Exiles on
mean streets

Ohio’s Whitechapel forge their own
brand of menacing, melodic metal

ANGER MANAGEMENT: Whitechapel

by JOHNSON CUMMINS

Heavy metal has historically favoured fantasy-based lyrics to temper its aggressive edge, but on their album This Is Exile, the lyrics of Cleveland, Ohio’s Whitechapel go toe to toe with the brutal music. This is a band that knows how to kick up dust with lines laced with vitriol—even if they aren’t always the angriest guys.

“When we’re writing, we strive to write the heaviest and angriest music possible,” says Whitechapel guitarist Alex Wade, “but we can’t be like that all the time. Our singer, who wrote the lyrics, is actually in love and just got engaged, and musically, we tend to listen more to stuff like Björk, Iron and Wine or Ryan Adams in the van. You just can’t listen to metal all the time if you are playing it every night or it’s kind of like a snake eating his own tail.”

Lyrically, Whitechapel know how to draw blood, but musically, by sidestepping the potholes of done-to-death formulas, the band really drops the hammer with innovation while never sacrificing gut level heaviosity.

“I think it’s really important that bands try to be a little different and stay away from the standard formula. We are a deathcore band, but if we want to do something a little bit more melodic, we will. We utilize dynamics a lot as we have three guitarists and we can exploit that. If you are just being heavy all the time, it just gets boring.”

Like any successful metal band, Whitechapel have earned their stripes and attracted the prestigious label Metal Blade with their massive amount of touring. With tastemaker blogs and mainstream media continuing to ignore metal in the face of a huge and fiercely passionate fanbase, touring remains the best way for a metal band to get noticed.

“We probably did too much touring for our first record,” says Wade, “but we really wanted to prove to people that we mean business. If you are in a metal band, you have to be out there and playing as much as possible. It just comes with the territory.”

With Necrophagist, Dying Fetus,
Beneath the Massacre, Into
Eternity, Neuraxis, Divinity,
Veil of Maya and Common Grave at
Club Soda on Friday, Aug. 15,
5 p.m., $34.50, all ages