Here in the state of Washington, U.S. we have some brutal death doom that has been coming out of the city of Bellingham in the form of Maldisdeun. Their album Anti-Access World Denial (2023) was a rather ominous tale of technology in the hands of elites seeking methods of control and power. Their music is very heavy, like electric caveman metal, but with lyrics about corruption and power. In this interview, the band talks about how they make their music, the problems they ran into while recording the album, and how the changes in their sound and personnel with their new EP Into the Flame of Fear in 2025. Let’s go into the depths of this death doom.
Back in 2023, Maldisdeun stormed out of the gates with a heavy dose of brutal death doom metal in the form of Anti-Access World Denial, a story about genetic manipulation for purposes of control resulting in a war. What was the inspiration behind the concept of Anti-Access World Denial?
Drake: The initial idea was spawned from an interest I’ve had with the idea of the next form of human evolution. I figure if women could control their own means of reproduction - with men entirely out of the picture – that'd likely be a major step in humanity’s evolution. Men would really have little use in society, and I thought there was a lot of ripe subtext to dig into with this idea.
With that initial idea in mind, I fleshed it out a little more and let the story go where it wanted to. The main overarching theme is to not hold much faith in humanity, no matter what tribe you belong to. I think people are easily corrupted by the smallest sliver of power and will abuse it whenever they obtain it.
The album has a strong thematic focus on war, manipulation, and downfall. How do you balance these heavy themes with the musical style of death doom metal?
Drake: The lyrics for sure fit the style, otherwise I wouldn’t have wrote them. I’m more interested in real-life horror and tragedy than I am about typical meaningless death metal schlock lyrics. We use the main lyrical concept as a way to provide social commentary about societal degradation, politics, economics, etc., without beating people over the head with our own personal beliefs. The lyrics are an invitation to have your perspective refocused.
What challenges did you face while recording and producing the album, considering its thematic depth? For example, you needed a certain number of songs to function as chapters, right? How many times did you doubt that you could put it all together—the story, the songs, and the overall theme?
Drake: When we were writing the album, the lyrics had to be re-wrote a few times due to changes in the tracklist order. I wanted the lyrics to retain a chronological order from start to finish, so when we had enough songs for a full-length LP, if one song sounded better juxtaposed against one that was later in the album, I’d have to rewrite the lyrics of the former to make it fit the timeline of its new order in the tracklist. Integrating the lyrics and music could be a bit of a pain at times, but any good art is worth suffering for. All in all, writing lyrics is always gonna suck to some degree, you just have to keep working at it until you get a result you’re happy with.
The recording process we underwent for this album could be a whole book unto itself – it was an incredibly trying experience and I’m amazed it didn’t destroy the band. A few months beforehand our drummer had informed us he would be leaving the band. He was still down to record the album, but we had to find a producer in time to do it quick before he changed his mind. This rush didn’t help things, and to make a very long story short, we made a lot of rookie mistakes that I should have known better about. It was during COVID times too, so that only exacerbated the problems we encountered. Many hard lessons were earned.
Tell us about the uptempo punk-metal sound at the beginning of the last song, “A2WD.” It’s fun and different, almost like something we wouldn’t expect from you.
Dan response: That riff came to me because I came up with the slower riff before it and loved the feeling of the chords and the build-up. I wanted to build tension and intensity using the same chord progression with some variation. Once I heard the riff all together in the song with lyrics, drums, and bass, it became a favorite of mine. I think the beauty of death metal is you can sneak in other punk and metal genres in a song and as long as you think it has a flow to it and think it’s heavy that’s all that matters.
Metal Archives shows this line-up for the album: Walker Eberdt on drums, Dan Fitzgerald on guitars, and Drake on vocals and bass. But your new 2025 EP features this line-up: Dan Fitzgerald on guitar, Drake on vocals and drums – as before, but now with Andrew Shore on bass, and Trevor Fisher on guitar. Therefore, the core of the band has been Drake and Dan taking care of guitars, bass, drums, and vocals. Do you remember what motivated you to form this band with this sound?
Drake: Dan may remember this more clearly, but originally, Dan and Walker started the band, I wanna say in 2018 or else early 2019. They were looking for a bassist, so Walker hit me up. I ended up singing for the band too. This was the original lineup for Maldisdeun.
Ever since Walker left, we’ve had trouble nailing down a solid lineup, until 2023. I decided to shift to drums when Walker left since I figured we’d have a harder time finding a drummer than a bassist. I’ve known Andrew for a long time, and he said he’d be interested in playing with us, so he was added to the fold. We stayed a 3 piece for a bit, but Dan and I always thought adding another guitarist would really add some depth to our sound, we were just hesitant because we dealt with a lot of flaky people in our previous member searches. Thankfully, Trevor – who played bass for the band briefly in 2022 before moving to the East Coast – moved back to Bellingham early this year and said he’d be interested in joining the band. Trevor is a great lead guitarist and a very easy personality to deal with who we already had prior experience with, so it was a very natural fit.
Dan would have a better idea as to the original motivation of forming a band with this sound. My goal in helping shape the sound when I joined was just to make sure we were always doing something that was true and unique to ourselves and keeping it heavy while not trying to specifically emulate any other band.
Dan: When Walker and I first started making music, we had only one goal, and that was making music that conveyed the agony and pain that one endures in life. Our first couple of songs we made a bit more blackened death doom with lots of misanthropic riffs. I had just left a band where my creativity was being stifled, and we had the common goal of being free to write whatever we wanted as long as it was heavy and we both liked it. I don’t think we really found our sound until Drake joined on bass and vocals. Things started to click, and we were able to have our own style without stressing genre and labels too much.
The new EP in 2025 is called Into the Flame of Fear. I’ve been enjoying the two new songs. When you were recording the new music, were there some things you wanted to improve upon? For example, the drums cut through more clearly. What does your drummer Drake think about his real drumming being replaced by sampled sounds?
Drake: Glad you enjoy the songs! We were 100 percent bound and determined to make a better recording this time around than the LP. I figured with a new lineup, we needed to make a statement and give it our all in the studio to turn out something we were really happy with, because our last experience definitely left me with a sour taste in my mouth.
The older I’ve got, the less I care about sound sampling or whatever, I just want a recording to sound good. Before you even enter the studio, you should be dealing with someone you’ve researched and trust – this point cannot be stressed enough. If you find that person, you should then give them the free rein they need to do their job because they know what they’re doing better than you. You don’t go to a mechanic to fix your car and then start taking wrenches out of their hand. Likewise, don’t go to a producer to make your album sound good and then start telling them to not use x or y effect, because they likely have a better idea as to the big picture sound for the record. I’ve been stringent and controlling in the past with producers when I’ve recorded, and every time I was, I ended up with a recording I didn’t like because I wasn’t willing to butt out and just let them do their job. How instruments interact with each other in a studio isn’t the same as in a live setting, and you need to make sacrifices in order for everyone’s performances to shine through in the studio.
I’m not 100 percent certain, but I’m fairly sure the kick drum is sampled, that’s about the only sound replacement that I believe exists on the drums. Like I said, I don’t really care, because sampling/triggering is not the same as programming drums. I’m still performing the drum parts, the sound just has to be altered because there is limited space to define low-end frequencies with our band because we play super downtuned. If the producer felt that was the best way to add distinction to the bass drum sound, I’m not going to argue; he’s not pulling that out of a hat just because he can, he is doing it because he cares about the totality of the record and knows what it will take to make it sound the best it can". And when I listen to it now, I can tell he was absolutely right in making the decisions he did. He's not making those decisions randomly.
What themes are you exploring in Into the Flame of Fear, particularly with the tracks “Pervasive Strife” and “Mass Suggestion”?
Drake: Andrew wrote “Pervasive Strife”, I wrote “Mass Suggestion”.
“Mass Suggestion” is a song about statues appearing in a village where nobody knows how they arrived there. The general populace’s interpretations of said statues lead to lethal consequences for the unfavored of their community. Thematically, the song is about paranoia and fear driving the actions of most “civilized” people – hence, “Into the Flame of Fear”. You could really boil down most of my lyrics to “people suck and are not to be trusted”.
Andrew: In regards to “Pervasive Strife,” Musically I wanted something kinda simple to play but sounded really big, something that could be off [Morbid Angel’s] Gateways to Annihilation or like some Immolation tune. Lyrically I was thinking along the lines of an early concept for the next album that Drake had told me about, I wanted a bit of a side conversation in that early story about human struggle and the fact that to be human means to struggle. I chose to write about Ahriman (or Angra Mainyu) because he is the demon of struggle in the Zoroastrian religion, like he is the thing that encompasses the entire concept I wanted to go for, so Ahriman it was.
Was there a particular event or inspiration that sparked the creation of Into the Flame of Fear? Was there a certain catalyst for the music and lyrics of the EP?
Drake: The main driving force for getting this new EP out was the addition of our new members. We really wanted to release something this year to showcase the strengths of our new lineup and to show we’re more focused and driven than ever. I think our songwriting has improved overall and we have a clearer vision of the music we want to make, because there was some grey area when the band first started.
“Mass Suggestion” was wrote quite a while ago, while Andrew brought “Pervasive Strife” to the table pretty fleshed out. We thought these 2 songs would be good to release on their own since I have a specific concept in mind for our second full-length, and I felt like these 2 songs seemed more like singles than something that was part of a larger whole. I also thought it’d be a cool way to stretch our wings lyrically by still having a story in mind for each song, but being lyrically contained to one piece of music.
I was surprised to hear a guitar solo! I did not get the memo that this was going to happen!
Drake: We’re not at all opposed to guitar solos, there is one in “Exterminatory Brackets” on the LP, and we do have a few more defined lead licks on the LP as well. Adding a second guitarist though has definitely given us more room for guitar solos and to play around with added harmonies and textures, hence why we added Trevor to the lineup. Our main objective is always to keep things heavy, but we’re not allergic to melody, it just has to be utilized carefully so it makes sense with the theme of the song.
So, on the new EP, is Drake doing ALL the vocals? Some of the vocals are a deep growl, and there are bits of crust-like punk-style vocals. Is it the work of only one person?
Drake: No, Drake only does vocals on “Mass Suggestion”, Andrew handles the vocals on “Pervasive Strife”. In the future, we want to utilize both singers more to make for a more distinct and adventurous vocal sound – and to give our drummer some more time to breathe while he's playing.
Did you experiment with any new sounds or production techniques on this recording compared to your past work?
Drake: Yes, this time around, we opted to record with the guy who mixed our last LP, Kelly Sorbel. Recording from the ground up with the same person who is also mixing your recording is a huge benefit and lent a focus and consistency to the recording we didn’t have with the LP. Kelly has a lot of experience with bands of our ilk and works in a studio I’ve spent a lot of time in, so I was much more comfortable with the recording situation overall than with our last recording. Since he mixed our last record, he already had a rapport with us and our sound and I think he did a great job. I couldn’t tell you every little thing he did - I’m not super recording-tech savvy - the only cool nugget I do remember is during the bass tracking of the bridge of “Mass Suggestion”. For some unbeknownst reason, Andrew’s headphones cut out during the build, which he is by and large leading - with only minor drum accents and a click track to keep tempo. He continued to play for a good stretch with absolutely no audio being fed to his headphones, but ended up being incredibly close to on-time with the tempo, so we just decided to leave his recording as is. If you listen closely to the accents of the drums at the start of the bridge, the bass and drums sound just a hair off from each other, but I thought the energy of his take just felt right and that it was just cooler to leave it as it is, things don’t always need to sound absolutely perfect to make an impression.
Drake: I hope people hear that we’ve taken a step up in quality. I’m kinda bummed how some stuff turned out with the first LP – I almost consider it more of a demo at this point - but I can’t change it, all I can do is try to make something better, and I think we achieved that. At very least, I think we took a major step up in the production department. I think we’ve found more of our sound, and I hope people do take something away from the lyrics as well, because we put real thought and time into them and they do have a message. I’m greatly influenced by Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone, and I try to approach my lyrics with that same storytelling approach in mind. Serling is great at utilizing an entertaining macro concept to make really smart, measured, and poignant social commentary. If The Twilight Zone is morality disguised as sci-fi, I hope “Into the Flame of Fear” is social commentary disguised as death/doom.
By the way, speaking of lyrics and music, I see on Metal Archives that you guys are young, so you probably haven’t thought about this, but you know, one day you will be 45, or 55, or 65 years old and a father and grandfather. Do you think about whether you would be embarrassed by your own music or would you show it to your own kids? Since you work so hard on the music and dedicate yourselves to your art, don’t you think you owe it to yourselves to make something you can be proud of?
Drake: It’s interesting you say this, because this is something I’ve subconsciously thought about quite a lot, actually. I’ve always approached any project I’m in with the idea “would my parents be proud of this”? While the type of music I play is about the furthest thing away from my parents’ cup of tea, I do think approaching my art with a real intent, message, and goal is something that they would be proud of and any listener can respect, because it’s got real backbone behind it, not just aimless brutality for brutality’s sake. I never wrote lyrics about murder or satanism or whatever other tired cliche because I don’t care about any of that and can’t relate to it whatsoever. I have to be able to stand behind and defend anything I create artistically, so what would really be the point of making art with no intent or message whatsoever? In a world with such an over-abundance of music, I don’t think saying meaningless garbage just to fill space in a song is a really respectable approach to art. That’s why I make a concerted effort to write lyrics that mean something to me and hopefully get a listener to think a little bit, because ultimately when you’re singing on a song, you’re just talking to someone who can’t talk back. Therefore, it would behoove you to have a point to what you’re saying and be selective in the words you’re using. I think it was Vetis from Weapon who said something to the effect of “if you’re not adding anything new with the music you’re making, stop making it”. That’s an artistic ideology I can absolutely agree with.
Into the Flame of Fear
by Maldisdeun
Anti-Access World Denial
by Maldisdeun
https://www.facebook.com/maldisdeun/
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.