Sometimes, when you hear some extreme music, you just want to be blown away by the devastation. Crucifiction goes by the concept that intensity is something that fits the particular image of the music in its concept and execution. Old school deathcore at its most barbaric, we sat down with multi-instrumentalist Salem Vex to discuss their first album Will to Power, the idea of cohesion between all parts of the music and presentation, the importance of image in addition to music, and much more.
Dead Rhetoric: Based on what I’ve read/found, Will to Power is based on a revenge concept. Is it a true concept album from beginning to end?
Salem Vex: Not really, I would say it’s more of a loose concept.
Dead Rhetoric: So what do you feel is the concept that pulls it through?
Salem Vex: I would say it’s more loose because there’s not a beginning and end to the story yet. It could be continued, or it could be just left where it is right now. But I would say it’s a concept in the term of all of the songs revolving around that one concept, which is following a story. But I wouldn’t say that I wrapped the story up in the end. Like there’s not a complete stop to it. It’s almost more like a TV show and it’s the end of an episode.
Dead Rhetoric: Could you talk about the inspirations you took to bring the album together?
Salem Vex: I’m an avid movie watcher and I took a lot of inspiration from films like 8mm, American Pyscho, Nightcrawler, Audition, and I also started getting into reading more around 2020 with the pandemic. I started reading more books that people find to be more controversial, such as The 48 Laws of Power and stuff like that, and that’s how I came up with the concept of the record. Viewing someone, who feels right in their mind, with these concepts, or reading books, and taking things that are good and really internalizing them and then using them as a way of feeling justified in disgusting actions. That’s the concept that I came up with for the record. The main character of the story feels like everything he is doing is completely justified and it made sense to him, and I think that is pretty fucking terrifying in general.
Dead Rhetoric: Discuss how the album is directed towards that classic deathcore sound. Was it something that happened as you wrote it, or did you fall upon it naturally?
Salem Vex: I think it was a bit of both. I love old school deathcore. It was one of the first things that got me into metal. The state of deathcore, in my opinion, isn’t great now. I’m not really into the blackened, symphonic stuff. I wanted to make a record that was the heaviest thing I could do. I just leaned towards that old school deathcore stuff, because I feel like that raw sound – not really relying on the post-production sounds and synths – I thought it was more brutal to do it the way I did, and I’m happy with how it came out.
Dead Rhetoric: There is that rawness when you listen to it. It kind of hits like a sledgehammer. To your point, there’s more of a visceral edge than what you get these days, which gives it some more energy.
Salem Vex: I want it to have that chaotic feel. I also wanted to make the record feel like this non-stop assault. It doesn’t have all of these stops. It’s just as chaotic as what I feel like the character’s head feels like.
Dead Rhetoric: With the vision and cohesion of it, what do you lean towards? If you look at the videos of it, you can see how it aligns. But if you also look at the artwork and lyrics, how important is that overall sense of having everything cohesive, to you?
Salem Vex: It’s completely essential to me. I planned out everything very meticulously, and making sure it made sense with each other. The artwork being very dirty but clean at the same time, I took all of the pictures of the artwork and did the front cover. The lyric video having elements of the front cover, and the music videos having a very specific vibe to each other. Under the vision, the record and everything – from my outfits and make-up and physique – I started going to the gym as much as I could to pull off this character in my brain. So there was a lot of forward thinking in the process for it to make sense in my brain, and I’m happy with how it turned out.
Dead Rhetoric: That’s interesting, it’s almost akin to something you would think about with being a method actor.
Salem Vex: Yeah, and that’s something I feel like I’m inspired by in my own way. I feel like my favorite actors are pretty much method actors. I watch a lot of movies – it’s one of my favorite things to do in general. Maybe to a fault, maybe I watch too many movies. But I think that’s cool, just really going into a character or an idea and just completely divulging yourself. Revolving yourself around those elements. It was interesting too, because I wrote the record in a pretty dark time in general, and I feel like it definitely helped me get out of some mental issues, just really venting the dark side of my brain and putting it into the character as much as possible. It really helped me to become less of a negative person, in a sense.
Dead Rhetoric: With pulling your own inspirations into the music, how do you represent yourself through the music you are playing?
Salem Vex: I feel like everything I do has a very big side of me. I’m involved in a number of different projects, you can tell where my hat was put in. For this project, I think image, which I’m not trying to sound cocky or anything, but it’s different than anything else I have seen done before, with the make-up and very direct imagery. I feel like a lot of deathcore bands, they don’t care about that. You see a lot of t-shirts and bullshit like that. I feel like that was a big connection to me. I’m very big into the fashion stuff. To an extent, there are some parts of the record that maybe someone that wasn’t as versed as I am in different genres might not have come up with. But I think that’s where it lies.
Dead Rhetoric: To put it more broadly in general, there is certainly a ‘metal’ aesthetic. The t-shirt and jeans thing. It’s almost the standard. There’s not really a push for people to go above that standard. It’s fine, and it’s what’s acceptable, so that’s what everyone does.
Salem Vex: I understand too. Most people don’t feel creative/artistic about outward appearance. People aren’t about it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I feel like I have always gravitated towards very big figures. Growing up…Prince, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, and Michael Jackson. People that had such an iconic look. Same thing with movies. If you look at the main character of movies like Hellraiser or Beetlejuice, they are in your head immediately. It doesn’t take more than a second. I feel like that is something I miss a lot within metal. The vocalist of a band, they look exactly like another band. It’s not like, “oh, it’s that guy!” I think I am pretty distinguishable for most people.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned the symphonic stuff before as not being too into it, so what do you enjoy about the deathcore genre?
Salem Vex: I would say the earlier stuff. The really raw, disgusting aspects of it. I like the lyrics of it too, I think a lot of people have gone from it – I always make a joke about people writing about the sky being blue and just random shit. I can’t connect to it. It can be graphic at times or misogynistic, but you can see…oh, okay this guy got broken up with by his girlfriend. I can’t relate to most of these new bands that are just talking about the sky, or vampires or something. So that was the first thing I gravitated to, that raw old school sound. It’s not filtered.
With Bloodbather, I added a bunch of synths, and I”m in another band called The Requiem, and there are orchestral elements and pianos. But for this, it didn’t feel right. I wanted it to feel animalistic. The main character of this doesn’t care about that. I want the point to get across, and that bare bones approach was what I took. The only post-production stuff I did was bass drums, there’s nothing else.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned your other bands, which obviously sound stylistically different. Is that important to you too, when you go into a band, that it does sound distinguishably different from other things you are involved in?
Salem Vex: Oh yeah, every band I have done, you could say that even though it’s within a certain realm. You might say that all of my bands could play on Warped Tour, or something similar. But they have very different sounds. I feel like music is just so diverse in general. I’m a diverse person when it comes to music. In my free time, I don’t listen to much metal right now. Sometimes, I don’t even listen to what my other bands make. Sometimes I just listen to trance music from the 90s. Or some industrial.
There are so many different genres that I can’t just choose one. I couldn’t make this band sound like Bloodbather, for example. I already did that. I’m bored. Second of all, what’s the point? Life is evolution and we are constantly changing. That’s what I want to do with my music. I don’t want to be too stagnant ever.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you write with the intent for a particular group, or do you write and then determine where it needs to go?
Salem Vex: I will just get into these grooves where I know I can write for one project. Some week, I might be really into Fall Out Boy. It’s all I can listen to. So I might channel The Requiem, because it’s what is in my head. Recently, I had The All-American Rejects in my head and it was all I could think about. So I wrote a rock song like that. Some weeks, all I can think about is metal. So I’m jamming and something off The Cleansing comes on and I’m like, “Fuck yeah” and it will go down the rabbit hole. So it comes to me at different times. I can channel it.
Obviously if I go to the studio, but even then. There was a time I was making two records at the same time, but I was in the studio for The Requiem and I’m making this rock/emo record, and that was when I was writing the lyrics to the song “The Gift” and to “The Collection.” I was in a dark place while I was there. All I could do was think about playing that. Putting that anger into the other project helped me finish off the other stuff. Writing lyrics or instrumentals for the other project, my brain took care of that and I could focus on what I needed to while I was there.
Dead Rhetoric: You do a lot – you do lyrics, you write music. Is there one that you like more or do you see them as two different extensions of writing in general?
Salem Vex: I’m a very self-deprecating person, and think what I do ‘sucks.’ So I sat on both records for a long time. Then something comes out and it revitalizes you. So I feel like whatever thing comes out at where I am in life, that’s usually my favorite. But looking at The Requiem stuff, I don’t think I’ve ever not liked it. I think it’s really good. That band is more collaborative than anything else I have been in. I didn’t have to write the full fucking record. Bloodbather and this band, I will doubt it, because my hand is so heavily involved, but now listening to it, I’m super proud of the Crucifiction record. I think it’s a staple for the genre it’s in, and it’s doing well, so I can only hope it does better.
Dead Rhetoric: More broadly, given your musical preferences, what do you hope for in music in general, in the future…be it heavy or not?
Salem Vex: I hate the Tik Tok shit, I need that to die. Making music to appeal to someone’s 20-second attention span is the worst thing ever to happen to music. I also have my view on the general, short-form Tik Tok ‘film yourself’ content in general, I think it’s shit. There’s no mystery or mystique anymore. It’s hard for me to do anything like that. The idols that I looked up to, it was a special event seeing them. They weren’t answering questions, they weren’t asking themselves questions, I just felt it was way cooler just having that mystery. I hope that mystique comes back but the attention span needs to be back to what it was. Listening to an entire album is very important.
The single route is cool, but I like to listen to the album front to back to hear the whole perspective. There are so many records, Mechanical Animals by Marilyn Manson, it’s such a big piece of work that i feel like i just couldn’t pick out one song and listen to it. I have to listen to the whole album. Or The Cleansing even. I can’t just listen to “The Price of Beauty.” I have to listen to the whole thing! You have to go through the emotions. Some people might not feel that way, but i feel like we fucked with something that didn’t need to be fucked with. But it makes sense with the world going as it is now. But I like long form content, and more paying attention to all of it – from the artwork to the booklet – everything. It should be more expansive, but I feel like things are becoming more dull and boring. It’s a product in the store, without depth.
Dead Rhetoric: With what you said about mystique, is that ‘larger than life’ idea appealing in terms of the aesthetic? Is that something you strive for yourself?
Salem Vex: I think I try to. It can feel corny or weird at times, because I feel like every human is equal. But I feel like you should apply it to yourself, to make yourself stand out. To be something different. A lot of people I look up to, they are unique. People gravitate towards uniqueness, more than an ‘everyday person.’ I’m not just saying that we can’t like someone that looks every day, if someone doesn’t look different on the outside, they could have eccentricies that they can get a cult fanbase. Someone like Shia La Beouf or someone. He looks normal, but he’s such a polarizing person.
Dead Rhetoric: What are your plans for 2025?
Salem Vex: Just planning out shows and live performances. I guess maybe more music video stuff. Honestly, taking a bit more of a break. I feel like that would be good for me. I have been running a bit too rampant. So focusing on the live shows and just enjoying the rest of the year. I’m excited.