The Bad Penny (beta)

[This interview was originally published on IndiePit in 2009. Go here for our far more recent conversation with vocalist Sean Z. in 2023 right here.]

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It’s the phone call that every musician with loft aspirations dreams of getting.

“We leave in two days, and we can practice for one day. Can you go on a U.S. tour with us?”

It was late 2007, and Sean Z. (for “Zatorsky”) didn’t need more than a minute to mull over his decision. Dropping everything, he lunged at the chance to join Dååth as their new lead vocalist – even though he had been told it was only to be a temporary gig.

“I quit my job, I quit my life, I quit my band and went on the road, man.”

And that’s where he’s been, more or less, ever since.

The addition of Mr. Z to the Dååth fold wasn’t exactly the only plot twist in the innovative death-metallers’ somewhat unfocused history: Even though they’ve only put out three albums – including the just-released Century Media record The Concealers – the Ozzfest ’07 alums have already been on two labels and parted ways with at least three bandmembers.

That includes co-founder Mike Kameron, who incepted the band about five years ago with longtime friend Eyal Levi while both were getting “schooled,” so to speak – at the unrivaled Berklee College of Music.

Between then and now, Dååth have rejiggered their sound a bit, morphing from an uncommonly sparse death-metal band on 2004’s Futility to an at-times club-friendly industrial-flavored configuration on 2007’s The Hinderers (Roadrunner) to the all-out wall-of-sound death machine the band is today. Along with all the lineup and sonic retrofitting, the Atlanta band has also altered its philosophy.

Prior to the evolution that brought in Sean Z. and eventually resulted in The Concealers, the band was obsessed with the concept of the Hebrew Tree of Life/Death. In fact, Dååth structured The Hinderers entirely around the concept, representing each of the 13 points on the Tree with one of 13 album tracks.

Now, almost two years after the official induction of Z., Dååth are somewhere else entirely. As curious and out-of-the-box as the Tree of Life/Death concept was, they’ve abandoned it. After opening earlier this year for Dragonforce at venues large (the 1,500-capacity Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut) and small (the 650-capacity, aptly named Mr. Small’s Funhouse in Millvale, Pennsylvania), they’re priming themselves to support another big metal band in the fall: Chimaira. And they’re guilty of having released one of the hottest metal records of the year.

On July 28, IndiePit caught up with Sean Z. as Dååth were scraping their claws across the chalkboard that is North America. They had torn it up in Toronto the night before and just hopped back over the border, ready to devour Rochester, New York’s Penny Arcade.

The trek – with Goatwhore, Abigail Williams and others – was more “grueling” than their last one, according to the howlin’ wolf, because of the lack of off-days. “But you gotta do all the tours, man,” he said. As any rational-minded metal band – or even a bonkers one – knows, it’s all about performing, performing and performing. Ensuring that you “Get the exposure. Can’t just jump on big tours all the time. You gotta play the small ones too.”

Sean Z. – who’s as brutally honest as he is a brutal vocalist – confessed to us that some shows had only seen 10 or 15 people turning out. But on the flipside, Dååth were hitting some cities they hadn’t played in two years, to the frothing delight of devout devotees. “In Canada especially, people were definitely flocking out to see us,” he said.

The last time the band-its had swung through Canada, it was during the ’07 Dark Funeral tour they pounced on after their rotating second-stage slot on Ozzfest. During that outing, Z. was acting as the band’s temporary frontman after its disenchanted former singer, Sean Farber, had predictably departed.

“He was a little bit older, and it seemed he had other plans on the agenda,” Z. said. The vocalist added that guitarist Levi had actually approached him during Ozzfest and asked him to learn the words to Dååth’s songs, because he had a feeling Farber was on his way out.

Still uncertain of their identity, and despite Z. being a champ about filling in, Dååth – via their old label – blasted out an industry-wide ad for a permanent vocalist while on the Dark Funeral tour. The listing asked candidates to download the below vocal-free songs, add their own singing parts and mail them to Roadrunner:

“Dååth will be considering entries throughout the fall and hope to announce a new vocalist by the end of the year,” the ad concluded.

On February 28, 2008, Dååth formally welcomed Z. and announced that they were getting to work with producer Jason Suecof (Job for a Cowboy, the Black Dahlia Murder) on what would eventually become The Concealers.

Fortunately for Z. – who has a knack for windmilling and screaming at the same time – the hyper-critical, often-elitist world of underground metal’s reception toward him has leaned on the warm side.

“People have been taking to me pretty well. There’s always those few people that are the die-hard metal fans, like, ‘Uhh … it’s too mainstream.’ “

A band that sounds like Dååth – with their brand of steely-eyed, tough-as-nails metal, not to mention songs like “Incestuous Amplification” and “Self-Corruption Manifesto” – being dismissed, or even ostracized, as “mainstream”? You gotta love metal fans.

“A lot of it has to do with the scream fans,” Z. said of the critics. “There’s actually pitch behind a lot of the choruses [on The Concealers], so that’s kind of how it can be looked at as more mainstream. Whereas before, it was basically just all fucking death metal: All one voice, all monotone. So you change it up a little bit, and people kind of run in fear.”

On past Dååth records, those vocals actually didn’t belong to Farber – he had only toured with them (and, according to Z., had never been in a band before). It was co-founder Kameron – or his vocal cords, more accurately – who had been responsible for the screaming.

Z. mentioned that it was also Kameron who was the one fascinated with the Tree of Life and intent on factoring it into the band’s makeup. Actually, traces of the concept – and Kameron – do surface on The Concealers. Before his departure, he worked with Z. on writing the lyrics.

“A lot of the stuff he came up with was just way too esoteric,” the current face of Dååth said. “[The motif] didn’t really do that well on [The Hinderers], so we tried to keep it a little bit but also stray away from it so that by the next couple of albums, it’ll be gone. Because that dude isn’t in the band anymore. And the people that followed it were really, really … how do you say … ‘interesting.’ They were just way into it, like slitting-their-wrists into it. Like, ‘Wow. Damn, bro. It’s just music, dog.’ “

One of the songs the two vocalists wrote together was “Wilting on the Vine,” which clearly extends the Tree of Life motif: “The roots they spread on the face of the land/ The seeds are spewing, from the mouth of the damned/ The love, the light, the worlds that define/ Disgusting mask on those that seek to disguise.”

But instead of writing more lyrics that stemmed, to so speak, from the Book of Genesis, Z. decided to bring more iconoclastic material to the table, including anti-establishment screeds like “Silenced.” Lyrics include: “They lied to us about the real truth/ They shut us up and took control/ We have been silenced/ Mouths sewn with fear/ Silenced and left to die.”

“I like America, I think it’s a great place,” Z. said. “It’s good stuff, man. But there’s a lot of fucked-up shit that happens in the world, and I think that’s more about where I went with the stuff.

“Hopefully by the next album, I can just write it all myself,” Z. added.

It’s scary to think what Z. might come up with if left to his own devices. Give a listen to “Sharpen the Blades” and read the below story about how the track came about.

“I was tripping when I wrote ‘Sharpen the Blades,’ ” Z. told IndiePit. “I ate a bunch of mushrooms, man – I ate waaay too many mushrooms. Well, I ate some, and they hadn’t kicked in, so I was, like, ‘Shit, I may as well eat the rest.’ So I ate the rest. And by the time I ate the rest, the first half had kicked in, and it was just fucking life-changing, man. I was up till 10 in the morning, and I just busted out the ‘Sharpen the Blades’ lyrics.

“It just came to me. We sort of had some ideas for the song. And it seemed like a really aggressive song, and somehow the blades [idea] just came to me. After that was done, Jordan [Haley] went ahead and put the artwork together, and the artwork goes perfect with that song – blades and shit. Birds of prey. I hadn’t intended it like that; I had written it before I had known about the artwork.”

Pretty trippy, doode.

That isn’t the only drug Z. is candid about, um, “experimenting” with.

“Definitely, definitely smoke a lot of pot,” he said. We took that not as a command to the audience but a casually phrased admission of his own bud habits. He also revealed that when he’s leafing through his spare time, it’s actually not metal that he always gravitates toward.

“I do like metal, but when I’m on the road, man, I just really don’t want to listen to metal. Six bands every day, 40 days, sitting in the van, just like, ‘Dude, let’s just not put on any metal today.’ When I’m home I do – I slam it. But I gotta scream it [on tour]. It’s like, ‘Fuck, man. I just want to hear something different.’ I listen to a lot of Three 6 Mafia and a lot of Cypress Hill.”

If you’re surprised, prepare yourself for another whopper: He said electronic music is “probably my favorite genre besides rap. Me and Jeremy [Creamer, bassist] and Emil [Werstler, guitarist] are in the same boat: We love that shit.”

Most members of Dååth love that brand of tunes so much, in fact, that they’re planning to find a way to incorporate it into the band’s sound. Or, you could say, “reincorporate” – after all, one of the signature tracks on The Hinderers was the club-ready “Dead on the Dance Floor,” which was remixed by one-time Nine Inch Nail Danny Lohner for an ’07 digital EP of the same name.

“We definitely have a plan to go back [to electronic music]. That’s all I do in my free time, that’s all Jeremy does in his free time. We just write weird electronic beats.”

Could an all-electronic Dååth album maybe even be on the horizon?

“It could just be a random one that comes out on top of a metal one at the same time,” Z. considered. “Like a double disc or a bonus, hidden feature – a few electronic songs.”

While that potential release might only turn out to be a Dååth wish, one thing is for sure: Sean Z.’s dreams have already come true.

UPDATE: Z. hit us back letting us know that the rumored Arch Enemy tour won’t be happening after all. So ixnay on that one, eh.’

For more on Dååth, visit their Bandcamp page.

This entry was posted on 10/25/2025 at 4:13 am and is filed under Interviews with tags Dååth, Sean Z., Three 6 Mafia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.