Black Dahlia Murder Talk Guitarist Change

12/16/08 3:28pm

by Pete Richards (CHARTattack)

It's been a rough couple of weeks for Black Dahlia Murder. The Detroit death metal band had an unexpected lineup change, as lead guitarist John Kempainen suddenly quit the band just days their scheduled cross-Canada tour. Rather than bail out, the four remaining members pressed on without Kempainen to fulfill obligations to diehard Canadian fans.

We had the chance to speak with vocalist Trevor Strnad and tried to exploit any ugliness between former members and milk it to the last drop. Sadly, there wasn't much to speak of.

CHARTattack: So you very recently had a major complication with the band.
Trevor Strnad: Yeah, definitely. This is the first interview since. So yeah, we're going as a four-piece right now without a lead guitarist, but it's just temporary for this tour.

We just haven't had the time to assemble anything, really. John didn't leave us any options. He just told us he wasn't going to come right before we were going to leave. We were begging him and trying to work with him, but it wasn't going to happen.

What was his reason?
He said he's just got personal issues going on in his life, and we've seen him kind of becoming detached from the band, you know what I mean? We've noticed it over a while, so it wasn't that big of a thing. The only shock was that he wouldn't come on the tour anyway.

Well, obviously if somebody isn't happy in any band, then it's inevitable that they would be leaving anyway.
Yeah, we were prepared. We just weren't prepared for the consequence of losing the tour. We knew it was going to come down in one way or another at some time. We're bummed that he wouldn't fulfill the obligations, you know? It's only 20 days, man.

Yeah, it's such a short tour I don't see why he wouldn't just stick it out.
Yeah, so now it feels like there's some bad blood because it ended on a bad note when he could have just went on the tour and it would have been cool. It would have broken the tension that was kind of mounting anyway. We could have all just relaxed and went, but I don't know.

So was it just conflicting lifestyle choices or what?
Um, no. I don't know, man. I think he was just kind of along for the ride for a lot of it and not really bringing a lot to the table. He didn't do interviews. He didn't do any kind of pressing or any kind of book-keeping or writing anything, really. He did a little bit, but a very minute amount.

I don't know. He was just changing. He didn't seem to have the same kind of love for it. I don't know, maybe it was the lifestyle just wearing him down. Maybe that was a factor, too. I don't know. It was just time for a change for both parties. We want to go into this record and just take it to the next level, so we're going to have someone that we can do that with and they'll be good.

I saw a lot of postings on your MySpace page with kids asking when auditions start.
Yeah, there's tons of people asking that, but I think we kind of have an arranged marriage in this department. But it's good. There's no panic in our ranks. We know what we're going to do, although I can't really reveal that at this time.

And this is somebody people will know.
Yeah. It's good, though. Right now, it's not what it appears. There's no turmoil in our ranks, you know what I mean?

We know what we've got to do right now and we know what's coming up in the future. We're working on the new album and getting the themes together for it and getting some new songs together.

It may look from the outside because of the MySpace and because of the tour and everything that things are going badly, but this is definitely going to prove to be a good change.

Is there a bad relationship between John and the band?
I don't really know what to say about it at this point. Right now, we're all just kind of getting bummed and pissed and frustrated about the tour, so it's kind of a sore subject at least for the moment.

Well, I'm glad I got the scoop on it.
Yeah, man. You know, it felt good. It felt liberating.