The members of Gruesome have enjoyed the strong response to their debut album Savage Land, and recently announced that they would be working on new material, due out tentatively in mid 2016. Drummer Gus Rios shared his thoughts on the band making another record and their mindset entering the next chapter.

“One of things I like about Death the most is Chuck [Schuldiner] never repeated himself. Our challenge is to maintain Gruesome to that same level as much as we can within the world we want to be in. Our next record, I’m not going to give anything away, is not going to be Savage Land Part 2.”

“There’s a few directions it could go in and hopefully when people hear it they’ll be like ‘wow that’s awesome;’ ‘I didn’t expect that;’ or ‘I’m glad they did it.’ It’s not going to be the same exact record again.”

The uniqueness behind Death’s writing approach is what appealed to Rios, and something the members of Gruesome kept in mind when they began crafting new tunes for their next recording. He also talked about keeping the element of surprise much like how they did back in their time period.

“That’s one of the great things about metal back in the late 80s and early 90s. There was no internet…like Slayer’s record came out Friday. You already heard half of it before it came out. Where is the surprise in that?”

“When Spiritual Healing or when Leprosy came out, you didn’t know what the hell you were getting. You go into the store and you knew there was a new Death record and you bought it. When I first got Human, I went from getting Spiritual Healing and now I’m getting Human. Saw the logo was a little different, the album cover was a little different and went ‘I don’t know.’ Then I heard it and I went ‘oh my god…this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.’ “

“I don’t know if we’re going to do any of that because to some degree people know what they’re getting. It’s going to sound like one band. Like I said, our hope is at least from one record to the next you’re not going to get Savage Land Part 2. With the next record, and the next one after that, it’s not going to sound like that.”

“Even sonically, that’s one of the things I don’t like about modern metal. Every record that you hear that comes out, it’s the same drum samples, the same guitar reamp. For me personally, if I buy Band X’s record, and two years later they come out with another record, I want it to sound different. Records are supposed to be a snapshot in time of what you’re trying to accomplish at that time.”

Rios elaborated about their recording approaches when they created the songs on Savage Land, and their old school approaches helped craft their stripped down sound, unlike modern techniques he felt took away from the raw sounds found on older records.

“When you set up a drum set in a studio, you get the snare sound and maybe you tune it differently. You tune your toms and you mic the kicks up. You move the mics around until you get the best sound and then you record it. You put your best performance into it at that time.”

“What a computer does nowadays most of the time when you hear a record is it takes anything you did as a human and perfects it, replaces all of your tuned drums with samples of perfect drums and in my opinion, for me personally, sucks the soul out of the record.”

“If every single record gets that same library of the same tom and same snare and same kicks and the same guitar simulator plug in, I’m just getting different riffs on the same record. In the late 80s or early 90s, no two Deicide records sounded the same. No two Morbid Angel records sounded the same. Certainly no two Death records sounded the same. Even if they went to the same studio with the same producer, it was a different day. It was a different drumset.”

“I can guarantee you the next record will sound nothing like Savage Land. Sonically. Riff wise, you’re going to know it sounds like Death. Very, very, very clearly. But is it going to sound like the era or the sound that we got on Savage Land? No. I guarantee you it won’t. There lies the little shred of originality Gruesome may have. We’re homaging one particular band but as artists I guess, our challenge is to keep the listener entertained one record after the other without regurgitating the same exact stuff over and over.”

“Dan [Gonzalez] and I are writing too and that’s another element. Matt wrote the entire first record. I’ve already written three songs. Dan’s written two. At least that’s our take on what we think Chuck would do. There enlies at least one slightly different element that’s going to be different. I think that’s the fun and the challenge of it. We’re still paying tribute to one single band but we’re trying to snake our way around it as many ways as we can.”

“I said in another interview that as long as there’s dudes on stage with vocals with (doing Cookie Monster imitation), Chuck will never be dead. In my opinion, I credit Chuck with definitely the creation of what everybody knows as death metal. Possessed Seven Churches came out first but that to me is more like Satanic thrash kind of shit. I remember being in middle school and this kid Rob Watson brought to school Scream Bloody Gore. In those days it was a cassette tape and a Walkman. This is in late 1987 and it was like ‘Slayer….please.’ “

“I remember looking at the album cover and that’s the thing. Everything about what we did…everything piece of what Gruesome is about is thought out. That logo, that flame…everything is thought out. Every piece of what Death was in the late 80s to little teenie Gus and Matt…every piece of that, the album cover. I remember looking at Scream Bloody Gore before I heard it and the album cover…when I heard the music it sounded like what I thought that album should sound like. I remember hearing those vocals and I just went ‘holy shit!’ I couldn’t understand a word he said or what the lyrics were.”

“Back in those days the cassettes had no lyrics in it. ’Infernal Death,’ ‘Regurgitated Guts’…gore horror. That’s death metal to me. If somebody from that restaurant across the street said ‘hey Gus, what is death metal?’, I’d probably hand them Leprosy and go ‘there.’ To this day that’s still my number one favorite death metal album.”

Through the music Gruesome had created, Rios said the band’s visions was to take newer fans back in time, much like his reference to Back To the Future did with revisiting their death metal past.

“Now what we’re trying to do is…Matt [Harvey] actually said it last night in San Diego ‘well we couldn’t build a Delorean. [We] can’t bring us all back to ’88 to re-experience that.’ All we can do is bring it back in some form.”

“It’s all in praise of…it’s not just Chuck. We say this every day. It’s Chuck. It’s James [Murphy]. It’s Rick [Rozz]. It’s Bill Andrews. It’s Sean Reinert. Gene Hoglan was there last night. Friday we played a festival with Obituary and we got to play ‘Born Dead’ with Terry Butler!”

By Rei Nishimoto