The Dead interview

The Dead are a death/doom metal band from Brisbane, Austrlia. They have been around a decade and have released 2 albums and an EP. I heard them first when my friend Kunal Choksi released their second album ‘Ritual Executions’ on his label Diabolical conquest (now Transcending Obscurity)

Last month they released their third album ‘Deathsteps to Oblivion’. I spoke to their guitarist Adam Keleher about the album, it’s recording process and their plans for the coming year.

“It’s definitely a big relief to finally have this out.” said Adam Keleher about their album being released. “Recording had finished by late 2011 and that in itself had dragged on for that whole year. A lot of work had gone into it and we were confident that we had created something unique and worth listening to so it felt like we had unfinished business until it was out there.”

“Overall we wanted an album that sounded cohesive and not a random collection of songs.That was already worked out very early on when we had a bunch of ideas that seemed to be coming from the same place yet were strong and individual in their own right.” said Adam about how the album compared to their previous album ‘Ritual Executions’. “On the surface the big difference is ‘Deathsteps to Oblivion’ has predominantly slow and mid paced songs with only two minutes of fast blasting in total.

The recording of the album was affected by the floods that hit Brisbane in 2011. “It was during recording that the flood hit and things were delayed for a while. This was our first time recording everything ourselves so there was a lot of learning going on throughout.” said Adam about the recording process for the album. The band took a different approach to recording this time around. “All of our previous releases were essentially recorded live with a few overdubs for vocals and solos. For those recordings we had the songs worked out in rehearsal and had usually played them live too then we would spend a day or two recording and another day for mixing. This one was built from the ground up starting with drums and the songs only in a basic skeleton form. It was then built on and refined until we were happy with it.”

‘Ritual Executions’ was the first release of Indian label, Diabolical Conquest (now Transcending Obscurity). “Kunal, the head of the label, had positively and insightfully reviewed all of our releases including a badly mixed version of ‘Ritual Executions’ that we had put out ourselves. He approached us about making ‘Ritual Executions’ the first release on his new label Diabolical Conquest. We jumped at the chance of a proper release which also gave us a reason to remix the album and include a proper CD booklet with lyrics and additional art.” said Adam describing how the band got signed to a record label from India.

“Brisbane has always had a healthy band scene with plenty of bands and musicians around.” said Adam Keleher about the music scene in their city. Vocalist Mike Yee recommends we check out Dead Letter Opener, Lustration and Laceration Mantra.

“No official plans for 2015 at this stage.” said Adam about what the coming year holds for the band. “We recently played our first show in a long time and it was good to brush off the cobwebs and get out again. So we want to keep that going and help promote ‘Deathsteps to Oblivion’ now that it is out. Hopefully we will start recording again before the end of 2015. It’s too early to accurately predict when that will happen as we are still in riff collection mode.”

Listen to ‘Deathsteps to Oblivion‘ below