Interview with DAWNBREAKER, American black metal (Part 4) - What is the depravity of the human soul?

Dawnbreaker has released six albums since 2018, including the most recent one titled Pactum Sanguine Novo, released on January 2, 2026. Dawnbreaker has a most unique history reaching back to 2004: Before Dawnbreaker, there was Angelcide—vile black metal of horrendous blasphemy that crashed and burned upon contact with God. In a shocking turn of events, Angelcide died and Dawnbreaker was born; the black metal that had for decades mocked God became a bondservant of Jesus Christ. In this fourth installment of the interview series with Dawnbreaker, we begin with a discussion of the concept of the depravity of the soul of the human race.

Metal Bulletin Zine (MBZ) -- Previously, we saw that in 2018 the debut album Deus Vult came out; Dawnbreaker was officially public, up and running. Your previous blasphemous black metal music called Angelcide is now behind you. Moving on to September 10, 2019, the second album Total Depravity was released. It begins with the sounds of battle and gunfire for a song called "Man of War"! Why did you use the sound of gunfire and the title "Man of War" for an album called Total Depravity as your opening statement?

Dawnbreaker (DB) -- I had been exposed to what I felt was a mostly “defanged” Christianity at the time. But I was reading the Bible and I was taken aback at how violent and destructive much of it was. "Man of War" comes from a verse in Exodus: “The Lord is a Man of War.” I wanted to further illustrate this side of God and Christianity that is left out in many modern churches.

MBZ -- What do the words of the album title Total Depravity mean to you? What is the "depravity" as you view it? Is it the condition of the world? Is it your view of power, politics, business, religion, and the world? Is it about the human race and a biblical view of people? Is there a general plan, direction, or concept for the album?

DB -- Total Depravity is a concept within Christianity that mankind is so naturally depraved (due to the original fall of man) that it can’t possibly choose to obey God without God’s explicit intervention. I thought that concept was really metal—that mankind is just naturally and infinitely depraved! I guess that also was my personal experience with people in general, and especially myself. I had the music before the theme came about, but the theme quickly came together as I attributed lyrics to each of the songs and arranged the full composition of songs that appear on the album.

MBZ -- What is the cover of the album Total Depravity? Is it a painting? How did you go about choosing the art?

DB -- Yes, it’s an old painting of the Tower of Babel that I edited with Photoshop software. I wanted artwork that was close to some old albums from Xasthur and Dark Funeral, which is where the blue theme comes from. A cold feeling, indeed. The Tower of Babel represents the theme of the album, mostly explored in the track “The Dark Tower.” It’s the ultimate testament to man’s arrogance, pride, and ultimate folly. I also felt like mankind was building its own modern Tower of Babel as it rejected Christianity and religion and opted for its own intellectual universalism. It will be the same outcome in the end!

MBZ -- In the first song—a brutal, blasting attack of a tune—you observe that many Christians "preach on morality" but that, actually, "Christianity is war." Are you tired of Christians reducing Jesus to some type of "I'm okay, you're okay, peace and love" hippie?

DB -- Yes, absolutely. It’s a spiritual war, and a war against the world. The world tells you to self-indulge, “follow your dreams,” and seek endless pleasures of the flesh. Christianity is contrary to all of this and puts you in direct opposition to what our modern culture is teaching you.

MBZ -- The fourth song is called "Secrets of Enoch." Enoch is quoted in the Bible in the book of Jude, but the Book of Enoch is not included in the Bible as Holy Scripture. Enoch was, according to the Bible, a hypothetical righteous person. Have you read the Book of Enoch? Is the song about the story of Enoch in the book of Genesis?

DB -- Yes, and yes, it’s the same person. It goes into further detail on some of the early Genesis chapters. The fact that it was referenced in Jude, and found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, always fascinated me. It was clearly read and known by the early Christians and the Israelites that came before them. A very strange and mysterious book with some terrifying passages!

MBZ -- After four intense black metal songs, you threw me for a loop with the seven minutes of "ambient horror" keyboard/synthesizer/sampled sounds of "Waterless Places." It's not a song, but rather an interlude. What was your thinking or your objective with this track? Did you play it for seven minutes on the keyboards, or is it a segment of, say, 10 seconds looped for seven minutes?

DB -- I played all of the notes throughout the entire song—there is no looping or copy-pasting. The album is told in two halves, each with an ambient ending. The metal section is the war and the ambient sections are the aftermath: the ruins, the wastelands. I wanted some pronounced ambient sections in the songs. It reminds me of the DSBM bands I liked when I was younger, around the time I wrote many of these songs. Some of the early one-man bands, like Burzum and Graveland, had a lot of ambient tracks in their works.

MBZ -- Then, the music returns to intense extreme metal for another four songs. The album ends with another "ambient horror" track featuring verses from the book of Revelation. So, we have: four black metal songs, an ambient interlude, another four tracks, and a postlude. It's about 16 minutes of ambient and some 27 minutes of intense black metal. Can you explain this structure?

DB -- Yes, it was meant to be two large battles and two desolate aftermaths. I followed in the footsteps of Burzum’s early works by separating the album into two halves, with an ending ambient section to drift away after a dose of metal carnage. In this album’s case, it’s meant to give it a more mysterious and unsettling feel. The battles conclude, with waste and uncertainty remaining.

MBZ -- By the end of 2019, you have two albums released. How were you feeling at the end of 2019?

DB -- 2019 was possibly the best year of my life. It’s the year I got married, adopted my dog, and got a decent raise at my job. I was living in an apartment I loved on the Upper East Side. Everything was going great. I would watch TV in the evening and was playing SNES and PC games often. I read a lot of Christian writings around this time—not only the Bible but also works from the Saints and Reformers. But I was also experiencing a lot of New York City culture: plays, concerts, symphonies, and frequent dining at exotic restaurants and markets. All of the fun stuff you see in the movies!

MBZ -- Since you basically do everything that we hear on the Dawnbreaker albums, it must be an incredible amount of work. Do you have time to even listen to other people’s music?

DB -- By now, I’m not really keeping up with other music and current bands. I had a phase when I would listen to hundreds of bands—mostly in my late teens and early twenties. By now, though, I know what I like and I don’t spend much time checking out anything new. However, around 2015–2018, I spent a lot of time diving into Christian black metal history—listening to the greats like Antestor, Slechtvalk, and Crimson Moonlight, but also some lesser-known classics like Sanctifica, Vardoger, and Grave Declaration.

MBZ -- Speaking of free time and reading—given the importance of the Bible in your lyrics—how do you approach reading it? Back in 2019, how often were you reading the Bible? It is not easy reading; it’s a text from two thousand years ago, and we live in a different time, culture, and language.

DB -- In those years, I would read every day and participate in Bible studies. I read it many times in different translations. I also read a lot of other writings from Saints and reformers. Sometimes I would read study Bibles that provided commentary for each of the passages, but other times I was reading without any commentary.

MBZ -- Let's look at the year 2020. On October 31st, 2020, you released the third album, Vanquished Horrible Night. 2020 was the year of COVID. Were you able to keep working at your job? Were you more productive, musically speaking? Did you find yourself being more depressed or isolated?

DB -- Yes, I work in healthcare, so I was fortunate to stay employed during COVID. I worked every day and was extremely productive during this time. I recorded not only Vanquished Horrible Night but also Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam and the newest release, Pactum Sanguine Novo. I was in great spirits this year, for the most part. I was used to being alone, sitting in my basement playing video games as a kid, so I wasn’t bothered by the isolation. I had many years of training in this already, haha!

MBZ -- Politically, 2020 was crazy too, because COVID became a political issue. The left tried to pin every single death on President Donald Trump, and the Trump administration had to deal with unemployment and the virus itself. Things were not going well for the administration. The spring and summer of 2020 were marked by violence and looting in the name of democracy and social justice. How were you doing at that time?

DB -- The protests drove me crazy. I was so angry that there wasn’t any policing being done. In New York City, a lot of buildings were boarded up; storefronts were full of cardboard. It looked like a post-apocalyptic society. Protesters would march down my street chanting despicable things. I felt a lot of anger that probably channeled into the music to some degree.

MBZ -- Getting back to Vanquished Horrible Night (2020), it is definitely a symphonic black metal album, and it seems to have lots of melody. The more I listen to it, the more I see the difference between this album and the one before it. Making an album every year, do you ever feel like you might be repeating yourself?

DB -- My plan was to change styles with each album so they all sounded significantly different. I always wanted to do a symphonic album but didn’t have the confidence to put the keyboards together. But the label Vision of God offered to do a vinyl for the third album, so I thought it would be a great time to try the symphonic style. I forced myself to study symphonic bands and how their keyboard placements were—what instruments and octaves they used, etc. I made myself experiment. Being stuck at home during the pandemic gave me a lot of time to work on this!

MBZ -- Metal Archives says that the artwork is a work by Gustave Doré. Is it a ghost and an angel? A ghost and a traveler? I personally do not know much about Gustave Doré.

DB -- A friend of mine did the cover and layout—the same guy who did the logo, actually. I asked him to do something "Dore-esque," and he did some copy-and-pasting to arrange an original piece. The art was more his interpretation, so I can’t comment much on it. I see it as a haunting over the earth and a figure rising to oppose it.

MBZ -- What does the introduction, "Summoned by Christ's Vicar," mean? It sounds like a traveler on a bandwagon pulled by horses, maybe?

DB -- The album has sort of a Castlevania theme—a warrior is called by the Pope to confront a great spiritual darkness that has arisen on the Earth. The "Vicar of Christ" is the Pope.

MBZ -- "Evil's Bane" kicks off the music, then "The Virtuous Quest" follows. I notice the symphonic black metal feel. I don't think I'm a very good listener, because I hadn't noticed this aspect on the previous two albums. Do you play the keyboards, or is it sampled/programmed?

DB -- Three of the albums are heavily keyboard-driven; this is the first of them. The first two albums also have a heavy keyboard presence in some songs, but on this album, they more or less take the spotlight. All of the synth is orchestrated in a MIDI program—I’m not physically playing the keyboard like I was on Total Depravity. This was the first time I really taught myself how to compose orchestrations to make a truly symphonic album.

MBZ -- The first song, "Evil's Bane," has some melodic singing from guest Brian Gawaski from the black metal band Abazagorath and The Ciem Show (who has also worked with Funebrarum). How did that collaboration come about? How is your friendship with those bands? Did you and Brian talk about the lyrics and your Christianity? It looks like you have maintained many friendships despite your change in music and personal beliefs.

DB -- Brian is one of my best friends. In Abazagorath, we were the guitar players for many years and were a great team. He is a much better musician than me! We did a lot of touring—from Texas to Chicago to Boston—covering much of the USA. We also recorded an album together. He is an outstanding vocalist, and a lot of my favorite symphonic albums have clean vocals. So, I insisted there be a clean vocal section, like on the Abazagorath album we did together. Most of my closest friends supported me in my change of religion. Brian, in particular, really liked a certain Christian podcaster and listened to him frequently. Other friends, however, rejected my beliefs and ended our friendship over it.

MBZ -- Finally, you ended the album with an instrumental ambient track of 4 minutes and 43 seconds. Why did you choose to end the album this way? It feels like the album ends with a "feeling of the night," and the darkness is not vanquished. Or is it? Wait, maybe that’s your point? Evil on Earth is never vanquished as long as we live on it because this is not the Kingdom of God yet?

DB -- The story ends with our hero martyred in Track 8, having a vision of the Virgin Mary in Track 9, and entering heaven—ultimately escaping the Outer Darkness. But the Outer Darkness still lingers; the track represents hell, and its threat remains for many even after this particular story ends. “The Outer Darkness—where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.” And yes, the darkness is not vanquished; the war of the ages continues in the follow-up album Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. The albums were united in theme and sound, so this was intentional; it was not meant to be conclusive but to continue the journey on the next album.

MBZ -- I have presented a ton of questions to you, and I wasn't able to get to the year 2021 and the album Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam. Let's leave that for next time.

DB -- I look forward to us continuing the journey!

Total Depravity (2019) by Dawnbreaker

Vanquished Horrible (2020) Night by Dawnbreaker

https://www.facebook.com/dawnbreakerworship/

If you enjoyed this conversation with Dawnbreaker, maybe you would like to see the previous one. https://metalbulletin.blogspot.com/2025/11/dawnbreaker.html