Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad Says New Guitarist is ‘the Guy We’ve Been Waiting For’

On September 15, The Black Dahlia Murder will return with 'Deflorate,' the Michigan death metallers' fourth studio LP and its first with new guitarist Ryan Knight, who replaced John Kempainen. Recorded at producer Jason Suecof's Audio Hammer Studios, frontman Trevor Strnad says the album marks a return to the sound of the band's 2003 debut, 'Unhallowed.'

"But only in that it's more real," he clarifies. "There's no sound replacement on the drums. It's just raw. It has that live energy that I think the first record had. The way that production and recording has gone in extreme metal has been toward ProTools'ing the hell out of everything, making everything so perfect, and it ends up sucking the actual human feel out of a lot of that stuff. So, we were trying to avoid that and stick with the more traditional death metal approach: go in, play the s---, and there it is."

That's not to say that 'Deflorate' is a sloppy effort. "It's good...it's just a different approach," Strnad says. "It sounds like us playing, if you were to see us live. I think its the best representation of the band that we've ever had, as far as recording goes. And the new guy, he just stepped in."

Strnad says the band started emailing demos of the new stuff to Knight, and "he was returning them with solos, and he actually contributed the bulk of two different songs on the record, too. He's the guy we've been waiting for. The guy that just loves the band, wants to forward the band, and is a great lead player. He's definitely better than John, our old guy, and we're excited to unleash his work with this band."

The Black Dahlia Murder were also excited about working with Suecof, and believe they may have found their George Martin.

"The marriage is too good," he says. "I trust Jason because he's an old metal head. He grew up in death metal, and he's just a great guitar player, a great musician. We just trust him. It was so hard for us to go to studios in the early days, because there was no precedent for bands that play at 230 BPMs, like, regularly. They weren't used to fast bands, and they weren't used to death metal, and we've found our guy. So the product is the best thing we've ever made. Hands down."

Lyrically, Strnad tackles a number of different topics, including cryogenic freezing on the album's final cut, "I Will Return." Overall, Strnad took a more sci-fi approach to his writing for this album.

"There's a sci-fi flare to some of the stuff, and its new territory for me, but its still death metal," he says. "I just wanted to try some new things. One of the songs is about a child that was born super malformed, to the point where people are questioning whether he's a human being or not. I wanted to capture that feeling, when you see some kind of extreme deformity. People have this natural reaction of being repulsed, and I was trying to capitalize on that kind of thing."