EPK – Absolute Darkness – Witness To A Dying World (2026)
Publicist – Jon Asher – jon[@]ashermediarelations[.]com
For fans of Testament, Vio-lence, Exodus, At The Gates, The Crown, Amon Amarth
Band: Absolute Darkness
Witness To A Dying World
Release Date: October 23, 2026
Label: Self-Release
Genre: Death/Thrash
Location of Band: San Francisco Bay Area, USA
“Witness To A Dying World is the album I’ve wanted Absolute Darkness to make for a long time. Not because it’s heavier or faster than our previous releases, but because it finally feels like a complete band effort. Everyone contributed to the songwriting in one way or another, and I think that made every song better.
Lyrically, the album isn’t about one event or one person. It’s about the world we live in today and the things that frustrate, concern, or inspire me enough that I feel the need to write about them. There are songs about propaganda, abuse of power, war, addiction, homelessness, and standing up to tyranny. Those aren’t exactly cheerful topics, but I think music has always been a good place to explore difficult subjects.
Musically, we never set out to write the same song ten times. Some songs are straight-up thrash. Others lean more into melodic death metal. There are a lot of guitar harmonies, plenty of solos, and enough twists along the way to keep things interesting, but we always tried to make every change feel natural instead of complicated for the sake of being complicated.
At the end of the day, we’re doing this because we genuinely enjoy making music together. None of us are trying to become full-time musicians or make a living from the band. We all have careers, families, and lives outside of music, and that gives us the freedom to write the songs we want to write instead of chasing trends. If people come away remembering the songs, wanting to hear them again, and maybe even thinking about the stories they tell, then we’ve accomplished exactly what we set out to do.” – Absolute Darkness – Ron Dorn – Guitar/Lead Vocals
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“Combining death/thrash influences… stronger production values that hopefully will garner more buzz and attention.” – Dead Rhetoric (Failure Of State 2022)
“Part album, part call to arms… a rabble-rousing affair and a slamming indictment of modern-day society.” – The Headbanging Moose (Failure Of State 2022)
Band: Absolute Darkness
Witness To A Dying World
Release Date: October 23, 2026
Label: Self-Release
Genre: Death/Thrash
Location of Band: San Francisco Bay Area, USA
Track Listing:
1. Above The Law – 3:56
2. Attritional Warfare – 3:50
3. World Decay – 3:28
4. Snake Oil – 4:14
5. Different Illegally – 3:33
6. Loyalty To Me – 3:32
7. I Guess I Die – 3:59
8. Big Lies – 3:51
9. Extreme Accountability – 3:34
10. World In A World (Vio-lence Cover) – 4:13
Album Length: 38:21
Album Credits
All songs written by: Absolute Darkness, except World In A World
Produced by: Harry Ahlas/Absolute Darkness
Mixed and Mastered by: Harry Ahlas
Album Artwork by: Ikke Greca
Member of ASCAP
Band Lineup:
Ron Dorn – Guitar/Lead Vocals
Douglas Vetter II – Lead Guitar/Backup Vocals
Orson Sojo – Bass
Scott Russell – Drums
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About The Album or Single Artwork:
Answered by: Ron Dorn – Guitar
The artwork is meant to capture the world that the album lives in. It’s not tied to one specific song. Instead, it represents the common thread that runs throughout the record.
I wanted it to portray a society that has completely come apart. The buildings are in ruins, the streets are dangerous, and violence has become part of everyday life. The people on the cover aren’t superheroes or villains—they’re just trying to survive in a world that’s forgotten what normal used to look like.
I also wanted the artwork to have a cinematic feel. Instead of showing one dramatic moment, it captures an ordinary day in an extraordinary world—one where fear, corruption, and violence have become so commonplace that people simply keep walking.
About the album as a whole (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):
Musically, Witness To A Dying World continues building on the death/thrash foundation established on Failure Of State, but with stronger songwriting, more collaborative arrangements, and a greater emphasis on memorable guitar harmonies and solos. It’s an aggressive album from beginning to end, but we worked hard to make every song stand on its own rather than simply being fast for the sake of being fast.
Lyrically, the album explores what happens when power goes unchecked. Corruption, propaganda, authoritarianism, war, exploitation, addiction, and social decay all appear throughout the record, usually told through individual stories rather than direct commentary. The songs aren’t meant to lecture the listener. They’re meant to tell stories that hopefully make people think while still delivering a fun, high-energy metal album.
Track by Track (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):
Answered by: Ron Dorn – Guitar
1. Above The Law – This is probably the most collaborative song on the album. Everyone contributed ideas that found their way into the final version, making it one of the most enjoyable songs to write.
Musically, it comes out of the gate fast but eventually opens up into one of my favorite sections on the album. The middle of the song slows things down just enough to let the guitar harmonies and Doug’s solo breathe before driving back into the final chorus.
Lyrically, it’s told from the perspective of someone who believes they’re completely untouchable. They abuse their power, blame everyone else for their actions, and don’t even bother trying to hide what they’re doing because they don’t believe there will ever be consequences. It’s a mindset we’ve all seen play out in the real world, and I thought it made for an interesting character to write from.
2. Attritional Warfare – This is probably my favorite song on the album.
The lyrics tell the story from both sides of a war. There isn’t a hero or a villain. It’s about ordinary soldiers waiting for their turn to charge, likely to die. Eventually the roles reverse, and the other side is waiting for their turn to charge, likely to die. That’s the tragedy of attritional warfare. Everyone loses.
The song was inspired by a combination of things. The war in Ukraine certainly influenced it, but so did watching The Pacific and its depiction of the brutal Pacific campaign during World War II. I was also inspired by the trench warfare of World War I. Different wars, different places, but the same reality of people being fed into battles where human lives become just another resource to be spent.
When we created the animated video, we intentionally kept the setting vague. We didn’t want it to be identifiable as any particular war or country because that wasn’t the point. The song isn’t about one conflict—it’s about the human cost of wars where victory comes through simply outlasting the other side.
3. World Decay – This song has a lot of Doug in it. It started with a riff I came up with, but Doug really took it and ran with it, writing most of the music from there. Orson and Scott also contributed riffs and ideas, so it ended up being another very collaborative song.
The lyrics went through a complete rewrite. My original idea was about worker exploitation, and while I liked the concept, I just couldn’t get it to say what I wanted it to say. I lived with those lyrics for a few months, but they never really clicked.
Then I watched two separate incidents where unarmed people were killed by law enforcement while standing up for what they believed in. That completely changed how I looked at the song. I threw away the original lyrics and started over.
The finished song is about standing up to tyranny, no matter the personal cost. History has shown that people who peacefully stand up to those in power are sometimes met with violence instead. That’s a difficult reality, but it’s also why those stories need to be told and remembered.
4. Snake Oil – This was Doug’s first full song contribution to the band, and I think it’s a great track. It has more room to breathe than some of the other songs on the album, with a few mellower sections, but when it picks up it has plenty of fast thrash to keep the energy up.
Lyrically, the song tells the story of the opioid epidemic through the eyes of one person. It starts with someone simply trying to deal with the pain from an injury. They become addicted, lose control of their life, and ultimately die from that addiction before being discovered by their family.
Unfortunately, that’s a story that’s played out far too many times over the last couple of decades. Rather than trying to tell the story from a broad perspective, I wanted to show how devastating it can be through the life of a single person. I think that makes the ending hit a lot harder.
5. Different Illegally – Musically, the song is built around layered guitar harmonies that run throughout almost the entire track. The middle section has a lot going on, with multiple guitar parts and melodies working together before driving back into the final chorus.
Lyrically, it’s about using the law to justify treating people differently simply because they’re viewed as “other.” Throughout history, we’ve seen governments and societies decide that certain groups are the problem, then pass laws or policies that make it easier to marginalize them. The specific group changes over time, but the pattern repeats itself.
The title is meant to reflect that idea. Being different isn’t illegal, but throughout history there have been plenty of attempts to make it feel that way. It’s also about distraction. While people are busy arguing over one group of people, the real issues often go unaddressed.
6. Loyalty To Me – Musically, this song opens with a driving mid-tempo march that sets the tone before exploding into one of the faster sections on the album. After all that energy, it comes full circle by returning to the opening theme to close the song. I always like it when a song feels like it has a real beginning and ending instead of just stopping.
Lyrically, it’s about people in positions of power who demand absolute personal loyalty from everyone around them while having no intention of returning that loyalty themselves. To them, loyalty isn’t something that’s earned—it’s simply expected. Anyone who questions them or refuses to fall in line is quickly discarded and replaced.
It’s another example of how power can corrupt people, but it’s also a reminder that loyalty only has value when it goes both ways
7. I Guess I Die – Musically, this is one of the thrashiest songs on the album and one of my favorites to play live. It has a lot of energy from start to finish, and Doug absolutely knocked it out of the park with the guitar solo. It’s just a fun song to play.
This was also one of the first songs written for the album, along with Attritional Warfare, so it helped establish the direction the rest of the record would take.
Lyrically, it’s about the hopelessness that can come with homelessness. It’s easy to think it could never happen to you, but sometimes all it takes is a few bad breaks and not much of a safety net. Once someone ends up on the street, climbing back out can be incredibly difficult.
The song isn’t meant to judge people or pretend there’s a simple solution. It’s about recognizing how quickly someone’s life can unravel and how easy it is for society to look the other way.
8. Big Lies – This song has a lot going on musically. There are layered guitar harmonies, overlapping left and right guitar parts, and multiple vocal layers that all work together to create a much bigger sound than a typical thrash song.
Lyrically, it’s about propaganda and the power of repeating lies often enough that people begin accepting them as truth. A false claim can dominate the headlines, while the eventual court ruling, retraction, or consequences for the people spreading those lies receive far less attention. By then, the damage has already been done because many people believed what they wanted to believe in the first place.
The quote in the middle of the song reinforces that idea. It’s a reminder that propaganda isn’t a new concept. The tactics have been around for a long time, and they’re just as effective today as they’ve ever been
9. Extreme Accountability
This song started as a collaboration between Doug and Scott. They brought the musical ideas to the table, and I wrote the lyrics around what they had created. It ended up being one of the heavier songs on the album, and I think the music fits the subject matter perfectly.
Lyrically, it’s very much inspired by Jeffrey Epstein. That’s not something we tried to hide. More broadly, though, it’s about the idea that wealth and influence can allow people to escape accountability for years, surrounding themselves with people who are either bought off or too afraid to speak up.
Regardless of what people believe happened at the end of his life, I think just about everyone can agree that he was a monster. The song isn’t really about his death—it’s about everything that came before it, how long he was able to operate, and the damage caused by the people and institutions that enabled him.
10. World In A World (Vio-lence cover) – This song is very personal to me. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent a lot of time going to shows when Vio-lence, Death Angel, and Forbidden were all local bands on the rise. I was at the record release show for Oppressing the Masses, and World In A World has always been one of my favorite Vio-lence songs.
When we decided to record it, my goal wasn’t to reinvent it. I wanted to stay as faithful to the original as possible while taking advantage of modern recording technology. The one place I intentionally made it our own was the vocals. Sean Killian’s voice is so unique that trying to imitate it would have been doing both him and myself a disservice. Instead, I leaned into my own deeper death/thrash vocal style. I think it gives listeners a different perspective on a classic song while still respecting what made the original so special.
One thing that was really important to me was not recording it to a click track. The original performance speeds up and slows down naturally, and I didn’t want to lose that feel. We followed the original performance closely so those natural tempo changes would carry through into our version.
I’m really proud of how it turned out. I hope longtime Vio-lence fans hear it as the tribute it was intended to be. The goal was never to improve on the original—just to celebrate a song that meant a lot to me growing up in the Bay Area while putting our own stamp on it.
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STORY ANGLES / FUN FACTS ABOUT THE BAND
1. Bay Area Thrash Roots
Ron grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the rise of the thrash movement and attended shows by many of the bands that helped define the genre. He was present for the Oppressing the Masses record release show and has long been a fan of bands like Vio-lence, Death Angel, and Forbidden. That connection ultimately led to the band’s cover of World In A World as a tribute to one of the songs that helped shape his musical direction.
2. The Most Collaborative Absolute Darkness Album Yet
Witness To A Dying World is the first Absolute Darkness album where every member made significant songwriting contributions. While Ron and Doug remain the primary songwriters, ideas from every member helped shape the finished record, resulting in a much more collaborative writing process than previous releases.
3. An ambitious independent music video
The video for Attritional Warfare was the band’s most ambitious production to date. It combines live-action footage with over two minutes of original animation that was created over many months. Every scene was storyboarded in advance to create a visual companion that tells the story of the song rather than simply showing the band performing.
4. Success on Our Own Terms
Absolute Darkness isn’t trying to become a full-time touring band or make a living from music. The members all have careers and families, which gives them the freedom to focus on what they enjoy most: writing songs they’re proud of and playing shows because they’re fun. Without the pressure to chase trends or commercial success, the band is free to make the music they want to make and let the songs speak for themselves.
5. Giving Back Through Open Metal Fest Suite
Outside of Absolute Darkness, Ron Dorn is the creator and lead developer of Open Metal Fest Suite, a non-profit, open-source project that develops mobile apps for metal festivals. The software currently powers the unofficial apps for festivals including 70,000 Tons of Metal and Maryland Deathfest, helping thousands of fans plan their festival experience.
The project is entirely volunteer-driven and exists to give something back to the metal community rather than generate a profit. One of the core goals of Open Metal Fest Suite is that every improvement made for one festival benefits every other festival built on the platform, making it practical to support additional events over time.
While there is no goal of supporting a specific number of festivals, the platform was designed to make adding new festivals straightforward whenever the right opportunity comes along. Ron welcomes conversations with promoters, organizers, and festival communities about ways the platform can help improve the fan experience.
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Left to Right – Orson Sojo – Bass, Ron Dorn – Rhythm Guitar/Lead Vocals, Scott Russell – Drums, Douglas Vetter II – Lead Guitar/Backup Vocals
Photo Credit by Eddie Granillo
Absolute Darkness is a death/thrash metal band from the San Francisco Bay Area, formed in 2015. The band’s sound blends the aggression of bands like Death, Cannibal Corpse, and Amon Amarth with the Bay Area thrash roots of Testament, Vio-lence, and Exodus.
Lyrically, Absolute Darkness explores themes of corruption, abuse of power, war, propaganda, addiction, homelessness, and social decay through story-driven songs that are often told from the perspective of the people caught in those events.
Current lineup:
- Ron Dorn – Guitar / Lead Vocals
- Douglas Vetter II – Lead Guitar / Backing Vocals
- Orson Sojo – Bass
- Scott Russell – Drums
Since forming, the band has steadily evolved both musically and in production. Their 2022 debut full-length, Failure Of State, marked a significant step forward in songwriting and production quality. Their upcoming sophomore album, Witness To A Dying World, continues that progression and is the first Absolute Darkness album where every member made meaningful contributions to the songwriting process.
Discography:
2026 – Witness To A Dying World – LP
2022 – Failure of State – LP
Shared Stage with:
Profanatica, Stormruler, Hellhunter, Oak Ash & Thorn, Phantasmal Abyss
Tours and Festivals:
2025 – Kilowatt – San Francisco, CA Direct – support for Hellhunter with Phantasmal Abyss.
2025 – Heavy Metal Beach Party – Hollywood, FL – Community-organized pre-party event held before the 2025 70,000 Tons of Metal sailing.
2024 – DNA Lounge – San Francisco, CA – Opened for Stormruler and Profanatica.
Absolute Darkness has earned support slots with nationally and internationally touring acts while steadily building its reputation throughout the San Francisco Bay Area metal scene.
