By Andrew Bansal
Las Vegas-based doom metal band Demon Lung released their second full-length album ‘A Dracula’ via Candlelight Records earlier this year, a highly impressive effort that combines the elements of doom and epic story-based musical arrangements. I recently spoke to drummer Jeremy Brenton to discuss the making of the album, his musical inspirations, the Las Vegas scene, touring plans and more. Enjoy the conversation below and check out some embedded tunes off of ‘A Dracula’ while you do so.
Jeremy, it’s good to have you on Metal Assault. I’m going to mainly talk to you about the new Demon Lung album that came out this year, ‘A Dracula’. Story-wise, I believe it’s inspired by a Mexican horror film called ‘Alucarda’. First of all, how did that idea come about?
We did our first album based on the 1989 film ‘Warlock’, and we realized that we like writing around a film, book or that kind of idea, like how Iron Maiden usually do one or two songs on a record based on a movie or book, but we stretched that out to the whole record and liked how it turned out. So, when we were thinking about ideas for this new album, Shanda was really pushing hard for ‘Alucarda’. We had a couple of other ideas but that one stood out from all the rest of them, and she felt a personal connection to it. So we plotted out an outline and when we started working on it, we realized pretty quickly that it was coming together pretty good, so we just ran with it.
In terms of writing the music itself, how did this movie inspire the other members of the band aside from Shanda?
We developed a formula of how we write during the last record, so basically we break the movie down into an outline. In this case it was six parts, so six songs, and then we just focus on that part of the film when we’re writing riffs. The majority of the riffs came from me and Phil, but Jason and Brent contributed a few this time too. So we’ll have a bunch of riffs and then we’ll see what riff goes with what part of the film, piece it all together and then focus on each part and arrange it to get the flow for that part of the film matched up with the music. It’s a tedious process for sure, but we really like how it turns out and I think we’ll continue to do this for a while.
How long did it actually take to write this album?
We wrote the whole thing in six weeks, which was a lot different from last time. We basically did one song a week. By the end of every week we had written one song and demoed it, and then moved on to the next one.
Compared to the first album, even though you said that was also based on a film, do you think the new one is more story-oriented? Because to me it sounds like it.
Yeah, we stumbled on a style on the first record and honed it down a little bit more and made it more streamlined. But for ‘The Hundredth Name’, I had that story outlined since 2005. I hoped that one day I would be in a band and write an album about this movie. Once we got signed to Candlelight and it was time to do the first record, I pitched the idea and everybody was onboard and we went that way. Both albums are the same style when it comes to the composition, but after everyone went through it once completely, we definitely got better at it, I think. The second one is just a better version of that style.
That’s a good way to put it. Talking of the live shows, I saw you guys earlier this year opening for Castle, and I don’t think you played too many new songs. Moving forward after the release of this album, is there anything planned in terms of visually portraying the story while performing on stage, or are you going to keep it simple?
Yeah, when you saw us in March at Complex in LA, I think we played two off of this one. Shanda is working on a different kind of look for herself. She actually dyed much of her white dress red in our backyard a couple of months before that tour (laughs), and there was a big red spot in the backyard as if someone was murdered. She definitely wanted to do red dresses and a bit more fog on stage, and she has a vision for what it looks like. So, probably the biggest difference is that we’re going more towards. We have red lights that we’ll be bringing on stage, and stuff like that.
Musically, this album sounds more progressive. Even though it falls under the doom category, it is very proggy. Is that just a result of the approach that you took, which separates it from other doom bands?
I think that definitely goes back to my Iron Maiden obsession from when I was seven years old. My biggest inspiration for music is Maiden, and also early Fates Warning with John Arch, and Solitude Aeturnus. That band just gets lumped in with straight doom but really, man, they are super-progressive. Their first three records I would compare to Fates Warning more than anything, specially the melodies and structures. I really like that. So, that’s where we get a lot of our influences from. There’s also Candlemass, but like I said, I can’t shake the early Maiden and Fates Warning stuff. I don’t want to go too progressive, because I don’t think any of us are that great as musicians when it comes to playing like that, but structurally and the way we compose, I think it definitely lends itself to that. I don’t like verse-chorus-verse-chorus, nobody does in our band. We write epics instead.
It’s interesting that you mentioned Iron Maiden because they are always regarded as the old-school heavy metal gods but they are definitely a progressive band at the same time, and have been from day one.
Oh yeah, I can tell you that I’ve probably learned everything from that band (laughs). The epics are my favorite parts on every Maiden record and I look forward to those every time a new record comes out, whatever the last song or the big song is. ‘To Tame A Land’ is one of my favorites, ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ and stuff like that. So, we’ve always wanted to do that in this band, and instead of having one of those songs on the record, let’s make them all like that (laughs)
Exactly, and with so many doom bands nowadays, there is this big wave going on and you have to do something out of the box like you’re doing, to get somewhere and stand out.
Well, it definitely isn’t a conscious decision. It’s just what ends up happening. When we’re composing, I usually arrange the song and it’ll just go until people have to stop adding stuff to it because it’s already 10-15 minutes long. It wasn’t like we decided we were going to be this kind of doom. It’s all mixed in. Phil brings a kind of death metal right hand in his guitar-playing. I’ve heard us being described before as really, really slowed-down death metal, and I like that because a lot of what Phil brings to the band is death metal, in his tone and playing. Then we have my progressive Maiden kind of arrangements and Shanda’s vocals. That’s really what the band is about. We just sound like we sound, and we definitely draw comparisons to Candlemass, but we don’t mind that at all.
I also wanted to talk a little bit about the fact that you guys are based in Las Vegas. First of all, are all the members still based in Vegas?
Yes, but Shanda is actually the only one that was born and raised here. Phil and I grew up together in Southern Indiana and I moved out here 12 years ago, and he came out not too long after that. So we all live here in Vegas but there’s not much of a scene here. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a show in Vegas …
I have been to a few and that’s why I brought it up. I find it hard to imagine how anyone growing up there could get inspired to be in a band like yours.
Yeah, when I moved out here, there wasn’t a scene, but people do forget that Goatlord is originally from Vegas. They are the originators of everything. So it’s cool to have a little bit of history like that (laughs) and there’s at least one band from back in the day that was cool, Tere was a lot of ‘bro metal’ stuff when I first moved here, but there are some kids coming up that are doing some cool things, so I’m hoping there’s going to be a better scene here in a few years.
Do you find it hard to play hometown shows?
For a few years after the band first started, there was one all-ages venue in town that was actually having good shows with bands coming in. They were packing it with kids and everybody was into it. That venue closed about two years ago and ever since then, there hasn’t really been a good place. So, shows have definitely gone downhill for everyone. For example, Saint Vitus was here six months ago. They sell out in LA and they come here and there’s 20 people at the show. High On Fire was here a couple of months ago and there were 30 people. So, it’s a weird place.
And finally, what plans do you have touring-wise?
We have the Southwest Terror fest in Tucson, Arizona in mid-October. We’ll be playing on the same night as Acid King and Sleep is headlining the night before that, so it’s going to be a huge festival for us. We played it a couple of years ago and it was awesome. We’re trying to get on as many festivals as we can, specially on the West Coast. So we’re trying to do that and then we’re looking for a tour to get on towards the end of the year. So we’re just trying to figure it all out and see where what we can fit in for the next six months or so.
Related: Demon Lung ‘A Dracula’ Album Review
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