AS FLESH DECAYS - A Wonderful Day for an Exorcism
Written by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Monday 16 May 2022
The Horror, The Horror …
Purveyors of horror-themed old school death metal that’s about as subtle as a chainsaw buzzing through your front door, AS FLESH DECAYS have finally unleashed their latest work, Dead City Cathedral, after years of delay. Ahead of their show in Albury supporting the mighty KING PARROT, drummer Chris spoke to Sense about horror films and shooting death metal in a church …
I checked out your stuff and saw some very horror movie-themed music videos. Love it.
Very old-school, yeah, definitely. I think, with horror films and metal, it’s definitely gone hand-in-hand since the 80s, you know? It’s nothing new. But I think there’s not a lot of bands in Australia that have been doing the horror niche thing, you know? There might be some bands that do one or two songs about horror films, but I sort of wanted it to be purely based on horror, like some of my favourite American death metal bands were like. Yeah, we try to keep it very horror film-themed.
Where did your love affair with horror movies start?
I must have been about three or four years old when I saw Jaws. Jaws is my favourite film of all time. While technically it’s not really a horror film, it’s still classed as a horror in the genre, so Jaws was the very first one. In Tasmania, growing up, we only had, like, three channels … I was always taping films off TV. So Jaws was my favourite film as a kid … I guess the second horror film I ever saw – legit horror film – was The Amityville Horror II: The Possession. I owe my love of horror films to my grandparents, because they’d give me the video card, and I’d go down and just hire anything. So Nan had gone to bingo one night, and she came home, it must have been 10 o’clock at night, and there I am, glued to the TV watching The Amityville Horror II: The Possession. It’s just a really dark film. I think, back then, I was used to Disney films and watching Jaws and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which is a really dark film as well. But Amityville Horror II was just a different beast, and from then I was fascinated. I’ve never been scared by horror. I’ve just been so fascinated with the way these stories are told. Some might be just simple slashers, but I just love horror. It’s just a different sort of escape from everyday rom-coms. And we root for the bad guy! It’s the only genre where we can go, “I hope he kills everyone!” It sounds horrible to say that, but you want that, and they make the cast of these films absolutely annoying, so you’ve just got to go that way.
What can you tell me about Dead City Cathedral? How long were you guys working on it?
We worked on that since about 2018 … [that’s when] it started getting written. Then in 2019, at the very start of January 2019, we locked ourselves away in a studio down in Melbourne for three days and fleshed out all these songs. I usually have a year-and-a-half plan when it comes to what we’re going to do in that year-and-a-half. Even on the last album The Horror of it All, even during making that, I already had an idea of what the title for this album is going to be, [and] basically the idea for the front cover was going to be like. I like to plan things in advance, because I’m just so enthusiastic about everything that I want to keep busy and keep my mind occupied. So in 2019 we started to flesh out the songs, and I had this plan of having six tracks and having this guy from Melbourne do some horror-themed intros … I finally got to record the drums in 2020, and COVID hit. So if COVID wasn’t a thing, we would’ve put this album out two years ago and would’ve toured it, but unfortunately … Our guitarist, Billy, he was in Melbourne at the time, so he was in constant lockdown. So all we had was drums done. I live in NSW, and my guitarist is in NSW, my other guitarist is in Melbourne, and my singer was in Melbourne, so there were all these lockdown border restrictions, and it was absolutely a nightmare to get anything done. So finally Billy moved back up here, but as soon as he moved back up to Albury-Wodonga, Wodonga went into lockdown. Basically, this whole album should’ve been out two years ago, but we have been working on it since 2018. In the middle of one of our tours, Billy started writing the songs, and so I basically had all the ideas fleshed out – how I wanted it to be, how I wanted the sound – and we all had a talk about what didn’t work with the last album. We’re pretty much a DIY band, and this time we wanted to spend some money and get somebody to mix and master it, which we did, from a bloke called Dan Swanö, who, if you looked up his body of work, he’s worked with all of the greats … He’s even been in bands like BLOODBATH. He’s worked with IMMORTAL, ENTRAILS … you name it. Dan Swanö is the man. If he’s on your album, you know it’s going to sound good. So we had that planned. We were like, let’s not do everything ourselves. We still record by ourselves, because our singer Lacca has all the recording gear, so we recorded it and spent all the money on mixing and mastering. So it’s been well over three years since we started getting it going, and now it’s finally out, [as of] a couple of weeks ago. Better late than never.
You filmed a track called An Excellent Day for an Exorcism in an actual church…
Yeah, it was. That was up in Beechworth, where my vocalist Lacca lives … We love the area. It’s a really quaint sort of country town. There was a church there. I’m not sure if it’s a working church, but it’s still got a lot of the stuff in it, so I think they may just hire it out for things. I don’t think they had any idea what we were going to use it for. I think maybe we told them we were going to play a song … I’m not sure if Lacca told them what the name of the track was, and that we were going to actually bring in a small child and have her possessed and vomit up blood and all this stuff. But we did it, and it’s funny, because as we were recording it in a church, doing the video, there was a big Saturday market outside the church, so they could hear us playing, and we got all these curious peepers looking through the window going, “What are all these ratbags doing in this church? What are we befouling?” [Laughs] Hopefully that will be out soon. We’re starting to work on that one at the moment. But yeah, it was inside a church, and we figured it was fitting too, with a track that was based on The Exorcist, so what more fitting place to do it than a church?
I imagine your vocalist has spent years looking at the Beechworth Asylum going, “Gee, you know what would be good here? … A video!”
[Smiles] Well, if you go to Youtube, our very first video clip was shot at the Beechworth Asylum! That came from the idea … There was actually a horror film that was shot there called Scare Campaign, and the directors came to Albury and did a screening and a Q&A, and I saw the film and thought, “I really want to go up there and shoot a video up there.” I love music, but I also love film more than I love music, so I wanted to do my Quentin Tarantino and direct for the first time. I storyboarded the whole video, and Lacca arranged the camera guy, and we had a budget of no money, but Jeff, who runs the asylum, was very nice to let us film in there and film around it, so I definitely recommend that place to visit. It’s an amazing place, at day and night too.
AS FLESH DECAYS play Beer Deluxe with KING PARROT and DREAD THE WINTER on Thursday the 19th of May. Tickets available here.
Dead City Cathedral is out now.
Pictured: AS FLESH DECAYS L-R Billy, Ryan, Lacca + Taz