Jun
08
1.04pm

ABRAMELIN // Full Bore Gore

Abramelin hysteria

The story of Australia’s oldest—if not its most prolific—death metal band goes right back to 1988 with a group featuring vocalist Simon Dower called Acheron.

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Conqueror guitarist Tim Aldridge joined soon after. Together the pair led the group’s multitude of line-up changes through the developing Melbourne extreme metal scene of the early 1990s until learning of another band called Acheron—a Florida-based Satanic death metal band also formed in 1988, and led by a member of the Church of Satan. It was 1994, and Abramelin had come to be, named after the medieval Egyptian mage whose magical formulae found their way into modern mysticism through the work of occultists like Aleister Crowley. 


aversions crown hysteria


As it turns out, there are two schools of thought when it comes to pronouncing that name. The correct way – ABRA-melin – or the more common way – A-BRAM-elin. That’s the way I’ve been saying it for twenty-five years as I sit down to face Dower over Skype. Apparently he doesn’t really care all that much, and actually pronounces it both ways over the course of the interview.

“As I’ve said before, it’s an either/or [situation],” he says. “The type of magic Abra-Melin was working with is called Abramelin magic so I’m fine to roll the words together and bring it into one. As long as they don’t call us Adrenalin or other things like they tend to do, because some people struggle with it.”

That wasn’t the only thing people struggled with when it came to this band. Dower’s depraved lyrics proved so disturbing that the Western Australian government banned their 1995 debut album; when it was re-issued a few years later there was no lyric sheet included. That level of censorship proved no barrier. Their next album, 2000’s Deadspeak, included songs like Flesh Furnace, about a child who incinerates his parents, and Plague, a Cannibal Corpse-like zombie apocalypse tale. They are two of the least tasteless examples.

After the second show back I ran into an old mate and he was like, ‘Hey man, it’s been twenty years and you’ve got kids and everything now, you must have toned down the lyrics a bit’ And I said, ‘No, mate, they’re worse!’
[ Simon Dower ]

“After the second show back [in 2017] I ran into an old mate and he was like, ‘Hey man, it’s been twenty years and you’ve got kids and everything now, you must have toned down the lyrics a bit’,” Dower recalls with a chuckle. “And I said, ‘No, mate, they’re worse!’”

Never Enough Snuff is Abramelin’s first album in two decades. It is the culmination of several years of work that began soon after their surprise comeback three years ago at a show commemorating the 30th anniversary of the famed Metal for Melbourne Records. 

“During the hiatus, I admit, I didn’t think we’d be getting back together again,” Dower says. “Then in 2017 when we had that first show back, which was organised by Rob, our bass player, within three rehearsals Tim is like, ‘Right, I’ve got a new song’. That was how the process started and it kept rolling on until we had enough for an album.”

Many of the songs had existed in the mind of the guitarist for up to 10 years, Dower suggests. With the band in a solid form again, they began to take shape, but unlike previous albums that had been written by Aldridge and Dower almost exclusively, Never Enough Snuff was more of a band effort. The result is an album that sounds like it could have been released immediately after Deadspeak, not twenty years later, although Dower doesn’t necessarily agree. 


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“I think if we had gone straight back in, we wouldn’t have got what we got with Never Enough Snuff,” he reasons. “I think having that downtime helped a lot with getting everything the way it has turned out. The other guys were all pretty active in the meantime. I wasn’t, but I did have that time to let new lyrical ideas fester in my mind. This time too, it was done more as a band as opposed to just Tim composing everything. The Peeler was written by Matt, and Dave’s arrangements for the drums have made a massive difference from what Tim had originally. After Dave got his hands on it, it was completely different. I just went back and made minimal changes to the flow of the songs, but outside of that, with the musical side of it, I just let the boys write it, then piece my lyrics together around the arrangement.” 

The new album features songs about mass murderers, werewolves, human sacrifices, sadistic killers and assorted forms of sickening bloodshed. Dower’s reprehensible lyrics come from a deep love of horror in all its forms, engendered in him from an early age. That fascination led to his involvement in the gore-filled realms of death metal in adulthood, after following the musical path of almost every metalhead of his generation.

It shits me when people say, ‘I used to listen to metal, but I grew out of it’. It really disses the genre, and that’s not cool, because the genre has so much to offer.
[ Simon Dower ]

“I’ve always had a huge fascination with horror, and every aspect of it,” he says. “That’s pretty much why I ended up doing what I’m doing—and going to a private Catholic school!” He laughs. “That’s something that turns you on to the dark side real fast! From watching movies when I was a little kid, going to the drive-in with my parents, reading horror … Then by the time I made my first foragings into rock back in the day, it was KISS. Destroyer was the first album I got into and I was fascinated with KISS for a while. Then (Iron) Maiden released Number of the Beast and I was like, ‘Wow! Look at this shit! And it talks about Satan and everything else!’ So I rode the Maiden train for a while, and then got into German thrash and started tape trading with guys from Europe and musically it just got faster, darker, heavier and the horror just got darker, more disturbed, gorier and the books I read got nastier and nastier … everything just spiralled down and that just made me happier, happier, happier!”

The resurrected Abramelin is comprised of veritable death metal scene vets—alongside Dower and Aldridge are guitarist Matt Wilcock and bass player Rob Mollica, both of whom have been in the band before and several others as well since, and drummer Dave Haley, whose own 20-year career with Psycroptic was just beginning when Abramelin’s was winding up last time.

“We’re very, very blessed to have Matt back with us—that was a bullshit guitarist to have before he left to go overseas, and play in all those other bands. An outstanding guitarist. Dave was a huge fan of the band before he joined, so he understands the feel and what we want. Rob just pounds away in the background,” Dower says with a warm smile. “The other guys are a little more technical than Rob, but he’s like the metal mascot of the band! He’s just a champion on stage.”

Everyone in Abramelin has been extremely active on the metal scene since the band ground to a halt following a tour with Cradle of Filth in 2001: individual members have played in about 30 different bands between them in that time. All except Dower. 

“Other! Not metal!” he responds with a laugh when asked what he was doing during that period. He stepped right away from it altogether, but not because of any time-honoured excuses: “It shits me when people say, ‘I used to listen to metal, but I grew out of it’. It really disses the genre, and that’s not cool, because the genre has so much to offer. Outside of metal it just sounds like Crash! Bang! Wallop!, but once you’re inside you realise how expansive it is, with all the different genres and then the sub-genres within those.”

His reasons were linked to his profession.

“Because I was working with it—I was working for a record company that was a major fulcrum point for a lot of international stuff coming through, and dealing with licensing and playing in the band—it was metal 24/7 for years and years and years. It wasn’t to the point where I was sick of it and I didn’t like it anymore, but it was more that I was struggling to find anything new. I’d heard it all before: as fast as it could go, as slow as it could go, the combination with every other genre, there was just not that fresh stuff coming through anymore. So I was glad to have a few years downtime from it.”

Purchase & Stream Abramelin’s Never Enough Snuff here.


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