When Dying Fetus returned with Wrong One to Fuck With, it was the bold album title and artwork that really got people talking. However, as drummer Trey Williams tells Exclaim! TV's Aggressive Tendencies, both of those shocking elements were nearly different.
With the goal of a "strong and imposing" title for the follow-up to 2013's Reign Supreme, the blast-beater extraordinaire reveals another potential title was Gods Among Insects, but they settled on the name of the closing song after going over the tracklist and finding it met the criteria.
Though the band have noted the final version of the cover art — complete with a man ominously standing above a bloody scene holding a machete and a mask made of someone's flesh — wasn't the full level of brutality they wanted, the concept was at first entirely different.
"The original album [art] idea for Wrong One to Fuck With was basically Hardcore Henry, that movie where it was all first-person and a dude just going around fucking everybody up," Williams explains. "The front cover was going to be a group of dudes about to beat up the first-person viewer. And we wanted to make the audience member feel like they were the wrong one to fuck with, so when you looked at the album cover, it's your view of these guys about to jump you. And then all of the pages on the inside were going to be scenes of the wrong one to fuck with fucking up this gang of dudes, and then the back was going to be just them all strewn out on the street, gushing blood and dead."
Of the actual album title, Williams notes that it's a good thing the record was well-received, lest people play on its title with jokes such as "this is the wrong album to buy." The trio achieved that by crafting melodies that would be stuck in attendees' heads when they're falling asleep post-show. However, they didn't let the pursuit of melody eliminate the brutality.
"I just like heavy music — anything that gets my blood pumping. It could be black metal, could be death metal, could be grind, could be hardcore, just as long as it grabs me and it makes me like, 'Oh my gosh, I want to hurt some people! Let's do it,' then it's cool. I dig it."
One thing he isn't fond of, however, is those who take offence to things in the death metal underground — things he suggests are integral to the genre. This adversity has, as previously mentioned, resulted in changed album artwork, but it's not just about that for Williams.
"If you like extreme metal and something offends you, why are you here? This is a place for the offensive things. This is not a place for everyone else. If we wanted to write music that appealed to everybody and made everybody feel good and warm and fuzzy inside, we would not be here. That is not what we do, and I will just leave it at that."
And so will we. Watch the full interview in the players below.
With the goal of a "strong and imposing" title for the follow-up to 2013's Reign Supreme, the blast-beater extraordinaire reveals another potential title was Gods Among Insects, but they settled on the name of the closing song after going over the tracklist and finding it met the criteria.
Though the band have noted the final version of the cover art — complete with a man ominously standing above a bloody scene holding a machete and a mask made of someone's flesh — wasn't the full level of brutality they wanted, the concept was at first entirely different.
"The original album [art] idea for Wrong One to Fuck With was basically Hardcore Henry, that movie where it was all first-person and a dude just going around fucking everybody up," Williams explains. "The front cover was going to be a group of dudes about to beat up the first-person viewer. And we wanted to make the audience member feel like they were the wrong one to fuck with, so when you looked at the album cover, it's your view of these guys about to jump you. And then all of the pages on the inside were going to be scenes of the wrong one to fuck with fucking up this gang of dudes, and then the back was going to be just them all strewn out on the street, gushing blood and dead."
Of the actual album title, Williams notes that it's a good thing the record was well-received, lest people play on its title with jokes such as "this is the wrong album to buy." The trio achieved that by crafting melodies that would be stuck in attendees' heads when they're falling asleep post-show. However, they didn't let the pursuit of melody eliminate the brutality.
"I just like heavy music — anything that gets my blood pumping. It could be black metal, could be death metal, could be grind, could be hardcore, just as long as it grabs me and it makes me like, 'Oh my gosh, I want to hurt some people! Let's do it,' then it's cool. I dig it."
One thing he isn't fond of, however, is those who take offence to things in the death metal underground — things he suggests are integral to the genre. This adversity has, as previously mentioned, resulted in changed album artwork, but it's not just about that for Williams.
"If you like extreme metal and something offends you, why are you here? This is a place for the offensive things. This is not a place for everyone else. If we wanted to write music that appealed to everybody and made everybody feel good and warm and fuzzy inside, we would not be here. That is not what we do, and I will just leave it at that."
And so will we. Watch the full interview in the players below.
