BLACK DAHLIA MURDER

How suburban Detroit–based death meddlers got mo’ metal, momentum, and the hell out of Motown for their latest blasterpiece.

By Kory Grow
Photo by Travis Shinn

For all the countless murders, curses, and “Statutory Apes” that populate the Black Dahlia Murder’s albums, the Michigan-based death-metal quintet loves a good laugh. When they staged a hot-dog-eating contest in Portland, Oregon, at the launch of Metal Blade’s 25th Anniversary tour (which also featured stalwarts Cannibal Corpse, progcore troopers the Red Chord, and black-death hybrids Goatwhore) they had fans cram as many steamy, beefy wieners into their mouths as they could to win either a $75 credit at the merch table or the contents of a “mystery box,” figuring the winner would pick the box, since of course no one can resist the lure of the unknown. The punch line? The mystery box was filled with more franks. But on this day at least, the joke was on BDM, as the eventual winner wisely chose to take the merch, leaving the band with a lighter box of T-shirts and a heavier box of hot dogs.

Frontman Trevor Strnad looks back on this and laughs. In some ways, that wayward box of hot dogs is a fitting metaphor for the band itself. Since they formed the Black Dahlia Murder in 2000, Strnad and guitarists Brian Eschbach and John Kempainen have gone through seven bassists and five drummers, establishing them as one of extreme metal’s most active revolving doors. Their longest drought continued right up to the recording of their latest, Nocturnal (Metal Blade). Although they had drafted bassist Bart Williams a year and a half earlier, they were still drummer-less and were borrowing money from the label to stay afloat; they didn’t know if they’d make it.

They demoed songs in Eschbach’s apartment with a drum machine, pocket amps, and Strnad’s dead-waking (make that “neighbor-waking”) screams until they felt forced to book a studio date despite the continuing lack of a drummer. “We were basically just freaking out,” says Strnad. “It seemed like the band was going to implode. On the other hand, we had these songs and we really liked them, but we had to find someone who was sick as fuck, because the drum parts were a step up from our past records.” At the eleventh hour, drummer Shannon Lucas (ex–All That Remains) came to their aid, providing their strongest rhythm section yet, and Nocturnal, with its European-sounding melodies, death-rattle rhythms, and horror-story lyrics would become the Black Dahlia Murder’s most successful record to date, cracking Billboard’s Top 100 Albums.

Behind a cruddy New Jersey venue straight out of Road House, the shaggy, bearded, and kind of sleepy Strnad is sitting behind the steering wheel of his band’s van, a maroon warhorse carpeted with sleeping bags that smells of sleep, sweat, and crushed Doritos. He points toward the sunset and a “vagina-like formation in the clouds” and laughs as he recalls the travails, comedies of errors, and feats of processed-meat gluttony that have brought him to where he is today.

REVOLVER What did you want to differently on this album?
TREVOR STRNAD I thought it was really important that we try to voice the spirit of the original wave of death-metal stuff from the ’90s and have painted artwork and lyrics that are very traditional about murder and Satan and the end of the world and necrophilia, all pretty typical metal stuff.

You didn’t have a drummer when you were writing. How did you handle that?
We were programming the drums using that program that Meshuggah uses, the Drumkit from Hell. If you listen to a lot of drum machines, like the one Mortician use for example, it sounds so obviously like a drum machine it’s sickening. It sucks. But the samples on a lot of those programs are pretty damn good; they can even make a blast beat sound realistic. [Laughs] When Shannon got a hold of the material, he reworked a lot of the stuff and put his own touches on everything.

How did you meet Shannon?
Shannon just happened to move to Michigan, just kind of on a whim, to be with a girl that he met while he was on tour. We started talking to him. We basically told him, “We don’t have time to court you, even. If you want to do this, do it. We’ve got to start right fucking now.”

Is it hard to find a good drummer in Michigan?
Michigan, dude? We were talking to people from fucking Europe! We had this guy Reno who was playing for Dimmu Borgir and Old Man’s Child. He said he was gonna do it. And he made a video of himself playing one of our songs, and it was perfect. We used it as a reference after he flaked out on us for the other people to see. [Laughs]

Have the songs mutated since you’ve been on the road?
They’ve definitely gotten tighter. It’s physically challenging. I’m dying up there, doing all the vocals and running around. I’m not in shape, by any means. It’s a battle to exude so much energy, to try to put on a good show for kids, to interact with the crowds on a level that can compete with the hardcore bands that we have to play with as well as death-metal bands.

A lot of death-metal bands just seem to play their instruments.
We take pride in being the best band we can be. We have switched a lot of members and shit like that, but it’s always been for the advancement of the band. People need to realize that.

What do you feel people misunderstand most about that?
What they’ve gotta realize is it takes a really strong person to be able to be the drummer and still have their head be on the same plane of existence as the rest of the world, because it’s the most praised part of the whole death-metal operation. People see that we’re going through members and assume that we think they’re just dispensable and somehow we’re some kind of tyrannical people, but we just have a vision for this band. It’s the only thing I have. I kind of let everything else go: school, and all my friendships at home. And you know, it’s 1,000 percent in this direction or nothing. I can’t level with people that aren’t like that, that aren’t there.

Since you’re serious about metal, what does being a part of Metal Blade’s 25th Anniversary tour mean to you?
I was huge into Metal Blade when I was a kid. Cannibal Corpse are one of my absolute favorite bands; there’s been no huger influence on me as far as lyrics go than them.

What era of Cannibal Corpse influenced your lyrics?
Definitely the first few records. The Bleeding’s my favorite. That album plays through without one falter on it. There was something about the lyrics on that, too, that were different than everything else at the time. It was basically saying, “I’m gonna kill you,” and it wasn’t dressed up in any fancy language. I remember when I got that tape, I was riding home from my grandfather’s house in the back of my mom’s car and I was listening to that record, and it just scared the fuck out of me. I was like, “That’s what I want to do.”

Are you, like Cannibal Corpse, influenced by horror movies?
Yeah. In the last year and a half, I started collecting the more popular European ones. All the Fulci stuff and Argento and stuff like that. And I like slasher movies. The first ones I was exposed to were slasher movies. Friday the 13th, the first few of those, Halloween, I loooved those, man. I was drawing people getting their heads cut off when I was in first grade. No lie. I was obsessed with horror. When I learned about metal, I was like, “Music about skeletons? I’m in!” It was the most natural thing ever. I played D&D. It just was like everything crossing over in metal.

When you’re writing serial killer–themed songs, do you stick to just one character?
I’ll roll with a feeling. There are two songs that are semi-similar on the new one. They’re just pretty much for-the-throat, “destroy humans because they’re disgusting creatures of a parasitic nature” stuff. That is just how I feel sometimes. I feel like humans were meant to go a different way than being oppressed by a government and fear controlling all of us. I feel like we have the potential to be so smart. We’re just so bound by tradition that there’s no hope for us, really. It just seems to be getting worse.

So you feel a kinship to your lyrics?
I don’t kill anyone, but I can see why some people…I imagine that the characters in those two songs are taking the way I felt to an ultimate extreme. I was reading in this book about serial killers, I can’t remember what it was called—it wasn’t a particularly well-written book or anything—but this chapter was about the realization you have when you’ve killed someone for the first time, that you’ve completely removed yourself from society and there’s no way to cross back over that line. It’s like being branded. Some people throw up when it happens; some people just brush it off. The song “I Worship Only What You Bleed” touches on that a little bit. Now that just gave me the fucking creeps. You never really stop to think about that. The other song that kind of mirrors that whole thing is “Climactic Degradation.” The chorus to the song is the most to-the-point thing. It’s “Climactic degradation/ rapture in blood achieved/ suffocate them, rip them, rape them, make them fucking scream.” It’s more to the point than anything I’ve ever done, I guess, so it was kind of a new aspect, but I don’t know. It felt good to scream those lyrics. [Laughs]

Do you ever get fans who take your music too seriously?
I think for the most part people are on the level. They know it’s fun. It’s fantasy. It’s fucking metal.

One band that people take to heart is Slayer.
Oh, man. They take it more seriously than anything has been taken by anyone ever. And that’s what’s awesome. When you go see Slayer, you go to the bathroom, you’re taking a piss, and the guy next to you looks right at you and screams, “Slayer!” in your face. And then 13 other people start screaming “Slayer!” in the men’s bathroom. And that’s what it’s all about.

Is that what you want for your band?
Yep. I want people to be in the bathroom, taking a piss in a trough, and to turn to the other dude who you normally wouldn’t even talk to, because you’ve got to act so “dude” when you’re in the bathroom, and just go, “Slayyyeerrrrrr!!” But instead it will be [in nerdy voice] “BDM!” Or “Black Dahlia!” Or “Black Delilah!” [Laughs]

“Delilah”?
People mispronounce it a lot. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaking of possessed fans, you have a pentagram in your album art. How should listeners interpret that?
I’m not a Satanist. A lot of my beliefs are aligned with Satanism in the respect that when they’re saying “Satan,” true Satanists are just talking about the free man. Satan is used because he’s the ultimate opposition of Christianity, basically, which is holding back this free thought. As far as our standpoint, to be talking about it, we talk from the point of view of the dark side always. We address our fans as being also included in this evil. We’re kind of the opposition. We are anti-Christian, definitely. But not really card-carrying Satanists.

As far as natural evil’s concerned, what’s the story behind the “heartburn” tattoo on your belly?
Oh, I get heartburn every fucking day. Last night I was lying there in bed, just like, “Someone please kill me!” Didn’t have any Tums or anything.

What did you eat?
Just a bunch of bullshit. Snacks from the fucking gas station. But I get heartburn from anything. Doesn’t really matter. It was tongue-in-cheek and it’s on my fat roll. You know what I mean? Like, “Oh yeah, that dude gets heartburn there.” Kind of a calling card.