Immolation are true legends of the death metal scene. With a thirty-year career, ten amazing albums and a dedicated fan-base, Immolation have retained a frightening command of the death metal scene, evolving their lyrics over time to maintain social relevance and melding their incisive commentary to some of the most devastating metal laid down. The band’s tenth album, ‘Atonement’, is a masterpiece of contemporary death metal whilst its lyrics, dealing with the increasing disconnection so many feel from modern day society, are dangerously close to the bone. In the wake of the record, we were given the opportunity to speak to Immolation vocalist and bassist Ross Dolan about the history of the band, the development of ‘Atonement’ and the socio-political landscape that informs his lyrics.
Hey, how are you doing man?
How’s everything with you, good?
Yeah good thank you…
Cool, cool, cool!
Thank you so much for this opportunity to chat with you dude, it’s really cool…
Yeah, no problem man, we’ve just got back from the tour like Thursday so I told them this week I was free – I needed to recuperate this week, I needed some downtime… a lot of time in the van, you know, I needed some time to unwind after that!
I can imagine! To kick off, to get a little context on the album, although the new record is really extreme and brutal, which is everything we expect from Immolation, it’s also really varied musically, so how do you guys go about writing to get that ebb and flow of an album rather than just a collection of songs?
Yeah, you know, Bob writes all the music and the way he describes it is that when he’s writing the record, he’s not writing individual songs, he’s writing an entire piece. So, after he has a song, then he decides…. “OK this song is…” whatever, a faster one or a more intense one… “where do we need to go from here?” I think he approaches it that way. It’s not really a song by song thing, I think he has the entire piece in mind, the entire record, and he just tries to fill in the gaps with what’s needed at a certain point. I think that’s how it works, I don’t think there’s any kind of magic formula to it, I just think that whatever comes, comes. I know for a fact that it’s something that can’t be forced. We had a few months during the writing of this record where he had to step away and just get re-inspired, so when it’s there it’s there and when it’s flowing, it’s great and he can tap into it, but when that inspirational flow stops he just has to step away for a while and wait for those juices to come back. So, that’s really it, so yeah, and I agree, there’s a lot of variety in this record. It’s definitely extreme in so many ways and I know the fans really look forward to that, but there’s also a lot of unique stuff on here, a lot of slower, very dark melodies on here, but not in a bad way… but a very dark way that we always try to accomplish. So far, the response has been really overwhelmingly positive and I think that’s because it is such a diverse record musically. It’s all over the map and every song has all those elements in those songs, you know, each one. I think that’s what makes it a strong album in my opinion, but… you know, you’ve got to ask the fans.
It does seem that there are some bands that really focus on creating an album and obvious song writing is a massive part of it, but there’s also the part where you have to sequence the thing and I was wondering how the band get involved in that side of it.
Oh absolutely, and I think that’s probably the most challenging part. The process, once everything’s done… you can’t really sequence until you hear everything mixed. Once you’ve got everything mixed you can hear everything as a whole and then you can sit down and say “OK – what do we want to start out with?” You have to hit them hard at the beginning and then you can maybe hit them with some other stuff once you’ve got that initial impact. It’s always very challenging and the way these songs are written, they’re written all out of whack, so for example the first song written for this record was ‘thrown in the fire’ which is a really slow grower. It’s a very slow, heavy, ominous song… not a song you’d open up the record with. Then the second song was ‘the distorting light’, which became the first song on the record and then it was ‘fostering the divide’ which was track three, so we were close… but it can take a lot of time to kind of position the songs in the sequencing process so that you have a proper flow so that dynamic doesn’t get stymied half way through the record where it’s all slow stuff for example. You kind of want to place the songs so you have a good dynamic moving through the record so it has that continual forward momentum, so yeah it’s always the trickiest part of the process and a lot of the time you’ll have a song which you’re sure will be the album opener and then when it’s all done and you listen to it, it’s like “yeah, not so much… We’ll pick another one!” That’s why it’s important to wait until the whole process is done to even think about sequencing.
The other thing about this record for me is that it’s thematically very strong, but before we talk about your inspiration, on a broader sense do you discuss thematic drive with Bob or does he present you with music and you fit lyrics to that?
There’s definitely a lot of discussion. What happens typically is that I need to hear the music before I even embark on the lyrical journey. A lot of times I have ideas I’ll jot down in pencil somewhere or make a note on my phone so I can come back to it but generally once the music starts coming I start getting inspired and I have… a lot of times, I’ll have a lot of good ideas going in to the studio which is where we do 90-95% of the lyrics – they’re written in the studio at this point in time, they have been for years. But yeah, I’ll try to go in with as much in the way of ideas and what we want the songs to be about thematically and then it’s just a matter of certain songs musically calling out to certain lyrical ideas and that’s just a fact for us, so once all the music is written and we’ve got all the lyrical ideas roughed out, then Bob and I will sit down and discuss which songs are better suited for which lyrical ideas and so on and so forth. So once that’s sorted out, then we discuss… I’ll usually sit down with him and say “Hey, I have this title – fostering the divide (or whatever), this is what I was thinking it means to me, this is what I’d like the song to be about and once he’s on the same page, then he can throw his two cents in, I’ll give him what I have and then we’ll go back and forth and that’s how the process works. But yeah, a lot of time and thought goes into the lyrics and I guess… they’re very reflective of our world today, just like ‘Kingdom’ was reflective of our world four years ago, so it’s more of that, it’s the times we live in. It’s all about that – the divisive forces in our world and how our media manipulates and changes our perception at so many levels toward so many different things It’s that darker side of humanity which is kind of always what we’ve written about, but I think this time it hits home because of where we are in the world right now. People are really understanding the lyrics and feeling them and that’s always been the point. We’ve always felt the lyrics are as important as the music and when they’re done right, they work together really well and with this album, I think we’ve gotten the closest to that than we’ve ever been in the past. So yeah, we’re very happy with the lyrics and it’s an important part of the process for us.
The two songs that really spoke to me were ‘the distorting light’ and ‘fostering the divide’ because, as you say, they’re very reflective of the times we live in but one of the things I wanted to ask was whether, when you’re writing the lyrics, there’s a line where you’re careful to tread between entertainment and promoting a specific point of view?
Absolutely and I’m so glad that you made that point because it’s very important. We always pay special attention to never cross that line. I never want to be a preachy band, I never want to force people into a certain mind set or direction, in fact we’ve spoken against that for years, so I don’t want to be that band ever. We try not to cross into the political realm, at all, and I don’t ever want that to be a factor because we’re not a political band. I choose not to air my political beliefs in the songs at all, it’s just our point of view… our very cynical, New York look at the world and it’s an honest look. I don’t think that we’re saying anything that’s off track, it’s all more or less spot on. It’s for people to get it, to understand what we’re saying is pretty much there, but at the same time we’re trying very hard not to take sides and not to lead people down any path. We leave that up to the listener and the lyrics are very specific in so many ways and also ambiguous in some ways, so they can apply to different things depending on how the listener interprets them. You mentioned ‘fostering…’ and ‘distorting…’ which were two of the main subjects I mentioned earlier and those are very strong songs, especially ‘fostering the divide’ – you see so much of that in our world. You see the same old culprits whether it’s politics or race or religion or nationalism, these same forces pulling people apart and needlessly… needlessly, you know what I’m saying? Instead of getting together positively to make some changes, we’re constantly pulled apart by these created forces that are designed to keep people separated and at people’s throats. So yeah, it’s a very strong song and it’s the way I perceive the world today and I felt it was something that I needed to get out there and articulate in a certain way so it’s neither one way or another, it just is… It presents a point of view. It’s the same thing with ‘distorting light’. We had a song on the last record called ‘spectacle of lies’ which is specifically about our media and how it misdirects people, so ‘distorting light’ is more about that, but in a darker sense. It’s about how our perceptions are changed by constant bombardment in the media. You can have something extremely negative like a war spun into something positive, or you can have something extremely positive spun until it’s completely negative once it’s out there in the press long enough. So yeah, that song is just seeing the world through this very manipulated prism and not getting the facts right or seeing the full picture. They’re very dark songs and the subjects are very deep and very real, and I think, along with that, that’s why I think this album, lyrically, for Bob and I was very challenging to articulate these ideas. Some of these ideas were not abstract but difficult to articulate so that you make that point in the proper way, so, that was the challenge throughout the entire record. Some songs were more challenging than others, of course, but I think that overall that was the challenge and we spent a lot of time in the studio – hours and hours and I think I’m very happy with them, Bob’s very happy with them and the feedback I’ve gotten form the fans on this last tour, a lot of fans when they actually did get the record at the end of the tour they were really pleased with the lyrics. And that’s just a huge statement about the metal community and the metal fans and how sharp they are; how smart they are; how connected to the present and to the relevant issues they are. You know metal has always gotten a shitty rap over the last thirty years and metal fans have always been looked down upon, but they’re really some of the smartest, some of the sharpest people out there and I know because I talk to them every night when we’re on tour and they’re no dummies and it’s just refreshing to meet and see a whole generation of younger fans who get it and that, to me, is the most rewarding part of what we do and just connecting on that level and really touching that nerve. It’s very cool.
I’m a huge physical music geek and as a band you guys have always taken amazing care over the presentation of the band – how important is the presentation to you and how much direct control do you take?
Oh, full control and I’m like you, I’m a very physical guy. I’ve never downloaded anything digitally, I’m always buying CDs or vinyl, so that shows my age! It’s kind of how I came up in the music scene. It was all about physical – vinyl – I have such a huge vinyl collection and I love it. So yeah, it’s always been Important to me and one of the first things you did when you got a record back in the eighties was that you came back, you’d open the package, you’d smell the vinyl, you’d read the lyrics, you’d listen along, you’d look at the artwork and you’d just obsess over it and I’m still like that, you know, so we take a lot of care in putting all of that into our releases. I think that the ‘atonement’ album is probably one of our strongest visually. It’s such a visually pleasing release in so many ways. Par Olofsson did the front cover and he did the back pages of the album. However, the inside four pieces were done by another artist, Zbigniew Bielak, and he’s a Polish artist and he’s done a lot of black metal stuff for Mayhem and he did the last Paradise Lost album cover and he’s a phenomenal artist… he did one of the Vader covers recently, so he’s a phenomenal artist but I particularly love his sketch work like he did on those inside pieces. It’s very detailed, it’s very dark and it’s a completely different feel from the cover piece and we wanted to have all of that in there, so yeah, we had him do those four pieces and the way we dispersed them throughout the layout of the booklet… and if you have the gatefold vinyl then it’s just mind-blowing. It’s amazing looking, so that’s very important to us to have a visual product that works well with the other aspects of the record – the music and the lyrics so it’s very important.
The final part of it really, and I think it comes from being a physical music fan, you tend to really notice when a band goes to the trouble of putting out a very dynamic mix and to have it mastered so it sounds as natural and open and dynamic as possible – was that a big factor for you when deciding to work with Zack Ohren again, because I think he both mixed and mastered it?
Yeah, you’re right. We did. When ‘Kingdom’ came out, we loved the material and we thought it was a strong record, but there were a lot of areas of the production that we weren’t happy with and number one was the sound of the drums were just…. Unnatural sounding and just very compressed and not really what we wanted and that wasn’t really anybody’s fault – you know we only have so much time and so much in the budget to work these things out so once that time is expired and the budget runs out, that’s it man, you’re left with what you’ve got. So, Zach did the best he could with that record given the time and the situation, but moving forward into ‘Atonement’, when we first contacted Zach and asked him if he wanted to be part of it again and he said that he’d love to, he even asked us, if it was possible and if he’d have more time, he wanted to really spend time on this record because he felt he could get it to where we wanted it if he could have that time. One of the main things he wanted to address, again, was the drums. So, I think we were all in the same page, it’s not like we didn’t know that there were issues with that record, of course we knew and our fans are very open about telling us their opinions! They didn’t have any problems saying they loved the record but that the drums sounded a little weird or whatever. And we do listen, we do file it away and when we move forward and start the next process, we address those issues. So, that was the consensus, that the production was too processed and cold for ‘Kingdom’ and we needed to address that and I think that, given the fact that we had more time and Zach had the luxury of spending that time, I think it really made the difference. So yes, we are happy, it’s a well-produced record but it’s not an over-produced record. It has that natural sound and style, but it also has that atmosphere we were looking for, that very dark atmosphere, so I think that this time he nailed it. Not to say he did a bad job with ‘kingdom’, I think he did a great job but there were certain issues. You know, ‘Majesty’, I thought he did a better job with because he had a little more time with, but this one I think he just nailed it, this one I think is… I think our best sounding record over the years and I think the fans agree. All the comments I’ve seen are that the fans are enjoying the production and that’s always been the fans’ biggest bone of contention with us – the production. Someone always has something to say about the production: it’s under-produced, or too raw, or it’s over-produced or too clean so there’s never a happy medium, it seems, so maybe this one we got close to that.
It’s difficult though – production is such a subjective thing and it’s a bit of a compromise between you, the label and the producer as well I guess…
Well, the label and producer are very cool. It’s really our show, they don’t really have…. They don’t intervene. The producer is just trying to create something we’re happy with and the label just wants something they can put out there. Obviously, they don’t want anything that’s complete garbage, but they’re very cool with us and giving us that freedom to do what we want and that’s never been an issue for us, luckily knock on wood you know.
I know that as a writer you’re always seeking that line that we talked about earlier of not preaching, but there is always that time that when you live in a time of political turmoil it somehow stimulates artists and I was wondering if you feel that the events of the last few years have pushed your lyrics and writing style and challenged you as an artist?
Absolutely, I think lyrically we were very heavy on the religious themes prior to 9/11. Once 9/11 happened, I think that was the catalyst for us to venture in different directions lyrically where we took a harder look at our world and what was happening at the time, so I then I think from ’Unholy cult’ forward, there’s that lyrical shift. And it’s because, I think, the times have changed and got crazier and crazier and crazier leading up to where we are now. I think it’s had a tremendous impact on the direction we went lyrically and the types of things we’re singing about and I think it makes everything a lot darker because we’re talking about stuff now that so many people can relate to and I think everyone can relate to and it’s just an honest look at the world and I think it’s something that strikes a chord more with people than, say, the religious themes do. And don’t get me wrong, religion always plays a part in our crazy world in some way or other, but I think that just… in general, the stuff we’re touching upon now impacts our fans more as far as striking that chord with them. So, yeah, definitely, what’s going on in the world and where we are right now has provided huge inspiration for where we went lyrically over the last few years, you’re absolutely right.
It’s interesting to me that religion historically has been such a tool for control, so the parallels are there and they do appear on this album and there are elements on this album too regarding that…
Yeah, and usually when we discuss religion in the past, it was always about that controlling aspect of it and how it consumes so many people and they were just… very misguided in my opinion and hey, listen, it served a purpose for some people and that’s fine, I just have a problem with eh very extreme end of that, as I do with the extreme end of anything in our work and when it gets to that point and it’s very preachy and people try to force that shit on everybody else, that’s when I have a problem with it. To each his own, it’s not my thing.
So, I guess if there’s a message it is that in respecting individuality, you can find unity…
Absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone’s an individual, everyone has their likes and dislikes and who am I to cast stones? It’s not my place. We’ve spoken out against it for so many years that I’d be a hypocrite if I said “Hey, that’s wrong!” or “don’t do this” it’s a very personal thing, just keep that shit away from me. I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want it involved in my life, I don’t want it involved in the law-making process, I don’t want it dictating decisions for me… just keep it out of my life and I’ll be very happy!
