Photo of This Is Me Breathing by Jordan Bruce
As the lead vocalist for one of St. Louis’ longest running and most successful deathcore bands, Paul Oster takes the long view on the St. Louis extreme music scene. He’s seen many bands heralded as “the next big thing” come and go. Oster’s number one piece of advice for anyone wanting to navigate the stress of scene politics is simple: experiment with different creative flows, never stop experimenting with your technique, and don’t be afraid to step outside your personal echo chamber and allow the will of the people influence your output. This tenacity has recently catapulted Paul and the other members of This Is Me Breathing to massive streaming success, with their single “Persona” currently sitting at a massive 167k streams on Spotify.
I recently met with Paul for a wide-ranging interview that covered the history of This Is Me Breathing, his inspirational story of using extreme metal vocals as a tool for recovery, and his many creative influences both musical and non-musical.
Note: Due a technical glitch, direct audio for this interview was not available, so the Q&A was reconstructed using Google Meet transcription and the Gemini application, edited, and reviewed by Mr. Oster for accuracy prior to publication.
Part I: “Persona” & Metalcore Nostalgia
The Arts STL: Paul, it’s great to connect. I want to start by congratulating you on the massive success of your single “Persona.” The streaming numbers on Spotify are incredible. In this landscape, a track hitting like that really proves how much depends on the raw effort put into the song structure itself, alongside smart distribution. What’s the history behind that track?
Paul Oster: Man, thank you. The wild thing about “Persona” is that leading up to the release of the EP, it was actually my absolute least favorite song on the entire record. The rest of the EP leans into a much more brutal, straightforward death metal style packed with blast beats. To me, “Persona” felt “too metalcore” compared to everything else we were tracking. I almost didn’t want it on there, but the band held a group vote, it stayed on the record, and honestly, it ended up working out perfectly.
It’s funny how the tracks creators fret over often resonate the most. Personally, my favorite material from your catalog isn’t actually “Persona,” but your early 2016 output. I have an immense nostalgia for that specific era of metalcore sound—especially the dynamic of the vocalist utilizing three distinct vocal styles, including those clean melodies.
I get that nostalgia completely, though I should clarify I actually wasn’t the vocalist on that 2016 material!
Ah, fair point! But that specific sonic palette—it really carries that classic early-2010s flavor.
Oh, absolutely. That early era of the band was chasing that heavy, melodic Memphis May Fire style. I have a massive soft spot for that old 2010s metalcore wave myself. In fact, if you want a killer underground recommendation from that era, you need to check out the album No Rain, No Rainbows by Greeley Estates.
Wow, I’m looking at this album art right now—this watercolor style of a deep-sea diver wearing overalls is incredible. This is exactly why I appreciate musicians like you who act as scene historians. It keeps the lineage alive and helps people discover these hidden gems.
Part II: The Evolution of Bring Me the Horizon & The A.I. Duality
Speaking of bands that completely dictated the evolution of that era, I’m actually slated to see Bring Me the Horizon live very soon [May 12th at the Enterprise Center]. Given how deeply their first four records influenced the foundational landscape of modern heavy music, I’m curious to get your take on their trajectory. There’s always been that massive fan schism between the pre-Sempiternal deathcore purists and the post-Sempiternal stadium rock crowd. I noted that I got a positive reaction from you when I shared “I Used to Make Out With Medusa” from their first record with you over Facebook!
When their album Amo first dropped, I’ll admit my immediate knee-jerk reaction was that they were completely selling out. But over time, I’ve grown to absolutely love that record. You have to admire their willingness to completely jump genres. They completely own their artistic shifts rather than staying boxed in. They helped invent the blueprint for modern deathcore, and then they successfully pivoted to mass-market appeal without losing their edge.
Their live production value is astronomical. Their current touring aesthetic is highly conceptual—built entirely around themes of virtual reality, AI integration, and the concept of a “post-human” existence. It forced me to think about how musicians are reacting to AI right now. It feels like the community is split into three camps: the traditionalists who refuse to touch it, the grifters using it to scam streaming royalties with bot farms, and the artists trying to utilize it constructively as a creative tool. Where do you stand?
For us, This Is Me Breathing is a very grassroots, DIY operation, so we don’t use AI anywhere in our creative process. I’m definitely torn on it. On one hand, I can see how it could theoretically be used as a technical tool, but on the other hand, there are just way too many avenues for it to be abused and to exploit actual human creators.
I think your perspective is deeply informed by being a musician who cut their teeth in the pre-AI era. You already built a functional, successful system based on organic chemistry and hard work before these automated shortcuts even existed.
Part III: Vocal Retraining & The Pitfalls of Modern “Vocal Stunts”
I want to talk about your development as a frontman. How did you originally find your voice in extreme music, and what did your training look like?
I started tracking my vocal development late in high school, mostly just trying to emulate Phil Bozeman of Whitechapel. A massive watershed moment for me was back in 2016, when we actually got to open for Whitechapel at The Ready Room here in St. Louis during their Our Endless War era. But right after that high point, I contracted a brutal case of mono. It completely wrecked my throat, and it forced me to tear down my entire approach and completely retrain my voice from scratch.
That sounds terrifying for a vocalist. How did you rebuild without permanently damaging your vocal cords?
During that first period of my career, I really wasn’t doing vocals correctly. I was “shoving” the sound from the wrong place and forcing it. When I had to retrain, I dove deep into instructional resources like Melissa Cross’s [2005 instructional DVD] The Zen of Screaming and meticulously studied the elite techniques of guys like Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation. I shifted to an approach focused entirely on precise anatomical manipulation—using my tongue and mouth shape to alter the texture of the scream rather than forcing raw air through my throat.
The sheer discipline required for that formal retraining is immense. It stands in total contrast to my own “dabbler” relationship with the guitar. I rely entirely on learning tabs by ear and have never properly mastered music theory.
I’m still mostly self-taught at the end of the day, but I learned a lot of those foundational, healthy mechanics from a close friend of mine who did vocals and guitar for the band Encrypted.
That makes sense. It’s like learning black metal guitar—if you have a foundational training rooted in something entirely different, say Eddie Van Halen’s shred technique, your execution of extreme tremolo picking is going to be infinitely cleaner. Taking influence from outside your immediate genre boundaries is crucial. Do you ever sing karaoke as a means of practicing?
Definitely. I’ve never actually done standard karaoke, but for my actual vocal warm-up routines, I routinely use non-metal tracks—specifically fast rap songs with intense tongue-twisters. It forces vocal agility. When I write lyrics and patterns, I’m always hunting for really interesting, syncopated vocal flows rather than just tracking a basic, predictable rhythm.
That focus on cadence is exactly what keeps art from becoming a closed, uninteresting loop. It actually brings up a major critique I have of the modern deathcore landscape. Ever since Will Ramos blew up, there’s been this massive trend where every single internet vocalist is trying desperately to sound “inhuman” and animalistic. It feels like people are prioritizing viral “vocal stunts” at the expense of writing an actual good song, a memorable chorus, or a cohesive hook.
I completely agree. This obsession with constant vocal acrobatics can totally derail the songwriting. And look, I’m a massive fan of old-school death metal institutions like Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse, but you see that same creative stagnation in the retro death metal community too. There are so many bands whose entire creative goal is just replicating early Cannibal Corpse note-for-note without pushing anything forward. That rigid resistance to change hurts the genre more than anything.
It’s the classic tension of scene politics. Replicating an established legacy sound like Darkthrone gives a band easy, immediate marketability within a niche. But true artistic motivation requires letting the genre evolve naturally—the exact lineage you see when you trace the line from Darkthrone all the way to a band like Deafheaven.
Exactly. We actually got to open for Lorna Shore years back during CJ [McCreery]’s brief stint as their vocalist. Will Ramos is an absolutely outstanding, elite vocalist who entirely deserves the hype he gets, but instrumentally, I honestly feel this current era is the least interesting version of Lorna Shore. It feels like they found a formula with the single “To the Hellfire” and have just replicated that exact song structure repeatedly, which ends up limiting what a talent like Will can actually do.
It’s the age-old metal debate: consistency versus reinvention. You have bands like The Black Dahlia Murder, Slayer, or Cannibal Corpse who excel by fiercely defending their sonic blueprint for decades. Then you have groups like Bring Me the Horizon who completely shatter their own mold. Both paths are entirely valid, but chasing personal reinvention definitely feels like a more fulfilling creative challenge.
For me personally, challenging yourself to adapt and try new things is infinitely more interesting, though there’s nothing wrong with giving the fans exactly what they want if that’s your lane. Speaking of Cannibal Corpse and Will Ramos, though—it’s awesome that the faces of this music are such genuinely great people. George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher is the ultimate ambassador of death metal with how sweet and charitable he is, and Will Ramos has that exact same incredibly kind demeanor. It’s great for the scene.
Part IV: Specializing Labor & Preserving the South County Scene
Let’s talk about upcoming logistics. This Is Me Breathing has an album release show on the horizon, correct?
Yes! We are hosting our official album release show on June 27th, and it’s going down at the new Fubar location out in South County. The cool thing about the venue is that they built it as an exact replica of the original downtown Fubar layout. [Editor’s note: It is entirely the fault, and regret, of this editor that this piece did not run in advance of the Fubar album release show. Keep an eye on thisismebreathingstore.com/dates or the band’s Facebook page for future dates! –JG]
That is incredible to hear. Preserving that regional scene history is so vital. Fubar has always held a legendary status in the local community.
It’s easily my favorite hometown venue of all time; we’ve played there more times than I can count. Outside of St. Louis, some of our most memorable spots were the old Rock Island venue in Iowa where we opened for Fit for an Autopsy, and Acadia down in Texas. But locally, playing the old Firebird—opening for Lorna Shore there—was historic for us.
If people want to dive deeper into that specific black-and-deathcore era, I highly recommend going back to Lorna Shore’s Flesh Coffin album, back when Tom Barber was fronting them. That record is flawless. I also still have a deep appreciation for the early Christian hardcore era of Underoath.
That wave had some incredible songwriting. It reminds me of the work Martin Roupert put into his album Gods Over Broken People—drawing heavily from that Christian youth group upbringing. I know David Bruno of Summoning the Lich picked that as one of his top albums of the year. Martin is easily one of my favorite individuals in the entire local scene.
Martin is the absolute best. He actually used to come out and perform a live piano piece right in the middle of our song “Gomorrah” during our sets.
That’s amazing. I’ve been trying to diligently document that exact web of local history—whether it’s covering Summoning the Lich, Polterguts, and Cavil over at Pop’s, or interviewing guys like David Bruno. Are there any other up-and-coming local acts we need to be keeping tabs on?
Definitely check out Hardhanded and Forth Rotted. They are doing great things for the city right now.
Funny enough, I actually have an interview lined up soon with Logan Fields, the bass player for Hardhanded!
One thing that stands out about This Is Me Breathing is your stability. In a genre where lineups fracture every six months, you guys have kept the exact same core roster locked in since 2017. How do you maintain that internal machinery?
We’re essentially a highly dysfunctional family, and the secret is that we have a very strict, specialized division of labor where everyone handles their specific strengths. Jace handles our booking, outside interviews, and A&R duties; Zach manages our entire social media presence; Collin is our resident tech expert who builds and runs our in-ear monitors and backtracks; and then Nick and I focus purely on the core writing process.
That is the ultimate blueprint for longevity. To close things out, Paul—as someone who has navigated the Midwest scene for a decade, what core piece of advice would you give to a young kid trying to start a deathcore band today?
Honestly? Just do not stop pushing. This path is incredibly demanding, and it is absolutely not for the faint of heart. If you are getting into extreme metal chasing money or clout, you are going to burn out instantly. You have to truly, deeply love the music for its own sake.
If you don’t know the history of your scene, you’re doomed to repeat its mistakes. A few years ago I interviewed the guys from Timeghoul, and I always think of them as the ultimate “Atheist or Cynic of Missouri”—this brilliant, visionary band that got somewhat lost to time because they were operating out of a small Midwestern town pre-internet. Musicians from the Midwest face an uphill battle; the global metal media tends to only focus on coastal hotspots like Florida or California. St. Louis gets recognized globally for rap or hyperpop, but our metal scene is incredibly vital.
I myself have sometimes encountered hostile scene gatekeepers who push back against music journalism. In my view, photographers and writers aren’t a threat—we’re historians trying to document what you’re building so it isn’t forgotten.
Exactly. A journalist is there to preserve the history of what happened in these rooms. The scene should always welcome that. You need people to document the bands, not just be in them.
I appreciate that, Paul. Before I go check out this Greeley Estates record and send you that nostalgic track we talked about on Facebook [“Stick Stickley” by Attack Attack], I have one final question. What is one piece of non-musical media you think everyone should check out?
I highly recommend the movie Mother! starring Jennifer Lawrence. I love artsy, psychological cinema where nothing is presented entirely at face value and you have to really think to unpack the allegory.
A highly sophisticated choice. Paul, This Is Me Breathing has a massive amount of untapped potential, and I can’t wait to watch you guys continue to scale it. I’ll see you in the front row on June 27th at the new Fubar.
Thanks so much for the support, David! | David Von Nordheim
This Is Me Breathing’s new album Serenity In Suffering is available now wherever you stream your music, and is available for download in the iTunes store or via Amazon.com.
