We ventured to Eindhoven in the Netherlands for the European tour of Red Fang, The Shrine and Lord Dying. After the pretty awesome show Lord Dying gave at the Effenaar, I had the chance to have a little chat with these guys. As soon as I stepped into the backstage room the air was filled with scent of male deodorant, beer, and a little whiff of sweat. Some bandmembers were roaming around the hallway. I walked into the dressing room of Lord Dying, Erik Olson, Don Capuano, Rob Shaffer, and Chris Evans were chilling out after their show, and I had one of the most warm welcomes ever. I got a beer pushed into my hands and from there is where we started to chat a little.
Welcome to the warm middle-south of the Netherlands. How do you like the Netherlands so far and did you guys had the chance to check out the environment?
Well yeah, we have a bunch of dates in Holland still coming and Roadburn in on the list. We didn’t really have the time to check things out outside of the venue. But during Roadburn we do have some time to check out the town, we believe we have 2 or 3 days in between shows.
One simple question, I’ve see you have been in Belgium a few days back, do you like Dutch or Belgium beers more?
Uhh, we actually drink this (holds up a can of Jupiler)
Yep, that definitely is Belgian beer, let me write that down. Talking about Roadburn, on their site they called you guys “Cavemen Metal”. What do you guys think about that name?
Haha, yeah that is an awesome name, yeah we totally are cavemen with beards.
So is it because of the beards?
It is pretty much all about the beards indeed.
Lord Dying has a very distinct sound, is this a typical sound from Oregon?
In some way it is, we get inspiration from bands that play in your certain area so you hear some of the influences back in our music. We love to hang around with the folks from our area, that is why we are so happy to tour with Red Fang who are also from Oregon. It is just cool to make what you love to make, and that is what we do.
Is this a popular kind of genre in Oregon?
We have a great booming metal scene up there. We have a lot of doom bands and we have a lot of thrash bands. We don’t really try to fit in with all of them. We just try to experiment with the riffs and beats, we try to crossover in the styles without too much genre jumping and still being interesting to listen to.
You can definitely hear a lot of those influences in Lord Dying indeed. What are the key points to the music as you make it?
We all like different kinds of heavy music. It all comes together with the riffs. We all try to write it before and then we kind of try to put it in a song. We definitely take an influence from the sound that is coming from the pacific southwest. We try not to take everything to directly. We try to write our own thing. There isn’t really a thing that we specifically try to play we just do it.
Okay, so you don’t try, you guys just are?
Haha, Yeah you can put it like that indeed.
You had your debut album out for quite a while now, named Summon the Faithless (Relapse). You immediately earned your status in the US and in Europe. How did that happen? Most bands go by trial and error.
Look. We have good friends that support us throughout. We work hard and earned our place, first local, then the US and now Europe. We take every opportunity to play, and it doesn’t matter how much it costs. And we had our very first show with Red Fang, who are also from our neighborhood. So we had a very good start.
It is pretty awesome you have friends that already have such credibility that can push you guys along.
Yeah, we were lucky on that part. And they are like really great dudes. We are really stoked to do this, and we have a lot of awesome bands from Portland.
So in a few weeks you are going to play Roadburn, how siked are you guys?
We are pumped! We got asked and we were like “Yeah of course”. It is 3 days after our tour is over, so we are already there. Why wouldn’t we play there! We love to play as much as we can.
There are a lot of bands that play this kind of style, how do you guys think you stand out in the crowd?
There are a lot of different kinds of genres we get compared with. For instance sludge. In our opinion sludge isn’t the good description of us, we accept it though. People like to put names on something. But we are more high energy and we write more pumped music.
I was looking at your show, and I agree with that feeling. I mean, you guys are fun to watch, the energy is splattering off the stage while you guys play. Do you feel that the same?
Well, yeah! It is fun to play and we try to give the audience everything we can. Obviously there is a lot of rad sludge bands out there. But we try to keep it interesting.
By the way, who is the Lord in your band name and why is he Dying?
It is about worshipping and bowing down. Fuck that! We don’t like to bow down. And we don’t like authority. So that is why the Lord is Dying.
If you would have to choose a band you could play with where you would go totally retard about, which one will it be?
Carp, they don’t exist anymore but yeah. They are pretty awesome. But we would love to play with Slayer of course, everybody would love to play with Slayer.
Another beer question, we love beer questions. How much beer do you guys think you have drunk after the tour is over?
Wow, do we have to answer this question in gallons? We don’t know, enough to float a ferry from the UK to Europe, we guess.
And for the final question. Where do you guys hope to be in 10 years from now?
Just playing riffs. Doing the same thing. Living the life. We’ll just see what is going to happen. We can’t live off it, but we hope to still be touring around. The goal is to be staying on the road all the time. We enjoy what we are doing. Every time when we get home, we want to get touring again. We call it after tour- depression.
After the interview with Lord Dying I went back to the venue to see Red Fang. It was a pretty awesome evening, you can read all about it in the review about this show. We had a blast on this energetic night.
KAAT VAN DOREMALEN
LIVE PHOTOS BY SUSANNE A. MAATHUIS