Lord Dying talks new music
By Troy Hasselman, March 17 2020—
Lord Dying, the Portland metal band has been climbing to new heights recently. On the heels of last years acclaimed album Mysterium Tremendum, the group has landed a spot opening for the Black Label Society on a tour that included a stop in Calgary on March 7 at MacEwan Hall.
Mysterium Tremendum is a concept album that deals with death and mortality. It marks a strong departure for the band from their earlier material which was more off-the-cuff and spontaneous into the very meticulous and thought out process of this album. Lord Dying guitarist and vocalist Erik Olson sees this spontaneity continuing into the future as the band begins to think of a follow-up to the album.
“We’ve actually already started on the next record which is a continuation of the concept, it’s a sequel to it and is quite possibly going to become a trilogy,” Olson says. “It’s three records, three concept albums.”
Olson elaborated on the group’s next project by saying it will pick up where Mysterium Tremendeum left off but follow in a weirder, more extreme direction.
“It’s more of a continuation with what we did with Mysterium Tremendum in the sense we’re following a similar approach to the writing method to magnify the parts of Mysterium Tremendum that we like and go with that and make the best record that we can,” Olson says. “That’s what we’re trying to do. It’s also more extreme than what we’ve done before because conceptually it exists in a darker reality than the last record, although there will be progressive, more beautiful moments. Overall it’s a warped, more extreme record.”
While Olson admits he doesn’t relate to this older material in the same way he did when it was first released he still enjoys playing his older material.
“It’s a little bit different for sure because I feel like a different person than I did when I wrote that stuff like 10 years ago,” Olson says. “I relate a bit more to the second album. I guess we didn’t really know what we were doing on the first album but it’s still really fun to play some of those songs. That’s definitely what we’re doing on this tour. We’ve been doing a bit of everything and it’s been a lot of fun.”
Lord Dying’s latest album, Mysterium Tremendum, is available on all streaming platforms.