We’re extremely pleased to have interviewed Dave McAnally, the “leader” behind industrial metal band, Derision Cult. The band has a lot going on including two recent single releases plus a forthcoming album, Mercenary Notes Pt. 1 that features some very special guests. We’d like to thank Dave for his time in the interview.
Thanks for taking some time to do the interview with Rock Revolt today. For the new fans, what’s a quick history of Derision Cult and the meaning behind the name?
It started as just me in my basement banging out riffs around 2014. I did a lot of demos and self-released them up through the last year. I have another project called Sys Machine which sort of brought me closer to a bunch of people in my local scene in Chicago. So fast forward to today and Derision Cult is more of a collective on Glitch Mode Recordings where I’ve sort of collaborated with artists to build what has become our latest EP Mercenary Notes Pt 1.
The name itself stems from an article I once read about that famously terrible movie called The Room. The author was talking about how this movie had become popular because people loved to hate it. He used the term “it’s almost as if there’s a cult of derision”. I thought that was interesting on how the movie got popular almost entirely in negative reactions to it. Since a lot of what my tracks are about deal with manipulating people’s emotions I thought it was a fit name.
Your music has been described as ‘industrial rock’ or ‘industrial metal’. Who are some of your biggest influences in the rock and metal arena?
Well the obvious ones like Ministry, White Zombie, KMFDM, NIN are all things that I grew up on. But I really love old Killing Joke and that comes through here on this, particularly with Deaf Blood (we even had a Killing Joke drummer remix the track!). I’ma Chicago guy and even though its heyday was a bit before my time, I love all things Wax Trax. Sister Machine Gun was a major influence on me early on. On this EP we drew a lot of influences from things like Nailbomb those 90’s Prong Records, Hansel Und Gretyl’s Sheissmesiah was a big one I referenced a lot.
Interestingly enough, a reference point for Sean and I while working Mercenary Notes was Circle of Dust, which is Klayton from Celldweller’s band in the 90’s. I hadn’t really listened to Circle of Dust in a long time, but man, there’s some heavy shit that came out of there. That first album and Brainchild are great. There’s a lot of influences well outside the industrial metal genre on Mercenary Notes. I’m old school outlaw country fan so there’s some nods to things like Johnny Paycheck and Waylon Jennings in tracks – even though they don’t necessarily sound like country. There’s a few nods to Tom Waits on here too- I’m a HUGE Tom fan.
The latest singles are “Bastards of the World” and “Deaf Blood”. Who are the “bastards”and what is the meaning of “Deaf Blood”?
Heh, the bastards was basically me taking the piss to big tech. Basically the point was that for all the data they have on people and the sophistication required to make platforms like Facebook, Tik Tok or Google go, their motives aren’t really all that profound. They just want to sell you more products. At the end of the day it’s that same old story. Literally changed society as we know it all to sell you another fucking Nissan. Not that big tech is all bad– there’s a lot of good…but at least on this track, that’s what we wanted to explore.
Deaf Blood is a little more abstract. Chris Connelly wrote those lyrics. I don’t mean to speak for him, but when we originally were roughing out the track and talking about it, we talked about those themes of media manipulation and over-stimulation. When I look at those lyrics he wrote, I think some of that comes through for sure.
You have an upcoming release, ‘Mercenary Notes Pt 1’. We understand there’s a central theme in it but what are some of the underlying messages within the other tracks?
There’s definitely a central theme- It’s really sort of like a survival guide for the 21st century if I were to put a fine point on it. But we explore a few different areas. The Year Hope Failed is about how machines and automation are replacing jobs and how you need to basically either adapt or die. “Life Until” is more about social justice warriors and how people today are exposed to more atrocities in the world than all of history, and so there’s a lot more complaining and finger pointing- but very little gets done. Slaves Rebuild deals with all the self help and self-improvement industries that really are like these viscous circles. Mercenary – even though it doesn’t have lyrics per say is sort of our shot across the bow on what you have to do to navigate all these things. We drew from some samples of talks and lectures friends of mine have given on this idea of adapting and being agile in the modern era.
Have you already come up with the concept for ‘Mercenary Notes Pt 2’? How does that continue where Pt 1 left off?
We do! We started out with the intention of this being a full length but as we got into the tracks, Sean actually suggested it’d work better as two EP’s. There’s a couple tracks that sort of occupy the same space sonically so it’d be more interesting to keep them separated. It continues on the same themes lyrically. We’ve got some plans for mystery guests that’ll appear on that as well. I think if I were to say how it’s different from what we’ve worked on so far, we’ll go further in bringing out more of those outlaw country flavors in there. I broke out the telecaster a lot more on those tracks!
The two singles have some intriguing cover art. Can you talk about that for a moment?
Jim Marcus from Go Fight did that. It was really exciting to work with him on this because I’ve been a massive fan of his visual stuff as well as his music. Jim and I talked a lot about these notions of over stimulation and pressures in the 21st century people are faced with. He sort of went with the vision of a city scape and some nods to old advertising like with the neon signs you see. That was cool cos we’re both ex-ad agency guys so it’s sort of a nod to the world we’re from. Ex Mad Men basically. We’re doing a few merch things that really go wild with the things he did that will be fun to share. The CD itself for Mercenary Notes is a full 8 panel digiwallet that Jim did.
Do you have any active projects outside of Derision Cult? If so,…. When you get inspiration to write, how do you know which project you are writing for?
I have Sys Machine which is more of a chill electronic project. Kim of Bow Ever Down collaborates with me a lot on that and she’s awesome. We did the album Graceful Isolation last year which really was a great experience. We’ve been working on tracks over the course of the year for a follow up to that. Right now, I’m still unsure of what we’ll do with that from a producer/collaborator standpoint. I feel like I need to one-up what I did last time! I need some headspace between releasing Mercenary Notes Pt 1 and what happens next with Derision Cult to give that the attention it deserves. But I’m really excited about the tracks. There’s no sign of that slowing down.
I have a project called Purgatory Line which is more of a hard rock/grunge sound with my buddy Matt Kettman from Iowa. We’ve been going back and forth of tracks for a year and a half and eventually we’ll do a follow up to our first album which came out last year. We actually just did a track for this Psychedelic Furs tribute album that’ll be out this week. That was a lot of fun to do and John Norten from Blue Eyed Christ mixed it and he’s awesome.
Other than that, I have sort of a solo project called Jefferson Dust that is more of a blues/acoustic thing. That’s a tough one for me to do justice lately because I’m so steeped in electronic stuff. But sooner or later I’ll revisit that.
Have you thought about how you would construct a live performance? Do you think it would be based around the album concept with some other tracks? Sort of like what Queensryche did with ‘Mindcrime’ when they played it live with other tracks?
Ha oh man if I had the stage and the budget! That’s a good question. Funny you should ask though because I was just chatting with Sean about this last week. Other than some acoustic one-offs I’ve been a recording only endeavor. I haven’t played live in a lot of years. But the itch is def there. We have tracks that’ll stand up live for sure. We haven’t quite figured out what “live” will mean yet but I’d say there’s a good chance I’ll do some things next year.
From a presentation aspect, whatever I do it’ll have a video component. We’re too far down that road not to! But beyond that, the conversations I had with Sean were all about the whole Keep It Simple Stupid principle. As much as I’d love to go out like Pigface, I also want to do this in a way that doesn’t add tons of stress to the operation. Honestly, the notion of 3 people and a merch jockey in a van doing two weeks as an opener sounds really exciting so we’ll see!
Reeves Gabrels is a legend in the rock world. How did you hook up with him?
Reeves is a hero of mine. It was a real thrill to get to work with him on this. I’m still kind of surprised it worked out as well as it did! Him and his wife Susan have been awesome in helping me get the word out about the project. When I hooked up with Sean and we started getting real about the tracks, and we started thinking about collaborators, I had a bucket list and Reeves was right at the top. He did guitars on a fantastic Sister Machine Gun album called Metropolis so it wasn’t all that crazy to think he might be up for revisiting the ‘ol Chicago sound. So with that in mind, armed with some tracks that kind of harkened back to the 90’s industrial sounds, I just reached out.
It just so happened The Cure was in a holding pattern because Covid prevented people from traveling to Europe to mix their album. So he had some downtime and it just worked out. He played a bunch of stuff on Deaf Blood and Slaves Rebuild. There’s a TON of textures in the mix that don’t sound like guitars at all that are actually Reeves. I think that’s pretty cool because there’s a solo album he did called Sacred Squall of Now that is notorious for only having guitars on it even though you’d swear you’re hearing organs and synths everywhere. The way he did David Bowie’s Earthling album was a lot like that too from what I read- where a lot of synth parts were actually played on guitar. So he brought some of that experimental stuff to this one too.
Where are you going from here? What do you envision for 2023 for Derision Cult?
Well we have Mercenary Notes Pt 2! I’m really having fun with the video ideas on these songs and we’re going to do more in the first part of the year. We’re kicking around ideas for shows in the back half of 2023 but we still need to see what that looks like. Its’ a weird space for touring right now and I’m sure a lot of things will be ironed out soon. But other than that, the plan is to release Mercenary Notes Pt 2 around this time next year as well. So 2023 will be pretty busy on the Derision Cult front!
Thanks again for your time today. Any parting words here are yours….
You can check out Mercenary Notes Pt 1 on our bandcamp at Derisioncult.com.
Thanks for checking us out!
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https://derisioncult.bandcamp.com/
