After working for two and a half years. Indiana death core band, Perpetrators, have finally released their debut album, Fade To Ashes, comprised of blood, sweat, tears, and straight passion. I caught up with member’s Devon Scott and Izaac Daugherty to ask a few questions about their debut album and to snap some promos for the release.
How would you describe your music?
Devon: A lot of this first album was directed towards simply hurting as individual and going through changes as a band. Of course we come with the chugs, spooky ambience, heavy breaks, and groovy riffs, but the underlying factor is simply emotion. Our music speaks about real life shit and is all very relatable. That’s what I feel connects us so well to our audience.
Izaac: With Fade To Ashes being our first album release, it has a handful of different elements and feel changes as you go through the album, including a few experimental songs. It’s got a little bit of something for everyone if you’re a fan of heavier music. It’s a little difficult to categorize our music into one sub-genre, we find it’s a mix of groove metal, with some death core elements, we’d even go as far as to say a little prog.
What was the recording process of the album like?
Devon: The recording process was a ton of fun for us. We mix, master, and produce all of our own material under the name Twins Sinister Productions. Usually, it’s just Izaac and I going back and forth recording each other for all the different instrumental parts, vocals, etc. but all said and done, at the end of the day it’s just Izaac and I bringing our thoughts to life musically.
Izaac: The recording process was definitely a process and an experience with us producing the whole album entirely by ourselves. It was a hefty work load, but it was very rewarding at the same time. An exciting part was hearing sections or elements of songs that came about during post production that we didn’t think of during the writing process. It was so cool to see how far a song can come after laying down those first initial tracks and then hearing the final product.
I know Pandora’s Box touches on a very heavy subject involving a late friend of ours, would you like to explain your viewpoints of the song?
Devon: Pandora’s Box was a song I never intended to be put on the album. This was an instrumental piece I came up with in some really dark times as one of our close friends, Drew, passed away. I intended on keeping this song very personal and close to me. I remember one day when Izaac accidentally came across it in our studio space and asked what it was. I eventually explained to him what it was about and how I felt about it. And he basically just kept having me loop it over and over again. He wrote most of the lyrics in about an hour. We decided to dedicate that song to Drew himself. It still is a very difficult song for me to personally listen too, but after reading Izaac’s lyrics to the chorus “Every time I close my eyes, I dream that I could die, to see you one last time.” It Just did it for me, it hit home.. I absolutely love the song and the emotion behind it. It just is a very difficult song for me to get through emotionally.
Izaac: Pandoras Box is a very special to us, it’s a emotionally driven song dedicated to a very close, good friend of ours and former band member who committed suicide last year. There isn’t another song like it on the album and we hope everyone enjoys it as much as we do. It is probably one of a couple to come dedicated to him.
Is there anything else interesting you’d like to share with fans?
Devon: Broken Mirrors was the very first song Izaac and I ever wrote about 2 and a half – 3 years ago. This song would later become the start of Perpetrators. Through the writing and recording process of the album we actually lost the song. We thought it was gone forever. A lot of tracks were missing and we gave up trying to recover it and said to hell with it. After about 2 years of it being “gone” we made a last second decision to try and bring it back to life. This song by far took the most dedication, patience, and time, but in the end we managed to bring our very first song as a band back together and I couldn’t be more happy with it. I’m really glad we decided to go way out of the way to make this song happen. This song in particular holds a place in my heart because this was the very first composition Izaac and I had come up with together and we have been writing, playing, and recording ever since that day.
Perpetrators debut album Fade To Ashes is now available on all streaming platforms. The band has a music video in the works and it’s likely they’ll be playing shows soon. For fans of heavy metal, Perpetrators is worth the listen.
