Whether you like your metal to have the ubiquitous ‘core’ suffix or to have the slightly classier ‘death’ prefix, Michigan based headbangers, The Black Dahlia Murder have just what you need. Currently trekking around the traps touting their latest record, Deflorate (with like minded heavy fusion band Unearth along for the ride), Blunt caught up with vocalist Trevor Strnad – in his pajama bottoms, no less.

“We’ve been home for the first time in ever, or maybe since 2003, this is the longest vacation we’ve ever had from touring,” says the frontman. “It’s been equal parts boring and relaxing.”
Now, some may think that metal dudes on vacation would keep up the touring lifestyle or at least go and burn some churches, not so, explains Strnad.

“It’s a lot of pajama pants and video games,” he laughs. “The old ones, anything on the original NES!”

Aside from hanging out and reacquainting himself with the golden age of console gaming, Strnad has had time to contemplate the band’s last release, Deflorate.
“I’m still in love with it and I can only really say that about the last two albums, Nocturnal and Deflorate. It comes down to having the recording quality up to par and also the material, it seems like we entered adulthood at that point.”

The vocalist goes on to explain that a big reason that the band are so happy with how the record turned out was due to the contributions of new guitarist, Ryan Knight (formerly of tech death metal act, Arsis).

“Ryan wasn’t in the band for a very long time before we recorded but he was brave enough to offer up some really great songs, so it was like the beginning of a new era for us, with everyone contributing – we had Ryan and then Bart (Ryan ‘Bart’ Williams, bassist) co-wrote two songs and Brian (Eschbach, guitarist) of course.”

“We used to get together and jam on the fly and sometimes that was like forcing it, pulling teeth,” says Strnad. “Now, everybody knows Protools and that changes, makes it more of a private affair, where the guys go home to their secret laboratory. In respect to the lyrics, I guess that is what I do too, I get the songs and play them a thousand times at home and go to work by myself.”

Lyrically, explains the singer, Deflorate contains a lot of Satanic material, taking metal back to its roots.

“Stuff like early Deicide and Sinister, you know, the shock value of that whole thing was something that really resonated with me when I was a kid, scared the hell out of me. You know that album by Sinister, Hate? It scared the crap out of me, with all of its incantation lyrics with magic words, like six, six, six! I think about all of that kind of stuff, what attracted me to metal when I was young.”

Aside from the old school influences on Strnad’s lyrics, he says that science fiction played a big part in his writing process, with songs like “I Will Return” featuring cryogenic rebirth and “Selection Unatural”, about a ‘weird deformity’.

Strnad says that he has always been into sci-fi and horror and that the crossover to using this in combination with the more traditional Satanic lyrics in death metal is quite natural. It may even help give evil its shock value back.

“I still have people that are Christian that have some kind of moral conflict when they listen to our band and they Myspace me and ask about why we have these kind of lyrics, I think that is pretty humourous. We’ll always be shocking somebody out there, I guess,” laughs the frontman.

“I look at songs as a little piece of fiction, but some have my opinions on humanity, like Necropolis is about my disgust with the way that religion has us enslaved by ancient and archaic traditions. That kind of stuff will be the downfall of mankind.”

Much as Strnad has turned to a new page in heavy metal’s Big Book Of Lyrics, the singer says that heavy music has recently forged a new path, running in all directions at once, exploding into mainstream popularity. This, he says, won’t last, but for now, he is happy to enjoy the fruits of his labours, even as he changes along with the scene.
“Its weird, because when we started touring, I was one of the kids and now, with these kids that look up to me, I’m an old man at twenty nine.”

Tags: the Black Dahlia Murder