Decibel #174 - April 2019

EXIS CIBOBJECELTIVEFL DETIVELY 20AN OBJEC REVIEW

QUEHEAVYENS RŸCHE METAL

CARCASS

EXCLUSIVE STUDIO UPDATE

IS THE LAW

REFUSE/RESIST

FLEXI DISC

INCLUDED

MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP ROTTING CHRIST

METAL CHURCH MISERY INDEX DEVIL MASTER PHLEBOTOMIZED

APRIL 2019 // No. 174

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April 2019 [R 174] decibelmagazine.com

54 No More Tears COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY GENE SMIRNOV

features

upfront 8

metal muthas Drumming up support

12 low culture A blaze in the New Jersey sky 13 no corporate beer Flights of fancy 14 studio report:

carcass

Heartbacktowork

16 totaled Brutality in anonymity 18 east of the wall Hindsight is 20/20 20 devil master Spooky scary 22 elizabeth colour wheel A new flavour 24 phlebotomized They’ve returned for your braaains

26 call & response:

metal church

Don't hold your breath for an upcoming tour with Dying Fetus 28 special feature:

the top 20 flexi discs of all time (so far) You mean these things actually play music?

32 queensrÿche Guilty of first-degree heavy metal assault 34 rotting christ Fgmenth, thy gift that keeps on giving

reviews 36 misery index #Socialism 38 q&a: jeremy wagner The Broken Hope guitarist wants to tell you a tale of love and loss 42 the decibel

hall of fame Though we may have lost drummer Ted McKenna, his legacy endures with the induction of the Michael Schenker Group’s Assault Attack

63 lead review Noisem return after nearly living up to their new album’s title Cease to Exist 64 album reviews Records that think the polar vortex was way cooler in 1987, including Children of Bodom, In Flames and Pissgrave 80 double negative Mother superior

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.

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you’re likely just trying to find five minutes of peace in the bathroom, hoping to learn if the new In Flames album is any good (spoiler: it isn’t) and not searching for sobering thoughts.

But as someone who is hurtling toward his mid-40s, it’s a reality that is increasingly difficult to ignore. And after curating the Decibel Hall of Fame series for the past 15 years, it’s an unfortunate reminder that presents itself on a monthly basis.

As most of you are well aware, one of the stipulations for Decibel Hall of Fame induction is that we must interview every band member who played on the record we’re honoring. Decibel started in 2004, which means that some pretty significant records—Ride the Lightning, Scream Bloody Gore, Bonded by Blood, just to name a few—were already off the board. As previously noted, this isn’t because we don’t hold these albums in the highest regard, but because the primary function of the Hall of Fame is to provide the definitive accounts of these albums that explain who we are as metal fanatics. And without Cliff, Chuck or Paul available to discuss the records in question, that just ain’t happening.

Of course, plenty of other events have dramatically altered the Hall of Fame landscape since its 2004 inception. Ronnie James Dio, Martin Eric Ain, Jeff Hanneman, Nick Menza, Peter Steele, the entire classic Motörhead lineup and many other inducted musicians have left this world behind. Their musical legacies were obviously long cemented before we interviewed them. But doing so allowed us to memorialize their work, forever preserving the genesis and stories behind timeless landmarks like Heaven and Hell, Morbid Tales, Reign in Blood, Rust in Peace, Bloody Kisses and Ace of Spades.

Just two days after this issue’s Assault Attack Hall of Fame was filed, Michael Schenker Group drummer Ted McKenna unexpectedly passed away due to complications from routine surgery. It was shocking and heartbreaking. And as time marches mercilessly on, it’s inevitable that things like this will occur with more frequency.

We are not here for very long. Don’t miss an opportunity to see a veteran band when they come through your town. I won’t wait the extra day to send that email to get a Hall of Fame story started. albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

REFUSE/RESIST

April 2019 [T174]

We are not here for very long. I realize

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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.

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READER OF THE

MONTH

Ruben Moreno Gardena, CA

You’ve been a Decibel subscriber for over a decade, so let’s make you editor in chief for an issue. What’s the one band you’d put on the cover the Decibel has yet to run a cover story on?

Wow, I always thought to myself, what if I was editor in chief for one day. Since I’m from Los Angeles, I’m going to be biased and say the crossover band Excel. I simply loved this band from day one since I first heard them as a teenage kid. They came out of that whole Venice scene in the ’80s, which included bands like No Mercy and Suicidal Tendencies.

Check out the Welcome to Venice compilation LP to know what I’m talking about. Excel’s story would shed interesting history on that

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particular musical scene along with introducing the readers to some great lost bands (Neighborhood Watch, Against). They reformed back in 2013 and now play gigs frequently throughout the year. Perhaps a possible Hall of Fame nominee for their debut album Split Image?

As an L.A.-area resident, please shatter one misconception about Los Angeles that metalheads in other parts of the U.S. and the world may have about the city.

Hopefully, I’m interpreting the question correctly. I would say that the urban myth of sunny Southern California, the place of Hollywood and Disneyland. We do have nice seasonal weather in the spring time but typically when the sun is out, the temperatures can get anywhere from 80100 degrees. When you add the smog and traffic on a mid-summer day with temperatures of 110, life in Los Angeles can be hell on earth.

Clippers vs. Lakers: who you got?

Funny thing, I’m not much of sports fan. I

occasionally do go to some basketball games during the NBA season, but if I would have to choose, I’m going with the Clippers. Clippers tickets are much cheaper than Laker tickets!

You attended Decibel Metal & Beer Fest: Los Angeles late last year. We’ll be doing it again in 2019, so here’s your chance to tell us what we should keep the same and what we should change about the event for Year 2.

I had a great time at the first inaugural Decibel Metal & Beer Fest here in Los Angeles. I loved the diversity of bands (YOB, Power Trip, to name a few) that played this two-day jubilee, including elder-statesmen bands like Testament and Triptykon. But the what made it so special is that both headliners played special sets and songs that I would never thought would be played in my lifetime. Keeping that “special” aspect to the fest is a definitely an added bonus. It looks like you guys are on your game at this year’s Decibel Metal & Beer in Philadelphia. I’m pretty satisfied with your choices of breweries. There no reason for anyone to complain about any craft beers at the fest since each brewery has about two to three selections of beer at each booth. I’m even surprised I got through two booths! I believe you guys a create a unique experience combining two great things I love: metal and beer. I wouldn’t change a thing.

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

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month?

Well, here are the records that we spun most while resting easy knowing Metal & Beer Fest patrons will have a place to shit.

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

This Month's Mutha: Michele Thomas Mutha of Jared Klein of Rivers of Nihil

Can you tell us a little more about yourself?

I was the child of a chorus girl who danced her way from Chicago's Chez Paree to the opening of Wilbur Clark's Desert Inn in Las Vegas. Jared was born in Reno, Nevada. Jared's dad was on tour with Engelbert Humperdinck at that time and I enjoyed taking a break, staying at home baking.

After two years, I jumped back into the game. I am singing and living in Las Vegas.

Did Jared ever get into trouble?

Do I tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? Between the age of 13 to 17, Jared became possessed by the teenage years. All that changed, and he started practicing for hours every day and became in demand with local and national bands.

sparkle in his eyes. He was hooked. He was in a concert band at Pine Middle School for two years and marching band for four years at Galena High School.

Did Jared's musical tastes ever worry you?

Jared's older brother, Toby, paved the way so I knew what I was in for regarding Jared's musical direction. I can't deny the first time I was introduced to this genre I was like "what the hell?” I didn't understand why the music I was hearing had screaming through the whole song instead of singing.

What is something most people don't know about your son?

Jared is an open book. If there are any secrets, please let me know!

How did Jared start playing drums? Did he pick them up quickly?

What about Jared makes you the proudest?

At two years old, he climbed on the throne behind his dad's drum set, picked up the sticks on the snare and proceeded to play and it all made sense! His dad and I sat there, looked at each other and said "uh-oh.” Jared had that

The human being he has become. Through all our happiness, struggles, dysfunction and anger, our family has a very strong love. Jared is such a good man. Each day I am so grateful. I am so very proud to be his mother. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

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Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Devil Master, Satan Spits on Children of Light  Full of Hell, Weeping Choir  Varathron, His Majesty at the Swap  Rotting Christ, Thy Mighty Contract  Misery Index, Rituals of Power ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Viagra Boys, Street Worms  Godflesh, Godflesh  The Lamps, The Lamps  Misfits, Static Age  Helmet, Meantime ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Third Eye Blind, Third Eye Blind  Blazon Stone, No Sign of Glory  Voices, From the Human Forest Create a Fugue of Imaginary Rain  ACxDC, Antichrist Demoncore  Immolation, Majesty and Decay ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Misery Index, Rituals of Power  Full of Hell, Weeping Choir  Graf Orlock, Examination of Violent Cinema Vol. 1  Devil Master, Satan Spits on Children of Light  Insect Warfare, World Extermination ---------------------------------Alex Yarde : d i r e c t o r o f m a r k e t i n g  Odd Future, The OF Tape Vol. 2  Rosalía, El Mal Querer  Cattle Decapitation, Monolith of Inhumanity  King Princess, Make My Bed  Panopticon, The Crescendo of Dusk ---------------------------------Vince Bellino : e d i t o r i a l a s s i s ta n t  All Hell, The Grave Alchemist  Endorphins Lost, Seclusions  Zorn, Zorn  Midnight, Shox of Violence  Cape of Bats, Violent Occultism

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Jay Gambit : c r o w h u r s t  Burial Rites, Workers Circle demo  Corubo, Ãngy Mbya Kueíry Hachypáma, Opa Mba'e Achy Avei  Tropical Fuck Storm, A Laughing Death in Meatspace  This Mortal Mountain, Ophidian  KARP, KARP

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN

Misery Paths hen I was younger, there

was a store on the Ocean City boardwalk called Tunes on the Dunes, which was open during the tourist season (Easter to a bit after Halloween) and had the façade of being what you’d expect from a boardwalk music store: a lot of tie-dyed shit to hang on your wall, a pop-punk section with songs about romancing underage girls and tons of Grateful Dead shit. You know, easy culture for lazy minds. But for some reason, beneath this veneer and under the counter, there was a box of underground metal CDs. This is at a time when finding even a single copy of Under a Funeral Moon in a fucking mail-order was a chore, and your only real glimpse into the world of metal was when Beavis and Butt-Head bagged on a Morbid Angel video.

This was a fucking gold mine and it only happened one summer. I found the Vlad Tepes/ Belketre split there. Neptune Towers, Behemoth, the entire No Fashion lineup. Without access to underground zines to find distros, this was an absolute oasis. It only went on for a few weeks one summer; Tunes was eventually bought by another store (which had a location I worked at until I got fired for—I shit you not—telling a customer that the Beatles were in “B” instead of showing them) and turned into as close to a head shop as you could get in the family-friendly (and very conservative) dry town. Now I think it’s a BBQ place, but that’s just how things go.

Anyway, I often wonder who got those items in stock, as I never actually met them. Where did they go? Ocean City wasn’t exactly the beating heart of New Jersey metal. I think the only band that came from there before I started making noise was Necrosis. Whoever it was just somehow got Les Legions Noires into a town where it’s illegal to buy booze and then just fucking vanished into thin air.

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The same store gave my up-to-no-good friends and me copies of our first underground zine, too.

The magazine was called Rubberneck and was a wealth of information for death and doom metal.

I doubt the zine got much further than a few towns in New Jersey, but it was another moment in my youth that helped define the rest of my life. Because of that zine I started writing to bands, tape-trading and swallowing up every bit of metal I could. Unlike the anonymous recordseller, I did eventually meet the editor, Todd, and stayed in touch for a fairly long time. He ended up getting out of metal and going into finance.

I stayed in and I now work in retail. I think we know who’s the winner here.

I bring this up because I was thinking earlier about how I got to where I am in my life, and these two seemingly minor events really had a huge impact. You constantly hear older folks recall the days of checking out bands because the cover art was cool and that’s what got them hooked. Are these still experiences that kids have? Printed zines and brick-and-mortar record stores are both still things (as of this writing, unless Trump signed another executive order). But with the obsession over our phones extending to the youngest of people, I’m not sure. The entire musical world is available at a push of a button. And it’s not like kids have money to blow on the shit they want these days, so a blind buy is probably an idea close to extinction. I don’t know whether I should feel depressed because kids aren’t having these experiences or just be grateful that I was alive during a time when these things happened. Are experiences devalued now or am I just cynical?

I think I’ll just let my mind wander back to the days where I had to skip school to hop a bus to Philly in the hopes of finding all those records with the cool covers.

crafts a monthly journey through

MORBID ALES

BY CHRIS DODGE

Southern Hops-brewtality

T

he wife and I hit Louisville, KY recently to celebrate the nuptials of Adam Greenwood (Tomb Stench, ex-Despise You) and his bride Liz Thompson. Strange how a city this far north is still considered the south. It’s famous for baseball bats, horse racing and classic bourbon distilleries, but could it deliver beer-wise?

First destination off the plane was Against the Grain, the only Lou brew spot I knew in the Northern South. ATG’s prowess is apparent across their roster of ridiculously refined beers. Most scotch ales don’t grab me, but their Tartan Titan is sweet, roasty, bitter and well-rounded—no kilt required. Most smoked beers are a liquid campfire, but the salted and barrel-aged Mac FannyBaw Rauchbier is crazily quaffable unlike any other.

The bar was immediately set high. From there, it was off to see how the rest of town measured up. At Goodwood, their beer is made with the same limestone water as local bourbon, and every beer, from lager to stout, is aged in wood barrels. Gravely Brewing has outdoor seating set around old lagering caverns, originally used to ferment beer prior to the invention of refrigeration. Plus, they produce smashable, music-themed beers, like Thunderstruck and Seether. Monnik Beer Co. bowled me over with their Imperial IPL—tropical, easy-drinking, not boozy, yet

Dressed to swill  (clockwise from R) Despise You bear witness to "I do," one of the many gateways to craft brews at Sergio's World Beers, taking flight at Goodwood and posing with Sergio himself, the Man Who Sold the World (Beers)

it packs a hidden 11.8% ABV punch that puts you to sleep before your bitterballen arrive.

Mighty impressive, y’all.

Despise You were in town for the wedding, so they set up a one-off show at Spinelli’s, a basement-level punk rock pizza joint. Ken Handsford and Doug Long from Hellnation made the trek down. Crusty Kentucky kids drove from as far as three hours away. We all crushed pints, pepperonis and powerviolence throughout the rowdy lineup. Afterwards, the Mrs. and I stumbled across town, losing count of our indie beer and whiskey consumption. My wife danced with a shoeless man while a Bee Gees bar band performed. Then we crashed a neighbor’s party. By chance, this lady was the best homebrewer I’d met, and I slurped down her homemade Belgian Dubbels while everyone else snorted rat tails. After 3 a.m., the wee hours smudged into a blur.

I’m not an amateur, but this bacchanalian excess came with a price: a two-day hangover that was so brutal, it nearly kept us from the very wedding that got us out there in the first place. We guzzled Gatorade, not deterred by the nausea-inducing twisty roads, and successfully joined the windy, rural ceremony.

“Lou-uh-vull” had us down, but not out.

The capper to this trip was a seemingly abandoned building in the now-gentrified Butchertown neighborhood, which, true to

its name, still reeks of slaughterhouses. Turns out this battered edifice houses an enigmatic bottle shop and tap room: Sergio’s World Beers. Coolers and fridges were stuffed with vintage bottles I’ve never seen. Hundreds of tasting glasses of every conceivable design cluttered the shelves behind the bar, and the basement was packed to the rafters with rare kegs. We had De Struise Rio Reserva Belgian Quad from 2008 on tap, meaning they’ve been sitting on that baby for a decade!

Sergio is an old-school, Brazilian-born fanatic and hoarder, seriously obsessive, with encyclopedic knowledge about all things beer. He’s a world explorer of brews who proudly touted his upcoming trip to North Korea, with the sole purpose of attending a beer fest there. Once he realized we were not only beer tourists, but purists, the vibe warmed and Sergio lined up an oddball bottle share of international goodies: Švyturys Baltijos Dark Red, a caramelly Märzen brewed in Lithuania; Niška Pivara Lager from Serbia; a Brazilian sour barleywine from Way Beer. Cicerone tendencies aside, Sergio is not without a sense of humor. Hidden between the HaandBryggeriets and Cantillons were cans of Bud Light and Miller priced at $99 each. Sure, some of the bottle labels were moldy. And I did see a cockroach or three. But this venue is a must-visit in this world-class city of horses and hooch.

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CARCASS

STUDIO REPORT

CARCASS

W

hen Carcass wrote and recorded their 2013 comeback

album, Surgical Steel, frontman Jeff Walker told Decibel that the death metal legends’ approach to the project ALBUM TITLE was simply “to just write a bunch of good Carcass TBA songs.” That method was executed perfectly, as the band took LABEL home Decibel’s 2013 Album of the Year and easily reestablished Nuclear Blast themselves as a vital recording act. But for Surgical Steel’s followSTUDIO up, that same tactic isn’t necessarily guaranteed to work. Surely, Studio Gröndahl, whatever Walker and guitarist/songwriter Bill Steer fashion is Årsta, Sweden (drums); going to sound like Carcass, but exploring new musical avenues James Atkinson’s appears to be a more likely course this time around. unnamed studio, U.K. “I think the idea is to include elements that Carcass has never ENGINEER had/tried before,” confirms Walker. “We’re not saying they’re Carcass unique or original ideas musically, but they are in the Carcass RELEASE DATE world. No one is claiming that this is going to be the best album TBA ever, but I think we can still easily make an album far superior to at least two of our previous efforts from our back catalogue— maybe even a third springs to mind. If we do that, then it must be a worthy pursuit.”

While art, of course, remains the primary focus, the commerce part of the music industry equation is still an unsettling reality for a full-time band like Carcass. And in the six years since Surgical Steel’s release, physical album sales have only continued to erode.

“So I’ve been told,” Walker eye-rolls. “I actually said if we can’t sell 100,000 albums [worldwide], then we shouldn’t bother with another album, and guess what? We did. So, I guess that gives us a

‘mandate’; some people are interested in our output. Surgical Steel was actually one of our most successful albums… OK, it took five years to sell that many, but the truth is we never sold bucketloads of albums back in the so-called halcyon days.”

One line-item that Carcass needn’t list for the new album is producer, as LP #7 is selfproduced. For the first time in 30 years, Colin Richardson will not be behind the boards when the band records.

“The drums were recorded at Studio Gröndahl with David Castillo,” Walker reveals. “He was keen to record more with us, but we’d already booked ourselves in with a studio owned by [Gentlemans Pistols’] James Atkinson. It’s relatively ‘cheap’ [compared] to what we’re used to, so we can take our time. Every album has had time constraints and we’ve had to compromise slightly. For once, we have the luxury of not having to worry about the numbers. We’ll save the bulk of the money on the mix—we’ll decide who at a later date.” —ALBERT MUDRIAN

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

CADAVER RESUME WITH FIRST NEW LP IN 15 YEARS

“My songwriting process was to go back to listen and learn all the old songs from 1988 to 1992 all over again to find the right inspiration and vibe that first inspired me to write death metal,” Cadaver’s Anders “Neddo” Odden says. “I have tried to make the album that would have been the missing link between [1990’s] Hallucinating Anxiety and [1992’s] …In Pains. It’s fresh and brutal, as well as catchy and sick at the same time.”

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Recorded without a click track and with maximum old-school vibes in tow, Edder & Bile is designed to sound like humans—rotting, of course—made it.

Odden’s idea behind was for the songs “to move and live” and not be the product of computer algorithms.

“We had such a great time in the studio,” says Odden. “The most brutal music is made having fun.

Not being miserable. I established a slang in the studio for going to the restroom. That was: ‘I have a board meeting to go to.’ At some point during the vocal sessions, it popped out of me that the take better work ’cause I almost had a ‘board meeting’ in the booth.” —CHRIS DICK

TOTALED

TOTALED

Anonymous blackened hardcore ensemble swears there is no band, only pain and retribution

O

ur withholding our identities is not some sort of middle finger to the people who listen to the record,” writes one of the members of Totaled via email. “It’s actually the opposite.” ¶ But I keep pushing because I’ve heard it all before when it comes to anonymity in underground metal. Aren’t the members of Totaled worried that concealing their identities will itself be a distraction from the music? ¶ “Clearly, we’re not hiding in the shadows, as we’re doing this interview,” Totaled respond. “We don’t have aliases, we don’t wear costumes and we don’t care about being listed as personnel.

We think that listing a personnel index of contributors would undermine the visceral impact of the art and trigger a social instinct to compare musical hierarchies instead of just listening to the album. What’s more important to us is that people find WHO THEY ARE in the art.” ¶ The album in question is Lament. “A confrontation with the end,” according to Totaled.

“A requiem for the punishment of birth, death and loss.” Eight highly intense tracks of something like blackened hardcore with

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inconceivably fast drums, virtuosic leads indicative of what else but a bartered soul, and an inescapable dread that pursues the listener for Lament’s entire 37 minutes.

The members of Totaled explain, “As far as the actual songwriting is concerned, it was less of a formulaic approach to fit a certain style of music and more of an attempt to play what we were feeling.

To capture the heaviness in our chests during a fit of depression all while holding a guitar in front of a recorder. We produced the album the way we felt it needed to capture the atmosphere we were expressing, and we had great mixing and mastering engineers to help us bring it all into realization.

We actually weren’t trying to mix genres intentionally; it’s really just the combined outcome from our culmination of influences.”

Totaled go on to describe how they sought “to capture a bunch of different vibes and atmospheres by

recording [Lament] in different areas throughout the process.”

“We recorded the drums in California, guitars and bass were done in the Tri-state area, overdubs were made in the central East Coast, and we got together to finish vocals and acoustic guitars in the [Pacific Northwest]. It took about eight months for the whole recording process.”

The band emphasizes that was it was their “top priority to maintain the initial concept of the album throughout [its] making.”

“The artist, Andrew Tremblay, committed so much effort into creating a series of masterpieces for this album—his work is incredible,” Totaled conclude. “We wanted this album to have the proper home, so our greatest obstacle was finding someone to release it. We wanted to put this out with a label who conceptualized this effort in a similar way as us, and we are fortunate that Profound Lore did.”

—DUTCH PEARCE

METAL MADNESS SHOP IN STORE OR ONLINE AT FYE.COM

MARK MORTON

WITHIN TEMPTATION

CHILDREN OF BODOM

QUEENSRŸCHE

ANESTHETIC

RESIST

HEXED

THE VERDICT

DEVIL MASTER

ROTTING CHRIST

OVERKILL

SEEYOUSPACECOWBOY

SATAN SPITS ON CHILDREN OF LIGHT

THE HERETICS

THE WINGS OF WAR

SONGS FOR THE FIRING SQUAD

COMING SOON

KNOCKED LOOSE

NIGHTWISH

METAL CHURCH

IRON MAIDEN

POP CULTURE

ONCE

DAMNED IF YOU DO

SOMEWHERE IN TIME 2019 REISSUE

QUEENSRŸCHE

CHILDREN OF BODOM

PIG DESTROYER

THE VERDICT EXCLUSIVE BLOODSHOT VINYL

HEXED EXCLUSIVE PINK & PURPLE SWIRL VINYL

HEAD CAGE EXCLUSIVE MILKY CLEAR VINYL

EAST OF THE WALL

EAST OF THE WALL

I

f you’re anything like me, the term “computational complexity theory” causes your eyes to glaze over and your mind to wander to old episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Luckily, East of the Wall are of a similar mentality—even though their new album, NP-Complete, is named after a decision problem that can be solved in “polynomial time,” they’re more interested in the metaphorical implications of the theory than giving their listeners a 50-minute lecture on computer science. ¶ “We’re not talking about any of the math involved,” laughs bassist Chris Alfano. “Basically, we’re using [the title] as an idea for solving problems in retrospect. A lot of the lyrics have to do with hindsight and reflection—looking at problems that you don’t really have a way of solving, but you might try to do something differently once you have more knowledge afterward. I also like it because it has a nice air of finality. It’s a good way to punctuate a long break.” ¶ That break he’s referring to is the six-year gap that separates NP-Complete from its predecessor, Redaction Artifacts.

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One might conjure images of a Black Album-level touring cycle or a debilitating bout of writer’s block, but as with so many artistic endeavors pursued by working-class musicians, the real culprit was much more mundane: the ruthless grind of day-to-day life.

“We actually finished the album in 2017, but we spent more time on these songs than previous records, so it feels even longer,” explains Alfano. “This is also the first fulllength that we largely recorded ourselves. That gave us a good perspective on the kinds of tones and layering we were going for, but without the clock of a studio, things just sprawled out over a wider period of time. One of the things we said going in was, ‘Let’s do this like we’re [in the studio] and carve out 12 hours at a time,’ but it didn’t work out that way!”

Alfano and his bandmates may have preferred a truncated journey, but based on the stellar results of NP-Complete, it’s tough to question their navigational decisions. Fans who have been around since 2008’s Farmer’s Almanac will feel right at home with the crafty riffs and snaky grooves in songs like “Tell Them I’m Sorry” and “Somn 6,” but they’ll also get to delve into an element of the EOTW sound that’s only been hinted at on past releases: the melodic singing of guitarist/vocalist Greg Kuter.

“This is the first record we’ve written from scratch with Greg, and he actually likes being the singer of a band, so it made sense to move in that direction,” says Alfano. “On top of that, the music is a little less over-the-top metal. Plus, we’re all 40 or pushing 40, and there’s only so long you can scream.” —MATT SOLIS

PHOTO BY SCOTT KINKADE

Jersey prog-sludgers crunch riffs, not numbers, on their fifth LP

DEVIL MASTER

DEVIL MASTER Philly filthies pay homage to devils, demons and D-beats

P

aging all night-freaks and headbangers! If you’re jonesing for something truly wild—say, a Satanic commotion broadcast from the nexus between Japanese hardcore and first-wave black metal—Devil Master are receiving you loud and clear. Looking for a transfusion of dark chaos energy to get through the day? Well, you’re sure to find the Philadelphian firebrands’ debut, Satan Spits on Children of Light, an exhilarating corrective to digitally homogenized 21st-century bullshit and the pious gatekeeping of genre norms. ¶ “To us, it’s triumphant,” says guitarist John Hades. “That’s the way we like to describe our music. There’s this sense of triumph throughout, and that’s the underlying theme. [Chaos] is something that we have embraced along the way as musicians. Going into writing this, we didn’t have a linear path that we were following. That’s the idea—that all of us delve into the ideas of chaos magic—and we really, really took that to the next level.” ¶ If said triumph is betrayed by the raw energy and joyous abandon in the performances—coached and captured by producer Arthur Rizk— 2 0 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

it is writ large in freewheeling arrangements that lurch from propulsive black metal skronk to fast-blasting punk, all skewed by a midnight movie vibe and a melodic sensibility that’s pitched somewhere between early ’80s gothic postpunk and true-steel heavy metal.

Anything goes, and that’s both the point and result of Devil Master’s process—a sort of democratized automatic writing, the band piecing songs together as new ideas arrive.

“That’s just because of us embracing the chaos,” explains Hades, “combining all of these ideas together and just seeing what would happen. We just allowed the album to spawn itself. All of us contribute. There are so many different minds churning and coming up with different ideas; it can’t help but be chaotic.”

Thereafter, the tracks were meticulously sequenced, perhaps the only aspect of the album borne

of strategy rather than impulse.

Ultimately, Devil Master wanted the record to feel like the listener is on some weird safari through hell. Mission accomplished. The cover art, courtesy of Erica Frevel, a theistic void worshipper who specializes in demon channeling, is of a piece with this concept. “When it comes to occult imagery, that is as close as you can probably get to having somebody really channel demons and paint them,” says Hades.

Satan Spits on Children of Light follows Manifestations, a compilation of early demos also released through Relapse, and sees the debut of keyboard player Dodder; Hades hopes the latter will help take the morbid theater of Devil Master’s live show to the next level. “Once we put those spider webs up, we are transporting you into our dimension,” he promises.

No need, man. We’re already there.

—JONATHAN HORSLEY

ELIZABETH COLOUR WHEEL

ELIZABETH COLOUR WHEEL

Genre-splicing Bostonians break new ground with old tricks, rip it to fucking gases and dust

I

f bands were hotel rooms, Elizabeth Colour Wheel would be a 4,200 square-foot haunted luxury suite with views of waterfalls, volcanos, celestial mishaps, miraculous back alley transformations and scenes of everyday trauma. The expanded-spectrum blackgaze/post-noise-rock quintet claims vast expanses of previously unexplored sonic and psychic terrain on their debut full-length, Nocebo, often (if not usually) working hidden connections among apparently disparate genres for both maximum in-the-moment impact and cumulative emotional effect. ¶ Despite the standalone integrity of the album’s seven tracks and the band’s chameleonic bent, Nocebo plays like a single epic work, thanks largely to Lane Shi’s vocals. (For a rough approximation, imagine an amalgam of Diamanda Galás, Julie Christmas, PJ Harvey, Judy Garland on the best night of her life and John Motherfucking Coltrane.) Shi gets around big, situating her burgeoning international presence as a sound designer, composer, performance/multimedia/interactive artist and

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expanded-technique vocalist in New York while double-moonlighting as frontwoman for the comparably praiseworthy (but very different) Dent in Boston.

“While my solo work definitely offers the broadest representation of what I am, say and do at the core,” Shi emails, “I try not to limit myself in terms of media— one reason Elizabeth Colour Wheel play such an important role in my musical practice. What’s more important still is that I get to interact with a group of extremely talented human beings and establish meaningful creative relationships with everyone in ECW.” Being the band’s sole distance commuter and principal engine of catharsis naturally affords the singer more overall freedom than her bandmates, who voluntarily inhabit somewhat well-defined roles and tend to work in pairs.

“A big part of our guitar sound is separation into tonal layers,”

guitarist Emmett Palaima writes of the way he and Alice Jackson build and execute their parts. “My tone tends to be harsh and crackly, filling in the high end of the harmonic spectrum, while Alice’s guitar is thick and murky, filling in the center.”

“Strange, ‘accidental’ noises and feedback are definitely a part of what we try to do,” Jackson adds.

Bassist Billy Cunningham and drummer Connor Devito offer further insight into ECW’s m.o.: “We aren’t aiming to be the drummer and bass player,” they explain. “Our goal is to be the percussive element and bottom end of the bigger thing that we are doing our best to fit into as naturally as possible. When it comes to mass and volume of parts, there’s almost no guessing or thinking. When we’re playing these songs as a full band, you can just feel where the song wants to go, and sometimes you have to just let it happen.” —ROD SMITH

PHLEBOTOMIZED

PHLEBOTOMIZED

Progressive death-doomsters return after 20 years with their most ambitious work yet

D

eformation of humanity exemplifies what a resurrection from a daring death metal artist should sound like.

In 1994, Phlebotomized warped the boundaries of deathdoom with their far-outlier debut full-length Immense Intense Suspense. And now they’re about to outdo themselves—and everyone else, too. ¶ Tom Palms, guitarist, songwriter and sole original member of Phlebotomized, admits, “It was clear from the start that the album had to be diverse in sound, atmosphere, time changes, keys, harmony, breaks and feel/emotion. But most of all, the album needed brutality! We reached those goals.

Sadness, heartfelt emotion, brutality, anger, hope, joy, sensitivity: I like to think it is all there.” (He goes on to add that he “wanted to create a sympho/prog/doom/death metal album.”) ¶ Sometime in 2011, Roel van Reijmersdal, owner of Vic Records, contacted Palms with hopes of reissuing Phlebotomized’s early material—specifically the Devoted to God demo (1992) and its uncanny follow-up, the Preach Eternal Gospels EP (1993)—as part of a 20th anniversary edition. (Hammerheart Records, Phlebotomized’s current label, ended up handling said reissues.)

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“I started with remastering the material and, during that process, reconnected with all former members,” explains Palms. “At a release party for the 20th anniversary edition, we played one song, ‘Subtle Disbalanced Liquidity.’ It was the start of a new chapter in our history.”

After the glow of the reunion dimmed and the time came to make sacrifices for art, Palms proved to be the only founding member willing to take it all the way. But as the main songwriter, Palms had the privilege of hearing Deformation of Humanity in his head long before he was able to demonstrate it to others.

“I gathered a few riffs from 1993, 2006 and 2013, and the rest of the ideas kept coming,” he remembers. “Both music and lyrics.

In the two years between writing and recording the material, we rehearsed, arranged and rearranged the basic parts, and added the key

and bass parts. I had some ideas for the keys, but [keyboardist] Rob [op ’t Veld] mostly arranged his parts. He put a lot of effort in creating the right atmosphere and sounds!”

In January 2018, Palms and the new lineup recorded the foundational parts (bass, drums, rhythm guitar) for Phlebotomized’s comeback at Soundlodge Studios in Germany with Jörg Uken. The album was finished in Palms’ native Holland at Prosound Studio with Jan Dekker.

“We recorded the base of the songs in Germany in just three days’ time!” Palms exults. “Nowadays, most bands record their parts separately, but we decided to record everything together. It really added something to the recordings. You can hear and feel the synergy you get when you play live together. It gives the album a very natural, almost organic feeling.”

—DUTCH PEARCE

CALL&RESPONSE

METAL CHURCH TRACK

Metal Church released their 12th album, Damned If You Do, at the end of 2018. To celebrate, we asked guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof what he thought of seven new songs from across the heavy metal spectrum. Spoiler: There won’t be any death growls on the next Metal Church album.

TRACK

01

•••••••

Candlemass, “Splendor Demon Majesty” from: The Door to Doom [THE SKINNY] Close to home I like these guys. I’ve liked them for a long time. It’s a little dark for my taste, but really good classic heavy metal. To me, that’s what heavy metal is all about. We’ve been compared to them a little bit, but they’re obviously a little darker and a little heavier than we are.

TRACK

02

•••••••

Deceased, “To Serve the Insane” from: Ghostly White [THE SKINNY] The King is denounced!

Great rock riff, not a fan of the vocals. That kind of growling, yelling... I like singing. Cool riff. It’s a cool, good hard rock riff. It reminds me of Accept.

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TRACK

03

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Myrkur, “Juniper” from: Juniper [THE SKINNY] Yeah, but what would Euronymous think?

Here we got some good singing and very cool, moody stuff. And then the big dramatic… that’s really cool. It’s very dramatic and big and ethereal. Definitely gotta be in the right mood for it.

TRACK

04

05

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Sick of It All, “Self-Important Shithead” from: Wake the Sleeping Dragon!

[THE SKINNY] Not sure if they hyphenated the title, but we’re here to help It’s good old punk rock attitude, screaming, lot of fun. Love it.

•••••••

Godthrymm, “We Are the Dead” from: We Are the Dead [THE SKINNY] Sometimes dead is better.

Like, way better That’s a little monotonous for me. Not really digging it. Singing about “we are the dead”... I’m not really into being dead.

TRACK

06

•••••••

Misery Index, “New Salem” from: Rituals of Power [THE SKINNY] In (cough) witch (cough) we admire the drummer Great drummer, but those vocals sound like everybody, all those bands. No identifying qualities for me, but great drummer.

TRACK

07

•••••••

In the Woods..., “Respect My Solitude” from: Cease the Day [THE SKINNY] South Park, Norway Respect mah authoritah!

Oh yeah, that’s kind of cool. They got some good melody going on there, good atmospheric[s] with the orchestration and stuff. Kind of a largerthan-life vibe, definitely a European sound.

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D E C I B E L : A P R I L 2 0 19 : 2 7

To celebrate the release of our historic 100th Decibel Flexi Series release, Decibel’s editor-in-chief and series curator impartially counts down 20 of the most memorable musical moments on collectible floppy vinyl.

BY ALBERT MUDRIAN

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20.

NAILS

“Among the Arches of Intolerance”/”In Pain” DB050

Maybe I subconsciously already knew this, but it’s

now pretty clear that every 50th flexi has to be from a grind band. Or, for you annoying purists who only listen to Agathocles rehearsal tapes, “grind-influenced” bands. Either way, this pair of Nails burners—the latter of which was rerecorded for the band’s last LP—storms through in exactly two minutes. They should have ample time to record more material for DB150.

19.

IMMOLATION “Immolation” (2016 Version) DB072

Last year, At the Gates contributed a re-recorded ver-

sion of “Raped by the Light of Christ” to the series to celebrate the track’s 25th anniversary. Their legendary death metal contemporaries Immolation pulled the same trick two years earlier, tracking an absolutely scathing rendition of “Immolation” from 1991’s classic Dawn of Possession (or the band’s first demo in 1988, if you require tape-trading cred). Fun fact: The flexi was mixed and mastered by Dawn of Possession producer Harris Johns.

18.

PANOPTICON

“Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing” DB075

There’s a distinct lack of black metal compared

to other subgenres in the Decibel Flexi Series.

So, when a black metal track does it appear, it’s gotta be special—like the first new Panopticon song following the completion of Austin Lunn’s epic trilogy of albums from Kentucky to Autumn Eternal. Lunn cautioned that “Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing” would be different, reflecting the social and political climate of late 2016. He wasn’t lying. It’s pissed.

17.

SUBROSA

“Key of the Eidolon” DB068

This song was originally planned to be the outro

for the band’s For This We Fought the Battle of Ages album, but with a total runtime exceeding 70 minutes, the group abandoned the track at the 11th hour. At least until I invited them to contribute a song to the Decibel Flexi Series, which is when SubRosa rewrote the outro and “Key of

the Eidolon” emerged as the final thematic piece of the record. Or, as frontwoman Rebecca Vernon puts it, “The album brings up a lot of questions, and ‘Key of the Eidolon’ is the answer.”

16.

CATHEDRAL

“Vengeance of the Blind Dead” (Flexi Version) DB027

You’ll notice the subtitle of “Flexi Version” here.

That’s because a different version of this track was originally intended to be included on the doom progenitors’ swan song, 2013’s The Last Spire.

Somewhere along the way, that plan changed, as “Vengeance of the Blind Dead” was left off the final version and only lives on in Flexi Series form.

Spanish templars arise again for one final time.

15.

CARCASS “Zochrot” DB034

This may sound ridiculous, but I was actually

invited to choose between this track and a couple others from the band’s Surgical Steel sessions, which eventually wound up on their Surgical Remission/Surplus Steel EP a year later. “Zochrot” was ultimately featured there, too, which is important because the issue of Decibel that this flexi was included in sold out immediately.

Jeff Walker’s “smiling” face on the cover surely helped, but this flexi disc certainly didn’t hurt.

14.

SPIRIT ADRIFT

“Eyes Were Not Alive” DB096

Spirit Adrift’s sophomore LP Curse of Conception was

our #2 album of 2017, and “Eyes Were Not Alive” is arguably better than any song on that album.

The Arizonians’ rocket ascent from Nate Garrett’s solo project to fully-armed classic heavy metal killing machine is hardly complete, though. Just wait for their next record, Divided by Darkness, to surface in June, which may feature a re-recorded version of this essential banger.

13.

KHEMMIS

“Empty Throne” DB079

Only our friends in Khemmis, who regularly fash-

ion 12-minute doom rock epics, would describe a six-minute song as “concise,” but that’s the word they used to explain what their Flexi Series contribution sounded like before I heard it. Maybe it

was because they tracked “Empty Throne” simultaneously with their cover of “A Conversation With Death” for a split 7-inch with fellow series vets Spirit Adrift, but they definitely proved surprisingly adept at the single format. See “Isolation” from last year’s Desolation album for further refinement.

12.

KEN MODE

“Fractures in Adults” DB084

Despite 100 songs stuffed with blistering blast

beats, superhuman guitar-shredding and subterranean vomit vocals, leave it to a noise-rock band to deliver the heaviest track in the history of the series. Perhaps even more amazing is the fact the this was originally just a demo for a version of the song that later appeared on last year’s Loved.

Sure, it sounded clearer on the finished record, but it wasn’t this fucking heavy.

11.

BRUTAL TRUTH

“Walking Corpse 2112”/ “You Should Know Better” DB001

Don’t worry—we were properly dead from the

start. Former BT vocalist and dB columnist Kevin Sharp deserves all the credit for helping revive the idea of flexi discs as part of the magazine in 2010. It was only fitting that the inaugural entry in the Flexi Series should be from Brutal Truth.

Notable as the only flexi sponsored by Scion. They don’t make cars anymore, but we still make flexis.

10.

OBITUARY “No” DB076

I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for Obituary.

And by this, I mean Decibel. That’s because Cause of Death was the first pure death metal album I ever owned, so the fact that the death metal legends contributed a song to the series—not to mention performed as main support to Kreator on the 2017 Decibel Tour—definitely qualifies as a “pinch me” moment. I’ll even forgive John Tardy growling actual lyrics over it.

9.

MUNICIPAL WASTE “Religion Proof” DB016

I think Dave Witte is still secretly bummed that

this track didn’t make the final cut for the band’s 2012 album, The Fatal Feast (Waste D E C I B E L : A P R I L 2 0 19 : 2 9

4.

IN SOLITUDE

“Mother of Mercy” (original by Samhain) DB017

I hate the Misfits. I hate Samhain. I don’t like

more than a handful of Danzig songs from the first three albums. Believe me, I have tried. Yet, I fucking love this rendition of “Mother of Mercy.”

I believe the now-disbanded Swedes actually recorded this cover in their rehearsal space, but it still sounds massive. This is the only cover that cracked this list because—for my money—it actually outshines the original.

3.

NAPALM DEATH

“Legacy Was Yesterday” DB005

 Choosing Decibel Asphyx in the studio recording their chart-topping metal mag anthem

in Space). And you know what? He should be.

“Religion Proof” is an absolute bible-bashing thrash ripper that stacks up against anything the Richmond (craft) beer-bongers have recorded in the past decade. The fact that it found its way into Decibel’s grimy paws definitely feels like a rare bank error in our favor.

8.

AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED

“Merry Chrystmeth” DB025

ANb are the only act with three Decibel flexis to their name, and each one is vastly different in concept. This was the second in what was originally planned to be an annual holiday-related flexi song from the band. Then we all realized how fucking bonkers and unrealistic that idea was. It’s a minor miracle that we even birthed two of these into the world. “All I want for Christmas is to chew solid food!” J Randall > Charles Dickens.

7.

NEUROSIS

“Locust Star” (1995 demo) DB070

Christ, I almost forgot about this. When I pitched

the idea of a Neurosis flexi to Steve Von Till to include in our special Neurosis issue of Decibel, I honestly didn’t expect him to have anything available, let alone turn around and provide us with an unearthly demo version of my all-time 3 0 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

favorite Neurosis song. If Scott Kelly’s refrain of “star reign down on you” doesn’t spark a primal response deep inside, why are you even reading this magazine?

6.

Getting your favorite band to write and record

a new song specifically for you is kind of a big deal, so I’m going to attempt to play this one cool. This was also just a few months into the series and, if I remember correctly, was the first new, original song that a band submitted (the series featured only live songs, covers, re-recordings or unused material to that point). This felt like legitimization of the series. Plus, the song just crushes.

PALLBEARER

2.

DB052

“Sentenced”

“Fear and Fury” At a mere five minutes and 52 seconds, “Fear and

Fury” was Pallbearer’s first, uh, radio single.

But in reality, it’s just as epic as any of the band’s signature 10-minute monoliths; it just doesn’t waste a single moment or movement.

Very fond memories of lugging Vallenfyre merch through the main floor of a sold-out Webster Hall during the 2015 Decibel Tour as Pallbearer soundtracked that experience with a live rendition of “Fear and Fury.”

5.

PIG DESTROYER “The Cavalry” DB100

Way back in 2007, Pig Destroyer’s Scott Hull

expressed interest in recording a PD flexi disc for Decibel. Only one problem: No one on earth was producing them. Fast forward to late 2010, and Pirates Press begins pressing flexis. The series was born in November 2010, but the Pig Destroyer flexi master wasn’t delivered until November 2018. One spin of the Harmony Corruption/World Downfall-style onslaught later, and it’s clear it was totally worth the wait.

HORRENDOUS DB065

Fresh off their 2015 Decibel album of the year

winner Anareta, Philly/Virginia death metal progressives Horrendous hopped back to Damian Herring’s Subterranean Watchtower Studio over a weekend to complete a song they began writing during the Anareta sessions, but never quite finished. Note the eerie similarities between “Sentenced”’s main riff and Judas Priest’s “Lightning Strike” from 2018. Note to self: Check if Richie Faulkner has an active deluxe subscription.

1.

ASPHYX

“Deathibel” DB066.6

OK, maybe we’re little biased here, but when

Dutch death metal legends secretly write a theme song for the magazine that rages like a cross between prime Motörhead and Decibel Hall of Famer The Rack, nothing—and I mean fucking nothing—is gonna keep you out of the pole position. Turn it up for De-ci-bel! But mostly, turn it up for Asphyx.

Judgment

Day Todd La Torre leads heavy metal heroes QUEENSRŸCHE into their past and their future simultaneously by j o s e p h s c h a f e r

T

odd La Torre is practically on fire when he gets on the phone with Decibel—the Queensrÿche vocalist has just wrapped up lunch with bandmate Michael Wilton and sounds bullish on the prog metal champions’ upcoming 15th album, The Verdict. ¶ “We’re not just some nostalgia band that’s going to regurgitate old stuff all the time. We’re proud of the new stuff that we’ve written,” he says between bites of ice cream. “This record, in my opinion, ranks up among those other great records.” ¶ He’s speaking of Queensrÿche’s rocksolid classic oeuvre. The Seattle band’s run of records from debut LP The Warning to commercial breakthrough Empire (including Decibel Hall of Fame inductee Operation: Mindcrime) remains singular. La Torre, however, didn’t sing on any of those albums.

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Quick history lesson: During the tumultuous ’90s and early 2000s Queensrÿche struggled with a series of disappointing albums, success-chasing endeavors written in part by outside songwriters.

They barely qualified as a metal band at the time.

“I own all those records,” La Torre says. “I wanted to like them, and I would listen to them then say, ‘Ah… maybe next time.’”

“Next time” came when original frontman Geoff Tate, who sang the band’s celebrated early material, left the band in 2012. La Torre, who sang in less-celebrated (though still beloved)

prog metal outfit Crimson Glory, stepped into Tate’s shoes, brought fan-favorite songs like “Queen of the Reich” back into the regular set list, and sang on two promising records, 2013’s self-titled LP and 2015’s Condition Human. Those albums hinted at a return to form, but La Torre and the rest of Queensrÿche sound locked in and more capital-M metal than they’ve been since the early ’90s on The Verdict.

“There’s a place for the softer stuff, but to me, Queensrÿche was a melodic hard rock/metal band with progressive elements, and I wasn’t hearing that for many years and albums before I joined the band,” says La Torre, an avid thrash metal fan.

La Torre has been steering Queensrÿche in this direction since he joined, by his own account. “When I joined the band, I said, ‘Why would you need any outside writers? The guys who wrote my favorite songs are right here!’

So, I told them to give me the heaviest shit they had.” La Torre claims that some of the riffs the band has been using were salvaged from 15-yearold hard drives—riffs considered too aggressive for the band’s direction then, but well suited for the here and now.

Much like their fellow forward-thinkers in Voivod, Queensrÿche have managed to ignite their old engines with the addition of new blood. Further, like Daniel “Chewie” Mongrain, it’s taken La Torre a couple album cycles to right the ship. While he’s proud of his previous records with Queensrÿche, he mentioned that Condition Human contained more slow material than some fans would have liked. “We were mindful that on the last one there was some complaint that it was too mid-tempo, so we wrote some more rockers on this one. It has heavier elements. It’s also more proggy in some places; the guitars are more present. There are sonic qualities that make it heavier—I did more raspy vocals on a few things.”

However, The Verdict’s return-to-form comes at an uncertain time for the band. Founding member and drummer Scott Rockenfield, who hasn’t played with the band since 2017, took no part in creating the album. If you’re curious as to why, well, as of this writing so is La Torre.

“We haven’t heard anything back from Scott regarding his intentions moving forward,” says La Torre. “I haven’t spoken to Scott on the phone in a year and a half, probably.”

La Torre claims that Rockenfield took a planned three-month paternity leave in 2017, which stretched into six, then nine, then longer.

when I was 14 or 15. I was playing songs from The Warning really [well] at around 17 or 18 years old.”

La Torre insists that The Verdict is the most collaborative Queensrÿche album he’s performed on, with songs written entirely by longtime bassist Eddie Jackson, as well as young gun guitarist Parker Lundgren, in addition to his drum parts and Wilton’s guitar pieces. La Torre even performs the guitar solo on “Portrait.”

As proud as La Torre is of what the band has accomplished, however, he acknowledges that they may never record another hands-down classic like Operation: Mindcrime again. “You can’t

To me, Queensrÿche was a melodic hard rock/metal band with progressive elements, and I wasn’t hearing that for many years and albums

before I joined the band.

Todd La Torre Eventually, Queensrÿche just decided to move forward without him, through La Torre insists the band would never begrudge Rockenfield’s wanting to be a good parent. “He was just not a part of this album for reasons. I don’t know why. One could say he doesn’t want to do this anymore, that’s obvious, but he hasn't expressed that verbally to us.”

In Rockenfield’s absence, La Torre wrote and performed drums for The Verdict after demoing some parts for Queensrÿche over the past five years. “I’ve been a drummer since I was 13,” he reveals. “I started learning Queensrÿche songs

always catch lightning in a bottle. When it was the entire original lineup, the band never captured that again.”

Instead, he hopes to carry his childhood heroes into the future with their heaviest material in decades and future live shows focusing equally on older material and songs he’s written with Queensrÿche, hinting that The Verdict will take up a big part of the band’s upcoming sets.

No matter what interpersonal drama affects them, La Torre has no reason to cool his jets now.

“I get to sing and play drums in my favorite band,” he beams. “What more could you want?”

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Rotting Christ

The blackened brothers of are on a mission away from god by r a o u l h e r n a n d e z

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| photo by e s t e r s e g a r r a

funny thing happened on metal’s highway to hell. Instead of marching merrily into the inferno, Satan’s proverbial dark art undertook a crusade, an almost 50-year conflict without end in sight. From Slayer to Ghost, the universal damnation of superpower spirituality—Christianity, mostly, but all three Abrahamic disciplines, ultimately—galvanizes modern extremity no less than war, gore and all general mayhem without mercy. ¶ So pervasive remains the practice, the genre lacks only an ecclesiastical scholar to delineate metallurgic theology as its own school of divinity.

Thank the Lord that headbangers care deeply about the subject. How else could Glen Benton and his ilk become a check against religion to the point of a whole new philosophical methodology? ¶ “I totally agree with you,” laughs Sakis Tolis.

On the horn from Athens, Rotting Christ’s frontman of three decades cuts in and out of our cellular connection like a disembodied voice rising up from an ancient oracle. Discussing the Greek outfit’s 13th full-length, The Heretics, for the first time, Tolis acknowledges a certain disconnect between his chosen career path’s veritable obsession with God and the global legion of tinnitus-impaired followers mostly humoring

decades’ worth of secular ranting. Those wishing to simply whiplash themselves into concussive oblivion can thank Scandinavia for the holy war.

“Black metal was born because of this,” opines Tolis, 46. “Black metal, dark metal [and] atmospheric metal [are], in some ways, as esoteric as religion, so you’re right.”

“Maybe it doesn’t mean as much now as it did in the past,” offers Rotting Christ co-crucible and sibling drummer Themis Tolis. “In those early days, we felt the weight and oppression of religion more.

This view for us is a mission and not an obsession, however—even if newcomers to this scene don’t seem to care that much about anything in general.”

The Heretics continues this mission, but in a novel fashion dictated by the elder brother.

Early volley “Vetry Zlye” sets the tone with a rolling environmentalist invocation that quotes John Muir (“life is as beautiful as death”) and is immediately followed by “Heaven and Hell and Fire,” which begins with Sakis intoning John Milton: “The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven.” Blood and fire, offsetting male/female choral sections,

Most tracks sermonize from the center channel while a faintly black metal drone rumbles underneath, the collusion both hypnotic and oddly religious. Akin to Behemoth’s most recent album, I Loved You at Your Darkest, Rotting Christ’s new book of spells sounds as if it could soundtrack a church liturgy. Closer “The Raven” tolls Edgar Allan Poe. “I am the heretic,” affirms Sakis. “My band is the heretic. All metalheads are the heretics.

I realized that one day: ‘Think of all the great heretics throughout history—people that said great things and became like prophets.’ Voltaire sums up the world since the Middle Ages. So, this is the reason we started this album.

“On Rituals, the last album, we paid a lot of attention to lyrics. On The Heretics, I quote Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘The world itself is the will to power—and nothing else!’ Because of that, religion has been the cause of more trouble than all other issues of my time. Thomas Paine stated, ‘My own mind is my own church.’ We try to induce people to listen to the words, because if you do, you’ll have a better trip with the music. You need something spiritual in music, in my opinion.”

Stefanos Fakatselis, six-string demon for Athenian blackened thrash maniacs Ravencult, counts his quartet among the legion of Hellenic descendants of Rotting Christ. Having first met Sakis in 1997, he documents the association as predating his own band, whose schedule at the start of this decade allowed the guitarist to fill in on bass for a handful of Rotting Christ dates.

According to Fakatselis, the Tolis bros can be “at total war” one moment and painting the town like kings the next.

I am the heretic.

My band is the heretic.

All metalheads are the heretics. sakis tolis

tolling bells and battle metal tumult—make room on the Game of Thrones soundtrack.

“Hallowed Be Thy Name” follows suit with a prayer from the pyre, a combat chant and fire ceremony incantation that ends in Shakespeare (“It is a heretic that makes the fire”). And so it goes, on down the line. “Dies Irae” evokes a Catholic funeral mass in metallic rhythms; “In the Name of God” quotes a holy trinity of Twain, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky as doctrine-accursed blasphemers; “Fire God and Fear” drills and exfoliates most Scandinavian, its solo ecstatic and inspiration belonging to Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

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“The actual ‘Hellenic black metal’ trademark riff probably belongs to Sakis, as he invented a type of guitar playing and songwriting that had never been heard before, nor after,” he emails, warming up to a religion/metal nexus. “Metal music is sinister. This can be easily proven, as the first-ever heavy metal album in history, Black Sabbath, starts with a morbid, funeral doom riff under the sound of a storm and bells chiming— not to mention inverted crosses in the layout.

“Since it’s not possible to get deep into the matter in a few lines, let’s say [the relationship] is a black metal thing. Metalheads don’t really care about religion, that’s true; but they like cursing it. And that we owe to mighty Venom.”

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Deathgrind guardians MISERY INDEX see through your self-serving bullshit

BY BEN HUTCHERSON // PHOTO BY HEIDI STRENGELL

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s

orry for taking so long,” apologizes Misery Index guitarist/vocal- Black Lives Matter, who have the clear goal of

ist Mark Kloeppel, acknowledging the gap between 2014’s critically acclaimed The Killing Gods and newest album Rituals of Power. Such a lull might not be noteworthy for many metal bands, but Misery Index are no ordinary metal band. With 15 releases in the first decade of their career, what caused a five-year bout of almost complete silence for the highly prolific quartet? ¶ “Well, a bunch of ‘life stuff’ happened,” Kloeppel laughs. “I have a few children now, and I just got my master’s degree.

Jason [Netherton, bass/vocals] is working on his PhD. Adam [Jarvis, drums] also has Pig Destroyer and a few other bands—that kind of stuff. But I guess the biggest roadblock was the really positive reception to The Killing Gods. Not only did a lot of people connect with that record, but we thought we did a pretty good job with it, too! It was epic in scope and dense in the world in which it existed. We had it in our heads that we had to top that in every way, which was the absolute worst mindset to have. I threw so much stuff in the garbage—whole songs, hundreds of riffs—and we psyched ourselves out. It took a long time to get past our insecurities and to trust ourselves, but once we did, voilà—we had this! [Laughs]”

“This” is Rituals of Power, the band’s second studio album on acclaimed label Season of Mist.

According to Kloeppel, “We got back to what we do best: writing the music we want to hear, channeling the ideas that are constantly humming in our brains.” The group embraced the relatively relaxed writing pace, then scrutinized every musical passage and line of prose to ensure that each truly served the new collection of songs.

“There was an effort to write really catchy choruses this time around,” Kloeppel elaborates. “I feel like we might have missed that a bit in the [early years]. But the songs that I come back to over and over have a chorus that sticks with you—even if they’re really long, complex songs. It feels like metal forgot that for a while; it was all about guitar acrobatics and riff salad. Kudos to the bands that do it and do it well—and ultimately, people can write whatever they want—but a lot of it just sounds like Tetris inside of Pro Tools. That’s not a riff— that’s 17 sweep arpeggios in a row!”

That’s not to say there isn’t flashy fretwork on this record. In fact, Rituals’ guitar leads are simultaneously ripping and memorable. “Darin [Morris, lead guitar] joined just after [2010’s] Heirs to Thievery, and he’s really into Yngwie [Malmsteen], Andy LaRocque—players like that. We felt these songs needed solos that would get stuck in your head. They should be ones that a 15-year-old kid, sitting there with their guitar, can hum while they learn to play ’em. I always loved those solos that you can sing or hum. The Kirk Hammett/ Dimebag Darrell school, you know? The ones that write the really memorable guitar solos in really great songs. So, we thought, ‘We need to do that.’”

Misery Index are more than just a riff-fueled deathgrind machine, as the band’s sociopolitical identity has served as an integral part of their aesthetic since inception. With album art and lyrics that eviscerate government corruption, the exploitative nature of capitalism and

our collective complicity in myriad systems of oppression, everything and everyone standing in the way of humanity’s progress has been considered fair game. “New Salem,” the album’s first single, marked a change in subject matter that the group feared might alienate their politically engaged fans.

“What’s different about that song for us is that… look, we’re obviously pro-human rights, anti-oppression and left-leaning,” Kloeppel says. “We see and support these really pureof-heart social movements like #MeToo and

liberating people. Then you have other people working their way in, only to start wearing a social movement like it’s a new pair of shoes.

They’re making a fashion statement as they [co-opt] some part of the message. It’s hard to say stuff like that because you don’t want to diminish support for these groups, but at the same time, there are people with ankle-deep knowledge of the topic[s] who are infiltrators.

They’re almost working for the oppressors.

They’re reducing a movement to a hashtag. So, I saw that, and it pissed me off, and I felt like we needed to touch on it.”

As it turns out, those fears were largely unfounded. “The reaction that we got to that song was great. It spread quickly and a lot of people really liked it. We didn’t get lambasted by the anarchists and the leftist people that we do support. [Laughs] In fact, we got some messages the other day from some people in Texas who’d just heard it. They said, ‘We heard from some people that y’all were extremists. But listening to your song right now, I don’t see how that could be true.’ Seeing that message was really cool, and having those kinds of people— who I see as good people who have been taught that there’s a line in the sand between them and everyone else, the ‘others,’ that they can’t cross—reach out to us and say that and have this realization… that’s just incredible. I really hope that continues to happen.”

Ultimately, people can write whatever they want, but a lot of it just sounds like Tetris inside of Pro Tools.

That’s not a riff—

that’s 17 sweep arpeggios in a row!

Mark Kloeppel

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interview by

QA j. bennett

WITH

JEREMY

WAGNER BROKEN HOPE founder discusses his new zombie novel, Rabid Heart

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o I blow his head off and put him out of his misery, or do I hang Wisconsin, in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t

onto him and hope for a cure?” That’s how Jeremy Wagner sums up the dilemma faced by Rhonda Driscoll, the protagonist of his new novel, Rabid Heart. After a military-made rabies pandemic turns most of the population into frothing zombies—or “Cujos,” as the book’s characters refer to them, in an appropriate nod to Stephen King’s 1981 canine classic—Rhonda discovers that her long-thought-dead fiancé is actually alive (sort of), and has become a zombie himself. What’s a girl to do? ¶ Thrust into her new life as a soldier in an American hellscape overrun by violent undead, the 21-year-old ex-hairdresser reinvents herself as a zombie-slaying badass. With her zombie boyfriend in tow, she sets out on a journey into the black heart of… well, we won’t spoil it for you. “I think Publishers Weekly summed the book up perfectly when they described it as ‘a grainy VHS horror movie meets Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,’” Wagner offers in a thick Chicago accent.

“There’s all this scary shit going on, but it’s about the journey.” ¶ Decibel readers likely know Wagner as the guitarist and driving force of Broken Hope, the Windy City death metal squad he founded as a teenager in 1988. The band released five goresoaked albums before splitting up in 2001, and have released two more (plus a live album) since reforming in 2012. In the meantime, Wagner has honed his chops as a horror writer, making his debut as a novelist with The Armageddon Chord in 2011.

We recently spoke with our man about zombie romance, the inescapable influence of Stephen King and what it feels like to get 22 rabies shots in the stomach.

You quote the lyrics to Type O Negative’s “Black No. 1” at the beginning of Rabid Heart. Did that song inspire the story in any way, or did you not realize its relevance to the novel’s theme until after the fact?

The Type O thing came to me later. I’m a huge fan of the band, and I love “Black No. 1,” but the story came first. I thought it was the perfect set of lyrics to have at the beginning of the book because it pretty much sets up the vibe of the story. I always jam a lot of music when I’m writing, and that song came up randomly while I was working. That’s when the lyrics sunk in—“Loving you is like loving the dead”—and I’m like, “Wait a minute… that’s like Rhonda Driscoll and her undead fiancé!”

It really is perfect...

What’s funny is that I also wanted to use lyrics from the Rolling Stones song “Start Me Up.” At the end of the song, Mick Jagger says, “You make a dead man cum.” I have this great lawyer here in Chicago—he also represents Rick Nielsen and Cheap Trick—so I asked him to contact the publishers of Type O Negative and the Rolling Stones. I gave him some examples of Stephen King books that use AC/DC lyrics in the beginning and said, “This is basically what I wanna do.” The publisher for Type O Negative’s lyrics just told us to fill out a form and pay a small PHOTO BY STEPHANIE CABR AL

fee, and said we were good to go. But the Rolling Stones wouldn’t give us permission. We offered to pay the fee, but for some reason, they didn’t want their lyrics in a zombie book. [Laughs] Type O Negative is cooler to me, anyway.

Speaking of Stephen King, you mention him in the beginning of the story, and the characters in Rabid Heart refer to the zombies as “Cujos.”

Even the style of writing is kinda like his.

I love Stephen King, and he’s a huge source of inspiration and influence on me. Obviously, the name drop and the calling the zombies “Cujos” were intentional references, but if my writing style comes across as Stephen King-ish, I take that as a compliment. I don’t think about it that way, but when you mention it, I think Stephen King’s vibe is probably evident. His brand of storytelling—and even his background and upbringing—is somewhat similar to mine.

And his writing has always been a part of my life. My mom picked up Carrie right when it came out in the ’70s. She was into mysteries, thrillers and horror fiction, and I read all the books she had around the house.

How was your upbringing similar to his?

Stephen King grew up in Maine and kinda lived in the country and didn’t have a TV, so he read a lot. It was the same with me. I lived in central

have cable, so we had maybe two stations on a black-and-white television. All we really had were books and records, so I became a really avid reader at a young age. By age five, I was reading Peter Benchley’s Jaws when it came out in paperback, right when the movie came out. That was the first novel I read from beginning to end, and I just kept going from there.

When Stephen King came out, my mom had Carrie, Cujo, Salem’s Lot—she’d read them and passed them on to me. As the decades have gone on, my mom and I would always give each other Stephen King books for gifts on birthdays or Christmases. And what’s cool is that I got to meet Stephen King once with my mom. He did a reading in Chicago back in 1997 or so—it was right before that accident where he got hit by the van.

So, my mom and I got to meet him and hear him read. He’s a hero of mine and someone who really made me fall in love with horror fiction.

Rabid Heart is essentially this bizarre romance set against the backdrop of a zombie outbreak.

As you know, there’s been a massive resurgence of zombie movies, books and TV shows over the last 15 years or so. Do you think we’ve hit oversaturation yet, and was that something you were concerned about when you wrote the book?

Absolutely, man. I was a little reluctant to release Rabid Heart for the very reasons you’re talking about. In fact, I do think the zombie genre is oversaturated on all levels, whether it’s movies, horror fiction, comics, video games or TV shows like The Walking Dead. One thing that suspended my reluctance was—and I don’t wanna sound arrogant—I knew I had a real story here. The story is about a young woman who’s extremely traumatized from this pandemic because she’s lost everyone in her family except for her father, the Marine colonel. She thinks the love of her life has died, and she’s trying to deal with that at age 21, along with all this PTSD. I really tried to put myself in her shoes while I was writing this, and I feel like her experiences are paramount to the story. The zombies and the pandemic are really a backdrop, like you said, to a human story.

Why was it important for you to have a female protagonist in this story?

I’ve always wanted to write a story with a very strong female protagonist. I know a lot of male authors might find it difficult to write from a female’s point of view because obviously you have your own point of view as a man, and you really need to get inside a woman’s head. I’ve been really fortunate to have been raised by a D E C I B E L : A P R I L 2 0 19 : 3 9

Loved to death  Wagner points to where you can find the best words

I do think the zombie genre is oversaturated on all levels.

One thing that suspended my reluctance was— and I don’t wanna sound arrogant—I knew I had a real story here.

One of the people you dedicated the book to is former Metal Maniacs editor Katherine Ludwig, who passed away in 2015. Was she a close friend of yours?

Her and I were friends over the years, and before she died, we were working on a zombie short story together that never got published. It was 4 0 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

the first time I’d ever done a joint venture with another writer. And I actually had Katherine in mind while I was writing Rabid Heart. She was really respected in the metal community for her leadership at Metal Maniacs, and she was a really awesome writer. A lot of people don’t know that she was really into zombies, which is why she wanted to do a short story with me. That was in the early 2000s, before The Walking Dead exploded on TV. She’s another great example of a strong, independent woman who left us way too soon, but there’s a little bit of Katherine in Rhonda Driscoll as well.

As you know, there’s an ongoing argument amongst zombie fans about slow zombies versus fast zombies. Rabid Heart has a mix of both, so clearly you’re not taking sides.

[Laughs] Yeah, I’ve seen the T-shirts and bumper stickers that say, “Fast Zombies Suck.” With the zombies in Rabid Heart, I really wanted to explain why these undead things are animated. In the story, you’ve got this rabies culture that was created in a lab to give soldiers stamina, but in typical fashion, the military fucked it up and ruined the world for everyone. A movie I really loved was 28 Days Later, because the zombies were really scary and violent. There’s that one scene where the zombie is on fire and just running at the dude.

They all have this rage. So, I wanted these zom-

bies to embody that. But not all the zombies in the book move fast, so I definitely mixed it up.

You grew up on a farm. Do you have any good real-life rabies stories?

I got bitten by a cat with rabies when I was like four years old. I remember the cat was terrifying, just out of its mind. Back then, there was a rabies outbreak in central Wisconsin, so the sheriff’s department had to come out and find the cat.

There were like 20 feral cats on this farm I lived on, but they found the cat like a day later because it was already dead. I don’t know if they still do this, but back then, the way they tested for rabies was they decapitated the animal and sent the head into a lab because the rabies is in the brain.

So, the test came back positive and I had to get rabies shots immediately. Today, I guess they hit you once in the arm with this multi-needle thing and you’re done. But back then—this is like 1974—you had to get a series of 22 rabies shots.

Every other day, they gave you a shot in your stomach with a needle that was like three or four inches long. So I’m four years old, and the pain was so bad I was out of my mind. By the third visit, it would take like three or four nurses to hold me down. I have tattoos all over the place— those needles don’t bother me—but to this day, a syringe freaks me out. [Laughs] I have to, like, hold the nurse’s hand when I get a shot.

PHOTO BY STEPHANIE CABR AL

strong woman, a single mom of two. My younger sister is a very strong woman, too, and someone I admire very much. I have amazing aunts and grandmothers, too. I was born in 1970, so I’d always hear about my grandmother and my mom’s sisters—some of them marched for civil rights, marched for equal rights, things for the greater good of women and other races.

Having all these positive examples really had a profound effect on me.

Fast forward to Rabid Heart: When I started writing the story, Rhonda Driscoll is driving a golf cart out of a service tunnel with a bunch of weapons. I didn’t even think about it like, “Should I have a man or a woman be in the driver’s seat?” I just knew I wanted to write about this awesome woman named Rhonda Driscoll. As her thoughts and actions came to be, I just drew from what I knew from actual women. It’s like they say: Write what you know.

Rhonda Driscoll is made up of women that I’ve known in my life.

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

story by

adem tepedelen

photos by

frank white

Lights Out the making of the Michael Schenker Group’s Assault Attack On January 19, just two days after Adem Tepedelen filed the following story, Michael Schenker Group drummer Ted McKenna died from a hemorrhage during a routine operation for a hernia. He was 68 years old. Decibel sends our deepest condolences to his family, loved ones and bandmates. —ed

E

ric Clapton was God in the late ’60s and Eddie Van Halen was God in the late ’70s; at some point between, German guitarist Michael Schenker assumed the mantle. Ask any number of the most influential guitarists in metal history—from Metallica’s Kirk Hammett to Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith—and they’ll testify to his greatness. Even those who no longer have a voice (Randy Rhoads and Dimebag Darrell come to mind) claimed Schenker as a major influence. As a teenage/young twentysomething guitar hero in Scorpions and UFO, his star blazed brightly. His riffs were rock-solid and his solos transcendent. We could easily justify inducting more than one UFO album he played on in the Hall of Fame (and at least one is, in fact, in progress).

But since Schenker is long overdue for commemoration, we’ll start with the solo project he formed following live UFO masterpiece Strangers in the Night and a brief reunion with Scorpions on Lovedrive, both issued in 1979. The Michael Schenker Group was always more about Schenker than the musicians that surrounded him, so the first two albums—1980’s self-titled and 1981’s MSG— had completely different personnel save for Schenker and vocalist Gary Barden. No surprise, then, that when it came time for album number three, Assault Attack—the lineup turned over (nearly completely) once again, with then-drummer Cozy Powell even exiting in the middle of the writing.

So, it was not without the typical Schenker drama that this album not only came into the world, but died a swift commercial death D B H O F 17 2 upon its release, when new vocalist Graham Bonnet (ex-Rainbow) was booted after exposing himself onstage at a pre-release warm-up gig in England. However, the only album that featured Bonnet—who later went on to front Alcatrazz (among other projects)—turned out to be MSG’s finest moment, a record beloved for decades not only for Schenker’s incredible playing, but the stellar songs, Bonnet’s soaring Assault Attack vocals and Martin Birch’s bruising production. Though this lineup CHRYS AL IS (rounded out by bassist Chris Glen and drummer Ted McKenna) never OCTOBER 1982 toured at the time, longtime fans of Assault Attack can witness it playing several of these songs on the current Michael Schenker Fest tour.

Schenker’s post-UFO pyrotechnics And now Schenker joins the pantheon of other musical gods—many of whom no doubt idolize him—in our Hall of Fame.

THE MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP

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THE MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP assault attack

Was the Michael Schenker Group originally intended to be a band that would keep a consistent lineup, or did you envision it as something where you could frequently work with new and different musicians?

MICHAEL SCHENKER: It was a very strange begin-

ning, because when I started the first MSG band, it was the second chapter of my life. I wanted to do small things. I had reached the highest with UFO. I had experienced fame and success at its highest, and I was able to make a decision if I wanted to stay up there.

I’m an artist. I wanted to experiment with music rather than being famous and making money. For me, my whole development went all the way from [Scorpions’ debut] Lonesome Crow to [UFO’s] Strangers in the Night and [Scorpions’] Lovedrive. I decided that I had basically developed and now I wanted to experiment. I wanted to do crazy stuff that came in through my head. But I wanted to do it in a small way so that there was no pressure, and I wanted to be an artist, you know, where I didn’t have to do things a certain way.

You had musicians like Simon Phillips, Paul Raymond, Neil Murray and Cozy Powell who played on the albums and tours, but I’m wondering if it was it hard to find musicians willing to commit to joining you long-term?

SCHENKER: Having a reputation, it’s always, “Oh, Michael is the bad guy…” But I never really had any problems with anybody. The reason that I had many lineups was because I couldn’t put people on a retainer, because I was not playing commercial music. I was experimenting, so therefore whenever I was going to make a new album, either people were still available or they were already moving on because they have to earn money, and I had to look for musicians and stuff like that.

Tell me how this lineup came together.

SCHENKER: [My manager] Peter Mensch was the one who wanted a different singer. He wanted to take what [original vocalist] Gary Barden and I had established at that point and take it to the next level. [Ex-Deep Purple and Whitesnake singer] David Coverdale was in the talks, and [Mensch] wanted Chris [Glen] and myself and [drummer] Cozy [Powell] to join Whitesnake. I said to Peter, “Whoa, tell him to join MSG.” Of course, neither one happened.

CHRIS GLEN: There’d been talk about a collaboration between Michael and David Coverdale. They tried, but it didn’t work out.

How did you shift your attention to getting Graham Bonnet, who was living in L.A. at the time?

SCHENKER: It was kind of weird because Cozy had left Rainbow, and so had Graham. And so,

basically, I kind of pushed for Graham, and Peter Mencsh kept pushing for Coverdale, one way or another. I insisted on Graham Bonnet, and eventually Peter Mensch said, “OK, let’s go for Graham Bonnet.”

GRAHAM BONNET: I went to see the band at a club in L.A. [when they were touring with Gary Barden]. Cozy Powell, after he left Rainbow, [MSG] was one of his new projects, or whatever you want to call it, and I went to see the band because he invited me down to see them. I’d never heard of Michael Schenker, but Cozy said, “You’ve got to see him, this guy’s really good.”

I go and watch the band, and they finish their show. Cozy came upstairs where I was watching and asked me what I thought. I said, “Amazing guitar player, the songs are great,” et cetera.

And he said to me, “How would you feel about being in this band? We’d like to have you as the

“Peter Mensch actually got me Mutt Lange, and I said, ‘No, I don’t want to sound like AC/DC.’ I made the weirdest choices in [those] years because I didn’t want to be part of that typical ’80s commercial, money-making sound.”

M IC HA E L SCHE NKE R singer.” I said, “Well, OK, let me know what happens with [Barden],” because it seemed a bit odd to me that they were going to change personnel when it seemed pretty good the way it was. I was thinking of doing other things anyway. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be in a band again [after Rainbow] anyhow.

So, what happened was, Gary Barden did eventually leave—I don’t know the conditions under which he left—but in the mail I got some cassette tapes, and it said on the tapes “Urgent.”

There were a few songs on there, and I spoke to Cozy or somebody and he said, “Do what you can and write some words.” That’s kind of how it happened.

Why did Cozy leave shortly after Graham arrived, while the album was being written?

BONNET: We get to rehearsals in London and there was an argument between Cozy and Michael, and Cozy was gone; which was unfortunate, because Cozy was one of my best friends.

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He’d left another band I was in. First it was Rainbow, and now Michael Schenker Group. So, Ted [McKenna] came in and we started in all seriousness to getting down to actually making the songs up and having lyrics. But it was through Cozy Powell that I basically got the job.

I always thanked him for that, and I also hated him for that, because he pissed off when things just started to happen.

SCHENKER: I think that David Coverdale was still pushing for Chris, Cozy and myself to join him, but I think Coverdale did not let loose of Cozy, and Cozy kind of was attracted to join Coverdale, even without Chris and myself. But it wasn’t really that big of a deal, because Chris had this great drummer that he played with for so long: Ted McKenna, who was the original drummer in the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. I said to Chris, “Hey, why don’t you get Ted in the band?”

So, he gave Ted a call and we jammed together.

Ted liked what he was hearing and how it all felt. So, we just decided to carry on.

TED MCKENNA: I had been working with Greg Lake [of Emerson, Lake & Palmer] and Gary Moore, and that project was kind of coming to an end.

I happened to be in a place in London called the Funny Farm, which is a late-night bar. I came in there one night and Chris was in there with Michael. Chris came over and said that Michael would like a word, so I came over to speak to Michael and he said, “Hey, Teddy, do you want to join MSG?” I said, “Well, that sounds interesting.” So, that night we got taxied to their rehearsal studio. Cozy’s kit was still set up in there, and we just jammed through a few ideas.

That was it, really. I joined the band, basically.

Graham and Ted both joined in early 1982, in the middle of the writing process. Did that create any challenges?

GLEN: When Graham came over, his voice was fantastic. The main problem was, we were writing the music and Graham had to supply the lyrics, which became a problem. It took him quite a while to come up with lyrics. I’ll give you an example: There’s a song on the album called “Dancer,” and Graham couldn’t come up with lyrics for it, so I just opened a music paper and said, “Fucking sing that!” And he sort of went to writing lyrics about this thing that was in the paper. And it turns out it was actually a review of a live performance [by ’80s pop star Toni Basil]. If you listen to the words of “Dancer” you can hear some of that: “She’s a great dancer / Not ideally built for ballet,” and various other things. That’s how hard it was for us to get lyrics to some of the tracks. But he was fantastic for “Desert Song,” “Samurai” and “Assault Attack.”

They just flowed.

SCHENKER: When eventually it was time for Graham to do his part, it was a bit awkward, because Graham didn’t know what to do. I was sitting with him in a rehearsal studio and played

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Lights on  Michael Schenker rocks you to the ground

him the backing track of my composition, and I said to him, “Just try to figure something out.”

Maybe it wasn’t the right approach. Maybe I put him on the spot a little bit, because I was present, and I expected him to come up with things in front of me. Maybe it was a bit weird. [Laughs] I’d never done something like that before, but I didn’t feel at the time that there was anything wrong with it.

BONNET: I wasn’t quite sure what they wanted me to write anyway. So, I said to Michael, “What do you want from me?” He said, “Anything you like.” At that point, after being in Rainbow, [bassist] Roger Glover wrote all the words and I did the melody parts on the Rainbow stuff I was on. The words were something I wasn’t quite sure of, because to me it was a whole different genre than the way I had been writing before.

I usually wrote my own songs with more of an R&B feel or pop feel, whatever. Some of it was rock, but it was my own ideas, so when you join a band, they already have an idea of how the band should sound and what the songs should be about, I thought. But when Michael said, “Do anything,” that’s what I did.

MCKENNA: When I joined, the demos had already been made with Cozy playing on some of the stuff.

GLEN: Quite a lot of the album had been written before Ted arrived. As usual, once you start things playing together, the tilt of some of the songs change a little. So, we included Ted in some of the writing, basically, because what he played changed the mood of the songs to a certain extent.

Because of all the changes to the lineup, were you fairly well-prepared when you went off to record in France?

GLEN: I’d say that 75 percent of the material was written in London, and then there was a lot of fine-tuning done once we got to France, especially between Michael and I, playing contra parts and things like that. The song “Searching for a Reason” was written in the studio, because we were one song short on the album. [Laughs] I don’t mean “knocked out,” but it was knocked out in an afternoon. It was a riff that was lying around that we just worked around it and went for it. Graham seemed to come up with the lyrics bang-on. I wish the whole album had gone like that. [Laughs] BONNET: The arrangement side of things was pretty much there, except once in a while, I might have said, “You need another verse here,” or something like that, or, “You need to make that bit shorter.” That was the only input I had on that side. For me, it was just the words and the melodies, the vocal line. And obviously the backing harmonies or whatever.

What made you decide to hire Martin Birch as your producer? Was it a recommendation or the work he had done to that point?

SCHENKER: I think he’s just a heavy producer.

He produced Iron Maiden and he had a heavier approach to things. I can’t even remember why we decided on Martin Birch. Peter Mensch actually got me Mutt Lange [for an earlier album] and I said, “No, I don’t want to sound like AC/DC.” [Laughs] I made the weirdest choices in [those] years because I didn’t want to be part of that typical ’80s commercial, money-making sound. I just wanted to be me. I wanted to do stuff that I enjoy.

I would say that [Mensch] was partly responsible for picking Martin Birch, based on the connections that he had. At the end of the day, I’m not exactly sure why Martin Birch was chosen.

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how he was chosen or when he was chosen. I just knew that I would be very assured that he would do a good job. His track record was Deep Purple, Iron Maiden and all the other bands he’d worked with. I didn’t even think about it; I just knew that [hiring Birch] was a good idea.

GLEN: I was always a big fan of Deep Purple In Rock. One thing Michael and I agreed on was that every single album that Martin Birch worked on, we liked the sound of it. We liked the balance, we liked the sound of the drums, the sound of the bass, and it was compatible with what we were doing. Very fortunately, Martin agreed to do it.

BONNET: I know that he had produced a lot of other bands, and he was producing all the socalled heavy bands at that time. He worked with everybody, as we all know. I remember meeting Martin at a pub in London—where else?—

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THE MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP assault attack Was there a reason you went to France to record?

SCHENKER: [Martin] had this idea to go to France,

and one of the first things he said to me was, “You haven’t made a good album since 1968.”

That was my first introduction to Martin, that comment. I’ll never forget it. He was apologetic about that incident right to the end of [making] this album. He didn’t mean it at the time. And actually, we became really close friends. It was a great experience to work with such a great producer. He’s the best. He really is.

Were you satisfied with the job he did?

GLEN: Because Martin Birch had [agreed] to produce it, and he was the Deep Purple producer, we thought, “My god, this guy is going to give us a hit record.” He’s known for changing songs and making you a hit. When we arrived at his studio [in France], we then find out that Martin was the biggest Michael Schenker fan and was a massive fan of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

And a massive fan of Graham Bonnet. So, basically, whatever we did, he’d say, “Oh, that sounds fantastic!” And we’d go, “Yeah, but what do you think we should do with it?” And he’d say, “Oh, I just think we should record it. It’s wonderful.”

Although he was a fantastic engineer/producer and he did a wonderful mix on the album, because he was a fan, he didn’t give us any constructive feedback. He just recorded it the way it was. I was expecting more. One of the reasons we picked him was when we were rehearsing and Gary was in the band still, Martin was working with Iron Maiden [prior to recording Number of the Beast], who were rehearsing next door. And, my god, I could hear him changing the order of the arrangements—halving one part, doubling another—and I thought that’s what he’d do with us. But he didn’t do that.

MCKENNA: [He gave me] one of the best drum sounds I’ve ever had. It’s perfect for the album.

It’s very, very punchy. It’s a punchy album, very strong.

BONNET: The one thing I liked about how he produced the album, was that every track we did, he did a slightly different sound on the vocals. There’s one song called “Rock You to the Ground,” which is a really killer, edgy sort of thing. I said to Martin, “Can you [capture] what I’m doing through sound? I’m putting my whole body into this. Look at me through the glass and see how I’m doing it. Can you get that sound like what I’m hearing in my head?” The microphones and such actually cut down a lot of what comes out of your mouth—the power, et cetera. But he was able to capture that. He treated every track as one baby on its own, not like all tracks are going to have the same sound and treated as one.

He’s great for vocals. He’s a great producer all around. The drum sound on there is fantastic, the bass sound—you know, say no more. [Laughs] He’s the best, yep.

near Paris, and rent this chateau. It was a bit like a castle. It was an old antique building.

MCKENNA: I think that Château d’Hérouville may have been chosen by Martin. It was probably somewhere he’d worked before, because he knew what he wanted to do drum-wise when he got there. It had a stone stairwell going up to the studio, and we set the drums up on the first level, which was very, very live. So, I had the feeling that he had been there before. The studio was isolated as well. It was in a little village.

The history of it is that it’s where [composer Frédéric] Chopin and [French novelist] George Sand had their rendezvous. And also, Elton John recorded there as well.

BONNET: It was one of those things where, back in the ’80s, you’d go to somewhere in the middle of nowhere where there’s absolutely nothing.

All you do is do your work. Everybody [in the band] was so bored. We were losing our minds in this place, which was a little village of like 300 people or something. The thing about isolating you from the real world, so to speak, is that it didn’t work. Everybody was losing their minds after two weeks. You’re there with the same people all day. It’s like being in the Boy Scouts or something. It was a little like being in prison at the Chateau.

GLEN: Martin chose it because he couldn’t record in Britain. It was basically a tax thing for him. He was making so much money that it made more sense for him to record outside of Britain. I think he was what they called a “tax exile” at the time. If he’d recorded something in Britain, it wouldn’t have gone very well for his earnings for that year. That’s why we went to studios outside of Britain.

What do you remember about the studio at Château d’Hérouville?

SCHENKER: It was in the countryside, and I think Fleetwood Mac had just recorded an album [Mirage] there. I didn’t participate much in putting the backing tracks down, because by the time we had done the pre-production, I kind of felt like I was done. I put everything into it that I had to say, and I wrote all of the music with the help of Martin Birch—he kind of rearranged around stuff with us together. So, everything was ready to record. The technical part of recording I don’t know much about anyway, so I decided to let [Martin] go ahead and put the drums down and the bass, because everything was ready to go. It was all pre-decided what and how it goes down, so it was not like we all played together in one room and stuff like that, as far as I remember. I never watched any of the vocal sessions. Apparently, Graham Bonnet, because he was singing so incredibly high, there’s this story that he was singing with his trousers down.

Because he was singing so high, the belt and the A P R I L 2 0 19 : 4 8 : D E C I B E L

button of his trousers was limiting him to be free and get the most out of [his performance], so he let his trousers down. [Laughs] They did a great job with the vocals. Many thanks for Martin Birch; he kept it all under control.

BONNET: From way back, I always used to loosen the top button of my pants, back in 1968, when I first started recording, really, so that way your stomach muscles work better. Probably my pants did fall down. I’m not sure. It was a thing I’ve always done. It just helps you breathe better. If [my pants] dropped down, it was by accident... on this occasion.

MCKENNA: It was a very interesting experience.

The studio control room was at the top of the stairs, where all the vocals and guitars and everything was done. I don’t even remember being up there [myself], to be honest. I did all my [recording] downstairs. Chris and I stood together and recorded in the stairwell. Because it was so “live,” we partitioned the bass drum off with this huge cardboard box. It covered the whole bass drum, so it was isolated from the rest of the room. There was a mic in the bass drum and another one at the end of the [cardboard box] tunnel.

GLEN: It’s a wonderful chateau, a huge chateau, and the rooms we were staying in had walls like a castle. Imagine staying in an ancient chateau from the 18th century, outside of Paris—enormous drapes, tennis courts, a swimming pool.

When I arrived to see it, Stevie Nicks was there.

She’d been recording [Mirage] with Fleetwood Mac. The actual recording studio was up [a set of stairs] in something that looked a little bit like a lighthouse. There was a massive room at the top, with all the recording equipment. It was absolutely idyllic and incredible.

Because you didn’t really have a permanent keyboard player at the time, do you feel like keyboards were generally downplayed on this album?

SCHENKER: Everything was written without

keyboards. There were no keyboards [during the writing] whatsoever. The way we used the keyboards was very tasty and just as a bit of color.

MCKENNA: I had fairly good experience playing as a three-piece before that. A three-piece sound can be very, very big, as I’m sure you probably know, if it’s a broad sound. Keyboards can sometime undermine that, to some extent, if you have a guitar player like Michael or Gary Moore. As Cream proved, there’s an art to being a three-piece and how you fill that sound out and complement each other. So, when we recorded, the body of the sound would have been guitar, bass and drums. Then Tommy Eyre, who’d worked with [Chris and me] before in the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, he laid down the keyboard parts appropriately to the sound that was already there. That was done in Munich at the studio where the mixing was done.

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GLEN: The unique thing about the album was that it was done as a trio: Michael, myself and Ted, with Graham Bonnet on vocals. There were no keyboards. That’s how the whole album was recorded. Then we moved from France to Musicland Studios in Munich, where we got to be really good friends with Queen, who were doing their album [Hot Space] there at the same time. We flew in a keyboard player that Ted and I had worked with in the Alex Harvey Band called Tommy Eyre. This guy was really famous.

He played keyboards on songs like “Careless Whisper” by George Michael, on Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street,” and he’s also played with Charles Mingus. So, Tommy played all the keyboards on the album on top of what was already there.

Sonically, this feels heavier than previous releases—particularly the drums. Were you going for a different sound or was that just how the recording turned out?

SCHENKER: I remember they were very creative

same thing. We put the drums in the stairwell of the Chateau and the drum sound—fuckin’ hell—was amazing. It was like machine guns. [Ted] recorded all his parts in the stairwell. It was thunder; it was amazing. Everybody was going for that slightly heavier feel than the other albums had.

I’m a different singer than Gary, anyway. I think that’s one of the reasons they asked me to be in the band: because I was a little different and probably more aggressive-sounding or whatever. It was a team effort to make it a harder-sounding album.

The core of this album is performing together on the Michael Schenker Fest tour all these years later. Why do the four of you work so well together?

SCHENKER: When we did the Michael Schenker

Fest album, Resurrection, it was almost like the whole cycle was completed. It was like déjà vu. I took everything [step] by step. I never premeditated anything. Everything fell into my arms.

I kind of felt [that] now is the time to do this.

It was so easy to get everything together, even though geographically, we’re all spread apart.

You could have never planned anything like this.

with the drums in the studio, because it was this old house with a great big ambiance. But they created this tunnel for the bass drum out of carpet, this long tunnel. [Laughs] I had no clue what [Birch] was up to. But he got a really good drum sound out of that place. We had a lot of rooms there to record in. He had the recording console upstairs in one of the rooms. It was very bizarre.

I’d never done anything like that in my life.

GLEN: It’s the sound of the room. You can’t recreate something like that; it just has to be right.

Martin Birch, the way he recorded [the album], it was much more urgent, much bigger, live, trebly-er—more everything. It just sounded like a great mix to me, just absolutely fantastic.

BONNET: After listening to the first two albums, because I had to listen to [former vocalist] Gary [Barden]’s stuff, I agree with you that [Assault Attack] is more aggressive. I think we all went for that because I think we were trying to be heavier, so to speak. I think Martin Birch was doing the

“The reason the album died [commercially at the time] is because I fucked up and I wasn’t in the band anymore.

We didn’t promote it the way it should have been.”

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Chris Glen and Ted McKenna were the original rhythm section of MSG after [drummer] Cozy Powell and, of course, they were on the Assault Attack album, as well as the Built to Destroy album.

It was just an all-around good choice for musicians. It couldn’t have been a better one.

MCKENNA: When I joined the band [in 1982], the material we played was mainly the earlier material, so I was familiar with all the stuff that Cozy had played. I learned and played the bulk of the songs that Cozy had already done.

So, I was familiar with that [era] as well. So, I take up quite a bit of Michael’s history in that sense. Obviously, he moved on and had a different lineup when he worked with Robin McAuley, but Robin’s stuff works with my playing style anyway. Having a rhythm section that’s not only familiar with the bulk of the material, but also cemented together from years and years of playing together is certainly a good foundation for the [Michael Schenker Fest] tour.

GLEN: Ted and I are just like the meat and potatoes for the meal. We just do what we do together. We don’t have to look at each other; it’s telepathic. And Graham just loves playing

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with us. Graham and I get on so well; there’s a great interaction between Graham and I onstage, along with Michael. It’s wonderful.

BONNET: We all know each other pretty well, and if something goes wrong, it’s just the movement of an eye. You don’t have to say anything. “You fucked up on that, didn’t you? Yes, you did.”

[Laughs] We all are very serious. If anything cocks up, we’ll get a telling-off after the event, because it’s important to us and we’re supposed to be the best that we are. We’ve gotta be great; we can’t lay back. Michael being the German person that he is, is very much into that discipline.

What are your favorite tracks from this album?

MCKENNA: Probably “Rock You to the Ground.”

“Assault Attack,” that was the first track that we did together. When I recorded the album, that was the very first track that we played. I like “Desert Song” as well. I have a lot of favorites that are great to play, that are enjoyable to play.

Even tracks that I didn’t think so much of at the time, when I listen to them now, I realize how good they were. I didn’t quite appreciate how good they were at the time.

GLEN: I think “Assault Attack” is wonderful; I’d say it’s my favorite. I think the feel of “Desert Song” is fantastic. I like “Rock You to the Ground” as well. One of my favorites—I’ve played it with Graham, but it’s very difficult—is “Broken Promises,” which I made far too complicated when I wrote it with Michael. Excuse my French, but that’s a fuckin’ hard one. For Graham as well.

It’s nearly impossible for him to do now. Graham is 71, and the fact that he’s still breathing is a miracle, never mind the fact that he can still sing.

We tried “Broken Promises,” but it wasn’t doing Graham justice as far as he was concerned.

BONNET: I think “Rock You to the Ground,” that one. I’ve always liked “Desert Song” from the word go. That was the first song I made up lyrically, just out of my head. “Dancer,” the more poppy one, I’ve loved because a lot of work went into that to make it commercial-sounding.

“Broken Promises,” I like that. There are about four or five tracks I’ve rediscovered after listening to it again, because for my band, we’ve chosen a couple of songs from that album to do live ourselves. “Rock You to the Ground” is a very straightforward bluesy thing, but live it takes on another life, which is incredible. Everybody loves playing it, and if the band gets into it, then I do, too.

had a famous singer in the band. The reason why I had previously picked Gary Barden was because I didn’t want to be in a position where I had to battle with another ego. I wanted someone who was easygoing, who was happy experimenting with music, and Gary was the guy. He was a simple person, very easygoing, had a fantastic mid-range and warm sound with great vibrato.

With Assault Attack, I thought we had a really good album, especially the vocals and the power that came out of the vocals.

GLEN: With Assault Attack, we managed to get—if you don’t mind me saying so, because I’m really proud of it—wonderful music that musicians appreciate, that people can listen to and really enjoy it on every fucking level. That’s why I love it. Assault Attack is my favorite Michael Schenker album—it really is. If you listen to Assault Attack with a fresh set of ears now, it still sounds contemporary. It still sounds as if it had been recorded now.

“Time is running out for a lot of us guys who have played for so long [to] still be able to hit it the way we do and play at the level that we do.”

T E D M c KE NNA SCHENKER: It’s actually a great album from

the music point of view. It’s almost like it was meant to be not to get too much attention, but it became musicians’ favorite album. It didn’t do anything commercially, but it became a musicians’ favorite. It was never toured, it was never promoted—it’s the weirdest thing on this planet. I never really played any of the songs on the album [live] for 30 years, except “Assault Attack.” Year after year after year, I found out how many musicians love the album, and constantly we would get remarks and letters or emails about what a great album it was.

We’ve chosen Assault Attack as the classic MSG album, but what are your thoughts about its place in the band’s discography?

Any regrets that this lineup didn’t get the opportunity to tour together to support the album back in 1982 after Graham was kicked out?

SCHENKER: I think it was a strong album. I was

SCHENKER: Peter Mensch booked a tour, and the

very happy with it. There was a great singer involved. But remember my words: I wanted to do something small, and [with Graham Bonnet] I

album was ready to be released. When we did the Sheffield show, the first show that we were supposed to be doing, Graham was onstage for A P R I L 2 0 19 : 5 2 : D E C I B E L

15 minutes, [exposed himself] and then we played the rest of the show instrumentally. And that was it. Three days later, we had to headline Reading Festival and we asked Gary back. Gary was kind enough to do it, so we carried on with Gary. You have to remember that I wasn’t in it for the big money or the big fame. I understood what that was about. I already made a decision that I didn’t need that. I wanted to be free and experiment and just enjoy my music, enjoy putting songs together creatively from the heart, the way I see it. Therefore, how can anything be a regret? I made a conscious choice. I was not forced to leave the height; I made a decision to leave the height.

BONNET: The reason the album died [commercially at the time] is because I fucked up and I wasn’t in the band anymore. We didn’t promote it the way it should have been. [MSG] had shows coming up, but Gary [Barden] had to come back and do the stuff that I did on the album, and it wasn’t the same. People were expecting to hear stuff from Assault Attack the way it was, and because I wasn’t there anymore, the record company wasn’t behind it. I got fired, and that was the end of that. I’ve always felt very ashamed and guilty about that whole thing. But I think I have redeemed myself with Michael, because when we play live together now, I see that smile on his face. It’s nice to be back, and it’s great to work with such a fantastic musician. I let [the band] down back then. Chris and Ted and Michael are some of my closest friends—I love ’em.

GLEN: There was a massive amount of regret about what could have been. Assault Attack is the enigma in the [Michael Schenker Group] catalog because it stands out on its own. What was the live show like? Don’t know, never was one.

MCKENNA: I think it would have changed the course of all our histories, if you like, if that had come to fruition. But I kind of think—and I’m not sure what Michael would have said— that it just wasn’t meant to be back then. There was a reason for it not happening back then, and maybe we would have been on a course that may have been, I don’t know, destructive or whatever. I suppose we were all disappointed that we didn’t get to go ahead with it, but I think it was just the way it was meant to be. I don’t really regret it. I think the fact that it’s happening now [with the Michael Schenker Fest] is a very, very good thing. We’re actually doing those songs and working together as a band. Time is running out for a lot of us guys who have played for so long [to] still be able to hit it the way we do and play at the level that we do. It’s almost appropriate that we can do it all together, that Michael’s managed to pull all the elements of his career pretty much together, including the UFO material that we do. I’m pretty sure that we’re all in a better place as people to be able to deal with it.

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After a decade of relentless touring and cacophony-creating, ’s incendiary passion and collaborative spirit represent the future of extremity

FULL OF HELL

STO RY BY

SEAN FRASIER

PHO TOS BY

GENE SMIRNOV

he snow piles high outside Baltimore’s Metro Gallery as a blizzard roars around 150 miles from where DIY hardcore/death firebrands Full of Hell rehearse in Ocean City, MD. It’s the second weekend night celebrating hardcore headliners Integrity, but the sold-out show feels surprisingly sparse. Because of the weather, many ticket-holders flip the bird at the icy roads from the warmth and safety of their homes. But Full of Hell were born in winter. Formed by guitarist Spencer Hazard in February 2009, they’ll soon celebrate the project’s 10-year anniversary; a decade battling snow drifts and black ice in wounded vans. Despite the flurries swirling outside, Full of Hell are at home anytime they’re onstage. But it’s been a few months since they played live—pretty much an eternity for a band that routinely eclipses 60 gigs a year. ¶ Live, their songs blast out of a cauldron of harsh noise and feedback. Vocalist Dylan Walker—dressed in an unassuming button-down—snarls and shrieks like a demon is crawling from him mid-exorcism. He lands haymakers on invisible opponents as time signatures change. Next to him, Hazard bends over his guitar while shredding out new song “Thundering Hammers.” Behind them and bassist Sam DiGristine, drummer Dave Bland’s hair falls out of its bun in a blur of sweat and shimmering cymbals.

Formed as an expression of teenage restlessness, Full of Hell have dedicated themselves to being road warriors who smash through any subgenre barrier in their path. Each time you thought you had the band pegged as a descendant of Pulling Teeth or Spazz, they’d evade classification again with a well-timed curveball.

Over the past 10 years, they’ve spanned hardcore, grind, powerviolence, power electronics, noise, ambient and—most substantially since 2015— death metal.

Propelled by compulsions to create and connect, Full of Hell have created a web of co-conspirators as they’ve repeatedly carved their way across the country and world. They’ve endured chipped teeth and broken feet, a year of deafness and passing kidney stones on the go. Following the success of 2017’s Trumpeting Ecstasy—Decibel’s eighth favorite release of that year—they’re now on Relapse Records alongside old allies.

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full of hell

We never said, ‘Hey, let’s make a web of co-conspirators that will become our best friends and be in our weddings.’

It just sort of happened super organically.

I feel like a hippie when I describe this, but

it feels like the true point of creating art.

It’s almost like a worship of the idea of friendship and love between people.

-Dylan Walker In “Gnawed Flesh,” Walker once growled, “Man will fail. Man will always fail.” You wouldn’t know it reading his lyrics, but the road ahead of Full of Hell burns with promise.

Even with a search history peppered with pornogrind band names and Pungent Stench lyrics, the first images that greet me after an “Ocean City, MD” Google search are picturesque. Known for an idyllic boardwalk that stretches like a middle finger along the Atlantic coast, photographs share family-swarmed beaches beneath the shadow of a Ferris wheel that glows neon at night. Like the old adage goes, “Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”

Boasting sun-baked summers and inebriated nightlife, you can get both in Ocean City. But apart from an occasional shark sighting, most of the excitement comes from unruly tourists staining the boardwalk with puke after too many signature “Tight Snatch” drinks from the Purple Moose Saloon.

Away from the throng of summer visitors, Hazard formed Full of Hell as a teenager. With no ultimate goal, he named the band after a track from Entombed’s Wolverine Blues. Like vocalist L-G Petrov snarled in their namesake song, Full of Hell would eventually embody the lyric “I’m organized chaos.” But finding the right collaborators was imperative.

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“The second guitar player quit at the very first practice and said he didn’t want to play music like this,” Hazard recalls. “We were inspired by heavy stuff like Crowbar, but also Cursed and Converge; stuff with dissonance to it. As the band went on, I just wanted to make as much fucked-up music as I possibly could.”

Hazard’s hunt brought him to Dave Bland’s Myspace profile (he was 15 at the time). But the band’s current form didn’t truly take shape until they crossed paths with Dylan Walker on an early tour.

“Dylan was in a dark hardcore band at the time playing guitar,” Hazard dishes. “He didn’t really even know how to play guitar; he just said he’d do it and tour.”

“The first week that our bands were touring, we didn’t talk at all,” Walker recounts. “We weren’t in the same van, so it wasn’t unfriendly or anything. But I figured he liked a lot of amazing shit. And to be honest, I didn’t know a lot of people in my life who liked noise and grindcore and Hydra Head-type stuff. But his singer quit afterwards, and I went and asked him immediately, saying I’d love to be in his band.”

Walker’s commitment was going to require more than a bond over digging Discordance Axis.

It was a six-hour drive from his home in central Pennsylvania to Full of Hell’s rehearsal space in Ocean City. But to Walker, it was worth the exhausting trek through Amish farmland and resort towns.

“[Spencer] was the only guy I knew who was in the same universe of driven as I was,” Walker says. “He was so good at booking tours [despite having] no connections. If he struck out with one venue, he’d ask 20 more. He was ready to just get in his van and go, and that’s what I wanted.”

Once Walker arrived in Ocean City, he was greeted by an attic rehearsal room in the garage behind Hazard’s family residence. The room was a tribute to Hazard’s seriousness about his musical endeavors, and also to the area’s flood-threat geography. Basements aren’t permitted in Ocean City, so Hazard’s father donated his carpentry talents to creating a soundproofed jam space for his son. In that attic space, a Legacy of Brutality Misfits poster scowled at the band as they created their earliest demos. And in the far corner, an old acoustic guitar sat collecting dust as they sharpened their music. When Walker first inquired about the origin of the guitar, Hazard divulged that a local kid with a potentially contagious malady had played it.

“That guitar sat in one corner and nobody touched it because we thought there was bacteria on it,” Walker laughs. “I think we knew in our hearts it was safe, but still nobody touched it.

In our heads, we thought there was blood on the strings or something.”

Like most rumors a decade old, the details are no longer important. The mystery of the diseased acoustic guitar endured, like a curse waiting in plain view.

After putting together their first demo, Full of Hell reached out to Baltimore-based hardcore/ punk ambassador Domenic Romeo. Currently crossing off his bucket-list goal of being Integrity’s guitarist, at the time Romeo was lead shredder in Pulling Teeth. But as the owner of A389 Records, Romeo was also an underground tastemaker and patron of the hardcore community. Until the label closed shop last year, he had given a platform and support to notable acts like Ringworm, Gehenna and Weekend Nachos over its 14-year run.

“None of us were the ‘cool guys’ in the scene,” Romeo confesses, “so we all helped each other, using our own resources and the geography of A389’s diverse roster of bands to our advantage.

It was how we survived as a label and playing in bands. That has always been the way I knew how to do this: If you don’t see or hear what you want, create it. If you build it, they will come, et cetera.”

Just like Ray Kinsella had to deal with crushing doubt after plowing his corn field, Full of Hell had to take their hits. When they approached Romeo, armed with their demo, the label head gave it to them straight. As Hazard recalls, “He said we had some work to do.”

So, they went to work. They caught the attention of Get This Right Records for a couple 7-inch releases. They hustled and bled on tour.

During the process, their downbeat hardcore evolved. While the breakdowns and brawl-ready riffs remained, grinding blasts and harsh noise entered the fray.

“I specifically remember we were in a band for about a year, and that one Insect Warfare one-sided LP [Noise Grind Power Death] had come out,” Hazard recalls. “In our area, there’s not a lot of metal or punk people, so there’s not a lot of people to show us super obscure and underground shit. So, I had no idea about noisecore or anything until that came out. I was already a fan of the band, but it blew my fucking mind. After I heard that record, I said we had to add noise elements to the band.”

With power electronics now in their collective tool belt, Full of Hell returned to Romeo. Floored by their progress, Romeo agreed to release their 2011 debut LP, Roots of Earth Are Consuming My Home. Full of Hell had found their new home in the A389 family.

“These guys were truly a bunch of sincere misfits,” Romeo recalls. “You had a couple boardwalk rats from Ocean City on drums and bass, a really shy and stoic guitarist, and a very creative and enthusiastic vocalist. They were [so] young when they started out, they used to have to sign Dave Bland out of class to go on tour. It was wild. And speaking of touring, by the time we started working together, they had

already toured Europe themselves with no hired driver. Their dedication to their craft even that early on was insane.”

While the band’s first European tour may have looked good on a résumé for a label, the members quickly mention that it was a barely conquered shitshow. Romeo’s recollection is spot-on regarding their teenage drummer: They forged documents to excuse Bland from school for a month while he was 16. When they landed in Europe, they quickly realized that their DIY tour wouldn’t exactly feel like spring break 4eva.

“We all got these really killer flus,” sighs Walker. “We had to bring Spencer to the ER in England because he had a fever of 104 or something crazy. He was hallucinating, he was so sick.”

“When I went to the emergency room, they said if my fever went any higher, I could have gotten brain damage,” Hazard confirms. “They gave me some medicine to break my fever and sent me on my way. I wasn’t even there overnight; there was a show to play.”

Between shows, Walker struggled to drive a dilapidated Sprinter van without seat belts or power steering. He estimates hitting three or four parked cars while navigating the narrow cobblestone streets of Krakow, leaving a path of destruction in the van’s wake. Once they crossed into Germany, the band was pulled over by police

and the vehicle was deemed unfit for travel.

They were left on the side of the road, brainstorming how to get to the impound lot to bail out their gear and luggage. But relenting ain’t in Full of Hell’s DNA. They rallied, forking over 500 Euro to snag their belongings and book it to the next gig.

“We played our show that day, and the tour ended great,” Walker confirms.

“And we went back to Europe the next year,” Hazard adds. “We took influence from Black Flag, who said they had to play hard every night.

We’d get in the van and that would push us.”

When you’re touring for weeks or months at a time, the van can feel like a powder keg.

Moods curdle, and patience gets tested. Tension runs high until a dust-up breaks out. There are also the physical demands; strenuous even when you’re not passing multiple kidney stones between gigs, like Bland once endured. Walker has suffered from food poisoning so badly that he’s kept a puke bucket next to the mic stand as a failsafe. But the medical emergencies and snafus are just campfire tales for another date.

Facing hospitalizations and winters of ice age demeanor, Hazard estimates that the band has only been late to three gigs in 10 years.

“Just don’t be a coward,” Walker summarizes.

“You gotta play.”

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With numerous split EPs in their discography, Full of Hell have always been drawn to tag-team camaraderie. In 2012 alone, they worked with both Mike IX Williams of Eyehategod and Code Orange back when they were still capital-K Kids.

But the gravitation towards immersive collaboration and texture blending continued.

There was a notable two-disc release with Japanese noise connoisseurs Merzbow. But befriending Portland downer-wave duo the Body challenged the rigidity of how Full of Hell approached music. As Full of Hell pursued precision in a live setting, their rehearsals were like tediously editing and revising a manuscript.

To the Body, music is more like Jack Kerouac pounding out jazz-prose on a scroll in a streamof-consciousness stupor. “[The Body] have been friends for a billion years, and there’s a lot of insight you can glean from those guys,” Walker notes. “The most important thing to me is improvisation: the ability to go into a studio and trust yourself to make something when you have nothing. We were never comfortable with being prepared less than 100 percent headed into a studio. That would be similar to a doing-your-school-report-in-your-underwear sort of scenario for us. But the Body love the idea of

happy mistakes; ingenious things you never would have premeditated that happen in the studio. That idea wasn’t in our wheelhouse before them.” “[Vocalist/guitarist] Chip [King] and I never know what it’s going to sound like,” admits Lee Buford, the drumming half of the Body. “We don’t write any songs, really. We just have like conceptual ideas of how they should be. I think that was weird for [Full of Hell]. They just had to get into that mindset.”

As Full of Hell prepare to celebrate their decade anniversary, the Body will reach their 20-year landmark this year. To attain that longevity, you have to communicate effectively, show appreciation when people give a shit and stay true to the spirit of the project. For Buford, that meant never losing sight of the band’s uncompromising spontaneity.

“We keep doing whatever we want to do,” Buford confirms. “We don’t worry about what would help us business-wise or musically, which is probably a detriment in some ways. We get people mad at us all the time that we’re not playing stuff like the first or second record. They’ll say, ‘I don’t like this electronic stuff.’ Where have you been? We’ve been doing it for like 10 years.”

While shifting from dark hardcore to churning out volumes of Throbbing Gristle-esque harsh noise, Full of Hell have embodied that same

When I went to the emergency room, they said if my fever went any higher, I could have gotten brain damage.

They gave me some medicine to break my fever and sent me on my way.

I wasn’t even there overnight;

there was a show to play.

-Spencer Hazard

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devil-may-care attitude. By exploring extremity without restrictions, they’ve turned heads and even captured the attentive ears of death metal royalty. After spotting a photograph of Max Cavalera donning a Full of Hell tee, they toured with him and the gents in Immolation in 2017 while playing tracks from Trumpeting Ecstasy.

“We hit it off from the start and became good friends, all of us working together and helping each other out,” Immolation vocalist/bassist Ross Dolan recalls. “It was nice to tour with a younger band that was focused, driven and passionate about what they were doing, while obviously having a good time doing it. I was impressed by how respectful they were to everyone on the tour—bands and crew—and watched them interact and have fun meeting their fans at the merch table each night.

“It was a very challenging tour with lots of very long drives, lots of snow and a constant sickness that made its way around the whole tour package,” he continues. “But despite this, they still killed it each night and had fun doing it. I was very impressed by their do-it-yourself attitude, which in so many ways reminded me of how we still are in Immolation.”

Because they’ve strayed outside their comfort zones, Full of Hell are even more prepared for the unknown. They still studiously prepare for

the road, championing each opportunity to turn a sedated crowd in their favor. But they can also approach writing music with an open mind and heart, surrendering to spontaneity and circumstance. For a band whose search for extremity flings them wildly into new aural wastelands, collaboration and improv were the next frontiers. Once again, exploring the unknown has rewarded them tenfold.

“It has made me a better human being,” Walker says of collaborating. “We never said, ‘Hey, let’s make a web of co-conspirators that will become our best friends and be in our weddings.’

It just sort of happened super organically. I feel like a hippie when I describe this, but it feels like the true point of creating art. It’s almost like a worship of the idea of friendship and love between people. Again, this is super hippie stuff, and I’m not even sure I want it printed. But the idea of collaboration is such a pure idea, and it’s challenged the members of this band in every conceivable way. We definitely wouldn’t be the band we are today without those projects.”

From the first breath of album opener “Burning Myrrh,” Full of Hell’s new record Weeping Choir (out in May) sets the world ablaze. Following Trumpeting Ecstasy’s clarion call, the material is sharpened so every note draws blood. The death metal malice and rabid stabs of grind still linger beneath the organized chaos of their Relapse debut, but bold new ideas creep from the album’s depths.

The saxophone slithering through “Ygramule the Many” invokes the mind-melting thrash-jazz of John Zorn’s Painkiller and Naked City projects. “Angels Gather Here” feels spawned from Eraserhead’s industrial hellscape, and features programming from James Kelly of Altar of Plagues.

But there’s also a sense throughout Weeping Choir that Full of Hell are revisiting old ghosts. The hardcore punk in the second half of “Downward” is a pit-stirring throwback to A389’s raucous roster.

“Rainbow Coil” is three minutes of noise that falls somewhere between Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and pitch-black purgatory. To the band’s founder, it was important to honor Full of Hell’s history without hindering their creative progress.

“With [Trumpeting Ecstasy], we wanted to make a straightforward record, first and foremost,” Hazard says. “We had just done the collabs with the Body before that; super noisy and avant garde and experimental. So, we wanted to take our influences from grind and death metal. But with [Weeping Choir], I wanted to take a step back and borrow from everything we’d done for the past decade. So, I wanted to add hardcore parts that we would have done on [2013’s] Rudiments of Mutilation, and stuff like that.”

But nothing on Trumpeting Ecstasy hinted at “Armory of Obsidian Glass,” Weeping Choir’s

harrowing centerpiece. The standout track shivers around a haunting vocal performance from guest collaborator Lingua Ignota (a.k.a. Kristin Hayter). After its sludgy death-doom relents, Ignota’s eerie wails become a literal weeping choir behind a veil of black ambience. With the deft tutelage of producer Kurt Ballou in his GodCity studio, the band has set a new high bar.

“We never would have written a song like this before,” Walker admits. “I don’t think it’s a space Spencer would have even thought to occupy before this record. And the song is really cool for me personally because it became so much more in-studio than the original demos.”

“I initially wrote the second half of that song like a mix of black metal with a Discordance Axis and Gridlink type of riff,” Hazard adds. “I meant for it to be super-fast with choppy blast beats under it, but we couldn’t get it to fit anywhere.

But I had another slower riff—I was listening to a bunch of Khanate while we were writing—so we ended up combining two ideas from opposite ends of the spectrum and molded them together.”

“Not to say genres like death metal or grindcore aren’t emotional at all, but sometimes they lack emotional depth,” Walker offers. “Speaking specifically to Full of Hell’s music, ‘Armory of Obsidian Glass’ has more emotion than usual. A lot of that is from [Hayter]. She sent over her vocal tracks, and there were like 20 of them. I went through them before we gave them to Kurt, and it straightup broke my heart. Her records are so deep and

powerful, and hearing her classically trained voice really going for it humbled me.”

While Walker’s lyrics have always carried weight, Weeping Choir is his finest mosaic of nightmare imagery. Among the Tolkien and NeverEnding Story references, there’s a search for truth among bone-strewn wastelands both metaphorical and literal. Walker rips the masks from what we assume to be true and expresses the real horror of truth’s pursuit. To paraphrase “Armory of Obsidian Glass,” each new door leads to another door.

“I think of Dylan as a landscape lyricist who uses language in a painterly way that eschews the usual metal tropes,” comments visual artist Mark McCoy. “While he’s able to conjure nightmarish worlds in his lyrics, his esoteric style seems born of another generation, perhaps even of another century. It’s his ability to conjure visceral feelings through language that’s helped me to create a visual direction for their albums.”

McCoy first worked with Full of Hell to create the memorable cover of their Merzbow collaboration in 2014. For Trumpeting Ecstasy, he created an image of flames bursting from a nun’s habit.

It was a cover that scorched any semblance of subtlety in favor of scalding commentary. Full of Hell still receive photographs of fans getting the design tattooed.

Now the next generation of Full of Hell disciples can get ink of McCoy’s new cover art: an anonymous holy figure raising a smoking chalice under a full moon’s gaze, his face just a

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smear of blackness in the fog. Walker guards his own take on the lyrics, instead encouraging the listener to uncover their own meaning. That’s exactly what McCoy did while creating a narrative for the record.

“The narrative goes, ‘Good is Evil, and Evil is the night, and the night is God, who spews forth from the unknowable to greet us in mourning,’” McCoy explains.

“The cover is a literal depiction of this, with a dark figure drinking in the night which rises from his chalice to envelop the world,” he continues. “In a biblical sense, the chalice symbolizes mankind’s redemption. But in this case, the meaning is inverted to imply a curse on mankind.”

There are few genres better suited as a soundtrack to humanity’s cursed existence than death metal. Trumpeting Ecstasy veered heavily towards the genre, and Weeping Choir follows suit.

But it’s not like death metal suddenly snared Full of Hell with one of Autopsy’s Severed Survival meathooks. Walker points to 2016’s Amber Mote in the Black Vault EP as a turning point, and it’s difficult to disagree. With time, it’s possible that students of Full of Hell’s discography see that EP like Mentally Murdered, Napalm Death’s bridge between grind and death metal.

“I feel we all listen to death metal,” Hazard posits, “but we all started in hardcore and punk bands. We just didn’t have a full grasp of our instruments. But because we’ve played together for so long, now we can use our Cryptopsy or Human Remains influences because we can kind of play them at this point, but with a punk edge.”

“Being around a band like Immolation a lot the last couple years has definitely had some sort of influence on us in some subtle way,” Walker adds. “If you look at someone with a crazy discography, Immolation’s music is so dark and strange in a way that you’d find in noise or something. It’s challenging in a different way.

You can’t help but be around dudes like that— lifer dudes still making relevant music—and not be inspired in some way.”

For Full of Hell, inspiration bubbles out of every attic rehearsal that’s recorded as raw as a Darkthrone demo. While Weeping Choir is a companion piece to Trumpeting Ecstasy, it’s also a relentless piece of art that reveals a band harnessing the skill and experience they’ve busted ass to obtain over the last decade.

“Lyrically and aesthetically, Weeping Choir is definitely the natural answer to Trumpeting Ecstasy,” Walker acknowledges. “If you view both records side by side, you can draw natural lines and feel a connection. Without humblebragging, I feel [that] after many years, we’re finally putting all that rabid energy we feel in our heads while thinking of making these records ... on tape so they’re vaguely reflective of what we imagined the whole time.”

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After 10 years of (ab)use, Full of Hell’s attic rehearsal space was a graveyard of broken equipment. Few drum kits can stand Bland’s devastating blast beats for years on end before they’re unceremoniously retired. Hazard counted doubledigit drum stands that were snapped in half before finally discarding them in a cleaning frenzy.

Joining the shattered drum equipment in the dumpster is the notorious acoustic guitar.

Respecting its rumored contagions, Hazard wore work gloves to discard it safely. No longer will it be watching the band from the corner, dust coating the dried blood supposedly caked to the rusted, untuned strings. There are plenty of things to fear in this world—you can read Walker’s lyrics and remind yourself of a few of them—but that guitar will no longer be one of them. Instead, they turn their eyes from the past to the wild sprawl ahead.

“We have more collaboration in the works,” Walker teases. “I think that will occupy our time for the next couple years. To be honest, I have no idea where we’re going sound-wise. I don’t think it matters. I don’t want to know.

“But I’m sure it will shift again at some point,” he continues. “We’ve talked for years about putting out an AmRep-influenced, Melvins-type noise-rock record, so we’ll see.

We’re not loyal to any particular sound.”

Maybe Full of Hell can’t promise what they’ll sound like tomorrow. But today Weeping Choir represents the band’s death/grind opus. Back in Decibel’s feature about the state of death metal in issue #154 (August 2017), Immolation’s Dolan outlined some of the ways to keep the genre vibrant and healthy for years to come. Among those were:

Asked about the quote in relation to Full of Hell, Dolan immediately says that they check all the boxes. “[Full of Hell] represent the new blood of this scene,” Dolan enthuses. “They embody the passion and will to forge ahead in a very difficult and constantly changing music business. They have the talent and drive to continue on and inspire other new bands. But aside from everything else, they all have good heads on their shoulders, and have the right attitude to make even more noise than they already have.”

“I have never seen a more hard-working band,” McCoy cosigns. “Their dedication to their music

is fierce, and their connection to their fans is extraordinary. Everything they’ve achieved has been the result of their endless drive to push their sound and explore new ideas on their own terms, which, to me, is the essence of DIY. “Their sound keeps tightening, and they’re only growing more focused and intense,” he continues. “I believe they will be remembered as a defining band of this era.”

Again, their labelmate Romeo—this time with Integrity on Relapse—has seen the band’s ascent from his unique front row seat as a self-described “band dad.”

“They are the perfect example of how to build a band from the ground up,” Romeo proclaims.

“During the past decade, while some of their peers would get popular fast and eventually wane, Full of Hell just kept building it one brick at a time until they were sitting on top of an impenetrable wall. Although the label’s time has passed, they will always be A389’s pride and joy.

“It’s funny to look back and remember them as super green, enthusiastic kids that eclipsed me in knowledge and experience very quickly,” Romeo laughs. “Now I’m the one bugging them with questions on how to do things.”

Praise from genre trailblazers and DIY luminaries isn’t new to Full of Hell, but it’s still surreal. While they’ve worked for every ticket and logo-patched trucker cap they sell, that’s just part of the self-reliant punk ethos they’ve admired in Converge and Neurosis. Like those outfits, Full of Hell are intensely protective of their band, and seek to turn art into their livelihood—as long as the art doesn’t suffer. To Hazard, it’s the same spirit that he had as a teenager lining the attic with insulation.

“It doesn’t feel like anything has changed,” he shrugs. “Some people talk like we’re a big hotshot band, but it doesn’t feel like that at all.

It still feels like we’re a local band. Nothing has put us on a pedestal over anyone else.

“People consider us prolific,” Hazard continues.

“I just consider that being part of a band. That’s what you’re supposed to do; create and make music. But I have really bad anxiety, so I fear we’re going to break up or lose momentum if we’re not playing shows, if we’re not writing. That tic has been what has pushed us the last 10 years, I think.

Some days it sucks really bad to feel that way; other times, the ability to get shit accomplished is great.” “[Music]’s definitely an obsession or true passion for me,” Walker stresses. “I haven’t wanted anything else since the first time I was presented with the idea of being in a band. It’s ingrained in me. When I met Spencer, I felt he was a guy who’d probably rather be dead than not be in a band. I was ready to be broke and go for it, and he was, too. When you’re faced with that big, questionable darkness, everything is easier when you have someone there to help you. I know Spencer won’t give up, and I won’t either.”

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INSIDE ≥

64 AKTARUM It's only rock 'n' troll but I like it 66 DEAD WITCHES Like nowadays Electric Wizard, but with good riffs

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

66 DEVIL MASTER Bow to me, faithfully 68 LAST IN LINE The only way you can go is down 74 PISSGRAVE *flushes toilet... in cemetery*

Savage Restoration

APRIL

After almost four years in purgatory, a reconfigured and revitalized NOISEM drag a bit of hell back to earth

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th Hour completely ignored

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–Year Billy McFarland prison sentence

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Completely necessary doumentaries

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F

or a hot minute there back in 2015, it really did appear as if Noisem were about to skip the line, transcend Samsara— that’s the seemingly endless cycle of birth and rebirth cenNOISEM tral to Buddhism and some other eastern religions, you unenlightCease to Exist ened fucking heathens—and head straight for death/thrash/ 20 BUCK SPIN grind nirvana. The Baltimore outfit’s stellar scene-jolting sophomore full-length, Blossoming Decay, was an unusually deft and vicious opus that not only electrified fans and landed the band on the cover of this very magazine hovering over the question “Are They Extreme Metal’s Brightest Spark?” but also had Relapse Records racing over, contract in hand. ¶ In retrospect, there were omens that exiting this plane’s suffering would actually not be so smooth. On ultra-sick Blossoming Decay opener “Trail of Perturbation,” for example, the narrator is “wandering along this path” where blooming flowers ultimately “rip from their roots /

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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reincarnate into shards … disabling the will to live”; meanwhile,“Burning” warned that “the heat of the argument does not warm / but only freezes away.” And so, rather than a hype-justifying new record, we got a long period of silence and—eventually, in mid-2017—a Facebook post announcing the departure of bassist Billy Carnes, guitarist Yago Ventura and vocalist Tyler Carnes.

Sebastian and Harley Phillips—guitars and drums, respectively—would carry on as a threepiece joined on bass/vocals by Castle Freak’s Ben Anft, a former bandmate from the brothers’ preNoisem outfit Necropsy.

That’s some extinction-level tribulation right there, but Noisem 2.0 admirably navigate their way to the other side. In the aftermath of the Blossoming lineup implosion, the Phillips brothers insisted they were the creative core of the band, and the somewhat ironically titled Cease to Exist certainly bears that out. Though the traces of transmigration are audible—particularly in the vocals (less ravage, more pillage) and tighter, streamlined sonic polish—the trademark velocity, lithe riff acrobatics, potent x-factor attack and delicious left field digressions are all here in spades. It’s an interesting mix of frenzy and focus that often feels like Noisem’s Heartwork moment. Then again, there are tracks that you could as easily call the band’s Altars of Madness moment. Or Master of Puppets moment. Or Napalm Death moment. At its best—closer “Ode to Absolution”; mid-album slayer “Penance for the Solipsist”—Cease to Exist nimbly crosses the aforementioned streams.

It’s true that, depending on your personal predilections, you may find yourself—much like your humble correspondent—missing a bit of the teetering, wild Noisem abandon of yore.

It is nonetheless difficult to imagine those who live for a sick mélange of extremity greeting the rebirth of Noisem with anything less than overwhelming gratitude. —SHAWN MACOMBER

AD PATRES

7

A Brief Introduction to Human Experiments XENOKORP

Prescribing pain

A Brief Introduction to Human Experiments begins with an appropriate sound bite from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. As asylum aides prep Jack Nicholson’s character for nonconsensual electroshock therapy, a nurse applies conductant gel to his temples. “Just a dab’ll do ya,” he sardonically quips. The bone-dry call for moderation from Nicholson’s tragic protagonist cuts to the heart of Ad Patres’ measured approach to brutal death metal.

The French quintet is back seven years after 6 4 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

their Scorn Aesthetics debut, and they bring refreshing restraint and disciplined songwriting with them. Brief Introduction boasts a plethora of nimble riffs at breakneck speeds (“Verses Void” and “Led by Flesh”), as well as an ear for sneaky grooves (“Spellbound”). Unlike inferior examples of the genre, there’s no center stage struggle between excessive technical noodling or brain-dead slams here. With only a brief Clockwork Orange sound clip as a reprieve, Ad Patres use their riffs like percussive weapons and paintbrushes. They create dense, textured compositions (“Enclosing Terror” and album closer “The Floating Point”) that are unbeholden to any single heyday of the genre’s past.

Lyrically and thematically, A Brief Introduction to Human Experiments argues that psychology’s culture of mind-manipulation is a form of mass-brainwashing on par with religious indoctrination. As someone who’s an advocate for universal therapy in some form, I can’t cosign that equivalence. But the performances from duel-shredders Olivier Bousquet and Pierre-Yves Marani are their own form of treatment for jaded death-heads. Clocking in at 34 minutes, the brevity mentioned in the record’s title is part of its appeal: There’s no filler to trim here, just nuanced brutality that I’m comfortable prescribing to anyone with a Pestilence or Inveracity backpatch. —SEAN FRASIER

AKTARUM

7

Ragnatroll

SELF-RELEASED

A spin in party metal’s trolls-royce

Troll metal: the Bud Light Lime of the metal world. Simultaneously unjustifiable while also being so precisely poised within its own extraordinary niche, you just know it’s somehow a vital, abiotic mechanism underpinning our delicate, ecological community.

Belgium’s Aktarum have been faithfully menacing the good folk of the shire since 2005, pillaging festivals and marking their everexpanding territory, but they’ve yet to leave an impression on their respective community in the same fashion that their closest kinsmen (Ensiferum, Eluveitie, Finntroll and Korpiklaani) have. With the band’s current LP, Ragnatroll, I’d argue that Aktarum are finally poised to fell their quarry.

Though admittedly playing in a sandbox I rarely frequent, Aktarum nearly hold their own against the likes of Eluveitie’s majestic Slania and Finntroll’s borderline brilliant Blodsvept.

Orbiting a star system populated by the likes of Tales From the Thousand Lakes-era Amorphis (check out the awesome “Trolls in the Fog”), Tankard

and, you know, the soundtrack to The Ocarina of Time, Aktarum succeed by leaning into their outlandishness while also composing great riffs. Each track is justified by solid hooks and by simply being fun to listen to.

Sure, there’s the occasional whoopsie-doo (the floundering solo on “Council of Trolls”).

And yes, there’s an undue stiffness that clings to the album like troll shit to the sole of your Keds. Simultaneously, there’s not a single track on the album that doesn’t rev me up like the proverbial deuce. Go figure: After all these years, I may finally be blinded by the (Bud) light. —FORREST PITTS

CHILDREN OF BODOM

7

Hexed

N UC L EA R B L A ST

Hey, that Reaper-guy looks like Mortiis

Children of Bodom have bounced between brilliant (melodic death) and vapid (death melodic) over the course of their 10-album career. Hexed, on first blush, advances Alexi “Wildchild” Laiho and team. That is to say, the Finns have retapped the well of inspiration that fed the killers on Halo of Blood (“Bodom Blue Moon,” “Scream for Silence”) and, dare I say, Follow the Reaper (“Everytime I Die,” “Kissing the Shadows”). Throughout Hexed, Laiho and new sideman Daniel Freyberg tear up fretboards, infusing ample amounts of technicality, atmosphere and crazy shit that makes Mors Principium Est sound like Bon Jovi.

OK, maybe not Bon Jovi, but certainly like Dangerous Toys. Really, the Finnish/Swedish duo are as much on fire at the beginning of Hexed (“The Road,” “Glass Houses”) as they are at the end (“Relapse (The Nature of My Crime),” “Knuckleduster”). Laiho has reined in the badboy vocals, which leaves plenty of room for his trademark snarl. Not since Hate Crew Deathroll has Laiho pissed this much vinegar.

But there are other elements to Children of Bodom some two-plus decades in. On Hexed, when the Granadillo isn’t on fire, it’s the foundation for a serious groove or two. “Under Grass and Clover,” “Platitudes and Barren Words” and the pogo-friendly “Soon Departed” deftly swing and sway without corny, unnecessary homages to John “Fuckin’” Fogerty or Finnish hero Michael Monroe. The negative here is that Hexed might be a little too long to sustain the awesomeness over time. As with Children of Bodom’s later output, the 47-minute clock feels a song or long two in the tooth. But with a leadoff like “The Road,” maybe it’s best to treat the filler as “Japanese bonus tracks.” —CHRIS DICK

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DEAD WITCHES

8

The Final Exorcism HE AV Y P SYCH SOUNDS

WITCH HUNT!

The various twisted branches that have grown from the Electric Wizard family tree continue to produce some seriously diseased fruit. On The Final Exorcism, Dead Witches feature ex-EW drummer Mark Greening leading a (newly revised) quartet through five ponderous, loping, psychedelic crushers, a creepy intro and one brief interlude that sounds like something from Pink Floyd circa 1969.

The opportunities for expressing “originality” in this kind of oppressive ’70s doom—the kind that U.K. musicians seem best suited to produce—are minimal. It’s pretty by-the-numbers as far as where you can go. Drop-tuned? Check.

Glacial pace? Check. Ominous-sounding string bends? Yep. Baleful vocals? Of course. Dead Witches do, however, discover some opportunities to bring a little much-needed texture to a well-worn path.

The band’s best asset may well be new vocalist Soozi Chameleone, whose frequently distorted exhortations offer a feminine take on the typical Ozzy-influenced wailings so common in the genre. She possesses a nice range, but tends toward the throaty/guttural, which suits the thick, throbbing material well. The production itself acts as a prominent “feature,” with Greening’s busy drumming mostly buried under Carl Geary’s fuzzed-out bass and walls of distorted guitar from new guy Oliver Irongiant. That alone is a thing of beauty, laced with psychedelic touches that populate these epic ruminations with little Easter eggs of mindfuckery.

The songs themselves are solid enough (though it’s occasionally hard to distinguish where one ends and the other begins), but it’s the combination of all the elements—from the personnel to the recording to the performances—that makes this an old-school U.K. doom album not to be overlooked. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

DEMON HUNTER

7

War

S O L I D S TAT E

DEMON HUNTER

8

Peace

S O L I D S TAT E

Metalcore survivors make their best album, ever—twice

Simultaneously releasing two full-lengths conceptually sutured to opposing states of existence is 6 6 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

kind of a big deal for any artist/label team— one reason why it never happens. (While only a few months separated Opeth’s Deliverance and Damnation, the albums dropped in different years.) To make a fait accompli of doing so is pretty much a first—all the more when, per War and Peace, each release captures the recording entity in different phases of an apparently major transition.

Neither album has much to do with metalcore.

Apart from the NWOBHM-flavored “Close Enough,” “Ash’”s straightforward thrash and the occasional djental interlude, War captures Demon Hunter in full-on groove metal mode. The condition would suit them even minus Zeuss’s impeccably measured mix. As matters stand, it’s close to impossible not to dance around at least a little while the record is playing.

Peace inspires casual movement at least as much—though the impetus runs more toward air guitar. It’s by far the more radical departure from the band’s past work—in part because Ryan Clark hews to clean vocals for all but a handful of lines, but even more because the album displays a level of depth, maturity, personality and variety only hinted at on previous Demon Hunter releases. By the time you’re 30 seconds into piano/vocals-only closer “Fear Is Not My Guide,” Clark has your heart’s attention to the extent that you really don’t want the rest of the band to come in. What happens next is exactly what needs to. —ROD SMITH

DEVIL MASTER

9

Satan Spits on Children of Light RELAPSE

Especially good at expectorating

Last year, Philly coven Devil Master entranced crusty ears new to their cemetery punk with a compilation of demos called Manifestations.

Satan Spits on Children of Light is their debut LP for Relapse, and it is further introduction to a band ready to headline your next black mass or haunted house keg party.

Most of Satan Spits on Children of Light rips straight from black metal’s primordial ooze, when Hellhammer and Bathory were forging the genre from death-thrash and fanged punk.

But if Devil Master occasionally sound like Integrity playing a reverb-drenched Halloween soundtrack, there’s good reason: Integrity’s live bassist Francis Kano is one of Devil Master’s vampire-caped riff-demons.

But just how Integrity have experimented with everything from end-days sludge to soul singers, Devil Master has more than one trick to pull from their bubbling cauldron. They dish out demonic surfer vibes in “Skeleton Hand” and

“Christ’s Last Hiss,” reimagining Dick Dale as a leather-clad incubus. “Desperate Shadow” even conjures the mystery and menace of transcendental death metal like Morbus Chron.

In the hands of Arthur Rizk, the album embraces lo-fi cult pastiche with every creeping synth line and Tom Warrior OOGH. The songs still conclude roughly and without warning; the record’s seams are exposed and raw. But that’s part of Devil Master’s allure. The garish album cover feels like a darker version of Coney Island’s Dante’s Inferno attraction, and the production captures that same feeling of a grimy hellride. Without visual aids, you can listen to the record before seeing them live and accurately hypothesize, “These freaks rule; I bet they’ve played behind a veil of prop cobwebs.”

—SEAN FRASIER

FUNEREAL PRESENCE

8

Achatius

THE AJNA OFFENSIVE

Let your freak flag fly

I feel like I’ve made this point before in many other places, but allow me to reiterate: Black metal has always been weird. From early Mortuary Drape to the first riffs of A Blaze in the Northern Sky, through the perennial Written in Waters and Mirties Metafora, and onward into the present and future, there has always been an undercurrent of oddity in black metal. Lurking in the underground from the late aughts is the uniquely maddening Funereal Presence.

An offshoot of the masterful Negative Plane, Funereal Presence’s take on black metal is as off-kilter as it is… metallic, for lack of a better word. According to mainman Bestial Devotion, Funereal Presence exists as a tribute to and continuation of the classic music he once loved, but this is a bit of an underselling. Yes, there are shades of the strange late ’80s/early ’90s classics, back when stylistic growing pains gave way to pure, unbridled creativity, but this continuation of that era has evolved into an extension of this aforementioned oddity and creativity.

Five years after the acclaimed The Archer Takes Aim, Funereal Presence reawaken with the ambitious Achatius. Composed of four lengthy, twisting and churning tracks of early second-wave black metal-influenced obscurity, this sophomore effort is both a refinement of the artist’s earlier work and an expansion of earlier intentions.

Simply put, Achatius expounds upon Bestial Devotion’s earlier thesis and puts it through a blender. Though reminiscent of The Archer Takes Aim, Achatius is a different beast—nonlinear, atmospheric and horrifyingly incredible. Let weirdness reign. —JON ROSENTHAL

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GATEKEEPER

7

Grey Maiden CRUZ DEL SUR

“An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told”

Western Canadian band Gatekeeper turned plenty of heads (yours truly’s included) a year ago with their sterling debut album East of Sun. Playing the kind of confident, devout and catchy vintage heavy metal we’ve all come to expect from the consistently reputable label Cruz Del Sur, Gatekeeper struck an immensely pleasing balance between raucous speed metal and the more swashbuckling side of proto-power metal, thanks in large part to the vision of guitarist and bandleader Jeff Black. Bolstered by singer Jean-Pierre Abboud, who can hit the high notes as well as anyone out there, East of Sun fit perfectly between such records as Manowar’s Into Glory Ride and Abbatoir’s Vicious Attack.

Not content to rest on their well-earned laurels, the band has returned in 2019 with a nifty little EP that fleshes out their sound and aesthetic beautifully. Comprised of two new songs, a reworked older number and a very cool NWOBHM cover, the four-track disc covers a lot of stylistic territory. “Grey Maiden” already ranks as one of the band’s best efforts thanks to its swinging riff, Maiden-esque progressive tendencies and Savatage-style fantasy tale. Previously released on the 2013 Prophecy and Judgement demo, the stately “Tale of Twins” is given a welcome spit and polish, while new track “Moss” delves into Celtic folk territory. Capping it off is a rousing rendition of “Richard III” by the very underrated NWOBHM band Tredegar, and the band captures the original’s epic theatricality in impeccable fashion, reason enough for no traditional heavy metal fan to sleep on this fine EP. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

IN FLAMES

5

I, the Mask

ELEVEN SEVEN MUSIC

By clicking the link below, you agree…

The legal confrontation that spills out of the review link for In Flames’ follow-up to 2016’s Battles—quite possibly the most fractional effort from the Swedes to date—reads like world peace is under threat, and any and all actions against said proverbial goodwill will result in solitary confinement in either Guantanamo or Lagos. Once the breathless legalese ends, I, the Mask begins.

In many respects, In Flames have found what they were looking for on 2006’s Come Clarity.

Namely, that between the occasional sweet riff, oh-wow chorus and super-melodic solo burst, 6 8 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

there’s a band content with the appropriation of hit singles by Trust Company (“Running From Me”), Chevelle (“The Red”) and Trapt (“Still Frame”) for album fodder. The formula across I, the Mask is far too evident to ignore. While songs like “Burn,” the Port Noir-ish “We Will Remember,” the very Scandi-pop sounding “Stay With Me” and the title track indicate that the Swedes are either nodding back to the glory days or peering carefully into the future, the majority of I, the Mask feels like a band stuck in the constructs of 2002. The ramp-up to choruses on “Voices,” “Call My Name,” “Follow Me” and the “Arabic scale”-style “Deep Inside” are entirely predictable and interchangeable.

Certainly, the harshness toward In Flames— one of the progenitors of melodic death metal— may appear unfair, but the Swedes are treading water. A band with this much talent should be well past the rim of greatness. In fact, it’s nothing to do with frontman Anders Fridén’s vocals or the new American rhythm section of Bryce Paul Newman and Tanner Wayne. Rather, it’s just one retread riff and song after another. I, the Mask is on par with Battles and Siren Charms, but that’s not saying much. —CHRIS DICK

KALEIKR

7

Heart of Lead DEBEMUR MORTI PRODUCTIONS

Open minds and hardened arteries

As the promotional materials have it, this Icelandic black metal duo’s debut could be described as a three-act descent from sadness into despair, terminating at the artistically promising “total mental collapse.” But if you’re thinking that this sounds too much like an afternoon at the DMV, or that Heart of Lead is an all too straightforward work of expressing misery on tape, rest assured, folks—we are taking the scenic route.

Driven by Maximilian Klimko on guitar, bass, keys and vocals, with Kjartan Harðarson handling drums and percussion, Kaleikr have a wayfaring style, melding the power of progressive death metal with BM harshness. Stellar contributions by guest violist Árni Bergur Zoëga deepen the pathos.

Such is Kaleikr’s melodic sensibility. You might also argue that they occupy a similar emotional plane as Evoken; at times the mood feels consistent with that strain of ornate bleakness.

Kaleikr’s darkness is not all-consuming, though. If sorrow is a through-line, it’s nonetheless muscled out on tracks such as “Internal Contradiction,” all low-end physicality, busy riffs formidably executed. Not to mention the antic “Neurodelirium,” a work of tonal ping-pong with an invigorating prog middle section. No doubt, having worked together since 2015, Klimko and

Harðarson have a musical shorthand that exhibits itself in a preternatural control over their sound. Hey, if they want to, say, press pause on the psychic obsolescence for a muso jazz freakout on “Of Unbearable Longing,” so be it. That’s just the sort of compositional set piece that the likes of Ihsahn, Mikael Åkerfeldt and Ivar Bjørnson have made a career out of, without whom Kaleikr’s creative horizons might have been dramatically narrower. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

LACERATION

5

Remnants

UNSPEAKABLE AXE

More like leftovers

All right, I think I’ve pieced this together. Remnants is not a new album by death-thrashers Laceration, but a 10-track compilation of three separate releases, spanning from 2009 to 2013. So, let’s go from shreddingest to least shreddingest.

The middle three songs are from a 2013 split with Tinnitus, and have the most overt death metal influence. They’re also by far the best things here. While still thrashy, there’s a clear Charles Schuldiner influence, especially with the vocals and some of the solos; but even the interplay of the bass and drums makes for a more interesting and punishing listen. Then there are the opening three songs, from a 2010 demo that is far more reflective of the band’s homebase: the thrash kingdom of the Bay Area (though this is still some fairly scathing stuff).

And that leaves us with the last four songs: music that’s now a decade old and accordingly sounds the most dated. The production is rough, the playing is sloppier and the songs themselves are the most standard/disposable thrash, sounding only worse when compared to what comes before. Not to mention the best of this particular batch was actually re-recorded, and you already heard it seven songs ago.

Listening to their 2018 demo, Laceration have now delved deeper into death metal, which offers you two options: Either pick up Remnants and reminisce about what they once were, or follow their new path and beg them, for god’s sake, to finally do a full-length like a normal band. —SHANE MEHLING

LAST IN LINE

7

II

FRONTIERS

They’re off to the witch (again)

When the surviving members of Dio reunited as Last in Line to pay tribute to late leader Ronnie James Dio, as sweet as the sentiment was, something didn’t sit well.

The 5th studio album by legendary New Orleans‘ Death Metal masters „One of the most ambitious albums that we‘ve ever written” Francis M. Howard

Release date: 22. February 2019 available on black and seablue Vinyl, CD and Digital

So get ready,

The Fallen Entities

is back!

A wide range of over 10.000 articles (vinyl, CDs, shirts & patches) can be found in our webshop:

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RUMBLY RU MBLY THROUGH A SPEAKER THROUGH

After all, Vivian Campbell revisiting Dio music after Ronnie’s death felt “too little, too late” in the wake of many years of unresolved acrimony between the two. It would have been nice to see them mend fences, because the music they made together from 1983 through 1985 was pure magic. Sadly, that didn’t happen, and although that sense of unresolved bitterness remains, it’s admittedly a joy to hear Campbell making heavy music again.

In the wake of Jimmy Bain’s passing in 2016, Campbell and drumming legend Vinny Appice have found a terrific replacement in former Ozzy collaborator Phil Soussan, and Last in Line’s second album, aptly titled II, continues where 2016’s Heavy Crown left off. Not surprisingly, the more aggressive songs (“Black Out the Sun,” “Year of the Gun”) showcase the band’s strengths: Campbell was one of the best riffmeisters of the ’80s, and he lets loose some killer guitar work here, while Appice, one of the hardest-hitting drummers metal has ever seen, adds the right amount of thunder. Singer Andrew Freeman does a great job in his own right, but this record is all about Campbell, who sounds rejuvenated. shredding like he did 35 years ago. What better way to pay tribute to your former mentor than making music he himself would have been proud of?

—ADRIEN BEGRAND

Inconvenient and arcane

BY DUTCH PEARCE

FOUL

Of Worms CALIGARI

Foul wield true death-doom in the sense that their output is equal parts rolling, crushing death metal and slow, agonized doom metal. Unlike their labelmates Bloodsoaked Necrovoid, who play Swallowed-style horrific death-doom, the Seattle-based Foul lean more toward the melodic side of the death-doom subgenre.

Hints of Hooded Menace can be heard, but Foul, like their forebears Infester, always rear up and do something ugly and unpredictable every time you think you’ve got ’em figured out. The vocals barf like Reifert, post-chugging ipecac. The drums sound like they got the guy at the bottom of a dungeon and he’s playing for his dear life.

Overall, Of Worms is a wildly entertaining and invariably heavy half hour.

WILSUMNES

Upon the Altar of Sacrificial Blood BLACK GANGRENE

MALAKHIM

8

II

IRON BONEHEAD PRODUCTIONS

(Un)orthodoxy

It’s no secret that the underground has been awash with the high tide of what is known as “orthodox black metal.” Following in Mortuus’s (or Arioch’s, your pick) footsteps, the devotees of the great Dark Lord pledge their undying loyalty through unrelenting chaos and discordant, terrifying madness. It is a style of one-upmanship and “unholier than thou” attitudes—each installment a mightier fuck off to Christendom, but also to its surroundings and stylistic siblings.

On the surface, Sweden’s Malakhim is no different from their “tritones and triangles” brethren. Intrinsically Mayhemic and darker than the blackest pit, it is easy to write them off as “just another one of those bands,” but the group’s second release (titled II, duh) is a trickster, hiding in plain sight. II plays a game of patience, requiring multiple listens to truly reveal itself amidst its mighty bedlam.

Beneath the short sharp shock of its immediacy and sulfuric ardor is a tangled knot of intrigue and intricacy.

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Nothing at all is known to the public about Black Gangrene’s latest offering, a debut tape from a black metal band calling itself Wilsumnes. There’s a howling, almost peaking quality to these songs that’s reminiscent of some of the more introspective European bands like Candelabrum, Faceless Entity, and, indeed, there’s a melancholic drag to these songs, but Wilsumnes blast too hard and too much to be called depressive. Really, it’s quite unique. Endless tremolo riffs are kicked up into frenzies by blast beats, then released into run-for-your-life gallops more cathartic than climactic.

PRIMITIVE WARFARE Primitive Warfare

STYGIAN BLACK HAND

You may think you know what you’re getting with Primitive Warfare, and if you’re thinking you’re getting a fuck-ton of war metal up your ass, you’re not wrong. But you’re not as prepared as you may think. Primitive Warfare are a U.S.-based war metal band, but this drummer sounds like he came from a slam band. Herein called Pu239 (after Plutonium-239, the main isotope used in making nuclear weapons), this dude is an absolute beast! While the riffs and vocals are standard fare for this subgenre, the

drum performance makes Primitive Warfare a band worth checking out.

NAHTSKELDUZ

Helm of Darkness FORGOTTEN CENTURIES

Nahtskelduz are Swedish dungeon synth, and they straddle the lines between old-school and modern, epic and minimal, captivating and inspiring in all the right ways. Helm of Darkness was “Composed & Cast” by Glömd, who allegedly is a wellknown Swedish black metal musician.

And it’s interesting that Ancient Records mastermind Swartadauthuz drew the Nahtskelduz logo. What really matters: Helm of Darkness is a debut both satisfying and refreshing. The opening track proves his ability and his allegiance to the subgenre, but once inside his dungeon, Glömd reveals to the listener the breadth of his influences, as well as the depths of his loneliness.

RESTLESS Restless

A D U LT FA N TA S Y

Restless, from Olympia, WA, feature Reuben Storey (of Christian Mistress) and Quayde LaHüe on drums. The former put out this tape on his own label, Adult Fantasy. Restless play vintage hard rock. This might not be metal, but several tracks are definitely air-guitar-around-the-house Thin Lizzy worship. Goofy vocals encourage you to belt along. Smooth licks abound. The best ones hit like dopamine after winning free tickets to see Tull at the Star Lake Amphitheater.

Restless are having a good time here, and it’s impossible not to get in on it with them.

GEHEIMNISVOLL

Venomous Sorcery Through Hidden Darkness KNIFE VISION

Here’s some scathing stateside black metal that hits as hard as it pierces. The vocals have that shimmering metallic reverb on them à la Sanguine Relic.

The riffs stab like simplified versions of those wielded by their European heroes. By no means better, but certainly not weaker either. Four tracks, 20 minutes. It’s anyone’s guess who’s behind it, but Geheimnisvoll’s demo just came out of nowhere to prove that, in fact, you have not had your fill of lo-fi vampyric black metal, because this is excellent and not to be missed.

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However—and this is most important— Malakhim put being a metal band before all the chaos and competition of orthodoxy. The intensity found herein is all based in pure riffage, not the atmosphere that pseudo-chaos could potentially carry. In its four parts, II may be black as pitch, but the surrounding darkness conceals leather, spikes and history. Each new riff is a testament to black metal across its entire timeline: melodies, discord, D-beats, heavy metal… you name it. The 20-minute release’s only true pitfall? It’s too short! We need more! —JON ROSENTHAL

MIND POWER

7

Q1

SELF-RELEASED

Punching the factory floor

After the dissolution of Philly metalcore heroes A Life Once Lost, guitarist Doug Sabolick took off down a musical path that allowed him to indulge his psychedelic-Afro-garage-prog fetish/ Hawkwind worship in Ecstatic Vision. Exvocalist Robert Meadows has been seen fronting deathcore bruisers Left to Vanish, but has now emerged with his Mind Power project, gathering ex-members of Ligeia, Dead End Path and Bring the Heat to reminisce about the 2000’s and the way things were: when breakdowns were mosh pit ‘on’ buttons; when locked-in eighth-note, alternate picked downtuned riffs were the toast of the town; when the New England Metal and Hardcore Fest was worth attending.

Let’s be clear, just because you’ve heard what Mind Power is selling a million times over doesn’t automatically de-legitimize it. If that were the case, none of this, or us, would be here. The trick is to either teach an old dog new tricks or rebuild that old dog with $6 million dollars worth of Lee Majors-approved upgrades to make it a better version. Mind Power may not biconically reinvent the wheel, but they at least add some pretty effective tire weights to make it run smoother. The supporting scaffold may be all about All Out War, Merauder, the majority Thorp Records roster and the early years of Meadows’ former band, but some glorious augmentation is provided by a coating of Foley-like guitar noise similar to the flowing industrial clang swirling through Godflesh, Neurosis and Treponem Pal. The rhythms pulsate with dance floor grooves while the second layer contributes a complementary cybernetic bleakness. It’s like the result of taking that contingent of beefy dudes hanging out in your local tattoo shop to a weekend coding workshop; worlds collide and someone’s getting an ass kicking. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO 7 2 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

MARK MORTON

6

Anesthetic S P I N E FA R M

Take as needed for pain

There are few guitarists finer than Mark Morton at grilling a huge side of riff on the groove metal barbecue.

The late Dimebag Darrell, Zakk Wylde... maybe early ’90s Andreas Kisser? It may seem like the most meatheaded style of guitar-slinging, but it takes some real talent to sear that meat properly.

The Lamb of God six-stringer’s first solo effort. Anesthetic, comes 20-odd years into his recording career, and in that time he’s built up quite the rolodex. Morton rounded up a lot of high-profile collaborators for this project.

Metal cred bros like Megadeth’s Dave Ellefson and Testament’s Chuck Billy lend their talents to thrashing ragers like “The Never.” Respected grunge-era survivors like Mark Lanegan and the Black Crowes’ rhythm section help with the bluesy jams like “Axis.”

And then things start going a little off the rails. He enlists Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy, Buckcherry’s Josh Todd and Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix for alt-metal crud that feels beholden to that time period right before the New Wave of American Heavy Metal swept the refuse out into the ocean. Let’s just say that “Cross Off (feat.

Chester Bennington)” would’ve received heavy rotation on Fuse’s “Uranium” show.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re into that sound. Anesthetic just feels dated—and, as is often the case with guest-star-laden projects, it can seem disjointed between the nü and the blue. On the bright side, the songs don’t come across as Lamb of God cast-offs. Morton has prepared a fresh feast for this—though of the cuts have gone past expiration dates. —JEFF TREPPEL

MOURNING SIGN

8

Contra Mundum

O R C H E S T R AT E D M I S E R Y RECORDINGS

Bargain bin banger

You know what’s better than an obscure gem that’s somehow fallen through the cracks of time? A bargain bin banger! The album artwork for these Swedish prog-death dudes’ third album—their first in 23 years— totally looks like something that would snag the half-glazed eye of a perusing metalhead shopper.

And no doubt this semi-interested party would look at their logo and think that Mourning Sign play trad doom, or maybe they’re an English crust band. They’d look at that generic artwork, the album title and its typeface. They’d scope that label name. No clues there either.

Fortunately for the fictitious and daring patron of this not-too-far-fetched scenario, Contra Mundum comes on strong and makes no excuses for itself. Opener “Dualism” begins with a palm-muted and melodic intro that could lead to anything. But when it erupts into a pounding death metal build-up with a spiraling guitar lead that’s both catchy and confident in that especially Swedish way, the listener simply forgets all preconceived notions and sets to headbanging immediately. An intro of solemn churchy voices and aery organs comes before the fourth track, providing a moment to realize that this isn’t what you were expecting. But Mourning Sign are nevertheless worthy and then some.

Don’t judge this album by its cover or logo.

Contra Mundum is 10 songs of timeless and solid Swedeath, an album practically bursting wide open with tough riffs, ripping solos, tireless vocals and an incessant barrage of killer drumming. It’s awesome to hear guys come back after over two decades, play as hard as they can and scream their guts out. Take a chance on Mourning Sign. No matter your expectations, you’ll be glad you did. —DUTCH PEARCE

MYSTIFIER

8

Protogoni Mavri Magiki Dynasteia SEASON OF MIST

What fresh hell is this?

The 18 years that have passed since Mystifier’s previous album, Profanus, have evidently been restorative. Of course, the Brazilian trio’s appetite for anti-Christian agitation remains undiminished, and once Protogoni Mavri Magiki Dynasteia (which translated via Google reads “Primal Black Magic Dynasty”) finds its stride, there’s a generous serving of the fuzzy blackened death craziness that you all tuned in for. But moreover, Protogoni has Mystifier returning to the lo-fi occultist pomp that made Wicca and Göetia so evil and essential.

Take the fractured weirdness of the title track, which opens the album with contributions from Prurient and Jim “Mutilator” Patsouris of Rotting Christ/Varathron fame. Or “Weighing Heart Ceremony,” which immediately follows in the key of weird-minor and sees Diego Do’Urden take a quick bass solo before officially sanctioning the aforementioned fuzzy blackened death craziness. This madness abounds, only to be periodically assuaged by mid-tempo passages trafficking disembodied vocals and ritualistic intent.

What uncanny forces are at hand to draft such off-kilter arrangements, soused in unpasteurized satanic turpitude? When “Witching Lycanthropic Moon” slackens into a triumphant old-school riff, over which Do’Urden’s voice goes all robot

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shaman on us, you can’t help but think of those early albums, and of Beherit. Not that Mystifier have that much cosmic evil on tap to eclipse Drawing Down the Moon. No one does. And besides, this is Mystifier summoning their quintessence, reckoning with their past. Much of Protogoni sounds composed as though by instinct. Take “Six Towers of Belial’s Path,” a riff salad that shouldn’t work, and yet, does. Why? By all means, credit Mystifier for such magic, but don’t rule out the uncanny. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

OOZING WOUND

8

High Anxiety

THRILL JOCKEY

Thrash metal misanthropes craft a monstrously exotic ripper

One fairly common trait among singers from Chicago is fear of sounding like Dennis DeYoung. Not without reason—consider Al Jourgensen. Exposed to Styx before his brain was fully formed, the Ministry frontman struggled through at least a couple fake accents and any number of hats before finding a way out circa Land of Rape and Honey.

While both the phobia and its originating danger have abated considerably since the ’80s, old habits die hard enough that adult Chicagoans still squander hundreds daily on potions and philtres of questionable merit—some in pursuit of prevention, others (DeYoung included, reportedly) seeking a cure. Aspiring showbiz parents often take a less expensive route, lining the sidewalk in front of Electrical Audio in the hope that their children can be inoculated by touching the one individual whose immunity to the affliction is both manifest and a matter of public record: Steve Albini.

Others visit Albini for different reasons. For Oozing Wound, the impetus came from wanting a quality product, fast. The engineer delivered, finishing tracking and basic overdubs quickly enough that the Windy City noise-rock/thrash metal trio had time to experiment with effects and the like, all in four days total. Never mind the “crossover” tag. True, guitarist and vocalist Zack Weil writes what could be construed as snotty lyrics, but the band’s sound is beefy, fucked up and sui generis intimidating enough to appeal to fans of Unsane, Nails and Dysrhythmia alike—especially when they slow down, as on “Birth of a Flat Earther.” —ROD SMITH

PERNICION

7

Seek What They Sought OSMOSE PRODUCTIONS

Seek it up

Seek What They Sought is the debut EP of atmospheric death metal from this 74 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

U.K.-based duo. While Pernicion’s vocalist is an unknown named Dan Benton, everything else about the band so far—from the songwriting to the drums to the mastering of this EP—is the work of Anil Carrier. Besides having numerous other metal bands, Carrier, most notably, also plays drums in Binah. Benton’s is a mighty growl, so it’s no wonder Carrier enlisted him to haunt these tracks with his hollow gutturals.

Together they sound like a more technical Dead Congregation, a less brooding Ulcerate, a more Finnish Ataraxy.

Really there’s just a lethal combination at play here of tight riffing, inhuman drumming and cryptic vibes. At the same time, it’s apparent from the start that as atmospheric as Pernicion may be, the death metal here is hostile and immediate. Parsed out, you’ve heard much of Seek What They Sought before, but Pernicion’s beauty lies not only in the combination of their disparate influences, but the impressive ways that Carrier combines the likes of, say, Demigod, Suffocation and Slayer (hear: “Tome”). Carrier has always managed to balance his technical prowess with his love for cavernous reverb, but never so well as on Seek What They Sought. —DUTCH PEARCE

PISSGRAVE

7

Posthumous Humiliation P R O FO U N D LO R E

Urine trouble

Amid Profound Lore’s relatively high-minded, Pitchfork/NPR-friendly releases from the likes of Pallbearer and Bell Witch, Pissgrave’s two LPs for the label feel like one of those art pranks where someone dumps a pile of garbage on a gallery floor, then watches as pretentious snobs gather to debate its finer nuances, thus proving some kind of point about the futility of criticism or what art even is, maaaan. It’s not just the bargain-basement goregrind artwork (which may or may not be reproduced above, and is fuckin’ gnarly), though that will ward off all but the truest of heads. Factor in the artless, brain-dead vibe and devolved savagery of Posthumous Humiliation, and it’s practically a negation of the very idea that extreme metal could be a respectable form.

Needless to say, there’s zero progression from 2015’s Suicide Euphoria, so the same reference points still apply: earliest Deicide for the fast, chaotic stuff—which is most of it—and Incantation at their rawest when they ease back on the throttle, like the nasty single-string riffing that opens “Funereal Inversion” or the back half of “Into the Deceased.” It’s all recorded with the fidelity of a very loud war metal demo, and played with similar barbarity. This is suffocating, and barely sounds like it was made by

humans. Minus a lyric sheet, Pissgrave seem to think entirely in death metal imagery with no goal beyond wallowing in it; peep the Mad Libs death metal-y nonsense of the two aforementioned titles or “Catacombs of Putrid Chambers.” RIYL: artless, brain-dead garbage. I do!

—ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ

ROSETTA

8

Sower of Wind PELAGIC

And other fancy terms for farting

Rosetta claim to be about finding the intersection between heavy and beautiful, but on their latest EP, Sower of Wind, they look down every point of the compass and discover only loveliness. This ambient exploration feels like an extension of their score for Audio/Visual, Justin Jackson’s 2015 documentary about the Philadelphia-based group’s decision to part ways with Translation Loss (a label connection that should tell you what their default mode sounds like).

On their latest release, three-fifths of the members that played on 2017’s Utopioid reimagine some of the background ambience from that album into four soundscapes—each named after a cardinal direction. Clocking in at just over 30 minutes, it’s more peaceful, more accessible (no growling) and more ephemeral than their proper full-lengths. It’s so ambient, in fact, it’s almost white noise. Melancholy, allencompassing white noise with a hint of postrock, akin to Brian Eno backed by Isis. Gentle piano, nuanced sampler washes and plucked guitar strings make up the bulk of the aural canvas. Subtle musical themes connect the tracks on Sower of Wind organically.

It’s a lovely listen, but not one that necessarily stays with you. This is a very in-themoment thing, which may be the intention.

If you’re looking for much more than background music for a cold, rainy day, you’ll be disappointed. On the other hand, if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right crossroads. —JEFF TREPPEL

SANHEDRIN

5

The Poisoner CRUZ DEL SUR

Open up and say blah

Sanhedrin are not for me. I consider all modern heavy metal/hard rock to be a tough sell, so lovers of the genre can just cut this review out of the magazine and toss it in the shitter. But when it comes to The Poisoner, even at my most charitable, I’m far from sold.

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The one thing that records like this almost universally deliver on is talent and execution, and this is no different, as the trio is comprised of consummate musicians. The solos aren’t particularly self-indulgent, and the longer compositions show that the band can weave through digressions without getting caught up in a jam session. So, that’s good. No issue with any of that. As for the actual music, though, it’s just very difficult to give a shit.

If your questions are about the riffs being cool, the hooks being memorable or the songs doing anything beyond what could be algorithmically formulated by letting a computer listen to a week of the “Ozzy’s Boneyard” channel on SiriusXM, the answers are all in the negative. You can find bright spots—the end of the title track has some great string melodies, and bassist/vocalist Erica Stoltz can sing with the conviction of someone rocking a stadium—but the album struggles to ever meaningfully deliver.

If you love hard rock/heavy metal, you may find Sanhedrin decent or even good, as The Poisoner has all necessary elements. But if you don’t love hard rock/heavy metal, I’m not sure why you read this far. —SHANE MEHLING

SISTERS OF SUFFOCATION

7

Humans are Broken N A PA L M

No relation to Terrance Hobbs or Frank the Tank

When Sisters of Suffocation bulldozed onto the European death metal scene back in 2014, their choice of moniker set them up for ridicule, typecasting, confusion and questioning. Being all-female, very obvious Suffocation fans and in their early 20s did little to help indicate how much the then-quartet were also fans of Cryptopsy, Aborted, Misery Index, fellow Dutch forefathers (Asphyx, God Dethroned) and epic thrash metal and how they strove for adeptness and adroitness instead of basic regurgitation of those inspirations. Now, with the addition of second guitarist Emmelie Herwegh and some meat ‘n’ veg in the form of drummer Kevin van den Heiligenberg, S.O.S.—yes, people picked on the acronym as well—is older, wiser and have added more power to their promise.

Sure, the band still demonstrate generous amounts of song writing greenness on their second album and van den Heiligenberg’s wavering tentativeness creates an unnecessary weak link, but by the time “Little Shits” and “The Machine” roll around you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’re spinning some unreleased Cattle 7 6 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

Decapitation, especially with Els Prins’ vocals scraping highs, crushing lows and crooning with surprising sweetness. Her use of excessively clean vocal lines in “War in My Head” may be a little off-putting at first, as is the mournful piano break in “Liar,” but both complement the sludgy tempo breaks (brakes?) and make much sense after a few spins. And, as Humans are Broken goes on, it puts the targets of a variety of online beatings for all the wrong reasons in a position where those with open ears are justified in their “I told you so, fuck face,” defence of the band.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

SPIRITS OF FIRE

6

Spirits of Fire

FRONTIERS MUSIC

Slightly less firepower

“Classic Priest meets Savatage,” proclaims Neapolitan imprint Frontiers Music, continental HQ to Quiet Riot, Jetboy, Kane Roberts, Stephen Pearcy and legions more over 23 years of operation from a Greco-Roman cradle of civilization.

Tim “Ripper” Owens (ex-Judas Priest), Chris Caffery (Savatage, Trans-Siberian Orchestra), Steve DiGiorgio (Testament, Death, Sadus) and Mark Zonder (ex-Fates Warning) thus come together as Spirits of Fire. They’re exactly the sum of their parts.

And never better than debut opener “Light Speed Marching,” which executes its stated intent behind a Painkiller riff and tempo. Mainman on that LP’s follow-ups, Jugulator and Demolition, Owens intones Halford highs as his fellow hesher vets rev a heavy metal thunder straight from the exhaust of Painkiller’s dragon motorbike.

Late ’80s/early ’90s metal is strong with this one—obviously so and with great intent.

Caffery’s string-bending spikes pleasure centers long thought dead, blueprint soloing and end runs tearing gaping wormholes back to the dawn of MTV and its initial overnight filler of cheese-and-caviar NWOBHM. As Owens also channels Ronnie James Dio (second track “Temple of the Soul”), one-man guitar army Caffery catches flame as white hot as the album’s cover art, which even bests the visuals to 2018 Priest bullseye Firepower.

Somewhat predictably, perhaps, Spirits of Fire can’t sustain the initial velocity, which in turn aligns it with a generation of Headbangers Ball acts true in sound and singles, but one-off in prolonged execution. At 63 minutes, it’s 20 too long, such that the back-end sails off a steep embankment. Gleaming axework on “A Game” can’t save faux GN’R balladry, or any such like-minded anthem hackery with Priestly titles (“Stand and Fight”). —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

TWIN TEMPLE

8

Bring You Their Signature Sound…

Satanic Doo-Wop RISE ABOVE

Blood sugar sex magick

Twin Temple’s feminist, Satan-saturated debut is guaranteed to be the most unique thing you will be exposed to all year, mostly because it doesn’t sound like it came from this decade—or generation, for that matter. The first 35 minutes of this full-length by Los Angeles-based couple Alexandra and Zachary James justifies the hype, offering a radical reinvention of the last 50 years of rock ‘n’ roll and soul. Bring You Their Signature Sound is also subversively humorous in a way that is likely to be a huge turn-off for the scene police or anyone who can’t get into Ghost: “You’re a much better kisser than Jesus” and “I’d kill to spend eternity with you,” coos Alexandra on “Lucifer, My Love.”

Title aside, this album owes more to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black than any doo-wop artist. Alexandra sports some of the same huskiness in her voice, particularly in invoking the gallows humor of “Let’s Hang Together.” Twin Temple’s template also owes a bit to the house style of Winehouse’s erstwhile backing band the Dap Kings and the Brooklyn-based Daptone label: basically, pairing bombastic Wall of Sound arrangements with equally brassy vocals. The musical lineage is even more apparent on “I’m Wicked,” which simultaneously riffs on Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” and Eartha Kitt’s 1954 jazz vocal classic “I Want to Be Evil.”

Overall, this is extremely clever and fun pastiche that only goes flat on the album’s dreary closer “Satanic Self Initiation,” nearly seven minutes of Satanic rites punctuated by blasts of church organ. It’s probably a necessity for reminding the masses that Twin Temple were bonded in blood, but it seems like two left feet on the left-hand path. —NICK GREEN

USURPER

7

Lords of the Permafrost SOULSELLER

I’m Gonna Git U, Surper

It’s difficult for me to contemplate how any tried and trve banger couldn’t on some level appreciate this band. Sure, rag on them for being doting ’Frost acolytes to your heart’s content. Correctomundo! And no, these gentlemen don’t remotely innovate. I absolutely concur. But their adoration for the genre as a whole—in tandem with their knack for grungy (as in Morbid Tales grungy) hooks—simply feels

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High Anxiety on tour throughout

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too good to deny oneself the sheer pleasure of indulging. I’m weak to Usurper the way some people are weak to potato chips: I can hardly help myself! Yes, it’s probably just empty calories, and we swore we’d be beach-bod-ready by spring break, but fuck it, let’s be bad. Let’s pop the top on a lil’ Permafrost.

After taking a protracted spring break of their own—14 years!—Usurper emerge from their own personal Frank Frazetta painting, hungry like the proverbial wolf for… well, more of the same, really. But guys, seriously, it’s such a fucking fun ride—like a roulette of metal Scattergories with the emphasis on “gory” (and maybe also on “scat”; I didn’t receive a lyric sheet). Per usual, chug ‘n’ roll rules the day, but Show No Mercy’s charming silliness thoroughly peppers the proceedings. There’s a vague Exhorder affinity (an almost unconscious groove), a little mildew-y Autopsy gunk and occasional nods to occult ’70s rock all sheathed in almost anaerobically tight songcraft. Sandwich this LPs between spins of Overkill and Killers and you’re getting all the vitamins and such that your pasty body needs. —FORREST PITTS

VENOM PRISON

8

Samsara

PROSTHETIC

Unleash the beast

Animus, Venom Prison’s fulllength debut, rode an unexpected wave of hype following its 2016 release.

Musically, the Wales-based quintet slammed together death metal and hardcore in typical ways, yet shrewdly avoided the generic deathcoreisms that plague most bands associated with that deservedly maligned subgenre. However, while Venom Prison showed promise from an instrumental perspective, it was really vocalist Larissa Stupar’s lyrical stance—an inversion of death metal’s past misogynistic inclinations, and a Napalm Death-worthy spotlighting of sociopolitical injustices—that garnered attention. It also helped that the revenge angle championed on “Perpetrator Emasculation” was conveyed perfectly by album artist Eliran Kantor, who created a gruesome Renaissance-style painting of a rapist being forcefed his genitals while sticky ichor dripped from the gaping maw where his junk once hung.

Second LP Samsara capitalizes on the potential of Animus in every way. For starters, the technicality of the dizzying DM riffs and complimentary lead work has been ramped up on par with scene veterans Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus and, on “Asura’s Realm,” Heartwork-era Carcass. The song structures are not only multifaceted, but more cohesive and exploratory, bolstered by fluid transitions and a jackhammering drum performance by versatile new player Jay Pipprell.

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To match the increased complexity of the musicianship, Stupar had to improve considerably, and her previously dry hardcore bark has taken on a much wider range. With a new arsenal of gut-busting growls and piercing shrieks, she faces personal insecurities through the use of violent imagery while still spitting disgust at societal issues such as forced surrogacy and capital punishment. And if that’s not enough, Samsara is bolstered further by a shit-hot master job by the in-demand Arthur Rizk, lending Venom Prison’s zeitgeist-smashing invectives the same kind of audio-force that rippled through Power Trip’s Nightmare Logic. —DEAN BROWN

easily Vincent’s sharpest, most focused attack since 1995’s Domination. Overall, Something Wicked is a trio of seminal extreme music figures kicking out the smart, intricate, immaculately executed death metal jams, which, if not quite groundbreaking, nevertheless subverts expectations in the best possible way. —SHAWN MACOMBER

7

Let’s get one thing straight: Knoxville, TN’s Whitechapel have established an audience so impervious to what outsiders have to say that nothing written here will impact their substantial popularity. However, sometimes bands, regardless of that popularity, feel like they’re getting the short end of the acceptance stick from those they feel they should be appealing to. Hell, the biggest band in metal history attempted to relive the glory years with Death Magnetic almost 30 years after writing the one of the most popular songs in the history of fucking music. In this case, Whitechapel’s breakdownheavy deathcore stomp has made them wellknown beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, but two out of three fuckers sporting a Dying Fetus back patch still see nothing but falseness.

Now, I’m not definitively claiming that any of Whitechapel’s intent is to appeal to “true” death metallers, but the first three songs on album number seven do lean towards hinting that supporters of Cattle Decapitation (and one or all of the many Disgorges) should be in the crowd—not just Killswitch Engage and Slipknot fans. That’s a roundabout way of saying there’s some obvious stylistic pocket-picking happening here, especially in how vocalist Phil Bozeman treats his vocal cords like a competitor in Travis Ryan’s decathlon. When that angle is thrown in with space-eating breakdowns and wobbling bass (“Forgiveness Is Weakness”), nü-rhythms and slam beats (“Black Bear”), half-note melodies and cowboys-from-hell guitar stomp (“Brimstone”), Montreal death riffs and Cannibal Corpse rips (“We Are One”), post-metal and clean-sung indie (“Third Depth”), it all comes across as scattered and frazzled, if not meandering and confused.

Individual songs will have success with certain segments of the metal community, and more power to Whitechapel for making diversity a priority and exposing “these people” to “those sounds,” but a little focus would’ve gone a long way toward making this an album that nondiehards will listen to the whole way through.

VLTIMAS

Something Wicked Marches In SEASON OF MIST

Just extreme enough

Though VLTIMAS possess an extraordinary curriculum vitae even by “supergroup” standards—guitarist Rune “Blasphemer” Eriksen served nearly 15 years in post-De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Mayhem, plus a couple decades and counting in Aura Noir; Flo Mounier is the sole remaining original member of revolutionary techdeath masters Cryptopsy—all eyes will doubtless be on the group’s legendary bassist/vocalist David Vincent, who famously transitioned from death metal to outlaw country in the wake of the much-derided Illud Divinum Insanus (2011), the only album born of his second tenure fronting Morbid Angel (2004-’15). Recently, Vincent took baby steps back into the maze of torment via I Am Morbid, performing sets overwhelmingly culled from his first tenure fronting Morbid Angel (1986-’96). This, combined with the announcement of VLTIMAS, naturally raised hopes of a restoration. As Illud ably demonstrated, however, past performance does not guarantee future returns.

Happily, the time away and return to roots appear to have recentered Vincent. Something Wicked Marches In is a vital and unapologetic—if decidedly modern—death metal record delightfully devoid of the angsty, conspicuous mid-career wing-stretching that presumably led to Illud’s more adventurous/questionable moments. That said, the songs bear only occasional, superficial resemblance to Mounier and Eriksen’s previous work, never mind the first four Morbid Angel records.

Musically, think an amalgamation of Apostasy/ Evangelion-era Behemoth and the more traditional Illud tracks—“Existo Vulgoré,” “Blades for Baal,” “Nevermore”—drowned out by the furor over hippity-hop lyrics and shoehorned electronica.

Vocally, the vibe is definitely closer to Sinister Ringmaster Evil D than “Rapture” growler, which is perhaps more fitting than it sounds, and also

WHITECHAPEL

6

The Valley

M E TA L B L A D E

Welcome to the valley of the damned if you do and damned if you don’t

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

8 0 : A P R I L 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L ANSWERS: 1. The cowpie at the bottom left has been replaced by delicious chocolate pudding... probably 2. The purple digital glitch extends to the left side of the feet 3. The nun’s bib is frayed at the bottom 4. The habit lining is black 5. The static at the top left has inverted B&W 6. The nun got some ugly-ass novelty socks for Christmas 7. Instead of a rosary, the nun’s wrists are bound in hand cuffs 8. The Starship Enterprise is drifting through space on the middle left 9. That’s a much leaner grade of ground chuck on the middle right 10–12. There are three extra wisps of flame throughout the bottom half of the image 13. The maggots on the middle left are now elbow macaroni 14. The thumbs on the praying hands are facing outward 15. The marbling of the raw meat on the lower left has changed angles

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