Venamoris talks about To Cross or to Burn, out on 28 February 2025 via Ipecac Records

Transmission 165: Interview with Dave and Paula Lombardo

Venamoris is the musical collaboration of Dave and Paula Lombardo, shaped by years of contrasting yet complementary experiences. Dave, whose drumming redefined thrash metal, has spent decades shifting between metal, punk, classical, and experimental projects, working with everyone from John Zorn to the Misfits. Paula, a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, honed her craft as a backing singer in Las Vegas before trying to carve a path in Nashville’s songwriter circles.

Title: To Cross or to Burn
Artist: Venamoris
Release Date: 2025-02-28
Genres: Ambient, Experimental Music, Industrial Music
Label: Ipecac Recordings
Description: Dave & Paula Lombardo interview: Discover Venamoris, a journey into dark melodies, sonic noir, and deep emotions.

Their partnership, initially separate from music, gradually took on a life of its own. What began with Paula sharing demos turned into a full creative exchange, leading to Drown in Emotion (2023) and their latest release, To Cross or to Burn, out on 28 February 2025 via Ipecac Records. Their sound moves between haunting atmospheres, industrial grit, and deeply personal songwriting, drawing from everything they’ve absorbed along the way.

This interview is also published in issue no. 01 of our free digital magazine Retrofuturista.

Featured image: Hannah Verbeuren

What were some of the earliest sounds or experiences that made you both realize music was important to you?

Dave Lombardo: Well, when we first met, it really wasn’t a priority or a thought. I didn’t know she was a singer. It was something we didn’t focus on and wanted to do until later in our relationship. We found ourselves during the pandemic — actually, before that, she sent me a demo tape, and I wanted to work with her while we were in the relationship.

Paula Lombardo: We hadn’t really worked together at all. When we first met, we didn’t talk about anything to do with music for me. After a couple of years, I sent Dave some of my songs, and he really enjoyed them, but we never knew how to work together. As time progressed, pandemic happened, and that’s where we were able to spend the time and sort of figure out what to do. But it came with him breaking down some walls for me, helping me come back to music. And then once that happened, I started writing more. Then Dave was able to look at those songs and kind of put his finesse on them. So it started like that.

Did you bond over any artists or albums early on, or did your tastes initially clash?

Dave Lombardo: She is from a whole different genre of music. There were some artists that I enjoyed that she enjoyed, one of them was Heart with Ann and Nancy Wilson. Interesting enough, she was very much into rap where I wasn’t really. I was into some but not as much as she was. She really got me into a lot of Snoop Dogg and Missy Elliott and various others.

Paula Lombardo: On the other side, Dave introduced me to a lot of different punk bands and metal bands that I maybe had heard of but never dove into their catalog. I would say that we didn’t clash so much as just started kind of introducing each other to the sounds of our lives. Both of us really enjoyed learning that about one another and I think we just started developing a mutual respect for our musical tastes. I’m now a fan of all those styles and Dave is the same. He really enjoys a lot of the singer-songwriter things that I’ve showed him from different songwriters that I’ve come across in life. It’s actually been really good for us. I think it expanded both of our musical palettes.

How did Venamoris take shape? Was there a particular song or session where you realized this was something worth pursuing together?

Dave Lombardo: I think it wasn’t really a session. I heard her demos. She let me have some of her demos while I was on tour with Slayer and I was listening to them in my hotel room and I really fell in love with her voice. I always hoped that we could do something together but the instruments that she was playing, like acoustic guitar, I didn’t know how to play too well. But then she started recording. I had her record on piano, which is her first instrument, and then that’s when everything started opening up. I was able to really work on the songs when they were recorded on the piano.

Paula Lombardo: Yeah, and we kind of left my old songs in the past. In pandemic was when Dave really helped me get back to music. I had taken a break for about eight, ten years from writing and singing completely. So when he did that and said, “Hey, why don’t you start writing on piano since that’s your primary instrument after vocal?” He then introduced me to Pro Tools, program that you can write music on, and started showing me the capabilities. It kind of opened up a whole new world for me where I could put all the thoughts that I had in my mind, how I wanted my songs to sound. I could now develop that instead of just being chained to just a guitar and myself. It really opened that up and when that happened, Dave and I—the first song we ever wrote is a song called “Let Me Be” which is the first song on the first album. And the second one is the last song on that album called “So Good.” So those were the first two things that ever happened between us and then it just developed from there where we started figuring out how to write together and it’s just become easier and easier.

When Venamoris started taking shape, was there a moment where it felt completely different from anything else you had done before?

Paula Lombardo: For me, it was completely different for sure. I had never approached songwriting in this way before. Dave had really taught me to approach it fearlessly. Write whatever I wanted to express however I wanted to, don’t worry about the chord changes or whether it’s for—I need to pitch a song to another artist or I want this to be played on a specific radio station for a specific style. He really taught me to just write from my heart and to be authentic. So I feel like it really changed shape for me and then I think for Dave, of course, it’s a completely different genre.

Dave Lombardo: Absolutely, it was like for me, I’ve never had anything to do with this style of music, but I’m a big fan of ambient music. I really enjoy—who doesn’t love Pink Floyd? It’s very ambient. And there are other bands—Portishead is very ambient, there’s also Massive Attack and several others. Even Jucifer, a hardcore band, husband and wife team, had some songs that were very influential in the early development of Venamoris. It’s really interesting to follow this kind of path that we’re going.

Paula Lombardo: Yeah, it’s very different from both of our stories, our past stories, but now it feels very comfortable.

When writing, do you start with a musical idea, or do lyrics and emotions come first?

Paula Lombardo: For me, I write a lot at night. I just wake up in the middle of the night and sometimes a lyric will come to me. I’ll just sort of write down a bunch of thoughts, but a lot of times the lyrics and the melody will happen. So I’ll write it and then I’ll get on a voice recorder and sing the melody that I envisioned for it, and then the next day is normally when I’ll sit at the piano and try to make sense of what was coming to me so organically. So that’s how it typically starts for this project.

Dave Lombardo: And then I open up a session in our recording studio and then she lays down the piano. And then I come in and start determining what kind of drum rhythm—like Paula has mentioned before, the space that I give the music, make sure that there’s enough room for the song to breathe. And then it starts developing, the sounds start coming and the structure.

Were there any recording techniques or production choices on this album that you hadn’t tried before?

Dave Lombardo: Of everything that we do on this record, including the recording of the drums, everything is recorded here at home with us. It’s just Paula and I, unless I sent some stems—I send the music to a guitar player and then he’ll play a little bit of guitar on there. Everything starts here at home and everything is an experiment. There is nothing that we do in this house that is by an engineer that studied engineering, or a producer that specializes in the art of producing. This is all just her and I. Everything I take everything that I’ve learned in my career and I apply it, and she takes everything that she’s learned and she applies it.

Did either of you bring unexpected influences into “To Cross or to Burn” that might surprise listeners?

Paula Lombardo: I think probably a touch of like an industrial sound. Dave has been a fan of Nine Inch Nails forever. I’m a newer fan to that but I got into a record with Halsey and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and I would listen to that here and there and that kind of just showed me a different approach to writing. So I feel like that might have come out specifically in “Numb,” “To Cross or to Burn,” and “Holding On To Nothing.” I think that you can kind of maybe hear that there. So that would be unexpected for me. I’m mostly influenced by the old school songwriters like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, storytellers. So for me to be influenced by sounds more than lyrics is very interesting.

Dave Lombardo: I think everything Venamoris does should be unexpected, at least from my end. Because everybody expects me to do something metal, something hardcore, but this is just like another side of me. It’s not really something that should be unexpected because I’ve always dabbled in and played around with genres and styles of music that are unexpected. I think I will always keep trying to do the unexpected and to try to explore different styles and genres.

What was the most difficult track on this album to bring to life? Did anything change drastically from the initial idea to the final recording?

Paula Lombardo: A couple things—I would say the hardest track would be “In The Shadows” because all of the vocals that you hear, the backup vocals, that took a long time to record. We were recording in different places in the house. We’d come back and listen to it, it didn’t seem full enough for the idea. Dave sang on that—like anything we could do, we would just keep adding and adding. But we also didn’t want to take away from the message. So that song actually lends itself to being more of a piano vocal, something very intimate, but we developed it in such a big way. So I feel like that might have been the most challenging song to just really pull together and get the idea.

Dave Lombardo: Yeah, I agree with her. That one was challenging. I think overall the whole record and all the songs were a bit challenging because this is all new. This is new to us. It’s a new sound, new approach. Like I said, every song is an experiment. We don’t know where it’s going to go or how it’s going to sound or if we’re going to be even happy at the end. There were three other songs that were supposed to be on this record that we removed because we didn’t like the direction it was going. We just said, “No.” Paula decided, “No, these songs do not fit the overall ambience or personality of the record.” They had totally different personalities, which could be good on another record, but on this one she went back and started writing three more.

Paula Lombardo: Yeah, and more often than not, whenever we start writing a song, we’ll lay it down and at some point in the very early stages, you’ll hear one of us say, “I have no idea what to do with this song” or “I have no idea where this is going” and it just doesn’t feel right. And then something happens—I don’t know what it is—but something happens where all of a sudden it could be one instrument and it just makes everything come together. And then the song just explodes from there.

Dave Lombardo: Sometimes I have to be really patient because at first the song won’t—I won’t feel it. It doesn’t hit me and I’m having trouble connecting with it and it will go on for a while. But that’s where patience—you really have to be patient and then all of a sudden something will happen. A light switch will turn on and the song will make absolute sense to me.

What’s the next step for Venamoris? Is there more material already in the works, or are you letting this album breathe before jumping into the next phase?

Paula Lombardo: Dave is finally off tour for a little bit, so we actually have some time to work on some things. But actually we had about 15 or so songs that were already in the development stages before this album really was created. So we’re still thinking about developing those but we’re not sure if they will be for Venamoris or just for our publishing company. And then we currently are working—I’d say we have four, possibly five that will be for another Venamoris album. So we’re actively writing. Just, with Dave being home, he loves being busy. He’s going from practicing for Misfits or doing something for Empire State Bastard, and then when he slows down a bit, he’ll work on Venamoris or Lustmord  or something like that. So I think we’re actively working on it for sure.

Dave Lombardo: Yeah, this is ongoing. We enjoy—we found our kind of family business, which we didn’t know we would ever have a part of or ever have. She was helping me with my schedule and everything that had to do with some of the technicalities of being a touring musician and recording, but now it seems like we have something that, after dinner, maybe watch a little bit of TV and then go up to the studio and work a little bit, or vice versa. So I think it’s going to continue on.

Paula Lombardo: Yeah, as long as it feels good and the ideas keep coming and we’re enjoying it, it’ll just continue to grow.

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others