The archenemy of great heavy metal might not be the censors, the brass, or your clergyman, but something way more mundane: getting older.
On Deicide's early work — like their classic 1990 self-titled debut and its 1992 follow-up, Legion — the Florida quartet sounded deranged, filterless. And their twisted-taut songwriting made it all connect straight to your jaw.
Their leader, bassist and vocalist Glen Benton, has always been utterly unconvincing as a scary consort of Lucifer. Rather, he drew Deicide's viciously anti-organized-religion themes straight from his life experience. Specifically, "terrifying moments" growing up with a "so-called Catholic" father and Lutheran mother, sitting through creepy Latin intonations with eternal damnation hanging over his head.
This uniquely grounded perspective gave Deicide emotional resonance, and a rage that seemed earned and realistic. When metal's legion of cookie-cutter, crucifix-inverting provocateurs try to wig you out, the only reasonable response is to roll your eyes and keep it moving. Deicide, on the other hand, might prompt a sleepless night researching the crimes of the Vatican.
"I identify myself as a free thinker and a kid that was tormented just like everybody else growing up," Benton once said, in an article that also featured him on his bike, cooing at a group of passing turkeys.
As with almost any legacy act in metal, Deicide's path hasn't always been easy. The lineup has shifted. Benton's had struggles, including with substances. Now, he takes lengthy bike rides every morning, eats a plant-based diet, and stays away from toxic people and situations.
Grinning ear to ear at home in Florida, in front of hockey masks on a bare wall, Benton's pleased as punch to have a new Deicide album, Banished by Sin, out April 26. Divorces, a custody battle, and empty-nester syndrome put him in a "dark corner," as he put it in press materials.
But songs like "Sever the Tongue" and "The Light Defeated" sound like he alchemized that pain into the hair-raising fun of metal. In conversation, Benton proudly states that Deicide avoided compression, Pro Tools, and plugins whenever possible — a heel turn from their last few records.
Make no mistake, Banished by Sin still sounds like modern metal; if you're clamoring for a return to mid-fi, analog sound, your mileage may vary. But by minding these issues, and taking care of the songwriting, Benton, original drummer Steve Asheim, and guitarists Kevin Quirion and Taylor Nordberg have managed to reignite that decades-old flame.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
You've mentioned retreating into a "dark corner," beleaguered by "other people's hangups." What was going on there?
I mean the personnel changes and stuff like that. And just the last decade, man, I lost my parents, lost all the family, lost everything in that. The kids all grew up, moved out. I just found myself all by myself there for a while. Things happened and bing, bam, boom, the universe threw some things at me and snapped me out of it.
I had a good time putting this together. I was out of my contract with Sony and Sensory Media, so I was able to really just put something together that was more out of just fun. Just, let's create something that when we do take it to somebody, they're going to jump all over it.
What snapped you out of this dark period?
I just kind of came to some realizations. I think you do when you get older, you know?
I guess, all the time I spent standing in the corner in the dark there, I just kind of discovered some of the deeper meanings of life. I just spent my whole life trying to make everybody else happy and kind of just forgot about my happiness. I put my s— to the back burner for a lot of things and a lot of people. Now I'm selfish and I just think about me and myself.
Seems like a healthier route.
I warn everybody: I'm guilty of just thinking about me sometimes, after all these years worrying about everybody else's happiness.
That goes for everybody. I mean, from my kids, to the exes, to everybody, you know what I mean? Obviously, I keep conducting business as usual, but I just... The guilty pleasures of, "Hey, you guys drive there and I'll fly there and meet you there," that kind of stuff. Not putting myself through the agony of a 20-hour drive anymore.
I'm sure in the early days of Deicide, there was no people-pleasing. Just making honest, provocative art.
It's still the same way, man. I don't put too much thought into what anybody else is thinking or doing. I just approach everything from my own perspective.
But as the band wore on through the years, I'm sure other voices entered your headspace, and made you self-question.
Nah, self-question? Man, I really don't. I can say that one of the things that I discovered recently that probably enlightened me the most is that I truly don't give too much of a s— about much.
You kind of rediscover that person that you were before a family, and kids, and your career, and all that stuff. What happened is I rediscovered and reconnected with who I really am and where I came from.
It's really liberating, man, at my age, and that's how I approached the record. It's like, You know what? I'm not doing this for anybody else's pleasure or enjoyment but my own.
There's no deadlines. There's no extensive record contract involved. I ain't got people breathing down my neck. I can just do whatever I do and enjoy, create something for myself. That's what we did, just like we did in the old days. No pressure. We just wrote songs that we thought were heavy, and put them together.
When family and industry stuff began to cloud your world, was it ever a drag to make music?
Willie Nelson would tell you if he didn't have sad stuff to write about, he wouldn't have any songs at all. It's just how it is. You write from your heart, and your life, and your experiences and you let that just kind of spill into your art. The poetry of my lyrics hold a lot of that stuff in there.
The title of Banished by Sin struck me. Unfairly treating someone as an outcast is more evil than any "evil" music in the world.
Right? Well, that's how I've always felt, because of who I am, and what I do, and everything. I've been banished by most. So that's where the title came up. I've been banished and I embrace it.
Yet there's this pervasive sense of cathartic fun. What was the vibe like, getting in the studio with the band at the outset?
We recorded right down the street from my house. We were rehearsing down in New Port Richey, but we moved everything here to my home, which is right directly up the street from Jeramie Kling's house, where the studio is. We're 60 seconds away from the studio now.
Jeramie and I would ride bikes in the morning and we'd talk about it, about trying to work with [Kling]. I told Steve, "Hey, listen, let's try it. We'll record a couple songs and see where it goes, see what it sounds like."
We did that and immediately it was just like, Yeah, this is magic. So we kept recording, and getting all the rhythm tracks done, and getting ready to start shopping it.
It was incredible. We went for more of a live sound. We used all amps and cabs and mics. We used Pro Tools a little bit; a lot of bands overuse it, and I wanted more of a live sound on this record, like a demo kind of sound. That's what we were shooting at, and that's why it's got that intent.
I'm sure there were barely even any overdubs on early Deicide material.
Well, you're talking about the age of two-inch tape. So doing overdubs, you're splicing tape, and cutting this, and cutting that. You had to go in there, and three guys stand there with the guitars, Steve in an isolation booth, and go for it.
I miss that approach, doing it like the old school. You go to the studio, you set your rigs up in that, you mic everybody, and you record, and that's how you distinguish your sound. It gets lost with the digital age.
The last couple of records, I played through plugins. I don't want to play through plugins, I want to play through a rig. I want my sound. When I sound like live, I want it on a record. That's what we were able to achieve with this.
Jeramie's our sound man, too, so he knows our sound inside and out. He was able to engineer and track us. So we captured that old school '90s sound vibe with the way we recorded it and that. I found out that less is best.
Did you write in the studio, or have all the tunes written?
Oh, we had all the songs written, man. We wrote all that stuff during COVID and we put it all together while we were putting the Legion [30th anniversary] stuff together. Then we were writing the songs in between all that.
Where are you at with your bass thinking? I'm sure you retrieved some technical and creative elements from when you were a younger, hungrier man.
I found out that the older you get, that stuff that you thought was really technical back then is not as technical today as you did. As a player, you improve.
When I was first approached about doing the Legion stuff, I was really hesitant. But I pulled it together. Once I started learning the stuff, I was like, Wow, man, I can't believe how easy that stuff is, compared to what we've been playing over the last decade.
Have certain incarnations of Deicide been less-than-functional? It seems like you're enjoying a healthy and productive dynamic with these guys.
With Taylor in the band, it's like we're at a place where it's never been better. I mean, everybody just gets along great. Nobody has any kind of hangups, personally. We just get down to business immediately.
He's an experienced engineer, as well as a phenomenal guitar player. Everybody clicks, and I got a great team of people working for me now. Finally, after all these years, we finally, we're at that place where me and Steve are really happy with the way things are working out.
We did a one record deal with RPM, and now that record deal has been handed in. It's a good feeling, man, because having those long, extensive recording contracts can be a little oppressive.
In the early days, the band was on fire. But I imagine you and Steve were less adult in dealing with each other.
Well, yeah, me and Steve have pretty much grown up together. I remember the day he quit high school, man. We spent a lot of time together.
Like I say, people changed over the years and that. But I just consider myself the coach of the team, and it's my job to try to keep making this thing better, and get the team stronger. Now I have us at a place where we've never been stronger.
I'm pretty content now, man. I don't have to stress and worry about the people that are in the band doing something stupid or embarrassing us in any way and ruining the brand. Yeah, everybody's totally 100 percent into this.
*Glen Benton of Deicide. Photo: Gene Smirnov*
You're clearly creatively energized. How do you keep your vitality up?
I ride my bike between 15 and 20 miles every morning. That's what keeps me moving. man. It keeps my cardio up, and keeps my health up. I eat healthy. That's about it.
Take the readers through the moment when you realized you had a great album in the can.
I think it was when I started laying vocals to it. Instead of coming in and blowing my voice out, doing four songs in a day's time. I was able to come in and do one song a day. So, I was able to come in there with the intensity.
I'd do one song, and then I'd listen to that over the course of the evening, which brought me in the next day with even more determination to make it even sicker. So for me, when I started hearing the vocals, the way I was laying the patterns down and everything was coming together.
When we had all the songs done, and you listened to it in its entirety, I was like, Wow, this is something special.
In the early days, what was the atmosphere like between Deicide and your peers? Was it super competitive? Were you all friends?
Some of us were friends, some of us weren't friends. Competitive? I didn't even know anybody else existed by me for the longest time.
I grew up here in Florida and I grew up going to concerts and shows by local bands, Nasty Savage, Savatage. With some of us, it was a competition. We all kind of fell in on the scene at the same time. So there was a lot of puffing of chests about who was here first, and all that stuff. "We're the best, this is the best, this is the greatest, we're the best." Everybody was just trying to sell themselves like that.
I just really tried to avoid all that. I do what I do, and I appreciate everybody that does the same thing that's keeping this alive.
Alive, and thriving. How's the early response to Banished by Sin been?
You have your people that have nothing better to say. But then, you know what? Then you got the real fans, man, that have been chiming in with kind words in regards to the new stuff.
For the first time ever in my career, it's really, it's warming to know that people still dig what we're doing. We really appreciate it, man. There's a lot of cool comments, It's really been entertaining.
I can't wait to drop the next video, man, that's going to come out when we release the record. That's going to cause a lot of controversy, so we're looking forward to dropping that one on everybody.
Some pearl-clutching, as usual?
There's going to be a lot of disclaimers before the video drops.
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