The Autumn Offering, ‘The Autumn Offering’ — New Album
The Autumn Offering will unleash their self-produced, self-titled beast on Aug. 31 through Victory Records. It was an exercise in learning and brutality for the band. And if the only way out is through, the band came out the other end, empowered by and happy with the results.
"The decision to make a record this heavy was an easy one. I feel like 'Fear Will Cast No Shadow' and 'Requiem' were heavy in their own right," vocalist Matt McChesney told Noisecreep. "Certainly not like this new one, however. [Producer] Mark Lewis and myself have discussed at length how 'Requiem' was such a criminally underrated album. I feel that was our most complete effort. This new one is pure rage, sadness, vitriol, everything ugly. Not that anything I have ever written has not been anything but complete negativity."
While negativity and catharsis are standards in heavy metal, McChesney lays everything on the table, even his personal struggles. "To put these lyrics to anything less than music this brutal would be an exercise in futility. It needed to be ugly, and it is," he said. "It's no secret I've struggled with substance abuse my whole life, and while I'm better now, I'm never safe. I am healthy, yet I always wonder when the bill is going to come for the life I've led.
"Enough about me. I felt like we wrote a few great crossover songs the past two records that never got the chance they deserved. I can't say that I 100 percent ever wanted to do that ... and in a way I'm glad they were never pushed to mainstream radio. Don't fret, there is some catchy s--- on here. We just wanted to write a good metal album, because we have always been a metal band."
He described some of the material for their fifth record as "definitely death metal or damn close, and that's fine by me ... that's where most of us came from anyway. I'm proud of the band, myself and the great job Pete Rutcho did mixing it. This was our first crack at producing ourselves."
Self-production isn't as easy or as 'controlled' of an environment as it may seem. "There was no one to say 'stop,' so I think the record came out a little bit over-the-top, which we are happy about," the singer said. "There was plenty of in-fighting between the band, due to no producer as a mediator. It's the fighting that makes a record great. And we had a Disney radio station coming through on the guitar DI tracks, which is really funny, hearing Daffy Duck over the top of such evil music. We fixed that, by the way!" Well, since many death metal bands use Cookie Monster vocal styles, perhaps Daffy Duck isn't too much of stretch!
The Autumn Offering have been quoted as saying that they want their music to "murder the scene," as in abolish all the things wrong with metal right now. McChesney clarified the statement, saying, "Metal seems to just be corroding. It started really with nu metal in the '90s. Not knocking that genre, it's just that it seemed to divide metal as whole. It spurned so much unnecessary hatred within metalheads. Then metalcore was loved and predictably destroyed by its own, and finally we have deathcore's time in the light. Now, that genre is bashed.
"I can't for the life of me grasp all the hatred amongst all these fans. It's just music. The s--- you read on the Internet is just despicable. We made a record that fits in with the glory days; Pantera, Slayer, etc. Honestly, if the whole thing crumbled and fell it would be a good thing. Start over. We wonder why no one takes metal seriously and laughs at it. It's because it's filled with self righteous a--holes."
As for McChesney, he is one of 'us.' As in like a Noisecreep staffer. He went to school for journalism and came this close to pursuing it as a career. "I was offered a high paying job at a big newspaper in Boston. I love writing, and may pursue that when this is all over," he said.
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