Born To Thrill

Following a spate of personnel shifts over their decade-plus career, the current incarnation of The Amenta is perhaps its strongest yet. This is particularly obvious during live performances. Playing a significant role in this was vocalist Cain Cressall's recruitment in 2009. Aside from being shrouded in thick smoke and blinding strobe lighting, the chain-sporting, corpse-painted frontman's imposing presence has injected a more murderous edge to proceedings.

“I don't take too much influence as far as lighting and production goes,” he explains. “It's probably more the crowd response. But there's plenty of shows where we might be playing to a crowd that is very alienated by what's happening. So they're not sure what to do with themselves… There are quite a lot of shows that have been like that on international tours, where you're playing to a totally new crowd that's there to see bands like Obituary. This bizarre, extreme Australian band comes on and all they can do is pay attention, which is a good thing in itself. But even in those circumstances you need to pull something from somewhere. There's always that burning desire to express ourselves, and destroying those crowds regardless of whether they're throwing any energy back at us or not.”

Album number three, Flesh Is Heir, is the first Cressall's vocals feature on an Amenta full-length. His harrowing, caustic tones are an ideal foil for their unforgiving sonic landscape. Also aiding matters is the recent return of Psycroptic drummer Dave Haley. “A lot of it comes down to the chemistry between the members,” the frontman enthuses from Perth. “When you've got a group of guys on-stage that really have a fantastic chemistry going, it comes across. I think it's a really obvious thing. But then there's some international, big bands that are still touring off albums that were released a long time ago, and the line-ups have changed so much to the point where the current members are really just session guys that have very little to do with each other. As much as they might be playing to enormous crowds, play with a great sound and be tight as fuck, they don't necessarily have that powerful chemistry on stage anymore. But they don't need it so much, because that fan-base has been growing over maybe twenty years and people are just excited to hear those songs played live. But if you kind of take a step back and look at what's really going on, you can often see that there really isn't that much energy there,” he laughs. “It's more just the excitement of the fans and those songs they hold close to their hearts.”

They visited Europe last year with death metal legends Obituary and also supported English veterans Cradle of Filth during their recent Australian run. Cressall hopes this hard work pays dividends. Since returning from these foreign adventures, does he find it difficult to adjust to playing for smaller local crowds again? “A little bit, but we've faced that enough times to kinda know what to expect now. The first time you tour overseas with a great line-up and you come home it can be a little bit of a shock. But after a couple of times, you just kind of accept the way things are. The metal scene's not as big in this country as it is in certain other countries. So you can't really come home and have a whinge about it. You just come home and get excited to be playing to your own home crowds again.”