Decibel #181 - November 2019 by Red Flag Media

PSYCHO

LAS VEGAS

LIVE REVIEW STRAIGHT FROM SIN CITY

REFUSE/RESIST

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INCLUDED NOVEMBER 2019 // No. 181

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ARMORED SAINT REFUSED MY DYING BRIDE SYMBOL OF SALVATION HALL OF FAME THEIR WAR STUDIO UPDATE

EXTREMELY EXTREME

November 2019 [R 181] decibelmagazine.com

upfront

features

reviews 65 lead review Schammasch’s brand of occult black metal becomes ever more dimensional on Hearts of No Light

10 metal muthas Family movie night

18 aftermath They live

32 exhorder Grumpy old men

12 live review:

20 lightning bolt My dad can beat up your dad

34 toxic holocaust Be kind, please rewind

psycho las vegas No one is too cool for the pool

14 low culture Recommendations to fan the flames of discontent 15 no corporate beer No beef but pit beef

22 asagraum What’s colder than Iceland?

40 the decibel

24 knaaves Messing with Texas 26 blut aus nord Turn on, tune in, drop dead

16 studio report:

my dying bride Never give up the ghost

36 q&a: refused Punk trumps hate

hall of fame Armored Saint overcome the death of a founding member and losing their record label only to succumb to Anthrax on Symbol of Salvation

66 album reviews Releases that were definitely forecasted to hit Alabama, including Alcest, Life of Agony and Mayhem 88 double negative Interdimensional gateways

28 pharmakon Hunger pains 30 population control Die laughing

52 Desert Storms COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER BARR Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. © 2019 by Red Flag Media, Inc. ISSN 1557-2137 | USPS 023142 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. 4 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

Chase Mason

www.decibelmagazine.com

REFUSE/RESIST

November 2019 [T181]

Tue, Oct 28, 2014, 12:55 PM

to Decibel Magazine

Dear Decibel Editors,

PUBLISHER

alex@redflagmedia.com EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

I would like to bring to your attention a misprint in your most recent issue. In the feature on Southwest Powerviolence, the portion on Sex Prisoner specifically, my band Gatecreeper was mentioned as "Gatekeeper". While this is an understandable mistake, I thought it would be worth bringing to your attention. I have included various links for reference about the band. Regards, Chase H. Mason GATECREEPER

The correspondence above was my introduction to Chase Mason and Gatecreeper. So, uh, whoops! To his eternal credit, Chase wasn’t angry, and to be fair, Gatecreeper’s lone release at the time was their self-titled EP, issued on cassette via Goatprayer Records through a scant 100 copies. Ultimately, it was a pretty bittersweet inaugural magazine appearance for Chase, but his band’s “official” Decibel debut came a month later when we ran a correction in the following issue. Years later he admitted that the only reason he emailed me about the mistake was to “weasel my way into the magazine via a technicality and now here we are.” Five years later, where they are is on Decibel’s cover because their second album Deserted isn’t just one of the best death metal albums of 2019, it’s one of the best metal releases of the year. Last month Decibel celebrated our 15th anniversary, which means there is a generation of bands now surfacing that essentially grew up reading this magazine. Chase, in particular, has had a Decibel subscription since 2007, which is something I didn’t know until reading the first draft of J. Bennett’s excellent cover story. While that fact makes me feel older than dirt, it’s gratifying to learn that Decibel not only plays a role in helping establish and cultivate artists, we might actually have some impact on them even before they are artists. So, to the any aspiring young musicians/subscribers with a HM-2 and a dream, there’s always a chance that your currently unknown band will land on Decibel’s cover one day, too. But there’s an even greater likelihood that we’ll totally fuck up your band name first.

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

Alex Mulcahy Albert Mudrian albert@decibelmagazine.com

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Anthony Bartkewicz Vince Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Nathan T. Birk Shawn Bosler Dean Brown Louise Brown Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Chris Dodge Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Jonathan Horsley Neill Jameson Scott Koerber Daniel Lake Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Justin M. Norton Andy O'Connor Dayal Patterson Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Joseph Schafer Rod Smith Zach Smith Matt Solis Kevin Stewart-Panko Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Ester Segarra Josh Sisk Gene Smirnov Levan TK Hannah Verbeuren Frank White

DECIBEL SUBSCRIPTIONS

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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., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. Copyright ©2019 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

Neil Burkdoll Sanford, FL

You’ve played in extreme metal bands and in shoegaze bands over the years. What’s your take on acts like Alcest and Deafheaven that merge the sound of both genres?

Yeah, I did two albums with Fatalist, and I have new albums with P.O.O.R. and Whimsical coming out later this year. It’s funny because I have been a fan of Alcest since 2007 but I always thought that shoegaze could very well be mixed with metal even before that. I remember in ’98 seeing members of Katatonia and October Tide wearing Slowdive shirts inside their albums and you could hear the influence even back then. The first time I heard

8 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

In the Nightside Eclipse in ’95, I thought it was very dreamy and atmospheric to the point that my brain connected it to shoegaze and darkwave music, but my friends didn’t hear the similarities. I think the crossing of the genres is good as long as it’s done well. I have no problem with blackgaze or whatever it’s called these days. Gatecreeper are on the cover of this issue. Are there any young death metal bands that an old-school death metal fan like yourself still gets stoked on?

That’s a tough question because for so many years I was following every new band that came out, but about six years ago I started getting burnt out on the whole OSDM thing and I sort of felt like I was part of the problem because I started Fatalist in 2006 with the intention of only playing Swedish death metal with an HM-2. There are just too many bands these days doing a similar thing and the thrill for me is mostly gone. With that said, I have enjoyed the most recent albums by Rude, Skeletal Remains, Ruin and Slaughterday.

You’ve been a Decibel subscriber since pretty much the beginning of the magazine. Why are you still here?

I actually got the very first issue with the Dillinger Escape Plan on the cover in the mail and I still have no idea why or how you got my address. I really enjoy the Hall of Fame articles and I’m actually worried that all of my favorite albums have already been covered. So, there’s that, and I’m a loser who looks forward to getting stuff in the mail each month. Also, I’m still hoping to read an article exclusively about Morrisound Studios… hint-hint. As the father of two small children how much of your record collection has been displaced by Barbie dream houses and Shopkins?

I still have about 3,000 CDs, but if I’m being honest, I rarely get to listen to metal these days because I’m always surrounded by my girls. I’m always listening to Disney songs and other “kid’s music” like Charlie Hope. I have had to compromise but my kids do love to listen to bands like the Pixies, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Duran Duran, Ultravox, A Flock of Seagulls, etc. Basically, my girls listen to all the stuff my dad made me listen to as a kid growing up in the ’80s and I’m fine with that. It’s not so bad and I try to sneak songs by Godflesh and Scorn in there once in a while to test the waters.

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

REFUSED War Music th October 18

T O O T H G R I N D E R

I AM

Produced & Mixed by Matt Squire

October 11th

A REAL F**KING ROCK ‘N’ ROLL RECORD

BONESHAKER Produced & Mixed by Dave Cobb

October 25th spinefarmrecords.com

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while booking the living fuck out of Metal & Beer Fest: Philly 2020.

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

This Month's Mutha: Marilyn Smith Mutha of Justin Smith of Graf Orlock, Dangers and Ghostlimb

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I was born on Halloween, 1952. I like the outdoors. I like all animals, but love dogs and have had them as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I used to ride motorcycles, and I like watching baseball and doing things with grandkids. One of these days, I would like to do some traveling, and maybe we will have our own free tour guide (Justin), but by the time I get there and step off the plane, I will probably have a heart attack and die. Justin tells us you’ve moved from Akron, Ohio to Minnesota to California. Does your itinerant history give you additional empathy toward his lifestyle as an artist?

I think it’s great for them to see different parts of the country and the world, and they make connections and friendships with a lot of people, who then come here. I think my life truly would have been different if I stayed in those places. I moved to California in 1968 when I was 16 and have never left because I like the lifestyle and the beaches (and hate the cold). I consider it my home more than anywhere else. When did he first start expressing an (obviously unhealthy) interest in action movies?

At a very young age, he watched movies like Conan [the Barbarian], Predator, Red Dawn, Indiana Jones [and the Temple of Doom], etc., watching them over and over again. He was into camouflage and violent video games. This could have corrupted his life at a young age. His dad, after seeing one of his shows (see question 4), said to Justin, “This is what we get for having the TV raise you.” 1 0 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

Justin is also a professor at Golden West College. Would you prefer sitting in on one of his classes or seeing one of his bands live?

I would like to sit in on one of his classes (which I haven’t yet), but I have seen his bands play live before. We saw them twice and we had earplugs in and stood in the back, unsure of what to expect. One time they made us stand on the stage while they played on the floor. The music was good, but I had ringing in my ears for two days afterwards. There was a lot of screaming and yelling and people trying to get after them. Justin said on the microphone while pointing to us, “If you want to blame someone, blame them.” How did you feel about his decision to play Return of the Jedi’s triumphant Ewok anthem “Yub Nub” as his wedding recessional?

I was impressed by the choice that he made. I think it fit them well and reminded me of when he used to hit his head on the car seat and choke himself whenever he heard it when he was a kid while I was driving. What is something that people would be surprised to learn about your son?

He started walking at nine months and has been in fast speed ever since. We tried to direct him into playing sports, but he would have nothing to do with it. One year for Christmas he got an acoustic guitar and his dad taught him some chords; it has been 26 years since then. I think playing a guitar relaxes him (contrary to his musical output). —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race  Mayhem, Daemon  Tesla, The Great Radio Controversy  Napalm Death, Apex Predator – Easy Meat  Napalm Death, Harmony Corruption ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Electric Wizard, Witchcult Today  1782, 1782  Bauhaus, Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape  Warhorse, As Heaven Turns to Ash  Ufomammut, Eve ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Gehennah, Too Loud to Live, Too Drunk to Die  Seer, Vol. 6  Gridlink, Longhena  Neuraxis, Asylon  Alterbeast, Immortal ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Cattle Decapitation, Death Atlas  Deafheaven, Sunbather  GosT, Valediction  Blood Incantation, Hidden History of the Human Race  Trash Talk, Plagues... Walking Disease ---------------------------------Alex Yarde : d i r e c t o r o f m a r k e t i n g  Joni Mitchell, Blue  Gatecreeper, Deserted  Mayhem, Daemon  The Blood Brothers, Crimes  Brockhampton, Ginger

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Anders Odden : c a d a v e r  Black Sun Brotherhood, Ecstasy of Blasphemy  Deathcrush, Megazone  Morbid Angel, Domination  Hilma Nikolaisen, Mjusic  TNT, Knights of the New Thunder

PSYCHO LAS VEGAS

 Death triumphant Carcass’ Jeff Walker (l) and Tom G. Warrior representing Hellhammer tribute project Triumph of Death unleash a metallic storm upon the Las Vegas crowd

PSYCHO LAS VEGAS

sycho las vegas is kinda like San Diego Comic-Con for metal nerds: It was an WHEN: August 16-18, 2019 opportunity to catch up with old friends, PHOTOS BY HILLARIE JASON get in plenty of steps running between the different stages and blow money on shit you don’t need (in this case, alcohol and black T-shirts). The three-day celebration of everything heavy showcased a variety of bands ranging from the mellow shoegaze of Beach House to the corpsepaint-and-axes black metal of 1349—and those at literally the same time. ¶ Since it took place in Sin City at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, you couldn’t tell if people had lost their shirts from gambling or from plunging into the wave pool at the outdoor Beach Stage. Or maybe because it was over 100 degrees outside. There was plenty of air conditioning in the other three stages—the cavernous Events Center, the same-as-every-other-one House of Blues and the Rhythm & Riffs lounge in the middle of the casino floor. It’s impossible to cover every band I saw, so I’ll hit the highlights. —JEFF TREPPEL Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, NV

WHERE:

FRIDAY

Friday’s festivities got off to a surreal start (at least

for me) with the Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Guy has been around since the ’60s and still knows how to put on a show. Switching costumes more times than Rob Halford, he took the stage as a shaman, a silver-suited space mystic and an aging hippie. He did not skimp on the pyro for “Fire.” Godspeed You! Black Emperor were somewhat of a strange fit on the bill. As incredibly 1 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

influential as their cinematic post-rock may be on future heavy acts, as live performers they more resemble a chamber orchestra. With their intensely introverted compositions set to desaturated shots of decaying urban architecture, the mood they set felt just as apocalyptic (in a different way) as YOB’s devastating subwoofer shockwaves over at the Beach. Beach culture already informs Fu Manchu’s entire aesthetic, so their SoCal stoner rock

went over perfectly at a pool. Unfortunately, surfboards were not allowed. Perturbator closed out the night there in their new duo configuration. Despite a truncated set due to equipment issues, they got a bunch of exhausted metalheads dancing to their futureimperfect darksynth.

SATURDAY

Somehow, attendees woke up by 2:30 p.m. to

drag themselves over the Events Center for Old Man Gloom. The late Caleb Scofield’s presence was definitely missed, but his bandmates picked up the slack. The arena provided the perfect atmosphere for their crushing post-industrial racket. The big stage gave them a sense of scale that amplified their transmissions. Clutch were Clutch (i.e., great), and despite feeling ambivalent towards seeing the Misfits again, Glenn Danzig seemed in higher spirits than I’ve ever seen him as they ripped through a 90-minute set of their beloved horror punk. Since I was partly in Vegas that weekend for a wedding, I missed two of the bands Albert told me to see. So, here’s fellow metal journo Jason Roche from Blabbermouth and Invisible Oranges: “While casuals that showed up only for the Misfits were pregaming in the casino bars,

the most die-hard metal fans of the weekend indulged in back-to-back sets of true pioneers. Thomas Gabriel Fischer expressed genuine admiration that Hellhammer songs he helped craft as a teenager in Switzerland were inspiring headbanging in the United States threeand-a-half decades later. Fischer promised to “keep my mouth shut” and keep the focus on the music, and that was exactly what happened as his new gathering of musicians—most notably stage-stalking bassist Mia Wallace— whipped the Saturday afternoon crowd into a frenzy with fan favorites such as “Crucifixion” and “Decapitator” during Triumph of Death’s first North American performance. It’s rare that Carcass are in a position to follow a band that potentially steals the show from them. While the well-oiled precision of their extreme metal attack could not match the emotional catharsis of the previous set, their career-spanning set list kept the whiplash going in the crowd. The live setting reinforces how seamlessly their 2013 return Surgical Steel picked up where the band left off two decades prior, though whether it was the early-era grind of “Exhume to Consume” or material from their more melodic period, the group’s tight performance helped everyone present sweat off the last vestiges of their Friday night hangover.”

 The Ultimate Sin 1349 frontman Ravn is hot in the shade

SUNDAY

As Sunday (afternoon) dawned, Mogwai brought

an exhausted crowd back to reality with their synth-heavy soundtrack music and a mesmerizing light show. Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats followed by delivering a toxic cocktail of their hazy doom rock. As ’70s schlock movies played behind them (possibly some of the same ones that Electric Wizard had on Friday night), they filled the Events Center with smoke that transported the audience into their fucked-up world. While the schedule overall made it easy to catch everyone you wanted to see, the programmers presented a veritable Sophie’s Choice to

metal fans on Sunday night: Opeth playing their only show of the year or Power Trip at the pool. Power Trip won out. Riley Gale had just flown in from his brother’s wedding, and he made damn sure it was a worthwhile trip. Water swirled like a veritable Charybdis as enthusiastic moshers completely disobeyed the security guards. Nobody got hurt, everybody had fun and the Texan thrashers put on one of the best performances of the weekend. Even though the three days could be draining, everything came up 7s in the end. It was definitely the most winning experience I’ve ever had in Vegas.

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Old Man Yells at Everything f you follow any of my online “exploits”

(a term I’m only using because it almost makes me seem interesting), you’ll know I spend a lot of time complaining or pontificating about various things. This is often met with mixed results—a conclusion I’ve grown used to since I’ve been in like 70 bands the last 25 years—but it’s become very apparent over the last 18 months that the times, they are a-changin’. Everything is incredibly messagedriven now, especially coming out of the U.S. underground metal scene, and while the message may be a positive one, the delivery system is consistently diluted. It’s difficult to navigate your feelings on this because if you think any of these bands suck on a musical level, you’re cast as someone who is against what said band stands for. Double jeopardy if it’s a joke-filled band because not only does that place you on opposite political sides, but you’re also an asshole because you don’t find it funny. For the record, I despise humor in music, but that’s because I’m an innately negative person who doesn’t enjoy fun. I think where a lot of anti-fascist music loses people is that there’s a large crop of piss-weaksounding bands. I’m sure there’s a bunch I’m missing, but really, a lot of this stuff just doesn’t bring nasty riffs and aggressive landscapes. How the fuck does that happen when the people performing are all like 23 years old? Some of this shit sounds like it was recorded to be played at tea parties, and I’m sure this analogy will be broken down for symbolism by the more politically-minded, but fuck you, I’m not retyping that. I’m on a roll and, at my age, you just need to go with it or you risk forgetting your point because you’re talking to your cats and accidentally type a meandering run-on. Did you know there’s a dungeon synth project called Pumpkin Witch? I hate humor in that genre, too. 1 4 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

Anyway, for the six of you still reading who haven’t logged onto Facebook to call me a Nazi, I’d like to recommend some anti-fascist stuff that has teeth because “but the riffs!” isn’t the sole property of NSBM dipshits. Recently, I had a conversation with Albert where we both marveled over how a) Napalm Death sounds more vicious today than ever (they’re all orbiting their 50s) and b) Karl Willetts is still hammering out vital, message-driven death metal. That, coupled with the fact that a lot of these newer bands are trying to remind people that fourth-tier My Bloody Valentine clones can read Mao, too, really got me thinking about left-minded bands you probably should dig into. Did you notice that Aus-Rotten did a reunion set at Skull Fest this year? You know what’s even better than that? Behind Enemy Lines, the band Dave Trenga formed after Aus-Rotten disbanded years ago. Band is a fucking salad shooter of riff after riff, and while some of the lyrics might be topically dated, the message is still relevant. Plus, Mary Bielich (whom you know from death/doom heroes Derkéta and Mythic), handles bass, just in case you needed some kind of death metal bona fides. For those of you interested in a more industrialinfluenced dystopia, there’s Cress (though Crass generally plays right after if you’re on YouTube, and that’s enough to ruin my day) or Spine Wrench, the post-Deviated Instinct project from Mid. If you just want heavy, nasty music, look into Extinction of Mankind and Napalm Raid. Violent music? Dropdead. You probably already know most, if not all of these bands, but for the few out there who don’t, this is a look at my playlist the last few weeks, and just a glimpse into harsher acts that share your political views. There’s a larger world out there besides these soft and gentlesounding indie bands whose PR teams want you to believe that they’re the new face of metal.

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN crafts a monthly journey through

MORBID ALES BY CHRIS DODGE

Cruelty-Free Drinking

t’s been a long time since veganism

was just for anarchist gutter punks. It’s big business, surpassing all expectations with recent mass production launches of Beyond Meat and the Impossible Burger. And what goes better with a burger—vegan or not—than a frosty cold brew? But look closely at a beer from one of my favorites, Modern Times, and you’ll notice that every can is emblazoned with the text “This Beer Is Vegan.” If you’re like me, you spent many years assuming all beer is vegan. Beer is basically water, hops, barley and yeast. Where’s the beef? Dustin Eckhardt, bar manager at Pig Minds Brewing in Illinois, sets it straight: “Lactose, isinglass, gelatin, glycerin and casein are all common ingredients used in the brewing process that are not veganfriendly.” He makes a good point, and it does sound way less tasty knowing my beer is made with weird goop boiled from cow hooves, bones and tendons. “We make our milk beers—milkshake IPAs, etc.—with coconut milk,” says Lisa McDonald, co-owner of Sanctuary Brewing Company in Hendersonville, NC. “Dairy is actually a horribly cruel industry, and we’d never use any animal products in our beers,” McDonald converted to veganism later in life and believed in it so strongly she transposed her pro-animal ethics into Sanctuary’s business

OUT NOW ON THRILL JOCKEY

EYES FLYS CONTEXT Debut EP from new band Eyes Flys — featuring members of Full of Hell, Backslider and Triac  Drunk on compassion (Clockwise from top l) Some of the vegan brews available from Sanctuary Brewing Company, Pig Minds Brewing and Modern Times

model. “We are animal lovers and live a cruelty-free life, so we were committed to having a cruelty-free business from the very beginning.” In recent years, even Guinness stopped using isinglass, a fancy name for a derivative of fish bladders, so while they don’t advertise it as such, their legendary stout is now vegan as well. But is making a specifically vegan brew such a big deal in the beer world? John Laffler, pioneering brewer of the original Goose Island, now with his own Off Color Brewing in Chicago, clarified, “Almost all beer is vegan and pretty much no one has used isinglass in the U.S. in more than 15 years.” Jacob McKean, CEO and founder of Modern Times, agrees, but adds that labeling their beer as vegan “… also rules out a host of other potential allergens and commonly restricted food items for folks who aren’t vegan. I believe we have a special responsibility to be as ethical as possible in the way we produce things.” According to Eckhardt, “Everything we make at Pig Minds is 100 percent vegan. We were the first vegan brewery in the United States and have been running seven years strong now. Being the first brewery to commit to being completely cruelty-free was a pretty big statement at the time, and continues to be even now.” While breweries like Pig Minds and Sanctuary are holding strong to their ethics at a street level, Modern Times operates at a comparatively large scale, with six locations (they also serve an all-vegan food menu). Despite their exponential growth, the values behind McKean’s organization are still rooted in underground ethos. “I wanted Modern Times to embody the values that mattered to me,” he says. “Several of our employees are in metal bands, and a bunch of us were into punk and hardcore. The politics of punk and DIY had a huge influence on me personally.” The hardcore scene has a reputation for an in-your-face, confrontational approach to animal rights issues. Those in the beer scene hold the same strong convictions, minus the punk rock compulsion to bludgeon others over the head with their values. Eckhardt from Pig Minds sums it up thusly: “I could dive into the unsettling facts about the dairy industry and milk production, but this is about beer.” Exactly. To each their own, and let’s agree to share a pint regardless of our views. There’s nothing wrong with brewers doing the right thing based on their particular moral compass. But with this success, I fear corporate brewers aren’t too far off from trying to cash in, compromising ethics for profits through packaging. Anyone ready for an Impossible Beer?

THE BODY REMIXED

Limited vinyl only 2xLP includes exclusive poster — featuring remixes by Lingua Ignoto, Moor Mother, Mark Solotroff, Moss of Aura, and more

LIGHTNING BOLT SONIC CITADEL Brand new 2xLP and Wonderful Rainbow reissue available now

Limited color LPs and merch items available exclusively at thrilljockey.com D E C I B E L : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 1 5

MY DYING BRIDE

or a long while, the fate of British doom metal icons My

STUDIO REPORT

MY DYING BRIDE

Dying Bride was uncertain. They had canceled high-profile shows and then went silent. Internally, vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe was dealing with the hardest news of his life— that his then-five-year old daughter had cancer. Black clouds encirALBUM TITLE cled the My Dying Bride camp. In September last year, Stainthorpe The Ghost of Orion stepped forward with the update that his daughter had couraLABEL geously smashed “one of the cruelest of God’s bitter and loveless Nuclear Blast creations.” The ray of hope was the spark Stainthorpe needed to STUDIO green light the forward march of his other love, My Dying Bride. Mynetaur Studio, The reconfigured My Dying Bride—without guitarist Calvin Manchester, England Robertshaw and drummer Shaun Taylor-Steels—eventually RECORDING DATES entered Mark Mynett’s Mynetaur Studio to record the follow-up December 2018– to 2015’s excellent Feel the Misery effort. With Jeff Singer (ex-ParaAugust 2019 dise Lost) on drums for the sessions and a host of guests—includRELEASE DATE ing Wardruna’s Lindy-Fay Hella—the band’s lucky 14th was desFebruary 7, 2020 tined to be a show-stopper. “The recording took forever,” says Stainthorpe mere minutes from embarking on a much-needed vacation. “That’s mostly down to being meticulous about every component used and ensuring it was the very best we could come up with at the time. We re-wrote and re-recorded quite a bit as the highest quality was always sought.”

No doubt My Dying Bride with three decades of experience under their white ruffled shirts would expect—no, demand!— perfection as they edge past their Pearl Wedding days. For Stainthorpe, however, getting back into the swing of things (writing and recording) wasn’t easy. The devastation of his daughter’s cancer battle was still too intense to truly focus on My Dying Bride’s creative rigors. But through the fog and murk of desperation, the frontman won out, resulting in writing, recording and completion of the stunning The Ghost of Orion. “We recorded in the north of England with Mark Mynett engineering and producing at his Mynetaur Studio,” Stainthorpe says. “It was fresh and exciting as we’d never used someone who wasn’t part of the wider My Dying Bride family before. He’s quite the whizz on the knobs and buttons and the final mix of the LP is astonishing.” —CHRIS DICK

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

DEATH/DOOM DEVOTEES DELIGHT! TEMPLE OF VOID READY NEW LP U.S. death/doom heavies Temple of Void are back in Mount Doom Studios working on their third album, The World That Was. “That’s an

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exclusive,” by the way, according to guitarist Alex Awn, who claims that even the band’s label doesn’t know what the Detroit-based quintet’s third album will be called yet. “Technically,” Awn explains that the title is “a Warhammer reference,” but it’s no concept album. “There’s an overarching theme of existential death, though. We’re looking

through different lenses at death and what it really means.” Once again, Temple of Void will collaborate with Omar Jon Ajluni, who appeared on both of their previous albums. “The studio gives us [the] opportunity to do things on record that we can’t do live, so we like to layer in sound design and elements of krautrock-esque ambiance,” Awn says, adding that while he doesn’t “want to mislead any reader into thinking we’re changing our style ... fans might be surprised where some of the influence comes from.” Rest assured, Awn describes The World That Was as “clearly a TOV album” that “strikes a perfect balance of death and doom.” With artwork provided by the immensely talented Adam Burke, The World That Was drops early 2020 on Shadow Kingdom. —DUTCH PEARCE

AFTERMATH

AFTERMATH Reunited Chicago thrashers unleash “woke” concept album

he world is changing fast. The measurement of time itself is, of course, static and unchanging. But the spread of information—both false and factual—via electronic means has had a world-changing impact in a very short period of time. Take, for instance, the humble beginnings of Chicago crossover thrashers Aftermath, who as teenagers first made their mark in the mid-’80s, pre-computers and pre-internet. They, like their thrash peers, had a reasonable mistrust of government, big business and institutionalized authorities, but the information they based those beliefs on was, relatively speaking, pretty limited. ¶ “The lyrics I wrote back then are exactly what [this] album is about,” says vocalist Kyriakos “Charlie” Tsiolis about Aftermath’s latest release, There Is Something Wrong, “but [back then they were] from the point of view of a teenager where he’s literally going around [saying], ‘There’s something wrong here.’ There were so many things, even in my teens, where it didn’t make sense why the world was run that way. 1 8 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

Like, why would you get arrested for smoking a leaf, but yet you could go and buy a bottle of Jack Daniel’s?” Fast-forward a decade or two and, for better or worse, the world has more access to information on which to base its opinions about those very same topics. So, while those Chicago teens might have suspected that there was something fishy about various institutions, the Information Age has delivered them perhaps more than they ever imagined (or hoped for). Tsiolis, along with original guitarist Steve Sacco, original drummer Ray Schmidt and new bassist George Lagis, has crafted a concept album that’s one part oldschool crossover, one part technical thrash and one part 2019 “woke.” “Once you really figure out in your head and you know what you know is true, you don’t see the world at all like you used to—it’s like night-and-day difference,” Tsiolis says in regards to the theme

running through the band’s comeback, 25 years removed from cult classic Eyes of Tomorrow. “Now I know what’s going on.” Regardless of whether you buy into the message that Tsiolis and crew deliver via the blistering tracks and numerous interludes— rife with sampled messages and sounds in multiple languages—the overall effect is impressive. Not too many bands return from a twodecade hiatus and deliver a coherent, relevant concept album. For Aftermath, it made total sense. “It flowed so naturally,” says Tsiolis. “The ideas for the concept were so many that I even wanted to have it more of a full-blown concept with dialogue. Our mascot was actually going to come back to Earth from being gone [as long as the band has been gone] with this information of who’s really running the planet, just to make it more like a story.” —ADEM TEPEDELEN

LIGHTNING BOLT

t’s our dad rock record!” laughs Lightning Bolt drummer/vocalist Brian Chippendale, poking fun at the changes the Providence, RI duo have embarked upon for their seventh album, Sonic Citadel. ¶ After recording 2015’s Fantasy Empire in a conventional studio with an engineer/producer for the first time, the procedural/operational tide turned for Chippendale and bassist Brian Gibson. When it came time to capture Sonic Citadel, the pair didn’t even consider going back to their old methodology of recording on the fly in random locations with a friend’s collection of vintage machinery. They also didn’t do their usual intensive road-testing of material, going so far as to write the lion’s share of two songs in the studio. ¶ “Things have been different because I have a little kid now, so our time’s been limited,” Chippendale says. “We didn’t go into the studio being super-tight after coming off tour; we went into the studio off our couches. [Laughs] We’ve always been on the edge of falling apart when we play, but this one is a little more controlled. A lot of times we’ll write a song at a certain tempo, take it on a couple tours and it’ll go through the roof. 2 0 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

These songs are fresher, closer to their origin point and rock in a more comfortable place.” None of the above should be interpreted as Lightning Bolt not still sounding like a red-lining bullet train on the verge of musical derailment. The Brians may have injected their ballistic noise rock with a dash of a tap-your-toe-and-hum-along sensibility, but tracks like “USA Is a Psycho” and “Air Conditioning” could have just as easily appeared on their 2001 masterstroke, Ride the Skies. The biggest change has come in the attention given to Chippendale’s vocal performance and lyrics, which is saying a lot for a gentleman who performs via a modified telephone receiver/CB mic sewn into an array of wrestling masks and extra-large hosiery. “I’ve always had a bit of a frustrating time capturing the vocals and getting them where I want them,” Chippendale admits.

“Now that we’re recording in normal studios and have the ability to use separation and overdubs, I embraced that more instead of ‘first take, best take.’ “There’s some environmental stuff in there,” he continues in regards to Sonic Citadel’s lyrical direction. “You know, the classic rocker thing about the world ending. There are a couple songs I took character roles. ‘Air Conditioning’ takes a Robin Hood approach where it lists stuff rich people have and how I’m going to take it from them, but I’m going to keep it all. It’s like a lovehate relationship with rich people where I hate them, but would love to be rich. And there’s a song called ‘Hüsker Dön’t,’ which is like a letter to my kid from beyond the grave saying, ‘Good luck, hope it’s fun; come visit me sometime if you build a time machine.’ There are also some nonsense songs in there as well.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PHOTO BY SCOTT ALARIO

Noise rock heroes turn 25 by redistributing a wealth of riffs

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ASAGRAUM

estled in the bosom of mid-’90s black metal fire, Dutch outfit Asagraum find their sound, vision and raison d’être. Across two full-lengths—of which Dawn of Infinite Fire is most recent—songstress Obscura (a.k.a. Hanna van den Berg) harnesses the hateful essence of Gorgoroth and Setherial while, at the same time, reconfiguring the top melodic ends of Dawn and Abyssos to form a sound that’s identifiable, yet distinctly Asagraum. Marching with A. (aka Amber de Buijzer) on drums, Obscura isn’t letting nostalgia be the only fuel to her proverbial songwriting flame. She’s also inspired by recent exploits of mind-altering black metal—such as Svartidauði and Misþyrming—emanating from Ultima Thule. ¶ “I am, as always, inspired by the second-wave black metal from the late ’90s,” Obsura says. “It is hard to beat the ’90s greats playing old-school black metal. [But] I am a great fan of present-day— mainly Icelandic—psychedelic black metal as well. The other renewals in black metal are of less interest to me, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. [Songwriting] came naturally. 2 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

I write my songs without much thinking; it is more like a process of opening me up to the powers of darkness that lie in my subconscious.” Make no mistake: Asagraum pretend not to be what they are. Under the barrage of A.’s drums and Obscura’s Nordic-infused riff batteries beats a truly Satanic heart. Whether or not Asagraum are theistic or nontheistic isn’t the point here. That’s not something they’re ready to reveal in detail to folks outside their spiritual circle. But the one thing Obscura does recommend to interested parties is finding your own path into darkness’ domicile. “I would label us as a Satanic band,” she concurs. “My main interest lies in various ways of magic as a way to manipulate the subconscious mind and reality. I don’t see it fit here to go into details. Those interested in this subject will find their own way into it.”

Musically, Dawn of Infinite Fire differs from Asagraum’s debut, Potestas Magicum Diaboli. Obscura’s new take is faster, more aggressive, kicking up the old-school vibe even more. There’s no misinterpreting their intentions. Tore Stjerna’s mix and master work (Necromorbus Studio) complements Asagraum’s tumultuous—if melodic—blackness, as if the Dark Lord himself presided over the proceedings. The famed studio wizard gives songs like “They Crawl From the Broken Circle,” “Dochters van de zwarte vlam” and “Abomination’s Altar” more bottom end and power. “Tore Stjerna creates a magnificently pure black metal sound, which is not too clean and smooth,” Obsura notes. “[His productions] sound dark and brutal, but at the same time leave all details in the music understandable to the listener.” —CHRIS DICK

PHOTO BY CHRISTIAN MISJE

The devil is calling this international satanic black metal trio

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KNAAVES

Meet Milwaukee’s best cult metallic hardcore act

n the spring of 1993, state and federal law enforcement, as well as the U.S. military, carried out a 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, TX. A media extravaganza, the siege made cult leader David Koresh a household name. One person who watched the nightly news coverage of the incident with rapt attention was Jamie Kerwin, now the guitarist in Milwaukee dark hardcore outfit Knaaves. ¶ “Andy [Parmann, vocals] and I had a conversation once where I recalled that the first world event that I can remember seeing on the nightly news was the standoff and subsequent invasion of the compound in Waco, TX,” Kerwin says. “When you are nine years old, something like that leaves a lasting impression.” ¶ It made such an impression that the first Knaaves album, The Serpent’s Root, is named after a sermon by Koresh. The record as a whole explores the psychology behind—and the media’s obsession with—cult leaders and serial killers through the lens of blistering D-beat and Holy Terror-style crossover.

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“In this album, there is an overall underlying theme of great discontent with the media in the way that they sensationalize tragedy for news content,” says bassist Amanda Daniels. “As news corporations clamor to have the latest and greatest scoop, they collect dollar signs from our clicks and grotesque fascination. These horrid killers become, in a way, pop culture icons. It’s all sickening.” Keeping the delicate nature of the media’s relationship with bad actors in mind, consider the following facts: Daniels is probably best known as the former bassist of Enabler, a project she departed following violent misconduct by a bandmate. In a statement at the time, Daniels indicated that it would be a long while before she returned to playing heavy music, and her absence impoverished this style of extremity.

“I missed playing music really badly,” Daniels shares. “It has always been such a big part of my life and who I am. [Knaaves] was the right project, the right people and right time. I had just moved back to Milwaukee a month or two before the fellas asked me to join in. It was a combination of those things, coupled with an appropriate amount of time passing, that I felt ready to play music again and venture back out into the realms of heavy music.” The Serpent’s Root marks a triumphant return for her in an even more prominent role, sharing vocal duties with Parmann. Brief, blistering and packed with small stylistic surprises, The Serpent’s Root represents an authoritative first record by Knaaves, one that will hopefully portend a long, fruitful career. After all, there’s more than enough sensationalized maniacs in recent history to keep the band inspired for years to come. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

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BLUT AUS NORD

BLUT AUS NORD Progressive black metal gods’ work continues to transform

rt is not a man’s business,” the enigmatic Vindsval posits. “Art is mystical in essence.” ¶ The legendary Blut aus Nord chameleon has been a constant in black metal’s experimental underground, mastering the style’s tenets early on, only to break them down into their atmospheric essence: a pulsing, jarring sound, heralded with majesty and a comforting grace. As the landmark 13th album of a 25-year marathon, Hallucinogen continues to break new ground in the ever-experimental artist’s oeuvre. ¶ “[Hallucinogen] is a very important album,” Vindsval explains. “It begins a turn that will allow Blut aus Nord to explore new territories. [It has] an energy that will allow us to experiment with new ideas on the harmonic level, to further enrich our musical palette, to change our approach to structures and composition in itself. Hallucinogen opens up a multitude of possibilities.” ¶ Marking the beginning of a new era, Hallucinogen finalizes the dichotomy once hinted at with this year’s heavy-industrial Yerûšelem album. “Blut aus Nord will move towards more progressive territories,” Vindsval continues. “We want to incorporate a lot of new elements [and] 2 6 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

other influences, unexpected for some; create atmospheres still unpublished in our discography. Blut aus Nord will continue to reinvent itself, mutate while remaining immediately identifiable ... continue to evolve without ever losing its identity. We’re only just starting.” Reaching back to the first metal albums Vindsval heard as a child, Hallucinogen’s own psychedelic energy aims to capture that early liveliness and frame it within the Blut aus Nord canvas. “This energy, tinged with naiveté, carelessness and simplicity, is omnipresent in this album; it deeply influenced it and is the main building block,” he explains. “Hallucinogen is thus free from any form of conceptualization. It is a living album, which conveys emotions and has only one ambition: to make the listener travel, to make him leave the world during 50 minutes.” What is most admirable about making such a different album

under the Blut aus Nord name is its characteristic identity. It still sounds like Blut aus Nord, as opposed to Vindsval making an attempt at plastic revitalization. “Our fans have understood this need for perpetual regeneration; they expect Blut Aus Nord to surprise them, shock them or irritate them sometimes, and they therefore offer us total freedom when it comes to composing,” says Vindsval. “[We] need to try new things with each new album. The inspiration and imagination are endless, and the possibilities are endless. Why should we in this case just keep on recording the same thing again and again? It would be of no interest, [either] for us nor for the people who follow us. Many bands do this and become boring. It’s a sterile process against what should be art that does not support stagnation. What does not evolve ends up rotting.” As for the title, Vindsval keeps it simple: “Blut aus Nord is a hallucinogenic substance.” —JON ROSENTHAL

PHARMAKON Harsh noise for harsher times doesn’t have to be indigestible

he blair witch project achieved the impossible: making viewers hate the word “fuck,” which was ad-libbed in some derivation approximately three trillion times. If a reboot ever wants to elicit real scares, they should consult Margaret Chardiet. The one-woman extreme noise terror that is Pharmakon routinely malforms her voice into the kind of repugnant, body-quaking shrieks that far exceed our puny scary-movie definition of “witchlike.” ¶ Enthusiasts can already comfortably predict that Chardiet gives zero fucks about “horror for the sake of horror” on Pharmakon’s latest full-length night terror, Devour. Cleaved into two unnamed 18-minute halves, the record offers five tracks (or, as producer Ben Greenberg of Uniform dubbed them, “suites”) about self-cannibalization, selfharm, helplessness, institutionalization, “the shallowness of sanity” and the imminent end of the world, just to scratch the surface. And if this particular slice of sonic body horror makes your stomach turn more than most, rest assured that it’s by design. ¶ “This time around, I found certain ways of manipulating 2 8 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

a little vibration in the ear or in the stomach or chest,” Chardiet explains. After working on a film about a drummer who loses his hearing on tour, she learned that, “just like a transducer mic can be a speaker or a microphone, your eardrums actually can do that, too. There’s this thing called otoacoustic emissions where, if you put certain frequencies in, your eardrum creates a frequency that wasn’t there, and then you hear it again—it’s a positive feedback loop of sound in your ear. I started looking for triads of tones that could produce it; thinking about ways of using sounds where it’s physical not just because of its harshness, but scientifically related to the body. This album is definitely way more physically queasy.” Be it the agonizing bone-drill rants of “Spit It Out” (“perpetuating the unending feed / your own gristle stuck in your teeth”) or the hypnotic metronome ear-rape of a “Self-Regulating System” that’s

constantly on the verge of bloodyheap collapse, Devour proves yet again that hardcore extremity can come just as easily from a sampler as an HM-2. “I watched a lot of people in my community who died,” Chardiet selaborates. “If you grow up below the poverty line, you’ve been seeing certain things happen your entire life, especially as it pertains to people that you love struggling to get by and to not be institutionalized in one way or another, whether it’s in prison, drug rehabilitation... These systems exist in order to scapegoat people and make money off of people that are struggling the most. The global state of affairs, with nationalism on the rise, presidents who can start nuclear arms races via Twitter, entire generations becoming increasingly narcissistic and borderline sociopathic ... when that happens, it’s contagious. This record is how I kept myself from falling into that cavern of selfdestruction.” —ANDREW BONAZELLI

PHOTO BY JANE CHARDIET

PHARMAKON

POPULATION CONTROL

Blackened thrashers pour one out for the world’s end

ome days you wake up to sunny skies and perfect skateboarding weather. Other days it feels like the planet’s being crushed to dust one slab of bad news at a time. On the cover of Death Toll—the new LP from Milwaukee blackened thrashers Population Control—Earth trickles through an hourglass like the doomsday clock is ticking down. Meanwhile, two coin-eyed figures cackle as an act of ultimate schadenfreude. That sense of societal sadism is one of many reasons that Population Control’s sound has turned darker and harsher since their inception. ¶ “There’s this weird feeling everyone has right now, wondering when the bubble’s gonna burst,” explains founding guitarist Mike Gamm. “But we don’t know exactly what the bubble is; it’s just a negative situation on the horizon.” ¶ Formerly a crossover band born out of a hangover, Population Control have veered away from playing Suicidal Tendencies covers. Mentioning Metallica’s Master of Puppets opus “Orion” as an inspiration, Population Control informally announced their stylistic shift on their 2016 instrumental “Gaze of the Abyss.” 3 0 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

Much like Gamm moved on from skateboarding after breaking both of his ankles in separate accidents, the band adapted as new blood was pumped into the lineup. Once drummer Noel Chandek and bassist Joe Sanfelippo joined the fold, Population Control committed to their distinct stylistic change. They scorched their riffs in Don’t Break the Oath’s inferno. Vocalist Ricky Ramirez started channeling Proscriptor McGovern in his newly spawned rasp. On a July Instagram post, Gamm even shared an ice cream-stained sheet of paper with notes about a new song, complete with a whole section deemed “Iron Maiden rip-off part.” “We’re very inspired by Thin Lizzy and Mercyful Fate and Maiden, for sure,” Gamm admits. “But our change happened naturally with the new lineup. We don’t want to be a black metal band or a cookie-cutter thrash band, so that’s in the back of our heads.”

Death Toll successfully rides that razor’s edge between genres without succumbing to by-thenumbers pitfalls. The rumbling bass of “Threshold of Punishment” invokes blackened ominosity and punk animosity. “From Where the Rotting Stench Came” reeks of dread-drenched death-thrash while boasting mercyful melody. Later, “Drowning in the Trenches of My Mind” dunks the listener into a cesspool and offers just enough moonlight to lead them back to the surface for air. But despite the harshness and grave demeanor of Death Toll, Gamm insists that the band remains close because of a shared sense of levity and humor. “If you met us in person at a show, we’re the goofiest dudes,” Gamm laughs. “If there wasn’t fun, if we didn’t keep it light-hearted in the rehearsal room and on the road, we wouldn’t be able to take the band this seriously.” —SEAN FRASIER

PHOTO BY ADAM TUCKER

POPULATION CONTROL

N OLA thrash vets EXHORDER are exhumed for their first album of new material in 27 years by ADEM TEPEDELEN • photo by DANTE TORRIERI

nyone who doubts that a band’s hometown can have a dramatic influence on their sound need only look to New Orleans for confirmation of this phenomenon. NOLA is a city like no other, where the culture is rich, the climate is torrid and thick with humidity, and the history is an exotic mash-up of European, African and Native American cultures. It has also produced some of the most original, truly American music across all genres—from jazz and blues to metal and funk—in the last 100 years. It could be argued, in fact, that the music scene is one of the defining features of the city; the number of groundbreaking musicians to originate here is impressive. ¶ We’re mostly concerned with what the city has given the extreme metal world, but even that is, in its own way, a product of the musical gumbo that’s long simmered in the Big Easy. Erstwhile second-wave thrashers Exhorder—who started in 1985, released their Decibel Hall of Fame classic, Slaughter in the Vatican, in 1990, and have broken up and reformed a couple times over the ensuing decades—are emblematic of the unique flavor of New Orleans. 3 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

“Stylistically, the influence of the traditional New Orleans music that is so very popular, especially where we’re from and also worldwide, a lot of metal people may not know much about it, [but] we grew up listening to it,” says vocalist Kyle Thomas, who, along with guitarist Vinnie LaBella, represents the only original members involved in the latest Exhorder reunion. “It got into our blood and into our writing patterns pretty early, so I think that’s a big reason why there’s that mysterious New Orleans metal sound. It’s really us paying tribute to the guys who did it before us in a completely different genre.” In the brief window in the early ’90s when the first incarnation of Exhorder released their only two full-lengths—the aforementioned Slaughter and 1992’s The Law—the band distinguished

themselves from the glut of homogeneous second-wave thrash at the time with their virtuosity, viciousness and willingness to inject some serious sludgy grooves into their songs. Any number of NOLA’s most notable extreme bands/musicians that followed surely owe a debt to the quintet’s innovative and unrelenting approach—a potent stew of incredible speed, maniacal solos, and riffs played both neck-snappingly fast and grindingly slow. We inducted Exhorder’s debut for all these reasons in July 2018 not long after Thomas and LaBella had resurrected the band for another kick at the corpse. Though original drummer Chris Nail and guitarist Jay Ceravolo opted not to be part of this reunion (and bassist Frankie Sparcello passed away in 2011 during the previous reunion), Thomas and LaBella followed the path established 29 years ago as closely as possible on new Nuclear Blast album Mourn the Southern Skies. With this being the first time the pair had written together in nearly three decades, it would be reasonable to wonder whether they could recapture what made Exhorder so distinctive. It was definitely something Thomas pondered. “A little bit,” he admits, when queried as to how hard it was to get back into Exhorder mode after stints fronting Alabama Thunderpussy and, more recently, doom metal institution Trouble.

“I would be lying if I said I didn’t have to chew on it a little bit from time to time. What was tough for me was having to kind of put the gears in reverse for a minute and think differently. I really kind of lost a little sleep here and there over how exactly I was going to write angry-youngman music at 49 years old. The general consensus was, I’ll just write angry-old-man music. [Laughs] There’s plenty for me to be angry about still.” Mourn the Southern Skies acquits the band’s legacy well in that it captures much of their trademark crossover of sounds and styles without compromising any intensity. It also benefits from both beefy modern-day production and an infusion of new blood, courtesy of guitarist Marzi Montazeri, bassist Jason Viebrooks and drummer Sasha Horn. Consider it an updated interpretation of the classic Exhorder sound. Thomas actually sings melodically at times, and songs such as the sprawling, nine-minute title track likely never would have been conceived and executed by the wild teenagers who originally founded the band. But, as Thomas notes, this material is far removed from those days. “The oldest piece is ‘Mourn the Southern Skies,’ which was something that Vinnie started working on in the late ’90s, early ’00s,” he explains. “He submitted it to me back then and we worked on a version that’s

not quite the same as it is in its final form, but a lot of what we did back then did make it to the album. There’s a sprinkling of songs that I know that Vinnie had on the back burner over the years that he’s just kind of been sitting on. Then, once we really started gaining steam on doing a new album, we were in a position where we needed to write X amount of brand new material, so a lot of these aren’t very old. For me—lyrically and vocally—a lot of these songs I hadn’t heard before, so the majority of [my parts are] brand new.” There is, however, one direct link to the past included on Mourn, via a freshly recorded version of “Ripping Flesh” (which features an appearance from Nail) from the band’s 1986 Get Rude demo. Exhorder aren’t trying to recreate their past, nor are they running away from it. Thomas realizes that having a classic like Slaughter under his belt has afforded him the opportunity to continue to add to New Orleans’ extreme metal history via roots established long ago. “[Slaughter] has spoken to people in a very strong way,” he says. “It’s made a lot of connections with people over the years, and even though we’ve been away, it’s like, for whatever reason, it just kept gaining steam. Every time we break up and come back, we’re actually bigger than we were before. It doesn’t make sense to me, but I’ll take it.”

D E C I B E L : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 3 3

JOEL GRIND CELEBRATES Toxic Holocaust’S 20-YEAR ANNIVERSARY WITH A RETURN TO HIS ROOTS BY

Adem Tepedelen

PHOTO BY

Chelsea Englizian

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. ALDOUS HUXLEY, ENDS AND MEANS

generation born just prior to the most recent turn of the century was

spared from a particular psychological affliction that trip-hop artist Tricky, in the late ’90s, dubbed “Pre-Millennium Tension.” As quaint as it seems now, a significant portion of the population had become convinced, leading up to the change from the 20th to the 21st century, that society’s growing reliance on computers was going to be our imminent doom—financial and otherwise—once 1999 flipped to 2000. The “Y2K bug” was going to bring the world to its knees. Planes would drop out of the sky, our toasters would attack us and that would be that for the human race. Foisted on our own computerized petard, so to speak. ¶ None of that happened, obviously, but we raise this topic for a couple reasons. The first (and most germane to this article) is that Toxic Holocaust mainman/ founder Joel Grind recorded and released his first demo, Radiation Sickness, 20 years ago in 1999. The second is simply that mankind’s notions of what lies in the future are occasionally spot-on, but more often than not spectacularly off the mark. ¶ The Aldous Huxley quote above not only speaks to the complicated relationship we humans have with technology, but is a fairly precise summation of what Grind has done on Toxic Holocaust’s sixth full-length, Primal Future: 2019. To celebrate the “band’s” 20-year anniversary, Grind has “gone backwards.” 34 : N MO AY V E2M 0 19 B E :R D2E0C19 I B:ED LE C I B E L

“I wanted to go back to the roots of the way I started—the first two records I did completely solo,” he says from his home/studio in Portland, OR. “I just wanted to capture that again. I was just looking back at how much fun that was at that time period. For this one, I did it the same way and it was a blast. It was really cool to go back to that style, but applying all the stuff that I’ve learned over the years. I’m operating my own recording studio now and mixing and stuff like that, so I applied all that knowledge and also the musical experience over the years from doing this so long, but going back to the way I did it originally.” As is common knowledge, Toxic Holocaust’s first two albums—Evil Never Dies (2003) and Hell on Earth (2005)—were, in essence, Joel Grind solo albums. He wrote everything, played all instruments, then recorded and mixed them on his own. It was only starting with 2008’s An Overdose of Death...—when he signed to Relapse—that he utilized other musicians and recorded in a proper studio. Grind’s aim to record Primal Future: 2019 like it’s 1999, however, wasn’t exactly how he “did it originally.” So, challenges like who do you get to hit the record button when you’re doing your drum tracks are no longer an issue. “Nowadays, technology is so much more advanced than 20 years ago, as far as recording

goes,” he explains. “The first album, I did at home on a reel-to-reel tape machine. This one, I did the traditional DAW [digital audio workstation] route, so nowadays you can use an iPad to start the recording. It’s stuff you couldn’t have imagined 20 years ago.” Yep, young Mr. Grind would have had no idea what an iPad was in 1999 and definitely no inkling he’d be using what today is a common piece of technology to record his sixth album. But Toxic Holocaust’s trajectory has followed an interesting and unexpected path over 20 years. Certainly ending up signed to eOne Records—labelmates of both Snoop Dog and High on Fire—after a decade with Relapse is major news in 2019. “Basically I wanted a little bit bigger distribution in Europe, because when we tour Europe, sometimes we’ve had issues with people getting our records,” Grind says. “That was a main focus. I wanted more people to get records in their hands in Europe without having to pay import prices. And I just wanted to try something different, to be honest with you. It’s no ill will against Relapse. Relapse has been amazing. I wouldn’t rule out working with Relapse again in the future. I really liked working with them.” The switch to a new label, however, wasn’t the reason for the six-year gap between 2013’s Kurt Ballou-produced Chemistry of Consciousness and Primal Future. That was largely a result of Grind starting up his own business as a recording engineer and mixing/mastering guy. He literally had so much work that finding the time to write and record his own material took a backseat. “Starting my own business was a massive undertaking,” he admits. “I got so busy so fast, and I wasn’t expecting it. And when you run your own business, it’s kind of hard to turn away clients when you’re starting, because you’re building your clientele and you don’t want to be, like, saying no to people who could be potential clients [again in the future]. I was constantly recording and mixing other bands, so I didn’t really have a lot of time. Also, if you do a certain job [like recording], it’s then hard to want to do that same thing you’re doing professionally for yourself after you’re done with work. It would be hard to be mixing a band all day and then want to go and record and mix [my] own stuff.” When Grind did finally find time for Toxic Holocaust, he conceived an album that has one foot in the future and one in the past. Yes, he went solo again, but he took advantage of all the latest technology to create an album that’s, well, a throwback thematically and even sonically. “I always try to mix it up [sonically] a little bit,” he says. “I tried to make this one a little more… [Laughs] I guess you could say ’80s. I just made it more reverby. I was kind of going for, like, Venom-meets-’80s Judas Priest, believe it or not. The feel of it is almost like a cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic future thing, almost like an ’80s version of the future.”

I was kind of going for, like, Venom-meets-’80s Judas Priest, believe it or not. The feel of it is almost like a cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic future thing,

almost like an ’80s version of the future. Joel Grind

D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 19 : 3 5

interview by

QA j. bennett

W IT H

DENNIS

LYXZÉN REFUSED’s vocalist talks Trump, the rise of the racist right and why the band’s new album sounds like “a bunch of Swedish pinkos going crazy”

3 6 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

lmost any published conversation one might have with Dennis When you say it enough times, all of a sudden

Lyxzén is going to revolve around punk rock, politics or both. The frontman and mouthpiece for Swedish punk firebrands Refused set the tone early with the titles and contents of the band’s landmark ’90s albums, Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent and Decibel Hall of Famer The Shape of Punk to Come. When the band pulled their own plug in ’98, Lyxzén penned a screed titled “Refused Are Fucking Dead,” in which he lambasted everything from capitalism and the class system to popular music and “stupid journalists.” ¶ Fast forward to 2012, and Refused suddenly became very much undead. They played highly touted reunion shows and put out a 2015 comeback album entitled Freedom. It was recorded in Los Angeles with hotshot producers Nick Launay and Shellback, a Swedish pop impresario best known for his work with Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and Maroon 5. But Refused’s new one is the opposite of that. They recorded it in Sweden and produced it themselves. And it’s called War Music for a reason. “We live in times that are super polarizing,” our man observes. “We have the rise of the alt-right and fascism. Racism is rearing its ugly head. You have a time period where capitalism is everything. In a lot of ways, just getting through life is war, and we wanted to create music that reflected on that and reflected on everything going on in the world.” Do you think the state of global politics is worse today than when Refused started in 1991?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s one of those things where progress is happening, so a couple of things are getting slightly better. But overall, the state of the world right now, where ordinary working people vote for Trump, but it’s against their best interest, is a bad situation. In all the years that I’ve been writing about politics and singing about politics, it’s definitely pretty fucking bad right now. It’s hard to measure, but I remember when George Bush was in charge and everyone was like, “Oh, this is the worst thing ever.” But now it is worse. [Laughs] What’s the general tone of Trump-related news in Sweden these days?

As someone that’s been to America a lot—I’ve toured the States 30 times, maybe—you get a little bit of both worlds. You can analyze the social, economic or cultural fabric that is America and you can see it from a European point of view. And I think when we look at America now, one of the problems with someone like Donald Trump is that no one takes your country seriously. To the rest of the world, it’s like a laughingstock. I had a feeling you might say that.

It’s also a situation where Trump keeps upping the ante of dumb shit you can say. A lot of news reports in Sweden, we don’t even talk about Trump because he’s just saying dumb stuff and it feels almost calculated. It’s like if you keep PHOTO BY TIM TRONCKOE

pushing the boundaries of what people can say and how much they can lie, eventually they just stop listening and you can get away with really, really horrible stuff behind the scenes. Because I think a lot of what he does is that he detracts from what’s actually happening. He says dumb stuff and then we get upset like, “Oh, he’s horrible!” But then, instead of focusing on his horrible ideas or his horrible words, maybe we should look at the system that created someone like that. We should look at the capitalist structure that enables a person like that to become one of the most powerful people in the world. Other countries used to have this great reverence for America. It was a country that was looked up to. And now a lot of people think it’s a joke. [Laughs] You’re not looking great right now. Suddenly, there’s a Trump-esque character in Boris Johnson leading the U.K. And now there are even some far-right politicians who have come to power in your country, which is generally thought of as a liberal bastion. What do you make of that?

There’s been a paradigm shift in how we view the world, I think. One of the things that’s been happening over the last 10 or 15 years is that there’s been an acceptance of right-wing and racist rhetoric, and people kind of get worn down. I think that’s what’s happening with Trump. That’s what happened in Sweden. The right-wing party in Sweden used to be full-on Nazis, and then they started wearing suits and saying there’s a problem with immigration.

people think there’s this problem with immigration that isn’t really there. The world is a very complex place, you know? We have economic and political structures that are insanely complicated. We used to have media outlets that were pretty critical about what was going on in the world. But now we have this sort of click economy and social media economy, where super difficult questions get narrowed down to a tweet, basically. Many neo-Nazis in America started wearing suits as well, obviously, and they’re calling themselves “the alt-right.” The media seems to have embraced this term as well. Why don’t we just call them what they are: fascists and Nazis? Why are we sugarcoating it?

I agree with you: We shouldn’t sugarcoat it. But I think it’s one of those things where people make very small, petty distinctions. And then if you call them a Nazi, you’re not serious in your debate. “I’m not a Nazi! I just don’t like immigrants. I love America!” So, the debate becomes about language. It becomes about definitions instead of, “What are your ideas? What are your beliefs? What do you stand for?” And it’s crazy because with the help of Russia, of course, you fought the Nazis once—and you won. Your entire country backed the decision to fight the Nazis. So, it is especially crazy to see what’s happening in the States from a European perspective. Backtracking to what I was saying earlier, I think really difficult questions demand easy answers for dumb people. And I think that’s what it is… well, I wouldn’t say “dumb”—uneducated people need these easy answers, an easy fix. And it’s easier to blame someone coming into the country as a refugee than blaming the economical structures that are putting you out of your job. You’ve said War Music is possibly your most direct lyrical statement yet. Is that related to what we’ve been talking about?

Yeah, but it also ties in with the music. Coming from the punk rock hardcore background, Refused has a certain language, a way you face stuff that sort of fits with the heavy riffage. And I think this is a record that’s incredibly direct in its entire approach. We trimmed all the fat. It’s a very compact record, and I think we wanted to reflect that in the way we wrote lyrics as well. There’s no bullshit. There is no time for trying to be fancy or highbrow. We wanted the entire thing—from the artwork to the songs and lyrics—to feel like an all-out fucking attack: a bunch of Swedish pinkos going crazy. [Laughs] D E C I B E L : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 3 7

Black and white and red all over  Refused are fucking undead and ready for war

Other countries used to have this great reverence for America. It was a country that was looked up to. And now a lot of people think it’s a joke. You’re not looking great right now.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, the setup of Freedom was weird because we hadn’t written music together for like 14 years or something absurd like that. So, you had to get back into, like, “Okay, how do we write music? How do we create songs together?” It was hard work. We went to America, we had a big-name producer and we did that whole thing. A lot of Freedom was to sort of recapture what Refused is to us. The 2012 reunion was great, but it was a little bit of a nostalgia thing. We were playing the old songs. We [decided] that if we’re going to continue, we need to write music to be relevant. So, we wrote Freedom very much in secrecy. When we did the last show, we kind of went away and said, “Yeah, we’re not really doing anything.” But we were actually writing songs. When we started playing the songs from Freedom live, it became obvious pretty fast what songs we liked playing and what songs the crowd liked us to play. So, when we started writing War Music, that was the starting point: What songs do we like? What songs feel like Refused songs? And then, in reaction to going to L.A. and working with a big producer, we did everything ourselves. Now that you’ve had more time to reflect on it, do you think Refused’s 14-year hiatus was a necessary part of the process?

I think so. If we would have tried to keep it going after The Shape of Punk to Come, it would have … 3 8 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

I mean, it did kill our band in a lot of ways. The success of that record didn’t happen until after way after we broke up. So, I think that whole weird scenario of growing as a band while you were not around was actually something that benefited where we are today. And I think that long break that we took—we broke up for a long time—I think it was something that we needed to sort of get some distance from that record and get some distance from our own lives, you know? So, I think it had to be like that. How much do you feel you have in common with the young man who wrote the open letter “Refused Are Fucking Dead” when the band broke up?

That’s a good question. [Laughs] It’s interesting because all of us in Refused are the type of people that we always want to challenge ourselves. We always want to change and move and grow, which I think is a fantastic thing as an artist because it makes you try things you didn’t think you were going to try. It makes you hopefully a better person. But when I read that open letter, I think it’s one of my best writings. I think it’s fantastic because it’s written in such anger, but it’s also very funny and clever. There’s still a lot of me in that, or vice versa. But I’m definitely different. There are definitely aspects of me [today] that 25-year-old me would think is kinda lame. [Laughs] But that’s what it is to grow up, to evolve. But I do think I can relate a lot to our old selves. Refused broke up when I was 26, maybe. So, we wrote The Shape of Punk to Come when I was 24 or 25. We were

young people. When we got back together in 2012, we were grown men, basically. And one of the biggest challenges was: How do we approach this music that was written by a bunch of kids? But it went surprisingly well because a lot of the riffs and ideas still resonate with who we are today. Do you still believe in punk rock’s ability to foment revolution?

Not really. I mean, I still believe that that’s my calling, if that makes sense. But as a subculture, as a movement? Not so much. In the ’90s, it felt like the heyday of what a musical movement could do to topple the world economy was already gone. And I think one of the biggest issues is that in the ’60s and ’70s, you had the hippie movement, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement. In the ’80s, you had Rock Against Racism. But there hasn’t been a musical movement aligned with a political movement in a long time. That’s one of the big problems. That’s why there isn’t more music that can make a huge impact. But I still believe in the idea that if you hear the right record or go to the right show or read the right book or see the right movie, even, it can have a huge existential impact on your life. It can change you and make you a more political person or whatever you want to be. There’s still power in music; there’s still power in art. As a mass movement, maybe not so much. But I definitely think that getting up onstage and playing these songs can still have an impact on people’s lives.

PHOTO BY SARA ALMGREN

In past interviews, you’ve talked about how new records you’ve made are often reactions to previous records. Is War Music a reaction to Freedom?

Another Day

the making of Armored Saint’s Symbol of Salvation N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 4 0 : D E C I B E L

story by

jeff treppel

D B H O F 17 9

ARMORED SAINT Symbol of Salvation METAL BL ADE MAY 14, 1991

The Saint goes marching on

D E C I B E L : 41 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19

oo melodic for thrash, too heavy for hair and too American to be NWOBHM, Armored Saint

were the ugly duckling of ’80s metal. Their story is almost as epic as their name implies: eternal hope brought down by constant disappointment, brothers in metal banding closer together while bad fortune, bad timing and tragedy threatened to destroy them. In the end, it’s the tale of a close-knit family united by friendship and a mutual love of music, together against the world—even when it seemed like the world won. The core of the band, drummer Gonzo Sandoval and guitarists David Prichard and Phil Sandoval, had all been friends since grade school. Inspired by bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, they started Armored Saint in 1982 in the Sandoval family garage with “some guy named Mike” while attending South Pasadena High School near Los Angeles. Fellow student John Bush had a versatile voice and a PA, making him the perfect choice for frontman. Bassist Joey Vera replaced Mike. The rest was history. Their muscular SoCal take on New Wave of British Heavy Metal melodies helped win them an important fan: nascent Metal Blade chief Brian Slagel. The label founder would be their constant cheerleader as they weathered major label woes, Phil Sandoval’s dismissal during the Delirious Nomad sessions and—the biggest blow of all—the death of Prichard, the heart of the band and one of their principal songwriters, after a battle with leukemia at the age of 26. The band regrouped and used Prichard’s final compositions as the basis for their fourth album. Symbol of Salvation proves that Prichard’s premature loss was just as devastating as Randy Rhoads’ or Chuck Schuldiner’s. Fantastical fist-pumper “Reign of Fire,” the soaring “Another Day” and the groovy “Tribal Dance” alone showcase his range and genius. The other musicians brought their best as well—new guitarist Jeff Duncan contributed heartfelt ballad “Last Train Home” and the sinister title track, while Vera’s soulful instrumental “Half Drawn Bridge” pays tribute to his friend. The band’s determination to do justice by Prichard shines through on every track, making this the Back in Black of the denim-and-leather set. Slagel has said it’s his favorite Metal Blade release. Unfortunately, the album came out in 1991—not a great time for traditional metal. Glowing reviews didn’t translate to sales or tour attendance. Then Anthrax put in a call to Bush to see if he’d be interested in replacing Joey Belladonna, and that was that. For a while. Armored Saint reformed in 2000 and remain active with the same lineup. In 2018, they toured Symbol of Salvation in its entirety and discovered that, although it took almost three decades, the album had finally found its audience. In order to be eligible for Hall of Fame induction, we need to include the voice of everyone who performed on the album. A notable voice is missing: Prichard’s. But because he didn’t actually play on the record (outside of a patched-in solo), his story—and the band’s—can be told here. We welcome Symbol of Salvation as it spreads its reign of fire to the Decibel Hall of Fame.

D B H O F 17 9

ARMORED SAINT symbol of salvation

The band got dropped from Chrysalis Records in 1988 after three records with the label. Can you tell us how that came about?

We actually got a two-record firm deal with our manager Cliff Bernstein [Metallica, Def Leppard]. We were signed to Chrysalis in 1982 or ’83, then a year later, the record [March of the Saint] came out in ’84. We were very happy at the time—we got signed when everybody else was getting signed on to majors, and we were like, “What about us?” Eventually, Ron Fair showed interest—he was with Chrysalis. We were his first signing; he went on to sign Christina Aguilera, Black Keys, Spandau Ballet. In hindsight, there were a lot of bad decisions made, but [March of the Saint] came out and it was very expensive. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out to be a big seller or anything. At that point, big labels would be dropping the bands that didn’t sell what they wanted, but we had the two-record firm deal, so we went on to the second record. JOEY VERA: We saw it coming. It was a gradual thing. We first lost our A&R man, Ron Fair, by the end of [second album] Delirious Nomad, so when we were making our third record, Raising Fear, we had lost our main cheerleader. We could tell that there was some pressure coming from the label, and we didn’t have anybody directing or fighting for things that we wanted, so the writing was on the wall. By this point, the group was fairly frustrated with the company. We felt like they didn’t really get us and they didn’t understand what they should be doing with us, marketingwise and supporting tour-wise. We had a very difficult time going to Europe to play there. We felt like that was the breeding ground for us. We could’ve taken so much advantage of that period of time, just given the kind of music we were playing. They were pretty instrumental in not supporting us going there, because it was obviously expensive to go there—it still is these days—but you have to go there. So, when it came time for Raising Fear, we were somewhat glad we were going to get dropped because we wanted to move on and try to find another company that would be better suited for us. JOHN BUSH: We did the final tour of America in January/February/March of ’88. When we came back, we knew we were probably done right after that. You know, it’s funny: I guess we were busting [our soundman’s] balls and he got pissed at us and told us that we were done, Armored Saint was done. And it was like a dagger to the soul when he said that because it was like, Oh, you might be right. I look back at that and [it] was like, I was 24 years old, we were all 24 years old, and we had already GONZO SANDOVAL:

“There are songs on Symbol that I look back and kind of laugh at some of the lyrical content— ‘Reign of Fire’ being one of them—but it was what it was. I think that song came out of a conversation we were having about Witches of Eastwick.”

JO HN B USH made three records on a major label, and to have somebody laugh at us and say we were done at 24—in retrospect, it was funny, because if somebody said that to me now, they would be right. But then, we hadn’t even hit 25 yet. What was the mood like in the band after Chrysalis dropped you? VERA: It was a bit of a harsh reality not having a label all of a sudden and not having doors being knocked on or phone calls being answered. The N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 4 2 : D E C I B E L

music scene was just starting to shift around this time, around ’88-’89. Hair metal was booming at this point, and so we suddenly felt like, Oh, this is harder than we thought. We thought we would just cruise into another major label and everything would be cool, but it was totally the opposite. That was something that we had to swallow and kind of figure out what to do. So, for us, we just went back to the music. We started writing and we went through this really long woodshedding period.

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D B H O F 17 9

ARMORED SAINT symbol of salvation I didn’t feel up to being in a band at that point in my life. I didn’t want to quit rock ‘n’ roll, but I needed to get some things straightened out, which I did. And unfortunately, David passed away, which was horrible.

DUNCAN:

BUSH: I think we decided that we were going to make some changes and decided that we needed to go back to being a two-guitar band [since Phil Sandoval had left a few years earlier]. That’s when we brought Jeff [Duncan] in, and that gave us another kick of morale. We were like, Okay, we’re just going to write some songs. We don’t have a label, so we’ll just try to write from the perspective of not putting any limitations on what somebody would expect from us. Let’s just be creative and push the boundaries of what we can do as writers. Eventually, the majority of those songs became Symbol of Salvation, so it probably was a good thing.

Jeff Duncan was in and out of the band briefly at that point. What’s the story with that?

I knew the guys for a long time. We played in the same scene out in L.A., and we became good friends. We hung out quite a bit. I was actually approached to join for Delirious Nomad initially, but I was still pursuing my thing and I didn’t want to make that move at that time. Odin was not really going where I wanted it to go—all the typical band stuff—so I seized the opportunity when it came around again. Of course, I loved Armored Saint, so I was eager to do it and excited to do it. I think my guitar playing is really something that was very compatible with the band, and we got along really well. There wasn’t really an audition, per se—there kind of was, but we just jammed for a couple minutes and then went and got something to eat. It was pretty simple. VERA: Jeff came in right after we got dropped from Chrysalis. When we put out the Saints Will Conquer live EP, we decided to do some touring for it. At this point, we had decided within the group—Dave included—that we wanted to be go back to being a five-piece, so we needed a second guitar player. We asked Jeff to come into the group. At that time, we didn’t ask Jeff to be the touring guy—we were really looking for a second guitar player again. We had known him for quite a while, obviously being in Odin, but we had mutual friends that lived in the area and we would hang out outside of the music scene as well. Once he came into the group and we began playing, it was a natural thing. Him and Dave got along great together, and his personality worked well within our group. We were with him for at least a year. He did that tour with us; we did several demos and writing sessions with him. He co-wrote “Last Train Home” during that time with Dave and myself. I don’t know exactly the timeline when he decided to leave the group, but it was during the time when Dave was ill and went into the hospital. Jeff was having some personal things that he was dealing with on his end, so that was when he split. JEFF DUNCAN:

What was the reaction when you heard about David Prichard’s leukemia diagnosis?

The situation came when David let us know that he had been going to the doctor and he needed some money for his medical expenses. We as a band said, “You know what? Take whatever money you need. We can make more, but you can’t buy more health.” We were like, “What do you want to do?” And he said, “Let’s keep writing, let’s keep going.” Eventually, David succumbed to the leukemia and passed away of pneumonia, and so we thought it was over, that’s it. BUSH: They’ve made a lot of inroads and strides in dealing with leukemia now, but I think we were pretty scared and we figured it was pretty bleak. He also was an only child—or I don’t even know if he was an only child; I think he was given up for adoption right after birth. They tracked his birth mother down to try to see if they could do a bone marrow transplant from a sibling or a parent. I think they found her and she didn’t have any other children. He had to go to the City of Hope Hospital, which was based out of the San Gabriel Valley, and a very established hospital in dealing with that kind of stuff. He was in line for getting a bone marrow transplant, but he couldn’t find the right match and it was a long process. We just tried to stay positive with him. He was the ultimate optimistic guy, so there was no reason for us to not be. G. SANDOVAL:

After Dave passed, why did you guys make the decision to press on?

They had been on Chrysalis and they had been dropped, and Dave went through everything he went through and passed away. I think the band was just kind of defeated; they had pretty much given up. At that point, they had all these amazing demos that they had recorded with Dave on it. I basically went to the band and said, “Look, we can’t let all these great songs go to waste. We have to do something with them.” So, I think that slowly got them to start thinking about maybe getting it together. I guess my pitch was good enough. VERA: I think Brian reminded us that the important thing for all of us has always been the music. In the time that we had spent with Dave, we had created what we thought was some really good music, so it would have been a shame to throw it away. As my memory serves, we just wanted to get back out there. There were a few things we had to do first. The three of us [Vera, Bush and Gonzo] had lost our guitar player and one of our main songwriters. Dave and I had shared a lot of the writing through [our] history,

but he was a very strong force in that writing process, and also a strong personality. Our group never really had a leader, which has probably been to our detriment. We’ve always been five engines without a chief, and as a result, we’ve made some questionable decisions along the way. Dave was the guy who was—most of the time— the cheerleader, but since he was gone, I was the one that had to step up, since I was the other 50 percent of the writing team that was still there. I decided to take on this [leadership] role that was new to me, but I think that it was really necessary, and I think that it also helped the group find a focus once we got into the studio. G. SANDOVAL: Dave was such a big nucleus of our band that we just thought it was over. When he passed, it was hard to be happy or to smile or to feel any sort of good, because the minute anything good happened, the fact that David passed away would just step in. It was hard to fall into being happy again for me, personally. We had a decision to make. We had written about 24 songs with David, and he had passed, so do we end it and let those songs die or are we going to regroup and record this record in honor of David, and allow the world to hear his magnificent writing skills? BUSH: We were all pretty skeptical. I was probably the most skeptical and not wanting to deal with it. I had some other personal things I was grappling with at the same time—a breakup, and that was a mess—and I was probably not that into carrying on, at that moment at least. We finally had a powwow between me, Joey and Gonzo, and said, “What are we going to do?” Because we had all the material, and Brian was there. We really had to regroup as a family— that’s what Armored Saint always has been and is still. So, that’s when we decided to regroup with Phil and Jeff.

BRIAN SLAGEL:

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What’s the story behind getting Phil and Jeff back in the band, especially after Phil had been let go several years earlier? BUSH: Jeff was someone who was in and out of the writing process with Dave from the beginning of the songwriting of Symbol of Salvation. Phil had gotten his act together by that point, and Gonzo was always obviously determined to get Phil back, and we were ready to embrace him. So, we said, “Let’s get these two guys.” They both played with Dave, which is cool, and they actually bonded pretty well. Phil and Jeff have a pretty good relationship to this day. So, we got them back, and then [it was] like, okay, we felt like we were a group again. VERA: I think that [Phil] was really keen to come back right away. I think at the time there was a question mark in John and my minds, because he had been out of the group for something like six years, and during that time, we really didn’t have any contact with him—I believe that he moved up to San Francisco

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ARMORED SAINT symbol of salvation After some shows and some final songwriting sessions, the band went into Eldorado Recording Studios in Hollywood to record Symbol of Salvation with producer Dave Jerden (Alice in Chains, Jane’s Addiction) and engineer Brian Carlstrom. What was it like working with Dave?

“We got the big bomb in Hawaii that John was going to join Anthrax, so that was like, ‘What the… ?!’ That was another set of circumstances that blocked Armored Saint from really moving forward and being that band— not as big as Metallica or Megadeth, but in there with all the successful bands.”

P HIL SA N DOVA L for a while. When we first made the decision, it was more like, first, let’s see if he’s interested, and second, let’s see if it’s going to work—like, can he still play? PHIL SANDOVAL: Of course, they could question that, but turns out that I could. I was going through some dark years. I had to go through some personal stuff, and John and Joey were going through some stuff. And then Brian Slagel heard the demos that Dave Prichard had recorded with them, and Brian suggested to Joey and John that there should be an album, and Brian suggested to them to get me back in the band.

I was in touch with the guys about what happened, because Dave was a friend first and I lost a friend. It was up to the guys as to what to do at that point in time—they were the remaining band members—but they didn’t have any guitar players, so they decided to bring me back. And Phil, which was really the best thing that could happen. I had already been in the band, and obviously Phil was a founding member, so it made sense. Armored Saint has always been closeknit—those guys have known each other since grade school—so it’s a real family vibe. Those guys aren’t going to bring in Joe Blow guitar player.

DUNCAN:

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VERA: It was great! I loved working with Dave. I like his style and I obviously loved his work; his personality as well. He was a very down-to-earth guy, a great engineer, and he had a great handle on vibe and how to draw it out, and I appreciate that about him. Probably the biggest thing I admired about him was his ability to recognize that he would be able to make a better record if he could let go. As I mentioned, I had become kind of the director of the band and would help the group internally produce the band and the music and the songs, and that was extending into the studio recording process. Dave was very involved in the very beginning, when we were tracking the rhythm section. When it came time to do the guitar leads and the vocals, Dave was very much just letting things unfold. In particular, John felt like he wasn’t being challenged enough by Dave, like that he could do better than what Dave was allowing to pass. I went to Dave and said, “Do you mind if I work with John one-on-one?” And he said, “No, not at all.” So, I began working with John tracking his parts, and Dave would come in for 15 minutes and say, “You guys are doing great, you don’t need me anymore,” and literally leave. I took that as a really bold thing for that guy to do this—he was hired by Metal Blade to deliver this record, but he recognized something, a trust in me maybe, that I would be able to give him performances that maybe he couldn’t get. At first, I didn’t know how to take that. Like, is he pissed off? But it really wasn’t that. It’s that he was mature enough and had enough confidence in his own abilities that he knew that, if he just left us alone, he would be able to wrap this up with a nice bow when it came time for the mix. DUNCAN: Dave Jerden just has an amazing ear. He’s one of those people. I do remember I was recording this 12-string guitar on “Another Day,” and there were some tuning issues between the electric guitar and the 12-strings because 12-strings are oddball instruments. He had me pick up the guitar and we played the chords differently and made it work. I was all of 24 years old when we made that record, and that’s just something I would’ve never thought of doing. P. SANDOVAL: I remember it was just pretty easygoing. There weren’t too many obstacles. It was a very good, pleasant atmosphere, and it was overall a very cool vibe through the whole process.

John, can you tell us about your approach to the lyrics? BUSH: There are songs on Symbol that I look back and kind of laugh at some of the lyrical

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content—“Reign of Fire” being one of them—but it was what it was. I think that song came out of a conversation we were having about [The] Witches of Eastwick, because Dave [Prichard] was really into that movie, this perverted fantasy of the girls with Jack [Nicholson], and he was like, “Why don’t you write a song about that?” So, I wrote a whole sex black magic song. It really wasn’t the most creative idea in the world, but it seemed to work with the music; hence, it became that song. There were songs like “Last Train Home,” which felt like it was a kind of yearning uncertainty-type song. Same thing with “Another Day” and “Tainted Past”—they kind of had a cynical view of life, yet still trying to remain optimistic. I think that, as [far as] being a lyricist goes, I want to be positive without being cheesy, but I also don’t always want to feel that way, because I just don’t know. A lot of the lyrics on that record in particular just felt that way—it felt like I have this new sense of optimism, but I don’t know about the future. Dave’s only appearance on the album was in a solo at the beginning of “Tainted Past.” How did you accomplish that? VERA: We wanted Dave to be a part of the record physically, even though he wasn’t there, so we were able to pull off one of his guitar solos from the four-track demo that he had done, a little cassette recording. We were actually able to fly it into the new version of “Tainted Past,” painstakingly going through the process recording it from one tape machine to another tape machine—mind you, this was way before Pro Tools and computers, so we did it the old-fashioned way. Brian Carlstrom and I painstakingly put the solo in there, and at the end of the day, it was such an awesome feeling to have Dave on the record.

Joey, can you tell us about your quote, “There are times when we have to leave things that are undone. It is then that we must leap in faith,” in the booklet for the instrumental “Half Drawn Bridge?” VERA: The quote and the title came from when Dave was in the hospital. He was having this bone marrow transplant and he was basically there for several weeks—he never got out, obviously. But while he was in there, during the first part of it when he started the chemo, he was

bored and he had nothing to do. Dave was really good at sketching, just drawing these strange monsters and creatures and stuff like that. He used to call me “The Troll.” That was a nickname the band had for me; they used to call me a troll because I lived like a troll. I was very nocturnal, I would stay up late and sleep in late, so I would never see the light of day. So, he drew a picture of a troll—he drew me—underneath this bridge, this little creature in one corner. And you see the drawing of this bridge over the other side, but the drawing was half-finished. He only got to the creature and about half the bridge, and then I guess he got tired and didn’t finish it. We put it up on the wall in his hospital room. So, when it came time to make the record, that was something I always remembered. After the album came out, the sales didn’t line up with your expectations. What happened? VERA: I would say the bummer part didn’t come until after the record was done and released. The “Reign of Fire” video came out, it was great, Headbangers Ball was in full swing and we were in the rotation on the show for something like 11 weeks. It got great reviews. I think at least in the critics’ eyes, we had done well. Everything was looking positive, but we were out on tour kind of struggling. We couldn’t get on any long tours. We did a run with Suicidal Tendencies, a very short one. We did another run with Wrathchild America. We did a very short one-week thing in Europe opening for the Scorpions, which was amazing because we were playing arenas, but we got added like a week prior and Tesla was on the billing, so nobody knew who we were. Everybody thought they were watching Tesla and not Armored Saint. So, it was great for us, but it didn’t do anything for us. We did some headline N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 4 8 : D E C I B E L

stuff and we found ourselves back to square one in a way, slugging it out sometimes in front of 100 people. We were like, “Oh my god, this isn’t lining up with what it looks like,” so that was a tough pill to swallow. G. SANDOVAL: Here’s the deal: Metal Blade had a distribution deal with Warner Brothers where Metal Blade puts out all these records and Warner Brothers picks up anything that sells, like, say, over 75,000 copies. So, I’m like, “Okay, we need to sell 75,000 copies and then Warner Brothers kicks in; my god, that’s so amazing.” This was heartbreaking for me, personally, because if we can’t sell 75,000 copies, then what are we doing? So, the record came out to much acclaim and this and that, but as far as sales were concerned, it never sold—at that time—more than 75K, so Warner Brothers never kicked in. P. SANDOVAL: I remember [Dave Jerden] saying, “Hey, you guys are really going to do well with this album, I feel it.” And we were very excited about the album, because it sounded phenomenal just hearing it from the speakers. And then we toured with it and then we got the big bomb in Hawaii that John was going to join Anthrax, so that was like, “What the… ?!” That was another set of circumstances that blocked Armored Saint from really moving forward and being that band—not as big as Metallica or Megadeth, but in there with all the successful bands. But then again, it was a difficult decision on [John’s] part, and he did some great albums with Anthrax, and now we’re here and I’m glad that John is back in Armored Saint. BUSH: We were back on the road and the first thing we did was this Wrathchild America/Last Crack tour. I just remember we were all in a van with the crew and it sucked. It was awful,

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“We really had to regroup as a family— that’s what Armored Saint always has been and is still.”

JO HN B USH it was terrible, the shows weren’t that great, the environment within the band and the crew was terrible—it was just not a happy time. I think that it was like, Here we are, we did that, and now here we are again and it sucks. So, I think that that, coupled with eventually I got the call from Anthrax [while on tour in Hawaii]—everyone is going to have their different opinion, and they probably told you about me leaving and the band ending at that point. I’m sure not everybody, including myself, wanted that to happen. But speaking for myself—and obviously it’s easier for me because I left and went on to this bigger band—it still felt like the right time for it to end. I know it seems kind of weird, because we struggled and then the guy in the band died and we rose up again and made this amazing record. That seems like kind of a weird ending to the story—until we resumed, obviously—but that’s the way the story, as I see it, had to go. Why do you think Symbol has become such a fan favorite?

We always knew it was a great album. It is a fan favorite. I think it’s because the album is so well-recorded and because everybody was on the same page as far as being honest to David Prichard. DUNCAN: I knew that we had made a great record. I knew that for sure. I didn’t know that we would be, in 2018, touring the album in its entirety, and that a lot of people would be coming to see that, because we did that tour P. SANDOVAL:

both in Europe and in America, and all the shows went extremely well. I would’ve never guessed that. You do something and you do the best you can, and you put your heart and soul into it. When it has that sort of impact on people, you just can’t predict that. I think the spirit of that album really spoke to people, and it’s an amazing thing to be part of something that was an important piece of music to people. It speaks to Dave Prichard, too, because he was just as much a part of that record as the rest of us, even though he wasn’t alive at that point. That material wouldn’t have been there. That album couldn’t have been made without Dave, so that really speaks to his legacy and what a great musician he was. BUSH: I think it’s the centerpiece of our career. It’s certainly the last one with Dave, really, as far as his major writing contribution. It was the end of the band for a while. So, there’s something about that record that’s bigger than what it actually is because of the story associated with it, and I think that’s a really amazing thing. I don’t even know if we knew that, truthfully. I think we knew that it had this real cool vibe to it, but I don’t think that we even completely knew it, either, until we went out and played it and realized that, wow, it is really cool, and you could feel it. So, I think it’s something that has taken on an even bigger life than we knew, and I think that’s a great thing. Hopefully it’s a record that, forever, people will think, “That’s a great album; that one Armored Saint record is really pretty special.” N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 5 0 : D E C I B E L

For a while there, it was just a little hard to listen to, just because of Dave Prichard writing the songs and passing away, and then Metal Blade not reaching the threshold to kick it over to Warner Brothers distribution. It was just a great record, great songs. Making the record was an amazing memory. The songs themselves were still kicking butt. VERA: I’m hoping that, initially, it’s the songs. They either still resonate with people that they resonated with then, or they resonate with people that discovered us a little bit later in our career, even though they missed [the album] when it came out in ’91. If that’s true, I feel like it’s a testament to what we knew when we were making it: that we are making a great record. And maybe that’s proof of it, a vindication of sorts. If it still resonates with people, then maybe we did something right. People ask me all the time, “Whatever happened to your band? Why didn’t you make it? Are you disappointed that you didn’t make it and you aren’t playing arenas and stuff?” I get that question all the time and my answer is always the same, which is that the reason we got into this was so that we could communicate and touch people with music, and make our music on our terms and do it our way, and hopefully someone will listen to it. The fact that we are sitting here and talking about it almost [30] years later, and we are going on another short tour tomorrow over in Europe playing for our devoted fans, that’s all we really wanted. So, we did make it. We did succeed. G. SANDOVAL:

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Apt pupils of the old school, Arizona desert dwellers may have made the death metal album of 2019 STO RY BY

J. BENNETT CHRISTOPHER BARR P H OTO S BY

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What makes the desert beautiful

is that somewhere it hides a well. — ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, THE LITTLE PRINCE (1943) —

ONG A SYMBOL OF DEATH AND HOPELESSNESS, meanings with their latest. Entitled Deserted, it’s

the desert has always been foreboding. If you’ve never experienced it, the movies give you plenty of reasons not to. Think: The Hills Have Eyes. Dune’s megalithic sandworms. The fucking Sarlacc Pit. Lawrence of Arabia, you say? Two hundred and 20 minutes of Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif sweating their balls off in a Jordanian hellscape. ¶ But the one that leaves the most indelible stamp on our desiccated lizard brain is that scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when Eli Wallach’s Tuco turns the tables on Clint Eastwood’s “Blondie” and makes him walk through the desert at gunpoint—with no hat to shield himself from the fireball sun. Tuco follows with a pink parasol, cackling and slurping oh-so-precious water from a canteen. Eastwood’s face blisters and boils. His lips wither and crack. Scabs crust the corners of his parched piehole. He looks like he has wicked cottonmouth. Sure, it’s movie magic. But the point is vividly etched: The desert is fucking hot and unforgiving. It’s extreme. ¶ And you know what they say about extreme conditions: They demand extreme responses. Which is where Gatecreeper come in. With members hailing from the twin blast furnaces of Phoenix and Tucson, the Arizona death metal outfit has taken the underground by (sand)storm since the release of their self-titled 2014 EP, which quickly became a linchpin of the old-school death

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metal revival. With their 2016 full-length Sonoran Depravation, they paid homage to the landscape that birthed them while distancing themselves from the HM-2 swarm with killer melodies and the hardcore-like delivery of vocalist Chase Mason. Now they’re doubling down on double

another nod to their sweltering surroundings. “I’ve read interviews with the Norwegian black metal bands where they talk about the coldness of their music being influenced by the weather,” says Mason, who lives in Phoenix. “But it’s also just logistical. It’s shitty outside, so you want to stay inside. For us, it’s the same thing. It’s just shitty outside in a different way. So, you take advantage of that and do something cool, something creative.” Devoted students of the classics, Gatecreeper owe as much to the Swedish masters—specifically Entombed and Dismember—as they do the Floridian progenitors. They’ve nailed the sound and spirit so well that they’ve even caught the discerning ears of a few death metal legends. “I haven’t heard a band that close to doing justice to the legacy of old-school death metal ever,” says Dismember drummer and Swedish death metal OG Fred Estby, who first caught Gatecreeper live in 2016. “I just think they have a cool American way to interpret and develop the old Scandinavian sound. Bang on, no complications, going for the kill!”

Cannibal Corpse bassist Alex Webster first saw Gatecreeper supporting Skeletonwitch that same year. “I liked what I heard—really heavy oldschool death metal,” he says. “The guitar sound brings to mind the classic Swedish Sunlight Studios sound, and the riffs they come up with have a very old-school feel. And they’ve got a killer live show—no frills, great energy.” Webster was so impressed that Cannibal brought Gatecreeper out on tour in late 2017. Dallas thrashers and recent Decibel cover stars Power Trip were also on the bill. “I think Gatecreeper is starting to carve out a niche for themselves,” says Power Trip vocalist Riley Gale. “They’re doing the kind of death metal that I like: something that’s got some real groove and riffs that stick with you. And I think that’s what sets Gatecreeper apart. They’re not afraid to have a catchy riff, which represents the closest thing you’d have to a hook in a death metal song. “They’re like us in a lot of ways,” he adds. “We’re not reinventing the wheel, but it’s a very nice wheel that we’re making, and it’s got a little bit of our own style. I imagine ours is some kind of Mad Max battle-tank tread, and Gatecreeper’s looks like a monster truck wheel.” SWELTERING MADNESS It seems only appropriate that it’s hot AF when we meet with Mason in Los Angeles. He’s staying at a friend’s place not far from Decibel’s West Coast bureau, so we post up poolside for a death metal summit. Over the weekend, Mason caught Power Trip at the Sound and Fury festival downtown. Earlier today, he met with a director about a future Gatecreeper video. Of course, his L.A. uniform is the same as his AZ one: Vans high tops, camouflage pants and a slightly oversized Mortician T-shirt, topped off with black RayBans and his signature black mustache. When Mason formed Gatecreeper with guitarist Eric Wagner and drummer “Metal” Matt Arrebollo back in 2013, he was fresh out of a lengthy stint in rehab. “I used to freebase black tar heroin with a copy of Decibel in my lap,” he reveals. “I actually used to hide my shit in the magazine, so I’ll still find old issues with black soot on the pages. I’ve had a subscription since 2007, so it’s an interesting reminder of the way life used to be.” Back in those days, Mason was playing guitar and singing in a band called Slut Sister, which he describes as “barbecue metal,” or a kind of cross between Eyehategod and the Sword. He was slinging dope to support his habit. “I’m lucky that I didn’t end up in legal trouble,” he says. “I’m not a felon, but I should be. I committed lots of crimes, but I just never got caught.” After years of turmoil and at least one overdose, he eventually burned out on the whole junkie lifestyle. “I needed to be physically separated from it,” he says. “I’m the type of person

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that, when I get a little bit of slack, I’m going to hang myself with it. I needed to be put away.” Mason entered rehab for the first time in 2011. “I went to the Salvation Army, which is like the free treatment center,” he says. “But it’s for homeless people and maybe people that are on probation—they get the option to go to jail or to complete this program. I didn’t go to the nice rehab most people probably think of. It was like [a] last-house-on-the-block kind of thing. It was intense.” He bailed early, stayed sober for a little while and ultimately relapsed. “Then I did a cycle of going to different institutions—detoxes, the psych ward, sober living places,” Mason continues. “I did that for a couple of months, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. Then in August 2012, I went back and did a six-month program. I’ve been sober ever since.” He started Gatecreeper not long after he got out. “I had a couple of years where I wasn’t playing music and I finally got to a place in my life where I could start doing it again,” he says. “I wanted to do a death metal band.” Mason met Tucson-based drummer Arrebollo through a mutual friend. They linked up at a Rotten Sound show in Phoenix and bonded over a mutual love of Dismember’s Massive Killing Capacity. They brought in Arrebollo’s then-roommate, Wagner, on guitar. “I had never met Chase, but me and Matt’s old band had played with Slut Sister— which is an unfortunate name,” Wagner laughs. “So, I drove to Phoenix to meet Chase and start playing with him. I had some songs, we talked about what we wanted to do, and then we went and got burritos. That’s how the band started.” Mason was a man with a plan. “There was always a blueprint for the band,” he says. “We didn’t want it to be technical, and I created a no-blast beat rule. There are plenty of bands that do blasts, but I’d rather go the opposite way and put in doom parts. I’d rather do mid-tempo stuff. Sometimes when bands that aren’t full-blasting bands go into the blast parts live, they don’t hit hard enough. They’re going for speed over power. I wanted our songs to be powerful at all times.” Keeping the songs lean and mean was also crucial. “The riffs need to be catchy,” Mason stresses. “Every riff needs to stand on its own. There’s no filler parts. We trimmed the fat off all the songs from the beginning. It’s always been like, ‘Do we really need this part? Should we do that part four times instead of eight times? Will this part stand on its own or is it there for no reason?’ If it doesn’t serve a purpose, we take it out.” Blueprint firmly in place, the trio wrote a handful of songs inspired by the Swedish godfathers. “Dismember and Entombed were the inspiration for the early stuff for sure,” Wagner nods. “I’d been playing almost technical kind of death metal stuff before that, so we were like, ‘Let’s do simple death metal.’ Not that Dismember or

Entombed are simple death metal bands, but they have catchy parts that are easier to play than the more technical bands. Before that, I was doing stuff that was all over the fretboard, with crazy blast beats. That was fun, but I definitely enjoy what we’re doing way more.” The original plan was to find a vocalist and keep Mason on guitar. Obviously, it didn’t pan out that way. “I wasn’t supposed to be the singer of the band,” Mason explains. “There was someone else from Tucson that was going to do it, but it didn’t really work out. It was getting pretty close to the time when we were supposed to record and we still didn’t have a singer. So, I kind of stumbled into it.” On that recording—essentially a demo that became their self-titled EP—Mason and Wagner both handled guitars and bass. Arrebollo played drums. They put the four songs up on Bandcamp and things got rolling fast. The U.K.-based Goatprayer label put the EP out on cassette. King of the Monsters, an Arizona label with a discography that stretches back to the ’90s, eventually released it on vinyl. Meanwhile, Gatecreeper recorded splits with Phoenix crushers Take Over and Destroy and now-defunct/disgraced Charlotte crust squad Young and in the Way. Somewhere in there, they started playing live. They enlisted bassist Sean Mears, who had played with Wagner in the death/grind band Languish (Mears is still a member; Wagner is not), and with Arrebollo in a black/crust project called Hellhorse. They also brought in guitarist Max Nattsblod from local black metal band Sovereign. “I was playing guitar and writing songs on the guitar, which I still do,” Mason explains. “But I didn’t want to do both live. So, we basically got someone to play my [guitar] parts so I could just do the vocals.” Early on, they’d play gigs with the aforementioned Take Over and Destroy, who included amongst their ranks a young guitarist named Nate Garrett. Garrett was already friendly with Mason, but he hadn’t met the other guys yet. Then he saw Gatecreeper for the first time at the Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix. “I just remember thinking, ‘This is heavy, this is badass and these guys look fucking scary,’” Garrett recalls. “‘Why the fuck am I not in this band?’” Gatecreeper invited Garrett along on their first East Coast tour. By then, he had started working on a new project called Spirit Adrift. “I did merch and helped with driving,” he says of that early Gatecreeper tour. “When we got back, their second guitar player wasn’t working out, so Chase texted me and asked if I’d be interested in playing in the band.” RAISING ARIZONA Arizona isn’t exactly thought of as a musical hotbed, but the state has a rich history of heavy music that dates back to the ’60s with the

WE LOST THE SEA T R I U M P H

D I S A S T E R

WE LOST THE SEA’s momentous follow up to 2013’s critically acclaimed “Departure Songs” is finally here! Produced and mixed by Greg Norman at Electrical Audio, “Triumph & Disaster” presents the bands most epic release to date. The album serves as the concept narrative to a post-apocalyptic view of the world, detailing the story of a mother and sons last day on the Earth as it unfolds.

OUT NOV EMBE R 8 TH

2XLP/CD/DIGITAL

TERMINAL THRESHOLD New York’s progressive metal instrumental trio DYSRHYTHMIA deliver their 8th studio album and first batch of new material in three years entitled “Terminal Threshold”. The album was recorded at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves by the band’s very own Colin Marston (Gorguts, Krallice) and continues the story of their organic evolution. Meticulous arrangements house collisions between technical shredding, complex rhythms and straight up thrash riffing for a completely unique outing.

OUT OCTOBER 4TH VINYL/CD/DIGITAL

T H E

G RE AT EST

B URD EN

Denver’s GHOSTS OF GLACIERS presents their breathtaking album entitled “The Greatest Burden”. Atmospheric post-rock collides with progressive metal while effortlessly slipping into a dream state of consciousness. The band’s Translation Loss debut presents sprawling soundscapes that possesses stark and majestic beauty all their own.

O U T S EP T EM B ER 27 T H

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ALL I HOPE FOR

LEDGE epitomizes the end time message that frontman John Hoffman (ex-Weekend Nachos) wants to impart on the world. The band’s sophomore effort “All I Hope For” presents epic stoner rock epiphanies interwoven with sludge and doom. Each song contains truly hateful riffs with purely nihilistic lyrics that round out one of the most devastating releases to ever come out of the Midwest! Recorded and mixed by Andy Nelson (Harms Way, Jesus Piece) and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (High On Fire, Tragedy).

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Long running noise/sludge masters, CABLE return with their first batch of new material in over a decade. T.T.S.T.H. is a concise gut punch that offers some new twists to the band’s already impressive 25 year old history. The album was recorded at Mystic Valley (Bloodhorse, Wormwood) and debuts new drummer, Alex Garcia-Rivera (American Nightmare) while featuring guest appearances from members of Palms, Isis, Barishi, Empty Flowers, and Tombs.

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original Alice Cooper band. In the ’80s, Phoenix locals like Sacred Reich and Flotsam and Jetsam took up the nascent thrash mantle, and Flotsam contributed massively to heavy metal history when bassist Jason Newsted joined Metallica in 1986. Since then, the Grand Canyon State notched even more metal cred when both Max Cavalera and Dave Mustaine moved in. But it’ll probably never be thought of in the same terms as metal meccas like California and Florida. Hailing as he does from Dallas, Power Trip’s Gale can relate. “It’s very hard for bands in our part of the country to get to another level, and probably Arizona even more so,” he ventures. “We have the luxury of having Austin nearby, which gets a lot of attention, but Arizona? It’s gotta be tough to break out of there, and Gatecreeper did it. You’ve gotta respect them for that, and I do. “I feel like we have a chip on our shoulder or something to prove being from Texas or Arizona because we don’t have these media centers like bands coming out of California or New York or a lot of the East Coast,” he adds. “We’re kind of out on an island, so it gives us that drive to get out there and tour and work that much harder. That’s another thing Gatecreeper had to do.” “Arizona gets skipped over a lot,” Wagner acknowledges. “There’s a lot of great music here, but you don’t necessarily hear it. A lot of people here live in poverty—Tucson is one of the poorest cities in the country. So, people are making music, but they might not have the means to get out and do stuff. There are also a lot of reservations here with a lot of disenfranchised people who don’t have the financial means to tour. So, I enjoy repping Arizona because I love being from here and I love the people here. If I can bring more attention to the state in any way, I will. But I’m also just proud. It’s a cool spot, so we’re repping hard.” Overcoming coastal perceptions of Arizona— with its very recent history of racial profiling, anti-immigration measures (Arizona Senate Bill 1070) and infamous failure to recognize Martin Luther King Day in 1990 (an incident immortalized by Public Enemy in “By the Time I Get to Arizona”)—is another obstacle that Gatecreeper might have to contend with. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, a band this good really came out of this area that you think is shitty or full of racists,’” Gale points out. “But we do have good bands outside of Pantera or whoever the hell came out of Arizona.” As a teenager growing up in Phoenix in the ’80s, Phil Rind was a huge fan of all the killer thrash bands that rolled through town. Back then, Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth were at the top of their games, and they were creating an exciting new genre from the ground up. Inspired, Rind started Sacred Reich in 1985—at age 16. “Phoenix is a little bit out of the way, but all the bands would come through and we played with everybody at the time,” he says. “So, we felt part of

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something bigger that was going on, but we were also separate because we weren’t from the Bay Area or New York—so maybe we had an opportunity to create a little bit of our own identity.” When Sacred Reich started putting out records and touring, they’d inevitably play thrash strongholds San Francisco and Oakland, home to titans like Exodus, Testament and Metallica, among others. “It was competitive and we kinda felt like outsiders,” Rind recalls. “It was like, ‘Hey, you’re not from here. This is the home of thrash and you guys are from the desert.’ Hostile is probably too strong of a word, but there was definitely an arms-crossed, ‘prove it’ kind of thing. So, it was very territorial, but I could understand that because there was a lot of testosterone—a bunch of young men with long hair and leather jackets, trying to act tough.” Of course, the Internet has leveled the playing field a bit in that regard. These days, most metal fans don’t give a shit where a band is from. Their records are either good or bad. They either bring it live or they don’t. But that doesn’t mean the members of Gatecreeper can’t take a certain amount of geographical pride. “Arizona is dusty and kind of bleak,” Mason says. “New Orleans has the sludge thing, Florida has a lot of the classic death metal bands, but Arizona doesn’t really have any music that it’s known for like that. It’s kind of unique. There aren’t many places like it.” “Arizona is very special to all of us,” says Wagner, who was born and raised in Tucson. “It’s not like anywhere else in the country. New Mexico might look similar, but it’s so different. Utah’s deserts are different—same with California. Arizona has this Wild West type of spirit to it that’s kind of rebellious.”

Arizona is dusty and kind of bleak. New Orleans has the sludge thing, Florida has a lot of the classic death metal bands, but Arizona doesn’t really have any music that it’s known for like that. It’s kind of unique.

THERE AREN’T MANY PLACES LIKE IT. — CHASE MASON —

BALANCING ACTS Gatecreeper recorded Sonoran Depravation

almost immediately after Garrett joined the band. Relapse swooped in to sign them. Then they embarked on a string of tours with the likes of Nails, Toxic Holocaust and Skeletonwitch. The irony is that Garrett had started Spirit Adrift as a solo studio project in order to avoid exactly what he was now doing with Gatecreeper. “When I started Spirit Adrift, it was to get out of touring and being in bands with other people because I was fed up,” he says. “I’d been playing shows since I was like 13 or 14—I’m 31 now—and I’d been touring since 2007, playing to nobody. I did that until about 2015 or so, and I reached the point with the band I was in where it was like, ‘Fuck this. Nobody is on the same page as me.’ I was totally disillusioned with playing in bands and touring.” But doing merch duty with Gatecreeper on that early East Coast run changed his attitude. “I went on tour with them and thought, ‘These guys are awesome. They work really hard and they’re fun to be around. They’ve all been through some real shit, so they don’t get hung up on bullshit,’” Garrett recalls. “So, it kind of reinvigorated my interest in touring, because I saw that I wouldn’t have to do all the work on my own. Everyone in the band pulled their weight and worked really hard—still do. And that’s part of why it works.” Garrett joined Gatecreeper in October of 2015. His first show with them was at Southwest Terror Fest that year. It was the beginning of a balancing act that he continues to this day. “I remember being in the studio recording the very first Spirit Adrift full-length in Phoenix, driving to Tucson to play a show with Gatecreeper, and then coming back to the studio in Phoenix and staying there for almost another 24 hours,” he says. “That was what my life was like at the time— and it still kinda is.” Since then, two more members of Gatecreeper have joined Spirit Adrift—Mason on bass and, as of a few weeks before these interviews, Wagner on second guitar. With both bands releasing new albums this year and touring regularly, things can get hectic. “It’s overwhelming at times, for sure, but I never feel like I’m in it alone,” Garrett says. “We all work extremely hard. We don’t really care about other stuff. I’m super into MMA, but I use it as a way to distract myself from music so I don’t straight-up lose my mind. It’s almost like a way to force myself to take a mental break. That’s how obsessed we are with this. Every day when we wake up, the first thing we think about is the band. The last thing we think of before we go to sleep at night is the fucking band. We dream about the band. It’s 24/7, dude.”

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Spirit Adrift released their third full-length, Divided by Darkness, earlier this year. It’s the doom outfit’s finest work to date, just as Deserted is Gatecreeper’s. Though Wagner has yet to play on a Spirit Adrift album, he recognizes why both bands are kicking so much ass. “I think it’s because this is what we’ve decided to do with our lives,” he says. “I put 90 percent of my time into this. If a tour comes up and I need to cancel something important in my life to do that, I’m gonna do it. We make sacrifices for it, and we do what we have to do to make it happen. We try not to let things

I wanted to make a stadium death metal album. We wanted to keep it old-school, but I also wanted to make it like when Columbia Records put out all those Earache bands [in the mid-’90s]. They’re still classic death metal records,

but they sounded

BIG.

— CHASE MASON —

stand in the way that are moveable. We try not to be held back. And that’s the difference.” It doesn’t hurt that both Mason and Garrett are sober. “People ask us every day, ‘How the fuck are you guys doing all this?’” Garrett says. “But two and two equals four, bro. We’ve got an advantage over most people who are doing this: We have clear minds. I’m not saying we’re better than anybody—if anything, we’re worse because we can’t do drugs right—but it’s one less thing that we have to contend with in our lives. There’s nothing diluting our insanity and obsession.” After drinking heavily for years, Garrett got sober in 2015—about two years after Mason did. “I was still getting super fucked up when I

met Chase,” he says. “We met at what was supposed to be a Deafheaven/KEN mode show, but Deafheaven didn’t make it. I think Chase had just gotten out of some sort of treatment center. Or maybe he was fucked up and about to go to treatment—I can’t remember. When he got out, I was still drinking, and then he left for a really long time and got sober. And then I eventually got clean.” When asked how important his and Mason’s sobriety is to Gatecreeper and Spirit Adrift, Garrett says this: “I think other people talk about it more than we do, but I’ll tell you how important it is: We’d both be dead if we weren’t sober.” STADIUM DEATH METAL When Gatecreeper dropped their first EP in 2014, they were quickly lumped in with the legion of old-school death metal bands that were emerging at the time. Most of those bands had no songs and no riffs to speak of, but they definitely had HM-2 pedals, and they were stomping the fuck out of them—and shitting out mediocre records. This is a topic that Wagner is more than familiar with. “I could talk about this for a million years,” he says with a laugh. “We get pigeonholed as, ‘Oh, they’re just hardcore kids trying to play metal.’ Or we’re trying to play old-school music. But honestly, it’s just what we listen to and what we like. What we’re making just happens to be that.” And unlike those other HM-2 hammerheads, Gatecreeper actually write memorable songs. That could be because their influences stretch far beyond what you might expect—and they have way more history to draw from than their predecessors. Power Trip’s Gale breaks it down: “Me and Chase like rap. I like soul music; he likes country. We have different tastes, and that does consciously or subconsciously influence the way we might write lyrics or deliver a vocal line. Our journey of getting into metal is different than it would’ve been 20 or 30 years ago, when all this stuff was happening. So, this is us realizing what was working, then taking what was working and trying to build and write classic records in that vein.” Wagner seconds that emotion. “Bands like Jungle Rot, or even the first Six Feet Under record—the songwriting is awesome,” he says. “You get excited for the riff to come back. They’re rock ‘n’ roll songs in a death metal style, and that’s what we enjoy doing.” He hits paydirt when he cites the Swedish death metal band you didn’t expect. “I really like Amon Amarth,” Wagner enthuses. “Oldschool death metal people don’t like that band that much, but they inspire me a lot for my songwriting. It’s epic, it’s heavy, it’s catchy. You can sing along. Parts repeat. There’s more factors in that music that makes for a great stage show and audience participation.”

Nobody reading this magazine is likely to confuse Gatecreeper with Amon Amarth anytime soon, but Wagner’s point makes a lot of sense. Amon Amarth write songs that maintain their power way out in the cheap seats—they’re still recognizable to the drunks in the back row at Wacken. It’s heavy, it’s no-frills and nothing gets lost in translation. You can hear all that on Deserted, especially cuts like “Puncture Wounds,” “In Chains” and lead single “Boiled Over.” “For whatever reason, I’m really drawn to writing songs that have a verse and a chorus,” Wagner says. “I think Chase feels the same way. Our songs are not super-long and crazy. They have five really good riffs that are together in a concise song. I think it’s crafted well and has an ability to be more accessible to more people because of that.” “The idea has always been to write catchy songs,” Mason says, “and it was definitely more

of a focus for this record because we wanted to set ourselves apart from this new generation of old-school death metal bands. We don’t want to be a part of that.” The term that the members of Gatecreeper use behind closed doors is stadium death metal. “When we were writing and recording Deserted, I said I wanted to make a stadium death metal album,” Mason says. “We wanted to keep it oldschool, but I also wanted to make it like when Columbia Records put out all those Earache bands [in the mid-’90s]. You know—Morbid Angel’s Covenant, [Entombed’s] Wolverine Blues. They’re still classic death metal records, but they sounded big. The songs were big. They had hooks, you know?” We do know. And so does Garrett. “Good songs are what stand the test of time,” he says. “How many people are listening to Psyopus today? I’m

not talking shit on them—I love that band—but my point is: How many people are listening to the Beatles compared to a complicated song that’s not catchy?” And while the Catchier Songs = Bigger Audience equation doesn’t always hold true, it certainly has a decent track record. “I can’t speak for anybody else in Gatecreeper, but I’ve been touring in bands for a long time, playing the shittiest places, so I don’t give a shit about proving anything else in the underground,” Garrett says. “The bottom line is, it’s way more powerful to play to more people. We’re bringing our energy, and the people that are coming to see us are bringing their energy. The more people involved in that? It’s like supercharged. That’s the part of playing live that gets you high. And I’m ready to play in front of as many people as you can put in front of us.”

Every day when we wake up, the first thing we think about is the band. The last thing we think of before we go to sleep at night is the fucking band. We dream about the band.

IT’S 24/7, DUDE. — NATE GARRETT —

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INSIDE ≥

66 ALCEST If you want to destroy his sweater... 66 BLUT AUS NORD Black/death trippers 68 BORKNAGAR Looking up 70 DRAGONFORCE Ninety-nine ways to die 76 LIFE OF AGONY We got time for them

Return to the Pandemonium

NOVEMBER

Bands we used to be nicer to

Bands we used to be meaner to

Albums of re-issued material

Hall-of-Fame album sequel

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

Swiss eccentrics SCHAMMASCH follow up a triple album with their boldest statement yet

wiss leading lights schammasch are of little note here in the States. Over three full-lengths and one 30-minute EP, however, the Basel-based outfit has deeply stunned Hearts of No Light PROSTHETIC audiences in Europe and on the Isles with their brand of introspective, spiritual and ambiguous black metal. Videos of “Metanoia” (off 2016’s stupefyingly great Triangle) and “Golden Light” (off 2014’s scarily great Contradiction) show a band of vision whose music is designed to be transformative magic, and whose imagery is meant to provoke profoundly. ¶ Schammasch are well beyond the Bentonisms of death metal. They’re less hubristic than the Deathspell Omegas of black metal. They occupy a new form of darkness, one that’s easy to fall prey to. Much in the same way that the Enuma Elish is instantly fascinating or the Itihasa (particularly the Mahabharata) captivates or the Gylfaginning informs our non-ecclesiastical vocabulary, Schammasch’s music,

SCHAMMASCH 9

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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image and spirit have a similar capacity to transfix our inner resonance. Certainly, at the nexus of Behemoth, Krzysztof's Batushka, Blut aus Nord and Secrets of the Moon, so too reside Schammasch, willing to transfigure the daily and horrifically mundane. But there’s more to the Swiss than simple existence and relative links to artists of similar import. New album Hearts of No Light (out November 8) is in many ways a continuation of Triangle. It extends Schammasch’s avant-garde venture without restriction or reservation. Consisting of nine tracks tallying over 67 minutes, the album oscillates from instrumental introspection (“Winds That Pierce the Silence,” “A Bridge Ablaze”) to heavy (vanta) black metal (“Ego Sum Omega,” “Qadmon’s Heir,” “Katabasis”) to challenging experiments in extremity (“A Paradigm of Beauty,” “Innermost, Lowermost Abyss”). Its journey will likely be misconstrued in the same way Into the Pandemonium was 32 years ago. But Hearts of No Light is more than Triangle. It represents three years of work, unrest and inventing new ways to express. That Schammasch’s fourth album is predominantly instrumental is part of the change at hand. Indeed, C.S.R’s haunting voice and disquieting snarl are employed throughout, but they’re done so sparingly. This creates a fantastic dynamic, so when the vocals do come in (“Ego Sum Omega,” “Katabasis”) they’re forceful, rife with emotion, ready to influence. The album production pivots on observing tenets (noisy, yet deep) and pushing past comfort zones (intense, yet delicate) of the genres Schammasch originated from and have subsequently transcended. Captured by Markus Stock at his Klangschmiede Studio E (Secrets of the Moon, Alcest), Hearts of No Light is start-to-finish excellent on headphones, in the car and even on decent PC speakers. The low end (on “Innermost, Lowermost Abyss,” for example) could be deeper, but it’s such a minor issue in the face of the remainder’s resolution. The drums feel as if they’re properly upfront. The tom hits and double bass are powerful against the mix of churning guitars, vocals, bass and dissonance. And yet the guitars are never too low in the mix either. They’re perfectly positioned, with standouts being “Rays Like Razors,” “Qadmon’s Heir” and the goth/post-punkisms (a nod to defunct Swiss weirdos Sadness, perhaps?) of “A Paradigm of Beauty.” With Hearts of No Light (and a few tours), Schammasch will triumphantly expedite their zero-to-hero status. Mark my words: The Swiss invasion is coming. —CHRIS DICK 6 6 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

ALCEST

Spiritual Instinct NUCLEAR BLAST

Blackgaze pioneer gets his ass back in the saddle

If—as he’s been known to claim on occasion—Alcest founder, frontman and creative core Neige really wants out of metal for good, then he either needs an ongoing intervention or whatever kind of meds work for that. The Occitan singer, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist has come close to a genuine exit exactly once: 2014’s Shelter is pretty much pure, unrelenting shoegaze. It’s also the band’s least popular release to date, even among fans of their work who don’t usually like metal. Apparently, Neige concurs. Just as 2016’s Kodama captured Alcest in the act of subtly sliding back toward the blackgaze of their formative years, full-length number six catches them luxuriating in it. They announce as much early in opener “Les Jardins De Minuit” by jerking out of a choral intro with midtempo post-punk instrumental underpinnings (apparently updated, as in, “Goodbye Chameleons, hello Shame and the Fews”) into a fast part with blast beats, followed by an aggressively tremolo-picked half-tempo section. The album’s first BM rasps come a couple minutes later—and they’re not the last. Despite all the regained unhallowed ground, Spiritual Instinct comes off less like a “return to form” than a glimpse of what might lay ahead, assuming Neige can incorporate all the postpunk/grunge/psych-rock threads he’s been low-key laying out for more than a decade. If the closing title track—easily the boldest and most conceptually coherent Alcest track since 2010’s “Solar Song”—becomes anything like the new norm, they just might finally get the breakthrough we all deserve. —ROD SMITH

BLOOD RED THRONE 7 Fit to Kill

MIGHTY MUSIC

Changing horses mid-regime

As monarchies go, Blood Red Throne’s bloodline runs about as blue as death metal royalty gets. Whether or not they can claim any sovereignty, however, is a different question altogether. That’s not only a shame, but also relatively remarkable. BRT sprang to life with the keen faculties of veterans possessing not only the rudimentary skills to pay them nagging bills, but also the uncommon knack of songcraft. Surprisingly, the band’s current release shakes free the polish that they’ve long

been associated with, opting for gloomier compositions and a suitably muddier recording. The choice in timbre offers rewards, but also results in notable sacrifices. BRT have always expressed value for deft, deliberative basslines, in a similar fashion to the likes of Opeth. Fit to Kill’s mix concedes similar sonic footage for its bottom end, but the tone here is so grimy that the instrument’s value is now largely textural. (While we’re discussing tone, the snare here is matte and bothersome.) The song structures have also been allowed to snarl like old, ornery extension cords that refuse to be unknotted. This affords the listener less in the way of catchy tunes (in the vein of, say, “Ripsaw Resentment” or “Slaying the Lamb”) and more the experience of rare spacious alcoves in the midst of crossing through collapsing caverns. However, the rewards are plentiful, as this is certainly the band’s most ambitious and thoughtfully orchestrated exercise, with wild recurring Ennio Morricone-esque picado guitar lines and occasional Exhorder tremors appearing to and fro to refresh the palate. Fit to Kill is a willfully turbulent and engrossingly mysterious encounter. —FORREST PITTS

BLUT AUS NORD

Hallucinogen DEB EMUR MO R TI P R O DUCTIO N S

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small…

The idea of imbibing recreational hallucinogens and putting Blut aus Nord’s back catalog on the turntable has never really been that alluring, truth be told. The monthly ayahuasca meet in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, will definitely downvote MoRT’s discordant rot on grounds of it being a grossly inappropriate audio gateway to the inner dimensions of the self. But then, Blut aus Nord have never made a recording with the spiritual purpose of Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain, nor have they occupied themselves with a sound sharing the neurological suggestiveness of the Ozric Tentacles, Plastikman, Hendrix, early Pink Floyd and—get thee behind me, Satan—the Doors. Until now. For all the transformative power of albums like 2003’s soul-warping The Work Which Transforms God and 2009’s magisterial Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With the Stars, it’s Hallucinogen that hollows out black metal’s desolate melodic arc and fills it with trippy psychedelics. The techniques remain unchanged, but this is as close to emotionally neutral that you could find the reclusive French outfit.

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Is the hinted-at darkness something we bring to the recording? Probably. But at their best, Blut aus Nord invite interpretation, and here they are wide open. Once “Nebeleste” and especially the ethereal monastic vibe of “Sybelius” and “Mahagma” is done, it all makes sense, as haunting, progressive and weird as it is. OK, so what if Dehn Sora painted what looks like sci-fi morels (great-tasting, yet insufficiently powered to lift the lid off the third eye) on the cover? This is still a trip. Purple haze, experimental black metal. They’ve already transformed god. It’s your turn now. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

BORKNAGAR

True North

CE N T URY MEDIA

The center will hold

The triumphs and travails of Borknagar are well-known and often told by primary creative force and founding member Øystein G. Brun. For True North, the Norwegians’ 11th full-length, the turmoil was in letting go of old members—chiefly, Vintersorg, Jens F. Ryland and Baard Kolstad—while continuing to forge new music and memories. Likewise, the success in new beginnings is life, a spark that (if properly nourished) sets off a conflagration of excellence. Such points in Borknagar’s history: The Olden Domain, Empiricism and previous album Winter Thrice. On True North, the Norwegians—under the experience of oarsman Brun and the cleverness/ aptitude of co-vocalists ICS Vortex and Lars “Lazare” Nedland—have yet again come out of their struggles pure as flame, ablaze with purpose and boasting nine unstoppable songs. From the aggro “Thunderous” and “Tidal” to the wonderfully progressive “Mount Rapture” and “Up North” to the full-hearted “Wild Father’s Heart” and the Nedland-sung introspective bookend “Voices,” True North is a resplendent gem of Nordic metal, the promise of which has been hinted at by Borknagar (and others) over the years, but is now finally on display in all its snow-capped majesty. Indeed, there’s so much for all eras of Borknagar fan to discover. The sheer brilliance of “Into the White” is almost blinding. Musically, it’s Brun and team’s finest hour—the fucking solo!—but vocally we’ve not heard Vortex do this kind of thing ever, and that includes Arcturus. “The Fire That Burns” is trad Borknagar, only with creativity dialed up to 11. The chorus alone, with harrowing screams in tow, raises hairs. But the crown jewel is “Voices.” No need to extol the virtues, really. Just listen to it on headphones, no distractions, and fall away into the white of… nothingness. —CHRIS DICK 6 8 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

CLITERATI

Ugly Truths/ Beautiful Lies TA N K C R I M E S

The hardest button to button

Listening to Cliterati makes me feel like I’m drinking corporate lime beer grenades and potions of unknown origins at a house show during Chaos in Tejas back in the early ’10s. Studs, shorts, sweat—those were the summers. The Portland quartet plays the urgent, slightly metallic crust that was a mainstay of Chaos, and though the fest is long gone, the stench lives on in Ugly Truths/Beautiful Lies. Though Cliterati mostly unleash standardissue crust, “Unfuck the System” is unusually bright for a crust track, with its gang vocals giving it a mutant pep rally vibe. It has the reckless, D-beaty hope of their fellow Portlanders Tragedy, minus the nihilism. The title track has subtle surf vibes—and not just because it takes aim at Brooks Brothers fascists carrying tiki torches—like you’re watching the sickest mushroom cloud collapse civilization from the beach. The two songs that will get the most attention here are “Trans Is Beautiful” and “Latinx Taken,” and rightfully so. It’s no coincidence, either, that these are the two most raging tracks, and that makes them the anthems of the record, songs to rally around. “Trans” also has a hint of crossover, which pushes it into a real standout. I don’t need to break down how trans rights are human rights, or how the vilification of Latinx people is really fucked up. These songs are for those who get it. And if you don’t get it? Well, you can coddle yourself with the new Phobia record, I suppose. —ANDY O’CONNOR

CLOAK

The Burning Dawn SEASON OF MIST

Expand your black horizons

Cloak are from Atlanta, but they play a distinctly Swedish style of elaborate, melodic, blackened death ‘n’ roll. Alternatively, to be less obtuse, they sound a whole lot like Tribulation, down to Scott Taysom’s guitar tone and vocal inflection. Honestly, that’s without judgment; after all, they’re not the only band to hew close to Tribulation’s approach (looking at you, Slaegt), and the whole Dissection-meets-theMission thing excites my pleasure centers. Taken purely as another entry in one band’s career, though, their second album, The Burning Dawn, is a subtle-but-potent refinement of their impressive first album, 2017’s To Venomous Depths.

These eight new songs (and instrumental intro) run in general ever-so-slightly shorter and pack more infectious guitar melodies per capita then their first stab. At their best, like the end of “A Voice in the Night,” they reach back through that Dissection influence and lightly caress the molten Ride the Lightning core of infectious and sweeping metal. Whenever Cloak lean into their melodic arpeggiations, they shine. Smartly, the drums seldom blast, letting the guitars take center stage. I wish the vocal lines were equally infectious—the instrumental “The Fire, the Faith, the Void” is easily as good as any of its verse-chorus-verse counterparts. To keep things from getting too samey, little flourishes—a piano intro here, an acoustic guitar outro there—give each tune a distinct fingerprint while underscoring the moribund atmosphere. When Taysom learns to craft a growl-along hook reliably, Cloak will be even more dangerous. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

CLOUD RAT

Pollinator A R T O F FA C T

Spreading the cure

Though Pollinator, the third full-length by Cloud Rat, comes four years after its predecessor, that doesn’t mean the Detroit grindcore wunderkinds have been resting on their laurels. The interim yielded four splits and two compilations, one of which is their second “discography” collection. Prolific recordings aren’t unusual inside the grindcore milieu, nor is the band’s drum-guitarvocalist power trio formation. What is unusual, though, is the band’s restrained delivery. Sure, songs about veganism and the evils of America’s de facto caste system are typical grind fare, but Cloud Rat’s cryptic lyrics and song titles often circumnavigate their subject matter—just who is “Perla” anyway? Further complicating matters, Madison Marshall’s voice seems to have some of its high frequencies rolled off. She’s every bit as emotive as, say, Jon Chang was in Discordance Axis, but her private audio hell sounds like it exists behind a wall and could bust through at any second. Cloud Rat aren’t hiding anything—Brandon Hill’s crust-inflected drumming and Rorik Brooks’ expressive guitars sound in-your-face enough to give Discordance Axis fans something to be happy about. Instead, think of Pollinator as an invitation—the band’s intentions might be gagged, but only so the listener has something to try and unlock in their imagination. When the band does break down that wall—check out the crushing breakdown in “Biome” or Marshall’s a cappella scream at the end of the

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lush and gorgeous “Luminescent Cellar”—their music is all the stronger for having held back elsewhere. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

DAWN RAY’D

Behold Sedition Plainsong PROSTHETIC

Changing the world one picked tremolo at a time

Dawn Ray’d are anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and pro-anarchist, and that really pisses people off for some reason. The ironic thing? Those beliefs track way closer to the actual tenets of Satanism than any misbegotten ideology professed by goat-humping NSBM dorks. As with any band that focuses on preaching their message through their music, however, it doesn’t mean a thing if the songs suck—no matter how admirable the sentiment (see: Neckbeard Deathcamp). Thankfully, Dawn Ray’d do not suck. The U.K.-based trio takes lessons from the later-period Agalloch school of building atmosphere, with mournful, downbeat tempos and lots of violin providing the perfect melancholy flavoring. Primordial provide supplementary training with their deeply emotive mix of folk music and black metal. Still, even though comparisons can be made, Dawn Ray’d find their own approach on Behold Sedition Plainsong. There’s plenty of grist for fans of the blastbeaten path, with tracks like “To All to All to All!” and “Until the Forge Goes Cold” providing all the ravishing grimness one could ask for. They also mix it up with more folk-focused tracks like “A Time for Courage at the Border” and “A Stone’s Throw,” although most of the songs have violin breakdowns. This is just well-done black metal. Honestly, you wouldn’t even know Dawn Ray’d were political at all if you didn’t pay attention to their interviews—heavily reverbed hissing isn’t the best vocal style to get across important messages about class solidarity. It’s still nice to know that they aren’t fascist assholes. —JEFF TREPPEL

DRAGONFORCE

Extreme Power Metal ME TA L BL ADE

Up, up, down, down, left, right… ah, who gives a shit?

Over the course of DragonForce’s eight-album career, the Londonites’ balance between ridiculously stupid and seriously fun has been carefully designed and professionally purveyed. New album Extreme Power Metal is no different, insofar as it picks up right where 7 0 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

COFFINS, Beyond the Circular Demise

Spin the death circle | R E L A P S E

Rototillers churn and chomp today in much the same way they did last century, but it doesn’t make their manner of earth-breaking any less singular. Japanese death metal engine Coffins haven’t modified a single blade on their killing machine since the group’s millennial manufacture, but the current foursome of Bungo Uchino, Satoshi Hikida, Jun Tokita and Masafumi Atake exhume the rotting heart of their cause faster, truer and more satisfyingly than legions of the genre’s undead. Beyond the Circular Demise, their fifth studio full-length and first since 2013, functions at peak gutting. While predecessor The Fleshland delivered an unrepentant sludgehammer—the doomiest in Coffins’ collaborative, literally splitsville catalog—it didn’t rise as gloriously from the fresh dirt as its own precursor, 2008’s Buried Death. Their sole go-round on 20 Buck

Reaching Into Infinity (2017) and every album before it left off. The insane video game style is resolutely intact—replete with Contrastyle cover art—as are the Helloween-ripped breaks, sped-up Entertainment Tonight theme motifs and heightened double-bass tempos. Really, Extreme Power Metal is just another DragonForce album, no questions asked. Sure, Vadim Pruzhanov’s fanciful keys are no longer present—having been replaced temporarily by Epica keyman Coen Janssen—and there’s a slight lean to hard rock (“Heart Demolition”), but there aren’t too many surprises on hand, as DragonForce traverse yet another 52 minutes. In many respects, the issue at hand isn’t Herman Li and Sam Totman’s myopic songwriting and predictably insane soloing. Rather, it’s

Spin, that hot springs DM bubbled up from the blackest, stickiest tar pit this side of La Brea. Better still, Buried Death rested on the bones of debut Mortuary in Darkness (2005) and The Other Side of Blasphemy (2006), which progressed from a tidy self-containment to far heavier distress. Beyond the Circular Demise plays like a followup to Buried Death more so than The Fleshland. “Terminate by Own Prophecy” opens at a gallop behind Tokita’s balls-drop-drop-drop intonation (fetid, oozing, decomposed), bandleader Uchino’s Panzer guitars and the rhythmic tsunami of skins mainstay Hikida and bass vet Atake. “The Tranquil End” jumps from stampede to a tolling tempo with subliminal ease before “Impuritious Minds” wallows in sludgecore. A battering, tidal burst, “Hour of Execution” whiffs a Melt-Banana freakout worthy of future explorations. But it’s “Birth Postmortem” that clusters the best projectile of this whole abomination. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

vocalist Marc Hudson, who replaced ZP Theart during the Late Cretaceous period of DragonForce. Hudson lacks power, he’s out of his depth range-wise and his vocal patterns, at times, feel like he’s singing an ABC Afterschool Special song about kids addicted to sugary cereals. Of particular note, he struggles badly on “Troopers of the Stars,” “Highway to Oblivion” and the corny-ass “Remembrance Day.” One can’t fault DragonForce for Hudson at this point, but the what-ifs would pose a considerable shock to the system should they have gone down eight years ago. I’m talking Jonny Lindqvist (Nocturnal Rites), Daniel Heiman (ex-Lost Horizon) or even fucking Limahl himself! —CHRIS DICK

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EREB ALTOR

Järtecken

HAMMERHEART

Vocal fimbulwinter

To be honest, I don’t listen to much Viking metal anymore, save the staples that helped define the genre (Enslaved and Bathory). There’s something about the LARP-y nature of pretending to be Vikings and obsessing over runes that rubs me the wrong way, and I guess it’s unfair, but it definitely paints how I listen to the music. With Ereb Altor’s new album, I tried really hard to give it a fair chance because, as a critic, it’s important to let go of one’s prejudices and take music for what it is. Ereb Altor are perfectly fine, if a little on the generic side. There is the expected mélange of blackened riffing and epic, skyward, balladic fistpumping, but there really isn’t any character to it other than the band’s obsession with Viking lore. This is where a lot of these “themed” bands fall short—they concentrate so much on being an X or Y band that they lose track of their own identity. I want Ereb Altor to sound like Ereb Altor and not every other Viking band, you know? A big pitfall to this album is definitely the clean vocals—there’s so much Melodyne (otherwise known as Auto-Tune) on them that it pushes them into the uncanny valley. They just don’t sound organic anymore, and it doesn’t fit with this historically themed, almost naturalistic music. Bad harsh vocals are mostly tolerable, but bad clean vocals can ruin an entire album; unfortunately, this is one of those sad examples. —JON ROSENTHAL

EXHUMED

Horror

RELAPSE

The mills of the gods grind unholy

As much as ripping through a fantastic release is an obvious cause for celebration, the album itself can be a difficult subject to evaluate. After all, who wants to read a 250-word critique that can be summed up as “Duuuude!!!”? Having said that, new Exhumed, bro? Duuuude!!! Being the sort of band that no genuine fan of desires marked shifts in timbre presents a series of relatively challenging hurdles for any artist to overcome. I mean, how does a body exhumed since friggin’ 1990 keep it, you know, fresh? On 2017’s Death Revenge, the answer was to offer a long-form, surprisingly elaborate narrative and allow a bit of alter ego Pounder’s trad-metal influence to bleed through the fabric of the work. The result felt like a gloriously vicious nod to Deceased’s messianic Fearless Undead Machines: lavish, fun and outlandishly macabre. 7 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

By comparison, Horror stubbornly veers hard into the passing lane, laying into the throttle and willfully grinding into high gear. Of course, Horror’s irrationally high velocity isn’t a remarkable feature and, in fact, these riffs demand nothing less than breakneck cadences. What captures my attention foremost instead is the mind-blowing excellence of this recording itself. The clarity is mesmerizing—the drum tone alone should serve as a paradigm for sound engineers of any genre. Likewise, every riff is as legible and as textured as a braille manifesto, no mean feat given that Exhumed have beefed up the horsepower of their Terrorizer, Carcass and Exodus programming into gory overdrive. Each passage lunges forward at escape velocity, almost as if wishing to overtake itself while always remaining meaningful, catchy and fucking deadly. Keep your favored subgenre close to your heart, but purchase this album. For enjoyment, for the associated credentials and for the repulsion of noisome in-laws. —FORREST PITTS

FINSTERFORST

Zerfall

N A PA L M

Back in the forest’s shadows

Germany’s Schwarzwald mountains have woodlands so dense, it’s said that neither sun nor moonlight can break through. Inspired by those crowded trees, Finsterforst have dubbed their music black forest metal. A few years ago, they released the novelty record #YØLØ, which winked at those too grim to abide heavy versions of Miley Cyrus and Michael Jackson cuts. Whether that release was a Spring Breakers-style criticism of vapid pop culture or just gleeful antagonism, you should know right off the bat that Zerfall isn’t packed with LMFAO and Gnarls Barkley covers or whateverthefuck. Zerfall—which translates to “decay”—is instead an odyssean return to the band’s past. Clocking in at 79 minutes, the band risks their creation feeling impenetrable and self-indulgent; a vanity release to contrast their last garish experiment as drastically as possible. Despite the album’s cinematic runtime and the plethora of instrument voices (your tolerance for accordion may vary), Zerfall never reaches for the overused “symphonic” tag. Instead, it feels like a village ruckus that gathers local rabble-rousers around a campfire surrounded by evergreens and rusted amplifiers. But Zerfall is still plagued by the same imbalance that has defanged so many other records of this scope. Outside the feral blasts of “Wut” and impressive guitar leads in “Fluch des Seins,” Finsterforst unfortunately under-develop the metallic aspects of the record in favor of

traditional elements. Then there’s 36-minute finale “Ecce Homo,” which exists on its own immersive merit. Charging right up to the line of superfluous, the song forgoes the density of their namesake woodlands for airy composition. Morphing from dizzying pagan fanfare to slowburn post-metal along its journey, Zerfall rewards patient listeners who welcome accordion sprinkled into their black forest metal. —SEAN FRASIER

GATECREEPER

Deserted RELAPSE

More like “sophomore slam”

If Gatecreeper’s rightfully acclaimed 2016 full-length debut Sonoran Depravation delivered an idiosyncratic, modernized take on extreme metal circa 1991—buzzsaw, Sunlight Studios, death-doom, War Master, Cause of Death— this dark and dazzling next-level follow-up in many ways jumps ahead a couple years, adding to the mix the underground-to-overground evolutions of the mid-’90s: death n’ roll, riff tightening, more condensed grooves, The IVth Crusade, The End Complete. Toss Chaos A.D. in there as well, because there are moments here that definitely call to mind the slugfest riffing found at, say, the end of “Propaganda” or all over “Nomad.” (The effects-laden solos that provide counterpoint to the tectonic riffs on Deserted standouts “Everlasting” and “In Chains,” for example, also feel very much like a homage to Chaos-era Andreas Kisser.) None of this is to suggest that Deserted is a dramatic departure from Sonoran. Truth is, those who thrilled to the latter are almost certain to be enlivened by the former. The primary difference, it seems, is that Sonoran was a powerful record, but Deserted is a record made by a band that understands its power. And it shows in virtually every area of the Arizona quintet’s sound, from the diversity and deftness contained within the compositions to the self-actualizing confidence and swagger animating the attack. Coming from the desert, Gatecreeper clearly intend to serve as an oasis, not a mirage—and Deserted is destined to prove to the scene at large that the band’s aim is true. —SHAWN MACOMBER

HOWLING GIANT

The Space Between Worlds BLUES FUNERAL RECORDINGS

Torched by a baroness on a mastodon

No matter how youthful a perspective you have on your own life, the fact remains that you’re

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RUMBLY RU MBLY THROUGH A A SPEAKER THROUGH

getting old, and the older you get, the greater the odds that some random fact will have you wondering just where in the hell the years went. This summer, Highway to Hell turned 40. The classic movie UHF turned 30. Thirteen years passed between Tool albums. And we are now starting to hear new young bands that were directly influenced by artists that we at Decibel were raving about 15 years ago. If you’re going to use certain bands as jumping-off points for your own nascent art, what better acts than Baroness, Torche and Mastodon? The Space Between Worlds is Howling Giant’s debut album, which comes on the heels of a series of EP releases over the past few years; and while there’s plenty of room for these guys to grow, they have laid a mighty sturdy foundation. The music is hugely indebted to the combination of heavy grooves and strong vocal harmonies that Torche have perfected, and while that influence is a little too obvious from time to time, the album truly starts to shine when the band extend their reach into Americana and progressive rock. “The River Guide,” which expertly blends doom metal and more rusticsounding interludes, is a prime example, as is “Cybermancer and the Doomsday Express,” which makes room for organ and synthesizer to add some richness to the arrangement. There’s more than enough potential here to warrant something even bigger and better the next time around. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

IMPERIUM DEKADENZ

When We Are Forgotten N A PA L M

Hard to deny such easy listening

With When We Are Forgotten, the Black Forest-based duo of Horaz and Vespasian have released their best album since their sophomore effort, Dämmerung der Szenarien. After going full-blown blackgaze on their last record, Imperium Dekadenz are returning to their roots, having learned a thing or two in the meantime. When We Are Forgotten opens with its title track, a blissed-out, galloping rocker that at several points sounds dangerously close to going into a post-black metal cover of “Boys of Summer.” The second track is a straightforward pulse-pusher of melancholic prowess that recalls the late ’00s when bands like Amesoeurs and Alcest were in everyone’s heavy rotation. Except these riffs, and the drumming behind them, are far more urgent and somehow more serious than anything that came from that scene. Then the first part of “My Solace” comes along to remind you just how experimental these 74 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

The obscure, the underrated and the long gone BY DUTCH PEARCE

ASHEN CHALICE

SZIVILIZS

T H E T H R O AT

N A R B E N TA G E P R O D U K T I O N E N

Ljubiš li i dalje istinski? Here’s your entry point for this young, but already prolific Croatian solo black metal noise project. Five tapes in and Ashen Chalice have yet to compromise even the slightest bit in their abrasive assault against your ears. The difference lies in the black metal side of their two-headed sound. More than ever, on Ljubiš li i dalje istinski? Ashen Chalice conjure spellbinding black maelstroms. Long-form, tentacular compositions that pour out from the speakers at once ethereal and thick like black smoke. The best tape yet from one of the most interesting new black metal bands out there. Don’t miss it.

NEKROVVITCH

Coven of Freiburg MORTEM

Nigrum, the mastermind behind underrated USBM solo act Nigrum Mortem, along with some co-conspirators (two killer guitarists and a death metal drummer) put out this tape of Argento-referencing, old-school black death perversity under the name Nekrovvitch. Raw in the sense that it’s just guitars, bass, drums and vocals, and also in the sense that Nigrum himself recorded, mixed and mastered these four tracks, but definitely not raw in the modern sense. This is warm and analog-sounding Satanic Saturnalia, replete with catchy vocals and louderthan-everything-else guitar solos. Another mandatory tape from Mortem, one of the most reliable, yet undiscovered labels in the underground tape trade worldwide.

TREST

Ordalium CALIGARI

Here’s an interesting tape from a mysterious German group. Ordalium is six tracks of midpaced, atmospheric black metal, but the two sides of the cassette represent different versions of the same songs. Side A, or the “Ordeal Version,” yawns atmospheric in that massive, Mortuus kind of way. While the B side, “Pyre Version,” features the exact same six songs, in the same order, but the guitar tones now stab out with indiscernible, staticky wall-of-shards noise, and the vocals are pure Balrog rising. The difference is so profound that it’s almost like a split. Since both versions evoke different feelings, but from the same songs, it’s hard to say which is the preferred side. Overall, Ordalium is an interesting spin on an otherwise familiar concept.

Ds Tagtroumschtärbä Unfortunately, all 66 copies of Szivilizs’ four-song demo of melancholic-but-blazing fast European-style black metal are long gone. Thankfully, someone uploaded the Switzerland-based one-man band’s synthaugmented, multi-layered demo because Ds Tagtroumschtärbä—don’t look at me, I’ve no idea what it means—absolutely must be heard, and demands repeated listens. Although not because it’s challenging and takes some time to wrap your head around. No, this tape is instantly enjoyable, but still gets better with each listen. Like the best black metal, it’s grim and evil, but Szivilizs goes way beyond modern expectations of how hard a black metal band can wail. Really too bad those tapes are sold out.

CHAÎNES FANTÔME

Forbidden Rituals for the Destruction of Purity Pt. II ANCESTRAL FLAME PRODUCTIONS

The product of a single musician, this is Chaînes Fantôme’s second tape, hot on the heels of his debut. This style of black metal is truly vampyric, as it drains the life from you while you listen to it, replacing it with something like a morbid zen. More than hypnotic, Forbidden Rituals is narcotic-like: the ouroboric riffing, the wash ‘n’ wah of the cymbals, the buried vocals that may or may not even be there at all. Something like Perverse Homage jamming on some Carved Cross worship, yet atypical to everything trending in the underground right now. Let this tape in, definitely, but listen to it responsibly.

ELDEST BLOOD

Where Old Stairs Wander ARDETHA

Eldest Blood are a duo from Nashville that rip a unique kind of warm and melodic, raw black metal ferocity. Introduced by an eerie ambient track where a knell tolls dimly in the hissing fog, Where Old Stairs Wander marks three deadly sharp rippers from this promising new group. Acwelan (guitarist/bassist/vox) provides the catchy, dreamily familiar riffs and all the melodic sensibilities therein, while drummer Hadal pumps these medieval bangers full of furious blasting, punkish stomps and a crash cymbal that sounds like swords clashing in an old, low-budget movie. Eldest Blood represent the perfect gateway into Ardetha, a promising and super-active, still little-known tape label.

ROBERT PEHRSSON‘S

Ca pilla Ardiente‘s

The new album »Out Of The Dark« carries on where »Long Way To The Light« has left off three years earlier

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HUMBUCKER

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Germans can get, sounding like Godflesh, Rome, the Angelic Process and contemporary Ulver all at once. But that’s only the third track out of 11, not to mention the two bonus tracks. And the hits just keep coming. All the way up to the almost-Humesque closer “Frozen in Time.” Thoroughly dynamic, consummately performed and constructed, Imperium Dekadenz’s sixth album is an impressive achievement. Yet, as obviously ambitious as a record of this magnitude is, the German duo makes it sound easy. Even more than that, there’s a vein of disarming humility running throughout. They know that their style of black metal isn’t in fashion anymore, but they wrote, recorded and released this incredible record anyway. Maybe if you find the time, you can give it a chance to move you. —DUTCH PEARCE

INSOMNIUM

Heart Like a Grave CENTURY MEDIA

Keeping it melo

It’s been over 20 years since melodeath gloom-bringers Insomnium first formed in the subarctic city of Joensuu. By pairing growls and lachrymose synths on their Underneath the Moonlit Waves demo, they clearly stated their intent and never turned back. Two decades later, they’re a genre Finnstitution that prowls the treacherous snowlands between Gothic metal and ornate Opethian death. Through the years, the band has risen from the moonlit waves to ascend Above the Weeping World as melodeath torchbearers. On their last record, 2016’s Winter’s Gate, they even challenged themselves to write a single 40-minute composition. But on their eighth album, Heart Like a Grave, they trade solemn mountains for the lakes of Karelia. From the first whispers of opener “Wail of the North,” the band wields piano and strings with as much care as the riffs that soon disrupt the tranquil water. In the title track, Insomnium even approach gothic sensibility that reimagines vintage Cradle of Filth if they focused on stoic introspection instead of seducing the nearest vampiress. But Insomnium don’t abandon the death while leaning on the melo. “Pale Morning Star” is a hot-blooded bruiser. Despite the triumphant shoegaze of standout stunner “Twilight Trails,” the songs wraps itself around sullen heaviness that’s even more effective following the Gothenburg thrust of “Mute Is My Sorrow.” There are so many delicate touches on Heart Like a Grave that it’s the clean vocals that actually feel less organic. The overproduced croons stab through the woodland mist like a CGI dagger. But most is forgiven once you reach swelling instrumental closer “Karelia.” Whether you’re looking 7 6 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

for melodies that are feather-light or heavy as deep-sea slumber, Heart Like a Grave offers a place to rest your head. —SEAN FRASIER

IRON AGE

The Sleeping Eye 20 BUCK SPIN

Today’s your lucky day

Midway through 2006 fulllength Constant Struggle (on Philly hardcore foundry Youngblood Records), Iron Age crack their third eye. The three-alarm prog of “Butcher’s Bill” glimpses the Austinites’ evolutionary leap from a punk-metal sneer in the crowd to Texan thrash/crossover pioneers on The Sleeping Eye three years later. Flaxen-haired hellion Jason Tarpey and guitar storm Wade Allison emerged from the ashes of the initial quintet as a writer/producer tandem that paved a runway for Mammoth Grinder, Power Trip and multiple others sprung from the latter group especially. Bathory, Integrity, the Icemen, English Dogs, H.P. Lovecraft: Iron Age blacksmithed it all into their second and final LP. Opener “The Sleeping Eye of the Watcher” exits the bucking chute like a 1,500-pound bull, wherein the roar of the arena matches the blood pounding in your ears from the mass adrenaline. “Dispossessed” and “Burden of Empire” sprint that rush of genre genius: U.K. tempos, Scandanavian shred and a U.S. backline. Whereas ’70s synthesizer interlude “Materia Prima” divulges a deeper narrative, “A Younger Earth” erupts Tarpey’s truest berzerker vocal for an instant centerpiece of DIY-gauge Mercyful Fate. Thirteen minutes of “Arcana” rage through compositional phases and stages, plodding beats set against stampeding axes, while eight-minute closer “The Way Is Narrow” blisters Texas heat— lashing, burning, fatal. Crime and punishment. A decade on, Iron Age reunite occasionally, one hometown 2018 performance featuring Mammoth Grinder/Power Trip turbine Chris Ulsh. Currently leading Eternal Champion (see dB’s 2016 site Q&A), Tarpey there dismissed any follow-up to The Sleeping Eye, now freshly reissued by 20 Buck Spin with new artwork. Get woke. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

LEDGE

All I Hope For T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

Hello, darkness, my new friend

Should you harbor any fears that Ledge might stray from their primordial tar pit origins on the follow-up to 2017’s Cold Hard Concrete, this quote from the press release courtesy of band mastermind/ex-Weekend Nachos frontman John Hoffman should set you at ease:

“I write all of the songs in the key of standard E on a very shitty acoustic guitar that is missing several strings. The songs are never rehearsed with a full band. The first time any of these songs are actually heard is when the album is recorded.” That about sums it up: As song titles such as “Deform,” “Crater,” “Hanged” and “We Suffer” likely suggest, All I Hope For is less about intricate craftmanship and nuance than a harrowing, iddriven, bile-drenched, rusty-hunting-knife-in-onehand-guitar-in-the-other sonic hari-kari. In practice, this mostly manifests as oppressively heavy, doomed-out, pitch black sludge— seriously, there are moments here that make Eyehategod look like the Bee Gees—but once you’ve been lulled into that sense of insecurity, Ledge will sucker-punch you with a bit of depraved swing or stoner groove. Oh, and to call Hoffman’s vocals tortured would be an understatement. There are probably circles of Hell with more chipper choruses. If it’s not clear by now, Ledge are not for everyone. Even by the standards of Hoffman’s work with an extremely extreme act like Weekend Nachos, All I Hope For is discordant, antagonistic, bleak and misanthropic. It makes for good walking music—if you’re taking a one-way stroll to the edge of the abyss. If not, reroute now or forever hold your peace. —SHAWN MACOMBER

LIFE OF AGONY

The Sound of Scars N A PA L M

Survivor song(s)

The announcement that Life of Agony would record a conceptual sequel to the landmark Decibel Hall of Famer River Runs Red (1993) kindled expectations plenty. And then Joey Z. sauntered up with a bucket of gas. “We really went back to our roots on this one,” the guitarist enthuses in a quote splashed prominently across the Brooklyn quartet’s official website, “and tapped into the mindset we had when we first started the band.” Whoosh! Could it be? Could LOA really be returning to the sound it has essentially spent a quarter century honoring but nevertheless kept firmly in the evolutionary rearview mirror? Well… no. In fact, The Sound of Scars doesn’t even hearken back sonically to the chuggier elements of Ugly (1995), the transitional record that so brilliantly bridged the hardcore-tinged alt-metal and metal-tinged alt-rock eras of the band. Instead, think the first couple Stabbing Westward records crosspollinated with the first couple Stone Temple Pilots records. Which is to say, Scars is more of a piece with the seriously underappreciated 2005 comeback effort Broken Valley than “Through and Through” or “This

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—SHAWN MACOMBER

MORTIFERUM

Disgorged From Psychotic Depths P R O FO U N D LO R E

Evoking abandoned gods

Two years ago, Olympia’s Mortiferum burst onto the underground scene with their runaway four-song demo, Altar of Decay.

First self-released by the band on tape, Altar of Decay was then re-released on cassette by Graceless in the U.S. and Extremely Rotten in Europe; then it was reissued on vinyl by Profound Lore. The PNW-based four-piece, which features drummer and death-gurgler A. Mody, spent much of 2018 on the road. They even played Killtown Death Fest in Copenhagen on the strength of their demo alone. It’s no stretch, then, to say that the expectations hoisted onto Mortiferum’s debut full-length were high, if not staggering. Good news: Disgorged From Psychotic Depths succeeds in much the same way as their demo. Once more, Mortiferum present perfectly balanced deadly misery. Opener “Archaic Vision of Despair” begins with the drums and bass. Massive and blood-caked, the rhythm section lays down a slow, ominous foundation of what’s to come. Then the guitars come in riffing sinister and low, with A. Mody clanging his ride bell. The rest of the album, excluding the interlude, plays out more death metal than death-doom, mostly sounding like a mix between early Paradise Lost

MAYHEM, Daemon

From the dark past | C E N T U R Y M E D I A

I know what you’re thinking: It’s Mayhem, and not just that—it’s Mayhem in 2019. For all the stories and legendary status, this band has had a rough go. Murder, deaths, constant lineup changes and other drama can obscure and even destroy identity. And, to be honest, the last few decades (at least post-Grand Declaration of War) have shown Mayhem to be a band in flux. That isn’t to say their material

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has been objectively bad—Chimera and Ordo ad Chao were wonderfully maddening, scary albums, and Esoteric Warfare was at the very least an interesting listen, but nothing was really… Mayhem. That is to say, the band that had a heavy hand in inventing the Norwegian black metal sound. In 2019, we get a Mayhem album. Daemon is blistering—fast in a way that Mayhem haven’t been since 1997. It is cold—frigid

and Funebrarum with Lasse Pyykkö of Hooded Menace on vocals. If you’ve ever wondered what a good mastering job can do for a band’s sound, listen to Dan Lowndes’ work here. Furthermore, Chase Slaker’s artwork couldn’t be more perfect. Even darker and more brutal than anyone could’ve expected, Disgorged From Psychotic Depths is a consummate follow-up to one of the most promising demos of the past 10 years. Indeed, Mortiferum have arrived. —DUTCH PEARCE

NEPTUNE POWER FEDERATION

Memoirs of a Rat Queen CRUZ DEL SUR

Let them eat vegemite

When a band names itself something as ludicrous as Neptune Power Federation, any trepidation on the part of the listener is warranted. Are these musicians trying a little too hard with the kitschy

like the deepest cave in the furthest North. It is a void—this is pitch blackness, a center of hatred and madness. Daemon positions itself as an anachronism in Mayhem’s discography; while the band spent so much time adjusting to new members and finding a new sound, all they had to do was rediscover themselves. This is the true successor to the madness found in Wolf’s Lair Abyss, or even what Wolf’s Lair Abyss would have sounded like had Attila Csihar never left. It is immersive, hateful, dark music solely for the initiated. Mayhem are back with a vengeance. —JON ROSENTHAL

PHOTO BY ESTER SEGARRA

Time.” Thematically, it is powerful to return to the story of the young man who we assumed died by his own hand at the end of River Runs Red. Survival, we learn through both lyrics and sketches/ segues, did not mean the end of struggle. The character is still in pain, still unbalanced. “The trauma you experienced as a young man is long behind you now,” his therapist insists at one point. “Let that scar on your wrist remind you of where you’ve been, not where you’re going.” Wittingly or not, it feels as if Life of Agony took that advice to heart long ago as well.

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psychedelic rock gimmicks? Oh wait, the music references heavy metal and space rock from 1968 to 1979 and the singer howls like a banshee while wearing garish costumes? You don’t say. Then you play the new album by these aforementioned Australian weirdos, and from the opening bars on track one, you know these folks are for real. Throughout this wickedly catchy record there are plenty of easily identifiable reference signposts: the eclecticism of Blue Öyster Cult, the ferocity of Motörhead, the greasiness of the Godz, the party anthems of the Dictators, the blues jams of Ram Jam, the riff-meet-hooks savvy of the Runaways. And if you’re looking for Australian influences, too, you can hear the Angels all over this thing. What makes Memoirs of a Rat Queen so convincing, however, is how Neptune Power Federation mash all those sounds into something surprisingly distinct. A big reason for that uniqueness is singer Screaming Loz Sutch, who boasts one hell of a set of pipes, capable of monstrous power and more subtle nuance. On such highlights as “Pagan Inclinations,” the wonderfully goofy “Flying Incendiary Club for Subjugating Demons” and the classic rock radio-ready “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” she sells the gimmick so convincingly that you feel compelled to immediately buy the damn ticket and enjoy the wild ride. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

NORMA JEAN

All Hail

S O L I D S TAT E

Would you take… two cheers?

Incorporating math metal, noise and screamo into their sound, Norma Jean were always one of the more interesting and unique explosions amidst the mid-aughts metalcore boom. And though fans of early wildeyed bangers like Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child (2002) or O’ God, the Aftermath (2005) might argue that the Georgians occasionally honed certain bits to a too-bright sheen or too often fell back on once-adventurous compositional tricks that did not exactly repeat, but sure as hell rhymed— okay, so maybe I’m projecting here—the truth is few from Norma Jean’s metalcore class remain as vibrant or consistent. This despite no original remaining members, 13 ex-members and a lineup currently self-identifying on Facebook as “a collection of musicians.” A feat, that. Still, one could sense a little restlessness on 2016’s Polar Similar, an epic that brought the spacey/shoegazey elements of Meridional (2010) and Wrongdoers (2013) further to the fore. (Yes, there are segue tracks.) All Hail does more of the same, only leavening a good deal of it with 8 0 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

hyper-produced, djent-tinged groove metal riffs—think the non-blast parts of latter-day Strapping Young Lad and you’ll be in the neighborhood—and midtempo “pretty” stuff that may have cleansed palates on a seven- or eighttrack record, but feels a bit meandering popping up repeatedly across 14. (One or two reverbdrenched guitar/vox breaks probably would’ve been plenty.) There’s actually a lot of material here that connects as well. Unfortunately, Norma Jean sound too enamored with this latest new beginning to pare back or distill. All Hail will no doubt satiate fans. Newbies looking to learn what the hype is all about should start elsewhere. —SHAWN MACOMBER

POPULATION CONTROL

Death Toll BEER CITY

Swill ’em all

I’m firmly of the belief that almost every problem confronting humanity today is rooted in the fact that there’s too much humanity. This planet needs a mass eradication. Comedian and late-to-the-game Meshuggah fan Bill Burr is with me on this. Are you? These Milwaukee ragers (probably) are, even if the world could do with a crossover band culling as well. Like anything, the subgenre’s original wave was fresh and exciting, but a few decades down the line, the gene pool has been weakened, making it a chore to listen to the same recycled riffs and stories of XXL-size beer bongs, waking up face down in cold pizza and battles with radioactive zombies. To this quintet’s credit, their lyrical stance is more apocalyptic, with “Drowning in the Trenches of My Mind” and “Reborn Into Failure” trumping the likes of “It Won’t Stay Dead.” Their sound is a fresh stirring of black and melodic death metal into a simmering pot manned by D.R.I. and the Accüsed. Vocalist Rick Ramirez has the throat-scraping, banshee timbre down pat. His bandmates lob volleys of rapid picked riffs and frosty Scandinavian chord progressions. So, it’s no surprise that opener “In the Winter’s Burn” exists as the sole occupant of the purgatory between Immortal and Excel, complete with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge ending you’d expect from Municipal Waste and/or the Blues Brothers. And that “From Where the Rotting Stench Came,” with its thrash-black balancing act, divebombing lead and shredding bass solo, is the album’s centerpiece. Wading through a suffocating glut of bands, crossover or otherwise, is merely one symptom of

our lack of population control. In the meantime, be wise and focus your attention on this Population Control. And while you’re at, see if there’s a way to erase 25-30 mediocre bands for every successfully ambitious one. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

SEMPITERNAL DUSK

Cenotaph of Defectuous Creation DARK DESCENT

Like a force of nature

Sempiternal Dusk began as a duo in 2011. Three years later, they delivered their eponymous debut full-length, a mountain-sized, insatiable sandworm of an album. By that time, drummer/ vocalist TC and guitarist JH were joined by bassist TG and another guitarist who would eventually be replaced by guitarist/vocalist VB. These four musicians from the PNW scene (counting among them members of Weregoat, Mournful Congregation, Anhedonist, etc.) spent the next five years releasing new music at a glacial pace: song-by-song, and via splits with other incredible bands. One of the most formidable lineups in U.S. death metal, gathering power, brooding in the shadows. The thing that sets sophomore album Cenotaph of Defectuous Creation apart from all the other must-hear death metal albums nowadays is its pacing. Its slow, ground-rumbling rise. What starts as a minute-and-a-half dark ambient intro that sounds briefly like The Disintegration Loops played in the Terminator universe suddenly becomes a colossal wall of DUNNNN! with slow cymbal crashing and plodding drums. Sempiternal Dusk have waited five years for this moment, and that wait feels almost palpable in the moments building up to when “Excavated Filth From Dimensional Incarnations” finally hits, riffing with all its overhead phantom leads and reverberating death growls. While several of these musicians are known mostly for their much slower-paced bands, here they ride death’s horse at a hard and bloodthirsty gallop almost the whole record long. At just 37 minutes, Cenotaph of Defectuous Creation is lean, mean death metal supreme. —DUTCH PEARCE

SORXE

The Ark Burner PROSTHETIC

Roasting God’s creatures, two-by-two

There’s a certain amount of appreciation that fans of sludge and doom should reserve for Arizona’s Sorxe. While so

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many bands of their ilk are trying their darndest to soil listeners’ pantaloons with brown note heaviness or grind bones into fine powder with tectonic tones, this Phoenix outfit injects a large swath of artistry into their pummeling. The light/dark, heavy/clean, crushing/caressing dynamic comes off more as a united front of psychedelic and cinematic walls of monolith, as opposed to sonic sucker-punching. Think of the difference between a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and inelegantly slam-dunking a hunk of milk chocolate into a jar of Jif. The band’s skill at massaging distorted grandiosity with elements of refined tribalism and Old West ambience (“Full Transmission”), and generating suspenseful sci-fi soundtrackiness (“Exiled”) demonstrates not only a depth of engagement similar to Through Silver in Blood and Times of Grace, but a starting point for comparison. Shane Ocell’s straight-and-narrow drumming holds down the fort for the effects pedal-clicking, gradual changes and Theremin whirling that move the band beyond the ordinary, as they skirt around the edges of a star-lit kaleidoscope before pounding beard hair on a titanium anvil in “Wondering If I Exist.” There are a few moments where things get a little too loosey-goosey via lazy percussion and a casual approach to space that’ll have you wondering where the intensity disappeared or if your stereo speakers shorted out (“A Negative Exorcism”), but overall, The Ark Burner welcomes listeners into a dense and wondrous world with smooth and slick textural shifts. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

URN

Iron Will of Power SEASON OF MIST

URNS

Urns

SELF-RELEASED

E pluribus urn-um

Besides their nearly identical band names, Tampere’s Urn and Pittsburgh’s Urns have little else in common. Urn from Finland play tight, blackened heavy metal, and have been at it for 25 years now. While newcomers Urns from western PA jam out on some dopey, epic heaviness, with crooning vocals delivering earworm melodies. Urn sound like heavy metal-worshipping demons. Urns’ self-titled, self-released debut sounds like some lost Hawkwind-worship album sat on forever by Harvey Milk. Urn’s fifth full-length comes in meaner than their previous album, but loses steam by 8 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

“Prayers,” the repetitive fourth track. It recovers in a big way with “Demonlord,” but then comes the jarringly milquetoast chorus of “Spears of Light.” Compared not only to Urn’s newest album, but to most metal albums coming out nowadays, Urns just has so much more personality and daring ambition. Everything happening on these five tracks is either fresh or turned on its head—oftentimes both. Urns alternate fluidly between stoner rock, math metal, post-hardcore, epic heavy metal and proto-metal, with another fistbanger riff just around the corner. From the dazed and wandering Reverend Bizarre-esque doom of “Curse” to the final track, “Credo Nihilo,” with its glorious blackened sludge climax, Urns is a dynamic and relentlessly entertaining experience. No two songs sound the same, and every one has the potential to be your favorite on the album—and probably will be at one point if you check this out and, inevitably, keep listening to it. Both records have their merits, but Urns’ debut is creative, sincere and, above all, heavy. While Urn’s fifth full-length is out on LP, CD and cassette. —DUTCH PEARCE

WHITE WARD

Love Exchange Failure DEBEMUR MORTI PRODUCTIONS

Triple sax maniak

For the first few minutes of the title track that opens Love Exchange Failure, the second album by Ukraine’s White Ward, listeners will hear acoustic piano, brushed drums and saxophone. These are unorthodox choices, but not ridiculous ones—metal bands have been using understated introductions to juxtapose harsh sounds since at least 1984, and this instrumentation fits the sophisticated urban skyline of the album cover. However, when White Ward kick into high gear, the keys don’t go anywhere, and neither does the sax. In fact, they’re in every song on the record. Unorthodox instrumentation can be sorted into two categories: gimmick and real deal. Points in the “White Ward are a gimmick” category include the band’s sort of screamo-inflected take on black metal, and that guest musicians play the sax and piano. Points in the real deal category? All these songs are really fucking good. White Ward’s cinematic sensibility, prominent bass, occasional twin leads and protracted song lengths all tie them to the sweeping melodic tradition in black metal, while their

clean production and sparse use of blast beats tie them in the here and now. Love Exchange Failure sounds fresh and urgent, even though they’re not the first black metal band to experiment with jazz. Those elements will turn some listeners off, but we’ve long since accepted horn sections and organ into the metal lexicon, so why not sax and piano? The only real downside is that the penultimate track, “Surfaces and Depths,” is so good it almost overshadows the rest of the album. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

WITCH-HUNT

Darkened Anthology 1992-2002 LO S T A P PA R I T I O N S

NO PRECLUSION!

The greater Washington, D.C. area has always been a fervent source for both underground and homegrown music. There’s hardDCore (Minor Threat, Government Issue and Scream), go-go (Rare Essence, Experience Unlimited), doom metal (Pentagram, Iron Man), grindcore (Enemy Soil, Pig Destroyer) and hardcore-meets-gonzo rock (the Meatmen). One of the missing ingredients is death metal; in the earliest years of the genre, death metal didn’t have nearly the presence in the D.C. area as it did in New York, Florida and northern California. Witch-Hunt, however, were an outlier, and a band that helped plant many seeds in the regional extreme music scene. Despite occasional tour visits from Napalm Death, it was a lonely time to be a D.C. death metal fan in the ’90s. But Witch-Hunt soldiered on. Lost Apparitions has collected the bulk of their catalog in Darkened Anthology, a 15-song omnibus that follows the northern Virginia band through several iterations from the early ’90s until the 21st century, right around the time drummer Erik Sayenga joined Dying Fetus. The label and band note in the press release that “the 15 songs therein do not intend to compete sonically with contemporary outfits benefiting from virtuoso musicians and pristine smart phone recording technology.” Despite that disclaimer, there is a lot to like in this energetic (if at times uneven) collection of songs. The best of them channel the sounds of Barney and Napalm in the early ’90s, and boast some dazzling riffs. While Witch-Hunt will never be remembered in the same breath as early Obituary or Deicide, you have to admire their tenacity and workmanlike approach to building the genre during a down time for metal, particularly in the barren D.C. area. If you’re a death metal die hard, this collection will help tell a small—but critical—part of a bigger story. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

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

LEATHER GLOVE

Perpetual Animation 12-inch

[ S E N T I E N T R U I N L A B O R AT O R I E S ]

Greg Wilkinson is in Brainoil, he’s recorded a ton of legit bands at Earhammer Studios in the Bay Area, this is his debut album of sludgy death metal and it is just really great. He got some other people to help him out, including guest soloists from Autopsy, Vastum, Ghoul and other bands, but it’s his project, there are riffs galore and it’s lovely to listen to. It’s the kind of record that sounds as if everyone is enjoying themselves, but it’s not goofy or full of half-baked ideas. Just well-written, -played and -recorded. I won’t be surprised when the follow-up is on a much bigger and less cool label. You should get this.

LIFES

Treading Water 12-inch [ H E R E A N D N O W R E C O R D S / K N O C H E N TA P E S / MIDDLE MAN RECORDS/TRIPLE EYE INDUSTRIES]

When you’re making a list of things to look for in a powerviolence band, it should always include song titles that are similar to “Uninformed Electorate (Complacently Eating Shit).” But you should expect no less from Lifes, a bass-anddrums powerviolence duo that’s been around the block many times, and even earlier with bands like Seven Days of Samsara and Kung Fu Rick. And despite a lot of these 18 tracks being the usual incendiaries in a handful of seconds, they still manage to cover a lot of sonic ground, and it’s all very, very pissed off. You should also get this.

THE ASOUND

Impalement Arts 12-inch [RUSTY KNUCKLES]

This is some stoned rock that’s at its best when it’s closer to the slower, sludgier Floor-type stuff... like the last song, which is a cover of a Floor song. In other words, those big, beefy riffs are what ring my bell. They tend to go sideways when it’s full rock ‘n’ roll and all that, but there will be people who dig this. There’s definitely some Kyuss worship on here that you Kyuss worshippers are gonna love, for example. If you’ve ever had a hungry record player positioned below a poster of a blacklight mushroom, this stands a fighting chance.

LEEWAY NYC

“Tipping Point” 7-inch

[ U P S TAT E ]

Leeway were a crossover thrash band from the ’80s that became kind of like an alt-hardcore band in the ’90s, and then broke up. And like every band that broke up in the last 40 years, they’ve reunited. This is an altered form that necessitates the “NYC,” but frontman/legend Eddie Sutton is

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still here and these two songs pretty much still sound like the ’90s version of the band. Is it good? Well, people love what Sutton does and Leeway fans are going to be over the moon that he’s back doing his thing. I myself think that most of Leeway’s music is borderline unlistenable, but I’m happy to let you all know that it’s out.

SUFFERING HOUR

“Dwell” 12-inch

[ H E LT E R S K E LT E R / B L O O D H A R V E S T ]

A one-sided LP with an 18-minute, nearly instrumental blackened death metal track sounds like a weird Mad Lib, but that’s what we have here. As something that keeps going pretty steadily for the majority of the 18 minutes, I have to admit they do a pretty good job maintaining your attention. The maybe four screams that comprise the entirety of the vocals seem a little odd, but they really didn’t need much more to hold this all together; and given that they’re a threepiece, I appreciate their economical approach to extreme music. Definitely an A for effort, even if I’m not sure how many more times I’m gonna listen to the whole thing.

DRUGS OF FAITH

“Decay” 7-inch

[SELFMADEGOD]

Richard Johnson, a.k.a. the Grindfather, a.k.a. the guy from Enemy Soil and Agoraphobic Nosebleed, is back with his main band Drugs of Faith, offering a sampler of the trio’s singular take on grind ‘n’ roll. That means in under 10 minutes you get all these big hooks mixed with blasts and Johnson’s scathing rant screams. This doesn’t have as much noise rock grime as their previous full-length, but it’s still great.

ABHOR/ABYSMAL GRIEF

Legione Occulta/Ministerium Diaboli split 12-inch

[IRON BONEHEAD]

Ah, but here we have ourselves blackened doom metal, along with blackened black metal, as two Italian bands from back in the day have joined forces. The black metal band, Abhor, started in 1995 and have been putting out the classic stuff pretty steadily this whole time. They have two songs here, one called “Possession Obsession,” and they’re both mid-paced, organ-accompanied blasphemy that’s pretty good, especially if you like extended exorcism samples. On the other side is the doom band, Abysmal Grief, who started in 1995 and show up here with a 13-minute song that literally does not get going for eight-and-ahalf minutes. It’s all keyboards and spooky talking, and then finally it’s just some kind of whatever riffs and soloing. It’s not great. So, unless you truly have an obsession for possession, maybe skip it.

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D E C I B E L : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : 8 7

8 8 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L ANSWERS: 1. The creature’s mouth-eye thing is open more... yes, mouth-eye! It’s... Lovecraftian, OK? 2. The puddles of gore on the floor have flowed into the cracks and grooves in the stone 3. The intestines of the open belly corpse on the upper left have looped 4. Just below the creature’s eye, the straps holding the bone gate together spell out “GATECREEPER” 5-8. Four bodies throughout the corpse wall are hirsute (hint: three are dark green and one is dark blue) 9. The creature has shed a few tears of sadness over its imprisonment... or that’s just drool 10. The long tentacle on the top right has seven toothy fang tusks, instead of just five 11. The severed head toward the bottom right got an ill-advised perm before he was sacrificed for the corpse wall 12. There’s another appendage coming from underneath the creature 13. Something has made off with the intestines of the torso to the lower right 14. The wall behind the creature is made of rounded stone 15. There’s one lone hand with its middle finger extended, at the top left of the corpse wall

There are 15 differences in these pictures. How many can you find?

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