Decibel #222 - April 2023

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E XT RE M ELY EXTREME

April 2023 [R 222] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 10 obituary:

justin bartlett Fvck cancer

12 metal muthas Like mother, like son 14 low culture Reunited and it feels so, so bad 15 no corporate beer Beer me a cocktail

16 úlfúð Willed into existence 18 hellripper You ever listen to the White Album... on speed?

20 tribunal Middle Earth is doomed 22 heaven’s gate Gotta go fast 24 kommand What about Age of Quarrel?

26 dawn ray’d Workers of the underworld, unite!

28 aftermath Lost in time 30 kruelty Mutual disgust

features

reviews

32 q&a: enslaved Guitarist and founding member Ivar Bjørnson’s approach to music is the stuff of legends

67 lead review Night Demon aim to bring trad metal back into the metal mainstream with the powerful Outsider

36 exclusive:

68 album reviews Records from bands that sincerely want to know what your personal opinions are on Twitter, including All Out War, Lamp of Murmuur and Rotten Sound

decibel magazine metal & beer fest: philly 2023 preview A Pepsi ain’t gonna cut it

42 the decibel

hall of fame Gothenburg melodeath kings At the Gates secure their third entry into the hallowed Hall with their transitional EP turned LP Terminal Spirit Disease

80 damage ink Anything but frosty

54 54

Most Known Unknown COVER STORY

COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY JC CAREY

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. © 2023 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

ISSN 1557-2137 | USPS 023142 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited.

4 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

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I hear a lot of records before you do.

albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

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April 2023 [T222] PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

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James Lewis

james@decibelmagazine.com DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SALES ART DIRECTOR

Aaron Salsbury

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Michael Wohlberg

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Patty Moran

COPY EDITOR

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tim@redflagmedia.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph

Online DECIBEL WEB EDITOR

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DECIBEL WEB AD SALES

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Emily Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Richard Christy Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Addison Herron-Wheeler Jonathan Horsley Courtney Iseman Neill Jameson Kim Kelly Sarah Kitteringham Daniel Lake Cosmo Lee Jamie Ludwig Shane Mehling Tim Mudd Justin M. Norton Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt Jon Rosenthal Brad Sanders José Carlos Santos Joseph Schafer Kevin Stewart-Panko Eugene S. Robinson Adem Tepedelen Jeff Treppel J Andrew Zalucky CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

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Periodical postage, paid at Philadelphia, PA, and other mailing offices. Submission of manuscripts, illustrations and/or photographs must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited materials.

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That’s just the way the music press works. Labels send publications music well before a release’s street date, so we can set up coverage and time it with the record’s release date. (Unless you’re Fenriz, who is done with all of that “advance music” stuff to remind me that I’m not very special.)

Anyway, occasionally the music comes straight from the artist. Old friends Shane Embury and Kevin Sharp have been kind enough to slip me demo versions of Napalm Death, Brutal Truth, Lock Up and Dark Sky Burial tunes over the years. In the early part of 2021, a new album from their longest-running shared project, Venomous Concept, appeared in my inbox. Only the familiar grinding punk blasts that dominated the band’s first four LPs were largely replaced with some of the catchiest punk and post-punk songs this side of classic Hüsker Dü. After a few listens, The Good Ship Lollipop was already my new favorite Venomous Concept album. Everyone was stoked.

But due to the material’s new direction, Shane and Kevin soon struggled to find the proper home for it, so I volunteered to help. Not by releasing it, of course—I’m not a moron. Instead, I spent the better part of a year playing the record for as many of my label friends who would listen. But despite the near universal agreement that the music was great, no one felt it was a fit for release through their label. Some were already overextended with releases through the year. Others worried that Venomous’ change in style was too severe, forcing them to essentially be marketed as a new artist. More still were concerned that their core audience just “wouldn’t get it.”

Those that were interested ultimately couldn’t reach a deal with the band. So, sometime in mid-2022, Kevin—who had recently acquired our Deadguy Buyer’s Remorse live LP—asked me if Decibel would release the album through Decibel Records. Considering everything else we produce monthly (note the object you’re currently holding), I had no intention of making Decibel Records a “real label.” But when my friends (who happen to be legendary extreme music musicians that recorded my favorite record of the past two years) ask me to release it, well, yeah, I’m not a complete moron!

Venomous Concept’s The Good Ship Lollipop is out this month on Decibel Records.

DECIBEL : APRIL 2023 : 7

READER OF THE

MONTH As best as we can tell, you’ve been a subscriber since 2010. Do you recall what led you to take the plunge and sign your life away to us?

I don’t know where I bought it, but the first issue I remember buying was the Refused HOF cover issue (September 2010, No. 71). The Shape of Punk to Come is a banger—who doesn’t love it? I devoured the whole issue. I subscribed shortly after and look forward to it every month. The writing is top-notch. I have been introduced to many great bands and beers over the years.

Paul Hoff Valatie, NY

Please tell us a little about Valatie. We are guessing metal shows do not regularly roll through your neck of the woods.

Valatie (Va-lay-sha) is a small village in upstate NY about a half-hour south of Albany. Most of the metal shows are either in Albany or require a trip to NYC. While there aren’t any shows in town, one of our finest local establishments, the Saisonnier, hosts “Metal Monday,” where a patron curates a metal playlist and there are metal-themed beer specials (examples are 3 Floyds, KCBC, beers brewed with bands). It’s a great excuse to wear my battle vest, and l bang my head to a wide variety of metal.

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We’re probably not booking a Metal & Beer Fest out there anytime soon, so you’ll have to make your way to Philly or Denver. We don’t know if you’re a drinker, so let us know which side of the event interests you more.

I am definitely a beer drinker, and love to pair it with metal. Metal & Beer Fest is a bucket list item for me. I would love to go one year. Hopefully one year it will align with my break from school (I’m a middle school teacher). The beer collaborations I see each year are insane! Very cool that Drowningman are playing this year; they are one of my all-time favorites.

As a longtime reader, surely you have strong opinions on the Decibel Hall of Fame. Now is your chance to make an induction case for a less obvious record (no Maiden, etc.) that we’ve yet to induct—let’s hear it!

The album I would induct is The Rain in the Endless Fall by Prayer for Cleansing. That album opened me up to different styles of metal that I didn’t really listen to before—melodeath in particular.

It still holds up today: timeless riffs and breakdowns. Side note: Doesn’t the singer run a coffee shop in Philly? I’m a vinyl collector—I have bought stuff from dB a few times—and it’s one of my white whales. It was just repressed, but it sold out in minutes and I missed out. So, maybe if it is inducted, they would repress it again and I wouldn’t have to consider paying hundreds of bucks on Discogs for it.

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

10 : A P R I L 2 0 2 3 : D E C I B E L

D

The metal scene remembers the acclaimed illustrator you knew as VBERKVLT isembodied heads impaled on splintering spikes. A blood-sodden papacy

presided over by a demon wearing a liturgical headdress. Crypto-zoological beasts engaging in acts of torture porn. An abstract decomposing goat figure. These are some of the macabre images conjured into reality over the years by the inimitable talent of Justin “Vberkvlt” Bartlett, whose work has helped define the aphotic aesthetic behind the music/brand of many extreme metal bands—from Trap Them, Dragged Into Sunlight and the Secret to Sunn O))), Cadaver and Hooded Menace. On January 9, Bartlett sadly passed away following a defiant near-two-year battle against Stage IV colon cancer. He was only 45 years old.

“Justin’s artwork was integral for the listener to visualize the darkness of the Trap Them sound,” admits the now-defunct band’s guitarist, Brian Izzi, a friend of Bartlett’s since the 1990s.

“Sleepwell Deconstructor, Filth Rations and Darker Handcraft just wouldn’t be the same if not for his illustrations to set the mood.”

“His unique style gave our visuals a really disturbed dimension [on 2015’s Darkness Drips Forth],” echoes Lasse Pyykkö of Hooded Menace. “[His artwork] was so different from what we have had before or after. It’s genuinely frightening and creepy, but at the same time very artsy and beautiful. I can only wish our music grabbed the listener as strongly as Justin’s nearly hypnotizing linework. To be honest, his art is way more twisted than our music.”

Not only was Bartlett admired by the musicians he worked with during his (too-short) time with us, he was highly respected among those in the metal art community for his hellish pen and ink-based approach. Artist Eliran Kantor was part of a special group exhibition alongside Bartlett and other esteemed peers in 2019.

“His style was all his own,” Kantor says. “It had a very natural flow and a very distinctive way of making lines wave, drip, deform and shake. It was visceral and primal, with a touch of chaos and a lot of roughness, which would elevate a heavy metal album cover to something

truly memorable and original without feeling out of touch with the music’s tradition and palette. It is a shame we won’t get to see more of this undeniable talent. My sincerest condolences to everyone he loved and [who] loved him.”

“Justin was not concerned with the modes of technical perspective, or anatomy. He went for impact,” astutely notes Brad Moore, another supreme metal artist who admired Bartlett.

Both were planning on working together this year on a card set of scenes featuring concepts from the Alien film franchise. As he battled his terminal illness, it’s therefore clear that Bartlett never gave up on his passion—he was making plans and collaborating creatively to the very end.

“He was determined in his fight against cancer,” Izzi confirms. “I remember he said recently in his usual funny sarcastic tone, ‘I know I like death metal and all this morbid stuff, but it turns out I want to live!’ Based on our last few conversations, I think Justin would tell people to use their time on this planet wisely, stay healthy and be mindful of the things in life that are truly worth living for.”

Cadaver mastermind Anders Odden worked with Bartlett on projects for almost 25 years. The death metal lifer battled cancer himself in 2019 and 2020, a time during which Bartlett was creating the layout for Cadaver’s Edder & Bile.

“We got closer through this time and with all the stuff that was going on in the world,” Odden recalls. “When he got cancer, I was one of the few friends he knew who had gone through it, so we had many good conversations about it. I think cancer patients have an insight and a way of talking that is different from everybody else and that it’s good to have someone to talk to when you are sick that understands the darkness of it all.”

“How did I feel when Justin passed?” ponders Danny Trudell of Holy Mountain Printing, another longtime friend/collaborator of the much-missed artist. “If we’re being honest, I cried. I lost a couple friends [recently] and those losses do not get easier. The only thing I can take away from those losses is to hug everyone around you, tell them what they mean to you and support them as best you can. Tomorrow is not promised.”

With the passing of any loved one—and we here at Decibel counted Bartlett as a dear friend (he even designed the first logo for the Decibel Tour back in 2012)—comes profound bouts of reminiscence. Those we talked to for this feature collectively remember Bartlett as uncompromising with his art; as being very straightforward and introspective; curious, open-minded, adventurous and kind; at times, a bit stubborn; a cat lover. For those who didn’t know him personally, his character, talent, beliefs and artistic vision are all forever enshrined in the demented imagery he has left behind.

“The beauty of Justin is this: He is gone, but he left us a body of work to treasure, and so in that way he will never really be gone,” Trudell says. “Every time I get out Locrian’s The Crystal World, or rage to Dragged Into Sunlight’s Hatred for Mankind, he will be there. Justin created work that will connect him to us all for the rest of our lives, and the lives of those that discover his work after us. What he did will live on forever.”

Amen to that. Fvck cancer. Rest in power, Vberkvlt. —DEAN BROWN D E C I B E L : A P R I L 2 0 2 3 : 11

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

Well, here are the records that we spun most while, despite the numerous requests, refusing to bring the Decibel Tour to Brazil.

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

This Month’s Muthas: Christina Apodaca Muthas of Steven Villa of Saber

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a single mom born and raised in California who has a love for music—especially heavy metal and classic rock. I also enjoy singing, but not publicly. Just a hobby, and I love to bake occasionally for the holidays.

At what point did you notice your son’s incredible vocal range?

We both enjoy singing musical tunes when listening to our favorite albums and other music genres. Especially when we were driving together when Steven was very young. We would always try to outdo each other on certain notes of our favorite singers like Rob Halford and Geoff Tate.

I realized then his range was surprisingly [high], and he was able to get good ever since. Especially how he could hold onto a note and [how he] learned to progressively improve his range.

Are either you or his father responsible for his interest in traditional heavy metal? What are some of your favorite bands?

I take full responsibility for Steven’s love of heavy metal and classic rock music. I have always supported him with his music by attending his shows, helping out by selling band

merchandise and [helping out with] ticket sales.

As a teenager, I took him to his first concert, which was the Heaven and Hell tour with Ronnie James Dio. After that, it [led] up to many concerts; my son [always] wanted to tag along with me.

How do you feel about a band entirely of Hispanic descent making such big strides in this genre?

I feel this genre is open to all who enjoy listening and creating music.

How do you think Saber compares to some of Steven’s earlier bands, like Lethal Night or Skeptor?

Steven had a good time with all his bands. He loves singing [and] creating music, but best of all entertaining people.

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

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Night Demon, Outsider  Enforced, War Remains  Street Tombs, Reclusive Decay  Úlfúð, Of Existential Distortion  Godflesh, Pure Live ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  The Exploited, Fuck the System  D.R.I., Dirty Rotten EP  Excel, Split Image  Metallica, …And Justice for All  Klaus Schulze, Deus Arrakis ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Enslaved, Heimdal  Lamp of Murmuur, Saturnian Bloodstorm  Tribunal, The Weight of Remembrance  Kommand, Terrorscape  Night Demon, Outsider ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Enforced, War Remains  Cursed, II  Jesus Piece, ...So Unknown  Cursed, III: Architects of Troubled Sleep  Fuming Mouth, Beyond the Tomb ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Heaven’s Gate, Heaven’s Gate  All Out War, Celestial Rot  Venomous Concept, The Good Ship Lollipop  Grave Chalice, Demo  Ekulu, Unscrew My Head

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Melissa Moore : s o n j a  Messa, Close  Maggot Heart, Mercy Machine  Ruby The Hatchet, Fear is a Cruel Master  Sacramentum, The Coming of Chaos  Kekht Arakh, Pale Swordsman

He is an avid Star Wars enthusiast. He also enjoys trying new restaurants and plays guitar occasionally. He sang at Disneyland for the Christmas Season Candlelight [Processional] with his high school choir class the last two years before graduating. —ANDREW BONAZELLI PHOTO BY

12 : A P R I L 2 0 2 3 : D E C I B E L

DON VINCENT ORTEGA

AN

NEY ISEM

T

BY COUR

The Springtime Song of the Necrobirds hen you turn the page and skim this accidentally thinking it was about beer (that’s directly to your right), it will mercifully be closer to spring. But while I sit here uncomfortably writing this with a cat on my lap, it’s still January and the taste of the new year hasn’t entirely been washed out.

The whole point of the new year is to leave old things behind and start anew, right? That seems to be whatever we’re being marketed towards, anyway. New year, new you—that worn-out hat.

And fortunately, since we’re already a few weeks into the new year, it’s mostly been forgotten as we return to business as usual, because time is an illusion and self-improvement doesn’t matter in the social media age. At least I guess so—I’m honestly ambivalent to the whole thing.

But let’s face it: We’re creatures of habit. And, especially in metal, creatures of nostalgia. And we’re getting older now, so like our parents and grandparents before them, we’re now entering a time of accelerated reunions. And, like, sure, there’s a plethora of reasons for doing so. Some bands do it because they felt they had unfinished business and needed to complete their story arc; others because they’re nostalgic and are doing it for the love; and, most depressingly, others do it for the money or because they miss the attention.

I had no idea there was going to be a Morbid “reunion” until the day after it happened, so that isn’t at all an influence getting here. But since it happened, we might as well chat a bit about it.

The Morbid “reunion” featured Dead’s brother Daniel (using the name “Necrobird,” which… cool) and Erik Danielsson on drums. Keeping in mind that both Dead and L-G Petrov, who were in the original incarnation of Morbid, are both (no pun intended) dead, you already have a bit of trouble as to why this would need to happen.

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Necrobird wore his brother’s famous rotten pants, which, I dunno, maybe that was something his therapist suggested, and did his best impression of Dead while the rest of the band looked like a few aging dads who get together to drink and “jam,” with the exception of Erik, who is there to lend credibility to the whole thing, I suppose. I mean, the fucking pants were an actual selling point. Did they play anything from Last Supper, the demo they recorded after Dead left to join Mayhem? Holy shit, that demo sucks.

Look, I’m sure it was a fun gig to attend and I don’t know the inner workings of a man who lost his brother to a traumatic—and now very public—suicide when he was only eight years old, but if this is more than a one-time thing, it reeks of cash grab as much as Dead’s 30-year-old pants reek of being 30 years old.

A lot of reunions end up being dogshit, so I stopped having any real expectations for them.

At least until Xysma announced they were working on new music. I’d heard a rumor that it was going to be a return to their middle period, where they mixed death metal with psychedelic rock. I’ve been a fan since the ’90s—even their last two records—so I thought, regardless of which era they pick from, I was sure to be stoked. Then I heard it.

This is the last time I look forward to any kind of reunion until I’ve heard the fucking thing. Now I know what everyone who’s ever dated me has felt—what a goddamn disappointment. So, while you read this and the flowers are blooming with an assist from climate change, I’m making a late New Year’s resolution—don’t ever get my hopes up for a reunion of any kind until I have valid proof it isn’t a loaf of horseshit baked to perfection and given to me as a festive shitloaf like your grandmother made. Oh, and listen to more Beherit. I can at least do one of those things.

Dressing Up Your Lager: Beer Cocktails That Don’t Suck

A

good lager is obviously special enough on its own. Brewers work their entire careers to master the craft of lagermaking, and a well-made lager, where no lactose or strawberry purée or cocoa nibs can hide any flaws, is a sign of a distinguished brewer. Sometimes, though, you want to try something new, shake things up, satisfy a separate craving, have a little fun with your go-to lager. After all, indulging in a beer is supposed to be just that: fun. Once you’ve reached lager nirvana, it’s okay to branch out with even more ways to enjoy it.

The trick is deciding what beer cocktails elevate the beer-drinking experience. It should be relatively quick and easy—if we wanted to play mixologist, we’d wheel out the bar cart; the beauty of a beer is how you crack a can, pour, and voilà: deliciousness.

And it should be better than the sum of its parts. If you cut half your lager with fruit juice, are you enhancing that beer or just pretending you like it by drowning it out with sweetness—at that point, why not just drink a fruited sour?

There are plenty of approaches as easy as they should be and also actually worth the effort. They complement the beer and create an entirely new, appealing drink. I’d long considered the michelada a bit tired, based on too many try-hard examples served up at

In the limelight  With a little bit of extra effort or the magic of Stone Brewing’s Buenaveza Lager, you, too, can feel like a certified mixologist

New York City brunch spots, garnished with an entire salad and often too spicy to actually enjoy. A recent Mexico trip, however, was a reminder of how good it is when done right, a.k.a. simply. A squeeze of fresh lime juice, a few dashes of your preferred hot sauce, ditto for soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, a pinch of black pepper, and—hear me out—a splash of Clamato. The result is hot, spicy, savory, sweet and briny, yet still refreshing because the beer doesn’t get lost.

Another winner is the Spaghett. Let the would-be influencers have their Aperol spritzes; the Spaghett is where all that fancy Italian tastiness gets down and dirty at a dive bar. It’s traditionally made with Miller High Life, right in the bottle: you add 1 ½ oz. Aperol and 1 oz. lemon juice, and there you have it. It couldn’t get much easier. Your beer’s a little dressed up, the spritz is a little dressed down, and that sweet spot in the middle is crisp, bitter, tart and easy drinking. Plus, you can mix this up with pretty much any lager and aperitif.

It’s understandable if you’re bored with the shandy, half beer (lager or wheat ale),

half lemonade. Instead, try branching out on that fruit component and cutting the ratio.

On his blog Beer Crunchers, chief marketing officer of Chicago’s Revolution Brewing Doug Veliky made a 2023 prediction that craft brewers will look to engage more drinkers with their lagers by adding flavorful twists, something you can easily DIY. The most basic example is a squeeze of fresh lime juice and a pinch of salt or a salted glass rim, à la the chelada or, in packaged form, Stone Brewing’s Buenaveza lager. You could really up your game, though, by making a simple syrup, which you can refrigerate and pull out whenever the beer-cocktail craving strikes. Make a jalapeño one (2 cups sugar heated until it dissolves in 1 cup boiling water, then 2 peppers sliced simmered for a few minutes, steeped for 20, and strained) and add a half-ounce with a splash of pineapple juice to your beer.

Apply that to any spice-and-fruit combo your little heart desires. When it comes to these beer cocktails, a little creativity without getting too complicated goes a long way—you’ll be happiest when the mixers are minimal, and the lager can shine.

DECIBEL : A PRIL 202 3 : 15

ÚLFÚÐ

ÚLFÚÐ

Icelandic black/death dealers’ resolve rewards on stunning full-length debut

THE

world tried to stop Úlfúð, but they persisted. Now poised to release their debut album, Of Existential Distortion, on Dark Descent, this Icelandic band recalls five years of hardship and the drive to move onward. ¶ “Most of the songs from this album were written in 2019 to 2020,” the band says over a group video chat, “but then the recording process happened and lots of delays from third parties and the pandemic hit, and we all know what happened there. It was supposed to be out years ago, but that’s how reality is, and we’re excited for it to finally be ready. There was a lot of waiting and a lot of songwriting for the next thing. We’ve been keeping busy and playing a lot of shows. ¶ “We have an EP from 2018,” they continue, “and our guitarist [Eysteinn Orri] joined the band in 2018, and we have been in this configuration since then. Since the EP, we’ve been finding the band’s sound, and we have a democratic songwriting process, so it was all about finding what works for everyone.”

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Using the past five years following that debut EP, First Sermon, to their advantage, Úlfúð’s egalitarian process resulted in a varied, exciting mixture of black and death metal. “We wanted to know where to go as a musical whole and also go through the process of finding your own sound,” the band explains. “It took a while to find.”

With a more melodic and metallic sound defining their newest album, Of Existential Distortion, Úlfúð stand out from the global perception of Icelandic metal. With a tripletheavy approach and a concentration on evil, catchy melodies, Úlfúð sound more at home in the Scandinavian peninsula.

“We’re not really part of the Icelandic sound in that sense,” they say, “but we also didn’t make the conscious decision that we did want to include melody in what we did.

It’s just what we wanted to do, and

we doubled down on the sound that we wanted.

“It’s not necessarily about the discordant black metal kids only playing with [similar] bands,” they add. “The scene is very small. A certain sound might have gotten popular outside Iceland, but we all go to the same place to see the same bands and hang out. I don’t think being a different-sounding band really affects us.”

All differences aside, Úlfúð’s concentration is on the album at hand, and it has been a rocky ride to get to this point. Persistence is key, and Úlfúð’s is admirable.

When asked about finally getting Of Existential Distortion out into the world, a noticeable look of serenity washed over the entire band.

“It feels fantastic to finally get this out. It’s been on our minds.”

—JON ROSENTHAL

HELLRIPPER

HELLRIPPER

Scottish black/speed project finds inspiration in terrors of the 19th century and 1990s

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respectful fear of the occult is necessary for any good black-thrash album. That’s just the way things are done ’round those parts, but it doesn’t hurt when it’s presented in a different light. On his third album, Warlocks Grim and Withered Hags, James McBain—better known as the one-man band Hellripper—turns to his home of Scotland for inspiration. ¶ “The thing I’m focusing on is folklore and the dark side of folklore,” McBain says. “The devil in Scotland and mythical creatures. Still kind of fitting with the Hellripper aesthetic; just with an additional twist that makes it a bit more personal.” ¶ McBain also tried on a new set of musical influences, many of them the rock artists he’s loved his entire life, on Warlocks, heard mostly in the melodic touches, longer song lengths and attention to guitar parts. ¶ “I was listening to a lot of classic bands,” the multi-instrumentalist explains. “AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Alice in Chains, even bands like Oasis or Manic Street Preachers or Smashing Pumpkins, the Beatles. Maybe that kind of stuff creeps in. If I hear something I like in their music, I think, ‘Maybe I can try to put this in a speed metal context.’”

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Hellripper haven’t abandoned the blackened speed metal they became known for. If anything, they doubled down on it for their third record. Lead single “The Nuckelavee”—a tribute to a horselike demon that allegedly lives in the sea—shows both sides of the coin, while second song “I, the Deceiver” is pure speed and throatripping shrieks. The title track is perhaps the strongest, a fist-pumping expedition through faster-thanthe-devil thrash and fist-pumping arena metal.

The release of Warlocks comes shortly after Hellripper’s eighth birthday. Originally treating the band as a bedroom project and operating with little knowledge of promotion, McBain watched Hellripper grow organically until he signed with Peaceville for second album The Affair of the Poisons. Those early years allowed him to cover a lot of

ground, helping develop an identity for what Hellripper is today.

“It’s difficult to tell you how I feel about it,” McBain admits. “It’s crazy. It’s this thing that I started at home messing around in my bedroom at my parents’ house has just kind of grown to this stage that I’m at now where I’m at Peaceville playing with some of my favorite bands and people like the music.”

The new album will bring the full-band version of Hellripper on tour with Warbringer, as well as a summer’s worth of shows and festival appearances across Europe.

“I’m really happy with the place this band’s in,” McBain says. “This is my favorite album I’ve done by far. When I listen to it, I just think it’s better in almost every sense.

We’re getting to do things I’ve never done before like play new places, play with some of my favorite bands.” —EMILY BELLINO

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PHOTOS: Chad Lee (King), @wombat (Tribbett), Dirk Behlau (Amott), Jody Wilk (Donais)

TRIBUNAL

Canadian death/gloom duo’s debut recalls doom of decades past

IN

an age where social media algorithms reward constant dopamine spikes, sometimes patience is a lost art. Despite forming in 2018, gothic death/doom duo Tribunal abstained from releasing recorded music until their debut LP was considered complete. The finished result is The Weight of Remembrance, a record of exquisite gloom well worth the wait. ¶ After moving to Vancouver around the same time, Soren Mourne (vocals/cello/bass) and Etienne Flinn (guitars/ vocals) were in similar states of musical limbo. Six years had passed since Mourne was in an active band. A year after Flinn’s band concluded, he was considering selling his amps. Like many others before, Tolkien unified them for a new quest. ¶ “We were introduced by a friend and started talking about Lord of the Rings,” Mourne laughs. “We were talking about The Silmarillion and I mentioned that one of my favorite bands had a concept record about it. Etienne asked if it was Blind Guardian, and that was correct. Our paths have been entwined forever more.”

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From the opening funeral bells, The Weight of Remembrance invokes the colossal rains and dark rivers of ’90s U.K. doom like My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. The songs are huge and hypnotic; patient instead of plodding. You can hear Mourne’s reverence for Candlemass, funeral doom and Italian heaviness in elegant flourishes throughout. But Tribunal recall the past without trying to echo it. Mourne’s cello lends gentle solemnity as a foil to Flinn’s harsher songwriting impulses.

“We have a strong collaborative writing dynamic, and I think the specific interplay between our tastes is what gives Tribunal its distinctive sound,” Mourne offers.

“Etienne often brings riffs that are more of a melodic death metal style of sound, where I bring in some of the traditional doom and darker elements.”

Despite the album’s strong A-side, it’s a record that gains downhill momentum in the second

half. That culminates with 12-minute closer “The Path,” a stirring composition embodying the band’s thematic and lyrical heft.

“Our writing is very inwardlooking and introspective,” Flinn describes. “There’s a melancholic, nostalgic sense of looking back.

Reminiscing and longing for the past. Wishing things were different.

Wishing you were different.” “[Our lyrics contain] a lot of exploration and looking at your identity and how your sense of self changes,” Mourne adds. “We consider how different forces can change your morality and sense of purpose over time.”

With their sense of purpose fortified by a remarkable debut from 20 Buck Spin, Tribunal recruited musicians for a five-member stage lineup. After already playing with Swallow the Sun and Wilderun, they will bring dark skies with them to live audiences outside Canada soon. —SEAN FRASIER

PHOTO BY LIAM KANIGAN

TRIBUNAL

HEAVEN’S GATE

HEAVEN’S GATE

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ocalist tony foresta once told us, “I like singing fast, man.” The diminutive frontman has had ample opportunity to put this predilection to good use while fronting Municipal Waste (since 2001) and Iron Reagan (since 2012). So, it should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that his latest endeavor, Heaven’s Gate, will provide him more of the same. That’s not to say that the Florida-based outfit—which also features Cannibal Corpse drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz, guitarist Mike Goo and bassist Jeff Howe—is “more of the same.” The quartet may be playing fast (mostly), but Foresta is taking the powerviolence-meets-crusty-D-beat tuneage and expanding his range, so to speak. ¶ “I worked really hard to try and branch out more vocally, and I feel the results speak for themselves,” says Foresta via email. “The lyrical content is pretty fuckedup, too, and very different to what I’m usually singing about.

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It’s an interesting project to be a part of creatively as well. It’s nice starting over. It’s like painting with a clean canvas for me, and I really have pushed myself performancewise to stick my neck out more.”

Foresta and Mazurkiewicz bonded over a shared love of Infest years ago at a European metal festival, and after the former relocated to his home state of Florida in 2020, the pair had the opportunity to finally work together playing in a hardcore band that was “in the vein of Scapegoat, Extortion or even No Comment.” Though all four members have other bands and projects, Heaven’s Gate’s upcoming five-song 12-inch EP on Beach Impediment won’t be a one-off studio thing.

“None of us are trying to be this touring juggernaut or anything like that,” Foresta explains. “[But] even with all of [our other bands and businesses], Heaven’s Gate has been surprisingly active in our area, and we’re fine with keeping it that way. Playing a bit locally, with a few out-of-town gigs, has been wonderful so far.”

With Iron Reagan “way on the back-burner,” according to Foresta, he has put his energy into Heaven’s Gate when the Waste isn’t on the road. It’s the “local” band he’s longed for since his move back to the Sunshine State. “[I] love this area and really want to be a part of it musically,” he espouses. And, you know, another opportunity to sing fast—well, that’s just gravy. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

PHOTO BY MICHAEL LOPEZ

Municipal Waste and Cannibal Corpse members raise a little hardcore hell

KOMMAND

Southland grimdark troop unveil staggering monument to death and death metal

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ould have called the record Chaos A.D., but that name was already taken,” says Jesse Sanes, frontman of L.A.-based death metal act Kommand, regarding the title of his band’s new album. “[Death Age] is a name that represents the theme of the record and the band’s commitment to the genre.” ¶ Death Age will be the first we’ve heard from Kommand since Terrorscape, their debut full-length from 2020. According to Ian Logan, the quintet’s guitarist and primary songwriter, that was almost the last we ever heard of the band. Logan writes: “I remember writing the last song for Terrorscape and thinking that might be the last Kommand song.”

He adds that once Terrorscape deployed, new riffs started coming to him. “At first we thought we’d do a seven-inch, but we were productive enough to come up with more material and decided to do an LP.” ¶ Inspiration arrived quickly, but Kommand were at work on something meant to withstand the passing of ages.

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“We started working on Death Age shortly after Terrorscape came out, and we were supposed to record this much earlier,” Logan explains.

“I think we postponed recording twice. We still wanted to work on the songs.”

The results of their efforts and commitment can be heard across every track, in all the riffs, in each growled vocal line, etched like an epitaph into the black granite of these six songs. Logan looks at this way: “Kommand tries to write compelling death metal songs that will hold up over time. We try to be faithful to the genre without being generic. We try to progress without being so complicated or weird that it would no longer sound like Kommand.” To the point that, according to Logan, “People have said we sound inspired by Bolt Thrower. It was never a conscious influence, but [for Death Age] we leaned into

it. I think we tried to do some different things with song structures, and bands like Incantation and Cenotaph were influential there.”

Out this spring on 20 Buck Spin, Death Age casts a mighty shadow across the future. Featuring highly combustive artwork by Bharata Danu—which Logan agrees, looks like something from the Warhammer universe—but drawn by Voivod’s Away, Kommand’s second album hits with a mind-altering heaviness. Death Age upholds and revitalizes the genre while simultaneously paying homage to it. Like Logan says, “Playing live is important to us, so we practice a lot. We plan to tour both coasts at some point this year, so keep an eye out for that. The underground extreme metal scene and subculture is also important to us, so we try to be a part of that as much as we can.” —DUTCH PEARCE

PHOTO BY KRIS KIRK

KOMMAND

DAWN RAY’D

Working-class black metal heroes find a light in the darkness

IN

2019, for pulverizer Beyond Sedition Plainsong, Dawn Ray’d puppet master Simon Barr told Decibel, “We just wanted to write a record that came naturally to us, but I do think we tidied up some things. I added more clean vocals, but it’s angrier and harsher than last time.”

Follow-up To Know the Light now harshes that previous high for the Liverpool/Leeds black metal triad. ¶ “We also felt we had to prove we were a ‘real’ black metal band, as due to our outspoken political beliefs, we are often told we aren’t,” adds the violin-wielding frontman. “This time around, we felt the scene is now set and we’re every inch the black metal band, [so] we wrote in a much more considered and emotive way. Huge amounts of time, care and detail went into To Know the Light, and I’m curious how people compare it to our other records.” ¶ Composed of 10 songs in 42 minutes for Los Angeles extremists Prosthetic Records, this third full-length unleashes a piercing fusillade of excoriating malevolence that ebbs enough for

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a folk pointillism to highlight the group’s onslaught. Barr’s skincrawling caw gives way to monastic harmonies with guitarist Fabian Devlin and percussionist Matt Broadley that make the men’s chorus of “Requital,” a lark of torched-church cleanliness is next to godlessness, an LP standout.

“That song was really meant to be a cross between the early Chumbawamba folk albums and a style of singing called sacred harp singing,” reveals Barr. “I was really proud of the lyrics on that song, and I feel like that’s the point on the record when we commit to the ideas of anarcho nihilism: ‘I will be a poison if I cannot be a cure.’”

From his sepulchral fiddle on “Sepulchre (Don’t Vote)” to the straight acoustics of harmonic bellringer “Freedom in Retrograde,” the word “folk” remains fundamental to Dawn Ray’d.

“Absolutely,” corroborates Barr.

“Folk music is the music of the working class. It’s how working people preserved stories, histories and culture. I think [‘Requital’] is more of a folk song than 100 acoustic songs written by right-wing black metal bands.”

Press for the new album states, “Consider To Know the Light as not just a rallying cry, but a sincere offering of a new way of looking at the world.” That way being…?

“Anarchism,” writes the adopted Liverpudlian. “As long as your rebellion is anti-hierarchical, then we’re all on the same side and have no time to lose. Fight back, don’t wait for someone else to fix this.

We’re on our own, but that’s our strength. While they slowly rot in castles and palaces, we have each other. We have sharing, community, compassion, love and greater numbers.” —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

PHOTO BY JAKE OWENS

DAWN RAY’D

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painting by sergio padovani

m idwest tou r, april 2023

romannumeralrecords.com / d e e p cr o s s . ba nd ca m p . co m ca ssette ta p e edi ti on ava il a bl e at : s o m at icau s t in. ba nd ca m p . co m

AFTERMATH

AFTERMATH

The truth is out there for tenacious Chicago thrashers

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ftermath have always been a band working against the grain—of life and the music industry, from their inception to today. Formed in 1985, the Chicago thrashers released a handful of demos and gained a degree of underground notoriety before recording their debut album, 1994’s Eyes of Tomorrow. ¶ Just one problem: Would-be label Big Chief Records ceased to exist, and Aftermath were on the hook for the cost of recording. It took them a few years to buy the album from the studio, and Aftermath broke up shortly after releasing their debut in 1994. The tech-thrashers reformed in 2015 to play a festival, and things began to gel naturally again. Aftermath released their second album, There Is Something Wrong—a concept record about “how the world works for real”—in 2019, and finished their third, No Time to Waste. Vocalist Charlie Tsiolis tells Decibel that he and his bandmates are carrying on the ideas from last album, but with a brighter approach. ¶ “No Time to Waste is the more positive side,” he explains. “It’s saying how we can fix the problems. The world doesn’t make sense, clown world— 28 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

one day you’re a villain on the news and the same day the next person contradicts something.”

He preaches the importance of knowledge throughout the record and opposes violence, singing about history he believes has been hidden or misrepresented and the military-industrial complex, going so far as to cover Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance.”

It hasn’t been a very easy—or linear—road for Aftermath to get here and, despite the fact that Tsiolis is confident that this is the best version of the band to exist, he feels that the deck has been stacked against them at times. An ill-fated first run plus a lawsuit with Dr. Dre and Interscope Records for ownership of the Aftermath name be damned—Dre launched Aftermath Entertainment as a Universal subsidiary in 1996— Tsiolis is happy to be here.

He had his doubts during pandemic lockdown—would anyone care about live music when it came

back, or was doing everything to release a third album worth it?— but recalls making the decision to bring No Time to Waste to life from demos: “I’m going to take this demo now and go on a ride, and if I’m not blown away by it, we’re not going to keep going. We’re not going to record another album.”

After not having heard Aftermath’s demos for months, Tsiolis says it was like hearing one of his favorite bands as a kid. It was music that he knew was worth releasing and sharing with the world.

“Money doesn’t matter,” Tsiolis stresses. “Nothing matters besides me thinking it’s great. I love music so much.”

No Time to Waste may not put Aftermath in the Billboard charts but Tsiolis knows he’s stayed true.

“I love great bands that release great albums for the right reasons,” he says. “They’re not big because it’s trendy; it’s just real music.”

—EMILY BELLINO

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KRUELTY

Japanese krew administer brutal slam, putrid death metal and old-school hardcore without mercy

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his is the only thing that motivates me for living. We have nowhere else to go,” laughs guitarist and songwriter Zuma. Dude is intense enough for you to realize he’s not joking, but he also seems to be fine with it, so chalk it up to maximum dedication to his art. It adds up once you’ve listened to Kruelty’s new album, Untopia—more than the mix of genres, it’s the relentless fury that catches you first. Brain-numbing slam-by-numbers or mere circle pit-fodder breakdown sausage factory, it most certainly ain’t. That dedication has a reason, too. “I started this band with a strong will to break into the rest of the world from here in Japan. It took five years, but we’re finally there. I’ll never be satisfied with myself, so we’ll keep doing this until we reach our absolute limits.” ¶ However, don’t fall into the trap of attributing the uniqueness of their sound to any kind of “exoticism” just because Kruelty are Japanese.

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“I have grown up with literally the same heavy music scene most of you guys have,” Zuma points out.

He might not have meant it like that, but it also means that there’s no excuse for any of you guys to not have come up with this startling mix of brutal styles before. Zuma even make it sound simple. Here’s the recipe: “Mostly I put some old Finnish death metal vibes like Purtenance or Rippikoulu, besides Japanese or New York hardcore elements, in our songs. At the same time, I’m heavily influenced as a songwriter by sludge or doom stuff like Corrupted, Crowbar, Electric Wizard and so on.

I don’t think there have been lots of bands before us who have evil tremolo, beatdown, and also D-beat at the same time!” As for the lyrics, cheery subjects all around, too: “Basically I write about how this world and the

system suck, and what we should do to survive here. Our singer Tatami writes similar things.”

Call it “disgusting music” to sum it up. The band does. “‘Disgusting music’ was what my mom told me Kruelty sounded like,” the guitarist laughs. “I thought it could be a good catchphrase to describe us, and seems like it did a good job of it, no?” [Laughs] Hey, it’s as good a rallying cry as any to potential fans—and there are a lot of you in that category.

“Normally a bunch of metalheads and hardcore kids are on the same floor at our gigs. Sometimes we have punks and crusties, too,” Zuma observes. “It’d be nice if metalheads started getting more into hardcore or hardcore kids started digging more extreme music because of us!” A noble goal for sure. —JOSÉ CARLOS SANTOS

PHOTO BY SEIJIRO NISHIMI

KRUELTY

interview by

QA j. bennett

W IT H

IVAR

BJØRNSON ENSLAVED’s founding guitarist on Norse mythology, black metal’s birth throes and revisiting the band’s early material

32 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

IT

had this momentous feeling of something happening. It’s no rules. But the concept is providing inspira-

like we were changing orbits.” ¶ That’s Enslaved guitarist Ivar Bjørnson talking about the writing process for Heimdal, the band’s 16th and latest album. But the moment he’s talking about actually happened while the Norwegian prog-metal squad were writing the song “Caravans to the Outer Worlds,” which appeared on an EP of the same name last year. As a result, the track appears on the new album as well. ¶ “It happened a few songs into the writing of Heimdal,” our man explains. “As we were getting the feeling of how the album would be, that song just came back and said, ‘I should be on the album also.’ Writing the EP was meant as a transition from where we were then and somewhere that we wanted to go afterwards. I didn’t realize at the time that it was actually the first song for the album. The songs that came after were a continuation of that one.” ¶ Heimdal is a concept album based around the Norse god who guards a burning rainbow bridge that leads to the heavens. Lyrically, it covers many themes under its mythological umbrella. The song and video for “Congelia,” for example, examine malaises both modern and ancient.

“For me, it’s basically about distancing ourselves from nature—both outer nature and our inner nature,” Bjørnson says. “We’re losing touch with so many aspects of what it is to be human. Of course, I don’t want to deal with a toothache like the Stone Age people did, where you have to carve out your own teeth. I prefer going to the dentist. On the other hand, it seems to be that we are scared when we see other people now. Back when we were in touch with nature, we knew nature was a scary place. We were fighting to find our place in it, so seeing another human would give you reason to rejoice. ‘Let’s sit down and look into the fire, brother. Let’s share this mead.’ It’s a cliché, but I’m getting old, so I’m allowing myself a few of those.”

Why Heimdal?

He was at the very forefront the day we started. It was the first song on our first demo, “Heimdallr.” It’s an Old Norse name. “Heimdal” is more of a modern Norwegian name. It’s one of the most mentioned gods, besides Odin, in Norse mythology. He even appeared in a movie a couple of years ago, I guess—one of the Thor Marvel movies, I believe. He’s very prominent, but he’s also one of the most mysterious ones because there’s so much cryptic stuff written about him.

A big thing in Enslaved’s universe is this connection between mythology and our deeper mental structures, the psychology of man. You have history telling us that these guys went on this ship and went there and discovered that— that’s one aspect of human history. But there’s also one that’s come more to light in the last few centuries, especially through the work of Carl Jung, and that’s mythology as our mental history.

How did we become what we are? The discoveries of almost pre-programmed archetypes and this fascinating web of phenomena like infants that can dream of animals they haven’t seen. It’s ingrained there, so to speak. For us, the local variant of that mental history is Norse mythology.

PHOTO BY ESTER SEGARR A

Enslaved have many songs and albums that examine the Norse god Odin in great detail.

What drew you to Heimdal?

Heimdal appears in a lot of weird crossroads in that mythology. There’s theories that he is another aspect of Odin—that he is the son of Odin or the father of Odin, or that he represents this kind of impending doom, that the next ruler of the world of gods will be Heimdal. So, this dialectic between Heimdal and Odin—who is who?—is also particularly intriguing. I guess that coincided with me and [Enslaved vocalist/ bassist] Grutle [Kjellson] becoming fathers. I don’t know if that’s connected—who are we to question? We just write the stuff. And we’re never gonna find the answers to this stuff, but there are so many good questions.

Did having a concept as a guideline make the songwriting easier, or did you feel confined by having those parameters?

The beauty of the concept is that it’s a conceptual framework in the abstract sense. So, everything that feels right is right. Anything that feels different just expands the concept. We still maintain the one rule that there should be

tion. For instance, when the title track is called “Heimdal,” it has to be grandiose. It gives me an abstract description of a space that needs to be filled with the right type of music. And then I just work at it until it feels like Heimdal is appearing in that song. It has to be monumental; it has to be heavy. So, the concept was definitely more of a tool than any type of confinement.

From what I can gather, Heimdal is an allknowing entity of sorts. There’s also a modern security company called Heimdal, which I thought was interesting. Is there a Big Brother aspect to your new album? Does it comment on the fact that we’re being watched?

Not really, no. I can see why a security company would call itself Heimdal because he does have that quality, that he can see and hear everything. But for me, that becomes more of a modern interpretation because there is control implied. For example, there were these vigilante groups that called themselves the Sons of Odin.

They were going around here a few years back— pretty nasty far-right stuff. I get the point that you want to be like Odin, but Odin is not the one that you would want watching your wife and children. He’s a trickster, a bit of a devil. He’ll get you drunk to seduce your wife. So, Heimdal is a pretty good name for a security company, but I’m not sure Heimdal would appreciate the connotation. But that’s just my interpretation. And let me state that I don’t have any stock in any security companies.

You released the song “Kingdom” with a video.

There’s a lot running in it. I know the idea behind the song has something to do with time. Is the idea that you can’t outrun time?

For me, the best symbol of a human being is the running man or woman. That seems to be what we have in common throughout the ages—our strand of homo sapiens were running back and forth between camps delivering messages.

It wasn’t that long ago, before we became as civilized as we are, that people were running messages across enormous distances. If it was a particularly important message, there would probably be more than one runner. Imagining the grandness of that simple act—there’s enormous connotations around it.

So, it fits very well with your interpretation.

My own interpretation is that, throughout time, there are these very big ideas that persist— ideas of individualism, of freedom, of breaking the chains of oppression. There have always been people carrying those ideas. There have always been runners among us, even though there has been no particular personal gain DECIBEL : APRIL 2023 : 33

We would get a call from England or France saying, ‘We’re doing a magazine feature and we’d like to talk to a Satanic band from the Norwegian black metal scene.’

And we’d say, ‘Okay, we can give you some phone numbers.’

Nature boys  Bjørnson (l) and Enslaved want to discuss mythology, not mayhem

The press release for the album describes it as “both a departure and a communion with roots forged over three decades ago in the turbulent birth throes of Norway’s black metal scene.”

It feels like Enslaved have been departing from that sound for a long time now—how do you see this album as a communion with that original era?

It seems that we are discovering more and more that what we learn in Norse mythology—that time is more circular than linear—is actually true. In Enslaved’s case, it’s maybe more of a spiral. We keep coming back to parts that feel closer to what we were doing in ’97 than maybe the previous album. That’s a constant kind of movement. With the lineup we’ve had in place since Utgard, we’ve had the pleasure of revisiting and playing the first two albums live—we did Frost at one of your Decibel Metal & Beer fests in Philadelphia, and we did Vikingligr Veldi twice in Norway. And now we’re doing Eld at Beyond the Gates later this year. But the way we do it is not each guy sitting down with Spotify and relearning the old songs. We treat it as if it were new material. We take it to the rehearsal room, practice each part and then piece it together. We stay true to the song, but we go through that experience.

Not only has it been a pleasurable trip down memory lane—you think of the spirit you had 34 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

when you were 16 or 17, when you’re not thinking of what you have to do the next day. You’re just there, with your best friends, playing, and everything feels incredibly metal. You’re not worrying about, “Is this riff being repeated too many times?” Speaking for myself, I’ve been very inspired by that approach—trying to push out everything else and just let the music be what it is.

Enslaved avoided many of the controversies and criminal activities of some of your peers…

Yeah, we might’ve been sleeping on the couch next to this “turbulent birth”…

How did that stuff affect you guys? Were you lumped in with the Norwegian musicians who committed the church burnings and murders simply because you were playing a similar style of music and you were friendly with some of the people involved?

For us, it was a little bit of the opposite. We shared the same sources of inspiration as the bands who created black metal, but we were careful to never label ourselves “black metal” because back then, “True Norwegian Black Metal” was a very serious stamp. There was an ideology and Satanic foundation that we didn’t relate to. So, we were a little bit on the outside.

We were colleagues and good friends with these people, but… you know, we’ve been in situations where we would get a call from England or France saying, “We’re doing a magazine feature and we’d like to talk to a Satanic band from the Norwegian black metal scene.” And

we’d say, “Okay, we can give you some phone numbers.” They’d ask, “Can we say you are Satanists?” No, sorry. So, we were at the end of the breadline there for a while because of what people wanted. They wanted people who were active in church fires and in prison and all that stuff. But that wasn’t us. We thought our turn would come eventually, when the music would become the focus again, and that’s basically what happened.

That must’ve been frustrating. Did it make you feel less connected to the music your friends were making?

I have huge respect and thankfulness, musically and artistically, for that music scene, because it really defined us as musicians. How it affected us on a personal level? I was maybe a bit too young to absorb everything that happens. I’ve maintained a certain distance. I’ve not gone to see Lords of Chaos in the cinema, for example.

What I experienced with Euronymous was a very good friend and musical mentor. We never discussed Satan or things like that. We discussed musical theory. He came to my home and gave me guitar lessons, which you can still hear in all my riffing. So, my mentor and good friend was murdered. That was pretty traumatic. It’s always been a little bit weird to see that side of it as entertainment. Then again, I’ve subscribed to reality magazine for some time now. I know that’s what people want. But I’m never going to sit down with a bucket of popcorn and watch that particular thing. I can understand it, but I can’t really relate to it.

PHOTO BY ROY BJØRGE

for these people. The video is sort of a tribute to that. You can move in any direction, culturally or timewise, and we’ll have this in common: ideas in the abstract, and people running in the physical world.

From Legendary Founder and Frontman BLAG DAHLIA of the

and MAD MARC RUDE, original father of punk art

FUCKED UP JUST RIGHT Possessed to drink  Suicidal Tendencies hold the honor of declaring last call at this year’s upcoming Metal & Beer Fest: Philly

Suicidal Tendencies, The Black Dahlia Murder, Eyehategod and Gorguts lead the erosion of sobriety at

Metal & Beer Fest Philly 2023

IF

by Kevin Stewart-Panko

the past six years—minus the worldwide clusterfuck that was 2020—and nine fests held on both coasts (as well as a mile high in the mountains adjacent to Coors’ Rocky Mountain Spring Water) hasn’t been enough to demonstrate the connection between metal and beer (not to mention the scads of evidence captured in metal’s historical photo archives of bands, beers and bands with beers), we can’t imagine what else will convince you. Still, we’ll keep trying. Maybe the 2023 edition of Metal & Beer Fest Philly will do the trick, as it once again brings together a vast array of extreme music and “adult pops” under the glorious roof of the Fillmore, a bottlecap’s throw from the shores of the Delaware River. It’s here where all and sundry can pay witness to the full-force blossoming of that relationship via a convivial community rallying around what nonconverts might see as little more than screaming noise fueled by liquid courage.

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Aside from the taste bud tantalization and sensory explosion beer can provide, liquid gold (and its various gradients) has a variety of functions swirling at the bottom of the bottle: conversation lubrication; a medium for literal scientific experimentation and discovery; a unifying fulcrum that brings people from all walks together; that which inspires one’s inner intellectual, creative beast and gatekeeping gourmand; and, of course, a distraction from life’s bullshit. Is it any surprise that music ticks those same boxes?

Is it any surprise that the combination of the two is magical and inseparably well-worn? While providing another forum for performing musicians may not be a distraction in the same way it is for someone letting loose after a weeklong PHOTO BY MISSHAGA ST

9-to-5 slog, a festival like Metal & Beer is unique enough of an event for those who play live and tour on the regular to have it circled on their calendars for reasons significant, motivational and celebratory.

FINDING STRENGTH IN SOUNDS AND SUDS

Following the shocking passing of frontman

Trevor Strnad in May 2022, the Black Dahlia Murder made the heart-wrenchingly difficult, but absolutely obvious decision to carry on. They returned to the stage in October with a reconfigured lineup that shifted guitarist and founding member Brian Eschbach to lead vocals and pulled former guitarist Ryan Knight back into the fold.

A Detroit hometown show in memory of their fallen brother has thus far been the only airing of BDM Mk.II, with a second showing of the band’s redesigned form set for April 14, the headlining slot of Metal & Beer Philly’s opening night.

“Every tragedy and ‘seriously looping curveball’ demands action,” reasons Eschbach. “You can wallow and turn [your] head to the wall and give up, or you can do everything possible to keep going. Of course, we were honored and stoked to be asked to be part of such a fun and unique festival. Albert asked us to play, and we were like ‘LET’S GO!’” Fuming Mouth’s guitarist/vocalist Mark Whelan spent the last quarter of 2021 and half of 2022 battling acute myeloid leukemia. After rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, he’s been cancer-free since August, and he and his Boston-based gang of crusty miscreants are using their appearance to celebrate both life and death—death metal, that is.

“Decibel Metal & Beer Fest Philly was the first concert we agreed to play since my battle with cancer,” he says. “Once Albert found out I was healthy and ready to perform, he made it happen.

It gave us the push to start playing live again.”

For Luc Lemay of Can-Am prog-death legends Gorguts, being booked into 2023’s edition of the festival was the spark he needed to put mindbending death metal back atop his priority list; Lemay has endured a tough couple of years in which he was thrust into an emotionally taxing caregiving role while keeping busy fulfilling work contracts for the city of Sherbrooke, Quebec.

“We’ve had a few offers to play live, but the last year-plus has been a tough situation with parents getting older and my girlfriend and I becoming their power of care, taking them to the hospital and appointments and stuff,” he explains. “I wanted to be here to help her out.

Plus, my woodcarving business was doing a lot of work for the city during the pandemic, so I was putting aside all offers for shows and the

band ended up so far down on my [priority] list.

After we got the offer to play, I figured it would be good for my mental health because if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities that life gives you, the next thing you know, five years flies by!”

When we catch up with Lemay, it’s the day after he and drummer Patrice Hamelin have barreled through another refresher rehearsal of material from 1991 debut Considered Dead.

Alongside that, they will also be dusting off classics from 1998’s avant-garde game-changer Obscura, and are poised as one of four bands preparing special sets of classic albums for Metal & Beer Philly. In the case of Eyehategod, Suicidal Tendencies and Incantation, who are respectively performing 1993’s Take as Needed for Pain, 1983’s Suicidal Tendencies and 1998’s Diabolic Conquest, the task is comparatively simple. As none of that terror-inducing trio have gone on hiatus since their initial inception, and all are coming off or preparing for tours, it’s more a matter of transferring present-day energy and sharpness towards that handful of songs still in their live sets, then dusting off the deep cuts.

“Most people, newer fans and old, seem to gravitate towards Take as Needed for Pain,” explains Eyehategod vocalist Mike “IX” Williams, “and that’s the album where we kind of found what we wanted to sound like. We still play most of the songs off that album, and can pull the others out of a hat if needed. So, when they asked, we said, ‘Sure!’ It sounds like a cool time and our set will be fun.”

The tricky part is what do bands unearth when there’s time for one more? What’s that one more going to be when you have doubledigit numbers of albums and/or triple-digit numbers of songs to choose from? Most of the above are keeping what they will be unleashing for the remainder of their special sets under tight wraps, possibly because given the wealth of material to select from, they’re still overwhelmed at the prospect, but in the case of Gorguts, the task is a bit more daunting given that the band hasn’t played together since orange shit stains were being smeared all over the furniture in the Oval Office.

“I’m about 98 percent done relearning all the Considered Dead stuff,” Lemay updates. “I haven’t played these songs in 30 years, man, but it’s so much fun and I’m so excited about jamming!

I’m rejuvenated and can’t tell you how happy and pumped I am about playing again and getting ready for the show. Patrice and I have been jamming, and we’re going to New York in a couple weeks to have our first jam as a four-piece [with guitarist Kevin Hufnagel and bassist Colin Marston] in six years.”

MORE POWER. MORE PAIN.

THE NEW ALBUM OUT 3.17.23

DECIBEL : APRIL 2023 : 37

S P EC I A L

Preview

We’ll be performing songs from our upcoming studio album.

BE READY TO HEADBANG. BRING A NECK BRACE. Mark Whelan, Fuming Mouth

PARTY ON... EVERYONE

In addition to providing escapism, incentive

and fortitude in numbers, playing Metal & Beer is a chance for many of the onstage participants to indulge in two of their favorite activities in one place.

“Fuming Mouth has drank a lot of beer over the years, and we’ve listened to a lot of metal. I’d say the two have fueled the band,” asserts Whelan.

His declaration is followed by Undeath vocalist Alex Jones commenting that, “Getting drunk and watching a band play loud metal music right in front of you is one of life’s most singularly beautiful treasures.”

While breweries TRVE, Broken Goblet, Adroit Theory, Wake, Cosmic Eye, the ubiquitous 3 Floyds, flagship meadery Brimming Horn and nine others will allow indulgence of their liquid wares, the diverse lineup that brings together the sounds of death, doom, sludge and black metal—as well as thrashy hardcore punk, grind and metallic hardcore—is also something all involved are looking forward to diving into.

“We never fit into anything, and that was always our thing,” says Simon Brody of reunited metallic hardcore anomalies Drowningman, “and I’m psyched that the day we’re playing [April 15] is all bands that don’t completely fit.

Suicidal Tendencies don’t completely fit into punk, metal or hardcore; they’re their own 38 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

thing. Eyehategod: What the fuck are they?! We ended up on the same bill as them once, and while there’s no similarity in the sound, there’s similarity in the fact that we’re outsiders. That’s the one thing I appreciate about this festival is the sort of celebration of bands that don’t fit into whatever genre completely.”

“All bias aside,” adds Undeath’s Jones, “the lineup is truly bonkers this year. The Black Dahlia Murder coming back swinging is an obvious highlight for all of us, but personally speaking, the name that really made my jaw drop was Drowningman. How fucking sick is that? Drowningman! In 2023! And I’m going to be wasted! What a treat! I also can't wait to see Mizmor and Incantation’s Diabolical Conquest set. Also very much looking forward to catching Gorguts again—it’s been way too long.”

The feeling is mutual, and the love-in that tends to emerge and converge around necking beers as distortion pedals and pounding drums push air around a room crammed with brewers, vendors and 2,000 punters continues, as expressed by Black Dahlia Murder’s Eschbach.

“For us, these occasions are always a refreshing pallet of sound. A chance to see and play with groups and genres we don’t get to in our normal course of touring. Festivals of similar variety are commonplace in Europe during the summer, and we love that shit! Super stoked to reconnect with the Gorguts and Undeath dudes.”

Other performers this year include freshfaced Texas death metal heavyweights Frozen Soul, blackened death/doom Lovecraft lovers Worm, the cave-imploding death metal swarm of Phobophilic and the machine shop blast of Escuela Grind. Also making an appearance are recent cover stars and metallic hardcore graybeards All Out War, who will be one of 14 bands (i.e., all of them) that will have collaboration beers flowing at the fest.

“Years ago, I belonged to a beer club,” laughs AOW frontman Mike Score, “and I’ve made my own beer before. It was definitely an experience, even though I had no idea what I was doing. But it was less than poisonous. For the festival, we’re going up to Boston to Bone Up Brewery to actually help brew the beer they’re doing for us.”

When you pair this much beer with that much extreme music and drop the mix in one of Philly’s best live music rooms, the results promise to be marvelously charismatic and jovial; enough to make you wonder how people are able to stop talking metal, catching up with friends and just plain smiling to actually get swigs of beer down their gullets. Exclusive sets aside, bands are promising to bring their best for attendees and peers alike.

“Our plan is to play as many of the new songs [off of new album Celestial Rot] as we can,” reveals Score. “We’ll probably do a lot of songs off of For Those Who Were Crucified, but I’m really psyched to start playing the new stuff.”

Says Whelan: “We’ll be performing songs from our upcoming studio album. Be ready to headbang. Bring a neck brace.”

“Brian Patton is going to join us!,” enthuses Williams, unveiling Eyehategod’s planned surprise. “He left the band to take care of his family, but he played guitar on the album and is going to be back. So, we’re going to be playing as a five-piece.”

“I tell you, man,” smiles Lemay, “going from the Considered Dead to Obscura material… it’s like two different bands. But this is what it’s all about: being with good friends, doing what you love, playing and listening to music you love.”

“We didn’t set out to return to be a reunion band,” asserts Brody, “but that being said, we’ll probably be playing more material from [2000 album] Rock and Roll Killing Machine. But we have the new stuff and the reissue of [1998’s] Busy Signal at the Suicide Hotline is coming out a month before. It’s hard, I don’t know. How about I say we’re going to show up and play?”

On time?

“Hey, don’t get ahead of yourself!”

And as far as Eschbach, the gent thrust into frontman position at the hand of tragedy, is concerned, “Everything is out of the ordinary for us at this point. Let’s have a ball!”

S P EC I A L

Preview

One of Metal & Beer Fest: Philly’s calling cards is the special band and brewer beer collaborations exclusively debuting at the Fillmore throughout the weekend.

Highlighted here is just a small flight from a few of our featured breweries.

3 FLOYDS BREWING x FROZEN SOUL: “Berried in Ice” Kettle Sour

“Brutally executed old-school death metal is what we live for, so when the opportunity to do a collab with Frozen Soul came about, the answer was ‘FUCK YES!’” says 3 Floyds brewmaster Chris Boggess. “For Philly, we teamed up with the old-school torch-bearers to create Berried in Ice, a kettle sour with flavors of blue raspberry, cherry and lime. Brain freeze be damned.”

WAKE BREWING x EYEHATEGOD: “Southern Discomfort” Pilsner

“To say we are excited to slay this collaboration alongside one of our favorite bands is a complete understatement,” exclaims Jason Parris, co-owner of Wake Brewing.

“I have been able to work/book EHG a few times over the past 12 years, and [they’re] still one of the only bands to put me in that dopesick-induced trance. Expect this beer to be the perfect companion for you during Metal & Beer Fest; take as needed for pain in the pit.”

WIDOWMAKER BREWING x GORGUTS: “Obscura” Czech Dark Lager

“Obscura will be a Czech Dark Lager, brewed with a blend of Weyermann Floor Malted Pilsner and a few specialty malts, with the goal of pushing max flavor with a simple recipe and hyper attention to process,” says Ryan Lavery, Widowmaker founder. “We decocted this, fermented it cold and spunded

40 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

it during the tail end of fermentation to build that natural carb. Pouring dark with a beautiful tan head, this beer is incredibly crushable at 5.1% with a ton of body and subtle complexity. We’re getting notes of chocolate and oatmeal cookies.”

MAGNANIMOUS BREWING x WORM: “Shadowside” Helles Bock

“‘Shadowside’ Helles Bock 6.66% ABV is brewed with Cara Hell malt and Grungiest Hops,” says Magnanimous owner Michael Lukacina. “Helles Bock is a traditional lager style brewed to have a fuller malt character, as well as more alcohol. We decided to add a modern twist and choose grungeist [Green Ghost] hops for a modern touch. Worm’s albums are in constant rotation on the brewhouse floor and, as fellow Floridians, we are proud to represent the Florida beer and metal culture at such an epic event.”

BONE UP BREWING x ALL OUT WAR: “Caustic Abomination” Strong Farmhouse Ale

“When we met with All Out War to discuss ideas for our next brutal beer, we were stoked to find common ground in our love of Belgian-style beers!” says Bone Up co-founder Jared Kiraly. “These heavy hitters are complex and unapologetic, just like AOW’s Celestial Rot! We’ll be offering a monster of a farmhouse ale for Philly’s Fest, featuring MAand NY-grown hops and grains, with a kick of ginger and locally sourced honey to add an extra layer of tasty!”

KINGS COUNTY BREWERS COLLECTIVE x UNDEATH: “Rise From the Grave” Maibock Lager

“The concept is loosely inspired by Genesee’s spring bock beer—Genesee Brewing is also based in Rochester,” says KCBC co-founder Zack Kinney. “We’re extremely excited to be working together on this beer. We’ve been big fans of Undeath for quite a while now, and we’re confident that with their unholy influence, we shall bring forth a deliciously gnarly lager—perfect for springtime crushing and surviving the zombie apocalypse.”

BRIMMING HORN MEADERY x INCANTATION: “Goat’s Blood” Wine (made with honey, grapes and cherries)

“A sweet, complex and bold wine made from 55% honey, 30% grapes and 15% cherries,” say the Vikings at Brimming Horn Meadery. “A quarter-century of death metal is celebrated in this bottle; indulge it under an ibex moon!”

COSMIC EYE BREWING x PHOBOPHILIC: “Cathedrals of Blood” German Style Sour

“Cosmic Eye is beyond stoked to be returning to Philly for Decibel Metal & Beer Fest in April,” says Sam Riggins, Cosmic Eye founder/owner. “We’re excited to be teamed up with Phobophilic this round so we can show you all what we’re up to out here on the Great Plains! Watch out, Philly… we’re coming for all your sandwiches!”

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

Die to Be Set Free the making of At the Gates’ Terminal Spirit Disease APRIL 2023 : 4 2 : DECIBEL

by

chris dick

W

e’ve talked about the New Wave of

Swedish Death Metal ad nauseam for the better part of our 19-year history.

Admittedly, part of that’s my fault, but denying the impact the city of Gothenburg (and its attendant suburbs) has had on the vulgar island we call home is folly. The truculent triad of In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and gold medallers At the Gates substantiates the claim that Stockholm wasn’t the only epicenter of death metal.

That all three have gone on to wider audiences and deeper meaning isn’t surprising. They had the talent, drive and work ethic to make where they are today. In fact, all three have won Swedish Grammys. All three have toured the globe multiple times. But only one, At the Gates, has three fucking Hall of Fames to their credit, with 1994’s controversial Terminal Spirit Disease roaring in 29 years after its inauspicious release on Peaceville Records.

To understand Terminal Spirit Disease is to go back in time. Between 1992 and 1993, At the Gates were in a transitional phase. The 20-year-olds had released two full-lengths The Red in the Sky Is Ours and With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness. The eldest (by five years) and most off-center contributor of the group, Alf Svensson, was on his way out. The innovative guitarist/songwriter had enough of pretty much everything. Sensing the need to pivot, the remaining members of At the Gates—vocalist Tomas Lindberg, bassist Jonas Björler, guitarist Anders Björler and drummer Adrian Erlandsson—simply followed their guts. Less Watchtower, more Slayer.

Actually, more thrash, doom and hard rock. The Björler brothers were now the songwriting primaries, and they were eager to dust off old-school passions in search of a new sound. They hired House of Usher guitarist Martin Larsson to fill Svensson’s void while they honed in on what would become the machinery that eventually constructed their genre-defining, genre-creating hallmark full-length Slaughter of the Soul.

Terminal Spirit Disease is that enginery. Concise, ridiculously air guitar-worthy, yet rife with red-hot aggression, At the Gates were able to harness and distill their most cherished twentysomething ideals into “The Swarm,” “Forever Blind,” “The Fevered Circle,” “The Beautiful Wound” and the title track. Back then, the world wasn’t quite ready for At the Gates Mark II. It shared little with its predecessors, apart from Lindberg’s exasperated howl. In many ways, Terminal Spirit Disease conflicted with the peers of its time. Not only because it featured a bewilderingly modern cover piece, but because it went straight for the throat, and did so with all of the heft and brevity of Reign in Blood.

Almost a decade has passed since we bestowed The Red in the Sky Is Ours with Hall of Fame honors and another 18 unbelievable years have (kingdom fucking) gone since we locked evergreen slaymaster Slaughter of the Soul behind our Hall’s gnarly gates. Not to be outdone by youthful vigor or overshadowed by a late-life triumph, At the Gates’ unsung third album, Terminal Spirit Disease, hereby storms into Decibel’s house despondent, teeth bared and violently incandescent.

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AT THE GATES

Terminal Spirit Disease PEACEVIL L E JULY 18, 1994

Spirit fingers activated!

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AT THE GATES terminal spirit disease

A year separates With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness from Terminal Spirit Disease. Alf Svensson was no longer part of the lineup.

Describe the time and band sentiment leading up to Terminal Spirit Disease.

ANDERS BJÖRLER: In the early days, we were all teenagers. We were still in school. And most of us still lived with our parents. We were very excited, but also very impulsive. By 1994, we had moved out to our own apartments in town. The band was up and running—it wasn’t a job, but economically we had things set up. I remember Alf telling me almost in confidence that when we got back from the mixing of With Fear, he was leaving the band. Alf didn’t want to tour. He wanted to focus on his tattoo business. I think he also wanted to start up a studio, work there Monday to Friday with weekends off. Touring wouldn’t fit in with that type of schedule.

I can’t speak for Alf, but I also think he probably felt he couldn’t get all his musical ideas through. The writing process in the band was democratic. We arranged songs together. Also, our early tours were very punk. We were in vans, no real income and all that. When we got in an accident while on tour with My Dying Bride, he got a guitar amp rammed into his back.

He got really hurt. Also, Alf was five-six years older than the rest of us. These things combined played a role in him leaving the band. That’s when Martin [Larsson] took over. We had been in contact with Martin ever since we played with Bolt Thrower in Eskilstuna.

JONAS BJÖRLER: The first two records, The Red in the Sky [Is Ours] and With Fear, were progressive and experimental. Before starting Terminal, I think we discussed wanting a simpler approach.

By that I mean fewer riffs. Some of our older songs had like 25-30 riffs. Now, we wanted to concentrate. We all listened to hard rock and heavy metal, so I think it was more like, “Can’t we just combine them all?” Do something cool.

It’s all riff-based, but [we wanted to] make it easier to listen to. Straight-up verse, chorus, verse, solo. In my view, even though I was still in school, the main focus was the band. We rehearsed three-four days a week. We shared the rehearsal space—our first real rehearsal space— with two other bands.

TOMAS LINDBERG: Looking back, I think we had to reconfigure the band a bit. For us, With Fear—the production wasn’t all that great—was the pinnacle of At the Gates. Without Alf, though, for us to do another album like that wasn’t really possible. Most of the avant-garde stuff came from Alf. We pushed that as far as we could without repeating ourselves. Now, we’ve done that a couple of times after that. [Laughs] Martin was already in the band when With Fear was released.

He actually played a few shows with us doing

 And the riff returned

Anders Björler (l) and Tomas Lindberg at their rehearsal space in Gothenburg, circa 1994

“We just didn’t want to repeat ourselves too much, go too far up our own asses. It’s actually harder for a band that’s already gone ambitiously weird to then focus.”

TO MAS LIND B E RG With Fear songs. He’s from House of Usher, and before that, Macrodex. He was one of us almost immediately. Actually, I think we asked Mattias [Kennhed] from House of Usher to join as well, but he declined.

We already knew Martin was a proficient guitar player—no, he was a gifted guitar player!

He was different from Alf. He was more of a guitar player, whereas Alf was inventive and all over the place. So, this was a period of change for us. It was 1993-1994. We were like 20-21, an early stage of life to have a band and then to have it reinvented. But we didn’t reflect on that much.

At the Gates was all we ever wanted to do. We just fired away with naivety and ambition. [Laughs] MARTIN LARSSON: I was a huge Alf fan—I still am! That’s the only sad thing with me joining At the Gates. It wasn’t At the Gates without Alf. I wanted to play with him! Alf, as I understand it, is an old punk turned experimental. My school is Metallica. I figured out Metallica riffs in my bedroom. We’re from different styles.

Anyway, House of Usher didn’t do many shows. Five total, and two of them were with At the Gates. Me and my friend—with the help of my employer, who owned a record store in my hometown Eskilstuna—booked Bolt Thrower.

APRIL 2023 : 4 4 : DECIBEL

We wanted some local bands. We had meant to book Grotesque, but they had morphed into At the Gates. We got them unheard, actually.

I was amazed by the music as soon as I heard their soundcheck. Me and Jonas became friends that day.

I had the At the Gates demo, Gardens of Grief, the Monday after. So, we continued to write to one another. We sent each other rehearsals. When Alf quit, I was one of the few guys they called to fill in. Since I was constantly going back and forth from Eskilstuna to Gothenburg, my memories of that time are hazy. I think I’d go to Gothenburg for a full week and then go back home for three weeks. I’d repeat that, more or less, until I moved to Gothenburg right before we broke up.

ADRIAN ERLANDSSON: Obviously, it was sad to see Alf go, but we all saw it coming for a while before it actually happened. When Martin joined, it was a fresh lease on life. We started gaining some attention. So, overall, it was a positive experience.

Was there a sense that the songs needed to be streamlined?

A. BJÖRLER: We did have discussions when Alf

was still in the band about making our songs

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AT THE GATES terminal spirit disease

 Ushering in a new era

A fresh-faced Larsson (l) makes his promo photo debut in the Gothenburg publication Aveny, October 1993

straightforward, but there was no official plan.

Tomas didn’t want to do the overly complex stuff anymore. Alf was against that, obviously. We never had arguments. The process was entirely creative within the band itself. We were democratic in the way that we arranged our music.

For me, the songs on Terminal came out naturally.

I liked Alf’s songwriting ideas, and I still do.

They’re really original. You can hear the influence—the way he used melodies—he had on us in “Terminal Spirit Disease,” “The Swarm” and “The Beautiful Wound.” [When we started] the band, we were listening to all kinds of things: classical, stuff like Dead Can Dance, death metal, opera, jazz, world music, pop/rock, thrash— everything! We were sponges, sucking up everything. You can hear all that meshing together on The Red in the Sky and With Fear. The music became very schizophrenic. [Laughs] Terminal Spirit Disease is much less so. It’s more a catalyzation of Slayer, Trouble and Thin Lizzy.

J. BJÖRLER: The main factor here is that Alf had left the band. He was the more experimental guy. He had very different influences. Me and Anders had a more straightforward approach to songwriting. I didn’t write too much on the first two albums, but Anders did. That said, Anders was pretty inspired by Alf’s writing on the first two. For Terminal, I think Anders’ style evolved.

LINDBERG: We ended up with songs that were more compressed, to-the-point. So, I think at the time, we knew we had something—a direction. I will say this was a time when we started to look back to where we came from, what we listened to

when we first discovered more aggressive metal like Dark Angel and Slayer. We realized we were still very passionate about those bands. But I don’t think we ever said, “Hey, we need to move away from the earlier stuff ’cause nobody ever understood it.” We just didn’t want to repeat ourselves too much, go too far up our own asses.

It’s actually harder for a band that’s already gone ambitiously weird to then focus. [Laughs] LARSSON: It was a challenge. When you’re in that period of life as a musician, you want to push the envelope. At the Gates had already done that.

They already had songs with 15 riffs. Their challenge was to keep the spirit, but streamline it by writing different types of songs. Everybody talks about At the Gates going commercial—or selling out—around this time. But it doesn’t matter if At the Gates were verse-chorus-verse or a riff salad; it didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to sell. For me, I didn’t have any influence on their music style. I think it’s more the case of them wanting to test that direction, and knowing my playing House of Usher, they knew I could pull it off.

cassette deck and set it to max so it distorted.

We had overdriven the signal into the cassette deck to get distortion. [Laughs] When you don’t have money, you find solutions to everything.

Back to songwriting, I’d often give Tomas riffs upon which he’d write lyrics. Then, when we rehearsed, we’d put it all together.

Our rehearsal room was shared with other bands ’cause we couldn’t afford our own and they were pretty hard to find. While we rehearsed, we recorded demos on a small, tiny cassette player, which we covered with blankets—or clothing—so that the recordings wouldn’t get too distorted.

ERLANDSSON: The riffs and songs that the twins were bringing to practice were a lot more straightforward, and it felt more to the point. With the simpler arrangements, I aimed for a more simple approach to the drum parts. It was around this time that we started doing the “Slayer beat” against the triplet riffs, which I really enjoyed.

J. BJÖRLER: There’s only five-six songs on Terminal. We wrote the songs pretty fast. Anders came up with the idea for “Terminal Spirit Disease.” We wrote that in a couple of days. The process was really smooth and fast.

LINDBERG: We moved more to the rehearsal space for Terminal. The songs—the arrangements— were written together. Anders and Jonas were definitely driven. They were writing a lot of riffs. So, I think the songwriting was pretty natural. Before, Alf always had almost all the songs worked out in his head. He’d give us cassettes with the drum machine parts and everything.

LARSSON: My memory is that every time I went to Gothenburg, we had a lot of new material to learn. We were mostly learning all the new stuff, beating it into shape. We memorized everything.

Every time we rehearsed, we’d record it like a blueprint. “The Fevered Circle” was basically my song. Anders contributed one riff. As I remember it, these were riffs I already had. The song wasn’t written specifically for At the Gates. I left the riffs with them, and they organized the song around them. It didn’t really turn out the way I wanted it to. The drums aren’t what I imagined, really. I think it might’ve turned out better if it had been done in a different band.

Lyrically, what were you exploring?

What were the songwriting sessions for Terminal Spirit Disease like?

A. BJÖRLER: We all wrote at home. None of us had

any money to buy fancy instruments or recording devices. This was also a couple of years before the home computer revolution. I had previously written music in our parents’ basement. We had an old stereo for a guitar amp. The cassette deck had microphone inputs on it. I connected my guitar through the microphone input on the APRIL 2023 : 4 6 : DECIBEL

LINDBERG: This is also the point where we went from one idea [the previous albums] to the next, which was Slaughter of the Soul. There’s a little bit of the philosophical, metaphor-heavy stuff from the early days mixed with social commentary. A large portion of Terminal deals with internal struggle. I also tried to step up my English game. [Laughs] On Terminal, I was trying to find my tone. I had to do Terminal in order to do Slaughter of the Soul.

DBHOF220

AT THE GATES terminal spirit disease

Tell me about the cover art by Frequent Form.

They were a Swedish design firm that had done covers for Swedish artists like Bo Hansson, Samla Mammas Manna and Stillborn. What do you remember about that experience?

A. BJÖRLER: We were very scared about letting

outside people in. We were in a little creative bubble. We liked to do everything ourselves.

Now I think it’s best to leave stuff like covers to professionals, but back then we did it all. I think you can tell that on The Red in the Sky. [Laughs] We were protective, like a secret club. Nobody had to know what we were up to. Not that we’d tell anyone anyway.

I think the cover came down to wanting to move fast. We had Martin in the band, we had a new record to record, and we wanted all this stuff done quickly. Full speed or nothing! I seem to remember Tomas sent them lyrics and maybe some pointers of what we had wanted. The art ended up coming to us on deadline. Tomas was on a press trip with the Peaceville guys in Europe. I think what went down was the artwork was sent by Frequent Form to Peaceville, and the Peaceville office faxed the artwork to Tomas. I think Dolores, the record store in Gothenburg, also got a fax of it. So, the rest of us in Sweden got a peek as well. Anyway, the label guys wanted Tomas to okay the cover. So, we all said, “Yeah, that looks good.” Faxes are black and white, remember. A couple of weeks later, the real cover—in color—showed up. It had yellows, pinks, greens on it. It’s fair to say we were all shocked. [Laughs] Alf did the logo and all the calligraphy on the inside of Terminal. We wanted to include him.

LINDBERG: I think they had done the Misery Loves Co. albums. I can’t remember who recommended them, though. I’m sure we were looking for something different at the time. Getting an art firm seemed like a good choice. We gave [Frequent Form] the lyrics. I’m not sure if they heard the album before. I know we described the emotional themes, and I guess they went for the desperation part of it. It’s an angst-ridden picture, but the color scheme is a little bit off for us. [Laughs] People remember it. If we can thank Frequent Form for anything, it’s the logo that Kristian [Wåhlin] revamped for Slaughter of the Soul.

LARSSON: It is what it is. I don’t mind it. I’m sure whoever had the vision of what it was going to be—whomever instigated the whole cover thing—was really disappointed. [Laughs] What was the transition from Sunlight Studios to Studio Fredman like?

A. BJÖRLER: Fredman, at the time, wasn’t a pro-

fessional studio. Sunlight wasn’t really a professional studio either. I mean, [Tomas Skogsberg] started out as a hobbyist and only later made

money off Sunlight ’cause everyone wanted to record there. For Fredrik [Nordström], we were one of his first bands. OK, he did Desecrator, which became Ceremonial Oath, who then became HammerFall later. So, we weren’t the first. Those connections, however, are what made us want to record with Fredrik. Back then, he was based further out in the city. The actual recording is something I can’t remember at all, though. [Laughs] I think it was all done in two weeks. The budget wasn’t anything, really. Every night, we’d take the communal bus home, which was nice, but in the mornings, it was frustrating ’cause we were always waiting on Fredrik to show up to the studio. He was always late. Always.

ERLANDSSON: Sunlight Studios was great, but at Fredman we were able to bring all our own equipment, and after a full day in the studio you could go home and sleep in your own bed.

Fredman was pushing me as a drummer in a very different way from when we recorded at

“It is what it is.

I don’t mind it.

I’m sure whoever had the vision of what it was going to be— whomever instigated the whole cover thing— was really disappointed.”

M A RT IN LA RSSO N Sunlight Studios. [Fredrik was] telling me to hit harder the whole time. This is where my drumming style really started to change.

J. BJÖRLER: We always wanted to record in our hometown. Maybe not in the same place [ART Studio] that we had recorded The Red in the Sky. That wasn’t a good experience. Fredman gave us another chance, though. We did two demo tracks at Fredman before Terminal. We were quite happy with that, which is why we went with Fredrik.

LINDBERG: We recorded a demo with Fredrik before With Fear. It was a two-song demo with Alf. The songs were “Ever-Opening Flower” and “The Architects,” which are on the countless Peaceville reissues. Not sure if many know this, but it’s actually Oscar [Dronjak], who used to sing in Ceremonial Oath and is now obviously in HammerFall, on backing vocals on “The Architects.” So, we had worked with Fredrik before. He knew more about this kind of music than the other producers in Gothenburg. He had just moved to a bigger studio, which is where we also recorded Slaughter of the Soul. I think Fredrik APRIL 2023 : 4 8 : DECIBEL

was also interested in working with signed bands, not just struggling local demo bands, so he was keen on performing as well. That’s where our relationship started.

LARSSON: It’s coming up on 30 years and the sessions for Terminal and Slaughter were roughly a year apart, so it’s hard to tell which is which now. I was there, in the studio, for maybe a week while Terminal was being recorded. I remember that because Slaughter was five weeks in the studio, of which I was home for a lot of it. I do remember I wasn’t there full-time for either Terminal or Slaughter.

FREDRIK NORDSTRÖM: At the time, I had a TASCAM MS-16 tape recorder and a Soundcraft Spirit recording console. That was 16 tracks. I remember they demanded that I upgrade to a 24-track recording console for Slaughter of the Soul.

I was moving in that direction anyway, so it was more of a win-win. [Laughs] Terminal Spirit Disease was your last release on Peaceville. How did the originally intended EP become a full-length?

A. BJÖRLER: Well, the [original] contract was with

Deaf, not Peaceville. We didn’t know that when we signed the contract. That was a surprise to us, actually. It was a weird situation. We were already recording The Red in the Sky before we had the contract, and we were lucky to have made it out of it alive without owing thousands of dollars. Typical of the times. [Laughs] There are some memories leaning towards the fact that Terminal was the album we made to get out of the contract. I’m not sure that’s true. We had six songs ready. Maybe we discussed using three live songs to make it a full-length as a way to satisfy the third album option in our contract, but it’s hard for me to recall that exactly. Looking back, albums were worth so much to us. I’m not sure the concept of a mini-album appealed to us as “album guys.”

JONAS BJÖRLER: We tried to get out of the deal with an EP, but that wasn’t going to work. We added the live songs to make it an LP. It was a strategic move, I think. Back then, we were so satisfied with the first four songs that we had written, we were eager to get the EP released as fast as possible. When we talked to Hammy [Paul Halmshaw], I think he said that the EP wouldn’t fulfill the last option in the deal. That’s why we came up with the idea to add live tracks.

LINDBERG: Terminal Spirit Disease was our first release on Peaceville proper. The Red in the Sky and With Fear were released on Deaf, which, as you know, is Peaceville’s sub-label. We were psyched about our first release on the main label, though. Peaceville had done this major deal with Music for Nations and there’d be better distribution. We were really happy with the way the EP sounded. As I remember it, Peaceville turned around and said, “You need to deliver a full album.” Of course, we didn’t know

DIRECTOR’S CUTS 02/24/2023

NEW ALBUM

CARCINOGENESIS OUT 03/03/2023

C H R O N O S OUT 02/03/2023

DBHOF220

AT THE GATES terminal spirit disease Swarming Gothenburg  At the Gates recording their live set opening for Carcass at the Magasinet, February 16, 1994

how to do stuff [like negotiate], so they suggested adding live tracks to it, about which we were pretty skeptical. We just wanted an EP. We recorded it early after Alf left to show the new style of the band—our new idea. Adding old songs that had been recorded live wasn’t our most favorite idea ever. We didn’t think that we could argue the point, so we just did it.

The live tracks were recorded at the Magasinet venue in Gothenburg.

That was with Carcass and around the same time as the studio sessions, right?

A. BJÖRLER: Was fun to open for

very curious if we were going to record their show, too. [Laughs] I think it came out okay in the end, but whenever I listen to Terminal, I don’t listen to the live tracks.

Tell me about the music video for “Terminal Spirit Disease.”

A. BJÖRLER: That was done after the Magasinet

[venue] show with Carcass. I think the video was filmed in the summer of 1994. We opened the doors early for a gig so we could record the video.

We made like four or five shoots for “Terminal Spirit Disease.” The audience was in on it, too.

There was an invitation—fliers—to come to the shoot. In a sense, it’s not live, but since we played it four or five times, it’s live. [Laughs] That’s how the video was made. The original concept for the music video also involved a kind of Natural Born Killers-like storyline, which we later scrapped because we thought it turned out too cheesy. That, or it didn’t fit the song.

ERLANDSSON: The acting parts were filmed at a separate location, and as I remember it, they were massively cut down from the first cut to the final version that we had settled on. I wish I had a copy of the first cut. The live parts were filmed during one of our gigs in Gothenburg. I believe we opened the doors early for the people that were gonna be part of the video. Very exciting times!

J. BJÖRLER: That was done by a friend of ours from the south of Sweden. He had access to really affordable recording equipment. He was working for a communal thing, a project in the south of Sweden. He borrowed stuff cheaply. I think it was filmed on 16mm video cameras. It was our first time having a real video, which was kind of nice.

APRIL 2023 : 50 : DECIBEL

Do you remember much about the tours before and after Terminal Spirit Disease?

A. BJÖRLER: Before the 1994 tour with Anathema

and Cradle of Filth, we really only toured the U.K. with other Peaceville/Deaf bands [like Anathema and My Dying Bride]. Whenever we played in Sweden, it was mostly at youth centers and smalltime venues, often booked with help from guys in the scene, by the cities or communes. We never got any money other than to pay for the trip to the venue. I think we got soda and maybe some crisps to make it all worth it. [Laughs] The Anathema and Cradle of Filth tour was before we recorded Terminal Spirit Disease, actually.

It was basically a tour hanging out with hoodlums from the U.K. We didn’t even have a tour manager. The three bands somehow managed to get a tour bus and a driver, and off we went. Anathema brought one of their brothers. He was hired as a beer roadie. His only task every night was to get the right amount of beer according to our riders.

I’m not sure we even had riders, actually. [Laughs] On the same tour, we actually skipped the last couple of shows ’cause we found out we didn’t have tickets to get home. Nobody had arranged our trip home. Of course, we didn’t know that.

Anathema had to pay for our train tickets back to Sweden with their merch money, and they then used that as an excuse to blackmail Peaceville. [Laughs] ERLANDSSON: The [headline] tour [in 1995] was an absolute disaster. We had this guy who wanted to be our booking agent. He presented some tour dates to us and we agreed without really being too concerned about the business side of things.

We got Ancient Rites and Seance to join us on the trek, which was meant to be about three weeks long. Our tour manager got robbed—

PHOTO BY THOMAS BRANDEBY

Carcass back then. But I don’t think they [the idea of the live tracks and the gig] were initially connected. We had already started to record, and I think there was some discussion about using the live tracks for the release. It’s all a bit fuzzy now.

Fredrik recorded the album. We asked him if he would record the live tracks as well. They had a studio under Magasinet. We asked if we could borrow the studio for that night. They set up the live feed, but six or seven songs in, Martin’s guitar stack got flipped over after people rushed the stage. They knocked him and his whole cabinet over. We had to re-amp those tracks after.

The funny part of that story is later that night, Fredrik and his assistant went out drinking.

When he woke up the next day, the tape of the live show was missing. Fredrik panicked. He started calling everyone to see if they had seen the tape. Luckily, he went back to where they had been drinking the night before. There it was, under the table in a plastic bag.

NORDSTRÖM: We went to a bar after [the gig] and we got smashed drunk. I forgot the tapes on the bar. In the morning when I woke, I was like, “Where the fuck are the tapes?!” I couldn’t believe it! I said to myself, “Fuuuuck!” [Laughs] I had a student who saw them and picked them up from the bar. Otherwise, the live recordings as they are today would’ve never happened.

LARSSON: That’s the one memory I do have.

[Laughs] They didn’t always knock over the guitar stacks, but people going crazy onstage with us was normal. We always had people onstage with us.

I remember we played a show in Glasgow. Tomas invited people on stage, and there were so many people, I couldn’t even move my arm to play the guitar. I think I just went offstage. [Laughs] LINDBERG: Magasinet was the venue for metal in Gothenburg. Fredrik was able to bring a [recording] desk in. I remember Carcass were a bit suspicious of us recording the show. They were

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AT THE GATES terminal spirit disease

Heading for disaster  Photos from At the Gates’ failed first headlining run with Seance, circa 1994

or so he claimed—after the first gig. After that, the finances crumbled, but as it turned out, the booking agent had not added all the numbers up and the tour broke down after the second gig.

We were stranded in Norwich [U.K.] for a few days while we tried to borrow money to come back with the bus that we had not yet paid for.

[Patrik] Jensen, in Seance, came to the rescue in the end by arranging a contract for us with Black Mark Records. We signed a deal with them, which they faxed to a petrol station in Norwich, where we signed the deal for what was to become Slaughter of the Soul. The deal was signed with the option that we could pay them back within a certain timeframe, or else they would own the upcoming Slaughter of the Soul album. Once we got home, we begged, borrowed and played a few shows, which enabled us to pay the money back in time. Otherwise, our future would have been very different.

LINDBERG: The fact that Music for Nations didn’t want to bail us out [of the tour bus expenses], forcing us to go to Black Mark—with whom we had a 30-day deal—really pushed us away from Peaceville. Of course, Dan Tobin, who was at Peaceville, went to Earache, which is where we went, obviously. Hindsight, we weren’t that professional either. I don’t want to place all the blame on Peaceville and Music for Nations. They were dealing with a bunch of erratic 20-yearolds. [Laughs] Only when we grew into our deal with Earache did we try to be a bit more professional with our decisions. I think had we not been on that so-called tour, there might not be a Slaughter of the Soul as we know it.

LARSSON: That [headline] tour became the fuel for all the anger and despair that turned into

Slaughter of the Soul. All that misery. It was supposed to be our first headline tour. We started in the U.K. We ended in the U.K. Two shows instead of 30. The whole thing was very sketchy.

haven’t played “Terminal Spirit Disease” since Anders quit in 2016. Maybe we’ll pick it back up again now that Anders is back.

Would you change anything?

What are your thoughts on Terminal Spirit Disease now?

A. BJÖRLER: “And the World Returned” is filler.

Nothing more. The live tracks, in retrospect, should’ve not been included on it. Terminal Spirit Disease should’ve been a mini album. It’s definitely a precursor to Slaughter of the Soul. The songs are strong, but I think the production suffers a lot. It’s weak and a little fussy.

J. BJÖRLER: I think it’s OK. It has some nice moments on it. It’s really a bridge between the old At the Gates and what we’d become on Slaughter of the Soul. You can hear the defining moment for us on that album.

LINDBERG: It would’ve been a really good EP leading up to Slaughter of the Soul. Without the troubles with Music for Nations—with the contracts and tour—Slaughter of the Soul might not be what it is now. Everything leads to something else. I’m still proud of it, though. We managed to do something quite different in a short period of time. I guess it still frustrates me that it wasn’t an EP, but I’m cool with it being considered an album.

ERLANDSSON: I still listen to it occasionally and really like it. We sometimes play “The Swarm” live. In fact, it was part of our set last summer in the U.S. LARSSON: Boring answer: I don’t think much at all about it. It’s never a chore to play those songs live—never ever. I always feel privileged that I get to do this at all. I always look forward to playing “The Swarm.” It’s a really solid song. We APRIL 2023 : 5 2 : DECIBEL

A. BJÖRLER: If I was writing it today, I’d change a

lot of things. Well, I wouldn’t re-record the violins or anything stupid like that. [Laughs] It’s a part of history better left alone. The worst thing you can do is try to redo history. That never works.

I’m pretty proud of what we did back then. We were different humans. Times and people change.

Sometimes for the better. Keep in mind we were about 20 years old when writing this album.

ERLANDSSON: I wish I hadn’t traded my ride cymbal for a pizza after the drums were recorded. It was one of the worst deals of my life.

LINDBERG: I’m not too into re-recording full albums. We could’ve had a crunchier guitar sound. I have thoughts on my vocal production, which is a bit thin. Stuff like that. I don’t want to change the vibe of the record. The charm of Terminal is what we did and when we did it. I do think what we did [in 2018] for the Decibel Flexi Disc—“Raped by the Light of Christ”—is cool. A one-off, special release track is cool. [Laughs] LARSSON: I would’ve liked for “The Fevered Circle” to sound differently. I’m not a fan of the drums going against the riff. Otherwise, I wouldn’t change anything.

J. BJÖRLER: I wouldn’t re-record anything. I’ve heard a lot of re-recordings lately, and let me say, I don’t like that idea at all. Imagine Black Sabbath doing the first album again—that’s just stupid! It never works. The original vibe can’t be recreated. It’s better just to walk away and do new stuff.

DECIBEL : APRIL 2023 : 53

story by

photos by

KIM KELLY

JC CAREY

PHILLY HARDCORE WORKHORSES

ACE THE JUGGLING ACT THAT MAKES THE UNKNOWN THEIR OWN

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A PR 2 0 2 3 •

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A

aron Heard was not having a good day. The morning started

off well enough, with Heard picking up a few Uber rides to make a few bucks before an interview he had scheduled for the afternoon. He figured he had plenty of time to run a passenger out to King of Prussia, a ritzy suburb located about a half hour outside Philadelphia, then get back to North Philly in time to meet Decibel. However, a strong gust of wind intervened, and an unfortunate series of events led to Heard locking himself out of his car with his keys, phone and wallet all tucked safely inside. When he walked into the closest hardware store in search of help, he considered his options, reflected on his appearance—which he deemed “sketch as hell” thanks to a bucket hat and sunglasses—and beelined for the first employee he could find who was sporting visible tattoos. ¶ After sheepishly dropping his band’s name in hopes of convincing her of his trustworthiness, Heard discovered that not only was the worker a fan, she recognized him from the local hardcore scene and would be happy to help him break into his car. Such is life as a member of Jesus Piece in 2023. It was a stroke of luck just surreal enough to leave Heard marveling at his good fortune, but one that also spoke volumes about the cachet his band now carries in the greater Philadelphia area. The phrase “Jesus Piece” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, from firearms aficionados to hip-hop fans to jewelry enthusiasts, but fortunately for this story, our Home Depot hero recognized it in its loudest form: as the buzzy, no-bullshit band that’s been turning the hybridized world of metallic hardcore on its collective head.

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CIIBBEE LL 5 6 : M• AARPCRH 22002233 •: D D EE C

A lot has changed for Heard and his buddies David Updike, John DiStefano, Anthony Marinaro and Luis Aponte since 2015, when they got the bright idea to start up a brutal death metal band and give it a name guaranteed to keep people guessing. None of them were new to the game then; they’d all spent years playing in other local bands and taking part in Philly’s vibrant punk, hardcore and metal scenes. Some of them, like Heard, started out as punks; others, like Updike, were sworn to death metal before succumbing to the lure of hardcore. Philly is a big-small city, and there’s enough crossover between the various strains of loud, ugly music that the same faces tend to pop up wherever there are loud riffs and cheap beer to be had.

That kind of cross-pollination tends to have an impact; their varied influences have turned out to be a blessing and helped elevate the scrappy five-piece from a locals-only favorite into a bonafide phenomenon.

“It may have seemed like we just popped off to a lot of people, but our shows were dope from the start because we put in the work to make sure it stuck,” Updike says. “It’s never been fake. Everyone that fucks with us fucks with us, and everyone that doesn’t doesn’t, and there’s no in between.”

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DECIBEL : APRIL 2023 : 57

Throw your regular life in the toilet.

Making music is just dumping your life into the trash.

You ain’t selling your soul,

YOU’RE SELLING YOUR STABILITY. Aaron Heard

early adopters who copped their self-released demo back in 2016. There’s a good chance their 2017 split EP with Malice at the Palace hit your radar courtesy of storied hardcore label Bridge Nine, and an even better one that Only Self, their 2018 full-length debut for Southern Lord, smacked you right in the kisser when you first heard it. If you’re lucky, you’ve seen them live, where they shine hardest. As they mark their eighth year together, Jesus Piece has become a genuine live force, one that has fully mastered the complex alchemy of kinetic energy, hair-trigger adaptability and joyful violence that makes hardcore beautiful—and that can also summon the kind of gleefully ignorant pit shenanigans that fuel Scott Vogel’s wet dreams.

They realized early on that that live show was going to be their key to success, if they pounded the pavement hard enough to get there. “We understood that, hey, we could put everything into this if we wanted to, but if we stay here in the city, we’re gonna stay in the city,” Heard explains. “That’s what happens to Philly bands, unless something miraculous happens: You’re just a legendary Philly band, and it stays that way. So, we took it upon ourselves to hit the road super early, dropped that shit, and went down to Florida to FYA Fest to get our name out there.

It was kind of a perfect storm of everyone just being young, being like, ‘Yo, now’s our time,’ you know what I mean?”

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They’ve toured with the kind of bands who top Billboard charts and get nominated for Grammys, but keep the same energy onstage as if they’re back home in a North Philly basement.

As Heard puts it, the band’s approach is simple: “Rip it up in a garage or rip it up in front of fucking Hellfest; it don’t matter.” Onstage, he is simultaneously the ringmaster, stuntman and carnival barker; he hurls his lean, muscular form across the stage, a taut ball of rhythmically explosive rage, screaming his guts out like they’re poisoning him from the inside. Their stage setup is minimal to make room for both stage divers and Heard’s own frenetic movements. “If there’s anybody in the music world that understands getting the crowd going, it’s definitely us,” Heard says. “We’re punks; everybody’s working with next to nothing to make something happen. I think that if you start there, then the rest of it’s kind of easier than starting with everything and hitting some lows and calling it quits. Fuck that.”

The release of Only Self was a watershed moment for the band, which had been steadily building up a fervent fanbase in and around their hometown for years. They may not be content to stay just a Philly band, but in terms of authenticity, loyalty and attitude, Jesus Piece still bring a distinctly Philadelphian energy with them wherever they roam. “I’d say a big part of any music that comes from this area is a

level of aggression that can only be found here,” Heard says. “With this kind of music, you have to understand that it’s an aggressive type of music, and if you go into this and you leave the aggression behind, without that kinetic energy, it falls flat. And I think that very much stems from your environment.

“Philly never left the map for me, and that’s just how we move,” he adds. “People can say, ‘Hey, Philly hasn’t been doing much.’ Philly has been doing shit; it’s that people are taking notice now. It’s a crabs-in-a-bucket city, and it’s hard for everybody to uplift each other. We were lucky enough to have that happen. Everyone wanted to help out, everyone wanted to look out; but that’s because the music was true.”

While this band is very much a live entity, that first album manages to capture a good deal of their hulking, oddball intensity on tape.

It’s been said that punks write the best metal songs, and Jesus Piece make a compelling argument for the veracity of that claim. Only Self is a satisfyingly punishing listen; brawny breakdowns abound, but so do more textured, noisier elements, with shards of old-school metalcore flying past thick, fat grooves and crashing into unhinged pit demon riffs. There’s a heavy ’90s industrial metal vibe present, even though the 30-something band members themselves weren’t around to soak it in firsthand (and a couple of them are younger than Streetcleaner). It’s

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weird, but not too weird; it’s still heavy as sin, and scientifically engineered to cause a motherfuckin’ ruckus once the fellas stride out onstage.

The album hit like a neutron bomb, racking in rave reviews from critics who swooned over the band’s layered approach to hardcore. But more importantly, it became a fan favorite and won them new supporters far outside the city limits.

Jesus Piece hit the road hard in support of the relatively more polished likes of Code Orange, Terror and Knocked Loose, and had no plans to slow down. Their momentum kept building, and shows kept growing, and it seemed like there was no stopping the ride. “We came out super strong and beat the fucking bricks nonstop, and beat ourselves down into little pancakes,” Heard remembers. “And then quarantine happened.”

And just like that, the ride came to a screeching halt. The COVID-19 pandemic arrived and blew a massive hole in everybody’s collective calendars. Jesus Piece had had a lot of plans in place for 2020, but fell victim to the same wave of cancellations and postponements that plagued virtually every band during the first two years of the pandemic. Instead of hitting the road, the band took a step back—a “time out,” as Heard says. Instead of pressuring themselves to rush out a new album, Jesus Piece took a beat. “It was low-key a blessing,” he attests, “because it gave us all time to breathe as people and to figure out what we want to do with this instead of not having the time to really strategize because we’re too busy touring all the time to worry about what our next move is.”

PIECE BE WITH YOU As they announced in December 2022, that move was a leap to indie giants Century Media for the follow-up to Only Self. So far, they’re enjoying life with their new European label partners, even if things occasionally get lost in translation. “I know at this point that with these guys, maybe they don’t agree with something sometimes because that’s gonna happen with a bunch of minds in a room, but at the end of the day, they have our best interests in mind as a band,” Heard says. “And that is what is really important, because we’re putting all of our time and energy into this. We’ve got somebody there with the money who feels the same way. It makes doing this lot easier, a lot more fun and a lot less stressful.” …So Unknown, their sophomore album, comes out on April 14, and was co-produced and mixed by Randy LeBoeuf, whose recent credits include Every Time I Die, Kublai Khan and the Acacia Strain. The man knows his way around a metalcore album, and Jesus Piece took full advantage of his expertise. …So Unknown positively explodes into being, opening with a full-throated roar from Heard and immediately boring down into a muscular core of lean, snarling metallic fury. It’s a death metal kid’s idea of what hardcore should sound like. They

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rip through 10 songs in just under a half hour, veering from the grimly atonal “Tunnel Vision” and murderously groovy “FTBS” to the jagged, off-kilter “Profane” and creepy-crawly industrial textures on “Stolen Life.” Their penchant for industrial metal is on full display, as is the band’s appreciation for early 2000s metalcore.

Here, Jesus Piece make it clear that they’re happy using whatever sonic weapons they can find in order to achieve maximum heaviness (and peak pit readiness). The overall vibe is—in a word—intimidating.

Those industrial leanings in particular set Jesus Piece apart from many of their metallic hardcore peers, but that isn’t the only evolutionary advantage that’s helped them achieve apex predator status. There’s also the matter of splatter—more specifically, the brutal death metal that they had initially set out to play, which remains a critical part of the band’s DNA. Satisfying slams and beatdown breakdowns made up a huge part of the initial blueprint for Jesus Piece, because, quite simply, that’s what the dudes who were writing the riffs felt like playing. “Me and Luis got together in Nazareth, PA, and were like, we want to write a demo that sounds like Devourment’s 1.3.8.,” Updike explains. “It didn’t happen that way, but that’s what we liked.”

Though the band’s sound quickly evolved beyond the single-minded pursuit of brutality, Jesus Piece wouldn’t sound the way they do now if Updike hadn’t spent so many of his formative years blasting his eardrums with the goriest, most knuckle-dragging death slop he could find.

“When I was getting into death metal, my brain just went to mush and I was like, ‘Okay, what’s the hardest, most disgusting shit of all time,’ and it was all this brutal death metal stuff from the mid-2000s,” Updike explains. That was during the peak MySpace era, when deathcore bands ruled the digital airwaves, Botch clones invaded the Tri-State area, and the metal and hardcore scenes collided in occasionally bizarre ways.

“A lot of scene kids liked that stuff, too!” he recalls. “I remember specifically going on MySpace looking for shit like Guttural Secrete and Disgorge, and all their top eights or comments were from, like, some dude with flippy hair.”

For those who lived through the early 2000s— with all of its attendant scene dramas and various white-belted musical trespasses—the word carries a lot of baggage, but in Updike’s view, deathcore comes as close to describing Jesus Piece’s sound as anything else critics have lobbed at them. Personally, he just calls it hardcore and keeps it moving. “It was hard to start writing this new record coming out because we didn’t have a genre we wanted to stick to,” he explains. “All we knew is that we wanted it to be heavy, and fun, and hard, and metal, and also hardcore. You could say metalcore, deathcore, whatever, but when we were writing it, it was very much like we’re just going to do whatever we want to do.”

PIECE OF ME The pandemic threw an unexpected monkey wrench into Jesus Piece’s songwriting process.

For a band so accustomed to spending all their time together, on the road and at practice, the separation necessitated by the pandemic was deeply alienating. “Generally speaking, it was really hard to write this record, just because it was COVID, emotions, whatever,” Updike says.

“But the band has never written a song by themselves, like separated—there’s been riffs and stuff, but it’s never been a separate process.”

When they were writing the songs for Only Self, Updike, DiStefano and Aponte would get together and trade riffs, hammering out the structure as they went. “When it’s being written, whatever feels good is what it’s gonna be,” Updike explains. “It’s like painting a picture.” This time, it was a much more isolated process, especially after Aponte moved to New York City last year.

Heard, Updike and DiStefano all live in Philly, and Marinaro is about an hour’s drive outside the city. They weren’t dealing with the kind of huge distances that many other bands had to contend with, but it was still tough to connect.

“It’s almost impossible to write without a drummer,” Updike says. “And jamming is so integral to that; 75 percent of the record is like, I had a riff that I was messing around with, I’d bring it to practice, and then it’d turn into a totally different thing. We had 10 song skeletons, and then the next three months were spent going over those skeletons over and over again.”

Once they fleshed out those skeletons, it was Heard’s turn to start cooking. As the lead vocalist and sole lyricist, it’s his job to add meaning to the menace, and he takes that responsibility personally. He also has to consider the physical aspect of that job in a very literal sense: “I gotta hear where my breath is gonna fit in these lines, how I’m not going to tire myself out running around like a psycho, and I try to keep all that in mind when I am fitting the stanzas.

“I don’t want to get in there and write the song super breathy where I’m doing and saying all kinds of shit and I get onstage and I can’t do anything,” he adds. “And I don’t want to be that dude who is just standing in the center of the stage with a foot on the monitor, not moving at all, just to make sure I’m hitting all these cues. You don’t have to just be the screaming guy. I would like for my energy to be mirrored by the people watching, and if I come up there and I’m standing around, that’s all I’m gonna get. I don’t want that shit.”

His lyrics cycle through depression, despair and righteous anger, offering a lifeline to those trapped in neuroprisons of their own while also tackling broader social ills. Those who’d paint them as a purely political band are missing the point, though. Jesus Piece have been calling out oppression since their first demo, but Heard prefers to turn inward when he’s writing. And as Updike points out, “We don’t need any more songs about hating cops.” They already have one.

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It’s not an easy task for any band to navigate the complex racial politics of metal and hardcore, and Jesus Piece’s status as a Black-led, multiracial band renders their very existence political.

When they released a collaborative Black Lives Matter T-shirt design with 11 other hardcore bands, including Knocked Loose, Terror and Stray From the Path in 2020, the backlash the project got from certain boneheaded fans of the other bands involved was embarrassing for everyone involved; as Heard said in a Hard Times interview that summer, “If you feel that politics should stay out of hardcore, you’re around for the wrong reasons, and probably a little racist on the inside.”

The reactionary whiners’ reaction revealed their Johnny-come-lately status, too, since Jesus Piece had already released their own (much more militant) Black Lives Matter design years prior.

But as a Black frontman in a white-dominated music scene, Heard is also unimpressed with attempts to force him into the role of scene-wide spokesperson for anti-racism. He’s tired of journalists asking him about his feelings on racism in the hardcore scene and “the current climate,” and of being singled out because of his identity.

“I feel like a lot of the time, press-wise, we can be tokenized so fast. They want to hear what I have to say about this shit, and all reality, I ain’t got shit to say. It sucks, and I have to deal with it every day. What more do you want from me? To be your champion for this shit? I can’t be that, too; I’ve got enough shit on my plate.

“If anything, that’s what made me not want to write about this shit on this record,” he continues, “because I’m tired of talking about it.

It’s already bad enough. Life is stressful as hell.

I’ve got a kid; the last thing I want to do is relive trauma every time I have to talk to someone about music, which is supposed to be my escape, you know?”

It’s become harder for him to find that balance as the band’s profile has risen. The first album saw Heard open up about his own struggles with depression and mental health, and he showed a level of vulnerability that resonated deeply with fans, but took a toll on him personally. As Jesus Piece continued to play bigger shows and Heard became more of a public figure, it often felt like all eyes were on him—and it eventually became a problem.

“A big thing that I prided myself on for a while was wearing my heart on my sleeve in my music,” Heard says, “but what that did was open the door for people to start asking me questions and poking at me and looking at my life. I’ve definitely had some very positive conversations because of all this, and that always feels great.

That’s why I keep making a point to not hide myself away in the back so that I can continue to connect, but as shit does get busier, it’s getting a little weird. There are more times than I can count where I’ll just be smoking, chilling outside of the gig, and I just end up becoming someone’s therapist so quick because I don’t have

I remember specifically going on MySpace looking for shit like Guttural Secrete and Disgorge, and all their top eights or comments were from, like,

SOME DUDE WITH FLIPPY HAIR. David Updike

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the heart to be like, ‘Yo, get away.’ I don’t want to do that and be that person; I’d rather just talk to you. It added to my social anxiety, and got to a point where I just felt like people were watching me, and I hated it. I hated how much people inquired about what was going on. I had to make that stop.”

So, on …So Unknown, he made the conscious decision to pull back and write in more esoteric, less personal terms. “Mid-COVID, when I started to explore some of the stuff that I thought I wanted to write about, I was just in a dirty, dirty headspace,” he says. “I wrote some of the darkest shit I’ve ever wrote, and I was like, no fuckin’ way am I’m putting that on there. I wanted to not write about this shit as much as I usually would. And I don’t think it lost any anger, pizzazz or passion that it would have had necessarily; I think the only thing that it’s really done is open up a wider range of writing. Now I’m not pigeonholed to write about my feelings, about wanting to kill myself or kill someone else. I’ve opened that path for myself.”

He did make one exception with “Silver Lining,” which sounds just as nasty as every other track, but comes from a very different place. About two years ago, Heard became a father, and that song is a tribute to his son.

“That was my challenge to myself: to write about something that doesn’t make me want to kill myself,” he says with a chuckle. When he screams, “With life came purpose / Center of

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my universe / Finally a reason / Something tangible,” you feel it rattle in your bones—the exact moment that someone who’s spent so much time contemplating death found something to live for. The last line—“It’s us against the world / Us against the world”—wouldn’t be out of place on a Madball album, but hits a million times harder knowing that they’re being sung to Heard’s little boy, who was born during a plague and has only known a world in which his dad’s band is on the cover of magazines.

“I actually showed him the new music video,” Heard says. “He goes, ‘Daddy? Can we watch it again?’ Yes!” The video in question, for “An Offering to the Night,” was the first taste of brand-new music that Jesus Piece had shared since 2018.

They dropped the news on the same day they announced their signing to Century Media, an extensive March U.S. tour with Show Me the Body and Zulu, and a clothing collaboration with Noah, an NYC-based menswear brand.

The capsule collection features classic fare like T-shirts and a hoodie, as well as a skate deck, pricey pleated pants, and a dapper blueand-white rugby shirt. The collaboration was organic; it came about not because the band are diehard fashionistas, but because drummer Aponte works at Noah’s retail store and thought it might be fun.

“He also has done a lot of work for them, like modeling and skating in one of their videos; the stars aligned in a sense, and he really drove the deal home,” Heard says. “We don’t really wait for shit to happen for us; we all try to get out and make things happen for the band and make these cool things line up.”

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“I also think the whole collaboration and fashion thing shows that we’re more than a hardcore band’ we’re people with interests,” Updike adds.

Every move Jesus Piece make underscores the band’s allergy to mediocrity and refusal to be pigeonholed as a “typical” anything, and as their star continues to rise, those opportunities to distinguish themselves from the pack will become even more valuable.

“Being around as long as we have at this point, I’ve seen way too many of our homies dump their lives into this and come away with nothing,” Heard adds. “I think it’s just about playing the game smarter than anyone else that’s doing it, you know?”

“People take one or the other,” Updike says.

“They either take the money and get less artistically sound or lose their artistic agency, or they stay true to what their deal is and they don’t do music as a career. And that’s cool for us, because we get better music that way. But then there’s the conflict of making them both happen. That’s how you get evolution: when two things stop conflicting and it turns out they can both work together.”

PIECE OUT There’s a lot riding on the band’s continued success, and they don’t have any kind of financial cushion or secret trust funds to break their falls on if things go south. The slow death march of gentrification that’s been crowding out families across the city for years is finally starting to chip away at the corner of North Philadelphia where Heard grew up. Rent’s going up. Food is more expensive. He has a kid to raise, and the other band members have their own responsibilities

to juggle. They’re in their 30s now. When Heard isn’t driving for Uber, he works the counter at a tattoo shop; before his son was born, he picked up weekend shifts as a bartender. “Throw your regular life in the toilet,” Heard chuckles.

“Making music is just dumping your life into the trash. You ain’t selling your soul, you’re selling your stability.”

Meanwhile, Updike works at a grocery store (yes, the discount comes in handy). “I feel like every band who wants to do this and gets to this point, here’s this conflict of paying your bills, but also being artistically fulfilled,” Updike says pragmatically. “I’ll never, ever not do what I want in this band musically, creatively, but it also needs to make sense in my life so I don’t have to struggle. And it’s doable. It’s realistic, but you have to balance the real world—needing to get my shit taken care of—with the fact that I also want to make music for a living. Then there’s the societal thing where it’s like, ‘Suck it up, you’re playing hardcore; you don’t need to do it for money.’ And we’re not! But being able to pay your bills is nice.”

Out of all the classic working-class band dude occupations, the two of them alone tick nearly every box—all they’d need to do is pick up some construction work to round it all out. But for a band with dreams (and an upcoming tour schedule) as vast as theirs, that’s what it takes.

As Heard howls on …So Unknown’s feral “Fear of Failure,” “Do what I can / Just to survive / In this fucked-up world / That’s eating me alive.”

Mere survival isn’t enough for Jesus Piece, though. They’re already out here thriving— and in 2023, they’re more than ready to take over.

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LORDI return with 14 melodic metal hymns

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PORTLANDDISTRO.COM @PORTLANDDISTRO

INSIDE ≥

68 ALL OUT WAR Brace yourself for what's in store 69 DYING SUN Lights out

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

70 FULL OF HELL + PRIMITIVE MAN

Full of Man 72 LAMP OF MURMUUR

You might say he's demonized 72 MAJESTIES Yesterworlds

Outsider Art NIGHT DEMON

APRIL

34

Eagles

27

Cheifs

5 57

days before Super Bowl

fearless prediction

American heavy metal heroes find the sublime in the simplicity of being themselves

TEN 9

years ago, “traditional” heavy metal—the highly melodic, fist-bangin’, leather-and-spikes aesthetic that owes its existence to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and its peripheral bands—was still perNIGHT colating under the surface in the American metal scene. Anyone DEMON that wanted to attempt making a living at it would have to work Outsider extra hard to earn respect, and Los Angeles scenester/musician/ CENTURY MEDIA manager/Renaissance man/overall good dude Jarvis Leatherby was up for the challenge. ¶ Three huge ways a patently uncool metal band can build a following are to a) know one’s audience, b) genuinely connect and engage with that audience, and most importantly, c) make damn good music. You always have to be thinking of clever ways to engage listeners, and if you mean business, you can never, ever stop.

Over the last decade, Leatherby and his band Night Demon have followed that model perfectly, cranking out albums, EPs, singles, a live album and a singles compilation, touring anywhere and everywhere, and consistently maintaining a podcast all the while,

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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ANGEROT

7

The Profound Recreant REDEFINING DARKNESS

Star search

8

Take to the skies! | T R A N S L AT I O N L O S S

All Out War have been blending rambunctious riffs and deadlift-able breakdowns for 30 years. Still, their latest album, Celestial Rot, recasts their established sound in a decidedly black metallic shade. From the opening blast of “Snake Legion” through closer “Shroud of Heaven,” you can practically smell the Norwegian-style bile dripping through the speakers.

The band has shared minor connective tissue with black metal for years—Mike Score’s vocals always trended a little more raspy than husky, and antireligious imagery has been part of the All Out War experience since their first record. Even so, the degree to which they lean into this turn is remarkable. It’s tough to imagine their peers in Merauder or Cro-Mags (any version) committing to the bit like this.

That isn’t to say the band has hard-forked their sound and abandoned palm-muted

chugs for tremolo-picking entirely. The old All Out War is still there, but the shifted aesthetic makes their tried-and-true tricks feel fresh, which is necessary for even the most consistent bands after three decades in the game.

Blending black metal and hardcore is hardly a new idea; it’s just something you’d expect to hear from Ohio, not New York. Still, All Out War’s distinctly East Coast willingness to keep things short and end a song with a big knuckleduster gives Celestial Rot a bloodthirstiness that Cleveland’s finest don’t always emphasize.

Listeners who wished Integrity’s Howling, for the Nightmare Shall Consume was a little less arty or that Ringworm’s Death Becomes My Voice was a little more concise owe it to themselves to check this record out. And for longtime All Out War adherents, Celestial Rot proves that Newburgh’s most gnarly still know how to throw a mean curveball. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

just to ensure that their little band could be heard above the din of the enormous global metal scene.

After a run of consistently strong music, the dogged trio of Leatherby, guitarist Armand John Anthony and drummer Dusty Squires have outdone themselves on their third fulllength, Outsider. A devout student of all things old-school metal, Leatherby has even done time as a member of Cirith Ungol and Jaguar, two bands whose influences you could hear in Night Demon’s previous two albums, 2015’s Curse of the Damned and 2017’s Darkness Remains. Outsider, on the other hand, steps things up both dynamically and melodically, surprisingly so.

The sense of greater confidence in their craft is immediately evident on the record. Leatherby has always been a strong singer, but he’s singing with a level of conviction, strength and range here that we have not heard before. That improvement is accentuated marvelously on the album’s biggest surprises, two tracks that elevate Night

Demon’s tried-and-true sound to something far more thrilling. The explosive “Beyond the Grave” gracefully morphs from stately ballad to rousing Maiden-esque gallop (’Arry would be proud), while the seven-and-a-half minute “The Wrath” achieves a sort of Sabbathian majesty with its stormcloud-conjuring riff progressions, which veer from morose to exalting in a heartbeat.

All this is not to discount the band’s bread and butter: the three-minute rager. “Outsider,” “Obsidian” and “Escape From Beyond” bear an uncanny (and kind of miraculous) similarity to the bloody-knuckled melodicism of Tank’s Filth Hounds of Hades. Whether straightforward songs or ambitious compositions, Leatherby’s persistence has paid off. He and his mates have made a record that not only speaks to those who know early-’80s metal inside out, but whose appeal to metal nerds of all generations is universal—a blazing, heartfelt, insanely fun reminder of why we all got into this music in the first place. —ADRIEN BEGRAND

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BASTARD GRAVE

5

Vortex of Disgust P U LV E R I Z E D

When all the drama went into your diorama

Vortex of Disgust sounds fantastic. The recording demonstrates sonic heft, but has enough contour to give the record a sense of magnitude. The drums resonate violently while possessing a meaningful quality of articulation. The mix is basically perfect and the record’s not overlong. All great things that elude (seriously) legions of other bands, and I feel that a degree of credit is only fair. Prost! However, competence in the production department is trifling if it’s not wedded to worthy tunes, and

PHOTO BY JUSTIN BORUCKI

ALL OUT WAR, Celestial Rot

South Dakotans Angerot return from the abyss on The Profound Recreant.

Previous effort The Divine Apostate earned plenty of accolades in our May 2020 issue for its brutish, Euro-inclined death bash. On their third, Angerot center their sound. Not so much Swedish or American, but somewhere in the purgatory of both, where the cruel, the lamented and the oddly grandiose dance.

Beyond the ritual-like intro of “Das Salz,” the quartet bludgeons wontly, their unchallenging riffs running deep and rhythmic pound unadorned. “Grand Feast ov the Flesh” is the kind of death metal made for a single purpose. That Andy LaRocque’s lead strikes a vibrant pose in its midst is almost inexplicable.

Elsewhere, Angerot have appointed other luminaries like Jack Owen (Six Feet Under), Sammy Duet (Goatwhore), Simon Olsen (Baest), Sebastian Bracht (Sophicide) and Steve Tucker (Morbid Angel) for beastly color. While it might be easy to pin The Profound Recreant on conservative—it largely is, thankfully—Angerot wickedly interpenetrate piano (“Bastard Creature”), acoustic guitars (“Slaughter ov Innocence”) and orchestration (the title track, “In the Company ov Wolves”). The Andreas Linnemann (Baest, Galge) mix/master absolutely towers, too, giving Angerot a far greater shadow than one might expect of a band off the center lane.

The Profound Recreant falters in its ability to not warrant returns, however. All the pieces to the puzzle are rightly inverted, but the highlights (“In the Company ov Wolves,” “Behold the Blessed Black”) succumb to the lassitude of the rest of the album. To rise above, Angerot will need to focus. —CHRIS DICK

HIGH ROLLER RECORDS proudly presents : unless you’re interested in a lukewarm xerox of Grave’s You’ll Never See, I just can’t recommend this album.

Bastard Grave’s 2015 debut, What Lies Beyond, is equally derivative and is additionally saddled with a super-rickety production, but is infinitely more passionate and fun to listen to. 2019’s Diorama of Human Suffering (Diorama? Whatever, guys...) is slower and stuffier than the debut, but the riffs are strong enough to keep it from tipping over; it works. Meanwhile, Vortex of Disgust sounds the way I’d imagine Swedeaththemed pillowcases to look and feel: isometric and flat. Perfect for a small jolt of nostalgia and then a snooze. Put another way, this is the music you listen to while you’re on hold with Century Media back in 1993. It’s in the right ballpark, but it shouldn’t make the listener antsy to mosey on.

I wouldn’t mind the uninventive nature of the record so long as its riffs were fucking worthy, but this is just a chore. The frequent harmonies are effective, but otherwise these tracks could’ve been written by AI. What happened to the great riffcraft from the band’s previous records? No clue. But check those out instead and circle back to this one when you need to zone out for your colonoscopy.

—FORREST PITTS

CARNAL SAVAGERY

7

Worm Eaten MORIBUND

Deceased but life goes

You can never have enough Swedish death metal. Anyone who says otherwise deserves decapitation from a wayward buzzsaw riff. Carnal Savagery, an underrated band from Gothenburg that eschews the fire-on-ice melodicism synonymous with their hinterland, keep the nastier, groovier, maggot-infested style of predeath ‘n’ roll that Entombed and their ilk championed in tireless fashion (four LPs since 2020).

Worm Eaten holds no surprises, as Swedeath in the stomping, mid-paced range with plenty of Obituary bludgeon (musically and in the simplistic vocal refrains) is the name of the game here. A track like “Masticating Maggots” pulverizes through the grinding groove of Bolt Thrower, with more than a few Slayerized sections cutting through. Conversely, “Disemboweled” is as melodic as this album gets, sounding not unlike a gore-obsessed version of Amon Amarth. “Baptized in Mutilated Innards,” however, swings way too gleefully for a song about taking a dunk in stinking viscera, and “Return of the Rotten Dead”’s braindead plod is beyond generic—its flaws are greatly accentuated

by the strength of the title track that follows it and mans a similar dirge-like tempo. Also, Mattias Lilja’s growl is very clearly enunciated throughout and, oddly, his voice has the same tonality as Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, which may irk some Cro-Magnon DM heads.

Overall, Carnal Savagery wield brevity as a weapon, with most HM-2 booms halting around the three-minute mark. And Dan Swanö’s master adds a layer of signature character, making highlight “Revel in Madness” pop like an eyeball from the socket of a decaying corpse that has been hung by its feet. —DEAN BROWN

DYING SUN

The Swedish Heavy Metal raiders are finally back with their long awaited new album!

5

Black Coven SELF-RELEASED

Shells of gas

In the upside-down world— Australia—polarization can occur. Opposite spheres, after all. Suddenly, bad is good, old is new, and time isn’t tick-tick-ticking in our skulls. South Coast three-piece Dying Sun tunnel underneath on sophomore LP Black Coven, yet little rightens up.

2020 debut Doomsday Cometh fared far superior as toker tea, a classically liquid THC swagger and slosh: punkier, groovier, stickier. Its followup actually adheres closer to the predecessor, literally—doomier, heavier—but the noir mass underbakes, overcooks and just generally expires as beaten upon by Dying Sun. Spinning off Brisbane DM legacy outfit Misery, additional guitarist Scott Edgar, bassist Damon Robinson and drummer Anthony “Ant” Dwyer all follow the leader in Matt D. The Aussies thus begin by “Summoning Darkness,” a whispery campfire ditty that erupts into tolling ’80s thrash, knuckle-dragging proto-Hetfield vox and guitar bends. Throw in a high priestess intonation to complete the exorcism. B.C. is now A.D.?

“Red Hot Liar” backfires dune buggy exhaust doubling as an ex-partner dis (“take a shit and run right out of here—you better stay clear”).

The plodding “Return to Madness” picks up Dee Dee Ramone’s lisp, so just as lovably vulnerable as the late Douglas Colvin’s rap disc remains, the scowling vocals to “Utopian Dream” here bears repeated yuks. Atmospheric touches such as the pagan guitar intro to “Dreaming” would serve a weightier version of doom lite “The Grand Departure” immeasurably.

Moreover, the pendulum effect between short tracks and epic cuts grates when the longer runtimes often drag (“Shadows of Despair”), while elongated jams clog the back end (“Burning Too Bright”). Birmingham tone bend “And Heaven Falls” nabs sleeper, but otherwise, R.I.P. Black Coven. —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

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ENTHEOS

6

Time Will Take Us All M E TA L B L A D E

In due time

I’m old enough to remember when messageboard dorks would start flame wars over bands like the Faceless and Veil of Maya. Somebody would say they were just metalcore with a Cynic-al facelift, someone else would reply that actually they play progressive/technical death metal with -core elements, the “poseur” epithet would be slung to and fro, and everyone would eventually agree to listen to Focus again. That feels quaint today, when every other promo in my inbox is for a “progressive deathcore” band. The purists lost.

Entheos don’t call themselves progressive deathcore—in fact, they take great pains not to use “core” anywhere in the bio for their third LP, Time Will Take Us All—but you can listen between the lines. The onetime five-piece has been whittled to a duo: multi-instrumentalist Navene Koperweis (ex-Animosity, ex-Animals as Leaders) and vocalist Chaney Crabb. Their twitchy polyrhythms and chugga-wugga riffage mark them as pupils in the school of Meshuggah, but they show enough personality to evade charges of mimicry. That begins with Crabb’s chameleonic vocal performance. She shrieks, growls, bellows and sings sweetly, often within the same song.

After a 2021 scooter accident left her with 100 stitches in her face, Crabb had to relearn how to sing, and that harrowing experience seems to have only expanded her range.

If Entheos songs are all rooted in the same familiar rhythmic core, they at least take frequent detours, both texturally and compositionally. There’s a little Between the Buried and Me in the way “progressive” comes to encompass both chaotic parts and moments of real beauty.

Unfortunately, the detours are a lot more interesting than the main road. When a song inevitably circles back to a chugging one-note riff, you yearn for the freaky solo or acoustic passage it replaced. But there’s real promise on Time Will Take Us All, enough to recommend it.

—BRAD SANDERS

FATHERS

7

He Who Greets With Fire S A I LO R

Hot and cold

Certain recent releases have been referred to as “COVID babies,” which I take to mean albums that were conceived and created during an isolated, self-reflective period. This has led to some really focused, impressive work, 70 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

as well as some self-indulgence. Fathers find themselves in both categories with their third full-length, He Who Greets With Fire.

This album harkens back to the band’s incredible self-titled debut, combining stadiumready hooks with a metalcore backbone. Engineer Kurt Ballou has elevated everything the band is best at, giving their riffs an abrasive heft while allowing the melodies to coast on top. Oscar Ross’s vocals continue to be the biggest barrier to entry, but they’re also still the most interesting part of the experience—an upper-register croon/scream that doesn’t really sound like anyone else and is now delivered with increased power and confidence.

But, as with many COVID-era records, this baby is long. At over 50 minutes and 12 tracks, it feels like room was made for every idea, getting it all on tape even if that meant a sometimesawkward flow and a couple false endings.

There are songs here that definitely could have benefited from some trimming, while others would’ve probably been of better use on a split or EP. In other words, Fathers have made an oftendelicious meal that is maybe too much for one sitting. There’s a great record inside He Who Greets With Fire; you just may have to do a little work to carve it out yourself. —SHANE MEHLING

FULL OF HELL/ PRIMITIVE MAN

8

Suffocating Hallucination

C LO S E D CA S K E T ACTIVITIES

An album half full

Not everybody likes Full of Hell, nor do they Primitive Man. We’re nuanced creatures—you may, in fact, love one and hate the other. And if that’s true, your preference may severely affect how much you enjoy their new collaborative album, Suffocating Hallucination.

Full of Hell, who are physically incapable of not collaborating with every musician they meet, are very good at this thing. They have a big enough vocabulary to take over, but seem content at being subsumed by the process and drifting away from their comfort zone. And Primitive Man have taken advantage of that pliability.

With two drummers, the sludge that dominates the majority of this record gets a new dynamic, along with varied screams, extra guitars, plenty of noise and just an overall more interesting sound. But even with all that, there’s still a notable lack of one thing, and that is blasting.

While FOH are known for an expansive take on grindcore, they’re still a grind band. Yet, of

this album’s five tracks, one is a grind song, and that song is 26 seconds long. Considering that PM’s Ethan Lee McCarthy also fronts the deathgrind outfit Vermin Womb, it’s odd that this ends up more like an enhanced Primitive Man than a true joining of forces.

But is that bad? Because this record doesn’t sound bad. It sounds great. It’s just that Suffocating Hallucination doesn’t quite nail the expected grindnoisesludgefuck package. So, all Primitive Fans are in luck, but you Full of Hellions may wish for something more. —SHANE MEHLING

KOLLAPS

7

Until the Day I Die COLD SPRING

Damn unpretty

Right away, we should note that these Australian post-industrial noisemongers respect your time.

Each of the three records they’ve released since 2017 burn out right around the 30-minute mark, while so many of their waveform-wrestling peers will happily wallow in scummy squeals for double that runtime. Primary sonic antagonist Wade Black knows you have appointments to keep and precious few moments each day to bellycrawl through the auditory filth that sloshes around the basement of his psyche.

More notable still is the fact that there are songs hidden inside all this signal-shredded gunk—hidden deeply enough that they’re easy to miss on the first listen (or even the first five), but discernible to the undeterred seeker, which is more than Dominick Fernow can usually claim. After the mostly intro-level throb atmospherics of “Relapse Theatre,” Black declares his depraved poetry through the propulsive haze of percussive distortion on “D-IX.” The title track folds a jangly Steve Von Till downer into a Michael Gira ultra-downer for a late-album win. “I Believe in the Closed Fist” grumbles and gripes amid evolving beats and whirring tonal undulations, and “Hate Is Forever” hearkens back to the gnarliest bits of early Swans or Godflesh records.

Around everything, the steel-wool textures of static, feedback and machine scree act as a sort of abrasive womb, encouraging each of these creations to gestate and rebel. When the camaraderie of the metal show has faded and the drug of highly structured guitar music has worn off, in that aftermath when you find yourself scratching at that ignoble, solitary withdrawal, Kollaps are there to fondle your most self-destructive thoughts. After 30 minutes, though, you’re on your own.

—DANIEL LAKE

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LAMP OF MURMUUR

8

Saturnian Bloodstorm W O LV E S O F H A D E S / N I G H T O F T H E PA L E M O O N / N O T K V LT

Back to Blashyrkh

The mysterious and enigmatic Lamp of Murmuur, a solo project of current Los Angeles-byway-of-Olympia resident M., has garnered lots of attention in the burgeoning raw black metal community, emerging as one of the scene’s victors, garnering global attention on a very small stage. As evidenced by explorations into heavy metal and classic rock on more recent material, it’s obvious that Lamp of Murmuur’s proverbial feet are too big for his proverbial boots. Lamp of Murmuur are more than just another hyperxeroxed aesthetic act, and so we see this project moving away from the raw sound and into something more viable and just as passionate.

Taking stylistic pages from Immortal’s playbook, the chill found in Lamp of Murmuur’s Saturnian Bloodstorm is much more natural than the digital harshness found on previous material. The riffs are all here, but there’s an aggression that goes beyond the ethereal austerity of albums like Heir of Ecliptical Romanticism and Submission and Slavery and moves into classical black metal territory. Heralding the sun falling from the sky, M.’s catchy, feral riffing moves far and away from the vampirism that fueled Lamp of Murmuur in the past and instead transports the listener to a pseudo-Blashyrkh: someplace that’s cold and inhospitable, but still feels like home to black metal nerds (present company included).

There is a big question surrounding this release: Is this Lamp of Murmuur? I would respond with another question: Who made all these fucking rules? Black metal has always been about freeing oneself from the constraints of the prevailing ideology. You don’t need to be raw and have limited records to be cool. It’s all about substance, and Saturnian Bloodstorm is rife with it.

—JON ROSENTHAL

LITURGY

8

93696

THRILL JOCKEY

Breaking the oath

More than 10 years down this road, we can say one thing for certain: Albert Mudrian hates me.

Not that I’m unhappy listening to anything I get to cover in these pages. Just the opposite, in fact. Albert’s disdain for my social health and, frankly, my physical well-being comes through loud and clear when he asks me to review the new Liturgy double album for a rabid audience 72 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

of death and black metal fans. Here I am, telling you dedicated black metal faithful that 93696, this expansive trap metal rock opera full of choirs, flutes, bells and (gulp) “burst beats” with a heavy slant in favor of Christian mysticism, is positively incredible. Come at me.

But is it even black metal? Fuck whoever asked that question. There are tremolo-picked guitar parts, but conveyed in bright tones and chord combos that bespeak no evil. There are blasting drum sections, but they're often diluted with heavy electronic editing. Ravenna HuntHendrix’s screams are frequent and feral. Sure, the first disc winds down into a strange pairing of organ- and flute-only tracks, and though I’m sure they are intentionally placed to accent the exact spiritual character RHH is trying to evoke in the moment, they feel a little anemic. But most of these compositions are absolutely monstrous. The layering of instruments and harmonies is masterfully wrought. The two quarterhour epics on the second disc are disruptive and meditative in equal measure.

As with almost any double album—and any record this complex—93696 refuses to be an everyday, every-mood listen. Your choice to engage with this kind of aggressive audio enlightenment needs to be purposeful and probably only occasional. Many should choose to simply ignore it. And if you choose to impale me in effigy or, you know, in reality, know that Albert is cheering you on from the shadows. —DANIEL LAKE

MAJESTIES

8

Vast Reaches Unclaimed 20 BUCK SPIN

A lunar strain of fresh blood

Despite being a debut record, Decibel recently listed Vast Reaches Unclaimed among the most anticipated albums of 2023. That’s because Majesties is an exhilarating collaboration between Obsequiae’s Tanner Anderson and the members of black/death tandem Inexorum. Guitarist Carl Skildum and bassist Matthew Kirkwold have histories entwined with Obsequiae, as recruits for their live lineup. Together, Majesties represents a trio of talents synched to summon a hyper-specific place and era: mid-’90s Gothenburg.

Vast Reaches Unclaimed invokes the time right before Slaughter of the Soul’s clinical precision became the benchmark for Swedish melodeath.

The subgenre’s fiery ascent spawned a generation of disciples who streamlined the sound into an over-polished attack. But Majesties feels more connected to the genre’s formative years, when At the Gates, In Flames and Dark Tranquillity

were still developing their defining traits.

Reducing the Gothenburg sound to the simple “melodic death metal” tag fails to acknowledge the experimentation and hybridity of the style’s golden age.

But as the rousing riffs and epic verses pile up, it’s clear that Majesties lean even harder into the grandeur of traditional metal than the Swedish pioneers. The thrashing melodeath of “In Yearning, Alive” soars when harmonized leads steer the opening track. Later, Maiden guitar heroics punctuate “Seekers of the Ineffable” and the bruising but bittersweet “Temporal Anchor.” While the unplugged denouements of “Our Gracious Captors” and “Journey’s End” retread old ideas, the clean guitars are still welcome texture. Majesties even channel an undercurrent of blackened woe in “Across the Neverwhen” and “Sidereal Spire.” Like the album’s title implies, there’s still fertile territory to explore within this post-hype genre.

Rediscovery is still discovery. —SEAN FRASIER

PHANTOM FIRE

8

Eminente Lucifer Libertad EDGED CIRCLE

Burning sensation

Norway’s Phantom Fire are on some kind of prolific creative tear. Their latest release, and second full-length, follows a 2021 EP, Return of the Goat, and their debut, The Bust of Beelzebub, that scorched a path through the Scandinavian snow during the pandemic. Eminente Lucifer Libertad is the work of Gaahls Wyrd and Krakow members, respectively, Eld (vocals/ bass) and Kjartan (guitars), along with Enslaved drummer Iver Sandøy, who also produced, mixed and mastered. It’s an album that delivers everything the members’ pedigrees promise, and much more, a trashy speed metal-inspired black ‘n’ roll paean to Lucifer.

“Bloodshed” launches the attack with a furious D-beat approach and manic tremolopicking—think Midnight played by actual Norwegian black metal musicians—and features a seriously demented/fucked-up solo at the end.

This aesthetic—an unorthodox, but totally suitable jumble of extreme styles and approaches— carries across all 11 tracks, as Phantom Fire apply corpsepaint to everything they touch, from trad metal and electronic/ambient to metallic hardcore and actual grimy first-wave black metal. It’s the grimmest joyride you’ll experience. It may sound evil, but it’s a helluva lot of fun.

We may be making Eminente Lucifer Libertad out to be some sort of disjointed mess, and it’s anything but that. These dudes have just managed to assemble a black metal album with

DECIBEL : APRIL 2023 : 73

Sign” “Antichristian Inquisition” or “Rise of the Goat” careen back around. While you can find all 10 songs on two releases that collected Plague Bearer’s earlier recordings in 2018 and 2019, neither come close to sounding as good as this.

Dense and layered, this record is a triumph of tenacity and a testament to the timelessness of its songwriting.

Adorned with cover art by Thomas Westphal and layout by Obscure Visions, Summoning Apocalyptic Devastation is the complete package—a fitting tribute to 30 years of veteran experience.

Here’s to hoping we don’t have to wait until 2053 for a follow-up. —TIM MUDD

STORMO

7

Pick a side, ladies and gentlemen | S E A S O N O F M I S T

There are two factions around these parts: those of us who think there are two, maybe three Rotten Sound albums with Hall of Fame potential, and those of them who believe most everything the flying Finns have written sounds the same, and thusly aren’t ready for eligibility. Yet. To which I, as a member of the former, declare, “Yeah, no shit! But they’re still awesome.”

So, here we are on the occasion of Rotten Sound’s eighth album of jackhammering, blast-furnacing, HM-2 abuse molded into 18 songs of tight-as-booby-trap-tripwire grindcore that sounds suspiciously like the majority of the band’s previous umpteen numbers of songs. Softening the similarity blow is the fact that nothing on Apocalypse

surpasses the two-minute mark, and those contributing bits and pieces to Rotten Sound’s sense of identity—a Swedish death metal hail (“Sharing”), odes to NYC mosh and skank beats (“Newsflash,” “Empowered”), staccato chord shifting (“Digital Bliss,” “Breach”), vocalist Keijo Niinimaa’s battery acid burl, the punishing production—are played by a quartet that moves in exacting swan-like unison with Sami Latva’s kick and cymbal accents locking in with guitarist Mika Aalto’s lurching riff sensibility.

That it’s done as gracefully at 1,000 mph (“Renewables”) as it is at 100 mph (“Denialist”)— and at both tempos, in the case of the title track— and is still worth the time spent is a testament to veterans who understand their lane and how to play and stay in it. Even if “it all sounds the same.”

some interesting twists that never betray the blackened heartbeat of the band. No compromises, no concessions, just one killer track after another. And hopefully there’s even more in the tank. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

and untouched by modern trends, Plague Bearer’s sound is slightly down-tempo from its sibling’s straightforward approach to technical death metal, but much more evil. While there is a clear lineage to be traced from the earliest days of extreme metal, Summoning Apocalyptic Devastation appears to exist beyond the stylistic trappings of death and black metal. From the opening seconds of “Unholy Black Satanic War Metal,” to the closing of Venom-esque “Christbane,” the band delivers a devastating triplepronged vocal assault supported by ear-snake melodic riffs and an orgy of pummeling drums.

At 37 minutes, there is no fat to trim, and each minute is as consistent as it is brutal.

Every song here is excellent, and it’s hard to pick highlights. The epic “In Satan’s Name” is a personal favorite—subject to change next time the title track, “Defiled by Sodomy,” “Under One

PLAGUE BEARER

8

Summoning Apocalyptic Devastation

N A M E L E SS G R AV E

Tenacious PB

Primarily known as the aborted Satanic brother of Seattle death metal legends Drawn and Quartered, Plague Bearer have produced a string of underground demos and EPs since 1993, but never committed to a definitive full-length until now. Rising from its 30-year pestilent slumber 74 : A P R I L 2 0 2 3 : D E C I B E L

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PROSTHETIC

State oppression

Recently, on the interweb, I came across Italian Punk Hardcore 1980-1989, The Movie. In case you’re wondering what it’s about, it’s a documentary about the history of Italian punk and hardcore from 1980-’89 (duh), and in addition to being disappointed at how little the greatest and longest-running Italian hardcore band—Raw Power—was mentioned, much was learned about the scene, and a shit-ton of previously unheard bands were discovered. Some of them were even worth checking out and adding to my already bursting playlist.

In the age of globalization and cultural shrinkage at the hand of the very same internet that brought the history of old-school Italian hardcore punk into my living room, it’s encouraging to see a band like Stormo emerging from their homeland and bringing homegrown lessons and influences to a wider audience via an American label. Four albums in and the quartet from Feltre in the Dolomite Alps region are still taking majority inspiration from their own national heroes and only lightly peppering their metallic noise rock with hints of KEN mode, Unsane and the Jesus Lizard.

The majority stake of their racket is rooted in a historical roll call of bands from the boot: Negazione, Wretched, Indigesti, Nerorgasmo and Kina for chaotic ’80s drenched red-lining; Raw Power and Cripple Bastards for the faster, discordant melodics; Buñuel, Zu and the Secret for that spritz of modern angularity. All is well and good for the Azzurri (Luca Rocco does all his hoarse throat hollering in his native tongue) until you try to summon any amount of recall beyond the herky-jerky “Sorte,” the space straddling “Spire,” the sweet science combo rhythms of “Frame,” the partial tribute to Melvis’ “Honey Bucket” that is “Disequilibrio”

PHOTO BY MIKA AALTO

ROTTEN SOUND, Apocalypse

7

Endocannibalismo

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and the furious blast of “Deserti,” which should find its way into the doc’s follow-up.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

STREET TOMBS

8

Reclusive Decay CARBONIZED

Brevity is confidence

Quick aside: I recently read a book on writing that included the following maxim: “Brevity is confidence. Length is fear.” I couldn’t agree more— whether in words or music. When an album less than a half-hour long arrives at my home, something deep in my DNA stirs. Here is a band that values my time and spends precious hours in the studio cutting fat rather than padding egos. This could be like other great albums that arrived with a half-hour of life-changing material.

It’s hard to say if it’s life-changing, but Street Tombs are the real deal. Their debut, Reclusive Decay, is six tracks spread across 33 minutes that go by fast. Part of that drive might be the spirit behind the music: The project launched six years ago in and around a DIY space in New Mexico called the Cave. DIY spaces often birth fierce, singular underground music free of niceties. Street Tombs embody that fuck-it-and-go mentality without sacrificing precision or quality. Reclusive Decay has a bit of Necrot gallop, a bit of up-tempo Bathory and a bit of John Tardy gutturals/Obituary squeal. But none of these sounds or influences take pole position; they are touchpoints on the band’s musical journey through crust and Cro-Magnon. And what metal bands name check GBH these days? You have my interest.

There have been both upsides and downsides to the collapse of the music business. One upside is bands own their material. One downside is that engaging every creative whim is not a recipe for success. Fortunately, there are bands like Street Tombs that remember the most important person: the listener. Reclusive Decay is a rarity in 2023: a straight-up fucking banger ripe for replay. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

TULUS

7

Fandens Kall SOULSELLER

They see me black ‘n’ rollin’, they hatin’

For fans of the meatier, groove-laden kind of black metal coming out of Norway, the last few months have been a feast. In June of 2022, Khold emerged from their frostbitten tomb with their first album in eight years, the excellent Svartsyn, and now sister band Tulus, which is essentially 76 : A PRIL 202 3 : DECIBEL

Khold sans guitarist Rinn (and less makeup, too), are also back at it. Though less hotly anticipated than Khold—Tulus had their own eight-year sabbaticals during 1999-2007 and 2012-2020, but Old Old Death still rings in the ears of fans—the quality of these songs is right up there, too.

Despite some natural similarities, Tulus’ sound has always been warmer and more organic than Khold’s icier approach, focusing more on the black ‘n’ rolling, even doomier, side of things.

The trio has always been unafraid to slow things down, and once again the secret to their success resides in thick riffs and massive grooves.

The pace of Fandens Kall does vary; they even kick the door down with the relatively pacey opening title track and liven things up with a few more blistering passages scattered throughout, which doesn’t hurt the overall dynamics.

But most of the album’s killer blows come from their simple, tried-and-true formula of midpaced bleakness. The press release throws around the word “honest,” which can also be healthily translated as “no-bullshit”—sure, there’s a few acoustic flourishes and fleeting piano/keyboard and female vocal guest appearances, but Tulus remain fiercely meat-and-potatoes black metal.

With no surprises offered, their songs live or die on how much they will make you curve your mouth down and headbang slowly and purposefully. If that’s indeed the main goal, then with stompy ragers such as “Lek,” “Isråk” or “Snømyrkre,” success must be considered absolute.

—JOSÉ CARLOS SANTOS

WOE UNTO ME

7

Along the Meandering Ordeals, Reshape the Pivot of Harmony M-THEORY AUDIO

Black and red anima

The latest promo shot of Belarusian funeral doom band Woe unto Me aims for Skepticism-levels of class, yet the red and black formalwear they are modeling makes them all look like they’re waiting to audition for Lacuna Coil. These seasoned miserabilists continue their penchant for verbose (pretentious) album titles on third LP Along the Meandering Ordeals, Reshape the Pivot of Harmony, and their base sound is still steeped in the mournful tones of metal’s most funereal.

But, as per the outlier stylings of their second album, 2017’s Among the Lightened Skies the Voidness Flashed, and their unexpected Meshuggah cover (“Lethargica” off 2021 EP Spiral-Shaped Hopewreck), these guys are definitely not beholden to the strict tenets of funeral doom as established by the Great Old Ones in Thergothon. The title track from the aforementioned EP returns on their latest record, a latter day Katatonia-inspired

doom sprawler that, while lacking the titanic tonal heft you’d hope for from this style, makes its point with nimble musicianship and the ambient atmospherics of post-metal.

“Spiral-Shaped Hopewreck” is indicative of the direction of this record as a whole: Woe Unto Me present textured long-form doom led by the Jonas Renkse-esque cleans of Igor Kovalev (who joined in 2019). There’s shades of Paradise Lost’s gothic grandiosity to atmospheric opener “Mired Down in the Innermost Thicket,” while “Deep Beneath the Burden” comes closest to achieving the balance between the band’s earlier extremity and the more melodic, progressive tendencies of their recent material. —DEAN BROWN

XYSMA

5

No Place Like Alone S VA R T

Yeah, no

Reunions are tricky things.

The weight of expectations, the weight of being in a room and working with people you went your separate ways with, the weight of creating something new with an established yet long-dead moniker. Some bands collapse under that weight while (rarely) others rise to the challenge and defy expectations. Then there’s Xysma.

It’s been 25 years since their swansong, Girl on the Beach, bid us farewell with a polished album of power-pop. Years turned into decades. The rumors started and solidified out of the air into festival appearances. Finally, a new album was announced and there were whispers it would be in their “old” style. It even had the old logo!

And for a band like Xysma, who’d shed their skin more times than an entire reptile exhibit at the zoo, the idea that they would come back down the road in a new skin didn’t seem far-fetched.

Honestly, for a band that hadn’t been on the scene in 25 years, any era is the “old” era, but anyone expecting Swarming of the Maggots Part II or even a sequel to First & Magical might’ve had their expectations misaligned. So, how’d they do?

Not too well, I’m afraid. Musically, it’s in line with their later-period stuff—think a heavier Lotto—but the over-the-top vocals remind me of some baby boomer karaoke bullshit you’d see playing your local pub on a Tuesday if you lived in the middle of fucking nowhere. The band sounds fine, but Janitor’s performance is like a person trying to sing AC/ DC who’d only read about how they were supposed to sound written by someone who hated music. It just ruins it.

Congratulations for having the dedication to come back. I just can’t stay on this ride with you.

—NEILL JAMESON

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AND EUGENE. OnE

of the essential

elements of life on Planet Oxbow is not having anyone be really mindful of where that planet begins and where it ends.

So, Oxbow playing with King Diamond, which happened, makes as much sense as Oxbow playing with Shellac. Or Sleep. Or Neurosis.

Or A Perfect Circle. Or Peter Brötzmann, Sumac and Converge.

All of which have happened.

Through it all, though, extends an interest in having what happens be something that very clearly never happened before. The nonduplicative experience. So it was that I found myself standing, smiling, pantsless, next to one of Austin’s finest: a cop who, truth be told, had probably met his fair share of pantsless men during the course of his night shift.

But let’s go back: Oxbow are playing South by Southwest at a venue called Spiros.

The club owner, in an attempt, pre-show, to bro-down, sidles up to me at the bar and tries to offer me a drink. Which is fine. But I don’t 80 : APRIL 2023 : DECIBEL

drink alone, and when I ask what he’s drinking and he declines, I say just that. Especially when the offerer of the drink is the club owner, always decline. In literary terms, we call this “foreshadowing,” because in the eternal battle between the artists and the owners, drinking is really the least of our worries.

Besides which, I don’t like the look in his eyes, an observation that bears fruit when I see him screaming at the bouncers during Oxbow’s set. Specifically, right after I’ve taken my pants off. The bouncers make their way to the stage and tell me, “The owner wants you to put your pants on.”

“I will,” I say. “Right after we finish playing.” He looks at me, shrugs and works his way back offstage. He’s about my height and weight, 6’1” and 230 pounds, and hey… it’s just a job.

Which I’d have agreed with.

Right up until they cut the power and all hell broke loose.

Greg Davis kept playing the drums, the bouncers tried to remove him, I blocked them, he played, the guys in Pelican, in some

show of solidarity, spit in a few bouncers’ faces, and the riot was on. You could taste the blood in the air, and as fists and bottles flew and real jungle hatred was afoot, I grabbed my bag and stuffed my pants inside it. Right over my gun, and worked my way through the fighting crowd.

Stopping to say hello to King Coffee from the Butthole Surfers in the long hallway out of Spiros, he asked where I was going. I told him that the owner had said the cops had demanded I put on my pants, and so I wanted to find the cop that didn’t like my underwear. He shrugged, we hugged goodbye and I found my cop.

“Can I take a pic with you?”

“Uh, sure.”

So, we did. But not wanting to leave the fray before the fray was ready to be left, I headed back in, to a sea of worried faces. AND a giant Norwegian.

“I’m in a band,” he said, towering over me. But the pupils of his eyes were like black flying saucers.

He didn’t seem high. Just excited.

“We’re called Enslaved. This was… this was…”

We had played Norway before, and the club owner there had described our show the same way one would describe an assault. In fact, that was almost what he said: “You fucked us and left.”

To which I corrected, “We fucked you over! Then we left.”

So, I knew something of the stolid Norwegian temperament. “… This was great.”

“If it was so great, why don’t you have me come sing with you?”

I’m worse than ODB in this regard. You open the door into your hustle, I’m in. You have any idea how many times I tried to wheedle my way into doing songs for my friends’ bands? As often as there are friends in bands.

“Yes!” That he agreed so readily was shocking.

That I never heard from them again? Not so shocking.

But here, now, in this place in space, I make my second move: Here I am, bro! Which is to say, don’t ask what Enslaved can do for Eugene from Oxbow. Ask what Eugene from Oxbow can do for Enslaved.

You know where to find me!

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