Hello LCTR, we’re happy to have you here with us on Rock Era Magazine,

• I can hear a mix of extreme metal with all its subgenres and hardcore elements in Goodness Won’t Save You From The Fire, would you tell me about your early influences? And which ones still steer your writing till now?

Tim (Guitars): 80’s pop music, early 90’s dance music, I try to remove myself from modern metal as much as possible to stay fresh and keep my ideas my own.

Travis (vocals): I came from the grind/death metal scene originally and so some of my earlier influences were bands like pig destroyer and circle of dead children. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to look at musicians like Tom Waits and Nick Cave and the way they construct stories in their music.

Geoff (drums): My earlier influences would be a mix of the bled, Rancid, old bury your dead, acacia strain, incubus (science album only) and wu tang clan.

• You guys come from many different bands, with whom did you play? And what’s the story behind the formation of LCTR?

Travis: I was doing vocals in Diseased Earth and our drummer decided he wanted to move to California, so we went on hiatus, and that’s when I was approached by the guys to form something.

Tim: Diseased earth, alcindor and cut the architect’s hand. This is just essentially alcindor with Travis as a front man playing some heavy tunes.

• You have detailed writing with every instrument fully contributing to your sound, would you tell us about your writing process? What usually initiates writing a new song?

Tim:The idea is simplicity, so we try to be as bare bones with our writing approach as possible, and then our bass player usually adds an extra layer of dynamics that pull against what the guitar is playing to create texture. It’s good having a bass player playing more than root notes.

Travis: i live two hours away from the rest of the band so sometimes i cant always make practice, but they are very good about sending videos of songs and it gives me reference to listen to and start working on vocal placement and lyrical ideas

• What’s the story behind Goodness Won’t Save You From The Fire? What’s binding these songs together?

Travis: None of us can escape fate, we are all at the mercy of the great decider.  These songs are all the frustrations and stress we deal with in daily life, the audio equivalent of baring our souls.

Tim: These were the 3 of the 8 songs that got us the most excited, we’ve trimmed our set back to 6 songs and we expect to record our other 3 track EP later this year.

• How would you describe your sound to someone who wants to get into LCTR?

Tim: It’s simple, it’s heavy and it’s mean. If you like the acacia strain, old bury your dead, the banner, or ion dissonance you may dig what we do.

Travis: have you ever been hit in the head with a steel chair, wrapped in barb wire, and lit on fire? That’s our sound

• If you would pick any band to tour with, who would it be?

Tim: The acacia strain, knocked loose, spite, Kublai Khan

Travis: basically all the bands Tim said, would love to as tour with some of the homies too

• What are your plans for 2023/2024? Got anything exclusive for us?

Tim: Another EP later this year, full fill all required show obligations and start work on new material next year.

Travis: we have several more shows planned, putting our some more music. All of us are older and have careers, families and such, so we try to look for quality more than quantity when comes to shows and such.

• Thanks for your time guys, wishing you the best of luck.

Goodness Won’t Save You From The Fire opens with Kayfabe as Personal Philosophy, a pounding heavy tune that demonstrates the brutality we’re gonna experience with LCTR. Kicking off with a slow intimidating build-up,

Kayfabe as Personal Philosophy has a dense guttural sound with damn powerful dynamic shifts, fat bassline, and raw production that matches its sound, and those grinding riffs and sick breakdowns threw me off my seat headbanging. Barb Wire Crown builds upon its predecessor’s intensity, pushing harder for deeper sound and a more complex structure. It opens with a groovy attacking riff that dramatically hits the breaks, warming-up before LCTR unleash hell. These guys have an ever-changing pace with unexpected twists and turns that keeps you hooked, and the way they subtly incorporate modern metal elements in their solid old-school sound was pretty interesting, especially at those filthy breakdowns. The diverse vocal delivery was cleverly handled, reflecting the riffs heaviness with no overdoing, delivering the perfect screams at the perfect timing. One of the best things about Goodness Won’t Save You From The Fire is the BASSLINES and it reaches maximum levels of awesomeness in A Discourse in Disillusionment. It sounds like LCTR are coming at us with full force, hitting hard with relentless riffing, machine gun blast beats, and REALLY DEEP guttural vocals, all in an unstoppable dynamic structure with amazingly well-executed headbanging-boosters and amazingly steered groove and pace that’d drive any metalhead crazy. 

Goodness Won’t Save You From The Fire is one record that you wish would’ve lasted much longer. LCTR‘s brutality sounds like it’s coming from the very depths of hell with their storming riffs and sick dense tone, making it one of the best extreme metal records I’ve listened to in 2023 so far. Their seasoned writing skills and musicianship are pretty obvious through this brief demonstration, making me already wait for their upcoming release. Looking forward to more from you guys, keep on rocking. Cheers!