We Spoke to The Black Dahlia Murder About Playing Death Metal in Ukraine

Listening to good melodic death metal is a lot like being beaten to death by Bruce Lee. It's skull crushing, bone breaking, and gut wrenching, but it's also subtly elegant. At this moment, there may be no one elegantly crushing bodies better than The Black Dahlia Murder. Black Dahlia’s studio recordings are grim, complicated and intensely structured songs. But when the band plays live, singer Trevor Strnad buzzes around the stage, flailing his arms at the crowd like he's conductor of his own macabre orchestra. Guitarists Ryan Williams, Brian Eschbach, and Ryan Knight head-bang during the most difficult parts of the set and work the stage and the crowd whenever their fingers allow them. It's a drastic transformation from the goofy and gregarious band's off-stage personality. Unlike their albums, Black Dahlia's live shows maintain a certain light hearted feel, despite the fact that the only time the band stops their pulverizing melodies is to tune up, make a quick joke, or to accost the audience for not going crazy enough.

Black Daliah is from western Michigan and started in 2002, but unlike most American metal bands, Black Daliah got their influences from abroad. Bands from Sweden, like Carcass and other European melodic metal bands gave them a frame work that they've built upon and improved every year since their formation. After three years of toiling around Michigan, the band got their shit together and signed with Metal Blade Records. Since then, Black Daliah has toured with the who's who of metal elite, like Cannibal Corpse and Children of Bodom. By the end of a Black Daliah show, the crowd devolves into a disoriented soup of sweat and expelled energy. The mosh pit becomes nebulous, and the whole crowd seems to sway and bounce back and forth, like every person is a small part of some massive creature whose heartbeat is fucking metal.

The band has undergone some lineup changes over the years, but they have always maintained their stand-alone sound. Even with these changes, Black Daliah has grown into something bigger than a combination of its parts, and continues to evolve and get better. Along with increasingly complex and melodic albums, Black Dahlia has also gained wider appeal, with their last two albums debuting on the Billboard charts. It seems that more and more people are interested in being elegantly beaten to death.

Noisey: How's the tour going so far?
Trevor Strnad: Reactions have been huge, the turn outs have been really good. We've been headlining the beginning half of the tour, and they (Suicide Silence) will be headlining the latter half. I look forward to that. Just send down the stress levels a little bit. It’s been fun.

Where are you headed after this?
After this we go out to Scandinavia and Russia and Ukraine. We've played in Russia a few times, but it'll be our first time in Ukraine, and things are kind of sketchy out there right now. My mom is like, “are you really going there?” she keeps asking, “Are you still going there?!” like yeah, we're going.

Does going to Ukraine make you nervous at all?
Nervous? Slightly, but I think that we’re gonna just persevere and go. I think people want to see us. I think in a time like that it might be a good thing, you know, blow off some steam and help people have some fun, that's what it's all about. I'm interested to see what it’s like, and hopefully it goes off without a hitch. A lot of Russian shows have been getting shot down. Suicide Silence got shot down a couple of times. Cannibal Corpse was just there and got shut down. All on having violent themes and all that old stuff. We'll see if we get through all the shows.

Do you see a huge difference in the crowds from city to city when you tour?
Yes and no. In any city, you want the same end result, which is people flying everywhere. Crowd surfing, stage diving, singing into the mic. It’s a death metal band, but it’s all about togetherness and a shared experience. It’s a positive thing, that's for sure From place to place it depends. If you’re going somewhere for the first time you may not have the most people coming out. Pretty much with every album we try to branch out more and more, like going to Ukraine. So I don't know what to expect, but we'll see. But usually when we come out for the second time the crowds have like doubled or tripled, you know, you see the growth. It’s still exciting to start somewhere new and conquer new grounds and build things up. It's fun. It's awesome.

Have you guys had some line up changes fairly recently?
Yeah, well the newest guy is the drummer, Alan. He’s been with us for two years now. So that's a lot of shows and we've done a lot of stuff together now. Every time we play, kids are like, “hey! You got a new guy” and we're like, “he's not really that new anymore!” It's been fun, the guys are great. They bring a lot of energy. And, him being young, he's 25, he was 24 when he started with us, it's just, y'know, I'm 33 man. I've been touring for 10 years straight and he's just so like young, wide-eyed, and excited to be here. It's refreshing, it's awesome. He plays his ass off, and he's a very versatile drummer. Outside of just death metal he can play anything. I'm excited to see what's going to happen with him. He's a really nice kid, and he deserves all the attention that he's gonna get. I think he's just gonna grow and grow.

How do you maintain the Black Dahlia Murder sound when you bring a new guy on?
We obviously have a mission statement to maintain a sound that you can hear from record to record. But, the other hand is we like to add different dynamics, try to shake things up a bit, try different time signatures, we're still exploring as a band. We try to keep it in mind, The line, y'know, we want to please old fans and also please ourselves. So there's a little experimentation here and there. The guys have all gotten so much better over the years. Every two years we go back to write and they surprise me with what the write. They’re always growing as musicians and players. And, in our old age now, we know who to look for to fill the gaps in the band. It was a really smooth transition.

Is touring still fun, in your old age?
It’s the best man, playing show is the best I love it. And now it's like, playing great show after great show we've built this whole thing up. Now it's just one party after the next it seems anyway. A lot of touring is sitting in there, but when it comes to this time of the day and the shows going, it's good times. The waiting: that's why people quit the band. It is. Touring is painful at times.

What do you do to alleviate the pain?
Well, weed helps. And a lot of laughs man. You have to have pretty tight nit to live that close to seven people, you know.

Do you approach playing live and playing for the record differently?
We approach the music with all seriousness. We would never have the kind of joking stuff you see us doing onstage or in our videos or whatever. The music is the most serious part. We dedicate so much time and thought to it, the rest is like, a necessary evil I guess. You know, comedy to keep you sane. There's always a lot of joking and weed smoking and carrying on. The guys in the band have always been my best friends. We're always very conscious of who we bring in and what there personality is going to be like. The album is dead serious, but on stage anything goes.

Erik Mclaren's life is a balance of melodic death metal and midterms - @Erik01