Creators of brooding gothic anthems that rumble with discontent, Toronto-based duo Dermabrasion are preparing to release their upcoming debut album, Pain Behaviour, on 26th January via Hand Drawn Dracula.
Formed of Adam Bernhardt and Kat McGouran, Dermabrasion bonded over a shared fascination with punk music, the occult and the corporeal form. Inspired by Roman Catholicism, LaVeyan Satanism, genre fiction and how this literature affects humanity’s outlook on power, shame and duty, Dermabrasion’s Pain Behaviour is a formidable concoction of post-punk, industrial and metal influences, culminating in a sound they’ve coined as “death rock and roll.”
We think one of the best ways to get to know a band is by asking what music inspired them to write in the first place. We caught up with Adam and Kat to ask about their “Five Favourites” – five albums that have inspired their songwriting techniques. Check out their choices below and scroll down to listen to their latest single ‘Magic Missile’ at the end of this post…
1. Sisters of Mercy – Floodland
Kat: Not going to pretend we are too cool to love this heater of a classic. We wanted to share albums versus songs because recording a full-length release and looking at it as a cohesive statement was a new thing for us. But some of our shared staples, like this one, showcase the form so well. From the drums and guitar striking like thunder and lightning in the first seconds of “Dominion” (always let it play all the way through) to its swampy final conclusion, Floodland weaves its tonal and atmospheric motifs throughout every track. Not a concept record, but with a distinct feeling of beginning, middle and end. Not a rock opera, just Daddy Eldritch in his most megalomaniacal era, seeing how far he can push the camp and bombast that he says is satire but probably comes from a very earnest place. Using big words and existential concepts to divine personal meaning; sax solos, runtimes that prolong undeniably solid grooves to the point of a game of chicken. The dark and indulgent excess is magnificent and I want to bathe in it.
Adam: It will never not be funny that Andrew Eldritch recorded an 11-minute diss track with a 40-piece choir and harpsichord.
2. The Mall – Zone
Adam: This album will make you want to buy a synth. I mean I did, I bought two. I think I found this album through the YouTube algorithm, which is always nice. I listened to it quite a bit over the course of lockdown and the pandemic, and I used to play it a lot when I went back to work over the intercom. They called it ‘weird spacey music.’ They also fired me. The album, though, is great. It’s an interesting mix of EBM and synth pop but hardcore. Songs like ‘Habit’ or ‘An Answer’ are absolute earworms, and they’ve got some really great mournful melodies that I eat right up. I guess it kind of evokes a liminal space in a dead mall, or maybe I’m reaching a bit, but I love it all the same. Also, if you get a chance to see them live, watching them is a real treat. They do it all without a DAW, which is crazy!
3. Special Interest – The Passion Of
Kat: The Passion Of feels like where Special Interest distills its years of experimentation and chaos and tour and, and, and, and, into its defining sound and statement as a recorded group as much as a legendary live performance act. The live chaos and urgency transmutes to an oppressive and textured noise fog, dynamic enough for listeners to pick out a different nuance each time. Alli Logout’s vocal performance just sends me. Hardcore as fuck, hitting incredible notes, each of which delivering a different shade of emotion for every word, speech, homily, manifesto, whether sung, screamed, chanted, spoken, proselytized. I could reserve all those nouns and verbs for “Street Pulse Beat” alone. The dirty, groovy drum and synth tracks, crunchy bass tones, the words, the mood, the vibe. I listened to this album a lot while sick and housebound during the pandemic and it seeped deep into my bones. A fitting soundtrack to mourn an old life, sexily, and summon forth a new one.
Special Interest came through our city a couple times between 2017-2019 and made a massive impression on us. It was the “DISCO” era and I remember their sound and performance feeling really transgressive, especially with what I understood to be the ‘rules’ for aggressive guitar music at the time. It was my first time experiencing music that felt and looked hardcore, ferocious, that took up the same space as any d-beat or powerviolence band’s live drums with electronic beats. You wanted to throw down but also watch and listen because they brought such a distinct attitude and confrontational point of view.
I had such a limited tolerance for what I would accept as “worthy” musically, going into my 20s, and am still trying to outgrow this macho bullshit about things needing to be “heavy” to be worthwhile. But to some degree this was/is a reflection of (and overcorrection against) the attitudes around me, and this band has been here providing a reference point for how to be hardcore, but be sexy about it, provocative, dancey, confrontational in a more distinct way. Just straight up different, but bringing the same feeling and energy to the sound and crowd.
4. Godflesh – Streetcleaner
Adam: I never listened to much metal growing up because all the metal guys I grew up with were bigoted assholes, and the punk v. metal divide seemed so very important back then. I forget how exactly I heard of Godflesh but a metal band with Swans, Big Black and Killing Joke influences definitely caught my interest. That they did that all without a drummer was just weird enough to sell it to me. All their albums are great, but I think Streetcleaner is probably my favorite. Man, is this album GRIM. The atmosphere is so oppressive, so bleak, so heavy. It’s the Silent Hill pain dimension with drop-tuned guitars. Justin Broadrick is able to evoke such brutal imagery with his guitar, and G.C. Green’s bass playing is so pummeling, it all serves to create this hypnotic wall of sound that oozes discomfort. Misanthropy in its purest form. Godflesh are super creative with their drum machine patterns, and I always find something new whenever I listen to them.
5. Danzig – Danzig
Kat: Unironically and unapologetically my favourite record. I love Danzig in every era, it’s hard to choose just one album. But I think what endears me to Danzig most is that he is just simply unwilling or unable to be anything other than exactly who he is, and to me this album is the clearest statement of that.
If I have the timeline right, most of these songs were written and in the process of being recorded while Samhain was still a thing. Releasing an album under his own name meant Danzig wouldn’t have to deal with lineup change issues, but he was still bitter and had something to prove. And he still had that death rock stank on him.
It just feels like there was so much riding on this release that he could have gone too far to ~realize~ his ~vision~. But then you have literally Rick Rubin telling you what to do and who to get to make it sound absolutely perfect. Cooking all of Danzig’s angst and ambition and hubris down to its most concentrated form, removing from it anything extraneous, for a thrifty 40 minutes of relentless howling into a sparse, airless void above the band’s tight and driving grooves. It shouldn’t be anything more. It is exactly enough. And he needed to yield some control so he didn’t sabotage himself.
Reading this back it all just sounds like what I really like is the narrative I’ve created in my head from the lore of this album which–there you go, that’s it really. I have a parasocial relationship with this record.
Adam: Danzig benefits from having someone who isn’t Danzig behind the dials (or film camera).
P.S. Please give us a round of applause as two insufferable and very online music forum nerds of the 2010s who neither once here used the word “angular.” Disclosing for accountability that a second use of the phrase “wall of sound” was removed in editing. (lol)
Check out Dermabrasion’s latest single ‘Magic Missile’ below
Pre-order Dermabrasion’s debut album Pain Behaviour here
Follow Dermabrasion on bandcamp, Spotify & Instagram
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