Trivia / The Black Dahlia Murder

• Approval of God: Members of various brutal death and slam acts^note Andrew LoMastro (Cerebral Incubation), Travis LaBerge (Splattered), Charlie Marvel (Visceral Disgorge), Joe Mortimer (Crepitation), and Matt Kilner (Gorgasm, Iniquitous Deeds) covered "What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse" for the Metal Injection Slay at Home series in October of 2020, and Trevor personally praised the cover. Andrew LoMastro himself was surprised by how well the cover turned out - by his own admission, he had never done highs like that before and had just winged it, and he was as shocked as anyone that he pulled it off.
• Breakthrough Hit: Nocturnal. While they had gained a reputation as an act to watch for with Unhallowed and had managed to successfully follow it up with Miasma, it was their Ozzfest 2005 appearance that exposed them to a much wider audience that really paved the way for them, and between that and the rise of deathcore (which they were never part of, but they had substantial crossover appeal with that fanbase, in addition to being an influence on many of the newer acts at the time), they managed to explode out of the gate with that album and became a major act almost immediately.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Trevor did not have the greatest opinion of Miasma, Deflorate, or Abysmal. As far as he was concerned, Miasma was a confused, unfocused album that involved way too many last-minute plan B's due to plan A either falling through or not coming out right, Deflorate was too technical for its own good and was just a bunch of extremely fast songs from start to finish with no room to breathe (though he has cited "I Will Return" as his favorite song in the band's entire catalog), and Abysmal involved a lot of writer's block and a major miscommunication between the band and the label about the mix.
  • They'd prefer that you not remember their first demo. Trevor's response to fans who have asked them to reissue it or play songs off it whenever he has made a "remember when?" post on social media has always been along the lines of "yeah, how about no".
• Creative Differences: Zach Gibson absolutely hated Brian Eschbach and left with a ton of drama, while John Kempainen just didn't give a shit and contributed literally nothing save for leads, which were improvised on the spot because he didn't feel like writing them. Gibson has since made amends with Trevor, at the very least, and the two are currently decent friends and Trevor is a fan of Nightkin and Shit Life.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: The band has made it clear that while Nocturnal was their defining work and the album that made their career, Nightbringers was their personal favorite album from the moment that they finished writing it up to the end of its touring cycle. To paraphrase the band, they knew it was something special right from the start. While Trevor has cited Unhallowed as his own personal favorite, it was more due to what it represented as the debut of a bunch of young, broke kids who had never even really toured and were just living on a prayer, but wanted to go out, kick some ass, and show the world what was up; musically, Nightbringers is still his favorite. On an individual song basis, he has cited "I Will Return" as his favorite.
• Creator's Oddball: Everblack was originally this. While they had been moving in a heavier and darker direction over the past few albums, Everblack was a distinctly less melodic (by their standards) and more blackened and old-school leaning album that was a notable departure from their established style. The album was divisive at the time and is still a fairly polarizing album years after its release, and it is likely not an accident that its followup (Abysmal) wound up being their most melodic album to date. They would later revisit similar ideas on Verminous, which, in spite of carrying over the power metal elements heard on Nightbringers, also had extremely prominent old-school death metal and death/thrash elements, making Everblack less of this.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: While Nocturnal is the prevailing fan favorite (and certainly their watershed album), it was not Trevor's favorite, as he placed it below Unhallowed, Nightbringers, and Ritual. Ritual, meanwhile, is somewhat divisive among the fanbase, but Trevor loved it for its variety, experimentation, and overarching concept, and has stated that out of the albums that they have yet to do full-album tours for, it is the only one that he would really jump at the chance to play in full. Lastly, while many fans (especially older fans) cite Miasma as one of their favorites (sometimes their absolute favorite), Trevor himself disliked the album and sees it as one large collection of ideas that looked better on paper and a general case of Sophomore Slump.
• No Export for You: "Seppuku" on Everblack is a Japanese bonus track, while "We Dead Are Best Left Underground", "Hellion", and "Der Ton" off of Abysmal, "Gone But Not Forgotten", "This Mortal Coil", "The Swarm", and live versions of "Abysmal" and "When the Last Grave Has Emptied" off of Nightbringers, and "Their Thwarted Patience" and "Go to Hell" off Verminous are all European bonus tracks.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Ryan Knight and Alan Cassidy. Inverted with Max Lavelle, as Trevor was a big Goratory fan long before Max was even in the band and had known him, Adam, Al, and Jay for some time (having crashed at the Goratory house in Natick with the rest of the band way back during their early touring days). Alan Cassidy got to do this a second time with Slugdge, as he was already a huge fan of their music; on their end, they inverted this trope as well, as Matt Moss and Kevin Pearson were longtime TBDM fans.
  • Trevor is this as a whole. He has mentioned numerous times that he's just as much of a fan as he is a performer, and that going from being the token socially-awkward kid who was into the more underground side of metal in high school to touring and playing shows with all the acts that he grew up on plus being able to use his now-famous name to call attention to up-and-coming underground acts that he loves is a dream come true. It was to the point that after he took his life, many underground bands who paid tribute to him said that if you didn't feel like anyone cared about your work, Trevor probably did.
• Schedule Slip: Verminous broke the "every two years" release schedule that they maintained up to Nightbringers. This was due to the extremely heavy touring that they did for Nightbringers, as they just kept getting offers for huge bills that they couldn't refuse.
• Throw It In!: Normally you'd think that the music videos for their songs would be high-budget horror mini-movies. Their music videos, most of the time, focus on the band members' free time while touring. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Subverted with the video "Everything Went Black". It actually is a high-budget horror mini-movie. See the entry for Shout-Out.
  • The Abysmal bonus track "Der Ton" was the result of them fucking around in the studio.