Photo by Nicolás Ramirez
Without letting the story get too much in the way of the plot (which I will inevitably do anyway): Here is the part where I tell you Chilean metal rules. I speak on the somewhat obscure promise of classic bands from the country like Death Yell or Rust or Necrosis, the realized potential of Pentagram or Atomic Aggressor. I talk about how bold bands like Massakre and Dorso got with Massacre and Romance as they dared to dive fully into the pandemonium. I sing the praises of Ammit and how they are, in some ways, the Darkthrone and the Countess of Chilean metal, keeping primitive necrotic black metal afloat in the swirling undercurrents of the 90s. I harp on about how Apostasy laid the roots for Valparaíso thrash back in the 80s, and still fly the flag strong to this day amongst a crop of newer bands destined to steal the contemporary thrash crown that Norway’s Kolbotn Thrashers Union fumbled with the dissolution of Condor (slight exaggeration, Deathhammer and Nekromantheon aren’t giving up without a fight).
Here is the part where I narrow in on the present, about how the long-brewing volcano of Chilean metal is reaching critical mass. It’s been erupting for some time, with each band building off the past as well as feeding from the contemporary scene. I talk about what Ripper did for their thrash, or about how tragic it is that Parkcrest split up after …And That Blue Will Turn To Red. About how Inanna’s slow career burn from the early 2000s has been paying off with an impeccable three-album run of death, or about how Pentagram and Atomic Aggressor hold the high watermark of their early releases to this day. I yammer on about Mayhemic’s absurdly violent ultra-metal (stay tuned for the new one!). I talk at length about how Chilean bands seem to have a knack for finding something new in old metal language, and about how the further you get from Santiago or Valparaíso the more likely you are to encounter something a little further from the beaten path, such as Hallux Valgus, Solipnosis, Blood Oath, Fuego Eternal, Exanimatvm, or Horrifying.
Here is the part where I narrow in on what Valparaíso means in the contemporary context: while plenty of thrash and speed comes from Santiago (amongst a great number of death and other extreme metal), Valparaíso is indisputably the speed capital of Chile, home to Miserycore, Sick Violence, Critical Defiance, Terror Strike, Hellbutcher (not the Nifelheim one). I yap about how that seems to be directly related to some of the more promising traditional acts from the region, such as Vortizé, Acero Letal, and Shadows.
Here is the part where I zoom in even further into Valparaíso metal. I talk about Demoniac and the label birthed from the band, Nube Negra Productions. I talk about how the label highlights a curated pool of talent not only in Valparaíso, but for Chile itself. I talk about how important Demoniac and Vórtize are to my own understanding of the larger story of Chilean metal, about how they add their own flavor without removing what’s made metal from their home country so great. I talk about what a revelation it was hearing So It Goes…. I babble about how the clarinet certainly made for an interesting addition, but it was really the Latin style in the riffing and leads that made me fall in love with the record. I gush about how the closing title track is one of the strongest thrash epics of all time. Hell, there aren’t a lot of 20+ minute long thrash opuses out there for good reason: it is HARD to pull off a feat like that, much less one that keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time. Oh, and furthermore, they absolutely rip live.
If it seems like I’m just listing off names here, well, that’s not entirely wrong. But it all accumulates in a tale I’ve uncovered/built for myself (depending on how you see it) across Chilean metal, largely due to the impact Demoniac has had on me. Their latest album, 2023’s Nube Negra (more detailed thoughts here), showcased a band that can mature and remain original while still holding tradition close to the heart. It made me even more curious to pick at some of the brains behind the music, to get a bit more of an idea for the plot behind the story of Demoniac and Nube Negra Productions. In some ways it was enlightening, in others it just seemed to confirm what I already thought I knew from the music. Regardless, it was a pleasure to share the following exchange with one of Chile’s premiere heavy metal bands:
Edited ever-so-lightly for clarity while preserving the voice of the speaker.
Last Rites: Okay, first question: How would you describe the Valparaíso scene, overall? There is clearly a rich tradition of metal, particularly fast and violent thrash, going all the way back to the likes of Apostasy at the tail end of the 80s. What was it like getting into metal in the region, and how important are other Valparaíso or Chilean bands–metal or otherwise–to the inspiration and development of the Nube Negra collective?
Demoniac: I think the Valparaíso scene is pretty same as any other powerful scene in the world: a bunch of people that do a lot of things in the scene, same people playing in a lot of bands. The guys from the bands are also the producers of gigs, the bands have their own labels, etc. I mean, there is a not so-closed circle of people that carries the scene, and that is something I have seen in a lot of other parts of the world.
Photo: Felipe Morales
Other important factor is here in the metal scene we really praise our old school metal bands–but not only the old metal bands, we also praise what these “new” bands are doing now (yes, I’m considering bands with ~10 years of experience as new bands). So I think we have been refining our metal for these 40 years with better bands and better production tools that were unreachable in the 80s. When I started getting in the scene here in Chile there was a lot of bands doing very good metal (Ripper, for example) so that set the bar for what we wanted to do with our bands. All of these are the [foundation] of what Nube Negra is today. Almost every of our releases are projects of this circle, of people that keep the scene [going] here in Valparaiso (Critical Defiance, Mental Devastation, Oldeath, Demoniac, etc.). Anyway, we also try to keep this circle open to new releases/bands.
Last Rites: Can you give us a brief history of the label? How did it come together? Out of necessity or a desire to be more in control of the complete artistic vision? How would you describe its purpose, philosophy, and goals? What is the meaning of the label name and the title to your latest album, Nube Negra?
Demoniac: At the end of 2020 we had copies of So It Goes on CD and tape, and we also had some stuff of Oldeath (Rise from Majestic Darkness CDs) and we [felt] like we were needing a “place” where we can offer all this stuff, because we felt it would be inappropriate to offer stuff of other bands in the pages of Demoniac. At that same time, we were planning to release our first live album with Demoniac and we wanted to release it by ourselves, so Nube Negra was born as a solution to both these things.
With the label / distro we find a place were we can offer all the music we have (physical copies of our bands and some other stuff) and we could also edit our own music. That’s why the first releases of Nube Negra were bands where some of us (Vicente or Javier) played: Demoniac and Oldeath. I already had some experience editing music in physical format in the past, I edited The Unacceptable Truth demo on tape under the name of Descarga Metalica (an old friend’s label), the first edition of Red Skies on tape (Mental Devastation) and we co-released So It Goes with Suicide Records, so I knew how to release music.
The label doesn’t have a philosophy or something like that, but we always want to do high quality releases regarding the physical format, excluding some less important releases (as promos or demos). We have always released pro stuff, we make our tapes in USA to reach a high quality sound, we sometimes add a sticker to the tape as an extra, now we are releasing T-shirts for some releases, things like that. The label offers bands to have their material released in the max quality that is on our reach and a lot of bands appreciate that.
Regarding the meaning of the name, here we say “andas con la nube negra encima” (something like “you are walking with a black cloud above you”). Basically that means someone is with a very bad energy around him, like when someone is mad and angry with everything and everyone. We liked how it sounded and the meaning of the words, since a lot of people in the metal scene walk with a black cloud (or maybe they are the black cloud?) It was a cool name with a cool meaning.
Last Rites: Speaking of black clouds, the lyrical themes for Demoniac seem to revolve around an almost spiritual sense of rebellion and frustration against the fallicies of mankind, evoking a sense of self-realization and empowering frustration. Can you expand on your lyrical themes and inspirations?
Photo: Felipe Morales
Demoniac: I think you have summarized very well what our lyrics speak about. To be honest we don’t have any specific inspirations, we just talk about what we live and see through our eyes in this life. In the beginnings we wrote about the devil and horrors or stuff like that, but now we write about a much more introspective point: we question a lot our own behavior and the human behavior. In the previous years we have been listening to more and more music in Spanish and that helps to understand that you can say really interesting things in the songs. You can explore ideas that were just in our minds. We don’t write about the same topic on every song, but there is always a negative or pessimist approach to the topic.
Last Rites: I noticed the gradual shift into Spanish across the three albums. Your debut Intemperance was almost entirely in English, yes? Then So It Goes introduced Spanish, and the latest, Nube Negra, is entirely in Spanish. Would it be fair to say you see language as an instrument?
Demoniac: I would not say we see language as an instrument, when we started the band lyrics were something that we didn’t really care about. We just wrote generic lyrics against religion and stuff like that, so lyrics were just a fill in the song. Now we really want to write good lyrics, so we put a lot of effort on it. That’s why now we write lyrics in Spanish, we feel like we need to write in our language to express better our thoughts, even if it’s way easier to write in English. For some reason, from our point of view (Spanish native language), it’s easier to write in English. It’s like anything you writes sounds good, but at the same time sounds generic. When we write in Spanish, we have to figure out how to say an idea with meaning and in a style that fits the song. You can say “death to humanity” in a lot of different ways; [it’s] different to just say it in an explicit way.
Going back to the idea of language as an instrument, I think there is some resemblance in the way that when you start playing an instrument (musical instrument) you suck at it and play it in a very “dirty” way, but with practice and time you get better at it, I think something very similar to that happened to us with lyrics.
Last Rites: It’s interesting that the use of language seems to have evolved along with the music. While there were hints of what would come on Intemperance, it felt like the musical vocabulary of Demoniac fully developed on So It Goes, using keys and modes not often utilized in thrash as well as distinctly introducing the band’s use of clarinet. What inspired the use of these keys and use of nontraditional instruments into thrash? Are many of you classically trained musicians?
Demoniac: No one of us is a professional or trained musician, every one of us started playing our instruments when we were kids (13~14 years old) and just as a hobby. We really like music a lot so we never stopped playing our instruments since we started. On So It Goes, the keys are most used as atmospheric layers of the music, not so much as a central instrument, so it wasn’t like the big deal, it all was added in the post production process of the album.
Photo: Felipe Morales
Regarding the clarinet, it was something very circumstancial thing. At the time when we were rehearsing the So It Goes songs, [Javier] started to play the clarinet and he bring it to one of the rehearsals. Also, in that time we were listening a lot of prog rock and stuff with non-typical instruments for Thrash Metal, so we started trying ideas with the clarinet and it found its places in “Extraviado” very fast. We liked how it sounded, so we decided to use it on the “So It Goes” track and added it as one of the features of the album.
I think you have to have a clear vision of what are you aiming for, we always knew we wanted to play aggressive Thrash Metal so if we would use a clarinet or non typical instrument in our music. We knew we could not sacrifice violence of our music and I think we were able to find this mix of stuff not losing any aggressiveness.
Last Rites: How important is it to push things forward verses holding to tradition? How important is it to establish a unique identity and sound?
Demoniac: I think is very important for a band to establish a unique identity, that’s the way you can differentiate from thousand of bands that plays a music style that have been being played for 40 years. Or maybe you don’t need a unique identity, but you need a CLEAR identity, you have to have a clear idea of what are you bringing to the table with your band.
Last Rites: What would you say Demoniac is bringing to the table?
Demoniac: Demoniac brings the best thrash you can find in Chile!!
Couldn’t agree more.
Photo: Samantha Diaz
