Face To Face With Black DahilaMurder

Tue 4th Oct, 2005 in Features

It’s four in the afternoon, and still over forty degrees in the middle of the San Bernardino desert. Black Dahlia Murder’s guitarist Brian Eschbach greets me outside, before entering the air-conditioned room to escape the sweltering heat. He is shirtless and holding a beer in his hand…

Both the audience and critics’ reaction to the band’s set has been nothing but overwhelming. It’s no surprise that they have gained such a following during this festival’s tour and the release of their latest album, Miasma.

“Ozzfest is a very huge corporate thing, and it’s just so weird for us. But we just look at it like we’re playing our music and we’re getting a chance to play our music for all these people. Any way for a band to introduce themselves to new people is a good thing. Even if the people don’t like what’s going on. You know, life is about experience, and experiencing as many things as possible and to be able to, for twenty minutes, in every town, have that many people come and experience our stuff, well, that’s awesome!”

The Ozzfest event is incredibly well organised, every band plays for exactly their time set, and the whole festival runs like clockwork, especially a day like today where the organisers have had to cut all the Second Stage band’s sets by ten minutes each to make room for a special guest appearance by Slipknot. Leaving the bands only twenty minutes to play, which can pose a difficult problem in selecting which songs make it on the setlist.

“We write all our song names on a piece of paper and we tear it up, into little pieces, and we put it in a hat. (Eschbach mimes the paper/hat process) We’re going to play this song, we’re going to play this song… cause it’s hard to choose you know?” Eschbach jokes, “Cause I don’t like any of the songs…! But you want people to hear something, so we kind of pick, well maybe they’ll like this… We pick the ‘summer songs’ you know?”

What defines a “summer song”? “Um… Killing usually, maybe a bit of making-out with a girl that doesn’t want you to make-out with them…? – That’s metal!!! That’s how we choose the summer songs. There’s also a factor that enters into it like, ‘what songs are the people going to hurt themselves to the most?’ and that all comes into play… But we’re pretty happy with the set and we’re going to roll-on with it. Y’all got to change it up! So by the time we get to Australia it will be a different set! And maybe some of the same songs but never the same show…!”

Eschbach seems genuinely excited about the possibility of touring Australia. It could have something to do with the fact one of his favourite death metal band comes from Tasmania. “We have some dates booked in December in Japan and we’re trying desperately to make something happen for Australia as well. We’re going to Japan, and like if you’re already on that side of the world you know, then make the stops. You guys have Psycroptic and that’s the real deal!” Eschbach pauses, “Death – when Chuck died (Chuck Schuldiner), he passed off the torch in spirit, and the guys from Psycroptic picked it up – fuckin’ piss ass band man. One of the best brutal death metal bands on the face of this earth, and they’re from Australia! This ain’t no ‘metal mecca’ – this is ‘light beer’ here. And I’m telling you about ‘real beer’ – not Fosters. And it’s Psycroptic!!!”

Perhaps it’s Eschbach’s enthusiastic personality, but it’s a quality that definitely transfers into his passion for music, and he exemplifies this dedication by lending a hand to younger bands that haven’t been discovered yet. “Usually on regular tours we get a whole lot of demos handed to us all the time. And sometimes we find some really cool shit. Like the last demo that we got that we found amazing was when we were on tour with King Diamond, there was a band that we played with, called Cellador they were amazing! They blew our minds! They ran home to give us a CD and we gave it to Metal Blade and now they’re signed to Metal Blade!”

“It was so cool to be able to hear a band that we thought was amazing to help them find the next step. If you like music, it requires you to do certain things. And if you’re in a position like we are -we know people who work at record labels, when we hear a band that’s straight up amazing, we want to help them fuckin do everything they possibly can. Because there are bands out there who deserve the world. And if there is some way we can help, we have to step in there and help them out, you know?” Eschbach continues, “Cause the same thing happened to us. People helped us out along the way and that’s what this is all about.”