You recorded Desacralize at Nu House Studios and Bricktop Studios. How did you decide where to record? What was the recording process like?

Keith: We did the drums at Bricktop Recording in Chicago. It was recommended to me by my brother, Logan Voss, who is in a band called Snooze. They’re a math rock band and they released their most recent album, I Know How You Will Die, earlier this year which was also recorded at Bricktop. Shoutout to Snooze, they are really, really cool! They're definitely an inspiration. We were recommended Pete to work with as a drum engineer for live drums. It happened to be that it was 5 minutes away from where we lived so it was extremely convenient.

As for the Nu House thing, that’s our guitarist Ash’s connection. She knew Aki from Nu House and the two of them formed an understanding and talked about the concepts sonically. That’s really not my department of Ruinous Time Blade so it was more her decision, but it was a stylistic one that was perfect.

Rudie: Working with Aki was a dream, she was very quick and efficient. She also worked 12 hours each day we were there working with her. On top of being extremely good at what they do, they’re also extremely lovely people; very, very wonderful to be around and very warm presences. We had a wonderful time there.

You’ve said this album has been 3 years in the making. What has changed the most since you started working on it? What has it been like to bring these songs to life?

Rudie: The climate around us and the context surrounding us has changed the most because obviously, these songs are politically and socially involved. The context has shifted in the sense that we’ve descended further into this American-style fascism and things have gotten more dire. There’s a greater need for us to say the things that we’re saying and for people to come together. Beyond that, everything that we are talking about is unchanged. If anything, it’s become more important to discuss. That’s because what we were targeting when we were writing the lyrics to this album was not just surface-level issues; we’re confronting class issues, we’re confronting the issues at the actual core of the system we’re operating in. They won’t necessarily be timeless in the sense that every single social system will be able to relate to what we’ve said, but it’s absolutely timeless within this system. Not much has changed for what we were actually talking about. We’re still living in this class system.

Keith: The themes and topics we cover in the album are pretty permanent and constant facets of American life. We’re not commenting on global issues from an objective outsider perspective, we’re doing it from the perspective of living in the belly of the beast right now, modern day. Our EP Will of the Earth, our first record as Ruinous Time Blade, was made in response to the 2020 George Floyd uprisings and the social movements that spawned from that. This album took place in the direct aftermath of that, starting in late 2021 and going on through now. All the issues that we were dealing with then have been exacerbated and have gotten worse.

The other countries of the world are changing how they move and people in America go through our own patterns. This album is also talking about our unique role in the suffering that’s going on around the world and what we need to do in response. Part of the problem is that things aren’t changing enough here. There’s so much to say because we’re talking about the never-ending conversation of geopolitics in our music, so it’s tied to everything.

It’s all connected. With the title and your lyrics, you talk about dismantling the idea of American exceptionalism.

Keith: Yeah, the blurb of the album is “stop believing” and that’s what that’s supposed to mean. It’s very direct. Stop believing in this country. Everyone has their own version of what it is to them, but stop believing in it. We’re the enemy of Journey. They said, “Don’t stop believing” and now we’re saying that’s over and it’s time to stop believing.

Rudie: We are the antithesis of Journey.

Keith: They can’t keep getting away with that. That cannot be allowed to stand. The tyranny of Journey must end. [laughs] But for real, we should move on to new music culturally.

Rudie: I feel like part of the reason our culture has been stuck since the late ‘70s is because that’s the time they started to realize they could introduce neoliberalism here. That’s around the time we got Ronald Reagan and it really feels like that’s where we stopped developing. If America was an adult, it would be stuck at 16-17 years old listening to the same pop-punk songs and rehashing all the same jokes over and over again. I feel like neoliberalism did a lot more damage than just economic. I think it really stunted our cultural growth as well as created this horrible system we have now where there’s no upward mobility. We’re all just dying. We’re just remaking Star Wars every couple of years. [laughs] Bread and circuses.

Keith: Right. It doesn’t help for anyone that’s conscious to be aware of everybody constantly missing the point of every piece of media too. That’s part of why we made this album so obvious and not up to interpretation. A cop shouldn’t be able to enjoy this, no matter what. If they hear this, they should understand this music is their enemy.

Rudie: Don’t underestimate the power of fools. There are conservative Rage Against the Machine fans who made it all the way to their 40s without realizing that the machine they’re raging against is the government. [laughs] We are trying to be very direct. When we were recording at one point I said, “We’re not doing fucking Cannibal Corpse here, you can understand every word I’m saying”. I’m enunciating everything. We’re being very intentional with all of our lyrics and with everything we’re saying. Keith and I spend a fair amount of time agonizing over pretty much every line.

Keith: Yes. We don’t wanna be using big, poetic words if we don’t think people are going to get what we’re saying in a general sense. Whenever I have an interview I always want to be inflammatory and call out other metal bands for not being specific about what their songs are about. I feel like it’s really ironic that we might write lyrics or write songs with the principle of appealing to a larger audience given what this genre comes from and what it exists to do. You should be specific with your message. Metal is not something that should seek to integrate itself into the mainstream for its own sake.

We want our music to be accessible and listenable to people who are interested in what we’re saying, but we’re not changing the content to fit anybody’s sensibilities. I feel like people use the aesthetics of heaviness and metal in ways that are antithetical to their musical purpose. I think that there’s plenty of reasons you can make art but in my view, if you’re gonna be making music as extreme and abrasive as this, you should have some genuine pain and vulnerability that you are showcasing; something that requires this medium and justifies it in a way. We joke around that this is 6th wave emo because it’s very emotional in nature.

The rage and power of extreme metal is not set dressing for a personal artist’s vision, in my view. The virtue of it existing means something is very, very wrong so you’ve gotta speak truth to power on that. In general, I’m just sick of bands that give you the idea that, “We are cool tough guys” and the ultimate outcome of this music is, “We’re tough, we’re not gonna be affected by x, y, or z”. No, there are giant evil systems of oppression that are fucking over each and every one of us. We’re not interested in petty squabbles between us and other people that don’t accept us. There’s more going on and certainly more than our personal artistic expression in that sense.

How would you describe your songwriting process?

Rudie: Multi-tiered and systematic. There’s a series of steps that a song goes through. The first step is behind the veil of Keith and Ash.

Keith: Yeah, it’s been a different writing process each time. This was our first album writing as a whole band. Me and Ash write a drum and guitar demo and present it to the other members who then create parts based off of that. There’s layers of writing and rewriting until we agree that the song is finished more or less. It’s not super consistent either because there are also songs that I completely wrote on drums, like “Blood in the Mortar” and then Ash added to it.

I think there’s going to be even more variation in the future because we are going to try to write entirely as a group in a different setting to see if we can get something even more distilled and tight. We’ll see. I wouldn’t say that we’re masters of the process, we’re just trying new things and working with the time we have while crunched under capitalism. You know the deal. [laughs]

Rudie: For Desacralize specifically, Ash and Keith would write the actual song and bring it to Alice, our bassist, and I. Alice and I joined secondarily and tertiarily so I think we were still all gelling with each other and figuring out how we would work with each other. Then typically what would happen is that Keith and I would work on lyrics. Like Keith said, there are some songs that are varied. Making art is always this consistently shifting structure of procedure. It’s like, “I do it this way” then after 5 or 6 years I have a different way of doing it. At least, that’s my experience.

I’ve always had some degree of contempt for people who are artists and have this very high-minded idea like, “This is my procedure, this is my structure”. I get that it comes from, “Oh, the greats did this” but whatever, they were all kinda conceited anyway. We can all kinda chill out now. We’re not all wearing the big collars and fluffy wigs, we can all relax, we’re wearing jeans. [laughs]

It doesn’t have to be this inaccessible thing that you need several degrees to learn how to do.

Rudie: Exactly! We can remove the academics of art now. We had a middle class, we went through that. We’re in a different kind of feudalism but we’re not in that old kind of feudalism. We’re not in the Renaissance era. Reading is a thing most people can do. Although in America I think something like 20% of people are functionally illiterate, but most people can read. We can stop being pretentious about this.

I think we’re in this beautiful moment for music where it is more accessible than it’s ever been. I could get an app on my phone that’s a soundboard of cat sounds and I could make a song out of that and use some editing software and make something goofy that sounds like 100 gecs and people might like it. We’re in a beautiful moment for music as art for accessibility. I think it’s a good thing and I think it’s lending all these shifts in different genres.

Did you have a song off the album that was the most cathartic to write?

Keith: Cathartic is an interesting word. It really feels good to externalize this but at the same time, the album exists for a reason which is to inspire action and empower people who are daring to struggle and to offer encouragement for people who are considering taking the plunge. I feel like the title track was extremely satisfying because it had the most elements that were preconceived and fit together in an organic way from the riffs to the words that summarize the gist of the whole album. All the lyrics in that song invoke ideas that cover the entirety of what we’re talking about, “Empire, a plague upon the world”. That is, in detail, what each of the songs are describing one way or another.

The song starts off with a monologue of the various war crimes, illegal actions, and clandestine actions America’s government has taken just in the last 50-60 years. It gives examples and it talks about everything we’ve discussed; our special role within dismantling this system and what awaits us should we succeed or should we fail. The final riff section before the end breakdown is sort of the last real message of the album before we go into hammering home the same words, “Strike the hydra at its heart / Kill evil at the source”.

Before that, there’s a paragraph where we’re saying, “Rise against those who drink from your wounds / Put your hands on the thieves / Consecrate the right to life / Stop believing / It’s why you’re bleeding / Take up the fight / Desacralize”. Each of those statements is a stab at trying to undo the crystallized powerlessness and sadness that we all carry with us, which we believe is unique to us and we can’t do anything about. Each of those lines talks about big concepts that really have to do with undoing that programming and believing in something better. Each of them is a succinct statement that is really saying the same thing in different ways. I think that section musically and lyrically is a little crystal of what the entire album is like. That’s the big red spot on the gas giant of this planet where a storm is always going.

I think that’s probably the most cathartic song to write because it contains the most condensed message that we have put into as few words as we could think of to get our point across. It’s not really our point, it’s the point of all free peoples throughout history and into the future. This idea of solidarity is what connects us to that world and so we advocate for it.

Rudie: I would agree for all of those reasons that was one of the more cathartic ones to write for me. I think that one also came about very organically. We did discuss a little bit beforehand about what we wanted the song to be about. It’s such a doomy, big, bombastic song and we knew that this entire album was going to be about the domestic viewpoint of imperialism in particular. “Desacralize” is great. That’s a fun one.

The other one that I would add to that list would be “Abject Contagion”. That one was pretty satisfying to write and put out because we’re dealing with the onset of COVID, the politicization of it, and then the “aftermath” of it - but there isn’t really an after because we’re still in a damn pandemic. Art is one of those things where you can try to make it good and sometimes it doesn’t come out well and you gotta restart it and shift it. A lot of the songs on this album just came out really, really well from the onset. That one definitely was a cathartic one to write as well.

Keith: I think that “Abject Contagion” deserves a special shoutout. The contents of the song talk about how public health has been betrayed in this country and the institutions we look towards to issue guidance for safe communal behaviours are not upholding their responsibility. That’s integrated into this whole anti-imperialist worldview and part of this whole solidarity-based message that we’re talking about is looking out for one another’s health in the ways that we can. Our band tends to only play masked or outdoor shows. Know that we don’t undergo this inconvenience for its own sake but because we understand it as a necessary step to protect one another.

We wish that this wasn’t something that we had to worry about or think about but because of our understanding of this country and the way it treats its citizens, we know that chemical warfare is not off the table and rather is par for the course. We encourage everyone to wear a mask out in public and take their own measures to protect their community because right now we’re flying blind in the Trump administration of deregulation but this has been going on for years. We need to learn lessons from previous generations that have been killed off by preventable diseases and do our part to preserve our lives and our communities in this way.

Finding the inner strength to fight against oppression and those who oppress others is a major theme of the album. What helps you find that within yourself?

Keith: I love this question because that is what the album is about but we don’t need to find the inner strength, we need to find our humanity. We need to find our community. Inner strength comes from connection to other human beings and solidarity is where we have found that power. There are many lanes of struggle and tons of roles that are necessary for people to bring about the world that we want to live in. We need skilled individuals who are willing to do anything for their fellow people and stand in solidarity with their neighbours but moreover, to do that with the perspective of why we are trying to create this social order. It’s not for a better America, it’s for a better world and social order for all peoples including mostly the people in the Global South who struggle more directly than we ever do with the tentacles of imperialism.

Solidarity is what empowers us to take those steps because we know that our sacrifice is not our own, it is shared sacrifice that binds us together with the other forces for liberation in the world. We know that when we deal damage to the body of evil here, it hurts it all the way over there and vice versa. That solidarity is what helps fight powerlessness, helps fight isolation, and that’s where what could be perceived as “inner strength” comes from. I would attribute it to the group and the human spirit as a whole.

Rudie: I would agree with that. I think the idea of strength is so often co-opted - especially in modern America - by far-right ideologies. I think it comes from the idea that strength is community like Keith was saying. Even fascists recognize that, it’s just that their community is a limited community of people they think of as worthy whereas we’re talking about the broader community of everybody. It’s less strength and more unity and fortitude and this ability to understand that we live in a global society. Just making yourself happy and comfortable is not humane. You have to understand that everything that we do here and everything that they do there, we’re all affecting each other. It’s one big lake; if you poison one side of it, it’s poisoning the entire lake.

The will to put in the time and the effort to resist comes from the knowledge that people are suffering. I’ve always been political but I was much more internally political like, “I just wanna have my happy little farm and live in the forest in seclusion and these people won’t let me do that”. But over time, reading theory has been fantastic. Shoutout to all Marxist theorists. [laughs] Reading theory has been great for making me understand how this global society is unavoidable and how we live as a part of this continuum of humanity. That really helped open my eyes to the idea that you have a direct impact on the person you’re seeing on your phone that’s suffering in a foreign country. It’s typically very, very small on an individual level and very, very large when you get into a community.

Whether you’re involved on a grand scale or a small scale, you have an impact even if it’s just talking to people. This is something that’s been said by people who spoke truth to power a hundred and seventy-five years ago, a hundred and fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, 10 years ago. Anything you’re doing is beneficial. Obviously joining some degree of community organization or political organization and getting involved in some way is ideal. I put respect on the anarchists with their affinity groups and their sabotage and their small cells because it works. These are all ways in which we are harming the hydra, we are attacking the imperial core. That can give you hope too, understanding that there’s a diversity of tactics beyond just a political ideology. You’ve got the Houthis in Yemen and they don’t care if they agree ideologically with the people of Gaza, they’re just doing what they’re doing because they understand that they’re a part of the same struggle.

Keith: Solidarity.

Rudie: Exactly. The people of Gaza and the people of Yemen and the people of Latin America and the people of Southeast Asia, all understand this on a certain level depending on the country and the culture. America is waking up to this. America used to be a place where that was extremely well understood and I think that’s important for Americans to learn their true history because we have an extreme, extreme history of resistance. It has always been a thing and they’ve done a very good job of making us forget.

I think that understanding that you’re not alone in the continuum of history can also provide strength. On this soil, people have fought and bled and died for your rights like the 40-hour work week and not having children in mines. There’s a lot to be said for how much will to fight the basic understanding of humanity and history and political theory gives you, although it can be a little bit doom and gloom to read about sometimes. It’s not really super fun to read about how the system in place is a massive, difficult-to-defeat monster and it’s doing all these horrible things, but it reminds you that we’re all connected and fighting in a continuum of resistance and class struggle. We’re at a very big inflection point right now. America is crumbling. Now is the time to stand up and do things and say things if you were worried before.

Keith: Hopelessness is what we are meant to feel. Hopelessness is an illusion. Defeat is an illusion. Three hundred years ago, people who died in the struggle could have analyzed the situation and said it was hopeless but that didn’t happen and there’s a reason for that. It’s false to say that we can’t do this or there’s no precedent to do it, it’s possible and very doable. You gotta believe it’s possible. It truly is.

Rudie: Slavery is a wonderful example. Look at Haiti, the slaves who resisted there were amongst the first to manage to succeed in a large-scale slave revolt that led to a revolution that led to a state of their own. The colonial powers have never forgiven them for that and they have consistently been shit on ever since. What’s more hopeless than the position a slave was in during the height of the slave trade?

It’s less a question of, “I have no hope” and more a question of, “Do you have the will?” Hope is a finicky thing. Hope is a lot like bravery. It’s a muscle you can only really exercise in dire situations so you can only really recognize how much will you have from hope when you’re in a situation that seems hopeless and is terrifying. I think that all human beings have the capacity to resist to really extreme degrees, it’s just a measure of will. Will comes from a lot of things; political context, cultural context, and social context. But for the people who say, “Oh, it seems very hopeless” your life is not more hopeless than that of a Haitian slave prior to the Haitian Revolution. Absolutely not. There’s absolutely still hope and there’s absolutely still time. I think there’s more hope than ever before now.

I think we’re at a very important point. Like the internet has been saying, we’re in the Find Out era. The 20th century following World War II was the Fuck Around era for capitalists and now we’re gonna see what will happen during and after the collapse of the final colonial empire and we’ll see how people will act during it.

What part of Desacralize are you proudest of?

Rudie: I think probably the whole album. The whole album is almost exactly how we pictured it with some caveats. For an album that we went and recorded so much of in such a short time, I’m very, very proud of it as a whole.

Keith: My answer is similar. I’m proud that we made an album that’s like this because I don’t think that we’re gonna make another album quite like this again. They’re kind of dense songs, they change a lot, and they’re very customized to fit the pace and the mood of what’s happening and what’s being talked about. It’s a showcase of a blend of a lot of different subgenres of metal and a lot of influences too. It is intended to be a big span over these feelings and ideas and things that we’re talking about and all of the specific pains of this confounded modern American existence. That is described and encapsulated in this album as holistically as I think we are capable of doing at this time. I’m really proud of that. It frees us up to move on to things that are more refined inside a certain focus.

For example, “Fragmented Existence” has like 12 riffs in it and a lot of those riffs themselves could be whole songs because of how dense they are. If you were to pick them apart and play each section of each riff as its own thing it would stand up. It’s like a quilt of riffs. You don’t get to hear the whole playing out of anything, really. I think on the next album we’re going to be more expansive on these ideas and let them groove more. That’s something that because of the urgency of this album, we couldn’t really do. There was so much to cover and so much to say. I’m really proud of how it all was covered. I hope that it does right by our comrades in the Global South and the message rings true for them as well and that they understand where we are coming from. I like it all.

Rudie: I think that’s a fair point that you made, it is an extremely dense album. If you just gave me those riffs, absolutely I could’ve gotten like 7 albums out of this album. [laughs] There are so many good riffs like, “That could’ve just been a whole song!”

I’m proud of how we managed to fit lyrics and vocals into some of these songs. When Keith and I were going over the songs, we would have to go through each song and run through each riff individually. There had to be a roadmap for every song in order to write vocals for it because it’s so dense and there’s so much to it. It’s introduced, it hits hard, and then we’re moving on to the next one. The pride in the entire thing is very deep and multi-faceted because it’s a deep and multi-faceted album.

Is there anything that I didn’t ask that either of you would like to add?

Rudie: The only final word that I would have is to tell people that they should read more and should read books about history and political theory. If anyone reaches out to me, I will send them a list of free PDFs and a list of books. I’m always open and ready to do that. Read books and get involved in your community whether it’s politically or whether it’s just helping out your neighbours.