Photo by Chance Visuals

Of the current crop of bands capturing the zeitgeist, Lorna Shore are the most unusual. Amongst Sleep Token, Bad Omens and Spiritbox, Lorna Shore drummer Austin Archey describes his band as the “crazy stepchild”. They are certainly the most extreme of the bunch, with a symphonic barrage that might have seen them confined to the darkest reaches of the underground.

But it was the novelty of that extremity that sent them stratospheric amongst a younger, digitally native generation. At the heart of this phenomenon is Will Ramos, whose good looks, charisma, and Instagram chops, have seen him win hearts and minds across the heavy music spectrum. Then there’s his prodigious vocal talent: unleashing a demon choir from the pit of his stomach and gargling it out of the back of his throat. It’s hard to think of a recent song that has ripped into wider consciousness like “To the Hellfire”, now clocking 26 millions YouTube views since its release in June 2021. Its breakdown has become notorious, with Ramos retching his way to stardom as if the possessed girl in The Exorcist had been portrayed by a dying pig.

But that’s only half of it. Behind that breakdown was the similarly inhuman drumming of Archey, a master of the art. Watching their set from Hellfest this summer, Ramos (with his immaculate ringlets and sunglasses) and Archey were playing like their lives depended on it; like our lives depended on it. The guitarists that flank them – Adam De Micco, Andrew O’Connor and bassist Michael Yaeger – seemed so calm as to be serene. You can’t take your eyes off Lorna Shore.

A large portion of that set comprised the closing titular trilogy of songs from 2022’s Pain Remains album, which consolidated the band’s new-found popularity. The stakes feel high for new record, I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me, which is a relentlessly EPIC (all caps) collection. The songs are long, often within a touching distance of ten minutes. O’Connor’s orchestration is dialed up throughout, and the ambition of opener “Prison of Flesh”, with a breakdown so diabolical it’s in serious danger of raising Satan itself, sets a pace which doesn’t relent. Every song counts. Archey visualised those live moments to gauge what stayed and what got cut.

“Overall, I want to feel dope on that stage,” he tells me from the confines of his car, avoiding his yapping Pomeranian at home. “I always judge a song by saying: How sick am I going to feel in front of 10,000 people or 1000 people or 500 people? It doesn't matter how many people, but how dope will I feel in front of them taking charge with these songs.”

Yes, Lorna Shore sounds like they are taking charge on this one. They decamped to the small town of Midland, Michigan, about two hours’ drive from Detroit, to record in producer Josh Schroeder’s basement studio. The band lived together in an Airbnb 45 minutes from the studio, where they spent three months writing and demoing and workshopping ideas. They attempted to take Saturdays off, and mostly failed. De Micco and Archey would work on their ideas separately, come together towards the end of the day, and see where they were at. O’Connor gave the songs shape with his symphonic sweep and then they were handed to Ramos. Archey waited to hear back from him whether lightning had struck.

The result is what Archey describes as a “dynamic record”, as opposed to overly dynamic songs. Coming off Pain Remains, the band was conscious not to feel pressured into writing “variety pack” and “party mix” concoctions. If a song was melodic, did it really need a breakdown? Did they have to switch gears in every song and potentially ruin something that was cohering nicely? This played on their minds throughout the writing process.

The result is an album that feels musically and thematically balanced. Despite the album’s title, I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me is a record of light and dark, for a band that – when locked together – can often feel like a rhythmic battering ram, propelled by Archey’s astonishing footwork.

“I wanted to groove a little more,” Archey says. “I wanted to change up my vocabulary when it came to fills and how I treated parts. We're a metal band. So that dictionary of beats, what makes a metal band, you need that. But how do you put your spin on it? How do you pull yourself back? And I think my big goal was just to play to the music. Don't over-complicate everything.”

Archey is interested in boundaries and how the drums can bring a listener in and out of Lorna Shore’s songs. Tracks like “Glenwood” and “In Darkness”, though still plentifully frenetic, let simpler guitar motifs and more considered solos provide the hooks. The vitality of the latter song provides the key to the emotional heart of the album – “In darkness we are alive,” roars Ramos, letting his voice break with emotion in his delineation of that paradox.

The album covers the emotional spectrum owing to the stretch of time it was written over. For every song about triumph and conviction (“Unbreakable” and “Lionheart”) there are songs about anxiety and frustration (“Prison of Flesh” and “Death Can Take Me”). A recurring image in the lyrics is that of diamonds pressed into existence by hardship. One of the earliest songs the band wrote was “Forevermore”, which finishes the album. It didn’t come together properly until circumstances allowed it.

“It really didn't take shape until he [Ramos] had a tragedy happen,” says Archey. “He decided to use that song as the vessel to tell this story in honor of someone that he lost. And again, it's a beautiful creation. It's taking something so terrible and turning it into something beautiful and something that was therapy for him.”

Archey contrasts this album with the “terrible time” that surrounded the creation of Pain Remains, when its members were struggling a lot with differing personal situations. But there’s no doubt that Lorna Shore thrive from writing “pure rippers” like “Oblivion”, which Archey cites as the song where they came together, and which “catapulted” everything else into a new gear. It’s a song that resolutely dwells in the dark places without let up: “We are infernal beings reconditioned/For self destruction.”

But nothing is straightforwardly one thing or another on Everblack. “Glenwood”, an emotional and melodic center for the album on which Ramos tangles with the period he was estranged from his father, is in Ramos’ own words in a recent interview, “bittersweet”. There’s a backbone of maturity running throughout the new music. Not that this is a po-faced record. 

“I'm on the very much dummy, stupid, heavy, gross side,” says Archey. “I always enjoy when we do some of the epic stuff – we do it well. I've always loved it. I was really surprised about how we were able to cite an influence and really execute it, but not do it in a way that wasn't genuine. When it comes to ‘Glenwood’, we would always talk about Mötley Crüe, ‘Home Sweet Home’, right? This is our ‘Home Sweet Home’ of the record. And I'm like, cool, sounds nothing like ‘Home Sweet Home’. But that was the feeling we were trying to do.”

I have to ask Archey how he keeps the myriad breakdowns he is expected to come up with interesting. Part maths puzzle, part super-dumb fun, he says he wrote 40-50 breakdowns for this album alone, what he calls “the most silly version of songwriting."

“So a lot of it is just sitting there, bobbing your head, figuring out where you want to feel that push and pull,” he says. “I feel like, in the past, how many kick drums there were in ‘To the Hellfire’ was how many literal kick drums is the most you can play before hitting a snare drum where it doesn't feel odd. That's it. You can't go [further], in my opinion. I've tried to go more. I've tried. That is it, so now where are we? We've reached the end in my opinion, you can't go any more.”

So the challenge is how can he innovate within the form. In “Death Can Take Me” he points to the rhythmic chug of the “pseudo breakdown verse”, reminding him of some earlier musical influences like After the Burial and Veil of Maya.

What Everblack really strongly recalls is the symphonic black-metal albums of the early 2000s, such as Cradle of Filth’s Midian and Dimmu Borgir’s Death Cult Armageddon. Some of this is due to Ramos’s polyvocal approach, some of it is O’Connor’s maximalist strings and choirs. “A Nameless Hymn”, in particular, sounds like watching a movie scored by Howard Shore with Lorna Shore playing in the foreground of the auditorium. The same song also sees Archey go for the jugular in the vein of the great black metal drummers, such as Cradle/Dimmu stalwart Nick Barker.

“That was strategic,” he laughs. “I wanted to write the best black and deathcore song. Behemoth with breakdowns, like that influence. In that whole moment, I'm like, What would Inferno do? What would Dominator do? What would some guy with a name that ain't his own do right now?”

Archey hesitates to say that Lorna Shore is pushing deathcore’s boundaries. He acknowledges their roots in the scene, but describes it as “perfect” as it is: “I wouldn't say, oh, Suicide Silence would be better if they just had a symphonic orchestra. No, it was a raw, fucked-up genre.” 

He speaks admiringly of Whitechapel and how the world wasn’t ready for 2019’s The Valley or 2021’s Kin.

“If we can't have a vulnerable space for bands like us, bands like Whitechapel, to have a lot of heart and want to say something about their life [that would be a shame]. I don't think that should be dumbed down,” he reflects. “I think our ticket out is just our vulnerability and our genuineness, because that just resonates with more people.”

After Ozzy Osbourne died, Archey wanted to keep him around by listening to his music and rewatching The Osbournes. There was something deeply human about Ozzy that resonates with Lorna Shore's mission. You can have the characters of black metal, but Ozzy embodied something vulnerable too. He was also a proud father to Pomeranians, just like Archey.

The broader mission for Lorna Shore is something different again. Archey sees the opportunity: to bring a band of their extremity to arenas, previously the province of Gojira, Slipknot or System of a Down. He openly attests that nu metal is his favorite subgenre of metal. And of how he flew into Chicago to see what was then the final show of Welsh post-hardcore band Casey. Archey is invested in music with a lot of feelings.

Lorna Shore could only have reached the heights they have in the twenty-first century: a combination of luck, timing and talent. If they rode the success they had already attained, Archey would be happy. But there’s also the side of him visualising those big breakdowns on the biggest stages, and just how EPIC that would feel.

“I just think that there's a lot of people that haven't given us a chance, an honest chance, dove into our psyche, listened to our songs, read our lyrics, watched our videos, and it’s kind of like that echo chamber,” he says. “Like, Oh my God, if people just read the lyrics, they'd understand it more than if they watched the video. But the world's not that simple. You’ve got to make an impression very quickly. So I think we're just trying to put our best foot forward, and honestly I want our fans to be proud of us. You know, I want our fans to enjoy being a fan of this band, always giving them as much as we can. I don't think we honestly give them enough.”

There’s a line in “Forevermore” which binds the album to its listeners: “Our fires burn in each other/We will never end”. I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me is an open and unabashed album that should see Lorna Shore fulfilling their destiny. That “crazy stepchild” is seeking acceptance, and is ready for the embrace of the masses.

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I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me arrives September 12th via Century Media Records. Get more info and order the album - HERE

Lorna Shore will embark on a comprehensive North American headlining tour to celebrate the arrival of I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me. The tour will be bolstered by a hefty roster of support with the likes of The Black Dahlia Murder, Shadow Of Intent and PeelingFlesh all joining rank. Tickets for the extensive headlining tour are now available. See the complete list of dates and cities below. Get tickets - HERE