Exmortus Wields Deathly Virtuosity on "Necrophony" (Interview)

Helmed by Jadran “Conan” Gonzalez, Californian neoclassical and technical thrash/death band Exmortus are back with a new album, Necrophony, which features new drummer Adrian Aguilar (who they found covering one of their songs on YouTube!). It has been 5 years since The Sound of Steel dropped and much has happened since – now,  it feels like the stars aligned for a new darker version of Exmortus in the form of Necrophony. Darkness and death don’t always gel next to the type of guitar pyrotechnics that Conan plays, but he manages to find a sweet spot for it on the new record.

I spoke to Conan about where his unique playing style was derived from. You don’t always hear conversations about Jason Becker and Beethoven, Randy Rhoads and Vivaldi and yet - here we are.

Exmortus are playing a special live show at southern California’s Grill ‘Em All on release day, 8/25 to get everyone fed and in the mood for some technically appealing good times. Regardless of your location and/or appetite, read on below for what’s new for the band.

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How is everything going in terms of live shows as of late?

Jadran “Conan” Gonzalez: Pretty good. We had a free show last week, which was pretty sweet, maybe that was because it was free. We did it on a Monday and people still go.

What is your musical background in terms of how you learned to play?

CG: I was always into the idea of playing guitar, my dad wasn’t a professional but he would jam out with friends and family. He showed me and I wasn’t interested even though I was always surrounded by it. My cousin and I started to play because my dad would teach Mario and since I was jealous I wanted to learn too. I watched a lot of live performances even though I really didn’t know what I was doing at the time, well before there was Youtube. I learned that I can play these riffs, which weren’t that bad and it was an empowering feeling; it wasn’t impossible.

As a listener of the band, I started back with your 3^rd album Slave To The Sword, which seemed like a big record for you guys. What is your background in terms of influences to give Exmortus its sound?

CG: This new album, Necrophony is a different aspect of our sound, a darker tone, horror themed sound harmonically and these chord progressions and melodies which are a little more off-putting than your typical heavy metal fare. We decided to push that more, being that it is our first record with Nuclear Blast and we did the same thing with Slave because at the same time it was our first record on Prosthetic which emphasized a different side of ours. Darker, more classically inspired even with our singles being the least classically inspired from the album. People are in for a treat if they love the classical style for the rest of the record.

We took a lot of inspiration from Beethoven and Vivaldi, we cover a Vivaldi piece, “Summer” within the context of a “Storm of Strings”. A lot of Tchaikovsky in this record, a melody is from “Waltz of the Flowers” contained within “Masquerade”; I just changed it to a minor mode and different minor context and it just sounded so evil to me. A lot of my inspiration comes from that. The album title helps to reflect on the dark atmosphere of the times, I had a lot more fun doing it now to express it in the songs. 

In terms of the rock and metal sphere where did you draw most of your sound from?

CG: Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, but not always. I wasn’t always into the brutally heavy stuff. It was too much for me as a kid. I loved Ozzy Osbourne and all his guitarists with Randy, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde. I slowly got into the more shreddy guitar players like Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Yngwie of course. I started to study and incorporate their licks into mine. If a virtuoso wrote it there is likely more than what you hear on first listen. The guitarists Paul Gilbert and Bruce Bouillet that played on Racer X’s Second Heat, another album were other guitarists that pushed me to get my songwriting and chops down. Great songwriting, riffs, licks and hair; the ‘80s were great.

What can you talk about in terms of getting on the road this year?

CG: We will tour at some point for a North American tour by the end of the year. We are looking to tour Europe for next year, maybe Japan and even South America. 

It’s been a little over 5 years since The Sound of Steel, what has changed about the band in that period of time?

CG: The Sound of Steel was an interesting time for me, half the band left for different reasons at the end of 2017. I had a lot of songs written and I didn’t want to give up either. As heavy of a blow as that was for me. We got a tour offer with Warbringer with our new members Chase Becker and Carlos Cruz that are also in Warbringer, and we did a little run and Chase decided to stay; Carlos had a lot of projects he was working on. We found Adrian Aguliar to drum since we found him covering “Death To Tyrants” in a video that he did of his own free will, so we tried him out. My manager asked if we could do a European tour and I was like “I don’t even have a drummer” so I called Adrian and asked him if he could do it and he was game. We built up a great friendship since we got to know each other more personally and musically. The writing process is more like what it always has been. I do write and arrange most of the music but this time around I asked the guys for more input. Let’s be a band more so than ever.

Anything else to talk about?

CG: We are playing a show at Grill Em All on release day, we have done events with them before and it has always been great. We are excited to play some of the new stuff for fans in a live environment.

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Necrophony releases August 25th via Nuclear Blast.