Indie Rock Band Murder by Death Discuss Their New Album ‘Big Dark Love’ and Upcoming Tour

Lead singer Adam Turla of indie rock band Murder by Death sat down with Entertainment Voice to discuss the band and their long-standing career’s reflection. Turla spoke on Murder by Death’s upcoming album “Big Dark Love,” U.S. and European tour, and the truth behind their songs. Read the full interview below.

Is there anything you want to say right off the bat about Murder by Death’s “Big Dark Love?”

I don’t know. I like it. I’ve been working on it for about a year and a half, we spent last summer; we went into the studio, three one-week sessions to put it all to tape. We’ve been working on it for a long time. We just seriously finished yesterday with all the Kickstarter presale orders that we had. We package them all up ourselves and mail them off. It’s just an insane amount of boxes, so hitting the road tomorrow is honestly just a really nice release for us. It feels like, “okay this things finally out.” We’ve been working on it for a while. We’re excited to just go play some shows in support of it.

What do you feel is different about Murder by Death’s newest album “Big Dark Love” versus your previous work?

Well, it’s the seventh record. We’ve had seven full lengths and three EPs. And I think you just have to start thinking about your past catalog when you’re working that late in your career. And the question I ask myself is, “okay, well what can I do that’s interesting to me? What can I do that’ll be interesting to the listeners? What do I think and what do I have to say whether musically or lyrically? This record, for me, I was very happy with the result because when I listen to it, it sounds like a murder by death record but it also sounds like we’re covering new ground. So, I’m just happy that in my mind, we pulled it off and people are starting to respond to it and they seem to like it a lot. We’re getting great reactions. You hope people will enjoy your work, but you can’t really control it. All you can do is do the best work that you can do and then hope that people will react positively

Is there anything new Murder by Death wants to experiment with musically on your next album?

Well, one of the things that was fun, I usually don’t do a lot guitar work on MBD records. I let the cello sort of act like the lead guitar. There are a couple songs on this record where I decided to just do a little more lead and a little less rhythm and I really like how it came out. I really like the result of it, so that’s something that I really want to push a little bit next time around, but I’m definitely not thinking of the next record yet, and I’m not even going to allow myself to think about it for sometime. We’re doing this big US tour, and we just announced some European dates today. We’ll work it for a while, we’ll take a break,—much needed break (laughs)—in March. Then we’ll see how people react, play a few more shows, and we’ll worry about writing down the line.

What can fans expect from the current tour?

What we always do is a blend of old and new. We really try to cover our whole catalog. We have a unique position where we’re one of those groups that there’s not one record that everybody wants to hear every night. So, we really try to mix it up. We get emails from people saying, “Oh, will you play this song from this record.” “Sure.” We practiced over 50 songs to be able to have ready for this tour, and that’s really exciting because when you get deep with your catalog, you’re able to have a different show every night. That’s really exciting as a player to not have the show get stale. I can never understand the bands that go out and do the same set for the tour. I just don’t understand it. It must just be so boring, but that’s just my take at least.

What track do you feel represents the upcoming album best?

I love the title track. I really like how it came out. The production is really cool. I think this record is by far the best sounding record we have in terms of like just really cool tones. We’ve been lucky enough to record with some really talented people, but this one has some really strange sounds that I like a lot. It’s a combination of Kevin Ratterman who engineered it and in the end we just decided to call it a co-production with the band because he had so many cool sound ideas for the record because he seemed to really like working on it. John Congleton mixed it and he is just such an interesting musician and engineer/producer/mixer. He has a lot of personality and it really shows when he puts his mark on a record. He’s a lot like me in that I think he has a short attention span, which ends up allowing for him to say, “This is boring; how can we make it interesting? Even a song that’s a solid good song, he’s always looking for ways to make it sound more interesting. He’s probably the most famous for his work. He’s done all the St. Vincent records. Whenever you think about her music, those records sound incredible and they’re really fascinating to hear. I’ve got to give him a lot of credit for that because his mark is all over that work

What artists inspire Murder by Death’s music most?

This record was interesting because we don’t really think about other musicians when writing our songs. Part of it is because we all listen to different music and there’s never a band where we’re like, “oh, we want to be like this band.” That’s just not how we work. We’ve just always done our own thing, but the thing that struck me as we finished the record that whenever we would use a reference track… it was interesting because it was almost always female musicians. We kept using these references and with Natural Pearl there’s kind of like a Neko Case feel to it but with male vocals and Big Dark Love has kind of like Portishead feel and we kept noticing its all these bad ass female musicians. It’s interesting that those were the comparisons we were getting… we thought that was really cool because it wasn’t even intentional. It must have just worked its way in our brain when we were working on the record.

What elements do you feel have remained over the course of Murder by Death’s music?

I would say the biggest thing is when we started this group, I used to put on house shows and I did a lot of them and it was always this personal experience of the concert. In a small town in the Midwest when you’re at a show it’s very easy to meet the band member and it’s a very relaxed atmosphere. There’s not this barricade or disconnect with the show, and we’ve kept that the whole time. We’ve always been really accessible for folks who want to meet us or if somebody writes us a letter, we’ll get back to them. I would say that comes from a Midwestern friendliness and also going to concerts here.

You guys incorporate whiskey and the devil into several of your songs. What attracts you most to this theme?

That was the first element of fantasy we worked into the group back in like 2002-3 when we first started writing. I just found there was a lot of music out there that was all centered around feelings and people just telling you about them. I found myself really bored with that as a listener. So when I had to start writing lyrics, the task just kind of fell to me because none of the other guys in the band were willing to sing, so I started having to think about writing lyrics, and thought, “well, I’m going to write about some really different stuff.”  So I just started making stuff up and being Kentucky-Indiana people, bourbon definitely is just the drink. That’s what you drink, so that made it into the song… then I dove into this almost fantasy world that really ended up inspiring a lot of MBD material. I mean, it just allowed for a world for our songs to just exist as one place. That was a really fun development because it really opened up possibilities for lyric writing.  I don’t think it’s very interesting to just write about yourself. It was more exciting to me to have these songs be about something that was a story, so I started to do that kind of writing.

You’ve used Kickstarter as a platform to fund your some of you projects. How has this helped you and what do you think this say about the industry?

The records have always been done, when we launched the Kickstarters, they’re ready to go; they’re going to happen no matter what. I chose to use Kickstarter as a platform to presale the records. We’ve done a presale for every album we’ve ever done, but about three years ago when we did the first Kickstarter, I just saw that site growing in popularity so much, and people doing fun and interesting things. I saw it as another marketplace to presale your record. Not everyone wants a CD or vinyl anymore. Some people will just download the record for free, but they still want to contribute to the band. I think it’s an interesting way to give people options to be part of the band and to support them. I don’t know where the industry is going; I don’t really have an opinion. All I know is that we always had a lot of people ready to pre-buy the record… Kickstarter was right there and I gave it a shot and it was a big success. It’s a great platform to get your music out there and to get people to acknowledge that your work is coming out. We package up all the orders and mail them off and there are people’s whose names I’ve seen for ten years…. Those people, we owe them a lot.

What is up next for Murder by Death?

Big U.S. tour. We’re leaving tomorrow. Going down the west coast, then the south, then the east coast. Then taking a little time off, going to Europe, playing some shows… Really it’s going to be getting this record in people’s hands. I’d love to get out and do a little more international this year. We’re trying to get back to Alaska and trying to get to Australia where we’ve never been. I’d love to do some more concept shows. We have our Stanley hotel shows that we do every year—the hotel from “The Shining.” Some more interesting, fun shows.

Murder by Death‘s new album “Big Dark Love” will be released Feb. 3. The band will perform Feb. 7 at The Roxy.