Led by vocalist and songwriter Sal Abruscato, New York State-based masterful metal quintet A Pale Horse Named Death (APHND) released their long-awaited third album, When the World Becomes Undone, on Jan. 18, through Long Branch Records.
It’s an epic collection of pure metal compositions, infused with deeply held emotions, immersed in a frisson of compelling, insistent energy, and a superlative example of modern production, melded with gritty, old-school aggression.
APHND actually took a hiatus off a couple of years back in 2014, when Abruscato, who came to prominence in the early 1990s as drummer for Type O Negative, was asked to rejoin another Brooklyn-based metal band, Life of Agony, for whom he had played previously on a couple of occasions.
“I had a lot of the sketches and even the album title in the works back in 2014. The title which I came up with back then seemed to resonate with what was going on in the world more and more. But that same year, I got a call from Life of Agony and they were getting offers for a lot of money to do stuff and wanted to reunite. My job in that band was the drummer, but I was also a writer too, so I got tied up in that again. One thing led to another, and it went from being a couple of weekends of shows, into playing almost full time and then it turned into doing a record [2016’s A Place Where There’s No More Pain],” he explained.
“For that record I did just like I do with APHND, and I ended up writing nine of the 10 songs and arranging nine of the 10 songs, so that really consumed my time. It took a lot of good ideas out of my head too. At the same time, I had an album’s worth of sketches sitting on my computer for the next APHND record, so while I was doing the touring cycle for Life of Agony and dealing with a lot of personal problems, I was getting messages from fans asking what I was doing, when are we going to get another album, when is APHND going to come back. I kept getting that pressure more and more.
“I was also becoming more unhappy with the current situation I was in with Life of Agony. And some of the guys from APHND started visiting me at shows and asking when we were going to start jamming again, when are we going to get back to work and do some stuff? I told them as soon as the cycle was done, we could talk. But Life of Agony was not so keen on that idea because they were expecting me to hunker down and write more material for them. It seemed like we were always butting heads and I end up leaving the band again and decided to put all my energy into the next APHND album – which I did.”
Getting back to the subject of When the World Becomes Undone, it marked the first time an album by A Pale Horse Named Death didn’t feature the guitar playing or engineering/co-production talents of long-time Abruscato collaborator Matt Brown, who chose not to participate in the new album. Looking around for a new partner in musical crime, he saw that he had another great production mind already in the band in the personage of bassist Eric Morgan.
“Even though Matt and I worked closely together, I own the band, I own the trademark, I own the music, I own everything. So, I had the rights to continue. I told him that I was doing it, three times actually, and he said no. I said I am going to do what I need to do, and it was an amicable discussion. I talked to him recently, actually. Back then I wished him the best and said I would get someone else to play guitar in his place. At the same time, Eric Morgan told me he was an engineer and had his own studio at his place, and we joined forces to make this album. Instead of co-producing and engineering with Matt Brown, we did the exact same thing with Eric Morgan. And what was interesting was we took kind of a different approach,” Abruscato said.
“We wanted to be a little more grittier and I gave Eric free rein with some of the soundscapes you hear between the songs, because we were discussing how we wanted to be even more conceptual and cinematic, like the soundtrack for a movie. And it was a cool experience and now there was this new creation between me and Eric where we had such a great working relationship and the record was so much fun to do, despite how much hard work it was. We delivered the album in September and the label was blown away.
“They were very happy and said it was the most diverse album we’d ever delivered to them and that everyone had seen this sense of next-level maturity in the progression of the music, but yet it retained the core values of the band.”
To replace Brown’s guitar playing, former long-time Doro and Lita Ford axe slinger Joe Taylor was brought into the fold, making an immediate positive impression on Abruscato and the music being created and played by the band.
“Joe Taylor is a phenomenal guitarist and when he showed up to audition, he did every part perfectly, even the extra stuff from the first two recorded that nobody was doing. He is an amazing solo player too. You can give that guy a ukulele and he will make it sound great. He reminds me of a dark, bluesy Tony Iommi/Jimi Hendrix kind of guy. And then you also have Eddie Heedles who has been with me from the beginning of the band, and he is an incredibly fast player,” he said. The band’s roster is rounded out by drummer Johnny Kelly.
“He is from the same area and neighbourhood as Zakk Wylde and he remembers Zakk when they were young. I would put that guy against Zakk any day, because Eddie is an extraordinary metal guitarist. He is the ultimate pure metal guitar player; he just lives and breathes the instrument. So, the combination of those guys makes me feel very fortunate to have such an incredibly strong guitar duo. I am actually pretty stoked about all the changes that have happened. It ended up being for the better in the long run.”
Back in 2014, the world seemingly was tearing itself apart, and with some pressing personal issues, the theme of the album – as well as its title, When the World Becomes Undone, was more than apt.
“I remember being in a hotel room in Europe in 2014 and that was the height of ISIS being on TV and there were all these terrible stories on the news of bombings and kidnappings and people getting their heads cut off and there were all sort of other crazy things happening in the world and it seemed like the world was unravelling. I couldn’t believe the sort of stuff that was going on,” Abruscato said.
“The notion of the whole world is falling apart mentality was kicking around in my head and I thought ‘the world is coming undone’ and, boom, when the world becomes undone, that’s it. And then the other part was in my own life, in 2013 my wife and I had our second daughter and she was born blind and disabled and she had to instantly go into corneal transplant surgery, and that was a heavy, deep feeling for us. It was a dark time for our new little family and that really messed me up as far as feeling okay about leaving them at home to tour.
“And so there was that going on, and it struck me deeply and was hanging around my head at the same time as all the other crap going on on the news. I was also diagnosed manic depressive, so I tend to really go into dark corners all the time, where I can have a really hard time getting out of it. But music does help. It’s me wearing my heart on my sleeve; it’s like me speaking to a counsellor. It’s important to have these thoughts and feelings come out through music instead of bottling them up.”
The catharsis created from releasing these emotions into aggressive, pulse-pounding metal music as crafted for A Pale Horse Named Death is not only helpful to Abruscato himself, but he believes the musical version of his own struggles and conflicted, darker thoughts also help those listening to the music whether on CD or in a live setting.
“I do think it helps other people when they listen to some of the songs because they touch on the kinds of things that they too are experiencing. And then some of the other songs touch on things like betrayal and people being insincere and showing up when things are good, but then when things aren’t going so very well in your life, they disappear. So, there is a little bit of everything, but in the end, I try to leave each song in a way that it can be interpreted differently and kind of gel with the listener’s own experiences in life and things they can relate to. Metal is for misfits, the kids like me who didn’t fit in. It’s a place for people who are a little bit different, and who have a sometimes darker, but more real, outlook on the world,” he said.
The band’s name is a riff on a popular scene from the Book of Revelations in the Bible talking about the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: ‘I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.’
“Honestly, it came from me lying on the couch watching the History Channel sometime in 2009. It was a program about Revelations and how they talk about how death rode a pale horse. And back then I was smoking pot and stuff and I thought I was being really clever and did a play on words thinking, ‘well what if the horse itself was death?’ So, a pale horse named death – I thought it had a nice ring to it. And then the acronym APHND also had a nice ring to it. I felt I was on to something, and that’s basically how it came about. I was just watching this Bible history program and I flipped the words around,” he said.
“I just did the play on words because I really like dark, macabre things that touch on topics about the devil and darkness and what’s on the other side of the human soul. It was really simply but hit me like an epiphany at the time.”
A less Apocalyptic sojourn sees APHND touring extensively starting in March with a three week stint in Europe and the U.K. before coming back to North America, where there are four shows in Canada planned (although not confirmed as of the publishing of this article) in Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and Toronto for May. After some summer festival dates there also may be another tour in Europe, as well as one on the southern U.S. in the early summer.
“We actually cleaned house and got two new agents: one for this side of the ocean and one for Europe and the rest of the world. And we’re working on trying to solidify all these other dates. My situation is that I am touring in little chunks because I need to come back home. I have a lot of stuff here, including a large property in upstate New York that needs a lot of grounds maintenance. And my wife needs help with our children, because we have three now,” Abruscato aid.
For more information on the new album, touring plans and other details, visit http://www.apalehorsenameddeath.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
