When a musician tells you, “I don’t enjoy communicating with people. I like to be left alone a lot,” it’s fair to expect the conversation will be short and not-so-sweet.
Black Anvil frontman Paul Delaney, however, isn’t one to meet anyone’s expectations. He’d much rather subvert them.
Most music fans familiar with New York’s Black Anvil simply call them a black-metal band. But, 15 years after forming the project with his pals from hardcore band Kill Your Idols, vocalist/bassist Delaney’s goal continues to be surprising listeners, his band mates — and even himself.
As he told New Noise before the November release of Black Anvil’s fifth record, Regenesis, telling a new story on each record is what fuels the fire in Delaney. He also told us about the story behind the making of the record, most notably how close he came to throwing in the towel as a musician altogether.
The reason why? A long break from playing music, due to COVID, wreaked havoc on his vocal cords and freaked out the rugged vet who so enjoys inflicting terror on audiences.
“I pulled through, very luckily,” he revealed.
Black Anvil and their hordes of friends, fans and family members let out a collective breath of relief when the band shouldered through a long tour last year. They exhaled again after the band quickly announced another one, with Enslaved and Insomnium, that starts in two months.
Regenesis surprised black-metal fans with a whole new approach to the sound — most significantly, one that’s far more stripped-down than more recent Black Anvil material. Even more surprising for us at New Noise, the supposedly antisocial Delaney spent 75 minutes talking with us about everything under the moon.
Are you doing any writing these days?
No. I’m done writing music for a while. I finished this record, and now the tank is empty.
[Black Anvil] were supposed to record [Regenesis] in 2020. But, you know, bad shit happened. A few friends’ bands were sneaking into studios and trying to bust shit out, but we were, like, “Fuck this, man. Let’s sit back and wait.”
In that time, I was writing shit and sending it to people. A friend of mine took the bait, and we wrote a record. I just did it on GarageBand. So after that and [Regenesis,] I … don’t have to worry about writing for a while.
The creation of Regenesis had more challenges than just writing, right?
Yeah, it did. I mean, First World problems, [but] I had it written for so long and [was] sitting on it for so long, and we didn’t recording until August 2021. Now it’s coming out November 4, 2022. It’s a lot of waiting and sitting and thinking about too much.
Being an artist, the lockdowns must’ve been especially hard, because there’s so much going on in your head all the time.
Yeah. It was strange. Also, I got very comfortable (speaking for myself and maybe a couple of guys in the band too) [during that] couple years off. It was a much-needed break. Granted, I’d much rather do that on my own accord than what we all had to deal with — and some of us are still dealing with in this shitty world. But I enjoyed the downtime a little too much, maybe.
Does it ever concern you how, when you settle into non-band routines, they might hook you and lure you out of music altogether?
It’s definitely a huge possibility. I don’t think I would 100 percent let it [though]. We [played] one week with Immolation in March [2022], and it felt like an eternity. But it was also so great to be with them again. I dread right up to the moment, and then, when the moment’s there, it’s smooth sailing. I miss the little comforts that I’ve buried myself into, because I’m just not used to it. And I got used to it, and it was very peaceful. And I usually don’t have much peace in my life.
[Laughter.]
So it was nice to just have a couple of years off from life.
Do you look back on the COVID period and wish you had written more, or is it a matter of you writing only when your muse comes?
The latter. It’s gotta come naturally or else you’re just forcing it. And even when it does come naturally, there are so many days — and I’m sure this is with most artists — where you sit down and have a plan, and all day you plan to pick up a guitar or maybe pen and paper, and you just have nothing. [Sighs.] It sucks to have to say, “Wasted day,” but at the same time, you really can’t force creativity. You’re at the mercy of it.
Writing this record, I felt like that many times. (We’re all so tightly knit, I speak for all three of us; whenever I say, “I,” I’m usually speaking universally for the camp.) Creativity is pretty challenging. There’s days when I can’t stop [writing], and then there are periods when I have absolutely nothing.
“Depressing” is an extreme word … it’s definitely quite challenging. I feel like I’m letting myself down. I’m not living up to this expectation of myself. And that sets something else off, and then you have to wait for this moment [of inspiration] when you’re not expecting it, and something cool happens. And that’s with everything [in life], almost.
The word “process” is so overused now, and it’s a dull word too, but did you take any different steps this time around with the recording of Regenesis?
Yes. Regenesis [marks] the second time we’ve recorded two consecutive albums in the same studio [Menegroth, the Thousand Caves] with the same person [Colin Marston]. Our first two records were with the same engineer [“General” George Fullan] but in different locations.
Our recording process was pretty streamlined. We tracked in Queens, New York, and we sent it to [Uppsala] Sweden to get it mixed and mastered by Tore Stjerna at Necromorbus Studio], which was just great.
Writing-wise, it’s become so much easier to write at home. I can send a demo out, and it feels complete — even before everyone puts their own little twists on it. [Laughs.]
After I got obsessed with 2008’s Time Insults the Mind, I’ve gotten the sense with each passing record that you and your band mates challenge yourselves to do something Black Anvil didn’t do before. Does that apply to Regenesis, and if so, do you have a specific example of what you did differently this time?
It does, actually. Very interesting question.
Time Insults the Mind was pretty much myself, [drummer] Raeph [Glicken] and Gary [Bennett] excited to be in a new band together. We were in a band called Kill Your Idols for years and parted ways and did a bunch of different shit. [Time Insults the Mind] was the first time the three of us got back in a room to do something together in quite a long time. It was just one song per rehearsal, and we were done. Eight practices, and we had a record. Relapse picked it up and signed us for another one.
The second record [2010’s Triumverate] required more focus, but we were still as hungry as we were with the first record. So that was [us] throwing ideas at each other. Violently throwing ideas at each other. [Laughs.] The third record [2014’s Hail Death] was, “OK, now this is important, and we have to grow.”
Every record you put out should be your best. Not to discredit what’s been done, but it should be your hardest work. And that third record was exactly that: We treaded new ground, and it worked out to, like, 70 minutes. There’s a lot going on there, and it was fun to not have limitations and to just do something completely liberating. Not have to worry about what someone was going to think. [We said to each other,] “Let’s just start doing our own thing.”
That grew into [2017’s] As Was, [for] which we took what we did with Hail Death to a whole different level and treaded new territory. I had never sang like that before. Challenging ourselves is always motivating. Our own past has more influence [on us] than picking up a new record by this band or that band, or any shit I’ve been listening to for a thousand years. I always dig back into what we’ve done and the choices we made here and there.
Come [Regenesis] — and to get to the point of your question — we wondered how we could strip it back and not put out [another] hour-plus opus with layers and layers. How do we strip it down and take it down a few notches but also surpass what we’ve done in the past? How do we keep it completely new and fresh and renew ourselves? That ties into the title of the album. We try to be conscious while we write, while also being creative and not overthinking it too much. Not trying to fit a square peg into a round circle.
So, we tried to trim the fat and still push forward with our creative aspect. That was the challenge here, and I personally think we succeeded with it.
You have an impeccable sense of melody, and create catchy songs despite your brutal sound. With Regenesis, was that something you tried to maintain, get away from — or am I totally wrong?
I think you’re totally right. I’ve always thought — and this separates us from what people like to compare us to … when the [term] “black metal” is thrown out there, especially with us, it doesn’t actually fit what people think it means. Which automatically makes me laugh, because I don’t give a fuck what people think we are.
[Laughter.]
I try not to be ignorant, but people drag this ignorance out … wow, I totally got angry and lost my train of thought.
We were talking about melody and …
Yes, melody. I think songwriting is really important. And I think telling a story in a song and having a perfect climax and bringing it back down to completion is really important. I’m huge on just sitting there and thinking about every little step of the way, and how to only achieve that in 11 or 12 songs, say, where you don’t want to do the same thing all the time. It always verse, chorus, verse. How do you respect typical song structure but also not have to be locked into it?
Telling a story, even if it doesn’t resolve in a generic way, is really something that I’ll overly analyze. Even widening the spectrum and looking at the whole album from Track 1 to Track 11 or 12 — I don’t even know how many fucking song are on this record anymore … it’s like when you’re looking at your phone and the photo album, and you tweet the screen and, instead of nine little squares on the screen, you have maybe five of them. Weird analogy, but trying to step back and look at the whole thing and seeing if the record, from beginning to end, tells one whole story, as each individual song would, is something I’ve put a lot of thought into. I want an album to flow just as a song would.
Are you able to disclose or provide any details about the story this record tells?
Oh yeah. And, when I say “story,” I’m talking lyrically and musically. With [As Was,] we had some heavy, actual deaths of people in 2014 that led up to that record. There’s a lot of loss on that record. It wasn’t named to praise death, like all these fucking people like to pretend it was. It was more just the reality of our lives. The concept for As Was was what happens after death, breaking the chains of your human self.
Lyrically and concept-wise, the name Regenesis came up via Raeph. Like, “What do we do after [As Was]?” Doing some research and thinking, the idea of a labyrinth sort of came up two or three times and snowballed into this idea of renewal and rebirth and the journey to this process. We wondered, “Is there even a result? Is there even a center to this labyrinth that we’re all journeying in? Is there even anything to achieve or escape from?” A whole big, nihilistic can of worms.
Once you had the idea and then the writing of the record complete, how did the production go?
We didn’t even rehearse this album as a full band before we went into the studio, because of COVID.
No way.
Yeah. It was strange. In the rehearsal studio, I played guitar along with Jeremy [Sosville] to some songs, with two guitars, just to hear what it’d sound like. It was cool, it sounded like different songs, but I also had the bass to focus on. So Jeremy and I played the guitars — luckily, he took the lion’s share — and I came in and filled up all the other space. We struggled and busted ass and made it happen. We also recorded it almost exactly as it was demoed.
The process was easy. The challenge was doing it a couple of years after not rehearsing it regularly. We saw how unprepared we were — I was. I had such a hard time singing, especially during “overtime,” extra days [of recording]. My voice was not where I thought it was, where it should’ve been. In the end, when I listen to [Regenesis], I can’t hear how bad I struggled. But it was really brutal for me. I was signing in the rehearsal space to a PA, and it wasn’t the same. The muscle memory just wasn’t there.
We felt beat-up during this process. It was more than we anticipated, physically and mentally.
Did any of the symptoms you just mentioned scare you at any point?
Yeah. One hundred percent. The first day, for example, I wasn’t even done with the first song and thought I was over. Like, “Oh, fuck.” So we split it up: did a couple of songs on guitar, then switched over to vocals. Worked on one thing for a couple of hours so I could give myself a break. But we soared through a lot of shit, and vocals were long days.
I have a close friend who’s a speech pathologist. We were [talking,] and she wanted to pick my brain about screaming. I was like, “You want to hear screaming from a totally unprofessional point of view?”
[Laughter.]
She gave me a few screaming exercises that weren’t able to get me back on par right away. But at the 11th hour, I was able to deliver. I pulled through, very luckily.
I’m glad you did.
Thanks. It was defeating, because I thought, “Fuck, how am I going to do this on a five-week tour? Can I do this? Did I lose it? Is Raeph tired?” And I realized Raeph ran the equivalent of a double marathon, playing for three days straight. So, we didn’t lose it. We just needed to beat ourselves up quite a bit.
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“Sometimes I … think I could get run over by a car and leave a mangled corpse on the street no different than a bug on a windshield. It humbles me.” -Paul Delaney
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Sounds like you had a really good story to tell with this record, as you alluded to earlier, this time around.
Yeah. You know, we have a really deep relationship. I met Raeph in 1996, and Immolation has a hand in [Black Anvil,] where we are today. I was in a [hardcore] band [Downlow] with Alex Hernandez, who was in a grindcore band called Disassociate and a band from Queens called Fallen Christ. He quit all three bands to join Immolation in ’95 or ’96, right after their second record [Here in After] came out. I met Raeph, and he joined our band.
It was completely bizarre to go from this guy who could obviously drum for Immolation to a guy with a three-piece, little Gene Krupa drum set.
[Laugher.]
But meeting Raeph at that age, he became this big brother. He completely molded me into who I am today. It all goes back to him. He’s the most important person in my life, musically and altogether. Then Gary and I start playing music together and called Raeph back. It’s this winding, dual-snake-like thing of us weaving in and out of each other’s lives.
Gary hasn’t been a full part of the band since 2014/2015. That’s when he wasn’t able to tour, and we were. But he’s still been on every release, with the exception of the new one. And there was even a conversation about him coming down and laying down some guitar, since we were short-staffed, so to speak. And Jeremy’s been with us for almost 10 years now, and he’s a brother as well.
So this relationship of what we have together is more important than the band, actually. Looking back on each album as this period of time in our lives is something I do pretty often. Not some weird “looking back at the glory days,” but appreciating what we did.
One last detail about Regenesis that really strikes me: It’s uncommon for a metal band to end their record on as positive a note as you did, in this case with the title track, which suggests rebirth. A lot of bands tend to start with that theme instead of end with it.
That’s an interesting one, because it’s not a very positive album. The prognosis is quite negative.
[Laughter.]
It’s positive in the sense that there’s so much love put into it, but the themes that we’re discussing are … still exploring death and this mundane, day-to-day life that we’re in. There’s always been this slight spiritual aspect and toying with it and working with elements to create and write music.
Especially in the last few years, I’m always asking myself, “What’s the point? We’re trying to achieve something we won’t complete till we’re dead.” For the answer to the greatest question, you have to die. I’m not looking to do that anytime soon. I like my life and am enjoying it. Life is challenging.
A lot of that comes out in these songs — I don’t want to say wanting to give up, but questioning why the world is the way it is. For centuries, no one’s been able to figure out why this consciousness we have destroys us. We just work and live. As I get older, it’s strange: I don’t know what I enjoy. I feel removed. So, lyrically and conceptually, coming to terms with what this album is about, [Regenesis] is a hard pill to swallow.
What has your own spiritual development looked like from album to album?
Starting off was very exciting to do this together. I don’t want to say our lyrics were ever tongue-in-cheek — none of us are that type; Raeph is one of the most serious guys you’ll ever encounter — but we all grew up religious in the sense that we were told what we had to do. Raeph went to a yeshiva and got kicked out of a Hebrew school. He’s got a wild story.
I grew up loosely Catholic, same with Gary and Jeremy. As I got older, I started listening to Mercyful Fate and questioning [what I was told]. I got left back a year in school in Michigan for wearing a Samhain shirt. I didn’t want to change the shirt in class; a priest told me I had to turn it inside-out. It put me on the spot, and I left the school. I didn’t tell my mom until she figured out that I wasn’t going. But when I told her what I did, she had my back, which was actually cool.
Diving into heavy metal and black metal deeper, and studying books and different religions, it — for me — is pretty hard to subscribe to one thing. But, at the same time, it’s very easy for me to step back and have respect and curiosity about religion. Then again, sometimes I snap out of it and think I could get run over by a car and leave a mangled corpse on the street no different than a bug on a windshield. It humbles me.
Taking inspiration from texts has always been in the lyrics. We don’t subscribe to Satanism. These days, I feel like a nihilist — but I don’t want to. I want to enjoy things.
As a musician who helped blaze the trail for black metal in the U.S., are you enjoying its resurgence or are you skeptical?
I’m more of a skeptic. We don’t fit into any cliques. We never have. Our band associations are more based on our long friendships with musicians here in New York and around the world, at this point. We never subscribed to: “All right, we started this band, so now I’m going to hang out at this venue with these people who just moved to New York and like black metal or underground heavy metal.”
I never looked into “the scene.” We have tons of friends and bands we play alongside, so we’ve never been isolated. But I’ve never felt like we fit into a box. Also, black metal in the United States has shed its skin so many times. It was cool for a minute, then it wasn’t cool, and it was cool for a minute, then Watain puts out The Wild Hunt and people didn’t understand it. (I don’t know what people expected; it was a black-metal band putting out a black-metal record.)
People forget or move on. It’s always like that. [Black metal] seems to be having a resurgence now, thanks to bands like Hulder. I’m glad there’s a lot of it happening in the United States, but I don’t know where or how we fit into it — and I’m sort of glad we might not. When you fit into something like that, there’s always limitations and expectations.
I would play alongside something that’s not remotely black or death metal if the opportunity is something I could benefit off. Why put a ceiling on something like this? We do what we do, and that is enough for the title of “black metal” for us. Our music is not catered to a specific black-metal diagram.
You’ve mentioned gratitude a few times. Are you an instinctually thankful person or do you have to constantly remind yourself to be one?
I think it’s just part of how I was raised. I haven’t even realized that, in this discussion we’re having, I’ve come across as grateful.
Well, you’re clearly humble, and that would seem advantageous for a band that wants to have a long career.
Yeah. I think being humble is important — because there’s always something that could come around to humble you, and that should be avoided at all costs. [Laughs.]
It doesn’t mean you have to be the most friendly human being. I’m actually not the most friendly human being; I can be a dick sometimes. I don’t always enjoy talking to people, having to put it on. I don’t enjoy communicating with people. I like to be left alone a lot. I realize less is more. Everything in the band feel like this. But that also doesn’t mean you have to walk around with a scowl on your face.
A conversation like this, I completely appreciate. It’s very cool.
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“For the answer to the greatest question, you have to die.”
-Paul Delaney
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It’s always a highlight of my day when I get to talk to a musician like you. Black Anvil hooked me when I saw you at the Roxy in Hollywood in September 2014 with Skeletonwitch. You played second on a bill with four bands but stole the show with the huge blast of energy and excitement you brought to the stage.
Thank you.
It’s been eight years since that show. What’s changed in terms of your live performance, whether it be song selection, intros, guitar solos, etc.?
Some things change but some things don’t. I don’t like to talk in between songs. This is something that has its ups and down. I mean, listen to my voice. I sound like some thug guido.
[Laughter.]
So, I like to let the music speak. But we’ve always played a set that intertwines and has zero breaks. We segue so that we start and stop [the] set with [no dead space] in between. Very minimal talking. I think it’s important for us to function like that.
Being realistic about our song selection … I’m pushing to play mostly new stuff, because we’re not really a legacy band. Maybe that’s just in my head, but we don’t have the “Master of Puppets” that people want to hear. I feel like being so proud of your new release is something you should bask in. We have to give our best 30 minutes. The most recent representation of yourself is what you should put out there.
Finding ways to tie everything together and tell a story live and seamlessly play six to seven songs back to back without stopping and keeping people’s attention is a challenge. It’s like chess. You have to carefully figure it out.
Even when you go out for another Regenesis tour, you’ll still be making tweaks, right?
Yeah. Another contributing factor is we still haven’t played these songs in a room with four people. When we played [another tour] with Immolation back in March, we played two new songs. It was great to feel what those felt like live, the first time. We had a dear friend from the Kill Your Idols camp filling in for those shows.
A week or two into a tour, we get into it. There’s a lot of improv and feeling things out and doing cool shit. Turning segues from one idea into the next casually. It’s like a game of telephone: We’ll have an idea and try to have fun while we’re playing and keep some wiggle room.
Were you nervous at all to play with a new band member?
Well, in this case, it was someone that I’ve spent time playing with. There was a side project called Death Cycle that Michael [DeLorenzo] and I spent some time playing together in. He replaced me in Kill Your Idols on bass when I had to step down. I even filled in on guitar for a European tour with the lineup that continued without me. So he’s someone I’ve known for decades and consider a brother.
I didn’t know Jeremy at all. Raeph said, “I’m going to bring in this guy, let’s try it out.” And this was when we were still a three-piece. We just needed someone to fill in for Gary. And it just worked out. He is a beast of a guitar player. It’s obvious if you listen to any of our records. At that point, we were like, “Man, we should be a four-piece. We could be so much more.”
I’m a very limited musician. I have my box, but I scrape every corner of that box. I use that as my inspiration. “I know this is what I can do. So let’s try to do as much differently as I can in that box as possible.”
In this case, it was very important to play those shows with Mike in March. Moving forward is another very old friend, [second guitarist Alex Volonino], a new guy from the hardcore-punk scene. We’d didn’t totally deviate and find some guy off Craigslist. He’s been in a few bands and has been our friend for a really long time.
We’re going to take it as it comes, but we’re very happy to have him onboard. He’s like part of the family. It’s like a new chapter.
