…nese scene. The final song is “Burn it Down,” which they clearly saved the best for last. The most explosive cut of the EP, raging with some meaty alternative metal/nu metal riffing and grooves, intense howls and screams, and of course, an anthemic chorus. They get some back up on the vocals from Ramandhika, which gives it some added flair to bow out with as well. Nextanative proudly showcase they can hold their own in the global idol scene with t…
…, the first one that comes to mind is the first time I saw Ulcerate back in 2010, might have been 2011. It was The Destroyers of All tour; they had two guitarists. It was in a small venue, 200 capacity. It was the first time… I had already seen some epic metal shows, ridiculous performances with Martyr a couple of times, they always destroyed. That show was the first time I realized that you can write the fastest, most heavy death metal, and it ca…
…was in the build up to ProgPower USA XX in 2019. When announced during the 2018 edition – of which is customarily done so at the festival via a cool video presentation – they immediately piqued the ear, and to that point, we had only really listened to them in passing. Well, a deep dive into their discography later, and we were sold. Seeing them live in 2019 was cathartic, and there they announced Rise Radiant along with a return for a tour the n…
…hrough the skies with Expedition One. They have a firm grasp on what works best for them as musicians and do their best to bring out those qualities in each track, without pouring out 16 iterations of the same thing. It’s fun and energetic, just as they’ve always captured. The fact that they provide such a large bounty of tracks this time around only helps to sweeten the pot. If you have dug their sound in the past, you are going to love this, and…
…maximum amount of satisfaction in delivering the records that way that you best desire? How hard is it to wear multiple hats and also ensure an objective final perspective to satisfy yourselves as well as the listeners/followers of the group? Peppiatt: I feel that keeping it to just the two of us really streamlines the process and means we can work quickly and there’s no arguments at all. Me and Joe have worked together with Psycroptic for almost…
…destine Transcendence is the latest album for Lord Dying – the follow-up to 2019’s Mysterium Tremendum. How do you see this set of material fitting in the catalog for the band – and did the pandemic have any beneficial factors to dig deeper into certain aspects of the process that maybe you never took into account or considered before? Erik Olson: Um, well… I would say with the new record we wanted to push ourselves further than we’ve ever done be…
…are quintessential tension release affairs – battering and bruising in the best way possible to squeeze every ounce of negative energy into a better direction. Never content to stick in one specific tempo template, certain songs can start off at a doom-like crawl before picking up into speedier, heads down thrash terrain with the proper hardcore/crossover switch-ups, as closer “Mortality Bait” illustrates, taking in aspects of Machine Head, Slayer…
…pany, both on and off stage. It’s like standing on stage with four of your best friends, and that’s very important for me. To feel safe, comfortable, and we all know that everyone is doing their best at that time. I think that’s a nice thing about this group. Premberg: Totally agree! It’s also so much fun to meet the fans. Standing on the stage and being able to meet their eyes, or even meeting up and talking after the show. It’s really nice. Dead…
…ngs and connections and, if we lose it, what does our lives amount to? The best change for the greater good of all would be in the direction of feelings but I don’t know if we are losing them these days or if man has ever been able to see the greater good, honestly. Maybe we have never been not the good bet of our creator. Dead Rhetoric: What would you say are some of the short term and long-term goals that you want to achieve with Rome in Monochr…
…an open schedule; we want to get some interesting offers to think about for 2024. It’s true that this year we went to Europe three times, played a total of 20 gigs versus one in America. I think in the relatively near term we need to spend time with some American fans. For instance, New England and New York City. These are some priorities upcoming, to be back to our usual spots. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLd0L0rhP2c High Spirits on Facebook…
…a clip on the web, because it’s cheaper! Also, about illustrations; before 2000, anyone hunted for the best artists to draw their covers. Then, all that turned into stupid pictures or computer graphics. So, underground is the word, death metal follows! They complete each other, I mean – death metal cannot be named this way if no one, before writing a song, doesn’t take care of the concept. Anyone says that today everything has changed, that all h…
…Earthside is a symphonic and progressive entity that first debuted back in 2015 with A Dream in Static. An album that was as gargantuan as it was intimate and emotive. Cooking up the right combination of ingredients takes proper time, so it was only last month that we got the proper follow-up in hand, that being Let the Truth Speak. An album that ups the ante instead of backing down, showcasing the band’s virtuosity as players but at the same tim…
…re does this come from? It’s surreal, you see this car in the magazines or online, you never see it up close with your own eyes. It has such a beautiful vibe, and this car is going to be in a video with Cobra Spell. Alright! And I can play in front of that, it was cool. Totally crazy. It was fun to shoot “S.E.X.” – we had a lot of friends come be in the video. It was nice to see all of these women being a part of this. All of the women had our own…
…eard the Metal of Satan EP and knew that I could sing this. And that was in 2017. Dead Rhetoric: Destination Destruction is the second album from Satan’s Fall – and first with Steamhammer/SPV after your previous record Final Day came out on High Roller Records. Tell us about the songwriting and recording process for this effort – where do you see the major differences in this record compared to the previous outing? Mäenpää: The major difference is…
…meet the right people. A lot of trial and error, we settled on a lineup. In 2018 we got our keyboardist Michael, and in 2019 we got our bassist Matt, and the rest is history. Stylistically there have been a lot of changes. The last two releases Death of the Cosmic and the new album Shatter and Fall have been pretty pivotal for us. In the sense that the sound of these two (releases) are way different than the first two releases. We wanted to up the…
…g and emotion behind it. It’s a tough balance. Whatever serves the song is best. Sometimes doing something super-technical is best for the song, and sometimes you have to know when to trim those bits out. Dead Rhetoric: You’ve shot videos for “Deadwood”, “Poison for the Lost”, “Descent” and the title track. Do you enjoy the art and craft behind making visually appealing videos that connect what you do with your fans – and are they as important as…
…ls): Hi, my name is Liv; I founded the band. Started writing for us back in 2014, we started playing shows in 2016. I play guitar and I sing for the group. One of the guitar players and one of the singers for the group. My favorite band at the moment is Immortal, as you can see by my massive flag on this side of the room over here. My day job is helping adults with autism, so I’m a psychologist. Eddie Shifflet (guitars/vocals): My name is Eddie Sh…
…Divide’s two releases, with their self-titled first album also releasing in 2015. After some touring, the band all but vanished for a bit, only to resurface in 2020 with the single, “Chemicals.” But Castillo confidently says that they never intended to stay away forever. “We had to take a little break for some personal reasons within the band. But we knew in our heads that we were not done forever. To everyone else, it may have seemed like we were…
…sle free. Dead Rhetoric: You’ve been a part of the Metal Blade roster since 2005’s The Gathering Wilderness. What are your thoughts on the label, their global staff, and how they have promoted the efforts of Primordial over the decades? Nemtheanga: Yeah, it’s a great relationship. It’s an unusual label for us, I don’t think there’s anything else quite like Primordial on the label, which I think is good. It makes us stand out. We have a genuine sen…
…ites different vocalists to their instrumental band. I have known him since 2010. He produced every single Infected Rain album so far, and we are about to release album number six. That tells you something [laughs]. He was born and raised in the same country as me, as well as the majority of the members of Infected Rain. He is also the brother of our drummer. We invited him to the band later, after we had met Valentin. We had a drummer but he move…
…reat guitarist, and he is a drummer too. He knows what it takes to get the best take, and how to get the best out of us because we’ve known him for a long time by now – ten years already. We’ve developed a good relationship, we can mess around and joke around a lot, but when it comes to getting down to business, he will tell us when things suck, and to do it again. Sometimes I will do a take and think it sucks, and he’ll be like ‘dude- that was pe…
…ere I was the last three years I was working on it. I started writing it in 2020, and then we began recording in the fall of 2022. As with the other records, it’s a document of that period of time in my life. I feel like I learn something every time I do it. I bring those lessons into each subsequent album, maybe that’s what was meant by more fully realized. If you keep your mind open, you can learn every time you make a record how to get better a…
…hty Music who signed the group to release the full-length Thrashmageddon in 2020. Whirling about in a mix of technical riffs against conventional Bay Area thrash influences, it’s easy to understand why these gentlemen appeal to a lot of the old school sensibilities within this genre. Their latest album Post Necrotic Human ups the level of musicianship, power, and finesse even more – giving us a solid opportunity to discuss all things Demolizer wit…
…ing game with the industry and streaming platforms to determine where your best markets are sometimes? Briody: Absolutely. I’ve talked to bands that we’ve played with on tour or bands that I’m friends with, and they’ll tell me they’ve got a million streams of this album. And they will play to 85 people. Jag Panzer has some of the worst numbers in streaming history – we have terrible numbers. Whereas one band may have a million streams and play to…
…ut perfection. Let’s just make your heart open and work. I was writing for online and paper magazines in Italy until 2009, and then I stopped because it was becoming too hard. I had to choose for writing or playing music. It was more than ten years of my life, and those were the times where you could still make some money as a journalist. Going into the studio for reports, receiving a lot of album promos -the label would invite us to do studio rep…
…liver with my voice, I feel my voice is not as strong as it was live say in 2005 or 2007, it was very powerful. You can lose that voice over the years, so I get nervous going into the studio if I can deliver. When you can deliver, you feel better about it. It’s a muscle, so it can be stressful. I’m always happy when an album is done and going into the mixing stages. I prefer playing live. Dead Rhetoric: What worries or concerns do you have regardi…
…king to expand our shows a bit more in the Midwest and South this year. For 2024, we’re looking to add some West Coast dates and Eastern Canada. We’re committed to trying to grow our road presence the best we can before we work on our third album. Dead Rhetoric: Every songwriter draws inspiration from a vast many things. What inspires you when creating music, and how do you harness that inspiration into creating the complex compositions that make…
…lked about lots of different options, when we did our last gigs of February 2022. Moira was in town, we had two guitar players and a bass player to hop on stage with us. We were running crazy backing tracks still on stage of all the orchestral parts. We have discussed doing this as a duo – drums, piano, and vocals live with all this other stuff rolling from a laptop or sample pad. The challenge that poses is who wants to go see a metal band with n…
…ything the way it was sitting. It’s a snapshot of what we can do. It’s the best we can do at this time. I’ll still jam it, which is a good sign. Asta: From my perspective I think it came out awesome. I’m not an engineer or producer, I share my opinions of what I think. Joe worked his butt off trying to make it sound as best as he could. If you were to say, where did you record this at? Joe did it – Joe did this? What big studio? It was Joe. I don’…
…Then the festival season will start, we have some festivals going on. The best thing is to look at our website or our social media sites. On Facebook we have all the events there. We have a gig in Mexico in December – who knows, maybe we can do a bit more in Latin America. It’s all in the making. We are thinking about going to do more shows in America. We are looking at the best possibilities, as we want to guarantee the quality that we give live…
