By Andrew Bansal
Eleven albums and 26 years deep into their career, Tampa, Florida death metal veterans Deicide continue to deliver what their ardent fans desire and expect from them. Their newest effort, the 11th studio album ‘In The Minds Of Evil’ is set to release via Century Media Records on November 25th, and is another slab of vicious death metal, the kind Deicide are known for. They just completed a North American tour with Broken Hope, and as is typical of anything Deicide-related, controversy never seems to escape their surroundings. Two days ago on a cold Thursday afternoon, frontman Glenn Benton called me for a phone interview, and in this very candid conversation, he addressed the drama that unfolded towards the end of that tour, the new album, lyric writing, health, Marijuana, mankind’s fascination with evil, and other topics. Enjoy the chat below.
Before we talk about the new album, I’d just like to bring up the North American tour that you just did. Aside from whatever happened towards the end, it was a good tour for you, right? You had packed venues everywhere and you put on a good show.
Yeah man, it was great times! We had a good time.
Was it important for you and Broken Hope to make amends? Both bands were getting bad press because of it.
I don’t think I was getting bad press, man. I really could give two shits what people think, as far as that is concerned. First and foremost, I’m a businessman. We’re friends and it just got to a point where people were assuming our friendship and were taking advantage of that aspect of it. I make no bones about it, man. I can be a dick, you know, and I’d rather be dick than a pussy. When it comes to getting shit done, if you step on my fucking toes, I’m going to lash out. That’s exactly what happened. But it wasn’t like I kicked them off the whole tour. It was just a couple of shows. They could have very easily come back and done the last two shows, but they took it upon themselves to release that ridiculous fucking post on facebook. It took a stupid situation and made it stupider. They needed to apologize, and they did more damage to themselves than I did to myself. So I could really give two shits. I made amends for their benefit, not mine.
The other thing I wanted to ask you about was the box-cutter incident in El Paso. Aren’t people take death metal too seriously, to be cutting each other’s throats at a concert? What’s your opinion of that and what’s your message to such people?
Well, I’d seen that unfolding probably during the second or third song of our set. I saw it start into a fight, that moved over towards the bar area and I saw bits and pieces of it from what I could see from where I was in the middle of playing the show. You know what, fights are going to break out. That shit is going to happen anywhere at anytime, no matter what. It was just one of those unfortunate incidents that happened during our set at the show. To try to capitalize and gain publicity from it is not my thing and I try to separate myself from that shit. I’ve got enough bad press in my life. Broken Hope really tried to capitalize on that, and I’ll let them go ahead and do that. I don’t give two shits about it.
Coming to this new album ‘In The Minds Of Evil’, it’s your 11th album and you’ve been around for a long time. People know what to expect from Deicide. Does that make it easier for you to write new music, because you already know what needs to be done to be successful?
Well, I think every time we do a record it’s always one of those things where before we even kick into the recording end of it, we stand back and look at it all and see what we have on the plate. We analyze it, cycle-analyze it, go back through the stuff and change things. It’s always one of those things where you want to make it better. In our situation we’ve always strived to be better, to make a better record every time we do one.
For the cover artwork, you used a painting that already existed, called “Power Of The Mind”by Australian artist Simon Cowell. I think it fits perfectly with the album title and theme of the music. Who found it and how did you decide upon it?
I have a few different artists and people from Century Media that I gave my ideas to, but they all kept coming back with the same kind of thing. On ‘In The Minds Of Evil’, the songs are loosely based around the events of the Denver shooting, the Connecticut shooting, the bombings and the terrorism in the Middle East and all that. So, how I came about with that was, every one of them individuals have that certain look to themselves, that thousand-yard stare to themselves. One day I was standing in front of a mirror and I looked at myself and said, ‘Wow, you’ve got that same look to you.’ So that’s how I came up with this thing, but I wanted something to reflect what I was thinking in my mindset when I wrote that. Everybody just kept giving me these renditions of people being hurt and almost scenes of these mass shootings. I don’t want to re-victimize the families and that’s really not what I was thinking. I was thinking more about what I have, which is being controlling to somebody. I just got to a point where I was done looking [for the cover]. How I came up with the idea for ‘The Stench Of Redemption’ and its artwork was I found this painting on Deviant Art and I kind of rethought it a little bit and had another artist redo it. So for this new album I resorted back to Deviant Art and put in keywords in the search engine. Certain pictures and paintings would pop up, and I believe that I punched in ‘In The Minds Of Evil’ and that painting popped up. So I had Century Media buy it for me.
That’s interesting. So, over the years you’ve written lyrics about horror and evil centric themes. People are clearly interested in those topics. Why do you think people are fascinated with these subjects? What is it about evil and horror that people get attracted to?
I think everybody in this world has got a little bit of that in them. Even the purest, kindest and most compassionate people in this world have an evil streak in them. Some people show it more than others and some admit it more than others, but I think it’s in each one of us. It’s bred into us. Those are the kinds of things a lot of people gravitate to. I just happen to strike those nails on the head for a lot of people. When I write, I write from my conscience, my inner being, and I let that be my guide. That’s how I come up with all these things.
Basically the lyrics come from within you, then. You don’t have to do any kind of reading or research at all?
It’s kind of like, when you write music, you’ll have a piece of music that just flows out of you and those are the most successful songs. When it comes to writing songs, if you take a bunch of parts and put them together, it sounds like that. It sounds like it’s been put together and assembled. When I write lyrics like that, it sounds assembled. So I like to just sit down, put myself in that frame of mind and just let my thoughts go.
Right. I was at that Whisky show in LA last month and I thought your vocals sounded really strong. It came across with a lot of power in that room. At this point, what is it like for you in terms of doing vocals? Do you find it hard to keep up with the demands of singing extreme metal?
You know, I quit smoking cigarettes, I quit smoking weed and I quit drinking. I have a glass of wine once a blue moon with dinner. Taking care of myself and my health has made my job easier. If I would have known that quitting all this stuff would have made this easier, I would have quit years ago (laughs). But the older I get, it’s actually getting easier for me. I don’t know how that works but I don’t lose my voice. I mean, I’ve lost my voice a couple of times in the last few years, once in New York City and once in Rotterdam, and I think it has a lot to do with smoking a lot of weed. That stuff has a lot chemicals on it. The weed today isn’t anything like the weed from 20 years ago. The weed today is genetically designed to fuck you up within a few fucking tokes. The stuff they’re putting on weed today, there’s a lot of chemicals involved, unlike the whole natural process of growing weed. I think that has a lot of do with all those years going down the road smoking that shit. It really takes its toll on you.
So, would you say that the weed you might have smoked 20 years ago was less harmful to health?
Yeah, because you had to smoke a little bit more of it. But the stuff today, oh man. They’ve got different names for it like KillYou, KillYou 2, Amnesia, Comatose and all these fucked up crazy names of this shit, it’s fucking insane man (laughs). I really don’t want to do that shit to myself anymore. The medicinal weed today is designed that way, and that’s how the States and this country is working its way into getting it legalized, by making this medical grade marijuana that’s unbelievably strong, very harsh on the throat and very harsh on the lungs. If you smoke the stuff that’s around today, it will wreak havok on your breathing, man.
I have just one more question for you. Have you kept in touch with modern extreme metal at all or do you stay away from that whole scene?
I really try not to listen to a lot of stuff that’s out there today, and I’ve always been like that when it comes to metal. I mean, I’m from the old-school and I like the hooks, so if a band comes along that catches me and has got the hooks, I listen to them. I try not to lose myself with listening to what everybody else is doing because then you tend to repeat that kind of stuff. I don’t want to get it into my conscience and my psyche where it comes out some day in my writing. So I try not to expose myself to too much of it.
Related: Deicide LA gig review
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