A quick return after their debut EP earlier this year, Mana Diagram set Moonlight Desire as their first full-length effort to close out 2024. Grabbing influences from the power metal spectrum and bringing it together with some more modern and genre-blurring elements was the idea that Light of the Destiny led with, and Moonlight Desire continues to capitalize on that particular sound to thrust them into their own niche within the genre.
Those familiar with vocalist Uyu and guitarist Mayto’s previous work in Hagane (which has since more or less ‘restarted itself’) should be able to dig right into what Mana Diagram is doing. There’s plenty of classic power metal shredding and energy to be had within their sound. “Desire” opens with plenty of big riffing energy and urgent speed to grab the listener’s ear. It’s groovy and hooky, and it feels a bit on the modern side of things, but it’s prioritizing of the riffing over the occasional synth injections, and Uyu’s soaring vocals keep it very palatable for those seeking something more grounded in power metal traditions. While the gang vocals of “Trigger” evoke a different feeling, but it’s quickly enveloped by some vicious shredding and frantic drums as the tempo leaps forward. A scorching solo as the song progresses hits all of the marks for being flashy without too flashy, weaving in some nice melodies. It’s an exceptional track that really nicely blends melody with a raging metal backbone.
The group’s instrumental prowess is really showcased by the instrumental “The Moonlight Shines,” which gives Yusuke’s basswork a more prominent role to stand out. The second half of the album seems to be where the band stretches the metal boundaries a bit more, and melodies are employed to a greater degree overall. “KuwazuGirai” has a very melodic tone, both instrumentally with it’s lead guitarwork as well as the shining chorus which sees a more emotive Uyu at the helm. “WarewareBakuretsuParty” effectively blends the power metal epicness and gives it a more modern melodic leg to stabilize itself on. Likewise “Solid Guitar” offers some ballad-esque moments and injects some groove and shred into the mix for a fun blend of sounds. To close things is an acoustic version of their first single, “Glitter Wind,” which let’s Uyu again stand at the forefront with her vocals with maximum emotion. It’s a nice, reflective way to end the album.
Mana Diagram have really primed themselves to make a mark in the scene with Moonlight Desire. The balancing of melody, shred, and modern grooves makes for an exciting mix of sounds that can hook new listeners as well as those seeking more of a thoroughly metallic experience. Look for them to spread their wings even further as we reach into 2025.
French gothic metal band The Old Dead Tree arrived on the scene in 1997 – releasing three studio albums during the 2000s that made an impression on a global scene looking for more emotionally-driven material. The debut album The Nameless Disease hit especially home for the group, as the concept record paid tribute to Frederic Guillemot, who tragically committed suicide in 1999 at the young age of 22. The band would first dissolve in 2009 due to personal and musical differences – reuniting a couple of times in the 2010’s for festival appearances, plus a final EP release The End in 2019.
Seventeen years beyond the last studio album The Water Fields, we are fortunate to have the fourth full-length Second Thoughts. Stirring songwriting that reflects the band’s depth of creativity, the tracks can be heavier at times, reflective in others – always touching the depths of your mind, body and soul. We were able to speak to guitarist/vocalist Manuel Monoz and guitarist Nicolas Cornolo regarding the concerns going into the long break between records, how the songwriting process worked in a collaborative sense this go around, video work, what being on Season of Mist means to the group, career highlights, and also career advice for younger musicians.
Dead Rhetoric: Second Thoughts is the fourth full-length album for The Old Dead Tree. Given the lengthy time between records and occasional stop/starts that occurred in the interim, what was the thought process behind the new record? Did you have any worries, fears, or concerns of how this record would stand up next to the previous discography you’ve created?
Manuel Monoz: Oh yes, actually a lot. Before we recorded this album, we released and recorded one single by May 2023 – the song is called “Terrified”, and it really says a lot about how we felt. I was afraid of many things – that we couldn’t compose as good of material as we did before, I was afraid there was no more audience for us that would listen to our music. I was afraid that no record company would be interested in what we were going to compose. The main thing I was afraid of was the risk of ruining our friendship when we stopped the band for the first time in 2009. It took years to rebuild the friendships that we had back then. They are precious, and I didn’t want to risk anything about this.
Nicolas Cornolo: It was different for me because I wasn’t in the band back then. I was already friends with a couple of the members, including Nicolas (Chevrollier) in other projects. I had followed the guys in this band for a very long time. I needed to find my place within this friendship. Friendships change with the end of the band, and now we’ve had time to rebuild these friendships. There are sometimes choices to be made. My concern was to find my place in this band, and if I can make things stronger. To bring some ideas to the band, and I think I succeeded because we are here. Manuel is right, it’s difficult to make music after all this time. I was a fan before being in the band. I don’t want to make a fake comeback, there is a strong legacy for this band. We are very happy with the first response to this new album, and Season of Mist was the first to say to us that this was a great album and that they support us with this.
Dead Rhetoric: Did that acceptance of the “Terrified” single last year give the band confidence going forward with the rest of the material that you were working on for this album?
Monoz: Yes. We could see what we were really made of, nowadays. The friendships are the backbone of this band. We formed this band back in 1997. We felt very proud to compose a song together that was very consistent, very good. It was a huge challenge to develop music that still connects to what we’ve done fifteen or twenty years ago, and who we are now. I think we were able to succeed with this song, and with this album later.
Cornolo: It was the first time that Manuel and Nico played the song for the rest of the band, it was obvious that this was a single. It seemed very obvious, that it should show the path of things to come, like now.
Dead Rhetoric: Which songs either during the creative or recording process immediately stood out to you as strong efforts for this record – and were there any specific tracks that maybe took a little longer or took on the greatest transformation from initial idea to what the listeners hear on the final output?
Cornolo: I will try to make it short because I could talk about this topic for hours. The song “Fresh Start”, that song along with “I Wish I Could” and “The Trap” are a trilogy of songs, don’t move a lot. There are songs where we fought a bit in the band, to find our form of the song. There were debates about which singles to premiere. There was a lot of work on “Don’t Waste Your Time” and other songs. There were songs that were very natural to develop like “Solastalgia” or “The Worst Is Yet to Come”. We love a lot of different styles, and we didn’t want to mess with the recipe for The Old Dead Tree. When you listen to the songs, the back stories are important.
Monoz: There is a lot of care in the songwriting. There are chances that when we compose that there can be some spontaneity. Before one of us proposes the song, we have three composers in the band. We always try to go through all the problems that we may have in the arrangements. Because we don’t live in the same area anymore, it’s very difficult for us to get together and rehearse or talk often about the songs. Most of the time there were no big debates. “Without a Second Thought” was a difficult song to achieve, it had many versions, and we had different visions concerning the song. Like Nicolas, it’s one of my favorite songs on the album now. I am proud of “Solastalgia” because I did that song by myself. It was naturally touched by the others, but I have never composed a song quite like this one. It’s quite difficult to choose amongst the songs, it’s like choosing your children.
Cornolo: There is something special when Manuel sings these songs and the other Nico plays his guitar, there are two things which give The Old Dead Tree touch to those songs. It’s great for me as a composer, to see these two guys and two personalities, when they add their skills, we know if it will make the songs better.
Dead Rhetoric: How did the guest session vocalists come about – and what do you enjoy most about the talent and abilities they offered to color the record even more fully for those tracks?
Monoz: This was the first time we decided to have some guest singers on an album. We played a show with the band S.U.P., which has one of the guest singers we decided to have on the album, Ludovic Loez. They are quite known in France, but maybe not as well known abroad. It’s a very cult band, they were inspirational on the first wave of French death metal, that movement during the 80s. They’ve changed their name and style, and they have made some very interesting Avant-garde metal. It happened that we had never played together during our years together. It was quite obvious that we had to work together one day. We played together a year ago, and it was obvious that we had this connection right away. You have never met the person, but it feels like family. We also found another singer, T.C., who is in a black metal band called Regarde Les Hommes Tomber, they are growing here in Europe. He was a big fan of The Old Dead Tree when he was in high school. Both of the guys gave an outstanding performance. We composed things for them that fall in line with their skills, they recorded the vocals by themselves, and we were very happy with the results. It paints another color for the record.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve released three videos to date for the record – do you enjoy developing the visual side of the band, and where do you see the importance of this medium in promotion of the record?
Cornolo: For us it’s something that’s very important. We live in a world where imagery and communication are very important. We have the chance to work with people that have known the band for over twenty years, like the director Julien Metternich. We trust him for his vision. He proposed to us different concepts and we worked with them. We did three videos for the album. The videos can be very powerful for the band and for other people. There are a lot of people that tell us that these are beautiful videos. We have had 150,000 people view them in a couple of months. We are artists, we are ourselves on stage, and we need to communicate the visuals, and what the band is about with these videos. We have had good feedback about these videos. I think the videos cost us more than the recordings (laughs).
Monoz: The director always takes some parts of the lyrics to go within the storyline. It’s interesting for us to see another vision of what we compose. It’s impossible now to imagine producing an album without a video. We invested so much in the album and so much in the videos, it helps us to get known by everybody.
Dead Rhetoric: How does it feel to be still on Season of Mist this many years later? Have you watched the growth of the label since the last record and this new one?
Monoz: It became more complicated! (laughs). I have too many people to communicate with now. Now they have offices in France, the Netherlands, the US. You have to choose carefully who you want to send information to, to be sure the right person gets it. We have a strong relationship with the label. They really love the band. That’s why you can say these guys are doing this for the right reasons. We will never be an enormous commercial hit. There is a strong and trustful relationship with the label. We are semi-normal people, we still have the same technical stuff, the same core people. It means a lot to us that we are loyal to people and people are loyal to us.
Dead Rhetoric: When looking at your musical career with The Old Dead Tree, what do you consider some of the personal highlights – either specific albums, tours, festival appearances, or other events when you knew you were making an impact with your art to touch people and garner deeper critical acclaim/respect?
Monoz: It’s a strange timeline actually. The story of the band – we lost our drummer two years after we created the band, he killed himself. We were really good friends, hanging out every day, and it almost broke us. It really impacted the band; it had a huge impact on the way we compose music and the way that we see life. We saw the value of this band. We worked for three years on the composing of the first album The Nameless Disease. This album is about the way I dealt with that death of our friend. We had a huge success with this album, we were a very underground band who sold 1,000 copies of our demo. All of a sudden, we were playing abroad, it was a bit like a fairytale. I was convinced back then we were the best band in the world, because of this success. We had our own tour, and the album that followed The Perpetual Motion was my favorite of all these days. But maybe Second Thoughts is my new favorite. We started to play festivals: Hellfest in France, it was a big festival. In 2009 we stopped the band, we were exhausted. We had kids, wives, a family life, small jobs besides the band and we could not keep things in rhythm.
That’s when we decided to come back when our families were settled in. We decided to compose something new. We gathered again and we wanted to put things back artistically to the way things were before. The feedback we had, we worked with the same people for decades, it really helped the band.
Dead Rhetoric: What fuels your desire to create, compose, and play music? Do you have equal affinities for playing live music as well as recording songs in the studio?
Cornolo: When it comes to creation, I just can’t explain it. Songs are coming, inspiration, we always have a lot of music within us. The process of creating something, for me it’s natural. When we have to share our ideas, it’s work. For the live side of the band, now that we are a five-piece band, it’s great. We are a great live band. Each time we play live, we choose to channel different emotions to the audience. Today, we love to do both from the studio side and play live. The studio side was difficult, we are far from each other, it was more of a logistical maze and a puzzle to fit together. When we are on stage, we are more than the five of us. We create something that is bigger than us. I think today I prefer to play live.
Monoz: For me, the composing part is my favorite. I really love to work on these compositions with the guys. We are far better as a live band now without me playing guitar than we were before.
Dead Rhetoric: Do younger musicians ever ask for your advice when it comes to music or the business side of things – and if so, what words or ideas do you try to impart upon them?
Monoz: We are not a very famous band from the commercial side of the world. Try to make music that people want to hear. Try to make music that you want to make. That’s the first thing – you have to develop your own personality. It’s always messy in the beginning. You get together, and you have to go through this step to build your first set of songs. After that, now you have your own ideas, you have your own way to express your own ideas, what do people want to hear? How can I make my ideas become songs, and not only titles? How can I make something really consistent, from the beginning to the end? The small details make the difference from an artistically successful band and just good ideas thrown on an album. Think in steps, and be true to yourself.
A random Spotify recommendation caught this scribe’s eyes when going to put on some music, and Gore-Girl Project turned out to be quite the diamond in the rough. What initially seemed like a VTuber project turned out to be a multi-faceted, genuine metallic article with a surprising number of high-profile guests (for those aware of the Japanese scene at least) and an impressively diverse number of tracks that run the gamut from slamming, brutal death metal to power metal to jpop and blurring the lines in between.
Gore-Girl Project stands out because of it’s unique blend of different influences that span it’s tracks. One of the album’s strongest tracks, “Death Penalty” opens with an anime-ish upbeat synth only to instantly drive firmly into brutal death metal riffing and blastbeats. Featuring guttural lows and slamming riffs, it’s an impressively heavy onslaught with a surprising amount of catchiness…until Uyu (Mana Diagram) storms in with some upbeat vocals and danceable synths take the song in a completely different direction. It’s a bit shocking, but in the best way. “Crimson Violator” soars with epic, blasting power metal energy blurred with melodic death courtesy of vocals from KOKOMI (Fate Gear) and Eugenics Scarlet Divinity. Toss in a fiery solo and it’s a ripper of a track.
“Coagulation” brings some sonic battery and raging death metal behind it, complete with gurgled vocals, but some female cleans give it a few moments of restraint amidst the chaos. A fun, ‘don’t blink or you’ll miss it’ cover of Napalm Death’s “You Suffer” featuring Fate Gear serves as a nice wink and nod to the heavier moments. Meanwhile, “Blasted Blue” is laced with jpop/idol elements with a good chunk of the heaviness removed, sans some energetic drumming and riffs subtly sitting below the synthwork. The closer “Meteorstorm” fuses those modern electronic elements with a heavier backbone to push the track into a futuristic feeling, bolstered by a catchy chorus, to finish the album on.
Coregula feels very much like a beautifully woven together passion project. From the grim, almost guro-styled artwork of the cover, to the eclectic musical diversity that springs from track to track, it’s clear there was a lot of thought and effort into putting together a unique vision and concept that blends heavy metal, anime, and more. Gore-Girl Project is a welcome discovery for anyone seeking something totally outside the box that pulls from much of metal’s greatest elements and merges it with a dark yet kawaii aesthetic.
A Swedish quintet with ties to acts like October Tide, Centinex, and Interment beyond live experience with Katatonia and Entombed A.D. under their belts, Moondark originally developed a couple of demos in 1993 and 2015 respectively. Guessing that good things take time to gel (or just finding the right opportunity/time to strike), we finally arrive at the group’s debut full-length for The Abysmal Womb. Steeped in 90s-style riffing, tones, and atmosphere, these eight songs straddle the greatness of doom/death that encompasses both stateside and European elements to convey a crushingly heavy sound.
The despair seething through the growls and sadistic screams of vocalist Alexander Högbom can’t be missed while the low churning riffs plus slower rhythm section parts thump your chest – as opener “Where Once Was Life” sets the mood with its mixture of Crowbar-like moodiness next to early Crematory / Cathedral heaviness. Every riff evolves in its own fashion, the five-piece using subtle dynamic tricks to keep ears on alert. The occasional thick use of the rumbling bass by Allan Lundholm sets up death-oriented sequences where drummer Kennet Englund can flex a bit more of his double kick groove-driven flair – working to symbiotic perfection on “Palliative Dusk”. The foundational riffs along with tasty mini-breaks or circular runs from guitarists Johan Jansson and Mattias Norrman never disappoint – every nuance logical in terms of phrasing to execute the next depressive musical montage. One listen to the savage, slow intensity for “Sterile Earth” or the devilish bellows throughout “Beyond Darkness” speak volumes to the doom/death axe ambiance in full effect, a raw purity driving a stake into the heart of all underground metalheads. Intertwining songs of average four to five-minute lengths with the occasional seven to almost eight-minute epics, these musicians serve the right balance between adequate songwriting mechanics in this style to serve each track’s individual needs without overburdening the proceedings.
It’s not very often that you find artists who started a band in the early 90s returning to that same form thirty plus years later convincingly. That’s what you’ll hear from Moondark on this record. Sincere execution on The Abysmal Womb should lead most listeners into a path craving more material hopefully released in a timely manner.
Quickly popping up with tremendous buzz, Gore. surfaced at the end of 2023 with “Pray” and then again with “Doomsday” in January of this year. Their cinematic, striking visuals and effective merger of heavy metallic elements with nontraditional melodic ones caught many ears, and to no surprise, they signed with a label and announced their first EP, A Bud That Never Blooms. We caught up with guitarist Alex Reyes and bassist Devin Birchfield to discuss the band’s beginnings and vision, their first tour, signing with Spinefarm, and more!
Dead Rhetoric: How was your first tour? Any big takeaways for the future?
Alex Reyes: There’s a few things, as far as touring. Not bringing as many covers and blankets. It just occupied a lot of space. Honestly, overall it was just a great experience. I have toured before with previous bands and this was a little bit different because it was like, ‘get there, set up, there’s no fucking around.’ It’s straight business. When I was younger, it was like vacation and like, “Let’s just go play shows!” This was more like, it’s time to get down to business.
Devin Birchfield: This was my first tour so it was all new. But my biggest takeaway was that I overpacked. So I’ll probably skip out on some stuff in the future to save space in the van. Lugging around my giant suitcase every day sucked [laughs]. Overall though, I think it went really well! Don’t trust the hotels when you book a room I guess? We learned that lesson!
Reyes: That’s a story in and of itself right there! We were tired.
Birchfield: It was a long day. We finished loading out in Dallas and it was around midnight or 1AM, and we rolled into San Antonio around 6AM and showed up at our hotel just for them to tell us that they had no availability or rooms. We also don’t have a booking with your name on it. I said, “you took our money.” So we called around trying to find any hotel with space. We found one, drove there, only to find the same exact experience [laughs].
Reyes: We just wanted to go to sleep. To go to bed for a few hours.
Birchfield: It wasn’t great, but there was a Walmart parking lot there. It builds character.
Reyes: We called a bunch of other hotels and they were all sold out. We found out it was sold out because of Comic Con in town. You can only guess at how sour our faces were.
Birchfield: That’s when we were like, let’s go to Walmart. I bought some mouthwash and did a birdbath in the bathroom and went to bed [laughter].
Dead Rhetoric: Could you discuss the concept of ‘emotional gore,’ as I’ve seen it in some other interviews you have done recently?
Reyes: Emotional gore is basically not just talking about the physical representation of bloody gore, but it’s the inner turmoil that one has when they are going through certain points or situations in life, where you know that storm is brewing. It’s emotional. It’s ugly. It’s not pretty to look at, but it’s in you. It’s emotional gore that comes from whatever life throws at you. That’s what we as a band are trying to personify in art.
Birchfield: Those deep emotions that maybe you aren’t super comfortable talking about, putting a sound and feeling to those and trying to convey it through music.
Dead Rhetoric: Could you discuss the band’s use of color? Is it deliberate in terms of the color palette?
Birchfield: The idea was kind of like to contrast the sludgy, gross stuff with some pretty, floral stuff. We wanted to kind of mix those together.
Reyes: When you hear a name like Gore, you think of the heaviest metal in the world, where it’s hard to read where it says whatever the name is, we wanted to give the people a bit of a juxtaposition. It’s really pretty. The colors are very vibrant. We as a group love different color palettes: pink, purple, magenta. These are all color palettes that we really enjoy and love. Plus, we are all used to the ‘everything black.’
Dead Rhetoric: I do feel that the metal scene in general could use some more color. There’s so much black. It’s to the point where you are in the scene where the question can be asked, “Do you really need another black tshirt?” Some people, sure! But it’s nice to see a band embracing the other colors and being forward about it.
Birchfield: To that point, I think bands are latching onto that too. We had a pink hoodie we were selling on tour and it was selling like hotcakes. It’s not something you’ll necessarily see every day at a metal show, but I love it.
Reyes: That’s definitely true. That pink hoodie was so rad, not going to lie. We also had some shirts in there, but the hoodie was selling like Devin said, like hotcakes.
Dead Rhetoric: Along with the color palette, could you specifically talk about the cover? I feel like it’s a great example of how you use the contrasting colors.
Birchfield: I’m not sure if Haley [Roughton] had something specific in mind, since she kind of workshopped that with our visuals guy. But to me, it kind of represents that we kind of look our best on the outsides – the flower and the background looking beautiful. But when you look at it, you see these gross, drippy sludgy things coming off of it. That’s those real emotions coming through that we all have. To me, that’s what it speaks to.
Reyes: We may seem fine on the outside, everything might look great, but on the inside there is that emotional piece that seeps out. If you think of the flower as the human body or consciousness, it’s a sludge drip of those emotions seeping out. That’s how I envision it and relate to it.
Dead Rhetoric: When you are making songs feel different from one another, what do you feel is the core of Gore’s sound?
Reyes: I would say it’s just straight vibes. Whether it is a different song feel or sound, I think the vibe is still the same.
Birchfield: Each song has its own emotion to represent it and I think that’s the overarching theme. If it’s going to be heavy, we are going to get heavy with it. But if we want something super pretty and beautiful, that’s what we do. That’s the biggest thing. Each song is meant to convey an emotion or an experience. Rather than stick to a genre or specific sound, it’s more about representing those feelings.
Dead Rhetoric: This is your first release as Gore. What do you hope people take away from the EP?
Reyes: I just want people to take away that we have range. We aren’t just a one-genre type of band. Of course, at the core of the group we are metalcore, but we don’t mind venturing off into various types of music. I just want people to take away that. We aren’t just a metal band playing metal music, we also like to veer off and see where the music takes us.
Birchfield: I just hope that people find some sort of takeaway that they can connect with. If you are in the metal/rock realm, there is probably something in the EP that you are going to like. I hope people can connect somehow. We have gotten some messages that a song has helped them through “x, y, z thing” and it’s super heartwarming to me that our art can help someone else like that.
Dead Rhetoric: It seems like you as a group are pretty good at ‘playing the social media game,’ which not a lot of bands are, currently. How do you use social media to try to grab new fans?
Birchfield: At the heart of it, social media is there for engagement with fans. It’s hard to gauge a specific social media plan. We have done it pretty well, but there is an element of just putting videos out there and seeing that they do well. We will put some out, saying they are the worst video we ever made, and the algorithm picks it up and there’s 200,000 views so we are like, “I guess they liked it” [laughs]! So there is a little method to the madness in consistently posting and making sure you engage with the fans in comments – that’s crucial. I don’t know that there is a hard rule, like having to put out a specific type of video. We try to try different things there.
Reyes: If only we knew what the algorithm was thinking. It would be so much easier! It would take the guessing game out of it.
Dead Rhetoric: Going along with that, what are the challenges of building up a new band so that people will pay attention to you when there are so many things going on through social media and everything else?
Birchfield: The internet’s attention span is [so small], so being a new band and trying to be strategic about what we put out – if we just dumped all five songs out last December no one would care. It wouldn’t get to people. One of the hard parts is that we put a song out, people liked it, and then we have to keep promoting the same one over and over. People ask where the new stuff is and we say we are working on it. But we have to play the game spacing it out, so that it actually reaches people. Now that we have an EP out, we can promote multiple songs – it’s a little bit easier. Specifically, when we were in that gap between releasing “Doomsday” and waiting for the label announcement, it was particularly rough. People were like, “what’s going on?”
Reyes: I had people, an old engineer acquaintance hit me up. I hadn’t worked with this guy in like almost 10 years. He messaged me saying that he had heard the two songs and asking when the next one was dropping. I’m like, “where did you come from?” and was like, “it’s coming soon!” He was like, “I just want it – when it is coming out!”
Birchfield: Most of the time, we were like “I don’t even know!”
Reyes: A lot of it is when things derailed, in a sense. When the label got involved. We had to play the long game and ‘blueball’ the people [laughter]. We just kept edging them on.
Birchfield: It’s like…’big things coming soon!”
Dead Rhetoric: So all five songs were done before you released “Pray” last year. How deliberate was it that you chose that song out of the five possible?
Reyes: We kind of just wanted to ‘come at you very hard and in your face’ in that song. It’s in your face. It also has an amazing hook. It’s one of the heaviest songs we have, and also, you are going to be singing it…a lot in your head.
Birchfield: It’s a good mix of what we have going. There’s some pretty stuff there, but it starts off right out the gate really heavy. It can grip people with the chorus.
Reyes: With “Doomsday” we threw a curveball. It sounds like it’s going to be heavy as hell, but next thing you know, boom – it’s got clean guitar and very pretty. Then we still hit you in the face with some heavy guitars. It was more of a build-up. It was like, ‘reverse “Pray.”’
Dead Rhetoric: Some pretty heavy lyrics on that one too!
Reyes: We were like, “man, I don’t know how people are going to take it!”
Birchfield: Honestly, most people didn’t really comment on it as much as I would have thought.
Reyes: I’m happy because one of the interviews that we did with a podcast, they really got it. It’s about the desensitization of humans to everything. It’s really talking about us as humans being desensitized through social media to violence, and the negative nature of humans. It’s really painting that picture. But you would never get it unless it’s really in your face with that opening line.
Dead Rhetoric: In terms of having a label come in, what ultimately made you go with Spinefarm?
Birchfield: Honestly, it just felt right talking with the team. They seemed genuinely excited and trusting with our vision. They weren’t going to turn us into ‘whatever they want.’ They are very excited for us to do our thing and help us along with that journey. That really got me excited. I got in there and they were really amped up to get in there and see how they could help.
Reyes: Spinefarm was really down for us. We have had talks with other labels before Spinefarm, and each one was like, trying to gas us up and get us to go with them. With Spinefarm, it felt more genuine. They thought our vision was amazing and wanted to build on it. They aren’t going to try to enclose us in a bubble. They wanted to see what we are talking about. They have really been helping us out.
Dead Rhetoric: It’s to your credit that you have such a distinct vision this early on with the band. I remember finding Gore. a few days before “Doomsday” and there’s a very distinctive flavor. It’s not often that you see that with a newer act. There’s often some flailing, but you have seemed to have locked in on what you want.
Reyes: We did a lot of brainstorming when we first started. We didn’t want to be a typical band that looks cool and ‘we are hard.’ There was attention paid to the planning and visuals and the marketing when it was time to write the songs. We put a lot of time in the mixing/mastering and the songwriting. We wanted to give each song it’s day. I think we were able to do that.
Birchfield: We were starting out as a new band, but it’s like, what if we gave everything the same care as we would to a seasoned project? Why not just spend your time on the little details, because in the end it all adds up. The color palette, the story, how we do music videos, mixing/mastering, all that. We really wanted to come out of the gate really representing the vision we had in our heads. Not necessarily that ‘we want to look so pro’ but we wanted to do justice to the vision we had in our heads.
Dead Rhetoric: Lastly, what’s in the future for the band after the EP?
Birchfield: We are going to be writing a lot, into the end of the year. We will be doing a lot more of that. There’s no shows lined up yet, but there’s going to be a ton of that too next year.
Reyes: Yeah, a lot of writing music, but we’ll see what happens with shows. But that’s pretty much what’s going on now. We are excited. The stuff we have been working on sounds great. It’s also very much Gore. Prepare to be Gore-ifed [laughter].
Some may remember us speaking about an up-and-coming Italian death metal band Kaivs last year when we reviewed their EP Horrend, and having an in-depth conversation with the band to boot. The quartet showed plenty of promise in said first release, encapsulating an unfiltered celebration of death metal’s fundamentals. Since then, we’ve been curious as to what they may put together for their debut full-length. Wait no longer, as the deathly horde has bestowed After the Flesh on our rotting ears.
The tried-and-true raging Dismember-esque chainsaw tone is revved up, with the band cutting down whatever hapless object that may be obstructing their path. “Koshercannibal” buzzes forth with a shredding riff that calls back that 90s Stockholm sound incessantly. The track pulsates with intent, maliciousness, and a direct, pacey trajectory. “Beyond the Autopsy” continues the frenzy, opting for a briefly slower start before ramping up into grimy, determined roars via vocalist Max Foam’s gritty, coarse voicings and axe wielder Tiziano Mortician’s wailing rhythms, finishing with a death/doom pacing that’s ominous and definitive.
Cuts such as “ For Satan Your Flesh for God Your Soul” ruminate in an Entombed-inspired groove, highlighted by drummer Leonardo Sastro’s and bassist Jacopo Simonelli’s coordinated low end pummeling, and Foam’s commanding groan. The influx of the HM-2 tonality is the focal point of Kaivs’ sonic projection, rending the hapless listener gnarled and disoriented, riff after riff.
The second half of After the Flesh mainly contains re-workings of the three songs contained on the band’s Horrend EP. The fuzzy, churning “Krushing All Altars” – Mortal Kombat anyone? – resides as one of the most distorted offerings on After the Flesh, whilst “Sepulchrist” adds an ironic quotation of a bible verse about eternal life before unleashing a rumbling, ominous Entrails-meets-doom sort of mashup that was the highlight of said EP, with this recording adding significant presence in comparison to the original. “Blasphemer After the Flesh” coordinates proceedings back to a feverish forward romp before signing off via the similarly fervent “Horrend.”
The production is louder and more robust than the EP, with a molasses-thick, grinding, volatile sound profile that fits their highly specific sound profile. An improvement would be for the drums to be a little less washed out and prominent, as they could add additional heft and dynamism if more discernible from the rest. Visually, the artwork by Juanjo Castellano screams a Like an Ever Flowing Stream influence, but in a horrific cave setting, giving a matching aesthetic to the band’s vehement sound.
Kaivs’ heart definitively resides in the early 90s scene, and After the Flesh is a solid homage to that most classic of death metal sounds that no doubt will have influence over the genre forever. What would make the record resonate even more would be if the band leaned into their more spacious, death/doom side to add additional variance to their dense, meaty outputs. More of that and some production tweaks could really see Kaivs make a statement within the now very crowded death metal landscape. For now, After the Flesh is an album that shows a band that has the chops, gnarly riffs, and instrumental talent in spades that know how to tear limb-from-limb by way of the truest of time-honored death metal paradigms. In our book, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Already on this scribe’s radar in the early days through their self-released debut EP Deaf Nite back in 2018, Polish thrash band Pandemic arrive on the Dying Victims Productions roster for this second full-length Phantoms. Gaining Filip Worek on drums in 2022, the band continue to develop a sound that can be very forward-thinking in terms of power and speed, injecting the best elements of melody and hooks yet never wavering in its main thrash stance. As such, these eight songs pack a mighty wallop thanks to a hefty, beefy bass propulsion that next to primal rhythms and heroic lead breaks should keep followers headbanging incessantly while chanting in unison to the slower segments that harken back to traditional European/NWOBHM-oriented aspects of the early 80s.
When the quartet throw in progressive stop/start riffs, Filip’s tempo control injects that foundation to allow guitarists Marcin Konieczny and Wiktor Lobarzewski ample space to drive the riffs to the stars, beyond circular runs that contain Angel Witch / Iron Maiden-esque twists (bassist/vocalist Gniewko Jelski a third key musician to up that ante). Check out all the musical exploration within “Bane of Brook Hall” which features a guest vocal assist from fellow Polish speed metal singer Mayheer of Pursuer, a gallop-fueled affair rich in harmonic, epic textures – the leads elevating excitement in the right spaces, while Gniewko’s main vocal delivery carries the right energy in mid-range to slightly higher spots. A Latin musical intro soon gives way to more driving triplet rhythm riff madness for “Santa Muerte”, the gang background vocals aiding the dynamic musical underpinning while the semi-blasting spots work next to this adventurous, winding progressive-oriented arrangement. Smartly mixing up the track listing to execute more straight-ahead bashers like the title cut and the anthem-oriented “The Last Road”, boredom will be the last think on one’s mind taking in this material – there’s plenty of information to absorb from a multitude of angles, even at its modest 37 minutes playback.
Not commercially driven when it comes to influences or execution, Pandemic combine a lot of speed, power, and throwback traditional aspects into the mix that makes Phantoms probably a record for more of the deeper thrash maven than one who has dabbled in the genre. Nevertheless, the quality can’t be denied – so dare to plunge into a more adventurous sound as the payoff could be massive.
A band that has never been afraid to change things up as they progress and evolve, Australia’s Make Them Suffer continue to bring new sounds into their music even after a span of 15 years. Their latest album, a self-titled release, exemplifies that spirit to continue to evolve with the times, providing a modern yet hard-hitting sound with a broad appeal. We spoke to vocalist Sean Harmanis to get his insights on the process of everything from the new album, to band dynamics, to the early challenges the band faced in trying to make a name for themselves.
Dead Rhetoric: You joked that the self-titled album was ‘a greatest hits album, but with new songs’ on the press release. Do you feel it’s representative of what you’ve done over the years?
Sean Harmanis: In some ways. Undeniably, this sounds very different to a lot of our other work, just on the surface. But in some ways, yes, because the songwriting tools that we have gained along the way and how to put a song together – certain decisions that we make when writing songs – there are still go-to things that we go to. There are things that I do as a vocalist or other people do, that make them “Make Them Suffer.” There’s always that element of female vocals and a softer element paired with it, whether it’s piano, synth, or classical elements. That’s the bread and butter formula. We have transported that to a more modern, futuristic kind of realm with this one.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel that your own vocal performance has changed since when you started?
Harmanis: I definitely feel like I have a lot more control over what I do. I can find an exact pitch, the tonality that I am trying to get with a lot of the lines is a lot more accurate. My taste in what I think are good and bad vocals has changed a lot. I used to do the cookie cutter lows and highs, and now I’m more into audibility. Being able to hear the lyrics is important for me, as well as knowing the correct phrasing and timbre to deliver that line in. Some words need to be said in the right way to evoke the emotion that word gives. I’d say that is what I have been diving into more.
Dead Rhetoric: So how much emphasis do you put on those sort of things like timbre and phrasing?
Harmanis: It’s what I spend the most time thinking about when we are writing a song. I think a lot of vocalists do that. I often try to figure out the phrasing before putting the words to it, and having an idea of what the song is going to center around. Some songs we will start off from a lyric or an idea/concept, but a lot of the songs start with finding what the correct rhythm is to accompany the instruments and building backwards from there.
Dead Rhetoric: What keeps your spark and excitement going as a group, knowing that the group has changed and evolved over time?
Harmanis: I suppose it’s the fact that we always switch it up. It’s every record for us. It’s always a bit of a learning experience. There’s an uncharted territory that we are trying to record, not on every song, since some are safer than others. But if you compare our sound from this album to the previous one, it’s like night and day even between those two. We are always moving and evolving, and I think that keeps the pressure on us. All the while, I feel like we are honing our sound, even still, and I’m always open to doing something completely different. It’s exciting for us.
Nick [McLernon] has even said that he tried a different tuning for his guitar on this album, for example. He said that he had felt he had run out of juice a bit with what we had been playing before. He felt it opened up a whole bunch of new doors for him, creatively. It’s not just tuning, but the tonality of the guitar is different. You have a whole set of sounds that accompany it and it’s a whole new world. The world of futuristic, synth-y cyberspace that we have been trying to experiment with everything. That whole Blade soundtrack kind of vibe [laughs].
Dead Rhetoric: Regardless of the different albums over time, what do you feel is an essential piece of a Make Them Suffer song?
Harmanis: It’s very difficult, but we have given it a bit of thought. I think for me, personally, Make Them Suffer has always been a band that centers its sound around contrasts. Good and evil, light and heavy, beautiful and angry…that kind of opposing emotions and sounds. Even in the lyrics, there is that juxtaposition. We have that within the vocals, as well as between the melody on the piano versus the guitars.
Even in our songwriting, we sometimes make intentional decisions to have transitions be jarring. It can jump from one extreme to another, and I think that has become one part of our sound. I think it’s shocking for some people, but it’s a very deliberate choice. We love pushing the boundaries of how far we can drive both of those opposing elements in the song.
Dead Rhetoric: Could you speak to the dynamic with yourself and Nick over the years, as members that have been there the longest?
Harmanis: Nick lives in Melbourne and I live in Perth, which is where Nick used to live. Perth is our hometown. So we do a lot of communication about songwriting through the internet and email. We don’t actually talk too much on a day to day basis except when fielding each other’s questions about decision points for the band. Not just the songwriting, but what we are doing tour-wise, the financial things, and stuff like that. In some ways, it’s probably good, because when we tour together and go into the studio, we have a lot of time together.
It’s very confined spaces and having to have integral discussions, and we have gotten it down – the art of keeping conversations civil down to an artform. Nick is a pretty fiery dude, and so am I in a different way. Sometimes tensions can get high, and in the studio I don’t think we have ever had a recording without getting into at least one argument. We are much better at resolving those, and I think just a lot of time, we have opposing ideas about where we want the song to go in certain areas, and I think that it’s actually a lot of where our sound comes from. We have started doing this thing where he thinks it should be a certain riff and I think it’s a different one so we will just do half and half. It’s two measures of each, so that creates some choppy sounding songs and I think that has become a part of our sound, which has become quite interesting. It’s important to have that.
I’ve found when one person writes too much of one song, and is never challenged or anything like that, it can sound a little safe. It needs to have some tension, and you have to have strong opinions about the direction you want to go. It’s been a fundamental part of Nick and I’s relationship in the band.
Dead Rhetoric: It goes back to what you were saying about contrast in the band.
Harmanis: Yeah, exactly. Thankfully, we can always bring it back to a vote. At least there’s 5 members in the band and not six [laughs]!
Dead Rhetoric: Speaking of five members, what’s the impact of Alex [Reade] been on the band?
Harmanis: It’s been incredible. People have welcomed her with open arms and I think that, with good reason. Tonally and everything, she sounds fantastic. Outside of the singing side of things, she has added this additional element of being able to contribute screaming vocal capacity. To me, that’s almost more fun and impressive than her singing ability, and her singing ability is amazing. The back and forth on the screams is something that gets us excited in the studio. It’s something we really enjoy doing. I think it brought that new X-factor for this new era of our sound.
I’ve been loving having her in the band, and everyone else feels the same. I think that really shows, with the comments from the fans and everything, she seems to be very highly regarded and with good reason.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve toured with a number of bands that I hate to say but some would argue aren’t ‘metal.’ Bands like Bad Omens, for example, that make some extreme metal fans scoff at least. What have you taken away from bands outside of the more extreme scene?
Harmanis: I think bands like Bad Omens are extremely impressive in their music. I actually really like them, I think their songwriting is really some of the best going at the moment. I think touring with them, and many other bands that have been growing in a similar realm, have opened the floodgates to this new generation of people listening to them. Through that, they are getting into metal in general. I think that’s really important. So we have taken note when we did the Bad Omens tour in the US – their fans are very unique.
It’s almost like The Beatles. They have swarming fans trying to get a photo, it’s absolutely crazy. You get to the venue at the beginning of the day and people are lining up, and it was crazy to see that sort of fandom. Now when we go back to the States, we see a handful of fans at every one of our shows and we can identify them as ‘the Bad Omens’ fans that we met on that tour. They behave in similar ways, and I think it’s really nice. They are super supportive. They have really opened up a metal resurgence, because of bands like that.
We also toured with Bring Me the Horizon as well, for example, in Australia. That was an arena-level tour. We had never played a tour of that magnitude before. Watching Bad Omens and Bring Me the Horizon, those bands had such a step up in terms of their live production, professionalism, and showmanship. We were a little rough around the edges, and it’s been a part of our brand. We like to rock out pretty hard on stage.
But at the same time, the production that goes into a Bring Me the Horizon show is just unbelievable to witness. You don’t even need to be a fan of the band to enjoy their live show. You don’t need to know a single song, it’s just purely just entertaining and amazing. Seeing how that translates, we really want to incorporate some of that into our live show.
Dead Rhetoric: I think you are completely on point with that. Some of those bands, despite how some people might like it, are injecting some new blood into the scene, which it desperately needs.
Harmanis: Metal has always had an element of elitist and gatekeeping and that sort of thing. I remember it was different when I started getting into it and I was obsessed with bands like Job for a Cowboy and the Doom EP. You had this group of people saying that it wasn’t death metal. People got into fights at All Shall Perish shows because you had the metal people and the hardcore people there.
It’s always been an element, and then you get older and you like ‘all metal’ and you realize that none of it really mattered. People are always going to gatekeep in metal and that’s just the nature of some of the people that the genre attracts. I welcome any change with open arms. A saying I have always tried to live my life by is “adapt or die” [laughs].
Dead Rhetoric: In your opinion, what are some of the challenges of being an Australian band and trying to break into the international touring circuit?
Harmanis: It was particularly difficult for us because we are from Perth, which is on the west coast of Australia. It’s the only major city on the west coast. It’s the most isolated capital city in the world. The width of Australia is roughly the same as the United States, but there are no cities in between. It’s a four day drive from Perth to any of the other major cities, like Brisbane. For us, there was the added challenge of not really having a community to ask questions when we started touring, as well as the added cost of booking flights over there. Whereas the east coast they could rent a van and drive up and down the coast. We had the added cost of flights.
It was definitely a bit of a challenge for us and we have been going for about 15 years. It has taken us a little bit longer than some, and one of the reasons for that is that we were a local band for four years before we started touring. We played maybe 1 or 2 weekends in our third or fourth year. That was thousands of dollars of money down the drain for a few shows in Melbourne. It took a while to just get out of Perth. Then we made it out and started touring Australia, and this is probably year five or six of the band now and we finally got an offer to go to Europe and went there on the Bonecrusher Tour in 2013. It was later renamed the ‘Bandcrusher’ tour by the people on it, because we were opening a six or seven band bill and the tour just flopped really hard. A lot of the headlining bands on that tour even lost a lot of money, and a number of bands ended up breaking up or going on hiatus after it. The booking agent was actually very apologetic to us when he first met us in person, but we were just the opening band so we were happy to play to 100 people every night. For us, it was fine and we were just excited to be in Europe at the time.
Going on that tour and seeing the scale of the European market, and thinking about that seven band bill – it was our first time in Europe. We wondered how long it would take for us to just climb to the top of this bill. It dawned on us that it was a really long slog. When you are first faced with the international market, it’s overwhelming for a lot of bands. It took a while and it was daunting at first, but the thing with being in a band or a musician, is that persistence really does pay off.
If you just stick at it, people will stick around. We still have people who have been listening to us since the EP and our first album despite sounding completely different on those. They still leave comments and it’s like, “What? Why are you still listening?” But good on you, thanks for sticking around somehow! They are still checking us out [laughs]! It’s been a journey for sure, navigating to where we are in the touring market now.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s next for the band after the album comes out?
Harmanis: I think the main goal is to try and up our live show and try to do some headlining shows and tours in markets outside of the US. I’d love to headline the States and Europe and just see how we do. We get enough requests for sure for longer sets. It’s tough to know how tangible those comments can be sometimes and if it actually translates to people coming to shows.
Regardless of the success of the tours, it would be exciting to bring a headline set to even a small number of people. I think that fans that have been listening and stuck with us know that it’s a pretty special and exciting time for the band and we want to share that with the fans who have been there through thick and thin.
So I had no idea what was happening when I first hit play on this new Misanthropy record The Ever-Crushing Weight of Stagnance, the third studio album for this Illinois act via Transcending Obscurity Records. Now this is without a doubt one of my favorite record labels and I’d say 99.9999% of the time what I’m hearing is a home run. Not in this case, however.
No,no, relax. This is not gonna be a review in which I relentlessly bash the band. Quite frankly I’m too old and tired to do that anymore. But I will say this. There really isn’t a whole lot to sink my teeth into, and there is a lot, I mean a lot of meandering around town when it comes to this brand of progressive death metal.
Now, to be fair when it works it really works. Case in point is “The All-Devouring” one of the record’s best and brightest cuts. A second example would be the next track “A Cure For the Pestilence.” But I was not very impressed with the opener “Of Sulking and the Wrathful.” You just feel like it really wasn’t headed anywhere. Again, we have another banger in “Condemned to a Nameless Tomb” but that kind of intensity can’t save numbers like “Sepulcher” or “Consumed By the Abyss.” Both of these just felt like paths to nowhere in the heavy metal forest. Hey, John Q. listener might hear something I don’t, who knows?
On another positive note “Descent” is a rager bent on wrecking shop, so there’s that. It’s done in slow, deliberate fashion, so this scribe definitely dug that. Look, they can’t all be home run records, right? Did I hate the album? No. It just didn’t really move the needle. You be the judge, though.
Standout Tracks: “Descent”, “The All-Devouring”, “A Cure For the Pestilence”.
