Hardcore and heavy metal were not friendly neighbors in the early 80s, but a number of crossover albums and changes in the underground scene helped to bridge that gap by the end of that decade. Although many of the pioneering bands from the underground movements in Washington D.C. Los Angeles, Boston, and New York had burned out or moved on by the early 90s, some were still holding on for better or worse.
Then there was a behemoth coming to life in Cincinnati, Ohio known as Integrity. Integrity were among the first crop of bands and some would say the very first that came out of this period between 1988 and 1994 with a new development to the hardcore metal hybrid sound. One could say that truly metalcore was breathed to life during this period due Integrity’s 1991 release Those Who Fear Tomorrow.
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| Howling For The Nightmare Shall Consume was released on July 14th through Relapse. |
Nearly three decades later, singer and messenger Dwid Hellion remains at the forefront of this creative revolution. Howling, For The Nightmare Shall Consume was released earlier this month, and it has stirred quite a buzz among long time fans of the band and critics alike.
I had the opportunity to sit down with him and talk about the new album, as well as some of the man’s deeper understandings of spiritual lore and philosophy.
Doom Gazed: Hi Dwid, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions! Integrity has a really heavy and unique sound that not many if any bands can replicate, and I love how you're always on the forefront in the extreme music community.
Dwid Hellion: Thank you. You are very kind I truly appreciate your interest and enthusiasm for my music.
DG: Raw. Energetic. Passionate. The violence and hatred are so strong in this record. How do you continue to channel all that energy through all of these years? Integrity is still one of the most savage animals in all forms of rock & roll.
Dwid: Without music as my outlet, the emotions would most likely consume me. This has not been a forgiving burden to carry, and it has put my life in some very difficult situations over the years. I am grateful that music and art has afforded me a means to channel my passions into a productive outlet. Blending into society can be a strange disguise, one that does not truly conceal my true nature.
DG: One of my favorite qualities of the new album is that it has an earthly jam vibe to it. It doesn’t lose that essence in the recording.
Dwid: Dom and I have been like brothers for years. We have a lot in common and we both have a clear understanding of what Integrity is about. The songs became an extension of our imaginations and I feel that everything flowed easily and organically in the recording studio.
DG: So I learned a little bit about this artist named Francis Bacon, and understand that he holds a huge significance around the album. Could you go into depth about that?
Dwid: Not necessarily a huge influence. When I started storyboarding the album, I wanted to find an anchor to tie all of the songs together in a way. The idea came to me that it should be themed around a seance that a young Bacon would have as his painting career was just beginning. These are blueprints, the songs themselves have a life of their own and much more depth than the early direction that I assigned to them. I would prefer the listener to interpret the songs and the album as their imagination permits. Hopefully taking a personal interpretation and conjuring up something that I would have never imagined.
DG: My favorite track on the album right now is "Die With Your Boots On." What did you write that song about?
Dwid: That is a song that I wrote about Lemmy when he died. I thought to myself, here is a man who died with his boots on. He lived his life as he wanted and he played music up until the very end. It is a song that was written to honor this great legend of music.
DG: “7 Reece Mews” is an interesting song title, and I really loved the bit toward the end where the song takes off into something a little less heavy but no less foreboding. Would you explain a bit about the song title and why you chose it?
Dwid: 7 Reece Mews is the address of Francis Bacons painting studio. It is where he made all of his horrific paintings. It would be the location for the seance that we discussed earlier in this interview. The drunken seance would have somehow worked out. Transporting the young Bacon, in a lucid dreaming way, throughout time and space to occult occurrences which actually took place in history. His exposure to these visions would have opened up something within Bacon that forever changed how he would view the world and the people around him. Seeing the demons within. Demons which he would go on to paint and with great success and notoriety.
DG: You’ve gone to Brad Boatright many times, and there are countless other excellent bands who have worked in the studio with him, so what is it about him that makes him so great to work with?
Dwid: Brad possesses a brilliant talent for sound. He is able to bring out the very best in any piece of recorded music. I find myself quite lucky to have Brad and Audiosiege as a part of my creative team.
DG: There is a lot of destructive energy associated with humanity in your music, and obviously, anyone who pays attention to history for more than 10 minutes would probably think the same way about the evil of mankind. Do you think that there is a silver lining or any window of hope at all, or is it just suffering?
Dwid: I think there is always grey area with anything. The world has always been ending. Since man was able to communicate, there was always this deep rooted fear that the final days were upon us and within every man’s own lifetime. There are many pleasures and joys to experience within this world, and equally as many torments and fears to be shackled with. Life is a myriad of experiences. I try to view the world from an honest perspective. It is not entirely evil nor entirely good. Humanity is a diseased animal acting irrationally. It is like using a DaDa poem as an instructional manual. I absolutely enjoy the madness that mankind has hurled at the world. It is a spectacular disaster and it has had me captivated since my childhood.
DG: Is there a point ever in your career where you say you want to quit making music and handle everything from the business end?
Dwid: The music is therapeutic for me. I suppose I will never stop creating. I have recorded music for 3 decades now, so I am not certain that I would even know how to quit.
DG: Where do you see the state of extreme music today and do you think it still does a good enough job to push new boundaries?
Dwid: That is a relative question. Extreme music does not always mean the same thing to everyone. I believe that being sincere and passionate lends quite a lot to how I would define extreme music. Fanatical and passionate about your creative intention. I never set out to expand boundaries. I have been accredited with doing so, but it was never a strategy. For me, making music that I would like to hear has always played an important role in my recordings. I have a vast range of interests, especially outside of music, which also bleeds into my recordings. This amalgamation of my interests fuels my creative process. I also do not have the mentality that I must be confined to following any rules attached to specific genres of music. That, in itself, affords a tremendous amount of creative freedom.
DG: There are some esoteric and maybe even spiritual ideas that I take from Integrity’s music, and as someone who has delved into some gnostic apocrypha, I’m eager to pick your brain to see where it may fit into Integrity’s music.
Dwid: There is absolutely an esoteric aspect to Integrity. Gnosticism is a wonderful alternate perspective of the more established religions of our time. I am fascinated by the many interpretations of scripture and how these interpretations often coincide with one another and occasionally and dramatically can differ. An example would be how the book of Genesis is portrayed in a Gnostic perspective. The serpent is freeing Adam & Eve from this vindictive and oppressive deity known as Jehovah (God). This lends a fascinating point of view and creates an incredible twist to the story that many of us were taught since childhood.
DG: Do you think that spirituality is a cancer, or would you say that it’s more of a threat when in the form of religion?
Dwid: Spirituality is a necessary escape from the flesh prisons that we each reside within. Religion, is a means to govern our spirituality and to use this need for our spiritual escape as an oppressive weapon against us and as a means of currency. That is not to say that I dislike nor disapprove of religion. In fact, I am entranced by the duality of it all. I find established religions to be among the most evil, and therefore the most intriguing for me.
DG: Would you say that there’s a new sense of spiritual awareness shifting into place in Western culture, or do you think we’re still very much behind in that regard?
Dwid: That is difficult to say. Perhaps there is the same amount of spiritual awareness within the humans, but at this time in history, they are channelling that awareness into other, less established faiths. I think that Christianity as an empire, has begun to unravel. They are desperately trying to modernize their approach to coalesce with modern man. When a religion begins to tailor itself to appeal to the popular culture, it has already breached its faith.
DG: I’d like to thank you again for doing an email interview for Doom Gazed, I love the new album and hope to catch you on tour.
Dwid: Thank you for your time and your interest.
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