Decibel #237 - July 2024

WOMB THE THE OBSESSED LUNAR HALL OF FAME HIGH ON FIRE WEATHERING PERFECT STORM

REFUSE/RESIST

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JULY 2024 // No. 237

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54 Harshing the Melo COVER STORY COVER AND CONTENTS PHOTOS BY SHIMON KARMEL

upfront 8

metal muthas Walk on home, girl

10 live review:

hell’s heroes vi A hell of a time in Houston

12 exclusive:

metal & beer fest: philly 2024 reviewed All the hazy details

18 low culture Live again 19 kill screen:

unleash the archers Welcome, one and all

20 witherfall Never forgive, never forget 22 john haughm A place both wonderful and strange 24 pentagram chile Heavy metal lifers 26 darkness everywhere Gothenburg calling

features

reviews

28 insect ark Finding her voice again

36 high on fire Let the good times roll

30 the troops of doom Antichrist soldiers are proclaimed

38 ulcerate Long live the code?

65 lead review The new album from Philadelphia doom lords Crypt Sermon is like a kiss from The Stygian Rose

32 hellbutcher Still old, still cold 34 ufomammut Like an everflowing stream

40 q&a: umbra vitae Vocalist Jake Bannon and friends know how to be super all on their own 44 the decibel

hall of fame The Obsessed become ambassadors for the American underground while remaining unknown in their homeland with sophomore release Lunar Womb

66 album reviews Records from bands that are definitely not comprised of Weezer-looking dudes!! , including BAT, the Hope Conspiracy and Sumac

😤

72 damage ink Something in the way he moves

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.

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REFUSE/RESIST

July 2024 [T237] 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

Stronger than hate  (from l to r) Gehlke, Burns and Mudrian ask what size knuckle sandwich you’re looking for

Over time, a few of our Metal & Beer

Fests have been granted pithy internal designations by the staff due to some unanticipated situation that ultimately defined the weekend. The 2018 Philly Fest, which endured dreadful Sunday ticket sales, eventually became known as the “Fuck Easter Fest,” while our first West Coast dBMBF, held later that year in Los Angeles, was such a test of our collective will that it’s now referred to through gritted teeth simply as “L.A.” Now our most recent installment of suds and thuds (reviewed in depth on page 12) has already been dubbed “The Scott Burns Fest.”

Mercifully, because it was such a wonderful experience.

Both Scott and esteemed author David E. Gehlke spent a weekend in Philly, attending Metal & Beer Fest and devoting hours to singing copies of The Scott Burns Sessions: A Life in Death Metal 1987-1997. I’ve worked with David on three Decibel Books projects and met him at a previous Metal & Beer Fest, but this was my first in-person meeting with Scott after over two decades of correspondence. And I’m not sure I’ve ever met a more gracious and humble person in my life.

I witnessed everyone from Glen Benton and Steve Asheim of fest headliners Deicide (who coincidentally performed a special set of material from three early-’90s albums that Scott helped fashion into death metal gold) to Chris Pervelis of Internal Bleeding (whom Scott met for the first time after mixing their debut album nearly 30 years ago) light up when they spoke with the living legend. That thrill extended to industry figures like Grammy-nominated metal engineer Arthur Rizk and former Roadrunner A&R man Mike Gitter, who saw Scott for the first time since he visited him at Morrisound while Scott and Obituary recorded The End Complete.

The greatest exchanges, of course, came from the fans who attended the book signings. For hours, Scott and David listened to emotional stories from hundreds of people whose lives were forever changed by Beneath the Remains, Human, Cause of Death and so many more revelatory records captured by the former. There were a lot of smiles, and no shortage of tears. I know it was overwhelming at times for Scott, who, earlier in the day, genuinely wondered aloud if anyone was going to actually show up; yet he stayed with David after the show each night to accept dozens of hugs and pose for even more photos. I’m honored to call them—and so many of you who were at the Scott Burns Fest—friends. albert mudrian, Editor-in-Chief

ART DIRECTOR

Aaron Salsbury

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Chuck BB, Ed Luce Mark Rudolph

Online DECIBEL WEB EDITOR

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DECIBEL WEB AD SALES

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Anthony Bartkewicz Emily Bellino Adrien Begrand J. Bennett Dean Brown Nathan Carson Liz Ciavarella-Brenner Chris Dick Sean Frasier Nick Green Raoul Hernandez Addison Herron-Wheeler Jonathan Horsley Neill Jameson Kim Kelly Sarah Kitteringham Daniel Lake Cosmo Lee Jamie Ludwig Shane Mehling Tim Mudd Justin M. Norton Dutch Pearce Forrest Pitts Greg Pratt 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.

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READER OF THE

MONTH You’ve been a Decibel subscriber since 2011. What’s kept you coming back? Surely, it can’t be Albert Mudrian’s winning personality!

Brendan Karnik Shoreview, MN

You are a resident of Shoreview, MN. Please tell us what is there besides Brendan Karnik.

I hear there are something like 9,999 lakes here. I’ve only lived here for two years, but I’ve definitely been impressed with the scenery. I feel like someone referred to Minnesota as the U.S. version of Norway, minus the fjords. I follow Austin Lunn from Panopticon on Instagram, and he directed me towards some badass parks and trails. Looking forward to seeing him play up in Grand Rapids at the end of May (in a brewery)! Definitely plenty of great beer options around the Twin Cities.

Invictus and the now sadly defunct tap room of Dangerous Man have been my favorites.

Luckily, Dangerous Man is being sold in most stores now. Was also fortunate to have visited Austin’s brewery, HammerHeart, when that was around. It was like a mini-Norway!

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Obviously, it was Neill Jameson’s winning personality! I’ve always appreciated the tongue-in-cheek nature of the magazine. It takes itself seriously without taking itself too seriously. Even though the internet gives us the most up-to-date information on bands, there’s just something about the physical product that can't be replaced, in my opinion. Probably why I shelled out for the expanded version of Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult through you guys. I have the original, but this expanded version is even better… and it came with a free patch!

You’re a pretty big Woe fan, going as far to have the band’s logo tattooed on a large section of your leg. What is it that draws you to the band? Surely, it can’t be Lev Weinstein’s winning personality!

I think most people enjoy the bands Lev is in, despite his winning personality. Kidding, Lev! Woe, to me, blends the perfect balance between the raw intensity you expect from black metal and the most memorable, fucking earworm riffs

imaginable. I honestly don’t know how Chris [Grigg] keeps coming up with this shit. And it just keeps getting better. Legacies of Frailty perfectly embodies that balance. I can’t wait to hear these songs live. (Anywhere in the U.S., Chris!

Please and thank you!). I’ve loved this band since the moment I heard them, and there was never a question/moment of doubt about getting that tattoo. Also, as a nerdy side note, being included in the liner notes in the thanks portion for the new album was a dream come true. Buy the album!

This issue marks Gatecreeper’s second Decibel cover appearance (Decibel Tour covers notwithstanding). What young(ish) death metal artist do you think deserves a Decibel cover that hasn’t landed one yet?

Do Skeletal Remains count as young(ish)? It’s those damn memorable riffs that I just can’t get enough of. Plus, they NEVER stop touring! I don’t think they’ve been to the Twin Cities recently, but definitely won’t miss them when they come through. Not a death metal band, but there is an amazing new band out of Minnesota called Kaldeket. It contains two former members of the band False (that y’all did a flexi with—I can use “y’all” since I’m originally from Texas). It’s kind of black metal, but veers off in so many different directions. Check them out!

ChuckBB.com / Instagram: @chuckbb_art

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

Well, here are the records that we spun most while ooh-wee-ooh, we look just like Buddy Holly.

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

This Month’s Mutha: Eunice “Bambi” MacRae Mutha of Pantera tour manager Meg MacRae

Tell us a little about yourself.

I grew up in Ohio in a large family with two brothers and four sisters, and studied to be a teacher at Miami of Ohio. After teaching for two years, I became disenchanted with it; when I saw an ad for Pan American airlines, I became a stewardess in 1956 and flew until I met my wonderful husband and married him in 1967. We had one daughter, Meg, in 1970, who became our pride and joy.

Was it always clear that Meg would have a career in music?

Meg was always interested in music, but also acting, singing and writing, so it seems appropriate that she ended up working in some type of entertainment job. She would carry two of those little cassette carriers, the ones that held probably 30 cassettes in each, and took them everywhere we went. But she was highly creative and I always thought of her as an artist herself—mostly as a writer, so I was a bit surprised that she ended up working on the business side of things.

Your daughter worked at Earache Records when the label was still relevant. Do you enjoy any of the bands that she likes?

It’s pretty noisy. I never really liked that type of music, as I come from the days of Glenn Miller; and we also listened to Count Basie, which is much different. But to work in music and with those bands was her decision, and we thought it was great that she found work that she loved.

In addition to being a tour manager for Type O Negative, Down and Pantera, Meg also worked with Bon Jovi and took you to see them play. What do you remember about that show?

Meg invited her father and I to see Bon Jovi in Charlotte, and what I remember is that it was such a massive production. Until we saw her in action at work, I don’t think any of us understood what her job entailed and the levels of responsibility that she undertook. Everything was so well-orchestrated, and she seemed to be at the center of all of the activity. It was rewarding for us to see her so successful.

You recently turned 90. What should we be doing to enjoy that kind of longevity?

I feel very fortunate. I am planning to see my 100th arrive in the future. I think having a positive attitude on life is very necessary. Keeps you young and alert.

What are some of Meg’s hidden talents?

She began to play drums when she was 17 and should have stuck with that because she loved it—again, quite noisy, though! Her father and I always encouraged her to follow her dreams and she was always very determined at whatever she was undertaking. She came home to Wilmington and worked [on] Dawson’s Creek—for several years, then moved out to Los Angeles around 2000 and had lots of work in the film world. I am not sure how she came back to music, but she was always excelling at whatever she was doing at the time. —ANDREW BONAZELLI

Albert Mudrian : e d i t o r i n c h i e f  Julie Christmas, Ridiculous and Full of Blood  200 Stab Wounds, Manual Manic Procedures  Darkest Hour, Undoing Ruin  Autopsy, Mental Funeral  Ulcerate, Cutting the Throat of God ---------------------------------Patty Moran : c u s t o m e r s e r v i c e  Crypt Sermon, The Ruins of Fading Light  Rudimentary Peni, Death Church  Kim Gordon, The Collective  Tiamat, Skeleton Skeletron  Spacemen 3, Playing With Fire ---------------------------------James Lewis : a d s a l e s  Gatecreeper, Dark Superstition  Crypt Sermon, The Stygian Rose  ACxDC, G.O.A.T.  Inter Arma, New Heaven  Full of Hell, Coagulated Bliss ---------------------------------Mike Wohlberg : a r t d i r e c t o r  Unleash the Archers, Phantoma  Daydream Plus, Clues Recalled From Memory  Gatecreeper, Dark Superstition  200 Stab Wounds, Manual Manic Procedures  The Red Chord, Fused Together in Revolving Doors ---------------------------------Aaron Salsbury : m a r k e t i n g a n d s a l e s  Slug Gore, They Slime!

They Ooze! They Kill!  L.O.T.I.O.N, B.E.S.T. Of 2013-2024  Nuclear Tom, Terror Labyrinthian  Crypt Sermon, The Stygian Rose  The Hope Conspiracy, Tools of Oppression/Rule by Deception

GUEST SLAYER

---------------------------------Payson Power : to m b m o l d / day d r e a m p l u s

 Marmalade Butcher, Onomatomani[a]kus  Zombi, Direct Inject  Scarab, Seeking Chaos and Revenge After Betrayal  The Ironsides, Changing Light  Perfume, Game

PHOTO BY

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SHIMON KARMEL

HELL’S HEROES VI

HELL’S HEROES VI

ONE

of the best things about Hell’s Heroes, the annual WHEN: March 21 – 23, 2024 old-school metal extravaPHOTOS BY VIOLETA ÁLVAREZ ganza at Houston’s White Oak Music Hall, is the way it temporarily turns the fourth largest city in America into a heavy metal village. You’ll see battle vests in barbecue lines and mud-streaked longsleeves in art galleries. Cab drivers will ask you, “Are you going to that metal festival?” You might even bump into Rotting Christ in the airport security line. (Sorry for punishing you, Sakis.) For three days in March, a makeshift hesher community pops up along the Buffalo Bayou, and that feels every bit as valuable as the long-awaited reunions and rare live appearances that dot the lineup. Even hell has its heroes, as festival founder Christian Larson likes to say, and a lot of them showed up in Houston this year.

WHERE:

White Oak Music Hall, Houston, TX

THURSDAY A hellacious downpour drenched the checkin line and threatened the festival’s opening day, but major crisis was averted. Chilean speed metallers Acero Letal, playing their third-ever U.S. show, kicked things off on the outdoor stage, overcoming technical difficulties with sheer enthusiasm. Girlschool followed 1 0 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

them with one of those sets that makes you say, “Well, I guess it’s cool that they still play shows.” Houston’s own Helstar righted the ship with what was billed as a Nosferatu set, but turned out to be even more exciting, incorporating bloodsucking tunes from 2016’s wildly underrated Vampiro as well. Doro played like she was on a far bigger stage, getting the soaked

 Give us to the night Candlemass vocalist Johan Längqvist pounds one out with a fan during their pounding Nightfall full-album set

crowd involved in Wacken-sized singalongs and working through a run of Warlock classics. (Her lead guitarist was Savatage’s Chris Caffery, which made me daydream about Jon Oliva getting his shit together enough for a Hall of the Mountain King set.)

On the indoor stage, Cleveland cult heroes Destructor delivered their signature pounding evil. That’s when the fest’s only real weatherrelated disappointment occurred; lightning had been spotted, putting a 30-minute pause on the festivities. That meant Autopsy, who were supposed to play all of Severed Survival, only got to about half of it. At least that half included the live debut of “Impending Dread,” a doomy deep cut so crushing I couldn’t believe it took them 35 years to play it. Thankfully, Candlemass were able to complete their run through Nightfall. Johan Längqvist put his own stamp on ex-vocalist Messiah Marcolin’s finest hour, while the rest of the band, looking and sounding ageless, carved those immortal riffs from stone. The rain stopped, a nearly full moon materialized, and epic doom lit the night.

Faces in the glare  (clockwise from l) Eternal Champion, Queensrÿche and Sodom claim another victory for Hell

FRIDAY As Hell’s Heroes has grown, so has the scope of its curatorial vision. Black metal now sits comfortably alongside trad metal, doom and thrash—sometimes within the same band, as with Friday acts Nite and Nubivagant. L.A.’s Mäleficentt blitzed through an impressive half-hour of raw black metal, frontman Y.E. screaming over the din unamplified when his mic failed. Lamp of Murmuur delivered a stillrare set that was among the best of the weekend. Lamp’s Saturnian Bloodstorm cycle has been all about arrogance and might, and that came through loud and clear in the towering riffs of anonymous mainman M. and his compatriots.

Doomy performances by Stygian Crown and Cauchemar set the stage for Solitude Aeturnus, playing their first show in 13 years. Robert Lowe still boasts one of metal’s most authoritative voices, a fact made even more astonishing by his Boomhauer-esque stage banter.

On the trad metal side of Friday’s bill, Intranced managed multiple costume changes during their high-energy early-day set, and Eternal Champion pulled out a surprise full-

album playthrough of Ravening Iron—cool, but not as cool as hearing “I Am the Hammer” would have been. The day’s headliners were Queensrÿche, who had previously given me good reason to be skeptical of their live show. I’m a believer now. “New” singer Todd La Torre didn’t miss a single note on the self-titled EP or The Warning, and the band seemed reinvigorated by playing all that old material. They closed with “Eyes of a Stranger,” which rang out over Houston and remained stuck in my head for the rest of the weekend.

SATURDAY

Day 3 is when exhaustion tends to set in. Blood Star struggled to get my blood pumping, but Cirith Ungol, playing King of the Dead classics under the midday sun, gave me a second wind.

The legendary band is in the middle of a yearlong farewell tour, but they sounded like they could give it another few decades. Necrofier, razor-sharp from the reps they got in on the Decibel Tour, gave a characteristically locked-in performance. (Larson putting his own band on the same day as his heroes in Rotting Christ was

a canny move. For their part, the Hellenic pioneers, playing an exclusive early ’90s set, were the tightest band of the day.) Darvaza were the day’s other black metal highlight, and owners of the fest’s best one-liner: “Are you having a good time? We’re here to change that.”

Forbidden accompanied a gorgeous, salmoncolored sunset and sounded great doing it, despite their dwindling supply of original members. My two most anticipated sets of the entire fest were on Saturday: Dawnbringer, who, apart from a warmup gig, hadn’t played in eight years; and Attic, the theatrical German act with a pronounced King Diamond streak. Both ruled. Attic ruled so much, in fact, that I missed the first 15 minutes of Sodom. The German thrash warlords made me pay for my sins with a supercharged set that spanned their extensive catalog. During “Agent Orange,” a couple of people lit road flares in the pit. I stared, dazed but impressed, at the chaos unfolding. Eventually, someone took the flares and put them out in the mud. Those were the only fires that were snuffed. Sodom’s—and the festival’s—burned on into the Texas night. —BRAD SANDERS D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 1 1

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: PHILLY 2024

Some gave all  Kirk Windstein leads a crushing hour-long performance of some of Crowbar’s heaviest hitters

WITCHING

friday

It’s been a whirlwind couple of years for

rising Philly metal crew Witching—from a record deal to international touring to their biggest hometown show ever. Tasked with kicking off the weekend’s official festivities, they launched into a set heavy with material from their Translation Loss debut Incendium.

The crowd quickly filled in as vocalist Jacqui Powell shrieked and sang over Witching’s fusion of black, doom and post-metal. Like their Incendium IPA collab with New Trail Brewing, Witching were a smooth way to start the party. —EMILY BELLINO 1 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

TERMINAL NATION

Death metal/hardcore hybrid Terminal Nation

made their Philly debut on Friday, armed with branded deodorant (bearing the message “It’s OK not to stink”) and playing cuts from their new album. Serving as a bridge between death metal acts like Internal Bleeding and hardcore bands like Jesus Piece and Biohazard, they got the crowd moving. Undeterred by attendees’ relative unfamiliarity, vocalist Stan Liszewski called for radical change and mosh pits alike. A better world—one with more deodorant and more justice—is possible. Just follow Terminal Nation’s lead. —EMILY BELLINO

ENFORCED

“We’re going to play loud and fast,” promised

vocalist Knox Colby, “because loud and fast fucking rules.” With no slight to the evening’s first two sets, the Fillmore couldn’t have agreed more and came to life under the Richmond crossover warriors’ iron fist. Enforced arrived ready for battle and the bodies whipping through the circle pit were the fuel for their war machine. Playing tracks from across their total body of work— from older rippers like “Reckoning Force” and “Malignance” to newer cuts like “Aggressive Menace” and “Hanged by My Hand”—it was a pledge easily fulfilled. —MICHAEL WOHLBERG

INTERNAL BLEEDING

Long Island slam purveyors Internal Bleeding

lit up Friday night. Nestled like a brass-knuckled fist between two slabs of concrete—Enforced at one end, Jesus Piece at the other—guitarist/ founding member Chris Pervelis marshaled IB’s “dumb fucking riffs” off the stage and into the barricades. True to form, vocalist Steve Worley joined Pervelis as the duo engaged in slam-worthy New Yawk intimidation tactics. The audience ate

PHOTO BY HILLARIE JASON

THE

seventh installment of our Philly edition of Metal & Philadelphia, PA Beer Fest was clearly one for WHEN: April 12-13, 2024 the books (see this issue’s Just Words for more on that), but there was plenty of room for “non-readers” primarily focused on creating soon-to-be-legendary bangovers and hangovers. —ALBERT MUDRIAN WHERE: The Fillmore Philly,

 Scream for bloody more

(clockwise from top) Internal Bleeding, Biohazard and Witching give the Philadelphia crowd a night to remember

JESUS PIECE

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes

and the fact that Philly is the best goddamn city on the planet. To see hardcore heroes Jesus Piece take the Fillmore stage for the first time ever felt historic, and a moment not lost on vocalist Aaron Heard, who offered nothing but love for his hometown scene throughout their set. Not wasting the opportunity, the band came out swinging as “Curse of the Serpent,” “Oppressor” and “An Offering to the Night” were straight haymakers to the solar plexus. No one may like us, but Jesus Piece care, and they care a lot.

—MICHAEL WOHLBERG

CROWBAR

Existence may indeed be punishment, but it didn’t feel like that during Crowbar’s hour onstage. Playing songs from their 1993 self-titled PHOTOS BY HILL ARIE JA SON

debut and Hall of Fame-inducted classic Odd Fellows Rest, the New Orleans OGs’ set was a reminder that less is more (and heavier). They pulverized with the brutal simplicity of “SelfInflicted” and “High Rate Extinction” before tugging on heartstrings with staples “Planets Collide” and “All I Had (I Gave).” Guitar duo Kirk Windstein and Matthew Brunson, plus bassist Shane Wesley, dialed in a seriously heavy tone that put Crowbar right at home sandwiched between Jesus Piece and Biohazard.

—EMILY BELLINO

BIOHAZARD

Bands playing 32-year-old records can go any number of ways, but Biohazard sounded as hungry and vital as they did in ’92 when Urban Discipline came out. The band looked healthy and collegial, their performances tight and in the pocket. (Yes, Bobby Hambel still has his spinning guitar moves). “Punishment,” “Shades of Grey” and “Tales From the Hard Side” had us geezers singing along, while kids in the pit, more used to the leaden breakdowns of post-millennial hardcore, gamely tried to keep up with NYHC

mosh beats. The old ways aren’t completely lost, though—I saw one young lady do a pictureperfect picking-up-change. —COSMO LEE

saturday

DAEVA

Black-thrash maniacs Daeva, featuring members

of Crypt Sermon, struck the Archdiocese of Philadelphia a mighty blow on Saturday, priming Lamp of Murmuur’s legions for a second assault. Openers never have it easy, but with Steve Jansson slinging evil riffs, frontman Edward Gonet venomously despairing/delighting, and the rhythm section of Frank Chin and Enrique Sagarnaga at the ready, Daeva’s set, culled from debut Through Sheer Will and Black Magic, riveted the Fillmore’s early risers.

Favorites “The Architect and the Monument,” “Arena at Dis,” and fucking “Passion Under the Hammer” bulleted our respective belts, proving God is not only puerile, but futile. —CHRIS DICK

LAMP OF MURMUUR

Metal & Beer Fest is all about specially curated performances, which sometimes means D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 1 3

TOP PHOTO BY HILLARIE JASON • BOTTOM PHOTOS BY GENE SMIRNOV

up the confrontation as much as the multi-era setlist, with tracks off Corrupting Influence (“Focus”) bullying anything from the ’90s into submission.

Once a Wild Rags darling, still a formidable fighting machine 33 years later. —CHRIS DICK

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: PHILLY 2024

In times of crowd war  Dying Fetus rip through the crowd and the classics during their “old-school” set

WILL HAVEN

The main hall crowd that thinned dramatically at the conclusion of Lamp of Murmuur’s set was slow to return in time for the start of Will Haven’s first Philly show in 25 years. I don’t know if they were thirsty hardcore craft beer enthusiasts or hardcore posers (or both), but as the Sacramento alt-metal masters pummeled the gradually growing throng with Neurosis-inspired cuts from their Hall of Fame-worthy El Diablo debut all the way through last year’s career redefining VII, the first real pit of the day took shape. By the time they closed with the thunderous sludgehammer of Carpe Diem’s title track, three-decades-in-themaking converts were born. Crown them, they are godlike. —ALBERT MUDRIAN 1 4 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

200 STAB WOUNDS

Back from Inferno Festival, 200 Stab Wounds

remain unhinged as they climb death metal’s ladder of bones, landing a coveted middle slot on Saturday. After Will Haven’s proficiently heavy left-hand turn, the Ohioans willingly bled Philly dry, pulling material from their Maggot Stomp debut Slave to the Scalpel (“Phallic Filth,” “Itty Bitty Pieces”) and the two-track Masters of Morbidity single. They even heaved up a new track—I think it was “Gross Abuse”—from their upcoming Metal Blade album. The Steve Buhl-led bruisers hosted one of the most intense pits of the weekend. —CHRIS DICK

TOMB MOLD

If you listened with your eyes closed, Tomb

Mold’s set dripped with queasy intensity that would satisfy any fan of the disgusting, derelict and depraved. Melody blossomed early as they focused the first half of their performance on songs from last year’s The Enduring Spirit, but welltested rockers from earlier records appeared later in the evening, and the guys were clearly enjoying themselves. But to notice that, you would have needed to open your eyes, at which point you would have seen their mildly jokey Blue Screen of Death backdrop and overall tech nerd energy. But who cares if it results in a great show? —DANIEL LAKE

DYING FETUS

“Uplifting” may not be what Dying Fetus brings to mind, but their set of late-’90s/early-’00s material was unexpectedly joyful. People seemed especially ravenous for the rougher edges of the early discography. “Grotesque Impalement” never felt better! The energy reached that magical state where band and crowd vibrate as one. If there were exhortations to circle-pit, they were unnecessary. Two simultaneous pits formed, stage left and stage right, with a constant river of crowdsurfers up the middle. “Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog” had people screaming along, eyes rolling back, minds generally blown to pieces. Good friendly violent fun it was. —COSMO LEE

DEICIDE

Glen Benton takes no fucking prisoners. Metal teaches us that we are all gods unto ourselves, and when Deicide take the stage, each of us will die where we stand. The band’s sound was thick, tight and devastating. Early-’90s riffs erupted around the absolutely catastrophic drum attack, and Benton’s growl-to-scream vocals only elevated the crowd’s violent ecstasy. We know how idiotically slavish this paragraph sounds.

We don’t care. Hyperbole is impossible. Deicide arrived not to complement the other bands of the evening, but to dominate, and that headlining spot was well-earned. —DANIEL LAKE

PHOTO BY HILLARIE JASON

legendary bands hyper-focusing on legendary tunes, and sometimes it’s the fact that the band is playing at all that is special in its own right.

Lamp of Murmuur appearances aren’t unheard of, certainly, but they’re rare enough—and the music is enchanting enough—to draw the misanthropic masses. Much of Saturday’s musical fare rose proudly from the tee-and-denim school of extreme music, so Lamp of Murmuur’s corpsepaint, facial coverings, spiked gauntlets and flowing garments brought a welcome air of black metal mystery to the Fillmore stage. —DANIEL LAKE

FULL OF HELL

HATE FORCE

COAGULATED BLISS

SYSTEMS OF TERROR

JARHEAD FERTILIZER

XIBALBA

CARCERAL WARFARE

AZTLÁN

DECIBEL MAGAZINE METAL & BEER FEST: PHILLY 2024

ONCE

UPON

THE

In which our intrepid reporter crams a month’s worth of professional drinking into one night at

METAL & BEER FEST: PHILLY it been five months already since we had this conversation? Feels like I just sobered up from Denver last week. I’ve started bringing tiny plastic taster cups with me everywhere, just in case there’s an outbreak of brew stands at the local library or the high school dance recital. So far, no luck—as of this writing, those places are still BYOB. Luckily, the suds-slingers at Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest have no such hang-ups about keeping me just as lubricated as I want to be.

To my chagrin and really no one else’s, I arrived late to the party.

Other professional duties kept me tied up Friday evening, and now that Decibel doesn’t like to have metal shows on Sundays—I guess we’re keeping the Sabbath now or some shit—it meant that half of the drinking and headbanging was over by the time I rolled up to the Fillmore on Saturday afternoon. Like any self-disrespecting boozer who’s feeling a bit behind the ball, I immediately parked myself upstairs in front of the Brimming Horn station for a couple rounds of their Infernal Passion, the Lamp of Murmuur mead collaboration that packs a cornucopia of fruits and spices into a 12% ABV monster that somehow tastes like a tame, non-alcoholic juice drink. Still, scrumptious.

From there, finding TRVE Brewing was as easy as turning around, and when I did, I dove face-first into their subtle, pleasant saison One to Seek, Another to Regard. Later, I returned to indulge in their Cursed mixed culture sour, exactly the kind of funky, tart and truculent wild ale that I needed to reset the palate and go back out exploring.

After getting a few mouthfuls of Attic Brewing’s Common Nightjar, a satisfying Czech dark lager, I found my way to the Empress Rising table, where they tried to confuse me by serving up two totally different styles, both called Dust & Stone. D&S #3 turned out to be a glorious IPA, a bright and bangin’ hop showcase that cut through all of the less floral flavors on offer elsewhere around the venue. The sequentially appropriate #4 revealed itself to be a bitter and bossy Schwarzbier, a real attention-grabber that leaves a lasting impression.

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Elsewhere, Magnanimous Brewing celebrated the presence of legendary producer Scott Burns and excellent author David Gehlke with their mango/guava/passion-fruited Morrisour, a strangely dry concoction with citrus hints. Does it emanate the essence of Florida death metal? Nope, not even a little. Nearby KCBC was pouring the punchy Dead Lasso, a sour made with cherry, raspberry and Japanese yuzu, as well as the heavenly hoppy Venomous Villains.

Having made my way through several of the more staid styles, I spent the middle of the evening soaking up some of the more stuntoriented brews. The Dark Lord marshmallow handjee by 3 Floyds was just as dark, sweet and sultry as it had been back in December, making it a definite destination beer. Ever Grain’s Tomb Moldinspired fruited sour, the Inebriating Spirit, tastes just as blue as it looks, which is somehow way less offensive than it sounds. Now that Kool-Aid masquerading as beer has been on the rise for the past several years, it might as well be as good as this one. Less gimmicky (but equally swiggable) is their HellYes! Helles lager. And then there’s the astonishing PB&J Mixtape by Xül, a gluten-free sour that should have been utterly disgusting, but actually scaled the heights toward being one of the most enjoyable drinks in a room full of worthy beverages.

Other beers passed my lips. I’m sure of it. But my focus began to waver, diluted by killer metal performances and the opportunity to shoot the shit with as many friendly faces as I could find. Of course, there were those all-too-rare conversations with every Decibel personality I could snag for even a few seconds, plus almost all the guys from the Metalheads Podcast, one of my former math students, current and former metal writers and label employees and PR soldiers, and a memorable half-hour or so with Götz Vogelsang of Deathevokation, one of the friendliest and most hilarious dudes you could ever hope to meet. Over my limit and over the moon, I left the Fillmore sated, and hopeful that my car hadn’t been towed from the dubious street corner where I had stashed it for the night.

PHOTO BY A.J. KINNEY

has

BY DANIE L LAKE

Baldur’s Gate 3 [LARIAN STUDIOS]

Go the Fuck Outside, It’s Summer have absolutely no idea where the year has gone, only that it hasn’t been my favorite and the weather is about to turn to the “balls sticking to your inner thigh” season, which is the meteorological term I learned by watching the Weather Channel while I was getting my oil changed. I also learned that one of the New Kids on the Block has a home renovation show. This was when I was at the doctor, not the oil change. This will all be important later, I promise.

Summer is generally a great time to catch touring bands (I’ve missed two just in the last week or so, unintentionally), hit a fest (intentionally missing a few) or go on the road and find various record stores (if I can get off work long enough). See those excuses? They’re mostly legit and entirely because of work or other responsibilities that sort of dump themselves in when you think you have free time as a middle-aged adult.

I’ve been trying to catch up with some old friends recently, mostly because people I know keep dying, and I’ve noticed the conversations used to be based entirely around sex (that they were having), drugs (that I was doing) and rock ‘n’ roll (insert witty bullshit here). Now? I’ve had conversations about homeownership, insurance and what statins we’re on (Crestor, for those playing along at home). Some of them are still planning on hitting MDF or various shows throughout the summer, and bless their hearts for it. Shows will always need creepy old guys amongst the youth. Representation matters, after all.

This may seem like a lot of complaining about getting older, but that’s only partially it. I’m comfortable with the idea of less social interaction, which my therapist says isn’t a good thing, but it’s not like she has a degree. I’d rather spend my limited downtime doing what I’m doing right now: freeform bitching to an audience that mostly dislikes me and listening to vinyl 1 8 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

in my office (Lustre, The Ashes of Light, since you asked.) But, through this, I’ve alleviated myself of the burden of holding some kind of emotional grudge because a fest or a tour isn’t catering to my individual taste. This is a torch I’m gladly passing along to the youth.

I could sit here and tell you that if you don’t like a fest/tour/show, don’t go to it, or set up your own, but I’ve said that almost annually since 2015. Instead, I’ve come to realize that it’s almost like a rite of passage to be of an age where life hasn’t kicked you in the balls until you’re pissing blood and have very strong, often hilariously misguided opinions. I have nostalgia for the time in my life where I could devote energy to that sort of thing because I had nothing else to truly focus on besides not impressing girls and wasting time in AOL’s “Unholy Metal” chatroom.

I expected this sort of development in my life, just because I feel myself letting go of a lot of things, but what I didn’t expect was, for the first time, I watched a fest that I would have killed to go to through the eyes (and phones) of people who went.

That was the NWN/Hospital Fest in Osaka that took place in April. Beherit playing a black metal set? Easily half a dozen other bands I’ve loved for years? I used to get the whole jealousy/ avoidance shit when I missed something, and I fully expected that this time. But watching everyone’s videos and pictures? It made me… happy? I was happy that such an event occurred, happy to see some great footage and happy to hear it was a total success. Which led me down the mental path we’re traveling here. That it’s okay to get older, miss some things and keep our traps shut. (I know, hypocritical, right? Go fuck yourself.) And that it’s time for the younger generations to be the insufferable assholes that we were/are. We can still stay in the fight; we just need to understand that we all go into the ground. And if the mathematical order of things holds, us sooner than them.

BRITTNEY SLAYES OF

UNLEASH THE ARCHERS WELCOMES ALL INTO HER ADVENTURING PARTY

W

ith names like The Last

of Us, Fallout and Baldur’s Gate earning household recognition,“nerd culture” (whatever that means at this point) has proven to be mainstream big business.

But what of the underground’s longtime champions of high fantasy and sci-fi? While much of extreme music took a left-hand path towards all things gore and Satan before the gaming industry turned into the behemoth we know today, power metal soldiered on in its quest for eternal glory.

Canadian heavy metal warriors Unleash the Archers are currently celebrating their latest science fiction opus Phantoma, a concept album with a narrative that would be just as comfortable in a Bethesda title as in a Napalm Records release. For vocalist Brittney Slayes, growing nerd acceptance in the scene leaves her with joy rather than jealousy. Though our extended online interview focuses more on her digital proclivities, the following moment with Slayes gives some general perspective on what it’s like being fantasy’s flag-bearer in this day and age.

EXCLUSIVES STORE.DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM

Gather all ye nerds here and

LISTEN TO HEAVY METAL!

Out of all the metal subgenres, power metal is typically regarded as the “nerdy” metal.

Through our column, however, we’re finding plenty of gamers and nerds in every facet of extreme metal. Do you look at the word “nerdy” as a pejorative or is it a welcome description?

I totally think it’s a welcome description. Gather all ye nerds here and listen to heavy metal! I think it’s a call to action, if anything. If you love science fiction, if you love fantasy, if you love reading comic books, if you love video games, it’s just a term that says to me that you’ll be welcome here. Being in heavy metal isn’t about being that tough guy anymore. It’s still out there, of course, and there’s some genres where that’s super important. But I think a lot of heavy metal bands now—technical death metal bands and black metal and folk metal and all the more underground subgenres—are embracing that, and we’re all supporting one another. I’ve always been a huge fan of a lot of different subgenres of metal. We’re all kind of embracing that nerdy side of ourselves. You’re finding tech-death bands that are doing concept records and stuff, too. It’s all cool.

I’m not going to gatekeep the term or anything like that. “You’re not a power metal band and you’re singing about dragons? How dare

you?” [Laughs] Týr just put out a new song called “Dragons Never Die.” My first comment was, “Get out of here, you power metal phonies! That’s ours! No touchy!” But of course, I love the boys from Týr, really good friends with all of them, so it’s just poking fun.

What’s funny is—I kind of hate to say this—I feel like Game of Thrones changed some things. I think that maybe the rest of the world was kind of like, “Wait a minute, this is cool?

Dragons are cool? Fantasy is cool? This is cool!”

And it’s kind of like, Maybe this isn’t something just left for the quiet D&D nerds out there in the world. It maybe made it a little bit more mainstream and kind of paved the way for these “nerd” topics to have 15 minutes on the main stage. Who knows?

But I think it’s great.

To a lesser extent, Stranger Things made D&D cool.

Absolutely. You like watching adventures in your movies—it’s no different. It’s just being created by you as you go. Stranger Things did a lot of good things for D&D. And it was really funny because they’re bringing up all these old articles like, “Is your child playing D&D? Are they worshipping the devil?” And this is actually in a print magazine! It’s just like, Oh god. Yeah, OK, sure.

CONTINUE AT DECIBELMAGAZINE.COM PHOTO BY SHIMON KARMEL

D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 1 9

WITHERFALL

W

itherfall’s new album, Sounds of the Forgotten, isn’t happy. While most current metal heavies of commerceland prance around in goofy WETA reject outfits or delightfully cannon neon nostalgia out the backend, Los Angeles-based Witherfall embrace rage, frustration and resolve in their ultra-aggro progitude. Opener “They Will Let You Down” thrashes proficiently as singer Joseph Michael (also of Sanctuary fame) shifts effortlessly through his impressive range. Lead single “Insidious” is no less venomous, even if its coda explodes in Classical thrill. Clearly, the pandemic, plus proximity to January 6 stooge Jon Schaffer, impacted Witherfall greatly. That Sounds of the Forgotten is the first album on the group’s newly-formed label, DeathWave Records, is telling of previous business gone awry. ¶ “There’s a lot of acrimony in us,” pines Michael, who, along with guitarist Jake Dreyer, felt the band had something to prove. “Our previous album, Curse of Autumn, was released a year into the pandemic—that wasn’t easy. The fact that [Jon] Schaffer ended up on the FBI’s Most Wanted List also didn’t help since Jake was in Iced Earth and Demons & Wizards.

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Then we had a major month-long tour that got canceled on us. When we wrote Sounds of the Forgotten, we were pissed off, but more determined than ever to make the best album of our lives.”

Witherfall did precisely that.

Throughout Sounds of the Forgotten, the craftsmanship and musicianship are top-notch. The 10-minute epic “What Have You Done?,” the gloomy creep of “Aftermath” and the hard rock balladry of the album’s title track centerpiece evince a group with an impressive new lineup—drummer Chris Tsaganeas (Wax Owls) and multi-instrumentalist Gerry Hirschfeld (Willie Nelson) join Michael, Dreyer and bassist Anthony Crawford—willing to test the limits of their potential. Not that prior albums Curse of Autumn, A Prelude to Sorrow and Nocturnes and Requiems were bereft of dark, mercurial virtuosity. It’s just that Witherfall have amplified their unique blend of traditional

metal, album-oriented rock and extreme metal.

“I grew up with classic rock,” Dreyer says. “That will come out of me whether I like it or not. Then a little bit of darkness always comes out, too. I can’t control that either.

In Witherfall, we always have the cool aspect of melody and harshness, as well as the proggy shit that we’re all into. There’s light and dark in our music. ‘Insidious’ is pure darkness, but it’s different from ‘Where Do I Begin?,’ which is also pretty fucking intense. ‘Ceremony of Fire’ is also quite different. The songs are way more varied this time—like they’re from different artists. We put in so many layers, but it’s all natural-sounding. Having Zeuss produce at Big Blue North Studios helped out tremendously.”

Expect the unexpected on Sounds of the Forgotten. The cover of Aerosmith’s minor 1978 hit “Kings and Queens” might be more of the latter, but that’s only good. —CHRIS DICK

PHOTO BY STEPHANIE CABRAL

WITHERFALL

L.A. metallic force’s independent streak burns brighter than ever

JOHN HAUGHM

JOHN HAUGHM

The nomad stalks America’s past and future amidst our troubled present

THE

devil’s coil is certainly an eccentric record.

Opening the album with a 19-minute soundtrack to my own medical dissection is a tribute to this eccentricity!” ¶ So says John Haughm, founder and frontman of Agalloch, and, in this context, wanderer of the American West as the nomad. Back in our December 2023 cover story, Haughm described his solo work’s avoidance of metal tropes in favor of a much more atmospheric approach, weaving together music and sound design to score the spectral journey of his alter-ego protagonist. ¶ “This project has been a wonderful artistic escape for me during dark periods over the past 10 years,” Haughm relates. “The character has always been there in the backbone, and his presence is a reflection of my own experiences and interests. I guess, in a way, it is comparable to Twin Peaks when Agent Cooper and Bob merge and this duality is seen in the mirror’s reflection. I feel a similar change when I put on the outfit and perform this material as the nomad.” ¶ This year, Haughm concludes the cycle he began in 2015 with The Last Place I Remember 2 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

and augmented with 2020’s Cast.

Iron.Blood. “It took a long time to conceptualize this album into the ideal end piece that would circle back to the first part of the trilogy.

The circular element—the coil— was crucial. The ending of ‘A Fine Hymn to Die To’ purposely contains the same notes and atmosphere as the opening refrains of ‘+37.717364’ [from The Last Place I Remember].

Additionally, the CD/digital edition has a bonus track that was recorded during the 2014 Last Place sessions. I also wanted to tell the story of how the nomad was killed and began his journey as a ghost who carries the 19th century with him.”

Haughm draws from myriad interrelated inspirations—the photography of William H. Fox Talbot, Alfred Stieglitz and William Mumler; the writing of Cormac McCarthy; Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man and Richard Stanley’s Hardware; the music of Fields of the Nephilim;

and “my memories of growing up in Montana around ghost towns and mining museums. Visits to the desert landscapes of Nevada, Arizona and southern Utah further ignited the ideas I had for this project. I am also a big fan of Edwardian fashion, architecture and interior design.

When I create the music, I have visuals in mind and use that mental picture as inspiration. When I perform this work live, the visual elements are equally as important as the music.”

Haughm also muses over various directions the project might take moving forward: “I’m thinking of writing and recording some new material that would be used exclusively for live performances. In the context of the trilogy, the story is told and finished. I feel a bit more freedom now that I’m not intently bound to the concept, so perhaps I can branch out a bit while still playing the character. Time will tell.” —DANIEL LAKE

PENTAGRAM CHILE

PENTAGRAM CHILE Four decades in, the old-school spirit still guides extreme metal legend Anton Reisenegger

I

try to reconnect with the teenager in me: the feeling I first got when I heard Seven Churches and Hell Awaits. It taps into a feeling that is very deep.” ¶ Death thrashers Pentagram Chile formed the same fateful year as the aforementioned Possessed and Slayer classics were released. Teenagers Anton Reisenegger and Juan Pablo Uribe were embracing the spirit of rebellion courtesy of those acts along with Dark Angel, Celtic Frost, Venom, Death and Morbid Angel (in that order). ¶ “When we first started… it [was] the last days of the [Augusto] Pinochet dictatorship,” explains guitarist/vocalist Reisenegger, who moonlights in deathgrind supergroups Brujeria and Lock Up. “I think the mere fact of existing as a band, as an extreme metal band, and have long hair or wearing black shirts with Satanic motives or whatever, that was a political act in itself. We really didn’t need to be political in our lyrics to actually be political.” ¶ Almost four decades have passed. The Pentagram Chile of today is a far different entity than the band that released multiple revered demos, then went silent. The members grew up and became pivotal representatives of the

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international metal community.

Finally, in 2013, they released their debut The Malefice. Another decade passed and so did a devastating pandemic; now, Pentagram Chile are releasing Eternal Life of Madness.

The album is an upgrade from the uneven debut, better capturing the old-school spirit the band lives by courtesy of more organic production.

“We want to celebrate the old school,” says Reisenegger. “And that feeling you had as a teenager, when you’re listening to Venom or whatever, and you just want to crack a beer open and throw the horns.

That’s the spirit.

“What we’re after is the exquisite sound of [Slayer’s] South of Heaven.

What a fucking awesome production. You know, that’s when you can hear everything clear and loud, but it’s intense and it’s real.”

Reisenegger continues: “On the new album, there’s a number of songs that actually deal with modern-day problems… I like to

keep almost biblical language so everyone can make their own interpretation of what we’re actually talking about. The rebellious spirit was and always is.”

Also touching on the mythical “El Imbunche” (a deformed monster that’s fed bat milk and protects the cave of the warlocks), Eternal Life of Madness is intentionally ephemeral, reflecting the circumstances that resulted in it.

According to Reisenegger, “Insanity has always been a recurring theme within the Pentagram lyrics because both me and Juan Pablo have a history of mental disease in the family. And it’s been pretty nasty, so we’re strangely familiar, but still terrified with that, you know? “[The album is] about a slowmotion apocalypse, but it’s about religious values and decay. This whole consumerism that we have… it’s giving people a very hollow feeling of their own existence.”

—SARAH KITTERINGHAM

DARKNESS EVERYWHERE Bay Area blazers feel the will to rise above the melodeath din

IF

gothenburg-style melodic death metal isn’t technically a birthright for Darkness Everywhere frontman Ben Murray, it’s awfully close. The Bay Area native was still in his early teens when he started Light This City in 2002, just as the so-called New Wave of American Heavy Metal was beginning to crest. Most of the bands in that pseudo-movement borrowed freely from At the Gates and In Flames, but they tended to absorb that influence into a Hot Topic-friendly metalcore mélange. Murray, who played drums and wrote much of the music for Light This City, wasn’t as interested in adulterating the Gothenburg sound. ¶ “No disrespect to Killswitch [Engage] or As I Lay Dying or any of that stuff,” Murray says. “But from day one, my ears could tell the difference between [that] and Black Dahlia riffs and Darkest Hour riffs. And I wanted to know where that came from, specifically. I could hear the kind of Americanization of what a lot of bands were doing of that sound, and I was more attracted to the bands that were honoring that sound 2 6 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

more directly, and not throwing breakdowns in and all that stuff.”

In Darkness Everywhere, the band Murray formed when Light This City went on indefinite hiatus in 2019, he gets to pay even more direct homage to the sound that shaped him. Two decades have passed since the early days of Light This City, but his motive remains the same: “I’m still trying to perfect that sound, and I feel like this is the closest I’ve gotten.”

To that end, Darkness Everywhere’s first full-length, To Conquer Eternal Damnation, is a lean, mean melodeath ripper. Only two songs break the three-minute mark, barely, and the whole thing whizzes by in a brisk 27 minutes. The melodeath classic it has the most in common with is undoubtedly Slaughter of the Soul, right down to its “Into the Dead Sky”-evoking acoustic interlude, “A Dreaded Eclipse.”

“We’re pretty close to At the Gates in the sense that they have that punk/hardcore aesthetic,” Murray confirms. “They do have two-minute songs, [that] only have a couple of solos. It’s not shred central. I love that, and I think we relate a lot to that, as opposed to the expansive, synth-heavy side of that world.”

To Conquer Eternal Damnation stands in contrast, then, to Majesties’ crystalline, Jester Race-worshiping Vast Reaches Unclaimed. Yet both records, alongside new slabs by bands like Upon Stone, the Halo Effect and Dungeon Serpent, seem to herald a surging melodic death metal revival.

“I’m stoked to be a part of it in any kind of way,” Murray says.

“I hope it breeds more bands. It’s always been my favorite genre, and I hear more and more talk about it lately, which is cool.”

—BRAD SANDERS

PHOTO BY JOE CALIXTO

DARKNESS EVERYWHERE

RE!!

MORE ANDD MO N, AN TION, ACTIO FI, AC SCII FI, LT, SC CULT, OR,, CU RROR HORR HO

CEMETERY MAN

CATHY’S CURSE

When a cemetery watchman tasked with dispatching the recently deceased falls in love with a widow, will his lust for life eclipse his bond with death?

When a vengeful spirit possesses a child, it unleashes an unnerving nightmare of creepy mediums, demonic dolls and plenty of sick ‘70s moppet mayhem.

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Some doors should never be opened. A man offers $30,000 to the first person who can prove that we go on after death.

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JOYSTICKS

TOO MUCH SLEEP

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INSECT ARK

Khanate and Swans members are bonded by experimental music, if not blood

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here’s a lot of meaning behind Raw Blood Singing, the title of Berlin-based duo Insect Ark’s fourth album. As described by Dana Schechter—bassist/guitarist/pianist/lap steel-ist/and every other “-ist” that creates the “experimental, cinematic noise” that drummer Tim Wyskida pounds in conjunction with—“it’s about wanting the feeling of lifeblood actively and intensely pulsing through my veins. It’s about wanting to feel alive while I’m here.” ¶ The title also celebrates the first appearance of vocals—yes, Schechter is the vocalist— on an Insect Ark recording since the first 7-inch from 2012. ¶ “People were like, ‘Why aren’t you singing in this band?!’” she exclaims. “When I started Insect Ark, I didn’t want any human stamp on it. I wanted people to hear the music and not be able to paint any picture about who made it. There was trepidation about [bringing vocals back] because singing is really hard and I’m self-critical and want everything to be the best it can. The music was all written and I was like, ‘All right, let’s give this a shot!’ It was wobbly at first, but I had a feeling I could do it.”

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Originally born as a one-woman solo project for the Swans/ex-Bee and Flower member to spill her heart in isolation, Insect Ark took bigger shape with the inclusion of live drums. First, it was Ashley Spungin, then the Otolith/ex-SubRosa skin-slapper Andy Patterson.

When the process of writing long distance between Schechter in Germany and Patterson in Utah collapsed (“Andy is much more of an in-person kind of guy, which I totally respect, so it was frustrating for him”), Schechter enlisted the services of old friend and fellow expat Wyskida (Khanate) for what was supposed to be a handful of post-pandemic gigs before their musical relationship blossomed.

“Once I started working with drummers, I didn’t want to look back,” she explains. “Doing this solo was satisfying, but it’s certainly more exciting to work with drummers in a live situation, and I didn’t feel like I needed to keep

control over the whole thing. I was still writing by myself in a room to set a vibe. When Tim started, we ended up discovering that we worked well together and had similar ideas about what was musically exciting. The timing was good and our work ethic matched.”

The result is a haunting gothic lushness and sweeping metallic avant-doom that touches on the idea of Diamanda Galás being backed

by OXBOW. “We used the time we had to really dig into the material,” Schechter continues. “I didn’t feel I had anything to prove or that these ideas were very precious and had to be done exactly in a certain way.

Some pieces aren’t so different from the original demos; some were completely ripped apart. If you want to really collaborate with someone, and you’re well-matched, chances are they’re going to have some great ideas. That was absolutely the case.”

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

PHOTO BY LUPUS LINDEMANN

INSECT ARK

THE TROOPS OF DOOM

THE TROOPS OF DOOM

H

umans are naturally nostalgic,” guitarist Jairo “Tormentor” Guedz tells us via email, “[and] we end up clinging more to th[e] glorious and harsh past, which is something that makes us happy and fulfilled as diehard metal fans.” ¶ Guedz should know. As the original lead guitarist (and bassist) in Sepultura, alongside the Cavalera brothers, he named his new-ish outfit after a track on 1986’s Morbid Visions and is solidly dedicated to the old school. The Troops of Doom’s second full-length, A Mass to the Grotesque, bows at the altar of late-’80s thrash and early death metal. ¶ “There was something about that time that exuded truth,” Guedz writes. “It was very original and visceral, it had blood and sweat invested, without any commitment to commercialism.” Guedz and his cohorts—Alex Kafer (vocals/bass), Marcelo Vasco (guitar) and Alexandre Oliveira (drums)—made every effort to invoke that spirit on Mass to the Grotesque, including adding the authentic Morrisound touch, courtesy of a mix/master job by Jim Morris.

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“He was able to bring that oldschool mixing we were looking for,” Guedz notes. “When we were writing this record, we instantly thought about Morrisound and all those death metal classics that came out of that studio. The sound breathes; it’s organic, lo-fi feeling, with aggressive guitars, heavy bass, real drums. It’s not 100 percent perfect, not robotic.”

This being the band’s sophomore effort, the natural question was how did they improve on their debut. “We [actually] consider the new album a ‘step back’—in [the] best sense—compared to our debut,” Guedz reveals. “We’re digging a little further into the ’80/’90s thrash and death metal. It’s a more straightforward and raw album.

It brings a lot of inspiration from the golden age of death metal, but

also sounds fresh and genuine. And there’s still a touch of sophistication on it somehow.”

Nostalgic as he is, Guedz doesn’t necessarily long for one particular aspect of the early days: when the gear—both instruments and recording equipment—available was super primitive and/or subpar.

“Everything was really difficult back in that time,” he confirms. “Here in Brazil in the ’80s, we didn’t have access to good instruments and gear in general, or even studios with some knowledge on how to record metal bands. But honestly, today, when you think about death metal and metal in general, there’s no soul; it’s fucking rare, especially when it comes to ‘mainstream’ artists. It’s all very plastic and boring. We can’t see much truth and guts in metal today.” —ADEM TEPEDELEN

PHOTO BY CISSA FLORES

Original Sepultura guitarist returns to his roots, bloody roots

HELLBUTCHER

Nifelheim frontman still possessed by evil

D

edicated decibel readers likely know Hellbutcher best as the vocalist of the storied Swedish black-thrash band Nifelheim, which he founded with his twin brother Tyrant in 1990. Nifelheim disbanded in 2022, but Hellbutcher’s journey through metal’s blasphemous badlands isn’t over—he’s back fronting a band that shares his name and continues the fast ‘n’ nasty sound he pioneered nearly 35 years ago. ¶ The timing of Hellbutcher’s self-titled album release might raise some eyebrows. Nifelheim ’s songs were fast, but their recording and touring schedules moved at a glacial pace. “[With] every year that passed in Nifelheim, it just became more and more complicated to do anything,” explains Hellbutcher, who’s perfectly aware that he’s fast approaching 50 years of age and metal is often stereotyped as a young man’s game. “We released our last full-length album in 2007. I don’t have more time to waste.” ¶ He recruited drummer Martin “Devastator” Axenrot of Bloodbath (formerly Opeth and others) and guitarist Dan “Necrophiliac” Andersson of Mordant, and began writing and demoing material in mid-2022 before Nifelheim disbanded.

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Guitarist Iron Beast and Bassist Eld joined after the project released one demo. “The album was written much faster than I normally do,” Hellbutcher says. “I got so much inspiration when I realized I could write songs without compromising with anyone.”

That no-compromises attitude and a palpable sense of urgency give Hellbutcher, the album, an immediate and intoxicating energy. Its eight songs demand attention in a way that its predecessor’s most recent records do not. Hellbutcher, the man, wrote much of the material on guitar, but insists that the band is a group effort, not a solo project—the band members recorded, produced and mastered the album in their own studios.

Though his collaborators have changed, Hellbutcher’s music largely continues the Nifelheim tradition of furious first-wave black metal focusing on speed and boundary-pushing energy. “Black metal should be metal that is evil, wild and over-the-top,” he says.

“Too many people think that ambiance and the beauty of nature and such have anything to do with black metal. That is not how I see it. I have never changed my vision of what real metal should sound like. I will continue in the same vein with songwriting and musical direction in this new band.”

For that reason, it’s tempting to think of Hellbutcher, the band, as a continuation of Nifelheim the way that Göden is a continuation of Winter or Triptykon is a continuation of Celtic Frost, but the man himself has a different mindset. “I don’t see it as a continuation of Nifelheim, even though the musical direction is,” he reasons. “It’s more a continuation of myself as Hellbutcher, just being able to do the songs and things I always wanted to do, but without limitations and compromises.” He has no plans to play Nifelheim songs live, though he does plan to play live more than his last band did—including in America. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

PHOTO BY SOILE SIIRTOLA

HELLBUTCHER

UFOMAMMUT

UFOMAMMUT Psychedelic sludge trio not content to remain in the shadows

S

creenwriters advise beginning a scene with the action already started. That’s Ufomammut since its millennial descent from the heavens: sky-blotting cosmic doom.

Levitating a literally mammoth (mammut) and menacing sound mass, the Italian triumvirate fills any frame with a concussive torrent of fuzz-busting inevitably. Tenth long-player Hidden lowers peak boom. ¶ “Despite always striving for change and diversity with each album, I believe we’ve truly achieved our musical aspirations with Hidden,” emails Giovanni Rossi, a.k.a. bassist, keyboardist and band orator Urlo. “It reflects who we are today, different from before.” ¶ Elongating slightly and possibly refining the bristling title cut off last year’s Crookhead EP, the album opens atop its revisited ignition switch at an avalanche tempo. Asteroid riffs and comet keyboards hurl through a sonic spectrum brimming with bedrock guitar/bass/drums fission. A close second, metaphysical event “Kismet” launches a tribal pulsation of galactic portions, its lyrics equally massive: ¶ I dreamt I was a waterfall ¶ Falling backward up to the sky ¶ Melt myself into the stars ¶ Like a swirl of light far from the fall 3 4 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

“‘Kismet’ embodies fate, the inexorable destiny each of us is bound to confront,” explains the author. “Undoubtedly, it stands as one of Hidden’s most emblematic compositions. With its weighty undertones and a profoundly psychedelic culmination, it’s one of the most intense tracks on the album.

I’m thrilled you sense echoes of [Ennio] Morricone in it! To be even remotely associated with the master is an honor.

“In crafting this piece, I envisioned the moment of our encounter with destiny—the transition into pure energy, a return to the primordial matter from which we emerged. It’s a journey from the depths upward, toward the radiant embrace of the sun and its illuminating warmth.”

Which describes the whole of Hidden. Rossi, co-founding guitarist Poia Malleus and drummer Alessandro Levrero suspend time for a moment or two here. “Mausoleum” expands like an iron lung of the

cosmos itself—black-hole vacuum of growing eradication.

“When contemplating time, I envision it as a flowing river, reminiscent of Heraclitus’ Panta Rhei philosophy,” offers our correspondent. “The pace of time is shaped by our actions and choices. It’s become increasingly evident to me that humanity is hurtling towards self-destruction and madness, akin to the broken sky I reference in ‘Mausoleum.’ This underscores the urgency for us to reflect, slow down and chart a more sustainable course forward.”

Similarly, penultimate tune “Leeched” lurches man’s infinitesimal life cycle in metallic megatons.

“Life itself is a symphony of vibrations, transforming into light and etching its melody into the tapestry of our existence,” Urlo concludes. “The thought of music fading into the background underscores its profound significance in enriching our lives and shaping our experiences.” —RAOUL HERNANDEZ

D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 3 5

on the

EE CC I BI B EE LL 36 : J AU P LY R I L2 0 22 04 2 1: :DD

high on fire

r e t urn a f ter a half -d ec ad e w i th th ei r n i n th al b u m,

Cometh the Storm

A

story by jus tin m . norton • photo by j ame s re x road

lot has happened to High on Fire in the past half-decade that helped the album flow. “Kurt had a big hand in helping arrange some of the tunes, and he is

has nothing to do with the long global malaise. Bassist Jeff always a proponent of less is more,” Matz says.

Matz studied Turkish music abroad. Guitarist Matt Pike suffered “He is from punk rock. We once said we were used to songs over seven minutes long. And he said he

from complications of diabetes, lost part of a toe and worried hates songs that are over 30 seconds long.”

There is a slight Middle Eastern touch on he might lose his foot. Drummer Coady Willis joined the band. High on Fire also won a Grammy. Even before the pandemic, there were plenty of reasons why six years passed with no new material. ¶ Some things, however, never change. One of them is Pike’s love for midday guitar heroics, one of the enduring sources of High on Fire’s catalog. “I will get into a place or a certain time of day, and I’m shredding as hard as I can while exploring the whole fretboard,” Pike says. “Everyone has to stop me for a while because you need to cut it off at some point. I will do four or five takes and then develop ideas. It always starts with improv, which becomes a blueprint. That’s what still excites me.”

Cometh the Storm, High on Fire’s first album with new drummer Willis (Melvins and Murder City Devils), is a brisk listen that pairs the band’s classic sound with Middle Eastern tones, punk rock energy, and an economy missing from both Luminiferous and Electric Messiah.

Cometh the Storm isn’t a concept album, but Pike says it touches on a typical hodgepodge of High on Fire themes: the environment, nuclear war and marijuana. “It’s my normal esoteric stuff with arcane religion and metaphors about the times,” he laughs.

The songs are a hybrid of material that dates back over a decade and new ideas from when High on Fire started jamming with Willis. Matz says the band begins with a riff vault with ideas from previous writing sessions and jams. “We try to freeze those kernels of ideas, place some context around them and grow them,” he says.

“We are constantly generating raw material.

It’s just a matter of self-editing and taking ideas and growing them. This album had a particular character and flavor that leans on the classic High on Fire sound with some new elements.

Some ideas, like the song ‘Tough Guy,’ go back a few years. That’s a hardcore riff we played with [former drummer] Des [Kensel] that goes back more than a decade.”

“Many of these turns were written from scratch when Coady entered the fold,” Pike adds.

“Some of the ideas from Electric Messiah didn’t get sorted because you have to cut the album off at a certain point. So, there are leftover ideas from different eras.”

The addition of Willis was a significant change. Matz says the band needed a drummer who understood the High on Fire vocabulary and sound, and could add their voice. “Coady could fill that role,” Matz says. “He can do the slow, heavy things and then the fast stuff. He can add all this new stuff while still honoring the High on Fire sound.”

“He is super creative, and for how big he is, hits like a Yeti,” Pike says. “Stylistically, the guy is just unreal. I can tell it’s him playing drums immediately, even if he isn’t playing with us.”

High on Fire have worked previously with producer Kurt Ballou of Converge at GodCity in Massachusetts, who was particularly helpful in streamlining some of the songs and ideas on Cometh the Storm. Ballou kept songs shorter, which

earlier High on Fire albums, but those sounds are much more apparent on Cometh the Storm.

Matz says a roommate introduced him to Middle Eastern folk music in 2006. When Matz was stuck at home during the pandemic, he studied Turkish folk lute (the baglama). “I’ve always thought the type of music High on Fire plays pairs very well with these sounds,” Matz says. “‘Khanrad’s Wall’ [on Death Is This Communion] was my first attempt at trying it. In 2019, I decided to take the instrument more seriously and learn the nuts and bolts of Turkish folk. I found a teacher online and we studied together every week. When the pandemic kicked in, I had extra time to take online baglama classes.” When COVID waned, Metz went to Istanbul to study Middle Eastern folk music in person.

Pike’s health scares have abated, and his diabetes is under control. He says the problems started when he entered a Russian spa with a small wound on his foot. The foot became badly infected, and Pike says at one point, “it looked like a gunshot wound.” His diabetes is managed without insulin or medications, largely due to an improved diet. He looks forward to getting back on the road. “You just have to stop eating all these carbs and drinking booze,” Pike says. “My neuropathy is under control, and I’m not losing any limbs. I learned how to take care of myself better, and I’m feeling good.”

My neuropathy is under control, and I’m not losing any limbs.

I learned how to take care of myself better,

AND I’M FEELING GOOD. matt pike

DD EE CC I BI B EE L L: :A JPURLY IL 2024 1 : 37

Command of the

Avant-garde death metal gods

Ulcerate

stay sharp on their first LP in four years story by Jamie Ludwig

HOW

solid is your moral code? What would it take for

you to bend, or even break it? And if you did, what would be your point of no return? These are some of the questions posed by Ulcerate’s new album, Cutting the Throat of God. Some bands wield concepts like these for shock or bravado, but this New Zealand death metal trio is less concerned with pretense than explorations that yield deep rewards. ¶ When it comes to their music, the trio of drummer Jamie Saint Merat, guitarist Michael Hoggard and bassist/vocalist Paul Kelland operate with near-surgical precision, leaving little room for daylight between notes, and even less to chance.

Their methodical nature extends outside their creative process, too. Take this interview, for example: Even as their international profile rises, they maintain an email-only press policy, with juggernaut drummer Saint Merat acting as their sole voice. That decision stems from early frustrations with shallow questions and mistranscriptions. But when pressed, Saint Merat acknowledges that for Ulcerate, carving out space for unhurried contemplation is part of the broader equation.

38 : JUN LYE 22002244 :: DDEECCIIBBEELL

“We spend a serious amount of time with this music, and we don’t take any of it lightly,” he says. “So, if we’re going to be talking about it, it makes sense that each answer is as considered as possible—something I’ve never felt comfortable doing being put on the spot.”

Thankfully, Saint Merat is a more-than-adept pen pal. And with the new record out June 14, there’s plenty to discuss. Formed by Saint Merat, Hoggard and vocalist Mark Seeney as Bloodwreath in 2000, the band rotated through a few members before renaming themselves Ulcerate in 2003. Following their 2007 full-length debut Of Fracture and Failure, Kelland (who joined on bass in 2005) assumed vocal duties. In 2012, they pared down from a four-piece to their current trio formation and signed to Relapse, where they continued to pulverize death metal’s boundaries with the one-two punch of 2013’s Vermis and 2016’s Shrines of Paralysis.

Few albums of any genre felt as made-forthe-moment in the early days of COVID-19 as Ulcerate’s breathtaking sixth album, Stare Into Death and Be Still, did upon its April 2020 release— though, of course, any prescience was purely coincidental. Informed by members’ personal experiences with loss and grief, the record ruminated on mortality with the intensity of a thousand suns, with lush atmospheres that toggled between staggering human emotion and bone-chilling, verging-on-clinical inevitability. But while Stare Into Death might have been the right record at the right time—and a career landmark, at that— pandemic-era realities hindered the band’s ability to properly promote it from the stage.

Ulcerate’s meticulous songwriting process— which encompasses everything from overarching melodic arrangements to nuanced vocal annunciations—and their exacting standards means each song can take more than a month to sketch out.

So, while they began writing Cutting in November 2021, their first completed track, “Transfiguration In and Out of Worlds,” only started taking shape the following February. They spent another seven months writing and pre-producing three more songs, took a break to tour, then wrote the remaining tracks over half of 2023.

“The hardest songs to write for us are always the first group of three or so, as you’re searching for the sound of the album,” Saint Merat says.

“It has to be fresh, hopefully unique, yet still feel as though it’s a coherent step forward. So, a lot of ideas get rejected and reshaped.”

The sound of Cutting—which Saint Merat describes as “a combination of uneasiness, sadness and dread”—emerged out of their early writing sessions and directly inspired the album’s themes. “We landed on the conceptual outline of significantly rupturing your inner

SEVEN ARE THEY

moral code,” he says. “The sensation of when a boundary is broken—either willingly or unwillingly—and the gut feeling of dread, remorse or abject terror of not being able to claw your way back to the prior state sinks in.”

It’s tempting to view Cutting as a companion to Stare Into Death, in the sense that immense loss can make you question everything, including right and wrong. Saint Merat notes that, like its predecessor, the album’s material is partially grounded in personal events. More broadly, though, he sees it as the latest chapter of the band’s evolution. I could tell you I’m inclined to agree or I could just say that in a spring where all of society is buzzing about Beyoncé’s country

You’d be hard pressed to call a Ulcerate hookdriven band, yet songs like lead single “The Dawn Is Hollow” and “Transfiguration” have earworms that could stick in your head for days. And the closing title track is a bona fide masterpiece.

Ulcerate will spend much of 2024 on the road, touring Australia, Europe and beyond. If we’re lucky, they’ll make it back to the States before long. As powerful as their music is on record, it’s even more compelling in a live setting, where the sounds grow massive and dense enough to overload the senses. Saint Merat describes the effect as “utter catharsis,” a feeling he’s drawn to in the music of his own favorite artists, extreme metal or otherwise.

We landed on the conceptual outline of significantly rupturing your inner moral code.

The sensation of when a boundary is broken—

either willingly or unwillingly—

and the gut feeling of dread, remorse or abject terror of not being able to claw your way back to the prior state sinks in.

J A M I E

S A I N T

record, I’m out here paraphrasing the meme: “Yeah, Cowboy Carter is cool, but have you heard the new Ulcerate?”

Recorded between last September and December, with Saint Merat overseeing production, Cutting paints beautifully terrifying pictures from the jump, flowing between evocative moods and tensions with the fluidity of molten iron.

“To the uninitiated: This is a form of music that should overwhelm you and force you to feel small and insignificant in the scheme of things,” he says. “The power that comes from controlling chaos or violence on a knife’s edge can be nothing short of intense to witness, and the exploration of an intangible darkness or melancholy can be life-changing.”

12”MAXI SINGLE/TAPE

A PROPHECY OF 7 NUCLEAR STRIKES 7 IN HEAVEN. 7 ON EARTH CRUEL NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL RELEASE DATE: 31ST OF MAY

M E R A T

TRONEARVINGENS DOED

DARKENED - DEFILERS OF THE LIGHT

CD/LP/TAPE/DIGITAL

LONG AWAITED THIRD ALBUM IS HERE, AND DARE WE SAY THEIR BEST YET!?

MIXED AND MASTERED BY LAWRENCE MACKRORY (KATATONIA, MESHUGGAH, FIRESPAWN) AND AGAIN GRACED WITH THE ARTWORK OF JUANJO CASTELLANO RELEASE DATE: 14TH OF JUNE

7”EP/DIGITAL

BLACK METAL FROM BERGEN, NORWAY. 2 BRAND NEW SONGS AS WE AWAIT THE FOLLOW-UP TO LAST YEARS SUCCESFUL ALBUM. RELEASE DATE: 31ST OF MAY

WWW.EDGEDCIRCLEPRODUCTIONS.COM STILL AVAILABLE: NECROPHAGIA “BLACK BLOOD VOMITORIUM” & NECROPHAGIA “HARVEST RITUAL VOLUME ONE”

DDEECCIIBBEELL :: JJUUNLY E 2024 : 39

interview by

QA j. bennett

WI T H

CONVERGE vocalist on new UMBRA VITAE record, guitar solos and the economics of life

4 0 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

IT’S

my favorite heavy record I’ve done.” That’s record. Whereas this was done in a proper studio.

Jake Bannon talking about Light of Death, the second and latest album from his death metal band Umbra Vitae. It might seem like a surprising statement from the man who screamed his way into your heart on such Converge juggernauts as Jane Doe, You Fail Me and All We Love We Leave Behind, but perspective is everything. ¶ “Working with these guys is fresh and exciting for me, because I’ve been recording with a lot of the same folks for a long time,” he says. “So, it’s nice to have a different look and a different group of collaborators.” ¶ Bannon is pretty adamant about not calling Umbra Vitae a supergroup, but the lineup is still pretty super: three members of the Red Chord— guitarist Mike McKenzie, bassist Greg Weeks and drummer Jon Rice—alongside former Hatebreed guitarist Sean Martin. Add in the fact that McKenzie and Martin are both members of Bannon’s side project Wear Your Wounds, and you get a sense of how well these guys work together. ¶ “I really like writing and recording songs with my friends,” our man says. “I felt really excited and pumped up about the material as we were doing it. I was resonating with it and what it needed. I felt like I was getting the emotional weight that I wanted. It all just clicked and came together.”

Why is this your favorite heavy record you’ve done?

Well, all records are a crazy labor of love. We’ve all made them, and we all torture ourselves during the process of putting them together. This one, from a performance standpoint, everyone nailed what they bring to the table. For me, it’s weird being a heavy vocalist. You sound like a monster half the time. You’re not an opera singer. You have a very different set of parameters that you’re trying to attain. As someone trying to make something heavy, I want something that sounds insane. I want something that sounds super powerful. In the studio, oftentimes that’s hard. You do a million takes and, by the time you’re done with the process, you’re not really sure if you even relate to the material the way you once did. But with this one, I felt pretty good. I felt in tune with all of it the entire time.

Was the experience of recording vocals for Light of Death different from that of records you’ve done in the past?

When you’re recording loud vocals, there’s a lot of things physically that can be really challenging. You can start to fall apart. You can be feeling sick. You can do damage that takes days or weeks to heal before you can get back in there again, but you don’t have that opportunity because these punk rock, hardcore and metal records tend to be made in a week’s time.

We’re not in the studio for a year. When you’re working like that, you never know what you’re PHOTO BY HILL ARIE JA SON

gonna get. With the records that we’re known for making, if people knew the myriad of physical challenges that came up during them, I think they’d be surprised. But with this one, I heard it back and it felt great.

We recorded everything at GodCity, and [engineer Kurt Ballou] has a small room on the second floor that they use as a mixing studio. They made a little iso-booth in the closet there, and we’re talking like a three-by-three closet—really small. There’s no light or anything. It’s made for cabinets, not vocals. But I went in there with a mic and it would be like a thousand degrees in there when I was done. But it was fun, and I felt like I was at the top of my game.

How did you approach it differently than Umbra Vitae’s debut, Shadow of Life?

When we did that record, it was basically all these heavy song ideas that we documented. We didn’t really do much refining. That was cool, but it was still in its infancy. It wasn’t something we got to tour on or spend a lot of time together on. We did it, COVID happened, and the band didn’t have time to marinate with the material.

I would say half of Shadow of Life, musically, was brought to the table by Mike. With this record, Greg and Sean wrote the majority of the music for it, which was really cool. Sean wrote some stuff for the previous record, but due to our schedules being so insane, he didn’t really get to play on it like he wanted to. And Mike tracked guitars at home. It was very much a homemade

Even though it was done in a shorter amount of time, there were more writers. It felt more like a proper band. Mike was more of an editor and idea guy on this one. Some bands have cookie-cutter ways of doing things, but I say if someone’s inspired, write. Do your thing. Let’s see what happens. We’re all there for the same reasons.

This one sounds a little wilder and more unhinged and more like we envisioned the band sounding. The last one had those moments, but I think it felt a little more reserved. Now that we’ve had some time as a band and we all know what our collective vision is, we can put it together and make something cool that we’re all happy with.

Light of Death and Shadow of Life seem like mirrored album titles.

Yeah. It’s a simple idea. The English translation of Umbra Vitae is “Shadow of Life,” so that was basically a self-titled record. I like playing with themes. Creatively, I find it an inspiring way to go down the wormhole. It’s not meant to be this intense poetic thing. Light of Death is not the most jarring title, but I like it, and I like the idea of having the visuals for the record be bright and light. But it’s more of an overarching theme— it’s not something that dictated too much of what we wanted to do creatively. That’s a fun thing to do within bands. You can depart fully, or you can link records to one another. With this one, we wanted to play with some of those ideas and link everything together, which adds a nice cohesion to everything.

Is it fair to say that the lyrics are less personal than what you write for Converge?

Converge is fully personal. This has personal tinges, but there’s a lot of conversation about modern life and the trials and tribulations that we go through on a larger cultural stage and societal stage. That’s what I explore more with Umbra, so to me they’re very different kinds of voices.

So, you have a clear demarcation line in what you’ll write for this band versus Converge?

Yeah, or any of them. I think they all have different feels. Umbra is a loud, aggressive, abrasive band, and Converge is, too, so you’ll get some similarities. I’m a unique-sounding vocalist, so you’ll hear that in both of them. People will always relate the two, but to me they’re quite different. Converge is much more angular and unorthodox when it comes to riff-writing.

There’s a lot of complex notes and ideas in the material. Umbra has a little bit of that, but we also do meat-and-potatoes stuff and work within the realm of speed and power rather than D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 41

I’m not a normal person, a normal civilian.

I travel a lot, I’ve had a lot of life experiences, I create art and music as part of my living, and I’ve given myself to that.

It’s not an easy thing to do or a normal thing to do.

 Lifers Bannon (c) and Umbra Vitae don’t live in the shadow of their other bands

“Velvet Black” is a big standout for me. Tell me about that one.

That song is definitely different than the other material on the record. It’s more mid-paced, and it’s all power. It doesn’t really let up. It was originally demoed by Sean, and I thought it was brilliant. I knew exactly where it needed to go on the record, I had a melody in mind, and I had some lyrical content already in my head that had been inspired by the riffs. We talked a little bit about where his headspace was when he wrote the song, and I tried to capture my ideas as well as his in the lyrical content so it could be a unified art piece that we were both excited about. It’s a super heavy and dark song. Sonically, it probably has more in common with bands like Crowbar and maybe even Acid Bath, but it’s a weird one for sure. To me, it sounds like a standoff before some great confrontation. Lyrically, I’m talking about trying to live a positive life and do positive things, but the world always needs decay for growth to happen and for things to progress within our lives. And I feel like I say that in a much cooler way than I’m saying it here. [Laughs] Who’s playing that rock solo towards the end of the song?

That’s Mike, but both Mike and Sean rip solos 4 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

all over this record. It’s interesting: I’m pretty much a metal guy more than anything. When I was a kid, you almost had to pick a team—metal or hardcore. I was a metal guy, but I was always kind of averse to the solos unless they were really musical and made sense, like how James Murphy or Chuck [Schuldiner] did solos. But generally, solos didn’t do much for me. As I got older, I really started to appreciate them. One of the things we talked about when we started this band was solos. We wanted to make it so solos could appear in records again for us and be fun.

There’s some Nuno Bettencourt moments on this one for sure.

Where are you coming from on “Anti-Spirit Machine”? The first thing I think of when I see that title is a smartphone.

With all the technological advancements we have in life right now, it’s a brilliant time to be alive.

We have all these wonderful things at our fingertips. We’re bonded together through a social fabric that’s ones and zeroes coming through a telephone or computer. It’s completely fascinating. In many ways, it’s brought us together, but, in many ways, it’s also created huge social and cultural divisions as well—or at the very least, it’s amplified certain aspects of those things.

Something I’ve always felt as a creative person and choosing to live my life in that way, I’m always bucking against societal norms. I’m not a normal person, a normal civilian. I travel a lot, I’ve had a lot of life experiences, I create art

and music as part of my living, and I’ve given myself to that. It’s not an easy thing to do or a normal thing to do. We have all these apparatuses in place that make it very difficult to be a creative person or a free thinker or to live the life that you aspire to live that will bring you fulfillment in some way. I look at the economics of society as the anti-spirit machine. It’ll grind you down. Anything you love or value or appreciate, it’ll make it less fun, less appealing, less exciting. The song is very much about that uphill fight that many of us have who exist in a creative space. I’m sure you yourself relate to that in some manner, too. It’s not easy: The economics of life don’t allow us to hang out and make exactly what we want all day. There’s a lot of compromise that we have to wrestle with. We have to make a lot of choices in life to go with that or go against that.

What’s happening in Converge Land these days?

We were about to go to Latin America at the end of this week, but in about an hour we’re announcing that we have to postpone because [guitarist] Kurt [Ballou] was in the hospital for over a week. He just got out a couple days ago, but he’s still dealing with some issues. He basically has doctor and specialist appointments up until when we were supposed to leave, so we’re postponing until November. But we’ve been working on new material, and depending on how Kurt feels, maybe we’ll get to start writing again in the next week or so.

PHOTO BY HILLARIE JASON

trying to work in the more technical metal and punk world like Converge typically does. It’s a different vibe. I feel Umbra is more heavy, and Converge is more hard, if that makes sense.

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the

definitive stories

behind extreme music’s

definitive albums

J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 4 4 : D E C I B E L

by

nick green

Clash of the Titans the making of the Obsessed’s Lunar Womb

FOR

15 years, The With the Gilded Sorrow, the Obsessed Obsessed’s 1991 LP have now released five full-lengths with Lunar Womb was five very different lineups, not to menspoken about in tion the shifts that took place before Lunar hushed and reverWomb or the reshuffling that occurred folent tones, parlowing the band’s full-time return in 2016. ticularly in stoner rock circles. That’s how That’s kind of how it goes with all Wino long it took for the band’s second album projects, which resemble volcanos: violent to receive its first North American release and short-lived explosions, with molten in a lovingly assembled reissue/remaster lava seeping through the surface and from MeteorCity and 20 Buck Spin. Maybe creating new forms, ultimately leaving you’d heard parts of it on a cassette dub. the ground very fertile for regrowth and But more likely, you satisfied yourself renewal. So, from that standpoint, Lunar DBHOF235 with the Obsessed’s more widely available Womb certainly marked a radical depar1994 album The Church Within, featuring a ture from the tone of the material on The slightly rejiggered version of the band, or Obsessed, and, in turn, offered a teaser of any of this lineup’s run of tremendous folthe further dimensions that would be low-on projects, including Kyuss (bassist/ explored on The Church Within.

Lunar Womb vocalist Scott Reeder), Goatsnake (drumBut Lunar Womb remains the quintesHE LLHOUND mer Greg Rogers), and Spirit Caravan and sential album from the Obsessed, in part 1991 the Hidden Hand (guitarist/vocalist Scott due to the unique circumstances of its Born bad “Wino” Weinrich). Lunar Womb was for the creation. Although Wino has become true initiates. synonymous with the Maryland doom The version of the Obsessed that birthed scene, Lunar Womb was entirely gestated Lunar Womb achieved a strong following during the much shorter window when he in Germany, though. The band’s label, was living in Los Angeles. And due to the Hellhound (which Wino had already worked with on the Saint Vitus LP somewhat rushed nature of assembling the band, the door was left wide V), had a genius formula for breaking American artists in the European open for Scott Reeder to contribute several songs from his earlier act Across market: Minimize airfare costs by scheduling longer tours, then send the the River. So, this version of the Obsessed featured two veteran songwritbands straight to the studio after a few weeks of battle-testing the material ers who were both comfortable in studio settings, plus a drummer who on the road. By the time the trio made it to Berlin in April 1991 to record was malleable and highly intuitive. Obvious high points are the intro and Lunar Womb, they were extremely well-rehearsed, and worked efficiently super-catchy chorus of “Back to Zero,” plus Wino’s exquisite, career-definenough to allow a little time for quirky in-studio creations like the title ing guitar solo at the end of “Endless Circles,” but Lunar Womb is a “biker track and the album’s instrumental closer “Embryo.” doom” classic from end-to-end.

THE OBSESSED

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THE OBSESSED lunar womb Under the sign of the cross  The Lunar Womb-era line-up of The Obsessed

The Obsessed entered its second act after Hellhound released the band’s shelved debut in 1990. How did the Lunar Womb lineup come together?

SCOTT “WINO” WEINRICH: I met the Hellhound people in Germany through Saint Vitus. At that time, I had what would become the Obsessed’s self-titled debut in the can on analog reels of tape, unmixed. This was the record that we had recorded for Brian Slagel and Metal Blade Records in 1985 as part of our deal that was reneged on. We had paid for the recordings and owned that record ourselves, so it was just languishing on the shelf. Saint Vitus went on tour in Europe, then we recorded V. After the band left, I stayed longer and had a couple of our German friends mix The Obsessed. I had hand-carried the reels with me, so I had them there. Then the Hellhound folks asked me if the Obsessed could tour Europe. Back in L.A., I asked Danny Hood, a badass bass player/biker/chopper enthusiast to join the band along with me and Greg Rogers from Acid Clown on drums. I had seen Acid Clown in L.A. and I liked them a lot.

Danny agreed, and we started working on some new songs.

About six months before the tour, Danny was unfortunately killed in a motorcycle accident. I had asked Scott Reeder to be in the band before I had asked Danny, but he had refused, citing his wife’s reason that he shouldn’t join a band that already had an existing name, and that it should be something brand new. But I called him again, and this time he agreed.

SCOTT REEDER: When Wino invited me to join, there were only a few weeks to prepare an album’s worth of material and rehearse for a three-week tour of Germany, followed by the recording in Berlin. This was going to be my first tour, and it was also my first time flying overseas, so it was a huge deal for me!

GREG ROGERS: I played with Danny Hood in Acid Clown, but I’d moved back to Knoxville, TN, by the time Danny and Wino started playing together. They were both biker guys, so they hit it off immediately. Wino was talking about putting the Obsessed back together, so Danny said, “Maybe we can call Greg and he can come back out.” So, I did. We did a couple of rehearsals, and then Danny croaked. Wino knew Reeder from before—they’d played generator parties together when Reeder was in Across the River and Wino was in Saint Vitus. They were all part of the same crowd. I remember Wino telling me that Scott was one of the guys from that scene who was making everything happen; you know, making sure that they had all of the gear they needed and that everything was going right. The three of us had actually met in ’89, and we’d talked about doing something together then and

we just never did—that was before I’d moved back to Tennessee. I think Wino and Reeder were kinda talking about doing something, but then Danny Hood came along, and he and Wino really clicked.

The album includes a few songs written during an earlier incarnation of the Obsessed, along with a few songs from Scott Reeder’s early band Across the River. How did you select these tracks and what was the songwriting process like on the rest of Lunar Womb?

REEDER: We were in a huge rush to throw things

together, which was good for me because there was room for a few of my songs within that time crunch. “Back to Zero,” “Bardo” and “No Mas” were old Across the River songs, and “Spew” was something I’d been batting around. There were a few brand-new Wino songs that had plenty of room for me to do my thing, like “Kachina.”

It was a good stress getting ready; everything flowed easily!

ROGERS: I had very little to do with the songwriting. I was just playing the drums. If I remember correctly, most of that shit was good to go. They were like, “Here’s the songs.” I just had to figure out the drum parts. This was true of most of the album, except the title track. Wino had some ideas, but hadn’t shown Scott or I that particular song until we were actually in the studio recording. We were literally learning it piece-by-piece, and then punching in the parts as we learned them. That was all live.

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WEINRICH: I had the riffs for the song “Lunar Womb,” which I considered to be my magnum opus at the time, already in my head. I had been waiting for the opportunity to put all the pieces together into a concrete song. One night sitting around my pad in L.A., I got the divine inspiration and wrote all the lyrics on the back of a Saint Vitus show flier I had done and threw them under the coffee table. When Hellhound offered us a record, we put our heads together and [worked] with a couple songs that I had newly written, and a couple of Scotty’s songs.

Between that, we had the material.

When we got into the studio in Germany, after a short run of some live shows, we started putting it all together with the help of the engineer Mathias Schneeberger a.k.a. Schneebee. The very last thing we did was I showed those guys all the parts to “Lunar Womb.” They learned them, and we put the whole song together right there in the studio, and we recorded it.

When it came time to do the vocals, I realized I had left the paper with the lyrics in L.A. So, I called my old lady from Germany and had her go through all my papers under the coffee table. She found it and read the lyrics back to me over the phone. Another interesting thing that happened during the songwriting process is that, while we were rehearsing Reeder’s amazing song “Back to Zero,” I noticed that he was straining a little bit on the vocals. It seemed too high for him to sing, so I suggested downtuning to drop D, and it magically fell into place.

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Lunar Womb was recorded and mixed at Powerplay Studio and Vielklang Studio in Berlin in April 1991. What do you remember about the studio experience? How much time did you spend tracking?

ROGERS: I think we were on tour for three weeks,

then went directly into the studio. The mastering was not completed in the same session.

The tracking and mixing part was really short.

We just didn’t have that much money. I can’t remember if it was done in five days or seven days. It was somewhere in that range, with the last day or two being 24-hour burners. We did most of it at Powerplay. I think we started the mixing there, but moved to Vielklang. The last day was a race to finish because other people had booked the studio and we had to be done.

WEINRICH: The most amazing thing that happened is that we did all the drum tracks at Powerplay, and we moved over to Vielklang to do overdubs and mix. Vielklang is an enormous building with many rooms. We were on, like, the fifth floor, with no elevator, so that was a lot of stairs. The bass cabinet we had rented, an SVT, came in a flight case. In order to get it up the stairs, we took the cabinet out of the flight case and left the case down in the courtyard, next to a big pile of sand that they were using for construction. We had a gap of time that we needed to fill for this record. While sitting in the lounge, looking down at the courtyard, I suddenly got this crazy idea. The SVT flight case was exactly the size of a coffin. I convinced everybody to do a simulated live burial.

This is how it went down: We extended a bunch of mic cables and ran them down outta the windows into the courtyard. Then we all

went down there, laid the flight case down, and I got in it. We put a mic on the inside of the “coffin,” and then they shut the lid with me in it. They then miked the top of the flight case coffin and Greg shoveled sand onto the top of it.

This was, in effect, the sound you would hear if being buried alive, as the mic inside picked up my heart beating, my breathing and the sound of the sand hitting the coffin. Once we had that on tape, we made a long composition going from “Endless Circles” into “Lunar Womb.” This piece I call “The Cacoffany.” The other crazy shit you hear in it is Reeder saying the name “Riner” and playing a slide whistle. Riner was a madman we had encountered who had tried to break his way into our apartment after getting drunk.

REEDER: After three weeks bashing it out live, we were tight as fuck going in, and it all went down very quickly. I think between the two studios, it was recorded and mixed in five days. There was one long night that I was actually locked into the studio after everyone went home, and I assembled and mixed much of the sound effect pieces towards the end of the record, with the last part emulating the ambiance of being inside the womb. We were able to use that “womb” mix during the live show, too. I was glad that Schneebee had kept a separate copy of that! We weren’t around for the mastering session and cutting of the lacquers, unfortunately.

All three of the band members are credited as producers on this album. What was it like working with Mathias Schneeberger, and what was the division of labor like between the three of you?

WEINRICH: Schneebee was the engineer, miking stuff, hands on the board, making amazing suggestions like setting up the drums on a sheet of fucking glass. He also had two killer Marshall

“Our Italian friend Dome and David [Polack] and Guy [Pinhas] and Greg [Rogers] all carried me to my room.

But they were drunk, too, and they dropped me, and I rolled down the mountain. They finally got me and threw me in my bed fully clothed, where I proceeded to piss my pants.”

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stacks, and I had a TC Electronics stereo chorus unit, and I used that as the splitter between the two of them with just a little chorus on, which made the guitar sound real fat. Scott Reeder was also an amazing studio engineer in his own right. He had cut his teeth in L.A. at a Synclavier studio. Scotty amazed us all when he physically spliced the tape together inserting the “Cacoffany” section in.

Another amazing trick that Reeder did at the end of “Lunar Womb,” the little tail that takes the record out called “Embryo,” is he tuned a guitar that was laying around the studio to super low, then we set up an original Electro-Harmonix Golden Throat talk box and had the mic pointed down towards the floor. Scotty got a mouthful of water, laid on his back, and miked his mouth as he plucked the guitar strings and modulated the Golden Throat. It realistically simulates an embryo in the liquid womb. It remains one of the most ingenious and inventive things I’ve seen anybody do. Greg is a fantastic human, and his part was that of a drummer, rock solid, and kept us in focus. Schneebee is a madman, but also a genius and a multi-instrumentalist, who I think did an amazing job on this record. He went on to live in Southern California and play in the band Masters of Reality.

REEDER: Schneebee had been the live sound guy for the tour, so he already knew all the material inside-out. He’s a great engineer, and fast! We all had ideas to throw into the soup and shared the producing credit.

ROGERS: I did not actually have that much to do with the producing. I pretty much just went in to play drums. If I had an idea here or there, I would say it. Out of Wino, Reeder and Schneebee, I was by far the least experienced. That was my first time making a record. We had done a couple songs for a Hellhound compilation in

a recording studio that Reeder worked at, and that was my first time in a studio. I kinda just kept my mouth shut and let the people who actually knew what they were doing do their thing.

Is there anything that you recorded during the Lunar Womb session that didn’t make the cut, or anything you considered recording that you didn’t get around to arranging?

ROGERS: No. I don’t recall us leaving any songs on

What is your favorite song on Lunar Womb and why?

REEDER: It would have to be the title track. We

learned it in the studio as we recorded it, with lots of punch-ins on the tape. And then all the editing was me. It splices into one of my riffs for the fade-out, with the “womb” ambience tailing out. It was an ambitious piece for only having a few days in the studio!

ROGERS: Oh my god. Um, goddamn. It might be the song “Lunar Womb.” What I liked about it was that it was really unexpected. People talk about happy accidents in the studio, and this is something that we really didn’t expect. It has a bunch of cool, different parts. It just felt kind of effortless as it came together. We were all really happy with the experience of making it, going in with no real idea of what we were going to do and then coming out with that song.

It moves through a bunch of different parts in a cool way. It just kinda happened like that. We didn’t have to beat our heads against the wall.

It was really spontaneous.

WEINRICH: My favorite song is “Lunar Womb.” I had those parts written years before, and it was magic the way it came together.

the table. We didn’t have that much time to record, and we pretty much knew what we were going to do once we got in there. I think there were some other songs that we were playing. We were touring the first Obsessed record, so we had learned some of those songs. So, it was a matter of getting those down and learning the songs for Lunar Womb— there really wasn’t much time for anything else.

WEINRICH: Nope. We used every scrap we had, and then cooked some up in the studio, too.

This was a very inspiring time, and we were young and hungry.

REEDER: No. We used everything we could scrape together in the short time leading up to that first trip to Germany!

How much consideration was given to the sequence of the songs on the album?

WEINRICH: The sequence is very important, and

it was given the utmost consideration. I think it flows good, especially the end.

REEDER: It’s always tricky to get the best flow in the sequence, and to have it make sense for vinyl as well. In those days, home computers weren’t a thing yet, so sequence experiments were basically homemade cassette mixtapes.

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ROGERS: A lot. I remember I had a double cassette

recorder. We had all of the mixes on a cassette tape. I would record the songs in different orders, and we were pretty conscious of getting the album as close as we could to 20 minutes per side, because it was coming out on vinyl as well as CD. We really liked the idea of 20 minutes per side. It took a minute to figure that out. There wasn’t a lot of debate once we figured out the sequence. It was pretty obvious that “Lunar Womb” would be at the end, and that it would blend together with “Endless Circles.” We wanted to start the album out with a banger, so that was “Brother Blue Steel.” It was pretty clear that “Back to Zero” would be a good song to start the second side with. We had a pretty good outline and just had to figure out which songs flowed well.

Hellhound was based in Germany. What was your relationship like with the label? How did you communicate in the era before email, cheaper cell phones and chat apps?

WEINRICH: For me, it was the telephone, mainly.

I became the Hellhound American talent scout, and I convinced them to sign Asylum and Internal Void, both Maryland bands that I really liked and thought should be heard. Somehow, I got a hold of a free telephone card, which allowed me to call internationally. Later in the game, when I was owed money from Hellhound, I would call them at some ungodly hour from

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THE OBSESSED lunar womb  Down the tubes

Weinrich and Rogers riding the subway in Germany

The Obsessed did 18 shows in Germany over a three-week period in April during the “Forever Midnight Tour.” Do you have any interesting stories from that run of dates?

L.A. and rant and rave. But they knew me, and it was all good.

ROGERS: There was a lot of faxing going on. I lived in the back room of a woman’s office in L.A., and she had a fax machine. So, there was a fair amount of faxes going back and forth. There were some phone calls, too. This was back in the era of calling cards. We would do that. We would obviously hope that they would call us, so they could pay for the call. We wouldn’t call them unless we absolutely, positively had to.

What was the reaction to Lunar Womb when it was released in November 1991?

WEINRICH: Since it was an import, I don’t think

that there was much American press around it.

The few reviews I read were good. I really liked it.

ROGERS: It was pretty positive. I remember we did another German tour in December 1991, and it was great. The difference between the first tour we did together and that one was dramatic. The shows were sold out in small to medium-sized clubs. When we were in Berlin, we did our soundcheck and then left to go have dinner. I really didn’t know my way around. On our way back, we saw a long line of people standing outside of this club. I was like, “Goddamn, what’s going on there?” And the rest of the group was like, “That’s your show, you dumbass.” So, it was definitely well-received in Germany. It didn’t come out here in the U.S. until much later. The people we played it for back home all seemed to like it pretty well.

What role did tape-trading have in spreading the word on the Obsessed?

ROGERS: I think it actually helped a lot, espe-

cially before I came on board. There was a lot of tape-trading of old shows from the Washington D.C. version of the band. I think the people that gravitated to this version of the Obsessed were those tape-traders, who already had us in mind.

WEINRICH: It was paramount. In the days before the internet and YouTube, cassettes and VHS tapes were all we had. The one stipulation I had was to the people that were polite and professional and asked me if they could record. I always said, “Yes, but just give me a copy.” The loyalty from these folks was pure. It might be 10 years later, and some dude who I let record us would give me a cassette.

What’s the story behind the album cover, which features the painting Saturn Devouring His Son by Goya?

WEINRICH: We had submitted a collage that Hellhound rejected, and to be honest, I didn’t like it much either. At the time of the release, I had left L.A. and gone back to Maryland.

So, we weren’t together physically as a band.

Michael from Hellhound came up with the idea to use the Goya. I thought it was perfect. The back cover picture is from when we were touring Europe and were in Dortmund, Germany in front of a statue. The recent re-release by the incredible German label High Roller now includes a ton of pictures that Greg had from those sessions, and new liner notes that I wrote describing those days.

ROGERS: We submitted a cover to Hellhound that Scott Reeder had designed. It depicted an astronaut with some tarot cards. I still remember their response, which was left on our answering machine by Tom Reiss. He was like, “We got your submission for the album cover. We think it is a joke. And we saw that it came to us through FedEx, so we see that it is a very expensive joke.”

You know what? They were totally right. The Hellhound guys came up with the idea to use the image of the Goya painting, and I think that’s fucking great. I assume that Hellhound sorted everything out, because the album includes a thank you to the Prado Museum.

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WEINRICH: That was a crazy tour. It was set up

by David Polack, who was an American cat with a German wife, living in Berlin. He was friends with Guy Pinhas. Our vehicle was a 1930s East German school bus that still had a coal heater in the back so the kids could keep warm. The driver was an insane-but-cool German alcoholic who, unbeknownst to me, had a quarter pound of coke in the engine compartment. He was instructed by the crew not to mention that to me, although I figured it out later. David and I knew Uwa Diese, a journalist, so we stopped by his office to say hello right before the tour. His company had just worked a press campaign for the movie Wayne’s World, and he had a bunch of Wayne’s World wigs that they had given him for promotion. He gave them to us and we took them on our bus. It was hilarious to see everyone clowning around drunk after the shows wearing these wigs.

On this tour, the Obsessed did the first rock show ever in the newly formed Slovenia. The war in the Balkans was still going on, but nearing its close. After the Slovenian show, we headed to Italy. They denied us entry at every Italian border we pulled up to in that ramshackle bus, just because of the way we looked.

This put us in the mountains of Slovenia, and we found a little bed and breakfast on the top of a mountain. We checked into our rooms, then went down to the little local restaurant to eat. After an amazing dinner and an even more amazing dessert of giant ice cream banana splits, the proprietor broke out their local grappa, a clear liquor with a sprig of a vine in the bottle that turned it a brilliant green. After several shots, I noticed an acoustic guitar hiding in the shadows. I asked if I could play it, and brought the house down with renditions of old favorites, especially “Inside Looking Out.” Finally, I was so drunk that I passed out and fell off of the barstool. Our Italian friend Dome and David and Guy and Greg all carried me to my room. But they were drunk, too, and they dropped me, and I rolled down the mountain.

They finally got me and threw me in my bed fully clothed, where I proceeded to piss my pants. Right around daybreak, someone was pounding on my door screaming, “Fire, fire, your bus is on fire!” I got up, still drunk, wearing pisssoaked jeans, and went out to find our smoldering bus. Turns out that one of the Wayne’s World wigs had mysteriously fallen from the rack above the coal heater and caught fire in the back of the bus. The only things that were lost/burned were my clothes.

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ROGERS: The German fans want a lot of show. You

can’t just go on stage for 45 minutes and split.

They kept wanting more. There were times that we’d played everything we knew and had to go back to the beginning of our set list and start repeating songs. They didn’t seem to care. At one place in particular, this great club called the Forum Enger, the backstage was on the opposite side of the club from the stage, so you’d have to walk through the audience. I remember the crowd was full of big fucking dudes, like a giant wall of meat. I remember finishing our set and trying to return to the backstage area and all the dunk German dudes were like, “No. More!” We were just glad that they liked us.

We also did some U.S. shows with this lineup.

I think the first one was at this place called the Coconut Teaszer in L.A. I think that show was with NOFX, right when they were starting out.

Obviously, we were two very different bands. We played at places like Raji’s in Hollywood, which was owned by the guy who used to run the punk rock club Cathay de Grande. We played at least one, maybe two, generator parties out in the Palm Desert area, because that’s where Scott Reeder was from. The Obsessed also did a short West Coast tour with Wool and Kyuss in ’92. We hit the Bay Area and went up to Seattle. I think that’s actually when Scott and Kyuss decided to get together, on the ride back down.

Is there anything that you would change about the album?

WEINRICH: No. REEDER: Not a thing. I think it perfectly encapsu-

lated that moment in time for all of us.

ROGERS: Maybe just a little remix of that

“Cacoffany” thing. But other than that, fuck no.

I like it just the way it is. It was my first recording experience and it was very exciting for me at the time. I enjoyed every fucking second of it.

I was, and still am, really happy with the way it came out. Most of those takes were live, and we didn’t do more than one or two for any of the songs. We were enjoying ourselves and each other. I think that kind of comes across on the album. It has been a while since I listened to it, but I listened to it a lot when it came out. I was in a little bit of disbelief that it was the three of us on it. I’ve made a bunch of records since then, but this sticks out as my favorite recording experience. Everything was just so new at the time. I was just some peckerhead that worked in a restaurant until Wino called me.

What do you think the legacy of Lunar Womb is?

How did the experience of making it influence the music that you are making today?

WEINRICH: I think it was an amazing experience to have the opportunity as young musicians to

“When we were in Berlin, we did our soundcheck and then left to go have dinner. On our way back, we saw a long line of people standing outside of this club.

I was like, ‘Goddamn, what’s going on there?’

And the rest of the group was like, ‘That’s your show, you dumbass.’”

SCOT T RE E D E R not only travel Europe and play shows, but also to record a vinyl record analog, even though it was under what today would be considered grueling circumstances with no heat in studio, little money, etc. Our enthusiasm and the belief that we and Hellhound had in our music is what carried us through. Since then, I always reflect upon those days, and am grateful to have experienced it all. And I am also grateful that the stories from these times and the music lives on. Thank you!

REEDER: Oh, I don’t know… For me, personally, it was a major turning point in my life, going from the engineering side of the studio to being on the artist side. It led to playing with Kyuss, which led to many other friends, pathways and projects. And as for our little underground rock scene, I think Saint Vitus and Wino deserve a lot of credit in paving the way for touring and making friends in Europe—they showed promoters overseas that underground rock from the States could do pretty well over there. With the Obsessed, I was the first musician from our little desert music scene to go overseas. It led to many more bands in our scene going over, including Kyuss, and later Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, etc. A promoter from the Obsessed’s first tour, the late Petra Hammerer, actually looked after Kyuss on the road for a bit!

I’m sure some of the younger bands making it over haven’t even heard of Vitus, but I’ll always be grateful for the bridges and relationships that they helped build for everyone down the road.

J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 5 2 : D E C I B E L

ROGERS: Oh yeah, there is absolutely no ques-

tion that doing that record totally changed my life. I went from somebody who wanted to make records and tour to somebody who actually made records and toured. Were it not for Wino calling me, I don’t know what, if anything, I would’ve gone on to do. I will always credit him and be grateful to him for having me involved with the Obsessed. It was really great.

Cool shit came after Lunar Womb, too, because of the experience of making it. Guy Pinhas, who replaced Scott Reeder, started showing up at our gigs in Europe. We played with his band Beaver and we were like, “Fuck, this guy is really good.”

When Scott was right in the middle of quitting the Obsessed, we already had Guy in mind. I saw the change come over Wino’s face. He was really mad at Scott for about two minutes, then he was like, “Yeah, okay. Go ahead.” We went straight home and called Guy, and he came out within a week or two.

After the Obsessed was done, me and Guy wanted to continue playing together, so we kinda fucked around for a while and then figured out Goatsnake after a couple of years. That time was a lot of fun, too. Whenever the Obsessed comes to town, I try to go check them out. It’s cool to see the band now, with some separation from it, and realize how heavy the songs are. I always thought Wino’s songwriting was good, but hearing it now as someone who is not involved, I have an even greater appreciation for everything he does.

D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 5 3

FIVE YEARS SINCE THEIR LAST FULL-LENGTH,

EMERGE WITH KILLING CAPACITY MASSIVELY EVOLVED STORY BY JEFF TREPPEL ||| PHOTOS BY SHIMON KARMEL

The Superstition Mountains

puncture the sky of the arid Arizona landscape, jutting out of the earth like the

jagged lower jaw of some primordial titan. Their monstrous majesty inspired wild stories in everyone from the original Native tribes to the later white settlers who displaced them. The most infamous tale revolves around the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, a rich hoard of gold hidden deep in the range that nobody’s been able to locate in the century and a half since German (not Dutch) prospector Jacob Waltz supposedly stashed it. That hasn’t stopped treasure seekers from venturing into the treacherous maw of the mountains—often meeting the Grim Reaper in the process. ¶ The core members of Gatecreeper grew up with that sight virtually in their backyards. ¶ When you think of Arizona’s environment, you think of the heat.

But the unique landscape plays a big role in Gatecreeper’s sound. Founding guitarist Eric Wagner drew direct inspiration from the mountains while working on their third album, Dark Superstition: “There’s an essence to [the Superstition Mountains]— and definitely Arizona in general—a mystic quality to it. There’s a lot of mystery surrounding it, if you get into the history of those mountains and other areas. And the ruggedness of it. I tried to channel that and capture the epicness of the environment and that mystery, and the harshness, too. I feel like this record has a lot of different values to it, and a lot of different angles. It represents the theme that we want with the record, but also the physical environment that we live in.”

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The album art perfectly illustrates that dual meaning of “Superstition.” Gatecreeper’s first two albums depicted surreal sun-baked visions that H.P. Lovecraft would have dredged from his imagination if he’d grown up in the Southwest.

The ominous tableau by tattoo artist Lena Richter on this cover takes a different approach: night has fallen. Truly terrifying wildlife crawls out of interdimensional portals, heat lightning rages across the saguaro cacti, reality’s mirror cracks. It portends change.

According to vocalist Chase Mason, “I had this title before any of the lyrics were written, and that really caught me. So, I tried to use the theme of superstition to be a general theme for most of the lyrics. And it could be just barely tied into it, or it could be very supernatural. Because once I dove into superstition and what that means, or what that entails, a lot of things fall under that umbrella, whether it’s werewolves and vampires or luck.”

Gatecreeper last haunted the cover of this magazine five years ago. A lot has happened since then, not just for the world, but for the band. Wagner, Mason and drummer Matt Arrebollo rounded out the lineup with guitarist Israel Garza and bassist Alex Brown. They dropped a surprise half grind/half doom EP in 2021, An Unexpected Reality. They signed with major metal force Nuclear Blast Records. And now they’re ready to shake things up once more.

As the explorers in the Superstition Mountains did before them, the Southwestern quintet has made its own journey into the unknown in search of sonic gold. Only they don’t intend on losing their heads like the hapless treasure hunters. Not content with merely spearheading the old-school death metal renaissance, they’ve—gasp—evolved their sound.

NATURAL BORN CHAOS Life came at Gatecreeper pretty quickly after the release of their second album. Mason lays out the timeline: “We released Deserted in October 2018. That was our last record with Relapse. We did a tour co-headlining with Exhumed, and we were supposed to have a full year of touring in 2020. We were supposed to do the Decibel Tour in 2020, the one that got canceled. Obviously, we all know what happened.”

COVID robbed us of a lot of very serious things, and while missing out on seeing Mayhem, Abbath, Gatecreeper and Unto Others tour together was relatively minor in the big scheme, it still sucks. For a working band like theirs, losing that full year of touring meant they had to make it up somehow. Which is why it’s taken them a half-decade to put together the follow-up to our number three record of 2019.

Mason lays out the timeline: “We had signed to Nuclear Blast off the heels of our Deserted record. The ball started getting rolling right around early 2020. And then shit

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WE’RE A BAND THAT HAS

VERY OBVIOUS INFLUENCES VERY, VERY OBVIOUS REFERENCES. AND

Chase Mason

hit the fan. We ended up signing in 2020. But at that point, we already had Unexpected Reality written, and it was going to be released on Closed Casket Activities. So, it’s kind of a weird timeline—we signed to Nuclear Blast, then we put out a record on a different label. The time from when we signed to when this record is coming out for Nuclear Blast is about three years.

Because, as soon as late 2021, when we were able to tour again, we just wanted to do that. And we had some touring to catch up on. So, we spent the first two years of when things more or less went back to normal touring a lot more, and we just needed to get that out. But we were starting to write the record. And so, we planned it out for last year, 2023: We’re not touring, we’re just doing a record, we’re going to write and record and just take our time doing it—which for a band like us, once the ball is rolling and we’re available, we’re getting tour offers all the time.

And we have to make a conscious effort, like, nope, we have to say no to everything that’s happening in this timeframe.”

Especially this time around, with a bigger platform and increased profile in the metal scene, Mason and his compatriots knew they couldn’t drop something merely good. “We knew that this was a big record for us,” he admits.

“We’ve been very lucky, and we’ve had a lot of good opportunities, and things have had a pretty steady upward trajectory. And we knew that, for this record, we had to really hit it out of the park. We couldn’t do what we usually do—not that we didn’t put a lot of effort into our previous records, but we knew we just needed to step it up on all fronts.”

“We definitely had more time than we feel like we usually had,” Wagner says. “We wanted to give ourselves some time to write the record and make sure we were really happy with

D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 5 7

it. We also wanted to do more pre-production than we have. So, Chase and I, we did our normal stuff where we send each other songs and we work through the songs together, but we also wanted to make sure that everyone else in the band had more of a say, and an opportunity to work on it. I feel like that’s something we’re always working towards, where in the past sometimes we haven’t really done that as much.

Everyone has something on the record that they’ve worked on and brought something to the table. And so that just took longer.”

THE GALLERY The fresh contributions Wagner mentioned came from their two newest recruits. Bassist Sean Mears (as of 2021) and guitarist Nate Garrett (as of 2019) are out, Alex Brown and Israel Garza are in—although as of the time of our interview, Brown was still listed as a touring bassist on Encyclopedia Metallum.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that,” Brown laughs. “I peep the Metallum from time to time to check the stats.”

Brown may be a relatively unknown entity to the general public, but he’s been long acquainted with the members of Gatecreeper. “I’ve known all of them pretty much as long as the band has been around—like I didn’t go to the first Gatecreeper show, but definitely the second or third. And I’ve been around and in the scene that whole time. Chase booked a lot of my bands when I was younger, even going back to high school. So, when the time arose for them to find a new bass player, Chase just hit me up one day

and asked me if I was down to give it a whirl.

And that’s what led to where we are today.”

Brown feels that his versatility really allowed him to bring a lot to the table during the songwriting process. “As someone who plays drums, guitar and bass, I’m thinking about that every step of the way when I’m writing a song.

So, I’m thinking about the drums as I write a riff and vice versa. Being able to link up with Chase or Eric and get on the guitar and just bust some shit out makes it a lot easier.”

Brown may have been right in their backyard, but the band had to go a little further afield for their new guitarist. Specifically, to Texas, where they recruited Garza from thrash barristers Judiciary.

“We’d played with [Judiciary] before, and we’ve been friends with Izzy,” says Mason. “But on that tour, we floated the idea, like, ‘Hey, would you want to play guitar for us?’ We would be playing a show on that tour, and I would look behind me and Izzy was playing along to our set. Like he was teaching himself our songs. He would be on the side of the stage basically playing along to our whole set, before we even really asked him to be in the band officially. So, it was kind of like, All right, this is our guy. And that was like the smoothest transition ever.”

For his part, Garza felt immediately welcome.

But the real test came when he joined in on the writing sessions. “I was a fan of the band for years,” he says. “You’re under a microscope when you’re writing for this kind of stuff. I can cover their songs. I can play them live, no prob-

lem. But when it comes to my creative part, it’s almost the most important part. So, yeah, I was pretty nervous, but I didn’t show it. I tried to play it off, like, play cool. And luckily it worked out. As we were writing together, we sat down in Chase’s living room, and I showed him the solos I had on GarageBand, and then he was like, ‘Wow, that’s exactly what I had in mind.’”

What Mason had in mind, though, may surprise longtime listeners of the band.

PINBALL MAP “We haven’t really gotten rid of any influences— we’ve just been building them as we go,” Mason explains. “Our band was started based off of Dismember’s Massive Killing Capacity, Entombed, Obituary. Those are still big influences on us.

But as we go, each record or release that we do, we’re adding more influences on top of it. So, it’s just getting a wider and wider range of things.

I think over the past couple of years, when it came time to write this record, we started to be influenced by more melodic things. I think the timeline is relevant because a lot of the old-school death metal that we’re super influenced by, over the period of their career, those bands started to change. Entombed had their Wolverine Blues. Even Massive Killing Capacity is Dismember’s more rock record. A lot of Finnish bands like Amorphis and Sentenced started out as old-school death metal bands and then changed into something else.

“This record’s a transitional record for us,” he continues. “I like those records where you can hear a band starting to do something

I HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS WHO MAKE MUSIC AND PLAY IN GOOD BANDS, AND I WOULDN’T SIT HERE NITPICKING MY FRIENDS’ BANDS APART, BUT I THINK [DARK SUPERSTITION] HITS IT SO ON THE HEAD AND

I JUST LOVE IT. EVERY SINGLE SONG. Fred Estby

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D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 5 9

THERE’S A LOT OF MYSTERY SURROUNDING [ARIZONA], IF YOU GET INTO THE HISTORY OF THOSE MOUNTAINS… I TRIED TO CHANNEL THAT AND CAPTURE THE EPICNESS OF THE ENVIRONMENT AND THAT MYSTERY,

AND THE HARSHNESS, TOO. Eric Wagner

different. It’s not totally out of left field, but it’s that middle ground where a band starts to move in a different direction. Even Carcass’s Heartwork, that’s a big influence where they started to do something more melodic. It still sounds like Carcass, but it’s definitely a little bit different than what they’ve done before.”

Dark Superstition unmistakably sounds like Gatecreeper’s brand of modern American death metal. But as soon as you hit play on “Dead Star,” the opening track, you get plunged into a very different realm—a place where jesters race and a Clayman prepares food for the gods.

“I really like In Flames,” Mason enthuses.

“It’s funny that they were kind of a big influence for this record, and we got to meet them last summer, and now they’ve asked us to go on tour. Their Clayman album was a record that passed me by when I was first getting into death metal, but I looped back around and I really latched on to that record. I think that that’s a good reference for us because that was their breakout record.”

For Wagner, the shift in direction came from a simple desire: “During COVID, I was just

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feeling a lot of stuff. I wanted to write some more melodic stuff. So, a lot of the songs are more melodic and played a little bit differently than I usually would—I played a lot more leads and melody.”

As the drummer, Arrebollo’s contributions came later in the process, but he was totally on board with this latest development. “A lot of times, before we start writing a record or working on a record, we’ll make playlists or share songs with each other,” he says. “When we first started sorting out the ideas, everybody had their own idea of what ‘melodeath’ means. So, we would share songs with each other like, Hey, maybe this is what I think melodeath means, and then it just melded into the thing. I think some of my interests are more on the trashy, speedier side than how the other guys were approaching it.

Like one of the bands that I was thinking of a lot when we were conceptualizing the record—and maybe it didn’t really come to fruition so much in the actual recording—was Sacramentum, from Sweden. Kind of just like fast, catchy Dissection-type stuff. And Dissection obviously is also a big band for me.”

While nobody from Dissection made an appearance, somebody from another “Dis” band did: After writing the songs, they flew legendary drummer Fred Estby from Swedish death metal progenitors Dismember out to Arizona to workshop the material with them.

Decibel actually played a part in Estby’s involvement, indirectly. “[J. Bennett] interviewed him for the last cover story, which is really cool. I didn’t even know he was going to,” notes Mason. “[Estby] was the elder statesman giving us the sign-off. He said some really nice stuff about us. That actually set the ball in motion for us to work with him on this record.

Fred talked about us carrying the Dismember torch, and that culminated in us bringing him out and working on this record with us.”

Although Estby had some notes on isolated elements, he approved of the overall direction they chose. “I think that one thing that I like about death metal is when it’s catchy,” he says. “It still has to be death metal in the sense that it’s actually brutal still, but I like catchy death metal, as long as it’s within the right [parameters] for me.

So, I thought, Oh, their songwriting has really evolved.

I felt like they were going in the right direction.

If I was them and I wanted to keep on doing what I’m doing, but I don’t want to be stuck in exactly the same rut, that’s the way I think they should go. And I told them so.”

Don’t expect them to go working the soil fulltime, though. Like An Unexpected Reality, it’s more to do with them maximizing their available palette of sounds to home in on what, exactly, Gatecreeper are and can be.

“We’re a band that has very obvious influences and very, very obvious references,” Mason clarifies. “I think that over time, just putting together—kind of Frankensteining—all these things that we like into our own thing, it does create our own sound. We are drawing from a bunch of different places, but it’s like baking, where you can have a certain amount of a finite amount of ingredients, but you can make a bunch of different dishes with those ingredients.”

SAY JUST WORDS Strangely enough, however, melodeath isn’t the most unusual recipe book they consulted for Dark Superstition. A mere two tracks after “Dead Star” mixes up the Gatecreeper formula, the band does it again with “The Black Curtain.” This time, rather than ’90s Sweden, they’ve taken a trip to Britain.

“Several of the songs were really influenced

by Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim and a lot of that goth, post punk sort of stuff.

Huge, huge Sisters of Mercy fan,” Mason gushes. “And this is the first time we implemented a little of that, like on the song, ‘The Black Curtain,’ and then the song ‘Flesh Habit.’

That one, we even added some very subtle programmed drums. I did the research, and we used a lot of the same drum machine sounds

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that Sisters of Mercy did on their first couple of releases. And yeah, just whether it’s down to the tone of the guitars, the guitar leads, some of the vocal patterns, I think that one’s a dark horse influence people might not pick up on face value, but that was a big one for me.”

Wagner name-checks a slightly more metal act as one of the primary motivators behind “The Black Curtain”: Paradise Lost. And it’s immediately recognizable, from Mason’s snarled intonations to the more restrained drumming.

Far from feeling threatened by possible drum machine replacement, though, Arrebollo found it an interesting challenge.

“Those are songs where I don’t want to get too caught up in trying to overplay or make a drum part too complicated,” he explains. “They deviate from a standard death metal song that’s a lot about force and power and speed. A rock ‘n’ roll song has its own force and power, but I needed to approach it differently. I decided to take a more meat-and-potatoes approach to those songs because I wanted to keep the focus on the songwriting, which is the new element that I thought we were introducing in those instances. I wasn’t trying to show off, like, ‘Hey, look at what we can play.’ It’s more like, ‘Hey, look what kind of song we can write.’ And it’s still cool, you know? So, for those songs, I wanted to keep the focus more on the songwriting and just lay back, almost like a drummer in a pop or a rock band would do. I stay back and let the song speak for itself.”

Those songs also gave Brown a chance to shine.

“There have been some songs that we’re doing something a little bit new for the band, and it allows the bass to breathe and do its own thing,” he reasons. “I’ve been able to get creative with it and do some new things and actually, you know, do some bass shit on the bass, where before, and with a lot of other songs on the record, it was really just another layer underneath the guitars.”

The nods to Sisters of Mercy didn’t faze Estby: “We had those influences when [Dismember] started playing. We listened to a lot of that stuff, both me and Nicke [Andersson] from Entombed.

It’s not that we really put it in there as much back then, but the influences were there. And I felt like I can really relate to where these guys are in the process for this album. So, I thought it was a smart thing and a good thing.”

Still, Gatecreeper don’t pull a Draconian Times to One Second-level change. For this quintet, consistency reigns. Mason makes sure to emphasize that this is an evolutionary step, not a revolutionary one.

“I talked about it being our transitional record, where we’re trying new things, but also keeping things the same,” he says. “We can try out some new influences or new flavors in there, but some things need to stay the same to make it still sound like our band. My vocals are still the same. I’m not trying to sing. I think that that’s a common or just an easy cheat where some bands

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THIS RECORD’S A TRANSITIONAL RECORD FOR US. I LIKE THOSE RECORDS WHERE YOU CAN HEAR A BAND STARTING TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

IT’S NOT TOTALLY OUT OF LEFT FIELD, BUT IT’S THAT MIDDLE GROUND WHERE A BAND STARTS TO MOVE IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION. Chase Mason

go, ‘We want to make the songs more accessible.

Let’s implement some sung choruses.’ And since we weren’t doing that, it was, How do I improve the vocals to make it catchier, but keep my vocals the same? If that makes sense. And the same with the guitar tone. We figured if we keep the guitar tone the same, even though there’s different types of riffs and some of it’s more rock songstructured, that if we still have the same guitar tone, we still have the same vocal style, then we have a lot of wiggle room with the other stuff that we can do in the songwriting to make it to elevate our sound a little bit, but still make it sound like Gatecreeper.”

Acclaimed producer Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire)—who’s worked with the band on all their albums—approves highly of their decision: “I thought it was an interesting choice, especially seeing as how the last EP was mostly fast, gnarly stuff. I think changing direction early in a band’s career is a wise choice; it keeps you from being pigeonholed. They can do whatever the fuck they want on the next record now, which I’m sure feels very freeing for them.”

UNTO OTHERS Heavy hitters like Estby and Ballou weren’t the only ones Gatecreeper turned to for help. Mason even got some assistance with his vocal delivery from an unusual place: Canada.

“I had a couple of weeks or a couple of months to write the lyrics, and I actually had someone else come out,” he begins. “His name’s Ben Cook. He sings in his band called No Warning from Canada. He has a project called Young Guv, and he’s helped other bands, specifically vocal production of bands. So, he came out and he sat with me for a couple days. And we just went over

all the songs and started to sketch out the vocal patterns. Not even the lyrics, just the patterns. I really wanted to make the vocal patterns catchy, which is difficult if you’re not singing and you’re not singing a melody. It’s really about the patterns of it, like a rhythmic instrument. So, I had some outside help to really help me to push myself on those and maybe go outside of my box a little bit. I didn’t want to do what I always do.”

Their primary collaborator in the studio was, of course, one of the best in the business.

Although Ballou had previously mixed their records, they had recorded locally with Ryan Bram at Homewrecker Studios. This time the larger budget and extended recording time afforded them the ability to fly to the very unArizonian setting of Salem, MA, and record at GodCity in person. Which did work with the superstition theme.

“We rented a van just in case we wanted to drive somewhere for that whole week,” says Garza, “and we used it maybe once because it was just in the center of everything that you need in Salem. Salem, as a whole, I loved it. It’s like Halloween all the time. Always spooky.”

That opportunity gave both Ballou and the band a chance to try some different tools and spend extra effort honing everything to a sharp point.

“Ryan Bram did a great job engineering their previous stuff, of course,” Ballou elaborates, “but it was nice to be in the room with the band while tones were happening so I could help with instrument and mic selection. We spent a lot of time making sure we had a complementary set of cymbals and the simplest, most effective amp rigs.

“The previous location of Homewrecker, where they tracked before, was a pretty small

space,” Ballou continues. “GodCity is small, too, but I know how to work the room pretty well to get roomy drum sounds, which is something I wanted in the drum palette for this one. Also, on their previous records they blended a lot of amps to get the guitar sound. That’s a lot of fun to do, but over the years, I’ve found that simpler rigs tend to sound better in the mix. So, we tried to use fewer amps and mics and focus on getting a massive sound from a simple signal path.”

Arrebollo, in particular, was enthusiastic about the in-person effect on his own drum sound: “One of the things that that I had never encountered, and which ended up sounding really great, is [Kurt] and his intern spent a lot of time actually tuning—not that I don’t tune the drums normally, but they were tuning the drums to specific to a specific pitch, which is something that I don’t usually do in my own playing.”

“He has this entire gear room,” Garza continues. “And we’re searching for a guitar tone, and we’d already been through like five amps.

And then we’re like, ‘Okay, this one sounds awesome. This is perfect. This is what we want.’ And we’d all be super stoked on a tone and an amp and a cab. And he was like, ‘Okay, well, we’re still going to try the other 20 in here,’ and we’re like, ‘Damn!’ It was cool because even what we were stoked on, he was like, ‘No, we’re gonna do everything possible, you never know what you can get.’ So, we literally spent a whole day just going through amps, and sure enough, we found stuff that we thought was even cooler.”

Sometimes the process just reconfirmed what they already knew, like it did for Wagner: “I used my signature [Darkest Cowboy] pedal on this record for just about everything. I think there were, like, two pauses on one of the songs that we

used the classic HM-2 because we wanted to put the HM-2 there. It was a throwback to Dismember stuff, that classic tone. But we used my Void Manufacturing pedal for everything. We actually had a shootout when we first got there and started doing guitars. We had a bunch of different options because you never know what’ll sound best in the room. And I was stoked because we actually zeroed in on my pedal that I always use.”

“Kurt strikes a good balance,” Mason adds.

“Especially with this record where we’re trying to make it sound big, but it still sounds like our band, and it still sounds like Kurt’s recordings, because that’s what we’re after. You know, that’s part of our sound, Kurt’s recordings. And that’s another thing like we were talking about earlier: keeping some things the same while we experiment in other places. Kurt’s production, Kurt’s mixing is part of that. It’s like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna write some songs that are a little bit different.’

But if we’re recording it with Kurt, it’s still gonna sound like our band.”

MASSIVE KILLING CAPACITY You may have noticed that’s something Mason has stressed over the course of our conversation: his desire to grow Gatecreeper while remaining true to what the band has always stood for. For him, it’s not just about his bandmates and himself anymore. Gatecreeper belong, to an extent, to the fans who have supported them this whole time. Now that the band is in a place where they can make a living from playing death metal to audiences around the world, he understands that they have a responsibility to not fuck it up.

“It’s much bigger than us now,” Mason stresses. “It’s served us well, doing things that we thought were cool, or things that we like. That’s

where it all comes from—we’re doing stuff that we like, we’re making stuff that we think is cool.

But it’s changed a little bit, or at least expanded, where these are the things that I think are cool, and also, we’re going to do some things that we know that the fans think are cool.”

Wagner, for one, believes that their audience will be excited to hear them develop their sound.

“Without the fans, and without people coming to shows, buying records and being excited about what we do, we wouldn’t exist,” he acknowledges. “But at the same time, if you’ve been a fan of us for multiple releases, you know that we touch on different things. And we have a variety of styles, and I feel like people know that whatever we release next might be a little bit different than the last thing we did. Something that was intentional with Dark Superstition, which I feel like we’ve done this always, is even though maybe our sound shifts a little bit and we mess around with it, the guitar tone is the same as it’s been since our first EP. We’re using essentially the same stuff. The singing—you know, I think Chase’s performance, vocally, on Dark Superstition is awesome, and he’s tried some new things, but it’s still Chase. And it’s still all the elements that make Gatecreeper, and I feel like it’s the elements that our fans enjoy.”

Or, if you’re looking for someone with both an objective viewpoint and unbeatable credibility, you could just ask death metal legend Estby what he thinks of the record: “I think it’s great.

I mean, it’s awesome. I don’t know what to say other than that it’s perfect,” he laughs. “I have a lot of friends who make music and play in good bands, and I wouldn’t sit here nitpicking my friends’ bands apart, but I think this hits it so on the head and I just love it. Every single song.”

63

DECIBEL ||| JULY 2024 DECIBEL : SEPTEMBER 2023 : 63

6 4 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

INSIDE ≥

66 ACXDC Powerviolenceage 67 BOTANIST In the weeds

ALL THE NOISE THAT FITS

68 CANDY Crush 69 SUMAC Scratching the Isis itch 70 THOU Connected to the Body

Saturnus Vincit!

JULY

0

Sick New World tongue piercing tent

0

Psycho Vegas hot tub

0

Roadburn chin-scratching station

0

Anything on a fucking boat

Philly’s triumphant doom heroes CRYPT SERMON are fully in bloom

, YES 0

i’m fully aware the Latin phrase in the headline above is, in all likelihood, a scholarly error. Poor Latin usage never stopped My Dying Bride, Abruptum or Behemoth. So, in genuflection of Crypt CRYPT Sermon’s masterstroke, The Stygian Rose, I’m running with it. The SERMON Saturn reference will be obvious later—maybe. ¶ Shards of what The Stygian Rose Filthadelphia’s best old-new band were capable of before could be DARK DESCENT heard on Out of the Garden (2015) and especially The Ruins of Fading Light (2019). “Heavy Riders,” “Temple Doors” and the little evil cherry of Decibel Flexi Series stunner “De Mysteriis Doom Sathanas” were leftish-hand paths, in full or part, to The Stygian Rose. ¶ While doomlords will declare Crypt Sermon were their greatest when they played basement shows in some of the shittiest neighborhoods on the East Coast, it doesn’t change the fact that the sextet—now featuring Matt Knox (Horrendous) on bass and Tanner Anderson (Majesties, Obsequiae) on keyboards/electronics— have written the best metal album I’ve heard since 1988. (We’ll get to 1988 shortly.)

ILLUSTRATION BY MARK RUDOLPH [MARKRUDOLPH.COM]

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The Stygian Rose, in all its resplendent regalia, isn’t a doom metal album per se. The wholesale ape of Candlemass and Solitude Aeturnus was cute before, but it’s distantly behind Crypt Sermon now. Master Riff Sergeant Steve Jansson is subtler than that. There’s always been more to Jansson’s vision than hamming up “Bewitched” or—god forbid—“Dreaming Neon Black.” It’s just taken the better part of his life to realize it in the form of The Stygian Rose’s entirety.

The guitar god intro to opener “Glimmers in the Underworld”—let’s name-drop Tony MacAlpine’s “Wheel of Fortune”—might appear idiosyncratic, but Jansson’s fiery fretboard action pairs perfectly well with the song’s stately fist-in-the-air rock and hookified heroics. The whole solo barrage that starts at 4:15 and lasts to 5:30 is fucking magnificent, with the turn at 4:47 bordering on ridiculous. His support in the form of Frank Chin, who recently moved over to rhythm guitar, is aces. More than mere sideman, Chin’s granite rhythms are particularly weighty on the mysterious, Levantine invocation “Thunder (Perfect Mind)” and the headbanging aperture of “Heavy Is the Crown of Bone.” That some of the riffs/motifs originated with Anderson, who entered the Holy of Holies with unfettered appreciation, isn’t all that surprising. His alluring, cosmic touch to “Down in the Hollow” is disarmingly genius.

The Stygian Rose is wonderfully dexterous all the way through, but it unseats the upper echelons of the brain on the 11-minute title track.

Not sure what it reminds me of, but I love it endlessly. Drummer Enrique Sagarnaga’s strong pocket hits as if he’s in an arena with his shirt off, while Knox’s beastie bops—check out his wicked inclusions at 3:00 in “Heavy Is the Crown of Bone,” too—provision the song with the nuance it needs. Truly, the champion of eternals is singer/lyricist/illustrator Brooks Wilson.

This isn’t the same Wilson we’ve heard before.

No, the white-booted fabulist has transformed into metal’s premier force. Most metal singers linearly opt for histrionics as if that alone will impress. Whether it’s “Glimmers in the Underworld” or “Down in the Hollow” or the title track, the singer, with his many voices, exudes personality, grit and a lot of guts. Yeah, the title track again, please.

Platform The Stygian Rose’s strengths—its songs—on top of Arthur Rizk’s “holy fuck!”

Alex Perialas-meets-Dave Jerden production, and it somehow feels like it’s 1988 (or somewhere late-’80s blurring early-’90s). The sheer scale of what Rizk has done with Crypt Sermon is unbelievable in that he’s sonically captured a bygone era without it being purely honeyed nostalgia. Like Crypt Sermon, the production is anachronistic, and no record sounds as big or important as this.

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If metal in the 2020s needed a Saturnine savior, it’s The Stygian Rose. Big talk, but I’ve not been this shaken by an album in a very long time. It’s why I got into metal in the first place.

—CHRIS DICK

ACXDC

7

G.O.A.T. PROSTHETIC

Hell ain’t a bad place to be

Our miserable planet has somehow continued to spin for so long that bands formed in the mid-2000s to revive the sounds of ’90s powerviolence have now been plugging away for two decades, like L.A.’s ACxDC, notching 21 years of their Satanic PV schtick. Of course, in that same timespan, the meaning of powerviolence has shifted on a spectrum that ranges from “two to five bands as decreed by Eric Wood” to “music that’s fast” to “Zulu, who are cool, but sound way more like Emmure than Capitalist Casualties,” depending on who you ask.

Antichrist Demoncore, the full unfurling of this crew’s moniker, wouldn’t pass the Wood test even in the ’90s; too much grind and death metal, with a whiff of contemporary hardcore in there too when they slow it down (check “Boxed In” and “At Midnight”). But G.O.A.T. hits enough marks that it should satisfy all but the most stubborn of heads. ACxDC share a drummer with Despise You, and the despondent, self-loathing rage that band captured is all over the lyrics: overwhelming grief, drudgery, failure, the same feelings that fueled powerviolence lifers Lack of Interest and the mighty No Comment. But ACxDC have plenty of rage to throw around, and aim some outward at clout chasers, racists (“Definition of Insanity,” another moshy one) and misogynist incels on “Thot Police.” Plus, there are two “we are awesome” anthems in the title track, the closest G.O.A.T. comes to straight-up death metal, and the frenzied “Goatcore.” I say they’ve earned it just for not getting sued over their name for 21 years. I also think this album could have had a lot more Satan on it if they really tried. Satan rules. —ANTHONY BARTKEWICZ

ADVERSARIAL

8

Solitude With the Eternal…

DARK DESCENT

Decade of obsession

Canadian destroyers Adversarial have returned after a near-decade in exile with their third full-length since forming in 2007. Its 2015 predecessor, the cheerily titled Death, Endless Nothing and the Black Knife of Nihilism, marked the initial-monikered trio—C.S.

(guitars/vocals), M.M. (bass), E.K. (drums)—as an underground concern in the cataclysmic world where death and black metal collide.

Taking Immolation’s hellbound dissonance to an even more relentless level of misanthropic malevolence on Solitude, Adversarial have lost nothing during their lengthy slumber.

“Beware the Howling Darkness on Thine Left Shoulder” wastes zero time in establishing its dominance; no elaborate reintroduction as the trio drags us beneath with eerily atonal riffs, ever-shifting/blasting rhythms and resonant gutturals. Adversarial’s fiery attack is punk-like in its economy; tracks such as “Hatred Kiln of Vengeance,” “Fanes at the Engur” (like Nile if they worshiped Deathspell Omega rather than Unas) or “Death Is an Advisor in the Woods of the Devil” burn around the three-minute mark with no space for respite.

However, that’s not to suggest that Solitude lacks dynamism: “Crushed Into the Kingdom of Darkness,” placed at the right center of this hellscape, takes tempos down to abyssal death/ doom depths. Some might suggest that the discordant, opaque and atmospherically arcane style of extreme metal Adversarial practice has been overexposed in the last decade. And while there may be some merit to that statement, there’s always room for masters of this sound— the final thought you may have as “Merging Within the Destroyer” and its frenzied solos splay you wide open. —DEAN BROWN

ALCEST

6

Les Chants De L’Aurore NUCLEAR BLAST

Fell on blackgaze

The trouble with really nailing it on your first release is that it becomes harder to manage your subsequent discography.

Sometimes there’s a valid reason behind that “I only like the demo” kind of pig-headedness, as the other not entirely untrue old trope that “you have your whole life to write your first album” often means that it might end up being your best one. Alcest, perhaps wisely—their overall success certainly suggests so—chose not to write variants of brilliant full-length debut Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde for the rest of their lives. But looking at the whole canon, the Neige/Winterhalter duo seems to have been left with a maddeningly inconsistent baby in their arms, one with its fair share of growing pains, the lowest point of which perhaps being the aimless poppy drivel of 2014’s Shelter.

This, their first album in five years, attempts to unify the directions that the pair has pursued over the years. As the title alone suggests, you have their usual dreamlike

imagery and atmosphere faintly tying things together, but the contrast between each song’s approach is jarring enough for it to feel like a clumsy best-of, a puzzle made of pieces that don’t quite fit. “Améthyste” even goes as far as trying to bring back the blackgaze of their illustrious beginnings, half-hearted shrieks and all, only to be totally offset by the rather childish sad-anime-like (and Kodama-esque) vibe of “L’Enfant De La Lune.”

The highlight? As if wanting to make our own opinions inconsistent as well, it’s the poppy Shelter-y ballad, closer “L’Adieu,” the one that stops trying too hard and finally captures, with elegant simplicity, the beautifully fragile melancholy the rest of the album desperately reaches for—and mostly fails to achieve. —JOSÉ CARLOS SANTOS

ARÐ

7

Untouched by Fire PROPHECY

Chorused of equilibrium

Newcastle’s Arð, featuring Winterfylleth’s Mark Deeks as sole proprietor, didn’t get much attention when they hearsed out debut Take Up My Bones in 2022. In a way, it’s to be expected. Arð’s ecclesiastical-sounding doom burns slowly. New album Untouched by Fire furthers Deeks as Archbishop of expansive church organs, eulogy strings, chambered piano and Cantor-like vocals. The intersection of all that with processional, near-funeral doom—think Elend mixed with Tristitia, for example—generates an atmosphere of Gothic architecture, misty moors and teary-eyed longing. It’s a lot to take in for a world whose attention span is split-second short.

That said, Untouched by Fire is surprisingly more impenetrable, which suits Arð perfectly. Deeks teamed up with German mastermind Markus Stock (Empyrium, Sun of the Sleepless) to produce, and the outcome is predictably grand… if wearying. Opener “Cursed to Nothing but Patience,” sprawls outwardly in stone and velvet.

Presumably, Dan Capp of Wolcensmen’s blue notes pierce Deeks’ pint-bereft monk vocals, and when it slips into Robina Huy’s cello arrangement, Arð stands tall. Actually, larger than life.

Afterwards, Untouched by Fire is just as resplendent. The challenge, however, is surviving it.

“Name Bestowed” isn’t that far away from “Beset

by Weapons,” and the capstone “Casket of Dust” also occupies the same air. Much of that is Deeks’ vocal/choral delivery, which, while convincing, is monochromatic—anyone remember My Dying Bride’s Evinta? Thought not. Untouched by Fire is beautiful in its stately despair, but reaching beyond the cathedral walls will be herculean.

—CHRIS DICK

BAT

8

Under the Crooked Claw NUCLEAR BLAST

Get your wings

Motörhead put out new material for four decades, and I can honestly say that I didn’t really give a shit about anything released after about 1984. I tried, but nothing could replicate the Kilmister/Clarke/Taylor triumvirate in a way that interested me. And that’s okay. Just because a “favorite” band released 20 albums, it doesn’t mean you have to like all of them (or even the majority of them).

And what does this have to do with Richmond, VA speed metal merchants BAT? Well, it’s pretty clear that they have a musical sweet spot—NWOBHM circa ’79-’84—that informs their approach, and they do not deviate. Bassist/ vocalist Ryan Waste and guitarist Nick Poulos (of Municipal Waste) are obviously aware of the decades of music released since that golden era of metal, but they don’t wanna know.

This is why Under the Crooked Claw is such a blast (from the past). These dudes, along with new drummer Chris Marshall, are so dedicated to the music they love that it lends an authenticity to what they are doing. That may seem contradictory, but upon listening to this, you wouldn’t immediately go, This sounds just like Motörhead/Warfare/Atomkraft/Jaguar, even though you can see the influence. There’s a difference between imitation and worship that BAT understand.

Though they’ve released previous EPs and full-lengths, Under the Crooked Claw is BAT at their best. The songs, the production and the performances are all top-notch, as is the production of Arthur Rizk. The mix of trad metal and horrorinfluenced themes that pervades the 13 tracks is undeniable. These dudes probably aren’t spinning many Millennium-era Motörhead albums these days, but they clearly know the classics.

—ADEM TEPEDELEN

BOTANIST

5

Paleobotany PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS

Blossoming so far from the root

Nobody who tuned into Botanist’s debut black-grind mimicries back in 2011 could have predicted that the project would release what amounts to a bombastic prog-death platter just over a decade later. Those early recordings presented the sparse, lo-fi ravings of a man who was experimenting with new approaches to metal structures and sonic palettes. The percussive tonalities of Otrebor’s hammered dulcimer clattered against equally

frenetic drum hits, and the man’s tree-frog croak buzzed through the thorny spaces between.

Maybe Botanist’s trajectory has always been toward smoothing and tightening the sound— Doom in Bloom slowed and separated all the chaos, Mandragora used distortion effects to build up the depressive black metal density, and as the years and releases piled up, the songcraft became more interesting than the instrumental novelty—and viewed through that lens, it’s possible to see Paleobotany as a sensible outcome.

Still… wow. The combination of the lyrics’ scientific fidelity, the songs’ compositional constructions and Mar Stacey’s multimodal voice puts Paleobotany in some kind of neutral zone between geologically obsessed the Ocean and Death-via-jazz-fusion progsters Exist. Fans of either band who think they can hang with the admittedly acquired taste of the hammered dulcimer in place of a guitar should absolutely give this record a shot. For established fans of Botanist, though, Paleobotany is a bit of a dice roll. It does feel like a rational, updated blend of last year’s beautiful Selenotrope and the Collective records that came before it. But the vocal sincerity feels estranged from the grimy misanthropy of those earliest entries, and the lush arrangements have lost some of the brash individualism that gave Botanist so much distinctive character. —DANIEL LAKE

BRUME

7

Marten

MAGNETIC EYE

Grit and pearls

San Francisco sludge sect Brume formed in 2014, and during that decade they have enchanted regional and worldwide festival audiences alike. Known for inviting moments of brightness and beauty into the genre’s den of distortion, Brume’s songwriting is evocative and emotionally raw.

Their third LP continues the animal title motif with Marten, an adorable but resilient tundra weasel known for being a solitary creature with a prized pelt.

The album has been promoted as “doom pop”

by Magnetic Eye, which is basically shorthand for heavy guitars and clean vocals. But at times Marten sounds like the band’s least pop-oriented release, in terms of pace and accessibility.

Despite being undeniably heavier, 2019’s Rabbits was more direct. On Marten, Brume indulges melancholy in compositions that are spare and sullen. Strings were a great addition to their amazing song “Blue Jay,” so the addition of Giant Squid’s Jackie Perez Gratz (cello/vocals) is exciting and welcome. The result is rainy day anti-pop more than a radio-ready departure from Brume’s doom roots.

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The trio of talented vocals (Susie McMullan, Jamie McCathie and the aforementioned Gratz) are pristinely captured by Emma Ruth Rundle producer Sonny DiPerri. These are the cleanest of clean vocals, with each enunciated syllable clear as crystal. That doesn’t necessarily equate to a pop sensibility—even Lana Del Rey soaks her vox in reverb. Opener “Jimmy” is powerful, but surrenders heft to the underwhelming “New Sadder You.” With its dark religious commentary and brooding mood, “Faux Savior” would fit on Nick Cave’s Abattoir Blues. The album’s tone shift between the ethereal cheer of “Otto’s Song” and “How Rude” to the unsettling momentum-killer “Heed Me” could give you whiplash. Not every song works alone. But throughout the record, Brume adapt to new sonic terrain like the resilient marten. —SEAN FRASIER

CANDY

7

It’s Inside You RELAPSE

Got that industrial, streetcleaning life

Current-day frontrunners in the “carpet don’t match the drapes” band name sweepstakes—former title-holders include Manitoba cow-noise-punks Kittens and Japanese powerviolence crew Friendship—Candy’s third album storms out with a mechanized hardcore thrust betraying their moniker in a way Lush and Old Lady Drivers didn’t. Here, Pitchshifter and Integrity are seen through the eyes of kids who grew up on a combination of Nails and Korn; kids who will try and convince you that Illud Divinum Insanus has parts worth listening to. Kids who will never fail to sacrifice a decent chorus for anything that’ll open up a pit.

Lack of consistent hooks aside, It’s Inside You is compelling for a number of other reasons, not the least of which is its mix of temporal sounds. The title track, for instance, features a guest appearance from sonic cohorts Trash Talk, a furious jackhammering of Reign in Blood riff style, Broadrick-approved cymbal splashes, apocalyptic holy terror hardcore guitars, turntabling and a drum break that might as well be a “Funky Drummer” sample. Opener “eXistenZ” tears Infotainment? a new bunghole with black metal atonality and Clevo hardcore chug, and the Krautrock layers, industrial metal tunnel vision and backwards baseball cap groove inserted into the blasting beats of “Faith 91,” “Terror Management” and “Dreams Less Sweet” may not be refreshing, but they possess plenty of caustic explosiveness.

There’s a certain amount of charm throughout It’s Inside You that’ll go a long way in attracting the ears of those who spent the ’90s listening to Praxis, Kong, ICE, Idiot Flesh, Foetus and Faith 6 8 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

No More’s Angel Dust, but still can’t deny the adrenaline bump of triplet-picking rips and phat breakdowns. —KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

FÓRN

8

The Departure of Consciousness PERSISTENT VISION

Slow forever

As unsettling as it may be to reckon with the fact that 2014 was a full decade ago instead of, like, recently, time waits for no one—and along with its cruel passage comes reissues of records you’d swear you just bought the other day. Today’s blast from the recent past is an album I loved the first time around, but never really got the recognition it deserved. Persistent Vision Records clearly agrees, because they’re reissuing Fórn’s 2014 debut, The Departure of Consciousness, ahead of the band’s forthcoming new album.

It’s strange to revisit an album that a younger version of yourself spent a lot of time digesting (and even stranger to read your own words quoted back at you in the marketing materials).

“Rarely does a debut album spring forth from the womb so fully formed and vital,” I’d written in 2015, undoubtedly impressed with Fórn’s artful contributions to a subgenre generally considered so impenetrable that it’s often ignored by people who already like slow, heavy music. There may not be a huge market for pure funeral doom, but Fórn realized that if you keep the crushing riffs, ditch those romantic flourishes the Europeans love so much and rough it all up with a slick of sludge, the grimy grooves will lure listeners closer and closer to the void—and by then, it’s too late for them to claw their way back out.

TDOC moves along in a structured ebb and flow. The album is bookended by melodic instrumentals, but the best stuff is smack in the middle; “Gates of the Astral Plane” and “Suffering in the Eternal Void” are particularly strong and showcase the band’s deft use of tension to bludgeon and bruise. The overall craftsmanship is superb, and vocalist Chris Pinto’s agonized roars contrast beautifully with the mournful chords. Sonorous, elegant and thoroughly miserable, the album sounds as fresh as it did the day it was recorded. —KIM KELLY

THE HOPE CONSPIRACY

7

Tools of Oppression/ Rule by Deception D E AT H W I S H I N C .

Giving us yesterday today

Tools of Oppression/Rule by Deception is the first album by metallic hardcore powerhouses the

Hope Conspiracy in nearly 20 years, but they don’t sound like they’ve aged a day. Instead, during its brief but barbaric runtime, the album suggests that the passage of time itself is an illusion and nothing of consequence has changed since their previous efforts. And, in an awful sense, maybe they’re right.

The Hope Conspiracy’s formula consists almost exclusively of pummeling drums, hot ‘n’ crunchy guitar riffs and bellowing vocals. Though their recipe utilizes only a handful of ingredients, their dish is delicious and satisfying without feeling hoity-toity. It’s not meat and potatoes; it’s a steakhouse filet paired with roasted rosemary Yukon Gold and nutritious seasonal veggies.

Vocalist Kevin Baker is what kicks these songs up a notch. His roaring takes are so furious and wellenunciated that, if pressed, I might call him the best singer in the Boston hardcore canon.

But Baker’s delivery is powered by the righteous indignation of his lyrics, and the target of his ire remains the American war machine.

When we last heard from the Hope Conspiracy, America was ass-deep in a taxpayer-funded forever war in the Middle East, not to mention proxy conflicts on multiple fronts. As Baker correctly points out, not much has changed, except now we do it with flying killer robots. That’s fine fodder for gnarly music, but I’d gladly trade every riff in my collection for compassionate foreign policy. It sounds like Baker and company would, too. In that context, Tools of Oppression/Rule

by Deception is compelling, but it’s a consolation prize. —JOSEPH SCHAFER

LIMBONIC ART

7

Opus Daemoniacal KYRCK PRODUCTION & ARMOUR

In the solace of shadows

Three decades ago, Limbonic Art was a fledgling project formed by Vidar “Daemon” Jensen during Norway’s notorious black metal peak. When Moon in the Scorpio emerged in 1996, it was an hour-long debut of dark symphonic mania. Even though the album crawls from the shadows of Emperor’s In the Nightside Eclipse, 30 years later it still bursts with original ideas.

After the departure of foundational member Morfeus, the project slimmed down to a Daemon solo project. Despite some production gripes, 2010’s Phantasmagoria was a pitch-black melodic blast. Now it has been seven years since Spectre Abysm haunted listeners, and the project’s signature symphonic grandeur has largely faded. On Opus Daemoniacal, the titular member eschews the familiar while flexing a more muscular, guitardriven black metal style.

Ferocious opening track “Ad Astra et Abyssos” balances might and majesty, leaning into

Daemon’s melodic strengths. With no keyboards fighting for the spotlight, Jensen’s mix grants the guitars extra bite in “Deify Thy Master.”

The record doesn’t boast much tempo variation, but the back half of “Vir Triumphalis” is a rocksolid Bathorian stomp. Programmed drums have been used throughout Limbonic Art’s legacy of evil, and your mileage may vary for the plug-ins here. Blast beats are pretty much a percussive blur at this speed, but the cymbal samples are still an earsore.

As a black metal record, it has the requisite speed and snarling darkness. I miss the youthful bloat of their seminal symphonic offerings, but that’s clearly not what motors Daemon’s creative impulses at this point in the project’s threedecade deathtrip. With its relative minimalism and punchier production, I surmise Daemon achieved the album intended. Nostalgia be damned. —SEAN FRASIER

MORGUL BLADE

7

Heavy Metal Wraiths NO REMORSE

Fire from the shire

You don’t have to be a total swords ‘n’ sorcery dork to enjoy the Tolkien-esque world-building that Philly foursome Morgul Blade craft on second LP Heavy Metal Wraiths. Whether you know your Baggins from your Balrogs won’t hinder your ability to headbang along to the triumphal traditional heavy metal on display here.

Although clearly enunciated, the black metalsourced snarls that Morgul Blade favor to orate their ’80s-inspired anthems might be a sticking point for the older generation. In actuality, the vocals (which work in similar fashion to blackened heavy metallers Nite) invest the music with the right amount of grit and character to differentiate the band from many of their peers basking in the residual glow of the glory days of pure heavy metal escapism—particularly when they drop into a blasting surge, as heard on highlight “Frostwyrm Cavalry.” The push and pull between melodic orthodoxy (aided by synth-laden segues, some of which sadly zap energy from the album) and underground extremity is where Morgul Blade excel.

For instance, the grandiose clean vocals that frame “Widow’s Lament” contrast nicely with the previously unveiled Priestian power of “Beneath the Black Sails” or the galloping thunder summoned on “Spider God.” “Razor Sharp” and “Neither Cross Nor Crown,” meanwhile, bask in the heritage of U.S. power metal, though with the edge of extremity still gleaming in red and white flame like the blade of Narsil—and it’s here that Morgul Blade are at their current peak in terms of songwriting and execution. —DEAN BROWN

NOKTURNAL

6

Shades of Night P U LV E R I S E D

Black metal that shouldn’t be

Did you know there are 275 million people in Indonesia? And yet I think this may be the first band I’ve ever reviewed from there. It would be cool to hear more of them, but for right now, black metal debut Shades of Night pretty clearly lays out where the band excels and where they do not.

Without question, the best thing on here are the melodies. The record opens with a blastless instrumental that contains most of the choice elements and prepares the listener for how skillful these guys are with a tuneful riff. The vocalist does a totally serviceable reverbed-to-hell madman scream on everything, but the slower, catchier parts are truly their bread and butter, or whatever the equivalent foods are in Southeast Asia.

To say it more explicitly, the blacker the metal gets, the less interesting this record is. There are moments here that express a genuine devotion to the genre, but none of that is particularly noteworthy. However, when the band wanders off and plays whatever they want, it’s confident and compelling. Listen, this record ends with a pretty straight cover of a ’60s psych-rock song from tabla player Sam Gopal (which apparently featured pre-Hawkwind Lemmy), and it’s executed better than anything that requires tremolo-picking.

Nokturnal are a good band playing music that unfortunately works against them. On Shades of Night they’ve forged a partial, promising direction for their future selves. It won’t be very trve or kvlt, but it will likely be much better. —SHANE MEHLING

SUICIDE SEASON

6

Life, but in Reverse…

A LO N E

Benjamin Button feels seen

Suicide Season are a Portuguese duo that takes its cues from the stainedglass iconography of British death/doom and now call this scepter’d isle home. And although there is nothing in the biographies of Nuno Lima and Bruno Silva to better explain why they chose to move to the U.K., we’ll assume it was a career decision. Yes, Scandinavia has the winters, but gothic death/doom metal with a literary depth? There’s nowhere like Blighty.

It’s where you can sample life’s bleakness, swirl it around, savor the bouquet. Inhale deeply, and as though by magic, you have a spiritual appreciation of how the works of the Peaceville Trio came into being.

Not that Silva and Lima arrived uninitiated.

Silva’s work with Heavenwood betrayed a sound working knowledge of Draconian Times. He handles all instrumentation on this, Suicide Season’s debut. Lima inaugurated his death growl with Porto-based old-school death outfit Dementia 13.

He modulates between gruff existentialist sweet nothings and full-on death roar, Peter Mullanesque voiceover one minute, Chris Barnes the next.

Suicide Season build arrangements from familiar materials, sheet walls of guitar pierced by minor key melodies, synth pads abut überdoom guitars, all vibrating in pleasing frequencies. When it works, it can be powerful and majestic, akin to the spectacle of watching storm footage in super slo-mo. But it is derivative, perhaps symptomatic of a creative partnership that’s yet to blossom. And in an age of human experiences flattened by technology, where our discographies bulge with transcendental works of doom misery, you might ask yourself if that’s enough, if your melancholy deserves the prescription of something more baroque and radical, something stronger. —JONATHAN HORSLEY

SUMAC

8

The Healer THRILL JOCKEY

Prepare to be gob-Sumac-ed

You know when you have something you need to get off your chest, something that’s been seething within the cauldron of your mind a hair too long until some mild provocation goads you into finally spitting it out in one aggrieved, burst-mode litany? Well, Sumac ain’t like that. Sure, similar tensions and emotional turbulence might form The Healer’s sonic backbone, but the inevitable episodes of release peppered throughout the record are phrased in the form of measured, thoughtfully structured observations.

There’s no rush to a denouement here. The Healer’s liberal improvisational passages are tightly woven into the album’s structure and don’t read as a device engineered to provide eventual catharsis. Each movement, however tightly or disparately arranged, is an indispensable pixel within the context of the comprehensive work. In principle, this format should bring to mind outsider/arthouse extremists like Orthodox, Kayo Dot or Neptunian Maximalism.

However, The Healer’s contemplative nature and the systolic/diastolic relationship between its spontaneous inclinations and its calculated ones distinguishes it.

This isn’t a skirling, sonic waterboarding like 2018’s American Dollar Bill... and it’s a more evasive and tantalizing affair than May You Be Held. This is an excellent and important expression of Auslander doom. —FORREST PITTS D E C I B E L : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : 6 9

SVNEATR

6

Never Return PROSTHETIC

Do not look directly at the kitchen sink

Having been a fixture in the British Columbia underground for a decade, Vancouver’s Svneatr are hoping to bring their pick-and-choose anti-vowel-ism black metal to a wider audience via Never Return, their third fulllength and first for Prosthetic. We’re informed that this album was three years in the making and created beneath harrowing clouds of “personal and collective uncertainty” sparked by “an internal and external world in a state of paralysis” (read: the same shit everyone is experiencing). Svneatr’s solution is to do what musicians do and sublimate experience into a multihued embrace of metallic sounds. However, Never Return’s overall inconsistency drops the ball. As they dipsy-doodle from church-burning black metal and Dissection-esque melodics to meandering prog and Keebler elf soundscape folk, their failure to maintain common threads has songs losing the plot quicker than someone running from the Okanagan Bigfoot trips over tree roots.

It’s not all bad: “Mechanical Wolves” and the title track are awesome displays of their capability—sinister icy marches through blackened prog vistas resplendent with melodic atonality and heroic leads. But “Reaper of the Universe” puts the dangerously thin guitar tone and inconsistent mix in the spotlight as it imitates Darkthrone, Between the Buried and Me, Ulver, Fairport Convention and Yes in clunky, stilted blocks, while “... And When Comes the Storm” cleaves a decent proggy excursion with embarrassingly weak 4AD mimicking. Three years is undoubtedly a long time in the album-writing process, but when synthesizing ideas isn’t your strong suit, as in Svneatr’s case, putting too much into the pot has it all going to pot.

—KEVIN STEWART-PANKO

THOU

8

Umbilical SACRED BONES

For Thou about to rock

They say you can’t go home again, but Thou have yet to actually leave Louisiana. And on Umbilical, their first (unaccompanied) full-length in six years, they’ve written songs that sound like they were dredged out of the dankest bayous in Baton Rouge.

This is the first LP since the band’s collaboration with Emma Ruth Rundle, and it seems like a conscious decision to counterbalance not 7 0 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

just that record, but their acoustic release and the other dynamic-laden music they’ve experimented with in recent years. Opener “Narcissist’s Prayer” has an intro that is eerily reminiscent of Eyehategod’s Dopesick, and the band runs with that spirit for the rest of the album, heaping sludge on top of feedback on top of Bryan Funck’s nihilistic shriek.

If there is anything new, it’s on songs like “I Feel Nothing When You Cry” and “Panic Stricken, I Flee,” where another traditional genre component—hard-charging rock—is unabashedly embraced. Even that, though, doesn’t do much to change what the band has been since its inception: creators of down-tuned grotesqueries, pure ugliness with the sonic force of a brick house dropped from low orbit.

We may soon learn the real reason behind the title of the album, but Umbilical feels like an acknowledgment of the band’s connection to the sound and scene that has inspired so much of their discography. Anyone hoping for them to take a left turn into more uncharted territory may be underwhelmed, but for everyone else, it’s nice to welcome Thou back home.

—SHANE MEHLING

TOMBSTONER

7

Rot Stink Rip

REDEFINING DARKNESS

Rotting in the free world

Decades into music writing, I am more convinced than ever that we’re going about music criticism the wrong way, at least when it comes to death metal. While it makes sense to parse nuance and the finer points of theory when we discuss Death’s Symbolic or Atheist’s Unquestionable Presence, an entire metal universe deserves a more accurate calculus. So, this is how Tombstoner’s new album Rot Stink Rip will be judged.

• Do my antisocial tendencies rise five minutes into spinning the album?

• Will the authorities check my search history to see if I like this record?

• Does it alienate friends and family?

• Do the band members look like they are on a watch list?

• Does it terrify pets and wildlife?

The answer to this is an affirmative fuck yeah, bruh. If scientists could gather the perspiration, bowel movements and rank breath of a thousand neckbeards, then turn that putrid condensation into music, it would be this album. Imagine collecting every nasty patch vest at MDF in a bin, weaving them into a death metal quilt and draping it over the audience stinking wet with fetid late May Baltimoregrade B.O. This is Tombstoner. Mind you, these

are compliments. I don’t come to death metal seeking enlightenment; oblivion is much preferable. This might not get me there, but a long shower afterward is required.

Somewhere on the Internet on a shitty metal website or podcast right now, this album is getting four tombstones or four burning skulls.

Occasionally the incels get one right. Check your discretion at the door and enjoy; death metal is alive and well. —JUSTIN M. NORTON

TZOMPANTLI

8

Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force 20 BUCK SPIN

Tribes of new rot

Brian Ortiz has played in Xibalba, the punishingly heavy California death/ metal hardcore hybrid, for close to two decades.

He brought all those years of head-stomping experience into 2022’s Tlazcaltiliztli, the first full-length by his Aztec culture-inspired project, Tzompantli. (He did leave at least a few noggins uncrushed—the band is named for a rack used to display human skulls.) Despite its tantalizing excursions into eerie death/doom and use of Mesoamerican folk instrumentation, Tlazcaltiliztli was fundamentally a pummeling, straightforward death metal album. Still, it proved that Ortiz was onto something, and it clearly hinted at something bigger.

Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force is that something bigger. Tzompantli’s second LP hasn’t softened any of the brutality that Ortiz brought to Tlazcaltiliztli, but with the help of a 10-person army of collaborators, it’s built a more fully realized musical world around it. It’s a strident, martial album, one that captures the desperation and pride of the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples who fought to stave off the conquistadors. The traditional percussion—the “drums of ancestral force” named in the title—could sometimes feel like window dressing on Tlazcaltiliztli.

Those pre-Hispanic instruments, along with Ortiz’s chanted vocals, are at the very center of songs like “Tlacoc Icuic” and “Tetzaviztli.” It’s a difference that you feel as much as hear.

There’s also a pronounced mournfulness to Beating the Drums, especially in its back half.

Things didn’t end well for the Aztecs, and Ortiz sends them off with a series of smoldering dirges that rank among his finest recorded work. The album’s nine-minute closer, “Icnocuicatl,” is the best Tzompantli song yet. It nods to Evoken’s funereal death/doom and Incantation’s churning madness, but at its climax, it finds its way to an almost confrontationally simple, rhythmic riff. Ortiz knows when to listen to his instincts.

—BRAD SANDERS

by

EUGENE S. ROBINSON

JACOB + BANNON THE ART OF EIGHT LIMBS we

dig on disjunctions.

Finding out that Lemmy and Ozzy were what passed for good fathers in a metal context, you have to admit, was a pleasant surprise.

That David Lee Roth trained as a paramedic? Also, for reasons that are fairly obvious, we take a beat and reexamine what we know about what is known.

Mostly though, we’d guess, it’s because if you can do something well enough to get paid for it, why’d you muck around doing anything else?

Oh, yeah: for “fun.”

But that’s not why, when I hear that Nick Cave is into paintball, I smile. It’s just the images don’t line up, and if ever there was anything about Nick Cave that radiated “paintball,” I guess I missed it.

There are other ways to manage to not be surprised, and all of those ways exist in the same places that poker tells do. Those curious quirks, tics and giveaways that let you know just where you are when you’re there.

I had it for the first time when I saw that so-called trip-hop artist named Tricky.

7 2 : J U LY 2 0 2 4 : D E C I B E L

“He does Muay Thai,” I mentioned to a friend at the show where we both were seeing him for the first time.

“How do you know?” Outside of having spent two years studying it before I moved over to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, it was obvious. His stage moves were Muay Thai-based. Muay Thai, the art of eight limbs, those being punches, elbows, kicks and knees, has a distinctive set-up that, once seen, cannot be unseen.

Matt Pike from High on Fire? The last few conversations I had with him pretty much focused solely on his previous practice of Muay Thai.

Surprised? I wasn’t. Once seen… not unseen.

But that doesn’t place you beyond surprise. The first time my band OXBOW played with Converge was in Bordeaux, France. While I’d heard of them, I had not heard them, and when they took the stage that night, I watched from the wings as this rail-thin kid, the singer, threw himself around the stage with the kind of wild abandon that you don’t get from beer-drinking and smoking.

You only get that kind of wind from training cardio and you only

train cardio if… wait a minute.

Suspicions were aroused, and the second time I was lucky enough to see Converge, it had started to gel.

“CrossFit?” Nah. Nate Newton from Converge kind laughed at my struggle to peg the tell for his singer, Jacob Bannon.

“Cardio kickboxing?”

I was getting warmer. But after yoga, Pilates, Zumba? I tapped out.

Right before I got to the correct answer, which was staring me right in the face: Muay Thai.

Outside of feeling like a dummy, it all made sense to me. Though I had to wade through rumors that caused me to harass Jared Warren from Big Business as being a member of some shadowy fight club somewhere, this one seemed to hold some weight. So much so that I had to track him down to have it either confirmed or denied.

Singers are a weird breed, though. Warren was polite enough when I braced him for an answer, though not without making me feel like I was out of my mind. Which was always a possibility, and I was fine with that.

The times I had met Bannon, we did the singer thing, which

was to shift around uncomfortably like kids at a school dance and say nothing. But now I had an in, and in the middle of doing an article on Converge that I was writing for some digital news site, I just asked him. And he answered. And in a surprise that should have not surprised me at all, he did indeed train in Muay Thai.

A more than cursory examination of his social media sort of looked like mine, too, with lots of photos of him standing with guys with cauliflowered ears and lean, hungry looks.

In the interview he was more than open, and we talked easily about it. A friend texted in the middle of the interview, though, and asked if I knew that he was also a mixed martial arts (MMA) ref.

Which I asked him about almost immediately. And he answered that he was/is. Damn, it feels good in this world of the woefully predictable to have shit that still manages to surprise.

So, hecklers, beware: You wise off at a Converge show and it’s your fault and (likely) fracture.

Which is, as it should be, totally unsurprising.

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