My buddy’s band played a show in LA with Slayer back when BDM were still kids. He said they showed up with their dads driving them to the show. He also said that BDM kids killed it. Said he didn’t even want to play after them. I’ve never been a huge fan but they were always one of the tightest extreme metal bands I’ve ever seen.
i've seen them tear up community center gymnasiums in suburban detroit in the very early 00's. My band and them ended up sharing a rehersal space (at The Hive in Warren, Mi) in the early 2010's/late 00's. I met trevor and brian in passing here and there in the hallways of that place. Hearing them rehearse...they won me over big time. They're disipline, tight, work hard, have good attitudes, and these are all of the reasons why they SMOKE my band. I was like "ok, they're the real deal, and i need to seriously stfu about calling them an At The Gates rip off.
I gotta admit, at the time that they got signed, i was a little jealous. I'm the same age as them and from the same "scene" so to speak. back then, the gothenburg style metal thing hadn't really hit the USA hard yet. As an aspiring metal musician myself, i had the choice of writing stuff that nipped from the gothenburg metal that i was obsessed with at the time, or move into a more "garage prog metal" direction, as i called it at the time (think mastadon-ish type stuff). I decided there was already enough bands in europe that sounded like at the gates or in flames, so i stayed away from writing shit like that, even though i loved that style and played it all the time alone. I thought that if i did write that kind of euro style stuff, everyone that heard it would discount it as an obvious rip off, and no one would like it. I should have looked at it the way Lars looked at NWOBHM. The US hadn't heard it yet, so metallica started playing their version of it in america, and the rest is history. Metallica was my fav band, i should have followed that lead, but i was like "no no, i'm going to reinvent the wheel instead!!" which of course never happened.
Well, then BDM started playing an "american-ed up" version of the swedish style death metal, and BLEW THE FUCK UP! got signed, got super popular (as far as an underground band goes), and i was like DAMN IT why did i just form a band in that vein like i WANTED TO!!! Thats how i felt back then. Now at 40, i'm full aware that both personally and as a musician, that i'm just not cut out for that lifestyle, and would have never written shit as good as them anyway