Hello Metalheads! This is John back with an interview with Ryan Kuder from Carrion Vael! Vael just released their new album Slay Utterly on January 15th, 2026! Here are my thoughts on their new album https://technicalmusicreview.com/2026/01/13/slay-utterly-by-carrion-vael/. He was gracious enough to answer some of my questions about his band, their new album and his influence in guitar.
John: First of all thank you again for agreeing to answer my questions! Let’s start at the beginning because we haven’t chatted before. When did you start learning and playing guitar?
Ryan: When I was 11-12 years old. I had a friend in the neighborhood whose Dad was a sick 80’s metal type of shredder. When I hung out over there he taught us our first riffs and let us play loud on all his best equipment with his gnarly Gibson SG and Ibanez RG. He was awesome for trusting us shithead kids with his gear and putting up with the noise. This all lit a fire under my ass to spend most of 6th grade mowing grass, raking leaves and doing chores for guitar money. I got my first guitar the summer before I went into middle school: a crappy but glorious-to-me Strat-style Silvertone. I’ve rarely skipped a day of playing since.
John: What/who got you into “extreme” metal and who did you look up to?
Ryan: The first CD I bought that actually had a notable amount of blast beats was ‘Damnation And A Day’ by Cradle of Filth. That album blew me away in middle school. Things like Cryptopsy, Origin, Opeth, Emperor, Cannibal Corpse, Nevermore, and Belphegor became very important shortly thereafter.
John: When did you join the band/when did the band form?
Ryan: The band became a functioning entity around 2017 with the release of the first LP ‘Resurrection of the Doomed’. I joined Carrion Vael in 2021, during the Abhorrent Obsessions recording.
John: Who are the bands biggest influences? Bands or even individual people
Ryan: We get compared relentlessly to The Black Dahlia Murder, which comes with the territory of being in a Melodic Tech band. However, I think the further away you get from our first album or two, the less that influence is present. Bands like Soreption, At The Gates, Carnosus, Origin, Wretched, Fleshgod Apocalypse etc. are all very important parts of the equation
John: Who are some of your biggest influences in your playing?
Ryan: I learned a lot from taking lessons with Christian Münzner for a couple of years. Other influences include Jeff Loomis, Marty Friedman, Joe Haley, Kim Thayil, Fredrik Schälin, Nobuyuki Takeda, Pat O’Brien, John Scofield, Charlie Hunter & Jason Mendonça. There are plenty of more contemporary players that really inspire me as well, like Scott Carstairs or Phil Tougas.
John: Are you into any other genres/bands?
Ryan: I tried my hand at being an asshole metal elitist for a couple of years as a teenager, and discovered very quickly that only listening to specific subgenres of metal was a good way to get burned out on music as a whole.
I like pop, jazz, hiphop, sad seattle rock, nostalgic 00s radio music, R&B, math & prog, folk, classical, all flavors of dad rock, noise, hardcore, whiny whisper songs, shred shit, synth shit, pretty much every metal subgenre (be it lo-fi, overproduced, caveman riffs, hyper-technical), and everything in between. Every genre has at least something to offer.
Guilty pleasures are for the weak!
John: What songs do you like to play along to that aren’t Carrion Vael?
Ryan: ‘Better Grieved Than Fooled’ or ‘Entropy Within’ by Anata. Also, ‘Curse You All Men’ by Emperor are some of the longstanding go-tos when I start noodling around. A good chunk of the riffs from the first eight Opeth albums are also permanently stored in my muscle memory.
John: Are there any bands that you love to play shows with?
Ryan: Too many to name them all! My buddies in Summoning the Lich, Demon King, Carnosus, Apogean, Aethereus, Warforged, The Last Of Lucy, Hath, Æpoch, Sentiment Dissolve, A Tyrant’s Lament, Mors Verum, Reeking Aura, Knee Deep In The Dead, Inoculation, all the rest of the bands from the first Rags to Riffage tour (Inferi, First Fragment, Tómarúm), Necessary Death, Between the Killings, and plenty more.
John: What’s your favorite song to play in the bands discography?
Ryan: ‘Truth or Consequences’ and ‘Tithes of Forbearance’
John: What song is your favorite song to play on the new album?
Ryan: Currently it would be‘Truth or Consequences’ though I’m hoping we’ll get a chance to sneak ‘40 Echoes Upon the Parlor’ into the setlist at some point.
Courtesy of technicalmusicreview.com.