Modern Death Metal Confronting a Harsh Reality

- Tekst av Even Knudsen 4. desember 2011 -

 

 

Until Living On The Razor’s Edge unexpectedly arrived in my mailbox, the German band DYING HUMANITY had completely escaped my radar. Since then, the album has become one of the most frequently played releases in my home this autumn, and I recently awarded it a strong 9 out of 10 in my review, available elsewhere on ArcticMetal.no. Discoveries of this caliber naturally spark curiosity, prompting a closer look at the musicians behind the music. That led me to guitarist Kai Seidel, with whom I sat down for a conversation. I opened by congratulating him on the new release and asking how satisfied the band is with the final outcome.

 

Hi Even, thanks for the compliment — we truly appreciate it. Overall, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, so it seems we’ve done a solid job. It feels great to see all the hard work we put into this being recognized, and it definitely motivates us to keep pushing forward.

Dying Humanity was completely new to me until I received this album, but as it turns out, you already had a couple of releases under your belt before this one. To start off, could you give us a brief introduction to the band’s history up to this point?

Dying Humanity was formed in 2006. Back then, the band consisted of three members, and together we wrote the first songs that would later appear on the demo The Origin of Dying Humanity. In the meantime, Hendrik Wetzel (bass) and Ken Uhlig (guitar) joined the lineup, and we began playing our first live shows. By the end of 2006, we had enough material to record our debut full‑length, and with that material we secured our first record deal, signed in early 2007. Later that year, Fallen Paradise was released through Restrain Records, followed by a string of concerts and festival appearances.

At the end of 2008, we began working on our second album. Unfortunately, our label went bankrupt during this period, leaving us on our own. In March 2009, we completed the recording of Fragments of an Incomplete Puzzle, which hit stores on July 5 the same year, distributed by Maintain Records. Sadly, we had to end our collaboration with that label as well due to personal issues with the owner, and once again we found ourselves without support.

In the spring of 2010, we played 21 shows on our self‑organized “Deadly Spring ANTI:Tour.” For the rest of the year, we kept live activity to a minimum to focus on writing our new album, Living on the Razor’s Edge. In February this year, we entered Soundlodge Studio with producer Jörg Uken, and after three months the recording was complete. During this time, we also signed a new deal with our current label, Bastardized Recordings. Living on the Razor’s Edge has now been in stores for a few days.

Your music is a fairly complex form of death metal, but there are also punchy thrash elements and melodic passages woven in. How would you describe your sound, and which bands have influenced you into becoming the band you are today? We like to describe ourselves as a modern death metal band. Some people label us as deathcore, but we really don’t understand how they arrive at that conclusion — and we’re not fond of the term either. Personally, I’m into Iron Maiden, Death, Metallica, and a whole range of old‑school bands. While they’ve certainly influenced us, we’re very conscious about not copying them when writing our own material. Authenticity is extremely important to us.

What would you say is the biggest difference between Living on the Razor’s Edge and your previous releases? This is the first time we’ve turned our ideas into a concept album. While our earlier releases were collections of individual songs, this time there’s a clear narrative thread running through the entire record. Each track connects to the others.

The guitar work on this album really stands out — especially the harmonies and solos. It sounds like you put a lot of effort into that aspect. Thank you, I’m really glad you noticed. I put an enormous amount of work into the guitar parts this time. We’re perfectionists by nature, and that mindset drove us throughout the writing process. Even during the recording sessions, we kept tweaking and improving details. The track Clarity of Mind is a good example — while recording it, I spontaneously suggested reusing the melody line from the beginning of Blinded.

The album is highly varied, offering everything from technical brutality to melodic passages and quiet acoustic sections. Tell us a bit about the composing and arranging process. Since Living on the Razor’s Edge is a concept album, we tried to reflect the emotions the main character experiences throughout the story. When writing the guitar parts, I constantly had this woman’s journey in mind. The darker parts of the story, for example, correspond to the quiet, melancholic sections on the album. I also made sure to give the bass enough space to create contrast with the heavier moments. Our goal was to pull the listener through the different moods of the narrative.

How do you recreate these moods live? Will you include the acoustic parts on stage, or will the focus be on the heavier material? It’s always a challenge to impress an audience live. We want to deliver a proper show for our fans, so we try to recreate all the moods as faithfully as possible and wrap them in a visually fitting presentation. And yes — the acoustic parts will absolutely be played live. It’s a new challenge for us, but we believe fans experience 50 percent of a concert through their ears and the other 50 percent through their eyes. 

If you had to choose a favorite track from the album, which would it be and why? I don’t have a specific favorite, because I’ve worked hard to perfect each individual song. In my opinion, every track has its own unique qualities, but no clear favorite has emerged yet. The other band members feel the same way, which makes it difficult to decide which songs to include in our live set. Ideally, we’d love to play the entire Living on the Razor’s Edge album live.

As we’ve already touched on, this is a concept album — and the story deals with themes not typically associated with death metal. Tell us about the concept and how you developed the storyline. We wanted to tell a story that could have been taken from real life. We didn’t want anything trivial or unrealistic that listeners couldn’t relate to. This way, we could shed light on some of the injustices that exist in the real world. The story begins in the teenage years of the main character, a girl raised in a protective family. After her mother dies, everything changes dramatically. She falls into a bad environment, loses control, and lives life on the edge. She meets the wrong man, gets involved with drugs, and is eventually rejected by her own father. The story ends tragically when she gives birth to a child. 

Did you enjoy the process of creating a concept album, and is it something you might consider for future releases? Making a concept album is much harder than making a regular one, but the extra effort also fueled our enthusiasm. Hearing the final result, and receiving so much positive feedback, was incredibly rewarding. We’re always looking for new challenges, but it’s too early to say whether the next release will also be a concept album. We simply haven’t planned that far ahead.

The album is released through Bastardized Records, with Massacre Records handling distribution. What are your commercial expectations? Our main goal is to get the album distributed to every corner of the world, and with these two companies behind us, we believe we have a good chance of achieving that.

Are there any concrete touring plans to promote the album? Unfortunately, nothing concrete yet, but we’re definitely looking for a good opportunity to join a tour as a support act.

….And when will we finally get to see Dying Humanity on Norwegian soil? We certainly hope it will happen soon. We’ve never played in Norway before and are still relatively unknown there, but we would love to come and win over the Norwegian metal audience.

 

With that, we thank Kai and Dying Humanity for their time. Until they eventually appear on a Norwegian stage, we strongly recommend all fans of death metal and extreme metal to check out Living on the Razor’s Edge, it’s truly a standout release.