Much has changed since they blasted a hole in the Metal scene of the early Nineties, but Deicide have remained a force to be reckoned with. Gregory Whalen spoke to Glen Benton about the band's formidable new album 'Serpents Of The Light' in an interview that nearly didn't happen...

Glen Benton does not phone when he is supposed to. A brief call to Roadrunner HQ in London reveals that this is not an uncommon occurrence. Glen doesn't like talking to the press. Apparently, he became engrossed in a book and clean forgot about his appointment with Terrorizer. Roadrunner's press officer-cum-wonderwoman Michelle is profusely sorry about this and says that he will call back right away. Eventually, he does.
"Yeah, is that Terrorizer?"
It certainly is. And how are you today, sir?
"Alright."
So what were you reading?
"A book."
An awkward silence.
Aha. What kind of book?
"Oh, you know, just your regular kinda book. I went down to the public library this morning and got me some shit to read..."
Another awkward silence. This is going to be difficult.

Not that you can blame Glen Benton for being difficult. After all, he has hardly been treated with respect by the Metal media over the seven-odd years that he and his band Deicide have been making records. Tentative questioning reveals that he is not so much angry with the press in general as he is fed up of what he calls "tabloid journalism kinda shit". He is sick of the incessant prying into his personal life, sick of being seen as some sort of cartoon character, sick of Deicide being treated as a joke.
"It's a fact that there are people out there that aggravate me," he growls. "A few people in the press or whatever have gone out of their way to create certain tensions in interviews. There are magazines over here in the States that for years have done nothing but tear us apart. They've printed negative stuff in their magazines against us, and now they're knocking on our door wanting to do an interview and it won't be done."
1997 sees Deicide return older, wiser and stronger than ever. Their new album 'Serpents Of The Light' is probably the best record they have made since their self-titled debut, and clearly they mean business. Which is one of the reasons why Benton is so keen to dispel the negative connotations the band name carries with it.
"It would making doing what we do a little bit more worthwhile if more people listened to us with an open mind instead of with the thought at the back of their heads that I'm completely out of my mind," he says. "I wish people would listen to us for the musical quality without having formed their opinions about us already."
It's easy to dismiss Deicide off-hand. In underground circles they share a position in the "too popular to be cool" category with Cannibal Corpse and Obituary, while the mainstream has been laughing at them for years. But although you may sneer whenever you see a 13 year old kid standing in line for a show wearing a 'Legion' shirt two sizes too large, or gnash your teeth whenever you hear yet another cover of 'Sacrificial Suicide' at your local Deathfest, Deicide's status within the Death Metal scene is undeniable. If anything, this is more obvious now, after Death Metal's so-called demise, than it has ever been. For 'Serpents Of The Light' proves not only that Glen Benton walks it like he talks it but also that Deicide are one of the most skilled, professional and downright brutal bands of their kind.
"I'm much more satisfied with this album than I have been with any of our previous albums," the frontman boasts, beginning to relax a little. "The main reason why is that the sound is much more in-your-face than on our last couple of records. We wanted to get a better guitar sound because we didn't wanna sound like shit for the rest of our lives. That's the whole point of being musicians - always getting better, always trying to avoid repeating yourselves. If you get stuck in a rut where you sound the same on every record, it gets dull. That's why we're still here, it's because we don't write the same shit all the time."

Whereas Deicide's last album 'Once Upon The Cross' was more or less a combination of the first two, their eponymous debut and 1992's 'Legion', 'Serpents Of The Light' sounds different from anything the band have done before. Obviously it's still very much a Deicide record - the band's trademarks are all present and correct, be it Steve Asheim's double-bass work, the Hoffman brothers' Slayeresque solos or Benton's kick-in-the-face vocal arrangements - but the material itself is far more focussed and aggressive.
"When we do shows, I like to see the crowd enjoying it," Glen explains. "But when you go out there and do stuff that's so technical that everybody's just standing there watching you it's not enjoyable. I wanted to get away from that after 'Legion'. All of us agreed that the speed and the brutality should be there, but we also wanna give the songs texture, that constant flow that people can keep up with and enjoy, instead of just blasting through them. That gets boring after a while. I mean, I don't listen to this kind of music myself because it bores me. I'm not talking about my own band, but I can't listen to that bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap all the time. My brain needs more than bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap."
The new album is characteristically short. Was that a conscious decision?
"Every record we do lasts the same amount of time, right?"
Right. Around thirty minutes.
"So it wasn't a conscious decision, that's just how we work. The record company calls you up and says 'How much time have you got?' About thirty minutes. 'How many songs you got?' About ten. 'Alright, we're ready for you to go into the studio.' That's how it works. We don't intentionally do it. But let me tell you this: we don't believe in writing a song just for the publishing we get off of it. I'd much rather put songs on a record that are tasteful than just put a bunch of shit on there to kill time. You can write that kinda shit all day long, but it's the stuff that you have to put time and effort into that is worthwhile. I mean, it's half an hour, man. I'm from the old school, I can't listen to a record for an hour. To me, a record that lasts an hour is a double album. Making a double album might be nice, and you'd get some great publishing off it, but the way we do it, it's like we're inviting you in for half an hour and when we're done with you, you're left a little dazed and confused."
Do you think you could ever do something like 'At War With Satan'?
"'At War With Satan'? I mean, it's possible. We've thought about doing stuff like that, but to me, a song lasting that long would just be boring unless it was something like a classical piece where it went off in lots of different directions. I'd rather just beat the shit out of a few chords."

The Venom reference prompts a line of questioning which is actually a thinly veiled attempt at getting Glen to discuss Deicide's musical influences, something he has repeatedly refused to do in the past. Needless to say, the plan falls flat on its face. However, a few interesting facts emerge. Yes, Glen listened to Venom when he was a kid but no, he was not a Venomaniac ("We were in a hotel once and Cronos was downstairs, but I was sick so I was up in my room. The other guys were like 'Hey man, it's Cronos! I'm gonna drink beer with CRONOS!!!' I was just like 'Yeah man, go have fun...'") It also transpires that Steve is very into classical music. Other than that, precious little information is given out. I try a different tack.
How and when did you get into Metal?
"Uh, Black Sabbath. I was pretty young. I've been interested in music ever since I was seven years old."
What was it like being a Metal fan where you grew up?
"You know, you got your preppies and your hicks and your rednecks... There were certain sections of the teenage community there, and I was in the freak department. Bringing knives and guns into school and all that kinda fun stuff."
Which band inspired you to start playing an instrument yourself?
"Uuuuuhhh... no band in particular. I'd say it was more just watching people play when I was a kid. My old man had guitars in the house and I always liked to pick them up and play around on 'em. As I got older, I sat in my bedroom learning riffs and all that kinda shit. Then I figured out 'Paranoid' by Black Sabbath and thought I f***in' ruled. I was ten years old and I was like 'Uuuuuuaaaaargh! I'm comin'!' Sitting there with my pop's acoustic guitar..."
What sort of music do you listen to now?
"I'll tell you what I don't listen to. I don't listen to Rap, I don't listen to Techno and I don't listen to dance music. I listen to old music."
As in...?
"Anything. I mean, if it's old and it's got quality, I'll listen to it. I don't listen to one particular thing. I like oldies, I like old music. I like Chuck Berry and shit like that. I like new music too, but it depends on what it is and what kind of musical value it has. I'm from the old school, man. The three/four Rock beat, boom-boom-boom, that's what I came out of."
What do you think of Black Metal?
"I told you I don't like music that goes bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap. I can't understand it, man. The whole musical aspect of it is incomprehensible. The recordings themselves are total shit. You can't hear what the f***'s going on, what you're supposed to appreciate. It's a bunch of f***in' noise. If you're going to do something like that, do it with taste and with style and with f***ing originality. Don't come out of the closet with a bunch of black material wrapped around your ass and your face all painted up like you're some kinda pallbearer or Frankenstein or something. I think it's ridiculous. If you're gonna do Satanism any kind of justice, and I learned this a long time ago, going out looking as ridiculous as that isn't going to work. You can make your point as far as Satanism goes on an intellectual basis, not by looking stupid and ignorant and ridiculous. That's where I'm going, man. I'm working my way into the intelligence department of it, because I don't want people to look at me and laugh. I want to be taken seriously."

When Deicide first emerged from the smouldering remains of the cult underground troupe Amon in 1990, they were arguably the most shocking band around. Forget WASP, forget GWAR: these were people who played shows drenched in pig's blood and covered in body armour, who openly admitted to harbouring satanic beliefs and who made Death Metal actually sound dangerous. Benton instantly became the group's focal point, thanks to his extreme outspokenness and the inverted cross which he had branded into his forehead, and his lyrics prompted a storm of controversy as well as the emergence of rivalling Black/White factions in the Metal scene of the early Nineties.
Since then, much has changed. In 1993 Norwegian Black Metal started making headlines in the music press, and it soon became clear that there was a new breed of extremists out there who were prepared to put their matches where their mouth was. Then came the assault on the mainstream from Marilyn Manson, a figure who has remained an object of parental hatred in the States to this day. So what of Deicide, then? It's possible that we have become so desensitised to Shock Rock that they seem fairly harmless in comparison to what's happening elsewhere in the scene. However, as Glen himself argues, it is more likely a case of them simply growing up.
"I'm getting wiser as I get older and I look at the world differently than I did back when we first started."
Your hellraising days are over then?
"No, believe me, I still raise hell..."
Are you prepared to talk about your Satanism?
"Depends on where we're goin' with it."
For example, do you believe in a personified Satan in the biblical sense? Or do you think of it/him more as a force of nature?
"I think it's a little of both. I think of him as a force of nature with a really strong presence in man. I feel that some of the descriptions might be true, but I won't have an answer to that until I've met him."
So do you believe in him as the Christians describe him? Like, um...
"I don't believe anything a Christian tells me, man! I look at Satan in a spiritual sense. I don't expect to see him or expect him to come and sit on my couch and smoke a joint with me. I just know there's a presence that lives with me, and that presence is what I would consider Satan. Because it surely isn't God."
Do you believe in God?
"There has to be a God if there's a Satan. I believe there is a force of good out there, you can call it God or whatever, and there are things that exist in this world that are good and evil. Some of us are good, others are evil. Some of us pretend to be good but are really evil."
How do you feel about people like Marilyn Manson and the way in which it has become "cool" or "hip" again to flirt with satanic imagery if you're a Rock band?
"I think there's certain people out there right now making light of it. I think they're making it look ridiculous, and I could tell you stories about them guys. I don't know why everybody tells them to me, but I sure hear a lot of 'em..."
You can tell some of them to Terrorizer if you like.
"Nah, it's alright. Let's just say that somebody needs to put a pair of pants on him, because some of us don't find his ass as attractive as he does. He's a f***ing joke! Like I said before, man, I want people to take Deicide seriously, not laugh at us."

This desire is reflected in Benton's lyrical approach on 'Serpents Of The Light'. A far cry from the horror movie demonology that characterised his earlier works, the new songs come across more honest, more mature and more articulate than numbers such as 'Dead By Dawn' or 'Crucifixation'. But how would the author himself say his style has changed over the years?
"I've toned it down some. If you want to be taken seriously, you've got to let your intelligence speak for you instead of a bunch of mumbo-jumbo and having the word Satan in your songs a hundred times. The way I approach it these days is that I'm telling you things that are coming from inside of me, and you can take them if you want but you don't have to. I'm trying to keep to a simplistic pattern so that you can understand what I mean."
Glen's scope has also widened somewhat. In 'The Truth Above', for example, he examines the UFO phenomenon and predicts the effect that contact with extra terrestrial life would have on religion. Elsewhere, 'Father Baker's' is a darkly humorous reflection on the urban folk myth about a home for boys where children were routinely tortured and abused by the titular priest. Predictably, Benton's fiercely anti-Christian stance remains present throughout.
"Organised religion makes me sick!" he spits. "People need to look at themselves to find the answers they look for in God. The answer is not in the Bible, the answer is not up in the f***in' heavens, the answer is nowhere but inside yourself. When you're dead, you'll find out. Until then, why fool yourself? Why deprive yourself of the simple things in life that one should be enjoying?"
How did you come to think the way that you do?
"Where I come from, man, if you didn't believe in God and go to church every Sunday, you weren't part of the establishment. Being an outcast for so many years has led me to where I'm at now."
Is it rebellion?
"I would say it's more my personal choice than rebellion. I'm not trying to go round and shoot off. I'm not what people would consider a threat to their children or whatever. If a Christian approaches me, I'll let him know that he has a few moments to get out of my face. I'm not as bad a person as people make me out to be. If a Jehovah's witness came to my door right now, I would say 'Listen man, the road in front of my house is fifteen feet away. If you can get to that in the time it takes me to get out the door you're gonna live.' So I mean, I like to have a good time with 'em. That or I'll let my dog at 'em.
"Everybody's different, man," the singer concludes with surprising diplomacy. "I believe in what I believe in, I'm not out to force it down anybody's throat, I'm not even offering it for you to f***in' examine. The music is created for your enjoyment. It's not made for you to contemplate killing yourself and everybody else or going out and doing anything f***ing fiendish. It's for the f***ing enjoyment of people who enjoy the darker side of life."
It's Rock music. It's entertainment.
"It's exactly that. That's what it all boils down to. Get passed the Satanism, get passed me, get passed everything. It's all just f***ing music."
Amon - sorry - amen to that.

EXPOSED! Terrorizer shamelessly indulges in some "tabloid journalism kinda shit" and puts five famous Deicide rumours to the test.

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