The summer of Rivers Of Nihil's 'Monarchy'

Progressive death-metal unit unleashes sprawling concept album
By Peter Lindblad

Rivers Of Nihil released the album
'Monarchy' in August

Never mind what the calendar says. To Rivers Of Nihil, it is a scorching-hot summer in the desolate desert of Monarchy, where the earth is a giant wasteland and its new inhabitants, ruled by oppressive religious zealots, think of the Sun as their God.

The planet is in peril on the latest post-apocalyptic concept album from ascending progressive death-metal provocateurs, and only a wise old earthly force can save them from themselves. In Rivers Of Nihil's seasonal cycle, which began with spring and 2013's The Conscious Seed of Light, the dog days of existence are here, as bassist Adam Biggs, guitarist Brody Uttley and vocalist Jon Dieffenbach are joined by new members Jon Topore (guitar) and Alan Balamut (drums) on a dystopian journey through flowing scenes of brutal sonic devastation and beautifully developed, expansive post-rock atmospherics inspired by Explosions In The Sky or Sigur Ros.

Signing with Metal Blade Records and sharing stages with the likes of Obituary, Whitechapel and Dying Fetus has only served to enhance the profile of Rivers of Nihil, who formed in 2009 and have been focused on building off the promise of their first EP Hierarchy since its release.

On Monarchy, Rivers Of Nihil break new ground, releasing giant storms of emotional tumult through ever-evolving dynamics, alternating scenes of darkness and light, and monstrously heavy, seething riffs that stand there huffing and puffing while gazing upward at heavenly skies of gorgeous sound astronomy.

Biggs recently took time out to answer some e-mail questions about the making of Monarchy and what influenced this mammoth project, which ought to garner some "Album of the Year" consideration. 

Explain how the lyrical concept for Monarchy was conceived and what role the seasons have played on your records.

Adam Biggs: The specific concept for Monarchy pretty much came as a result of simply thinking about topics that bother me about our modern society and sort of extrapolating it to its source if you will. I was thinking a lot about the issue of LGBT rights in general and the grip that the "fundamentals" of our society has over a person's individual rights. What really governs someone's right to love? Or to be who and what you are without fear of judgement? It comes down to this convoluted idea of right and wrong brought about by centuries of religious brain-washing. So Monarchy deals with a race of new intelligent life forms on a distant future earth after it has been transformed into a desert wasteland by a massive solar flare, and their struggles with these similar issues. The desert setting, and the "oppressive heat" of this religious empire's stranglehold on the masses really sets the tone as the summer album in the seasonal concept. The whole idea behind the seasonal bridges between the four albums is to illustrate in the most relatable terms, the inevitability of death, and idea of rebirth within an ever-changing landscape. It's a huge thing to connect four records, but hopefully by the end it will all come together, and the larger picture will be more apparent.

Rivers Of Nihil - Monarchy 2015

Did this turn out to be a more emotional record for Rivers Of Nihil, and if so, why? Did the sequencing of the album play a role in bringing out those elements?

AB: I think it definitely is a more emotional record. You can tell just by listening to it. There's a whole lot of different feelings mixed in with the more stoic brutality that we tend to bring to the table. I think the main reason we decided to inject more feeling into this record is because the last one just felt so straightforward brutal, which is great, but it's not all we have going for us really, so we decided we should dig a little deeper this time around and show the more emotional side of our musical range. The order of the tracks takes on a sort of progression towards this idea, with the album starting off a lot darker and heavier before giving way to the more progressive leanings on the album. It's intended to give this feeling of relief, a sort of break from the anger of the first half or so. 

What was different about making this record, as opposed to previous efforts? Did you feel you had more freedom this time around to do what you wanted to do?

AB: Absolutely. We decided to take a fairly large chunk of the production duties on ourselves this time, utilizing our guitarist Brody's burgeoning engineering skills to track all of the guitar and bass performances in his home studio before importing to nearby Atrium Audio in Lancaster, Pa., where the rest of the album was tracked, edited and mixed. This method allowed us the freedom and time to make the guitar parts as layered and intricate as we wanted without the threat of going over budget or skipping over something for time's sake. This sort of control we had this time I feel really opened up the floodgates as far as what we felt we were capable of pulling off as a band; whereas before there was always a question of whether or not it'll work, now we can listen to it right away and get a feel for what we're doing ahead of time.

Talk about the influence of post-rock music on this album. Was it simply a matter of wanting to make an album that was more atmospheric, or did those elements work especially well with the tale you wanted to tell?

AB: Again it was another means of bringing our more emotion within the music. It's an element we'd experimented with in the past, but never brought to the forefront like on Monarchy. Yes there was also a desire to make the record more atmospheric, but at the same time it's more about just making everything denser; it's almost like having an orchestra backing in the band in a way that is really cool. The amount of moods that it can create is pretty impressive. 

In what ways is this record more experimental than the others? What sorts of things did you try with Monarchy that you hadn't attempted before? Were there some that didn't make the record because they simply didn't fit or seemed to be too "out there"?

AB: Pretty much everything that was written made it onto the record in some form or another which is kind of odd, I know. We've been a band for a lot longer than some people realize, and Brody and I have a pretty good understanding of what works for Rivers of Nihil material and what doesn't. So while we were writing the record we really stretched those ideas; rarely did we truly break away from the sorts of things we know we like to hear. It was all really a matter of sort of amending the definition of what this band is a little bit without betraying the whole meaning. 

Rivers Of Nihil are Jon Torpore,
Alan Balamut, Brody Uttley,
Adam Biggs and Jake Dieffenbach

How did the talents of the two new members, guitarist Jon Topore and drummer Alan Balamut, impact the recording of Monarchy? What kind of musicians are they?

AB: Jon's impact on the record is somewhat minimal because he joined the band pretty late in the writing process. However, he did co write the song "Reign of Dreams" with Brody, which turned out to be one of my favorites on the album. Jon is really solid as a player; he's a goofy dude, but when it comes down to putting on a tight show he's all business, and his talent for guitar mimicry is pretty impressive and makes for a really solid addition to the guitar duo of this band. Alan on the other hand contributed quite a bit. All of the drum parts are totally translated through his super busy, entertaining style of drumming. Alan really wanted to shred on this record, and that he did. At one point during tracking he even joked that he was doing too much and should probably make his drum parts easier next time, but I doubt he will. It's just not in him to take a break behind the kit.

Was there a moment during the making of Monarchy when it seemed like everything was coming together just the way you wanted it to? Conversely, what frustrations did you encounter along the way?

AB: It's actually pretty crazy because I don't think there was any point during production that I thought the record wasn't coming along the way we wanted. It really was a super smooth process, each next thing we did just kept adding to the overall feel and we just kept getting closer and closer with very few stumbling blocks. But if I had to choose one moment where I was like, "Yeah, this is what this is supposed to be," I'd have to say it was during mixing. Having all the finished parts where we wanted them and just adjusting the fine details of the whole thing really made it feel like reality at that point. It's like putting the last coat of paint on a model car or something.

There has been talk about how lush and layered the record is. Talk about the process that went into producing those sounds.

AB: It was honestly just a ton of Brody's guitar wizardry layered with a generous heap of delay and reverb among other effects. Like I said earlier, this was one of the big reasons that recording the guitars in our own home studio was the right option. There's just so much there and so many different tracks and tones that it would've been a nightmare trying to track them all in a pro studio when the clock is ticking and the money is flying out the window. He took a lot of pride in composing and arranging those tracks, so it's something I encourage anyone who listens to the record to take an extra careful listen to all the ambient textures. A lot of it is really cool.

Let me get your take on a few of the songs off Monarchy, beginning with "Ancestral, I" ...

AB: This one was actually pretty divisive. When Brody first sent the demo for this song I wasn't entirely sold on it, and I'm not sure if he was either. We went back and forth on it a lot; at one point we even considered leaving it off the album altogether. This one easily went through the most changes, going from the demo stage to what you hear on the record. Everything from the overall tempo to the solo structure to bass lines and drum beats were tweaked, scratched and re-written. It turned out to be well worth the effort in the end, because everyone in the band really enjoys that song and we plan on including it in the live set in the future. The lyrics ended up dealing with the death and burial of an over-zealous religious figure within the monarchy who is reflecting on the impact his life and influence had and will continue to have on generations to come. 

"Reign of Dreams" 

AB: Again, this is the one that Jon and Brody wrote together. It's a brutal, chaotic experience right from the get-go and it kind of gradually gathers itself into a more easy-to-digest sound, culminating in one of the biggest sounding choruses on the record. It was also one of the most difficult songs on the record to learn and perform. It could just be that the pace of the song is pretty nonstop, or that I'm just not used to adapting Jon's riffing style to the bass guitar just yet, but I had a hell of a time with this one – still lots of fun to learn and play though. The lyrics are about the sort of freedom that this new society enjoyed prior to the advent of the sun-worshipping religion and the Monarchy itself. It was free-flowing and dangerous, but they were very much in control of their own minds. The lyrics themselves have a good deal of "stream of consciousness"-type phrasings to reflect a truly free society.

"Terrestrai II Thrive" 

AB: Believe it or not this was actually the first full song written for the record and it's a heavy contender with "Ancestral, I" for the title of "most messed with song on Monarchy," in that it was pretty much a different song until Brody decided to turn the song into an instrumental, and was titled "Terrestria II." This is definitely the biggest leap sonically that this band has ever taken; it's head and shoulders above anything else we've done as far as a more progressive sound is concerned. I'm personally really excited to bring this one to the stage sometime, but it's hard to say when we could possibly make that happen.

"Perpetual Growth Machine" ...

AB: This is another one that got worked over pretty good (you're reminding me just how much rewriting we actually DID do). It started as a few throwaway riffs that Brody cobbled together to test tones on an amp configuration in his studio. When I heard it I said to him, "That's how the next record starts." And that's really how it happened. He sat on amp test version of this song for a while until fleshing it out more, and then there were some further edits we did. As it turns out this has quickly become a pretty popular song for us, which is strange because I never really saw "single potential" in it because the song doesn't really have a chorus, but hey it works! The lyrics, naturally, are about the birth of the new species of life on earth as the crawl from cracks of the world's dry ocean beds. It's meant to portray the persistence of life, and the inevitability that life can continue through just about anything.

Vocally, what's different about "Monarchy"?

AB: The easiest thing to notice about the vocals in this track is how few of them there are compared to a lot of our other songs. At the beginning of the writing process for this record, Jake and I agreed that we'd made the vocal lines way too busy in our previous releases and we wanted to draw it back on this record and focus on hooks, and more slogan-esque type passages that get stuck in the listener's head, while also giving the music and the riffs more space to breathe. And Monarchy is a pitch-perfect example of us doing just that. 

Now that the process of making the record is over, what stands out the most about it to you? And in what ways does it reflect where Rivers of Nihil is right now and where it's going?

AB: I think the thing that stands out the most for me is that I can still listen to it and not get grossed out in a way hearing my own band like I usually do. It still feels like it's fun to listen to, which I hope is something that translates to fans as well. As far as how it reflects us? It really doesn't because this IS us right now. When you see us live you're going to see mostly new material because of how proud we are of it. Hopefully when it's time to wind down on touring for Monarchy and start writing the next album we can continue the trend set by this record and just not put limitations on ourselves, and just do what we think sounds cool, because that's ultimately how good music is made.

CD Review: Revocation – Deathless

CD Review: Revocation – Deathless
Metal Blade Records
All Access Rating: A

Revocation - Deathless 2014

Deathless is the album that's going to move Revocation to the top of the class as far as technical death metal is concerned.

New to the Metal Blade Records family, this being their first release for the label and fifth overall, Revocation – having toured with fellow death merchants Whitechapel and DevilDriver – has a lot of living yet to do, their dizzying chops, maniacal energy and frenzied diversity driving such crazed balls of thrash fury as "A Debt Owed to the Grave," "The Fix," and "Scorched Earth Policy."

And yet, this is a disciplined unit, moving together in lock-step, switching directions on a dime, adrenaline coursing through their riffs. Somehow they don't lose the plot in the twitchy, jazz-like complexity of a constantly sparking "United in Helotry," and when they decide to lay it on thick, as they do on the brutally heavy "Madness Opus," they make crushing bones an art form, even as wreaths of melody escape the carnage.

Surging, careening dynamics, fearsome vocals, horrifying lyrics and hammering, high-velocity drums make Deathless a gripping, visceral listen, guitarist/vocalist Dave Davidson leading this team of death-metal demolition experts through its paces and teaming with Dan Gargiulo on brief spells of beautifully intertwined twin-guitar leads that pay homage to Judas Priest or Iron Maiden.

Deathless is non-stop action, every song the aural equivalent of a sliced artery shooting forth well-sculpted sounds like geysers of blood and Revocation scrambling to save itself before it bleeds out. Even the building drama of "Apex" eventually explodes through speakers, as does the simmering, menacing "Witch Trials." This is volatile stuff, but Revocation, like other technical metal freaks Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah, does not handle it with care. It shakes it up like a snow globe and lets the chips fall where they may.
– Peter Lindblad

Best of 2012 ... so far (Part 2)

Unveiling the top five hard rock and heavy metal albums of this half year

By Peter Lindblad

And then there were five. Fine specimens of skilled musicianship, thrilling energy and conceptual artistry, these sparkling diamonds bear hardly any rust, even if Judas Priest is nowhere to be found among them. From the devastating brutality and white-hot intensity of Whitechapel and Kreator to the steam-punk splendor and adventurous progressive spirit of Rush and black melodic magic of Kill Devil Hill, 2012 has been a banner year for hard rock and heavy metal up to this point.

And though any of the four mentioned above could easily have garnered the top spot, none of them did. There is another whose mystical vision and raging metal tumult simply boggles the mind. It is a perfect storm, one that would make meteorologists quiver with excitement. And it will leave you disheveled and dumbstruck, scrambling your brains so thoroughly that you might not remember where you are or how you got there. Feel free to agree or disagree with the list or its order, as long as we can do it over drinks at an establishment of my choosing.

Whitechapel - Whitechapel 2012

5. Whitechapel: Whitechapel – Nobody’s taken a bigger leap forward in 2012 than Whitechapel. It’s not enough anymore for deathcore’s biggest breakout act to take audiences by brute force. It’s not enough for them to terrify the easily offended with gore-splattered lyrics. These tortured Tennesseans with the swarming, intricately woven triple-axe attack have gone all in on their self-titled not-so-pretty hate machine, with back-breaking tempo shifts, maximum riffage and crazed dynamics threatening to consume Phil Bozeman’s guttural growl. Pretty little piano passages – a tribute to a fallen friend – set listeners up for the kill, as the imaginative sonic architects of Whitechapel makes good on their promise to conquer expectations.

Kill Devil Hill - 2012

4. Kill Devil Hill: Kill Devil Hill – A thick slab of surging, darkly melodic doom metal, Kill Devil Hill’s powerhouse debut bulldozes gothic ruins of riff-heavy rock and builds towering, monolithic new song structures atop the sacred burial grounds of Pantera and Ozzy-led Black Sabbath. More than the sum of its talented parts, Kill Devil Hill – created by former Sabbath and Dio drummer Vinny Appice, with ex-Pantera bassist Rex Brown onboard – introduces to the world Dewey Bragg, a man with the voice of a lion, and guitarist Mark Zavon, whose Panzer-like guitar forays seem directed by Rommel himself. The Alice In Chains comparisons are unavoidable, but with Brown lending heft and potency to the low end and Appice beating the living daylights out of his kit, Kill Devil Hill – immersed in all the haunting blackness and gloom of a graveyard after hours – boasts way more sonic mass than its grunge-era counterparts.

Rush - Clockwork Angels 2012

3. Rush: Clockwork Angels – 2112 was a great album … for its time. Clockwork Angels is better. Blasphemy, you say? Clockwork Angels is heavier – “BU2B” and “Carnies” – and more complex musically, although perhaps less raw and angry. The elaborate story, welded to some of the most grandiose sonic architecture the Canadians have ever constructed, of Clockwork Angels is wonderfully crafted, a mature, thought-provoking concept with none of the holes or the confused hokum of the 2112 saga. Where revisionists might see 2112 as the epochal moment where Rush’s power and progressive-rock inclinations clashed to create a compelling piece of art – which 2112 surely is – Clockwork Angels finds Rush still suspicious of totalitarian authority but more articulate and elegant about how they construct a response to it. And “The Wreckers” is one of Rush’s finest creations.

Kreator - Phantom Antichrist 2012

2. Kreator: Phantom Antichrist – Across a hellish, smoldering wasteland of apocalyptic imagery fly these four horsemen of thrash, soaring to dizzying heights on spiraling arpeggios, pounding whole cities into piles of ash with bombing drums and frenzied riffs that attack with an unquenchable blood lust, and speeding at high velocity into the unknown with an unrestrained fury bordering on madness. Screaming for vengeance, tracks like “United in Hate,” “Death to the World,” and “Civilisation Collapse” rain torrents of fiery thrash down on the unsuspecting, while “Until Our Paths Cross Again” and “Your Heaven, My Hell” offer brief moments of bruised beauty amid an outpouring of transcendent power-metal drama. Once again, Mille Petrozza whips this reconnaissance mission of the damned through its paces, and the result is a magnificent manifesto forged of startlingly brilliant technical musicianship and cataclysmic, compelling song craft. Phantom Antichrist will make you a believer.

High On Fire - De Vermis Mysteriis 2012

1. High On Fire: De Vermis Mysteriis – In the eye of a wintery hurricane of blustery, tempest-tossed guitars and roiling rhythmic seas stands High On Fire’s Captain Ahab Matt Pike, daring an angry God bent on destruction to silence his roaring, ragged voice as he relates the woeful plight of Jesus’ cursed twin brother. Mystery, madness, time travel and gale-force riffs threaten to tear the good ship De Vermis Mysteriis to pieces, but Pike’s able seamanship steers this scarred vessel through treacherous, rumbling melodic currents and violent, battering storms of sludgy metal. Epic is too small a word for such a monstrous beast. It’s only four letters after all. 

Whitechapel's new era of devastation

Deathcore titans return with powerful new LP

By Peter Lindblad

Whitechapel in 2012

Losing drummer Kevin Lane in late 2010 certainly took the starch out of Knoxville, Tennessee deathcore doomsayers Whitechapel. As hard as that pill was to swallow, Ben Savage would experience worse between the release of A New Era of Corruption in the summer of that year and the difficult birthing of the band’s latest self-titled LP, a fiery blast furnace of hostility and rage that burns so hot it threatens to consume anything that dares creep near it.

“My best friend died during that time, and he was a real amazing piano player,” admits Savage, one of three architects of the savage, thickly layered guitar onslaught wrought by Whitechapel on its immense new sonic undertaking, released June 19 by Metal Blade. “That’s why we put piano parts in the songs. He was an amazing piano player and a songwriter. When he sung, it was beautiful. His name was Andrew Bledsoe (the son of veteran Knoxville music writer Wayne Bledsoe) and … yeah, he was a great piano player and we felt his arm around us.”

The melancholy that resides in those purposefully struck keys is palpable. Unchecked violence and vehement invective almost buries them on Whitechapel, a bloody war of brutally heavy riffs, fire-breathing vocals and punishing, seismic rhythms all caught up in a powerful maelstrom of surging emotions and oppressive darkness. And yet there are sinewy vines of strange and beautiful melody found in the ruins of these massive, shape-shifting structures of sound. From the scathing, anti-conformist rant “(Cult)uralist” to the crushing devastation and bleak outlook of “Possibilities of an Impossible Existence,” Whitechapel is a furious condemnation of a society gone horribly awry, as the crazed, chaotic beatings of “Section 8” and “Hate Creation” so viciously illustrate.

Now boasting a lineup of Savage, the growling, roaring lion of a vocalist Phil Bozeman, guitarists Alex Wade and Zach Householder, bassist Gabe Crisp, and drummer Ben Harclerode, Whitechapel, formed in 2006, is primed to stomp its way through the heavy metal community like Godzilla on bath salts. This fall, Whitechapel is touring with Hatebreed. In a recent interview, Savage relayed the story of how Whitechapel survived drug addicted booking agents and anxiety over a change of drummers to record its fourth album in a house abandoned by a couple that apparently fought like cats and dogs. Here’s what Savage had to say:

What do you remember about hearing the new record in its totality for the first time?

BS: I was just really stoked. I guess I look at it in a different way, because I could see all the elements coming together, like how all the riffs kind of just fit into place and how all the ideas came to be. I mean, it was like that one was put together in a month, but we had ideas and parts for like a couple of years. We had riffs from before the last album and stuff, so I could see it all coming together, and I thought it couldn’t have come together in any better way. I try to think about what else we could have done, but I can’t really think of anything major that we could have done differently. So that’s a good sign, I guess.

In sitting down and thinking about recording the new record, what elements of the Whitechapel aesthetic did you want to retain in making this album and what new features – like perhaps the piano intro to “Make It Bleed” or that really affecting quiet guitar outro in “Dead Silence” – did you want to add?

BS: I wanted to be as different as possible, without coming off too tacky I would say. I wanted the songs to be well – I mean, we all did – in a live setting, to be just really powerful. And that’s basically what we tried to do, make it as cool sounding as we could and still be able to pull it off live, but make it cool sounding so that it intrigues people that listen to it for more than just the music, to give them like another perspective – a musician’s perspective, but still have like a nice live feel to it. So we messed around with tempo changes and stuff, like dropping the tempo down. I still wish we could record an album without a click track, because our first two were like that and they sound real blah. We tried to make it as live as possible, basically.

Listening to the new album, you can hear an increased complexity – both sonically and lyrically – to this new record. But, it also has an expansiveness that is quite remarkable. Do you feel like this is your most ambitious record to date?

BS: Yeah, I’d say so. We’ve all been through a lot the past couple of years since the last record, just in our home lives and everything. You try to find inspiration in like the down times – I mean the hard times and everything. It really came together I think because the record is real dark sounding, too. A lot of the riffs were written under not very ideal conditions. Yeah, it’s definitely way more vicious, because for the most part, we didn’t want to overthink it. That was the main thing. The previous record, we tried to – especially the first two albums – fit like 10 riffs into one song. On this record, it’s more like three or four riffs per song, but those riffs go on different tangents. It’s definitely way more dynamic, and it’s definitely like we didn’t just write a riff with the first idea, you know. If we wrote a riff that was cool, we’d just see what else we could do with it and see what other avenues we could take rather than just stick with the first idea that came to mind. Phil did an amazing job, too. Like, he’s just … it’s like we make the beats. We’re like Dr. Dre and he’s Eminem just laying vocals down over it, and it just makes it awesome.

It does seem like he tried to sing a little more on this record instead of just all growls all the time.

BS: I know, I know. It’s good, it’s good. It’s like you can almost sing over the choruses. Whenever we first started listening to the final version it occurred to me to make joke-like songs over the choruses, just like singing them instead of just growling them. We’d sing them. It’s real melodic like that. And also I just want to … like the big thing recently I’ve wanted to be able to do is be able to play our songs on an acoustic guitar. When we write the songs, we try to mess with the riffs as much as possible so they’d sound good on an acoustic, because that’s how you know a song is good if it rocks on an acoustic.

Is there going to be a Whitechapel unplugged album some time?

BS: I’d be down if people didn’t think it was too tacky. I could totally do it. We’ve already done an acoustic version of a song from the last EP, but that’s the only thing. We could do a lot of acoustic renditions on this one.

“Section 8” comes from the EP you guys released last fall, and I love how it grows and evolves into something that just keeps gaining speed, and then, it has slower, brutally heavy finish. Working on that EP, did it at all point the way toward the results of the new full-length?

BS: It did, it did. The EP was definitely a good idea, although I think some people in our band would disagree. But, I think it was a good idea in the fact that we were on tour for so long, and we hadn’t had much time to write anything together since we’d been on tour. It’s hard to get inspired when you’re doing that. So we just basically … we wrote “Section 8” as a band, because like the last album, A New Era of Corruption, that was more like, we toured a lot … we still tour a lot, but we were touring a lot back then, so it was more of like we all kind of wrote our own songs. Everybody still had an opinion on it, but it was more like, we’d already come in with pretty much full songs, whereas this one … with like “Section 8,” when we starting working on “Section 8” we just kind of went back to what we used to do and start with the first riff and work your way till the end. And then everybody throws in ideas, everybody worked together. I think “Section 8” really helped the process for this record writing-wise, like how to go about the writing part.

In what ways has the band changed the most since The Somatic Defilement?

BS: Well, I don’t know. We have a new drummer, so that’s definitely a change. Everybody’s really been like the same, it’s just like we have a different perspective on like the music industry and how we should go about writing our songs. It just comes with experience, but we all haven’t really changed that much. I mean, we have a new drummer who can actually play our stuff perfectly, and we can actually make tempos faster, we can make riffs groove harder … that was the hardest part. Like, finding – especially in a band like ours – a well-oiled machine of a drummer who can play the fast parts perfect and then be able to groove. Usually, it’s one or the other. It’s hard to find a guy who is well-rounded, in the middle sort of, and so we found the new guy … we also call him “new guy,” so I’ll just call him “new guy” from now on in this interview. We got him like a year ago, and when we got him, he just wanted to go fast. He was real fast and we always pushed him to be like … well, he still had groove, so we were just like, “You know, man, just groove harder man, just don’t be afraid of the groove.” And you’re thinking about putting a double-bass part, a straight double-bass, 16 double basses in one part; instead think of what else you can do, like with the high-hat or something, that makes it groove harder other than that. So that was another cool thing that came about.

Did it change the dynamics of the band having him come in?

BS: Definitely … in the studio and live. Like live, it’s tremendous, because that’s where you’re showing off for the people to see. Live, you’ve got to have somebody that’s on it. But, yeah, it definitely changes the dynamic, and because before we found him, we all were just kind of like, “Oh sh*t, are we going to find a guy?” We have a tour coming up in like a month or something. We need to … it was not a good time in the band trying to find a drummer, because Kev had just left, but when [Ben] came around, our spirits just shot up.

What guitar parts are you most proud of on the new record?

BS: I’m real proud of the guitars in “Hate Creation,” because those two riffs … basically, the riffs in that song are like real old-school sounding. It’s like some parts you listen back and you go, “Oh, that’s really cool, like that Tool part in the middle, I’m so glad we did a part like that,” because I used to love Tool when I was a kid. My first metal show was Tool and Meshuggah, and I was really stoked to have that part in the song. And those riffs are like really old, too, so it was cool that we finally got to use them. And I’m proud of “Make it Bleed,” the riffs in that, because it’s pretty straightforward riffing, but they all flow really well. And “I Dementia” … “I Dementia” is real brooding and heavy – yeah, just happy with most of them or all of them.

I guess it feels this way with every album a band makes, but do you feel that this is the album that’s going to put you over the top?

BS: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so, because … well, I don’t know, because every time I look back, everybody was happy with the songs. It was like all of us were happy with the material. So, yeah … I don’t know what better situation there could be.   

You mentioned the collaborative nature of this album, as evidenced by the naming of it. Did that make the writing and recording of this record a more satisfying experience for you, or did it in some ways make the process easier or more difficult?

BS: Um, it’s all three. In the end, it was satisfying, but during the process … f**k man, it’s like everybody’s stuck on a part, and you’re like, “I don’t know what you did there, but it shouldn’t be that.” And I’m like, “Well, can you give me an idea? Just something you don’t ever want to hear (laughs).” Patience is the key and Alex, our guitarist, he has a new house. So, it was really easy just to go over there, drive 10 minutes down to his house and just work and then drive home. It was a really easy process. Alex’s house definitely has a lot more to do with the writing process, because it was a comfortable setting.

Was the house finished when you were working on it?

BS: Yeah, he got it off like this couple. They had an argument and they broke up. There were like holes in the walls throughout the whole house (laughs).

You’re kidding …

BS: No, they had an argument. I guess the wife or the husband just went through punching holes in the walls, and … I don’t know. And then, after that was fixed, it was all set up and then from January to February, we were there pretty much every day working. But, from halfway through January and February, we went to NAMM because we have signature guitars, so that was a real kink in the writing process. I think up to that point we only had two songs done and that was January 15. And we had to go into the studio like Feb. 3, so that was a real kink in the chain. But it gave us time to reflect on the material, and I went through my hard drive while I was there. And I have like a catalog of just riffs that I went through, just listened to them. So, it was all building up to something good.

Most of the band is from Tennessee. What was the environment like and how did it inform your sound?

BS: Well, I mean … the schools are kind of … I don’t know (laughs) … I went to this magnet school, when I was in middle school, and I met some friends and that’s when we started a band called Psychotic Behavior. There wasn’t really like a music scene, or if there was, I was too young to really go out to shows. I was just out there listening to metal in my car … I mean, not my car but at home, you know. After a while, I started going out to shows and it was cool. That made you want to start your own band and do that whole thing. So it was just ambition to do something other than just living here, ‘cause there’s nothing there that really intrigued me. I just wanted to be in a band.

It seems like culturally barren areas really influence people to start bands. I’ve heard Slipknot talking about how it was growing up in Iowa …

BS: Yeah, I don’t know what else you do in Iowa (laughs).

What were the early days like for Whitechapel? Was it a struggle financially?

BS: Yeah, we all had equipment before … we all had like day jobs. I was going to community college and working at a deli. Phil and Alex were working at this screen-printing shop. Phil also worked at this place answering calls for jewelry television and stuff. He also cleaned the interior of cars for Jaguar. Zach worked at a paint shop. I mean, we all had jobs. We’d save up enoughto buy gear off people that we knew in town. We all bought our own equipment. We never really had a sugar daddy (laughs) doing it for us.

What did it mean to you to sign to Metal Blade a year later?

BS: I think that at that point, we signed to Metal Blade and it was definitely just a confidence boost. It was just like, “Wow! We can actually be optimistic with the band.” So, I think that pushed us right on into our first release on Metal Blade, because a lot of energy went into doing that and also a lot of stress. A lot of the songs are really like riff sandwiches all throughout the songs … I’m still happy with it. Oh, just signing to Metal Blade was just a huge confidence booster. It was like, “Wow, we might actually be able to make a career off this and do something cool.” Before that, we were just doing our own stuff with tours and with like shady booking agents.

You got to know the dark side of the business …

BS: Yeah. Aw man, this guy was like a heroin addict. He booked the tour and then he just didn’t care. Halfway through the tour, he just stopped advancing shows … he just stopped halfway through, and I think it was like our second tour ever in 2007. And he just stopped caring halfway through. He wouldn’t show up. There wouldn’t be any promotion. It was like, “Oh, what the hell …” And then after we signed to Metal Blade, you could actually feel people starting to care about you. The management we have now, it’s like … well, people care about you when you’re on a label.

A New Era of Corruption seemed to up the ante so to speak, sounding more brutal and intense. When you look back on that record, how do you feel about it?

Whitechapel has a new LP out

BS: I’m real happy with it. I mean, a lot of the songs were written individually. The songs I wrote I’m more self-conscious about … you know, I’m like, “Sh*t, maybe it would have been better if we’d worked together.” But when we released the record I was proud of it, and I’m still proud of it. I mean, it is what it is. At the time, we thought that was a necessary step. And I’m still proud of the record. It was definitely what we needed at the time, and it did what it did. And I’m proud as hell of the songs. The only thing is I’m not really like a lead guitar player. I like writing riffs, so I’m really self-conscious about my leads. That was probably the biggest part, like the leads on the record could have been a little better … but, whatever.

I wanted to talk to you about some of the tracks on the new record specifically. One of my favorites is “Faces.” The intensity and speed just blows you away, and yet it might be the most straightforward track on the record. What went into making that one?

BS: Oh, there’s a funny story behind that one. Our bass player, Gabe, whenever we’d come up with like a cool riff, we’d e-mail each other. We’d like record it and e-mail it to each other. And then people would reply back: “Oh, that’s cool,” or “Aw, it’s cool you did this.” But sometimes you don’t get replies back. And then you’re like, “Okay, I guess this riff sucks (laughs).” Gabe actually took a liking to the first riff in that song. And we were like at Alex’s house like writing and stuff, and Gabe and I were going to work on the song. We went out back to the back porch and Gabe had like this Kentucky blueberry weed, and we smoked a bowl of it, went inside and finished the song in an hour. It was like, “Bam.” Gabe and I had never written a song before, so it was cool because Gabe just really directed the song, “Yeah, and then there should be a part like this.” And it went on like that, and we’d do that, and then, “Okay, we should bring it back to this,” and the end of the song was done in about an hour. I think Alex and “new guy” went to go get Chinese food, and then by the time they came back, the song was done. And we were just stoked on it. It was a pretty cool moment. I don’t know if we could have caught it at a better time.

Is “The Night Remains” the most melodic track to you?

BS: I’d say so. I mean, earlier on, everybody thought that song would be kind of a dud or whatever, like it’d kind of be just all right. Then, I knew that song could be real special; it just needed effects added to it. So we really focused on … like in the song, if you don’t listen to the effects, it’s just real like straightforward, like chugging … just real straightforward. But, with the effects added to it and the layers and the atmosphere adds a new vibe. I still think we named the song perfectly, “The Night Remains,” because it kind of has a nighttime, Halloween type of feel about it.

“Hate Creation” is the first single, and the breakdowns and changes in tempo are so unpredictable. I quite like the dual guitar parts as well. Why did that track seem the perfect one to release first?

BS: Probably because it was different, but it wasn’t so different that people would be like, “Oh wow! I’m just not going to care about this band anymore.” It was different enough that it was like Tool, you know. It was like everything wasn’t like awkward at all or … it was just like an anthemic song. I don’t know. It just felt right. I don’t know, it’s heavy and basically, it’s just classic Whitechapel. 

What are you most looking forward to in touring this summer?

BS: Yep. Um, looking forward to seeing High On Fire, Slipknot, Slayer, Motorhead … all those cool bands. I don’t know … just looking forward to playing all the new songs.

Have you played the new songs live and if you have, what’s been the reaction?

BS: The only one we’ve played live is “Section 8,” and the reaction has been great for that. I want to start playing some of the slower songs live, like “I Dementia” and the closing track on that record ‘cause it’s going to add a different contrast to the songs we have. It’s going to have like a slower, groovy thing to the live show that’s going to be real cool.

CD Review: Whitechapel - Whitechapel

CD Review: Whitechapel - Whitechapel

Metal Blade

All Access Review: A-

Whitechapel - Whitechapel 2012

Someday, a happier Phil Bozeman might be moved to pen a charming children’s book full of goodness and light-hearted mirth. That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, however, as the superhuman, almost bestial lead vocalist and resident wordsmith for deathcore warriors Whitechapel has a spleen full of hate-filled bile built up inside that is just begging to be vented. And he expels gallons of it on the Tennessee band’s hotly anticipated new June 18 release for Metal Blade, a seething emotional cauldron of intensely hostile and dense, aggressively dynamic metal that’s saturated with starry atmospherics and resigned to the idea that “the world will rot from the inside out,” as Bozeman demonically growls in the brutally heavy chorus to “Section 8.”

As the decomposition eats away at mankind, Whitechapel will serenade the apocalypse with darkly melodic passages, a dizzying array of riffs and violent, death-obsessed imagery. A parade of exquisite misery and pain, expressed so vividly in Bozeman’s full-throated roar, this scary self-titled effort signifies just how anxious Whitechapel is to escape the restrictive extreme music ghetto they’ve been locked up in since their screaming, agonized birth. “Section 8” is their cry of freedom. A nightmarish frenzy of angry guitars and furious blast beats – courtesy of clever new drummer Ben Harclerode – that pummel and attack from all angles, “Section 8” shifts tempos seamlessly, slowing to a bulldozing crawl and then accelerating to breakneck speeds before exhaling its last breath. Similar in how it switches directions, the expansive first single, “Hate Creation,” does a swan dive into a swirling vortex of guttural, hellish vocals and layers of evil-sounding guitars created by Ben Savage, Zach Householder and Alex Wade. Regaining its footing, Whitechapel floats through little mystical episodes that vanish like mirages when a blazing sonic holocaust – stoked by Sepultura-like tribal percussive chanting from Bozeman – scorches the song’s sacred earth.

More curious, however, are “The Night Remains” and the epic closer “Possibilities of an Impossible Existence,” the former a mysterious, shadowy presence bringing destructive grooves and oddly intoxicating guitar hemlock and the latter a burnt offering of relentless heaviness and decayed beauty. Punctuated by a morose piano outro that serves as an exhausted epithet for this asylum of insane thrash, paralyzing breakdowns, and vigorous, charging rhythms, “Possibilities of an Impossible Existence” is the last monolithic structure standing on Whitechapel, an album that survives massive, devouring conflagrations like “Make it Bleed” and the politically-charged screed “Faces,” while also absorbing the booming guns of the chugging battleship “I, Dementia.” If this record is any indication, Whitechapel may just be deathcore’s greatest hope for crossover success … and Bozeman would be its messiah.

-            Peter Lindblad