Metal Bulletin Zine: Dawnbreaker - Black Metal after Nihilism, Atheism and Self-Destruction (Part 2)

Dawnbreaker is black metal from the United States, with five full-length albums released since 2018. What makes Dawnbreaker most unique is its history, which stretches back to 2004 and even before that. Before Dawnbreaker, there was Angelcide—ghastly black metal steeped in contemptuous blasphemy, the kind that would make Slayer blush. Angelcide released three albums, along with several EPs, splits, and demos from 2004 to 2017, in addition to numerous side projects, often profoundly entangled in blasphemy and satanism. The satanic lifestyle of drugs and perversion—and everything that goes with it, too graphic to describe here—was the hallmark of Angelcide.
That was, until one day, when it all became too much. A personal crisis of epic proportions occurred, and the man behind Angelcide, in a shocking turn of events, began to feel the presence of God. Thus, Dawnbreaker was born, and the black metal that had for decades mocked God was now, however unlikely, black metal in the service of God.
In a previous installment of this interview series, we gained insight into a happy childhood, an adolescence gone astray as a black metal anti-social extremist and dangerous weirdo, and the era of Angelcide up to the moment of his conversion to Christianity.
This, more or less, is where we pick up the interview in this installment.

I have read something about your music that I am not sure that I understand. You spent some 15 years making obscenely blasphemous, anti-social black metal against God. However, after you repented and you accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you actually went back and recorded your old satanic black metal songs and changed the lyrics to reflect your Christian faith in a project called Hosts of Lord? That seems like a huge amount of work! Is that three full-length albums and a bunch of demos, all your satanic music from 2004 to 2017! Did you go back and read your old lyrics or was that too painful or embarrassing to see what you had written? Did you play all instruments and record it all yourself?

- Yes, I took a great deal of the songs I had from “Angelcide” and other side projects from that era and rerecorded and restructured them for Dawnbreaker and Hosts of Lord. I actually didn’t need to re-listen to anything, I remembered all the riffs and song structures very well. The lyrics I didn’t remember for the most part, I wasn’t thinking about the lyrics at all when I decided to rerecord them. The songs (music, not lyrics) were meaningful and powerful to me and I didn’t want to be ashamed of them. They were also recorded poorly and I wanted to give them another chance now that I was better and more experienced with music production and also a much more proficient musician. This all came after recording and touring with the band Abazagorath, so I understood the recording process much better. And yes, I did it all myself with no collaborators. Just an engineer to record the vocals, since I was living in apartments during this time and couldn’t scream without disturbing the neighbors! There was at least a 10-year gap with everything I rerecorded since the original recordings, so I ended up combining the passion I had in the early days with many years of experience as a musician and audio engineer. And since nobody in the Christian/Unblack metal scene was familiar with my early work, it was all new and fresh to them anyway!

Is Hosts of Lord finished? Has the mission been completed, as way to rectify or atone? Why call it Hosts of Lord and not Dawnbreaker? It's probably not a good business decision, given that for fans it is easier to keep track if everything that you record is simply called Dawnbreaker. I like the raw black metal of Hosts of Lord. I like everything about a song like “I Beheld a Clash of Otherworldly Entities.” The harsh vocals, the guitar riffs, the tone, the drums sound, all of it. Do you use vocal effects on Hosts of Lord? Are the drums on a song like the one I mentioned, are those programmed?

- Hosts of Lord was started because I just had too much music! From about 2016 – 2021, I had a huge surge in motivation and creativity. Maybe it helped that I was getting a prescription for Adderall, which is basically just speed (it literally said “amphetamine salts” on the bottle) and drinking a lot of espresso coffee. But maybe living in New York City during these years also had a cultural impact, the hustle and bustle and the grind, you know? It made me want to work hard. Whatever it was, I couldn’t keep up with all of the inspiration that was flowing at that time. So, by the time of the early Hosts of Lord releases (2020) I had already released 3 Dawnbreaker albums that were improving in technicality and production quality. I didn’t want to oversaturate with too many releases, especially without a logical transition between them. So, I thought I would create a new project that would be raw, low fidelity recordings. To capture those early days of my black metal works, and also the early days of black metal in general. I wanted to take my earliest demos and turn them into completed, full length works. And also record some other stuff that was written from that time frame but never recorded. I didn’t use vocal effects (I used the worst quality computer microphone possible), tuned to standard (the Dawnbreaker albums are downtuned), and yes the drums are programmed but made to sound live. I also initially wanted to release the albums on secular record labels, whereas all of Dawnbreaker’s music was released on a Christian label. But the other labels got complaints from people about releasing a Christian band, so I ended up returning it to Christian Metal Underground Records (a sub label of Vision of God). But Hosts of Lord wasn’t very successful, and maybe I should have recorded this material as Dawnbreaker at some point. Sometimes I even think about rerecording some of it again for a Dawnbreaker release haha! I don’t plan on releasing any more Hosts of Lord albums, but I have admittedly been inconsistent when it comes to this stuff.

You are now a grown man. Do you have a wife and kids? Or, does doing music really leave no time for raising a family? If you don’t have a wife and children, is something that you think about? How does the prospect of raising children sound to you?

- I had a wife for many years, but unfortunately we ended up parting ways. This happens to many of us, Christian or not, although it’s extremely embarrassing as a Christian and a stain on my legacy and testimony. You can “not believe in divorce” but sometimes divorce believes in you! I never particularly liked being around children, and thus never had much of a desire for it, but I’m absolutely open to them if the situation arises! Not because I want to, but because it’s the right thing to do. I think it’s objectively better to have children and I probably would have been a more fulfilled, better version of myself if I had them. But I also believe you don’t necessarily have the right or guarantee to them. I definitely will re-marry if/when the opportunity arises, as the Catholic church never recognized my first marriage (it’s a long story).

Looking back on things, to when you were a teenager and a young man, how do you think that your parents felt seeing their baby become this really disturbed, mentally sick individual?

- Yes, all the time. It was hell for them! But they always loved and believed in me anyway. They tried there best to help in whatever way that they could. They didn’t see the worst of most of it, outside of me going to jail a few times! But we all got along most of the time after my teenage years, even though I still had some troubles to work out. There was only one or two years where things were really terrible. But they were happy we had a continued relationship and I tried to be respectful as I got older. I still see them often!

I sent you a link to an article about a former satanist to whom Jesus appeared. The former satanist had a crisis and a breakdown because he was heavily involved, not just in atheistic-satanism, but rather in worship of the devil. Given your years in the anti-Christian lifestyle, did you come into contact with devil worshippers? Looking back on it now, what are your observations about such people? Are they angry? Are they frustrated with their lives and with the emptiness of their life? It's usually single people who are not real adults because they live their lives for themselves, and are not responsible for other people, family, children or other people in general. Being 18 years old does not make one a man or woman, but when you become directly responsible for the well-being of other human beings, it teaches you the value of serving other people and about the meaning of life, a life shared with other people. What are some of your conclusions and observations as to why disturbed individuals, angry people, people frustrated with their empty lives, people who are unhappy, anti-social, who hate the human race, drug-consuming people, hedonist/pleasure-obsessed people, these types of people attracted to atheism, satanism, nihilism and self-destructive ideologies and behaviors?

- I did read the article yes, fascinating stuff! Yes, I met some real witches, theistic satansists, and genuine psychopaths! I could tell you countless horror stories. Yes, a lot of frustration, hatred, darkness, and psychotic episodes. Our society naturally leads people to hedonism and pleasure obsession. From baby boomers on, these became the new gods and nothing mattered as long as “you were getting yours.” People pursue this hedonism in different ways, and it isn’t necessarily limited to devil worshipers in the literal sense. You have so many pleasures at your fingertips now, the phone that sits in your pocket all day can bring you whatever your mind and heart can conjure up. Just a few swipes from your finger and there’s whatever food you want at your door, or whatever kind of woman you want ready to take her clothes off. Or a community of sickos to tell you that whatever debased habit or thought is in your head, is totally normal and should be encouraged and pursued. There’s a funny meme about this… if somebody in 1970 has sexual fantasies about toasters, they just get over it and live a normal life. But in 2025 there’s a whole Reddit page of people sexualized by toasters ready to encourage you to ruin your life! It takes severe and extreme discipline to keep yourself grounded in this age. Because much of popular culture is ready to reinforce your worst temptations.

Have you encountered people who formerly lived their lives in these ways, but that eventually became tired of the emptiness of their atheistic and satanist way of life? Sometimes such individuals feel the need for a connection with God. They feel God pushing them towards Him. Yet, they resist. They resist, in part, because they know all of the disgusting things that they have done in their past. They feel shame. Shame for alcoholism and what it has done in their lives. Shame for the drug addiction. Shame because of the extreme sexual immorality, thievery, violence, deceit that they have done. Shame because they know they have used people, exploited people, maybe killed people (like drunk driving), raped, spent time in prison, and who knows what else that they have done. It is normal for people to feel shame. How about you? Did you feel shame? What would you like to say to someone reading this, someone who feels a deep sense of shame. That person feels God calling them to a better life, but they don't do it. They feel unworthy. They think, “God won't want me. I'm too filthy.” What would you like to say to that person that is reading this right now, feeling ashamed?

- Yes, I felt great shame. Because in my past, I engaged in almost all of those things, maybe all of them besides rape and murder! But God still decided to not only forgive me, but pursue me relentlessly! Of course, there were consequences to all of them. Consequences I’m still facing over 20 years later. But in Jesus Christ there is forgiveness, there is a way, a truth, a light. A narrow gate. And all through the Gospels, Jesus sees the poor, lowly and broken sinners. He sees the heart and not the exterior. So yes, if you are reading this, look at all the terrible things I’ve done, and see how God forgave me and chose me to represent the Christian faith within the metal scene! There are many who seem so far beyond hope or redemption, that God will do incredible works with. So someone reading this, maybe could be one of them!

When you became Christian, how did you go about telling people? Did you deal with ridicule?

- I was off social media at the time. For years, I was private about it and told no one. Maybe for two years. I didn’t consider myself a full-blown Christian yet. But I was praying to Jesus Christ daily, fasting, meditating. But in 2016 I went to a Joel Osteen event, and they read the verse in the Gospels where Jesus says “He who denies me before people, he I will deny before my father.” So I answered the altar call that night, and became a Christian publicly. But I was pretty isolated at the time. Eventually I joined a church and a church worship team, playing guitar in fairly large services of 300-400 people. It all happened fast, and was surreal. But I needed to make a public declaration still. And I did it with the first Dawnbreaker album, DEUS VULT. That was my true declaration of the Christian faith, and it was intended to be so. I even self-released the album, created a record label to release it, because I wanted to make sure the message was exactly as I wanted it. All of the layout, everything, that the lyrics were there. The album was literally me screaming about my conversion and that I was a Christian now. It was probably the most important thing I ever did. I wanted that testimony out there, so if I died that year, it would be on record, for everyone to see. Most of my friends in the metal scene accepted it, as they had found their way into the “conservative” ecosphere where Christian voices were prominent. Some said “I’m glad your happy, but don’t try to force your beliefs on me.” But others – not my good friends, but others – have said “I don’t like that you’re a Christian.”

If a person reading this, is thinking about what you have been telling them about Jesus, but they don’t know where to start. In religion there are charlatan preachers asking people for money. There are many scams and scandals. So many denominations, too, fighting each other, attacking each other. It is not always easy to know where to start. What part of the Bible is a good start for them to read? How can you help them to start to learn about the real Jesus?

- Just jump in and start reading. I would start with Romans and read to the right – this will give you a sense of what the faith actually entices. Then read one of the gospels, John or Matthew maybe.

To be continued.