Will Ramos may be one of the most in-demand artists in heavy music right now. The frontman of US deathcore group Lorna Shore, whose brutality in vocals is only matched by a natural charisma on and off stage, has been a dominating presence in the scene since joining the band in 2021.
The versatility of Ramos’ range has garnered him acclaim throughout the deathcore and metalcore communities, mirroring the growth of Lorna Shore since his addition.
The band’s prolific surge, notably since the release of 2021’s And I Return to Nothingness EP, has brought viral success online (single “To the Hellfire” has accrued over 72 million streams to date), as well as renewed global recognition for the band’s vicious approach to music that isn’t made to alienate but to emotionally penetrate.
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Ramos has taken this objective into each Lorna Shore project he has been part of: from And I Return…, through to 2022’s Pain Remains and now, the band’s fourth studio album, I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me.
An album like Pain Remains arrived at a time in Lorna Shore’s journey where they were ready to push themselves to the next level; receiving widespread acclaim and positioning the band, alongside groups like Spiritbox, I Prevail, and Sleep Token as leaders of a fresh vanguard in modern metal.
With I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me, Lorna Shore have wisely taken the momentum of their third album back into the studio, developing a striking new collection of music that honours the formative chapters of their career to date, while embracing a forceful, reinvigorated chemistry that marks the band’s future.
When we speak with Ramos, it is release day for the band’s newest cut, “Prison of Flesh”. A touchstone of I Feel the Everblack… “Prison of Flesh” is an extremely intense and dark offering, a powerful blend of sonics and breakdown that carry Ramos’ raw lyricism – navigating his family’s experience with dementia.
“I really tried to make this more emotional,” Ramos explains. “If there’s any emotion that somebody is feeling, then hopefully they can dive into it more when listening to this music. I’m excited to see what people think.”
I Feel the Everblack… is the first Lorna Shore album to drop in three years – from it, fans were teased with singles “Oblivion” and “Unbreakable”, ultimately being shown how committed the band has been to bolster their reputation as one of the most impressive bands in the space.
The pressure to keep delivering – not just for the public, but for themselves – reached new intensity for Lorna Shore during this cycle. Getting out of one’s way and trusting the intention behind each song, each creative idea, was a hurdle Ramos says the band had to overcome.
“When you put out an album like Pain Remains and it does really well, we see how the band is progressing and everyone gets in their head a little bit,” he admits.
“Normal people who are just listening and watching us, they’re going, ‘The next album has to top this one, somehow.’ That pressure feeds into our internal pressure as we’re trying to write. So we’re second-guessing everything that we’re doing. That was happening the entire six, seven months that we were in the studio. Even up until the very last day.”
As a result of their own high standards and desire to kick down this new era of Lorna Shore as hard as possible, I Feel the Everblack… arrives as a cohesive and thrilling set of music: brutal, symphonic and relentless in its delivery.
Ramos attributes some of this fresh snarl and confidence in taking new ideas and directions to the limit, to recent time spent touring with giants of the genre including Gojira and Byron Bay’s own, Parkway Drive.
“Watching these other bands play massive arenas, seeing how the crowds react to them versus how they sometimes react to us; we play ‘To the Hellfire’, everyone has their phones out and they’re watching it on their phone. You watch Parkway Drive, and everyone is so into the music, it’s a beautiful moment. The tour we did with them was the sickest one we have been a part of — ever. I’ve never seen a band perform like that. I haven’t been to a lot of massive performances but for what that was, I was shocked,” Ramos says.
“I watched [Gojira] almost every other day; they are fucking insane,” he remembers. “Keep in mind, I’d never listened to them prior to this tour. I know, I’m terrible, whatever. I’m going in with nothing in mind, I have no idea what they sound like, except for awesome. That’s all I heard from every single person who’d seen them.”
“Every single time I watched them, they were incredible. They play so many different styles: they have a lot of progressive, they’ve got a lot of ambient stuff. They have a lot of pretty sounding shit, which I like a lot. I’m like, ‘This is really cool, but how do you define a band like that?’ This album is a big testament to the experience we had on that tour.”
Releasing an album such as I Feel the Everblack… at this point in the Lorna Shore story, is a reminder of the resilience the band has developed over the years. Cycling through various lineup changes, as well as different levels of adversity attached to the departure of previous members, it would not have been a massive surprise if the fire within this band extinguished.
Smiling, Ramos is happy with how fulfilled Lorna Shore has become in its more recent history; this optimism is simply fuelling their ambition to be the best version of themselves – a dynamic and genre-defying heavy band, they can.
“We love making heavy music. That’s what it is. Lorna Shore will always be a heavy band, but we’ve all grown,” he explains. “We want to make more music that is just a bigger version of the band; one that you can’t really define. You wouldn’t be able to say, ‘This band is a deathcore band.’ At the end of the day, it’s just Lorna Shore. Just like listening to Gojira. That is just what they sound like. Their ‘sound’ is whatever Gojira is. That’s their genre.”
Australian fans were able to get a taste of this pure and fired up version of the band, with Lorna Shore making an impressive debut earlier this year. For the band, it was a reminder of how far their reach has been able to extend, as well as being a brilliant opportunity to connect with fans and crew so far from home.
This summer, Lorna Shore will return to Australia as part of the Good Things Festival. Joining a line up boasting Tool, Weezer, Refused, and Garbage, Lorna Shore’s addition to the bill adds to the festival’s growing legacy of providing unique live experiences for a diverse audience.
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Safe to say, Ramos is stoked to be coming back twice in one year.
“Going to Australia or the eastern part of the world in general was a pipedream for us,” he says. “The fact that we did a little tour of Australia and Japan earlier in the year, it was so short, but so unbelievable for us. The fact that we’re coming back for something as big as this festival says a lot about the growth of the band. We never thought that we would be in a place like this, we’re very excited.”
Ramos shares a broad grin when conversation inevitably turns to looking forward to what comes next for Lorna Shore, once I Feel the Everblack… brings them back to stages in a massive way. Ramos himself is a natural frontman and exemplary vocalist, yet he is also aware of the bond and talent everyone has applied to bring the band this far.
He is confident though, that if this album is a gateway for new Lorna Shore fans; or if this one is simply a new step forward for the longtime listener, there’s going to be something for everyone to get on board with.
“I like to think of Lorna Shore as HBO… but old-school HBO, when HBO was fresh!” he laughs.
“Sometimes there’d be shows that wouldn’t be for you, but that’s no problem. For the people who those shows were for, it would be the best show ever. We want to do that, as much as we can. We really tried to give every song its own identity, and make them the best they could be.”
“It’s a testament to the last few tours we’ve done, how much we’ve been on the road. The few tours we did with Parkway Drive was enough for me to be like, “We’ve fucking made it.””
Lorna Shore’s I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me is out now.
