Get your ice picks out, Frozen Soul is back.
Nearly three years after their last release, the Texas-based band comprising Chad Green (vocals), Samantha Mobley (bass), Michael Munday (guitar), Matt Dennard (drums), and Chris Bonner (guitar) unveils its third album, No Place of Warmth, in collaboration with Century Media.
The album opens with No Place of Warmth, the title track, and its rather unsettling 80s slasher-style intro before the first riffs kick in to remind us just how violent the band’s Hardcore-tinged Old School Death Metal is. The leads add a more majestic touch, but the real surprise comes from Gerard Way’s (My Chemical Romance) Black Metal vocals, who joins Chad Green’s growls before launching into Invoke War, the next track, which also focuses on brutal, direct intensity. Riffs are simple but crushing, playing on controlled accelerations before welcoming Robb Flynn (Machine Head), who joins the band for the final mosh pit section, followed by the short and now quite politicized Absolute Zero. Barely a minute of crushing sound that hits as hard as a baton, then we move on to the massive Dreadnought, where the band rolls over us alongside Devin Swank (Sanguisugabogg), who takes the opportunity to add another layer to this slow but devastating track. We pick up the pace with Chaos Will Reign, a track that openly draws on its hardcore roots to establish a menacing groove, featuring a near-constant double bass drum while the rhythm section makes us want to smash our necks, before Eyes of Despair returns to a livelier and more aggressive approach. Unsurprisingly, the track makes us just as eager to headbang, using the breaks to mosh, but we’ll also savor the moment of respite offered by Ethereal Dreams, though it’s still quite unsettling. The violence, of course, resurfaces at a brisk pace, using a strong rhythm to keep us on the edge of our seats, then a sampled voice awaits us on Skinned by the Wind, followed by riffs that are as slow and heavy as possible, but the track is very short and quickly gives way to DEATHWEAVER, which literally explodes in our faces. We can fully feel the weight of the rhythm section assaulting us with every note, building ever stronger before unleashing us onto Frost Forged, which takes more or less the same approach and strikes relentlessly until the slower, even more suffocating finale. The album’s conclusion is already taking shape with Killin’ Time (Until It’s Time to Kill), the eleventh and final track that propels us forward at full speed and ruthlessly harnesses furious Old School influences to give us one last chance to thrash and revel in the relentless waves of aggression right up until the very last moment.
With this third album under their belt, Frozen Soul establishes itself as one of the major new figures in Old School Death Metal. I’ve always been a huge fan of this brutal, uncompromising genre, but I have to admit that No Place of Warmth packs a serious punch and sets the bar very high for what’s to come!
95/100
A few questions to Chad Green, vocalist for the Texas Death Metal band Frozen Soul, about the release of their new album, No Place of Warmth.
Hello and first of all, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. How do you feel?
Chad Green (vocals): I feel pretty good, man. How do you feel?
I’m fine too.
Chad: Awesome.
So the first question is already a hard one: how would you describe Frozen Soul‘s music without using the word Death Metal or any other thing related to Metal?
Chad: Positive aggression.
That’s a great one! So do you remember why you picked the name Frozen Soul at the beginning of the band and how do you still link it to the band’s music now?
Chad: Yeah, Michael (Michael Munday, guitarist, ed.) and I were trying to figure out a name that was like different, you know. We didn’t really pick a name that didn’t… When you hear it, you’re like “that’s a Death Metal band”, or “that’s this kind of band”. Pick a name that was different from other bands, and there’s like a lot of names that are real aggressive and stuff like that, but we’re not like super aggressive people. We’re gamers and we deal a lot with depression and stuff that doesn’t get talked about a lot, so we were stumbling upon different things, trying to come up with different ideas and we always liked the lyrics in Metallica‘s Trapped Under Ice where it says “frozen soul, frozen down to the core”, and, and it’s like stuck. You know what I mean? It was very different. It gave us a different feeling, and then we stumbled across this demo from this band called Mezzrow, and it was called Frozen Soul, it was very Slayery, very Metallica-like, but just pairing the two together, we were like “all right, this is a sign!”. And just made that the name because it didn’t really sound like a Death Metal band name. And we felt like it could kind of different, make us stand out.
I definitely understand. So Frozen Soul will soon release its 3rd album named No Place of Warmth. How do you feel about it?
Chad: Oh Well, from my perspective, it’s the best record we’ve ever written. I’m really excited and proud of it. I’m stoked for everyone to hear the whole record. We worked like super hard on it and didn’t have a lot of time to write and record the record. With all that given and feeling the pressure, I think it was like the right kind of combination of stuff to really light a fire under us and we’ve left the studio with a record we loved. So I’m, stoked. I really do feel like it’s the best evolutionary step for us so far.
I definitely agree with you. So next question, how would you sum No Place of Warmth’s identity in only three words? It’s a hard one I know.
Chad: I have 4 words.
It’s okay!
Chad: Straight to the point.
Okay, I definitely agree. So No Place of Warmth happens nearly 3 years after the previous album, for which you toured a fucking lot. Are there any changes you noticed into the composition process?
Chad: Yeah. Touring so much and not really focusing on writing music because of just… The strain of being on the road all the time and having very little time at home… It gets hard to get in the zone to write, so we didn’t have a lot of material ready. So I think when we went to the studio, we had a few main goals in mind and one of them was to try our best to give the energy on the record that we give in person at a show. And I really think like we did about the best we could do, because if you compare back and forth to the other records, this record’s a lot more dynamic. It’s got a lot bigger of a sound, but still has like that Old School reverby vibe to it every now and then. But yeah, that was the main thing about the composition that we wanted to focus on, how do we make a record that follows the other two records up when we finished those records, we thought those were the best records we could do. So how do we follow that up, and we started looking at the comments and stuff and we had heard friends and in the comment sections, like when someone would say they didn’t like us or whatever. We would have people chime in and be like… “you should see this band live though”. So we kind of took that as constructive criticism and we really decided to focus on what it is that makes us Frozen Soul. And really what makes us Frozen Soul is the fun aspect and the positive nature of the aggressive music and how explosive, powerful it feels live. So we just tried our best to incorporate that in the overall composition of the record.
I definitely agree with you. It’s a very straightforward and live is really cool too! So next question, Frozen Soul’s sound is of course rooted in Old School Death Metal, as you said, and even some Hardcore roots, and even if I personally have an idea of what you would answer, which bands would you quote as your personal main influences?
Chad: Like our main influences? Bands? We try not to stick to just one thing. We really try to incorporate everything that we really like into everything we do, but I’d say obviously Bolt Thrower is a huge influence, that’s the one everybody can hear because that’s my favorite Death Metal band. And there’s bands like Obituary and Cannibal Corpse, and then the Swedish side of things like Entombed and Dismember and things like Michael is a huge fan of. But then there’s like Hardcore and Punk as well. Like Chris (Chris Bonner, guitarist, ed.) is like heavily influenced by Burning Spirit, a Punk/Hhardcore band. Bands like Judgment and Deathside and stuff like that. And I draw influence from a lot of New York Hardcore stuff like Marauder and Cro-Mags, and things like that. So we kinda go across the board with our influences.
You mentioned on Instagram that you’re definitely proud of the song Invoke War, where you welcome Rob Flynn from Machine Head. Can you please talk a bit about the song?
Chad: Yeah it’s a really important song. It went through a couple of different iterations though, like the final version of that song is definitely not where we started with it. But It’s a follow-up song to um the song Arsenal of War off Glacial Domination. And it’s sort of, I guess, encapsulates the whole meaning behind our band. And us as people, we’re constantly growing and learning, trying to adapt to new experiences and stuff like that. And, you know, in life, you face a lot of things that change your life for the better or worse. We’ve experienced a lot of stuff like that over, the last like 3 years of touring and stuff. We’ve gotten really cool opportunities, but we’ve also experienced loss in our families and things that we weren’t home as much for as we wish we were sometimes and Arsenal of War… And most of Glacial Domination, we wrote that right after my brother passed away. So it was like a very rough time. And I think like everything kind of changed, at least for me after that moment. So I have a hard time writing music just to be brutal or just to be hard or, you know, just to… I don’t know, just writing Metal for the sake of writing Metal. It’s hard for me to do that now. Like when we started Frozen Soul, we had moments of dark undertones to the songs with depression and stuff, but that wasn’t… It was mostly just about having fun. But then like as stuff starts happening and as you get older, life becomes harder, loss impacts you more, you just change as a person and it’s harder to not express that in what we do, and so the last record became all about that, and this record started off as being like, obviously straight to the point and powerful and just, you know, meant to have fun. But then I found myself just constantly thinking about my brother and my grandfather and Chris‘ mom and the people we’ve lost and like the things we’ve given up for this band, and the things that we still give up for this band. And I think when writing like that song in particular, it’s kind of just hit this nerve with me where I was… Kind of just so angry with how things went down, with my brother’s death. And it just made me so mad and filled with hate, and just blame and you know, just that feeling of being hopeless. Not being able to help. And so I think with that song, it became more of like a weapon, how to weaponize that pain.
So you needed something like a catharsis?
Chad: Right. And with Arsenal, it was more about a reminder of. Okay, that person may be gone or whatever, but like you can still carry him with you. And this one was more or less like my rage, and so the song is directed at how I feel responsible for my brother’s death. But it’s also directed inward at the piece of myself that’s holding me back, and not letting me be happy and move forward and the guilt and regrets of not spending more time with him and taking him for granted as a brother and stuff like that. So it’s really presented as a very aggressive song, but it’s sort of really truly an internal battle, and how you have to destroy the doubt and the negativity. Sometimes it feels like a brutal war that you’re waging on yourself, you know, which at the end of the day, you end up having to do most of the time. With Rob, me and my brothers, most of our band are huge fans of Machine Head and I have personally ripped off Davidian, I can’t even count the amount of times. And it’s just like meeting Jared (Jared MacEachern, bass player, ed.) from Machine Head and partying, meeting up with Rob too and getting introduced to him and partying, having a good time… we always try to include people that we care about, or look up to, or are friends with in our records. And naturally we have some riffs on this that are pretty tough, like Burn My Eyes era. I guess it was like a natural thing for us to just reach out and be like “hey, you want to do this?”. Once we, once we kind of got in contact and had a nice phone call, we realized we had a lot more in common with the subject than we could have thought. So we’ve both dealt with a bunch of stuff and had similar family situations, so he really took on to the song and took ownership of it and he wrote all of his lyrics for the song, and really put his heart into it and wanted to be in the music video and everything. So it was really, really awesome and we worked really really well together, and yeah, we’re stoked about that song.
So, Invoke War is your favorite song of the album?.
Chad: I won’t say it’s my favorite song on the record. It’s definitely one of my favorite songs on the record, for sure.
There are two other guests on No Place on Warmth. Devin Swank from Sanguisugabogg, and Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance. Even if Devin is obviously a great Death Metal choice, it was really unexpected to hear Gerard Way going crazy. How did all those collaborations happen?
Chad: Well, with Devin, we’ve been friends for a long time. Our bands kind of came up at the same time and we’ve wanted Devin on a song for a while, but we didn’t really have a song that we felt would do him and his style justice until this record. That song just felt like “okay, Devin can sing on this, he’ll crush it”. So yeah, that was easy. I just hit him up, we’re friends. So I just hit him up and he was like “yep, all right, we’ll do it”. And then with Gerard, we met him like a few years ago when we were invited out to see him perform in Dallas at this big arena show that they had. And we got to meet him and he was really cool and his security guard gave me his number, and we traded numbers. And we just stayed in touch, talked about common interests and stuff like that. Fast forward, he came to see us when we were playing with Napalm Death in LA, we stayed in touch, but not like an everyday kind of thing. And then we’re finishing up the record and it was kind of a joke in a sense, I didn’t really think someone as talented and as busy as him would be down to sing on our little Death Metal record, but when I texted him and asked him, he was just all for it. And he was just cool about it, didn’t charge us money or anything. So yeah, it was really cool. We recorded a lot of extra stuff for it and he was just totally down. He was actually wanting to be in the video, but we had our timeline for when we needed to do the videos and him being in South America, I think it just didn’t really line up, so we ended up not being able to have him in the video.
Do you think you personally improved yourself as a vocalist with this new record?
Chad: Yeah, I do. I haven’t exactly been proud of myself with vocals, like I don’t really know what I’m doing, you know. Lots of guys have crazy techniques and can just make all these really wild sounds and I’m really just like ruining my throat every time I get on stage. I’m in pain and, and don’t know what I’m doing. And no matter how hard I try, I just can’t figure it out. So with this record, I really tried hard to do different things. And I have my range. I know how to do it but I think given what I know how to do, I really tried to not have everything be like monotone, carry my voice a little bit with the guitar notes, I didn’t really do that before, just try and overall be a little bit more dynamic of a singer.
So yeah, just shouting and following some stuff?
Chad: . Yeah.
Frozen Soul just came back from a European run with uh Heaven Shall Burn, The Halo Effect and The Black Dahlia Murder. How was the tour for you?
Chad: Oh, it was great! We love going to Europe and it was really cool playing, the size of shows that we played. We didn’t really understand how big Heaven Shall Burn was in Europe. They’re a huge band.
It’s a huge band because they’re Germans, so it’s of course European.
Chad: Yeah, it’s like they have an awesome fan base and there were very few people there that knew who we were. And we’ve done headliners and stuff over there, but nothing like that. So, it was awesome. Everyone had a good time and I think we made a lot of new fans out there, so it was great!
I was at Paris’ show as a photographer, maybe you have some special memories from Paris’ show? (photo gallery)
Chad: Our day off in Paris was pretty sick. I’d say the Paris show had a lot of energy even though there wasn’t a huge turnout for that show. It was a great time. Everyone seemed to really enjoy our set and we got a lot of kind things said to us like at the merch table and stuff, so it was great. But yeah, we got to go around and eat go to the gym and stuff in Paris. It’s pretty cool getting to hang out there for a day, the day before we played… Not the day before, 2 days before we played because our day off and then we played in Lyon, in France, so we had a little day off in Paris. It was awesome.
So the band is also about to embark for a USA tour with Avatar on Fleshgod Apocalypse. How do you feel about it and how did you work to get in shape for the tour?
Chad: Just being on tour, we’re pretty much still locked in, because we live in… 10 days or something like that. So we basically just are already kind of locked in from the last tour, but we’re stoked. It’s like another tour we took that like nobody’s gonna know who we are, which is great. We’re trying to reach new audiences not leave the audience we have, but just expand and just show, give other people the chance to see a band like us play and we’re stoked. We actually met some of the Avatar guys in Europe. We played the same venue as them, but had an off day the day before we played, and they were playing at that same venue. So we got to go talk to a couple of them, and they seem like super nice guys. So I’m super excited to hang out with them more, but yeah, not much time at home, but me and our drummer Matt (Matt Dennard, ed.), we work out pretty heavily. We are pretty much in the gym almost every single day, so we try to stay as physically fit as we can to stay ready for these tours and stuff, we work pretty hard on ourselves to stay ready.
How did you build the band’s visual identity on thematics about ice, the chain microphone stand on the BC rich stuff?
Chad: We just kind of do the stuff that we think is cool and that we like… All of us in the band enjoy a good show. We enjoy movies, we like the theatrics of things, so naturally if we go see a band play, we’re always more stoked when they have a really cool show, they have stage props and all sorts of stuff. So we just kind of started doing stuff that we thought was cool, and then fell into the theme because if we have the word “frozen” in our name, we would be stupid not to capitalize on that a little bit, but yeah, I make our stage props and stuff like that. It’s just one other way to love what we do!
And I also noticed there’s horror movie posters behind you, are you a horror fan?
Chad: I am, yeah. I’d say I don’t live and die by horror movies, but I am a huge fan. I love them.
When the song Absolute Zero came out, you took the opportunity to include the messages “fuck ice” and “icebreaker” in the video. It’s of course really coherent because of the song, but it’s also a political message in the United States. Was it important for you to be clear about your political views as a band?
Chad: Yeah, we had to. We really felt like it was time for us to say something. We have a lot of friends and family that are going through things because of what’s happening here. And on top of that, we have a group on Facebook that is like a fan group, that someone started for us and someone was raising money in there, for their family or friends that were being affected by ICE and the climate of our country, and they kind of were getting shit on by people. And we just kind of had to shut it down, and just be like “yo, this is not what kind of band we are”. We’re not, if someone needs help, we’re a band that’s about friendship and family and fun, we’re not a place for hate, like at all. This is not who we are as people. This isn’t what we stand for. We are for love and protection, and we just had to make our stance known because in Metal, you know, there’s a line where there are people that don’t like politics, being involved in things. And to be honest, it doesn’t matter if you fucking like politics or not. Politics are a part of everyone’s life because we have to survive and live in whatever country you live in where things are affecting us on a daily basis. And you look at all the best Metal bands, they all have something political to say. Like everyone, Metal, Hardcore and Punk, it’s all a counterculture, it’s all about standing up and not keeping your mouth shut, standing for something. We felt like it was the right time to do it, but we also didn’t want to tie it to the record, as in drop our pre-order and all that stuff at the same time, because it just wasn’t about that, so we waited to do that until sometime later and whatnot. But yeah, it was interesting to say the least because we got tons of hate, but we also had tons of support and stuff, so it was cool to let the fans out there know where we stand.
I definitely agree. So next question, maybe you have heard about the French Metal scene, are there any bands you know and like?
Chad: I don’t, I know that I have one band that’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t, I was listening to them like a few months ago and I cannot remember their name right now. Sorry, I’m a little under the weather. I’ve been kind of sick the last couple of days. My allergies and stuff have been going crazy. It’s not off the top of my head right now!
It’s okay, no worries about that! Are there any bands you would love to play with?
Chad: Yeah, Metallica! Honestly, I don’t really think about that anymore. I want to play with everybody, we’re down to play with anyone and everyone. There’s not a dream tour lineup and all, just with our friends, our friends’ bands. Sanguisugabogg, 200 Stab Wounds, Tribal Gaze, Creeping Death, Devourment, all those bands that we love, all the bands that we’ve toured with and stuff I just could endlessly play shows with them! And I’d be fucking super happy!
I definitely agree it’s really important to play with friends! So uh last and funny question, which dish would you compare Frozen Soul with?
Chad: I think a big ass pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream (American food company that manufactures and sells ice cream, ed.).
That’s unexpected, but I really like this answer! So I said that was the last question for me, so thank you very much for your time, your music on the last words are yours, man!
Chad: Thank you very much for the interview, man. Have a good one, cheers!