Decibel #233 - March 2024 by Red Flag Media

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MARCH 2024 // No. 233

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March 2024 [R 233] decibelmagazine.com

upfront 8

metal muthas Eyelovemom

10 exclusive:

decibel magazine metal & beer fest: denver 2023 review Chilled to perfection

16 low culture We’re coming for your stapler 17 no corporate beer Last round on us 18 in the studio:

unto others

Crossing over

20 eternal evil Young, not dumb 22 meth. Pink is the new black 24 stygian crown Here there be monsters 26 vitriol The mirror stares back 28 jarhead fertilizer Fresh hell 30 slift Earthbound 32 blood red

throne

Old-school tenure

features

reviews

34 the obsessed The age of doom

67 lead review Hulder’s devotion to darkness pays off on sophomore release Verses in Oath

36 darkest hour Death in perpetuity 38 q&a: ihsahn The black metal legend has a score to settle 42 the decibel

hall of fame Having burnt out long before they could fade away, math rock progenitors Breadwinner see the sum total of their triumphant work compiled in The Burner

68 album reviews Records from bands that decided to put off oblivion for a bit longer, including Darkspace, Dusk and Vincent Crowley 72 damage ink Am I evil?

Sweet Oblivion COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY BRENDAN MACLEOD

Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $34.95. 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. © 2024 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.

2 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

www.decibelmagazine.com

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March 2024 [T233] PUBLISHER

Alex Mulcahy

alex@redflagmedia.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Albert Mudrian

albert@decibelmagazine.com AD SALES

James Lewis

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

Aaron Salsbury

aaron@decibelmagazine.com

Michael Wohlberg

michael@decibelmagazine.com CUSTOMER SERVICE

Patty Moran

COPY EDITOR

Andrew Bonazelli

BOOKCREEPER

Tim Mulcahy

patty@decibelmagazine.com

tim@redflagmedia.com CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph

Online On January 15, 2015, Spectral Voice

delivered their now-legendary Necrotic Doom demo to a largely unsuspecting world. I specifically use the “largely” qualifier because, by February 25, Dutch Pearce posted an even-then rare interview with elusive drummer/ vocalist Eli Wendler on the Decibel site. It’s how I first heard Spectral Voice. If you’re even a semi-regular Decibel reader, you’ve seen Dutch’s byline. He’s one of the contributors who has been here for well over a decade, but I couldn’t tell you if his tenure is closer to 15 years or the magazine’s full lifespan, because I honestly can’t remember Decibel without him. Be it his online Demo:listen column or in print with Through a Speaker Rumbly, he’s consistently been the magazine’s most vocal champion of the underground. Dude wrote about the debut Tomb Mold demo for Demo:listen less than a month after the tape was released. Same goes for Undeath’s 2019 demo debut. Over the last 14 issues, Tomb Mold, Undeath and now Spectral Voice have been featured on the magazine’s cover, with Dutch handling this month’s story on the latter’s new death/doom masterpiece Sparagmos. That is, to put it bluntly, the kind of A&R work any record label would kill for. Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find Neill Jameson’s monthly Airing of Grievances (a.k.a. Low Culture), where he cynically questions some people’s motivation for discovering new artists and the alleged clout that comes with being an early advocate of a band. But if there’s one contributor who just wants to share in the excitement of fellow metalheads hearing new artists, it’s Dutch. Stay enthused. Stay death. albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

DECIBEL WEB EDITOR

Albert Mudrian

DECIBEL WEB AD SALES

James Lewis

albert@decibelmagazine.com james@decibelmagazine.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Emily Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Nathan Carson Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Dillon Collins 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 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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To order by phone: 1.215.625.9850 (10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST) To order by fax: 1.215.625.9967 To order online: www.decibelmagazine.com Decibel (ISSN 1557-2137) is published monthly by Red Flag Media, Inc., P.O. Box 36818, Philadelphia, PA 19107. Annual subscription price is $34.95. 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. Copyright ©2024 by Red Flag Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. PRINTED IN USA

ISSN 1557-2137

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FULL OF HELL AND NOTHING

JARHEAD FERTILIZER

XIBALBA

SKINHEAD

WHEN NO BIRDS SANG

AZTLÁN

CARCERAL WARFARE

EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL, AND NOTHING HURT

Pete DeLuycker Aurora, IL

You’re a lifelong Chicagoland resident. How does the current metal scene there compare with the one you grew up with?

The current metal scene in the Chicagoland area is actually pretty comparable to the scene back in the ’80s and ’90s. Many of the legendary bands, such as Broken Hope, Trouble, Ministry, Macabre and Master are still together, and are releasing killer new music. Some of the venues I would see shows at, like the Thirsty Whale and Medusa’s are gone, but Reggies and the Forge (in Joliet) are still bringing in lots of great bands.

6 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

Most 58-year-old metalheads aren’t excited about new releases from death, black and doom bands like you are. How have you managed to stay so enthusiastic and not get jaded like most fans of your vintage?

on your 20th anniversary. That’s quite the accomplishment! Many publications like Metal Maniacs and Terrorizer are no longer around. I have so many favorite albums of 2004, so I’ll just list the Top 5.

I’ve always been very passionate and obsessed with metal, so it’s easy for me to remain enthusiastic. I’ll be a lifelong metalhead. Besides, there are a lot of amazing new bands, like Tomb Mold, Frozen Soul, Necrot, Blood Incantation and Cerebral Rot coming out to hold my interest.

Suffocation, Souls to Deny Deicide, Scars of the Crucifix Incantation, Decimate Christendom Cannibal Corpse, The Wretched Spawn Malevolent Creation, Warkult

I hate KISS. But your unbridled love of them makes me want to reconsider the band. Where do I start?

KISS is the band that started me on my path to becoming a metalhead. I suggest starting with their first live album, KISS Alive!, as this album rocks hard from start to finish. Then check out the studio album Hotter Than Hell, which has a raw and gritty production that makes it sound very dark and heavy. You can’t go wrong with Creatures of the Night either, where they intentionally went in a heavier direction. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Decibel. What were your favorite albums from back in 2004 and do you think they still hold up?

First off, let me congratulate Decibel magazine

I’ve always been very passionate and obsessed with metal, so it’s easy for me to remain enthusiastic. I’ll be a lifelong metalhead. I think they all hold up really well, with Deicide’s Scars of the Crucifix being a standout release, as this was the last album to feature the Hoffman brothers.

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

NOW SLAYING Wonder what Decibel world HQ has been rocking for the past month? Well, here are the records that we spun most while eagerly awaiting Pearl Jam’s new powerviolence album.

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

This Month’s Mutha: Linda Armentor Mutha of Jimmy Bower of Eyehategod

Tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Linda and I’m retired at 77 years old. I love hanging out with my grandkids and watching my favorite game shows on TV. I’m not as mobile as I used to be, so I’m limited as to what I can do. What was Jimmy like growing up?

He was very active. He loved his Big Wheel and grew up around a bunch of kids, so he always had someone to play with. He also played in the school band and sang in the choir. He also sang in two operas! The operas were Carmen and Le papillon, and he would rehearse for that in the evening. He was even paid $5 per performance. He also loved fishing, and we would go out on the boat pretty much every weekend. We’ve heard great things about your biscuits. Care to share the recipe?

Crawfish ettouffee I would understand, but biscuits? My favorite dish to make is rice and gravy made with a grease gravy! It has to cook down for hours and will have your house smelling good. We have to ask since Jimmy is a founding member of Eyehategod: Did you raise him religious?

He’s a Catholic, but not practicing. He went to Catholic schools and was an altar boy. 8 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

Did you have any influence on Jimmy getting into heavy music? What kind of music are you a fan of?

When Jimmy was 10 years old, I got him KISS Alive! and KISS Alive II for Easter along with his Easter basket. I would always give him a present with his basket. He loved KISS so much that he and his friends would have concerts with brooms and entertain the neighborhood kids. Me personally, I enjoy country music and rock ‘n’ roll. Your son is a renowned multi-instrumentalist. Do you prefer his work as a guitarist or drummer?

I like them both, but think he’s better on drums than guitar. According to Encyclopaedia Metallum, your son has played in no less than 20 bands. What’s your favorite?

I guess it would have to be Eyehategod. Tell us something that most of Jimmy’s fans would never suspect about him.

I’m sure they already know, but he likes country music, like the old stuff! Country music was always played at family gatherings when he was growing up. I guess another thing would be he loves to cook and does good meals. I enjoy his potato salad very much. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Spectral Voice, Sparagmos  Chapel of Disease, Echoes of Light  Darkest Hour, Perpetual | Terminal  Negative Prayer, Self // Wound  Cathedral, Forest of Equilibrium ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Die Kreuzen, Die Kreuzen  Negative Approach, Tied Down  Necros, Conquest for Death  Minor Threat, Complete Discography  S.O.A., No Policy ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Spectral Voice, Sparagmos  Hulder, Verses in Oath  Jarhead Fertilizer, Carceral Warfare  Blood Red Throne, Nonagon  Morbid Saint, Swallowed by Hell ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Various Artists, Katamari Damacy Original Soundtrack  Ghoul, Noxious Concoctions  Esselfortium, “memory=entryrrrr/////”  Spectral Voice, Sparagmos  Devil Master, Ecstasies of Never Ending Night ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Strigampire, All to Dominate  L.O.T.I.O.N., [Declassified Audio Document 2018:]  The Dillinger Escape Plan, Calculating Infinity  Death, Individual Thought Patterns (2023 remaster)  Orchid, Chaos Is Me

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Hasan Ali : r i p p i n g h e a d a c h e s p r o m o t i o n s  Malokarpatan, Vertumnus Caesar  Lycia, The Burning Circle and Then Dust  Ilsa, Preyer  Oz, Fire in the Brain  Blue Öyster Cult, Secret Treaties

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: DENVER 2023

Mountain kings  Local boys Khemmis make a triumphant return to their hometown stage

here’s nothing more Metal & Beer Fest than a dude wearing corpsepaint stepWHEN: December 1-2, 2023 ping to the mic and yelling, ‘Let’s fucking PHOTOS BY HILLARIE JASON party!’” I’m likely paraphrasing, but Decibel’s long-suffering art director Mike Wohlberg’s astute observation at the start of Morbikon’s set certainly captures an important element of the event: It’s fucking fun! You’ll laugh. Maybe you’ll cry, like more than one of us did, too. And if the nearly 50 different beers available at the Summit clouded any of those memories, we’ve got the details of the 14 sets from the second edition of our Denver Metal & Beer Fest. —ALBERT MUDRIAN WHERE: Summit, Denver, CO

THE MUNSENS

PHOBOCOSM

fit in with any crowd, enthusiastically embracing influences from death and black metal in their sound over the years, which made them the perfect opener for the Denver edition of the festival. Warming up the hometown crowd with new death metal-tinged single “Sacred Ivory,” followed by a pair of doomier tunes—the title tracks to last album Unhanded and 2016 EP Abbey Rose—the trio set a grim and heavy atmosphere from the jump. Opening the weekend is always a considerable task, but the Munsens rose to the occasion, priming the audience for more beer and blast beats. —EMILY BELLINO

fest into decidedly more dour and doomy territory, Quebecois death metal depth-delvers Phobocosm took Friday’s crowd by the throat and tried to suffocate us all inside their gory, low-end horror show. They sampled from all three of their records from the past decade, leaning a bit more heavily on their hot new platter, Foreordained. Everything about their set seemed designed to deepen the venue’s shadows, to manifest something physical out of the darkness that would swallow band and audience alike. Given another 10 minutes of stage time, they might have succeeded. Their sound

Sludgy stoner crew the Munsens have always

10 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

Before Saturday came to officially pitch the

mingled mightily with the many potent brews being passed around. —DANIEL LAKE

MORBIKON

My call-to-arms came two hours before Morbikon’s set via a text message from drummer Dave Witte: “I better see you there.” I went directly to the venue, did not pass the 3 Floyds table, did not collect a sample of their 9.2% ABV Morbikon collaboration barleywine, and watched the whole set stone-cold sober, but transfixed. The brainchild of Phil “Landphil” Hall offered much, much more than secondwave worship; it’s kind of amazing how seamlessly the songs from 2022’s Ov Mournful Twilight translated to the stage, especially with original lyricist Quotidius subbing on vocals. This was only the band’s fourth live performance ever, and it was an appropriately epic— and perhaps medically inadvisable—amount of fun. —NICK GREEN

KEN MODE

After two long days traveling by van from their native Winnipeg, noise rock quartet KEN mode had plenty of pent-up aggression to live up to their moniker. Songs from companion albums NULL and VOID were brought to the fore as haymaker openers “A Love Letter,” “The Shrike” and “Painless”—as well as longer,

Party thrashers  Midnight’s Athenar (l) and Morbikon’s Quotidius are here to threaten us with a good time

unflinching tracks “Lost Grip” and “No Gentle Art”—made it clear that while they may not be as metal as those with whom they shared our Denver stage, they are by no means any less heavy. A double bass rendition of “Blessed” proved their only “older”—but certainly welcome—addition to the set. Missing out was a mistake. —MICHAEL WOHLBERG

THE RED CHORD

The Red Chord came to Denver to fucking

party, and party they did. Walking out in white robes to the sounds of ’80s pop blaring behind them, the New England deathcore heavyweights played all—OK, most of—the hits in their fourth show back since reforming in 2022 (and first Denver set in over a decade). Performing a set that focused heavily on 2005’s Clients, the Red Chord oversaw the night’s most chaotic mosh pit without ever slowing down to take themselves too seriously. Ending the set with crowd-pleaser and longtime closer “Dreaming in Dog Years,” the Red Chord reminded us why they’re one of the 2000s’ essential heavy bands. —EMILY BELLINO

CEPHALIC CARNAGE

“Kill for weed! Kill for weed! Kill for fucking weed!” Oh, uh, sorry, didn’t see you there, just a little too busy reliving the set, let me put down

this b… keyboard. Maaaaaan, the hometown heroes of “Rocky Mountain hydro-grind” blazed through ripping fan favorites and heady deep dives plucked from their 30-plus years. It was, like, transcendent! The whole trip was elevated to an entirely different level with the addition of saxophone legend Bruce Lamont, as well as a totally-out-there backdrop and laser display. For longtime fans and newcomers alike—and even for total squares like your correspondent—this was enough to get you really… wait, what were we talking about? —JAMES LEWIS

KHEMMIS

Khemmis’ first Denver show in a year and a half produced perhaps the most Decibel-centric set of the weekend. Unearthing both songs they recorded for the Decibel Flexi Series, 2021’s “Sigil” and 2017’s “Empty Throne”—the latter of which making its live debut—and three tracks from Decibel’s 2016 Album of the Year, Hunted, undoubtedly provided big feels to not just yours truly, but everyone still standing in a packed Summit. The band may have closed with their video game soundtrack hit—their cover of “A Conversation With Death”—but penultimate number “The Bereaved” proved the emotional apex of the night. Day one was complete, but Metal & Beer Fest clearly still had life. —ALBERT MUDRIAN

ASTRAL TOMB

With echoes of the previous night still ringing—

or perhaps early onset tinnitus—Denver phenoms Astral Tomb were Saturday’s opening roar. Maybe it’s cosmically cruel to book musicians under 21 years old at a fest known for its craft beer. But cosmic cruelty through star-swallowing tech-death is sort of Astral Tomb’s thing. Under a frenzy of thrashing hair, vocalist/guitarist Michael Schrock stomped the stage with chonky moon boots. They rewarded punctual mosh-pitters by bashing through chaotic cuts from Soulgazer and Total Spiritual Death. With a vast universe of potential ahead of them, Astral Tomb were a riveting jolt to wake the exhausted souls slithering into the Summit. —SEAN FRASIER

MOTHER OF GRAVES

Fellow dB scribe Nick Green and I tucked ourselves behind the Wise Blood Records merch table so label head Sean Frasier could bask in Mother of Graves’ mournful glory a little closer to the stage, but really, our exact location inside the Summit could not have mattered less. There isn’t a bad spot in the place, and the Indianapolis quintet delivered song after sparkling song into every corner just to hammer that point home. Towering guitar leads traded emotional weight with beautiful keyboard passages, DECIBEL : M A RCH 2 0 24 : 11

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: DENVER 2023

 Heavy snowfall Agalloch’s Don Anderson is crushed by the weight of his own riffs

crunchy chords buoyed Brandon Howe’s gripping growl and we were all treated to one of the most consistently engaging sets of the weekend. —DANIEL LAKE

THE KEENING

Brutal bands can easily drown out a crowd full

of half-blitzed, beer-swilling, pizza-gorging metalheads, but a more acoustic, lilting act has a harder time with that. As a massive fan of the Keening (and Rebecca Vernon’s previous project SubRosa), I was concerned that some of their energy wouldn’t carry or translate under such circumstances, but boy was I wrong. Despite the fact that you could still hear a din of voices over the sound of their music, they didn’t let that sway them in the slightest, and their set was still emotionally powerful enough to move me to tears. Definitely one of the best moments of the weekend. —ADDISON HERRON-WHEELER

KRYPTS

Fifteen years have shriveled up like mummified flesh since Krypts formed in the catacombs of Finland. Over that time, these Helsinki death/ doom hellions turned heads and snapped spines with their subterranean style. As part of Dark Descent’s early catalog, their simultaneous ascents are symbiotic. They don’t regularly 12 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

haunt North American shores, so it was a bruising treat to hear casket-crushing tracks from their whole discography. Unlike their track title from Remnants of Expansion, there was no evidence that these titans were withering. Awash in winter hues and boasting a guitar tone tough as coffin nails, Krypts brought the doom without the gloom. —SEAN FRASIER

PRIMITIVE MAN

Denver’s very own brought the misery and the

hate to Metal & Beer Fest. Much like Sisyphus and his eternal duty, Primitive Man’s music is like a sonic boulder that they roll out on a suspecting audience. Cutting intimidating figures and splitting their set between numbers from 2017’s Caustic and 2020’s Immersion, Primitive Man bathed the Summit in feedback and lumbering riffs. Opening with “My Will”—the feelbad song of the winter—and concluding with the music industry-decrying “The Lifer,” a little pain was just what the sadist ordered. —EMILY BELLINO

MIDNIGHT

With this sensational performance, Midnight joined Friday night headliners Khemmis as the only bands to play both Philly and Denver Metal & Beer Fests, a Decibel Tour and a Decibel

anniversary show. “I would make Midnight the house band and book them on every single event if I could,” notes Decibel Editor-in-Chief Albert Mudrian. Seriously, what’s not to worship? Midnight delivered a typically crowd-pleasing and crowd-pummeling set, unleashing fucking speed and darkness at a breakneck pace. Plus, Midnight mastermind Athenar showed his benevolent side by sharing his “stash” with the crowd. Rock against drugs? More like: rock against die-a-beat-us. —NICK GREEN

AGALLOCH

I’m not a crier. Metal just never really hit me like that… until late Saturday night. I was primed, I guess, by Agalloch’s ecstatic opener, “Limbs,” which the band has subtly updated to transcend in all ways its recorded counterpart, and whose climax exploded into heady bliss. This was followed up by ironclad highlights from nearly all of their albums, every one of which enthusiastically hailed by the grateful crowd. But everything went blurry for me amidst “Falling Snow” during John Haughm’s haunting final incantation: “The snow has fallen and raised this white mountain on which you will die and fade away in silence.” The performance marked me, and a couple hundred other people, too, I imagine. —DANIEL LAKE

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: DENVER 2023

A valiant attempt to tackle all of Metal & Beer Fest’s nearly 50 different pours

arly-ass flights out of Washington D.C. are… well, they’re fine, actually, if you’ve got the disposition to get moving before dawn and make the most of the day. Upon touching down in Colorado mid-morning on Thursday, November 30, the first order of business was to hop a train into downtown Denver and figure out the hotel situation, but it was already beer o’clock. Editor-in-chief Albert Mudrian and I froggered our way through traffic—and at least one belligerent biker towing a dog in a carriage—to kick off the weekend’s festivities at Decibel’s Kill Screen-sponsored happy hour at TRVE Brewing. Everything started with their Decibrew Vol. 3, a crisp, easy-drinking Kolsch. From there, we got to sample the rich Obsidian Crown, TRVE’s imperial stout collaboration with Khemmis, and the refreshingly flavorful Tunnel of Trees IPA. Before leaving, I took the opportunity to also dive into their Dead Monk Belgian series and a couple of their sours, including Burning Off Impurities, a truly odd flavor combination that included notes of fruit and coffee. Also in attendance was WarPigs brewmaster Erik Ogershok, a sly conversationalist with whom I spent large chunks of the weekend chatting about beer and metal in equal measure. Everything WarPigs poured was worth a return trip, including their Foggy Geezer hazy IPA, their zesty Blinding Light Show IPA, and especially the Rauchbier (read: smoked) Marzen collaboration with Agalloch, called Burned Fortress. Rauchbiers are a rare commodity where I live, so the chance to swig something so hearty and well-balanced was revelatory.

14 : M A RCH 2024 : DECIBEL

by DANIEL LAKE

At the Summit venue, the Brimming Horn Meadery station was positioned just a couple tables down from WarPigs, so it was easy to transition right over to their smoked huckleberry mead collaboration with Agalloch, which held its own admirably, even up against the pungent and powerful aged Dark Sorcery mead. With all that boozy horsepower, it was useful to have a couple light, carbonated meads on hand (Nuclear Blast Beats and Drengr) to cleanse the palate and provide some less intense fare. Just one shuffling mass of drinkers away stood the KCBC table, whose Jingle Zombie sour with cranberry, tangerine, and plum was stunningly bright and well-rounded, and who also brought enough firepower— pilsners, IPAs and the Primitive Man collaboration Death Sludge dark lager—to fuel festgoers’ alcoholism all by themselves. Denver’s Black Sky also showed up in force, lifting spirits high with their killer Cephalic Haze IPA and 6.66 Schwarzbier, which was full of dark flavor and bitter anger that paired well with KEN mode’s barbed set. Magnanimous Brewing were absolutely not fucking around—their Red Chord collaboration, Molasses Through the Vein was a massive imperial stout flavored with vanilla, cacao, peanut butter and butterscotch, landing a bitter punch almost too thick to believe; their real triumph, though, was the Keening collaboration Silent Grave, a similarly brutal stout that bloomed brilliantly on the tongue and begged for repeated pours. Loving Mother of Graves as much as I do meant that checking out their collaboration with Little Cottage Brewery, the Emptiness of Eyes Schwarzbier, was a satisfying

low-ABV destination; likewise, their Double Fatality DIPA was an awesome experience, all fresh hops and a commanding depth of flavor. Never outdone, 3 Floyds brought the power of their 15% Dark Lord variations— the sweetly unsubtle Marshmallow Handjee and the complex Sundae Thunderstorm—as well as the heady, Morbikon-backed cherry barleywine, Deaththirst. All of these breweries had locked down real estate on the ground floor, and some drinkers might not have realized that even more beer flowed upstairs. Space was tight, but not so constricted that business wasn’t booming for Holy Mountain Brewing, whose White Lodge saison burst with a spicy bouquet; Soundgrowler, with the Everlasting Void dark lager, refreshing Orange Haze IPA and mild Tortilla Hands Mexican lager; and the ever-reliable Adroit Theory, specializing in their Ultraviolence quad IPA and Dia de los Muertos Russian imperial stout variation with coffee, hazelnuts and coconut. Midway through Saturday’s revelries, though, something terrible and unexpected happened: After three days of… let’s call it “enthusiastic tasting,” because that sounds moderately more responsible than “binge drinking”… my lust for more beer just gave out. I hadn’t sampled everything, but I simply broke and couldn’t take one more sip. Sometime during Midnight’s blasphemous performance, my plastic cup got knocked from my hand, and I didn’t even care. Moments later, a not-unpleasant crunch under my feet told me that my weekend allotment of beer had come to its end, and I found myself perfectly content in that knowledge. Besides, there’s always April in Philly…

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NEY ISEM

T BY COUR

A New Year of the Same Stale Shit ello there, people reading this in the new year. Right now, it’s two weeks out and we’re still simplifying having a wonderful Christmas time. I mention this because it feels like the perpetually online require regular reminders about how publishing works and how this has to be done in advance. I’m willing to guess, though, that when you’re reading this—probably on the throne sometime in, I dunno, early February— that your ass cheeks are cold and there’s still a select few people moaning about year-end things. Consider this your last reminder from the year that just passed to shut the fuck up and I promise I won’t mention it again for another 10 months. Another thing that I wish people would understand is how, under no circumstances, does anyone care if you’re the first person to be into a band. Seriously. No one in the history of the known world has ever won an award or gotten laid because they were early adopters of a band. Hell, most people in the bands themselves don’t receive a trophy or a warm touch on a cold, lonely night. I have no sources that I checked on this. Just take a leap of faith and trust me. This kind of behavior comes across as attention-seeking at best and a desperate, Elon Muskesque plea for love at worst. This idea that fans or journalists—even label owners—somehow need to be validated for the work of others reeks of childishness. Just because we write about something doesn’t mean we’re owed any thanks or attention. And I say this while I’m in the middle of writing a half dozen year-end lists, so trust me, I do understand the desire for validation as much as—if not more than—most. But I (try to) keep it to myself like an adult. An aside: This issue marks nine years since I started this column, for those playing along at 16 : M A RCH 2024 : DECIBEL

home. I think I’m like the stapler guy in Office Space at this point; Albert just forgot to fire me. Does it feel good to be someone spreading the word about a band you love? Absolutely, and talking about music with others is (and this is a reach) a worthwhile way to pass the time. And yes, when people tell you that you’re why they heard a band in the first place, it is nice. I’d think that’s the reaction you would want when you share music: to turn others onto it. But that’s where it should end. You share music to help spread a band you dig, not to chase clout. Probably should have used the word “should” in that last sentence. It’s similar to a guy I knew who ran a label and would put “executive producer” on every record he released, even though he did absolutely fuck-all in the creation of them. It was just one of several shitty business practices he adhered to. He’s dead now and everyone seems to have forgotten what an asshole he was. I’ve been involved in (poorly) operating three labels over 25 years, and each time I did it because I wanted to support and spread music that I connected with, not because I needed the work of others to help propel my sense of selfworth. If that’s your bag, hey cool, seek therapy. Or go volunteer. Or learn to masturbate left-handed. Anything that helps you feel more like a person without the mental gymnastics of riding the coattails of someone you’ve probably never even met. I’d like to think that we all do what we do for the love of music and not our own egos, that there’s still something genuine and pure out there. And then I remember we live in a world where influencers exist and make millions from being useless lumps on social media. And I realize the last 600 words will probably be forgotten once you’ve thawed your ass cheeks enough to get up and flush.

Last Call for the Decibel Beer Column— But Not for Craft Beer Plus Metal

t’s a plot twist hard to imagine back when this column debuted in 2009, but the seemingly super-niche crossover of heavy metal and craft beer is now business as usual. Perhaps it was inevitable considering how massive American craft beer has become, with around 9,500 breweries, and yet how in simultaneously remaining dwarfed by macro beer, it’s still considered a cooler, more creative alternative: An IPA, stout or rauchbier is a perfectly logical collaboration for a metal band. It reaches a significantly sized crowd, the process of making it feels in line with the artistry of music, it goes hand-in-hand with the experience of watching a show. Enough bands partner up with like-minded breweries now that these collabs aren’t exactly newsworthy anymore. Neither are metal-themed breweries, or solid craft beer selections at concert venues. What a time to be alive! Craft beer and metal simply exist together now and partner up in myriad ways, and that’s a win for all of us fans. But it also renders this column a little redundant. As some readers well know, Decibel most recently held our 11th Metal & Beer Fest. This magazine and its festivals are arguably the biggest supporter and—let’s say it—best possible outcome of the craft beer-plus-

metal convergence. Even we have to admit, though, when that convergence is more just an integral part of the music-enjoying, showgoing experience, and not a splashy timeline demanding column inches. When Adem Tepedelen started writing this column under the title Brewtal Truth in 2009, the only brewery that had a loose and then-undefined relationship with metal was 3 Floyds, opened in 1996 in Hammond, IN. Bands teaming up with breweries to make their own beers didn’t pick up until a few years later. Iron Maiden entered into what has always appeared to be a pretty involved relationship with fellow Brits Robinsons Brewery and released a solid ESB in 2013. The same year, Voivod released a farmhouse ale named for their song “Kluskap O’Kom” with Canadian brewery Hopfenstark. Bands like Pig Destroyer and Skeletonwitch were close behind (2014 and 2016, respectively; both with 3 Floyds). In 2012, TRVE Brewing blasted open its unholy doors in Denver. More breweries with strong metal ties—many of whom have helped set the bar for Decibel Metal & Beer Fest’s unrivaled beer lineup—followed. To name a few: Holy Mountain Brewing in Seattle in 2014; Adroit Theory Brewing in Purcellville, VA in 2014; Kings County Brewers Collective in Brooklyn in 2016; and nomadic Nightmare Brewing in 2018. These breweries provide natural collaboration partners for bands and no-brainers for beer options at shows. And most venues have ventured far past this metal circle to stock their bars with myriad craft options, simply recognizing the growing consumer thirst.

“There are only so many times you can say, ‘Now this brewery is making a beer for this band,’ or, ‘This guy from a metal band also brews,’” says Chris Dodge, the Trappist vocalist and bassist who helmed this column when it was first rebranded as No Corporate Beer. Dodge says the waning newsworthiness and increasing normalcy of metal-plus-craft beer is one of the reasons he saw his time writing the column coming to an end. His own inspiration for discussion topics was greatly fueled by Trappist’s touring, which took him on fascinating beer adventures through the United States, Europe, Japan and beyond. Without those excursions, Dodge says he would have felt “stifled.” “In the context of the time when Adem started the column, [this] was unique in itself and worth writing about,” Dodge explains. “Extreme beer, extreme bands. A new frontier. Cool. And, of course, Adem’s writing style is solid and captivating. Ten years later, the beer/band crossover storyline didn’t carry much water on its own.” Let’s be real: Endings are tough. Thinking about what Decibel’s beer column has achieved by deciding to spotlight the beer-and-metal convergence and find new niche rabbit holes to dive down monthly, it’s not not sad to close this chapter. But the reason behind this end—that metal and beer are now common dance partners—is an undeniable victory, one us fans of both can continue to enjoy. And while a lack of newsworthiness renders this column irrelevant, the pairing of craft beer and metal—a pairing Decibel has helped grow and has long heralded—is one this magazine will continue to celebrate.

EXCLUSIVES STORE.DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM

DECIBEL : M A RCH 2024 : 17

STUDIO REPORT

ortland, OR-based heavy rock outfit Unto Others are midway through their studio session at Falcon Recording Studios (Poison Idea, Silver Talon), where ALBUM TITLE they’re tracking the untitled follow-up to 2021’s TBA acclaimed Strength full-length with British studio maven Tom STUDIO Dalgety (Ghost, Opeth). When Decibel phones vocalist/guitarist Falcon Gabe Franco, we’re not sure if he’s wearing aviators—we didn’t Recording Studios, ask, actually—but since his eyewear of choice was de rigueur in Portland, OR videos for “When Will Gods Work Be Done” and “Heroin,” then RECORDING DATES we safely assume he probably is. November 11 November 22, 2023 “Day 11 in the studio today,” says Franco in a relaxed tone. The frontman tells us that the songwriting for the band’s third PRODUCERS full-length originated before Strength. Four or five songs were Tom Dalgety and Unto Others nearly completed before he and the rest of Unto Others hamLABEL mered out the remainder in rehearsal. Franco wryly describes the Century Media tracks they’re recording as “posi-goth” or “crossover goth.” The crossover isn’t all that surprising, though. The Portlanders have RELEASE DATE defied easy categorization since emerging as Idle Hands in 2017. early to mid-2024 “The way I’ve always approached songwriting is natural,” he says. “I’m not thinking, ‘Well, we need to go heavier or lighter, or this should be a goth or a metal record.’ I mostly play acoustic at home, and any good riff that comes out of that might become part of a song. I don’t have a marketing or platform approach when I’m writing. I like to be as creative as possible.”

UNTO OTHERS

18 : M A R C H 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

Recording with Dalgety is taking Unto Others down a new path. The Grammynominated producer is breaking out the sessions in batches for this latest full-length. “Tom’s idea,” says Franco. “It’s nice because we’re only doing four songs at a time. We can take the energy to focus on these songs individually and not get burnt out. Everyone still gets to have a hand in the recording process throughout the sessions instead of Colin [Vranizan, drums] finishing in two days, and he has nothing to do the rest of the month; or tracks/takes getting rushed due to fatigue.” While we don’t have a firm release date for the next Unto Others LP, Franco assures us there will be no cover songs, such as the Roadrunner-mandated Pat Benetar cover of “Hell Is for Children” on Strength. “I personally prefer covers to be on cover records or singles,” Franco says. “They’re fun and I love them, but they shouldn’t be on your main statement as an artist.” —CHRIS DICK

PHOTOS BY PETER BESTE

UNTO OTHERS

ETERNAL EVIL

espite being a mere 19 years of age, Adrian Tobar—with all his talk of building a fanbase, working around government pandemic restrictions in order to play shows at home and abroad, and writing Eternal Evil’s second record while assembling the band’s second lineup—already sounds like a veteran of Planet Metal. Heck, the kid already experienced his own existential coming of age when he walked away from thrashers Three Dead Fingers with the belief he could do something heavier, meaner and more evil with a new, more appropriatelymonikered outfit. ¶ “I joined Three Dead Fingers around December 2017, when I was like 13 years old,” says the guitarist/vocalist. “It was a fun ride. We did a couple big things: recorded our first album, played at Sweden Rock Festival 2018, and shows abroad in Poland and Austria. After almost three years, I started to realize that their music was not really my thing, so I quit and founded Eternal Evil. It was fun and I learned a lot about business and professionalism. [Three Dead Fingers guitarist/ vocalist] Oliwer Bergman also taught me how to write songs, so I owe him when it comes to my songwriting and arranging.” 20 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

After recording a limited-release demo, Rise of Death, in his garage in 2019, Tobar led Eternal Evil through the construction of debut album, The Warriors Awakening… Brings the Unholy Slaughter!, issued by Redefining Darkness in late 2021. COVID restrictions saw the band playing frustratingbut-fun “physical distance shows” at home before a quick European tour once regulations loosened. Two new members—bassist Niklas Saari and drummer Adam Schmidt—were drafted in while latest album The Gates Beyond Mortality was written while negotiating a new deal with France’s Listenable Records. “[It was a] real stressful period,” Tobar understates. “Things didn’t work with the guys we were with before. So, while writing a whole new album, I also had to find another lineup. It was like doing two jobs at once and I was also still in school, so that made things even more stressful! But I think it all

turned out well. The thought of having a fresh start with a new lineup totally motivated me to write the new album.” That fresh start includes a nod to the more vicious sides of the young band’s original old-wave influences: Dark Angel, Slayer, Germany’s Big Three, classic Brazilian blackened death/thrash, and a thematic exploration of the occult, particularly, “the works of [Dissection and Arckanum collaborator] Frater Nemidial. He wrote books like Liber Falxifer and Liber Azerate. His form of Satanism fascinated me in a way that others did not. “We just let our creativity guide us through the music and that’s how this album came to sound,” Tobar concludes. “We are very proud of the work we put in and think that this is a great album that needs to be heard everywhere.” Gotta love the confidence of youth! —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PHOTO BY MINDPHASER90

Youthful Swedish black/thrashers continue infernal devastation

METH.

hicago’s meth. (stylized all lowercase with the period) chose an interesting way to announce their new record, SHAME. Greeting the world with smiling faces, white outfits and green fields, meth. took a different route than their peers to make their presence felt. Though they’ve been known more for their disturbing music and unhinged live shows, meth.’s fusion of noise rock, metalcore and black metal doesn’t quite match these new band photos, but vocalist Seb Alvarez weighs in on their importance. ¶ “It was the contrast of everything, because the album is so dark and weighs really heavy on mental illness,” Alvarez explains. “Having the dichotomy of those photos, I thought, would be pretty fun and a nod to Throbbing Gristle. People would flip through in the record store and say, ‘Oh, what’s this,’ and be met with a weird harsh noise record. I also thought it would be fun to do something like that, especially within our genre of music. Everyone takes dark and brooding photos, and I felt like, 22 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

with us especially, people think we’re really dark and have a presence to us with how we perform, but we’re all dumb, goofy people, too. Something like that felt more up our alley, and it seems like it was received well!” Though black metal—a genre with which meth. feel an affinity more than their more hardcoreinflected roots—often denies progress and change, the band was met with excitement and celebration upon unveiling their new aesthetic, due in part to their acquired audience, but also their own musical upbringings. “We all came up playing basement shows, and I think all of us were in different screamo bands,” says Alvarez. “Being able to do that and put our personalities into the band felt more natural. It contrasts and complements everything in a weird way, and I feel like it makes

the album’s presence weirder and creepier.” SHAME’s birth follows a similar story to albums born during COVID, and with material dating back four years, meth. are excited to finally present their new material to the world—something they did in a live setting earlier in 2023. “We debuted this at ZBR Fest in Chicago in May 2023,” Alvarez recounts, “and it was probably one of my favorite shows we’ve played. The room was full and people were moving around a little bit, but most people stood and watched. I love that: when you play heavy music, but you can get people to stand still and be attentive. It feels like the live show is our bread and butter, just a different presentation, and I feel like a lot of bands strive to sound just like the record. I’ve always felt that the live show should always have a different feel.” —JON ROSENTHAL

PHOTO BY VANESSA VALADEZ

METH.

Dirge dealers bare their vulnerabilities with first album in five years

The Swedish blackened death metal pioneers return to rain brutality down upon the masses! FEATURING SINGLES

“Stormcrow”, “As Stars Collide” & “Grace Of The Past” OUT 03/15 ON CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS

AVAILABLE IN JEWELCASE CD, LIMITED EDITION CD MEDIABOOK, BLACK 1LP VINYL, LIMITED EDITION DELUXE GATEFOLD COMBAT GREEN 2LP WITH LP-BOOKLET & POSTER, AND DIGITAL ALBUM FORMATS.

Borknagar’s latest offering is a truly unique blend of soaring melody and chilling intensity, showcasing the evolution of this legendary bands carefully crafted sound. FEATURING SINGLES

“Summits”, “Nordic Anthem” & “Moon” OUT 02/23 ON CENTURY MEDIA RECORDS

AVAILABLE IN LIMITED EDITION CD DIGIPAK, BLACK 1LP VINYL, AND DIGITAL ALBUM FORMATS.

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STYGIAN CROWN

STYGIAN CROWN L.A. doom destroyers weave monstrous epics

OUR

primary focus is on monsters and what they mean to people.” ¶ Melissa Pinion, vocalist and keyboardist of American quintet Stygian Crown, is a lyricist on a mission. On her band’s rich and dense 2020 self-titled debut, she delivered elegant soliloquies on evil amidst a backdrop of crushing epic doom elevated by riffing structures more commonly used in death metal (hence the band’s unusual “Candlethrower” moniker). ¶ “Providing these first person perspectives on these monsters in the songs gives people a different look at what they’re going through and what their motivations are,” says Pinion, who is joined in Stygian Crown by guitarists Nelson Miranda and Andy Hicks, drummer Rhett Davis and bassist Eric Bryan. “Society often puts monsters in a negative light, and I think this will give people a different perspective.” ¶ The thematic focus continues on this February’s Funeral for a King, which is an elegant upgrade of Stygian Crown’s existing sound. Injected with elements of 24 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

traditional heavy metal, Funeral is powerful and refined, evoking Sorcerer, Below and Candlemass. There are several upgrades to pinpoint; the alluring and unnerving violin contributions from Ann Hackman on “Let Thy Snares Be Planted,” “The Bargain” and standout “Blood Red Eyes” contribute to the Faustian grandiosity. Pinion’s increasing confidence as both a lyricist and vocalist is another highlight, shining brightest on tracks like “Bushido.” “[The song] is about a World War II holdout Hiroo Onoda. He’s not a monster in the typical sense that you would view, like, Godzilla,” explains Pinion, referencing the Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who allegedly killed up to 30 Filipino citizens on Lubang Island. He was relieved of duty by his former commanding officer after decades in hiding and

returned to Japan, where he was received as a hero. “He 100 percent believed for 30 years that World War II had not ended. And he was assigned to the Philippines to conduct guerrilla warfare. The war had ended, and he continued to take lives on the island of innocent people. But he fully believed that these people were the enemy.” Stressing the importance of nuance in telling unique stories from an alternative perspective, Pinion and company have deftly avoided a sophomore slump, instead emerging triumphant with Funeral for a King. “From the beginning, I wanted to parallel stories of a monster and how it relates to current times as much as possible. Everyone has a different viewpoint based on their own histories and their own personal beliefs.” —SARAH KITTERINGHAM

VITRIOL

Death metal tech-twisters hurt so good

hen anyone responds to a medium of art that really resonates with them,” opines Vitriol riff-slinger/ vocalist Kyle Rasmussen, “it’s because it reflects back to them something about their personal experience, or their environment, that either they have a hard time articulating for themselves or they have a hard time finding someone to commiserate with. And for me, extreme metal specifically was it.” ¶ It’s hard to imagine what Rasmussen and four-stringer/ vocalist Adam Roethlisberger went through to come up with their debut album, To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice (2019), and its belting follow-up Suffer & Become, but whatever it was, it was significant. The duo, now rounded out by newcomers drummer Matt Kilner (Gorgasm) and guitarist Daniel Martinez (ex-Atheist), battle with and are transformed by the experience they’re unfurling with Vitriol. ¶ “Anyone who tries to make art is implanting an experience in another person’s mind,” Rasmussen says. “To have them feel what you feel, see what you see. As I get older, my personal philosophies develop and they become part of Vitriol. There’s a feedback loop between me and Vitriol. 26 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

Writing [Suffer & Become], I appreciated that Vitriol became more than just a band. It was a user interface for self-development—whether it’s spiritual, artistic or intellectual.” While To Bathe songs—specifically “The Parting of a Neck,” “I Drown Nightly,” “Victim” and “Hive Lungs”—were nightmarish, chaos-hurled vortices, the massive sonic missives on Suffer & Become crash not with reckless death metal abandon, but slice, thrust and cut (German swordmaster Johannes Liechtenauer’s so-called “drei Wunder”) with menacing ambition. They’re Vitriol repurposed, where Team R reins in their spiritually uncontrolled art to focus on the thrill of torment and the consequences of restoration. “The Flowers of Sadism,” “Shame and Its Afterbirth,” “Weaponized Loss” and “He Will Fight Savagely” are the edges of a very sharp blade wielded by tacticians at the height of their craft. “There’s duality,” offers Rasmussen. “The noodly parts of ‘Shame,’

‘He Will Fight Savagely’ or ‘Weaponized’ are articulate. They’re meant to be nimble and precise. I’m channeling Yngwie a bit. But the beginning of ‘Weaponized’ is just big and gnarly. Everything is flying out everywhere. You’re not supposed to hear what the guitar is doing— you’re supposed to feel it. That’s me leaning into my slam influences. The G-sharp breakdowns are from the sewers of death metal, while the mountain peaks are from shred, the Cacophony-types of the world.” Of course, a journey into the guts of Suffer & Become isn’t complete without a super-close look at Dylan Humphries’ stunning cover art. “The painting was supposed to be done two and a half years ago, and it’s still not done,” Rasmussen says. “What you see on the cover is only part of it. In full, it’s 15 by 8 feet. Dylan, a good friend, put over 6,000 hours into it. He’s still working on it. I don’t want to sound like a total cunt, but I think it’s the most impressive metal album cover of all time.” —CHRIS DICK

PHOTO BY PETER BESTE

VITRIOL

JARHEAD FERTILIZER

Deathgrind hellraisers forge their own identity

arceral warfare, the new album from long-running grind crew Jarhead Fertilizer, paints a grim picture. It starts with the artwork by Andrew Durgin-Barnes (portraying a bizarre prison riot) and the album title, but extends to the bleak lyrics and raging songs within. As drummer, vocalist and primary songwriter Dave Bland explains, the gritty imagery makes Jarhead the band that they are. ¶ “The lyrics are a lot of true-life things in my life,” he elaborates. “I grew up seeing a lot of crazy events, a lot of prison stuff and gang stuff… a lot of these lyrics are really tying into things I’ve seen growing up.” ¶ The music and recording for Carceral Warfare came together rather quickly, especially when compared to 2021 predecessor Product of My Environment. Bland explains that he wrote the album in less than three months before recording, forcing himself to perform under pressure. When it came time to put the songs to tape, the choice was obvious: longtime Jarhead and former Full of Hell engineer Kevin Bernsten at his Developing Nations studio. 28 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

(“Kevin really understands the band and he’s a crucial element.”) Many readers probably know Jarhead Fertilizer as a Full of Hell offshoot, though the “side project” has existed nearly as long as FOH. There are instances of sonic overlap between the two bands—both Bland and Sam DiGristine are members of Full of Hell, and ex-FOH bassist Brandon Brown still plays in Jarhead—but Bland says that each project’s identity is distinct. In part, it’s because Bland is the primary songwriter in Jarhead, as well as the fact that the two bands are branching out into different sonic territory. “I think ever since [2017 Full of Hell LP] Trumpeting Ecstasy, it’s veered in two separate directions,” Bland reasons, “and the new Full of Hell LP is, to me, very different than anything that Jarhead sounds

like. It just so happens that the band has unconsciously went in two different directions.” The drummer is also quick to point out that the members of Jarhead were effectively children when the band started, so their growth has become more rapid as they’ve gotten older. When this issue goes to press, they’ll have just wrapped up a tour with Phobophilic. Despite being faced with expensive van repairs, Bland is thinking positively about the present and future; Jarhead were able to make their tour dates and will jump back into the writing process soon. “We’ll have a four-month break after that, and Jarhead will definitely do some writing. I think we’ll have some splits come out next year, in the future for sure. That’s our next plan.” —EMILY BELLINO

SLIFT

French heavy psych trio lay siege to cosmic Troy

pace used to be the place you could find French trio Slift—their first couple albums were literally called Space Is the Key and La Planète Inexplorée. On their latest records, however, they’ve come back down to earth. Or at the very least they’ve taken inspiration from more earthbound texts. “Our previous album, Ummon, was constructed in the style of Homer’s Odyssey,” singer/guitarist Jean Fossat tells us over email. “We wanted the next one, Ilion, to be inspired by The Iliad. Thematically it is close because it is about the fall of humanity, and the rebirth of all things in time and space.” ¶ Heavy stuff. As is their musical approach on this 80-minute double LP, which veers from their earlier Earthless-inspired heavy psych/ space rock sound into more of a post-metal direction (while still retaining the propulsive instrumentals that put them on the radar in the first place). Fossat also livens things up by slipping into a Jaz Coleman bark and Aaron Turner-style roar, in addition to his usual ethereal singing. It’s an impressive piece, 30 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

divided into eight chapters, that somehow never gets boring and rewards repeated listens. No surprise considering some of the influences that went into the making of the record. “We listen to a lot of different styles of music,” Fossat says. “It goes from King Crimson to Neurosis, Alice Coltrane, Psychic Paramount, Boredoms, Birds in Row, La Dusseldorf, Miles Davis… and of course Hendrix. I like the raw emotions of post-metal. It’s uncompromising. We needed that, I think, and this scene showed us a path to try to reach those emotions.” They also have a wider market to showcase those new emotions. Thanks to their booking agency’s relationship with longtime indie tastemaker Sub Pop (the agency organized Nirvana’s first shows in France) and an impressive live showcase, Slift now find themselves signed to that label and poised to

break out. Which isn’t to say that they’ve simplified or compromised their sound at all. “We wanted to explore new harmonic sequences, not just riffing, as we mainly did before,” Fossat adds. “Develop this work on chords and harmonic combinations between bass and guitar. Try to maximize each passage that we want to be really intense through the playing, but also through the sound. [Drummer] Canek Flores evolved his playing by looking for new grooves; we experimented with odd and composed measures. But the idea was not to make it more complex for the sake of making it more complex. We wanted to look for new modes of expression in accordance with who we are at the time of composition. I say ‘at the time’ of composition because I think it’s important. This is a photograph of our group at this moment.” —JEFF TREPPEL

PHOTO BY BEN PI

SLIFT

BLOOD RED THRONE

BLOOD RED THRONE With new blood up front, Norsemen remain dead set on killing in the old way

ith 11 studio albums released since forming in 1998, there’s no disputing that Norway’s Blood Red Throne are death metal stalwarts. Additionally, few could argue that BRT haven’t been consistent with the quality of their records, this despite regular lineup shuffles and countless scene trends. However, when it comes to longstanding acts that deliver consistency in the old-school manner rather than aesthetic flash or stylistic evolution/experimentation, there’s a tendency for those bands to get overlooked in the grand scheme of things. ¶ “I still hear and read from people that they think Blood Red Throne is one of the most underrated death metal bands,” notes founding member and primary songwriter, Daniel “Død” Olaisen. “There’s not much we can do about that. We have been consistent, as you mention, and we always deliver good albums and good live shows. Sure, we would like to play more big festivals and go on the best tours, but we definitely do a lot of cool stuff in between. It’s a jungle out there today, and so many bands want the attention. I’m glad I started the band 26 years ago and not today. 32 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

“I do register that having a flashy image and theatrics on stage draws more attention, both from organizers and audience,” Olaisen continues. “I can’t focus on that. I never bothered about such things. I only need kick-ass music and the connection with the audience. Our true fans don’t expect the spectacular. They want real death metal and us having a good time onstage.” As expected, BRT deliver “real death metal” with the same passion as they always do on new LP Nonagon. Olaisen believes he has developed as a songwriter over the years by paying more attention to the compositional structure and flow of the songs, while his melodic and exacting solos have become “a trademark in the BRT sound.” It’s easy to concur with such beliefs when diving into their new record, the first to feature Sindre Wathne Johnsen on bass and vocals.

Johnsen’s vocal performance is just one standout of Nonagon, as his array of sharp shrieks and quaking growls (an impressive range that’s similar in action to the much-missed Trevor Strnad of the Black Dahlia Murder) cut through the mix in fierce fashion. BRT have had too many vocalists pass through their viscera-laden ranks since 2001 debut Monument of Death, but Johnsen might be their most versatile yet. “Personally, I think Sindre is the best singer we’ve had,” agrees Olaisen. “His vocals are perfect and he understands the music. He’s taking 100 percent responsibility and records and delivers everything perfectly from his studio. It’s really taking a lot of weight from my shoulders. He’s a huge resource for the band, and we’re already feeling like a unit that will stay [together] for a long time!” —DEAN BROWN

THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE

2 DISC COMMEMORATIVE EDITION Mike’s obsession with the horror movies and their rules dictates that no matter where he goes, he will find a monster lurking around every corner.

THE PSYCHIC Jennifer O’Neill (SCANNERS) stars as a woman tormented by violent visions of past slayings. Or are they premonitions of murders still to come? AVAILABLE ON 4K ULTRA HD AND BLU-RAY

THE LOST

SPECIAL EDITION Based on the infamous horror novel by Jack Ketchum, The Lost is “a modern-day Last House on the Left” (Bloody Disgusting).

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

THE DEAD ONE Just outside of New Orleans, a plantation mistress summons her brother to rise from the dead for a bizarre low-budget voyage of voodoo vengeance. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

THE BLUE JEAN MONSTER The Blue Jean Monster is a 1991 Hong Kong horrorcomedy film directed by Ivan Lai. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

SLASHENING: THE FINAL BEGINNING

SATANIC HISPANICS

A timid woman, traumatized by a brutal event in her past, joins a support group that an unknown killer cuts a bloody path through. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

A lone survivor recounts tales of horrors after police find a house full of dead bodies. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

RAPE IS A CIRCLE Catherine is a deeply troubled woman who picks up two female hitchhikers and then subjects them to experiences that they will never be able to forget. AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY

DANZA MACABRA VOLUME TWO:

CUTTING CLASS

In this 2nd collection of Italian Gothic shockers, you’re invited to enter cobwebshrouded worlds of violence, madness and sexual deviance.

High school students are being terrorized by a crazed axe murderer in this tongue-incheek late 80’s slasher film.

THE ITALIAN GOTHIC COLLECTION

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Far Beyond Doom legionnaires

THE OB SESSED

add a guitarist for new peak Gilded Sorrow and Scott “Wino” Weinrich isn’t sorry story by RAOUL HERNANDEZ photo by JESSY LOTTI

elve through the Obsessed discography—only five full-lengths since getting on [into] his 30s and I’m 63. Age is a

1980—and the sovereignty of Gilded Sorrow becomes immediately obvious. The latest biker acid from the pioneering U.S. doom crew—and first since Sacred cemented a millennial reboot in 2017—February’s Valentine to concussive crawls (“Stoned Back to the Bomb Age”), ’70s extinction-event riffs (“Realize a Dream”), and Jurassic dirges (the title track) catalog a redoubling of sound and fission. Scott “Wino” Weinrich confirms. ¶ “I got a chill right now just thinking about it,” says the founder/frontman over FaceTime, a veritable and virtual blur of tattoos, trademark gray mane and wintertime tank top. “It’s different because there’s two guitars now. We’ve taken them on the road, so it’s road-tested. It added so much.” ¶ Meet Jason Taylor, axe-wielder for Ontario prog metallurgists Sierra. “We knew each other, so he sent me this really cool letter before the pandemic,” recalls Saint Vitus oenophile Wino. “He said, ‘If I see my future as a songwriter, the kind of music I want to play—the kind of music I want to spend my career doing— is the kind of music you write, your music. The Obsessed are my favorite band.’” “[On the road] we became friends,” emails Taylor. “Every night I would watch them and think how huge it would be with two guitars— the riffs still going while Wino rips solos. He gave me a Saint Vitus ‘V’ tattoo and we’d seen eye to eye regarding our dedication to the guitar and art and our views on life. He was a fan of my style of playing and we spoke about trading licks someday. “We talked about it for almost five years, on and off, and about one week after my band broke up, unbeknownst to him, he gave me the official call. Couldn’t have been more perfect.” Gilded Sorrow bears that out beginning on opener “Daughter of an Echo,” twin guitars emerging from the gloom almost as if Jerry Cantrell didn’t dam that river. Music business screed doubling as a residual COVID taskmaster, “It’s Not OK” rumbles double trouble, too. Meth misadventure “Jailine” duels a rhythmic interweave straight from the annals of classic rock. On their eponymous 1990 debut LP, the Obsessed’s relative minimalism posits doom before doom became smooth and bottomless—a genre still at the lip of creation: jagged, humid, MPARRICLH2 02 20 12 4: :D D 34 : A EE C ICBI B EE LL

ugly. Lunar Womb the following year improved the accelerants (“Right!” laughs Wino), while major label bow turned Columbia Records swan song, 1994’s The Church Within, still rolls mature and unhurried, a concrete clatter bearing steel knuckles and lead shoes. Sacred smelted all eras and now crowns Gilded Sorrow. “Jason Taylor, he brought so much to the table and, man, I couldn’t be happier,” beams Wino. Father of three—ages 16, 17 and 20 (all of them musicians)—Weinrich exudes only vigor: touring, recording, jamming. Born in San Bernardino with seminal early layovers in Arizona and Texas, the singer/guitarist settled in Maryland at age 9 and ventured to Southern California two decades later to join doom lords Saint Vitus. Today he lives in the Catskills, but desert-born, he considers the Left Coast his true north. Home, family and career now fused, the lifelong midnight rider pauses to consider an observation: DECIBEL: You’re probably old enough to be Jason

Taylor’s father. WINO: Yeah. Probably. Yeah, yeah. He’s just

state of mind. Snaking, shaking, spearing closer “Lucky Free Nice Machine” closes Gilded Sorrow with an instrumental snippet of six-string muscle. That makes penultimate axe throw “Yen Sleep” the album’s sonic and emotional peak, its author explaining that the title refers to an opiate nod—semiconscious dream state. Reality’s up for grabs, but what about death? “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever read describing death is Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet,” he responds. “There’s a section on death that says it all.” He can’t recall it exactly, but a search reveals: “If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; and like seeds dreaming beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring.” “It’s actually strange to see ‘63’ written out [next to Wino’s name],” writes Taylor. “He’s more energetic than most 30-year-olds I know, and his enthusiasm for music, art and knowledge is infectious. He’s been fucked over by the music industry many times and has gone through so much personal turmoil over the years, but his spirit remains stronger than most.” Reflecting on his fifth decade in the Obsessed—fueled by drummer Brian Costantino and bassist Chris Angleberger—the bandleader loops back to the start. “I was so hungry,” says Wino. “I just wanted to make this music so bad. Back then, I was pretty wild. When I think about the way I lived and my interactions with other people, I was fucking driven. I think now, ‘Maybe I was hard on people.’ Or maybe I was taxing to be around. Not that I was putting anyone down. I just wanted to go, go, go. ‘Let’s do it!’ “That’s always how it’s been. I have a fierce drive to get music out.”

I’M 63.

AGE IS A STATE OF MIND. Scott “Wino” Weinrich

DD EE C ICBI B EE L L: :MAAPRRCIH L 2024 1 : 35

MELODIC DEATH METAL LIFERS

FACE THEIR 10th ALBUM UNDAUNTED story by JEFF TREPPEL

36 : M A PARRICLH2 02 20 12 4: :D D EE C ICBI B EE LL

ou’re unlikely to meet anyone more enthusiastic

about playing heavy metal than Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum. When Decibel reaches him at his sound-dampened home studio in Maryland—“Just like anything you learn, being a young punk rocker, you got to appreciate your neighbors. Otherwise, you’re just gonna have the cops called on you all the time. So, I learned through multiple other bad neighbor relationships to be cool to these people right away.”—he’s recently returned from touring with Exodus, Fit for an Autopsy and Undeath, and looking forward to the release of his band’s 10th studio album.

“We had one of the best tours we’ve had in a real fucking long time,” Schleibaum enthuses about the bill, which showcased four generations of heavy metal royalty. “And we fit right in there. Because after all these years of doing super-heavy records, you know, or doing supermelodic records or doing super-thrashy records, we were able to make the right setlist that just fits in there. And I think it’s a good metaphor for where we’re at as a band where, if you like modern metal music—maybe you’re a skull metal purist, or maybe Arch Enemy is your favorite fucking band, or whatever in between— Darkest Hour might fit on your Spotify playlist, and you might just fall in love with it.” Getting to tour again is a luxury that they learned not to take for granted in the seven years between 2017’s Godless Prophets & the Migrant Flora and upcoming release Perpetual | Terminal. Obviously, the pandemic had as profound an impact on the metalcore legends as every other act. It wasn’t until they were able to hit the road again and revisit some of their peaks with a 15th anniversary tour for Deliver Us that the music started to flow. It also gave them the overarching theme for the record, one that vocalist John Henry really hammers home in his lyrics. Schleibaum tries to sum it up: “Survival is a universal theme that people have faced over these fucking last couple years.

It’s something that everyone is acutely aware of and, as a band, was something we were definitely aware of before. We were trying as an almost 30-year-old band to keep doing this for a living and keep making art, going on tour, paying off debt, making art, going off, you know what I mean? We were caught in the cycle of it, and then the pandemic and all this bullshit hit. And then life after it has basically had this effect where it really had to make people say, like, ‘Why do you want to fucking do this?’ Look how fucked up being in a band is, and it’s not getting any easier. Do you want to keep doing this? Or this is your time to, like, maybe go do something else? And I think we all really had that awakening, really, that was like, I want to fuckin’ do this. I love going on tour. I love playing for people, I love heavy metal. It surrounds me. It is what I’m all about. Like, of course, I’m gonna fucking do this.” Their previous couple records felt more experimental, be it the conceptual thrust of Godless Prophets or the wild, divisive and short-lived style change of the self-titled. Schleibaum, Henry and their bandmates—Aaron Deal (bass), Travis Orbin (drums) and Nico Santora (guitar)—wanted to get back to what really made Darkest Hour special. They wound up with an absolute beast of a record, one that nods to all their previous incarnations while still getting to the core of what the band is—which was important to Schleibaum. He

wanted it to feel honest and give listeners that feeling they expect when they listen to Darkest Hour while still acknowledging that metal has evolved since they started in the mid-’90s. Perpetual | Terminal succeeds. It features some of the sharpest songwriting (and lyrics) of the band’s career. From the opening title track, which Schleibaum describes as “one whole fucking Darkest Hour album in one song,” to the instrumental “Amor Fati” (which he loves because it “breaks the mold of what a Darkest Hour show is” when they play it live) to “Mausoleum,” a showcase for Henry’s dominating vocal performance, it’s packed with new songs for longtime—and new—fans to love. And despite the second part of the album title, Darkest Hour aren’t ready to pack it in just yet. “The real message of it all,” explains Schleibaum, “is that once you realize that being in a band is a lot of miserable experiences, but realize that you want to be there and you’re used to them, then they just become things you endure and they’re not so miserable. And then, after a while, you start to enjoy the misery in a way where you’re like, ‘This is where I belong,’ and then you’re immune to a lot of the attacks. To sum it up, I think Rambo says it best: To survive war, you have to become war. And then once you’ve survived the beatings long enough, they just feel like a massage.”

If you like modern metal music— maybe you’re a skull metal purist, or maybe Arch Enemy is your favorite fucking band, or whatever in between—

DARKEST HOUR MIGHT FIT ON YOUR SPOTIFY PLAYLIST, AND YOU MIGHT JUST FALL IN LOVE WITH IT. DD EE C ICBI B EE L L: :MAAPRRCIH L 2024 1 : 37

interview by

QA j. bennett

WIT H

EMPEROR’s guitarist and vocalist on stage names, the hero’s journey and his ambitious new solo album

38 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

hsahn isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. After collaborating with

his bandmates on the first few Emperor releases, he wrote the band’s last album, Prometheus – The Discipline of Fire and Demise (2001), all by himself. Starting in 2006, his first three solo albums comprised a trilogy, while his 2020 EPs (Telemark and Pharos) comprised a set of musical experiments. His new self-titled full-length is a concept album written and recorded in two different versions—one metal, one orchestral—with parallel storylines. ¶ “Since the EPs were different experiments, this album was me wanting to do something back down the center of what I’ve been doing from the beginning—the black metal elements with my love of soundtracks and orchestral elements mixed in,” our man tells us from his home in Norway. “Which kind of dates back to the early Emperor days for me. I also wanted to make a conceptual album with a core story to it. I’m not reinventing the wheel in any individual part here. It’s all very classic themes and classic stories. I wanted to take those core essentials and try to elevate them in my own subjective way, but on a much larger scale than what I’ve been doing before.” Why did you decide to record two different versions of your new album?

There’s always an educational side to my projects. I’ve been adding orchestrations to parts for many years, so part of the challenge for this album was to try and write a soundtrack-like element to fit inside the metal version. But it would also be arranged in such a way that they would work independently. I wanted to express a different dynamic and emotional side of exactly the same music. In the early days, I wanted to add these orchestra-sounding textures to the metal expression because I felt it would give a cinematic dimension to an already big sound. As you work more with those sounds, you realize the dynamics and subtleties of soundtrack music, so I wanted to try to explore both extremes—but with the same actual music. [Laughs] I’m not sure if this makes any sense at all, but I’m trying to explain. Did you make one version first, or were they created simultaneously?

You could almost compare it to a painting where you charcoal out a sketch beforehand. I wrote all the music with a piano short score, a kind of reduction, if you will. Then I applied that music to guitars and bass and drums and all that. And then applied it to a full symphony orchestra. The first single, “Pilgrimage to Oblivion,” has two separate videos, one for each version. There’s a very clear narrative this time for the whole album, and the video for the metal version follows the narrative of the main story. Whereas Costin Chioreanu made animations for the orchestral version of the same song, which follows a parallel story. By the end of this run, there will be three singles with six individual videos—one for the metal version and one for PHOTO BY ANDY FORD

the orchestral version of each song—that, as a whole, will flesh out both stories. What can you tell us about the narrative?

I would say it’s a very classic Joseph Campbellstyle hero’s journey. Again, not reinventing the wheel in any way. But I wanted the album to sound like a soundtrack to an imaginary film, so I needed a story to go with it. I wanted the lyrics to follow the scenes of a traditional storyline, with recurring themes and leitmotifs in different songs. As a result, there’s some symbolism from an old folk tale that goes through the orchestral version and kind of bleeds into the main narrative of my story. It’s not something that needs to be understood or followed from A to B—that’s why I’m reluctant to give too much away—it’s much more important that the listener gets a feeling of wholeness from it. I’m not trying to intellectualize it, but I always loved albums that made sense, with the music and visuals kind of pointing in the same direction. Can you share anything about the main character, the hero in this particular hero’s journey?

I suppose he’s your typical antihero in a sense. Someone who’s drawn into a different view, meets some challenges and decides to explore a different side of normal life. There’s a lot of symbolism going back to the Greek, with Dionysus and Apollo, and very archetypical scenarios and deities, with tragedy, loss and love—all the stuff you need for a good story. [Laughs] And how such a journey can change you as a person. You may come back to the same place, but you are never the same. That’s the classic story, and this is my take on it.

Greek mythology has played a part in your lyrics going back to the early days of Emperor. Beyond the fact that those stories provide the fundamentals of drama and tragedy, what do you think draws you to them?

I’ve just always found Greek mythology appealing, probably because it’s subconsciously so integrated as archetypes of our own culture. I’m sure you can find parallels to the same gods and dilemmas in Egyptian mythology, or as many of my colleagues in Norway do, from the Norse gods. But for some reason, the complexity of some of these [Greek] archetypes, that are not necessarily good or bad, are more interesting. It’s not as black and white. They’re more complex in their nature. In the ’70s and ’80s, when Star Wars came out, there was a very clear distinction about who was good and who was bad. In the 2000s, you had The Sopranos. That changed the game a little bit. It was more like Greek mythology. All of a sudden, you’re maybe rooting for a character who does some very bad things.

Yeah, and I think that’s interesting because none of us are either/or. It’s easier to mirror ourselves in these archetypes because it’s more complex than that. I wish I could have had a proper education and learned Latin and explored all the classics like Homer, but unfortunately for me, it’s just picking up bits and pieces along the way and applying them to my little part of creativity. I’ve always found that the things I’ve learned on my own are much more meaningful and useful to me than the vast majority of the stuff they taught me in school. It seems like maybe you’ve had a similar experience.

Absolutely. I have no musical education, either. I’ve learned by doing—and by doing my own research. Sometimes I wish I had some proper education in that way. Pre-internet, it was really hard to learn this stuff on your own. It’s fucking hard to read Rimsky-Korsakov’s Principles of Orchestration when you can hardly read a score. Then again, I try to look at it in a positive way. I’ve come to these realizations and techniques quite late in life, but maybe it wouldn’t have had the same freshness and excitement to it if it was part of some curriculum growing up. And that’s important for me. Every time I make an album, I want to put myself in a position where I’m just as excited about making new music as I was when I was 16. That’s the only meaningful way of doing it, I think. Why did you decide to make the album self-titled?

A lot of people have made a big deal out of it, like it’s some kind of statement. [Laughs] But a lot of the bands that I grew up on and love DECIBEL : MARCH 2024 : 39

 Knowing the score

Whether a self-titled release or beneath the shadow of Emperor’s banner, Ihsahn is doing only what Ihsahn can do

I’ve spoken to many musicians who feel that way—that they’re channeling something bigger than themselves. And then, when they release that music into the world, they feel it’s no longer theirs.

It’s true. When we’re doing meet-and-greets or signing sessions, you sometimes meet people who are excessively emotional about having a picture taken—getting nervous and all that. At the beginning, I felt this was hard. What do I do? What should I say? And then I realized that it has nothing to do with me. These are people who have an invested experience and emotions in music that I happen to be a part of, in a similar way that I attached stuff to music that I love. My job in that situation is to not screw that up.

There are people who happen to have a strong connection to early Emperor music. There’s a craving there. But there’s possibly no contemporary Emperor record that we could do that could satisfy that need. have self-titled albums. It was very hard for me to find a title for this one, given the complexity of the layers and the two different versions. It was hard to come up with something that would embrace all of that and the Greek symbolism, the black metal, the orchestral stuff. So, if I was going to have a self-titled album, at least this one is a good representation of what I do. You chose your stage name—which is the title of this album—when you were a teenager. Does it mean something different to you now than it did back then?

Now it’s just like a nickname. Even some of the people I work with use it instead of my real name because it’s easier to pronounce if you’re not Norwegian. [Laughs] But at the time we picked our stage names, it was just part of the metal culture. I’m sure Nikki Sixx was not baptized Nikki Sixx. I’ve been giving that some 40 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

thought lately because this album is self-titled, but maybe it’s just natural to create this extension of yourself as a representative of the music. Because the more I’ve worked with music—writing, touring and performing—the more I’ve realized that it has nothing to do, really, with me as an individual. I may be at the center of it physically, but the music is something else. You’re a vessel for the music, nothing else. More and more, I feel I am in service of the music rather than being at the center of the creation. Subconsciously, I think we know this. As artists, we make music and if we’re fortunate it gets attention, and you become the focal point for people’s relationship to that music. But in the end, the relationship is to their own experience of that music, not the person who made it. And I think that goes both ways. I think many artists use artist names because it creates a necessary distance.

People are always asking you if there will ever be a new Emperor album. Given that you wrote the last Emperor record by yourself, wouldn’t a new Emperor album just be a new solo album?

When people ask for a new Emperor record, a continuation of where we left off with Prometheus is probably not what they mean. [Laughs] If I had a dime for every time someone asked me about a new Emperor album since I started my solo career, I’d be a rich man. But rather than being kind of annoyed with it, there’s a compliment in there. There are people who happen to have a strong connection to early Emperor music. There’s a craving there: We want to feel that way again. Which is understandable. But there’s possibly no contemporary Emperor record that we could do that could satisfy that need. As you said, if we’re following the continuation of me writing all the music, it wouldn’t be that different from what I do now, other than being limited to the ensemble that makes up Emperor as a band. For me to try and go backwards and try to recreate some kind of equal collaboration that was part of my late teens, it would be premised on a compromise to satisfy some need. Ironically, I think that’s the worst thing we could do to the Emperor legacy. Me and Samoth have talked about this, and it’s something we’re very proud of: We never did any compromises. And I like to think that is part of the reason that we’re still able to travel to the other side of the world and meet people who sing along to those old songs. There’s a trust that it’s not fake, and I think that’s worth maintaining.

the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

MARCH 2024 : 4 2 : DECIBEL

nick green

Instrumental Funeral the making of Breadwinner’s The Burner

just around 20 minutes

with a series of hairpin turns, presentof music, Breadwinner’s ing Breadwinner constantly in motion only full-length is the and passing kinetic energy from one song physical embodiment of to the next. This also happens to be the the old showbiz maxim chronological order in which the songs— “always leave them wantoriginally released on a series of 7-inch ing more.” Aside from an errant cover of singles—were recorded, making The Burner the Birthday Party’s “Yard,” the nine pera marriage of Southern efficiency and fectly imperfect songs on The Burner are all Northern charm. there are and all there ever will be of the Thanks to the band’s critically short band that paired the boundless intensity 18-month lifespan, Breadwinner never of punk with the rhythmic complexity of really had a chance to build a national King Crimson and birthed an entirely new following. According to Donne, they only DBHOF231 genre: math rock. played shows as far west as Chicago, as far Rosy retrospection reveals north as Boston and no further south than Breadwinner to be the work of true Chapel Hill/Raleigh. But all three of the iconoclasts. When you listen to the band’s members have remained hometown trio’s recorded output, you can literheroes in Richmond, where Breadwinner The Burner ally hear guitarist Pen Rollings, bassist have always been spoken of in hushed M E R GE Bobby Donne and drummer Chris Farmer and reverent tones, along with Rollings’ M A R CH 1 4 , 1 9 9 4 dismantling convention with stretched abrasive hardcore act Honor Role and Earning power chords and mutant time signatures. By Butterglove, the bridge between Honor the time Merge released the posthumous Role and Breadwinner. compilation The Burner in 1994, math Aside from the opener “Tourette’s,” rock was not only well-established with Breadwinner remained a largely instrureleases from contemporaries like Slint mental act, which makes The Burner an outand Polvo (as well as early-adopters like Don Caballero and Shellac), but lier in the Decibel Hall of Fame. It’s also one of the shortest releases we’ve also getting ready to mutate into even more metallic directions with acts inducted (edging Plague Soundscapes by the Locust), and probably the only like Botch and the Dillinger Escape Plan. LP that takes on the practical form of an album, but was never intended as Watching Breadwinner level the room in a smoke-filled, 500-capacity such. That said, we make the rules, and we can bend ’em as we please. And venue is probably the best way to experience the band’s music, but alas, it’s not a stretch when you crank shit-hot tracks like “Kisses Men on the we have only a few YouTube videos to capture the ferocity of their live Mouth on the Mountain” and “Mac’s Oranges” and hear that sound conperformances. Which leaves us with listening to the songs on The Burner tinuing to reverberate in diverse acts like Mastodon, Meshuggah and KEN in sequence as the preferred way to take it all in, like a roller coaster ride Mode. If you know, you know.

BREADWINNER

DECIBEL : 4 3 : MARCH 2024

DBHOF231

BREADWINNER the burner

How did the three of you become acquainted, and where did the idea to form Breadwinner first take root? BOBBY DONNE: I had known Pen for many years

at that point—but very much just as an acquaintance. I got to see his band Honor Role play live a lot after I moved to Richmond in ’86. They were great, but Pen was a standout performer. He was a very unusual guitar player and he had a way of just dominating the stage. Towards the end of Honor Role’s existence, he formed another band called Butterglove. They were really sort of Breadwinner’s precursor, a three-piece band exploring heavier music in an instrumental vein, but they didn’t last that long. Breadwinner came about because Pen wanted to form something else immediately to pick up on the momentum of Butterglove. I was excited to get a chance to play with Pen, first and foremost. But Chris was a very energetic and exciting drummer, too. I was jazzed to just spend some time with those guys and see what evolved from it. PEN ROLLINGS: After Butterglove broke up in January 1990, I still wanted to play music. The only two people I considered asking were Bobby and Chris. I had seen both of those guys play around town, and always thought they were topnotch players. I used to love seeing Chris playing drums in his first band Flat Stanley. His secret weapon was his insanely strong and intricate kick work, and he just clobbered the drums. It was breathtaking. He remains one of the best drummers I have ever seen. Ever. Bobby’s band, Pumphouse, was more of a feral Hüsker Dü type of thing. Bobby was a force of nature. I knew he was someone I would be completely confident playing music with. Plus, he was a total sweetheart. CHRIS FARMER: Flat Stanley had the chance to play with Honor Role when I was still a teenager, and I immediately recognized that Pen’s approach on guitar was completely unique. I was a fan of Pen’s from that point onward, and especially at that very young age, I looked up to him as a leader of the scene and surely someone I would never be able to get to know. Toward the end of Honor Role, the band began to lock into heavier riffs, so Pen and the drummer Seth Harris carried that into Butterglove. That band was the foundation for Breadwinner, drawing in a swirling pool of influences surely very similar to what bands like the Melvins had been immersed in on the other side of the country. It felt like a whole new type of riffing. How much did the band practice and how did the songs start to come together—particularly the material that ended up on the band’s demo? What was the songwriting process like? ROLLINGS: Breadwinner’s musical style was

more “Richmond 1990” than anything else.

“Upon recent listens, our songs come across as so singular and honest to me. It reminds me that, as a band, we did not aspire to be anything at all. We just simply played our music. I am proud of that.”

PE N RO LLING S When we formed Breadwinner, Richmond already had a longstanding, uniquely talented, diverse and creative music and art community. The bands in the scene always fed off of and inspired each other. With Breadwinner, all of our songs started with someone bringing in a riff. We’d repeat the riff until some sort of shape or direction emerged, then we’d start to deconstruct it. That would lead to doubling some parts and editing others. To me, the entire process was very conversational; Breadwinner was definitively a collective effort. For me, it was always very exciting to be a part of that creation process with Chris and Bobby. They are great players. FARMER: I think Bobby and I were both still very much enjoying new relationship energy, and were so pleased to be asked to be a part of Breadwinner. We were Pen fans. Pen did his part to allow us to feel more at ease as time went on—that we didn’t have to keep him up on a pedestal, that it was all a level playing field and that we were all equal. Pen took the lead on arrangements, but we all wrote things and we would very democratically hash out the order MARCH 2024 : 4 4 : DECIBEL

of the riffs and the nuances of bridging them together. We practiced as long as it took to get them tight and right, and all told, I think we were pretty impressively efficient at getting them down. What we did I would not have been able to do with any other combination of players. What each of us brought to the table was the perfect piece to the puzzle. DONNE: It was a fairly open forum in terms of who came up with an idea or who wrote a riff. We all brought whatever simple ideas we had to the table. One of Pen’s strengths is that he’s a real-time editing machine in the practice room. I’d come in with a riff, and within 15 minutes, he would’ve chopped it up, turned it around backwards and cut off the last three or four measures, and you would’ve had something completely new. Pen was thinking very quickly in the moment, and in some senses, Chris and I were both trying to keep up. For better or worse, we didn’t rehearse as much as one might imagine. My memory of it was that writing was a very concentrated, intense time when we were in the practice space, and we could be incredibly lazy outside of that.

DBHOF231

BREADWINNER the burner ROLLINGS: Scott Wolfe, the engineer, ran a small

Aside from compilation appearances, all of the band’s recorded output was released on Merge. How did the band come to the attention of the label? ROLLINGS: I had known Mac McCaughan since

the Honor Role years. If I am not mistaken, Superchunk’s first show was opening for Butterglove at Barefoot Press in Raleigh in 1989. One Saturday morning in spring/summer 1990, Mac randomly called me to shoot the shit. He asked about my new band Breadwinner, so I played him a practice tape of “Ditch” through my cassette alarm clock radio. When the track was done, Mac asked if we wanted to do a single for Merge. The label was still a pretty small operation at that point, but it was a no-brainer. Our first 7-inch ended up being the label’s 10th release. We have been extremely lucky to have them curate our entire output. DONNE: Pen had a relationship with Mac. They were friends. Their bands had played together over the years. Pen had a connection with the Raleigh/Chapel Hill music scene. He was also friends with the Corrosion of Conformity guys and several bands down there. I think when Merge formed, Pen just called up Mac and said, “I’ve got a new band and you’re going to put our single out.” It was really just that. There wasn’t a lot on Merge that made you go, “Oh yeah, Breadwinner fits in with all these other bands.” But it was thrilling to have it happen, period. Of course, Merge has evolved into a very interesting label, and Mac and Laura Ballance always had a really good attitude and positive view. Even early on, they were an extremely artist-friendly label.

eight-track studio down in the basement practice space/studio of the local band Burma Jam. There was some sort of crazy ground issue with the guitar amp, and it was constantly buzzing like a chainsaw. I finally found one specific spot where, if I aimed my guitar’s headstock at my feet so the neck was perpendicular to the floor, I could get a fairly “interference-free” sound. If you listen closely to the guitar on “Kisses Men on the Mouth on the Mountain,” you can hear a guy on a CB radio break into the track at around the 0:55 mark. We hastily mixed the session later at John Morand’s studio. The end result definitely did not sound like we did live. When we played live, we were a very loud, brutal, thick and heavy band. Unfortunately, none of those traits were reflected in the final mix. But it does give a sort of clinical view to the arrangements, at least. I think we all wish it would have been more accurate sonically. But it is what it is, as they say. FARMER: John and Scott are two huge hearts, and they were both kind, easy and fun to be around. Both went on to some big-name work over the years, including Lamb of God for John and GWAR for Scott. If I am not mistaken, we didn’t have many songs at that point, so the decision about which ones to record was easy. As far as the results, I think at times we were too hyped and played a little bit too fast.

The first three songs on The Burner come from the band’s first 7-inch, 232 S. Laurel St., which was recorded in September 1990 and released in November of the same year. What do you remember from that session? DONNE: I think we recorded the songs that we

felt were strongest at the time. We might have even had the intention of recording the rest of the songs in the same set-up at a later date; we just didn’t get the opportunity. How can I say this diplomatically? The first 7-inch doesn’t sound great, but it provides a clue of who we were and where we were. I think that when we left the studio that day, that’s what came out on the 7-inch. It was a really fast process. Not to its betterment. It all adds up  A flier for this Fugazi/Breadwinner show could quite possibly be the first known instance of the term “math rock”

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Who does the vocals on “Tourette’s”? When did Breadwinner decide to become a (mostly) instrumental band? FARMER: From my memory, we were always intent on being instrumental, except for the few times we wondered if a vocalist would be a good idea, and gently experimented with that. “Tourette’s” was an example of that, and there were some vocals when we did “Turtlehead” live. DONNE: I don’t think there was ever a sense of like, “We should recruit a singer!” Vocals were something that we did as a lark when those moments popped up. There were a few covers that we did that had vocals as well. We did a cover of “Crazy Nights” by Loudness a few times. We also covered “Yard” by the Birthday Party, which was the only thing we recorded that didn’t end up on The Burner. Pen would sing that one, except for one time when we were at CBGB and David Yow took over. That was fun. But vocals were never something that we really cared for or wanted. ROLLINGS: I do the more exaggerated voice on “Tourette’s,” and Bobby is the “intercom” voice. When Bobby came up with the song title, I had no idea what it meant. After he explained it, the symptoms reminded me of the behaviors of a large portion of the “underground” at the time. Especially relating to the fanzine community and the idea of a “journo-nerd” talking trash

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BREADWINNER the burner Bobby were on the unfinished basement side. I could not see them at all, but at least they could see each other. Steve was upstairs. We couldn’t see him at all. We recorded six songs, live off the floor. No overdubs. I think most of them were first takes. After we finished, we broke down our gear and loaded it into the van. We had a lunch break. We ate pizza and Steve made us grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as well. We hung around his living room while he mixed the session. We were done with everything by 4:30 and on the road by 5 p.m. Then we drove 14 hours through the night back to Richmond and got into town just in time for me to clock in at work at 8 a.m. It was like none of it ever happened. Breadwinner played gigs on the East Coast and did some tour dates with the Jesus Lizard. Do you have any memorable stories from the band’s live performances? ROLLINGS: I was friends with a couple of deaf

“The breakup of the band was entirely my fault, and I still regret it to this day. I was 21, immature, lacking some essential communication skills, but more than anything very demanding and extremely impatient.”

C HR IS FA R M ER from behind their word processor or a band singing about rude/shocking/offensive things to an audience that had obviously heard it all before. I don’t think we ever decided to be instrumental; I think we just were by default. Personally, I had moved away from the lyrics thing after Honor Role broke up. Who was going to write better lyrics than Bob Schick? Absolutely no one. So why bother? Being instrumental was one less thing that we had to worry about. Songs 4-6 on The Burner were culled from the band’s second 7-inch, which was recorded by “some guy in his basement” (a.k.a. Steve Albini). What was that experience like? DONNE: We met Steve Albini through the Jesus

Lizard. I’m a little fuzzy on this, but my memory is that it was David Sims’ idea to have us come to Chicago and record with Steve. He may have even wanted to take a crack at engineering and producing it himself. I remember that we set this date around an end-of-tour hometown show they’d booked. We were going to drive out from Richmond, play the show in Chicago and then spend the next day recording at Steve’s space. The first time I’d met Steve was the night of that

show, which was the night before the session. It was at Lounge Ax in Chicago. He had just seen us play and I remember him being really enthusiastic. He looked us and said, “If you can do what you just did in my basement, you’re gonna be great.” FARMER: Steve Albini was a fan of Pen and they had forged a relationship. Steve had said something like, “If you ever want to record something, I’ll do it for free,” so Pen set up a show in Chicago so we wouldn’t have to drive 14 hours without at least making gas and meal money, and I guess we were in Chicago for two partial days and one overnight. We went to Steve’s basement and slammed together a recording. It was very quick. ROLLINGS: We left Richmond after work on a Friday and drove straight through the night. We got into Chicago around 10 a.m. on Saturday. During soundcheck, we realized that the sound man was no other than Ian Burgess, who had recorded the first Trouble record! The show was sold out and packed. We really brought it that night. The Jesus Lizard ruled, as usual. After load-out, I went to an aftershow party. Then we all slept. We got up and loaded into Steve’s basement around noon on Sunday. I tracked alone in a windowless soundproofed room, and Chris and MARCH 2024 : 4 8 : DECIBEL

guys named Wes and Ron. They used to come to Breadwinner practice to hang out. They would lay on their backs on the floor or put their heads in the kick drum to “feel the song.” When we played the old 9:30 Club in D.C., we invited Wes and Ron along. They had been students at Gallaudet University, so they invited other alumni to the show. During soundcheck, we told the sound guy that there were going to be a bunch of deaf people in attendance and he suggested cranking up the kick drum super loud through the monitors and aiming them face down to make the stage shake with each kick. It was badass. Ron laid on the vibrating stage and Wes had his head deep in the kick drum. The sound guy also cranked Chris’ kick through the mains and the 20 or so deaf folks reacted with the “waving hands above head” sign language applause. We signed back “thank you.” Years later, a good friend told me that this show was the first time he ever saw Breadwinner. During our set, he was taken aback by the songs and the sign language and wondered, “How could a band this tight be deaf?” He actually thought we were deaf. I will always love that. FARMER: The two mini-tours with Jesus Lizard were absolutely memorable. Seeing David Yow completely exhaust himself while flailing about, passionately reaching into the depths of his soul each and every night was inspiring. One of my personal favorite moments from touring with them happened during a rest period before soundcheck. We were in some club basement— I just remember concrete walls and built-in concrete benches. Members from each band and the entourage were sprawled out, almost as an impromptu meditation. For once, absolutely no one was talking; it was a beautiful moment of complete silence for about half an hour. I decided to accompany the quiet with a serenade, and played an acoustic guitar.

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It was a bunch of contemplative riffs I had at the time, mixed with improv. At the end of the rest period, Duane Denison got up, walked past me and quietly whispered, “I really enjoyed your guitar playing.” It was such a small event, but, as a non-guitarist, to get kudos from a guitar guru really made me feel great. DONNE: We played a lot of shows in between making those two 7-inch records, which included going on tour with the Jesus Lizard. I was a huge fan of theirs. It was also very powerful because all of those Jesus Lizard shows were sold out and we played in front of a packed house every night. I think that was good for us, too. It made me feel like we needed to bring it. If we had a shortcoming, it was that we just didn’t have enough material and we weren’t writing enough to have a catalog that would allow us to be diverse from night to night. It seems like Breadwinner’s main period of activity was between ’90-’91. What factors led to the band’s breakup? DONNE: From my point of view, it was very

simple: I think Chris grew a little disillusioned with what we were doing and he wanted to move on and try something different musically. Like, he just didn’t want to be in a rock band anymore. Pen and I were both still entrenched in the idea of pursuing Breadwinner and seeing where it could go, so we briefly flirted with the idea of continuing with another drummer. But we didn’t have any real strong ideas, so it just sort of fizzled. I was always pretty okay with it. I was maybe a bit sad in the moment. But certainly now, it sits well with me. Breadwinner is a band that I have nothing but fond memories of. I had this really brief, intense experience working with those guys, and I think I learned a lot from that. Then it was over before we could get into trouble and make any big mistakes. ROLLINGS: In November ’90, we did a nine-day East Coast tour with the Jesus Lizard. It was the first time we were actually in each other’s company 24/7. During that tour, I realized that Breadwinner probably wasn’t gonna be a “long run” thing. We lasted about eight or nine months after that. Within that time frame, it slowly became evident that we were not all on the same page about the band. It was just like any relationship: The more time you spend with someone, the more the flaws become apparent. In July 1991, Chris let us know he was quitting the band. It was a relief of sorts, because he had told us repeatedly that he was unhappy in Breadwinner. It was cool that he was honest about it. Sometime after our last show in September of that year, Chris moved to Germany to be with his father, and seemed excited to be able to concentrate on his solo material as

Gourd. After Chris left, Bobby and I considered moving forward as a band. We even found this incredible drummer named Jamie Guggino from the Maryland tech-metal band Transilience. It sounded great, but after a few practices, Bobby suggested we just drop it. I agreed. While it would have been great to continue to write and play music with Bobby, the fact that I still count him as one of my closest friends to this day is the most important thing that I gained from my time in Breadwinner. FARMER: The breakup of the band was entirely my fault, and I still regret it to this day. I was 21, immature, lacking some essential communication skills, but more than anything very demanding and extremely impatient. Breadwinner was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Musically, it represented so much that I was interested in at the time, and the buzz we created had us envisioning imminent record deals and European tours. My dedication to the band and our potential was intense, but we just didn’t have enough material for my liking, and I thought it was time for us to inject some new wrinkles into it as well. In my mind, we needed to write more tunes and grow. Had we had the tools to communicate more thoroughly, and I hadn’t been such a dickhead about it, the sky was the limit for us. But it is funny: People with abandonment issues sometimes tend to push people away, and that may have been in play there with me as a young man. The Albini session also produced a second set of three more songs that became a posthumously released 7-inch, and tracks 7-9 on The Burner. How involved was the band with the release of the final Breadwinner recorded material, and how do you think The Burner hangs together as an album? DONNE: The music side of it was already done—

the songs had been recorded and mastered. The question was just whether we should put it out or not. There were some art considerations. We knew our friend Doug Dobey, who had done the second 7-inch, would be a good fit to design the cover of The Burner. He took care of all of that. He showed us a few of his concepts and we picked one. We approached The Burner as a chronological record of Breadwinner’s music; it was just intended as a reissue of the 7-inch records that were still available at the time. We weren’t trying to fool people into thinking that they were buying a new record. ROLLINGS: Two years after our breakup, Merge reached out about collecting the Breadwinner singles on a CD. Everyone seemed to agree it would work. Our only concern was for the folks that had already purchased the first two singles. We didn’t want them to have to buy an entire CD for three extra songs they didn’t have, especially since one of those songs was less than MARCH 2024 : 50 : DECIBEL

30 seconds long. So, we asked Merge if they would also put out a 7-inch of those “bonus tracks” for people that already had the two singles. I think of The Burner as an effective linear overview of our recorded output. The riffs and arrangements contained on it are unassuming and honest. I think, as a collection, it is an interesting and engaging listen. It is nice that, upon recent listens, our songs come across as so singular and honest to me. It reminds me that, as a band, we did not aspire to be anything at all. We just simply played our music. I am proud of that. FARMER: I am glad we have something to hang onto. I think The Burner flows just fine. One thing I wish is that the warm analog sound of Pen’s rig was, well, warmer, in the recordings. While there was always a harshness to his sound, the best part about his amazing guitar tone was the tube, and I think that is lost a little bit in the Breadwinner recordings. What is your favorite song on The Burner and why? FARMER: “Mac’s Oranges.” It was named after Mac McNeilly, Jesus Lizard’s drummer, whose positiveness was infectious. I loved being around him, and I loved his drumming so much. The song also features two of my riffs; both—but one in particular—were me essentially channeling King Crimson, the album Red and the Trilogy era. So, it was just very cool that Pen loved them, too, and colored it with his own brush. DONNE: I’ll pick “Exploder.” I think that one because it, more than any other track, represents a simplistic, almost childlike version of what we were all about. And I think it was accurate to our short lifespan as a band. ROLLINGS: “Tourette’s,” to my memory, was the first song we wrote. It is snazzy, without much of a hint of groove. It actually sounded like what I imagined we would sound like. And it was fun and easy to play. It is a solid number.

Who is Vance Thomas, who is credited on The Burner as “The Burner”? ROLLINGS: I met Vance in September 1979. He has

been one of my closest friends for the last 45 years. He has always been an integral part of my relationship with any of the bands I had been in, up through Breadwinner. In Breadwinner, Vance fronted all of the money to buy the band’s van. He fronted half of the money for the release of the first Breadwinner 7-inch. He was at every single show Breadwinner ever did. He would front money to buy strings, picks, heads, drumsticks, and even go to the store and pick them up if needed. He always helped with load-in, T-shirt/record booth sales, load-out, guitar tech, drum tech, saxophone player, driver and overall “good vibe merchant.” To this day, he still gets a check for 25 percent of our royalty payments. Dubbing him “The Burner” was most definitely a huge term of endearment.

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BREADWINNER the burner  Burn after use Breadwinner playing their last show ever, circa 1991

“We never really considered revisiting the band, and that has always felt like the right decision, too. Breadwinner is a band that I felt fortunate to be a part of, and it sits in a perfect place in my memory.”

B O B BY D O NNE FARMER: Pen and Vance had been best buds since high school, and Pen loved Vance so much that he very sweetly wanted Vance to be able to experience everything we were doing, too. Pen is a stubborn SOB just like me, but if you are on his good side, there is no limit to the size of his compassion and heart. Always admired Pen so much for that. Essentially, since Vance was brought into the fold, he became a good friend to the band and a non-playing band member. If I am not mistaken, Vance bought the van and we paid him back over time with gig money. Vance was a grounding, calm and dependable asset for us. DONNE: He was a close friend of ours. I got to know him through Pen and being in the band. Vance Thomas was always available and around. He became a support system for the band. I wouldn’t call him a “roadie,” although he certainly served that purpose for us when we traveled. He was a resource. He helped us financially at times. He was the unofficial fourth member of Breadwinner, and he was very much there every step of the way. It was also nice to have someone around that didn’t have a vested interest in the artistic aspects of the band. He was a great guy all around.

What do you think is the legacy of the band’s recorded output and The Burner? FARMER: Just the wide-ranging influence we had on underground music, I’d say. I have always been impressed that our music influenced artists/music across genres as well. I had fans that would write me from all over the world about how our music changed their lives. I still had someone recently thank me and tell me how Breadwinner changed how they thought about music completely. You can’t find a better compliment than that. DONNE: I went on to do a lot of music after Breadwinner, and most of it wouldn’t seem relevant to Breadwinner in the slightest. My tastes evolved. I wanted to try new things. Merge did a show for the label’s 15th anniversary at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, and they were going to have a bunch of bands play. They asked us to consider it, but there was a very quick realization that it just wasn’t something that would’ve been feasible or felt genuine to pursue. I don’t even know where Chris was living at that point. We never really considered revisiting the band, and that has always felt like the right decision, too. Breadwinner is a band that I felt fortunate MARCH 2024 : 5 2 : DECIBEL

to be a part of, and it sits in a perfect place in my memory. ROLLINGS: During our time as a functioning band, Breadwinner actually had a very small following. There weren’t that many folks into what we were doing. There also weren’t that many folks doing what we were doing at the time, either. But over time, our music has seemed to resonate to folks who may not have experienced Breadwinner during the band’s lifespan. We have far more listeners now than when we existed in the first place, that’s for sure. Part of that is the accessibility afforded by the internet and streaming services. It is interesting to see Breadwinner called out as a sort of touchstone to folks whose work I admire. It tickles me that a band like Lamb of God will name-check us as an influence. Or when the guys in Down give us a shout-out whenever they play the area. I’ve been told that the Don Caballero guys saw Breadwinner in Pittsburgh in 1990, and it inspired them on some level or another. The fact that we are even being asked to participate in the Decibel Hall of Fame series is a great compliment in itself. This is actually a really nice thing. Thanks, guys.

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SEVEN YEARS AFTER THEIR TIMELINE-ALTERING DEBUT, DEATH/DOOM MONOLITH

FINALLY UNVEIL THEIR SOPHOMORE FULL-LENGTH story by DUTCH PEARCE

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Spectral Voice operate in much the same way, except the evoked shade speaks not only through Wendler, but the other members and their various implements of dread; including, according to the drummer, “a backline [consisting of] a Ludwig Modular drum kit, Peavey 5150ii, 6505+ and V2-B amplifiers, square Marshall 1960B cabs and an Ampeg 8x10,” as well as “Tibetan bells, a Soma Lyra, a Bastl Granular sampler, rotting animal carcasses [no animals were harmed in the making of this album—ed.], a gong, two Roland Jazz Choruses, an Echoplex and Roland tape echoes, Eventide, Moog, Alesis and Electro-Harmonix delay chains, [and] an acoustic guitar whose strings hadn’t been changed in over a decade.” Meaning, despite the fact that Spectral Voice are also connected with several of the most influential and successful outfits in the extreme metal world today—never mind the symbolism and themes behind the title of their second album, not to mention the near dissolution of the band “one month” prior to the recording of said album—the band speaks as one collective voice on the topic of Sparagmos.

SPARAGMOS

(SLOWLY) CLAIMED by OBLIVION

In 2015, after jamming together for two years, a Denver-based duo calling them-

selves (the) Spectral Voice dragged out from the shadows one of the most important demos of the modern era of extreme metal. Three songs, 21 minutes long, Necrotic Doom was a revelation not only in sound, approach and aesthetics, but in format as well. We had heard plenty of incredible death-doom prior to Necrotic Doom, but what Eli Wendler and Paul Riedl came up with on their (first widely distributed, but actually third) demo tape was something completely unique, yet strangely familiar, and also somehow mystical. This monolithic slab of Finnish-inspired, brutal death-doom ensconced in an atmosphere potent and sepulchral brought in hordes of fans, and inspired waves of new bands. ¶ Back in those demo days, drummer/vocalist Wendler played guitar as well as drums, and Riedl was responsible for bass, guitar and synth. Around the same time, another of Riedl’s Coloradobased bands was just coming into its own. And it was from the ranks of this other, also now very well-known band that Spectral Voice found their permanent roster. By October 2017, when Spectral Voice released their debut album, Eroded Corridors of Unbeing, the band’s legacy was already as set in stone as their lineup. Composed of guitarists Morris Kolontyrsky and Riedl, bassist Jeff Barrett and drummer/ vocalist Wendler, Spectral Voice insist that wherever the band is concerned, they speak as one, as the Spectral Voice, and only as Spectral Voice. Wendler may be the vocalist and the mouthpiece for the band, but all the quotes you’ll read below

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are from Spectral Voice as a whole. If that snags, consider how a seance (in theory) works. A group of people gather around a table and together their combined occultic efforts are believed to channel a single spirit. Never mind their professions, their other interests, or who they are beyond this moribund tableau.

A Greek term, ancient, full of meaning and heavy with numerous historically significant interpretations, sparagmos is a real rabbit hole of a word and idea. But in essence, it means dismemberment, typically that which is done in a ritualistic context. For Spectral Voice, sparagmos means “a sacrifice of yourself, to yourself, to be free of oneself.” Wendler explains how, for his own part and his bandmates’, sparagmos means “the conscious pursuit of the dialectical solution of life and death. Art (in our case, extreme metal) allows the space for this to occur. When we play live— in darkness and fog—whether performing for an audience or sometimes just by ourselves at practice, this Dionysian self-loss gives rise to flow state/trance/encounter with spirit/vitality of being—whatever you want to call it.” Anyone who’s witnessed Spectral Voice live at any point over the past near-decade understands what Wendler is talking about. There’s losing yourself in the music, and then there’s witnessing (the) Spectral Voice live. The band elaborates: “Once you accept that existence and self-consciousness are a curse, by means of sacrifice, one is able to escape the logical prison that is modern man towards a bestial super-consciousness full of primordial vitality that is the ultimate expression of Life through the utter exaltation of death.” Likewise, for the rest of us, sparagmos now has a new meaning entirely. Whether you’ve studied Ancient Greek mythology, read Georges Bataille or had to Google the word sometime between now and the morning of December 8, 2023, after the album was first announced, Sparagmos will forever mean

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46 minutes of (as Wendler himself so eloquently put it in the promotional press release) an “immersive, morbid atmosphere of funereality” spanning four tracks that exemplify and amplify the band’s signature macabre siren. What began as Necrotic Doom is now, nearly 10 years after, Sparagmos. “The conditions we went into the studio under contributed to this very moment that is sparagmos,” Wendler tells us. “The time leading up to the recording [of Sparagmos] was quite tumultuous and uncertain. Things had changed so drastically during the pandemic for [us], with the material for the album as well as [our] personal relationships changing shape many times.” Given the unique circumstances of the band sharing all of its members with various other successful death metal acts, Wendler informs us that “between [the band members’] depressive personalities and life-altering events,” such as multiple deaths in the family, Spectral Voice were carrying a lot of psychic weight going into recording Sparagmos. “There is a lot more tension, despair and exasperation in the music, but also more intensity, aggression and malice,” he continues. “To be honest, about a month before we recorded, I wasn’t sure we’d make it. In hindsight, the belief in the strength of the material is what kept us together during the worst of it, and finally getting it out of our systems was quite cathartic.”

practice of sonically exalting death. Wendler describes the weeks leading up to recording Sparagmos: “We were rehearsing pretty much every single day for weeks. I can’t remember exactly when we ‘buckled down,’ but throughout the entirety of that winter [2021-2022], we were wholly focused on SV. I thought about the songs and lyrics every single day. I won’t get into the personal stuff here, but I know we were all going through it, and the material was no less emotionally demanding. The record became a genuine outlet for everything that had been swirling and building since 2020. By immersing ourselves into that headspace, it allowed us to clear our heads for a short while of what was often overwhelming anxiety and dread. “Once we got to the studio,” he continues, “everything was great, and the creative energies flowed freely. We started recording on March 18—Paul’s birthday—and got everything done in eight or nine days.” Wendler emphasizes the experience as an overwhelmingly positive one for Spectral Voice as a whole. Unanimously, the band praises having Rizk at the controls. “Arthur is such an inspirational guy to work with,” Wendler says. “Every idea you have, he’s down to try it. He’s got ideas of his own, he allows for tangents and

spontaneity, and is generally very laid back and cool to be around, while also knowing just what to say to get the best takes out of you and encouraging the session.” Wendler had similar praise for Aidan Elias, who assisted Rizk during the production: “Aidan was just as invaluable. [Having him around] helped speed up the process. I’ve never seen anyone work quite like Arthur—a lot of the time you can see him surveying the room, in his own world, thinking 10 steps ahead—but he and Aidan had a chemistry that was great to watch, and it streamlined a lot of the processes. It was like Aidan could anticipate what Arthur would need. I think it partly contributed to us finishing ahead of schedule. “Overall, being in a new environment, working with Arthur and Aidan, as well as being totally isolated from our home lives was a tremendous creative asset,” Wendler adds. “Our workflow was so elevated that we actually finished everything a few days ahead of our original schedule and left early.” But don’t go thinking they cut any corners. In fact, they booked more time for Sparagmos than any previous recording session. “There is always some feeling of being up against the clock, and that can lead to undue pressure and take you

ROTTING AURAS Spectral Voice recorded Sparagmos in March 2022. Unlike Eroded Corridors, which was laid down on the band’s home turf at Denver’s World Famous Studios, when it came to tracking, Spectral Voice left the wide-open skylines and thin air climes of the Rockies for one of the most unforgiving cities in the country: Philadelphia. Because Philly is the City of Brotherly Love, and—just like our license plates used to read—You’ve Got a Friend in Pennsylvania, the quartet crashed with Tim Mellon, frontman for peerless purveyors of filthy and abject death metal, Pissgrave. (“Thanks again, Tim!” Wendler says.) That said, Mellon probably didn’t see much of the Spectral Voice guys during their stay in Philly. According to Wendler, the band “spent all day, every day in the studio.” Who could blame them? They recorded Sparagmos at Redwoods Studio with none other than Arthur Rizk at the controls for the entire recording, mixing and mastering. “Arthur has been a friend for many years now, and after working together with a different band, it became very clear that he was the man for the job,” Wendler says. Instead of bringing Rizk to Denver, the band traveled to Philadelphia in order “to remove all distractions of daily life and routine that can get in the way of total immersion.” The true secret to Spectral Voice’s success has always been their total commitment to the

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I don’t think it should be that radical to most metalheads that

NONEXISTENCE IS PREFERABLE TO EXISTENCE. —ELI WENDLER

THE DEFINITIVE VERSION of the

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out of the zone,” Wendler notes. “We booked enough time where that wouldn’t be an issue, and I can’t remember if we finished one or two days early, but we wrapped everything up and started the drive back to Denver. We left feeling accomplished and proud.” They may have stepped out of their so-called comfort zone, but Spectral Voice bring their rotting auras with them wherever they go—even North America’s premier recording studio for all things metal-related. According to Wendler, Spectral Voice found Redwoods to be the “ideal environment” for their downtuned explorations of the katabatic depths. He describes the interior of the facility like something out of a cosmic horror story: “It was perpetually dark. We had dozens of candles and incenses burning, piles of bones and mystical books adorning any surface that would allow for them.” Wendler recalls the band curating “a fantastic, immersive experience” during the nine days at Redwoods. As for rotting animal carcasses, Wender says these were necessary, as they “FILLED the studio with the stench of death.”

Now try to imagine being in the absolute dark, adrift on various scents from incense and decay, sitting amidst dusty ancient tomes of dubious intent, listening back to a freshly captured “Red Feasts Condensed Into One” played back through state-of-the-art studio monitors. “We had been working on this material for so long,” Wendler says, “and to finally hear it played back for the first time, it was really special.” He goes on to tell us that some passages on Sparagmos date back to 2013, as early as their “very first rehearsal space.” The band knew these parts “had their place, but… never seemed to fit with anything else.” Wendler adds that there were parts of some songs that “were still being perfected in the few weeks before recording. “The album does play in the order in which songs were finished, unintentionally matching our first album, despite parts of some songs dating back almost 10 years,” he continues. The oldest complete track on Sparagmos is opener “Be Cadaver.” It was “first played in 2018, and went through several iterations over the years. It is also the only song from the album that we played live before recording it.”

The whole point of the band, both in content and form, is to remove the individual and present a holistic and singular piece of music/art. When each individual contributes to a collective project,

EACH INDIVIDUAL WILL RECEIVE SOMETHING DIFFERENT IN RETURN.

—ELI WENDLER

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TERMINAL EXHALATION of BEING

“By now it’s evident that we work quite slowly,” Wendler allows. “Part of that is because of what this music means to us and what it gives back to us as artists. Over the years, the true meaning of the Spectral Voice has been revealed to us. In the beginning, we had very strict guidelines and influences. I never considered us a ‘worship’ band; rather, we were trying to tap into the same currents that these select bands seemed to have found.” And tap into the same currents they did. The best impersonators get you with not only their overall performance, but the attention to details you never ever realized were so crucial until they were brought forth again. Take the color scheme of the aforementioned demoturned-12-inch Necrotic Doom. That cerulean bloom font over the Xeroxed black-and-white image. When Spectral Voice released that aesthetically pleasing demo, you may not have realized it, but they were emulating the likes of Mournful Congregation and Mythic. But they knew exactly what they were doing. As did those who had been there the first time around, when the subgenre was invented. Right away, they earned instant cred with the old heads, and their peers just gaped in fascinated wonder. And all this before people had even pressed play. As exciting as those early days were, it’s important to know that Spectral Voice were inspired by something greater than admiration. They strove for more than mere emulation. “Through year after year, tour after tour, we started to search harder and harder for what energies were contained behind those bands we loved so much, intentionally or not,” Wendler relates. “In a douchier way, we wanted to find the essence of those currents. As time went on, we started becoming influenced less by others and more from within, more influenced by the ephemeral atmospheres those great bands once captured.” Once again, Wendler brings up that feeling of dissolution unto the collective: “There is this feeling that we get, from time to time, be it a show or a practice, that I can describe as total trance.” But it’s not a consistent feeling, he confesses. “We have had plenty of riffs, even full songs, that seem great the first or second time we play them, but after a few months they feel stale— and they get the axe.” The band is uncompromising on this point. Though it appears that recording at Redwoods brought out the best in the songs as well as the players. “I honestly don’t remember what these songs sounded like before recording, but I know that the feeling was the same,” Wendler says. “The recording process was in service of accentuating and embellishing that same raw energy. We were doing extensive

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I don’t care how pointy your guitars are, or how low you’re tuned, or how Xeroxed your tape is; if it’s just for fun or something to pass the time with after your email job, I am not interested.

IF YOU DON’T CARE, WHY SHOULD ANYONE ELSE? —ELI WENDLER

pre-production prior to recording, and those demos really pale in comparison to what eventually happened in the studio.”

HORRID PHANTASM Spectral Voice’s evolution into a more singular entity is perhaps most obvious in Wendler’s dynamic vocal performance. The drummer’s range has been broadening while simultaneously perfecting over the course of the past neardecade. And on Sparagmos, the guttural growls are largely missing, replaced by tortured screams and an overall more feral-throated demonic approach. Some might even wonder if that’s still Wendler on vocals. Turns out, it is—at least most of the time. “Spectral Voice is the same as ever,” he assures us. “We’ve only ever had one lineup change—originally, our friend Casey Hogan was the vocalist—and any other lineup would not be Spectral Voice.” Regarding his vocal range, Wendler concurs that there have been some new developments. “I think the progression of the vocals are a result of what I mentioned above, of searching for that specific feeling. As the lyrics became more personal, so did the approach and delivery.” Pissgrave’s Mellon did provide some vocals on album closer “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity.” Wendler says this “turned out to be

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one of [my] favorite parts on the album. Tim is one of my favorite vocalists. He has this malice and genuine seething contempt; you can hear his passion on every track. I’ve seen him get in the mood before gigs, and all I can say is I wish more people in the ‘scene’ had his tenacity and dedication. Again, it is an honor to have him on the album.”

RED FEASTS CONDENSED into ONE

When it comes to Sparagmos’ lyrics, Wendler credits the influence of philosophers, artists and writers throughout history. He drops names both familiar and esoteric, such as Hadewijch, Georges Bataille, Austin Spare, Emil Cioran, Thomas Ligotti, Mark Fisher, Peter Grey, Gast Bouschet and Byung-Chul Han, “as well as personal friends and contemporaries” he deeply respects and admires. According to Wendler, the first half of the album—“Be Cadaver” and single “Red Feasts Condensed Into One”—addresses “the process of offering oneself to destructive forces in an effort to reach eternal release from Being itself.” While the second half—“Sinew Censer” and “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity”—is an “invocation of Spirit into a prison of rational ‘understanding’ to let that spirit move wholly through you unto death,” and, eventually, rebirth.

Wendler breaks down Sparagmos even further, explaining that “Be Cadaver” is “the erotic thrust of the void, and the subsequent despair which bleeds from Consciousness.” Next, he says “Red Feasts Condensed Into One” represents “an offering of Self, to demons and gods alike to feast, to tear, to devour Ego; leaving vacuity/emptiness—through which the inherent nonexistence of everything can be understood. ‘Sinew Censer’ scourges the spiritual bypassing of contemporary ‘spiritual’ movements (which often only serve ego at best, and the capitalist market of the consumer at worst). A critique of practices which should fortify one’s soul to endure the world, but which more often than not seems to insulate one from the world. ‘Death’s Knell [Rings in Eternity]’ is an ovation to the eternal self-loss and eternal darkness which reaps all. “The moment where you give yourself to absolute frenzy/ecstasy is the moment we are in closest contact with Absolute Spirit,” Wendler continues. “I don’t think it should be that radical to most metalheads that nonexistence is preferable to existence. With that as a jumping-off point, the album moves through passages of morbid funereality into moments of ferocious attacks. Anxious tension released through violent bursts of primal atavism through misanthropic yearning for unbecoming.”

VISIONS of PSYCHIC DISMEMBERMENT The recording of the record may have been a new experience, but for the visual aspect of Sparagmos, Spectral Voice returned to yet another one of their extremely talented and esoteric friends. Mat “Manifester” Brinkman—illustrator of the dark, the weird and, frequently, the gross—is practically the fifth member of SV for all his aesthetic contributions over the years. He’s produced all of their art and shirt designs, with the exception of their split 7-inch with Danish death crew Phrenelith. “Normally, we specifically give him no guidance other than the music and the lyrics,” Wendler reveals. “This way he gets to make a piece that is representative of the music for him, which in turn deepens our collaborative process and makes his artwork intertwined to the overall concept and aesthetics of the band. He is sort of the unofficial fifth member (akin to how Teitanblood viewed Timo Ketola) and the first person outside the immediate band to hear any new material. “The sculpture was all Manifester’s idea.” Wendler continues. “He mentioned that he didn’t want to just add to the pile of pen-and-ink drawings that have saturated the landscape in recent years—not to mention all the ‘artists’ who try to copy him. He pitched the idea of a sculpture and we started sketching ideas that day. He has worked in that medium for three decades at this point—in galleries and squats

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across America and Europe—so we had full trust in his ideas. “It didn’t take any convincing—he is one of my favorite artists and I genuinely love almost everything he has done, across all mediums and platforms. He is a true outsider and lives by his own code, which is endlessly inspiring, both personally and for the band. Some days I’m still in shock that he graces our releases with his fantastic visions.” For the cover of Sparagmos, Wendler tells us he and Manifester “worked together from day one. We were reading the same books, discussing the themes and concepts on long walks through the woods gathering materials. I was heading up to his house about two to three times a week for months helping him work on it, and he worked on it almost every day that entire time, with other friends pitching in, adding layers throughout the process.” Looking at the cover of Sparagmos, the difference is stark. There are golds, browns, reds and even something like green present in the color palette. But while there are new colors, there still remains that familiar harrowing otherness that has become the hallmark of Spectral Voice. Because the black-and-white approach has become so popular over the last few years, the band sought to do something completely different while still presenting something that was even more Manifester than ever. And when you look at that absolutely nightmarish visual, there can be no doubt: This is one of the greatest album covers in the history of the genre. “He made something remarkable and had the vision from day one when we set out to find the right pieces of wood in the forest,” agrees Wendler. “When it came time to capture the sculpture, he and Brendan [MacLeod] spoke about how to photograph it and what Manifester wanted to convey with the presentation, and both were inextricable from that process. It was truly a collaboration between all three parties, and it would’ve turned out differently if any part hadn’t been involved. This leans back into the overarching concept of SV as a dissolution of any individual contribution towards the totality of something larger, in order to present one holistic entity that encompasses the collective effort put forth by all involved. It’s not about us; it’s about THE SPECTRAL VOICE.”

THRESHOLDS BEYOND True, Spectral Voice sought to create an overall immersive experience with this new album, but Wendler and the rest of the crew say they felt no pressure from their past achievements, or from anything like fan expectations. “The only pressure we felt was from our own duty to the Spectral Voice,” Wendler stresses. “Nobody thinks their old material is better—even if it is—so the progression was quite natural and organic. Plus, it’s not like we’ve been actively

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touring, and before [2023’s] Undergang split, we haven’t had a new release in some time. So, if anything, we were just hoping people hadn’t forgotten about us,” he laughs. Whether it was for trends or even their own “hot moment,” Spectral Voice refused to bend to any whims save their own. Compared to many other popular underground bands of the past 10 years, their pace has been glacial as of late. “There was simply no [reason to] hurry,” Wendler shrugs. “We never had a deadline to get ‘the next album’ out; we just knew we had to wait for it to be done.” It’s the same mentality that has always existed within the ranks of Spectral Voice, only tried and even more true. “Earlier, when I mentioned that we scrapped loads of material, that’s partly due to this very intention,” Wendler points out. “It’s really hard to talk about without sounding like an asshole, because it’s so personal, and anytime you try to describe these vague and nebulous feelings that are so enmeshed with inner experience, you inevitably fail to do justice to the mysticism that is Art, and alienate anyone who hasn’t directly experienced something similar. The flip side of working with such specific currents of negation (not negativity) is that it requires a lot of energy to be in that mindset. Rehearsals aren’t necessarily ‘fun.’ Sure, we have good times and we joke around just like anyone else. But we’ve had plenty of (really fucking great) rehearsals where we barely say anything to each other. We’re in the zone.” Never forced or arbitrary, the changes within Spectral Voice’s approach to their art occurs because of natural growth. “With Eroded Corridors and the atmosphere of that album, we wanted to be in the same place as our musical heroes, yet leaving our own marks and footprints,” Wendler says. And for the bulk of their career, Spectral Voice have done exactly that. But at some point, something else started to happen. “The evolution of playing that material in total darkness unleashed something deeper and personal to us all,” he adds, “and that feeling is what we have been searching for since.” Wendler notes that “Ineffable Winds,” from their 2020 split with the late, great Anhedonist, felt like a new beginning. “That was the start of a new era in terms of what a Spectral Voice song should be. The entire structure for that song came to me in one go, in the middle of the night. I was asleep, woke up, and pretty much had it flow out in one full sequence. That was March 5, 2018. Of course, we polished and perfected it, but the feeling was there from the very first second. From then on, rather than try to surround ourselves in atmospheres and currents that have already been opened, we had to open our own.” This was the energy they carried into the writing process for Sparagmos. “Every moment needed to feel immersive and entrancing.”

Reflecting on how this all works in real-time, Wendler says, “It’s an interesting band because all of us play in multiple projects [and] all of us have different ideas and philosophies, so over time, the line between what is or isn’t Spectral Voice has become more liminal and narrow (while at the same time always expanding into new territories and influence). The whole point of the band, both in content and form, is to remove the individual and present a holistic and singular piece of music/art. When each individual contributes to a collective project, each individual will receive something different in return. “For me, the personal context of the album is an ideological representation of the years of working with the Spectral Voice as an Entity, and the liberating role it has played over the years,” he shares. “Most bands today are completely lacking in anything resembling conviction, much less the religious fervor this music was once approached with. There are reasons why ‘extreme’ and ‘cult’ are synonymous with underground metal. I don’t care how pointy your guitars are, or how low you’re tuned, or how Xeroxed your tape is; if it’s just for fun or something to pass the time with after your email job, I am not interested. If you don’t care, why should anyone else?”

DEATH’S KNELL RINGS in ETERNITY

Mercifully, the torturous anticipation will come to an end on February 9 when the new Spectral Voice record will be available to listen to, to own, to stare at while immersing yourself in its multifaceted depths of darkness, death and doom. There is no doubting its supremacy in not only their catalog, but among other modern recordings of its ilk. After telling the band as much, they express their sincere gratitude. “I guess it feels like a natural extension of everything we have done thus far,” Wendler considers. “Maybe a boring answer, but as your body of work grows, it’s natural that it becomes the context for how your new works are created.” Considering their writing and recording process, and all the work they put into making Sparagmos the very best they could, it seems their efforts—as well as their convictions—have all been validated in a major way. “We deliberately took our time to make sure this was, in fact, what we wanted to say.” Make no mistake: Wendler and the rest of Spectral Voice know exactly what they’ve created with this new album. He says the most apparent difference between Sparagmos and the rest of Spectral Voice’s releases is the greater quantity of bleakness and morbid violence. In other words, “The fast parts are faster, the slow parts are slower. It is easily the most satisfying and personal Spectral Voice material for everyone involved.”

INSIDE ≥

68 BULL OF APRIS BULL OF BRONZE By the horns 69 DARKSPACE Rated higher than -2 70 FULL OF HELL AND NOTHING Full of Nothing 71 SPECTRAL VOICE Vox Tenebrarum 71 VINCENT CROWLEY Cult never dies

A Blazing Oath HULDER

Black metal’s preeminent Valkyrie, , rises from the woodland shadows in rousing style

MARCH

Slay

Rizz

Mid

Sus

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

FOR 9

those unfamiliar with hulder’s tantalizing 2018 demos and 2019 EP, this one-woman black metal act seemingly appeared out of nowhere upon frigid wings with 2021’s acclaimed debut, GodsHULDER lastering: Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry. Channeling the dark mediVerses in Oath eval BM of Satyricon’s early albums, Ancient circa Svartalvheim, 20 BUCK SPIN Second Spell-era Gehenna and the folk-imbued works of Drudkh— amongst other spiritual sources—and yet avoiding stale genre clichés while remaining steeped in such rich orthodoxy, multi-instrumentalist Hulder has proven she knows exactly how the “accursed blue flame” of this blasphemous subgenre should burn. ¶ Hulder’s second album, Verses in Oath, follows last year’s The Eternal Fanfare EP, which refined the songwriting style of her debut and destroyed any lingering reservations from subterranean curmudgeons that she had not earned her place with the USBM elite. In terms of musical evolution in the short period between releases, emphasis has been placed upon crafting chantable refrains, delivered in Hulder’s now-signature bestial snarl, as best experienced on the ravenous title track and “Vessel of Suffering.”

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

DECIBEL : MARCH 2024 : 67

This development was clearly to make sure these new songs translate powerfully in a live setting; the spike-brandishing Hulder in battleready stance rather than the aesthetical contrast of an isolationist in flowing garb, posed in a pastoral setting. Ensuring that each of the 10 songs flow as a dynamic movement was, evidently, another point of focus. “An Elegy” scene-sets with the cawing of birds and the portentous rumble of an oncoming storm. This surrenders to “Boughs Ablaze,” which rages elementally and spotlights the anti-symphonic, carefully interwoven synth lines that add eerie Xasthur-esque ambiance to this track (and the LP overall). Meanwhile, the folk-laden doom of “Hearken the End” echoes SubRosa in its gait and keening vocals, accentuating the heathen aggression of the aforesaid “Verses in Oath.” Following this, interlude “Lamentation” acts as a reprieve and sets a ghostly atmosphere with operatic female vocals distorted through what sounds like a vintage radio, and the ecclesiastical “An Offering” appears as though it was summoned by a corpsepainted Enya. If that description rattles the delicate constitutions of gauntlet-sportin’ traditionalists among us, fear not! For Side B also contains some of the most ferocious Hulder tracks to date, especially the vital second-wave onslaughts of “Enchanted Steel” and “Veil of Penitence.” There is newfound poise, a resolute force, at the heart of Hulder’s new LP; it is equally nostalgic and forward-searching. The way this evolving phenom conveys emotion—from rage to sorrow—and does so through time-tested combinations of throttling raw riffs, blast-surges, mournful keys and inhuman growls while still sounding singular, is a truly striking achievement. When it comes to black metal in 2024, to bastardize Isaiah 45:43: “… every knee shall bow [to Hulder], every tongue shall take [this] oath.” —DEAN BROWN

BULL OF APIS BULL OF BRONZE

The Fractal Ouroboros

FIADH PRODUCTIONS

Out of the shadow of the horns

For their second full-length, Rocky Mountain black metallers Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze aligned with Fiadh Productions and Vita Detestabilis Records to spread the grim tidings. Like fellow Coloradans Wayfarer, Bull of Apis embrace the violent romance of their surroundings, but there are no freight trains or oil barons lurking in their lyrics. Instead, the evils they seek to 68 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

banish—capitalism, colonialism, oppression in all its rank forms—are more systemic in nature. The Western legacies they interrogate on songs like the cosmically funereal “A History of Cages and Broken Bones” and ominous opener “Trophy” are of spilled blood and stolen land, and their love for the mountains is rooted in an earnest desire to see all who occupy them returned to the earth: “a colony, a garden, a growth.” For Bull of Apis, that ugly history is reflected in our increasingly fascist present, and they have no qualms about showing which side they’re on. As a self-professed “occult ritualistic black metal band,” they also exert a considerable amount of energy conjuring the appropriate apocalyptic atmosphere (particularly on the unsettling quiet of “Annihilation” and Achaierai’s pervasive guttural whisper). “Liberation Ritual” is indeed their most ritualistic track, and carries all the hallmarks of a typical spooky black metal interlude—chanting spoken word, moaning synth, muted percussion. But then… it shifts. There is a wildness here that breaks through the fog, summoning shadows of skinwalkers and the Wendigo’s howl. Bull of Apis have figured out how to harness some of black metal’s self-indulgent tropes, run them through their own localized filter of uniquely American nightmares, then twist the result into something that feels vital and genuine. Yet, for all of their inventive musicianship and atmospheric aerobics, the emotional weft of this LP is wholly primal. It’s a truly furious album, sonically and conceptually. Esoterica aside, the band growls and blasts with the best of them, carving out truly inspired slabs of fastpaced atmospheric black metal that wouldn’t feel out of place alongside their Cascadian brethren Ash Borer or a more earthbound Mare Cognitum. Ultimately, The Fractal Ouroboros is an ash-blackened effort to bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old—and a call to join them in raging against the horrible gears of industry that crush and pummel us at every turn. —KIM KELLY

CARNAL SAVAGERY 7 Into the Abysmal Void MORIBUND

Death metal’s FlixBus, leaving Terminalslingan in seven minutes and six seconds…

Look, I love HM-2-powered Swedeath as much as, if not more than, any of the other shit-bangers in these pages. But just because one has the ability to make a guitar sound like a swarm of bees

attacking a grizzly fucking the business end of a rusty chainsaw doesn’t always mean the greater public needs to hear you do it. Mikael Lindgren has been variously mimicking the beeschainsaws-bears triptych on a variety of instruments since 1990 with Cromlech and Divine Souls before posting up with Carnal Savagery’s salute to the usual suspects in 2017. We’ll give Lindgren and vocalist Mattias Lilja a pass—not just because they’re old and us old folks need to stick together, but mostly because Carnal Savagery properly validate the collision of the sounds of old Stockholm and Gothenburg. The past six years have been insanely prolific for this lot, to the tune of Into the Abysmal Void being album number five, all amazingly emerging since the world went on lockdown in March 2020. This might go some way in explaining the lack of urgency to some of the tracks on offer. However, where fuzzy riffs end up being the detriment in mid-paced, mediocre stompers like “Limb by Limb” and “Choked to Death,” a ripping solo force-fed through a proggy/bluesy/ Satriani-like filter provides solace. On an entirely positive note, ragers like “Defleshing Bones, “Raped in a Coffin” and “Reek of Decomposing Flesh” may make both their violent (Entombed, Dismember) and melodic (old In Flames, At the Gates) roots obvious, but a punky injection of vim and vigor makes for “OK, I guess I’m down” moments of surrender. Even if this is an album destined to get lost in the shuffle of similar sounding releases and the excitement of Dismember playing MDF this year. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

CHAPEL OF DISEASE

Echoes of Light VÁ N

Immortal spells

While new death metal bands pop up as fast and frequently as mushrooms after a spring rain, unique takes on the genre are rarer than Kalahari truffles. Chapel of Disease are one such rare fungus: deadly as a Death cap and headier than a baggie of psilocybin toadstools. While their name is a portmanteau for two Morbid Angel song titles, these Germans play what you could loosely call death ‘n’ roll, though don’t expect Wolverine Blues on their latest, Echoes of Light. Instead, imagine if Mark Knopfler played lead guitar in Asphyx. If that sounds psychotic on paper, it’s hallucinatory in execution. Vocalist/guitarist Laurent Teubl’s penchant for clean, plucky riffs and extended bridges has little precedent in extreme metal, and that’s to his advantage.

But Teubl’s music is no novelty. He writes legit songs with big, intelligible choruses that remain interesting, even when they approach 10 minutes in length. Hearing someone blend tried and true tropes into something new and fresh is exhilarating—so much so that Echoes of Light makes you wish more prominent bands would further exit their comfort zones. Evil knows no boundaries after all. Echoes of Light marks a slight progression from their 2018 revelation …And as We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye, but meaningful changes such as mellow, clean singing on “Shallow Nights” add depth and range to an already addictive mixture. Remarkably, Echoes of Light was nearly Chapel of Disease’s final specimen: Drummer David Dankert and Laurent’s brother Cedric (also guitar) departed after the recording, prompting the band to temporarily disband. Here’s hoping Laurent continues his singular voyage, and that the rest of us are invited on future trips. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

DARKSPACE

-II

SEASON OF MIST

Black hole sons

Darkspace have always been searching for something, but what that is we will just have to guess, because the Swiss trio are not in this for the conversation. They’re from the ambient wing of black metal, synth pads and industrial low-end guitar—a party with zero gravity, but an atmosphere. The detached sample of a woman’s voice is how they open this, their first album since 2014’s Darkspace III I, which they chose to announce to the world via Morse code. It is one 47-minute track constructed around a spaced-out beat, that sample on a loop, and the slow swell of synth and digital noise, guitar modulating between straight eighth-note chug and some syncopation, coming and going. It feels like a piece in three, maybe five movements, a series of slow-moving crescendos, bleak and menacing when the vocals come in. The autonomous pulse lends it a mechanized yet glacial thrust. In another time, another dimension, they’d be scoring a sci-fi exploitation film about space travel as death cult, climaxing with a peyote and blood ceremony as the spaceship passes Saturn. In this timeline, Wroth, who you might know as Wintherr of Paysage d’Hiver fame, sounds like he and Zhaaral (both guitar/vox, with Yhs rounding out the lineup on bass) are chasing some cosmic epiphany, drawing not so much on the magic of the sky at night, but the great emptiness beyond it for inspiration. It’s not quite Gene Roddenberry

ghost-writing a Blut Aus Nord 12-inch. This is more anti-human, leaving us the feeling that the machine is about to terminate us. “This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.” —JONATHAN HORSLEY

DISSIMULATOR

Lower Form Resistance 20 BUCK SPIN

Resistance is futile

If you’re looking for good riff-for-your-buck value, you won’t find a better deal than Montreal trio Dissimulator’s fulllength debut, Lower Form Resistance. These dudes rage—a complicated tech-thrash informed by death metal—like they’ve been told they get a higher royalty rate if they cram every last tune with a bazillion little bits, parts, transitions and just… content. It’s dizzying at times, but in the best possible way. The threesome are either really confident on their instruments or they spent a lot of time working all this out. Probably both. There are precedents for this type of hyperactive metal, which can be tedious to these ears when done clinically, but Dissimulator manage to avoid being showy for the sake of look-at-mevirtuosity and instead make sure that the song is the most important element. There are plenty of moments that feel gratuitous, but never in a way that detracts from the track. And, yeah, the space/computer/sci-fi element—weird synth washes at times—is a welcome dimension in this morass of musical ideas. I dunno if I’m gonna remember any of these songs, but I definitely want to hear them again and again. The experience of listening to these French Canadian cats do their thing is sublime. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

DRIPPING DECAY

Ripping Remains S ATA N I K R O Y A LT Y

Flipping okay

Though Portland, OR, is known for its quirky culture, ample bike lanes and gorgeous public parks, Rose City has become a world-class hotbed for gross, grimy death metal. PDX’s murderers’ row of ultradistorted riff-slingers is too long to list, but Dripping Decay are one of the newest and most notable names in contention. Their debut album, Festering Grotesqueries, showcased their speedy, grindinflected take on the genre last summer. “Speedy” describes their writing and recording regimen as well as their music; while waiting for their first album to drop, Dripping Decay wrote and recorded a follow-up EP,

Ripping Remains. All the elements that made Festering charming remain in this quarter-hour blast: lovably punk rhythmic choices; bellowing, but sometimes intelligible vocals; and a riff sensibility vaguely reminiscent of Pungent Stench. Even so, Ripping Remains feels inessential. The songs are good, but as previously stated, there’s so much excellent death metal in Portland (and internationally) that they don’t particularly stand out. The tossed-together sensibility of their influences works because bands like Autopsy were playing at the limit of their ability this early in their careers. However, each member of Dripping Decay is a seasoned veteran, so one can’t help but wonder if they’d be great if the band were even more unhinged. The best offering here is a cover of “Trick or Treat” by niche speed metal act Halloween, which captures the sneering, sleazy vibe of the original without sacrificing the band’s core identity. If Dripping Decay can keep some of that attitude as they construct vomit comets in the future, their next record could further stand out from the crowd. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

DUSK

Dissolve Into Ash DARK SYMPHONIES

Better late than never

The last time Wisconsinbased doom/death metal outfit Dusk issued an album, Bill Clinton was president. For us old hats, that’s a lifetime ago (29 years). For the kiddos, it might as well have been the Civil War. While Dusk did see light on 2018’s Withdraw EP, they’ve been quiet since. The group’s new album and second overall, Dissolve Into Ash, flows from the same long-lost, but heavily applauded ...Majestic Thou in Ruin, albeit with the added benefit of hindsight. Founding members Steve Crane (vocals/bass), Steve Gross (guitar/synth) and Tim Beyer (guitar/synth) are less prone to falling into the uneventful. In many respects, their previous output was elongated for the sake of it— “Thy Bitter Woe,” for example—while “Begotten Interlude” barely cracked the four-minute mark, but was unhandy. There are moments on Dissolve Into Ash that feel that way, too. “The Promise Passed,” for example, plods a bit before picking up at the mid-section, but most of Dusk’s newgeneration doom/death is death. They’ve hewn off most of the pinky-finger stuff the Euros were so bent on leaning into throughout the ’90s. Even the minor nods to pregoofball Theatre of Tragedy are appreciated— vocalist Dana Ignarski is predictably angelic, yet not overly mawkish. Therefore, “Beacon Obscured,” “Ancient Passage” and “Libations DECIBEL : MARCH 2024 : 69

Offered” are meatier, frill-conservative affairs, minimally resplendent in their pursuit of genre tenets (and trappings). Dusk actually have an edge to them. With My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost still humming and the new guard of Dream Unending and Tribunal kicking up the feels, Dissolve Into Ash is home. —CHRIS DICK

ESCUELA GRIND

DDEEAATTHHMMEETTAALL M N R K H E AV Y

Death metal. It says death metal.

The new EP by Escuela Grind, DDEEAATTHHMMEETTAALL, has to be one of the most copypasted record titles in history, but everything else about the album makes for a nice, easy, brutal time. This release finishes off the band’s EP trilogy of homages to certain genres, the first two being powerviolence and grindcore (spelled in similarly irritating ways). And in the spirit of this, the band keeps their eyes on the DM prize throughout these four tracks. Low on technicality and high on mosh parts, the tempos here are mid-paced to slow, bordering on sludge. Vocalist Katerina Economou sticks with her more guttural side, adding heft to the blunt weapon that is her vocals, with an assist on the closer by Barney “Why wasn’t he on the grindcore one?” Greenway. They sound surprisingly similar, so it’s hard to tell who is who, but it still works. There are really no serious complaints except that such a short and narrowly focused album produces very little that establishes itself above the hundreds of other bands that are doing this. You may catch yourself headbanging to a particularly killer riff, but even after multiple listens, it’s hard to remember which riffs go to which songs. So, if DDEEAATTHHMMEETTAALL is your kind of micro-genre, then roll up your sweatpants and stroll through the beloved tropes of this enjoyable—though fairly slight—EP. But if you miss the grind in Escuela Grind (among other things), you’ll probably be happier waiting for the next proper full-length. —SHANE MEHLING

FULL OF HELL AND NOTHING

When No Birds Sang C LO S E D CA S K E T ACTIVITIES

A whole lot of Nothing

At the beginning of 2023, a certain reviewer offered their opinions on the Full of Hell/ Primitive Man collaboration. Blowing the dust 70 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

off that thing, the main complaint seems to be that the record felt a little too wedded to the sound and aesthetics of Primitive Man, with Full of Hell relegated to a supportive role. Well, you’ll never guess the biggest issue with When No Birds Sang, Full of Hell’s collaboration with modern shoegaze icons Nothing. Opener “Rose Tinted World” sets your expectations high with feedback and sludge and FOH frontman Dylan Walker screaming on top. The song peters out halfway through, but there is some harsh noise that makes it seem like this is gonna go swimmingly. But after that, it’s pretty much the Nothing show. At least three of these six tracks would be comfortably at home on one of Nothing’s records, and even if Nothing scholars disagree, there is little that Full of Hell seem to be adding from their own bag of tricks. Out of 33 minutes, only about seven contain screaming and heavy guitars. The rest is pretty much just more shoegaze that isn’t bad—it’s just not a particularly compelling or interesting collaboration. Full of Hell release so much stuff that it’s not like these kinds of projects keep them from churning out their bread and butter. And once you know what’s coming, this album is a pleasing, even sometimes beautiful curiosity. But the execution of When No Birds Sang falls far below its promise. —SHANE MEHLING

GUHTS

Regeneration SEEING RED

New flesh from old battles

Back in the autumn of 2021, NYC doom sect GUHTS released their debut EP, Blood Feather. Decibel’s resident Canadian sage Kevin Stewart-Panko described them as “sludgy post-metal that simulates the eerie sensation of an evil crone whispering last rites before delivering an icy kiss of death.” A few years have passed, and they were anything but silent. Daniel Martinez (bass) and Brian Clemens (drums) represent the band’s retooled rhythm section. On the strength of their demo and live performances, GUHTS have shared the stage with notable artists known for reflective heaviness like YOB, Cave In and Mizmor. Now they have their first LP on the way, and Regeneration is an unusual name for a debut. The word itself implies renewal, and for many outside the boroughs, this will be their introduction to the band. But the album does feature new recordings of three demo tracks, painting new flesh on songs composed during the pandemic. From the first wave of distortion, founding guitarist Scott Prater sounds heavier and darker.

Here, GUHTS wield their doomed guitar tone to build depth and add new shadows to “The Mirror” and “Eyes Open” especially. Liberated by their own album title, “Generate” leans more into Codeine and shimmering shoegaze than the Otolith or Battle of Mice. But album closer “The Wounded Healer” snuffs any light lingering from “Generate.” As the 10-minute dirge reaches its midpoint, it frays like a funeral drape as Amber Gardner’s howls grow more and more unhinged. That’s by design, as the rest of the composition stitches itself back together with her bittersweet harmonies. The song represents the album’s themes most viscerally: Self-renewal isn’t always glamorous; it can be painful and disorienting. But Regeneration shows the power of empowerment through change. —SEAN FRASIER

MORBID SAINT

Swallowed by Hell HIGH ROLLER

Troubles continue

When your band is most renowned for taking 30 years to release its sophomore record (25-ish years after recording it) and touring with Death in 1989—despite not actually ever having toured with Death—it’s safe to say that lack of momentum is a long-term issue. This negative point isn’t indicative of quality—personal faves of mine hardly ever played out of their home region. Heck, Indestructible Noise Command went so far as to write a song about why! But the stalled engine of progress is as much part of the Morbid Saint story as is thrash metal and their home state. I’m not putting my listening and inference skills above anyone else’s, but this particular set of ears can hear the Wisconsin in the third album of Morbid Saint’s long stagnant and inert career. The band fires out very thrashing thrash in this, their 23rd active year, and Swallowed by Hell is definitely beholden to the genre’s basics. In addition to the galloping pedals, twobeat drumming, scalar staccato riffing, barked vocals and sustained power-chorded choruses, in Morbid Saint one can hear a certain something that likens them to fellow Cheeseheads Jungle Rot, Realm and Morta Skuld. Please don’t ask for an articulation beyond metaphors involving spicy cheese curds bubbling over in the California sunshine instead of melting into disgusting gooey paste during a summer NYC garbage strike. Swallowed by Hell oozes laser-cut cleanliness and precision, with “Bloody Floors” and the title track in particular latching onto clenched-fist tightness that teases death metal’s edges given

D.J. Bagemehl’s double bass adrenaline. “Fuck Them All” is twice as classy and three times as refined as the title hints, as shredders Jay Visser and Jim Fergades crack off with leads that are plenty Guitar World, though the latest hiccup of the Morbid Saint story lies in the difficulty exhibited in making opener “Rise From the Ashes” markedly distinct from closer “Psychosis,” let alone any of the other eight tracks in between. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

SOVEREIGN

Altered Realities DARK DESCENT

Remember to spay and neuter your realities

I flirted with the challenge of not referencing any of the legacy DM acts that Oslo’s Sovereign are clearly motivated by. I mean, it’s a little slackjack to rely on the reader’s frame of reference in order to connect the dots in a review, right? But then I thought, “Nah, fuck that,” so here we are. Altered Realities’ foundational materials are early-’90s Pestilence, Death and Sadus. (I’m also favorably reminded of a less quirky, late-’80s Bulldozer.) The vocals are pure pre gym-membership Patrick Mameli—just utter, mimeographed glory. Though Sovereign perform with enough precision to clarify their debut’s breakneck, harmonic complexities, they have a charming tendency to strain against established tempos, almost absentmindedly accelerating in a way that feels more vital and less manicured than most contemporary tech-death outfits. This works, although the drum performance happens to be among Altered Realities’ least magical missiles. While the “live” feel of the performances is welcome, drummer Cato Syversrud’s occasional whoopsie-daisies are deflating. Imagine if Bill Andrews carried on from Spiritual Healing to play on Human. It’d be an entirely different record, right? Cato’s a better technical performer than Bill, but he’s just not on par with his bandmates, and it’s a bit of a pebble in the ol’ loafer. Another flaw rests in Sovereign’s underdeveloped songwriting acumen. These tracks frequently careen off into dispensable roundabouts that inhibit momentum. What’s more, they often struggle to properly wrap up. Just end the fucking song, please—these weird, audial ellipses are unnecessary. That said, Sovereign are undeniable bruisers, and the withering final track alone has me rooting for them. I predict that album number two will significantly improve on this promising framework. Providing I’m correct, Sovereign will have truly earned their imperious moniker. —FORREST PITTS

SPECTRAL VOICE

Sparagmos

DARK DESCENT

Deep sensory procession into aural fate

It’s been too long since Coloradans Spectral Voice pleasured our downstairs brain with Eroded Corridors of Unbeing. Luckily, Blood Incantation’s Morris Kolontyrsky, Jeff Barrett and Paul Riedl had enough time between their Lovecraftian invocations elsewhere to team up with busy-bee Eli Wendler for another spelunk into the depths of anguish and decay. Sparagmos picks up where its predecessor left off. For fans of slow-fi, this is a wintry gift, as it oozes into the peripheral, evoking visions of ancient, forgotten malice. Yeah, this is funeral doom/death storyboarded on the cave walls of the Rockies. “Be Cadaver” pings from oblivion with meditative danger. It’s likely whatever Spectral Voice have in their atavistic minds is too ruminative to catch the gallop of forebears no longer of this fucking Earth. But they slyly make up for their muddy march in parts of “Red Feasts Condensed Into One,” a lumbering track that suddenly, almost inexplicably runs at you. As it chews into the final throes of its 13-minute expanse, followup “Sinew Censer” reminds us that death/doom metal is an opposing force. Unlike the members’ other established acts, the grimy uptempo gait, replete with some of the ugliest vocals, bludgeons mysteriously. Sort of out of body, but from deep down where light fears. When the 12-minute closer “Death’s Knell Rings in Eternity” ends, it’s evident that Sparagmos has changed you. That metamorphosis could be mundane—there’s nothing bright about Spectral Voice—or extramundane. I’m leaning on the latter. —CHRIS DICK

TRANSIT METHOD 7 Othervoid

B R U TA L P A N D A

Planes, trains and automobiles

On third full-length, Othervoid, Austin quartet Transit Method are like a musical Rorschach test. Like, what do you hear in the seven songs? Is this a progressive punk band with metal leanings? A melodic metal band with touches of prog and psych? A heavy grunge band with psychedelic flourishes? I dunno. All of the above, I suppose. Let’s leave it at this: They aren’t constrained by genres and they let the song dictate where it wants to go. Which, you know, is kind of freeing. And, as a result, there are a lot of cool surprises here. Sometimes you might catch a glimpse of what a

grungeified/alt-metal version of trad-metallers Haunt would sound like. Or maybe some psych weirdness shows up in tracks like “Another Wasted Life” and “Savage Creatures.” At its heart, Othervoid is simply a progressive rock record, in the sense that it always reaches beyond the obvious and isn’t afraid to go someplace unexpected. Like the nearly nine-minute closer “Frostbite,” which takes you on an extended journey through Voivod prog, Tad rumble, high-stepping speed metal, and then off into something spacey and laconic before a prog-punk crescendo. What’s never sacrificed, however, is the quality of each individual composition. Transit Method may go rogue from time to time, but never at the expense of the song. There’s intention and ultimately resolve in all their creative forays, and that’s the thread that ties it all together. —ADEM TEPEDELEN

VINCENT CROWLEY 7 Anthology of Horror HAMMERHEART

Quoth the Critic, GIMME MORE

Longtime metal nerds are probably familiar with Acheron, the Midwest band that consistently churned out blasphemous tunes in the underground from 1988 to 2019. Since the band’s dissolution, mastermind Vincent Crowley has set off on his own with a new eponymously named foursome to carry on spreading his gospel of death, horror and living deliciously. Only this time around, Crowley has left the black metal element behind for the most part, focusing more on combining classic death metal and the vintage underground metal of the early 1980s. Needless to say, it’s a tantalizing mix of styles for those who prefer their metal more on the traditional side. In the wake of 2021’s aptly titled Beyond Acheron comes the much more ambitious Anthology of Horror, which, obviously, delves into the eternal link between classic heavy metal and classic horror fiction. Although it’s, by my last calculation, the 17 jillionth metal album to celebrate the horror genre, it’s absolutely delightful. Try to imagine Amon Amarth ditching the Viking shtick and embracing Mercyful Fate, because Vincent Crowley (the band) achieve a tasty balance between the rough-hewn, overdriven tones of late-’80s death metal with the more lavish, ornate melodies of Hank Shermann and Michael Denner. Vincent Crowley (the dude) is clearly having a blast bellowing such tracks as “Gods of Crimson Cullings,” “Nowhere to Hyde” (get it?!) and “Coupe De Poudre.” If you’re doing it right, sometimes all you need are the classic metal tropes, and this band has no trouble executing them perfectly. —ADRIEN BEGRAND DECIBEL : MARCH 2024 : 71

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

SINGING A SONG OF

SATAN the

graveyard yawned open in front of me. It was a wild graveyard in what felt like the wilds of what was only New Jersey. But I was 8 years old and from Brooklyn, so any place with a few trees seemed wild to me. Months earlier I had dedicated myself to Satan. In the half-informed way that kids have, I had decided to ally myself with the counterforces of what constituted morality. If it was “bad” to do, I’d do it. Well before AC/DC fan Ricky Kasso cut his friend’s eyes out in an offering to Satan, I watched the neatly laid gravestones and, like some mad dancer, ran down the rows of concrete tributes to the dead and kicked them over until my legs got sore from kicking. The other kids with me, one who later became a Navy SEAL, and post-service, a field operative (read: assassin), were frightened at first. Then confused. Then engaged, and eventually joined in to lay waste to whatever it was that graveyards are supposed to be. I remember feeling… accomplished, and it took a few months for me to realize: feeling accomplished for sowing chaos was a dubious achievement at best, criminal at worst, and in the full flush of time, just sort of stupid. 72 : MARCH 2024 : DECIBEL

And again, not something I thought about until strolling around San Francisco one night and pulling up in front of a house all painted black with a pentagram embedded in the sidewalk in front of a formidable steel gate. The woman I was with yanked my arm and urged me through clenched teeth to “not stop.” Turns out this was the house of the head of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, and she was superstitious enough to care. “That shit can really fuck you up,” she finally spoke, full voice, when we got to the corner. “Believe me. It’s bad karma.” Something I remembered right up to me writing a letter to LaVey: Would he be interested in being interviewed in my philosophical journal of note The Birth of Tragedy Magazine? He agreed and invited me up one night. As luck would have it, the night in question was drizzling, foggy and in another house in the hills, and there were dogs howling against a night made for just these kinds of theatrics. I was standing in his living room when LaVey padded up behind me on stocking feet, setting his schtick for maximum effect. “Eugene, I presume.” I turned to face him, smiled,

slapped my hand to his in a hearty shake, and we were off. I was here because I cared not at all about karma, but cared a lot about evil, and he might have a take that could contextualize that whole graveyard deal and my previous thoughts about whatever constituted counter-morality. We talked about music, since he proudly claimed music—most of it keyboard—and he sniffed at the bands that had contacted him. Venom, mostly, at that time. “Can you really even call that music?” But also, Dio, who he sort of liked. And Black Sabbath, who he felt lukewarm about. Yeah, yeah, but evil was why we were here. And so I asked after it. “That’s simple,” he smiled. “Evil is what doesn’t feel good.” Root canals don’t feel good. Celine Dion doesn’t feel good. But evil? He tried again. I shot it down again and finally he tapped out: “Hey… I’m an atheist,” he sort of laughed and shrugged. Then some version of, “I’m just trying to make the rent.” I didn’t hold this against him. As hustles go, it was conceptually kind of clever. At least as much so as anything any other church has pulled off. But where does that leave the people who are not tourists (by the

time I was 9, I was over the whole Satan thing, so, yeah: I was a tourist) and are deeply invested enough to make this something that they think makes sense? “You mean the ‘occultniks’?” LaVey laughed, not with them, but at them. Then he sighed, lapsed into talking about “psychic vampires” and finished by comparing me to Paul Robeson and praising what he felt was my Satanic appeal. A characterization that must have played poorly on my face, as he quickly followed with, “I mean that in the good way!” LaVey died; I became friends with his grandson Stanton—who some, his grandson included, believe to be his son—who also died; the Church fractured; and churches started burning all over Norway in the intervening years. So, hearing adherents wax poetic about what significant Satanism is and what it is not, I think of him often. And more than him, I think of how Henry Kissinger was about 10,000 times more “evil” than anyone mentioned in this piece thus far, and at this writing was still alive. Of course, now Kissinger is actually dead. What invisible deity do we thank for that? I’ll go for Father Time and call it a day. ILLUSTRATION BY ED LUCE

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