Entry Level: Gatecreeper on Making Extreme Music for the Masses
Tuesday, 29 October 2024
Written by Matt Mills
Photo: Joey Maddon
In death metal circles calling a band ‘entry level’ is an insult, implying the artist in question isn’t heavy or authentic enough to truly belong. For Gatecreeper, though, being ‘entry-level’ is the ultimate career goal. “I think that it’s a good thing, I think that it’s necessary,” says singer Chase Mason. “Everyone has to start somewhere. I’m OK with being an entry level band if it means we’re getting people into death metal.”
Gatecreeper’s aim of making extreme music for the masses defines their latest album, this year’s ‘Dark Superstition’. Since the Phoenix quintet formed in 2013, they’ve favoured the more accessible parts of the genre, dishing out chunky grooves and melodic lead guitar lines. However, record three turns those sparks of inspiration into an inferno.
It’s audible from the off. On opener Dead Star, the guitars take the chainsaw guitar tone of genre idols Entombed and wield it while playing a hummable, heavy melody. Drummer Matt Arrebello stays respectably restrained throughout the 10 songs, resisting blast-beat madness in favour of grooves that could get arenas headbanging.
Single The Black Curtain seldom accelerates beyond a mid-paced stomp, whereas A Chilling Aura contrasts its initial speed with an epic conclusion, unloading the kind of harmony you’d expect from Iron Maiden’s fretboards. It’s not a coincidence that this designer death metal was streamlined by expert hands.
‘Dark Superstition’ was produced by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou, who’s previously manned the dials for such cult heroes as Code Orange, Zeal & Ardor and Every Time I Die. Furthermore, Fred Estby – drummer, composer and producer for Swedish death metal heavyweights Dismember – contributed to the songwriting and arrangements. According to Chase, his touch is felt on every song.
“When we met him he was doing sound for another band we were doing a run of shows with — I definitely fanboyed out a bit,” he smiles. “When we signed to our new label [Nuclear Blast], we had a bigger budget for the record to bring in outside people. He wasn’t going to produce because we already had Kurt, but I wanted Fred involved, even if it ended up being for my own personal satisfaction.”
By now, it’s easy to tell that Chase is an extreme metal aficionado, and he looks the part as well. During his video call with Stereoboard, their singer’s sitting at home wearing a Paradise Lost baseball cap with a Crowbar poster behind him.But as the conversation continues, the origins of Gatecreeper’s melodic ways become clearer.
Chase was raised in a religious household where metal was strictly taboo, but The Beatles were on the radio consistently. As he grew up, he entered the Arizona skate scene, listening to melodic punk put out by Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph. The singer, who writes Gatecreeper’s music with guitarist Eric Wagner, even cites post-punk and goth rock as influences on the band’s newest music.
“If you listen to the beginning of Flesh Habit, when the drums and bass start, it’s very Sisters of Mercy,” he says. He also claims the gruff but catchy vocals style employed by Fields of the Nephilim’s Carl McCoy inspired the riffs on ‘Dark Superstition’.
When Chase did discover death metal, and it was (in his words) the genre’s “sell out records” that appealed to him the most. He offers up Deicide’s 1995 album ‘Once Upon the Cross’ as an example. “Our A&R, Monte Conner, signed Deicide to Roadrunner Records,” the singer explains. “He says that’s a death metal Bon Jovi album. When he signed us [to Nuclear Blast], I said that that kind of record was the goal and, when we released ‘Dark Superstition’, he told me, ‘You did it!’”
By the time Chase co-founded Gatecreeper in his mid-20s, he was already a journeyman on the local scene, having been in punk and metal bands for years. This group were instantly different, though. The singer had just ended a decade of drink and drug abuse, which began because he was “bored”. He needed a new project that he could immerse himself in, from writing songs to booking shows and recording.
“I was in a position where I needed to dive into something,” he reflects. “To do what we do, and have it going for 10 years, people don’t realise how hard it is. You have to do it every day, you have to have the discipline to keep pushing. For 10 years straight, I have always been working on something Gatecreeper.”
Now more than a decade sober, Chase remains as busy as when the band started. On the day we talk, he and his cohorts have just wrapped up a US tour, including one show that was attended by Post Malone. And, with barely a week’s rest, they’ll soon be jetting off to Europe. The first show on that run, at Whelan’s in Dublin, goes down on October 30 before dates in Bristol and London.
At the same time, though, Gatecreeper aren’t rushing anything. ‘Dark Superstition’ took 18 months to write, and during that time they composed with a singular vision: not just packing the clubs they are currently, but getting entire fields of people to lose it to death metal – whether they’ve heard this kind of music before or not.
“The goal for us, especially with this record, was to write songs that were ready to be played live at big, outdoor festivals,” says Chase. “We’ve learnt that these mid-tempo, very driving songs go down very well with that kind of audience. We had the foresight on this record to ask not just, ‘What kind of shows are we going to be playing?’, but, ‘What kind of shows do we want to be playing?’”
Gatecreeper’s ‘Dark Superstition’ is out now through Nuclear Blast.
Gatecreeper Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed October 30 2024 - DUBLIN Whelan’s
Thu October 31 2024 - BRISTOL Fleece
Fri November 01 2024 - LONDON O2 Academy Islington
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