“Here comes the pain!/ It’s not hard to convince oneself that our afflictions are the worst of all worlds … And it is not by burning the forests/ Or flooding the lands with your tears/ That you will find consolation/ It is not by force that one can ease the worst kind of pain … Here comes the end! No one will help you to find your progeny.”
Those profound and terrifying lyrics are featured on “Scale of Sorrows,” one of the new songs by tech-death metal band Gorod. They’re a solid example of how Julien “Nutz” Deyres, vocalist for the French band, doesn’t mince words when he’s got something to say. These days, like many others, he’s obsessing over whether environmental collapse will lead to apocalypse for mankind—and, if so, when.
“Happiness appears to belong to those with short memories,” Deyres quips on the title track to the band’s latest album, The Orb (Base Productions). “We are always repeating the same history in the end.”
Gorod are one of a growing number of heavy metal bands shifting their song lyrics and album subject matter to issues of climate change and other environmental concerns. They’re making a strong case that the underground metal, punk, and hardcore community is addressing those issues in their art more so than any other music genre.
We spoke with Deyres—who works as a researcher at a university—while his tech death metal band were powering up for a month-long tour of the U.S. The trek ends Saturday in Richmond, Virginia—but with Gorod’s new record having come out just over four weeks ago, more legs will surely be added to further promote The Orb.
“I know the topics (we deal with) aren’t that joyful or funny, but we’re pretty fun dudes,” Deyres admits to New Noise in a recent conversation. “We want our music to be taken seriously—but not too much. We are talking about serious topics, and we are making serious music, but sometimes it’s good to just take it easy because we are just human beings.”
Gorod also include guitarists Mathieu Pascal and Nicolas Alberny, bassist Benoit Claus, and drummer Karol Diers. As the musicians are strewn across multiple cities, getting together for band practice is an arduous task that requires Deyres to drive three hours. And because he doesn’t do video conferencing with the band, he wrote music and notes on sheets of paper and mailed them to his band mates.
Even though Gorod’s members didn’t get together or rehearse all that much for The Orb, Deyres says he’s very proud of the chances they took during the writing and recording of the album. The record finds Deyres adding clean vocals to the band’s repertoire for the first time. They also tried working without blast beats—something most other tech death bands would be too scared to do—and giving some new harmonies and suspended chords a shot.
Deyres was confident to the point of giddiness that Gorod’s gamble to experiment paid off. He picked “Chrematheism,” the first track on the album but the last one recorded for it, as the song that best epitomizes how The Orb came together. Deyres chuckled that the creation of that track reflects his penchant for procrastination.
“I’m a procrastinator, so we’re always rushing around the time of deadline,” he confesses. “Most of our songs have been made that way.”
Deyres further says “Chrematheism,” which refers to the worship of inanimate objects as holy, also encapsulates the underlying social critique in the Gorod canon.
“Aldous Huxley wrote about that concept (idolizing objects) a lot, and for this album, I got into his way of thinking,” Deyres reveals. “Look at this. (He holds up his cellphone.) We made these things our gods.”
All in all, “This is the most versatile album we’ve ever put out,” Deyres concludes.
