Decibel #204 - October 2021

EXCLUSIVELY EXCLUSIVE FEST RE-PREVIEW!

WARLOCK

TRIUMPH AND AGONY HALL OF FAME

ANDREW W.K. THE ART OF PARTYING

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JOEY

JORDISON 1 9 75 - 2 0 21 MIKE

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OCTOBER 2021 // No. 204

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LESS TALK, MORE ROCK

EXTREMELY EXTREME

October 2021 [R 204] decibelmagazine.com

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Inside the Torn Apart COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY ESTER SEGARRA

upfront 10 obituary:

mike howe A somber sermon

12 obituary:

joey jordison Metal’s No. 1 drummer

14 metal muthas A buck for your thoughts 16 low culture Flippin’ angry 17 no corporate beer Drink to life 18 in the studio:

oceans of slumber The stars have aligned

features

20 zealot r.i.p.

Stockholm syndrome

34 unto others Idle no more

22 wraith ALL CAPS NO FILLER

36 skepticism Happiness in misery

24 succumb Is this your card?

38 q&a: andrew w.k.

The Partymaster General doesn’t have all the answers… well, except for these

26 green lung The horror of the ’70s 28 dungeon serpent Bloom in decay 30 filth is eternal Unbound and ready to tour 32 mastiff Unleash the beasts

reviews 42 exclusive:

decibel magazine metal & beer fest: philly 2021 preview Sold out, but never sellouts

48 the decibel

hall of fame Doro casts a spell over the metal community via Warlock’s final album Triumph and Agony

73 lead review Full of Hell continue their hot streak with the always heavy, never predictable Garden of Burning Apparitions 74 album reviews Releases from bands that are old enough to remember how shitty Woodstock ’99 really was, including Aborted, Quicksand and Sculptured 88 damage ink The most dangerous game

Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, 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, P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. © 2021 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

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TASCAM Congratulates

Tommy Bolan on the release of the

DORO - WARLOCK ‘TRIUMPH AND AGONY LIVE’ Album

CD/DVD/Boxset

Out Sep 24 Worldwide Rare Diamond Productions Doro.merchnow.com

Photo Credit: Shawn Sand

“The TASCAM Porta One was an essential tool for me when working on my original ideas for ‘Triumph And Agony’. TASCAM continues to capture all my inspiration. With my TASCAM DP-32SD, I created and recorded my actual album tracks for the song, ‘Legacy’, featured on the upcoming ‘Triumph And Agony Live’ album. Without a doubt…

TASCAM is the Reference Standard.”

– Tommy Bolan-Warlock/N.Y.C.

Plug, Play, Create.

TASCAM.com

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October 2021 [T204] PUBLISHER

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On July 26, the metal scene endured a pair of stunning losses, as both former Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison and longtime Metal Church frontman Mike Howe passed away. At the time of publication, Jordison’s cause of death had not been made public, but a few days after Howe’s death, it was revealed that the 55-year-old vocalist committed suicide. To those of us familiar with Howe’s thoughtful and often empathetic lyrics on classic LPs like Blessing in Disguise and The Human Factor—as well as his trademark athletic frame— he was seemingly the increasingly rare mentally and physically fit middle-aged metal musician.

Earlier that day, Decibel ran an editorial on our site titled “Gus Rios (Gruesome, Union Black) On His Brush With Suicide and Fighting Depression.” It was a piece that was over a year and a half in the works, as Gus first contacted me about the idea in late 2019. I’ve known Gus for years, and before he shared his story with me, I had no idea that he struggled with mental health issues. The fact that Gus reached out for help only after literally having a gun to his head is the sole reason his story didn’t have the same conclusion as Mike Howe’s.

Obviously, the pandemic has done nothing to improve the mental health of pretty much anyone who wasn’t already a billionaire.

While suicides declined in 2020, deaths from opioids in the U.S. rose considerably last year. In an emotional announcement of Howe’s death, the surviving members of Metal Church stated, “He was victimized by a failing healthcare system and subsequently poisoned by the venom of Big Pharma.”

Over the past 18 months, the challenge of pulling oneself out of a spiral has only grown greater, so expecting more endings like Gus Rios’ and fewer like Mike Howe’s is a terrible bet. If you even suspect someone you know is struggling with depression, please reach out to them. Even a gesture as seemingly insignificant as a text or a tweet—but not an Ello direct message, because they are never gonna see that shit— can make a huge difference to someone feeling isolated. And if you are having suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Help is available 24 hours a day.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

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

New album out digitally September 17 LP/CD Out October 8 Thrice.net - Epitaph.com

READER OF THE

MONTH At some point last year during lockdown, you decided to listen to every album from several years’ worth of Decibel’s Top 40 Albums of the Year lists. What brought that on and what did you get out of the experience?

Tim McCollum Morgantown, WV

Tell us something cool and/or exciting about Morgantown, West Virginia.

Morgantown is home to West Virginia University, which helps make it one of the cultural hubs of WV. There are many cool restaurants, bars/breweries, clubs, shops, etc. It’s a big enough city that a lot of bands come through that people probably wouldn’t expect—the Black Dahlia Murder, Converge, Eyehategod, D.R.I. and tons of others. When I was with my old band, we got to open for Suffocation, Crowbar and Voivod.

8 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

I work at a grocery store, so work during the pandemic was really crazy and really stressful.

My wife suggested I listen to music to make the day go by quicker. With everything shut down and canceled, I was craving new music! I realized there were a bunch of lists already put together by you guys, and I wanted to know why those records, out of everything released that particular year, were “the best.” The experience was a lot of fun because the Top 40 lists are always so diverse — always something new to listen to or revisit. I discovered Mizmor and Prurient, both of whom are amazing. I also discovered that I am apparently a big fan of doom!

You're a big craft beer nerd. Please recommend three breweries we should invite to pour at either edition of our Metal & Beer Fest.

Oh man, there are so many fantastic breweries

out there, most of which no one even knows about unless they live close to them! Picking just three is hard, but I’d have to go with: Cinderlands Beer Co. (Pittsburgh, PA), Hitchhiker Brewing Company (Pittsburgh, PA) and the Veil (Richmond, VA). Those breweries do a lot of different styles and they do them all really well. I’ve never had a beer from them that I didn’t absolutely love. Honorable mention to my hometown brewery, Morgantown Brewing Company, because they made a blood red IPA called Listen to Slayer!

Carcass return to the cover of Decibel this month. Torn Arteries notwithstanding, what’s your favorite LP from obviously the most famous rock band to ever hail from Liverpool?

Carcass has evolved so much that it’s hard to pick one album above the rest. If I had to choose, though, it’s gotta be Surgical Steel—it is the sound of a band out to prove that they are still on the throne and reigning supreme. I’ve seen them live twice, and I feel like the songs from that album just hit harder than everything else. I am really stoked for Torn Arteries, though. As far as lesser known Liverpudlian bands, I am actually a fan of the Beatles, especially the later stuff when they were “expanding their minds.”

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

OBITUARIES

MIKE

HOWE 1 9 6 5 - 2 0 21

I’M

feeling like the luckiest guy on the planet!” ¶ It’s late 2016.

I’ve reached out to Mike Howe hoping to lock down a chat about the two decades he spent plying his trade as a high-end carpenter/raising a family after the Metal Church riff altar first went silent in 1996, as well as his unlikely and rousing return to fronting the band on XI—a record that might not have quite reached the same epic heights as straight up Howe-era classics Blessing in Disguise (1989) and The Human Factor (1991), but came pretty goddamn close. And to say the vocalist’s enthusiasm is commensurate to the energy of the album would be something of an understatement. ¶ “I’ve found the fountain of youth,” he tells Decibel. “It’s called heavy metal!” ¶ It is difficult to square this joie de vivre with the news that Howe committed suicide last week. (The full interview never happens, by the way: It is only too easy with someone as effervescent and good-natured as Howe to assume you have all the time in the world.) His death is a good reminder that the kindness and generosity one gifts others is not always mirrored in the kindness and generosity they offer themselves.

But, much as Howe’s ability to fuse grit and snarl to technique allowed his voice to transcend the work of most of his peers—he “had the unenviable task of filling the large shoes of the band’s original vocalist David Wayne,” legendary former Roadrunner Records A&R head Monte Conner aptly wrote on Facebook, 10 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

“but he came through in a huge way, and his voice helped usher in a fresh new era and sound for the band (less thrash and more bigpicture metal, comparable to Metallica meets Queensrÿche)”—the devotion to empathy and equity that shined through in the words he sang also was not relegated to lyrical couplets.

When asked by Little Punk People’s Elliott Fullam what goal he’d like to achieve in life outside of music, Howe replied, “Just being a good person…a person that spreads humanity. Being civil to each other and setting an example like that out in this world.” As the outpouring of memories and love from metal celebrities and ordinary people alike in the wake of Howe’s death clearly attest, mission accomplished.

Six years on, Howe’s return to the Metal Church congregation for XI—and, subsequently, another great studio album in Damned If You Do (2018), as well as the expansive compilation From the Vault (2020)—will inevitably be imbued with a more elegiac vibe. We should remember, however, that even though Howe felt like the luckiest guy on the planet, the denizens of Greater Metaldom should be counting our not-sodisguised blessings as well. Howe gave us one hell of a farewell. Remember, he’s still here when you need him. “Still, I’m pushing onward,” Howe roars on “Badlands,” perhaps Metal Church’s best-known song. “Alone I can’t deny: My presence fills the desert, my spirit never dies.” —SHAWN MACOMBER

OBITUARIES

JOEY

IF

you look for the reason any metal band achieved success, one of the

first places to look is behind the drum set. Black Sabbath had Bill Ward and later Vinny Appice. Slayer had Dave Lombardo. Megadeth had Nick Menza. Mayhem have Hellhammer. And Slipknot, a band that lured countless kids toward extreme metal KISS-style from the late ’90s into the 21st century, had the powerhouse and perennial outsider Joey Jordison. ¶ But Jordison was not just the drummer and a founding member of Slipknot, although his drumming is one of the reasons their music was a cut above many of their peers who achieved mainstream success. Jordison was also the beating heart of Slipknot and gave the band their voice. From the beginning, Slipknot spoke directly to disaffected kids—many of them who grew up in similar circumstances as the band members. When KISS’s makeup elevated the band into gods or Dionysian heroes, Slipknot’s bar codes and masks communicated a different message: We are just like you. We aren’t important.

What matters is the community. What matters is what we can share and collectively exorcise as a group. It’s a compelling message. Slipknot provided their fans with something that many never received at home, church or school: acceptance and empathy.

Jordison was the backbeat for those collective exorcisms, and the Slipknot member that remained the closest to the extreme music he loved as a kid. While it’s cliché to post something on social media where you claim to respect the artist, but dislike the art, no one who attended an early Slipknot show doubted their power.

Their formative gigs were a Jungian nightmare writ large, a schizophrenic kabuki performance with ferocious percussion.

Whether it was Jordison behind the kit or other band members playing kettledrums, what 12 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

helped make Slipknot’s music transformational in so many young lives was the percussion. It was like the marching band from hell. What’s not mentioned nearly enough in the discussion of Slipknot’s music is that what gives it power are the same rhythmic elements that drive both indigenous and tribal music. Slipknot’s ability to bind a group of people together is also similar.

The need for a tribe transcends culture.

Jordison’s best work was on Slipknot’s first three albums: their self-titled debut, their breakthrough and career-best album Iowa—the

only platinum album with a 15-minute song about a serial killer—and Vol 3: The Subliminal Verses. Jordison’s drumming propelled the caustic “Surfacing” into an outsider anthem (“don’t belong / don’t exist / don’t give a shit / don’t ever judge me”). He played both quietly and ferociously on the eponymous closing track of their second album, and was the ringleader of the percussive magic in “The Blister Exists.”

Without Jordison’s power and precision, Slipknot would never have made a dent outside of Des Moines. Jordison was so good he got the call to fill in for Metallica, a glass slipper moment if there ever was one for a lifelong metal fan.

Jordison also never forgot his love for extreme metal. He played with Satyricon and used interviews to name-drop death metal bands. “That’s where I learned, basically, all my skills from the drumming that I do—most of my style comes straight from death metal,” Jordison said once.

Jordison left Slipknot in 2013 in a contentious fashion. He claimed at the time he was fired but revealed in 2016 that the neurological disease transverse myelitis made drumming impossible.

The disease—a form of multiple sclerosis— robbed his legs of their power. He was able to recuperate through medical intervention and intense rehab work.

“All my life and the damage done.” The damage is done, but Jordison’s gift—not just his musical achievements, but building a platform for a genuine outsider community—endures.

Rest well, Joey. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

PHOTO BY ANTHONY DUBOIS

JORDISON 1 9 75 - 2 0 21

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

Well, here are the records that we spun most while watching some of you feel threatened by a woman on the cover of this magazine.

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

This Month's Mutha: Patti Perkins Mutha of Dave Adelson of 20 Buck Spin

Tell us a little about yourself.

I was born in Los Angeles in 1949. Grew up in Westchester right near LAX. I went to UCLA during the ’60s. The music at that time was Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Simon & Garfunkel.

We went to the Troubadour in Hollywood to see them all. After I got married to Dave’s dad and had Dave, the music had changed. It was disco in the ’70s, and in the ’80s, when Dave was coming of age, I bought him his first tape: Guns N’ Roses.

That was the beginning of the end for me!

When did Dave first display an interest in running his own business?

Do you listen to the music on his label?

If so, any favorites?

I have an Alexa gadget and listened to a few of his bands to see if they had mellowed over the years from some of his earlier dark, doom, nihilist-sounding death metal creations. I played Khemmis and Spirit Adrift and I was pleasantly surprised. I could actually listen for a few minutes without shutting the screaming off!

Dave and his daughter recently moved to Pittsburgh to be closer to you. Is there any music that all three of you can sit together and enjoy?

Dave was always stubborn and somewhat of a contrarian from an early age. He was very selfcontained, and it was obvious that he didn’t like taking orders from anyone and had his own ideas about the way things should be done. In the Bay Area, he worked with Jello Biafra at Alternative Tentacles and learned the business of owning a label.

Well, we did all go to see Hamilton together. Dave enjoys many different genres of music, as do I. Not sure what Dave’s daughter likes now, but she used to like a group called King Diamond. When we’re all together, I turn on my jazz station and they don’t usually complain.

We understand he’s a big baseball fan.

Did you take him to a lot of A’s games when he was growing up?

I would say his deep love and loyalty to his father. When Dave was young and had an early interest in music, and when he wanted to buy a record store and run his own label, Dave’s dad was there to support him. When I left the Bay Area for Pittsburgh, Dave stayed with his dad and it was the two of them for years.

I know his dad took him to plenty of A’s games.

He played baseball when he was younger and always liked the game itself, as opposed to football or soccer. I just liked Jose Canseco and had a big poster of him on my wall!

14 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

What’s something about your son that people would be surprised to know?

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Full of Hell, Garden of Burning Apparitions  Pray U Prey, The Omega Kill  Metal Church, The Human Factor  Evoken, Hypnagogia  Social Distortion, White Heat, White Light, White Trash ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Tiamat, Skeleton Skeletron  Sloth, The Voice of God  1782, From the Graveyard  Ufomammut, XX  Katatonia, Discouraged Ones ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Carcass, Torn Arteries  Wolves in the Throne Room, Primordial Arcana  Dungeon Serpent, World of Sorrows  Decrepit Birth, Diminishing Between Worlds  Baroness, Purple ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Khemmis, Desolation  Nachtmystium, Live Decay: Roadburn Rites 2012  The Silver, Ward of Roses  Këkht Aräkh, Pale Swordsman  Groza, The Redemptive End ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Amenra, De Doorn  Lamb of God, As the Palaces Burn  Magic Circle, Journey Blind  Asphyx, On the Wings of Inferno  Dearth, To Crown All Befoulment

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Brooks Wilson : c r y p t s e r m o n  Cannibal Corpse, Violence Unimagined  Ghastly, Mercurial Passages  Glorious Depravity, Ageless Violence  Craven Idol, Forked Tongues  Kansas, The Absence of Presence

—ANDREW BONAZELLI PHOTO BY SCOTT KINKADE

Y ISEMAN

TNE

BY COUR

Neill From Krieg Has Kidney Stones here’s a lot of discussion about all things surrounding music these days: the culture, the way we communicate, the ability to do shows, why not even your mother likes your band, etc.

We talk all the live-long fucking day about these things. I know I’m guilty of it. And some things that are adjacent to the music are worth talking about, like how they found child porn on the Inquisition guy’s hard drive, yet people who otherwise support QAnon somehow think that’s not a reason to heap scorn upon the band. Other things, however, are not worth really thinking about because they don’t matter—not one bit.

And yet we can’t shut the fuck up about everything surrounding music, but rarely do we have a conversation regarding the music itself.

So, this month I wanted to talk about music.

This is a music magazine, after all.

The last few years, I’ve been buying physical copies of records again, but the things that I have done to attain this position also prevent me from having time to actually enjoy the things.

Add a child into the mix and I spend more of my time listening to the Word Party theme song than whatever cool new thing hit my mailbox. And there’s been a lot this year. And last year. And the year before. Which sounds like a great thing, and it really is fantastic to see/hear so much great music released year after year. But it’s given me pause to consider two things: 1) What about the great music of the past? And 2) With so much killer shit selling out in literal seconds, are these purchasers actually listening to their records or buying them just to flip or have something to wave around on social media in place of actual meaningful content? Collecting expensive vinyl is not a personality trait.

Over the years, I’ve been forced to sell off chunks of my collection to pay bills—for moves, 16 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

or just because I needed space. While I’ll never be able to buy some of it back, there are some holes that I can fill via vinyl reissues. But with the glut of absolute bangers pulsating out of the underground these days, it’s a philosophical question of whether to seek out the classics I’ve listened to a thousand times or hunt the new blood. Even at 43, I haven’t hit the point of adulthood where I’ve stopped checking out new music, but my wallet is certainly past the mark of having disposable income for it. And it’s difficult not to jump on the new releases, because they’re fucking excellent—also, if you don’t set an alarm for the label drop, you’re guaranteed to never own the record for less than three figures.

And the people buying a record that was just released at an $18 price two weeks ago for $180 today? Are they listening to their records?

Probably not. Collecting anything has become a joyless slog where it doesn’t seem like anyone likes the shit that they’re shelling out two months of a utility bill for, other than the status it gives them among other nerds that have more dollars than sense. I missed a record last month by minutes because I had to change my daughter’s diaper. It’s now going for $80. Get fucked.

But I almost can’t get angry at the flippers; rather the people buying these at inflated prices because that’s what feeds into such greedy behavior. Doesn’t help that most of these people are shit-mouthed dickheads, the type who post “U MAD?” under pictures of the records they overpaid for, but will never listen to.

I guess these aren’t horrible problems to have; no one has ever died because they didn’t get a record they wanted, and no one owes us shit. But they are a sizable enough annoyance to fill another page and distract me while I wait to hear about dick surgery for my bladder boulders. See you next month, pals.

Celebrating Live Music’s Return With Beer

T

he past 18 months or so have been

a series of challenges and adjustments. They introduced most of us to our first experiences with long-term quarantining, relying on virtual meeting sites for communication with the outside world and Googling what chemicals would clean our groceries, but not poison us in the process. One change that would obviously feel significant to any music fan?

No live shows.

Finally, thanks to vaccines, the trickle of tour dates announced for the rest of this year is now growing into a steady stream, and both the fans and the musicians who have been missing that income are rejoicing. Everyone from Gatecreeper to Guns N’ Roses have been hitting the road. At Decibel, nothing marks a return to at least a new sort of normal more clearly than the Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest, postponed in March 2020 and now finally going down September 25-26 at the Fillmore Philly. And this festival is an example of the hand-in-hand relationship that beer has with live music.

Shows are arguably the most exciting place to enjoy a beer, and something just feels right about taking in a set while crushing a good brew. Several breweries have been highlighting the revival of live music via this connection, kicking their own lineup of shows into gear, or creating music-focused releases and promotions. It’s again becoming increasingly easy to stumble into a taproom where an artist or band is playing a set this

 On the house The Crosby Hops and Silver City Brewery collaboration brew Rock On (left) directly benefitted the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund in May while Elysian Brewing is offering rebates on six-packs of their Space Dust IPA and Contact Haze IPA with proof of a show ticket purchase

summer and fall, and a select few breweries are making the most out of privileges like space and cachet to host big sellers at ticketed concerts. Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY, for example, welcomed Modest Mouse this August, and in Minneapolis, Surly Brewing Co. staged Patti Smith and Her Band.

Before shows were able to fire up again, the goal of a music-centric beer collaboration was to help musicians stripped of a primary income source, or venues missing their revenue. In May, hop merchant Crosby Hops partnered with Silver City Brewery in Bremerton, WA, Sweet Relief Musicians Fund and pop-punkers MxPx in the Rock On project. They invited breweries to make a Rock On lager with certain hops from Crosby; Crosby donated 100 percent of the profits from these hops to Sweet Relief.

Now, special brews are looking to support musicians by encouraging people to get back to shows. Seattle’s Elysian Brewing has launched Cheers to Live Music, where through September 6, customers can get

rebates on six-packs of the brewery’s Space Dust IPA and Contact Haze IPA by uploading photos or screenshots of concert ticket purchases at the brewery’s website. Elysian has crossed paths with music before: They’re the brewery behind Def Leppard’s beer, and last fall, they brewed the Keep Music Live IPA to raise money for small, independent music venues in Washington.

“For me, personally, music is a great passion and hobby of mine, and anytime I can incorporate it into my professional life, that’s a win-win situation,” Elysian co-founder Joe Bisacca tells us via email. “As venues open up this summer, we wanted to find a way that not only celebrates the return of music, but supports the fans, the bands and the reopening of venues. Six-packs of Space Dust and Contact Haze are on us this summer for our fellow community of live music supporters.”

On that note, enjoy those free beers, but don’t forget to do some spending at venues (if you can). Here’s to raising a plastic cup or can of a good brew at your next show.

DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 17

OCEANS OF SLUMBER

STUDIO REPORT

T

exas-based metal powerhouse Oceans of Slumber have just completed

OCEANS OF SLUMBER

be an adventure. Like Neurosis ALBUM TITLE recording Cammie Gilbert’s vocals when Decibel calls. In fact, the band—feaplaying gospel music. Or the Starlight and Ash turing drummer Dobber Beverly (ex-Insect Warfare), guitarist Jessie Santos, Swans moonlighting with PRODUCER guitarist Alexander Lucian, bassist Semir Özerkan and keyboardist Mat V. Portishead. Starlight and Ash Joel Hamilton Aleman, along with producer and engineer Joel Hamilton—are on their way to features splashes of doom, LABEL dinner to celebrate Gilbert closing out almost three weeks of recording sessions at country, and whatever genres Century Media Studio G Brooklyn.

Kate Bush and Swans own.

STUDIO “I went around the chain of command and contacted Joel Hamilton directly,” “There wasn’t a sound Studio G Brooklyn, reveals Beverly, clearly distracted by 1) the bee-like activity around him, and 2) model,” Beverly acknowledges.

Brooklyn, NY Decibel sandwiching ourselves between two momentous occasions: the Texans’ “I will say I like the sound of RECORDING DATES studio exit and their impending supper. “Joel had worked with Danny Elfman, the Stooges, Nick Cave, Tom June 10 – June 30 Elvis Costello, Tom Waits—all kinds of big shit. He’s into the heavier stuff, too. He Waits [and] Neurosis, all the RELEASE DATE was in [A] Storm of Light, [JJ Paradise] Players Club, the Book of Knots; so, from the way through to Florida death Spring 2022 beginning—the demos, really—Joel was tracking our record. This is the first time metal. I’m not sure what I we’ve ever done it this way. It eclipses anything and everything we’ve ever done.” want, but what I do want is Overcasts. Lords over. A cut above. Superlatives. That’s what Oceans of Slumber’s fifth album, the top of the top. Also, I will say that Cammie titled Starlight and Ash, represents. It’s Beverly, Gilbert and the rest of the band’s chance to expand absolutely eclipsed herself with this one. I don’t horizons, to grow into an ever-changing vision unflinchingly. As Helen Keller once said, “Life is think anybody is going to be able to top her either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” For Oceans of Slumber, their new musical forays had to after this.” —CHRIS DICK

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ZEALOT R.I.P.

ZEALOT R.I.P.

D.C. metal supergroup actually performs decidedly non-D.C.-style punk rock

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ost bands play their first show in reliably shitty locations: ¶ A venue close to closing • A sweatbox community center • A local community college • Even a backyard ¶ Zealot R.I.P. are perhaps the first metal band ever to play their debut show at an embassy. The gig at the Swedish Embassy included a panel discussion on Swedish metal—even though Zealot R.I.P. are not Swedish. ¶ “Jason [Hamacher, drummer] is a man about town and is a D.C. City Commissioner and is heavily involved in the art scene,” vocalist Blake Harrison says.

“He was in touch with the Swedish Embassy and knew they had a room. We’re not a Swedish band, so the panel helped fix that issue. The embassy is a beautiful palace on the Georgetown waterfront, and it was pretty surreal to watch all these scuzzy punk rockers going through security checks.” ¶ Zealot R.I.P. started years ago when Hamacher (Frodus, Battery, Combatwoundedveteran) and guitarist Mike Schleibaum (Darkest Hour) decided to collaborate and write songs with a crossover bent. Harrison and Fairweather’s Peter Tsouras (guitars) completed the band.

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“Jason and Mike had done Zealot for years and had a bunch of false starts,” Harrison says. “I moved to the D.C. area about four years ago, and I ran into them at an Exodus show. I kept saying we should get together and jam in a goofy, sloppy Dwarves-style punk band. Eventually, they were like, ‘We’re not going to do that, but why don’t you come over on Tuesday?’ We made a bit of a racket, and it kind of went from there.

“We wanted something a little more raw and more punk,” Harrison adds. “As much as Scott [Hull] and I would love to do more raw punk stuff in Pig Destroyer, it doesn’t satisfy everyone, and with a band that’s been together for 20some odd years, there are certain expectations. We can’t just come out of left field with a Circle Jerks-style record. I’ve always wanted to do a noisy punk-style band.”

The bulk of The Extinction of You was recorded pre-pandemic, although the band has been able to get together a few times postvaccination. The album includes alternate and re-recorded versions of songs the band initially tracked for an EP in 2019. “I’ve taken a different approach from any other project or band I’ve been in,” Schleibaum says. “Zealot is a return to my early days in music.

We write songs pretty quick and usually end up keeping the first takes.”

The band’s next show also aims to be more of an event than a concert. Instead of just planning a gig, Zealot R.I.P. are planning a combined record release, video shoot and beer release at D.C. area brewery DC Brau. “It’s going to be a fun time.” Harrison says. “Jason and I try to go above and beyond on these events.” —JUSTIN M. NORTON

WRAITH

WRAITH

Indiana thrashers break chains and swing scythes on sophomore record

NO

BULLSHIT THRASH METAL. Borrowed from one of their very first reviews, Indiana thrashers Wraith embrace the simplicity of that adopted description.

It fits their Absolute Power debut like a burial suit.

Their blackened punk and Motörhead speedfreak riffs never ease off the gas pedal. Meanwhile, vocalist/guitarist Matt Sokol summons the reaper with raw snarls. Undo the Chains—Wraith’s new record with Redefining Darkness Records—reveals a band that continues to honor thrash’s power without a shred of the genre’s 21st century self-aware novelty. ¶ “With a scalpel, we went surgically through it to make sure [Undo the Chains] represented us in our current form,” Sokol says. “The biggest criticism we got from Absolute Power is that it blended together. I think that’s one of the problems with modern thrash and with the punk influence of crossover. We do rely on some of the same structures or chord progressions when writing songs. So, we were hyper-critical that each song stood on its own on this album.” ¶ While guitarist Jason Schultz wrote and recorded the leads for Absolute Power,

22 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

Undo the Chains is his debut as a fulltime member. While Schultz was slowly initiated as a live musician, the members all have two decades of friendship to aid the transition.

From high school friends to groomsmen in Sokol’s wedding, Wraith’s members share a bond tighter than a mortician’s stitch.

“I don’t have any brothers by blood,” Sokol says, “but all three of them were in my wedding. To me, they’re family.”

The result of their chemistry is a lethally cohesive album that snaps spines and crushes trends. Outside of their music, the members of Wraith have senses of humor as sharp as their hooks.

But there’s nary a smirk to be found on Undo the Chains.

“We take metal pretty seriously, and our gripe with thrash for a long time was that it’s treated like a joke,” notes Sokol. “I’ve gotten on my high horse and defended

thrash’s legitimacy many times. The pizza party element brought thrash back to the limelight. But that’s not who we are.”

Before joining Redefining Darkness, Wraith self-released and financed their own physical releases.

Sokol originally cut his teeth in the punk scene, and he still carries the lessons learned from those DIY days. On the back of their punk hustle and determination, Wraith are ready to decimate crowds and support Undo the Chains on stages.

“There’s a work ethic [in punk] that means a lot to us,” Sokol stresses. “We were so used to being told no. So, record labels won’t put your stuff out. Fuck it. You can make CDs, you can print T-shirts, you can book our own shows. That’s what carried Wraith through the band’s intimacy at the start. It didn’t matter if others didn’t care or didn’t want to help us; we would just do it anyway.” —SEAN FRASIER

SUCCUMB

Bay area death dealers read as the world burns

XXI

refers to the last tarot card in the major Arcana, which is the world card. The imagery there usually [depicts] a tetramorph, which represents all four of the elements. All the songs are an [allegorica] look at the elements: earth, air, fire or water.” ¶ Vocalist and lyricist Cheri Musrasrik of San Francisco death metal outfit Succumb had a clear vision for her band’s second album.

Titled XXI, the record is a subtle improvement on the band’s 2017 self-titled debut. Whereas the former featured degenerate, acidic screams to the soundtrack of frenzied death metal and crust, XXI offers a more nuanced take. Comparatively, this record is musically immersed in the world of Canadian war metal (in addition to classic death metal), bolstered by disparate production courtesy of Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, King Woman, Amenra) and an unusual lyrical bent. ¶ “I was looking at all these different things throughout mythology that relate to [the tetramorph],” Musrasrik says. “Like [Sumerian female demons] ‘Lilith’ and

24 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

[the orgiastic female followers of the Greek God Dionysus dubbed the] ‘Maenad’ and [Greek titan God of the ocean stream] ‘Okeanos,’ titans, Arthurian literature, a song about ‘Soma’ and [the psychoactive mushroom] Fly Agaric stuff, and about the boxer rebellion in China, which was about killing missionaries.”

Musrasrik continues: “It was a very anti-Christian, anti-Western uprising. It was related to the disrespect and dismissal of ancestor and nature, of deity worships.

They all hang together and it’s all to deal with the elements. That’s what I want to talk about, because of the state of our planet…

Every year California is on fire, there’s all of these natural disasters that you have to dodge.

If you’re on a road trip or touring, for example, you’re dodging natural disasters and things seem to be getting increasingly worse.

That was one of the only things I

couldn’t stop thinking about: the state of our planet.”

This sense of impending dread— coupled with celebratory Dionysian sexuality—infuses XXI with the sense that everything is careening off the rails. That’s further heightened by the perpetual musical aggression; Musrasrik cites Blasphemy, Adversarial, Brutal Truth, Morbid Angel and Defeated Sanity as most informing the band’s input.

Meanwhile, the lyrics are an extension of her lifestyle and interests.

“I want to look at the ancient ways of doing things and thinking about things, and I’m into beauty and poetry,” says Musrasrik. “The way that I write about these topics has to deal with just the way that I move through the world personally… I always do feel very fluid, and I love slipping into being masculine and being feminine. I find them both very powerful in their own way.” —SARAH KITTERINGHAM

PHOTO BY CHRISTIAN SHEPHERD

SUCCUMB

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EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY How Strange, Innocence Anniversary Edition Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the birth of Explosions In The Sky with this exquisitely remastered, repackaged reissue.

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GREEN LUNG

GREEN LUNG

Retro U.K. quintet pumps out well organ-ized doom

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recent global events have provided doom bands far and wide with a discography’s worth of appropriately bleak topics to write about—and, for many, the free time to craft their opuses. This should be a golden era for the genre. London’s Green Lung have certainly made a solid contribution with their second long-player for Svart, Black Harvest, an album featuring the Four Horsemen front and center, and suitably gloomy in its lyrical approach. ¶ “Over the course of [a] year, we lost a band member [bassist Andrew Cave] and the pandemic happened, so by the time I was really drafting lyrics, I was in a pretty melancholy state,” vocalist Tom Templar explains via email. “So, there’s a sense of seasonal change there—falling leaves and darkening days—but also more widely, a sense of the end of a world or era.” ¶ Black Harvest opens with Templar and organist John Wright doing a creepy scene-setting vamp, “The Harrowing,” in a medieval Welsh church before the band— rounded out by guitarist Scott Masson, bassist Joseph Ghast

26 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

and drummer Matt Wiseman— crashes into a heaving, organaccented groove. Throughout the album, the band weaves folk and prog touches amidst Masson’s lumbering riffs, while Templar’s soaring vocals provide a solid melodic hook. The subject matter may be dire, but the choruses are divine.

“Green Lung [was] specifically [created] to have a retro-heavy kind of feel, married to a more accessible, song-focused take than the typical Sabbathian proto-metal band,” Masson notes. “We’ve just focused on making sure the songs [are] as fundamentally good as possible. By focusing on melodies, vocal hooks and big fat riffs, the sound and feel of the music developed organically.”

Having an organist is also novel in such heavy music, and it’s something the band has learned to use

effectively within its sound, without immediately invoking Deep Purple or early Uriah Heep. “We ended up using the organ as a lead instrument so that it grabs attention, rather than being constantly there, dominating the sound,” Masson explains.

Wright’s organ “stabs” and other keyboard touches add considerably to the eerie vibe throughout Black Harvest’s 10 tracks. The dynamic, well-arranged album has a cinematic feel, and not by accident.

“We’ve always been inspired by cinema since the beginnings of the band,” Templar writes. “We wanted to capture that late-’60s/early-’70s folk horror aesthetic in a modern metal context. On Black Harvest, we wanted to try to move the lens toward our own vision a little more—it’s intended more as the soundtrack to the folk horror movie in our heads.” —ADEM TEPEDELEN

RARE BIRD

Wherever Good Books Are Sold

AUG 2021

SEP 2021

NOV 2021

ALSO NEW FROM RARE BIRD FATHER, BROTHERS, AND SONS by Frank Bello of Anthrax with Joel McIver HALLUCINATIONS FROM HELL by Gregg Turner of Angry Samoans NEW FROM DEAD BOOKS TOMORROW RUINED TODAY by Ryan Kent and Brett Lloyd SOME OF US LOVE YOU by Ryan Kent and Brett Lloyd

STILL AVAILABLE MUTATIONS by Sam McPheeters of Born Against SCALE and WATCH by Keith Buckley of Every Time I Die

DUNGEON SERPENT

DUNGEON SERPENT Old-school death metal project shines through majesty and decay

N

ot dungeon. not serpent. But Dungeon Serpent. The name of Vancouver’s latest calamitous export could very well be pulled out of a Gary Gygax bestiary or a Robert E. Howard creation myth, but it’s not. The name of sole proprietor Arawn is a simple concatenation of two words he likes.

Musically, however, this one-person death metal warrior isn’t too far removed from Austria’s Miasma enlisting Eucharist’s Markus Johnsson to reinterpret Incantation’s four-song Entrantment of Evil EP. This is brutally savage, yet remarkably devious death metal, the kind that slithers and spits with Machiavellian grace. That Arawn started Dungeon Serpent in high school and has completed World of Sorrows (Nameless Grave/Desert Wastelands) as the only member is another story altogether. ¶ “I started writing World of Sorrows in spring of 2020,” says Arawn. “The factors that inspired it initially were that I wanted to fill a certain niche within death metal. Very extreme and brutal-sounding melodic death metal. That’s how the music started. There are too many non-musical influences to go into all of them, but [I’ll cite] nature, history, personal sadness (usually due to my romantic dysfunctionality and work) and sci-fi/fantasy— 28 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

like (among many others) the first six Star Wars movies, Treasure Planet, the Riftwar Cycle and DJKaktus’ work. One very major inspiration to me throughout the whole thing was the idea that decay, change and ultimately ‘unbeing’ are completely natural and necessary factors of existence, and that our attempts to prolong things, keep things a certain way, or control nature are unnatural and frivolous.”

Indeed, Arawn’s relationship with decomposition (literally) was sparked during a constitutional through a local cemetery. There, among the tombstones and mausoleums, the idea that burial ground beautification was a fruitless exercise sprouted. This overarching theme is imbued into Dungeon Serpent’s five-song, 35-minute World of Sorrows. Opener “Necroscope” and its rearguard “Decay” feel like early-’90s death, geo-locating with impunity somewhere between Cemetary’s An Evil Shade of Grey and the sub-basement of Morpheus Descends’ Ritual of Infinity. Enrobed

in Arawn’s astute observations on the finality of all forms of life is foundational death metal.

“I take very heavy and extreme death metal techniques and riff archetypes and apply consonant melodies/harmonies/counterpoints to them,” Arawn says. “[I then] throw in sections influenced by heavy metal, jazz, Midwest emo and black metal abstractly, make sure it’s utterly devoid of direct thrash influence and, lastly, try to avoid melodic metal cliché to the best of my ability. NYDM plays a very big role in my perception of what ‘death metal’ should be. Albums like Dawn of Possession, [The] Dead Shall Inherit and Onward to Golgotha almost single-handedly form my basis for death metal techniques.”

Arawn warns that a follow-up to World of Sorrows is already in the works—to be preceded by a possible EP or split—but it may take time for it to emerge from his garden of shadows. We’ll wait patiently, playing “Immortal Incubation” and “Cosmic Sorcery” on loop. —CHRIS DICK

FILTH IS ETERNAL

FILTH IS ETERNAL

M

embers of he whose ox is gored, Reburied and extouring members of Daughters and Cattle Decapitation walk into a bar as Fucked and Bound and leave as Filth Is Eternal…” may sound like the curious beginning to a compelling story, and it is. After building a name as DIY wild things via incendiary live shows and a ripping debut album, 2018’s Suffrage, the Seattle quartet felt pressure to re-christen their metallic hardcore outfit. And if you’re already shaking your head in disgust at the grip that social media has on society-at-large, prepare to shake harder. ¶ “It’s a combination of things,” begins guitarist Brian McClelland. “We essentially got a new band. [Vocalist] Lisa [Mungo] and I had been doing Fucked and Bound since the beginning, and we welcomed a new rhythm section [bassist Rah Davis and drummer Matt Chandler]. Because we had a new team, we’d been talking about a change. Also, over the course of the pandemic, social media has been a wreck, and in reality, we’re largely a word-of-mouth band. Not being able to play live while culture wars were crushing algorithms was making it hard for us to reach people we were already engaging with.

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“Previous to the pandemic, we’d already been dealing with booking stuff,” he continues. “We’d actually altogether lost a tour we DIY booked because we found out venues were getting opposition because of our band name. We’d get on festival posters and promoters were getting blocked and censored. We didn’t think that was fair to anyone involved and the decision was made to help everyone, including fans who were even having a hard time getting our record. The reality is that it’s hard to get anything done without social media because that’s how the majority of people absorb information and culture. We didn’t necessarily want to change the name, but we realized all our work would have been lost if we put out another record and everything was being censored more and more.”

The “new” band’s second fulllength, Love Is a Lie, Filth Is Eternal, was already in the works before the

world froze in March 2020. Being able to pull attention away from shows and no longer battling to justify their admittedly awesome former moniker, they dove deep into the album’s creation, including meticulous attention paid to post-production.

The result is beastly, meat-grinding sludge played at hardcore/D-beat tempos, filtered through a ferociously snotty punk delivery.

“Suffrage was all about coming out swinging,” McClelland says, comparing the two albums, “with somewhat traditional fast, hard and gnarly hardcore punk compared to the more progressive and experimental metal Lisa and I were doing in He Whose Ox Is Gored. With the new one, we had time to reflect on what worked and resonated. Also, the new rhythm section got to learn the Suffrage songs then [applied] everything about the new band to the new material, which was absolutely cool.” —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PHOTO BY EMILY SALISBURY

Band names aren’t forever, but pissed-off noise-punk is

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Los Angeles, CA’s TEETH return with a blistering 5 song offering entitled “Finite”!

Produced, mixed and mastered by Erol Ulug (Our Place of Worship is Silence, Swampbeast) at Bright Lights Studios and featuring artwork by Mark Erskine.

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Brooklyn NY’s blistering indie rockers JUDAS KNIFE present their Translation Loss debut entitled “Death is the Thing with Feathers”.

Recorded by Kurt Ballou (Converge, Dylan Carlson) and featuring members of the beloved 90’s bands Into Another and Garrison (both of Revelation Records).

24th OUT SEPTEMVBER I N Y L / D I G I TA L

genocidal rite Providence, RI’s Doom/Sludge purveyors, CHURCHBURN celebrate their 10 year anniversary with their most accomplished album yet entitled “Genocidal Rite”. Featuring ex-members of Vital Remains and Greif!

O U T N OV EMBER

1 st

vinyl/digital

OUR PLACE OF WORSHIP IS SILENCE D I S A V O W E D, A N D L E F T H O P E L E S S

Uncompromising and utterly bleak, OUR PLACE OF WORSHIP IS SILENCE present their newest offering and sophomore TL follow up entitled “Disavowed, and Left Hopeless”. Seven songs of cripplingly depressing blackened death.

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Erol Ulug (Teeth) and featuring artwork by Jon Zig (Deeds of Flesh, Vile, Disgorge).

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VINYL/TAPE/DIGITAL

This Never Happened

“This Never Happened”, the third full length record from Philadelphia’s legendary metallic hardcore hybrid ALL ELSE FAILED finally sees a proper vinyl release... 17 years in the making!

Featuring Chris Pennie (The Dillinger Escape Plan) on drums.

OUT NOW VINYL/DIGITAL

PURCHASE OUR TITLES AND MERCHANDISE FROM OUR BANDS ONLINE, 24 HOURS A DAY! | TRANSLATIONLOSS.COM | FACEBOOK.COM/TRANSLATIONLOSSRECORDS | TRANSLATIONLOSS.BANDCAMP.COM

MASTIFF

Brit sludgecrushers survive pandemic’s dog days, refocus on humanity’s next plight

A

fter we finished the album in October,” says Mastiff guitarist James Andrew Lee, “we didn’t see each other again in person until March or April.” ¶ So goes another tale of band life during COVID. But despite the challenges and setbacks due to the pandemic, the U.K. five-piece is on the brink of releasing a devastating full-length well worth the wait: Leave Me the Ashes of the Earth. ¶ And even if the album is coming out much later than expected, it’s what the band has long wanted to make. After Lee and bassist Dan Dolby joined, the band’s vision took a little time to get just right. ¶ “We were a different animal then,” vocalist Jim Hodge says of the music that they first wrote together. “When they joined, we were figuring out our limitations, and then realized we were allowed to be what we wanted to be.” ¶ “As time went on, we got more comfortable and less worried about stepping on toes,” Lee adds.

“We became more open to bringing in different extremes.

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We tend to pull from the far reaches of heavy music, but for this album we reached in more directions and incorporated more things.”

And that’s not an overstatement.

The band fluidly—and consistently—moves from sludge to black metal to grind and hardcore, held together by an overarching tone of misery and Hodge’s distorted bellow that sounds like the microphone is cracking apart.

“The lyrics are the same as always,” Hodge says. “I write a lot of personal stuff. Loss. Human loss.

That is a recurring thing. It leaves its scars. There’s always something to pull out of the horrible little corners of my mind.”

The band are quite affable, though, even when discussing the arduous, incredibly frustrating path towards this record’s release. “[The pandemic] had a drastic effect on what we could do with

promotion,” Lee says. “The label didn’t want to announce our signing or any pre-release info until they could make a video and other stuff. That couldn’t happen until restrictions were lifted. And we were just sitting on our hands, biting our lips, trying not to scream that we had this huge thing we knew about.”

Now that it’s all hopefully on track, Mastiff are scheduling tours and readying Leave Me the Ashes of the Earth to be unleashed everywhere.

But, most importantly, the band gets to hang out again.

“We’re used to seeing each other once a week,” Lee says. “You spend so much time together as a band that this has been a strange and not pleasant experience.” Their group chat never slowed down, but “it’s not the same as sitting and having a beer with your friends, is it?”

—SHANE MEHLING

PHOTO BY STEWART BAXTER

MASTIFF

T E S S E R A C T P O R T A L S T H E &

M U L T I

F O R M A T

V I S U A L

R E L E A S E

C I N E M A T I C

L I V E

LIMITED EDITION DELUXE 4 DISC BOOK presented in a lavish set with exclusive pictures, extensive liner notes from Amos Williams and an individually numbered art print.

BLU-RAY, DVD + 2CD P O R T A L S soundtrack

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BLU-RAY EDITION 3LP GATEFOLD / 2CD / DIGITAL the soundtrack to the stunning cinematic live experience featuring tracks spanning the band’s career to date including Nocturne, Seven Names & King

A U G U S T

T E S S E R A C T B A N D . C O . U K

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K S C O P E M U S I C . C O M

K ATAT O N I A

DARKTHRONE ETERNAL HAILS

M N E M O S Y N E A N

Extensive collection of rarities and B-sides from the enigmatic Swedish dark prog masters, marking 30 years of the band.

Artwork from Travis Smith 2CD / gatefold 3 LP on lt ed white vinyl / gatefold 3 LP on black / digital

CANCER’s classic early albums set for release on Peaceville

OUT NOW

ULVER ‘Themes From William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’

DEATH SHALL RISE

(30th Anniversary Edition) Double disc 30th anniversary edition of the iconic 1991 Death Metal masterpiece of merciless brutality. Includes bonus live show, plus booklet with exclusive band interview.

LP 19th November 2CD 3rd September

TO THE GORY END

THE SINS OF MANKIND

1990’s blood-drenched debut opus of influential, savage UK Death Metal. Includes bonus CD containing Cancer’s full 1989 Demo.

1993’s highly revered third studio album from the longrunning British Death Metal titans

LP 12th November 2CD - 10th September

www.peaceville.co.uk

CD 17th September LP 26th November

Newly remastered edition of The Marriage of Heaven & Hell - the fourth studio opus from the Norwegian pioneers. Features guest vocal appearances from Darkthrones Fenriz, and Emperor’s Ihsahn & Samoth.

Includes a retrospective look at the album courtesy of writer Jeff Wagner.

3RD SEPTEMBER

Available on cd, gatefold 2x coloured lp - red & white

All available and more from www.peaceville.merchnow.com

Portland goth metal trailblazers UNTO OTHERS power forward

by ADRIEN

BEGRAND

photo by PETER

etalheads will listen to anything that has a misanthropic or nihilistic or cynical message,” says Gabriel Franco. “Something that sheds light on the darker side of shit that mainstream society seems to want to brush under the rug so often.” ¶ The Portland, OR-based singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter has been delving deep into the more melancholic side of heavy music in recent years with his current band Unto Others. Originally named Idle Hands, the group’s debut full-length Mana wowed listeners in 2019 with its unique blend of thrashy NWOBHM-derived riffs, black metal atmospherics and the unmistakable influence of the chilly flamboyance of 1980s gothic rock. Goth and metal have been comfy bedfellows for decades, but it’s rarely been this riff-driven, this relentlessly catchy, and Unto Others—whose name change was announced a year ago—are poised for crossover success with the robust, brooding, melodic new album Strength on new label home Roadrunner. ¶ “Everybody gets sad sometimes,” Franco notes. “It’s a fact of life.

Some people want to act like they smile 24/7, but that’s what draws metalheads to goth, because that’s what drew them to metal. When you’re younger, you’ve got way more piss and vinegar in you. You just want to fuckin’ rock, fuck shit up. Then as you start getting a little bit older, you still have the negative attitude, but you don’t have the fuckin’ energy. Then you hear this music, [sings] ‘Everything fucking sucks,’ and you’re, ‘Yeah, it does, man. Fuck this shit.” [Laughs] 34 : O AP CR TO I LB 2E0R2 21 0:2D1 E: CDI B EE C ILB E L

BESTE

While the world was in a prolonged holding pattern through 2020 and early 2021, Franco and his bandmates (bassist Brandon Hill, guitarist Sebastian Silva, drummer Colin Vranizan) were hard at work recording Strength with producer Arthur Rizk in fits and starts. “My God, it was a year of the most intense waiting I’ve ever done in my life,” Franco says incredulously. “I was pretty distraught for most of last year. There was almost a hopelessness about it, a never-ending tunnel you’re walking through. We went to Philadelphia to do sessions in June, July, October and November 2020, and then again in February 2021, and the record was finally done and dusted in April. We would have done it in a shorter time frame, but then again, what was the rush? That was the idea, because of COVID-19, obviously. That said, I will never do that again. [Laughs] Ever.”

Especially noticeable on Strength is how Franco’s songwriting has sharpened over the last couple years. Much like Ghost, Unto Others’ balance between morbidity and hookiness is impeccable, but unlike the ’70s-obsessed Swedes, the shadow of such ’80s goth classics as Floodland

If we can write a song that lifts the metal community up from the dregs just one more inch, maybe into the sunlight of the mainstream world,

THAT’D BE GREAT. GABR IEL FR ANCO

and Disintegration loom heavily over Strength.

Backing up every wicked, fist-pumping riff are atmospheric, chiming guitars, and Franco himself provides nuance in his vocal performance, approaching the soulful baritone of Robert Smith. Best of all, his songwriting is refreshingly economical and he is unafraid to use imagery that’s unconventional for most metal acts. “‘Little Bird’ is one of the weirder songs to me as an artist,” he says of the album’s surprising, lilting centerpiece. “It has a lot of character. I like pushing the limits of what I’m allowed and not allowed to do. You hear Queen’s anthems and radio hits, and then you hear ‘Bicycle Race,’ and I love that shit because it’s such a sweet song.

Something as simple as that can resonate with so many people. Taking something simple and adding a lot of meaning to it, putting the listener in your emotional headspace.”

In stark contrast, leadoff track “Heroin” blows the gates open with its rampaging pace, Hetfieldian rhythm riffs and Franco’s blunt lyrics that, while thankfully are not autobiographical, are an account of experiences he witnessed as a youth. “I grew up with a circle of friends in high school, a crew of punk rockers that would go around and drink and party,” he says. “One by one, I saw them all start to drop like flies. Luckily, most of them are still alive

today, but I watched so many people I knew [fall by the wayside], including one of my old drummers, a great friend who got me into music in high school. He was living on the streets, and a day after we kicked him out of the band for using drugs, he pawned his drum kit for drug money and lived on the streets for four or five years. Thank God he’s sober now—he’s working and doing great—but so many of my buddies went down this terrible, terrible path. The song is about the absolute selfishness of the whole ordeal. It turns people into demons.”

2022 is certain to be a busy year for Unto Others as the world opens up to live performances again, but Franco is already casting his gaze toward album number three. Most important to him is avoiding sounding predictable.

“The second I start repeating myself, I’ve failed as an artist,” he admits. “I’m always changing and evolving, and every album you’re going to get an honest expression of what I was going through at the time. The goal is to continue writing songs, and hopefully I get one song that transcends myself as a songwriter and when I listen to it, I go, ‘Holy shit, I wrote that? How?’ If we can write a song that lifts the metal community up from the dregs just one more inch, maybe into the sunlight of the mainstream world, that’d be great.”

D E CDI B EE C ILB:EO L C: TAOPBREI R L 2021 : 35

J O Y P A I N and

The seemingly disparate emotions conveyed by Finnish funeral doom legends

SK EP T ICISM are unlikely companions

by Jonathan Horsley

CR TO EE C ILB E L 36 : O AP I LB 2E0R2 21 0:2D1 E: CDI B

T

his year marks funeral doom trailblazers Skepticism’s 30th anniver- stage,” says Pöyry. “He was seeing himself playing

sary, and that is something to celebrate. It might seem antithetical to the funeral doom ethos to work oneself into raptures over, well, pretty much anything, but just because the Finnish quartet traffics in magisterial dirge doesn’t preclude them or their audience from the full spectrum of human emotions. This, of course, is not party music, and yet those attuned to ecstasy may well find theirs in the metaphysical fervor of Skepticism’s crushing sound. As they return with Companion after the traditionally respectful six-year gap since Ordeal, keyboard/organist Eero Pöyry acknowledges the contradiction in feeling deep joy in the artistry of doom’s most influential architects of long-form grief. ¶ “This is what is beautiful in music,” he explains. “Sometimes I get feedback from the singer, Matti [Tilaeus], saying that I should smile less on the stage. Because sometimes certain parts of the songs are so enjoyable that I smile when playing.”

Pöyry’s enjoyment comes from their aesthetic choices paying off—playing in a minor key, tuning down, progressively putting the brakes on tempo, alternating passages of ecclesiastical grandeur and low-end riffs ‘n’ growls. All this is done in the company of musicians who have been there from the start, who know instinctively what the other guy is going to do next. The audience’s experience of Companion might be a little more complex.

Like any other form of music, how it affects us depends on how we’re feeling. Tracks such as “The March of the Four” and “The Swan and the Raven” are calibrated to fathom the depths of the soul, but also awe. “Yes, I fully agree,” Pöyry says, “and I was very happy to see in the comments for the ‘Calla’ [promo video], someone was happy because of the fact that they would celebrate their wedding with the song, and someone else said they felt comfort after the loss of a loved one. That proves that it isn’t as singlesided as you might think. There is clearly joy and enjoyment in the music. How people experience music is much more complex than just ‘happy people, happy music.’”

Famously, upon the release of their groundbreaking debut, Stormcrowfleet, Skepticism buried the album in the forest as a gesture of gratitude to nature. To whom or what might a firstpressing of Companion be sacrificed? According to Pöyry, nature played a role again—typically Finnish, he says—but the influences are harder to pin down. “I would say the inspiration has been mostly kind of an introspection into the experiences we have had, and how to visualize them, how to turn them into music,” he explains. “‘Calla was something the guitarist [Jani Kekarainen] experienced while having a walk, seeing reflections of stars in ponds, and coming into thoughts of longing and such emotions.

Practically all of those six songs on Companion have some sort of story like that. It is a collection of some important events and emotions that we came across in the span of the last six years.”

In the case of The Passage, one of those events took place in the unconscious mind of drummer Lasse Pelkonen, whose lucid fever dream sketched out the whole song. “In the dream, he entered a record shop—just how they were in the ’90s— and from there, there was a backroom that was a

the guitar, and the fortunate part of the story was that he was playing the guitar, and when he woke up he could remember the riff, and the riff is in the song! The whole song was based on this vision that he had. How he explained it to the rest of the band—how it looked, the whole visual experience—we built the song around that vision. In that sense, I think having that sort of cinematic feel to the music is truly a part of it.

The music is for me cinematic because it stimulates visual ideas from the beginning.”

It was the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky who described cinema as sculpting in time. Perhaps he would have recognized the cinematic ideal in Skepticism’s work. “If we weren’t a band, if we were a group making short films, we could have made a collection of six short films from the same ideas,” says Pöyry. Tarkovsky would most certainly recognize their patience.

Metal used to be all heavier, faster, louder and repeat. Maybe today it is more radical to resist the trigger finger and stretch the dynamics out, giving the listener time and a three-dimensional dreamscape for the mind to explore.

“When it comes to time, it is also a word that turns up quite frequently in the lyrics,” says Pöyry. He says the drift into slow epics came accidentally, making sense as Pelkonen chose mallets over drumsticks, with the organ naturally dragging the tempo toward the infinite.

When tracking Companion, there was no click; the tempo was set by recording scratch tracks, and it would ebb and flow. This tempo drift works because they’ve been doing this forever, but it serves an artistic purpose, too. “That kind of leaning forwards or backwards, to me, is most audible in the song ‘The Intertwined,’” he says. “I am leaning back, almost metaphorically, because in the lyrics, the companion is always behind the narrator, so sometimes it works like that as music and also as a metaphor.”

There is clearly joy and enjoyment in the music.

How people experience music is much more complex than just

‘HAPPY PEOPLE, HAPPY MUSIC.’ Eero Pöyry

D E CDI B EE C ILB:EO L C: TAOPBREI R L 2021 : 37

Always positive, always partying

38 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

N

othing has changed. Everything is different.” Like some medi-

eval Persian mystic, this is what Andrew W.K. will tell you when you ask him if partying means something different to him today than it did 20 years ago when his debut album had milk shooting out of people’s tits. But it’s a reasonable question, given that partying has been his favorite topic ever since. That first album, I Get Wet, featured high-energy kegger tracks like “It’s Time to Party,” Party Hard” and “Party ’til You Puke.” Donald Tardy of Obituary played drums on the record—and in the subsequent iteration of Andrew W.K.’s live band—so the extreme metal world sat up and took notice. ¶ His sixth and latest album, God Is Partying, clearly continues this theme. In the intervening years, W.K. expanded his repertoire to include motivational speaking, venue ownership and advice columns. But partying is still his main jam, even during the pandemic—though he did find time to get engaged to actress Kat Dennings this past spring. “I’ve been holding both arms up, extended straight and hard, shoulders tight, elbows locked, wrists flexed, palms open, always straining to keep on holding up my side of the deal,” he tells us via email, which is his preferred method of communication these days.

Below, he holds court on his new album, wearing white and—of course—partying.

With a few stream-of-consciousness non-sequiturs in between.

What have you been doing to keep yourself busy during lockdown?

When I was in high school, I had a lucid dream that shook me to the core. In this dream, everyone thought the same as me. Everyone did exactly what I wanted and exactly what I believed was right. At first, I thought I was in heaven, but slowly I began to realize that this dream was a nightmare, and I was relieved to wake back up in a world of frustrating complexity and divine diversity.

Even though my ego wants to believe I know best and everything should be how I want it, I know the cost of achieving that outcome is hell on earth. When life feels unfair or bad to me, I can work as hard as I can to adjust it to my will, but I also must accept that the world wasn’t made to cater to my preferences, but to be functional for all of this infinite cosmic creation. It’s painful to realize that, but it is part of the humbling truth. That’s what I’ve been thinking about over the past year.

Congratulations on your engagement. Which bands or music did you two bond over when you started dating?

Kat and I met under mystical circumstances. I feel like the luckiest person on the planet. I feel like the entire world has turned into one gigantic musical explosion of orgasmic audio.

What inspired the title of your new album?

It was inspired by partying, first and foremost— like everything else I’ve ever done. Forcing PHOTO BY HERB MA XIMO

the audience into knowing too much about this interferes with our presentation and their experience. When the album was first being constructed, it was decided that it was to be a very direct channel, driving this vision from its point of origin and directly into the darkest depths of the listener’s self. I don’t want the directness of that current to be weakened by interference caused by me or any of my desperate mental distractions, such as “understanding” and “meaning.” I want to bypass logic and reason and transcend their intellect entirely, and the only way to do that is to give the audience a psychic lobotomy. Let the brain bleed out the nose and let the truth be inhaled in its place. Let this thing be encountered as itself, and not as the thing behind the curtain.

How did you approach this one differently than your last album, You’re Not Alone?

God Is Partying was recorded primarily in 2018 and 2019. It was more or less recorded with our usual approach, only much more alone. On You’re Not Alone, I tried working in a different recording studio for the first time in a long time, and with a lot more people working with me. It was an interesting and valuable experience. We reverted to our established solitary recording approach for God Is Partying, and I imagine it will remain this way indefinitely.

It’s great to try new approaches to your work, but when a method works well for you, don’t forget how precious and rare that can be, even if it becomes a bit predictable.

Why do you think God is partying? How do you envision that party?

It is un-envisionable. All I can do is extend my highest conception of pure fun and total love, collapse it back down into a solid black cube and hope it doesn’t crush my skull as it rotates its way through the abyss. I think the key might be jumping on top of the cube and riding it, rather than constantly trying to dodge it or destroy it.

But that’s just a hunch I have.

What’s the inspiration behind the song and video for the single “I’m in Heaven”?

Before Andrew W.K. started, everything I touched turned to shit—except when I touched myself. This sort of self-contact allowed me to forge a connection to what I mistakenly thought to be the eternal. But it turned out to only be a reflection of a shadow. Still, that shadow counted for something, and that something became everything to me. I’ve generally considered myself to be very frightened in general, and especially frightened of people. I’m not so much frightened of strangers or by society as a whole, but I’m absolutely terrified of myself—and the people who think they know me, of which I’m the prime example.

What’s the story behind the quote at the end of the “Babalon” video? “Consciousness hasn’t opened reality, only nightmares. Zone-out now.”

I understand the temptation to see the world in very binary terms, but whether our mind likes it or not, the world and humanity is infinitely multifaceted and beautifully non-binary. At least, it appears that way to me. Fortunately, there are many ways, small and large, to do good in the world.

Zone out. Zone it all out and then into one mega zone. It’s like water. I think most everyone can agree that water is essential. We all need it to survive. But not everyone’s conscience is going to compel them to engage with water the same way. Some will be driven to devote their entire lives to studying water in great detail.

Others will work to keep it clean and flowing.

Others will work to bring that water to where it is needed most desperately. And still others will surf in it, swim in it, fish in it, piss in it; and finally, everyone will drink it.

Sure. But what about that quote?

I generally leave all the creative choices up to the directors. They’ve put their full faith in me, and I’ve put my full trust in them, even if I don’t always understand why.

For a few years, I attended a school that had a strict dress code. You couldn’t wear shirts with pictures on them, for example. You had to DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 39

 Potty hard!

The party master himself implores you to seek your own meaning through the art of partying

One of your new promo photos features you sprawled in the gutter with what looks like a pee stain on the front of your pants. Have you ever woken up that way in real life?

That’s not urine in that photo. Those jeans are encrusted with sour, rotten semen.

You look almost exactly the same today as you did on the cover of I Get Wet 20 years ago.

What’s your anti-aging secret?

Partying hard.

You had Donald Tardy in your band for a while.

What’s your favorite Obituary album and why?

I’ve probably listened to their World Demise album the most. Amazing, tasty drum parts, incredibly heavy riffs, absolutely untouchable vocals, and an overall style and sound that’s as unique as it is undeniable. I love Obituary and am forever indebted to Donald. He did so much for me in those early years when it was all just beginning. He’s an incredible man and an absolutely stupefying drummer.

Imagine you’ve been asked to give a motivational speech to Metallica. What do you tell them?

Just keep on making music!

wear shirts with a collar, etc. Like many students, I tried to do everything I could to subvert and test the limits of the clothing restrictions, sometimes in ridiculous ways. For example, one of the rules was that on Fridays all the boys had to wear neckties to school. Well, some students began developing amazingly abstract interpretations of what a “necktie” was. It went way beyond bolo string ties and bowties.

One free-thinking student managed to get away with wearing a long piece of clear plastic Saran Wrap around his collar as a tie.

Several years after we graduated from this school, I saw one of the most rebellious students out and about wearing the most ordinary clothes: khakis and a blue button-down collared shirt. When I pointed out to him that he looked like he was following our old school dress code, he said, “I’ve always liked dressing like this—I just didn’t like being told I HAD to dress like this.” The difference was, I DID like being told.

40 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

Fair enough. What inspired the lyrics of “And Then We Blew Apart”? There’s a lot of talk about “coming together.”

I don’t want to tell people where I’m coming from. If they care about it enough, they’ll figure it out on their own. That song has been in various stages of non-completion since 2005. It’s personal, but it’s not about me. I prefer not to demonize people. I don’t even like to demonize demons. Most of these demonic positions usually descend quickly into paradox. For example, you can demonize demons, but of course, then you may become demonic in your demonizing. And if I demonize the people who demonize the demons, then maybe I’m demonic as well, and may even end up demonizing my own self. These paradoxes don’t make such investigations irrelevant or unimportant, but they do reveal a rather hard-tograsp and swirling, underlying nature to how the human mind operates, and how subjective and slippery nature seems to be at its most primal. Or maybe not… I’m a delusional realist today.

In 2018, the American Association of Suicidology named you Person of the Year. What does that mean to you?

To me, it means that music—and the arts in general—are vital and sublimating cornerstones of human survival. I felt like I was accepting that award on behalf of music itself. It was all very humbling and confusing. Ultimately, I want all my work and public presentations to express ecstatic ambiguity and a liberating confusion.

And that’s what I want to feel myself. I would be unwise to abandon or compromise this aesthetic, especially considering my obligations and so on.

There are many conspiracy theories out there about you. What’s your favorite, and why?

To convolute Samuel Goldwyn: I don’t ignore any conspiracy theory about me; I don’t even pay attention to them.

Last but not least, what are the pros and cons of wearing white after Labor Day?

The pros are showcasing all your hard-earned party stains. The cons are showcasing all your hard-earned party stains. I was always fascinated by magicians—how they could use a mirror to make a rabbit disappear. I wanted to make my sense of self disappear. That remains a work in progress.

PHOTO BY HERB MAXIMO

That’s not urine in that photo.

Those jeans are encrusted with sour, rotten semen.

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: PHILADELHPIA

The pandemic’s grave isn't dug yet, but

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: PHILLY intends to piss on it anyway

BY ANDREW BONAZELLI

42 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

hen life sticks it in, breaks it off and commemorates the

occasion with a limited-edition 69-track pornogrind cassette spammed on all your friends’ socials, you have two options: a) curl up and die, or b) lick your wounds (okay, maybe not these wounds) and fight back. ¶ We don’t need to remind you that last year’s Metal & Beer Fest: Philadelphia, originally scheduled for April 3-4, was one of a trillion victims of the pandemic’s Unicron-like appetite.

Good thing our perpetually-booking editor-in-chief doesn’t believe in weakened bullshit like sleep—Team Decibel fought back with a series of back alley surgeries that would make Jeff Walker blush, slowly but surely stemming the bloodloss of 71 percent of the original 2020 lineup. ¶ The good news is that the tentpoles remain strong like bull: On September 25-26 at the Fillmore Philadelphia, the rabid cerberus of Converge, Pig Destroyer and Napalm Death will bark out both dB Hall of Famers (the former two’s Jane Doe and Prowler in the Yard, respectively) and tracks from woulda-been HOFers, were it not for the 2006 passing of Jesse Pintado (the latter’s Harmony Corruption and Utopia Banished). The bad news is the fest is Sold The Fuck Out, so for the love of Christ, do not fixate on my coworker and email Albert about the guest list. ¶ The great news—which comprises the rest of this feature—is that we made lemonade out of, uh, the lemonade that was unjustly stolen from us. And, if you’ll allow a little metaphor-mixing, the trump card in our reshuffled deck is the 25-years-in-the-making reunion of the men behind one of the greatest Hall of Fame one-and-dones in our omnibus.

MASKED AND DEADLY Back in 1995, when metalcore connoted “new

and exciting,” as opposed to “horseshit on Ozzfest flatbed stage,” New Brunswick, NJ quintet Deadguy followed up a handful of promising EPs with what would be their only full-length: the corrosive, mathletic groundbreaker Fixation on a Coworker. Over a quarter-century later, they still flaunt the smartass bravado permeating Kevin Stewart-Panko’s HOF way back in our July 2006 issue.

“We’re definitely at the point where we accept that the band was meaningful for a lot of people who didn’t get a chance to see us play,” concedes drummer Dave Rosenberg, “and while none of us care about legacy or nostalgia, we are all ready to get back out onstage and kill everyone.”

“We should probably practice at some point,” guitarist Keith Huckins half-jokes. “We’ll be fine, but being scattered around [the globe, from Amsterdam to upstate NY—ed.] certainly doesn’t help.”

Neither does the fact that bassist Tim Naumann should be receiving a kidney transplant right around the time this issue goes to print, which will preclude him from appearing at dBMBF. (The rest of the band is crash-coursing everything with Jim Baglino, a professional soundman who spends most of the year on the road with major sports leagues.)  PHOTO BY GENE SMIRNOV

None of which means it won’t be Deadguy’s weekend. Their new documentary Killing Music (which Rosenberg dubs “a cross between Behind the Music and insult comedy”) will worldpremiere at Philly’s Underground Arts on September 24, and those in attendance will not only have a chance to guzzle their Broken Goblet collaboration Makeshift Atomsmasher (more on that in your nearest sidebar), but participate in a Q&A afterwards.

“Since Albert refuses to put anything hockey—the most METAL sport—related in dB, I’d love to talk about hockey,” Huckins suggests.

“Most importantly, I’d love anyone reading this to punish Albert at the fest with hockey talk.”

VETERAN PRESENTS As for the other big down-bill names, it’s always

a plus when dB event regulars Municipal Waste and Immolation bring the comfort food. We last heard from the former on 2019’s almost-too-presciently titled The Last Rager EP, and like so many of us, frontman Tony Foresta is pinching himself in anticipation of the ball dropping on this postvaccination party.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous about playing live again,” the man of a thousand bandanas admits. “I’ve never in our 20-year career been away from the stage this long. But my excitement to be up there with my bandmates and see so many familiar faces crushes that.”

Your excitement should likewise be redlining, given that Muni “could actually do a full set of new songs if we really wanted to,” presumably slated for an as-yet-unannounced lucky-numberseventh album.

“Would anyone actually want to see us play a whole set of songs they’ve never heard after not seeing us for years?” Foresta ponders. “I doubt it.

Maybe we will bust out one or two, but I kinda hate it when bands I want to see play songs I’ve never heard.”

In the interim, man of a thousand bands Dave Witte has been spending the blandemic polishing his elite drum chops and sampling a shit-ton of local Virginia breweries (“I had a lot of friends send me beer, and that would be like a thanks list on an album if I mentioned them all”). It’s unclear if any rank as high as Muni’s dBMBF collaborator Cosmic Eye Brewing, whose logo is tattooed on one of Witte’s mitts.

Synergy is only cool when it’s authentic, and that’s also the case with Brimming Horn Meadery and OSDM institution Immolation—the Dawn of a Session mead will commemorate the 30-year anniversary of debut triumph Dawn of Possession.

Which is not to say that Immo are spending the rest of the year resting on their laurels.

If you traveled back in time and told any one of us that we’d play with Pig Destroyer, Napalm Death, Municipal Waste, Converge and Immolation, we wouldn’t fucking believe it.

LO AND BEHOLD, HERE WE ARE. EROL ULUG, TEETH

DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 43

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: PHILADELHPIA

Fixation on a Fest Line-up  (clockwise from l) The newly undead (and Killing Music documentary subject) Deadguy, Immolation and Eternal Champion are vaxxed, waxed and ready to bring the noise to the max

THE SHAPE OF ASTRAL DEATH TO COME Students of the annual Decibel Top 40 will notice that [LeBron voice] not one… not two… not three… but four bands that made the cut in 2020 will be performing at this year’s dBMBF: Cleveland speed demons Midnight (the only band aside from our aforementioned “Big Three” that was booked for last year’s ill-fated fest), plus, coincidentally, last year’s top three—Imperial Triumphant, Eternal Champion and Napalm Death.

With all due respect to avant-black masked men Imperial Triumphant—our most recent cover artist on the bill and by far the most, uh, concise about future plans [Decibel: “Have you begun working on the next masterpiece that will secure you cover number two?” IT: “Yes. See you soon”]—perhaps the “buzziest” performers on offer are responsible for our favorite album of 2019: Blood Incantation.

Turns out the daring death metal cosmonauts have another time-and-space-bending gyroball in 44 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

their arsenal; according to frontman Paul Riedl, “Blood Incantation have been hard at work writing an ambient record, and have not played any metal together since filming our set for the Adult Swim festival last year.”

We know you don’t wanna wait for a studio report after that bombshell, so we now interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for the peculiar particulars: “The ambient LP (which will be marketed as an EP, despite being longer than both previous full-lengths) will contain two side-long pieces that we have been working on for the past year. The overall atmosphere is deep and cinematic, and would be particularly effective performed in a planetarium, cathedral or outdoor amphitheater under the night sky. I think people who enjoy experimental electronic music, kosmische musik, new age, modern classical/chamber music or dark ambient will be quite pleased. I can assure you that the material is far from ‘metal guys improvising with keyboards,’ as the songs each have their own linear progressions and maps, with many changes and developments throughout. To be reductive, if you were to extract all of the atmospheric passages, acoustic songs and synthesizer intro/outros from our previous records and arrange them in the long-form pattern of our most epic songs, you’d be halfway there.”

If any or all of that turns you on, congratulations, you’re reading the right magazine. If it’s deflating your sweatpants boner, chill, big guy.

“If you only enjoy our death metal for the death metal elements,” Riedl adds, “you can still come see us on tour while you await the proper third album, which will be an even more extreme and brutal blend of raging death metal and dense prog fusion.”

VAX AND PURGE As for the rest of this stacked lineup, it would

have been criminal for us to not show some brotherly love, and we did so with the absolute fucking best Philly has to offer in spastic grind (Die Choking), epic doom (Crypt Sermon) and, um, prolific producers (Arthur Rizk, drummer of otherwise Austin-based heavy metal overlords Eternal Champion, modestly counters, “Prolific producer is a stretch! I will at least admit to being ‘a’ producer, but thank you for the attempted compliment.”) Then we extended our Nosferatu claws to both coasts, plucking recently exhumed stoner-doom vets Warhorse from Worcester, MA, and “dissodeath” maniacs Teeth from L.A. Like Foresta and Huckins, many of these musicians have butterflies about getting back in the saddle, especially those who took social distancing seriously over the last 18 shitty-ass months.

“It’s been rough,” admits Warhorse drummer/ vocalist Mike Hubbard. “We had a really good run in the first few months after Maryland Doom Fest. Psycho Las Vegas, [and] Saint Vitus— the last show we played before the lockdowns.

IMMOLATION PHOTO BY GENE SMIRNOV

“We are currently busy finishing up the writing of the new album,” reveals frontman Ross Dolan, “and have already begun rehearsing to work out the kinks in preparation for the recording studio, so pre-production has been well underway. We kept busy the last year behind the scenes, so it’s nice to finally be at the point we are at now.”

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DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: PHILADELHPIA

Being in different states, we didn’t have much opportunity to get together during lockdown.”

Just before Warhorse croak out selections from 2001 classic As Heaven Turns to Ash..., Crypt Sermon will treat you to material from our fourth favorite album of 2019, The Ruins of Fading Light. Yes, we back-to-backed the only two doom practitioners in the lineup; no, they do not remotely play the same kind of doom. “Crypt Sermon intend to show up and deliver the highenergy, engaging performance that we know connects us to our audience,” says frontman Brooks Wilson. “Then I think it will be appropriate for those who are ready to doom out with their eyes rolling in the back of their heads to have a go. One thing is for sure: There’s going to be a lot of sore necks the next day.”

WE SHOULD PROBABLY PRACTICE AT SOME POINT. KEITH HUCKINS, DEADGUY

That’s an understatement. Catharsis is nigh for all, especially Sunday afternoon openers Teeth, who composed the entirety of this September’s Finite EP under lockdown. They’re up to the tough task of slaughtering jaded non-pregamers, then wandering around at least a little starstruck. “If you traveled back in time and told any one of us that we’d play with Pig Destroyer, Napalm Death, Municipal Waste, Converge and Immolation, we wouldn’t fucking believe it,” guitarist Erol Ulog marvels. “Lo and behold, here we are.”

A wise man in a movie TBS plays all the goddamn time once said, “Get busy living or get busy dying.” We’ll amend that to “get busy choking” in honor of Die Choking frontman Paul Herzog, who puts this whole motherfucker in perspective: “I love beer, but libations aside, we are ready to fucking grind. I wanna grind as fast, as loud, and as manic and pissed-off as fucking possible. It’s pretty clear that we all have reason to feel this way.”

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sWIG DESTRoyerS Our pouring brewers preview just some of the killer band collaborations you can expect at

METAL & BEER FEST: PHILLY

BY ANDREW BONAZELLI

COSMIC EYE BREWING: MUNICIPAL WASTE’S “YOU’RE CUT OFF, VOLUME 2” “We have a ‘last call’ playlist for the taproom and ‘You’re Cut Off’ is on there, so that’s what we called the original collab beer. It was a Black American Lager. I had always wondered what the beer would taste like without the dark malts, so when the opportunity popped up for another collab, I just suggested redoing the original sans dark malt. It’s an American Lager with Nugget and Centennial hops, and lands right at 5%.

Just like the original, it’s designed to be a beer that you can crush at shows.” —SAM RIGGINS, OWNER

BROKEN GOBLET BREWING: DEADGUY’S “MAKESHIFT ATOMSMASHER” “As a founding member of a New Jersey metalcore band myself, it would be impossible not to know Deadguy and be influenced by them. The beer will be a very traditional Oktoberfest style, with notes of bread crusts, toast and honey. No adjuncts, no extras—just a perfect fall beer.” —MIKE LACOUTURE, CO-OWNER

ADROIT THEORY BREWING COMPANY: IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT’S “ATOMIC AGE” “The beer is 12% of full-bodied, dark-roast, chocolate, malty goodness in a body that has assertive bitterness, but not so much as to detract from the inherent sweetness. Notes of leather, tobacco and fresh espresso combine with citrus and red berry from the coffee beans.

Jet-black, it is a sipper, but also scary drinkable. The 12% alcohol is not readily apparent, and only manifests itself after you have consumed the full can.” —MARK OSBORNE, OWNER

WAKE BREWING: NAPALM DEATH’S “SINK FAST… LET GO” “The idea came from Barney [Greenway] of Napalm Death, as he wanted a nice pub-style beer, but with a twist. [This collaboration is a] caramel and bread crust malt backed with floral/earthy English hops.

Peppercorns add aromatic complexity and help cut through the malt backbone in the finish.” —JASON PARRIS, CO-OWNER

BRIMMING HORN MEADERY: IMMOLATION’S “DAWN OF A SESSION” and ETERNAL CHAMPION’S “SKULLSEEKER” “We don’t normally make our Mead and Metal Collaborations over again, but [Skullseeker] was a huge hit with the fans.

Immolation’s mead will be very tasty! Going for a blueberry, apple cobbler-style mead with vanilla and pie spices.”

—JON TALKINGTON, FOUNDER/MEAD MAKER

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

We Are All

the making of Warlock’s Triumph and Agony

story by

adem tepedelen photos by

frank white

T

riumph and Agony is not the Warlock album you think it is. And what you’re going to read about its making is unlike any album we’ve inducted into the Hall of Fame. Hell, everything we thought we knew was turned upside down when we started researching the making of a record that transformed Teutonic vocalist Doro Pesch from the fiery frontperson of a scrappy Scorpions- and Accept-influenced German quintet into a global metal icon.

The Hall of Fame has always been about the music, but this one transcends the songs.

Triumph and Agony was Pesch stepping forward and taking control of her destiny in a very real way. After three albums of unsatisfactory commercial results—Burning the Witches (1984), Hellbound (1985) and True as Steel (1986)—with the (more or less) original lineup of German musicians who formed the band, Doro realized she needed to shake things up.

The making of Triumph and Agony is really a New York story. It was primarily recorded at the famous Power Station studio in midtown Manhattan by largely New York-based musicians and a New York producer, Joey Balin. It’s a powerful, expertly crafted album that feels very American, and has more in common with the surging ’80s commercial metal scene in the U.S. than what was happening in Europe, for the most part. And those album credits on the inner sleeve?

You can pretty much ignore them. Tommy Henriksen didn’t play bass; longtime Warlock drummer Michael Eurich performed very little on the finished product; and most of Niko Arvanitis’ guitar parts were actually re-recorded by newcomer/NYC native Tommy Bolan, whose bombastic playing (and personality) helped define this album.

In one sense, Triumph and Agony is the ultimate Warlock album, and yet it’s not really a “Warlock” album at all. It would be the last album released as Warlock, thanks to a conniving former manager, and its success would launch Pesch’s decades-long career.

The 10-song record is bookended by a true ’80s hard rock anthem (“All We Are”) and a ballad sung in German (“Für Immer”), both of which have remained in Warlock/Doro’s setlists ever since. It sounds little like its three power metal-style predecessors, and even less like subsequent Doro albums, which is likely why, 34 years after its release, it’s still beloved worldwide and has found its way into the Decibel Hall of Fame.

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Triumph and Agony VERT IGO S EPT EMBER 29, 1987

Metal queen ascendant

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WARLOCK triumph and agony  Castlemania

Coverage of Warlock’s Monsters of Rock appearance in German teen magazine Bravo

longer, but he said we’ve got to do something. I said I was ready to do whatever it takes. So, he introduced me to a guy named Joey Balin. I met Joey and he was taking me to the Cat Club and to Webster Hall and all these cool clubs and record stores. It was great, and [Balin and I] really got along great. He was a musician—guitar player and piano player—a great musician. One night he said, “What do you want to do, where do you want to go?” and I said, “Shall we jam a little bit?” So, we went to Joey’s apartment [in Manhattan], which was on 10th Street between Broadway and University.

JOEY BALIN: Doro was in New York, looking around trying to find a new direction. At the time, I was hanging out at [Rolling Stones guitarist] Ron Wood’s house, and Ron had an assistant named Adrienne, who was a lovely girl. And Adrienne said, “There’s this Swiss manager in town, [Alex Grob], who manages a couple acts, and I want to introduce you to him, because I think you have what he needs and he can do what you need; maybe this will be a good connection.” So, I met with Alex Grob, who was at that time Doro’s manager.

Joey would become the producer on Triumph and Agony, as well as the co-writer of all the songs.

Is this how your working relationship started?

MONSTERS OF ROCK The Triumph and Agony story actually begins in August 1986, when Warlock, promoting True as Steel, performs at the Monsters of Rock festival dates in England and Germany. It was the first time a femalefronted band had performed at the long-running fest.

How important was Warlock’s appearance in 1986 at Castle Donington to your career?

The legendary Monsters of Rock festivals were the most important festivals you could play back then. We played two in Germany and one in England, at Castle Donington. There were about 80,000 metalheads there, and I think we did pretty good. That show opened doors for us to actually do a little promotion tour in America.

And that was my dream; I always wanted to go to America—always. We wanted to find an American manager, as well. The guys in the band and me, we couldn’t speak English that well; just what you learn here and there in school. So, we

DORO PESCH:

needed a manager [in America] who would be cool with us, and we found somebody, Alex Grob. He was American, but he was born in Switzerland, so he could speak English and German. He invited me to come to New York and do a promo tour.

Did the whole band go to America for the promo tour, or just you, Doro?

PESCH: [Only] I went to New York for [the] first promotion tour… and after the first day, I knew I wanted to stay. I fell in love with New York. In my imagination, I’ve always thought, Man, in my heart I’m an American. I have the American spirit, you know. I want to live the American dream. When I went to New York, that was it.

Was this when you decided to record the next Warlock album in New York?

PESCH: I told my manager, Alex, “I want to stay, I want to stay!” He said that he would talk to the record label and see if I could stay a little bit OCTOBER 2021 : 50 : DECIBEL

PESCH: Joey had an acoustic guitar and we had a little Walkman that we used to record it. We wrote, like, awesome lyrics, and I was so happy because I felt really great that somebody was listening and somebody was interested. Joey and me became really great friends and we had great chemistry.

BALIN: Doro and I would bounce lyrics back and forth, melodies back and forth, harmonizations back and forth. The fact that she doesn’t have the musicality, that’s almost irrelevant. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s lopsided. There’s a definite collaboration. But I want to give a lot of credence to the fact that people have a certain aura, a certain energy that, if you tap into that and you work with that, that in and of itself is a power.

PESCH: The next day I went to Alex and told him we wrote a killer song and asked if I could play it for him. I played the demo of “East Meets West” and he said, “Wow, man, that sounds great, that sounds great!” He suggested that [Balin and I] do another song, so I went back to Joey a day later and we wrote another song, a very fast song called “Three Minute Warning.” [At this point] we went back to Alex and he said that we should make real demos. So, I talked to Joey about it and he said he knew a place where we can record.

My band was in Germany, but Joey said he knew some people.

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[Alex] got a budget together from PolyGram. I went into the studio with my guys [bassist Schuyler Deale and drummer Sterling Campbell, from Balin’s band Z Boy, and guitarist Tommy Bolan] and Doro, and we demoed out several of the songs that wound up being on Triumph and Agony. At that point in time, PolyGram came over to New York, which I thought [was] surprising because it was the German office of PolyGram; they heard the songs and they said, “Keep going, we want you to finish the record.”

BALIN:

COMING TO AMERICA Pesch’s newfound infatuation with America wasn’t shared by her German Warlock bandmates. Guitarist Peter Szigeti and bassist Frank Rittel opted to exit the band, leaving only guitarist Niko Arvanitis (who had only just joined for True as Steel) and drummer Michael Eurich.

How did Tommy Bolan, who was previously in Armed Forces, end up joining Warlock?

There was a guy named Willie Mosquera, and Willie had a band called Attack. Years ago, he asked me if I would produce a couple of demos.

Tommy was in that band [which later became Venus]. Tommy and Doro have a lot of similarities in the sense that I knew both of these people had metal in their veins. These were people that I call lifers; they were never gonna stop doing what they’re doing. And that kind of dedication, I read that very quickly in someone. Tommy really impressed me as somebody that really wanted to be out there and do it, you know?

PESCH: Tommy was full of energy. He came into the studio and I couldn’t believe it; he was so awesome, so on fire. His gear is his world; he loves gear and guitars and amplifiers. So, he brought in, I guess, his whole studio and was playing.

TOMMY BOLAN: I came down originally to play on some [Warlock] demos at Joey’s request. Joey talked me up to Doro for like two months—I’ve got this crazy, drug-free, great New York guitar player.

He’s out of his mind!

PESCH: I was watching him play [through the control room window] and suddenly I couldn’t see him anymore; he wasn’t there anymore, but you could hear all kinds of excitement and whammy bar. And then I went into the studio to see where he’d gone and he’s laying on the studio floor, on his back, sweating, bleeding. [Laughs] I thought, Wow, and I totally fell in love with his spirit, his energy, enthusiasm and his guitar playing, which was out of this world. It was so unique and crazy, but [he had] great ideas.

BOLAN: When I’m playing guitar, whether in the studio or live, I’m very animated, I move a lot. I work myself into a full lather; I go nuts.

[So] Doro’s watching, wondering who this freak BALIN:

show is! Afterward, I walk into the studio and say hello to her, and then Joey rolls the tape on “ East Meets West,” “Make Time for Love” and “Three Minute Warning” and asks me to play on them. I start shredding and make all the riffs in my first takes. Doro’s eyes got big, like saucers. It was immediate chemistry. The vibe is everything to Doro—the energy, the feel. She was totally bonding to my energy. She goes, “Do you want to play on an album?” and I go, “Yeah!” The next day, they asked me to join Warlock. Suddenly, everything went batshit crazy in my life! Here’s Doro, established, and I’m fuckin’ out of left field nowhere, a kid from Queens. Next thing you know, I’m living in Manhattan and working on [Triumph and Agony].”

“We were in Studio C in the Power Station, where there’s a window in the back. When Doro lets out this big scream, hand to God, may I be stricken dead if I’m telling a fib, this lightning bolt came right through the window. I thought, Wow, does that mean take the song off the record or put the song on the record?”

JO EY BA LIN Tommy was absolutely crazy in the studio.

The way Tommy performs onstage is actually the way he performs in the studio. So, if he’s down on the floor or laying on his back or whatever, that’s the way he’s recording! Doro would get such a kick out of that. Doro was intensely entertained

by Tommy, and when I say entertained, I don’t mean to make it sound like a clown show. There was something about the way Tommy played and the way Tommy acted that Doro responded to.

Tommy and Doro excited each other, and subsequently excited a lot of other people, too.

BALIN:

Prior to the actual recording sessions, you were rehearsing at SIR. Who was there rehearsing the songs?

It was me, Schuyler, Niko, Michael and Doro.

BOLAN:

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Tommy Henriksen is credited as playing bass on the album. Was he not part of the rehearsals?

BOLAN: [Balin] brought Schuyler down to play on the demos, and at that point just enlisted [him] to play on the entire album. It was never documented or well-known. It was just kept low-key.

[A few years ago], Tommy Henriksen did a post on Facebook saying he didn’t play on the album and that it’s all Schuyler.

BALIN: The bass player was Schuyler Deale, who later went on to play with Billy Joel. I always had a knack, all my life, for recognizing musicians long before anybody knew they were famous.

SCHUYLER DEALE: I don’t remember rehearsing a lot for the record. We did rehearse some of those songs before we went in to record them. I remember we had this other guitar player, Niko, who was there.

The demos for Triumph and Agony had been recorded without the other members of Warlock, so what was their role in the rest of the album?

All the players [in Warlock] were spoken to; everybody stayed in the family, everybody contributed, everybody was part of it. So, it wasn’t that people were left out. The only people that were left out were people that were sort of aggravated about the shift of the record from True as Steel to Triumph and Agony. There were some guys in the band [Frank Rittel and Peter Szigeti] that were part of the old Warlock who didn’t want to go further. No one was fired, ever. But as they fell out, or weren’t interested in coming to America, or coming to New York, well, [that’s when] I called in Tommy [Bolan].

PESCH: It was the ’80s, and there were lots of studio musicians that were doing stuff on these big records, even with other bands. That was a common thing. For example, we had a really cool drummer named Michael Eurich, and he was the friend of our [original] guitar player Peter [Szigeti]. Michael was really young. I think he joined the band when he was 14 or 15.

When you’re that young, you don’t know so much, and because you haven’t practiced for years, you don’t have the skills like a drummer who’s been doing it for 10 or 15 years. So, there were many times when people had to help us out [in the studio].

BALIN:

HIGH VOLTAGE AT THE POWER STATION With the material written and arranged, the quintet that had been rehearsing together at SIR went into one of New York’s best and most famous studios, the Power Station, and were eventually joined by some very special guests.

Since Niko and Michael weren’t around for most of the writing of Triumph and Agony, how much did they contribute to the recording?

BOLAN: Michael did play drums [on Triumph and Agony], but they had opportunities for other drummers. I know that Michael did get on

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some of the record. [Arvanitis] played guitar, but I’ll be honest—a lot of his parts I re-recorded at Doro’s request. I brought a different energy to it.

He was, at that point, I was told, more of a studio musician. I think those riffs he might have contributed were there, but I do know I recorded over most of his parts, if not 95 percent of them.

I did that at Doro’s request. I did all the leads, all the inflections; that’s all me 100 percent.

PESCH: Niko was actually only a hired gun that helped write only a couple of riffs on two songs. His guitar parts were mostly recorded over. His involvement in the record was extremely limited.

BALIN: What it became, actually, was like a community of people contributing to make a great record. We weren’t thinking about the band or who’s in the band, who’s not in the band. We just wanted to make a great record. Because, as you know, there are two different skills altogether— one is recording and the other is performing.

Every once in a while, they do criss-cross, but more often than not, recording is a whole other art than performing. To that end, if something was not exactly as we needed it to be, then we didn’t just settle for that; we went the next mile.

Besides Michael Eurich, who played drums on the recording?

We brought in different players to accomplish different kinds of intensities and different kinds of sounds. And that ranged from a drummer that [would go on to play with] Overkill— Mark Achabal, who plays on “All We Are”—to Cozy Powell, who came in and played on “Touch of Evil,” to Sterling Campbell [who later played with Soul Asylum, Duran Duran and David Bowie], who played on “Metal Tango.”

PESCH: When we had Cozy Powell or Sterling Campbell, when they played [on Triumph and Agony], I tell you, it was a revelation. All these songs, they came to life. I could feel that I could sing better and better. And you can’t go back and say, “My drummer, he needs to play it.”

Sometimes we tried it, here and there, a little bit, but when you have a world-class drummer like Cozy Powell or Sterling Campbell, you can’t go back. Everything is on the line, too. You have to deliver the record, and, of course, the record company expects a great record. And if somebody’s not used to playing in the studio, it’s a different animal. You have to be cut out to do that job. Not everybody’s as good in every situation.”

BALIN:

How did Mark Achabal end up playing on “All We Are”?

I [played] with Tommy Bolan in this local band in Queens called Venus. When I joined Venus, Tommy was actually preparing to join Warlock. Tommy said, “Listen, Warlock is

MARK ACHABAL:

“The minute I met Doro, it was [an] instant match-to-gasoline vibe. Doro is very big on the vibing of energy. She can read you from a mile away.”

TO MMY B O LA N looking for some drummers to maybe do some work on an album. Get a demo tape and your résumé and come meet Joey Balin.” So that’s what I did. [After that] I went down to SIR studios one night [where they were rehearsing], and from there it led to doing a lot of rehearsals with Joey and Doro and the band. I was always there and I was very eager. Being young, I was doing anything to get my foot inside the door.

PESCH: He was a friend of Tommy’s and he was such a happy spirit. He was a cool guy, and he was a young drummer. One time he asked the engineer, or Joey, if he could check out Cozy Powell’s drum setup, because Cozy was one of the heroes of every drummer. At first we said, “Don’t touch anything, Cozy might get mad.” So, he was checking it out, and then he sat down [at the kit] and I asked him if he wanted to play a little bit OCTOBER 2021 : 5 4 : DECIBEL

of “All We Are.” Everybody looked at me, because they didn’t think Cozy would like someone playing his drums. But Mark knew the song inside out. He started playing, and I told the engineer to record it, because that’s it, that’s the sound!

It had great energy; it was so happening. So, the engineer recorded Mark, and that’s what you hear on the record. It was Mark playing.

ACHABAL: I did the overdubs on that, as well.

Even though my name is not on [the album], I just know, Hey, that’s me, and millions of people heard it! Fuckin’-a cool. [Laughs] How was rock legend Cozy Powell (R.I.P.) enlisted to play session drums on a couple of songs?

Warlock’s manager, Alex Grob, had managed an incarnation of Emerson, Lake and

BALIN:

A spectacular celebration of the iconic masterpiece "Triumph and Agony"

by Doro Pesch of Warlock out 24th of September on CD, Blu-ray incl. awesome live concert and documentary, marbled vinyl and as amazing box sets, including Doro/Warlock figure, old school patches, buttons and cassette.

Also available in an exclusive marbled vinyl color coming with the biggest album cover in the world!

Rare Diamonds Productions

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Palmer called Emerson, Lake and Powell. So, I asked Alex if there was any way that if Cozy comes to [New York] we can use him on something.

PESCH: We had a very heavy song called “Touch of Evil,” and on “Touch of Evil” we wanted to do a powerful drum intro. We had tons of drummers [at the studio], but I thought, if we’re going to have a powerful intro, it needs to be the best.

DEALE: I remember Cozy Powell because he was supposed to be this big-time rock dude. We played together [at the session]; I was so excited.

He played this big Ludwig kit—big bass drum.

But what struck me the most was his sticks. He played with these really big fat sticks that were like baseball bats. He was hitting the drums and it was like a freakin’ explosion coming off there.

BOLAN: I’m pretty sure he played on “Touch of Evil” and “I Rule the Ruins.” I remember jamming with him. Cozy was only there for one or two days.

ACHABAL: Cozy Powell was one of my idols, and he played on “Für Immer” and so did I, so it was like, Cool, me and Cozy are on the same freakin’ track!

[Laughs] I even got a pair of his sticks because Joey invited me to come down [to the studio] and watch him.

BALIN: Cozy Powell [was] one of the most powerful double-bass drummers ever, and he had drumsticks that I swore that he stole from a caveman. They were like baseball bats. And we just went for it. He did exactly what I knew we needed if we were gonna do the song “Touch of Evil” at all. I know this sounds strange, but to that end, Doro did, I think, two or three takes on “Touch of Evil,” and it was late at night, and we were in Studio C in the Power Station, where there’s a window in the back. When Doro lets out this big scream, hand to God, may I be stricken dead if I’m telling a fib, this lightning bolt came right through the window. I thought, Wow, does that mean take the song off the record or put the song on the record? I didn’t know how to respond to it. The engineer, I think, is still traumatized by it. Nevertheless, it was Cozy Powell, Doro and a bolt of lightning. That’s all I can tell you about his contribution and Doro’s on that song.

PESCH: We almost dropped dead. I tell you, we were all scared shitless. We finished our session immediately, because it was a scary thing. Thank god nobody got hurt, but it was really strange.

What other memories do you have of recording at Power Station?

DEALE: Those sessions were kind of brutal.

Sometimes we had to do a couple of passes, and the tempos on some of those songs are extremely fast. I don’t play with a pick, so by the end of some of those songs, my fingers were killing me!

I was looking at Joey with the look of death. I

was working on some other records at the time, and that’s why I was kind of pissed at Joey for having to play those fast-ass songs and do multiple takes. It’s not cool if you’ve then gotta go and play on somebody else’s record and your hands are bleeding. [Laughs] BOLAN: Once Schuyler was done with his parts, he was no longer in the picture. He came in— he’s an amazing bass player—and banged out his parts in record time, because the songs were well-rehearsed, and then he went home. Niko played a few things, and then he and Michael went home to Germany. So, for months, [Balin, Doro and I] worked on that record every day. The biggest thing is, my energy clicked with Doro, which [Balin] was counting on. The minute I met Doro, it was [an] instant match-to-gasoline vibe.

Doro is very big on the vibing of energy. She can read you from a mile away. When we met, it was instant vibe, instant energy.

PESCH: I was always about vibe and feel.

Sometimes people don’t care [about that] as much [as I do], and that drives them crazy.

Because when I do, for example, a mix, I can go for 40 hours straight. All these little nuances really matter to me. The right vibe, the feeling— that’s most important to me. If people want to just go through the motions or do it superficially, oh man, that doesn’t work for me at all. It needs to be whatever that perfect feel is. But I think it is important, because otherwise it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not a technical person; everything comes from my gut, soul, heart, feeling, vibe. I think I have a lot of compassion, as well. When I look in someone’s eyes, I know exactly what’s going on. I feel things that maybe other people don’t feel.

BOLAN: I was in tune with Joey, I was in tune with Doro, and they were in tune with me, and the songs had already been mapped out.

Everything was on the pizza; we just had to cook the motherfucker. That’s exactly what we did.

PUTTIN’ ON THE HITS Two very different songs, one at the beginning of the album and one at the end, become instant classics and define Warlock and Doro’s career.

Warlock’s biggest anthem came from this album. Tell me about making “All We Are.”

What True as Steel may have been lacking that Triumph and Agony solved was, it didn’t have anything anthemic. “All We Are” is anthemic, and I knew it immediately. It came to me one night, and it’s the same intervals as a police siren—dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah—so it’s like a siren. It just was, “all we are/all we are, we all/ we are all/all we need,” and I thought, Oh man, that’s it. So, I showed it to Doro and Doro loved it and we expounded on it.

PESCH: We could feel already that it was a feelgood song, a nice anthem. I sang on it and I thought that it sounded like magic. It had such a BALIN:

OCTOBER 2021 : 5 6 : DECIBEL

positive energy; I always loved that. I love dark metal lyrics, but I love positivity and giving people, like, really good energy to empower them. I thought, that’s a perfect song. So, we recorded the basic tracks for it, and I told Joey that I was a big fan of gang vocals and said I would love to have a choir on it. I said that I definitely need a choir on it, and I told him some bands which I love, like Accept, who always had great gang vocals, like “Balls to the Wall” or “Princess of the Dawn.” I like European-style [gang vocals]: not so fancy or all in tune. It should be more like a football stadium where everybody sings and are having fun, with a lot of power and the right metal attitude.

BALIN: [Doro] said to me, “I want headbangers.

I don’t want singers, I want headbangers.” So, I went to the Cat Club, where I used to perform a lot in New York, and literally grabbed every headbanger I could find in the place, and brought 50 of them into the studio. I fed them all, paid them all and had them sing the chorus to “All We Are.” Doro was in heaven. Any other rock singer would have wanted to make sure that they had professional singers in the front and maybe some crowd in the back. Not Doro.

Doro wanted all the authentic headbangers that hang out in the clubs, chanting, “All we are!” and just going for it. So, I also have to credit her for that suggestion, because those little touches do put a whole other vibe on a tune, so that anthemic quality that the song had at its core, Doro further heightened it by not waiting for it to become an anthem; she brought all the headbangers in and she made it an anthem.

PESCH: I was sitting in the studio watching people singing, and I can tell you I knew right then we would have a hit. You could feel it. It still feels timeless and fresh.

Triumph and Agony also included the first song that Warlock did in German, “Für Immer.” Tell me how that came about.

BOLAN: I remember when we were working on “Für Immer” when [Balin and Doro] just started working on that song. Joey would be playing piano and Doro would be singing. I remember that song when it was first being written.

BALIN: I insisted that Doro do a song in German.

She had not done a song in German prior to that.

Doro wrote all the lyrics for it; it’s a love letter to her fans. And still to this day it’s one of the most powerful songs in Doro’s complete repertoire.

That would never have been done on the first three albums, and I don’t think it would have been done if I hadn’t insisted on it.

PESCH: When I delivered [Triumph and Agony] to the [record company], I was really proud of it, I must say. I was so happy. And then I got a phone call from a guy who was in charge, and he said, “Doro, it’s awesome, I love the record. We’re all totally behind it; we want to do whatever it takes to make it successful. But there’s one song

SHIRTS

SHIRTS

E V I S U L C X E

P A T C H E S

NSORSH IP *S M IL E FO R CE

F L A G S BEANIES

DBHOF202

WARLOCK triumph and agony

that has to go. That German song, ‘Für Immer,’ that can’t be on the record.” I said, “No way, that song has so much magic.” That was the first time I really had to fight for a song big time. It was very unusual that [a metal band] would sing in German; it was unheard of. So, we made a compromise that it would be the last song on the second side of the vinyl.

It must have been satisfying to have this album do so well after so much hard work went into it.

BOLAN: The album [went] to #80 on Billboard with a bullet. The momentum was great, and seeing the reception we were getting from the fans and the bigger tours [that] were coming along definitely bolstered the feeling. Obviously, there’s nothing better than seeing your hard work come to fruition. It was a high-energy time.

PESCH: I’m so proud of it. We really worked on every song. I really wanted to make a record which would be totally 100 percent great, or which would make me happy, with no regrets, like on True as Steel. That’s why it took so long and it took so much out of everybody, I must say.

Everybody was probably so exhausted. But when you’re working on something and you’re passionate about something, you demand so much from everybody. There’s no sleep for the engineers— forget it. [Laughs] It took everything out of everybody, and I think that’s why it’s still great and I love it so much. There’s not one note I would change, or one sound. It’s all good.

BALIN: In 1992, I was in Berlin with the president of German/Austria/Switzerland PolyGram at a Metallica show, and as I was making my way through the crowd of headbangers, there was this group of about 50 of them that started singing “All We Are” a cappella. The president of PolyGram looks back at me and asks, “What do you think about that?” I said, “That’s probably the greatest compliment I’ll ever get in my life.” I knew that [Triumph and Agony] was not just gonna be 1987 or 1988; this record had serious wings. It had gotten under the kilt, if you will, of the heavy metal crowd.

DEALE: I didn’t have [a copy of the] record, so I went out and bought it on Amazon [recently], just to refresh my memory. I had my mouth open the whole time I was listening to it—totally blown away! I was like, What the hell is this, you know? It was mind-blowing! I was so happy. It was like, Holy shit, what the hell was I doing back then? [Laughs] The feeling I got from hearing that album again for the first time in years, man, it was just awesome. There’s nothing better than that. That’s an old record. It hit me, like, this is some badass shit.

BOLAN: This album was unlike any other Warlock album, mostly because it’s definitely [leaning] more toward Doro being the solo feature of it. Of

“I was sitting in the studio, watching people singing [‘All We Are’], and I can tell you I knew right then we would have a hit. You could feel it.

It still feels timeless and fresh.”

D O RO PE SCH course, with it still being Warlock. Changing the guitar player in the band is like changing the engine in your car; it’s going to run completely different. My guitar playing is different from any of the guitar playing on the other albums before or after. The album after [Triumph and Agony], Force Majeure, wasn’t the same because I wasn’t involved. Even though you had Doro and Joey, the album didn’t sound like Triumph and Agony. Doro has an outstanding catalog, no doubt, but Triumph and Agony is the absolute epicenter.

What is this record’s legacy in the metal world?

PESCH: It is absolutely true that it is my favorite album—it is. Everything else was leading up to making this album—all the experiences, all the hardships, as well. It was all leading up to making Triumph and Agony. And many, many things still inspire me from the making of this record. I’ve played between 3,500 and 4,000 concerts, and I haven’t played one concert without playing both “All We Are” and OCTOBER 2021 : 58 : DECIBEL

“Für Immer.” I never get tired of playing them because I know how they make people react and how they make them feel.

BALIN: Everybody was really intent on making not a hard rock or heavy metal record, but trying to make a great record that actually said something and had some lyrics that kids could hang onto. And I think that’s where we succeeded.

ACHABAL: This album put [Doro] up on goddess status, especially in Europe.

BOLAN: This album still has such an insane following. This album was really the album that was the pinnacle of it all. It meant so much to so many people. It’s a big honor [to have played on it]; it’s something I wear with a lot of pride.

That was a great moment in my life. We didn’t know what we were making. You don’t realize you’re creating something that will affect people… like, think of your most favorite record you had as a kid, you know? This record became that to people, which I’m absolutely humbled by and proud of.

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With Torn Arteries, English death metal masters

saw off their first album in eight years.

Too bad Jeff Walker doesn’t really wanna talk about it.

STORY BY

PHOTOS BY

J. BENNETT

ESTER SEGARRA

DECIBEL // OCTOBER 2021 //

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Can’t you just talk to Bill and Dan?

Decibel is less than five minutes into our transatlantic call with Jeff

Walker when he tells us—again—that he doesn’t really want to do this interview. “I’m only being half sarcastic when I say I’d be quite happy to do no fucking photographs and no interviews for this album,” he says. “I know we’re not Pink Floyd, and I know that’s kind of kicking ourselves in our own backsides, but part of me wonders what good these things are.” ¶ So, he tries—again—to pawn the whole thing off on his bandmates: trusty guitarist Bill Steer and youngblood drummer Dan Wilding. “Maybe they should talk for a change,” he says. “I’m not trying to be difficult, mate. It’s just that I’m always the world’s person for everything, and I’m boring myself.” ¶ We explain that we’re speaking with Steer and Wilding regardless. But we can’t exactly do a Carcass cover story without Jeff Walker. He’s the face, voice and sarcastic soul of the band. “You can,” he fires back. “I guarantee no one is going to write to Albert complaining.”

And round and round we go. When we last spoke with Walker—for the Q&A feature in issue 200—the Carcass frontman was a bit less cranky.

Though he was openly disappointed that we’d pulled him away from an evening of ancient M*A*S*H reruns, he was days away from his first vax jab and seemed in generally good spirits.

Unlike today.

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How was the vax for you? Any side effects?

We talked about this last time. I mean, what have I got to say? I spoke to you two weeks ago.

It was two months ago. It only seems like two weeks because you’re old.

Yeah. Well, I’m living through dog years, you know?

Despite all the obvious signs that we should pack it in, we press on. We’re determined to get to the bottom of our man’s reluctance. Sure, he’s probably done dozens of Decibel interviews over the years—many of them with yours truly— which, admittedly, must get old. And yeah, you can probably multiply that by hundreds on a worldwide press scale. So, it’s exhausting. Fair enough. But does that really mean it’s all Bill and Dan’s problem now?

“What I found is, whatever I say in interviews or promo pieces, people literally run with it,” he says. “For example, if I was to say, ‘This song really sucks,’ I promise you I will read it back if I bother to look on YouTube or wherever: ‘Jeff Walker said this one sucks, and it does suck.’ So, what’s the point?”

The point is this: Carcass have a new album out. It’s called Torn Arteries. And it does not suck.

//PANDEMIC PALPITATIONS

During the height of the pandemic, Bill Steer walked the empty streets of London. “At first, I thought I’d just be pounding the books and getting all this great reading done,” he says with a laugh. “But initially, that didn’t happen at all.

So, I walked five to 10 miles a day just to stop the mental chatter. It was enjoyable for the first few weeks because the whole experience was so different. The atmosphere on the streets of Soho

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was just ghostly—everything’s closed up and there’s not a soul around. I’d never seen it like that before. But then you do hit some of those darker periods when you start, you know, getting a bit neurotic.”

Meanwhile, drummer Dan Wilding was—and is—at home on dad duty. “I’ve got two young children and my wife’s got a pretty serious straight job as a lecturer at a university,” he explains. “She was flat out while they were trying to sort out moving all the teaching online, and of course the kids weren’t allowed into childcare, so for the first seven or eight months I was [a] stay-at-home dad. Initially, I was freaked out because I was used to being on tour all the time, but then I got into a routine and really, really loved it. My wife still has to work quite long hours, so my days are still filled with childcare. But I think it’s been quite good for my mental health because I don’t have time to dwell on not touring.”

That time may or may not be up. Carcass have a European tour with Behemoth, Arch Enemy and Unto Others scheduled to kick off in late September, yet no one in the band is confident that it’ll actually happen. “I can’t visualize it because each country has its own idiosyncrasies in terms of dealing with the situation,” Steer points out. “Everywhere has its own set of regulations and is at a different stage in the vaccination process. Going between several countries as part of a tour, I just can’t see how that would work. If it does come off, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But it doesn’t feel realistic now.”

“I think anyone’s guess is as good as ours,” Wilding offers. “But because we’re a British band, there’s not just COVID to worry about.

We’ve got Brexit as well, and no one really knows what that means for touring bands at the moment. There’s still no information on whether we need visas or whether we can take our gear

into certain countries without having to pay tax on it. So, COVID is only one step on the ladder.

I’m just taking it day by day and playing drums religiously so I don’t embarrass myself at the first show. But I hope the tour will happen.”

It’s worth mentioning that the tour is scheduled to begin in the U.K., where COVID restrictions are still in place as of this writing—though they’re supposed to be lifted by the time this issue goes to print. According to medical experts cited by the BBC, the U.K. is expected to suffer a “significant” third wave, possibly culminating in up to 1,000 hospitalizations per day before the summer is out. “The problem is that the U.K. is its own worst enemy because this country is doing tons of testing and gene sequencing and they keep finding new strains,” Walker observes.

“No other countries are really bothering to do that. So, we’re going to be in the priory here— just a shitty little island on our own, not being able to bloody go anywhere.”

//ALL IN THE FAMILY

Either way, Torn Arteries is slated for a September 17 release. It’s been a long time coming. The album was originally supposed to drop in the spring of 2020. In fact, lead single “Under the Scalpel Blade” came out as a Decibel Flexi Series release in December of 2019. But band and label decided to push the record back so Carcass could support it properly. To tide fans over, they released the excellent four-song Despicable EP— also featuring “Under the Scalpel Blade”—in October 2020. We’ll never know if delaying the album was the right decision or not, so it probably isn’t worth haggling over. But Walker does have a hot take.

“Maybe it would have been healthier to have got the album out, just so it didn’t feel so old from my point of view,” he says. “But only with hindsight do we know what the situation is now.

I still feel like they are Carcass, if you know what I mean.

When I talk to other people, I’ll refer to Jeff [Walker] and Bill [Steer] as being a separate thing and

I’m kind of just tagging along.

DAN W I L D I N G

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I mean, this time last year, we didn’t think it was going to be another year. Because we’ve … sat on it so long, it’s definitely a bit rusty having to discuss something from nearly two years ago. I’m 52, so it’s hard to know what happened yesterday.”

On the other hand, he’s quick to give credit to Steer and Wilding for their work. “They’ve been with these songs from the ground up, and they worked them quite a bit before I turned up,” Walker points out. “It was just my job to make sense of them in the end. They do the fine polishing, and very strong grip sandpaper was needed to get these songs into order. I’m kind of the guy that shapes them and adds the icing of the lyrics, if you like.”

The last time Carcass recorded an album, Wilding was very much the new guy. Enlisted to replace drummer Daniel Erlandsson, who returned to his duties in Arch Enemy with classic-era Carcass guitarist Michael Amott in 2012—Wilding joined just in time to contribute to Surgical Steel. “Bill and I started writing Surgical about two or three months after they asked me to be in the band,” he recalls. “We hadn’t even played any shows together. We just went straight into the rehearsal room and he started showing me riffs. And he’d be asking me, ‘What kind of things do you think would work with this?’

I thought, ‘He’s asking me my opinion about a Carcass song. This is crazy.’”

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For Steer, playing with Wilding felt natural from the beginning. “Dan is the kind of person that puts you at ease,” he says. “I’ve never seen him not get along with another human being.

He’s remarkably well-adjusted as a human being and, on top of that, he’s extremely musical. He just knows what to play. And one thing people maybe don’t know about Dan is that he’s also an incredible guitar player. When that guy plays rhythm, it’s scary. He’s one of the best I’ve seen.”

Wilding says the elder Carcass statesmen have involved him in every decision since day one and treat him as an equal member—despite the fact that the band’s first album is older than he is. “They’ve brought me in with open arms, which is incredible,” he enthuses. “But mentally, I still feel like they are Carcass, if you know what I mean. When I talk to other people, I’ll refer to Jeff and Bill as being a separate thing and I’m kind of just tagging along. Of course, there’s Ken as well.”

That’d be Ken Owen, original Carcass drummer and leading light, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in 1999 that put him in a coma for nearly a year and left him unable to play drums at full Carcass velocity. To their everlasting credit, Walker and Steer have kept Owen involved ever since the band’s 2007 reformation—at times bringing him on tour, including him in band photos, and having him contribute backing

vocals to Surgical Steel. In fact, Torn Arteries is named after a one-man noise tape Owen recorded in his bedroom back in the ’80s.

“Ken is such a huge part of the band—not just musically, but his spirit is such a huge part of the band’s style,” Wilding notes. “Bill and Jeff will always throw drum ideas at me that are things I’d never think of, but when I try them, I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah—that sounds like something Ken would have done.’ So, his aura is such a big part of Carcass. He was a childhood friend of Jeff’s and—not a lot of people know this—Jeff is one of the most loyal people I’ve ever met in my life.”

“It’s natural for us just because we’re all still good friends,” Steer says of Owen’s ongoing involvement. “I’m in touch with Ken several times a week. He came up with the Torn Arteries angle—and Despicable, actually. Both of those are titles of bedroom tapes he made when he was a teenager. They were remarkable because they were so crudely recorded. He’d do the guitar parts with this cheap Spanish guitar. I can’t remember if he used books or boxes for drums, but because the recording was so far in the red, everything sounded massive. And he was just screaming over the top of it. It was fantastic.

“Ken has been very encouraging all the way through,” he adds. “And he’s made no secret of his admiration for Dan’s drumming, which has been lovely to witness.”

//TEMPTING (MERCYFUL) FATE

As with Surgical Steel, Steer played all the guitars on Torn Arteries. “When we did Surgical, we were a three-piece, but I was still writing for two guitars,” he explains. “If we had decided to bring somebody into it to play the other parts, it would have just prolonged everything. And we knew it was going to be a lengthy enough process without having a fourth person.”

The same is more or less true for Torn Arteries.

This time, Carcass did have second guitarist Tom Draper playing live with them, but he was still new to the band. “Tom totally nails everything live, but the studio is such an extreme microscope on people’s style and feel that I think you’d be asking a lot of somebody who’d only just joined the band to suddenly dive in there and contribute,” Steer says. “And in some ways, I feel that having just three of us in the studio really helps in terms of writing and recording. I can’t even picture how long this record would have taken if we did it with a fourth member in the mix.”

Carcass recorded most of Torn Arteries at Studio Gröndahl in Stockholm with engineer David Castillo—minus the rhythm guitars, which Steer recorded in Leeds. “We didn’t go in and do it in one chunk,” Walker explains. “We were doing it in downtime that David Castillo had. When he wasn’t busy on other projects, he would slip us in. It took probably well over a year from start to finish, so it was kind of laid-back. There was no real degree of urgency.”

It might be more accurate to say there was no urgency whatsoever. “To be honest, I think if you’d have given us two years in the studio, we would have used that time,” Walker ventures.

“The older you get and the more albums you’ve made, the process just seems to take longer and longer. I think it’s because you’ve got so many bloody options now. In the old days of analog tape, you just had to get on with it. But now you can keep every bloody take, and someone has to sift through it all and make a decision. And decisions aren’t as forthcoming as they used to be.”

Which is another way of saying that Torn Arteries was self-produced. But the laid-back pace meant less pressure, even though it’s the band’s first album in eight years. Then again, it was 17 years between Swansong and Surgical Steel, which probably makes eight years seem like eight

Because we’ve … sat on [Torn Arteries] so long, it’s definitely a bit rusty having to discuss something from nearly two years ago.

I’m 52, so it’s hard to know what happened yesterday.

J E F F WAL K E R

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months. Especially if you’re Jeff Walker. “There was no pressure,” he confirms. “It did get a bit unnerving when you’re a few months into it and you haven’t done any vocals yet, and you can see that the budget’s running out. As usual, that’s kind of irritating.”

Steer has a slightly different take. “You could say this is a tougher situation now because people expected so little of us when Surgical was coming out,” he says. “We also had the element of surprise.

But in terms of how we approached this album, it didn’t really affect us because we were just in our own bubble. It took a bit longer than the previous one simply because we had higher expectations. I would say the overall vibe of Surgical is so frantic, it didn’t require the same kind of production values that this record required. We had to look at these tunes a bit more carefully because some of them aren’t just all-out blasters.”

Case in point: “Flesh Ripping Sonic Torment Limited.” The Torn Arteries centerpiece features a Spanish guitar intro; many, many riffs; a downright soulful bridge; and a 10-and-a-half minute running time. All told, it’s easily the longest and probably the most nuanced Carcass song ever recorded. “I think Bill was on a Mercyful Fate trip,” Walker says. “It’s as simple as that. For a laugh, we were seeing how long we could make a song and if we could put more riffs into it than ‘Satan’s Fall.’ I don’t think we succeeded, to be honest. I think ‘Satan’s Fall’ has still got more riffs, but that’s definitely the angle we’re coming from.”

“It felt to me that maybe nobody had tackled a song of the nature of ‘Satan’s Fall,’” Steer confirms. “At some point, I had a tune that went off in a lot of directions. There [were] loads of riffs and we just kept building the tune—that’s why we got something over 10 minutes. But before anyone says anything, I’m not comparing it to ‘Satan’s Fall’ because that’s unbeatable. But it is, as you say, uncharacteristic of us.”

We’re pleased to report that it’s uncharacteristic in a good way. In fact, it’s one of our favorite tracks on Torn Arteries—and they’re all pretty fucking good. But Steer knows what every metal veteran knows: In the eyes of the fickle faithful, Different often equals Bad. “I’m fully prepared for some people to dislike this album,” he says.

“That’s inevitable because stylistically it’s a couple of steps on from the previous one. But we just had to do what we felt was right. Any band really ought to do that, obviously.”

//DINNER IS NOT SERVED

Whereas Surgical Steel’s majestic instrumental opener “1985” was actually written in 1985 and riffs on second track “Thrasher’s Abattoir” date back to the mid-’90s Swansong era, everything on Torn Arteries is a fresh kill. As far as Walker knows. “There’s nothing that got dusted off in my presence, but there’s some style of riffing that Bill showed us in the rehearsal room that reminded me of when I first met him,” he offers.

“There’s definitely riffs on it that sound like they could have been on Reek [of Putrefaction].”

In fact, it might not be a stretch to say that Torn Arteries somehow captures all previous eras of Carcass, from the Reek goregrind days (though definitely less of that) and melodic death metal of Heartwork to the vastly underappreciated and oft-derided death ‘n’ roll glory of Swansong. “None of it is amazingly original or experimental,” Walker says. “But it’s definitely a case of, ‘We haven’t had a song like this before. Let’s try it.’”

Still, one listen to Torn Arteries makes it clear that the band wasn’t just fucking around.

“Maybe that’ll just be with rhythms or something, but every song has definitely got a purpose,” Walker says. “It’s not as if we’re doing a song just for the sake of it. Each one had a working title, and that working title would betray the roots of the song or what we were trying to do.”

You could say this is a tougher situation now because

people expected so little of us when Surgical [Steel] was coming out.

B I L L ST E E R

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Cut to “Kelly’s Meat Emporium,” the single released back in June. It’s the name of a real butcher’s shop in Liverpool. Or at least it was until a few years ago, when it closed down. “It was a place I’d pass by occasionally,” says Walker, who, as a longtime vegetarian, had no cause to actually set foot in the place. “The title is just my little Beatles-esque nod to the place I live. People seem to think every Carcass song is three medical words put together, so I wanted to do something a bit different. I was being playful—joyless, but playful.”

Then there’s “Dance of Ixtab (Psychopomp and Circumstance March No. 1).” A quick web search informs us that Ixtab is the Mayan goddess of suicide by hanging. Which seems awfully specific for a goddess, but maybe less so for a Carcass song.

“I honestly can’t recall how I stumbled across that,” Walker says. “But the song is not glorifying suicide or anything like that. I mean, Ixtab is a muse to encourage suicide. Maybe in this sense, she’s meant to help certain people kill themselves because they could probably do with killing themselves. So, let’s say it’s assisted suicide.”

Much like “The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue,” the leadoff track from last year’s Despicable EP, Torn Arteries ripper “The Devil Rides Out” takes its title from a cult horror flick— in this case, the 1968 Christopher Lee vehicle based on a Dennis Wheatley novel of the

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same name. In both cases, the song has nothing to do with the film. “It’s just a title I’ve always really loved,” Walker says. “The song is meant to be anti-satanic. Metal always has anti-religious songs, but satanism is just as fucking stupid as any other -ism.”

If you want any more information about the album’s lyrics, you’re on your own. Walker is done explaining. “I’ve deliberately not put the lyrics in any legible form on the sleeve,” he says.

“I mean, the lyrics are there, but they’re completely mashed up. I’m tired of spoon-feeding people. If they’re that bloody interested, they can work it out for themselves.”

We know the beginning of a good rant when we hear one, and far be it from us to keep it all to ourselves. “People think you’ve got bloody geniuses playing in bands because they’ve read a book or seen a film and distilled it into a song,” he continues. “That’s not something I do, and it’s not something I’ve ever done.

I would rather people just enjoy this album on whatever level they want to. And if they want to dig a bit deeper, they can. I mean, the lyrics are all there—and I think my vocals are pretty legible for the most part. It might take a few listens for people to get their head ’round them. I know there are some people that really do get into the lyrics, which is fantastic—but there’s probably 90 percent of people who don’t give a shit.”

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Bottom line? “At the end of the day, it’s just Carcass,” he says. “There’s no real surprises there.

It’s not a concept album, but you know what Carcass deals with. For want of a better word, we’re a death metal band. All the subjects are morbid, with the usual lashings of black humor in there. But I’d rather people worked a bit for the lyrics, you know? Especially in the 21st century, where everything is put on a plate for people.”

Perhaps this explains why the Torn Arteries vinyl box set comes with a porcelain dinner plate and stainless-steel utensils. “Rather than someone just being a consumer in that way, maybe people can try and get a bit more enjoyment out of it,” Walker ventures. “A lot of them aren’t going to bother, but there’s some people that take Carcass extremely seriously. So, maybe this is aimed at them. Maybe they’ll really enjoy the fact that they’ve got to sit there and wade through it and try and work out what the hell’s going on.”

Of course, most death metal bands aren’t funny. At least not intentionally. But the black humor that Walker refers to—the dinnerplate, the fact that there’s a song on Torn Arteries called “Eleanor Rigor Mortis,” Walker’s general demeanor—is a crucial element of Carcass. “Let’s face it—we’re not trying to be the fastest, most brutal band,” he says. “I mean, we were trying to do it on the first album, but not 30 years down the line on our seventh. We’re not a comedy band—this isn’t a Peter Sellers record—but we

don’t take ourselves too seriously, and I think that comes across.”

In fact, Walker thinks if ultra-brutal and dead-serious death metal is your bag, the chances are excellent that you’re not a Carcass fan. “If they like those bands, they’re not going to like us,” he offers. “We’re not the most popular band in the genre, anyway. We’re pretty much a niche thing. We’re definitely a specialty in death metal.”

Steer makes a similar point from a different perspective. Having spent years playing in rock ‘n’ roll bands like Firebird and Gentlemans Pistols after Carcass went-tits up in ’96, he sees the boundaries erected between overlapping genres as largely pointless. “Those kinds of artificial distinctions we make in everyday parlance don’t represent the reality of music-making,” he says. “There’s six degrees of separation in the music world. You get some amazing surprises that make you realize everything’s connected.

“At some point, I realized that there are people out there who feel that genres like death metal exist in isolation,” he continues. “But for me, it’s a relative of heavy metal and a relative of rock ‘n’ roll—and so forth and so on. I know some people are very dogmatic about how pure death metal needs to be, and those are probably the same people that are going to hate this record. But for any true admirer of Carcass over the years, this album will make perfect sense.”

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INSIDE ≥

76 CARCASS Bursting out 78 GROZA Emerging from the fog

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

80 NOCTURNAL WANDERER Finger-lickin' good 82 QUICKSAND Notice your image is different 84 THIEF Reinventing the steal

The Island of Dr. Damnation

OCTOBER

FULL OF HELL continue to splice extreme music genes to thrilling—and sometimes terrifying—effect

15

Bands ripping off Dissection

12

Bands ripping off Watain ripping off Dissection

5

Bands ripping off Mgła ripping off Watain ripping off Dissection

0

Batushkas

R

emember the underappreciated, campy 1994 sci-fi horror flick Brainscan? A young Edward Furlong, followFULL OF HELL ing up roles in the Terminator and Pet Sematary sequels, Garden of is an outsider nerd who gets drawn into the titular first-perBurning Apparitions son psychopath video game, only to discover both the game’s RELAPSE monstrous host (the Trixter) and his own depraved digital murders are manifesting in the real world. (Quaint, sure, considering the real tech threat proved to be not pixelated demons, but translucent white social media dudes clubbing our critical thinking skills like baby seals with emoji hammers.) Anyway, at one point, the now-corporeal Trixter theatrically pledges to never rat out Furlong: “They could pump a million volts in me,” he says, graphically acting out each bit of torture. “They could bust my fingers one by one by one. They could dig out my eyes. But… no country western music, please. Every man has his limits.”

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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It’s a weirdly appropriate touchstone for Garden of Burning Apparitions—either the fifth or eight full-length from Full of Hell, depending on how you count collaborative albums with Merzbow (decent) and the Body (completely fucking brilliant). And not simply because there are sinister electronic elements at play and a complete lack of country western twang. No, the real “trick” this 12-track extreme music subgenre supercollider pulls off is how every single brand of sonic violence the Ocean City, MD quartet chooses to dabble in—grind, death, industrial, progressive metal, math rock, straight powerviolence, blast-radius-fallout noise, tight-as-fuck groove metal—is rendered in its most visceral, lavishly bellicose, essential form.

To strain the allusion a bit further, the spirit of these songs is primal, but it is clear the underlying intent/scaffolding is built from a solid intellectual and philosophical foundation. This, I believe, is precisely why Full of Hell connect so deeply with so many people while never really returning to quite the same compositional well twice: The journey of Full of Hell feels like beating a path towards a vision, an idea, an ideal— not a collection of amygdala larks.

Despite 2019’s Weeping Choir being sold as the really-tied-the-discography-together release, Garden of Burning Apparitions feels like the crystalizing moment for Full of Hell. And while obvious touchstones arise—If only Morbid Angel had been as good at pouring Skinny Puppy-esque industrial nightmare fuel into its own Covenant gas tank! Wow, did “All Bells Ringing” really just call to mind Dinosaur Jr., Infest, Steel Pole Bath Tub and Napalm Death in less than a minute?!—the arc feels pretty goddamn singular. Following this beast up probably really will be hell.

The Trixter’s ad copy for Brainscan promised: “Satisfy your sickest fantasies.” Garden of Burning Apparitions won’t murder anyone, but as killer metal experiences go, it’s a dream.

—SHAWN MACOMBER

ABORTED

7

Maniacult

CENTURY MEDIA

Can’t stop, won’t stop

Does the world need more Aborted? It’s a valid question. Maniacult is the band’s newest full-length, their 11th in a career that goes all the way back to 1995. And even if production values and members continue to change, they have settled into a fairly predictable deathgrind approach.

But is that bad?

The Aborted school of death metal is more or less crushing breakdowns, ludicrously fast blasting and complex solos that are often 74 : O C T O B E R 2 0 2 1 : D E C I B E L

beautiful or sad. It’s a reliable approach, elevated by vocalist Sven de Caluwé. The only original member, with no close second, his collection of growls and shrieks are used strategically, sounding like a few different people are dogpiling the mic. And this being the first album composed as a quartet has not significantly changed anything. Which also highlights the biggest issue.

If the band dabbles in anything slightly different, such as the brief industrial section of “Portal to Vacuity,” the idea is quickly gone and may as well have not even been there. The melodic interludes and other details seem to show a band that wants to evolve beyond their formula, but remains in their safe zone, sticking with what works.

On the flip side, it still works. While Maniacult may sound like a band that’s grown comfortable, it remains enjoyable to listen to.

Sometimes it’s hard to know which song is which, but whatever’s playing is still usually pretty good. So, maybe the world doesn’t need more Aborted, but it’s okay if you still want some for yourself. —SHANE MEHLING

BEYOND GRACE

5

Our Kingdom Undone PROSTHETIC

It’s the end of the world as we know it

The lyrics throughout much of Our Kingdom Undone fall somewhere between Margaret Atwood dystopia, Craig Unger chronicling how Russia has used Trump to fuck America, and a collab between Barack Obama’s speechwriters and Barney Greenway. And I’m all about it! Chronicling the nefariousness of international relations, the insidiousness of organized religion and how the remaining sanity on this dumb planet is being chipped away may not be what anyone zipping around in a Ford F-150 wants to hear in their death metal, but at this point it’s either horror tales of entrails being ripped from a virgin’s nether regions or horror tales of the entrails of civility being ripped from the nether regions of decency and democracy.

Unfortunately, there’s not as much to back about this Nottingham band’s music as there is about Andrew Walmsley’s lyrics. Hailing from a shaky midpoint along both the brutal and progressive continuum, Beyond Grace channel Decapitated, Hate Eternal and Cattle Decapitation, but sometimes seem a step off the pace, whether it’s sustained chord space and tempo dynamics falling flat in “Persona Non Grata,” the unnecessarily lengthy and serpentine title track, and/or far too many leads and melody/ harmony layers sounding out of tune or off-key.

That’s not to say the band’s sophomore album is a complete wash; the dissonant, Human Remains-like slashing in “Dark Forest Doctrine,” the metallic hardcore shuffle of “Fearmonger” and the rock-solid groove propelling “Barmecide Feast” are encouraging signs, as is the unifying interplay between guitars and keys in “The Price of Peace.” But if we’re going to suffer through more commentary on the floating turd ball we call home, the tunes need to rage and rip appropriately. Otherwise, you might as well watch the news or doomscroll through the r/politics Subreddit.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

BLACK MASS

8

Feast at the Forbidden Tree REDEFINING DARKNESS

Eatin’ Eden alive

Boston speedfreaks Black Mass once wrote a song called “East Coast Thrash” that articulated many of life’s simple pleasures: loud and fast music, and a 40 to pass around a circle pit of friends. Now releasing their third full-length—and Redefining Darkness debut— Black Mass have sharpened their punky thrash and graveyard rock on Feast at the Forbidden Tree.

Vocalist/guitarist Brendan O’Hare scraped most of the Beantown hardcore out of his trachea between their Ancient Scriptures debut and 2019’s Warlust LP. Now his improved performance nails the Araya upper-register screams that punctuate his gritty snarls. Like the golden age of South American thrash, the reverbdrenched vocals sound like howls to the war gods. The guitars are equally frenzied, bringing a wild pulse to the album like it was recorded during a full moon.

While Warlust suffered from an overlong intro, Black Mass rectifies that here by slicing the opening synths in half with distortion. I hope you take a deep breath, because the rest of the album is a breathless sprint through the flames. There’s the Bible-stomping groove of “A.S.H.E.S.” The searing solo in “A Path Beyond” left my speakers in cinders. The blackened blasts of “Nothing Is Sacred” relent to the mid-paced Mercyful menace of “They Speak in Tongues.” Maybe the bluesy detour of “Betrayal” and the slow-motion crawl concluding “Blood Ritual” don’t add much more than unexpected textures. But even those questionable choices are examples of a band searching for ways to tattoo the thrash genre with their logo. This is a band hitting their creative stride.

By the time Feast at the Forbidden Tree fades to black, Black Mass leave Eden smoldering.

—SEAN FRASIER

WWW.BYNORSESTORE.NET

DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 75

CARCASS

9

Torn Arteries NUCLEAR BLAST

Spurting genius

At its essence, Torn Arteries is wrought from the same high-grade ore as Surgical Steel. This is, of course, a very good thing. That 2013 comeback was, as I’ve written previously, a Back in Black/Heaven and Hell-level heavy metal triumph; a record that didn’t pander or cash in, but rather found a way to fuse the best elements of virtually every era of the extremely varied Carcass back catalog and simultaneously raise the resulting amalgam to another, higher level of deftly rendered melodic brutality. Though the band’s seventh full-length does not reinvent that particular wheel, it keeps it spinning at the same glorious RPM—which, to be blunt, is more than enough for Carcass to pull an Evel Knievel-style jump over both their few peers and legions of imitators.

Yet, on a less tangible level, Torn Arteries does feel different. While a cursory survey of the long arc of Jeff Walker and Bill Steer’s careers certifies that neither are careerist— see, for example, Welcome to Carcass Cuntry or Firebird—there was a kick-down-the-door, replant-the-flag vibe to Surgical Steel. Almost martial, really. The riff-pummel-shred on Torn Arteries, conversely—though clearly the work of the same idiosyncratic master metal craftsmen and exuding the same serrated dark brilliance—flows in a freer, borderline playful way. If a song christened “Eleanor Rigor Mortis” doesn’t clue you in that Carcass are enjoying themselves, the wild transitions on the title track likely will!

Could Torn Arteries be the revivified consequence of contentment? Perhaps! Regardless, long may joy, melodic death and Carcass reign.

—SHAWN MACOMBER

CRIMINAL

6

Sacrificio

M E TA L B L A D E

Criminally underrated?

Anton Reisenegger is a metal lifer. Be it his work in Pentagram (Chile), Lock Up or Criminal, the Chilean vocalist/guitarist lives for neckwrecking riffs and the suffocating heat (and stench) that rises off a tightly packed crowd of battle jacket-clad pit-starters. As he has proven for decades, the dude is more than capable of crafting deathly thrash tunes stacked to the tits with ample amounts of bug-eyed intensity. For some reason, though, the metal journeyman remains an underrated character in our vast and ear-splittingly loud world.

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Under the guise of Criminal, perhaps playing their South American-tinged thrash in a very consistent—yet safe—manner is the reason why this 30-year-old band has remained unheralded, despite the status afforded as part of the Metal Blade stable since 2004’s No Gods No Masters. 2005’s Sicario was a notable high point for Reisenegger, a record that brought prime Slayer and Sepultura to mind through the particularly sharp songwriting on display. But if you haven’t paid much attention to the three releases that followed it, you haven’t missed a masterpiece.

Sacrificio, album number nine and their first since 2016, follows suit. It has the patented Criminal energetic bite, simplistic hornssummoning vocal bellows (“Dark Horse”) and head-down riff-battery that we’ve come to expect. And... that’s it, really. Like Max Cavalera’s more thrash-heavy output since his ’90s nü-metal turn, Reisenegger and company hit the right notes with the right spirit, but fail to really distinguish themselves from their peers or eclipse the masters. —DEAN BROWN

DIMENTIANON

8

Dreaming Yuggoth PA R A G O N

Where the sun shines no brighter than a star

It’s been 11 years since Dimentianon released their last full-length, Collapse the Void, but their latest sounds like it could predate even their debut, 2003’s Seven Suicides.

After sitting it out for over a decade, guitarist/ bassist Joe Fogarazzo, who also owns Paragon Records, has returned to the fold, bringing with him keyboardist/world-builder Don Zaros, also of Evoken. But Dreaming Yuggoth still sounds older than what the group was doing on Fogarazzo’s last album. For all its over-the-mix vocals, roomy drums and unvarnished-but-heavy guitar tones, Dreaming Yuggoth sounds like Dimentianon seriously forgot which century they’re in.

They also tend to forget which subgenre they occupy, as well, as if they really do come from that era before stringent boundaries and expectations. Their penchant for mixing black, death, doom and meaningful synth augmentations represents the most anachronistic aspect of their sound. Rarely does the band stick to the same approach from track to track, and the progression from high-speed death-thrash to leaden and lumbering doom/ death across this 56-minute album smacks of a staggering capability in handling some longpent-up creative urges.

Opening with a Morbid Angelcorspe-style scorcher—one of the many instances in which drummer Matt Hass puts his versatility and

skills on full display—you won’t believe it’s the same band that, four tracks later, conjures the atmospheric whisper ballad “Smoke Rising,” let alone the closing four tracks.

This and the ensuing title interlude are the gateways into the latter (and utterly doomed) half of Dreaming Yuggoth. For all its variety and daring, this one never feels long, or even too dreamy. But it definitely feels beyond time.

—DUTCH PEARCE

ERDVE

6

Savigaila SEASON OF MIST

These guys are Lit(huanian)

At surface level, Erdve will sound unquestionably familiar to most Decibel readers, largely drawing on the type of brawny, deliberately inscrutable chaos native to Converge and Mouthbreather, while also federated with the heady, anti-melodic abstractions associated with Dodecahedron and Deathspell. (You know, where a lick’s more likely to sound like a busy signal or downed power line than an actual riff.) But beyond those more obvious influences lies a suite of even more interesting ones, such as the abrasive six-string soundscapes of Caspar Brötzmann and a robotic frigidity evoking early Projekt Records lodgers Attrition, Android Lust and especially Lycia.

Erdve are unafraid to lead the listener off onto a wild digression, only to rudely abandon them there without explanation (or perhaps they’re just not fully in command of their craft).

“Smala” works on every level, with a melody smacking of late-’90s Katatonia played on halfstrung guitars. The incessant susurration of the blustery cymbal work and the unexpected melodicism express both thrilling agency and existential emergency. Likewise, “Savigaila”’s workaday metalcore intro unfolds two minutes into an effecting journey, complemented by a quiet piano melody on the following track (“Skilimas”) that soothes like cool spring water meeting sunburned lips.

But the anatomy of the record is too oblique for its own good. Erdve shouldn’t have to rely on instrumental recesses and improbable juxtaposition for the meat of this exercise to have meaning. Their tendency to mummify heavier passages in sonic obfuscation is a parlor trick that quickly becomes frustrating, and their habit of leaving so many of these tracks fundamentally unfinished feels irresponsible to the compositions themselves—much less the listener. For now, approach with caution, but also patience. Erdve are undeniably a band to watch. —FORREST PITTS

DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 77

GROZA

7

The Redemptive End AOP

Nie dziel skóry na niedźwiedziu

Mysterious German black metallers Groza were put to death (by a million keyboard strokes) for setting up camp in Mgła’s backyard on 2018 debut album Unified in Void. Older and wiser, the fourtet hasn’t necessarily moved on from (black) sock masks and a penchant for Mikołaj Zentara-isms. Still, they’ve suffused their dissonance with a soupçon of melody, brighter chordage and a catchier strike.

That is to say, there’s more Deafheaven, Uada and Satyricon at play now.

New efforts like the “Sunken in Styx” twoparter, 10-minute closer “Homewards” and the title track have swagger in their oppositional atonal/harmonic musings. The attitude persists in the production, too. Resembling what Joe Barresi afforded to The Age of Nero or Jack Shirley put into Rheia, The Redemptive End is resplendent in its sonic rigor and dynamic heft (check out the midsection to the title track).

That it was in-housed by Groza primary P.G. is indicative of the next generation of extreme metaller—note: Portuguese phenoms Gaerea or Czechia’s incredible Inferno—who is not only visually aware and musically adroit, but also has pro-level knob-twiddling skills.

Based on the six songs on offer, the cool videos, the atmospheric band photos and what Groza could morph into (yet still retain), the sightlines to underground superstardom are easy to see. Whether that happens will depend on how much work the Germans are prepared to put into their gesichtslos black metal and everything around it. Daresay The Redemptive End is more than a facsimile of their heroes’ most ambitious output. —CHRIS DICK

HOUR OF 13

7

Black Magick Rites SHADOW KINGDOM

Now Satan makes your rules

Since Chad Davis formed Hour of 13 in North Carolina in 2003, this much-lauded doom unit has undergone many confusing twists and turns, with rotating lineups, multiple relocations (San Francisco via Virginia) and a singer who couldn’t decide if he was in the band or not (Briton Rites’ Phil Swanson). Their last LP emerged nearly 10 years ago; in the meantime, Davis changed the band name to Night Magic, then changed it back again in 2016, finally redetermining Hour of 13 as a one-man band, handling vocals as well as 78 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

all instruments. Singing can often be a bit of an afterthought in doom—for male-fronted bands, anyway—and Davis’ own voice won’t be challenging any genre standards, but his thin, adenoidal midrange feels more intuitively bonded with the creepy atmospheres, and Swanson’s industry-standard Ozzy wail wasn’t exactly irreplaceably distinguished.

Of course, Black Magick Rites doggedly evokes the grime and groove of early Sabbath, but just as doggedly evokes the handful of NWOBHM bands who doggedly evoked Sabbath (Pagan Altar, Arc, the ones with “Witch” in their names). As the title makes clear, Davis doubled down on occult horror themes, although perhaps to the detriment of imagination; “Within the Pentagram” is especially on the nose, given how much HO13 owe to Bobby Liebling’s career, while the front cover is an off-the-peg nothingburger straight out of a goth freshman’s ninth grade photography portfolio. These and a few overfamiliar riffs and refrains point to the difficulty of escaping a soporific plod within such narrow genre boundaries; it’s not easy to keep things engaging and distinctive.

That said, Black Magick Rites does feel like their most cohesive, focused release to date, with the best tunes (“His Majesty of the Wood,” “The Mystical Hall of Dreams”) balancing earthy accessibility with otherworldly esotericism.

—CHRIS CHANTLER

INFERI

5

Vile Genesis THE ARTISAN ERA

Imperfect perfection

Vile Genesis is Inferi’s latest album of progressive technical death metal. The sixth feather in the Tennessee band’s cap was captured with the latest advances in home/studio recording technology and performed on gleaming top-notch gear: guitars with extra strings; basses with odd-sized frets; drum kits sporting enough shiny cymbals to discombobulate military drones. It’s all enough to confuse old-schoolers for whom an HM-2 pedal and a properly working amp was the height of luxury.

This album hails from the Allegaeon/Obscura/ Beyond Creation/Archspire school. It features expectedly stellar musicianship that politely offers antiseptic riffs comprised of tons of lurching notes and legato sweeps, backed by clicky drum excellence, an absolutely killer bass tone and a Foley-esque layer of manufactured classical orchestration. Nothing is out of place, so much so that Inferi present as metal’s version of Sterling Archer’s hair—stylized to perfection and not a strand out of place.

However, there is very little, if any, of Vile Genesis that anyone will be whistling while they work. It may be a masterwork of rejigged and spit-shined rudiments that will get blood flowing with the tablature/sheet music book crowd, but baroque linearity coupled with monosyllabic vocalization is ultimately less than exciting. Herein lies the difference between tech-metal’s segments and eras: Watchtower, Atheist and Cynic may have blown minds with their abilities, but folks can hum “Meltdown,” “Mother Man” and “Veil of Maya” at gunpoint.

In the case of Vile Genesis, impressions lean more towards “the lead in the title track reminds me of a cool etude” and “the dynamic bass playing in ‘Mesmeric Horror’ is killer” before filing it away only to be revisited upon the publication of the album’s tablature/sheet music book so that budding musicians can play/follow along.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

JUDAS KNIFE

6

Death Is The Thing With Feathers T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

Re-start today

You can nail your X however hard you want, but the truth is this: All your favorite youth crew bands from way back when were breaking down walls on the streets, but listening to the Cure under the sheets. Everyone from Gorilla Biscuits to Judge came out to bat for the Smiths, Britpop and British goth rock, so don’t get all snarky when your man puts out a record that sits squarely in that Venn diagram of Fugazi, Swervedriver and R.E.M. Drew Thomas, rhythmic chameleon and the backbeat/bone of hardcore as we know it, has laid down some trip-hop chops here for Sid Jagger (a moniker so wonderfully arrogant it reminds us of the time Freddie Mercury called the Pistols bassist Simon Ferocious) and his post-Garrison/Gay for Johnny Depp comeback.

The singer and multi-instrumentalist recently took a break from music after a health scare, and that collision of fear, joy, desperation and hope takes the form that we’ve seen from other such hardcore luminaries exploring their own musical paths.

Whether it harkens back to the first postLife of Agony Caputo solo record or Handsome/ Deftones, or the Mars Volta or ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, there is something familiarly comforting about Death Is the Thing With Feathers. It doesn’t necessarily deal with simple subjects, but certainly transports you to a simpler time, when the only thing you had to worry about was your favorite straight-edge band selling out and going emo. —LOUISE BROWN

“…ADARRAK IS AN OVER THE TOP METAL BAND THAT EFFECTIVELY MIXES ELEMENTS OF OLD SCHOOL METAL WITH NEW AGGRESSIVE SOUNDS”

- MARTY FRIEDMAN

“…ADARRAK IS TRULY PROGRESSIVE SINCE THEY ARE NOT AFRAID TO IMPLEMENT ALL KINDS OF METAL INTO THE MIX”

- DAN SWANÖ

DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 79

MALICE DIVINE

8

Malice Divine

SELF-RELEASED

Black + death/virtuosity + substance = damn good maiden voyage

A subtle doubling effect permeates Ric Galvez’s debut as Malice Divine. Not always—much as the Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist and session drummer Dylan Gowan tend to sound like at least one band at any given time, classicallyinclined instrumental opener “Somnium Lucidus” reads like the calling card of a composer/ guitarist so self-assured in his mastery that he waits more than halfway through his first recorded song as a solo artist to shred. Granted, this is only like a minute and 15 seconds, but that’s a lot for a dude with a background in death metal.

The interlude is brief, too: For the track’s final quarter, Galvez returns to the long, limpid melodic lines that initially came right after his acoustic handshake. From “Quantum Manifestation” on, Malice Divine hop back and forth between coming off like a death metal band doing covers of stuff they’ve recorded as a black metal band and coming off like a black metal band doing covers of stuff they’ve recorded as a death metal band. Instrumentally, they most often favor the former—lyrically and vocally, the latter, with Galvez using profoundly abysmal death growls to garnish default goblin rasps.

His favorite topics to use them in are perpetual self-transcendence (number one by far) and rectification/revenge. Just as the duo are always careful to lace their core genre hybrid with significant doses of thrash, doom and/or traditional metal, Galvez often enhances his narrative arcs with talk of ancestral memory, time travel and his own indomitable divinity. —ROD SMITH

MALISON

7

Death’s Embrace M E TA L A S S A U LT

These snakes are arms

Malison either got their name from a Ye Olde word for “curse” or a Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition human/snake hybrid. My money’s on the monster mash—these San Diegans definitely fall towards the nerdy side of the metal spectrum.

Much as the Yuan-ti Malison is an evil hybrid of human and snake, this trio melds Children of Bodom, DragonForce and Warbringer. They fire off neoclassical guitar riffs instead of poison arrows, and wield soaring choruses instead of scimitars. Basically the same thing, right?

The title track of Death’s Embrace talks about chasms of pain and stuff like that, and they 80 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

probably mean pits in the literal sense, not the poetic one. It’s not really a pejorative to call this “dumb”—it’s metal meant to inspire the body, not the brain. In other words, Malison play the type of music Bill and Ted would if they started Wyld Stallyns today. On highlights like “Reborn,” they put together some genuinely catchy choruses. Lots of flash and sick guitar solos make up for the slight lack of hooks.

Sometimes stuff gets a 7 because it’s better than bad, but not good enough to be good. Sometimes it’s because it’s fun as hell, but offers nothing new. Malison fall into the latter category.

The air of familiarity keeps them from ascending to the next rank of monster, but that doesn’t mean you can safely ignore them. They still have bite. —JEFF TREPPEL

NETHERBIRD

8

Arete

EISENWALD

Bird is the word

The hallmarks of No Fashion’s glory days flirt with brilliance on Netherbird’s sixth full-length, Arete. While most may not be familiar with the Stockholm-based quintet, the Bird have been flying under the banners of Pulverised, Scarecrow, Black Lodge and now Eisenwald since 2008.

To wit, they’re not neophytes, and Arete, in all its 1995-like melodically black fury, sounds like it.

Indeed, this is the lost fucking key to the nearly vanished door to the zeitgeist that is Unanimated’s Ancient God of Evil, Ancient Wisdom’s For Snow Covered the Northland and Naglfar’s Vittra. Leave it to Swedes to recapture with conviction and spirit the magic that is (or rather was) Swedish.

Throughout Arete, there’s no question this is a Nordic product. The ice-cold trems (“Towers of the Night,” “The Silence of Provenance”), the menacing grooves (“Infernal Vistas,” “Carnal Pentiment”) and the melodically sophisticated, if woe-filled solos (“Void Dancer,” “Mystes”) recall the fantastical snow-covered, wind-blasted realms the Swedes meant for us to see all those years ago. But Netherbird aren’t really throwbacks in their execution. They’ve had this sound in one shape or another, but are now surfacing as a don’t-fuck-with outfit musically and aesthetically. That their look is more the Nephilim than Dissection is also refreshing.

Prod-whores will notice Arete has Swedish DNA. The Sverker Widgren (October Tide, Demonical) production absolutely resonates with this type of music. It’s neither the classic Fredman nor the classic Abyss take, but there’s clarity, depth and bite. If Widgren pins his future on a production, it’s this hype-sticker worthy effort.

Netherbird aren’t necessarily for Swedophiles

(it helps, naturally), so don’t let Arete wing past without notice. The fault will be entirely yours.

—CHRIS DICK

NOCTURNAL WANDERER

7

Gift of the Night A LTA R E P R O D U C T I O N S

Extra crispy recipe

As a genre, black metal is so reactionary that we often forget its origins: a bunch of dudes in leather pants yelling about the devil. Where’s the fun in that? I mean, sure, you have a bunch of people in Halloween makeup running around the woods breathing fire and causing mayhem, but the robe and wizard hat routine gets old after a while. Along with riffs, I really just want to have a good time, and newcomer Nocturnal Wanderer’s surprisingly rocking debut tickles a need I didn’t think I actually had before.

Sure, blackened heavy metal exists, but no one ever thought to approach it from the black metal aesthetic and sound background before (because, let’s face it, blackened heavy metal is generally pristine). As such, Nocturnal Wanderer’s Gift of the Night is as raw as can be for these types of melodic riffs—“crispy,” according to some—but not hypnotic or blown out (you can even hear the bass, if that’s an upsell). When looked at from a relative perspective, Gift of the Night turns the idea of blackened heavy metal upside down, creating something that feels familiar from multiple angles, but also so surprising and unprecedented that it really stands in a field all its own, which is an oddity in the age of recycling damn near everything.

How would I even go about classifying this?

Is raw heavy metal a thing? Heavy blackened metal? Why even bother with semantics?

This rips! —JON ROSENTHAL

PORTRAIT

5

At One With None

M E TA L B L A D E

Is this it?

After setting a high bar with their 2008 s/t debut and the outstanding 2011 follow-up Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae, Portrait have steadily—albeit subtly—distanced themselves from the retro metal label they’d been saddled with. Progressive elements crept into their sound as the Swedes sought to expand their musical palette, and who could fault them? They’re justified in putting in the effort to forge a distinct sound they can call Portrait, to utilize the influences of their old-school heroes and put more of their own personality into the music.

DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 81

A decade after Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae wowed many—yours truly included—it’s debatable whether Portrait have arrived at that point yet, and that issue is what weighs down ambitious fifth album At One With None. The skill is there, without question. The band pushes the exact buttons listeners expect: speed metal, twin leads that echo Maiden and Mercyful Fate, dynamic time signature changes and soaring, upper-register vocals. That’s all well and good, but when a listener has to work extra hard to connect with meandering song structures and vocal melodies that go nowhere, you’ve got a big problem on your hands. A melodic chorus is supposed to be an explosive moment that galvanizes listeners, but with the exception of “Curtains (The Dumb Supper)” and the damn good “A Murder of Crows,” songs list lazily toward climaxes that seldom arrive.

It’s called a “hook” for a reason. At One With None dangles plenty of bait, but discerning listeners will be reluctant to bite. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

QUICKSAND

8

Distant Populations E P I TA P H

Post-post-hardcore

If you were in a coma for the last five years (lucky fucker) and got handed Quicksand’s fourth fulllength, Distant Populations, you’d look at the cover and wonder if this was actually that pioneering post-hardcore band from the ’90s. And the answer is simple: yes and no.

Interiors, their 2017 return after a 22-year hiatus, set the stage for something different: a proggy, laid-back outfit. That translated to a record that was lethargic, indulgent and wholly forgettable. Now a three-piece after the troubled exit of guitarist Tom Capone, they’ve found their focus again. With the shortest record of their career, the band is back to writing concise, aggressive music.

That doesn’t mean we’re back to the glory days, though. There are only a handful of moments that feel genuinely like the band of old. In fact, “Brushed” and parts of “Missile Command” sound more like Radiohead, with frontman Walter Schreifels cribbing some of Thom Yorke’s delivery. But even when the tone drifts toward their previous album or in a different direction, it’s all anchored by the preternatural ability to write big, addictive rock riffs and sing-along choruses that helped establish them in the first place.

Does this record rank up there with the dual classics from the ’90s? No, it does not. Those high-water marks seem pretty much out of reach forever. But if Distant Populations is treated 82 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

SCULPTURED, The Liminal Phase

7

They have no boundaries | B M G

“Sculptured changing sound and adapting over time [remains] a notable reality for this band, and The Liminal Phase is no different,” noted Jon Rosenthal in a recent Decibel site feature. The Oregonians’ fourth full-length— their first in 13 years—takes a hard right from its predecessors. Right and wrong.

1998 debut The Spear of the Lily Is Aureoled alternated between Don Anderson’s aerated DM intonations and Brian Yager’s clean, fantasy-esque vocals atop ’80s hair guitar from the former. Anderson and bassist Jason Walton seesawed between Agalloch and Sculptured, the core duo’s less worshipped flight of fancy lurching toward post-metal on Apollo Ends (2000), while first-period capper Embodiment (2008) shot further into the avant-garde. Continuously bouncing between intonations undead and reborn, The Liminal Phase jettisons throaty grit for crooning gleam.

as a standalone creation by a group of older gentlemen who also happen to be called Quicksand, it’s an absolute success. —SHANE MEHLING

THE SILVER

8

Ward of Roses GILEAD MEDIA

Worth its weight in gold

When I asked a friend who wasn’t into metal to assess my record collection, they asked if the albums were all done by the same person. Black metal’s penchant for the historic and emulatory is… evident, but we move on as if nothing will happen to change that. But why can’t there be change and progression beyond the classics? To venture beyond even black metal’s most experimental

Norwegian guitarist/vocalist Marius Sjøli sings clean as ice, pulling focus where Anderson’s guitarsenal otherwise takes center stage. Layers of axework chop through both cascading beats from drummer Martti Hill and keyboard grandeur by Andy Winter, with “Dead Wall Reveries” refracting a mirrored hall of six-string funhouse. As the disc digs forward, Anderson’s steely exoskeleton glistens ever brighter into total guitarmageddon.

When it works, that is. When it doesn’t, “State of Exception,” Lizzy rebar ends in a tangle of Asia. Worse, Sjøli’s lactose delivery drenches all. Singers make or break classic metal albums of yore, and like them, every clunky vocal here meets a temple-cracking bank of guitars, the two inextricably merged (“At the Margins of Light”).

As such, The Liminal Stage makes a compelling case for Anderson and Walton undertaking one of those late-’90s instrumental showcases: shred mania only. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

reaches? When listening to the Silver’s eponymous debut, black metal can be heard, but they as a band have transcended the genre’s definition.

Flirting with elements of grunge, black metal, progressive rock and other metallic elements, the Silver’s capricious and versatile sound never stays in one realm long enough to truly welcome any type of definition. Featuring equally acrobatic vocals, this album’s predilection for the unexpected and surprising—be it turn-on-a-dime stylistic changes or unprecedented fusions—allows for influence to come from many places simultaneously.

What is most peculiar about this album is its lineage. Featuring members who have performed in bands such as Horrendous (guitarist and singer “V” is rumored to be Matt Knox) and Crypt Sermon, the element of “progression” coming

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into play for these historically inclined outfits displays just how versatile they are. This is admirable, and, to use a word twice, unexpected, but the Silver’s version of black metal—or whatever they play really is—was only ever going to come from the unforeseen. The future is coming, but only if we accept it. —JON ROSENTHAL

THIEF

7

The 16 Deaths of My Master PROPHECY

Everything Zen

Dylan Neal lives in a Zen Buddhist temple, and his most prominent prior musical position was hammering dulcimers in tech-black weirdos Botanist, so it would probably be a mistake to expect anything close to traditional from his solo project. Thief steals from unexpected places, tossing trip-hop, breakbeat, industrial and even Gregorian chants into his loot pile. On album number three under that name, Neal goes a little more straightforward than his first two heists—but not so much so that you’d mistake The 16 Deaths of My Master for anything else in the extreme music section.

The press material quotes Portishead and (later-period) Ulver as influences. Neal’s clatter reminds me of a weird mash-up between forgotten industrial rockers Kidneythieves and Tricky’s pre-millennial tension with more church organ.

He was a teenage Satanist, a gorelord, his mother was a scorpion, his occasional raps rain fire in the land of endless rain. It’s a vibe for sure. A very ’90s vibe, one that’ll be familiar to anyone who’s spent time skimming soundtrack bargain bins. Probably a little on the long side, though— at an hour, ’90s-style CD bloat starts to creep in.

Thankfully, these excursions into the darkness of his mind prove compelling for a surprisingly large percentage of the runtime without clipping his wings. It’s a nice little change of pace (not sure why it’s on dark folk/blackgaze haven Prophecy), one that finds life from an extreme metal artist trying his hand at something less extreme sonically, but just as dark emotionally. —JEFF TREPPEL

TOXIC RUIN

8

Nightmare Eclipse M-THEORY AUDIO

Well, it’s a marvelous night for a slamdance

You gotta love the unambiguity of thrash metal—if you’re flipping through bins and come across an eyeball-headed monster wading knee-deep in a pit of congealed bodies, you can safely assume the music 84 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

contained within ain’t making it to Spotify’s “Afternoon Jams” section any time soon. Of course, that’s not Toxic Ruin’s fault. In a perfect world (or maybe just the ’80s), the skills and moxie displayed on Nightmare Eclipse, the Wisconsin death/thrash quartet’s second LP, would be more than enough to unite the teatime crowd with us common headbangers.

It only takes about eight seconds for opening track “Until Everything Is Gone” to lay out Toxic Ruin’s sadistic intentions, as what appears to be atmospheric noise suddenly reveals itself as a murky cacophony of guitar harmonies, gradually swelling to the surface like they’re clawing their way out of a festering bog. Salvation comes in the form of a vicious speed metal riff that hurls the band into a 40-minute auditory onslaught replete with five-star musicianship and infectious, undeniable energy.

Sure, the abundance of twin-guitar work over a propulsive thrash backdrop makes it tough to ignore the obvious influence of seminal bands like Carcass and Megadeth (hell, United Abominations shredder Glen Drover even shows up for a guest solo), but Nightmare Eclipse never comes off as pandering or derivative. On the contrary, standout songs like “Defiler” and the excellent instrumental “It of the Horrid Storm” manage to bow down to the old-school while embracing the beefy production style and tone mastery of the modern era. —MATT SOLIS

UNTO OTHERS

8

Strength

ROADRUNNER

Love them to death

Two years ago, Portland gothic-trad metallers Idle Hands were opening for King Diamond and riding high on the underground success of their debut Mana. Cut to today and the lost boys have not only been legally forced to change their name to Unto Others, but lead guitarist Sebastian Silva has been dealing with racist immigration policies separating him from his bandmates.

Iron strengthens iron, apparently. Their excellent sophomore album—first with the new name—is coming out on Roadrunner, following in the footsteps of U.S. goth metal legends Type O Negative. Fortunately, the change in label hasn’t signaled a significant change in the music.

While Strength sounds more polished, it doubles down on the catchy-but-melancholic sound of its predecessor. Opener “Heroin” and dramatic follow-up “Downtown” mirror the fast-then-furtive one-two punch of “Nightfall” and “Jackie,” the first two songs from Mana. Not a bad thing; Mana landed at No. 21 on Decibel’s Top 40 Albums of 2019 list for a reason.

Though the band has made few tweaks, those little changes are significant: Strength’s songs are shorter, punchier and more dramatic, taking full advantage of vocalist Gabriel Franco’s widened register and more meditative lyrical approach. On songs like “Why,” a hint of the arena-ready swagger of Queensrÿche’s Operation: Mindcrime creeps in at the edges. Toward the end of the record, Unto Others knock a cover of Pat Benatar’s “Hell Is for Children” out of the park.

Those who have followed the band since the surprise hit of their first EP might miss some of the rough-and-tumble charm they had as Idle Hands, but it’s obvious that Unto Others are aiming high. Lucky for us, they have the songs to back it up. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

WIZARDTHRONE

6

Hypercube Necrodimensions N A PA L M

Boardgame metal… again?

Leave it to members of Alestorm, Disney theme park metallers Swashbuckle and social media metric-only outfit Gloryhammer to form a Bal-Sagoth cover band.

OK, let’s be fair: This isn’t just a retread of The Chthonic Chronicles, but an approximation—however well-executed—of Covenant’s Nexus Polaris, Children of Bodom’s Follow the Reaper and Cradle of Filth’s Midian at its most histrionic. This ragbag of He-Man attack themes (with double bass) might be a fun thing to kids strung out on TikTok, but it comes off offensive, as if the members here—however talented musically—are taking the piss with Napalm’s dollarbucks.

Indeed, the music is overwrought and plied with uber-cliché, but it’s also sacrilegiously polished to death, as if it’s more digital than flesh. The songs—imagine “Beyond the Wizardthrone (Cryptopharmalogical Revelations of the Riemann Zeta Function)” for a second—purport of some far-out universe where deep-throated wizards in fluorescent armor collab Wonder Twins-style to save fair-minded minions from a haggis-flavored, evilly sentient tesseract. Perhaps metal isn’t always supposed to be Aeons of Magick or New Obscurantis Order.

Still, it’s hard to take what Wizardthrone are offering seriously—the pantheon of symphonic death/black has long endured being at the assend of things. Hypercube Necrodimensions appears to be piling on instead of shielding against. Musically, Wizardthrone aren’t trying to out-weird Luciano Berio, and their collective skill set means that songs like “Frozen Winds of Thyraxia” and “The Coalescence of Nine Stars in the System Once Known as Markarian-231” can’t be ignored based on sheer conviction alone. —CHRIS DICK

DECIBEL : OCTOBER 2021 : 85

Ischemic Ischemic From 1900-1920, tug of war was an Olympic sport.

Seriously! Historical records indicate that Great Britain leads the event’s total medal count, with the U.S. in second. Fitting that this band sounds like Conan yanking on a rope with Ludicra while the members of early-’90s Napalm Death stand at the midpoint with a sharp cutting object.

The Noctambulant Hellrazor

As of this writing, the Tokyo Olympics are a couple days away from beginning in earnest, despite Japan’s COVID cases trending in the wrong direction. Yep, bringing many unvaccinated international athletes together during a public health state of emergency makes sense—about as much sense as comparing extreme music’s new breed to sports most people rarely watch and will be watching less of this year. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

Angelic Desolation Rumpus Time Is Over/Quorum of Unspeakable Curses (commentary reissues) I generally watch the Olympics with the sound muted to avoid the commentators’ rah-rah flag-waving. I also generally enjoy listening to metal without people talking about what I’m listening to. These Denver devotees to Aborted and Cattle Decapitation offer up a creative re-release of their previous efforts... with a commentary track! Questionable idea, but I’d still rather listen to stories about gravity blasts than a feel-good story about how some hammer-thrower from Idaho beat the odds.

The Beast of Nod Multiversal Two great mysteries of our time: 1) Why do countries continue to put up with the IOC’s shit? And 2) How does an unsigned band—self-described as “intergalactic death metal” (read: Dream Theater-obsessed tech-death) and led by a guy known as Dr. Görebläster Körpse-Härvest Lunden—manage to wrangle guest appearances out of Joe Satriani and Michael Angelo Batio?

Desolate Realm Desolate Realm I don’t know what sport the members of Desolate Realm enjoy most, but judging by their full-length debut, it’s whatever Grand Magus’ favorite sport is.

The Harvest Trail Instinct The info provided says this Aussie trio focuses their lyrics on true crimes from Down Under. I’m hoping one of these songs is about how the world would be a better place had the dude who committed the Port Arthur Massacre channeled his aggression into target shooting or archery. It also categorizes the band as melodic death metal, forgetting how innate Oz ruggedness makes them more Carnal Forge and the Crown than the Haunted and Arch Enemy.

86 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

I was in the crowd at the 1976 Olympics in Montréal.

I remember attending one of the track and field days, and although my memory is spotty, I recall watching the javelin competition. I mention this because my childhood recollection is similar to how these Floridians have hurled their pointy sticks through Dissection, Sacramentum and Dark Funeral riffs, but attempt to distance themselves from Sweden in favor of their home state’s swamps and humidity in the same way I’m distancing myself from the possibility I may have done an Olympic-themed column back in 2016.

You following that?

Polymerase Unostentatious Considering the harsh drug laws in Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, it seems like any band hailing from Quezon City describing itself as psychedelic stoner metal is taking a chance at drawing unwanted attention. On the other hand, Polymerase don’t give a fuck and will start worrying about arrest and prosecution when Olympic athletes stop worrying about not pissing clean.

Requiem for Oblivion Hindsight 2020 The shot put is a confounding discipline. An enormously bulked-up individual voluntarily dons a crotch-hugger, then ends up with gritty chalk dust in their earholes and under their fingernails in order to take a few seconds to throw an iron ball a few feet. Bizarre! Requiem for Oblivion sound like Immolation took up the sport, but are still working on their weight training and throwing technique.

Terroreign Terroreign This Long Island pack does a body good when they’re barrelling along all melodic death/thrash-like with a guitar tone begging to be Fear Factory and/or Meshuggah. The instances of Tool and NWOAHM worship, however, are sometimes clumsy and occasionally painful. It’s like watching an outside lane sprinter pull up lame, wincing in pain and holding their hamstring. They had little chance of winning, but you hope they’ll be able to come back stronger post-rehab and physical therapy.

Tidak Demo 2021 The pandemic (and technology) brought the American and Indonesian halves of Tidak together in the creation of this raw, in-your-face blast of grind-punk and Hellhammer riffs boosted by nitrous oxide and Despise You. Tidak is the sort of international gathering we need at this stage; not a moneygrubbing, superspreader event disguised and sold as essential competition.

All of the above can be found seeking fame, fortune and free beer on Bandcamp and Facebook.

by

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

REAL FAKE VS. FAKE FAKE:

DISCUSS IS

there a reason you give a shit about authenticity?”

People from Crete are actually called Cretans. The speaker was a Cretan. Not a cretin.

Totally different ball of wax.

“Me? I listen to a song; if I like the song, it’s as authentic as I need it to be.” He had never made much sense before, but this sounded reasonable. Almost much more than reasonable. And yet…

When I was 10 years old, I got taken to a voodoo ceremony. To call it voodoo was a skosh incorrect. It was Santeria. Which is much more of an African-Caribbean thing that mixes Catholicism and was developed alongside the slave trade in Cuba and is still widely practiced by enough people in New York City that there was an event I could attend.

If you’re not on the inside, insofar as you’ve ever heard of it, it’s probably been because of the animal sacrifices that sometimes end up being part of it.

Long story much shorter: I was there with my stepfather, who was working on a chapter in a book about it. Midway through the ceremony, women started screaming.

Screaming and falling to the floor.

Their bodies wracked by some sort 88 : OCTOBER 2021 : DECIBEL

of otherworldly ecstasy. My stepfather called it “catching the spirit.”

Post-event: “So, what did you think of THAT?” I snorted a one-word critique: Fake.

Did I enjoy it? Sure. Did I believe it? According to the Cretan, who cares?

When I saw Manowar play and they were bleeding from their crotches and mouths? Was that “real” blood? Is Dio any less enjoyable even allowing that many of us have never met a wizard? Or that when Ozzy bit the head off of a bat, he thought it was a rubber—re: fake—bat?

Does that make them all substandard, inferior experiences?

In 1978, I went to see the Plasmatics play somewhere over in Lower Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

The only things down there in 1978 were a collapsed West Side highway, burned-out cars, leather bars and a club where a nearly naked Wendy O. Williams screamed on a stage that featured both a Black bass player and Ku Klux Klan logos.

It was loud. So loud that in midsong, mid-set, when some stagehand tossed her a pump-action shotgun, you couldn’t hear her rack a round.

She made the motion so you’d have

to assume she had done so, but you could hear nothing.

Nice stage prop, I thought. And continued to think. Right up until she started blowing away chunks of the stage and I could feel blowback on my face.

Then a chill and a realization: The shotgun was real.

Which changed just about everything. Williams was already a badass. This, beyond the shotgun and everything else. It was in her eyes.

Years later, when she killed herself in the woods, I didn’t mourn. She died the way it seemed she lived, and I’ve been a fan for life.

THAT is the power of real.

But you know Brahms and Bach could have been the world’s biggest phonies and we, generally, like them too, right? So, what’s the problem?

The answer is right there, I think, because while we generally like the inauthentic if it checks the boxes we liked having checked, we LOVE the authentic no matter what it does. For the thrill factor at the very least.

No matter what he thought he was biting, Ozzy did actually end up biting the head off of a real bat.

And GG Allin did eat actual shit onstage—albeit his own shit.

Wendy O. Williams, fines be damned, did really discharge a firearm in a packed club, and Iggy Pop and Darby Crash did actually carve themselves up with broken glass onstage. Burzum… well, you get the idea.

Does it make the music better to know that the people who were making it were by no measure faking it?

It does to me. Which is why, while I love them both, I’ll always choose Mötley Crüe over Fugazi. Crüe—no matter how fake they appeared— were truly committed to what they sang about. Fugazi? Well, who knows? I know nothing about them from their music. Outside of some ideas they might or might not hold.

Therefore, the honor goes to those artists who let us peek into their heads and their hearts, even if those heads and hearts are empty versus those that, like some Facebook algorithm, just feed us what they think we want. The music might sound exactly the same, but there’s a reason most of us don’t listen to Muzak for fun.

So, like the old Hollywood adage goes, “Sincerity is everything.

And when you can fake that?

You got it made.”

ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE

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JANE DOE

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