A Conversation With Alex of Undeath

Undeath have quickly become one of standout bands in the modern death metal scene for a variety of reasons. Their energetic live performances, songwriting acument, and the simple fact that they have doubled down on their own identity by betting on themselves. From their early demos until now they have established themselves as banner wielders for metal and take that role - but not themselves - seriously. I sat down with Alexander Jones to discuss the new record, embracing expectations, and also knowing when to kick those expectations to the curb. 

Jake: I've had the record for about a week and spent a lot of time listening to it. It feels exactly like I was hoping it was going to feel. So, before I start getting into that, though, I guess the question I'd like to lead with is "Why is this the record you had to make now?"

Alex That's a great question. You know, I just feel like ultimately, when it comes down to it, all of us collectively felt like we needed to just step it up a little bit, you know? And that means everything from the performances to the production to the arrangements of the songs themselves. You know, I think we just really needed to hone in on what we were doing and really take it to the next level as best as we could. And yeah, with the last record and its time, you know, that was kind of us really getting everything in our sound down to the bare essentials. With More Insane, this record feels like us working from that canvas and building everything out as much as we could without straying from what we feel like the essence and the core of the band is. So, yeah, I think that was really important to us, and that was a crucial North Star, so to speak, in the entire writing and recording process.

Jake: I love it. so you kind of alluded to it there, and I think I've heard you or read that you guys like to push yourselves internally. And you're sort of talking about that with the new record and sort of widening your sound a bit and trying to still fall within those parameters of what you believe Undeath to be. How wide do you think that will get in terms of what you've already done and looking forward? I don’t expect to hear a full-on prog record for instance, but what are the limits?

Alex: Yeah, you know, I kind of look at the band as us trying to get as good as we can possibly get and as confident as we can possibly get working within a specific medium. You know, and I think that, like you said, I don't ever really foresee Undeath making a big prog crossover album. I don't really ever see us doing big, chancy swings, like clean vocals or any kind of super left-field stuff like that. But I can always see us doing what feels right and what feels natural in the moment. All the decisions that we made in the writing process on More Insane were all stuff that just felt good, it felt right at the moment. You know, it wasn't like with this stuff that has more of a melo-death feel to it, like "Brandish the Blade" or "Sutured for War." You know, it wasn't like we got into the practice space, sat down, and looked at each other and said, "All right, boys, let's write our melo-death song." It was just riffs that were presented to the band, and we all thought them, so we just kept it going, and it just felt like Undeath the whole time, so we didn't say no to it. So in the grand scheme of things, I always envision us as a death metal band first and foremost. I really, really don't think we're ever gonna stray anywhere far from that. I think that's always going to be at the forefront of our minds with anything that we do. But I think we're all trying to see how far we can push the specific Undeath death metal sound while still retaining our own identity, if that makes sense.

Jake: Yeah, absolutely. And identity, I think, is a really keyword that I think about when I think about Undeath. Not to paint with too broad a brush, but I think a lot of the death metal, especially the old-school death metal, has kind of reached saturation a little bit. I’m not going to name names, but there are times, when I couldn’t tell you what band was playing the song, it just kind of has a feel. It’s good, but there’s not a whole lot of personality or identity in it. And I think that’s where Undeath excels: you can hear a song from Undeath, and you know it’s from Undeath—there’s no debating that. So how conscious are you guys in figuring out which singles to release, is that kind of like a pruning process?

Alex: Yeah, I mean, we're very conscious of it. You know, a song like "Brandish the Blade," which obviously was the first single off of this record, we knew when we were even writing it and recording it that it was going to ruffle some feathers. Not that it was like this big controversial song, but we knew that when we were going to release it there was going to be a contingent of people out there that would say, "Oh, you know, this band hasn't been good since the first demo," or "I miss when they were just doing pure Cannibal Corpse worship," blah blah blah. But to us, like that song had to be the first single because it just feels like a first single song, you know? It's huge and catchy and driving and frenetic. It definitely was not something we wanted to bury in the release of the album, even if it is a little bit different or different enough from everything else that it kind of stands out. So we’re definitely aware of that stuff, and it isn't something that we try to let influence our writing process too much. But, we are completely aware that there is something of an Undeath sound, I guess, that people are expecting from us these days, as corny as that sounds. And it isn’t like we go into writing or recording with that at the forefront of our minds, but it’s definitely something that we’re keenly aware of.

Jake: It feels like you guys protect that identity in some ways, and I think that's really, really smart. Branching off of that, you know, we're talking about the first single, "Brandish the Blade." I had some friends immediately say, "Okay, these guys were definitely listening to Unearth when they wrote this song," because there’s a little bit of a feel of Oncoming Storm in that breakdown. And I know you guys have always been like a metal-first mentality; it’s like you're not necessarily reaching into the core scene necessarily. This is the first time that I've noticed that kind of leaning in that direction. How did that come about? Not that a breakdown is a huge thing to discuss, but like it is a slight departure, and kind of, like you say, it’s a little further out than maybe some people were expecting.

Alex: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it’s kind of like a two-fold thing. You know, the first thing is that we are a metal band first. You know, I don’t see us as being heavily consciously hardcore influenced. But at the same time, yeah, me and Kyle and Tommy specifically, we all grew up in hardcore shows, you know? That was definitely a part of our development as people and as musicians—being exposed to all that stuff. So whether you like it or not, that influence is there, and it's going to come out eventually. You know, Kyle and I grew up going to see Converge and bands like that all the time here in Upstate New York. So it was really just a matter of time before a part like that—a big “go!” breakdown—kind of entered our lexicon. So whether or not we’re actively trying to be more influenced by that stuff, it’s just going to happen one way or another, whether you like it or not. And the other thing is we’ve toured so much in between It’s Time… and More Insane that we’re just kind of aware of what works and what doesn’t, right? And that’s not to say that we’re writing every song with audience response as the first thing that we’re considering. But when we were playing "Brandish the Blade" back in 2022 for the first time, we noticed that... yeah, I mean, we were maybe a little bit bullish about the breakdown part. You know, I think all of us were kind of like, “Is this a little too much?” You know, like, make this breakdown like in five-eight or something. From the jump, like when we started playing that song, it just popped off for that breakdown so hard compared to other stuff in our set. So when we were going into the studio, you know, we really leaned into it because we knew how much it worked, and that’s just a virtue of having experience on the road. So it’s kind of like a really interesting mix between subconscious influence that’s there whether or not you are choosing to acknowledge it, and stuff that you actively consciously experience just playing music live over and over and over again.

Jake: Right on. Yeah, I think it absolutely works, and I think that transition from the breakdown into the solo into the end of the song still sounds like Undeath, and it still absolutely fits what you're doing. 

So I know you guys switched it up a little bit this time; you went with Mark Lewis behind the board. I kind of fully expected you to go somewhere in Florida for this new record but you went to Nashville. Obviously, Mark's got a big, roster of people he's worked with from all kinds of places like Nile and Gutslit to Whitechapel. So he's all over the map, but he's obviously very good at what he does. How did that relationship start? And what was the impetus and the determining factors on going in that direction this time?

Alex: Yeah, so with Mark, you know, when we were done with It’s Time…, I mean, we all loved Scoops Dardaris, the guy that recorded that record and Lesions as well. But, you know, regardless of time, pretty much right off the bat, we were having conversations about wanting to kind of switch it up a little bit for the next record. That became even more of a topic once the songs from the album started coming together, and we realized that they were just the kind of songs that were going to benefit the most from a much bigger, brighter, and more open production style compared to the more dark and almost claustrophobic style we were going with before. So once we realized that, we started having conversations about who the engineer could be that could really bring these songs to life in the way that we were positioning them. And Mark's name kept coming up because we looked at Black Dahlia Murder records or Cannibal Corpse records that he worked on or Nile records that he worked on, and all of us would talk about how much we loved the drum engineering on one record or how huge and chunky the guitar sounded on another record. Mark was always the common factor there, so he’s the name we brought up over and over again. Eventually, we were on tour in February of 2023, playing a show in Birmingham, Alabama. I was just having a miserable time on that tour for a number of reasons. I felt like my mental wounds were not healing [laughs]. Yeah, I mean, shit happens. But we were playing the show in Birmingham, and we got the word that Mark was going to come out to the show, say what’s up to us, and introduce himself. I thought, “Fuck", you know, "I don’t want to meet anybody today. I’m not in the mood for human interaction right now.” [laughs] But even in the state I was in, we just clicked with Mark immediately. The vibe was there. He got all of our extremely juvenile senses of humor right off the bat. He just understood what we were trying to do. It seemed like immediately after the conversation we had about the record. So, yeah, it was just a pretty instantaneous connection. That’s more or less how it came about, and then we did pre-production with him in Nashville a couple of months in 2024, so like a year later. It was great, and that was kind of the last deciding factor. When we actually got to go into the studio and workshop songs with him, we knew he was 100% going to be the guy we wanted to work with.

Jake: Very cool. So did you guys go in with a note sheet? Like, “Hey, we liked how you did the drums on this record, the guitar on this record, and like, put all this together for us”? Or was it just carte blanche; he could do what he wanted with your sound?

Alex: Yeah, you know, we definitely gave him pointers as far as what we were and weren’t comfortable doing. There are non-negotiables with Undeath, you know, tones, and like no sampling and stuff like that. A lot of everything needs to be live and raw and organic, and all the tones we got had to be from actually us playing the songs and not from computerized stuff that was added in post. We explained all that stuff to him. We didn’t want everything to be super heavily produced, but we wanted it engineered in a way that it was just buffed up, but still live and big-sounding, and he got that. He was completely down. I think he was kind of excited to do that because, without throwing any other bands under the bus, I know he works with a lot of bands who do use a ton of production and add a lot of stuff to sweeten up their songs a little bit, with super clicky kick drums and all that shit. With us, we were just like, “Here’s 10 songs. Can you please record them? [laughs] Make them not sound bad.” I think he was kind of stoked to work on a more live project like that. So that was as far as we got with pointers. When we were actually recording the songs, his influence was definitely felt in just getting the best performances out of us. You know, that was kind of where I felt like, besides the actual engineering of the album, his production really shined. He didn’t let us get away with anything. There weren’t takes where we were in the room and it was 80% there. He was like, “Yeah, that was good enough.” We hammered stuff until everybody was completely sure it was the best we could possibly do. I think that was definitely big in helping us get the best performances individually, and yeah, working with him was awesome.

Jake: Sounds like a great experience. I noticed that he does have a co-producer credit on the record. In what ways, aside from general engineering, was he involved? Also, I feel like vocally, you’ve pushed yourself in new ways on this record. Did he have a hand in that, like, saying, “Hey, let’s try this rather than that”?

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he was kind enough to share productions with us on the album, and I was really stoked that he was humble and honest enough to do that because I know a lot of producers out there definitely wouldn’t. With Mark, I mean, we definitely produced the record together. There were songs where everything was just 100% done the way we brought it in, and we just grabbed it, it was good to go. There were others where he had some suggestions about ways we could tweak certain arrangements or where vocals were or weren’t, and we listened to him on that. So in that sense, we really produced the record together, and I think we were all really excited about that process. 

As far as vocals go, yeah, he absolutely got me out of my comfort zone and really helped me push myself in ways that I’d been trying to do for a while on this record. There are a lot of factors to that, but I’ll say when we were doing It’s Time, I was still so green when it came to tracking vocals. We hadn’t played that many shows between Lesions and It’s Time, and we were tracking with somebody, Scoops, who is great but not a metal engineer. I would do takes, and he would just kind of say, “Yeah, that was good. Did you like it?” and I’d be like, “Yeah, I liked it,” and we’d move on. Which is fine, but with Mark, this is a guy who’s tracked Corpsegrinder and Trevor from Black Dahlia. He knows what works and what doesn’t, and he knows generally what metal vocalists are trying to do and accomplish. So, when we went into the process, I told him, “You know, this is my range. This is what I feel comfortable doing, and this is what I feel like I suck at.” I kind of wanted to stay in that lane, and he wouldn’t accept that. He said, “We’re gonna get you there. I know what you think you can’t do, but I know that you can do it.” He was really able to boost my confidence and allow me to expand my range and deliver a vocal performance that I’m extremely proud of.

Jake: It was very noticeable, too, not just in terms of range and approach but also in phrasing. There are tracks where you’re really cruising through some bars, so to speak, and it’s absolutely impressive. One of the other things I wanted to talk about is the breadth of the record in terms of expanding the lane that Undeath is traveling in.  You’ve got a lot of dynamics in how the songs are put together. Conceptually, if I understand correctly, all Undeath records take place inside the mind of one person, and this is sort of like the continuation of that, so to speak. Where does the anthology idea come from, and how does it relate to how these songs are different? Because, you know, we’ve got bounty hunters and all sorts of cool shit happening at the same time.

Alex: You know, it’s a good question. I think the anthology aspect of it is more in the sense that the artwork is really what ties everything together. We’ve had this series of covers now that zoom out more and more, and everything is kind of existing within the same universe. That’s where the thematic thread is most obviously apparent. But as far as what the songs themselves are actually about and the different dynamics there, we kind of mix it up sonically to keep things interesting. We always want the songs we write to be death metal songs first and foremost, but we don’t want it to just be like, “Okay, here’s 35 minutes of breakdowns” or “Here’s 35 minutes of incomprehensibly fast music.” We want it to be interesting for people from front to back and have kind of spaces and depth, like you said, that keeps it refreshing. The well of influences thematically is not something we tend to deviate far from, you know? It’s always going to be zombies, gore, blood, guts, depravity—all the good stuff, like your standard horror movie and shock themes—because that’s what works for us, and that’s what kind of gets our rocks off. We’re going to continue to go back to that well as long as it’s still tapped, or not tapped, I should say. I don’t know how wells work. [laughs]

Jake: I’m not sure either. But yeah, I mean, I think there’s an endless supply of content and ideas that you can sort of get away with in death metal by just revisiting old themes, which always works. But there’s also an element of being memorable that really plays into the way Undeath puts together a record or a song. And that’s a hard part, in my opinion, of extreme music. A lot of times, I think it’s why metal people are album people—they probably have a hard time distinguishing one song from another on a record. There’s a lot of identity within the songs, and I think that leads to a bit more sonic attachment from those who are listening or watching. Is that something you guys are also kind of intentional about? Like, “we want people to remember this song”; we want them to remember not just the sick riffs but that this song is cool?

Alex: Yeah, one million percent. That is like the big guiding principle in the way we approach writing songs, point blank. That’s how we operate. Everything that we do—whether it’s the riffs, the heaviness, the speed, or the intensity—all the different factors at play that we toy with, everything has to serve the song as a whole. We want people to come away from listening to us with songs stuck in their heads. We want them to have specific songs they look forward to hearing, not just, “Oh, that was heavy.” We want them to have a favorite song that they hope we play. A lot of that comes from our own personal fandom of metal. I could tell you that my favorite [Judas]Priest record is Defenders of the Faith, but it’s not just that. It’s because I love “The Sentinel,” “Jawbreaker,” and “Rock Hard, Ride Free.” That album has tracks that I want to come back to, and I hope that whether it’s now or down the line, people think of Undeath the same way—not that we’re as good as Priest [laughs], but that people think about us and say, “Oh, my favorite Undeath record is More Insane because it’s got ‘Brandish the Blade’ and ‘Disputatious Malignancy,’” and not just because it’s heavy.

Jake: I think that is honestly a big part of why you are where you are as a band. You guys have managed to figure that out quickly, and I think it’s working for you.

Alex: Thank you! 

Jake: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve got a couple more questions, one related to the new record and then your catalog. The first question: What would you want someone to know who’s hitting play on More Insane? Any context for the first time they’re listening? What would you want to say to them?

Alex: Wow. Whether or not you’re familiar with who we are as a band and the identity of the stuff that we’re trying to do, I hope it’s apparent from your first listen that we put our whole dick and balls into this album. We really did everything we possibly could to deliver the most complete and organized, overall best death metal record that we could. I hope that whether or not you agree with that sentiment, it’s clear to you after listening to More Insane that this is undoubtedly the best Undeath record that’s been released so far.

Jake: Sick. I think it is, personally.

Alex: I agree! [laughs]

Jake: So, last question. This is one that I hope you enjoy. More Insane is your third studio LP, right? So now you have a trilogy of albums. What is, in your mind, a good analogy for the trilogy of Undeath records? What film trilogy or video game trilogy would you compare your first three records to?

Alex: Oh shit, that is awesome[laughs]. Okay, right off the dome, I’m going to say Evil Dead.
I mean, to me, that’s just too perfect to ignore. Lesions of a Different Kind is absolutely our Evil Dead 1. It’s a little darker, a little more nefarious. It doesn’t have the same elements of tone that would develop over the next two movies and with us in the next two albums, but it isn’t quite crystallized yet. Then Evil Dead 2 is absolutely It’s Time… to Rise From the Grave. It has a similar vibe and spirit, but it’s coming into its own as its own entity. A lot of that humor and levity has entered the picture more than ever. And More Insane is 100% Army of Darkness. It’s just everything blown up to maximalist proportions. So I feel like that’s the trilogy; I can’t think of anything else that works better.

More Insane releases October 4, 2024 on Prosthetic Records. Order your copy here and catch them on tour.