Tom Barber - Chelsea Grin/Darko (US) 'I Would Rather Sharpen My Blade... And Just Put Out Music'
Australia was lucky enough to witness Chelsea Grin‘s recent performances down in Australia on Thy Art Is Murder‘s Decade of Hate tour (gig review here), which really set an early standard for deathcore show of the year in 2023, with Whitechapel and SPITE on the bill too.
Of course, you might have picked up that both Chelsea Grin's Tom Barber and SPITE's Josh ‘Baby J’ Miller were together across the tour, but unfortunately there were no surprise Darko (US) performances. However, we did get to have a beer with Barber in Melbourne after their show at The Forum to chat all things Suffer in Heaven, out 17 March, via ONErpm as well as recent Chelsea Grin release Suffer in Hell and Darko releases Oni and Dethmask Pt. 2.
Barber revealed what we can expect in the upcoming Chelsea Grin second part Suffer in Heaven:
"I think it's a bit heavier. I think it's more aggressive."
Comparing it to Suffer in Hell from last year, he says:
"It's more of an ass-beater. There's a lot more just heavy parts, some crazy vocal parts. I believe this one's going to be the one that people go 'oh, that's why they did eight and eight'."
Explaining the reason the two albums are separately, Barber elaborates:
"It's not just a bunch of songs that we wrote and picked together. we picked certain things that fit in certain songs, and it's just going to make sense when it's all released."
Of course, we're still on a Darko hangover as well and Barber reckons there's a whole lot more to come with the 'passion-project'.
"We have another record too. We're just consistently putting sh*t out. You know how people put 'content' out, well instead of wasting people's time... we just put out stuff that people can grab onto."
"It's like people want to see what you're doing and what f*cking food you're eating, but I would rather sharpen my blade the entire time and put out music, because music is the best kind of content."
On the independent nature of Darko, the vocalist comments on how a debut live show could look.
"We're planning for a live show. We're going to put out money in it, we're going to try and get a gnarly lineup. We're going to do a thing where, if people can't make it to the show, we're going to fly out a handful of people from certain countries. We'll do a raffle."
Check out the full interview below including our next edition of Deathcore Karaoke with Tom Barber.
Interview by Ricky Aarons (@rickysaul90)
Pre-Save/Order Chelsea Grin - Suffer in Heaven here
Stream Darko (US) - Dethmask Pt. 2 here
