A spotlight where musicians from bands can talk about their four favourite or influential albums of all time
Hails, heretics! I am David, founder and sole member of Ontario, Canada-based death metal band World Eaters. When Iโm not playing death metal (or working my day job), Iโm the low-end theorist in my pop/ rock outfit The Breaking English. I know itโs not particularly trve or kvlt for a death metal musician to also play in a band that jams out to Vanessa Carltonโs hit โA Thousand Milesโ, but tough deal. That song rips, and you havenโt seen music truly send someone until youโve played that song to a table of half a dozen wine-drunk moms. Poseurs, leave the hall.
Maybe, if Iโm a good boy, Carcassbomb will eventually let me talk more about The Breaking English. But right now Iโm not here to talk about covering early 2000โs one hit wonders, Iโm here to talk about death metal.
World Eaters started as an explicitly Bolt Thrower worshipping band (with a name like World Eaters itโs shocking, I know) centered lyrically in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (another real stunner there, folks). I play guitar, bass, handle vocals, program drums, and occasionally lay down some keys or, in the case of an upcoming track, shred some mandolin. I handle all writing, recording, mixing and mastering duties for World Eaters, but despite all that Iโve wanted to make World Eaters as collaborative a project as possible.
Every release Iโve put out to date (one demo and two splits for those counting at home) has featured multiple musicians from the Southern Ontario music scene from all sorts of genres. World Eaters started as a pandemic project partly as a creative outlet for me and partly to help connect the musicians Iโve met over the years together in a time when music scenes are hurting and people are seeing each other less and less.
But, before the collaborations and before the tunes about big tanks and space skeletons, there was inspiration. Humour me for a bit as I walk you through four of my favourite albums, specifically ones that helped influence me as a musician and help shape the sound and aesthetic of World Eaters.
You can check out my music and follow my social media accounts below.
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With the Bolt Thrower references, 40k lyrics, and penchant for writing six-minute-long mid-tempo grinders, Iโm sure you can guess one of my picks. So, without further adoโฆ
Carly Rae Jepsen – Emotion (2015)
No, thatโs not a joke. I love this album. Itโs incredible. This is the album that helped make pop music โclickโ for me. Before hearing Emotion I only knew CRJ as the โCall Me Maybeโ girl – a simple lowest common denominator bubblegum popstar. I only checked this album out because of a recommendation from a podcast host I like. Without Griffin McElroy, I likely wouldnโt be the music fan I am today.
It takes a matter of seconds. The opening sax line of one of the greatest pop anthems ever written, โRun Away With Meโ (I will die on this hill, just try me) carves its way into your brain immediately and the rest of the tune (and album for that matter) does not let up. This album is a masterclass in songwriting, composition, and production. Every song is packed full of hooks, vocal and instrumental alike, worming into your ears, never to leave them again. Youโll hear this album once and two years later waiting to checkout at the grocery store, the bassline of โBoy Problemsโ will take over your thoughts and youโll be inadvertently grooving along to that top shelf bop. Carly – 1, Real Metal FanTM – 0.
Thatโs a lot of colourful language just to say itโs catchy. But Emotion does more than get stuck in your head. Itโs the first time I noticed a mainstream pop starโs album play with really engaging, evocative, and, well, emotional lyrics. The songs on this album range from funny, sad, uplifting, or just transportive, something I think made an impact on my lyric writing. Sure, I write tunes about dumb sci-fi wars, but if I can find the core feeling of a song I want to write I can try my best to apply the lessons learned from this album to help make those words as powerful as I can.
Okay, so, maybe you gave Emotion a shot and itโs not for you. Fine, I guess. Music aside, Ms. Jepsen has taught me one thing that I will carry with me in any and every musical project Iโll be a part of for the rest of my life:
Write.
Write, write, write. Write songs. Write hooks. Write riffs. Keep writing, then write more. Legend has it that Carly writes about 100-200 songs between albums and, while Iโm positive they arenโt all totally flow-on-to-the-page bangers, she keeps her songwriting and musical chops sharp and ready so that she can capture and capitalize on the times she does get inspired. If that dedication to her craft isnโt inspirational, I donโt know what is. In a world of compromiseโฆ she doesnโt.
Bolt Thrower – Those Once Loyal (2005)
Yeah, duh. I know. Itโs obvious, but Iโm still picking it. Some of you (those who didnโt immediately click away after the last album) might be wondering why I didnโt pick Realm of Chaos, yโknow, with the name World Eaters and all, but let me tell you a little secret about me if you didnโt know already:
I like catchy music.
Catchy music is fun, it gets stuck in my head and makes me do a little subdued dance in my chair while Iโm at work and makes me go wild at a live show (when those were a thing). Donโt get me wrong, Realm of Chaos is a monster of an album and Iโve paid more money than I care to admit to score an original 1989 pressing of it on vinyl, but Those Once Loyal is the album I keep coming back to from the English war dogsโ discography.
I could wax poetic about this album but every metal blogger and their mothers have frothed at the mouth raving about โThe Killchainโ, โEntrenchedโ, or the title track. Yeah. I know it. You know it. This album absolutely fucks. I wonโt spend time just talking about how good it is.
Before I got into Bolt Thrower, I didnโt play death metal. I didnโt try. I had heard Chuckโs mile-a-minute solos on Human and Symbolic and lost my mind at Treyโs finger-snapping riffage on pretty much every Morbid Angel release and there appeared to be such a high barrier to entry for the genre. I was just a guy who took some guitar lessons and rocked out to his favourite Metallica and Deep Purple tunes (the ones I could play, at least). Enter Bolt Thrower. Heavy. Heavy. Heavy as any other death metal band, sometimes heavier by a mile, stretched out into an artillery pocked no manโs land, no less.
Bolt Throwerโs final album was the first of theirs that clicked with me, partly because of how damn catchy and well produced it is, but also because it proved to me that death metal wasnโt just for the inhuman shredders and virtuosos. All you needed was a mighty fucking riff and enough conviction to play it with authority, and people would listen.
Any amount of time listening to World Eaters will tell you how much I worship later-era Bolt Thrower. Hell, I even put my own spin on the classic Bolt Thrower intro/ outro riff on some of my tunes. You know the one. โCenotaphโ, โEmbersโ, โPowder Burnsโ, โThe Killchainโ. Obviously, I donโt want to ape them completely, and I want to display my influences with tact, but check out my tunes โBanebladeโ and โThe Commissar Shootsโ for an example of this homage.
Letโs move on from Bolt Thrower, because I could fanboy about them all day. For those of you who might have heard my music before reading this, or who mightโve tossed on a track or two while you browsed the article, you likely picked up on something that features a fair amount that is a bit of a departure from the Bolt Thrower sound:
Guitarmonies.
Thin Lizzy – Black Rose: A Rock Legend (1979)
I spent some time thinking about what would occupy this spot. I knew I wanted to touch on harmonized twin guitar lines (guitar + harmony = guitarmony, for those unaware), and pretty immediately my brain jumped to Iron Maidenโs Piece of Mind and Judas Priestโs Screaming For Vengeance but after spinning each again recently I came to two conclusions:
- These albums rule.
- There arenโt nearly as many guitarmonies in those albums as I thought there were.
Fortunately, Irish rough-and-tumblers Thin Lizzy provide the twin overdriven goods in spades here and, like my previous picks, the songcraft and catchiness are on display front and centre. Gorham and Moore are completely unleashed on this album, laying down iconic melody after iconic melody across the whole thing. Hell, if the opening leads of โDo Anything You Want Toโ donโt get you air-guitaring in your living room, then youโre dead inside. Sorry, I donโt make the rules.
To my ears, nothing sounds cooler than twin guitarmonies, and while I might not be able to light a fretboard aflame like Gary Moore once did, Thin Lizzy — and by extension Maiden and Priest — have forever shaped the sound of my lead guitar work. When I get to write a guitar melody I always ask myself if I can harmonize it, and the answer is almost always yes. Itโs a surefire way to add a triumphant sound to any rock or metal tune and helps make the song feel absolutely massive.
Morbid Angel – Gateways to Annihilation (2000)
I described Bolt Throwerโs Those Once Loyal as heavy, and while thatโs true, itโs more a Mars-pattern Baneblade superheavy tank level of heavy. Gateways to Annihilation, on the other hand, is like a fucking neutron star.
The musical side of this album is monolithic. Itโs an imposing juggernaut of riffs and grooves, blotting out the sun. While Iโm not particularly interested in writing music that sounds like Morbid Angel, thereโs an authority and commanding presence to the Tucker era albums that I rarely find present in any other death metal band. Similar to the Bolt Thrower style of โriff harder, not smarterโ songwriting, Gateways has indirectly inspired me to try and capture that energy when writing my own tunes. If Iโm writing lyrics about extinction level events or the aforementioned Mars-pattern Baneblade superheavy tank, the music should be able to back it up and sound like the imagery Iโm trying to conjure.
Inadvertently, Gateways to Annihilation kind of became my reference for death metal vocals. Iโve been told before that my vocals are reminiscent of Karl Willetts, however, Iโve found myself subconsciously trying to emulate Tuckerโs monstrous growls more often than not. Deep, guttural, and powerful, Steve Tucker works in unison with the music on this album and gives an absolutely amazing performance, sounding like a Baron of Hell presiding over the lesser demons, giving them orders to charge forth through the gate and decimate some unsuspecting world.
Itโs a high bar to aim for, but why not try and put everything youโve got into your art?
Outnumbered, Though Never Outclassed
In a genre known explicitly for itโs inaccessibility (and often rife with gatekeeping because of it), I want to inject it with some accessibility and bring death metal to the people. There ainโt nothing wrong with traditional/ popular song structures and catchy choruses if youโve got enough high calibre riffs to back it up. Anybody can find inspiration anywhere, and all the musicians I respect the most seem to draw from a varied pool of influences to help shape their craft. I hope that one day other people might look at World Eaters the same way.
Is loving sugary pop music a sin in the hyper-grim world of death metal? Maybe. Will I lose the trve kvlt crowd? Probably. Do I care about appeasing them? No, not really. But, if youโre like me and want to see more catchiness, more openness, and more acceptance in the genre, then I invite you to join me on this journey. Weโll be the new gatekeepers. Weโll stand at death metalโs gate, and keep letting people in.
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