hordes of arpeggiation, cosplay interludes and guitar-keyboard LARP battles, the world of power metal is still as vibrant (maybe more so) as ever. True, there’s TikTok, but I think the denizens of Meatloafland have yet to discover (and then employ) the technological idiocy that is the unholy matrimony of Vine and Myspace. Foam swords aloft, my bewinged constituents! Time to hit the turbo button! —CHRIS DICK Vexillum

Evil

SCARLET

MIGHTY MUSIC

When Good Men Go to War Thank Momus Italian that power metallers Vexillum aren’t trying to be the next Sabaton. Oh, wait, they are! By way of Helloween, Running Wild and Skyclad, the Tuscans vie for the ludicrous throne currently occupied by countrymen Elvenking. By no means is When Good Men Go to War an amateur treatise on “drinking songs”-style power metal, but it is an exposé on music that’s not meant to be heard (or enjoyed) outside of EU festival grounds, sober or moderately inebriated.

Frozen Crown Winterbane SCARLET

OK, Italians Frozen Crown have all the talent in the world— think Herman Li and Sam Totman-crazed stuff—but are utterly unimaginative when it comes to setting themselves from the glut. Vocalist Giada “Jade” Etro sings her fucking heart out on tracks like “Far Beyond,” “Embrace the Night” and “Night Crawler.” The problem isn’t Etro, but the music behind her. At one moment, it’s DragonForce or Judas Priest. At another, in the same song, Frozen Crown have disingenuous death metal flare-ups. Winterbane is the Milanese outfit’s third album, so there’s little hope that the compositional schizophrenia and subsequent mediocrity will self-treat into something notable.

Evil’s Message Ride to Hell Mighty Music have unearthed Danish heavy metallers Evil’s 1984 EP Evil’s Message, as well as the group’s ’83 Demo and Live on Stage (collected here as Ride to Hell) for a trip back to Nordic denim, spikes and leather. While the newjack crowd has the sound on lock, there’s nothing like an original, lost to time, buried by decades of dust. Fans of Kill ’Em All-era Metallica, the ’84 Sortilège twofer and Omen’s Battle Cry will rejoice in cheap beer and stale chips with these remastered (by Tue Madsen) recordings. Evil had a name for themselves in Denmark (and surrounding countries), as they fought death’s design in the mid-’80s, but were largely unknown to the metal world at large. Mighty changes that now and forever!

Heart Healer

The Metal Opera by Magnus Karlsson FRONTIERS

Magnus Karlsson is in 10,000 bands. Some of them you’ve heard of (Primal Fear). Some of them you haven’t (Heart Healer). The latter’s debut album is well-crafted and adorned in talent, but is so overwrought with cliché it hurts where it counts. Karlsson’s no stranger to sentiment and Baroque-infused intricacy, though. He lives for this stuff. In fact, if there’s a follow-up soundtrack to The NeverEnding Story III: Escape From Fantasia, director Peter MacDonald needs to have Karlsson on fast-dial. I mean, between big string arrangements, a bevy of vocal talent (Anette Olzon, Noora Louhimo and Ailyn Giménez, to mention a few), teary-eyed musical victories and telltale coming-of-age-isms, why wouldn’t he?

"Should not be missing in any death metal collection!" -Deaf Forever

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equal parts soaring and heavy. And yet, their real strength lies in melody and how their use of melody imparts a profound depth of feeling, whether it be through mournful and often spectral keyboards, tasteful lyricism, slow-unfurling lead-lines or, most effectively, the trade-off of harsh and soft vocals between Jussi Hämäläinen (guitars), Toni Hatakka and Riikka Hatakka. The latter joined the band in 2019, and her contributions are a high point of this record— she adds Jonas Renkse-style melody and longing while also matching Anneke van Giersbergen’s range. Notably, there are also washes of bombast to Hanging Garden’s music similar to Nightwish, more evident now in the juxtaposition between male death growls and the salve of feminine cleans, but don’t let that turn you off. —DEAN BROWN

HILDR VALKYRIE

Revealing the Heathen Sun MORIBUND

Nearly rune-d by riffs

The second album from onewoman folk metal act Hildr Valkyrie, Revealing the Heathen Sun, was originally released in 2017 on an obscure Russian label, but has now been plucked from the depths by the kvlt tastemakers at Moribund Records. Multi-instrumentalist Valkyrie is Greek, and instead of drawing upon her own country’s vast mythology, she worships Norse legends—heathenry long synonymous with heavy metal. Valkyrie’s vocal performance is the album’s main draw; she displays a staggering range that borders on operatic while remaining rooted in the soil, and her layered harmonies and melodic runs are expertly arranged, particularly on “An Ode to All Father Odhinn” and the spectral neofolk invocation “Bringer of Light, Bearer of Fire.” Given how impressive Valkyrie’s vocals truly are, comparisons to Myrkur, Darkher, Tarja Turunen and, hell, even Enya will abound, though the label does try to sway your attention towards more underground-acceptable folk metal influences such as Borknagar, Bathory or Summoning. And sure, there are instrumental passages that recall those bands, so please stop weeping into your spiked arm gauntlets, Moribund punters. However, the most effective passages on this release are the least metallic moments. That’s mainly because many of the riffs here are nondescript platforms for the vocals, keyboards or other folk-centric instrumental embellishments to ascend, plus the drums tend to plod rather than charge. Consequently, this diminishes the stature of “Over Lands, Mountains and Shade” and “Summoning the Heathen Fire”—two 7 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

HELLISH FORM, Remains

Still rounding into shape | T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

Jacob Lee (from Californian black sludge crew Keeper) and Willow Ryan (from Vermont sludge drone duo Body Void) put their heads together and came up with Hellish Form, because somehow their other bands weren’t providing enough of a conduit for their raw, heaving sludge-doom addictions. On Remains, Hellish Form take a little more from the gothic tradition than the urban alienation of last year’s MMXX debut, as is instantly evoked by the none-more-doom sleeve art depicting a ghostly figure in a graveyard flanked by dead trees and abbey ruins. This is Hellish Form’s second album (both were recorded in lockdown), and seldom has doom made more sense than in these blighted times. The sluggish introspection, anxiety, isolation, melancholic yearning, grinding authoritarian misery—somehow, at last, funeral sludge doom is nailing the zeitgeist. Even so, it is a relief to report that after the sinister, pounding frost-hammer of

songs that would totally rule if there was some fiery rhythmic flair to the guitars and percussion underpinning them. —DEAN BROWN

INHUMAN CONDITION

Rat God

BLACK SERPENT/ B LO O D B L A S T

If you liked Rick Rozz’s mustache then you’ll love...

“New to the scene!” heralds Inhuman Condition’s press release. This statement is both technically correct and utter horseshit. Why this band didn’t just roll with Massacre AD like any other self-respecting death metal stepchild, one can only guess (hint, hint: potential lawsuit). Regardless, from filching an old Massacre EP title as the band name to cribbing Massacre’s

an opener, “Your Grave Becomes a Garden,” second song “Ache” does something radically unexpected—it allows the sun to come out. There are open-hearted chord progressions, radiant synths and actual pastoral passages that provoke gentle hallucinations of Mike Oldfield gatefolds (bravely blended with fingernails-onblackboard screeching and crashing guitars, yes, but there is at least a glimmer of hope among the black clouds). Normal service is resumed on “Shadows With Teeth,” monstrous developing chords punctuated with spooky one-finger synth melodies, casting vulnerable shades even while slowly beating the listener down and scooping their eyes out. The synths get a bit heavy-handed—perhaps even gauche—on closer “Another World,” not quite so smoothly coordinated, the band not as convincing at a more animated tempo. But on the whole, this is an album that resonates, with an emotional pull that might surprise anyone signing up for mere nihilistic devastation. —CHRIS CHANTLER

classic logo, bassist Terry Butler (Obituary, exMassacre) and company didn’t waste too much thought on veneer. Like a guy decked out in full woodland-camo yodeling into a megaphone, obfuscation’s in no way the objective here; it’s more of a pretense. Surprisingly, despite Kam Lee’s conspicuous lack of involvement, Inhuman Condition manage to evoke the heralded From Beyond record more overtly than any Massacre joint since that landmark eruption and—against my better judgement—I give a rat’s ass. Qualifiers: the production is too sanitized and crisp (though I’ll cop to digging the weird, Leprosy-esque snare). The sheen here leaves little elbow room for dynamics. Additionally, Inhuman Condition mimic that early-’90s DM bent for affixing the occasional atmospheric intro to their tracks without bothering to justify them compositionally; ergo, “Tyrantula”’s

potentially very cool tribal drum and mouth harp opening is merely jarring and superfluous. Finally, while drummer Jeramie Kling’s vocals are more than serviceable, they offer zero variation. The gear’s locked at one monotone speed, like it or lump it. Regardless, the band cranks out riff after undeniable riff, reeking of early Whiplash daisy-chained with Morbid Saint spinning Morbid Tales in the key of whammy bar shitfits. Rat God lands like a sloppy but effective haymaker that seems to have come from out of nowhere. But don’t you be fooled. The haymaker that dropped you—it came From Beyond. —FORREST PITTS

KATAAN

Kataan

PROSTHETIC

Between a rock and hard place

The promo puff that accompanies Kataan’s four-track debut EP bills the Plaistow, NH duo as a modern death metal band, and while that’s not exactly false advertising— there are death metal elements; the production is up-to-the-minute—it’s somewhat selling them short. Their sound is far too musically adventurous to satisfy bona fide death heads looking for some contemporary audio violence, and occupies an emotional tenor that’s a million miles from the antic fevers of Artificial Brain, Tomb Mold, and the rank and file of the death metal entertainment complex. Besides, that death metal label might put off folks who would otherwise dig the melodies that shape Kataan’s sound. The project pairs guitarist/vocalist Nicholas Thornbury, once of U.S. progressive black metal band Vattnet Viskar, with Brett Boland, who pulls a double shift on bass and drums. Boland also played bass live for Vattnet Viskar, who later changed their name to Vattnet before splitting in 2018. Now, this backstory might seem complicated, obscure and ostensibly besides the point, but it surely has some relevance given that Vattnet had a similar sensibility—i.e., incorporating spiritual uplift and emotional complexity in a genre and subculture largely hostile to any such introspection. Heck, you could argue that Vattnet Viskar missed the boat given the ecstatic rapture that greeted Deafheaven at the time. Whatever—we’re here now. Recorded in 2019 and produced by Boland, this EP sounds massive, and Kataan, to their credit, have enough songwriting nous to gracefully pivot between minor-key post-hardcore doom and the thunder chug that builds during the likes of “Vessel” and “Erase.” —JONATHAN HORSLEY 74 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

MEPHITIC GRAVE

Into the Atrium of Inhuman Morbidity CARBONIZED/ MY DARK DESIRE

Through the lobby of merciless dismemberment

Hungarian death squad Mephitic Grave have come out of nowhere with a debut album that sounds like something you’d find on some archival blogspot dedicated to proving that Central and Eastern Europe had an amazing death metal scene in the early ’90s. Except Into the Atrium of Inhuman Morbidity isn’t some lost album from 1992. Recorded, mixed and mastered in guitarist Knot’s basement during the 2020 lockdown, Inhuman Morbidity is the first utterance from this cavernous Hungarian ossuary, and it begs immediate listening. Formed in 2018 under the name Mothrot as a duo between drummer Balázs and guitarist Zoli, Mephitic Grave became the dominating quartet we know today when Knot and bassist/vocalist Ádám entered the fold in 2019—Ádám with all kinds of dark and twisted ideas from too much time spent in the dusty tomes of bygone eras. It was these ideas that would transform Mothrot into Mephitic Grave, bearers of cosmic doom and raw, atavistic death metal power. With gnarly, bowel-rumbling vocals just the slightest bit too loud in the mix (old school!), and a gorgeously thicc bass tone, Mephitic Grave maul ears for eight tracks straight on Into the Atrium of Inhuman Morbidity, beginning and ending with some noisy atmospheric sounds that are chilling enough to set the mood and leave you with an uneasy feeling afterwards. Suckers for “cryptborn”-style death metal have just found their hidden gem of the year. —DUTCH PEARCE

NADJA

Luminous Rot S O U T H E R N LO R D

In the zone, zoning out

To be a truly devoted Nadja fan, to keep up with every new studio release throughout the band’s impressive 20-year career, requires a herculean sort of single-mindedness, one which precludes listening to just about any other music. The duo’s library of original recordings and collaborations reaches toward three dozen volumes, but that ignores Aidan Baker’s solo work, which encompasses another whole universe of pensive, shimmering guitar meditations, and it’s hard to imagine anyone embracing Nadja without trying to wrap their already strained arms around Baker’s

oeuvre as well. The problem is that, for lovers of highly textural experiments in the guitar’s emotional and conceptual frontiers, everything Baker produces is worth hearing. It’s a pretty damn minor conundrum in this world of mass shootings, famine, disease and forgotten genocides, but completists beware: Baker’s output will drive you to destitution. Luminous Rot follows more in the song-centered tradition of 2009’s covers set, When I See the Sun Always Shines on TV, rather than, say, the glacial half-hour behemoths that ruled 2007’s Radiance of Shadows. If this choice appeals, then definitely check out this record; if you find it moderately disappointing, though, don’t be too quick to judge. Even within these more cohesive structures, the blown-out guitar tones remain narcotically potent, and the subliminal monotony of Baker’s vocals still complements the broken, fuzzy mess within. Nadja with a discernible beat can actually be pretty great, like a pop band filtered through a stoner’s nerve-damaged imagination and haunted by bong-burdened paranoia. And the album’s central tracks, “Cuts on Your Hands” and “Starres,” are just as belligerently tranced out as a Nadja fan could wish. This might sometimes feel like Nadja for Dummies, but it’s still Nadja, who are no dummies. —DANIEL LAKE

PHARAOH

The Powers That Be CRUZ DEL SUR

Black is back

Chris Black has had so many projects on the go, most of them of the outstanding variety—the legendary Dawnbringer, the exuberant High Spirits, the experimental Aktor—it’s inevitable that his longtime listeners suddenly realize, what about Pharaoh? One of Black’s earliest projects, Pharaoh proudly carried the traditional American heavy metal torch at a time when melodic metal couldn’t be less fashionable. Twenty years later, look around you—the American underground is littered with similar devotees to elder statesmen Manilla Road, Riot and Manowar. As I Lay what? All That who? Avenged zuh? Fads die out; tradition never dies. Classic heavy metal will always be around. Pharaoh will always be one of the best at the art form, and their first album in nearly a decade asserts that fact. While Black and guitarist Matt Johnsen remain the visionaries, they allow singer Tim Aymar to step forward and deliver the kind of gravel-gargling roars he’s known for. Of course, Black and Johnsen contribute some truly exceptional songwriting, but it’s on Aymar to sell the everloving hell out

of the material. Whether it’s the fist-bangin’ anthem “Freedom,” the antiauthoritarian title track or the self-described murder ballad “Waiting to Drown,” Aymar leads the charge as his bandmates throttle away with precision and force. With the likes of Haunt, Spirit Adrift and Eternal Champion attracting a lot of deserved attention these days, the timing couldn’t be better for Pharaoh to tap into the renewed interest for traditional American metal. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

PORTAL

AVOW

P R O FO U N D LO R E

“I had this terrible nightmare. You had this old clock on your head…”

Portal’s arrival on the death metal scene was a welcome intervention for a genre that was fully formed, but had little left to do but eat its tail or lose itself in an orgy of machotechnical excellence. Of course, it did both and lived to tell the tale, yet no matter how masterly the HM-2 necro riffs, or meticulous the high-protein blasts and slams, death metal needed Portal to reopen the event horizon and recreate the awe and terror we first experienced as we fell backwards into “Immortal Rites.” Times might have changed. Three years after the electric skronk of its predecessor, Ion, and almost two decades after Portal’s chastening debut, Seepia, augmented death metal’s form, AVOW arrives in a scene populated by a new generation of artists inspired by the Australian trailblazers’ bizarro evil. Yet, few get close to supplanting Portal as masters of Lovecraftian hugger-mugger. No one better understands how sound can reproduce the disorienting physical laws of our nightmares. “Catafalque” sets the tone with an 11-minute experiment in existential tension, as though the elastic that holds the universe together is being tightened and tightened, soon to snap. Organic, analog and richly textured throughout, AVOW is a free-jazz supernova of dissonance, tom-heavy pummel and the Curator’s vaporized growl. Portal’s sound functions a lot like German Expressionism in early horror cinema, animating shadows and darkness, using the power of suggestion to seed terror where it can best take root. Early death metal is awesome and was radical at the time, but it functions much like Deep Purple or the Knack—you can hum the riffs. Not this. AVOW is more insidious. You’ll be haunted for days, but remember few details. Much like a nightmare. —JONATHAN HORSLEY 7 6 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

SHADOWSPAWN

The Biology of Disbelief

E M A N Z I P AT I O N PRODUCTIONS

Disbelieve all things are possible

Danish death metal project Shadowspawn has dwelled in the darkness of obscurity since beginning in 2012. After a series of demos and EPs, Shadowspawn conceived their debut LP in 2017. Hope Lies Dormant was a ferocious formal introduction to the band’s fanged approach to Swedeath through the lens of thrash. Four years later, Shadowspawn return with The Biology of Disbelief. “Under the Blood Red Moon” sets the scene with scarlet-splashed Swedeath and Danish groove. Gone are the harsh bellows of Kenneth “Fyrsten” Iversen, which invoked vintage Barney Greenway. In their place, new vocalist Bue Torin Jensen growls crisply. The entire mix feels more enunciated than its predecessor—especially the drums recorded by prolific engineer Tue Madsen. Like other lean ‘n’ mean death metal fiends whose song durations settle comfortably between three and five minutes, Shadowspawn regularly ride grooves. Think the Haunted, who often collaborated with Madsen. Or Blood Red Throne, if they grew up listening to thrash instead of Deicide. But Shadowspawn don’t have the hooks to shun other embellishments. Simply stated: The Biology of Disbelief is all meat and no flavorful fat. After notable highlight “Daughters of Lot,” The Biology of Disbelief unfolds as a death metal record that sounds familiar, but unmemorable. The record concludes with gnashing closer “Bite the Pain,” which is the closest it comes to conjuring Dutch heroes Asphyx. But most of the album is spent falling short of the band’s fantastic debut. Digitized vocals and audio clips intended to add texture rip attention away from the surrounding components. Unfortunately, the album is so precise that it feels built on a sterile assembly line, sharp edges polished away. —SEAN FRASIER

STORMRULER

Under the Burning Eclipse N A PA L M

By the power of gray skulls

I know that Satan hogs most of the spotlight in black metal (and deservedly so—the guy’s artistic vision is off the charts), but let’s not understate the genre’s longstanding fixation with all things sword and sorcery. Bal-Sagoth, Absu, Summoning—plenty of bands have plunged their spiked gauntlets into the Well of Power Metal and pulled up visual and thematic elements to

use in their own blasphemies, much to the confusion of purist weirdos and “bought it for the artwork” listeners alike. Go ahead and add Stormruler to that list. At first glance, the St. Louis-based duo’s debut album, Under the Burning Eclipse, seems destined for the “between sets” playlist at ProgPower USA (e.g., an armored warrior waving a battle flag on the cover, nearly a dozen “Dark Souls loading screen” interludes, that band name). However, get past the 30-second tone-setter “Shine of Ivory Horns” and you’re bombarded with what this band is really about: an infernal procession of daggersharp riffs framed by punishing drumming and the elemental lifeforce of melodic black metal luminaries like Dissection and Old Man’s Child. To that end, Under the Burning Eclipse’s success ultimately hinges on the contributions of guitarist/vocalist Jason Asberry, and he does a bang-up job for most of the 60-minute runtime. Standout tracks like “Age of Steel and Blood” and “At the Cliffs of Azure City” are shining examples of Asberry’s songwriting proficiency, and even when déjà vu starts setting in on later offerings like “Fear the Old Blood,” there’s enough pleasant neck-snappery here to warrant your attention. —MATT SOLIS

SUNBOMB

Evil and Divine FRONTIERS

Not glam, but not great

That the new band by L.A. Guns’ Tracii Guns and Stryper’s Michael Sweet isn’t called Sweet Guns is just one of numerous issues with Sunbomb and their debut album, Evil and Divine. Guns, playing guitar, brought Sweet on for vocals, and if you considered buying this for its reported doom metal influences... really? That’s why? Well, expect a scavenger hunt for all those gloomy morsels. In all fairness, two of the 11 songs on here could be considered legitimately classic doom, and they are certainly the brightest spots. A whole record of those could’ve had potential. But mostly this is dusty, generic hard rock slop that reeks of “vanity project.” Just as the creation of Stryper might’ve been a complex scheme to unload 80,000 Bibles, Tracii Guns could very well have created this band just to play some new solos. Not that they are shredding masterpieces, but they’re among the few things that don’t sound cobbled together an hour before recording. The real casualty, though, is Sweet. His delivery may be corny and dated, but he’s belting his heart out for what amounts to stock music on a YouTube ATV racing compilation. As far as easy targets, it’s hard to top “aging glam rockers release unnecessary bullshit,” so

at least Sunbomb tried a couple times on Evil and Divine to be more than that. But there certainly isn’t enough worthwhile music here for them to quit their day jobs… which, weirdly, are still just being in Stryper and L.A. Guns. —SHANE MEHLING

THY CATAFALQUE

Vadak

SEASON OF MIST

Hungary for heaven

Here’s a question I sometimes receive, mostly from audiophiles outside of the metal genre: When’s the last time you heard something truly unique in heavy music? I sometimes struggle for a good answer. Periphery felt pretty fresh while the band was a demo project. More respectably, Zeal and Ardor’s blackened industrial gospel is both unprecedented and necessary. But the artist I usually answer with is Tamás Kátai, the sole prolific mind behind Hungary’s Thy Catafalque—and he’s been busting genre boundaries since the early ’90s. Thy Catafalque blends driving electronic drumbeats—amen breaks, oh yes—with luscious synthesizers, virtuosic metallic guitar and a mélange of vocal elements clean and harsh, often supplied by guest musicians. He’ll evoke black metal and space-age pop in the same song without a hint of irony and, what’s more, weave these elements into records that come across as cohesive wholes, not collages of influences. OK, so that’s Thy Catafalque as a whole, but what about their latest, Vadak? Coming hot off the heels of maybe his most electronic suite, 2020’s Naiv, Kátai’s latest is a bit more metallic, making it a great entry point for those unfamiliar with his particular brand of weirdness. In a sense, that makes the record come across as playing a little “safe,” but then nobody on the same label as Rotten Sound is making easy decisions with piano-led numbers like “A kupolaváros titka.” If there’s one issue with Kátai’s music, it’s that his kaleidoscope of sounds amazes in bursts, but rarely sticks with one idea long enough to make an impression. Even so, trading memorability for surprise is a fair deal, if only to give closed-minded eavesdroppers a reason to shut up. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

VOID VATOR

Great Fear Rising RIPPLE MUSIC

Under the influence?

It’s confusing when the press release accompanying an album name-checks Power Trip, Metallica, 7 8 : J U LY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

Turbonegro, Thin Lizzy and Van Halen, and yet the album sounds very little like any of these bands. Stepping back a bit, the actual bands that are name-checked are a confusing cross-section of styles and approaches. Power Trip and Van Halen? I don’t really hear either, but maybe those touchpoints, as, uh, diverse as they are sound better on paper than “Foo Fighters and every alterna/groove metal band in the ’90s.” Void Vator, an L.A. trio, don’t really have anything modern to offer on their first full-length. The term “New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal” is thrown into the above-noted press release—to perhaps justify the dated sound?—but that also seems erroneous. Now, judged on the merits of the music, without considering the (apparent) nonsense in the accompanying materials, these dudes can play and the production is top-notch. No complaints there. There’s definitely a thrash vibe of some description—think Anthrax and Metallica circa Sound of White Noise and Load, respectively—and on the punky/growled “McGyver’s Mullet,” you can hear a bit of the Turbonegro influence. Largely, though, the vocals are clean, the choruses are strong and there’s an abundance of melody as the band pounds through a selection of nine tunes laced with impressive guitar work. It’s not trad metal, it’s not thrash, but it’s pleasant enough—if not a little unremarkable. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

WITHERED

Verloren

SEASON OF MIST

We missed you, too

It has been five years since Atlanta decay-dealers Withered released a new album. Before 2016’s Grief Relic, it was another six years since that album’s predecessor. Withered refer to themselves as “tortured blackened doom,” and the wait between albums has certainly been fittingly torturous. Their new album Verloren—which translates to “missing” in German—ends the dry spell with a gargantuan effort that ranks as their most dynamic release. We welcome back a version of Withered that has shapeshifted a bit since Grief Relic. Bassist Rafay Nabeel has joined the lineup. New guitarist/vocalist Dan Caycedo was once in sludge projects Leechmilk and Sons of Tonatiuh. With new blood squirming in the band’s veins, Verloren has improved over Grief Relic’s glacial solemnity. While 2010’s Dualitis was a powerhouse record, it leaned harder into black metal stylings. Verloren retains Grief Relic’s preferred lurching rhythms without feeling static or stagnant during its nearly 45-minute runtime.

Opener “By Tooth in Tongue” nails a balance between dusky melodies and Gorgutsian discord. Blast beats still storm through “The Predation” and “Casting in Wait,” but they’re not the default tempo on this album. Withered have long been a band that promotes introspection while deserving thoughtful diagnosis, and the pensive composition of “Dissolve” reflects that. Verloren’s bruised soul emerges most noticeably in the morose title track, and in the agonized vocals of album closer “From Ashen Shores.” But the entire album emits a distinct aura of heartache and loss. Like the album’s title implies, Withered have thought a lot about what they miss from the past. Verloren’s triumphant return to form is a reminder of what we were missing during Withered’s silence as well. —SEAN FRASIER

YELLOWTOOTH

The Burning Illusion O R C H E S T R AT E D M I S E R Y RECORDINGS

Underloved Indiana strivers bounce all over the place, stay there

It’s unlikely that anyone will ever call Yellowtooth purists. Not that the Hoosier State threepiece is into driving without anchor subgenres. They’ve made a point of favoring various flavors of doom and sludge metal since forming in 2008. They’ve also made a point of lacing songs with enough mid-uptempo moments to never come off as one-pace ponies. The Burning Illusion captures Henry McGinnis (guitar/vocals), Peter Clemens (bass/vocals) and Dave Dalton (drums/new guy energy) essentially making 2012’s Disgust and 2015’s Crushed by the Wheels of Progress seem like the work of a different, lesser entity. A chunk of the credit definitely falls on Dalton, a humble pro whose playing is intrinsically spectacular enough that he never has to go out of his way to remind us of how good he is. Clemens and McGinnis’ chops also help enhance the outcome, with the latter often flexing a blend of creaminess and grime as addictive as Woody Weatherman’s—though maybe a little less stitched to tradition. Thanks in no small part to their aptitude for building/working moods without getting redundant, Yellowtooth constantly generate sharp little surprises— some sharper than others. To wit, the jazzy touches on opener “From Faith to Flames” and McGinnis’ lysergic flourishes on “The Illusion” are plenty desirable—but how could much of anything compete with anything that, per parts of “Astronaut’s Journey,” might make a person think the words, “reminds me of Smashing Pumpkins in the very best way imaginable”? —ROD SMITH

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EUGENE S. ROBINSON

A HARD ATTACK WHILE THE ROCKETS

GLARED RED IF

you weren’t there in 1978, you have no idea what 1978 was like. Which is okay, and which would go without saying for just about any year before you were born. It’s really just a cheesy set-up to say: 1978 was a bitch of a year. Not a COVID bitch of a year, but still. Junk was king. Before there was a name for PTSD, cats who had come back from Vietnam a few years ago were still recovering from shit that caused them to lose their fucking minds. Hippies metastasized into disco cokeheads. And murder was on everyone’s mind because Son of Sam was shooting people in lovers’ lanes just a year earlier. Either because his neighbor’s dog told him to or because they were trying to make snuff films for the Long Island set who thought those kinds of things were kinky. CBGB—the club, not the reconstituted clothing store—was happening. A few blocks over from the men’s shelter. So, it was bum central

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and forbidden. I was 16 and a band I had read about was playing. The band was called Shrapnel. Now, I had been seeing everyone I could: the Rattlers, the Plasmatics, James Chance, Klaus Nomi, Blondie, the Talking Heads, the Ramones— whoever/whatever had “punk” attached to it. But Shrapnel were different. They were kids, the local weeklies said. From New Jersey. They dressed up in military fatigues and dog tags, and the singer sported a bunch of muscle and came out astride a bomb mid-show. There were certain ways to say you don’t give a fuck, and this was one of my favorites. Because since the Vietnam War had ended three years earlier, America’s attitude was just as schizophrenic about its costs, the toll paid and how to handle it all. “OK, our next song is called ‘Hey, Little Gook!’” the singer, Dave Wyndorf, screamed, and if it makes you cringe now to hear it, you need to know it almost killed people back then. No one reviewed them, and

if you heard about them, it was always with kind of a shrug: Was it satire? Were they serious? Did they mean it? Does it matter? If you read about Shrapnel at all, you’ll see them described as “punk rock.” And now, with everyone talking about Punk 1.5—this sort of weird bridge between punk rock and hardcore—I think having been there and peeped the vibe, I can comfortably say that what this was, was indubitably hardcore. About which people always asked the same questions: Was it satire? Were they serious? Did they mean it? Does it matter? The only line that answers that comes to me by way of the Adolescents, the L.A. band that came along a few years later: “trashed beyond belief to show the kids don’t want to learn.” Wyndorf stood center stage, bomb foisted over his head, chewing on a dimestore stogie, and finished their set, a collection of songs that were almost entirely paeans to the teenage thrill of traveling to exotic

places, meeting different kinds of people and—like the peace posters at the time said—killing them. Legs McNeil, a known associate now of a few known associates of mine, was their manager at the time, and he got it. He got it enough to get them to play for Norman Mailer, for god’s sake. I was a 16-year-old who grew up both protesting the war AND reading Sgt. Rock comics, so I got it. But in 1978, it was just the teenagers at CBs that got it, and you can’t eat off of us. So, imagine my delight when a few years later Wyndorf ended up in Monster Magnet. A completely different take. Completely different, but drawn from the same well. Heavy drugs, heavy danger, mid’70s anomie and a whole lot of ways to say you don’t give a fuck. They were glorious, and sharing an issue with them now, I couldn’t be happier. You want a real one? Wyndorf is it. And here are some answers for you, finally: yes, yes, yes and yes. ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE