Beyond Mortal Dreams is one of those great bands from down under that seem to fly under most people’s radar. If you’re a fan of dark, brutal, and well-executed death metal with equally excellent themes, then I strongly suggest that you check them out as soon as possible. The following interview was conjured with vocalist/guitarist, Doomsayer.
Hails Doomsayer! How’s everything going? Can you give us an update on the current status of the band and when we can expect a follow-up to 2014’s killer “Lamia” EP?
Hails Death By Hammer! Going well here. A lot of activity happening behind the scenes with various projects I'm involved in, including BMD. As for the current status of the band, unfortunately, it's no longer a live endeavor anymore, as the members have all since moved their own separate ways. Some out of the state of South Australia, some starting families, etc. Life happens, my friend! The show goes on, however. It's pretty much turned into a one man band at this point, so whatever will happen as far as gaining a live line up again, well, we shall see...
At the moment I'm currently working on new material for future recordings as well as finishing up mixing the next full length LP to follow up 2008's From Hell. It's certainly been aeons between drinks there! Since Lamia, there's been another release out on Lavadome Productions in 2016 entitled "As Death, We Shall Walk". It's more of a compilation CD of old demos, cover songs and also includes the Lamia 7" EP. Also, From Hell has recently been remastered and repackaged and released on both LP and Digisleeve CD by Nuclear Winter Records. These are all still available through myself, or Lavadome Productions and Nuclear Winter Records respectively.
As for the next LP, it's been a long slog with many setbacks along the way, but I'm happy to say that the end is finally in sight! I'm at the final mixing stages now, and so far it's looking like you'll be seeing it come out (via Lavadome Productions) by year's end. We're aiming to begin promoting the album in the next couple of months, so stay tuned.
Which bands influenced the infernal sound of Beyond Mortal Dreams, and what kind of atmosphere do you try to capture with your music?
I guess you could say the late 80's, early 90's era Death Metal that mostly came out of the U.S. was a big influence on our style in our early years. Bands like Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Nocturnus, Death, these all had an influence on the style of metal we wanted to play at the time. Cannibal Corpse - Butchered at Birth and Napalm Death – Harmony Corruption were probably the two albums that influenced me most when it came to my vocals. Some black metal styles such as Immortal and Dark Funeral had an impact also, but that came out more in a later incarnation of the band. There was a time actually that BMD went into a more experimental phase during the mid to late 90's. Members in the band at that time were getting more heavily into more psychedelic music and wanted to incorporate that into metal. Nothing really came out of it though, and that incarnation was short-lived. When myself and original BMD drummer Matt (Hellaeon) reunited in the early 2000's, we were both blasting out the early albums of Nile, Krisiun, Diabolic, Emperor, Dark Funeral, Myrkskog (to name a few). When we started jamming again, there was this shared desire to play fierce, fast, and brutal, and some of the albums that were coming out around that time had a big affect on us. Albums like Krisiun's Apocalyptic Revelations, Nile's Amongst the Catacombs of Nefren-Ka, Myrkskog's Death Machine were on high rotation. Bestial Warlust's Vengeance War 'till Death was also a big influence for its sheer atmospheric savagery! You put that fucker on, and after all these years it still spits forth blood and venom! Haha.
The main atmosphere over all that I try to capture and project in my Death Metal music is of a dark nature. That can be conveyed either through the more film score soundscape parts we have delved into, such as in the song Dreaming Death, or through a much more raw, savage and aggressive way. Though there are exceptions, I always gravitate more towards raw and aggressive styles of music when it comes to this genre. In an artistic, or fantasized mindframe, I like to think of it as a power unleashed as a howl from the void tearing into existence, indiscriminate in it's destruction. Or like a sonic bulldozer flattening everything that lays before it. You take that aspect, and add some more melodic elements, some catchy riffing that you can walk away humming in your head, and some more dark, film score inspired symphonic elements, and you've got the basic ingredients for the type of music that I try to capture in BMD today.
What kind of themes do you explore in the musical context of Beyond Mortal Dreams?
Overall, the themes are dark in nature. Sci-fi and horror are big interests of mine, so you're gonna see that rub off on the kind of lyrics I write. A lot of what I write tends to be inspired by either books or film and I try to treat most of the lyrics like short fictional stories. From Hell pretty much covered the themes of Demons, infernal war, fictional tales, spiritual afterlife, horror. In Dreaming Death I went more on a mildly Lovecraftian influenced horror trip with the title track plus a kind of ghost/monster tale with "Feast of Carrion" and an anti organised religion take with "The Filth of Their God". Something I like to do more of these days is inject some artistic licence into the mix by taking concepts based in history, nature, mythology, or wherever, and give it a horrific twist. The theme for Lamia for instance, is a love affair with a ghastly necrotic flesh-eating vampire creature. I based the creature on the Lamia from Greek mythology, and turned it into a man's psychotic fantasized love tale, willingly giving himself over to be fed upon by the Lamia. Hallmark, eat your heart out!
What is the connotation behind your band name?
When I came up with the name back in '95, my thinking was to have a name which left us open to explore various themes either lyrically of musically, rather than be pinned to a name that speaks to only one thing, such as our previous name of "Suffering". Of course, in the realm of Death Metal these themes will usually come from a place of darkness. As I mentioned earlier, we had gone through a phase experimenting with and incorporating other styles of music, but my heart for BMD was, is and always will be death metal. That's not to say I'm against any kind of experimentation in the future, though. The next album will feature some material which has a different vibe to what we've done before, but don't let that worry you. This next album will still be 100% dark and brutal Death Metal!
Would you agree with the fact that Australia is renowned for spawning some of the most killer black/death/thrash bands on the planet? Also, do you think Australian metal has a trademark sound that distinguishes it from the rest of the world? What’s some of your favourite Aussie bands?
Absolutely! Australia over the years has produced some world class music in these genres. And others, for that matter. I'd say that blend of black/death/thrash would probably be one of the more stand out genres that Aussie metal has put its own stamp on, but throughout the years there's been a lot of great metal music that's come out of our corner of the globe. As for some of my stand-outs, there's a lot to name. Some still active, some no longer around, but bands like Armoured Angel, Bestial Warlust, Destroyer 666, Astriaal, Hobb's Angel of Death, Bastardizer, Abominator, Destruktor, Stargazer, Nazxul, Nocturnes Mist, Sadistik Exekution are but a few I hold in high regard.
According to the metal archives, you’ve been in 15 bands. Do you mind giving us a little overview on some of your past and current bands, and which ones held the most significance to you?
15? Jeez, haha. Looking back at them all, yeah, there's been quite a few throughout the years I've played bass, guitar or vocals in. The most significant will always be BMD, but that's not to say that I've ever held any of the bands/projects I've been involved in with lesser value. A lot of great music was created between all those bands, in a lot of different styles, which as a player was of great value to learn and adopt. The 2000's was where I was most active with various bands. Some out there beyond Australia may know of a black metal band I spent time in called Darklord, probably one of the heaviest BM bands on the planet. That's quite a boast, I know, but they had such a brutal, yet symphonic atmosphere that was such a rush to play. The double twin neck guitar attack in that band was a thing of beauty. One of the guitar players/song writers also plays in one of my other current bands, Oath of Damnation. There's an element of Darklord that's carried on in Oath, but there's a lot more going on in the music as well.
I spent some time in a couple of brutal DM bands called Oni and Hatred Slave. Oni had a bit of a Japanese mythology theme about it, which was carried on into Tzn Tzu, while Hatred Slave was more straight forward with catchy, heavy riffing, blasting, and a bit of groove behind it. One Step Beyond was another band whose music I enjoyed playing. They have a death metal foundation, but with an ecclectic mix of other music genres. Brutal, groovy, grindy, funky, all in one. They're still going, I believe, so go give them a listen. Members of OSB and Hatred Slave have a DM band now called Brutaliate. Worthy a listen!
Some bands outside the DM genre I spent time in were Raven Black Night, Mammoth, Johnny Touch. RBN are a trad doom/rock band who are still going, Mammoth a stoner rock band with a massive, heavy wall of sound, also still active, and JT, a trad style of old school heavy metal. Mammoth was more in the vein of bands like Crowbar, and was the first band I started using cleaner vocals on, and JT, cleaner still. As for my clean vocals, let's just say that's still a work in progress, haha. As for my current endeavours, as well as Oath of Damnation, I'm currently bass/vocals in a trad/thrash/prog band called Shadow Realm, also featuring the guitarist and drummer of Oath. I have a couple of side projects on the go, one which is old school BM, and the other trad doom in the vein of Candlemass/Solitude Aeturnus. Just recently, I've started playing bass for a death metal band called Descend to Acheron. They've got an EP out through Petrichore Records called The Transience of Flesh.
Another project that myself and the BMD bass player have started recently is an old school DM style band called Dreaming Death (named afer the BMD EP). We're in the middle of recording an EP, so hopefully by year's end we can start promoting songs from it. It's got a real raw, late 80's thrash/DM vibe about it, drawing influence from Death, Pestilence, Morgoth, Possessed, Slayer. Looking forward to getting that out there, so stay tuned.
The level of virtuosity displayed by your band is definitely above average and competes with the best. Are any of the members in the band fans of prog or classical music, and do you try to incorporate that into your sound?
Yeah, between us in BMD we're fans of some prog stuff as well as thrash, doom, trad metal, even some glam. Those glam bands may have dressed like fairies, haha, but lets face it, they generally had great singers and guitar players. I'm more of a straight-out metal fan, myself, so I like to keep the music more savage with the songwriting but don't mind throwing in a little bit of technicality and odd time signatures as well as a slight symphonic element to keep it interesting. My other band Shadow Realm has a far greater incorporation of prog metal in it's style. The rest of the guys in that band are big prog and jazz fans. The keyboard player is classically trained, the drummer is primarily a jazz/prog drummer and The guitarist loves classical music as well as metal.
On the other hand, you also covered Beherit’s Beast of Damnation. Why did you choose to cover this band? Are you a fan of bestial black/death/war metal? Your band’s version is one of the best I’ve heard.
There's something about the original Beast of Damnation that has such an aesthetically evil vibe about it. Raw and savage, two main elements that draw me to this style of music, which is why that bestial black/death/war metal style is so appealing to me. When doing covers, generally what I like to do is inject a bit of our style into it, sort of making it our own, and there was a lot of room with Beast for us to do that. For years prior, we've talked about doing a rendition of Beast, and when the time came to record the Dreaming Death EP, we had only three new tracks ready and needed a fourth. A cover of Beast seemed like the perfect finale to round up the EP. We put out as a youtube clip a cover rendition of Bestial Warlust's At the Graveyard of God. It's as yet unreleased, so the only place you can find it for now is on youtube. The one exception to the rule when we tackle covers though was our rendition od the Nocturnus classic, "Lake of Fire". The only way we felt we could try and do it any kind of justice was to be as faithful to the original as possible.
Is Beyond Mortal Dreams mainly a studio enterprise or do you perform live?
It's gone between the two over the years, really. It started out as a live band, but line up changes and loss of members has forced it to continue as a studio band. We were live up to the time From Hell was recorded, but were unable to carry that on with the departure of Hellaeon. Finding a competent or available drummer to fill the void is very difficult here, so it was a few years until Maleficus came along. By the time Dreaming Death was recorded, we'd resigned ourselves to be active as a studio band only but when Ghuul came back on the bass, we went back to playing shows again for a while. As of now though, it's back to being a studio enterprise again with myself flying the flag. Maybe one day another live line-up might come along, but until then, I will still be producing material and carrying on the BMD name.
There’s a lot of underrated bands from Australia, and Beyond Mortal Dreams is no exception. What do you think it is that’s been holding the band back in terms of getting more exposure?
Lack of self promotion would be the main thing. I'd say it's my biggest achillies' heel when it comes to the music industry as a whole. I spend almost all of my time playing/making music and little in the way of networking and promotion. In my constant pursuit of creativity the promotion side tends to get neglected, where really, equal attention should be given to both. What little I've done over the years has helped, certainly, but it is something I definitely need to get better at.
Are there any new albums that have caught your attention lately?
The latest Enforcer release "Live By Fire II" has been getting a fair amount of play here lately. An older album that escaped my radar years ago that's been getting some plays lately is Hypnosia's "Extreme Hatred". Killer early Kreator style thrash! A friend of mine here in Australia has a band called Puncture Wound that put put out an album last year entitled "Complete Carnage of Coagulating Cacophonous Corpses". It's a great, solid slab of OSDM, so if you're into that, go give it a spin. Other cool recent releases from the last couple of years I've been playing lately also are Impaled Nazarene - Eight Headed serpent, Vulure - Dealin' Death, Devastator - Baptised In Blasphemy, Grief Collector - En Delirium, Nekromantheon - Visions of Trismegistos, Skelethal - Unveiling the Threshhold, Metabolic - Demo 2021, Nazxul - Irkalla, Incantation - Sect of Vile Divinities, Cambion - Conflagrate the Celestial Refugium. The latest releases last year from Vader and Skeletal Remains are killer, man, there's been a lot of great stuff coming out I could go on for ages!
Thanks a lot for your time, mate! I wish the guys in Beyond Mortal Dreams all the best, as well as your other musical endeavours. The last words are yours.
Cheers for the interview, much appreciated! Quick shout out to Jan at Lavadome Productions, Walter and Unholy Prophecies, Anastasis and Nuclear Winter Records, and to everyone supporting BMD past and present, it means a lot and is greatly appreciated. The new material is really close to being complete, so keep an eye and an ear out! Eternal hails, stay heavy, play hard and loud!