Decibel #196 - February 2021

MEGADETH AT THE GATES EYEHATEGOD CARCASS

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s n g i e R C haos

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REFUSE/RESIST

FA ” H F ALL O

FLEXI DISC

INCLUDED

ARTHUR RIZK ASPHYX

RIVERS OF NIHIL MANY SUFFER HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY HULDER

FEBRUARY 2021 // No. 196

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February 2021 [T196]

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Alex Mulcahy

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Albert Mudrian

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Michael Wohlberg

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WAS TOO BUSY KILLING GRANDMA This is the final issue of Decibel that we’ll send to print in 2020. As you may have noticed, large portions of 2020 have been profoundly un-good. You’ve lived through it, read about it enough in these pages since March, and are still dealing with its ramifications, so I really don’t need to revisit the ghastly details. Each of us is reminded of them literally any time we even think about setting foot outside.

It’s tempting to want to rewind the clock a year back to simpler times when some members of the metal community exerted most of their brainpower on making sure everyone knew their opinions on the Lords of Chaos film adaptation. But in lieu of more memes about also being our way to kill Euronymous, please hear me out: Going forward, it’s OK to look ahead and hope for even more than that!

Let’s not kid ourselves, though; just because we’re turning the calendar to 2021, it doesn’t mean that everything is immediately going “back to normal.” With the tremendous surge of infections that began this fall and are poised to only worsen through winter, it’s clear that many of our fellow citizens are uninterested in making an effort to slow the spread of the virus. Still, with a pair of highly effective vaccines set to be distributed in the coming months, there is—for the first time since the beginning of this nightmare—legitimate hope that live music could return at some point in 2021.

Obviously, that won’t bring back many of the jobs lost, the venues that have permanently shuttered or the irreplaceable lives lost since the pandemic took hold, but, Christ, the prospect of attending a show is one of the few things that has made closing the coffin lid on 2020 so satisfying. So, please, do your part over the next several months and maybe, just maybe, we won’t completely fuck up 2021, too.

See? Hope!

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

REFUSE/RESIST

Patty Moran

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Vince Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Louise Brown Chris Chantler Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Chris Dodge Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Jonathan Horsley Neill Jameson Sarah Kitteringham Scott Koerber Daniel Lake Andrew Lee Shawn Macomber Shane Mehling Justin M. Norton Andy O'Connor Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Joseph Schafer Rod Smith Matt Solis Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

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WASN’T ON HIS WAY TO KILL EURONYMOUS

We try to not focus on readers’ musical projects here, but you perform in melodic black/death metallers Inexorum. So, with that in mind, call this one-on-one fight for all-time melodic black/death supremacy: Sacramentum’s Far Away From the Sun vs Unanimated’s Ancient God of Evil.

Carl Skildum Minneapolis, MN

According to our admittedly spotty records, you’ve been a subscriber since issue No. 39, which featured our Top 40 Albums of 2007 list. Some people are probably still mad about that list (and all of our others) 13 years later.

Do you take year-end lists seriously?

I look forward to year-end lists because they are a great way to find out about records that I may have missed. I like to be reminded of records that came out in the early winter months that may have faded into the mists of time behind the nonstop deluge of new releases. It is truly remarkable that we have so many great records to choose from every year. It feels like we are in a golden age of creativity and productivity in heavy metal and neighboring genres, so let’s celebrate it. It hasn’t always been like this!

4 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

This is like asking which lung I want to give up. I picked up Ancient God of Evil right around the time it came out and it blew my young mind, but the thing about that record is that it opens with an alltime banger in “Life Demise,” and then it eases back on the throttle with a little more of a rock ‘n’ roll feel and bluesy wah solos. Sacramentum were a bit more singularly focused on doing nothing but relentless melodic black/death. Both albums are wonderful and filled with amazing riffs and harmonies, but Far Away From the Sun has one of my favorite Necrolord cover paintings, so it gets the edge for me. I’m very stoked that both bands have new LPs in the works.

As a Minneapolis resident, we’re guessing you’ve spent some time at HammerHeart Brewing. (The fact that you perform live with HammerHeart employee Tanner Anderson in Obsequiae makes us feel even more confident about said guess.) Anyway, what’s the best beer you’ve ever had there?

HammerHeart is a special place to me. They specialize in smoked beers with Nordic and

Scandinavian styles, and any fan of metal and beer owes it to themselves to visit when they come here. Every fall I look forward to Herbstklagen, which is an incredible Bamberg-style smoked märzen lager and a great example of how delicious a smoked beer can be. They’ve done Finnish-style sahti beers using a kuurna (a hollow log with juniper branches as a filter bed) that are awesome, too. I celebrate their whole catalog, but the most incredible beer was a one-off peat smoked ale aged in a Laphroaig barrel called Bog Burial. It was like a Scotch whiskey, but you could have a pint of it and not need an ambulance later. Like an obscure demo, once it was gone, it was gone, and now it lives on in legend.

This is the last issue that Decibel will send to print in 2020. Please take us out on a positive/hopeful note heading into 2021.

This has been a nightmare of a year, but at least at the time I write this, I feel cautiously optimistic that we could be heading in a better direction soon. We like to escape into sorcery and magic in our heavy metal, but when it comes to controlling this pandemic, it’s going to be science and logic that get us through it, along with the massive effort by health care professionals everywhere.

I’m looking forward to getting my sweet, sweet vaccine ASAP and finally seeing friends, family and live music again.

We can do this.

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

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

Well, here are the records that we spun most while while reminding you to please, for fuck’s sake, just shut up and wear a goddamn mask

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

This Month's Mutha: Julie McCarthy Mutha of Shane McCarthy of Wayfarer

Tell us a little about yourself.

Like Shane, I was born and raised in Colorado.

After college in California, I returned to Colorado, got married, and we raised two awesome sons. My work as a public librarian is rewarding and satisfying. I enjoy listening to music, reading a good book, watching romantic comedies, taking long walks, hanging out with my family and, most of all, spending time with my two adorable, energetic grandsons (Shane’s nephews: “The Brobarians”).

Shane is the curator of the Fire in the Mountains festival. Did he express an interest in nature when he was young?

Shane has always been curious about and respectful of the natural world. As he grew up, we camped regularly in the mountains. He and his brother enjoyed exploring and hiking. Shane has always had an affinity for the mountains.

We are fortunate to live somewhere with lots of open space, trails, parks, state parks and Rocky Mountain National Park nearby, and can see the Rockies from our home.

His band Wayfarer plays “black metal of the American West.” Did you have a hand in his appreciation of folk music?

Shane was exposed to a variety of music growing up, mostly rock and blues. Probably the closest thing to folk music I introduced him to was Otis Taylor: a blues musician whose songs often delve into issues of race and social injustice. I think he was drawn to Taylor’s intensity and passion, and the strong emotions his music 6 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

evokes. Several of the metal bands Shane listened to were heavily influenced by Norse folk music, and he was intrigued by the music from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns.

Have you had the opportunity to see Shane perform, inside or outside?

My husband and I have been fortunate to see Shane perform many times. Seeing him play at Fire in the Mountains was an incredible, memorable experience. It was surreal and primal, with the mountainous backdrop and starry sky. We are always blown away by his skill and confidence, his passion and presence. Shane is in his element when playing his music! It amazes us that our son could be such a talented musician since neither parent shows any aptitude whatsoever. We love listening to music, but that’s as far as it goes. We are so proud!

What’s something most people wouldn’t know about Shane?

Shane is a huge horror buff. Halloween is his favorite holiday, and he’s always loved horror movies and haunted houses. Throughout his middle school and high school years, we turned our house, yard and garage over to him around Halloween to be transformed into a haunted house experience. Shane would begin months ahead, spending lots of time thinking up new ideas and creating elaborate plans, sets, roles and props, then recruit a bunch of friends to participate. He made flyers to pass out at school and would get a pretty good turnout. He still loves haunted houses! —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Tribulation, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound  Many Suffer, The Strangest of Beasts  Dark Tranquillity, Moment  King Diamond, “Them”  Bettie Serveert, Palomine ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, Blood Lust  Electric Wizard, Dopethrone  Idles, Ultra Mono  Sqürl, Some Music for Robby Müller  Monolord, Empress Rising ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Cannibal Corpse, Red Before Black  The Crown, Cobra Speed Venom  Panopticon, Autumn Eternal  Publicist UK, Forgive Yourself  Nonexist, Deus Deceptor ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  King Diamond, “Them”  Propagandhi, Less Talk, More Rock  Gatecreeper, Deserted  Cannibal Corpse, Red Before Black  Tribulation, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Power Trip, Live In Seattle 05.28.2018  Motörhead, On Parole (Expanded & Remastered)  Haunt, Flashback  Dio, Dream Evil Live ’87  Deaf Club, Contemporary Sickness

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Grant Netzorg : i n t h e c o m pa n y o f s e r p e n t s

 Swans, Leaving Meaning  Primitive Man, Immersion  Roky Erickson, Gremlins Have Pictures  Tom Waits, The Black Rider  Bleakheart, Dream Grie

PHOTO BY COLLEEN DONLEY

Here’s How Bernie Can Still Win ome of the most preposterous shit I’ve seen floating around the toilet bowl that was 2020 contains undigested chunks of American black metal clogging the pipes, which makes for a terrific visual metaphor, but a crappy way to ponder the end of the year.

You might think I’d go for the easy-to-see targets, like how excited a lot of people are that a noted pedophile has a new album coming out.

You might think I’d even mention how their label posted a PR statement saying that said pedophile is in fact the victim in all of this.

You’d expect I might bring up the irony of the “reject degeneracy in black metal” right-wing crowd all having throbbing boners while they defend this band, for whatever reason. But I figured out the lack of moral character in a lot of these motherfuckers when they waited a few months after it was news to dust off their Inquisition shirts, pretending nothing had ever happened—a luxury the kids in the videos on Dagon’s hard drive have not been afforded.

But no, I’m mostly here to talk about the reaction to the USBM book that Decibel contributor Daniel Lake wrote and Decibel itself published.

I don’t have the word count to properly describe what a self-fulfilling prophecy this scene has become over this book, and I can’t give a fair analysis of the content because I haven’t read it. The problem is that the people vehemently shitting on it haven’t either. You can tell because they love to tell whomever is scrolling by how they won’t read it, which isn’t a surprise because they don’t seem like they read much of anything, upholding the proud American tradition of anti-intellectualism as some kind of spontaneous ejaculation-inducing virtue.

Having to watch an adult trying to explain to these sentient mashed potatoes that not every band in the book is going to make the list on the back cover—thus really explaining how books work in general—prepares me on how to explain these things to my daughter after she’s born.

Granted, these people are all of drinking age, so I’m going to lay the blame with their parents, churches and public schools, and probably Obama, because why the fuck not at this point?

Forming an opinion on something you’ve never read, seen or heard isn’t being challenging to the status quo; it makes you a proud moron. And yes, I know some dickhead will say, “WELL, WHAT 8 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

ABOUT NSBM, I DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO THAT TO KNOW I HATE IT” or think that this would be a cool argument as to the kiddie-fiddling that was on Dagon’s computer, like how do we know it was bad unless we watch it ourselves? If this line of thought pops up in your head, you need to clean it out with a fucking shotgun. Or, at the very least, wait until you get your answer as to whether Grand Belial’s Key is in the fucking book before dumping out your liquid shit of an opinion.

The other obnoxious-as-fuck thing that I keep tripping over is how people are upset with the choice of bands. I understand you’re upset your demo that existed in 1991 but no one had ever heard until 2008 somehow didn’t make the cut, but not every band in a scene is important to anyone else other than the people involved (and judging by some of your demos, not even then).

Same side of the coin is, “I wouldn’t have had my band in there even if I was asked.” Guess what?

You won! Because nobody asked. Just like nobody is asking your opinion now, either.

Sure, I’m not a fan of a lot of the bands, especially in the last decade or so, but I can’t deny the impact they’ve made to the greater metal world, regardless of how fucking boring and pretentious I find them. Spectators acting like this is going to be the final book on the subject to be written are pudding-brained during the best parts of their day. You’re aware you can write your own book, containing the bands you were in or that are important to you that you feel were misrepresented (or missing entirely) in Daniel’s book? That’s the great thing about it: You can control it as long as you’re willing to put in the excruciating amount of work that such an undertaking requires.

But if I were a betting man, I’d say the majority are just trying to attract attention to themselves and their meandering bullshit, and would never attempt it. So, frankly, if you’re not willing to do it yourself? Shut the fuck up and keep your opinions to yourself.

If you’re still interested, well, look at me. If I can get a writing gig, fucking anybody can if they just try. Same with a record deal or any of the other things I’ve stumbled into accomplishing.

As a final fun fact, this marks the sixth year of doing this column, so without tittering on anymore, thank you to Albert for the opportunity. And to the 11 of you still reading me every month, it’s greatly appreciated.

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN crafts a monthly journey through

MORBID ALES

BY CHRIS DODGE

Getting Low on LSD and High ABV in Utah

I

’m surrounded by smug hipsters, so it

didn’t surprise me that they scoffed when I mentioned road-tripping to Utah. As tempting as it is to automatically make jokes about the Osmonds or plural marriages, it is astounding how many people aren’t aware that the Beehive State is home to the most awe-inspiring red rock scenery anywhere in the U.S. It’s like an old Road Runner cartoon. And while the landscape can be dry and desolate, nowhere is that desolation more intimidating than on a map of Utah breweries. They’re out there, but it’s slim pickings. The lopsided open-land-to-lowpopulation ratio is the most obvious reason, but Utah doesn’t exactly have a history of being warm and friendly to brewers either.

The state is predominantly Mormon, a faith that shuns all stimulants and mindaltering substances—alcohol, tobacco, caffeine. (Don’t even think about ordering a Coke.) Mormon prophets Joseph Smith and Brigham Young proselytized a lifestyle abstaining from the evils of fermented grains, with convenient exceptions. When a bodyguard of the LDS Church opened Hot Springs Brewery, the first in the state, pious leaders conveniently feigned awareness. When IRS tax collectors documented distilleries and breweries in the state in 1869, they found all of them were owned by

 Taste the sin

Some of the remarkable craft brews Utah has to offer via one of their few unremarkable state stores

Mormons, including a few owned by Brigham Young himself.

Bizarre liquor restrictions abound to this day. Up until 2008, it was illegal for any cocktail in Utah to contain more than one ounce of alcohol. Big box beer like Bud always brewed a lower than average ABV offshoot beer just to sell in Utah, until two years ago when a law passed to increase the wimpy 3.2% standard to 5%. Thankfully, craft brewers don’t adhere to this limit, with the caveat their beer can only be carried in the State Liquor Store, which is as gray and joyless as it sounds, with all the charm and panache of a hardware store. Sterile. Functional.

But it isn’t all fire and brimstone. There are a hell of a lot of tasty brews in this restrictive and red state, with the granddaddy being Epic Brewing, spending the past decade experimenting in ways that their newest counterparts haven’t even dreamt of attempting.

Along with their traditional roster of beers, Epic has infused flavors using everything from peanuts to sage, and has aged their brews in every iteration of barrel imaginable, not to mention their Big Bad Baptist Stout is the stuff of legend. Also well-established is

Park City’s Wasatch Brewery, which gleefully pokes fun at Utah’s wholesome values with beers like their Satanic-themed Great Deceiver Imperial Pilsner and the Polygamy Porter.

Johnny’s American IPA from Moab Brewery is a toothsome balance of bitterness and malted barley roast, the opposite of the juice bomb delivered by Proper Brewing’s Hopothetical NE style IPA. Both are distinct and worth finding. Templin Family Brewing’s Albion Belgian Style Tripel is a treat that drinks true to style and packs a 10% ABV punch. I despise pumpkin beers, but Kiitos Brewing’s Pumpkin Latte Golden Ale With Coffee is fucking tasty, even though it sounds like a beer Karen would speak to the manager about.

In the southwest corner of the state, we visited Zion Brewery, which operates out of two locations, including a slick St. George taproom converted from a 103-year-old fire station. We were extra mindful of how much we imbibed while out on the town. Utah has the strictest drunk driving laws in the country. A blood alcohol content level of .05 will put you in the slammer, which explains the slogan given to Utah by neighboring states: “Come for vacation. Leave on probation.”

DECIBEL : FEBRUARY 2021 : 9

RIVERS OF NIHIL

STUDIO REPORT

O

RIVERS OF NIHIL ALBUM TITLE

ur sax player is here today and it’s his first day in the studio. I literally

the opposite of that and it TBA had sax blasting in my ear when your first call came in.” feels more like our [2015] PRODUCER Rivers of Nihil guitarist Brody Uttley is laughing and apologizing for Monarchy record. The prog Grant McFarland and Carson Slovak; missing the call when Decibel initially rang at our agreed-upon interview factor, or whatever you want Brody Uttley time. At the same time, he’s revealing that the PA-based progressive death metal to call it, has been signifi(engineering) act’s new album won’t be holding back on any of the offbeat elements that made cantly boosted, but so has STUDIO 2018 predecessor Where Owls Know My Name the most popular of their discography. the ferocity of the heavier Atrium Studio, “Largely, Owls was the biggest boost of our career,” Uttley notes. “We did the parts. It’s way more aggresLancaster, PA; biggest tours we’d ever done. We had super-successful headlining runs in the States sive than the last album, and Uttley’s home studio, Douglassville, PA and Europe, and went to Australia and New Zealand when we never thought we’d definitely our heaviest record. be able to headline or sell out places that weren’t in our hometown. That record got I guess we turned it up in both RECORDING DATES a lot of new ears on the band; in a lot of ways, this record is a logical continuation, directions with the ultimate September November, 2020 but in many ways it’s not. It’s a strange one, I’ll say that.” goal being to make the record RELEASE DATE Where Owls Know My Name leaned heavily on the progressive end of the prog-death we want to hear. With this mid-to-late 2021 statement Rivers have been making since their formation in 2009. And while record, I think we’ve sucLABEL Uttley is hesitant to refer to the forthcoming fourth album as a reaction to “the ceeded in giving people what Metal Blade mellotrons and saxophones on our last album,” he’s not shy about acknowledging they’d expect after a record all the parts that got them to where they are. like Owls, but also giving “I feel like a lot of bands, when they start going in a more progressive direction, get super-sick them something they didn’t know they wanted and proggy, but they sometimes end up losing the heaviness,” he muses. “On this record, we did from us.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

MELODIC BLACK METAL VETS VREID GET WILD ON ALBUM NO. 8 Norwegian black metallers Vreid are currently holed up in Studio 1184 in Asker, Norway, where, as bassist/producer Jarle “Hváll” Kvåle tells it, it’s a “mad world” laying down the tracks for new album Wild North West (prepping for spring release via Season of Mist).

“Sometimes you just get that overwhelming feeling that all the puzzles fall into place,” Kvåle assures. “I had that feeling when we did the Likferd and Milorg albums; they are

10 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

cornerstones in our foundation. Wild North West is a concept album, a journey through our past with firm eyes staring ahead. I would describe it as very heady and atmospheric, and it also has some of the most psychedelic and intense stuff we have ever done.”

While Kvåle orchestrates, Wild North West wouldn’t be possible without valuable assistance from Nabolaget Studios’ Anders Nordengen and Vreid soundman Helge Bentsen.

“Anders is not a metal producer,” offers Kvåle. “[He] mostly works on rock stuff, and I think that’s an important strength. Then there’s Helge, our front-of-house since 2009.

He keeps the technical things under control, explaining everything that I’m doing wrong.”

—CHRIS DICK

HULDER

HULDER

Portland’s expatriated Flemish black metal baroness sings songs for the forgotten

L

ike the fabled scandinavian forest creatures that inspired her band name, Hulder began in the hidden places of the world; that is, the extreme metal underground, where tape-trading thrives. In 2018, the Pacific Northwest-based one-woman black metal attack debuted out of nowhere with Ascending the Raven Stone, a three-song demo tape of promising Bathorian black metal rawness. A month later, we reviewed the Belgium expat’s follow-up rehearsal tape (now impossible to get), forecasting that “Hulder is on her way to becoming exceptional.” ¶ “The name Hulder was something that came to me years ago,” recalls the woman behind the runaway project. “Naturally, the idea of a mythical and feminine forest-dwelling creature seemed to be fitting when the initial writings began for the first demo.

The juxtaposition of majesty and evil that is implied by the term adequately represents my intent.” That intent became crystalclear with 2019’s 7-inch Embraced by Darkness Mysts. Not content with merely slaying competing underground raw black metal solo acts, Hulder says she “wanted to bring an air of mysticism and evil” to the music as well. ¶ With Godslastering: Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry, Hulder’s debut full-length, the artist says 12 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

she aimed “to create something that would invoke the same primal experience [she feels] when listening to classics like Nemesis Divina or Diabolical Fullmoon Mysticism.” Hence, the album plays out like an eightpart love letter penned to true black metal, executed with both severe reverence for and barely repressed ambition to overthrow the genre.

Hulder explains: “When directly translated, the term ‘Godslastering’ equates to ‘Blasphemy.’ Conceptually, this record, like many before it, is a disjointed series of stories with subject matter regarding loss, evil intent and the eventual overcoming or realization of internal power.”

Hulder moved to the U.S. when she was a teenager, but she remembers her childhood with her grandmother, “an antique dealer who travelled Europe picking primarily medieval wares.” She has “many fond memories of traveling alongside her and listening to the fables that she would tell.” Godslastering, she continues, was inspired by “many aspects of my life,” such as

her “upbringing in a small town rich in medieval history,” her lifelong “fascination with dark lore” and her “recent ventures into the forests and mountain ranges of the Pacific Northwestern United States.”

The songs that comprise Godslastering were merely “concepts in the winter of 2019,” according to Hulder. During the global lockdown last spring, suddenly there was “time [for] fine-tuning and recording demo versions of the songs.”

Godslastering was recorded over the period of a few months at both De Pestkerk Studio and the Underworld Studio in Portland. She and Charlie Koryn (VoidCeremony, etc.) “engineered and mixed everything.” Huder adds that “working with Charlie is always a smooth process. He understands and recognizes every influence or idea that I can bring to the table, no matter how obscure. It makes the recording process much more productive and fruitful when the engineer is on the same page as you are.” —DUTCH PEARCE

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GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN (1958)

NEW 4K RESTORED VERSION A 500-year-old Spanish conquistador rises from the dead in this cult class you won’t want to miss!

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ASPHYX

Writing simple, catchy riffs is child’s play for Dutch death metal gods

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here are many ways to slice the death metal salami.

Some like it technical, blast-heavy, lots of counting. Others cloud everything in necro fuzz and punch the Golgotha zip code into the satnav. Then there’s the Paleolithic approach, the death metal of beer-drinking and primal impulse— as practiced by Asphyx. ¶ Helpfully, the Dutch quartet described this crowd-pleasing style explicitly with 2009’s Death… the Brutal Way, but point at any of their releases and you’ll get the gist. Take their latest, Necroceros, for instance. Here, tigerthroated vocalist Martin van Drunen joins us on the line to unpack its brutal architecture. The common thread? Simplicity. ¶ “No one has ever asked me this, but it is true: We like to compose songs in a simplistic way,” says van Drunen. “Usually, they are the strongest ones. I think music, especially metal, needs to be a little bit catchy—at times, not always. That is the kind of thing we try to do in Asphyx, not to make it too difficult. If we did that, we might as well start a new project.”

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Krist Novoselic described Nirvana’s process as writing children’s songs. Asphyx are more Nirvana 2002, but it’s a similar deal. Indeed, some of Paul Baayens’ riffs were written in the classroom. “He is a teacher,” laughs van Drunen. “The kids are 7 or 8 years old. He stands in front of the class and sometimes he’ll have an idea. He has a small room behind the classroom with an acoustic guitar. He makes sure the kids are occupied for a few minutes, runs to the room, grabs his guitar and comes up with a riff.”

Baayens only needs two or three for the band to put a song together. Necroceros was written in the creative tailwind of a steady lineup and a lockdown that left van Drunen uninterrupted. They booked time at Tom Meier Studio, where Stefan Hüskens tracked drums, with van Drunen, Baayens

and bassist Alwin Zuur finishing it at Baayens’ home studio. Sebastian “Seeb” Levermann—a power metal guy—mixed and mastered it. There are songs about war, Antarctica, murder sprees and Maoist famine.

Oh, and Vince Neil’s plastic surgery, too. “It is total bollocks,” snorts van Drunen. “We all grow old. Come on, face yourself; and if you can’t, go throw yourself in the river with a stone around your neck.”

“Botox Implosion” is not quite “She Loves You,” but with airtight grooves, simple hooks and an underrated drummer, there’s something of the early Beatles in Asphyx. “I consider that a massive compliment,” says van Drunen. “I really love that old Beatles material. I love the Stones. You mention Lennon/McCartney, but sometimes I say to Paul we are like the Jagger and Richards of death metal!”

—JONATHAN HORSLEY

PHOTO BY NEGAKINU PHOTOGRAPHY

ASPHYX

MANY SUFFER

MANY SUFFER Legendary doom guitarist embraces a darker shade of black

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hen calvin robertshaw left My Dying Bride in 2018, things were uncertain for the guitarist/songwriter.

Many thought the Yorkshireman had given up the musical ghost permanently. But beneath anger, inside desperation and forged in the crucible of will, Robertshaw had his solo project, Many Suffer, bubbling under. ¶ What started after watching the Bride perform for the umpteenth time at Belgium’s lovely Graspop Festival in the mid-aughts has morphed into a full-fledged, pleasantly unpleasant monster as the Year of the Ox comes into view. “It’s long been said that I’m a big fan of the thrash scene—not so much now—but back in the day it was probably true,” Robertshaw says, regarding the origins of the new moniker. “One band that stood head and shoulders above the rest was Dark Angel. The name Many Suffer actually comes from the song ‘An Act of Contrition’ on the Time Does Not Heal album. To me, that short phrase doesn’t categorize the material I have or could write in the future, but holds a deeper meaning that, in truth, everyone will encounter suffering, and the world is built around the suffering of many for the reward of the few.”

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Bleak, indeed. Given Robertshaw’s pedigree and his affection for the gloomy, morose and soot-covered, Many Suffer should be no less.

As a solo project—though E from Swedish black metallers Malakhim appears on “Bring Forth Death” and Wallfahrer from German black metallers Wallfahrer spits on “Die Saat Der Angst”—the music on debut EP The Strangest of Beasts soars and sears as much as it coruscates and biseriates.

Certainly, songs like “The Trees Die Standing,” “Bring Forth Death” and “The Unkindness of Ravens” could be interpreted as having roots in and/or divine inspiration from black metal. Many Suffer at its heart is metal, with the potential to offshoot in any (extreme) direction. “Musically, you could say that with regard to the style of riffs played,” agrees Robertshaw. “It’s dark, heavy and claustrophobic at times. It also has fast tracks, blast beats; I’ve always felt that dynamics are important, but the overall

tempo and lyrics, for me, don’t fit into the core black metal genre.

Don’t get me wrong—over the past few years, I’ve been listening to a lot of black metal.”

Where Many Suffer go from The Strangest of Beasts is unknown.

Musically, for Robertshaw, it’s a much-needed outlet, a vent for the travails of life. It also offers him complete control. There are no competing songwriters or conflicting opinions on matters artistic and personal. For now, the future is cloudy, so the focus is on the present and the self-release of The Strangest of Beasts. “The flexibility I have working on my own is extremely useful,” Robertshaw offers.

“It also gives me the no-compromise approach to material that was always an element of being in a band.

There will probably be vocal collaborations in the future, as whenever I finish the music for a track, I immediately hear the vocal in my head and know the type of voice that will fit perfectly.” —CHRIS DICK

HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY

HARAKIRI FOR THE SKY

Austrian post-black metal vets learn to vet

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arakiri for the Sky—multi-instrumentalist M.S. and vocalist J.J.—have been very prolific, releasing five cathartic post-black metal albums since 2012. “For us, music is one of the main pillars in our life,” M.S. says. “We have been friends for over 10 years now, and of course the chemistry and getting to know how the other one writes definitely helps to evolve and mature [our music].” ¶ The recording sessions for fifth full-length Mære went smoothly for the talented duo, as essential time had been spent on pre-production. Kerim “Krimh” Lechner (ex-Decapitated, Septicflesh) returned as session drummer, while Alcest’s Neige and a disembodied voice from black/death outfit Gaerea take up guest slots. ¶ HFTS, however, met controversy for the inclusion of vocalist Audrey Sylvain on the album’s initial tracklist. The online furor was based on Sylvain’s lengthy affiliation with French black metal act Peste Noire, which has widely publicized National Socialist ties, and her apparent ongoing online support for far-right movements. ¶ “The only reason we talked to her was because of Amesoeurs, as we were huge fans of the band,” J.J. explains. “We thought reuniting Neige and Sylvain, as back in the times of Amesoeurs, would be an awesome idea.”

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HFTK confirm that prior to reaching out to Sylvain to collaborate on a song, they had heard from other parties that she wanted to leave her past behind. Apparently, similar sentiments were also expressed directly to the band by Sylvain.

“My personal attitude is that people, if they haven’t committed something that’s really unforgivable, should get a second chance... if they’ve really changed,” J.J. says.

“That she, behind closed doors, still has right-winged traits—we were totally unaware [of], and were confronted with all this stuff the same evening we posted the new tracklist,” he furthers. “But we reacted and erased her not more than 24 hours after our fans made us aware of all that shit.”

The band notified Sylvain of the erasure in a private message. She subsequently shared it online. Further condemnation ensued as HFTS were accused of only removing Sylvain due to the detrimental impact it would have on promotion of the

album, since they didn’t specifically push back on her alleged beliefs in the message.

“If you come [to] the situation we were forced to,” J.J. begins, “you don’t write to the third person, ‘Hey, you are fucking Nazi scum, we cancel your feature, fuck you!’

No, you try to act professional, to minimize the damage, as she also threatened to bootleg the song.

That’s the only reason we wrote her [the] lame-ass message.”

“We strongly oppose any fascist tendencies,” M.S. states emphatically. “It goes completely against our beliefs. The same goes for racism, homophobia and other backward attitudes. That’s something really important for us to clarify.”

“I know that we should have had way more back-up checks on the people we feature on our albums… it was totally our fault we missed this,” J.J. admits. “But that’s the only thing we can be accused of: being credulous that people can change and not doing detailed checks.” —VINCE BELLINO

interview by

QA j. bennett

W IT H

ARTHUR

RIZK

Heavy metal’s hottest producer talks ETERNAL CHAMPION, POWER TRIP and SUMERLANDS

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rthur Rizk is a man of many talents. Over the last several years,

he’s recorded and produced albums for Power Trip, Sacred Reich and Cavalera Conspiracy, mixed and/or mastered records for Spirit Adrift, Integrity and Cirith Ungol—among many others—all while playing guitar in cult favorites Sumerlands and hardcore trailblazers Cold World. He also plays drums for metal masters Eternal Champion, whose Ravening Iron landed at No. 2 on our Top 40 Albums of 2020. Did we mention that he recorded and produced all of those albums, too? Well, he totally did. ¶ Of course, all that momentum came to a screeching halt in March when the pandemic hit. “In the beginning, it was stressful,” our man explains from his pad in Philly. “I had to cancel a lot of sessions because there was no trustable information about the virus beyond ‘Stay indoors’ or ‘Don’t go anywhere.’ Most of my clients fly into Philadelphia or I fly out to them, so the thought of sitting in a potential tube of COVID gave me anxiety for a while. As time moved on, I implemented social distancing rules and busted out the masks and hand sanitizer.”

What did you do with yourself when the pandemic forced the cancellation of your recording sessions?

I built a mix setup in my home and would work from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m., and then sleep while my roommates were up. I got to play my guitar every single day and listen to my record collection. I basically lived like a teenager without a job—spending time with my fiancée, my cat, my roommates, who are best friends of mine, doing puzzles and watching every movie. Since that ran its course, it has been nonstop madness!

Especially releasing the Eternal Champion record on our own label, which during COVID has been quite a challenge.

You produced the new Eternal Champion record, which landed at No. 2 on our Top 40 list this year—and you’re also in the band. In what ways does Ravening Iron feel different to you than The Armor of Ire?

I think me and four other different writers contributed to the last record in the songwriting realm. Then I took everyone’s work and put it through my producing/songwriting filter to give everything relation to each other and to make Armor not sound like a compilation of songs.

Ravening was written by myself and [guitarist] John Powers, with the exception of a reworked album version of “War at the Edge of the End,” which was previously only a demo.

We recorded Armor in 2015, which would’ve been my fourth year as a serious producer. By 2019, when we started Ravening, I was in my eighth year and have had the opportunity to learn lessons from every single person—engineer, producer, metal hero—that I’ve worked with since then. Armor was straight cult heavy metal inspired by cult heavy metal, but Ravening PHOTO BY GENE SMIRNOV

was inspired by a lot of different things. The title track was inspired by the time we spent playing the Up the Hammers fest in Greece and gives nods to some of the classic Greek composers that some of my Greek friends showed me—like Manos Hadjidakis, for example. There is Tangerine Dream influence and some early dungeon synth as well.

How is recording or producing a band you play in different than recording or producing a band you’re not in?

I try not to treat working with my own band any differently than working with someone else’s band. Some of the ruthlessness of being a producer is to reality-check what’s going on every step of the way. That’s tough to do with your own band, but the tradeoff is studio time with no price tag. The negative is that I have to be insanely hard on myself and everyone else to make sure I’m not sacrificing quality out of laziness. When producing themselves, people can get like, “These takes are good enough—I’m gonna go slam a Snickers and play Call of Duty.”

You recently finished recording the new Municipal Waste album. What was that experience like?

I had a really good time working with those guys. They’re metal nerds, and it makes for an inspiring session when everyone is just constantly talking music—it fuels the vibes.

We had more of an old-school session, with the whole band initially playing together to get a more natural feel. Also, we mic’d the drums from underneath with the bottom heads off and used early ’80s Marshall guitar heads. It was just loud and heavy all around.

You’ve said that you studied Sepultura records like Chaos A.D. and Arise when you were learning how to produce. What other albums were crucial to your learning process, and why?

I’m pretty metal-obsessed, but a lot of non-metal records inspire me in the production realm. One that I could talk about endlessly is Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. That record doesn’t have one cymbal sound on it, and the first time I realized this, it blew my fucking mind. Instead of using crashes and hats, every rhythm was glued together with toms or string sections or acoustic guitar. Sometimes instead of having a crash to accent a big change, she would just use a sample of some weird shit like a dinner plate crashing.

It made everything so incredibly heavy that I started messing around with this subtractive theory every time I wanted to make something repetitive sound a little more interesting.

Another record that shaped my experimentations was Candlemass’ Nightfall, for how big everything sounds on that record. Not one thing at all sounds small, from the voice to the toms to the guitars and synths. When I started mixing bands, I thought it would be great if everything I mixed sounded like Nightfall, no matter what the band or genre.

I also would say every Queen, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden record had tons of DNA coding and blueprint info for what I’ve worked on. Sad Wings of Destiny is like a heavy metal version of Queen’s A Night At the Opera, and the amount of depth in both of those records blew my mind. Sabbath’s Mob Rules is one of the greatest-sounding records ever, and Dehumanizer is one of my favorite-sounding albums by the god Reinhold Mack. Maiden’s albums are all perfect, especially the Martin Birch stuff, my favorites being Killers and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. He was the greatest to ever do it.

Since then, you’ve worked with Cavalera Conspiracy, Sacred Reich and Cro-Mags— musicians you listened to growing up. How does your perspective change when you go from being a listener to someone who’s actively involved in these bands’ creative processes?

Well, it’s easy to drift in and out of reality when working with legends such as all of those bands mentioned. I realize I’m being trusted to handle the artistic baby of people I have looked up to since I was a teenager, and of course while we’re working, I’m always like, “Ohhh, so that’s how they do things.” I feel like I can always go back to their classic records and digest more after seeing people’s processes in real life. But I don’t let my personal tastes get in the way of extracting the molten core of what everyone involved feels like the record should be.

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I also try not to be like “The Chris Farley Show” skit from SNL, but sometimes it’s hard not to be like, “Hey man, remember Beneath the Remains? Uhhh… that was cool.” If anything, I find myself with a closer relationship to the band’s classic records because of what I’ve learned. Sometimes I’ll spin The American Way or Best Wishes and be like, “Damn, I just texted this dude a couple hours ago!”

What’s the first record you produced that came out sounding like you wanted it to? What were the deciding factors involved?

I would have to say Power Trip’s Manifest Decimation was the first time I felt like what I heard in my head was what ended up being the final mix. There was a lot of experimentation with placing mics in random places in my old South Philadelphia house—we had a giant ceiling, so I hid mics in different corners and even taped one to the ceiling by the banister. I was able to do well; I didn’t feel a ton of pressure recording one of my best friends, Chris Ulsh, on drums, because he slapped. So did Riley [Gale], and Blake [Ibanez] slayed.

During mixing, I spent a lot of time trying different experiments and then either tossing them out or committing them. We were not being rushed at all and had the time to do it, so I would spend hours going back and forth with Blake and Riley making all the little things perfect, like reverse vocals and intros. I prob22 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

ably spent more time on all the seasonings than the actual mix.

You produced both of Power Trip’s albums and were in pre-production with them when Riley passed earlier this year. How are you feeling about that awful situation right now, and what do you want folks to know about Riley?

It’s really hard to even think about the magnitude of that situation because Riley is family to me. I can’t even unpack anything about the musical loss, and I still have not been able to listen to anything that we have ever recorded together. When he passed away, there was a massive outpouring of love from all kinds of people from all walks of life. People who met him only once felt like they lost a piece of themselves. He would listen to a janitor at a venue talk about cleaning a toilet and somehow turn it into an ultra meaningful conversation—and he would care! We lost someone who put a lot of love into the world. He was not just a talented singer—he was an equal-opportunity human being.

What can you tell us about the new Sumerlands record? We hear it’s coming out in 2021, but Phil Swanson may not be involved…

As of right now, it’s almost fully tracked and will hopefully be mixed by the time these words are in print. It’s in the same arena as the last record, but the only way I could describe it is that it’s a bit more moody on the music front. Phil Swanson

did bow out. There’s no big headline—he just didn’t want to do it. I was honored to even get the chance to do one record with someone I have always looked up to—and still do—as a singer and human. Phil actually has a new record with his band Vestal Claret—it’s self-titled. I mixed it and Justin [DeTore] from Sumerlands played drums on it. It’s really good and classic Phil.

So, who’s singing for Sumerlands now—and how did you choose them?

I wasn’t even sure whether I wanted to continue working on the record without Phil, but the whole thing was written and Phil encouraged us to continue and find someone. The first option that came to mind was Brendan Radigan from Pagan Altar [and Magic Circle]. We’ve worked together so many times, and we just wanted to get a friend in the band. His singing abilities are a plus.

Last but not least, what’s going on with Cold World?

Cold World was planning on doing a bunch of stuff that was interrupted by COVID-19. We had some shows planned and I wanted to get together with Nick Woj, who is the main writer behind Cold World, and jam out with him. I hope there will be more things to come for Cold World in the future, but I’m not positive when or in what form it will take. I do know it’s definitely not off the table—and those guys are some of my best friends, so we’re always scheming together.

PHOTO BY GENE SMIRNOV

 Guitar hero He doesn’t get to work with your favorite bands, your favorite bands get to work with him

It’s easy to drift in and out of reality when working with legends.

I also try not to be like ‘The Chris Farley Show’ skit from SNL, but sometimes it’s hard not to be like, ‘Hey man, remember Beneath the Remains?

Uhhh… that was cool.’

BY ANDREW BONAZELLI

We’re not dead yet!

And if you’re reading this, presumably, neither are you! That’s about the best we have to offer about the state of the world right now; although, perhaps by the time you read this, the first wave of a vaccine will have been delivered to frontline workers (at the very least), and what’s left of our democracy won’t be in laughable shambles. Which means we can start to at least think about beginning a slow ramp-up to familiar record release schedules, ideally in advance of (gulp…) the bands behind them hitting the road again. ¶ OK, let’s not get greedy (or comically unrealistic). Whether or not Life Still Sucks in 2021, we feel relatively confident that the 20 bands listed below will make Life Suck Less with a tonic of blast beats, sweep arpeggios, HM-2 worship and guttural grimaces. You’ve seen them on the cover, in Hall of Fames, in the Flexi Series and at Metal and Beer Fests; and in all heart-attack seriousness, we hope they’re the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our soundtrack to a better tomorrow.

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MEGADETH

lead guitarist Kiko Loureiro and omnipresent he “last thing you ever want to hear” varies depending on, well, countless facveteran drummer Dirk Verbeuren, Mustaine tors. Just speculating here, but for Dave has been focusing on getting his iconic rasp Mustaine—going on 38 fucking years as the in fighting shape (thanks in no small part to perpetually grimacing face of Megadeth— Loureiro: “Sometimes ... there will be a part throat cancer had to be way up there in terms that I’m singing and it’s not the right part, if TITLE: TBA of utter devastation. And yet, it’s somehow you know what I mean, and it’s like an ‘illegal not even a little surprising that the enigmatic note.’ Kiko’s been very, very helpful with helpLABEL: Tradecraft frontman conquered that piddly bullshit in ing me with my vocal training.”) Along with PRODUCER: Chris Rakestraw roughly 16 months (he was originally diagnosed solos and percussive overdubs (“We’re looking in June of 2019), clearing the four-piece to launch at stuff that’s like giant timpani drums”), RELEASE DATE: TBA those vocals are the final ingredient of headlong into their latest metal masterwork.

“All of the medical treatments that have had Megadeth’s 16th album. to take place during the recording—you know, the chemotherapy, the radia“There are 12 songs on it, and we have a cover track, and we have an tion, all the surgeries and stuff—it’s been pretty brutal, and I think a lot instrumental, and there are a lot—a lot—of guitar solos,” Mustaine teases, of times even I myself forget how many things have taken place,” Mustaine “so as far as singing or the song titles, unfortunately with me, I change song admits. “It was a year this October since I was diagnosed cancer-free, but then titles up to the last moment. I don’t want to give you a song title and then change it and then look silly.” that was just in my throat area. Once we started looking around other areas, which is the process, you want to get rid of it and then continue to look for In October, Mustaine hyped the new record as being “up there with Countother places that it may have risen, anywhere that it may be hiding—they down [to Extinction], Rust in Peace and probably Peace Sells [... but Who’s Buying?] found four other spots that it was hiding, and we got ’em all.” and Dystopia.” For maddeningly cryptic (yet nevertheless exciting) clarificaKilling-is-his-business quips notwithstanding, the conclusion of that tion, he hints, “The production is different, the producers are different, the arduous process freed up the band to execute the follow-up to 2016’s excepband lineup is different. The new album, I believe, is probably more like Rust tional return-to-form Dystopia. Backed by founding bassist David Ellefson, in Peace and Dystopia than all four of those albums.”

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CANNIBAL CORPSE TBA Metal Blade PRODUCER: TBA RELEASE DATE: TBA TITLE:

What can you say about Cannibal Corpse in 2021? In our case, well, nothing! Which is to say we know something you don’t know (nyah nyah?) about a major happening in the death metal demigods’ gore-splattered hellscape... but we’re sworn to secrecy, lest we never again feature Corpsegrinder hacky-sacking a severed kitten head on the cover again. So, I dunno, go read one of the six cover stories or three Hall of Fames, which should help to work yourself into a frenzy for album number 15, the Buffalo brutes’ first since 2017’s unsurprisingly rock-solid Red Before Black.

IRON MAIDEN

AMENRA

SUMERLANDS

TBA BMG PRODUCER: Kevin Shirley RELEASE DATE: TBA

TITLE:

TBA Relapse PRODUCER: Seth Manchester/ Tim de Geiter RELEASE DATE: Summer

TITLE:

LABEL:

LABEL:

TITLE: LABEL:

“Fuck cancer” is a sometimes eye-rollingly boilerplate (if understandable) social media response when a friend, family member or celebrity is diagnosed. No metalhead was remotely surprised when Bruce Dickinson fucked (throat) cancer right back shortly after the release of 2015 double album triumph The Book of Souls. While the pandemic has gummed up the path to Maiden’s 17th album, the Air Raid Siren revealed in October that he’d been writing in the studio with bassist Steve Harris. The living legends are “gagging and raring to go,” which sounds… half good?

Let’s hope we don’t have to write a longer version of this blurb for The Top 20 Most Anticipated Albums of 2022.

It’s hard to imagine a better time for Amenra to “conjure beauty from the world’s shadows” (to quote Neurot upon the release of the Belgians’ 20year anniversary documentary in 2019). While we can’t confirm the seemingly logical title of Mass VII, we can tell you that there are two versions of the new LP, one recorded by bassist/ubiquitous underground recording guru Tim de Geiter, and another by Seth Manchester (the Body, Battles).

Expect a cameo from Oathbreaker siren Caro Tanghe and what the band dubs a “different approach to writing, and a different outcome even. A lot of the music was written for several fire rituals we have done throughout our country.”

TBA Relapse PRODUCER: Arthur Rizk RELEASE DATE: TBA Don’t ask—Arthur Rizk is booked. Between producing every album you love over the last decade and manning the skins on our secondfavorite album of 2020, Eternal Champion’s Ravening Iron, he simply hasn’t had time to strap on the ol’ six-string for Sumerlands’ sophomore album. Until now. “I am pretty slow to the draw with my own albums when working on other people’s stuff,” he admits. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but I will say that there is a bit of a different take on what we have already done before. There was much more gear used on this record, guitar and synth. The record is a bit moodier, also.”

CARCASS

CEREBRAL ROT

WITHERED

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Execration of Mortality LABEL: 20 Buck Spin PRODUCER: Detto RELEASE DATE: Spring

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Verloren LABEL: Season of Mist PRODUCER: Mike Thompson RELEASE DATE: Spring

Torn Arteries LABEL: Nuclear Blast PRODUCER: David Castillo, James Atkinson RELEASE DATE: TBA

Something is reeking, putrefying and festering in the Pacific Northwest, and it isn’t just the Seahawks’ defense! Emerald City OSDM foursome Cerebral Rot first turned our heads Linda Blair-style with mid-tempo mauler Odious Descent Into Decay, our 31st favorite (s)platter of 2019, and gurgling is back on the menu with Execration of Mortality. Guitarist/vocalist Ian Schwab reveals that both tracks on last February’s Spewing Purulence demo will be re-recorded for Execration. “Spewing was just to give people a little taste of the rot we have bubbling up for all you mutated turds,” he promises. “Expect nothing but a pile of fuming putrescent DEATH.”

The title is German for “lost,” and it’s obvious why the black/death/doom veterans chose it. Withered began tracking their first LP since 2016’s Grief Relic “the week [coronavirus] shit hit the fan,” according to founding guitarist/vocalist Mike Thompson, igniting a cycle of “excitement, burnout, drinking too much … excitement again, procrastinating, drinking more, disinterest, then repeat.” But perseverance paid, and our man says that Verloren will “incorporate new-ish styles that we feel are missing from the landscape right now. Lots of nods to [2005’s] Memento Mori and [2008’s] Folie Circulaire, but no one should expect anything on the nose. If you’re a fan, you wouldn’t anyway.”

The only band that appeared in our Top 20 Most Anticipated Albums of 2020 is finally ready to force-feed us their latest choice cuts. Which is not to suggest that the delay of Carcass’ seventh album is in any way their fault. Torn Arteries was recorded a year ago, so the world simply has to wait to hear it until the lads can tour on it.

(Hence, the appetite-whetting Despicable EP released in October.) “For one reason or another, the EP is comprised of tracks we felt wouldn’t belong on the album,” says founding axeman Bill Steer. “[Jeff Walker’s] vocals—and lyrics— are stronger than ever. To my ears, this album is far richer than the last one [2013’s Surgical Steel].”

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TITLE:

PHOTO BY ALEX MORGAN

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EXODUS Persona Non Grata Nuclear Blast PRODUCER: Exodus/ Steve Lagudi (engineering) RELEASE DATE: Summer TITLE: LABEL:

The seven-year gap between Exodus albums is easily explained: Gary Holt was a little preoccupied steering Slayer to its final resting place of the live undead. “I’m back and super happy to be back with my musical family,” the guitarist gushes, “and this record is a reflection of how much we still dig this music and hanging out with each other.”

Engineered by Steve Lagudi and mixed by Andy Sneap, the 12th Exodus album should serve as “a reflection on the current state of affairs in the world and not a judgment on them, if that makes sense,” according to Holt, who used pandemic downtime to craft this “monster ... full of anthems” with drummer Tom Hunting in the mountains.

NIGHT DEMON Year of the Demon Century Media PRODUCER: Various RELEASE DATE: TBA TITLE: LABEL:

Jarvis Leatherby is a busy dude. Not only has he been manning bass for fantasy-doom lifers Cirith Ungol since their triumphant mid-decade reformation, but he fronts his own killer trad trio, Night Demon, who are finally poised to release their third album… even if that wasn’t Plan A. “Our initial plan was to release eight 7-inch singles in 2020, every five weeks starting in April,” Leatherby relates. “When the pandemic hit, literally ALL of the other producers we had scheduled had to back out, so we just decided to record the remainder ourselves with our guitar player Armand John Anthony at the controls.

We have what seems to be a very interesting concept record in the works, and will be announcing something within the coming year.”

CROWBAR TBA LABEL: eOne PRODUCER: Duane Simoneaux RELEASE DATE: TBA TITLE:

It’s hard to complain about five years between Crowbar albums when their frontman just gave us the 20th best album of 2020, Dream in Motion. So, fresh off his sterling solo debut, we’ll let Kirk Windstein do the complaining for us, re: the sludge legends’ 12th album, which has been sitting on the shelf since April due to COVID-19: “It’s been incredibly frustrating knowing how much we all love the album! The whole year has sucked. I’m just ready to get this year over and move forward with a positive attitude!!!” We hear that! And hopefully will be hearing this consciously doomier “old-school” opus soon enough.

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ith age, we all mature, at TITLE: A History of least a little. (Minor excep- Nomadic Behavior tion: notable recent Leader of LABEL: Century Media the Free World whom band in question dubbed a “bumbling PRODUCER: James Whitten and dolt” following European travel ban.) Sanford Parker Although they’re creeping ever closer RELEASE DATE: March 12 to their 35th birthday, it doesn’t seem quite right plugging “Eyehategod” and “mature” in the same sentence; these are the dudes who have not one, but two songs titled “Sister Fucker,” you may recall.

But that’s exactly what frontman Mike “IX” Williams (half-jokingly) promises on the NOLA sludge titans’ long-anticipated sixth full-length.

“It’s EyeHateGod #2020,” our man relates in the parlance of our times. “It’s still the style we’ve used since day one, but I would say it’s maybe more of a modernsounding EHG. Apparently, we have slightly matured in our sound, but none of us noticed. More heavy filth, more dirty riffs, more blues, more annoying feedback, more trashy cryptic yelling and more waving the Black Flag/Sabbath banner. We’ll give you a dollar if you’ll be our friend.”

We’ll gladly return that favor tenfold for a record as wonderfully wretched as 2014’s self-titled comeback album, EHG’s first since the turn of the century. A History of Nomadic Behavior is the now four-piece’s follow-up, which had to survive member turnover, multiple health scares and plain old bad luck to finally poke its ugly head into daylight. “[Aaron] Hill, our drummer, got stabbed in Guadalajara, Mexico in July 2019,” Williams reminds us. “Also, [guitarist] Jimmy Bower took some time off from our psychotic schedule for a couple of personal matters, so we asked Brian Patton back on board for a European tour later that same year. However, Brian couldn’t make the Japan and SE Asia tours, as he was having another child, but our longtime pal Paul Webb jumped in on that one. Everyone is healthy and happy as we speak, and super ready to get back out on the road.”

Assembling Nomadic Behavior was relatively simple, according to Williams; putting on the finishing touches was the hard part, due partially to the band constantly touring since 2017 and partially to the pandemic fucking shit up en masse in the middle of summer. “We were taking time off this year from touring to finish it anyway,” he explains, “but then the studios were closed. In July, I went to Chicago to Sanford Parker’s joint Hypercube to record the vocals. It was a very socially distanced and safe environment where I felt comfortable. I was considering doing them there even before this madness happened, so it was perfect.”

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reticent to reveal too much about the new opus, e’re all eagerly awaiting our signal with the notable exceptions of Adrian Erlandsto GO again, and At the Gates will give son just completing drums and percussion with us just that in 2021. Hopefully soon.

(Please soon?) When we caught up with producer Jens Bogren and the following morsel: the melodeath masters in mid-Novem“We have some new stuff that might turn some heads, but don’t worry: It is still 100 percent an ber, Martin Larsson and Jonas Stålhammer were en route to Andy LaRocque’s Sonic Train Studios ATG record. This time we have incorporated even in Verberg, Sweden, to lay down guitars for their more of our avant garde influences.” as-yet-untitled seventh full-length—the as-yetLindberg adds that it was particularly rewarduntitled part being one of the more enjoyable ing to hear Erlandsson bash away at his kit in speculative aspects of a new ATG slab, as so far real time, in the same room, although the fivetwo sets of acronyms have been introduced via piece was well-prepared for COVID contingenTITLE: TBA social media for fans to speculate over: HBOMTB cies. “Me and Jonas [Björler, bass] worked on and, more recently, TNOB. some of the material for TDFTNI online as well, LABEL: Century Media “I think that we choose to keep our fans in as we live a few hours apart, so that gave us some PRODUCER: Jens Bogren the dark for a bit longer on this one,” teases experience that has helped the process this time frontman/go-to Decibel special event DJ Tomas around,” Lindberg explains. “Adrian has, since RELEASE DATE: Spring Lindberg. “The two different [acronyms] are the writing process for AWWR, been recording conscious, and the reasons for this will also be demo versions of his drumming for the preproductions in his hometown of London as well. revealed when the time comes. I don’t think any ATG fan will be disappointed with the titles or lyrical concept this time around. I can say this: “One positive aspect has been that there have been less distractions It is darker than anything we have ever done before.” this time around, I guess. Of course, we have met face-to-face as well Bold words for the corroded throat propelling two no-brainer dB Hall during the process; there are some parts of writing an album that need of Famers (The Red in the Sky Is Ours and Slaughter of the Soul) and two highmore ‘normal’ interaction, but then [Sweden] has been under controlled charting comeback albums on our annual Top 40 list (2014’s At War With [preventative measures]. All in all, it has felt quite normal, considering Reality and 2018’s To Drink From the Night Itself). Lindberg is understandably the circumstances.”

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FALLS OF RAUROS

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Inheritance Gilead Media PRODUCER: Colin Marston/Falls of Rauros RELEASE DATE: TBA

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“We’re all forced to inherit the world we live in,” muses FOR vocalist/guitarist Aaron Charles. “We inherit tradition, religion, wealth, poverty, illness, language, prejudice and so much else.” That’s the poignant thematic baseline for the Portland, ME black metallers’ sixth full-length, the latest in a series of unpredictable turns that nevertheless “is nowhere close to resembling the Light That Dwells in Rotten Wood sequel some people seem to be holding their breath for.” The quartet is still writing and editing at press time, but Charles teases “an increased prevalence of traditionally metal- and rock-inspired riffs laced throughout these relatively lean compositions. Dashes of folk-rock, psych and alternative rock help color the songs’ metallic foundations.”

“The pounding shows no signs of letting up any time soon.” Generally, this is a bad thing. But when it comes from Exhumed frontman Matt Harvey in reference to his trad metal side project’s sophomore record, it’s quite the opposite. Expanded from an EP and largely written even before 2019 breakout Uncivilized, Breaking the World is the trio’s second remotely-recorded full-length (also produced by bassist Alejandro Corredor, whose knob-twiddling has “come on leaps and bounds,” according to guitarist Tom Draper). “As much as I love traditional metal,” Harvey says, “the formula is so well-trod now [that] it’s easy to fall into the trap of recycling the same old musical tropes. It helps that we’re influenced by a lot of straight-up hard rock and even melodic rock/hair metal.”

SANGUISUGABOGG TBA LABEL: Century Media PRODUCER: Cody Davidson RELEASE DATE: March 26 TITLE:

Pronunciation is the least of your concerns when it comes to DOWN TUNED DRUG DEATH. Columbus, OH up-and-comers Sanguisugabogg are finally set to follow up 2019 demo Pornographic Seizures with a proper debut full-length, complete with visibility upgrade from Maggot Stomp to Century Media. “Devin [Swank] really killed it on the lyrics for this one,” promises guitarist Cameron Boggs. “The violence and torture is more focused on men, and especially pedophiles. Fun for the whole fam.” Expect 11 brand new tracks that “[go] way beyond the caveman riff mentality that is on Pornographic Seizures. Every song is a meat parade of crazier riffing, pummeling drums and insane vocals, while keeping the Bogg groove alive with it.”

Breaking the World Shadow Kingdom PRODUCER: Alejandro Corredor RELEASE DATE: January 29

HIGH ON FIRE TBA eOne PRODUCER: TBA RELEASE DATE: TBA TITLE: LABEL:

Fresh off their 2019 Best Metal Performance Grammy for the title track to Electric Messiah, the Bay Area stoner kings were last seen quarantine-jamming on bassist Jeff Matz’s Instagram in March. We still know precious little about HOF’s ninth LP, but ever-garrulous frontman Matt Pike gives us just enough dirt to keep us craving: “Recently, [drummer] Chris Maggio came out, and we jammed on a bunch of new material. It is the next level of the band, and it’s been really fun working with a new angle on rhythms and timing. I think this a new chapter of inventiveness, with the heavy integrity we’ve always kept sacred to our metalpounding hearts.”

TRIBULATION Where the Gloom Becomes Sound Metal Blade PRODUCER: Jamie Elton RELEASE DATE: January 29 TITLE:

Guitarist Adam Zaars claims to “suck” at describing his band’s music, but we beg to differ. “I think I hear both hope and despair in the songs, frustration and yearning, playfulness and gravity, creativity and tradition,” he writes of his acclaimed goth-leaning death metal quartet’s fifth album. “Heavy metal overtones and ’80s goth and darkwave nostalgia, folk melancholy and religious angst mixed—and hopefully thoroughly stirred—with our extreme metal origins. It sounds like a horrible mix, but that’s where we have ended up, and somehow I think it’s a recipe that’s working for us, even though we keep changing it. There’s even a bit of clean Swedish vocals in there, but don’t worry—it turned out great.”

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mixing process. We’ve recorded portions of each WITTR album at our studio, the Owl Lodge, but this is the first time we’ve recorded and mixed all the music here. Because of this, we can really take our time to create an epic recording.”

The trio, rounded out by guitarist Kody Keyworth, was inspired not only by the European leg of their stint with Behemoth and At the Gates last year (“It was a winter tour with lots of snow and ice, so it was a good atmosphere to get in the zone and distill our ideas”), but talented knob-twiddling collaborators Randall Dunn, Jack Shirley and Tim Green. Astute readers of Daniel Lake’s USBM: A Revolution of Identity in American Black Metal will recall that the boys teased “extra complex” sonics in their latest epic, but that appears to be just the tip of the (ahem…) iceberg.

“We used a lot of weird old synths and samplers on the album, along with some beautiful modern electronic sounds,” Nathan elaborates. “At the core of the synth sounds are some of the old digital Roland and Korg rack synths from the late ’80s and early ’90s, which have such a pure and beautiful sonic character. The software emulations of these old machines are just not the same. I can’t get enough of this atmospheric and symphonic synth sound, maybe because in 1992 I was discovering death and doom metal and taking hallucinogens while listening to death and doom metal!”

The glue guy in this wolfpack may well be Keyworth, who first signed up for a secret gig-gone-apeshit in 2010 (“I think half the audience fell on top of us while we were playing. A very grunge Pacific Northwest show!”), then became a full-timer in 2017. “Kody brings his own excellent ideas, riffs and heathen concepts,” Nathan enthuses, “and these new songs are really flourishing because of this fresh energy. Also, he’s more of a lead guitar player than I am, and his solos and melodic leads add a lot to the songs.”

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can actually see on this album where the band has matured,” offers Tony Foresta, founding frontman of Richmond, VA thrash institution Municipal Waste. “Well, as much as a band that sings about getting drunk all the time can.”

TITLE: Electrified Brain It’s been four sobering years LABEL: Nuclear Blast since sixth LP Slime and Punishment, and the metal world could use a PRODUCER: Arthur Rizk reason to party—be it virtually or RELEASE DATE: TBA at drastically diminished capacity.

(In an instance of prescience the band is surely not stoked about, they titled their 2019 stopgap EP The Last Rager.) But according to Foresta, the five-piece—rounded out by guitarists Ryan Waste and Nick Poulos, bassist Philip “Land Phil” Hall and ubiquitous drummer Dave Witte—have made lemonade out of nuclear-yellow lemons.

“We had about half of the record written before the pandemic started,” Foresta says. “We were able to write way more songs than we expected, and had a lot of time to rethink and even reimagine some of the song structures.

It’s been wild trying to figure out how to make everything work and regroup everyone and get back on the same page. But when we did, I think it made us a lot hungrier to write a better record. We have a lot of songs here that are clearly the best material we have ever written because of that.”

With the globe in flux, Muni took their time to make sure Electrified Brain isn’t lobotomized on arrival. Foresta has been tweaking lyrics in the studio, but to a man, they’ve gone out of their way to be “super hush-hush” about specifics so as not to whip fans into a premature frenzy. None of the four tracks on The Last Rager will appear on the LP, as they were simply an excuse in the pre-pandemic good ol’ days to “play them on the road and … get ourselves back in the mindframe of writing together again.” Which is something both frothing fanatics and band desperately miss.

“It’s been really hard, not gonna lie,” Foresta says of the inability to play out. “I miss interacting with our fans and friends a lot. I know not only myself, but some of my other bandmates have been getting hit with these weird waves of depression. It’s fucked up. You kind of aren’t getting this adrenaline or form or release that you are so used to from performing, and just being out of work in general for this long just really puts you in a weird headspace. But I’m very thankful that we have each other as a form of support and have been able to focus on writing and being creative musically through all this. We’ve been through a lot together, and I sure as hell plan on us getting through this.”

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ome quarantine has its pros and cons contingent on, amongst many other factors, a) whether or not you can afford to keep said home, and b) how much of a depressive suicidal misanthrope you really are away from social media. Either way, it’s hard not to envy Nathan and Aaron Weaver’s setup. Comprising the core of Olympia, WA atmospheric black metal stalwarts Wolves in the Throne Room for the past 17 years, the brothers live in the Pacific Northwest woods, truly isolated from pandemic panic, and they’ve used their quaran-time wisely.

“We’ve just become metal monks during this lockdown and are focusing on music, as well as some film projects,” Nathan reveals. “As of [November 2020], everything [on the new album] is tracked, and we are deep in the

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

story by

dutch pearce

photos by

frank white

Grandma Comes Home the making of King Diamond’s Them Grisly Sororicide in the House of Amon Can you feel “Their” eyes?

Guests in the Attic It is Time for Tea Over the river and through the woods…

T

here was no shortage of dark and thrilling metal albums in 1988. With releases like Blood Fire Death, Keeper of the Seven Keys: Part II, Operation: Mindcrime, Reek of Putrefaction and so very many more, heavy metal and thrash—as well as black and death metal—were well on their way to becoming the powerful, worldwide cultures they represent today. But amid all those now-legendary albums of 1988, one ridiculously awesome effort stands out from the rest. That album is King Diamond’s third solo LP, “Them.”

A concept album was hardly unheard of in metal back then (the Danes’ previous record qualified as well). But where 1987’s Abigail unfolds a supernatural story of cursed lovers that spans two centuries, “Them” revolves around a young boy named King and the event of his grandmother’s return from a psychiatric hospital. Even those familiar with King Diamond’s previous work could never expect songs with titles like “Tea,” “Welcome Home” and “Mother’s Getting Weaker” to be so relentlessly and technically over the top, so chaotic and maddening, and yet so exciting and catchy. In short, “Them” is arguably King Diamond’s best work ever.

And it was accomplished during the pandemonium of substantial lineup changes. We know that after Mercyful Fate broke up in 1985, guitarist Michael Denner and bassist Timi Hansen went on to form King Diamond’s solo band.

King Diamond’s first two albums proved wildly successful (Abigail was inducted into Decibel’s Hall of Fame back in February 2012), but by the time King wrote and recorded his magnum opus, Denner had been replaced by Pete Blakk, while Timi Hansen had left amicably enough to teach bassist Hal Patino a set’s worth of material. With the reliably stellar Andy LaRocque splitting lead DBHOF194 guitar duties with Blakk, and Mikkey Dee and Patino laying down the most locked-in rhythm section KD fans have ever enjoyed, “Them” also stands as King Diamond’s most personal album. In fact, the twinkling instrument you hear on the album’s opening and closing tracks is our man’s own childhood music box.

Not to mention King wrote the album in the middle of several life-changing Them events. He had lost his father only the year before, and this was the first ROADRUNNER record he’d written since. Meanwhile, his group was on their way to Los S EPT EMBER 13 , 1988 Angeles; “Them” was to be their last album recorded in Denmark. They were a band at the top of their career and rising, and “Them” sounds as effortless Quote us on this one as it does unbelievable. For a record that’s at once silly and unnerving, reckless and tight, insane yet familiar, that makes perfect sense. As does King Diamond’s “Them” finally making its way into our Hall of Fame.

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What do you remember thinking when you heard that the album was going to be about an evil grandmother and her “invisible friends”?

Did you think you would be able to pull off making tea time and grandparents exciting and sinister?

At first, all of us probably thought it was a crazy idea, but the more King presented the idea to us and we got to know more of the story and lyrics, you get used to the idea and it surely became a classic!

“Grandmaaaa!!!”

MIKKEY DEE: Absolutely.

After we did [Abigail], we were all excited to make a full story on the album.

We wanted to take the next step from [Abigail] to “Them”. King writes such great stories and lyrics, so it was just a matter of diving in and writing great music to the story. We were all looking forward to creating this story. There was never any doubt, at least from my side.

HAL PATINO: I didn’t really think that much about the whole storyline at the time because coming up with the concept and writing it was always King’s thing. But heavy metal and all the L.A. hair bands were at [their] highest at that time. I do remember thinking that it’s either gonna be a failure or become a great success. “Welcome Home’’ came out as a single, and the video became one the most requested on MTV in 1988. The album went straight to [the] Billboard [charts] and sold more than 200,000 copies in America when it first came out. We followed up with a major North American tour three weeks after the release. I guess it was just perfect timing: The story had an impact on all the heavy metal teenagers, the album cover was great, the music didn’t sound like any other band and we really had a strong image going on as a band.

KING DIAMOND: I mean, I had proof that my grandma was an ass, you know? One of them was. There was a lot of evil there, in my opinion.

But I thought it was funny as well because we were able to make a lot of people look twice at their nice, beautiful grandma, who was probably the sweetest. You give them a second look, like, “She could never be like that.” Are you sure? I mean, what goes on when she closes the door upstairs and she says good night to you?

ANDY LAROCQUE:

“I mean, I had proof that my grandma was an ass, you know?”

KING D IA MO ND King, you wrote most of the music for “Them”?

Andy did “Mother’s Getting Weaker” and “A Broken Spell,” and he co-wrote “‘Them.’”

He did the main theme for “‘Them,’” and the rest of “‘Them’” was mine. He did two songs mainly, but all the rest was mine. You know, when we rehearsed … before Pete joined, we were a guitarist short. So, when we rehearsed, I played a lot of the guitar. I would be playing rhythm guitar, Andy would play the other and Timi was playing the bass during the rehearsals. He was still there and he worked together with Hal to get Hal up to date in a hurry. Hal learned his lines and added his own stuff. The bass guitar playing on “Them” is fantastic. I’ve just heard it now and there’s some amazing stuff going on there.

DIAMOND:

How did Pete Blakk come to join the ranks of your band?

Andy knew him from Sweden. They were friends from Gothenburg. He pretty much walked right in because Andy knew his playing from all of his stuff. He was also in Brats with Mikkey Dee. Then Geisha, so Mikkey Dee would have recommended him, too.

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Pete, “Them” was your first album with King Diamond. When exactly were you brought in, and what was it like joining the band at this time?

PETE BLAKK: Oh, it’s a long story. We moved down to Copenhagen with our band and became friends with the M[ercyful] F[ate] guys. When they split up, me and Mikkey was asked to form the first King Diamond. It was natural for me to join. I met King at a New Year’s Eve party and we talked; the rest is history.

What sets “Them” apart from the first two King Diamond albums, Fatal Portrait and Abigail?

“Them” is far more progressive and intense than the previous albums, probably the most progressive album we ever recorded.

It has a lot of aggressive riffs and crazy tempo changes. We had two new band members on this album, and the fact that we recorded in a different brand new studio probably made the overall outcome of the “Them” album different from the previous two albums.

PATINO: “Them” is probably the most weird-sounding King Diamond album, but in my opinion also the most personal. It’s by far the most progressive King Diamond album ever; the five of us LAROCQUE:

SWAMPBEAST

SEVEN EVILS SEVEN HEADS SPAWNED OF

Los Angeles, CA’s SWAMPBEAST present their devastating debut full length entitled “Seven Evils Spawned of Seven Heads”!

Eleven cripplingly brutal yet expansive Blackened Death journeys embracing the evil and disgust of mankind.

SWAMPBEAST has awakened and blazes a path to chaos!

Produced by Erol Ulug (Teeth, Our Place of Worship is Silence).

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Canada’s sons of darkness present an enthralling three song release entitled “Confluence”.

Conceived in COVID isolation, WAKE present their ever-expanding evolution with their most ambitious music to date!

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MOTHERS WEAVERS VULTURES West coast power trio GRAYCEON return with their epic new full length entitled “Mothers Weavers Vultures”. The band’s 6th album finds them fine tuning their ever evolving adventurous sound.

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Death Metal titans GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY (members of Pyrrhon, Woe, Mutilation Rites, Belus) present their crushing debut entitled “Ageless Violence”.

Seven sinister compositions of old school death metal in the vein of Cannibal Corpse, Death, Ripping Corpse, Suffocation and Deicide.

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TH E V I O L E N C E B E N E ATH A decade after is was originally released, Mouth of the Architect’s “The Violence Beneath” finally sees a proper vinyl treatment for the first time.

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together really had something unique going on, and so many people felt it already back then. The album came out at the right time and we got lots of new fans when it was released. The two previous albums were great, especially Abigail, but the musicians complemented each other perfectly on “Them”. Pete and Andy were two totally different guitar players. Andy’s style was always big and melodic, where Pete’s style was way more uncontrolled dirty hard rock. I always liked that! Mikkey is one of the greatest drummers in the game and my style was a perfect fit, which allowed us to create the foundation of our sound.

I definitely think that we were one of the hardest rhythm sections back in the late ’80s.

BLAKK: It’s hard to compare, but the story is just awesome! Genius, as a matter of fact. I think me and Andy’s collaboration working hard and pushing each other makes a big difference.

DEE: I really like Abigail a lot, and one thing I can say about “Them” is that I don’t really like that the sound was thinner than on Abigail. We did not succeed… with the sound on “Them” as [much as we did] with Abigail. But we were more into it on “Them”. We knew what we were going for as far as playing. The plan was more clear and directed when we did “Them”. Abigail has great songs, but lacks the common thread through the whole album. Important to mention, we also had new members in Hal and Pete, and this was the first album with these guys. We had great harmony in the band. Everything just clicked, right time and right feeling. It does not happen that often that planets and stars align. A lot just happened right there in the studio, but at the same time this album was more mature and planned than Abigail.

DIAMOND: There were no rules. When I listen to it right now ... oh my god. I mean, I can’t believe we did it like that! And hearing how everybody played? We didn’t care whether it fits for playing live later or whatever; we figured it out, you know, and we do play those songs live. We’ve played most of the album live. I don’t think there were many songs we never played. There were certain songs that became favorites that we still play today. “Welcome Home,” you know, and “The Invisible Guests” were on the last set we played—and “Tea,” that was in there, you know?

But the way Mikkey Dee drums, it’s like Neil Peart. There’s some tempo and time structures that are crazy! “Bye, Bye, Missy,” for instance, the end part; he throws it back and forth. It’s against the beat, it’s with the beat. And now I just sit there like, “Okay, wait a second. Yeah.”

Even besides the fact that the protagonist of the album’s story is named King, the tale behind “Them” seems somehow autobiographical. King, what inspired the album’s conceptual storyline?

DIAMOND:

Oh man, that’s a good question. I

don’t know. I mean, Grandma’s in there, you know? And I had a very nasty grandma. Some of that was already in Abigail, where my mom’s story is in there about being born out of wedlock or whatever you say. She was, my grandma was… what can I say? She was a servant in a professor’s house and [the] professor’s son got her pregnant, and then she had to go away and have my mom somewhere else. And then my mom was given away. She was left at someone’s doorstep, someone who took her in and raised her. Later on, she found out who her real mom was—that’s the evil grandma, you know? She was a fucking bitch, you know? Some of the shit she did to my mom when my mom was taking care of her…

Once, when she was really sick, my mom took a month vacation and went to where my grandma lives and took care of her there. Then one day, a neighbor came over to borrow something and said, “Oh, I notice you have someone staying with you. Who is that lovely lady?” [My grandmother replied] “It’s just an old friend.”

She still didn’t want to acknowledge my mom.

I told my mom, “Don’t ever talk to her again.

She’s not worth it.” So, yeah, that inspired some of this, that inheritance stuff on Abigail and that “child born out of wedlock,” you know? That was totally taken from my mother’s story.

You know, [“Them”] builds on that. And then Grandma, well, she’s right here, right? The bad one is in “Them” and [1989’s] Conspiracy. So, there’s some of those things in there, you know, but of course, there’s crazy other stuff. When we write stuff, it can be taken from anywhere. You know, sometimes it has to do with what has been going on in the world; sometimes it’s things that have pissed me off. I have to write about that. It gets into the stories, you know?

What do you remember about recording “Them”?

It was a completely new situation for us. This was a very, very hectic time in our career. Just a few months earlier, we got back from the Abigail tour that started in the U.S., summer of 1987, and ended in Europe right before Christmas. We ended up trying to find two new members with a short notice; bass player Timi Hansen quit the band after the European tour, but we also needed to find a new guitarist [because] Michael Denner left right before the U.S. tour, summer of 1987, to be replaced by Michael Moon for the Abigail tour. In December or January, we started to talk with guitarist Pete Blakk, an old friend of Mikkey Dee and [myself].

He joined the band and he strongly suggested the bass player Hal Patino that also joined right before we started the recording of “Them”. I believe we started in the studio in mid-February 1988. It was very refreshing to have those new guys in the band, and I remember me and Pete spent a lot of time practicing in the studio, where we actually slept at the time also.

LAROCQUE:

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BLAKK: Oh, we had a great time! What stuck out was me and Andy’s chemistry in creating and recording all the guitars, especially the trade-offs.

PATINO: I remember the recording session went pretty smooth and the band was on good terms.

We were the first band to record in the brand new MMC Studio in Copenhagen. Mikkey and Andy had already recorded most of the drum and rhythm guitar tracks before I started tracking the bass. Pete and I were the two new members, and I wanted to add something new and different to the band. I tried to contribute with a harder attitude through my style. I actually remember the first song I recorded was “Welcome Home.” We had so much fun recording that album.

DEE: We were very comfortable in that studio with Roberto Falcao, our engineer. We made Abigail there and was really happy about that, so we wanted to continue along that line and keep Roberto as our engineer for the album. Roberto became a really good friend to us as well. It’s a great feeling to record the drums in a studio you’re familiar with and comfortable in. You get the same vibe when you go back, and that really helps. I have to mention that we partied quite hard during the recording of “Them”. We stayed up late in the studio and cranked the studio monitors to the max listening to our favorite albums at the time. Def Leppard, Queensrÿche and Ratt, I believe, came out with Invasion of Your Privacy around that time. We had a lot of fun.

The studio became like a second home to us.

DIAMOND: [We recorded “Them”] in Copenhagen right before we moved to L.A., right before we went to L.A. with… man, some crazy things happened in that studio. I almost burnt the studio down. Because we worked so hard to get everything done before we had to pack everything up and leave for the U.S. The record label felt like it would be good for us to go to L.A. for a while.

And we spent a year and a half there, where we then did Conspiracy. But it was this small, brand new studio where we recorded [“Them”]. And there was another band waiting outside to get in at the end. Me and Roberto were the only ones left around when the mixing started.

You know, we were working so hard that I fainted during the last mixing date. This band was standing outside the studio, knocking on the doors. We had to finish this. We sat there and then I think I collapsed into the board, then BAM! And I sat on the floor. Then [Roberto] pretty much carried me in some—I don’t know what it was—some kind of mattress that was lying in the hallway. I said, “I’ll continue a little bit here,” then half an hour or so, I came to, you know, continued to sit up. These people were screaming outside the door. It was just nuts.

One of the vocal sessions, I remember I had candles on each side of my lyrics—and that’s all I had in there [for lighting]. I fortunately had another copy of all my lyrics, but we

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took a little coffee break and came back, and my lyrics were gone. There was this black heap on the wooden floor. I start moving them and I see the wooden floor has this big burn mark. So, we tried to move a rock over it or something, you know?

But I never heard [anything more about it]. We moved to the U.S. afterwards. So, for a while, I guess they didn’t know where to catch us.

King, you say you fainted during the mixing process?

Yeah. I blacked out, you know, and then slid from my chair with a head smack, full power into the desk. And then I was on the floor. I got a big mark on my head.

DIAMOND:

And you almost burned the studio down?

DIAMOND:

Yes.

This is something of a cursed album. Do you think that it brought some things out from the darkness?

“The intro to ‘Welcome Home’ I created when I was really hung over. I had been jamming in the rehearsal room, wasted during nighttime, and recorded it. Next morning, when I woke up and played back what I had recorded, I had to relearn what I had done.”

For many, many years, there was always things following me. No matter where we went, whatever we did, always. My apartment on the third floor was so haunted, you wouldn’t believe it. Lots of things [were] taken from up there and used as lyrics. Absolutely.

And it was not just me. It was other people.

My friends came up there, Timi Hansen, lots of people. They’d come up and end up with filthy stinks on their own skin.

DIAMOND:

So, this is where some of the ideas for “Them” came from? The idea that a house can be possessed by creatures?

Yeah. That’s what it stands for. These invisible figures you can’t see. They’re not especially nice. They use Grandma as a vessel for them to have Their way so that They still have importance in this world. They’re stalking that house there. They can’t really get out of it. That’s why, when Grandma leaves the house, when I lure her out of the house so I can kill her, she doesn’t have the protection from Them anymore.

DIAMOND:

MIKKEY D E E explain, but around the time we recorded “Them”, we really dived into that specific style.

We had a few years to really dig in, and I feel we had matured at that point. It was just hard work and finding that little extra. The intro to “Welcome Home” I created when I was really hung over. I had been jamming in the rehearsal room, wasted during nighttime, and recorded it.

Next morning, when I woke up and played back what I had recorded, I had to relearn what I had done during the night. It was like, “What the hell did I do there?” and then I worked with it from that point. We spent an enormous amount of time in the rehearsal room and worked hard, very hard. Out of that came some really cool stuff. I really feel that we had matured and really understood the role we had to play there in 1988 when we recorded “Them”. We knew what we were doing and we for sure went all in.

Andy, your solos on “Them” are some of your most high-flying guitar work in the band. Who were some of your major influences back then?

I think this was just a natural development from the previous album Abigail; me and Pete would sit down in the studio at night going through a lot of different stuff, but one of the

LAROCQUE:

Mikkey, what do you remember about writing and recording the drums for “Them”?

DEE:

I can put it this way: It’s not easy to

FEBRUARY 2021 : 38 : DECIBEL

bands that Pete got me into was Racer X with Paul Gilbert and Bruce Bouillet. Can’t really say I was influenced style-wise by them, but it sure was an injection to hear them play. Then there was Yngwie Malmsteen that we also listened to on and off. Other influences were Randy Rhoads, Steve Vai and Michael Schenker.

Pete, what kind of stuff were you listening to back then in the late ’80s that might have influenced your solos on “Them”?

BLAKK: Late ’80s? I don’t know, but my influences have always been the same: Billy Gibbons, Leslie West and Michael Schenker.

So, what do you remember the critics of the time thinking about “Them”?

Not a thing! I think we got great reviews.

The thing we heard the most overall was always, “Dude, this album is fucking scary!” and how heavy the band was from fans and journalists. I remember the first week we rehearsed at Mates Studios in Los Angeles, Guns N’ Roses and Badlands rehearsed in the same building, and they would stop by our production room from time to time. Eric Singer would tell Mikkey, “Now you finally found your bassist.”

BLAKK:

PATINO:

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KING DIAMOND “them”

Jake E. Lee and Ray Gillen came to me and told me how heavy the rhythm section was. Things like that are some of the things that I remember being said and hearing from so many fans and musicians on that tour. King was on the cover of almost every heavy metal magazine at that time, and the album received great reviews.

DEE: I remember that the album was wellreceived, but the [success of the] album grew tremendously years later. “Them” became a cult album. It did not get that status right away. But that seldom happens to great albums. It takes a few years before some albums grow to their full potential. I had that feeling about this album.

Sure, it was well-received and got good critique, but [that] was nowhere close to the positive critique you heard five years later. Then it was raised to the sky.

If you compare that with Queensrÿche, [who were] creating alongside us, they did Rage for Order and then came Operation: Mindcrime.

That was something completely different.

That album was also received well, but it took many years before that album got the status it deserved. I feel it was the same with “Them”.

Everyone liked it; it was a killer album and a great follow-up to Abigail, but Abigail was such a hit. It just exploded in the U.S. People thought it was the best album they had ever heard. We made a big leap from Fatal Portrait to Abigail, and then a normal transition from Abigail to “Them”.

“Them” just kept climbing; it never stopped climbing. It just kept going. So did Abigail as well, but at a slower pace. “Them” was so complex and technical for that time, so it just took longer for people to “digest” it.

DIAMOND: It got very good reviews, actually.

It was the best-selling of “the old ones,” you know? It’s sold better than Abigail, actually. Man, people sing along like crazy. “Welcome Home” has become a specific trademark for us. When someone says, “Hey, you know King Diamond?”

“Oh yeah, of course! ‘Grandma’!” They give that “‘Grandma’!” Yes, that’s it.

What can you tell us about filming the nowclassic music video for “Welcome Home”?

DEE: We had a total blast recording that video, and we were at this amazing place in England. One of the actresses was extremely foxy; we all thought so. It was a large production. Bigger than our earlier productions. Large budget and production.

We had a lot of fun.

PATINO: It was filmed outside London at Foxwarren Park Castle, and it was a really cool shoot. We came in the day before and met the whole crew and cast. When we first got there, they were building the whole setup with cameras, lights, PA system, and we had tailors who had previously taken our measurements in the

studio and designed our stage clothes; they were on the set as well to fix the last details on our clothes. We met the count who owned the castle; he was really cool and liked the band. He showed us around his huge property and told us that some of the old rooms were haunted. The band started late in the evening and we were shooting all night.

Another cool detail on the set was the real full moon. As you can see in the video, we were lucky that it was perfectly hanging above the old castle, as on the album cover and in the lyrics.

That was great! There was a lot of scenes that never made it to the video, lots of cool special effects of King and the boy, but there was no space for it in the four-minute video. The old lady who played Grandma came up with the

“The old lady who played Grandma [in the ‘Welcome Home’ video] came up with the idea herself to take out her fake teeth.”

HA L PAT INO

what we were doing. They did this stupid thing where they were forcing me to have a different kind of makeup and all this stuff. I hated it.

And I had to have a massive discussion with Cees Wessels—you know, the owner of Roadrunner Records—afterwards to say that we cannot do that again. It’s so pathetic. It’s embarrassing. I cannot do that again. And then he went all out.

[Wessels] was always so amazing at listening to what we did, and he had great ideas himself. You know, we had such a good relationship with him and he taught me a lot of stuff about the business. I have nothing but good to say, but, again, he listened to what was going on there.

So, he made it up the second time and he got us to this old castle—it was haunted, believe it or not. The owner was there all night long as we were filming. We talked to Grandma and she ended up taking her teeth out [for the video] to make it extra cool. There’s one scene where she sits with her hair all whacked out. She’s in the wheelchair there, you can see she has no teeth and her mouth like [evil Grandma noise].

It’s just so cool. Everybody was there the whole day. There was a big garden behind you, down to a little pond. We could roam around there.

And the owner said to be careful. We were given a couple of rooms as dressing rooms on the second floor, and the owner said that we should be very careful when walking up and down the stairs. Big, wide stairs going up. He said, there’s someone here that likes to push people.

So, be careful. So, that was real. And then when we were standing outside [for] this giant, long take, full power—I think it was 2 or 3 in the morning—I suddenly saw the moon come out.

It was totally full! It’s the real moon that’s in the video.

Did the album’s success come as a surprise to you?

No. Well, nothing you really think of when you write the songs and record it all, but of course [it was] very cool that people like it. I remember we were pretty high on Billboard with that album.

PATINO: The album was already a success when it came out, but those years were very intense with lots of touring, traveling, [recording a] new album, lineup changes, back on tour again, so we didn’t really have much time to think about it. I’m surprised that it still has an impact on people so many years later, and seeing a whole new generation of kids and teenagers discovering the album more than 30 years later singing ‘’Grandma’’ is absolutely amazing!

I still get messages from fans on social media on a daily basis about how that album inspired them to pick up an instrument or changed their life. It’s really cool!

DEE: No! It is finally reaching the status it should have.

BLAKK:

idea herself to take out her fake teeth, and the makeup artists messed up her hair for some of the scenes. I always thought that was cool. The whole band stayed in London for three days.

LAROCQUE: We spent a few days in England preparing and recording the video at an old mansion somewhere south of London, if I recall right. Just a very cool place with a big film crew including all from catering, camera and sound crew to actors. One small detail about the filming was that I threw the guitar that I used in the video down into the lawn and didn’t notice until later that a piece of the guitar broke—one of the wingtips—and wasn’t to be found. I’ve still got that guitar with the broken wing.

BLAKK: That was awesome. We recorded in the countryside, outside London in that castle.

DIAMOND: It was insane, man. It was somewhere outside London that we went to. I mean, we had done “Abigail,” and I hated it. I still hate it.

Horrible director, complete misunderstanding of FEBRUARY 2021 : 4 0 : DECIBEL

LAROCQUE:

BRAZIL’S

NERVOSA

THRASH THROUGH LINEUP CHANGES, OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT AND PATRIARCHAL BULLSHIT TO DELIVER THE BEST WORK OF THEIR CAREER S TO RY

BY

P H OTO S

BY

SARAH KITTERINGHAM BARBARA CIRAVEGNA 42

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T

he novel coronavirus COVID-19

has fundamentally shaped 2020, and may sculpt 2021 in a similarly devastating fashion. First reported in the capital city Wuhan of the Hubei province in China, COVID-19 has spread rapidly around the world, resulting in the deaths of millions and infections of over 60 million as of press time. The mutating virus has hit certain countries particularly hard, including the United States, Brazil, India, Mexico and the United Kingdom, where divisive leadership and anti-science rhetoric—combined with poor living conditions and political unrest— has resulted in disproportionate cases and fatalities. ¶ In the shadow of a pandemic, the impact on the music industry has been particularly cruel. Millions of performers and live event workers lost their livelihoods overnight, and though there is hope for live events to return in future, that timeframe remains uncertain. It’s from that context that Nervosa’s fourth studio album, Perpetual Chaos, has sprung. Shortly after the United States announced a European travel ban on March 11, 2020, numerous countries began implementing travel bans and lockdown measures. In Brazil, where mayors and state governors were suggesting similar measures, controversial president and retired military officer Jair Bolsonaro urged the rolling back of lockdown measures in a televised national address on March 24, in direct opposition to international medical advice.

Shortly after many countries announced a lockdown, news broke that ascending Brazilian death/thrash outfit Nervosa had split.

Founding guitarist Prika Amaral immediately clarified, announcing that the band would continue on, refusing to put her life’s work to rest despite a rapidly worsening sociopolitical situation brewing in her country that was exacerbated by rapidly increasing infection numbers.

Meanwhile, bassist/vocalist Fernanda Lira (who joined the band in 2011) and drummer Luana Dametto (who performed in the band from 2016 onwards) moved on with old-school death metal outfit Crypta. That left Amaral to her own devices.

“Nervosa is now a band from the world. We don’t have a specific place or country we are from,” begins Amaral, who spoke to Decibel from São Paulo, which is currently the epicenter of the pandemic in Brazil. Amaral’s native tongue is Brazilian Portuguese, which is spoken by more than 200 million people within the Brazilian diaspora. While the vast majority of South America speaks Spanish, Brazil’s unique language has profoundly shaped the cultural evolution of the nation.

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“Let’s start with the beginning,” continues Amaral, who has helmed the band since their inception in 2010 and steered them through propulsive growth and world tours. “When Nervosa split and I found the [new members] to be in Nervosa, the new girls, I started to immediately write the songs. I’m the unique original member for the band, so that’s why I was in the front about the writing.

“I was a little bit worried to keep the sense of the band, so that’s why I was in the front; because, you know, we didn’t meet each other before, but it was very hard for me because I was a little bit confused [about] how I can manage this.”

The lineup shift within Nervosa was shaped by two factors: Firstly, COVID-19 infections were raging worldwide, and secondly, the sheer quantity of female musicians has vastly increased in the past decade, meaning that the moment Nervosa’s “split” was announced, Amaral began receiving a myriad of encouraging messages from fans and musicians around the world who eagerly offered their services.

“I received a lot of messages from girls around the world asking me for me, ‘Don’t give up, and don’t let Nervosa die,’” recalls Amaral. “I answered these very fast and said, ‘Oh no, I won’t. Nervosa is my life. Nervosa will never die.’

“This gave me a lot of energy to keep going, you know? I tested many girls around the world, but mainly in Brazil and Europe because of the logistical [concerns]. The situation is impossible for anyone to move to another continent like this, which is why I put off some girls from the USA, Canada, Mexico and Asia, because it’s impossible.”

Instead, Amaral focused on women from Brazil and Europe, knowing that Brazil’s European flight hub status would benefit her and her new members, both for writing and touring (whenever the latter begins again).

Pulling from a well of international auditions, the lineup was cemented with bassist Mia Wallace, drummer Eleni Nota and vocalist Rocío Vázquez, a.k.a. Diva Satanica of Bloodhunter, who briefly toured with Nervosa in 2019.

“The girls that joined Nervosa were in my top picks,” enthuses Amaral. “They accepted when I invited them immediately. Everything matched very fast. It was perfect!”

The new members had an impressive legacy to live up to. Following the release of their 2014 debut Victim of Yourself, Nervosa began touring extensively while consistently releasing albums, including 2016’s Agony and 2018’s Downfall of Mankind. Despite cycling through a handful of members, Nervosa retained their signature sound while growing as songwriters.

Their approach blends ’80s Brazilian blackened thrash à la early Sepultura with Teutonic thrash in the vein of Destruction and Kreator. At the

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onset, Nervosa mirrored the new wave of thrash, spearheaded by Municipal Waste, Bonded by Blood and Havok and others. But on their fourth LP, the four-piece has gone headlong into their most extreme territory yet, courtesy of primary songwriter Amaral’s mounting experience and a revamped lineup who were thrilled to join the fray.

“The story [of joining Nervosa] is like science fiction,” begins Wallace, who lives in northern Italy, close to the COVID-19 red zone of Milan, and has been playing bass since 1994 in bands such as the True Endless, Abbath, Triumph of Death and Niryth. “I know it sounds strange because Nervosa had just split up. I always admired this band because I always thought that this band was really showing what women can do and how much power they can have. “[Nervosa] were screaming about women’s rights and this kind of stuff that I always would like to scream about. I’m not saying I wasn’t allowed to [in my previous bands], but I was not in the right avenue to scream about women’s rights because my bands were mainly men in the lineup, so I was mostly blending with this kind of mentality. And, you know, if you belong to a black metal band, and then if you start to scream about women’s rights or things like that, they start to think that, ‘Yeah, this is a feminist; she is always moaning for something. She is a sissy and blah, blah, blah.’”

Wallace laughs at the absurdity of the conceit.

“Whatever. I was really sad about the splitup of Nervosa, and I was in lockdown. So, I was on the roof of my house listening to some music and, out of the blue, I heard the sound of the email. And I opened it, and it was from Prika Amaral. It was like, What? She is really writing to me? I didn’t want to think that maybe she’s asking me something about Nervosa… but she was really asking me to do an audition for Nervosa! I immediately asked her, ‘Do you really think that I would be right for Nervosa, because [former bassist Lira] was really technical and I am really a black metal [player].’ Fernanda was always playing with her fingers, and there’s no way for me to play with fingers. That’s not really my style.”

Amaral asked Wallace to submit a cover of “Kill the Silence,” the eighth track on Downfall of Mankind, then invited her to join the band.

After a decade of playing in an all-female lineup, Amaral never considered changing that integral element of the band.

“When we decided on the band name, it was ‘angry girl’ in Portuguese,” she reveals.

Amaral began playing guitar in 1999, inspired by her father’s acoustic guitar playing. Initially introduced to rock via her mother’s love for Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Yes, Amaral was then introduced to underground heavy metal in 1997, citing Sepultura’s sophomore effort, 1987’s Schizophrenia, as one of the first and most important albums that since stuck with her (it’s joined

by Slayer’s Reign in Blood and Morbid Angel’s Altars

of Madness). After cutting her teeth in multiple hardcore and metal bands in the city of Bragança Paulista (in the state of São Paulo), Amaral met a drummer who wanted to be in a band with an all-female lineup. The bandleader was receptive to the idea, and it has shaped Nervosa ever since.

“The words in Portuguese have a gender,” Amaral explains. “‘Nervosa’ is for female, and ‘Nervos’ is for male. It made no sense to put a man in a band that has a female name. We realized that it’s hugely important to keep the band all-female because we started in a [time] when there were not many female bands. Why not give women the opportunity for growth?”

The precedent for all-female bands in Brazil and beyond is indeed slim, although the presence of women in metal bands is increasing annually. Of course, all-female acts like Girlschool, Rock Goddess, Malibu Barbi, Vixen and Mythic have left their marks on the metal scene, but the ubiquity of all-male bands is shockingly disproportionate for a variety of reasons. Similarly, in Brazil, where projects like Sepultura and Sarcófago came to be recognized worldwide, their female cohorts in bands like Volkana, Placenta and Flammea have not been equally lauded or developed into globally recognized talents, despite emerging from similar conditions and performing similar styles.

“When extreme metal appeared in Brazil with bands like Sepultura, we were leaving a political climate that was very oppressive; we were just getting out of a dictatorship,” explains Gracielle Fonseca, a discursive analyst who wrote her master’s thesis on gender imbalance in Brazilian heavy metal. Fonseca has created two documentaries about Brazilian heavy metal, including a project on the metal scene in Belo Horizonte titled Ruído das Minas and a documentary on women’s experience in the Brazilian scene titled Women in Metal. Fonseca currently works with the TREINAM project, which gives female musicians tools to shape their music career.

“The military threat was real,” Fonseca elaborates. “And the guys, when they were walking on the street, they were stopped by the police. So, it was very complicated to be a young headbanger in Brazil back then. And I believe that the extreme sound came as a response to this very oppressive climate of the military dictatorship. That metal scene was just rising and rising against all the oppression, but into the metal scene, we can look at oppression within itself—when you talk about Sepultura, Sarcófago and Placenta, an all-female band, they were part of the same scene, same friends. And they didn’t know how to play at all. You can talk to any band, any member of the bands. And they say, ‘Well, Sepultura, they didn’t know how to play well. They didn’t know how to play at all.’

None of them did. Why did the record company just pick up some of the bands like Sepultura and Sarcófago? It’s something that is still in that scene you can see—it’s not at all as open-minded as it claims to be.”

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BRAZIL IS A VERY CORRUPT COUNTRY. WE HAVE A LOT OF FAVELAS WITH A LOT OF VIOLENCE. I MEAN REALLY VIOLENT; THE GUNS HERE ARE DESTROYING EVERYTHING. IN RIO DE JANEIRO, YOU CAN DIE AT 2 P.M. IN THE STREET FROM A [STRAY] BULLET. PRIKA AMARAL Amaral has experienced a similar pushback against her metal involvement, and has thrust Nervosa into the limelight by proudly and defiantly labeling and managing the project as an all-female band.

“That’s why we always decided to keep the females,” she says. “And now in this year when the lineup changes, this was not in my mind, you know, to change for male members. Never!”

The three women who joined Nervosa never had the opportunity to play in such a project.

“It was my dream come true because I always wanted to be an all-female metal band,” offers Vázquez, who was recruited after her death metal band Bloodhunter toured with Nervosa in 2019. Hailing from the countryside 40 kilometers from Milan, Vázquez is a psychiatric nurse with a considerably deeper growl than previous bassist/vocalist Lira, whose voice is drier and higher.

Taking up the mantle from Lira was a substantial challenge for Vázquez, who was concerned that her different register would profoundly change the sound of Nervosa.

“I remember the day that Prika called me to say [I was in the band],” says Vázquez, who shared her concerns with the founding guitarist. “She was like, ‘Listen, I don’t care. This is very different from the beginning of Nervosa, I like this approach and I like your register, so welcome in.’”

Vázquez continues: “For me, this is just perfect because, besides that we all came from very

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different backgrounds ... I really like that connection that we made coming from different cultures, different metal or music backgrounds, and very different experiences. In the case of Mia Wallace, I can’t imagine what it would be like living in the black metal scene with a project like Abbath.

Abbath is amazing. I’m sure that there are a lot of men around that [scene] that have tried to put Mia down all the time, and all the [other] women around them. This is a big challenge for all the women in the scene. Very few people still think that we can do it as well as men.”

Incredulous, she asks, “Why? I mean, music has nothing to do with gender, with the physical aspect. I don’t know. It’s kind of crazy thinking that nowadays there’s a small amount of people thinking that we can’t do this. It’s stupid.”

Once Amaral added drummer Nota (the youngest member of the band, who hails from Greece), the quartet made a plan for how to record Nervosa’s fourth album amidst the pandemic, which was accelerating in numerous countries.

“We recorded this album in a perfect time,” assures Amaral, whose dual Italian citizenship enabled her to fly to Italy, where she took a precautionary COVID-19 test and self-isolated for 20 days. “When Europe started to get better and opened the borders, I was one of the first people to go to Europe, coming from another continent. When I was in Italy for 30 days, [self-isolating] there for the 20 days, I was composing the album.

“There wasn’t anyone around me, so it [helped] keep the focus,” she continues. “I left Brazil with five songs ready, but then I composed 10 more in one month [in Italy]. I recorded all the guitars as well. I didn’t record the guitars in the studio. I just re-recorded some riffs and I recorded the solos there, but for the most part, the songs were already recorded when I arrived in the studio.”

Selecting Martin Furia once more as producer, the band recorded their album in an isolated recording studio and house in Málaga, a capital port city in southern Spain. Complete with stunning views and a pool, it was Nervosa’s home base for a month, where they spent plenty of their downtime dancing to Lady Gaga and Madonna, hiding chocolate and candy from each other, and fast becoming close friends.

“This opportunity was very unique to be in this haven, but this was the unique way to be safe, you know, in this crazy situation,” explains Amaral. “It was hard to find a studio with this condition, but it was perfect. I want to record there forever.”

The album that emerged is Perpetual Chaos.

It is, by far, the strongest and most engaging of Nervosa’s output. With a decidedly heavier edge, slicker production and an uglier vibe, its quality is reflective of the care Amaral put into deciding the new lineup. Merging death metal and thrash into an aggressive melee, the raspy, deep growls of Vázquez are juxtaposed against an unrelenting attack of battering drums, numerous slides and ample soloing.

“The details for me were the secret for this album,” Amaral notes. “I worked with musicians that were more open, for some advice, for good discussions for the music. We were working together for the music. I love all the history of Nervosa, and I love all the music that we made before. But I think that this change was very good for Nervosa. All the respect for the other members—they are doing a very good job with their other bands—but, you know, I feel more comfortable now because we work together.”

Wallace found the experience similarly productive, despite having initial reservations about integrating her black metal style of playing into a death/thrash project.

“Day after day, [Prika] was sending me the songs and I was sending her back the basslines,” Wallace remembers. “And she was like, ‘Look, it’s perfect. I like it. This is exactly what I always wanted with the bass in Nervosa.’

“She always wanted, how can I say, the fat part of the bass? You know, the heavy part of the bass. I’m not playing one million notes per second, of course, but I’m really giving attention to the heaviness. In my opinion, the guitar has to play one million notes per minute, not the bass.”

Wallace goes on: “So, I packed up everything and I left for Málaga, and then the magic happened when I met the girls. I saw the house. It was amazing. The best experience in my life.”

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Following recent acrimonious splits from previous projects, Wallace was eager for a supportive and cooperative experience that allowed her to explore her craft.

“I like to play with sounds more than notes,” she explains. “I prefer to bend the neck of the bass to obtain a certain effect on the strings, or I like to tear the strings, trying to obtain certain sounds with it. I like to slide. I like to bend ... which is why I’m playing a bass with a tremolo, because I was really used to bending the neck to obtain this sound I’m talking about.”

She starts to laugh at the unintentional consequences of this technique. “I remember in one concert, I clearly heard a crack on the neck next to the head of the bass. And I was like, ‘Hmmm... maybe I should stop with this thing.’ And I asked my technician to put a different mechanism like the tremolo on the base. That’s why [I have] a tremolo, because I was destroying my bass to do what I’m doing with a tremolo.”

Wallace laughs again, recalling her time with black metal legend Abbath. She played on his eponymous band’s 2019 album Outstrider, and toured with the project as well, including the Buenos Aires show at the Palermo Club where a visibly intoxicated Abbath was forced to cut the show short. He entered rehab shortly thereafter.

Wallace was unceremoniously forced out of the band in January 2020.

“I remember I heard like a crack,” she says, “and I was clearly seeing the head of the bass that was moving. I changed the bass immediately. I told the guitar tech to give me the other bass and it was with Abbath ... I was playing with a Dean Metalman; that’s the V base. You can see in the video ‘Hecate.’ In this song, there’s a long bass intro, and it’s all made with this kind of effect I’m talking about. And I remember the last time I played, it was with the Dean bass; it was at Beyond the Gates festival [in Bergen, Norway].

“The concert started with me doing the intro of ‘Hecate,’ and the smoke, and me bending this bass like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.’ And then, you know, the song started, and after a while, when the smoke goes away, I was with a white bass instead.”

She laughs again, and our conversation steers back towards the Nervosa album. The highlights are plentiful: “Genocidal Command” has unusual and punctuated riffs that are kicked off with a gruff squealing scream, courtesy of Destruction’s Marcel Schirmer.

“He is a huge friend of mine,” says Amaral, who was thrilled to have Schirmer contribute remotely due to the limitations imposed by the pandemic. “He was always a huge supporter of Nervosa. When I wrote ‘Genocidal Command,’ I was very inspired on the direction, and I wrote the song for him.”

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Another guest vocalist also contributed remotely, resulting in arguably the best track on the album, “Rebel Soul.” It’s a paean to heavy metal’s most recurrent theme: rebellion. Punchy and propulsive, the track features dueling vocals from Vázquez and Eric A.K of American power thrash outfit Flotsam and Jetsam, who have also toured with Nervosa.

“This is my favorite song!” enthuses Wallace.

“First of all, because the text, the lyrics itself, is talking about a rebel. And I am a rebel, and I have been a rebel for my entire life. And the second thing is because it’s really Motörheadish. It’s really Motörhead style, and I am a Motörhead maniac. So, I was like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes! Prika, you did a great job.’ And in fact, ‘Rebel Soul’ was the first song I recorded in Málaga to break the ice. This is the song. It’s really my favorite song, maybe the favorite song of my 25-year career. I’m not joking!”

Meanwhile, Vázquez’s experience as a psychiatric nurse dictated her favorite track, “Until the Very End.” Tumultuous and driving, the solo is withdrawn and moody, adding dark dimensions to a song that is written from the perspective of a person who is considering suicide.

“I’m very used to that, sadly, in my daily life,” says Vázquez. “It’s very interesting to just try to talk about it because it’s a taboo here. People don’t want to talk about this, but it’s like, ‘Come on.’

I think almost everybody, at some point in their lives, feels something similar to that. And we can feel very sad at some points, and that relief of being understood by others and knowing that there’s somebody else in the world that had that feeling before makes you feel a little bit better.

There are a lot of songs in Nervosa that help a lot of people, like ‘Kill the Silence.’ This one is very special because I think that they never deal with this topic before of committing suicide. And for me, just because of my job, this is very personal.”

Vázquez’s daily life has been profoundly impacted by the pandemic, given her close proximity to people with mental illness, many of whom are at heightened risk for contracting the infectious disease. She says that her experiences have illuminated how those with chronic illness have responded to the pandemic versus how many of those with the privilege of health have responded.

“It’s been incredible because those that are very ill and have the most difficult illness... they are doing great because they perfectly understand that they have to put in effort to help others to not get sick,” Vázquez observes. “[People who] can have a ‘normal’ life, they just behave much worse. They don’t think about others, they just think about, ‘I feel anxiety.

I have to go out. I don’t care about wearing a mask. I don’t care about what the others need because I feel bad.’”

Such scathing observations about human nature, politics and social justice dominate Nervosa’s sociopolitical death/thrash output, a commonality they share with the thrash tradition

and metal at large. It’s this focus that initially drew Amaral into the music as a teenager.

“My very beginning was around the hardcore scene, the punk scene in Brazil,” she recalls.

“In my city, the punk scene was bigger than the metal scene. So, I always think very constantly about politicians’ behavior and how important it is to be resistant about this kind of thing. Thrash metal was a perfect combination for me because thrash metal would speak a lot about the government [and] politicians, and this was the stuff that I really want to talk about.”

Perpetual Chaos is frequently political, addressing such injustices as factory farming, the experiences of minorities and the consequences of succumbing to the whims of social elites.

“This album is more direct, it’s more in-yourface,” stresses Amaral. “With Perpetual Chaos, it’s something like, we are learning many things, but always [making] the same mistakes.”

The tradition of infusing sociopolitical commentary into extreme metal has a long history in Brazil, where extreme metal, corpsepaint and bullet belts emerged quite early. Exactly why is up for debate, but J. Neto from Greyhaze Records (a native Brazilian now residing in the United States) has a compelling argument for the earliest instigator: KISS. “My feeling is that heavy metal in general started to take shape in Brazil in the late ’70s and early ’80s,” says Neto, whose label has released albums by a myriad of influential Brazilian bands, including Mystifier, Sarcófago, Vulcano, the Mist and more. “In my view, the biggest catalyst of this was when KISS toured Brazil for the first time in 1983. KISS was already known very well before they came to Brazil, but that tour was just such a massive undertaking. It was covered in such a huge way in Brazil that I think it spread the idea of heavy metal to the entire nation.

“To put it into context, they played three or four shows; it was covered by a national news media on a daily basis. Like every day. There would be a story about where KISS was on that day, or a story about the size of the KISS stage, or a story about why they hid their faces, and so on and so forth. The end result was huge audiences… I think it began there.

“Secondly, two years after, it was the first edition of the Rock in Rio festival.” Taking place from January 11-20, 1985, the inaugural installment of the fest was attended by 1.4 million people, and its lineup boasted AC/DC, Queen, Iron Maiden, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, Yes, the B-52’s and numerous others.

“So, after that,” Neto says, “you know, 1986, you started seeing those first extreme metal albums coming out, with like Vulcano, Bloody Vengeance, which came in 1986, and then obviously Sepultura, Morbid Visions [in 1986], and then Sarcófago in 1987, and so on and so forth.”

The extreme metal scene in Brazil grew quickly after the dissolution of the country’s authoritarian military dictatorship on March 15, 1985. That dictatorship began with a 1964 coup d’état, and

DECIBEL : F EBRUA R Y 2 0 21 : 49

FOR ME, THIS IS JUST PERFECT BECAUSE, BESIDES THAT WE ALL CAME FROM VERY DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS …

I REALLY LIKE THAT CONNECTION THAT WE MADE COMING FROM DIFFERENT CULTURES, DIFFERENT METAL OR MUSIC BACKGROUNDS, AND

VERY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES.

R O C Í O “ D I VA S ATA N I C A” VÁ Z Q U E Z was violently reinforced by the conservative and religious factions of society, who stifled political opposition and freedom of speech. Eventually, all media was suppressed, and dissidents were tortured and murdered. Meanwhile, across the ocean in Europe, Germany was experiencing unrest over the aftermath of the second World War and the Cold War, eventually resulting in the Peaceful Revolution (Die Wende), a period that coincided with the explosion of Teutonic thrash and eventually resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“Scenes cross-pollinate influences,” offers Neto. “That bullet belt visual that Sarcófago and Sepultura exhibited, what you mentioned makes sense: Teutonic thrash. Like, if you look at Destruction’s [1984 EP] Sentence of Death, it’s all bullet belts, it’s that purple filter on the photo of the cover. And then you would see that a little later with Sarcófago on I.N.R.I. It was a cross-pollination of influences—they were taking a little bit from Sodom. They were taking a little bit from Destruction, and then Kreator as well. And then you mix that with what I mentioned before with KISS… like all of the Sarcófago members were huge KISS fans. [Wagner Antichrist, vocalist/guitarist of Sarcófago] loves Alice Cooper. If you look at the corpsepaint, it’s basically that Alice Cooper look. Then Brazil, although it was a very obscure scene at the time, it started influencing Europe as well.”

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Neto acknowledges that the lasting influence of the military dictatorship in Brazil is widespread. “It not only influenced heavy metal, it influenced all of Brazil’s cultural fabric,” he asserts. “I think it’s important to say also, when I.N.R.I. and Bestial Devastation and those early Brazilian seminal albums came out, the musicians that played in those albums at the time, they must have been 16 or 17 years old, and in some instances, even younger than that. I think they’re upset about what life has dealt them at that point. But they’re also doing this—and even Wagner has said that—for the pleasure of making noise. It’s a mix of that: of teenage angst and of teenagers growing up in a country that has recently come out of a dictatorship, you know?”

This spirit of rebellion and anti-government sentiment lives on in both Brazilian heavy metal and Nervosa, who continue to advocate against the evils they observe both at home and abroad.

“It’s definitely a complex moment in Brazil because it’s under a scenario where a lot of regressive ideas are being pushed by the current government,” observes Neto. “It’s not very unlike here in the United States, and you know, those ideas revolve around xenophobic and bigoted ideals. It’s a very delicate moment that Brazil is living. This [situation] is ripe for subversive music, be it heavy metal or be it punk.”

Amaral agrees, citing the homophobic and anti-science policies implemented by Bolsonaro, as well as his involvement in far-right, promilitary protests that advocated for the return of a military dictatorship in Brazil in March 2020.

The president has been a fierce advocate for antidemocratic mobilization.

“Brazil is a very corrupt country,” she says.

“Nothing works very well here, and we have a huge problem in different conditions for the people. We have a lot of favelas with a lot of violence. I mean really violent; the guns here are destroying everything. In Rio de Janeiro, you can die at 2 p.m. in the street with a [stray] bullet.

It’s horrible!

“Our laws don’t work. The laws just don’t work for someone that doesn’t have money, they don’t work for black people as well. So, everything like this gave us a lot of hate. This is just something that happened all over Latin America, because Brazil is like Mexico, like Chile, like all the countries in Latin America. The USA has this kind of problem also.”

As for the increasing right-wing and proauthoritarian ideologies that are seemingly gaining popularity in social media realms with metal fans, Amaral is perplexed and incredulous.

“With this kind of internet generation and everyone [being] interested in talking about politics, you discover [an opinion] that was hiding: These kinds of people don’t agree, they don’t use the political topics in metal; they think that you have to separate and everything. But I think these people never paid attention to lyrics. It just shows that they are very empty-minded.”

Amaral joins a massive tide of musicians speaking out against racism, violence, authoritarianism, homophobia and societal injustice in both Nervosa and her new project Revolta.

Featuring Amaral on vocals alongside second vocalist João Gordo (Ratos de Porão), guitarists Guilherme Miranda (Entombed A.D.) and Moyses Kolesne (Krisiun), bassist Castor (Torture Squad) and drummer Igor Cavalera, Revolta will be releasing music in the near future. For now, however, Amaral is thrilled to start the next chapter of Nervosa with Perpetual Chaos primed for release, as well as plan for her future with Wallace, Nota and Vázquez.

“This album has a lot of contrast in talking about lyrics because you have [these] fighting vibes,” offers Vázquez. “You have [these] positive vibes, you have this critical side, and everything makes a good mix of what life really is. I mean, life is beautiful sometimes, but life, it’s [also] very difficult, and I think it’s very good to accept it like that.

“We have many perspectives about what Perpetual Chaos means. It’s not only war, it’s not only animal abuse, it’s not only rapists. It’s much more than that. It’s much closer to ourselves than we think, and we have this chance to make something important that can have a big impact on the world.”

INSIDE ≥

54 DEEDS OF FLESH The sound of perseverance 56 FROZEN SOUL Brave the cold

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

56 GONE IS GONE Background? Check 58 MOTHER OF GRAVES Brave murder days re-revisted 61 NADER SADEK Sects and violence

Beyond the Realms of Death (Metal)

FEBRUARY

15

Records that could use an evil grandma

8

Records that fail to break for tea

4

Records that could use a Randal and Jay vocal duet

0

Records with a better bonus track than "Phone Call"

With a mile-wide nonconformist streak and virtuosic chops, TRIBULATION return to kick down the doors of heavy metal perception

D

eath still lives beyond the horror… ¶ When Johannes Andersson growled those words on TribulaWhere the Gloom tion’s 2009 debut full-length The Horror, could even he Becomes Sound himself have fully grasped just how prophetic the line would M E TA L B L A D E prove? It seems unlikely. The Swedish quartet, true to its moniker, has never sought détente with that head-turning master class in atmospheric thrash death madness—or any other subsequent album, for that matter. Instead Andersson and Co. have constantly expanded the scope of their aesthetic and ambition, brilliantly fusing wildly disparate elements—gritty Motörhead-esque street rock; crush-spiralcrush doom dirges; late second-wave black metal reminiscent of the more melodic moments of circa-Nemesis Divina Satyricon; prog-y marauding and wing-spreading spiritually akin to the left-turn evolutions of, say, Amorphis, Enslaved and Opeth—

TRIBULATION

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

8

DECIBEL : FEBRUARY 2021 : 53

onto the band’s sound without sacrificing either its core identity or vibrancy.

Beginning with 2015’s The Children of the Night and carrying on through 2018’s Down Below, this deft splicing and its ensuing transcendence over ordinary songsmith-eries has translated to an increasingly immersive listening experience.

Now comes Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, a record that in many ways feels a bit more balanced and less sprawling than its predecessor, yet is nevertheless a kind of apotheosis of that journey.

It is, in fact, exceedingly apropos that one of the twistiest, most killer tracks here is entitled “Hour of the Wolf,” an hour which Ingmar Bergman, discussing his 1968 cinematic mindfuck of the same name, described as the time when “sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most palatable… when the sleepless are pursued by their sharpest anxieties, when ghosts and demons hold sway.” Two different mediums, two different eras, sure, but the number of bell tolls is eerily identical. The top-notch metal riffs, soaring leads and driving beats are so beguiling—seriously, if “Funeral Pyre,” “Daughter of the Djinn,” “Elementals” or the extended crescendo of epic closer “The Wilderness” don’t stir your soul, you must’ve misplaced it—one does not quite realize quite how deep into the ethereal the nuances and underlying vibrational currents have drawn us.

Some will no doubt prefer the immediacy and majestic pummeling of The Horror and sophomore triumph The Formulas of Death (2013)—and if that’s you, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound won’t be the one to pull you back into the fold. Hell, if it was a one-to-one trade, your humble correspondent would likely stick with the purer strain of auditory violence as well. Happily, it isn’t, leaving Gloom there to be embraced for what it is: a canny, dexterous stab at actualizing a record that behaves essentially like a sensory deprivation tank. Go ahead, slip into that buoyant darkness and thrill to the experience of the walls of perception, consciousness and milquetoast metal falling away. —SHAWN MACOMBER

ACCEPT

7

Too Mean to Die NUCLEAR BLAST

Too [something] to [something]

Ten years and five albums into the Mark Tornillo era and Accept seem to have made their peace with former frontman Udo Dirkschneider’s absence. While Tornillo still basically sounds significantly like his pudgy predecessor, he also seems more comfortable using his voice in ways that Udo never could. Therein lies the strength of Accept in 2021: Though only original 54 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

member Wolf Hoffmann remains, they aren’t trapped in trying to repeat past glories.

Too Mean to Die definitely benefits from Hoffmann’s incredible skills and overall versatility— he can do the chunky ’80s riffs and classical-influenced power metal anthems, and even throw in some lighter acoustic touches. Dude is one of the most underrated guitarists of that era. Even if you don’t find a single song on this long-player that turns your crank, Hoffmann’s guitar work is worth the price of admission.

The least appealing aspect of what is basically a really entertaining album, however, is the quality of the lyrics. Having a native English speaker fronting the band obviously avoids the ambiguity as to what, for instance, a song like “Balls to the Wall” is all about; but the downside is that Tornillo can’t really hide behind the “language barrier” when he writes cornball crap like “The Undertaker” (which just makes no sense) or “Sucks to Be You.” It’s a relatively small beef, though, as Too Mean to Die offers the surefire buzz of classic Accept without getting stuck in a retro rut. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

DEATH DEALER

7

Conquered Lands STEEL CARTEL

Mano-what now?

Speed metal throwbacks Death Dealer made a modest splash among power metal fans back in 2013 with the confident, ear-shattering War Master, an album deeply indebted to the likes of Helstar, Exciter, Iced Earth and especially Manowar. Which, as it turned out, was rather fitting considering that guitarist Stu Marshall managed to coax Ross the Boss—the greatest member of Manowar—to join in on lead guitar. Ross’s presence alone gave Death Dealer instant credibility, and with the addition of the spectacular upper-register screams of Cage singer Sean Peck, War Master masterfully swiped the torch from the failing hands of Manowar.

It was theirs to hold high, and it’s good to know they have yet to relinquish it.

Following the release of 2015’s Hallowed Ground, the band went off the radar for a spell, but they’ve returned in late 2020 with a resounding reassertion of just how exuberant, empowering and fun their music is. Do they bring anything new to the table? Of course not! And nor do we want them to. We want riffs, speed, shredding, sing-along hooks, and screams that rival Rob Halford and Ralf Scheepers, and Conquered Lands shamelessly immerses listeners in everything that's great about speed/power metal. There are plenty of doubletime ragers such as “Sorcerer Supreme” and “The Heretic Has Returned,” while tracks like

“Running With the Wolves” and “Every Nation” shift gears with some good old-fashioned fistbangery. With music as viscerally gratifying as this, who needs reinvention? Keep it up, boys.

—ADRIEN BEGRAND

DEEDS OF FLESH

8

Nucleus

UNIQUE LEADER

Metal of (tragic) death

No one should be surprised if Nucleus turns out to be the final studio output from this long-serving brutal tech-death battalion. That Deeds of Flesh’s ninth album even exists is a crowning achievement in making sweet lemonade when life hands you the worst lemons.

Almost exactly two years prior to the writing of this dispatch, sclerosis took the life of vocalist/guitarist/Unique Leader honcho/indisputable death metal devotee Erik Lindmark. In the face of tragedy, it would have been easiest for surviving members to raise the white flag, but given the amount of new material sitting on hard drives and in the creative holsters of guitarist Craig Peters, bassist Ivan Munguia and drummer Darren Cesca since 2013’s Portals to Canaan, a new chapter seemed appropriate. In a heartwarming show of support and friendship, Nucleus not only brought former members Mike Hamilton and Jacoby Kingston back into the fold, but had Luc Lemay, George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, John Gallagher, Frank Mullen, Matti Way and others contributing guest vocals in salutation.

As such, Nucleus stands as an ultimate sendoff—through injury, hardship and into his final days, Lindmark lived death metal, and having ex-members, friends and colleagues come together to contribute to that which flows through the veins of all involved demonstrates multi-directional impact and respect.

As expected, it’s plenty brutal, as dizzying time and tempo changes provide ballast for riffs mimicking a pack of starving leopards fighting over a freshly slain, overweight antelope.

Kingston and guests throttle their larynxes in celebration of both the inherent musical power and the unity provided by the DM scene. Rest in power; only death is real. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

DEMON HEAD

7

Viscera

M E TA L B L A D E

Sequestered quest

“Years spent in a room with no light / a sanctuary to purge my own blight.” When Swedish doom rockers Demon Head released their demo in 2014,

“...tectonic slabs of thunderous doom and spacey drone...”

Revolver —Revolver “IN THE COMPANY OF SERPENTS embodies luminous transcendence with its steadfast heaviness and engrossing atmosphere....these songs run the gamut of sludge metal both as a musical style and a spiritual guide.”

— Metal Injection “If your wont in life is to prowl the twilight perimeter of doom as you await enlightenment, Lux should be on your record shelf or hard drive, stat. 9/10” Decibel —Decibel

# 33/

Support DIY artists directly! Use the code DEATH 2FALSE MONOCULTURE and SAVE 30% on everything through the winter solstice of 2020.

DECIBEL : FEBRUARY 2021 : 55

those lines opened its self-titled track. Since their formation, the band’s sound has traded in the bell bottoms of stoner rock and ’60s psych, gravitating towards the duskier shadows of doom. But six years later, the project still embodies the darkness and seclusion of those lyrics on their Metal Blade debut, Viscera.

When Demon Head first started committing riffs to tape, the dirty-denim legacy of Pentagram and Bedemon were fitting references. But Demon Head started drifting from those influences before 2019’s Hellfire Ocean Void. Instead, it feels like they have bricked themselves into a haunted cellar with a wealth of analog equipment, determined to purge destructive spirits.

Viscera has that same feeling of being insulated from outside trends and influences while still crawling backwards through time. It’s as much a medieval occult recording as it is a descendant of Sabbathian doom.

Once he bellows his first breath into “Tooth and Nail,” Marcus Ferreira Larsen’s vocals are the evocative center of Viscera. Larsen’s delivery sounds like someone casting last rites into a bottomless pit. As it unfolds, Viscera becomes an anachronistic mixture of downer rock and ancient cathedral organs. Proto-metal majesty surfaces when harmonized leads stretch their paws in “The Feline Smile,” or when the reverb-drenched “Magickal Death” stomps to its crunchy climax. Songs like “Black Torches” and “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” achieve everything the too-plentiful interludes express, and far more. Despite those redundancies, Viscera feels like a Bubonic processional ending with the finality of a closed casket lid. —SEAN FRASIER

DEMONIAC

8

So It Goes

EDGED CIRCLE

Fuckin’ way she goes

Be careful around this one—it’s sharp, hot as hell and will take your head clean off. So It Goes, Chilean hellthrash quartet Demoniac’s sophomore album, bursts with a crazed energy, some next-level musicianship they definitely sold their souls for and a reckless abandon that never interferes with the previous two attributes.

Instead, the band’s abandon shows itself in the inconsistent track lengths and their overall daring approach to their compositions. This is extreme and outrageous metal all the way up your ass and twisted about therein—four-and-ahalf-minute clarinet-led jam included!

Formed in 2011, Demoniac might have flown beneath the radar for the past decade, but So It Goes will surely change that. Between its threepart opener—which hits like a rail of fine 56 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

white boog suge blasted off Kerry King’s copy of the German death/thrash Poison’s one and only LP Into the Abyss—and the unbelievable 20-minute title track that closes out the album, So It Goes is chock full of enough addictive riffing, baroque ambition and next-level technicality to keep even the most jaded metalheads both interested and guessing as to what these wild men will do next.

Every riff, lick, solo and transition on So It Goes shines like sharpened steel, and speaks of the determination and violence that went into its creation. With the release of their sophomore album, Demoniac both transcend the thrash genre and simultaneously breathe fiery new life into it—not to mention it’s a blast to jam! —DUTCH PEARCE

FROZEN SOUL

8

Crypt of Ice

CENTURY MEDIA

Those still loyal

Though they hail from Texas, a state better known for heat waves than wintry winds, Frozen Soul sure has some kind of arctic fixation. Every song on Crypt of Ice that doesn’t explicitly mention frost or glaciers at least zeroes in on death’s cold embrace. But while their imaginations skew cold, their debut LP is every bit as red-hot as their subterranean demos promised. Think evil-but-enunciated croaking, melodic tremolo riffs turned low and laid atop groovy drums, and near-constant double bass rolls.

That percussive proclivity points to the band’s greatest strength and weakness: It’s tough to listen to this record and not hear Bolt Thrower. The instantaneous barrage of “Arctic Stranglehold” and the merciless pounding of “Beat to Dust” show guts and aim for glory. The similarities go deeper than their liberal use of Andy Whale’s Tank-beats, but at the same time, they’re hardly surprising: Birmingham’s most martial seems to have usurped Entombed’s place atop the pile of death metal bands with crossover hardcore clout. By that token, Frozen Soul express their influences with at least as much reverence as Black Breath, Nails and Xibalba did for their chainsaw guitar forebears. All three of those bands helped pave the way for our present renaissance of old-school death metal revivalists before mutating into unique beasts.

Frozen Soul haven’t quite evolved that far yet, but Crypt of Ice is fun, catchy, full of conviction and—most important—harder than free-climbing up a sheer rock face. Who could ask for more from their first tour of duty?

—JOSEPH SCHAFER

FUNERAL WINDS

7

Essence

AVA N TGA R D E M U S I C

Hail Stan!

Though many try to reinvent the wheel, the old ways live on through their originators. Funeral Winds’ take on black metal is aged, but that is simply by design, one that dates back to 1991. Blasting and riffing their way through four ungodly fulllengths, Funeral Winds enter the new decade with a new conceit: titling their fifth album Essence.

What is essence in black metal? Some can break it down into different musical elements, which would also be correct, but black metal’s actual spirit can be wholly defined by its intent—black metal exists to be the most extreme version of itself, be it ideologically or through execution. Essence might not be the most extreme version of black metal to date, but Funeral Winds carry an ancient vitriol throughout their skeletal damnations of God and glorifications of Lucifer.

Does Essence’s lack of super-aggression and failure to be the most extreme black metal make it a failure? Certainly not! Funeral Winds succeed at creating something supremely hateful, and with a competency that comes with almost three decades of practice. Should Essence, in its current style, become something greater than what it is, it would verge on the cartoonish and off-putting. Essence is as blackened and extreme as it really needs to be.

Essence, in itself, also doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Cursory listens will show this to be a very traditional black metal album, but history backs Funeral Winds’ stylistic conservatism. They’ve been around the whole time; you just missed them. —JON ROSENTHAL

GONE IS GONE

6

If Everything Happens for a Reason…

Then Nothing Really Matters at All C LO U D S H I L L

Album title = 1/25 of my word count down!

If you want Mastodon’s Troy Sanders to join your band, give it a passive-voice name—between Killer Be Killed and Gone Is Gone, he clearly has a type. Gone Is Gone proves that the band doesn’t even have to be metal. If Everything Happens for a Reason finds solace in mid-’90s electronic rock, the kind of atmospheric quasi-industrial/ quasi-alt-rock/quasi-metal favored by acts like VAST, Econoline Crush and, yeah, Nine Inch Nails when Trent is feeling depressive instead of manic. Also, some Pandemonium-era Killing

DECIBEL : FEBRUARY 2021 : 57

Joke. The type of thing usually described as “cinematic,” and in this case it’s apt—the driving forces behind the band, Mike Zarin and Tony Hajjar (At the Drive-In), make their livings composing trailer music for movies and TV shows.

Filling out the roster with guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age/A Perfect Circle), the group feels like a distinct unit.

Unlike Killer Be Killed, these songs really don’t highlight each musician’s personality. It’s all about creating a cohesive whole. The upshot of that is that these pieces weave a very specific mood. The downside? The tunes just aren’t that memorable. They work well as background music for, say, a movie trailer. While everything is executed well, it doesn’t leave much of an impression, even after multiple listens—a problem their ’90s predecessors didn’t have. Or the members’ other bands, for that matter. Passive voice, indeed. —JEFF TREPPEL

HUMANITY IS CANCER

6

Humanity Is Cancer REDEFINING DARKNESS

It’s benign

Written in the mid-2010s and recorded piecemeal over the last five years, Humanity Is Cancer’s death metal supergroup EP has finally seen the light of day. And that news is welcome, if not exactly momentous.

The supers behind this group are/were in bands such as Abigail Williams, Aborted, Nunslaughter and the Faceless, and none of those are super accurate reflections of this brutal death metal, which is nothing fancy and also not insanely brutal. That means fast, but no gravity blasts or blurry double kicks; there is no extreme technicality or overblown production. Instead, this is burly, growling DM that’s pleasantly faithful to the genre. And that gives a wide berth for the riffs to be showcased, which are quite solid, along with solos that are compelling without being ostentatious. No complaints here. But there just isn’t much else to say about it past that.

This is just four tracks, there’s nothing particularly revelatory, and while the songs are good brutal death metal, there’s a lot of good brutal death metal out there. This is wellwritten, well-produced and well-performed, but at no point does it really stand out from the bloodthirsty pack.

As a modest jewel that was sitting on a shelf, it’s nice that this was finally all pulled together and given to a self-destructive human race. And a follow-up could definitely be pretty killer. But it makes sense why no one was clamoring for Humanity Is Cancer to be finished as soon as possible. —SHANE MEHLING 58 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS

7

Multitudes of Emptiness

SELF-RELEASED

Thankfully, not a journey into that darkness

Who out there remembers Sorrow? The New York doom/death band originally existed in the very early ’90s though their pair of Roadrunnerreleased releases unfortunately got lost in the Morrisound shuffle. They did, however, gain a regrettable bit of notoriety for the back cover photo of their Forgotten Sunrise EP. Check it out, especially if you enjoy hearty laughter followed by a puke-in-your-mouth chaser. And if that ain’t your thing, don’t say we didn’t warn you.

In the 27 years since Sorrow’s demise, guitarist Brett Clarin has emerged from a different sort of man cave, having schooled himself as a multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer.

The result is Multitudes of Emptiness, a solitary pursuit rooted in the symphonic worlds of Dimmu Borgir, Emperor and Cradle of Filth, sci-fi soundtracks and dungeon synth. The defining element in Journey Into Darkness’s world is how a streetwise cinematic sensibility nudges European pomp and circumstance aside.

Much like the difference between the “Freedom Fries” you’d get at a NYC food truck and frites you’d overpay for at Charles de Gaulle Airport, the basic ideas are similar, though the differences are minute.

Clarin’s lone ranger methodology provides an oppressive air to “The Insignificance Of” and “Multitudes of Emptiness,” though an occasional rhythmic rigidity dampens the impact.

The inspiration taken from album intros and silver screen/boob tube theme songs is evident and powerfully expanded upon in the fantastically baroque “To Be Human Is to Be Inhuman” and “Sending Death,” which imagines John Carpenter abusing waltzing triplets and Florida death metal, and almost scrubs that photo from our mind’s eye. Almost. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

MEGALOPHOBE

5

Music for Resistance Fantasies N E FA R I O U S I N D U S T R I E S

Dreamy, Airy, Spacy, Sneezy, Dopey, Bashful and Doc

If context is king, then Music for Resistance Fantasies is the minor baron of an outlying province whose serfs haven’t flown kingdom colors for several generations. (Yep, I stretched that metaphor right out past the breaking point.) This single ambient womb hymn (artificially sliced

into six movements) is performed by Benjamin Levitt and is “composed primarily of effectsladen ambient and experimental accordion passages.” Rather than being formulated as a standalone musical effort, the piece was conceived as accompaniment for one section of a three-hour dance performance called Resistance Fantasies: Strategies for Moving Toward - and Against, in which five dancers “encounter and frame notions of resistance together and through independently designed scores and frameworks” (as described on the website for the 2019 Exponential Festival, where Resistance Fantasies was performed).

To be clear, this is totally my shit. It’s the kind of event I would have attended and gushed about afterward, had I been aware of it and lived closer. Last fall, I blissed out at the High Zero experimental music festival in Baltimore, so I’m no stranger to (or critic of) the weird and wonderful. But stripped of its context, Megalophobe’s music wafts through indifferent air for 37 minutes, dusting your aural environment with transient, subliminal ash without doing much to alter the mood of the space. Earlier this year, I characterized IIVII’s Zero Sleep as the sonic equivalent of ghosts moping about inside abandoned spaceships; this record is arguably warmer than that one, more WALL-E than Event Horizon, but the basic premise remains valid. Seeing the dancers interact with these sounds would be particularly instructive, though. —DANIEL LAKE

MOTHER OF GRAVES

7

In Somber Dreams W I S E B LO O D

Sounds of delay

Indianapolis has terrible winters. Often super cold, stupidly windy and perpetually gray. Though it doesn’t share the same latitude with, say, Stockholm, what has recently emerged from Naptown bears a striking resemblance. Quartet Mother of Graves may sound like a band that shares stylistic traits with Black Tusk, Zoroaster and the like, but they’re not. Rewind time to 1995 (For Funerals to Come...) or 1997 (Sounds of Decay), and this is where the Wise Blood’s most “Swedish” signing unfurl their melodic doom-death.

Indeed, Mother of Graves have a healthy appreciation for Katatonia when the Swedes were in their “uncertain” stage of their nowmulti-generational career. Lead single “The Urn” immediately recalls Anders Nyström’s sorrowful refrains with its own signature blue lines.

The clean guitar breakdown, with soft keyboard motif and descending bassline into the central theme, is purely old-school Katatonia; even Don Curtis’ single-to-double bass drum part has that

DECIBEL : FEBRUARY 2021 : 59

their brand of thrashing heavy metal seriously, but the fun they had with these songs blares from every moment of its runtime. And that fun is also mighty infectious. —DUTCH PEARCE

PILLORY

4

Scourge Upon Humanity UNIQUE LEADER

Ghosts of the ghost of Orion | N U C L E A R B L A S T

There’s no consensus on leftovers. Is what you didn’t finish last night still good the next day? It depends. Mom’s meatloaf? Always good the next day. Maybe even better. Sushi? You want to eat it fresh, or else you don’t want to eat it.

But what about My Dying Bride’s leftovers?

The U.K. death-doom institution released its stellar new album, The Ghost of Orion, earlier this year, and is now serving up its hot remnants. As far as leftovers go, the Macabre Cabaret EP—composed of three songs written and recorded during the Orion sessions—isn’t ever sushi. At least some of the time, it’s excellent home cooking. My original review copy of Orion included them, and two were among my favorite moments on the record.

“in the feels” timing. Guitarists Ben Sandman and Chris Morrison definitely studied at the same Nyström University that Rapture’s Tomi Ullgrén and Aleksi Ahokas attended. Even vocalist Brandon Howe has his familiar moments, recalling in vestige the death metal lovechild of Mikael Åkerfeldt and Henri Villberg. Indeed, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

In Somber Dreams also gifts the splendid “Deliverance,” “Nameless Burial” and the title track, all three engineered at the right doomy tempi to support almost any forlorn note sequence the Graves can throw at them. That Swanö mastered this thing (yes, the same Swanö that didn’t master Brave Murder Day) lends that extra inch of credibility. Mother of Graves may not be advancing what Katatonia wrought decades ago, but that’s fine when it’s rendered with this level of conviction. —CHRIS DICK

OCCULT BURIAL

8

Burning Eerie Lore INVICTUS PRODUCTIONS/ E L E C T R I C A S S A U LT / STYGIAN BLACK HAND/ TEMPLE OF MYSTERY

Atavistic resistance

Canadian denim ‘n’ leather thrashers Occult 60 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

Thirty years of fine-tuning their mournful metal have turned My Dying Bride into a reliable machine, so an EP’s strengths might not turn heads the way they ought to. “A Secret Kiss” is the tastiest morsel, a sublime throwback to the early-’90s gothic rockers that made MDB’s career. The mostly spoken-word-and-synth “A Purse of Gold and Stars” offers a pleasant diversion from the Peaceville-esque pounding.

The title track offers 10 minutes of howling riffs that would be the best cut on any other artist’s release, but from the band whose discography includes vital EP dirges like The Barghest o’ Whitby, it comes across a little leaden. Even so, fans who stopped eating after The Angel and the Dark River should take at least a nibble of Macabre Cabaret. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

Burial slay an old-timey kind of extreme metal that—classic as it may be—went out of style decades ago. Yet, on their sophomore slasher, Burning Eerie Lore, the Ottawan trio executes this specific sound with so much panache and attitude, it’s like they’re not paying homage to the likes of Bathory, Venom and Mercyful Fate so much as they’re probably just possessed by the same demons. Don’t get it twisted: These tres hombres seem perfectly aware of what year it is.

No doubt that’s why they got so hard in their devolutionary ways.

For nine tracks straight, uninterrupted by anything even resembling an interlude, Occult Burial all but gaslight the listener with a barrage of vintage-style riffs—absolute whippers that somehow evaded all the fretboard predators of the ’80s—and vocals that bring to mind both King Diamond and a young Steve Souza.

Layered with solos and other six-string high jinks, shot full of the scrappy and energetic drumming of former Iron Dog Dan Lee, Burning Eerie Lore comes off as totally refreshing, rather than derivative. Simply because it goes for it and doesn’t look back.

After all, Burning Eerie Lore serves us to remind not so much that the ’80s ruled, but that metal used to be evil, loud, heavy and fun. There’s no denying that Occult Burial take themselves and

Imprison my ears

First off, the artwork for Pillory’s third full-length is hideously garish in a Michael Bay Transformers kind of way. There’s a good chance you’ll turn color-blind as a defensive mechanism after viewing it. The music within is just as hard on the senses: an exhausting combination of early 2000s chops-oversongcraft technical death metal, post-Calculating Infinity mathcore and Despised Icon-style dickswingin’ deathcore.

Jabbing, noodly riffs in odd time signatures; hyperspeed, erratic blasts; belching bass pops; guttural bellows, squeals and screams; breakdowns trying to disguise the fact that they’re breakdowns; structures that hyperactively jump codas without much in the way of coherence. Sound familiar? Well, those who paid attention to tech-death at the turn of the century were accosted weekly with this kind of soulless performative bilge, to the point of near-terminal migraine.

To make matters worse, there are needless attempts at adopting Meshuggah’s mechanisms with some of the stuttering groove sections, and after five irritating tracks, “Envisaged Transmutation” offers a plastic symphonic segue before reverting back to this everything-in-the-red, dynamics-free battery.

Multi-instrumentalist Darren Cesca (ex-Arsis, Deeds of Flesh, other brutal DM acts) is surely equipped with a huge amount of musical ability—that’s not in dispute. But why the hell he continues to use his talents to write this pointless tech-dreck is beyond comprehension.

Cephalic Carnage did this style a million times better 20 years ago, and even they got bored to the tits with it back in 2010. —DEAN BROWN

NADER SADEK

8

The Serapeum SELF-RELEASED

Free Nader Sadek!

While Nile get the silver Osiris statue for their storied, if collegiate (Egypt-informed) death metal, actual Egyptian-American musician/visual artist Nader Sadek receives free passage to the afterlife for recording parts of this new EP in the

PHOTO BY JOHN STEEL

MY DYING BRIDE, Macabre Cabaret

7

FRAYLE

NATHANIEL SHANNON & The Vanishing Twin

BURNING TONGUE

Formats: digital / streaming / T-SHIRT

Formats: Emphemeral Cassette Box, digital / streaming

Formats: Vinyl record, printed book, digital / streaming

“Haunting, hypnotic mix of crushing Sleep-style doom and cooing ethereal vocals à la Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser.”

–Revolver

“There are very few times that you listen to music & it’s something brand new with its own identity & style.

A dark dreamscape of life with faceless people & the distant sound of sirens.”–Steve Austin (Today is the Day).

Prisoner’s Cinema, is eleven new songs of crushing nihilism that nod to the shadowy side of hardcore punk– This is real hate, played real fast.

COMING SOON

RING OF FIRE

THE THREE MOTHERS

LISTEN

PRISONER’S CINEMA

BUY

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Pyramid of Sneferu. That’s right—Sadek, who apparently is under perpetual watch of Egypt’s National Security Agency, invoked timeless spirits (and secured his death metal cred for eternity) by officially fulfilling his role as “Mouth of Death.” That he (with the help of Cairometal.net) brought Nile’s Karl Sanders, ex-Hate Eternal drummer Derek Roddy and Perversion’s Mahmud Gecekusu to spill blood for The Serapeum creatively is another confrontation-free ticket through the Underworld.

Years ago, in this very publication, I described Nader Sadek’s previous effort, The Malefic: Chapter III, as “masterclass.” Based on the punishing and supremely dark death metal on offer with The Serapeum, that sentiment holds true today as well. Spread across “four” tracks, the multi-year, many-headed beast is orchestrated with heart and skill. Think Vader, Behemoth and Immolation in a single, gilded (and cursed) sarcophagus, but with hair-raising atmosphere.

Sadek’s compositions operate on an axis of savagery and obliqueness. The purity of death metal is retained, but not always confined. The opening notes of “The Serapeum: Black Osiris” and “The Serapeum: Polluted Waters” provide a glimpse into mercurial waters, and offer the scent of wavering kyphi before they descend into the crushing weight of gold-tipped pyramidal capstones. Here, Sadek (and team) craft out of primal determination and spirited resolve some of the best death metal this side of the Upper (or is it Lower?) Nile River. The Year of Corona may have been foretold in ancient texts, but the bedamned priests of old didn’t see The Serapeum coming! —CHRIS DICK

SONIC FLOWER

7

Rides Again

H E AV Y P SYC H S O U N D S

The second coming

Need a cold shot of Japanese doom boogie to tide you over until the next Church of Misery bloodbath? Founding serial killer scholar Tatsu Mikami reanimated his millennial side project Sonic Flower a decade and a half after a seismic bow in 2003. Its six-song, 25-minute artifact bloomed a big, bashing, Bonham-esque slab of mammoth instrumental rock crossing the proton beams of Mikami’s Old Testament bass and lysergic spasms from Takenori Hoshi’s axe mania.

Material from a follow-up session two years later, wherein the group splintered, Rides Again 62 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

floors exploratory, knuckle-cracking jams. As such, its seven tracks in 28 minutes double the Sonic Flower catalog, while adding another shovelful of raw sediment atop Mikami’s heaping mound of greater heavyosity. Redline distortion levels and a no-fi capture make it sound like they baked these tapes in order to recover them.

“Black Sheep” brays pure Sabbath, “Jungle Cruise” devolutionizes drum circles and “Captain Frost” uncorks a crude slam dance. Rip it up, break it down, shred it around. “Quicksand Planet” romps and stomps. For proto-metal archivist Mikami, whose covers range from the classic (Blue Öyster Cult, Iron Butterfly, Saint Vitus) to the classically obscure (Cactus, Gun, Sir Lord Baltimore), a stab at the Meters’ “Stay Away” spirals off into synthesized keyboards and phased drums, but Graham Central Station’s “Earthquake” unleashes locomotive funk.

Better still, Mikami and Hoshi, hatchet man on COM’s seminal The Second Coming, recruited Kazuhiro Asaeda to sing in a Sonic Flower currently working up a new album. Original vocalist per 1996’s Vol. 1, Asaeda now leans this satellite group into three-quarters of a vintage Church of Misery reunion with Eternal Elysium psych whirlpool Toshiaki Umemura on drums.

—RAOUL HERNANDEZ

TO DUST

8

Nightmare Cycles SEEING RED

The sound of Napalm in the morning

Considering that the new Napalm Death was crowned best record of 2020 by my fellow Decibel writers, it would be professional suicide to criticize Nightmare Cycles, an EP that shares much of that same DNA. But self-preservation is irrelevant because To Dust are pretty great.

As mentioned, this duo drinks fully from the hardcore punk side of grind, maximizing the hooky riffage without skimping on outright blasting. The four tracks are bona fide pit starters, with D-beats and bulldozing HM-2 guitar distortion and all the good shit you love from the last few decades. And special attention should be paid to the drums here, which are all programmed. In the end, it doesn’t really matter if it’s man or machine doing the actual playing, but the whole process here is really a testament to how not having a drummer or a room to record them in is no longer an excuse if you have the skill and creativity.

The only complaint here really isn’t one: This is an EP, which means it’s short. About 12

minutes. It’s hard to have an issue with a band getting in, getting it done and not wasting your fucking time, but it would have been nice if they hit one more grind standard and included a sludgy dirge just to round it out.

But we can wait for that when the follow-up comes around. To Dust are paying homage to a genre while carving out their own spot.

Let the Nightmare Cycles keep on turning.

—SHANE MEHLING

WARDRUNA

8

Kvitravn

SONY MUSIC

Everything’s rune(d)

It’s a rare outfit that can rank on Billboard’s World Music Charts while simultaneously rearing its head in this here snaggletoothed publication, but in Wardruna’s case—if you squint—the duality makes sense considering the group’s familial pedigree (think Gorgoroth, Sahg, Dead to This World). And hey, if those associations are reassuring enough to prompt the workaday metalhead to investigate Wardruna’s foreboding, Nordic-folk oeuvre, the more the better.

Unlike other similarly anachronistic projects (Blood of the Black Owl, Wovserpent, Senmuth), Wardruna don’t tip their leather skullcap to any melodic traditions past roughly the 11th century, so leave your bulletbelts and pit etiquette at the door; you won’t be needing them here. The band’s antediluvian maneuvers appear reluctantly evoked from antiquity and thrust into an ill-fitting, cosmopolitan hellscape of microwave Johnny Cakes and winky-face emoticons.

Wardruna offer dour, pulsing passages that build slowly and without care for newfangled melodic contrivances. The speakers almost weep an oily sacrificial smoke as harmonies expand by dint of coiling repetition into menacing, but meaningful form. Personally speaking, I don’t find it particularly useful to regard this sort of effort through any sort of anthropological or folkloristic lens. Rather, it’s best to accept Wardruna’s animistic summons at face value and wander wheresoever the ceremony takes you. Sure, a few tracks found here—such as the sovereign-toned closer “Andvevarljod” or the uneasy title track—may stand out due to boasting more contemporary structures, but this record is best absorbed as a gestalt as one listens to the thunderstorm itself, as opposed to the isolated patter of a raindrop. Therein lies the weird authority of this ancient orison.

—FORREST PITTS

DECIBEL : FEBRUARY 2021 : 6 3

by

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

OF

KING DIAMOND AND THE

INIMITABLE SMELL OF BLOOD T

here are two types of music that seem to embrace what I’ve always felt to be a truism, which is simply that there might arise an occasion where the only solution to whatever problem you’re having is a punch in the face. Either giving or receiving.

Hip-hop seems to understand this, as does metal.

And yet, the fact that this position seems/feels like an outlier is shocking. Or put another way, why is that mere statement of fact shocking to so many? Like Octave Mirbeau said in his great book The Torture Garden, there are some backs that cry out for the knife.

So it is when we get the call: “Hey, you want to play a show with King Diamond?”

This was one of the rock ‘n’ roll fantasy moments, since the answer was always going to be YES. Because of Abigail, “Them” and probably a half-a-dozen other reasons.

We start postering and handbilling and all the rest of the stuff you used to do to get people to come to your shows. Show night, we were 64 : FEBRUARY 2021 : DECIBEL

geeked beyond measure. Drive into load-in and the promoter pulls me into his office.

“OK. There’s been a change.”

“Yeah?” It’s not an Oxbow deal without a fucking being part of it.

“Your set is 20 minutes now.”

A fucking thing that we’ve learned to say NO to.

“Ah, OK. Tell you what: You don’t need us on the bill. Our contract, that you signed, said 30 minutes.

We developed a good 30-minute set. Twenty won’t work. So, lemme get our stuff loaded out and we’ll leave.” I rise to stand.

“No, no, no. Tell you what: It’s OK. Play your 30 minutes.”

To anyone reading this now, the end is as predictable as it was surprising for us at the time. At 20 minutes, they cut the power.

Now, prior to this, King Diamond and crew had been super nice. We knew enough to give the headliner their propers, and their space. However, minutes before our set was to begin, a beefy Danish roadie was screaming at us to start. In literary terms? Yes, foreshadowing. Since

the power got cut, the fact that there are some who think telling lies will have no consequences?

Still stunning.

Because that’s right around when all hell broke loose.

The PA stacks and monitor wedges were yanked into the audience.

The lying promoter sent bouncers to come fetch us. A mic stand was unscrewed from its base and was being lightsabered around at bouncers who had very little interest in removing an angry, nearly naked Black dude with five feet of steel in his hands.

The audience? Booing us. Right up until the bouncers showed up.

Then, cheers.

The bouncers were pleading with me to put down the mic stand. Envisioning a call going out to the cops about a Black guy with a weapon got me to thinking. So, I threw it into the audience and raised my fists. Angry enough that the blood in the air might as well have been real.

This went on for 20 minutes. The lying promoter had cut our set at

20 minutes, and then the battle went on for another 20 minutes before we saw the cops moving up toward the stage, who shared with me a simple question: “Would you like to go to jail tonight?”

Since the answer to that question will always be NO, we called an end to our “riot.”

Moving backstage as we packed, the Danes avoided us as the police oversaw the load-out and the bouncers stood behind the cops.

Of course, after we loaded, we stayed to get paid and watch King Diamond. For no other reason than that was the most uncomfortable thing for all involved.

Their stage set-up had upsidedown crosses, fake blood and corpses draped over altars.

No idea if they are always that good, as we’ve, surprisingly, never been invited to play with them again, but they were pretty great that night. For which we will gladly take all of the credit/blame.

Just something about real violence that makes fake violence so much nicer.

ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE