The Black Dahlia Murder: Here to Deflorate You

BDM's Trevor Strnad recently spoke to Spiritech from www.pyromusic.net about their new album, Deflorate: Which is available as a CD/DVD pack in the Riot Store for $27.95

Detroit melodic Death Metallers The Black Dahlia Murder are one of the biggest names in their genre, creating relentlessly brutal music for close to a decade on albums such as 2005’s ‘Miasma’ and 2007’s ‘Nocturnal’. With new album ‘Deflorate’ in stores, PyroMusic chatted with frontman Trevor Strnad after a show in California about the new record, being given every musical label under the sun and whether the band will return to Australia.

Q: Hey Trevor, how’s the tour for ‘Deflorate’ going?

A: Actually, today is the first day of our new tour where we’re headlining. It’s with Skeletonwitch, Toxic Holocaust and Trap Them. But we’ve been on tour for a month straight prior to this with Children Of Bodom and that was an awesome tour. But tonight was the first show of this new one and it was killer, so hopefully that will set the pace for this thing.

Q: Children Of Bodom have a reputation as hard partiers on tour. How was that experience?

A: Those guys drink man, they drink like Scandinavians! (laughs) Any time we’ve ever toured with Scandinavian bands, they just drink so brutally. Like I’ve been drank under the table by the female keyboard player of Ensiferum, you know what I mean? So it’s like, wow, man. You guys just slam absinthe like it’s fucking Kool-Aid – okay! (laughs) It’s hard to compete, you know? But dude, Bodom is cool and it’s definitely an honour for them to have us back, ‘cause we toured with them a few months ago across the States. So they’re like, “oh alright, let’s take these guys to Canada!” So apparently we must have done something right, because they had us back and it was really rad. Like I said, we’re shifting gears right now and this tour is going well so far.

Q: On to the new album, ‘Deflorate’ seems like such an appropriate title for a Black Dahlia Murder album. Is that why you went with it?

A: Well yeah, ‘Deflorate’, deflowering is tied into the band name a little bit, because of Black Dahlia, flower, you know? The woman, she was killed and was very innocent, so in a way she was being deflowered. And then it’s tied into… it’s an encouraging verb to the masses, because Death Metal has always preached from the point of view of the bad guy. So whenever we’re talking to the legions of darkness, (laughs) it’s always to the fans, so to speak. It’s an encouraging verb to go out there and fucking rape and ravage and despoil the innocent. To destroy the moral fabric, so to speak I guess.

Q: Interesting. To my ears, the new album sounds like you’ve honed in on a sound that is distinctly yours and are now working to refine it with every album. I think it’s an improvement in almost every facet – especially in the lead work.

A: Yeah, I think we’ve learned our strong suits and we know what the fans will want by now. But you know, we’re always growing as a band too, always trying to expand our horizons and play more complicated music, more challenging music, it’s more fun for us to do that. And when we started this band we were just kids, you know? So we’re a bit older now, a bit wiser. We get a bit wiser with every album and kind of try new things and challenge ourselves. I think this is the most… this is our most accomplished album, it just sounds the most professional of anything we’ve done and it ahs the most variety between the songs of any of the albums we’ve done. So that’s a good thing for us, because we play very fast, so to have that kind of variety between songs is something we’ve been striving for. Having Ryan (Knight, ex-Arsis) come in on lead guitar on this record and just really take the solos up to the next level has also been a big part of propelling this whole thing forward. We couldn’t be happier right now, we couldn’t be more excited about all this great stuff that’s happened.

Q: Along those lines, the new album debuted in the Top 50 of the Billboard Charts in the US. Is that still a thrill for you guys?

A: Yeah, that is a thrill, it’s crazy. I mean, we have a tunnel vision of just our fans and keeping our fans happy and getting more fans, you know? Just doing our thing, just being Black Dahlia. So making a ripple in the real world’s music charts alongside of every other kind of music, I think it’s cool. It’s a statement of the times man, there’s a lot of young people, there’s a lot of positive energy in the extreme scene right now. It’s kind of like at a boil I would say. So it’s exciting, it’s exciting to be us right now. We’re very fucking happy to be getting that kind of response and to see people still going out and buying the album when it’s so easy to just steal it and download it. It means a lot to us and I think maybe our fans realize how much it means to us. It’s a very cool time for us!

Q: What’s your view on the whole downloading matter?

A: I think that downloading and having the Internet as a tool to find the underground is like a huge, huge, hugely instrumental part in a lot of really underground bands getting out there. Distribution is at a low, you know, record stores, independent record stores that would carry any kind of like cool Death Metal are suffering right now. You know what I mean? It’s cool just to see… I use the Internet in that way. I download stuff too, but I also buy more CDs than anyone you could fucking imagine; it’s kind of like my vice. I think that for Death Metal, for a lot of those small labels, that bands aren’t going to get out there that the power of the Internet, the power of the Blogspot’s and all that kinda stuff is kind of just helping, ushering people into a lot of cool, underground stuff and just keeping things going. It’s kind of like the equivalent of tape trading was back in the day.

Q: Moving on again, each album’s lyrics seem to be derived from a different source. What inspired your lyrics on this record?

A: Well, a lot of if is just steeped in classic Death Metal, as usual. Some of the stuff is a little bit more Satanic than anything before. That was just an attempt to try and shock the young fans out there. I realize that we may be the gateway for a lot of young kids to get into the extreme. I try to tap these themes and the kinds of lyrics that scared me when I was a young kid. Lyrics that made me go, “holy shit man, I’m definitely going to hell for listening to this!” (laughs) I just try to keep the themes and lyrics as classically Death Metal as humanly possible in my mind. Just trying to keep things true, the artwork and stuff like that is a part of it too, you know?

Q: It is rather cool artwork as well.

A: Thanks man, I appreciate that!

Q: No problems. The band has experienced a number of lineup changes in the past – how solid is the current incarnation of The Black Dahlia Murder?

A: I think things are better than ever, we’ve hit a really good stride and everyone here is just so focused with just connecting with the other players and playing the best possible. It was an uphill battle to kind of get to this point, because when we were young and kind of coming out, we were just taking any musicians from Michigan, you know what I mean, whoever was around, local guys. I think our success now has afforded us the ability to look around and get people from all over the place and get people that are just dead serious on having a touring lifestyle and being really proficient musicians and things like that. The guys that we have now is just a total blessing, it’s an honour to play with these guys. Ryan being the newest guy coming in, he’s just electrifying, his guitar playing is just so goddamn good. He just came in really confidently and even though we had like very little time to write, he felt confident enough to supply us with two songs worth of material basically. And they were killer – some of them are people’s favourite songs from the new record are his. We feel like that we just took a gamble by parting ways with John (Kempainen) and we won. ‘Cause John was extinct man, he didn’t want to be here anymore. He wasn’t excited about anything. We had new songs that we recorded with Pro-Tools, these demos and he wasn’t even eager to hear ‘em. If Brian (Eschbach, guitars) texts me and tells me has ten seconds of a new song, I’m like, “well, when the hell are you going to send it to me?” (laughs) So it was very obvious to us that John was just over it and just wasn’t there in spirit and he wasn’t there in the writing mode, he wasn’t contributing anything so you know, it was just time man. It was just time to say goodbye and it’s been a really cool breathe of life in the band to have Ryan aboard.

Q: Fair enough then. Changing topics again, ‘Majesty’ was one of the more entertaining Metal DVDs of the past few years. Was this meant as a form of closure of one chapter of the band’s history and you’re now writing a brand new one?

A: Oh yeah, dude. It was all really calculated, you know what I mean? At this point, we try to think about kind of news release, any kind of member announcement or any of that stuff, you really, really think about it from a tactical level. It’s kind of ridiculous the amount that we think about this kind of stuff. The DVD was the perfect timing, because ‘Nocturnal’ was cooling off, it was the end of the second year of touring on it. And it kind of like just totally renewed people’s enthusiasm for the band and kind of brought us into having a lot of anticipation for the new album because of it. And it definitely closed the John chapter of the band and we said our goodbyes on the DVD and you know, Ryan Knight is here now. The new DVD that comes with the new album is kind of like his beginnings in the band and his first shows with the band. It was definitely a tactical move and it definitely exceeded all of our expectations. We didn’t really know the DVD was going to take on the kind of life that it has, it’s been really exciting to see.

Q: Now, the band has been lambasted by many so-called true Death Metal fans for ridiculous things such as short hair and other small, insignificant reasons. People seem to think that guys with short hair can’t play Death Metal for instance and that’s a criticism many elitists have thrown at your band.

A: Oh yeah, we’re used to it by now. We’ve been called every kind of genre possible for the longest time. Some people just make snap kind of decisions and associations. They look at you and they think, “oh, they must be some kind of scenester band” or something.  For us, the whole image end of the band – having photographs and like videos and stuff like that – is more of a necessary evil than anything. We don’t care about how we look, it’s not about trying to look cool or have cool hair or appeal to any kind of crowd in any way in that way. It’s just about delivering the music the most potently way possible. Just having the best music that we can and we try to let that do the talking. But you know, being kinda pegged in a bunch of different genres has been a strong suit for us too, because we’ve been able to tour with Hardcore bands, Metalcore bands, Deathcore bands, Death and Black bands and everything in between, because we get called all of those things. So it’s just worked out to a positive and I can’t complain!

Q: Indeed. The band has visited our shores twice now – when will see The Black Dahlia Murder Down Under again?

A: We’ll be back on this touring cycle for sure. The last time we came with Cephalic Carnage was really cool. It’s definitely one of our favourite places to go, just the whole vibe there is really cool and everyone is really relaxed, everybody’s smoking a lot of weed and a lot of awesome food, it sounds like my kind of place. The women are beautiful there too. It’s cool man, so we definitely want to come back and we hope the anticipation is there. We’re going to try to deliver the best show possible for you guys.

Q: Final question – do you have any last words for PyroMusic.net & riotact.com.au  readers?

A: Just stay with us, check out the new record and we’ll be back to fucking wreck shit as soon as possible!