Washington, D.C.-based melodic death outfit Darkest Hour released its latest LP, “Suffer Divine,” last month and will perform at Wave on Friday alongside Fear Factory, Brotality, and local act The Absent.
With just over 30 years behind it, Darkest Hour continues to evolve its sound and stage presentation, resulting in recordings that are unmistakably part of the group’s own musical lineage, while not ignoring the continually evolving metal genre.
Darkest Hour guitarist and co-founder Mike Schleibaum recently spoke about the making of “Suffer Divine” and some of the LP’s key tracks.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me a little bit about when you knew it was time to make this album.
We knew it was time to make this album the second we walked out of the sessions for the last one. It was seven years between the last record (“Perpetual Terminal,” 2024) and the previous one (“Godless Prophets and Migrant Flora,” 2017). There were lots of reasons why that took that long. COVID, whatever. We had recorded “Perpetual Terminal” and everything was going good. We had established a good communication style in terms of how we were writing. Then we hit the road. Right after we finished recording, we went to Australia and stayed on the road (for a long time).
There was real chemistry with the lineup we had, but we were also absorbing the things around, the bands we were on tour with. The last album was more reflective of the band’s past catalog; it touched on all of the places that the band had been. This one is more of a focused statement of a single direction, the love of melodic death metal. We had also toured with a lot of older and newer bands over the last couple of years, and we started feeling like we could make something that would fill a void for what we were trying to put in the setlists.
When we started this, people thought we were crazy for the way we sounded, and now modern metal music has come to us. We really felt like we could be ourselves on the record and just make more of a definitive statement. We had the communication, we had the time together, we had the influences of the bands around us, and the last thing we needed was the will to go in and make the album.
At some point metal changed, and it seemed to lose its connection to the blues. Darkest Hour isn’t a blues-based band, but the melodic and rhythmic elements of early metal are in your DNA, and that tie to blues-based music is in there somewhere.
We have been described as part of the neo-classical metal world. We will tend to do some blues-y things. What you’re touching on is feel, and that was a big focus on this album. I haven’t heard it described as a blues influence, but I can see that in there. We probably see it more as punk. Inside every Darkest Hour song there is a basic rock song that exists where there are chord changes and chord movements that make us different-sounding than a lot of modern metal, because a lot of modern metal will stick to one chord and be more chuggy in the rhythms.
We do have this structure where you could trim the songs down to an acoustic guitar and vocals. That exists within our music. One thing we did work really hard on this time was not just how something sounded, but how it felt. Today, in the metal world, there is a lot of emphasis on things being perfect, and that means that a lot of records almost have no feel. Everything becomes so perfect.
There are subtle tempo changes in your songs. There’s a lot of contemporary music that clicks along with one feel, and it’s like there’s no movement within the song.
It’s funny that you mention that, because our first few records were recorded before people really understood or cared about records being recorded to a click track. The first couple Darkest Hour records were recorded on two-inch tape. You can’t really punch in what’s happening on the drums very easily. That meant that the feel of a song would really feel more like a live drummer was doing it. Things were not quantized and edited the way they became. I think that those earlier records have so much style. You can’t even make a record right now that sounds as messed up as they are because you wouldn’t let yourself do it.
But it works. Our drummer would rush the end of almost every fill. Years later, when we’ve tried to actually put that to a click, we’ve had to automate the click so that it does those things. When you hear the songs as static beats per minute, it sounds messed up. The only way I can describe it is: If you watch people dance and they’re very jerky and robotic and you think, “Why can’t they dance that well?” That’s what it sounds like when you get into a feel and the feel’s not right. It has to dance.
I think the sequencing of the songs on this album is so great. We come to the last three – “Tribalist,” “Everyday Horrors,” and “A Story of Redemption” – and they work together to bring this end to the album that’s really dynamic and has a lot of surprises.
“Tribalist” is insanely hard to play. It took a ton of work to put together. It’s not at the front of the album, so it’s almost like, “Why would you build this cathedral in the middle of the woods?” We really want every song to be special and have impact, so you really have to dig in and let them have their own personalities.
“Everyday Horrors” is a cool one because it sounds like (what would happen) if Darkest Hour slept on Exodus’ tour bus for a week. The thing is, I got to do that because their bass player had to go home and I filled in. I got to hijack Exodus’ bus and ride with them for a week, and I remember being around them and soaking up their energy and thinking, “You know, we need to write a song that’s thrashier. We need to get thrashier.” We almost didn’t record that one because we had enough heavy songs.
At some point, our other guitar player, Nico (Santora) said, “We should be recording this song. That’s stupid. You guys are stupid.” We did and it just clicked.
(With) “A Story of Redemption,” I kept trying to organize it like a regular song and then it ended up being this long, linear kind of thing with two bookends. We said, “This is cool but what is this thing? Why?” John (Henry), our singer, was trying to make it work and said, “You know what? This is cool. The thing kind of takes you on a journey. It’s like a story.” I said, “Huh.” He started writing it like it was a story, and I thought, “That’s weird.” I guess that makes the linear structure we can’t make sense, make sense.
All three songs that I described, which fit so well in a row and are on the record together, are also so different. It’s cool to see that they can coexist and also have their own personalities. I appreciate that you dug that and dug that they are put in some sort of order. I know everybody out there is going to listen to it however they want to, make their own playlists. Do whatever. Whatever. We made our playlist, it’s called the record.
I remember speaking with another musician a few years ago and complimenting him on a late track on his album and he said, “Well, I’m so glad you like that, but I’m not convinced that anybody’s going to listen that far into a record these days.”
The ninth, the eleventh, whatever track on a Darkest Hour record is important. You can always get a sense of what the last song’s going to be. It’s gotta be the end. But the penultimate song has to set that up, it has to have a (reason) to exist. It’s gotta be different than everything you’ve heard at this point before. It has a lot to prove because you’re almost at the end of the record. They’re quirky songs. They’re special songs. And the one at the end of this record is especially that way.
