SonicBlast in Conversation with Deathchant
“If you’ve been to Sonic Blast before, there’s a good probability you’ve seen Deathchant play! The 2026 edition will mark the fourth time these L.A. heavy rockers visit Âncora to blow us away with their riffy, fuzzy goodness, and it’s come to a point where they even describe playing the festival as “coming home.” This time, however, things look like they will be even more special than usual for this Sonic Blast – Deathchant connection. They are coming hot on the heels of a brand new album that is being released soon, which promises to totally change the way we perceive the band – and because of that, vocalist/guitarist T.J. Lemieux and guitarist Doug Stuckey have already promised us their best set ever!”
It’s an exciting time for Deathchant, isn’t it? You have recently published a few acoustic snippets of the new album, and now we’re looking forward to more news. What can you tell us?
Doug Stuckey (guitars): Well, first off, we just broke up today, so… [laughs]
Ah, damn it. Should we end the interview then?
T.J. Lemieux (vocals/guitars): It’s cool, we’re back together again, me and Doug hugged it out we decided to get back together. It was just now. [laughs] Okay, seriously now, and I feel like we say this every time we make a record, but… it’s my favourite we’ve made so far.
Doug: Mine too!
T.J.: It’s going to be a little different, that’s the thing. I hope that people cherish the evolution of the band as much as we do. The one big thing that I guess I c1ould give away about it, is that we approached this record completely differently vocally. So, for the first time we dropped the “Japanese” that I’ve run with for so long. And to decode that, that means dropping a lot of the delay and a lot of the effects on the vocals. So I really leaned into that approach, because I mean, I’m a singer too. I do solo music. Doug does solo music as well. But in Deathchant setting, as a band, we’ve always treated vocals like an atmospheric element, as more of something to accompany the guitars. But now, with this record, the songs were written like songs. I know that sounds weird, but what I mean is that they’re not jams. They’re not, you know, a fucking bunch of guitar solos and stuff. At the same time, don’t worry, that shit’s still there. But this time we thought more about the actual meat and potatoes of the songs, what makes them songs. That was the starting point, and then we just built outward from there, rather than crafting this big kind of journey with a vibe and based on atmosphere and stuff. So we also focused heavily on lyrics and like I said, the core meat of the song. I really want people to understand me, what I’m saying, this time. The vocals are pretty dry, and the emphasis and the attention is paid mostly to the emotional delivery of the song itself, not so much how it’s dressed up. But I repeat, you’ll still get all the nuts and bolts that make Deathchant what it is, it’s still going to be a noisy album, it’s still rocking!
Doug: Yeah, it still sounds like Deathchant all the way. But like T.J. said, and I know every band always goes like “oh, this one’s better than the last,” but the truth is that we’ve matured a lot. I think who were able to connect to our music before are still going to be able to do that, but now a lot of people are going to be able to do that also on a lyrical platform, and I think that is going to be really captivating. A lot of people will take a strong grasp on it and be able to relate to it a lot.
You sound very emotionally invested in this album that is a great thing to see at this point.
T.J.: We are really into this one, that’s for sure. I make a lot of records, I play with a lot of bands, I do a lot of shit with music all the time. And I can tell you this is the most exciting record I’ve ever been a part of. That is really saying a lot for me. I’m really fucking stoked.
How did this change come about, can you pinpoint that? Was it a gradual evolution, or something you decided together?
T.J.: Honestly, a lot of our friends died in the last few years. I had a kid. Life got in the way of a lot of things. That sort of thing makes you think about what you’re really doing. I mean, I’ve always been serious about Deathchant, and so has Doug, I’m not saying we haven’t. But when you’re in a band like this one, some things really make you zoom in on the fact that you have access to a vessel that can have a message. It’s a privilege. When you lose friends, when you have children, when this big life and death stuff happens, it really makes you realise that if you have a microphone in front of you, maybe then you should say something into it. If you have a platform, then say something that means something to you. That doesn’t mean that we’ve written songs that don’t mean anything before, it’s just saying that we’re leaning way more into that aspect of it. So I could say that it was kind of a natural progression to get to where we are now, yeah. I guess that coming from that mindset, I had two songs that we have been playing live for a while now. I shouldn’t say titles for now… but well, whatever. [laughs] So one is called ‘Enemy’ and the other is called ‘Ruin’. Those kind of served as a basis for the writing style that followed. They have a lot more peaks and valleys, which is intentional. There’s slower parts, faster parts mid-tempo parts, doom parts, fucking metal parts, it’s kind of all over the place but it’s all still one package and one cohesive journey and idea.
That’s proper songwriting right there, isn’t it?
T.J.: It really is, and songwriting is weird, man. [laughs]You’re in a certain zone in life and that’s how you write. You’re a mirror, you reflect things happening around you as an artist, and there have been a lot of things happening for us, that’s really the best way to explain this whole process. As a band, we’ve gone through a lot with our families and our friends and, you know, the United States is not fucking all that cool at the moment either. The whole world can see it’s a fucking burning pile of shit and trash. We’re not proud of that either. So we also make music to reflect the doom and gloom that we are experiencing over here, what we’re living through and what we’re struggling through. I think we did a great job of letting this shift in the band’s style happen naturally because of all the things changing around us. If you don’t change your sound and change your message while the entire world is shifting around you, then I don’t know that you can call yourself an artist of the times.
Doug: If we’re going to just put out the same album over and over and over, where are we going with it? What are you progressing with in life as a person, a musician, or just as an artist, like T.J. said? AC/DC did that, and they did it well, and I think that’s fine. But just for them! [laughs] So yeah, it is a natural change, but it’s a purposeful movement forward too.
Maturity is a big word, but that’s what’s happening to you as people and as artists.
T.J.: Yeah, we’re getting older! [laughs] Maybe our taste in different things has come to the surface a little bit more and this is a reflection of that as well. We’re opening up our antenna a little bit wider. For example, I had a song at one point of the process, you could call it a solo song, I guess. It was all acoustic guitar and singing, I had made like little phone demos of it and stuff. But the more I listened to it, and the guys liked it too, the more I was like, this is a Deathchant song, dude! It just fit the entire album, it felt like it was from the same body of work, and it needed to be an album song. So we went from there, we just added the bass, the drums and stuff, and it all fell together so fucking easy. We found this crazy guitar lead to float on top of it that brought it fully into that Deathchant world.
I like the idea of a “Deathchant world,” actually.
T.J.: You know, that’s also a big thing – creating a world for the listener is something that we did on this record really intentionally. I’m not saying it’s a comfortable world. It’s quite dreary and raw and heavy, sometimes sad, sometimes fucking evil. But like I said, it reflects the times, it reflects our country and where we’re at. It also reflects a lot of inner turmoil. All our big life shifts and changes, all that stuff kind of feeds into a world that’s a bit shaken to its core, but we’re really naked about it and really honest about it.
Doug: I feel like on this one T.J. has just really 100% opened up, he’s wearing his heart on his sleeve, you don’t have to pick the lyrics apart to see what’s going on. I think people will love that too. I feel people will be able to relate to Deathchant as not only fans, you’re not on the outside anymore. You can relate to so many of these things because we are just humans.
Do you have a projected release date for it already?
T.J.: We just finished the mastering, so now it’s all done, it’s mixed, everything’s off to the races. But we only get a definitive date when we turn in the master, which we’re doing in the next few days. So, any day now we’ll have the release date, but ideally, we would hope to be able to bring something to Sonic Blast, obviously.
As you can guess, that was the aim of the question, yeah. [laughs]
T.J.: If it happens in the usual way everything works, essentially the release is going to be late summer, I would say, We can’t promise anything, but worst case scenario, we might show up to Sonic Blast with a very, very, very limited number of test presses to sell or something like that. God willing, inshallah, we’ll have a whole fucking record, who knows. [laughs]
Regardless of what you bring, it’ll still be Deathchant at Sonic Blast, so it’ll be great as always. You are, of course, veterans of the festival. On your social media, when you announced you were playing there again this year, you said that you were “coming home,” that was very nice. Is that how you feel about your relationship with the festival, after three previous appearances?
T.J.: Man, we fucking love Sonic Blast. I look forward to seeing the crew. You know, Ricardo, Tila, all the people that make Sonic Blast possible are the fucking coolest people in the world. Also, it’s the most beautiful place in the world, in our opinion. You know, we live in a shithole, man. Well, it’s actually beautiful over here, too, but it’s, you know, playing that festival just feels so good. Doug just got goose bumps thinking about it.
Doug: Yeah. What I’m mostly looking forward to, I agree with T.J., it’s the crew, which by now is less of a crew to us and they’ve kind of become like family Since day one, even before we played for the first time and Ricardo was reaching out, just his ambition and his consistency, just making sure we could get there, proved to us that this was more than just a fan of the band. So Sonic Blast is a connection that was meant to happen. We meet a lot of people touring all over the world and we make a lot of these connections, but some people you meet and it turns into more than just a fan or a promoter or anything. It’s like a lost friend or a new family member. Going to Sonic Blast is a family reunion every time for us, it’s the best fucking place ever. Over the years we’ve grown a lot and the fans there have always taken us in and shown us so much love.
T.J.: We get excited about it because we have a lot of love in our hearts. When I think of playing at Sonic Blast, I know we give it our all at every fucking time. I mean, we always burn it down and sweat our asses off at doing what we do. But Sonic Blast is a bit unique, the people are so familiar and it’s become such a familial network type of thing, that I want to create an experience with the audience and with the crew and with all the people we know. It’s a thing that we’re doing together for the fourth time, and that excitement just pours into your set. So I think you can expect the best set we’ve ever done. We’ll play shit from a bunch of records and a lot of new stuff which I think will translate really well live.
Doug: I’d also like to add that even beyond our music and the fans, for example, T.J.’s daughter came with us the last time that we were there. She was only a year and two months old. That was awesome. I have a huge connection with that region, I’ve spread my grandma’s ashes there as well. It’s just a magical place of familiarity. It’s a place of home.
