Deicide
The Devil You Don’t Know

02.07.2024

There were times when Glen Benton did his best to come across as “tough” and “dark” and “evil” in pretty much every interview he did. Our website managed to talk to him at one of such periods more than 10 years ago, and he proudly set a record that still stands to this day by answering 25 questions in mere 12 minutes. Today’s Glen is quite different: he speaks in pretty long passages, he has no problem with providing details and clearing misconceptions, and he even laughs from time to time. And guess what – he has no desire to bring up the topic of Satan, which most of his interviews were focusing on back in the day. In the absence of the Prince of Darkness, I felt at liberty to ask Glen about his new album “Banished By Sin”, his relations with record labels, his attitude towards touring and other matters that used to hardly get any light before.

I read in an earlier interview that “Banished By Sin” was pretty much written back in 2021. Why did it take three years to complete it?

It had been done for a year before we released it. We were waiting for the record company to get all their ducks in a row business-wise. You can only guess what record companies are thinking when it comes to when they release stuff. (laughs) We were working on new stuff when Chris (Cannella, former guitarist) was still working with us, but I think we were kind of loose-ended working on it. It wasn’t until Taylor (Nordberg, current guitarist) came into the band when we really started. Me and Steve (Asheim, drums) and Kevin (Quirion, guitar) all had our songs ready, and then Taylor came, and we started working on his songs. That way we really started focusing and tightening everything up and getting it ready to record. We didn’t have a label, at that time we weren’t talking to anybody, we were just like, “Let’s write a record”. Me and Steve decided that the best way to go about it was to write the record and then sell it. And with the Covid thing, and then I let everybody talk me into doing this “Legion” tour… I don’t know, I can just tell you that I’m in no hurry to go nowhere. (laughs) I just let things take their time, I guess.  

Deicide was one of the first bands to sign with Reigning Phoenix Music. Why did you decide to go with that label? What do they do differently as compared to Century Media, for instance?

Oh well, Century Media did absolutely nothing to promote the band. If I had an opportunity to do it all over again, I would probably have avoided that. As a label here in the United States they started falling apart after our signing with them, they didn’t even have an office here in the States, they were working out of people’s apartment. That’s why I think Sony came in and bought them here in the States, and then we had to do our live record for Sony Music. They did nothing to promote the records, they put absolutely zero money into it. While Reigning Phoenix, man, they gave us a one-record deal like me and Steve wanted, they gave us the royalty rates that we wanted, and it was a contract on one piece of paper. I’ve been doing all kinds of press, they’re pumping the band, and they’re doing an amazing job. They’re hungry, man, you know what I mean? When you’re starting off a label like that, they’re putting their everything into it, and I appreciate it. It’s a totally different experience, I haven’t seen this enthusiasm since the first couple of Deicide albums from Roadrunner back in the days.  
 
With the addition of Taylor Nordberg, you now have four songwriters in the band. Is it easy to find common language when there are so many good cooks in the same kitchen, so to say?

It’s more like you go home and write your shit and bring it to practice. It’s not like we’re sitting here and putting it together. You write it, you bring it to practice, we all show each other the parts, and at that point everybody puts his spin on it. It’s really great, it’s excellent, it’s the easiest shit, you know. I even tell them, “If you can write lyrics, then write lyrics and I’ll help you guys out”. There’s really no money in this shit anymore, making records is like trading flyers for a show, it’s just a promotional item.  it’s not like you’re actually making any money off it, you’re lucky if you ever recur the recording costs. I still owe Century Media or Sony, whoever the fuck it is, 70 grand or whatever it is, you’ll never get out of that with these assholes. This is part of the game.

Taylor has a lot of other bands going alongside with Deicide. How does he manage to find the time for so many activities? Doesn’t his busy schedule interfere with Deicide’s plans from time to time?

Taylor is very respectful about that. He checks with me if we’re gonna be working at that particular time, and we just coordinate with him. I can tell you from my experience that you can get tired of doing side project shit after a while, this just takes too much of your time, and you really want to just stick to where your money is. But he’s free to do whatever he wants, it’s like Steve is free to do whatever he wants, and I’m free to do… This is democracy: do whatever you want, say whatever you want - I don’t give a shit what you think, it’s your business.

As far as I understand, Taylor, with Jeramie Kling, was also responsible for engineering the album. How did his involvement change the recording process?

These guys work together as a team. When you’ve got more ears hearing shit, it helps man. When something’s going on, and one guy ain’t catching it, the other guy is catching it. It was a great experience working with Jeramie and Taylor on recording the record. It went by really smooth, and we were able to do it the way it should be done, like a live recording, and Jeramie runs our live sound, so you’re really getting a live record.

Speaking about producers, how was it like to reunite with Scott Burns at the recent Decibel Magazine fest?

It’s always nice to see Scott, I’ve run into him a few times over the years. We all grew up together.

As far as I understand, he doesn’t do music recordings any longer…

Nah. I think I can see the hunger in his eyes. (laughs) I think he still does mess around with stuff, I’m not exactly sure, but, like they say, you can never get it out of your system.

Can we look forward to him coming back to the recording business then?

That would be nice.

Whose brilliant idea was it to release singles/videos on religious holidays?

That was mine, together with the record company. I was like, “Hey, Valentine’s Day is coming on, we’d better drop a video!” (laughs) “Easter is coming up, we’d better drop one!” “Christmas - do it!”

That really brought a lot of attention to the band…

I enjoyed it. I enjoy pissing people off, that’s what it’s all about.

There are quite a lot of comments on YouTube under those new videos saying, “Why isn’t Glen Benton starring in any movies?” And indeed, why?

(laughs) I don’t know. Give me a call, I’m here!

So you’re open to this idea, aren’t you?

I’d do anything. Throw it my way, and we’ll give it a thought.

How do you work with video directors? Is it the band behind the concepts of your videos, or does a lot of that come from the director or producer?

A lot of it came from David (Brodsky), Allison (Woest) and their company, they are very creative people. I just gave them free rein to do whatever, because they wanted to do a Deicide video and make it, you know, blasphemous. I mean, everybody’s got that evil streak in them, and they’re not different that the rest of us. They had a lot of fun doing it; we all had fun doing it. We all went out to the Poconos and hung out for a week shooting the video, we had a good time.  

One more thing that pissed off a lot of people is the cover artwork for “Banished By Sin”. I’m not going to ask you about AI…

(interrupts) Oh man, it doesn’t bother me, I have no problem with that. It’s always 14-year-old kids whose fave thing is going out on the world. To me it’s our work, no matter how you create it. It takes a person to do it, it’s not like I was talking to one of these Alexas or Daisys you’re talking to in your house that creates shit for you. It takes an actual artist to do what we did. And that’s what he did. He was told what we wanted and how we wanted it, and he did exactly as I asked. I’m glad he did it. I like to do artwork, I’ve always done artwork that’s controversial, I’ve always done artwork that stirs people’s emotions and that’s what this was about. AI art is in the world right now unfortunately, we might choose to ignore technology and ignore what’s going on in the world, but the future is forward, and I don’t want backward, I just keep doing art and doing things that are different and change with the times. I mean, you gotta strike a nerve in every generation, and that’s what I am about.

Yeah, I see, but my question is a little bit different. The guy who is credited to doing it on the Metal-Archives website, Nenad Dukic, had done no other cover artworks before. How does one become a cover artist for Deicide?

He’s the guy who designs our whole jewelry for the band. Me and him discussed how we’re gonna do this, using AI to create my face on the artwork, that’s what it is. If you look at it, there’s actually my face on the artwork. We had him working together on that, and that’s what we came up with. That’s incredible – the record company wanted the new medallion, like a 2024 medallion, like the first album, so we said, “Nenad, let’s use that program”, and he used my face and worked around that. I mean, it wasn’t all done with AI, there was a lot of photoshopping and other shit to it, it’s a mixture of a few different methods that we used to create that.

Nenad is well known for an artist, he does a lot of special effects for stuff like “Predator” and that kind of stuff, he’s really an amazing talent. To me and him and the rest of the people that know the depth of his talent, when people talk shit, we can’t help but look at these people as being ignorant and arrogant at the same time, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

You mentioned this jewelry that Nenad is also doing for you. Could you provide more detail? What kind of jewelry is it?

Well, we’ve done the medallions of the first album, we have Trifixion rings, and Trifixon pendants, there’s a whole bunch of Glen Benton rings, and I just got the new medallion, it’s on the Instagram page, I’ve just got a new medallion for the new album. And that’s how we created it – we created the medallion and the artwork around it, so that it all ties in. So yeah, he’s an amazing talent, he’s working with some other bands now, and he’s starting to get his name out there with his jewelry. He makes a lot of incredible stuff, and I have a lot of his stuff, I wear it live and stuff like that.

So it’s a kind of merchandize that you put up on sale, and fans can get it, isn’t it?

Yeah, but it’s hi-end shit, it’s not your flea market jewelry. This is real silver, real precious metals, and this is heavy duty made stuff. I can tell you the price will scare a lot of people, but the quality is incredible.

Moving on to live shows – you’ve recently done three festival shows in the U.S., and two of them had no new songs in the setlist at all, and on the third one you only did “Bury The Cross… With Your Christ”. Why weren’t you doing more songs from “Banished By Sin”?

We’re kind of saving that material for the European festivals in July and for the U.S. tour in support of the album. These festival-based kids wanna hear the old stuff and I don’t wanna do like some bands do and go out there and play a bunch of songs that no one’s really familiar with. I didn’t even know we’re gonna play “Bury The Cross” at the Decibel festival at Milwakee, it was a last second addition, kind of an encore, and I wasn’t really ready for it either. (laughs) But the new stuff is fun, we rehearsed today, and we’re preparing like eight new songs. We don’t know which ones we’re gonna play live yet, but we have some ideas: obviously we’re gonna play “Doomed To Die”, “From Unknown Heights You Should Fall” and “Sever The Tongue”, probably “Bury The Cross…”, “Faithless”, Woke from God”, that kind of stuff.

Speaking about your live plans, I only know about a European tour with just seven dates in early August, and one show in Canada in September. Is that really it for the remainder of 2024?

We’re heading on to South America to do some festivals, and then April 2025 we go over to Europe for seven weeks. But we don’t know. There’s stuff coming in all the time that usually fills itself.

But seven weeks is a really long time, isn’t it? Are you OK with staying on the road for such long periods?

I’ve got nothing to do. My kids have grown, they’re grown men, there’s just me out there doing what I do now. What am I gonna do back here? Hours lost to TV. I’d rather be out there eating shitty dolly trays and scaring the shit out of people. (laughs)

Coming back to labels, there was a ton of boxsets in 2022 and 2023, with Roadrunner era albums on CD, vinyl and even on cassettes. Are you happy with those reissues?

I was responsible for those reissues. It all comes to me first, I have to say yes or no to that shit, it still has my name on it. (laughs) I was happy with the “Roadrunner Era” vinyl boxset, that made us a lot of money man, they sold like crazy, they sold out and sold out. And the cassette boxset that’s recently been done (“Screaming Ancient Incantations”), it’s incredible. And they (Darkness Shall Rise Productions) leased this stuff, they leased it from the labels so that they can do it. These guys are fans, for the most part they are responsible for chasing the shit and getting it out there. It’s been great.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the way Chuck Shuldiner reissues are handled by Relapse Records: they’re adding pre-production demos, live recordings and all kinds of crazy stuff as bonus tracks. But the Deicide boxset only contain previously released materials. Have you considered doing any expanded reissues like that?

One thing that’s recently been getting ready to… I have all the cassette tapes from our early rehearsals from the beginning, from the first song we ever tried writing – I mean, I have all that stuff. I was gonna transfer that to the digital format and maybe add this as bonus tracks here and there. I have a lot of pre-production stuff, rough tracks from all the records – “Legion”, “Once Upon The Cross”, I’ve got all the pre-production stuff and everything.

As long as “Banished By Sin” was written quite a long time ago, have you written any more material since then? Will the fans have to wait another six years for the next record?

Oh, no! Covid really brought that wait on. We were actually three days before Covid shut the world down, we were getting ready to leave for South America and start touring in support of the “Overtures…” album. That really fucked things up. Just like everybody else, that shot us down for six months too, and by that time all the bullshit got in. I aint’t gonna lie, I’ve been under contract since I was 21 years old, so not being owned by a record company kind of felt good for a little bit. (laughs) That’s why I did a one-record deal – “you guys have the record, and I’m no longer under any kind of commitment”. That makes it easier to write good music when you don’t feel like you’re selling yourself short. I don’t like that anymore. I expect that with Taylor in the band and the way we are, that music writing thing comes pretty quick, for me I know it does, I just bring out my guitars and start popping out riffs.

Deicide on the Internet: https://deicideofficial.com/

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Interview by Roman Patrashov
Photos courtesy of Reigning Phoenix Music
June 14, 2024
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