Stephen King wrote in „Fairy Tale”: „There is a dark well in everyone, I think, and it never goes dry. But you drink from it at your own peril. That water is poison” The Austrian formation Monument of Misanthropy has been exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche for years, dressing them in uncompromising, technical death metal. Each of their concept albums is dedicated to a different serial killer. On June 26, Listenable Records will release the successor to „Vile Postmortem Irrumatio,” released two years ago, which delved into the figure of the co-ed killer, Ed Kemper. Now it’s time for „Washington State Charm.” Does the name Ted Bundy ring a bell?
We won’t be talking to „America’s favorite killer” since he was executed in the electric chair on January 24, 1989. Instead, Monument of Misanthropy vocalist George—creator of brutal music, but not a brutal reality—found himself under fire of questions.
Your music combines brutal technicality with a very dark atmosphere — how do you balance aggression and composition when writing new material?
George: That’s actually a really good question, and I think the answer comes down to the way we work as a band. I never sit down and give strict instructions to the guitarists or bass players when they bring in their ideas. I trust their instincts completely. They already know what a song built around a certain theme has to feel like — eerie, violent, oppressive, sometimes dissonant and chaotic, sometimes crushing with huge grooves and breakdowns, and sometimes even surprisingly melodic.
How does your creative process look regarding the lyrical layer?
George: What makes our process special is that I usually take the songs exactly as they’re presented to me and then build the lyrics around that instrumental foundation. And honestly, that can become a pretty demanding challenge. You’re trying to tell a complex story — from childhood all the way to death — across nine tracks without leaving out the essential moments, psychological details, and turning points. Writing a standard death metal album full of fictional gore and random blood-soaked lyrics would definitely be the easier route. A lot of those lyrics out there sound like they were written by a fifth grader trying to be edgy. We always wanted to push beyond that and create something with atmosphere, depth, and an actual narrative. So if you ask whether we’re proud of what we created? Hell yes, we are (laughs).
How has Monument of Misanthropy evolved musically since the band’s beginnings?
George: What’s really changed over time isn’t the process itself, but the people and their abilities. We’ve had quite a few lineup changes over the years for different reasons, but looking back, it’s actually worked out for the better on a musical level. In the beginnings MoM started out with some kind of grindcore/old-school brutal death approach. With Unterweger and Joe (Gatsch) we could evolve into a more complex and technical brutal death, and with Julius (Kössler) joining the band this technical death metal was pushed to a new mix of melodic brutal tech death with tinges of deathcore.
The only constant I think were the sick vocals by yours truly (laughs). Honestly, we probably could never have created albums like Unterweger and the records that followed with the musicians we had back then. It might sound harsh, but that’s just the reality of it.
Which artists or albums had the biggest influence on your sound and identity as a band?
George: Being the oldest member of the band, I’d probably have to name classics like Dying Fetus, Suffocation, Aborted, Benighted, and Cattle Decapitation as some of the biggest influences. Those bands really shaped my understanding of brutality, atmosphere, groove, and intensity in extreme music. The younger guys in the band would probably also throw in some newer names like Archspire, Beyond Creation, Shadow of Intent, or Slaughter to Prevail, since they grew up with a more modern wave of technical and deathcore-influenced extreme metal.
The metal scene is constantly changing — what do you think modern death metal is missing today?
George: Being completely honest, I think way too many bands nowadays are obsessed with social media, likes, streaming numbers, and constantly chasing attention online. The artistic vision often feels secondary compared to statistics and superficial success. A lot of self-promotion eventually turns into pure self-absorption, where the focus shifts away from creating meaningful music and toward building some kind of internet persona. And honestly, I think some people in the scene need to pull their heads out of their own asses and start concentrating on delivering actual art instead of nonstop memes and algorithm bait.
Your songs often feel cinematic and chaotic at the same time. Do you approach songwriting with a visual narrative in mind?
George: Definitely. It was already clear to the band and Listenable Records that we wanted to continue down the path we had established with the previous records. So in a way, the narrative direction was already there from the beginning. After tackling Jack Unterweger and Ed Kemper, we were facing the brutal challenge of picking the next subject for another serial killer concept album. We even threw the question out to the fans, and the usual names kept coming back — Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez, and Ted Bundy. Dahmer was off the table right away since Macabre had already carved that path years ago.
So I started digging deep into the lives of the remaining killers, reading through biographies and case files, and in the end Bundy stood out as the perfect nightmare to shape into a dark and haunting lyrical concept. His twisted childhood, the broken and empty relationships, the descent into murder, the prison escapes, the media circus surrounding him — it all built toward that final march to the electric chair. The whole story just had this eerie, cinematic atmosphere that felt made for a death metal record.
Which track was the biggest challenge for you and why?
George: I already had some pretty demanding material to work with once Joe and Julius joined the band, but I think “1974 PNW Spree” has definitely been the most challenging track so far. Between the complexity of the story itself and the insanely fast-paced vocal patterns, it became a real challenge to record everything perfectly on time without sacrificing precision or clarity. Even our vocal recording engineer was reaching his mental limits trying to fully process the new songs during the sessions this time around. After a few hours in the studio, all of us basically needed a day or two away from the material just to clear our heads and reset our brains (laughs).
How important is shock value and brutality compared to atmosphere and emotion?
George: I think that’s an important line you can’t cross, because there’s a razor-thin difference between telling a dark story and outright glorifying the monster at the center of it. Sure, there’s always that element of shock value — the same reason people are drawn to horror films, slashers, and true-crime documentaries — but for me the real fascination has always been the psychological decay behind the atrocities of our album’s main characters.
If you could collaborate with any musician — dead or alive — who would it be?
George: We’ve already had the chance to collaborate with a lot of musicians we genuinely admire — Sven from Aborted, Julien from Benighted, and even Romain, who played with Necrophagist and was actually our first drummer back in the day. So in many ways, we’ve already been lucky enough to work with some of our personal heroes within the scene.
Looking ahead, I think it would be really sick to do something with Ben Duerr from Shadow of Intent or maybe even Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation. A vocal duet with either of them could turn into something completely unhinged in the best possible way.
The album “Vile Postmortem Irrumatio” refers to Ed Kemper. What made his character an inspiration?
George: The biggest fascination for me always was — and still is — the fact that evil can wear many different faces, and most of the time it hides behind a very friendly and charismatic one, like Ed Kemper or Ted Bundy. That’s really the core message behind these albums in a way: never judge a book by its cover. But when you decide to write music based on real-life horrors like this, you have to approach the subject carefully and with a certain level of depth. I never wanted these records to feel like some cheap slasher soundtrack or gore-for-the-sake-of-gore experience; that kind of exaggerated splatter aesthetic fits more into the slam scene, and that was never our intention creatively.
For me, it was always important to treat these stories with seriousness and respect, because at the end of the day these were real crimes involving real victims and real human tragedy. What interested me was exploring the darkness behind the façade — the psychology, the manipulation, the hidden decay beneath the charm — and translating that into something atmospheric, unsettling, and emotionally haunting through the music and lyrics.
What did your research on Kemper look like? Did you try to reach out to him?
George: For concept albums like these, you really have to do a massive amount of research. There are so many true-crime nerds out there who instantly notice every incorrect detail, inconsistency, or historical inaccuracy. And I’m a complete nerd about this stuff myself, so I put a lot of effort into making sure the lyrics are built around information that’s actually credible and documented. At the same time, you also have to stay critical about your sources. You can’t blindly trust every interview or confession from guys like Kemper or Bundy either, because both of them were known for manipulating people, misleading investigators, and playing psychological games with the police and the media. So part of the process is constantly separating fact from performance, myth from reality, and trying to piece together the most truthful version of the story possible.
No, honestly I never really thought about reaching out to Kemper. I leave that kind of obsession to the people who genuinely glorify guys like him, which is something I absolutely don’t support. For me, Kemper and the others are purely subjects of research — psychologically fascinating cases to analyze and understand from a narrative perspective, nothing more. And besides that, I honestly don’t even have the time to sink into that kind of fixation. Between music, family, everyday life, and taking care of the pets, there’s already more than enough going on (laughs).
Does the music on „Vile Postmortem Irrumatio” reflect Kemper’s mental state?
George: Not really, not directly. As I mentioned, the guys usually bring in the songs already fully arranged, and then I decide which part of the story fits best to each track or even to specific sections within the song. It’s a matter of pure artistic instinct and entering a creative flow state, where the lyrics almost write themselves under the influence of the track’s mood.
In Kemper’s case, the most striking thing was the contrast: the fact that he was casually hanging around with police officers at the Jury Room in Santa Cruz while hiding what he had done, and his high intelligence, which allowed him to study and manipulate psychiatrists. He was perceived as a polite, intelligent, and trustworthy neighbor – that gap between appearance and reality is the most terrifying part.
How does the new material about Ted Bundy differ from previous releases?
George: All of our serial killer concept albums follow the events in strict chronological order. For me, that’s the only way a concept like this truly works, because it allows the listener to experience the story as a complete journey from beginning to end — following the development step by step through the childhood, the psychological decline, the crimes, and finally the downfall. This structure pulls the listener deeper into the atmosphere and makes the whole album feel less like a random collection of songs and more like a disturbing cinematic experience unfolding track by track.
In terms of production, we once again had the opportunity to collaborate with some incredible musicians on this record — Mendel bij de Leij (ex-Aborted), Johnny Ciardullo (AngelMaker), Gabe Mangold (Enterprise Earth), and Hal Microutsicos (Engulf). We also returned to working with Kristian “Kohle” Kohlmannslehner at the renowned Kohlekeller Studios, where the drum tracks were recorded.
To be honest, the time frame we had to work with was the biggest challenge and it was pretty intense. We had just released our Kemper album Vile Postmortem Irrumatio when we got signed to Listenable Records, and there was an expectation from the label to deliver a follow-up in a reasonably timely manner, so we had to switch straight back into songwriting mode almost immediately.
What message does your music carry, given the controversy surrounding the theme of killers?
George: Metal has always had that edge of controversy to it, which is evident in how perception changes over time; for instance, even AC/DC and KISS were labeled as “satanic” back in the ’80s, yet today they are mainstream stadium bands. I do not feel like I have a message I want to preach to fans, as they have their own minds and can think for themselves.
If anything, our music and albums reflect the idea that the real “beast” on this planet is humanity itself. We are the only species capable of destroying our own environment and inflicting harm on each other in such extreme psychological and physical ways. No animal truly behaves the way humans do in terms of cruelty and self-destruction, and that contrast is a theme that naturally seeps into the material we explore.
What are your plans for the future?
George: We are preparing for European festival shows and discussing a potential fall tour with our booking agency. Even though the financial situation in the music business is currently unstable due to rising logistics and transport costs, we hope everything falls into place.