…ted though, is that you will be pushed through the emotional ringer as slow-burning melodies sneak up on you and explode into moments of triumphant and elation. There’s no cheap tricks involved so much as the band using different components (such as acoustic segments, folk and Middle Eastern flavors, proggy indulgences, and heavy grooves) in such a way that one can’t help but feel whisked away by the music. Dreamy and lingering moments combine wit…
…bands could play with major touring acts and not have to do any sort of pay-to-play to be on it. It was a risk, but I finally found the right location. The guy that owns the place is actually a super-cool dude. We are actually partners in it now – he believes in it just like I do. He thinks this fest could be something big. I presented my ideas to him and we went back and forth – in the end I said, “fuck it, let’s do it!” I rolled the dice, and he…
…act to a full-fledged band entity? Mackie: Absolutely. We started as a two-piece and I was just writing the music on my own, it did whatever. With the additional members, I have a feel for their styles and their skill level. I do tailor the music more towards them and what I think they would like and what I think they would be able to do, but also leaving room for them to use their own flavor to it. With the live performance, I think it’s helped…
…rre. Bleeding the Stars is an impressive album. It takes that classic, hook-y structure of gothic metal/rock and gives it a heavier doomy spin that boosts the emotions and adds to the replayability of it all. An utterly solid turn-around for Lacrimas Profundere that really cranks up the potential for future offerings. Read the entire review HERE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnTcb9NUAb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5uUcR8Ox0g https://www.yo…
…, whichever. If we do a really good show, best in our career, best lights, best crowd, best sound, best stage show, musicianship – everything. It rarely all clicks. You can get two or three of those, but everybody has a different experience. We’ve had cases where half the band come off stage saying, ‘yeah- tonight was awesome!’ and then somebody is like ‘oh no- I made some mistakes’. When it’s your best metal show ever – if your goal is to make th…
…got Russ involved early, and we were able to pass him the songs as we were writing them, we could get something big production-wise for the album. For the Fallen, that album was us experimenting with the sound for Memoriam to have. It’s easy to get four blokes into the rehearsal room and make songs up. We’ve all been different bands over the years, but we wanted to see what our sound, the Memoriam sound, would be. I think that with For the Fallen…
…restaurants, and we sourced a lot of local suppliers – whether it was port-a-johns or the generators needed for the stage. The tents where all put up by a local company. We are very conscious about the community we are in, and giving back the business. We don’t just bring in people from Cleveland or Columbus. Sometimes we have to, but we always source locally first if we can. So it was nice for them to recognize that. It was quite an honor. Dead…
…The Number of the Beast, Brave New World was a great record too. Metallica- Master of Puppets, even Re-Load, I love that album. Mostly the classics – Iced Earth inspired me as well in my early days. Something Wicked This Way Comes. Joe Satriani – Surfing with the Alien. Regarding concert memories, the first Iron Maiden concert I attended was in 1999, October with the first reunion of Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. That was a night to remember….
…more parts, and writing more of the lyrics, and S. Vincent was singing them- and I was writing from the perspective of female warriors, it seemed kind of disingenuous to keep him on the vocal lines when they were all coming from a woman’s perspective. So we decided to shift everything around, and here we are now! (laughs). Dead Rhetoric: How did you finally reach out to Collin and Kevin on second guitar and drums across the border in Illinois to j…
…you don’t have to sell a cd or anything. Since recording costs have gotten cheaper and cheaper over the years. I think Nirvana’s In Utero was like $25,000 to record. Now you can get a pretty legit sounding album for like $6,000. So why am I going to sell my soul to the record label and lose out on all future royalties when I can just chalk up that money with the band and prepare a few months in advance, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see more bands…
…lot of faster tempos for “Reborn” and “… Of Blood and Gore” which are very fast, some of the fastest double bass we have done so far in the band. We are all satisfied with the drum recordings. It was very easy to record the songs this time. The last album (Hell Beyond Hell), just before we wanted to go into the studio (guitarist) Wolfgang Tewes left the band – so we needed another guitar player to play some leads. We didn’t take every song that he…
…ad anybody want to invest that kind of money into a release, or do a double-gatefold thing. We knew Crowbar, Black Fast, and High on Fire – they put out great records for them and they all had good things to say about eOne. We are happy to work with them. Dead Rhetoric: Could you discuss the relationship between yourself and Chris Evans, and how crucial it is to Lord Dying? Olson: I think that without it, it wouldn’t be the same. There’s something…
…s integrated with strings. The changes that are brought to bear are quality-of-life in nature: at 49 minutes across its six tracks, Elegy is a significantly more digestible listen than Litany (also with six tracks, though running for over 73 minutes). The large, multi-part songs are still presented and accounted for: early ‘single’ “Empty Hands, Hollow Hymns” takes time to set a vast landscape before tearing off across it, a great beast consumed b…
…and frankly (no pun intended), he’s probably capable of singing for a half-dozen top-tier metal bands; his clean, but throaty delivery augmenting lead singles “Late” and “Out Here” with the type of choruses that engage and hang around. Coupled with some high-flying guest appearances by way of Ace Frehley (Kiss), Nita Strauss (Alice Cooper) and Satchel (Steel Panther) and what you have is simply a celebration of good, ample songwriting. Nothing mo…
…rites a lot of songs, he could easily fill a couple of hours just with the fast songs- but we try to get some diversity for keeping up the interest. If it goes at 170 BPM for more than half an hour, I would at least lose interest. Mid-tempo songs are always nice, and you have to expect that people will like different kinds of songs and tempos. Maybe we can please a wider crowd if we have a little wider approach. Dead Rhetoric: Is the songwriting d…
…of Gorgon sole and main dude Christophe Chatelet, it’s evident his shredded-to-pieces larynx has survived the 28 on-and-off years the band has been in business. The Veil of Darkness is the band’s first full-length in 19 years, coming together in a cleanly-produced, but nihilistic package where primitive black metal runs head-first into thrash, all the while, Chatelet bites and barks like a man half his age. – David E. Gehlke (Gorgon Facebook) Meta…
…odies are just empty shells now losing the last of our damned souls to the cheap thrill of fake life online. It’s our own fault. Hate us and blame us. We are the damned!” Wolf to Man tracklisting: 1. Starless Night 2. Wolf To Man 3. Embrace The Nightrage 4. Desensitized 5. God Forbid 6. By Darkness Drawn 7. The Damned 8. Arm Aim Kill 9. Gemini 10. Disconnecting The Dots 11. Escape Route Insertion 12. Lytrosis (Instrumental) Nightrage official webs…
…ple are used to singles and half an album. Keep in mind, we are a doom band- so we write pretty long songs. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s, full albums could be around a half an hour. It’s only four songs (the EP), but it has some length to it. There’s that aspect of it, and the other thing is- we are self-funded. Being in the studio, even for a full day, it’s not cheap. We were able to record this in one day – all four songs start to finish. All…
…just gouging us. It’s not the band, it’s the venue. The venue is taking 50%-60% or more- and often times they aren’t doing anything. At some of the venues we played on our North American tour, they took merch cuts and they aren’t doing anything. They don’t provide you with staff, they don’t provide you with lighting, or services. They send a bouncer at the end of the night to take their cut. Okay- you are taking money from us, and you literally di…
…knock personally it affected me. I’m still working through some of the non-visible and non-audible damage that that causes, which is damage to your confidence. I feel like I’ve only really finished working on getting my confidence back this year, even though my range came back a year and a half to two years ago. If my headspace was like it is now, I’d have been able to sing that way on Untouchable Glory if I really had to. I was afraid of it. I t…
…. Jamie was the first person I ever played music with. It was always an all-in or all-out thing. We are in multiple projects – I’m not in a single project that does not have Jamie in it. It’s this given that we are making music we are making music [together] and that’s it. Jamie Knox: I have never actually been in a band without Matt, so I wouldn’t even know what it feels like. This feels very natural and regardless of what style we are playing, w…
…nly tell so much within a 3-5 minute window anyway. Kiranos: Time to start writing these epic 15-minute ballads [laughs]! Dead Rhetoric: You could always shoot for a concept album. Kiranos: I really wanted to do one for this record, and it wasn’t ready. It’s there. It exists, and hopefully it will be born one day. Dead Rhetoric: With releasing a string of EPs in the past, did you approach Everything is Fine any differently? Kiranos: I was really s…
…phy for a very well-known Michelin Star chef named Curtis Duffy. He had a 3-Michelin-starred restaurant in Chicago called Grace. His life story is so crazy though. Imagine Sons of Anarchy meets Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. That’s how this guy was brought up. He’s a good friend. They did a Netflix documentary that you can watch anytime, and I highly suggest it called For Grace. It’s about Chef Duffy and how he built Grace Restaurant from the gr…
…there, you play the shows, and then you come home. Super easy, super simple- and relatively cheap from Finland. It’s a big investment for the label to get a European band to play in the US for the first time. That is the biggest thing that holds at least Finnish bands from touring within the US. We probably would have done it earlier, but it was too risky. There were some offers for tours, I think it’s a good thing though that we have established…
…oric: You immersed yourself in terms of the lyrical content with horror/sci-fi writing, especially the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Can you discuss what captures your attention in these genres for writing, and how it works seamlessly with the style of extreme metal Revocation is a part of? Davidson: I think it’s going back to a love of horror as a kid. I remember going to Blockbuster as a kid, and always this would be the section of the store I would g…
…e last few years, does that make things easier as you continue to tour and write? Billy: We take time off to write, we don’t really do it on tour. But since we have been on tour, and all of us do it for a living. When we tour, we work hard. After the Slayer run, we are done. We aren’t booking anymore tours. We have a few shows, but no tours booked. Then we are going to start working on the new record. Dead Rhetoric: As an accomplished musician, is…
…ked if I could get him Rudy and Simon- I said yes. He asked me who I would write with- and Wayne was the first person I thought of. Plus people like Alessandro Del Vecchio and Jeff Pilson, I had worked with them in the past. My favorite thing to do though is to write with a keyboard player, because that’s my favorite core to begin with. Diego – a friend of Diego’s had e-mailed me a thing 7 or 8 years ago of a song Ronnie and I wrote called “Push”….
…ourselves. People want to have something better from you- we are doing the best that we can, write great songs, to have great gigs. We believe that this work will affect the people that are following us – and more of them will follow what we are doing. Dead Rhetoric: How important are social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. to Null’O’Zero? Do you enjoy the active engagement that you have with your fans, and consistently post…
…Australian black/death mongers (or mongrels?), Husk, is a perfunctory blaze-of-glory salvo that should put a nice bow on the band 25-year career. Unrelenting and smeared with those sideways, front-loaded chord smears, the album heaves itself forward via “Black Night by Firelight” and “Kneel, Kiss, Kill,” the latter injecting some quick dashes of melody. For a band that has gone unnoticed in the Australian underground for so long, Husk begs to ask:…
…got, the more critical I got as a teenager. That might be the reason I am writing so much agnostic and upside-down perspectives in those lyrics. A funny story – my teacher at this school was the brother of the Pope! With those three different topics, I mentioned a small bit about where it came from, but in writing for Obscura, astrophysics, religion, and philosophy somehow became something I read about every day. These are my interests – I’m not…
