Interview

Charles Elliott Of Abysmal Dawn: "Sometimes I Feel People Are Treated As Commodities, Something To Be Replaced"

“Obsolescence” is the fourth album released by modern death metal group Abysmal Dawn. Released in late October via Relapse Records, the album offers more than mere DM brutality and speed. The album reveals elements of black metal made obvious by the band’s cover of Dissection’s “Night’s Blood.” The band’s technical abilities recall Nile, while its use of melody and rhythm bring to mind Hypocrisy. Overall, the album’s European feel makes it almost seem out of place in America. Americans love Euro style death metal, though, and the band has received its largest contingent of fans opening for Deicide.

During the last night of their tour guitarist/vocalist Charles Elliott joined me in the alleyway behind Dirty Dog bar in Austin, Texas, the preferred area for interviews at said club. In the following interview, Elliott discusses the tour, which also featured Septicflesh, Inquisition and Carach Angren, and recounts writing and recording “Obsolescence.”

Rex_84: You’re on the last show of this tour. Has it been a success?

Charles Elliott: Yeah, definitely. I’d say this tour has been a huge success. We haven’t toured for a while, so a lot of our fans came out for this. It’s a good promotion for the new album that’s coming up and I think we made some new fans, as well, crossing over. We have some black metal elements as well. We’re not purely just a death metal band. With the mix of bands we can appeal to different types of audiences.

Rex_84: You played how many songs off “Obsolescence”?

Elliott: Tonight we played two. We were playing three at the beginning of the tour and we decided to take one of the songs out in exchange for some hits, I guess, since we have such a short set and the album hadn’t been out yet.

Rex_84: What were the two songs?

Elliott: “Inanimate” and the “Inevitable Return to Darkness.”

Rex_84: How do you feel about touring with Deicide? Are you a fan?

Elliott: Absolutely I’m a fan of the band, especially the first three records. My personal favorite is “Once Upon the Cross.” I know a lot of fans are more partial to “Legion” and the first album. I like the catchier side of the band. That is probably my favorite record.

Rex_84: Obsolescence is defined as the process of becoming obsolete or the condition of being nearly obsolete. Is this album of mankind’s extinction?

Elliott: Basically where the album title came from is the term “planned obsolescence.” We shortened it and applied the term to humanity. In terms of business, planned obsolescence is something manufactured to be broken down and replaced. I took that idea and applied it to humanity. Sometimes I feel people are treated as commodities, something to be replaced. We’re not really looked at as human beings here to serve a certain purpose in society. There is only a certain amount of time until we outlive our usefulness and then away with you (laughs).

Rex_84: How does the writing for “Obsolescence” compare to “Leveling the Plane of Existence?”

Elliott: I feel like every time we enter the studio we are less and less prepared (laughs). We have less lyrics and less leads prepared. On this album we had all the structured map out. We demoed a lot more. The drums and guitars were demoed more, but the lyrics and leads had come after the album had been recorded. Everything else had been recorded. We were able to get a good studio rate and thankfully. Mike Bear produced the album. He was willing to work within our schedule and budget. As far as it being different, musically, it’s a little different than our last album. I feel every album is different from the other one, which is a good thing, in my opinion, I don’t want to repeat ourselves. This one was a little more on the black metal side. It has a little more black metal elements, dual guitar harmonies. It’s a little faster. I think we stepped up the leads a little bit. The production is a little bit cleaner, maybe.

Rex_84: Is Andy Nelson a new player in your band?

Elliott: Andy Nelson is our second guitar player and Eliseo Garcia is our bassist. They were the new additions to our band.

Rex_84: What does Nelson bring to the band?

Elliott: He wrote one song “Devouring the Essence of God.” I helped arrange it but it was all his drum patterns and riffs. I tweaked where certain things went. He also had some leads on the album. Hopefully, I think as we grow together as a band, we’ll work together more. This album was mostly written by me. Obviously, Eliseo helped with some riffs on the album. Like I said, Andy has a song. A lot of it was me at home with a drum machine and getting together with Scott [Fuller-drums] and hashing out the final versions of the songs. Him changing the drum parts and making it better.

Rex_84: The album is rife with long-winded screams. You belt out a ten-second scream at the end of “By My Demons.” Did you nail this scream on the first try to did it take multiple recordings?

Elliott: I think the longest scream is on “Human Obsolescence” actually. On the first track. I only did that one a couple of times. I think we might have gone with the first or second take. It’s just something I worked on a lot for this album. It’s pretty ridiculous, running out of breath with vein popping out of my head (laughs) in the studio. Some of the stuff I have to do live now with that is pretty taxing.

Rex_84: Did you condition your throat to perform these screams?

Elliott: I just looked into new, different techniques. Just tried to work it out and get some higher pitches and get longer screams. Yeah, that’s basically it. I just looked into it and tried to condition my voice. (laughs) I abused the fuck out of it on this album.

Rex_84: Par Olaffson created a dark otherworld. Did you instruct him on what you wanted. Are you depicting a story?

Elliott: It’s a collaboration between the two of us here. I think at some point we’ll going to release a making of the art with all the sketches with commentary from Par and I. Basically, I came to him in the middle of the process. I didn’t have lyrics yet. I said, “Hey man, we have this album coming out. I don’t have a title yet. I don’t have lyrics yet. I don’t have anything. We wanted to avoid a cityscape. There were a couple of conditions that I wanted to try to avoid. We always try to incorporate the last couple of album covers with the new album, so it’s almost a continuation of the story that was being told on each album cover. He came up with the basic structure that you see, a sort of monolith. And then we both added to that and exchanged ideas on that. Maybe a lot of the ideas were mine. I don’t know. I don’t remember. Definitely he added to it and made it awesome. This is our fourth record with him. I don’t know if anybody has used him on as many albums as we have. He really wanted to do something special and he really did do that.

Rex_84: Dissection’s “Night’s Blood” is covered on the album. Why did you decide to record this song and how did you make it your own?

Elliott: We are fans of the band. We wanted to do something a little outside of our box, instead of doing a straight up death metal song. We wanted to do a black metal or blackened death metal track. It seemed to make sense. I think Scott suggested it. We almost did a Death song. We had a couple of ideas—Testament, Judas Priest, Death, a bunch of different bands we had talked about doing. In the end, we decided to go with the Dissection song. It was kind of last minute, but somehow we pulled it together and nailed it. That album meant a lot to me when I was growing up. I listened to “Storm of the Light’s Bane” a ton. I was a big fan of the band. I think you can hear the influence in Abysmal Dawn probably the most in our early records. I think we maintained the integrity of the track while also giving it more of a modern production. Still, like I said, maintaining the vibe that it had. Maybe playing it a little bit cleaner because I don’t think they played to a click or anything. It fluctuates a lot on the album. I split it between black metal vocals and death metal vocals to try to give it a different flavor.

Rex_74: You’ve spent eight years and this is your third record on Relapse. Will we see more come out on this label?

Elliott: Possibly. We haven’t really talked about that. I guess our contract is up with them, but we’re happy with them. They do a good job, so we’ll see what the future holds.

Rex_84: After this tour you go to Europe in March. Are you only doing a couple of dates? What’s taking you across the pond?

Elliott: Three weeks. We’re just trying to figure out if it’s going to happen (laughs). It got announced a little prematurely so we’re trying to figure out the logistics of it because we’re not getting paid a ton of money and we have to provide our own transportation, in flights and backlines, so we’re just trying to figure out how to make it work. We need to go to Europe. It’s awesome that we got this offer and we want to make it happen. We’re just trying to figure out how to do it.

Rex_84: Are you touring with another band?

Elliott: It’s the Death To All tour with Massacre and Loudblast.

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