Evil Bouncers Beware! | Whitechapel are totally, way way scarier than you. I mean, look how serious they all are...
DETAILS
The Starlite Room
Friday, August 22 - Friday, August 22
More in: Pop & Rock
The Summer Slaughter Tour
featuring Whitechapel, Necrophagist, Dying Fetus, Beneath the Massacre, Into Eternity, Neuraxis, Veil of Maya, Divinity, and Common Grave. Aug. 22 (5pm). Starlite Room (10030–102 St).
Death metal has always reveled in ominous tales of the defiled, the wretched, and the fallen usurping the Earth for their own demonic purposes. But no one would guess that when the Great Deceiver revealed himself to a member of Whitechapel, the shape-shifting Father of Lies would take the form of a diligent bouncer—albeit an evil, evil bouncer.
“Two days before we got home, our guitarist tried to get into a strip club that was 21 and up, and he’s only 20. He tried a fake ID and it didn’t work,” explains Alex Wade, one of Whitechapel’s three guitarists (and presumably one who’d have no problem obtaining cigarettes legally). “They called the cops because he was underage. He ran out the door and just kept running down the parking lot. He never got caught.”
Fresh off such McLovin-like conflicts, the deathcore band from Knoxville, Tenn., has been relaxing at home for the past two weeks. It’s a welcome reprieve from the heavy touring schedule Whitechapel has been enduring, having just concluded the U.S. portion of the Summer Slaughter Tour. But there’s no rest for the wicked, or for the flagrantly underage, and Wade mentions that the sextet is embarking that very night on the tour’s Canadian leg.
“The writing process is stressful,” he says in his mild Southern drawl, “but we had it under control, and the recording process was smooth. Touring is definitely the hardest part. Everyone tends to get on edge when you’re gone for a long time. The last week of tour is generally called Don’t Talk to Anybody Week because everybody’s in bad moods and just wants to go home. There’s been a few quarrels on the road, but we’ve kept our cool. Nobody’s freaked out and quit yet.”
The writing Wade alludes to was for their recently released sophomore album This Is Exile. “[It’s] a concept album,” he says, “which tells the story of this dark overlord who is out to eradicate the human race.” The lyrics—conjured up by Whitechapel’s vocalist Phil Bozeman and screamed like his larynx was being fed through a meatgrinder—are easily misunderstood, Wade says.
“Phil’s lyrical content isn’t a personal thing. It’s not something a fan could really relate to. He tries to more or less write stories. It’s kind of funny; we love the support from our fans, but there’s people that get lyrics tattooed on them and I think they completely misinterpret them because it’s a line that might sound like it could be applied to something. But the way Phil wrote it, it’s completely different. They completely misunderstood it and they think it’s something that a fan is supposed to take personally when it’s just something out of the story.” He quickly adds, “But I guess that’s okay.”
Regardless of accuracy, having people tattoo themselves with your fantasies is pretty damn metal. Aside from the occasional strip club incident, the band tenaciously maintains their hardcore persona. But beneath the lobe-stretching and the post-apocalyptic nightmares, does Whitechapel ever let their guard down and embrace their cuddlier side?
“Oh yeah, of course,” Wade replies. “When we’re on tour, most of the time the music that’s playing in the van is softer. It might be metal, but more ambient metal like Isis or Jesu. We even enjoy more indie- and folky-type country music. You can’t listen to metal and play metal and be metal all the time; you’ll get burnt out on it. You can’t be 300 miles an hour all the time.”
