Decibel #187 - May 2020 exclusive

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U.S. VISAS THE HIGH COST OF PLAYING ABROAD

CLUTCH

BLAST TYRANT HALL OF FAME

TESTAMENT NECROT ON THE SHOULDERS OF TITANS IN THE STUDIO

REFUSE/RESIST

FLEXI DISC

INCLUDED

MYRKUR ABYSMAL DAWN HEAVEN SHALL BURN TEMPLE OF VOID HAUNT AKURION WVRM

MAY 2020 // No. 187

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TESTAMENT

NIGHTWISH

LAMB OF GOD

AUGUST BURNS RED

TITANS OF CREATION

HUMAN. :||: NATURE.

LAMB OF GOD

GUARDIANS

GREY DAZE

DANZIG

tetema

HUMAN IMPACT

AMENDS

SINGS ELVIS

necroscape

HUMAN IMPACT

ALLEN/OLZON

SEMBLANT

HER CHARIOT AWAITS

WE SELL THE DEAD

WORLDS APART

OBSCURA

HER CHARIOT AWAITS

BLACK SLEEP

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LAMB OF GOD EXCLUSIVE RED WITH BLACK SWIRL VINYL

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May 2020 [R 187] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 8 metal muthas Like mutha, like son

14 akurion A real ball buster

10 low culture Don’t start him talkin’

16 temple of void Shades of godliness

11 no corporate beer ¿Beinvenidos a Miami?

18 irist No horsing around

24 sicarius Darkness in the sunshine state

12 studio report:

20 mamaleek Hell comes home

26 wvrm Establishing a new colony

necrot

Mortal rites

22 heaven shall burn Welcome to Job Land, where jobs grow on jobbies

28 psychonaut DIY bother?

56

features

reviews

30 abysmal dawn Destroy. Erase. Improve.

67 lead review Cirith Ungol return from a 30-year exile with ebony blade in hand on comeback album Forever Black

32 testament Twelfth strike still deadly 34 q&a: myrkur New mom Amalie Bruun talks folk implosion 38 special report:

u.s. visas

Even Norwegians should take note 44 the decibel

hall of fame Clutch walk away from major labels to make their own way with mid-career landmark Blast Tyrant

68 album reviews Releases that can’t believe more than 50% of you animals don’t already wash your filthy hands, including the Black Dahlia Murder, Oranssi Pazuzu and Sweven 88 double negative Winter has come

Guardians of the Realm COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY ESTER SEGARRA

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. © 2020 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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www.decibelmagazine.com

REFUSE/RESIST

May 2020 [T187]

Decibel turns 16. Only Odin knows how we’ve never managed to run a cover story on the progressive post-black metal heroes over that shared history.

Of course, it’s not like we haven’t covered the legendary Norwegians while counting the days to Ragnarök; I can recall a trio of Decibel Hall of Fame inductions—1993’s Hordanes Land EP, 1994’s Frost and 2003’s Below the Lights— another pair of Decibel Flexi Series releases, a headlining spot on our 2018 Decibel Magazine Tour and the first-ever (and last-ever) North American performance of their entire Frost LP as part of 2019’s Metal & Beer Fest: Philly just to start.

Despite such well-earned plaudits, a proper Decibel cover has astonishingly eluded them. If you’re counting Enslaved studio LPs alone, your favorite publication has now had eight fucking opportunities to get this right! And believe me, over the years we’ve certainly gotten close. Bear in mind that, since 2004, every single Enslaved album from Isa through 2017’s E has cracked Decibel’s Top 40 Albums of the Year list.

That’s seven albums. To put that in perspective, the second most Top 40 entries any other artist has placed in that span is five (by perennial Decibel slobber victims Converge, Baroness and Napalm Death).

Considering Enslaved’s unprecedented creative run, it’s appropriate that their loooooooong overdue first Decibel cover appearance should culminate with Utgard (out in May on Nuclear Blast), a record that rows the good Viking ship through virtually every era of the band’s incomparable career, yet still discovers previously uncharted lands. As Matt Solis’ fantastic cover story illustrates, that creative fire between visionary Ivar Bjørnson and musical foil Grutle Kjellson—having first sparked in a cramped Haugesund rehearsal room three decades ago— still rages just as brightly today. They’ve spoiled us to the point where we consistently expect greatest from their recordings and live performances. Just because they have never failed to deliver on either of those fronts doesn’t mean we should take their excellence for granted.

And that includes Decibel. Ivar, Grutle, Ice Dale—sorry, this cover should have happened ages ago. I guess Hiindsiight finally arrived in 2020. albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

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Enslaved turn 29 years old this year.

READER OF THE

MONTH You released a ton of rad acts under your Chainsaw Safety label (Rorschach, Black Army Jacket, Anodyne, Only Living Witness) back in the day. Ever think about reviving it?

Like, maybe you hate having money!

Will Tarrant Astoria, NY

You’ve been around the block a few times.

Please dispel the antiquated notion that old farts like us can’t fully appreciate new bands.

There are a ton of new bands out there that are completely killing it: Ascended Dead, Oath of Cruelty, Slaughter Messiah, Sewage Grinder, Triage, Blood (Fucking) Incantation, Carnation, Contaminated, Six of Swords, Skeletal Remains—I can keep going. There’s an infinite amount of new music going on, and I’m happy to check it all out!

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I don’t hate money.

I’ve never had it in my hands long enough. As a parent, a professional social worker and a former label owner, I’ve embraced poverty well. The label was a forum for me to release music in a format that was supportive to the bands who are all still my friends. I look back on all of it with fondness, but would never think to resurrect that corpse.

Decibel has been attending Maryland Deathfest annually since 2008. We’ve seen you there every year for as long as we can remember. What brings you out regularly?

I enjoy attending every year and have been there since 2009 (barring a year or two, I think). One highlight for the fest is that I get to catch up

with tons of friends. It’s like being on tour again, but with none of the crappy 10-hour drives! And Albert gives me the five-minute platform to pitch ideas for the magazine every year. One of these days he may actually use one of them!

As a parent, a professional social worker and a former label owner, I’ve embraced poverty well.

According to our admittedly spotty records, you’ve been a Decibel subscriber since issue #22. That’s a hell of a commitment. What exactly are we providing you that you can’t get for free on the interwebs?

Really? That long?! I guess I am an old fart!

The magazine has always been a testament to introducing new bands and properly crediting the founders. I greatly enjoy the Hall of Fame because it gives many of those albums a new perspective for me. And I can safely say I learn about at least three new bands I really dig after reading every issue. You guys consistently do a great job. Now, my next new idea for the magazine is...

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 in between our daily Tom Keifer updates from Blabbermouth.

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

This Month's Mutha: Nancy Cancilla Mutha of Trevor William Church of Haunt

Tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Oakland, CA. I graduated from Skyline High School, then went to Marinello’s Beauty College in Oakland. [When I] moved to Pleasant Hill … one of my clients was my cousin Denny Carmassi, who was the drummer for Montrose. The band liked the way I cut his hair, so they hired me to do theirs.

In 1977, the “Electric Church” [Bill Church] and I got married; four years later, we had Trevor. What a blessing! He was the most perfect baby. So darn cute! I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. When Trevor was a few weeks old, I mentioned to Trevor’s dad that I was going to quit my job and take care of him. Bill asked if I was kidding about quitting. I told him no; I’m not leaving my son with a sitter. I want to be there for him and watch him grow. I’m still here for him for whatever I can help him with.

Trevor tells us that you’re a rocker. What are some of your favorite bands?

Yes, I am, and always will be. The world would be a sad place to live in without music. Led Zeppelin is one of [my] most favorite, although it’s very, very hard to pick just one. I love all rock bands, heavy metal, soul, rhythm and blues, oldies and, of course, Haunt!

Trevor’s father is famous for his work with Sammy Hagar, Van Morrison and Montrose.

Was it clear from an early age that he would be following in his musical footsteps?

Yes! When Trevor was 2, he turned my family room into his stage. Every day I would watch my little one-man band play. He had a ukulele, 8 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

and then would run to his Casio keyboard; then he’d grab his Fisher-Price popper and would sing into the handle. To top it off, he laid his tricycle on its side, and for drumsticks, he would get my wooden spoons and bang on the wheels. I definitely saw his musical footsteps at such an early age. Absolutely adorable! Later, I opened an account with Guitar Center to get him whatever he needed—guitars, amps, strings.

What was it like seeing Trevor on the cover of Decibel?

When my February issue arrived, seeing Trevor on the cover, I got teary-eyed! I was thrilled, excited and very happy for him. I’m a happy mutha! I can truly say he has earned it!

What is something that most people would be surprised to know about your son?

During his teenage years, Trevor was really into skateboarding. I must have bought him two skateboards a month. He would always split them in half, trying tricks. He told me that he wanted to be a professional skateboarder like Steve Caballero. He tried hard to convince me, but I told him, “No, you’re not! You’re going to be a guitarist.” You can’t fool this mutha!

When Haunt play in Sacramento, I don’t miss a show. Trevor loves, and I mean it—he loves his fans. They love him, too. He works super hard to give them what they want to hear. I can feel the love in every note he plays. I am so, so proud of him—not only in his music, but in his life. He has given me a beautiful daughter-in-law and an amazing grandson. He is a wonderful son, husband, dad and person. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Göden, Beyond Darkness  Sweven, The Eternal Resonance  Cirith Ungol, Forever Black  Enslaved, Utgard  Old Tower, The Last Eidolon ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Sequentia, Canticles of Ecstasy  Triptykon, Melana Chasmata  Sun Ra, The Futuristic Sounds of the Sun  Domkraft, Slow Fidelity  Mark Lanegan Band, Somebody’s Knocking ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Enslaved, Utgard  Enslaved, Monumension  Clutch, Blast Tyrant  Clutch, Earth Rocker  Nobuo Uematsu, Final Fantasy VI Original Soundtrack ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Drain, California Cursed  Panzerfaust, The Suns of Perdition Chapter I: War, Horrid War  Tombs, Monarchy of Shadows  Caustic Wound, Death Posture  Mega Drive, Sleeper Street Original Motion Picture Soundtrack ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Choir Boy, Choir Boy  Die Choking, IV  Converge/Hellchild, Deeper the Wound  Curl Up and Die, Unfortunately, We’re Not Robots  Zealot R.I.P., Zealot R.I.P.

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Rhett Thorgrimm Davis : s t yg i a n c r ow n / g r av e h i l l  Winter, Eternal Frost  Black Flag, Slip It In  Brendan Perry, Eye of the Hunter  Unleashed, Across the Open Sea  “Weird” Al Yankovic, In 3-D

A Cat Ate the Cord on My Two-Day-Old Headphones can’t really complain this month, which makes my job a little harder than usual since that mostly seems to be what I do in this space. My girlfriend just had her first chemo session after two successful surgeries, I finally got those Paths of the Eternal tapes that I’ve been shilling for the better part of six months and, after having a discussion outside of Vinyl Conflict this afternoon about how I’m very late to appreciating Ash Pool, I walked in and found For Which He Plies the Lash for less than a pack of cigarettes. For the most part, I’ve quit smoking. I slip up here and there, but let’s face it—it’s not like I’m all of a sudden going to become healthy. The last few days have been pretty good creatively, as I’m putting together the skeletons for a book and two records from unrelated projects. It’s snowing, I’m off work and I’m having coffee. So, obviously, the only thoughts I’m having are how to fuck up this rare peaceful time.

I have options aplenty, like opening up my Facebook messenger just to shoot a couple overdue hellos, only to get bombarded with messages from people I forgot I friended and probably will act like I know if I go to MDF this year. You’ll probably have to remind me, and I probably won’t hear what you said, but will agree anyway.

Honestly, I just saved both of us an awkward interaction, so you can tell others about my altruistic nature if you want.

Or I can see if anyone’s sent me a friend request and judge their profile for things like Photoshopped demons, pictures behind the wheel of their truck or a leather cowboy hat/ do-rag, then count down how long it takes for them to send me a link to like their hard rock/ metal band that probably has the word “snake” in either the band name or the other 50 percent 1 0 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

of their lyrics that don’t discuss the merits of clown tits.

Or I could open my email account and see how backed up it is with the sewage of PR people firing off 40 messages about some band that sounds like another, better band if said better band was distilled and pissed out (the LaCroix of bands, if you will). There’s one firm that has been sending me shit since I did my first thing for the late CLRVYNT. I politely told them in 2016 that I probably wasn’t the best person to send a seventh-gen clone of the New York Dolls, but they acted like I was being coy. That website has been inactive since 2017, and this fucking firm still sends me shit for said abandoned site, and still plays coy even when I stopped being polite and told them the music they shill is fucking trash. I guess I have to admire their tenacity since these labels keep paying them to do it. I know I haven’t held a job for that long since I got unceremoniously told to leave the record store or my boss was calling the cops, so I guess they’re doing well enough.

So much of the music industry is a fucking shitshow when you peek behind the curtain, from labels creating loopholes in their contracts that absolutely choke their artists to all the little scurrying-back-and-forth marketing people and the bands ourselves. And knowing a lot of this has certainly changed how I perceive music, be it my own or someone else’s. And yet, somehow, I’m sitting here during what’s probably going to be the only snowfall of the year writing about it, and planning things. So, I guess that says something about it, but I’m not going to ruin my night thinking about a poetic end to this. Instead, I’m going to put on Arctic Thunder with my cats hanging around and maybe brew another pot of coffee. It’s maple bourbon-flavored, and the vinyl is orange, and the snow won’t stick.

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN crafts a monthly journey through

MORBID ALES

BY CHRIS DODGE

Miami Weisse

M

y mid-January trip to

Miami was so frigid the National Weather Service issued a falling iguana warning. Coldest nights in nine years.

Iguanas live in the trees; the low temps stunned them and they’d plummet to the cement. Adding insult to injury, entrepreneurs collected carcasses and quickly sold iguana meat. Florida life.

I last visited Miami in 2013, and the independent beer scene was weak at best. I asked for recommendations, but locals were stumped. Rick Smith from Torche took me to The Abbey Brewing Company in Miami Beach, a Belgian-inspired bar with a couple proprietary beers—albeit brewed off-site— but that was it.

For 2020, I consulted my pal Eddy Torres, host of the RocknRoll Beer Guy podcast and former Miami brewer. Per Eddy, “Miami took its time to get on the craft beer bandwagon, but once it did, it took it to whole new levels.” I didn’t believe him, so he sent me off with a recommendation list of the best of Dade County.

As an “up-and-coming” (read: “hipster”) neighborhood, the Wynwood Arts District featured a number of indie beer destinations. The cornerstone of brewing in this borough is the eponymously named

He will never be one of them  Our fearless columnist braves the hippest of Miami neighborhoods to sample their burgeoning craft brew selection

Wynwood Brewing Company, crafting a unique list inspired by the owners’ Puerto Rican roots. Dodge Island Lager was an immediate go-to for obvious reasons, but the dark braus were their true standouts, like the Coqui-to imperial milk stout, finished in rum barrels and fashioned to sip like a Puerto Rican eggnog. And the Cup of Jose espresso porter, as rich as it sounds, delivered a brisk kick to the chonies. I was the only non-local there, and clearly not welcome to interject in any conversations. This city clearly took a pass when they were handing out Southern hospitality.

Nearby Box Elder hosts the finest bottle shop in the city, as well as a collection of 20 predominantly Florida and East Coast taps, a playland for the palate of a Westerner like me.

I snuggled up to a bevy of Floridian tasters like the Fresh Drops IPA from Civil Society Brewing and Coppertail Brewing’s booze bomb, Cryptid RIS. It was a weeknight and I was the only one in the joint. I offered to make myself scarce if they wanted to close early. The beertender said no, he had to stay that last hour anyway. Despite the lack of customers, again, there was a complete lack of conversation. Crickets.

The most respected local in the craft beer echelon is J. Wakefield. This time I found someone willing to chat about local beer. No surprise—John Wakefield is from Jersey. Brews

were solid across the board, with a wide variety of styles. Most surprising was the number of high-ABV stouts on the menu. Breweries in tropical climates don’t often concentrate on dense, roasty beers. Wakefield’s were the best I’ve quaffed anywhere, the winner being the BA Live & Let Brew, a chewy and tobacco-y heavyweight imperial stout clocking in at 14%.

Hitching a ride to the vibrant Little Havana neighborhood, the difference in vibe was palpable. It was down to earth, more my speed.

First stop: the Union Beer Store—great bottle shop, killer tap selection, focused on Sunshine State suds. My hosts, Adrian Castro and David Rodriguez, made me feel welcome, and locals were genuinely cool and approachable. Adios, gentrification. I played trivia with strangers and sampled a shit-ton of innovative beers: Beat Culture Brewing’s Velour Jumpsuit, a milk stout brewed with cacao husk, and Tripping Animals / Hidden Springs Berliner Weisse collab, El Cartel De Las Ranas, conditioned with lulo, a South American citrus.

Weirdest of all, Hidden Springs’ Brawndo, a glowing green Gatorade-flavored Berliner Weisse. Sounds like a horrifying practical joke, but actually damn good.

Eddy was right—Miami’s beer game is on point. They’ll never be voted America’s Friendliest City. Then again, maybe they’d warm up if I offered to buy their iguana meat.

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NECROT

STUDIO REPORT

NECROT

D

ecibel recently caught up with Chad Gailey, drummer

of Necrot (he also drums for Atrament, Mortuous and Vastum, and owns rising new label Carbonized Records), ALBUM TITLE to get the dirt on the trio’s impending sophomore Mortal album, Mortal. We found the young Atlas of the NorCal death metal underground once again at Greg Wilkinson’s renowned LABEL Earhammer Studios in Oakland.

Tankcrimes “The drums are sounding MASSIVE!” Gailey is psyched to report.

STUDIOS He tells us he “finished the tracking [for his drums in] two days.”

Earhammer Studios, West Oakland, CA As for his performance, he reveals that “everything was done in a PRODUCERS few takes” and they “only had to ‘punch in’ a few parts after that.”

Now, with the hard part in the rearview, Gailey can relax a Greg Wilkinson little, reflect and safely say, “I am really stoked on these recordRELEASE DATE ings so far.” Besides the seven new tracks that will comprise Mortal, June 5 Gailey says they’re also re-recording “a demo song from 2012” to be featured on a forthcoming Decibel flexi disc! Meanwhile, diehards for Necrot’s bulldozing renegade death metal style, as exemplified on their debut Blood Offerings (which came in fourth on our Top 40 of 2017 list), will find much to dig into on Mortal. “[Mortal] is going to destroy everything!” our man promises.

“Greg is an awesome engineer and always makes our records sound the way we like it, so we keep going back,” Gailey adds. “He has recorded all of our material since 2012, starting with our second demo, Into the Labyrinth.” Gailey says straight-up that Mortal “is a death metal album. The lyrics mainly talk about life, death and the mortal human condition.”

Mortal features not only the same engineer as previous Necrot releases, but also the same trio of death-obsessed heshers that you’ve come to know and love: Luca Indrio (Vastum) on bass/vocals, and Sonny Reinhardt (Saviours) on guitar. The way Gailey puts it, Necrot aren’t as concerned with evolving musically as they are in staying true to their killer sound: “The production is similar, but it’s all new songs and new artwork. I think whoever liked our previous works can expect the best album Necrot has ever recorded, and can expect us to tour somewhere close to them in the near future!”

—DUTCH PEARCE

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

THE DAWN OF THE DAMNED NEW NECROPHOBIC LP IS UPON US Longstanding Swedish blackened death metallers Necrophobic have just finished recording Anders Strokirk’s vocals. The group is holed up with engineer Fredrik Folkare (also slated to mix and master) at Chrome Studios in Stockholm, where they’re recording new album Dawn of the Damned.

“After that, we will have a complete listening of everything recorded to see if we need to add or remove stuff, change

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anything,” says drummer Joakim Sterner.

“And after that, it will be time for mixing.”

Necrophobic take their dark art and the production of it seriously. The sessions at Chrome Studio have been focused—all work, no play, just like the sessions for 2018’s excellent Mark of the Necrogram.

“We are aiming to get a soundscape that fits the songs,” Sterner says. “The last album was a bit of a new standard for us, so we kept that in mind to see where this new album is going. We are still recording, but it sounds great already at this point in the process.”

Musically speaking, Sterner is quick to remind Decibel that fans will recognize Dawn of the Damned as Necrophobic, but there’s more to discover. —CHRIS DICK

AKURION

AKURION

Death metal legend Mike DiSalvo triumphs in the face of tragedy

B

ands often refer to albums as a snapshot of a moment in their lifetimes. For Montreal’s Akurion, debut LP Come Forth to Me lands more like a meticulously crafted, widescreen pointillism masterpiece encompassing eight years of ups and downs, manifested into progressive technical death metal. As vocalist Mike DiSalvo says, “We really put our balls into this. There’s a grand scope of time and a ton of shit that went on in between, both negative and positive, and all of that encompasses this record. Now that we’re getting ready to release it, I look back and think, ‘Man, how much shit went on during the making of this?!’” ¶ What started as a lunchtime discussion back in 2012 between DiSalvo and guitarist Rob Milley has grown from “a few riffs he had and a couple lyrics I had” to a full band ready to bring its hour-long album to the stage.

Eight years is a long time, but the gap between the starting and finishing lines is understandable once DiSalvo walks Decibel through the process. ¶ “Rob and I had been friends forever, and we got together to bounce ideas and riffs around,” he explains.

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“We did that for nine months or so.

We decided we needed to take it to the next level, so we got [bassist] Olivier Pinard and [drummer] Tommy McKinnon and started jamming.

That went on for five years between all the different stuff going on with bands and regular life. We worked our asses off so we could record the album live, which we did in 2017—no click tracks and in our jam space, actually. The live session was only a weekend; there were a lot of overdubs and post-production work.

That’s when shit hit the fan: My wife was diagnosed with melanoma; Rob lost his father; Oli was in Cryptopsy and then joined Cattle Decapitation.”

Add guest appearances from Gorguts’ Luc Lemay, ex-Cryptopsy vocalist Lord Worm and DiSalvo’s late wife Genevieve, whose vocals prop up “Petals From a Rose Eventually Wither to Black” (“We drank three bottles of sake and just jammed

one night at the house. It was one of my favorite recording sessions ever!”), and it’s a marvel that Come Forth to Me exists, given logistics, scheduling and the emotional pain associated with the album. However, DiSalvo asserts that despite all the hurdles, dedication to Akurion never wavered.

“Things got put on the back burner, but we didn’t leave it alone to die,” he stresses. “We held true to our belief that we were writing some killer songs. We had no time threshold, so it got done when it got done and once it was, we started looking for labels, and here we are. We stuck to our guns, and with all the discouraging things that went on, we had to unite and pool all our strength and power into finishing it. It’s definitely a telltale period of time, and now that it’s done, it’s an amazing feeling!”

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

TEMPLE OF VOID

TEMPLE OF VOID

Death-doom wolverines take another step towards redefining the subgenre that defined them

M

y personal goal for Temple of Void is to be talked about in the same breath as the legends that inspired me, like Paradise Lost,” writes Alex Awn, founding guitarist of Detroit’s Temple of Void. “When people hear the words ‘death-doom,’ I want them to immediately think of Temple of Void.” ¶ It’s a lofty goal, but Awn may meet it. The quintet’s third record, The World That Was, marks a remarkable step forward in their evolution. Epic melodies mix with groove worthy of Bolt Thrower or Asphyx over its six songs, which are presented with a deep and full recording that suits the nuanced compositions and intriguing lyrics equally. ¶ “We’d never want to write the same album twice,” Awn says.

“All we know when we write an album is that it has to have significant elements of death metal and doom metal. But what we do with those elements—and what we add to the mix—is really only bound by our own depths of creativity. There’s so much to explore in the realm of death and the realm of doom.”

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The World That Was sees the debut of second guitarist Don Durr, a mainstay of the often unsung and criminally overlooked Michigan metal scene, and his contributions obviously added some depth to the process.

“All our albums are written very collaboratively,” Awn confirms, saying that he and Durr “work together and bring the riffs, and the band works on composition, tempo, beats and overall vibe together. No one ever brings a complete song or says, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’

The power lies in the strength of our collaboration and not on any one individual.”

Awn also clarifies another strength: TOV’s extra-metallic influences, including Alice in Chains and Failure. “Everything we do is suffused with these vibes,” he says. “And it’s all blended together

as part of our DNA. So, when we write a song, it just sounds like Temple of Void. I’d like to think our diverse influences are a huge part of our strength as songwriters and helps set our sonic identity apart from ‘generic’ death-doom.”

Those compositions were brought once again to Clyde Wilson, who’s had a hand in all of the band’s recordings in one way or another. It’s a fruitful relationship, according to Awn: “This recording has a new level of depth that is resonating with people. I know for a fact that we spent more time mixing and tweaking than any other band that Clyde records.

“So, we’re either a huge pain in his ass or we’re just more meticulous than some other bands,” he concludes, adding, “Probably a mixture of both.” —JOSEPH SCHAFER

IRIST

Multinational prog metallers take rocket ascent in stride

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very once in a while, a debut LP comes out of nowhere so perfectly formed that it hits you right in the solar plexus. Order of the Mind, by Atlanta-based prog/post-metal act Irist, is one such record. Taking the titanic syncopations of Gojira, the storm and drive of Cult of Luna, the technical fluidity of Burst, and a wealth of other influences spanning hardcore, thrash and beyond, Irist stand out as a vital concern.

So much so that Monte Conner—the A&R guru hugely responsible for Roadrunner Records’ commercial success during the 1990s—immediately signed them to Nuclear Blast’s stable. ¶ Guitarist Pablo Davila describes the whole experience to date as “surreal.” “We’re very well aware of Monte’s background, and still have to pinch ourselves at the idea that he ever gave us the time of day,” he marvels. “He’s responsible for signing several of the bands that influenced us, so having him sign us to NB feels like coming full circle in a way. We couldn’t be happier.”

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Davila is one of three South Americans in Irist’s five-piece lineup. His family emigrated from Argentina to Athens, GA in search of a better life, and he met the other members of the band in nearby Atlanta. “Most of us in the band grew up in households in which our parents would constantly be playing various types of music from South America, as well as salsa and countless other styles of Latin music,” Davila notes. “Naturally, that’s had some effect over how we hear and understand rhythm especially.”

Writing for the undeniably rhythmically powerful Order of the Mind was lengthy and trying, but by the end of a concentrated cycle of song refinement, Irist were confident they could nail their vision in the studio. They traveled to Southampton, U.K., to hook up with producer Lewis Johns (Conjurer, Employed to Serve), a kindred spirit in terms of

shared influences, which led to a smooth recording process. “[During recording] we were actually lodged in a repurposed horse stable, which added an unexpected element to the whole experience,” Davila recalls. “There was one neighborhood pub that we frequented, called the Horns Inn. When we walked in there the first rainy night, everyone went silent and looked at us like we were about to hold the place up. We weren’t regulars there and looked like we’d crawled out of the trenches or something. By the end of our time there, the staff knew exactly who we were, though.”

Donning our soothsayer cloak, Decibel predicts that, given their extremely impressive debut, by the end of 2020 it won’t just be the staff at the Horns Inn that’ll know this exhilarating band—the metal world at large will. —DEAN BROWN

PHOTO BY SUSY IRAIS REYES

IRIST

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MAMALEEK

MAMALEEK

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mbrace the weird and implausible. Embrace Mamaleek. This mysterious duo of brothers has operated somewhere in black metal’s left field for the past decade, and with their latest album, Come and See, we find them further left of anything. ¶ “Pick any direction,” one of the brothers explains. “[T]here’s going to be significant distance from the black metal datum point. [...] Black metal per Mamaleek is like a broken branch. It’s still of the tree, but it’s now detached and losing its tree-ness through a process of decay. Maybe it breaks down and becomes soil or something chemically distinct altogether.” ¶ Though early recordings mirrored black metal’s chilling atmospheres, Come and See is an entirely different beast. Still extreme in its own right, the record’s loose energy comes from freneticism and experimentation. “[T]his might be one of the more challenging releases we’ve attempted,” one of the brothers says. Drawing from a plethora of influences that can only be summed as “experimental,” Come and See’s jangling proclamations may come off as more accessible than 2018 predecessor Out of Time, but don’t let its recognizability fool you.

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“Is it really a more recognizable song structure?” one questions. “‘[Eating] Unblessed Meat’ [is structured]: A-B-C-D-A-E-F, [with] only one section repeating.”

Now expanded from the duo to a full band, Mamaleek were faced with the new challenge of collaboration outside the original brotherly lineup. “When you’re working alone,” says one, “you’re used to being in control. You can be as Stalinesque as you like without consequence. Working with others requires a softer touch, more Trotskyite. We’ve had our issues with this, but we’re all brothers, whether biologically or in spirit.”

Further distancing themselves from the branch of black metal, Mamaleek concern themselves not with the coldness of winter and evilness of spirits, but rather the failures of humankind by way of crumbling public housing. “Looking at the interior and aerial shots of Cabrini-Green, Robert Taylor

Homes, etc., made me slightly nauseous,” posits one. “Getting to know the disgraceful history helped me understand, beyond Chicago’s dirty politics of displacement, how the miasma of dark energy pervading these structures profoundly impacted generations of families’ lives. It also further confirmed that foreboding feelings are often not just imaginary.”

What inspired this? Maybe not meditations on failure, but the band’s own surroundings. “I believe it was the machine shop where we practice and where three-fifths of the current band worked/works,” one of the brothers explains. “It’s full of pointy, dirty obstacles, fragments of metal material, cavernous corners, etc.

The space emits such an austere, bloodless feeling. It’s a setting that got me wondering about its effect on our sound, both in terms of acoustics and the cold feel.”

—JON ROSENTHAL

PHOTO BY GEOFFREY SMITH II

Anonymous brotherhood leaves black metal in the dark

HEAVEN SHALL BURN

HEAVEN SHALL BURN

The rule of law sustains German metalcore vets

T

here’s a lot of talk in the workplace these days about achieving a good “work/life balance.” This is a concept that veteran metalcore heroes Heaven Shall Burn take very seriously. Though in their case, it’s more of a work/ metal balance. And it’s this balance that’s kept the metal fresh after 23 years, as compared to other bands going through the tired motions. ¶ According to founding guitarist Maik Weichert, “We really love our ‘ordinary’ jobs, and we make sure we can keep them. It’s a great balance and makes you value being in a band. So, the secret is, we’re a professional band, but we have amateur enthusiasm. No routine or boredom. Every show is a highlight.” ¶ This would definitely explain how energized and full of life HSB sound on Of Truth & Sacrifice, their latest album, featuring two discs worth of blazing riffs, perfectly punishing drums and ferocious vocals. It also explains their drive and ambition to make a double album. “There was just this explosion of creativity and inspiration,” Weichert explains.

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“It was almost like being 16 again and playing in a band for the first time. After the album title came up with the words ‘truth’ and ‘sacrifice,’ it was pretty clear we have to think about a double concept for this record.”

The theme of sacrifice is very evident in songs like “Protector,” with lyrics like “I am your shield and sword.” Weichert puts it like this: “Do you sacrifice the truth for an easier life, or would you choose the truth and accept a more ‘complicated’ life? Just think of defiant journalists and writers getting killed by criminal politicians, or teachers in Africa trying to educate girls and being terrorized by religious fundamentalists.” He then contrasts this with the relative comfort enjoyed by people in the richer countries of the West: “On the other hand, in our western world, so many people

start creating their own realities so they can keep living in their daily grind. They deny moral standards that should be common sense in every civilized society.”

Weichert is determined to be a vital and active member of civil society in his native Germany, pursuing multiple law degrees. He’s not an attorney, however, explaining, “I am more like a legal scholar, also focusing on historical issues and constitutional questions. I also started reading about cultural history last year as well.” In relation to Heaven Shall Burn, Weichert notes that “this work is an important reason why we’re such a political band. And, of course, it’s always fun listening to the bullshit some music-business lawyers tell bands, thinking they’re only a bunch of clueless kids. I love to make lawyers like that look like fools.” —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

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SICARIUS

SICARIUS

Eclectic horde brings new unlife to SoCal black metal

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from jack parsons’ semi-renegade O.T.O. lodge in Pasadena to Chuck Manson and company’s Spahn Ranch residency by way of the first Church of Scientology branch in downtown L.A. (all connected, BTW) and dozens of lesser configurations of humans trying to harness unseen forces for personal gain, Southern California has long been America’s number one hotbed of cult and occult activity—in addition to being a showcase for novel/spectacular murders, suicides, murder-suicide combos, theatrical gestures, natural disasters and innovation in makeup. ¶ So, why—given all the ambient drama and malevolence—does the region have a history of appallingly few black metal bands per capita? Could it be the heat? Population density? A social dynamic that steers people toward more gregarious forms of self-expression—per porn, hair metal and the like? Or is a robust BM scene lurking just under Cali reality’s surface like oil in the earth, just waiting to be tapped and harnessed? ¶ If Sicarius’ second full-length is any indication,

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that last item just might be the case. Coursing with currents of belligerence and bestiality rarely encountered south of San Francisco, God of Dead Roots points with long, bony fingers toward the possibility of a new strain of black metal brewed in and around the fivepiece’s stomping grounds—the vast expanse of mixed terrain just east of L.A. known as “Inland Empire.”

“Sorry about the lousy connection,” bassist Carnage says. “There’s no cellular service up in the mountains where I live, so my only phone options are online—and they don’t always work that well. I think this area is very conducive to making black metal, and I’d like to think that the new album reflects some of the area’s character.”

Whether it’s just a cinematic connection, some kind of long-distance tellurian link or wireless ley line, the entity the album most brings to mind is ancient Mesopotamian

king of the demons of the wind Pazuzu—best known in SoCal as the evil spirit who possesses Regan MacNeil in first two installments of The Exorcist. While the martial priorities and BM traditionalist musical values of former guitarist and leader Argyris make their presence felt lyrically and musically on opener “Bia” and a few other tracks, God of Dead Roots feels more slatheringly untamed overall than 2017’s Serenade of Slitting Throats, with considerably more personality. You’d never guess the Mick Kenney-produced album was recorded in a week and a half, not long after new guitarist Tragroth stepped in (and up).

“Tragroth started pitching in on writing, I think, three weeks after he joined the band,” Carnage says, “but I’m really happy with the way the album turned out. I just hope we get more sit-down time in the early stages next time around.”

—ROD SMITH

WVRM

WVRM

South Carolina blasters do the isolation grind

F

or their third album, Colony Collapse, South Carolina grinders WVRM have brought their chaotic, raw grind (think Die Choking for a good contemporary starting reference point) to underground biggie Prosthetic Records. And in signing with the relatively larger label, the band has pulled their weird card, bringing not clean vocals or more accessible songs to the table, but... prayer bowls? Yes, those are prayer bowls being played on the album. And in a fully non-ironic, nongimmicky way, to boot. ¶ “My roommate brought a couple of religious instruments back from Tibet and India,” says vocalist Ian Nix, “and I thought it might be worthwhile to experiment with them, along with some other instruments typically outside of grind’s general orthodox. The singing bowl particularly emits a really cool humming sound, almost like amp hum, and the scraping sound that’s produced along the edge of the bowl tends to make your skin crawl. We thought the combo of organic noise with noise produced by amps and pedals was really interesting.”

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“Interesting” is a fair word to describe a grind band from South Carolina because, apparently—and I haven’t hopped on a plane to pound the pavement, dirt, or whatever’s on the ground there to confirm this, but work with me here—WVRM are, according to the press material accompanying Colony Collapse, the only grind band in the state. When I ask Nix how that makes him feel, his answer is as blunt—and dour—as the songs on the new record.

“Not great,” he says. “I really wish there was a larger and more cohesive scene. Now, there are definitely really great pockets of art and music all over the state.

It’s just hard to maintain at times.

We have half the population of the states around us.”

Colony Collapse follows up 2016’s Heartache. Not that the band has been silent since then, putting out

a steady stream of EPs and split releases; but, still, good art—and good grind—takes time to create.

And for Nix, part of what takes time is crafting his lyrics.

“Grind lyrics have a ton of room for content,” he suggests. “But for me personally, I like to convey emotional experiences through my writing. Sometimes in more straightforward prose and sometimes more poetic or metaphorical. For Colony Collapse, I wanted to expand that style into more of a specific commentary on the working class/poor person’s experience.

Everyone understands that the last few years have been highly politicized, with quite a lot of dark and overwhelming instances of mass violence. I wanted to capture the emotion of living in that world and struggling to salvage some sort of decent life.” —GREG PRATT

PSYCHONAUT

PSYCHONAUT It’s fun to take a trip with promising Belgian psych-metallers

E

very month in our reviews section, some combination of Kevin Stewart-Panko, Dutch Pearce and Shane Mehling do the Antichrist’s work and sift through a quagmire of demos, indie vinyl and limited-release cassettes. It can be a slog— you may not be aware of this, but there are a lot of shitty bands out there—and even when the crystal ball plays nice, we do dumb shit like misspell the moniker of future cover stars Gatecreeper. ¶ And yet, like the great Joe Pesci says, it’s our privilege. For all the tin cans our metal detectors pick up, that rare Patek Philippe buried in the sand makes it all worthwhile. Such is the case of Belgian trio Psychonaut, who have spent the last seven years making ambitious, infectious psychedelic post-metal for, um, themselves? Two EPs and 2018’s sprawling full-length debut Unfold the God Man were all released independently, so unless you’re a weirdo like Chris Dick who randomly chills in places like Mechelen, Antwerp, you haven’t heard of ’em. Fortunately, Berlin-based gem collector Pelagic has picked up Unfold for reissue, and it will be instantly obvious to anybody who hears the one-two opening salvo of “All I Saw as a Huge Monkey” and “The Story of Your Enslavement” that Psychonaut have issues with excessive modesty.

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“We’ve always been a DIY band because our music is very personal,” reasons bassist/vocalist Thomas Michiels. “We prefer to keep as much of the decision-making power to ourselves to ensure that we stay faithful to ourselves and the message we want to convey. Over the past few years, we’ve built a good reputation by writing and playing intensively, but we agreed that we had reached a ceiling that was nearly impossible to break through on our own. Being part of the Pelagic family as a relatively small Belgian band seemed completely unrealistic to us, but it appeared they really liked our album and wanted to collaborate with us.”

Clocking in at well over an hour, Unfold the God Man is, at least in part, a concept album that both examines and deconstructs the duality of man. Yup, they’re That Type of Band. Which means a seamless integration of the most eye-opening (and dilating) elements of Intronaut, Baroness, Tool and Mastodon.

It also means throat-singing. Plenty of it. (The latter will in no way impede your dumbfounded appreciation of the former.)

“We tried to write all nine songs in such a way that they would complement each other,” Michiels explains. “It was important to us that this concept record really sounded like a ‘record’ instead of a collection of songs. Every song had to feel like a chapter of a larger story where each of them had their own unique energy. In that way, we tried to create a perpetually fascinating experience with all the different energies in the songs being carefully selected to lift you up and drag you down at the right time.”

If you want to augment the rollercoaster with selected literature, the gents recommend Eli Rook’s The Big Fucking Secret, Graham Hancock’s Fingerprints of the Gods and Ram Dass’ Be Here Now. The cool thing is, you are here now. And you’ll want to hear Psychonaut first. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

RISE FROM THE ASHES OF THEIR OLD SELF ON PHYLOGENESIS WORDS BY ROD SMITH

PHOTO BY RODRIGO FREDES

Louder, faster, harder, heavier, denser, more nuanced and more complex, with significantly stronger songwriting and the band’s most spectacular musicianship to date—Abysmal Dawn’s fifth full-length isn’t merely the Angeleno death metal quartet’s best album ever, several steps up from 2014’s Obsolescence. Phylogenesis is also a marvel of dynamic equilibrium—a fivealarm conflagration of conflict, crises, newish members (guitarist Vito Petroni and drummer James Coppolino), toil and, last (but hardly least), seizing the means of production. (The album was recorded at founding frontman Charles Elliott’s three-year-old Tastemaker Audio facility.) Also, time—as in six years. ¶ “A good part of the reason the record took so long is that life happened,” Elliott explains by phone. “For me, and for the other people in the band. We recorded the drums and all the rhythm guitars in 2017, but then a bunch of shit happened in our lives and we needed to take care of that. Also, I had things to do, like recording bands, mixing bands and writing lyrics for the album—those are a fucking bummer to write. Having to do that—especially kinda stretched out over time—really fucked with my mental state.”

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It’s more than a little telling that Elliott’s first words on the album are “fuck you all,” screamed with uncommon sincerity. The album’s lyrics don’t initially seem all that different from what he’s created for past releases—especially Obsolescence, with its persistent visions of apocalypse—but they spring from a different source and mostly happen in the present rather than the future.

“I started off trying to do a concept album and ended up shitcanning the idea because I didn’t like where it was going,” Elliott admits. “Then I started writing lyrics on a more personal level and it all just kinda came together. I feel like it’s almost a concept album by mistake—a look at the things in society that can rob us of our sanity and humanity.”

Even the band’s choice of covers is more reality-driven than Obsolescence closer “Night’s Blood,” a beautifully executed rendition of one

I STARTED WRITING LYRICS ON A MORE PERSONAL LEVEL AND IT ALL JUST KINDA CAME TOGETHER. I FEEL LIKE IT’S ALMOST A CONCEPT ALBUM

BY MISTAKE. Charles Elliott

of Dissection’s more successful stabs at 19th century symbolist poetry. This time around, Abysmal Dawn tackle Death’s “Flattening of Emotions,” wrestle that fucker to the pavement and make it their own.

“I don’t know what Chuck was thinking at the time he wrote that song,” Elliott muses, “but the meaning that I got out of it seemed to tie in. We almost covered the song on Obsolescence—it came down to either Dissection or Death, and we decided to go with Dissection at the time, in part because Scott Fuller, who was our drummer at the time, didn’t feel like ‘Flattening’ was his thing.

“When it came time to do this album, Death came up again. James is a fucking monster. He’s always had more of that jazzy style I’ve always really been into—I like to call it ‘melodic drumming’—that Sean Reinert basically invented. I was really bummed when I found out he passed away. I did that Death to All tour with him.

He was so fucking cool. He’d torn his Achilles heel and he was playing anyway. He was just a really cool guy and an amazing drummer, and he changed the game for a lot of people. Anyway, James was down, we did the song, and it just seemed to fit right in.”

Tracked in Sweden and mixed at Tastemaker, Unleashed guitarist Fredrik Folkare’s two solos on “Soul-Sick Nation” also fit right in—just like Phylogenesis’ many other moving parts. After a couple listens, what stands out most about the album is the way those parts work together— the depth and thoroughness of execution. It doesn’t sound overthought, overworked or

overproduced—it just fucking sounds complete in a way that makes it hard not to give Elliott big-ass credit for having the foresight to open his own facility.

“Having your own studio is both good and bad,” Elliott says. “Because you have a seemingly endless amount of time to do things, people are a little laxer about things like showing up on time and being as prepared as you’d like them to be. That said, the studio also afforded us way more time to work on parts and explore different possibilities, try things we otherwise might not have even thought of, work on structures more and really take our time with the writing. Having our own studio also helped us kinda map the flow of the album in advance. When I think back to all these classic records that I grew up listening to—especially in our genre—one thing most of them have in common is that they don’t overstay their welcome. You get in. You make your statement. You get out. You make something that people want to listen to again—ideally, immediately—not something that wears people down.

“Most of us have day jobs, so our number one priority is just to make the best record we possibly can, and when it’s done, it’s done. We don’t need to shit out a record every year. We just wanna make something we’re fucking proud of.

Everyone who’s heard the record so far is like, ‘Jesus Christ, this is the best thing you guys have ever done,’ and we’re like, ‘That’s why it took so long.’ Making records is hard. But touring?

Playing in front of people? That’s the part we’re really looking forward to. That’s the fun part.”

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TESTAMENT add an essential new chapter to their three-decade legacy

by ADEM

TEPEDELEN

/ / photo by STEPHANIE

CABRAL

hen a pack of ambitious bay area teenagers decided to name their new band Legacy in 1982, there’s no way they could have known they’d be a position to discuss their actual legacy 38 years later. And what better time to examine that legacy than today, when Testament have found themselves at the forefront of that influential first wave of thrash? Slayer checked out for good in November; Metallica have been in another metaphorical hemisphere for decades; Megadeth are subject to their leader’s often ill-advised whims and (unfortunately) health; and Anthrax can’t decide whether they want to be old-school or new old-school or old old-school, or whatever.

OK, so we can’t exactly relegate the majority of the Big Four to the has-been/checked-out category in 2020, but an honest examination of the quality of material produced in the last 15 years doesn’t reflect well on most of them. Testament, however, have gone from strength to strength since the classic lineup of guitarists Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick, vocalist Chuck Billy and bassist Greg Christian reunited 12 years ago with the aid of drummer Paul Bostaph (most recently of Slayer) for 2008’s The Formation of Damnation.

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Dark Roots of Earth—with Gene Hoglan stepping in to fill the drum throne—arrived with impunity in 2012 (and was recently named by Decibel as one of the best of that decade), and Brotherhood of the Snake came in 2016, with bass virtuoso Steve DiGiorgio replacing Christian. Both albums are arguably as strong as anything Testament recorded prior, with the musicianship and songwriting raised to an incredible level. That brings us to 2020’s Titans of Creation, which has the distinction of being one of the most diverse

and expansive records in the band’s entire catalog. Blessed with an embarrassment of riches talent-wise, Testament did not waste it.

“Having guys like Alex, Gene and Steve as part of the band is very helpful,” Billy deadpans, punctuating the understatement with a rumbling chuckle. “As songs are written, we really depend on them coming in the studio and doing their thing, which is obvious on the record. Also, I think, in the songwriting as well. I think Eric is the kind of writer; when he writes—and he writes the majority of the music—he doesn’t tend to listen to a lot of other stuff. He doesn’t really listen to modern music or have Sirius, so he’s not really exposed to a lot of that. Which, I guess, is a good thing, because he stays in his own world and just writes Testament stuff.”

There’s no question that Testament have become really good at writing “Testament stuff.”

But on Titans of Creation, with its tales of mass murderers (“City of Angels”), cults (“Ishtar’s Gate” and “False Prophet”) and historical

treachery (“Code of Hammurabi”), the Bay Area vets have taken some musical risks that they may not have felt comfortable with in the past.

And according to Billy, Peterson was largely the driving force in challenging his bandmates.

“I’ve gotta give it to him, because on this record he actually pushed the limits a little bit, just on some chord choices that aren’t your typical metal choices,” Billy says. “Usually, a lot of metal is based around E, chugging on that. So, he chose a lot of different chords, but it really worked well with how it all came together.”

Billy may fail to acknowledge his own contributions here, but faced with some material that was perhaps out of his comfort zone, he acquitted himself well. “It actually was a little more challenging for me,” he explains, “because usually I’m the first one to go, ‘No, I’m not gonna sing over that, that sucks,’ because I’m just not comfortable singing to that chord or using that note. But this record, I was open-minded and just kind of took every riff [Eric] had and did my best with it, and it really worked out for the better, I think. It really challenged me, and it shows on there.”

As we write, the band is off touring Europe, introducing crowds to new single “Night of the Witch”—a pounding dose of classic Testament thrash, made all the better by DiGiorgio’s bass

acrobatics—and preparing for the worldwide release of Titans on Nuclear Blast. Testament’s lofty position in the thrash hierarchy since their 2005 reunion isn’t a result of luck. The band has put in the time and energy and effort necessary to get there, and the results are apparent in the quality of the material they continue to issue.

“When we first got Alex back [in 2005], we never really talked about doing new records,” Billy admits, “but we’ve now done [four] records

since then. We’re working harder now. At one point [before Skolnick’s return], we actually referred to ourselves as ‘weekend warriors’ because we weren’t taking tours. We were just… surviving. But once we all decided we were all-in and that we’re doing this full-time, we committed to touring and staying busy. So, being together and writing and touring really just helped and inspired and made us get closer as people and a band. I think that shows when we do write and play music together now.”

I was open-minded and just kind of took every riff [guitarist Eric Peterson] had and did my best with it, and it really worked out for the better, I think.

It really challenged me, and it shows on there.

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interview by

QA j. bennett

MYRKUR W IT H

AMALIE BRUUN on motherhood, folk music and her captivating new album

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I

don’t remember what it’s like to sleep through the night.” So says Amalie woman who’s made the wrong choice. When

Bruun as she feeds her infant son, Otto, while speaking with Decibel over Skype. This is actually our second chat with Bruun this week—the first was cut short because Otto just wasn’t having it. “Of course, he woke up again right before you called me,” she says with a laugh. “He’s been napping for hours, so I think he knew you would call.” ¶ At the time of this writing, Otto is just over four months old. (“So, I’ve been awake for four months, more or less,” Bruun jokes.) Before he was born, the Danish songstress found time to record Folkesange, a collection of folk music—half original, half traditional—which comprises the new Myrkur album. Gone, for now, are the tremolo-picked guitars, frenzied drum blasts and screeching vocals that have made her a target of seemingly endless spite from the black metal trolls, incel misogynists and mouth-breathing meatballs who poison comments sections and social media feeds throughout the metal world. “I adore traditional folk music, so it’s very natural for me to do this album now,” she says. “But I will make more of the other stuff.”

Why did you want to go in this direction?

I think it’s quite a natural direction for me, and I’ve been working on this album for years, actually—just trying to pick out the traditional songs and perform them live and get them under my skin. And then also writing, because it’s 50 percent my own material. And it’s a good time in my life—it fits with my fairy tale.

How so?

Well, folk tales are all about rites of passage and archetypes—and I’ve entered a new phase. I’ve gone from maiden to mother, as they say. I’m a new woman, and I have to find out what that is. I have to learn a new life, and I think you can learn a lot from that kind of music. This is knowledge that has been passed down for hundreds of years. There’s something to it.

In that sense, are you passing the folk tradition on to the next generation—which includes your son?

It’s something that’s on my mind, yes. But maybe not so much to my own son because I don’t know if he’s even going to like this music. But I think it’s important to keep it alive and new—it’s not a dusty old museum, you know? You want to make it relevant for today, and that’s the beauty of folk music. It’s for the folk and told by the people, and it’ll be reinterpreted forever.

What was your criteria or process for choosing the traditional songs? Were they simply favorites, or songs that were suited to your voice, or something else?

I don’t think you can describe that with words.

It’s a feeling. Why does certain art attract you?

Why am I drawn to certain songs as a musician?

PHOTO BY SH AW N BR ACK BILL

I don’t know. I couldn’t put that into words, if that makes any sense.

I imagine you’ve been hearing some of these songs since you were a child. Is that part of it?

Definitely. But some of it’s more new and fresh to me. I’m sorry—it’s such a bad answer. But it’s a feeling—it’s intuition-based.

Can you give an example of a song on the album that you first heard as a child?

“Ramund” is a Danish traditional song. It’s very, very famous.

How has your perception of that song changed from hearing it as a child and now learning it, dissecting it and performing your own version?

I think the first time I heard it, it was a cappella with maybe some percussion. We chose to take it in a much darker direction, I think. It’s very much a hero-type folk tale archetype. When I heard it, there was darkness there, but it was more about the brave hero. As I dove into the lyrics as a grown-up, I got attached to a different, much darker side of the tale.

Speaking of dark folk songs, you also do “House Carpenter,” which is an old Scottish ballad with a fascinating history. What drew you to that one?

That song is just so catchy—it just hits you in the pleasure center. It’s the most delicious, poppy folk song. The melodic universe it has is just so satisfying and perfect. It has that slightly Celtic, more Anglo-Saxon sound—that English folk song vibe that I just love. I used to play a lot of Irish folk violin, so I love that song.

That song is also known as “The Daemon Lover”…

Yes. I find the song very sad. It’s about this

I play the song live, I always say it’s about a woman who was married to a house carpenter, but then she got approached by a rich and powerful man, so she left her husband and she burns in hell. So, I’d say, “Ladies, you should stay with your house carpenter.” [Laughs] There are interpretations of the song in which the rich and powerful man is understood to be Satan.

Totally!

Do you remember how you were first exposed to that song?

Yes, it was the Joan Baez version. She plays it live in a concert in 1971 or something. I was not alive then, but I heard it in that recording.

Judas Priest does a Joan Baez song as well— her original “Diamonds and Rust.” Do you think there’s a reason metal musicians might be attracted to her work?

Yeah, that is interesting. I think it’s because she’s a good example of the modern Americana folk singer, which is historic and traditional in its own right. I think that draws in metal musicians.

Were there other traditional songs that you tried to do that didn’t work for some reason?

No, because I did all the research, if you will, with my live performances. I was very determined—I could not record a folk record without having performed the songs live. You just have to. I mean, in reality, these songs should just exist around the campfire. They don’t have to be recorded. But I wanted to, so I started choosing the songs by playing them live. There were maybe one or two that we tried in rehearsal and I decided to let them go, but once you start diving into the songs, I just knew which ones to perform.

“Leaves of Yggdrasil” is one of your originals on the album. What inspired it?

I wanted to create my own version of that type of Celtic folk song. It’s a love song, really, but a tough love—like lovers apart and longing, but with the traditional Nordic aspect, I guess.

“Tor i Helheim” is another original based on a poem from the Icelandic Eddas…

It is, yeah, but it’s a reinterpretation of it from the 1800s by Denmark’s national poet, [Adam] Oehlenschläger. He wrote this incredibly long thing—it’s all the poems, all the sagas, in this giant book that I have. And that’s the version.

It’s not straight from the Eddas. So, I took that version and wrote a melody to it. It was a fun D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 0 : 3 5

I’m very much awake now— in fact, I’m starting to miss my nightmares because at least that would mean I was sleeping!

Tell me about “Ella,” the first song on the record. It’s beautiful.

Thank you. It’s a song that means a lot to me.

I wrote it last year after having a very tough 2018, personally. I needed something to regain my strength, so I wrote a song to try and regain my inspiration and maybe help other people, too. It was a little bit like an anthem, I suppose.

It was personal, but written outwardly, if that makes sense.

Your last album was based on nightmares. Do you see this album as a return to the external world?

Well, I’m very much awake now—in fact, I’m starting to miss my nightmares because at least that would mean I was sleeping! This album was also part of an awakening, you could say—I have found inner strength in this process that I never thought I would have. I do feel like folk music is dreamy in its own way, though, so I don’t feel like this is a “realistic” singer-songwriter record. That’s not what this is at all. It’s definitely otherworldly.

Folkesange is obviously quite different than most of your previous work. Was going in this 3 6 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

direction as much about getting away from black metal as it was about exploring folk?

No, this was purely a desire to create a folk music record that I’ve dreamt of making for years. It wasn’t meant to have any metal at all, even though you could say it has something in common with black metal in terms of history and paganism.

Do you feel that your connection to folk music is deeper than your connection to black metal because you were introduced to folk music at a younger age?

Yes, I definitely feel that—although I also love black metal so much and it makes me feel like nothing else. But folk music is the essence of what I love about music to begin with, and nothing can ever beat the connection you have to the music of your childhood, I think. What I’ve discovered from becoming a mother is that you really relive your own childhood, like it or not.

It’s so weird. You get thrown right back to it and you rethink everything all of a sudden. So, I don’t know—maybe that’s had some effect on this need to go back, if that makes any sense.

You worked with Christopher Juul from Heilung on this album. Why did you want to collaborate with him?

I met him and [fellow Heilung member]

Maria [Franz] through some mutual friends in Denmark years ago, before they started Heilung. We just bonded instantly over music.

They’re very good folk musicians and very experienced in that whole world. So, he’s been a good friend for many years now and he is an undeniable talent. He moves freely within different musical genres and I relate to him in certain ways. I couldn’t think of a better person for me to record this album with.

The press release sent out to journalists with the album acknowledges that this record could be seen as a part of a pagan folk-based renaissance. What’s your theory on why that renaissance is happening now?

I think people long for authenticity and for art that can stand the test of time and can be listened to and enjoyed after hundreds of years. Today, we live in a culture of buy and then throw it away the week after. And that thought pattern has also infected music.

People make music that isn’t even meant to last—it’s just meant to get many plays on Spotify and then forgotten. Maybe people are sick of that? Traditional folk songs are not only still great and classic today—they are relevant and continue to be reinterpreted and passed down generation to generation. True beauty lasts.

PHOTO BY SHAWN BRACKBILL

challenge to write a song like that. It’s about Thor and Loki going down to hell and meeting the goddess of death. I always loved the character of Hel. It’s very creepy.

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Decibel examines the difficult and expensive process for foreign artists to perform in the U.S., and discovers it ain’t getting any better by KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

I

first met Vernon Blake in 2013 on a tour where he was Napalm Death’s drum tech. He possessed a perpetual and avuncular smile, sported great advice about keeping your body hopped up on vitamin C and never seemed short of stories that could entertain all corners of a room. At the tail end of 2018, I happened upon Vern at a Cannibal Corpse show in Florida, where he explained how he had pulled back from road-dogging to help with the family business. Most recently, this past fall, we ran into one another in Dallas. His warm grin was alive and well, and while Vern and I wouldn’t be considered close friends, he’s a great dude to be around and hang with. ¶ But he’s no Shane Embury. Even he’ll tell you that, as the occasion that had Vern and I crossing paths was his position as last minute fill-in for the Napalm Death bassist and Grindmaster General, who was informed a few days before the band’s umpteenth American tour that his P-1 visa was being delayed. This despite the fact that Embury has come to North America as a professional touring musician since the ’90s with Napalm, Brujeria, Venomous Concept, Lock Up and god knows who else.

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SPECIAL REPORT

Every single penny we had in merch money went towards our visas.

NO ONE’S MAKING MONEY PLAYING EXTREME METAL, AND THE VISA THING IS SO PROHIBITIVE. FABIAN DEVLIN, DAWN RAY’D

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UNCERTAINTY BLURS THE VISION

A P-1 visa is what allows foreign national per-

formers/entertainers to enter the U.S. to legally work at a special event or festival performance, or tour for up to a year. As opposed to many other countries, where a band can show up at a port of entry with an itinerary, letter of invitation from one or more promoters or a declaration of purpose—or, if necessary, pay a nominal fee—the process for securing a P-1 is burdensome and expensive, and requires much pre-planning and organization.

Olav “Ravn” Bergene has been touring the U.S. as the frontman for Norwegian black metallers 1349 for 15 years, and, as such, has endured the visa process on numerous occasions.

“The first thing you need is someone to be your petitioner—someone who will vouch for you and basically employ you in the U.S.,” he explains. “The way we do it is that we go through a visa agent service, a law firm that specializes in helping people through this massive process.

You need to provide them with enough information so they are convinced you are a benefit to the country, and that what you’re doing is not a service that can be provided by anyone in the U.S. Basically, you’re showing a demand for your presence. We submit our personal information at Homeland Security’s online form—which takes over two hours because the website crashes all the time and you have to start over and over— and our record company acts as petitioner, providing a shitload of press, writing letters of recommendation and all sorts of stuff. Once all this information is collected, it’s submitted and then, as they say, the papers get thrown up in the air and you never know what’s going to happen. You can be approved, they can ask for more information—which will delay the process—or they can deny it. When you are approved, you get a petition paper, which you show at the embassy when you go for your in-person interview. You make an appointment, get your fingerprints scanned and are interviewed for anywhere from 30 seconds

to a couple of hours. There, they put the visa sticker in your passport and mail it back to you.”

What’s most counterintuitive about the process is before any of the aforementioned steps can be embarked upon, not only does a tour have to be booked beforehand, but the contracts between the promoter/venue and the band and their booking agent have to be secured as part of the paperwork submission. Basically, a tour’s details have to be finalized before a band can enter the process to make the tour happen.

“You have to fully commit without even being fully assured it’s going to happen,” says Ben Ward, frontman for U.K. stoner rockers Orange Goblin. Ward and his bandmates went through the process “for the fifth or sixth time at least” for a 2019 tour, only to have drummer Chris Turner’s visa delayed after his embassy interview. “That’s why it was such a scare for us when Chris was held up,” Ward continues. “We’d already invested upwards of $20,000 before we’d even started.”

Nathanial Saucony is a veteran booking agent who books a good number of the bands you read about in these very pages. Nathanial Saucony is also not his real name, as he requested anonymity in order to avoid any potential future government blowback for his overseas clientele.

Here, he outlines the fees applicants shell out for the visa process: “The filing fee is $460. There’s a $250 annual union fee to become a member of the American Federation of Musicians, which provides a required letter to the government on behalf of the band showing them to be members in good standing, and $190 per band member for their embassy appointments.”

Those are the fixed fees. On top of that, there is a $1,440 premium processing/expedition fee that bands will often face when applications and filings get slowed down by red tape and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS, the department that reviews applications) employee vacations/sick days. In addition, there are the costs of hiring attorneys to navigate the

process. That’s before you even get to actual tour expenses: flights, vehicle rental, fuel, gear, crew and so on.

“The cost of hiring an attorney to prepare the petition and paperwork isn’t fixed, and that’s where you’re going to be paying minimum $1,500 to as much as $5-6,000, depending on who you’re working with,” says Matthew Covey, a New Yorkbased immigration lawyer who works the petition process for bands. He’s also the executive director of Tamizdat, a nonprofit that advocates for international artist mobility. “The truth of matter is that the process is really complex and a lot of hours go into it. I do this for a living, but we’re mission-based, so I know where costs can be cut. The biggest reason it’s so expensive is partly because lawyers charge too much and partly because the process has become so unpredictable, complex [and] non-transparent that it’s very hard to do if you’re not an attorney.”

“For our last tour,” points out 1349’s Ravn, “we paid almost $2,500 to our visa agent because of the amount of paperwork we had to deliver.”

Liverpool black metal trio Dawn Ray’d secured visas for a 2019 tour and appearance at Northwest Terror Fest, but as guitarist Fabian Devlin remarks, “It was an absolutely bureaucratic nightmare! We had amazing support from Prosthetic Records. The people from Northwest Terror Fest and people who work in music media wrote some really nice letters and references for us, but I have never dealt with bureaucracy like that. Every single penny we had in merch money went towards our visas.

No one’s making money playing extreme metal and the visa thing is so prohibitive.”

“The problem with North America is about visas,” says Franz Treichler of Swiss avantgardists the Young Gods, who played on North American soil—Canada—for the first time in 23 years this past summer and continue to avoid the U.S. “Switzerland isn’t in the European Union, the application costs $1,000 and you’re not even sure you’re going to get the visa. So, if you

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U.S. VISAS It’s always been pretty good for us and seems to be getting better.

Maybe because we’ve done it so many times that we have a good record.

That’s the thing—you never know.

BUT TRUMP DID SAY HE WISHED MORE NORWEGIANS WOULD COME TO THE STATES! RAVN, 1349 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

have six or seven people, you have to put $6-7,000 on the table to not even know if it’s going to happen. Financially, we never had a solid tour of 20-25 shows that we could take the risk on coming back to America.”

A sticking point with petitioners and lawyers representing foreign bands is the USCIS regulation requiring applying artists to be “internationally recognized as outstanding in their discipline for a sustained and substantial period of time.” This makes it difficult for lesserknown, non-mainstream and underground bands to prove their worth to a faceless government entity. However, with the right amount of knowhow and legalese on your side, the issue can be skirted around.

“Part of the packet can be letters from a record label and a record contract,” explains Saucony. “The label or petitioner can say, ‘We have this artist we’ve signed and we want to help them grow and blah blah blah.’ It especially works when there’s a U.S. entity with dollars on the line counting on artists coming over to recoup their investment or turn a profit. On the surface, it seems easier for more established artists to come over, but obviously there are many brand new or lesser-known bands that still get over.”

“All you need is bona fide employment in the U.S.,” says Covey. “So, even if you meet the standard of international renown and you’re doing a bunch of house parties for $30 a night or for pizza and you have a contract for it, that’s still employment. What you’re doing doesn’t have to be impressive.”

“It should be noted that the process is the same for a tour or for a one-off or festival performance,” adds Marc Gessford, the one-man visa petitioning whirlwind behind Play America, whose client list includes ProgPower and Maryland Deathfest. “If you play 352 shows in one year in the U.S., the work and cost is exactly the same if you were coming here for a one-off, 60-minute festival set.”

“YOU SUFFER, BUT WHY?” The P-1 process begs many questions. Among

those are why it’s so rigorous and labyrinthine.

If there’s a bureaucratic process that hasn’t moved with the times, it’s this one.

“It’s to prevent what they call speculative employment,” explains Fuji Whittenburg, a Los Angeles-based immigration lawyer whose client list includes Grammy-winning artists, Emmy/ Oscar-winning actors and high-profile celebrity models. “You can’t get a visa for unknown work.

There’s the background part of the process, but also a forward-looking component that you’re coming here to do x, y or z. That’s what the contract and itinerary requirement is for: to protect the U.S. labor force and U.S. musicians. They don’t want artists coming here to audition or look for work; they want that work to already be secured.”

“I would also guess that these regulations stem from a long time ago when foreign performances had to be planned months and months in advance,” adds Gessford, “whereas today you can get any kind of gig at the last minute, anywhere.”

Throwing another wrench into the proceedings is something called a Request for Evidence (RFE). Simply put, it’s when a visa gets held up because the government requires additional information about a particular application, after which the petitioner is required to provide more supporting evidence. When you hear of incidents like a band missing the first week of a tour, or the Orange Goblin and Napalm Death situations—Turner got his visa approved after the band was already well into the tour with a fill-in; Embury’s was approved on the final day of the tour—it usually involves a RFE. “You never know what it’s based on, and typically there’s no obligation for immigration to divulge what and why they’re asking for information,” Saucony explains.

“It’s very anonymous,” laments Gessford, “but my impression and hope is that the USCIS is filled with people who are trying to do their best. When it comes to bands, I think they’re

more likely to approve instead of RFE or deny, but like any other profession, there are dicks and assholes in there.”

“They do get better over time as they see more petitions,” Covey says of the adjudicating agents.

“There was a time back in the early ’90s where you’d come across officers who would deny DJs with the reasoning that ‘Webster’s defines a DJ as an employee of a radio station.’ Seriously?! That doesn’t happen anymore, as they’ve become aware that a DJ is something more than Casey Kasem.”

This, then, begs another question: Do the USCIS employees passing judgment have any knowledge about the scenes and cultures on which they’re passing judgment?

“No, they’re not trained culturally,” answers Covey. “So, we have to explain to the agents the validity and cultural significance of artists who aren’t making a ton of money; like how an artist who is playing a 150-capacity venue in New York City can be important. I think there’s definitely a nexus of an issue here in that bureaucracy moves slowly and you need to work it in advance to prepare for problems. The simple answer is that both booking agents and musicians gotta get their shit together, organize earlier [and] get stuff booked further in advance so a lot of these problems can be avoided, but that’s really blaming the victim because the process shouldn’t be so hard, slow and prone to things going wrong.”

“A lot of the time, it’s not that the people making the judgments haven’t heard of something that might be common,” suggests Whittenburg. “It’s that they’re not willing to go forward based on their personal knowledge. This comes up all the time whenever we see an uptick in RFEs or if there are issues coming up that are out of bounds or extra-regulatory. When we bring it up to the department, a lot of the time the answer will be that they’ve hired a bunch of new officers and these are training issues, but to my knowledge, I don’t believe they have subject matter experts who know the nuances of the industry standards.”

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U.S. VISAS “And this is what makes this job so difficult, frustrating and more stressful than you can possibly imagine,” Gessford emphasizes. “The USCIS is this monolith of mystery that has some number of agents; could be hundreds, could be thousands, and you never know who’s working on your case.”

THE (REPUBLICAN) ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM “You want to know whether Trump’s fucked everything up?” laughs Gessford. Professionals in the trenches will note how many of these issues have existed long before, and go far beyond the present commander-in-chief. Still, there has been an indirect “Trump effect” throughout his administration.

“USCIS is a fee-based agency, and has the capacity and volume of manpower,” notes Whittenburg, “but things have changed. The regulations haven’t changed since the 1950s, but there are things called policy memos, which allow administrations and senior officers to be either more clarifying and flexible or more restrictive. Bush had Homeland Security created after 9/11, and things were strict with people from certain countries; it felt more like national security. Under Obama, the regs were there, but they gave deference to prior approval. Now, there’s a policy directive we call ‘BAHA’—Buy American, Hire American—and they no longer give deference to prior approval and treat each application like it’s the first one. For really wellestablished bands, that’s not a problem, but for bands that aren’t as well-known, going through the process is a lot of work.”

“I don’t think Trump has had any direct impact,” opines Gessford, “but what he may have done is put immigration at the forefront, and I wonder if the agents making the determinations are more concerned about their decisions because everyone is scrutinizing anything that goes wrong with any kind of immigration issue. It’d be natural for agents to be a little paranoid now.”

“The petition part of the process hasn’t gotten worse under Trump,” Covey argues. “That has been continually getting worse since the ’90s.

There’s been a slow progression of raising the standard and making it a little harder all the time, but there’s been nothing cataclysmic about it. The consular piece—where people actually apply for visas at the embassies—has changed massively in the last three years. Mostly, it’s become really difficult to get artists from the global south—Latin America, Africa, Middle East, southeast Asia—to the U.S. Artists coming from Europe haven’t been as big a deal because they’re largely white and middle-class.”

“It’s always been pretty good for us and seems to be getting better,” counters 1349’s Ravn.

“Maybe because we’ve done it so many times that we have a good record—I don’t know. That’s the thing—you never know. But Trump did say

he wished more Norwegians would come to the States!” he laughs.

CURE FOR THE COMMON COMPLAINT If there’s good news in all this, it’s that even if delays are becoming more commonplace, the number of outright P-1 denials is relatively miniscule, especially for those hailing from European and Commonwealth nations. Both Saucony and Whittenburg remark that unless an applicant raises serious red flags, committing time and money to the process almost assures approval.

Orange Goblin’s Ward reasons, “I think the reason we hear about these sorts of delays or when there is a rare denial is because they are so rare.”

With all the hoops I sometimes have to jump through to get five guys over from Sweden for two weeks who’ve played in a band for 25 years,

YOU’D THINK I WAS BRINGING IN OSAMA BIN LADEN, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! MARC GESSFORD, PLAY AMERICA

USCIS has a no-interview policy (at least with the likes of Decibel), but published stats show almost 17,000 P-1 approvals in 2018. Multiply that by processing, embassy interview, attorney fees and hidden costs—this is no shrinking violet of an industry. If anything, bloated inefficiency and outdated requirements are the biggest problems that those we spoke with wish they could wave a magic wand at.

“The biggest issue I have is with the itinerary/contract/proof of future work,” sighs Whittenburg. “It makes no sense to me why big bands like the Rolling Stones or Coldplay should have to prove they have work lined up.

For smaller and younger bands, the evidentiary requirement should be more lenient. If a band has a tour lined up through a booking agent or

touring company, it should be automatically approved because obviously they’re a big enough deal that people are doing all this work and fans are going to pay money to see them.”

Both Ravn and Ward, as musicians who have trudged through the process multiple times, wonder why basic computing technology isn’t employed in the application. “The biggest change I’d like to see is that our old applications are stored in an account so we don’t have to start a new one each time and re-enter the same information each time,” says the former.

“It’s frustrating having to do the same application over and over again,” seconds Ward.

“You’d think there would be a database where they save all that information. Passport numbers, birthdays and social insurance numbers don’t change; all they’d need to know is what we’re doing this time.”

“I don’t even know where to start,” laughs Covey. “On the petition side, if you’ve got a band from Finland and you can send in a stack of press, that should be enough to show they have renown. Give them a visa and not make things crazy! That was the way it was back in the early ’90s: five pieces of press and evidence of a gig, and you’re off. That didn’t destroy the American labor market or let any terrorists in with plastic explosives in their drum kits; everything was fine and contributed to a much healthier international cultural situation.”

“I don’t see things changing anytime soon,” grumbles Gessford. “In America, immigration is one of the most divisive issues, and when it comes up, no one ever says anything about how it affects athletes, performers, TV personalities or scientists; it’s only poor people who want to come here that anyone cares about. In the grand scheme of things that our lawmakers and the public are concerned about, this isn’t one of them. There’s no public pressure saying, ‘You really need to revise how bands come into the country.’

“But I always question the government standard about being internationally recognized,” he continues. “A band should be able to establish they’re a legitimate band. If you’re a young band, that might be difficult, but there’s generally some indicia of it. I’ve worked with a lot of bands that only have one CD out, but that’s still one CD—you’re a band! Nobody else can do what that band does because they’re that band. The international recognition standard is outdated, outmoded and illogical, and this idea of protecting American workers… can anyone play an Iron Maiden or At the Gates song? Sure, but nobody wants to see a cover band when you can see the real thing. With all the hoops I sometimes have to jump through to get five guys over from Sweden for two weeks who’ve played in a band for 25 years, you’d think I was bringing in Osama bin Laden, for Christ’s sake!”

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APRIL 10TH D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 0 : 4 3

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

Of Strange Beasts and Phantoms the making of Clutch’s Blast Tyrant M AY 2 0 2 0 : 4 4 : D E C I B E L

story by

chris dick

DBHOF185

CLUTCH Blast Tyrant DRT ENT ERTAINMENT MARCH 23, 2004

The swollen GOAT

D E C I B E L : 4 5 : M AY 2 0 2 0

PHOTO BY DAN WINTERS

T

he Hall of Fame isn’t just a library of legendary first attempts or super influential second albums. Throughout, Decibel has unfurled the proverbial carpet to bands well into their now-vaunted careers. To wit, Corrosion of Conformity found the key to the Hall via their historic third record, Blind.

Influential U.K. proto-metal phenoms Budgie were also on their third with Never Turn Your Back on a Friend when they hit the Hall with vintage heaviness. So, it’s not without precedent that we fired up our flat black 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle and muscled past Clutch’s triple-poser threats in Transnational Speedway League (1993), Clutch (1995) and The Elephant Riders (1998) for the venerated post-millennial riffmaster general Blast Tyrant.

Moored by lead single and video “The Mob Goes Wild” and expanded upon by the acoustic guitar mastery of “The Regulator,” Blast Tyrant wasn’t just the follow-up to 2001’s guest musician-heavy Pure Rock Fury. The 15-song pinnacle of modern heavy rock was Clutch rewriting the rules. In many respects, the Marylanders had grown beyond their humble hardcore (and later alt-metal) trappings.

After a tumultuous time on Atlantic and Columbia Records, they needed to move on by throwing their past to the wind. It wasn’t an abandonment of the songs that made them heavy rock favorites from the mid- to late-’90s (“A Shogun Named Marcus,” “Spacegrass,” “The Soapmakers”). Rather, the time was right to start anew. So, Clutch replaced their gas station badge logo with a trippy alternative. As the unforgettable line in “Spacegrass” goes, “Don’t worry, it’s coming.”

Indeed, by hook, crook and a lot of risks, Clutch opened up the hood, slotted in a Ford 427 “Cammer” and repainted the bitch. From the expeditious “Mercury” and the rhythmic funk of “Cypress Grove” to the thunder boogie of “Worm Drink” and the barebones “Ghost,” Clutch funneled their influences—old and new—into a reconfigured powerhouse. By having producer Machine at the helm, the quartet would also find an outsider coming into the fold. The New Jerseyan hammered into and pulled out of Clutch’s songwriting bag, refining and retooling Tim Sult’s “Big Block” riffs, honing JeanPaul Gaster’s drums, perfecting Dan Maines’ mountainous grooves, and hyper-projecting Neil Fallon’s full-throttle vocals and wry humor. Blast Tyrant was to the aughts what the self-titled was to the ’90s.

It was a way forward and a standard-setter in the realm of heavy rock.

With Blast Tyrant, Clutch not only join fellow riffrockers Kyuss, Monster Magnet and Sleep; they also find themselves next to their influences in Black Sabbath, Bad Brains and Melvins. The Hall hereby welcomes the heavy groove and sardonic wit of Clutch milemarker Blast Tyrant.

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Clutch released Slow Hole to China: Rare and Unreleased in 2003 to ample applause. Describe the lead-up to Blast Tyrant.

JEAN-PAUL GASTER: It was an interesting time.

Previous to that, we had bounced around on the major labels. We did Transnational Speedway League and the self-titled. Those were both for Atlantic. Then, we went over to Columbia for The Elephant Riders. Then, we went back to Atlantic at the very end of the ’90s. It was difficult because each time we signed to a label, there was a short honeymoon, and then the real work came trying to promote a record. The majors would bail on the record before it really had a chance to get any traction. That was a normal scenario for us.

Luckily, we saw the writing on the wall in the late ’90s and recorded Jam Room, which we did completely on our label, River Road Records. We sold that one on the internet. We had a website for it. We’d pack up CDs and go to the post office.

The next day we’d do it all over again. In some way, we were ahead of the curve, but the business model—which was completely DIY—wasn’t sustainable. So, we started thinking about a 50/50 deal with another label.

The idea behind the 50/50 deal was that the band and the label would officially form a partnership. So, DRT came to us and said, “Let’s do a 50/50 deal.” The negotiations took a long time, almost leading up to the first release we did with DRT, Blast Tyrant. We spent an enormous amount of time writing a lot of songs, some of which are on Slow Hole to China. In a lot of ways, Slow Hole to China was a precursor to Blast Tyrant. We were really feeling our way around how we were going to do business in the new decade. With a tremendous amount of material, we turned around and delivered what is known as Blast Tyrant.

TIM SULT: This was the era where we decided that we wouldn’t deal with the major labels. We did four albums on the majors. After that experience, we just didn’t want to go down that path anymore. We wanted something a bit more indie.

We wanted to go in with the label. We didn’t just want to be signed. We did that with DRT under a new business model. We had dabbled in doing our label, River Road Records. We released Jam Room and a few live albums on that label.

The Bakerton Group also released an EP on the label. At the time, we figured we needed someone else at the helm label-wise. We weren’t ready to dive into the whole label thing. We got into it too early, I think.

DAN MAINES: The last album we had put out was Pure Rock Fury, which was on Atlantic Records.

That was our last dance with a major label.

There were a couple of things going on around that time, actually. Between Elephant Riders and Pure Rock Fury, we’d been living together in a

band house in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

I don’t remember exactly when, but we all left the band house individually. We all got married. And we all bought houses. I would say it was a period of heavy transition for the band. Moving off the majors and signing with DRT, an indie, was a pretty big move for us. I remember we all started jamming the songs that would become Blast Tyrant in Jean-Paul’s new house in Frederick, Maryland. We would jam in his basement. Good times were had at Jean-Paul’s house.

NEIL FALLON: Not to be dramatic or anything, but I was at a point in my life where I was married, and I started to think about how I was going to support a family with the band. Was it going to work out? From 2000 to the release of Blast Tyrant were the dark nights of the musical soul. We pounded pavement viciously. Creatively, it was frustrating not knowing what to do. The music industry was changing drastically. We were

“We started as a hardcore band, but turned into a riff-rock band early on. Of course, the term ‘stoner rock’ is kind of stupid.

It’s way limiting.

But you know what?

I love all those bands.”

T IM SULT signed during the wave of Nirvana. We were swept up like a lot of bands. When that well dried up, we were dropped like a bad habit. We went label to label. We had to ask ourselves if we wanted to get back in the van. Were we ready to do the work? That’s what comes to mind when I think of the lead-up to Blast Tyrant.

Clutch was sandwiched between heavy metal and alternative. While it made sense at the time to include you in the stoner rock movement, what do you think about the classification in hindsight?

SULT: When we first started out [and] were touring, our first album was out, and we heard Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Sleep, and we felt like we had more in common with those bands playing a kind of heavy rock ‘n’ roll—remember, this is before the descriptor “stoner rock” even existed—than we did with heavy metal or alternative. I think our first big tour was with M AY 2 0 2 0 : 4 6 : D E C I B E L

Monster Magnet. We felt like we were that kind of band. We started as a hardcore band, but turned into a riff-rock band early on. Of course, the term “stoner rock” is kind of stupid. It’s way limiting. But you know what? I love all those bands. So, I don’t mind saying that we were listening to a lot of stoner rock prior to Blast Tyrant. The Atomic Bitchwax, with Ed [Mundell] from Monster Magnet, was definitely in rotation. I was also listening to a lot of the Allman Brothers, which probably explains why the solos are a little too long.

MAINES: At the time, it might’ve been beneficial to Clutch. People need a label to put on a band’s sound, just when they’re talking about it. That’s how they describe it without listening to it.

Bands like Kyuss, Sleep, Fu Manchu, the Atomic Bitchwax… we loved those bands! We listened to those bands! To be associated with them, I’m proud of that. We shared a similar pool of influences. We were all trying to do a rock thing by putting our individual take on it. The label “stoner rock” never bothered me, but I never tell people I play in a stoner rock band. [Laughs] Typically, Clutch songs are given the tape-trade treatment before the album is released. I know you encourage tape-trading of live shows as part of the community-building aspect of Clutch, but there weren’t a lot of songs played live off of Blast Tyrant before it was released. Why was that?

By that point, we were writing these songs mostly in the house that I lived in at the time. Actually, I remember recording an entire version of Blast Tyrant in that same house. We demoed the shit out of Blast Tyrant in a lot of ways. I had just started to get into recording, so the band would come over to my place and we’d jam and record. The original intent was to record Blast Tyrant entirely on our own. There are versions of all the songs that I recorded at my place. The riffs were all there, for the most part, but it was Machine, our producer, who really shaped Blast Tyrant. He took those early demos and focused them. The arrangements changed.

Some of the lyrics changed as well. But a lot of the riffs on Blast Tyrant were in our arsenal for a couple of years. So, yeah, I guess it was different. We didn’t really play a lot of Blast Tyrant live before it came out. These days, we play a lot of new material before we record it. I will say we weren’t playing many shows at the time. We were between labels. We were battling booking agents, too. We were between agents. So, it was a tumultuous time for the band. I think a lot of that has to do with which songs we played live and why.

SULT: I don’t think we didn’t play songs off Blast Tyrant before the release on purpose. We had “Promoter” and an early version of “Cypress Grove” called “Cattle Car” that I think we played a lot. Maybe we didn’t. The others were probably not written yet.

GASTER:

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CLUTCH blast tyrant

Blast Tyrant has an overall faster tempo than your previous albums. Why was that, if you recall?

We were definitely trying to make a more focused album. We were coming off of Pure Rock Fury, which [despite] a pretty fast title track, a lot of that record is mid-tempo. In a lot of ways, Pure Rock Fury was very hip-hop-influenced.

At least the drums were. We were getting into the whole mid-tempo thing. Like 88 to 102 bpm— that kind of feel. Machine had a lot to do with speeding the songs up and cutting a lot of the fat. He helped us make a more focused album. If he hadn’t come in, the songs probably would’ve meandered a bit more than they do. Also, we learned a tremendous amount about songwriting on Blast Tyrant. More than anything, I think we wanted a different record from Pure Rock Fury. At the same time, it was something that was more concise, stripped-down and focused.

FALLON: We’re well aware of the comfort zone, which J-P calls the “Clutch Tempo.” That’s anywhere from 95 and 105 beats per minute. We can play a riff for half an hour at that speed. So, we got comfortable with that. Growth is always spurred on by challenge in any endeavor. It was uncomfortable for us to play faster, and that was a good thing. Not for nothing, Machine was cracking the whip on us. He’s a very intense individual while in the studio. At the time, it was really annoying, but the method to the madness—the end product—makes it worth the while. I will say, we’ve always been a very schizophrenic band. If you listen to Transnational, that’s a really slow record, except for “[A Shogun Named] Marcus.” Tim and J-P were and still are huge Melvins fans. I think that slow philosophy was there from the get-go. We’re also into the faster punk rock like the Bad Brains. We’ve always tried to figure out how we could fit in the middle of those two things, I think.

GASTER:

Keyboards and acoustic guitar are also more prevalent on Blast Tyrant. What was happening in the songwriting department that pulled these instruments into the fray?

FALLON: I think people scratched their heads at the time, but we had keyboards on the self-titled [record]. So, I don’t think they were necessarily new to Clutch, but maybe the way they were in the mix is what changed the perspective. We ended up hiring Mick Schauer, who unfortunately passed away last year, to play keyboards on tour with us.

GASTER: A lot of that is us trying to set a new path for the band. It was a new time in the music industry. We were very excited not to have to deal with the bureaucracy of the major labels.

We really felt like it was an opportunity for us to strike a new path. To find some sounds that we hadn’t covered before. At the time, we were

listening to a lot of the Allman Brothers Band, the Meters, Deep Purple. We had just started to dabble with that on Blast Tyrant.

MAINES: Well, Neil has played keyboards throughout the history of the band. He has a good ear for adding subtle keyboard parts that fit and blend in well. His keyboard style isn’t overwhelming to the song. The idea is that when we play live, they’re part of the sound, but if they weren’t there, you’d notice. The keyboards are a nice added texture. The acoustic guitars were also coming from Neil. He started getting into the bluesy style of guitar on the self-titled, but he was able to take it to another level on “The Regulator” and “Ghost.”

There’s a sense of humor to Blast Tyrant—a Clutch-centric sense of humor. What were you trying to poke fun at or at least find humor in?

FALLON: That record was a stream of consciousness, for lack of a better phrase.

I didn’t know what I was writing until it was done. I’ve always liked humor in music. Not laugh-out-loud humor, but the kind that brings a smirk to one’s face.

I did learn, to my regret, that politics instantly dates music. You kind of have to make it vague enough where it doesn’t put a time stamp on things. Do I regret mentioning Condoleezza Rice? Yes and no.

I thought mentioning her was funny.

SULT: It all came from the word magnets we were putting on a refrigerator at Water Music in New Jersey, I think.

We were putting all these weird words together to make song titles. They were so jumbled they almost were like Carcass song titles. The refrigerator magnets were a big influence on Blast Tyrant’s overall sense of humor.

Lyrically, there’s a loose connection between the songs—a quasi-sci-fi theme. What exactly is happening on Blast Tyrant?

FALLON: Well, with lyrics, a lot of the time, the words just fall out of the sky. If provided words, lines around those words are added to justify their existence. I love words. I love double entendres. Words can sound cool, the sonic qualities of words. Certain syllables feel good going off the tongue. The songs themselves were written so quickly they’re kind of cross-referential in some ways. A band like Funkadelic have their mythology. I loved that. It was sci-fi. It was goofy. But more than anything, it was cool. It’s such a bold thing to do, but it’s a lot of fun. I only say this in hindsight ’cause I didn’t know I was doing it at the time. I like it when concepts aren’t too heavy-handed. They need to be pliable so the listener can have his or her version of it. I’ve always liked escapism in music—even if it’s M AY 2 0 2 0 : 4 8 : D E C I B E L

 Not-so-subtle hustle All access laminates for some of the many tours from the Blast Tyrant era

Jean-Paul Gaster holding the yet to be released Limited Edition Hess 454 Sculpture.

Small quantity remaining for pre-order at clutchmerch.com

CLUTCH blast tyrant

not clearly defined. I can sing the same song every night, and the movie in my head will be different. That’s what I was after on Blast Tyrant.

GASTER: Lyrically, the way I remember it, it changed a lot from the earliest demos to when we were recording with Machine. I seem to have memories of Neil changing things quite a bit over time, and especially when we were in the studio in New Jersey, which is where we tracked it. The studio had an apartment upstairs where we stayed while recording. On the refrigerator, it had these word magnets. So, we started putting words together. Blast Tyrant was actually a title we got from putting random words together on that apartment refrigerator. We were always putting two words together that had no business being together. I remember doing that and Neil changing up his lyrics as we experimented with all these different word combinations. “Worm Drink” is one of those word magnet titles. “Spleen Merchant” is, too.

The cover art is different. You enlisted Encarnacion Hernandez to draw the cover. What were some of the ideas you showed Hernandez to arrive at the final cover?

Well, Encarnacion Hernandez—that’s a mouthful, I know—is the younger brother of our tour manager, Oscar Hernandez. He’s actually Chon for short. Chon is a tattoo artist. We simply gave him some song titles, like “Blast Tyrant” and “Worm Drink.” We asked him to draw what he thought a worm drink might look like. He took the titles and started drawing. Some drawings are more literal than others, but that’s how we ended up with the artwork for Blast Tyrant.

As a result, the logo changed, too, which I think was us, again, trying to chart a new course for the band. New decade, new deal, new record and new logo. We wanted to give the band a new life.

We wanted this record to be different from anything before it.

FALLON: We wanted an organic, homegrown cover piece. It was really strange-looking, and I was surprised by that. I’m very possessive about the aesthetics of Clutch. So, it was hard to let go. But when I saw the drawing—on a piece of paper—I was pretty into it. We sent the label the drawings and they colorized it. The full title, Blast Tyrant Atlas of the Invisible World With Illustrations of Strange Beasts and Phantoms, was meant to be more like a book title. The song titles were meant to be the chapters. Chon illustrated the book, for lack of a better phrase. I remember the reactions. Everyone was put off by it. [Laughs] New ideas are almost always met with disapproval. If we had put the classic Clutch logo on top of a photo of a ’60s hot rod, it would’ve been obvious, and people would’ve been comfortable with that. How boring!

GASTER:

“I don’t think DRT were intentionally malevolent, but they were trying to use a ’70s business model when most people in the music industry at that time didn’t know what tomorrow was going to be like.”

NE IL FA LLO N How did the DRT deal happen?

Part of the attraction to DRT was that the owner, Derek Shulman, was a musician. Not only did he come from rock ‘n’ roll, but a very artistic form of rock ‘n’ roll. He was in Gentle Giant. They were way out there, ahead of their time in many ways. They crossed a lot of genres.

So, the idea that the label was owned by a musician who was into way-out-there music was exciting to us. This idea of a 50/50 deal was also exciting to us. By that point, we had signed four record deals with major labels—two for Atlantic, one for Columbia and then one more for Atlantic.

It was a crazy time. This new way of doing business was interesting to us. That was the mindset going into the deal with DRT. SULT: It was designed to be a collaborative deal where we would have a share in the profits. At the time, it felt fresh, like a new business plan.

We weren’t too internet-savvy at the time, so we really didn’t have a concept of doing things efficiently. I’m not sure DRT knew what to do with the internet either. They were coming from a different angle. They were really old-school. DRT weren’t ready to move into the future.

FALLON: The DRT deal was refreshing. They called it a 50/50 deal, where the artist and label would split 50 percent of the net, whatever it is. Long story short, it ended up being a 0/0 deal. DRT went belly-up, owing us a lot of money. We were GASTER:

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starting our families at that point. We were completely stressed out. It’s not like, “Oh, I need to buy a guitar.” It’s more like, “I need to provide.

Period.” We ended up going to court with DRT. That’s how we got the masters to Blast Tyrant and two other records back to us. We ended up starting Weathermaker at that point. It was a super pain in the ass, but ultimately ended up a blessing in disguise. I don’t think DRT were intentionally malevolent, but they were trying to use a ’70s business model when most people in the music industry at that time didn’t know what tomorrow was going to be like.

What do you remember about the studio sessions with Machine? You recorded drums at Water Music and the guitars, bass and vocals at the Machine Shop, both in Hoboken.

That was the first record that we recorded in a modern way. We used click tracks and Pro Tools. Today, that’s all no big deal, but back then it was very new to us. So, the majority of the drums, which we recorded at Water, I actually cut to click tracks and scratch guitar tracks. That was the first time we made a record like that. That way of recording was completely new to us. We were used to going into the studio and playing the song as many times as it takes to get it right all the way through. Once you get it, you move on to the next song. That wasn’t

GASTER:

PHOTO BY RUTH STANLEY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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the case with Blast Tyrant. I would track a verse, and then we’d move on to the bridge or a chorus.

It was a very different process from which we were accustomed.

I remember the drum room at Water was just gorgeous. The room itself sounded beautiful.

They have an amazing console there. Those two things, I think, had a lot to do with the drum sound we were able to get on Blast Tyrant. Water Music was pretty incredible. I will say we were pretty aware of the fact that we were recording a record that was going to be different from our previous records. Similarly, I will say we wanted a record that sounded organic, as if we had gone into a room together to jam. We didn’t want a record that sounded sliced and diced like a Nine Inch Nails record. So, I think we struck a happy middle in that the recording techniques were new to us, but the result didn’t sound that way.

MAINES: Things moved along pretty quickly with Machine. That’s how he likes to work. He likes to work on sections. To focus on it. We’d record sections, then he’d listen to it, comment on it, and we’d record that section again. It wasn’t like we had to record the entire song over again.

That’s how we worked on previous albums. So, I guess Machine’s method of recording saved a bit of time. It’s cool because it does allow you to think a bit longer about how to approach each part. It gives you a chance to experiment with different ideas without sacrificing the entire take of a song. I remember Billy Milano was living in a part of Water Music. He knew Machine pretty well. He would make us these awesome spaghetti dinners. A home-cooked Italian meal by Billy. [Laughs] Chicken scratch fever  Neil Fallon’s initial lyrics for “Homecoming,” what would later become “The Regulator.”

SULT: I think about Billy’s cooking about once or twice a year—it was that good. As for the sessions with Machine, they were super easy recording-wise. As far as the recording process went, I really just had to play the riff one or two times.

If he felt it needed to be edited, he’d do it right there. The playing time that I actually put into the recording sessions was very short compared to other albums. On the other albums, we’d do 20 takes of a full song. With Blast Tyrant, it was the first time that we had recorded separately.

I recorded my tracks by myself. The drums and bass were already recorded.

FALLON: We did pre-production at Jean-Paul’s house in Maryland. Those were done in a little studio in his attic. He lived next door to a historic site called the Barbara Fritchie House. All these American Civil and Revolutionary War history buffs would be hanging out in front of his house at all hours while he’s banging away at his drums. What I remember the most about the studios in New Jersey was that it was very cold, and there was a huge blizzard. I wrote a lot of the lyrics in Water Music. I was woefully unprepared. But downstairs lived Billy Milano, he of Stormtroopers of Death and Method of Destruction fame. I went shopping with him and a couple of friends at a grocery store. While we were there, I thought to myself, “How did I end up grocery shopping with Billy Milano?” [Laughs] He made us a wonderful spaghetti dinner during one of the worst blizzards in New Jersey/New York history. So, that was fun.

Machine, however, has a very specific way of working. His process took us a while to wrap our heads around. He can sit and listen to a loop of a snare hit or riff forever. While that’s great and all, it’s absolutely no fun for the guy who made that snare hit or played that riff. We’re a democracy, and like any democracy, it’s great because it’s fair, but it’s slow.

What do you remember about the tours?

The first tour we did right after Blast Tyrant was “An Evening With…”; we had Mick with us on keyboards. We didn’t have an opening band, so we opened the show with the Bakerton Group, which is our instrumental alter ego.

We would do 30 to 45 [minutes] of the Bakerton Group, take a few minutes, and then do an entire Clutch set. We’d then take a 15- to 20-minute break and then do another full Clutch set. Some nights we played for over three hours. It was a lot. I felt like it was some of the most exhausting shows we’ve ever done, but at the same time, they were the most gratifying. At the end of

GASTER:

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the night, it was always a happy moment knowing we played as much material as we did.

We played the whole Blast Tyrant record during that. Not in order, but mixed up with other songs from our past catalog. For us, that was quite a stretch. It was a lot of work. We were in a van at that point. When we were on the majors, we’d get tour support so we could have a bus when we wanted. When we started the touring for Blast Tyrant, buses weren’t an option. Our crew guys would drive behind us in a box truck. We toured like that for several years after the release of Blast Tyrant—really barebones. Sometimes we didn’t even have a crew. Just a van with a trailer.

I mean, we had to make money stretch as much as it could back then.

MAINES: I loved that “An Evening With…” tour.

It opened up my musical vocabulary. It was like two or more hours of playing. The Bakerton Group was just a jam band, so that was like warming up for Clutch. The extended Clutch sets, especially at that point having just finished Blast Tyrant, were very fun. Blast Tyrant is 15 songs long, so that was one set. The other set was all the other material, which meant we could focus on some of the older songs our fans wanted to hear. It was a great learning period for Clutch. We really got comfortable playing outside the box. Every night was a new lesson. It definitely informed a lot of the direction that ended up being Robot Hive/ Exodus. That was even more adventurous than Blast Tyrant. I’m pretty sure that Robot Hive/Exodus was informed by our tours for Blast Tyrant.

FALLON: After those tours, we got the wind back in our sails. We learned that people really did like our music. We weren’t a flash. For the longest time, being in the band was the best way to be away from the job that I hated. It was liberating to say, “Clutch is what I do.” So, I became very defensive about it in a positive way. I was much more appreciative of Clutch. Suddenly, this weight was lifted off my neck. So, the tours, as hard as they were, were like a renaissance for us. More work for us, but more reward. The Blast Tyrant tours set the stage for where we are today.

SULT: Well, we did the “An Evening With…” tour in a van. A lot of driving in a van. I remember driving in the snow and ice. In Canada, it was 10 times worse than anywhere else. Just horrible.

I was very tired all the time. The shows were great, though.

You reissued Blast Tyrant in 2011. When you were assembling the reissue, were there any epiphanies or surprises about it that weren’t really evident in 2004?

FALLON: Two things come to mind. Not so much about the reissue, but when we did the New Year’s Eve show in Philadelphia last year, we performed Blast Tyrant in sequence from beginning to end. So, we practiced those songs, and many of them we hadn’t played in years. When you have a career that’s as long as Clutch’s, it’s easy to

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CLUTCH blast tyrant

forget about songs unless they’re in stock rotation. I was surprised how those songs held up.

There are records in all bands’ careers that sound great on record but not onstage. There wasn’t a single example of that from Blast Tyrant. It was a revelation. Music is a living thing, so I’m glad we did that exercise. The other thing that comes to mind was that “The Regulator” was a BFD. I knew when that was going to go out, and it was going to shock a lot of people. We hadn’t done anything like that before. I was very interested in the response, but it ended up being a watershed moment for us.

MAINES: The biggest aspect of the reissue is that it was out on Weathermaker. At the time, the label was going through some growing pains. It was a good time for us to put that reissue out.

The package also included a second disc, Basket of Eggs, which was a reworking of a few songs off Blast Tyrant. The entire dynamics of the songs we played were changed. The acoustic guitar is very different from a [Gibson] SG plugged into an Orange amp. Jean-Paul was playing more delicately, with a much lighter hand. That was a really cool session. That’s what excited me about the reissue—getting those acoustic songs out.

“I remember Billy Milano was living in a part of Water Music. He knew Machine pretty well.

He would make us these awesome spaghetti dinners.

A home-cooked Italian meal by Billy. [Laughs]”

DA N MA INE S

You’ve redone “Spacegrass” from Clutch. Any plans to remake songs off Blast Tyrant?

Possibly. [Laughs] A lot of the times when we re-record songs, it’s because we’re thinking of how the songs were originally recorded. The original recording of “Spacegrass” wasn’t great.

We knew we could do better. There are other older songs coming out that we re-recorded for different reasons. On a few of them, the original performances weren’t as good as they could’ve been. Now that I think about it, I don’t think any of the songs on Blast Tyrant meet the criteria for re-recording. Not only do they sound great, but I’m also very proud of the performances. The band played great and the songs are very well laid out.

So, to answer your question, I can’t really imagine re-recording a song like “Spleen Merchant.”

FALLON: When we first played “Spacegrass,” it was met with a sea of middle fingers. Hardcore kids would sit down and turn their backs to us.

The line in the song, “Don’t worry, it’s coming,” started as a live thing, telling these kids who wanted to mosh the drums were going to come back. [Laughs] I will say this about Blast Tyrant— we did record that New Year’s Eve show in Philadelphia. I don’t remember any train wrecks happening, so that might come out, which would sort of answer your question.

GASTER:

What do you make of any Clutch, but specifically Blast Tyrant, as influential to other bands?

FALLON: It’s flattering. It’s cliché to say this, but time flies when you’re having fun. The older I

get, the more dumbfounded I am that I got away with it. How improbable of a life that I have making music or art. I’ve heard the expression, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” I think that’s bullshit. It’s the opposite: “If you love what you do, you work your ass off to keep it that way.” I took it for granted in my 20s. Now I don’t. If people say we’ve influenced them, then that’s immortality. That’s what keeps the ripples in the pond going. So, it’s a blessing. To squander all this would be a shame.

GASTER: Well, for a lot of people, Blast Tyrant is their favorite Clutch album. Blast Tyrant was, or still is, a gateway album for a lot of people. Not only do they discover the band Clutch, but they also get to discover the bands we toured with.

This idea of rock ‘n’ roll. So, it’s amazing that we can touch anybody musically. The best thing ever is to hear somebody say, “I play drums because of Blast Tyrant.” It’s a beautiful thing. That’s definitely not lost on me.

MAINES: It’s incredibly flattering. It makes me think about bands and players that I consider as influences today and from when I first picked up the bass. We all look for guidance, so it’s a great compliment that somebody is using your sound or style as a jumping-off point or influence [of] how they write or play. I can’t think of a greater compliment than that.

SULT: It’s always nice to hear a compliment like that. It’s a blessing to be in a band that can go M AY 2 0 2 0 : 5 4 : D E C I B E L

and play somewhere and a lot of people will show up. People who know all the words to our songs. Just people coming to our shows makes it all worth it.

Would you change anything?

When the record first came out, I remember feeling that because I played to a click that I wasn’t able to play all the stuff I wanted to.

Playing to a click was challenging. So, I felt the playing could’ve been better. But when we played Blast Tyrant in its entirety for New Year’s—in Philadelphia, actually—last year, I learned pretty quickly how good the playing was on Blast Tyrant.

I have Machine to thank for that, too. He was encouraging me to perform. He was putting me in uncomfortable situations musically that now I appreciate. Looking back on Blast Tyrant, I’m super proud of it. So, no, I wouldn’t change anything.

SULT: Honestly, as I said before, I’d take off the last song, “WYSIWYG.” That’s the only thing I’d change.

MAINES: Not really. OK, maybe I’d question why “WYSIWYG” is almost six minutes long. [Laughs] FALLON: No. Not at all. They were lessons for the next time. We can change things onstage, which is one of the joys of music. I mean, Pablo Picasso was banned from the Louvre because he kept retouching his paintings.

With music, we get to do that every night and nobody bitches. [Laughs] GASTER:

LIVE PHOTO BY FRANK WHITE

DBHOF185

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ENsLAVED

WITH AN EXTRAORDINARY NEW LP IN TOW,

PREPARE TO CARRY THEIR CREATIVE FLAME INTO ITS FOURTH DECADE STORY BY

PHOTOS BY

MATT SOLIS

ESTER SEGARRA

A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica taught us anything (besides the fact that Bob Rock probably deserved way more than what Elektra gave him), it’s that the “album, tour, repeat” cycle that metal’s top dogs often find themselves beholden to isn’t always as desirable as it seems. Sure, no one is going to feel sorry for you if the worst part of your day is being forced to change out of your bathrobe and track eight bars of drums, but the reality of the situation doesn’t change regardless of how many zeros are in your bank account. ¶ The life of a band that reaches a certain level of permanence is one of sacrifice. Families spend time without parents, spouses shoulder uneven responsibilities and it’s all just teetering on the precarious notion that people are willing to pay for what you’re putting down. Of course, this process has become infinitely more challenging for bands in the digital age. Forget about private jets and gold records—if you can do enough to keep your kids fed and the machine chugging forward, you’re doing better than most.

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In the world of extreme music, few bands exemplify this “nose to the grindstone” ethos more than Enslaved, the Norwegian progressive black metal juggernauts who have been steadily releasing some of the genre’s most compelling, introspective material for nearly three decades. Since forming in the early ’90s, the band has never gone more than three years between albums, which has allowed them to amass a sizable, incredibly consistent catalog that they’ve subsequently performed for headbangers all around the globe.

So, for those of us who have been paying attention to the calendar and possess basic math skills, it should come as no surprise that we find ourselves here in 2020, preparing to once again pry open our collective third eyes and bask in the ferocious creativity that is Enslaved’s 15th LP, Utgard.

It’s a situation that’s easy to take for granted, especially when you consider that the success of the band’s last album, E, led to one of the busiest touring cycles of their entire career.

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“2018 was one of our biggest years in terms of the amount of performances and traveling,” affirms co-founding guitarist Ivar Bjørnson.

“Especially late summer and autumn—we were bouncing back and forth between the U.S. and Norway, and we also did our first shows in Asia and Australia. It was pretty intense.”

Such hectic scheduling can be a recipe for burnout for even the most seasoned musicians, but for Bjørnson, who has been Enslaved’s primary songwriter since its inception, life on the road has always been a crucial part of his creation process. “There’s something cathartic about wearing yourself out from performing an album—it gives a sense of conclusion,” he muses. “Luckily, in my case, it’s really inspiring to write new music.”

Not one to look a gift muse in the mouth, Bjørnson started writing new songs almost immediately after Enslaved returned home from the final dates of the E tour, beginning with “Fires in the Dark,” Utgard’s spirited leadoff track. On previous albums, his solitary writing process would take him all the way to each song’s conclusion before the rest of the band weighed in, but this time, he opted for a more collaborative approach, which ultimately informed many of the album’s dynamics and sonic qualities.

“I still wrote the basic compositions for all the songs, but the arrangement process was a lot more interconnected,” says Bjørnson. “Iver [Sandøy, drummer/vocalist] and Grutle [Kjellson, 5 8 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

vocalist/bassist] would be working on vocals while I was still writing the demos, so I could get instant feedback. I think that’s why [the album] sounds more involved and lively—it created a more cohesive sound of the band. I definitely want to explore that more in the future and have the guys involved even earlier. Fortunately, they’re really patient, so I think they’re up for it as well.”

“I can’t remember the last time everyone in the band was involved at this level,” declares Kjellson. “I think it’s the biggest group effort so far in 30 years. I felt really comfortable going into the process with this lineup, which is the strongest we’ve ever had. We’ve been touring a lot and our chemistry is really good, so everyone was very enthusiastic about doing an album together.”

BEHIND sHADOW

CREATION

The band’s close collaboration also paid divi-

dends in a more practical sense—they finished writing and arranging Utgard before the recording process even began, which Bjørnson says is somewhat of a rarity in the Enslaved camp. “For the last few albums, I was writing up until the moment we started recording. This time, when I handed the last song to the guys, I felt like, ‘Yeah, this is probably the last one.’ That also gave us more time to prepare mentally before going into the studio.”

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As expected, Utgard was recorded using the same multi-location strategy that Enslaved have been employing for well over a decade. With two professional engineers in their ranks (Sandøy and lead guitarist Arve “Ice Dale” Isdal) and several home studios at their disposal, the band was able to work at a comfortable, yet highly efficient pace. Often, they would have three studios operating at the same time, which meant if someone came up with a guitar line or vocal melody, real-time opinions were only a few phone calls away.

“We’re quite open to studio experimentation,” says Bjørnson. “Of course, there’s a foundation to everything, but about half of the ‘addons’ happen spontaneously in the studio. This time, we had a lot of spaces where we could try things, but we ended up appreciating the simplicity of certain passages. To me, [the songs] contain even more information in a sense, but in a simplified way that conveys more of the ideas within the music.”

Indeed, one of the byproducts of Utgard’s synergistic creation process is a batch of songs that are the shortest Enslaved have produced since 2004’s Isa. Standout tracks like “Jettegryta,” “Storms of Utgard” and “Distant Seasons” need less than five minutes to stake their claim as modern classics, and even prog odysseys like “Sequence” and “Flight of Thought and Memory” hit the ends of their mind-altering paths before the seven-minute mark. For a band that prides

itself on evolution, it’s not much of a leap to think this newfound brevity is by grand design, but Kjellson is quick to point out that such decisions are rarely purposeful.

“I mean, we are terrible at planning stuff like that,” he discloses. “A few of the songs were actually longer, but Ivar and I cut them down because we felt that some of the riffs were too repetitive. But I believe you have to treat songs like living organisms—when they’re finished, they’re finished. For all I know, the next songs [we write] will be like 15 minutes long. We just go with the flow.”

For Utgard, part of that flow included continuing an Enslaved tradition that began during the recording of E: After the initial tracking sessions were completed, the entire band convened at Kjellson’s secluded home on the coast of Norway (aptly nicknamed “The Overlook Hotel” for its ominous exterior) for a few days to work on the album’s finishing touches without any distractions from the outside world.

“My house is basically placed in a fjord, so there’s a lot of space and it’s pretty far from everything,” explains Kjellson. “You can’t just go to the pub because it takes an hour to get there, so you’re basically stuck, which really does something to the focus. It’s a good environment to get those last recordings and try out those last ideas. Like, my neighbor collects anvils for some reason, so we recorded him banging on a few different anvils. We recorded some nature sounds, too. It’s pretty easy around here—if you want birds, sea, rain or wind, this is the spot.”

“The intro to ‘Fires in the Dark’ came from that place,” adds Bjørnson, referring to the harmonized chanting section that kicks off Utgard.

“Grutle told everyone to get in front of a mic, gave us this verse and said, ‘OK, we’re gonna sing it a cappella as a group.’ We did two takes and everyone was shocked by how unified it sounded.

Then Iver put it in front of the song and we said, ‘There’s the opening of the album!’ I still can’t believe we managed to get that in tune. I guess it must have been the magic of the moment.”

DIFFERENT

The demo, studio and overdub processes may

have stuck to the Enslaved blueprint, but there’s one aspect of the band that’s completely new on Utgard: It’s the first album in more than 15 years without longtime drummer Cato Bekkevold, who stepped down from his post on amicable terms two years ago. A powerful, driving presence since the Isa days, Bekkevold eventually realized that the pull of civilian life was outweighing his desire to stay in the music business—a decision he informed his bandmates of during their 2017 tour of Russia, on a train ride from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

“We were having some drinks on the train and it just popped out of him,” remembers Kjellson.

“I don’t know if it was intentional or if he was just drunk, but he said, ‘Guys, I’m quitting. I can’t do this anymore.’ He was having some trouble with his shoulder and he had just become a father, so he decided he wanted to leave. But it was the honest thing to do because he didn’t feel like he was fit for the task anymore.”

“Cato also had a much longer streak in the industry than any of us,” notes Bjørnson. “After he quit Red Harvest in the late ’90s, he was done being a musician. They did some really bad tours and got screwed over by industry people. That made him lose his appetite for things, but we pulled him back in. He made up his mind before that [train ride], though. When you’re as close as we are, it was better for him to just let us know rather than hold on to that information. He said, ‘I’m gonna stick with it for as long as you need, but it would be great to finish some time in 2018.’

And of course, we accepted that.”

Bekkevold’s departure put Enslaved in a tight spot. Beyond the touring they had scheduled, Bjørnson had already started thinking about musical ideas for the next album, and replacing such a powerhouse musician would surely be no easy (or quick) task… that is, unless you’re close friends with a highly accomplished drummer who also happens to be the engineer of your last four records. Enter Iver Sandøy, the biggest nobrainer in Enslaved history.

“After Cato told us he was leaving, I said, ‘Well, should we call Iver?’” says Kjellson. “It was the only natural choice for the band. I actually texted Iver right there on the train in the middle of the night. He was like, ‘Uh, OK, I have to think about this because it’s like 3 in the morning and you’re obviously not sober.’ But when we got home to Norway, Ivar and I had a meeting with him and he said yes. He had already played session drums for us back in 2006, so he has more or less been a sixth member of the band for many years. It was a logical decision for us, but of course, he had to agree. It’s a different life.”

“We didn’t make a Plan B, C or D—we just talked to Iver and said, ‘Sorry man, we know you’re already busy, but you have to join this band,’” adds Bjørnson. “In classic western Norwegian fashion, he said, ‘Well, I guess I have no choice, so I’m in!’ It was a really smooth transition and the optimal solution. Otherwise, we would’ve had to go into reset mode. I didn’t want to get a guy who would have to emulate something outside of his own style, because we would have to spend a lot of time rebuilding.

Thankfully, we didn’t need to do that.”

Beyond his work as an engineer, Sandøy’s sonic stamp is all over Utgard, from his tasteful cymbal work and hard-hitting grooves to his commanding, emotive singing. Bjørnson says that having such a skilled player to write and record with opened up an entirely new avenue of creative exploration for Enslaved.

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“Iver has a bit of a different approach,” he explains. “He played in metal bands when he was younger, but for the last decade he’s mostly been playing rock, alternative, noise and art music. His other band, Emmerhoff and the Melancholy Babies, is sort of a desert rock meets Led Zeppelin thing, so when you ask him to ‘Bonham-ize’ a riff, he understands what that means. He embodies a lot of what we’ve wanted to do for a long time. I don’t think it would have worked for earlier stages of Enslaved, but we’re at a point where his drumming and our ideas for the music really fit together.”

CARRIER

FLAME

The addition of Sandøy also means that

keyboardist/vocalist Håkon Vinje, who replaced Herbrand Larsen in 2017 and made his recorded debut on E, only had to spend one album/tour cycle as “the new guy.” A gifted musician who cut his teeth playing in various prog rock groups, Vinje joined Enslaved without any prior experience playing extreme metal or even singing lead for a band, but Bjørnson says his tenacity and boundless enthusiasm brought him up to speed in no time.

“Håkon showed a lot of courage doing the lead vocals on E,” he notes. “He was basically forced into melodic singing when he joined the band, and he took vocal lessons before we went into the studio and did a great job. When Iver came in, it changed the dynamics of the vocals because he’s used to working as one of the main singers, so Håkon was able to focus more on his keyboard parts.”

“He spent a lot of time making all the keyboard arrangements himself, so his signature is a lot stronger on this album,” adds Kjellson. “In my opinion, he has some of the most amazing keyboard parts I’ve ever heard. Which is logical, because this is the only guy I’ve ever known who actually wanted to become a keyboard player. His father played a Deep Purple record for him when he was a kid, so from a very early age he wanted to be like Jon Lord.”

Vinje’s fondness for key-drenched ’70s rock is an important connecting thread for him and his bandmates. At just 28 years old, he’s a year younger than Enslaved itself, so a shared love of Yes and Deep Purple has undoubtedly gone a long way toward bridging any perceived age gaps. All told, it’s the best-case scenario for a band comprised of prolific veterans: an exuberant youngster with a gung-ho attitude and one foot planted firmly in the past.

“Håkon definitely brings a youthful presence just by being himself,” affirms Bjørnson.

“Us older guys will be moaning about it being too cold or whatever, and he’s just thrilled that something is happening. It reminds us not of how we used to be, but how we are, so we just have to remember that. And he loves music so much that it really sparks something in him to be part of developing ideas.”

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All of a sudden, one of the guys did a stage dive and crashed into me, leaving me on the floor.

I half passed out and woke up to the guy giving me some friendly slaps on the face and asking if I was OK.

AND THAT WAS GRUTLE. WAVELENGTH GATEWAYs

Vinje’s expanded role in Utgard’s arrangement

process resulted in some of the most intriguing electronic elements to ever appear on an Enslaved record. From the twinkly, glitchy runs near the end of “Sequence” to the jagged, mystifying solo on “Jettegryta,” his keyboard work builds upon the band’s prog leanings that began on 2001’s Monumension and blasts them into a brand new hemisphere. Bjørnson says this is no happy accident—in fact, certain sections of Utgard were essentially conceived as tributes to Enslaved’s favorite avant-garde artists.

“For example, the middle section of ‘Sequence’ is sort of an homage to the Norwegian band Jaga Jazzist,” he elaborates. “At some point, we decided to go overboard and just rip off their sound. And of course, I couldn’t resist totally overdoing it, so I called Martin Horntveth [of Jaga Jazzist] and said, ‘How about 6 0 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

instead of ripping you guys off, we send over the recordings and you actually play on the song?’

So, that’s what he did! He played tubular bells, xylophone… all kinds of weird stuff. We told him he needed a metal name for the credits, so he called himself Bellhammer. That’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to do, but I didn’t realize how far we could take it—that we could not only be inspired by these influences, but also physically insert them into our music and have them fit so well together.”

Nowhere is this idolatry more apparent than on “Urjotun,” a four-and-a-half-minute scorcher built around a sequencer riff that sounds like it came straight from the mind of Ralf Hütter. Fans who prefer the Vikingligr veldi side of things will likely be taken aback by this unabashed krautrock worship, but within the context of Utgard as a whole, the song is an apt metaphor for Enslaved’s unwavering commitment to keeping their music away from any and all prelabeled boxes.

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“‘Urjotun’ is something I’ve been chasing as a composer for many years, but I haven’t really worked with a drummer where I can say, ‘Underground East Berlin, early ’80s, very unhealthy environment, poor lighting, lots of drugs… can you do that drum beat?” and Iver will just do it,” laughs Bjørnson. “I have a particular fondness for sequencers, so it was something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, and I think it turned out really cool. It’s more than emulation from our side; it’s bridging something.

“Our criteria for relating to music isn’t necessarily BPMs and distortion; it’s the atmosphere in the music,” he continues. “Listening to stuff like Steve Reich gets me in the same headspace as good black metal, with the inspiration of harmonies and overtones that appear through repetitious patterns. It makes me think of those brain scans where they show how things light up when people have certain emotions. I bounce around between black metal ’94 to the early-’70s German electronic scene all the way up to contemporary noise. It’s all interconnected in so many strange ways. It’s wonderful to slowly but surely select some of these roots and bounce along with them to see where they end.”

HIDDEN WORDs CREATION

Reverence for the past has been an important

theme throughout Enslaved’s career, especially when it comes to incorporating Norwegian history in their imagery and lyrical content. Extending far beyond the broad tag of “Viking metal,” they’ve spent decades delving into the allegorical elements of Norse mythology and applying its metaphors to modern society. Utgard is no exception—on the surface, it refers to the realm of giants where the gods of Asgard fear to tread, but a closer look reveals a multilayered exploration of some deeply metaphysical concepts.

“Utgard is a place where the gods have limited control; a place of magic, chaos and dreams,” explains Kjellson. “To me, it’s a metaphor for the outer rims of your consciousness, where danger and creativity coexist and something other than your inner self takes control.

Of course, you can try to control the uncontrollable, but you can also accept it, and I think that’s the crucial part—to be able to live within that [realm] and seek something in there, like musical creativity.”

“Carl Jung was very interested in the worlds of the Norse gods,” adds Bjørnson. “He wanted to find and quantify the connections between mythologies and the people who had them as part of their culture, as expressions of their mental and psychological history. In that sense, he believed mythology is passed along as a way of communicating with the deeper part of the self.

“It all boils down to a need for reconciling and reuniting with the shadow, in Jungian

terms,” he continues. “If the reunification with the shadow side of the self is ignored, it just keeps growing. It’s like a room full of stuff you don’t want, but you keep putting more stuff in there—it’ll eventually become impossible to handle. Then you could put it in the larger context of the world today. We’re pushing aside things like death and decay, sickness and aging, and that’s catching up with us. We’re trying to find something we’re never going to find, which leads to a permanent state of petty hate where nobody has any time to take care of developing their own worlds.”

ECHOEs

PAsT

The process of developing Enslaved’s world began back in 1991, when Bjørnson and Kjellson branched off from their death metal project Phobia and started writing more singular music that was inspired by second-wave black metal bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem. But if not for a chance meeting and a well-placed boot to the head two years earlier, their ambitious plans may have never come to fruition.

“When I was 11 years old, I decided to walk to the local record store one Saturday afternoon,” Bjørnson recalls. “I passed this place that sometimes had all-ages gigs and heard this really cool metal coming from inside. It turned out it was the band Witchhammer, who were on tour with their brilliant album 1487. The guys from the band saw me peeking in the window, so they came out and said, ‘You should come to the gig, it’s all-ages and tickets are cheap!’ When I got inside, it was a bit of a scary scenario with all of these older dudes doing this moshing thing I had only seen on television. All of a sudden, one of the guys did a stage dive and crashed into me, leaving me on the floor. I half passed out and woke up to the guy giving me some friendly slaps on the face and asking if I was OK. And that was Grutle.”

“For some reason I thought there were more people [in attendance], but there were only two rows, so obviously I jumped right over them,” remembers Kjellson. “I thought, ‘Oh shit, I’m gonna land on the floor and break something!’

But then I fell on this small creature’s head.

To be honest, I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl—he had a very high-pitched voice!”

After dusting themselves off and going their separate ways, the two would meet again a couple of years later in a much more relaxed environment: a rehearsal space where both of their respective bands were playing. “Grutle and his friend, Hein [Frode Hansen, future Theatre of Tragedy drummer], were starting a death metal band and needed a guitarist,” says Bjørnson. “Someone told them this kid at the other end of the hall had a pretty nasty guitar sound. I think they were expecting someone a little taller and older. Grutle saw me and said, 6 2 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

‘It’s you!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, it’s you!’ He asked me if I wanted to try out and that was pretty much it.”

In late 1990, the trio started writing songs under the Phobia moniker, recruited some new members and began making plans to bring their energetic brand of death metal to as many ears as possible. Unfortunately, not everyone in the group shared Kjellson’s and Bjørnson’s creative drive, and the two young friends eventually found themselves at a crossroad.

“At a certain point, it became clear that Grutle and I were alone in this,” says Bjørnson.

“The other guys in Phobia wanted to hang out, drink beer and talk about cars… which was all very interesting, just not necessarily in the context of being a musician. It made us feel like we were souring the mood, so we realized we needed to start our own thing.”

“Phobia was a stereotypical Scandinavian death metal band—we basically sounded like everyone else,” adds Kjellson. “With Enslaved, we had a strong urge to avoid that. The only rule we had was, if we think it’s cool, we’re going to use it. We just decided we would walk our own path and have absolutely no consideration for what other people in the scene might think.”

Enslaved’s ambition was evident from the jump. The combination of Kjellson’s dedicated participation in the death metal underground and Bjørnson’s manic drive allowed the band to take ample steps in a short amount of time.

After recording the Nema demo (which Kjellson himself refers to as “pretty shitty”), they threw away their material and started writing what would become the Yggdrasill demo, which landed them their first record deal with Deathlike Silence Productions.

“I just had the sense that if we worked hard, we could do something,” says Bjørnson of the band’s tenacious beginnings. “When I started hanging out with Grutle and Hein, they were already in the scene, so this new world of tapes and flyers opened up and gave me a peek into the actual process of getting a band into the world.

That’s when Grutle and I started getting more serious about concepts and analyzing how bands like Autopsy, Entombed and Darkthrone built on themes and gave their music extra depth—something more substantial and almost spiritual.”

INsEPARABLE WALKERs

And so began a career that has since spanned more than 30 releases, thousands of concerts and an extreme metal legacy that will undoubtedly stand the test of time. Enslaved would ultimately move away from the raw melodic black metal that defined their early recordings in favor of a more psychedelic, progressive sound, but regardless of how far they strayed from their original musical intentions, the philosophical heart of the band remains the M AY 2 0 2 0

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DECIBEL

same to this very day. Which begs the question: Do Bjørnson and Kjellson still see their teenage selves in the lush, cinematic music they create today, or are those two figures merely shadows of a distant past?

“The further away in time we get from it, I see it like a spiral or multidimensional thing,” Bjørnson offers. “When we did the 25th anniversary in 2016, we put together a setlist with songs from early in our career, and that confirmed [my] suspicion that this wasn’t evolving in a linear way. I guess some bands see themselves progressing along a straight line that’s going upward, with one axis being time and the other being level of proficiency, but with Enslaved, we keep crossing old paths and then the old paths even cross the new ones sometimes. It’s almost like time isn’t relevant anymore. If you disregard the obvious things of how [each album] sounds and when it was recorded, our history is a lot less linear than you might think.”

“Our main goal has always been to make our own contemporary favorite music,” adds Kjellson. “And we’ve never been afraid to incorporate different influences. We’re music lovers, so we’re always trying to broaden our musical horizons. Each record sounds a bit different from its predecessor, but there’s still a line through the songs all the way back to ’91.”

More than any riff, drum pattern or vocal melody, the throughline that links Enslaved’s past to their present is one of human connection. Through three decades of ups and downs, Bjørnson and Kjellson have remained united in their desire to push their band to explore new sonic terrains and expand their idea of what it means to play progressive metal. Some artists spend their entire lives looking for such a meaningful long-term partnership, only to have it foiled by unforeseen circumstances or their own personal shortcomings. So, what exactly is the secret in Enslaved’s case?

“I think [Grutle and I] have been hanging out for so long that our relationship is turning into cubism,” laughs Bjørnson. “It’s quite abstract— we’re very close, but we regard some things very differently. At the same time, there’s a unique understanding. The things we disagree on… there’s an agreement in the disagreement, if that makes sense.”

“We’ve done this for so long that we don’t know what else to do,” says Kjellson. “It would be so weird to be in a different band. I’m almost 50 years old and I’ve been doing this since I was 17, so the turning back point is long gone! But I’m really proud of what we have achieved. We’ve made some damn good records and we still have it in us. When I see what we’ve accomplished together and I know the potential is still there… that’s the driving force. We just want to make good music. If the spark isn’t there, we’ll quit, but it’s still there!”

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PLAINs BETWEEN WORLDs

Enslaved’s desire to surround themselves

with interesting music has led them to participate in some highly eclectic tours over the years, which isn’t exactly a common practice for many of their black metal contemporaries.

Instead of relying on genre packaging or nostalgia booking, they’ve continually widened their reach in an effort to connect with metal fans from all walks of life, as well as to satisfy their own diverse preferences.

“Even though Enslaved have roots in a sort of esoteric area due to their Viking imagery, it’s no secret that they’re progressive rock lovers—I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve run into Grutle and he’s been wearing a Rush shirt,” says Pallbearer bassist Joseph D. Rowland, who toured alongside the band in 2013. “They have a knack for pushing their own musical boundaries with each record and they’re always bringing new twists to the table, and I think the curated event of each show is a logical extension of that. I love that they’re always looking to evolve rather than sticking to one formula.”

Later this year, Enslaved will return to the lighted stage once again, starting with the European festival circuit and continuing with extensive touring that will bring Utgard’s vibrant material to venues far and wide.

And despite the fact that the live music landscape has been going some through some alarming changes lately (especially in North America), Bjørnson and his cohorts still feel the exuberance of youth when it comes to playing for their fans.

“I’m on the board of the Norwegian Recording Artists Association, and we get statistics about the live market, and things are just getting weirder and weirder,” he explains.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen over the next few years. Maybe we won’t tour as much, or maybe we’ll tour even more. But I do enjoy being on the road, I have to say. I love traveling with friends, meeting people and seeing new places. Of course, I miss my kids and it’s horrible at times, but it’s possible to allow yourself to do both. There’s a limit, though. I don’t ever want it to break the enthusiasm I have for the music.”

“It’s still very enjoyable to play live, but I could do without all the traveling,” admits Kjellson. “If someone could beam me from my living room to the stage and back again, that would be amazing—I could go until I was 100 years old! But playing live with your mates, that’s probably one of the best things you can 6 4 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 19 : D E C I B E L

I believe you have to treat songs like living organisms—

WHEN THEY’RE FINISHED, THEY’RE FINISHED. do as a human being. A good live show beats the shit out of everything else.”

Ultimately, that’s what it all comes down to for Enslaved: the adoration of music in its myriad forms. For all five members, the challenge of creation is worth the years of sacrifice.

To not step back into their own footsteps or anyone else’s; to create something that has never been created before—that is, and always will be, the Enslaved way.

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“[I love] having a common sense of belonging with a group of people who want to do something that’s not totally quantifiable,” says Bjørnson. “Like those moments where you feel you’ve achieved more than you ever hoped for.

Whether it’s after a particularly good show or during a studio session, it’s all just common progress. I guess that’s the problem with oneman black metal bands… there’s no one to celebrate with!”

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Masters of Chaos

MAY

Legendary mutant metal act CIRITH UNGOL return to storm the dreaming city

12

Have a plan for that

5

We, not us

2

I dunno, some bullshit about American leadership

1

Extreme malarkey

M

ichael moorcock’s tragic albino antihero Elric of Melniboné never fit comfortably into the post-Tolkien fantasy landscape. His drug-addicted deposed emperor wandered CIRITH the Young Kingdoms, battling all sorts of hideous monsters and would-be tyrants with the help/hindrance of his ebony sword StormUNGOL bringer, a sentient blade that devoured the souls of his foes and Forever Black M E TA L B L A D E friends alike. The early-’60s novellas were dark, ugly and nihilistic.

In other words, they were pretty fucking metal. Proto-metal acts like Blue Öyster Cult and Hawkwind even collaborated with Moorcock on songs about the Eternal Champion. ¶ Another band heavily influenced by those books? Cirith Ungol, which formed in 1971 in the sunny seaside town of Ventura, CA (about as far from the gloomy isle of Melniboné as you could get). Starting with their 1981 debut, Frost and Fire, they’ve adorned each of their album covers with Michael Whelan’s striking paintings of said warrior, a tradition that seemingly ended with their swansong, 1991’s Paradise Lost.

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

8

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Now they’re back with Forever Black, and Elric strides resplendent on the cover with the Black Blade at his side. The surviving members of Cirith’s classic lineup—Tim Baker, Greg Lindstrom and Robert Garven—here team up with Jim Barraza, who replaced inimitable lead guitarist Jerry Fogle after his untimely death in 1988, and new member Jarvis Leatherby from Night Demon. Anyone who has witnessed the reunion’s live shows can attest they do justice to the old material, but can they recapture the magic of classic records like King of the Dead and One Foot in Hell?

I mean, does Elric’s treacherous cousin Yyrkoon fall to the soul-thirsty Stormbringer? Of course. Cirith Ungol occupied a similar place to metal as Elric did to fantasy, occupying a strange middle ground between doom, NWOBHM and classic heavy metal, anchored by Fogle’s buzzsaw guitar tone and Baker’s gnarly shrieks. It’s no wonder nobody got them the first time around.

Weirdly, though, that sound has aged really well!

Combine their sharp songwriting with sound quality that finally does them justice (courtesy of the band, Armand John Anthony’s production and Arthur Rizk’s mastering job) and you’ve got one serious blast from the past.

Baker still howls as scarily as ever, and Barraza and Lindstrom pick up for Fogle admirably.

While the songs feel more streamlined than the tunes from their first incarnation, they don’t lack anything for it. “Legions Arise” triumphantly announces their return with one of their beefiest anthems to date, but still feels very in character. Baker continues his tradition of odd phrasing (and odder song titles) on the sinister march of “Frost Monstreme” and “Fractus Promissum.” The band even tackles the dreaded Stormbringer itself on an epic of the same name that does justice to the stately sword (at least more so than the synth swooshes of BÖC’s “Black Blade”).

With no real nods to metal’s evolution (besides the production), Forever Black could have followed immediately after Paradise Lost. And that’s what makes Cirith Ungol so awesome— like Elric, they’re forever out of place, and forever timeless. —JEFF TREPPEL

ANGEROT

8

The Divine Apostate REDEFINING DARKNESS

Out of the Sunlight

Mixed by Tomas Skogsberg (Sunlight Studios), Angerot’s debut was the pitch-perfect, rehashed Swedeath classic that no one asked for, but plenty celebrated. Released in 2018 (at least a 6 8 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

solid decade after the HM-2 revival) and featuring guest vocals from none other than Entombed A.D. vocalist L-G Petrov—not to mention a guest guitar solo from James Murphy (Disincarnate, etc.)—The Splendid Iniquity garnered enough attention to motivate the Sioux Falls-based quartet to record a sophomore release. But something happened in the meantime.

Without completely ditching their penchant for Swedish-style skank beats and thick, buzzy guitar tones, Angerot seem to have discovered their inner molten demons. Thus, The Splendid Iniquity becomes The Divine Apostate, and Angerot evolve from indecent and obscene worshippers of dirty Swedish death metal to ascendant demigods melding the measured domination of D through H-era Morbid Angel with an openended ambition to stand out in the crowd. If Angerot have remained true to their craft—and every moment of these eight tracks testifies to that fact—how could they not outgrow their former selves? Rather than getting groovier or more melodic as their erstwhile muses had done, Angerot’s death metal grew dimensions, scales and heads.

The Divine Apostate storms, scorches and soars, and the closer packs parts that shake the foundations of the earth’s very mantle if you play it loud enough. Boasting a synaesthetic guest guitar solo from Terrance Hobbs and unbelievably awesome guest vox from former King Diamond drummer Snowy Shaw—plus lots of hooks and killer moments—this one is not to be missed. —DUTCH PEARCE

ARCADA

6

Projections EDGED CIRCLE PRODUCTIONS

Their shadows have shadows

With blood-smeared live performances and a mic stand adorned with a horned skull, Peruvian four-piece Arcada embrace ritualistic black metal with gauntleted arms. The band’s visual aesthetic has included blasphemous iconography and easy-mode corpsepaint since their 2012 inception. But their moonlit compositions have ascended from the noisy roots of their earliest recordings to this saturnine debut LP. With a blur of cursed tremolos, the dour blasts of Projections’ title track conjure shadows that linger when the record lunges into second offering “IAO.” While Arcada regularly mixed tempos on their Serpent’s Void demo, over a third of Projections races by before the band’s less reserved impulses emerge. When they smudge their polished nocturnal BM with grave dirt

and immolation ash (“O”), it feels like a welcome deviation. Halfway through “Lunar Possession,” it sounds like the song steps back into the oppressive shadows and hunts there until the terminal note expires. Eleven-minute closer “Setheus” may not earn the entire runtime, but the subtle adjustments throughout feel like skillful mood lighting fades.

While Projections seems content seeking sanctuary in black metal’s belfry rather than flapping freely into the night sky, the performances still distinguish Arcada from the rest of the roost. Most notable is bassist Ult, whose warm tones bestow a mournful weight to “Setheus.” Then there’s new vocalist Iniquiator A.D., who hurls howls and snarls into the darkness like he’s taunting unseen ghosts.

When Arcada reference the blackened Swedish melodicism of Dawn, their songs are familiar, but worthy of closer inspection. It’s when the band forgoes the quickly identified influences that the music feels less tethered to black metal’s traditions and finds its uniquely haunted voice. —SEAN FRASIER

AZUSA

8

Loop of Yesterdays S O L I D S TAT E

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay

“There’s nothing as unstoppable,” self-described “success coach and motivational cattle prod” Jen Sincero has written, “as a freight train full of fuckyeah.” This, it seems, is the guiding principle behind the ultra-focused sophomore effort from Azusa, a record that not only smartly evolves and deepens the sound established two years ago on Heavy Yoke, but is also essentially comprised of only the sort of crackling fivestar riffs, choruses and freak-outs that would be album centerpieces for other bands. The transcontinental quartet—by way of Oslo, Philadelphia and Greece—benefits from a technically and compositionally high-level debut that left no question as to bona fides.

And now, with that necessary work done, they are more comfortable in their own determinedly weird and wonderful skin.

“Two dudes from Extol join forces with one from Dillinger Escape Plan for a set of tracks that treat metal subgenres—avant-garde, math, trad, pop, death, -core—like spinning plates to be balanced en masse and fronted by… Eleni Zafiriadou of indie duo Sea+Air.” That’s how I described Heavy Yoke back in 2018. It remains fairly on the mark. The elemental building blocks are the same. The intent to transmute sonic violence

2CD/2LP/digi

Hexvessel

Kindred |

LP / CD / Digital 17.4.2020

“Weaving English folk, lilting Americana, and mushroom-induced psychedelia, Hexvessel are The Doors misplaced and found wandering the vast forests of Finland.� - Noisey Psychedelic forest folk-rockers Hexvessel return to Svart Records with spellbinging new album Kindred

CD/2LP/digi

Telepathy

Burn Embrace |

LP / CD / Digital 27.3.2020

Having taken the post-metal scene by storm, Burn Embrace sees TELEPATHY ignite their spark and leave behind a scorched earth in the eclectic wake of their blackened sludge, post-black and epic doom.

In 2 0 2 0 t h e Wi n t e r s a g a co n t i n u e s

E N TER TH E WE B SH OP w w w . s v a r t r e c o r d s . c o m D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 0 : 6 9

and beauty into a sensibility-mutating elixir is unchanged. Yet from the …And Justice for All-esque opening chug of “One Too Many Times” to the Napalm-meets-Mazzy Star segues of “Memories of an Old Emotion”—and through every improbability-vanquishing jam in between—it’s clear that Loop of Yesterdays is a subtly different beast. Those spinning plates have been traded in for heavy, genre-piercing spikes. And the hammer hand of Azusa is surer than ever.

—SHAWN MACOMBER

BARISHI

7

It’s 2020. The future is now. Let’s listen to shit that shamelessly apes what we thought 2020 would sound like in the 1980s. —JEFF TREPPEL

Old Smoke SEASON OF MIST

If ya got ’em

Attention, all planets of the Solar Federation: Graham Brooks has assumed control. Not only did the departure of Sascha Simms (following the Vermonters’ first two LPs) reduce Barishi to a trio under the leadership of guitarist and now singer Brooks, but they have veered away from the Mastodon-y nü-prog of 2016 predecessor Blood From the Lion’s Mouth and are forging toward epic roots grandeur à la Panopticon. A primitive throwback and self-proclaimed atavist, their fallback frontman reroutes a decade’s worth of brand equity on Old Smoke to rebirth the band.

Drummer/bassist tandem Dylan Blake and Jonathan Kelley remain, and behind Brooks they billow six songs in 50 minutes.

Length is strength here, so 11-minute opener “The Silent Circle” unmutes into a storm front of sound, where Brooks’ cold, black vocalizing collides with the warm ambience blowing inside all this mass and movement. Nearly as long, the succeeding “Blood Aurora” could have dispensed with any separation between the two tracks, because you cannot stop a nor’easter. Pounding repetition spawns a serious earth-cracker.

Shorter works, too: The undead nosh of Donner Party feast “The Longhunter” approaches cannibalistic frenzy in spots. Its solo and dizzying hive of shred—round and round, stinging, piercing—prompts incredulous repeat spins. “Entombed in Gold Forever” follows suit with a vicious loop of closed guitar circuitry, Brooks’ huffing chug sucking air out of the burning room. The concluding 13-minute title cut wafts moody ’70s rock: genuine, authentic, relaxed, organic, simmering. Three minutes in, scorched death vox start stripping away the veneer and tensile howls overlay unhurried deforestation. At that moment, Barishi deserve their own Green Mountain State Festival… albeit blackened. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ 7 0 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

A

DULT. have explored various aspects of electronic music over the past two

decades. Perception Is/as/of Deception [ DA IS] feels like their unabashed ode to ’90s industrial, from Nicola Kuperus’ deadpan dominatrix vocals to the trash can beats. The couple literally recorded this in a black-painted basement, making their eighth full-length a perfect fit for this magazine. Songs like “Second Nature” and “Total Total Damage” certainly paint it black as they push Electronic Body Music into Electronic Body Horror territory.

Hey, it’s another cyberpunk concept album! ELAY ARSON lined up a bunch of killer guests like Megan McDuffee, FacexHugger, Occam’s Laser and Dreddd for Dusk Incarnate [ SEL F- R EL EA SED] , the story of a sexy lady living weapon in a postapocalyptic wasteland getting chased by a bounty hunter. I bet they fall in love. At any rate, this duo goes harder on the metal than a lot of their peers, making this perfect for those who want some guitar crunch with their synth stings.

MAGIC SWORD are kinda like the synthwave version of Coheed and Cambria, only with better vocals (because there are none). They have a whole conceptual fantasy story told through albums, live performances and comic books, but you don’t need to read any of the outside material to enjoy the endlessly enjoyable Endless [ J OY FU L NOISE] . If nerds playing epic music inspired by S U R V I V E, Daft Punk and Giorgio Moroder’s The Neverending Story soundtrack sounds good, there’s a place for you with these (literal) neon knights.

If STIEGLITZ’s Burn the Night Away [ J ET SET TR A SH ] came out in the ’80s, the title track would totally have a video shot in a factory where flames burst all around the poofy-haired guitarist as he makes dumb faces and shreds out a solo (even if it is a one-man operation). The Belgian musician uses echoed vocals, massive beats and lots of electric guitar to make songs like “Electric Star” and “Midnight Menace” sound like the arena-fillers they should be. Set the night ablaze to this.

BENIGHTED

6

Obscene Repressed SEASON OF MIST

To brie or not to bree?

French deathgrind provocateurs Benighted have always delighted in twisted lyrics, even at the expense of great songwriting. Still, vocalist Julien Truchan is a wonder; maybe no other screamer has his range. When he employs that voice

judiciously, it moves the needle on the entire band—songs like “Let the Blood Spill Between My Broken Teeth” from 2011’s Asylum Cave are minor-league classics.

Their latest, Obscene Repressed, might be their most perverse. Inspired by Truchan’s experiences as a nurse in a mental hospital, the record tackles oedipal complexes and selfmutilation with disturbing glee. Benighted aren’t the first band to have this idea—the Red Chord’s Clients presages it in style and

D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 0 : 7 1

substance—but they lean into it as hard as they possibly can.

Why focus on lyrics? Because the thing Benighted do better than most bands like them is vocal hooks. Sure, drummer Kévin Paradis is a blasting wonder, and Benighted are happy to show off their jazz chops here and there, but even more than breakdowns, choruses are their thing. Truchan’s testicle-grinding squeal is at its best when it compels the listener to “BREE!” along, especially if that means saying things like, “Mom, I love you the wrong way.” Slimy grossness is half the fun, but Benighted would be even better if they coupled that with the righteousness of labelmates and genre contemporaries Misery Index.

Truchan’s horror franchise continues upping the ante on grossness when it’s trying to find sophistication, rather than just delivering 12 solid deathgrind anthems. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER

8

Verminous

M E TA L B L A D E

Writing “Happy Birthday, Dude” in black icing on a Dairy Queen cake

Consult your scorecards and you’ll see that this whole heavy metal thing unofficially turned 50 in February. It’s been an eventful ride, and unless the coronavirus, a supervolcano or lack of political common sense destroys us all, it would appear that our beloved metallic art form is readying for a healthy future. Apparently, 50 is the new 40, which must mean there’s life in the old gal yet.

One of the trappings of having a lengthy history to reference is that originality—or at least the ability to create something relatively novelsounding—becomes increasingly difficult. When was the last time you heard decent funk that didn’t sound like it just rolled out of the ’70s? Or a reggae song that didn’t sound like every other reggae song? Originality is at a premium this far into the game, and while the Black Dahlia Murder may not have rewritten metal’s sacred texts with their ninth album, they have vaulted themselves above the crowd with more standout moments than a band this long in the tooth should. Especially since, in the past, they were unfairly tagged as At the Gates and Heartwork-era Carcass copyists.

Verminous doesn’t drastically leap away from the melodic death metal the band has staked its existence on, but noticeable bounds have been made in the songwriting department. The leadoff title track and “How Very Dead” both do a stellar job of conjoining disparate styles— 7 2 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

minor-key movements with epic melodies in the former, a creepy horror movie vibe in the latter—while “The Wereworm’s Feast” proudly waves the flag for American metal by updating the NWOBHM for post-Brexit isolation. The songs ooze powerful and infectious melodies that will feature prominently in metalhead shower and bath routines for the foreseeable future—that is, if bathers can refrain from gargling scented body wash in salutation of Trevor Strnad’s tasteful vocal gymnastics.

And on the topic of hummability, mad props to guitarists Brian Eschbach and Brandon Ellis for punching in with stellar leads that straddle technical wizardry and old-school fury. The future appears to be in capable, claw-shaped hands. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

CALLIGRAM

8

The Eye Is the First Circle PROSTHETIC

The fathomless depths got a backbeat

Though its title is taken from a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay and its ultimate effect is similarly profound, The Eye Is the First Circle nevertheless finds rising extreme metal colossus Calligram pursuing a decidedly different brand of transcendentalism—one that seizes the listener by the throat at the very first note, tosses them down an exceedingly dark (yet wholly seductive) rabbit hole and then, for the next 35 minutes, completely immerses its fledgling devotees in a startling, hypnotic, harrowing, stirring, thrilling sonic netherworld of crust-infused epic black metal from which we may emerge, but will likely never fully leave behind.

Aside from the strange atmospheres it conjures, the Emersonian homage/perversion and the simple fact that is a preternaturally assured full-length debut, however, there is captivating, well-cultivated mystique to the record. It exudes this otherworldly sensibility and power you can’t quite put your finger on—not unlike the best moments of Dissection or Watain—and which, for lack of a better term, pierces the veil.

Perhaps this unorthodox boldness comes from the far-flung origins of the London-based quintet—Brazil, France, Italy—or that the lyrics are delivered entirely in the Latin-anchored Romance language of Italian. Hard to tell.

Whatever synergies are at work here, one thing is clear: This is a special record by an audacious band capable of both straight savagery and ethereal sophistication. It is difficult to imagine a scenario in which Calligram fail to make a very big splash in the deepest, weirdest corner of heavy metal’s lake of fire. —SHAWN MACOMBER

CAUSTIC WOUND

7

Death Posture P R O FO U N D LO R E

Sophisticated art covering the dirt chamber wall

At first blush, Caustic Wound don’t seem like the type of band that repeated listens are required to understand.

Either you prefer your extreme music to sound like early Carcass and Scum-era Napalm Death butting heads with murky nth generation ’80s death metal demos before being clubbed over the head and dragged into the cave of a slopeheaded Cro-Magnon to be taught distorted grunting, or you don’t. It doesn’t take a PhD candidate to figure this mess out. Where we found enough intellectual wonder in classic Metallica (and/or the message of first-wave hardcore) to allow them to be the focus of hopeful high school independent study projects, no one is cranking out a thesis about chaotic, rudimentary, Neanderthalic deathgrind.

On the other hand, while CW’s worship of all things pre-1992 may be admitted, avowed and not shied away from, there’s more bubbling under the low-end cacophony than even they admit. In addition to the obvious Earache and late-’80s NYDM worship, we’re hearing everything from Canadian heroes Slaughter (straightforward rhythms) and Sacrifice (divebombing whammy bar abuse) to the same unrelenting tone as Soul of a New Machine and solos that sear facial flesh from skull bone à la early, gore-grinding Exhumed. With all that on the plate, there appears to be a certain insidiousness to Death Posture, one that puts Caustic Wound above the current cabal of young bands aiming for old-school glory by trying to mimic the sound of Incantation being force-fed into a wind tunnel. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

DOOMENTOR

7

Altar of Resurrection SELF-RELEASED

Rise of the Imperial Black Cult

We first covered this mysterious German cult back in issue #123, January 2015. Five years later, Doomentor have unleashed their third album upon their steadily growing fanbase. With Opus Diabolae, their 2018 sophomore album, the outfit perfected their heavy metalinfluenced old-school blackened doom sound.

Altar of Resurrection sees enough of a departure from that nailed-down style to keep fans interested both here and in the years to come when future ’heads discover this well-kept secret of the deep underground.

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The most noticeable change from their previous work is the lack of acoustic guitar intros and interludes. While 2016 debut Dominous Omnes is nearly a split with their dark ambient/neofolk alter egos, Altar has but one acoustic guitar intro, and it’s at the very beginning of the album.

After that, the following 12 tracks attack you one-by-one without hesitation—excepting only the excellent “Carpathian Impalement,” which begins with a sound bite apropos of gothic vampyric vibes. Altars, more so than any Doomentor recording yet, plays out overall as a black metal album. It’s genius how, without really altering their sound, they have become a BM band along the lines of Isengard, Storm and even Urfaust. Those organs that used to introduce their songs—they’re all over Altars, except now they’re employed in a more Emperor-eal fashion.

The result is something like funereal symphonic first-wave black metal, and it rules.

Sure, the clean vocals are a little too monotone, and 13 tracks definitely exceeds most of our attention spans, but Doomentor’s third opus stands tall and refreshingly black in their

already mandatory discography. Altar of Resurrection is an album you can throw on shuffle and no matter where you land, you’re headbanging straight to hell. —DUTCH PEARCE

6

DRAIN

California Cursed R E V E L AT I O N

Seasons in the sun

Santa Cruz’s Drain present as skate punk—I think I saw a passing reference to the singer’s “commitment” to wearing skate shorts year-round in the press material, but maybe that was just a bad dream—but of the 23 minutes that make up California Cursed, a huge chunk is spent worshipping Slayer. Opener “Feel the Pressure” makes that pretty clear right away, as does third cut “Sick One,” a 58-second rager that channels the positive hardcore of decades past before… dropping a half-time Slayer riff. “Army of One” pushes both worlds together, the King/Hanneman partnership living on in these riffs, as do sounds that

you might expect to hear on a Revelation release circa the early ’90s. Heck, the whole record is basically skate punks worshipping Slayer. Could be ugly, but Drain pull it off, fashioning a pleasant afternoon listening experience.

It also creates one that is bound to be forgotten soon enough. The songs are a blast when they’re playing, but it almost feels like they’re more for a basement show with your pals than a recorded document I’m expected to return back to with so many other records elbowing their way into my life on a daily basis. Sure, this one shreds, but it's more a fling than a long-term thing.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that.

While California Cursed is playing, I sometimes think it’s actually a pretty decent debut. But I can absolutely guarantee you that if you played it for me this time next year without telling me what band recorded it, I would have absolutely no idea who it was, which prevents me from investing too much emotional real estate (as much as those Slayer-riffic riffs try to win me over). —GREG PRATT

DEF LEPPARD

8

The Early Years ’79-’81 UME/VIRGIN

’S EARLY YEARS B OX I S U P A N D D OWN, BUT N EV ER I N B ETW EEN

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Two dozen productions in, Robert John “Mutt” Lange paved AC/DC’s Highway to Hell (1979). One year later, the countryloving Afrikaner tolled Back in Black. In 1981, he pulled the hat trick: For Those About to Rock We Salute You, Foreigner 4 and Def Leppard’s High ‘n’ Dry. Lange and Lep then encored with Pyromania (1983), Hysteria (1987) and—oof—Adrenalize (1992).

The Early Years ’79-’81 taps that Midas touch and more in a giddy, five-CD free fall. Torque up Highway to Hell and High ‘n’ Dry back-to-back, and Def Leppard’s Sheffield steel rings like the glam rock little brother to the Australian blues manglers.

Deal in the former U.K. teens’ full-length debut, 1980’s On Through the Night, and hear the NWOBHM begin its mainstream crossover to “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Produced by high (Judas) Priest wizard Tom Allom, On Through the Night documents kids playing with flamethrowers.

“Rock Brigade,” “Hello America” and “Wasted” all sizzle Lizzy licks, Mott the Hoople mythos and Queen-like grandiloquence.

Given a revelatory remaster here, the album morphs crackling nascence into the proper runway for High ‘n’ Dry, wherein Lange turns equally crude anthems—opening trifecta “Let It Go,” “Another Hit and Run” and “High ‘n’ Dry (Saturday Night)”— into platinum standards.

Add 70 minutes live from Oxford 1980 that prove as canonically crucial as the 1983 L.A. Forum show on the Pyromania deluxe edition; fold in an odds ‘n’ sods CD leading off with 1978 studio bow The Def Leppard E.P.; and arm an entire BBC disc begging for a box equal to Thin Lizzy Live at the BBC, and Def Leppard’s Early Years ignites the arsonist tendencies to come. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

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ENEPSIGOS

8

Wrath of Wraths OSMOSE PRODUCTIONS

Blackened is the end

This Norwegian trio’s first album was called Plague of Plagues. Wrath of Wraths is their second, and home to songs with titles like “Shields of Faith” and “Cups of Anger.” Luckily for this former studio project—their live debut will be at Belgium’s Throne Fest this coming May—what’s lacking in naming ability is made up for by a monstrously terrifying black metal blast.

Mainman Anders “V.I.T.H.R.” Hansen’s concurrent musical activity includes such evil-asmagnified-by-corpsepaint panzer divisions as Doedsvanger, Nordjevel and Svartelder; Enepsigos aspire to keep hammering the nails into ol’ J.C. with a Black Witchery-esque barrage that expands upon the pale. Included in the morass are sounds drawn from the dystopian groove of God and Painkiller, a guitar tone straight out of Rotten Sound’s rehearsal room and prominent bass, which may be faking the funk, but goddamn if there aren’t walking lines in “Confess” and “Seventh Seal.” Drummer Gionata “Thorns” Potenti’s experience playing in more bands than most people have heard of gives Enepsigos’ decidedly filthy edge more texture and swing than expected, and offsets long stretches of relentlessly frigid blasting in “Water in Flesh” and “The Whore Is the Temple.”

That the aforementioned tracks all run traditional black metal through a sonic wringer while adding significant moments of deep impact harshness to create a soundtrack to a painfully futuristic wasteland puts Enepsigos in the “innovator” category. Daring to show up at the ball with panda paint and a bit of rock ‘n’ roll lurking in the background served Immortal well. Enepsigos turn in the other direction, daring to make black metal more threatening, sinister and heavier than it has been in a long while. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

FOOL’S GHOST

8

Dark Woven Light PROSTHETIC

Marriage counseling not included

They say you should never work with your significant other, but from Sonny and Cher to the White Stripes, romantic couples have made both love and music together without it affecting either partnership… shit, those are bad examples, huh? At any rate, Fool’s Ghost are rock’s latest power couple to tempt fate. Consisting of Nick Thieneman from Louisville post-hardcore outfits Young Widows and Breather Resist and Amber Thieneman from 7 6 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

Louisville experimental/jazz outfits Sandpaper Dolls and Liberation Prophecy, their conjoined sound takes them somewhere different from any of those acts.

On Dark Woven Light, they go for more of a dark post-punk thing—it’s unsurprising that their first tour in support of the album finds them opening for Fotocrime, the latest project of fellow Louisville post-hardcore expat Ryan Patterson. Still, they take a very different approach.

Whereas Patterson’s work emerges from a crumbling urban darkness, Fool’s Ghost attack the sound from the dusky dying fields. The prairie melancholy conjured by Jaye Jayle/Emma Ruth Rundle producer Kevin Ratterman enhances the steel pedal guitars and Amber’s folky croon, giving songs like “Touched” and “In Between” a real sense of menace.

As you may have figured out by now, other than the label and Nick’s former bands, not much qualifies Dark Woven Light for inclusion in this magazine. This duo still articulates their despair in much starker terms than a lot of extreme acts. After listening through, it’s not hard to relate to the cryptid getting swallowed by the darkness. —JEFF TREPPEL

FRAYLE

7

1692

AQUALAMB

She got the moon in her eye

Juxtaposing delicate feminine vocals with monstrously heavy arrangements succeeds for good reason, the same way My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless and Slowdive’s Souvlaki remain so singular roughly 30 years later. There’s something alluring about hearing an enticing vocal melody amidst layers of guitar noise. As the Gathering, Theatre of Tragedy and, more recently, Chelsea Wolfe and Myrkur have proven, it’s pretty damn easy to attract nerdy metal boys with honey than vinegar. As tired as the “siren song” trope is, the tactic works, especially in a genre as male-dominated as metal. As Ashley St. Ives says leeringly to a hapless man in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, “‘Come into my web,’ said the spider, et cetera.”

Cleveland band Frayle are the latest to serve up that gentle/colossal dynamic, and their debut full-length ably pulls it off. Guitarist Sean Bilovecky draws heavily from the oeuvre of Sleep, cranking out huge stoner-doom riffs, but at the same time occasionally adds a very smart layer of chiming melodies that echo the likes of Slowdive. However, it’s all about the wonderfully creepy delivery of Gwyn Strang, who croons in a light, airy voice that neatly balances the alluring and the disturbing. Instead of channeling shoegaze icons Elizabeth Fraser and Bilinda

Butcher, she opts for more of a Julee Cruise feel to her singing, which, on standouts like “Burn” and “Godless,” shows why 1692 is such a promising record. Just when it feels warm and comfy, your skin starts to crawl. And you keep coming back for more. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

GÖDEN

9

Beyond Darkness S VA R T

Winter is coming…

Devout fans (Decibel’s own doom scholar Scott Koerber, for instance) have waited nearly 30 years for the follow-up to Winter’s debut death-doom monolith, Into Darkness. Now, finally, the wait is over, Göden are here.

A record this long overdue can warp expectations. There’s no way that Stephen Flam, Winter’s founding guitarist, who half-wrote Into Darkness and wrote all of Göden’s debut, can make Winter fans—especially those who have been waiting for this moment for nigh three decades—feel what they felt all those years ago when they first heard “Servants of the Warsmen.” And yet, when they hear the colossal doom rise amid the stainedglass-light keyboards (courtesy of Winter’s own Tony Pinnisi) and the deathly purring of vocalist Vas Kallas as she growls “Blessed be…” during the beginning of “Twilight,” they will absolutely feel something, and quite similar, too. By the time the fifth track, “Cosmic Blood,” crawls from the void, and Kallas literally bellows, “RISE!” all doubt should be crushed to dust.

Essentially, Göden are to Winter what Triptykon are to Celtic Frost. Otherwise, Beyond Darkness sounds like Into Darkness more than anything else ever written does; but it also sounds unlike anything else—even when Göden cover “Winter.” Every other track is Biblicalsounding spoken word, performed by a pitchshifted Pinnisi, backed by dark ambient. These “Manifestations,” as they’re called, represent eight out of the album’s 18 tracks, and interwoven between Göden’s massive songs—with the impressive rage and force of Kallas’ vocals— they give Beyond Darkness so much gravitas that it’s intimidating. Like you’re in the presence of something godly. —DUTCH PEARCE

KATATONIA

6

City Burials PEACEVILLE

Cul de sac kings

Maybe you felt a bit alienated by 2016’s The Fall of Hearts, which, in addition to being overlong, was uncharacteristically warm, not to mention a bit too noodle-y and divaricating for its own good.

However, like it or not, it was a more truly metal album than anything Kataonia had released in more than a decade. By comparison, the new listener will likely be caught off guard by City Burial’s periodic (at best) allusions to its alma mater, as this release most directly leans into Katatonia’s sultry pop inclinations. This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself; Katatonia have toyed with maudlin, trip-hop-tinged understatement since 2006’s The Great Cold Distance. What may more likely serve as the proverbial pineapple on the pizza is vocalist Jonas Renkse’s lukewarm and predictable treatments.

Ever since Renkse discovered the perfect fourth harmony in the early aughts, he’s overused it like a hypochondriac abusing hand sanitizer. That quirk along, with Renkse’s habitual nonchalance, can provide an interesting counterpoint to denser, heavier and more atonal riffs.

However, City Burial’s movements are so yielding and chic that, spangled with Renkse’s too-coolfor-hooks insouciance, it often reads as little more than Katatonia brand ASMR. Head turning moments definitely occur, such as the jarring, Scorpions-esque shredding on the radio-ready “Behind the Blood” (why this wasn’t selected as the teaser track instead of snoozefest “Lacquer” is totally beyond me) or “Rein”’s moddish, ice-cold doom. Additionally, a few songs achieve that righteous balance between pop accessibility, novelty and integrity, like the very strong “Flicker,” which weds familiar tropes to a melody and urgency convincing enough to justify them. All well and good and certain to delight the faithful, but as a package, a touch dull and too conservative to be recommended as essential. —FORREST PITTS

LIKE RATS

7

Death Monolith H I B E R N AT I O N R E L E A S E

Rapacious rodents

So. Turns out we may have had rats pegged all wrong for the last five or six million years. The artifice of hate began to crumble with a 2018 history. com article titled “Rats Didn’t Spread the Black Death—It Was Humans,” and then accelerated late last year with a Washington Post feature: “Studies suggest rats dream when they sleep, giggle when tickled and grind their teeth (called bruxing) with pleasure when stroked—similar to when cats purr,” Kim Mueller writes. “Rats are also empathetic, according to a study in which lab rats rescued other trapped rats who previously helped them.” For those of us who have seen Ratatouille, this… kind of checks out.

It is, in fact, enough to lead one to suspect that Chicago quintet Like Rats might be dabbling in, say, synthpop or where’s-my-tissues emo.

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Well, don’t let your guard down: Death Monolith ain’t that kind of rat. The kinetic buzzsaw death metal here is more like a gang of rodents that shunned the Black Death as not apocalyptic enough—the sound of that sewer rat who figures out how to climb out your toilet and attempt to eat your cat. The foundational Morbid Angel/ Entombed/Obituary-isms are galvanizing and on point; the production razor-sharp, but not antiseptic; and shades of other metal subgenres— groove, doom, metallic hardcore—toss welcome diversifying curveballs into the mix.

Actually, Death Monolith is likely one of the most interesting and fully realized extreme releases of the year so far—adventurous, gritty, enlivening and catchy enough to have you mashing that play button like a rat in a brain stimulation reward experiment. Just with sick riffs instead of stale food. —SHAWN MACOMBER

MALOKARPATAN

7

Krupinské ohne

THE AJNA OFFENSIVE/ INVICTUS

Slovak ’til you drop

Those seeking music equally evil and eccentric could do a hell of a lot worse than Malokarpatan. The Slovakian quintet’s previous record, 2017’s Nordkarpatenland, took the melodic and folkloric elements of fellow eastern European blasphemers like Root and Master’s Hammer and cranked up the quirk factor, to the delight of many. Its follow-up, Krupinské ohne, explores similar territory with increased ambition.

Malokarpatan augment their metal with a blend of folksy supplemental instruments and what sounds like old film score samples. If you wish Enslaved had kept on using that semi-comic mouth harp, you’re in luck—it’s here. The film samples are more uncanny—they remind me of the darker sections of classic animated films derived from fairy tales, like Disney’s Snow White, which is fitting since Malorakpatan’s songs revolve around traditional folk tales.

The extraneous sounds, lovingly arranged as they may be, are just set dressing. The main attraction here is semi-raw black metal with a serious ear for pre-Norwegian licks. Malokarpatan excel at riffs with a folksy tinge and an obvious hard-on for the early ’80s, such as the main hook in “Ze semena viselcuov carovný koren povstáva.”

Great songwriting, though, involves more than riffs. Nordkarpatenland included 10 digestible songs of normal length. Krupinské ohne consists of five extended compositions, and Malokarpatan sometimes struggle to make their ideas cohesive during these 10-minute epics. Their journey through the dark imaginative forest toward prog enlightenment ain’t over, but at least where they’re at is interesting. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

MIDWIFE

8

Forever

THE FLENSER

Get an afterlife

Forever is a love album.

No, wait, come back! It’s a brutal, painful, beautiful, tender, violent, solemn, hopeful, heartbreaking, joyful album about love. Coming out of a Denver DIY scene centered on artist co-op Rhinoceropolis, musician Madeline Johnston created this delicate body of work in memory of her creative partner Colin Ward, who passed away in 2018. All that sorrow and happy memory was poured into Forever, and the result is a rapturous record that runs the gamut of grief via delicate whispers of dream pop, drone and noise rock.

Johnston conjures Julee Cruise, Kim Gordon, Beth Orton and Marissa Nadler, but remains wholly unique, telling her story in her own way.

Right off the top, with the brave and comforting slow-burn “2018,” she gently puts into song the catharsis of loss. She’s funny, too, and sweet— within the heartache, she allows you to crack a smile. “Anyone Can Play Gtr” is a true moodbuster that hits you with the hope bombs, but the album’s centerpiece is a poem read by the friend to whom the album is dedicated.

If your New Year’s resolution was to mediate more, well, this is your album. Shut your eyes, lie back and listen before floating away on the Explosions in the Sky gorgeousness of the closing number. From the womb of gloom, Midwife will bring you into life. —LOUISE BROWN

ORANSSI PAZUZU

8

Mestaryin kynsi NUCLEAR BLAST

Drawing down the cosmos

Since forming in 2007, Oranssi Pazuzu have undertaken an aggressive expansion of black metal’s frontiers. Like Beherit in spirit (if not in style), they too seem invigorated by cosmic nightmares, with an uncanny feel for the mind’s volatile compass under the influence of psychedelics.

The troposphere gets thinner the closer you get to the North Pole; maybe that’s got something to do with it, as though Juho “Jun-His” Vanhanen is mustering his band on terra firma as they await ascension into the aurora borealis. Mestaryin kynsi, the Finnish quintet’s fifth full-length, is a work of hypnotic darkness with an electronic pulse, and it wastes little time in casting its spells.

“Ilmestys” opens the record with Jun-His’ morbid croak pitched over an ominous swell of low-end synth and a minimalist guitar motif that feels unmoored to conventional Western tonality. It ebbs and flows as it builds to a

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conclusion. There’s an automatic quality to Oranssi Pazuzu’s sound, a disembodied musical progressivism that rarely gives in to black metal’s proclivity for pure aggression. It might occasionally be combustible, as it is midway through “Tyhjyyden sakramentti,” where a crescendo of harshness peaks with instrumental white noise before taking off with a clanky riff, or on “Kuulen ääniä maan alta,” which sounds like a hellish, full-spectrum redux of ’90s industrial rock before the fever breaks and Ville Leppilahti goes all Maurizio Guarini on the keys.

But it is krautrock momentum, not aggression, that propels their sound forward. Towards where is hard to say, but the final track, “Taivaan portti,” translates as “The Gate of Heaven,” so maybe they do ascend after all. — JONATHAN HORSLEY

PURE WRATH

8

The Forlorn Soldier DEBEMUR MORTI

Only in the hottest years this happens…

Januaryo Hardy is a busy man. Apart from Pure Wrath—a nod to mid-’90s keyboard-driven black—our boy Ryo has eight other active bands, for most of which he’s the sole member. Now, logically, it would follow that one or none of Ryo’s projects offer music at the higher end of quality, but Pure Wrath (once you get past the twinkling, sometimes misplaced keys) is fucking awesome!

Think Naglfar’s Vittra, blend in some Shining avant-garde piano and hard rock-isms, finish it off with a twin helping of Abyssos and Unanimated, and you have Pure Wrath. Hell, there's even some Dråpsnatt (Skelepht era) floating around in the Swedish-sounding milieu. While only an EP, The Forlorn Soldier runs at 27-plus minutes. Ryo’s songwriting preference is to elongate the blasts, acoustic passages and killer onslaught of folk-inspired/melody-imbued riffs. The first track, “When a Great Man Dies,” sets the tone, but it’s honestly the weakest on offer. Not that Ryo has phoned in his formula here, but it’s the song that moves the inner storms the least.

When “Children of the Homeland” and “With Their Names Engraved” finish orchestrating turbulent seas, wind-sweeping lands and mourning lost castle ghosts, it’s immediately evident that Ryo’s vision wasn’t fully realized on 2018 predecessor Sempiternal Wisdom. Production-wise, The Forlorn Soldier is right on the mid-’90s money, too.

It has that vintage Dan Swanö vibe, winding up somewhere between Vinterland’s Welcome My Last Chapter and Sacramentum’s Far Away From the Sun. Pure Wrath proves that metal—good symphonic black metal, actually—not only exists, but is thriving in the unlikeliest of places. —CHRIS DICK 8 0 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

SOLOTHUS

7

Realm of Ash and Blood 20 BUCK SPIN

The fire rises

Gradually heaving their way up the developmental ladder since 2011’s Ritual of the Horned Skull demo, this Finnish quintet’s strengths are perfectly signposted by their third album’s opening one-two, “Father of Sickness” and “The Watcher”: gritty, head-caving deathdoom hung with melancholy melodies, but also packing an irresistible groove and swagger that should prick the ears of any who miss Cathedral more each year (drummer Juha Karjalainen even brings a touch of the “Mike Smail’s Rollercoaster” approach to his fills). Other tangible influences sagely noted by the band include Asphyx, Runemagick and Cianide, and touring buddies/compatriots Hooded Menace remain a relevant touchstone, although Solothus embrace more of an esoteric, otherworldly mystique.

However, not all the riffs are totally topdrawer, and after a beautiful intro, the overlong “The Gallows’ Promise” gets stuck in a rut of dull chugging. Excepting a few shrieks in a higher register, vocals predominantly remain a deep monotone gurgle in the noble early-’90s Finnish tradition of Thergothon, Demigod or Rippikoulu. Naturally, an uncompromising streak is always welcome—not least in a subgenre where frontmen often run the gamut of vocal styles like they’re hedging their bets—but the flat-battery Cookie Monster rumble does get a bit one-dimensional, especially when the music has a much more sumptuous, even accessible quality.

(Witness the elegiac grace of the guitar soloing in “Chasm of Shattered Bones” or the sophisticated shifts of epic closer “A Rain of Ash,” when the Sabbath influence firmly takes hold.)

Even so, Solothus’ leap from Doomentia Records to 20 Buck Spin betokens a corresponding hike in arrangement and performance, suggesting a breakthrough should be on the cards.

—CHRIS CHANTLER

SWEVEN

9

The Eternal Resonance VÁ N

More like a nwine

In 2014, Swedish ascendants Morbus Chron ripped death metal fans out of their sleep and thrust them into Tiamat’s astral slumberland with their sophomore LP, Sweven. Morbus Chron used Swedeath as a gateway to compositions that were tangled and enticing, referencing sprawling prog more than the Stockholm buzzsaw.

Unfortunately, Morbus Chron evaporated before

2016, and the hopes of a Sweven successor seemed like a daydream for another, better day.

That day has come. Robert Andersson— Morbus Chron’s visionary vocalist/guitarist—has emerged from hibernation with Sweven’s debut album, The Eternal Resonance. In exactly an hour of time, Andersson continues to explore the mindscapes beyond the treacherous terrain uncovered with Morbus Chron. Andersson is joined by Speglas duo Isak Koskinen Rosemarin (lead guitars) and drummer Jesper Nyrelius. They’re perfect conspirators considering Speglas’ Birth, Dreams & Death appealed to many of the same thoughtful death metal mutations as Sweven.

Commencing with clean guitars and concluding with a minute of the album’s only sung vocals, The Eternal Resonance is death metal when it suits itself to be. Although “By Virtue of a Promise” is propelled by Andersson’s desperate snarls, the song is not over-flavored with harsh distortion. In “Reduced to an Ember,” Nyrelius’ rhythms are in turns impish and destructive, invoking Martin Axenrot’s dichotomous work with Opeth and Bloodbath. After its sky-cursing first half, “Solemn Retreat” creeps towards a finale of calloused acoustic guitar and piano.

While Sweven felt exquisitely meandering, The Eternal Resonance capitalizes on its unorthodox momentum with “Sanctum Sanctorum.”

In so many extreme albums, quiet is a sparingly used ingredient used to make heaviness feel heavier. But Sweven show there’s merit in developing the quiet as well, even if it’s later shredded by blackened blasts. Andersson and Sweven seem interested in stray beams of light and the shadows they create, not the darkness alone. —SEAN FRASIER

TESTAMENT

7

Titans of Creation NUCLEAR BLAST

Into the pit… or maybe stand near FOH

Four years in the making, Testament’s latest (and 13th overall) feels like, well, latter-day Testament. Yes, there’s the usual excitement around the Bay Area baddies’ newest, but Titans of Creation follows Brotherhood of the Snake.

Where it’s full of amazing (“Children of the Next Level,” “WWII,” “City of Angels,” “Dream Deceiver,” “Ishtar’s Gate”), Testament are successful at blending the finer moments of their first four albums in a contemporary context. But where it’s not, Titans is typical of the band’s ability to execute on middling songs that always have more bark than bite. While the musicianship is top-notch—drummer Gene Hoglan and bassist Steve DiGiorgio are the best rhythm team in metal—and the recording, mixing and mastering are super-powerful, the rest of Titans of Creation

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is indolent. The world knows Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick are a kick-ass team, but their songwriting often lacks a good hook.

Lead single “Night of the Witch” burns hard after the initial luster wears off. “Code of Hammurabi,” “The Healers,” “Curse of Osiris” and “False Prophet” exhibit a similar feel—hot as lava upfront, but cinders after a few selective playthroughs. There’s more longevity in, say, “Symptoms,” which isn’t (yet) a focal track, but probably should be. Chuck Billy, at the tender age of 57, still holds down his side of things. He’s probably not the best singer, but for the material on offer, his baritone rasp reverberates off the platter; of course, this hasn’t changed since The New Order, but it’s always worth mentioning.

Titans of Creation is a diehard-only album. If neophytes want to hear modern Testament in all-killer, no-filler mode, check out Dark Roots of Earth. —CHRIS DICK

TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION

6

…to Be Alive at the End of the World T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

Total fucking weirdness

How much should you expect from a record that’s half a noise jam based on “The StarSpangled Banner”? I never expected to be in a position to review said record, but here comes Total Fucking Destruction with …to Be Alive at the End of the World.

Coming roughly a year after #USA4TFD, this album lulls you into believing it’s a complete departure from that previous full-length, which itself continued the band’s 20-plus-year focus: brief, oddball grind and powerviolence that seems to sprout unbidden from drummer/co-vocalist Rich Hoak’s subconscious. Instead, the title track/ opener is blacklit psychedelia with drugged-out vocals that ends up being five minutes of a slow build into... eight tracks of brief, oddball grind and powerviolence. What that six-ish minutes has in store for you, among the blasts, is some funky punk, some punky pop and a song called “Yelling at Velcro,” which truly does sound like an approximation of a guy just yelling at Velcro.

Then we’re ushered into the aforementioned cover of the National Anthem, where the familiar lyrics are screamed on top of freeform drums and bass and noise and some unassociated melody that is maybe a flute, and this goes on for quite a long time. Then, just like that, it’s over. …to Be Alive at the End of the World will make you wonder if it’s earnest eclectic experimentation or a pastiche piss-take designed to confound. Total Fucking Destruction probably don’t care which of these you think it is. But you might. —SHANE MEHLING 8 2 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L

VARIOUS ARTISTS

1

Dead Bodies Everywhere – A Slam and Death Tribute to Nu-Metal I M P LO D I N G S O U N D S

Maybe we deserve this

Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” with a deathcore breakdown. Let that roll through your head. Sit with it a moment. Now imagine Dead Bodies Everywhere, a 26-track compilation of “brutal death, slam, gorgrind [sic], gorenoise and other heavy bands” doing nü-metal covers.

Twenty-six songs provide a big spread, but these renditions broadly fall into: 1) good faith efforts, 2) interpretations seemingly based on a vague memory of the song, or 3) total fuck-off joke nonsense. The clearest example of the first two are dueling covers of “Dig” by Mudvayne.

While Angelic Assblast stay fairly true to the song, Coagulopathy sound like they’re covering what someone hummed at them a few years ago. Of course, like most of this collection, even the better of these simply offers an absolutely terrible riff from the ’90s with someone deathgurgling on top of it at twice the volume.

It should be mentioned that Order of the Wolf's black metallish cover of Deftones’ “Be Quiet and Drive” is quite good. And Omni Express does a version of Korn’s “Blind” that’s close to an ideal execution in these dire circumstances. But any brighter spots offer as much relief as a squirt of aloe vera on a severed arm.

“Limp Bizkit’s ‘Break Stuff,’ but more guttural” sounds like something you’d see scrawled in shit on the wall of a padded cell. But instead you can find it here, on Dead Bodies Everywhere, a compilation which definitively proves what metal has sought to confirm since its inception: There is no God. —SHANE MEHLING

VELNIAS

8

Scion of Aether EISENWALD

Raining fire in the sky

Eight years and a new label (the very fitting Eisenwald, where they stand beside Agalloch and L’Acéphale, among others) after their last album, RuneEater, “Rocky Mountain Doom Metal” duo Velnias return with another master class in melodic, empowered lugubre. Spending nearly a decade in near-hibernation seems like a lot, and it really is, but initial listens to Scion of Aether prove one thing: Time is a construct. As such, this new album sounds like Velnias never really stopped, honing their blade to battle-ready status that much more.

Essentially picking up where RuneEater left off, Scion of Aether’s folk-infused, blackened doom metal is an exercise in raw power and thoughtful composition. A thunderous display of calculated, majestic force, the duo of P.J.V. and A.J.S.’s flowing, robust music positions itself at the midpoint between doom and black metal—slow and forceful, but filled with atmosphere and skyward gazing.

Though this can be written off as “another Velnias album”—and it is to a strong degree— there still isn’t anything quite like this band.

P.J.V.’s spidery compositions and A.J.S.’s heavyhanded drumming style work together well, creating something unique and wondrous. Through Velnias’ picturesque music, one can actually see the mountains, breathe the cold air and feel pine needles between their toes. This isn’t your average “folk/doom metal”—there is neither pageantry nor put-ons here. Just the passion of two artists who have been working together for the past 15 years. And it truly shows. —JON ROSENTHAL

WHITE STONES

6

Kuarahy

NUCLEAR BLAST

Pale heritage

It’s best practice to take every new musical project on its own merits, but I can’t do that with White Stones. The new outfit by bassist Martin Mendez ought to carve out its own identity, but is probably damned to be forever compared to his first band, Opeth. Though Mendez insists otherwise, White Stones sound like a referendum on its predecessor.

Fans of the Swedish prog metal behemoths may remember that they promised to deliver a pure death metal record on their 2002 album Deliverance, but didn’t. White Stones, though, deliver on that promise. Their debut, Kuarahy, only employs growls. Mendez claims to have never composed for Opeth. If so, years with Michael Åkerfeldt have rubbed off on him. White Stones scratch the ol’ Blackwater Park itch better than any of Åkerfeldt’s record this decade—with shorter songs to boot. Standouts like the slinking, seductive “Guyra” are a joy to hear.

Rather than a straightforward Swedish buzzsaw tone, Mendez chose to play these songs with a lightly distorted Fender Stratocaster. The results are so thin it would be frustrating if it didn’t leave so much room for his gloriously fat bass. Mendez’s bass sounds so good here that it’s deepened my appreciation for his other performances, so I guess a little vanity in the mix is forgivable. What I can’t forgive are Singer Eloi Boucherie’s breathy vocals. These songs deserve a commanding roar.

White Stones offer up fascinating ideas that could use a punchier presentation—or a second record with a little more attitude.

—JOSEPH SCHAFER

D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 0 : 8 3

The International Debt Insect Exercise Imagine if sarcasm was a crime. Big Black, Butthole Surfers and AmRep would have never existed, Melvins and the Jesus Lizard would have to find new vocations, and these Brits would be forced to stop before they started.

Kvelond Chaotica Vladamir “Kvelond” Schaulov’s solitary endeavor sounds like the result of a gearhead using everything at his disposal at once in a desperate attempt to permeate Ihsahn’s concentric inner circle.

Mrome Leech Ghetto Someone somewhere will hear this and think it’s a bunch of screaming noise. On the other hand, if you’re a regular Decibel-er and have gotten this far into this issue, you’ll likely think it’s a result of repeated spins of The New Order and Terror Squad.

Odyssian Day of Wrath There’s a lot of stuff to get to and not a lot of spa...

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

Arcane Ritual Witch-Heart Somewhere in the woods surrounding San Francisco, late-’90s/early-’00s Lacuna Coil and the Gathering are doing a sensual belly dance next to a bonfire and a crappy drum machine.

Architects of Aeon Koloss They carry heavy hearts, blackened souls and a quizzical love of both Evoken and Gojira. If I owned a better deathdoom vocal translator, I’d swear their message is, “Kill yourself to save the environment.”

Burial Fog Last to Mourn “Decomposing doom for morbidly obese cave-dwellers who hate their parents,” they say. “Morbidly obese parent-haters clutching to Khanate and Monarch! albums while wheezing through a 5K,” I say.

Cortége Capricorn There's a large handful of art house film classics I’ve tried to watch, but fall asleep to each time because nothing ever seems to happen. Sounds like Cortége may have done the soundtrack for many of them.

Duskwalker All They Know Is Fear Remember that time an angry Erik Rutan and a snarky Dave Mustaine went into a room and Rutan emerged with bloody knuckles, then sat down to read a stack of Van Halen biographies? Duskwalker do. In fact, they may have written that screenplay.

Greylock Trembling in a Hospital Gown Continuing with the hospital motif—if you like your doom/ sludge to sound like unfinished surgery and look like a shoddily stitched post-op scar, head on over to triage with these Boston miserablists.

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Whatever international relations tells us about the Swedish-Finnish border is a lie. That’s because Odyssian long ago abandoned Seattle to man the ramparts and juggle the middle ground between Amon Amarth, Insomnium, Dark Tranquillity, Omnium Gatherum, et al.

Overveillence The Gangly Creature The Gangly Creature is what happens when Obituary crawl out of their cave and let the light of old-school thrash melodies and rhythms warm their dead, hard hearts.

Pitiless Amaranthine For all of technology’s faults and triumphs, it did a confounding number here by somehow creating a deathgrind band indebted to Earache’s classic roster in which the programmed drums are the music’s most dynamic element.

Plaguebringer Diabolos Last time I was in Calgary, I overheard this part of a conversation: “Fuck, if there’s never going to be another Necrophagist album, we might as well do one ourselves.”

Didn’t think anything of it, until now.

The Primitive Founded in Hell As the lone member of the Primitive, Jim Roe—who formerly smacked drums in Incantation and Goreaphobia— does all instrumentation and vocals. It would appear he learned a lot from his former bands, expect how to calibrate whatever he used to tune his lead guitar.

Shuulak Citrinitas On the darkened side of the highway between Keep It True and whatever the hot European symphonic goth rock festival is sit these Dutch men/women, minding their broken-down van and waiting for someone to tell them which direction to head.

All bands above can also be found seeking online superstardom on Facebook and Bandcamp.

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8 8 : M AY 2 0 2 0 : D E C I B E L ANSWERS: 1. The elder Viking toward the middle right has a snotty nose 2. Jack Torrance is frozen at the foot of the hill on the far left 3. The lead Viking has two extra rivets on his nose plate 4. The elder Viking at the far left has three scars on his face 5. He also has extra Wolverine-like gashes on his shield 6. The main Viking’s beard is fuller on the bottom left 7. The front Viking has split knuckles on both hands 8. The Viking to the far right has twin braids cascading from his curly ginger mane 9. The blonde Viking toward the middle left is sporting a curly poodle pelt 10. The lead Viking’s axe has a giant chunk missing from the upper blade 11. The ginger Viking on the far right is missing his pinky finger 12. The elder Viking on the middle right has a giant fur pom pom on his hat 13. And his burly blonde buddy on the middle left has one on his helmet 14. The axe has extra banding across the handle 15. The Vikings stopped to build a black metal Olaf on the far right

There are 15 differences in these pictures.

How many can you find?