Inhuman Condition are a Death Metal supergroup from Florida formed in 2020 by guitarist Taylor Nordberg and drummer & vocalist Jeremie Kling after departing from the band, Massacre. The band’s bass duties are taken care of by none other than Terry Butler. The band name Inhuman Condition comes from an EP Massacre released in 1992 titled, Inhuman Condition.
Terry is in Obituary and formerly Six Feet Under, the early days of Massacre, and Death, where he played bass for the legendary Spiritual Healing and Leprosy albums. Jeremie is also in Necromancing The Stone, Kill Division, and Venom Inc, who released an album titled There’s Only Black on September 22nd of 2022. Taylor and Jeremie both play in The Absence, Goregäng, Ribspreader, Eye Of Purgatory, Dritt Skit, and also in the Punk Rock band Fore. Taylor also plays in the Rock band Umbilicus which features Paul Mazurkiewicz from Cannibal Corpse on drums. Taylor mentioned he and Paul had a band meeting at the Doobie Brothers concert the night before the conduction of this interview.
Taylor’s been a fan of Heavy Music since he was eight years old when his older brother introduced him to Korn, The Black Album by Metallica, and Rob Zombie’s first Hellbilly Deluxe album. Mentioning it first started off with Metallica, then Iron Maiden, then Slayer….He thereafter ventured off into the heavier side of Metal with Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Cannibal Corpse, noting that it is Peaceful in a weird way, “Heavy Music was sort of attractive to me…Not really sure what it was, maybe it was just the intensity of it that was just like watching a Horror movie…You know, no one likes being scared, but in the moment they kind of like it…Maybe it’s just like getting the aggression out by listening, rather than yourself raging out and killing people.
And live Death Metal can be really awesome, given the right mix, and the right band, and the right performance, and everything….I don’t personally mosh anymore,” Taylor said while laughing and continued on, “My days of that are over. But that used to be an awesome way to just go in and just run around and hit people…Get hit, fall over…It’s kind of a cool comradery in there. Just being around that energy is cool, seeing other people get their frustrations, and everything out. You kind of feel that for them. I don’t know, Death Metal is like a Peaceful protest. Listening to Death Metal is much better than fighting people or going to the bar and just being an idiot.”
The main reason Taylor picked up a guitar was because of Aerosmith’s self-titled debut 1973 album and Get Your Wings, which released a year later in 1974, as he says were Life changing, along with Queen, Cheap Trick, The Doors, CCR, and The Steve Miller Band. He also recalled his Dad having quite a few Alice Cooper and AC/DC cassettes that he’d listen to as a kid. Taylor started getting into Metal more when he began playing guitar. He also is a huge Led Zeppelin fan. “I had The Song Remains The Same DVD when I was thirteen, and that’s such a weird movie, but all the concert footage is so killer. So, I used to watch The Song Remains The Same all the time. But yeah, the solo in Communication Breakdown was like hugely inspirational for me.
The Classic Rock stuff is…That’s the stuff like when I sit down and play guitar, more than likely I’ll play some Rock stuff as much as I play Death Metal. There’s just something about Rock ‘n Roll that is just the best. Yeah, it’s nice to just be able to play some Rock riffs and not be like worried about the crazy solo coming up or the really fast parts coming up, it’s like…This whole song is pretty easy, and I can just do some backup vocals here & there and not really struggle, just have a good time…We can jam on a section and extend it if we want. It’s a nice Freedom,” Taylor added while laughing about Umbilicus, “I know Paul’s enjoying it because he has a pretty tough gig in Cannibal Corpse playing all of that stuff, he’s like ‘Dude, it’s great to just be able to play some Rock stuff!'”
Inhuman Condition’s album Fearsick was unveiled to the masses on July 15th of 2022 through Listenable Insanity Records. The album stems from songs written during the time Jeremie and Tyler were still in Massacre. They had an album and a half worth of Music for both RatºGod and Fearsick. They even played the song Recycled Hate live with Massacre, however the lyrics and vocal patterns were different. Paul Mazurkiewicz wrote the lyrics to the Inhuman Condition version of Recycled Hate, as well as Killing Face off of RatºGod. RatºGod is Inhuman Condition’s debut album, which released on June 4th of 2021.
The video for Recycled Hate was something that Taylor described as fun and also bizarre to do because the video was recorded at half speed. They played the song at half-speed, and then they sped up the video to match the actual song tempos, “That’s why our movements look really manic and like crazy people, because it was filmed at half speed. If you would’ve seen us on the set, everybody playing the song at half tempo, headbanging at half time, it was super bizarre, but it definitely gives the video a super stressful-like crazy person feel. And I think the rest of that is just raw power.”
The album Artwork for both RatºGod and Fearsick were spawned from rough ideas Jeremie had envisioned. They initially thought about reaching out to Ed Repka, who illustrated album covers for Megadeth, Death, Dark Angel, Holy Grail, Massacre, among many others. However, they stumbled upon the Artist Dan “Babe Ruth” Goldsworthy through the 2019 Xentrix album, Bury The Pain.
“We stumbled on the Artwork that Dan did for the latest Xentrix album, this British Thrash band that’s really great…I was like, “Holy crap Jeremie, this is like Ed Repka style!” So, we talked to Dan and got on the phone with a video conference…Just got to know him, what kind of Music he was into, what kind of Art he was into…And Jeremie told him this concept of this kind of unsavory fellow walking up a staircase made out of bodies, sort of like creepy castle dungeon, something like that…”
Inhuman Condition have dubbed Dan “Babe Ruth” because he knocked the Artwork out of the park for both albums. They went back to Dan after RatºGod for the Fearsick cover, as the album has five songs written from the same time period, “So we said, why don’t we bring the RatºGod back, but this time have him way more twisted, and evil, and unhealthy…. Closer along to whatever his final form is…Have him in a new setting as well. And we set maybe like a wall or building made out of bodies instead of a staircase. So, this whole complex that he owns is made out of his victims.
It was really great just having Dan come back and do the Artwork for Fearsick. I guess he kind of became our mascot unintentionally, at least for these two albums, the RatºGod character. So, it’s just a cool, different location for the RatºGod to be in his building is made out of bodies, maybe his whole world is made out of bodies. Kind of an unintentional Eddie or Rattlehead or something like that.”
Taylor elaborated more about their experience working with Dan and how the process went, “He says he usually likes he listens to the Music of the album that he’s doing the Artwork for, so I guess he just was inspired the same way we were… Like, all of the great Thrash album covers from mid-to-late eighties and early nineties. A lot of bright colors and kind of obnoxious, flipping through records, something catches your eye…When Dan sent over the original sketches, I would say fifty percent of the Artwork was done…He gave us sort of a color palette to choose from. He gave us four different options, and the pink one just looked the coolest…So, we were just like, let’s have a pink album cover! Why not! And of course, it’s sort of a nod to Death’s Leprosy, which of course Terry was on, which is pretty cool as well. “
Fan Facts: Dan also created the cover Art for Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens’ upcoming album, Return To Death Row under the band name RIPPER, and Corpsegrinder’s self-titled debut solo album, which released in February of this year. Both albums are produced by Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed, who also founded Perseverance Media Group. You can check out more of Dan’s work here, which even includes Sylosis and Alestorm cover Art!
Taylor described how Jeremie’s concept for the video The Mold Testament was, “like how regardless, if we’re human or machine, we all end up in a heap somewhere with a bunch of other dead machines or humans. So, that was kind of a cool concept with the graveyard mixed in with the dead cars kind of thing. It was cool. We’re all just trash at the end,” he said while laughing.
The guitar solo at the end was spontaneous when they were writing and recording the song. “So, it was sort of like…A third of the song was that riff, but it was only that one part that faded out. I think we had the idea of having some sort of crazy guitar solo divebomb, mixed in cave reverb and all of that stuff…I don’t really know what I was thinking, I was just trying to get the…”Let the kid out,” I guess as Steven Tyler would say.”
When we got to the subject of the Music video for Caustic Vomit Reveries, the third track on Fearsick, and filmed by Daniel Wahlström, Taylor elaborated more, “Our buddy Daniel, filmed most of the stuff in Sweden. Jeremie was actually in Sweden and filmed his parts there. And then Terry and I did ours here in Florida. I’m not really sure. I sort of wanted it to be a performance video sort of, but not quite the same as Recycled Hate. That’s why we did a darker video as opposed to the white, to contrast Recycled Hate. And the strobe was just kind of another added stressful touch. And then all the creepy imagery that Daniel had filmed in there, I don’t know exactly what the theme would be video wise, but it’s good to have a visual with our songs. It’s good to have a unique kind of personality with the rest of the videos….Another tangible Death Metal video.”
To close out our interview, we chatted about some of the other bands Taylor is in and all of what’s going on with them. On the subject of Umbilicus, “We have our buddy Brian Stephenson, he sings in my Punk band called Fore…He’s like a super crazy talented vocalist, but he wrote the lyrics and the vocals for Umbilicus, you can check two of those songs out now.” The new Umbilicus album titled Path Of 1000 Suns is dropping on September 30th of 2022. He also mentioned that Fore will probably have an album come out next year as well.
Here’s what’s going on with Deicide, who released their last full length album, Overtures of Blasphemy, in September of 2018, “We’ve been working on the new songs as well, but we don’t have a definite date of when we’re recording or anything like that, but we are working on new Music, it is definitely very Deicide-y, so expect it to sound like Deicide.”
And finally, here is what is going on with The Absence, who released their last album Coffinized in June of 2021, “We’re just kind of in a….we’re not on hold right now, but we just put that record out in June of last year…We’re kind of on holding pattern right now…Cause we’ve been doing the Inhuman Condition thing, and the Deicide thing, but we’ll probably start kicking around some stuff here pretty soon… No definitive release date or anything like that, but we’re bouncing around ideas…More details on that soon probably.”
