Deicide’s Glen Benton on Banished by Sin, Individualism in Metal

The post Deicide’s Glen Benton on Banished by Sin, Individualism in Metal appeared first on Consequence .

Late last year, death metal vets Deicide pulled a patently Deicide stunt: dropping the gory, blasphemous music video for “Bury the Cross…with Your Christ” just days before Christmas. For anyone familiar with Deicide’s history and the band’s mastermind Glen Benton, it was both absurdly hilarious and completely expected.

Whether he’s offending the Christian right or shaking down a corrupt concert promoter, Benton has never been one to suppress his uncompromising personality or beliefs. It’s why his creative vehicle, Deicide, continues to endure after emerging from the Florida death metal scene decades ago. He’s not letting anyone stand in the way of his band.

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The group’s latest album, Banished by Sin , sees Benton and company on a new label home, Reigning Phoenix Music (RPM), and with a renewed spirit and optimism. Benton himself has called the album a throwback to the band’s “1990s style” in both sound and creative process, and he reflected on the LP as a turning point in his life. A crushing 12-song effort, Banished by Sin is as evil as ever, not to mention sonically rewarding — the effect of raw, organic production. Calling it a “return to form” implies there was some previous dropoff; however, it sure sounds like the work of inspired individuals.

We recently spoke with Benton about the making of the album and his own journey over the past few years. As the band kicks off a North American headlining tour (get tickets via Ticketmaster or here ), read our interview with Benton below.

Let’s start at the beginning of the album cycle when you released the video for “Bury the Cross…with Your Christ” around the holidays last year. It seemed like it may have ruffled some feathers in that notoriously Deicide way.

The whole idea with the Christ body and all that shit, [director] David Brodsky, he had a lot to do with that stuff. You give people money to do something, they’ll do it [laughs]. And we had a good time with it. We wanted to do a video making fun of their whole thing, and I think we did a pretty good job of it. It was fun; we had a good time doing it.

Deicide do have a long history of blasphemy.

I just don’t give a fuck, man. Honestly, I just don’t care. I really don’t. I don’t care if it hurts your feelings. The video for “From Unknown Heights, You Shall Fall” — you think the first two were [too much], the third video is where we really went back to our roots. We have all kinds of warnings on it and everything. Because it’s that graphic.

Diving into the latest album, Banished by Sin , you mentioned in the initial press release that you had been “sitting in a dark corner for several years now” and this album was like “flipping a switch.” Could you elaborate?

I’ve met some people recently that made a lot of sense to me as far as where I was at. You get older. The kids move on, and the family’s all passed away. And you find yourself alone in life. That’s what I mean by “a dark place.”

I had something snap me out of that. I’m very thankful for that. And it made me realize a lot of things. I learned to be a little more selfish with myself. Instead of trying to chase everybody else’s happiness, I started focusing on my own. So I’ve spent a lifetime trying to make everybody else fucking happy and kind of put myself in the back. Now I’m back up front. The kids are all gone. I feel like I was 18 again. I’m like a loose cannon. I’m able to get arrested at any second.

Would you say the record came at a pivotal moment during this transition in your life?

I can say it was definitely the beginning of the next chapter of my life.

The whole COVID thing… it sucked. But we had all this time, no deadlines; we had no record label. So when the COVID thing hit, it was like, “Let’s just put a record together just for the fun of it, and what happens happens.” And me and [drummer] Steve [Asheim] were like, we’ll write a record and then we’ll shop it around and we’ll do it right this way. Not sign a multi-record deal with some shitty record company and let them fucking shelf all of our records.

When you have the record done and you have a product, it’s a whole lot easier to get what you want. We were able to get with RPM for a one-record deal, a big pile of money, video money. It was great, man, for the first time. And these guys are really pushing the band like we should have been pushed back then.

Did you have a prior relationship with the RPM folks? How did they react to the new record?

Gerardo Martinez used to work for Nuclear Blast, and he started the new label [RPM]. We would bring samples to them. Like when we had all the rough tracks recorded, we brought it to them and let them hear it, and they were like, “Wow.” Once I started laying vocals to it, everybody was in.

It was incredible, man, recording the way we did. It’s like a live record for us … it’s got a touch of live sound to it. No heavy compression. We went with more live drum sounds, mic sounds instead of… I just get tired of that whole sample thing.

Everybody wants to phone it in with the sampling and the modeling amps and all that shit. We used actual amplifiers with microphones and cabinets, and we recorded a record, like records used to be recorded. We used ProTools where it needed to be used, but for the most part, we don’t want that. I don’t want that clicky elevator drum sound.

You mention some really valid things about mixing and mastering compression, and it’s refreshing to hear a modern metal record that actually sounds like what you guys recorded. A lot of records get homogenized during that process.

Individualism, man. Nobody wants to be an individual anymore and stand out because they’re afraid of what everybody’s going to say about them on social platforms. So everybody’s afraid to act the fool. I don’t give a shit. Make fun of me all you want. I’m going to still be stupid, you know?

Everybody’s so worried about what the next person is going to say or think that people have lost that individualism. All the great frontmen had these personas and personalities — they’re all gone … Everybody wants to just blend in together.

I just don’t. I want to be that one toenail that looks all yellow and fucked up.

Regarding the creative process, you guys shared equal songwriting duties on Banished by Sin , which is somewhat uncommon for a metal band. Could you take us behind the writing and recording of the album?

Taylor [Nordberg] did an amazing job capturing the essence of the band’s sound. He would record Steve’s drum tracks and then write parts based around Steve’s playing. So that’s why his stuff sounds like it fits so well. ‘Cause Taylor he’s an incredible talent. Incredible. Incredible engineer, and an incredible guitar player, incredible person. It’s an honor to have him in the band. He completes us.

We have a really solid team now with him. And, for me, if you have the same guys just writing all the material, it sounds one dimensional. I like the fact that Kevin [Quirion] writes what Kevin writes, and we all bring [ideas] to practice. If there’s a part that we don’t find convincing or somebody has a problem with it, we usually go home and try to come up with something different that better fits it. It’s an imperfect world. You come to practice and think, “Yeah, I got it.” And then somebody’s like, “That part sucks” [laughs].

But the way the world works now with the whole royalty thing, it’s hard to even see a check anymore, so the least I can do is put everybody on the board with publishing and with mechanicals and all that. Because the industry standard is whoever writes lyrics gets half of publishing, whoever writes the music melody gets the other half of publishing. And it’s a really easy concept to understand. So if everybody gets the same amount of songs on the album, everybody gets basically the same amount of money. It’s better than putting yourself into a shitty deal like I did years ago, where we’re splitting it four ways, no matter who writes what.

So this way, everybody writes their stuff. Everybody gets an equal cut. And at the end of the day, everybody’s happy. No arguments. No bullshit. Nobody pouting and stomping their feet and quitting the band and all that bullshit.

The new stuff sounds like classic ’90s Deicide. Did it just come out like that?

The only thing I can think of is the fact that it was like how it was when we wrote the first record. It was getting together and just writing songs that sound heavy. There was no pressure. Just fun, man.

When you’re under the gun, record company people are breathing down your back and shit — it just takes all the fun out of it. And it doesn’t become what the first album and this album were like for me.

I didn’t have any preconceived notions of what it was going to be. We just wrote songs that we all thought were heavy, and we worked together as a team. Everybody did an amazing job on this record.

Old-school death metal has been going through a revival, though a lot of these acts seem to be more fixated on the gory or sci-fi angle of it, while you guys continue to carry the torch for Satanic death metal.

I just do what comes natural. I don’t try to chase after zombies, and I’m not burying people’s vaginas in the backyard. I just keep it real, coming from my soul. That’s where I keep it. I’m not trying to get into Comic Con for free next year [laughs].

The legacy of Deicide is very much tied to that Satanic image you’ve cultivated for the band, as well as the… I want to say “tall tales” of your exploits from back in the day. Your reputation precedes you. How do you feel about that notoriety?

A lot of it’s true. I’m not going to defend myself. I scratch my head at times wondering how I got away with half the shit that I got away with.

It was a different time then. I didn’t do anything that would constitute arrest or anything, but shit was crazy back in the ’90s doing this. My reputation, being management of the band, I didn’t tolerate people ripping me off. I didn’t appreciate it. I traveled all this way to play for the fucking fans and then I’ve got to put up with your fucking stupid shit trying to ask for a reduction when you filled your pockets: You burn me on a merch cut, you burn me on my catering and, and then you don’t want to pay me what the guarantee is.

I will choke you out, or I will take you from ATM to ATM to clean you out. But you’re going to pay. And I guess there were moments there where I had to put my hands on people, and I’m not proud of it. But, you know what, when you’re going to rip off my opening bands — and these guys are working for fucking nothing already — then yeah man, you fucking pissed off the powers that be.

It seems like you’ve moved past a lot of that, especially on the business side of the band. Where do things stand with Deicide at the moment?

​​Yeah, we are now at a point with the band where we have the greatest team of people working for us and we have the best lineup ever as far as personalities and musicianship. We are running at optimum performance right now.

I love it right now. It’s fun now; it’s not about having to pay my bills and all that shit. I’m a loose cannon now. I really am [laughs]. I told my kids, watch out, you might see me on the six o’clock news.

Deicide’s Glen Benton on Banished by Sin, Individualism in Metal
Jon Hadusek