Twelve years in, experimental metal band Earthslayer are ready to take their apocalyptic sound to the live circuit

It’s close to a decade since Earthslayer released their debut album, said bassist Simon Bird as he sat in a swiveling chair in his recording studio below Herbert Street on Monday evening.

They've been a band for 12 years, he said. “We’ve only played one gig."

Beside Bird was a desktop laden down with synthesizers big and small, an arsenal of guitar effects pedals, computer monitors, a tangle of colourful cables and a smiling Fisher Price toy telephone.

Relaxing on the couch beside him were his two bandmates, Sam Burton and Tom Morris.

That gig was six weeks ago, said Sam Burton, the experimental metal outfit’s lead vocalist. “It was in Anseo, and we didn’t really tell anyone.”

Their friends only showed up because Burton’s dad had told a bunch of people, he said, chuckling as he leaned forward on the couch. “So my dad leaked the gig entirely."

It was a "trial gig" before they start performing live more regularly in the near future, guitarist Tom Morris said as he sipped from a can of cola. “We just kinda wanted to break the ice, and check that it was okay.”

They were surprised that people enjoyed it, Burton says. "It was one of those gigs where it goes much better than you expect and then you're like annoyed you didn't tell everyone."

On and off since 2016, the trio have been preparing their follow-up album, he says. “It has some really interesting moments. There are backing vocals from 10 years ago and lead vocals from recently.”

“There’s also, like, a minute and a half song that took 10 years to make,” he says, bursting out laughing.

Soundtrack for another century

Earthslayer formed in 2014 when guitarist Tom Morris had an idea to perform a live soundtrack for Häxan, a 1922 Swedish-Danish silent horror documentary by director Benjamin Christensen, Morris said. “We said let’s just cut down the film to its best bits and perform the soundtrack to that.”

They wrote and recorded their own score for the film over 2014 and 2015, he said. “Ultimately, we decided not to go ahead with the gig.”

“We were really unprepared for the gig,” Morris laughs. “It took a lot longer than we thought.”

Their score for the film was released, ultimately, on 31 October 2016. It is an elaborate piece of work, with distant pianos, droning ominous guitars, creaking violins, stomping drum machines, and a wide timbre of vocals, including guttural black metal roars and gentle lullabies.

Bird stuck their version of the film on the flat screen, skipping ahead to a lively dance scene in an underworld, with skeletal horses and a line of people who each, happily, kiss a devil’s posterior.

The lively orchestral score that usually accompanies the film is replaced with gothic clanging percussion and Burton’s throat singing – a technique that generates two different pitches.

He can’t do the whistling overtones that throat singing generates anymore, he says. “And I do a lot of choral chanty stuff. A lot of made-up languages.”

They were always called Earthslayer, but the original version of this was EORÐESLAJYR, he said. “We obfuscated the name to make it a bit more on brand with the project.”

“It looked cool in text,” Morris said.

It did, but nobody really knew how to pronounce it, Bird said. “And anyone who hears it was going to spell it wrong.”

Not The Wizard of Oz

Once they completed the Häxan soundtrack, they got to work on the follow-up, he says. “Sporadically, not constantly.”

They were all living apart. Bird was in Dublin, Burton in Leipzig, and Morris in New York, he said. “We’d record parts, build out the structure and work on the mix.”

While releasing a short EP in 2020, recorded four years earlier, and apocalyptically christened The Earth Shall Be The First To Die, the band took a break in 2018, he said. “I was like, maybe we pause until the guys are back in the country.”

They resumed work on their forthcoming album in 2023, he said.

“What?” Burton says. “Wow. Jesus, the time.”

Similar to Häxan, the new, as-yet-untitled sophomore record was written in response to an unspecified, but slightly more recent horror film, Bird says. “The style is more industrial, and that’s in response to the film.”

Writing in sync with a film creates limits that help their process, he says. “Songs are the length of scenes. It enforces a framework that you have to compose and design around. It’s personally what I like doing.”

Ahead of the release of the studio album, the trio are previewing an alternative version of their new track "The Daydream Flinch" recorded at Daylight, the volunteer-run arts and community space located in Glasnevin.

Featuring experimental drummer Jason McNamara, the new track opens with an extreme call-and-response of soft, rumbling rhythms created by Bird on the bass that are interrupted by explosive, rapid bursts of grindcore: a hybrid genre of heavy metal and hardcore punk.

As quickly as it starts, McNamara switches to a smoother, almost jazzy beat while the trio harken back to 1970s heavy metal before everyone abruptly stops.

Bird pulls up the studio version. It is a drastically different, shorter take on the track. It features trembling, high pitched synthesizers, the grunts and screams of Gilla Band vocalist Dara Kiely, and electronic drum beats, which clatter in unison with Burton’s singing.

Whereas Häxan was very “soundscapey”, dark and heavy, the newer material has more hooks, he says, laughing. “More conventional song structures. Actually, like quieter. Not so…”

“Doomy,” Morris says.

They are unsure if they’ll release a version of the unspecified horror film that features the second album, primarily because they want the new record to stand up on its own, Burton says. “But I like the idea that you know there is a film somewhere out there that goes perfectly with this record.”

“But you have to keep playing it with different films until you figure out which one it is,” he says with a grin.

“It’s not The Wizard of Oz,” Morris says.