Decibel #239 - September 2024 by Red Flag Media

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upfront 10 metal muthas Metal enough for a man, made for a woman 12 live review:

maryland deathfest xix 19 minus the COVID

features

reviews

18 spectral wound Hail horror

28 orange goblin They’ll never walk alone

20 göden Seasons change

30 nile The forever war

22 fulci Quack attack

32 q&a: geezer butler The Black Sabbath bassist masters reality and paranormal in new autobiography

61 lead review Even with new blood, Nile stay true to their history of old, old-school death metal with The Underworld Awaits Us All

16 low culture Cranking the hog

24 obscene They wanna rock

17 kill screen:

26 oxygen destroyer Turtle power

zeal & ardor Devil’s advocate

36 the decibel

hall of fame Deathevokation’s cup overfloweth with old-school reverence on sole LP offering The Chalice of Ages

62 album reviews Records from bands that finally beat Medicare, including Gel, Nails and Sissy Spacek 72 damage ink An offer you can’t refuse

Mental Fun for Real! 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 $34.95. 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. © 2024 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.

4 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

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REFUSE/RESIST

September 2024 [T239] PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

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James Lewis

james@decibelmagazine.com DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SALES

Decibel’s 20th Anniversary Show— headlined by this issue’s cover stars, Autopsy—more than a few people expressed their astonishment that our little shindig on August 31 at Philadelphia’s Brooklyn Bowl will mark the California death metal institution’s debut Philly performance. Apart from one brief, disastrous northeast run in 1993, when they skipped Philly in a favor of an Atco, NJ hair metal club called Bonnie’s Roxx (which is now the site of a Dollar General), Autopsy’s touring was mostly limited to regional California dates and a pair of European runs in 1990. This was in direct contrast to most of the Earache and Roadrunner acts of that era who regularly slogged through relentless eight-week runs of America. But before the band could even contemplate that missed opportunity to raise their profile beyond the most devoted undergrounders, it was 1995, death metal’s commercial appeal had waned and Autopsy were so disillusioned with the scene that they titled an album Shitfun, slapped a fake turd on the cover and unceremoniously disbanded. For the generations that came after us old farts who grew up amid death metal’s rise in the early ’90s, it’s difficult to imagine a time when Autopsy (and death metal as a genre) held anything but a revered status. But when I first contacted Chris Reifert in March 2002 for an early Choosing Death interview, he was preparing to release the third Abscess album and had no interest in reigniting Autopsy, largely because, as he told me, “No one gave a shit.” To be fair, the landscape was a lot different then. Reunions of many of those classic Earache and Roadrunner acts were still years away, while the old-school death metal renaissance was only about to get rolling (see this issue’s Hall of Fame induction). By the time Autopsy officially reactivated in 2009, there was just one high-profile extreme metal festival in the U.S. that the band could play (see this issue’s live reviews section). Some 20 years later, Autopsy have birthed six critically lauded studio albums and performed dozens of one-off live shows AUGUST 31, 2024 throughout the U.S. thanks to a thriving network of underground metal festivals propelled by an assembly of fans who weren’t even FIRST PHILADELPHIA SHOW EVER born when Bonnie’s Roxx was demolished. So, yeah, it’s been a long, surprising road that finally “FIRST 20 YEARS” ECDYSIS brings Autopsy to Philly for our 20th anniversary bash. Hope you THE STYGIAN ROSE join us for tons of (shit)fun. PRESENT

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After the recent announcement of

Aaron Salsbury

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

READER OF THE

MONTH When Obituary was announced at an all-ages club, my friends and I grabbed tickets as soon as we could. As rare as out-of-state bands were, a death metal band from Florida was even rarer, and we weren’t missing it for anything.

Blake Owens Eugene, OR

You are from Hawaii. Your first concert was Obituary in Honolulu back in October 1992. How rare were rock shows there at the time, let alone death metal shows?

Hawaii’s local scene was a big melting pot: ska, reggae and punk were huge, but we also had a lot of metalheads and a decent amount of metal bands (mostly thrash from what I remember). We didn’t get out-of-state bands often, so whenever they played Honolulu, the shows were packed. Problem was, there weren’t many all-ages venues, so unless it was an arena or the Aloha Tower Marketplace, my high school buddies and I were out of luck.

8 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

You’re currently based in Eugene, OR. Last issue’s Reader of the Month, Sam Greer, is also based in Eugene. You guys should totally hang out! Beyond the obvious names like WITTR and YOB, what is the underground metal scene like there these days?

The scene in Eugene and Portland is very diverse, and bands aren’t afraid to experiment; I’ve seen everything from black metal to nü-metal lately, and plenty of flavors in between. Some standouts include Boltcutter (slam), Sweater for an Astronaut (stoner metal), Silver Talon (power metal), Redivivus (blackened death), Bad at Life (solo black metal) and Bloody Pineapples (modern metal with members scattered across the world). Sam, if you’re reading this, your first beer is on me at John Henry’s when we meet, and we’ll send Albert a dual Readers of the Month selfie.

You regularly travel to events like Maryland Deathfest and Metal & Beer Fest: Philly. Are there any other destination metal fests on your bucket list?

First off, the Philly Metal & Beer Fest has become an annual pilgrimage for my friends and I. The effort put into each one to make it a unique experience is unlike any I’ve been to before, and we always have a blast seeing old favorites and discovering new bands; so kudos to all your hard work. In the future, I’d really like to see some of the European fests like Hellfest and Summer Breeze. But also, there’s a certain Metal & Beer fest in Denver I hear great things about… Deathevokation’s The Chalice of Ages is the Hall of Fame in this issue. That’s one of our most obscure inductions to date. What’s an underthe-radar classic you’d like to see inducted?

I spent some time checking my HOF wish list against the Decibel archives, and while I could make good cases for Misery Index’s Traitors, Torche’s Harmonicraft or Soilwork’s Natural Born Chaos, my most obscure pick would be Blood Duster’s Str8 Outta Northcote. It’s a filthy, irreverent death rock/grindcore hybrid with absolutely zero fucks given, and tracks like “Shoved Up Your Pisshole” crack me up just from the title alone.

ChuckBB.com / Instagram: @chuckbb_art

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while taking a pass on writing something funny here in the hopes that it inspires a really good zinger for next month’s 20th anniversary issue.

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

This Month’s Mutha: Beth Rail Mutha of Dalton Rail of Terminal Nation

Tell us a little about yourself.

involved in social justice?

I’m a healthcare worker, and I’ve been in the field for too many years to count. I grew up in a small community on a farm in Southeastern Arkansas. My father was a Vietnam war vet and a farmer for his entire life. We have a very small but tight-knit family, and we’re all very supportive of each other.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that their band sheds light on so many controversial things. Dalton’s always been a good guy, and he cares about doing right by people. We’re living in hard times, and I’m proud that he’s not ashamed to speak his truths and stand up for what he believes in, even if it does spark controversy.

Was Dalton immediately attracted to guitar, or did he play other instruments growing up?

Dalton was always trying new things. He was drawn to music from an early age. He played the trombone and tuba in his earlier years. I bought him his first guitar when he was 11 years old. I don’t remember the first guitar he had, but that was just the start of many over the years. He was very passionate about it, and he’s stuck with it for all of these years. We understand you’re a big Alice Cooper fan. Did you ever take Dalton to shows?

I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. Hair bands and heavy metal were huge when I was coming of age, and I was there for it! Some of my favorites were Slaughter, Tesla, Skid Row, Ozzy, Alice Cooper, Metallica, Mötley Crüe and Pantera. We saw shows when they would come through Little Rock, which was about an hour drive from where we lived. Dalton’s band makes a point of raging against fascism and police brutality. Was he always this 10 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

Terminal Nation have branded deodorant. Is your son really that smelly?

LMAO. I can honestly say my kiddo’s always been pretty hygienic, except maybe when he was little rolling in the dirt and eating bugs. I’m also not surprised they’re trying to make the world smell better, one deodorant stick at a time. Heavy metal shows can be a pretty awful-smelling place. What is your first recommendation for somebody who’s never been to Little Rock?

The Little Rock scene honestly has lots of things to do. Great restaurants and venues with shows every weekend that are very diverse; there’s a little something for everyone. You can also go outside and enjoy the natural beauty of what Arkansas has to offer. So many beautiful scenic hikes and river trails to enjoy what we’re most known for. Folks in Arkansas love drinking and eating, so fully expect that to be your main objective when you come through. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Spectral Wound, Songs of Blood and Mire  The Black Dahlia Murder, Servitude  Dismember, Where Ironcrosses Grow  Cirith Ungol, I’m Alive (Live at Up the Hammers Festival)  Hyperdontia, Harvest of Malevolence ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Crypt Sermon, The Stygian Rose  Fu Manchu, The Return of Tomorrow  Redd Kross, Redd Kross  Metallica, …And Justice for All  Midnight, Hellish Expectations ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Autopsy, Severed Survival  Deathevokation, The Chalice of Ages  Zeal & Ardor, GREIF  Necrot, Lifeless Birth  Baroness, Stone ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  The Black Dahlia Murder, Servitude  Spectral Wound, Songs of Blood and Mire  Zeal & Ardor, Zeal & Ardor  John Carpenter, Lost Themes IV: Noir  Oranssi Pazuzu, Muuntautuja ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Dysrhythmia, Coffin of Conviction  Das Oath, Das Oath  Immolation, Here In After  The Cramps, Bikini Girls with Machine Guns  Various Artist, Last Action Hero (Music from the Original Motion Picture)

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Paul Zavaleta : d e t e r i o r o t  Noroth, Sacrificial Solace  Rotpit, Let There Be Rot  Dripping Decay, Festering Grotesqueries  Holycide, Towards Idiocracy  Judas Priest, Invincible Shield

MARYLAND DEATHFEST XIX  Freezing moon over

my hammy Mayhem dominates the Market Place stage while thinking about pancakes, probably

MARYLAND DEATHFEST XIX

YOU

didn’t really believe that 2022 would be the final MaryWHEN: May 23-26, 2024 land Deathfest, did you? After PHOTOS BY JOSH SISK nearly 20 years of producing the most important underground metal festival in North America, co-founders Evan Harting and Ryan Taylor just needed a fucking breather, OK? The recharge allowed for a welcome reconfiguration of the event, which packed 104 bands over five days between three city blocks of downtown Baltimore. Europe, you can keep your festivals in natural caves formed during the Stone Age; we’re rolling with Mayhem freaking the fuck out of people trying to have dinner at IHOP. —ALBERT MUDRIAN WHERE:

Baltimore, MD

THURSDAY STABBING

With no barricade, Soundstage has a reputa-

tion for stage dives and sloppy mosh pits, often resembling a sopping crater before Memorial Day. But brutal death metal upstarts Stabbing brought that inevitable outcome around early with songs like “Vortex of the Severed Dead” and the aptly titled “Splatter Pit.” Vocalist Bridget Lynch orchestrated said chaos with dogmatic charisma, only breaking character for a couple of nonverbal “wows” at the sheer mass of folks dogpiling toward the stage and swan-diving off it. Stabbing are a young band with one album under their belt, but judging by the enthusiastic turnout for their tight set, the Texan quartet has a rosy and gory future ahead of them. —JOSEPH SCHAFER 12 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

DERKÉTA

“We’re from Iron City,” began Sharon Bascovsky

in a voice every bit as ore. “That’s Pittsburgh, PA.” Kinda sells itself, doesn’t it? Tick off metallic capitals effectively mined for Mother Earth’s most common element: Birmingham, Gothenburg, Tampa. Pennsylvania’s second sibling after Philly, Three Rivers extracted this iron quartet in 1988, so Derkéta are all core, no crust. Atomic element 26 thus boomed big-room doom inside the cool, dark, tripled-tiered Rams Head Live! Chain-drive riffs, bottomless Bonham beats, and the bandleader’s molten death flow powered the mostly female configuration. “Obscurities of Darkness” sundered, while the furious uptick to “Last Rites” hit fifth gear. “Best sound we’ve ever had onstage,” observed Bascovsky, iron maiden for the ages. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

CHTHE’ILIST

Chthe’ilist benefited from Thursday scheduling that let them deal death inside, versus the outdoor stages that neutered many bands over the weekend due to iffy sound or blazing sun. They plied that most delicious of metal contradictions: inner worlds writ large—very large. Another contradiction was on display: old-guy esoteric death metal (Demilich being the usual reference) played by young guys full of energy. OSDM by younger bands is common now, but this style isn’t the obvious choice—kudos. It took me a few songs to square what I was hearing with what I was seeing, but by the end I was a convert, like the rest of the roaring crowd. —COSMO LEE

BROKEN HOPE

Midwestern death metal OGs Broken Hope

haven’t toured the States in nearly a decade, which is a shame considering the precision and showmanship they brought to their enthusiastically received midnight set. Though only guitarist Jeremy Wagner remains from the original lineup, he and his cohorts ripped through ’90s cuts like “Gorehog” and “Into the Necrosphere” just as masterfully as material from 2017’s Mutilated and Assimilated. Whereas sound issues kneecapped several bands this year, Soundstage’s mix brought out nuances not always apparent in Broken Hope’s music on record— especially the copious technicolor melody in

Some more black  Noctem (l) and Agalloch each bring their flavor of the monochromatic rainbow to Charm City

Matt Szlachta’s guitar solos. Now, how about a new record, fellas? —JOSEPH SCHAFER

SODOM

Sodom’s Agent Orange is thrash metal at its absolute best, as was the band’s performance of that classic album on Thursday. Although songs like “Tired and Red,” “Ausgebombt” and “Baptism of Fire” are already total rippers on record, they turn into thermonuclear anthems in the mosh pit. There’s something special about thrash metal guitar tones onstage that can’t be replicated on speakers or headphones. Additionally, the band gave the crowd some extra doses of obsessive cruelty with songs like “M-16,” “Sodomy and Lust” and the black-thrash classic “Outbreak of Evil.” Sodom’s music has aged like fine wine, and the band’s set at MDF was a proper vintage of riffs, growls and steel. —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

FRIDAY NOCTEM

Contrary to (all) lesser genres, ours remains truly borderless. From Stone Age caverns in Germany all the way to Singapore, the hard arts manifest on any atoll with Wi-Fi. Downside: You’ll never lay eyes on legions. Iberian black metallers Noctem hail from Eastern Spain on the Mediterranean, and last decade’s five raw fulllengths in 10 years poisoned a well not purified by sea air, nor necessarily storming your burg.

And indeed, live they swarmed like feeding time at the Orlok Inn. Heath Ledger-like Joker smears to accompany his fellow wraiths in black, Xavier Tolosa struck a corpse-painted Jesus Christ pose, leaping about in a ritualistic torrent of death metal fury and unhinged, aircrackling catharsis. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

SPECTRAL WOUND

As the sun sank behind Rams Head, under-

ground devotees filed into the venue for a spectacular 40 minutes of black metal from Spectral Wound. By the time the Quebecois quintet broke into “Frigid and Spellbound” from 2021’s A Diabolic Thirst, the audience was shouting along resolutely in the band’s thrall, thanks in no small part to vocalist Jonah Campbell’s captivating performance. The skeleton key to Spectral Wound’s sorcery is the hefty dose of classic metal bubbling beneath their raw surface. As if to underline that point, drummer Illusory broke into the iconic intro to “Painkiller” during “Imperial Saison Noire” before cracking a wry smile and shifting back into blast beat mode to close out their set. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

AHAB

Point Nemo, the remotest coordinate on the planet, should double as home port for Ahab. Christened equally in honor of Jules Verne, the funeral doom foursome from Heidelberg on the

Neckar River in southwestern Germany pushed tsunamis of sound against a Nautilus-anchored backdrop straight out of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea—and also off last year’s fifth full-length The Coral Tombs. Crystalline guitar matrices by ship builder Daniel Droste and Christian Hector launched 55 minutes of titanic nautical lashings as bassist Stephan Wandernoth and drummer Cornelius Althammer brought down the latter’s surname and Ahab slammed home a perfect storm of tectonic plate-breaking at double-decade dBs. Appropriately, they docked at the Decibel table the following afternoon. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

SATURDAY SKINLESS

As the opening sample to “The Optimist” goes: “Life sucks! And then you DIE!” But if it’s any consolation, Skinless do NOT suck, and some of us have the chance to see them destroy the stage before we die. The band took to the Power Plant stage, and once you heard the opening salvos of “Crispy Kids,” it was all uphill from there. One thing that’s abundantly clear when watching these guys play: While the subject matter is decidedly tongue-in-cheek, the quality of the metal on display is deadly serious. Skinless are all about hooks, dynamics and songwriting skill. And every element was in full effect at the band’s performance in Baltimore. —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY DECIBEL : SEP TEMBER 2024 : 13

MARYLAND DEATHFEST XIX

More than decent & obscene  Dismember makes their long-awaited return to American shores

AGALLOCH

A temporary stage at Market and Pratt dif-

fers slightly from pine trees in solitary forests, but the locale did nothing to dampen the experience, as Agalloch’s 75-minute set transported listeners from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor to snow-covered trails and quietly meandering streams in the Pacific Northwest. The recently returned, legendary band played fan favorites from Ashes (4), Marrow (2), Pale Folklore (1) and even the criminally underrated The Serpent and the Sphere (unpopular opinion: it’s their best record), making for an unforgettable experience—and a welcome reprieve from full-blast grindcore. Need proof? Even comments on YouTube videos of the set mention chills and goosebumps—and you’ll get to see guitarist Don Anderson having as much fun as anyone in the crowd! —JAMES LEWIS

DISMEMBER

Dismember were probably the most anticipated

SUNDAY SINMARA

Reykjavik, Iceland inking any festival schedule

gets top priority in my book, joining maybe only Sigur Rós and Björk in top-o’-the-world witnessings. As Cryptopsy performed DM trigonometry on one of two outside headlining stages, Sinmara summoned dark and Earthen majesty in the gloaming indoors at Rams Head Live! Corpsepainted with possible Pagan head tattoos—and led by behemoth frontman Ólafur Guðjónsson whipping around a face made of long blond hair funneled through the closed loop of his hoodie—the five-piece thundered like Vikings. Tommy-gun drums, glacial bass, dual axe deforestation and Guðjónsson’s chest bellowing drew me forward step by step until the stage barrier intervened. Fierce yet refined, unpredictable but practiced, Sinmara moved heaven and earth. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

CRYPTOPSY

band this year, judging from overheard conversations and T-shirt action, both legit and bootleg. They didn't disappoint, treating us to a thoughtful spread across the entire discography. Oftimitated, never duplicated, the magical formula of Swedeath tone, Fred Estby rock ‘n’ roll drums (that seat-of-the-pants, “will he make it through this fill” energy was thrilling) and straight-up Iron Maiden cleaved the night sky asunder. The set was perfectly paced, with “Override of the Overture” satisfyingly near the end, setting up “Dreaming in Red” and “Life - Another Shape of Sorrow” to reprise their closing roles in 3D. One could practically see smoke rising afterwards.

totally cut out multiple times, it would be a reason to stop the show—or lose your cool and get really upset. But luckily for Cryptopsy, they have Flo Mounier as their drummer, who was able to fill the dead air with ease. And thus, the band played on as if nothing was wrong until the sound came back. And thank goodness, as it was a treat to hear all of Blasphemy Made Flesh played live in perfect, brutal clarity. It was also cool to see how stoked vocalist Matt McGachy was to be there and express how good it felt to finally be accepted as Cryptopsy’s vocalist.

—COSMO LEE

—J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

14 : SEP TEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

You know, when most bands have their sound

GORGUTS

Recreational weed has been legal in Maryland

for less than a year, and it would appear the entire state is still celebrating by partaking whenever there's an opportunity. This mass light-up and exhalation made the air during Gorguts’ set throat-burningly oppressive. But the shimmery haze and (possible/probable) contact high experienced was appropriately kaleidoscopic accompaniment to the Quebec/New York quartet’s avant-mystical death metal lurch and Colin Marston’s psychedelic Moog intros and interludes. The potential for disaster was high when they whipped out a ponderous instrumental as second or third song, but redemption was nigh with the airing of From Wisdom to Hate’s ferocious “Inverted” and tracks from Obscura that weren’t “Obscura.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

MAYHEM

If you’d never seen Mayhem before or weren’t

familiar with the band, the Norwegian legends’ performance at Market Place would have made the ideal crash course in classic black metal art. With documentary-style visuals in the background, Mayhem proceeded to play songs from every era. In short, there was something for every type of Mayhem fan. For my part, I was most excited for “Freezing Moon,” “Buried by Time and Dust,” “Funeral Fog” and “Deathcrush.” Meanwhile, it was during the band’s set that the eyeball-beach ball, which had been bouncing around through the crowd all day, finally met its demise. The girl next to me popped it with a broken beer can. No fun, indeed. —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 [UBISOFT]

Do Not Request Clear re we just going to ignore Batman grooming Batgirl?” was the sentence that made me decide I’d had a little too much of the public internet world before opening a chat window that asked the question “Do you think George Pig, Peppa Pig’s baby brother, has a huge, hairy crank?” made me decide to put down my phone and reevaluate my very existence. I bring up that first bit because it follows a conversation that I had for a podcast this afternoon. The second I brought up because I feel that this is the place for those kinds of difficult, existential questions. But back to the first bit. A real person posted that in a thread about two of the actors who had played Batman and had died. A real person derailed the fuck out of said thread to inquire about their perception of grooming in a fictitious landscape. This was this guy’s contribution. Hopefully the next thing to go through his head is a runaway truck before he has another chance to share with the rest of the class. The conversation was about performative progressivism/leftism being a marker for American culture (podcast was Swedish) as either a way to make the person making the statement appear to have the moral high ground and thus requiring your admiration or that it’s packaged in a way solely to be a marketable product, think every corporation during the months of February or June. But in this instance, I’m talking about it in music. And not adding to the fantastic discourse of cancel culture that so many of you sociologists engage in, but rather the bands/people who loudly proclaim social causes—especially when they have a new record to promote. Without naming names (and giving them their desired attention), there was a band who recently released something and, as punctuation in every social media post they did to promote it, they would add something about ending Zionism/Free Palestine. I even heard some interview where they would toss in those 16 : SEP TEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

platitudes while talking about the record, as in, “Our new record is great, free Palestine. We recorded it in four days. We’re strongly antiZionist.” Did the music have anything to do with this? Maybe, who knows. I didn’t give enough of a fuck to listen to it—though, ironically, I did give enough to write the last hundred words about it. It reminded me of bands putting Trump on their T-shirts. The message there being that they weren’t trying to convince anyone who disagreed with them, but they were marketing to the choir. Crass (pun?) consumerism masquerading as activism, all in the pursuit of clicks, likes and the almighty greenback, at least while that’s still a thing. Sadly, what this exercise in capitalism does is weaken any salient points that people trying to enact positive change are trying to push forward. Just like it’s easy to be cynical when you see a corporation raise a rainbow flag (or any symbol of a marginalized group) and think they’re doing it to attract business or to stay out of the crosshairs of people like the daffy fucker in the first few lines. All this “look at me, I’m helping!” marketing yields more than a healthy amount of skepticism. And it creates an echo chamber of people proud of themselves because they’ve ended decades of strife in the Middle East through their download of some band whose musical identity is so fucking forgettable that the only reason anyone is even talking about them is their manufactured political stance. Much like the guy who paid $200 for some record on Discogs, I doubt they’re evening listening to the bands when they buy into this farce; they just want people to know they support them because of the moral perception of the cause. So, no, I don’t know if George Pig is packing some serious hog, and I don’t know how well our bullshit detectors work these days, but maybe that’s a muscle we should exercise, because it’s only going to get worse as we approach November.

MANUEL GAGNEUX OF

ZEAL & ARDOR

IS DOING JUST FINE orn as a reaction to a 4chan comment that was at best deliberately offensive and at worst truly hateful, the music of Zeal & Ardor tackles very serious subject matter. In doing so, it somewhat masks the welcoming charm and natural silliness of its founder Manuel Gagneux, a lifelong gaming nerd with a decades-long obsession for the industry. Most of our time with the multi-instrumentalist—spent over Zoom with Gagneux framed in a Mario Kart 64 overlay—was filled with laughter for the absurd, unabashed excitement for our shared titles of interest and a lot of callbacks to Poland (read our extended online interview for some much-needed context). It’s the following moment, however, that brought a briefly measured tone to our chat. Despite gearing up for the release of his latest LP GREIF, the first recorded as a full band, it’s his breakout 2017 hit “Devil Is Fine” that was tapped to be used in a massive marketing push for an Ubisoft title back in the good ol’ days of 2019. For those familiar with the song, it may be strange to hear that used to promote an MMO war-driven power fantasy. Looking back can be funny— sometimes, it’s really just not that deep.

RIOTOUS INDIGNATION

Is pleased to announce the July 5th, 2024 release of the new single

At the end of the day, I was never a slave. I’m talking to you from fucking Switzerland, which is, like, the most privileged country I could be talking from…

WHO AM I TO FUCKING DRAW THAT LINE IN THE SAND? “Devil Is Fine” was used in the trailer for [Tom Clancy’s] The Division 2. How did this come about?

They just asked us, honestly. Did they reach out to the band directly? Did they reach out to the label? Was there any back and forth?

It was a really, really cool story where they wrote an email to my management… um, and that was that. It’s super unspectacular. [Laughs] Was there any sort of feeling about a song like “Devil Is Fine” to be used in a trailer? “Devil Is Fine” is a very specific feeling and it tells a very specific story, and that story is not The Division 2. I can’t help but think that so much music that gets used for trailers and product, and capitalism is misrepresenting what the story of that song is.

This might be copium, but I think that people watch the trailer way more than listen to my music and they might have stumbled upon my music that way. But of course, there’s the aspect of, “Did I whore out my principles to sell digital goods?” But in the end, I’m doing exactly the same, you know?

But I [Michael] don’t want to frame it as putting the responsibility on you. You’re not the multimillion dollar company that is utilizing a song that is very specifically about the Black slave experience in America—or even the Black slave experience, period—but then to just use it for something wildly out of left field.

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I actually think there’s kind of a beauty to that because there’s two levels to it: One is the narrative and the heaviness of the historic context, and the other one is, “Oh, this sounds nice,” or, “This makes me feel something.” Because at the end of the day, I was never a slave. I’m talking to you from fucking Switzerland, which is, like, the most privileged country I could be talking from. You could be Norwegian, let’s be honest.

I mean, we have the Nazi gold, which does not help. So, in that regard, who am I to fucking draw that line in the sand? And also, I have five people in my band. They have kids and they have literal mouths to feed. And I love video games. Of course, this sounds like an excuse—because it kind of fucking is—but I didn’t see the the discrepancy as large enough to say this is bad.

CONTINUE AT DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM

DECIBEL : SEP TEMBER 2024 : 17

SPECTRAL WOUND

The world is going to hell and Quebec black metallers are enjoying the ride

ome black metal bands confront their audience with a manifesto, a grand declaration of intent, aesthetic or otherwise. Spectral Wound resist all that. Their freewheeling approach is more philosophically unmoored, which feels more in tune with the exhilarating fuck-everything appeal of the art form in the first place. Their latest studio album, Songs of Blood and Mire, is animated by “decadence and decline,” a tour de force of black metal’s basest pleasures, melancholy and triumph commingling at 200 bpm. Does Spectral Wound’s uncodified ethos allow their sound to be more personal? Frontman and lyricist Jonah Campbell isn’t so sure. Nonetheless, it allows us to lean into their whirlwind sound and interpret it for ourselves. ¶ “I would not say more personal,” he says, “but certainly it allows a freer rein, as we are lashed to no particular ideological or conceptual millstone. It allows the lyrical preoccupations of the songs to range fairly widely, and that too perhaps permits people to engage differently with the music.” 18 : SEP TEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

Joining us as the Montreal quintet makes its final preparations before taking this ferocity out east on a tour of Japan, Taiwan and mainland China, Campbell says the music and lyrics should speak for themselves: “Indeterminacy, opacity [and] contingency are all important elements of Spectral Wound.” There is a lot of music on Songs of Blood and Mire. It is an epic, constructed of epics. Guitarist Patrick McDowall and drummer Illusory (a.k.a. Jordan Kelly) handle the arrangements. Campbell writes lyrics to the riffs. Spectral Wound then track it themselves, keeping it as live as possible. “This gives us the liberty to indulge and explore more than we might if we were subject to another producer’s schedule,” Campbell says. “We tend to eschew doing too much on record that we would be unable to reproduce live.” And yet Songs of Blood and Mire does not lack for ambition. It

ambushes us with tempo changes. Its three-dimensional production has acoustic textures buried deep in the mix. A track such as “At Wine-Dark Midnight in the Mouldering Halls” serves as an orgiastic “sonic thumbprint” for the band. “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” sounds meta, but elaborates on the theme. “The title, though a bit wry, alludes to the gilded death cult that Western civilization has become,” Campbell says. “If there is humor, there is also horror, because that is our world: horrible and ridiculous.” Yes. Yes, it is. Whether you find Spectral Wound an escape from society or a window into it is a matter of perception. But like Campbell says, you can’t really escape. One way or another, you’ve got to be at peace with society’s grotesquery. Songs of Blood and Mire at least might make it palatable. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

PHOTO BY BEN ZODIAZEPIN

SPECTRAL WOUND

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GÖDEN

Ex-Winter members tread new ground: a second album

you somehow missed their debut album, 2020’s Beyond Darkness, Göden “was assembled from the ‘ashes,’ if you will, of [NY proto-death-doom gods] Winter after its members mutually decided to tread separate paths— except, of course, for Stephen [Flam] and myself.” This from The Prophet of Göden, one Tony Pinnisi, whose keyboards have accompanied the pendulous, earth-shaking riffs of Winter/Göden guitarist Flam since Winter’s debut full-length, Into Darkness. ¶ “Stephen approached me back in 2017 about singing on some songs,” relates Göden’s vocalist, Nykta a.k.a. Vas Kallas. “At that time I had a little hiatus with my band Hanzel und Gretyl, and so I gave it a try. I never did this style of slow doom music … I’m more accustomed to getting onstage with my bass or guitar and creating mosh pits, so this was a big 180, and it intrigued me.” ¶ Several tracks from Beyond Darkness date back to the early ’00s, as Flam tells us, but follow-up LP Vale of the Fallen is entirely new material. Vale of the Fallen “feels like a progression for Göden, 20 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

the songs are strong and I feel the music is more direct than [the] debut,” says Flam. “Beyond Darkness was material I wrote for a Winter demo in 2004. Everything on Vale of the Fallen is new material except ‘Death Magus’; that’s an older riff that [had] been sitting around for a while.” Those who pick up Vale of the Fallen expecting mountainous and crushing riffage will be satisfied completely. But they’re also likely to have their minds expanded, for much of Vale is truly next-level. This is not simply raw, slow and heavy death metal. At least not only entirely. “[Vale] is more diverse sonically,” says Flam. “‘Urania’ was an interesting song to make because it came from something I did in 1990 on a Kurzweil K2000 and was an ambient track that came to life using the newer technology and an old technology that melted together

in an unusual way. Once everyone started to add different ingredients, it was an unexpected mind excursion for me. It’s also very different from anything we have done before. The guitar has a swirling feedback sound I dig.” Meanwhile, violinist Margaret Murphy returns once again to elevate the atmosphere to unapproachable heights. Says Flam, “This time around I wanted [Murphy] to be more involved because she brings different textures to the music ... In sections where normally guitar solos or melodies would be, [I wanted to] replace [those] with violin.” For her part, Kallas has nothing but positive things to add: “Not only did I get to listen to [Murphy] just jam away on the songs like it was second nature, but I got to ride on a beautiful black horse around her property! It was amazing.” —DUTCH PEARCE

FULCI

orror movies and death metal are one of modern pop culture’s most enduring pairings, with the aesthetics of the former so embedded within the very core of the latter as to be utterly inseparable. Much of that is thanks to the blood-soaked work of Italian director Lucio Fulci, the Godfather of Gore, whose nihilistic horror flicks have inspired countless bands—including one who bears his name. Italian brutal death metal quintet Fulci mold their entire musical identity around his films. ¶ “What we like about Lucio Fulci and all Italian cinema of the ’70s and ’80s is the total freedom that the directors had,” guitarist Dome Diego explains. “I believe that this extremism that made famous the Italian cinema of that time was probably a reaction to the previous fascist repression. For example, if a director had wanted to show an anthropophagus that removes a child from the mother’s womb and eats it, no producer would have stopped him!” ¶ Like all of Fulci’s recorded output, their fourth LP (and 20 Buck Spin debut),

22 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

Duck Face Killings, is based on one of their namesake’s uglier slasher flicks. This time, they home in on The New York Ripper, an especially gory and misogynistic giallo nightmare. “The band’s idea is to make a paradigmatic shift of Lucio Fulci’s films,” Diego explains. This time around, “We tried to create a death metal soundtrack for the film.” The album’s title has nothing to do with millennial pursed-lip selfies; rather, it references the film’s villain, a homicidal monster who taunts his victims in a bizarre Donald Duck voice (sampled to great effect on “Rotten Apple”). The murderer’s voice is as inhuman as his actions, and Fulci the band don’t shy away from Fulci the director’s penchant for graphic violence. Songs like “Fucked With a Broken Bottle” sum up the sickening lyrical vibe, and the band’s incorporation

of sleazy ’80s synth (and a saxophone!) into their guttural sound only adds to the creeping depravity. The end result is heavy, brutal and unsettling—just like the film itself. If metal is meant to be an escape from everyday life, Fulci would rather run straight towards humanity’s worst—and those who wish to join them can catch them on tour with Morbid Angel, Suffocation, Mortiferum, Uada and Knoll this fall. One thing is certain: It won’t be pretty. “Unfortunately, evil is around us every day,” Diego says. “For example, if we just take a look at our social media, we can literally see in a few scrolls a nonsense sequence of a chef cooking something delicious, children dying under bombs, naked people, road rage fights and so on. Increasingly, reality is more violent than fiction.” —KIM KELLY

PHOTO BY CHIARA MEIERHOFER MUSCARÀ

Italian horror hounds direct fowl play on 20 Buck Spin debut

OBSCENE

here is a storm coming, like nothing you have ever seen, and not a one of you is prepared for it!” That quote from the psychological apocalypse film Take Shelter kicks off “Breathe the Decay,” my favorite track from Obscene’s upcoming ripper Agony & Wounds. Appropriately, a rainstorm roars through Indianapolis as Obscene vocalist Kyle Shaw answers questions across the table with a cheap beer. ¶ Agony & Wounds is Obscene’s third LP, and the first one from their new home at Nameless Grave Records. The record is a torrential bloodbath of old-school death metal. No trends, no breakdowns, just ruthless riffs and murderous downhill momentum. Shaw’s vocals knowingly invoke Martin Van Drunen while the band summons power from the genre’s golden age. That’s partially why they decided to record Agony & Wounds at Noah Buchanan’s studio across the state line in Cleveland. ¶ “One of the reasons we went to Noah [for our previous album] was because Mercinary Studios has the same mixer that Morrisound and [Erik] Rutan’s Mana Studio used to run,” Shaw explains. “So, we said, ‘Well, shit, we have that late-’80s, early-’90s Florida death metal sound anyway, 24 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

let’s try him.’ We didn’t even know he was in Nunslaughter until we met him in person.” Recording across an efficient week, Obscene incorporated more harmonic flourishes from guitarist Mike Morgan. The intricate drumming from Brandon Howe adds power and texture. But the record is still lean and muscular, with only the title track flexing a runtime over five minutes. The result is their strongest and most propulsive material yet. “The older I get, if I check out a new band, it’s gotta rock,” Shaw admits. “There are a hundred different subgenres of death metal, and I’m not always sure where we fit in. But I look at a band like Deceased or Exhumed or Nunslaughter, and they’re rockin’, sincere and fun. And that’s what we sort of try to bring in.” Part of the fun of Obscene’s live show is Shaw’s playfully antagonistic stage presence. He embraces

the role of the heel. For those who don’t watch professional wrestling, that’s a term for the villain you love to boo. Even their album’s first single, “The Reaper’s Blessing,” features a clip of Ric Flair talking smack. While discussing the state of modern death metal, Shaw slips in a taste of his concert persona: “That camo Obituary hat ain’t hiding your Hatebreed riffs, brah.” Obscene will share the stage with Tomb Mold and Horrendous at their hometown release show this summer in Indianapolis. The audience should prepare to rage and get roasted. Inferior frontmen, you’re about to get put on blast. “If you’re going to do a show, put on a show,” Shaw emphasizes. “If I go to a show and the frontman is a charisma vacuum, I’m out the door. Let me tell you right now, dude, I’m not a good singer at all. But I have charisma and personality, and you know me when you hear me.” —SEAN FRASIER

PHOTO BY SCOTT WILSON

OBSCENE

Indianapolis death metal vets ain’t afraid to play the villain

OXYGEN DESTROYER

OXYGEN DESTROYER Pacific Northwest death blasters will take your breath away

ith a title like Guardian of the Universe, unknowing listeners might think Pacific Northwest death-thrash quartet Oxygen Destroyer have gone power metal on their third LP. That idea couldn’t be further from the truth—this is still harrowing death-thrash, but it’s also an intentional leap forward from the band’s primitive origins. ¶ “I originally planned this album 10 years ago,” says guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Lord Kaiju. “I made the second album to try new ideas, improve my songwriting and prepare myself for this third album. I wanted this to be our definitive record.” ¶ The concept album’s heroic title refers to Gamera, a turtlelike giant monster whose trilogy of films from the ’90s is the basis of the album’s concept. The idea of a giant turtle stomping around Tokyo may sound silly, but the modern Gamera trilogy is among the best massive creature features ever made, bested only by the original 1954 Godzilla—they are also Lord Kaiju’s favorite films. ¶ “One of the goals of this record is that it will please people enough that they’ll watch these three films,” he says. “I wanted to capture how epic and grand 26 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

the Gamera trilogy is. To best represent that, I wanted these riffs to be frantic. I made a rule that at least half the riffs on this album needed to reach the seventh fret. I wanted the songs to be exciting to listen to and watch.” The songs harmonize with pivotal action scenes from the Gamera trilogy to deepen the connection between the music and the films, creating an immersive experience; think Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon echoing Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, except, you know, real. “I watched movies while writing the songs. Every single riff, every moment, it all syncs up to scenes from the movies,” Lord Kaiju promises. Befitting its conceptual nature, Guardian of the Universe evolves stylistically as the album progresses. “Side A is thrashy to match the high-octane battles of the first two films,” our man continues. “The third movie is more horror-inspired; it’s darker. I needed to find a way to make our B side represent

that, but without making it sound like a different record altogether. So, the B side has more variety; it’s a little more evil-sounding.” Oxygen Destroyer’s stylistic ambitions reach their apex on the album’s climax, “Banishing the Iris of Sempiternal Tenebrosity,” where Lord Kaiju deploys two radically different vocal styles to dramatize the back-and-forth dialog between two monsters. The tension builds until guitarist Joey Walker unleashes a guitar solo grander and more melodic than anything previously hinted at in the band’s discography. This begs the question: Where will Oxygen Destroyer go now that they have completed their original 10-year plan? Lord Kaiju says he’s got the project’s next decade sketched—hinting at a future album about the original King Kong—but he’s keeping his plans secret until Guardian of the Universe has finished flattening every city that Oxygen Destroyer can play. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

ONE-WAY RIDE VETERAN U.K. BALLERS

+ ORANGE GOBLIN +

SHOOT THE MOON ON PEACEVILLE DEBUT SCIENCE, NOT FICTION

STORY BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ

PHOTO BY TINA KORHONEN

ang on,” motions Ben Ward, pushing away from his desk at the opening of our 50-minute Google Chat. “Bear with me.” ¶ Orange Goblin’s six-foot-five center forward rolls his chair back a few feet to a discrete closet and emerges with a blood-red Liverpool F.C. jersey. ¶ “Is it this one?” ¶ Exiting Ramsgate on the southeast coast of England, Ward began his life odyssey pursuing professional soccer in London. There he met bassist Martyn Millard and the two tapped a love of metal and beer that superseded his passion for British football. Even seated, the frontman looks imposing, and he poured every last ounce of that into Orange Goblin’s 10th full-length Science, Not Fiction. ¶ “Well, I mean, I was pretty good,” he reckons, put on the spot. “I played obviously [with a] high standard for my school and for my county. When I was 15, I went for trials with Queens Park Rangers, who were a Premier League team back then.

28 : S JU EN P TEE2M0 B 2 4E R: D2 E 02 C 4I B:EDLE C I B E L

I spent two years playing on the youth team and made a few appearances for the reserves. “Never broke into the first team. I was a bit too young.” Better print up jerseys for the merch table, lads. Science, Not Fiction closes a cosmic loop begun on 1997 astral debut Frequencies From Planet Ten. From the knobby start that unites both discs to new album bookends “The Fire at the Centre of the Earth Is Mine” and “End of Transmission,” the OGs ride their venerable, high-scoring psy-fi into mañana astride a trademark torpedo of attacking existentialism. Witnessed pre-pandemic promoting second Candlelight scorcher The Wolf Bites Back, the

London foursome began lockdown by losing Millard. Buying time and Bandcamp traction, their soundman compiled Rough & Ready, Live & Loud. Raw and rumbling, liquid and lusty, the hour-long comp uncorks the band’s No Sleep ’til Hammersmith. At Millard’s urging, the group enlisted dayone cohort Harry Armstrong to slot in alongside original core duo Joe Hoare on guitar ionization and drum tumult Chris Turner. “We’d always said if any of the original members left, we’d call it a day,” reveals Ward. “But Martyn gave me, Chris and Jon his blessing to continue—and suggested we get Harry. Martyn making his announcement during COVID [proved] a blessing in disguise, because it gave Harry a chance to learn everything.” Downsized from the London office of United Talent Agency (UTA), Ward founded Route One Booking, which represents Crowbar, Eyehategod, Voivod and other heavy luminaries. Downtime also allowed drying out, Ward now notching more than two years’ sobriety. His grizzly bawl leads Science, Not Fiction rather than burying inside the mix of Hall of Fameworthy classics Time Travelling Blues and The Big Black. Wooed by fellow islanders Peaceville Records, the Goblin cleavers rang up “Tony Iommi’s right-hand man” Mike Exeter, whose credits additionally reap Heaven & Hell’s swansong

crusher The Devil You Know, multiple Cradle of Filth entries and a pair of Judas Priest campaigns. As audio-spiritual guides, Ward cited four records: Motörhead’s 1977 bow, Black Sabbath Vol. 4, Dopes to Infinity by Monster Magnet and Hawkwind’s Doremi Fasol Latido. “Mike said, ‘I think we can make something good,’” chuckles the singer. Yield from the U.K. countryside last November snaps and howls every bit as aggressively as The Wolf Bites Back (2018), while also harkening back to its immediate predecessor Back From the Abyss (2014). Exeter gives Science, Not Fiction a contemporary edge. Crisper, cleaner and harder than the analog bluster of their Rise Above big bang—five initial haymaker LPs wherein Orange Goblin pioneered retro classicism—the new album bristles renewed sonic investment. “I think that bridge was made with the album prior to Back From the Abyss,” offers Ward. “Eulogy for the Damned really changed us as a band. Not only in terms of the sonic element, but also in professionalism. Following that album, we did the band full-time for a couple years and gave it a real go. We did 161 shows in 2013, which involved tours with Clutch, with Down. “Seeing a band like Clutch and how they operate, it’s inspiring,” he continues. “That made us re-evaluate our whole thing, ’cause obviously in the early days, we was a little bit naïve. We were like kids in a candy store, thinking, ‘This

is all about free drinks, getting drunk, having a good time,’ and not really giving much thought to how we portray ourselves onstage in front of the audience, who buy your tickets, buy your albums, buy your merchandise. “Clutch taught us to respect that and go out there and be the best you can be every night. Then translate that into the studio recordings.” Science, Not Fiction journeys through its titular sphere as all Orange Goblin launches do, but arrives at a singular reality. “(Not) Rocket Science” puts it plainly enough: “We’re all born with a ticket for a one-way ride.” Live life or lose it, then. Stop overthinking sentience. Bludgeoning Hammer Films fodder “Cemetery Rats,” an elbow-throwing “Prometheus in the pit” (a.k.a. “The Fury of a Patient Man”) and one final Phantom of the Opera, “End of Transmission”—a dystopian epic summating nigh on 30 years of Orange Goblin—all shoot the moon. Looking back, what a wild ride it’s been Cosmic frequencies and all that we’ve seen Lifelong odyssey into the unknown A million miles of twisted hard road DECIBEL: Let me just add that Liverpool’s Virgil Van Dijk is one of my all-time favorite humans. BEN WARD: Well then, you’re a friend of mine. Always good to meet a fellow Red.

D E C I B EDLE:CSI B EE P LT E: M JU BN ER E 2024 : 29

NILE PHARAOH KARL SANDERS

ISN’T THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW WHEN THERE’S TIMELESS DEATH METAL TO WRITE TODAY story by JOHN HILL • photo by CASEY COSCARELLI PHOTOGRAPHY

the creative force behind one of the most extreme death metal bands

of all time, Nile’s Karl Sanders is a Zen Master at peace with humanity’s total annihilation. For over 30 years, Nile have focused their creative energies on becoming more vicious with every successive record, never once attempting to slow things down or make a play for big-room music. “Well, it may be to our ultimate detriment,” Sanders muses. “Who knows. When we started playing, we had already given up any childish illusions that we could be Iron Maiden-big. We just loved playing metal, so we did the best we can with that.” ¶ Thankfully, that patience worked. Nile are set to release their 10th full-length, the appropriately titled The Underworld Awaits Us All. Through the band’s insane technicality, it’s a highly complex exploration of the very simple fact that the human race is totally fucked. Sanders and company explore that emotion through some of the most intricate, riffy work they’ve ever produced. Songs like “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes” outdo every other tech-death band in the insane song title department, as well as in delivering a total sonic assault through multiple tempo changes. 30 : S JU EN P TEE2M0 B 2 4E R: D2 E 02 C 4I B:EDLE C I B E L

Despite how technical the record gets, it never feels like a circle jerk of how fast everyone can play. Instead, it’s all in service of the overarching darkness and conflict Sanders connects from ancient Egypt to our modern day. When asked point-blank what makes a good guitarist over a bad one, he reflects for a moment. “I’m reminded of something my father said to me when I was a teenager. My dad was a horn player, and he listened to stuff like Herb Alpert, Miles Davis, classic trumpet and jazz stuff. I would be practicing my electric guitar and, of course, butchering it. I’d show my dad and he’d say, ‘Is that anything that anybody actually wants to hear? Why don’t you play a song that somebody wants to hear?’ That’s my purpose now. I’m just playing some stuff, hopefully, that other people will enjoy as well.” Taking a close reading of the album’s lyrics, it’s hard not to draw parallels between Nile’s classic Egyptology focus and the things happening in our world right now. Album opener “Stelae of Vultures” describes a war and genocide justified by supposed divine right, which feels awfully close to what’s happening with Israel and Palestine. “I wouldn’t say it necessarily comments directly on it, although the inference that you’ve drawn from it is appropriate,” Sanders says when asked if it’s an intentional connection. “Because while I am talking about

a specific historical thing, the Battle of Lagash, the ideas in there are timeless and could apply to pretty much any war that people undertook for supposed religious reasons. You can take it and apply it directly to [now] and see the absurd ironies in it, and go, ‘What are we doing? This is a mess.’” More than anything, it speaks to what Nile’s core interest has been for a long time: using the imagery and metaphor of Ancient Egypt as a mirror to what’s going on in the present day. Sanders’ process of devouring historical documents on the history of Egypt, finding a sonic representation of the brutal atrocities that occurred and a way to connect it all is a formula that’s still paying off in dividends. “I’ve been saying for quite a while: There’s nothing new under the sun. Human beings are still doing the same despicable things to each other that we’ve been doing for thousands of years, and probably before that.” “Doctrine of Last Things” is Nile exploring the album’s central statement the most, as Sanders explores the great oblivion that awaits us. Despite the huge stakes of these lyrics—and that the album cover looks suspiciously like a giant question mark—at 61 years old, Sanders tries not to get bogged down in the burning question about what comes next. “I’m too much in the here and now,” he says. “I’ll worry about it later, whenever later is, because you can’t do anything about it. I

got more important things, like how do I play this goddamn Nile riff and keep it in time?” Still, he does consider legacy in a Bill and Ted Socrates kind of way. “It’s hard not to feel like a fucking grain lost in the sands of time,” he says. “Anything that we do that we think is important, a thousand years from now, will it still be around? Will anybody give a fuck? The fact that we still care about these ancient Egyptians just shows that they did something that people are talking about 5,000 years later. Hopefully, something that you or I do, someone will give a

shit about in 5,000 years. But, man, you got to do something pretty big for people to give a shit.” At the end of the day, whether Nile matters to whatever civilization exists centuries from now is of little concern. “Art is in the mind of the beholder,” Sanders says. “What is art anyway? I don’t even know. These are all questions, right? We could go through our entire life and we all face that big, monumental void of a question mark. What does this mean anyway? I don’t fucking know, man, but I like banging my head alright.”

I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR QUITE A WHILE:

THERE’S NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.

HUMAN BEINGS ARE STILL DOING THE SAME DESPICABLE THINGS TO EACH OTHER THAT WE’VE BEEN DOING FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, AND PROBABLY BEFORE THAT.

KARL SANDERS

D E C I B EDLE:CSI B EE P LT E: M JU BN ER E 2024 : 31

interview by

QA j. bennett

WI T H

BLACK SABBATH bassist on gangsters, ghosts and the paperback edition of his memoir

JU 0 2B4E :RD2E0C2I4B :E L 32 : S E LY P T E2 M DECIBEL

WHO

cares if Geezer Butler is a little late ones that’s in there. [Laughs] So, I didn’t wanna

to the party? Ozzy’s memoir, I Am Ozzy, came out in 2010. Tony Iommi’s Iron Man came out the following year. The hardback edition of Butler’s memoir, Into the Void, was published just last year, but it’s the best—and probably most reliable—of the Black Sabbath memoirs thus far. ¶ Sure, Ozzy’s book has all the alcoholic bat-biting, ant-snorting, pants-pissing antics you’d expect, but it all feels a bit stage-managed by You Know Who. Meanwhile, Iommi’s book is dry and conservative. He doesn’t share a whole lot that isn’t already public knowledge, and you get the sense that there’s more than a few omissions. Butler’s, on the other hand, is a believable story written by a seemingly reasonable person who just happens to be the band’s main lyricist. And even the most diehard Sabbath fan will likely learn a few things. ¶ We caught up with Geezer about a week before the paperback edition of Into the Void was published. Even though the memoir itself has been available for a year, he regrets that he was forced to stray from his original manuscript. “It’s a shame that I couldn’t do the book that I wanted to do,” our man says. “There were so many things that I didn’t realize you can’t say these days.” You mentioned in the afterword that your original manuscript was different, and a few things were removed. Can you say generally what that material was about?

It was mostly management stuff, the business side of things. They also tried to take out the part about the time Ian Gillan crashed Bill Ward’s car. The publishers wanted me to get a letter from Ian Gillan saying that he actually did that. I said, “Not only was it a true thing, he wrote a song about it called ‘Trashed,’ which is on that album. And there was a picture in all the metal magazines of us standing next to the car, which was on fire. So, I don’t think you need a letter from Ian Gillan.” They wanted me to prove absolutely everything. But some of that stuff you can’t possibly prove. They just had to take my word for it. There are plenty of stories about Ozzy in the book, but I’m guessing they didn’t ask you to prove any of those.

[Laughs] I think that was the only thing they allowed, stuff about Ozzy. They understood that. The book was originally something you wrote for your kids and grandkids, because you regretted not learning more about your own parents’ early lives. Why did you eventually agree to have it published?

It started as a letter to my grandkids about my life, and I did it because when the pandemic came around and I was stuck in the house for God knows how many months on end, I got really PHOTO BY ROSS HALFIN

bored and frustrated. The original letter wasn’t as graphic, obviously, but I showed it to me wife and she said, “This is a memoir. You should publish it. Tony’s done his. Ozzy’s done his, so you should put your side of things out there.” She got in touch with an agent, who sent it around, and HarperCollins wanted to publish it. Have you read Ozzy’s and Tony’s?

Mostly, yeah. I got about halfway through them. After I read their books, I made up my mind that I didn’t want a ghostwriter. I wanted it to come from me. To be honest, their books just didn’t sound like them. I’ve grown up with these guys. Those books didn’t come across as them writing it. I wanted this book to be 100 percent written by me. I had somebody looking up dates and years for me, but that was it. Have you read any music memoirs lately that you enjoyed?

I go on tons of road trips around America, so I’m always listening to audiobooks in the car. I listened to Rob Halford’s book, and that came across as exactly him. That’s what I wanted my book to be. Plus, it’s him narrating the audiobook, so it was 100 percent genuine. Some of the most fascinating stories in your book are the ones about the supernatural experiences you’ve had. There are quite a few in there. Did you leave any out?

Yeah, because people probably don’t believe the

go on about it too much. And the older you get, you question yourself: Did I really see that? The ghost thing in Dublin, my sister was there—she saw it, too, so it wasn’t my imagination. That house was so weird, anyway. One of me brothers used to sleep with a knife under his pillow, like that would do any good against a ghost. The weirdest one was when my first girlfriend broke up with me. I dreamt the breakup letter she sent me word for word the night before it arrived. The next morning, me brother said, “You’ve got a letter, Romeo.” And I knew what it was gonna say. My theory with that stuff is that it’s like a radio. Some people can pick up the frequency and others can’t. I used to live in one of the most haunted buildings in America—it’s on the list— and I never saw anything strange there. But many of my neighbors at the time saw all kinds of unexplainable stuff, and I don’t doubt them. I think I didn’t see anything because I can’t pick up the frequency, and I’m grateful for that. How do you think of it?

It started very early for me, so I just took it for granted as a kid. But the older I got and the more substances I imbibed, I probably lost that kind of thing. The last one I had, I mentioned in the book. I had a nap before a show and I dreamt that me and Tony got stuck in an elevator, and the elevator dropped and killed us. I was telling Tony about it as we got in the elevator at the hotel, and of course we got stuck. But thank God the elevator didn’t drop. It just got stuck between floors. But when that happened, I turned to Tony and said, “Oh, no…” Luckily, the elevator carried on working. Do you have a theory about why you’ve had so many experiences like that and other people never have any?

I’ve no idea. Some people say it’s because I’m the seventh child of a seventh child, born on the 17th of the seventh month in 1949, which is seven sevens. I’ve no idea if it’s to do with that, but some people insist that’s what it is. But I believe all of it, because it happened to me. Whether other people believe it or not, I don’t know. I don’t particularly care. The first premonition you had was in 1955, and you saw yourself onstage as what you realized much later was a rock star. But at the time, you’d never even seen a guitar. How do you think of that vision now? Were you being pushed in a particular direction?

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 White Sabbath

Butler suffers the children, and all the children that could have been

[‘A National Acrobat’]’s not about wanking, but it is about sperm in general. All these billions of sperm get released and try to make it to the egg, but only one or two are successful. So, the song is about all the lives that could have been. I think I was doing too much cocaine at the time. or anything. There were no guitars hanging about in the house. We didn’t even have a bathroom or heating. At the time, I just put it down to something out of a comic book, something I’d read. We didn’t have a television, so I’d never seen pop stars on TV. When I had a vision of a person onstage wearing silver boots, I thought it was a kind of spaceman. It wasn’t until I actually saw these silver boots in London that it all came back to me. When you saw the boots in that London shop, was it an affirmation that you were on the right path in life?

Yeah. I thought, “I’ve gotta have those boots!” It was meant to be. But I mean, the whole thing was meant to be. How did four blokes who lived around the corner from each other, but never really took much notice of each other until we realized we had the same taste in music end up in a band together? This was one of the poorest areas of England, and you’ve got these four blokes who think they’re gonna be successful musicians.

downside. But that’s the way we were brought up. None of us had any money. Our parents didn’t have any money. We were ultra working class. We didn’t have cars or bicycles or anything like that. It was always, “What’s the catch?” The whole time, it was, “When’s this gonna end?” We certainly went through that in the ’70s, when we got badly ripped off by people. There are endless stories of bands being ripped off by managers, but you guys were dealing with actual gangsters. That’s a whole different level.

One of the Family: The Englishman and the Mafia, by John Pearson. He was the only one that didn’t rip us off. [Laughs] But his partner, Patrick Meehan, did. They were both mixed up with all that. Wilf Pine was one of the top gangsters in London. He was involved with the Krays, who were the biggest London gangsters of all time. We were young, so we thought it was great at the time. But then you realize you’ve got absolutely no chance of ever getting your money back.

In the prologue, you say that being in Sabbath felt like being an actor in a soap opera. Was it like that from the beginning, or did that happen later?

The first time Sabbath met Don Arden, you decided he was too dodgy to work with. But then you turned around and worked with Wilf Pine, who you knew was a hitman. What’s the story there?

It was that for every good thing that happened, there was a bad thing. There would always be a

[Laughs] The worst ripoff artists were the publishing companies and the record companies,

34 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

because we’d signed our lives away practically. When Wilf Pine and Patrick Meehan came along, they tried to get us out of those contracts, but they couldn’t because we hadn’t been to a solicitor or anything. I’d forged me dad’s signature because I was too young to sign a contract, practically giving away all the money I was ever gonna earn. It was one of the worst publishing deals, but we didn’t know you got paid for writing songs in those days. We were totally green idiots as far as the music business goes. We were just happy to get a record deal. The oft-repeated story is that Tony had writer’s block for quite a while you were working on what became Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. What I didn’t realize until I read your book is that you were writing material that was rejected by the others for whatever reason. How do you think that album would’ve been different if more of your material was used?

It’s impossible to say. There’re a couple of things of mine on there. I played them for Tony and he liked them, but when Tony played them, everyone just assumed they were his riffs. I was just happy to be able to do the album, because I thought the band was finished until Tony came up with the “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” riff. I thought we’d taken the band as far as we could go. I thought there was nothing left in us, but that riff gave us hope again. You had a big hand in writing “A National Acrobat,” which has always been one of my favorites. Ozzy famously said it’s about wanking, and you confirmed that he’s not far off.

[Laughs] It’s not about wanking, but it is about sperm in general. All these billions of sperm get released and try to make it to the egg, but only one or two are successful. So, the song is about all the lives that could have been. I think I was doing too much cocaine at the time. Which Sabbath lyrics are you most proud of?

I love “Spiral Architect” because that was a great time in my life. I can still see the day that I wrote them. It was just a really good point of my life, and I reflected that in the lyrics. And then “Into the Void.” I read those recently because I’d forgotten what it was about. [Laughs] I was really surprised that I could write those lyrics back in the early ’70s and they’re still relevant now.

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

Integrity of the Forgotten the making of Deathevokation’s The Chalice of Ages SEPTEMBER 2024 : 36 : DECIBEL

chris dick

DBHOF237

DEATHEVOKATION The Chalice of Ages X T REEM MUS IC FEBRUARY 2007

Good to the last drop

PHOTO BY DAPHNE VOGELSANG

here are endless underground classics in the

Hall. From Entombed’s Left Hand Path and Cryptic Slaughter’s Money Talks to Napalm Death’s Scum and Autopsy’s Severed Survival, the curation effort has been a balance of art form and tenacity, with a lot of luck thrown in. There are other factors, too. Nostalgia, a vibrant history, relationships and maybe near-death experiences all funnel into the calculus that is the Hall of Fame. San Diego’s Deathevokation weren’t (or rather aren’t) like most of the bands we’ve encountered. They were, historically speaking, a one-off. Their debut, The Chalice of Ages, was designed to stay beneath the surface. Although Götz Vogelsang, a German transplant, Steve Nelson, Brian Shuff and Scott Ellis had signed to Spain’s Xtreem Music (formerly Drowned Production and Repulse Records), they, as you will learn, had no intentions of jetting off to squalid venues in the hopes of minor celebrity. Deathevokation were hyper-local to Southern California and, at times, Tijuana, Mexico. They were their happiest when underexposed, left to their own devices. The Chalice of Ages was released by Xtreem in 2007. The current love-fest for old-school death metal had yet to materialize. There were undercurrents, though. California’s Fatalist, Sweden’s Entrails and New Jersey’s Funebrarum all had their gross, olivaceous tentacles into the Old World. Of course, originals such as Deceased, Immolation, Autopsy and Incantation still fired off quality death metal. But everyone else had moved on, engrossed in perfection. When Decibel first heard The Chalice of Ages, we were floored. Not because it was a technician’s delight, but rather because it was the opposite. We reveled in the cryptics of “Acherontic Epitaph,” “Infinity Blights the Flesh” and “The Monument,” Vogelsang’s dry growl, the Axel Hermann cover art and the unorthodox production, courtesy of producer John Haddad, who had cut his teeth with Hirax, Phobia and Intronaut. Deathevokation flagged the heyday of death metal, and we were into it. So enamored that we featured Götz and his “1990”-badged axe in our “Special Report: Old-School Death Metal Revival” feature in August 2009. The Chalice of Ages is death metal remembered. It’s not an homage, though. Deathevokation, primed by Vogelsang’s fan-first involvement in the Dortmund-Essen scene, never really left the early ’90s. Community mattered as much as the music. Fortunately, Vogelsang and Shuff wrote great, if idiosyncratic, songs that made sense one minute and not the next, but always charmed. They had the simplicity of Bolt Thrower’s brutalist expressions, the bleakness of Paradise Lost and the quirks of Disharmonic Orchestra, all housed in a byfans, for-fans vault. They sounded like a bonafide band. Just they were and weren’t—more four friends who had chanced upon The Chalice of Ages through hard work, a healthy dose of self-deprecation and an underground mentality. Years later and dormant as death, Deathevokation bubbled from under, with publications like this one and Germany’s Rock Hard awarding Chalice coveted spots in their Greatest Death Metal Albums of All Time lists. There are numerous reasons why Deathevokation are lodging kingly in the Hall. Most importantly, from the eerie Woodhouse Studio-style intro of “Rites of Desecration” to the softhearted plucks closing out “As My Soul Gazes Skywards,” The Chalice of Ages is death metal ultimate. Welcome, Deathevokation! Your Monument is safe with us.

DECIBEL : 37 : SEPTEMBER 2024

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DEATHEVOKATION the chalice of ages

Deathevokation were different from most death metal bands. It wasn’t apparent from the outside, but after I had interviewed Götz in 2009 for Decibel, I understood immediately what “Alte Schule” meant in the context of the band, the people behind it and The Chalice of Ages. First, let’s talk about that mentality. GÖTZ VOGELSANG: OK, this might take a

while. [Laughs] I never considered being in a band. I am the proverbial fan. From my observation as a fan, back in the day, those musicians were gods. They were mostly photos in magazines or underground zines, and sometimes you got to see them live. That time was pure magic. That’s all different now. Secondly, after the curtain had dropped due to social media removing most of the magic and mystique, it felt like the attitude of the days of thrash and early death metal had changed as well, and got replaced by being judgmental of bands and especially their members. The days of 100 guys standing in line outside a Cannibal Corpse show singing “Dead by Dawn”—and I know that’s Deicide—were over. The blue-collar, lowincome sense of community was subverted by social media elitism. The rise of black metal had much to do with the scene becoming hostile, and the tech movement added to it by judging people by their abilities. That wasn’t for me. I loved the music and went to all the black metal shows, but people, fans and bands had changed. That longing for the original mentality went right into the foundation of Deathevokation. If it wasn’t fun or had a negative impact, it wasn’t right for me or Deathevokation. STEVE NELSON: Hang out, laugh, drink and listen to metal. Camaraderie over ego. That encapsulated the spirit, and it still does to this day. I’ve been in touch with Götz for a long time, even when the band wasn’t active. That’s because he’s a good friend. BRIAN SHUFF: We always said that as soon as it’s no longer fun to jam or play, there’s no point in doing it. So, that was the mentality the whole time. Every time we went to rehearsal, it was just a smile and a fun time. SCOTT ELLIS: The mentality was not the mentality of any band I had been in or been associated with. We jammed, worked, had fun, drank, played video games. It was more like a brotherhood than a band. It’s still like that. Deathevokation formed, loosely put, out of the simple joy of playing music with friends. Describe the formative stages. VOGELSANG: Fast forward to me moving to the States in ’98. Of course, I owned a guitar like everyone else, and was—and still am—a

Blood of the covenant  The 2005 Blood demo-era lineup of Deathevokation

loudmouth. I guess I have quite the personality. [Laughs] Back then, we had a wonderful website called SDMetal.org, where we would organize meetups, and we all became fast friends. Not long after, people started coming to my house, where we’d throw LAN parties, drink beer, listen to music and be nerds. My now-wife Daphne was in the thick of it. [Laughs] Everything was just butter—positive and fun. There’s more to this story, but after I had joined and left a band that had invited me in at one of my parties, I ended up calling Stevie [Nelson] drunk the same night to celebrate my return to being a regular fan again. I had found out being a band hero was not for me. I had interviewed Stevie while writing for Frank’s [Stöver] Voices From the Darkside zine, so I knew him from before. I said, “Dude, I just quit. I’m sitting here with my Isten and my Voices fanzines, having beers, and I just wanna listen to music.” He said, “I wanna jam with you.” I thought, “Why would he wanna jam with me?! I can’t play for shit.” [Laughs] But Steven insisted. The very next minute, I called Brian [Shuff], who I had replaced in said band. I was never told I had replaced him in the first place. I was told that Brian had left. I felt so bad about that fact. Anyway, he said to me over the phone, “Hey, I wanna jam with you.” I started to think, “What the hell?!” [Laughs] This is all within 10 minutes. Both of them wanting to jam with me was what triggered Deathevokation’s creation. We sort of SEPTEMBER 2024 : 38 : DECIBEL

poached [drummer] Tushant [Bonner] from my old band. Tushant, if you read this, we love you. That was the original four. However, I knew that due to my dissertation timeframe, my dissertation defense and my eventual move back to Germany—I had business waiting—we’d only have a few months. Our original idea was to do three demo tapes in quick succession, the first of which was the Blood demo. I had it all planned out, the whole lore. Obviously, the other two demo tapes never happened. SHUFF: I was in a thrash band in middle school with a friend. That thrash metal band got more aggressive in high school. Then we got into even more aggressive music. Instead of Slayer, it was Morbid Angel. That band eventually became GutRot, who I think Götz will tell you about. [Laughs] GutRot kind of disbanded, and I was just sitting at home writing music. This was around 2004. When GutRot reformed, I wasn’t in the band, but guess who was? Götz. I went to a couple of their shows, and I remember quickly becoming friends with Götz. We started talking, and he showed me all these death metal bands I had never heard of. He got me into the really obscure stuff. I remember talking with Götz about forming a doom metal band with really nice melodies, acoustic guitars and everything. That idea became a band called Artifacts. I don’t think we were Artifacts for too long before it all morphed into Deathevokation, which is all Götz’s doing. [Laughs]

DBHOF237

DEATHEVOKATION the chalice of ages

The name Deathevokation originates from Dismember’s “Deathevokation.” How’d you end up picking Deathevokation? VOGELSANG: I’ll never forget it. I had just talked to Stevie. I’m at my computer desk, next to me is my CD wall, which my father-in-law had built for me. At the bottom were nine feet of demo tapes. I grabbed one at random and saw “Deathevokation” on the song list, and said, “That’s the band name!” [Laughs] I called Stevie back two minutes later and said, “I have a band name!” In the early days, you picked song titles for band names, and that was before all the good titles were gone; it was the right thing to do. [Laughs] If it weren’t for me randomly picking up the Dismembered demo, we would’ve had a totally different name.

Xtreem signed Deathevokation to a deal. Let’s talk about that. VOGELSANG: I was dead set on doing three demo tapes during my remaining time in San Diego. And would have never swayed. I got several deals in the mail and happily ignored them, but when Dave Rotten [Xtreem Music’s label boss] mailed me, that changed everything. He was one of the aforementioned metal gods for me—more from the label side akin to Hervé [Herbaut, Osmose Productions]/Digby [Pearson, Earache] due to Drowned and Repulse. To sign with him was an honor. Dave signed us to a two-album deal. I’m an avid fanzine reader, and I used to read about bands signing to Roadrunner for seven or Century Media for 10 albums, but that wasn’t for me. The only thing I ever wanted is for whatever Deathevokation created to belong to the four of us. It needed to stay ours; but, of course, it was with the world to share as well. So, I told Dave, “Yeah, two albums—cool!” I stipulated that after eight years, everything would go back to me 100 percent, especially since he didn’t have to pay a dime to me or Deathevokation upfront, as we had agreed on a barter deal. Unfortunately for me, he was not willing to do an LP at all at the time, which I had to accept. Since I was doing all the layout, etc., I did my dream LP layout anyway. [Laughs]. Hence, the fingernail-sized logo on the CD. As an LP, it would’ve looked sick! Anyway, the CDs Dave sent me are still stacked four feet high at home 15 years later. [Laughs] Dave reached out shortly before the eight-year clause in the deal expired, asking if he could now do an LP version of Chalice, as LPs were all the rage again. I wasn’t in a spot mentally and emotionally to deal with Deathevokation at that time. So, I didn’t answer Dave—my fault. He put out the LP, but unfortunately ruined Axel’s artwork, as he stretched Axel’s morbid art to cartoonish extremes and, I guess, wanted to

maximize the logo size. Bummer. I bet Axel would not be amused if he ever saw it. Furthermore, he used 7-inch art that belonged to others and used the demo songs that were not part of the deal. I realized there and then that Deathevokation needed to find a home—not a label—after whatever became our second album. From the outset, Deathevokation was never intended to be a full-time band. The notion of getting into the write, record, promote, tour, repeat cycle was only briefly considered, as I understand it. VOGELSANG: Basically, yes. Deathevokation was four friends who met up four times a week to hang out and escape the trials of reality. We were lucky to have show offers locally, and that’s already more than we thought we ever deserved. I guess it never occurred to me that it was a business to others, which, of course, it is. It has to be a business if you want it to last. I was so in the moment and just a fan that

“We had our demo on a CD the size of a business card [officially called a ‘bootable business card’], so we were that band.”

ST EVE NE LSO N when I got a call from Dave right after Chalice was released, I wasn’t prepared for what he was about to offer: a four-week tour with Dismember in Europe. I was like, “FUCK!” Suddenly, the four clowns in Deathevokation are going on a tour with Dismember? [Laughs] It must’ve been a huge disappointment to Dave when I turned him down. Imagine an alternate universe, though. Nowadays, we would jump at the chance. NELSON: That was part of the allure for me: that I wouldn’t have to tour. Doing shows here and there, that’s fine. Touring, at the time, wasn’t on the table. Götz was in San Diego for a reason. He wasn’t going to ignore that responsibility. By the time he got his doctorate, I think we were at the end of the initial Deathevokation run. So, I think it was short-lived if we talked about getting into touring. ELLIS: That was a big reason why I joined. At the time, we were all much younger, stepping into life, and nobody had any idea what was gonna happen next. Committing to a full-time band wasn’t something I was considering. We were in Deathevokation because we loved it. SEPTEMBER 2024 : 40 : DECIBEL

At what point did Scott enter the fold? VOGELSANG: Scott was my long-running friend from the LAN parties. We played Battlefield 1942 in Desert Combat mode. It was epic! We were two geeks playing video games for hours on end. Scott was one of the original YouTube drummers, though. His drum videos had over a million clicks in 2006. He was one of the first guys Sick Drummer ever interviewed. He was the shit back in the day, really. In that Disgorge-type of way, right? He was in Warface, but he had the same issue with them I had with my other band. Warface wanted death metal to be a career. I don’t think that was where he wanted to be, and he quit. A few weeks later, he joined us. He wanted the same retreat from stress and reality as the rest of us, and didn’t mind the tons of doughnuts I would bring to every practice. [Laughs] ELLIS: Warface fell apart, and I found out that Götz was having trouble finding a drummer for Artifact, and then Deathevokation. If I remember correctly, he asked me and I said yes. I remember telling him, “You realize I’m kind of Captain Unique Leader Boy over here?” [Laughs] Origin, Disgorge and bands like that were my favorite things. He was like, “Yeah, whatever, we’ll figure it out.” I had to learn to lay back and become more rhythmic. That was a big mental shift for me. I got to throw in a little tech on Chalice, though. [Laughs]

Which songs on Chalice move you? VOGELSANG: Easy. “Acherontic Epitaph” is my favorite when it comes to pure death metal. Yet the song that takes me away the most—as if someone else wrote and recorded it—is “As My Soul Gazes Skywards.” It’s 10 minutes long, and every time I hear it there is a complete disconnect from artist to art. I get to enjoy that song as a pure fan. On the other hand, I’ll say that Chalice, the album, is too fucking long. Novice mistake, right? [Laughs] And “Chalice of Ages,” the song, is way too fucking long. It’s stupid. We should’ve stopped at the five-minute mark and nobody would’ve missed anything. From our point of view on Chalice, we didn’t use one bad riff. That was our mindset. Whenever we came up with a riff or arrangement we loved, we were smiling like kids finding their first Playboy—oh, boobies! [Laughs]. Any lame riff got immediately discarded without any ego. We were in total disbelief after hearing Chalice for the first time on CD; tons of “did we just do that?” moments of disbelief. NELSON: “The Monument” definitely is one of my favorite songs. I know Götz will say it’s out of place on Chalice, but “Infinity Blights the Flesh” is great, too. It’s a good shifting of the gears—very fast. The songwriting process was very fast. Between Brian and Götz, there was so much riff writing. I wasn’t local, so I could only rehearse with them on the weekends. By the time I would get to rehearsal the next weekend, they would have three completely new songs. They’d rework

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DEATHEVOKATION the chalice of ages

things endlessly, too. “Blood,” from the Blood demo, got reworked a few times. I’m pretty sure a few of the songs they had written were axed before Chalice came around. They were always writing. SHUFF: “Acherontic Epitaph” is the fan favorite. That one stands out to me. Also, I’ll say “Carrion” ’cause it’s a bit thrashy. The one I feel for the most is “The Monument.” It’s the most thrashy of the songs on Chalice. OK, “The Monument” is probably tied with “As My Soul Gazes Skywards.” I’m a huge fan of doom, and that’s definitely our doomiest song. There are two very personal songs on Chalice. Why are those songs crucial to Götz? VOGELSANG: “The Monument” was how alone I felt all of a sudden in the scene of Southern California. Everything I had loved—the thrash metal attitude of “we’re all in this together”— became a competitive bro thing. I remember I was driving home one night, and I was listening to this German band Wir Sind Helden—they’re absolutely amazing—and the singer is one of the best lyricists I’ve ever heard. She was singing about her relationship with her partner, a very personal thing, and how the people around them unintentionally threatened to destroy what they had built. People around them meant the best, but the outcome was damaging. There’s a line in “The Monument” that goes, “they build us this monument.” “They” refers to the scene, the fans, bands like Bolt Thrower, Massacre, Deicide, and bands like Sodom before [death metal]. They created the spirit of our scene. Much more personal is “As My Soul Gazes Skywards.” OK, so my mom’s gonna read this, and I want to be honest, yet heedful. I never really got to connect with my father the way I had longed for. I tried my whole life. He never really allowed it to happen—it was a generational thing, I think. I was afraid of losing him without ever truly connecting with him. I wrote the lyrics for the song in 10 minutes, my parrot on my leg and acoustic guitar in hand. I’ve never been that inspired. I did lose my father 11 years ago, and no, we never connected the way I hoped we would and should have. He was such a wonderful person, but he never let me close or in. So, my fear came true. That’s why the song is called “As My Soul Gazes Skywards,” ’cause I knew I’d miss him and what could have been. The song is so beautiful and dark at the same time. It can be played at birthday parties and funerals alike. That song was originally created for Artifact years before Deathevokation.

Tell me about recording Chalice at Shiva Industries, as well as getting Peter “Pluto” Neuber, formerly of Poserslaughter Records, at Mega Wimp Sound to master. VOGELSANG: There was a real professional band in San Diego called Psychotic Waltz. They were amazing, and they worked with click tracks. I took note of working with click tracks to allow us to be efficient. That’s something I learned from Norm [Leggio] from Psychotic Waltz. That’s how I did the detailed pre-production. That’s definitely not a hobby band thing. As I stated, we take our art 100 percent seriously, not ourselves. We went up to Haddad—we called him “Haddady”—with everything prepped to perfection. Click tracks, pre-recorded scratch guitars, everything very efficient to keep the hours down. Haddady had probably never seen anything like it. Also, I was the only guy who had insisted on data backup. That saved Chalice later. I remember Haddady called me three weeks after we had recorded Chalice. Sure enough, he had lost all the hard drives due to a catastrophic crash. He had lost everything, including an entire Coffin Texts album. Poor John was stressing out. He said, “Gotz, you have to come in and re-record.” I was like, “No, I don’t. I have the backup,” much to his relief. These days, he has triple backups. So, the drums for Chalice were recorded with John, and I recorded everything else in our rehearsal room.. Then we went back up to John’s, where we mixed, with me fucking up the mix as much as possible. Poor John in hindsight; my naïve enthusiasm versus his experience. I learned from my mistakes, though. Now, he gets to be a producer, not just an engineer. I gotta say, the

Board to death  Deathevokation mixing the brew that would become Chalice SEPTEMBER 2024 : 4 2 : DECIBEL

mastering by Pluto was super-important for Chalice for that reason. He’s the guy who put out like Gorement and Necrony on Poserslaughter. He’s our other permanent member, a mastering god! He saved Chalice— no question. I handicapped John during Chalice with my inexperience. Little did I know then how incredible and unique John is in the world when it comes to catching the natural tones and mixes, creating the soundscapes I have always longed for. These days, I trust John blindly. NELSON: I put Götz in touch with John. The band I was in [Winterthrall] practiced at Shiva. Shiva was kind of a studio-practice warehouse run by Matt [Fisher] and John [Flood] of Eyes of Fire and Mindrot. John [Haddad] was in Eyes of Fire in the beginning. He was also in Phobia and Dead America. So, Shiva is where John learned how to record. Shiva eventually got a really nice Trident soundboard. Both of the bands I was in had recorded with John, so it made sense for me to suggest Shiva and John to Götz. John’s very easygoing. He knows drums and how they’re supposed to sound. He just dials it in. When combining John and Götz’s infectious personality, it didn’t really take long for them to hit it off. It was like the old Scott Burns days. ELLIS: I just remember being excited. There definitely were nerves about going in to perform, though. I wanted to go in and have solid takes— not to do take after take. Now that I remember, I don’t think there was a whole lot of concern because the atmosphere between all of us was just so wholesome, for lack of a better word. It was all well-orchestrated by Götz. He’s very organized. I think the drums were done in two to four days.

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DEATHEVOKATION the chalice of ages

JOHN HADDAD: Götz and the boys all shared the

same vision: to not necessarily recreate death metal from 1990 in 2006, but merely pay homage to it in Deathevokation fashion. Götz clearly envisioned the end product even before we got started, so it was really easy when selecting the gear to throw mics in front of. [They were] very prepared. These guys came in with serious gear and a can-do attitude. Rehearsed, tempo maps and all. We definitely used my Trident console. From day one, the Trident has been a staple— not only on every Death Evo [Deathevokation] recording, but all my recordings. I remember the drums almost maxing out my console, having close to 18 mics. Back then, guitars were recorded with [Shure] SM57s and Sennheiser 421s. Bass most likely was some fashion of DI and preamp straight into the console. PETER “PLUTO” NEUBER: The label, Xtreem Music, had probably suggested me for mastering. Later, Götz and I met at a festival, got to know each other, and had a lot of beer. Since then the contact has been unbroken, and we are in constant contact, discussing the scene, new bands, news in the audio industry, and how labels are different in the States and Europe. The mix [from John] was highly professional. All that was missing was the salt in the soup. It wasn’t much—too much salt can screw everything up. There’s a fun story about how you got Axel Hermann to paint the Chalice cover.

“From our point of view, we didn’t use one bad riff. That was our mindset. Whenever we came up with a riff or arrangement we loved, we were smiling like kids finding their first Playboy—oh, boobies!”

G ÖTZ VO G E LSA NG final version was developed “on the job,” so to speak. A monochromatic coloring, appearing foul, bloody and with rotten meat/flesh. Like foulness trying to hide itself, but cannot. Trying to get away with “anything” is just an illusion. Nobody gets away with anything. For this cover, I also filmed my first making-of to document the process for myself.

VOGELSANG: I only wanted Axel. Here’s the guy

who had done the Asphyx and Morgoth stuff. Classic, right? I thought I’d be the happiest guy ever to have him airbrush Chalice. I emailed him—nothing! So, I looked up his name in the German version of the White Pages and found out that his parents lived in Dortmund. I called and got his mom. So, I asked his mom to talk to her son for us. Like, “Could you put in a good word for me?” [Laughs] He got back to me finally and said, “You motherfucker!” He was so impressed with all the effort I went through just to get in touch with him that he agreed to it all. I said, “Look, it’s got to be airbrushed, like the old days.” By that point, he was done with airbrushing and was only doing digital painting. I bugged for airbrush-only for Chalice, which convinced him to get back into airbrushing again. I was super happy. I still am! AXEL HERMANN: Oh, I unfortunately do not remember Götz calling my mother. I would love to have that on tape! But I remember vividly that he wanted old-school artwork designed with an airbrush. The painting was done (sort of) in the way I approached Asphyx’s Crush the Cenotaph, using a mixture of airbrush, chemicals, a scalpel and some minor pencil work for the highlights. I only had the basic concept, so the

Chalice had an album release/farewell show. Farewell not in the traditional sense since Götz was moving back to Germany, but it turned into an unintended, overly long hiatus. Or, as Götz called it, “Death on Vacation.” VOGELSANG: Right, the album release date was preset because that was my last weekend in the U.S. I pushed Dave [Rotten] hard. I said to him, “Dude, we need this because I want to say goodbye to my friends with a farewell show.” Dave got us the album on time. The farewell show was at the Jumping Turtle in San Marcos. Infinitum Obscure, from Tijuana; Winterthrall, which is Steven’s band; and Leather Nun, who are this amazing stoner band from San Diego; a band called Narsil, whose guitar player joined Deathevokation for one release; and obviously, we played. It was awesome. That night was epic! NELSON: I’ll preface this by going out with my other bands. I’d bring the Blood demo with its CD business card with me. Yes, we had our demo on a CD the size of a business card [officially called a “bootable business card”], so we were that band. [Laughs] The Blood demo had a really good reception. We had good word-of-mouth going with the demo. When Chalice came out, the feedback was even better. I created our Myspace page at SEPTEMBER 2024 : 4 4 : DECIBEL

the time. We’d get messages on Myspace from all over the world. So, the farewell show, if it can be called that, was, in a way, Deathevokation going on indefinite hiatus too soon. The year 1990 is a Deathevokation calling card. What’s that about? VOGELSANG: I wish there was a master plan, but there wasn’t. I don’t regret it, but if anything, the whole 1990 thing makes me feel uneasy these days. It looks like a marketing ploy. It wasn’t. I never left 1990, so it wasn’t nostalgia. I live that lifestyle to this day. It was my mindset carrying 1990 forward. Back in 2005, nobody cared about death metal from the 1990s. It was done, with a few bands remaining—hail Wannes [Gubbels] from Pentacle! The tipping point for me was while I was at a show in San Diego. After the show, someone says, “Their bassist is better than their guitar player.” I was shocked. Where I came from, we didn’t discuss skills. OK, we all loved skills—we worshiped Trey [Azagthoth] and Chuck [Schuldiner] like everybody else—but we didn’t call out people onstage. I realized then that the scene had changed; the Myspace culture of songs, not albums, had arrived, and it had become a contest to find out the latest and greatest before anyone else. In racing terms, second place is the first loser. The scene had become a sport. So, the whole 1990 thing wasn’t a fuck you or done to raise eyebrows. It was just me staying in my little happy place. 1990 isn’t the year I got into death metal; it was 1989. But I’d say 1990 was the year that defined death metal for me. Either my favorite albums were recorded or released in 1990.

DEATHEVOKATION the chalice of ages

When we did the “Alte Schule” (a.k.a. “old school”) shirt with 1990 on the front in 2006, I remember bands would come up to me and say, “Man, that’s a weird-ass gimmick. You guys weren’t even a band in 1990.” I understood where they came from and instantly felt bad. I’m like, holy shit, I didn’t mean to do that as a gimmick or marketing trick; I felt terrible that moment. It felt like I lost a bit of innocence, even if it was all a misunderstanding. My 1990 guitar logo got a lot of attention when you wrote in Decibel about Deathevokation in 2009, but before that, the “Alte Schule” slogan had way more impact. For example, when Deathevokation played Mexico, the Mexicans called me “Bombenhagel” because I’m German and Sodom is German, right? One day, my friend named “Bootleg” Tony [Eastman] asked me, “What’s ‘old school’ in German, Bombenhagel?” I said, “Alte Schule.” After that, they all started screaming, “Alte Schule! Alte Schule! Alte Schule!” I was still Bombenhagel, but I now stood for “Alte Schule.” It was a term of endearment, and I loved it. Eventually, the “Alte Schule” slogan got back to Germany and exploded. Even Rock Hard used it! In 2007, Chalice was an outlier, a beacon of what was and a harbinger of what was to come. We covered Deathevokation in 2009, but a lot of people have said since then that Chalice is a modern-day classic. Obviously, it wasn’t just Decibel fawning over it. SHUFF: That wasn’t intended, but it’s cool that it

got—and I guess still gets—that kind of attention. We weren’t so much Entombed-based— although that’s in Chalice—but maybe more Asphyx-based. Now, there’s this new, new wave of old-school death metal, and it’s great! Not to say we influenced any of these bands, but Blood Incantation, Skeletal Remains, Necrot and a whole bunch of other bands on the West Coast are taking old-school death metal as influences, and they’re killing it. NELSON: Putting “New Wave” in front of “Old-School Death Metal” just gives it a longer name. OK, it’s better than “Death Metal Squared.” [Laughs] We weren’t trying to sound old-school because it was what we grew up with. What we did with Chalice was only natural. If others, like all the bands on Carbonized [Records], for example, are building off of the same mentality we had, I think that’s only a good thing. Does it make me happy Chalice is liked now maybe a little more than when we released it? I think so. We probably sold 10 more copies since 2009. Is it a classic? I can only hope people are hearing the same Chalice I am. [Laughs] VOGELSANG: Oh, I get it, but I don’t. We didn’t feel like we were doing anything out

of the ordinary—quite the contrary. We got way more interest in Chalice years after it was released. Not just from Decibel—you’re right. What came back was individualism, even if the bands sounded a bit like Death or Massacre or Morgoth, they had the right mentality. Like Eroded from Germany. Or Fatalist. Now, it’s way bigger and even crazier. There were no rules back then. There’s no rules now, and that’s what I think is special about death metal these days. The new bands are in the same era as Incantation and Pentacle, both of whom have never given up. I love it! If Chalice has, in any way, got people to think or listen to death metal, and they’re doing it for the right reasons— meaning their own reasons—then I’ll say the vibes are back. Hindsight being 20/20 and fear of missing out being a powerful force, would you change anything with Deathevokation’s trajectory? SHUFF: That’s a really, really good question. That’s

actually a question I’ve never really spent a ton of time thinking about. My approach to guitar solo writing, harmonies, melodies and other stuff would be different. I’d mix things up a bit more. I love the album—it’s amazing!—because it reminds me of the good times of the past. With that in mind, I’m happy with how it ended up, which means I wouldn’t change a thing. ELLIS: I think I would’ve liked more time to put my twist on the drum parts. I had never played “As My Soul Gazes Skywards” until we were recording it. While I was recording it, I remember Götz was in the [studio] window orchestrating me with his hands. Somehow, we made it happen. NELSON: At its core, Deathevokation maintained its focus, which was us having fun and having good times. That never changed. I have a feeling that if we were pressured to do more shows or to maybe do a tour, there’d be too much of a possibility

SEPTEMBER 2024 : 4 6 : DECIBEL

for that friendship to be tested and strained. Everything went the way that it should have. We didn’t wear out our welcome. I’ll blame [Decibel editor] Albert [Mudrian] for giving Götz the nudge he needed to keep going, though. It’s all his fault, and I mean that in the most loving way. VOGELSANG: No, I wouldn’t. We tried to keep the band going while I was in Germany, but without me being there—not as a leader, but as a doer—it just didn’t work out. We did play the NRW DeathFest 2007, which is in my home state of North Rhine-Westphalia. That was cool—a sort of homecoming. Long story short, while we did the Darkened Domains 7-inch, the Morpheus, Son of Hypnos 7-inch in 2009, and Scott was jamming with a Disgorge project called To Violently Vomit, without me being there, Deathevokation really wouldn’t get off the ground. When I moved back to the States, it took a while for me to be in a good spot to get Deathevokation going again, and I can only thank Albert for reminding me that what we did mattered. He’s the reason we’re back, and he had a huge impact on my mental health (positive, if you can believe it). Hence, he had a huge impact on my family and all our happiness, and I cannot thank him enough. Again, these things matter in Deathevokation: love, empathy, friendship, positive energy. He kickstarted it all back up in me by constantly reminding me that Devo needs to be a thing again. This obviously led to why and how we ended up playing at the [2022] Metal & Beer Fest in Philly. Now, we’re back with the old lineup intact, except that we have Adam [Walker] from Necrocosm on drums. To be honest, if I hadn’t found Adam, who’s an amazing human being, I doubt we would’ve gotten to where we are now, and yes, Scott’s still family. We’ve just recorded our new album, Gotha, with Haddady, and yes, Scott was there. Everything happens for a reason.

PHOTO BY DAPHNE VOGELSANG

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LONG, SANGUINARY PATH LEADS TO DEATH METAL IMMORTALITY AND DECIBEL’S 20th ANNIVERSARY SHOW story by

JUSTIN M. NORTON

photos by

SHIMON KARMEL

THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE WEAK-WILLED OR COWARDS WOULD HAVE FLED BY NOW—OR REGURGITATED ON THE SEATS IN FRONT OF YOU.

hris Reifert is trying to recall the most horrifying scene

from Bloodsucking Freaks, the infamous 1976 grindhouse film. In the movie, Sardu and his dwarf sidekick Ralphus run an off-Broadway Grand Guignol called the Theatre of the Macabre. Unwitting guests at the show watch as people are tortured, humiliated and dismembered. The varieties of sadism are endless and include finger-smashing and torture via iron tourniquet. The audience thinks it’s an act, but the carnage is real. “I haven’t seen it in forever,” says Reifert, the 56-year-old drummer and vocalist of Autopsy. “It’s been a long time, but I remember someone drinking brains from a straw in the head.” ¶ “I think I’m desensitized,” guitarist Eric Cutler laughs. “I don’t want to see real stuff because that would freak me out. I saw someone get run over by a bus a few months ago, and it was horrible. When I was young, I’d watch Night of the Living Dead, and I loved the feeling; it freaked me out. But nothing does that to me anymore. There is an art to that.” SEP 2024 : 48 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL

D E C I B E L

DECIBEL : SEP T EMBER 2 0 2 3 : 49

That art—the fine craft of luring your audience along as you shock and horrify them—is one Reifert, Cutler and guitarist Danny Coralles have worked to perfect as Autopsy. It hasn’t been easy. Death metal was an outlier in the early ’90s, and Autopsy were an oddity in a small scene. Their sound—death metal paired with the recklessness of punk, hardcore and slow dirge doom—confused and alienated listeners. Like all true revolutionaries, Autopsy refused to follow trends, change their style or tone down their extremity. Metal history has been kind to that choice. Both fans and critics now consider Autopsy one of the progenitors of death metal and an American metal institution. When the band returned in 2009 after a long layoff, they found their catalog was a template for many young artists, from OSDM death metal outfits in the Bay Area to death metal shape-shifters who prize experimentation and bulldoze genre boundaries. Their music even inspired a couple to engage in oral sex in the Maryland Deathfest pit in 2022, an incident that was filmed and went, er, viral. Sardu would consider this an endorsement. Autopsy have since gone on to record albums worthy of the legacy of Severed Survival (1989) and its fellow Decibel Hall of Fame inductee Mental Funeral (1991), and show no signs of slowing down. It’s fitting that they’ll play Decibel’s 20th Anniversary Show (their first Philadelphia show in their long history). Autopsy are an institution. Decibel is closing in on institution status with two decades of publishing in a world hostile to both print media and long-form storytelling. Both the band and magazine took the hard road, and earned dedication and support as a result. That support requires tireless work. Like Sardu and Ralphus, Autopsy find it challenging to continue to invent novel horrors—and write catchy songs. “It’s tough and cool, finding something weird to write about,” Cutler says. “Not doing the same song again is hard, especially when you think about other bands. Even naming an album is hard. We can think of something unique, and then you go online and see that 20 bands have done it. The cool part is when you finally stumble on something no one has used. It’s special.” “We also think about songs that aren’t about people ripped into seven pieces,” Reifert adds. “Still, it must somehow be gruesome, dark or twisted. It’s hard to find the one worst thing— it would be like the 10 worst things. Even the songs that aren’t about someone being mutilated are all bad.” That Autopsy are in such a good spot sometimes surprises not only the band, but anyone around from their early days. Autopsy didn’t fit in the Bay Area because they didn’t play thrash

: SEP 2024 : DECIBEL 50 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL

THERE WERE NEVER OLD PEOPLE PLAYING DEATH METAL BEFORE.

NOW YOU HAVE DEATH METAL PEOPLE WITH AARP CARDS.

metal. They didn’t fit the emerging death metal scene because their peers in Florida and Europe chased brighter production and faster tempos. And they certainly didn’t fit in the dogmatic punk scene, even if their songs betrayed a massive punk influence. Nonetheless, their music and fearlessness inspired a handful of people long before Autopsy headlined large metal festivals. Exhumed vocalist and guitarist Matt Harvey first discovered Severed Survival at 14 in the summer of 1990. He spent an entire summer vacation trying to learn the licks. The band made him feel less alone in a metal scene where conformity was, sadly, the norm. “I was from the Bay Area, and it seemed like thrash was the only acceptable metal community,” Harvey says. “Knowing this band was only an hour’s drive away with traffic was inspiring. They were so separate not just geographically, but also musically from both the Florida and Earache scenes. Autopsy was just different from all of it. They are fucking weirdos, but they have this real honesty to what they do. The music they do is just them, and only they can do it.” Exhumed’s first show was a pay-to-play gig in January 1992 opening for Autopsy; drummer Col Jones’ father drove the band’s gear to the show. Harvey watched Autopsy soundcheck and later saw Reifert vomit after Autopsy’s set. “I’d seen a fair amount of shows then. I’d seen Death and Carcass and Napalm Death and Godflesh,”

Harvey says. “But to look behind the curtain and see one of my favorite bands was awesome. They were so unassuming, and it was so nice to see that. We were these 16-year-old twerps, and they were so nice and accommodating.” As Exhumed continued in the ’90s, death metal’s popularity waned and they became scene outcasts. Harvey says Autopsy’s example helped Exhumed stay the course; like Autopsy, their career is thriving decades after their inception. “We were always the odd band out because powerviolence and groove got big,” he says. “We were on this solitary path of being ourselves, and they inspired us to keep going. I have a hard time imagining Chris and Danny ever talking about resolve. I think it’s more they didn’t give a fuck. That was what inspired me. Death metal albums in the 1990s were well-produced, and they had this dirty, fuzzed-out nasty music. [Autopsy’s 1992 LP] Acts of the Unspeakable was the exact wrong album to make in terms of death metal marketability. Thank God those guys didn’t give a fuck, because it’s what makes them who they are and not just another Dan Seagrave art and Morrisound [Recording] production band. A lot of stuff just became assembly-line and was boring.” Anyone who has heard Autopsy can likely remember the first time they listened to the music. Their album covers aren’t just an enticement to buy the record, but an accurate summation of how the music makes listeners feel.

RE!! MORE ANDD MO N, AN TION, ACTIO FI, AC SCII FI, LT, SC CULT, OR,, CU RROR HORR HO

ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE Director David Gregory reveals the history, controversy and legacy behind one of the most bizarre genres in movie history: Bruceploitation.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

THE GAME OF CLONES:

BRUCEPLOITATION COLLECTION VOLUME 1 Collection includes 12 restored Bruceploitation classics, the award-winning documentary ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE, 100-page book & 23+ hours of extras.

BLOOD AND SNOW BANDITS OF ORGOSOLO Scientists uncover a

SYMPATHY FOR THE UNDERDOG

meteorite in the Arctic that killed a scientist and infected another. The survivor they rescued may not be who they think she is.

Returning from a ten-year prison sentence, former gang leader Gunji (Koji Tsuruta, Big Time Gambling Boss) finds that his turf has been taken over. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

LIMITED EDITION A Sardinian peasant is suspected of murder following an encounter with bandits. In order to survive, he has no option but to turn to banditry himself. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

ENTER THE DRAG DRAGON

BAG OF LIES

BRING HER TO ME

Desperate to save his dying wife, Matt turns to The Bag, an ancient relic with dark magic. As his wife heals, Matt’s sanity unravels.

A woman is plagued by nightmares about traveling to a dark realm and a demonic entity that awaits her arrival.

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY AND DVD

THE WORLD OF KANAKO

STREET SCENE

THE PROJECT A COLLECTION:

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Play an Autopsy album and it will fray your psyche, pierce your flesh, splinter your skull and leave you atomically disassembled like the cover art for Mental Funeral. Some music seeks to reassure and comfort; their music torments and harrows. “Besides the first few Morbid Angel records, no one better defines death metal better than Autopsy,” says Kyle Shaw, vocalist of the Midwestern death metal band Obscene. “From the uncomfortable filth to the earworm riffs and man-disemboweled-style vocals and weirdo tempo changes, they’re kings for a reason.” “Autopsy stands out because they created their sound and have influenced so many bands from back then until now,” says Chad Gailey, drummer of prominent OSDM death metal bands Necrot and Mortuous and the owner of Carbonized Records, which releases emerging death and doom bands. “You can hear their influence everywhere in underground death metal circles, whether people like to admit it or not. When the new one drops, you never know what to expect. It’s death metal; it’s punk; it’s thrash. They’re not going to put something out they don’t like, and I respect that a lot, especially when it’s so easy just to release whatever you want nowadays if you have a wide-reaching fan base.” Reifert credits Autopsy’s late-bloomer success to one simple practice: writing good riffs and songs. “Many bands want to show you how fast or slow they can be. But if you haven’t written a good song, no one will care and no one will remember it for long,” he says. “It has to be memorable. I could use the word ‘catchy,’ but not in a pop way. It’s magic when a riff gets caught in someone’s head.” Reifert sidesteps any talk of influencing bands, particularly OSDM Bay Area bands like Necrot and Acephalix: “Those bands are, for the most part, our friends. I think we are in the same mix and like the same things. I just try to enjoy music for what it is.” Dave Adelson, the founder of tastemaking label 20 Buck Spin, discovered Autopsy in the early ’90s while growing up in the outer Bay Area suburb of Concord; he saw their name on the thanks list of Entombed’s Left Hand Path. He first heard “In the Grip of Winter” via a compilation rather than on Mental Funeral. “I discovered they were from Antioch,” Adelson says. “I was from Concord, so it was cool that a band known in the death metal underground was from my area of the Bay Area, the farther East Bay, often considered lame by the Oakland and Berkeley heads and dismissed by people in San Francisco—many of whom were transplants and not Bay Area OGs. “I think they were messier sound-wise, the way they mixed tempo varieties: at times pure death metal, at times very doomy,” Adelson adds. “Reifert’s vocals were different from most other

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WE DID THE SHITFUN ALBUM ALMOST AS A FUCK YOU TO EVERYONE. IT WAS A BIG FUCK YOU TO EVERYTHING. I EVEN CRAFTED THE TURD IN THE MOUTH [ON THE INFAMOUS COVER PHOTO] WITH A TOOTSIE ROLL AND STEAK SAUCE.

guys in the scene. Not to mention, there were not a lot of drummers-as-the-vocalist bands in death metal. I think they influenced powerviolence and grind bands as much as death metal bands.” Adelson says Autopsy never had the knack for careerism of many of their peers. They also didn’t take themselves too seriously. Nonetheless, they had an oversized imprint on death metal and other emerging subgenres. “They had a huge influence in many ways, not only on Bay Area death metal, which, to be honest, was far from the strongest death metal scene. They influenced many bands in areas of the scene like West Bay powerviolence. Their influence on death metal in the early days was far greater outside the Bay than it was within, from my admittedly isolated perspective. Only later in the 2000s did they truly get their due. “They write great fucking songs every time,” Adelson says. “Catchy as hell and true to their underground roots always. It’s easy to point to Autopsy’s classic records, but they’ve maintained consistency. I don’t think they have a bad album.”

DEATH METAL, THE FINAL FRONTIER Playing death metal for your entire adult life is not easy. The secret ingredient in Autopsy is not just work ethic, but relationships. When Autopsy broke up for the first time, Reifert, Cutler and Coralles remained friends (Cutler and Coralles

also played with Reifert in the punked-up death metal band Abscess). When they decided to work together again, it was as simple as showing up and jamming. “If I could tell my 18-year-old self that I’d be doing this in 2024, I would say that 2024 was Star Trek,” Reifert says. “I don’t reflect or look back because new things need my attention. That’s where the focus is. The music is just still fun. If it weren’t fun, we wouldn’t be doing it. It’s not like we are making a fortune on it, so you had better enjoy yourself. If we feel like we have something to say musically, we say it. Traveling sucks, but you have to suck that up.” Autopsy now headline festivals, and Coralles says it’s easy to forget the difficult early years when the band faced indifference and endured long tours with little sleep. “I never looked at the whole arc, but it’s just sort of amazing how fast time has flown by,” he says. “We just love the music and playing, so it’s easy to keep doing it. But a lot of it was a hard road. You’d be out there grinding in the early days, playing five nights a week. A lot of people didn’t go to those shows. What kept us going was this new, extreme style of music. We all believed in it. We all wanted to take it to the next level. So, we kept plowing ahead even on the nights without food or sleeping in a van. Many of those things were tough when they happened, but now they seem like a comedy.”

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While some death metal bands flirted with or even signed to major labels, Coralles says that was never an option for Autopsy. “Not only were we not going to get in on that, but we cemented that we’d never get in on it with [Autopsy’s intended 1995 swan song] Shitfun,” he says, laughing. “We just stuck a big middle finger to it and shelved the band. We never thought about changing when people were jumping to big labels.” Cutler says he simply stuck to his plan as a teenager: play metal for a living. “I’m not surprised we are doing it,” he says. “It’s something I thought would happen as a kid. When you are young, you just think you can do this—you don’t see the obstacles. I saw Michael Schenker playing guitar and wanted to play it. It consumes you. You don’t know if you’ll make a penny or lose money; you just know it’s what you want to do.” That said, the life of a death metal musician is not without struggles or mundane responsibilities. “We all have side hustles and jobs,” Reifert says. “The money is never enough to cover all of your expenses. It’s a competitive life being a death metal musician. You still have to make ends meet. But we are still cool with each other and like to jam and hang out. It’s been a long time, but we are still friends. It’s rare to know someone that long but still get along with them and want to be in the same room. We were still friends even when the band wasn’t functioning; we didn’t see each other as much. We are like brothers. We argue sometimes, but it’s cool at the end of the day. I have been in a band with Danny since I’ve known him. We still love each other. It’s crazy.” While Autopsy 2024 are grounded in their late ’80s and early ’90s roots, they also include a piece of the present: bassist Greg Wilkinson (also of Deathgrave and Brainoil), who runs Earhammer Studio in Oakland. Earhammer has recorded some of the best modern death metal albums. Wilkinson knew all the band members well and recorded Autopsy’s 2017 EP Puncturing the Grotesque. When there was an opening on bass, it seemed a given that he’d join the band. Wilkinson says it’s still surreal to look around onstage and realize he’s a member of Autopsy. Wilkinson was just 12 when Severed Survival came out; the little metal he was exposed to came from MTV. There was no turning back when he heard Autopsy and other extreme bands. “I didn’t have other siblings to point me in the right direction,” Wilkinson says. “Autopsy walked the line between metal and punk rock, which appealed to me. You had D.R.I. doing crossover, but things still seemed segregated into the ’90s. Bands like Autopsy said it was OK to like both punk rock and metal. “They were still a punk band in many ways,” Wilkinson continues. “They didn’t spend months

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I LOVE THAT WE CAN GO OUT THERE AS FRIENDS AND PLAY FOR A LARGE GROUP OF PEOPLE. AND WE DON’T HIDE IN THE GREEN ROOM—

WE LIKE TO GET OUT AND TALK TO PEOPLE.

recording their albums or use triggers or any technology metal bands used. They’d just throw mics on and record. There is a very chaotic punk feeling to their music. In the beginning, they were too punk to be metal and too metal to be punk. Death metal became more polished or even more robotic. Metal people are also faster, faster, and Autopsy is slower, slower. All of these ingredients played a role in why [recognition] took so long for them. But when people started rediscovering Autopsy, they realized it was doom, punk, death and even had thrash parts. With the slow burn of multiple decades, people realized Autopsy is a fascinating band.” Matt Calvert, owner of Dark Descent Records, has released records from acts at the forefront of modern death metal like Blood Incantation and Horrendous. He says many pioneers are misunderstood. “Autopsy was more primitive than Morbid Angel, Deicide and even Obituary,” Calvert explains. “They were doomier. They used those moments to drive home those filthy sounds. That separated them from their peers during this time. Unfortunately, we don’t always get things right, or the sound at the time wasn’t what people were really into. We can look back in metal history and find several of these bands. Maybe people weren’t ready for Shitfun? If we’re being honest, maybe it’s a great thing they weren’t spoiled by time. The industry machine didn’t use them up, so you see a group that continues to make stellar music.

“There’s something primitive and sinister in their sound,” Calvert concludes. “I hate to compare eras because influences change, people get older and skills improve, but I think Autopsy still gives you what Autopsy fans want, even today. Not many bands can consistently say they are putting out great music, even in their 50s.”

A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF AUTOPSY Reifert and Cutler formed Autopsy in the outer Bay Area suburb of Antioch in 1987. Reifert was drumming for death metal trailblazers Death, but formed a new band when Chuck Schuldiner returned to Florida to relaunch Death with a new lineup. Metal was huge in 1987—if you caught on the early thrash wave, played Sunset Strip glam rock or were a household name like Judas Priest. Autopsy were in a different universe, musically and geographically. Coralles was playing in a punk band in Oakland and had no plans to return to his hometown. He was happy to have escaped. But an old friend told him, “You need to join this band.” Coralles went to an Autopsy practice and plugged in his guitar. Reifert looked apprehensive; he didn’t know Coralles had heard Autopsy’s demo and learned every note. They powered through a practice set and they clearly had something special. “Your whole life, your entire goal is to get the fuck out of this town. So, I had escaped,

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and now I was going to go back?” Coralles says. “I must have thought there was something special to join this band from Antioch. Despite the age difference, we all just gelled well. From that moment on, we were a band and always aimed to make Autopsy the sickest, most brutal band ever.” Autopsy recorded a trio of genre classics: Severed Survival, Mental Funeral and Acts of the Unspeakable. The band had little success in the Bay Area. They went on the road in the United States and played for largely empty rooms or hostile audiences. Reifert remembers one tour where the band rented a Winnebago and lived on Jim Beam and cold SpaghettiOs for almost the entire tour. Despite recording now-revered albums, it never got easy. Corrales says the indifference and the beyond-spartan conditions on tours finally wore thin. Autopsy hit their breaking point in the mid-’90s and disbanded in 1995. “We noticed people crossed their arms at many shows and looked stern. It was a weird time,” Coralles says. “After that tour, we also weren’t getting along. We all knew it was done. We did the Shitfun album almost as a fuck you to everyone. It was a big fuck you to everything. I even crafted the turd in the mouth [on the infamous cover photo] with a Tootsie Roll and steak sauce.” The band, however, wasn’t destined to be a footnote. While Reifert and Corrales were busy with Abscess, Autopsy’s catalog found a new generation of listeners. New bands name-dropped their classic recordings. When the group was approached about recording a few new songs to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Severed Survival, they ended up with even more material and The Tomb Within EP. “Someone got the idea to get back together just as a bonus for fun,” Reifert says. “When Eric showed up, everything just fell into place. Abscess was played out. So, it was natural to start Autopsy again because we felt it. All the arguments and stuff we had years ago didn’t matter.” Since their reunion, Autopsy have recorded five albums and three EPs, among them their comeback album Macabre Eternal (2011), Tourniquets, Hacksaws and Graves (2014) and Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts (2023). Most have been favorably reviewed as worthy additions to their earlier catalog. Reifert says there are new challenges, among them juggling the opportunities they sought in their youth at midlife. “When you are young and crazy, you just say everything sucks if you have a bad show,” he says. “Now, when you’re old, it’s more difficult. There might be more days when I say, ‘Why the hell am I doing this at my age?’ Once you hit the stage, you are instantly reminded why you are doing this. Some people just have the calling.

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WE’VE ALREADY DONE TWO ALBUMS SINCE I JOINED. THIS ISN’T FOR THE PALACE AND THE CARS—

IT’S BECAUSE THIS IS SUPER FUN, AND THIS IS OUR FAMILY.

Being onstage and being in a band—there is something addictive about it.” “It is very gratifying,” Coralles says. “We are grateful, but we also feel like we earned it. We feel we have earned it by taking the long, hard road. But it’s wonderful that we get to play these shows and are getting paid enough to make it worth the trip. Chris and Eric are all the same age and grew up together. I am a little older, but it doesn’t register at all. We are all an equal part of the band. We’ve had arguments and disagreements, but we are a brotherhood, and it has to be that way. Once this isn’t fun, we just aren’t going to do it. Outside of bass, there has been zero turnover in the core Autopsy lineup over the years. Joe Trevisano joined the band in 2010 and remained for over a decade. He wanted to stay long-term, but needed to focus on family matters. To find a replacement, the band simply looked to their local collaborators. “We never thought Joe would leave, but it was a family decision,” Cutler said. “I never thought about it until it was on our plate. We had a few people in mind, but people are in so many bands these days. We just floated it by Greg because he is flexible with the studio. He was on board right away. We already knew how good he was, so it was almost like, ‘He is in the band now.’ He is a pro and good at his craft, and he made it very easy.” Wilkinson took the opportunity to join a legendary band seriously. During the height of the

pandemic, he’d wake up at 5 a.m. and then play through the Autopsy set for an hour. He’d work at Earhammer, then practice Autopsy’s material for 75-80 minutes each night. He quickly had Autopsy’s set down cold. “I had a lot of learning to do and wanted to respect my chance to join the awesome band,” Wilkinson says. “It feels like it happens every fast, but it happened over a few months because it was in the dead heat of the pandemic. The world was a little weird. We all felt like there was a good energy there.” Wilkinson says he quickly meshed with his older bandmates despite the generational difference: “We understand each other. When you choose to play this stuff, you aren’t doing it to become popular or easily understood. We just want to do what we want and rip it up. There is a legacy that’s already there. We all also tend to write from the gut, write from what is there. There is this intensity about it. That mentality helped me fit in because I never wanted to compromise the sound. I fit into that because I’m not looking to be normal.”

SEVERED IN PHILLY Fans who make the trek to Philadelphia for Decibel’s 20th Anniversary Show can count on one thing: an Autopsy set primarily based on oldschool classics with a few newer songs thrown in for variety. Severed Survival turns 35 this year, so the band might play the entirety of the

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album in order. At the very least, listeners can expect a good chunk of Severed and some cherrypicked classics from Mental Funeral and Autopsy’s catalog from 2010 onwards. Reifert says much of the band’s early catalog is polished and practiced, but several songs need dusting off. “We played many of the songs here and there,” he says. “We’ve never played ‘Impending Dread’—the last time was in the recording studio. None of us sit around listening to Severed Survival in our spare time. We also haven’t played ‘Stillborn’ in a long time.” While some performers sadly refuse to play their most beloved material, Reifert says he is honored that the songs he wrote a lifetime ago still have an audience. “I would be an ungrateful idiot if I overlooked that people—including the whole new crop of people—like stuff I did when I was a kid. I can’t imagine complaining about that. It would be completely insane. I am pretty stoked about all of this stuff. I don’t worry about the alternate universe, like what we could fix. I still think all of our albums are pretty good. Every album and recording has some sort of memory attached to it. I’m not ashamed of this stuff, so that’s good.” Reifert says the band’s collective decades of playing since their early classics were recorded won’t change how the material is delivered. “It still sounds the same. None of us are virtuosos,” he says. “It’s not like we turned into fucking Dream Theater. It’s like saying the Ramones are

great, but could they play that stuff even better? If you did that, it would be like, what the fuck is this? We are not trying to show off or say we are musical badasses. We just want to play the songs convincingly.” “I’ve enjoyed [Decibel] for decades, and it’s cool to be involved with something you supported,” Wilkinson says. “Playing a showcase with two U.S. institutions in metal is very cool for me. It’s a cool realization to think all of this has happened.”

THE INCREDIBLE TORTURE SHOW CONTINUES Playing death metal is hard in your 20s. In your 50s, it is exponentially harder. Death metal is primal, physical music that requires complete commitment. Reifert’s job—drumming and vocals—gets harder over time. As a result, he exercises at home about five days a week—both weight training and cardio. “I can’t not be in shape and play this stuff,” he says. “There is no way it would work. It is very demanding physically. I give it everything I have until the last song. I need to be all-in because people would notice if I half-assed it. “It’s uncharted territory,” Reifert adds. “There were never old people playing death metal before. The Rolling Stones have been old since the ’80s and are still doing it. Now you have death metal people with AARP cards. We are learning as we go. But on a personal level, I can still do this physically, and it’s probably good for me to keep doing this so I don’t fall apart at the seams.” Autopsy’s work is far from done. A new record is in the works, although they haven’t started rehearsing material. Cutler says the band will likely record the album in early 2025. Since they

can use Earhammer, there’s no rush to finish on a tight schedule. “I think they’re at a point where they can and will do whatever the hell they want,” Obscene’s Shaw says. “It’s certainly inspiring to see Autopsy still going strong. Unlike many of their contemporaries who quit and returned, they remained active in other bands. As someone who feels like a bit of a maverick in the current death metal landscape, Autopsy’s approach and attitude have certainly been a personal influence to me that goes far beyond ‘sick riffs, bro.’” Wilkinson even thinks his older bandmates could outlast him. “We might go until people start petering out and can’t do it,” he says. “We all like to work and play shows and write records. We’ve already done two albums since I joined. This isn’t for the palace and the cars—it’s because this is super fun, and this is our family.” “Everyone is creative in their own way, and there is a good chemistry with ideas,” Cutler says. “I could attribute some of that to getting older and playing together longer. Things just come together more naturally. I love that we can go out there as friends and play for a large group of people. And we don’t hide in the green room—we like to get out and talk to people.” And Coralles believes that the band’s best work is ahead of them. “Death metal was so brutal initially that no one wanted to touch it,” he says. “So, in many ways, it’s the last form of the people’s music. It’s the real rock ‘n’ roll. It exists because people want it to exist, not because people are making money on it. The music and visuals are so harsh that the average person is not interested. It remains a fun, exclusive little club, and it needs to keep going.”

I WOULD BE AN UNGRATEFUL IDIOT IF I OVERLOOKED THAT PEOPLE—INCLUDING THE WHOLE NEW CROP OF PEOPLE—LIKE STUFF I DID WHEN I WAS A KID.

I CAN’T IMAGINE COMPLAINING ABOUT THAT. 58

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INSIDE ≥

62 CATERGORY 7 Rock you like a hurricane 64 FULCI Crying fowl

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

66 LACERATION I Erode love you, I Erode tempt you 66 MAMALEEK My WAR 67 NAILS Reborn of fire

Pyramid Extremes NILE

SEPTEMBER

Band named after a famous actor

Band named after a famous director

Band named after a famous MLB player

Bands named after Bob Uecker

Brutal tech-death metal legends

reorder their chaos

eath metal stalwarts nile never disappoint in their erudite exposition of ancient brutality. Second only to Demilich in song title length, the South Carolinians have made lyrics as song titles an art. Often derided by back-of-the-classers for being “too Egypt”—a notion that has bewildered ringleader NILE Karl Sanders to this very day—but then hoisted like anthropomorThe Underworld Awaits Us All phic gods by the same bunch for their punishing, take-no-prisoners N A PA L M relentlessness is tried and true metal. Strikes and gutters, I guess. ¶ Well, Nile have returned on The Underworld Awaits Us All, reconfigured from “comeback” effort Vile Nilotic Rites with guitarist Zach Jeter (Lecherous Nocturne) and bassist Dan Vadim Von (Morbid Angel) in tow. If the formula worked before, it works here. Expert knobber Mark Lewis returns to aid Sanders at the captain’s chair, while Polish artist Michał “Xaay” Loranc gets his fourth cover, a swirling vortex atop—you guessed it!—a pyramid. ¶ Musically, The Underworld Awaits Us All isn’t a departure from any previous Nile album. That should excite the atavists. There’s the triple vocal threat of Sanders, longish-standing guitarist Brian Kingsland and new ripper Jeter.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

DECIBEL : SEPTEMBER 2024 : 61

Across Nile’s 10th long-player, they heave, howl and growl near-indistinguishably. The effect is choir-like if the gospel were profane (for example, the “monkeys fuck your skull” line from the voluptuously titled “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes”) as culled from necromantic text. The actual choirs in “Doctrine of Last Things,” “Naqada II Enter the Golden Age,” “Under the Curse of the One God” lend ritualistic air to Nile’s hyper-hypo death. Even at their most frenetic and grotesque, I can hear how this might be divisive to purists, though. Conversely, the thrash infusions to “To Strike With Secret Fang” should balance the discord. Sanders, drummer George Kollias and the rest of Nile are certainly exemplarily musicians. That’s a foregone conclusion, but there’s no lag in their employ here. The Underworld Awaits Us All is very quick up front, almost to the point where the songs bleed into one another. That might be on purpose, a systematic way of submission via a greater, obfuscated theme. As the album edges into time, riffs (and what might resemble hooks) emerge as Nile decelerate. If Nile ever had an answer to “Where the Slime Live,” it’s “True Gods of the Desert.” It’s here where I actually feel transported to kingdoms of savage old. The follow-up title track and pseudo-instrumental closer “Lament for the Destruction of Time” also appear as if they were intended to be listened to first. Ultimately, the very things I adore about Nile—frantic, dizzying, decollating death—are the very things I struggle with. There are parts to “Stelae of Vultures” where it’s almost as if there’s two bands playing at the same time. It all feels off. But sinking time into Nile is always necessary; Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka wasn’t instant by any stretch. The Underworld Awaits Us All is, like the albums before it, multi-sided. On the surface, it’s fury, powerful yet forgetful. Prolonged exposure, however, reveals that Nile bury artifacts to discover. Underworld is a twist of the tourniquet, and that’s fine. If I want more transcendence without the bruising, I’ll throw the Saurian albums into the fray, but maybe that’s what “The Pentagrammathion of Nephren-Ka” is for. —CHRIS DICK

ANCIIENTS

Beyond the Reach of the Sun SEASON OF MIST

I’s wide open

Eight years ago, the momentum that Vancouver band Anciients had built over five years was starting to yield results: second album Voice of the Void would win a Juno Award 62 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

for Metal Album of the Year, and plenty of touring opportunities were there for the taking. But family issues, internal issues and a global pandemic (yeah, that again) brought everything to a halt, and guitarist/vocalist Kenny Cook had little choice but to reset, this time minus his longtime bandmate and songwriting partner Chris Dyck. All the hallmarks that originally had Anciients turning heads a decade ago—a strong predilection towards Mastodon-adjacent riffs and Opeth-inspired progressive metal—remain present on album number three, but it’s all been fine-tuned into something much more distinct. Melodies are more refined, instrumental arrangements are broadened and edited enough to allow the music to breathe, and there’s a new contrast between progressive rock and progressive metal that brightens Anciients’ music like never before. “Forbidden Sanctuary” is a revelation, somehow interweaving the serpentine riffing style of Mercyful Fate with psychedelic vocal melodies. “Melt the Crown” features a brilliantly timed ’70s prog moment that echoes Richard Wakeman, while “Beyond Our Minds” and the ferocious “The Torch” are two inspired rockers with big crossover potential. “Test of the will, the future looks bright,” Cook bellows at one point. “We see the light shine again, bask in the rays of the sun.” Anciients are in a good place, and the metal scene is the better for it. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

CATEGORY 7

Category 7

M E TA L B L A D E

Definitely doesn’t blow

Metal Blade kinda sprung this one on us out of nowhere. Though Category 7—an all-star collab between members/ex-members of Armored Saint, Exodus, Machine Head, Adrenaline Mob and Shadows Fall—have apparently existed since 2023, the band was only officially unveiled in the spring when their self-titled Metal Blade debut was announced. So, when we say “band,” this is a collection of players—vocalist John Bush, guitarists Phil Demmel and Mike Orlando, bassist Jack Gibson and drummer Jason Bittner—who are all actively involved in other endeavors. Maybe we’ll call this a “supergroup” or side project, instead. Funny thing is, this sounds like neither. Supergroups frequently feel forced and sterile while side projects sometimes lack seriousness or depth. Category 7 have, in spite of the deck being stacked against them, knocked out a barnstorming 10-song debut that needs no qualifiers. It’s a damn good album regardless

if it’s a one-off or whatever happens down the road. The combination of Orlando and Demmel’s thrashy riffage (and insane soloing!) with Bush’s strong, confident vocals and alwaysthoughtful/clever lyrics wins the day. And Gibson and Bittner absolutely hold up their end of the deal. Category 7 has some killer songs—sort of a thrash/modern metal hybrid—but the guitar work is off the charts. Demmel and Orlando use this platform to show their chops (especially on closing instrumental “Etter Stormen” where they just go off), yet never at the expense of the tune. Their soloing actually enhances every track here. Even if these dudes never record anything else together, with this debut they will have succeeded where many other famous musicians have failed by creating an off-the-cuff album with a brand new lineup that sounds like it was years in the making. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

DARK TRANQUILLITY

Endtime Signals CENTURY MEDIA

Hopefully not their final resistance

Gothenburg gravediggers Dark Tranquillity shattered purists’ serenity at the turn of the century with the gothic/electronic tangents of Projector and Haven (especially funny considering the transgressions some of their contemporaries like In Flames would soon commit). They undid some of the damage done with subsequent releases, working in the keyboards more organically, but those divisive diversions ironically set them up to mature more gracefully than their peers (again, see In Flames). They no longer feel shackled to the roles of angry young men—instead, they’ve aged nicely into melancholy middle-aged men. That said, it’s disingenuous to even attribute Endtime Signals to the same band. It seems like a lot of the melodeath pioneers have entered the “Stephen Pearcy’s Ratt” stage of their life cycle—here, only mainstay vocalist Mikael Stanne and keyboardist Martin Brändström predate the world shutting down. Still, the newbies have done their duty on the road, internalizing set lists that span the band’s history. It certainly sounds like Dark Tranquillity, no mistaking that. There’s even a beneficial effect: The musicians display a ferocity on songs like “Shivers and Voids” and “The Last Imagination” lacking from the most recent couple efforts. Despite a distinctive sound and Stanne’s usual erudite approach to the lyrics, though, nothing here really stands out from their

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previous work. Endtime Signals slots nicely into an impressive body of work. There’s nothing embarrassing here. There’s also nothing remarkable, nothing that would drive a listener to pull this off the shelf instead of The Gallery or even later triumphs like Construct. Just another solid entry in a respectable discography. —JEFF TREPPEL

DARKENED

Defilers of the Light EDGED CIRCLE PRODUCTIONS

A defiling well-defined

Ignoring the useless 41-second intro, once the first five proper seconds of the title track kick in, your opinion on this record will be immediately formed. For better or worse, it won’t change after that, or during any of the remaining nine songs (well, eight and another indifferent interlude). Which is to say that it’s not the kind of memorable album that experiments, pushes envelopes or does anything remotely unexpected. (It’s a band called Darkened, okay? These people aren’t looking to “redefine” anything.) Still, it won’t let you down on that initial promise. Experienced and well-battered ears will instantly be able to detect the familiar fuzz of finely crafted, heartfelt death metal, featuring correct amounts of melody, power, atmosphere, hooks and fine riffs, which all contribute to an immensely satisfying whole. Heard it all before? Sure, of course, including on their own previous records, not to mention in the vast list of current and classic quality bands these four Swedes and a Canadian intruder can boast. I mean, bassist Tobias Cristiansson alone is one Unleashed away from having played in all of the Swedish DM Big Four. Ultimately, the best thing about Defilers of the Light is that, despite some inherent stompy HM-2 Swedishness to it, as would be natural, it isn’t a typically Swedish (or otherwise) death metal scene-album. Some kickass Bolt Thrower chugging and even some melodious brushes with that murky territory of “dark metal” end up making it the best kind of “heard it all before”—the kind that you don’t care and love it anyway. —JOSÉ CARLOS SANTOS

FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE

Opera

NUCLEAR BLAST

Per aspera ad astra

The symphonic metal from Italian outfit Fleshgod Apocalypse has long 64 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

boasted a defining sense of drama. But nothing contends with the grim drama of reality. In 2021, founding mastermind Francesco Paoli suffered serious injuries in a mountain climbing accident. During his grueling multi-surgery recovery, Paoli plotted a 10-movement album inspired by the ordeal. The curtains spread to reveal Opera, the band’s ambitious and musically verbose sixth LP. Fleshgod Apocalypse have long abandoned the dizzying pyrotechnics of their formative albums through Labyrinth. After their sound shifted on 2016’s King, the guitars no longer sound like serrated weapons. The riffs have been largely reduced to a percussive bludgeon, closer to beatdown chugs than their tech-death roots. But for Paoli and Fleshgod, the guitars are just part of the orchestra. They have their moments to shine—namely the leads from Fabio Bartoletti— but Opera is more interested in the marriage of beauty and brutality than flat-out extremity. While the guitars aren’t heavily featured in Jacob Hansen’s mix, the album is still dense. At times, even ferocious. But Opera works best when it indulges their symphonic inclinations. See the ominous bass ‘n’ brass throb of “At War With My Soul”; the piano-only outro is effective and emotionally resonant. The prestissimo virtuoso mania of “Morphine Waltz” taps into the unhinged energy of their earliest releases. While clean vocalist Veronica Bordacchini has powerful pipes, her radio-ready contributions to “Matricide 8.21” and “Till Death Do Us Part” might have some death metal fans dismissing their sound as falsetto metal. Opera is a testament to ambition, vision and resilience. But the metallic components lack the same attention and invention as the rest of the record’s aspirations. —SEAN FRASIER

FULCI

Duck Face Killings 20 BUCK SPIN

Quack for the attack

Fulci know a thing or two about bloodlust. The Italian metal outfit have spent more than a decade worshiping at the cinematic altar of their namesake, director Lucio Fulci, through brutal death metal, chilling synths, and evocative audio samples from the horror and giallo master’s extensive body of work. The band’s fourth LP, Duck Face Killings, is a concept album based on Fulci’s 1982 slasher flick, The New York Ripper, in which the Big Apple is terrorized by a prolific sexual sadist and serial killer with a fetish for butchering beautiful women while quacking like a meth-addled Donald Duck. With source material like that, how could the record be anything less than depraved?

“Fucked With a Broken Bottle” enshrines the film’s most gruesome murder sequence in a filthy death metal stomp, while “Morbid Lust” yearns for violence over a deep, Bolt Throwerworthy groove. Lord Goat of Brooklyn underground hip-hop legends Non Phixion joins vocalist Fiore Stravino on “Knife” with a vivid rap narrative about the film’s salacious crimes that makes the track feel like death metal’s answer to the gritty, realism-meets-fiction combo Eminen laid down in 8 Mile’s “Lose Yourself.” Fulci rachet down the nightmarish frenzy with the ambient “Lo Squatatore,” which pairs a slow, resolute instrumental with samples of the victims’ tortured screams. Finally, “Il Meile Del Diavolo” closes things out with a forlorn saxophone solo from Mario Luce that conjures imagery of a streetwise detective trying to shake off haunting memories over a stiff drink or 10. It’s a fun romp, though you might think twice next time you cross paths with a duck. —JAMIE LUDWIG

GEL

Persona BLUE GRAPE MUSIC

Gellin’ like Magellan

Five songs in 13 minutes doesn’t populate much narrative cohesion in most genres, but Jersey hardcore overwrote that tome all by itself. A few well-chosen words and hooks go a long way in the Garden State. Persona, the follow-up EP to 2023 debut “long-player” Only Constant, doubles Gel’s time management admirably. Ten songs in 16:29, the quintet’s bow broke out mouthpiece Sami Kaiser, whose rending and wrenching delivery—a gritty, throaty rasp stretched taut between soprano shriek and tenor growl—seals the deal from first gallop to last spur. Said vocal intersection acts as a searing genre brand matching the singer’s flaming red mane. Cardiac tempos, jackboot riffs and Kaiser’s bristling soul-bearing manifests Only Constant’s brawny musculature. Repeat! Hardcore’s constant tone and tempo shifts create the illusion of micro-suites within a single track, making every song sound more like five. Persona evolves the first album by moving past bullet-train breakdowns into weightier discharges. An urban jungle purple-tagging doubles as cover artwork alluring enough to beg for an in-store promotional poster. Tensile shudders and stomps wither in the blowtorch of Kaiser’s epiglottal ire on opener “Mirage,” which at just under three minutes indeed receives more room to seethe. Sawing rejoinder “Shame” shouts down playing the victim with pre-millennial harmonies atop a riotous, reality-series grind. “Persona” races past

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gallop to stampede, a midpoint turnstile into the pit (of rage and recrimination), while “Martyr” runs and guns pure fun and “Vanity” piles on a relentless closer. Gel won’t win Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom” award since no backside populates here, but then Persona’s face-clawing hardcore wasn’t born to lumber through 1970s Klipsch resin-ators. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

HAMMERFALL

Avenge the Fallen NUCLEAR BLAST

Average, the fallen

HammerFall have released 13 albums, and good for them for being so reliable. It’s not easy for anyone to enjoy a long career in music, and HammerFall have churned out product with admirable consistency. But just because a band manages to stick around for a long time doesn’t exactly make them “legends.” Just ask Anvil, whose persistence, like Manowar and Axel Rudi Pell, has all the charm of an old piece of gum stuck to a shoe. Try as one might to forge a long livelihood in this business, you don’t want to fall into that trap where your latest release is greeted with apathy rather than genuine enthusiasm. Avenge the Fallen, the affable Swedes’ new LP, does a lot of things right. All the requisite power metal characteristics are present: rousing lyrics, rousing melodies, rousing riffs and twin leads. While not exactly fiery, there’s at least a little spark or two in songs like the opening title track, “Burn It Down,” “Rise of Evil” and “The End Justifies.” Far too often, though, HammerFall struggle to keep pace. It’s as though they’re winded at times: “Freedom” sounds lazy, “Hail to the King”—for all its bombast—sleepwalks its way through every power metal cliché you can imagine, while “Hope Springs Eternal” leans so hard into the fromage of it all that its stench almost transcends metaphor. There’s nothing wrong with complacency (we all want to feel comfy and stable), but when power metal, whose sole intent is to uplift, starts to sound too comfy—borderline tired—it’s cause for alarm. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

LACERATION

I Erode

20 BUCK SPIN

De-fender benders of the faith

Like the blues, trad death metal doesn’t exactly have scads of harmonic elbow room at its disposal with which to really differentiate one band of ruthless hessians from 66 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

another. Some outfits lean into crypt-keeper atmospherics while others are more distinguishable by dint of extremities in tempo. The identity of some is defined by one or two egregiously brilliant players while others are delimited by way of highfalutin thematic motifs. But the Bay Area’s Laceration don’t appear concerned with gimmicks or sticking out from the throng simply for the sake of it; their field guide was written in the early ’90s. The band’s passion for the genre is manifest, the energy’s undeniable and every member more than earns their cut of the door charge. Aesthetically, I’m reminded of Skeletal Remains, down to the band’s (arguably charming) basic-bitch logo and near-flawless production treatment, but the overall experience I Erode offers reminds me most specifically of early Brutality, and herein lies the key to my antipathy. Like Laceration, Brutality were a technically proficient band who began their career engulfed in DM orthodoxy at a time when many of us were already hankering for something a smidge more unconventional. Brutality would go on to release more forward-thinking records, but far too many of us missed out on them, which is a shame. That same quality of orthodoxy hampers I Erode, while its mechanical excellence keeps it buoyant enough for me to happily recommend to the faithful. These guys are bruisers, no question. My advice to the band is simply to ask themselves which (if any) of their characteristics or quirks distinguish them from the excess of similar bands presently grappling for recognition. That I can’t discern anything along those lines might be cause for pause. —FORREST PITTS

MAMALEEK

327

Vida Blue

THE FLENSER

Mama weer all leekz now

No one has cared about baseball in Oakland since Charlie Finley moved the team from Kansas City in ’68 as a tax shelter. Barely anyone showed up when Finley applied a proto-Moneyball strategy (read: being a total cheap-ass) and ennobled the A’s. Between 1971-’75, the A's steamrolled their competition to five straight division titles and back-to-backto-back World Series championships in ’72-’74. Three straight World Series titles, led by two formidable starters: Catfish Hunter and Vida Blue. Two of the best pitchers in baseball, each of whom won a Cy Young and an ERA title during the A’s dominant run to add to their bona fides. And yet only Hunter made it to the Baseball Hall of Fame, while Blue remains on the outside looking in.

Theory #1: The Baseball Hall of Fame is whiter than a group of parents waiting in line for Taylor Swift tickets while eating mayonnaise straight from the jar. Well, yeah. Theory #2: Catfish Hunter should never have made it in. Maybe it's like a Moonlight/La La Land situation where some blind New York Yankee on the Veterans Committee read the wrong name, but the newly revised rules include provisions that Jim Kaat will always have someone to chill with in the Hall of Very Good. Hunter’s main case is his four straight topfour Cy Young finishes, but aside from the 1974 season, baseball writers overvalued his win totals. Blue has the higher lifetime WAR and a superior 162-game average WAR—both raw measures of a player’s average value on the field. Blue won the Cy Young and MVP awards in his 1971 season, where he went 24-8 with eight shutouts and 301 strikeouts. Those numbers destroy any of Hunter’s best seasons. But the real story here is with Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), which measures the events that a pitcher actually has control over. Blue led the league in ’71 and ’76, and probably would’ve ridden that to a second Cy Young if Mark Fidrych hadn’t flipped him the bird. Of course, Dwight Gooden was super dope and nobody ever talks about him as a HOF candidate. So perhaps it’s better to file this all under things that you'd be happier to never think about, along with Vida Blue, because you should really be listening to Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs instead. —NICK GREEN

SHADE OF SORROW

Upon the Fields of Grief M-THEORY

Privilege of am I evil

Sole sonic trader Mika Kankainen is Shade of Sorrow, a Finland-based melodic death metal project in the vein of Black Sun Aeon, Omnium Gatherum and Hinayana. Apparently, self-sufficiency (or sisu, as it’s known in local parlance) is a common trait in Thousand Lakes-land. The dude’s debut, Upon the Fields of Grief, sets the stage for heavy-ended guitars, blue-colored melodies and Hammerheart-like vistas. Musically, if Kankainen isn’t in full-on Nordic melodic death mode—which is the case 60 percent of the time—he finds himself in tough-guy mode. This is communicated via attempts to power through routine riff/melodic structures vocally. Remember when James Hetfield transitioned from tour de force to decaffeinated weekend dad? Yeah, Kankainen is dangerously close to the precipice, but he’s not reliving the worst skits from Hee Haw. I recognize the need to vary on the mic, but

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SISSY SPACEK

Diaphanous TO LIVE A LIE

For the music haters

Diaphanous is possibly the 190th release by Sissy Spacek since 2001. Maybe? Whatever it is, this extremist duo (one of them being noise/experimental icon John Wiese) pumps stuff out at a ridiculous pace, and there’s no use in trying to keep up. This album in particular is 28 tracks of grindcore that’s recorded like absolute shit and only takes about 13 minutes to listen to. Who on god’s green earth would like this? Well, the guy writing this review likes it, but there isn’t a lot here to sell to skeptics. As mentioned, it sounds pretty rough. Do not blame your speakers. This is drums, vocals, bass and noise, but it’s more just the snare, the screams, the wash of cymbals and some sort of vague riffing in the background. The bass is not mixed to be inaudible, but if you’re trying to write the tabs out for this, good fucking luck. Even when it’s front and center, there’s still a rumbling jumble that makes it tough to figure out. Add to this the fact that these tracks average around 22 seconds and it gets even more difficult to follow anything. So, does this sound bad to you? Stupid and pointless? Then skip Sissy Spacek. Don’t waste your time. This magazine is packed with plenty of viable listening alternatives. But for anyone who just wants to mainline extreme blasting noise euphoria for roughly the time it takes to air-fry mozzarella sticks, Diaphanous should be near the top of your list. —SHANE MEHLING

SPECTRAL WOUND 8 Songs of Blood and Mire P R O FO U N D LO R E

The ghosts with the most

Citing Metal Archives feels like the metal nerd equivalent of starting a 68 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

NAILS, Every Bridge Burning

I’m burning for you | N U C L E A R B L A S T

Unfortunately, Nails’ You Will Never Be One of Us ended up victorious in the category of Fizzling Out on the Precipice of World Domination. The Oxnard nerds had the world voluntarily placing its heads on curbs to wait for the steel-toed boot of grind/hardcore/ powerviolence to unleash an injurious kicking to the backs of our collective brain buckets. Then, after one, maybe two short tours in support, the band that was on everybody’s lips with the album in everyone’s ears suddenly disappeared. Debate whether that act was symptomatic of how quickly people move from whatever the hot thing is when that hot thing isn’t being forced down throats, the tricky world of inter-band dynamics or a combination of both, but it’s been eight years, which is like two generations in the world of extreme music. However, eight years away from the game has suited original (and last standing) Nail Todd Jones well. With a completely new lineup—guitarist Shelby Lerno, bassist Andrew Solis and drummer Carlos Cruz—the new Nails are worlds improved. From the off, Lerno

and Jones’ HM-2 slaughterhouse tone is thicker, meatier and more metal than previous outings, and is appropriately met by Cruz’s more driving and precise (but still spazzcore) style. The new Nails spin a convoluted web with a rollercoaster ride of references to caffeinated Swedeath, 625 thrash, the most New York of New York-sounding half-time mosh parts (the title track), Converge album openers (“Give Me the Painkiller,” “Made Up in Your Mind”) and even a little slo-mo gravestone dragging doom/sludge (“No More Rivers to Cross”). Given that Every Bridge Burning does the very Nails thing of clocking in at just over half a Reign in Blood means that the album will be over and done before a decision is made about whether you like it or not. And by the time you make it through those secondary and tertiary spins, the catchy, down-picked chugs, rollicking gallops and cannon fire fills of “Lacking the Ability to Process Empathy” and “Dehumanized” will have opened a ball-peen hammer-sized fissure to skulls everywhere. Let’s hope that this configuration sticks around long enough to fill in the cracks it causes. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

review with “Webster’s dictionary defines [word] as…” Real hack shit. But can we collectively agree there are too many “Spectral [Noun]” bands? Forty-one currently active, per ye olde Metallum. To be fair, “spectral” is a cool word, invoking all manner of ghosts and phantoms. On first listen, I thought Montreal black metal crew Spectral Wound might be better served by a more distinct moniker, given the overt physicality of Songs of Blood and Mire. But remember that another definition of “specter” (it’s in, uh, a dictionary) is something that haunts or perturbs the mind; listen further and it makes sense. They can keep it, but some of the other “Spectral” bands have to change their names; 41 is ridiculous. Proceed directly to the fifth track, “Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit,” for a display of that physicality. No drum machine here; Jordan

Kelly’s drums and cymbals are live and boomin’ in a room, guitars feeding back like snarling dogs before they attack. Spectral Wound are RIFF MANIACS, cold and sharp like Darkthrone circa Total Death, Craft or Tsjuder. That’s a Scandinavian-ass list for a group of Quebec metal veterans with Blood Sacrifice and Profane Order among their other projects. The regal melancholy of Quebecois black metal reveals itself in the melodies, a wine-drunk beating heart behind the icy exterior. “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” is the purest manifestation of this hybrid, from its title—simultaneously arrogant and anguished—to the earworm opening riff that blooms into a melodic flurry, to an unexpectedly anthemic chorus. If enough people hear this, no one’s gonna confuse Spectral Wound with any of the other bands because it’s excellent. —ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ

PHOTO BY HRISTO SHINDOV

it comes off forced, as if he’s sitting in a Ford F-150 Raptor filming himself eulogizing over the sorry state of the nation’s Karelian pie supply. Again, these are all fine lines. “Blame” features some of the most Pasi Koskinen-esque (ex-Amorphis) vocals I’ve heard since 1996, while Kankainen jams to darkened, melodically spiked death. A few tracks earlier and later (opener “No Return” and mid-album bomb “Meteor”) follow a similar path, and they work. I’m feeling it. Shade of Sorrow have loads of talent and drive, but fewer attempts to roughneck it and less reliance on predictable chord choices will do wonders next time. —CHRIS DICK

QAALM’s highly anticipated follow-up to their 2022 debut, Resilience & Despair Atmospheric Doom / Post-Black Metal For fans of YOB, Neurosis, Mizmor, Paradise Lost, early-Katatonia, Dream Unending, Agalloch, Anathema Limited Edition CD / Cassette / Digital

First Light of e Last Dawn

LOCUSTS AND HONEY Teach me to live that I dread the grave as little as my bed

Cinematic Black/Doom from the UK

Atmospheric Death/Doom from Hamilton, ON

For fans of Bell Witch, Esoteric, Cathedral, Coil

For fans of Primitive Man, Thou, Indian, Cough, FÓRN

Limited Edition LP / Digital

FÖHN - Condescending

QAALM - Grave Impressions of an Unknown Arc

2xLP / CD / Cassette / Digital LP / CD / Cassette / Digital Atmospheric Doom / Post-Black Metal Avant-garde Funeral Doom from Greece For fans of YOB, Mizmor, Paradise Lost, For fans of Mournful Congregation, Esoteric, Colosseum, Swans, Böhren & der Club of Gore Katatonia, Dream Unending, Agalloch, Neurosis

HYPAETHRAL R E C O R D S Est. MMXII

Smog

Limited Edition LP / CD / Digital

NEPENTHE - The Fading Promise of Tomorrow

PYRES - “YUN”

CD / Cassette / Digital Atmospheric Black Metal / Doom / Neo-Folk FFO Woods of Ypres, Winterfylleth, Warning Coming Fall 2024...

LP / CD / Digital Sludge / Metal For fans of High on Fire, Mastodon, Baroness Coming early 2025...

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DECIBEL : SEPTEMBER 2024 : 69

TEETH

The Will of Hate T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

More molar than canine

What Teeth do is very hard to dislike. They worship at the thrones of bands like Gorguts and Immolation while managing to be tighter and more accessible—a sort of starter kit for angular, dissonant death metal. After some experimentation on their previous EP, the L.A. quartet is back with The Will of Hate, pretty much sticking with their usual formula and ending up with mixed results. There’s no doubt that the band has a great ear for the kind of brutal skronk that puts them in the same league as their influences. This is elevated with the liberal use of syncopated rhythms and the excellent drumming of Alejandro Aranda. It’s all constructed in a fairly streamlined manner, keeping many of these 11 tracks honed to about the length of a pop song, an efficiency that many in the genre could take a lesson from. But once you’re into the second half of the record, which is slower and moodier, redundancies start creeping in. The dynamics simply aren’t dynamic enough, and with these abridged run times, too many songs feel unfinished or unsatisfactory. Many of the same ideas get revisited without enough to differentiate them. Teeth seemed well-positioned to take more risks and carve a new path that, even if it didn’t totally work, would be more distinctly their own. The Will of Hate is a good record with a nice bag of tricks, but they should probably look into tossing a few more things in there. —SHANE MEHLING

VILE RITES

Senescence CARBONIZED

Some so vile

In the litany of death metal sub-sub-subgenres, progressive and psychedelic aren’t two descriptors that typically flow together. Thankfully, instead of some kind of godawful combination of Rush, Cream and Gorguts, Santa Rosa crushers Vile Rites give that combo a good reason to exist on their sophomore effort, Senescence. Despite this being their first shot at a full record, each member of the trio is extremely adept at weaving together impressive riffs and shape-shifting melodies that conjoin nicely with an exceptionally adept rhythm section. 70 : SEPTEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL

That said, after hearing the very capable opening track “Only Silence Follows,” you might be asking yourself when the hell things are supposed to get trippy. “Senescent” eases listeners into the weirdness, as its death metal begins to fade into a very otherworldly melody. From here on out, bursts of melody and off-time instrumentation make their way into the rest of the album. Maybe most impressively, it never feels like the band is trying to play fast and weird for the sake of it, as they know how to tastefully insert a mosh part from time to time, like near the latter half of “Shiftless Wanderings.” As expected, the opus of the record is in its finale, the 11-minute epic “Banished to Solitude (Adrift on the Infinite Waves).” The first few minutes hit you with one monster riff after the next as the song eventually drops its instruments to a whisper. It’s the eye of a tornado; the band takes a breather here, a reflective moment of peace before the melody eventually shifts into a cathartic solo as everybody powers back up into a nice finish. You’d be hard-pressed to bum out any stripe of death metal fan with this record. —JOHN HILL

VOID WITCH

Horripilating Presence

EVERLASTING SPEW

Mistress of none

On one hand, I support the middle-aging ex-members of Azoth, Shitstorm and Drainbow as they escape the real-life drudgery of adult responsibilities by incrementally writing, recording and releasing music together. (I see you, Void Witch, because I am one of you.) I also appreciate the band avoiding genre classification by paying homage to everything they enjoy, emphasizing classic doom metal, oldschool death metal, thrash solo and grunge sensibilities (that’s all part of the escapism). But all together, Horripilating Presence is a little much: The doom is too slow for the thrash, and the grunge too muddy for the death. Far be it from me to suggest homogenized genre singularity. Still, when each subgenre tangent clashes head-on in a single song, such as opener “Grave Mistake,” the disparities make the title slightly too appropriate. The similarly well-titled “Second Demon” also suffers this disconnection; in the span of just one minute, dynamic shifts invite performance techniques that overwhelm songwriting cohesion. The cycle continues to rinse and repeat over the remaining four tracks, resulting in a lack of memorable

moments that typically engender repeat listening. If this record was written and recorded in fits and starts over the last couple of years, it sounds like it. Let me be clear: Horripilating Presence is not a bad record. Many promising elements show tremendous potential, chief of which is each member’s instrumental mastery. I’m a big fan of Luke Friebertshauser’s throat work, and the band has obviously worked on mix clarity since their 2022 eponymous EP, as the bass is no longer buried. With more attention to the pacing of genre direction across an album’s worth of songs that’s also treated with more guitar tone cohesion, Void Witch may be on to a winning formula. —TIM MUDD

WORSHIPPER

One Way Trip MAGNETIC EYE

Journey to the center of the mind

Calling your band Worshipper makes the job easy for lazy writers. It’s hard to resist the temptation to say they bend the knee to Sabbath, Acid Bath, Kyuss, etc. Not that these Bostonians would deny the charges. One listen to album number three, One Way Trip, and you can immediately tell that they fully embrace the stoner doom tag. To their credit, they do it well. Meeting the devil at such worn crossroads requires certain rites performed. Ghoulish grooves? Check. Just gaze through the filthy “Windowpane” or witness the slo-mo Satanic swing of “Onward.” Tales from the crypt? Yup. “James Motel” and “Heroic Dose” explore the seedier side of the railroad tracks, sending their subjects on very different one-way trips that meet the same end. Hellish hooks? All over the place. Mid-album highlights “Acid Burns” and “Only Alive” invite crazed choruses to live in the graveyard of your mind. There’s even a creepy concept: It’s based on the 1990 psychological thriller Jacob’s Ladder. Downsides: Singer/guitarist John Brookhouse’s Dax Riggs-ish delivery can grate. Although he handles his lines with gusto, the overall performance feels one-note. Also, as previously mentioned, these rituals have a familiarity at this point that Worshipper don’t fully find a way to make their own. They have the execution honed to a fine edge. This could have just been from any number of acolytes. Otherwise, if you’re looking for guides on a journey with no return ticket, you could do much worse than enlisting Worshipper. —JEFF TREPPEL

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EUGENE S. ROBINSON

THE

BUNGLE PARADOX e

verybody imagines the call

differently, but in keeping with the Bad Company song, it really does end up feeling like part of your rock ‘n’ roll fantasy. That is, when you get the call to do something for your band that is something unlike what you’ve ever done before. “You want to go on tour with Mr. Bungle?” It seems a hands-down “yes” would be in order, but if you’ve ever come close to orbiting what could constitute Planet OXBOW, you know that nothing is a hands-down “yes.” Much more closely aligned to “yeah, but,” the times that we’ve been offered a hand up—or a handout, as the case may be—have been so few and far between as to be healthily noted now. Isis—the band, not the terrorist organization—offered to take OXBOW on tour. But there was a catch. We had to do all six weeks or do none. When we hit with a “yeah, but”—as in “Can we do four weeks with the full band and the remaining two weeks as the acoustic duo?”—and got a yes, it was on.

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Isis’ last tour and our first with a larger band that had the balls to be okay with having OXBOW be their support every night. It was a mas macho move, and we were happy to have them make it. And outside of the Ambien-Jäger incident I fell victim of, it was a sound decision all around. Sumac. You might see a theme emerging. Aaron Turner is a mensch for not once, but twice advancing the fortunes of fellow travelers down on our luck. But I get it, and the fact that not many larger bands want to see us onstage every night really makes sense to me. So much sense that something like this confuses me. “You want to go on tour with Mr. Bungle?” We could only do 16 days of it; would that work? Apparently so. Which is how we found ourselves doing just that. And it was/is with a mighty Bungle. Lombardo on drums, Trey, Trevor, Scott Ian and Mike Patton. The first surprising thing? How many old friends remembered that we were still alive. I don’t begrudge

anyone asking to be put on a list for any reason. I am noting, however, if this was the first time you’ve ever asked. Meaning, you weren’t asking because of a burning need to see OXBOW, but rather a desperate need to see Bungle. Which is fine. If truth be told, getting to see Bungle is more exciting for us, too. But if you’re never calling and never writing except for this? Expect us to be a little put out. The second surprising thing, to me at least, was to note/remember that Patton can really sing. Like really fucking sing. I’ve been in bands since 1980, and the number of singers who can really sing—Gary Floyd, Rob Halford, Dio and, um… well, yeah—is few and far between. But Patton can SING. Maybe not surprising to you, and shouldn’t be to me, but there it is. Moreover, everyone is unfailingly nice. So much so that Imposter Syndrome hangs heavy on my head. I mean, if you happen to harbor deeply dark and thoroughly destructive life attitudes and propensities hanging around people who are “sane”? Well, enough to make you

ask more than once: Is pissing on the dressing room couch really the right thing to do? Spotlights are opening as well. And they’re all good-natured and nice, too. OXBOW feel, by all and every measure—or at least the singing portion of OXBOW—like John Wayne Gacy running a boy’s camp as a condition of his parole. Yet, playing to thousands of people every night and getting to watch Bungle do the same was a revelatory joy. And what made it such a joy in total is that it managed to be a joy without any of the old and playedout rock ‘n’ roll tropes regarding excess and assholishness. Sure, it’s there and accessible, but it’s neither exciting nor interesting. But what was much more so? Just doing what the dead can’t do. Every night. So, writing this before soundcheck, I contemplate life’s curious twists and turns and the occasion by which I find myself about to not piss on yet another couch because the bathroom is too far away; what a glorious ride it’s been/going to be. ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE

Special ‘GONE FOREVER’ set

stephen & adam acoustic set

East Coast USA Reunion

commissioned world debut