Salt Lake City’s Arsenic Addiction released their fourth album “XIX” in September 2019. The album is the story of an outsider, those who dare to be different, strange, or unusual and are made out to be monsters, demons, or witches because of it. It’s the journey of the human soul from a feminine perspective experiencing love, hate, finding inner power, and making deals with the devil to conquer those who would stand in the way of that power.

Although the music of Arsenic Addiction has evolved in style over the years, the reason has always been the same: to create art, connect with others, and express emotions/complex issues about love, death, and the world that are difficult to convey with mere words. 

A wide range of emotions is packed into Arsenic Addiction’s music, which blends gothic, melodic, and death elements. Check out our interview with Lady A!

Beginnings:

We met in school when we were about 13 years old. We have been playing music together since we were 15. Our other members, Nate Dahlquist (Drums) and Tyler Gipson (Guitar), we have known for years through the local metal scene in different bands.

Behind the name:

The symbolism behind the name is being addicted to something that could potentially be dangerous to you. This could be something like drugs, people, relationships, etc. We use to have a Victorian-inspired stage show. Arsenic was a popular ingredient in cosmetics, medicine, and fashion in the Victorian era. We later shed the very tongue-in-cheek version of the Victorian gothic imagery and moved to a more serious and darker image as our music reflected the same.

Inspiration:

We draw a lot of our inspiration from love, death, history, earth, elements, religion, spiritualism, witchcraft, and anything that deals with the macabre. We all have a lot of bands that inspire us that change our moods, so it makes the question difficult to narrow it down. To name a few we are inspired by bands like Behemoth, Cradle of Filth, In This Moment, and Myrkur.

We like to have the creative process be as collaborative as possible. It usually starts out with a member presenting an idea or “the bones” of the song and then all of us working on it together to flesh it out and try to choose the right direction we feel it should take. 

I write all of the lyrics, sometimes after the music or before the music and sometimes we write to her lyrics, just whatever flows the best. 

Inspiration behind “XIX”:

The new album “XIX” was inspired by love, death, betrayal, Magick, dark ritual, witchcraft, and nature. The album took over 5 years to complete and was worth it for us. It was very cathartic to write and we very much enjoyed the process.

COVID-19:

Covid has affected us very profoundly. We have been able to meet but did take a hiatus from in-person meetings for some time. We have been able to make a safe work environment in our space so that we could meet up and have rehearsals. We have worked on some individual ideas for the next album but have been unable to really put much time into it. The pandemic definitely put a pause on the creative process. We are currently working on promoting our album “XIX” and being prepared to play live when the venues reopen as “XIX” didn’t get the tour it deserves. 

Fun facts:

While filming our music video for Maleficium we decided to shoot one of the two days of shooting up in the Unitas in the snow. It was a beautiful day and getting up the mountain was quite easy and we had no issues. Later on in the evening on our way back down, all the snow had been packed down from travelers and turned to ice. Our poor guitarist slid off the road and was stuck in a ditch, and I almost slid in the same ditch pulling over to try and help him out of it. Luckily, a gentleman passing by had a wench and was kind enough to pull him out. I say kind because all of these nice people were driving up the mountain to cut down their Christmas trees and here we are, in our music video make-up and costumes, standing on the side of the road looking like we had just escaped the woods post ritual. After a very slow and careful hour-long drive to the main road, we were home free. We laugh about it now. 

To everyone who has supported Arsenic Addiction throughout the years, we would like to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. It is amazing to connect with people through our music and entertain them. If you have not listened to our Album “XIX” then please check it out, available everywhere you can stream music, please check out our videos for “Fire”, “Maleficium”, and stay tuned for our video for “Moon and Sun”. We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy.