Lorna Shore: “The metal scene is growing a lot, and fast”
“The metal scene is growing a lot, and quickly.” Will Ramos he says it with the naturalness of someone who, in the space of a few years, has gone from being the new singer of an already established band, to becoming one of the most recognizable faces of the contemporary extreme scenedriven by that viral shock that the single “To the Hellfire” – from the 2021 EP “…And I return to nothingness” – triggered and which brought the name of Lorna Shore far beyond the boundaries of deathcore. Now the band is among the most influential names of the genre in recent timesalso thanks to his pushing beyond traditional limits, rewriting what extreme metal can be today. As evidence of their continuous change, Lorna Shore released the album “I feel the everblack celebrating within me”, already presented live in the United States, Canada and Australia at the end of last year, and which is about to bring the group back on tour. The tourwhich kicks off today – January 23 – in Germany and will continue until spring, will stop in Italy for a single date on 1 February 2026 at the Gran Teatro Geox in Padua.
“It’s amazing to be back on tour again alreadyI won’t lie. It feels like we just got off stage a short while ago, but that’s because the break went by really quickly”, Will Ramos tells Rockol: “I’m happy to be back on the road. We also play songs that the audience will hear live for the first time. So, whatever happens, it will be a great experience“, adds the singer, during the chat directly on the other side of the world, from his home in New Jersey. Yet, his fuchsia quiff makes him immediately recognizable even in a situation far from his natural habitat of stage, sweat, scream, growl and mosh pit.
The tours it is the natural condition of Lorna Shore in recent years and for Ramos it is also a way to connect with people from distant places and explore new countries. “From the first part of the tour, the concerts in Australia were one of my favorite moments,” explains the 31-year-old singer: “I discovered that I had a lot of friends over there, so after the concerts I stopped for a couple of days to spend time with them and visit some places. Now I love Australia even more.” The new tour scheduled in Europe will offer the band the opportunity to also return to Italyat a distance of almost three years since the last tricolor passage. Since Will Ramos has been in Lorna Shore, the group has had the opportunity to play in our area in 2022 in Padua, on the occasion of Slipknot’s Knotfest in June 2023 in Bologna and in November of that year in Milan. “We haven’t played often in Italy. So I’m super excited to come back”, Ramos enthusiastically underlines: “I also think that, precisely because we are returning after a long time, this will push people – especially Italians – to let loose a little more. As if they felt ‘hungry’ to see Lorna Shore. And our response is: ‘Here we are, now we are. We are here to give you everything. So let loose, let out all the emotions you’ve kept inside since the last time we played here‘. At least, that’s what I hope.”
To the inevitable question about how to bring a record to the stageor very dense, “dramatic” and layered like new “I feel the everblack festering within me”, Ramos replies without poses: “It’s honestly hard to say because, when I’m on stage, I’m just trying to survive. Sometimes these songs are really difficult and I just think, ‘Come on, fuck, let’s do it. I don’t know how, but we will, one way or another.’ However, there come times when everything comes together again. A piece like ‘Glenwood’, or ‘Pain remains I’, has those moments where there is total chaos, with me running everywhere, and then everything comes together in a precise moment, perhaps on a single emotional vocal line. And that’s pretty much it. I try not to focus too much on what I’m doing on stage, except when it really matters. And it doesn’t always matter. Sometimes the light show does half the work for me, and I can just stand there and scream my soul out.” The voice, therefore, remains the most fragile and technical point of the whole thingand – when asked how to manage emotions while maintaining vocal technique – Ramos reiterates it without invincible frontman mythologies: “I’m still trying to figure it out every fucking day. Sometimes you have great concerts, sometimes you have shitty concerts. It’s part of the natural progression of things. Unfortunately, I do everything I can to manage any damage to the voice. That’s all I can do. Using your voice in this way can be very exhausting; so, it’s just about making sure it doesn’t consume me too much.” He adds: “I’ve spent 16 years mastering my instrument, and I’m still learning. I continue to discover new ways of doing things. And in doing so, sometimes I find techniques that are not good for the voice, and others that are excellent. But you can’t know until you try. They push the boundaries to see what happens. You have to have the confidence to try something new. If it doesn’t work, you try something else. That’s how it goes. And above all, whatever you do, you have to stand on stage and look like you know exactly what you’re doingeven if you actually don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck is going on.”
Revealing just what Italian fans can expect from Lorna Shore’s next concertWill Ramos then explains how the band approaches the construction of the set list and a show: “When we build the show and the set list, we struggle a lot to find a flow that really works”, says the singer: “Let’s add new songs to the setlist; so, it’s exciting not only for the audience, but also for us. We’re super excited to play new music. The lineup up to the end is difficult to define. But I can say that it’s going to be one of the biggest shows we’ve ever done, for production and for sound. The band is growing and changing every day. So what the audience sees will not be what they last saw. Let’s put it this way.”
Lorna Shore’s new album, “I feel the everblack celebrating within me“, arrived three years after “Pain remains” of 2022 to confirm the reputation of the group, capable of holding together brutality and an almost cinematic breath without losing compactness. Through the ten tracks of the album, a work is configured crossed by images of dissolution, internal conflict and loss, in which the emotional dimension is intertwined with a musical writing based on orchestral stratifications, extreme dynamics, rhythmic tension and a use of the voice as a narrative tool, capable of transforming deathcore into a dramatic, almost liturgical language, which stages the constant comparison between darkness and catharsis, explaining what “I feel the everblack feasting within me” represents for Lorna Shore as a band, Will Ramos finds that “you represent how much we can change and at the same time remain authentic to ourselvesHe continues: “Lorna Shore have been around for a very long time. If you compare the first album ‘Psalms’ from 2015, or the EP ‘Maleficium’ from 2013, with what we do now, it’s night and day. At times it doesn’t even feel like the same band. But it absolutely is. Lorna Shore always has that something, that I can’t even define, a sort of je ne sais quoi that makes me say: ‘Ok, yes, it’s them’. It’s different, sure. We are all changing. Each of us is changing the sound in our own way. Whatever it becomes, let’s move on.”
Precisely for this reason, Ramos rejects the idea that Lorna Shore’s music should be pigeonholed into one emotionin a single posture. When asked about the sensations he felt when playing the songs from the new album live, the singer replies with a list of moods that coexist, and for this very reason they work. “Some songs are positive, some are sad, some are triumphal. Whatever the case, the goal is to feel the emotion linked to a certain song”, says Will:
“I can’t say it’s all anger, nor that it’s all enthusiasm. Sometimes we play songs that make me sad while I’m on stage, and it’s part of the process. I think it’s therapeutic for me. I experience my emotions on stage. And I think everyone else does too, under the stage.”
The term “therapy“, in his speech, does not appear as a label, but more as the concrete description of an effect that he sees happening before his eyes, among comments, messages, reactions. Based on the first concerts presenting the album, the reaction of the public reached Will and the band in the most positive way possible: “There are very sad songs, and sometimes among the comments, even those that my girlfriend tells me, someone points it out to me. And I think, ‘Thank you, that means you’re really feeling it.’ ‘Forevermore’ is one of our sad songs, while ‘Glenwood’ is a sad song, but also a happy one. So I happen to hear people tell me: ‘That song made me feel terrible, but it also pushed me to write to my father, my mother, who I hadn’t spoken to in I don’t know how long’. For me it’s incredible. For me, that was always why I wanted to make music. I don’t want to be someone else’s therapy, but I want to be something that can guide someone, naturally, towards the idea of helping themselves. Whether it’s a song like ‘Glenwood’, which makes you want to make things right with people you no longer have with you, or a super powerful song that makes you say: ‘I don’t feel good today, I need to feel strong’, or a song like ‘Forevermore’ that helps you accept the loss of someone.”
That’s a neat way of saying that the emotional impact, in Lorna Shore, is not decoration, but substanceit’s a tool, it’s part of because this music finds a new and wider audience today. “Metal is becoming huge,” insists Will Ramos, and explains it with a simple image:
“As a kid he was convinced that certain bands were ‘the biggest ever’ because in their world they really were. Then I look at the numbers, from Spotify and YouTube, for example, and I think: ‘Damn, Lorna Shore are huge’. And that’s something I would never have imagined. The point is that the metal scene is growing so much and fast. The historical bands are still as big as they were back then. But now the audience is ten times bigger. And so the new bands can still get bigger. It’s crazy. I never would have thought let metal get to this point here we are. Let’s fucking move on.”
In this scenario, faced with the reflection that it almost seems that the new generations need this type of music, this emotional power, Will Ramos confesses: “I don’t know, honestly. I don’t think there is just one answer. Each band has a different element that makes it good for a specific reason. I can’t say with certainty that it’s one thing rather than another.”
