Decibel #217 - November 2022 by Red Flag Media

SCORN EVANESCENCE HALL OF FAME

LAMB OF GOD GOATWHORE THE FUTURE IS NOW WELL HUNG FOR SATAN

REFUSE/RESIST

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STEVE

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AUTOPSY EXHUMED REVOCATION DEAD CROSS RIPPED TO SHREDS GAERA RUBY THE HATCHET ACEPHALIX CLOUD RAT

NOVEMBER 2022 // No. 217

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November 2022 [R 217] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 12 obituary:

steve grimmett The curtain closes

14 metal muthas Have son will travel 16 fire in the mountains

2022 review Nature, boy

20 low culture Memoirs from the mosh retirement home 21 no corporate beer From zero (ABV) to hero

22 sonja Loud and proud 24 cloud rat Homeward bound and tortured 26 mother of graves Peace be with them 28 ripped to shreds Fuck it, they’ll do it live 30 ruby the hatchet Going their own way 32 acephalix One life to live 34 gaera No time like the present 36 dead cross Fuck cancer 38 daeva Will and fallen grace

features

reviews

40 autopsy Rock you to death

79 lead review With their second LP in as many years, Dream Unending craft a uniquely etheral world on sophomore offering Song of Salvation

42 revocation Hell of a time to be alive 44 exhumed No gravestone left unturned 46 lamb of god We’ve got a good feeling about this one 48 q&a: goatwhore Guitarist Sammy Duet asks the question, “Am I evil?” (Spoiler warning: yes) 52 the decibel

80 album reviews Records from bands that aren’t eligible for student loan forgiveness from the School of Hard Knocks, including Incantation, OFF! and Skid Row

104 damage ink Boy harsher

hall of fame Mick Harris and Nic Bullen move form blast beats to looped beats on Scorn's genre-obliterating Evanescence

Reternal COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY SHIMON KARMEL

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. 6 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

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November 2022 [T217] PUBLISHER

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early 2005 at an exceptionally dour northeast metalfest. For context, Decibel hadn’t even been around for a full year and Unhallowed was still the most recent Black Dahlia record. We were at the Decibel merch table nerding out hard about old-school death metal when he mentioned he wanted to buy a copy of Choosing Death, which had only been out a few months. He had $8 and some change in his pocket, and I had enough Sam Adams in me to feel as though this was fair market value, especially considering that the book was about to be devoured by a dude who recently had the Carcass “tools” tattooed on his forearm. Our paths crossed occasionally over the years, but we didn’t really hang out again until the NYC date of the 2014 Decibel Tour, which featured BDM as main support for Trevor’s heroes Carcass. Or at least I thought we hung out, as I later discovered that—for at least part of the evening—I drunkenly mistook another bearded, bespeckled dude for Trevor. Ironically, I only learned of this when I met Trevor’s doppelganger years later at the first Los Angeles edition of Metal & Beer Fest, which, amazingly, also featured Black Dahlia on the bill. I have several regrets about that evening, but not organizing a photo with all three of us together looms largest. Not counting our Decibel Magazine Tour 2014 issue, it’s somehow been 15 years since the Black Dahlia Murder last appeared on the cover of Decibel in support of their Nocturnal record. We actually began the process of assembling a Hall of Fame induction for that now-classic LP back in late March, but regrettably, didn’t complete our interview with Trevor before his death in May. I didn’t speak with Trevor directly, but when I put our contributor in touch with him, Trevor replied, “I’m sure this wasn’t Albert’s idea, but I’m stoked anyway!” He was right, but I was also stoked. And I didn’t have any reason to believe the story wouldn’t happen. Over the years, I’ve met Brian and a few of the other dudes from various BDM lineups, but Trevor was the only band member I communicated with regularly. Considering that, I’d like to personally thank the current members of the Black Dahlia Murder for trusting Decibel with telling their story. Witnessing them emerge from the past six months of trauma united by a renewed purpose might be the greatest tribute to Trevor’s memory that anyone could offer. Don’t take what they are doing for granted.

The Texas metal scene is crushing right now. Please give us your top three Lone Star metal bands of the moment.

Jody Martin Texarkana, TX

You’ve been a subscriber for about eight years now. How did you discover Decibel?

The first metal publication that I ever subscribed to was Metal Maniacs—the gold standard of metal magazines at the time. At only 10 issues a year, it left me wanting more. I was a newsstand buyer of other publications (Metal Hammer, Terrorizer, Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles), and it was the newsstand where I discovered Decibel in December 2004. While I didn’t immediately subscribe, the smart writing and coverage of all my favorite bands and subgenres of metal kept me reading. It was the Decibel Flexi Series that compelled me to become a subscriber. All told, I have been with you guys since you were “The New Noise.”

10 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

Texas has always had a prolific scene, but it’s definitely a metal hotbed as of late. My “hard-tojust-pick-three”: 1) BLK OPS. Their Godflesh-meets-Today Is the Day approach to songwriting feels like a carnival spook house at full speed, with the cart wobbling off the rails. Scary and exciting and also a little dangerous. Their new album The Heroic Dose is easily one of my favorite albums in the last five years. 2) Frozen Soul. I caught Frozen Soul’s first-ever show opening for Blood Incantation and Necrot in 2019, and I was immediately hooked. Sure, they make fantastic music, but their relentless touring and fostering an environment of belonging and inclusion in the metal community have made them a force to be reckoned with. They were one of the first bands to start playing shows after the pandemic settled down. Their annual Wrecking Ball fest has arguably become the premier Texas metal music event of the year. 3) Malignant Altar. Malignant Altar jumped on the scene almost perfectly formed. [Comprised of] all veterans of the Houston metal scene, they crafted some of the best demos over the last decade. The expectation was that their debut album would be incredible, and it did not disappoint. Last year’s Realms of Exquisite Morbidity made many year-end Top 10 lists. They have added to

their mystique by choosing to perform live only occasionally. With no theatrics or gimmicks, just a ton of killer riffs. Please give us your elevator pitch for a Hall of Fame induction on an album that you doubt we’ve previously considered.

Soilent Green’s Sewn Mouth Secrets is worthy of the Hall of Fame treatment. It’s a start-to-finish juggernaut I’ve never grown tired of all these years. Sewn Mouth Secrets was the band’s second album, and the first one [where] they finally fine-tuned their sound—time signatures weaving around the confused listener, grindcore and southern metal and punk spilling out of the speakers. So underrated, really, and an album the younger generation needs to know about. In what embarrassing fashion will the Cowboys lose in the playoffs this season?

The most painful question of the lot. The Cowboys have no depth at quarterback. If Dak [Prescott] goes down, the Cowboys go down. An honest fan knows our ownership and coaching staff leave a lot to be desired at times. Any number of embarrassing scenarios could be generated by either. Your Eagles are stacked this season and, as much as I hate it, it wouldn’t surprise me to see us go out in the first round at the hands of your beloved team. And I honestly couldn’t imagine anything more embarrassing than that.

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

OBITUARIES

STEVE

GRIMMETT 19 5 9 - 2 0 22

the early ’80s, the voice was everything in heavy metal. Metal fans

seem to have abandoned the voice—perhaps due to decades of unintelligible vocals or pitched screams. Grim Reaper frontman Steve Grimmett was a living artifact of a time when metal was a vocalist’s world and titans like Ronnie James Dio sang about wizards and magical mountains. Grimmett never lost his voice or enthusiasm for metal in the following decades, despite band, financial and health problems. ¶ Grimmett started his career in the heyday of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal when over-the-top theatrics were an indelible part of the genre. After a stint with a short-lived act called Medusa, Grimmett joined Grim Reaper in 1982. He sang on the band’s titanic debut See You in Hell, a mainstay in every metalhead’s collection in the early ’80s. Grimmett’s voice is the reason that album achieved classic status; it soars above the music and propels it forward with operatic grace. See You in Hell was as much of a staple as Iron Maiden’s Killers, Dio’s Holy Diver or Cirith Ungol’s Frost and Fire. For fans, Grimmett was an equal of Maiden vocalists Paul Di’Anno and Bruce Dickinson, even if he never achieved the same fame. 12 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

While not as strong as their debut, Grim Reaper’s 1985 follow-up Fear No Evil was also a success, and 1987’s Rock You to Hell was hyped on Headbangers Ball. But a combination of label problems and a fickle public conspired against Grim Reaper. The band broke up in 1988 and wasn’t resurrected until 2006, when Grimmett reformed the project as Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper amidst renewed interest in theatrical metal. At

one point in the ’90s, the band was a punchline on Beavis and Butt-Head. But the fans never forgot. Grimmett’s life was not without hardship. His best-known band never achieved the success of many NWOBHM bands. He was also beset with health problems later in life, including a bad leg infection discovered during a show in Ecuador that led to a partial amputation. He told interviewers that he’d never made a dime from Grim Reaper. Those hardships didn’t weigh on him. He seemed happy just to be able to play music. Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper released Walking in the Shadows in 2016 and At the Gates three years later, and were working on new music at the time of Grimmett’s death. Grimmett was happy to just have the opportunity to perform and play music for people. The music business never soured his faith in metal or metal fans. See You in Hell is a sacred metal totem. Every metalhead raised in the ’80s has the cover art imprinted in their brain and can sing along with the title track (even if they can’t hit those falsetto shrieks). Thanks for the memories, Steve. We’ll see you in… you know. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

Ruben Limas Tetrarch

Carmine Appice Drumming LEgend

Corey Pierce God Forbid/D.O.V.

Jeff Fabb

Black Label Society

Niki Skistimas krashKarma

ddrumusa www.ddrum.com

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most when we weren't also collaborating with Ed Sheeran.

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

This Month's Mutha: Liz Logan Mutha of Jarvis Leatherby of Night Demon and Cirith Ungol

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am going to be 65 this year! I was born in Australia to Hungarian parents who left their country during World War II. We moved to the States when I was five months old to reunite with the rest of the family that settled here. Even though they left their country, my brother, sister and I were raised “Hungarian” in America, with Hungarian language, music, food and traditions. English is my second language, as I did not learn English until I was in kindergarten. I was married at 20 to Jarvis’ father, and together we had Jarvis and his sister Jenny, who has given us the gift of two beautiful grandchildren! Although my marriage to Jarvis’ dad did not work out, we have remained very close and have supported the kids in their endeavors. My current husband and I will be celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary next year! Together we have five children and five grandchildren. Jarvis plays in both Night Demon (his own band, since 2011) and the legendary Cirith Ungol (since 2016). Do you have a preference?

I like them both, but love Night Demon. Night Demon live is about the experience. No matter how large or small the venue is, it always feels like the band is sharing their music with you, not just playing songs for an audience. You can feel the high energy [and] their teamwork, as well as their genuine happiness in performing their songs for you. Much of his music celebrates traditional heavy metal. Did you ever listen to anything in that vein growing up?

My high school years were in the ’70s, so I grew 14 : NOV EMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

up listening to Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Judas Priest, to name a few. Your son is not only a prominent metal musician, but manages multiple bands. Is that a career path you ever could have envisioned for him?

Actually, yes! One of my favorite stories is about Jarvis in eighth grade. It was the end of the school year and he received his yearbook. On the “careers” page next to the student’s name was the career they wanted to pursue. Students chose the traditional occupations—police, fire, medicine, politics, sports, etc—but not Jarvis! His career goal was “Small Nightclub Tours”! I actually didn’t even know what that meant at the time, but he sure did! Whether he was playing in a band or working at a venue, he would always critique the experience after and make notes in his journal. He always wants to do his best and questions what he liked, what he didn’t like, and what could have been done better both from the standpoint of a performer [and] as a member of the audience. What’s something that most people wouldn’t expect about Jarvis?

For the past few years (interrupted by the pandemic for two), our Christmas gift has been an adventure with him. He looks over his tour schedule and asks us to pick a show, and he builds an adventure around it. We have been to Seattle, Austin and, just recently, in Ireland for the Frost and Fireland Festival. We have met so many wonderful people and, as a parent, I cannot describe the happiness and pride we feel when we see him perform and smile at us from onstage. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Worm, Bluenothing  The Black Dahlia Murder, Nocturnal  L7, Bricks Are Heavy  Sonja, Loud Arriver  Mortuous, Upon Desolation ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Stalag 13, In Control  Verbal Abuse, Just an American Band  Omen Stones, Omen Stones  Electric Wizard, Dopethrone  MDC, Millions of Dead Cops ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Mortuous, Upon Desolation  Autopsy, Morbidity Triumphant  Strigoi, Viscera  Exhumed, To the Dead  Kreator, Hate Über Alles ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  The Black Dahlia Murder, Deflorate  Phobophilic, Enveloping Absurdity  Blackbraid, Blackbraid I  Ripped to Shreds, 劇變  明日の叙景, Island ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Botch, We Are the Romans  Knoll, Metempiric  Violencia/Double Me, Split 7-inch  SpiritWorld, Moonlit Torture  Sentenced 2 Die, Spring Promo ’22 7-inch

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------The Necrosexual  Ozzy Osbourne, Blizzard of Oz  Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell  Alice In Chains, Dirt  Slayer, Decade of Aggression  Prince, The Hits

FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2022

ith all the talk of “communion with nature” and “rewilWHEN: July 22-24, 2022 ding” in the organizers’ stated PHOTOS BY TIM MUDD vision for the 2022 edition of Fire in the Mountains, it was hard for this jaded urbanite to not roll his eyes and write off the event as “Burning Man for Metalheads.” But now—having traveled deep into the Rockies, camped on a working dude ranch, and been immersed in a pop-up community of incredible music and better people— I can see my initial assumption was wrong. ¶ What transpired over three days in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness this summer was a magnificently executed feat of patience, tenacity and passion shared among the organizers, promoters, artists and fans alike. Set in a valley that sits at an altitude of 6,000 feet in the shadows of the Teton range, Fire in the Mountains is tricky to get to as an individual, let alone accomplish the necessary logistics of curating two music stages and hosting over 1,000 people with basic amenities. Nothing about organization and participation in this event was easy, which made its flawless production an even sweeter victory. WHERE:

Heart Six Ranch, Wyoming Teton Wilderness

Besides the setting and music, two significant facets of Fire in the Mountains contribute to its uniqueness: the broad spectrum of panels and workshops you can indulge in, should you choose; and the relatively little separation between the performers and attendees. Whether you’re enjoying a discussion of the Denver music scene with Wayfarer’s Jamie Hansen on the smoking tarp, political discourse with Panopticon’s Austin Lunn in the merch tent, or nodding along to Enslaved only to find Neurosis’ Steve Von Till standing next to you doing the same, there was a shared sense that 16 : NOV EMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

we were all just regular people doing something special together. On the workshop front, Qi Gong (or, more familiarly, “Yoga for Headbangers”) is a great way to limber up for the long day ahead. “Metalations” brought some mindfulness to the party. Watching a large crowd of attendees debating the edible nature of native flora during the Ethnobotanical Plant Walk was almost as cool as witnessing Eternal Champion’s Jason Tarpey forge a freaking dagger during his blacksmithing demonstration. For those of a more scientific persuasion, Siv Watkins, Ph.D., was on hand to

 Burning love Fire in the Mountains’ three-day festivities prove both a celebration of nature and community

explain “Microanimism,” or how human beings can consciously relate to and engage with microbial organisms. Even the food had a story based in Norse mythology, curated and delivered by Chef Jonas Lorentzen. Things got even more profound during the panel discussions, which included a fireside chat with Lunn, Ivar Bjørnson, Shane McCarthy and Sean Parry, where they opened up about the native cultures of their respective homelands and the inherent impact on their music. Similarly, the fabric of the universe pulled at its seams when a cast of thinkers—that included Bjørnson, Von Till and Shaman Elena Radford—discussed music’s connection to cultural pasts in a session titled Mirrors, Revolving Doors and Wormholes. Then, there was the Bear Training. While informative and entertaining, my primal brain concluded that—were any of us to be charged at 40 miles per hour by a 300-pound ball of muscle, fur, teeth and claws—our posttraining chances of survival were almost as slim as they had been before. Aside from the ever-present undertone of certain death, it’s the music (and beer) that matters. From the haunting overture of cello doom virtuoso Helen Money on Friday afternoon to the final notes of Lunn’s acoustic fireside coda on Sunday night, every artist brought their best game to this festival. The inspiration was palpable in the constant theme that ran through conversations with many of the performers:

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Grammy-nominated epic doom legends Candlemass return to their roots with the supreme Sweet Evil Sun! Sweet Evil Sun

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FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2022

 Violent by nature (from l) DBUK, Wolves in the Throne Room and the Otolith return to nature to unleash their unique brands of ferocity

It’s a rare opportunity to perform against a visual backdrop that matches the aural magnitude of extreme music. Apparently, these unique circumstances call for exceptional sets. Day one was mainly an acoustic affair, as those who traveled far and wide settled into their rural home for the next few days. Helen Money single-handedly summoned the spirits from slumber before Nechochwen let the heat of the day linger with a catalog-spanning performance. Sean Parry’s commanding Celtic baritone and horsehead percussion filled the collective heart before that same heart was broken in two by Mike Scheidt’s emotionally wrenching soloelectric set. Steve Von Till’s sunset-melancholyturned-dusky-ambiance ushered in the stars and begged the question: If this was just the beginning, what exactly lay ahead? As the 95-degree heat engulfed day two, if anyone had previously felt lulled into a state of peace, love and metal harmony, Dreadnought took the stage and dispelled those notions by careening through a standout set of material from their excellent new record, The Endless. Ghosts of Glaciers continued the onslaught with their instrumental blackened post-metal, which led to Yellow Eyes’ name feeling apropos as the glaring sun amplified their dissonant black metal assault. An oasis appeared in the form of DBUK’s hypnotic Western Americana, allowing those in attendance to catch their breath before Eternal Champion brought the blitzkrieg back with their wildly orchestrated chaos. 18 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

Progressive death/black metal unit Haunter found “11” on the ferocity amplifier, weaving intricate and vitriolic passages from their latest, Discarnate Ails, before the winds of redemption blew in the form of David Eugene Edwards, with a solo performance quilted of Wovenhand classics, Rasputina and Bob Dylan covers, and some fan-favorite 16 Horsepower material. As if designed for the moment, Wayfarer’s Western black metal arrived at dusk like a gunslinger with a lust for violence, clearing the way for Norwegian extreme metal pioneers Enslaved, whose thrilling, career-spanning headline performance left Viking chants reverberating into the Milky Way. Not to be outdone, day three began with a surprise land blessing delivered by a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe before Salt Lake City’s the Otolith opened with their cosmic storm of ghostly strings and pummeling instrumentation. As if Wayfarer and Blood Incantation members weren’t busy enough, they mutated into Lykotonon for a crushing set of avant-garde electrodeath with nowhere to go but Panopticon. Lunn’s stripped-down set of “Happy Songs About Death” road-tested material from two upcoming records with just two violinists accompanying his acoustic guitar and vocals. Then, like a rattler in the high sun, Snakes slithered in to break strings and take names, driving through their set of Heavy Western that mixed Americana, rockabilly, surf and a fifth of Eastwood into an intoxicating cocktail.

Obsequiae’s three-guitar attack scorched through the lines of time and subgenre before Tchornobog followed frontman Markov Soroka’s vomitous introduction with hallucinatory numbers from their eponymous debut. YOB’s incendiary set was a masterclass of doom mysticism, serving notice that power trios can and will go toe-to-toe with bands twice their size. With drummer Mikey T. on the COVID IL, the Otolith’s Andy Patterson summoned the Aura of Courage and saved the day from a last-minute Visigoth cancellation. Without rehearsal, the band tore through a triumphant set of power metal whose looser-than-usual nature made for a moment of shared vulnerability sending the audience into a frenzy of headbanging horns. As the dust and dusk settled, and the band members’ partners blessed the audience with incense, Wolves in the Throne Room took to the woodland-decorated stage and finally gave “Mountain Magick” and “Spirit of Lightning” their longdelayed live debuts. Following transcendent cuts from Thrice Woven, Celestial Lineage and Two Hunters, the band exited to the howling of insatiable metal animals who were now one with the wilderness. Between the location and the clash of genrebending performances, Fire in the Mountains shouldn’t have worked as well as it did. It was a glorious affair that rewarded every participant with an unforgettable memory of what it feels like to find communion together in nature. Wait. Did I get “rewilded?” Dammit. I’m calling my therapist. —TIM MUDD

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Y ISEMAN

TNE BY COUR

Hey, is Burzum on Tidal? most anyone who’s tried to get in contact with me knows, it’s very rare that I answer anything. I think it has to do with my psychiatrist’s diagnosis of my suffering from PTSD, and I have some avoidance issues. I don’t know, I’m just starting therapy. Regardless, this is about the one time I did check a message from a stranger about this very column. He told me that he generally enjoys my writing, but one column I wrote seemed like I was taking on an “elitist” tone, like I was discouraging people from starting bands, and it bothered him. So, we had a brief conversation about it, and I figured I’d share it here since, like roaches or one-man black metal projects, the sight of one means the presence of many. Maybe that wasn’t the nicest way of putting it, but you get the idea. My opinion on what you’re doing doesn’t matter. Nobody’s opinion should matter but your own. I’ve written a lot about motivations this year, and I’m afraid that my point might not have gotten across the way I intended, but that tends to often be the case. My thesis on this is that I don’t want to discourage anyone from creating something—far from it. I want to encourage every person who has some inkling that they want to build something, be it art, music or even fucking baking, to give it a try and work through their ideas to lead them to a conclusion that is either satisfying or eye-opening. My opinion on the matter shouldn’t be a factor in what you do with your own life. It's idealistic, but I want to believe that those who are driven to create won’t be discouraged by 20 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

the feedback they receive from others, that they press on because they have the restless urge to reach for something. I tend to forget how fragile that can be, especially when somebody takes a fiber-full hot shit on it. Does this mean I’m going to shower every single one of you with words of encouragement? No, because that would be disingenuous, and I only lie to the ones I love. But just because I can come off a little caustic doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize, especially with kids just getting into this shit. I had my fair share of older people try to bar the entrance to me when I started. Most of them are failures or dead now. Who says there aren’t happy endings in life? The flipside to this is those out there who create with profit in mind—and I don’t mean the glassy-eyed youths with dreams of being a rock star, but the cynical pieces of shit that are motivated solely by financial gain and accolades through the soulless manufacturing of a product. Dungeon synth and black metal are especially guilty of this the last few years. Similar to someone making bootlegs because they love an artist and want to own a reproduction of an expensive, long-out-of-print shirt vs. the guys who pump out unlicensed shit in order to avoid getting a 9-5 or coming up with something original. So, no, I don’t want to take part in the elitism that’s always been a part of metal culture. What you do with your creation does not affect my or anyone else’s life but your own. Go hog-fuckingwild, I really don’t care. And if you find that you suck at it, but really enjoy it? Then keep on doing it. Life is too short to be told “no” by strangers on the internet. Just please don’t send it my way.

Craft Non-Alcoholic Beer Is Booming— Who’s Drinking It?

eemingly overnight, you can’t

paint a full picture of craft beer without non-alcoholic craft beer. “The N/A category is definitely surging right now across beer/malt, according to retail can data from NielsenIQ, especially within the craft subsegment,” says Joe Sepka, co-founder of consulting firm 3 Tier Beverages. “Athletic Brewing is one of the top three fastest-growing craft brands in the entire country.” Headquartered in Stratford, CT, Athletic Brewing Company was founded by Bill Shufelt and John Walker in 2018. It became one of the first breweries to bring non-alcoholic beer into the craft space, offering both quality and range—an alcohol-free IPA or stout was essentially unheard of—not available before. Now, you can grab alcohol-free beers from breweries like Brooklyn Brewery and Samuel Adams; experience the discovery you’re used to from craft beer with West Coast IPAs and Berliner Weisse-style sours from makers like Wisconsin’s Untitled Art; and explore more exclusively non-alcoholic breweries like Canada’s Partake Brewing. With Athletic, you can even hang out in a taproom and enjoy events like Oktoberfest. The fuel behind N/A beer’s fire is both the demand created by society’s increasing focus on health and wellness—especially during the pandemic—and the supply created by breweries finally making craft options people

 Full of health Athletic Brewing Co. may have ditched the alcohol, but are far from anonymous

actually want to drink. But who is drinking N/A beer? Is its demographic totally sober/ sober-curious/simply seeking balance? It varies. Some sober folks view alcohol-free beers as a safe way to engage in the craft beer hobby they love, while others may view anything aping beer as a challenge to recovery. Plenty of people, too, aren’t sober at all. Craft beer’s dedicated fanbase is aging and seeking ways to mitigate hangovers and health issues by occasionally swapping in N/A beers. Just like standard craft beer preferences, it’s all personal. To Athletic co-founder Shufelt, craft N/A beer is about helping people feel free to decide what’s best and healthiest for them. Noting that programs like Alcoholics Anonymous do incredible work, Shufelt says, “One of the biggest downfalls is the classification of alcoholism (or people who just don’t mix well with alcohol for zillions of reasons) as a shameful thing. Making healthy, positive choices should be celebrated and not hidden. And if people drink or not drink should be totally fine in society either way. I do think the saying, ‘Non-alcoholic beer is for non-alcoholics,’ while easy to repeat, is very overly broad and restrictive.” Now an account manager for plant-based food company Upton’s Naturals, Joe Hehl has appreciated the option of N/A beer as someone who transitioned into sobriety while working as the marketing director at Alarmist Brewing in Chicago. “I don’t feel I’ve compromised the

ritual cracking a cold one after a long day, or the camaraderie of ponying up to the bar and shooting the shit with the bartender based on the beer in my glass being non-alcoholic.” Meanwhile, non-alcoholic beer may open a can of worms with both one’s own feelings and one’s ties to their community when it comes to sobriety. After choosing to be sober, Dan Barnes says he faced some criticism because most N/A beers are actually 0.05% ABV: “I was judged for not going full stop. That was uncomfortable, but I get everyone has to do what is right for them and their specific relationship with alcohol.” A Vermont-based digital marketing professional, Barnes explains he was once known as “the beer guy,” waiting in release lines, attending festivals, homebrewing, and beerblogging; now he’s known to be sober, so sometimes it feels weird having a N/A beer in public in case someone thinks he’s fallen off the wagon. “These are all ME problems, and certainly better than the problems I had when drinking, but nonetheless complicated.” Non-alcoholic beer is not some clear-cut magic solution for sober people, but it does mean more options for everyone relating to alcohol in any capacity, which matters. N/A beers are starting to appear in “best beer” roundups without any caveats, chipping away at stigmas and making the case that a craft beer can just be a good drink with or without the booze.

DECIBEL : NOVEMBER 2022 : 21

SONJA

Melissa Moore rises with triumphant glam-infused metal trio

here is something in the air; nobody is following any rules, but we are making things dark,” says Melissa Moore, the heart and lungs of Philadelphia heavy metal-goth rock hybrid Sonja, of her latest demon child. She and co-conspirators Grzesiek Czapla and Ben Brand are no strangers to darkness, musical and otherwise, and have all done time in projects across the extreme metal spectrum, from Absu, Tombs and Woe to Infernal Stronghold and Rumpelstiltskin Grinder. The seeds of Sonja sprouted in 2014 while Moore and Czapla were still playing in Absu together, but thanks to their busy schedules (and Absu’s shameful decision to fire Moore after she came out as trans in 2017), the project took some time to bear fruit. Eventually they got Brand on board, started mainlining ’90s-era Anathema, Tiamat, Fields of the Nephilim and early Danzig, and got to work. ¶ The resulting 2018 demo, Nylon Nights / Wanting Me Dead, gave us a first taste of Sonja’s hedonistic rock ‘n’ roll deathwish, 22 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

and now the trio is poised to release its debut full-length, Loud Arriver, via Cruz Del Sur. It’s a hooky, orgiastic mix of sultry goth rock, high-spirited heavy metal and sleazy rock ‘n’ roll, with Moore’s acrobatic vocals cutting through the retro grime. Though the trio is best known for its stakes in black metal and doom, Sonja make clear that their commitment to dirty rock ‘n’ roll is absolute (“All we want is to live and die for rock!”). Moore has long been recognized as a phenomenal shredder, but this project marks her debut as a lead vocalist. Backed up by Czapla and Brand’s swinging rhythmic power, her voice has room to soar—and lots of bloodsoaked, sexed-up stories to tell. Loud Arriver pulsates with witchcraft, murder, fornication and heavy metal thunder, but here, the fantastical is actually quite personal; as Moore says, “It’s like that

classic old saying, ‘You can take the nihilistic trans party girl out of black metal, but you can’t take the black metal out of the nihilistic trans party girl.’” Yep, Sonja’s lusty tales of bloodlust and riff worship are (mostly) autobiographical, and while Moore admits that tearing at the raw edges of her psyche to find lyrical fodder wasn’t easy, she saw it as a necessary struggle. “Plunging myself into the depths of human darkness so I can return with the manna that our beautiful child Sonja needs to live is what I do,” she explains. “Sometimes mama has to go to work to get some lyrics, ya know? This is what I believe it takes to start an uncontainable dark queer heavy metal fire in the hearts of the wicked.” You heard her: If you want to find hell, Sonja will happily show you what it’s like. —KIM KELLY

PHOTO BY DON VINCENT ORTEGA

SONJA

NEW FROM METAL BLADE RECORDS

ngels Hungs from the Arches of Heaven

The title of the record - like all Goatwhore releases - is both deep and direct, vocalist Louis Ben Falgoust II knowing exactly where he is coming from. “It is a basis of human despondency, the arc of life and its relationship with the personal abyss of overwhelming emotion and thought. A mixture of esoteric ideas and biblical scripts and the journey to the places some people care not to venture on mental paths. The rise and fall of the self and how the abyss can be a turning point for some and a passageway to oblivion for others. It is blunt and to the point, just like countless aspects of life.”

†

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 7, 2022

metalblade.com/goatwhore

CLOUD RAT

Prolific grinders reach their breaking point… and break that, too

loud rat guitarist rorik brooks is connecting the title of the Michigan grind trio’s fourth album, Threshold, with its surrealistic cover art: “We normally do intricate black and white drawings, but this time we wanted something broader and more encompassing of the word threshold—about everything happening all at once and that feeling of oversaturation, but also the idea of a threshold being a gateway.” ¶ To that note, it is easy to tumble through portals of usefulness and pointlessness when faced with the modern age’s unending treasure trove of information. No one is immune, including Brooks, who came clean about having spent the half-hour before Decibel rang reading about Indonesian cannibals; your darling scribe burned away that same time reading thousands of brilliantly hilarious online comments concerning a Kid Rock show cancellation. ¶ “The news cycle of the last couple of years has been pretty gnarly,” Brooks says, “but there’s something inescapable about it when you have eight billion people broadcasting all at once. My brain can’t handle any more.” 24 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

When most of those eight billion were shouting from the digital rooftops amid lockdowns and furloughs, Brooks found himself in an unprecedented position. He’d lost his job, was off the road, and at home with his wife and kids. Given the differences in geography, schedules, and lifestyles separating him and his bandmates (vocalist Madison Marshall and drummer Brandon Hall), he was forced to create in isolation. “We’re spread out just enough to where it sucks,” he laughs. “[We’re] about two-and-a-half hours from one another, and it can be hard to get together, even without a pandemic. I’d write riffs and we’d pass stuff back and forth, but we didn’t see each other in person for a year.” Once extricated from internet chatter and video games, Brooks got down to the business of cranking out the riffs that comprise Threshold’s 15 tracks of avant-grind barbarism. He subsequently built up a home studio

the trio recorded at after being able to get together and sculpt the songs into their final versions. “[During the] downtime, I learned how to record properly so all of Threshold was done in-house,” Brooks says. “We’ve always had a great time in the studio, and part of the decision was because of money. Also, we felt confident in the sounds we were getting, though in retrospect, I don’t know if we would do our own recording again. It’s always better to have another set of ears and an objective opinion in the mix. “This record started out of creative necessity and having an outlet in light of everything going on,” he continues. “There wasn’t a vision at first, but as it shaped up, the intention was to be as extreme as possible while maintaining our melodic, weird side. It’s hard to keep expanding with just guitar, drums and vocals, but it’s a fun challenge to innovate while keeping as raw as possible.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PHOTO BY LUKE MOURADIAN

CLOUD RAT

N EW AL BU M O UT OCTO B E R 7 T H

MOTHER OF GRAVES Fall deeper into Midwest Peacevillains’ death/doom debut

hen i first heard Indianapolis-based melodic death/ doom metal band Mother of Graves’ 2021 debut EP, I don’t necessarily think I was expecting anything of this style to come from the States. Classic Peaceville doom has always been, far and away, across the ocean from the Midwest this band calls home. ¶ “I have always loved the Peaceville-type bands, especially Katatonia, and it’s cool,” says guitarist Chris Morrison. “I haven’t paid attention to any of the American bands doing this type of stuff, but we’re just off doing our own thing. I hope the style picks up around here, especially in Indianapolis. We’re the only ones doing deathy, doomy shit like this around here.” ¶ Even so, Mother of Graves’ upcoming Where the Shadows Adorn has an American death metal edge to it. “I think if we put out a full-length the first time, we’d have more of the death metal there like on the new album,” says Morrison. “We’re death metal dudes…” 26 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

“Aging death metal guys,” interjects drummer Don Curtis with a laugh. “So, it’s nice to get a small section of that again before jumping out again. Just enough of a hint.” “I think I’ve played enough technical death metal to last a lifetime,” says Morrison. “I just wanted to do something else, but that’s who we are. Death metal at heart!” This type of “Peaceville doom,” as some call it, is inherently emotional, and Mother of Graves’ mood runs deep. “The theme of [the album] is like an emotional release,” says Curtis. “It’s kind of a release for us, different life experiences like losing people. Bandmates. That’s what it means to me when I listen to it. To me, it’s an emotional release.” “There’s always been a theme of loss,” explains Morrison. “The band was formed when our best friend died, and we knew we wanted to

do something together to honor our friend Jeremy in a way. It was fucking sad, man, I don’t know. Everything I’ve been writing for the past two years has been trying to get that shit out. The grief, the sadness, and it comes out in a melodic, Katatonia rip-off kind of way. [Laughs] One of my friends died, so Brave Murder Day sounded pretty good. We wanted to add more melody if possible. We wanted to use some of the heavier bits we had in mind; try and include keyboards, but still make the creepy, kind of sad atmosphere. “And there’s a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel,” says Curtis. “There are survivors who have to carry on, and that’s how we tried to end the album.” “The last song where he’s screaming at the clouds,” Morrison adds, “that’s kind of the apex of the catharsis for me.” —JON ROSENTHAL

PHOTO BY KRISTIE VANTLIN

MOTHER OF GRAVES

RIPPED TO SHREDS

Taiwanese-American death force aims for sonic and cultural impact

劇變

(jubian) is a visceral eightsong ride that grabs you by the ankles from your bed and tears you through every circle of hell, a.k.a. death metal’s various melodic, thrashy, grinding and doomed faces, leaving you gasping for air and desperate to do it all over again. It’s the third album from the Bay Area’s Ripped to Shreds, and representative of the band’s evolution. For this one, founding member Andrew Lee approached songwriting by thinking about playing live. ¶ “There are definitely elements of simplifying song structure a bit so it’s easier to practice and we can make it more powerful,” Lee explains. “On [sophomore album] 亂 (Luan), there were all these harmonies, and that couldn’t really work live—you’d need three guitars.” ¶ As Ripped to Shreds’ records garner more fans, the demand for live shows grows, and it all affects how Lee writes. Nothing is lost in stripping back, though. Instead, Lee has zeroed in on effective rhythm guitar, deft riffs, pummeling drums and demonic chant/scream-laced vocals,

28 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

creating a tight, masterfully executed beatdown reminiscent of two albums the frontman cites as influential: Dead Congregation’s Promulgation of the Fall and Horrendous’ Ecdysis. Touring ability also drove Ripped to Shreds’ very makeup to evolve. RTS started as a one-man operation; Lee still writes the music and records it himself, but he also played all the parts on debut album 埋葬 (Mai-zang) in 2018. Being able to perform live and also bring on a drummer—“I’m a really awful drummer,” Lee laughs—compelled him to collaborate with peers between Taiwan and the United States; Trenchrot’s Justin Bean drummed on 亂 (Luan). For 劇變 (Jubian), Ripped to Shreds are a fully realized four-man operation, with Michael Chavez joining on guitar, Ryan Cavaleras on bass and Brian Do on drums. One constant is Lee’s mission for Ripped to Shreds to bolster Asian and Asian-American visibility and

representation in metal. In terms of being a “political band,” Lee has pointed out that being a minority in America is inherently political. From lyrics to artwork, Ripped to Shreds embrace elements of Chinese culture. “No one is really exploring Chinese history or culture in extreme music,” he says, noting the Hu and Tengger Cavalry as standout exceptions. “I’m still singing about the same sort of things and ended up in a band that’s all Asian-American. Thinking about what we want to represent with the band—I don’t want to do the same things people have been doing with death, gore… we do those, but not in the same way.” Songs “Race Traitor” and “Reek of Burning Freedom” demonstrate this. Lee references bands like Bolt Thrower and Asphyx, who incorporate similar war, death and destruction themes, but always from a Eurocentric perspective. “There’s more out there to be explored,” Lee says, and 劇變 (Jubian) is one electrifying way to do that. —COURTNEY ISEMAN

PHOTO BY GREG GOUDEY

RIPPED TO SHREDS

RUBY THE HATCHET Psychedelic heavy rockers take their whacks at modern-day angst

rom coven to lucifer, hard rock fronted by women taps into the twilight hour of proto-metal. Where feminine mysticism both vocal and lyrical fuses with guitar eloquence, all parts inform and inspire each other into melodic alchemy. It’s impossible to pinpoint where original Ruby the Hatchet duo Jillian Taylor and Johnny Scarps delineate beyond vox and axe on fourth disc Fear Is a Cruel Master, a siren-esque voyage through metallic classicism. ¶ “[In the] early days, I blew my voice out on Heart, Nina Simone, Queen, Patti Smith and Fleetwood Mac,” writes Taylor from the band van. “I cherish every singer in Fleetwood Mac, but my range and inflection are most similar to Stevie Nicks, so I cut my teeth studying her approach. People, from strangers at shows to toll booth workers and other musicians, have jokingly called me Evil Stevie, and I think that checks out. Maybe it’s my blonde shag, but it’s also the Fleetwood Mac/Sabbath crossover happening as I tried [initially] to find my voice.” 30 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

Those pipes shade Ann and Nancy Wilson on opener “The Change,” which spearheads the album’s meditation on maturation—in a band, on the road, as human beings. Scarps, bassist Lake Muir, organist Sean Hur and drummer Owen Stewart, meanwhile visit some of that Sabs on the succeeding “Deceiver” and music biz side-eye “Primitive Man.” Even so, the soul of Fear Is a Cruel Master dwells in melancholic abyss “1000 Years” and a burning duet with Stewart, “Last Saga.” “Owen brought in ‘Last Saga,’ and I cannot say enough about how that man was born to write and play music,” reveals Taylor. “As soon as the gang heard it, we knew it had deep emotional potential. I wanted him to sing lead the entire time, with my voice on harmonies only, and I had to twist his arm to take an entire verse himself. We

had a lot of fun ghostwriting lyrics together, exquisite corpse-style.” Back-to-back, “Soothsayer” and “Thruster” spotlight Scarps’ elegiac tone and soloing. That keening, steely core manifests equally in Taylor’s singing and Ruby live sets. Try and spot the Blue Öyster Cult ankhs the Jerseyites once had inked in Austin. “I’m a big proponent of tour tattoos,” admits the frontwoman. “Most times, I can talk at least one band member into it, usually Johnny. BÖC is a favorite across the board for their combination of wild changes, unique approach and catchy melody. I would say I hear our BÖC influence [here] in the ending breakdowns on ‘Primitive Man’ and ‘Amor Gravis,’ those quick jam sections that sound like they’re about to come off the (hot) rails (to hell), but then pop back in at the perfect moment.” —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

PHOTO BY DON VINCENT ORTEGA

RUBY THE HATCHET

ACEPHALIX

Reconfigured Bay Area death quintet declares that god is dead

his gift, a pathless path, I follow it to the last.” This line, puked so precisely, so disgustingly, by lead growler Dan Butler on new bruiser “Innards of Divinity,” might as well be the Acephalix credo. Through a series of demos and the release of three death-crust dreadnaughts over the course of a decade, their devotion to the dark, dirty and deviant marches unerringly forward. Since 2017’s Decreation, while Butler and drummer David Benson retain their respective positions, the needs of former core members Kyle House and Luca Indrio required a personnel shift. ¶ “Kyle and I formed the band, and we established our sound—especially Kyle,” says Butler. “Kyle passed the baton to Adam [Camara, guitarist], who was an avid Acephalix fan before he joined the band. He understands Acephalix in such a way that [new album] Theothanatology is sonically both a continuation and an evolution of the band’s sound. Luca was so busy with Necrot that Erika [Osterhout, bassist] stepped in. She was already a good friend who we’d known for years. The band has always attracted performers with confidence, attitude and intensity. The spirit of the band remains strong.” 32 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

Aside from the fairly recent addition of Adam Walker as a second guitarist, the other “new” members have been with Acephalix for years, so Theothanatology documents the morbid vitality of the band in 2022. “The West Coast death metal scene is fairly tight-knit,” Benson explains. “We believe that the current lineup allows us to best evolve without straying from what our fans expect from us.” Camara, who wrote the majority of the new material, says that album opener “Theothanatologist” was the first song that took shape: “It really set the tone for trying to create something with a lot of energy and aggression while still being catchy, but also stepping up some of the technicality within the riffs/songs and incorporating some newer elements/feelings into this material.” Butler highlights closing track “Atheonomist,” saying, “That song is about enjoying life because you only get one life to enjoy. It’s about

relinquishing envy, resentment and (essentially religious) delusions of an afterlife. It’s about facing death with pleasure. It’s about living like an enlightened brute.” Anyone who has experienced front row treatment at Butler’s shows with Acephalix or Vastum knows it to be a uniquely visceral interaction. “I can’t help but perform like I’m living the most important moment of my life,” he says. “When I’m in the midst of it, I’m not thinking about anything else. I’m making contact—often physical contact—with other people who are so immersed in the music that we’re all temporarily losing our minds. An acephalic experience! I always thank people for being up front, partly because I spent many years playing to frightened audiences. I think I was frightened, too, by myself and my way of performing. Once the fear subsided, the shows got better. Performing has taught me a lot about how to live.” —DANIEL LAKE

A BHOR R E N T OB SE S SIONS

GAEREA

Portuguese masked men unearth more secrets via the black arts

ysterious black metallers gaerea have worked hard since their inception in 2016. To date, the bemasked Tripeiros have erected not one, but three full-lengths as ghastly memorials to their otherworldly black art. The group’s newest sunless offering, Mirage, furthers the notion that if incognito visually, transcendent musically; larger-than-life singles “Salve” and “Mantle” heave up Gaerea into the scorching firmament. Still, even considering hard-won ascension, there’s zero itch to pull off the sigil-emblazoned masks. ¶ “Aren’t we all anonymous in the end?” begs Gaerea’s nameless founder. “We’re just lost ants circulating in endless nightmarish cycles through this thing we call life. We are no different from any members of our audience, but we have chosen to assume our true identities: the great nothing.” ¶ No doubt Gaerea are parlaying fanciful Nietzscheanisms into an all-too-defined world as a way to delineate philosophy from musical expression; but in reality, they’re the same. This isn’t music for weddings or morning constitutionals. Rather, Mirage is a continuation of a separate limb 34 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

from predecessors Unsettling Whispers (2018) and Limbo (2020). In the crucible of dissonance and harmony, Gaerea strike hard. Mirage pinnacles “Deluge,” “Mantle” and the title track violate, coruscate and project horrors existential. “We knew Mirage would be a fair continuation from where Limbo left off,” our innominate protagonist says. “And that wherever the concept and story behind the record would lead us this time, the music would follow. It’s a very organic process to me. Mirage is indeed a very distant record sound-wise when compared to Limbo, not only for the compelling and haunting melodies that structure this record, but because for the first time I wrote music supposed to be furious and aggressive towards itself. A selfdestructive journey.” While most Portuguese art is imbued with saudade—a feeling of longing, lost opportunity or nostalgia— Gaerea are more concerned about

the palpitations of the present. Perhaps as with peers Mgła, Wiegedood or Misþyrming, the past is alive, but the tenets of it are now forced into precipitous flux. Mirage is another leading light pulling out new, extant threads from black metal. “We never wrote about nostalgia or loss,” reveals the disguised overseer. “The present time intrigues me way more than reflecting about the past or projecting the future. Life is too damn short for that—the moment is happening now. Still, saudade can have an indirect correlation with the Vortex Society. These people are constantly seeking for something, whether it can be escape, salvation, death. Saudade can also mean the desire to relive a moment you have never actually experienced, but your head has showcased it to you thousands of times. The mind works in very interesting ways.” No question it does, Gaerea. —CHRIS DICK

DEAD CROSS Hardcore experimentalists take sharp left turn or two for new LP, II

onic outliers dead cross—featuring the stacked lineup of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle) on vocals, Justin Pearson (the Locust, Deaf Club) on bass, Michael Crain (Retox) on guitar and Dave Lombardo (you know who Dave fucking Lombardo is) on drums—are about to unleash II, a follow-up that is very different indeed from their self-titled 2017 debut. This time around, it’s not just all hardcore all the time, as these songs are deep in atmosphere, sounds skulking around from post-punk to atmospheric weirdo metal and over to labyrinthine hardcore. There’s a huge emphasis on vibe instead of just hammer-smashing faces, and it’s by design. ¶ “It came out exactly what we intended to do,” admits Lombardo, on the phone from Spain, where he was on tour with Testament when we rounded him up. “The songs on the first album and the [self-titled 2018] EP were very short and straight to the point, 36 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

and we felt, ‘Let’s create a little more; let’s venture out of our norm and create with a little more body in the songs.’” Normally when Patton is on an album, Patton dominates the album, but this record is most assuredly led by Crain’s intriguing and thoughtful guitar work. It conducts Lombardo’s always-on drumming and Pearson’s propulsive bass playing, and it keeps Patton under control. I repeat: Crain keeps Patton under control. This is Crain’s album, and perhaps for good reason. “Yeah, he did an amazing job. Now, let me remind you that he was going through a cancer battle,” says Lombardo, recounting when Crain first gave him the news. “We were in rehearsal writing the music... He was late, I was waiting for him by the studio door, and I said, ‘How you doing, man?’ He said, ‘Not

good.’ I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘I have cancer.’ It’s not the news anybody ever wants to hear. I immediately said, ‘You’re going to be fine. You’re going to kick this shit. There’s the technology today and the medicine that they have today for all that stuff is the best that we can get, and you’re going to kick it. You’re going to be fine.’ Staying optimistic as much as I could, but deep inside I was like, ‘Fuck!’ It was hard for me to retain my composure and anger when I first heard the news. So, he put a lot of passion and a lot of love into this record when it comes to his guitar playing.” That’s good news for the listener, as Crain’s work—like everything else on II—is a joy to listen to. And Lombardo has some good news about Crain: “He’s doing great. He’s moving forward … He’s healing, let’s just say that.” —GREG PRATT

PHOTO BY BECKY DIGIGLIO

DEAD CROSS

TEMPORARY RESIDENCE LTD.

MONO My Story, The Buraku Story The legendary Japanese instrumental rock band releases their first-ever film soundtrack. A masterwork of delicate, understated execution with oversized emotional resonance.

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.

LINCOLN Repair and Reward The entire recorded history of one of the foundational pieces of early 1990s post-hardcore is restored and remastered after being unavailable for over 25 years.

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.

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.

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.

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DAEVA

Five years after their debut EP, Philly black/death dervishes writhe again

lack-thrash outfit daeva (pronounced “Da-ay-vuh”) have finally arrived. Initially surfacing on an out-ofnowhere EP (Pulsing Dark Absorptions) via 20 Buck Spin in 2017, the Philadelphia-based quartet stunned the underground with their aggro-adept anticlerical proclamations. Five years later, riffmaster Steve Jansson leads the charge on new album, Through Sheer Will and Black Magic…. Moored by the gritty aesthetics of old-world Sarcófago, Bathory and Mayhem, but informed by the musicality of vintage Metallica, Randy Rhoads-era Ozzy and Destruction, Daeva inject absolute torment into whatever black-thrash was, is and ever will be. ¶ “We released the EP in 2017,” says Jansson of Daeva’s inauspicious start. “We thought nobody cared. It was just a project. Then we got offered a gig [at Migration Fest] in 2018. I asked Enrique [Sagarnaga, drums] and Frank [Chin, bass], both of whom are in Crypt Sermon with me, if they wanted to do the gig. They did. We were a trainwreck, but it was fun. We thought that’d be the end of it all, but the gig offers kept coming in.

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Now, I know there’s been a lot of time between the EP and the album, but I truly think we’re taking everything from the EP one step further by not following the rules of whatever blackened thrash metal is.” Part of Daeva’s charm lie in their uncompromisingly faster-thanfuck riff assaults and hyper-tense musical constructs. To wit, “The Architect and the Monument” and “Loosen the Tongue of the Dead” are hellaciously flagellated, bangedhead numbers, while “Passion Under the Hammer” and “The Itch of the Bottom” antagonize immediately, but sport ultra-sick, clovenhoofed grooves. Through Sheer Will and Black Magic… is rife with such awesome unction. The other half of Daeva’s demonic bedlam is vocalist/ penman Ed Gonet. Throughout, the frontman taunts, adulterates and extols with fiery resolve. The urgency of his venomous crows are upped from lyrics gleaned from his own commonplace.

“I’ve always carried around lyric books and copybooks,” Gonet says. “I’ve gone through several now, but the one I have now is almost 13 years old. It’s leather-bound and looks old-as-shit; most of the pages are trashed; there’s writing everywhere. I pull things out of it all the time. I have to be able to mirror the intensity of Steve’s riffs. Much of what I write about comes from my Catholic upbringing. There’s not a love in me for that. So, heavy metal is the perfect opposite.” The strength of Through Sheer Will and Black Magic… is not only its black-thrash frenzy or unbeatific visions, but also its visuals. The cover by German illustrator Karmazid (Mournful Congregation, Thy Darkened Shade) is, as Jansson says, “evil as fuck!” Reminiscent of David C. Sutherland’s work in Dungeons & Dragons, but more profane, Daeva’s colorful lid might just be the perfect capper for Album of the Year. —CHRIS DICK

PHOTO BY SCOTT KINKADE

DAEVA

Mental M

a legacy death metal band in 2022 is the heavy lifting required to find something that’ll shock an audience whose pop-cultural innocence has long been lost, one that consumes everyday horrors 24/7 via the newsfeed. Chris Reifert doesn’t see it that way. But then, as a drummer/vocalist, the Autopsy co-founder has always tended to view death metal from a different perspective. ¶ Returning after seven years with Morbidity Triumphant, an album so undeniably the work of the California gore-fiends that even two months before its release it already feels canon, Reifert explains that Autopsy are used to inflationary pressures on the material. After all, they were as responsible as anybody for defining the genre at the dawn of the ’90s with Severed Survival and Mental Funeral; recordings of rank lyrical excess, grooves from the animal kingdom, NSFW before NSFW was a thing. ¶ “The challenge is not doing something that you’ve already done, like ‘In the Grip of Winter: The Sequel,’ or something like that,” Reifert says. “That is not something we are interested in doing. We don’t want to recycle things we have already done. There’s that challenge, but at the same time, we don’t want to sound unlike what we sound like.” ¶ A change of personnel can help. Morbidity Triumphant marks the story by debut of Greg Wilkinson on bass. Wilkinson replaces the outgoJONATHAN HORSLEY ing Joe Trevisano, who left on good terms for family reasons.

FUN REAL for

LEGENDS

AUTOPSY

BRING RETRIBUTION FOR THE OLD-SCHOOL DEATH METAL FAN

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any people might assume the biggest challenge for

Wilkinson worked with the band on their 2017 EP Puncturing the Grotesque at his studio, Earhammer, in Oakland, CA. Turns out, Earhammer being shuttered mid-pandemic created the opportunity for him and Reifert to jam on a death/doom project that would later become Static Abyss, which released the stellar full-length Labyrinth of Veins in April. “Greg got the opportunity through a friend of his to do tracking in San Francisco at this venue called the Great American Music Hall, which just happens to be one of my favorite venues in the area,” Reifert says. “It’s just a really, really cool place.” Wilkinson didn’t even have to talk music to get Reifert onboard. Once he knew where they would be working, he was all set. Reifert grabbed his sticks and hit the Autopsy rehearsal space alone. He put on the headphones, played some beats, got his stamina back. Wilkinson then threw riffs at him all day. Reifert put a rhythm to them, and later some lyrics, too, and Static Abyss found a sound. Little did Reifert know it then, but this would help secure Wilkinson’s spot in Autopsy. “I got to report back to the guys, ‘Greg is really cool to work with. It was just me and him alone, so if there is an opportunity for awkwardness

that would have been it,’” Reifert recalls. “I gave him a good report card with the rest of the band! We had him come in and sit in, and next thing you know, instant bass player.” Recorded at Opus Studios with longtime collaborator Adam Munoz engineering, Morbidity Triumphant traffics in familiar themes, familiar styles. Tracks such as “The Voracious One” and “Born in Blood” evoke Ozzy-era Sabbath, Danny Coralles and Eric Cutler’s guitars draping doom majesty atop Autopsy’s punkish death metal skeleton before they switch up the tempo. Connoisseurs might point to the lyrical hyper-violence or Cutler’s weird riff patterns as signature features, but maybe, above all, what gives Autopsy a sense of itself is the rhythm. “I know there’s that kind of feel sometimes, like, man, this could fall apart any minute, but it never does,” Reifert says. “There is a looseness, but that’s kinda us, as people and musicians [laughs].” If there’s any rushing, that’s fear, deadline adrenaline, the vibe coloring the recording—oldschool, anti-quantization rock ’n’ roll. Is that so far removed from Blue Cheer or the Rolling Stones? “Man, you’re hitting all the sweet spots today,” laughs Reifert. “I have been listening to the Stones like crazy. I just got that Live at the El

Mocambo album. I’ve been playing the fuck out of that. That makes me feel good. That’s kind of the sort of thing we grew up with. We were always looking for the next heavy thing as kids in the ’70s—or ’60s, in Danny’s case. We started off with the Beatles, KISS, Aerosmith and AC/ DC, Cheap Trick and Alice Cooper, so all that stuff is deep in our DNA. Later it was like, ‘Oh fuck! What’s this Motörhead thing?’ Maiden, Possessed, Slayer… always looking for the next heavy. But rock ‘n’ roll is what started it.” Today’s death metal neophyte is ahead of the jump; the evolutionary cycle of discovery is as fast as they want it. Will they hear the rock ‘n’ roll in Autopsy’s sound? Will their gnarly primitivism resonate as it did 30-odd years go? Just so long as Reifert and company can still horrify them, all will be well. “In death metal, you want that. It shouldn’t be a safe and pleasant ride. It should make you feel a little creeped out,” Reifert says, then pauses. “I just think it’s fun. We just get our kicks out of doing it. None of us are really good at anything else. I know I am not. I don’t give a shit about cars or computers, or anything really. I am not good at anything else. I don’t have any other skills. [Laughs] It’s music or nothin’, basically.”

I know there’s that kind of feel sometimes, like, man, this could fall apart any minute, but it never does. There is a looseness,

BUT THAT’S KINDA US, AS PEOPLE AND MUSICIANS. Chris Reifert

D E C I BDEELC I: BNEOLV:EAMPBREIR L 2022 1 : 41

I S

P L A C E

O N

E A R T H

Boston tech death/thrash punishers

R E V O C A T I O N delve into the inferno

story by ADEM TEPEDELEN • photo by ALEX MORGAN

AC/DC’s 1977 album, Let There Be Rock, the band’s late vocalist Bon Scott surmised that “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be.” Organized religion’s version of hell—a place “below” where sinners are sent for an eternity of suffering as punishment for their earthly misdeeds—has obviously provided lyrical and conceptual inspiration for rock and (later) metal bands pretty much since those genres’ inceptions, and is well-mined territory. But if you don’t buy into Christianity or any other religion that includes some version of hell in its belief system, hell is a little more ephemeral, not a location. It’s anywhere… or maybe it’s everywhere. ¶ Revocation guitarist/vocalist Dave Davidson likely disagrees with Bon Scott’s assessment that hell ain’t a bad place to be, and on his band’s eighth album and fourth for Metal Blade, Netherheaven, he delves into the subject matter in some depth. “There’s an overarching ‘hellish’ or ‘demonic’ theme,” he tells Decibel on a Zoom chat from his home studio, “whether it’s dealing with the occult or… certain songs might have a political slant to them. [I]t felt like we were all living in various different types of hell during the pandemic. There was so much uncertainty and chaos, and there was political chaos. There just seemed to be social unrest and also hatred seething below the surface. Some lyrics, like any kind of art form, you can kind of read what you want into them. For me, there were current events that led me down certain paths with my lyrics. So, I was kind of inspired by the macro environment of things that were happening, as well.” 42 : N AP OR V IELM2B0E2R1 2 : 0D2E2C :I BDEELC I B E L

The title itself, Netherheaven, offers an evocative juxtaposition of words that furthers the creative exploration of “hell.” It’s a term Davidson coined himself. “That’s the cool thing about an album title: When it’s a made-up word,” he says, “it can mean different things to different people. I had this idea of ‘inverted heaven,’ like hell being an inversion of heaven. It was kind of cool, but it wasn’t rolling off the tongue. So, then I started thinking about Greek mythology with Hades and the underworld, and I figured there must be a million records with ‘netherworld’ or ‘underworld’ in the title. I just kind of woke up one morning and came up with Netherheaven. It was cool to create a new word that has a symbolism to it, an iconography to it. It evokes different things.” Netherheaven is the tech-death outfit’s first album in four years, delayed only by the pandemic, not for lack of material. Davidson not only spent his pandemic downtime writing the album, he also taught himself how to record and applied those skills to tracking his guitar and vocals, as well as Brett Bamberger’s bass for the

Certain songs might have a political slant to them. [I]t felt like we were all living in various different types of hell during the pandemic. T here was so much uncertainty and chaos.

THERE JUST SEEMED TO BE SOCIAL UNREST AND ALSO HATRED SEETHING BELOW THE SURFACE. D AV E

D AV I D S O N

new album at home. Only Ash Pearson’s drums were done in a studio. Though recording most of the album himself offered Davidson the opportunity to try different things without the pressure of paying for hourly studio time, it still had its own challenges. “You can drive yourself crazy [doing too many takes],” he explains. “It’s good to have an impartial third party there who can say, ‘That’s the take right there,’ because sometimes I’ll just keep going. I’ll have a sound in my mind that I’m trying to achieve. But sometimes the first take is the best and you end up doing 10 more takes before realizing that. “There were also roadblocks I ran into with this being the first time I’d ever recorded an album. For someone who’s a seasoned vet, they probably see these little error messages, or whatever, pop up all the time, but for me, anytime something went wrong, I’d have to stop my recording process—take myself out of that—and call a producer friend, or search a for a YouTube video for a tutorial on what the fuck is going on. But I’m so happy with the final product in terms of the performances, and there’s an extra level of pride there for me knowing that I was the captain of the ship the whole way through and was responsible for much of the engineering of the recording process.” The assembled songs were then sent to Jens Bogren (Opeth, Sepultura, Dimmu Borgir, Kreator) for mixing and mastering. Though Revocation had previously worked with Zeuss on recent records, they wanted to mix things up on Netherheaven. “[Jens has] been in the scene for a

long time and has a great ear for metal and has a great way of capturing the raw energy of the band,” says Davidson. “I told him I wanted [the album] to have that very modern punch to it, but I also wanted it to be super organic and feel like it’s three dudes in a room just rippin’. I think he captured that energy very well.” Yep, just three dudes ripping it up. Longtime guitarist Dan Gargiulo wasn’t part of the writing or recording of Netherheaven. “During the pandemic, Dan decided it would be best for him to move onto other endeavors,” Davidson tells us. “He has multiple projects that he’s involved with, and I suppose he felt like it would be best to make his departure from the band during the downtime. Recording as a three-piece was a smooth transition for [us]. The recording process didn't change too drastically; it just meant that I had to write more material, which was fine since I had extra time to focus on composing, so there was no dearth of material.” Though Gargiulo wasn’t part of the creation of Netherheaven, the album features a posthumous appearance by Davidson’s good friend, the late Black Dahlia Murder vocalist Trevor Strnad, who took his own life in May. It’s a bittersweet contribution from someone who was perhaps living his own hell. Strnad and Cannibal Corpse growler George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher both added vocals to “Re-Crucified,” the ferocious final track on the album, a song inspired by Dante’s Inferno that, fittingly, Davidson said is “meant to feel like a journey through hell.” Wherever that may be. D E C I BDEELC I: BNEOLV:EAMPBREIR L 2022 1 : 43

EXHUMED

how ’s artisan death metal approach to songwriting became the key to their longevity

story by JOSEPH SCHAFER

photo by RAUL VARELA PHOTOGRAPHY

think of death metal as a young man’s game, but California

gore hounds Exhumed have been splitting heads and hitting the road since 1990. If the band were a typical American man, he would already be 41 percent through his projected life span. Exhumed’s latest record, To the Dead, shows no sign of middle-aged sag. In fact, these 10 tracks might be the tightest the band’s put to tape in the past decade—high praise considering Exhumed’s sterling recorded output. ¶ That consistently high-quality bar has been held up by Exhumed’s vocalist/guitarist and founding member Matt Harvey, who has kept the band on a packed touring schedule while the project has cycled through other members—Metal Archives lists 18 musicians in the band’s previous ranks, a veritable murderer’s row of talent.

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“Somebody once called us the West Coast deathgrind Deep Purple,” Harvey says, citing the lauded British rockers’ connections to Whitesnake and Black Sabbath, among others. “People say, ‘Matt Harvey is Exhumed,’ but it’s always been a collaborative thing, and the people we’ve collaborated with in the past are still in the family circle.” To the Dead underlines Harvey’s point. The record, intended to mark the 30th anniversary of Exhumed’s first demo, features songs by Harvey and his current cohort, and compositions written by former Exhumed members, including

That Exhumed have persisted long enough Impaled guitarist Leon del Muerte, Cretin bassist to commemorate a silver anniversary makes Matt Widener and others. Harvey a death metal elder statesman, though “I wanted to acknowledge the past of the he prefers the term “grizzled veteran.” He’s band in a way that is novel and interesting,” seen the genre’s booms, busts and revivals— says Harvey. “Because this record was written and looks at the zeitgeist with an almost superand produced during the pandemic, I thought, naturally levelheaded perspective. (“Remember ‘Everyone has time to come up with a song!’” that Morbid Angel shirt that said, ‘Extreme The result is one of Exhumed’s most straightforMusic for Extreme People?’” he asks. “What ward and hooky releases, a return-to-gore folabout extreme music for reasonable people?”) lowing the melodeath rock opera of 2017’s Death Given that, it seemed fitting to ask Harvey Revenge and the grind excursion of 2019’s Horror. for his take on death metal’s current renaisExhumed boast both longevity and ability to sance. “My take is dichotomous,” he responds. push their sound into new and old styles while accommodating new and old songwriters without “On the one hand, good news first, there’s a great scene of younger losing the band’s central bands over the past identity. Its essential several years. It seems Exhumed-ness comes like every few months down to a focus on tuneanother band lands fulness that’s been part a bunch of tours and of Harvey’s formula since gets a lot bigger.” He the beginning. lists former tourmates “I remember listening Mortuous, Skeletal to records like Breeding Remains, Creeping the Spawn and Indecent and Death and 200 Stab Obscene, and it’s not that Wounds as examples. they weren’t brutal,” “They’re all very cool Harvey posits. “They kids playing good music, just didn’t have the same so it’s great to see,” he replay value as other continues. “The bad stuff we’d been listening news is that honestly to. There seemed to be a I feel like all of rock lack of musicality—not music has had an unnatin the instrumentation, urally long half-life. I but in terms of the overdon’t think that there’s all presentation. There any particularly new weren’t songs. ground to cover that’s “That became our raison listenable or worth d’être with Exhumed. I covering. Every idea want to take this extreme matt harvey that hasn’t already been music and forge sometried is probably kind of thing that is catchy and a bad idea. All of us playing any form of rock, has a pop sensibility out of these really from indie to grindcore, are mostly reflecting extreme ingredients.” light from a star that died a long time ago.” Harvey’s seen that desire through, crafting Harvey makes sure to include Exhumed memorable songs like “Limb From Limb” and among those bands playing in the prolonged “Open the Abscess,” not to mention this year’s “Rank and Defile,” out of the same lightning-fast heat death of guitar-based music. “But we’re still having a good time,” he notes, tempos and lower-than-low guttural vocals that “so who cares?” have been in his toolbox since the beginning. That same fun-loving attitude has seen Harvey sees To the Dead as a celebration of Harvey and Exhumed through death metal’s the band’s career, down to its commemorative glory days and near-demise, so there’s reason title. “To the Dead to us is a destination—where to believe Exhumed will persist long enough are we all going? We’re all going to be dead,” he for another decennial LP. For now, though, he’s reasons. “It’s to our fans; anyone who listens to us obviously has some level of morbidity in their preparing to toast To the Dead on the road with personality. Also, it’s a celebratory cheer because fans during the band’s annual autumnal trek whenever we’re together, there’s inevitably some across the country… likely with more young libations involved.” and hungry death metal bands in tow.

I don’t think that there’s any particularly new ground to cover that’s listenable or worth covering.

EVERY IDEA THAT HASN’T ALREADY BEEN TRIED IS PROBABLY KIND OF A BAD IDEA.

D E C I BDEELC I: BNEOLV:EAMPBREIR L 2022 1 : 45

WELCOME TO THE

LAMB OF GOD

DON’T JUST HEED THE OMENS— THEY TRY TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE

STORY BY

JEFF TREPPEL

photo by

TRAVIS SHINN

nyone who’s had the pleasure of witnessing one of Lamb of God’s

live performances knows that Randy Blythe is one of metal’s most dynamic stage presences, utterly commanding his surroundings. Anyone who’s watched the 2014 documentary As the Palaces Burn or watched him speak on YouTube can see that he’s a passionate and well-spoken individual. Hell, their liner notes even show him to be an erudite lyricist. ¶ He’s less enthused when you catch him in the middle of a very long day that started with the band’s tour bus breaking down somewhere in Slovenia at 4 a.m., and will end with a concert in Hungary that night. ¶ So, when asked about whether he had any lyrical themes he wanted to play with coming into Lamb of God’s new album, Blythe replies tiredly, “No, not really. The previous record, which I had a very full thought-out plan for, it moves and tells rather a story. But this one? No, not really, because I wasn’t planning on writing a record so soon.” NP OR V IELM2B0E2R1 2 46 : A : 0D2E2C :I BDEELC I B E L

The reason we’re getting Lamb of God’s punishing new album, Omens, so soon after their 2020 self-titled release is the same as pretty much every other band we’ve covered. “Tours kept on getting pushed and pushed and pushed,” Blythe says. “The pandemic, as you know, fucked everything up. We kept on having multiple tours, like, ‘Okay, we’ll do it now. We’ll do it in a few months, and then we’ll do it in a few more months.’ And things just kept getting delayed. So, I don’t exactly remember the exact moment [we decided to do a new record]. You know what I mean? I’m not a studio guy. I fucking hate going to the studio. I hate writing records, really. So, I think, eventually, some of my dudes started writing. Like, ‘Let’s write a record.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I guess we’re doing this.’” [Laughs]

To me it’s an odd thing to write a record so soon [after the previous one]. But I mean, we’re a band—

what else are we going to do? Randy Blythe

He continues to reminisce: “The last record feels to me as if it’s almost disappeared, in a sense, because of the pandemic. But basically, I’ve been doing this band for the vast majority of my adult life, and the sort of pattern my life has settled into was ‘write record, record, go on tour for a few years.’ And that was obviously disrupted by the Coronavirus pandemic, and nobody was really going anywhere. So, to me it’s an odd thing to write a record so soon. But I mean, we’re a band—what else are we going to do?” 0mens won’t surprise anybody familiar with Lamb of God’s southern-fried metal, but it’s yet another ridiculously vital entry in their unimpeachable discography. Blythe pays attention to the world around him and comes up with socially relevant words to roar over Mark Morton and Willie Adler’s groovy guitar interplay, and John Campbell and Art Cruz’s thunderous rhythm section. “Nevermore” tells the unflinching story of Richmond, VA’s history built on the backs of Black slaves. The title track lambastes humanity for not seeing the environmental collapse in front of them. “Gomorrah” even deals with a former disgrace-in-chief.

“There’s too much to write about,” Blythe explains. “All you have to do is look at the growing—discontent isn’t quite the word, but growing disenchantment with our political system, the economy. Environmental issues, of course; the pandemic and how everybody handled it. The media, social media, misinformation in general—it’s like this grossly rich palette to draw from. “I write about things that concern me,” he continues. “And, as it is, to quote the wonderful Nina Simone, it is the duty of the artists to reflect the times that they’re in. So, for me, it’s like, I don’t particularly know if me writing lyrics are going to sway anyone’s opinion on any issue one way or the other. But it is, I think, [important] for me, at least within this band, because I’m not writing love songs or whatever.” As happy as he is to talk about his band’s new album through his exhaustion, Blythe really perks up when I ask him about one of his personal projects: his decision during the pandemic to purchase a plot of former cattle land in Ecuador, make a documentary about

the importance of reforestation, and pay for it all through the profits from Cameo appearances. As important as it is to express himself through his music, it’s even more important for Blythe to act. “I’ve spent a fair amount of money on maintenance, and planting trees and all that other stuff, and just letting it go back to jungle,” he says. “And it’s important to me because the world needs that. Whether people believe it or not, whether morons believe the climate crisis is real or not, it doesn’t fucking matter to me. I know the science I see with my own two eyes, what’s happening to the natural world. So, I’ll just do my little fucking piece when I can, and I think that it does me good as well. Internally, I feel like I’m actually doing something instead of making some stupid social media posts: ‘save the whales’ or whatever. Just do something; people can take and make individual acts to make the world a better place. Not necessarily in an environmental sense; in all sorts of ways. So, for me, I don’t like to be stagnant. I like to try and push forward in a positive manner. And that was my way of doing that.” D E C I BDEELC I: BNEOLV:EAMPBREIR L 2022 1 : 47

interview by

QA j. bennett

WI T H

SAMMY

DUET GOATWHORE’s trusty guitarist on spiked gauntlets, Satan and the band’s best album yet

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IT’S

a Wednesday night in Cleveland when we

catch up with Goatwhore guitarist Sammy Duet. He and his fellow black-thrash killers Ben Falgoust (vocals), Zack Simmons (drums) and new bassist Robert “Trans Am” Coleman are on a co-headlining run with Incantation. It’s Goatwhore’s second tour back in action after the wide-open nothingness of the plague times. “It feels good to be back out here,” Duet says in his soothing New Orleans accent. “I wasn’t sure how it was gonna be when everything opened back up, but the shows have been much better than I expected.” ¶ By the time this issue hits your greasy paws, Goatwhore’s eighth album, Angels Hung From the Arches of Heaven, will have crawled its way into your misshapen skull. Rippers like “Born of Satan’s Flesh” and “The Devil’s Warlords” deliver all the satanic speed and frantic riffery Duet and his crew have been honing for the last 25 years, but “The Bestowal of Abomination” and the title track offer layers of nuance and melody that one might not associate with a band that once put out an album called Carving Out the Eyes of God. “I’m so happy with how this record came out,” our man enthuses. “If Goatwhore broke up after the show tonight, I’d be happy ending it on this note.” This new record really stands out. What did you do differently?

We first started throwing ideas around in 2018. When the plague hit, it gave me a lot of time to really sit and think about the songs. I’m not gonna dog our other records, but in the past, I’ve always been like, “If I had another month, I could’ve made that song a lot better.” We’d always be touring, so we’d have to write a record quickly and get back out on the road. There’s nothing we’ve done that I’m completely dissatisfied with, but I know there’s things I could’ve made a lot better if I had more time. But I’m always my own worst critic when it comes to that shit. It seems like there’s more nuance and melody than on previous Goatwhore albums. Was that a conscious decision or just a result of the extra time you had?

It just kinda happened. I was experimenting with a lot of things, like the melodies. I did a lot of things with the guitar layering that I’d never done before. I was sitting in my house, trying not to go completely insane, while at the same time completely going insane. We were planning to take 2020 off anyway to work on the record, but then COVID rolled into 2021 and I took the time to make the songs really fucking awesome.

I was having some really bad issues with drinking and other substances. So, I decided to get myself some help and get rid of that shit. Or at least get it under control. When you’re on tour, it’s really hard to stop doing certain things as far as alcohol and drugs and whatever. It’s damn near impossible to go, “I’m gonna stop tonight,” because it’s just around you constantly. I took the pandemic time to really get my head straight as far as that goes. I had to get my shit together, and I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t taken that step, I probably wouldn’t be talking to you right now. The pandemic was such a depressing time that I knew if I kept going down that path in isolation, it would’ve just killed me.

Speaking of Satan, the first single and video is “Born of Satan’s Flesh.” What can you tell us about the song?

That was loosely based on an old movie from the ’70s called [The] Blood on Satan’s Claw, which was actually the working title of the instrumental version before it had lyrics. Ben just kept the idea and loosely based the lyrics on the movie. Where did you shoot the video? That building looks pretty dilapidated.

It was an old masonic temple in Wilkes-Barre, PA. It’s gigantic and totally abandoned. We actually shot two videos in there, but it’s so big that they don’t even seem like the same building. It’s fucking insane. The director found the location, and it was run-down as hell. There was pigeon feathers and shit on everything. No one had been in there for like 15 years or something. Did you and Ben both write lyrics for this album?

Ben writes most of the lyrics, but I write the parts that I sing. We don’t really talk about it because we both know what the direction is. When it comes to the lyrics, we don’t really stray off the path too much. It’s all evil, but we like to leave stuff abstract so you kinda know what we’re talking about, but it’s open to interpretation. I don’t hear his lyrics until he’s recording them, but I have zero doubts about what he’s going to do. My current favorite is “The Bestowal of Abomination,” with that spooky tremolo riff. What’s the story behind that song?

That was one of the later songs we wrote. I was starting to feel really evil, and that song just kinda fell into place. Why did you start feeling evil?

Oh, you know—life. I try to feel as evil as possible whenever I can.

Are you sober now?

I’ll tell you the alcoholic’s saying: We just take one day at a time. I definitely have it more under control rather than it controlling me. But it’s a process. Tell me about the album title, Angels Hung From the Arches of Heaven. It’s heavy.

It’s about completely destroying everything that’s pure and wholesome and embracing everything that’s evil and dark. There’s no real deep thought process behind it. It’s blunt and straightforward: killing the angels and hanging them from their kingdom. Ben came up with it.

The song “Death From Above” has a cool story behind it, about an all-female bomber division in World War II.

Yeah, Ben was kicking that idea around for a while. There was this all-female bomber division in the Soviet Army, and they would come in at dark, cut the engines so you couldn’t hear them and bomb the Germans. They were called the Night Witches, so the Germans called them Nacht Hexen. Ben likes really obscure stories from World War II that most people don’t know about.

Beyond the extra time you had for music, how did lockdown play out for you?

Did he tell you what inspired it?

This is your first record with TA on bass. Last time I saw him, he was playing in Ancient VVisdom. How did you hook up with him?

It was actually a blessing in disguise. Before that,

Satan.

We used to play a lot with his old band, Hod.

PHOTO BY STEPHANIE CABR AL

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Angelbreakers  Duet (center l) and Goatwhore ask the question, “What would Satan do?”

I had to get my shit together, and I’m glad I did. The pandemic was such a depressing time that I knew if I kept going down that path in isolation, it would’ve just killed me.

Kurt Ballou from Converge mixed the record, and you’ve said he had some arrangement suggestions for you, which was a first for Goatwhore. Did you change any of the songs around based on his notes?

The suggestions he had were very small, but very important, like changing the first half of a riff to a different note. I’d try it and it would sound awesome. He had great ideas. Seeing as how I write the majority of the music, I always appreciate an outside ear. I’m forever grateful to Kurt for that. 50 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

Spiked gauntlets have always been a big part of Goatwhore’s style. What do you look for in a gauntlet these days?

There’s no real rhyme or reason to it—they just have to look like they’re gonna hurt somebody. [Laughs] That’s basically it. But you do have to think about what you can play onstage for an hour in without wearing yourself out. You don’t want them to be too heavy. But I make a lot of my own stuff. I’ve made TA a couple of things. Another guy makes all of Ben’s stuff. Ben isn’t into the pointy, dangerous looking ones. He likes ones that look like something Rob Halford would wear. How long have you been making your own?

I started messing around with that stuff in maybe the second or third year that Goatwhore was in existence because I couldn’t really find anything that I liked. I had a couple people make some stuff for me, but I didn’t like those either. So, I just decided to learn how to do it. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, make it. I was listening to your old band Acid Bath the other day, and it occurred to me that those records have aged really well. Which is a lot more than I can say about plenty of other stuff from the ’90s.

It’s insane, because that stuff is bigger right now than it’s ever been. I guess all the stoner

rock/doom stuff is big again, and we’ve always been tied to that even though I don’t consider Acid Bath to be one of those bands. I always felt we were a lot more metal than the stoner rock scene. But I’ll take it. Are you still in touch with [former Acid Bath singer] Dax Riggs?

I don’t really talk with Dax that much anymore. He kinda secluded himself and disappeared, so I don’t know what’s going on. Nobody’s heard from him. I know he’s doing okay, but he’s just in his own world doing his own thing. I thought [Riggs’ 2007 solo album] We Sing of Only Blood or Love was phenomenal. I wish he’d do something else, but that’s totally up to him. I don’t even know if he’s still messing around with music. To this day, he’s still my favorite singer of all time. This year is Goatwhore’s 25th anniversary. Does the band mean something different to you today than it did when you started?

Absolutely. When we started, we just wanted to have fun. We wanted to play heavy, fast, Satanic music and have fun. If you’d told me back then that I’d be doing an interview with you on record number eight, I would’ve probably told you that you were full of shit. I’m grateful that it’s gotten to where it’s gotten because I never would’ve expected it.

PHOTO BY STEPHANIE CABRAL

Every time we’d play San Antonio, Hod would play with us, so we just became really good friends over the years. Our old bass player, James Harvey, left the band because he was starting a family. He knew he wouldn’t be able to tour as heavily as we would like, so he bailed out. We’re still friends—everything’s great—but we were trying to think about who we could get to replace James that we know we get along with. We didn’t wanna get some strange dude in there. I mean, we gotta live with these guys in a van for months at a time. You never know what you’re gonna get—they could turn out to be a weirdo or something. But we knew TA was a cool dude, so he came out and it worked out perfectly. We didn’t even audition anybody else. We wanted someone who we knew was cool.

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

Destroyer of Worlds the making of Scorn’s Evanescence NOVEMBER 2022 : 5 2 : DECIBEL

nick green

ick Harris has revisited Scorn as a solo elec-

tronic music project throughout the years, but 1994’s Evanescence marked the end of a combustible partnership with multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Nicholas Bullen. Of course, Harris and Bullen had some history as two-thirds of the short-lived Napalm Death lineup represented on Side A of Scum. Both had a shared interest in punk rock, industrial, dub and avant-garde art, all of which filtered into two full-lengths of minimalist music (1992’s Vae Solis and 1993’s Colossus) before reaching the apotheosis of that sound on the more polished Evanescence. For Bullen and Harris, the continued quest for extremity on Evanescence meant slowing things down, not speeding them up. The sound of Scorn’s third and most fully realized album is best described as “narcotic,” which is evident from the jump on opener “Silver Rain Fell.” On Evanescence, the pair explore tension and release with cascading patterns and trance-like rhythms. The album also marked the introduction of James Plotkin as a member of Scorn, playing guitar and guitar synth; he and Harris had first met through tape-trading and continued to collaborate in subsequent projects after the break-up of this version in Scorn. Almost 30 years after it was recorded, Evanescence still sounds newly minted, but it admittedly isn’t the easiest album to get into—it can be as cold and unwelcoming as the city that birthed it. Echoes of Birmingham’s roots as a key factory site during the Industrial Revolution can be heard in the mechanical noises of “Automata,” which also channels the Bhagavad Gita and J. Robert Oppenheimer. The content of Bullen’s lyrics take on an extra-sinister dimension with his vocal contortions. On Evanescence, they offer Scorn’s ripest avenue for exploration; tracks like “Days Passed” and “Exodus” seem to presage the band’s impending demise. 1994 was an absolutely bonkers year for electronic and ambient music, including Portishead’s Dummy, Massive Attack’s Protection and Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II, not to mention early works by Tricky, Autechre and Roni Size. Despite Harris, Bullen and Plotkin’s firm roots in grindcore, Evanescence is more closely aligned with artists like those and the more hip-hop-influenced, breakbeat-heavy scene later showcased on the Mo’ Wax label. This connection was further underscored/explored on 1995’s Ellipsis, which contained a series of Evanescence remixes by the likes of Meat Beat Manifesto and Scanner. What might have happened if circumstances allowed for Bullen, Harris and Plotkin to continue as Scorn? All three are mercurial personalities and guided by their own aesthetics. Harris is now back to recording under the Scorn moniker, and sometimes works out his inner demons in Lull and Fret. Bullen was off the radar for a long time, but has applied himself to the field of sound art and is now making some of the best music of his career with Rainbow Grave. And Plotkin has continued to push the envelope as a solo artist, and as the architect of influential acts like Khanate and Phantomsmasher. Together, they wrote one of electronic music’s darkest and most uncomfortable epitaphs, so we’re chuffed (and not at all weakened) to welcome Evanescence to the Hall of Fame.

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What they did in the shadows

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Dub and industrial were huge influences on Napalm Death in the early years, even if it wasn’t reflected in the music, so it makes sense to hear them reflected in the music of Scorn. But Scorn were also early pioneers of the style that became known as “trip-hop.” What were you listening to while you began to work on this album? MICK HARRIS: Me and Nic both came from punk. We’re both around the same age, maybe eight months apart, and we were both turned on to John Peel around the same time. My cousin got me into some of the punk and new wave bands when he went to university in ’79, but Peel was our teacher. He guided us to look for the extremes in music. Peel is what inspired us most for Napalm Death. I think Napalm Death is what opened doors to Scorn, although it was purely a coincidence that the first lineup of Scorn was the same trio on the A side of Scum. Things like Chrome, Swans, Meat Beat Manifesto and Coil were all influential throughout. NICHOLAS BULLEN: With Evanescence, we wanted to create an album that incorporated aspects of rhythm-driven music, but operated outside of functionality on the dance floor, an album that used rhythm and bass to enter into an immersive realm. At that time, we were particularly listening to music created by Black, Asian and minority ethnic artists: hip-hop, jungle, techno, dub and free jazz. Our intention was to diffuse particular aspects of those sounds—the drum breaks, the tone and minimalism of dub bass, the glacial spaces of production—through our own perspective. On any given day, you may have found us listening to productions by DJ Premier and Prince Paul, Giacinto Scelsi, Brian Eno, Public Image Ltd, Pharoah Sanders’ Black Unity, Hafler Trio, King Tubby, György Ligeti, Dillinja, the Eraserhead soundtrack, A Tribe Called Quest, Empreintes DIGITALes, Jeff Mills, Cabaret Voltaire, Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way and Get Up With It, Autechre, Cluster, Remarc, Nocturnal Emissions, Adrian Sherwood, the Acousmatrix archival series, the Truper, Scientist, Jon Hassell, PGR, Basic Channel or Herbie Hancock’s Sextant. JAMES PLOTKIN: A lot of jazz, early-’70s Krautrock and electronic music/techno. Mick absolutely despised the tag “trip-hop,” and he really didn’t feel any connection to that scene whatsoever. According to him, it was full of wankers—and I’d have to agree. It was mainly just another group of people that were more concerned about image—and a terrible one, at that—than anything else, creating music through intellectual property theft. That was of no interest to anyone in the band, and likely still isn’t.

“Many of the fans from the Napalm Death era were long gone by Evanescence, but this was understandable—we had a vision and refused to compromise it.”

NIC B ULLE N Evanescence continues the theme of the album that preceded it, Colossus, but also seems like a great leap forward musically. What were the lessons learned from making Colossus that you wanted to put into practice here? BULLEN: The psychic tone of Scorn remained constant, but musically we were effectively experimenting in public on our early records, working through areas that we wanted to explore and then jettisoning them as we moved onward. Colossus was a very bleak record that fused eroticism, anger and alienation, and reflected these elements musically through bass pulses, robotic rhythms, disembodied and disassociated voices, damaged psychedelic guitars and dissonant samples. After working through it, we realized that we needed to lose some of the more “human” elements of our sound—such as the live drums and guitar—and to move further forwards towards the Scorn core of bass, beats, samples, electronics and effects. Scorn’s music was always immersed in a distant and cold space. But it also seemed necessary to introduce a certain quality of warmth, analogous to the fetid and fungal heat that exists in the writings of the French Decadents and J.G. Ballard. This is something that manifested itself on Evanescence through the glimpses of beatific melody in some of the samples and in James Plotkin’s soaring guitar lines. NOVEMBER 2022 : 5 4 : DECIBEL

HARRIS: I was always looking for a heavier sound. To this day, it’s what keeps me coming back to doing this. I’ll never get it completely right; I’m never completely happy with it. Vae Solis was the start and mapped out the basic ideas—minimalist dub music. With Colossus, we wanted to get more psychedelic and spacey. We were a lot more confident in the studio at that point and wanted to get involved with the engineer, Jon Wakelin, who we also worked with on Evanescence. The studio wasn’t a big place, but there was a vocal booth, a live room, a control room and a reel-toreel player. We took our own sampler and drum machine into the studio because me and Nic were comfortable doing things that way. I only ended up playing from a drum kit on two of the songs. I didn’t think that the material we had assembled needed it. I’m a basic punk rock 4/4 drummer, so I didn’t feel like I had that “swing.”

Evanescence was recorded at Arena Productions in Birmingham and later mixed at the Square Centre in Nottingham. How much time was spent in the studio? And how much time did you set aside for pre-production? PLOTKIN: I spent a few days tracking guitar. I hadn’t even heard any of the material before arriving at the studio… though knowing Mick for such a long time, I had a pretty good idea

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what to expect. Still, I don’t think I had anticipated how accessible the new material would be. I was incredibly impressed with what they had put together and thrilled that a more atmospheric style of guitar work would be possible on the album. Songs were fully formed by the time I had arrived—and I was given free rein over the guitar recordings, which is always a great thing. Some of the tracking was done in a more “supplied guitar” style, meant to be edited down as needed, while some of it was tracked specifically to the arrangements. HARRIS: We’d finished up a bit of the album before Jim came over to record his guitar parts. Jim was in England for a couple of weeks and then went back to America. Me and Nic started mixing, and a couple of tracks in, things didn’t feel right. It sounded good in the room when we mixed and sounded very thin when we’d listen back to the tracks in the hotel. I remember telling Nic that we were going to have to break it to Jon Wakelin that we couldn’t use the recordings. I tried taking my own DAT machine and running it through the mixing board to add a bit more bottom end to the recording, but I wasn’t confident with that process. I eventually called Digby Pearson of Earache and explained what was happening, and he said, “I’ll book you a couple of weeks in Nottingham, yep, no problem.” The studio in Nottingham was nice, and we got on better with the engineer there. We spent 10 days mixing the album and completed one track every day. For this part of it, we never asked for revised mixes—what was produced in the Nottingham sessions always sounded good. BULLEN: Scorn did not work like a conventional group where you’d write, rehearse and then record material. We tended to have long periods where the material slowly gestated inside our minds as we discussed the overall direction and gathered samples. We would work together to program the pieces during pre-production sessions, which I would then organize into structures. The studio sessions themselves were short, but focused and intense. In the studio, I knew that Mick had a keen interest in production and that he understood intimately how everything should sound and would be guaranteed to make the right choices. So, I would often withdraw from the desk to listen from the room so that he could direct the flow of production, only making interjections on points of production where I felt it was appropriate; in retrospect, this may have been an incorrect decision, as it perhaps meant that Mick may have felt a lack of contribution or support on my part. When it came to final mixes, both of us worked together and mixed hands-on at the desk. Both Mick and I would probably accept

that we can have challenging aspects to our personalities. However, our dynamic was at its best when working on our compositions; and consequently, my memories of those times are overwhelmingly positive. Scorn were wildly prolific early on, releasing eight albums and EPs within the first few years of the band’s existence. What do you recall from the writing sessions for Evanescence? HARRIS: We did have specific conversations about wanting the beats in this album to be in the vein of hip-hop breaks. We were still very primitive in our approach to programming. The loops were pretty minimalist. I think we did well with the tools that we had at the time. The loops and samples were quite rudimentary, but it worked. We made a good foundation for Nic to play bass and Jim to play guitar over. I’d gone down the route of working exclusively with the sampler and the drum machine. So, we’d get together and pick samples and try to figure out how we were going to process it and where we’d put it in the sequencer. Nic was always really easy to work with, as was Jim, so that helped with songwriting. Nic always had a clear vision for how he wanted things to sound. It was a joy working with someone who always brought good ideas to the table, and we had a good rapport and rhythm in bouncing ideas off each other. All three of us worked pretty quickly and were committed to getting things down. BULLEN: Scorn was viewed by both of us as an equal partnership. The credits reflected our equal contribution to each piece and the albums as a whole. The combination of our interests and approaches created the Scorn sound up through Evanescence. After my departure, the sound of Scorn shifted to reflect Mick’s perspective, resulting in recordings that are noticeably different—but equally rewarding and successful. On Evanescence, we both contributed drumbeats and samples in largely equal measure, using a process of collage and bricolage to merge our choices. I was generally responsible for the arrangement for each piece, allowing the structure to be guided by the sonic content and by the thematic concerns of the piece. I also chose the album titles and defined the sequence of songs on the albums to present a passage through the material that mirrored the title of the album and the content. The lyrics were generally the last element to be put in place. I always carried a notebook, which I would use to capture ideas as they emerged, but I would often rewrite aspects of the lyrics in the studio in response to the developing pieces. At the time of Evanescence, I was experiencing a very strange and disquieting period and this manifested itself in the fragmented and repetitive structure of the lyrics, as well as the thematic concerns of alienation and despair, reflecting French Symbolist literature, Samuel Beckett and alchemy. NOVEMBER 2022 : 5 6 : DECIBEL

One of the unquestionable high points is “Exodus,” which features Nick Garnett on didgeridoo. How did this come about? BULLEN: “Exodus” has a quality of melancholy, an almost elegiac tone intended to convey a simultaneous sense of movement and eternity: an endless exodus to nowhere, weighed down by the body and time. Mick had met Nick Garnett and we knew that the qualities of the didgeridoo would contribute to the structure and tone of the piece—the shifting waves of air passing through the instrument complementing the forward motion of the rhythms, and the drone aspect linking to the sense of endlessness. HARRIS: He lived above the flat me and my wife Helen used to rent. He was a real nice lad. I liked the low-frequency sound of the didgeridoo, so I asked Nic if we could have my mate come in and play on a track. Nic only knew him as the hippie that used to live above me and Helen. Nick Garnett would occasionally come down to my apartment and listen to some experimental music and have a smoke and hang out. We actually made a whole album together, which was never released. I have it on DAT somewhere and it was sort of in the vein of [ambient group] Zoviet France. So, I’d already recorded with him and thought the sound of the didgeridoo might fit. Nic chose “Exodus” as the track to incorporate it on, and I think it works really well there.

Evanescence also features guitar work by James Plotkin, who played in a band named O.L.D. that started as a grindcore act and evolved into something a little more like Scorn. You shared a label at the time; was this something suggested by Earache? BULLEN: James is a very skilled and creative musician, and Mick and James had been friends since the Napalm Death era. We knew that his extended techniques—both in terms of playing and electronic processing and looping—would mesh with the sound of Scorn, bringing the feeling of damaged psychedelia that we were looking for. For each piece, we discussed the direction and tone that we sought to create and the kind of sounds we were looking for, and then trusted James to create his guitar lines with minimal intervention on our part, resulting in absolutely essential contributions to the recordings. Scorn always had an unstable relationship to the guitar, though; even by Evanescence, we’d grown progressively disenchanted with the idea of incorporating it as a component of our sound, as it seemed to offer a reduced textural palette when compared to the sonic landscapes available through samples. PLOTKIN: I highly doubt Earache had anything to do with this—I don’t think the label had any creative input on their releases, especially anything involving Mick. He knew plenty of capable guitarists that would be able to take care of whatever might be required from that particular instrument on their recordings.

Chicago, IL’s READY FOR DEATH (featuring former and current members of Indecision, Racetraitor and Pelican) present their crushing self-titled debut. READY FOR DEATH seamlessly melds the best parts of Hardcore, Thrash, Death and Punk into ten tracks of grinding mayhem!

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On their third full length venture and Translation Loss debut, Minneapolis, MN’s HIVE presents their gripping new album “Spiritual Poverty”! “Spiritual Poverty” addresses the struggles of mental illness and the lack of will to carry on in today’s bleak landscape.

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Me and Nic may have written the foundations of this album before bringing Jim into the fold—the beats and the samples and the loops. Nic always played bass and did vocals live. We chose Jim for this record because he brought another dynamic to Scorn’s sound. Jim is a really wonderful guitarist. I think he was a bit ahead of his time with his technique, using loops to layer sounds, and also using synth guitar. He had an evolving sound, and he was constantly experimenting. I called his style of guitar playing “the drift.” It was perfect for what Scorn needed. Considering that Nic never really picked up a guitar on a daily basis, he had laid down some wicked parts on Colossus; we decided he’d play guitar on that album because [ex-Godflesh guitarist] Paul Neville couldn’t fit it into his schedule. So, Nic played guitar there, but we decided that we wanted to bring someone else in for Evanescence because we wanted to play live and have that person tour with us. Jim was a simple choice, really. He has an expansive mind and he was interested in pushing the envelope. It was perfect to have him involved. Jim and I had been friends since ’86 or ’87 from tape-trading. He’d discovered Napalm Death and sent me [his preO.L.D. band] Regurgitation demos. HARRIS:

HARRIS: “The End.” Jimmy’s guitar is fucking wicked on that song. Nic’s bass sound reminds me a bit of Jah Wobble’s work in Public Image Ltd, but also is distinctly Nic Bullen. The beat on there is really simple, but memorable: a poppy kick drum and snare thing. The melody is quite sad. I remember listening to the mix and being wistful that the record was almost finished, because it was such a great experience putting it together. There’s a lot of influences on that song and it has a lot going on, but I think it works. BULLEN: “Silver Rain Fell” is a piece that resonates for me. It has a strange tone. It’s bleak, hard, cold, dissociated, alien. It conveys an endless sadness that permeates everything, like psychic mercury flowing through the macrocosm of endless universes and the microcosm of the inner space of an individual. Musically, the piece has a sense of the inescapable eternal, amplified by the fusion of samples, where repeated small motifs and cells of sound merge together into a larger whole. This is underpinned by the combined pulse of the breakbeat and the robotic pointillism of the drum programming, plus the insistent bassline, which I had originally used on our first Peel Session for the piece “Wall of Silence.” In terms of the album, it was a natural choice as an opening piece, setting the tone for

the whole. “The End” also provided a suitably mournful ending. Technology, of course, was a lot different nearly 30 years ago. What type of gear did you use for sampling, looping and drum programming? HARRIS: When we did Evanescence, I decided I wasn’t going to do any drums at all and that we’d just get deeper into the programming. We’d moved into using an Atari sample sequencer and an Akai sampler. Our process became more refined. We had more of an idea of how we wanted the grooves, the basslines and the vocal effects to sound. We liked to record all of the samples to tape to give things a warmer sound and a bit of saturation. PLOTKIN: A lot of the guitar work was done with a crusty old DigiTech 7.8 second looping rack unit—it was extremely unstable, which could work to my advantage as far as making unique sounds, but could also crash and burn at any time. If you left the loop playing long enough, the pitch would end up about at least a semitone higher than where it started… nightmarish for most musicians, I suppose. BULLEN: The earliest Scorn recordings were made on minimal equipment: an Ensoniq sampler for sampling and looping and an Alesis drum machine for drum programming. It worked for us, but perhaps placed some limitations on

 The End Though their most commercially and critically successful album in its time, Evanescence and its remix album Elipsis would be the final album of the Harris (l) and Bullen era of Scorn

NOVEMBER 2022 : 58 : DECIBEL

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the palette of sounds and how we could approach their transformation. On Evanescence, we moved on to using an Akai sampler and Cubase as a digital workspace, which allowed us greater freedom in terms of editing samples and programming. As always, we also made use of the studio as an instrument, working the faders and EQ on the mixing desk to create and alter sounds. The album cover features a super creepy vintage-looking photograph of a mother and child. What type of input did you give to Ruth Collins for the album visuals? HARRIS: Ruth Collins was Nic’s partner at the time. I had absolutely no input into the design— that was always Nic’s department. Nic was the lyricist. There was something behind his lyrics. I never questioned anything when it came to that. He was a very intelligent, deep guy. He had his lyrics and often ideas about what he wanted visually to represent those lyrics. Ruth Collins was great—she later did the art for Gyral and Ellipsis. I’d love to have some of her work today. I do think that Evanescence is a particularly beautiful sleeve. BULLEN: We had created the artwork for the preceding releases by Scorn, but it seemed appropriate that Evanescence would take a different approach. We gave Ruth relatively free rein in terms of the images. She knew the mood and tone that we were attempting to convey, and her style echoed elements in our compositional approach—a certain tone in the imagery, overlaid elements, shifts in perspective, mingling of past and present into a different future. She produced a range of hand-tinted photographs, and we then selected the different elements for the album cover—the end result perfectly complemented the music.

How was Evanescence received upon its release, especially from fans of Napalm Death? Did Digby Pearson view this as something that was commercially viable or a pet project with connections to other acts on his label? BULLEN: It may be true to suggest that Earache often struggled to market Scorn; we did not fit with their core demographic or fit neatly into another scene of the period. But Evanescence seemed to be very well-received upon its release, garnering positive feedback from listeners and our peers and reviewers in the music press. Many of the fans from the Napalm Death era were long gone by Evanescence, but this was understandable—we had a vision and refused to compromise it. However, the Scorn albums acted as a gateway to other realms of music for some listeners, reminiscent of the effect that John Peel’s radio show had on many of us from Mick and I’s generation. It is hard to gauge how Evanescence would be received if it was released today, as music has

developed in many different directions. There is a quality about the record that means that it continues to resonate for new listeners. HARRIS: To start, Dig was always into it. He didn’t put out anything that he didn’t believe in. Scorn was a challenge for Dig until Evanescence came out—I think he did see some commercial potential with it, because it had this sort of radiofriendly poppy production. There was a big press storm. Earache had Pete Lee from Lawnmower Deth working on publicity, and he had good contacts. Earache had a bunch of posters made to advertise the record. Along with Pete doing the press, we had a booking agent, and everything came together perfectly. It was actually pretty easy. We just had to do some press and go on tour to sell some records. We enjoyed getting into the back of the van and going on tour; it was really good fun. Out of all the Scorn records, this is the one that we had the most success with. I can’t really say why—it just grabbed people.

“Sometimes we’d end up hating each other, but that’s normal after you’ve spent that much time together in a van. You can only put up with so much of Mick Harris in the back of a van. It’s a small fuckin’ space and I’m a pain in the ass, I’ll tell ya that.”

MICK HA RRIS “Isolationism” was a term that was frequently used to describe dark ambient/post-industrial music of the early ’90s. Indeed, the remix of “Silver Rain Fell” was included on an Isolationism compilation on Virgin the same year that Evanescence came out. Did you feel a sense of kinship with the rest of the artists included in that scene? HARRIS: Kevin Martin [of GOD] was the one that came up with the term “isolationism.” What Kev meant by it was a way of grouping individuals that were making their work in isolation—the term later became a way of describing dark ambient music. I did feel kinship with those musicians, because they were all forward-thinking artists that were pushing the envelope. To this day, I don’t really know what the fuck I’m doing. It’s all about experimentation. That’s how I work, and that’s how Kev works, and that’s what he saw NOVEMBER 2022 : 6 0 : DECIBEL

in that group of people. I approach music the way I approach fishing—keep going a little further. You’re not going to know what you are capable of unless you go a bit out of your depth. PLOTKIN: It was a small-ish scene, and most of us knew each other, but I never really bought into the term or considered it any kind of artistic movement. It seemed like a typical marketing thing to me, or at least a question of, “How do we fit this music neatly into some kind of genre so it can be marketed?” BULLEN: Scorn were “isolationist” in the sense that we followed our own path without consideration for outside elements. Our focus was internal rather than external, on our inner space and the dissociation that we felt. Combined with a certain quality of reticence in our personalities, we generally worked in isolation and were conscious of that fact, so it was hard to feel that we were involved in anything wider. I appreciated the work of many of the artists on the Ambient 4: Isolationism album, and perhaps did feel a sense of kinship if only in terms of making music that explored a particular vision. I do not know if this is how the other artists on that compilation felt about Scorn. Scorn did limited touring and played festivals during this era of the band. How did the songs from Evanescence fare in a live context? BULLEN: Mick and I were always much more comfortable in the studio compared to the live setting, working without any need to engage with external responses. However, we always wanted to make our live performances something to remember. The Scorn live sound was always full and enveloping, using volume and sub-bass to flood and vibrate the venue spaces. We deliberately restructured the songs from Evanescence for live performance to allow us to extend elements and to present new versions of the material rather than providing a duplicate of the recorded versions. This approach worked particularly well when James Plotkin was playing with us—those concerts are personal favorites. We received an incredible response from audiences. The sight of a packed venue moving to the inexorable pulse of beats, bass and abstracted sounds was completely energizing. PLOTKIN: The actual music fared quite well, in my opinion. I think the visual aspect suffered a bit—Mick was planted behind the front-of-house mix console during the entire gig, in order to take full control of what the audience was hearing. Certainly not a bad idea if you’ve had enough experience with live sound engineers that can’t be bothered with your live mix, or fear cranking the bass up to a level that was suitable for the music... but I certainly wasn’t concerned with having any sort of stage presence, which left Nic as the sole visual point for anyone in the audience that needed to see a moving human form on stage. HARRIS: What we did for Evanescence is that we recorded down to a two-track, and for every track we’d mix the track that would go onto

DBHOF215

SCORN evanescence

 Multi-album collaborations Scum-era Bullen (l) and Harris, circa 1986, begin their short but impactful collaborative career

“I approach music the way I approach fishing—keep going a little further. You’re not going to know what you are capable of unless you go a bit out of your depth.”

MICK HA RRIS the album, flatten the board and move on to the next track. Before we moved on to the next track, we’d do a separate mix of the bass and all the loops and samples, so we were ready with a live backing DAT, which I would control through the mixing board. I’d take a sampler and a little midi keyboard. I wasn’t onstage—it was just Nic and Jimmy, along with the visuals. We started to use projections back then, which Nic was making on Super 8 and then balanced out on VHS because it was easier and more practical. I’d be front-of-house, pushing the DAT, adding samples, and mixing and dubbing the whole thing live. I loved that set-up. I finally had control over the volume and the bass levels, and we didn’t have to employ a sound man, so I didn’t have to constantly worry about it sounding right. The tour was fun—we’d go to Europe for four to five weeks. Sometimes we’d end up hating each other, but that’s normal after you’ve spent that much time together in a van. You can only put up with so much of Mick Harris in the back of a van. It’s a small fuckin’ space and I’m a pain in the ass, I’ll tell ya that.

Evanescence marked the end of the HarrisBullen musical partnership, leaving things on a very high note. Why did you decide to put a stop to this version of Scorn here? BULLEN: Evanescence was the high point of our collaboration together, and what Mick and I achieved with it still resonates for me to this day. Mick and I worked together very well creatively, but there were certainly some differences at this time in terms of the future direction of Scorn. We would probably have worked through them and carried on, but circumstances in my personal life meant that we could no longer work together. They also caused me to realize that it was neither healthy nor desirable to continue to follow a professional career as a musician, so I withdrew from public releases and performances for the better part of a decade, focusing on composing and recording in private. HARRIS: The final day we mixed the record, Dig threw a little bit of a party for us, and I was just in a mood. I pulled Dig aside and said, “Look, I can’t work in a studio anymore. I need my own NOVEMBER 2022 : 62 : DECIBEL

place.” Nic and I wanted to be more in control. We did find a place for a studio in an old factory in Birmingham, where they used to produce Bird’s Custard Powder. We’d found the studio space and someone to build it out for us. We already had an idea of how the record would’ve sounded, too. It would’ve been a heavy homage to PiL, stripped down like Metal Box. We’d made the decision to cut out the vocals; Nic wanted to sample more little lines and single words, with the idea of using the vocals as an instrument. That’s something Nic has picked up on in his work to this day. We also discussed sampling the bass, allowing Nic to have more freedom for other things. I think we would’ve been more comfortable with the sampling and beat-making, especially with our own space to spread out in. We certainly would’ve had Jim on the next record—he always enjoyed visiting for a few bongs of Birmingham bud. It bothers me that we never got to do a follow-up to Evanescence. I’m very happy with how it turned out, but we never made our best record together.

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J U ST I N M. NORTON

S HIMON KA RME L

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER speak about LOSS, GRIEF and

CONTINUING THEIR CAREER

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THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER

eath changes worlds, especially when it arrives early or

unexpectedly. Trevor Strnad’s death at 41 was both early and unexpected. The Black Dahlia Murder frontman had been open about his struggles with mental illness, but, in conversation with close friends, hinted that his struggles were in the past. With the worst of the pandemic in the rearview, the Black Dahlia Murder were ready to start working again and finally get on the road to support their 2020 album Verminous. Tours were planned and there was talk of recording. Everyone in the band was thrilled to return to doing what they love after two years of enforced solitude. ¶ The news on May 11, that Strnad had taken his own life, stopped everything. In addition to the mammoth personal loss of a longtime friend, it left the band members with one crucial question: Where do we go from here? What do we do with our lives? The Black Dahlia Murder’s members don’t have side jobs or tour a few weeks a year; they are full-time musicians who make their living on the road. The band is, for better and worse, their life. ¶ Here’s the bottom line: The Black Dahlia Murder will continue as a working band. Guitarist and co-founder Brian Eschbach will move to vocalist and be replaced on guitar by Ryan Knight, who left the band amicably in 2016. Guitarist Brandon Ellis, drummer Alan Cassidy and bassist Max Lavelle will keep their spots. All the band members say that Eschbach’s move is the only way forward; Eschbach has been with the band since the beginning in Oak Park, MI in 2001, and honed the group’s identity. Inserting an outsider as frontman would never work because of the band’s close-knit, almost familial ethic. 66 : NOVEMBER 2021 : DECIBEL

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“We spent many days thinking things like, ‘Is this over?’” Eschbach tells Decibel. “None of us wanted it to be over. We still feel like there is a lot left to do. I know Trevor would keep this band going if I went down a deep, dark path and weren’t here. It’s bigger than us. When we finally started talking about it, we thought, ‘Let’s remake it from within and see if Ryan wants to return. And I’ll take a crack on the vocals and see how it goes.’ I can’t go out there and do Trevor’s voice or try to be him. I can only execute the music of the Black Dahlia Murder with respect and try to do it the most justice I can. I’ve heard Trevor perform more than anyone else alive.” Knight says the decision to return was easy despite the difficult circumstances. “The time I’ve spent with this band is the best time I’ve ever had,” he says. “Being away has given me a lot of time to reflect, and it always occurred to me that being in BDM is the best use of my time. I’ve thought a lot about the band while I was away and realized how much value this band has. I almost feel like I let some opportunities slip, being away from the band. So, it feels great to be back and like everything has come full circle. I’ve realized how much I love being in this band.” Replacing Strnad—who was no mere frontman—does present challenges. Strnad was a once-in-a-generation metal talent who related with fans personally (more on that below). In addition, he’d been Dahlia’s chief spokesman and messenger for the entirety of his two-plus

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THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER decades in the band. He was usually the person out front in interviews when the band promoted new albums. During the pandemic, he kept the group's name in circulation through podcasts, web conferences, interviews and more. He even took viewers inside his apartment and showed off his massive death metal T-shirt collection. Despite Strnad’s ubiquity, many people helped shape BDM’s music, vision and career, chief among them Eschbach. Eschbach had been a stalwart through several lineup changes, not to mention during the band’s ascent to the upper tier of the metal club circuit. Social media allows anyone to second-guess or criticize a band’s plans. Even when you replace Strnad with the heart and soul of the band, criticism is inevitable. “Of course, it won’t be easy, but BDM is a family,” says E.J. Johantgen, the Black Dahlia Murder’s longtime manager. “Once you’re in, you’re in. There’s no replacing Trevor, but Brian is as much BDM as Trevor. They started the band and worked hand-and-glove to drive the band to where it is today. They are keeping it in-house, which is the only way forward. If you’ve seen a BDM show, you know who Brian is and what he can do. Ryan is an important part of the band’s journey, too. I’m excited about their future.” Ellis, who joined BDM in 2016 after Knight’s departure, said he was initially worried the band would end. The band members couldn’t even

have a conversation about their future because their emotions were so raw. “We were dealing with everything that happened, not the future,” Ellis says. “The prospect of getting on the stage with a stranger and having someone else become the face of the band after nine albums didn’t seem to work. Trevor was the public face of the band. To put someone else in that place would not have worked. It wasn’t even a consideration. Brian called me and asked what I thought about the future. I loved working with everyone in the band. I told him it wasn’t a good idea to replace Trevor. I wondered if it might need to be another band. But I thought we needed to continue.” “This band is all about freedom of expression,” Cassidy says. “We’re playing exactly the kind of music we want to play. We want to be who we want to be without hiding anything. We are goofy people and don’t need to be anything we’re not. We don’t need to be super serious or write things we think people care about. This is just pure self-expression. That’s what I love about this band. If you watch DVDs, you will see a bunch of guys who are unapologetically themselves. I never feel like I have to put on a show. To be able to play heavy music and not even worry about the mainstream means so much to me. [With these changes] we’ll be able to continue doing what we love.” When Eschbach told Ellis he planned to move to frontman, it was a proverbial light bulb

moment. If anything would work, Ellis says, it was Eschbach as frontman. “It was the only way it could work,” he asserts. “Brian has been the president and mastermind of the band from the beginning. He’s our leader. For him to take over as the face and frontman of the band is the only option. We are all so thankful that there is a path that seems to make sense. Because if we don’t continue this band, all of this music and all of these songs—everything we worked on with Trevor for over 21 years—just goes away. That didn’t seem like an option. This is the only way forward that is authentic, respectful and genuine. We have five guys that are and have been the Black Dahlia Murder. No one on the planet knows this band like Brian.” Arriving at this decision, however, was not easy. Each band member had to navigate their grief during the reconfiguration. During a lengthy roundtable interview, Decibel talked to all five members of the Black Dahlia Murder. In their first and only interviews on Strnad’s passing and their decision to continue, the band shared everything they went through and why continuing with Eschbach up front was the only choice. The good news: There are many more horrible nights to have a curse in our future. “I’ve said this to Brian before, but this band is the best family I’ve ever had,” Lavelle says. “Everything feels right with everyone here. I have a real sense of purpose. We’re on the same mission.”

I know Trevor [Strnad] would keep this band going if I went down a deep, dark path and weren’t here.

IT’S BIGGER THAN US. B RIA N ES C HB AC H

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THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER “HE TRIED TO FIND SOMETHING THAT WORKED” Almost everyone remembers where they were

when tragedy strikes. Ask someone who was around during the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and they’ll tell you the precise moment they heard the news that planes crashed into the Twin Towers. Similarly, the Black Dahlia Murder’s members can remember what they were doing the morning of May 11, 2022. Eschbach got a call from Strnad’s sister. Cassidy was just getting up. Ellis was in Los Angeles working on a video shoot. Knight got a call from a former tour manager. None of them could believe that their jovial frontman was gone. Eschbach says he never expected to get that phone call because he knew how hard Strnad worked to address his mental health issues. “Trevor was pretty open about struggling with his mental health for some years,” Eschbach says. “I know that he tried a lot of things, and he’d paid a lot of different people and tried a lot of different prescriptions. He tried to find something that worked for him. When he talked about his struggles with me, he talked about it like it was something he had gone through recently and had been at a dark point. I didn’t

have an idea of how bad things were. The pandemic exacerbated and amplified everything people were dealing with in their lives. There is no way that people not being able to live their lives didn’t impact everyone.” “When he told me that Trevor was gone, I was just in such disbelief and shock,” Cassidy explains. “I kept thinking back to the text messages I received. I thought [Brian’s] call was about the tour on deck. From his wording, I thought Trevor was missing or in critical condition or something. It took me like five or 10 minutes to process it. It was so surreal and heartbreaking. I felt the pain, but I also felt like I was crying at nothing because I didn’t even believe it.” Ellis was in Los Angeles and had just finished a video shoot for a guitar company, playing one of the Black Dahlia Murder’s songs. Eschbach asked if he was sitting down and said, ‘Trevor is gone.’ “At first, I thought [Trevor] was missing,” Ellis recalls. “I couldn’t even understand. I understood it, but I couldn’t believe it. It was almost like I disassociated. At this point, it’s still like I can’t believe this even though I know it’s true. It just doesn’t register that he is gone and I’ll never see the guy again. I was on a flight home crying and trying to come up with some words. We tried to take care of everything and

arrange it so we could honor him. After that, we met up in Atlanta, where he was living, and tried to take care of his personal affairs. “During the pandemic, a lot of people experienced depression or had negative feelings,” Ellis adds. “Having our careers taken away from us the past few years affected everyone. There were a lot of times I was feeling down [during the height of the pandemic], and I’d see that Trevor did a podcast or an interview that was an hour long. I would always listen to the whole thing. Hearing how he talked about us and the band always lifted me. It reminded me of who I was and what I was supposed to do—that we are one of the most kickass metal bands out there. I wish I knew he was struggling and could have raised his spirits as he did for me so many times. He was a larger-than-life character that always made everyone else feel good.” While most metal fans wouldn’t consider the Black Dahlia Murder a legacy band—their oldest members are in their early 40s—they have a long career and a deep catalog. Many fans first discovered them during childhood in the ’00s and have grown up with the band. The members knew Strnad's death would deeply impact their lifelong fans, and that attachment became clear in the hours and days after

This is the only way forward that is authentic, respectful and genuine.

WE HAVE FIVE GUYS THAT ARE AND HAVE BEEN THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER. B RA N DON E LLIS

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THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER his passing, as social media feeds filled with tributes to the frontman. One, in particular, stuck with Cassidy. “After a gig, Trevor walked through the crowd and a guy grabbed his hand and high-fived him,” he offers. “He told [Trevor] it was a great set. Trevor said, ‘Let’s get shots.’ They went and had some drinks. This guy said Trevor just treated him, a random fan, like he was a friend. He had never talked to or met Trevor. But Trevor pulled him aside and then made him feel special. He always gave fans the time of day. He befriended so many people who have stories of getting to hang out with him. I always knew Trevor would sign anything for a fan. But after he passed, I was reminded of all the other things he did to make people feel special. He went out of his way to make that connection. There were so many of those stories. He was much more involved with the fans and more of a friend to the fans than I ever realized.” Ellis says Strnad’s “superpower” was his ability to make people feel seen. “People felt like, ‘This guy sees who I am and we are friends forever now,’” he explains. “The next time he saw them, he would remember exactly who they were and what they talked about. People just felt this intense connection to him. When one of your friends dies, you go through all of these things in your head. I wondered if I was more like Trevor if he would still be around. Maybe he would have known how appreciated he was. You always hear people saying, ‘Check on your friends,’ or ‘Tell people you love them.’ Everyone just goes back to their life. I’ve learned something from this and will forever be a different person. Everyone needs to realize life is fragile. Your friends might be struggling, and you might not even know it or understand it. But you can still help. If there is any way that this tragedy can help move forward, it’s understanding that this guy was such a positive force in people’s lives and uplifted people’s lives. But even he was struggling.” In the days after Strnad’s passing, many tributes were published—both on websites and in comment sections. However, some sites ran pieces speculating on the cause of Strnad’s passing or even the state of his relationships. The band members say that tributes far outnumbered clickbait, but still found the tabloid approach to Strnad’s death distressing, especially when it came from within the metal community. “Ninety-nine percent seemed to be love and positivity and sharing stories about Trevor and the time they met him,” Ellis says. “Beyond that, people trying to read into things based on social media posts or make a narrative out of someone else’s life is disrespectful.” “The furthest I will go is to say that some outlets want to post as many stories as possible after a tragedy,” Eschbach adds. “They are pulling up stuff from years ago trying to cultivate 72 : NOVEMBER 2021 : DECIBEL

clicks. Some of it is distasteful, especially when you’re in it.”

“EVERYBODY KNOWS WHAT THIS BAND SHOULD BE” It’s not uncommon for bands to replace frontpeople, and many do it seamlessly. But replacing the public face of a band and a universally beloved vocalist is a trickier proposition. For many fans, a band’s identity is inextricably linked to whoever is at the microphone. Still, some bands manage to make a change and continue—if not go on to greater success—after such losses. The death of Bon Scott floored hard rock legends AC/DC, but the band soared to even greater commercial heights with Brian Johnson on Back in Black, an album of mourning that strangely became a party staple. Joy Division lost its visionary frontman and lyricist Ian Curtis to suicide and ascended to worldwide popularity as New Order, with guitarist Bernard Sumner assuming vocal duties. It’s hard to find a similar situation in metal, but there are a few. Power Trip frontman Riley Gale died in 2021 from a fentanyl overdose; the band has hinted that they plan to continue but provided few specifics. Chester Bennington, vocalist of the enormously popular nü-metal act Linkin Park, ended his life in 2017. The band never replaced him or recorded new material, and it seems unlikely that they will return under the same name. Steve Waksman, a music professor at Smith College and author of the upcoming book Live Music in America, says a band’s relationship with its fans ultimately determines whether replacing a frontman is successful. “AC/DC is a good example,” Waksman explains. “You would think Bon Scott was irreplaceable because he brought so much of his voice into play. Was it that Brian [Johnson] was so good that he overshadowed the baggage? I think it’s more than when a frontperson dies, the fans have an investment in seeing a band continue. I was a kid when Bon Scott died, and I was a fan, and I certainly didn’t want them to quit. [Guitarist] Angus [Young] was also a huge personality, and people are drawn to him. At the same time, I remember when [Led Zeppelin drummer] John Bonham died, and he wasn’t even the singer and Led Zeppelin decided not to continue. That also seemed like the right decision, and it was easy for people to let go of Zeppelin because they’d been around.” What makes it a challenge is that a frontperson is a singular presence and that most fans identify with a vocalist first and foremost. “It’s not always easy even when you have the same people involved to hold on to an identity a band has established,” Waksman says. “The frontman defines the relationship bands have with the audience because the voice is what we respond to most strongly. Metal fans also think the best bands are defined by their vocalist. A vocalist N OV 2 0 2 1 :

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brings their whole being into what they do, and fans strongly identify with that person. So, when you bring someone in—even from within the band—to be the new frontman, it can work, but there will be a process of redefining the band. “Bands should be allowed to continue when someone is taken prematurely,” Waksman adds. “It’s about the strength of the connection. A lot will depend on how [the band] acknowledge the loss and justify continuing, especially with social media providing a powerful way to communicate with the fans.” Metal Blade Records founder and CEO Brian Slagel, who signed BDM in 2002, says the band is up for the challenge. He also says he knows the switch can work. “Trevor was a one-of-akind person on many levels. So, there are some difficulties because there are so many things he brought to the table,” Slagel reasons. “But the Black Dahlia Murder are all such good guys and have always been a people’s band. I think they will find a path to continue that. Strangely enough, we went through a similar situation when [GWAR frontman] Dave Brockie passed away. As everyone knows, Michael Bishop came back [as a new character Blothar the Berserker] and they are going strong. I remember now from the early days of GWAR that Bishop spoke even more than Oderus, and he was able to jump back in and continue. I hope this is a similar situation. This has not been done often, but there are occasions when this works. I feel good about this, and I know Brian [Eschbach] is putting his heart and soul into it.” The surviving members of BDM say none of them could envision a future without Strnad, yet none wanted to stop making music together. One thing was certain: If they were to have a new vocalist, it couldn’t be someone from outside the band family. The first step was Eschbach calling Knight and asking if he’d return to his old job. It wasn’t a tough decision. “I didn’t even need to think about it,” Knight says. “I never wanted to leave in the first place, but there were other things I needed to do then. It was an easy decision to come back. Honestly, coming back was always in the back of my mind. I thought it would be cool if the opportunity came up and I was in a place where I could do it. The way it happened sucks, and I would never have dreamed it would be this way. But I am grateful to be back. Before that, I was going through scenarios and couldn’t imagine anyone replacing Trevor. It irked me to even think about it. But when Brian said he was taking the spot, I said that was the way to do it. I’ve been gone for six years, and when I got in, it was full speed ahead. It was like almost no time had passed.” When you make globally popular music, you will encounter opinions about everything you do. The BDM say they’ve heard every conceivable comment about new members and albums, and they won’t overthink choice words

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THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER in comment sections or social media. “I know we’re going to encounter criticism. But I think all of us agree this is the right decision, especially bringing Ryan Knight back into the band,” Ellis says. “The people who love us and buy our albums—the majority—will be excited we are continuing it into the future with this lineup. As the guy who replaced Ryan Knight, I remember many people saying, ‘Bring Ryan Knight back.’ At least they were honest. [Laughs] But I look at it this way: We now have three guitarists and three prolific songwriters. There is a lot to look forward to with the five of us. We’ve all made music together, so it feels familiar. And people already know Brian’s voice.” “I don’t think we could make any move that wouldn’t upset some group of people, whether it was getting a new vocalist, moving Brian to vocals or anything,” Cassidy adds. “But we’re adding an ex-member back to the band. Ryan knows what Dahlia is. We don’t have a new vocalist who has to figure out how to fit in with us. We’ll just continue to do what we do. We’ve all been working together a long time, and the consistency and overall feel will be there. That keeps the cohesion of the band together. Everyone knows what this band should be like.” Another bonus: The band won’t need to find out six months into a relationship with a new vocalist that he doesn’t want to tour or isn’t into

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metal. “We aren’t going to need to find out that someone sucks way after the fact,” Cassidy says, laughing. “We don’t need to find out that this isn’t the group someone wants to be with or what they want to be doing. We all know we want to be here and have the same goals. We all know how to keep this sounding the right way. We won’t need to fight with some weird direction change someone wants to take. It just feels right, like Ryan said. It’s full steam again. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and it all makes sense. We can carry on without even needing any discussions.”

A RISING TIDE LIFTS ALL BOATS One of Strnad’s missions in life was to introduce

the world to new metal music and bands. There are countless videos of him showing off obscure death metal CDs or going record shopping. All the band members say that part of the reason they will continue is to carry on that mission and help new bands get the break they deserve. But first, it’s back to business. The Black Dahlia Murder will play a hometown show in Detroit on October 28. Once that’s done, they’ll see where things stand with the pandemic and consider some tours in 2023. There is already talk of writing new music. The band will record a few demos and share digital skeletons. They won’t record until they are all in the same room. But after everything they’ve been through, there is a plan

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to be a viable band and steps to move forward. One thing that won’t change is their approach; BDM will stick with the same aesthetic they’ve had since the turn of the century. The style and delivery of the lyrics will change— Strand could weave stories like they were out of 1950s EC horror comics. But there will be no changes in themes or topics; personal and global horror and terror are still on the menu. “I don’t have any doubts about what we’re doing,” Eschbach says. “We are making the best out of a shitty, horrible situation. We are the people to do it. It’s always a challenge to write a new album, but it will be a different challenge this time to keep this legacy alive without Trevor. We aren’t going to start writing a bunch of political songs. In the early days, we would always talk about horror comics. We wanted to tell dark and scary stories. That was the foundation of it, and will stay the same. [Second-guessing] is going to happen. We’re a big band. Some people will reject it just hearing about it, but this is just something we have to do. This is us, and we can’t stop it. If that bums them out, well, that bums us out, too. But we can’t stop doing it.” There are also plans to adopt Strnad’s “help bands achieve what we did” ethic. It won’t be easy—Strnad was so good at spotting talent that Slagel once asked him if he’d consider working in A&R. (Strnad declined, saying he

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THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER

I’M HOPING EVERYONE WILL GIVE THEM A CHANCE. I know this will be difficult, but they are doing this for the right reasons and from the heart.

THE BDM FANS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN INCREDIBLE,

AND THAT WILL NOT CHANGE. B R I A N S LAGE L / / ME TA L B LA DE

could do more as an influential frontman.) The band members say they can work together with similar goals. “Have you heard the saying, ‘A rising tide lifts all boats?’” Cassidy asks. “Trevor always thought that the more extreme stuff he could get out there, the more people would care, and the more we could do what we love in a larger fashion. It popularized this music and got more people into stuff they had never heard or thought they would like. I love that we were this band that helped all these people that never heard of this music become fans.” “We’ve all loved being in this band,” Ellis says. “When we get to do it, it just feels natural. There are things Trevor would do that he’d consider his duty, not even as the frontman of our band, but as someone with influence. It was always about uplifting young and new bands. He’d always keep his ear to the ground and give new bands opportunities. So, we will still take out new and extreme bands who haven’t had the exposure they deserve. It will take a cumulative effort 76 : NOV EMBER 2021 : DECIBEL

from all of us to continue this, because he was the king of it. But this band has always been the sum of its parts. There is no hierarchy. We are five partners. Like Alan says, there is always freedom. Freedom is almost part of the mission. People need to feel like they can be themselves. I remember when I joined this band and it was time to write an album. I didn’t feel like I needed to change. It was like what I did naturally was now part of this band. So, we need to carry on this tradition. There are so many bands that don’t carry on like we do, like a democracy.” Slagel says the Black Dahlia Murder once held contests where they’d try to find a band Strnad hadn’t heard before. The five remaining members, he says, are just committed to scenebuilding as their late frontman. “It’s one of the amazing things about Black Dahlia,” Slagel explains. “When a band like BDM unearths a band and gives them a platform, it helps the scene. I am guilty of hearing new bands and telling people about them, but Black Dahlia has N OV 2 0 2 1 :

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been at the forefront of this and will continue. I’m hoping everyone will give them a chance. I know this will be difficult, but they are doing this for the right reasons and from the heart. The BDM fans have always been incredible, and that will not change. I hope everyone can have an open mind.” Ellis says that, even after tragedy, the band realizes how fortunate they are to contribute to something larger than any of them. “This band must carry on, and this is the way to do it,” he says. “The only thing we could do in the wake of this tragedy that honors and respects Trevor’s legacy is what we’re doing. It would almost be disrespectful to let this fizzle out. Trevor wouldn’t want that, and anyone who is a fan of us wouldn’t want it. This is what must be done.” “I’ve spent the last 21 years of my life doing whatever it took to keep this band going anywhere and everywhere,” Eschbach says. “This band is the right people writing music that reaches people. This band is our purpose.”

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INSIDE ≥

80 AUTOPSY All guts, all glorious 82 DARKEST ERA Pretty much every new day on earth

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

84 GOATWHORE Hung like goat, not an angel 86 LORNA SHORE Deathcore overboard! 88 MORTUOUS The return of the beautiful

In a Dream DREAM UNENDING

NOVEMBER

Appearence of “saudade” in Reviews section

Appearence of “saudade” in Upfront section

Interpertations of the definition of “saudade” in issue

216

Previous streak of Decibel issues with zero appearences of “saudade”

Ethereal doom/death duo doomgaze on their sophomore record

transcend

long for a kind of quiet where I can just drift and dream. I always say getting inspiration is like fishing. If you’re quiet and sitting there and you have the right bait, you’re going to catch a fish eventually. Ideas are sort of like that.” ¶ Melodic DREAM doom/death two-piece Dream Unending share a certain kinUNENDING ship with that quote from David Lynch. Known for his surreal Song of Salvation nightmare logic, Lynch deconstructs movie tropes until they’re 20 BUCK SPIN otherworldly and unrecognizable in Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive. After releasing their debut LP last November, Dream Unending surrendered to their bursting creativity and kept writing. A short year later, their unearthly genre explorations continue on the eagerly anticipated sophomore record, Song of Salvation. ¶ When vocalist/drummer Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms) and guitarist/bassist Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold, Outer Heaven) united, they steered away from the more primal compulsions of their death metal projects. Last year’s Tide Turns Eternal introduced Dream Unending as a vehicle for expressing emotion through mood and tone.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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That’s admittedly not an anomaly in doom metal. But Dream Unending pair vulnerability with an equally inspiring openness to textures and influences from outside heavy music. In interviews, the members have mentioned the Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine more often than any of the Peaceville Three or funeral doom heavyweights. But reducing Song of Salvation’s sprawling title track to doomgaze misses the album’s point. Like Lynch suggested, picture imagination as a bottomless ocean with unfathomable depths and darkness. Dream Unending aren’t fishing for more genre tags. They pursue ideas unwelcome on most extreme records because their creative spirit demands it. As Song of Salvation unfolds, there’s a formless aspect that feels more freeing than meandering. The elements comprising “Secret Grief” are both sublime and subliminal. Layered synths and mournful guitars weave between brass embellishments until distortion crashes like rolling waves. Borne from the space dust of the “Murmur of Voices” interlude, “Unrequited” is an unrushed mood piece that sparkles. The same sense of daydreamy wonder doesn’t permeate the middle tracks, and they’re not the strongest or most engaging compositions on the album. But they still offer valuable contrast to the record’s lengthy bookends in terms of style and substance. Sixteen-minute closer “Ecstatic Reign” begins with a psychedelic portal that spits you into the album’s most familiar death groove. Almost immediately, that riff dissipates into a funereal tempo and a world of shadowy reverb. But even on the album’s darkest track, Vella’s melodies are like bright paint streaked across a black canvas. Unbeholden to precedent and homage, the finale still captures the essence of My Dying Bride or Skepticism. Song of Salvation feels like admiring the vastness of the sky and watching the colors change as the cloud-strewn heavens time-lapse from dusk to vibrant dawn and back to nightfall. —SEAN FRASIER

ARMED FOR APOCALYPSE

Ritual Violence CANDLELIGHT

Oozin’, groovin’ and poundin’ metal

Even the genre’s biggest supporters have to admit we’re at the stage that, when a band gets tagged as sludge, the expectation is little more than one thing. And the shock is palpable when those who would be sludge do anything beyond churning along at a few miles per hour on a tone as dirty as Mike Williams’ socks and fuzzy as Kirk Windstein’s beard. This, despite historical 80 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

records denoting that sludge originally existed as the audio Venn diagram of doom, classic/southern rock and hardcore punk. Ritual Violence does a lot of things. It heralds Armed for Apocalypse’s return to active duty after almost a decade; it pounds and pummels with bright-eyed sharpness; and it provides an exemplary West Coast punch to the throat of sludge metal conventions. Armed for Apocalypse are all about monolithic and colossal riffs backed by cannon-fire drums and guitars cutting through the fat like scalpels during do-it-yourself bariatric surgery. But there’s a cleaner cut to the way they take out your kneecaps. AFA are more shiny aluminum baseball bat than bloodstained 2-by-4;—more sand between your toes with snow-capped mountains in the distance instead of double-wide neck girth and giant rats rummaging through humid piles of trash. Underneath the sledgehammering, there’s an air of Revelation hardcore and suburban punk, more so when they step on the gas for “Frail” and “Lifeless” and display a versatility beyond quarter-note down-picking and palm-muting. And when they do the inevitable southern swagger thing (“Foredoomed”), it’s more metallic hardcore à la Botch and Coalesce instead of some Pennsylvania dipshit wrapped in a Confederate flag. Sure, figuring out where Will Haven end and Armed for Apocalypse begin is a problem that isn’t going away (neither is telling some of these songs apart), but there’s no denying how crushing this is, however you tag it. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

AUTOPSY

Morbidity Triumphant PEACEVILLE

Shit-tons of fun

Unsheathed in 1987 and flushed out by 1995, Oakland butchers Autopsy re-coagulated between 20082010, then doubled down atop a trio of death metal dissections commensurate with their initial salvo of audio savagery. After the Cutting summated everything in 2015 with a gooey, gory, fairly dripping four-CD medical journal. A lifetime and one (ongoing) pandemic later, Morbidity Triumphant lops gleefully hemorrhaging LP number eight into the chum bucket of a decade off to the worst start since 1970. Macabre Eternal (2011) bridged the first two eras—lashing dirges, caveman crust, gristle— while The Headless Ritual (2013) spurted more grotesque, and Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves (2014) ripped as subtle as its title. Not missing a plastic-encased footfall, Morbidity Triumphant follows suit: gnarly, unsparing, exsanguinated. See-sawing the tempo between death march

and killing spree, guitarists Eric Cutler and Danny Coralles, new bassist/recording wizard Greg Wilkinson, and timekeeper/larynx Chris Reifert snap and froth at the symbiotic sweet spot between chain gang sledgehammers and chainsaw massacres. Reifert resounds immediately on opener “Stab the Brain,” well-deep and cobblestone, as if the rocks themselves cried, Sam Raimi style. “Final Frost” spans glacial to avalanche in a spasm of frozen beats and seismic freezy; so “Tapestry of Scars” ups the temperature, lurching inevitably into an ouroboros of momentum. “The Voracious One” roars equally big, a churning incantation of brass-knuckle character and godlike guitar solo. Even when procedures become indistinguishable (“Skin by Skin,” “Maggots in the Mirror”), Reifert deserves Actors Guild recognition for his method narratives. Like Karloff, Lugosi or Price, his vocal malevolence pulls ultimate focus. Tempest beats and end-times crowing on “Slaughterer of Souls” prove both he and Autopsy alive and spraying. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

CARRION VAEL

Abhorrent Obsessions UNIQUE LEADER

Hearts all aflutter

Take a look at this bunch, their logo and the cover of this, their third full-length. If your thoughts don’t immediately drift towards frustration rooted in mind-melting, sonic widdly-woo and superhuman notes-per-minute tech-death lacking in emotional impact, you’re probably not a crotchety old prejudger like, well, me. However, give ’er a whirl and elements emerge that set this Hoosier State crew apart from their contemporaries in the Kennedy Veil, Inferi, the Zenith Passage, Fallujah, Arkaik and the like. The individuating factor that Carrion Vael bring to the table is their ability to weave an infectious insight into the rat-a-tat-tat pitter-patter and this subgenre’s inherent antiseptic vibe. That’s not to say the scalding mid-range guitars and overly clicky drums don’t have Abhorrent Obsessions flirting with the dark side (read: boredom rooted in clean room slick tones). But the way the tommy-gun riffing and punishing rhythmic oppression lock in together (and are brought to the edge of sing-along status via Travis Lawson skirting between burly Floridan DM caveman and skinny Japanese hardcore screecher) certainly makes “Wings of Deliverance” and “The Devil in Me” intriguing. That said, they could have dispensed with the keyboard swells someone presumably told them are “haunting,” but in actuality are extremely obnoxious.

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As prodigious musicians and whippersnapper students of YouTube instrument tutorials, Carrion Vael do fall into the lack-of-distinction trap here and there. However, after a few jaw-dropping leads, some Rust in Peace-like sniper fire staccato grooves, and fretboard traversing fluidity in “King of the Rhine” and “Tithes of Forbearance,” it’s clear these dudes are playing with their hearts, not just their minds, and leaning in the right direction as a result. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

COUNTERPARTS

A Eulogy for Those Still Here PURE NOISE

I know the pieces fit

Counterparts’ latest opening with a song in month/date/year format brings to mind Poison the Well’s The Opposite of December. Indeed, A Eulogy for Those Still Here calls back to that time even beyond that song name and the album title as a whole. Somewhere in the decades since 1999, metalcore became so perfected that any threat was removed with riffs smooth enough to lull you to sleep. So predictable (and predictably placed), not even a chunky breakdown could jolt you awake. Though always ahead of their peers, even Counterparts have occasionally fallen victim to this over their career. With classic guitar duo Jesse Doreen and Alex Re back in the band, the Hamilton-based band is remembering where it all began—ripping off Misery Signals. That said, with the cheekiness of perpetually hilarious vocalist Brendan Murphy, it’s not without its merits. The band’s early material drew heavily from Mis Sigs’ dizzying display of metallic hardcore, and here they take the masterful yet youthful enthusiasm and add doses of both melodicism and chaos. They’re not haphazardly slapping some dissonant panic chords atop to achieve freneticism, though those harbingers of chaos are certainly well-represented, instead intersecting masterfully catchy melodies with jarring rhythmic bludgeoning thanks to drummer Kyle Brownlee’s perfect playing. Take “Sworn to Silence.” With its driving melodic hardcore energy, it feels like a follow-up to 2013’s “Witness,” but a sudden breakdown sends the listener careening out of the second chorus. Higher singing takes precedence over yelling in key, again nodding to metalcore’s early days, when it wasn’t uncommon for tours to feature emo bands—if not share members. Midsection “Skin Beneath a Scar” and the title track takes this to its logical conclusion, while “Bound to the Burn” combines it carefully into their metalcore. 82 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

Worry not, though: Counterparts haven’t gone soft. “Unwavering Vow” and “Whispers of Your Death” have earworm chorus riffs, which Murphy simply yells atop, while the singing in “Flesh to Fill Your Wounds” is a bit deeper. Oh yeah, and “Whispers of Your Death” is about Murphy’s cat’s (now-beaten!) death diagnosis, and hits harder than a ton of bricks. GO KUMA! —BRADLEY ZORGDRAGER

DAEVA

Through Sheer Will and Black Magic... 20 BUCK SPIN

The secret of my success

Philly black-thrash outfit Daeva recorded their debut EP, Pulsing Dark Absorptions, without the assistance of a click track for fear it might tame their frenzied sound, and surely the same approach has been used here, where performances are on-point, but falling over themselves to get out of the speaker first. Besides hiring Arthur Rizk to produce, this is not a band that takes prophylactic measures with audio. But by the time this record’s thrashed itself hoarse, some listeners may want to grab themselves a rabies shot, just in case. “Emanations,” the intro track, would work a treat testing your new Dolby Atmos home cinema setup, but it’s nary a moment’s grace before the super-speed blasts, necro screams and scratchy, hot and raw black metal guitar send you headlong into the hurricane. This is all-action extremity, riffs crashing into each other, guitars double-dosed with technical ecstasy. Seriously, it’s like Steve Jansson woke up and took his vitamins E, V and H before grabbing his guitar and tracking this. Every full moon it’s the same: He turns into evil Marty Friedman and writes a solo for Daeva. It’s all very entertaining. “Passion Under the Hammer” might be a title best reserved for Manowar erotic fan fiction, but here it has a fist-in-the-air classic-steel vibe, anointing the record with the spirit of ’84. That sort of classicism surely comes from the Crypt Sermon alumni—Jansson, drummer Enrique Sagarnaga, bassist Frank Chin—but it doesn’t get in the way of a feral sound that’s principally concerned with going for the throat, with spilling some blood, with activating the beast that lies dormant in all of us. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

DARKEST ERA

Wither on the Vine CANDLELIGHT

Harvest now, thank us later

Northern Ireland’s Darkest Era play a downcast, rain-wrung strain of

traditional heavy metal that somehow sidesteps the basest expectations of that style without ever losing focus on writing epic, driving songs. Guitarist Ade Mulgrew apparently classifies the band’s sound as “dark metal,” and that’s fine, though others have used the same label for somewhat different types of music, and the combination of tear-tracked melodies, routinely rambling paces and crestfallen chords embodies the term “doom” as well as anything this side of a death growl. Bonus points to vocalist Dwayne “Krum” Maguire for the simultaneous bravado and vulnerability in his clean vocals without ever straying toward a power metal fireworks fiasco. Likewise, the songwriting and instrumental performances show evidence of laser-keen precision, not so much restraint as ruthless self-editing that slims Wither down to the sleek metal missile it needs to be for greatest impact. Occasionally, Darkest Era bump up against their own boundaries. Krum brandishes his voice handily and admirably through most of the record, but when he pushes out to the upper edge of his range, the strain is audible, and he lingers there more often than he probably should. It’s a fleeting concern, but it does erode some of songs’ grandeur. Then, somehow, with three-quarters of tonesetting/fulfilling behind us, “The Ashen Plague” erupts into black metal bombast. Admittedly, it’s less a case of the wheels coming off as it is the band intentionally ripping them from Wither’s otherwise untippable cart and clamping them temporarily onto a spike-clad, fire-breathing armored truck so they can take it for the most destructive joyride. All told, Wither is a masterwork that deserves all the attention it can get. —DANIEL LAKE

EPOCH OF UNLIGHT 8 At War With the Multiverse DARK HORIZON

Heard and not seen

Email is a wonderful thing. It allows our exhausted EIC Mudrian to juggle and manage his stable of nerd scribes, fielding all our ridiculous ideas from a distance, at his own pace and without laughing directly in our faces. It was likely great relief—probably to the both of us—that he was able to double over in hysterics and curse my name and brain in the comfort of his metallic man cave when I approached him, celebrating the return of Epoch of Unlight and heralding the Tennessee melodic death/thrash/ black crew as one of America’s best kept secrets. They may have dropped off the radar for 17 years by their own volition, but their three previous albums (OK, maybe two…) are brimming with excellence. And At War With the Multiverse expands and improves upon their unheralded past.

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Using the early, heavier days of melodic death metal and blackened thrash—the Crown, Carnal Forge, Dark Tranquillity, Defleshed and Sacramentum—as a starting point, John Fortier and Jash Braddock create compelling riffing that is as intense and propulsive as it is euphonically hooky and tuneful. Heck, dig the simultaneously playful and sinister guitar duel in opening track “The Anthropocene”! The axe-slinging pair draws from vintage Big Four and early-’80s speed metal, jack up the dynamics and flashiness, and add a darkened rock ‘n’ roll vibe as they direct “Wrath of the Cryomancer” and “Night Hunt” towards the progressive singable likes of Bay Area undercards Forbidden, Heathen and Blind Illusion. And while the strength of the riffing is consistent and on point—try to keep the sixteenthnote stutter of “All Light Dies,” the aquatic legato of “An Amaranthine Line” and “The Lie of Tomorrow’s Dawn”’s leads out of your head, we dare you—the effectiveness of these 10 songs is magnified by a warm, natural production that takes melodic death metal back to its roots while raising the bar. Without exception. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

GOATWHORE

Angels Hung From the Arches of Heaven M E TA L B L A D E

Damnation from the delta

Given that two core members of Goatwhore (Sammy Duet and Ben Falgoust) have illustrious metal careers going back 30 years, and the rhythm section consists of two dudes with their own impressive musical histories (drummer Zack Simmons and bassist Robert “Trans Am” Coleman), the band’s eighth record has no business being this fucking savage. The performances throughout these 11 bangers (and one ghoul-infested intro) blaze with intensity, and the production choices complement every accelerated blast and every mid-paced rock groove without ever feeling too muddied or sparse. Goatwhore have never settled for manufacturing a mood, instead setting out to write cracking songs with distinct personalities each and every time. In this way—combined with their devil-may-care stylistic blurring

INCANTATION, Tricennial of Blasphemy 8 To Golgotha and back | R E L A P S E

Crawl deep inside the cobwebbed corridors of Incantation’s archives, pry open the foul crypt and behold the death metal grotesquerie before you: a 31-song compendium of rarities and unreleased tracks titled Tricennial of Blasphemy. Incantation’s impact on DM during this legendary band’s three-decadeand-counting existence is legion. As trends come and go—including underground mania primarily inspired by the cavernous bellow of Incantation—the John McEntee-spawned extreme metal monstrosity lumbers on

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resolutely, free from outside influence. The temple of death-doom that is Tricennial of Blasphemy is a bountiful reward for completists and Incantation diehards. For the uninitiated? First, march Onward to Golgotha, then gaze upon the Mortal Throne of Nazarene, and by then you’ll be fit to take part in the Diabolical Conquest. Uniformly mastered by Dan Swanö, some highlights from this infernal collection include: the Will Rahmer-led “Impending Diabolical Conquest” demo from 1996; chaos-chasm Revenant cover “Degeneration” from our own

of thrash, black, death and heavy metal paradigms into a heightened whole—the Louisianans share a sonic ideal with bands like Skeletonwitch. It’s no surprise that a quick internet search proves the two bands have toured together. Favorable comparisons can also be made to last year’s Rutan-injected Violence Unimagined by Cannibal Corpse. Angels consistently rages without ever devolving into the samey-sounding banality that plagues so many less adept practitioners. Angels just gets better the longer it plays. After the face-flayer “Born of Satan’s Flesh,” follow-up “The Bestowal of Abomination” bursts into new territory with some truly inspired melodic guitar runs and a scorching solo. “Ruinous Liturgy” sparks a bonfire of riffs and twisted solo perversions. “Nihil” offers a nasty thrash nugget of late-album adrenaline. And Goatwhore know how to construct a decrepit, synth-laden haunted mansion for mesmerizing closer “And I Was Delivered From the Wound of Perdition.” More than two decades since their debut, Goatwhore have made their best record yet. —DANIEL LAKE

Flexi Series; the rabid and churning, previously unheard “Pest Savagery”; Incantation’s überdestructive cover of Slayer’s “Hell Awaits”; “Emaciated Holy Figure” from Relapse’s 1994 Corporate Death comp; “Devoured Death,” a twisted dirge off 1990’s Entrantment of Evil (the EP appears here in full); and the array of live tracks vomited upon the devoted between 2010 and 2014, replete with McEntee’s unintentionally hilarious growled introductions. Once you examine this horde, you’ll be left admiring how musically consistent, stylistically defined from day one and relentlessly evilsounding Incantation have been across their lengthy reign of terror. Like Napalm Death, the strength in depth outside of the classic LPs is beyond impressive. —DEAN BROWN

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INVICTUS

Unstoppable M N R K H E AV Y

Sacrificing momentum

As a founding member of Canadian death metal vets Kataklysm, Maurizio Iacono has seen extreme music trends emerge and expire. In his Ex Deo side project, he flexed his war anthem muscles to create soundtracks suitable for a battlefield of slashing swords. For his new project Invictus, Iacono turns his focus to music that promotes internal fortitude and personal ambition. Unfortunately, the songs do not embody the same individual strength mentioned in the earnest lyrics. Questionably marketed as a solo record, Unstoppable is a collaboration between Iacono and vocalist/songwriter Chris Clancy, with contributions from notable genre musicians. Longtime Kataklysm and Ex Deo comrade Jean-François Dagenais joins Inhuman Condition/Venom Inc. drummer Jeramie Kling for a formidable supporting tandem. But Unstoppable has more in common with groove metal—think latter-era Machine Head and DevilDriver—than death metal. The anthemic clean-sung choruses land somewhere between Euro power metal and 21st century nü-metal with their polished (verging on overproduced) pleading delivery. For an album called Unstoppable, there’s regrettable irony with choruses that halt the song’s momentum. The physics of momentum require an object of equal or greater force to stop forward motion. With that in mind, this album’s foundational heaviness is usually strong enough to keep Unstoppable rumbling ahead. “Weaponized” has an impactful mid-album sprint, with a fiery solo and the LP’s most potent energy. The nasty metalcore breakdown of “Darkest of Enemies” wields a much-needed mean streak. Overall, the melodeath elements are sharp and Dagenais’ riffs shine when they’re not shackled to a weak chorus. But the forays into predictable radio-friendly melodicism feel like intermittent speed bumps weakening the album’s potential power. —SEAN FRASIER

KEN MODE

Null

A R T O F FA C T

Your pain is no credential here

“I am unraveling so much faster than I used to.” What an opening line to a closing track! What an admission of the fragile state of mind we almost all have empathy for this side of global chaos. Hurled into the abyss by Jesse Matthewson over relentless, industrialized clangor, 86 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

KEN mode close out part one of a duo of releases. This is Null. The Void is incoming, and we feel it so deeply. This isn’t Loved or Success—it’s not even Venerable. It’s just emptiness and despair in musical form, and fuck, it’s more needed than ever. Hewn from cold Manitoba ice over lockdown (s, plural), the band admits this is the “Jesse show,” a project borne out of desperation and a need to keep the mind from going on the blink. Null is a manifesto for all who felt they were losing it; it is evocative, guttural, Howlesque poetry laid over frantic, Godfleshian soundscapes. “Something is fucked” bellows opening track “A Love Letter” (he’s right). It’s the sound of madness, heightened by the tormenting saxophone of newest member Kathryn Kerr. And it’s that torturous instrument that makes standout track “The Tie” so momentous— is that the lamentations of the damned we hear in that brass and reed? KEN mode have always been on the precipice of chaotic post-hardcore perfection, but Null is so maniacally hopeless it’s bordering on dangerous. As eerie piano draws you into the midpoint track “Lost Grip.” Matthewson howls, “We deserve this.” And as humans, we concur. But we also deserve this—a meditation on the human soul that feels so cathartic it could cure all our ills. —LOUISE BROWN

KILL DIVISION

Peace Through Tyranny REDEFINING DARKNESS

Power flows to the one who knows how

Grindcore isn’t going away anytime soon, with kids learning how to blast coming out of the womb nowadays. But with the one-upping of extremes and mixing of genres, well-executed old-school grind can get muscled out of the way. Kill Division noticed and released their debut Peace Through Tyranny. When a band covers a Terrorizer song—and not some obvious track off World Downfall, but a deep cut from the ’87 demo—you shouldn’t be surprised about what’s in store. Two of the 25 former members of Malevolent Creation are on vocals and guitar, who keep it faithful to the early days. But the reason this works is because of Dirk Verbeuren, who for the last six years has usually been the drummer of Megadeth. Obviously, Mustaine’s gonna require precision, and Verbeuren brings that, but also beats the daylights out of his kit, leading to an updated but unsanitized version of his forebears. Of course, as you know, this has all been done before, and it’s sometimes hard to not flip it off

and revisit the classic albums. Oh, and the title track includes clips from a Transformers movie, as it’s a famous Megatron quote. That kind of makes sense, but when the album cover features real-world villains like the Proud Boys and neoNazis, it feels a little weird throwing Decepticons into the mix. Ignoring that, though, Kill Division nailed what they aimed to do. If you’re a grindcore old head, current or aspiring, Peace Through Tyranny should do the trick. —SHANE MEHLING

LORNA SHORE

Pain Remains CENTURY MEDIA

South of Luma Beach

As a blue-collar deathcore act, how do you trot out a third singer in a dozen years after booting the last one following allegations on cancel media? If you’re Jersey quintet Lorna Shore, ignite fourth LP Pain Remains with a choir so vast it renders all discussion about earlier mic-wielders immaterial. Genius palate-cleanser: Prompt the elephant in the club to trumpet the point home before making it altogether moot. Paving the transition, Will Ramos cashes that check with neck-snapping ease, if not exactly grace. Exorcizing more voicings than Regan MacNeil, the new mouthpiece flamethrows all traces of his predecessors the second said operatic opening concludes. Matching the band pound for pound—symphonic metal, power metal, tech-grind—Ramos ratchets Lorna Shore louder, angrier and waaaaay more extreme. In short, more believable. Where that hammer meets anvil, however, the whole of the group pivots to a grander, yet paradoxically less flexible, more scatterbrained version of deathcore. Pain Remains ruptures like the whole of the genre a decade back: the Acacia Strain, Born of Osiris, Fit for an Autopsy, Job for a Cowboy, Winds of Plague. That creates a clear-cut, stronger identity than previously, but also one stampeding myriad heshers out to the patio bar. Aria-like sweeps blow “Apotheosis” toward blackened Scandinavia, with Ramos croaking in a sub-guttural blort. “Wrath” features more black toad vox, but when he briefly assumes whispery intelligibility toward the finale of “Dancing Like Flames,” his efficacy as a clean singer becomes clear, even if never explored. That spreads directly into “After All I’ve Done, I’ll Disappear,” pure emo-tion in motion of oxygen-eating sound and fury. All that’s missing is the acne. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

TANKCRIMES.COM

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MISS MAY I

Curse of Existence SHARPTONE

Memphis Mice Men May Miss

OFF!

Free LSD FAT P O S S U M

Not just his other band

If you’ve studied entrylevel Circle Jerks, you know that Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers played bass with the band for one 1984 tour. Many years later, Flea wrote a memoir called Acid for the Children. His friend, and onetime bandmate, Keith Morris is also on the dose-everyone bandwagon; OFF!’s new album is called Free LSD. It’s a fitting title; this is a mind-melt of a listen that takes sideroads, but never loses sight of the hardcore fundamentals Morris does better than almost any living being. Morris has been touring with Circle Jerks for the better part of the year to sellout crowds. 88 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

MORTUOUS, Upon Desolation

The bitterness and the bereavement | C A R B O N I Z E D

The flame-engulfed hellscape depicted on the cover of Mortuous’ Upon Desolation by artist Marald van Haasteren visually speaks to the musical evolution of this Bay Area death metal band on their second LP. Debut Through Wilderness charted at number 25 on our Top 40 of 2018—an earthy death/doom record that, outside of its Incantation and Autopsy worship, also revealed an affinity for Peaceville Three lamentations. Upon Desolation, however, increases the latter’s regal influence to truly dramatic effect, while the pure DM side of Mortuous’ sound razes everything it encounters to crematory ash. There’s no gentle acoustic strumming bookending this album; instead, “Carve” immediately erupts like superheated gasses meeting oxygen. This startling DM backdraft swarms with rapid tempo changes—from double-bass explosions to thrashing Slayerisms and queasy grooves underpinning Demilich’ed riffs—pushed to

the limit by drummer Chad Gailey (Necrot). On “Nothing”’s Bolt Thrower-bludgeon syncopations, violin-accompanied doom à la My Dying Bride, blitzing solo runs and downcast ending, guitarist/primary lyricist/co-vocalist Mike Beams really showcases his seamless ability to tonally transition from barbaric to mournful. It’s one of eight perfectly formed tracks that highlights the stylistic refinement and expert pacing afoot here. Elsewhere, the bestial “Metamorphosis” and “Burning Still…” are all abyss-lurching riffs, inverted grooves and blood-flecked bellows, while “Days of Grey” unveils a Finnish funeral doom coda to the same chilling effect as heard during the dying moments of closer “Graveyard Rain.” With Upon Desolation, Mortuous have truly distinguished themselves in terms of songwriting chops, incendiary atmospherics, inter-song dynamism and powerhouse musicality, resulting in a record that is, without question, a 2022 DM milestone. —DEAN BROWN

Sadly, some listeners never followed his career past his best-known band. Interview him and he’ll probably bring this up. Fans who have never dropped a hit of OFF! should consider dosing now. What Free LSD does so well is merge hardcore catchiness with experimental sounds and random detours. Give credit to Morris’ new bandmates Justin Brown (Thundercat) and Autry Fulbright (...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead). Just when you think the noise is about to send the music off the rails, they ably draw you back into a song. It’s like Black Flag, Big Black and Bob Mould had a baby in 2022. Morris’ vocals are as ferocious, biting and sarcastic as they were in his salad days, and Brown is a rhythmic wonder who breathes life and vitality into each song. What is especially beautiful about Free LSD is that Morris and company respect our time. Despite the aforementioned experimentation, most of these songs are two-plus-minute pipe

bombs. They detonate fast and demand replay. Why not make a statement and then get out? Punk rock changed the world with that ethos and approach, and Morris is still the master of that blueprint. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

PERISH

The Decline SUPREME CHAOS

Scene, not heard

Has modern black metal written by hooded dudes who sport bulletbelts and are known only by their initials gotten its own subgenre title yet? Given the prevalence of this niche aesthetic within a niche, surely by now, as Alanis Morissette once sang, “Uada know!” Perish fit this now-tired presentation on their predominantly self-produced full-length debut,

PHOTO BY CHRIS JOHNSTON

A couple funny things happened to metalcore at the end of the 2000s. The wave of bands emerging from Rise Records grabbed the stylistic credit card and maxed it out on catchy pop-punk and emo choruses—and took out additional sonic loans for djent-y guitars and mainstream production as the 2010s lurched on. Whereas the 2000s scene was an exciting variety pack of mathcore and Slaughter of the Soul worship, the 2010s saw its consolidation into a streamlined and predictable market segment. While Miss May I definitely belongs to this family of bands, they still were a cut above in terms of the guitar work. The band were experts at the dual harmonies, and the breakdowns at least had some bite to them. On their latest album, Curse of Existence, they take pains to echo some of that spirit. But it’s still so swamped under layers of slick production, compression and 2010s pop sensibility that it feels like a radio-rock album using the husk of metalcore as a delivery mechanism. Don’t get me wrong: The band can write a good riff and catchy chorus, and Levi Benton has a unique snarl to his harsh vocals. I’m sure “Earth Shaker” will fit in nicely on SiriusXM and college “loud rock” radio playlists, and good for them. But I can’t help but wince when I hear lines like, “And now we’re rewriting history / please let the apple fall far from the tree” on “Bleed Together.” And fundamentally, the band just fits too neatly into its niche to meaningfully stand out against Memphis May Fire, Of Mice & Men and other contemporaries from the last decade to be all that exciting. —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

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PHOBOPHILIC, Enveloping Absurdity

Hooked on a phobo-feeling | P R O S T H E T I C

Phobophilic can be qualified by a few simple, but significant influences: Grave’s odiferous debut, Bolt Thrower’s War Master, a light dusting of early Asphyx and—via the band’s favoring of the Egyptian melodic scale—a fleeting rinse of Karl Sanders’ solo output. Moldies but goodies, to be sure, and exquisite carrion for any band-of-prey to cut their teeth upon. But hey, am I being at least a little inconsistent by being so horny for Phobophilic when I’ve righteously ripped into scores of other bands in this very rag for being overtly derivative? Well, I’ve thought about it, champ. The answer’s an emphatic “nah,” and I’ll tell you why: I don’t care about a band stylistically echoing their influences so long as—and this is so goddamn important—they can match the excellence of and arguably improve upon those old templates. I’m uninterested in listening to a better band’s understudy. Simple, but no mean feat when the source

The Decline. The trio of RJ (vocals, drums, keyboards), FF (guitars, bass) and GS (bass, guitars) come from the very metal-sounding city of Münster in Germany, and like fellow countrymen and contemporaries the Spirit, they draw life-force from Scandinavian black metal. While the Spirit will dazzle you with Dissection-sharp melodic musicianship, Perish, however, are less musically defined and self-assured. This is, of course, somewhat forgivable at their nascent developmental stage, and these newcomers no doubt have promise. But the atmospheric sections led by beyond-standard riffing and blasting tend to clash with the strident black ‘n’ roll streak that emerges emphatically at times during these six songs. The former pulls Perish into a post-black metal quagmire of mediocrity, only to be saved by the latter’s forthright power. “Breathless” really highlights this unevenness, as these two styles collide and neither win. 90 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

material is as deific as Phobophilic’s, and yet they manage to resurrect these old motifs via sheer compositional prowess. Consider Enveloping Absurdity’s opening track “Enantiodromia,” which moves from ultra-uggo Swedish death to an unbudging, Bolt Throwerstyle sortie to a prestige of worm-mottled doom peeled directly from The Rack, while always shifting smoothly from one passage to the next. The riffs will mash your potatoes, and everything’s recorded just about perfectly. But “Enantiodromia” is also constructed with such logical and ruthless economy that the listener can’t help but be sucked downwards along with it. Phobophilic outshine the formula. My one qualm with this record lies in its overarching homogeneity, but again, that uniformity isn’t simply stylistic; it’s also a homogeneity of unrelenting quality. This is the rubric that I’ll be comparing the next crop of upstarts against. Those upstarts are fucking doomed. —FORREST PITTS

Should Perish suppress the urge to go “epic,” as they try on the moody, yet banal closer “Hopeless,” and instead maximize the wild abandon as heard on “Relentless” or the Sacramentumworthy “Soulless”—while continuing to allow RJ to turn his throat to human tartare—there’s a good chance this band won’t live up to its chosen name. —DEAN BROWN

PETBRICK

Liminal NEUROT

From the past reborns the synths

Collaborative efforts and “supergroups” are rarely worth the time it takes to listen to them, so it is a welcome surprise, then, that Petbrick, the collaborative effort between Wayne Adams (of synth-terrorists Big Lad and

the sadly defunct Death Pedals) and the ever-busy Iggor Cavalera, is an excellent little endeavor. Their modus operandi is abrasive, noisy industrial that is somewhere between Broken-era NIN, Skinny Puppy’s harsher moments, Youth Code and the busier side of acid techno à la Squarepusher. Thankfully, what could have been rendered cold and clinical by virtue of the myriad synth textures and samples on display is given an exciting, organic backbone by virtue of Cavalera’s characteristically awesome live drumming and percussion. A few notable guest vocalists are peppered throughout, with Converge’s Jacob Bannon taking the mic on the punishing and aptly titled “Grind You Down,” and the band deconstructs the entire affair into noisome ambience with the Steve Von Till-led closer, “Reckoning.” “Lysergic Aura” enlists the help of NYC-based underground hip-hop artists Lord Goat and Truck Jewelz to aid in an industrialized beatdown. The record’s true strengths, however, are the songs free of guest appearances. The songwriting is concise and snappy, and shades of Godflesh, the early bands on Wax Trax!’s roster and even Atari Teenage Riot freely overlap with one another. The overall experience is a blood-pumping, aggressively dense and altogether enjoyable album that does not overstay its welcome. Liminal is an unexpectedly good record from two rather unlikely collaborators. —ALEC H. HEAD

RAVEN

Leave ’Em Bleeding STEAMHAMMER/SPV

Still rocking, still not dropping

Consider Leave ’Em Bleeding a solid reminder that New Wave of British Heavy Metal stalwarts Raven are still potent well into their fifth decade. The power trio, led by brothers John Gallagher (bass/vocals) and Mark Gallagher (guitar), has certainly made some missteps along the way—their mid-’80s output was mostly pretty sketchy when they were signed to Atlantic—but the music they’re making in the 21st century with drummer Mike Heller shows they haven’t lost the plot. Legacies can be tarnished irrevocably by a string of shitty albums, but it’s possible to find redemption by returning to what you do best. Raven’s frantic NWOBHM-era albums—Rock Until You Drop and Wiped Out—established them as one of the early influences on thrash, but 1983’s stone-cold classic for Megaforce, All for One, also showed they could do mid-tempo metal equally well. With this run of records, they were at arguably their creative peak. And it’s broadly this nononsense style they’ve returned to, as evidenced by this collection, a selection of tracks recorded between 2009 and 2020.

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The first five tunes, taken from 2020’s Metal City and 2015’s ExtermiNation, are blistering examples of what the band is still capable of. These are great songs, laden with hooks, manic guitar work and an aggressive rhythm section—Raven at their finest. If you missed those two releases, these will no doubt convince you to rectify that mistake. An equally persuasive argument for picking up this set is the plethora of bonus material—live tracks, covers and rarities—that fill out the rest of the record. Though it may seem odd for the band’s label to revisit albums recorded in the last seven years, it may actually be a shrewd reminder of how good those albums are, and how relevant Raven still are. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

SKID ROW

The Gang’s All Here EARMUSIC

This new kid is wikkid

About 25 years have gone by since Sebastian Bach left Skid Row, and while neither side’s careers have been the same since, the Jersey band has had a helluva time replacing the inimitable Baz. The erstwhile singer so dominated the band’s early work that not Johnny Solinger, not Tony Harnell, nor ZP Theart could live up to the task. Astonishingly, in 2022, Snake Sabo, Rachel Bolan and Scotti Hill just might have found the guy they’ve been looking for, not to mention the one producer who could give the music a good kick in the leather pants. The 2009 winner of Swedish Idol, Erik Grönwall made his mark by covering the Skids’ “18 and Life,” and now he’s singing on his heroes’ sixth studio album. The impact of Grönwall’s presence is immediate on the “Monkey Business”-esque “Hell or High Water,” selling the empowering lyrics with intensity and range that’ll give the most grizzled headbangers flashbacks to 1991. The dude can belt, and he sets the stage for a shockingly fun record that sticks to the band’s strengths: riffs, hooks and grit. That’s where producer Nick Raskulinecz comes in; having made great late-career records with Rush, Death Angel, Deftones and Alice in Chains, he excels at recalibrating a veteran band’s sound, and his back-to-basics approach works yet again. Sabo recaptures his old riff magic on highlights like “Resurrected,” the fiery title track and the swaggering “Tear It Down”; and while it’s not a perfect record—“Time Bomb” is cartoonish—it’s a welcome and long overdue return to form. —ADRIEN BEGRAND 92 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

SLUGCRUST

Ecocide

PROSTHETIC

Everything, everywhere, all at once

Buffets are great, but sometimes after you sit back down, you realize you didn’t need the pasta and the cornbread and the dinner rolls. That can be the feeling on Ecocide, the debut full-length by Slugcrust. This is grind, punk and blackened hardcore (which I’m calling Charredcore if no one’s coined that already) with a healthy dose of sludge, so they’re pretty much playing all things that are good. And there is an unbridled energy across the album that never completely goes off the rails, giving it the feel of a basement show. Most of the 12 tracks are under two minutes, yet there’s an impressive vocal range here (if they’re all the same guy), screaming, yelling, gurgling and doing a great job of mixing it up in these brief fusillades. But while it’s great that the band has all these genres they can dip into, they dip often, even when they don’t need to. This creates some very jerky, frustratingly arbitrary shifts, where instead of just staying the course for a while, a song will shoot off into completely different territory. I rarely complain when bands are brief, but there are enough solid, diverse parts they could have built out of some of these songs instead of cramming too many ideas into too few seconds. Slugcrust have a lot in their arsenal, and it’s all on display throughout Ecocide. If they can figure out how to balance all those pieces a little better, they’ll have a real feast on their hands. —SHANE MEHLING

SPELLBOOK

Deadly Charms CRUZ DEL SUR

It’s a page-turner

Two years after the promising debut Magick & Mischief, York, PA’s SpellBook are back with a revamped lineup and a new album that both expands on the band’s pagan-themed heavy rock and reins things in considerably. When creating heavy music inspired by the witchy sounds of the early ’70s, it’s crucial to note that the music is supposed to breathe, and most of all, swing. The groove is sometimes as important as the riffs and hooks, and the accomplished, confident Deadly Charms is all about that groove. When one hears the band tear into the mighty, Uncle Acid-like shuffle of “Rehmeyer’s Hollow,” the effect is immediate—the listener is sucked in. By the time singer Nathanus enters the fray with his Ozzy-meets-King Diamond wail, it’s game over—the spell’s taken hold.

And about that singer. Nathanus tackles the pagan horror-themed lyrics on Deadly Charms with devilish glee, howling away with the kind of over-the-top flamboyance we rarely hear from American bands. Accentuated by the new guitar duo of Les Yarde and Patrick Benton, Nathanus conjures images of folklore, blasphemy, witches and murderers with the maniacal enthusiasm of a teenage headbanger in 1984. “Goddess,” “Pandemonium” and “The Witch of Ridley Creek” are tremendous examples, but the real keeper is the seven-minute “Night of the Doppelganger,” which combines NWOBHM riffery with some riveting storytelling. Capped off on a high note with the startlingly upbeat, Thin Lizzy-esque “Out for Blood,” Deadly Charms is a bold step forward, a must-have for fans of underground traditional metal. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

STRATOVARIUS

Survive

EARMUSIC

Post-dolphin phase commence

Finnish long-haul power metallers Stratovarius had a remarkable run— mostly in Finland and Japan—up to Infinite (2000). Albums Dreamspace (1994), Visions (1997) and personal fave Destiny (1998) successfully navigated the narrowest of spaces between Silver Mountain, Yngwie Malmsteen, Queensrÿche and, of course, Helloween. Surely, keyboardist Jens Johansson, who was famously a member of Silver Mountain, Malmsteen’s band, and ’90s-era Dio, played a major part in augmenting (now former member) Timo Tolkki’s own heavy metal/hard rock predilections. Somewhere along the line, Stratovarius got caught up in their own trap, forcing the Finns to shed members (like Tolkki) and the issue of middling yet highly polished metal. By Elements Pt. 1 (2003), heavy was certainly out of the Stratovarius musical equation. OK, enough setup. Survive, perhaps like predecessors Eternal (2015) and Nemesis (2013), has found the Timo Kotipelto-fronted quintet re-uprighted, recalling the ’90s glory days of progressiveminded, heavy-leaned power metal. Tracks like “Survive,” “Firefly,” “We Are Not Alone” and the staccato-inflected “Broken” are tried and true Stratovarius. At 53, Kotipelto, sounds as good (if not better) as he did on stormers “The Kiss of Judas,” “Will the Sun Rise?” and “Destiny.” Buttressed by a massive production, everything here soars and sings resplendently. At an hour run, Survive might be a little long to, um, survive, but it’s reassuring that after seven years away, Stratovarius have entered year 38 with surprising strength. —CHRIS DICK

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Succumb to Chaos ROTTED LIFE

Slumber of sullen apprise

American death metal combo Vrenth have as much trouble gaining visibility as I do pronouncing their consonant-heavy moniker. The Californians return from a two-year pandemic absence on sophomore sicko Succumb to Chaos. Immediately, the Chasm, Demigod and Dead Congregation influences gurgle wryly out of the depths. “Omnipresence (Mors Certa/Hora Incerta),” “Integrum Tenebrae” and “An Eternal Impious War” are all-burl/no-frills, the kind of death metal that emerged in 1990 and fell largely out of favor four years later. Yet, in the midst of Vrenth’s strengths—well-constructed meat and potatoes—there’s a slightly different side on offer. Guitarists Carsten Brix and Bob “Bodybag” Babcock (both also in Ruin) carefully blend in despondency and melancholy into their brutal assaults. We’re not talking gothic this or funeral that, but rather a sense of mourning and loss. The coda to “Demise in Hollow Suffering,” the intro for “Curse of the Living and of the Dead” and the second solo set in “The End as a Shadow” feel decrepit, of an older time. The blend of lizard-brained savagery and emotional naïveté were hallmarks before,

and Vrenth, especially on Succumb to Chaos, are hoisting old-guard tricks with newfound fervor. Drummer Charles Koryn (VoidCeremony) cements Vrenth’s rock-steady emanations. His beat choices—especially leading into and during blasts—across Succumb to Chaos are very inspired by Andy Whale’s younger days. If there’s a downside to Vrenth, it’s that outside of the nuanced Bolt Thrower-isms, the eight tracks here act as a single 40-minute blur. Then again, death metal, as culled from its halcyon days, was never meant to be the least bit dynamic. Though, I suspect twentysomethings Disharmonic Orchestra might want a word with me after this. —CHRIS DICK

WOLFHEART

King of the North N A PA L M

Where the cold winds kinda blow

Tuomas Saukkonen was a crucial (if unsung) architect of the ’00s Finnish melodic death metal sound that bands like Insomnium and Swallow the Sun brought to international audiences. His work in Before the Dawn, Black Sun Aeon, and Dawn of Solace was graceful and melancholic, adding heaps of gloomy Scandinavian terroir to the sound pioneered in neighboring Sweden. Saukkonen shut

SUMERLANDS, Dreamkiller

Dream a killer dream | R E L A P S E

There’s a word in Portuguese with no direct translation in English: saudade. Roughly, it means a nostalgic longing for a past that never existed. Philly’s Sumerlands are saudade personified. They deliver songs that long for the Elysian fields of classic metal; their formula is equal parts glam and fantastic. Their punchy-but-pensive self-titled 2016 debut was a sweet dream—pleasant in the moment, but its details disappear as soon as you wake from its spell. Maybe the band feels

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the same, since their follow-up, Dreamkiller is more invigorating. It’s black coffee with an extra dash of sugar—and two spoonfuls of great guitar solos. Studied ears will easily pick out what sources the band cites: a little Dio-era Sabbath here, a little Jake E. Lee-era Ozzy there, sprinkled with Accept-y speed and Tangerine Dream-y synths. Dreamkiller is a bit on-the-nose, but Sumerlands execute their inspirations’ ideas better than their heroes do (these days anyway). The X-factor is the singing. Trad metal can’t

down all those bands in 2013 to focus full-time on Wolfheart, a somewhat less morose melodeath project. King of the North, the band’s sixth album, feels effortless the way only the work of a seasoned veteran can. It also feels weightless. Saukkonen has been at this for far too long for King of the North not to at least be competent, but it rarely seems like it’s striving to be anything more than that. Songs unfold along predictable routes, and the death metal riffage too often gets reduced to a background role, with Saukkonen’s mirthless good cop/bad cop vocals and wispy lead work sitting at the front of the mix. The album’s omnipresent piano melodies and synthesized horns and strings attempt to build atmosphere, but they feel like obvious window dressing, an attempt to mask the not-particularly-strong metal songs they hang from like tulle. The finest song is “Cold Flame,” where Saukkonen rises to meet a guttural guest vocal by Nile’s Karl Sanders with the heaviest, most focused riffing on the album. It can only do so much to break the somnambulance. Melodic death metal is “back,” if it can be said to have ever left. But young bands like Dungeon Serpent and In Nothingness are exciting because they’ve rediscovered the animating fire that was there at the genre’s dawning. Wolfheart don’t sound excited by anything anymore. There’s nothing wrong with King of the North, not really. But is that enough? —BRAD SANDERS

tolerate anything less than perfection behind the mic. Sumerlands added to the fold former Magic Circle vocalist Brendan Radigan, whose performance is a significant contribution to Dreamkiller’s success. Radigan’s clear, nasal timbre takes some getting used to, but his abundant charisma totally sells the massive choruses of songs like “Twilight Points the Way” and “Edge of the Knife.” It’s odd, then, that Radigan’s vocals are so sharp when the instruments are so reverbedout. Songs this good don’t need this much distortion. Repeated listens, though, will be rewarded by the clever details and small touches that elevate Dreamkiller above the average nostalgia trip. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

PHOTO BY JACLYN WOOLLARD

VRENTH

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I N W H I C H W E R E V I E W V I N Y L I N A N D O F T H E H E AV I E S T R O TAT I O N S BY SHANE MEHLING

STILL/FORM

From the Rot Is a Gift 12-inch

[HEX]

I don’t usually get a chance to review an Album of the Year contender in this column, but that’s what we have here. To say this sludgy noise rock band sounds like if Nirvana ended up on Skin Graft instead of Sub Pop doesn’t do justice to how interesting and compelling this is. Dense, mathy sections, an incredible rhythm section, huge, heavy riffs that sometimes border on orchestral and just a bleak, vulgar experience the whole way through. I don’t know if I’ve heard a piece of music this year that I like more than the last minute of “Loyal, Like Dogs,” but either way this is gonna get listened to a lot, and that should be true for many of you.

NECROPSY ODOR

Tales From the Tepid Cavity 7-inch [625 THRASHCORE/HEADSPLIT/ E X T R E M E LY R O T T E N P R O D U C T I O N S ]

I don’t know what it is that makes fairly normal people with regular jobs and families want to listen to blownout, old-school gory deathgrind with vocals that occasionally sound like a badger eating a tape recorder and song titles such as “Cooked in Vomit.” But this is great. Six tracks in 10 minutes; burly, but also insane production; and “Cemattery Rose: guitar and cool hand pukes.” Not sure what there could be to complain about. Act fast to get the red vinyl.

VENOMOUS CONCEPT/UNDER ATTACK

The Kids Are Alright Split EP 7-inch [ T O L I V E A L I E / M C R C O M PA N Y ]

But if you like your songs even shorter, check out this stacked fucking split. So, Venomous Concept is still the incredibly catchy punk hardcore side project of two guys (and the touring guitarist) from Napalm Death and one guy (Kevin Sharp) from Brutal Truth. Then you got this band Under Attack, which is Mr. Dave Witte and some other guys from bands like Limp Wrist and Suppression doing the same thing, but kicked up an extra notch with five songs in less than four minutes. Essentially, the VC songs are like taking a long chug from a liquor bottle missing its label, and the UA side is getting a pool cue to the shins right after.

ONA SNOP

Ona Snop 7-inch

[ N E R V E A LTA R / C O X I N H A ]

Jesus, I have a lot of short records this time. This is one of the most colorful and pleasing layouts

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Nerve Altar has ever done, but these fastcore Brits are writing the soundtrack for the first powerviolence video game. It’s weird and has some truly oddball riffs, but over the course of seven tracks, they never let goofiness overtake the spitting rage. And despite there being a lot of nominees this month, they win the best song title with “Eat Shit and Thrive.”

S.I.D.

City of Chemistry 12-inch [GRUESOME]

Finally, no more blast beats. And also, it’s very good. This is a heavy, doomy EP that occasionally picks up speed, but doesn’t lose its impact. There’s also additional instrumentation, samples and some nice hooks, but this remains pretty oppressive and bleak. These guys are from Italy, and I don’t know my geography very well, but I’d think they would probably know it’s weird for a band member to be named Ikea; but, hey, the music is still awesome.

ANTICREATION

From the Dust of Embers 12-inch [SENTIENT RUIN]

Greece seems like a pretty good spot for black/ death metal hybrids, and this duo is keeping it going. Also, this is not the usual duo, as these songs actually have multiple guitar parts and a real density, which especially comes in handy when they need to sell the slower parts. But this also isn’t just a death metal band that occasionally blasts; there is that atmosphere and overall Satanic flavor that keeps this pleasingly grim. Oh, and the riffs are really good. A band would be foolish to write a song called “A Journey Into the Throat of Death” just to have it suck, and I assure you Necro and Noctus are not fools.

BITTER END

Harsh Realities 12-inch

[M-THEORY AUDIO]

Bitter End were a Seattle thrash band who put out one record on Metal Blade in 1990, and now it’s being reissued. Is this a lost classic that everyone has to pick up? I don’t think so, but I’m far from an expert. All I can tell you is that it is very, very funky; the artwork is cool; the vinyl is nice; and on the second song, the singer says “guitar!” before the guitar solo. Whatever Decibel writer is growing furious at my disinterest, please email me.

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EUGENE S. ROBINSON

CRAZY IS.

CRAZY DOES. IT

takes a certain something to be a good music photographer. A combination of crazy, fearless, and a real and actual love of chaos. So, when a dude came up with a crazy concept for how to handle photos at a Whipping Boy show with Social Distortion back in the ’80s, we were in. The show—at a big old movie theater, the kind of which are rare now in these days of multiplexes— was being played on a stage right in front of a huge silver screen. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world that was not dialed in, Polaroid had come out with a slide camera that our photog dude had gotten his hands on. He had taken pictures of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, non-rocker Jimmy Carter, just about whoever he could. But he had never used this camera before, and never with this setup. And the setup? During the show he’d take photos, no matter the stage-diving, crowd-surfing kind of aggro that was occurring, run up to the projection booth while the slide 104 : NOVEMBER 2022 : DECIBEL

photos he had taken developed, and then drop them into a projector and project them on the huge screen behind us. “Yeah, yeah, OK, whatever…” That was usually my response to anything that required more than a few paragraphs for me to concentrate on around showtime. However, during the show, amidst flying fists, feet and mosh pit mania, I happened to glance behind me, and there I was, 60 feet tall on the screen. And I suddenly understood. What? Just how dictators lose their minds. Rather than a 60-foot me being comforting, it was unsettling. I was unsettled. And I came close, during odd points in the show, to what I imagined it must feel like to lose your mind. Later, the photog—who was also my roommate—started making animal noises in the living room. First quiet. Then much louder. Under normal circumstances, not that big of a deal. At 4 in the morning? Sort of a big deal. Stepping out into the living room, a few things were clear. He

had lost his clothes. And his mind. “YOU NEED TO CALL YOKO! SHE WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!” I outweighed him by quite a bit, but he was flying high on crazy guy fuel, so I took the phone when he dialed, only hanging up when Yoko answered. Then I called his mother. She indicated that she’d send his father over. To help. His father showed up. Noteworthy because, after flying for hours, he had no luggage, no shoes and an acoustic guitar. Which he strummed while sitting crosslegged in the middle of my living room floor. “You gonna handle this, man?” He looked up at me and smiled the blissed-out smile of Moonies, Hare Krishnas and guys who always want to talk to me about something I have no interest in hearing about. “Yeah… man.” He tuned his guitar and then began singing some tuneless variant of… exactly what was happening while he played. “Black dude… staring at me… while the naked son runs and runs… oh…”

Then I got it: The mother had played me, off-loading two of her problems. I was stuck, left to reflect on how mental illness in the movies is—surprise—nothing at all like it is in real life. In the movies and television, it’s played for laughs. Someone does something “wacky,” someone else makes some version of an eye-rolling funny face, and cut, strike the set, move on to the next scene. In reality? People who are mentally ill are mentally ill at 4 in the morning, 6 in the morning, noon, dinnertime… in fact, all the time when they are having episodes. I eventually got them out, their parting words to me being, “You’re being kind of harsh, man.” I felt for them, even if I was being kind of harsh. But you know, I’m not the sanest guy myself, so let’s call it self-preservation. And if you’re reading this and feel like you can’t hold on, remember there’s help. Not at my house, but places like the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Make a call. Let your roommate get some sleep. ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE

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