In the same way that the Bible has the Old and New Testaments, you can divide the story of deathcore into two halves: what happened before To The Hellfire, and what happened afterwards.
Before Lorna Shore released their breakout single in 2021, the genre was condemned by many for adhering to its barebone cliches – incessant breakdowns, pig squeals, chug-a-lugging guitars – and refusing to evolve. But then, one six-minute symphonic masterstroke went madly viral, and the mainstream perception of what deathcore could be was ripped wide open.
By all conventional wisdom, To The Hellfire should not have been a hit. It may boast some 75 million Spotify streams nowadays, making it Lorna Shore’s biggest track by miles, but nothing about it screamed ‘commercial’. Winding acoustic guitars give way to an onslaught of distortion and blastbeats, with the first breakdown hitting less than 90 seconds in.
Then come the choirs, Adam’s wild soloing and an even nastier breakdown at the end. All the while, debuting frontman Will Ramos’ voice touched on every shade of extreme there is – growls, squeals, weird flushing-toilet sounds – but not a single clean. Maximalist and hugely impressive? Absolutely! An instant earworm? Hmm…
“There is no way to even explain it,” guitarist Adam De Micco decides, reflecting on how such an unapologetic track earned his band widespread notice.
Right now, Lorna Shore are one of the biggest deathcore bands on Earth. They’ve ushered in a new era of popularity for the genre, taking it away from its more formulaic elements to something that can incorporate anything from symphonic black metal to prog.
Their fifth album, 2025’s I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me, cracked the top five of the German, Austrian and Finnish charts, and in February 2026 they’ll headline London’s Alexandra Palace to 10,000 people. Safe to say, none of it would have happened without To The Hellfire.
Before the pandemic, Lorna Shore had signed to Century Media, but they’d been about for almost a decade and still hadn’t had their crossover moment. Their longtime vocalist, Tom Barber, left in 2018 to join peers Chelsea Grin.
Then, his successor CJ McCreery only lasted a year and a half before being dismissed. News of the singer’s firing broke after his ex-girlfriend claimed he was abusive, but Adam insists that he was already gone by the time the allegations surfaced (multiple other women have also accused CJ of abuse; he denies any wrongdoing).
“We were already having him leave the lineup anyway,” the guitarist says. “He didn’t really want to go on tour. He didn’t really want to do a lot of things. He was looking to quit. I didn’t hear about any of that stuff until after he was already kicked out of the band.”
When Lorna Shore released their third album, Immortal, in January 2020, Adam and drummer Austin Archey were the only members left. Still, they were unfazed by the upheaval.
“Because we went through it almost two years prior with Tom, we were like, ‘We just handled this; let’s handle it again,’” says Adam.
Enter, Will Ramos. The band were inundated with unsolicited audition videos from wannabe vocalists, but they found their future frontman for themselves, stumbling upon an old Lorna Shore cover he’d posted to YouTube. Will had spent the last few years hopping between underground metal bands and, unbeknownst to his soon-to-be cohorts, was considering dropping out of music altogether.
“I had been in the music world for a little bit at this point, and I was getting to the end,” remembers Will. “I was like, ‘Dude, honestly, if this doesn’t work out, I’m going to do something else.’ I didn’t have full confidence [in myself].”
All the same, Adam and Austin were floored by his chops. They then realised that they already knew him: his old band, A Wake In Providence, had supported Lorna Shore at a few shows in 2016. Once they reconnected, the chemistry was instant.
“Other people were auditioning and I felt like I had to coach them a bunch on what to do,” Adam says. “We had a tour coming up in Europe [supporting Decapitated] within, like, a month. Will was just able to bust out these songs off Immortal where I was like, ‘Oh, I prefer this version to the album version.’”
I was like, ‘Dude, honestly, if this doesn’t work out, I’m going to do something else'
Will Ramos
The Decapitated tour was to be Will’s unofficial try-out – until restrictions necessitated by Covid-19 came into effect, ending the run after just eight shows.
“It was pretty bad because I’d finally started locking in on things,” Will admits. “The first show was so bad for me: I was fucking up so many lyrics. By, like, the fifth set, I’m actually dialled in. Then it was like, ‘OK, now we’re getting pulled out!’ I didn’t even feel like I got a chance to show off what I could have done.”
But for the rest of Lorna Shore, Will had more than aced his probation. In lockdown, Adam decided to do …And I Return To Nothingness: an EP with three new tracks, each one demonstrating a different shade of their new recruit’s voice. Two songs were ready by November 2020, when the band entered Random Awesome! Studios in Michigan with producer Josh Schroeder. To The Hellfire wasn’t one of them.
“We kind of pieced the song together in the studio with a bunch of parts that I had,” Adam says. “We knew we wanted to do a heavy song. I had the intro lead idea, the acoustic guitar. The first two minutes of music were written out, and the other, like, three parts of the song were written at different points in time, throughout 2020.”
The lyrics were about what Will imagined death to feel like. He drew influence from the loss of life during the pandemic, but also from a personal loss. His uncle died of unknown causes before the lockdowns began, but his condition bore all the hallmarks of Covid. The singer learned about his passing after landing in Europe for the Decapitated tour.
“My uncle was a big, burly dude who would go to the beach in a speedo at 65 years old and hit on women with the most confidence you’ve ever seen,” Will laughs. “He would show up to family gatherings and was always the loudest Puerto Rican in the room. He was one of my biggest supporters, and he wouldn’t have wanted me to miss a big opportunity like [joining Lorna Shore].”
When it was completed, To The Hellfire was one of the gnarliest things to ever come from Lorna Shore. It also proved that Will was their secret sauce. At last, the band had a voice able to not just keep up with the chaotic layers of guitars, strings and blast beats, but actually stand out among them.
In fact, Will’s screams were so powerful and inhuman that, in a 2022 interview with YouTuber Nik Nokturnal, he revealed he’d once been mistaken for Bigfoot by a hiker while practising in the park.
It didn’t take long for the rest of the world to clock just how exceptional Will’s voice – and Lorna Shore’s boundary-pushing music – was. Released on June 11, 2021, To The Hellfire soon made its way to TikTok, fans in particular drawn to its cataclysmic final breakdown. The audio was clipped and shared by countless accounts, many of which were run by people who hadn’t heard of Lorna Shore before.
“It was probably some people’s first time hearing crazy music,” Adam guesses with a laugh.
It was probably some people’s first time hearing crazy music
Adam DeMicco
When the band emerged from lockdown, they were headlining venues where they’d served as a support just 18 months prior – and they were selling them out. Suddenly, the challenge switched from, ‘How do we grab people’s attention?’ to, ‘How do we keep it?’ So, Lorna Shore toured. Hard.
They headlined in North America for the remainder of 2021, then hit Europe and North America in the spring. Then, they returned to Europe for the summer festivals and to support Parkway Drive and While She Sleeps. Their fourth album, Pain Remains, came out on October 14, 2022, and they hit the Billboard 200 in the US for the first time, peaking at 150. How did they celebrate? By embarking on another headline tour of North America one week later.
“My fear was having 15 seconds of fame,” Adam explains. “One of the big driving forces at that time was the fear that this moment right now will be the best that there is.”
Today, things are even better: the venues are bigger and the albums chart higher (I Feel… hit no. 129 in the US). To The Hellfire may have rewritten the deathcore rulebook and introduced the genre to one of its most charismatic frontpeople, but Lorna Shore don’t want to be defined by the track. To them, the present and the future are much more exciting.
“I don’t think we’d ever have been able to do half the stuff or have half the relationships we do without that one moment as a pedestal,” says Will. “I’m stoked, but at this point it’s about moving on. The To The Hellfire hype isn’t going to last forever, so what’s next? How are we going to take that to the next level?”
I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me is out now via Century Media. Lorna Shore’s UK tour kicks off at London’s Alexandra Palace on February 8 and the band play Welcome To Rockville and Sonic Temple in May
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