Courtesy Belhor
Audio By Carbonatix
At first glance, Denver blackened death-metal band Belhor appears sinister and ominous, like a long-lost underground group that dropped a series of cassette-only releases throughout the ’90s before fading into obscurity. The band’s moniker is a synonym for “Beliel,” a Hebrew word that roughly translates to “the devil,” and a black-and-white photo on Encyclopedia Metallum, a metal music website, shows the five members, some shirtless, covered in what appears to be blood.
So it’s a little surprising that Belhor has only been active since 2009 and maintained a healthy social media presence, let alone that the musicians are approachable dudes who just want to create the type of music that they like to listen to.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever had much of a mission,” says founding guitarist Nick Campbell with a laugh. “We’ve just been making the music we wanted to make and find the right like-minded people to do what we were doing. Basically, just play gigs, create and maybe do more stuff, or maybe not.”
Before the pandemic, Belhor kept busy by regularly releasing new music, including its 2011 debut album, I Am the Nails, and the 2015 followup, Discordia Concors. A 2020 single, “Coemergence,” is from the band’s upcoming third record, but the official release date has been delayed since that first song came out. “Finally, we’re starting to get in a mode where we’re actually trying to do stuff and be creative,” Campbell explains.
But before Belhor’s members lock themselves up in a dungeon to record the entire album, the band with a penchant for brutal imagery and music is playing one more show this year, at the hi-dive on Thursday, August 3, with Weaponizer and Abhoria.
“That’s the goal after this – to just plug away and try to get a new release out, because it’s been forever,” Campbell says, adding that the band’s third album will most likely see the light of day sometime early next year after the five-piece is finished recording.
“We just want to go recording,” he says. “We’ve been sitting on this album for three years.”
By incorporating the stripped-down harshness of black metal and inherent melodies of Swedish death metal, Belhor has nurtured a unique sound that’s become “angrier,” as Campbell puts it, over the years. A little pent-up pandemic frustration certainly helps, too.
“At the time when we were composing this new music, we were just dealing with adult-life stuff. Things were just tougher,” he explains. “I think we all sort of felt on the last album that maybe we weren’t heavy enough, or too melodic or something. So it was like, ‘Maybe we should try to get a little more brutal and see how it goes.'”
Campbell, who handles guitar duties in Belhor alongside lifelong friend Keenan Binkley, is easygoing and more than happy to chat about the band’s current happenings, but he doesn’t consider himself or his bandmates the angry people you might imagine they are when first checking them out. They are neither brooding nor “very black metal,” he admits.
“We don’t really inch that way too much. We like more melodic and heavier aspects. … I don’t know, we kind of just wanted to get a little more brutal,” he says of Belhor’s latest direction. “We’re also doing some stuff that’s a little more dissonant, even maybe some doom parts thrown in there. We’re still changing it up.”
While the “formula won’t be super different,” he adds, “the song structures and songwriting are just a little bit more mature.”
Other than the duo of Campbell and Binkley, Zaqq Fickas mans the drum kit while Guillermo Martinez, who joined in 2018, is on bass. Vocalist Colin Stubbert, formerly of Canadian black-metal outfit Demiurgus, is the newest member, coming aboard in early 2020. “Coemergence” proved to be an appetizer of what Belhor sounds like with Martinez behind the mic, and fans should expect more of the same once the next batch of fresh tracks is ready, Campbell says.
“It’s just time to get it out, because we’ve been hanging on to it and moseying along,” he adds. “We’ll punch you in the face and make you move a little bit, then we’ll also get a little melodic. It’s like a war-and-peace experience.”
Belhor believes there’s “harmony in dissonance,” according to Campbell, and the band leaned heavily into that mindset on Discordia Concors (the title is a Latin phrase that means “harmonious discord” achieved by “combining disparate or conflicting elements”).
“At first, it’s like, ‘Here’s some brutal extreme metal,’ then we start playing these minor third harmonies and doing some Iron Maiden-y riffs,” he explains, adding that the goal is to keep the music of Belhor “exciting the whole way through.”
“I hope from start to finish, whether we’re playing thirty minutes or an hour, it’s an experience that doesn’t get dull or boring,” he concludes.
Belhor, 8 p.m. Thursday, August 3, hi-dive, 7 South Broadway. Tickets are $12-$15.
