Photo: Robert Ash
West Virginia may not necessarily be a hotbed for heavy music, but it is home to this young band Executionist. Embracing a musical concoction that intertwines aspects of thrash and death metal, the group contains a brother duo in guitarist/vocalist Brett Ash and drummer Tristan Ash – who started together in their teen years to evolve together since the band’s inception during the pandemic. Their debut album Sacrament of the Sick contains elements of influences domestic and abroad – intense yet melodic when necessary, ready to make heads bang into oblivion. We reached out to Brett and Tristan to learn more about their upbringing, the growth between their EP and album releases, lyrical themes, how the band overcomes criticism due to their ages, favorite shows / albums, their love of movies, weather, and computers, as well as hopes in expanding their live footprint beyond home state boundaries.
Dead Rhetoric: What was life like growing up in childhood between the two of you as brothers? At what point did you discover heavier forms of music – and eventually pick up the desire to play an instrument and perform your own material?
Brett Ash: Whenever we were growing up, we were only four years apart. It wasn’t a super weird situation with a relatively big age gap, so we were always super close. We were close to the same level of maturity, even though it was only four years. We grew up playing video games together, and we still do all that. And then I started playing guitar when I was 14, so about eight years ago at this point. I guess I started learning all the basic stuff on guitar, all these easy riffs that they tell you to start with. That progressed to me learning heavier riffs, and learning those heavier riffs got me listening to heavier and heavier forms of music. It progressed into what it is now. I decided to play in this style because I thought it was sick. I figured I’d stick to playing with it.
Tristan Ash: I didn’t really have a desire at the beginning. I did want to play guitar at first, when I saw Brett playing, I thought it was really cool. I got a guitar, a little cheap Jackson and tried it for a week and decided I don’t want to do this. The only reason I started to play the drums is because I went to Guitar Center one time and the employee showed me a really simple beat, and I thought it was pretty cool. I was 10 years old. If I play drums and Brett plays guitar, I guess we can be a band now.
Dead Rhetoric: Tell us about the early days of Executionist. Did you have a natural direction and style you wanted to develop right away – or did things grow out of rehearsals and bouncing ideas back and forth?
Brett: Whenever we first started jamming together, we only listened to Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer. I still listen to Mötley Crüe as well, but our music is very far from that. We would jam – and I still have some old recordings of some of those songs we had written in those early days. They were not very good – just two kids beating on our instruments with a low-quality recording on our iPhone. But that music was more straightforward, a thrashy heavy metal kind of thing. We released our EP Destined For Destruction in 2021, and I was listening back to it, I knew I wanted to do something different. We would jam new stuff; I would add more melody and death metal elements on top of the thrash stuff. It allowed for the sound we currently have to come to fruition.
I think the sound is pretty unique. Really how I got our sound is ripping off a bunch of different bands. If you rip off enough bands, then you are going to create something that is original.
Dead Rhetoric: Did you feel like at that point your influences were not just coming from the American side of things, but European as well?
Brett: A lot of the death metal influences I took from were more on the melodeath side. One of my favorite albums of all time is Slaughter of the Soul – At the Gates. That album had some influence on our album that is coming out soon. I love melodic death metal, and I’m putting more of that into the new material I am writing for the next album. German thrash had a huge influence on not just the newer album but also the EP. Specifically Kreator, they are one of my favorite bands of all time. What I find specifically interesting about that, when our EP came out one of the comparisons we got was it sounded like old school Kreator. It was straightforward, raw, very gritty sounding. The early reviews I’ve heard about people who have listened to our full album is that it now sounds like newer Kreator. Part of that was intentional, but not to the level that I’m being told. Another European band I love is Children of Bodom – they are a huge influence on Tristan and me. The single we’ve released “Serrated Shadows”, when I wrote that song, I had the intention of it being a Children of Bodom worship song, the entire five and a half minutes.
Dead Rhetoric: Sacrament of the Sick is the debut album for Executionist. Where do you see the biggest differences when it comes to performance, production, packaging, or songwriting compared to the EP?
Brett: I think the biggest thing that people will hear right off the bat when they hear Sacrament of the Sick is the immense jump in the production value. When we were recording our EP, I was 17 years old, and Tristan was 13 years old. I was funding this EP, the whole process, over working part-time at Walmart. I was still in high school, and I wasn’t able to work full-time yet. That’s what that whole thing was – so we had to do what we could do at that point. And I still listen to that EP and I’m proud that we managed to do that at such a young age and with such restrictions. But I think the production on the album is a huge jump.
The room that we are sitting in and doing this interview from is the room where we recorded our album. We have a home studio split between Tristan’s current bedroom and a spare bedroom. Also, for the songwriting aspect of it, I feel that it’s way more cohesive. The way that I would write stuff for the EP was writing a riff, and write another riff, but not really build off of the first one. Just kind of throw them all together, and technically if you throw enough riffs together, it will be a song. What I was trying to do with this album is I wanted to make each song completely cohesive. I stuck more to actual music theory. It’s not a metal thing to follow that, but I would pick a scale for each song, and I would write the whole song in that scale. Not in an effort to make it musically correct – I wrote it because it felt way more cohesive that way. I wanted people to hear this and see that there was a lot of TLC put into this – not just riff salad. I wanted to avoid that.
Dead Rhetoric: Where do you draw inspiration from with the lyrical content of the band? Do you try to inject real world and personal experiences into the topics, even if it’s on a subconscious level?
Brett: Yeah, for sure. The title track is about the bubonic plague. I really enjoyed writing those lyrics, because I graduate from nursing school next week. I already knew these different medical terms – so I was injecting real medical terms into my lyrics, which I think was really cool. I really like to be correct in my lyrics. I don’t want anybody to listen to this and try to poke holes into it. I’ve never listened to a song and been like, ‘that’s wrong- that’s not historically accurate’. As the person that is writing (this), you have to feel like you are covering all the bases. You want to put out a product that you can be 100% proud of, and be proud of it for a long time.
The track “Divided We Stand, United We Fall”, those lyrics are more on the nose. We are a thrash band located in the United States, so we had to do a political song that touches on the issues that we have here. Those lyrics were unfortunately very easy to write, due to all the stuff we have going on here at all times. I wrote those lyrics two years ago, and the topics are still prominent – and I imagine they will be for a very long time, if not forever. One of my favorite songs on the album is “Palace of Kings”. Out of all the songs on the album, every one of them is written about something that is very real. Except for “Serrated Shadows”, that’s about a comic book character. “Palace of Kings” is about Skyrim, the video game. I was playing a lot of it at the time, and I thought it could be solid material. It’s about a Civil War conflict that takes place in the game. I figured nobody would pick up on the exact meaning behind it unless they knew the title “Palace of Kings” is something from that game. Every time we play it live, I talk about ‘hey if you ever played Skyrim, this song is for you.’ Some people have come up to me afterwards and said that it’s so sick, you wrote a song about that.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you handle the possible criticism that may come about regarding your ages and lack of experience in developing quality death/thrash metal? Has it been harder to be taken more seriously as a result?
Tristan: Yeah, when we first started, I was 13 at the time. Listening back to the EP, I do kind of have a distaste for it even though I am sort of proud of it as we were able to accomplish something like that at such a young age. Now, since I have such higher standards and I’m much more mature now, it is hard to listen to it. There are a lot of different writing choices I would make. I wasn’t involved in the production; it was somebody else. It has been hard to be taken seriously by people in the local scene. Not just bands specifically, but venues look at us and we say we are Executionist. Especially because when we were a two-piece, we were a two-piece for a very long time ages 19 and 15 or 20 and 16, it was hard to get even a response back. Shows now, they don’t really expect much because of our ages, and then when we play, we melt their faces, they get surprised.
The criticism for me has probably been the hardest part. But I think I have taken it well and used it as fuel. I’ve taken over production for all Executionist related things. I have a home studio, I mix everything, we produce everything here. So, my standards have increased drastically. It helps a lot now that we have a product, and I can do whatever I want with it.
Dead Rhetoric: What is Executionist like in a live setting compared to what people hear on the records? What have been some of the most memorable shows to date for the group?
Brett: When we first started playing live, it was a huge learning curve for us. The way you rehearse is completely different from the way you perform live. When you rehearse, you are trying to nail down the intricacies of the songs, which is very important. We’ve come to realize that while you want to play as best as you can live, the energy you bring is far more important than the technical proficiency. Because if you can get the crowd into it, that is the biggest thing. You don’t want to go up there and fumble or play horribly. But if you miss a couple of notes every now and then, while the crowd is still into it, that is far and away a fair tradeoff.
Executionist live – if you are going off the EP and “Genesis 666” our single from 2023, it’s night and day. We play everything so much faster – not intentionally. We play songs from the EP 25-30 BPM faster than they were recorded. It’s not an inherently intentional thing – it happens after you play the same songs so many times, you are feeding off of the energy, the adrenaline kicks in. We rounded out our members – we are a full four-piece. I’m doing guitar and vocals, Tristan is on drums, Austin Rose is on bass and our second guitarist is Mike Kinder. Having it as a full four-piece really brings another dimension to our sound. Harmonies and what not in our music, that we can finally do that justice when we play live.
The most memorable show we played live was in January. We played at The Loud in Huntington, West Virginia. Our bass player Austin is in another band here called OniKuma. They were the headliner, and Executionist was the opener – so he pulled double duty. The Loud is a prominent venue here in West Virginia, we’ve been trying to get in for the longest time. But it’s an 18+ venue – so we could only get into it after Tristan turned 18 in January. That was the most fun I’ve ever had playing live because the turnout was great. We are very lucky that we will be playing there again in another month, as a support for a bigger band in the area, and we will have a full band this time.
Dead Rhetoric: How would you describe the local live scene in West Virginia when it comes to heavy music? Are there specific genres that seem to do better than others – who are some of your favorites that the readers should look into?
Brett: Far and away, when it comes to the heavy music scene, the two genres that are the most prominent are hardcore and punk. I’m not super into punk, that’s just me. Hardcore is another one – Austin is in another band called OniKuma, and I cannot recommend them enough. They consider themselves hardcore, but they have a lot of death metal elements in their music as well. We’ve played in Kentucky a handful of times. There weren’t any hardcore bands there – it seems centralized to West Virginia, and hasn’t really bled into any of the surrounding states. I also enjoy The Final Seconds of Suffering, another good band. I have a buddy who has another project coming out called Rise From Nothing. I got to listen to their forthcoming lead single; he sent it to me. I enjoy the scene here.
What is unfortunate for the scene, for me anyway, is there aren’t any other thrash bands that I know of. And that’s both good and bad. Good because what other thrash bands are you going to listen to if there are no other ones? But also, it makes me feel the imposter syndrome at times – do we really belong playing music here in this scene, being the only one doing what we are doing? Then I play live and realize, damn, we kick ass.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you consider some of the biggest challenges facing the group at this point in your career? Do you enjoy being DIY at this point, and what would you like to see from a label deal that would advance your careers further?
Brett: The biggest challenge for us is just life stuff. I graduate from college next week, and I’ll be starting full-time as a nurse. Tristan graduates from high school in about a month, he’s going into college in the fall. Austin and Mike work full-time, they all have different things to worry about so it can be a challenge to coordinate rehearsals and what not. We always make it work. We are happy with being DIY. I’m happy with how the album sounds, that’s the biggest thing. It is quite expensive to self-fund an album, the way that we have. I’m willing to put in any amount of money if it means the product we put out is something that I’m proud of.
We’ve sent in our demos to so many different labels. Just seeing if we can get somebody to bite. No success so far, but we will keep trying and building our following. I would like the opportunity to go on tour – even if it’s just as a supporting act for a week stretch. Just see all the different places, and see other scenes. I would like to get a better grip on the scenes in the surrounding areas.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel about hiring a PR firm like Clawhammer and the importance of what they’ve been able to do for the band?
Brett: I can’t say enough good things about Clawhammer. They’ve been exceptional for us. And I am sure they will continue to be exceptional for us. When we released our EP, we did very little PR, if any at all. I know Spotify listeners isn’t the greatest metric, but it is the standard. That’s how you judge things as a band, how many listeners you can get on Spotify. When we had our EP out, we never even touched 50. And that was fine for us – and now we are at 200 right now. That will continue to grow as we release another single, and then the album will come out. Clawhammer has been very good to us so far – we had an interview with a man in Puerto Rico. It’s very humbling to see other people listen and appreciate your stuff, and know who you are, even if they are far away. It helps alleviate that imposter syndrome I was talking about.
Dead Rhetoric: What are three albums that mean the most to you when it comes to heavy metal? And what’s your favorite concert memory, purely as an audience member?
Tristan: For albums, I’ll say the ones that have stuck with me and Brett. We will have a Kreator phase where we listen to them on repeat for a little while. Albums – Reign in Blood – Slayer. Hate Crew Deathroll – Children of Bodom. And Ride the Lightning – Metallica. One of the coolest experiences live we’ve seen was just this past September when we saw Kreator for the first time. Because we’ve always wanted to see them – I started to get into them right when the pandemic started. Seeing a European band come to the US is already kind of rare enough. It was a good lineup there with Testament – it was the coolest part. People have compared us to Kreator so many times. Seeing Testament is always great.
Dead Rhetoric: What are some specific hobbies, interests, and passions you possess outside of music when you have the free time and energy to pursue them?
Brett: Outside of music, I can say that for both Tristan and me, we love horror movies. We love movies period. Outside of being on stage and playing music, I don’t know if this is a sad way to express it is the local movie theater here is my happy place. I’ve seen so many great movies there, and I have spent that time with people who are important to me. Whether that be – one of the best experiences for me was Halloween Kills, opening night. That movie does not have the greatest reviews; however the crowd was so into it, which was really surprising to me. I am a huge video game guy. I like studying weather. Whenever there is any bad weather here, we had some tornado warning recently, which doesn’t happen often here in West Virginia. I still live at home because I’m in college, my mom woke me at 5 am to tell me about the tornado warning. I went outside, and nothing happened. I know it’s not cool that a tornado could hit and destroy my livelihood, but in a morbid kind of way, it would be cool to see one. I keep up with all the weather stuff.
Tristan: I love horror movies, and movies in general. I got Brett to watch the Saw franchise. Outside of music, I play games every now and then. I am big into tech. I built a computer last week, and it’s actually the one we are doing this Zoom call through. That was a fun experience even though it caused a couple of headaches. It’s cool to see something that you can build and use for a really long time.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you see the next twelve months shaping up for Executionist to support this album?
Brett: I’m hopeful that over this upcoming summer before Tristan starts in college that we play in surrounding markets to our state. We’ve played in Kentucky a couple of times, and we will be playing in Richmond, Virginia soon. Our bass player Austin has played there before, and he said it was sick. As much as I love playing in our local scene, we can’t just keep playing in our local scene and expect the growth that we want to get. You need to play in other markets and expand your reach. I’ve been emailing like a madman, reaching out to bookers, promoters, venues, agents, and other bands. I’m making some progress. I want people to listen to the album and enjoy it. If we can have 20 more people around the world enjoy it, that would mean the world to me than just a million people listening to us casually.