All Hallow’s Evil began in the winter of 2000 upon the realization that the digital revolution had hit. “I had always wanted to do something towards the more extreme end of the musical spectrum”, states band founder Jason Gironimi (rhymes with "astronomy"), “but it was very hard to find musicians with the same vision. I had been sketching out songs on my 4-track for sometime, but I couldn’t afford a drum machine, so at that point I was pretty much entertaining myself as I had a lot of extreme thrash tracks with no drums.” Fortunately, while snowed in one December morning, Jay discovered Pro Tools Free. “It had four more tracks than the four track I paid $200 for and, to a kid who grew up on cassette tapes, the editing seemed almost like magic. That was when I first realized I could make albums completely on my own.”


Having recorded two demos in 2000 and 2001, work soon began on what was to be the first official All Hallow’s Evil album. “I did those demos with this horrible General Midi drum program that I couldn’t figure out how to program, so I simply played along to the guitar tracks I had recorded. It worked fairly impressively if you consider that I was just jamming away on the ‘B’ and ‘V’ buttons on my keyboard, but it just didn’t sound right. Luckily, a friend had purchased one of those guitar pedals with drum loop accompaniment, so I commandeered that for a while.” However, as became du rigor for All Hallow’s Evil, it turns out if you don’t do it yourself, it’s probably not done right. “I hated the fact that I only had a select number of loops I could work with, so I eventually scrapped the entire recording and started over using some samples I had taken from the pedal and a fantastic program called ‘Hammerhead Rhythm Station’”. Along the way, Perfect Plastic World also lost 4 of it’s weaker songs. “I got rid of a couple of filler tracks and ditched two songs that didn’t really fit the over the top Gothic/Thrash feel I was going for.” Though one of the more melodic tracks eventually made it’s way back onto the E.P. via a 2003 re-recording, one was saved for future use.


In 2002, Jay released the first full length All Hallow’s Evil album, Hymns for a Damned Race. Recorded much in the same manner as Perfect Plastic World, Hymns... saw the thrash metal attack take a bit of a back seat to a more melodic approach, while still retaining the edge. However, it wasn’t long before the next All Hallow’s Evil release. “My friend Andy Forbes and I had started playing some coffeehouses at the local community college we attended. Everyone else would play your standard coffeehouse fare while we were getting up and playing murder ballads we had written or a bluesy cover of Cannibal Corpse’s ‘Skullfull of Maggots.’ Of course, once we started going down that road, we knew that we would have to top ourselves with every performance we did, so one day I sat down and wrote a ballad about what it’s like to be a zombie. I never thought of turning it into anything more until I was mastering Hymns for a Damned Race and a friend of ours suggested that the next album should be a concept album about zombies. Two days later, Andy and I finished The Zombie E.P.” Important not only in the addition of keyboards and extreme diversity to the All Hallow’s Evil sound, The Zombie E.P. also marked the point where Andy Forbes joined the band. “At that point, Jay would still make up names for the other non-existent band members. He had gotten pretty used to calling himself ‘The Abominable Dr. Gironimi’ which was a fairly blatant rip of the Vincent Price film The Abominable Dr. Phibes, so after I read Lords of Chaos I told him to credit me as ‘Count Andy’. The name just kinda stuck.”


With membership doubling, All Hallow’s Evil then started to do a few live shows. “The big hurdle to the live stuff was the drum machine. We didn’t really have the equipment to properly represent the sound, so we did acoustic shows out of necessity. However, with The Zombie E.P. we knew we had something that needed to exist outside of two guys playing a sit down gig at a coffeehouse, so one Halloween we dressed up like zombies, put the drum tracks on CD, fired up a boombox and did the full electric production.” Andy adds, “Being huge Alice Cooper fans, we were really just trying to put our own spin on that sort of theatricality. We still like to do acoustic shows so people can really hear the music, but two guys dressed up like zombies playing blackened thrash metal along with a drum machine, love it or hate it, isn’t really something you see everyday. That’s really what we’re going for.”


With the new dual identity of All Hallow’s Evil firmly in place, work began on 2003's As We Suffer.... “Andy and I both think that’s the best All Hallow’s Evil album because although the production wasn’t so great, you could definitely hear the attention to melody. While writing that album, I knew a good portion of the songs would also be played acoustically at some point, so I put a lot of care into making sure that we had tracks that worked as All Hallow’s Evil metal numbers, but could also be arranged into something that worked with just two acoustic guitars.”
A mere two months after As We Suffer..., All Hallow’s Evil released the Give Guns to Children E.P., which showcased a band that had finally out grown it’s technology. “I really wanted to get a cleaner sound, so I decided it was time to stop using the internal soundcard on the family computer and get an actual recording interface and a real drum machine. Unfortunately, I just kind of forgot about all that stuff once some things started going wrong in my personal life.” Sparing any inane details, writing for the follow up album didn’t even begin until January of 2004. “That’s very strange for Jay, because he normally feels the need to always work on some kind of music. Of course, once everything got going, the album just sort of worked itself out.”


In 2004, All Hallow’s Evil released what many consider their “breakthrough” album, The Cold Taste of Nickel Plated Steel. As Jay puts it, “It wasn’t so much a commercial breakthrough, but it was the album that got things going for us. People started paying attention, we started doing more live shows and we’ve been trying to keep that momentum going ever since.” A deeply personal album, Cold Taste... also showcased one of the earliest All Hallow’s Evil songs in the form of its closer, “Memory.” “I finally felt like I was in the right place to record that, so I changed some lyrics around and had at it. At one of the shows we did, someone I’d never met came up to me and started quoting that song, which was when I decided that this music stuff might have something to it.”
In the summer of 2004, All Hallow’s Evil released a companion piece to Cold Taste... in the form of the We’re Going to Die, Then We’re Going to Hell E.P. It’s proper follow up didn’t appear until winter of 2005 with No One is Forgiven, featuring the crowd favorite “No One Loves You”. After their summer shows prompted a complete sell-out of All Hallow’s Evil merchandise, the band new they would have to put a considerable amount of work into their next album.


"This Faustian Flesh", the 9th All Hallow's Evil release, is a 28 minute song in seven movements. It's story centers on a man who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for complete apathy and absolute knowledge. “It started out as a very literal adaptaion of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus,” starts Jay, “but as time went on, I made it more modern and more personal, until we eventually ended up with what we have here.” It also marks yet another stylistic shift within the All Hallow's Evil camp, this time marrying the progressive approach of bands like Anathema, Porcupine Tree, Ulver and Pain of Salvation with the rage of Satyricon and Kreator. “Throughout the writing, I was mainly listening to Jeff Buckley’s Grace and Satyricon’s Shadowthrone. Once we started recording, I new I wanted to get that layered Porcupine Tree sound, so this is the end result.”
Comparing the first and the latest All Hallow’s Evil albums, it’s obvious that they still have the attention to melody and aggressive edge, but now it’s all a little cleaner and more focused. “Of course, the next album could very well be brutal 4-track Black Metal,” laughs Jay. It’s kind of hard to tell if he’s kidding.