There’s death metal and then there is brutal death metal. Enjoy a straight injection of sinister-flavored dopamine by way of spastic blast drumming, crunchy, grooved guitars and jazz-inspired homicidal tendencies when Severed Savior plays Salt Lake City’s Bar Deluxe on July 11. SLUG caught up with the band’s drummer, Troy Fullerton, to give all you brutal fans a window to the ear-bleeding, eye-watering event going down this summer. With two masterful full-lengths in their pocket, an EP and a couple of grisly demos all featuring a lineup that’s included members of Odious Mortem, Carnivorous, Deeds of Flesh and Gorgasm, expect some heads to spontaneously pop from the brutality.

SLUG: Severed Savior have been on hiatus since roughly 2008. Why did the band decide to take the short nap, especially after the positive momentum from your last record, Servile Insurrection?
Fullerton: The short answer is that everyone in the band needed a break. After the trials and tribulations we had recording Servile Insurrection and issues between some of the band members, I decided to take a hiatus and later moved from Calif. to Las Vegas, essentially leaving the band. When the other members realized that I wasn’t coming back anytime soon, they explored the option to find another drummer, but decided instead to also take a break that turned into an indefinite hiatus, lasting
several years.

SLUG: With the band’s time away from the road, is this tour sort of a “testing of the brutal waters”? Or are there any sort of plans to create a
new album?
Fullerton: Yes and yes. This is a “testing of the waters,” so to speak, in that we have been gone for a while and never did any shows or tours to support our last CD, so we feel like we need to get out and support it. We also need to see what kind of response we get, how many people have discovered us while we were away and how many have forgotten about us. Once the summer and the fests and this tour are over, we plan to start writing again, and hope to have generated at least a little buzz and spur some interest from others that might want to tour with us in
the future.

SLUG: What about the genre appeals to you personally and directed you to take on the style of tech/
death drumming?
Fullerton: My original attraction to death metal was the speed and power of the drumming. Over the years, there have been several bands that have inspired me in other ways, such as really unique song structures, excellent musicianship, awesome production quality and stuff like that. The main thing that keeps me playing it, though, is the challenge—pushing myself to those speeds while trying to improve my form and technique and figure out how to add more groove and more “taste,” if you will.

SLUG: How hard is it to get your sound to come across how you want it on recordings, and, equally, in a
live setting?
Fullerton: Although I do really like the drum sounds we got on Servile Insurrection, I’m pretty sure, at this point, that I’ll always be trying to get better sounds as we go on, both recorded and live. I think that having the best sound possible and mixing it well is crucial [in] making a good recording and reproducing the feel of the recording live. Unfortunately, even with the same exact drums, heads, mics, etc., getting the drums to sound the same live as they do on CD is nearly impossible in my experience, due to all the other variables like the shape of the room and the size and the type of speakers and amps and the mixing board and the sound engineer. I try not to think about it and just hope that, even though they sound different, they still sound good in the overall mix.

Severed Savior plays Bar Deluxe on July 11 accompanied by touring acts Arkaik and Genocaust, with hometown ass kicking from Adipocere and Incendiant.