Deicide: No Rest For The Wicked
The new DEICIDE album Banished By Sin is a suitably blasphemous collection of songs from the Florida death metal masters and sees the band reenergised and sounding as razor sharp and more focussed than they have done in years. To celebrate the release of the album, we caught up with mainman Glen Benton to hear all about Banished By Sin and all things DEICIDE.
We kick things off with Glen stating how happy he is with the new record. “We just finally got everything right for a change!” And the reason why this new album marks the longest gap between DEICIDE albums. “Well, the pandemic had a lot to do with it, but it put us to work. We started working on things but we didn’t have a record company to deal with, so we just wrote the record on our own timeframe and the whole recording process went smoothly.”
On a suitably more blasphemous tip, the band’s music videos for Banished By Sin album tracks Sever The Tongue and Bury The Cross… With Your Christ are Satanic to the core and Glen enthused about them and what’s to come! “We’ve still got one more to come and it’s the one that’s gonna get everybody’s attention, it’s gonna leave your mouth hanging open!”
With that blasphemous ethos still as strong , Glen revealed he still gets shit from certain groups of people about DEICIDE‘s music and lyrics. “Yeah, I still get that but I don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks.”
Glen then talks about the recent DEICIDE performance at the Metal & Beer Fest in Philadelphia where the band played a special Deicide, Legion and Once Upon The Cross set. “We had a good time. It was a long set, 19 songs or something like that. It was fun on every level.” When asked if they played any other material and he answers “we dropped Homage For Satan and Scars Of The Crucifix at the end,” and as for the new material, he says “we’re holding off on that for the Metalfest in Milwaukee and the other dates. I think we’ll play some of the songs off there definitely.”
We then turn the conversation back to Banished By Sin, and Glen is very happy with how the album has been received so far. “People are just losing their shit over the new album and I can’t wait for everybody to hear the record from start to finish!” We then discussed the sensationalism and myth making about DEICIDE by the press, particularly in the UK, and Glen just laughs. “It was comical, stupid shit back then just as much as it is now!”
Glen then went on to rally at cancel culture and how Deicide are perceived today. “I think enough people are sick of this whole cancel culture but it still keeps me in business, man. I don’t think as many people buy into it as the media wants you to believe. I don’t let anybody make my mind up for me, I do this for my benefit, nobody else’s.”
With DEICIDE being active as a band for almost forty years, Glen was asked about their longevity and was refreshingly honest on his answer! “I sincerely do not have an answer for you. I don’t know how I’m still doing this shit at my age and why I’m still doing it or how it’s even possible but I am thankful and very appreciative that I’m still doing it. I think I got a lot of dead friends that are pushing for me on the other side, laughing the whole way along, just keeping me doing this”.
Glen then went onto state that he feel the same adrenaline when is he onstage with DEICIDE as he always has. “You go out there, like this past weekend and you break into Once Upon The Cross and the pandemonium that breaks out. That first fifteen feet of the front of the stage, that’s bananas, it’s fun and the closer I am to the crowd the better!”
Glen then discusses the process of further DEICIDE recordings, both new and old as he now has access to his own recording facilities. “I have my own studio set up for future projects, and I have the capabilities now in case I moved to a different area but I prefer to play and rehearse in person. He went onto reveal some information that will excite any hardcore DEICIDE fan. “I recently started going through all my archive cassettes for early practices and stuff, the first time we ever played together, I’ve got that on cassette and I’m going to bounce all that stuff into digital format, so I can have it that as bonus things, so it can give fans an idea of what it sounded like back in 1987. It’s barbaric. It’s rough, man. We used to record everything. We’d have a boom box, and we would record everything out there and I would use those cassettes to write lyrics to that. I got all that stuff saved.”
We finish off this chat about the past, present and future of DEICIDE with Glen telling us about those early days. “Just getting from one day to the next was a challenge back then. I’m one of those people who are constantly looking forward to the future, so I try not to backpedal into the past all that much but I mean, we had our moments man!”
Banished By Sin is out now via Reigning Phoenix Music.
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