The Black Dahlia Murder Interview
Interview with Shannon Lucas of The Black Dahlia Murder
Words by Brendan Monteiro / Photo’s by Nathaniel Shannon
The Black Dahlia Murder, a historic event described as ferocious and gruesome, those same discriptions could be used for the music the Mischigan five piece of the same name create. The difference between them and every other death metal band out there is there outlook and attitude, that’s not to say that their lyrics are any less darker than say another band out there, it’s just that they are different than rest of the pack as people. Clink got a few minutes before their headline slot at the Bonecrusher festival to sit and talk about everything from keeping fans happy to general retarded tour antics.
The music that you guys create can be described as heavy, but what is the heaviest experience that you have had to deal with as a band?
I think since I have been in the band the heaviest experience would be, I think it was when our last guitar player John Kempainen left the band. We knew he was going to be on his way out whether he left or we fired him and it was one of those crossroads we could see coming, but we weren’t prepared to replace him until the next tour was over. So we had about three weeks in Canada to do and no time to replace him. He quit the band and said he wasn’t going to do the tour three days before the tour started which puts everybody in a real bad position because we were doing a headlining tour and the bands supporting us were relying on the money as well. Being just before christmas a lot of these bands were relying on the money, A for bills and B for christmas. If we were to not go on tour because of him there would of been a whole lot of people out of a whole lot of money, not to mention when you burn bridges by canceling you actually really piss off fans. That was there plans and they as fans made plans and your just bailing out on them. It’s funny because being in the band you think “it won’t matter, we will see them next time”, but it’s not like that for fans and almost take it personally and get a little hurt. We just decided that we were just going to go without him as a four piece, our music is based a lot on guitar harmony’s which made it hard. We posted a statement online stating what happened and that we were still going to tour as a four piece and that we hope that the fans still want to come out, we actually had so much positive feedback from that and they were so happy with that.
How emotional is it when a member leaves a band?
It’s very emotional, we spend more time with each other than anybody else on this planet. Say we tour eight months out of a year that’s eight months that we are with each other all day, every day. The only break you have is when you go and eat by yourself or go to the bathroom. I live with our vocalist Trevor outside of touring so I see him all the time. When you have something that has so much time involved and your close to these people and then have to work with a new person and teach stuff and it takes time and is sort of a headache. We were very lucky with getting Ryan Knight though after John left because he is actually very perfect for the band, personality wise and he’s from the same age group and he’s an incredible player. He took us to a new level, he’s a blast to play with and he doesn’t complain about a lot and that is all that is important because we all know that things suck on tour and it’s uncomfortable and we don’t need people to constantly complain about it. So people that can stay positive and make the best out of every situation and appreciate what they have and the opportunity they have, well it’s just good to have that.
Your commonly misplaced into different genre’s, it happens with a lot of bands, but there must be limit as to what genre’s are being thrown around. Especially when it comes to touring rosters and being put on tours with varied acts, what would be your limit with regards to touring with bands from a different genre?
Well, usually for a tour we are able to decide who we are going to bring out or who we want to go out with so it’s never really a huge problem but we were actually invited to play The Gathering. ICP (Insane Clown Posse), it’s there big festival out in the woods. It’s all a lot of there bands, Psychopathic Records bands, and we offered a good slot but we had to decline. I respect them for what they do and I think they are marketing geniuses but I just think that that’s a place we can’t go and our fans are not going to go there and we just thought it wasn’t a great idea. We drew the line there but usually we are with other bands, there are so many sub genres of extreme metal, but usually we try to stick with bands that have some sort of extremity.
Death metal is significantly technical, who do you think is pushing the envelope at the moment?
Wow, there are so many bands doing that. There are a lot of bands that are just so far under the radar, the only people that know about them are the other people that like underground death metal. There’s a tonne of super underground death metal bands that are so fast and so outrageous but the one’s that most people have heard of are Nile, in my opinion George Kollias is probably on top right now as the fastest and most legit drummer and he’s not doing any cheating to play that fast. He’s a hard hitter and very accurate and extremely fast. I think everybody gives him credit where it is due and he’s the man right now. For a long time it was Derek Roddy when he was in Hate Eternal, that band pushed the envelope with speed, I mean they were ungodly fast and relentless and just never slowed down. I think that since he is not with them that Kollias is easily on top, I think he’s actually faster than Roddy was in his prime to be honest with you but that’s a whole other discussion.
There are so many bands now though and death metal has become so techie, like bands like The Faceless on this tour, outrageous band that are so fast and they are extremely technical and so young. It seems like prog, progressional type metal is becoming rapidly more popular.
Lovelost Records is stated in many places as the bands own label but that is not true right?
Our first EP was released on Lovelost but the band definitely does not own it. It was a local type thing and then we found our place with Metal Blade Records
On a forum it says that you possibly might re print that first EP that you originally released with Lovelost, is there any truth to that?
No possible way, no way. Lets leave the fossils buried in the earth.
You guys seems a lot more relaxed them some metal bands, what would your definition of a metal head be?
I don’t know if there is necessarily a definition for that, I think we come from a different school of looking at things. For us we all have punk rock backgrounds but were all metal heads and so for us we don’t feel like we have to dress or look a certain way and there is standard and no dress code. Because of that we get lumped in to the hardcore scene a lot and we have a lot of hardcore fans and that works to our advantage as crossover’s are great and we are all fans of that genre as well. So we don’t believe there is a dress code but in Europe it’s different, the typical metal guy has long hair and facial hair is optional. You also see a lot of leather jackets, boots, spikes, all black and it seems like they take it a very seriously and I just think you can be a metal head but you don’t have to take it that seriously. You can live life outside of that little realm, it’s ok if you wear a shirt that’s blue or yellow, no one is going to hate you for it. I don’t know, I think my idea of a metal head is just a guy who enjoys different genres of metal, I just disagree with the whole “you have to look a certain way”. Besides the fact that I am wearing black pants, I am wearing a bright red shirt and I a have short hair, I never had or will have long hair.
Would the video for Miasma be a good indication of what a night out with The Black Dahlia Murder would be like?
That was done some time ago so everyone has grown up since then, I have noticed that over last handful of years everyone is calming down a bit and everyone is reaching a few years from thirty and a couple of guys are married and buying houses. So I have seen people calming down but we still like to have fun. I would say if the whole band didn’t have to work and we were in vegas to have fun then it would probably look something like that except that everyone can get in the bar now.
Do you feel that with the addition of Ryan Knight in the band, that the band has now become more technical?
A little bit, I think he raised the bar for sure. Maybe not so much the song structure but the guitar playing and the solo’s have gone up in leaps and bounds, even the rest of the guitar riffs are much better. This record is a little more technical than the last and a lot of people mentioned it when it came out. I don’t know if we really noticed how much it changed but obviously when you progress as a musician and your touring all the time an you hopefully get better at your craft. Naturally you want to push the envelope on every record and you don’t want to write songs that feel fairly easy to play, you want it to be hard and your constantly pushing. So I would definitely say in all areas everyone has grown as musicians.
Staying on the topic of Ryan, do you think he could pull of a good phone prank as Jeff Bridges from The Big Lebowski?
Ha ha, kind of, in high school everyone called him Butthead because he talks like Butthead. In my opinion he is a cross between Butthead and Garth from Waynes World, you know what I mean. He will just kind of walk up to you and just be like “yeah” and that’s it. You know what I mean, It’s so awkward, he is hilarious but it’s like an unintentional funny. I am not sure if he could pull it off or not. I was actually out with him last night. It was me, him and a couple of dudes from the tour and we went to a gay bar
On purpose for laughs?
Yeah on purpose, it was fucking hilarious, it was guys and girls with straight and gay and it was just funny.
Why do you think The Black Dahlia Murder has been in the spotlight more than other death metal bands?
I would say our age, the generation nowadays want to be able to relate to a band more and the appearance kind of has something to do with that. If a kid has stretched ears or maybe has got some tattoo’s and he sees me and hears the band and think “well I’m sort of like that guy” and in that way people can relate to the band. I think visual appearence has a lot to do with how kids perceive a band and it’s unfortunate that it’s part of the case but I do think it’s because we look like an everyday person and in that we we encourage kids to just be themselves and not care so much. This is for everyone and you don’t have to have designer clothes or leather jackets with patches of bands way before your time on it. The whole idea we have behind our show is like a punk rock mentality, you work all week and on the weekend you just want to cut loose so why come to a show and hang around an worry about how people are perceiving you. It’s your time to not worry about those things, who cares about that guy because it’s not a fashion contest. Who cares if you look silly moshing, just let loose and have fun.
I congratulate you on having such a honest objective with your band.
Thank you, I think that the kids get it. I think if people are going to grasp something and retain it, it has to have something memorable as far as music goes. It’s got to have a hook of some sort and whether it’s a guitar melody or vocal thing or drum thing, it’s got to have something that catches peoples ears. I think that because we are influenced by Swedish metal there are catchy harmony’s and I that’s what gets stuck in peoples head. You hear that one spot in the song and maybe the drums are going fast and you lock into that groove and you keep hearing that harmony and it becomes infectious. Death metal can be infectious if you do it right.
Watching some interviews prior, one word that comes up in Trevor’s vocabulary is “boner”, does he use it a lot?
Boner?
Like describing things by saying “… that gave me a boner”
I honestly never even paid attention to that, I thought you were going to say heartburn ha ha. It’s funny the thing that we say, there will be a period in time where there will be something that somebody has made up or said that everyone will use. Like for the past four months there has been this thing and Trevor started it, it’s putting an N in a word when it shouldn’t be there. Like instead of saying “what the heck” you would say “what the henk” or instead of “fuck you” it would be “funk you” or “sunck my dinck”. It just sounds hilarious and it’s really funny, it’s like borderline retarded but we have become obsessed with it and everyone starts doing it to a point that you don’t even know your doing it.
Has it spread to other bands?
I don’t know if they pick up on it, I don’t know if they are as dumb as we are. It’s so funny though and that is what has been going on lately.
Lastly, when do you think the world will end?
Ha ha ha, I don’t know, some people believe it will be 2012.
Every year they seem to add on an extra year.
Yeah your right, I heard 2011 at one point and now it’s 2012. They’re still building that Hadron Collider.
The Black Hole maker?
Yeah yeah, the black hole maker, maybe once they get that bad boy fired up it might be the end of the world. I tried to understand it, I wend to wikipedia and read up about it but I couldn’t make any sense of what they were doing. All I could get from it was that it’s an enormous machine that they claim could destroy the world. It’s great, lets just create a black hole. There’s that and then there’s super volcanoes, Yellowstone, scientist say if those bad boys go off it will be a nuclear winter where the world gets covered in ash with no sun and just general bad news. What can I do to stop it though, worrying isn’t going to do anything.
