Liner Notes: Darkest Hour, 'The Eternal Return'

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (0)

THE THEORY OF eternal return posits the universe has no starting or ending but the matter within it is finite and ever-changing.

Darkest Hour's own take on "The Eternal Return" (Victory Records), the D.C. metal band's sixth album, deals with that philosophical concept by trying to bash it into submission. The breathless CD was recorded in Baltimore's Salad Days Studio with producer Brian McTernan but without guitarist Kris Norris, who left the group last year.

"The press is an interesting place to tell the dirty insides of the way a band operates," said guitarist Mike Schleibaum, 32, who co-founded Darkest Hour in 1995 with singer John Henry. "So, in fairness to Kris and our friendship ... sometimes real-life problems start to creep in, and it just got to the point where there were problems that were creeping into the band."

Mike "Lonestar" Carrigan replaced Norris, and he and Schleibaum handle all the ax duties on "The Eternal Return." While Darkest Hour still mixes melodic Swedish death metal and D.C.-inspired hardcore, the album is the group's most furious since 2001's "So Sedated, So Secure." That return to Darkest Hour's early brutality was due in part to the influence of McTernan, who produced the group's 2000 debut, "The Mark of the Judas."

"We wanted to find out what is Darkest Hour," Schleibaum said. "It just felt like we needed to go back to somebody who knew where we came from to figure out the actual essence of what we're trying to do. ... This is a band that grew up in front of everybody ... and every record got a little better. This record is, like, adults who beat the [stuff] out of each other to make some [angry stuff]."

While "The Eternal Return" sounds tumultuous, it also captures the essence of what makes Darkest Hour so amazing and its concerts so inspiring.

"We still love metal," Schleibaum said. ""Musically [the CD is] very angry, but you definitely see five guys who want to be there, who like it enough to have dedicated our lives to it."

Schleibaum gave Express a track-by-track tour of "The Eternal Return" while standing outside the Sonar club in Baltimore where Darkest Hour was performing on the "Summer Slaughter" tour. Click hear to listen alone to the whole album while reading Schleibaum's funny, energetic, swear-word-loaded commentary.

"Devolution of the Flesh"
This song was the sleeper. It was written three or four months into the writing process. It was three or four riffs that Lonestar had and one that I had, together, and we thought it was going to be this weird Mastodon-y instrumental thing. Then Ryan [Parrish] came in and played drums over it and made it thrash — and we loved it. From that minute we knew it was one of the catchiest, sickest, fastest things, and we wanted the album opener to just be a pissed off, short punk jammer.

The song is an open letter to certain people that mean something to us, but it can be translated back down to an open letter to the music industry in general. It's a sad place to live every day. ... The reality is, this is where we live; music isn't something that we turn off. 100 percent, all day long, on tour seven or eight months a year, death metal, heavy metal, I'm listening to it, I'm looking at iTunes, I bought that [Heaven & Hell] record the day that shit came out. I live metal. ... The song [asks], "Where are we? What are we doing?'"

"The Eternal Return," the name of the record is about this whole death and rebirth, and we had to start over in a lot of ways with a different guitar player, and we wanted a different sound. It's the last record on Victory; it's a closing in a lot of ways. We've been touring the same way for a real long time, and after 10 years of this shit it's like a new breath.

Lonestar and I we're in there, it took us four hours to change a guitar string today because we're so anal about this shit — it's because we care.

It's a death because we're tired not realizing the full potential of the band, and it's a rebirth because I think we know now what the fuck we're trying to say, musically and artistically. And that's freeing when you're an adult, because now I can walk away from a show and say, "Fuck you! That was death metal done the way I want to do it, the way I like it as a grown-ass man. Now I'm gonna go eat a burrito and hang out with some regular people."

"Death Worship"
This is a classic Darkest Hour song, to me. The main riff, I wrote ... and it has a classic Darkest Hour feel, and the bridge is a Lonestar riff that takes it to this ultra-heavy Slayer part. It's just a fast, thrashy, pissed-off, kinda old-school feel with a new twist — and that's the record in a nutshell. That's why we put it second. It doesn't have a solo; it just says, "Hey, fuck you! We don't have to put all the solos first." Here's what people like about the band: It's not raging guitar solos; it's the sick songs.

"The Tides"
This is the long-ass guitar-solos section, which we were fucking tortured over for days. I love that song because it's also old-school feeling in the beginning; it's got this thing called the "dug-a-dah," which is the Darkest Hour swing. [Mouths a drum beat] We haven't had it for two records, and we brought it back because a lot of bands that we tour with always talked about that. That's what they call the Darkest Hour part. Mastodon, when they had a new record coming out, we played one of their record release shows and they said, "Dude, we have a Darkest Hour part." We were like, "What does that mean?" And it's just anything that's just this swing triplet dug-a-dah [drum beat]. So we wrote a song around that that's got a crazy solo section. That's why it's third; we kind of put all the chips on the table and said, "Oh, you don't' think there's guitar playing? Bam!"

"No God"
That was a really fun one to write. It's just a straight headbanger. We knew we wanted to do a real pissed-off religious-political song because shit is crazy right now. We tour with so many Christian bands who have a lot to say, and I'm not saying I'm a guy who hates people for their beliefs; I'll just have opinions of my own. And I feel if a lot of these Christian bands are gonna infiltrate heavy metal — not infiltrate, but I just don't think religion belongs in metal. I think it's subversive, it should be abrasive, and I think if you have religious opinions they should be somewhere else.

So, it's funny, because there's an religious opinion right there — it's an oxymoron.

I'm a spiritual person and I believe in a greater force, but [the song] is written from a punk angle — like, no god in the sense of no masters. Because I don't think the spiritual reality that I adhere to is one that has rules. For me, the only rule I live by is the "do unto others" rule. But I don't think of it as a Catholic-based rule. It's insane [how many Christian metal bands are out there]. Not saying that to offend anybody; it annoys me. I'm not a Christian person and I can't really get down to lyrics that are that. I'm sure there will be a lot of people that will be offended and not like that song, but ....

"Bitter"
"Bitter" is my personal favorite. It's my little gem. It's a minute and a half long — whatever. To me, it has the sense of Assuck, this old grind band we toured with a long time ago. The best band ever to use blast beats. It's really fucking short and it says what it needs to say. That song is also a testament to where the music industry is now. It's just pissed-off, fast as fuck. All these bands want to use blast beats and make it death metal, but this is a thrasher death-metal version — and it's just fun. It's fun. It's a Darkest Hour song that goes out on a limb.

"Blessed Infection"
It's a classic, melodious, "Undoing Ruin" era Darkest Hour song with this this sick solo section. That song was the producer's favorite song. Totally melodic, sick riffs. The lyrics were spawned from a bunch of patterns I had come with over the the top of the music. It was just a cool song because it's really the most melodic song.

"Transcendence"
It's kind of like the ballad. It's the slowest song. But, dude, we didn't see it going there at all. It just happened to end up that way, and the chorus is really sing-along-y, it's melodic. It's nice because it slows the record down right there.

"A Distorted Utopia"
One of my personal favorites. We used to call it the "Pantera Swing "because the pre-chorus has this swingy headbanging part. At first, we were like, "I dunno if the song should have that." Originally it was called "Lonestar Man" because it was based off some riffs Mike played, but it changed so much. It's a combination of another song that got totally cut called "Vultures." Ryan and Lonestar had these riffs and then I came in there and we played it all together, and then John Henry, our singer, came in and was like, "I hate it all." And we were like, "Fuck you!" and he was like, "Fuck you!" And months later down the line our producer said he didn't like the bridge in this one song, and we said, "Hey, we have this other song," so we took the bridge out of that and blah, blah, blah. And it became a song.

"Black Sun"
It's the second down-tuned song [along with "No God"]. Everything else is in C; that's in B. "Black Sun" was sick because me and Mike were at my house coming up with riffs, and we have this exercise we do. It will be, "Give me the riff!" And I'd record it in ProTools and would be like, "That sucks!" And then he;'d say, "Riff!" and I'd play and record it. We'd riff, riff, riff, riff, and we got some cool shit, but we were just sitting there. And Mike's zoning out, just playing some shit, and all the sudden I recorded it and I hit the space bar by accident and it looped what he was playing — and we got the idea for the riff. The riff came out of this accident and all the rest of the song followed. I think we tweaked it once or twice in pre-production, but it was a total accident.

I love it because it's really intricate the way the riffs [come] into each other, and it being downtuned so low makes it a badass. It's also the last solo section that we wrote. Dude, we had been in the studio for six weeks grinding out these fucking solos at the end, and it was fucking painful. We had written this whole solo section for the song, and Brian the producer came in and said, "No, it's not good enough." And we were like, "Are you serious? It's good enough! What the fuck? We're done! It's good enough!" So we spent all day and rewrote it — and dude, it's my favorite solo section. It's sick as shit and hard as fuck to play.

"Into the Grey"
It's my personal favorite song on the record. "Bitter" is my favorite one thematically because it's a short one, but "Into the Grey" is the best song. It's a little bit more fully realized, Every Darkest Hour album, the last song is a clue to where the band's going to go next. "Deliver Us" was the heaviest, fastest song on the last record. This song is a little bit more intricate than some of the other songs; it has more riffs and it flows and it's a little bit longer. But it just sums the whole record up.

And lyrically, it's sick. If you pay attention, it works thematically with the first song, which is kind of this circular thing we like to do that we kind of rip off of Pink Floyd. The first song and the last song can be bookends to the record. The first song is the open letter introducing the way we feel and the last song is saying, "Here's the punctuation mark on this sick-ass record."

BONUS Q&A

» EXPRESS: What really happened with Kris and Darkest Hour?
» SCHLEIBAUM: Let's put it this way: The press is an interesting place to tell the dirty insides of the way a band operates. So, in fairness to Kris and our friendship .... The problem with Darkest Hour is it's kind of like a tribe. We have the same sound guy and the same tour manager and the same merch guy forever. There's eight of us and we live in that little fuckin' van right there. We were friends before the band, and sometimes in this fucked-up world — because this is really a fucked-up world to be a touring musician. People think you're famous as shit — and you don't have no money. People think you're rich — and you can't buy a Value Meal at McDonald's.

So, it's a fucked a game to be in, and in this messed up world, sometimes real-life problems start to creep in, and it just got to the point where there were problems that were creeping into the band that didn't have anything to do with the band that got overwhelming. And from a friendship point, we were like, "Hey, man, we need a break so people can figure out what they want." And when that time happened, certain people decided that they couldn't handle what this band's about.

For the "Behind the Music," I'll tell the truth.

» EXPRESS: Did it have anything to do with him being a new father?
» SCHLEIBAUM: He has a kid, but it has nothing to do with the fact that he has a kid. Our bass player, Paul [Burnette], has a kid and he negotiates being in a band and raising a kid very well. It's more to do with — not wanting to air a dude's personal shit. I'm trying to respect him as a friend by saying, "Hey, all you have to know as a listener is: You like Darkest Hour as an entity? Well, it wouldn't exist if we kept going the way we were." We had to make some changes, and I believe his life will be much better off and our lives will be better off, and there's where we put it.

I know it sounds super political, but why do you need to know? Nobody here is Britney Spears, nobody here is a fucking rock star.

» EXPRESS: It's written in the credits for "Deliver Us" that Kris did all the solos. How did you figure out who would solo on "The Eternal Return"?
» SCHLEIBAUM: First of all, people have this misconception that one guy goes in — Kris did play the solos, but there are five dudes in there arguing about every goddamn note. What you hear when you hear a Darkest Hour record is after five guys sat in there and beat the fuck out of each other every way possible to make it — to the point where Ryan, our drummer, will be singing the notes. It's definitely not just one guy who writes everything.

What happened with the band is we got up to "This Sadist Nation" record and I had written pretty much anything. Kris had joined the band, and we had let other people play solos, and then we went to Devin. What you really hear when you hear "Undoing Ruin" and "Deliver US" is the influence of Devin Townsend. This guy is a guitar maniac. He took the sound of the band and translate into this new, more shredder-iffic thing. And Kris liked playing solos, and he's definitely better at that style than me, so it was kind of natural to him playing all the leads. But it wasn't like he was the special sauce. We were all tortured over everything.

So, when it came to this record, it was more like, "How do we make it a little bit different?" Because going back and copying to what we did when Kris was in the band would have been disrespectful to the way the band sounded, but also just a bad move. Wanted a fresh spin on it. So I played two or three solos on the record and Lonestar played three or four. ... All the guitar stuff is mixed. Like with Kris, we were like, "Who plays that part better? Who wrote that riff?" ... But everything is so quantized to a click, you can't really hear the individual guitar players as much as you could on, say, a Van Halen record.

» EXPRESS: Why did you switch from Devin Townsend to Brian McTernan to produce "The Eternal Return"?
» SCHLEIBAUM: Brian McTernan, our hometown guy. First of all we did Devin two times and it started to feel like — and I'm sure Devin would agree with this because he's my boy — that his sound was really starting to infiltrate the sound of the band. Not in a negative way, but just to the point were it started to get dependent, and we kind of felt like we needed to shake it up. "Undoing Ruin," "Deliver Us," there's a girl on the cover, there's a boy on the cover — they're kind of like twins, even in the way they sound, even in the songwriting. But we needed something new. We wanted to find out what is Darkest Hour?

Our friend Brian is in Fells Point, it's close to home, it's real, he's been producing bands for a decade after he did that last Darkest Hour, he knows where we came from, he knows where we want to go to, and he knows the industry. It just felt like we needed to go back to somebody who know where we came from to figure out the actual essence of what we're trying to do. What I feel like we got is — I'm not saying there aren't bands who aren't playing Swedish-influenced death metal, but I am saying now Darkest Hour has a sound and we sort of found that by instead of saying, "What can we do different? Let's make it more melodic, or make it more prog, or let's make it faster." We just figured out what the fuck's badass, do that, make some songs you like to listen to, there's tons of shredding and all the bullshit that all the other songs have to make them intricate, but this is a band that grew up in front of everybody.

We've been touring since I was right out of college; we've been touring since '99. We grew up in front of everybody, and every record got a little better. This record is, like, adults who beat the fuck out of each other to make some pissed-off shit. We still love metal, there's eight of us in that van, we're all hanging out, all here all day at a heavy metal fest ... just because we love it. ... The record is a reflection of that, as supposed to other bands who aren't that happy with what they're doing.

» EXPRESS: How much did the philosophy of Dischord Records and Fugazi inspire you when you were starting the band?
» SCHLEIBAUM: Look, I'm 32 years old, I live in D.C., I own a house with my wife, but we grind it out. Getting money on tour is fucking hard, and we do it in this little van — and it's pretty hard to do. ... This is a really rough time for people that are in bands, or people who live off music, or people whose lives are based around music. ... It's just a hard time to be an artist, and that on top of being in a band for 10 years, getting older — I always say, "Fugazi didn't leave the rest of rulebook." They showed me when I was little kid when I went to Fort Reno: You can do a band with your friends, do whatever you want, as long as it's real and it connects with people, you'll get to make connections regardless of industry things.

But then they got older and they moved on, and I don't know what to do when you are in a band, you don't want to move on, but you're older and you don't fit in someplace. ... Ian [MacKaye]'s a little bit smarter than we were, or maybe he was less desperate when he was a kid. But we're part of the machine.

At the same time, as much as I love D.C. punk, I love Van Halen, and that has a lot to do with how the band operates. We like concerts, we like light shows, and blowing it up, and guitar solos, and Pantera — so it's a mix. We want the band to feel like the family and feel like a collective and feel like everybody's taken care of, but when we're on the stage there's a little bit of punk rock and a little bit of showmanship.

» EXPRESS: Darkest Hour is one of the most accessible metal bands out there, inviting fans to pre-show barbecues and drinking with them at the bar. Ever feel like the band is too accessible?
» SCHLEIBAUM: What we have in that trailer right there is tents and fuckin' chairs and a barbecue and this little box where we can play our iPods loud as fuck. We can make a goddamn parking lot a barbecue party if we need to. ... We grew up going to these punk shows, these hardcore shows, and meeting the people at he shows, connecting with the people with the audience was the fun part. Playing was fun, but becoming friends with people and hearing what people think ... when you talk to people and they connect with you, it's awesome. I don't know why so many bigger bands we meet start to get indifference to the audience.

The audience wants someone mysterious; the audience would prefer me to hide backstage and then come out and be like, "Goddammit!" They don't want me hanging out to the bar and talking to everybody because it's the illusion of the rock star that people want. ... Darkest Hour is a punk and metal band. I don't give a fuck: I will stand at the bar and drink with the kid who payed $12 because I can still go on the stage and not feel like I looked like a dipshit because I just did that; I'm not ashamed of it. We used to play [George Washington University] all the time in the halls there, and you'd just be standing in the audience, hanging out, and you're like, "Oh, shit! We're about to go on!" You set up your gear in front of everybody, you go on and play, and it's fuckin' badass.

» EXPRESS: Your music is angry, but you guys still have so much enthusiasm for being in a band and creating music. Do you have to work at staying positive?
» SCHLEIBAUM: Negativism — just being negative — is an addiction, but you can be in a death-metal band but you just gotta be positive. You gotta be like, "Fuck, we're here at the show, there's nothing to do, so let's fucking all get hammered in this backstage room and sing songs." Or show me a Pantera riff on a guitar, or let's go play football in the parking lot.

Musically it's very angry, but you definitely see five guys who want to be there, who like it enough to have dedicated .. Once you get past 30, all your friends think you're insane for doing a death metal band. ... But if you love music and you like art, and you can appreciate a death metal song the same way somebody appreciates the Mona Lisa. And you see that from an intelligent perspective — and there's not a lot of people who can — and you start to love the music in a different way.