![News Added Aug 11, 2016 SERPENTINE DOMINION, the new band featuring KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, CANNIBAL CORPSE frontman George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher and ex-THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER drummer Shannon Lucas, will release its self-titled debut album on October 28 via Metal Blade. The origins of SERPENTINE DOMINION can be traced back to 2009's Rockstar Energy […]](https://hasitleaked.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Cover1-1-320x320.jpg "Serpentine Dominion : Serpentine Dominion")
SERPENTINE DOMINION, the new band featuring KILLSWITCH ENGAGE guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, CANNIBAL CORPSE frontman George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher and ex-THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER drummer Shannon Lucas, will release its self-titled debut album on October 28 via Metal Blade.
The origins of SERPENTINE DOMINION can be traced back to 2009's Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, which boasted a lineup that included KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, CANNIBAL CORPSE and THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER. During that fateful summer, Dutkiewicz made a proposition to Fisher: "George, I want to write you a record." On the Mayhem fest tour, Lucas, who performed with THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER through 2012, was tapped to record drums on the album. Between 2009 and 2016, CANNIBAL CORPSE and KILLSWITCH ENGAGE released three albums each, so scheduling time to work on SERPENTINE DOMINION was no easy feat — but when their rigorous schedules allowed, SERPENTINE DOMINION began to come together, with KILLSWITCH ENGAGE vocalist Jesse Leach penning the lyrics, which touch on corruption within the government, religion, big business, and other timely issues. Ultimately, though, this debut is a pure passion project; it was written and recorded simply for why musicians get into music in the first place: fun.
Dutkiewicz in 2013 spoke to Decibel magazine about how SERPENTINE DOMINION came together. He said: "When [KILLSWITCH] toured with CANNIBAL CORPSE and BLACK DAHLIA on the [Rockstar Energy Drink] Mayhem [Festival], I was just hanging out with George one night, and I was like, 'Dude, if I wrote you a bunch of songs to sing over, would you do it?' And he was like, 'Fuck yeah, man!'" he said.
Asked if this was material he had sitting around that he thought George would be good for, or if these were songs that were written specifically for George to sing, Adam said: "They were written specifically for him. He's one of my favorite singers of all time, and I thought there wouldn't be any harm in at least asking him. Once he said yes, it was like, 'Alright — let's go!'"
Regarding the musical direction of the new project, Adam said: "It's not straight death metal — there's some melodic elements in there — but it's much faster and more aggressive than KILLSWITCH is. And the drums are blazing, so Shannon is probably one of the only guys on the face of the earth who could pull this off."
Fisher told "The Jasta Show" last year that KILLSWITCH ENGAGE singer Jesse Leach ended up writing all the lyrics for SERPENTINE DOMINION. He explained: "I originally was going to write stuff [for the new band], and you know what? [Writing lyrics has] just never been my thing, and we were getting down to when I was supposed to go up there [and lay down my vocals]. And [Adam] just said, 'Look, I'll ask Jesse to write some stuff.' So he wrote it, and I just said I don't want no pro-religious crap 'cause I ain't about all that. Anyway, so it's more just about like getting revenge against corrupt motherfuckers and shit like that."
He continued: "And so [Jesse] wrote a bunch of lyrics and Adam arranged a lot of it, and then when I went up there, we recorded it in his bedroom of his house. And, basically, I would be, like, 'No, wait. We've gotta change this, fix that.' Maybe we'd tweak a word or take a word out or take a couple words out or take some lines out. We just basically fucked with it, you know? And I went up two [or] three different times [to work on the vocals]."
