Melodic death metal outfit The Black Dahlia Murder are best known for their uncompromising attitude towards their music, their intense live shows and relentless touring. Ghost Cult caught up with frontman Trevor Strnad who’s more than anxious to tell about Everblack, the band’s latest album, and what it takes to be a member of The Black Dahlia Murder…

Ritual, your previous album, is seen by many as the finest TBDM album to date. Did you guys feel any pressure as a result while working on Everblack?

For sure. We had two new members coming in, so people are going to be skeptical. Like you said, Ritual is seen as our best release to date, so coming up with an album that’s equally good caused quite some stress. We wanted to top Ritual, but at the same time continue doing the things we’re good at. With Everblack we want to send a message out there that things haven’t changed and that, despite the line-up changes, we are still on top of our game. That’s also reflected in the album title. At the same time it was good for us to have a goal to reach for. With Ritual we really expanded our musical horizons and with people responding so well we saw that album as the dawn of a new age. We wanted to keep going with that style and refine that further on Everblack.

So why did the two former members leave the band?

They didn’t leave at the same time, but they got tired with the touring life and being constantly on the road. It’s basically sacrificing your personal life. They wanted to go home and settle down. Shannon (Lucas, drums) got married to some girl from New Zealand and they barely had the chance to see each other, because of all the paperwork involved. It was a long and exhausting process for him, so when the whole thing was finally done he just wanted to go home and settle down with her. With Bart (Williams, bass) it was pretty much the same thing. He was sick of touring. Touring is very much like camping and being in this band it means being on a camping trip for eight months in a year. The touring life is far from being glamorous, so I can perfectly understand why attitudes change because of this. For me and the remaining members the dreams remain the same. Despite the changes, we’re still the same band people fell in love with the first time.

A Black Dahilia Murder live show is a very intense occasion. How do you maintain that over a whole tour?

We hold our ourselves to a higher standard than other bands I think. We’re not content with simply getting on stage, playing our music and going through the motions. We really love what we do. We’re punk rockers at heart and we come from the hardcore scene as well. Over the years we played with a lot of hardcore bands and in the early years, before we got signed, playing at hardcore shows was the only thing around here in Detroit. We played with Bane, Throwdown and Circle Of Dead Children, who were big at the time. The intensity of hardcore has always been a part of our show. We shared the bill with Terror. Their music is really straightforward and their shows are the epitome as far as intensity during live shows goes. We always tried to keep up with less technical bands, while still providing that same intensity. We look at it as going to war basically, so if you don’t jump in the crowd and do all the crazy stuff, you’re simply not suited for being in this band.

You’ll be doing the Vans Warped Tour later this year. How does it feel being one of the few metal bands on the bill?

For the most part it’s really accessible pop-punk and rock that dominates this year’s line-up and that’s stuff I wouldn’t normally listen to myself, but it’s a great opportunity to reach new fans. The Vans Warped Tour is the epicentre of youth culture here in the States with so many young kids going there. We realise that we’re going to be a standout there as far musical extremity goes and it’s somewhat of a risk for us, but it’s also a really good opportunity for us to reach new potential fans who haven’t necessarily heard of us or haven’t been exposed to metal in general yet.

We’ll probably scare the hell out of those people, but it should be a fun experience! A lot of people from the metal scene will probably call us sellouts and whatnot, but in truth we have always done a lot of different things. The people behind Vans Warped Tour are the same people that handle the booking for the Mayhem festival. We like to expand our horizons. In the past we toured with hardcore and with metalcore bands. It helped us reach out to new fans. We look at this as another attempt to surprise people.

So what do you make of the whole ‘real’ metal versus metalcore/deathcore discussion?

For me it’s not worth discussing because there’s no finish line. No-one is going to win, so just shut up about it. In Black Dahlia Murder we’ve had our fair share as well. We’ve been labelled a million different things. I see us as a death metal band, and all our musical influences come from that genre. We’ve been labelled as a metalcore band and also as deathcore and probably everything in between, but in a way it has given us the ability to survive because we have people from all walks of the underground liking this band.

The labelling thing used to drive me up the wall, but nowadays I don’t give a damn about it anymore. If it enables us to tour and have success, I’m thankful and I couldn’t care less how our music gets labelled. On a personal note, I’m not into deathcore, because it sounds so empty to me. It borrows some of the elements from death metal, like a scary logo and the whole blood and guts theme and the gruff vocal style, but at as far as playing and songwriting goes it’s an empty shell. There’s no music, there’s no song. It’s all about bass drops and subwoofing and getting as low tuned as you can. Most of it is formed after metal, after the Big Four. It has nothing to do with thrash metal or classical music, it’s all shaped after Korn and Slipknot and I’m just too old to fall for it. It’s too cheesy and hollow for my taste. It’s all gimmicks and no songs.

Finally, in the Everblack bio there’s a statement by one of the guitarists that says that Black Dahlia Murder will not throw any curveballs at their fans and you will always remain who you are. What are your thoughts on that?

That’s one of the most important things for us. We want to be the band our fans can depend on. That’s what the new album is all about. We’ve made it our mission statement not to throw any curveballs to our fans; we have our specific style and we stick with it. It’s a give and take thing really. You write the music you want to hear, but you don’t want to alienate your fans either. It’s the eternal struggle for any musician. You don’t want to stagnate as musician, but you don’t want to let your fans down either. It’s a struggle, but I think we’ve managed to do exactly what we set out to do with the new album and that’s why I’m so damn proud of it. I really can’t wait to present our new material to our fans.

Raymond Westland

The Black Dahlia Murder – Facebook