Killswitch Engage guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz spoke to Teamrock.com about his upcoming supergroup side project, Serpentine Dominion. Cannibal Corpse frontman George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher and former The Black Dahlia Murder, etc. drummer Shannon Lucas join him in that project, who will release their self-titled debut album on October 28th through Metal Blade.
Dutkiewicz fielded a number of questions about the group’s formation and branching out with the project. He said of Fisher‘s work on it:
“George is the same as me. He listens to a lot of traditional metal. It’s really cool for him to be in a band with all this melody, in the guitar work and some of my backing vocals. It’s different for him and it’s a nice creative outlet for someone who’s always pigeonholed as just this brutal singer in this classic, grinding death metal band for years and years. I guess maybe the chance for him to break out and do something a bit different was exciting for him as well.”
When asked about what he gets from Serpentine Dominion that he doesn’t in Killswitch Engage, he replied:
“Honestly, I do get something out of it. It was a cool rush for me, to write songs with that kind of aggression. I think we’d put off a lot of listeners if Killswitch were to do something like that. Working with these two guys, it makes it so damn exciting. I listen to those dudes all the time and I respect them, so this has been a huge adrenaline rush for me.”
You may have already read that Killswitch Engage vocalist Jesse Leach wrote the lyrics for the album, he said of that:
“That was some work. George originally wanted to write the lyrics. He and I came up with the theme for the whole record, and he wanted to do his best and throw some lyrics down. He hasn’t written anything for Cannibal or any of his bands, I believe, so he hasn’t had much experience of doing it. When we were making the record, George would try and try but he couldn’t come up with anything that would stick and that he really liked, so after a while I suggested we got an outside writer.
Obviously I get on with Jesse really well, we’re good friends, and we always have a really good creative connection, so I suggested him for ghost writing. George loved the idea. Whenever Jesse writes lyrics, they’re almost like freeform poetry, so he gave me a couple of long sheets of lyrical content and I took it all and grabbed the bits that really stuck out and that had real meaning, and I constructed them into songs for George to sing.”
He further elaborated on the theme of the album:
“…The entire record is just about corruption and all the political agendas and the corruption within politics, within big business and within the rich. It’s all the bad, bad people out there doing bad, bad things. That’s the main gist of it. We wanted this record to be different from Cannibal, especially George. He didn’t want to do the gore thing again, because that’s what Cannibal does. So we agreed to do something different and something that made sense for what this record should be.”
With the album having a political theme, Dutkiewicz also went on to comment about U.S. presidential candidates, Donald Trump & Hillary Clinton:
“…We chose the ideal year to release this record. We’ve got a crook and a shithead to choose from right now. Which one do you want? I’ve said this before, I’m embarrassed by a lot of the people that are actually voting for Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. How could you ever think that a reality TV star could be a great leader for the nation? It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
For more from Dutkiewicz on the band’s origins and future plans, head to Metal Hammer.
