It’s 2pm, and Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse smells like a bonfire. We walk through the venue to meet Lorna Shore’s tour manager, Jonathan Jarrell, who immediately addresses the lingering haze.
“We’ve been roastin’ marshmallows,” he shrugs, a smile tugging at his lips. His deadpan delivery could have you fooled – perhaps tonight really will see the New Jersey deathcore titans sharing a few s’mores onstage.
In fact, frontman Will Ramos looks like he could use a cosy fireside singalong. He’s been battling illness the last few days, and is swamped in a hoodie for today’s soundcheck. The material covers his washed-out pink hair, hands transformed into paws beneath long sleeves, as he nonchalantly fiddles with his crossbody sling bag. In his softened state, he looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Of course, that’s utter bullshit. All at once, the band burst into War Machine, and a shower of pyro erupts. Suddenly, Will is a demon decked out in streetwear, speaking in tongues previously confined to the darkest depths of Hell, emphasised by the band’s gut-wrenching wall of riffs and bruising drums.
More songs follow, the full-body assault of blastbeats and vocal violence taking your breath away. To round off, the posterboy for deathcore grips the mic one last time, and utters an odious, booming curse: “WIZARD!” What?
Manchester is the third and final date of Lorna Shore’s UK run, off the back of last year’s album, I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me – and it’s clear the band are in high spirits. Backstage, Lorna Shore’s dynamic is that of a wayward family of five, guitarist Adam De Micco serving as the single dad trying to keep things together.
As Will releases photographer Nick Chance from a headlock, drummer Austin Archey stumbles around the kitchen like a sleepy bear, bassist Michael ‘Moke’ Yager plays RuneScape on his laptop, and guitarist Andrew O’Connor gossips with a front of house tech. Adam opts to sit on the sofa, eyes closed, for a moment of peace.
Lorna Shore are the biggest band in deathcore right now. As well as playing to 3,500 people in Manchester tonight, this tour has taken in the 3,000-capacity O2 Academy Birmingham and London’s 10,000-capacity Alexandra Palace. This puts them several thousand punters above Slaughter To Prevail, who headlined the same venues in Manchester and Birmingham last month, but peaked at 5,000-capacity at London’s Brixton Academy.
"The house was always very quiet until he woke up."
Austin Archey
While selling out bigger rooms could be down to the tour package – it’s a deathcore extravaganza, with support from Whitechapel, Shadow Of Intent and Humanity’s Last Breath – it says something that Lorna Shore have been able to reach such a massive milestone before any of those peers.
While Lorna Shore have been fine-tuning their brand of blackened aggro and technical riffs since 2009, they broke through in 2021 when Will joined as frontman. After releasing To The Hellfire from the …And I Return To Nothingness EP, Will’s unearthly pig squeals and magnetic personality catapulted the band to stardom. Coupled with their heavy but melodic sound, Lorna Shore have become the gateway band for deathcore, bringing in people who previously hadn’t engaged with it.
Opening his eyes and flashing us a knowing smile, Adam wrangles Will and Austin into another room with us for a chat, and we start by addressing the elephant in the room. Or, rather, the wizard. All three guys start laughing.
“Yesterday, I tried changing the lyrics to the chorus of a song – then I fucked the whole chorus up,” Will admits sheepishly. “I was making sure I practised for tonight.”
Apparently, the front of house team dared him to add ‘wizard’. We quickly realise that Will is the fabled kid who would absolutely jump off a bridge if you told him to… so we challenge him to do it again tonight. He narrows his eyes like an evil madman, cogs turning. But pig squeals are famously challenging to decipher – how will we know if he follows through?
“If you need confirmation that the ‘wizard’ has successfully landed, just look to front of house, and they’ll be doing this…”
Adam grins, before moving his hands above his head in a triangle, symbolising a wizard’s pointed hat. Both Will and Austin do the same pose. For Will, who first encountered Lorna Shore while listening to 2013’s Godmaker on LSD, being in the band has been one hell of a trip. He fitted in quickly, partly because he had already been living with Austin, who’d had to vacate his home during the pandemic and ended up moving in with him. The pair vaguely knew each other from the local scene.
“The bond became real – we saw a lot of each other…” Will says, eyes widening twice in emphasis.
“The house was always very quiet until he woke up,” Austin smirks. “He’d start the day singing really loudly while making his coffee. Then he got an electric keyboard in the living room, and, for some reason, he’d turn it on while he was drinking the coffee!”
Touring together is another way to fast-track a friendship. It’s why the entire team is so close. They all know when it’s time to rag on bassist Moke for playing RuneScape, or finish someone else’s sentence. Photographer Nick, formerly of Las Vegas metalcore unit Distinguisher, regularly hops out to feature on Lorna track Sun//Eater.
“Nick’s our unofficial-official-secret bandmate,” Will grins. There’s a palpable sense that none of them can quite believe how big things have got. “Honestly, we were just hoping we’d be able to keep it together for another five years,”
Adam admits of Will’s arrival. “We as a band have already passed everything that I ever wanted to do. Everything, to me, feels like a bonus.”
While Will’s vocal cords have been the topic of much discussion among their fanbase, he helped push the band to the next level in other ways.
“I remember Will would ask, ‘Oh, what should I write about?’ None of our other vocalists had ever asked us that before,” Adam explains. “That collaboration didn’t happen. We’d just find out about the lyrics once they’d been written.”
Will’s question was rooted in anxiety (“The EP was so much pressure – I didn’t have my own identity yet!” he cries), but it made Adam and Austin realise they’d never developed a coherent artistic vision for the band.
“On the first few records, even me and Adam weren’t on the same page,” Austin admits. “Everyone had a personal agenda, writing the craziest music ever, even if parts didn’t work together.”
The more honest you are with your emotions and your feelings, the more you connect with the people listening
Will Ramos
Following 2022’s Pain Remains album, Will fully settled into the band, and felt more comfortable expressing himself on I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me. He dug deep. Not only does the record’s title allude to Will’s family history with dementia, the nauseatingly heavy Prison Of Flesh reflects the fear, confusion and pain experienced by someone with the condition.
“I feel like, the more honest you are with your emotions and your feelings, the more you connect with the people listening,” Will notes.
It’s a similar situation with Glenwood, Will’s bittersweet ode to the father he cut off for years. The song references the time he lost while stubbornly refusing to reach out – it’s his attempt to mend old wounds.
“Music really got me through those hard times,” he says. “Even if something hurts, it’s good to get those feelings out. I don’t think anything should ever be off limits. As far as I’m concerned, the more emotion that you put into your music, the better it will be.”
He picks out Unbreakable as a case in point, which was written to be a shining beacon of hope on your worst day.
“It’s such a powerful moment,” Will smiles, a little giddy. “Hearing a whole room sing it back to you is like therapy. It’s the heaviest catharsis possible.”
While making the record, they felt some pressure. They knew they were being touted as the biggest thing in deathcore – a band able to open it up to a wider audience.
“We’re an extreme band for people that don’t normally tap into the genre,” Austin explains of their appeal. While the writing process initially had guitarist Adam staring at the wall for hours, losing his mind while hoping to find inspiration, the answer came in the form of eight-minute single Oblivion.
“We shut out all the outside noise, and locked in on this hunger, this angst – that’s when it all fell into place,” Adam explains. “That track was the first song that didn’t just feel like noise. Afterwards, everything felt right.”
Considering the hordes of fans queuing up outside, their approach has worked. From giddy 14-year-olds in corpse-paint to seasoned deathcore elders with Lorna shirts peeking out from under bushy beards, they span generations. The band’s gear is covered in stickers fans have made them, while Will shows off a gifted SpongeBob Squarepants Patrick Star badge on his bag.
The guys even recall how fans embraced Wilk, an in-joke ‘cocktail’ consisting of red wine and milk, which led to venues believing that the band genuinely enjoyed it. When red wine and milk started appearing on their riders, they knew it had to stop. We suggest whipping up a glass – everyone traumatically yells “NO!!!”
As showtime approaches, the band decide to have pre-show shots, and even Moke – who has been slaving away on his laptop, trying to get an infernal cape on RuneScape – is willing to be torn away from the grind. He walks over with a warm, disarming grin. He’s wearing a green camo cap – apparently his 80th one, because his sweat essentially “deteriorates” them – and a contrasting pair of classy, pointed boots made from Italian python leather. He downs his Jägerbomb and makes a face. Considering his last name is Yager, he notes how, ironically, he’s not mad about that liquorice sting.
“Once a rep left us boxes of the stuff,” he recalls. “I really didn’t want any of it… We drank it all, obviously.”
It’s time for the main event. Will bids us farewell as he adjusts his in-ears – the case of which has a massive sticker of his face slapped on it. He shares some parting words of guidance: “Look for the ‘wizard.’”
Despite any backstage tomfoolery, the show is all business and utterly compelling, and we miss the ‘wizard’ entirely. Unbreakable is just as powerful as Will explained, fans howling back the words, while Sun//Eater once again sees photographer Nick emerge, him and Will screaming into one another’s faces with shiteating grins, embracing like brothers at the climactic end.
Will addresses thanks to “the crowdsurfers, the fire, and the crowdsurfers not being on fire!” Unfortunately, he takes Pain Remains III: In A Sea Of Fire a bit too literally, flinching when his hand passes through a blast of pyro.
“Well, if someone’s gonna set themselves on fire, it might as well be me!” he laughs.
After the show, we head backstage. Will’s jittery – he’s just avoided being barbecued.
“My sweat saved me, I was just too wet to get burnt…” he says, before snapping back to his usual excitable state. “Sick show though, right?!”
Right. Judging by tonight, Lorna Shore could be heading for arenas and headlining festivals. If fire can’t stop Will Ramos, nothing can.
Lorna Shore play Welcome To Rockville on May 8 and Sonic Temple on May 15.
