Voyage Into Sickness: The Quality of Mercy
How good it is to see you once again, my dearly beloved Death Metal friends! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to contribute another edition to this column last week due to a few issues with my e-mail server holding my info for this feature hostage. However, I’m back with a feature on one of the most violent and original death metal bands you are ever going to hear. I invite you once again to join me for the voyage…into sickness.
My topic of interest this week, as mentioned earlier, is quite possibly one of the most original yet still insanely violent bands I have ever heard. That band is Cleveland, Ohio’s Brutal Death Metal powerhouse Dislimb. Dislimb is a band I first heard when they released their legendary split with Dyscrasia. Since then, even throughout their dormant period, I’ve followed these guys with great interest. Their music isn’t typical by any means. In fact, lyrically and conceptually, these guys have always been a breed apart from their peers. Rather than focusing on blatant gore and heinous subject matter as most death metal bands do (not that there’s anything wrong with that…I mean, come on, it’s death metal, right?) Dislimb has always done their best to reduce the listener to rubble by focusing on the fears of mankind’s subconscious. In fact, to better describe them…think about the original Twilight Zone series but with a death metal soundtrack.
“When Rob and I met back in the spring of 2001 we shared a lot of the same musical goals and ideas” states vocalist Ryan Inman. “At the time, we were both without bands, so we decided to start up a new project. That project was Dislimb.” Shortly after Ryan and Rob recruited more musicians for their project, they began rehearsing, playing live, and eventually recorded the legendary Bleeding Anxiety release, which attracted the attention of up and coming brutal death metal label and Voyage Into Sickness honorees Comatose Music.
“Pretty much the day after we recorded Bleeding Anxiety , I became a madman, so to speak. I literally mailed out around 1,000 promo CD-Rs of that demo within a month to pretty much everyone in the underground that I could find an address for. That of course included all the brutal labels I could find and Comatose was one of them. Steve was just starting out back then, but we really liked his ideas of what a label should be all about. After we met him at the Ohio Deathfest in 2002, we knew he was a totally cool guy and decided to sign with his label.”
Once Comatose released Bleeding Anxiety as one half of the split with Dyscrasia, soon the brutality of Dislimb was being unleashed upon the masses. However, all was not well with the band, as Inman goes on to explain. “Directly after the Brutalize Your Mind Fest in 2002, I had a severe panic attack and was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. How ironic is that? I was in pretty bad shape for a while so I decided to leave the band. Chad and Mike left as well but Rob kept it going and got all new members and they did their thing for about six months.” Rob Lesniak’s new incarnation of Dislimb lasted only briefly, as Inman soon recovered and decided to rejoin Dislimb. This, unfortunately, would only be a temporary relief for the band’s fans.
“Once I started to gain back my health, the lineup that Rob had formed pretty much broke up so he called me and we got the Bleeding Anxiety lineup back together. We wrote a couple of new tunes, played some shows and had big plans for the future, but between having two members of the band that lived out of state and a little bit of a personal conflict, we decided it was time to call it quits in late 2003.”
Dislimb stayed broken up until 2005. Thanks to the band’s fans from the Bleeding Anxiety era, as well as new converts who had discovered the brutality of Dislimb by other means, the band decided to reform. When asked about the outpouring of fan support, Inman states, “There hasn’t been a single week since then that someone didn’t ask me if we were ever going to get back together and finally do a full length. So I guess after three years of that Rob and I sat down and had a talk and decided to go for it.”
After the decision was made, it was time to recruit new members. The first of these additions was the psychopath who now plays drums for them (if you don’t believe me, listen to the new single. This man is not human.) Armen Koroghlian. “I first met Armen last year. He was playing drums for a band called Shotgun Sodomy. He asked me about Dislimb and I told him there might be a possibility of us reforming one day. After I heard the guy drum I knew if we ever did reform that he was meant to be a part of it. Lucky enough for rest of us he felt the same way!”, says Inman. After the addition of Armen, the band found new guitarist Blake Cruz. Blake had been friends with Inman for several years, and when the opportunity arose to get a new guitarist, he seemed to be an obvious choice. Inman himself states, “He clicked with Armen right away so that was that.”
This also marked the first time in many years that every member of Dislimb lived in the same general area. It’s a fact that Inman is quite happy about. “It’s just nice. We can write more, play shows when we want and pretty much just do everything the old Dislimb lineup didn’t have the luxury of doing.”
Speaking of things the old Dislimb lineup never did, the new Dislimb has recently made their new single, “A Quality of Mercy”, available to the general public on the band’s Myspace page. As a fan of Dislimb for many years, I can truthfully say this is the best they have ever sounded. The music is tighter than ever and even more brutal than Bleeding Anxiety, which was something I thought next to impossible considering the impact of said album on the underground. Inman also realizes the excellence of this single, stating “It was the first new song we wrote. Blake wrote all the music for it and I arranged and produced it. It pretty much came together rather easily.”
The band, thinking of the fans like myself who’d been with them for years, did everything to make the song sound as much like vintage Dislimb as possible without sacrificing the new level of intensity they had acquired from the new members. “When we went into the studio to record it as a demo/single I wanted to sort of give it the same atmosphere and feel that Bleeding Anxiety had. We did it in the same studio, with the same engineer, and I brought the Twilight Zone element back into the band. We did it on a tight schedule and budget, but overall we’re pleased with the results. I’d say it’s our most solid material to date.”
The future finally looks amazing for Dislimb. The underground has finally begun to recognize them for being the innovators of brutality that they are – something their old school fans have known for years. So what’s next for Dislimb? One of the main priorities in mind for the whole band is the completion of their first ever full length, Architects of Fear. “Once that’s complete and we finally have a full length Dislimb album, it will be a giant weight off of my shoulders, that’s for certain!”, says a determined and optimistic Inman. “After that, the goal is to get some new merch in stock, play a few shows and possibly tour next spring. I have no idea what the distant future has in store for us. I guess it will all depend on how well the album does. If it does well, then I guess that means we would want to tour a lot. If not, then that means we would probably start writing a new one! I guess only time will tell, but right now Architects Of Fear is the only thing on our minds.”
If you’d like to hear more of this band’s sickness and brutality, please check them out at http://www.myspace.com/dislimbband
I’d like to thank Ryan Inman for being kind enough to answer my questions in such detailed form and for keeping Dislimb alive. These guys are seriously one of the best bands in the brutal death metal scene right now and it would be a wise decision on your part to check them out, my fellow sickos. Until then, keep it sick like we do…right here in the Voyage Into Sickness. To quote Chuck Schulinder, “Let the metal flow!”
Josh | 07/26/2006