“I think I feel it more and more with each album and as the band achieves more success,” says The Black Dahlia Murder frontman Trevor Strnad. “I just feel there’s more eyes on me to come up with more scary lyrics that’ll make your skin crawl. We have almost 100 songs now, I think, and that’s a lot of songs about chopping people up. You have to be creative within the world of the macabre. I do enjoy the challenge, but there are times where the whole thing gets to me.”
With internal tensions mounting, the Michigan metallers tried to make the writing and recording process for their upcoming seventh full-length as relaxed as possible, taking an extended break from touring and assembling a recording studio in Strnad’s very own home.
“I did vocals in my closet and it was the first time I got to record at home, so I was pretty stoked,” he says. “It’s nice to be comfortable when you have to do that kind of thing, because it’s a pretty stressful time. It was recorded with the same studio we always record with, but we had them come here this time. We were also working with our old bass player Bart [Ryan Williams], and he helped record a lot of the album. He was also involved in [2013’s] Everblack and he was a good force to have because he’s an engineer himself. Having him still be around and putting in his two cents about things is really an asset to the band. He worked with Mark Lewis from Audio Hammer in Florida. We’ve known these guys for a long, long time now, so we just had a really good time. Before, we normally worked with Mark and Jason [Suecof] together. But when we heard the latest Cannibal Corpse record and it just sounded so awesome, we thought we would just try Mark and see what he’d do.”
At this stage, the title of the album and its contents are still under lock and key, and Strnad believes it’s important for bands to retain the mystery when it comes to new releases. “Some bands kind of walk you through the whole thing,” he says. “I think by now our fans have sort of figured it out, because we are always sticking to the same album cycle. Touring for two years, then an album. So far, our albums have always come out on odd years too. So it’s about time for a new one.
“Our last album did better than I had imagined,” he continues, “Coming from Ritual [2011], which was such a big success for us at the time, it seemed really intimidating to put another one out after that. For fans to really grab onto two albums like that was awesome. It made us happy. Ritual was a door opening for us; incorporating samples into the music and different kinds of instruments, and being able to recreate that stuff live. We took what we learned from that and Everblack and applied it to this new one.”
Finally hitting the road again this month, The Black Dahlia Murder will be wiping off the dust with an Australian headline tour. Strnad can’t confirm whether any new tracks will be played from the soon-to-be-released album.
“I would like to debut something,” he says. “We still need to hash it out. We’ll definitely be playing a good chunk of the Everblack stuff and our longest sets ever. Especially since the last two times we came was with Soundwave, I feel like we owe the fans a nice, long set in a nice, personal environment.”
BY JESSICA WILLOUGHBY
