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The digital age has deprived us of the sense that an album is an event. By the time a record is released, it’s been shared piecemeal via song premieres, lyric videos, and more. The day before the album comes out, there is often a full album stream. In some cases, there isn’t even a physical album. An album is just code floating inside a server farm.

Celtic Frost’s comeback album, Monotheist, released on May 29, 2006, was one of the last album-release events I remember. There was tremendous anticipation for it; on release day, I went to Rasputin and purchased my digipak. Within twenty seconds of hearing the opening track, I knew the fabled band of my youth had righted the ship.

Two decades later, Monotheist has taken its place as one of the “big four” Celtic Frost albums, alongside Morbid Tales, To Mega Therion and Into The Pandemonium. Unlike its more compact predecessors, Monotheist—which featured guitarist and chief songwriter Tom Gabriel Fischer, bassist Martin Eric Ain and drummer Franco Sesa—was sprawling, dense and often slow-paced. Monotheist also reached new generations. For listeners who came of age with Celtic Frost, Monotheist‘s emotional depth mirrored the challenges of adulthood. For younger listeners, the band’s renewed heaviness led them back to Frost’s formative work.

Monotheist has aged incredibly well and is one of the rare albums that reveal more with dedicated listening over time. If there is anything bittersweet about it, it’s the loss of Ain, who fully embraced his role as a songwriter on the album. Although Celtic Frost split just two years after this album, Fischer and Ain remained in contact and sometimes talked about working together again. Fischer has continued the path of the 21st-century Frost with Triptykon, which recorded the Hall of Fame-certified Eparistera Daimones just two years after Celtic Frost’s final breakup.

Monotheist is where Fischer put the ghosts of the late ’80s to bed for good and opened a creative wellspring that shows no signs of abating. Fischer talked to us about Monotheist’s 20th anniversary and the backstory of one of the watershed metal albums of the early ’00s.

You recently had the chance to perform the song “Welcome To Hell” with Mantas and Abaddon. Venom is the band that launched your entire career.

That’s the reason I accepted the proposal. I get offers for guest vocals or collaborations all the time. But Venom shaped my entire life, especially the first album. I didn’t have to think about accepting this. Little Tom wouldn’t have believed it was happening 45 years ago. We bonded during rehearsal, so even though there was a lot of pressure to do the song justice, it was so much fun. Bulldozer from Interceptor [who handled bass and vocals] is phenomenal. He flew from America right to rehearsal; he’s in his 20s and tasked with playing this legendary music. You can’t replace Cronos, but he has the same kind of style and energy Cronos had in the early days.

Can you believe it has been 20 years since Monotheist was released?

I will be 63 this summer. At my age, you come across the sensation a lot. Triptykon has been together longer at this point than Celtic Frost. So the 20-year period is one of those mind-blowing experiences you have if you survive to become an old musician. The only reason I get to experience this is the grace of the audience. That’s the astonishing thing, and I’m grateful. For me personally, it [Monotheist] is extremely important. I am responsible for Celtic Frost’s great flaw: Cold Lake. But that’s also the reason I wanted to make up for it. We all needed to prove to ourselves that we could still sound like Celtic Frost.

How did Celtic Frost decide to get back together in the early ’00s?

In films, everything is black and white, but real life is more complex. Everything is the result of a thought process. Celtic Frost dissolved in April 1993, but we had already lost the plot years earlier. The latter incarnations of Celtic Frost had nothing to do with the early spirit. We knew this, but we still carried on. The band dissolved because the concept of Celtic Frost had run its course.

Martin and I met throughout the ’90s and discussed our past, present, and influences. It helped us develop into adult musicians. In 1999, Noise Records asked me to oversee the Celtic Frost reissues, which I did in Berlin. I remastered the records and dug into my photo archive. It made me reevaluate Celtic Frost’s history. Martin was also involved. These steps helped us get close again musically and talk about how Celtic Frost should have continued. The final step was attending the Roxy Music reunion tour in 2000. I went to three concerts and was blown away by how good the songs sounded. I said to Martin: “If Roxy Music can do this, we could do it, too.” Martin agreed, so we began in 2001.

In your time away, black metal became a huge global commodity. A lot of those bands cited Celtic Frost’s early work as a huge inspiration.

I lived in America in the mid-1990s. I missed the birth of the second wave of black metal, whereas Martin followed it closely. I came back to Europe in the late ’90s and was blown away by what had happened to extreme metal. Journalists were asking me about my influence on the new black metal. I was half a world away from what was happening in Scandinavia. I had to catch up on the scene, while Martin experienced it in real time. He introduced me to many of the bands. The more extreme and underground, the better. He loved Mayhem, early Darkthrone, and fringe black-metal projects.

Martin always seemed to provide Celtic Frost with an intellectual and stylistic backbone.

Martin hardly wrote any music until Monotheist. He was active on an ideological platform, and I was active on a musical platform. But we never separated the two. Music was always connected to ideology for us. I can’t imagine any of the early Celtic Frost songs existing without both of us.

What happened after you decided to bring the band back?

We had such a bad experience with the recording industry in the ’80s. When we started talking about reforming the band 15 or so years later, we were far more experienced. We said the recording industry won’t enslave us. We decided to take full control and make all the decisions ourselves. We came up with the money ourselves. This gave us the freedom to take our time with Monotheist. The reunion started with all-night conversations about how we wanted to sound. We also talked a lot about earlier mistakes. We wanted to do it right and do the music justice.

How soon after you reformed did you have songs or ideas?

We decided to reform in 2001. There was music from the beginning. The demos started in 2002 and 2003. The early work was a process of searching. What direction should the album go in? Celtic Frost had many faces. We needed to determine what the face would be. The early demos were so experimental, and we tried pretty much anything. Having done Into the Pandemonium, we were completely open artistically. We recorded anything that came to mind to see what worked and what didn’t. The process was simple: record anything and focus on feeling. We needed to find what sounded like a Celtic Frost album. We worked on the album for five years.

People who hear the Prototype demo online act like it’s an outlier, but Celtic Frost was always experimental to a fault.

Prototype was recorded for Music for Nations, which had expressed early interest in the Celtic Frost reunion. We wanted them to hear what we were working on. There were 20 copies of the demo. When the Internet age came, the demo went public. That’s fine with me. But it was in no way meant to be a Celtic Frost album. It was just meant to show some ideas. The demo is very adventurous.

As a result of that demo going public, we did get to hear Martin rapping.

It [“Hip Hop Jugend”] is an odd track [laughs]. The best description I can think of for it is interesting. It was a typical Martin thing. I wasn’t involved in the song beyond some backing vocals. It was Martin expressing his frustration as someone who managed hipster clubs in Zurich. It was about people who just partied mindlessly, so he put it into a song. It was a parody of that scene. If you hear that song and don’t know his background, it wouldn’t make sense. But we never considered “Hip Hop Jugend” for a Celtic Frost album.

Martin and I had an extremely deep relationship, like brothers. It was a complex relationship. The relationship resulted in these creative outbursts. Before Martin died, we talked about how we turned conflict into art and creativity.

How did you finalize the material that ended up on Monotheist?

Initially, it was like being blind, reaching into a dark room. Once we started playing and practicing several times a week, the process of radicalization began. When all the Marshalls were on, and we had live drums, the good songs started to show themselves. The ludicrous experiments went away, and the dark riffs manifested. We were overwhelmed by the radicalization. We focused on: what is the essence of who we are now? Month by month, the album became darker and heavier. The heavier it sounded in rehearsal, the darker it got.

Martin became a songwriter and collaborator on Monotheist.

I’d been waiting for this for years. I urged Martin to write music from the beginning in Hellhammer. He had phenomenal lyrics and ideas, but didn’t have finished songs. In the 90s, we went out for dinner, and he told me he always felt inferior and intimidated. I told him I was always waiting for him to write songs and believed in him. When we got back together in 2001, and he had some songs, I was happy the gate was finally open. Martin brought in some fragments for “Mesmerized” during Into The Pandemonium. With Monotheist, he came in with some finished songs. I love the song “Ain Elohim”—it’s extremely powerful. I only co-wrote a minority of it. We just made it a little better. Martin and I wrote “Synagoga Satanae.” It was 50/50. We could never have done that collaboration in the early days. It’s one of the most important songs in the band’s history

I think it’s also one of the band’s heaviest songs.

It sounds very heavy and is a dark, cumbersome song. It shows what the mature Celtic Frost was capable of. I wrote the skeleton of the song, and Martin took my riffs and wrote an equal amount of it. It’s a full collaboration.

How did you know when the album was complete?

After about five years, we condensed everything. We actually ended up with too much material. We decided to go to a proper studio in 2005, make the best recordings, combine them and shape them into an album.

When Monotheist arrived, people were genuinely excited. The album’s release seemed like an event when such things were still possible. It was interesting to experience, remembering what the band’s early years were like.

For most of the ’80s, we were an underground band. [For Monotheist] went out shopping for a licensing deal. We wanted a deal that did the album and Celtic Frost justice. We talked to several labels and their management to find a licensing deal. Century Media committed to a real publicity campaign. We felt Celtic Frost shouldn’t be remembered by Cold Lake and Vanity/Nemesis. We felt the band needed to have a statement for contemporary times. It was gratifying that the reviews and the audience felt the same way.

Of course, we couldn’t plan it, and we were ready for any reaction. We were ready to face even hostility. People would like it or hate it. But then the dam burst, and everyone seemed to love it.

The opening track “Progeny” is one of the most aggressive tracks on the album and draws listeners right in.

We were open to change until we finished mixing the album. We wanted to listen to some final mixes. “Progeny” was an early candidate [for the opening song] because of its energy. It just happened by intuition. One thing I’ve heard in the past 20 years is that the album is too modern. But what does Celtic Frost sound like? Every album sounds different. It’s very much Celtic Frost, and as usual, it’s a reinvention of Celtic Frost.

The Monotheist tour dwarfed anything from the band’s formative years.

It was the biggest Celtic Frost tour ever—125 concerts around the world. It was overwhelming and beautiful to see how the audience welcomed us back. It was a dream come true. We wanted to give the audience a full program and took great care with the set lists so they heard songs that hadn’t been played for like 16 years.

I imagine it’s tough to think of the album’s anniversary since Martin’s passing.

That’s the bittersweet component of it. I am satisfied with Monotheist as a musician. I don’t feel I missed much musically with Triptykon. But I would have loved nothing more than to do those records with Martin Ain. It will never be the same without him. Who knows what would have happened if he hadn’t passed? We were still talking about writing music again. Victor [Santura, guitarist for Triptykon] and I always talked about involving Martin in some capacity. That’s a blank spot that can’t be filled. I miss Martin every day. No matter how big the audience is, I always think I should be doing this with Martin.

A whole younger generation discovered Celtic Frost through Monotheist.

There are people my age when I was in Hellhammer who discovered the band through Monotheist. Martin and I didn’t want to make something designed just for our generation. We hoped the album might provide a bridge, and astonishingly, it did. At the Venom gig, someone told me that Monotheist was their gateway to Celtic Frost.

The post “It Was Like Being Blind Reaching Into A Dark Room:” Tom Gabriel Fischer On 20 Years of Celtic Frost’s ‘Monotheist’ appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Socrates said, “to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”, and Ben Franklin said, “there are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” Between them they underscore the fact that self-awareness is a difficult journey, and not one that everybody chooses to take. Kentucky-based singer/songwriter Jonathan Pennington, who goes by […]

Mysterious Catalonian black metal/death punk operatives Pvrgatorii have been in the shadows cultivating a poisonous new strain of their patented “Black Metal ov Death.” The forbidden fruit harvested via this unholy labor is available in all its terrible potency on Profane Rites for Cursed Times, the duo’s new EP on Night Terrors Records, which we’re premiering today. Equally informed by modern hardcore’s urgency and black metal’s aggression, Pvrgatorri create “sinister, malevolent” atmospheres. Perhaps the most effective way they conjure malevolence on Profane Rites… is through Darth Dvnkel’s bizarre and overwhelming vocals. On “Hermetik Axis,” layers of disturbing exhortations hover over relentless blasts and trebly guitar tornados as Dvnkel’s profane “black spell” recitations coalesce into mushroom clouds. A random sample dissolves into pummeling obsidian-hued crust punk on “The Key to Thee Temple,” wherein the guerilla war vocal incantations swirl amidst bloodthirsty riffs and blasts. The cyclone of gurgles and death grunts resurfaces once more during “Dystopian Flesh Arise,” a midtempo Motörhead gallop that morphs into a circle-pit igniting D-beat (down). “A Broken Seal for Final Capitalism” sees Dvnkel’s ominous vocal panopticon assert its dominance over a blackened thrash metal feeding frenzy. Recorded by L’Ombra, the entity also responsible for the EP’s pulverizing “war drums,” the production is brilliant, not only in its uncanny vocal manipulations, but its overall menace. The first 50 orders of Profane Rites for Cursed Times come with a 16-page zine that “offers a broader insight into the ethos that fuels their work,” and it’s recommended you pick that up too.

…

…

The band comments:

In these moments when trve evil gets stronger everyday through growing inequality and rising fascism, we have casted with all our energy at thee core ov our dvngeon these four sonik sigils ov annihilation. Physical, spiritual and intellectual concentrated, as a humble way to break a thin threat of black light in a world doomed to dark capitalistik chaos. Lets ignite thee metal torch, and make it burn -as fast, so slow- for these Profane Rites for Cvrsed Times.

…

Profane Rites for Cvrsed Times releases May 29 via Night Terrors Records.

(Our Norway-based contributor Chile wrote the following very enthusiastic review of the sophomore album released earlier this month by D.C.-based Desolus.) For a guy who’s constantly (or often enough) on about how he likes his metal fast, I feel like I am not listening to nearly enough thrash metal, arguably one of the fastest genres […]

The post DESOLUS: “DWELLERS OF THE TWILIGHT VOID” appeared first on NO CLEAN SINGING.

 

 The masters of Tasmanian technical death metal are back with a vengeance. Psycroptic has officially joined the legendary roster of Metal Blade Records, marking a new chapter in their storied career. To celebrate the signing, the band has unleashed a devastating new single and video titled “Gathering a Venomous Herd”.

Known for their surgical precision and Joe Haley’s unmatched riff-work, the new track is a relentless assault that proves why Psycroptic remains at the forefront of the technical metal scene. “Gathering a Venomous Herd” is the first taste of their upcoming full-length album, The Pulse of Annihilation, scheduled for release later this summer.

A New Era of Annihilation

The video for the single captures the raw energy and chaotic precision that fans have come to expect from the Haley brothers and vocalist Jason Peppiatt. “Joining Metal Blade feels like the right move at the right time,” the band commented. “We’ve pushed ourselves harder on this new material, and ‘Gathering a Venomous Herd’ is just the beginning of the carnage we have in store.”

For fans of high-speed technicality and groove-laden brutality, Psycroptic’s return is nothing short of a landmark event for 2026. The technical death metal throne is being reclaimed, and it’s sounding more venomous than ever.

Watch the official video above and prepare for the full-scale annihilation coming later this year.

 

 The masters of Tasmanian technical death metal are back with a vengeance. Psycroptic has officially joined the legendary roster of Metal Blade Records, marking a new chapter in their storied career. To celebrate the signing, the band has unleashed a devastating new single and video titled “Gathering a Venomous Herd”.

Known for their surgical precision and Joe Haley’s unmatched riff-work, the new track is a relentless assault that proves why Psycroptic remains at the forefront of the technical metal scene. “Gathering a Venomous Herd” is the first taste of their upcoming full-length album, The Pulse of Annihilation, scheduled for release later this summer.

A New Era of Annihilation

The video for the single captures the raw energy and chaotic precision that fans have come to expect from the Haley brothers and vocalist Jason Peppiatt. “Joining Metal Blade feels like the right move at the right time,” the band commented. “We’ve pushed ourselves harder on this new material, and ‘Gathering a Venomous Herd’ is just the beginning of the carnage we have in store.”

For fans of high-speed technicality and groove-laden brutality, Psycroptic’s return is nothing short of a landmark event for 2026. The technical death metal throne is being reclaimed, and it’s sounding more venomous than ever.

Watch the official video above and prepare for the full-scale annihilation coming later this year.

In March, Kristin Hersh unveiled the sprawling dirge “Sundial.” Now, the Throwing Muses/50 Foot Wave leader is announcing a new solo record titled Sugar On Blackstone to follow 2023’s Clear Pond Road. The new single “Dark-Eyed Junco” is out today. “Dark-Eyed Junco” meditates on childhood with her brother. “He was a ‘Dark-Eyed Junco,’ and I…

The post Kristin Hersh Announces New Album <em>Sugar On Blackstone</em>: Hear “Dark-Eyed Junco” appeared first on Stereogum.

Seeing the Firekeeper Alliance name and logo plastered alongside every mention of the Fire in the Mountains festival might make it seem like it is solely a partner in the production of the fest. But their work extends beyond the past couple of years of festival association and has its initial roots in Indian country suicide reduction. The Firekeeper Alliance’s website spells out its mission as “a suicide prevention and mental wellness nonprofit organization serving community members within the Blackfeet Nation. Firekeeper provides strengths-based counseling support and delivers creative, cultural, and music-based programming designed to promote healthy coping strategies, emotional regulation, and community connection. Suicide rates are significantly higher on American Indian reservations compared to non-reservation locales, and those rates continue to climb each year. This stark reality underscores our mission to illuminate this pressing concern while fostering a culture of support and resilience for our loved ones. By engaging with the most at-risk age groups in Indian Country and empowering them to embrace new coping mechanisms, we aim to keep the sacred flame of life alive, ensuring that every young person within our Tribal community feels valued, connected, and equipped to thrive. Together, we envision a future where every member of the Blackfeet Nation has access to sustainable mental health resources and support, leading to a significant decrease in suicidal behavior.”

The point man in all of this is Charlie Speicher who has combined his lifelong love of extreme music with his professional work as a counsellor and educator to not just shine a light on the tragic issue of indigenous suicide rates, but provide ongoing help to youth and communities embattled by crisis. This includes an ongoing local involvement, an introduction to and development of skills, creative workshops, festival internships, and/or simply a chance to let off some steam, all using extreme music as entry point. Following the interview with the Fire in the Mountains production crew a few weeks back, and in advance of the festival’s kick off in a couple months time, we got on a call with Speicher to inquire about his and the Alliance’s work.

Can you shed a bit of light on background and mission of the Firekeeper Alliance?

Firekeeper is a non-profit organisation and our mission is to create more safety and protection, specifically in the Blackfeet Nation, from suicidal distress. We’re a tax exempt and social advocacy organisation. Really, we’re a group of counsellors and educators working in this field in Browning, MT which is the biggest town in the Blackfeet Nation. We have experienced a lot of sudden, early and traumatic losses in our families, friend groups and with our students and clients we work with. I think it’s widely known and understood that suicide disproportionately impacts indigenous communities. We’ve been working with this issue for a long time and we coalesced around this issue to form Firekeeper about a year and a half ago. In the fall of 2024, we acquired tax exempt status and became an official non-profit. At the time, we’d already been working in close association with the Fire in the Mountains festival. It gets a little confusing. They’re their own thing and we’re sort of their sibling organisation working alongside them and we’ve just kind of partnered and aligned in terms of scope and mission to do this work. So, Fire in the Mountains had existed for a few years before Firekeeper becoming a thing. They had a few years where they did the festival down in Wyoming. July 2022 was the last year they did it there. I attended the festival, liked what they were doing and followed their social media messaging about how they didn’t get their permit renewed. I reached out to their generic email address and got ahold of [festival owner, cofounder and director] Jeremy [Walker] to come on up here and check it out. He did a month later and we got to know each other a little better, we became tight and I talked to him about suicide and what it’s like here and thought it would be cool to do something to fight that. He was onboard.

Before becoming an official tax exempt non-profit, how long had you been doing work in this field?

I’m the director of the alternative high school in Browning [Buffalo Hide Acacdemy] and I’ve been an educator and a licensed counsellor for about 20 years. So, I’ve been doing this work for quite a while before Firekeeper became an official organisation and I work with several other like-minded educators and clinicians in our school and community and we’re all very invested in trying to create as much safety in the face of suicide. We became an official thing under the Firekeeper moniker and 501(c)(3) status recently, but in our eyes this is what we’ve been doing for as long as we’ve been here. Most of the members of Firekeeper are tribal members who have been born and raised here. I’ve been in Montana most of my life, but I’m not Blackfeet and I wasn’t born here.

And is the tie-in to extreme music essentially you? Or are others into it as well?

That’s me. I’ve been into hardcore and metal my whole life and it’s always been a deep reservoir of wellness, inspiration and healing for me, so it just naturally appears in my clinical work. That was a goal early on; to galvanize the messaging and spirit that there’s a lot of safety and community to be found in the world of punk and metal. It’s a really organic life pursuit. There are other members who are into it and part of our mission is to try and position all the creative potential in punk, metal and hardcore as a source of protection. And the presence of that protection can be the different between having a really shitty day full of anguish or reducing that pain a little bit and giving it a place to cathartically process.

As you’ve gone along, has the extreme music angle been a tough sell and have you had to do a lot of convincing to school boards, kids, parents, etc.? And when you brought the festival into the mix, was that a big sell to the locals and Blackfeet people?

A little bit yes, a little bit no. In the broad sense, it hasn’t been that tough of a sell, at least for our local community. There are a lot of different entities that we network with closely to pull the festival off. We have a tribal council here in Browning; there are nine of them and they’re the governing body and decision makers for the tribe. We first had to get approval and their blessing to move forward with the festival. Fortunately, I know a lot of the councilmen and women and we’ve worked closely together on different mental health initiatives over the years. They’re familiar with me, our school and the work we do and they see me walking around with Converge tattoos and battle jackets, so I’m kind of known as the metal guy around here. That kind of presence, and my identity as a lover of music and having it be a part of everything we do at school, has been a thing before any of this work began, so it wasn’t that tough of a sell. I just had to talk to the council and explain that this is something that we’re doing for the kids that aren’t really tied into sports, the rodeo crowd or other extracurricular activities. These are the kids with hoods up and earbuds in and probably the demographic that expresses the most profound amount of suicidal material. That’s who this is about. It’s not for everybody, and we completely understand if they weren’t big fans of death grind or whatever, but this music is an important thing to a lot of people and I think everybody could get on board with that. We mostly describe it as heavy music so we’re trying to cast a wide net; anything that gives us the ability to connect to experience that cathartic element and help us to pursue our own avenues to take care of ourselves is a good thing. It definitely wasn’t a tough sell to get the Fire in the Mountains people to get on board with our work. I definitely know we’re not the first people to talk about mental health and metal. There’s a connection there so I think the Fire in the Mountains team was already naturally there and, if anything, Firekeeper helped provide a little bit of language about how to talk about it and how to contextualize it.

What sort of impacts have you noticed in the kids and community that you can obviously connect to last year’s festival?

That’s a great and really important question. This works if there’s continuity to it. If it was just a one-off event that goes away and disappears forever, it doesn’t have much of an impact. The way that there’s actual safety being integrated into people’s lives here is if it’s a regular and expected thing that they can look forward to. It can provide a little bit of meaning, a little bit of hope and a reason to keep going. Having it be an annual event is critical to being able to reinforce those clinical goals, to foster hope and meaning and to create that safety. The impact I’ve experienced here being intimately connected to the festival and carrying the torch in the months since has been awesome. I know our kids were positioned as leaders at the festival and were seen as these cool creative ambassadors of the Blackfeet Nation and its culture, and people were treating them like celebrities. They were up on stage for a few different sets. Alan from Pan-Amerikan Native Front brought our class up and had like 20 kids waving Blackfeet flags up there, head banging and going apeshit. A few of our kids joined Inter Arma during one of the songs of their set and did some drumming. Our kids were working as interns at the festival which was really important to us to show there are some pathways beyond just being a shredder or a ripping drummer. That you can be involved in this scene. You can dork out on soundscapes, and lighting and there’s work and jobs to be done as well; to articulate those potential career pathways. The impact has been awesome. At my school, heavy music is a big part of what we do and we teach regular classes celebrating punk and metal that have somehow been green lit by our superintendent and school board. So far they’re trusting and onboard with what we do. There are bands developing, there’s an after school program where we give kids access to instruments and our recording studio, we’ve run battle jacket workshops. We’re really trying to build a scene. We want to book shows and help our kids through the classwork we’re doing and the outreach in the community that we can have shows here and capture touring bands that come through and there’s no reason we can’t have shows to look forward to which is the same thing as having the festival repeating every year. If we have shows to look forward to that could help us keep going and help make those really shitty days just a little bit less shitty if there’s something fun happening that night. That could be the difference between fucking ending it or getting to tomorrow.

I don’t know what the collection of suicide data is like where you are, but I’m assuming it’s still too early to tell if last year’s festival had any noticeable impact on the raw numbers and statistics?

It’s too early to tell. The numbers for suicide and mortality tracking in Montana are typically a year or even two years behind. Right now we have data from 2023 and that’s about as recent as it gets. There’s typically a lag when it comes to mortality stuff with the department of public health, in Montana at least. I can respond anecdotally to that, though. Our mission is very intentional when it comes to reducing suicide, instead of most western methodologies which are rooted in preventative terms. The truth is we fucking suck at predicting suicide. And most Western clinical frameworks are designed to try to do that, basically. If you’ve ever sought out therapeutic counselling services and indicated that you might be suicidal, you’re typically given a checklist of all the ways you feel like shit and that’s the lens with which a treatment plan is built. So, the framework is rooted in pathology and negative symptoms and it’s a deficit-based model. We intentionally use a different framework, a different clinical approach, intervention and different terminology. Our goal and mission is to reduce, bring it down, not to convince ourselves or anyone else that we’re going to eliminate all suicide because that’s just not going to happen. If we set those expectations of getting to zero suicides in five years, we’re going to feel like failures. The unrealistic approach is going to set us back even further. So with great care and intention, we’re using terms like ‘reduce’ and do everything that we can to provide as much safety and as much opportunity to be safe from this experience and just do our best. Our clinical mechanism is really informed from a strengths-based perspective, which is way more aligned with indigenous values and worldview. It’s basically the total opposite of the western framework. A strengths-based mechanism, instead of looking at what’s wrong with you, looks at what’s strong with you; what’s working and what are the areas of your life that are okay, what can we build on and how can we increase the amount of benevolent experience that exists already. That’s one of the cooler things about being in Indian country. It’s true there’s a lot of distress, misery and anguish here. Life can be very hard for everybody. But what’s also true is there’s a lot of laughter and strength and cool shit going on. There are a lot of strong, bad-ass beautiful people doing some really amazing shit and that’s where our focus is. And as soon as I switched my cognitive psyche towards that different therapeutic orientation, I actually felt effective and like I was being helpful.

Being based in Montana, how did Firekeeper end up sponsoring and doing events in other parts of the country?

I’m a big Converge fan and they played here last year. Steve von Till is on our board of directors and he’s gotten us connected with a lot other people in the heavy music world. We got connected with Converge through Steve last year and wanted them to play because they sing about what we’re doing. They talk about suicide and our kids will like it because the atmospheric black metal may not resonate with the kids who want to go nuts, lose it and mosh. Converge came to be a thing and they crushed it and that became a highlight for a lot of people. We kept in touch and they had the Saddest Day fest in December and they invited us out to check out the event and talk about what we do. We jumped at the opportunity and went out to Boston, which was a great experience. We travel around here and there, mostly linking up with other bands or entities adjacent to the festival and relationships and partnerships we’ve developed since then. As a giant fan and music nerd my whole life it’s been awesome to be validated by my heroes and brought into the fold like this.

From this year’s lineup, who are you most looking forward to seeing?

Full of Hell, for sure. I love those guys and gotten to know them a little bit over the last year. [Vocalist] Dylan [Walker] has done some work with our class, Zoom-ing in to visit with our kids, and they seem like great people. Their style is kind of the flavour I’m always pushing; let’s not just be heavy, but let’s be fucking aggressive, caustic and intense. Anything from the world of hardcore or death metal, anything with a style that’s more combative or hostile, is what I’m trying to push the hardest. I’m also a big fan of YOB and have seen them a number of times and deeply respect what they do. We’ve got to know them a little bit over the years and they’re great people and have worked with our kids as well. I like all the other bands on the bill, even if some of the stuff isn’t my number one, favourite kind of jam. I think the common thread linking all the bands on the upcoming bill is that everyone believes they are quality people and that’s the really important indicator that they’re on board with the mission and what this fest is all about. You gotta be cool and you gotta be a believer.

Firekeeper Alliance

Fire in the Mountains info and tickets

The post Q&A With Charlie Speicher of the Firekeeper Alliance appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

The Surf Shack ride a wave of retro charm and sun-soaked nostalgia on Come Back and Stay, a warm fusion of surf rock grooves, soulful melodies, and psychedelic guitar shimmer. Built around fluid rhythms and breezy instrumentation, the track captures the feeling of endless coastal afternoons while carrying an emotional undercurrent that gives the song real heart beneath its laid-back exterior. Michael Dommes blends classic surf aesthetics with touches of funk, jazz, and cinematic atmosphere, creating a sound that feels timeless rather than merely nostalgic. Smooth, uplifting, and effortlessly transportive, Come Back and Stay is pure escapism wrapped in glowing vintage tones.

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It hasn’t even been 24 hours since Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 people announced the lineup of the Great American State Fair, a series of summer concerts on the National Mall intended to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. That lineup honestly looked like a joke — a collection of where-are-they-now ’90s hitmakers that included names like Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice, and C+C Music Factory. Now, it’s looking like even more of a joke, as a couple of the announced acts have made it clear that they want nothing to do with this clusterfuck.

The post Young MC Also Drops Off Trump’s <em>I Love The ’90s</em> Freedom 250 Celebration appeared first on Stereogum.