Last Savior of God

The Last Savior of God is a melodic death metal band from Colorado Springs, CO. They have only been together for a year and a half and they are already beginning to dominate the local metal scene. I sat down with the band in Sunshine Studios right before their show and talked to them about the band, their performances and their plans for the future.

Do you guys want to give us a little bit of band history?

Dylan: Well, the band started back in February of 2010, and I had just left this band Breathe the Abyss and our drummer at the time, Dominique Fresquez, had just left Mourn the Martyr, which we had actually quit, like the same night. We had a show together and we both quit, like, that same night. We had talked about getting something together, and finally we got something together and started getting members. Then we had a bit of a falling back a little while later and then we got our new members. we got Sean and we got Chad. We had D.J. for a while and he was part of our lineup of original members and we’ve been playing shows and all that kind of sh*t.

DJ: Yeah, we came out in early August, and thats when we played our first show, and really we’ve just been trying to climb the ladder and just trying to push forward.

What are your biggest inspirations?

Dylan: Um... White Chapel, Steve Vai, Children of Bodom, uh... f*ck, there’s so many of them, it’s rediculous.

DJ: I’d have to go Lamb of God, Impending Doom, and probably White Chapel. That’s one of my favorite’s too.

Sean: I’m more of a prog rock guy. My biggest influence is Dream Theater, Symphony X, and then the heavier stuff like White Chapel, Winds of Plague...

Dylan: Oh yeah, I forgot that one!

Sean: Chimaera was a big one for me.

Dylan: F*ck, you guys are making my answers look inadequate

Chad: I’m more old school, like Pantera, like f*cking, Sepultura, But I listen to f*cking all the new sh*t too, I love f*cking Winds of Plague and all that sh*t too.

Dylan: And definitely a big influence for our music was pornos. [Everyone bursts out laughing but Dylan manages to keep a straight face] And I write all of our music, so what I’ll do is I’ll jack off right before I write something.

DJ: Actually both of our guitar players do write, so Chad writes a lot of material too.

Dylan: But chad just doesn’t watch a lot of porn anymore, man, he’s old.

DJ: It’s definitely worked out that we all have our different influences and stuff, but put the four of us up on stage and give us instruments, and there really seems to be something special there. Very good chemistry.

What made you guys decide to get a dedicated vocalist?

Dylan: [Laughing] Well, we had one, but then he quit.

Yeah, I met him at a show just a couple of nights ago.

Dylan: Oh, you’re talking about that vocalist!

DJ: Well, we won’t go into much detail.

Dylan: Yeah, long story short, he and my manager are two different people, and they’re both arrogant and hot-headed as f*ck, and it just went downhill from there.

[To Dylan] So, you’re back to doing vocals then?

Dylan: Yeah, I’m back to doing vocals.

DJ: So we’ll say at least for tonight it’s the four originals, and we’ll go up there and do our thing like we have been for a year and a half.

As far as melodic death metal goes, there really aren’t that many melodeath bands in the area, so how do you guys feel the fan base is for that?

Dylan: Well, the fact is, that it is slowly coming to us. Like, other bands, like Try Redemption and Alabaster Morgue and stuff like that, they’ve been doing this for years and that’s why they can pull so many people, and you know, like high school bands, they’re still in high school, they can bring a lot of friends. But we’ve been out of high school, I mean at least I have for at least a year, and Chad’s been out of high school since we were playing with Tonka toys.

DJ: What we’re saying is that we’ve been successful so far, and we’re still climbing that ladder to where it’s not just inviting our friends, it’s that we’re meeting people and selling tickets to people that we’ve never met before and they’re coming to shows, and we’re learning their names, and we’re building a fan base that’s not with people we went to school with or we work with or anything like that, it’s building a fan base with someone we’ve never met, but they’re gonna come and support us and watch our shows.

Dylan: And it’s definitely promote, promote, promote. You always want to bring that new person, like ‘Oh, my friend told me about you guys so I might as well check you out and sh*t.’ You’ve gotta work hard to build a fan base and that’s what we do. We are one of the hardest working bands you will find around here.

DJ: True dat!

Dylan: All I do all day is play guitar, be on facebook, jack off, promote, and play guitar some more. I’m a big advocate of masturbation.

DJ: [Laughing] That’s our Dylan.

When you guys are playing shows what would you guys say your favorite kind of venue is? Bigger ones, smaller ones, this kind of thing at Sunshine, or what?

DJ: I would say that I like the bigger venues and stuff like that. For some reason, like Union Station, take that one for instance, it’s a smaller stage and it just feels like there’s more interaction with the crowd because you’re a little bit closer to them and I don’t think you can get that at a bigger stage. But really it just depends on the night and the energy in the room.

Dylan: Well, the big thing is... Well, I like playing here [Sunshine Studios] because there’s more room to crawl rather than just standing still, but I also like playing stages with bigger sounds too, like for instance, The Black Sheep, that place has a killer sound, but there’s just no place to walk or do anything. But here, I have all the room I want to, you know, like walk around, punch people in the face, you know, all that sh*t.

Sean: Like, Union Station. That always feels like it has a real good vibe to it.

DJ: Yeah, every venue has a different energy in it.

Dylan: I’ve got to say, Union Station was our favorite one.

DJ: We definitely like playing here too though. And it’s not always about the energy that’s there, it’s about the energy that you’re going to bring too.

So what are you guys doing right now as far as writing new material? Are you trying to find another dedicated vocalist for that or are you just planning on continuing to write like this or what?

Dylan: Well, right now we’re in a bit of a mixup between vocalists and stuff. We have no idea what the f*ck we’re doing with that. New stuff, we are playing Foothills Gutfest in July, so we plan on bringing all that brutal stuff because we’re going to be, like, the lightest band there.

DJ: There’s gonna be a bunch of grindcore stuff and death metal bands, where we’ve got that more melodic side. At the end of the night you can go home and go to bed telling yourself that what it all comes down to is metal, but with that more melodic side, we’re going to have to bring out more of the death metal side in our writing and stuff like that.

Chad: As far as new material, what we’ve really got to do is just start putting it out there.

Dylan: Yeah, I have like 15 songs in the works right now.

DJ: Yeah, so we’ve got a bunch of new material right now that we’ve just got to get fixed up.

What are your plans for the future? Are you going to try to get a record deal, try to tour, or what?

Dylan: My dream is to go all the way.

DJ: I think we all want to do that.

Dylan: I actually got into music by playing video games one day and I heard a Korn song in a f*cking video game and sh*t. The next day I stopped playing video games, grew out my hair, started singing, sucked at singing, and started playing guitar and sh*t and ever since then, it’s all been about this dream of me playing at Mayhem and everybody watching me instead of me having to watch some other f*ckface band. Not that they’re bad or anything but it’s just one of those things where it’s like ‘Well, they’re there and I’m here, and I wish I was there.’ So it’s more of envy. I said f*ckface but you know, I hope I can say f*ck. [laughing] Can I say f*ck?

Yeah, haha we have to censor it but it doesn’t really matter.

Dylan: Oh okay, f*ck f*ck f*ck f*ck. [Everyone laughs]

DJ: I think our biggest thing is that we’ve grown pretty well I think, especially in the Colorado Springs area and the Pueblo area, but one thing we haven’t done is expanded up to Denver, so we definitely want to go up there and take that by storm. You know, to conquer the world, you have to conquer your city first. So yeah, that’s our ultimate goal but there’s a lot of steps we’re going to have to take to get there. We will definitely take them as we can.

Dylan: We’ve conquered Pueblo, which was a kick-a** scene by the way.

Do you guys have any advice for metal bands just starting out, or just any musicians in general?

DJ: Well, I got some. In the recent scene, everyone, they’re together for a couple of months, then they break up, they die. I’ll tell you what. If you really want to be serious about it, like our manager told us, be together for at least six months, Don’t go out there until you have a solid 45 minutes of material, and I mean solid. It needs to be tight, it needs to be planned, there’s no reason to rush out there with 15 minutes of material and you just learned it last week and you’ve been together for 2 months. That’s just set to fail. That would be my advice.

Dylan: My advice, well, I’ve got a couple of things to say. First and foremost is don’t do drugs. If you’re going to be the person to do drugs, don’t let it consolidate your career, like do it a little bit on the side, be able to control it, and all that sh*t. Second, know how to play your instrument before you go out there. You don’t want to look like a jack*ss. If you’re in high school you’re definitely in the plus, but once you’re out of high school, just realize that your fan base is going to go away quick, because you’re not going to talk to all those people you were in high school with. And the scene is, how would you say it, like, critiquative. They will hear, like, two seconds of your music and will be like ‘Ah, that band sucks.’ So you’ve got to put on a really good show for people to think, like, ‘Oh, that band’s kick-a**. Like DJ said, we went out there with a 45 minute set and we were pumped so we went f*cking crazy on stage. We’re like the new Try Redemption in Colorado Springs, all we do is jump around and act stupid on stage, but people tend to enjoy it, so that’s what we do.

Sean: Just a lot of perseverance. That would be my advice. Just keep at it, go, get frustrated. I mean, there’s gonna be frustration no matter what, but you cannot let it get to you. Like it took a f*cking year and a half for us to finally, like--

DJ: [Laughing] Have a blowout! It never got physical...

Sean: But yeah, it was a pretty heated thing, but now we’re ready to just f*cking kick a** in there.

DJ: Yeah, but we’re a good band. It took us like five minutes and we’re back in there slappin’ each other in the a** saying ‘good game’ and all that.

Sean: Exactly. Just perseverance. You just can’t let things get to you and you’ve just got to keep going.

Chad: For me, good advice, you just have to know what direction, like there’s so many different genres of music, you’ve just got to know what kind of music you want to play and all that. I mean, there’s always some experimenting and mixing certain genres but usually you want to pick something and go with that. You’ve got to know what you want to play and play what you want to play pretty much.

Dylan: Another thing I’ve got to say is don’t go out there thinking somebody is going to pick you while you’re playing a show. You can’t be like that, you’ve got to work hard. That’s the biggest think right there, is work. And it is f*cking rough work.

DJ: It is. It’s tiring.

Dylan: It’s tiring, it’s stressful, and it takes up your day. You get home from work any you’re like ‘Oh, I’m just going to relax.’ No. You have to work at it then too. That’s all of the advice I can think of off the top of my head. After I masturbate I can probably think of more. [Everyone laughs]

Well that’s all of the questions I’ve got. Do you guys have any closing thoughts or messages for fans or anything?

Dylan: Steve Vai rules and Last Savior of God’s going to kick your a**, and you guys get ready for it because we’re coming out with a storm and it’s gonna shoot some lightening down at you.

DJ: What he said. We’re locked, cocked and ready to rock. We have been and we’re going to keep going. You’re going to see the name around for a long time. I’ll guarantee that.

Chad: Yeah, keep an eye out for Last Savior, man. We ain’t goin’ nowhere.

DJ: Ain’t going nowhere but up!

Dylan: Next time you guys see us, well, we’ll either be playing a local show [the rest of the band starts laughing] or, if you hang out for a while, and you’re like, ‘Well, I’m going to see these bands or whatever’ then we’ll probably be, like, Metallica status by then, you know, like, b*tching out Lars Ulrich for being a f*ckface and a d*uchebag for making downloads illegal.

DJ: [When everybody’s done laughing] our main point is that LSoG’s here to stay!

Sean: To all the fans, thanks for all the support.

Dylan: Yeah! Keep ‘em coming!

Chad: Tell all your friends how cool we are.

Dylan: [Flexing his biceps] Tell them to come see the gun show!

You can keep up-to-date on The Last Savior of God’s upcoming shows, get in touch with the band and listen to music on their Facebook page. If you ever get the opportunity, make sure you check these guys out, because this is one band that is definitely going somewhere in the near future.

-Duncan Mandeville

Theconcertscene.com