Black Dahlia Murder explains bands today

[superblonde]

I’m stuck in the old ways of thinking about a band being a group of guys/gals who physically get together to rock out as a regular hang out. The idea of a band that we all grew up with. Three or four or five long haired punks creating havoc. Which is the same rosy idea of a tech startup company too, a few people getting together every day (in a garage) to make something bigger than themselves. That is not what a band is, these days. Bands are made up of members working remotely across state lines in their own man-caves and never rehearsing together as a group. The only time they physically play together is at a live show. Even the local cover bands tell me that they never get together to rehearse, not even for newer songs, they just practice their parts at their home studios, make sure to follow the song perfectly according to the album track, and the first time they ever play a song together is some smaller show where they can test the song out. For pro touring bands, when one band member leaves, the outgoing member finds a new replacement who then practices in isolation and only meets up for one or two rehearsals just before the next live show.. etc. To me this sounds incredibly boring. I guess I’m stuck in the old way of thinking about a band as being a small group of friends who like to physically get together to rock out together. Who wants to send group texts to a band member rather than talking face to face, not me.

Snip from a new interview with Black Dahlia Murder. https://metalblade.com/tbdm/

And now your band has become a lot of other young people’s Cannibal Corpse.

Thats super heavy to think about it that way, because I love them so much, but it’s a huge compliment! We’ve gotten older, obviously; we used to be sold as a young band, you know – ‘Look at these kids playing this crazy fast music!’ – so now, there’s kids in the crowd half my age or less sometimes, who talk to me like I’m an old wizard. It’s different! But we’ve grown up on the road, basically, playing 200 shows a year usually; we’re always moving at a thousand miles per hour, writing albums very rapidly. By now, I’ve just accepted that pace, it’s just a part of us, to be like go-go-go! I know when we’re going to record the next six albums; it’s the same time every year and a half, two years, like clockwork.

Coming into the internet era, and acknowledging how music became disposable to people, compared to the collector’s era, and when that door opened, everyone had too much of a good thing, like a kid with ketchup, just piling it on – you realize how oversaturated things are, especially now that you can make things at home with ProTools. So many bands exist right now. You could never meet the members of your band in person; you could do it over the web, and that enabled us to have Brandon, who lives out here; we have guys all over the place now, we have a bass player in Boston, and the other three are Michiganders. I remember not even dreaming, like ‘How could you have a band where the members live across the nation?’ but so many bands do that now, with ProTools demos, text message groups, taking responsibility for your own craft – you have to upkeep it on your own, because we don’t practice weekly like a normal band anymore.

Do you guys feel more pressure individually now as musicians?

Yeah, for sure. We want to show up and be on the level. We’ll play for a few days before we leave for a tour, we get together in Michigan, hash it out; everybody comes ready. The drummer has a huge responsibility with upkeep; it’s Olympic to do what death metal drummers are doing. So Alan, our drummer, is at the practice space all the time. I go there so little now because of this [arrangement], I don’t remember the door code to get in [laughs].

You mentioned Brandon, who lives out here on the East Coast; how did you guys find him after Ryan Knight left?

So Ryan Knight, our lead player was stepping down amicably; he told us a year and a half in advance, just to be the most bro possible and help us segue. That was so huge and so nice of him, and we were like, ‘This is on you, man. Who do you think is the guy?’ and he’s like, ‘Well, Brandon’s my number one.’ They’re very much cut from that same cloth of appreciating virtuoso guitar playing, tons of vibrato, 80s shredders, Shrapnel Records, all that stuff, so in a way they’re tied by these sleazy rock elements. [Brandon] had more than a year to prepare, which he didn’t need because he’s a prodigy; he waltzed right into the first show we did in Europe. We did it very quietly, as to not blow our own spot up, because people get so worried and so butt-hurt about member changes, and I get it – well, I do, and I don’t. We did these DVDs where you learn who we are, we showed you our personality, and that became a double-edged sword when the members left, because then [some fans] were like, ‘It’s more than just a band – that guy’s got jokes!” [laughs]

People get so attached to bands, especially when they’re younger and are maybe the only metalheads in their town or their school; that’s where you get this feeling of ownership, and of betrayal, when something shifts, like a band’s sound, or lineup…

Or something you consider a compromise of their ideals to achieve some kind of status, like, you know, [whispers] a sellout. It’s kind of a balance, what we do. We want to stay the course as a band and represent the same core sound and intent of Unhallowed, but there’s a lot of selfishness in it, too; incorporating new ideas, more complicated arrangements, more technical stuff, as we get older and better. We’re always looking at what the fans like, too, though, and I think that they like that we’re staying the course. Like with Cannibal Corpse – you know what you’re going to get, and you’re probably going to like it! Or Obituary – their new record is one of their best since the 90s, and it’s been huge for them, you know?

I want to be a band that has a legacy. I’m amazed we’re still here 8 albums in – it sounds crazy when I say it! It’s super cool that we’ve survived the comings and goings of certain trends, and even ridden those waves a little bit; we were called metalcore, then deathcore, and we got fans from both. We’ve straddled a lot of different lines. I don’t even know what to call my own band genre-wise anymore; so many people have pitched in their two cents, it’s confusing! To me, it’s kind of its own thing now; it’s death metal, but we’ve transcended some of the glass ceilings by being misunderstood, mislabeled, by looking weird by metal standards – short hair, serial killer glasses, jokes. And for me, that came from the Big Four; it was cool to show that you liked punk, it was cool to wear your influences on your sleeve, but somehow, somewhere, it got all elitist or whatever, where you can only like one thing or the other.

Also, we knew we were weird-looking; at first, we didn’t even want to have photos of the band, period. Or videos, or anything. And they were like, ‘Well, this is a necessary evil, guys.’ So since there was no budget to make an amazing metal video where you turn into werewolves, joke videos came into play; we took the whole budget and drank it for one video, the pictures were us punching each other in the face – it was different, you know? The label was like, ‘What are you doing!?’ But it’s like Anthrax – tongue in cheek, they’re a great band, the music’s still first, but they have fun doing what they’re doing. I cannot not smile up there, there’s no point for me to try and wear black metal paint and be serious; it would’ve not flown! I cannot do it, I just have so much joy, it’s like a rapture to play live. It’s awesome, it’s my dream that has been achieved, but hasn’t stopped, so I have to keep going 101 in this direction.

Where I was once so alone, to be surrounded by like-minded people, I fucking love it. I exude that, it comes out, and I see what a smile does, even at a death metal show; it goes a long way, man.

I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

[Igglepud]

I’ve considered the online route, but I hate paying for the sites like Bandmix. I should probably suck it up and get with the times.

MY ROCK IS FIERCE!!!

[superblonde]

My only experience with those sites is reading their terms of service and costs, I definitely did not like either of those aspects. I think it should be possible to find people directly thru youtube or soundcloud or social media directly. Well, maybe even look in European groups (or Latin America?).. where rock and metal is still popular.. One thing I can say is that working with people in different time zones (esp overseas) really, really, reaaallly sucks, so one sneaky thing to do is to go across state/nation lines but vertically across the globe instead of horizontally across the globe.. (for us that probably means Latin America, maybe Argentina?)

Artists often say that metal is a tight or close community. (Zakk Wylde especially has mentioned this in several interviews) So it could be the best bet is on a metal forum or metal oriented channel (like maybe some of those youtube guitar review guys which I wont mention names).

I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

[Author]

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