Decibel #214 - August 2022 by Red Flag Media

TREVOR STRNAD

1981 2022

CATTLE DECAPITATION THE HARVEST FLOOR HALL OF FAME

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Brain Teasers COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY HRISTO SHINDOV

upfront 8

obituary: trevor strnad On losing a death metal champion

10 metal muthas The wo-mantle 12 low culture Passion project 13 no corporate beer A good year for pale ales 14 in the studio:

autopsy

The dead don’t progress

features 18 chat pile Breathe grease 20 intoxicated New heavy brew 22 mantar Not quite the end

32 satanic tea co. He likes his tea like he likes his metal 34 vegan & vegetarian

extreme music

Making bleeding hearts even bloodier

24 candy Heaven can wait

36 extremely extreme

26 party dozen Sowing the seed

Heavier than your grandmother’s cooking

28 inexorum Lucky No. 7 30 axioma Doomscreamers

restaurants

40 extremely extreme

chefs

Serving food to die for

reviews 44 q&a: cauchemar Vocalist Annick Giroux knows the best way to prepare proper doom metal is slow and low 48 the decibel

hall of fame Cattle Decapitation refine their death metal palates to serve up a bloody great album on The Harvest Floor

73 lead review Wake cook up a brand new approach while still feeding us delicious blasts on Metal Blade debut Thought Form Descent 74 album reviews Records from bands that know all the best gas station food in your area, including Arch Enemy, Haunt and Tombs 80 damage ink A hairy situation

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. © 2022 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 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

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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 ©2022 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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longtime friends as well as co-workers. But tattooing is a service for sure. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve gotten to tattoo a bunch of stuff that I enjoy, but the real goal is to make the client happy. With illustration, too, but most of that comes straight out of my head with much less direction, so the two mediums are super different. The gratification is instant with tattooing; not so much with drawing, although drawing can be more of a release. Plus, I’m a total recluse when I’m not at work or at shows, so being at home drawing is my comfort zone.

Jeffrey Kopp Denver, CO

You’re an artist in the Denver area who does both tattoo art and illustrations. Do you prefer one medium to another, and do you approach each differently (besides lightly, repeatedly stabbing someone for one and not the other)?

I love tattooing and drawing. Probably not one more than the other, and I definitely approach them differently. Tattooing gets me up and out of the house in the morning and pays the bills. The shop, Little Black Church, is a place I love being because of the great people I work with, two of which have been really

6 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

You’ve been a subscriber since issue No. 54, which included a Cattle Decapitation story on their then-latest record The Harvest Floor. That record is this month’s Hall of Fame inductee. Do you feel old like me now?

Cattle Decap is great, musically and lyrically! Humans are pretty disgusting and disappointing as a species, and it’s always good to hear a band saying the things you’re feeling. Honestly, I still feel like a kid most of the time, even though I am decidedly an old fart at this point. It’s all dookie discussion and debating the precise nature of the sandwich, etc., at the shop every day, so we generally avoid grown-up talk and things that make us feel old. Let’s just say—theoretically—we decided to move our West Coast edition of Metal & Beer

Fest out of Los Angeles and we’re looking for a new home. Give us the hard sell on Denver as a potential location for the event.

Denver’s music scene is stellar! Especially the metal scene. Blood Incantation, In the Company of Serpents, Of Feather and Bone, Khemmis, Glacial Tomb, and on and on. There are SO many great bands here, and venues. The level of appreciation here is huge, so turnout would also be huge. As evidence, the success of Denver Black Sky in years past, the show Sherwood Webber from Skinless put together, and Electric Funeral Fest, which was also awesome. Not to mention TRVE Brewing is here. And Denver is in pretty much every way superior to L.A. I’m biased, but seriously, it’s a no-brainer. This is a special food-themed issue of Decibel, so please tell us your top three establishments to grab a bite in Denver.

Speaking of Denver being a tight scene, Dave [Grant] from Of Feather and Bone has a restaurant called Gladys that truly rules. Before he opened Gladys, he was at a spot called City O’ City, which I still really like. Somebody People is really amazing, and their whole minimizing waste mission is so important. You asked for three, but I’m giving you four. Because Somebody People is kinda fancy, I have to mention Pie Hole. It’s right down the street from TRVE and does slices and vegan pizza. And they’re open late. Perfect for a go-to after the Metal & Beer Festival shows!

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

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PHOTOS: Chad Lee (King), Dirk Behlau (Amott), Stephanie Cabral (Peterson), Dylan Duncan (Barrett), Martin Wicker (Vincent)

OBITUARIES

TREVOR

first met Trevor Strnad more than 15 years ago during the tour cycle for the Black

Dahlia Murder’s third studio album Nocturnal. The band was on the ascent at that point and backing Cannibal Corpse on Metal Blade’s 25th anniversary tour. What struck me the most about Strnad, then just in his mid-20s, was how different in temperament he was from so many of the artists I’ve met and talked to over the years. While it’s fashionable to say someone is different after they pass, no one would deny that Strnad was unlike any death metal frontman—or any frontman in the metal genre, period. He was part ferocious frontman and part court jester, with a peerless passion for and knowledge of heavy metal. ¶ Strnad’s dedication to performing death metal, preserving the scene’s landmarks and elevating little-known bands was one of a kind. If Strnad never fronted a band, he still would have made timeless contributions to the scene. With his passing, we haven’t just lost an integral part of a band and a charismatic frontman, but one of the most informed and passionate advocates for underground music of any generation. Offstage, Strnad reminded you of the smartest guy who worked in the record store (which he was). Onstage he was a force: proudly rubbing his belly while shirtless and working crowds in a way few performers ever muster. Strnad was quick to laugh and never seemed to take anything seriously. At the same time, his attention to the smallest details was that of a completist who cared for what mattered most to them with abiding love. 8 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

That Strnad would take his own life at 41 seems almost impossible to anyone who has interviewed him, seen him perform or knew him in real life. His life force was so strong that you can’t see him not existing. For starters, Strnad was a peerless lyricist who clearly drew on the best elements of Carcass and Jeff Walker while taking the storytelling in a completely different direction. Second, he was a consummate

performer who turned TBDM shows into moving parties, death metal’s version of the late Hank von Hell of Turbonegro. Finally, he was a death metal fan, historian and archivist of the highest order. Even if you count the Decibel staff, few people on the planet loved death metal as much as Trevor Strnad. Strnad was so funny that I can still remember portions of conversations we had for stories years ago. When I interviewed him in 2013, a question about how many writers asked him “how the tour was going” turned into a hilarious monologue. On another occasion, he talked about the inadvisability of drinking Jäger through a beer bong. Strnad lived large and indulged his passions—for life, music and partying—and invited others to join him for the ride. Despite the darkness of TBDM’s lyrics, I never saw kids have more fun or party harder than I did at their shows. Laughter, however, can be terribly deceptive. While it’s surprising, it’s not entirely unexpected when someone like Strnad takes this path. Depression and darkness can be all-consuming, and sometimes those who burn the brightest carry the heaviest burdens. Rest well, Trevor. You will be deeply missed. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

PHOTO BY KAREN JERZYK

STRNAD 1 9 81 - 2 0 2 2

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while screaming into the fucking void.

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

This Month's Mutha: Jeri Widmer Mutha of Jason William Walton (ex-Agalloch)

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am retired and spend a lot of time close to Jason and his family. I also spend time in Florida, where I own a motorhome in a camp on a lake. Jason tells us that you and his father bought his first two bass guitars, as well as lessons. How did you feel about all of that study manifesting in such extreme music?

We were happy as long as he was happy. I did joke with him that I envisioned him being in a country music group, but that just wasn’t Jason. From the beginning, he was interested in all music, especially harder types of rock ‘n’ roll. He started collecting T-shirts before he was 10. One of his earliest was Ozzy Osbourne. On the other hand, Jason’s discography is boldly experimental. Did he inherit any of that curiosity from you?

No, not really. As a family, we love music; however, Jason takes it another step or two and created his own music! Your son has openly written music about his struggles with sleep paralysis. As a parent, what was that like to hear?

Horrifying! As a mom, you want to take that fear from your child, but it is not possible. 10 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

You drove from Bozeman, MT to Portland, OR for Agalloch’s Ashes Against the Grain release show. What are your impressions of Jason onstage?

He is amazing onstage. I was brought to tears a few times remembering the boy with his bass. He looks like he belongs onstage. I love his music! In addition to Decibel Hall of Fame artist Agalloch, Jason has countless solo endeavors and side projects. Do you have a particular favorite?

I can’t pick a favorite, but I have narrowed it down to two: Sculptured and Snares of Sixes. Despite its title, Jason’s I Hate Music podcast offers quite the opposite: thoughtful deep dives with a variety of musicians. Was he talkative and inquisitive as a child?

As an only child, Jason was talkative, inquisitive and imaginative! He wrote stories and made-up games for the family. At a young age, he was used to talking with adults and discussing music with them. So, I Hate Music was a natural for him. What’s something most people wouldn’t suspect about your son?

He is an amazing father to his girls. He lets them paint his toenails all the time and does not rush to take it off, even if it is pink or red. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Hulder, The Eternal Fanfare  Phobophilic, Enveloping Absurdity  Paradise Lost, Icon  Skinless, Savagery  Inexorum, Equinox Vigil ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Temple of Void, Summoning the Slayer  Various Artists, Flex Your Head  Excel, Split Image  Black Flag, Damaged  Power Trip, Nightmare Logic ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Municipal Waste, Electrified Brain  Bog Body, Cryonic Crevasse Cult  Haserot, Throne of Malice  Deliriant Nerve, Uncontrollable Ascension  Soilwork, Stabbing the Drama ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  The Black Dahlia Murder, Nocturnal  Undeath, It’s Time... To Rise From the Grave  Left for Dead, Devoid of Everything  Absence of Mine, Smile! Aren’t You Happy?  Sect, Blood of the Beasts ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Model Prisoner, Compulsion Analysis  Cave In, Heavy Pendulum  Some Girls, The Blues  Temple of Void, Summoning the Slayer  Drowningman, Later Day Saints

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Terry Savastano : come to grief/warhorse  Sacrilege BC, Party With God  Brume, Rabbits  Tommy Bolin, Teaser  Helms Alee, Keep This Be the Way  Raw Power, Screams from the Gutter

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Y ISEMAN

TNE BY COUR

Grief Tourists and Sinking Shit Ships he theme of this month’s tax

writeoff is motivation—particularly your motivation. What is your motivation to be doing whatever it is that you do? I’m not going to tell you what the correct answer is—that’s entirely subjective—but I am going to (subjectively) judge whatever it is you say due to my (in all likelihood accurate) disbelief in the honesty of said answer. Feel free to judge me on mine; that’s the collateral shrapnel of being in this industry™. Were you in a band, like a decade ago, for a brief moment, yet base your entire personality around that moment to this day? Double points if that band was at all successful. Minus 40 points if you were only in it for a tour or as a session member. Leave the game entirely if you still try to get cool-guy points by talking about the band you were hardly a part of, especially if you use the phrase “people always ask me about,” because I guarantee no one—not a single fucking soul—has ever asked you about whatever “fun fact” you’re clinging to like a life preserver afloat a sea of liquid shit. It’s as embarrassing as the people who try to make someone’s death entirely about themselves. People who live entirely in the past, especially a past that wasn’t entirely theirs, show such a childish inability to move forward, either because they constantly need a pat on the head and/or they’re fearful that whatever they’re doing now is (in all likelihood) not interesting to anyone but themselves. Sometimes things don’t work out. Sometimes you can’t catch lightning in a bottle even once, let alone twice. Then there are those who have public meltdowns when whatever they’re doing somehow isn’t making them “rich” or “famous.” I’m sure you know the type; they’re on their social media accounts constantly bitching about algorithms, or that their friends don’t support them, or 12 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

people don’t understand what they’re doing. All artists and musicians have these feelings; these feelings are fine. The broadcasting of them, however, is obnoxious and completely counterproductive since all it will garner is disdain or, at best, a sympathy listen. You don’t gain positive results by asking for a pity fuck. Next, you have this new wave of Bandcamp lo-fi black metal that seems entirely based upon shitting out awful demo after awful demo so your PayPal fills up every Bandcamp Friday and your inbox fills with pictures of stiffened cranks. Maybe I’m just critical, but I hardly see much thought or sincerity in 84 percent of these things. Same with dungeon synth. I guess death metal gets a pass since there’s more of an emphasis on skill, but really this is different sides of the same coin. I know I’ll fuck up the original quote, so I won’t even really try, but someone once said that turning something you’re passionate about into work changes it from being a creative outlet to just simply another job. That’s not just true for financial capital, but emotional currency as well. Spending all this time chasing recognition and admiration is wasted time, time you could spend doing something you’re passionate about for no other reason than your own satisfaction and enjoyment. And if someone else digs it? Great. But acting entirely in vanity to cover up your own insecurities or swinging from the achievements of others is a terrible thing to be known for; it’s as meritless as being pegged for (or by) an industry shill. It’s as sad as watching people whose star once shined brightly hanging on to diminishing returns the older they get, becoming nostalgia acts for a shrinking population with a shrinking interest. You learned how to walk by yourself once; maybe it’s time to revisit that skill. Or maybe you should sit this one out.

1349’s Black and Pale Ales Return, With a Tripel Born in the Forest

orwegian black metallers 1349 storm back into beer this year. Their pale ale returns first, well timed for warm weather. According to the band’s label Season of Mist, a new “heavily hopped and spiced” tripel, <<3>>, follows in early autumn, and the 1349 black ale resurrects later in the fall. As the band prepares to meet fans’ seasonal craft beer thirst, drummer Frost and guitarist Archaon caught us up on 1349’s beer journey. Back in 2010, 1349 were co-headlining a tour with Triptykon following the release of Demonoir. Standing at the bar with drink tickets after a show in St. Paul, MN, Archaon asked Frost for a beer recommendation. “Frost was by far the one of us with the most knowledge about beer,” Archaon recalls, adding 12 years later that everyone in the band is into craft beer. As they discussed beer at that St. Paul show, someone approached Frost and Archaon. “[He] said, ‘So, you guys are picky about your beers, eh?’ The gent was none other than Powermad guitarist and brewer (then at Surly Brewing Co., presently Mocama) Todd Haug. Following that night, the whole band established a friendship with him.” 1349’s beer interest has since grown and evolved. Frost says it’s driven by “curiosity and a search for quality and particular

 A pale horse named delicious 1349 and Haandbryggeriet congregate at the brewery to discuss their collaborative pale ale. NOTE: This can is a mock up and the final art may appear different.

expressions. To me, it makes sense for a creative musician to be interested in tastes as well.” Traveling and experiencing different beers has helped. Frost credits “sharp, crisp and hoppy beers” for opening up his senses, while he remembers Archaon having to warm to the idea that “edgy and even extreme beers could be both interesting and good.” For example, after a persuasive conversation with Frost about sour beers, Frost says that Archaon was hardly buying anything other than gueuzes and lambics. “It goes to show that as long as you keep getting impulses to try out tastes that might be strange or uncomfortable to you, your taste will evolve, sometimes radically so.” The friendship with Haug culminated in the first release of 1349’s black ale with Surly and Norway’s Lervig Brewery in 2014; the pale ale’s debut soon followed. Archaon recalls how few metal bands were making craft beer at the time, and how drastically that would soon change. One thing still arguably setting 1349 apart in the beer-making-band crowd is how involved they are in the collaboration. Those first beers took a couple years of exchanging ideas, Archaon recalls. Frost conceived of the dual-beer release, wanting the “intense, dark, dense and relentless” black ale to reflect the

1349 PHOTO BY ESPEN WESTUM

band in beer form, and the “thirst-quenching, crisp and delicate” pale ale to be the kind of beer you’d have backstage post-show, or watching the band in the crowd. He came to see the former as part imperial stout, part barleywine and part imperial black IPA, and the latter as a lighter West Coast IPA with subtle acidity. Their common denominator is a hint of spruce and zesty lemon peel. The process remains collaborative now that 1349 is working with Haandbryggeriet, a brewery in Archaon’s hometown of Drammen, Norway. It’s still important “to be involved on a deeper level in any outcome that would carry our name on it,” Archaon says, and Frost, who identifies an “idea-maker” in this collaboration, claims the band approaches the beer like their music, prioritizing a unique, powerful expression and certain edge. For the newest addition, the tripel, Frost says he “went straight out into the forest” to work out how to push the pale ale concept further. He considered taking the pale ale to brutally hoppy extremes, but saw it as an easy way out. A sudden taste of a Belgian tripel came to him as he noticed the bitter smell of plants nearby, and so the “intensely hoppy, herb-infused” tripel <<3>> was born. A unique expression with a certain edge, indeed—this authentic trio of brews stands to make 2022 1349’s year when it comes to beer.

DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 13

AUTOPSY

he last time Autopsy were in the studio spilling blood, gorging on guts and

STUDIO REPORT

not now. Then again, the flying their puke-colored death metal flag, the West African Ebola virus epistudio sessions have been demic had started, the Roman Catholic Church bukkaked Pope Paul VI and unpredictably animated. ALBUM TITLE Brazil was humiliated mightily by Germany in the World Cup final. Indeed, “[There’s] dead hookers TBD different times, but same shitty world, then exemplified by the springtime shit-fun everywhere,” Reifert muses. RECORDING DATES that was 2014’s Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves. “Mutants puking into studio March - April 2022 Fast forward to our current misfortune and not much has changed in the Autopsy speakers, cops busting us for STUDIO camp as they once again hunker down inside Opus Studios in Berkeley, CA with being too metal, constant Opus Studios, longtime knob-master Adam Muñoz. “Something gross, something heavy, something food fights, and mainlining Berkeley, CA sick, nasty and pummeling, something brain-squishingly heavy,” describes chief Red Bull until we see Satan in PRODUCER sicko Chris Reifert of the music he and team are laying down for Autopsy’s eighth every paper cup we look into. Autopsy and full-length. “[It’s] basically a good time for all, if you’re into the aforementioned All the things you’d hope for at Adam Muñoz descriptives. It’s an Autopsy record. What do you expect?” any party that’s worth a shit.” LABEL The recording lineup—composed of Reifert, Eric Cutler, Danny Coralles and When we asked our man Peaceville Greg Wilkinson—has been innie and outie on the regular in the post-pandemic about musical direction in light RELEASE DATE apocalypse tracking their untitled new splatter platter. Reifert posits that the new of Autopsy’s newfound prog TBD material shows Autopsy’s previously-hidden Dream Theater influence, but Decibel metal ambitions, he simply knows he’s pulling our rotten legs. There’s no way guitarists Cutler and Coralles says, “If I do, I will have to kill would ever crawl out of the unspeakable acts they’ve been known for time immemorial. Certainly you.” Well played, dudes. —CHRIS DICK

AUTOPSY

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

PHILLY BLACK THRASH BATTALION DAEVA ENLISTS ARTHUR RIZK FOR DEBUT OFFENSIVE VIA 20 BUCK SPIN

It’s been five years since Philly black-thrash practitioners Daeva unleashed ripping blackness in the form of 2017’s Pulsing Dark Absorptions EP, but vocalist Edward C. says that the band’s mission remains the same: “I think this album will be a clear step up in terms of everything, but it’s all just very much black-thrash.” Daeva kept things close to home while making the record. C. says the band was

14 : AUGUS T 2022 : DECIBEL

ready to record much earlier, but they were held up due to circumstances relating to the pandemic. When they entered Redwood Studio with renowned producer Arthur Rizk, the band was like a well-oiled machine, booking individual days for each member. “I move very fast. We’ve been playing [these songs] for a while,” the vocalist says about his time recording. “I started around 10 and I finished at 11:10. Arthur was like, ‘I think you time-traveled.’” That’s no small feat for a record that clocks in around 35 minutes, but C. says the band are just operating at their highest level. “There’s a level of musicianship this time around that you don’t usually hear in the genre that I’m very happy to be a part of,” he concludes. —VINCE BELLINO

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NINA NASTASIA Riderless Horse The renowned singer-songwriter emerges from a 12-year hiatus with her first-ever proper solo album. Produced by Steve Albini.

PARTY DOZEN The Real Work The undefinable sax & drums duo from Australia deliver their fiercest and most diverse album yet. Features guest vocals by Nick Cave.

MOGWAI As The Love Continues The Scottish icons return with their first new album in four years, continuing to offer solace from the mundane.

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY Big Bend (An Original Soundtrack for Public Television) Explosions In The Sky’s first release in 5 years is a euphoric soundtrack for this PBS Nature documentary.

WILLIAM BASINSKI & JANEK SCHAEFER “ . . . on reflection ” Nearly a decade in the making, this collaborative album is a diamond of meditative wonder.

ELUVIUM Virga II The second chapter in the beloved ambient music series by Eluvium, built from generative music and long-format looping.

ENVY The Fallen Crimson Japan’s most iconic and influential post-hardcore band returns with their first new album in five years. Released in the UK/EU by Pelagic Records.

MASERATI Enter The Mirror The legendary cross-continental synth-rock group returns with their first new album in five years, taking equal inspiration from 80s industrial noise and new wave.

TEMPORARY RESIDENCE LTD. NYC • USA

SHOP • TEMPORARYRESIDENCE.COM

DECIBEL SPECIAL ISSUES ARE A RARE BREED. In our illustrious 18-year history, we’ve produced 11, most of which sold out ages ago. There’s always room for one more Special Issue, however. Thankfully, longtime and venerated Decibel contributor Nick Green had the resolve to endlessly bug our esteemed editor-in-chief that a food/culinary-based Special Issue needed to happen. After years of intense suggestion—and maybe a few hammered fingers—Decibel is proud to offer The Food Issue. ¶ Mr. Green played a major role in curating the iron-clad cauldron of contents. The Food Issue bores inside the box for us to go outside the box. We pulled in Michelin Star metalhead chefs, metal-themed restaurants, region-centric food faves, musthave food from different countries, pontificated eloquently on virtues of tea, and drilled into the brains of vegetarians and vegans on all things culinary, cultural, ethical, moral and controversial. To top off our food-obsessed soufflé, we inducted Cattle Decapitation’s crushing fourth long-player The Harvest Floor. The Food Issue is quite unlike any before it. ¶ To illustrate the point, here’s a startling unused quote from our interview with Earth Crisis’s Karl Buechner: “There were a lot of big arrows that point to veganism [for me]. My grandfather worked at a slaughterhouse in Chicago. One day, my grandmother brought him lunch. She witnessed for herself what was going on there and vowed to never eat meat again. She raised us to be considerate of animals—domestic and wild—and to value them as equals.” ¶ So, Decibel gourmands of all stripes—The Food Issue is upon you. Eaten back to life is real! —CHRIS DICK

DECIBEL : AUGUS T 2022 : 17

CHAT PILE

CHAT PILE’S TOP 5 RESTAURANTS IN OKLAHOMA CITY

1. SHEESH MAHAL Sheesh serves up the best Pakistani and Indian food in the city. You can go ham on a budget and have delicious leftovers for days. Their building is eternally under construction, making it a great representation of our state.

CHAT PILE

Eclectic Oklahoma City noise rock quartet aims to please via aural displeasure

am 37 years old and have been doing music since I was about 19. This is the most success I’ve ever experienced by a wide, wide margin. We’re just doing it for the love of the game and it’s nice to be, like, ‘Ah, somebody likes our band finally.’” ¶ Raygun Busch is a kind, incredibly earnest and insightful resident of Oklahoma City. He’s also the bewildering and hypnotic frontman of Chat Pile, one of the very best outfits to rocket up through the ranks during these plague years. And after priming the listening public with a couple stellar EPs in 2019, they’re now releasing their deranged full-length masterpiece God’s Country. ¶ “I’m always trying to figure out what people like about our band,” Busch says, “and just give them more of that kind of thing.”

Whatever those things may be, they’re now in the most concentrated form. This is noise rock like the hallucinogenic drug milk in A Clockwork Orange is 2%; there’s plenty else that makes it special. It feels as if the quartet has an endless heap of eclectic influences that they’re pulling from, whether it’s industrial, new wave, grunge, sludge, post-hardcore or whatever else you might hear, similar to finding 18 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

different shapes in clouds or, in this case, toxic plumes from a refinery. And it’s elevated at every turn by the talk/yell/scream/howl of Busch, who’s managed to combine pleas for human kindness, grisly imagery and bizarre comedy into a lyrical pastiche that is all his own. “Some of the lyrics are personal, and then there’s a song about Friday the 13th, and that’s just something I like,” he says. “There’s this song

‘Slaughterhouse,’ and I thought what’s the most quintessential Chat Pile thing ever, and I was like, ‘hammers in grease.’ I just have to work the term ‘hammers in grease’ into that song as a chorus. “Some of my bigger influences are David Thomas from Pere Ubu and Jamie Stewart from Xiu Xiu. I think both balance horrifying scary seriousness with crazy songs about birds or whatever. Life is horrible, but absurd at the same time.” While there are no extreme tour plans to support God’s Country, the band recorded an even more diverse soundtrack for the film Tenkiller, and are working on new music with their priorities very much sorted out. “We just want to have fun,” Busch says. “My rule is, do I like the music? Am I proud of what I’ve done? I’m not trying to get anything out of it other than creating something meaningful to me. It’s gratifying that it means something to other people, but if it had never happened, that would be fine. I’d still be very proud of Chat Pile.” —SHANE MEHLING

2. THE LOADED BOWL Are you vegan, but not particularly concerned with your vascular health? This place serves up the best animal-free comfort food you’ll find anywhere this side of the Bible Belt. 3. PHO LIEN HOA Perhaps the most important restaurant in OKC. Simply incredible, world-famous Vietnamese food served in a cash-only environment. The vibe inside is not unlike that of a sun-faded Nagel poster. 4. EL TARASCO We have no shortage of great Mexican food in OKC, but the hunt for the best guiso de puerco in the city stops here. The setup is also superb, with thick chips and zesty pico. 5. CHOWS Located just a stone’s throw away from Chat Pile HQ, Chows is famous for its down-low BYOB party environment and incredible take on traditional and Americanized Chinese dishes. You can throw a dart at their vast menu and always walk away happy.

INTOXICATED

INTOXICATED’S TOP 5 FLORIDA SPOTS

1. CUBANS ON

THE RUN, CASSELBERRY

INTOXICATED

Florida thrashers never stopped letting the metal flow

here’s thrash. and there’s intoxicated. Initially formed in Altamonte Springs, FL, in 1992, the then-young guns had simple aims: to play aggressive, brutal, sometimes dissonant metal with absolute conviction and without compromise. To that end, Intoxicated succeeded, issuing a bevy of EPs—.08, Scars and Drain—from 1994 through 1996 before landing their much-sought-after debut album Metal Neck in 1997. ¶ So promising were Intoxicated that Chuck Schuldiner took them under his wing, recording (at his nascent Black Diamond Studios) and performing vocals and guitars on Scars and Drain, respectively, while courting them to prize-fighting A&R mavericks at Roadrunner. Intoxicated never made it to Roadrunner or any other similar-stature label. But Erik Payne (guitars/vocals) and Gregg Roberts (bass) persisted in one form or another, with Payne joining Andrew W.K. (along with Obituary drummer Donald Tardy) for a popular, inexplicably raucous through-aughts spell. ¶ “We really never stopped writing,” says Payne of Intoxicated’s forward progress from the Walled EP (2020) to the group’s impending Seeing Red Records release of new album, Watch You Burn. “The flow was there, so we embraced it. We’re really stoked on the tunes from the Walled EP, and this being our first crusade with our new drummer Mike Radford and guitarist John Sutton, it’s all been a learning process. While getting to know one another musically and as a band, we evolve and push each other. I’m grateful to say the tunes have organically gotten heavier. 20 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

A staple of the community. Trust me, just get the Cuban.

to Candor The new album Recording Studio is super-pissed; 2. MEDI DELI, means Watch You it’s our first ORLANDO Burn sonically full-length [since Happiest hands-on owner, crushes. Metal Neck]. We’re worth the wait of the line “I met Ryan swinging for around the building. in 2003,” Payne the fences!” says. “He was To put Payne’s 3. PLANET PIZZA, working on the metaphor into DOWNTOWN new Andrew perspective, ORLANDO W.K. record Intoxicated’s If you tour and have played in New York, thrash is instru the Beacham Theater or where I’d come mentally adept, the Social, then you know! up to help out. where tracks Delicious slices bigger than We lived in the like “Assholian your head. studio together Mode,” “Watch 4. JAMES JOYCE above a bar for You Burn” and IRISH PUB, four months. We “Force Fed” burn YBOR CITY/TAMPA are both from white-hot and hit Hands down, the best Florida and had harder. This isn’t French onion burger you will many of the same “fun thrash.” ever have, and they play friends in the There’s no Day music for the Hesh. skateboarding Glo Anthraxisms scene. We immeor beach bunny 5. ST. JOHN’S diately hit it off. grins on Watch RIVER GRILL, Regarding the reYou Burn. In SANFORD toxicated are cut cord’s tone, Ryan Right on the water and stiff from the same hasn’t done much drinks. Get the blackened cloth as New metal, but was Cajun catfish, topped with Jersey’s oft-oversuper-intrigued. crawfish etouffee. looked Revenant, He’s really Wisconsin late-heroes Morbid Saint talented, and we work well together, and Van Drunen-era Pestilence. so we went for it—I’m glad we did! I That it was recorded with Ryan gave him the Gruesome album Savage Boesch (Foo Fighters, Henry Land as a sonic reference, and I love Rollins) in an old Morbid Angelthe kick drums and overall low-end owned building that’s now home punch on that record.” —CHRIS DICK

MANTAR

TOP 5

SADDEST MEALS IN MANTAR TOURING HISTORY, BY HANNO KLÄNHARDT

1. LEIDEN,

NETHERLANDS

2. AUSTIN, TEXAS We were sitting on the side of the streets and were eating one of our standard tour meals. Gas station Wonder Bread with potato chips as a topping. A nice lady found us sitting there and invited us to her house to feed and wash us. After some hours she realized we weren’t homeless people but a touring band. Same/same.

MANTAR

Blackened sludge duo wrecks all their shit, pushes forward

hen i jump on a Zoom call with Mantar vocalist/guitarist Hanno Klänhardt, he’s rocking a baseball cap, gaudy Hawaiian shirt and a pair of Helloween shorts— not exactly the sartorial choices you would expect from somebody who named his latest album Pain Is Forever and This Is the End. ¶ “I’m a German dude living in Florida; I have 100 percent right to be as much of a cliché as I can be,” he explains. “I can’t wait until I lose all my hair and I smoke big fat cigars and I’m completely leather-skinned with a very heavy German accent complaining. It’s going to be great. [Laughs]” ¶ He’s in surprisingly good spirits considering the hell that he and drummer Erinç Sakarya went through to make the record. “In late 2020, I called Erinç and was like, ‘Do you think we should make another record?’” Klänhardt begins. “Because, you know, there are some bands out there who [maybe] should not have made another record. Maybe we said everything we wanted to say. Maybe we wrote every song that we were capable of. And so, we talked about it, but Erinç said he thought we had more to offer. I flew over to Germany and brought my guitar. Erinç got married right before we started to rehearse, and on his wedding day I was kneeling down to take a picture of him, and 22 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

his wife and I tore a meniscus in my knee. Weird-ass sound and insane pain, and I was so embarrassed because the whole fucking wedding was looking at me.” Then, after surgery and four weeks of hospital rest, Klänhardt tore his ACL the night before the next rehearsal. That series of

Old bread without anything hard as a rock. After Erinç started eating it, the promoter said it’s not even for us as it was for the rats! OUR main course was couscous without salt or pepper. We were able to spice it up with water.

unfortunate events nearly ended the band. Thankfully, they decided to push through, and their latest studio album may be their best yet. A burning Molotov cocktail of black metal, sludgy hardcore and classic metal hooks, it contains all the dynamics Klänhardt feels the last one lacked. It also draws on his observations of our stupid species. “The first three albums were mainly medieval shit and ancient space traveling and lucid dreaming and Vikings and shit,” Klänhardt riffs. “On the fourth record, I was like, we live in the craziest fucking times ever. Just turning on the TV or reading the newspaper or watching other people in social media is a never-ending source of inspiration for a dark, dark sinister record called Pain Is Forever and This Is the End. It seems like people have given up hope to ever become better again. They got comfortable being miserable.” Not that anyone should expect him to have the answers. “I in no way think my music is going to change the world,” Klänhardt shrugs. “I don’t give a shit. I want to provide good vibrations with very dark music.” —JEFF TREPPEL

3. TOKYO, JAPAN Ordered vegan noodles in a famous restaurant. We got fish noodles. Fish broth with fried mini fish and we still think to this day that they even managed to make the actual noodles out of fish. Seems like fish is such a common food in Japan that it’s regarded as vegan. Erinç kissed a male waiter on the mouth. Politeness is key. 4. EUROPE

(EVERYWHERE)

“Reis mit Scheiß.” A classic main course all over Europe offered to touring bands on a daily basis. Directly translated it means rice with shit. Which means it’s basically rice with whatever leftovers you can find or cheap veggies. It is not “horrible” by any means but eating this 47 times in a row makes a lukewarm gas station burrito taste like a party in your mouth where everybody is invited.

5. USA (EVERYWHERE) In the USA you usually get NO FOOD AT ALL. So a big portion of nothing.

CANDY

Abrasive hardcore trio’s Relapse debut is anything but sweet

umanity is the root of all cancer.” Or at least it is according to Candy guitarist Michael Quick. The band, styling itself as a convention-breaking unit dedicated to metal, punk and hardcore, is set to unleash its debut album, Heaven Is Here on June 24 via Relapse. It’s a fitting message for a band with song titles like “Price of Utopia” and “World of Shit,” along with uplifting numbers like “Human Condition Above Human Opinion.” ¶ The band’s music hits like hardcore, speeds along like grindcore and sounds like raw death metal. But Candy also make ample use of electronic influences as well, particularly on songs like “Transcend to Wet.” According to Quick, “It just felt natural to include samples and electronics. At the end of the day, we’re only focused on the feelings our music evokes, not the traditional way of making any particular genre.” And there’s a practical element to this as well, as “all the music—even the songs with live drums and guitars—[is] demoed with a drum machine, so it felt like we should embrace and lean into that to some extent.”¶ Beyond any stylistic considerations, the band’s focus is on replicating “certain emotions we feel or do whatever we can to elicit a specific response from the audience.” He goes on to say that the band picks and chooses

24 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

he rightly points out that, “Without “which elements from different fail, there’s more people overdosing, genres we wanna use whenever we murdered, suicidal, people in prison want to use them based on what for unjustified crimes, etc. Nothing response we’re looking for.” And ever changes.” while they see themselves as But what to primarily a do about it? “It hardcore band, feels like if we Quick notes that were less focused “some people on the rules/ see hardcore as laws to gain a limited genre 1. 8 ½ someone’s apwith little room Best Italian take-out. proval and more for deviation 2. JOE’S INN focused on the from an old for Opened in 1952. quality of life mula, but we we would be in a don’t at all. We 3. DOT’S BACK INN better place.” think that hard Old-school American diner. That’s deficore brushing up 4. STUFFY’S SUBS nitely part of it. with elements of Best American food And a record like different genres in Richmond. Heaven Is Here is good for the serves as a fitting subculture and 5. PATRICK HENRY’S wake-up call. for the music.” PUB & GRILLE Opines Quick, As for the mes English pub-style in “I’d like everysage, “I wanted the heart of Church Hill. one to reflect on to reflect on the starting at the feeling of despair bottom for everyone to improve the living in the modern age,” Quick lives around them and to take some explains. “Often it feels like we’re type of action, even if it feels like a faced with the atrocities of society small act.” —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY and everyone has an answer.” And

CANDY’S TOP 5

RICHMOND FOOD SPOTS

PHOTO BY IAN HURDLE & MA SON MERCER

NORTH AMERICA STADIUM TOUR 2022 08/21 • MONTRÉAL, QC PARC JEAN-DRAPEAU 08/27 • MINNEAPOLIS, MN U.S. BANK STADIUM 08/31 • PHILADELPHIA, PA LINCOLN FINANCIAL FIELD 09/03 • CHICAGO, IL SOLDIER FIELD 09/06 • EAST RUTHERFORD. NJ METLIFE STADIUM 09/09 • FOXBOROUGH, MA GILLETTE STADIUM 09/17 • SAN ANTONIO, TX ALAMODOME 09/23 • LOS ANGELES, CA - SOLD OUT LOS ANGELES MEMORIAL COLISEUM 09/24 • LOS ANGELES, CA LOS ANGELES MEMORIAL COLISEUM 10/01 • MEXICO CITY - SOLD OUT FORO SOL 10/02 • MEXICO CITY- SOLD OUT FORO SOL 10/04 • MEXICO CITY FORO SOL

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DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 25

PARTY DOZEN

TOP 5

CHEAP STREET EATS IN SYDNEY,

BY KIRSTY TICKLE 1. RICO’S TACOS,

CHIPPENDALE

PARTY DOZEN

Baddest-ass Bad Seed gives Aussie improv maniacs reason to celebrate

ldest, driest, harshest continent Australia breeds bands like Party Dozen by design. Sydney’s Jonathan Boulet (bash) and saxophonist Kirsty Tickle (brass)—who occasionally shrieks into the exhaust end of her tenor— push musical extremes in an entirely native way. Careening from a heaving dissonance (“The Iron Boot”) and post-industrial fusion (“The Worker”) to heat-warped outback ambiance (“Earthly Times”) and even a krautrock moment reminiscent of Melbourne cutups King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard (“Fruits of Labour”), third album The Real Work captures these experimental expressionists unleashing all sonic elements at once. ¶ “We draw influence from so many great bands,” offers Tickle. “We both love the Stooges, Death Grips, Betty Davis. And we’re influenced by a lot of Australian bands like Birthday Party, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Dirty Three, the Drones. I think the thing we try to aim for when we’re writing PD music is variation. We don’t want to get stuck in the same ideas, so we’re always casting the idea web wider and finding new aural space to occupy.” ¶ Not so wide as to miss Victoria baron Nick Cave, who guests with gusto toward the frenzied finale of second cut “Macca the Mutt.” Turns out a Hail Mary email to his management resulted in Saint Huck’s digits. What next, pray tell? ¶ “Being from Australia, Nick Cave played such a huge part in our musical landscapes from early high school,” acknowledges the reed flayer.

26 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

Simple space, really good food. They occasionally do an al pastor special that’s worth lining up for.

2. CAIRO, ENMORE

blistering, “We love the Delicious middle eastern bellowing “BalGrinderman re food in Enmore. Always ance” off this cords, and every packed, always great vibes! first release for thing he’s creatBrooklyn empired with Warren 3. CHINESE icists Temporary Ellis. We saw NOODLE HOUSE, Residence (home him and the Bad HAYMARKET to Explosions Seeds at Primav A Sydney institution; in the Sky, era in 2013, and locals know it as “grapes Mogwai and Wilthe show was a on the ceiling.” Get the liam Basinski) masterclass in braised eggplant. streamlines the performance. 4. MARRICKVILLE aggression of “Now, he’s PORK ROLL, Party Dozen also this in MARRICKVILLE singularly. credible musi Probably Sydney’s best “Being mostly cian who took a Banh Mi, and almost instrumental chance on listen certainly the cheapest. is what allows ing to our band the album to and generously 5. PASTIZZI CAFE, feel relevant to gave us his time NEWTOWN the listener,” and art. We have Pastizzi has been around injects Boulet. no idea what the forever. It’s all about the “Every song has future of the col maltese pastries, but the a feeling and is a laboration will pumpkin ravioli with platform for the be, but we’re pink sauce is so yummy. listener to align super psyched their own feelings or experience on his contribution to our record.” with. You can’t just pick out a lyric First embolism The Living Man in and categorize the song automatical2017 twisted up barbed-wire noise ly. You have to use your imagination punk, while Tickle’s protean blowand let your mind do some instincing—free, fluid, melodic—on May tual exercise. We’re leaving the door 2020 follow-up Pray for Party Dozen wide open, and you can come in if pitched it closest to a traditional you like.” —RAOUL HERNANDEZ sax-led session. By contrast, the P HOTO BY PA R T Y DOZEN

INEXORUM

TOP 5

NE MINNEAPOLIS TAKEOUT JOINTS THAT HELPED ME SURVIVE THE LAST TWO YEARS, BY CARL SKILDUM

INEXORUM

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow can stop Minneapolis duo’s melodic black metal delivery

arl skildum has done extensive research into the maximum number of guitar tracks you can layer on top of one another while retaining clean articulation. His conclusion: It’s seven. “I’ve tried eight, but once I got into that zone, it’s hard to pick things out,” the Inexorum guitarist and vocalist says. “It starts to turn into mush. Seven is the sweet spot.” ¶ Equinox Vigil, the Minneapolis duo’s third full-length since forming in 2018, sees Skildum and bassist/producer Matthew Kirkwold hitting that seven-guitar limit as often as possible. The album pushes their melodic black metal maximalism harder than it’s ever been pushed before, with bigger, brighter melodies and a more densely layered mix. It’s also easily the best-sounding Inexorum album, a credit to Kirkwold’s tireless tinkering behind the boards. “It’s a fun challenge as a mixing guy to find a way to make sure that the [guitar tracks] that are needing to stand out stand out, and the ones that are needing to operate together do so as they’re supposed to,” Kirkwold says. “I think this is the first time I’ve gotten it really right, guitar-wise, and I’m really proud of it.” ¶ Skildum started Inexorum as a place to put the ’90s Swedish-style melodic black metal riffs he was writing for fun. It was never supposed to turn into a “real band,” but four years later, it’s become his top musical priority.

28 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

1. CHIMBORAZO Ecuadorian delights. Their llapingachos (stuffed potato patties) are dreamy pillows of gold.

feel of Finnish The sculpted meblack metal.” lodicism of Mörk 2. THE ANCHOR Incorporating Gryning and FISH & CHIPS those influences Dawn remains a Essential comfort food. helped make key foundation Get the house-made Equinox Vigil the of the Inexorum curry for dipping those most welcoming, sound, but Skil thick-cut fries. accessible Indum’s palette exorum release has broadened 3. EL TACO RIENDO yet. This project, as the band has A comprehensive menu to which Skildum become a bigger satisfy all tastes, but their started to enterpart of his life. tacos are hard to beat— tain himself and “The first and have plenty of heat. a few friends, stuff I grew up 4. KHAO HOM THAI is likely to win on was Iron Speaking of heat, they know an even bigger Maiden and how to dial it all the way up fanbase. It’s Metallica, bands if asked. Try their incredible already made that had two drunken noodles. him famous great guitar playon his block in ers playing well 5. QUE VIET Minneapolis. together,” Skil VILLAGE HOUSE “My mailman dum says. “It’s Outstanding pho, but this walked by today less about the place is really known for and said, ‘Hey, Swedish stuff their giant egg rolls that are are you Carl now. That was meals all by themselves. from Inexokind of a launch Get two and you’re rum?’” Skildum ing point, but good to go. laughs. “I said, now I’m pulling ‘How do you know this?’ It’s really from classic heavy metal, and there’s other regional styles of black bizarre that people have heard this, but it’s a privilege, so it makes me metal that I’m interested in. I get want to try harder to make each excited when I hear some of the neoclassical stuff that French black record and song better than the one before.” —BRAD SANDERS metal does, and the rock ‘n’ roll P H O T O B Y K E L LY O ’ D O N N E L L

AXIOMA’S TOP 5

AXIOMA

(MOSTLY) CLEVELAND EXCLUSIVE FOODS (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER) 1. POLISH BOY For the uninitiated, a Polish Boy is a Polish kielbasa on a bun, topped with French fries, coleslaw and BBQ sauce. It’s a challenging session, extremely messy, and you quite possibly could develop coronary issues after—but hey, it’s Cleveland. What else have you got to lose? Recommended at Seti’s Polish Boys food truck.

AXIOMA

Post-metal nihilism befitting a ravaged post-pandemic world

are all fucking doomed.” So says Aaron Dallison, bassist and vocalist for post-black metal realists Axioma, and also known to many for his time spent in Keelhaul and Brain Tentacles. To be fair, the dude is not wrong, given how we’ve barely slipped out from a greasy shitshow of a pandemic only to slide as close to WWIII as humanity has come in decades. This is our current reality—and it hits harder every damn day. ¶ Because of this, some might find Sepsis, Axioma’s sophomore strike, too on-thenose; the lyrics are terminally bleak and totally nihilistic. You can sense claustrophobic terror caused by recent isolation in the words to nearly every song (“Earthen contagion / septic subsistence / follow the host / transmit despair”), and the band’s thematics match the stifling music, which ups the extremity with increased drilling death metal and Neurosis-ian drama. “For the most part, all of the lyrics deal with some sort of oppression that we as humans inflict upon ourselves, and how we deserve it due to our arrogance,” Dallison reveals. “Religion, mind control, disease, etc… The current state of humanity gives us plenty of inspiration. This record is just a natural development of the four of us as musicians writing a stygian type of music.” 30 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

But while the new record is indeed chokingly dense in every conceivable way, there’s solace to be found in such sonic suffering, and Dallison concedes that the creation of Sepsis was a cathartic experience for him, guitarists J. Meyers and Cyril Blandino, and drummer Jon Vinson. We’re also told that the four-piece took some time out during lockdowns to work

on side projects; after a couple of months respite, they reconvened to write; and that the pandemic didn’t put a dent in their usual recording efficiencies. “We record everything at the rehearsal spot as pre-production,” says Dallison, “then [we] give it to Dave Johnson [engineer for 2019’s Crown and Sepsis]. By the time we record, we know exactly what we want to accomplish. After tracking, Dave mixes, then we all add our notes for amending. The longest process for this record was the 10 or so months it took to press the vinyl.” You can blame Adele or the glut of gratuitous colored variants for those delays, as they hog pressing plants and shill vinyl to throngs content to gorge on banality. Decibel will be right here, however, in the trenches with the likes of Axioma, a passionate underground band, staunch in their resolve when faced with the daily atrocities of modern living. “Axioma is just trying to find our place in the muck, and we will keep releasing and playing music even when the muck gets deeper,” offers Dallison as a defiant parting shot. —DEAN BROWN PHOTO BY DOUG FRENCH

2. PIEROGIES These are basically dumplings stuffed with whatever the hell you want in them. They come from the large population of central and eastern European folks in Cleveland. Common fillings are cheese and potatoes, and/or sauerkraut. Usually topped with sour cream and sautéed onions. The best place to get them is from some old ladies at a random church. Pretty much the only reason to ever go to a church! 3. SUPER STACKED

CORNED BEEF SANDWICH

This town is definitely well-known from all visitors to have amazing corned beef and/or pastrami sandwiches! Go to Slyman’s and you will find such a beast to try to slay. Good luck!

4. THE ROMAN BURGER This is by far the most perfect hangover cure ever! Two hamburger patties placed beside each other on an Italian sub roll. Add grilled salami, assorted Italian luncheon meats, American and Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo and Italian dressing. You can find this at any Mr. Hero location in the Cleveland area. 5. MUSTARD Yeah, you read that right. Mustard. Stadium Mustard, Ballpark Mustard and, our favorite (from Ohio), Mister Mustard. Look ’em up, get ’em and enjoy.

Hail Leaf Satanic Tea Co. BREWS NONE MORE BLACK

I’VE

been in metal bands since I was 11, 12 years old, and super

involved with metal my whole life,” begins Dominic Alvernaz, the Canada-based mastermind behind Satanic Tea Co. Conjoining salacious black metal aesthetics with small-batch, sustainably sourced loose leaf tea, the company was conjured post-tour, when Alvernaz realized he needed something to financially sustain himself between bouts on the road. ¶ “I had come home from working for a band on tour selling merch,” he continues. “I was visiting my dad in Portugal, actually, and he knew someone that was selling tea, that had a tea field.” ¶ The resulting online business eventually evolved into Satanic Tea Co., which sells a variety of tea blends via their online shop, Patreon, and in coffee shops sprinkled across Western Canada and the United States. Blends have been made in conjunction with Midnight, Cradle of Filth, Kittie, Twin Temple and Bloodbath. And you can expect not only round two with Midnight, but the very magazine you’re holding. ¶ As for what’s currently on the menu, the newest blend is Blood Drenched Torture Chamber. It’s a chocolaty blend of black tea, cacao and beet created in conjunction with a pulverizing death metal track and video of the same name. The malevolent music was spawned during the darkest period of COVID-19, when Alvarez realized he desperately missed that part of his life. 32 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

“After two, three, four years of not playing live music, not being in a band or creating in that way, it was having a toll on me,” explains Alvarez, who does vocals for Blood Drenched Torture Chamber and conceptualizes it as being similar in spirit to animated death metal projects Belzebubs and Dethklok. Visually striking, the debut video depicts Alvarez (who goes by the pseudonym Crucifix) in a leather face mask, spikes and chains, pouring a viscous red tea blend over himself in a torture chamber while growling and screaming. If this all sounds a little on the nose, that’s because it is: Satanic Tea Co. is deliberately marketed. “It just seemed natural from being in bands,” Alvarez reasons. “I didn’t always have the control [of] the imagery… I could do whatever I want this way. I just leaned into a very black metal-themed, upside-down crosses-type style. But then it became its own thing. I introduced the Crucifix character, who wears a gimp mask with upside-down crosses, big spikes and corpsepaint.” —SARAH KITTERINGHAM

THREE GENERATIONS OF VEGAN AND VEGETARIAN EXTREME METAL ARTISTS MOVE THE GENRE BEYOND MEAT HOOK SODOMY BY CHRIS DICK

definition, vegetarianism is the practice of not eating meat or fish.

Veganism extends the dietary choice one step further, eschewing the consumption and usage of animal or animal-derived byproducts, as posited by the Vegan Society to “exclude all forms of animal exploitation” in 1951. This is, as I suspect, not new information. According to analytics company Gallup, around five percent of the U.S. population identified as vegetarian or vegan in 2018, or about 16.3 million. Spin up the number globally and it’s approximately 12 percent of the world’s 2018 citizenry. Proportionally speaking, it would stand to reason that these stats are also applicable to the very genres and subgenres of musical extremity we consider our heart and home. The path to today hasn’t been straight or easy. ¶ “People would be shocked to hear what we went through back then,” says Earth Crisis and Freya vocalist Karl Buechner, who became vegetarian at 16 and vegan two years later. “We couldn’t be Agnostic Front, Minor Threat, Sick of It All or Youth of Today. We had to stick out. And we did with our activist lyrics, technical proficiency and songwriting. We had so much opposition everywhere. Labels didn’t want to sign us, promoters didn’t want to book us and some people were very against what we stood for. We had cigarettes, beer and dead mice thrown at us. Entire delis were thrown at us. All because we challenged—and we’re still challenging—the status quo.”

34 : AU PR G IULS2T022012:2D: EDCEI B C IEBLE L

British psychopathological gore legends Carcass weren’t as ostentatious in their contracarnivorous stance. Certainly, the world reeled between the indecent Reek of Putrefaction (1988) and obscene Symphonies of Sickness (1989), but there was no formal declaration of vegetarianism and veganism by the then-ascendant Liverpudlians. Under Carcass’s carneous surface, the mores were there, however. Amid flashing images of animal testing, former drummer Ken Owen said, “Animal and human meat are one and the same” in 1991’s Hard ‘N’ Heavy: Grindcore VHS. “We’ve always wanted to live by example,” says Carcass vocalist/bassist Jeff Walker, citing anarcho-punk outfit Flux of Pink Indians as one of many gateways into his animal-conscious lifestyle. “We were never that obvious about it—in fact, we were against it. I remember when we [were distributed by] Combat in the late ’80s, they wanted us to make a big fuss about it as a way to market and sell our music. We never really got on board with that. Now, JEFF WA LK ER PHOTO BY E S TER SEGA RR A

everyone’s quite obvious about their intentions, and it’s one big advertisement.” Right or wrong, Walker’s not far off, but that’s probably beside the point. Taking a stand visually and lyrically is integral to the message, and subsequently the corresponding culture, which is often centered on animal rights first and foremost, and everything else after. This ties back to when Earth Crisis espoused the efforts of organizations like Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Earth First! and the Sea Shepherds against a backdrop of heavy, proficient and lyrically poignant anthems, but the tendrils of the past are strong in the current generation in bands like Heaven Shall Burn, Rotten Sound and Sect, as well as newcomers Propitious Vegetation and Animals Killing People. “We have merch designs that deal with vegetarianism and veganism,” says Maik Weichert, guitarist of Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn. “We also sell benefit designs to support the Sea Shepherds. [I will say] we have always been very outspoken about our vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. Our songs ‘Voice of the Voiceless’ or ‘The Disease’ are good examples.” American-Canadian vegan straight-edge outfit Sect go even further. Imagery, lyrics, message and music form a cohesive, pissed-off whole. “Lyrically and visually, I try to tie veganism to a bigger picture as it relates to the inhumanities we visit on ourselves and each other,” offers Sect’s Chris Colohan. “We’re rightly appalled by the predatory things we do to each other, but we turn around and live entire lives seldom secondguessing why we even have a frame of reference for treating anything ‘like animals’ or like pieces of meat. It’s the ultimate ‘Other,’ a servile subspecies, and a shackle doesn’t know or care what it’s clamped around. That’s actually the theme of Blood of the Beasts, the last Sect LP, and the song ‘Like Animals.’” Sect are obviously not the first band to scrawl down and vociferate aggression against the food industrial complex, animal testers and trophy hunters. Earth Crisis lined up vivisectionists and advocated for their extermination in “All Out War” (from 1992’s All Out War EP) while “Deliverance” (from 1995’s Destroy the Machines) argued with similar pugnacious vigor for their cruel execution on streets. Carcass were no strangers to “alternative solutions” to plant food supply chains (humans as fertilizer) on “Inpropagation” (from 1991’s Necroticism). Finnish grindcore mavericks Rotten Sound have been mostly figurative in their lyrical presentation of animal suffering at the hands of mankind’s anthropocentric hubris, but “Nutrition” (from 2018’s Suffer to Abuse EP) eschews metaphor for graphic intensity.

“I have written [a] few lyrics around animal rights,” says Keijo “G” Niinimaa, who is vegan. “Mostly from different angles over the years. ‘Nutrition,’ for example, is a graphic presentation of the last day of a cow—from her perspective. Also, I would like to ask people to look up some facts from Animalia, PETA or other animal rights organizations to learn why going vegan is not just a healthy or ecological option, but also mental hedonism.”

It’s the ultimate

‘OTHER,’

a servile subspecies, and a shackle

DOESN’T KNOW OR CARE WHAT IT’S CLAMPED AROUND. CHRIS COLOHAN, SECT

New York City death metal combo Animals Killing People blast savagely across two fulllengths and a handful of EPs. The group is currently writing a new album and has promised to continue to vividly capture pro-animal sentiment just like they did on brutally direct lyrics to songs like “Human Disgusting Species,” “Wrong Lunch,” “Human Hunting Season” and the aptly named “Kentucky Fried Killing,” which sports the line “Producing genetic deformities / dreadful tortures with no reason / trapped in cages for life / with no escape, human's fault.” “Yes, the lyrics are gory,” says Animals Killing People drummer Wilson Rairán. “We play brutal music, so there was no escape from that. I also want to wake people up. I wanted to raise consciousness about animal rights and animal suffering. We kill millions of animals every day for food. We don’t have to. The world can be a vegan planet. We just have to try.”

Artistically, Animals Killing People have gruesome covers (check out Phylum MorphApokalupsis) to coincide with their lyrical and musical posture. They’ve signed to brutal death metal-only label Sevared Records for a reason. Nestled in the bosom of the U.S. heartland, Tennessee-based death-grind outfit Propitious Vegetation aren’t as vitriolic lyrically, but sole proprietor Zack Plunkett demonstrates his viewpoints vocally (wicked pig squeals and hardcore-inspired roars) and visually through goreobsessed album art, à la Symphonies of Sickness. “Once I became more aware of the violence and torture against animals, I started to explore [animal rights-based] themes on my EP Prime Cut Coffin,” he says. “Since then, the project became an outlet for me to spread awareness and express my anger towards those injustices. This is shown on the following releases The Slow Rotting Process of our Kind and Ethikill Submission.” Perhaps the tide is turning, likely for a myriad of reasons. Since the late ’80s, vegetarianism and veganism food options have (and continue to) transformed dramatically. Dietary flagellation of the dust cake and egg replacer era is gone. British weekly The Economist declared 2019 to be “The Year of the Vegan.” Since then, food technology—particularly in plant-based substitutes—by companies like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, Amy’s Kitchen, Archer-DanielsMidland Company and a host of others—has iterated, innovated and exploded. Just this year, Fortune Business Insights predicts the vegan food market alone to grow from $26.16 billion in 2021 to $61.35 billion by 2028. Vegetarianism and veganism are becoming culturally and socially accepted norms—not just in the U.S. but in most countries traditionally accustomed to animalcentric industries. Still, there’s hardship. “It was very hard at first because people were always making rude remarks or gestures for choosing not to eat,” Plunkett. “In my family, everyone has gotten used to it. Now, they always bring veggie burgers or other alternatives for me. Sometimes I get asked why I am not eating meat— [that’s when I get] to share my point of view.” Native Floridian Brian Manowitz, the host of the popular YouTube series Vegan Black Metal Chef, author of The Seitanic Spellbook and primary of industrial black metal outfit Forever Dawn, also isn’t deterred. “Being into metal primes the mind to be aware of social conditioning,” he says. “That’s why I think there’s a special connection between metal and veganism. But times are changing. I’m in Nowheresville, South Carolina at the moment, and there’s a vegan food truck that’s 12 minutes away. It looks amazing!” D EDCEI B C IEBLE:LA:UAGPURSI T L 2022 1 : 35

 The Devil’s Hands Kindred in San Diego hates god, loves delicious vegan food

Good! and Bus iness Is d

Decibel highlights eight essential metal heavy metal-themed restaurants, where EXTREME KITCHENS demand EXTREME RESPONSES BY NICK GREEN

36 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

are now in the golden age of heavy metalthemed establishments. Spots like Kuma’s Corner in Chicago and Austin’s Hoeks Death Metal Pizza (R.I.P.) used to be curious oddities for initiates only; now you can go almost anywhere in the world and find a place to grab a meal where extreme music powers the menu. Expect something to suit all tastes, too—double-patty smashburgers, French charcuterie, elegant vegan fare, a stiff cup of freshly roasted coffee and “metal” versions of everything from yakitori to poutine.

GRILL ’EM ALL (ALHAMBRA, CA) “I like being an underdog.” That’s Trappist drum-

mer Ryan Harkins, who co-own s the Grill ’Em All restaurant with his longtime pal (and former bandmate) Matt Chernus. Harkins had his first experience working in a restaurant while he was in college in Columbus, and he was hooked. “There was no preparation; they just threw me on the line the first day,” he notes. “I came out of that first shift feeling totally energized. For me, it was the same pressure to perform that you feel when you’re in a band. Being onstage is just like being in a kitchen: If you fuck up, everybody knows it. But if you have an off night, you always have the chance to redeem yourself the next shift.” Harkins and Chernus both moved to Los Angeles in 2008 to escape their jobs in the service industry. The pair realized that they didn’t have the capital to open their own restaurant, but something at the scale of a food truck made a lot of sense, so they called around until they found a truck they could afford to rent and picked a name based on their shared love of egregious puns. “I’m not kidding when I say that both of our bank accounts were at zero when we finished loading the Grill ’Em All truck with sodas from the commissary,” says Harkins. “But with our first sale, we were back in the black. We’d lived so sparingly for the rest of our lives that it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. But looking back on it, we had no choice but to succeed.” The Grill ’Em All truck also got an early boost with an appearance on the inaugural season of the Food Network’s The Great Food Truck Race in 2010. Harkins and Chernus were convinced that they’d never win, so they decided to source all of their food locally and serve the freshest possible ingredients. To everyone’s surprise, Grill ’Em All made it through to the finale, then cruised to victory with its menu of overstuffed burgers with hand-thrown half-pound patties. Prize

winnings were modest, but the television appearance provided extra exposure to Grill ’Em All. Harkins and Chernus then decided to build on the truck’s following by transitioning fully to a brick-and-mortar operation in 2013. Harkins has also worked jobs in marketing and is aware of the power of branding. “That was what allowed us to survive the first year as a restaurant,” he notes. “The name plus the quality of the food is what helped us get through the second. If you’re a heavy metal restaurant, the deck is already stacked against you. That three-year period of running the truck was crucial in getting the word out and allowing people to try our food inexpensively. By the time the restaurant opened, we’d already gotten awards for ‘Best Burger in L.A.’ and stuff like that. Right now, I love walking into the restaurant and seeing happy faces, even when Cannibal Corpse is blasting on the stereo. I want to spread that everywhere.”

KINDRED (SAN DIEGO, CA) KINDRED’s owner Kory Stetina was drawn to veganism through his immersion in punk and hardcore, and he felt a similar calling when it came time to transition his pop-up dinner series into a full-service vegan restaurant and cocktail bar in 2016. Stetina keeps the menu seasonal, with an emphasis on fresh ingredients and umami flavors (miso, za’atar seasoning, chimichurri and some nods to Memphis BBQ), an experience that is tied together by the kitchen’s stunning plating. “Heavy music culture, ethics and aesthetics are deeply baked into everything that KINDRED is,” notes Stetina, highlighting the restaurant’s curated bathroom playlist that is literally 12 straight hours of Sleep’s Dopesmoker. “We have a strong and enduring sense of teamwork, family and community. Whether accidental or not, we’ve built a shrine to heavy music culture without alienating the uninitiated.”

I love walking into the restaurant and seeing happy faces,

EVEN WHEN CANNIBAL CORPSE IS BLASTING ON THE STEREO. I want to spread that everywhere. RYAN HARKINS, GRILL ’EM ALL

Grilled by (Mega)deth  Master grillers Ryan Harkin (r) and Matt Chernus (l) pose with Megadeth main man Dave Mustaine at their Alhambra restaurant DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 37

EXTREMELY EXTREME

RESTAURANTS

it represents an act of brutality, but there’s also a degree of finesse that’s required to do it well.

 Caring and killing (and also caring)

Melissa Pellegrino and Pat Alfiero (l) are Philadelphia’s butchers by birth while Mike Barone (r) opens his doors to the city’s heshers with bleeding hearts

PAT ALFIERO, HEAVY METAL SAUSAGE CO.

ZUCCHINI KILL (AUSTIN, TX)

HEAVY METAL SAUSAGE CO.

THE KOVEN (OTTAWA)

The DIY spirit runs deep at Jessica Freda and

(PHILADELPHIA, PA)

The menu at the Koven leans into some dis-

Cece Loessin’s vegan/gluten-free and unabashedly feminist bakery, which recently expanded into a second location near the UT Austin campus. “I think with both of us growing up in the punk and metal communities, we have adopted the whole no gods/no masters/no bosses mentality that really pushes us to make sure Zucchini Kill is successful,” observes Freda. Zucchini Kill has been turning out gluten-free and dairy-free cookies, exquisitely decorated cakes, doughnuts and cupcakes since 2017. They’ve even created a tribute to the first allfemale death metal band. “You should hear the struggle people have trying to order the ‘LavenDerketa.’ Another good one is the ‘Fig Destroyer,’ which the old ladies love,” laughs Freda. “It is never not gold to hear an 80-year-old grandma ask for one. It’s just the best.”

What started as a side hustle making hot dogs

tinctly Canadian offerings, like 17 different types of poutine and several items that feature the Montreal delicacy smoked meat. But owner Mehdi Galehdar recommends that patrons try his signature creation, the Chaotic Cthulhu: one pound of beef stuffed with cheese curds, tucked in between a pair of grilled cheese sandwiches, complete with bacon tendrils. Gandehar, who grew up in Iran, simply wanted to combine his experience working in restaurants with his lifelong obsession with metal. The Koven has already received drop-ins from the likes of Judas Priest, Max Cavalera and Deicide. “I always thought it would be cool to have a place where you could headbang to Immortal, Behemoth or Iron Maiden while stuffing your face with unholy greasy burgers,” he explains. “So, I merged meat and metal.”

EL CUCUY (NEW ORLEANS, LA) “Metalheads are some of the nicest, most genu-

ine people on the planet. We’re naturally pretty good at hospitality,” notes Austin Lane, who spent a year building out the El Cucuy space before launching the business during the pandemic. Lane has envisioned El Cucuy (named after the Mexican boogeyman) as a vehicle for transporting the Mexican street cuisine he first experienced in Texas border country to his adopted hometown of New Orleans. The menu includes Mexican comfort classics like al pastor, carne asada and nopales (cactus paddles), served as tacos with handmade tortillas or tucked into heartier tortas. “El Cucuy is a reflection of the people, culture and music I enjoy,” adds Lane. “I’m sure we’ve surprised a few folks when a heavily tattooed server delivers a margarita with a smile while Orange Goblin is blasting on the speakers.” 38 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

when Pat Alfiero was laid off from his job in the early stages of the pandemic has transitioned into a full-time brick-and-mortar operation. Alfiero preps mousses, pates and Old-World specialties like blood sausage, while his partner Melissa Pellegrino slings elegant sandwiches on house-baked bread. Alfiero’s menu is a testament to his own exhaustive research: “There’s a much deeper world to sausage than most people realize. It covers any type of meat product that is ground, from bologna to bratwurst. There’s an Eastern European tradition of smoking those meats, plus the Italian style of salami and salumi. Making sausage is kind of like death metal—it represents an act of brutality, but there’s also a degree of finesse that’s required to do it well.”

GRINDCORE HOUSE (PHILADELPHIA, PA) “In the beginning, our instinct was to be really clever with all the item names, like ‘Cattle Decaffeination’ or whatever. I quickly realized that the motivation for Grindcore House really boiled down to creating a space I felt comfortable spending time in,” notes owner Mike Barone. Perseverance has paid off with a longtime South Philly brick-and-mortar space and a second location in West Philly that opened at the end of 2019. Both locations are currently operating as take-out only, and Barone has been revamping the menu by adding more vegan food options to go along with the lattes, iced drinks and Americanos. “Both locations are doing well now, but the pandemic definitely transformed us,” he adds. “Our ability to survive the turmoil of the past few years is largely due to us adapting.”

LE BLACK DOG (PARIS) According to Jessica Rozanes, who runs events for Le Black Dog, the Argentinian steakhouse was one of H.R, Giger’s favorite haunts. But the Giger original art on the restaurant’s walls is not half as trippy as the menu, which features grass-fed beef from South America, empanadas and chili con carne. Now in its 20th year of continuous operation, Le Black Dog is a popular destination for metal fans before and after shows at its sister venue Le Klub (where Rozanes also books concerts). She’s a fan of the roasted camembert bread bowl with potato wedges, but highlights that the restaurant is mostly known for its highquality meat. “Food is something you can’t live without,” she observes. “I think when you’re passionate about something as gut-wrenching as extreme music, you probably also appreciate a very good meal.”

PHOTOS BY A.J. KINNEY

MAKING SAUSAGE IS KIND OF LIKE DEATH METAL—

CURTIS DUFFY,

EVER (CHICAGO) Curtis Duffy is the chef and co-owner of Ever and the subject of the documentary For Grace, which chronicles his turbulent childhood and rise through the culinary world. He was recently awarded two Michelin stars for his work at Ever. Has there been any point where your faith in your abilities has been shaken?

I had a lot of those people around when I first started working in kitchens that were like, “You’re never going to make money. A restaurant is a terrible business.” Maybe it was a sign that I should’ve been considering other career paths. But I didn’t want to think about anything else. People who are successful in life love what they do. I was driven to be great at something. Whether or not I made money was irrelevant.

WE GRILL FIVE METAL CHEFS AND THE SECRETS OF THE DARK (CULINARY) ARTS BY NICK GREEN

What are some mistakes that you commonly see people making early in their careers?

One of the things that I always tell my young guys is to put their heads down and focus. Five years from now, they’ll be way ahead of the game, rather than rushing to become a sous chef and then realizing that they can’t even butcher a fish or clean a chicken properly. Some people are too eager to get ahead and they don’t want to put the time in at the beginning of their careers. You have a Danzig skull tattoo. Have you been able to coax Glenn into any of your restaurants?

A great friend of mine is also close with Glenn Danzig, and he surprised my wife and I by inviting us out to dinner in Los Angeles. I nearly lost it when I showed up and Glenn Danzig was at the table. Glenn is extremely knowledgeable about food and loves to talk about it. Having him tell me how to prepare and season certain things— that was pretty fucking awesome.

TWO

and a half years into a global pandemic that shows

few signs of abating, the restaurant industry remains in a state of upheaval, renewal and regrowth. Decibel checked in with five of the culinary world’s best and brightest (and metal-loving) chefs to find out what this group of James Beard Award, Michelin star, Chopped and Iron Chef America winners think about the industry’s prospects for recovery and where food might be going next.

40 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

Why should people make time for food as an experience?

Obviously, it’s not a necessity. Coming to a restaurant of our caliber represents a choice of being able to do something for yourself that you love to do. People who come to Ever are not there just to have a meal. They want to be pampered for a few hours and forget about all of the shit that’s going on in their lives. Anybody can go down the street and get food just to fill up. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MUSER

OLD SCHOOL DEATH METAL

BRIAN TSAO,

LIZ JOHNSON,

Brian Tsao is the former chef de cuisine at Beauty & Essex in New York. When he’s not sweating it out at his recently opened Brooklyn walk-up Mission Sandwich Social, he plays guitar in the metal band Loss Becomes.

Liz Johnson is a veteran of multiple kitchens and a James Beard Award nominee with her husband Will Aghajanian. Both co-own the dining hotspot Horses, which opened at the site of the legendary Hollywood haunt Ye Coach & Horses.

MISSION SANDWICH SOCIAL (NYC)

You beat Bobby Flay with your family’s recipe for Korean short ribs. Did you get to take home any trophies, like one of Bobby’s fingers?

I wish. I got to walk away with street cred, but I can’t pay my rent with that. Why sandwiches? And why now?

I was on a random trip to California and one of my buddies took me to lunch at a sandwich place in San Francisco called Little Lucca. I was absolutely blown away by it. The sandwich style in San Francisco is very cool and different—loaded up and saucy with a unique bread called “Dutch crunch.” I saw it as an opportunity to bring that to New York. My mother is Korean and my father is Chinese, and restaurant owners would have me lean into that. But now I’m liberated to do my own take on a Cubano or whatever. There’s really no limit to doing sandwiches. What are the essential ingredients for a good sandwich?

Cooking is a combination of ratios, timing and technique. With sandwiches, you need to be focusing on the ratio of meat to bread to cheese to sauce to condiments. If it’s a meaty sandwich, how will you balance it out? A classic corned beef or pastrami sandwich where the meat is stacked a mile high can be awesome, but that’s not something I’d have every day. The pandemic has been particularly hard on the hospitality industry. Did this give you pause when considering whether to open a restaurant?

Well, I started working on this project a month before everything went to shit. So, I was freaking out that it wasn’t going to happen, especially when things got shut down again. I was stuck at home and I challenged myself to gain a new skill or to have six-pack abs. I, uh, drank a lot of six-packs. And I started a YouTube channel and learned a ton about editing and video production. This is what led me to create a bunch of awesome new sandwiches. I’m very proud of that.

HORSES (LOS ANGELES) HARROWED (SWE) · PHANTOM CORPORATION (GER) Poison Death · Banner Of Hatred Limited vinyl, splatter already sold out!

What were some of your earliest experiences with food?

I wasn’t really exposed to food at a young age, but my mom has an essay that I wrote in kindergarten, and it was like: “I want to be a chef when I grow up, and my favorite food is shrimp scampi!” To the outside observer, it seems like you’ve approached your career as an itinerant, where you’ve never been in one place for too long. Is that by design or happenstance?

KADAVERFICKER Kaos · Nekros · Kosmos Wild mix - Death Metal, Grindcore, Black Metal, even normal Metal. Everything possible by these crazy Germans. Last copies!

I guess I never thought anybody would follow my career path, so it’s weird to hear someone say that. But it’s also 100 percent true. When I’m not learning new techniques or doing new things, I start to go crazy. I also don’t like to plan and I don’t want to settle down. When something comes up and I feel that it is an awesome opportunity and I want to be involved in it, I’ll just do it. What parallels do you see, if anything, between extreme music and food?

Both are acquired tastes. The more you learn about food, the higher your standard is and the more you are unsatisfied with things. It becomes harder to get excited about what you’re eating. But at the end of the day, you get to try all of these amazing dishes that maybe you couldn’t understand before. Some people would totally be happy eating at Chili’s for the rest of their lives. But when I meet creative people and they have bad taste in food, I’m always like, “Huh.” Maybe you should induce new customers to come to Horses by offering to let them spit the food out into your hand if they don’t like it.

The way we set up this restaurant was to ensure that people wouldn’t want to spit out the food. We tried to accommodate everyone from all walks of life in this room. We don’t give a shit whether they prefer to eat a burger or whatever fancy stuff we’re making that day. Maybe that’s the COVID effect: We just want people to be happy. We’re trying to be a fan favorite.

ARROGANZ dark and deathless Doom death metal, heavy as lava. Amazing vinyl release of the debut album with special bonus track.

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D E C I B E L : A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 : 41

EXTREMELY EXTREME

ALEX STUPAK,

EMPELLÓN (NYC) Alex Stupak is the founder of the Empellón restaurant group and a former pastry chef at high-end establishments. His 2015 cookbook, Tacos: Recipes and Provocations, offers a radical take on Mexican cuisine. Is a burrito a taco?

It is not, in my opinion. Because I define a lot of things by their physical form and the way you eat them, and you consume a burrito and a taco differently. I try to avoid these debates. What lessons have you taken from working in the modernist kitchens Alinea and wd-50? Does it reverberate in what you are doing now?

Alex Stupak is out to explore the shocking final frontiers of food

ANDREW CLARKE,

ACME FIRE CULT (LONDON) Andrew Clarke is an award-winning chef based in London and one of the founders of Pilot Light, a charity focused on mental health in the hospitality industry. Clarke’s newest venture, Acme Fire Cult, features an open-kitchen concept where chefs cook over live fires. What kind of impact do you think the pandemic has had on the restaurant industry?

I do notice that there’s a staff shortage around the world. During Brexit and then the pandemic, I think people were like, “Fuck this, we’re not working here.” The industry showed how fragile it could be. Working from home is not a viable concept in hospitality, so that left a lot of people feeling very unsupported. I’m lucky to have come out of the pandemic with the concept for Acme Fire Cult and to have people wanting to come work with us—open-flame cooking is unique. How do you keep from stagnating with your projects?

I’ve always tried to go in a different direction. When everyone else comes over my way, I find a new path. I’m 44 years old now and I’ve been working in kitchens for the last 23 years, so 42 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

I’ve learned a lot. I’m more inclined these days to intuit what people like and to work within those parameters. I am concerned with the bottom line of doing whatever gets bums in seats, after all. We’re not trying to outdo our peers in innovation, but we are trying to do some good for the planet by reducing waste and using byproducts. Did your experience working with the mental health charity Pilot Light alter your approach to food?

I learned about how food affects the gut and how the gut produces most of the body’s serotonin. We can eat better, and we can fix some of our mental health issues through our diet. If we all start eating differently, it could improve our immune systems and minimize inflammation and ailments. When I put things on a menu, I don’t just do it because it looks nice on a plate. What do you see as the next trends in cuisine?

I think everyone’s starting to play it a bit safe, unfortunately. Smaller cities have always taken their cues from the larger ones. So, if the biggest cities aren’t coming up with anything new, how can cuisine possibly advance?

What is the most “metal” type of cooking?

Pastry is the most extreme of all of the disciplines of cooking. If I serve you a steak, whether it’s A5 Wagyu from Japan or something from the local grocery store, it will always be a steak. Pastry is pretty magical, like roaming through the aisles of a toy store. There’s another level of manipulation. You’re as close to making a new type of food as you can get. Empellón is now a restaurant group with multiple offshoots and plans to open three more properties this year. How do you maintain a unified aesthetic?

Most people only care whether it’s good Mexican food or not. If you are into learning more, there are very deep reasons behind the choices we make at Empellón. I believe that restaurants should be able to wash over you and be a sensory experience. If the menu comes with too many instructions, then it’s like listening to a prog metal album where you don’t know if it’s something to actually enjoy or whether they made it to humble other musicians. I want talent and greatness to be applied to what matters. Music or tacos, I just want people to fucking bang their heads to it.

PHOTO BY EVAN SUNG

 The yellow GOAT of Mexican food

Very much so, just not in obvious ways. The molecular gastronomy movement came about when a group of scientists realized that we knew more about the surface of the moon than what was happening when you put a steak on the grill. I was very much attracted to that movement early in my career, but what I always cared most about was shocking people. When I turned 30 and decided I wanted to open my own restaurant, I found so much more profundity within Mexican cooking than what I was actually pedigreed to do.

EAT ME ALIVE

THE CHEF DE METAL JOHN HURKES T SUPPLIES A RECIPE FI FOR THE (METAL) GODS

YOU

can't be “Hell Bent for Leather” without burnin' through some steaks. One of my favorite pastimes the last few years has been motorcycling and truck-camping through the Southwest. There’s nothing more killer than cranking some Judas Priest and heading out to the highway. The following recipe was one I first made after a grocery run in Tucson and fired up in the Sonoran Desert. Rob Halford lives somewhere out in Arizona and I like to think he’s probably rippin’ down some of the same highways on motorcycle while I’m tearing through this fucking steak! —JOHN HURKES

JUDAS PRIEST RIBEYES AND GREEN MANALISHI SAUCE (WITH PEAR CACTI): SERVES ENOUGH FOR ONE (1) METALHEAD INGREDIENTS: 12 to 16 oz. ribeye 2 tablespoons canola oil

STEAK RUB: 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 1 teaspoon palm sugar 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1¼ teaspoon salt 1¼ teaspoon black pepper 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

GREEN MANALISHI SAUCE: ¼ cup finely chopped pear cacti (cleaned and all prongs removed) ½ cup chopped fresh cilantro ¼ cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley ½ tablespoon fish sauce ½ cup olive oil 2 large garlic cloves, minced 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar ¼ cup shallots minced 1 tablespoon honey Salt to taste Scallions and lime wedges to garnish

FOR THE STEAK: Start by listening to British Steel or any of the other master classics by these Metal Gods. Next, mix together the steak rub ingredients and generously rub it onto the steak. Heat the canola oil in a ripping hot cast iron pan and cook the steak for about seven minutes on each side. Turn down the high heat as needed to avoid burning. There should be a nice sear on both sides. You do not want a sad steak of destiny. Cover the pan on low heat to reach the desired doneness. Remove the meat and place on a cutting board before slicing.

FOR THE SAUCE: In a medium sized metal bowl whisk together the pear cacti, cilantro, parsley, olive oil, fish sauce, garlic, shallots, honey, red wine vinegar, red pepper flakes, lemon and lime juice. Season it with salt to taste. It also helps to make the sauce the night before, cooking it after midnight. Serve it on the sliced steak and garnish with chopped scallions and lime wedges. For a heavy metal explosion, pile it onto anything from yuca fries to sticky rice. The flavors are screaming… Screaming for Vengeance!

DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 43

interview by

QA j. bennett

WI T H

CAUCHEMAR’s frontwoman on Canadian cuisine, poison mushrooms and the band’s new album JU B CEILB E L 44 : A ULY G U 2S0T2220:2 D 2 E: CDI E

IT’S

been six years since French-Canadian doom

dealers Cauchemar graced us with a new album. Granted, two of those years don’t count because they spent them under strict national lockdown rules during the pandemic. But as it turns out, the band had already decided to take their time with their third record, Rosa Mystica. In moving from Montreal to rural Quebec, vocalist Annick Giroux and her husband—and Cauchemar guitarist—François Patry wanted to slow everything down a bit. “We just wanted a different lifestyle,” Giroux says. “We live about two hours from Montreal now. There’s a lot of land, so we were able to do a big garden. As a foodie, being able to grow my own vegetables and herbs has been amazing. And we can play music as loud as we want because there’s no neighbors.” ¶ Giroux brought her passion for food and loud music together in her metal-themed cookbook, Hellbent for Cooking. Originally published in 2010, it features recipes collected from various metal bands—members of Autopsy, Possessed and Kreator contribute some mouth-watering highlights—and tested/refined by Giroux herself. Since moving to the countryside, she’s been expanding her culinary repertoire and foraging for mushrooms while championing Canadian metal through her label, Temple of Mystery. How did you approach Rosa Mystica differently than your last album, Chapelle ardente?

Because we live in a completely different setting now, I think the songs reflect that a little bit. We had more time to develop the lyrics and the music, and to really create demos. The guy who recorded the album for us is Chany Pilote, the guitarist and singer of the band Inepsy, which was really something special for us because we really love his band. Every cigarette break, we would go outside and he would tell us about his touring days. He has great stories, so the atmosphere was really rock ‘n’ roll. We drank a lot of beer during the recording! And then Alan Jones from Pagan Altar did an amazing guitar solo on a song. We’re honored to have him on the record. What can you tell us about the lyrical themes?

We’ve always written about similar themes in Cauchemar, but this one is perhaps more about the Cathars. They were a medieval sect, and there are a lot of songs we did about that subject. Back then—like the 12th century—the Cathars were considered heretics because they wanted to be pure of heart. We also have a song based on a Lovecraft story, and a song influenced by Fulcanelli, who was an alchemist. What’s the story behind the Lovecraft song?

It’s called “Danger de nuit”—night danger—and it’s about whippoorwills. If you hear these birds in the morning after somebody dies, it means P H O T O B Y N AT H A N I E L H É B E R T

that they didn’t capture the soul of the person who died. If they stop singing, it means they captured the soul and the person is stuck with those birds forever. Lovecraft mentions them in The Dunwich Horror, and it’s probably the most hard rock song of the album.

He also brought the double-bass pedal. There’re a few parts on the new record that are a little more speed metal, and he’s really tight with that. Plus he brings us youth, because he’s younger than us! And he wrote a whole song for us by himself—“Volcan.” He’s the only Cauchemar member to ever write a song besides me and François, so that’s quite something. And, actually, for the shows we have coming up, we’re going to have Occult Burial’s guitar player on second guitar. So, we’ll have two-thirds of Occult Burial in Cauchemar. You’re releasing Rosa Mystica on your own label, Temple of Mystery. You also put out Occult Burial’s excellent 2020 release Burning Eerie Lore and the Trapped Under Ice compilation you mentioned earlier. Why did you start the label?

I want to be as much involved as possible in the metal scene because it’s my passion. It’s one thing to be a singer in a band or have a fanzine—which I had before—but to actually release records, I think that’s the ultimate way to contribute to a scene. So, it was a little bit of a dream to start the label and produce records. I started slowly with cassettes and 7-inches, and then we started doing actual LPs and distribution and stuff like that. But the reason I started it was to make a difference and bring forth real Canadian metal. We’ve done bands from all over the world, like Pagan Altar and Communion, but we mostly love releasing Canadian metal.

Do you read a lot of Lovecraft?

I used to, but nowadays not that much. I’ve been reading a lot of biographies in the past two years. I recently read Steve Sylvester’s Death SS biography. Have you read it? Yeah, it’s crazy. I wonder how much of it is true, but it’s a good story either way.

Yeah, like all the orgies. I mean, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. It sounds so over the top. But then again, it’s Italy in the ’70s. But like you said, it’s a good story even if it’s not 100 percent true. It’s probably one of my favorite biographies that I’ve read recently. Rosa Mystica is your first album with Joel Ladouceur from Occult Burial on drums. What did he bring to the table?

Joel is a really good friend of ours, and I’ve been following Occult Burial since the beginning. We recorded one track with him before— on the Trapped Under Ice compilation—but this is the first full-length. When we play with him, he just understands perfectly what we want to do. We don’t even need to communicate. The chemistry is perfect.

Fenriz would approve.

[Laughs] Canadian metal! You’ve put out a bunch of Pagan Altar records and reissues. They’ve been around since the late ’70s, but they’re still pretty obscure. How were you first exposed to them?

I think I read about them in a forum around 2005. I ordered Volume I, which is now called Judgment of the Dead. Then Mythical & Magical came out in 2006, and I became completely obsessed with it. I don’t think it left my CD player for six months. I flew to see them—I think it was their second show ever—in London when I was 19 years old. It was really amazing and special, and I became friends with them. Then in 2010, I booked their first North American show in Montreal. When their singer Terry [Jones] died in 2015, I thought the band was completely over. But then we were visiting the guitarist and they got me and François drunk and said we should release their new album. It was like our fifth release—we were like, “Are you sure?”—but we took it as a chance to grow as a label. I still feel really honored that they chose us for that. DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 45

 Kitchen nightmares

Giroux (center r) and Cauchemar find doom is a dish best served with mushrooms

There’s a white mushroom that looks really delicious, but it’s called Angel of Death—like the Slayer song. It’s one of the most poisonous mushrooms that you can eat. If you do, every part of your body slowly stops functioning. You can’t just start tasting mushrooms to see what happens. which ones aren’t. Obviously, people died during that process.

It’s not that exciting, but I’ve done a squash macaroni and cheese. It’s really good—it’s a little bit sweeter than regular macaroni and cheese. It’s completely made from scratch with squashes that I grow in my garden. You purée the squash and make like a béchamel. Then you put the cheese in the purée. So, it’s creamy, but maybe healthier than regular macaroni and cheese? It’s like an adult macaroni and cheese.

Yeah, I always wonder if they used prisoners of war or hostages to figure that stuff out. “Okay, today we’re gonna make you this dish to see if you die…” It’s fascinating.

I hear you’ve been foraging mushrooms. What do you make with them?

Yes, I’ve been really into mushroom hunting. Last year I picked a lot of chanterelles and porcini mushrooms, and I froze them. We eat a lot of them during the season, but I’m like a squirrel—I keep reserves for the rest of the year. So, I’m gonna make this amazing recipe I have for chanterelle pie—I’ll send it to you. It has gruyere cheese, and there’s a lot of butter involved. I made it for the guys in the band Freeways when they were here, and they said it tasted like a Michelin star dish! Are there any poisonous mushrooms in your area?

Oh yeah. There’s a white mushroom that looks really delicious, but it’s called Angel of Death— like the Slayer song. It’s one of the most poisonous mushrooms that you can eat. If you do, every part of your body slowly stops functioning. And it’s everywhere here, so there’s a lot of studying involved when you’re picking mushrooms. There’s something like 5,000 different kinds of mushrooms, but only a few are edible. You can’t just start tasting mushrooms to see what happens. It makes you think about how our ancestors figured out which mushrooms are safe and 46 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

Are there any other things you forage?

Soon we’re going to have… fuck, I don’t know what it’s called in English. It’s a native food we have here in Canada. It’s like a fern. Wait—fiddlehead! That’s what it’s called. You can forage it, and it tastes a bit like asparagus. I really love food that is seasonal, because that makes it really special when it happens once a year. Did you find yourself relying on certain comfort foods during lockdown?

beans and chicken drumsticks. It’s made with wine and bacon, and it’s just a really feel-good meal that I make from time to time. There’s also a Japanese udon recipe from Sigh that I like to make. It’s one of my go-tos. The book is out of print. Are there plans to publish a new edition?

That would be really cool. I think the editor, Ian Christe, wanted to do a revised edition with a few more recipes, but I’d like to do a completely new recipe book. I mean, it’s 10 years old, and there’s so many bands since then. But it hasn’t materialized so far. I should probably get in touch with him, because I have two or three people getting in touch with me every week asking where they can get the book.

Where we live is really secluded. The restaurants here are not that good, and they didn’t even do takeout. So, we were always craving Asian or Indian food. I really love Japanese food. For me, it’s such an amazing mix of tastes—a little bit sweet, a little bit umami—and it’s light and healthy. So, I tried to make as much exotic food as I could, and I learned a lot of new techniques. And you know what? A lot of times my food was pretty fucking good!

Richard Christy contributed a cocktail recipe to the book. When was the last time you had a Viking Testicle?

Hellbent for Cooking has been out for over 10 years now. Which are the recipes you find yourself going back to most often?

It depends on the region in Canada, but FrenchCanadian cuisine is pretty influenced by English cuisine. So, we have a lot of meat pies and stews and meatballs. There’s a meat pie I try to do every year that has three different kinds of game— deer, wild rabbit, and this year I did it with bison. Then you add potatoes and homemade broth. Of course, it’s a pie, so there’s dough all around. You cook it slowly for hours, and it feeds 10 people. A lot of the dishes are made for big families, because back in the day everyone was Catholic and they just fornicated and made lots of kids!

I really love the jalapeño bacon bombs. That’s Chris Reifert from Autopsy’s recipe, and it’s fucking good. I made some of those for the Freeways guys, too. They were burning everyone’s mouths, but they kept going back for more. They’re strangely addictive. There’s a recipe from a guy called Shaxul, who used to be in Deathspell Omega, but now he has his own band. It’s a really French recipe that has white

[Laughs] About eight years ago, maybe. The thing is, it needs champagne and fucking vanilla vodka, so the Viking Testicle is an expensive drink. In the last interview you did with Decibel, you mentioned that you like to discover old ways of making traditional Canadian cuisine. What kind of dishes in particular?

PHOTO BY NATHANIEL HÉBERT

This is a food-themed issue, so we have to ask what you’ve been cooking lately.

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

kevin stewart-panko

Slaughterhouse-Four the making of Cattle Decapitation’s The Harvest Floor

the time the late ’00s

technicality, frenetic rhythmic pulsation, some Naked City-like quick-change sensihad rolled around, San bility and ridiculously over-the-top guitar Diego’s deathgrind work forced into death metal’s then-tworubber-burners Cattle and-a-half-decade-old maw. Decapitation were In addition to blasting the techalready years deep into a career of shattering musical land speed nique, extremity and sweep-picking records, visually confronting audiences upward with flare gun urgency, Cattle who’d thought they’d seen it all and Decapitation were also learning how to poking holes in death metal tropes via a wrangle their tools into the creation of message that, in part, spoke out against actual compositions. And as more coheanimal cruelty while calling for a culling sion took shape, it was augmented by of the cancer of humanity from its host, experimental layers of noise, classical, Planet Earth. While the topics explored on and vocal instrumentation courtesy of DBHOF212 their five previous records and the thenan impressive collection of guests and forthcoming The Harvest Floor may not have producer Billy Anderson’s unrestricted possessed the prescience of vocalist Travis open mind. Once everything was paired Ryan bellowing “Bring Back the Plague” on with Ryan and Benscoter’s bleak and wry The Harvest Floor 2019’s Death Atlas (only to have the world conceptual dystopia, the impact was posishut down at the hands of the plague less tively pipe bomb-like. M E TA L BLA D E than three months later), THF certainly As they themselves describe it, JA NUA R Y 1 9 , 20 0 9 went out of its way to continue foisting The Harvest Floor was where Cattle Animal instincts the band’s favorite topics onto center Decapitation started to come into their stage: pointing out the folly of humanity; own and go all-in on their future—a stepping outside our own meat sacks for a future that has delivered nigh on 15 years few minutes to empathetically view how of rubbery genre-defying/defining death mankind is viewed by non-mankind; and, metal that not only scythed their own generally, underscoring how everything is fucked. path, but indebted today’s hyper-tech heads. To celebrate this crowning One other thing The Harvest Floor did was take the elements that Cattle achievement of precision, forward thought, and all systems being locked Decapitation had used in their extreme music boundary-stretching and and loaded, we corralled Ryan, guitarist Josh Elmore, drummer Dave blow everything into the stratosphere. Simultaneously, they managed McGraw and ex-bassist Troy Oftedal onto a Zoom call, let them have it, a tight grip on the leash of control in the face of unhinged chaos. This and watched the sparks fly the same way they were flying in those clausallowed the band to improve upon their treasured red-lining while chiseling trophobically cramped, wretchedly humid and stale beer-scented practice a holistic work that careened into as many of the listener’s senses as allowspaces many years ago. Welcome to our Hall, gentlemen. The conditions able. The overtly dark and ominous depiction of humanity being sent to are a slight step up from those old rehearsal rooms in the Clairemont, slaughter (imagined by Ryan and manifested by visual artist Wes Benscoter) Sweetwater and National City areas of San Diego, but definitely better was matched by a sonic approach that subverted tradition with literate than the human slaughterhouse depicted on the album’s cover.

CATTLE DECAPITATION

PHOTO BY SARAH REMETCH

DECIBEL : 49 : AUGUST 2022

DBHOF212

CATTLE DECAPITATION the harvest floor

Where was the band at and what were your goals going into The Harvest Floor?

How did Dave become a member of the band?

I think it was around 2005 when I started talking to Travis a little. My older band had a little bit of that MySpace thing going at the time, and I was getting hit up by a lot of bands, but I wanted to join a band that was going to be able to allow me to contribute to the writing. The band I was in was super-limiting with that, and I didn’t like it, amongst other things. Travis and I were talking a little on MySpace, but

DAVE McGRAW:

“There were a lot of changes in metal that had been happening: Deathcore had reared its head, and I felt that part of our motivation was to separate ourselves from that.”

T RAVIS RYA N nothing really came of it. Cattle was on a tour, and I was on my first U.S. tour in the summer of 2006, and we were both playing Robot Mosh Fest in Wisconsin, where I met the guys in person. Travis and I spent some time together, and he was saying that it would be rad if we joined forces, but I was committed to the project I was in, even though things weren’t totally working out. Travis gave me their entire discography anyway and said check it out. About a year after that, things with my band were not working out, and I had a dead-set goal of what I wanted to do and asked Travis if they needed a touring drummer. I was sick of not doing anything and knew they had a bit of a revolving door happening. That was it; I went on my first tour with them, we clicked, and after that they asked if I wanted to join. I said fuck yeah and moved to San Diego. We started writing almost right away and spent almost the whole next year writing The Harvest Floor. For me, it was cool to be part of a band that had a trajectory already, that put in so much work touring and recording, and to allow a new guy to come in and have equal creative input was amazing, really cool and just what I was looking for. It was a bit of a gamble on both ends because we had never written together and didn’t know what kind of chemistry we were going to have. It was definitely a roll of the dice, but they were very welcoming and it was awesome. AUGUST 2022 : 50 : DECIBEL

Did the writing for The Harvest Floor start from scratch, or were there leftover bits from Karma. Bloody.Karma? How far back does the material on the album go? OFTEDAL: It was written from scratch; all new stuff for sure. ELMORE: There may have been a riff or two that had stuck around, but it was pretty much from the ground up at that point. RYAN: Dave came in at a relatively perfect time. McGRAW: I think we were all hungry. I was sick of not having the opportunity to have a creative outlet, and everyone else was kind of stoked to do more with more straightforward death metal drumming. [Ex-drummer] Mike [Laughlin] had a crazy, more spastic style, whereas mine is more linear. A lot of those songs wrote themselves. I remember “A Body Farm” was the first, then “Regret and the Grave” was number two.

How did the writing go with the new lineup configuration?

It gelled pretty well. They would show me riffs, or if I had an idea to contribute, we would just run with it; and we were trying new things, so that was a good sign. There weren’t any issues, and it was a pretty smooth process. ELMORE: I don’t recall there being any big tense moments of us not being able to write new songs or anything. We did a Vader tour in November 2007, and we were recording by McGRAW:

PHOTO BY ROBIN LAANANEN

JOSH ELMORE: I think the environment then, not just amongst the band, but in general, [was that] there was this slight pressure. The Harvest Floor came out in 2009, which meant we recorded in 2008 and probably wrote it in 2007-2008. At that time, I was 34-35, and there were all these younger bands that were 22-23, and it felt like we had to maximize what we could do with our take on things. We were feeling these younger bands coming up, and I felt we had to go for it and make this super-intense—and what ended up being very busy-sounding—record. It was the right album at the right time for us. The songwriting definitely got better. I almost feel like things moved in groups of three with us, with Human Jerky, Homovore and To Serve Man, then Humanure, Karma.Bloody.Karma and The Harvest Floor being the last of the three for that era, and the realized version of what we were trying to get at. TROY OFTEDAL: It kind of feels like it was that way for everything after To Serve Man; like it was a reaction to ourselves saying we could do this better, or that we figured out a better way to convey this feeling in the riffs. In To Serve Man, and the other two after, I think we were comfortable in how we were all writing parts and gelling them a little better than before. It was a little less of a mishmash and the progression seemed natural. TRAVIS RYAN: I was excited as fuck because Josh and I had been kind of stalking Dave [McGraw]. We saw what he was doing with his other band, and I remember saying, “Dude, can you imagine what we could do with this guy?” Every album we try to raise the bar, and I thought it had been raised with Karma in terms of trying to push things forward. There were a lot of changes in metal that had been happening: Deathcore had reared its head, and I felt that part of our motivation was to separate ourselves from that. So, I was really stoked with The Harvest Floor because getting in Dave—who has riff and songwriting talents as well—was cool. As much as I dislike change, personally, it was important to hit the refresh button musically, and switching things up seemed to work for us.

DBHOF212

July/August 2008, which is incredibly quick for that amount of material because there are a lot of notes on that record. OFTEDAL: There was no writer’s block or anything like that. We always kind of fed off each other, and it was pretty smooth. We generally had the same idea or concept in mind, and it seemed to work. We were committing as much of our free time as possible to the music. We were getting together and rehearsing and writing as much as possible between working odd jobs at bars or whatever to make ends meet with flexible hours. We were at the studio writing like three, four, sometimes five days a week. The work ethic was crazy badass. It was nuts, but I loved it. RYAN: And it was very equal in the songwriting and organic in the sense that someone would come up with a riff and, if it stayed, it would get morphed through someone else’s filter. It was like a symbiotic relationship where everyone and thing was working together instead of any one person really dominating. If you listen to the other records, I was slowly trying to edge my way in there to get some more tonality, notes and actual singing out of the high-pitched scream vocals, and even trying to pitch some of the low gutturals to try and hit notes and stuff. This record had a lot of that, and there were a lot more areas I was able to grab onto and make things into a chorus or something that had some number of notes being hit in the vocals instead of just “the bear and the snake.” Billy Anderson produced Karma.Bloody.Karma, and he did The Harvest Floor, too, and we went a little head-to-head trying to figure out the best way to capture these vocals. To me, I didn’t really catch my stride until the next couple albums after Harvest, but Harvest was where I really cut my teeth on trying to put in having more melody in the screech. I really thought I found my footing where I was starting to more readily identify parts that called for that. This was the album where I started to embrace that concept, and it was because of the stuff they were writing; it was more melodic and there was a lot more to grab onto. It’s also the first appearance of gravity blasts for us. It starts off with a super-intense banger and then ends with the most intense ending that any of our records have ever had. McGRAW: Yeah, I was 24 and like, “Gravity blasts are cool, let’s do that.” That shit sucks now, dude. [Laughs] Tell us about recording with Billy Anderson at Sharkbite Studio in Oakland.

There was a shooting down the street involving submachine guns like four days before we got there. So, that’s what we pulled up to, and

RYAN:

CATTLE DECAPITATION the harvest floor

realizing that all the food places we were going to be eating at were on the other side of where this shit took place. It was a little sketchy. [Laughs] OFTEDAL: Personally, I enjoyed it a lot. It was crazy; we were there for six weeks, taking turns between sleeping in the studio and [Necrot, exSaviours guitarist] Sonny [Reinhardt]’s house. It was cool to be able to just wake up and say, “All right, let’s go record some riffs.” And we played a show with Impaled towards the end of the recording. ELMORE: We got to the recording and had barely played the [older] songs together in order to record the album. It was about a month before the show, so we had to practice in the studio live room and take it down a block or two to the Oakland Metro to play. For the recording, Billy allowed us to indulge all of our most ridiculous ideas, let us go off in whatever crazy tangents we could think of and let us go wild. To a certain extent, I’m thankful we had that outlet, but there were points where we could have been more focused because we were indulged. There’s a lot of stuff on the record where it’s like, “What the heck is that?!” But I’m glad it happened that way, and I feel fortunate that Billy was the one involved. McGRAW: This was the only record in which I didn’t stay the entire time. It was my first with the band; I had just moved to San Diego and couldn’t get the time off work. So, I did the drums first with [engineer] Zack Ohren, recorded with no click track—which was gnarly—and then Billy was going to come in and do everything else because the guys had already worked with him on two other records. I remember the Impaled show because I was going to fly back up to play and also review some of the mixes because the guys were trying to send me links or play stuff over the phone, and it wasn’t working. When you’re as involved as I was, you really need to be there for the entire process. RYAN: Bringing Dave on, who was coming from a more modern-sounding background—and we were with Billy, who was known more for bands like Sleep, Swans and a lot of stuff that doesn’t snap to a grid—was a neat experiment. I personally like the marriage of modern and organic. I thought we were always organic in our approach to writing and execution, so Billy was this crossroads between that and more modern recording methods and a more modern-sounding recording. We loved Billy’s experimentation, and he was fun as hell to work with; we had a great experience together, and he became a good friend out of it. And when you talk about indulging whatever we wanted to do, the Japanese bonus track from that album [“You People”] is a song that is basically a poem I wrote for the record that wasn’t really lyrical, accompanied by a modified Tickle Me Elmo doll, which someone turned into a synth. So, yeah, we did shit like that. [Laughs] AUGUST 2022 : 5 2 : DECIBEL

There are a number of guest appearances on The Harvest Floor, most notably Jackie Perez Gratz [Grayceon, ex-Amber Asylum], John Wiese [Sissy Spacek, Bastard Noise] and Jarboe [ex-Swans]. How did they come to be involved? ELMORE: John Wiese did some stuff on Karma with the bonus track, some of the bumpers and between-song stuff. RYAN: I had met John when we played a show together in San Francisco back in the ’90s with this old ambient noise band I was in, and we had just kept in touch over the years. Josh and I knew Jackie through a mutual friend, and we had always wanted to use strings without getting all Dimmu Borgir about it, but with as much flair thrown in as we could. I remember she was kind of ticked off at me because we had never done this kind of instrumentation before, and I didn’t realize what needed to be done. She came in and was like, “OK, what am I doing?” I explained it to her and she’s like, “Oh my god, dude, you should have told me about this two weeks ago.” It was a lot more involved than I realized, and she had a totally different process as a classically trained cellist for this than we as a bunch of metalheads do. ELMORE: There’s footage of her, Billy and I sitting there while she’s doing the cello part on “We Are Horrible People,” and Billy’s like beating the tempo out and we’re playing along, looking at each other. It’s kind of funny, but I was all for it because it sounded really cool. RYAN: The way Jarboe got involved was that we had the title track leading into “Regret and the Grave,” and I remember Billy going, “We should get Jarboe for this part.” I was a massive Swans fan and was like, “Dude, shut up! Can you make that happen? Holy shit, talk about dreams come true!” I knew Billy did all the live stuff on Soundtracks for the Blind, which is my favorite Swans record. So, we hit her up and she said she’d do anything Billy was a part of. He asked for a simple part of her humming or singing this melody, and she sends back a 16-voice choir, this massive dense collection of her voices. She came out to the Atlanta show on that tour, and I remember being onstage playing, seeing her come through the door, and immediately go to the merch table and buy a hoodie. I remember standing there doing vocals thinking, “No, don’t do that! I’ll give you one!” We also had Dino Sommese from Dystopia on that album, as well as Ross Sewage [Exhumed, Ghoul, Impaled]. Both those guys were from around there, so it was nothing for them to come in and lay down some vocals, and that was really fun.

At what point did you decide on The Harvest Floor as a title?

I’ll do little things in the lyrics or artwork that allude to something on the next record, or pull things from previous albums to tie to current concepts. It was a lyric on the [Cattle Decapitation/Caninus split] 7-inch that bridged

RYAN:

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CATTLE DECAPITATION the harvest floor

And this is where the slaughterhouse in which you shot the video and took promo photos comes into play?

So, Jim Mills was a buddy of ours, and was actually managing us at the time. He got us signed to Metal Blade in 2001, and he had always been a guy who helped us out, helped guide us, helped hammer things into us about the industry that we didn’t know about. I always wanted to do something in a slaughterhouse, a photo shoot or video or something, and Jim, who was working at Metal Blade at the time, was like, “Dude, I can make that happen.” There was a slaughterhouse down the street from him and he went in there [and] talked to the owner, who had a 13-yearold kid who was really stoked about us being there. They didn’t look us up and didn’t get the concept, thankfully, because it was a meat-processing facility, and if they even heard the word “vegetarian,” they’d probably be, “No thanks.” They let us come in and shoot the video for “Regret and the Grave,” which we wanted to be more like a mini film because of the Jarboe intro, but the director wasn’t having any of it. I had Metal Blade telling me what we had to have happen—all about getting it on MTV—and he would get mad at me because I’m the messenger

RYAN:

Karma.Bloody.Karma and The Harvest Floor, and I just thought it felt like the right time to use it conceptually. The lyric [from “No Future”] was “I crawled along the harvest floor,” and it’s a metaphor for the destruction of the human race and species. I feel like everyone has that moment where they’re like, “Fuck humans, fuck the world, fuck our species,” and stuff like that. Actually, I think the Metal Blade promotional line said something like, “The most anti-human record ever!” What was the process like working with Wes Benscoter in putting together the artwork?

If you look at Karma, the cow is actually hovering over what they call a harvest floor, or the killing floor, which is where the animal gets a bolt to the head, is processed and all that. I carried over that concept from Karma where you see the cow in the room, and on The Harvest Floor you’re seeing all of humanity going into that same room. I’ve always had this obsession with a huge wall or the face of a building that has some sort of nefarious design on it or our ouroboros logo emblazoned upon it, and I finally got to do it with The Harvest Floor where what you see is the slaughterhouse that humanity is being led into. I consider Wes Benscoter the fifth or sixth member of the band, and with him there’s usually very little back and forth. You’ll get a sketch, make a few changes or suggestions, and a week later get what ends up being pretty close to the finished product. All of the covers he’s done for us, except for Death Atlas, have all been photorealistic digital artwork and editing. This one was a little challenging for him because we had to represent all races, nationalities, creeds, ages and whatever in this image. It had to show as many different types of people going into the slaughterhouse. I actually had to create 3-D renderings of different-sized people, and I remember him saying that was the most difficult part. We were trying to give people a reason to buy a damn CD! Back then, CD sales were starting to hit the shitter; we had just had that recession, and we needed to have a booklet that had more than just the lyrics. I remember thinking, “Let’s throw some pictures in there that get into the vibe of the scene on the cover and bring it to life on the inside.”

RYAN:

boy telling him something he didn’t want to hear. He didn’t give a shit; he was making money doing commercials and stuff, and I remember him saying, “This is the last metal video I’m doing.” It wasn’t. [Laughs] At the same time, we had our friend Sara come down and shoot photos of us, and that’s when we started sending photos to Wes, and he would treat them to make it look like different scenes. Like, he made us look like we were processing human meat; he made Troy look like he was cutting down a body dangling from a hook, and Dave look like he’s hacking some guy on the ground. McGRAW: I remember we used the blood that they saved for us. It was actual blood from some sort of animal, and the guy pulls out this huge tray of thick, jellied-up blood and I’m like, “All right, here we go, I guess.” So, I was grabbing chunks of coagulated blood and putting it all over my arms and face. It was gnarly and disgusting. RYAN: We did the pics, video and everything in one day. I had the feeling we only had one shot to do this. I was shocked they let us do it in the first place. ELMORE: It was a functioning business and we couldn’t encroach upon their daily routine too much.

“I was 24 and like, ‘Gravity blasts are cool, let’s do that.’ That shit sucks now, dude.”

DAVE McG RAW AUGUST 2022 : 5 4 : DECIBEL

PHOTO BY ROBIN LAANANEN

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CATTLE DECAPITATION the harvest floor

A funny anecdote is that, a few years later, the kid hit me up online saying that we never paid them for the video. I was like, “What?!” I don’t know what the deal was or what Jim told them, but I remember saying there was no way we’re paying a slaughterhouse to do anything.

RYAN:

What do you remember about reactions to the album upon its release?

There was a slight difference in sound and production from before, which got noticed. ELMORE: Guitar World did a feature on me. I want to say it was a fluke or something, but I was kind of surprised when Metal Blade told me they wanted to do something. It was basically a thing where there was a picture on the page on the left-hand side, and maybe four or five paragraphs on the facing page. It was just a little write-up thing, not a whole story, but as someone who grew up reading that magazine, it was cool and I was into it. As far as other magazines and general press, the response to the album was overall pretty positive from all the same channels as normal. We’d get these binders of press clippings, just an overwhelming amount of material, and you’d see all the reviews we got and interviews we forgot we did, and it’d be like, “Oh, Germany doesn’t care too much for us.” [Laughs] McGRAW:

Our fans seemed to love it. I think this was the first album where people were starting to realize that we were trying to craft albums and create a cohesive flow with beginnings and endings instead of just putting out a collection of songs. People were seeing that we were starting to find our sound—or had found our sound. For a long time, Europe didn’t know what to make of us. It was like, “Are they grind? Are they death metal? Is this prog?” The Harvest Floor is when I actually started to notice Germany starting to pay attention, from the Metal Blade office there to the fans, booking agents and promoters. When we started doing stuff that was a little more melodic and had more things to grab onto is when they started to catch on, and there was more of a demand for us over there, and the shows started doing better.

RYAN:

How was touring for The Harvest Floor different than previous runs?

We did a lot of fucking touring for that record. We did our first full Canadian tour. We went out on tour for three straight months with no crew, no sound guy, no nothing. It was basically the four of us, and we did shows up the West Coast to Canada, did all of Canada, came back into the States and did two weeks with Rose Funeral to connect with the GWAR tour,

McGRAW:

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and after the GWAR tour, we went straight into a tour with Mayhem. We did four tours back-toback. We don’t do that anymore. [Laughs] RYAN: That was also when we were paying more attention to how the stuff was being presented, trying to play better venues and telling our booking agent to knock it off with putting us out in the middle of nowhere or with the stick PA shows. I really wanted to recreate the cover and was talking about having pipes come out the side that would spew fog and shit, but we never did any of it. We had aspirations and dreams, but didn’t have any way to make them happen. We really took our time edging in any kind of real production value. OFTEDAL: We started using banners, maybe even on the Karma tours, and I think scrims shortly before I left the band. We had covers with the ouroboros logo made for our cabinets, and Travis had this little tabletop thing with all these electronics that he was using. RYAN: One of Sonny’s roommates was in Secret Chiefs 3m and he showed me a raagini, which is a little white box that’s like an Indian sitar accompaniment instrument that just does drones. I ended up buying one and using it on this table of electronics and stuff that I used between songs as part of our shows on The Harvest Floor and [followup album] Monolith of Inhumanity tours.

PHOTO BY SARAH REMETCH

Inhumane harvest  Cattle Decapitation put the “death” in death metal during their photo shoot at a meat processing plant

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As this is Decibel’s “Food Issue,” we’d be remiss in not asking how death metal’s most foremost vegetarian band fared on the road back then?

Lots of Waffle House, Denny’s and Jason’s Deli. RYAN: Yeah, lots of Waffle House—not that that’s the beacon of vegetarianism or healthy eating by any means. You can find vegetarian food anywhere; it all depends on how shitty you’re willing to eat. I’ve always been OK with having to rely on Taco Bell or whatever. We toured with the Locust in 2007, and their booking agent was able to get us playing in a vegan establishment or directly next door to one at every single show. Each show was booked in a location to cater to the band being vegan and vegetarian, and I still don’t know how the fuck they pulled that off. ELMORE: I don’t think it’s been very hard, ever—in the States, at least. It depends on how you’re traveling, too. We were in a van until probably 2015, so you’d have the freedom of pulling into places at like 2 or 3 in the morning instead of being bound by a bandwagon or tour bus where your choices are either what’s open when you pull into a truck stop in the middle of the night, which is usually nothing, or a Walmart parking lot. Our culinary choices have actually narrowed over the years because of how we travel, but at that time it was kind of like bachelor diet kind of stuff. McGRAW:

When you consider The Harvest Floor, its legacy, what it did for the band and how it changed things going forward, what comes to mind?

The Harvest Floor helped us write Monolith. It’s so dense and intense with so much going on, and with that record bringing in more areas and room for Travis to stretch vocally, it made us a lot more conscious. Going into the next record gave us opportunity. Everything with the instrumentation is there to support everything else, and Travis didn’t have to dance around all the busyness. The Harvest Floor started factoring that in the writing and helped us explore that stuff in later releases. Having said that, I don’t want to downplay The Harvest Floor at all; it’s a superintense record with a little more moodiness to it, but the more traditionally death metal songs pummeled the entire time. It’s an exhausting record to listen to—and I mean that in the most positive way—with so much going on with all the instruments, vocally, whatever. Everything that each individual could do with their skill set and bag of tricks is on display at all times. McGRAW: That record is nonstop, and it paved the way for everything else. After every record, we go into the next one with the idea of working on this and focusing on that, and that’s the way it’s been record after record. It was also my first ELMORE:

Fit for human consumption  Travis Ryan samples the decidedly un-shitty “Cattle Decapitation,” a veggie burger named in honor of the quartet at Hamilton’s Pub & Café in San Diego

“You can find vegetarian food anywhere; it all depends on how shitty you’re willing to eat.”

T RAVIS RYA N record with them, and since then I’ve been with the band for 17 years. OFTEDAL: I had left the band between Harvest and Monolith, so it was the last record I was a part of, which is a big thing for me. But if I took anything away or learned anything from it, it’s understanding how and what I wanted to write in the future. It helped pave the way, and it was a point where it hit me, like, “Oh shit, this is what I need to do and need to focus on to actualize what’s going on in my creative head and as a collective in future bands.” It helped push that idea for me. RYAN: It was a blueprint of sorts for what was to come and how we were to handle crafting an actual album that takes a person on a journey from here to there, spits them out and have it all make sense. For me, that one was where we found our footing. It was where we started bringing in this more grandiose scope, and we were AUGUST 2022 : 58 : DECIBEL

able to use this record to expand upon things. It was very much the beginning of the sound that you hear now, and very much a cornerstone for this band. 2008 was also when I quit my job because, between the amount of touring we were doing and my home business, it was getting in the way of me being able to run the band and having someone on the back end/admin side of things. At that time, this was the album I was able to personally put focus on making sure marketing, layout and all that stuff was being taken care of the way I wanted. The Harvest Floor was when able to finally dedicate time, where we were selling more merch, getting bigger guarantees and moving up the ranks. It signified a lot of changes for the band and was the framework for everything that came after it, from the art to the way the songs were placed to the music videos. We made a lot of moves that paved the way for the future of the band.

P L AY I T. W E A R I T. L I V E I T.

F O L L O W O U R K V LT

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Crossover thrashers plug back into the party on Electrified Brain STO RY BY

SEAN FRASIER P HOTO S BY

HRISTO SHINDOV

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In a genre that backhands authority, the band founders had two basic goals: Keep it fast and keep it fun. Sure, they were inspired by the DIY grit of predecessors like Accüsed, D.R.I., Crumbsuckers and Nuclear Assault. But instead of turning back the clock, Municipal Waste turned the page. Thrash badly needed a facelift, and Municipal Waste obliged with their grininducing frivolity and ferocity. They embraced the no-brakes spirit of the music and knew only one reckless speed.

Those dudes—

MY BEST FUCKIN’ FRIENDS ON THE PLANET— packed my shit in the truck and were the ones waving when I drove away. And the next time I see them,

WE’RE RECORDING AN ALBUM. Tony Foresta

vocalist Tony Foresta and

nom-de-plumed guitarist Ryan Waste formed Municipal Waste in Richmond, VA. In a young century, the duo’s music was a lightning rod for youthful exuberance. The mission was crushing it in a crossover band that honored both pillars of the genre’s major influences: thrash metal and hardcore punk. ¶ “I was just learning how to play guitar, so you sort of have a punk attitude whether you like it or not when you’re that raw,” reasons Waste. “Tony obviously loves hardcore punk and I was a metalhead, so you put the two of us together and you get Waste.” ¶ “It was a really bad time for music in the late ’90s and early 2000s,” Waste recalls. “Nü-metal was alive and well. All sorts of alternative music and emo and that sort of soft-ass shit. We said, ‘Fuck all this, man. Let’s play fast and tell everyone to fuck off.’ I know that’s not the best quote, but I was 20 years old and just playing what I wanted to hear. I think that’s partially why we have a young fan base to this day.” 62

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“Go, go, go, go, go,” Foresta describes. Municipal Waste was just a few weeks old when original drummer Brendan Trache’s other project canceled their tour. He urged his new bandmates to fill the spot on a whim. The novice thrashers hit the road with six songs and a 10-minute set, tearing up ask-a-punk gigs throughout Florida. In Jacksonville they played a house show with D-beat bruisers Tragedy for 20 people. The band merch table had a single shirt design with an illegible logo, a few flip-up hats and a xeroxed poster reading “Waste That Shit.” Municipal Waste’s toxic revolution had modest beginnings, but the impending ascent was a furious blur. Their Waste ’Em All debut was a jolt of riffy irreverence. They recruited the rhythm section that has motored them for 18 years when drummer Dave Witte and bassist Phil Hall both joined in 2004. Their shows became notorious for their energy, excess and humor. In 2005, they released their death-ripping Earache debut Hazardous Mutation, which endures as Foresta’s favorite. Before we had memes, Waste gave us their “Kite Song” hidden track. As a snapshot of how out of place their smirks

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seemed in extreme metal, they appeared on an Earache DVD comp with death metal royalty like At the Gates, Deicide and Morbid Angel. Then in 2007, they released their Magnum-condomed opus—and Decibel Hall of Fame entry—The Art of Partying. All the while they toured relentlessly, bringing the party to the people worldwide. As Municipal Waste surpass two decades of debauchery, the thrash-kickers turn up the voltage on their upcoming shocker, Electrified Brain. Paused by the pandemic, the record has been locked in Nuclear Blast’s vault awaiting release. A band that never rests suddenly faced the silence of empty show calendars and shuttered venues. Now Electrified Brain surges out of secrecy to liquidate our frontal lobes. The wait is over and the volume dial’s slammed past 11. To paraphrase the cinematic masterpiece Airheads: If it’s too loud, you’re too fuckin’ old.

REANIMATED After moving south from Richmond to St.

Petersburg, FL, Foresta knew hang sessions with his bandmates in Municipal Waste would be less frequent. But there would always be time together on the road, he surmised. The global shitsmear of 2020 had other plans. “Right before the pandemic we had tours planned, and all those got canceled,” Foresta laments. “It ended up being a year and a half before I was in a room with those guys again.” The band booked studio time with engineering dynamo Arthur Rizk in Philadelphia. If Rizk’s name sounds familiar, congratulations on your sexcellent taste. His prowess helped shape albums by bands as diversely heavy as Power Trip, Pissgrave and Temple of Void. “I wanted to work with Arthur and proposed it to the band,” says Waste. “He was in high demand, obviously. I met him when he was running sound while we were on tour, so we’ve known each other a few years. It’s his temperament that really struck me, man. He’s such a patient guy, and he likes the same heavy metal stuff I like, too. He just gets it. Hardcore, punk, metal—all of it.” “Some of my friends from the Lehigh Valley had shown me an early split [Muni Waste] did probably around 2003, and the buzz about their gigs was cult lore at the time,” Rizk recalls. “I saw them a few years later when I moved to Philly. I heard drum legend Dave Witte had joined the band and I bought their newest release [Hazardous Mutation] at the gig. Fifteen years later, I was locked in to record Electrified Brain.” With that sort of mutual admiration, teaming up for the record was a no-brainer. Like a true heavy metal pupil, Rizk did his homework. He 64

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went back and listened to their entire discography, from the raw ‘n’ rowdy eponymous EP to The Last Rager. While Rizk was researching, the band worked overtime on preparing their new songs. For an outfit always on the move, they funneled their uncharacteristic stillness into even deeper songwriting focus during the shutdown. “We didn’t feel under the gun with any time constraints for obvious reasons, so we had a little more time to work out guitar fireworks,” says bassist “Landphil” Hall. “We tried to really slow down and craft some songs with the time we had.” “I always like to rehearse material until it feels old and it rolls out with no problem,” Witte explains. “But you also spend so much time with it that you are too close to it, in a way. At some point, you forget if it’s even good or not.” Luckily, the band had an in-house source of critiques and hot takes. Whenever they were unsure about a riff or song’s staying power, Foresta listened at his home down the coast and offered feedback. With the help of a neighbor— a recording engineer with a convenient home studio—Foresta reshaped some songs that weren’t pit-ready. Most drastically, “Crank the Heat” was rescued from the garbage disposal and reanimated with Foresta’s vision. From there, Foresta worked on his lyrics and vocal patterns, forced to rehearse alone because of distance and safety procedures. “I have this crazy set-up in Saint Petersburg where Morbid Angel practices,” Foresta shares. “It’s a rental studio with their setlists and logo on the walls, where they prepare for tours and shit. I basically go into this room, put on my headphones, and sing along to Spotify like I’m on a stage. It’s gotta be weird for people walking by the room, just hearing me screaming with no music behind me.” Screaming alone be goddamned. Armed to the teeth with riffs and combat-ready for a killer group hug, Municipal Waste finally converged in Philadelphia. “It was weird, but I’ll never forget it,” Foresta recalls. “It was the first time I saw those guys since they moved my shit into a U-Haul. Those dudes—my best fuckin’ friends on the planet— packed my shit in the truck and were the ones waving when I drove away. And the next time I see them, we’re recording an album.”

ELECTRIFYING THE BRAIN When you have a band that thrives in a live set-

ting, it’s a weapon in the studio. There’s nothing wrong with a thousand overdub layers; if anything, the pandemic necessitated a bevy of solo bedroom recordings. But Municipal Waste’s chemistry is a perfect match for recording takes as a full squad. Their pre-recording preparation helped Rizk capture that stage energy in the studio like lightning in a beer bottle.

“The whole foundation for the record was laid down live with all the guys in the room playing cranked in each other’s ears,” Rizk explains. “There was no click used at all, and I cannot recall doing many punch-ins for the drums, if any. If it was not right, it was done again.” “It was a fun experience getting into a studio and putting on headphones and doing it oldschool,” Hall says. “We don’t play to a click; we play live in a room looking at each other. That makes the performances more genuine in a lot of ways. We have been playing together for quite a while now; those guys are my best friends in the world.” Despite the band’s wealth of recording experience, Witte and Waste both mention studio anxiety rearing its ugly mug. With its soothing lighting and oriental rugs, the welcoming aura of Rizk’s studio helped calm the band’s recording nerves. The experience was so positive that Waste and guitarist Nick Poulos returned six months later to record with side project Bat. “Personally, I usually have a hard anxietyridden time in the studio,” Poulos admits. “But working with that guy, it’s slicing a piece of cake. Man, it’s easy. He’s the friendliest dude and will coax you through the hard times and pat your back when you nail a good take.” “[Rizk] makes it look so easy,” Foresta confirms. “We’d be dicking around, and he’d be over there with headphones on while we’re chatting. I’m like, ‘Whatcha doing over there, Arthur?’ And he’s like, ‘Mixing a Cro-Mags record.’ While we’re hanging out and chilling, and he’s totally still interjecting and contributing to convos. There’s a way he works that reveals a level of genius.” But a relaxed studio doesn’t mean shit if the music sounds like it was recorded with a potato. Municipal Waste relied on crisp performances and nailing a guitar tone that can slice through steel. No need for any “we’ll fix it in post” production hacks. Just a big, natural sound that doesn’t get cute and toy with the band’s winning formula. Experimentation on the record was left to Witte. “I’ve wanted to record without bottom heads for a while, which is how a lot of those early classic metal and prog rock records were made,” Witte reveals. “I love that weird raw overtone it has to it; it’s so full and solid. So, I took the heads off my kit for a while beforehand to adjust. I called up my buddy Brann [Dailor] from Mastodon, and he’s done a record like that. And I remembered Dave McClain from Sacred Reich was a big fan of that approach, too. It turns out [McClain] worked with Arthur already, so we were both on the same page.” After the snap of a few sparks and a quick whiff of ozone, Witte’s drums rampage out of the power plant on Electrified Brain’s title track.

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Judas Priest was my first love, and some of our stuff is basically sped-up Priest songs.

THRASH WOULDN’T BE HERE WITHOUT HEAVY METAL, SIMPLE AS THAT. Ryan Waste

The drums are punchy and dynamic, teaming up with Hall’s bass to support the searing guitars. It’s undeniably Municipal Waste, even before Foresta’s distinct voice barks into the fray. The sweat and speed all remain from past records. Now it just sounds better than ever. But you can drown any worries you had about this being a “grown-up” Municipal Waste record. Despite an absence of thrash puns in the song titles, it’s still packed with gleeful gore and campy wordplay. They’re still the same Gooftroopers of Death who wrote a concept split album about Kurt Russell movies (Tango & Thrash) and recorded a triumphant anthem about flying kites—despite both of those ideas being attributed to ex-bassist Andy Harris. Fun is subjective, but “Ten Cent Beer Night” might as well be an audio definition of the word. Salvaged single “Crank the Heat” grabs your neck like a wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac and throttles you to the last riff. Humor has always been a hook for Municipal Waste, and Foresta certainly knows his audience. Electrified Brain is soaked with self-aware kitsch, whether it’s about cannibalism and craft brews (“Barreled Rage”) or the title-says-it-all “Paranormal Janitor.” The tracks are a blast while retaining satirical silliness reminiscent of Troma’s shlock. 66

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“There’s a fine line between clever and stupid, but we try to fuel the clever side,” Waste states, paraphrasing This Is Spinal Tap. “The theme of the band has always been taking it seriously, but having fun at the same time.”

HIGH SPEED STEEL When Ryan Waste answers the phone, he’s stalking the streets of Greenpoint in Brooklyn. Later that evening, he’ll incinerate the borough’s unholy heavy metal spot Saint Vitus when Bat plays with Eyehategod. Before sound check, he has plans to hit the local pizza point Triangolo. You can choke on your stale pizza thrash jokes, because Electrified Brain is informed more by NWOBHM than any previous Municipal Waste record. “British heavy metal and traditional metal has long been the stuff we listen to in the van on tour,” Hall shares. “It’s been our background music for years, so it’s only natural that it crept into some of the songs. Bottom line, you’d have to be made of stone to listen to some of that stuff and not have a reaction to it.” “Sometimes in the van, someone will ask, ‘Do we really need to listen to fuckin’ Angel Witch again?’” says Poulos. “I might be that guy,” Foresta confirms with a laugh. “I feel like obviously Ryan and Nick and

even Dave are heavily influenced by that stuff, and even more so as they get older. Bat has that vibe as well. So, I knew that would bleed into our newer stuff. I don’t mind it, because my favorite type of metal is punk dudes doing metal.” In most Municipal Waste songs, the line between metal and punk blurs more than a rookie drinker’s mid-bender vision. But Electrified Brain showcases a few songs that truly harken back to early-’80s U.K. pre-thrash heaviness. Think English Dogs and their To the Ends of the Earth EP, which segued into the dragon-riding ripper Forward Into Battle. Waste also mentions Court in the Act legends Satan as a band that continues to make killer metal in a traditional vein while sneaking in punk-inspired percussion. Plus, not mentioning newly inducted Rock & Roll Hall of Famers Judas Priest would be sacrilege. “Judas Priest was my first love,” Waste reveals, “and some of our stuff is basically spedup Priest songs. Thrash wouldn’t be here without heavy metal, simple as that.” “Restless and Wicked” fits Waste’s description of a turbo-charged Priest song with its hellbent harmonized leads and galloping tempo. Solos sizzle as the song hits a thrashy mosh stomp. “Demoralizer” and “Crank the Heat” both add trad metal flourishes amid the crazed gang shouts and punk propulsion. But “High Speed Steel” is the album’s real throwback sky-puncher. Waste even wrote the lyrics to reflect the greedfor-speed themes of other ’80s barnburners. While the song’s stylistic influences aren’t shocking, the track’s title had an unexpected genesis. “I’m not sure if we should put this in the magazine,” Waste laughs before granting Decibel permission, “but it’s based on a paint color I used for my kitchen. That’s the sickest fucking paint color I’ve ever heard. I write general heavy metal lyrics that are pretty straightforward. Uncompromising steel. It could be about a sword, or a car—or my kitchen cabinets, I guess.” To fully embrace the album’s classic metal leanings, they commissioned cover art from James Bousema. Those familiar with the band’s stage weaponry will recognize Ryan Waste’s guitar impaling someone’s head on the album cover, filling his noggin with lightning bolts. The victim’s face is a fleshless contortion of shock, pain and electric ecstasy. They could be D.O.A., or transforming into some reanimated corpse like a villain ripped from Frankenstein or Wes Craven’s Shocker. Municipal Waste album covers often feature characters in various states of cartoonish decay. But there’s a much cleaner, leaner approach to Electrified Brain’s design. Bousema mentions Iron Maiden and Scorpions covers as inspiration. That’s sweet devil music to Waste’s ears. “A lot of our covers have been really busy with a lot of stuff going on,” Waste offers. “But

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as a heavy metal fan I wanted a recognizable, iconic image that sticks in your brain. We wanted our music frying someone. Even though it’s impaling his skull, you’re not sure if he’s loving it or in pain. That’s kind of the theme of the band—it’s heavy and aggressive, but you’re enjoying it.”

CRIMES OF THRASHIN’ “Did Nick say anything about me eating his sauce?” Foresta asks the question after I mention this is a food-themed issue of Decibel. Witte co-runs a highly praised vegan restaurant called Hang Space in Richmond, and also operated a food truck called Go Go Vegan Go before the pandemic. He knows a shit-ton about food and craft beer. So, when Witte calls someone a culinary talent, you listen. “Nick [Poulos] is a very good, accomplished cook who has worked in some of the best restaurants in Richmond—Edo’s Squid and Dinamo,” says Witte. “He’s a powerhouse on the line with mad skills. He has worked on the food truck a few times when we were busy, and I never worried if he was there with me.” The phrase “if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen” exists for a reason. Temperatures skyrocket when you’re next to active grills, fryers and ovens. But on Witte’s food truck, interior temps would surge up to 200 degrees if he parked on blacktop during the summer. Even when the tickets piled up and they were “in the weeds”—service industry slang for stressfully fuckin’ slammed with orders—Poulos kept his cool in that sweltering galley on wheels. Which brings us back to what I would like to call…

FOOD CRIME #1: THE SAGA OF THE SAUCE “I’m kind of like the band cook; if we have a time and place, I can whip up a meal for everyone,” Poulos says before a grim pause. “As long as Tony Foresta doesn’t dunk his fuckin’ fingers in my pasta sauce.” “Nick is one of the nicest, sweetest human beings in the world, and I’ve never seen him that pissed,” Foresta describes. “I was upstairs sleeping, so I didn’t know he was putting his energy and heart into this sauce. So, I come down and dip some cold pizza crust in that shit, and I dump some on a sandwich. “He was so fuckin’ mad, dude,” Foresta cackles. “I did Nick wrong, I admit it. I fucked up, and it made things crunchy for a little while, where I started getting defensive. I was like, ‘What’s the big deal? It’s fuckin’ spaghetti sauce.’” “You can’t compromise the sauce, man,” Poulos definitively argues about the party foul. 68

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“That still gets brought up to this day,” Foresta adds. “But I will tell you—it was delicious.”

FOOD CRIME #2: MIS-STEAKS WERE MADE “But I got wronged by a band member as well, dude,” Foresta reports. “I’m gonna tell you a story that just came to my mind. And I’m hopping around right now, man. I’m so excited to tell you, it’s fuckin’ bad. “We had a cross-pond flight going to Europe, and we had a layover in Philly. I bought a killer cheesesteak at the best spot in the airport. We had a couple drinks before we got on the plane. The plane takes off, and I’m a really anxious, bad flyer. So, I actually fell asleep for a bit. I wake up and we’re in the air and I’m calm again. So, I’m like, I’ll tear into this sandwich. But I can’t find it, man. The sandwich is fucking gone.” Foresta stresses gone like the sandwich is a kidnapped family member. “I start freaking out on the plane, like, Where the fuck’s my shit?” Foresta continues. “And I turn to Phil—who ate my whole sandwich. Not a couple bites. Not a half. The entire fuckin’ sandwich, next to me, while I was asleep. That’s fucked up, man. That’s some evil shit. “[Phil] was apologetic from the get-go,” Foresta insists. “He probably figured I was too drunk to remember I even had a cheesesteak. But here we are over 10 years later, and I still think about that sandwich sometimes.”

GETTIN’ OLD AIN’T FOR THE YOUNG This year Municipal Waste celebrate the proj-

ect’s 21st birthday—the legal drinking age in the States. Later this year, they have a tour scheduled with At the Gates where the Swedish melodeath pioneers will honor their landmark Slaughter of the Soul record. That turns the convo to album anniversaries from Muni’s own catalog. The Fatal Feast turns 10 this year. As a fan of cosmic horror, I have a soft spot for the record’s deep-space destruction. The record often creeps under the radar amongst the band’s other releases. But the breathless blasts of “Unholy Abductor” and the title track remain personal favorites. “It’s cool you like Fatal Feast; I don’t hear other people talk about it too much,” Waste concedes. “Taking it to space, dude. I used to joke that usually in the fourth or fifth sequel, you go to space. Just look at Hellraiser and Leprechaun.” “I hated Fatal Feast for a long time,” Foresta admits. “But I actually listened to it again and called Ryan after. I think what we fucked up on that record was the song order. I think Side B really fucking rips on that record; that’s when it opens up and starts crushing. I sort of want to remaster the record and adjust the song order.

We also wrote a few other songs that didn’t make the record—one of them (“Religion Proof”) was a Decibel flexi, actually.” The band’s 2007 thrashterpiece The Art of Partying likely doesn’t need introduction. It sits atop a throne of shotgunned beer cans in the Decibel Hall of Fame and launched Municipal Waste to international infamy. Fifteen years isn’t as sexy as a quarter-century anniversary, but the band knows there’s demand for a full Partying set. “I hear some people complain when bands do whole records on the road, but I love it,” Foresta shares. “We started practicing The Art of Partying before the shutdown to maybe do a show of that set, but obviously a whole bunch of shit hit the fan. But one day we want to do that. We did a Hazardous Mutation show where we played the whole record, and that was fun.” Some musicians hold grudges against their earliest albums because they don’t reflect the skill they’ve accumulated in the years since. Recording quality improves. Songwriting abilities and technical skills sharpen. Their pre-Waste ’Em All releases ain’t pretty, but they’re still an important part of the band’s training montage. Each album is a snapshot of a time and place that can’t be replicated. “This has been a huge part of my life, and every one of those albums are time capsules of my life and my friends’ lives,” Hall explains. “They bring back a surge of memories when I see those album covers. It’s something I love and will always love.” “When I hear about these anniversaries, I think, ‘Wow we did that record that long ago and it’s still cool and people care about it?’” says Witte. “That’s the ultimate compliment, and I feel very fortunate and proud of that. The music connects with other groups of people as it keeps going. When I first joined the band, the ages in the audience were all across the board. When I see parents bringing their children to our shows, it’s very exciting for me.” “Coming up on 21 years,” Waste considers, “people come up and say, ‘Man, I used to love you guys in high school!’ And I’m like, ‘Cool… do you still love us?’ Because I totally get people who are high school-aged digging us. We’re catering to that anti-establishment teenager. We’re still writing for the kids, man.”

DEBAUCHEROUS POSITIVITY “Torturous.”

That’s how Witte describes not playing live when safety guidelines restricted touring. When you’re constantly on the move—Witte has played in approximately 666 million other projects—the forced stillness feels like a straitjacket. While Witte funneled his time and energy into his

When someone can surf the crowd in a trash can and land safely,

I’M HAPPY. Phil “Landphil” Hall

restaurant and other creative endeavors, he was still haunted by the tours that could have been. Now Municipal Waste have a calendar packed with tour dates. They’re sharing stages with a diverse slate of badasses like Integrity, Pig Destroyer, Bewitcher and the aforementioned At the Gates. As normalcy returns, Municipal Waste prepares their Electrified Brain set for the fans whose antics they dearly missed while sequestered at home in 2020. “I feel like this is the greatest job in the world, and playing music out on the road and having a good time playing thrash metal is impossible to complain about,” says Hall, who also stays busy with Cannabis Corpse. “So, when shows stopped, I missed it big-time. After a year and a half, I missed it even more. I could never celebrate time away from that, and I hope I can keep doing it forever.” Ryan Waste isn’t ashamed to confess he needed a burnt-out breather. Heavy recording and touring cycles with multiple projects dominated his life for several years. When you grind for that many miles, your tires can lose some of their tread. “But over time I got stir-crazy, and I realized how much I truly enjoy touring,” Waste admits. “It’s such a huge part of my life that was missing. It made me appreciate everything even 70

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more. I felt a resurgence, because everybody was in the same boat. It felt like a reunion when we could go play live again.” GO. The shouted command kicks off the title track of At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul, and it’s basically Municipal Waste’s two-letter motto. Once they plug in, there’s no slowing down. The first law of thermodynamics states energy cannot be created or destroyed; it just changes forms. You can see that theory in motion at every Municipal Waste gig. “We love the connection with our fans,” Witte raves. “The volley between us and the audience is inspiring and infectious. When they get going, it propels us to get going even more. I get pumped when people are having a good time. The fun is mutual; we are working together on that. Retaining the speed and intensity is important to me. A lot of people tone it down over the years, but I still love it.” “It never gets stale,” Hall adds. “It’s not like a cubicle where every day feels the same. Every day on tour gives us something new and crazy. Every night there’s a crazy person who does a double front-flip off the stage. Sometimes people go berserk and we see complete catastrophes where someone wipes out. But when someone can surf the crowd in a trash can and land safely,

I’m happy. I don’t want anybody to get hurt; I just want everybody to have a great time.” Hall is referencing a Municipal Waste tradition of combining thrash and trash. The band shared a photo from a recent show in Austin with someone crowd-surfing while submerged in a big rubber garbage pail. The only visible body parts were two hands throwing celebratory horns. “The trash cans came back into the fold when we were on tour with Napalm Death and Sick of It All,” Foresta recalls. “[SOIA vocalist] Lou Koller said some shit like, ‘We haven’t done a metal tour in a long time, and the last time it was with Sepultura and Sacred Reich, and everyone was throwing trash and shit. What’s wrong with you guys?’ We played after them, so I grabbed every trash can in the room and said, ‘Yeah, this is happening now.’ I actually get a stern talking-to from the clubs for doing that sometimes. But if they sell glass, I don’t do it, because people can get hurt.” From his vantage point onstage, Foresta has seen pure jubilant chaos. Naked people rushing the stage. Prosthetic legs in the pit. Fans crowd-surfing in wheelchairs. But the band also longed for the quiet moments of connection to return as well. “I remember pre-pandemic in 2019, there were three kids outside our tour bus,” Poulos reminisces. “They couldn’t get in because it was 21 and up. But I stopped and chatted, took some pictures with them, and gave them each a free shirt. And they’re not gonna forget that. I know because I was that kid once. I think it’s important to pass that torch on. I want them to be psyched as much as I was as an impressionable young lad. “We are lifers, baby,” Poulos continues. “People kept telling me I’d grow out of it one day. And here I am. When I hear certain songs, I still want to just thrash my living room table in half.” With a new record and a reanimated sense of urgency, the volt-throwers in Municipal Waste are raging back to a stage near you. Grab your favorite trash can, don’t touch their pasta sauce, and smile for a while. “If we’re not having fun, then there’s no real point in doing it,” Foresta concludes. “[Touring is] exhausting and everyone gets tired at certain points. But there’s a certain energy that happens. Especially now after all the bullshit we’ve all gone through, people really want to cut loose again. I feel like it’s our job; like they need us now more than ever. It’s our calling to bring a certain level of positivity back into the metal scene and into the world. “It’s debaucherous positivity,” he continues with a laugh. “I drank a lot of coffee this morning and I just made that up, so maybe it doesn’t make sense. It’s our duty as Municipal Waste to get back out there. We gotta remind them we’re still going. Not just the band—all of us. We’re all still going.”

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INSIDE ≥

74 ARCH ENEMY Semi-brutal truth 76 HULDER Conquering the Shadowthrone

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

77 INHUMAN CONDITION Regressive tyrant 77 MUNICIPAL WASTE The mind's fry 78 TELEKINETIC YETI Cryptid bros

Absolute Descent WAKE

AUGUST

Impossible Whoppers

7-Layer Burritos

Beyond Famous Stars

Arby’s

Calgary crushers dive into the deep end and remerge with a shimmering, expansive extreme metal hybrid

ull disclosure (but no surprise): Your humble hack has been a fan of fellow hosers Wake since they first tore onto the scene at 200 kilometers an hour with 2011’s Leeches. And before you get all, “Of course you do, because Canadians stick WAKE together like maple syrup on poutine (and use phrases like ‘200 Thought kilometers an hour’”), know that it wasn’t until witnessing the Form Descent band’s set during Decibel’s 200th Issue Extremely Ex-Stream “show” M E TA L B L A D E from the comfort and warmth of my own home that Wake really clicked with my cranial oatmeal. Why? Dunno, but it certainly puts into question the amount of time spent with the band’s recorded material and being sweat on by sweaty people who smell like sweat stains at their gigs. So, thank you, the pandemic, for working whatever black magic fuckery that has come to have me further enjoying and understanding Wake’s ever-evolving extreme music angle. ¶ The pandemic ain’t over yet, but folks are emerging out the back end of the mess with positive bents in their fanny packs. Where some veered down the path of starting podcasts or finishing books

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 73

(take a bow, Alan Averill and Daniel Lake, respectively), others ended up working far too much (me) or suffering brain rot via watching Smokey and the Bandit twice a day for a month (also me). For Wake, the forced downtime was about redefining their vision. The Confluence EP hit in the fall of 2020 and now comes album number six, which was initially written in concert with Confluence, but later de/re-constructed because of too much familiarity to the past. Thought Form Descent questions the band’s own status quo, but still spits out a recognizable result; there’s been shape-shifting, but it’s still Wake in the same way Napalm Death and Carcass are still Napalm Death and Carcass over 30 years down the line. “Infinite Inward” and “Swallow the Light” are definitely grind, but introduce English post-punk eeriness, strains of dark ambient/industrial, and blackened death vocals colluding in layered concert to add depth and density. Somewhere between “Venerate (The Undoing of All”), “Observer to Master” and “Bleeding Eyes of the Watcher,” a vortex opens up to a world where Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Hüsker Dü, and the Smashing Pumpkins are unpretentiously jamming on soundscapes and suffocating grooves. Maturity and growth expansively direct “Mourning Dirge (Repose of the Dead)” into territories highlighting by spidery counterpoint and alt-rock dissonance similar to that of An Autumn for Crippled Children and Deafheaven, while still hanging onto raw riffing, pummeling snare patterns and vocalist Kyle Ball’s improving strides via sustained notes and Travis Ryan-esque “clean singing.” It all goes into an album that traverses neatly cubed subgenres and sonic ghettos, and offers seamlessly multi-hued, all-encompassing extremely extreme music. Period. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

It’s rare to see a veteran band undergo a creative rebirth after replacing a distinct and popular lead vocalist, but ever since hiring Alissa White-Gluz, Arch Enemy have been on a mighty impressive ascent. The Canadian singer has proven to be up to the task ever since stepping in for the retiring Angela Gossow, as 2014’s War Eternal and 2017’s Will to Power proved, yet anyone who saw her with progressive metalcore outfit the Agonist knows that her vocal talent goes well beyond a brilliant guttural death growl. As it turns out, her third album with Arch Enemy gives her plenty of room to show off her singing chops—both clean and otherwise— which has in turn yielded the band’s strongest work since 2001’s Wages of Sin.

Guitarist/songwriter/visionary Mike Amott continues to show a mastery of juxtaposing strong guitar melodies with rampaging rhythm riffs on Deceivers; plus, having former Nevermore stalwart Jeff Loomis as a solo partner has given Arch Enemy its strongest guitar tandem yet (best showcased on “Deceiver, Deceiver” and “The Watcher”). However, it’s White-Gluz who steals the show with her astounding range. She’s especially commanding on the Accept-esque fist-banger “In the Eye of the Storm” and the throttling “Sunset Over the Empire,” while her cleanly sung vocals on the soon-to-be fan favorite “Handshake With Hell” take Arch Enemy into even more melodic territory (which, of course, fits this band like a studded leather glove). Deceivers sees White-Gluz not only settling into her role with Arch Enemy, but flourishing. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

millennial extreme metal styles, U.S. and European, to what is ostensibly a thrash metal core. Cavernous Depths is the sort of thing a focus group might come up with if said focus group was populated by an active circle pit, all syncopated chug and antic tempos, double-kicks and even a breakdown for your head-cracking pleasure. You won’t find much in the way of subtlety, but then who opens a can of Monster Energy drink to savor the bouquet? This visits something similar upon the nervous system. Sure, atmosphere is sacrificed for a sound that is so direct and present, but it’s exhilarating if loud enough. Tracks such as the economical “White Death” and “Relentless”—wait, is that the energy drink reference we’re looking for?—demand a slack hand with the volume knob. Better still, a pliant festival crowd or a

club with understanding front-of-stage security. Either way, Cavernous Depths serves as both a reminder and endorsement of heavy metal as a physical phenomenon. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

Cavernous Depths B I T T E R LO SS

Bit early in the morning for kung fu, isn’t it, Jim?

Some thrash metal works best when played at tempos beyond the comfort zone of all involved and too much for the studio equipment to handle, everything reading red. Other thrash styles require the perfect balance of precision and power—goddamn Rafael Nadal in beast mode—and an appetite for muscular audio violence that would rival Rob Dukes-era Exodus. Battlegrave traffic in the latter, applying a full-court press in their assault on the senses. With Clint Patzel on bass/guitar and Rohan Buntine on vocals, joined by guests Samus Paulicelli (a.k.a. 66Samus) on drums and Daniel Mackie on lead guitar, Battlegrave apply all kinds of post74 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 2 : D E C I B E L

With an enemy like this, who needs friends? | C E N T U R Y M E D I A

BLOODHUNTER

Knowledge Was the Price MALDITO

Insufficient funds

Spanish melodi-death posse Bloodhunter feature in their lineup one Rocío “Diva Satanica” Vázquez, who, in addition to being the new vocalist in Brazilian thrashers Nervosa, appeared on the Spanish version of televised talent show The Voice and stunned polite society by growling, shrieking and howling like

PHOTO BY KATJA KUHL

BATTLEGRAVE

ARCH ENEMY, Deceivers

90 percent of the albums in your collection. Also featured is guitarist/chief songwriter/lone original member Dani Arcos, who back in 2015 was a part of something called “100 Guitars From Hell” where he performed an extensive guitar étude alongside the late Alexi Laiho and members of Lost Society on Finnish turf. In 2018, the big stink around Bloodhunter was their cover of Helloween’s “I Want Out,” featuring Leo Jiménez, purported to be “the best heavy metal Spanish singer.” Somewhere in this mix, the band has issued three full-lengths. All of this goes to show that Bloodhunter are more well-known for not being Bloodhunter than being Bloodhunter. These extracurriculars are bound to help draw attention to new album Knowledge Was the Price and their take on the sound at which Arch Enemy, Hypocrisy and Dark Tranquillity remain at the forefront of, right? The answer is a big fat “probably not.” The Galicians are certainly adequate at the melodic and death metal parts of the equation, but synthesizing everything while carving out identity remains their biggest stumbling block. Ms. Satanica’s wind tunnel bellow is overaffected and lacks the biting rasp of her obvious heroine, Angela Gossow; and the material she’s working with comes across as rote and typical when it’s not disjointed and samey. It isn’t until well past the halfway point—track seven, “The Eye of the Serpent”—that a solid, individuated tune stands out from the pack with robust and wiry hooks, a caustically anthemic mid-section and purposeful leads. This steers Knowledge Was the Price down a path where it presents more as a vehicle for Arcos’ prodigious lead skills, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing for shred heads. But the lack of substance backing him makes the whole package frustratingly dull. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

DOOMENTOR

Doom What Thou Wilt… U N H O LY F I R E

Doom wide open

Since 2014, the once-anonymous German band Doomentor have released a (nearly 40-minute) demo, a 7-inch and four fulllengths, counting the one in question; last year, they dropped a four-song EP of Mayhemic Truth covers. Since then, Doomentor have played live shows unmasked, revealing themselves to be exand current members of Mayhemic Truth, Blooddust and speed-thrashers Blizzard, but their old-ways-informed approach to melodic black metal and doom-death subsequently lost none of its magical appeal. If anything, the unmasking confirms what we’ve known all along: These

dudes can really shred, and they’re rockin’ out on these absolutely killer/deceptively simple riffs because they’re bona fide dyed-in-the-wool heavy metal geniuses. All along, we’ve championed the German ensemble, but now they’ve gone and released their best album yet. Beginning with a horror movie-style synth pulse (because Doomentor have always had a thing for introductions and interludes), Doom What Thou Wilt… is a misleading title if you take it literally. In fact, Doom What Thou Wilt… is Doomentor’s trimmest and fastest album to date. Besides the synth-tro and outro, Doom is riff-driven and bursting with dark, occult energy. Like early-early Tiamat combined with Varathron and just the right amount of primitive old-skullery à la Hellhammer, this is Doomentor at their best, tightest and most fully-realized. Songs like “The Chariot and the Fool,” “Inner Raw,” the title track and several others are full of a pugnacious magmic fervor like the Balrog swinging. The title track especially rumbles, begging the question, Can doom be this fast? Like I said, misleading title if you’re expecting doom crawl, but a magnificent experience nonetheless. —DUTCH PEARCE

EXECUTIONER’S MASK

Winterlong

P R O FO U N D LO R E

On the chopping block

A lot of bands seem perfectly constructed to please their audience, and Executioner’s Mask certainly fit the bill. Between their aesthetic and ear for gothic post-punk, they have collected all the elements necessary to make an absolutely killer second full-length. But on Winterlong, it’s not quite enough. When the band succeeds, they really succeed. Band leader and frontman Jay Gambit has the voice, delivery and lyrics that are perfect for this kind of music: an eerie, deadpan baritone of a man who has seen some shit, both here and in other realms. And when they get ahold of a genuine hook it’s pretty hard to resist. “Hart Island” has a memorable, slithering guitar riff, and “Contempt,” probably the strongest track here, uses soaring vocal harmonies to deliver a compulsive chorus. But there are just not enough of those hooks to carry you through the record, with some songs seeming to build towards an apex that never comes. Others are missing an effective anchor to make them push past aimless brooding. They have the potential to be something special, but if these tracks had been put in the oven a little longer, they’d probably be more

fully realized. Few bands could live up to a song title like “Two Vultures Fucking,” but it feels like it was especially frittered here. Executioner’s Mask know post-punk goth music and how to write a good song. And that makes it hard to listen to Winterlong and not think it should have been a better record. —SHANE MEHLING

EXOCRINE

The Hybrid Suns UNIQUE LEADER

Re-release the fucking fury

In the 2011 documentary series Metal Evolution—and about a thousand memes since—legacy shredder Yngwie Malmsteen opined to comic effect, “How can less be more? More is more.” Pedantic? Yes. Missing the point? Almost certainly his intention. Even so, Malmsteen’s turned that would-be gaffe into something of a brand, if not a personal ideology. He made it work for him. French technical death metal outfit Exocrine subscribe to the same ideology. Though it’s just over a half-hour long, their fifth album, The Hybrid Suns, displays more ideas than many bands express in decades-long careers. And about half the time, that works for them. Let’s start with what works: Exocrine understand melody. Songwriter and producer Sylvain Octor-Perez has a knack for instilling his plentiful, warp-speed sweep arpeggio sections with a hummable theme (see: “Burning Sand”). Speaking of themes, the band understands how to make a cohesive listening experience out of an album. Motifs repeat throughout the record, giving it a conceptual throughline. These hints at a grand concept underpinning The Hybrid Suns imply almost operatic ambitions. Indeed, Exocrine’s best material layers their technical attack with synths and multitracked clean vocals. In lesser hands, all the accoutrements could overpower the core of the music, but when Exocrine go all-out on “Dying Light,” they make the best song on the record. It’s so good, in fact, that it casts a bit of a shadow on everything else. One wonders what might happen if Sylvain and company let their freak flag fly at full mast 24/7—more is more, after all. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

FINAL LIGHT

Final Light

RED CREEK

Light comes out of black

Sometimes a product really is what it says on the DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 75

HAUNT

Windows of Your Heart CHURCH RECORDINGS/ IRON GRIP

“He’s like some sort of non-giving-up guitar guy.”

A blare in the northwestern sky | 2 0 B U C K S P I N

Just over a year after the release of their debut full-length, Hulder have returned with The Eternal Fanfare EP: four tracks of second-wave European-style black metal, plus an ambient-vocal introduction track, each of which make it abundantly clear just how much Hulder’s prowess has grown since the band was initiated four years ago. What began as a raw one-woman black metal band now sounds like the second coming of Satyricon as executed by a Belgian expat and, on the drums (most of the time), Necreon. Godslastering: Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry, Hulder’s debut, boasted robust and multidimensional executions of melodic black metal. The four tracks on The Eternal Fanfare maintain that consistency of sound we’ve come to expect from Hulder, but, as

packaging. In this case, the packaging itself doesn’t say anything, but Final Light is a team-up between Perturbator’s James Kent and Cult of Luna vocalist Johannes Persson, and guess what? It sounds like Perturbator with Persson roaring over it. Which is probably why Albert let me review it here instead of in the Neon Knights sidebar—something about a growling dude just makes things metal, even if the backing instrumentation consists of nightmarish post-darksynth. Kent and Persson originally planned Final Light as a Roadburn collaboration prior to the pandemic. That puts the music here closer to Perturbator’s 2017 New Model EP than last year’s Lustful Sacraments. For the uninitiated, this sounds like Blade Runner feels. It reminds me 76 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

a song like “Sylvan Awakening” demonstrates, the gestalt of Hulder is more powerful than its manifold layers. No wonder this song in particular stands out; besides the excoriating riffage and the subtle-but-exquisite clean vocals, it’s C. Koryn’s top-tier drumming that drives the fury onward into black metal history. “Sylvan Awakening” is the strongest cut on The Eternal Fanfare, but the title track is one of Hulder’s most memorable compositions. The melodic half-time chorus hits like something you’d hear on Immortal’s At the Heart of Winter, easily one of the greatest triumphs in Hulder’s catalog. You can already see the rows of raised fists, hear the voices shouting in unison, “The tune, it chills my spine!” This EP is simultaneously a stepping stone and a key turning point for Hulder. It’s not to be missed. —DUTCH PEARCE

of Swiss industrial death weirdos Bloodstar’s extremely obscure classic Anytime – Anywhere, only people might actually hear this one. If you thought Kent’s previous work or Cult of Luna’s thoughtful post-metal was bleak, Final Light sports song titles like “Nothing Will Bear Your Name,” “In the Void” and “Ruin to Decay.” Bad vibes all around. Thankfully, like the collaborators’ best work in their other projects, the atmosphere immerses the listener deep in its dark waters. That immersion makes up for the lack of hooks. Even though Kent’s musical fingerprints are all over this thing, Persson’s contributions prove invaluable in making each song its own distinct journey à la Cult of Luna. Hopefully it’s not their final tandem quest into the void. —JEFF TREPPEL

HISSING

Hypervirulence Architecture P R O FO U N D LO R E

The answer, my slime, is hissing in your mind

Critique relies on a series of assumptions for it to successfully operate. For example, it must assume that excellence is both real and quantifiable. It must assume that a work is capable of possessing intrinsic value rather than possessing merit solely because the observer decides that it does. Critique is a presumptuous beast by nature. Attempting to review Hissing makes me painfully aware of this gnarly paradigm. Hissing

PHOTO BY LIANA RAKIJIAN

HULDER, The Eternal Fanfare

Trevor William Church has the vintage heavy metal aesthetic down so thoroughly that it’s next to impossible not to love Haunt for such devotion. That the Fresno singer/songwriter/multiinstrumentalist has put out so much Haunt music over the last four years only makes the project that much more endearing. The guy is brimming with ideas, and his material captures the tone of 40 years ago on record so astutely that it’s honestly unnerving. Toss in an undeniable gift for hooks—in riffs, harmonies, solos and vocals—and it’s easy to see why Church has endeared himself to many. Windows of Your Heart is—let me pause to count on two hands—Haunt’s eighth album already, and again Church gleefully channels early-’80s metal from Tokyo Blade to Black ’n Blue, lacing songs with contagious choruses and dive-bombing solos. And that energy in the music is palpable, whether on the brisk “Mercenaries,” the sleek title track, or the staccato-riffed stomps of “Catch Me” and “Frozen in Time.” On an instinctive level, everything about this record is immediately satisfying, but now that we’re already dozens of songs deep into Haunt’s discography, it’s hard not to wonder if that rough-around-theedges DIY sound is all Church wants to do. This stuff is begging for a more polished studio treatment, with more care put into his vocal delivery. While there’s nothing wrong with the warm, comfy, demo-style tone Church seems to prefer, just imagine what this music could do with a producer who could entice him to swing for the fences instead of manufacturing runs. Then again, a win’s still a win. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

vend the sort of death metal that’s really more of a deformation of the genre than an exercise of it. Patterns ruthlessly honeycomb into hypnotizing rosettes beneath a fog of extremely raw production. In fact, the album’s tonal muddiness is almost a character, adding a gross foreboding quality while also jealously concealing much of its finer detail. If the listener desires more than sheer, sonic bedlam, they’ll find a wealth of nuance for their consideration here, but not without a hefty investment of their time and concentration. They’ll need to burrow deep into Hypervirulence Architecture’s subsoil (and perhaps that is the point). I’ll conclude with a series of conditional statements rather than settling my ass into the judgment seat itself: If you wish that Imperial Triumphant were—you know—way less bougie, Hissing might be for you. If the idea of Morbid Angel free-associating into a Dictaphone while on a heavy dose of psychostimulants intrigues you, and/or you wish that Artificial Brain were more impenetrable and less academic, you’re going to make a Happy Meal of this. If the notion of extreme music as an exploration of vague, inchoate shapes appeals, then Hissing have the goods. It’s really all up to you. But then again, it always has been, champ. —FORREST PITTS

INHUMAN CONDITION

Fearsick

LISTENABLE INSANITY

Good vibrations

A significant cohort of Decibel readers are going to stick this on, sink into the easy chair, stare lovingly into the awesome Repka-esque cover art from Dan Goldsworthy and feel like there’s a real weight being lifted off their shoulders. Because for such a cohort, Fearsick is the epitome of easy listening, akin to reentering the womb in a metaphorical and totally non-creepy way. This is mother’s milk; hot soup in a mug; thrashy and trashy old-school death metal with a turn-of-the-’90s production that sounds like it was recorded straight into the desk at Morrisound. (It was actually tracked an hour’s drive away in Spring Hill, FL, but whatever.) Featuring recent Massacre alumnus Taylor Nordberg on guitar, Jeramie Kling on drums, and less-recent Massacre alum/current Obituary bassist Terry Butler, the band is for all intents and purposes Massacre II: Named After the 1992 EP. They announced their presence last year with their superlative debut, RatºGod, and with death metal evolution slowing up in the sticky heat of the Sunshine State, there is not much to

distinguish the two records. Both are animated by quality riffs set to a dry, organic groove, the kind that was minted in the era of cassette tapes and high-tops. Nothing too fast, lest it kill said groove. Nor too slow. It’s a shame that much of the aforementioned cohort might spend two months in traction at the mere thought of a stage dive. The Goldilockspaced headbanging nirvana of “I’m Now the Monster” would have been worth a tumble off a wedge monitor. The easy chair will have to do. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

KHOLD

Svartsyn SOULSELLER

Strap it on

It’s been a verifiable age since Khold issued Til Endes to a purposefully-unaware black metal universe. Since their introduction in 2001 on debut Masterpiss of Pain, this Tulus-like reincarnation has presided on the outer outskirts of cool. Perhaps that’s because they don’t have the typical trappings (i.e., drama) of Norwegian black metal, though “Skjebnevette,” off 2002 followup Phantom, remains one of the best AmRepstyle noise rock tracks ever. Normally, I’d see myself out the back door here, but Svartsyn is the Oslo-based quartet’s latest, and it deserves a thorough walkthrough. Sarke, Gard, Rinn and Crowbel all return—so too does Gard’s half-Oreo cookie corpsepaint. Certainly, the last 21 years have been consistent, so starting with Svartsyn—if you’re at all curious—shouldn’t disappoint with its economical, emotionally-concrete black metal. Khold have all the subtlety and all the perils of a sidewalk. Yet, this no-frills, riff-repetition aesthetic works. While there’s little variation in “Apostel,” “Dystopi” and “Bryt i Udåd Ut,” other cuts like “Helligdom Av Døde,” “Manngard” and the ending of “Evig” offer brief respite from Khold’s brutally simple architecture. Bassists, note that Crowbel’s growly groove is standout, much like Brynjard Tristan’s was on Dimmu Borgir’s (original) Stormblåst. The Andy LaRocque production affords Khold all the space, clarity and dirt they require. It’s warm enough to not feel squishy, with Khold’s trademark rhythm-centric thrust spotlighted appropriately. By itself, Svartsyn occupies an interesting headspace and musical construct (again, check out the sparse “Helligdom Av Døde”). If Khold’s frugal noise suddenly becomes tony, there isn’t much headroom in what would be a movement. Not that I think that would happen anyway. —CHRIS DICK

MOLDER

Engrossed in Decay PROSTHETIC

Make sweatpants boners great again

There’s a lot to like about Molder, the death metal power quartet from Joliet, IL, who simmer in the same sewers as contemporaries Undeath, Sanguisugabogg, Tomb Mold, Cerebral Rot and the seeping pallet of young bands sporting illegible logos, sleeve-print longsleeves and multi-hued merch options, all of whom have no problem hopping into time machines back to when death metal infused with punk energy was… death metal. Additionally, the threesome peppers their sonic filth with heaping helpings of upbeat sass that give their caveman death metal aesthetic a decidedly non-caveman air. In that sense, Molder roar like troglodytes who have figured out how to make practical use of that newfangled wheel thing (and have experience with indoor plumbing). Despite a few upward IQ ticks, the lads still maintain a fierce dangerousness that attaches risk to Engrossed in Decay, like hugging a cactus, keeping a kimodo dragon as a pet or maintaining a filterless pack-a-day habit. Imagine a festival lineup with Autopsy, Obituary, Unleashed, Asphyx and Pestilence (doing exclusive pre-Spheres material), headlined by Cannibal Corpse. Molder would be the band that attendees Aaren Pantke (vocals/guitar), Carlos Santini (guitar), Dom Vaia (bass) and Kyle Pooley (drums) formed the very next day. This goes great lengths to explain everything from the infectious lurch of “Glutinous Remains” and the sinister blasting of “Chemically Dissolved” to the crawling doom-thrash of “Huff the Stench.” That Pooley has as much Excel and D.R.I. as Repulsion and Carcass in his muscle memory—and everyone else applies George Emmanuel III’s pick-hand strength to the Bay Area gallop—boosts “Relentless Pestilence” and gives “Unsubstantial Hallucinations” a pop often missing in bands content to keep their camo and stringy center-parts languishing beneath the surface. Not these dudes; no cave can constrict their yearn to burn. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

MUNICIPAL WASTE

Electrified Brain NUCLEAR BLAST

Shock ‘n y’all

The adage of “evolve or die” makes a lot of sense. But Municipal Waste seem to live by another, less known saying: Party DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 77

or kill yourself. And with their seventh fulllength, Electrified Brain, they probably have the stronger argument. The quintet is still a crossover thrash band, nothing more or less. And they wisely understand that this strict adherence requires a couple simple, important things: killer riffs and lyrical content that has the same effect on your brain as that part in Airheads where they say Lemmy is God. And this is what you get, with riffs on songs like “High Speed Steel” and “Crank the Heat” fulfilling the first requirement, and titles like “Ten Cent Beer Night” and “Paranormal Janitor” nailing the latter. Helping elevate it all is the band remaining a slick, cohesive unit that still sounds straight from the gutter. Is this the strongest release from these Hall-of-Famers? No, but it’s unlikely that anyone happy with the previous six albums is gonna hear any sort of decline either. This is the 21st year of Municipal Waste. At this point, Metallica were deep into their welldocumented existential crisis while recording St. Anger. Other thrash pioneers were clawing back from trendy flirtations or mailing in stuff no one really remembers. Electrified Brain, though, not only remains faithful to what works, but delivers it in the same stoked, celebratory fashion that makes you feel like a teen again—or at least makes you want to lob a fire extinguisher at a cop car. —SHANE MEHLING

PATRIARCHS IN BLACK

Reach for the Scars MDD

Daddy issues

Is anyone truly prepared for the inevitable ’90s metal revival? Are things bad enough with rising global temperatures and the rolling back of human rights that we must also contend with frosted tips, ball chain necklaces and the sodden indignity of puddle-drenched jean hems? Johnny Kelly’s all in, however. But fair play, he was the era’s fall guy—the everreliable scab drummer to sit in on Type O, Pist. On, Black Label Society and Danzig gigs—and now he’s hoping to be its comeback king with his supergroup, Patriarchs in Black. Okay, supergroup is pushing it. Apparently, Bobby Blitz is to blame—he told Dan Lorenzo of thrash latecomers Hades to hit Kelly up, and the result is Reach for the Scars— sadly not a typo, but negative all the same—an eight-tracker of ’90s stoner chug (plus, inexplicably, a cover of “Kashmir”) that’s begging for a Jäger endorsement and an opening slot on a Biohazard tour. If the universe suddenly wipes 78 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

Blind, Meantime and the first Life of Agony from existence, then this has done you a nostalgic solid. Rotating guest vocalists including a rousing return from Karl Agell (ex-Corrosion of Conformity), and some admittedly “sweet riffs, bro” do counter a) the wince-inducing “Hate Your Life” from ex-Dog Eat Dog’s Dan Nastasi, and b) Photoshop outrage. (Get a manicure, or is that not what “Patriarchs” do?) It’s easy to look back at the ’90s and claim it as metal’s lost decade, but that’s not true. There’s some gold in those barren 10 years. However, you won’t find it here. There’s plenty of COC and Down fans at your local Battle of the Bands, and you’d be better off encouraging them. —LOUISE BROWN

PESTILENT HEX

The Ashen Abhorrence

DEBEMUR MORTI PRODUCTIONS

Building bridges

Reading this album’s press release was a joy, if only because it name-dropped so many of my favorite black metal artists. “The Ashen Abhorrence builds a hypnotic netherworld from the shadowed groundwork of acts such as Obtained Enslavement, Kvist, Abigor, early Emperor and Arcturus,” reads the artist bio, and I’m sitting here nodding like that one Jack Nicholson reaction meme. The thing here is, you can be influenced by big, awesome bands, but can you prove your mettle without becoming a boring copy? Pestilent Hex are unique in that, while they pay overt tribute to their favorites (some of the piano work in the opening track is shamelessly lifted from the first Arcturus album), they don’t necessarily sound like them per se. Pestilent Hex are billed as “symphonic black metal” and yes, Pestilent Hex are symphonic black metal, but not always. Jeff Wagner once described later Dimmu Borgir, whom I feel many black metal fans associate with the subgenre, as “Andrew Lloyd Webber-esque,” but Pestilent Hex don’t fall into the pit of the overblown and overemoted. Rather, Pestilent Hex are calculated, moving between different vibes like the old masters, but also like multiple old masters at once. A prime example of Pestilent Hex at their finest is definitely the bridge in the album’s eponymous opener. Delicate piano heralds mighty guitar work and endless layers of synthesizer. It’s perfect, but the album never reaches that high again, no matter how good it is. I feel like I’ll return to this one, though. —JON ROSENTHAL

SPELLFORGER

Upholders of Evil DYING VICTIMS

Pleasure to trill

Indonesia ain’t the first country on a hesher’s go-to list for throwback speed/thrash metal. That might be the U.S. or Germany or Norway, where the Kolbotn Thrashers Union is apparently a thing. Nevertheless, Spellforger (out of Bandung) are a “speed kills”-type outfit, where conviction, dedication (to the early ’80s), and the DIY aesthetic are of utmost importance. There is no invention here—just pure homage to early Slayer, Destruction and Kreator, with a slight studded leather glove nod to Jairo Tormentor. Indeed, Spellforger cart out all the obligatory clichés without fail on their debut EP, Upholders of Evil. Song titles like “Metal Crusaders,” and “Black Spellcrafters” don’t shy away from welltrodden Satanic Panic topics. Vocalist Middernacht (a.k.a. Demi Raldi) does his best twentysomething Tom Araya scream/croak throughout the EP’s five-song (the title track is an intro) offering. There’s riffs and themes we’ve all heard before—creepy intros, trills, speed runs and mean-spirited riffs—but it’s done with such aplomb that having a modern-day edition of Haunting the Chapel by kids aching and living for it is well-appreciated. Even the cover art (a grumpy lava snake) and Spellforger’s winged logo have that vintage, blue collar-budget vibe. Most of the songs are similar, but that’s the idea. There are no ballads or sentimental moments on Upholders of Evil. It’s rampaging metal straight from the gut. If young guns like Deathhammer, Cruel Force and Condor quell hunger pangs for underground ’80s metal, Spellforger shouldn’t be far off the radar. —CHRIS DICK

TELEKINETIC YETI

Primordial TEE PEE

Spotted in Matt Pike’s backyard

All-time Tee Pee Records releases since 1993? Dopesmoker first, natch, but squish deeper into that long-term gray matter and try to recall a meteor shower of throbbing, pulsating, reverberating bands/albums: Ancestors, Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound (Ekranoplan), any Coliseum, Earthless, Witch, the Skull and Swedish crew Graveyard’s howling 2007 debut. That Telekinetic Yeti now lumber into the fold makes as much sense as cryptids themselves. Sophomore scrum and Tee Pee debut Primordial nearly reduces 2017 indie bow Abominable to its title thanks to a sonic makeover from Kylesa

without the frontman’s sasquatch bark, when their proggy hit-and-run arrives at a quixotic intersection spotlighting the elusive but everlurking Telekinetic Yeti. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

WHITE WARD

False Light

DEBEMUR MORTI PRODUCTIONS

There’s no sax in violence

When Ukranians White Ward take on the form of a black metal band, they’re a truly excellent one. Guitarists Yuriy Kazaryan and Mykola Jack trade searing, inhuman riffage; drummer Yevhenii Karamushko pummels his way through blasting patterns; and frontman Andrey Pechatkin howls like a demon being tortured with a cattle prod. The black metal moments on False Light, the band’s third full-length, represent some of the best black metal you’re likely to hear on a record this year. They also comprise less than half the album. For most bands, that would be a troubling statistic. Experimentation in extreme metal

TOMBS, Ex Oblivion

We all want our time in hell | S E A S O N O F M I S T

One thing that’s been abundantly clear about Tombs frontman Mike Hill since the beginning of his music career is his excellent taste. He frequently name-drops artists like Christian Death (the Rozz version, not the crappy Valor version), Big Black and Black Flag. During the pandemic, Tombs covered Glenn Danzig’s best band (Samhain, not the Misfits). Like a true underground connoisseur, he loves it all: hardcore, black metal, industrial and more. As time has passed since Tombs released a

Decibel AOTY, Hill’s music has ably incorporated elements from all of these genres, with interesting and sometimes illuminating results. Ex Oblivion is sort of like the start of a love letter to underground music, with an excellent new Tombs song opening it up. Hill is completely unafraid to tackle sacred horses. Tombs are not a band I would pick to cover “Killed by Death”—I would think something like Fields of the Nephilim would be their speed. But Hill and company do a serviceable job preserving Lemmy’s fuck-it

usually exists as scaffolding to support all the shrieking and gnashing of teeth. That’s not the case with White Ward, who sound equally comfortable on an extended dark jazz excursion— they’re one of the few black metal bands that carry a full-time saxophonist in the soulful, virtuosic Dima Dudko—as they do when they dip into austere neofolk, bouncy deathrock or labyrinthine prog. The best songs on False Light glide between styles with ease. The appropriately named 13-minute opening track “Leviathan” builds slowly, letting Dudko’s slinking sax serve both as a bridge between soul-thrashing black metal sections and as a crucial component of their ferocity. “Cronus” is a Sisters of Mercy song until, suddenly and thrillingly, it’s an Emperor song. “Salt Paradise” hands the microphone off to Crowhurst multihyphenate Jay Gambit, who ferries the song through a Swans-inspired hell. Not only do White Ward’s stylistic diversions cohere on a track-by-track level; they also function exceptionally well as an hour-plus whole. They sound like they can go just about anywhere from here. —BRAD SANDERS

approach. G.G. Allin songs don't get covered much because, let’s face it, G.G. Allin sucks. The bulk of his notoriety is based on hurling feces and Jerry Springer appearances. So, it’s a nice surprise to see Hill reverse-engineer “Commit Suicide” and turn it into a good song. There’s also a Dwid Hellion guest appearance (on “Murder Legendre”). One thing worth noting is how Hill’s vocals continue to add mournful whisper to bestial wail. I won’t pretend this record is anywhere near career highlights like Path of Totality or Savage Gold. I see it more as additional proof that interesting people like to make interesting things. Ex Oblivion is a worthy peek into Mike Hill’s musical psyche. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

DECIBEL : AUGUST 2022 : 79

PHOTO BY SCOTT KINKADE

co-captain Phillip Cope. Guitar manhandler/ occasional throat Alex Baumann and doublefisted stickler Rockwel Heim represent the Iowa territories same as its prairies, forests and wetlands: vast and elemental. Abominable now sounds like a rehearsal in the face of this Primordial eruption that delves into the rise of humankind and the natural magik that rules us. At a deep woods tempo—thick, chesty—the title cut opens the disc tramping through a viscous bang und drone of forward-thrusting epic clatter. Uptick “Ancient Nug” shoots a psychmetal curl next: motorik cardio, white water riffs and headbanging, vertebrae-compressing delight. “Stoned Ape Theory” bubbles and smokes clean and heady, blowing out a simian run through the jungle. The cannabinoid wallop of the Tee Pee ilk thrives on endless waves of THC contouring— follow the bouncing strings and trembling skins toward the horizon. “Toke Wizard” bellows and bashes like these two need to warm up High on Fire. Toward last light, “Invention of Fire” demonstrates that Baumann and Heim’s fundamental engagement often burns brightest

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

WHERE TOUGH GUYS

FEAR TO EAT O

nce upon a time OXBOW played a festival in St. Etienne, France. The band playing support for us was Chokebore. A solid band of the whole AmRep ilk, they had, like Jucifer had once explained to me, decided to do what could only be called a perma-tour. Which is sort of like spending every day high on meth because coming off is such a drag. That’s right: a really, really bad idea. While it might be great for the music and art, to be in a perpetual state of motion without any familiar anchors, the presence of familiar anchors lets you measure your places in space for… proportionality. In any case, they seemed like nice enough guys; a set of brothers, if I remember correctly. And in the food tent, I had posted up over an aluminum tin of roasted chicken. No surprise to anyone, the French can cook. I stood up to get a napkin, and from behind me I heard one word. Maybe more than one, but the only one I could make out was “broccoli.” No sooner had this word been uttered than a wild melee kicked 80 : AUGUST 2022 : DECIBEL

off, brother against brother in only the way brothers can. Clearly, there had been some long-simmering beef—see what I did there?—and the fuse that set it off was the simple utterance of the word broccoli. I sat back down to finish my meal while Cain and Abel grimly battled themselves into a state that required outside intervention. Yeah, they had probably been on the road too long, I sniffed. We had been out for eight weeks and were just about losing our minds, so I could only imagine. Something else I couldn’t imagine: after eight weeks, my sense of proportionality? Also, slightly askew. “What’s that?” I say, pointing to the menu at an eatery in Lille using my barely functioning gradeschool French. The owner, who is waiting on us, laughs and waves his hand. It’s contempt. Not a lot, but enough. “It’s not for,” and here he paused for effect, “Americans.” The gauntlet had been thrown. “Well, I’ll have that then.” And then the next thing on the menu that

had looked good. “That, too.” He paused before scribbling. “That’s head cheese, monsieur.” “And?” And lastly, but nowhere near leastly, I order Togolese okra. My mother used to cook okra. I loved okra. At the very least, how could I blow it with okra? Well, in literary terms, we might call that foreshadowing, since the very first thing I should not have eaten was horse. While I was OK with eating horse, it was horse sausage. So, horsemeat stuffed inside some animal intestine. When an intestine is turned inside out, it has hair on it. In America and Italy, even they burn these hairs off. In France? Forget about it. You ever eat a hairy sausage? That’s not connected to a pair of testicles? With the owner watching you and waiting for you to break? I’m sure you haven’t. I choked it down. The wine didn’t help. The sparkling water didn’t help. Nothing did. And using the head cheese as a chaser? Horrific. And for those wondering how cheese could be

bad, envision eating cheese made out of brains. Which left the okra. How do you fuck up okra? Try giving it to the Togolese. It was green and lumpy and looked like snot, and while I was buckling under the weight of my ugly Americanhood, I would not break. With tears in my eyes, I choked it all down. We paid the bill, in silence, and when he looked at me, eyes searching, and asked me if it was good, I again refused to concede. “It was great!” I mean, we didn’t help win the Great War for me to say anything less, right? However, as soon as time and space allowed, I got myself a package of Fig Newtons I had been hiding in my bags and, sitting in the van, I munched on each and every one. Silently taking measure and wondering if I was going to die from what I had just eaten. As of this writing, I have not. But I’m taking it one day at a time. And looking for Waffle House whenever the occasion arises. ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE