I Am are a band whose music is so unique and dominating that their fans have created a new term to describe their sound.
With riffs, speed, precision and ferocity, I Am carve out a frenetic blending of thrash and death metal to lift you out from whatever rock you are hiding under or whatever shadow looms over your existence.
Coined Texas Death metal, I Am deliver sonic waves of intent that drive deeper with every listen.
Already being mentioned in the same breath as legendary outfits such as Obituary, Cro – Mags and early Sepultura, I Am know the limits such labels place upon the band but are also confident enough in their output to embrace the notion and promise to do such bands justice.
With the band preparing for their new album Eternal Steel to be released on September 9, I Am guitarist Tom Reyes joined HEAVY to chat about the album and more.
"Musically, we kind of wanted to - we say this a lot - but wanted to extend on what we did with Hard 2 Kill and that sound we were starting to carve out and take those elements to the extreme as far as the fast parts being faster, the heavier parts being heavier. What we do well, we wanted to expand on that. There wasn't really any set or straight rules for what we needed to sound like because there are some experimental songs that don't really sound like something we have done before, so we were just doing what we thought sounded good and what was fun to us and what was interesting to us. It's really hard to think about genre or specific words for it, but yeah, that's the idea behind what we were doing."
In the full interview, Tom also talks about the songs on Eternal Steel, the discounted rage that permeates throughout, how the band feels about comparisons to metal Gods, the term Texas Death and where it came from, releasing the album on cassette, their live shows and what to expect, coming to Australia to play with Thy Art Is Murder and more.
Intro track ODIUS 'Ignorance Paid In Violence'