Elder Devil are a Fresno, California grind band featuring members of Hellish Form and Keeper, drawing heavily from the Rotten Sound, Trap Them and The Secret school of the genre with some sludge-isms creeping in throughout. Everything Worth Loving is their second full-length and serves as a meditation on grief and loss. Everything Worth Loving will be released on June 16th through Prosthetic Records (pre-order here).
We asked guitarist Jacob Lee about 3 releases that have influenced him and Elder Devil in the creation of Everything Worth Loving.
Photo credit: Nancy Anoukesy-Lee
Celeste – Infidèle(s)
I had recently rediscovered, or perhaps matured enough to appreciate how masterful Celeste is at crafting whole pieces of heavy music rather than an arrangement of riffs. The guitars are so melancholic, they tell a story all on their own, while the drums showed me how many ways they could compliment a song that I had never thought of before, and the vocals sit perfectly right in the middle of it. I make sure every song I write holds up if it was an instrumental or if the guitars were isolated, my goal is for them to also tell a story, and Celeste is a band to aspire to in that regard.
LLNN – Deads
A few more mid-tempo sludge riffs may have leaked into the album than anticipated, and that is all due to how much I was listening to LLNN, basically ever since their formation after The Psyke Project broke up. The guitar work in both bands is always so fun to listen to, but LLNN brings so much atmosphere and dynamics by adding synths that ebb and flow with the guitars until the both finally explode into a crushing breakdown. The song ‘Parallels’ is so heavy it is terrifying.
Vermin Womb – Permanence
Shout out to Ethan Lee McCarthy, who did the cover art for our first EP Graves Among the Roots. I was a big fan of Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire, so I was glad when Vermin Womb grew out of those ashes. The tone of those fast riffs has always stuck with me and are incorporated into a lot of our songs. A perfect dose of sludge is often present in Vermin Womb songs and I feel like that adds an essential bleak vibe that a lot of grind is missing. Ethan always makes end of the world music and isn’t that the goal for metal anyway?
