The Autumn Offering
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Bands face a crossing point within their careers, and discover when changes are necessary to elevate to the next level. The Autumn Offering did that and made their strongest release to date, Fear Will Cast No Shadow.
Over the past nine years, the Autumn Offering introduced their brand of modern thrash metal through constant touring. This Dayton Beach, Florida quartet did self-booked tours in 2003 before befriending Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta. Jasta released the band’s debut CD Relevations of the Unsung through Stillborn Records (later re-released by Victory Records.
After the release of 2006’s Embrace the Gutter, the band made major lineup changes. Known for constant lineup problems, they made their biggest change by recruiting former Hell Within vocalist Matt McChesney in May 2007. He brought a wider range of vocal styles, which the band lacked in the past. Plus the band experimented with more thrash metal sounds than before.
Since the interview, the band also recruited new drummer Brian Sculley. McChesney spoke to Blistering.com about the new record, the newly found spirit within the Autumn Offering, and reaching new fans on the road.
Blistering.com: How is the Dope tour going?
Matt McChesney: It’s cool. It’s a little different as far as the crowd goes. But we had some good responses and won over fans.
Blistering.com: How long have you officially been in the band?
MM: Since May (2007).
Blistering.com: How did you get involved with the Autumn Offering? You were in another band.
MM: I was in a band called Hell Within. We did a couple of tours with the Autumn Offering. So I knew them pretty well. They fired their singer and the last tour we did, they were hinting to me…I did “Cowboys From Hell” with them every night. They were hinting at it. The direction that Hell Within was going was not what I wanted to do. So it was a pretty easy choice.
Blistering.com: Did you originally join to help The Autumn Offering and also stay in Hell Within, or did you completely leave Hell Within?
MM:I quit to join full time, but I kind of had an understanding that with Hell Within that I would try to pull off both, but it became clear that it wasn’t going to work. I had to make a choice. I chose to go with the Autumn Offering.
Blistering.com: You brought a new dynamic that was not there before. How much of the songwriting were you involved with? Were you there from the beginning?
MM: Basically, what happened was that Tommy [Church], the lead guitar player, started sending me demos in last April or early May after their tour was done. I had started writing stuff. Me, Tommy and Matt [Johnson, guitar] basically wrote the whole record. We got down to [Jason] Suecof in Orlando, moved a bunch guitar parts around, and wrote a bunch of different drum and bass parts. The record was pretty complete by the time we got there. We changed some vocal stuff. It’s the normal stuff you do in the studio. We worked pretty well in the studio. We had the same vision for the record. They wanted a lot of singing, since they never had that before. They didn’t want to be boxed in with the band that has screaming the whole time. They didn’t want to do that any more.
Blistering.com: What was the biggest difference between how Hell Within operated and how The Autumn Offering works?
MM: I wrote a lot of the music and the lyrics in Hell Within. It became harder to convey the ideas I wanted. On the last record with Hell Within [Shadows of Vanity], which I thought was a great record, but I had to fight almost for the screaming parts. They didn’t want screaming at all any more. They wanted almost like what Avenged Sevenfold did. I didn’t want to do that. I want the heaviness. If you hear the Autumn Offering record, there’s a lot of singing on it, but at the same time, there’s a lot of songs that don’t have any singing on it at all. I didn’t want to specifically go in one direction and alienate half our fanbase by giving them a completely different record. What happened was some of the fans grew with it, and some of them were like ‘this is a completely different band.’
Blistering.com: How does your lyrical approach differ from the previous vocalist’s?
MM:I know their thing before, which I wanted to get away from, was the whole white trash thrash thing on Embrace the Gutter. My lyrics come from poems. I think the stuff I write is a lot heavier than anything they’ve done before. There’s probably stuff that’s a lot lighter. It’s all ends of the spectrum. Whereas their last vocalist – I don’t even know what he wrote. I don’t know if he wrote the lyrics at all. They were decent but it was straight up to a point. I tried to bring in my thing. I think it works pretty well. I took the best of what I did in Hell Within with the best of what they had to offer in their band, and combined them both.
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