L.A. metallers Anubis are proudly carving their own path with a blood-pumping blend of lofty power metal and high-octane thrash. The hybrid metal band’s latest single “The Great Divide” is out November 15.
Watch the lyric video for “The Great Divide” below:
Anubis are a rising force in the Los Angeles metal scene. Founded in 2018, the band is comprised of bassist and vocalist Devin Reiche, guitarists Justin Escamilla and Eleazar Llerenas, and drummer Zed Amarin.
“The Great Divide” is the first song written by then-incoming guitarist Justin Escamilla. With hard-hitting guitar solos, aggressive drums, visceral lyrics, and Reiche’s impressive vocal range, Anubis’ diverse metal influences assemble to create a distinct and unforgettable track on “The Great Divide.”
Featuring veterans of local and national/international metal bands Hatchet, Tower Guard, Delusional Fate, and Esodic, Anubis combine the speed and aggression of thrash metal bands like Megadeth, Testament, Havok with the twin guitar attack and soaring vocals of melodic metal like Helloween, Savatage, and Iron Maiden. After releasing their debut Ashes EP in 2019 and its self-titled follow-up in 2020, Anubis are preparing to take their brand of metal to all of California, the world, and beyond.
Read on for an interview with Anubis bassist and vocalist Devin Reiche below.
“The Great Divide” is the first song written by Justin as the band’s newest addition. How did Justin come to join Anubis and what does he bring to the band creatively in terms of his background and songwriting process?
I knew him from his old band Tower Guard. He’s actually someone I’d been after for this guitar spot for a while, but he always had boring-ass real life stuff going on. He joined after the previous line-up disintegrated during the pandemic and it was actually kind of a massive lifesaver. His absolute dedication and creative energy gave this band an almost complete rebirth. It wasn’t even like he was stepping into an existing band; it was like everything he touched was reinvented in a completely organic way.
With previous line-ups, I did essentially 100% of the writing, mostly because other members were either too focused on other bands to have any desire to contribute or were just on way too much of a different page musically. With these guys, the songwriting is pretty much as close to a perfect four-way collaboration as it’s probably possible to get. On our upcoming EP, every song was primarily written by a different member, and also features everyone’s creative fingerprints fairly prominently in one form or another.
With a name that draws heavily from popular Egyptian mythology, there’s obviously a strong fictive element to storytelling and lyricism in the band. Tell us about the “old sci-fi story” from the ‘90s that influenced “The Great Divide”?
The source material is called Star Control and it’s exploring a wide variety of alien cultures, and where they all fall on two sides of a galactic war. The particular race explored in this song are called the ‘Yehat’: a race of bird-like creatures who have evolutionarily split into two sub-species: one of whom leaves their planet and becomes a sect of weird, spiritualist space-hippies, the other remains to serve under an evil, warlike queen. Ultimately what ends the war between them is miscegenation in their royalty and leadership, and they gradually become one species again.
Obviously, I keep it somewhat vague, because if I went too far into those specifics it would probably sound too goofy to be metal, but hopefully, if any fans of super, super obscure ‘80s and ‘90s epicness end up hearing this they’ll know what’s up.
A lot of groups from across the metal spectrum, such as Manowar, Vektor, GWAR, Coheed & Cambria, Blind Guardian, and many more populate their songs with fictional characters and worlds. Do you feel that there’s a benefit from this type of abstraction? A sense of creative freedom or liberation, rather than drawing explicitly from personal experiences and real-world experiences? If yes/no, why?
As much as I love bands like Rhapsody and Twilight Force, I could never commit to their approach to lyrics with mine, where it’s entirely 100% fantasy-based. There’s too much real-world shit that I care about for that, and I would consider it a pretty serious creative limitation. At the same time though, things like Tolkien, Norse Mythology, Star Trek, and all that fucking shit is a pretty integral component of my personality. That’s why I don’t like the idea of nailing this band down either in genre or in lyrical or aesthetic themes. Complete and total creative freedom is too important to me.
The same applies musically as well. Our new drummer Zed is a straight-up death metal guy, which I absolutely love because to be totally honest, there are elements of death metal that I couldn’t live without in the long-term either, despite the fact that we’re typically lumped in as a power metal band.
I don’t know, man—I just love metal. Absolutely every single thing about it. There’s just so much amazing shit in it to be inspired by, and as far as I’m concerned none of it is off-limits.
The difficult question now: What are your Holy Grail Top 3 power metal/thrash records?
I don’t know that that’s actually all that difficult of a question:
Power:
- Blind Guardian – Nightfall in Middle Earth
- Gamma Ray – Land of the Free
- Iced Earth (yeah I know, it is what it is) – Burnt Offerings
Thrash:
- Metallica – Master of Puppets/Megadeth – Rust in Peace
- Testament – The Legacy
- Overkill – Years of Decay
Given the state of the world and the music industry over the last few years, what’s next for Anubis? What can fans expect for 2022 and beyond?
Well, something I’ve been pretty vocal about is my belief that the future of the industry is a regular stream of singles and small EPs, not full-length albums. I feel like the metal scene may be a bit lagging behind a bit in this regard but am pretty confident that it’ll pick up eventually (for example, Rhapsody of Fire released four or five singles at pretty regular intervals without yet dropping the album they’re from. Sabaton has done it too. I predict we’ll start seeing a lot more of this).
While I wouldn’t be opposed to doing a full-length, if the right record deal came along, until then this line-up is currently pumping out songs I consider incredibly strong faster than we can even keep up with, so I’d say fans can expect a lot of shit coming out on a much more regular basis.
They can also expect a much wider breadth of influences now that there’s a variety of creative voices for the first time. Our guitar player Eleazar brings a lot of more progressive influences like Nevermore, Death/Control Denied, Arch Enemy, etc., and our new drummer’s influences (which I already mentioned) have brought a completely new layer of depth to everything. Which is of course to say that we’re now a Tom MacDonald cover band. Check out our new single on World Star Hip-Hop and The Daily Wire.
Stream Anubis here.
Follow Anubis on Facebook and Instagram.
