Adam De Micco - Lorna Shore 'Fuelled by Festering Pressure and Australian Return'

Lorna Shore have grinded hard to become an iconic name in the international deathcore scene. It’s arguable that their upcoming album I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me is one of the genre’s most anticipated releases of 2025, and after their completely sold out debut Australian headline tour in February, Aussie fans are salaavating at the chance to see the band back for Good Things Festival in December.

I was stoked to add a tick to my bucket list, when we at Wall of Sound had a chat with the riff master himself Adam De Micco about the pressure of success, what to look forward to in Australia and what’s next for the band.

Suss the video or read on...

Lorna Shore wowed Australia with a sold out debut headline tour earlier this year. With a return to Australia happening in December and their next album out soon, Wall of Sound are here with deathcore riff extraordinaire Adam De Micco to pick his brains. Thank you for joining us, mate.

Thank you for having me. What an introduction.

Hey, a band as big as you guys, you deserve it. Lorna Shore are the most talked about deathcore band on the planet right now, the balance of orchestral layers, technical guitars, and relentless rhythm, as well as the vocal acrobatics on display. You've got an incredible signature sound. That mindset of making music that you truly love to listen to, that's all ingrained in your writing. I'm wondering, how do you keep evolving Lorna Shore and the sound that you make while carrying the instrumentals forward and staying true to what makes a Lorna Shore song yours?

I wish I could give you a better answer than I could honestly give. I don't even know how we evolve the sound. I think honestly the more we do it, the better you get at it. I know that's the worst answer to possibly give, but I just feel as time goes on, you find out the things that you like, the things that you don't like, the things that you wanna carry forward, the things that you didn't like, that you're like, “how do I do a better version of that?” Or is it just something that just should be left behind? I don't know. That’s a really good question. I don't know how to evolve the sound. I don't know what is involved in evolving the sound.

You guys have done it. The proof's in the pudding. With the growth you have with your studio albums, there’s more eyes and ears on Lorna Shore than ever. Particularly due to the viral success of ‘To The Hellfire’ and the Pain Remains cycle. I'm wondering how does this heightened attention bring you pressures into the writing of I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me?

It was the most pressure just 'cause I think there's a standard and we've done more things. There's more eyes on us, there's more I don't know.

There's a lot more pressure this time around. I thought there wouldn't be, I thought after we released ‘To The Hellfire’, we did Pain Remains. I thought there was a lot of pressure. I guess at that point in time there was pressure but I thought that was like the most pressure we were gonna face

Can we maintain the hype? Are we just gonna be like a flavor of the month? Is this gonna burn out? And that was the pressure during Pain Remains then after doing Pain Remains. It was definitely a situation where we grew so much, we got a lot more attention. There's a lot more eyes on us and there's more of an expectation to uphold. That was such a big thing that was going through the entire process of writing this record.

It's gotta be such a crazy jump. It’s awesome to see that Pain Remains proved that it's not just an And I Return To Nothingness phase and that's it. Pain Remains and that entire cycle has shown that you guys are deserving to be one of those household names in the scene. With the pressure and the challenges did it maybe sharpen any writing decisions on the album? Diamonds are forged under pressure right?

That's what everyone says. It doesn't feel like it in the process and it doesn't feel like that in the moment. It feels like this is the worst thing and I wish we had a better way to go about doing this. Sure to some degree it definitely sharpened the process. I feel like because of that pressure and we want to uphold the status and because we're all signing our names on it and we want to just keep pushing this sound forward, I think that we are a lot more critical; we were already a critical bunch to begin with, but I think that we were a lot more critical this time around to make sure everything counted, every step mattered and I think that pressure did help to some degree. I think in the process we would've loved to not have that pressure. Overall looking back on the record, I feel like everything we've done was based around upholding a status and upholding like a standard that came along with previous releases, which is good to some degree.

There's a lot of growth that happened between Pain Remains to this record. Maintaining that growth and learning from the experiences we got from Pain Remains and taking it forward was a challenge. It's one thing to point out the things we can do better on Pain Remains, it's another thing to actually execute it. It's one thing to talk about it and criticize it and analyse it. It's another thing to actually sit down and take that feedback that you're giving to yourself and apply it and actually having something that is reflective of that feedback, of that growth, of that experience. The pressure was there, but the pressure for sure was more internal and I think it was the internalization or just responding to what we're seeing on the outside and our own interpretation of the external and internalizing it and then creating that pressure internally. Definitely added to it. I think it definitely helped. But it wasn't pleasant I'd say that.

I bet. You could have gone “okay this is the commercial sounds that do well”. But instead of going on with what everyone wants to hear and just focus on that, you've doubled down on the sonic and emotional extremes within Everblack and it's great.

Thank you. I feel every time I read feedback on the band, every single person says something completely different.

We always talk about it as a band. We've always sat down and been like, if we just took everyone's advice on how to write a song, it would be songs that nobody would wanna listen to.

I say that in the way where everyone's advice or everyone's suggestion is so different from the next person, which could be like someone's pro about the band could be someone's con about the band and vice versa. Some people would be like, “they should double down on this”. And some people should be like, “we should double down on this and we should do more of this, and we should do less of that.” At the end of it, we would be left with no material. I've learned over the years to read people's advice and suggestions on the band – to double down on that I feel would lead us nowhere. The best solution was just to come from within, what do we want to accomplish? Looking back on the last record – because I feel like every record you're picking up where you left last left off – what did we learn during Pain Remains? What are things that we like? Luckily enough, we played the entire record of Pain Remains even before playing the entire record. Last Fall we were playing seven to eight songs off Pain Remains. we've played this record in its entirety. What are the lessons we've learned from this?

What are things that while performing it live while sitting on these songs for two, three years, what is it that we wanna do more of? What do we wanna do less of? What do we want to improve upon? Is there anything that we want to leave behind to evolve forward? I think all that stuff came internally from just actually having a normal album cycle. You actually gotta sit on an album for a few years as opposed to in the past; we've just been in these weird album cycles where it just either got shortened or once we put out And I Return to Nothingness a month later we were in the studio doing Pain Remains. We didn't even get to sit on the record for that long.

Our prior record Immortal, we released it right during the pandemic so that cut the album cycle short, we haven't had a proper album cycle. So this time around we had a proper album cycle, able to gain a lot of experience from it, and I think that really helped shape the sound that you hear on the record.

Having a full album cycle paid dividends in the studio and on stage. Part of that cycle, meant you could come to Australia for the first time. It only took nine days to completely sell out the entire headliner tour in Australia, and you're coming back less than a year later for Good Things in December. What's next for Lorna Shore in Australia headline? Arena runs on the cards? Parkway Drive did just play the Sydney Opera House after all, maybe there's an opportunity to be made in deathcore history.

Maybe! We hadn’t gone to Australia at all and now we're just going as often as we can now – which is a very long flight. I'm just excited. It's just really awesome to take your music everywhere outside of your home country or even your home state. Let alone just to be able to take our music from outside of New Jersey to literally the other side of the world is just really awesome. So whatever we get to do is really awesome, it's exciting. If that's what's next that's great, but if we continue just doing the same thing that we've been doing, it's just really awesome. I am grateful to be able to do this I know what it's like just to be a local band from New Jersey and to see where it's gone from – just playing shows to four people to be able to take your music all around the world. It's just really awesome. I'm excited to come back and I'm just excited for what the future holds there. It's an amazing place and it's warm at a different time of year, so it's really nice to have to go to different parts of the world at different times of the year.

You'll be coming around at the start of December when it's gonna be really nice in the beginning of our summer. The Good Things festivals are always just such a vibe. All the crowds just turn out for all the bands and I would say that everyone's just stoked to see you guys on the line up. What was it about the Pain Remains run in Australia that really stuck with you, either on or off stage and what are you chasing this time around on your return?

I think we really just enjoyed being there. Normally when we're on tour, we're just going from city to city to city and we don't really get to experience a country. This time around we would fly to a city, have a day there, fly to another city. So we were able to spend time in Australia, which is really great to be able to experience a country you've never been to, which we normally don't get to do that. What I want to do this time around? I feel like the shows have been very similar to what we've experienced in the past in other countries whether it be in in America or in Europe. So it's very a similar vibe to what we've experienced. It's been great. It's really nice 'cause it feels like home, it doesn't feel awkward and foreign, it feels like our home away from home at this point.

I don't know what we wanna do more of. I guess play to more people 'cause I felt bad that we sold it out. People didn't get to come see us. And I'm sure some people were like, “they never came here until this time around, it's gonna be another few years until I get to see 'em again.” It's nice that we get to return play to more people.

And I'm hoping the next time we do come around after this festival is to be able to play to even more people, and people have a chance to see us 'cause who knows when we'll be back. Maybe it'll be every nine months

Who knows? Hey I know I'd love it. I missed out on that initial headline run, so when I saw that you guys were on the Good Things lineup I was bloody stoked man.

Exactly. There's probably many people in your position that didn't get a chance to see us. It would be great to be able to play to people that want to see us and not feel left out.

As much as it's nice to sell out shows, it also feels bad 'cause there's probably people that don't get to see us and I think it would be cool to be able to play to everyone that we could play to.

Yeah cool. One last question on Good Things and your return. What song are you most keen to play live on your first time on an Australian festival stage?

That's a good question. We're starting to add more new songs to the set. We just played ‘Oblivion’ live in Europe and that was really awesome. I'm excited to play that. I'm excited to play any new song. So that was really fun to play at festivals in Europe. I know it's a completely different country, but that was just fun to play on that big stage.

I think all of us are excited to play ‘Unbreakable’ live because I feel like it's just a really fun song. I feel like it has a crowd interaction.

Those are the two songs I'm probably looking forward to the most to play live 'cause I feel like we have a little bit of experience of playing ‘Oblivion’ live and it went over really well. I think with shooting the video for ‘Unbreakable’ and the positive feedback we've gotten and how people are excited to see that live, I'm looking forward to play it on these big festivals and to that many people. Hopefully it goes well.

I feel like ‘Unbreakable’ is one of those songs that's really gonna bring the entire crowd together and you'll be able to feel the ground moving when everyone's just stomping across

I hope so, that's the plan at least.

Awesome, man. It's been an absolute pleasure having a chat with you Adam. Thank you so much for joining us at Wall of Sound and we are looking forward to seeing you at Good Things in December.

Thank you for having me and I’m looking forward to it.

Interview by Tyler Lubke @huntsman421

Grab tickets to Good Things Festival here

Pre-order I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me here

Lorna Shore - I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me tracklisting

1. Prison of Flesh
2. Oblivion
3. In Darkness
4. Unbreakable
5. Glenwood
6. Lionheart
7. Death Can Take Me
8. War Machine
9. A Nameless Hymn
10. Forevermore