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features
reviews 71 lead review Chat Pile give us more of the same—and that’s not a bad thing—with sophomore offering Cool World
12 metal muthas Let the son shine
18 regional justice center Slam poetry
28 the flight of sleipnir The forest and the trees
36 chat pile Movie night
14 live review:
20 mother of graves Midwestern charm
30 avernus Airing of the grievances
22 kanonenfieber Living hell
32 dreamless veil Everything went black
38 escuela grind Like, comment, subscribe?
24 vicious blade Nothing is sacred
34 vomit forth Fear and loathing
beyond the gates 2024 The return......
16 low culture Fixation on plastic 17 kill screen:
better lovers Dream team
26 maul Grown ass men
40 undeath Ghouls just want to have fun 42 q&a: ripped to shreds Main man Andrew Lee lets us know that we’re full of worms 46 the decibel
72 album reviews Records from bands that can’t wait for Decibel’s 30th Anniversary Show, including the Crown, Glacial Tomb and Opeth 80 damage ink But why tho
hall of fame Arch Enemy utilizes a feminine touch to crushing effect on breakout album Wages of Sin
58
Elsewhere and Now COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY ALVINO SALCEDO
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.
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TERRIFIED OF GOD
Vomit Forth’s sophomore full-length, Terriied of God, isn’t merely a benchmark for the Connecticut-born extreme metal squad but also for Northeastern death metal itself!
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SHINING “Shining” encapsulates the profound duality of the human experience and the band's enduring brilliance.
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Our friend in the Great White North Panko (c) as the meat in a nice™ sandwich, flanked by Immolation’s Dolan (l) and Vigna
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November 2024 [T241] PUBLISHER
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By the time you read this, we’ll have
sent the 15th(!) Decibel Book to print. Hopefully. I mean, Jesus, give us a break; we just finished this issue in your leathery paws a mere five days after hosting our blowout 20th Anniversary Show in Philly, featuring several Decibel favorites including the subject of said book, death metal legends Immolation. I wrote about my feelings for the four dudes in Immolation over seven years ago in this bit of real estate, so I won’t regurgitate those here. Just know that their reputation as The Nicest Guys in Death Metal™ has been well-earned over the past 36 years. I’ve had the pleasure of covering them in the magazine, booking them at our events and genuinely enjoying being in their presence for 22 of those, only slightly longer than I’ve been working with original Decibel contributor Kevin Stewart-Panko. If you’ve read Decibel with any regularity for the past 20 years, you’ll recognize his name—that’s because he’s contributed to every single issue of the magazine! In addition to his aptitude for filling Decibel with more Melt-Banana reviews than I imagined possible, Kevin’s developed a burgeoning second career as a professional death metal T-shirt slinger, spending most of his time on the road anchored behind the merch table of our mutual Yonkers native pals. So, a few years ago, when he pitched me the idea of him authoring (and Decibel publishing) a book on the history of Immolation, I was on board quicker than a Bob Vigna ninja stage maneuver. Not only was their story of the hard-fought journey from the earliest days of the New York underground scene to their current standing as one of the most beloved bands in death metal history compelling, I understood that the combo of Immo and Panko was perfect. At the risk of stating the obvious, writing a book—a good one anyway—is fucking hard. And without the commitment of the right author, it’s nearly impossible. There are many supremely talented people who contribute to this magazine, but I don’t think anyone else is capable of consistently producing the volume of compelling writing that Kevin has for the past two decades. Through his unprecedented access to band members (past and present), tremendous attention to detail and signature humor, Into Everlasting Fire: The Official History of Immolation is easily one of my favorite works Decibel has ever published. And I can’t wait to be finished with it. Not just because I have a million other things to do, but so you can experience it, too. albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief
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To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $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. Copyright ©2024 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PRINTED IN USA
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READER OF THE
MONTH and I have a new co-host named Balaram Shakti, but Jason and Javier are still involved as well behind the scenes. We are about a third of the way through the catalog, so we better get moving so that I’m not still doing this into my 50s!
Greg Polard Ambler, PA
Tell me about the Where It Went podcast
Where It Went started back in the dark days of 2020 as a pandemic project in which me and a couple friends (Javier Van Huss and Jason Mazzola) decided to start a podcast where we go through the entire Revelation Records catalog in chronological order. The inspiration to start this journey came from one of my favorite podcasts, You Don’t Know Mojack, which is about the legendary SST Records roster. We have had the pleasure of interviewing members of several Decibel Hall of Fame entries, too, like Quicksand, Sick of It All and Judge. Currently we have done some restructuring,
10 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L
You came to Decibel via hardcore and metallic hardcore. Decibel has inducted plenty of classics like Judge, Deadguy and Rorschach over the years. Make a case for another album in that style that has yet to be inducted and is eligible.
I give my vote to 108’s Threefold Misery from 1996 released via Lost & Found Records. It is the perfect blend of Slayer, Bad Brains and Cro-Mags. The production is amazing, especially considering that it was recorded in a basement by a then-brand-new producer Brian McTernan (Cave In’s Jupiter, etc.), and it just crushes from beginning to end. There’s a good story there, too, considering that this was their final record before a long breakup because Vic [DiCara] became a full-time monk. I think a lot of Decibel readers who are not familiar with them should definitely listen to this LP.
Part one of two: This weekend you’re attending Decibel’s 20th Anniversary Show in Philly. What are you looking forward to most about the event?
The lineup is so solid, it’s very hard to choose! As a relatively new Autopsy obsessive who has since procured all their albums and then some, I’m really looking forward to being there for their first-ever Philadelphia show! If that wasn’t cool enough, we just learned they’re doing the debut LP Severed Survival in full. I’m also looking forward to seeing local heroes Horrendous and Crypt Sermon play their special sets for a hometown crowd. I can guarantee this is going to be a night to remember! Part two of two: You attended Decibel’s 20th Anniversary Show in Philly on Saturday. What was the highlight of the event for you?
Everything that I was looking forward to above exceeded my expectations, but I have to say my personal favorite set of the night was Immolation playing only songs from their first four albums. They absolutely crushed it. Watching Robert Vigna play guitar was like witnessing a real-life wizard in action. Amazing! It was also really nice to catch up with a bunch of friends and get a chance to meet Albert. Congrats again on 20 years. Here’s to 20 more!
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 just assuming that Andrew Lee made up all the non-Taylor Swift acts in his playlist.
Because not all of us were spawned in the darkest recesses of hell
This Month’s Mutha: Ana Reinhardt Mutha of Sonny Reinhardt of Necrot
Tell us a little about yourself.
I am a former registered nurse of 19 years, but worked in adolescent hospital psychiatric units for 10 years. I later became involved in youth development in the arts. Our city had limited activities for kids; as a result, I co-founded four nonprofit arts and entertainment centers serving young people and our creative community. Since 1980, my passion in the arts was because of Sonny’s talent and ambitions. He has been my inspiration for over 40 years. Aside from shredding, what were some of Sonny’s interests growing up?
Sonny enjoyed BMX riding, hiking, martial arts, art, comic books, Dungeons & Dragons and other games, reading, listening to rock, punk and metal music, breakdancing and playing in various bands such as Mobius Trip in Santa Fe as a teenager. Later, as a young adult, he performed with Word Salad, Bullet Train Mafia, Watch Them Die, and other local metal and punk bands. Sonny says he got one of his first acoustic guitars from your boyfriend at the time. How else did you contribute to his musical education?
We actually found an acoustic guitar in my dad’s closet when Sonny was 12; my brother would play it. Later, he got one from a boyfriend of mine. He never put guitars down after that and moved on to electric guitars. He rehearsed in loud bands in our basement for years as a teen. His music performances grew audiences in the nonprofits I worked for, as well as independent bookings that
led him to play guitar in many kinds of concerts with well-known musicians locally, regionally and abroad. I love his mesmerizing and squealing guitar solos! Your son has been in two nationally renowned bands that couldn’t sound less alike, Saviours and Necrot. Which do you prefer and why?
Both bands have toured the U.S., U.K. and Europe with my personal bravo reviews. I really enjoyed Saviours, as their raw intensity tunes were full of rage and held a form of hectic riff alchemy. Sonny’s other Bay Area band, Necrot, is a powerful trio that stimulates a steady mosh pit fever with headbangers everywhere they go. Luca [Indrio]’s guttural vocals and his defined death metal lyrics reveal a fragile existence with angst; Chad [Gailey] is a trembling fast-paced brutal drummer who deepens the heart-throbs; and Sonny, with his extraordinary fast-paced skills on guitar, stirs my brain cells into creative chaos. Have you tried Shadows and Light, Necrot’s collaborative beer with Black Sands Brewing?
No, but I best try it. Tell me where to tap in! How does it feel seeing your son on the cover of Decibel multiple times?
Another recognition well-deserved, so thank you! Now they say on Billboard that their new album, Lifeless Birth, landed the number three spot on both the Top New Artist and Top Albums [charts], plus other growing placements. I am one proud METAL MAMA. Mosh with love. —ANDREW BONAZELLI
Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f Tribulation, Sub Rosa in Æternum Mother of Graves, The Periapt of Absence Vicious Blade, Relentless Force Crypt Sermon, The Stygian Rose Immolation, Close to a World Below ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e Molly Nilsson, Un-American Activities Radar Men From the Moon, Vomitorium Katatonia, Discouraged Ones Tiamat, Skeleton Skeletron Sisters of Mercy, First and Last and Always ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s Blood Incantation, Absolute Elsewhere The Crown, Crown of Thorns Vicious Blade, Relentless Force Immortal Bird, Sin Querencia Glacial Tomb, Lightless Expanse ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r HEALTH, RAT WARS Enforced, War Remains Nothing, Tired of Tomorrow Rosetta, Wake/Lift Yelle, L’Ère du Verseau ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s Deathevokation, “Black Blood” flexi Rid of Me, Access To the Lonely Crypt Sermon, “Lachrymose” flexi The Locust, Follow the Flock, Step in Shit Krieg, “Bone Whip” flexi
GUEST SLAYER
---------------------------------Andrew Lee : r i p p e d t o s h r e d s / houkago grind time
Morgue Breath/ Blue Holocaust, Split Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department HARM, Con Safos Hemorrhoid, Raw Materials of Decay Meatspreader, Mental Disease Transmitted by Radioactive Fear
PHOTO BY
12 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L
GREG GOUDEY
BEYOND THE GATES 2024 Enter the Eternal Fire A Danielsson-fronted tribute to Bathory’s Quorthon is confident in Norway’s sprinkler systems
BEYOND THE GATES 2024
I
nterred in bergen, norway, Beyond the Gates feasts on the fantastic across its four offiVENUES: Stereo; USF Verftet; Kulturhuset; cial days. Spread between three venues (with Grieghallen now-defunct Stereo serving the pre-party), the WHEN: May 23-26, 2024 festival is an easy (sometimes rainy) walk. Since PHOTOS BY ALLAN LARSEN it’s organized with attendees, not dollars, in mind, there are rarely timing conflicts. ¶ The superlatives don’t end there, either. The lineup curation is always jaw-dropping: Satyricon across two days in Grieghallen; Enslaved disentombing Frost in its chillingly good entirety; Watain and Behemoth with full-on pyro; Death SS, Venom, Darkspace, Aura Noir, Dødheimsgard; and, of course, the topper, Blood Fire Death - A Tribute to Quorthon, featuring black metal greats and even an unsung legend. ¶ Decibel was also invited back as a delegate, which entailed yours truly setting up and hosting a Norwegian metal trivia night for the rest of the delegates from far-flung places. My esteemed colleague Cosmo Lee and I hold horns high and clutch invisible oranges together as we venture into—and sadly out of—Beyond the Gates 2024. —CHRIS DICK WHERE:
Bergen, Norway
TUESDAY, JULY 30 STEREO
Much like Decibel’s Metal & Beer festivals,
there’s always a pre-show party to shake up the coffins. Norwegian indie Dark Essence Records sponsored two of their artists, shapeshifters Vestindien and avant-garde metal icons Madder Mortem. Both swept the basement of Stereo in rifts of “otherness,” heads nodding arrhythmically. —CHRIS DICK 14 : NOV EMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 USF VERFTET (RØKERIET, HALLEN)
Whoredom Rife aptly opened a lineup heavily weighted towards black metal. Their sound was so straightforward, one could practically see all the way to their hometown of Trondheim. The pitch-black-perfect presentation of aggression, atmosphere,and corpsepaint was the chef’s kiss. Trelldom took the opposite tack in their much-
anticipated first-ever show. Those expecting lo-fi black metal (i.e., everyone) instead got saxfueled psych/krautrock, with Gaahl making like Nick Cave in the Birthday Party. It was baffling, if ballsy. —COSMO LEE Having met my unofficial partner-in-crime, Mr. Lee, I proceeded to claw my way to the front of Hallen, where Swedish nasties Watain were in strike position. Full of fire, smoke, danger and, yes, blood (yours truly and my wife were sprayed, much to our dismay/delight), Erik Danielsson ushered his Satanic troopers to fiery victory. “Cultural treasure” Mayhem befuddled Hallen with a setlist nobody wanted to hear (middle fingers went up for “View From Nihil”), but ended on a historical note with “Funeral Fog” (using Dead’s pre-recorded vox) and a threesong Deathcrush blast with Messiah and Manheim. —CHRIS DICK
THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 KULTURHUSET & USF VERFTET (RØKERIET, HALLEN)
Darkspace made a rare live appearance bathed
in icy blue hues. The Swiss trio delivered industrial black metal with metronomic precision and herculean picking endurance. Getting pummeled by a drum machine never felt so good. Death SS got the fest’s best reception
Satan’s latchkey kids (clockwise from l) Trelldom, Death SS and Darkspace add to Beyond the Gates’ long list of firsts and rarities
with a lurid set filled with camp, giallo spirit and boobs. It could have been awful, but it was amazing. —COSMO LEE Missed Czechia’s awesome Cult of Fire, but made up for the sacrilege with a visit to Venom in Hallen. Cronos still has the goods, spitting out minors “Grinding Teeth,” “Pedal to the Metal” and crowd fave “Countess Bathory.” Behemoth’s ultra-pro setup of super-high platforms, fire (lots of it!) and a varied setlist had Hallen in rapture. Nice to hear oldie “Cursed Angel of Doom” ring out against “Chant for Eschaton 2000” and “Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer.” Akhlys celebrated witching hour with a crushing performance before a packed Kulturhuset. —CHRIS DICK
FRIDAY, AUGUST 2 GRIEGHALLEN
To my surprise, Dødheimsgard looked like
normal metal dudes. Their music is anything but, or so I thought, until their “metal up your ass, but also lots of electronics” set. It clicked into place that they’re fiercely black metal at heart, but just as fiercely free of its confines. Honored with an exhibition of historical photos and memorabilia in Grieghallen, Satyricon started a two-night stand by spanning their catalogue. The band in 2024 is workmanlike and professional, but “Hvite Krists Død” brought back that old feeling. —COSMO LEE
Permanent fixtures Enslaved pulled a Frost-only
set out of the icebox for Grieghallen. Against a backdrop of jagged icebergs and a re-frosting logo, the Bergenites blew through “Loke,” “Svarte Vidder” and “Yggdrasil,” featuring Eirik “Pytten” Hundvin on bass, expertly. Again, Enslaved at Grieghallen, mere doors away from where they recorded their classic albums, is priceless. —CHRIS DICK
SATURDAY, AUGUST 3 GRIEGHALLEN
Vreid delighted us with cuts not only from their
catalogue, but also their previous (and epic) incarnation as Windir. Sporting Scandinavian crosses on their sleeves, they were so Norwegian that they never addressed the crowd in English. (For extra credit, listen to Milorg while reading Jo Nesbø’s The Redbreast.) Satyricon finished their victory lap by leaning mostly on their black ‘n’ roll hits. “Now, Diabolical” elicited a room of pumping fists and going-for-it headbanging. It may be the “Enter Sandman” of black metal, but it works. —COSMO LEE Bathory tribute Blood Fire Death was filled
with A-listers. Ivar Bjørnson and Rune Eriksen
manned the guitars, while rotating vocal (Apollyon, Erik Danielsson, Grutle Kjellson, Gaahl, Satyr, etc.) and drum (Faust, V. Einride) slots paid homage to Quorthon’s vision. The kicker was original Bathory bassist Frederick Melander flicking strings to “Raise the Dead” and “The Return of Darkness and Evil.” If not for the insanely great setlist, then this effort is epic for all the little details, including 13 candles under the drum riser and a real choir for the intro to “A Fine Day to Die.” This won’t be replicated any time soon. —CHRIS DICK
My first time at Beyond the Gates was eye-
opening. From the quality-not-quantity curation—I was perfectly happy seeing four or five bands each day—to the white gloves treatment for both performers (even opening bands got full-on elaborate stage sets) and festgoers (Grieghallen has plenty of seating, both inside and outside the concert hall), I got an experience I didn’t know existed. Having fjords and mountains outside doesn’t hurt, either. I’ll always love the heavy metal parking lot, but when I want something finer, I’ll “Visit Norway.” —COSMO LEE DECIBEL : NOV EMBER 2024 : 15
Fortnite [EPIC GAMES]
GREG PUCIATO OF
Microplastics, Scratched Discs and the Beauty of Nature here are a few things that will make you pause and take stock of where you are in life. It might be the birth of a child, or graduating college, or moving. It could also be sitting in your office and having one of your employees walk in to tell you they just fished a used tampon out of the drain of one of the sinks in the restroom. I’ve done most of those things, save one. You can guess the missing experience, I’m sure. I took on a new job earlier in the summer, one that I didn’t really think about and applied for while stoned. It’s in the retail arm of a nonprofit, which is yet another notch in my belt for variations of management jobs I’ve held since moving to Richmond nine years ago. I was recently informed that I’m the 18th manager of this location in the last five years. That’s another moment of pause and reflection. I’ve also decided that, since I don’t listen to them, I was going to sell my CD collection outside of a few dozen that never made it to any other format or held some kind of sentimental value. This means I’m going through the accumulation of over 30 years of listening and being involved in music, be it through bands, running labels, being on the radio or writing. And holy shit, it’s the equivalent of a drain that’s stopped up because someone didn’t feel like flushing their plug. Every night after work, I come home, take care of my daughter, and waste a bit of time before I sit down and open up one of the several large tubs of CDs I’ve hauled from place to place over the years, go onto Discogs and price them out. It is mind-numbing. I’ve got distro deadstock, things people have handed to me in hopes I’d somehow do something for them, and 16 : NOV EMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
shit I’ve acquired over the years. It’s a roadmap for how I’ve spent much of my life. And, in the greater sense, a roadmap of how others have spent theirs through their work. And all of this is now being passed on somewhere else, be it a collector or an eventual run to Goodwill. It’s easy, on my end, to just move these items into a sales database without a lot of thought, but if you look at it more philosophically, it boils down to the perception that everything we do comes down to just “stuff”: items that are to be bought and sold and take up space. That’s slightly depressing if you take too long to think about it. Moreso when you look up metrics on Discogs, mainly the “in collection” or “want” numbers. Here’s a piece of music (I’d use the term “art,” but I’m stretching the concept here enough as-is) that someone (presumably) put a lot of themselves into. It might have been the most important thing they’ll ever do in their lives. And six people want it, with the last one selling for $2.99 sometime in 2018. Some of these are so destined to just sit there well past their sell-by dates that I’ve taken to seeing if it’s more valuable to disassemble them, keeping the cases for replacements (“better” CDs) and just throwing the actual music in the trash. I’m pretty sure that’s the theme in at least a few Herzog films. And I know that I’m on the other side of this ecosystem as well. I’ve released a few projects I felt would somehow take off that not many people cared about when they were released and even fewer give a shit about now. And as a steward of these things, I’ve decided that, in the spirit of giving, I’ll just include them in other orders as a freebie, contributing to the endless cycle of making problems for others. But at least I’ll have space in my office again.
BETTER LOVERS
CHOOSES LOVE OF THE GAME AS AN ACT OF REBELLION
G
ames, as a form of entertainment, should be fun. It’s an overly simplistic view that has historically caused a horde of neckbeards to push their collective glasses up the bridge of their noses while drawing breath necessary to exhale a condescending, “Well, actually…” But for Greg Puciato, vocalist for metalcore supergroup Better Lovers as well as a bevy of other projects, there’s no time not to have fun. A child of the ’80s with a passion for the present, the hyper-prolific road warrior is in the midst of a reborn appetite for electronic escapism from his work/ life imbalance (read more about that in the online version of this column). A result of pandemic lockdown as well as a now-understood case of ADD, Epic Games’ gaming juggernaut Fortnite has become a regular part of Puciato’s digital diet. The crowned king of the battle royale genre known for its staggering number of highprofile collaborations with movie franchises, comic books and mega music stars—hell, even Metallica got in on the action—it’s no surprise that the game has received its share of criticism, both fair and not. During his stay in the Kill Screen arcade ahead of the band’s debut LP Highly Irresponsible, it is
EDGED CIRCLE PRODUCTIONS
HELLENIC BLACK METAL MASTERS *
If you had told me when I was a kid that I’d be able to be a T-800 running around shooting a dude in a fucking Chun-Li outfit in a giant grassy field with thousands of other players in the world, I would be like,
‘THIS IS BATSHIT, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?’
at this point in our conversation where Puciato gives some much needed historical context as to why teabagging your fallen enemies in Tomato Town is a beautiful thing. It seems like you’re kind of conflicted over really liking [Fortnite]. What’s the hang-up for you?
It’s funny, I’ve got two camps of friends: I’ve got friends that are really into Fortnite and friends that are really into Call of Duty. I don’t have a hang-up on it, but I have friends in my peripheral right now in my mind that just shake their head and they just do not understand why I think that’s better than Call of Duty. But all those people won’t even try Fortnite. That’s the thing that cracks me up about the Call of Duty camp. They just are like, “Ah, that’s for kids.” And I’m just like, “You won’t even play it! Why don’t you just jump in?” This is fucking unprecedented in the world of gaming. Just the wrangling of IPs that it’s managed to have is absolutely insane. If you had told me when I was a kid that I’d be able to be a T-800 running around shooting a dude in a fucking Chun-Li outfit in a giant grassy field with thousands of other players in the world, I would be like, “This is batshit, what are you talking about?” It’s unreal.
It just makes me happy, and that’s really my only criteria for playing stuff. Of course, there’s things about it that you can’t [do], things that in Call of Duty that you can mod this and do that. It just really comes down to, Does this make me happy or not? And for whatever reason, that game, I keep coming back to it.
YOTH IRIA *
RETURN WITH THEIR HIGHLY
ANTICIPATED SECOND ALBUM
ON THE 8TH OF NOVEMBER FEATURING
JIM MUTILATOR THE FORMER MEMBER OF
VARATHRON AND ROTTING CHRIST
MIXED AND MASTERED BY
LAWRENCE MACKRORY (KATATONIA, FIRESPAWN, DECAPITATED)
You can play as Batman and shoot down Goku. If you said that to somebody back in the ’90s, they’d be like, “Whoa, really?!”
I remember when Wolfenstein [3D] came out and I had a friend who had a PC, and it was, like, 25 MHz, 125 MB hard drive. I didn’t have one. I remember beating Wolfenstein and I was like, This is un-fucking-believable. And then I remember Doom, and I remember that people had modems. I was like, What the fuck is a modem? Someone that you know is like, “Well, you plug your phone line into it, it makes this crazy noise and then you can play Hangman with someone.” You’re like, “Oh… that’s not quite as cool as I thought it was going to be.” And then little by little, people are like, “I’m playing Quake against somebody.” You’re like, “Wait, really?” It so rapidly has gotten to the point where you get mad if you have to wait for more than 30 seconds in the queue for 100 people that are playing five different platforms. That shit’s insane.
CONTINUE AT DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM PHOTO BY GABE BECERRA
DECIBEL : NOV EMBER 2024 : 17
REGIONAL JUSTICE CENTER
Hardcore blasters inspire revolution in 15 minutes or less
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conomists of scale agree on hardcore, naturally. So much payload delivered so efficiently. On trilogy finale Freedom, Sweet Freedom, Regional Justice Center meter out 12 beatdowns in 15 time-suspending minutes of self-recrimination and rage. A model of brutal economy, the album speaks—screams, shrieks, recites even—to the genre’s… punk poets society? ¶ “When punk steps outside of its traditional lyrical tropes, it definitely can be [poetic],” writes singer/drummer/bandleader Ian Shelton. “RJC always desired to express something different than just the ‘stabbed in the back’-type of traditional hardcore lyricism. It’s interesting now that Max has joined in on that journey.” ¶ “The poetic part has ALWAYS been a part of the hardcore scene,” co-writes his brother, Max Hellesto. “Learning Ceremony lyrics when I was a little kid, I always felt there was something writerly to the approach, which basically informed and shaped how I went about being a lyricist. There’s something special about lyrics that are actually deep being sung on top of the angriest shit you’ve ever heard.”
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Freedom, Sweet Freedom closes a chapter begun with World of Inconvenience in 2018 and followed up by Crime and Punishment three years later. Started as Ian’s anger management project over his sib’s six-year imprisonment at 18 for stabbing two people in a drug deal gone bad, RJC marked Max’s release during the pandemic, and now welcomes the co-vocalist into a Seattle-bound fold including producer Taylor Young and guitarist Alex Haller. The bass breakdown in rivet-gun opener “Freedom” (“chained to my ways / no way to escape”), and a Beasties-busting close to “Diplomatic Solution”—not to mention “Comfort of Addiction” outing our sorry species—all bench their “Weight” (“I cannot carry you any further”). Last confession “Sweet Freedom” muscles a jailhouse pledge (“death sentence if I go back again”) of repentance (“all my lies”)
and finally strength: “embrace your imperfections.” Best of all, Ian and Max’s dual credit on penultimate punisher “Unnerving.” MAX: Ian and I have always been a collaborative force, even since we were kids. We tried making bands together since I was in middle school. It’s been boiling so long that it’s just a natural process for us. IAN: My goal has always been to make music with my brother. Early on I tried to show Max it could be a way out of the things we felt trapped by, but when I tried to show him hardcore and punk, it was basically people in their mid-20s reading a pamphlet of what you can or can’t say and do, and he was looking for something more dangerous and vital. I’m glad after all this time—and after taking two completely separate journeys—we can blend our perspectives musically and lyrically on these songs. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ
PHOTO BY TAYLOR JONES
REGIONAL JUSTICE CENTER
MOTHER OF GRAVES
Midwest doom metallers take a step out of the shadows
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ndianapolis-based melodic doom/death metal upstarts Mother of Graves are disarmingly humble. Call it “Midwest Nice”—a phrase in stark opposition to the band’s namesake and their melancholia—or maybe guitarist Chris Morrison and vocalist Brandon Howe are good dudes, still incapable of grasping the praise this publication and many others heaped on their debut album Where the Shadows Adorn (Wise Blood). ¶ “Honestly, yes, the feedback, praise and attention Shadows received still blows my mind,” says Morrison, sitting amongst his Edge of Sanity, My Dying Bride and Katatonia LP collection. “I know inside that what we created was something that I love and believe in, but there is always the chance that no one else is going to feel that way. We were, and still are, just some dudes in Indiana writing music from our hearts with no real aspiration other than achieving the kind of therapy that writing provides and the hope that our songs resonate with others.” ¶ Howe, however, is more measured in his response, stating that Mother of Graves—having elevated beyond a mere studio project—are likely more suited to European audiences.
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He’s probably right to some degree, but this isn’t 1996, bringing us to the heart of the group’s second fulllength, The Periapt of Absence (Profound Lore). Melodic, oppressive and rife with Howe’s open-souled depuration, opener “Gallows,” video single “Shatter the Visage” and the Yorkshire-heavy title track impressively ante up. “We were sticking to our usual gut instincts,” Howe offers. “[We] also want to expand on our soundscapes, general songwriting, hooks and choruses, sad parts being even sadder, heavy parts being even heavier, a little bit of everything. While Shadows, to me, was a great album, there’s always the inner critic within us to seek growth and expansion. With The Periapt of Absence, we struck every chord we intended to—and then some.” From “Gallows” to closing quasirocker “Like Darkness to a Dying Flame,” The Periapt of Absence hangs out in the margins of all the ’90s albums we love (and have inducted
into the Hall of Fame). The deadly missive salutes, but isn’t subservient, and that’s important. Much like Rapture’s Futile or Daylight Dies’ Dismantling Devotion, Mother of Graves were creatively adept to make slight moves to the left or right. Guitarist Ben Sandman’s persuasive production amplifies the weight of it all, though. The nods to old-school death metal, the obligatory tips of the hat to melodic doom/death and the quiet bits (“A Scarlet Threnody” is particularly poignant) owe their import to Sandman and mastering ace Dan Swanö. “Ben was shooting for and achieved a thicker sound with a little more heft than the last album,” says Morrison. “He focused on making the drums something that could be felt and heard. We love working with Dan. We fully trust Dan’s ear when it comes to mastering. He knows our style and sound and seems to enjoy mastering our work.” —CHRIS DICK
PHOTO BY KRISTIE VANTLIN
MOTHER OF GRAVES
KANONENFIEBER
For those about to melodic black/death, we salute you
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yseudonymous musician noise has been creating music through various niche solo bands since at least 2018, but the project that’s made an international impact is Kanonenfieber. His melodic death and black metal hybrid became a Bandcamp and social media phenomenon with the release of full-length debut Menschenmühle, which he is following up this year with another LP, Die Urkatastrophe. ¶ “The pandemic played into the hands of the release,” Noise says. “People were sitting at home looking for something to do. Catchy, melodic black/death metal paired with a slightly different theme and eye-catching cover did the trick.” Its evocative cover depicts a skeletal general shoveling helpless soldiers into a cannon, perfectly matching Noise’s suite of dark but memorable songs centered around World War I. ¶ WWI isn’t a new subject in metal. Bolt Thrower, God Dethroned and more recently 1914 have all written albums about the Great War. But for Noise, the subject is personal: His great-grandfather fought in the war and kept a diary on the subject. “My grandmother had kept the diary in the attic without ever reading it,” he explains. “The diary was written in old German, and my grandmother couldn’t read it.
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I took the diary to a friend of mine who is a historian. Together, we deciphered the words in Sütterlin and wrote them down in New German. I had a bound version of the diary made and gave it to my grandmother. This fueled my already great interest in war history. As a result, my historian friend and I started Kanonenfieber.” Kanonenfieber was intended as a one-off project, using that diary and other historical documents as source material for lyrics, but the band’s immediate response quickly translated into live offers. Since the pandemic, Kanonenfieber have played over 100 shows, mostly intense theatrical displays on the European festival circuit. “The idea behind our live show is to bring the horrors of the First World War to the stage,” says Noise, who wears a mask, helmet and officer’s uniform onstage. “In my opinion, death and suffering cannot be represented by five guys in band shirts.” Die Urkatastrophe is the first Kanonenfieber album written with
live shows in mind, but playing for wide audiences hasn’t dulled the band’s critical edge. His greatgrandfather’s observations are sadly still relevant 100 years after being written. “The past two years have deeply influenced me and pushed me to deliver my message even more emphatically, even if the theme centers on WWI,” says Noise, who lives less than a day’s drive from the border of Ukraine and released a charity single with proceeds benefiting relief organizations for Ukrainian refugees at the start of the Russian invasion. And though Noise may eventually run out of passages in his great-grandfather’s diary to sing— or may move on from WWI as his sole subject—the core message behind his music will never grow old: “Through Kanonenfieber, I’m trying to convey to listeners that war is the worst thing this world has to offer. Nothing on this planet destroys more families, dreams and lives.” —JOSEPH SCHAFER
PHOTO BY STEPHANIE RIFKIN
KANONENFIEBER
VICIOUS BLADE
VICIOUS BLADE You can’t stop Steel City old-school thrash
E
mulating sacrilege and midnight in their crossover onslaught, Pittsburgh outfit Vicious Blade stormed out the gate in 2020. They were quickly scooped up by Redefining Darkness, which released their debut Relentless Force in September. ¶ According to vocalist Clarissa Badini, who doubles as the frontperson for American death metal outfit Castrator, “[the] underlying theme of this album is to be more relentless than all the bullshit in this life. Be it people or powers above us trying to keep us under their feet, we have to be more resilient than the unrelenting bullshit. It’s about the reclamation of power within ourselves.” ¶ Within Vicious Blade, Badini delivers a daunting combination of guttural growled vocals and occasional clean vocals, emulating hugely influential underground crossover thrash legend Lynda “Tam” Simpson of the mighty U.K. outfit Sacrilege. Instrumentally, expect a blend of “blackened death thrash, crossover, crust and speed.” ¶ Badini elaborates: “We wanted to be a Sacrilege worship type of band and write crossover thrash. 24 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
That was the idea… I definitely wanted to sound different from my typical death metal/black metal range. I wanted to try to emulate Tam’s style… I love her vocals on [Sacrilege’s 1987 album] Within the Prophecy and I wanted to try my own spin on that style.” As Vicious Blade have become progressively heavier following 2020’s s/t debut, 2022’s Siege of Cruelty EP, and 2023’s Faster than the Devil II split, Badini’s clean vocals have become less prevalent, and the growls have taken center stage. They are now only featured on one track from Relentless Force, dubbed “Forged Steel.” It may be the catchiest song on the record. “Relentless Force is the culmination of this super heavy, aggressive sound we’ve developed,” says Badini, who is joined by guitarists Jeff Ellsworth and Erik Wynn, bassist Justin Pelissero and drummer Kevin Parent. “We wrote half the
album together and half separated while I was on the road with Castrator. I was in the van or green room chipping away at the lyrics, while listening to all the scratch tracks being sent over to me. “I write Vicious Blade’s lyrics based on various sources influenced by politics, personal life experiences, film and combative sports,” she continues. “But they are all presented in a more metaphorical way.” Tied together by artwork by James Bousema that shows a fiery gauntlet-laden arm bursting out of hell gripping a skull, the album’s message is clear. “It paints a very beautiful, powerful medieval visual,” enthuses Badini. “The main gauntlet bursting out of the fiery crust, gripping the skull accompanied by other gauntlets gripping weapons symbolizes, ‘We’re not going down without a fight.’ That’s what Relentless Force is all about.” —SARAH KITTERINGHAM
INCLUDES NEW INTERVIEWS WITH CURRENT AND FORMER MEMBERS OF:
CANNIBAL CORPSE • DEATH • SEPULTURA • OBITUARY DEICIDE • SUFFOCATION • CYNIC • GORGUTS • TERRORIZER ATHEIST • MALEVOLENT CREATION • EXHORDER PESTILENCE • MASSACRE • ASSÜCK • SIX FEET UNDER AND DOZENS MORE!
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MAUL
Fargo face-melters level up with a fresh set of death metal “assbangers”
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e’re ready and this is where it becomes real.’ We’ve said that so many times and at so many different chapters of our band, but that was definitely one of those ‘Oh shit!’ moments.” ¶ Garrett Alvarado is speaking to us via Zoom and demonstrating his capacity for rolling and puffing on Camberwell carrots while recounting highlights along Maul’s seven-year timeline. At the moment, the frontman of the “Midwest Death” now-sextet—and proud owner of one of Fargo, ND’s most debonair moustaches—is recalling the winter of ’22 when the avowedly DIY sludge/hardcore/death/doom band received a ‘what’s up?’ message from 20 Buck Spin’s Dave Adelson. ¶ “We were doing a nine or 10-day run around Bangin’ in the Rock, a festival in Little Rock that Stan [Liszewski] from Terminal Nation and Evan [Grove] from Morbid Visionz are behind, and Dave cold-DMed us on Instagram asking what was going on. I was like, ‘Bro, you don’t even know. We’re ready!’ I pulled everyone into the green room that night to tell them 20 Buck Spin DMed us and that this is where it becomes real. 26 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
I had no idea we could even be on the radar of a label I’ve looked up to like that. It was definitely a shock.” The initial result of the bandlabel pairing was the 2023 flash mob cassette Desecration and Enchantment, which Alvarado describes as more of a deliberate nod to their doom and black metal influences than any of their previous baker’s dozen of releases. Up next: Maul’s second full-length, In the Jaws of Bereavement, an album he hilariously pegs as “loaded with assbangers.” The band stared down the difficult second album by adding a third guitarist (former merch guy, Josh Sanborn). They embarked upon intensive thrice-weekly rehearsals and preproduction demos that helped sculpt novel songwriting angles and the axe-slinging twists and turns afforded by another set of six strings, as well as wholly preparing them for the time spent at Minneapolis’ Signaturetone Recording with
producer Adam Tucker. All this in addition to the extensive live work embarked upon since the release of debut album Seraphic Punishment, which beveled the band into a finely tuned kill squad. “I remember listening to an episode of Jamey Jasta’s podcast and hearing people talk about not going soft on your second album,” Alvarado says. “That when you know you’re about to hit a bigger audience you become nothing more than more of yourself. For us, we doubled down on the hardcore sludge mixed with death metal and approached this as us still doing us. With 20 Buck Spin and the new record, I think the goal is just to be bigger. We have a wider platform, can tackle more, look at bigger tour offers, and have the chance to get our feet in different doors and show who and what we are to a whole group of different people.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO
PHOTO BY TYLAR FRAME
MAUL
12”, CASSETTE, AND DIGITAL
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THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR
THE FLIGHT OF SLEIPNIR Denver folk/black quartet find Nature’s Cadence in letting go
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layton cushman appears at ease. After seven records of co-crafting the Flight of Sleipnir’s DIY folktinged black metal, he’s reached a new stage of enlightenment: letting go and focusing on what truly matters. For the first time, Cushman has relinquished the meticulous control he and fellow founding member David Csicsely held over every production detail, inviting fresh creative voices into the process. “We’ve always explored new ground,” Cushman says, “but this time it felt right to let go and see where the music—and the people we trust—would take us.” ¶ In that widened circle is new guitarist Jeremy Winters. “Jeremy brought in ideas that expanded our sound,” Cushman adds, “but it was about all of us working together, bringing our individual best to the creative whole.” Pete deBoer at World Famous Studios also played a significant role in mixing and mastering songs the band was shaping, refining the evolving sound and ensuring the final product was as powerful as the creative process that birthed it. ¶ The result is Nature’s Cadence, an album that represents not just a sonic expansion, but a philosophical one. 28 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
While their earlier work often drew heavily from Norse mythology, Nature’s Cadence sees the band exploring broader, introspective themes. This shift allowed for a more organic and personal connection to the music. “We wanted to create something that felt timeless and true to who we are now and where we’re going—not just where we’ve been,” Cushman says. Another standout element on Nature’s Cadence is Cushman’s use of pedal steel, particularly on “Madness” and “The Woodsman.” Not typically featured in this genre, the instrument’s inclusion adds a hauntingly beautiful layer that’s unexpected and mesmerizing. “Pedal steel has always been part of our sound in some form, but it’s more prominent now,” he says, “and I think it adds something special.” As universally noted, the global pandemic bogeyman also contributed to the evolution of the Flight of Sleipnir. Cushman reflected on those challenges, particularly the
delayed release of their seventh album, 2021’s Eventide. “The timing was tough,” he recalls. “We had all this new material, but with the world shutting down we couldn’t tour or promote the album—those songs were in limbo.” The tour plans for Nature’s Cadence will offer a chance to finally bring Eventide to life onstage. “We’re excited to perform these songs alongside the new material,” Cushman shares. “It will be a unique experience, blending what we’ve done with where we’re going, giving fans the best journey through our evolving sound.” Cushman is eager to see how longtime fans and newcomers will receive the new material. “We’re so grateful for those who’ve stuck with us through the years. Their support means everything. We always try to honor that in our music. We’re also excited about potential new fans—it’s the greatest affirmation when someone discovers our music and finds something they connect with.” —TIM MUDD
POWERNERD DEVIN TOWNSEND’S 28TH STUDIO PROJECT IS A GALLOP OF MELODY, NOISE AND EMOTION! FEATURING “POWERNERD”, “GRATITUDE”, “KNUCKLEDRAGGER”, AND “JAINISM”. OUT 10/25 ON INSIDEOUTMUSIC AV AVAILABLE IN JEWELCASE CD, LTD. 2CD DIGIPAK & O-CARD, LTD. 2CD+BLU-RAY ARTBOOK, LTD. GATEFOLD 180G GREY LP, LTD. GATEFOLD 180G BONE COLORED LP, GATEFOLD 180G BLACK LP, AND DIGITAL ALBUM FORMATS.
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AVERNUS
AVERNUS
America doom/death cult heroes deliver their sophomore LP nearly three decades later
IT’S
taken a veritable lifetime (27 years, in fact) for Chicago-based death/doom combo Avernus to follow up their unsung debut, …of the Fallen. The band’s glacial progress toward their new album, Grievances (M-Theory), is the product of the usual blockers, delays and vagaries of adulthood. Yet, here we are, Avernus projecting their Windy City despondency and urban ennui with power and purpose. Founding vocalist Rick McCoy and drummer Rick Yifrach, along with near-original guitarist Erik Kikke and bassist James Genenz (also of Jungle Rot fame), aren’t here for the nostalgia, though. They want to make music together. ¶ “[Grievances] came down to having to mature and do other things to realize there is still music to write together,” says McCoy. “It took a long time with different lineups and scheduling conflicts, but Erik and Jimmy went through a whole bunch of stuff we recorded over the years during jam sessions (and on our own) and started the process for what is now our new album.” ¶ Grievances is the real deal. Informed of all the 30 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
Peaceville Three goodness Avernus can muster but with American bravado and forthrightness, the 10-song LP breathes sadness, sorrow, regret and anger into lengthy introspection. The world’s changed since …of the Fallen was ushered into obscurity by then-label M.I.A. Records, but according to Genenz, their emotions haven’t. Whether it’s the nineminute heft of single “Nemesis,” the siren laments of “The Burning Down” or the cemetery stroll of “Utter Euphoria,” Avernus have imbued everything into their neverexpected but welcome return. “Our grievances are real in these later years,” Genenz offers. “We really need to get these emotions out, but we’re avoiding the standard ‘I’m sad’ tropes. We’re old men now, with families, bills, surgeries, life insurance and multiple loved ones dying weekly. Our grievances now are much more warranted than when we were dumb kids. I’ve always loved making music with these guys. They’re completely
involved and ready to continue with the band’s original idea.” Truth. A deep dive into prominent songs, such as “Sadness,” “Anastasia” and “If I Could Exist,” reveals Avernus were more than assembly line doom/death. Though Grievances is heavier, darker and angrier than almost anything in the band’s catalog, the moonlighting of goth (“Return to Dust”) and ambient (“Abandoned”) sneak into the songs with a bit of smarts. There’s no eyeliner or artistic conceit—just absolute heaviness with occasional air. “We went back to our roots, but remained open-minded,” says McCoy. “I can’t speak for the other guys, but my main influences are always present when I write. You may not hear Lycia, Fields of the Nephilim, Cranes, old-school goth and shoegaze music from the ’90s in these songs, but I do. That’s part of why we work well together—we have other influences that complement each other well.” —CHRIS DICK
FROM THE ABYSS TO THE APEX
BLAKE JUDD’S REVENGE ON BLACK METAL!
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GOTHIC WAVE ROCK TO DANCE OVER THE MOON!
SOROR WHISPERING DOLOROSA VOID “MOND” AT THE SOUND OF THE HEART
...by the shadows...
M G LP (bio black, lim. marbled) CD hardcover book (18x18cm, 36 pages | CD D
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DREAMLESS VEIL
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very limb of the flood, the debut LP from Dreamless Veil, is a real piece of work, 40 miles of bad road and then some. It’s a concept album, a bleak narrative musing on what it would be like to fully disappear, to cease to exist, set to a tangle of black metal discordance. It was dreamed up by Dan Gargiulo, who, having written all the music for this epic in December 2018, handed it over to his Artificial Brain bandmate and Inter Arma vocalist Mike Paparo to put lyrics to the music. Psycroptic’s Dave Haley pulls a hero shift on drums. If you’ve followed Gargiulo’s career—the careening stylistic tech-death provocations of Artificial Brain, the rawer-than-thou black metal of Ortolan—it won’t surprise you that he wrote this in just two weeks. ¶ “I wanted to write in the style of metal I loved the most, and I didn’t want to overthink it,” he says. “If I caught myself spending an hour reworking harmonies or song structure, I would say fuck this and go with a different idea. So, I was writing fast.” 32 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
Dreamless Veil is familiar territory for Gargiulo, a dissonant and grandiose take on black metal, booby-trapped with musical adventurism, yet never losing its sense of sullen, existentialist melancholy. “I grew up on this style,” says Gargiulo. “Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, Storm of the Light’s Bane, Supreme Immortal Art, Nattens Madrigal, et cetera.” Innumerable influences are at play; even the most fleeting moments in a song can trigger Gargiulo. But Emperor and Abigor are his lodestars. All are artists who see beauty at black metal’s extremes. “Their approach to guitar arrangement goes far beyond, ‘rhythm guitar playing power chords, lead guitar harmonized in thirds, case closed,’” says Gargiulo. “Nothing wrong with writing that way; those bands both do that sometimes, as do I. I’ve just always been fascinated by more ornate arrangements.”
Concept records can be a heavy lift and a fool’s errand, but there was no big discussion about how this would go. Paparo was presented a rough mix of the completed album to write to. And he wrote. As philosophical pessimists go, he’d make Emil Cioran sound like Barney the Dinosaur in comparison. Paparo’s protagonist wants to disappear from the world. At times Paparo felt similarly when writing it, holed up mid-pandemic, but the sort of primo misery Dreamless Veil traffic in is fresh for all seasons, plagued or otherwise. Gargiulo promises there’s more where that came from. “In terms of writing metal, specifically, I just always liked very negative, sad or upsettingsounding melodic riffs,” he says. “I have to say it’s cathartic to write in a style I feel so much nostalgia for.” —JONATHAN HORSLEY
PHOTO BY DAN WAGNER
DREAMLESS VEIL
Inter Arma, Artificial Brain and Psycroptic members go black, will likely go back
VOMIT FORTH Connecticut hardcore death squad expel fear through sick riffs
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rutality in death metal is a precarious thing. Bands who embrace it walk a knife’s edge between sounding genuinely unsettling and slipping into cartoonish gratuitousness. (If you can successfully pull off both modes, congratulations—you’re Cannibal Corpse.) For Vomit Forth, the depraved Northeasterners behind the ultra-brutal Terrified of God, it’s important to stay on the right side of that line. ¶ “I wanted people to feel fear,” mainman Kane Gelaznik says of his approach to the album. “I think it’s a very visceral record. If you really listen to it, you can feel that it’s a heavy record, not just in an ‘I’m gonna punch you’ way, but thematically, sonically.” ¶ Vomit Forth belong loosely to the federation of young bands skin-grafting brutal death metal with hardcore. They have, in fact, released music on Maggot Stomp, and it’s clear from their riffs that they’ve heard an Internal Bleeding album or two. But their sound is a shade darker than most of their peers. Prurient’s Dominick Fernow provided the ominous intro to their debut album, Seething Malevolence.
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On Terrified of God, Gelaznik and producer Randy LeBoeuf layer the death metal assault with harsh noise, queasy synths and some truly disturbing samples. “I want to incorporate that unsettling noise in a way that I feel is missing in a lot of the heavier bands,” Gelaznik says. “It sets us apart a little bit, because we have this element that people can’t put their finger on, so they’ll search for anything to label it. That’s important to me. I want something that sounds like itself, and you can’t put your finger on it.” Terrified of God was recorded at LeBoeuf’s studio, an isolated cabin in the woods of New Jersey. After the other members of Vomit Forth finished tracking their parts and LeBoeuf went home for the night, Gelaznik would stay in the cabin alone. “I watched Midsommar and Hereditary a million times, and then, when I was alone, I would be watching Marian Dora films,” Gelaznik
recalls. “My headspace wasn’t great, and being alone in the cabin made it worse. But I think that’s what made the album.” Fear also defined Gelaznik’s life at the time of recording. After periods of intermittent homelessness, he had finally found a stable job. He quit it to pursue Vomit Forth. The terror and doubt of plunging back into insecurity motivated Gelaznik—a religious person, by his own admission— to write Terrified of God. “I leaned into the fear and started creating,” he says. “What am I scared of? Being homeless? I’m scared to be a failure. I’m scared to be accountable for, maybe, the wrong decision. I’m scared of God, because I’m looking at my own sin, insecurities, the negative parts of me, and I’m scared that God is gonna look down and just be like, ‘You’re worthless.’ That’s the fear that I had, and that’s where I got the name from.” —BRAD SANDERS
PHOTO BY FIN GEIGER
VOMIT FORTH
Oklahoma noiseniks
CHAT PILE take on a toxic world on their second full-length story by ADEM TEPEDELEN /// photo by MATTHEW ZAGORSKI
N
oise rock isn’t for lovers. Virginia may be, as the well-known state mar-
keting slogan once trumpeted, but you’re not gonna find those kinds of sentiments in post-hardcore’s gnarly late-’80s spawn. It’s ugly, raw, angry and pretty frequently disturbing (see: Big Black, Cows, Unsane, Flipper, Killdozer, et al.). And unlike, say, grunge, it doesn’t really have a spiritual home, having sprung up in mostly urban environments across the U.S. When the prime directive of a style is to create tension, discordance and, well, noise, love’s got nothing to do with it. But, look, if you want a musical fist to the face with a couple of lyrical kidney punches, noise rock will deliver that beating, no sweat.
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Oklahoma quartet Chat Pile—vocalist Raygun Busch, bassist Stin, guitarist Luther Manhole, drummer Cap’n Ron—may or may not be misanthropes, but they definitely have some things to say about the state of humanity in 2024. And it seems they aren’t impressed. The band’s previous full-length, 2022’s God’s Country, addressed the many issues facing a divided America, as the have/have-not divide increasingly widens and the poor get poorer and the rich get unfathomably richer. The message was as ugly as the music.
GENRE PURITY IS FOR CHILDREN. STIN
HRR 947 SCALD Ancient Doom Metal LP/CD/MC
HRR 948 CAPILLA ARDIENTE Where Gods live and Men die LP/CD/MC HRR 962 KAT‘s ACID Blowing your Ears Off LP/CD
Musically, Cool World continues Chat Pile’s founding directive. “Ultimately we’re just fans of all kinds of music including extreme metal, noise rock, post-punk, indie rock and just about everything else under the sun,” Stin explains. “We
HRR 952 HELVETETS PORT Warlords LP/CD/MC
Our influences run the gamut from dISEMBOWELMENT to U2.
didn’t want to paint ourselves into a corner genrewise, so we just sort of smashed together a lot of disparate influences in a way that made sense to us, and Chat Pile is the result. The base layer of what we’re doing is ultimately noise rock, but our influences run the gamut from dISEMBOWELMENT to U2. Genre purity is for children.” “We all have a ton of different influences, and it’s cool that this band allows us to pull from all that stuff and mix it together,” adds Manhole. “I still don’t really know where we fit, but I always just say we’re in a ‘loud rock band.’” In addition to expanding the album’s lyrical scope, Chat Pile pushed things musically as well. “I feel that everyone in the band performed better on this album than the last,” notes Busch. “Everything is slightly more intricate—guitar/ bass lines, drum parts, vocal layering, production. It also feels overall more concise than the previous record. I like everything we do, but this is my favorite thing we’ve done so far.” “I tend to agree that we just did everything better this time,” Manhole chimes in. “We had more space and time to work on it and I think it allowed us to be more thoughtful with how we wrote and arranged everything. I think we identified that one of our main strengths is taking extreme music and finding ways to make it catchy, and we were able to lean into that even more this time.” Catchier maybe, but still no love songs.
HRR 965 MINDLESS SINNER Metal Merchants LP/CD/MC
time with what it’s saying about our relationship with media and where it’s heading. The internet is clearly the real Cool World.”
HRR 960 WARLORD From the Ashes to the Archives LP/CD
So, where to go from there on album number two? More of the same, since nothing substantial has changed in the interim? “If the last album was about living in America, this one is about living in the world,” Busch tells us via email. “The lyrics cover a range of topics, but the underlying theme of this record is the horror and futility of war: genocide, colonialism, environmental destruction, extreme human rights violations. Lyrically, my main goal with this album was to get out of [America’s] plains and deal with a more universal anguish. I tried my best to definitively set Cool World in the year 2024.” Maybe then, the title is a facetious or sarcastic one? Well, yes and no. It certainly fits the theme, in a sense, but its origin is a little sillier, going back to the start of the band. “The four of us were getting together each week to have a bad movie night around 2018 or so, when it occurred to us we were all in between bands,” says Stin. “So, we basically just decided to start a new project together.” And years later, as mutual fans of bad movies, they landed on a doozy as inspiration for their latest. “The title is taken from the Ralph Bakshi film,” Busch explains. “As with most things, it has multiple meanings, so I wouldn’t get hung up why, because we aren’t huge fans of that movie or anything. [But] it’s a good caption for that obscene photo [on the cover]. That’s the real reason, though that movie is pretty ahead of its
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www.hrrecords.de D E C I BD EE L C: I N BE O LV E: M JU BN ER E 2024 : 37
down
story by JOHN HILL
rabbit photo by DANTE TORRIERI
hole
ESCUELA GRIND explore their complicated relationship with social media with DREAMS ON ALGORITHMS
the
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b
ack in February, Escuela Grind endured a living nightmare: They became
the main characters of the internet. It was a twisted mire of he said, she said, where former tour managers claimed abuse at the hands of the band for getting called “Creamy Chris,” members changed and van drivers were pissed off—all of which is to say, a lot of people seemingly came out of the woodwork to take the band down. It was an insane amount of social media gossip and chatter typically reserved for pop stars, levied at a grindcore outfit. ¶ It was the last thing singer Katerina Economou wanted. “It felt like going from a nobody at the bottom of the barrel to being perceived to have a position of power, purely because I sing in a band,” they say. They allude to parties outside of the band bringing lawyers into the fray and the statement the band made in March, limiting how far they can go about what went down. Still, it left an impact on them and the rest of their bandmates. “I guess sometimes you have to be the main character for two weeks, and if you’re strong enough to deal with it, you can get through anything. I’m grateful that my bandmates and I had each other because it was probably the worst thing that happened in our lives, short of people passing away. But we certainly learned a lot, and we adjusted the fuck out of what we’re doing and how we work off each other.”
It’s a strange cosmic coincidence given their new record’s focus on how we interact with others on social media—Dreams on Algorithms. Written a year before any of the drama took place, it came out of a natural response to how Economou and their band saw themselves and others interact with social media. “We started just riffing on the acronym D.O.A.,” Economou says. “It’s such a great phrase: It could be a band name, just ‘dead on arrival,’ anything. We landed on ‘algorithm’ for the ‘a,’ and then figured ‘dreams.’ We kept running into this thing where we kept having dreams in the van, waking up in the middle of the night, scrolling through our phones and having dreams about whatever the fuck was on social media. From there it led to Jung, Freud, everything.” The merging of philosophy, social media anxieties and more plays out as a sort of dream logic in the music itself. There is no set reality in what’s happening throughout the record, as songs melt between genres. “Who wants to be pigeonholed?” Economou says. “I think bands want to break up when that happens.” The grind of their namesake easily plays with death metal, metalcore and straight-up hardcore. Part of the plurality of sound is how much Escuela Grind has soaked up from their tourmates. They’ve had a chance to play with every pro in their lane, from Napalm Death and Dropdead to Baroness, to name a few. Their veteran tourmates also planted the seed for them to incorporate clean vocals into their usual mix of chaos on the song “Turbulence.” Unlike a metalcore band looking for an easy
way to pull together a simple chorus for a shot at radio, it’s used as an element that’s almost beautiful, but remains off-kilter. Despite having a striking voice, it wasn’t an easy sell for Economou to change up their vocals for this new context; it took some serious coaxing. “At the end of the night, when we were doing the nightliner tour with Napalm Death last year, we would listen to music and sing together,” Economou says. “Napalm Death and their sound guy, all of them heard me singing. They told me, ‘You’re good at this, you should be doing this in your band.’ I was like, sure, maybe we can do it. Then we went on tour with Greg Puciato from Dillinger Escape Plan.
“He took me to the side one day, and I was talking to him about this, and he was telling me how when they started clean singing on Miss Machine, it changed their lives. It took them to a new world.” After trying the song out in front of producer Kurt Ballou during the recording of the record (which he loved), the song made the cut. “He’s the fucking Grammy winner; he would know,” Economou laughs. “What's more punk than throwing clean singing into grindcore?” Ballou’s ear for metallic crunch comes through in spades throughout the record. Some especially biting tracks include the massive “Moral Injury,” which ends in a dueling guitar breakdown. Other standouts include “Planned Obsolescence,” which shifts the speed of its chug riff on a dime, leaving the listener spinning. As the band continues to gain steam—haters be damned—Economou is excited about the opportunity to get people in the door for true face-to-face connection, outside of the internet echo chambers that social media platforms force us into: “The algorithm pushes us into these categories and separates us from each other. They’re set up to push us so far apart to where we can’t bridge the gaps between each other ideologically, and I think that’s really scary.” Economou hopes that Escuela Grind’s music is so unfuckwithable that it’ll get people in the door who might not otherwise come due to preconceived notions of the band’s identity. “That’s such a great conundrum for the audience member to have if they’re coming to our show and they don’t know about our politics, what we stand for or who we are as people, and then they have to contend with our identity because they fuck with our band. That’s what the spirit of all this is about, to me.”
I guess sometimes you have to be the main character for two weeks, and if you’re strong enough to deal with it, you can get through anything. I’m grateful that my bandmates and I had each other because
IT WAS PROBABLY THE WORST THING THAT HAPPENED IN OUR LIVES, SHORT OF PEOPLE PASSING AWAY. katerina economou
D E C I BD EE L C: I N BE O LV E: M JU BN ER E 2024 : 39
UNDEATH
ROCHESTER’S GIVE DEATH METAL FANS ANOTHER REASON TO SMILE story by KEVIN S TEWART-PANKO • photo by NICK KARP
IT ’s
literally the name of our band group chat!” laughs Undeath vocalist Alexander Jones when asked about the phenomenon wherein the Rochester, NY death metal quintet has found themselves being confronted by jubilant fans chanting “Fundeath!” in their faces at shows around the country. ¶ “I was hammered and posted about how ‘Fundeath is coming to your city!’ It just caught on and all these people started screaming it at us. But it does perfectly encapsulate the vibe we’re hoping to elicit during our sets.” ¶ Even with segments of fans catching onto the “Fundeath” movement, Jones and his bandmates—drummer Matt Browning, bassist Tommy Wall, and guitarists Kyle Beam and Jared Welch—still routinely find themselves pilloried for daring to express joviality in any form. In the same way Tom Hanks venomously asserted that there’s no crying in baseball, Undeath have been subject to loud pontifications about there being no smiling in death metal. This, despite most Cannibal Corpse gigs being home to a litany of Corpsegrinder one-liners, the elated warmth that Immolation’s Bob Vigna and his contorted martial artistry stage presence spreads throughout any venue, and every Obituary show being the home of gleaming white chompers beaming from behind a veil of frontline hair. Undeath are down with their lot in life, and they want you to know it. And share in the experience. “What you see is what you get with us,” shrugs Jones, “and we don’t try to put on any airs about what we’re trying to present. We’re a death metal band who likes playing death metal, and it makes us happy to do it. When we’re onstage, it’s a joyous experience, and that ruffles a lot of feathers. I see it online all the time: people complaining I smile too much, that we don’t take ourselves seriously enough and whatever. Yeah, I smile onstage, but so does Ozzy Osbourne. Are you going to tell Ozzy not to smile?! Regardless, we’re going to do what we want to do, and we’ve found our little lane to do it in. I try not to lose too much sleep over it, but a lot of that online stuff is just brain rot that works to distract from the reason I’m making music, which is to play shows, have fun, travel and put out a record every two or three years.” This inability to be discouraged about doing what they love has powered Undeath through VE M B2E4R : 2D0E2 C4 I :BD 40 : N J UON 20 EE LCIBE L
their demo days and two full-lengths (including the crowning champion of our top albums of 2022, It’s Time… to Rise From the Grave) through to their latest, More Insane. It’s an album that acts like a metallic superhighway with on-ramp access points for influences from all eras of metal’s history filtered through the lens of death metal’s new generation. Those are the kids who discovered metal through the unchecked Wild West of file-sharing, downloading and information everywhere one’s head was willing to swivel. By default, they ended up with broader takes on the landscape to where it becomes no surprise that More Insane reminds of the midpoint between Satan and Raven on one end and Cannibal Corpse and Deicide on the other. “Yeah, absolutely!” enthuses Jones. “Bands like those, Maiden, Priest and the heavy hitters are huge guiding influences, and there’s something unique—and nothing ‘lesser’—about the
craft of writing a simple, catchy, heavy song. When I hear ‘The Sentinel,’ ‘Jawbreaker’ or ‘Living After Midnight,’ they move and speak to me in a very primal way. They make me want to get up and dance, get out of myself and have a good time; and that’s something we definitely try to bring to death metal, where stuff can often feel very cloistered and violent in an unapproachable way. We try to make it so that death metal’s rawness and feralness is there, but it’s mixed seamlessly with conventional songwriting flavor.” And as Undeath are exploring how to have their sound (hopefully) get all y’all up and dancing, they’re not holding back on where they want that shimmying to happen. Case in point: an upcoming tour of the other side of the planet, which will see shows happening in Vietnam and Singapore, on “Sydney’s first-ever floating dive bar boat” and in the “relaxed political climate of the People’s Republic of China,” where the band will visit and play for the first time. “We were plotting out the tour and Zuma from Kruelty, who booked it, asked where we were interested in playing. We told him the obvious places, but that we’d be willing to go anywhere that made sense. He came back to us asking if we wanted to play China, and we said, ‘Absolutely!’ “The visa process is actually pretty straightforward,” Jones continues. “All I had to do was write down the lyrics for all the songs we’re planning on playing. But when I looked at our songs and lyrics in one place, I realized that every single one of them is about killing someone. It doesn’t look good on paper. [Laughs] We submitted it anyway and haven’t received word that we’ve been banned from entering China… yet. So, I’m assuming everything is all good, even though I have no idea if anyone over there knows who we are or cares. I’m not laboring under any [great] expectations. I fully expect we’re going to show up in Beijing and play to 15 kids in a parking lot. Anything better than that is going to blow my expectations out of the water!”
When we’re onstage, it’s a joyous experience and that ruffles a lot of feathers. I see it online all the time: people complaining I smile too much, that we don’t take ourselves seriously enough. Yeah, I smile onstage, but so does Ozzy Osbourne.
ALEXANDER JONES D E C I BD EE L C: I N BE O LV E: M JU BN ER E 2 0 2 4 : 41
interview by
QA j. bennett
W ITH
The guitar maniac behind RIPPED TO SHREDS and HOUKAGO GRIND TIME on demonic parasites, funeral strippers and total weebery
42 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
R
ipped to Shreds’ new album was born out of an existential crisis. Southeast Asia, you’ll see a lot of variations on
Andrew Lee, the leader of the aforementioned death metal squad, was pondering WHAT IT ALL MEANS. “I was thinking about what the hell I’m doing with my life,” the bilingual vocalist and multiinstrumentalist tells us from RTS HQ in San Jose. “I’m working some crappy job that I don’t even like, and in about 50 years I’m gonna be dead. So, what’s the point of all this crap? I’m not particularly religious—I’d even say I’m antitheistic—but I was researching traditional Chinese conceptions of death and the afterlife, and I came across some stuff that’s pretty interesting. It’s very different from the western JudeoChristian type of mythology.” ¶ Truer words were never spoken. At least not by us. Ripped to Shreds’ fourth album, Sanshi, deals in demonology, mind-erasing potions and one of humanity’s most inspired inventions: funeral strippers. Sung partly in English and partly in Chinese, the songs on Sanshi delve into the Chinese mythology and traditions surrounding death, reincarnation and the concept of hell. It’s a topic Lee has been fascinated with since childhood. ¶ “When I was a kid in Taiwan, I’d stand at the window of my grandparents’ apartment, and I’d hear this huge racket during a funeral procession because Chinese funeral music has all these clanging drums and horns or reeds playing really weird, dissonant sounds because the idea is to scare away spirits,” our man explains. “So, you’ll see these small flatbed trucks with flowers all over them and speakers blaring this music and the deceased will be lying on the back of one of these trucks.” What’s the story behind Sanshi?
There’s this Taoist belief that people have three kinds of demonic parasites in their body. These parasites record every single deed, good or bad, and they report it to the celestial bureaucracy. In the afterlife, there’s this big book with the names of everyone who’s ever lived and everything they’ve ever done. When you die and go to hell, the judge will pull out this book to see what you’ve done and then send you to whatever kind of hell you deserve. Some people think, “How can I have a pure body and expel these demons so I’ll never die?” Or they try to evade whatever is coming to them in the afterlife. That’s where a lot of the songs on this record are coming from. Sanshi means “three corpses” or “three worms” depending on the characters that are used, and those are the three demons living in your body. Being born with demons inside you kinda sounds like the Catholic concept of original sin. In both cases, the idea is that we’re born bad.
I see what you mean, but when I say “demon,” I don’t mean that in a sense of good or evil. In Chinese mythology, demons are generally outside of morals or human ideas of good and bad. There are evil demons, but also benevolent demons. Generally, they’re amoral supernatural entities. PHOTO BY GREG GOUDE Y
How do these demons manifest themselves in the songs?
Take the first song, “Into the Court of Yanluowang.” Yanluowang is the god or king of hell. He’s the guy who manages hell, and he judges your sins and such. I talk about being trapped in samsara: You’re continually born again and again, so there’s no end to your suffering. For me, it’s a little bit murky here because Indian Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism kind of get mixed up together. It’s not super consistent unless you’re a scholar of these things, and I’m definitely not a scholar. I’m using them more in that pulpy horror kind of sense. So, the song is about being judged in the afterlife and how that stuff never ends. The idea sounded very death metal to me. When I was preparing for our interview, I looked up Yanluowang and the first thing that came up was a type of ransomware.
Oh yeah. That makes sense. Some of the early worms and bugs in malware have names like that as well. But I should point out that Yanluowang is not totally analogous to Satan, who is in direct opposition to God. Yanluowang is more like Hades from Greek mythology. I think someone would name their virus that if they thought it sounded badass. Yanluowang has different names in Korea, Japan and Indonesia. In
the judge of hell figure. You have another new song called “Perverting the Funeral Rites – Stripping for the Dead.” I looked into this and… dude, funeral strippers. They’re my new favorite thing. How did you learn about them?
Funeral strippers are not a mainstream thing. You wouldn’t necessarily see them in a big city in Taiwan. It’s more in rural areas; or if it’s a big gangster’s funeral, you might see them. By Taiwanese standards, it’s pretty transgressive, but I think you can see some parallels in some Afro-Caribbean funeral cultures, where it’s supposed to be like a loud party to send off the dead. Funeral strippers are just an extension of that, especially when it comes to gangsters because gangsters run the whole funeral industry in Taiwan. The more strippers you have at your funeral, it’s a show of how much your gang can spend to show you respect. In 2017, a city council member in Chiayi City, Taiwan, had 50 pole dancers at his funeral.
[Laughs] Yeah, that’s in southern Taiwan. There’s a stereotype that the south of Taiwan is less cultured and more rustic than the north. But that does sound like something that would happen in the south of Taiwan. I thought about using an actual stripper in our video for that song, but I didn’t source everything myself. I went to the director and told him my general idea, and then he went to a producer to go get everything. But I think they didn’t want to go directly to the gangsters, obviously. So, I think the woman in the video was a bartender/model that they found. The song “Force Fed” references a mythological “elixir of forgetfulness.” From what I can gather, it’s usually served as a tea or soup.
Right. The idea is that when you die and go to the afterlife, you still have all your memories from your life—and all of the memories from the trillions of years in which you’ve been tortured and punished before that. They can’t send you off to be reborn with all these memories still in your head. There’s a bridge you cross before your soul is taken back to Earth and reborn in a new body. Before you cross the bridge, there’s an old lady who gives you this elixir so you can forget everything. Meng Po is the old lady, right? The goddess of oblivion.
“Po” is like old auntie or grandma, so in English it’d be like “Auntie Meng.” She’s the figure who gives you the forgetfulness potion. Some cultures say there’s 18 hells; others say there’s 36, DECIBEL : NOVEMBER 2024 : 43
Hell to pay Lee (center l) and Ripped to Shreds can’t take it with them when they die—or get reborn
Some cultures say there’s 18 hells; others say there’s 36, but they all have different punishments depending on what bad things you’ve done. Say if you cheated on your wife or husband in life, you’d have your fingers continually ripped out over and over again.
The tongue makes sense for gossip, but why the fingers for adultery? You’d think they would rip something else out.
I’m not really sure, but there are all these brutal tortures. I wanted to structure it like a Demolition Hammer song, with that rapid delivery about all these awful tortures, but when I hit the pre-chorus and chorus, that’s where you have your mind wiped, you’re purified and reborn, and then you get to do it all over again. And then die again. The song “Living in Effigy” takes us out of the mythological realm and back into reality. Tell me about that one.
So, the divide between rural and city living in mainland China is really huge. There’s always a massive brain drain out of all the villages because some of them don’t even have electricity. All the young people want to go to the cities, live a modern life and earn a lot of money. So, all their parents and extended families are left in these rural villages. Now, a big thing in Chinese culture is funeral portraits. Japan and Korea also do it. But because these Chinese villages are so rural, some of the old people there never had any photographs taken of them. So, there was this one photographer, maybe five or 10 years ago, who would go around the villages taking pictures of the old people so they could use it at their funerals when the time came. 44 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
I was thinking about that, and the kids who leave have essentially abandoned their parents. In their minds, their parents are kind of already dead. And that sounds pretty death metal to me. The parents are living in effigy in the kids’ minds. You sing in English and Mandarin. How do you decide which songs are suited for which language?
On previous albums, I sing more history stuff, so I’d sing that in English and sing the more cultural stuff in Chinese. But everything on the new record is cultural stuff, so I had to switch it up. If there was a part I specifically wanted [RTS guitarist/vocalist] Mike [Chavez] to sing, it obviously had to be in English. On “Visions of Sin,” which is the song with the most Chinese on this record, I wanted to capture that Bolt Thrower feel, but give it a twist by singing in Mandarin rather than English. When you sing in English, the way the words fall across the music has to sound right in conversational English, for the most part. But if you look at other languages, like Mandarin or Japanese, your voice doesn’t have to fall into normal speaking patterns when you sing. You’re free to play around with putting the emphasis on the wrong syllables or to elongate syllables in the wrong way.
never really thought about writing about anything else. It just felt natural to me. I write about anime stuff for HGT, but those are all kind of written backwards. I make the mouth sounds first, then I come up with silly rhyming stuff that doesn’t fit the mouth sounds at all. Good segue. Earlier this year, Houkago Grind Time managed to cram five songs onto a Decibel flexi, including “I Woke up in Another World where Albert-niichan Pivoted Decibel Magazine to Reviewing Seishun Love Comedy” and “Sleazy Derek Visits the Weeb Dungeon.” Obviously, you’re coming from a very different place with HGT than you are in Ripped to Shreds.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a reaction to what I write about in RTS. HGT is just about stuff that I personally love. I guess I could write about video games if they’re from a very weeby point of view—like anime video games. I would say the subject matter for HGT is also very natural. I know a lot about it, I really love it, and I can easily write that stuff. It’s just kind of serendipitous that it’s a humorous contrast to RTS. The new HGT album is called Koncertos of Kawaiiness: Stealing Jon Chang’s Ideas, a Book by Andrew Lee. Are you in touch with Jon Chang from Discordance Axis?
You’re often asked about why RTS songs are based in Chinese history or culture, and you’ve always responded, rightly, that Asian-Americans don’t have much representation in metal, so you feel it’s your duty to be a bit of an ambassador. But does that ever feel like a burden?
I don’t talk with him a whole lot, but I have talked with him some. I have not shown him the new record because I don’t like showing my heroes my records. [Laughs] I don’t want to know if they don’t like it.
I’m not sure. I love video games, for instance, and I love a lot of bands that sing about video games. But when I think about writing video game lyrics, it doesn’t work for me. I guess I
There’s a song on the album called “Why Do You Post?” Well, why do you?
I ask myself that every day, dude. I don’t know why I post.
PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER JOHNSTON
but they all have different punishments depending on what bad things you’ve done. Say if you cheated on your wife or husband in life, you’d have your fingers continually ripped out over and over again. If you gossiped, you’d have your tongue ripped out.
the
definitive stories
behind extreme music’s
definitive albums
Savage Messiah the making of Arch Enemy’s Wages of Sin NOVEMBER 2024 : 4 6 : DECIBEL
by
joseph schafer
T
DBHOF239
ARCH ENEMY Wages of Sin TOY’S FACTORY APRIL 25 , 2001
Dark thoughts rising up
hough it may seem difficult to imagine now, at the turn of the millennium, Arch Enemy were not the world-beating commercial juggernauts they are today. The Swedish quintet’s pedigree was unassailable: Michael Amott had helped codify melodic death metal as a genre with his contributions to Carcass’s Heartwork album in 1993. In Arch Enemy, he formed half of a skintight lead guitar duo with his brother, Christopher. Speaking of brothers, drummer Daniel Erlandsson’s elder sibling had helped craft the other melodic death metal ur-text, At the Gates’ Slaughter of the Soul. Bassist Sharlee D’Angelo laid down the low end with both King Diamond and Mercyful Fate, not to mention put in work with Dismember and Witchery. But those bona fides hadn’t translated to accolades. Though Arch Enemy were massive in Japan, they were slumming it as European tour openers. Part of the problem could be attributed to vocalist Johan Liiva, who was a talented singer but unable to commit to touring. The bigger problem, though, was paradoxically the band’s collective résumés. Arch Enemy’s most notable feature was its members’ other associations; they’d yet to carve out a unique identity. A change was in order: While renegotiating their contract with Century Media, the band parted ways somewhat amicably with Liiva and reconfigured their sound. Drawing inspiration from the European power metal bands that dominated the charts in Japan, Arch Enemy shifted focus to memorability and classic tropes rather than riffs. The Amott brothers tuned up to a relatively legible C-standard and doubled down on melodies and solos. On songs like “Ravenous” and the indomitable “Dead Bury Their Dead,” the band picked up the thread that Chuck Schuldiner laid down when Death covered Judas Priest’s “Painkiller” five years earlier. The result was Arch Enemy’s long-desired commercial breakthrough and the masterpiece of their career: Wages of Sin. But the band’s most canny maneuver—maybe the smartest and most daring decision they ever made—was enlisting Angela Gossow as their vocalist. Drawing inspiration from death metal’s Floridian founders, Gossow’s furious shrieks delivered all the heft and menace that guitars would have provided in other bands, and then some. In the studio, she pushed the band to strip every ounce of fat from their songs with drill sergeant discipline reminiscent of Henry Rollins. Though she was unassuming at a glance, the Dortmunder proved to be a commanding and imperious performer onstage. Despite her obvious surplus of talent, Gossow was seen as a high-risk, high-reward choice. To turn that potential weakness into a strength, Arch Enemy concealed her identity and asked fans to guess who she was as part of one of metal’s first viral online marketing campaigns. Gossow was not the first woman to sing in an extreme metal band—Arch Enemy are quick to reverently cite Nuclear Death’s Lori Bravo and Holy Moses’ Sabrina Classen as predecessors. But with all due respect, she’s the first woman singing in an extreme metal band that broke through the underground, and her undeniable excellence helped inspire a generation of singers including her eventual successor, Alissa White-Gluz. Female-fronted isn’t a genre, but it is a phenomenon worth celebrating, and that celebration begins with Wages of Sin, the album that helped set the template for melodeath’s commercially unstoppable second wave and gave Arch Enemy an achievement that stands on its own merits. D E C I B E L : 47 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 4
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What was the state of affairs in Arch Enemy when you were writing Wages of Sin? DANIEL ERLANDSSON: We were coming home from the touring cycle for Burning Bridges and starting to write music again. The vibe of the band was good in rehearsals while putting the songs together. At that point, we’d released three albums, and the first two were mainly received in Japan. When Burning Bridges came out, we started to see more interest from the rest of the world. We wanted to go to new places and be able to tour the U.S. and Europe on our own, not just in Japan. MICHAEL AMOTT: We’d gotten a manager at Sanctuary U.K., and with that came some talks about renegotiating our record deal with Century Media. So, while that was going on, we could take more time while writing. At that time, we all lived in close proximity, so we were rehearsing a lot, being creative and feeling inspired. We wrote face-to-face in the rehearsal rooms, sweating it out, then we would go home and orchestrate other parts and bring them back in. It came together pretty quickly. But it was all instrumental. SHARLEE D’ANGELO: Everybody was enthusiastic, Michael and Christopher were writing a lot together back then and getting new ideas all the time. Somebody would bring an idea to rehearsal, and we would play it over and over, rearrange it or harmonize it, and then build something else around it. We felt we had something strong, even though we didn’t have a singer, which was a problem.
Please tell the story of Johan Liiva’s departure from Arch Enemy. M. AMOTT: Johan is one of my oldest friends. I’m still in touch with him on a regular basis, and we talk all the time. I met him for the first time in 1986, and we’ve had several bands and projects together over the years, but at that point in time, he had his own printing business and couldn’t commit to touring. It was difficult. We were writing killer material that we were pretty excited about, but in the back of our minds, we knew that Johan couldn’t commit to tours. He had another life. The rest of us didn’t have a life apart from metal. That was a problem. Our manager at the time came over to visit me in Sweden. I was playing him rehearsal tapes of the new songs and he asked the question, “Do you think Johan is the right singer for these songs?” That surprised me. Even with the difficulty of his not being able to commit to touring, he was our singer, and we were not thinking about a change. But the question that our manager asked us planted that seed in our minds. We started to think that if we were going to take this band to the next level, we had to think
“I’ve said this before a thousand times: Having a woman in the band was not a recipe for success back then.”
MICHA E L A MOT T about another singer. It was a sad time, but it turned into a good thing. CHRISTOPHER AMOTT: I remember it being a very difficult decision for us. Johan is a wonderful guy, but there was a feeling that maybe it wasn’t an ideal fit. A change was needed in order to move the band in the direction we wanted. ERLANDSSON: We wanted to take the next step with the band, to get bigger and be able to tour more and stay out for longer periods of time. Johan was the only one in the band with a fulltime job at that point; I had recently quit my full-time job to be free to travel. It’s a critical step when you’re taking a step away from the comfort of a full-time job and then into the unknown to become a full-time musician. That was why it didn’t work out with Johan. D’ANGELO: Johan wasn’t ready to commit to touring. He had a regular job and couldn’t get time off. I think his enthusiasm had waned a little bit. As far as I know, Michael and he had a discussion where they agreed that he should leave the band, and we would move forward without him. I don’t think he was happy about it at first, but in hindsight he realized he couldn’t do the NOVEMBER 2024 : 4 8 : DECIBEL
kind of schedule that we did. He’s said, “I would have gone insane.” How did Angela Gossow come to be the band’s vocalist? Were you familiar with her before? M. AMOTT: Century Media flew me to their home office in Germany to do some press for Burning Bridges, which was about to come out. During those endless phone interviews, I talked to one female webzine person, Angela, who asked very good questions. In the interview, she mentioned that she was going to come to a show that we were going to play since the tour had already been announced. When she showed up to the show, she came backstage. At the time, we were pretty accessible, so she got to meet us. It was pretty sneaky; she just gave us a videotape and a demo tape of her band, Mistress. When I got home months later, I popped in the VHS tape. It was a small show with a small crowd, but you could tell she had a lot of charisma. She was doing the extreme metal vocal style. I thought that was interesting. I showed the tape to my brother and we added her name to a list of people that we thought could be a vocalist for Arch Enemy.
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Once her name was on the list, it was hard not to think about what the band would be like with her. She had killer vocals, charisma and a great look. I’ve said this before a thousand times: Having a woman in the band was not a recipe for success back then. I contacted her on the phone and she came to Sweden. We didn’t even do demos with her; we went right in and recorded the album. C. AMOTT: I pushed to get her into the band from the first time her name was thrown into the mix. Her brutal singing style, accompanied by her stage presence, was an undeniably impressive combination. I was convinced it would be a winning concept together with our songs and guitar work. ANGELA GOSSOW: I had been playing in underground bands, but living off death metal and traveling the world wasn’t something I was looking for in a future job because it didn’t seem like it would pay well, so I was playing local gigs. I was also writing for a little fanzine, and I interviewed Michael for it at a show in 1999. I passed him a demo and said, “If you ever want to have a local opener, please get in touch.” Eventually, he played the demo tape to Chris, and Chris was blown away. Michael called me a couple of months later and said, “Do you want to try out singing on a couple of Arch Enemy tracks? I think we are separating from our singer.” It seemed like a joke for a German girl from Cologne to get that call, but I did travel to Sweden and ended up in Studio Fredman. I thought they were going to try out a couple of other singers. It wasn’t like they had decided to have me join the band. We just recorded the song “Enemy Within,” and after that, they asked me if I wanted to do the rest of the record.
bit. We realized what kinds of songs were fun to play live, which influenced the album’s material to be a little bit more straightforward at times. We started to lean more towards traditional song structures, whereas before we would throw all the riffs that we had at the wall and see what sticks—you know, the good ol’ old-school death metal way of doing things. GOSSOW: There was already heavy competition when it came to extreme sounds from Sweden. Arch Enemy were always the supporting band on tour. I think Michael saw some potential for them to get a completely new start. Some people probably thought Arch Enemy wasn’t extreme enough anyway because they were always very melodic. Wages of Sin is kind of a hybrid. It’s not death metal; it’s classic heavy metal with death metal vocals. C. AMOTT: I don’t think any of us ever thought about genres in that way. We just wrote and played what we liked. The twin-guitar sound is one of the core elements of Arch Enemy’s style. My brother and I always focused on perfecting the guitar arrangements and making sure the harmonies and timing between us were as clean and tight as possible. In regard to changing tuning, we liked the brighter, clearer tone. We felt it wouldn’t diminish the perceived “heaviness.” We knew a lot of that comes from dynamics in the arrangement and tempo as opposed to tuning down.
Wages of Sin marks a turning point in Arch Enemy’s sound and an updated configuration of melodic death metal. What caused that change? M. AMOTT: New ideas were creeping in over time; the guitar solos were getting more adventurous, and the melodic sensibility was getting more advanced. A lot of that was inspired by the Japanese metal market. Over there, power metal and melodic traditional heavy metal bands like Helloween, Blind Guardian and Gamma Ray were still popular. We were going over there every year, but didn’t fit into the Japanese metal scene. Those bands were bouncy and had melodic vocals; we weren’t going to do all that, but it was cool to see how fans reacted to the melodies, guitar solos and harmonies. We started to push that even further to the forefront. Riffs took a backseat from that point on. D’ANGELO: Burning Bridges was the first album that we did any extensive touring behind. Because of having done that, the music changed a little NOVEMBER 2024 : 50 : DECIBEL
ERLANDSSON: If you think about seminal albums,
such as Slaughter of the Soul, The Jester Race or Heartwork, you can hear other bands imitating the sound of those albums. I think that’s because those albums came at the point where the bands had developed their own style. Arch Enemy, on the other hand, was a mix of different styles, making it harder to copy. We were more rooted in classic metal like Judas Priest and Slayer, and Wages was building on that tradition. What specifically did Angela bring to Arch Enemy’s music that wasn’t present before? D’ANGELO: Her voice and delivery were the things
that we were missing before. When I heard her voice on the new songs, I thought, “Wow! This is what I imagined it would be, and then some.” Another thing was that she pointed out where the songs had a few too many parts. She could say, “That part there: What’s it doing? It doesn’t kick my ass. I don’t know why it’s there.” I always liked that directness that she had. She’s close to her own thoughts and isn’t afraid to say, “No, I won’t do that.” She became an editor for us, which streamlined the music even more. It was good to have somebody with an outside perspective. That was a big contribution from her. ERLANDSSON: The thing that Angela brought was her personality and attitude. She brought an edge to the band that was more interesting. Her voice sits in a higher register than Johan’s,
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ARCH ENEMY wages of sin “Some people liked my vocals, but didn’t like that I’m a woman. There was a lot of sexism. That’s something I wasn’t prepared for. I’m a heartfelt person. I didn’t have that thick shell. I had to learn not to let it affect me because you can’t stop people from acting the way they do.”
A NG E LA G O SSOW which changes the sound. She almost sounded like she could sing in a black metal band. Once we got onstage, she almost had a different personality. That’s the edge that I’m talking about. When she started singing, you could tell from the faces in the crowd that people were getting blown away on a nightly basis. Sometimes, when we were playing on small stages at the beginning of the Wages campaign, she would stand in front of the drum kit, and I swear that I could hear her screaming over the music acoustically, not through the mic. She was loud. M. AMOTT: She’s an aggressive person, or she was that at that time. When you hear her on those first albums with Arch Enemy, you can tell she was an angry person. She was singing the way she was doing it for a reason, and that was cool. She also had a “fuck you!” rebellious attitude, and she wrote that into some great lyrics. She was the real deal, and I think people could sense that. It has been said that as many people as she attracted, she also scared away because she was so intense. There was no way of taming that beast, and she unleashed that onstage. She’d grown up in the death metal scene. She’s been in the mosh pit for Death, Testament and Carcass shows in the early ’90s—that’s where she came from. But, of course, she was also a beautiful blonde woman. That can be a bit taboo, but that dichotomy made her interesting. How did you come to the decision to hide Angela’s identity when the album was announced? M. AMOTT: We were a band on a bigger record
label that had three albums out, and we had a fan base already. If we were a new band with a woman singer, I don’t know if we would have been approached by a label. So, we decided to keep it a secret. We had this basic website since the ’90s. We took everything down and put up a page with some new graphics and a compilation of sound samples [from Wages of Sin] that played when you clicked on it. The site basically said, “Hey, we’ve got some new music recorded with a new singer. Here’s a taste. We hope to see you soon.” There was a comment section under it where people could guess who they thought was screaming. They thought it was Tompa [Lindberg] from At the Gates or Jeff Walker from Carcass. Nobody guessed that it was a woman. It was funny. We knew that some of those people would be upset when we released who the singer was. D’ANGELO: That was a deliberate decision. You know how people are when it comes to music. She wasn’t the first female singer in an extreme metal band, but still, it was a new thing. People have preconceived notions. We said, “If we tell people we have a girl singing now, they’ll only say, ‘I guess she’s pretty good for a girl,’ but if we play it to them and they say, ‘This sounds great,’ and then tell them it’s a girl, then they can’t go back on their word.” The smartest thing was not to tell anybody until they heard something first; since this was the early days of internet forums, social media as we know it today hadn’t started. We released a little snippet of the verse and chorus of “Ravenous.” NOVEMBER 2024 : 5 2 : DECIBEL
When that was out, there was a lot of discussion on metal forums, and everything was positive. People were guessing if the singer was a guy from one band or another. It was fun. We didn’t tell anybody that didn’t need to know. Even our record label and manager didn’t know at first. Once they heard it, they weren’t sure how it would be received, but we had made up our minds. It took a little bit of energy to keep it a secret, but it was worth it. GOSSOW: That was our idea. We didn’t want to diminish the musical impact by putting a picture of a cute girl out. We were very aware that there could be a lot of prejudice one way or the other. That coin has two sides. There are a lot of women who have gotten it easy because they look great, and that’s why they have gotten so far. Or, you get, “She’s pretty good for a woman, but not good enough.” We didn’t want to have either. We wanted to let the music speak for itself, not my gender or my looks. To me, metal wasn’t about male or female; metal was for me about the way it sounded and how it made me feel. So, you were supportive of the idea? GOSSOW: I was very supportive of the idea. I didn’t want to release my picture. I’d be judged upon my outer appearance. I just wanted to be the right vocalist for the band, not the poster girl for anything. I didn’t want to be reduced to that. Plus, I come from marketing, so I thought keeping that secret was a good idea. It was exciting for us, like a game that we played.
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What was the touring like for Wages of Sin? C. AMOTT: My standout memory is our first show
with Angela. It was at the Troubadour club in L.A., and it was great. I remember both the crowd and the band being super high-energy. At that point, we knew we had a great lineup. D’ANGELO: We did one warm-up show at the Troubadour in Hollywood. Then we did some press in L.A. and went straight to a headlining tour in Japan, which started in March of 2002. Wages of Sin immediately became our biggest success in Japan to date. Normally, people do two or three shows when they go to Japan, but we did seven or eight, which was the kind of tour that bigger bands like Helloween had done before us. We’d never had such a welcome before there. We played a sold-out show at a venue in Tokyo called the Akasaka Blitz, which holds around 2,000 people; we had never played anything that big before. After that show, our then-manager stepped into the dressing room and said to Angela, “One would think that you have been on the big stages all your life,” and she said, “I have in here,” and pointed to her head. M. AMOTT: We were off to the races and started touring a lot at that point. We went out on a death metal bill in the States sandwiched between Hate Eternal and Nile as the headliner, with Origin opening. We stuck out like a sore thumb on that tour. Our power-death metal hybrid didn’t fit into that bill, but we sold a lot of tickets, that’s for sure. Everybody had found out about our lineup by that time. We would go onstage and open with “Enemy Within,” and after the piano intro, Angela would rush to the front of the stage and scream. People’s jaws would drop. They’d throw their beers in the air and scream, or look at each other and go, “What the fuck?” That reaction went on for years. We had no budget for effects, but we didn’t need it. She was our special effect. How was Wages of Sin received when it was released? ERLANDSSON: The reception was overwhelmingly
positive from all corners. I remember that people were blown away by the production. Compared to how Arch Enemy sounded on the previous three albums, it was a more modern sound. Everything came up to the surface in the mix, and you can hear all the drum notes, guitars and bass. Everything is there, and you can hear it in your face. I remember feeling it was a huge step forward in every aspect of the band, and people could also hear the same thing. GOSSOW: I think it’s the first Arch Enemy record that sold well for Century Media. It hit Japan like a bomb. Japan is still much more traditional than Northern Europe or America, so for them it was mind-blowing to have a woman doing those vocals.
M. AMOTT: We were renegotiating our contract with Century Media, but we had a separate deal with Toy’s Factory Records in Japan, so the record came out a year earlier there. Japan was the only territory where we had something to lose. I don’t care if people say they were at those early shows everywhere in the world, the States and Europe. I know they weren’t—because there was nobody there. In Europe and the States, I felt that we were starting from zero, so the press could only do us good. But in Japan? Yeah, that was a bit risky, but they loved the record and Angela. In the end, when Wages of Sin finally came out in the rest of the world, it made a big impact. That was one of those times in my career when I felt the gears shift. Everything got more intense. Everything felt a lot bigger, and there was more interest in working with us. Of course, it’d been a long time coming, in a sense, since I’d stepped away from Carcass in ’93 after putting so much work into Heartwork. [After Wages of Sin] I was finally back on the world stage again, in a way. That was a great feeling.
It seems as though Wages of Sin and Angela’s performance especially opened the possibility for women to take more prominent artistic roles in extreme metal. Do you think that’s true? ERLANDSSON: I had also heard women singing,
such as Sabina Classen in Holy Moses and a few more examples, but I had never heard anyone sing the way Angela did. That was the key: how she did it, how she presented herself onstage, and the confidence in her attitude. That’s what impressed people and opened the doors for others to do the same thing. D’ANGELO: The significant impact of Wages of Sin was that it was one of the first successful NOVEMBER 2024 : 5 4 : DECIBEL
extreme metal albums with a female singer. There had been a few before, but not on the same level. Angela became kind of a figurehead for that, and a bit of a role model for girls who were younger back then. I think that there are a lot of women in metal now who say the album meant a lot to them when they were younger because it showed them that you can do extreme metal as a woman, that it wasn’t only for people like David Vincent and nobody else. GOSSOW: I was the first female metal singer that was commercially successful worldwide. Everybody else was kind of stuck trading cassettes. Nowadays, I meet a lot of great vocalists that I love who say, “You were one of the first women I heard doing these vocals, and you are the reason I started doing it.” Even Alissa [WhiteGluz, Arch Enemy’s current vocalist] said that when she heard Wages of Sin she wanted to sing like that. It was a spark that initiated a lot of female vocalists to try out more extreme vocals. M. AMOTT: I had been in the underground metal scene since the ’80s, so I knew about other bands [with women vocalists] that came before, but for a lot of people Angela was the first. She was the first in a band with that level of musicianship [and] songwriting. A lot of other women in bands have come out and said that she inspired them. It must be nice for her because there were some walls that had to be torn down. But at the same time, there was an upside. We got a lot of attention; not only because she was a woman, but because she was exciting. It was killer music by a killer band, with a killer vocalist that looked killer. Everything was 100 percent on target, and that was what gave us a lot of opportunities. People who know metal know that it doesn’t matter if you have a female singer
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or a good-looking singer. If the music isn’t there, it’s not going to last. There are tons of bands out there with female singers who wear more revealing clothes than Angela did, but nobody knows about those bands. Nobody cares about those bands because they don’t have the music. It’s got to be the whole package. That’s what we had. Did the fan reactions to Angela present any significant hardship for the band? GOSSOW: I had built up my self-confidence, but didn’t know what was coming at me. At the time, I felt only love and support from the little metal scene that I was a part of, but it wasn’t like that as soon as we went public. It’s true what they say—opinions are like assholes; everybody’s got one. I think nowadays it’s even worse than back in the day because we didn’t have Instagram, where there are a lot of trolls and haters. I didn’t have that, but obviously I had exposure to magazines, and we were pretty early on Myspace; we had a website, and there were metal forums. I got a lot of comments there. It was a mixed bag; some people liked my vocals, but didn’t like that I’m a woman. There was a lot of sexism. That’s something I wasn’t prepared for. I’m a heartfelt person. I didn’t have that thick shell. I had to learn not to let it affect me because you can’t stop people from acting the way they do. That was the toughest lesson, tougher than being on the road without a shower or good food. And it’s an important lesson because everybody has to learn it at some point in life, but I probably had to learn it faster than most. D’ANGELO: I think it affected her more than us. She had thick skin, but after a while, if you keep poking at the same place all the time, even the thickest skin is going to burst. I remember people on these online forums where the fine art of trolling had been invented would say mean
things. They couldn’t accept that the vocalist was a woman. All of a sudden, we weren’t good enough. They said we were some product or a teeny-bopper version of extreme metal because we had a woman singing. There were some negative aspects of it that way, but I don’t think it worked against us. We didn’t care. ERLANDSSON: I’m sure there were people who saw that move as something negative, that women shouldn’t be in metal. But people stood corrected when they saw Angela perform because she had more balls than the guys in the scene. It didn’t matter if there was any negativity because it was outweighed by all the positive feedback that we got. M. AMOTT: It was a mixed bag. Social media was not a thing yet, but forums and Myspace had come along. We were quickly resigned to the fact there are people out there who are never going to like Arch Enemy because we had Angela. I don’t see gender in that way. I want my metal to be good in a specific way, and it doesn’t matter if it’s got a female singer or a male singer as long as they’re doing a killer job. That goes for all instruments. We’ve got to be open-minded about that notion. Is there anything you would change about the album now? C. AMOTT: Not a thing. M. AMOTT: No. Of course, it’s of its time. It’s get-
ting up there in age, but it still sounds fresh. We’re still playing songs off that record. We always play “Ravenous” and “Dead Bury Their Dead.” On our last tour, we brought back “Burning Angel” and “Enemy Within.” Those songs still translate. We even still play the clean interlude piece, “Snow Bound.” “Ravenous” still opens up the pit, even though it was written in 1999. I think that’s a classic riff.
“If you think about seminal albums, such as Slaughter of the Soul, The Jester Race or Heartwork, you can hear other bands imitating the sound of those albums. Arch Enemy, on the other hand, was a mix of different styles, making it harder to copy. We were more rooted in classic metal like Judas Priest and Slayer, and Wages was building on that tradition.”
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It’s not easy to write a classic riff, but a good riff becomes a classic if it stands the test of time, and that riff has. A lot of “modern metal” is based on rhythmic patterns. Whereas guitar riffs with melodies baked upon chord progressions are what Arch Enemy was founded on. I think Wages of Sin is an album full of great riffs and melodies. I think it’s the perfect length; it’s not overbearing, and it doesn’t drag on. The songs are to the point, and you can get wrapped up in them in your head. I don’t want to change anything about it. D’ANGELO: It’s a little too clean. When I hear it today, there’s a part of me that would want to dirty it down a little bit. But that’s a small detail; it doesn’t bother me. It sounds good if you hear it at a club or somewhere over speakers, even with people speaking loudly in a bar. Other than that, I wouldn’t want to change anything about it. It’s not too long. It’s got the right amount of each type of song. It’s a darn good album, I’d say. ERLANDSSON: No. You wouldn’t go back and change your diary. I don’t see anything that I would be interested in changing. They say every album is a postcard from that specific time, and for that, it’s perfect the way it is. GOSSOW: No, I wouldn’t. It’s still my favorite record of my era in Arch Enemy. I love the sound because it wasn’t so polished. It’s real. It’s oldschool. When I listen to the record and I hear all the angry breakdowns and the fast drumming, I can still hear how much energy went into the record, and I remember the joy we had, knowing that we created something different and special. It’s a fun record to listen to and a full-on live smash as well. I think it stands the test of time.
RE!! MORE ANDD MO N, AN TION, ACTIO FI, AC SCII FI, LT, SC CULT, OR,, CU RROR HORR HO
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TO THE
COSMIC EXPLORERS
BLOOD I N C A N TAT I O N GO WHERE NO DEATH METAL BAND HAS GONE BEFORE STORY BY
PHOTOS BY
JEFF TREPPEL ALVINO SALCEDO lood Incantation initially exploded onto the galactic scene
with an ambitious goal: multiversal obliteration. Their embryonic state captured the chaos caused by the violent eruptions of celestial bodies. Rapid progression became apparent as they turned their sights to Earth next, where they chronicled the alien manipulation of mankind’s evolution. An insatiable thirst for new experiences took them on a detour to explore the fractal relationship between the I Ching, quantum physics, and psychedelic drugs via the interaction between electronics and soundwaves. Then they linked these different planes of reality together via a shimmering bridge of light. ¶ Now, the stargate opens, bringing a message from beyond. ¶ But what form does that message take? Does Blood Incantation’s fourth album revisit the Morbid Angel-influenced technical ecstasy of the Interdimensional Extinction EP and Starspawn? The sprawling progressive death metal of Hidden History of the Human Race and the A-side of the Luminescent Bridge maxi-single? Is it another lesson in Berlin School ambient like Timewave Zero and the maxi-single’s B-side? Or something else entirely? NOV 2024 | 58 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL
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TIMEWAVE ZERO IS NOT ONLY A BLOOD INCANTATION RECORD, IT’S POSSIBLY THE MOST BLOOD INCANTATION RECORD UP UNTIL ABSOLUTE ELSEWHERE IN THE SENSE THAT
IT’S EXACTLY WHAT THESE FOUR GUYS WANTED TO DO IN THAT EXACT WAY. P A U L
“We’ve announced the record and album cover and launched the pre-order, and no one has heard any music,” says guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky. “The public hasn’t heard any of this. And there’s a constant debate of ‘Is it ambient or not?’ Because it’s two 20-minute-long songs. I love it. [Laughs] That type of discourse essentially makes the band bigger, right? Because everyone’s asking the same question, and they’re talking to each other, and they’re getting other people involved that don’t even know what the hell that is. But then they listen to both versions of it and they’re like, ‘Oh, what are they gonna do next?’” The answer is simplicity in itself: It’s a synthesis of everything they’ve done to date. It’s the culmination of a plan they’ve had for a decade, but needed to hone their craft to execute. It’s both quintessentially Blood Incantation and a bold step towards new frontiers. It’s Absolute Elsewhere.
NEW AGE OF EARTH
Although they’ve been building to it for years (some of the riffs on the record date back to Starspawn), Absolute Elsewhere would never exist in its current form without a controversial tangent from their core sound. In 2022, as the world emerged from the worst of the pandemic, Blood Incantation released their third studio album, Timewave Zero. It consisted of two Tangerine Dream-inspired instrumental pieces composed and performed 60 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL
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by all four members on synthesizers. This wasn’t a side project or an EP (sorry, Encyclopedia Metallum), but the official follow-up to 2019 Decibel Album of the Year Hidden History of the Human Race. It proved divisive, with a core audience expecting more sick guitar riffs (although it opened the doors for unexpected new fans to get on the bandwagon). There was a lot of chatter on the internet about it being a stopgap measure, an easy post-lockdown release. The band’s guitarist and vocalist, Paul Riedl, sets the record straight: “Timewave Zero is not only a Blood Incantation record, it’s possibly the most Blood Incantation record up until Absolute Elsewhere in the sense that it’s exactly what these four guys wanted to do in that exact way. It wasn’t an afterthought, it wasn’t a spontaneous development, and it wasn’t a cop-out. We wanted to go into the Stargate with total freedom and see what we come out with on the other side.” When the world tour for Hidden History got canceled for obvious reasons in 2020, it afforded the band the luxury to completely redefine not only what they sounded like, but how they worked together. “We got a new practice space right when Hidden History came out,” Riedl continues, “and during the lockdowns we got an interface and a computer and set up the space so we could record all of our synth stations. We physically took down the drums and didn’t have the guitars out NOV 2024 |
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for like a year, and just wrote—or rather, before even attempting to write, we just improvised with each other for seriously a year. We still practiced as often as we did for our metal, four to six days a week, four to eight hours depending, and we would still show up and just jam completely free, no preconceived notions.” Drummer Isaac Faulk adds, “That spirit of improvisation and collaborative writing, which was at its height during Timewave Zero, really informed how we approached this new album; because even though some of the songs and parts of the songs were maybe instigated by one member or another, the new record is very collaborative. It allowed us to have a new shared language, a new shared inspiration to do things in some of those progressive sections where it goes for a long time and it goes into these different chord changes and different key changes; and we would not have done it that way had we not had that Timewave Zero experience.” In fact, resetting the timeline opened the door for Blood Incantation to throw aside genre boundaries, something they’ve been eager to do for almost their entire existence as a band. “We’ve talked about this at great length for the Timewave interview cycle, that we knew that was going to be a capstone on an era, and we had planned on doing that for many years,” says Kolontyrsky. “So, in terms of evolution, [Absolute Elsewhere] really was the first time we were like, ‘Okay, what are we doing now? And how are we going to do it? Let’s take everything we’ve learned from the last however many releases and just push the boundaries of what it means.”
IN SEARCH OF ANCIENT ASTRONAUTS
In hindsight, it’s not much of a surprise that Blood Incantation made an ambient record. Their loyalties have always been divided. Although they’re obviously students of death metal—Riedl name-checks French progressive death act Supuration as one of the band’s key influences and raves about Morbid Angel’s underappreciated Formulas Fatal to the Flesh—the Colorado-based quartet never hid their love for ’70s prog rock/krautrock/kosmische. When we speak to Faulk and Riedl over Zoom, Faulk sports a Yessongs T-shirt and Riedl pulls obscure prog LPs from his collection to share how his favorite albums’ designs inspired Blood Incantation’s record jackets and labels. The accompanying making-of documentary for Absolute Elsewhere, All Gates Open, features an extended sequence of them record shopping in Berlin and debating whether to spend three figures on first pressings of Ash Ra Tempel vinyl. The very title Absolute Elsewhere (as well as the album’s governing philosophy) was inspired by a fateful crate dig by Faulk: “When I was at Recollect [Records] here in Denver, I found
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this record that was called Absolute Elsewhere [In Search of Ancient Gods] by Paul Fishman and a few other pretty notable musicians, like Bill Bruford from Yes and King Crimson. I pulled it up, and it’s music based on Erich von Däniken [author of the infamous 1968 book Chariots of the Gods?]. And I’m looking at it like, surely Paul must have heard this record. I sent him a picture. I'm like, ‘Hey, do you know this record?’ And he was like, ‘No, what is that?’ I had no idea what it was gonna sound like. I just knew it was from the early ’70s. There are all these synths and flute and different instruments and no vocals. And I’m like, ‘Okay, this is gonna be pretty interesting.’ “It turns out—and I bought this after Hidden History had come out—that this record also has a booklet that is almost identical to the Hidden History booklet that Paul made, having never seen this record ever. It’s super similar—ancient aliens, weird conspiracy, all this New Age kind of stuff. And I’m like, ‘How does this album exist and we had never heard it?’” But it inspired more than just a title. As Riedl explains, “On the B-side, there’s crazy drone, ambient, noise stuff. So even back then, in ’78, it was already ambitious to have this traditional prog sound on these first three A-side songs, and then it’s got the interludes and this cinematic stuff. It was a very free-spirited album. “And that guy, Paul Fishman, has heard Absolute Elsewhere, our Absolute Elsewhere, and he’s flattered and impressed and gave us his blessing,” Riedl reveals. “We’re not aping this style. We’re channeling its essence and bringing this energy of creative freedom and stuff into our project as a tribute or a nod, more so than an overt influence, if that makes sense. We weren’t like, ‘We need to make a part that sounds like Absolute Elsewhere.’ We were like, we just want to be free.”
CROSSING THE RUBYCON
The idea of freedom keeps coming up in our conversations about Absolute Elsewhere (the album, not the band). The band chafes at the idea of being locked into the constraints of death metal conventions. Jeff Barrett, their laconic bassist, connects the luminescent bridge between the Timewave writing sessions and this: “Timewave was important for us to learn how to play together in a different way, and I think that came through with this record, where we’re experimenting and jamming a little bit more than we have in the past, breaking down some different walls, boundaries or whatever, and just letting our freak flag fly as high as we can.” Which is to say, the album title fits perfectly. Blood Incantation took two genres that should not exist anywhere near one another, death metal and ambient music, and combined them into one incredible singularity. 62 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL
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M O R R I S
K O L O N T Y R S K Y
“The concern of things being metal enough or brutal enough?” Riedl posits. “This is something that we are completely unshackled by via Timewave. We completely opened our own minds, as well as our musical ambitions, to this. The freedom of like, no, there’s no such thing as ‘this isn’t a Blood Incantation thing’ in our band. What other bands are doing, there are plenty of things that are metal and non-metal, but Blood Incantation exists at the nexus of these things. Imagine if you had a checkerboard between a bunch of white and black squares. We exist on that dividing line between the two.” Writing sessions started in earnest back in 2021. “Obliquity of the Ecliptic,” from 2023’s Luminescent Bridge, originated from that process—but the band decided it didn’t fit in with the other material they’d developed. Riedl explains why succinctly: “It doesn’t suit the album. It needs to have its own breathing room, and the album needs to be unfettered by our past style or ambitions.” They wanted to do something different this time; not just musically, but structurally as well. Faulk tells us that the band found inspiration for the album’s structure in their own previous work. Besides the two side-long pieces on Timewave Zero, Hidden History’s B-side consisted of the jawdropping 18-minute “Awakening from the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul),” and Starspawn NOV 2024 |
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featured the separated “Vitrification of Blood” two-parter. The next step seemed fairly obvious. “With Yes and albums like Relayer or Close to the Edge where there’s this big side-long piece of music, to us that was always very exciting to do as a band,” explains Faulk, “especially because we’ve always thought of ourselves as progressive in a sense—but not like we’re just doing progressive death metal like it has been talked about in modern times. It’s more like, ‘Okay, how did bands through the last 40 years approach music in a new way?’ And a lot of times, doing these longer pieces of music allows you to explore so many different things in one go. That’s the appeal to it. “And since we had done that before, it allowed us to think, ‘How do we take this to the next level? What’s the most Blood Incantation thing we can do right now?’ We had just done Timewave, where it’s two side-long kosmische pieces. So, why not take that idea, but do it in a metal capacity, with all this other stuff that we also want to do, and then allowing us that freedom to explore other keys and other melodies and motifs that maybe we would have been like, ‘Oh, that’s not metal enough’ before, but now we have that freedom to just be like, ‘Well, why not try?’” Although Faulk has main songwriting credit for Absolute Elsewhere’s “The Stargate,” the other members get “contributions by” credits. And “The Message,” the second track, shares credit between Riedl and Kolontyrsky. Kolontyrsky
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WE’RE EXPERIMENTING AND JAMMING A LITTLE BIT MORE THAN WE HAVE IN THE PAST, BREAKING DOWN SOME DIFFERENT WALLS,
AND JUST LETTING OUR FREAK FLAG FLY AS HIGH AS WE CAN. J E F F
is psyched to have been a bigger part of the process. “I feel like this is the most I’ve personally contributed beyond solos or arrangement ideas, like the actual skeleton of a song,” he enthuses. “And that’s mainly for ‘The Message.’ It’s Paul’s old riffs and my old riffs put together with Jeff and Isaac’s input, and I fleshed out a bunch of it.” The new approach had its own challenges. You can’t exactly try out brand new 20-minute pieces in front of an unfamiliar crowd. For a band that road-tested material prior to each of its previous albums, this time “freedom” meant relying on their own instincts. “We didn’t play any of this live in front of an audience ever before finishing writing and recording,” Barrett shares. “Whereas Starspawn [and Hidden History], we had been playing those songs on tour well before we went into the studio to record them. We were able to really look into how we were performing it every night and make changes on the fly, so when we were in the studio we had a better understanding of how the songs could develop. We didn’t have the luxury of doing that. This was just pre-production in our practice space, jamming. And then eventually Noisy Rooms [Rehearsal Space] in Berlin.”
KRAUTROCK
If you check your maps app of choice, you’ll see that Berlin is a long way from Colorado. With Absolute Elsewhere written and demoed, the band 64 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL
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needed somewhere to record. And if German experimental bands are a big part of your influence, why not go to the source? The idea came from producer Arthur Rizk. He had mixed and mastered Luminescent Bridge and worked with the various band members in other projects like Wayfarer and Spectral Voice, but this was his first time present in the studio for the recording of a Blood Incantation full-length. He suggested going to Hansa Studios in Berlin, a legendary location that hosted influential artists like Tangerine Dream, David Bowie, Wire… and Kreator. “I had just recorded Kreator there in 2022; it was such an incredible experience tracking in there,” Rizk tells us over email. “Yes, the history adds a certain amount of magic for sure, but the Hansa people also preserved most of the original gear from the ’70s. Gear that David Bowie and Brian Eno used, and [a] just plain brilliantsounding room altogether. Being away from home keeps everyone focused on a monumental task, and being in Berlin is inspiring, as it is the greatest melting pot in Europe. It is like flying to New York or London to record; same thing, legendary vibes.” The members of Blood Incantation all found Rizk easy to work with due to both their shared experiences and his own musical CV (as both a musician in bands like Eternal Champion and Sumerlands and a producer for, well, pretty NOV 2024 |
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much everyone). You can see it in the documentary—he’s basically a fifth member of the band, comfortable and joking with everyone. “They kind of reminded me of the Beatles in Peter Jackson’s Get Back,” Rizk shares. “The parallel is that the guys would come into the studio and there were synthesizers/acoustic percussion/guitars/pianos everywhere. People would just hop on different things and mess around with different stuff and, just fooling around, start coming up with amazing stuff that had nothing to do with what we were working on! It would take an hour and a half sometimes to even get started on anything relevant. We were all just so psyched to be there together, and we were not taking any moment for granted.” “One day, we came to a bit of a creative impasse,” Riedl tells us. “There were maybe so many ideas in the pot that everyone’s getting a little burnt out. And a typical producer would be like, ‘Guys, we’re wasting money here. You know, time is money. We’re wasting time in the studio. We got to get this thing,’ which would only serve to further compound the stress in the studio. Art was like, ‘You know what? We’re just gonna jam, everyone’s gonna hang out, and we’re gonna switch instruments and we can just play.’ And he encouraged us to have that playful sense of freedom and non-pressure, which then cracked open the rapport between us and Nicklas, who we had met as fans of his band and punished him at festivals all over the world. And, you know, he’s the Swedish guy. They’re not the most open people in a new environment, you know? And he also developed this instantaneous rapport through improvising, where he was like, Wait, I’m in a safe place.” Which brings us to the other contributors.
TRANS EUROPA EXPRESS
Eagle-eyed fans will notice that, although the four permanent members are credited with “additional synthesizers” on the songs, there’s someone unexpected with a “Lead Synthesizer” credit: Hällas keyboardist Nicklas Malmqvist. “When we approached him at the Denver show that Hällas was playing, Paul had made a tape of these super rough demos that we had been working on, and he was definitely like, ‘Who the hell are these guys?’” Barrett laughs. “We surrounded him,” adds Kolontyrsky. “We’re like, ‘Please take this thing.’ And he was so nervous. He fumbled around and dropped it on the ground.” “I know I had met them once before, I think, or maybe twice, at some festival, small festival in Europe,” Malmqvist admits. “But I didn’t know them at all.” Thankfully, the drummer for that proggy hard rock act, Kasper Eriksson, knew exactly who they were, and facilitated the eventual collaboration between Malmqvist and Blood Incantation in Berlin.
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Malmqvist recalls being nervous about it: “I am not a metalhead, actually, and I have no idea about death metal, so I didn’t know if they would like what I was, what I would do, or anything.” The guys in Blood Incantation specifically wanted it that way. Riedl lays out their reasoning: “It’s better that he doesn’t listen to death metal and doesn't fall into the same tonal tropes that guys like us do when you make keyboard accoutrements to death metal music. It’s only going to sound in the keys and key changes that we think of, same as guitars and tritones and these dark, dark-sounding motifs. He doesn’t think about music at all like that. And so he quadrupled the potential of the initial [compositions]—because we did send him rudimentary synth ideas. The pre-production demos have synths all over them, and most of those parts that we’re playing, we just played the same on the final version. But like the Minimoog solo in ‘The Stargate,’ and all the Mellotron flute stuff—that’s Nicklas’ ear, hearing his own interpretation of the environment we created without us being like, ‘Okay, put the Mellotron flute here.’” Malmqvist worked so well with the guys that he’s touring with Blood Incantation on their upcoming North American trek—and Kolontyrsky, for one, suggests he wouldn’t mind if Malmqvist joined full-time. In addition to Malmqvist’s contributions, two other guests play a key role on the album: Sijjin singer Malte Gericke, who provided additional death growls, and longtime member of Tangerine Dream (and inheritor of Edgar Froese’s mantle), Thorsten Quaeschning. The band had initially bandied about the notion as a “what if”-type endeavor, but when they got to Berlin, they discovered that their product manager at Century Media had successfully tracked Quaeschning down. So, they reached out. And then they waited. And waited. Until, towards the very end of their tenure in Germany, they got a call that he’d be showing up at the studio that very day. They played the album for him, sans Riedl’s vocals (which hadn’t been recorded yet), to see if any inspiration jumped out at him during “Tablet II” of “The Stargate.” “So, we listened through the whole thing, and the whole time I was afraid to look back,” laughs Faulk. “I did look over for a second, and he’s just very stoic, very German. And the album finishes. And it’s silence, no one’s saying anything. And we’re like, ‘So, yeah, what did you think?’ He’s like, ‘Oh yeah, interesting.’ And we’re like, ‘Oh man, he probably hated it.’ And then he goes on to just basically explain the music theory of our album to us. We’re all just like, ‘Yeah, I think I know what you’re talking about?’” Quaeschning wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the world of extreme music—he’s collaborated 66 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL
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in the past with Attila Csihar of Mayhem notoriety. He, too, lacked familiarity with Blood Incantation, but he immediately recognized kindred spirits. “I think they had a very close connection to krautrock, which is a strange term, to be honest, especially to a German, but we all know what’s meant if someone says krautrock,” says Quaeschning. “It was easy to play with them, or for them. We’d had some days in Hansa studio, and then the sequence of stuff was recorded at my studio because it’s much easier—everything is connected with the big modular system there and things like that. There were not so many things we disagreed on.” For their part, the band was awed that the sounds used on Berlin School masterpieces found their way onto their record. According to Kolontyrsky, “He was sampling exact Mellotron sounds from Phaedra and Rubycon, like sounds Edgar Froese himself recorded, and he did that on purpose because he knew that’s our favorite. He could tell what we were getting at, what we wanted.” Quaeschning was so impressed by Blood Incantation as people that he introduced them to another of their idols. “One of them was wearing an Ash Ra Tempel T-shirt on the first day,” Quaeschning recalls. “And I thought, well, they’re such nice guys that I called Harald Grosskopf, a good friend of mine—he’s from NOV 2024 |
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Ashra [the second incarnation of the band]— [and asked] if he would be able to send a small message. And he did it, and it was so great.” Although they didn’t necessarily convince Malmqvist or Quaeschning to don Cannibal Corpse sweatpants (Quaeschning prefers progressive and gothic metal), Blood Incantation did have an unexpected convert: cover artist Steve R. Dodd. Dodd is known for his out-there sci-fi novel covers from the ’70s and ’80s and contributions to magazines like Omni and Starlog. The band had originally hoped to license a piece from him for the front of Absolute Elsewhere like they had for Luminescent Bridge. “There’s an Instagram account from this guy from Australia that posts a lot of sci-fi retro artwork,” Barrett explains. “And we were able to get Steve’s sister’s email from him, because Steve doesn’t deal with computers. We reached out to her and we were like, ‘We’re making this new record. It would be great to have Steve do a custom piece.’ And they really were pushing us to license something that already existed. We actually were sent hundreds of hi-res versions of his art from the Instagram account guy, but we narrowed it down and we found a piece. But, of course, it’s the one that Lord Dying used for their record [Mysterium Tremendum].” Kolontyrsky cuts in, laughing: “In retrospect, that would have been really funny to do, because we got so much shit for the Hidden History
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album art [by Bruce Pennington] to just, like, straight-up use another band’s cover art.” They prevailed in getting an original piece commissioned. “We sent [Steve] pretty much the entire back catalog of music,” Barrett continues, “along with some extremely rough demos, probably the same ones we gave to Nicklas, of Absolute Elsewhere. So, he was actually listening to the demos of Absolute Elsewhere while he was sketching and painting the covers. Having that connection there was pretty cool.” The respect, apparently, was mutual. “He says he paints listening to our music a lot now.”
SPITZENQUALITÄT
Don’t worry: The end result of Absolute Elsewhere not only features deep synthesizer soundscapes, but some absolutely killer death metal as well. “The Stargate” even opens with some of their most complex guitar work to date, a synthesis of what Riedl describes as the “sludgier” tone of Starspawn and the more “needly” sound of Hidden History. “I think the A-side is like the ultimate Blood Incantation song, from the demo to Timewave,” Riedl says. “As soon as you hit play on Absolute Elsewhere, it takes you all the way through ‘The Stargate’ and the farthest that that type of stuff can go while being in the framework of what Blood Incantation has always been trying to accomplish. And then once we have distilled 10 years’ worth of our interests and ambitions into one suite, we are like—what Timewave did to us as musicians, ‘The Message’ can do to Blood Incantation’s sound, where it’s like, what kind of music is this? It’s certainly brutal, technical, dense and intense death metal. But it’s also so much more, and it’s less compartmentalized, like on ‘Vitrification (Part One).’ It has a Pink Floyd part in the end, but because of the minor chord melody on this clean part, it sounds almost black metal. It’s this ominous, breathy, clean thing.” Barrett also names the “Pink Floyd part” as one of the highlights for him. “The Pink Floyd parts are like, yeah, that’s the jam for sure. It gets stuck in my head a lot. And also, the final riff on ‘The Stargate’—the super Morbid Angel one—I feel like it’s one of those forever riffs. It could have just kept going, but we were like, ‘No, have some weird Stargate meltdown sounds.’” “Obviously, the guitar solo in ‘The Stargate,’ the one that’s like two minutes, and the super Pink Floyd part, after the Mellotron solo, the Mellotron solo to the guitar solo, back-to-back, just gives me goosebumps and makes me want to cry every time I hear it,” Kolontyrsky adds. “I’m very proud of that moment, but also the crazy, insane blast beats with the vocals and the fast octave chords going with the Mellotron on top. There’s a part we called ‘Egyptian Stadium Paysage,’ as in Paysage d’Hiver, the black metal band. It’s one of the most unique atmospheres 68 : SEPTEMBER 2023 : DECIBEL
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I’ve ever heard, and it’s so mysterious, scary, beautiful and inviting at the same time. I feel like your head is exploding and rainbows are flying at it, but also demons at the same time.”
THIS FAR INTO THE GAME, 30 YEARS AFTER ACTUAL DEATH METAL, AND 50 YEARS AFTER PROGRESSIVE ROCK MUSIC AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC, ALL THE WAY BACK,
THERE IS STILL ROOM TO GO, THERE’S STILL NEW THINGS TO BE SAID, THERE’S STILL NEW RIFFS TO BE HEARD, NEW COMBINATIONS OF SOUNDS YET TO BE MADE. P A U L
R I E D L
And there are still surprises to discover in the album—like Riedl’s first attempt at clean vocals, which he and Rizk worked on together to get the best performance possible, or the lyrics that he describes as his most personal and vulnerable to date. Each of the six parts (it’s split up that way for streaming purposes) contains insane time signatures from Faulk, keyboards that both complement and contrast the brutality, Barrett’s bass holding everything down, and Riedl and Kolontyrsky’s otherworldly guitar interplay. Rizk puts it best: “I listen to it with zero regrets and zero things I wish I could have changed, which is so rare. I am so thrilled, and I am incredibly excited for the band to share it with the world!” NOV 2024 |
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MUSIC FOR FILMS
If you think that putting out an incredibly ambitious album was enough for Blood Incantation, you haven’t been paying attention. This is just the beginning. There’s the aforementioned documentary, All Gates Open. But, of course, they couldn’t just leave it there. “We’ve actually always wanted to have studio footage because we just like to watch that shit for regular bands,” Riedl says. “We love to see behind the scenes stuff. We’ve had people come take pictures in the studio and stuff to document it, but it’s always been a goal to have a full-on making-of, immersive documentary. But then that wasn’t enough for Blood Incantation. We had to make a soundtrack for it, which is distinct from the new album. So, we made a soundtrack. We made an album, then we made the making-of our album, and then we made the soundtrack to the making of the album. And they’re all three different things. But it’s all one big thing together that makes sense.” A music video is also on the way. Not just for a segment of one of the songs. For an entire 20-minute song. Directed by Michael Ragen, director of photography for the Panos Cosmatos (Beyond the Black Rainbow, Mandy) episode of Cabinet of Curiosities, “The Viewing.” “It’s like nothing that’s been done before,” Riedl promises. “It’s like a silent movie with a death metal soundtrack about an interdimensional scavenger that goes back in time to when humans are not extinct anymore, and takes us to the future to siphon the chemicals secreted by our brains during astral projection to fuel ships in the future in an alternate timeline. So, it’s like a mixture of The Seventh Seal and Event Horizon, but goes from medieval to deep space and ’60s/’70s, psychedelic stuff. Practical effects, very minimal visual effects. There’s no video similar.” The band teases even more on the horizon—Kolontyrsky hints at a collaboration with New Age legend Steve Roach, who’s opening for the band on their album release show, and the band hopes to do a full movie score at some point. In other words, it’s a pretty good time to be a fan of Blood Incantation. “I really look forward to people finally being able to hear it, because I genuinely believe it will impact and hopefully elevate or expand people’s preconceived notions for what extreme music can actually be and how far it can still go,” Riedl concludes. “This far into the game, 30 years after actual death metal, and 50 years after progressive rock music and electronic music, all the way back, there is still room to go, there’s still new things to be said, there’s still new riffs to be heard, new combinations of sounds yet to be made. And I think that’s so fucking exciting, man.”
NEW ALBUM OUT
OCT. 4TH
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INSIDE ≥
72 CEMETERY SKYLINE Punish my rain from heaven 76 GLACIAL TOMB Better killing through Khemmis-try 76 LIVING GATE Gateway to annihilation 78 OPETH He did the thing 78 SCHAMMASCH Schlemiel, Schilmazel
The Nü NoiseCHAT PILE
NOVEMBER
1
Brought back growls
20
Never stopped growling
1
Never started growling
1
Added flute solos from the Jethro Tull guy for weirdoes bummed about returning growls
ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS
Oklahoma’s sludge-noise darlings defy the laws of diminishing returns
C 9
hat pile’s vocalist, raygun busch, once declared to an intrepid reporter in this very magazine that his goal was to figure out what people like about the band’s music and then give them more of that. It’s a charmingly earnest and CHAT PILE self-aware admission that seems to have been a guiding prinCool World ciple for their sophomore full-length. After two EPs that garTHE FLENSER nered positive attention, the Oklahomans released God’s Country in 2022 to critical acclaim and commercial success, finding themselves on the covers of magazines and atop many year-end lists. Barely over two years later, their followup is not just a continuation of the approach and aesthetics they’ve been cultivating, but a lab-grown reflection of what a superfan would want. Cool World sounds like Chat Pile, only more so. ¶ To fulfill the obligatory genre talk, the band remains mostly a sludgy, noisy, kinda post-punky and also somewhat nü-metally band. Maybe we can call them Nü-oise Rock for now, which is mostly to accentuate how percussive these 10 tracks are. This is a rhythmic album more than anything, with the bass and drums
ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]
DECIBEL : NOVEMBER 2024 : 71
on every song forcing the listener to either skip the track or offer headbanging approval. When it comes to the riffs, they’re usually instruments of simple blunt force trauma, which are only broken up when guitarist Luther Manhole switches to eerie hooks and distressed melodies. These guitar lines are often the catchiest moments in the songs, yet manage to still be fairly ominous. “Shame” somewhat inhabits a ’90s alt-rock verse and chorus, but even before the death-growling breakdown, nothing ever feels quite right, like you’re listening to Smashing Pumpkins on the wrong speed while nursing your last can of air duster. As far as what Busch offers behind the mic, there are no lyrics that immediately have the viral impact of “Send my body to Arby’s” or his plainspoken homeless advocacy on “Why,” but he has honed his delivery into something that is more confident and connected to these songs instead of screams and rambles later stapled onto the music by a lunatic. The previous album, though, did have his music-free spoken word, “I Don’t Care If I Burn,” and if there is any criticism to level at this record, it’s that there are no real surprises. Sophomore releases tend to get overly ambitious and contain some big left-field swings, but the album barrels ahead with no risky divergence from their bread and butter. Still, their bread and butter is… this. Tailoring your art to please an audience may be considered a cardinal sin that can only backfire, but regardless of how the band has resonated so far, they are not trendy or accessible or inauthentic. Maybe Cool World is Chat Pile resting on their newfound laurels and just putting out more of what works; but it does work, very well, and it’s hard to stop listening. —SHANE MEHLING
1349
8
The Wolf & the King SEASON OF MIST
Too young to fall in love, too old to care
Most people don’t believe me until I point it out, but there is a directly indirect line between 1349’s hellacious hellstorming brand of fjord-fisting black metal and classic, greasy Sunset Strip cock rock. It’s especially noticeable in the live arena when guitarist Archaon collides early Voivod voicings and vintage Mick Mars into a venomous slurry that fluid-bonds different degrees of face paste, leather pantaloons and black stomping boots. At MDF last May, this so-called blasphemous sentiment emerged like Dr. Feelgood riding a live wire smack dab into the heart of winter. Sure, cannon-fire drums, double-kick sprints and Ravn’s 72 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
cherub-shredding vocals materializing from behind a wall of blackened clamor wholly slots 1349 alongside the most prickly of the prickly, but you can’t throw in soulful minor-third bursts, swaggering bluesy chord dyads and shuffling 16th notes and not expect someone to hear the parallels to the darker side of stuffed spandex. The martial chug and spidery chord dissection of the title track on the band’s eighth album is a great example of the above, as is the way “Shadow Point” massages rapid-fire grindcore and single-note runs with grooves straight out of wherever it was the youth were going wild back in ’89. Same goes for the way ugly Van Halen licks percolate the otherwise dissonant “Fatalist.” On the flip side, Killing Joke emerges as a reference point on the evermorphing “Ash of Ages” and Archaon’s guitar even does some gentle weeping in the otherwise malicious “Inferior Pathways.” You (and the band!) might have twinges of cringe scaling your spine upon reading this. Don’t worry: The Wolf & the King remains cloaked in 1349’s emblematic heinous darkness, and bubbles with primal energy in the borderline inhospitable rapidity of “Inner Portal” and the thrashing stare down of “Obscura.” This is simply my way of saying their tendency toward atonal malevolence is tempered with elements that might elicit a reaction beyond staring straight ahead with arms folded and legs shoulder-width apart. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO
CEMETERY SKYLINE
7
Nordic Gothic CENTURY MEDIA
Maybe it’s Maybelline
Scandi death metal dudes finding their goth muse isn’t new. Diabolique, the Loveless, and, uh, Cemetary donned eyeliner riffs and unmodulated vocals eons ago. Even Katatonia flirted one time (“Scarlet Heavens”), and Edge of Sanity more than once (“Sacrificed,” “Black Tears,” parts of “Crimson”), with iconization of popular Brit nightstalkers. Supergroup Cemetery Skyline, featuring busy bees Markus Vanhala, Santeri Kallio, Vesa Ranta, Victor Brandt and Mikael Stanne, are the latest to offer innocuous yet infectious gothic rock, predicated on the mores of Sisters of Mercy, the Mission (U.K.) and, of course, Fields of the Nephilim, with heavy application of Type O Negative for good, mandatory measure. While ’80s goth was rarely glitzy (“Lucretia My Reflection” might qualify) and Type O Negative moped in luxurious urban decay (“I Don’t Wanna Be Me” might not qualify), Cemetery Skyline wrap heartache, gloom and black
leather jackets in bright lights. In a way, it's a modernization of Dark Tranquillity’s Character/Haven era, but “Torn Away,” “The Darkest Night” and closer “Alone Together” all confusingly point somewhere else. It’s an anachronistic blend. Fault primaries Vanhala and Kallio for residing in the VIP lounge (production mostly) for the entirety of Nordic Gothic. That said, it’s hard to shake the polish off good old gothic rock/metal, the likes of which often pivot on atmosphere, not songwriting. Here, Cemetery Skyline excel—there’s a bit of everything in quality cinematics to go around. Nordic Gothic might not get the bats out dancing, but it’s real enough to crush “mall goth” roaches. —CHRIS DICK
THE CROWN
8
Crown of Thorns M E TA L B L A D E
Top-tier tyranny
Back in 1990, Swedish death/ thrashers the Crown originally formed as Crown of Thorns an hour north of Gothenburg in Trollhättan. While their first demo was mostly corrosive old-school death, early track “Diachronic Damnation” was a whiff of the infernal diesel speed on the way. Over 30 years and a name change later, founding guitarist Marko Tervonen and vocalist Johan Lindstrand still motor the Crown on their new record, Crown of Thorns. While the album title nods to their genesis, don’t expect a death metal retrospective. Their last album had a crushing ode to OSDM (“Devoid of Light”), but on Crown of Thorns those influences are relegated to the opening riffs of “Where Nightmares Belong.” Instead, the record focuses on speed and heavy metal thunder. From the first sprint of album opener “I Hunt the Devil,” the album leans heavy into the melodic turbo-thrash Sweden perfected in the mid-’90s. Whether it’s the fiery melodeath of “Churchburner” or the initial punk thrust of “Martyrian,” the Crown still excel with a balance of precision and power. That said, the dusky stomp of “Gone to Hell” is a fine example of a classic band stretching their influences beyond predictable confines. There’s a gothic post-punk veil draped across the track that projects mystery and even sex appeal without thinning the metallic foundation of their sound. After a blast beat blitz, “Howling at the Warfield” shines with valiant power metal fireworks. At almost seven minutes long, “The Storm That Comes” is a suitably epic down-tempo album closer. It’s not quite a knockout track, but it’s a satisfying power move from a band continuing their reign by writing on their own terms. —SEAN FRASIER
Sad Plight of Lucifer
Abramelin delivers an all-out brutal Death Metal assault on the senses with “Sins of the Father”! OUT 4 OCTOBER ON CD/LP/DIGITAL
Original Scandinavian Death Metal masters will blow everyone away with “Sad Plight of Lucifer”! Mixed by Tue Madsen! OUT 29 NOVEMBER ON CD/LP/DIGITAL
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DECIBEL : NOVEMBER 2024 : 73
ENTHEOS
5
An End to Everything M E TA L B L A D E
Emotion in motion
8
Wake up and listen to this | S E A S O N O F M I S T
When Limbo blew up during the plague years, the veiled figures of Gaerea showed that it’s still possible to have a universally appealing black metal band, and that it doesn’t need to be lowest common denominator shit. Even the mask thing served a purpose—everyone knows their identities, but they’ve taken it seriously enough so that even now the music is still the main thing. No “superstars” here.) Fortunately, Gaerea have kept their feet firmly on the ground since, tracing a constantly upwards trajectory without taking any “steps bigger than their legs,” as you would say in their native Portuguese. Coma amply confirms this—still faithfully recorded at Demigod with producer Miguel Tereso, it sounds instantly amazing, warm and
EMASCULATOR
6
The Disfigured and the Divine N E W S TA N D A R D E L I T E
Divine potential, disfigured
International brutal death metal unit Emancipator are here to rip your head clean off with their debut EP The Disfigured and the Divine. It’s a dull tear, too. Over the course of 27 minutes, the quartet hacks and mangles with blunted, bass-heavy guitar tones, demanding drumming and vocals that refuse to leave the low end. “Musically proficient” is the phrase that comes to mind with The Disfigured and the Divine; although it violently drags your squirming body through endless fields of torment, that’s about all it accomplishes. Six of the seven tracks are 74 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L
organic, perfect for the duality of their attack. Songwriting is still, at its core, straightforward and direct with zero unnecessary pretentious bullshit, and yet constantly exhaling a vibe of complexity and sophistication. There’s a clear identity to each of the songs, be it the calm, eerie intros of “The Poet’s Ballet” and “Wilted Flower,” the brutal staccato of “Suspended” or even the surprisingly poppy riffs of closer “Kingdom of Thorns.” And it’s refreshing to have a black metal album full of actual songs, no matter how grandiose the conceptual justification for the whole thing is. Ultimately, this works because the songs kick ass. At some point over their next record or two, they will need to present their true grand declaration of war. But for now, just more Gaerea will do just fine. —JOSÉ CARLOS SANTOS
solidly headbang-worthy death metal, albeit interchangeable. While “In Resplendent Terror” is a highlight boasting jerky rhythms and “Age of the Goddess” provides some solid twists below memorable vocal lines, it's difficult to say the same about the rest of the EP. Amidst the fury is the world music-flavored interlude “The Unassailable,” which makes you wonder where this tactic has been throughout the EP (and where it went once the interlude ends). Brutal death metal mixed in with this approach could’ve been plenty engaging; I’d love to see Emasculator embrace this sound as less of a break between the beatdowns and more of an integral part of it. Emasculator clearly have potential, but The Disfigured and the Divine does little to make them rise above the brutal DM pack. —GREG KENNELTY
IMMORTAL BIRD
8
Sin Querencia 20 BUCK SPIN
Bird abbath
If you were only familiar with them owing to a plug from some pundit or a splashy promotional insert, you’d likely presume that Immortal Bird’s distinguishing factor lies in simple, genrewarping chicanery. Tags identifying them as “blackened death,” “progressive,” “post metal,” “avant-garde” and occasionally “metalcore” are regularly asserted in an attempt to taxonomize the bird (most critics are also quick to assert that their tunes can be curiously beautiful as well). I don’t see any reason to quibble with these attributives, but I’d righteously quarrel with the
PHOTO BY CHANTIK PHOTOGRAPHY
GAEREA, Coma
If you watch the video to this record’s title track, you’ll pay witness to the discomfiture of vocalist Chaney Crabb’s facial contortions as she mimes along to the bear-like bellowing and bansheelike screeches originally laid down when this EP was recorded. Visuals combined with sonics make it plain that there’s a shit-ton of emotional discharge happening here. Do some digging (i.e., read their bio) to discover that An End to Everything has as its central focus the vocalist losing a friend to the ravages of addiction, and the source for that potent expression becomes obvious. Where this release falters is, without the backstory knowledge and visual accompaniment, little of that emotion comes across in the music as a standalone. The fifth release (second EP) from the project of Crabb and multi-instrumentalist Navene Koperweis absolutely lives up to its technical, progressive deathcore billing, as the duo spit liberal amounts of halting Meshuggah scholastics, palmmuted thunder, clinical-sounding dervish drumming and muscular breakdowns into the ether. But aside from the anthemic choruses comprising the centerpieces of the title track and “A Thousand Days,” the shifty tempo changes in “Life in Slow Motion” and the legato smooth lead work, this feels like a recording simmering in restraint when it could have had the pair’s prodigious talents and heart-wrenching subject matter pushing everything to where redline bursts bubbles. It may only be a terse five tracks, but too much of An End to Everything reverts so deeply to the ordinary that even the extraordinary bits are suffocated with the feeling that this was an unfulfilled opportunity. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO
DECIBEL : NOVEMBER 2024 : 75
8
Cold feelings in the night | P R O S T H E T I C
A significant leap forward for Glacial Tomb, Lightless Expanse refines their blend of sludge-corrupted death and black metal into a more intricate and harrowing experience than their 2018 debut. The Denver trio, now invigorated by the addition of bassist David Small, channels a potent mix of raw aggression and precise musicianship into an album that resonates with emotional intensity and technical mastery. The “Khemmistry” between Small and guitarist/vocalist Ben Hutcherson—particularly evident on tracks like “Sanctuary”—drives the album’s seamless interplay between blistering riffs and complex rhythms courtesy of Mike Salazar. These dynamics capture the band’s evolving sound and reflect the pervasive dread and fleeting joys that colored the album’s three-year gestation, resonating with anyone who’s endured the rush-hour crawl from DIA to downtown Denver on night one of Metal & Beer Fest. (Pro tip: Get an earlier flight.)
assumption that “genre liberalism” is the actual secret sauce animating their overarching recipe. “Bioluminescent Toxins” incorporates a bed of eerie, cheshire-grin organs, blasts that feel more “Cold Meat-industrial” than blue-collar grind, black ‘n’ roll passages in the vein of early Carpathian Forest and a scowling darkwave movement, studded with terrific tension. The trick, however, doesn’t lie in the tracks’ abundant slate of disparate elements, but rather in how Immortal Bird are able to parlay these components into something cohesive, coherent and genuinely exciting; that’s the prestige. “Synthetic Alliances” proposes a parallel universe in which Killing Technology was actually a Marduk release; “Consanguinity” introduces contrapuntal sorties to rollicking wrist-slitting hijinks, (à la Ved Buens Ende) and “Ocean Endless” plies sloping, cattywampus grind that ripens into vin76 : NOV EMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
Opener “Stygian Abattoir” sets the tone, its relentless momentum soon engulfed by the suffocating weight of “Voidwomb.” Tracks like “Enshrined in Concrete” and “Seraphic Mutilation” showcase the band’s ability to craft songs where crushing rhythms and soaring melodies create palpable tension. This isn’t brutality for brutality’s sake; it’s a carefully orchestrated blizzard between heaviness and melody that rewards repeated listens. The 36-minute runtime feels expansive around “Worldsflesh” and “Wound of Existence”—ironic, considering these shorter cuts whiplash with a tighter wind. However, each listen reveals new layers of emotion and intensity that underscore their critical role. Produced by Hutcherson and finely tuned by Arthur Rizk, Lightless Expanse balances raw and refined. Like a winter storm that settles in your bones long after the last flake has fallen, Lightless Expanse has an atmosphere that lingers—a richly textured experience that demands attention. It pushes the band’s sound and thematic explorations, leaving a lasting impression with cold, unyielding defiance. —TIM MUDD
tage East Coast hardcore before finally collapsing into a post black metal pity-party. Every song has its own internal logic and never takes a heel-turn that feels like a superfluous parlor trick. The fact that Sin Querencia also manages to be absurdly catchy (though not quite as maddeningly hooky as 2015’s Empress/Abscess) defies conventional wisdom as it pertains to what an album this extreme can be. Whosoever is without Sin (Querencia) can suck it. —FORREST PITTS
LEGIONS OF DOOM 7 The Skull 3 TEE PEE
Between darkness and dawn
The spirit of Eric Wagner lives on in Legions of Doom’s debut album, The
LIVING GATE
7
Suffer as One RELAPSE
Extreme enough!
Remember when Morbid Angel brought original frontman David Vincent back, only to nuke any goodwill it gained them by releasing a weird, shitty techno-metal album? A cool side effect of this curious blip in the MA timeline was that we, listeners of metal, collectively recalled or realized, the Steve Tucker era was good, actually. Bet Living Gate remembers! Since 2020, this project has been an outlet for current and former members of certified 180g colored-vinyl heavy-hitters YOB, Amenra and Oathbreaker to put on some death metal sweatpants and pay tribute to an infernal brand of classic USDM, with Morbid Angel LPs F through H looming particularly large on their debut full-length Suffer as One. It’s Formulas Fatal to the Flesh from 1998 that Suffer as One invokes hardest—an album built from massive granite blocks of rhythm and riff, with molten lead guitar snaking through the pores and fissures. “To Cut Off the Head of the
PHOTO BY FRANK GUERRA
GLACIAL TOMB, Lightless Expanse
Skull 3. Actually, this would’ve been the Skull’s third full-length, the much-anticipated successor to 2018’s The Endless Road Turns Dark. With the Wagner family blessing the project, Trouble legend Ron Holzner rounded up a supergroup of co-vocalists Scott Reagers (Saint Vitus) and Karl Agell (Lie Heavy, ex-Corrosion of Conformity), drummer Henry Vasquez (Saint Vitus), guitarists Scott Little (Leadfoot) and Lothar Keller (Sacred Dawn) to groove massively and rock heavily. According to Holzner, 80 percent of The Skull 3 was already in the can at the time of Wagner’s passing, so it was a matter of approvals and cementing the fallen metal legend into Legions of Doom’s edifice, with conspicuous hails in Wagner’s final vocal performance being included in “Heaven,” a slippery jangle of very late-summer rock. Elsewhere, The Skull 3 is bifurcated into Reagers- and Agell-fronted songs. The sheer weight of “Beyond the Shadow of Doubt” is the ballast to Agell’s throaty wails, while his “All Good Things” is more uptempo in its dissonant drawl. The former Blind frontman reappears on “Between Darkness and Dawn”; Reagers comes out of the crypt on the creepy “Lost Soul,” the galloping “A Voice of Reason” and the album’s ’90s-vibe endcap “Hallow by All Means.” Constructively, Agell and Reagers could’ have thrust more power into their performances— would’ve been sick to hear a duet, too—and the solos should’ve also hit harder. Understandably, The Skull 3 wasn’t the product of healthy times, and sometimes it shows. —CHRIS DICK
Snake” leaps out of the gate with high-speed chaos, then takes whiplash turns into slow parts that recall Immolation at their most sinister, and to big, dumb slam riffs. Guitarist and vocalist Levy Seynaeve has a commanding enough death metal bark to match the unrelenting BIGNESS of the music. Check out basically the entire latter half of “Destroy and Consume”: You’re moshing. What I initially thought were keyboards lending an otherworldly edge to the end of “A Unified Soul” turn out to be some sneaky Azagthoth-style guitar wizardry. You might notice I’m not exactly deploying a wide range of comparisons here; Suffer as One is a well-played, clearly recorded take on a pretty specific style of death metal that isn’t exactly in vogue right now, but if you’ve ever said “Suffo” and/or “Immo” out loud, you probably need it. —ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ
LIVLØS
6
The Crescent King NOCTUM PRODUCTIONS
The shape of melodeath to come
In the best way possible, Livløs’ take on death metal is a lot like a former high school football player going through a massive life change and getting a doctorate in philosophy. As much as the band wants to lean into high-level musings on space on their new record, The Crescent King, their talent for big riffs and huge moments betrays any chance of being a squarely nerdy act. Opener “Solstice” is massive, mostly basking in the fuzz of its distortion. Despite the record’s grandiosity and typical big-brain death metal theming of good and evil, the band is at its best when the spaciness is used as a counterweight to caveman riffs. “Maelstrom” opens up with a seriously groovy riff before the rest of the band comes in with off-kilter drumming to complicate what they’ve set down. But despite their insistence on writing heady death metal riffs, they can’t help themselves from throwing in a high-tempo mosh part that eventually morphs into a breakdown. “Throne of Cosm” features moments that could be genuine crowd singalongs if the band wanted to go the big fest route instead of finishing the song with an extremely intricate jazz part. The caveman is so good, however, it leaves you wishing they would shorten the songs up a bit. “The Crescent King” has a few genuinely excellent parts, namely its front third and last minute or so. Instead of letting the best moments shine, they find themselves trying to throw too much into the song, weakening what would be some pretty sick melodeath. When done well, moments like the final solo on “Endless Majesty” are enough to make you remember why you love this music in the first place. But if you can play your instruments this
well, maybe turning off and slowing down isn’t a possibility. —JOHN HILL
MAMMOTH CARAVAN
7
Frostbitten Galaxy BLADE SETTER
Furry road
Hard to believe mammoths roamed Alaska 5,600 years ago. Even less fathomable, more than three dozen survive. Today, Acid Mammoth, Mammoth Grinder and Ufomammut all rage upon the metalscape. In Little Rock recently, a fine specimen turned up—fully wooly and rampaging. Mammoth Caravan interpret their pachyderms cosmically, those herding this album cover demanding empyrean worship in a Frostbitten Galaxy not so far away. Doom trio Brandon Ringo (bass/scream), Robert Warner (guitar/clean) and drummer Khetner Howton retool their big and tusky three-seater since 2023 debut LP Ice Cold Oblivion, a reverse lava lamp of blinding white fuzz and three-feet-thick tempos. A tight six tracks in 36 minutes, Frostbitten Galaxy begins at “Absolute Zero,” which spends almost a quarter of the album’s overall runtime revisiting the glacial wallop of its predecessor. “Cosmic Clairvoyance” then redirects Mammoth Caravan subtly, but seismically. Blue tones and ice nine vibes (to paraphrase Joe Satriani) melt bass icicles onto Warner’s synth and sanguine strumming. Rack toms stretch their hides until the proceedings finally erupt into a molten new universe. Frostbitten Galaxy thus standardizes that blueprint. “Tusks of Orion” roars Ringo’s mammoth bellow and Howton’s cymbal napalm, showers of Warner’s meteor shred coating all. “Siege in the Stars” recoils cannon-like from a riff that builds, discharges and shoots its celestial bodies via a warfare tempo—swift, resolute. Despair seeps into Ringo’s throat blasts, proving once again that caring is despairing. “Prehistoric Spacefarer” punches gravity-free pockets between volcanic passages, while closer “Sky Burial” winces initially too precious before pouring down a doom torrent complete with asteroid lead and vocal incantation. Ground control to Major Tom. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ
MORK
7
Syv
PEACEVILLE
K.O.
The first word that comes to mind when listening to Mork’s new album is “mystery.” Although Thomas Eriksen’s long-running musical
adventure certainly has its origins in straightforward second-wave Norwegian black metal, albums like Syv don’t quite sound like anything else emanating from that storied land. The rich and flowing riffs evoke images of nature, travels to distant and unknown lands, and contemplation on a variety of life’s questions. In this way, the vibe captured on songs like “I Tåkens Virvel,” “Heksebål” and “Med Døden Til Følge” most closely resemble that of Blodhemn or Mardraum-era Enslaved, and perhaps a more stripped-down version of bands like Kampfar and Skogen. It’s not an outwardly brutal or hateful sound, but rather one that blends the standard black metal approach with lots of nuances that give it a special character all its own. That said, Mork can certainly deliver pounding aggression when called upon, which is especially evident on “Ondt Blod” and “Utbrent.” “Ondt Blod” is a particularly satisfying listen, one that features lots of palm-muted guitar attacks and righteously ferocious vocals. For readers searching for the fire on this album, look no further. Still, much of Syv takes a more introspective and thoughtful tone. Many of the progressions are plodding affairs that don’t create the same mood as many black metal classics. It makes the album both a rewarding and challenging listen. It’s not predictably so grim and dark, but that might make Syv trying for people who require that in black metal. However, the record serves as an interesting way to expand one’s palette while still staying close enough to the core temperature of ice-cold black metal. —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY
MOTHER OF GRAVES
8
The Periapt of Absence P R O FO U N D LO R E
Brave murder Graves
The early ’90s are back! Or maybe they’ve been back and we’ve already moved on. I dunno, there were a couple of years where all the teenage girls at the local mall dressed like Blossom from the hit and completely forgotten TV sitcom Blossom. At any rate, Mother of Graves prefer their death/doom with that Clinton-era shine to it. Their debut was mastered by Dan Swanö, who sat behind the board for stone-cold classics by a murderers’ row of Swedish death metal grandmasters—most relevantly, Katatonia and Opeth. Guitarist Ben Sandman handled the production of The Periapt of Absence, but he clearly learned from the master. This slow-motion soul crusher feels vintage in the best way—which is to say, timeless. The band has studied the ways of Paradise Lost and Novembers Doom, and used them to channel stately death/doom that doesn’t DECIBEL : NOVEMBER 2024 : 77
turn into a slog. Key to that success: groove. On songs like “Shatter the Visage” and “Apparition,” they remind the listener that Black Sabbath worked because even their most leaden trudges had some swing to them. Those bursts of energy help provide some welcome respite to the more morose numbers like “A Scarlet Threnody” and the title track. I guess the long Indianapolis winters helped this promising act channel the Scandinavian darkness effectively. They still have a little way to go before they reach the heights of their more obvious influences (while the songs flow well, some lack hooks), but that’s all that’s absent from their formula. —JEFF TREPPEL
OPETH
8
The Last Will and Testament REIGNING PHOENIX
Make Opeth Growl Again
This is not a drill. After 16 years, Mikael Åkerfelt is growling again. Opeth’s 14th studio LP, The Last Will and Testament, is a progressive death metal record—a good one. Oh, you’re still reading? Then either you’ve already bought a pre-order, or you’re not interested in Opeth having a public come-to-riff-Jesus moment. And if you are, that’s understandable! Åkerfeldt and Co. seem to understand they burned much goodwill with four albums of competent-to-sorta-great prog rock noodling. The Last Will and Testament does everything possible to signal a return to form, from its haunted concept storyline to its spooky album cover. And for the most part, it nails the gorgeous-then-gruesome songwriting that characterized Decibel Hall of Fame inductees Orchid, Blackwater Park and Still Life. Sure, some divorced-uncle prog-isms that typified recent history remain. Åkerfeldt’s upper register cleans are still here. Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull appears as the voice of a spiteful recently deceased entity, and delivers a pair of pastoral flute solos. Those aren’t the deathliest choices, but they work. A couple of irritating tics persist, though. Before 2010, Åkerfeldt’s greatest strength was making 10-plus-minute songs feel bite-sized and distinct. After that, he sometimes made a fiveminute song feel like the whole side of an anonymous LP. None of these new songs stick in your head like “Demon of the Fall” did. But that’s all right! The Last Will and Testament functions primarily as one continuous song—the kind of song metalheads have clamored for since the Obama administration. It doesn’t erase the intervening years, but it is a worthy continuation of the band’s golden period. Welcome back, Unc. We missed you. —JOSEPH SCHAFER 78 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
SCHAMMASCH
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The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean PROSTHETIC
I prefer Ocean Classic
Never ones to shy away from ambition (2016’s Triangle was a full-on triple album complete with an entire ambient disc), Schammasch now deliver the second entry in a multi-album musical adaptation of a 19th century French proto-surrealist poetic novel about a Luciferian figure. The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean focuses on the parts of Isidore Lucien Ducasse’s story involving the ocean. It’s unclear if they include the part where Maldoror fucks a shark. Selachomorphaphilia aside, the Swiss sorcerers delve into the branch of the mystickal black metal arts known as avant-garde black metal. They come up with spells somewhere between Behemoth’s imperium phase and Arcturus’ progressive take on the second wave. Strangely, this may be their most accessible full-length, despite containing three 10-plus-minute songs. The vocals are C.S.R.’s cleanest yet, and Sylvaine’s Kathrine Shepard and her ethereal singing play a prominent role in many of the songs. Nothing quite as catchy as Hearts of No Light’s gothic anthem “A Paradigm of Beauty,” but “Crystal Waves” and “Your Waters Are Bitter” have enough layers that they worm their way into your skull after a few listens. It’s an impressive effort, and although I’m not gonna read the novel for an album review, it seems to capture the melancholy and passion of the main character (at least as far as the summaries I’ve read indicate). They’ve taken such an esoteric subject and presented it in a different medium so that you get the intent behind the work—the hallmark of all good adaptations. Chapter three should be great as well. I hope it includes the saucier bits. —JEFF TREPPEL
SIDEREAN
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Spilling the Astral Chalice EDGED CIRCLE PRODUCTIONS
Pro-cosmic metal of death
Maybe the whole “death metal band leaning into the horrors of the cosmos instead of the horrors of humanity” thing is reaching a bubble period. Or maybe the horrors of our existence and whatever the fuck is flowing out in space, trying to capture that feeling of awe and hopelessness, is an endless well of metal inspiration. Siderean don’t seem to give much of a shit. Formerly known as Teleport, the Slovenian prog metal crew return with their sophomore LP, Spilling the Astral Chalice. Fittingly, their take on
death metal is the perfect kind of music to listen to after smoking way too much weed and freaking out about your position in the universe. Opening track “The Sacred Sea” captures a genuine sense of anxiety that few other bands can, as guitars mimic racing thoughts through a multitude of tempo changes. Vocalist Jan Brišar is part of what makes this veritable overdose of anxiety work so well. While he mostly trades in very competent death metal growls, he will throw in a wail that sounds like he’s been stirred from a horrible night terror. Even on the interlude “Emerald Age,” he screams as though he’s just witnessed some kind of eldritch horror that can’t escape his periphery, while a discordantly chill instrumental plays behind it all. The final track, “To Build Ruins,” is a ripping endcap to Siderean’s fraught take on death metal. In the midst of the tense riffing, a gnarly solo emerges that sounds like an ’80s power metaller got lost in some intergalactic voyage before getting snuffed out by the horrors of the celestial sphere. If death metal acts can keep writing about how fucked up it is that we were all born into an unknowable infinity, we’re cool with this staying an evergreen topic. —JOHN HILL
SULLY
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Sully
H O R R O R P A I N G O R E D E AT H
Bye, bye, bye… we’re back!
In a recently released Netflix docu-series, the rotund shyster who created and bankrolled Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, O-Town and x number of dancing, prancing, singing pretty boys into the music industry’s thinly veiled version of indentured servitude was asked about the long-term survival rate of boy bands. His answer was something along the lines of, “As long as God keeps making little girls, there will be boy bands.” After subtracting the creepiness from that response, it got me thinking about how—as long as nerds like me cheat congestive heart failure, dodge crosstown traffic and maintain non-presidential levels of mental faculty—there will at least be a market for grindcore. Especially grind that absorbs influence from across the extreme music spectrum the way Discordance Axis, Napalm Death, Pig Destroyer, Burnt by the Sun and the Red Chord do and did. Rochester, NY’s Sully is led by Erik Burke, he of Brutal Truth, Sulaco, Nuclear Assault, Lethargy and more. Given Burke’s decades of extreme service, Sully (and Sully) is another unsurprisingly quality entry into a world that drops grinding velocity and intensity, fish-like, into a barrel and shoots it with mathematically inclined
SWALLOW THE SUN
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Shining
CENTURY MEDIA
From shadows to sunlight
Next year will mark a quarter-century since Swallow the Sun rose from the Finnish dusk. As one of Finland’s most recognizable death/doom artists, they invited gentler melodies and emotional fragility to the genre. Their ninth album, Shining, continues their journey from extreme metal’s enduring darkness towards a cleansing light of constant renewal. The title itself implies radiance and reflecting sunlight. If you listened to the band’s haunting Moonflowers, you could likely sense an aesthetic transformation in progress. It’s not really a softening grip on doom metal; these are veterans deeply protective of their legacy in the genre. Shining is more like ripping curtains off a window and inviting light into a forgotten room. In fact, their 2019 album title sums it up perfectly; this is the sound of a shadow forced into the light. It will only take you a minute of opening track “Innocence Was Long Forgotten” to realize Swallow the Sun have pursuits well outside their original subgenre. Produced by Grammynominated engineer Dan Lancaster, Mikko Kotamäki’s voice is smooth as silver during clean singing passages. The vocals hover above the mix as an ethereal presence, disembodied from the rest of the band. While that helps bring a cleaner, crisper quality to their studio sound, it also suffocates the heaviness of the guitars. The nightshade dirges of The Morning Never Came are distant primal roars at this point, but “What Have I Become” and “Charcoal Sky” are reminders that Swallow the Sun gather power from gloom. While a few tracks blossom with repeat listens—“Velvet Chains,” the title track and “MelancHoly” especially—the
UNDEATH, More Insane
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More betterer | P R O S T H E T I C
Sometimes the most rewarding extreme metal comes from bands so attuned to the intricacies of their subgenre that there’s no indication they’re aware of any musical development after 1992. It’s why we love Undeath so damn much. The Rochester, NY band is so firmly entrenched in early’90s American death metal that all you can see in your mind’s eye is Metal Maniacs, Morrisound, Blue Grape and Jolt Cola. Equal parts Cannibal Corpse, Autopsy and Exhumed, Undeath’s evocation of that bygone era was perfected on 2022’s It’s Time… To Rise From the Grave, earning an Album of the Year nod from this publication. Underneath the splatter flick lyrics, monstrous growls, blast beats and churning, downtuned riffs is a resolute dedication to
songcraft. Even on a song called “Disattachment of a Prophylactic in the Brain.” The musicianship on the much-anticipated More Insane is stunning: guitarists Kyle Beam and Jared Welch deftly balance melody and atonality, drummer Matt Browning finds the elusive sweet spot between groove and precision, and bassist Tommy Wall is a marvel, a budding genius in the vein of Alex Webster and Steve DiGiorgio. Alexander Jones, meanwhile, leads the way with his astounding snarl, giddily eating the songs’ gory lyrics back to life. There’s a moment on “Wailing Cadavers,” right before the monolithic breakdown, where Jones emits a gnarly gurgle sounding like an industrial sample from Dimension Hatröss that’ll make the stodgiest old headbanger weak in the knees. Keep doing whatever it is you’re doing, Undeath. Hook it directly to our veins.
album floats between Kotamäki’s rare growls too peacefully for my liking. —SEAN FRASIER
Mountains,” which both hint at greater things to come. What follows is good, but not necessarily greater. If anything, The Bastard presents like an attempted update of classic sounds. The guitar tone isn’t nearly HM-2 craggy or fuzzed-out; the punky galloping in “Not Equals” and “Pest” temper Clandestine with the melodic overthrust of Darkane; MHA himself makes chameleonic vocal moves; and the soloing (by actual Thorium members Jens Peter Storm and Jose Cruz) approaches King Diamond-meets-Satriani levels of phrasing and maturity. The overall production is classier and brighter, its clarity satisfying brutality expectations while shining a light on the stadium-sized melodics in “It All Comes Back to Me Now” and “Infamy” that are clearly chasing Amon Amarth’s inexplicable success, but doing so with a tinge of mediocrity. The Bastard is a record someone throws on during a long drive, during a between-band changeover or to accompany the necessary tedium of housework; definitely background music use, but nothing that comes to the forefront when topshelf Swedeath is called for (in bastardized form or otherwise). —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO
THORIUM
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The Bastard E M A N Z I P AT I O N
Here they come…
Just to give an idea of what’s going on here, Thorium (b. 1997) are a death metal band from Denmark whose frontman, MHA (Michael Hvolgaard Andersen), drafted Sweden’s most prolific abuser of quantity-over-quality, Rogga Johansson, to write the band’s sixth album. An album that was originally going to be titled Sverige, but was renamed The Bastard at the 11th hour. Goddamn, there’s a lot to unpack here—my inherent snark could go on for pages about the title!—but rest assured: If any of the above pushed your thoughts toward “competent, but ultimately milquetoast Swedish death metal,” let’s just say your mind is not playing tricks on you. Thorium play a little trick on you by frontloading The Bastard with “Eclipsed” and “Over the
—ADRIEN BEGRAND
DECIBEL : NOVEMBER 2024 : 79
PHOTO BY NICK KARP
hardcore (“Judas Kiss”), noise rock (“Blanket”), thrash (“King of Terrors”), death (“DeadPan”) and even a little bit of melodic doom (“Dredge the Lake”). Something that separates this quartet from their contemporaries/influences is the way Ed Jusko’s bass is given equal stead in the mix to punch up while maintaining the fort with a warmly vicious tone. Years of doing this has taught these fellers (also including drummer Alex Perez and ex-Psyopus vocalist Adam Frappolli) how to keep chaos controlled within the structure of songs that have definitive beginnings, middles and ends, but can still call in the crazy. And as long as God keeps crazy, nerdy bands like this coming, everything will be A-Ofucking-K! —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO
by
EUGENE S. ROBINSON
AN OCTOBER SURPRISE,
STARRING CHAT PILE IF
you were ever in a position to corral a band post-show, most (or many) of your targets view it as a one-way exchange of information. They’ll answer questions about them, their band, the show, whatever. For me, it’s always been more pointed, mostly because since the punk rock flyering days it’s always been a mystery to me: How’d you all find us? This is the only way you learn anything about how the non-mainstream world works. In any case, it keeps me from being blindsided. Which I am. Way too often. Case in point: on tour with WHORES. We were on a “couldn’t be beat” tour package. OXBOW, WHORES., and, at least in one instance, Full of Hell. Audiences, in general? Packed. Right up until we got to the Pacific Northwest. As a guy in a band, you don’t really want to ask; and if you’re smart, you adhere to Black Flag’s Chuck Dukowski’s dictum of it not being the fault of the people that 80 : NOVEMBER 2024 : DECIBEL
showed up that no one else did. But Seattle and Portland last fall were… sparse. Which didn’t make sense. Not until the whispers started. “Chat Pile.” “What the fuck?” “Chat Pile, man!” Knee-jerk reaction: “Oh yeah. I know Chat Pile!” Real reaction: “Who the fuck are Chat Pile?” But everyone else seemed to know. This disconnect between everyone else and me has yawned big and wide before. Once with Converge. Once with Melt-Banana. And now Chat Pile. But being older now—though not so much wiser— before I opened my mouth and said anything I’d regret, I went to the great regulator, the internet. Chat Pile were indisputably great. Describing their music was a mug’s game that wouldn’t make sense for me to try, but more importantly, it was the lyrical purview that got me. One song in particular where the singer asks something along the lines of, “Why do people have to live on the street?”
A line he repeats, the intensity increasing, until I find myself, unexpectedly, wet around the eyes. Some of this is having a four-yearold daughter who has asked me the same question. Another part of it is that they even took the time to ask. It’s been a long-held suspicion that the proverbial “both sides” have weaponized homelessness for political gain without any real concern for the very real people who make their homes the streets. Some very good—and, at one point, reasonable—people that I know for sure have found themselves on the business end of the issue. Heartbreaking to the extreme because very few have made it back from there, but Chat Pile put a point on it, a sound to it, and THE feeling that prevailingly captured what I knew to be the truth on it. And I was caught. Chat Pile. From Oklahoma, no less. This is not a country vs. city jab, but the last time I played Oklahoma, some of our audience— the part that hadn’t figured out I was Black—were playing Nazi war
marches on their car stereos in the parking lot. And here in 2023, at the time, was Chat Pile, just killing it. In ways that are more artistically more significant than anything someone like Jello Biafra has done for the last three decades. So, for me, the listening party had begun in earnest. Everything that they’ve recorded, everything I could find. It did what I wish all the music that I dug did: It didn’t seem to exhibit any tendency to be stupider than they really were. This affectation—a pox on music since the Rolling Stones sang, “I can’t get no…” (and maybe even earlier)—was just tossed to the winds. Specifically in face of the truism that there is no such thing as too smart. But, Jesus… I love these guys. Moreover, if the ugly truth be totally told, I’d have skipped our shows as well to see them. I’m hoping I don’t have to do so at any time during BUNUEL’s November tour of the U.S., but you know… it always makes sense to go where the smart money goes. And so it goes: Chat Pile, baby. ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE
MUSIC PRESENTED BY
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