Feature: A HILL TO DIE UPON – The Lost Christmas Interview 

by Chris Gatto

Not everything ever goes as planned when writing for a magazine. Some ideas never sprout into fruition, personalities can clash, other writers can get the scoop on you (especially when you insist on only reviewing physical product), and best intentions can lose out to available time (when you’ve got a permanent stack of cds to review at any given time). These things you never see as a reader. Well, this Christmas, I want to give you a peek in our Heaven’s Metal vault and show you an interview that should have been. The year was 2023, the band is A Hill to Die Upon and the album was The Black Trinity. Our blackened death metal heroes had just done their best take on Christmas from the viewpoint of the magi. I’ve covered brothers Adam and Michael Cook with either an interview or a review for every album of their career as AHTDU, so execution should be a cinch, right? Right… 

(12/23) Hey Adam and Michael, what’s happening? This is Chris Gatto from Heaven’s Metal magazine. Care to engage in an interview once again?

Adam: Hey Chris! Always great to hear from you. Yes, we’d love to do another interview. Thanks!

How are my favorite shirtless metal miscreants doing? (It’s rare to see a picture where these two are wearing shirts- or not wearing corpse paint- or blood). Where have you guys been hiding out the last 5 years or so?

(No response for a while) Hello?? (echo…)

Adam: We’re down here! (echo…) Sorry, crazy week so far!

It’s alright. Thought you got kidnapped by some jealous pop tart.

(Incoming picture of a stairwell being remodeled)

Adam: I’ve been remodeling an old courthouse this week. Abe Lincoln would have walked on these floor boards when he was a lawyer.

Nice. They make you wear a shirt for that gig? 

(Laughing face) Sadly…

(Another incoming picture of the remodel, but noteworthy is the fact that all the other workers are wearing orange jumpsuits)

Straight outta lockup?

Yep. Cool dudes, though. That’s pretty much what I have been doing the past 5 years. Building and remodeling and tagging along with The Comancheros whenever possible.

Was there an intentional gap from the last album until now?

Just busy and burnt out. We had pushed VAVM(Via Artis Via Mortis- 2017) really hard and it really didn’t take off. Michael was more and more busy with The Comancheros, Nolan has been touring, doing sound for some really cool metal bands, and I’ve been helping with the family construction business.

I, for one, am glad to see AHTDU back in action. 

Jairus from Rottweiler Records started talking to us about doing an album several years ago. Took a while to come together, but if it weren’t for him, we probably wouldn’t have really done much. He definitely helped us a LOT!

Who are The Comancheros?

Michael plays drums in The Comancheros. They’re a Southern rock band a little like Thin Lizzy and AC/DC. They just did a tour with The Darkness (THE Darkness!) and I got to tag along. It was a blast!

Very cool. So I guess it wasn’t in you to make the Cook Brothers Christmas album, so you had to do it all up extreme metal style?

Yeah. I’d like to say it spun out of wanting to tell the story of the three magi in the Christmas story and do a concept album about them. So we have some original songs in there too that help tell the rest of the story, but we loved Jairus’ idea of adding the Christmas songs.

There are sooo many cool and weird instruments used in some of the acoustic songs and we got to do some really fun stuff. Michael played accordion, banjo, drums, and arranged some of the best songs. Nolan absolutely smashed all of the clean singing, acoustic guitars, and guitar solos. We had so many cool guest musicians and it was amazing to have our old guitarist Elisha Mullins mix and master it. Very pleased with how it tuned out.

But a “Cook Brothers Irish Christmas Folk Ballads” might have to become a thing…

I was trying to figure out what the druid looking guys were on the cover for a while, and then one day it dawned on me that they were the three wise men. 

We have an old song, “Adept in Divinity,” off our second album Omens. It’s about the three wise men and that has always been a big story of interest to us.

So the album’s pretty much an expansion upon that song?

Yeah. Pretty much.

The sonic quality on the album is super clear this time, so you really get to hear all those odd instruments up close and personal. And having Bruce Fitzhugh on guest vocals is pretty awesome.

Having Bruce was such an honor… I almost couldn’t believe it when I heard it!

Definitely!

At this point, things unraveled. We were only about halfway through the interview, but it had gotten late, so Adam and I made plans to finish talking the next day. I never heard from him again. After trying multiple times, I reached Michael, who suggested I contact him directly. I did, but never heard from him again either. For all I know, the Cook brothers were kidnapped and taken in by a family of Sasquatch, out in the Midwest somewhere. They’ll pop up again, I’m sure. The Black Nativity was a great album, by a great band who I have extensive history with, but once Christmas 2023 passed, the urgency to put out an interview about a Christmas album died and it never happened. I’m kind of a perfectionist when it comes to writing, so, as much as I hate to leave something incomplete, I hate for you to read something that’s incomplete. But here it is- Christmas 2024, and hearing the album again, I thought it might be a cool metal Christmas present to let our readers peek in our vault. Now off with you! Quick before I change my mind! Merry Christmas, everyone!

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