- Necrophagist, Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Emperor, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Septicflesh, Behemoth, The Black Dahlia Murder, Suicide Silence, Whitechapel (Band), All Shall Perish, Bring Me the Horizon, Emmure, Carnifex, Waking the Cadaver, Beneath the Massacre, Through the Eyes of the Dead, The Faceless, Obscura, Fallujah, Enslaved, Wintersun, Children of Bodom, Insomnium, Arsis, Dark Funeral, Abigail Williams, Batushka, Born of Osiris, Veil of Maya, As Blood Runs Black, Wretched
Formed in Warren County, New Jersey in 2010 by Tom Barber (vocals), Aaron Brown, Jeff Moskovciak (guitars), Gary Herrera (bass), and Scott Cooper (drums) as a metalcore act, the band almost immediately put out Triumph, their debut EP. Brown left very shortly after the band formed, however, and Adam De Micco replaced him the following year. This lineup embarked on a small regional run up and down the Northeast before tracking Bone Kingdom, which came out around the beginning of 2012, though Moskovciak and Cooper left at some point during the year. The former was not replaced right away, but Austin Archey jumped in to replace the latter. The band kept on grinding throughout 2012 and 2013, and by the end of 2013, Maleficium, their third EP, had dropped and made something of a splash online. The buzz that they had gained allowed them to gain spots on multiple tours with major acts, and a decent amount of 2014 was spent on the road. Connor Deffley also wound up joining around either the end of 2014 or the beginning of 2015, rounding out the lineup for the first time since 2011. This lineup went on to track and release Psalms, their full-length debut, in June of 2015, which was hailed as a remarkably mature and well-thought-out release from a promising new band.
The next year or so was devoted to touring the hell out of the album, and by the end of the year, they had already run back into the studio for their second full-length. Flesh Coffin was released in February of 2017 to excellent reviews, but Gary Herrera also announced his departure around the same time, citing general burnout. The band continued onward with a full year of touring, but a bigger shock came in April of 2018: Tom Barber had replaced Alex Koehler in Chelsea Grin and had left Lorna Shore. The band stated that they were not calling it quits, and after many rumors about the new vocalist, a still image from a new video was shown on Twitter that confirmed the rumors that CJ McCreery had joined, followed by an official announcement that spelled it out. "This Is Hell", a standalone single, was released in September of 2018 as their first work with McCreery. The band's third full-length is done as of spring 2019, and upon completion of the Flesh Coffin touring cycle, they signed a deal with Century Media Records. Immortal, their third full-length, will be released in early 2020.
As of December 23, 2019, CJ McCreery has been fired from the band following numerous accusations of serial Domestic Abuse and sexually predatory behavior. After some deliberation, the decision was made to release Immortal on its originally scheduled date, and the band has stated in unambiguous terms that they are not breaking up. Adam would later go on to state in an interview that they were in talks with an extremely strong candidate for a new vocalist. Popular rumor placed Will Ramos (ex-A Wake in Providence; pronounced roughly RAH-mos) as their new vocalist, and while an official announcement has still yet to be made, fans who saw them on their first post-CJ show confirmed Ramos' presence in the band. His status was unknown at the time; Ramos repeatedly stated that he was just a live session member, while the other members told individual fans that the job was his if he wanted it and that he was the guy for them as far as they were concerned. With touring off the table due to COVID-19, the band got to work on new material, and Austin also stated in a podcast that an instrumental version of Immortal was coming in the near future (which did come out the following year), while an Updated Re-release with new vocal tracks is also being worked on.
After over a year of ambiguity regarding his final status in the band, Will Ramos was confirmed as their new vocalist in June of 2021. The EP ...And I Return to Nothingness, the band's first release with Ramos, was released in August to unanimous critical acclaim; the lead single "To the Hellfire" gave the band their commercial breakthrough, topping Apple Music's metal charts. The EP was featured in numerous end-of-year "best metal releases" charts, with "To the Hellfire" even being crowned by Loudwire as their best metal song of the year.
In 2022, the band announced that they have finished recording Pain Remains, their fourth album, which will be released in October. The lead single, "Sun//Eater", was released on May 13 after being previewed during their live shows. The album dropped on October 14 to further critical acclaim and also landed on the Billboard charts, making them the third deathcore band to accomplish such a feat after Suicide Silence and Whitechapel (Band). An instrumental mix was released the following year.
Will Ramos is also famous for having done a video with YouTube channel The Charismatic Voice in which he demonstrates various harsh vocal techniques during a laryngoscopy, to the point where this is perhaps the first thing most people know about him or the band these days; it has been a genuine milestone in the serious academic study of harsh vocals (and also conclusively demonstrated that he is not damaging his voice at all).
Discography:
- Triumph (2010) (EP)
- Bone Kingdom (2012) (EP)
- Maleficium (2013) (EP)
- Psalms (2015)
- "The Absolution of Hatred" (2015) (single)
- Flesh Coffin (2017)
- "This Is Hell" (2018) (single)
- "Darkest Spawn" (2019) (single)
- Immortal (2020) (received an instrumental rerelease in 2021)
- ...And I Return to Nothingness (2021) (EP)
- Pain Remains (2022) (instrumental mix released in 2023)
ENTER INTO THE DARKEST NIGHT! I WILL TROPE WHERE I LIE! THROUGH THE SANDS OF TIME! THROUGH THE ANGEL'S EYE!:
- Ascended Extra:
- Andrew O'Connor started out as a live fill-in in early 2019 and did the tours for that year before being made full-time around the end of the year. According to the band, they had originally assumed that he would just be a hired gun, but he was so enthusiastic and showed so much hustle that they knew he had to be made a full member.
- Mike "Moke" Yager was a longtime friend of the band who was the subject of a running joke about him joining on bass until he finally did around the end of 2021.
- This was also apparently how Austin joined; he was a kid in high school playing in local bands who used to hang out and smoke weed with Tom, and when Scott Cooper left the band, he immediately asked Austin if he wanted to fill in for a show they had that same week.
- Audience Participation Song: A few:
- "FVNERAL MOON": "LEFT! ALIVE! I! CANNOT DIE!"
- "This Is Hell": "REALIZE! THAT THIS IS HELL!"
- "Immortal": "THE IMMORTAL QUESTION - THE CESSPOOL WE REST IN! THE IMMORTAL QUESTION - WHEN WILL YOU LEARN YOUR FUCKING LESSON!?"
- "To the Hellfire": Most, if not all of the chorus, though "MY FINAL BREATH! SWALLOWED BY THE WOMB OF DEATH!" is pretty much guaranteed.
- Back from the Dead: The title track of ...And I Return to Nothingness can certainly qualify.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: Andrew O'Connor is over six feet tall and is a big man in general, while Austin, Will, and Mike are of roughly average height and Adam is fairly short.
- Black Metal: Started adding in some elements of it on Maleficium and made it an extremely prominent part of their sound on Flesh Coffin.
- Brown Note: The video for "Into the Earth" features the protagonist finding an odd DVD that proceeds to play a series of increasingly surreal and nightmarish images that nukes his mind and kills him.
- Concept Album:
- ...And I Return to Nothingness is based around the stages of death ("To the Hellfire"), purgatory ("Of the Abyss") and resurrection (the title track).
- Pain Remains revolves around lucid dreaming and the experience an unnamed narrator has creating a world of their own within their dreams before realizing the futility inherent within their endeavors.
- Deathcore: Became this with Bone Kingdom and started out as a melodic, technical deathcore act before taking a heavier direction on Maleficium, followed by a more blackened one on Psalms and especially Flesh Coffin. While they still do not debate the fact that they are a deathcore band, they are much less heavy on the "core" part of the sound these days.
- Despair Event Horizon: Their primary lyrical theme during Tom's run, especially on Flesh Coffin.
- Driven to Suicide: The protagonist of the Pain Remains trilogy of music videos. A man and his wife are shown happily married in and around their home, mixed with scenes of the wife slowly deteriorating in a hospital bed. When she eventually dies, the husband imagines himself attempting to kill himself in the church where her funeral is being held. When he returns to his marital home after the funeral, he douses the interior in gasoline and sets the house ablaze while he is still inside.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Triumph was a melodic metalcore album, while Bone Kingdom was much more melodic and tech-based than their later material, with a sound highly reminiscent of early Within the Ruins. Even Maleficium, while certainly more reflective of the band's current style, had more breakdowns and was more tech-oriented, with only some trace blackened elements.
- Epic Rocking: The title track of Immortal clocks in at almost 7 minutes, and all three songs in ...And I Return to Nothingness are around 5 to 6 minutes in length. Pain Remains takes the trope to a new level for the band, with only three songs barely missing out on the 5 minute mark and the longest, the title track, being a 20-minute closer split in three parts.
- Fading into the Next Song: On Pain Remains, the album version of "Sun//Eater" fades into "Cursed to Die".
- Grief Song: The title track of Pain Remains is an entire 20-minute mini-opera about someone who is overcome by the grief of their loved one having an untimely death, and how the sorrow erodes his sanity to the point of setting themself on fire alongside the house they lived in as shown in the three-part music video.
- I Am the Band: Zigzagged with Adam De Micco; he is the primary songwriter and the band has collectively agreed that if he ever has to leave, Lorna Shore will no longer exist, but Austin plays a major role in the song editing process and is just as much the core of the band as Adam is.
- Icarus Allusion: Inverted with "Sun//Eater", where the Icarus figure in question manages to come into contact with and consume the sun.
- In Name Only: They have no remaining founders as of 2018, though Adam De Micco and Austin Archey have been in the band for the bulk of their career, and De Micco has been the sole songwriter for quite some time now.
- Instrumental: They have released instrumental mixes of both Immortal and Pain Remains.
- Last Chorus Slowdown: Used commonly in their music, but the most famous example by far is the final breakdown in "To the Hellfire".
- Lead Drummer: Austin Archey is easily the single most recognizable member of the band aside from Will Ramos (to the point where there was an "AUSTIN!" chant when the band played a show in Connecticut in August of 2021), as he is the second-oldest member next to Adam De Micco and plays a major role in the songwriting process, is friends with almost everyone in large portions of the metalcore and deathcore scenes, and is known for his frequent appearances in the touring circuit as a fill-in, roadie, or tech.
- Lyrical Cold Open: "BOUND WITHIN PURGATORY!"
- Meaningful Name: As per Adam, Immortal was chosen as a title because Lorna Shore had, on their own, survived multiple occurrences that would have broken most bands up, and just refused to quit despite their perennial bad luck (and this was before the CJ incident, though he was going to be fired anyways even if that hadn't happened).
- Metalcore: Started out as a standard (if not somewhat heavier) melodic metalcore act on Triumph. They don't like to talk about it too much.
- Metal Scream: Tom Barber was famous for his hoarse, shout-like lows that were somewhere between a Type 1 and a Type 2, as well as his fairly standard Type 3 highs, while CJ McCreery was equally famous for his guttural Type 2 lows that are best described as slam gurgles done with tunnel throat, as well as his shrill, squawk-like Type 3 highs. Will Ramos mostly sticks to Type 3s with some Type 2s, with a style somewhere between Tom and CJ, but generally closer to Tom.
- Motor Mouth: "Sun//Eater" features one example in the second verseI fabricate, manipulate, incinerate, and duplicate
Restabilize the precipice, my arbitrary exodus inside
Where I confide, looking down on this steeple - Music Is Politics: A downplayed version of this was part of the reason why it took so long to announce Will Ramos had joined the band, as he had also tracked a full-length with Euclid and Lorna Shore didn't want to steal their thunder, while Euclid wanted to make sure that Century Media would be okay with announcing another release with Will's vocals in close proximity to Lorna Shore's own announcement, and also didn't want to look like they were piggybacking off of the announcement for cheap clout.
- New Sound Album: Numerous.
- Bone Kingdom was a Genre Shift to deathcore.
- Maleficium was significantly heavier and less melodic, as well as introducing the blackened elements that would later dominate their sound.
- Flesh Coffin reduced the tech and significantly expanded on the blackened elements that were introduced on Maleficium and expanded upon with Psalms and overall greatly emphasized the "blackened" part of "blackened deathcore".
- Immortal introduced prominent Symphonic Metal elements and was also significantly heavier, with numerous slam breaks and the usage of seven-string guitars on multiple tracks. This new sound was entirely carried over to ...And I Return to Nothingness, only with a far greater emphasis on the symphonic parts as well as influences from Power Metal.
- Pain Remains dials back on the breakdowns in favor of bringing the symphonic elements to the forefront, and further amplifies the black metal elements in their trademark sound, taking notes particularly from depressive/suicidal black metal.
- Nobody Loves the Bassist: They did not had a bassist between when Gary Herrera left in 2017 up until when Mike "Moke" Yager joined around the end of 2021.
- Pastiche: As per Will Ramos, his vocals in the final breakdown in "To the Hellfire" were a tribute to Dickie Allen.
- Power Metal: A prominent part of their sound from ...And I Return to Nothingness onward, which Andrew O'Connor helped introduce.
- Sampling: "Sun//Eater" contains the sounds for the Perilous Attack and Healing Gourd from Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, while "Pain Remains Pt. III: In a Sea of Fire" concludes with the bonfire sound from Dark Souls.
- Shout-Out: They were apparently named after a onetime Batman love interest by an old guitarist.
- Signature Style: Extremely fast technical death metal riffing (involving heavy use of pedalpoints), melodic tremolo riffing with bombastic symphonic textures, flashy and theatrical vocals, neoclassical shred leads, and frequently abrupt breakdowns that occur with minimal buildup and often revert back to the original tempo with a similarly brisk transition.
- Small Name, Big Ego: CJ, even before he was kicked out. He didn't even particularly like being in the band, hated touring (and was notorious for complaining constantly about petty grievances and regularly embarrassed the band with his conduct on tour)note , decided on multiple occasions to arbitrarily refuse to go on stage and ditch his bandmates for the night, half-assed the recording process for Immortal, and generally did the absolute bare minimum. In short, he treated the band as an ego boost and clout generator and little else, and Adam stated in no uncertain terms that he was only looking out for himself and did not care one bit about his bandmates.
- Surreal Music Video: The music video for "Into the Earth" can certainly qualify.
- Symphonic Metal: They introduced prominent elements of this on Immortal.
- Teen Genius: Austin Archey was only eighteen when he joined the band.
- Truck Driver's Gear Change: Used in the final choruses to "...And I Return to Nothingness" and "After All I've Done, I'll Disappear".
- Walking the Earth: How Austin Archey lives. When he's not on tour with Lorna Shore, he's usually on the road as a tech, merch guy, or fill-in for another band, and he generally spends very little time at home.
- We Used to Be Friends: Subverted with CJ, as he wasn't even really a friend to begin with; he wore out his welcome very quickly and quickly became a thorn in the side of his bandmates (and picked up a rep in the touring world for being a gigantic Jerkass who was to be avoided as much as possible), and even before he was outed, they were sick of his shit and were gearing up to fire him. Also currently subverted with Tom; both Adam and Austin (especially the latter, who went off on him on Twitter at the time) were initially not at all happy with him about it, but as Tom has settled into Chelsea Grin and Lorna Shore has settled into life without Tom and both acts have flourished, they have been quite happy to abandon all hard feelings and ill will and be friends again.
