
From left to right: drummer Leo Didkovsky, guitarist Mario Miron, guitarist/vocalist Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, and bassist Tia Vincent-Clark.
The black metal band’s latest release speaks loudly with frontwoman Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix’s theological philosophies and classical influence.
Most musicians hate labeling themselves with a genre. But Liturgy vocalist, guitarist, and mastermind Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix is different. She knows exactly what her music sounds like, and why.
“A lot of people don’t like the idea of naming what they do, but I love it,” she says with a laugh. “[Liturgy is] a cross between extreme metal; avant-garde, minimalist, classical music; 19th-century Romantic classical music; and American screamo-inflected metalcore.” Her quick response and detailed description are typical of Hunt-Hendrix’s musical personality. Everything she does comes from a crystallized vision, years of music education, and a passion for the theological and philosophical purpose that she believes animates the greater zoetic universe.
Conceived around the concept of Christianity’s kingdom of heaven, Liturgy’s latest release, 93696—named after a numerological representation of heaven, or a new eon for civilization—and its companion EP, As the Blood of God Bursts the Veins of Time, embrace the entirety of the band’s catalog and push it even further into the cosmos. With each release, Hunt-Hendrix has searched for new inspiration, new sounds, and a new approach. In the past, that included everything from electronic trap-style layers to a wide range of world and orchestral instruments. Based on her earlier musical education, Hunt-Hendrix took a more classical approach to 93696, and while that may have turned off a few black metal purists, she knew what she was doing—and chose to double down on it.
Djennaration
“With this one, I felt happy with the language of the band and wanted to make something really, really epic using that language,” she explains. “It feels like a synthesis of a lot of things that we’ve done before. It’s by far the most ambitious record we’ve ever done. It’s longer, and more complex.” Every instrument, whether in the gigantic “Djennaration” or the instrumental, organ-driven “Angel of Individuation,” plays a key role in a bed of twisting, layered melodies and deep harmonic complexity. This is especially evident in the bass work, where alternate chord inversions and counterpoint are more common than driving root notes.
“[93696] feels like a synthesis of a lot of things that we’ve done before. It’s by far the most ambitious record we’ve ever done.”
“That’s pretty unusual on electric bass,” she admits. “It’s in that classical tradition of writing music. The bass has a role while the higher voices come together doing different things. Then it all coalesces into unity.”
Speaking on the evolution of her musical influences, she elaborates, “I played piano from a very young age and was really into classical music. But, in high school, black metal was this fascinating, faraway thing. I was listening to a lot of the classic second-wave Norwegian stuff. Emperor and Darkthrone were my favorite bands, and I was intentionally emulating them.”
Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix's Gear
From a young age, Hunt-Hendrix was interested in classical music, but in high school, she got into listening to black metal bands like Emperor and Darkthrone.
Photo by Alexander Perelli
Guitars
- Reverend Descent Baritone (standard or drop-D tuning)
Amps
- Sovtek Mig 100
- Orange TH30 combo (studio only)
- Ampeg 4x12 cabinet
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball .009s
- Dunlop Tortex .5 mm
After graduating, Hunt-Hendrix attended the prestigious Columbia University, where black metal took a backseat to her philosophy and classical composition studies. Her plan was to make a future in the classical arts. That didn’t last long. “There was a time when I thought I might be a composer and write music in the classical tradition. I studied classical composition and was really into minimalism and Romanticism. I was reading scores and studying them and then trying to write [my own]. But I got swept up in the punk and metal scenes and wanted to, instead, take those techniques and put them into rock music.”
When Hunt-Hendrix says “rock music,” again, think “black metal.” And her alchemy of the genre, as well as classical composition and philosophical studies, would soon manifest in Liturgy’s 2009 debut LP Renihilation, released when the band was just a solo project. Full of blast beats, dissonance, and throat-shredding vocals, there was no question where Hunt-Hendrix cut her teeth. But, even on her early releases, Liturgy went far beyond the aggression and atmosphere of black metal’s forebears. Throughout their catalog, each savage and unrelenting instrument together weaves a whole much larger than their individual parts.
“I studied classical composition and was really into minimalism and Romanticism…. But I got swept up in the punk and metal scenes and wanted to, instead, take those techniques and put them into rock music.”
This, Hunt-Hendrix says, is where the classical influence comes in. “Learning to write music in Western notation and think about it in terms of themes, variations, sonatas, or a fugue has been a big influence on the way that I write Liturgy’s music. I’m combining classical music and metal. Not to overlay symphonic stuff onto metal, but to use the structural tools of symphonic music with metal instruments.”
Hunt-Hendrix composes Liturgy’s songs using DAWs and notation software, then shares them with her bandmates for them to learn.
Photo by Mike Boyd
For all of the classical influence, Hunt-Hendrix’s black-metal-approved wall of distortion gives each Liturgy release its trademark sound. Much of that comes down to her relentless speed-picking technique that transforms single-note lines into what sounds like a demonic orchestra. “I noticed, [when you’re] picking really fast and have a distorted sound, it kind of sounds similar to violins in a string orchestra,” she says. “So that became my main thing. That’s pretty much what I am almost always doing in Liturgy songs. To me, that’s the string orchestra aspect. It’s in the range of a violin or a soprano singer.”
And when she says “always,” she really means it. When Hunt-Hendrix is playing, her picking hand is flying the whole time. With multiple songs clocking in at over 10 minutes, it makes you wonder how she makes it look so easy. “At this point, it’s not hard at all,” she said. “I barely notice. It’s like the way drummers who play really fast double-kick learn to do it so gently that they can do it forever. But it’s a big problem if I don't have the right picks!”
Her playing style—and picks—have been constants throughout Liturgy’s career. But they may be the only ones. Since her first release, Hunt-Hendrix has expanded the band (now including guitarist Mario Miron, bassist Tia Vincent-Clark, and drummer Leo Didkovsky) to record and perform as a quartet. Hunt-Hendrix’s compositions are ever-evolving the sound of the band and the genre.
“I noticed, [when you’re] picking really fast and have a distorted sound, it kind of sounds similar to violins in a string orchestra.”
But with so much of that aforementioned, variegated musical background swirling around her exacting vision, writing 93696 demanded a different approach than a group of people plugging in and jamming. Instead, she again pulled from her classical training, composing each part individually with the help of technology.
“I wrote most of the music using Logic and Ableton, and used Sibelius for notation software,” says Hunt-Hendrix. “Then it’s different with different songs. I'll either make a demo using a drum machine and recording guitar into my computer, or I’ll make the demo using an organ sound that sounds like the guitars will sound. But there’s a lot of revision and a lot of listening back!
“Then I’ll either give the demo to my bandmates or give them music to read. And we were working through this album during the height of Covid, so a lot of our rehearsals were actually on Zoom in the early part of the year.”
Then there’s all of the other instrumentation throughout the record. Everything from harp to ocarina to glockenspiel to vibraphone play their part on 93696. And, while some artists may whip these auxiliary sounds up with virtual instrument plugins, Hunt-Hendrix wanted to keep a raw, human element.
Hunt-Hendrix’s picking hand almost never stops moving in Liturgy’s live performances. In her rapidfire, distorted guitar lines, she hears orchestral strings.
Photo by Mike Boyd
“It’s mostly all done live,” she reveals. “I have a lot of friends and acquaintances in New York who are in the avant-garde classical scene, or jazz scene, or something like that. So I just called people up. I wrote out the music, gave it to them, and then they came to the studio and played it.”
That human element extended to every element of the album’s recording process, giving it a surprisingly gritty, punk vibe. The secret, according to Hunt-Hendrix, is that “It’s mostly all recorded live.” Aside from the additional instrumentation and occasional electronic elements, the band tracked nearly every tremolo-picked guitar line, chordal bass passage, and exceedingly complex drum performance together and in the same room. “And we tracked the whole record to the tape,” she added.
Furthering Liturgy’s no-nonsense approach is both guitarists’ simple selection of gear. Miron relies on his trusty ESP LTD MH-200 into an MXR Fullbore Metal pedal and Quilter ToneBlock 200 amp head. But Hunt-Hendrix takes a uniquely pragmatic approach to her gear, dictated by her equally singular technique.
“Bringing in the old material has this quality of your life flashing before your eyes…. It adds a purpose to the sense of culmination, or heaven, if you like.”
“So, now, I actually play a baritone guitar, a Reverend Descent. I’m almost always playing at the very top of the neck above the 12th fret,” she explains. “All the chord changes and everything are up there. Since I’m playing at the top of the neck all the time, there’s more space between the frets for my fingers. I string it with normal, .009-gauge guitar strings, and it’s tuned like a standard guitar or drop D."Next in line is her beloved Sovtek Mig 100 amplifier, complemented in the studio with an unlikely combo. “I don’t use any pedals at all,” she explains. “I run my guitar straight into my Mig 100. I like it because it distorts a lot, but it’s not a super crunchy distortion like you hear in a lot of metal. The notes ring out and breathe. And, on a recording, I like to contrast it with my Orange TH30 combo. It’s very small and not good for using live. But if you mic it in the studio, it sounds huge."
This raw, DIY character helps make 93696 a wonderfully challenging listen with endless intrigue. The aggression and themes that propel the 15-minute title track are somehow matched by the mandolin and choir-driven space and beauty of “Immortal Life II.” And, speaking of songs on the album ending in “II,” these are references to Liturgy songs from previous releases. As new compositions inspired by her earlier work, they perfectly sum up Hunt-Hendrix’s vision for the entire record.
“For some reason, while we were working on this record, I began listening to older Liturgy songs. I was fascinated by the potential to go back and take material from those songs and work them out in totally new ways. Bringing in the old material has this quality of your life flashing before your eyes. It’s like surveying Liturgy’s whole career before, or at, the end. It adds a purpose to the sense of culmination, or heaven, if you like.
“I’m not saying that this is the band’s last album. I want to keep making more music that sounds like this. But, and maybe it’s more of a time we live in, it feels like this is the last couple of years that humanity will exist. That may or may not be true, but this is an album for that time. In that sense, it’s the final album [laughs].”YouTube It
Liturgy delivers a thrashing wall of sound in a performance of “Glory Bronze” from their 2011 album Aesthetica at First Unitarian Church, a fitting venue, given the band’s theological influence.
- Cram Session: Thrash-Metal Rhythms ›
- Municipal Waste Delivers OG Metal for the Party-Thrash Set ›
- Slave to Sirens: Lebanon’s First All-Female Thrash-Metal Band ›
- Black Metal Band Myrkur: Stepping into the Ethereal ›
Lutefish, the real-time music collaboration device and platform, is excited to announce a suite of new features designed to simplify setup, streamline collaboration, and offer more flexible subscription options for Lutefish Stream users. These latest updates, Audio Presets, Automatic Session Recall, Improved Scheduling with Contact Visibility, and a new Yearly Subscription Plan, are all about making it easier than ever for musicians to jam together, no matter where they’re based.
Save Time and Stay in the Flow with Audio Presets & Session Recall
Musicians can now save and reuse their exact audio settings, reducing setup time and ensuring every session sounds exactly as they want.
- Automatic Session Recall: When users leave a session, their current audio levels are automatically saved and restored when they rejoin.
- User-Defined Audio Presets: Each user can create and name up to five custom presets, like “Band Practice,” “Studio Mic Setup,” or “Quick Jam,” making it effortless to jump back in with the perfect sound.
“These tools are all about saving time and hassle,” said Patrick Finn, Business Manager at Lutefish. “Musicians want to make music, not spend time rebalancing levels every session. With presets and recall, we’re giving them time back and helping them sound their best, every time.”
Smarter Scheduling and Contact Visibility
The latest update to Lutefish also made it easier to find collaborators and book sessions. Users can now:- View all their contacts at a glance when scheduling a session.
- Instantly identify which contacts own a Lutefish Stream device—so they will always know who’s ready to jam.
Go Yearly and Save 20%
Lutefish now offers a Yearly Subscription Plan, providing users with the same great access as the monthly plan at a 20% discount.
This option is now available within the Lutefish app and web platform, and current monthly users are eligible for a discount with an upgrade to a yearly subscription.
Lutefish’s mission has always been to empower musicians to connect and collaborate without boundaries. With these new updates, Lutefish Stream continues to break down barriers—whether you’re jamming with a friend across town or collaborating with a bandmate 500 miles away.
For more information and to start jamming today, visitlutefish.com.
The veteran Florida-born metalcore outfit proves that you don’t need humbuckers to pull off high gain.
Last August, metalcore giants Poison the Well gave the world a gift: They announced they were working on their first studio album in 15 years. They unleashed the first taste, single “Trembling Level,” back in January, and set off on a spring North American tour during which they played their debut record, The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation, in full every night.
PG’s Perry Bean caught up with guitarists Ryan Primack and Vadim Taver, and bassist Noah Harmon, ahead of the band’s show at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl for this new Rig Rundown.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Not-So-Quiet As a Mouse
Primack started his playing career on Telecasters, then switched to Les Pauls, but when his prized LPs were stolen, he jumped back to Teles, and now owns nine of them.
His No. 1 is this white one (left). Seymour Duncan made him a JB Model pickup in a single-coil size for the bridge position, while the neck is a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Staggered. He ripped out all the electronics, added a Gibson-style toggle switch, flipped the control plate orientation thanks to an obsession with Danny Gatton, and included just one steel knob to control tone. Primack also installed string trees with foam to control extra noise.
This one has Ernie Ball Papa Het’s Hardwired strings, .011–.050.
Here, Kitty, Kitty
Primack runs both a PRS Archon and a Bad Cat Lynx at the same time, covering both 6L6 and EL34 territories. The Lynx goes into a Friedman 4x12 cab that’s been rebadged in honor of its nickname, “Donkey,” while the Archon, which is like a “refined 5150,” runs through an Orange 4x12.
Ryan Primack’s Pedalboard
Primack’s board sports a Saturnworks True Bypass Multi Looper, plus two Saturnworks boost pedals. The rest includes a Boss TU-3w, DOD Bifet Boost 410, Caroline Electronics Hawaiian Pizza, Fortin ZUUL +, MXR Phase 100, JHS Series 3 Tremolo, Boss DM-2w, DOD Rubberneck, MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Walrus Slo, and SolidGoldFX Surf Rider III.
Taver’s Teles
Vadim Taver’s go-to is this cherryburst Fender Telecaster, which he scored in the early 2000s and has been upgraded to Seymour Duncan pickups on Primack’s recommendation. His white Balaguer T-style has been treated to the same upgrade. The Balaguer is tuned to drop C, and the Fender stays in D standard. Both have D’Addario strings, with a slightly heavier gauge on the Balaguer.
Dual-Channel Chugger
Taver loves his 2-channel Orange Rockerverb 100s, one of which lives in a case made right in Nashville.
Vadim Taver’s Pedalboard
Taver’s board includes an MXR Joshua, MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe, Empress Tremolo, Walrus ARP-87, Old Blood Noise Endeavors Reflector, MXR Phase 90, Boss CE-2w, and Sonic Research Turbo Tuner ST-200, all powered by a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus.
Big Duff
Harmon’s favorite these days is this Fender Duff McKagan Deluxe Precision Bass, which he’s outfitted with a Leo Quan Badass bridge. His backup is a Mexico-made Fender Classic Series ’70s Jazz Bass. This one also sports Primack-picked pickups.
Rental Rockers
Harmon rented this Orange AD200B MK III head, which runs through a 1x15 cab on top and a 4x10 on the bottom.
Noah Harmon’s Pedalboard
Harmon’s board carries a Boss TU-2, Boss ODB-3, MXR Dyna Comp, Darkglass Electronics Vintage Ultra, and a Voodoo Lab Pedal Power 2 Plus. His signal from the Vintage Ultra runs right to the front-of-house, and Harmon estimates that that signal accounts for about half of what people hear on any given night.
Kiesel Guitars has introduced their newest solid body electric guitar: the Kyber.
With its modern performance specs and competitive pricing, the Kyber is Kiesel's most forward-thinking design yet, engineered for comfort, quick playing, and precision with every note.
Introducing the Kiesel Kyber Guitar
- Engineered with a lightweight body to reduce fatigue during long performances without sacrificing tone. Six-string Kybers, configured with the standard woods and a fixed bridge, weigh in at 6 pounds or under on average
- Unique shape made for ergonomic comfort in any playing position and enhanced classical position
- The Kyber features Kiesel's most extreme arm contour and a uniquely shaped body that enhances classical position support while still excelling in standard position.
- The new minimalist yet aggressive headstock pairs perfectly with the body's sleek lines, giving the Kyber a balanced, modern silhouette.
- Hidden strap buttons mounted on rear for excellent balance while giving a clean, ultra-modern look to the front
- Lower horn cutaway design for maximum access to the upper frets
- Sculpted neck heel for seamless playing
- Available in 6 or 7 strings, fixed or tremolo in both standard and multiscale configurations Choose between fixed bridges, tremolos, or multiscale configurations for your perfect setup.
Pricing for the Kyber starts at $1599 and will vary depending on options and features. Learn more about Kiesel’s new Kyber model at kieselguitars.com
The Sunset is a fully analog, zero latency bass amplifier simulator. It features a ¼” input, XLR and ¼” outputs, gain and volume controls and extensive equalization. It’s intended to replace your bass amp both live and in the studio.
If you need a full sounding amp simulator with a lot of EQ, the Sunset is for you. It features a five band equalizer with Treble, Bass, Parametric Midrange (with frequency and level controls), Resonance (for ultra lows), and Presence (for ultra highs). All are carefully tuned for bass guitar. But don’t let that hold you back if you’re a keyboard player. Pianos and synthesizers sound great with the Sunset!
The Sunset includes Gain and master Volume controls which allow you to add compression and classic tube amp growl. It has both ¼” phone and balanced XLR outputs - which lets you use it as a high quality active direct box. Finally, the Sunset features zero latency all analog circuitry – important for the instrument most responsible for the band’s groove.
Introducing the Sunset Bass Amp Simulator
- Zero Latency bass amp simulator.
- Go direct into the PA or DAW.
- Five Band EQ:
- Treble and Bass controls.
- Parametric midrange with level and frequency controls.
- Presence control for extreme highs.
- Resonance control for extreme lows.
- Gain control to add compression and harmonics.
- Master Volume.
- XLR and 1/4" outputs.
- Full bypass.
- 9VDC, 200mA.
Artwork by Aaron Cheney
MAP price: $210 USD ($299 CAD).