Thy Art Is Murder—known for their technical brilliance, visceral performances and frontman CJ McMahon’s signature roar—talk about social, political and environmental injustices in their songs. And yes, for the Australian band, combining elements of depressive hardcore with death metal — via “intelligent lyrics focused around deeper levels of human suffering” is purposeful, says guitarist Andy Marsh. “Seriously, we’re trying to fill in the gap of what we’re not getting out of metal. We create a sound we wish we could hear from other bands.”

It’s apparently working. The band’s latest album, Holy War, charted No. 7 on the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Pop Charts and beat out Ed Sheeran. They made national Australian news as  the first ever death metal band to land the top 10. (Their 2012 release, Hate, also made history as the first death metal album to crack the Australian top 40.)

Marsh also says this about himself, singer McMahon, bassist Sean Delander and drummer Lee Stanton: “We’re the kind of people that have questions to ask,” he says. Holy War has songs about religion, lost love, animal rights, the environment, child abuse, the Internet … “All the things we feel passionately about. No one else is talking about religious nutters killing all these kids! And our fans can tell that from how we are as people, the music we write, how angry we are when we play.”

He talks about his roots and how Myspace made their success possible while living in Australia.

Hometown: Hilo, Hawaii, split with Brisbane, Australia. I was a global baby.

Homebase: I split my time when I’m not on tour between Minneapolis Minnesota and New Jersey. I grew up in the sweltering heat so I’m a sucker for the cold north.

Thy Art is Murder has been around since 2006. How did you all meet?

The guys started the band a couple years before I joined the band and I think they all met at a party of some sort. I met the guys through playing in other bands on the Australian metal circuit and eventually ended up joining about six years ago.

What is Holy War about?

Late last year, we entered the studio in secret to create our follow up to Hate, free of expectation and public pressure. What we came out with was a reaction to things going on around the world that crawl under our skin, that make us feel sick to be alive. Musically, it is darker, faster and more technical than anything we've done in the past and it hits hard lyrically. We wrote about concerns of ours, real issues, hardships that people are facing around the world today. Of course, it wouldn't be a Thy Art record if a lot of those affairs weren't rooted in religion somehow, and what better way to sum up the state of all things than by entitling our album Holy War. This is our war on racism, homophobia, child abuse, animal cruelty and all evil born of religious immunity, indoctrination, and ignorance. It is ultimately a push for secularism and humanism. Without it, we will be left in the hands of mad men.

Did you grow up in a musical household? How did you discover metal?

I definitely did not come up in a musical household. My mother used to listen to a bit of ‘80s pop and old disco music but my father frowned upon modern music. I left the house when I was 17 and started hanging out at shows and listening to as much new music as possible.

Who are your biggest musical influences?

On guitar, I’m a big fan of John Petrucci and Paul Gilbert. Early on discovering those dudes helped drive me to put in more hours on the instrument. Musically, I’m into a pretty eclectic collection of bands, bands like Muse, Behemoth, The Dillinger Escape plan, I try to not stick to one genre.

Finish this sentence: We’re so deathcore that …

We’re so deathcore that we still play breakdowns in 2015 and still get away with it.

How does living in Australia influence your music? Do you feel that you had to try harder to get known worldwide?

Living in Australia certainly makes touring harder but it doesn’t make it impossible. We were lucky early on to gain some worldwide fans through the power of Myspace and really helped us gain exposure in places we could not yet afford to tour in.

What is your songwriting process like? Do lyrics or music come first?

Music comes first, lyrics second. Sean writes the majority of the music and then presents it to the band and then I write the majority of the lyrics. We all talk about concepts and ideas that we would like to communicate and represent through our music and then I try to come up with a twist on it for the lyrics.

You come off as pretty serious because the music is so heavy. What do you do for fun?

We eat food, lots of food and don’t take anything else in our lives too seriously. Cj plays a lot of soccer and video games, this year Sean has taken to travelling between tours, Kevin lifts weights, I cook food and hang out with my family and Lee just drinks beers and blasts beats all year round.