Everything Went Black: RIP Trevor Strnad

[Photo by Nick Reece]

Dear Trevor Strnad,

Yours will be a voice sorely missed and for more reasons than some may realize. Through The Black Dahlia Murder, you roared and screamed your ass off and were one of the leaders who spearheaded a now-common approach of regularly trading off between the two rather than saving those highs for impact notes. The dedication to your craft is crystal clear across your career. The rawer rasps and less intelligible bellows of Unhallowed would become a clear growl, nuanced mid and throat-shredding demon scream for Everblack and beyond. Your musical phrasing made chorus lyrics as infectious and memorable as the melodies in your bandmates’ riffs. Any time I hear that window-cracking scream that opens “In Hell Is Where She Waits For Me,” I still get chills even nearly a decade after first hearing it.

Your voice lives inside the minds of fans in the form of some of the best lyrics death metal has ever known. In your world blood didn’t simply spill, it “paints a pattern of Rorschach’s design.” A song focused on a mutant baby was not just an exploration of the grotesque, but a reminder of humanity when “Truth is that it could’ve been me or you. One simple helix misconstrued.” Hell, you managed to create a song where the listener almost feels sympathy for a necrophiliac because you turned it into a result of deeply-felt lost love, “I sew the gaping chest work / Each thread is made with love. The bosom where I would rest my face is covered in your blood.” You managed to make the most hardened death metal fans still squirm with deeply uncomfortable songs like “The Window.” Your lyrics embraced and celebrated all of our inner nerds. Songs have been based on disparate sources including documentaries on chemical castration (“Threat Level No. 3”), Castlevania (“What A Horrible Night To Have a Curse”) and Scrooge McDuck (“Everything Went Black”). The Cannibal Corpse vignettes that blew your mind as a teenager were taken to a different level in your hands. Your macabre tales offered detailed gruesome imagery, wordplay that created disturbing metaphors, and eloquence rarely reached in the world of metal.

Your voice was a champion for others in the metal community. You were the ultimate metal nerd. You were never shy about calling out a cool shirt you saw in a crowd or telling anyone who would listen about a new band you loved. The Obituarist was likely the only press some of the bands you loved ever got. I can’t even imagine the joy one of the small brutal bands from Indonesia must have felt to not only receive your stamp of approval, but see you attach kind words to it in that column. As any wise fan does, you were just as apt to bring up some unheard-of gem from the ’80s as you were a modern band with only one demo from some obscure village half a planet away from you. The world of underground metal has lost its greatest advocate.

Yours was a voice that offered levity and light. If anyone was unsure about your demeanor, the site of the word heartburn tattooed in giant letters across your stomach was a pretty good sign that jokes were incoming. Your stage banter and presence were there to make people smile and remind them that death metal need not always be serious. You wanted the crowd to show you their muscles and vigorous fist-pumping followed by even the most muscleless people (i.e. me). To watch Fool ‘Em All is to see a man who loved making people smile, whether it was from a joke or just taking the extra time after a show to talk to a fan. You were polite and kind to even the most punishing punisher.

Your voice meant a lot to me. As was the case for many people my age, The Black Dahlia Murder was one of my gateway bands into death metal. Ozzfest ’05 was my first metal concert, and seeing you contort your face and laugh while bellowing and working the crowd was one of the most memorable parts of the day. The first time I heard “Contagion” on the Headbanger’s Ball Vol.2 I couldn’t believe what was happening to my ears. I was hooked and would proceed to pre-order or do a day-one buy for everything that followed Miasma. I loved the music but I was always most eager to pry open the lyric booklet to see what deranged stories you had to tell. I saw The Black Dahlia Murder more than 20 times and every single time they were coming to town that was the most important date on the show calendar. When I was sitting in a hospital room watching my grandmother die, Nocturnal was my comfort album. It doesn’t make sense on the surface, but the aggressive music and mix of ghastly humor just made me feel better during the darkest day of my life. Your music remains my ultimate go-to when I feel like I can’t deal with the world.

Your voice was one of the first I recorded while doing band interviews early on in my music review endeavors. This was the second-to-last date on one of the Abysmal tours at a complete shit-hole venue. You were clearly exhausted after several weeks on the road but you immediately perked up and engaged in a genuine conversation. You didn’t cut me off or get mad when my newbie self went over the allotted time. You even spent a few minutes afterward reminiscing with me about a wild show in Grand Rapids from many years prior. You couldn’t have been nicer to someone who was there in a pseudo-professional capacity but couldn’t resist turning into a fanboy.

Thank you for sharing your voice with us all. Thank you for everything you’ve given me as a fan and thank you for everything you gave to this community across the globe. They say you should never meet your heroes but I will be forever grateful I got to meet one of mine.

Your voice being silenced has made this shitty world an even worse place.

R.I.P. Trevor Strnad, and may you find peace in the everblack.

Posted by Spencer Hotz

Admirer of the weird, the bizarre and the heavy, but so are you. Why else would you be here?

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