Creeping Death’s Reese Alavi on the band’s return to the road ahead of Thursday’s Warehouse show

Creeping Death. // photo courtesy the artist

Creeping Death plays as part of The Summer Slaughter Tour 2026 Part II, along with Hatebreed, Terror, Incantation, Gates to Hell, and Torture at the Warehouse on Broadway Thursday, September 3. Details on that show here.

Texas death metal band Creeping Death is exactly as heavy as you’d expect from a band which shares its name with one of Metallica’s finest songs. Over the course of their decade as a band, they’ve come to be known for songs which groove even as they kick you straight in the teeth.

It’s been three years since their last release, 2023’s Boundless Domain, and nearly a year since they last hit the road, so the announcement of them being part of The Summer Slaughter Tour 2026 Part II, joining a lineup featuring Hatebreed, Terror, Incantation, Gates to Hell, and Torture makes the tour’s stop at the Warehouse on Broadway this Thursday, September 3, an absolute instant purchase for any fan of heavy music.

We spoke with Creeping Death frontman Reese Alavi via Zoom ahead of the tour kickoff.

The Pitch: What’s it like playing these mini-festival tours where you’ve got five other bands on the bill? What does that offer a band like yours when you’re touring?

Reese Alavi: Dude, I don’t know. It hasn’t started yet, but I’m really stoked about it. I think in terms of what it offers–yeah, it’s basically a mini fest, and so I think the concept is very sick because it puts smaller bands in the opportunity to really actually offload some merch at some shows, and it’s pretty tight.

Also, the whole lineup is very stacked. I get to tour with Hatebreed, so that kicks ass. We were supposed to in 2021, but COVID happened, and it just never got rescheduled. It was announced and everything too.

That’s gotta be the cool thing ’cause it’s putting metal bands and hardcore bands together on the same bill, and it’s gotta be great when you play a show and you’re playing to people who are into heavy music but might not be specifically into the genre you play.

Yeah. Everyone in our band very much appreciates a mixed or even adjacently mixed bill. We’re out there for a month, dude. Nobody wants to hear the same shit for five sets in a row. And I feel like that’s what the audience wants to hear, too.

You get to play to different people, which is awesome, and you get to see all of these other bands play as well.

That’s the best part of tour, 100%. That’s the best part.

Even more so than yourselves getting up on stage?

Dude, being on stage is for sure–it goes without saying–the best part, but you kinda black out when you get up there. But I get to watch throughout the last 10 years of my life, some of my favorite bands play every night, and I’m just like, “This is so sick.” It’s the- I’ve had those moments with [Dying] Fetus and Carcass. I’m gonna have that with Hatebreed. Incantation–I’ve been listening to that band forever, so I’m very stoked about that.

No, it’s one of the best parts, honestly, ’cause, like–I don’t know. I just very much appreciate seeing bands that, when I was a kid, when I was young and naive, I didn’t think I’d see them, or just, “Oh, it’s gonna be so hard to buy a $40 Hatebreed ticket.” It’s tight. I love watching bands that I like, and that’s the only reason we do it. We just wanna have fun.

It’s been a minute since your last album. Boundless Domain came out in 2023, but you’re on a new label now. What does that mean for Creeping Death?

We haven’t toured since the Cruelty run in 2025, so we’ve been off for a minute. The break was needed, and it did what we needed to do. We restructured a little bit and are a little past the halfway marker on writing LP3, so that’s very exciting. We’ve been working on it since January, pretty much every other week, every two to three weeks, getting together on the weekends, ’cause we’re all spread out now in Austin, San Antonio, and DFW. We’ve been doing like camps on the weekends and just writing LP3. It’s pretty tight.

How challenging is that when you’ve taken time off? You’re not touring and seeing each other, and you’ve spread out to different cities. Does that make it a fresher experience when you get together and write because you’re not constantly on top of each other?

Not that anyone’s down each other’s throats or anything, but we had some room to breathe, and we went really hard for a long time. The break didn’t feel super weird. It went a little bit longer than I would’ve liked it to but–logistics and stuff. I think that because it’s been so long since we’ve written, and we’re at a point where having that break and stepping back a little bit, we can see the big picture a little more than when we’re just like, “Okay, LP this year. LP2 next year.”

We can take what we want, or what we like, from both records, because there are a lot of differences between them, and kind of piece together what we meant for both of them to sound like, if that makes sense. I think that the break gave us a little more insight there. We got to sit with it for a little more, and just not be constantly going, which was very nice.

There’s something about Texas death metal. There’s a twang to it that I can’t really explain, and it really comes out at the beginning of “Boundless Domain,” right? There’s that intro that just sounds like it’s a spaghetti Western before it kicks your fucking ass.

That’s the sickest description I’ve ever heard. I love that. Yeah, the flanger was a very last-minute decision, and we were like, “Fuck it.”

What is it about the heat and the Texas plains and stuff like that that just seeps into Texas death metal?

I don’t know. I feel like a big part of why I’m very proud of the bands that come out of Texas–and I think that we have some of the best–is that groove is very important in our death metal bands. And I think that probably stems from everyone growing up and everyone’s mom having made out with Dimebag Darrell at some point. If you live in DFW, your parents got high with Pantera or some shit.

I think Pantera has a big influence there, ’cause I think that what sets Texas death metal apart mostly as a whole is that we have groove, and when there’s repetition, it’s not really monotonous.

That was 100% a thing I was gonna bring up: because Creeping Death–especially on Boundless Domain- there is some groove to that record.

It’s strangely downtempo but upbeat. That’s as close as I can get it to putting into words. You almost still feel like you’re in a downtempo part of the song when it transitions to machine-gun-fire chug, ’cause it’s still a little draggy. I think it just comes back to the groove thing, the pocket. We live in that shit.

When you all are writing music, which comes first? Is it music or lyrics?

The only thing that comes after lyrics is, like, leads and overdubs that happen in the studio. Songs will either be born from- we just come blank and empty-handed to a–it’s funny, dude. We actually just had two or three camp weekends where it wasn’t, like, bad, but we were just trying to figure out how to finish the song, and then the next practice, we just started a new one from scratch.

No one had a riff coming in, and we banged it out that day. It’s like a coin toss sometimes, especially when you’re trying to do it within a set amount of time. But I don’t know. It usually starts with either Trey [Pemberton] or AJ [Ross III] bringing a riff to the drawing board, or we’ll just go from a blank canvas at the practice, and then drums will usually weigh in on structure and stuff like that.

And I’ll be like,” I think it’d be really cool if you went like, ‘Wa-na-na-wow,’ right there or some shit.” That’s all I got.

Where are you pulling from when you’re working on lyrics?

I’m trying to ask myself that question, because now I feel like I’ve written the same–more or less–story for the last three releases, so I feel like I can’t remember, but I think lyricism-wise there’s definitely some Riley Gale influences there. The dude was a fucking poet.

Not one of my super-favorite bands, but a little bit of Asphyx-type stuff, like apocalyptic in their style. Last One on Earth kind of thing. And then, I don’t know, just fantasy shit. Fantasy novels and psychological thriller stuff. I don’t know. I’m usually just making shit up and trying to somehow personify it to whatever the fuck is happening today.

“Remnants of the Old Gods” is very much like a Lovecraft story, but it also talks about politicians who hang around way too long. As you’ve been working on this new LP3 and getting ready for tour, what are some things that you’ve gained from the break and the time off?

Just being refreshed, honestly. There was probably a five-year, six-year stretch where it was five weeks on, eight weeks off constantly. And as much as we love it, you do get burned out sometimes. The break just kinda made me remember why–I think all of us can say this, too–why we love it so much.

It went from us being very tired to, “Oh, fuck, I cannot wait to do this shit again.” We’re reorganized. We’re the most well-lubed functionality-wise as a band as we’ve been in a really long time, which is awesome. But no, it feels new again, to a degree.

Creeping Death plays as part of The Summer Slaughter Tour 2026 Part II, along with Hatebreed, Terror, Incantation, Gates to Hell, and Torture at the Warehouse on Broadway Thursday, September 3. Details on that show here.