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The Black Dahlia Murder is one of the most infamous unsolved slayings in American history.  It’s also the name of a European style metal band from Detroit, Michigan.  The band (Trevor Strnad – Vocals, Brian Eschbach – Guitar,  John Kempainen – Guitar,  David Lock – Bass, and Cory Grady - Drums) recently released their debut full length on Metal Blade Records, titled ‘Unhallowed’.  The album has been garnering some good reviews, and the band has been putting quite a few miles on the tour bus in support of it.  While on a brief break from the road, guitarist Brian Eschbach was kind enough to chat with me about his band. 

UT:  You’ve been on the road quite a bit in support of this album.  Is it still fun or is it starting to get like a job for you?
Brian Eschbach – We’ve been taking breaks throughout the entire time, so we haven’t gotten too burned out on it. 

UT:  What happened with Trevor not being on the tour with Arch Enemy?
BE:  We were out on tour before that with Soilent Green, and we’d been having a tough couple of months.  We weren’t getting along all that well.  It ended up outside of a show we had a fight, and Trevor and Dave took off.   But we had to go out on the road, so we got some replacements for that Arch Enemy tour.  We had two weeks to get the replacement guys up to speed, teach ‘em all the songs, and get them comfortable playing with us.  We had a chance of maybe botching the whole thing, but it went alright.  A lot of people came up to us to say they really dug what we were doing.  We sold a lot of CDs on that tour.  It was really exciting.  When we got home, we were looking around for another vocalist, and we realized this was stupid.  There’s just too little for us to be fighting about.  We started talking to Trevor again, and got him over for practices and stuff.  We just got back from Japan, and everyone’s been feeling pretty good.  It looks like there shouldn’t be any more problems like that. 

UT:  When you and Cory first put the band together, was it your intention to do something in the European metal style?
BE:  There was a bit of that, and a bit of how we worked together.  The combination of what we all think sounds good.  But right off the bat I wanted to do a heavy, melodic style band.  You listen to bands like Iron Maiden and shit like that – they set the standard for what metal is to me, and the rest of us.   

UT:  I first became aware of the band from the video.  Who directed that for you and how much input did you have in it?
BE:  It was pretty low budget, so we knew we couldn’t get too intricate with it.  We kind of just sat out on it.  The guy who made it, Jason Joseph, has done videos for Lamb of God.  We just talked about what the song was about.  He threw out a couple ideas, we threw out a couple.  We went through some different cuts of it, had him change a couple things.  In that aspect we were involved in it, but Jason did most of the work on it. 

UT:  Were you surprised that it’s been getting played on MTV2?
BE:  We knew it would get at least a play on the ball, but we didn’t realize it was going to go into heavy rotation on the ball, Extreme Rock, and some of the other shows they have going on. 

UT:  What do you think about Ozzfest having some real metal bands this year?
BE:  I think it’s great.  Ozzy’s been taking out these bands for the past couple years now that all pretty much sound the same.  People don’t want to hear that bullshit any more.   

UT:  How were the crowds in Michigan before you got signed?
BE:  It’s kind of weird.  During the 3 years that we’ve been a band, we watched the tail end of one scene dying here, and there was a period of time where people didn’t go to shows.  Then there was a bunch of kids that just kind of popped out of the woodwork this past summer that go to tons of shows in Detroit now.   

UT:  How do you go about writing songs?
BE:  I usually write the majority of the riffs, but everyone’s involved in piecing together songs.  Trevor writes all his lyrics. 

UT:  You guys have sort of a “true crime” name.  Did you get that from a TV show or book on the actual murder?
BE:  No, actually we were poking around on the internet and came across that.  We thought it had a cool ring to it, kind of dark and morbid, which is what we were trying to go for. 

UT:  So are you normally a big “true crime” fan?
BE:  I’ll sit down and watch anything on A&E about that crap, but none of us are really into getting all the forensic facts in our head.  It’s always cool to hear about some guy like Gacy tearing into someone. 

UT:  I notice the zombie thing comes up in a few songs.  Any favorite zombie movies?
BE:  I’m a big fan of ‘Dawn of the Dead’, and I’m stoked to go see the remake.  From the commercials it looks like they’ve done an ok job on it.  I was really surprised with the ‘Texas Chainsaw’ remake they did.  I thought it was really good.  And ’28 Days Later’ which came out last year, I thought that one was worth a shit.  It seems like horror movies, and zombie movies, are coming back. 

UT:  Would you like to be on a movie soundtrack?
BE:  Someone’s trying to actually make a movie about the Black Dahlia, and we got an email approaching us to possibly do a song for the soundtrack.  But you know how crazy Hollywood people are.  This guy could just be a quack, sitting in his underwear at his computer.  But it would definitely be cool to get on a soundtrack.  It’s great exposure, and it would be perfect because that’s totally the type of stuff we write about.   

UT:  I know you don’t write your own press releases, but the one I have says you’re “creating the new generation of American metal.”  Do you stand by that, or is it maybe a little too much hype?
BE:  A little too much hype. (laughs)  People have criticized us for not being more revolutionary or original.  I’m not worried about that shit as much as just writing songs that we think rock. 

UT:  Some bands that started out in a similar style as BDM, like In Flames, have changed over time.  Does that sort of thing appeal to you or do you want to stay true to pure metal?
BE:  If what we’re doing now is staying true to metal, then we’re just going to keep on doing that.  There’s only so much you can really try to figure out with the In Flames situation.  They come from a totally different culture.  Maybe rap-core is really revolutionary over there, and they just love it.  But that’s not the sort of thing that we’re going to be incorporating into our sound any time in the future. 

UT:  Have you started working on material for your follow up yet?
BE:  Oh man, it’s killing me.  That’s all I’ve been doing for the past week.  We’ve been writing while we’ve had some downtime.  We’re hoping to head into the studio in December, and have a new album released in March of 2005. 

UT:  So what are your goals with the band?  Do you want to be big or would you rather stay in the underground?
BE:  If these people at Metal Blade, or whoever we involve ourselves with, want to push the band to some sort of next level…I don’t really give a shit about that, and I know the guys don’t either.  But if people are actually into what we’re doing and we can get to the point we can play 3000 seat clubs and get away with it, then hell yeah. 

UT:  So tell me about the upcoming tour.
BE:  As I Lay Dying and Everytime I Die are co-headlining, switching every night.  We’re in the support slot with a band called Scarlet opening, I believe. 

UT:  Any plans to headline?
BE:  We did that back in the summer with a band called Himsa and --- on the northern West Coast.  That was alright.  The first time we ever went out headlining.  Some nights would be 300 or 350 people, other nights were only 80 or 100 kids.  But I think we’re just going to chill out and do the support slots for awhile and see what happens with the next record. 

Visit The Black Dahlia Murder website.