Following the death of Trevor Strnad in 2022, there was a real chance that The Black Dahlia Murder would call it a day. Rather than shattering the Michigan melodic death metallers, however, that tragedy bound the surviving members closer together, and spurred them to make 10th album Servitude a crushing statement of their will to endure…
Brian Eschbach never imagined the situation he finds himself in today. Despite their fixation on devilish imagery and gnarly melodic death metal, The Black Dahlia Murder always felt like a family to its founding guitarist, the weight of whose decades-long history he shared with frontman Trevor Strnad.
News of Trevor’s death on May 11, 2022 almost crumbled their foundations. The singer was an icon in the heavy music underground. He was the frontman in one of the scene's most enduring and enjoyable bands, but he was also an obvious metal maniac, a fanatic whose noisy enthusiasm for this music was infectious and admirable. More importantly for the rest of the band, he was their friend.
But, fidgeting with a nylon-string guitar on the back patio of his home in Ferndale, Michigan as the machine hits full gear for the band’s upcoming 10th album, the excellent Servitude, Brian explains there was no better way to process their tragedy and do justice to the years spent with their friend than to close ranks and carry on.
“There’s a nobility in service,” says Brian, unpacking an album title unusually loaded with self-meaning for its authors. “That can be service to who you are. It can even be service to something that you want to achieve, as long as you approach it with honour, care and respect. We are in service to The Black Dahlia Murder. We are in service to the fans of this band. This record is a celebration of that.”
Trevor Strnad live in 2019. Photo: Jason Bailey
Moving forward wasn’t always a given. Looking at their options with fellow guitarist Brandon Ellis, bassist Max Lavelle and drummer Alan Cassidy, there was a reluctance to recruit from outside to patch the hole Trevor had left. The late vocalist could never be replaced like-for-like anyway, and there was a need to reconnect to their history rather than starting afresh. A solution was hatched that longstanding backing vocalist Brian would take over Trevor’s duties, with Ryan Knight – lead guitarist from 2009 to 2016 – returning to take his place. Continuing the purpose and vision of TBDM was key in that, but so too was sharing in the weight of loss.
“If Ryan hadn’t agreed to come back, we wouldn’t have gone on,” Brian says, frankly. “Twenty-three years into this band, it needed to continue with members of The Black Dahlia Murder, people who have contributed to building this body of art. How do we fill Trevor’s absence? In this new incarnation, each one of us has already spent seven-and-a-half years of their life, at least, as part of TBDM. Everyone understands what we need to do. And although I don't know I could ever have conceived of going from where we were then to where we are now, it didn’t take long for instinct to kick in.
“The grief is always there. You can sit and brew on it, or you can keep going and do something new. But that grief isn’t really part of [Servitude]. It’s not in the visual art. It’s not in the songs. This is a Black Dahlia Murder album: a collection of horror and the macabre. Satan worship. All that shit.”
Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about Servitude is how much of a natural continuation it feels. The title of lead single Aftermath may have teased a reckoning on the dark period from which they had emerged, but it’s actually a characteristically blood-splattered tale of post-apocalyptic cannibalism. Mammoth’s Hand is a gleefully groovy, grandiose sonic reimagining of a scene from Don Coscarelli’s 1982 swords and sorcery classic The Beastmaster. Panic Hysteria sees Brian reacting to an old interview with Frank Sinatra eloquently extolling the evils of rock’n’roll, its stand-out exclamation of ‘We choose to be free!’ positively doubling down on the horns-up heavy metal defiance fans would always have expected from TBDM’s landmark 10th LP.
“People talk about the ‘satanic panic’ of the ’80s, but that really started with rock’n’roll 30 years earlier,” Brian grins. “It’s music that’s alleged to be morally bad that has drawn so many people together and inspired the positive energy to create many subgenres and evolutions. And there’s something beautiful about that. There's similar ridiculousness in all of our lives, right across the board. Plus, metal has the thrill of ‘being bad’ or experiencing something ‘evil’ without harm.”
Musically, too, Servitude delivers a full-blooded attack without descent into melancholy.
“We knew we couldn’t stray too far from the path,” Brian admits. “We wanted to prove that we could still do this. Straight to the point. Go for the throat.”
With three guitarists onboard, there is a sharpening of the technical cutting-edge. Brian himself wrote opener Evening Ephemeral, the aforementioned Aftermath and final track Utopia Black, but even he admits that some of the fret-melting work from his colleagues elsewhere would require a six-string training camp to catch up.
Far more focus is on Brian’s vocal performance, of course. And as much as there is no ‘replacing’ Trevor, he’s a revelation, maintaining the brutality while bringing his own punky ragged edge.
“On this journey, I’ve spent a lot of time watching the best frontman there could ever be for The Black Dahlia Murder,” he gestures. “I got to listen to his conversations with other amazing vocalists over the years about delivery, and presence. Of course, you can’t just catch up with people who’ve been doing it 10 or 20 years instantly. And I’m a 42-year-old man. I won’t be doing cartwheels or backflips across the stage. Maybe Bruce Dickinson can still do that shit, but I don’t know what he’s on. It’s a work in progress. It’ll always be a work in progress. And I’m confident that Trevor would’ve said his vocals were always a work in progress, too. But I’m not scared of that. Whether writing lyrics or finding how my vocals can develop and grow, it’s exciting.”
Time and again, the decision for bands to continue after the loss of a keystone member invites some level of fan backlash. And despite the honourable intentions and high quality of new work, there have already been vocal naysayers. For Brian, though, it’s not something to pay attention to.
“You can't really navigate fan expectation,” he shrugs. “We're all chaotic and unique. We respond to things accordingly. People may not think that we could make an album that sounds like TBDM without Trevor. But we didn’t have time to think about those outside pressures while we were working on this. We believe in ourselves in a band. And we’re itching for them to hear what we’ve done. Plus, if you’re not a fan of this version of TBDM, there are nine albums that you can go back to that we hope you still love. I hope what we’re doing now doesn't take away from that. And with the time we’re living in, it probably won’t be long before there’s some sort of AI vocal generator to put ‘Trevor’s’ vocals on the album anyway. That’s not something I’d be sad to hear!”
Ultimately, the focus is inward, doing what’s best for The Black Dahlia Murder and its constituent members. As much as they’ve striven to keep things constant for this return, one major change behind the scenes has been an improvement in communication between the men in the band. Although Brian doesn’t explicitly touch on Trevor’s struggles with mental health, it’s a looming theme, as is the communal processing of grief for the late frontman they all knew and loved.
“There's a routine that you get used to when you're going on tour and off tour together over months and years,” Brian explains. “You’re on top of each other for 24 hours a day. You presume you know exactly how each of you are doing. And when you’re off tour, decompressing from each other, it feels like there’s no need to catch up because it won’t be so long until we’re back together for the next chunk.
“Nowadays, we talk to each other a lot more. On a professional level, with everything we’ve been doing, we’ve needed to be that bit more focused than we were before. But on a personal level, too, we check in on each other a little more than we used to.”
With that in mind, the future is unwritten for The Black Dahlia Murder. Brian is reflective on how important this pivotal moment in time will be, stressing the passage of time always changes one’s perspective on life’s milestones, and teasing that perhaps the reconfigured line-up will make an 11th – or 14th – album so revolutionary that Servitude will seem “laughable” in comparison. For now, though, they’re just happy to have made something that honours the legacy of the band while clearing the road for them to fight another day.
“How proud would Trevor be to see us endure as we have?” Brian ponders. “I’d preface my answer by saying that people are multi-faceted and can want many different things. Sometimes you only know a portion of someone. But I know that the friend that I made music with for 20 years would be so proud of this album.
“There was a point where our goal was just to have it exist. But now it’s about getting back to the same goal that we’ve always had: getting these songs in front of people and rocking their asses. That’s the closest thing to a religious experience that we’ve ever felt.”
Servitude is released on September 27 via Metal Blade
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