Decibel #199 - May 2021

MOB RULES HALL OF FAME

GOJIRA THE Q&A… OF DEATH!

ZAO

STARING INTO THE VOID

OBSCURA IN THE STUDIO

REFUSE/RESIST

BARNABY

STRUVE

FLEXI DISC

1 9 7 2 - 2 0 21

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ALSO

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

Death MAY 2021 // No. 199

ConquEring

SMITH / KOTZEN

The debut album from guitarists / vocalists Adrian Smith & Richie Kotzen out on 26th March 2021 Featuring 9 songs evocative of the classic rock bands of the ’70s brought bang up to date with punchy hooks, harmonies & sheer guitar virtuosity from two of rock’s most respected musicians INCLUDES

TAKING MY CHANCES “The perfect collaboration from two of Rock’s greats” Paul Anthony, Planet Rock Radio

CD · Limited Edition Red/Black Smoke Vinyl · Black Vinyl · Digital www.smithkotzen.com

The Self-Titled Full Length Album Available March 12th 2021

WWW.CLOSEDCASKETACTIVITIES.COM

· WWW.GODSHATE.US

EXTREMELY EXTREME

May 2021 [R 199] decibelmagazine.com

52

Necrogenic Resurrection COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY ALEX MORGAN

upfront

features

reviews 63 lead review Black Metal vets Vreid share their tough love for their homeland on Wild North West

8 metal muthas Heaven sent

14 solstice Coming up triple sixes

24 the lion’s daughter Synthetic skin

32 zao Forever true

10 low culture All the small things

16 bongzilla Legalize(d) it

11 no corporate beer To Evil!

18 genghis tron Unboard the house

26 wode A long, hard look in the mirrors

34 q&a: gojira Joe Duplantier wants to save the world, even if we can‘t save ourselves

12 in the studio:

20 bewitcher Fun isn‘t a four-letter word

obscura

Turn the page

22 spectral wound Blood drunk

28 sanguisugabogg Corrosion of gender conformity 30 mare cognitum Black and blue

38 exclusive:

rotting ways to misery excerpt In which Amorphis put Finland on the death metal map

42 the decibel

hall of fame

64 album reviews Releases from bands that would really like their $2,000 checks right about now, including Eyehategod, Haunt and Wolf King 80 damage ink At dawn he slept

An album worthy of breaking our sacred rule, Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules marks yet another milestone for the storied masters

Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $29.95. Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials. Postmaster send changes of address for Decibel to Red Flag Media, 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia PA 19107. © 2021 by Red Flag Media, Inc. ISSN 1557-2137 | USPS 023142 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.

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REFUSE/RESIST

May 2021 [T199] PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

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ART DIRECTOR

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BOOKCREEPER

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ILLUSTRATION BY LITTLE BROTHER MUDRIAN

My home office does not have a door.

The towering Ikea Kallax—buckling under the stress of records, magazines and books—barely serves as room divider, let alone any significant deterrent from entry. The lack of barriers also allows virtually anything to escape. One is the daily sound of extreme metal, which my two children—having been regularly exposed to the stuff since their births—simply dismiss as “daddy music.”

A year into the pandemic and neither has returned to in-person school, which means I have prepared a lot of lunches and they have heard a lot of metal records. While my grilled cheese game has never been stronger, big sister remains a firm skeptic of the latter. She occasionally asks unsolicited questions like, “Why would anyone want to listen to this?” Which is something I’ve also pondered, depending on how many new releases I’ve screened that day.

Little brother, on the other hand, has displayed more curiosity (though I suspect his initial motivation to hang out in dad’s noisy office was to avoid his writing assignments). He first took a shine to Tribulation; to his credit, never questioning the growled vocals (whenever I’d play something with traditional sung vocals, he’d immediately request something “more deathy”). More importantly, any songs not performed up-tempo were quickly rejected, as they failed to provide a suitable soundtrack for jumping up and down on the guest bed right next to my office.

With his interest in galloping rhythms noted, I played him “The Trooper.” Then “2 Minutes to Midnight.” Then—what would prove to be his favorite—“Iron Maiden.” By the time he laid on eyes on some of the cover art, my 6-year-old was fully entranced by the Maiden universe.

A month or so into his immersion, I have exhausted every note of Maiden I can access. OK, so maybe not all of the Blaze era, or the two Smith-less records that preceded it, but I can definitely now rank all 11 Iron Maiden live albums if I had the space. (Hot tip: En Vivo! is a sleeper masterwork.) Fortunately, his Maiden mania remains so strong that it functions as an incentive to get him to complete his schoolwork. (“Finish Social Studies and then you can listen to ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’”) At the very least, his unsolicited rendition of the self-titled album cover should net him extra credit points in Art. I’m still not certain when he’ll be back in a schoolroom, but I’m sure if someone like this issue’s Reader of the Month winds up in his class, their band is going to rule.

Patty Moran

CUSTOMER SERVICE

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

READER OF THE

MONTH forward to going back to school? What have you been doing with all of your extra time?

We are back in school in person. I go to Montessori school. I have been reading a lot. Like Highlights, Decibel, Mad Libs, NatGeo Kids and The One and Only Ivan (with my dad). Metal-detecting for Civil War stuff, looking for old bottles, shooting my BB gun. Listening to podcasts. And playing with my sister.

Lela Jane Barry (age: 8) Richmond, VA

Congrats on usurping your father’s Decibel subscription! He’s a local legend in the Richmond punk rock scene. Does he give you the freedom to be different? Whose friends are weirder: his or yours?

Yes, he does let me be myself. He lets me dress how I want and listen to whatever music I want. But he doesn’t let me watch TV or use the computer much. My friends are weirder and crazier than his. Daddy’s friends are a lot of fun, but not very weird.

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If you could be the editor of Decibel for one month, who would you put on the cover? And who would you want to feature inside?

I’d put Joan Jett on the cover because she is my favorite singer. “Bad Reputation” is my favorite song right now. Inside, I’d put a Richmond band like Municipal Waste, even though they were in there [recently]. Or a band like the Distillers.

Right now, most kids your age have been at home during the pandemic. Are you looking

My friends are weirder and crazier than [my dad’s].

Daddy’s friends are a lot of fun, but not very weird.

What do you think the world will be like in 20 years?

I think the world will be weird and crazy and fun.

I hope to be in a band—punk, metal or rock.

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

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

Well, here are the records that we spun most while trying to get Iron Maiden into the only Hall of Fame you should give a shit about.

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

This Month's Mutha: Tara-Leigh Tarantola Mutha of Austin Haines of Outer Heaven

Tell us a little about yourself.

As a full-time professional, I am a communications manager at a large medical device company.

My spare time is spent babysitting Austin’s son (sorry, I mean dog) Ozzy.

We understand you volunteered to be a Metal Mutha after stumbling upon the column in a back issue. How metal are you, compared to your son?

I don’t consider myself “metal,” but more of a “metal supporter.” Austin and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum as far as musical tastes, but his father used to listen to bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden. I am more of a country or coffeehouse-type music fan, but I have always supported Austin’s interests and dreams, so I am thrilled that he has such a passion for it, and I always look forward to listening to Outer Heaven’s new songs. I’m proud to say that I have fed and hosted many metal bands overnight in my home during tours, and have found them to be some of the nicest people on earth.

Have you sampled NecroGenesis, Outer Heaven’s collaboration beer with the Adroit Theory brewery?

Of course! Mushrooms, maple syrup, brown sugar and vanilla. What’s not to like? We keep an empty bottle to show off on our back deck bar.

Austin’s lyrics are pretty wild, touching on hallucinogenic-inspired cannibalism. Did he exhibit an interest in writing at a young age?

Austin was always very creative, and his 8 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

elementary school stories were epic! During his high school years, I’d find his writings in little notebooks, on backs of envelopes and on sheets of paper all over the house. I had no idea at the time that they were lyrics to songs. I thought maybe they were just random thoughts or poems, like he was trying to work something out in his head. I’m glad he wasn't making plans to be a cannibal, and I can also see that my expert oversight on his vocabulary and spelling all those years paid off!

Realms of Eternal Decay was our 20th favorite album of 2018. Any other accolades in your son’s past that we should know about?

I was so proud after high school when he was accepted into an audio engineering program in Baltimore, and then graduated as one of the top students in his class. He built a recording studio in our basement, and even recorded a finalist from The Voice.

What is something most people don’t know about Austin?

My favorite question! Austin is actually very shy and a homebody. I sometimes think his performing is a way to overcome that, giving him a platform to express himself through a different voice. He is an extreme perfectionist, loyal to a fault, and behind the tough tattooed exterior, he’s very sensitive. He can also be extremely stubborn. Ask him about the time he failed gym class because he refused to take out his piercings! —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Iron Maiden, Powerslave  Iron Maiden, Piece of Mind  Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast  Iron Maiden, Somewhere in Time  Iron Maiden, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  The Black Angels, Directions to See a Ghost  Sonic Jesus, Grace  Gravediggaz, Just When You Thought It Was Over  SQÜRL & Jozef Van Wissem, Only Lovers Left Alive  Kælan Mikla, Nótt eftir nótt ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Cannibal Corpse, Violence Unimagined  The Crown, Royal Destroyer  Cannibal Corpse, Gore Obsessed  Socioclast, Socioclast  Slow Machine, Black Tide ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Power Trip, “Hornet’s Nest”  Cannibal Corpse, Violence Unimagined  The Red Chord, Fused Together in Revolving Doors  Mutilation Rites, Empyrean  The Crown, Royal Destroyer ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Insect Warfare, World Extermination  Frozen Soul, Crypt of Ice  Nunslaughter, Hells Unholy Fire  I Hate Myself, 11 Songs  Horrendous, Sweet Blasphemies

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Marko Tervonen : t h e c r o w n  Deicide, Once Upon the Cross  Type O Negative, World Coming Down  Mötley Crüe, Shout at the Devil  Paradise Lost, Icon  Hellripper, Coagulating Darkness

TRAPPIST FRONTMAN crafts a monthly journey through

MORBID ALES Countdown: Five Weeks n a little over a month, I’ll have expe-

rienced two momentous life events: My daughter will be born, and I’ll have hired and trained 50 people over the last 10 weeks for work. At the same goddamn time.

This means a massive change in how my time is spent and what my life will look like. I managed to get out of the job that was killing me and into something lucrative and challenging, and I didn’t pull out, which also has consequences catapulting me into deeper adulthood. So, you would think this would be a time of reflection for me; about how I’ve pulled my shit together and should be maturely considering my life.

You’d be absolutely fucking wrong.

Because for the last two weeks or so, I’ve allowed a pea underneath my mattress (Google it) to ruin my train of thought. And that pea is how much I despise the use of “blackened” as a descriptive for a band. Jesus, that’s a fucking awful signifier. It generally means some asshole is screaming in a higher pitch than whatever genre said asshole’s shitty band is in. Or there’s some melody in the guitar playing, but it’s not slow enough to be called “doomy” (also a shitty adjective). Or a bit of both, mostly in “blackened grind,” sort of a shit runway down the middle of the genre’s briefs.

Labels and press people love this. It’s the apex of lazy descriptions and somehow is always “served up” à la “Shit Hammer serves up a heaping mass (or some other equally boring way of describing a record, usually around the idea that the music is fucking food being prepared, which I guess makes sense since we’re pretty much reduced to being consumers at this point) of blackened doomy grind!” followed by a list of 1 0 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

three dozen similar artists, because fuck anything having its own identity anymore.

I don’t know how I would change the format of descriptions because it also gives my dickhole a paper cut when I see a press piece or review that has fucking nothing to do with the music, but is some kind of short story about dungeons or battlefields (ancient or contemporary, take your pick), or some kind of extended metaphor that’s more the writer jerking themselves off for no one’s entertainment or enlightenment. Again, almost entirely written around black metal or something that has black metal influences.

I’m told I get irritated over meaningless things. There’s a guy across the street from where I was working for the last month who still has his pumpkins out in February, and I’ve probably bitched more about that than talked about how excited I am to be a father. Will this sort of shit ease off once I have a kid? My cat Spaghetti turned into a mean bitch once she was fixed. Is this my fate? Jesus Christ, that’s a sad life.

Regardless, I don’t see anyone changing their lazy writing anytime soon, and we’ll be hearing about “platters of blackened expressions” being served up until the end of time; but truth be told, that’s probably a good thing, because it helps me steer right the fuck away from those records, as it just announces that I’m going to be bored by them. I think one of the labels that did the Twilight records described us as “blackened,” which is probably why those records sold like shit (and probably why I seem to be triggered by it). Who knows?

Join me again next month when I discuss crowning and changing diapers.

BY CHRIS DODGE

Barnaby Struve (1972 – 2021)

S

eriously, fuck this decade. This

is the column I never wanted to write. Barnaby Struve has passed.

He was the molten solder that fused the worlds of metal and beer.

Trailblazing extreme brewer, 3 Floyds, Wayfinder Beer, Puppy Mill Recordings, artist, roadie, one-man think tank, iconic mad scientist. Pay homage. Even if you didn’t know him, you owe him. Go pour one out for Barnaby; a beer or a greyhound will do. “To Evil!”

Todd Haug (3 Floyds, Powermad): In 2012,

as Barnaby and I lamented how craft beer was lousy with hippies and not with headbangers, it was obvious that we could do more. A slogan was born: “Bludgeoning the hippies out of craft beer.” And the rest is history. R.I.P., my friend Barnaby.

Chris Boggess (3 Floyds): [One] time I tricked him into going to see Mötley Crüe at the Summit in Houston. I think it was in ’95. Barnaby hated Mötley Crüe, but he started the “CRÜE! CRÜE! CRÜE!” chant in our section, saying, “I had to… my hands were tied.”

Gone too soon  The worlds of metal and craft beer mourn the loss of a legend

Jason Parris (WAKE Brewing): [He] was a legend, rock star, mythical

creature and solid dude. He is the reason you have metal band and brewery collaborations, and metal breweries like WAKE. First time going over to Barnaby’s house: tons of weird taxidermy, surgical tools, fucking wall-size David Yow painting. A backdrop to some acid-tripped Scooby-Doo nightmare. He looks over at me and says, “Jason, check this out,” walks over to a bookcase and I am like, “Don’t fucking tell me you have a secret room.” I shit you not, Barnaby pulls on a book and a door opens to another room. Barnaby was one of those raw souls who truly forged his own fucking way; we should all try to be more like him with our lives. Loose.

Matt Jacobson (Relapse Records, Wayfinder Beer): Barnaby was truly one of a kind. A connector, a creator, a character, a crazy fuck in the best way. You are missed, my friend. See you on the dark side.

Blake Harrison (Pig Destroyer): Barnaby was a rare soul, a wild man, a fun person to be around. One year at Maryland Deathfest, we were walking over to one of the indoor venues. Barnaby hands me his drink to help him finish faster. I was about to take a huge gulp of whatever swill he had in his cup, and he yells, “Stop, stop, don’t drink that!” Barnaby had dosed his drink with LSD, so he’d be flying high for Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. I haven’t done acid in about 25 years, so I’m glad he caught me in time. Typical Barn...

Dave Witte (Municipal Waste): I have so many amazing memories of him; he was so razor-sharp and spontaneously fun, it was off the charts. He was so versatile, encouraging and charismatic. Hilarious.

The total package. A true sage. Barnaby is the center of our universe in the metal and beer world. He made it happen, he brought us all together. It’s all because of him, and we owe everything to him for lighting the flames. All hail Saint Barnabus.

STEEL BEARING HAND - SLAY IN HELL ASH013

Out from the wastes of Cimmeria, Steel Bearing Hand has come to tread the jeweled thrones of the earth with booted feet, overthrow the heretical tyrants and sacrilegious interlopers who corrupt the sanctity of Metal and... SLAY IN HELL!

CARBONIZEDRECORDS.COM

Melanie Pierce (Brewbies): He was a unicorn. He managed to connect

so many worlds, always being the common denominator. He only lived with an open heart and an open door policy. If you needed him for a meal, he’d turn into Martha Stewart. A new record to listen to? He’d send you the most obscure thing in his brain. A hug? You will be engulfed by the sweetness of this man. A greyhound? Well, no questions asked there. A place to sleep for you or your friend? The key is hanging up at the Map Room… He was always there. Who the fuck else do you know that has a taxidermied hippo in their house?!

Thank you for years of unconditional everything. Rest in power.

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

OBSCURA

STUDIO REPORT

OBSCURA ALBUM TITLE

TBA PRODUCER

Fredrik Nordström STUDIOS

Studio Fredman (Gothenburg, Sweden); Stress Studio (Graz, Austria) STUDIO DATES

December 2020 – April 2021 RELEASE DATE

TBA LABEL

Nuclear Blast

G

erman tech-death lodestars Obscura are months away

from completing the follow-up to 2018’s highly lauded Diluvium. Over the plague-ridden backbone of 2020 and 2021, the Bavarians have completed pre-production and finished up recording newcomer David Diepold’s drums, as well as Steffen Kummerer, Christian Münzner and Jeroen Paul Thesseling’s rhythm and bass guitars at Stress Studio in Graz, Austria. They’re now setting their sights on the finishing touches—acoustic/clean guitars and vocals—with studio maven Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman in Gothenburg, Sweden.

“Working in a studio environment changed for the band over the years,” says mainman Kummerer. “As a musician, engineer and producer, you gain more knowledge with every project. A major part of producing a new record happens before you enter a studio. My principle contains the separation of performance and artistic decisions from a studio session. If the creative part has been completed entirely before you enter a recording studio, you have more room to focus on your performance. The better you are prepared, the better the album turns out. We adjust and improve with every release, so I see barely a routine.

Of course, it helps if you gained experience over the years.”

Obscura’s still-untitled sixth full-length is part of Kummerer’s long-term vision. Diluvium closed a four-album concept, played out over a 10-year timespan. The next chapter will find Obscura traversing new unimaginable vectors without destroying the precious DNA of previous albums. The reconfigured lineup sifted through 22 outlines before choosing the best parts for songs that have evolved from the outer rims of “Emergent Evolution,” “Akróasis” and “Incarnated.” The result: an “exceptionally smooth” songwriting term.

“Our new album follows the path we entered in 2002,” Kummerer concludes. “Within the last 19 years, we created our very own niche, our own sound and kept all trademarks we established. At the same time, every album feels like a reincarnation, and so does the new record. We do not repeat ourselves and reinvent the band’s signature sound with every album. If you like any of the last five records, you will love the new one!” —CHRIS DICK

STUDIO SHORT SHOTS

MAX CAVALERA RECRUITS ENGINEER ARTHUR RIZK FOR NEW SOULFLY LP “Me and Zyon worked really hard on this record,” proud papa Max Cavalera enthuses about the elbow grease he and his drumming son expended in piecing together the building blocks of Soulfly’s forthcoming 12th album. “We practiced three to four times a week since May of last year. I haven’t practiced that much for an album since [Sepultura’s] Arise, maybe.”

Cavelera’s excitement also has him quick to reveal the other secret

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

ingredients comprising the band’s next recorded chapter.

“The studio we’re recording at is called Platinum Underground, and it’s insane!” he exults. “It’s actually underground, like a bunker in the middle of the desert, and is a massive space with a huge live room for drums. And we’ve got Arthur Rizk producing. I’m a huge Arthur fan and love what he’s done with Power Trip, Code Orange, Black Curse and Outer Heaven.

We thought it would be cool to take the world of the extreme underground and mix it with Soulfly percussion and groove.

We’re just going off on all kinds of crazy ideas with no barriers. The record is turning out really fucking wild!”

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

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SOLSTICE

SOLSTICE

A new era rises for seminal Florida death/thrash stalwarts

S

toried miami death/thrashers solstice have waited 12 years for the release of new album Casting the Die. Spearheaded by guitarist Dennis Munoz (Iniquitous) and drummer Alex Marquez (ex-Malevolent Creation), Solstice slowly, yet methodically picked up the pieces with the recruitment of then-16-year-old phenom Ryan Taylor (ex-Condition Critical) and bass maestro Marcel Salas (Cyst) in 2013 and 2017, respectively. Surreptitiously, the reconfigured lineup wrote and recorded Casting the Die, finishing up before Munoz relocated to San Antonio, where he headquartered his new Synergy Sound Studios. Casting the Die’s aggro death was then tweaked, mixed and completed by Munoz in 2018. Ever since, Solstice have bided their time while also searching for the right label partner. ¶ “We hadn’t really been an active band [since 2009’s] To Dust,” says Munoz. “Members lived in different areas. Members were not able to commit to touring, etc., until Ryan came into the fold in 2013. After he joined, we had just been focusing on getting the band on the road finally, and getting the band out there for the fans that had been waiting a long time to see us, 1 4 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

and to finally give the band the attention it deserved in general.”

That’s exactly what happened.

Over the course of several years, Solstice performed in the States— delivering a raucous Maryland Deathfest XIII appearance—and across Europe’s festival circuit. A split with Russia-based Cist also surfaced in support of new activity on Unspeakable Axe Records. With Taylor (and then Salas) in the band, songwriting sessions were fruitful.

Together, the band completed Casting the Die closer “Scratch” first, which features original guitarist/vocalist Rob Barrett and friend/bass wizard Tony Choy. From there, Solstice put together 10 more songs—from the galloping savagery of “The Altruist” to the severely staccato “Outlast”— that were more in line sonically with the band’s unsung gems from the Steamhammer era.

“Casting the Die is definitely more akin to the first two albums’ sound

and style, as opposed to To Dust,” Munoz says. “There are some fresh elements on this new one that weren’t overly prevalent in the past, such as Marcel’s bass playing.

You’ll actually find some nice slap parts on here, and something else that wasn’t done too much before that you’ll find on the new one is the trade-off solos—a lot of Munoz/ Taylor action going on.”

As underground hordes feverishly await Casting the Die, they’ll also wholeheartedly hail the official reissue of Solstice’s back catalog—including the band’s Demo 1991—on new label Emanzipation Productions. Additionally, the group is planning to release its firstever live album, from their Gebr. de Nobel gig in Leiden, Netherlands.

But until then, they’re weathering the COVID-19 storm, waiting for their chance to bring their famed death/thrash to metalheads the world over. —CHRIS DICK

BONGZILLA

BONGZILLA

Wisconsin volume dealers emerge from smoke with first new LP in 16 years

A

s you can hear,” Mikey “Muleboy” Makela croaks between coughing jags, “I haven’t stopped or slowed down at all. And I’m not stopping, even for this interview.” ¶ The Bongzilla bassist/vocalist (and former guitarist) is sputtering out his response to Decibel asking whether liberalizing attitudes and growing decriminalization/legalization across the United States and around the world have changed his relationship with the leafy green substance his band have circled their professional and personal wagons around since, well, forever. ¶ “Well, it’s not legal in Wisconsin, but here in Madison they’ve decriminalized it to where you can carry a quarter-pound legally and you can smoke legally on private property,” he elaborates.

“I also quit drinking, which has increased my smoking amount.

[Laughs] I’ll eat about 300-500 mg of edibles a day, plus smoke half a gram of shatter and maybe a quarter or an eighth of weed a day. So, it’s not like I’m doing crazy, crazy amounts. The biggest change for us is that it makes life easier on tour—not that I can remember what touring is like—because in legal and nonlegal states alike, you can get really good marijuana anywhere.”

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In direct contradiction to Muleboy diversifying his intake portfolio and increasing the amount of THC easy-riding into his system, he and his bandmates—guitarist Jeff “Spanky” Schultz and drummer Mike “Magma” Henry—have amazingly managed to belie the stereotype of lazy stoners baked out on the couch with red eyes and Cheetostained fingers. Bongzilla’s newest and fifth full-length, Weedsconsin, continues the tradition of hazy stoner doom fronting pot puns, smoking songs and reverence for head shop culture with probably the rawest, sludgiest and dirtiest offering of their stash. (“We had a running joke in the studio, calling ourselves the ‘All-Bong Brothers Band.’”) Bongzilla took advantage of the first wave of the pandemic to finish the album, and being off the road for a year has allowed them to maintain a regular practice schedule with the result being a creative flurry, including the

christening of their own imprint, Gungeon Records.

“When we first got back together [after a hiatus from 2009-’15],” Muleboy hacks, “in the first two or three years, we probably wrote three songs because [ex-bassist] Cooter Brown was living in Minneapolis, Spanky lives in Green Bay, and when we would get together, it was to practice for shows or tours.

Cooter left, I started playing bass, and we were on tour for three days when COVID hit. Suddenly, we were getting together twice as week, every week, and we wrote Weedsconsin, a 7-inch for Wake Brewing, then a split with Tons. We’re also doing a Gungeon split 7-inch series with us and Boris, Bridge City Sinners, Weedeater, Dopethrone and possibly Pig Destroyer. I just got high and started calling friends one night. There was definitely a silver lining to that crazy COVID cloud.”

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

GENGHIS TRON

GENGHIS TRON Hey, they still made this album three years faster than it took Bongzilla

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t the end of 2008, it seemed as though the world was Hamilton Jordan and Michael Sochynsky’s oyster. The pair were two-thirds of experimental outfit Genghis Tron.

Their sophomore effort, Board Up the House, had been named a Critics Choice album by The New York Times, among other accolades, including Decibel’s third favorite album of the year. Two years later, though, Genghis Tron went on hiatus, and after 13 years of almost total silence, it seemed as though the world had heard the last from Jordan and Sochynsky. ¶ “We always intended to write another album, but there was no timeline attached to that goal,” writes Jordan. The pair traded demos, seeing one another rarely, but keeping in touch for a decade. That changed in 2018. ¶ “We hung out for a weekend in New York, and without even planning to, we started writing a new song together,” Jordan continues. “It felt so good to be collaborating again, and we knew then that if we were ever going to make another album, we had to dive in and make it happen.” Now, they’ve completed the third Genghis Tron album, Dream Weapon.

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The pair continued without founding vocalist Mookie Singerman. “When Michael and I first started writing the new album, we had assumed Mookie would be involved,” says Jordan. “But once we got serious about actually finishing the thing and reaching out to Relapse, we all realized that Mookie would not be able to put the time and effort into the album that it needed. The three of us decided that it would be best for us to move on without him, and he gave his blessing for us to work with someone new.”

Genghis Tron’s new vocalist, Tony Wolski, stepped in after being introduced to Jordan two years earlier, referred by none other than Kurt Ballou, who also produced Dream Weapon. He’s not the only addition to the band, either. For the first time, instead of a drum machine, Genghis Tron have a drummer— Nick Yacyshyn.

Yacyshyn’s name should be familiar to some Decibel readers—he sits behind the kit for Sumac as well as Baptists, and is known for his intense drumming. He came to Jordan’s attention after the latter caught a Sumac show, and was the only percussionist considered for Genghis Tron.

“Early into our hiatus, we agreed that if we ever made music again, we wanted to play with a drummer,” Jordan says. However, Yacyshyn’s blast-free Dream Weapon performance is often measured, even minimal, befitting the more hypnotic and psychedelic nature of the album.

“When we started writing this album, we very quickly realized that trying to revisit or recreate the vibes on Board Up the House or [2006’s] Dead Mountain Mouth was not going to be interesting,” writes Sochynsky. “The thing we find interesting right now is writing music that you can get lost in.” —JOSEPH SCHAFER

BEWITCHER

Portland satanic speedsters chug from the chalice of rock ‘n’ roll

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here were countless reasons to be bummed about 2020. One of them was postponing the Decibel Metal & Beer Fest, where Portland hellions Bewitcher intended to rip it up for all us sinners at the official afterparty. But the momentum of breakthrough album Under the Witching Cross has not withered during the pandemic. After signing to Century Media, their label debut Cursed Be Thy Kingdom is a scaldinghot firebrand with satanic sizzle. It’s also a noticeable shift to embracing the classic metal and rock ‘n’ roll elements that have long lurked beneath their shroud of blackened thrash. ¶ “We all grew up listening to AC/DC and Guns [N’ Roses] and KISS and stuff,” shares vocalist/guitarist M. von Bewitcher, “So, we said, ‘Let’s make a rock record that just slams and kicks some ass.’ We’ve done the grimy, underground metal sound, and we always want to have that in the background and back of our minds. But we wanted to have that classic attitude for this one.” ¶ Cursed Be Thy Kingdom commences with a shimmer of guitar invoking the simmering heat of spaghetti westerns.

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Picture the iconic image of Motörhead on the Ace of Spades cover, posing like frontier outlaws under a burning sun. The album embraces the seductive melodies and structures of heavy metal before it was diced and divided into hundreds of subgenres. It’s fitting that the album was mastered by Cameron Webb, who polished records from metallic royalty like Motörhead and Megadeth. While “Valley of the Ravens” reveals Bewitcher’s foray into balladry, rollicking cuts like “Satanic Magick Attack” and “Sign of the Wolf” are still supercharged with an element that’s taboo in some extreme metal circles: fun.

“Fun has always been a word people use to describe us,” von Bewitcher states. “That wasn’t the point to begin with, but it’s become our thing. We obviously have fun doing this—why do it if it’s not fun? But if that comes through in the music and people have that

feeling when they listen to it, that’s cool with me. We’re just trying to recreate the feeling and danger for other people that the bands we listened to gave to us.”

From the sinister cover painting

by Paolo Girardi to the scythesweeping solos, Cursed Be Thy Kingdom sustains a sense of dangerous grandeur. Working with a major label hasn’t dulled the band’s sharpened hooks or DIY ethos. Because the devil is in the details, Bewitcher’s songwriting just incorporates a wider variety of textures on this record. From their exuberant tempos to their snarl-along choruses, they still embody satanism that smirks instead of scowls.

“It’s not like we’re up there trying to convince people we’re evil or whatever,” von Bewitcher laughs.

“I don’t think people expect us to be like Watain in a dungeon, worshipping the devil and shit.”

—SEAN FRASIER

PHOTO BY TIM KEENAN BURGESS

BEWITCHER

SPECTRAL WOUND

SPECTRAL WOUND Montréal vampires raise their brimming goblets to an eternity of decadence and drinking to live

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he true catastrophe is not that the end is nigh, but that it will never come,” says Spectral Wound, the Canadian melodic black metal quintet that speaks as one, even when on a tangent. “The day of reckoning remains, tantalizing, just beyond an ever-receding horizon. We comfort ourselves with our fears that the world is ending, but the awful banality of it is that it is not. Tomorrow will be worse.” ¶ Spectral Wound remember the original question, regarding the title of their forthcoming new full-length A Diabolic Thirst. They add, “Also, we fucking love drinking.” ¶ Out this spring on Profound Lore, A Diabolic Thirst counts six raucous and snarling hyperborean tracks of ice-clear, but blizzard-thick melodic black metal.

Spectral Wound insist, “There is no formula to the writing ... Our ambitions are simple, and we have no pretensions about pushing the genre into any ‘new’ territory, or feel any need to hide our influences. At the end of the day, black metal is fucking rock and roll.” ¶ All over A Diabolic Thirst, Spectral Wound demonstrate 2 2 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

what they mean, but by their third full-length, they’re come to truly grasp the art of the album as a composition itself. A portion of the credit, Spectral Wound say, must go to their new bassist.

“The lineup on A Diabolic Thirst is as it was for [2018’s] Infernal Decadence, with the exception, that in the interim, we recruited a new bassist, who has added a lot to the aural landscape of the band,” the band notes. “Samuel’s playing on A Diabolic Thirst adds tension and melody, and lends to the songs a dimension of space that would not have been achievable otherwise. He is an uncommonly intentional and nuanced player, and a true maniac.”

A Diabolic Thirst jumps from the speakers upon “play” like it’s been lying in wait for another victim.

Its blood- and beer-thirsty opener “Imperial Saison Noire” immediately launches into full-blown

blizzard beats and fretboard fury, as if the band had been dying to rip this album from the ether and trap it to tape. Turns out, that’s exactly the case.

According to the band, they “were just preparing to enter the studio when COVID hit,” which set them back significantly. “Once it became clear that the pandemic would not soon pass, we decided we needed to move forward and embrace these new conditions of our existence. The impact on A Diabolic Thirst is a reflection of that: all of the misery and existential dread we were steeping in, the total unmooring from a sense of futurity, and a final, furious desperation.”

Before we can even ask, they conclude, “How it would sound otherwise is anyone’s guess, but it was certainly more painful and obsessive a process than our previous efforts.” —DUTCH PEARCE

HE L L HA MM E R RECO RD S P RE S E N T S

BEYOND ACHERON

From the ashes of cult underground metal stalwarts ACHERON comes the debut release from VINCENT CROWLEY. US Edition on Hellhammer Records features 2 exclusive Bonus Tracks!

COMING JUNE 18, 2021

AVAILABLE IN LIMITED EDITION CD & COLORED VINYL

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THE LION’S DAUGHTER

THE LION’S DAUGHTER

Progressive Midwesterners strip things down on Skin Show

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xperimentation has always been the watchword for St. Louis sludge chameleons the Lion’s Daughter. Consisting of drummer Erik Ramsier, guitarist/bassist Scott Fogelbach and guitarist/vocalist Rick Giordano, the power trio began their career over a decade ago dabbling in knotted, blackened sludge before releasing 2013’s A Black Sea, a lush, cinematic album-length collaboration with Americana quintet Indian Blanket. ¶ “I’d hate for our band to become predictable at any point,” writes Giordano. “As childish as it may be, I’m more interested in provoking the listener or leaving them scratching their head. I’m not afraid to lose fans from record to record.” ¶ Giordano and company’s path took another left turn in 2018 when the former added electronics to his repertoire for their synthwave and industrial-tinged album Future Cult. That detour seems to have become the band’s main route—their newest iteration, Skin Show, expands on the synthesizers of its predecessor. “[On Future Cult] I felt we had finally found our identity, and through the utilization of synth textures, we achieved the sound that

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I’d always heard in my head,” Giordano says. “I would be surprised if they didn’t remain a part of our band from here on out.”

But Skin Show is no retread of a recent victory, either. Giordano describes the album as more of a sequel than a second season—one that pares their previously labyrinthine song structures into tight, hooky horror stories, accentuated by a clear, deep production job courtesy of Sanford Parker, who gave Skin Show the same focus he did Nachtmystium.

“I said jokingly that I wanted it to sound like an arena rock record,” Giordano says, “but there is also some truth to that. These songs are intentionally bigger and have more meat on their bones. We’ve made songs in the past that were a chaotic and complicated mess, and it was fun, but there are bands that do it much better, and we’ve already made those. Our intent with Skin Show was to make something larger

and more direct. Hooks and memorable melodies are not always bad things. Sometimes it’s OK for a song to just be a goddamn song.”

Then again, maybe Skin Show is more of a prequel than a sequel.

Lyrically and in terms of synthesizer choices, the album turns the clock back from the ’80s and looks to the sleazy pornographic heyday of ’70s Times Square for influence— a setting Giordano chose specifically for the challenge it presented.

“As a man, it’s easy to write about death and destruction,” he explains, “but it’s difficult and even a bit risky to write about the darker sides of something like sexuality. Especially in an era where exploitation and abuse are rampant like they are. But I can say with 100 percent confidence that if you think these lyrics are fucked up, it’s because you are fucked up.

I sleep just fine at night, and I’m the weirdo who wrote this shit.”

—JOSEPH SCHAFER

WODE

WODE

Manchester black metallers are united in their admiration of genres past and present

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ans were still in the honeymoon phase with Wode’s 2016 eponymous debut album when the Manchester, U.K., band followed up with 2017’s Servants of the Countercosmos. Not only were these two albums hailed for their sense of balance— reminiscent of black metal’s second wave; ferocious, yet melodic; uncontrived, but well-produced—but the speed with which they were released was rare. ¶ “On paper, it looks like we did the first album, smashed it and put out another one right away, which isn’t really what happened,” says drummer/guitarist/keyboardist T. Horrocks. “Because the first album took ages to come out. By the time it happened, we had so much written we could fire the next one out.” ¶ In contrast, Horrocks says, it seems like it took ages for Wode to release their latest record, Burn in Many Mirrors, but the band was busy touring as well as working on other projects. The pandemic didn’t help: The album’s targeted release collided with the week that COVID-19’s full impact became apparent in the U.K. That said, the extra time wasn’t all bad news.

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“We could listen to it just ourselves over a few months,” explains guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist M. Czerwoniuk.

“We could focus on synth parts a bit more,” Horrocks adds. “We had a bit more time to focus and work something good up.”

It was worth the wait. Joined by D. Shaw on guitar and backing vocals and E. Troup on bass, Horrocks and Czerwoniuk have delivered six tracks blazing with urgency, haunting fury, tight production and— weaving through a wicked crush of sound—melodies that dare you to call “catchy” a dirty word.

Burn in Many Mirrors is a natural evolution for Wode, formed by Horrocks and Czerwoniuk a decade ago. The band pulls in enough different elements to both keep fans on their toes and demonstrate the complexity that black metal can possess, without straying from a path of sonic hellfire. Fans of

classic black metal will never be disappointed by Wode, but they will be surprised and excited.

Horrocks and Czerwoniuk reference Oi! punk as a touchstone for the album, as well as “early European black metal before it became codified into a sound, where lots of bands had different influences,” Czerwoniuk says. “A lot of heavy metal creeps in naturally, which we like.”

Old-school heavy metal laces tracks like “Lunar Madness” and “Serpent’s Coil” in the form of powerful riffs. “Fire in the Hills” demonstrates Wode’s ability to mirror themes sonically, with riffs erupting like a growing wildfire.

“Sulphuric Glow” may be a black metal traditionalist’s favorite, while “Streams of Rapture (I, II, III)” indulges in slightly more experimental synth. Ultimately, Burn in Many Mirrors possesses a sense of danger with nightmarish appeal.

—COURTNEY ISEMAN

SANGUISUGABOGG

SANGUISUGABOGG

“Down-tuned drug death” band’s long-awaited debut will make you say “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee…”

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t’s pronounced sang-gwee-sue-guh-bog, and means a toilet that sucks blood out of your ass. It’s a portmanteau of the Latin “sanguisuga” (bloodsucker) and “bogg” from founding guitarist Cameron Boggs’ surname, and coincidentally is British slang for a toilet—the rare “happy” lavatory accident.

It’s a surreal moniker that could only work for a band born from an acid trip in a flooding Columbus, OH basement. ¶ Boggs since left the basement (and state), as Sanguisugabogg went from solo project to full band, from Maggot Stomp newcomers to Century Media breakouts on the back of four-song EP Pornographic Seizures.

Jokes about shirts outnumbering songs abound. Upcoming LP Tortured Whole won’t change that—it launched with plenty of apparel—but certainly solidifies the band, which embraces humor on their meme page and beyond. ¶ Throughout this Zoom interview, members constantly update their backgrounds to images NSFW or hilarious—often both at once. Boggs proudly asks, “Do you like how we trolled everyone in the world into saying tortured hole? Without actually just saying, like, ‘tortured asshole?” ¶ Shit yes. It also works as a mission statement,

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as drummer/producer Cody Davidson declares the title track “the most Sanguisugabogg song we have in the universe of Sanguisugabogg.”

The criteria has changed since their 2019 release.

“There’s [fewer] caveman riffs,” explains Boggs. “There’s a lot of weird timing parts. I got fed up with people being like ‘caveman riffs, low IQ.’ It’s not really that low IQ; I work really hard on this shit, so I tried to make it not so knuckle-draggy.”

After imitating his EP performance, vocalist Devin Swank recalibrated with the addition of gutturals, octave changes and pig squeals.

This is exemplified by Morticianapproved lead single “Menstrual Envy” and its Troma-helmed video in which the band demands a “Dong Clause” (“15+ inches”) be added to their contract. A bloodbath ensues.

The lyrics are decidedly less selfish, though still plenty bloody.

“It’s a love song—this guy’s old lady hates it when she’s menstruating,” explains Swank. “He infects

his dick with a harmful parasite and it starts eating the inside of the stomach, so he’s experiencing the closest thing to menstruating.”

Another song’s romantic lead brings his necrophiliac lover to a morgue to indulge. Elsewhere, a man eats his own semen out of a dead asshole, pedophiles’ genitalia are mutilated and God’s UTI starts the apocalypse.

Swank explains: “I’m a big Clive Barker fan, and I’ve always wanted to be in a band that got involved with horror and homoerotica.”

Boggs recently came out as queer (non-binary), and has received plenty of affirming messages thanking them for validating the senders’ experience and identity. (“As soon as that shit started, I was like, ‘Fuck it, we’ll just make death metal gay.’”)

“We try to write the most fucking brutal shit imaginable,” Swank concludes, “but at the same time, we write it for everybody.”

—BRADLEY ZORGDRAGER

MARE COGNITUM

MARE COGNITUM

Atmospheric black metal multi-instrumentalist cleans up his sound, hopes for the same for the planet

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hen we gaze at the stars, we often describe it as “looking out” at the night sky, as if we’re contemplating something separate from ourselves. But in a way, by looking out into the cosmos, we’re also staring back at ourselves, aren’t we? There’s something elegant and wonderful about this, but it can also call to mind our disappointments as well. This was something very much on the mind of Jacob Buczarski when he crafted Mare Cognitum’s latest album, Solar Paroxysm. ¶ “I’ve been dwelling quite a bit on the reality of our failures as a species here on earth and the way we continue to treat each other and our planet as completely disposable,” says Buczarski. “It both saddens and angers me, and I see no end to it.

I feel that this planet is very close to wiping us all from it soon if we don’t change our ways.” Saddening as this thought is, he was able to put it to good use: “I felt frustrated by this reality, and meditated on it a lot. I ended up channeling this into the music.”

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Indeed, Mare Cognitum has always been a dazzling blend of melodic grandeur and thunderous power, making the project one of the most vital in modern black metal. For this album, Buczarski says that he “stripped things down a bit” and “wanted to do a guitar-focused album, focusing on riffs and a very direct, very traditionally ‘metal’ approach.”

This meant “no lengthy ambient sections, no keyboard-driven writing or symphonics, rolling down the dial on the reverb. I wanted everything up front, very present and very aggressive in sound. And I pushed my limits as a guitarist on every song.” This aggression is immediately evident with the use of palm-muted guitars, which Buczarski tellingly indicates as, “a bit of a return to my death metal roots, maybe.”

Like many artists, Buczarski was able to use the isolation of the pandemic to his advantage. “If anything,” he notes, “it has allowed me more time to devote to musical endeavors.” And although he actually recorded Solar Paroxysm prior to the pandemic, Buczarski says that it “did finally offer me a lot of time to dedicate to ideas that were trapped in my imagination before.

So, I’ve made the best of it, and this is just the beginning of what I’ve managed to accomplish.”

As for the multi-instrumentalist’s worries about us as a species, it might help if we start building back up with each other. After all, it was Carl Sagan who wrote in Cosmos that, “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” —J. ANDREW ZALUCKY

N of

Rite Passage Zao

Metallic hardcore heroes

explore new musical haunts three decades on STORY BY SHAWN MACOMBER PHOTO BY JERED SCOTT

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early 30 years into their existence, Zao are—like

a human body powered by a heart that regenerates very few cells while pumping constantly, regenerating white and red blood cells—a fusion of past and present. Always evolving, always renewing, without leaving marrow or quiddity behind. Despite hiatuses, philosophical transfigurations and lineup changes that left no original members, there is nonetheless a continuity of spirit, of attack, of lifeblood. ¶ “I have been talking to the original guys a bit lately since we have been working on the back catalog stuff, and I told them that I don’t feel the essence of Zao has changed,” drummer Jeff Gretz tells Decibel.

“And they agreed. The band was always about being open and honest—warts and all—and using aggressive music as the vehicle for that. When Shawn Jonas was singing, he had a very distinct thing. The Christian thing was very important to him—and still is. When [current vocalist] Dan [Weyandt] joined, there was an aspect of that at first, but he was very different in how he approached it. Either way, people change and that’s pretty much gone. We were—and are—always very open about that aspect having changed… whether people listen to what we say or not. Still, it’s up to Dan. If he came to us and said he wanted to write an album about Jesus or astral planes or Crom, I don’t think we would stop him. As long as it’s honest.”

Alas, if you were hoping for an interdimensional crossover Jesus versus Crom concept album, The Crimson Corridor is not that record.

Instead, Zao’s 12th full-length delves into “postdeath meditation introspections,” Weyandt explains. “Not songs specifically about death meditation itself”—what the Buddhists call maranasati; essentially practicing constant mindfulness of death to infuse life with urgency— “but the ideas conceived from being within that mindset and looking back on events from futures past. The ideas explored on the new record in and of themselves are very erratic in nature.”

If the thematic elements are “erratic,” the musical end is eclectic in vivifying, unpredictable ways. Which is to say, if you thought 2016’s brilliant The Well-Intentioned Virus covered an impressive amount of tonal and stylistic ground without sacrificing Zao’s identity, unique flow or everratcheting synergistic tightness… well, The Crimson Corridor is all those things and more run through a gigantic magnifying prism improbably continuing to raise the stakes, both for the band and listeners.

“I just love so many different types of music,” guitarist/vocalist Scott Mellinger says. “I’m always trying to incorporate things that may seem odd or out of place, but I still have such a love for violently heavy music. We do spend a lot of time writing songs, though. We go through so

many revisions. But I do feel that we all have a great grasp on what we want to do.”

“Our process has stayed the same at least since [2006’s] The Fear Is What Keeps Us Here,” Gretz adds. “Somebody—usually Scott, but occasionally [bassist] Marty [Lunn] or [guitarist] Russ [Cogdell]—brings in a song in some semblance of demo stage, and then we build on that, following it where it goes, changing it as each personality comes in. I think, more than anything, we have become more open to not second-guess ideas that on their surface might not ‘sound like Zao.’ One thing we never do is alter something so it sounds like the last record. As the songs were rolling in [for The Crimson Corridor], we discovered it was probably going to be a sprawling, dark, atmospheric record. From that point, everything from production choices, art ideas, the whole vibe started to fall into place. A five-minute instrumental or a 10-minute psychedelic folk/doom song would not have fit into the world of the last few records. On this one, those songs became the starting points of everything else and the cornerstones of the album.”

Or, as Weyandt succinctly puts it, “Keep writing, keep evolving, let it get weirder and peer deeper into the void.”

This expansive, borderline esoteric approach is bolstered on the visual end by a series of

striking accompanying photographs by Christopher McKenney.

“Surreal horror was the overall [vibe] as the songs were coming together,” Gretz says. “It had a very ‘cinematic’ quality, and we absolutely knew we had to go with photos on this one. We had been following Chris’ work for a while, and we made a wish list and just approached him and asked. It was funny—we all sort of picked the same photos individually, so it made the layout process pretty simple.”

“One of the best words I can find to describe his work is haunting,” Weyandt agrees. “I feel like the music on this record is haunting as well.”

Indeed. And powerful—a truly remarkable marriage of elegance and what Mellinger described as “love for violently heavy music.”

“For myself, though, Zao is catharsis in its purest form,” Weyandt says. “Through all the changes over all the years, it has been about the catharsis.”

“We just want to put out music that we’re proud of and hang out with each other,” Mellinger continues.“You take for granted a lot of that stuff when you’re younger and knee-deep in record cycles. I’d say Zao’s meaning for me has always been about hope. We really all have so much to suffer through, but there is solidarity in knowing you’re not alone.”

Keep writing, keep evolving, let it get weirder and peer deeper into the void.

Dan Weyandt

D EDCEI C BIEBLE :L A: PMRAY IL 2021 : 33

interview by

QA j. bennett

JOE DUPLANTIER WI T H

GOJIRA’s frontman on conservationism, death and the band’s new album 3 4 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

J

oe Duplantier lives in New York City, but he’s been stuck in his and humanity also carries a lot of good stuff, so

native France since the pandemic started. The Gojira frontman was visiting family and planned to head home after three months, but—like many things planned before March 2020—that’s not how it worked out. “All our shows got cancelled, the flights got cancelled, so we decided to lay low and stay near my father, who needs assistance,” our man tells us over a spotty Zoom connection. “It’s good for me to be with my family and where I’m needed, but we’re heading back in a few months.” ¶ As it turns out, the pandemic hit just as Gojira were mixing their new album, Fortitude. With their release schedule and touring plans on hold, they unveiled the new song “Another World”—complete with sci-fi animated video—in August. Now the album is officially slated for April 30, and it sees the French prog-metallers taking a decidedly different lyrical tack than that of their last album.

Whereas 2016’s Magma concerned the death of the Duplantier brothers’ mother, Fortitude is all about positivity. And though it was written long before COVID started killing people, the message couldn’t be more timely. “People are more anxious now because of the pandemic,” Duplantier says. “People are losing their jobs and their homes, and it’s very dramatic. Music can be a huge support in these times, I believe, so I hope it’s going to speak to people.”

How are you holding up on Planet Virus?

I’m dealing with it pretty good, personally. I selfishly enjoy this confinement because I need more home and a little less being gone. I have kids, so it’s an incredible opportunity to spend many months in a row with them. So, just for that, I don’t have second thoughts. I’m happy. I have it pretty good—I’m safe and sound, not sick, you know. And we’re in a pretty safe area, too, in the southwest of France. So, I’m really taking it slow and enjoying my time home. But it’s starting to itch now. I feel like I could be back onstage, and I haven’t felt that way in a long time. So, it’s good to get reinspired in that way and hungry again.

The pandemic hit while you were mixing the album. How did that affect the process?

We were on our toes. We were ready to release the album and go on tour. We were ready to start rehearsals and we were really excited with the new material. But then everything was shifting and spinning around. I feel bad for the bands that released an album right when it hit. At least we had the luxury to sit on the album for a little bit and wait. So, now we’re a little more mentally prepared to release an album without going on tour right away. The best scenario is to be on tour when the album is dropping so you can promote it and have the visibility. It can be weird to release an album and just stay home. But now we’re ready for that. Everyone is more in tune with the situation now, with livestreaming and all that. But now is the time for this album to come out. We’ve been sitting on it for too long.

PHOTO BY GABRIELLE DUPL ANTIER

Many musicians are noticing that some of the songs they wrote before the pandemic but released during it have taken on new meanings.

Have you had that experience with any of the songs on Fortitude?

Absolutely, yeah. My lyrics tend to be very dark, but at the same time very naïve. I sound like a 12-year-old just understanding how things work around him and being shocked. I never really got out of that state somehow. It’s a very innocent approach, even though I feel more jaded and cynical now. I have less hope for humans than I used to have when I was a teenager. So, I’m a bit bitter about the human race. I was full of hope as a teenager that humanity would be awesome.

But then I noticed that people tend to forget about history and now they have their noses in their goddamn phones all the time. I’m speaking for myself, too. Without my phone, I’m starting to have a panic attack. [Laughs] What’s up with that? I remember growing up with no phone, so humanity is shifting. We’re starting to look like a science-fiction movie, more and more.

It’s unreal, isn’t it?

That’s the word for it. When I’m on the subway in New York and every single person on the train—including me—is on their phone, you just have to shake your head at the way we behave. We’re so hyper-connected, but completely disconnected from our direct environment, so there’s this weird thing happening that tends to make me very sad and depressed. At the same time, I’m a big fan of art and what people can do,

I’m always a bit torn. This is always present in the lyric themes, so then the pandemic hits and you go, “Of course!” [Laughs] It fits the lyrics very well, and they take a new meaning.

Your last album, Magma, was very personal for you and your brother Mario because it concerned the death of your mother—which you then had to relive over and over again in interviews. Did you specifically want to write about themes that would be easier to talk about this time around?

Talking about it over and over was very depressing last time, yeah. Definitely, we wanted to move on from that nostalgic, sad vibe to something more positive. We’re positive people with positive energy, and we want to communicate more positive things. We want to empower people as much as possible, because I love being empowered by music. I always need music somehow—it feeds me and gives me strength and perspective. That’s what we want to be for people. I love to hear about when our fans work out with Gojira on their headphones or they go through difficult times and the music helps them. So, we consciously created something epic for the listener to feel empowered.

The songs on Fortitude are described in the press release as “a series of motivational speeches.” Do they feel that way to you?

Yes, absolutely. That’s a pretty accurate description. I didn’t write that—I cannot write about the band—but when I read it, I thought, “Yeah, it’s true.” I don’t want to be a life coach for people, but the songs go towards that a little bit. It’s not that technical, though. It’s more like, “Do you feel your heart beating? Okay, so get on your feet!” There’s something really primal about it.

You guys released the song “Another World” last summer. Why did you choose that track to serve as the first preview for the album?

We debated it a lot. Mario wanted one song, I wanted another song, Jean-Michel [Labadie, bassist] wanted another, Christian [Andreu, guitarist] wanted something else, and the record company wanted something else. I hate to release a song by itself. I really love albums. You start somewhere, you end somewhere—it’s a journey. One song might be mellow and the next might be really heavy. So, giving people just one chapter is a bit criminal, to me, artistically. But that’s the way it works. And it is fun, in a way, to present one song and kind of tease people.

But why that song? When the pandemic hit, we were still debating two songs. The other D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 1 : 3 5

Born to expire  Joe Duplantier (center r) has a less-than-sunny outlook for the future of humanity

Even when I’m doing something else like cooking or driving, I’ll think about death. [Laughs] It haunts me somehow.

I understand you’re going to be donating the proceeds from “Amazonia” to a rainforest preservation group.

Yes. There’s a group of Brazilian activists in New York who are very serious. At the end of the track, you hear a very angry Brazilian woman screaming—you don’t understand what she says, but you get the message. She’s a very dear friend of mine, and she put us in touch with some indigenous tribes who are trying to protect the forest there against the corrupted government and corrupted police and corrupted army. All these people are also using the pandemic as a shield to do whatever they want, and they’re about to snatch the land of the indigenous people.

It’s pretty dramatic, because they are some of the last indigenous people on the planet. These are the last people who have the right mind— who can live with nature and do actual good for the planet instead of destroying everything. So, they’re fighting the government and the army and police and the industries that are trying to burn as many trees as possible to grow soybeans and so on. They need support and they need hospitals, so we’re going to try to raise enough 3 6 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

money to build 15 jungle hospitals. When we release the song, we’re going to do something to raise money—sell some guitars to an auction or something like that.

You’ve been working with Sea Shepherd for many years, haven’t you?

“Working” is a big word, but we met with [Sea Shepherd founder] Paul Watson a few times and we fully support them. We’ve talked about them a great deal, and we brought a Sea Shepherd [booth] with us on tour where they were giving information to people and selling shirts and stuff like this. It’s a little thing, but we’re trying to do our part. We believe that we have a responsibility as artists—as people who take people’s time—to support things that are important.

Your new song “Born for One Thing” has an anti-consumerist message. What drew you to that theme?

It’s related to death, which is something I think about very often. Even when I’m doing something else like cooking or driving, I’ll think about death. [Laughs] It haunts me somehow.

But it’s deeply human to be afraid of death.

It’s terrifying to us, and our life is impacted by how much we fear it. If you’re fearless, you’re going to do things that seem crazy to other people. Some people won’t even get on a skateboard because they’re scared to fall—which is completely my case, for example. [Laughs] But if you’re not scared, you’re gonna do wonders.

You live better, and you don’t hold onto things in the same way.

Also, there’s a Buddhist belief that says if you own more than seven things, you start to suffer. If you don’t own anything, you’re free.

But I’m surrounded by stuff, you know? If I have an accident tomorrow, all that stuff is gonna be there. So, I have to let go of material things and also enjoy every minute I’m alive. Each time you see your friends or your family or your girlfriend, you need to enjoy that to the max. I try to remind myself of that because I get lost in my thoughts and start to be cranky for nothing.

I have to remind myself that it’s important to be in the moment and to fully appreciate everything and anything we have.

Last but not least, you’ve announced a U.S. tour that’s scheduled to start in August. Do you think it’ll happen?

No. [Laughs] I don’t think it’s gonna happen, man. We’re fucked. I mean, I hope it’s gonna happen, but I don’t know. I’m not supposed to say that. I’m supposed to say, “Of course it’s gonna happen!” But I’m not gonna lie. I’ll tell you what’s happening with all the bands and venues and promoters, dude: Everyone’s going through the motions. What if, you know? What if it happens and we’re not prepared because we’re sitting on our asses? So, we have all these meetings and we’re negotiating and we’re choosing openers—knowing it’s not gonna happen. But everybody is working just in case.

PHOTO BY GABRIELLE DUPLANTIER

one was written during the big fires in the Amazon forest. It’s very catchy and very primal and it sounds like Sepultura a lot. It’s difficult to find one song that can really represent the whole album, but “Amazonia” was one of them.

But then “Another World” seemed more appropriate at the time, because of the pandemic.

Serena Cherry (Svalbard) presents her new black metal project NOCTULE with their debut album “Wretched Abyss”!

Out May 28th V I N Y L / D I G I T A L

•L A MENTING A DE AD WOR LD• Denver, CO's doom / sludge trio ORYX present their mesmerizing new album and Translation Loss debut “Lamenting a Dead World”! Mixed and mastered by Greg Wilkinson (High On Fire, Graves at Sea, Necrot) with artwork by Ettore Aldo Del Vigo!

• OUT AP RI L 3 0 th • V I N Y L / D I G I TA L

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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AMORPHIS’ transition from ABHORRENCE is detailed in this

rOtTiNG WaYS TO MIsERy

The History of Fi nni s h D eat h Meta l book excerpt

IN APRIL, Decibel Books will proudly publish the U.S.

version of Rotting Ways To Misery: The History of Finnish Death Metal. Co-authored by Markus Makkonen (Sadistik Forest, Nerve Saw, Hooded Menace) and Kim Strömsholm (Festerday, ...And Oceans, Havoc Unit), this 362-page hardcover dives deep into the unique and sometimes overlooked late ’80s and early ’90s Finnish death metal scene. While you’ll get the full histories of underground heroes like Funebre, Purtenance and Mordicus in the book, for this exclusive excerpt, Makkonen and Strömsholm examine the earliest days of the scene’s biggest band, Amorphis. — A L B E R T MU D R I A N 38 : M A PAY R I 2L022012:1 D: EDCEI C BIEBLE L

CHAPTER 12 Amorphis

A nebulous evil  Demo-era Amorphis.

Photo supplied by Mikko Mattila.

A

fter Tomi Koivusaari left Violent Solution, the band kept going.

They recorded a demo with Esa Holopainen on guitar, Period of Depression, in 1990, and it was followed in the same year with a more technically advanced EP entitled Paralysis/Individual Nightmare. Even though Violent Solution had taken huge steps forward as a band and were making a name for themselves in the live scene of the time, Abhorrence were not the only band in the neighborhood struggling with motivational problems.

“Violent Solution just simply died,” Holopainen says. “There was only the second half of it left, really. One guy was maybe more interested in his moped than being in the band, and the other dude was not far from that either. They simply were not into it any longer.

We just kept playing old songs. Then [myself and Jan ‘Snoopy’ Rechberger] formed a new band. Simple as that.”

After Koivusaari’s departure from Violent Solution, death metal fandom had reached Holopainen and Rechberger as well. It was clear to the remaining duo that the new band would not be thrash or speed metal. Rechberger switched to drums and they started to figure out a completely new kind of musical approach, for a completely new kind of band.

“He had been thinking of drumming for a long time and finally got himself a kit,” Holopainen remembers. “We did not have anybody else in the band at the time. We knew Oppu from the Helsinki scene, and he had Nuxvomica—a sort of a death metal band—himself. We asked if he would be interested in joining the group.”

Olli-Pekka “Oppu” Laine did not hesitate. “I knew Jan and Esa through Violent Solution,” he says. “When they split up, Esa called me up and said they were looking for a bass player for a band they were putting together. At the time, Abhorrence was still up and running, but they had asked Tomi to be their singer. I thought I might give the band a go, and it worked out really well, right from the very first rehearsals.”

Koivusaari had been doing some backing vocals at Abhorrence gigs already, and discovered that he was a natural at the savage death metal growl. So, the proposition to do vocals in the group of his old bandmate and lifetime friend Snoopy felt like an interesting one.

“If I remember right, the material Esa had written was still a bit of a thrashy kind of death metal,” Laine says, “somewhere between Violent Solution and Abhorrence. Not proper death metal yet. We rehearsed first as a trio without Tomi, but when Abhorrence split up, Tomi decided to play guitar as well. This was the turning point and a really crucial moment in our history. He insisted the music be more brutal than it actually was at the time. So, we decided to discard all the old stuff and switched to Tomi’s originals instead. This material would be our first demo.

“When you’re a kid, a lot of things happen in a short time, so the original ‘trio phase’ feels today a lot longer than it actually was. We had about four or five songs that we ditched later.

I think there are recordings of them remaining, and I would really like to hear those tracks again. Like everything in those days, all the early stuff of ours was really lo-fi, but also very natural-sounding, when you think of it now.”

The group was eventually baptised as Amorphis, the name referring to having no specific shape, or being formless. Holopainen came up with the term, but misspelled it by an accident. Amorphous became Amorphis. Despite the misspelling—or maybe even because of it—the moniker stuck.

The musical direction of the band was clear from day one and, just like Abhorrence a year earlier, Amorphis were never intended to be anything other than a proper death metal group.

“Yeah, I don’t think we ever wanted to be anything else than that,” Holopainen suggests. “We had those early songs, around the time when Snoopy was still practicing his drumming, but things happened fast and we soon found ourselves recording the first demo with Timo Tolkki.”

Koivusaari agrees: “When we got our first rehearsal room, we already had the first demo and we were listening to it there already. We recorded it really early. It must have had every song we had at time on it.”

The first Amorphis demo, Disment of Soul, started rotating in the Finnish demo circuit in 1991, only a couple of months after the formation of the band itself. Due to Koivusaari’s past in Abhorrence, the crudely primitive tape became a serious matter of interest. Even though it could not match the sheer brutality of Abhorrence, it gathered mainly positive reviews in zines of the time. As Abhorrence had been one of the most interesting bands in the global death metal underground, Amorphis were off to a flying start. Record labels were after them from the very beginning. The first proper offer came from French label Osmose Productions—the band was even about to sign a contract when a D EDCEI C BIEBLE :L A: PMRAY IL 2021 : 39

phone call from the States changed the history of Amorphis for good.

Matt Jacobson of Relapse Records was trying to reach Koivusaari to sign a deal with Abhorrence. In a pre-internet world, news travelled slowly, and as the Abhorrence 7-inch had just been released, the label had no idea the band had split up. Koivusaari informed Relapse that Abhorrence had called it quits, but mentioned that he already had a new band going.

Without hearing a single note from Amorphis, Relapse signed a deal with them… with one condition. They would need to rerecord a certain Abhorrence track with Amorphis—namely, the epic “Vulgar Necrolatry.” It had become a favorite in Relapse’s headquarters, and was the main reason for their interest in signing the band in the first place. So, by a genuine twist of fate, it was Abhorrence’s Vulgar Necrolatry demo tape that got Amorphis signed, not their own originals.

Soon Amorphis found themselves working with Timo Tolkki again. This time, the session consisted of two Disment of Soul tracks, three brand new ones and, of course, “Vulgar Necrolatry.” The material recorded in those sessions would become Amorphis’ most death metal release ever, the Privilege of Evil EP. As usual in the early days of death metal, things did not go as planned with that release either.

“That Privilege of Evil thing was originally meant to be a split with Incantation,” Holopainen explains, “but after we had recorded it, Relapse told us that Incantation wanted to do their own EP instead, as ours was so much better than what they had to offer. I don’t know if they ever got the EP done, but our EP was finally released after the first album was out.”

As the original plan for an Incantation split fell through, parts of that session were used on Amorphis’ first-ever Relapse release, a single simply titled Amorphis. This 1991 7-inch featured the aforementioned “Vulgar Necrolatry” on one 40 : M A PAY R I 2L022012:1 D: EDCEI C BIEBLE L

side and a new original, “Misery Path,” on the other. Relapse soon informed Amorphis that they could record a fulllength to compensate for the split deal falling through, so things were indeed moving fast for them.

The rest of the material recorded in this first Relapse session would have to wait two years  Vulgar display to be released and, Promo picture from indeed, when it the debut album era. finally landed in record stores in 1993, the crude death metal battery of Privilege of Evil was greeted with confusion rather than praise. And for a single simple reason: Relapse failed to promote it as an old recording.

Koivusaari is quite certain the original release did not even have the recording dates printed in it. By 1993, Amorphis had their debut album out already, and the band was taking quantum leaps in their songwriting. Privilege of Evil was seen by the fans as a regression, or a step back, not the praised relic of the death metal version of Amorphis it actually was.

Both Holopainen and Koivusaari agree that all the early Amorphis material was a natural evolution from the concepts of Abhorrence and Violent Solution. “There was one slight difference, though,” the latter clarifies. “Everybody in Abhorrence and Violent Solution was listening to only extreme metal and nothing else. But when Amorphis was starting out, we had quite a lot of other kinds of music in our stereos as well. There was the Doors and all the other bands like that.

We kept writing death metal, but our musical tastes had already developed.”

“Especially around the time of our first album, there were a lot of influences coming from outside the death metal circles,” Holopainen continues. “We listened to all kinds of hippie stuff, Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath and things like that. Kingston Wall ruled, too. Their album came out around the time when we were recording our first one. Oppu had it on tape, and the album made an everlasting impact on us all.”

“I think we discovered the Doors and all that [psychedelic rock] through Xysma,” Koivusaari explains. “They did that ‘Hello, I Love You’ cover.

The Doors was one of the very first things I freaked out on to the degree that I went and got all their albums. Back then, it felt like all the modern music of the day was just pure rubbish.

Never liked grunge a bit.”

Holopainen has similar memories: “We hung around a lot in record stores and bought all kinds

of 1970s stuff from them. Around those days, there was a real absence of interesting new music.

Early 1990s in Finland was musically a bit like it is today: a lot of rap groups. People dug them just as much as they dig that stuff today. I personally never liked the music from that era at all, and metal was just really something very marginal and hidden very deeply in the underground. Anything even remotely heavier was really unpopular.

People laughed at Amorphis, too, at some gigs.”

This would be somewhat inevitable, as even regular metal was deeply underground to a mainstream music fan, and death metal was just pure absurdity. “I will always remember the incident when I tried to play our demo to my mum and she did not hear any vocals in it,” Koivusaari laughs. “I tried telling her, ‘Now, there! Listen!’ but she did not make out any vocals from there at all. I think that is quite self-explanatory.

People just did not understand that somebody could sing like that.”

Amorphis did, however, break through to wider audiences with their debut album, The Karelian Isthmus. Their demos had already gotten good reviews, and the interest towards the band was growing, so it was well-timed in terms of their career. Recorded in the legendary death metal hive of Sunlight Studios in Stockholm, The Karelian Isthmus is the pure essence of Finnish death metal on album format: gloomy and suffocating, rich in melancholy atmosphere and with those fat, swaying Xysma riffs. Europe’s leading death metal producer at the time, Tomas Skogsberg, gave the album a superior soundscape, and ultimately, this was the album that broke Finnish death metal to wider metal audiences. It shifted the focus from the shabby demo tapes of a small underground circle to professionally released albums, and even introduced Finnish death metal to people outside the death metal scene.

An acoustic intro, “Karelia,” chimes with folkish melody before the album launches into its immense first track, “The Gathering.” Echoes of Paradise Lost and Bolt Thrower mix in with Koivusaari’s savage growls. “Grail’s Mysteries” adds a hefty Xysma vibe to the mix, and the quintessence of the album becomes quite obvious. Even if the Finnish folk music influences would be more visible on their future albums, Amorphis were not afraid to stir the death metal formula on their first record. It is the angular melancholy of Finnish folk music that gives The Karelian Isthmus a fresh approach and helped prevent it from becoming just another generic death metal release in a time when there already were quite a few of them coming out already. The phenomenon had broken through, and the monster was getting out of control.

Pre-order the Decibel Books edition of Rotting Ways To Misery: The History of Finnish Death Metal at store.decibelmagazine.com.

DAY OF THE ANIMALS

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the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

The End Is Begun the making of Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules M AY 2 0 2 1 : 4 2 : D E C I B E L

story by

adem tepedelen

“Rules are mostly made to be broken, and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.”

— GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

DBHOF197

BLACK SABBATH Mob Rules WARNER BROS .

NOVEMBER 4, 1981

Dio-era Sabbath’s (first) studio swansong

D E C I B E L : 4 3 : M AY 2 0 2 1

PHOTO BY MARK WEISS

IT’S

not often we open a Hall of Fame induction with a quote from a U.S. military general, but it feels like the best way to address the very obvious fact that, by inducting Black Sabbath’s 10th studio album, Mob Rules, we’re blatantly—and for the first time ever—breaking one of our longstanding rules for the Decibel Hall of Fame: All band members must be living at the time of the story. Vocalist Ronnie James Dio tragically succumbed to stomach cancer in 2010, but here we are in 2021 inducting one of his greatest musical achievements, the brilliant Sabbath album that 40 years ago followed hot on the heels of the already inducted Heaven and Hell.

Even though we’re making an exception here, don’t take this as an indicator of a dramatic change in policy. This is, in fact, a very special exception, and the Hall of Fame will continue to maintain the same rigorous requirements it has for nearly two decades. So, with that out of the way, we likely don’t need to make much of a case for inducting Mob Rules. After all, if Heaven and Hell was Hall of Fame-worthy, certainly its successor deserves the same treatment. It would be hard to argue that separately Dio and Sabbath made many albums equal to what they made together. Without succumbing to obvious RJD-isms, there was a magic in this combining of forces. Dio brought a melodic versatility to Sabbath, and Sabbath gifted Dio a heaviness he could attain nowhere else. Yes, it was a volatile combination that imploded and reconvened on multiple occasions, but that creative tension always made incredible music.

And lest we give the impression that we view Mob Rules as simply Heaven and Hell Part 2, please allow us to disabuse you of that notion. Yes, it offers many of the same musical thrills, but it is indeed a unique beast, due to the addition of then 23-year-old drummer Vinny Appice, who brought an energy and vitality to Sabbath that a flagging Bill Ward— grappling with addiction issues—was incapable of at that juncture in his life. Though it was Ward’s choice to exit Sabbath in the middle of the U.S. tour supporting Heaven and Hell, it turned out to be a blessing, as the young Appice not only ably replaced Ward, but injected some well-timed youthful enthusiasm. The album this newly solidified quartet (two original members and two Americans) would make together in the spring of 1981 would both confirm the strength of a Dio-led Sabbath and eventually lead to its dissolution, the first of three such break-ups.

Before delving into the making of Mob Rules, we need to acknowledge that this induction wouldn’t have been possible without the contribution of an extensive Ronnie James Dio interview conducted by journalist Bryan Reesman in 2008. Portions of this interview were used in the liner notes he wrote for the Mob Rules remaster in that same year, as well as in a Heaven and Hell (the band) cover story in Goldmine magazine from May 2008. Other parts of his interview have not been previously published. We’re grateful to Bryan and Goldmine for their generosity.

DBHOF197

BLACK SABBATH mob rules

Heaven and Hell turned out to be a very successful album for Black Sabbath, as was the supporting tour, but Bill Ward departed in the middle of the tour. How did having a second original member leave affect the band at the time?

It was devastating for me, because I’d played with Bill before Sabbath, and I’d always been around Bill for many, many years. I was so shocked when Bill left, because I hadn’t played with another drummer for many, many years.

GEEZER BUTLER: It was bloody annoying. The tour was going great and the album was selling well—more than anyone expected—but Bill Ward’s boozing was out of control. I remember just before he left, he was sitting on his balcony boozing. I had the room next to him, and I said goodnight and went to bed. When I got up the next day, he was still in the same position, still boozing, and we had a gig that night. Shortly after, he got in his bus and left in the middle of the night without telling any of us.

RONNIE JAMES DIO: Bill didn’t want to tour anymore, so [he] left. I think Bill had been on the tour three or four months [when he left]. He just couldn’t take it anymore. Bill was not happy with traveling and hated to fly. We really had to tank him up to get him on a plane.

TONY IOMMI:

Ward was replaced mid-tour by Vinny Appice, younger brother of drum legend Carmine Appice, adding a second American to the band.

How was he able to step in so seemingly easily?

“We went into this studio to record and it was crap.

We couldn’t get a decent sound in there.

I don’t know what it was; it was probably us, really.”

TO NY IO MMI to rehearse, and miraculously, he learned the whole set and was unfazed to play his first gig with us to a crowded stadium. He was a very steady drummer, and very easy to play with.

DIO: He changed the dynamics a lot. Vinny became my best friend in the band. We’re both from New York, both Italians, and both have the same kind of families, so we became very close. It made it a lot happier. We traveled together, and he didn’t have a problem with travel at all.

Musically, what did Vinny bring to the band?

Bill was more of a percussionist. He thought of himself as a percussionist, and he liked to fiddle around with toms and cymbals.

That was very important to Bill, and that was cool because that’s what got in there. But Vinny was just a monster, just an aggressive monster who came in: “Oh my Christ, what’s that?” And such an expert at what he did, great rudiments,

DIO:

M AY 2 0 2 1 : 4 4 : D E C I B E L

and he was just a great player. It was wonderful to play with Bill. Bill was very special, and still is, and his work on Heaven and Hell was brilliant.

No one could have done a better job. But Vinny added this other flavor. He was a real listener.

Instead of thinking himself as one kind of player, he was part of the band and really plays off people. He has great ears and has incredible reactions and a great musical sense. So, it was very enjoyable for me. I missed Bill as a person, and certainly as a player, but Vinny really made it all happen, I think.

IOMMI: I think the style that Vinny would play was more modern for us, which would also go better with what we were playing, the songs that we were playing. I think it worked as a good team. Vinny was really a sort of spot-on drummer, time-wise and everything. Where with Bill and the old Sabbath, we would sort of sludge along and things would get faster as you get to the end and stuff like that. [Laughs]

PHOTO BY FRANK WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Sabbath was in L.A., and they asked if I wanted to come down and meet Tony. I think that they got my number and info from people at Warner Brothers Records. At that point, I had done three Derringer albums with Rick Derringer, and I did an album called Axis. Axis was kind of a three-piece metal band that was on RCA, produced by Andy Johns. So, [it had] a really nice fat drum sound. That’s the album Tony heard me play on. I met Tony at a hotel one night, and he walked in with the Axis album. He goes, “This is really good.” So, he liked the way I played.

IOMMI: I think initially when we first heard Vinny, I was really unsure [how he would work out]. Bill and I had worked so close together musically that when Vinny came in, it was really a shock—I went, Oh my god! Vinny was a clean, precise player—very sharp. Bill was more of a percussionist drummer. [Bill] put a lot of little bits in, where Vinny would probably play through the song. [Vinny was] probably more of a modern-time drummer, at that time. But he got used to how we play. It’s gotta be hard to come into a situation like Sabbath and be thrown right into the deep end, which Vinny was.

BUTLER: Vinny did great. We had a massive stadium gig in Hawaii coming up, and Vinny came in with hardly any notice. We only had two days VINNY APPICE:

SHIRTS

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F L A G S BEANIES

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BLACK SABBATH mob rules Did you have any idea what the scene or scenes you were writing for in the movie would look like?

The cool thing was, when I first started playing with Tony and Geezer, we had the same kind of feel, and I learned how to play with them. They [play] so big and huge and behind the beat a little bit that I really focused in on that. It was good for me, because now I’m really a steady drummer and I play a little behind the beat and I can push it when it needs it. A lot of drummers play on top of the beat or ahead of the beat. It’s amazing because they’re from England and I’m from Brooklyn, New York, and [I’m] younger, and we fit in together really well the way we played, the feel and the approach. It was a good fit.

APPICE:

The first music this lineup recorded together was the song “The Mob Rules” for the Heavy Metal movie. Was that a song you already had written, or was it written specifically for the movie?

It was written for the movie, while we were on the Heaven and Hell tour. It went really well. It was written in John Lennon’s house, in his studio, using his equipment. The vibe was great and the song came together in a couple of days.

IOMMI: What we did is, we went to John Lennon’s house and used his studio. Instead of having all the equipment all set up in the studio, we had the drums out in the hallway, and the [engineer] miked them up. We used John Lennon’s engineer, as well. We did it that way. And so we came up with this song that we rehearsed in the lounge. In fact, we rehearsed in the room where [Lennon] had done “Imagine” with the piano, the white room. It was quite magical, really. We wrote the thing from start to finish. I came up with this riff more or less straight away. They said we need a song for the film, and I came up with it there and then. Geezer came up with a bass idea; he’d just gotten this new pedal board that he was fiddling about with. It had all these effects on it, and Geezer came up with the start of “The Mob Rules” to lead us into the song. It all sort of fitted in quite quickly, really.

APPICE: We [recorded the song] “The Mob Rules” while we were in the middle of the Heaven and Hell tour. Everybody was excited, everybody loved the new song. See, I was told that I was in the band until Bill came back. Because Bill was the only guy that ever played with Tony and Geezer.

So, I was like, “Fine, that’s cool, I’m playing with Black Sabbath.” After we recorded “The Mob Rules,” that kind of cemented me more into the band, because it came out so well, it was used in the movie and it was kind of a song that I don’t know if Bill would have played it like I played it. He would have to copy me [if he were to rejoin the band], and I don’t think Bill ever had to copy any other drummer. So, that kind of cemented me more into the band, because Bill still wasn’t coming back at that point.

BUTLER:

What they did was send us sketches of parts of the movie. What with it being animated, there was just figures drawn and then signs saying things like “hidden door” and things like that. [Laughs] I didn’t really understand it, but we wrote something that was more energetic. We put something that was more of an energetic riff to it. We just saw the sketches of it, and I think they had one little part that was finished. But that’s all I saw, really.

DIO: We chose the part that we were going to write for in the film. We had that luxury. The visuals for “The Mob Rules” start with a revolutionary army attacking a walled establishment, so it was very easy to talk about how they’re knocking down walls, and if we don’t change our attitudes, the same thing is going to happen to us. But it was a little bit more premeditated because we did have somewhat of a storyline to deal with. Of course, it depends upon what you write. You can have a storyline, but if you write something stupid, it’s never going to work. The song worked. Once again, it was an example of what we were doing on the first album—faster, aggressive kind of pieces—and you couldn’t get much more aggressive than “The Mob Rules.”

After all these years, it’s just held its own with being one of those classic fast rock songs.

IOMMI:

You wrote Heaven and Hell mostly at the Bel Air house in L.A. Were the writing sessions for the rest of Mob Rules done in a similar fashion?

Heaven and Hell was a lot easier for us to write without the four of us together in the room with drums and instruments, like we did on Mob Rules. [Writing] worked best when we were just doing it in a smaller environment, closer together without having to use the strength of the amplifiers and having to play across drums. I mean, there’s nothing worse—being the vocalist that I am, that has to write these things that I sing—[than] to have to compete with drums and guitars and basses. So, it’s not a matter of excluding someone—Geezer or Bill or Vinny; I just know how well it worked with less people having ideas, because at the time you start to cater to those ideas, and maybe they shouldn’t be catered to.

IOMMI: We just went into a rehearsal room and we just had a cassette tape, really. I’d just come up with a riff and everybody’d join in. That’s really how we did that album, just by jamming and coming up with ideas. If everybody liked it, then we’d carry on with it.

APPICE: We were all living in the valley in Los Angeles. That’s where Ronnie and I lived, and I think Geezer and Tony had rental houses.

And we just rehearsed at a place in the valley.

We used to go there every day and nothing was ever written before we’d go in. Everything with DIO:

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Sabbath was going into the rehearsal and jamming, recording—I was in charge of recording everything on cassette. Sometimes we’d go in and Tony and I would jam and we’d record it.

Sometimes it was all of us and Ronnie would sing something. Whenever there was something good, I’d press record. And that’s how we wrote the rest of the album. Nothing was really written, like, Hey, I’ve got this new song. It wasn’t that kind of band, which was good, because it was a very natural thing, the way we all played and wrote the songs that way.

With Heaven and Hell having done so well, was there a greater sense of confidence in what you were doing when it came to writing and recording Mob Rules?

Yes. [With Heaven and Hell] we didn’t know how people would react to Sabbath without Ozzy. So, after having such a successful album and tour with Ronnie, and maintaining our fanbase, we didn’t have to worry about that when we did the Mob Rules album and tour.

IOMMI: I think so, yeah. With Heaven and Hell we had to break the ground with that one—new singer, new album that sounded different from our last stuff. Mob Rules was a continuation, really. Doing Mob Rules was a lot easier in some ways, you know. It was exciting to play.

APPICE: [There was] a lot of energy. [The writing] went really quick. And also there was fresh blood. When Ronnie joined the band, there was a whole other direction, and they had that whole successful Heaven and Hell album, and the momentum and the tour. Then I jump in in the middle and everything’s going well. It was a good thing. They could have gotten a drummer that maybe worked out, but then they weren’t really inspired by. I think that I fit in very well with Tony and Geezer, and we got along as friends, too. There was a whole renewed energy, it seemed like. The band was on fire; we played well together.

Ronnie and I gelled right away. We’re both Italian, we’re both from New York. So, we hit it off and it just fit real well together with that combination. It was easy. It was fast to do things. I was the engine pushing this thing with a lot of energy. We all inspired each other. It was pretty much unstoppable, we played so well together.

BUTLER:

Though you used producer Martin Birch again, you stayed in L.A. Was that simply a matter of convenience or did you have a preference for the Record Plant since you had recorded there before?

We went to L.A. to start writing, and for some reason we got talked into buying a studio.

We sent Martin Birch, the producer, over to have a look at this studio and he said, “Oh great, it’s really good,” and so we went ahead and bought a new desk for it and everything.

IOMMI:

Black and white  Wendy and Ronnie James Dio don’t need to imagine what John Lennon’s house was like

Though many see Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules as very similar, sonically they are very different. What are some differences and/or improvements that the Record Plant offered?

I really don’t know, because Martin was doing the production again. So, we left, more or less, the sound to him. Because he knew, after working with us on Heaven and Hell, how we worked. At first, we had to try each other out when we’d done Heaven and Hell. So, Martin learned from us and we learned from him. Doing Mob Rules, we’d [already] learned everything with each other, so it was a matter of going in and playing, and Martin got the sound. That’s why we had to re-record “The Mob Rules,” because we’d recorded that with [John] Lennon’s engineer and it was a different sound.

We used Lennon’s equipment. I was using a Vox amp when we did that. We just plugged in and recorded with the gear that was there. But when we got with Martin [at Record Plant], he said he wanted [us] to record it again so that it would all sound on the same level. He said [the original version] would sound too different. He wanted them all to sound from the same stable. So, we ended up recording it again at the Record Plant.

DIO: I think probably [the original version of “The Mob Rules”] might have sounded inconsistent with the rest of the album, and that was what the problem was. [Mob Rules] was done over a good period of time and was IOMMI:

Ronnie James Dio’s widow,

WENDY DIO,

remembers the making of Mob Rules Were you there for the recording of “The Mob Rules” at John Lennon’s house in England?

Yes, it was a great adventure for all of us. It was an amazing place. Ronnie and I went around and took photos of all the places where John and Yoko had taken photos of themselves: by the piano, by the bathtub, in the pool room. One day somebody opened a closet and like about a hundred platinum LPs from the Beatles fell out. We were all looking at those in astonishment! [Laughs] How would you characterize the state of the band when the Heaven and Hell tour wrapped up and Vinny was in the lineup?

In the beginning, when Bill [Ward] first left, there was a lot of apprehension. But I think that Vinny definitely filled the spot.

They had done [the second] half of the tour by that point, so I think that they were very happy with Vinny.

Did you feel like having another American in Sabbath was a positive thing for Ronnie at the time?

I think Vinny and Ronnie had a lot of camaraderie, especially because Vinny was Italian-American and so was Ronnie.

And they were both from New York, even though Ronnie was from upstate New York and Vinny was from, I think, Brooklyn.

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Yorkers, and so they both supported the same sports teams and they became incredibly great friends.

What did you think of the band’s decision to record in L.A.? Did that create distractions?

From my point of view, I liked it because Ronnie was home. But there are distractions in L.A.; of course there are distractions. But I think they were pretty happy with that.

Were you aware, while the band was recording Mob Rules, of any sort of division between the New York faction and the English faction, or was the band generally happy and getting along?

They were sometimes happy and sometimes… a little strange. You know, there was a lot of drug stuff going on at the time.

There were a lot of things like that. Ronnie never did anything except smoke pot. There were some problems back and forth, but then there were some good times, too.

How would you characterize Ronnie’s feelings about this album?

Well, he always enjoyed working with Sabbath no matter what, because the musicianship was so amazing. He loved writing with Tony. I think, when looking back, he was very proud of that album.

—ADEM TEPEDELEN

WENDY DIO PHOTO BY PG BRUNELLI • ARCHIVAL PHOTOS COURTESY OF WENDY DIO

The writing was still going on then; we were just trying different ideas. I came up with a lot of ideas, but we didn’t use all of them and we’d just pick certain things. But the studio thing did slow it up a bit, because we went into this studio to record and it was crap. [Laughs] We couldn’t get a decent sound in there. I don’t know what it was; it was probably us, really.

APPICE: I remember that. I remember going there with them. I think we were still writing and rehearsing, and they were talking about buying this studio that was called Can-Am at the time. I remember going there one night to check it out. It looked OK; it was kind of small, from what I remember. We never went in there to record anything. I don’t remember anything like that. So, we wound up doing it at the Record Plant in Los Angeles.

BUTLER: We enjoyed recording at the Record Plant, so we were happy to try recording there again.

IOMMI: [The Record Plant] was a great studio, and I think they’d given us a good deal to [record] there. It had everything we needed, all the facilities, you know. Whereas the studio we had bought, we had to buy new stuff to put in it and it all would have to be tested. The Record Plant was tried and tested, you know, so we could just walk in and start playing.

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BLACK SABBATH mob rules

well-rehearsed and all done in the same studio that we were happy and comfortable with, so if you take a track from some other place, you’re really going to hear the difference. So, for consistency’s sake, it was probably better for us to [record “The Mob Rules”] again. And we probably thought we could do it better than we did the first time. But you usually find that that doesn’t happen. The first time has got all the magic in it, and the second time is when you start whitewashing it a little bit. But I don’t think that happened with the [album] version.

I think the [album] version was fine.

APPICE: I’d never met Martin or worked with him before. It was a first-time thing when we got to the Record Plant. He’s a real sweet guy.

Very nice guy. I knew some of the stuff he did before, so I totally respected him. Each engineer or producer has a way of how they want to mic my drums and techniques and this and that. So, I’m open to that. I let them do their own thing and I work accordingly with them and we work together. I think we had a whole day and we got the drum sound down. I’m very happy with the drum sound; it’s a big and fat kind of sound. It captured my energy the way I was playing with the band. So, we worked very well together. He gets a little bit of a different sound. There’s a lot of low end on the album and on the drums. It was a similar sound to Heaven and Hell, except Bill tunes his drums slightly differently than I do; my drums are tuned higher. So, that was a good thing: a similar sound to Heaven and Hell, but a little bit different.

What are some memories of recording Mob Rules with Martin, which was the last time Black Sabbath would record with him?

It took a long time for me to get a good bass sound. I was using half my stage set up in the studio and kept blowing the mics. Martin was very patient with me, but it turned out okay in the end.

IOMMI: It was just great working as a team. At first, when we first used Martin, we almost had to train him to us, really. We had a particular sound. Geezer and myself were like a wall of sound, if you like. Geezer had different bass amps than most other bass players. And the way he played and everything, he wasn’t a one-note wonder. He did a lot of different runs and stuff.

So, Martin tried to clean Geezer’s sound up and I said, “No, you can’t do that. That’s not his sound.

Geezer needs to [have] that really fat, growly sound.” He went, “I dunno about that.” And I said, “Well, that’s our sound; that’s how it needs to be.” He got it at the end.

A lot of engineers and producers always used to separate everything and listen to the guitar nonstop, and listen to the bass nonstop. With BUTLER:

Sabbath, it wasn’t like that. You listened to [the band] as a sound, all together. If you start pulling things individually, it sounds horrible.

It’s the overall sound that makes that [Sabbath] sound. I said to Martin, “You’ve got to listen to the guitar and bass together, not individually.”

So, that’s something he got, and we learned from him, as well. It was a trial and error thing, which was good. He was grateful for that, and I was grateful that he could come in and produce it, because I wanted to concentrate on playing and writing, not being involved in the production so much.

APPICE: I remember after we got the drum sounds, they were trying to get the bass sounds, but they weren’t happy with them. It took a while to get dialed in. But it was just a great experience hanging out and watching the process with this legendary [producer]. I always had my eyes wide open and checked it out.

Ronnie and I would drive down there together, so I was there a lot of the time. The funny thing is that my brother [Carmine] was playing with Rod Stewart at the time, and they were over in the next studio [at the Record Plant]. So, we used to screw around with them. They kept peeking in to see what Black Sabbath was like, so one time we just hung a bunch of crosses all over the place. [Laughs].

What are some highlights from Mob Rules for you? What are some of the iconic songs that fans of Dio-era Sabbath want to hear?

I’d say “Sign of the Southern Cross” is one of my absolute favorites. “Falling Off the Edge of the World,” absolutely. “Over and Over” I liked a lot. I like “Voodoo” a lot. My favorite song is probably “Sign of the Southern Cross.” I love the bigness and feel of it all. I like songs that have big spaces and have very classical attitudes to them. I thought it was a wonderful follow-up to “Heaven and Hell,” as far as the kind of song that it was. It was fun to write and really fun to perform, and in retrospect, now that we’ve done these songs again on an entire tour, I’m a little bit more fresh on the ones that I like and don’t, and also the ones [we] chose for the set and the ones we didn’t choose for set.

BUTLER: “The Mob Rules,” “Voodoo,” “Slipping Away” and “Sign of the Southern Cross.” In “Slipping Away,” I was encouraged to do a mini lead bass part in the middle of the song, which I had never done before, and in “Sign of the Southern Cross,” I got to use a custom built [effects] pedal board.

IOMMI: I really like a lot of the songs on Mob Rules. “Sign of the Southern Cross” I really liked.

I tried some different things on that. I managed to get this violin sound on the guitar. A lot of people thought it was a violin, but it was a guitar. I managed to get this overdrive; I had this gadget that I can’t even remember what it was now. It was like a little mixer. I said to DIO:

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Martin, “Quick, you’ve got to record this before it blows up, or whatever.” [Laughs] It was, like, really overloaded. He created this violin sound, and I used it on “Sign of the Southern Cross,” at the beginning. All those little things sort of stood out in my mind. The only one that was a bit weird for us was “Country Girl,” [which] we had a bit of a dispute over. Geezer and myself didn’t like the idea of calling it “Country Girl.”

We said to Ronnie, “It doesn’t really sound like [Black Sabbath].” And he said, “Oh no, I like it.”

Anyway, we let it go in the end and we lived with it. We’d always laugh when it came on, and of course we got used to it.

APPICE: “Sign of the Southern Cross,” that song was so Sabbathy, so heavy. That’s what was cool, was touching on some of the sounds of Sabbath.

“Sign of the Southern Cross” is just a heavy, heavy song. It sounded like that could have been on some of the old Sabbath albums. “Turn Up the Night” sounds like it could have been on maybe Heaven and Hell. And some of the other ones, like “Voodoo,” that’s an interesting song, almost funky in a way. “Slipping Away” had almost kind of a funky feel to it, as well. The rest, “Falling Off the Edge of the World,” “Country Girl,” were pretty Sabbathy. Pretty signature Sabbath. It’s just the way that Tony and Geezer play together.

Only Tony could hit those chords and make them just total evil. [Laughs] I mean, he plays two chords and it’s huge and so evil. And Geezer, the way he plays underneath him and along with him—what a sound. It was easy for me to fit in because I love that, and I love that heaviness and behind-the-beat thing.

These Dio-era Sabbath albums were arguably some of Sabbath’s finest of any era, and many fans see them as “companion” albums, so to speak. As the musicians who wrote and played on them, what are some things in your mind that distinguish Mob Rules from its predecessor?

Mob Rules was done as a band, rather than done in bits and pieces.

IOMMI: I suppose with Mob Rules, Vinny brought that sharpness to it a bit. Being a totally different drummer from Bill, it brought a bit more slickness to it, I suppose, and [made it] tighter.

APPICE: Heaven and Hell was such a great album, such great songs. I wish [this lineup] would have written [the song] “Heaven and Hell.” [Laughs] I wish we would have had that on Mob Rules. That’s just the rock song of the century. I think there’s a little bit more energy involved in Mob Rules. On Heaven and Hell, the songs were a little bit more laid back and heavy. “Neon Knights” was a fast one on Heaven and Hell, but we had “Turn Up the Night,” which was a fast one, as well, but probably played with a little bit more energy, I would guess. I think it was the natural progression of Mob Rules coming out of Heaven and Hell. It’s the perfect album after such a classic.

BUTLER:

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BLACK SABBATH mob rules

Sign of the northern cross  The Dio-fronted Black Sabbath leads the mob in Madison Square Garden, May 17, 1982

“My brother [Carmine] was playing with Rod Stewart at the time, and they were over in the next studio. So, we used to screw around with them.

They kept peeking in to see what Black Sabbath was like, so one time we just hung a bunch of crosses all over the place.”

Do you prefer one over the other?

No, I see them as companion albums.

IOMMI: I love both of those albums. Certainly, Heaven and Hell was a big jump for us to go into that with a different singer. It’s hard. Most bands that replace the singer, it’s hard to carry on, you know? So, that was a big risk for us. But we did it and it worked. So, Heaven and Hell was a great achievement for us, and again, Mob Rules was a continuation. I love both of those albums.

I can relate to them.

APPICE: It still holds up and people still love these songs. I have a really good band in Europe and South America, and I go out and play most of the Sabbath songs I played on, and a couple of Dio songs, some classic stuff. People just really freak out, ’cause, really, I’m the only one out there now from the original band. Ozzy stopped doing it now, Tony and Geezer are not out there playing, and Bill hasn’t been doing anything out there live. So, I’m like the last link of this music, BUTLER:

of this band. When we play “The Mob Rules” live, people go friggin’ crazy. It’s great to be part of such a legacy for me.

This was the last album this lineup of Black Sabbath would make until 1992’s Dehumanizer.

Do you think that the success that happened so quickly for this lineup might have helped cause the split?

A lot of times success breeds problems, and that happened. I felt that that really did happen.

All of the bad things that could be used were used—from drug abuse to mental abuse. I just found that it all happened. It didn’t make for all that happy an album, not happy like Heaven and Hell was. Heaven and Hell was “the sky’s the limit,” and Mob Rules was a bit more contained: You need to do this, you need to do that. Once you have a successful album, of course you’re going to compare it— people are going to compare it—to that successful album. I just found it a lot more difficult album.

DIO:

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The process was a lot more difficult for me. But again, I’m proud of it. I think it’s a great album.

IOMMI: What caused the split [in 1982] was the live album [Live Evil], oddly enough. I think at the time Ronnie wanted to do a solo thing, and Geezer and myself were so used to working as a band it seemed like almost a betrayal to go out and do a solo album in them days. I think we sort of got the hump a bit about that. But the straw that broke the camel’s back, as they say, was when we were doing the live album and we heard that Ronnie was going in [to the studio] and doing a different mix with the engineer after we’d left. Which, apparently, was totally untrue; but these were the rumors that were started from the engineer at the time. That was it. But it just shows you, we got back together again and we got back together again for another two albums.

DIO: If you’re lucky—and I’m lucky—you remember the good things that were going on and not fester over [the bad things].

PHOTO BY FRANK WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

VINNY A PPICE

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gs n i k l a t e m Death

ty l a y o r l a t e th m their a e d t i u r c e r and exdteenndted reign unprece PHOTOS

Y STORY B

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Daniel Lak

BY

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Alex Morg

• M A Y 20 21 D E C IB E L •

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we’re one of the lucky bands that planned to be off during this time. Our crew… those guys had other tours lined up with other bands. They’ve been affected big-time. They’ve been hurting because all the other tours got canceled that they would have done.”

As Fisher is quick to mention, people in all walks of life have taken punch after punch— from health risks to personal isolation to the economic fallout from all of the above—ever since the novel coronavirus went global at the end of last winter. But Cannibal Corpse’s woes stretch back somewhat further, to a day in midDecember 2018 when reports started flying about Pat O’Brien’s arrest. The news seemed sensationalist without appearing to have been sensationalized: Stories published at the time state that the guitarist unlawfully entered a home, pushed one of the residents to the floor, then fled to the yard where he lunged at the responding police

ERIK RUTAN

is a member of Cannibal Corpse.

The throne conqueror who summons sick riffs in Hate Eternal, who awoke the gods of the forsaken on a pair of early/mid-alphabet Morbid Angel records, who was shredding cadavers in early-’90s phenoms Ripping Corpse before all that—now he terrorizes strings and ears for one of the longest-running and most revered death metal bands in the world. And although it’s been a year since the decision was made to transition him from frequent producer and fill-in touring guitarist to full-time musical contributor, it’s possible he hasn’t completely assimilated this knowledge yet. ¶ “It’s still surreal,” Rutan gushes, “partially because this year has been surreal. To be a part of the band—to have the honor of them wanting me to be a part of the band—it was probably one of the biggest decisions in my life that was the easiest to make. To have something like this happen this far down the road in my career is pretty surreal. I feel very grateful to have opportunities like this.”

The road that led to Rutan’s formal installment in the band was a tangled mass of professional highs and personal lows, culminating in the career-choking held-breath of the COVID-19 pandemic that swallowed 12 months (and counting) of lives-that-would-have-been. Though Cannibal Corpse had already planned to take time off from touring in 2020 to focus on writing and recording the grotesque and lacerating Violence Unimagined, they expected to be touring by late last fall, and the protracted global lockdown has not only stymied any such ambitions, but, for that very reason, postponed the album’s release.

CONDEMNED BY CONTAGION “It is definitely strange being at a standstill,” guitarist Rob Barrett muses. “We usually have our plans a year ahead of time, sometimes more. The engine’s idling, but we don’t have anywhere to go.”

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“There was always something coming up,” explains bassist Alex Webster. “There’s a recording, and a few months later there’s going to be this tour; and then a month or so after that, there’s this other tour; and then maybe we’re doing a couple weeks in Australia or something. There’s none of that at the moment.

Everything’s in a holding pattern. 2020 is the only year since we’ve been a band that we didn’t play at least one show.”

“I miss going onstage,” vocalist George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher grumbles. “It’s like with wrestlers, when their music hits and the crowd goes crazy. When it’s a rowdy crowd and they first see everybody onstage, there is not much in this world that is more exciting than that. When I’m putting my arms up, and Paul [Mazurkiewicz, drummer] hits the count… It is the most adrenaline I can remember ever having for anything. I’m missing that stuff now. But

I knew I was producing a Cannibal Corpse record this year, but I had no idea the added involvement that I would have.

It was kind of like,

‘HOLY SHIT, TIME TO UP THE ANTE!’ Erik Rutan

with a knife before officers stunned him with a taser to get the situation under control, all while O’Brien’s home—containing dozens of shotguns, handguns, rifles and a pair of flamethrowers—burned for nearly an hour, the heat from which caused some of the ammunition in the house to explode.

The facts of that day are difficult to grapple with, for any of O’Brien’s fans or friends, making speculation of their underlying causes both ill-advised and irresponsible. In the months since, the other members of the band have spoken about their own emotional reactions to O’Brien’s situation, and they have collectively voiced their support for the man with whom they have spent so much of their professional lives. For the purposes of this story, all parties were asked not to discuss O’Brien in interviews, so for the time being, Cannibal Corpse have laid the issue to rest.

The amputation of a pivotal axeman from their ranks came at a particularly bad time for the band. They had recently announced their slot on the 2019 Decibel Magazine Tour with Morbid Angel, Blood Incantation and Necrot, from which they would have to leave a week early to prepare to join Slayer’s farewell tour through North America. Cannibal Corpse do not rest, but for an instant, their momentum hung in the balance.

“We’ve known Erik since 1990, maybe even earlier, when he was in Ripping Corpse,” Barrett says when asked about bringing on Rutan to keep the Cannibal tour train rolling along. “He’s not the new guy. He’s just the new guy we’ve known for 30 years. We didn’t even have to ask him. He basically just offered to do it because he knew we were in a tight situation. I didn’t think that he’d be willing to do it because he’s got so much other shit going on—he’s got his own band [Hate Eternal], he’s got a studio he’s got to run [Mana Recording Studios]. He just jumped right in. It was totally natural.”

Rutan dredges the far corners of his memory for details about his past with the band: “Back in the Ripping Corpse days, the first time we went to see Cannibal was at G. Willikers [in Pennsauken, NJ]. It was either Paul or Alex who gave me Eaten Back to Life before the record had even come out, and it was fucking amazing! We played the shit out of it! [As a member of] Hate Eternal and with Morbid Angel, I’ve toured with Cannibal Corpse. Alex was my roommate for two years back in the ’90s.” And not inconsequentially, Rutan has handily engineered, produced and mixed four of Cannibal Corpse’s last five records. So, yeah, not the new guy by quite a stretch.

“He’s such a professional,” adds Mazurkiewicz. “When he first came to practice to do the live stuff, you’d think he’d been playM A2Y 02021 • EDE 5 6 : M• AY 21 : D C ICIBEL BEL 56

ing the song for 10 years already. That’s how great a guitar player he is and how prepared he is.”

“Erik is a top-tier guy; everybody knows that,’ Webster echoes. “We did not have much time to get ready [for the spring 2019 tours]. He got his act together really quickly, about a month and a half. He just worked his ass off and got the set together.”

SURROUND, KILL, DEVOUR THE EARTH Rutan won’t deny that preparing to tour in Cannibal Corpse caused him to sweat a little, but he admits that he had an advantage: “I had produced half the songs. They’re ingrained in my head because I’ve listened to those songs over and over again. The other half I know so well because I have all the records. It helps that, since the beginning of my career, I’ve been playing really complex music. It definitely set me up.

I’m able to learn material fast. It was challenging, there’s no doubt about it, but I’m always up for a challenge.”

Fisher recalls the Decibel Magazine Tour with Rutan on guitar as an exciting experience.

“Rutan raised this new energy, this positivity,” he enthuses. “It’s super infectious. He’s screaming at the crowd or mouthing the lyrics, because he knows all the lyrics. The last show, in New York, was our best show that tour. [After playing] we all went backstage, we got in a room and were just screaming. Rutan is very vocal. I was like, ‘That was a fucking good show!’ And then he started off, ‘Yeah it was! Fuck yeah!’ He started going crazy, and then we all went absolutely bonkers in that dressing room. We were fucking hyped up. It was power. From the outside, it must have sounded like we had the worst show ever.”

After the first week of March, Cannibal Corpse gave up their dB Tour spot to Immolation

so they could prepare to tour with the almighty Slayer. Asking Fisher to express his feelings about sharing the stage with his lifetime idols might be the one way to drive the man to utter reverent silence. The words just don’t meet the moment. So instead, he starts speaking in parables.

“A friend of mine, Charlie Smith, rest in peace, is one of the first guys who I really got into listening to music with. He would paint on a lot of our jackets. He drew the Slayer logo with the swords [on mine]. It’s all worn to hell now, but you can still make it out. Under that, he did the Possessed logo and Destruction on the sleeve. When I was growing up, all my friends called me Fish. But when I started going to shows, people called me Slayer George because of my jacket. It didn’t matter if it was August, if it was 100 percent humidity or 95°, that fucking jacket was on me. It did not matter. I still have that. Touring with Slayer was one of the biggest fucking things.”

Then it was on to the European summer festival circuit, and by the fall of 2019, Cannibal Corpse were savaging North America once again with Australians Thy Art Is Murder in tow, wrapping the cycle for 2017’s nightmare-fueled Red Before Black with a triumphant hometown Thanksgiving show in Tampa, FL. All told, the nearly 50-year-old death metal lifers ground out a brutalizing seven tour legs before pausing just long enough to write a new record—and, in February 2020, formally induct their newest full member— before returning that fall to the nomadic life of bombastic performances once again.

That was the intention, anyway. But partway through the writing process, whispers of lockdowns and travel restrictions hounded the band, who have been bicoastal ever since Webster moved to Oregon a half-decade ago. As harrowing as 2018 and 2019 were for Cannibal Corpse, one imagines 2020 appearing in a dismembered Vince Locke version of a popular meme, sneering, “Hold my ear.”

“When we’re writing material,” explains Barrett, “Alex will usually fly down halfway through the process to learn our stuff, tab it out and then show us his stuff. He was able to come down before the whole shutdown. He came down for a week sometime in March.”

“Alex had to cut his trip short by a day,” Mazurkiewicz recalls. “He didn’t want to get stuck in Tampa. But having him for those couple days definitely helped shore up his songs. I think everybody felt a little more confident in Alex showing up for his songs. And we did our band photos. We got so lucky on that. If that hadn’t happened then, we would probably be out of luck for any newer band photos. That was perfect timing.”

With the whole world in turmoil over a virus about which there was little information—and with problems in the United States compounded by the incompetence of the idiotic Tweet-pumpkin in the White House—Cannibal Corpse’s plan

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D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 1 : 5 7

I DO MISS THE ORGANIC DAYS.

Five guys getting together in a room and making a song—that just doesn’t happen anymore.

I miss that. That’s how the band was founded.

BUT WE’VE EVOLVED. Paul Mazurkiewicz

to record an album in April suddenly seemed unsure. But Rutan runs the studio, and most of the guys live within comfortable driving distance, so the decision was made to forge ahead, even in Webster’s absence.

“Alex is such an integral part of the band, in every aspect,” Rutan adds, “so to not have him here was so weird—learning his songs from tab or Skype, and tracking them when he wasn’t here. Luckily, he has Pro Tools at home, and he’s tracked bass at home before for other projects, so it worked.”

With a cool modesty, Webster says, “Bass is one of the easier instruments, as far as recording it goes. It’s pretty straightforward to get a great bass tone in a home studio. I’m not a studio engineer or anything, but I learned what I needed to learn a decade or so ago when I was working on the Blotted Science project with Ron [Jarzombek of Watchtower], and I also recorded my bass tracks at home for Conquering Dystopia [a band that includes Jeff Loomis]. I was really happy with the results, and I knew that it wasn’t going to be a problem. But I’m not as efficient an engineer as Erik. Erik’s the professional. Also, I tend to spend a lot longer on it than necessary because I don’t have someone there telling me that was or wasn’t good enough. You start to wonder if you got it. I would second-guess myself a bit. I need that second set of ears.”

M A2Y 02021 5 8 : M• AY 2 1 : D• EDE C ICIBEL BEL 58

Rutan understands the sentiment, but he praises Webster’s experience, talent and consistent communication for making the process work so well: “Alex is the best. Talk about adapting—he can adapt to anything. We made sure he had plenty of time to do it on his own. We set up a schedule. He kept to that schedule and so did we, so that made the transition smoother.”

IMAGINING THE VIOLENCE After 30 years and 14 albums teeming with

well over 150 songs, how much catchy, carnivorous death metal does the Cannibal really have left to give? Turns out, at least 42 more minutes of material that deserves to take its place high in that blood-drenched canon. Without meaning to do so, the band’s string players divvied up the work almost evenly (with Mazurkiewicz cleaning up lyric duty on the opening and closing tracks), stitching together a total of 11 songs that will have you performing elective home surgeries on yourself as happily and hungrily as ever.

Of course, Cannibal Corpse’s songwriting process certainly hasn’t stagnated over their decades of service to extreme metal. “Way back when I first joined the band, on The Bleeding, we all would get in the practice room together and write stuff together,” Barrett remembers. “We would just start throwing out riffs at each other. We’d

arrange songs like that. But after I came back in 2005, the writing was different. Everyone was doing their own songs separately. There’s only a few songs that I wrote together with Webster since I’ve been back in the band because we don’t really write songs together anymore.”

“I do miss the organic days,” Mazurkiewicz says. “Five guys getting together in a room and making a song—that just doesn’t happen anymore. I miss that. That’s how the band was founded. But we’ve evolved. I think we’ve done some great stuff—this album for instance!

Great songs! But they’re so much different than the way we would have put together songs back on the first couple albums, where it was so organically done.”

He’s right, though. Violence Unimagined (the title itself a Mazurkiewicz creation) is another batch of superb tunes. Both Webster and Barrett bear their Slayer influence on their sleeves when they talk about some of their contributions to the record. “‘Necrogenic Resurrection’ is a fast song,” Webster says. “It’s a thrash/speed song, sort of that Slayer kind of speed. The lyrics came afterward. They’re not overly influenced by what the music is, but they ended up working well together.” Of course they fucking do— amid galloping nastiness and a chuggeriffic time-bending breakdown, the song follows the exploits of a homicidal cult obsessed with raising their maniacal lord from the dead through the ritualized slaughter of… well, everyone else, we guess.

“I’m not going to hide it,” Barrett admits.

“Slayer is my main influence. The opening track, ‘Murderous Rampage,’ is a very Slayeresque kind of song, but with the Cannibal identity.” In its place at the very top of the record, “Murderous Rampage” sets the album’s tone, both sonically and thematically, but that tonal definition is loose and open to reinterpretation as the record plays. The sole constant is that all songs are head-choppers with stellar performances in every department. Guitar solos whine and slice, riffs pounce with fury, and Mazurkiewicz’s drum performances should be turned into museum pieces for skinsmen of any age to study for as long as humanity lasts. The deftness with which that man handles absurd timing is simply awe-inspiring.

“Alex’s songs were the hardest songs I’ve ever played,” says Mazurkiewicz. “They’re not faster or anything, just different, things that I wouldn’t play naturally. It’s within my tempos, but mentally, it’s so hard to comprehend. They drove me crazy. ‘Surround, Kill, Devour’ was just fast, with double bass, a lot of fills, crazy tempo, but all right, that’s kind of straightforward for Alex. ‘Necrogenic Resurrection,’ was all in fives and sevens. It’s just insane, having to learn these parts. But the tough part to me got to when I learned ‘Slowly Sawn’ and ‘Cerements of the Flayed.’ Those two songs drained me so much.

They’re exercises in mental stamina. ‘Slowly

Sawn’ is not a fast song—it’s the slowest song on the record, and it’s a great song—but it took me a long time to wrap my head around the timing of those parts. This album drove me completely nuts. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I think it turned out great, but it was tough. I needed to take some time off after the recording.

It really wore me out.”

“Paul did an amazing job,” Webster asserts.

“It had to be hard work. Paul’s [always] been working hard. Even if the band isn’t doing full practices, he’s up there all the time keeping his chops going. He’s been working so hard the past decade or so. If you’re into drums, and you see the progression, I think it’s pretty killer. It’s cool when a guy’s 30 years into a career and making some of his best shit. Hats off to Paul for his performance.”

Coming late in the album, “Slowly Sawn” and “Cerements of the Flayed” churn and groan; they’re barbed and barbarous without espousing the mainlined aggression of some of the other songs. They showcase a more twisted, narcotic approach to the Cannibal sound. Flanking the turbo-charged skull-shredder “Overtorture” the way they do, they offer an intriguing window into Cannibal Corpse’s alternate soul. With technical fireworks on display throughout much of the album, Barrett establishes that his duty for this record was to tether it to the old-school Cannibal style, at least for a few songs.

“The way I look at Cannibal Corpse over the years,” Barrett says, “the first three records were real simple, caveman-style, basic stuff, but there’s some weird shit going on. It’s not straight-ahead stuff. It used to crack me up when I heard those records. ‘What the fuck are these guys doing?’ They were writing stuff that didn’t make sense, but they made it make sense.

That’s what made their identity, their sound— playing this weird shit that nobody would even think of doing.

“The first one I wrote [for Violence Unimagined] was ‘Bound and Burned.’ To me, it sounds like it could have been on The Bleeding. It’s pretty cool because the whole middle part of the song is a back-and-forth lead thing, à la Slayer’s style, where there’s a real quick lead, then a quick vocal part, then back to a lead, and it goes back and forth six times like that.” Barrett also flags his favorite of his songs for this record, “Inhumane Harvest,” as hearkening back to Bleeding-era sounds, and he makes an unassailable argument for adding ideas into the mix that are a bit less manic and technical. “We have plenty of fast songs, so I feel like I have to be able to write some more mid-paced stuff to counter all the fast shit that we’re playing. It’s good to have slower songs in a live set when you’re playing for 80 minutes. You want to break it up a little. What are we going to do, play a bunch of fast shit one after another? It’s going to all sound the same. You have to have those slower things, because it makes the faster stuff less stale.”

Still, Barrett allowed himself to play around with fun new ideas. “The fourth song I wrote was ‘Follow the Blood.’ I wouldn’t say it’s experimental, but I was fucking with this low-tuned, weird, bendy rubber band kind of riff, and I thought it sounded pretty cool, and we ended up using it in this song. It’s mostly slow, but it has a fast couple parts in the middle and the end. I think it’s got a cool groove to it.”

Between them, Webster and Barrett brought eight songs for Violence Unimagined. The remaining three tracks came from the mind and fingers of the band’s new secret weapon in Rutan.

“I knew I was producing a Cannibal Corpse record this year,” Rutan says, “but I had no idea the added involvement that I would have. The next thing you know, I’m not just producing, but writing songs and playing on the record.

It was kind of like, ‘Holy shit, time to up the ante!’ With Hate Eternal, I don’t really think much about anything. I’m just rolling with it as ideas flow. But with Cannibal Corpse, you have a huge body of work, all kinds of styles over the years. I haven’t done something like this in a long time, since Morbid Angel, where I had to think, ‘What can I contribute that will be unique?’ But with Cannibal, it wasn’t forced either. The thoughts came naturally. The songs I wrote sound like Cannibal Corpse, just with a little different flavor. I really enjoyed it. And the lyrics! I wrote some fucked-up shit! I had a really fun time writing the songs until I had to record them and realized, ‘Why do I write shit so fucking hard all the time?’”

What he ended up with were the aforementioned “Overtorture”—whose first riff Rutan calls “weird, revolving, total fucking insanity”— “Condemnation Contagion” and “Ritual Annihilation,” which Webster points out as being some of the fastest, most punishing drum parts anyone could have thrown at Mazurkiewicz.

“Playing Erik’s songs presented a new challenge,” says Webster. “He certainly wasn’t going to join this band and take it easy on us. He’s played in some very high-level bands, and he came in and wrote some stuff that was really hard to play. Erik is not the kind of person who is going to take it easy in anything he does. He will work super hard, and if he wants to write something, he’s going to write it the way he hears it. He’s not going to pull it back. He loves to do stuff with dueling rhythm guitars. Listen to the left, and then listen to the right—there’s very often two different guitar parts going on. His songs sound very big and three-dimensional because the two guitar parts are sometimes fairly different from each other. He’s really good at that sort of thing.

You can hear it throughout his catalog, in the work he’s done with the other bands he was in.

He brought that to Cannibal Corpse. It’s killer.”

“There’s a lot of uneasiness on this record with the riffing,” Rutan suggests. “There’s no doubt in my mind that the uneasiness of these days has created what this record is. There are some uncomfortable moments, in a very positive way. It reflects a lot of what everybody has been going through. I’m glad we were able to channel that into something like this.”

BOUND AND BURNED (TO CD) With songs written and learned by all of the

band’s members, they began tracking in earnest at Rutan’s Mana Recording Studios in the middle of April of last year, a demanding process that was only made more complicated by the pandemic. Webster was more than capable of capturing his bass parts in Oregon, but even in the comparatively small Florida region between the guys’ houses and the studio, there were obstacles.

“Records are hard, period,” Rutan says, “but when you add in all these other things, it just : 59 59

DE CIBEL 2021 DE C I B E •L M: AMY AY 2 0 2• 1

what the fuck we were doing. There are times when Webster’s been in the studio, if it’s a song he wrote lyrics for, and I’ll start rapping them.

One time, Alex was like, ‘You sound almost like Ice-T. I’m serious!’ That’s a hell of a compliment.”

OVER(DUE)TORTURE And by the end of the spring of 2020, Violence

There are times when [Alex] Webster’s been in the studio, if it’s a song he wrote lyrics for, and ’I ll start rapping them.

One time, Alex was like, ‘You sound almost like Ice-T. ’I m serious!’

THAT’S A HELL OF A COMPLIMENT. George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher

becomes, ‘Holy shit, how do I balance all this and keep my head on straight?’ There were curfews and protests, and at some point, people were blocking the same highways that the guys needed to get to the studio. Certain counties were having lockdowns, and we were trying to figure out, ‘If you bypass this county, go through that county, get here by this time…’ We had to start earlier so guys could get out of here by 9 o’clock because of curfew. It was nuts, a unique experience, for sure. But it kept my mind focused.”

Despite generally performing separately on the record by necessity, without anyone stopping in just to hang out, the Florida-based members of the band report a mostly smooth recording process, largely related to the fact that working with Rutan has become a regular and comfortable experience. “We don’t want to rush things,” says Mazurkiewicz. “We know we have the time.

We know how we work. I really tried to get two songs a day. I’m not beating myself down or trying to get it all done in a day or two. I think I got it done in six or seven days.”

“Rutan has recorded a who’s who of bands,” Fisher praises his longtime collaborator. “He’s one of the founding fathers of modern death metal, and he’s a badass singer in his own right.

Working with him, I know nothing’s going to slip through the cracks. I know that when M A2Y 02021 6 0 : M• AY 2 1 : D• EDE C ICIBEL BEL 60

I listen back, I’m not going to cringe. I trust everything that he says.”

Fisher goes on to describe the dichotomous reasons why working with Rutan is so rewarding. Reason #1: An exacting, but compassionate work ethic. “There’s times we’ve worked on the same fucking part for an hour and it’s making us both go crazy, and I’m sitting in the booth ready to stick my finger down my throat and rip my guts out and kill myself. And he’s like, ‘Come on, man. We’ve got to work.’ He’ll give me time to feel dark or down and desolate, and then he’ll be like, ‘You know what you have to do. You have to get up and sing this fucking part, because you’re the MAN!’ And then we’re laughing, and boom, we’re working again. But if the voice is just kaput, he’s like, ‘You know what? We’ll just come back in tomorrow. It’s not sounding right. You know it and I know it.’”

Reason #2: Just clowning. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because some people might be unhappy with it,” Fisher begins, plowing forward anyway, “but we spend a lot of time just laughing our asses off. It’s mostly because of me that we spend a lot of time fucking around.

It’s not him. It’s all me being an idiot. He’ll be like, ‘Let’s try that scream again,’ and I’ll do a really high scream. He’ll be laughing his ass off, and then it’ll take us five minutes to figure out

Unimagined was all dressed up with no place to go. Nobody could tour. The band and label made the choice to hold onto the record for months, hoping that opportunities to support it would open up. Nearly a year later, none have. In their time off, the members of Cannibal Corpse have found a variety of ways to occupy themselves.

Webster makes the most of his placement in the Pacific Northwest by hiking, camping and biking. Mazurkiewicz has been able to return to playing ice hockey in a local league, though that was interrupted for a time during the worst parts of the lockdown. Fisher parents his two teen daughters, plays World of Warcraft and presumably makes trips to Target whenever the occasion presents itself.

Rutan, of course, refuses to sit still. Before recording Violence Unimagined, he was working on a Hate Eternal tab book that is due out sometime this year. When the Cannibal record was finished, he used the rare months without studio work to upgrade his console—on which he estimates he made over 60 albums—and rewired his studio. At the tail end of that process, tropical storm Eta flooded his house and knocked out electricity in the area, so he was reduced to using an industrial broom to push the water out of his home studio. This comes after Hurricane Irma left him with massive wind damage to repair.

The construction projects keep piling up, but as Rutan says, “When times get tough is when I rise to the occasion. That’s kind of the story of my life. That’s when I excel.”

Now the band is anxious for people to finally hear Violence Unimagined… and to see what sick images Vince Locke cooked up this time for the cover. As usual, the primary image (a nude, fangfestooned mother kneeling amongst decapitated corpses and dismembering her own wailing child) will hide behind a “censored” version, a painting that is equally as horrifying, if rather less explicit. It’s all depraved and indefensible and perfect. Cannibal Corpse have always played death metal, have always written lyrics about various shades of horror, have always cloaked their records in the most hideous paintings.

Some things never change.

And others, as Rutan enthusiastically embodies, occasionally do change. “I put everything I had into this record,” he insists. “By the time this record was done, I had nothing else to offer.

It’s important to me to help contribute to the legacy of one of the best bands in death metal.

For me to be a part of that is a tremendous honor, and I take it very seriously. It’s a fucking huge deal for me. I don’t take it lightly. I don’t take it for granted.”

D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 1 : 6 1

INSIDE ≥

64 COFFIN MULCH Total landscaping death metal 66 THE CROWN Their majesty

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

68 FULCI Beyond the living 70 KREATOR Bring the Noise 72 ORYX Heavyweight and still undisputed

Battles in the North West

MAY

Outlaw Norwegian black metallers VREID enter a new frontier with an ambitious multimedia concept album

15

Hatchets to the head

12

Heads shoveled off

5 1

Nails through the neck

Skull full of maggots

A

t the furthest inlet of a massive fjord is Sogndal, Norway, an isolated municipality with its own insular VREID culture and dialect (sognamål). As it happens, Sogndal, Wild North West in the world of extreme metal, is a special microcosm, giving SEASON OF MIST the world a handful of important, near-irreplaceable black metal artists over the past three decades. From Windir and Cor Scorpii to Mistur and Ulcus, Sognametal is an important microverse in the larger setting of “Norwegian black metal.” ¶ Sitting at the current seat of “Sognametal” is Vreid, whose rock ‘n’ roll-inflected, folk song/legend-inspired take on black metal fully embodies Sogndal in the new decade, with Valfar’s shadow (Vreid having been Windir’s backing band for the Likferd album) looming just in the distance, but enough of Vreid’s own character to continually cement this now long-running act as the new rulers of their small kingdom. ¶ A concept album about life in Sogndal and the lore which surrounds it

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

8

D E C I B E L : M AY 2 0 2 1 : 6 3

deep within the fjords, Wild North West is Vreid’s love letter to the place they call home, and their finest hour at that. Though Vreid’s music doesn’t come off as romantic in the slightest, it is the passion fueling their music that really drives the love for their origins home. Be it the stomping, now-signature rock riffs that defined predecessors like Pitch Black Brigade and, more recently, Lifehunger, the melodic, folky black metal that inspired the band’s impetus, or even new-ground ballad “Dazed and Reduced,” Vreid’s multifaceted take on Wild North West demonstrates them to be more than “just a black metal band.”

Accompanying the LP is a full-album video that tells a story of a young person’s experience in the “wild north west” of Sogndal’s past; interwoven, of course, with footage of Vreid tearing it up (in traditional folk garb, no less—sweater game strong, Vreid). The idea of an album-length video isn’t a new one, and yet Vreid’s more conceptual approach makes the visuals inseparable from the musical content within. Even listening to the album on its own, I am reminded of the visuals presented in the video with each new song’s introduction (especially the children’s voices that herald “Into the Mountains,” my personal favorite). Visions of mountains, snow and log cabins abound within Vreid’s most ambitious video work to date, and this video’s near-cozy nature (men in sweaters playing ferocious black metal is kind of adorable) makes a perfect foil for the music.

What is most peculiar about Wild North West is, even though it’s a love letter to Sogndal’s rugged past, the album itself is in English. Though Vreid have made entire albums in English before, one would think the personification of their hometown would be presented in sognamål. This isn’t a complaint, though—rather a surprised comment. Wild North West’s pride is still just as palpable, even though I personally think delivering the album in their home dialect would have made it that much more special. Either way, what Vreid have presented on this latest album is easily their most potent and varied musical outing to date. —JON ROSENTHAL

AGENT STEEL

7

No Other Godz Before Me CHERRY RED

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

A decade ago, yours truly was on a ship in the Caribbean early in the day to see speed metal veterans Agent Steel, the dudes who released the classic Unstoppable Force a lifetime or two ago. The trouble was that singer/mastermind John Cyriis didn’t make the trip, and folks were stuck with 6 4 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

seeing last-minute substitute Rick Mythiasin reading from a handful of lyrics scribbled on looseleaf paper. It was friggin’ depressing, and that’s the last thing you want to feel when soaking up the blazing sun on a ship in January. Not long after that sorry display, the band went on indefinite hiatus.

There’s good news, though, as Cyriis took it upon himself to completely revamp Agent Steel, taking on four new band members, and the crew has releasedt No Other Godz Before Me, the band’s first new album in 14 long years. Bolstered by two ace guitarists—Vinicius Carvalho and 20-year-old phenom Nikolay Atanasov—Agent Steel sound reborn, pulling off rampaging arrangements that rival the band’s best work 35 years ago. Better yet, Cyriis is in fine form, his maniacal screams accentuating the instrumentation like a crazed, speed metal King Diamond.

Sure, at times his histrionics can flirt with silliness (the way he enters “Trespassers” bears an uncanny resemblance to the time Apu imitated a hummingbird on The Simpsons) but hell, speed metal has always been a little silly, and the way Cyriis and Agent Steel go all-in with a wonderfully over-the-top performance is huge fun, not to mention endearing as hell. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

BODY VOID

7

Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth PROSTHETIC

Tortured hole

It can be both a blessing and a curse when an album’s opening song works as a perfect summation of a band’s style, sound and strengths. Excitement and compulsion are instant, but the second half of the LP can end up feeling like more of the same, to lesser effect.

Body Void have developed a good feeling for pace after two self-released albums, an EP and a split (not to mention a wealth of demo material under the name Devoid, circa 2014-2016), but the opening song on this four-track, 52-minute Prosthetic debut remains the high point—of both the album and feasibly their career to date. The sluggish sucker-punch riff compels instant sky-punching on the cymbal crashes, and at just the right moment we’re deviated into a frenzied burst of speed, collapsing into gristly drone-doom piled with layers of troubling noise before stomping to a climax with a riff that sounds like the iron man from “Iron Man” wreaking his vengeance to the tune of “Three Blind Mice.”

All four songs run around 13 minutes, each underpinned with an iron spine of a sludge riff, a wandering structure and unfolding

drama, stretching and shifting and mostly staying interesting (especially “Forest Fire,” bubbling with atmospheric melodic nuances, subtle segues hung between primevally basic caveman chords). Side two is, largely, more of the same, but to lesser effect—the noiselayering seems less assured and satisfying, and there are few surprises left. However, it is all deployed with tangible passion and bristling conviction, singer/guitarist Will Ryan popping a temple vein over hot-button progressive issues like climate change and trans rights, all the while sounding like a furious witch shrieking hideous incantations in a thunderstorm.

—CHRIS CHANTLER

COFFIN MULCH

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Septic Funeral

REDEFINING DARKNESS

Bowel burial

A funeral bell. A creak of night-stalking bass. That’s all between you and the coming deluge of feculent filth oozing from Coffin Mulch’s mini-LP, Septic Funeral. After releasing a three-song demo in 2019, these Scottish slime-mongers were scooped up by death metal benefactors Redefining Darkness. The result is a record that splashes in the old-school cesspool like the band’s genre forefathers in Autopsy and Carnage.

While the album’s self-titled opening track is a lumbering introduction, “Black Liquefaction” hammers into your consciousness with swampy grooves and a slashing solo. The Swedeath speed-blasting of “Live Again” reveals tireless percussion, which otherwise settles into a slow to mid-paced stomp. After barking the song’s titular command to the troops, the militant march of “Onward to Death” concludes with the crunch of boots in lockstep.

At just 47 seconds, “Carnivorous Subjugation” is a literal one-trick war horse riding one riff into the grave. Septic Funeral concludes with a re-recording of their eponymous anthem, “Coffin Mulch.” The song’s creeping rot feels like a redundant bookend that in many ways echoes the funereal tempo of the opening track. While the album’s mix (by Tommy Duffin) and mastering (by Andy Lippoldt) captures the grime promised by Adam Burke’s grotesque cover painting, the songwriting relies on horrors already wellestablished by death metal’s golden age. But Coffin Mulch proudly embody that pustulant charm while unapologetically soaking Septic Funeral’s 20-minute runtime in raw sewage.

As Skinless once growled in gross-out anthem “Pool of Stool,” “Here I sit in the shit, here I be in the pee.” —SEAN FRASIER

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7

Through the Gate Eternal BORIS

Thrashing was never my business, but this is good

My metal indoctrination was a little different from the traditional Hesher’s Autobiography in that I completely skipped over thrash. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it—I just kind of dove directly into black and death metal very soon into my “I can finally make my own music taste” phase. This may seem like a bit too much information, but hear me out: I don’t have the same sort of nostalgic, heartfelt connection to most thrash that the majority of metal fans have, so when I view an album like Demiser’s Through the Gate Eternal, it’s a little confusing to fully grasp, simply because I don’t have that context of style. The reality is, I can only view this for what it is: a metal album.

And it’s a pretty decent one at that.

Demiser play a ripping, fast take on black/ thrash metal, not so much in the “first wave”

sense like Venom, but rather something with a more distinct connection to current-day black metal’s definition(s). There is a heavy emphasis on the word “modern” here, as you’ll be in for some of the big-budget “arena black metal” stylizings, which really put them at home alongside Boris Records alumni Cloak. This is made manifest in big, chugging riffs and catchier rhythms which are generally atypical to black/thrash metal.

The big thing about Demiser’s approach is, I feel pretty at home with it—a non-thrasher’s delight, I guess—and the more time I spend with it, the more I think I can dive into thrash and get into something new, even if I’m in my 30s. —JON ROSENTHAL

DVNE

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Etemen Ænka M E TA L B L A D E

Mostly great Scots

From the Ocean Collective to Mastodon by way of Isis

THE CROWN, Royal Destroyer

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The devil ain’t just in the details! | M E TA L B L A D E

The consideration of compositional balance might seem like academic horseshit to the extreme metal layman, especially when—at a glance—the genre appears to be prefabbed from coat upon coat of sheer excess (whether an excess of velocity or heresy or discord).

And hell, isn’t that sort of the point? Don’t we want at least some small corner of our lives to be untethered from this type of fussy analysis? Sometimes, sure. Yet, one of the medium’s most fascinating qualities is underscored in the way that adepts such as Carcass, Nile or Exhumed are able to

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reel wholesale upheaval around a core of unfuckwithable grace.

Hearing that raw bedlam held just at bay by meticulous compositional structure is one of death metal’s more peculiar and appealing potentialities, and there’s no better paragon of that razor’s edge than Royal Destroyer. The fact that the Crown’s new record manages to outdo 2018’s Cobra Speed Venom in every way should immediately flavor-blast your undergarments.

The way that the band breezily alludes to decades of metal tradition without ever fumbling into hackneyed Manowar territory is exhilarating.

and Opeth, finding antecedents and points of comparison for Dvne would be all too easy—if, in fact, Etemen Ænka sounded like any of the above, which it doesn’t. What mostly sets the Edinburgh-based progressive sludge quintet’s second full-length apart from any of the above (even in their most maximalist moments) are the album’s density and the ways the band injects new strains of spaciousness into and around that density.

Dvne flex an exceptional command of extreme dynamics from the beginning. Opener “Enûma Eliš” commences under the threshold of audibility, lingering long enough to make at least a few people think some crucial part of their listening experience has gone haywire.

Follow-up “Towers” ends on a balancing note, replacing silence with an extended, delicately melodic fade that positions listeners impeccably for “Court of the Matriarch.”

As satisfying as Dvne’s excursions into restraint are, for most of us, they’re still just set-ups for the glorious excesses that characterize both band and album, as well as making

Johan Lindstrand continues to besmirch his microphone windscreen as few outside of Kevin Sharp and Bethlehem’s Onielar are capable, but the real everlasting gobstopper here lies in the way that the Crown balance the sophistication of prime In Flames with the ruthlessness of Dissection and the skunky beer-buzz of Motörhead.

Example: “Scandinavian Satan” fishtails into grindcore’s passing lane while still managing to fire off an emotive, bluesy solo (peppering in a little cowbell for good measure), and for the life of me, I can’t explain how it all functions so neatly and unselfconsciously. But harmonic balance is meant to be felt, not calculated. Here, my friends, is your case study. —FORREST PITTS

PHOTO BY IDA KUCERA

DEMISER

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“Court” a sustained blast of “how come” bait— as in, “How come more vocalists don’t slide gracefully from clean to dirty vocals at just the right (unexpected) moment?” per vocalist Victor Vicart, and “How come more bands don’t stack massive (and massively intriguing) riffs in new ways while using comparably massive rhythm guitar parts as counterweights?” And so on. You could listen to this fucker dozens of times without completely unpacking it.

—ROD SMITH

EVILE

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Hell Unleashed N A PA L M

None so evile

Blinking heck, Evile are back and they mean business. It’s fair to say that while Blighty invented heavy metal, when it came to its sprawling evolution, the wee isle was left in the dust whipped up by the frantic pits of America and Germany.

It took until the ’00s thrash revival for four lads from Yorkshire to go toe-to-toe with their contemporary Teutonic and stateside brothers. Big Four-obsessed and with a skill to kill, Evile won over a scene in search of speed with their cheekiness and salt o’ the earth grit.

Thankfully, just shy of a decade in hibernation (and with a shake-up in the ranks), Evile have not turned soft. Hell Unleashed is just that, and pent-up quarantine fury is bubbling over across 40 minutes of punishment. Right off the bloodied bat, “Paralysed” is anything but, making way for a fullthrottled attack that makes us yearn for the days of dodging stage-divers.

Evile were the nice lads, the scamps who once pranked Metallica fans; now they’re pummeling skulls with a ’roid-raging beast of an album that threatens with violent velocity and an unrepenting hardcore stomp tinged with industrial menace. If Evile unleash anything this lockdown, it will be one-person circle pits until we can do them the in bare, sweaty flesh that this comeback deserves. —LOUISE BROWN

EYEHATEGOD

7

A History of Nomadic Behavior CENTURY MEDIA

The end time isn’t here yet

If you’re wondering why the last couple decades of your life have felt off, maybe it’s because A History of Nomadic Behavior is only the second Eyehategod record since the year 2000. After their acclaimed return to the sludge throne in 2014, vocalist Mike Wil6 8 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

liams was diagnosed with cirrhosis, resulting in a liver transplant, and longtime guitarist Brian Patton split, leaving Jimmy Bower as the band’s only other member from back in the day.

Stripped down to a quartet, EHG’s new record reflects that world-weariness, pulling down to something slower and denser and bleaker overall. It also confirms that the days of Dopesick are over, as the production is relatively polished (though far from mild or accessible). And that’s the same for the vocals.

Williams has long been one of the most compelling and deranged vocalists in heavy music, and his self-destructive rasp continues to clear up, to the point of being nearly comprehensible for much of the record. But there’s no question whose tirades are hitting the mic. Phrases like “a bounty of filth from heaven,” and references to things like glue traps and methadone are spewed throughout, making clear that there is only one him.

And that’s the pervasive feeling after a few listens. It is a simple truth that, despite many efforts, no other band can do this and make it sound so goddamn hopeless and depraved and foul. A History of Nomadic Behavior may not be the band’s crowning achievement, but the throne remains theirs. —SHANE MEHLING

FULCI

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Opening the Hell Gates TIME TO KILL

Undead death metal

When there’s no more room in Hell, the riffs will shred the earth…

OK, OK, so that’s (a variation of) George A. Romero’s immortal Dawn of the Dead (1978) tagline, of course. But considering Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (1979) was, bizarrely, intended as the European sequel to Dawn, and Opening the Hell Gates by extreme metal uber-power trio Fulci is a record directly inspired by the Italian surrealist horror director’s City of the Living Dead (1980)… well, perhaps a little incestuous beyond-the-grave wordplay can be forgiven.

Especially in light of how fitting the exhumed allusion actually proves to be.

Now, one might argue that Decibel is predisposed towards unholy unions of decay and metal. (Remember the April 2012 zombiethemed issue?) Yet, despite its unapologetic devotion to its namesake—from moniker to thematic content—Fulci transcend their own ostensible raison d’être (it really is more sincere and higher-brow than a mere “gimmick”) with this razor-sharp, twisty, gloriously nasty sonic tribute to the cinematic undead. Sure, if you’re a Fulci fanatic, sick, vibrant tracks like “Zombi

Slam Squad,” “Deranged Minds,” “Incubus in the Surgery Room” and the title track will probably hit a bit differently. That said, anyone who enjoys dynamic, hook-ridden, untamed death metal is going to love the putrefying guts out of Opening the Hell Gates.

It honestly isn’t as disorienting (or just plain fucking weird) as a Fulci film, but in its epic, expansive attack, sense of filthy grandeur and the way it revels in the Beyond-esque outer reaches of brutality, this album and band are very much spiritual successors to the man’s unique and wild filmography.

—SHAWN MACOMBER

GIZMACHI

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Omega Kaleid THE ORCHARD

Or Sirius’ “’90s on 9,” for simplicity’s sake

The obvious questions confronting any band reappearing after a 15-year disappearing act are, “Where have you been and what you been doing?” Donning our musicologist’s hat, it’s not a stretch to imagine this rife-for-off-color-puns band has been a) paying off the interest from the buy-on fee that got them on 2005’s Ozzfest, b) listening to Meshuggah and c) religiously tuning into the morning zoo show hosted by Mad Dog and Mike on whatever station plays “All the Best Rock From Yesterday and Today” at home in Orange County, NY. We’re also assuming that convincing Soilwork’s Björn Strid to join as new vocalist took some time.

As disparaging as the above may sound, the fact is, Gizmachi have a knack for riding jagged polyrhythms and contrasting them with the sort of anthemic choruses that elevated Killswitch Engage and Fear Factory above their peers. Drafting in Strid has only stretched the boundaries of Omega Kaleid’s good cop/bad cop narrative. The Soilwork frontman has not only brought years of experience carving out an identity within melodic death metal to Gizmachi’s Destroy Erase Improve-esque sidewinding chug, but also his skill at creating hooky vocal phrases, no doubt influenced by his work with the Night Flight Orchestra.

There are times when the flow suffers from overwrought moodiness and bloat (“Inner Visions” “Paradox”), but there are more moments like “Shattered Dream,” which would open up the pit in parking lots and state fairs, while “Broken Ends” and the title track impressively balance railway spike heaviness and mixed drink sweetness without sounding like two bands fighting over the same sliver of real estate. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

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HAUNT

7

Beautiful Distraction CHURCH RECORDINGS

Father and son

“In the beginning, I wanted Haunt to be a solo project,” Trevor William Church revealed last June in transitioning the band’s studio recordings to exactly that on Flashback, which burned rubber at No. 21 on dB’s Top 40 in the first year of our unholy pandemic. “I wanted to be the singersongwriter guy. One of my biggest heroes in the world is Cat Stevens.”

So is Phil Lynott (“super influenced by Thin Lizzy”), but the Fresno franchise made his point: Composition is king no matter the velocity. Touring alongside Municipal Waste and buddying up to Joel Grind proved that speed kills, so Church inlaid dual lead axes on synthkissed rockers and rockets on Haunt’s most inflamed disc. “Flashback takes the edge over previous 2020 full-length Mind Freeze for one simple reason: glorious, glorious synths,” pinpointed our own Jeff Treppel.

Follow-up LP Beautiful Distraction—final 2020 release Triumph conjoined revamps of the group’s first two EPs, Luminous Eyes and Mosaic

Vision—tamps down the synthesizers, amps up the tornado-of-souls tempos and polishes the bandleader’s metallic anthems into pure pop standalones. He of the Megadeth tattoo unleashes nitroglycerin fretwork throughout (“In Our Dreams”) as RPMs ramp past 78 (“Sea of Dreams,” “Hearts on Fire”), but never sacrifices immediate melodies.

At such extreme acceleration, the songs begin to blur and the dynamic peaks don’t strike as bright as those on Flashback. Yet, bookends “Beautiful Distraction” and “It’s in My Hands,” with “Keeping Watch” in between, could strip down to their acoustic alter egos in a heartbeat. Tea for the Tillerman meets Bad Reputation? Not exactly, but Church just opened up a mosh at Starbucks. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

LUNAR SHADOW

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Wish to Leave CRUZ DEL SUR

Total eclipse of the heart

Lunar Shadow’s identity feels as ephemeral as their namesake astronomical event. Although they initially trekked in a

BriLlIaNT n o i t u c e x E KREATOR’s classic Noise era is collected in one swing

KREATOR

9

Under the Guillotine NOISE

When it comes to shelling out for this type of expansive vinyl box set, the obvious consideration is this: Does it have enough “extras” to justify the cost? It’s a given that the five albums—Kreator’s first five fulllengths, including the Hall of Fame-inducted Pleasure to Kill—are worth owning, and all

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the better that they’re issued here in various types of colored vinyl, with original artwork and lyrics. Musically, this captures Kreator’s nascence in the German thrash scene and later progression into a world-class metal band capable of incredible diversity. These albums basically explain why Kreator are still a potent force today.

The musical bonuses included—such as demos, EPs and live sets recorded between ’85–’92—are many, though they have previously been made available through other CD reissues over the years. And since

trad metal Solstice/Atlantean Kodex direction, their journey took them to strange places, and they’ve arrived at a “Tribulation with clean vocals” thing on third album Wish to Leave. It’s been a natural evolution, but a noticeable one nonetheless—even the thrashier prog metal elements of 2019’s The Smokeless Fires have largely been replaced with melancholy riffs and postpunk atmosphere.

The good news? This smokes The Smokeless Fires in just about every way, which in turn made far strides from 2016’s Far From Light. So, these Germans’ trajectory is pointed in the right direction. Better production, better use of Robert Röttig’s vocal range, better songwriting courtesy of guitarist/band mastermind Max Birbaum. The Fates Warning touches on highlights like “Delomelanicon” work nicely with the Sisters of Mercy-esque gloomy goth vibe.

Plus, if you’re a Dire Straits fan, the guitar solos (especially on “To Dusk and I Love You”) feel remarkably like Mark Knopfler’s work.

There’s a lot going on here. Thankfully, it all weirdly makes sense together.

The biggest thing Birbaum needs to work on if he wants Lunar Shadow to eclipse its peers is that all-important first impression. While songs

vinyl can only hold the original tracks, these bonuses are provided as MP3 files via a “demon figurine” USB drive. Another non-vinyl addition is the Some Pain Will Last DVD, which offers a mini documentary, two previously unreleased audio live concerts and an Andy Sneap remix of Live in East Berlin 1990. They’ve even included a reproduction of the Tormentor (pre-Kreator) End of the World demo cassette.

One of the coolest things, however, is the 40-page hardback book filled with rare photos, lyrics and Kreator ephemera. This is the kind of printed matter—something solid you can hold in your hands and pore over while listening to the music—that seems most appropriate for a vinyl box set.

The actual box it’s all packaged in is pretty badass, too.

Clearly, there’s a lot to dig into, and there’s also plenty of value in simply having what amounts to the entirety of Kreator’s Noiseera recordings in one package. Diehard completists may already have all the music, but the little value-added details—such as the colored vinyl, the mini documentary and the cassette reproduction—may be too hard to resist. For anyone else, this is a fantastic deep dive into the formative years of one of the titans of thrash. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

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like “I Will Lose You” definitely worm their way into your head after a few listens, they lack that initial grab that bands like, say, Tribulation have perfected. Nail that and their listeners will never wish to leave. —JEFF TREPPEL

MARIANAS REST

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Fata Morgana N A PA L M

Songs of the dithering?

Gloom metallers Marianas Rest are doing Finland proud enough on this third full-length. A mix of Swallow the Sun, In Mourning and Rapture, the coastal dudes have forged a sound that is at once direct, yet reserved. While most new bands have the fingerprints of other bands in our Common Era, the Rest really don’t. They have that overarching doom/death metal thing that seems to fester deep inside the Nordics, in addition to the beastly dichotomy of melancholy and grit—sisu on downers perhaps—that Finland is world-famous for, but originality is not lost on the sextet.

The guitar work of duo Nico Mänttäri and Harri Sunila is passive-aggressive, one minute ponderous and courtly, the next fierce and lacerating. This is as true for lead single “Glow From the Edge” and the funeral-esque observation of “South of Vostok” as it is for the (almost) fleetfooted “Pointless Tale” and the Eeyore-ish opener “Sacrificial.” What stands out are the guitars, but even more so are the forefronted nature of Jaakko Mäntymaa’s serrated vocals.

At times, this works for Marianas Rest.

With Mäntymaa’s roar, they’re able to drive home points of misery, anger and adversity; but at times, he’s far too high in the overall soundscape. The vocals are emotive, but the guitars, keys and rhythms are the power in the Rest’s crestfallen eight-track plunge. More of the latter, less of the former.

For sure, Fata Morgana never fails to set the mood—manic depressives, steer clear—yet after several journeys in the lower recesses of my proverbial nucleus accumbens, the only thing that stuck was the entirety of “Glow From the Edge,” with its effulgent zeniths and glum nadirs. —CHRIS DICK

MEMORIAM

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To the End

R E A P E R E N T E R TA I N M E N T

At ease, soldier

Memoriam’s death metal sound remains an instantly recognizable fusillade of 16th-note bass drum kicks and sawtooth guitar chug, the air thick with 7 2 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

elegiac melody. This sound has been field-tested, proven to pull an audience into the trench to investigate the philosophical aspect of combat through the long lens of military history, to take in the sights of the battlefield as seen through the eyes of a pawn. Ultimately, it’s existential, about man usurped and under control from an authority unquestioned. As such, it is catnip to headbangers.

Led by Karl Willetts—a veteran of martial verse ever since Bolt Thrower’s 1988 debut, In Battle There Is No Law!—Memoriam might skew a little more doom, with tracks such as “Each Step (One Closer to the Grave)” evoking the sodden misery of the Peaceville Three, but your radar is not lying when it tells you that bombs are going to fall, and soon. This dynamic between moribund listlessness and mortal panic is bread and butter to Willetts.

Memoriam 2021 sees him joined by guitarist Scott Fairfax and drummer Spikey T. Smith, with Frank Healy (Sacrilege) on bass. All seem at home in a low frequency pummel that feels tonally of a piece with Mercenary-era Bolt Thrower.

Anyone weaned on such fare might find a sense of calm, which seems counterintuitive, yet the hypnotic pulse of such mid-tempo death metal is comforting—like sleeping on a ship and hearing the engines thrum. That said, spitfires such as “Failure to Comply” and “This War Is Won” will shake you out of your reverie, while “Mass Psychosis” pitches a discordant curveball that calls to mind Godflesh’s claustrophobic hellscapes.

—JONATHAN HORSLEY

ORYX

8

Lamenting a Dead World T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

Bacdafucup

If you’re looking for a few dulcet tunes to cushion the blow as you hurtle toward the doom quarantine’s first birthday, you better keep movin’—Oryx will come to the party, but they’re bringing a bunch of gift-wrapped broken glass, and their incessant torture-screams will definitely wake up your neighbors. However, if you’re in the mood to longingly gaze into a fractured, grime-caked mirror held up to the existential horrors of modern reality, the Denver trio’s fourth LP is just what the plague doctor ordered.

Let the malevolent opening track “Contempt” serve as Lamenting a Dead World’s mission statement—ominous feedback and feral noise create an immediate sense of dread before drummer Abbey Davis pounds out an eight-count snare roll that leads to a barrage of highly neck-snappable sludge riffs, all while guitarist/vocalist Tommy

Davis bellows and shrieks about the disgraceful nature of “all ‘God’s children’ [at] the edge of a cliff.” Subsequent dirges like “Misery” and “Last Breath” emit equally harsh vibes, but Oryx wisely inject enough sonic diversity (cavernous clean guitars, psychedelic soundscapes) to ensure the album hits more than one note throughout its 40-minute runtime.

Epic closer “Oblivion” benefits the most from this approach—around the halfway point, Oryx quietly introduce a hauntingly beautiful theme that steadily builds momentum until it blooms into a soul-crushing maelstrom (complete with cosmic synth dustings by Blood Incantation’s Paul Riedl). The song is indicative of the record as a whole: impeccably layered, full of atmospheric tension and appropriately gross-sounding for these supremely gross times. —MATT SOLIS

PHLEBOTOMIZED

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Pain, Resistance, Suffering PETRICHOR

What themes may come

Featuring their best album cover since 1994’s Immense Intense Suspense depicted a bootleg Gollum pointing at something from a surrealist outcrop, the latest EP from this legendary Dutch progressive death-doom outfit follows up 2018’s Deformation of Humanity with a graceful vengeance. Despite a 20-year lacuna between their second and third albums, guitarist and original member Tom Palms has maintained a steady course toward the outer reaches of extreme metal.

Like a European (and still active) Maudlin of the Well, Phlebotomized are at their best when they’re all over the place. Pain, Resistance, Suffering runs at so many different speeds, switching lanes and gears so frequently and fluidly that passengers aboard this wild craft are advised to jettison all expectations and prepare for anything. What at first seems unbelievable after repeated listens becomes undeniable.

With repeated listens also comes a deeper understanding. What was once indecipherably strange now feels familiar, like the fantastical death-doom number “Beheaded Identity,” or the inspirational epic fight song “No Surrender.”

Even the short burner “You Have No Idea” makes sense once you break it down to something like Yes’ Rick Wakeman playing keys on My Dying Bride’s The Dreadful Hours. Although the EP defies expectations and genre boundaries, the song structures bear the weight of their collective imagination, bending but never breaking.

Ambitious as it is, Pain, Resistance, Suffering hits all of its marks—sometimes for better, some-

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RUMBLY RU MBLY THROUGH A SPEAKER THROUGH

times for worse. But all of this madness folded into 24 minutes is—let’s be honest—a little nuts.

Expect some motion sickness. —DUTCH PEARCE

Indecent & Obsolete

BY DUTCH PEARCE

SMITH/KOTZEN

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Smith/Kotzen

Poisoned Maiden

File away Smith/Kotzen as a potential answer for this future Jeopardy question: “Unlikely rock/metal guitar duo featuring members of Iron Maiden and Poison.” To be honest, Adrian Smith’s recent book about fishing, Monsters of River and Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler, had more initial appeal to me than this collaboration. While I recognize that American guitarist Richie Kotzen’s career was not defined by his time in Poison (he was a Shrapnel shredder early on, did a stint in Mr. Big and has issued a slew of non-rock/metal solo albums), this connection with the longtime Maiden guitarist seems really unlikely.

Apparently, however, the two bonded over a love of “’70s classic rock,” which certainly seems to be at least an inspiration for the musical direction on display here. So, yeah, don’t expect galloping rhythms and epic historical tales, or glammed-up party-hardy entreaties. Smith/ Kotzen is, however, filled with the kind of slick hard rock that only two dudes who are this wellestablished can make, irrespective of its actual marketability. There’s no questioning the talent level here, as both have clearly established their bona fides in the music world at large, but the sell-by date for this kind of bluesy, groove-riding rock seems like it passed a couple decades ago.

The appeal of Smith/Kotzen from this Maiden fan is simply the guitar work. Both men resist the urge to turn this into a shredfest, instead offering up tasteful demonstrations of their ample skills that work well within the tunes.

The songs themselves, featuring both men on lead vocals at various times, however, are mostly just mundane and uninspired. While the pair may have bonded over ’70s classic rock, this sounds more like it crawled out of ’90s “modern rock” radio. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

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Socioclast

CARBONIZED

Grind out the noise

Fans of old-school U.S. grind will be stoked on this new West Coast trio formed by ex-In Disgust guitarist/vocalist Matt Gomes and Deadpressure 74 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

PERILAXE OCCLUSION

SELF-RELEASED

GURGLING GORE

Vicious Blade

BMG

SOCIOCLAST

VICIOUS BLADE

Instantly bursting right out of your speakers, the self-titled demo from Pittsburgh-based death-thrash punks Vicious Blade wastes no time across its five face-slashers. From the steel-flashing ambush of opener “Banshee’s Blade” to the poison-tipped immediacy of “Burning Visions,” the demo’s closer, you won’t find anything like a moment’s rest on this tape. Backed by four of the hardest mugs from the Pittsburgh metal scene (ex-members of Complete Failure and Commit Suicide among them), the vocalist keeps pace and pours gas on the fire, occasionally trading her visceral growls for quick crossover shouts.

The result is explosive and highly addictive.

MIASMIC OOZE

Terrain of Inflamed Pustules DESERT WASTELANDS

This Miasmic Ooze demo sounds like spoiled meat smells. It’s like the four Birminghamers (Alabama, not England) put as much effort into making this sound harmful as they did in writing, practicing and performing these four slabs of rotten death-grind depravity. All in with its gruesome collage cover, Terrain of Inflamed Pustules is a welcome fetid breeze amid the vast caverns of contemporary death metal. A little more beatdown-oriented than the bands on their shirts ever were, but Miasmic Ooze are on their way.

THE TOVVER

The Tovver COGNITIVE DISCORDANCE

This reissue of the Costa Rican trio’s self-titled EP is the first we’ve heard from the Tovver since it was originally released seven years ago. Their fifth release since forming in 2011, the four songs on The Tovver combine colossal riffing, mausoleum atmospheres and expertly placed samples of dialogue from warped films, always with some kind of unsettling intent. The tracks run without vocals, but the samples add that atmosphere that instrumental bands sometimes lack.

Otherwise, The Tovver is almost unspeakably inhuman in its size and sound. Not straight doom—not all the time—but dark, moody and always heavy.

Exponential Decay

This Ontario-based duo materialized in December 2020 with their three-song demo, and ever since, the death metal underground has been divided between the assimilated and those who have yet to experience Exponential Decay. The first two tracks attack with a direct (although unique) immediacy, something like Planetary Clairvoyance-era Tomb Mold rebuilt by an insane Luc Lemay. But it all leads up to the brilliant eight-and-a-half minute closer “Rigid Body Displacement,” where Perilaxe Occlusion fold you up like so much origami.

FECULENT

The Grotesque Arena CALIGARI

The Grotesque Arena, Feculent’s debut EP, features the prolific Australian death/grind drummer Brendan Auld, whose solo blackened doom campaign Snorlax released its demo on Caligari in 2018. Auld is joined by three equally capable Australians, and together they drag forth a snarling beast of a debut.

The Grotesque Arena sounds built from complementary parts by four musicians who each showed up to make it as hard-hitting and malignant as possible. Without forgetting where the genre began, Feculent also acknowledge where and when they are; their debut’s massive production gives this beast all the room it needs.

DISFUNERAL Disfuneral

REDEFINING DARKNESS

Originally released in 2017, this self-titled six-song demo is so underground that virtually nobody’s heard it yet. Thankfully, here’s Redefining Darkness to give these Frenchmen their just desserts. As you might have guessed from the “Dis” prefix, as well as their dripping Old English-style logo, Disfuneral shred old-school, crusty, thrashing death metal. With frequent tempo shifts, bluesy leads and guitar harmonies— not to mention a seemingly instinctual understanding of crafting short death metal tracks that explode, maul your face and run off with your body—Disfuneral savagely distinguish themselves as much more than just another gang of HM-2 stompers.

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drummer Cris Rodriguez, with Colin Tarvin of Evulse, Acephalix and Mortuous on bass and vocals. Socioclast grind darkly and unapologetically. They’re adherents to the sacred devastation wreaked by legends of the genre like Assück, Terrorizer and late-’80s Napalm Death; thankfully, Socioclast embrace modern recording technology, and their self-titled debut is all the heavier for it.

This 15-track LP clocks in at about as many minutes, but what Gomes and company have crushed and compacted is truly impressive. It’s almost like a trick. On the outside, Socioclast seems like an abbreviated experience. Press play and suddenly it’s not just an album, but the mid2000s, when sociopolitically conscious grindcore reigned over the metal scene. One thing that has been sorely missing from the scene lately is bands with something real to say.

But it’s how Socioclast delivers these diatribes that will ultimately unite all of us. An ominous clean riff opens the debut, then the album attacks, rabid and abrupt, and doesn’t let up once. Brief as the experience may be, it’s akin to live warfare for all its combustibility and unrelenting, unpredictable carnage. Doom call-outs rise and fall like primordial behemoths instantly sent back to the mud by a sudden barrage of destruction. Breakdowns become fakeouts, and the only certainty is that the blasting will return. —DUTCH PEARCE

SPECTRAL WOUND 8 A Diabolic Thirst P R O FO U N D LO R E

What would an imperial saison noire even taste like?

A Diabolic Thirst is killer. Buy or die. Shit, buy and die. That’s how great this sounds. It’s like someone let early 1349 off the leash again to scour the Earth with liberated post-apocalyptic hellfire.

Spectral Wound hail from Montréal, home of the frostiest demon orgies this side of the North Sea, a region previously repped by souldesecrators like Rage Nucléaire, Incandescence and Gevurah. This violent quintet is on its third record, and A Diabolic Thirst raises the stakes on their earlier work in every way.

It’s tempting to say that evil drips off this album like the most poisoned divine nectar, but the rabid, slashing guitars, drums and vocals never settle long enough for any of that viscid substance to ever fall the direction that gravity usually requires. This evil splashes all over the walls and ceiling, coating everything in the most wonderfully gruesome ways. Jonah Campbell’s 7 6 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

vocals absolutely slay, but they’re just the razorfilled cherry on top. The songwriting on display has a more sophisticated bent, even while a trebly grime clings to every corroded surface. I’m a sucker for anything that hints at raw noise, and this recording edges toward the noisiest waveforms without once employing anything but the blackest of metals.

After the daunting pace set by most of the music here, “Mausoleal Drift” proves that Spectral Wound can sculpt their queasy terror into slabs of derelict doom, too. The cover photo’s a little prosaic, and closer “Diabolic Immanence” doesn’t quite match the quality of the half-hour that precedes it, but those are minor quibbles. This brew should quench your bloodthirst. —DANIEL LAKE

STEEL BEARING HAND

7

Slay in Hell CARBONIZED

Swing of the axe

Power Trip’s emergence on 2013’s Manifest Decimation and their ascent that followed—along with efforts from others such as Noisem—helped re-legitimize the thrash scene following a failed party-hard revival.

Right now, however, it seems as though thrash, in order to remain relevant going forward, really needs to be melded further with the established rampant strains of black and/or death metal. Since 2010, Texan death-thrashers Steel Bearing Hand have been quietly tinkering with that formula. And perhaps their minor status will change if second LP Slay in Hell lands on the radar of those who like their thrash riddled with more subterranean sounds.

The aptly titled “Command of the Infernal” bolts like any good extreme metal opener should.

It’s a high-energy affair that has a tinge of BM to it—similar to Hellripper’s snarling take on this sound. “Lich Gate” maintains the frantic pummel of its predecessor, but with a streak of Seven Churches apparent. “Tombspawn” smartly drops tempos to “Where the Slime Live” levels during its early instrumental intro, shifts to modern Cannibal Corpse—all hyper-paced syncopations—and peaks with an incisive solo section.

But as well-constructed as all of those stylistic transitions are, Steel Bearing Hand are at their most impactful when death metal is pushed through a thrash prism and not vice versa, as on highlights “Per Tenebras Ad Lucem” and “’Til Death and Beyond.” If they can write a full album in the vein of those kinds of vicious blitzkriegs, we’ll have another band really worth championing in a post-Nightmare Logic world. —DEAN BROWN

STORTREGN

7

Impermanence THE ARTISAN ERA

Being smarter than everyone else can be crippling

There’s a fine line between sounding like a baroque, buzzing maelstrom of layers sculpted into knife’s-edge blackened death metal and sounding like the chaos of Guitar Center on the Friday night of pay week. This Geneva quintet blazes along both sides of the divide.

Impermanence is the Swiss veterans’ fifth album in a decade, and pulsates with structure, smarts and agility as often as it gets bogged down in clutter, meandering and jumble. Those unable to OD on tech-death despite how much they mainline will recognize similarities to Obscura, Gorod, Beyond Creation, Necrophagist, Gory Blister, et al. Were those same folks able to stop gawking at the fretboard gymnastics, bassist Manuel Barrios’ summoning of Stu Hamm and Samuel Jakubec’s ability to hit five pieces of his drum kit with four appendages at 200 miles an hour, they might notice how this album’s best moments come when the technical wizardry is cut with Dissection’s melodic sense. When those worlds collide, the result is masterful, sublime and triumphant (“Timeless Splendor,” “Multilayered Chaos”). The impact underwhelms when the title track’s scalar run cascades shoot out like broken spokes from a bike wheel, ultimately obscuring the riffing centerpiece.

Impermanence’s staying power is limited because too much of the wailing and widdling is interchangeable. Drop the needle on the stunning, extended, orchestrated midsection in “Ghosts of the Past” and you might as well be dropping the needle on “Cosmos Eater”’s showoff sequence. Listen with a razor-sharp ear and you’ll be blown away, but you’ll require a razorsharp ear to cut through the scholastic chaos.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

VARMIA

6

Bal Lada M-THEORY AUDIO

White shirts on a tombstone

Poland’s contribution to black metal over the last year is weighing heavily on former strongholds Norway and Sweden.

Indeed, Mgła, Kriegsmaschine and Batushka (assuming that most side with Krzysztof Drabikowski) have carved severely into and positioned significantly atop their white eagle-born black metal flag near the crown of the global

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www.deathblow1.bandcamp.com “It’s such a beast. Filled to the brim with thrash-focused head-bangers, while also delving into punkier areas and touching upon the world of death metal.”

– Games. Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life

“Snarling pit thrash sound somewhere between Power Trip and Nuclear Assault’s second album. These guys make an undeniably strong impression.”

– Grizzly Butts

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continues to have its challenges. Varmia have the talent, just not the vision. —CHRIS DICK

WITCHSEEKER

6

Scene of the Wild DYING VICTIMS PRODUCTIONS

Same ol’ situation

Dying Victims Productions is undoubtedly riding a molten wave from the international metal diaspora—their strongest recent releases include albums by Japanese trad metallers Significant Point, Switzerland’s extremely epic Megaton Sword and French black thrashers Hexecutor. Singaporean act Witchseeker is their newest acquisition, a one-man project turned full band that proudly wears their influences on their sleeve: they love the ’80s and all bands that emulate the sexy (read: feathery, cocaine-addled) side of it; they love dry and natural production; and they love speed/trad/thrash/glam.

Take the opening title track—you wouldn’t be at fault for assuming it was an outtake from

WOLF KING, The Path of Wrath

7

’Cause eight out of 12 ain’t bad | P R O S T H E T I C

Following up their debut full-length Loyal to the Soil with the equally rhyming The Path of Wrath, Wolf King have gotten meaner and riffier. And that really works for them—at least for a little while.

The band’s debut was closer to a thrashy hardcore record with blackened elements, but they’ve moved away from hardcore and closer to both black metal and regular metal, which turns out to have been a great decision.

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When Wolf King go full-on and tear through a song like fire tears through a Norwegian church, it hits just like you want; but when they slow it down and the hooks come out, it’s clear they’ve upped their riff game considerably. And this balancing act goes great for the first two-thirds of the record.

Then it gets a little dicey.

The eighth track, “Incantation,” ends as though the record is over, and this would have

Enforcer’s 2010 fan favorite Diamonds. Otherwise, on Witchseeker’s sophomore album, the shredding is constant and driving—check the solos in “Lust for Dust” or the latter half of “Nights in Tokyo.” These squealing, dueling guitars help elevate Scene of the Wild beyond 2017 debut When the Clock Strikes (props are owed to guitarists Nick Stormbringer and Brandon Brandy). Similarly, closing track “Hellions of the Night” kicks up the pace and is the LP’s obvious highlight.

Unfortunately, the remainder doesn’t quite live up to the standard set by the solos. Featuring the gruff, shouted vocals of bassist Sheikh Spitfire, poppy structures not unlike those found on an AC/DC record and dry production on Aip Sinner’s driving, simplistic percussion, the songs are hard to differentiate from mid-2010 projects like Skull Fist, Cauldron and the aforementioned Enforcer. There’s an ample dose of the Sunset Strip, bandanas and leather, and these musicians are highly competent, but this specific style became oversaturated nearly a decade ago.

To break through the noise, Witchseeker need to introduce new elements, or variations on a toofamiliar theme. —SARAH KITTERINGHAM

made for a tight, very burly album. But the band keeps going for another four songs, which overall feel lesser than what came before. The melodic backing vocals on “Grief Portrait” are nice, but not quite enough to save it. And while closer “Eternal Hunger” has a pretty killer part, we’ve already gotten an earful, as that same part is used for the extended intro.

The Path of Wrath is a really great record with a lesser EP bolted onto the end. Wolf King are writing better songs, but they may want to be a bit more judicious on what exactly makes the cut. —SHANE MEHLING

PHOTO BY BRANDON GULLION

heap. The country made famous in our legion by Vader’s intrepid drive (and later Behemoth) is now overrun with bands like Olsztyn’s Varmia, which formed a mere five years ago and now have three full-lengths—of which Bal Lada is the newest—under their respective krakuskas.

While the use of “white voice”—a traditional singing technique in Poland and Ukraine—is staged as a unique identifier, it’s kind of difficult to discern its place in Varmia’s dissonant, angular whirl. Perhaps it’s best represented in “Upperan” (or the Skittles shake of “Zari Deiwas”), but don’t get crossed thinking the Poles are advancing on Einar Selvik’s pagan-fed world music-isms. Bal Lada—and the 10 tracks that call it home—steers more into the same inky, inharmonious morass of their contemporaries than hitting the same vein that Dead Can Dance’s Into the Labyrinth flooded all those years ago.

Varmia’s major stumbling block is that they’re conflicted. The Satyricon/Hagalaz’ Runedance miscegenation is off throughout Bal Lada. Successful integration of folk music elements in black metal (or vice versa)—Cruachan’s nightly soil on Tuatha na Gael remains a salient example—

by

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

A SLEEPING

DISORDER I’m

an idiot.

First and foremost, that must be established. Because as it stands now some of us miss some things for some reasons but how many of us miss some things for the same reasons? And here, I am speaking specifically of bands that we slept on.

As a guy in a band that’s routinely slept on, I should know better. If I had a nickel for every time I read “it took me about 20 years to get into Oxbow but now that I have, I get it!” I’d have $5.40. So, I understand. It just happens sometimes.

It all cuts to the science of how we come to like that which we like.

It could be sun cycles. Atmospheric conditions. Meteoropathy. I don’t know but the shuffle function in iTunes has opened my eyes, and my ears, to the fact that I’ve slept on some crucial stuff that was happening right in front of my sleeping face, each one worse than the last, and all of which I am using to try to… to change my life! Because sleepwalking through life is no way to go through life.

8 0 : M AY 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

Work? School? Your relationships? Yes. But not your musical life.

So, let’s start with some hardcore. Specifically: Youth of Today.

OK, missing these guys makes total sense. I’m a native New Yorker and if you’ve actually known any pricks like us, you know the fact that these guys were from Connecticut ruled them out of serious consideration for idiots like I used to be.

Plus, in 1985 they were kids and I was already gearing up to audition for Van Halen [See issue No. 197].

But every time they used to come up on the best 12,368 songs of my life on my iTunes shuffle, I stopped doing whatever I was doing and dove in. Years later, after I got obsessed with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I contacted then-purple belt Ray Cappo for an article I was writing for some MMA magazine and he was gracious beyond all reasonable measure.

To make it even worse, Kevin Seconds from 7 Seconds who used to be a pal of mine put their record out. I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

I was an idiot. Don’t be an idiot.

Break Down the Walls, their first album, is worth some deep consideration

and, despite being hardcore manages to both sound like no other hardcore and sound like the best parts of every single of piece of hardcore you’ve ever heard.

Then: Slayer.

I want to displace total responsibility for this. It can’t all have been my dumbass fault that despite every single person ever telling me how great they were that I ignored it. I even went to see them play.

The original band. My rabid friends asked me if I liked it.

“They were alright.”

Maybe it was the record covers that looked hackish to my eye.

Maybe I was only willing to accept one singing bass player in my life, I don’t know.

I do know what happened finally though: being the writer of lyrics I finally heard a lyric that made me wish I had written it.

“I keep my bible in a pool of blood so that none of its lies will affect me”… followed by a bloodcurdling scream.

Not even off of their best record, God Hates Us All, it precipitated a deep dive and some months long obsession. Unlike Youth of Today

though, I got to see them after this revelation. Not the original band but their last tour.

Despite Araya’s shitty politics, I’m not telling you what you don’t already know: Slayer are great. And extra points for covering Minor Threat’s “Guilty of Being White,” a song that I told Ian MacKaye sucked in 1982 in the backyard at Tesco Vee’s house. Slayer finally convinced him, I guess.

And finally: Harvey Milk. This is my most shameful, deep, dark listing. Because we toured together so I had every earthly opportunity to hear them, night after night, and while I did and I dug them then, in the last year I have to realize that I should have done more than dig them, I should worship them. You should, too.

Crushing at the right times, soft and soulful at the other right times, and strange all the time. An almost perfect band without a single sub par record.

How could I not have heard this? How could I have heard it and missed it after hearing it?

Easy: I was an idiot.

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