Florida teen thrashers Chained Saint built their debut album Blindside the old way, straight to analog tape with no computers, under the guidance of Alice In Chains frontman William DuVall. With a UK run alongside Slaughter To Prevail ahead and a new EP landing in August, guitarist Ethan Kahn talked us through DuVall’s tape machine, that WWE moment, and why he plugs straight into a Marshall.
Tell us a bit about Chained Saint. Who are you and what’s your band ethos?
We’re four guys who love heavy music. We met in school between the ages of 12 and 15. I was 12 and Sean was 13 when we met, and we immediately hit it off, jamming in my garage or his. Then we met Sebastian at school. I met Cameron in my freshman-year high school guitar class. He was wearing a Metallica t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and I knew we needed to know each other. Then I learned he was a drummer.
As for our ethos, we’re huge fans of the bands that came before us. Thrash metal laid the foundation for everything we do, and we have a tremendous amount of respect for the pioneers who created this music. But Chained Saint was never formed to be a copy of anyone else. We want to carry that spirit forward while finding our own voice. That means taking inspiration from thrash, hardcore, metal, punk, and everything that’s shaped us, but not feeling confined by any one label or scene. At the end of the day, the ethos of Chained Saint is about authenticity. We’re four young musicians creating the music we want to hear, staying true to who we are, and letting the songs dictate the direction rather than trying to fit into someone else’s definition of what we should be. We honour the past, but we’re focused on building our own future.
Who are your main influences, and what is it about thrash metal that made you want to play it?
We all found thrash metal on our own, and it’s something we all bonded over. As a band, I’d say our main influences are Sepultura, Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica and Pantera. People might find it interesting, or not what they’d assume, but Sean and I were also influenced by Rush and Dream Theater.
William DuVall producing your debut is a serious get. How did that come about, and what did he bring to the studio?
We hit the jackpot getting to work with William DuVall on our first record, for many reasons. First and foremost, he’s such a great mentor. He didn’t just say do this or do that. He explained the reason behind many of the things we were doing. Not that different from “wax on, wax off” in The Karate Kid. There’s a method to his madness, and we trusted the process. The greatest thing for us, being 16 and 17 at the time, is that we didn’t have any bad studio habits to break. We only knew the experience we were having in Atlanta at West End Sound, recording to tape. We didn’t know the difference from traditional modern-day recording.
Each day we look back and realise what a special time it was for us and our development as a band. Not just in recording the music, but in the process. The expectation. The standard that was set. The need to understand what we were doing and why. William is a task master and a true professional. He expects everyone to be prepared and locked in, and he holds himself to that same standard. He put in 12-plus-hour days, every day, for over five weeks to make sure the final product was something we could all be proud of and that would stand the test of time. He always said this would be a great representation of where the band is at that moment in time. Now that two years have passed, we know exactly what he meant, because having just turned 19 we’ve seen our tastes evolve. Our sound is evolving into a mesh of hardcore and thrash combined. We’re maturing. These are things only experience can bring. Growth. That’s why, looking back, I can see the wisdom William was conveying to us.
Recording Blindside to analog tape with no computers, tell us about that choice and why it mattered.
This was 100 percent William DuVall’s idea to record the whole record analog. He felt that if we really wanted to embody the thrash sound of the early 80s, let’s just fucking go for it. No click tracks, no computers. Just a tape machine and the understanding that we’d have to make decisions and live with them. There’s just something about the sound you get on tape that doesn’t exist with plug-ins. You can’t manipulate anything. What you hear is what it is. The great Tom Tapley, our engineer, would say, “There’s no undo button,” so we had to lock in and make it happen. I believe William had that confidence in us because he visited us in Florida a few times to watch us rehearse and play a couple of live shows. He taught us how to slow everything down and really get locked in with each other. I’d credit that to this day as to why we’re so tight as a live band.
Your debut single ‘Animosity’ ended up as the theme for WWE 2K24 DLC 4. What was that like?
I mean, we’re teenagers making a debut album, and then the opportunity comes to have the song featured as the theme for the trailer for that game. It was surreal, to say the least.
‘Animosity’ is pretty unforgiving. Is that anger real, or is it more about channelling something for the song?
You’re asking all the good questions. The song ‘Animosity‘ has a meaning behind it. I don’t want to get too deep into it, but it was inspired by a series of events while we were actually making the Blindside album, which is also why the name Blindside has meaning and is attached to this same situation. The original song title was ‘Vengeance‘ before we changed it to ‘Animosity‘, and there’s an actual reference to that early in the song. I’ll just leave it at that. It’s a play on words.
This is your second time at The Whisky. What does playing that room mean to your band?
The Whisky is a legendary venue for music. Just knowing you’re sharing the same stage as so many legends over decades is a special feeling. There’s just something about it and the Sunset Strip, especially for heavy music. Imagining what the 80s were like with the amount of bands playing in Los Angeles at that time. We also released a live EP from that second show in August 2025, and we’ve since played a third show at the Whisky in January.
You’re vocal about doing things the real way, real riffs, real players. What is it about music that’s best created by a human? Is there any benefit to AI?
Look. I don’t even like to use my Quad Cortex, even though I have no choice on tour sometimes, because when you’re the opening band of three and you have to be on and off stage in a 30-minute set, you do what you’re told. If you’re told you can’t have your backline, you can’t have your backline. But any other time, I’m plugging directly into my Marshall JCM 800 and cabinets, and not even going wireless with my guitar. I like it old-school, and the less interference in the signal chain, the more authentic the sound will be. I prefer wedges over IEMs too. There’s a loss of connection to the audience once you start to alienate yourself on stage. If we’re going to let computers create music and try to pawn it off as original, then we might as well quit making art. I don’t understand it, and no matter how intuitive and adaptive AI becomes, it will never be human and truly know human emotion, and I feel it’s that human emotion where real music and art are born.
Tell us a funny, dramatic, or emotional story from the band.
We’ve had a few along the way. Dramatic, I’d say finishing sound check at Mohegan Sun, getting ready to open for Alice In Chains on a run of tour dates, and Jerry Cantrell walking up on stage to tell us the show was being cancelled and that we’d see each other in Nashville. Then the remaining shows were cancelled the next morning. We were 30 minutes away from opening for Alice In Chains as direct support. The banner went up, sound check was over, and then the rug was pulled out from underneath us. But that’s how it goes. It happened to us again in September at Louder Than Life in Louisville. We finished sound check and then the sky opened, with a code red for weather. An hour later we were able to get out of our van, and as we walked up to the stage they were striking our gear.
As far as emotional, I’d say the departure of our original vocalist during the recording of the Blindside album. Mostly because he was part of the original formation of the band and a friend. There has since been reconciliation and we talk from time to time, but it was tough being 16 and 17 and dealing with that turbulence. We literally made a lineup change during the recording of Blindside that delayed everything by a year. We literally left Atlanta with completed music and no vocals.
We hear you’re coming over to the UK. What can fans expect from your set and those Slaughter To Prevail shows as a whole?
We can’t wait. All I can say is we’re going to explode on stage during these sets. One thing I can guarantee is that we’re bringing the energy. We’re beyond excited and grateful to Slaughter To Prevail for giving us this opportunity. This is what we live for.
Is there anything else you’d like to tell UK metalheads?
We can’t wait to play for you. Plain and simple. We want to meet each and every one of you at the shows this summer. We have a new EP dropping in August, and a couple of new singles before then. Can’t wait to play the new songs for you.
