Interview: AUTOMB

I had the pleasure to interview Danielle Evans, the vocalist and bass player of the US extreme metal act, Automb. This year, the band have released their second album entitled as Chaosophy.

Greetings from Antichrist magazine! First I’d like to say that your new album, Chaosophy is amazing. I like it a lot! Tell me more about the album, what’s the concept behind it?
Thank you so much! Glad you liked it. The main theme is about our chaos philosophy, as the name implies. It’s about the primeval essence of chaos and its many forms throughout different facets of left hand path paganism.

Your lyrics are basically about paganism, occultism, witchcraft. How do you aproach these themes?
We approach these themes through different lenses of various cultures. For example, in Chaosophy we talk about the left hand path of paganism in multiple cultures as well as the different deities in these cultures. We have songs based on Hinduism, Norse paganism, and Slavic paganism. We also try to write lyrics based on our own experiences and views.

Talking about the sound on the new album, do you think you have improved it more than the debut album Esoterica?
Yes, definitely! I think the most drastic change was in my vocals and how much they improved from Esoterica to Chaosophy. Overall, I think our song writing really improved, as well as the sound of the band overall.

The album is released via Witching Hour Productions. How’s working with them?
It’s been really great! We love the bands that they’ve worked with before (Behemoth, Vader, Hate, Batushka) and it was a great fit for us.

You had two recent shows if I’m not wrong, which were sold out. It’s nice that you could perform during the pandemic. How were the shows?
Yes, we played two shows recently, one of which was sold out! It was a really great experience. You could tell that people were dying to go to shows and so the energy and atmosphere both nights was really great! It was a treat to be back on stage.

I’ve talked about it with other bands too, and I’d like to point out the fact that even bands from the US, can release good black or blackened death metal albums, and black metal is not just the “Norwegian black metal“, even though, most of you, are also inspired by the Norwegian bands. Can you comment more on this?
Yeah, I mean I would say most black metal or blackened death metal bands from the US are heavily influenced by the Norwegian scene. I can’t see a black metal musician not being influenced at least somewhat by bands like Darkthrone, Immortal, etc. We are strongly influenced by that scene, for sure!

Aswell I’d like to ask, because through the years, this topic had been gone a bit “crazy“ to say so, regarding women in metal. As a female in the extreme metal scene, do you consider the term “women in metal“ ( or “queen of metal“) is placed as a genre and how are you feeling into this position?
I don’t think it’s placed as a genre per se, but it is placed as a tag, if that makes sense. I don’t mind the phrase “women in metal” or “female fronted metal” because it’s just a fact about a certain band, and it separates those bands from the rest. I don’t think its necessarily a bad thing because it does set some bands apart from others, however, I just don’t think that it should be the main focus. If a band is sick, then they’re sick, the gender of the people in the band shouldn’t matter that much.

Do you think that women in metal are showing more a sexual image instead of just playing music?I asked this because there are metalheads who believe that, which I do not agree with, in a way…
I think that in some cases, they are being more sexual than letting the music speak for themselves. But at the same time, if that’s what makes those women happy, then who am I to judge? I personally am more interested in bands who have killer frontwomen that do not over sexualize themselves for the sake of attention. I try to not do that and let my talent speak for itself but I also don’t think it’s so wrong to have some “feminine” aspects (which can be misconstrued as being sexual, automatically, ex: what you wear). At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what a woman is wearing or how she looks, it’s how well she plays her instrument, or does vocals.

And a last question, what is the band name formed of?
The band name is a combination of the word autumn, and tomb. It is a representation of what autumn is, essentially a tomb, where all living things in nature begin to die off, just to be reborn again in the spring.

Thank you for this interview Danielle. It was my pleasure and hope to see you someday! Hails!
Thank you Carla! It would be great to meet you someday hopefully soon!

https://www.facebook.com/autombmetal