International Spotlight: Lee Harrison's relentless drive powers Monstrosity into 2026

by Scott Roos

photo by Tim Hubbard

There’s a particular kind of stamina required to play death metal drums at full velocity. It’s not gym stamina. It’s not marathon stamina. It’s something stranger and more surgical, more punishing and more precise. And after more than three decades behind the kit, Lee Harrison knows exactly what that means.

“I grew up doing it,” Harrison says plainly, sticks already in hand during our conversation. “Getting more intense as time went on… I’m just trying to stay consistent with my playing to be able to do it and keep doing it.”

Consistency. That word comes up a lot with Harrison — the founding drummer and primary architect behind Monstrosity. It’s not flashy. It’s not particularly metal as slogans go. But it perfectly captures the mindset of a musician who has survived — and helped define — one of extreme music’s most physically demanding subgenres.

And in 2026, with Screams Beneath the Surface arriving March 13 via Metal Blade Records, Harrison sounds less like a veteran coasting on legacy and more like a craftsman still refining the machinery.

THE PHYSICS OF EXTREME

If you’ve ever watched a death metal drummer up close, you know the violence is deceptive. The arms may blur, but the real work - the endurance work - happens in the small mechanics.

“A lot of this stuff I do, I’m using wrists and I’m using ankles,” Harrison explains. “I’m trying to conserve the energy to where I’m not just bashing my arms like crazy.”

It’s less brute force, more biomechanics. And it has to be. At the tempos Monstrosity operates, inefficiency is the enemy.

“I see drummers like that.... it’s like, man, if I did that, it’d kill me. Because we’re playing so fast, you kind of got to be ergonomically correct in your thinking.”

There’s a quiet discipline in that statement that mirrors Harrison’s entire career. While younger players often chase speed through sheer physical punishment, Harrison’s approach has always been about sustainability — the long war, not the short sprint.

That doesn’t mean age hasn’t entered the conversation.

“It gets a little harder,” he admits. “Back in ’98, ’99, we were practicing like crazy… you just kind of go beyond what you think your normal capabilities are.”

Now the mission is maintenance. It's staying sharp enough to deliver the goods without burning the engine out.

THE DRUMMER AS ARCHITECT

One of the more surprising revelations about Screams Beneath the Surface is just how central Harrison is to the songwriting process. In Monstrosity, the drummer isn’t just keeping time — he’s often building the skeleton the songs grow around.

“Four of the songs were written during the mixing of the last album,” he says. “I basically had drum skeletons I record… then I pull that into the computer and come up with riffs to fit those drum skeletons.”

It’s an inside-out writing method that flips the traditional metal formula. Instead of drums supporting riffs, the riffs are engineered to serve the rhythmic framework.

From there, longtime collaborator Matt Barnes enters the picture — often with near-absurd turnaround speed.

“I’ll send some to him by as late as ten at night… by seven in the morning I got something waiting in my email box.”

That kind of workflow speaks to a band that, despite the eight-year gap since the last release, has been quietly grinding the whole time.

And if you think the pandemic radically changed Harrison’s routine, think again.

“I’m locked down anyway, to be honest,” he shrugs. “I’ve been in this house since 1993… I’ve got my drums set up here… microphones… recorder… I’m set up to write.”

For some artists, isolation was a disruption. For Harrison, it was just Tuesday.

FROM FOUR-TRACKS TO THE FUTURE

Listening to Harrison talk about recording technology is like hearing a survivor describe crossing geological eras. The Florida death metal pioneers came up in a world of brutal limitations. For them is was four-track machines, track bouncing, and gear that barely cooperated. That's how they shared ideas in those days...

“We had four-track machines… drums on two tracks, bass and guitar on three and four, bounce that down,” he recalls.

Today’s environment feels almost unreal by comparison.

“The kids these days are completely spoiled… free lessons on YouTube.”

There’s no bitterness in the observation — just perspective. Harrison learned the hard way: magazines, scattered drum lessons, and the trial-by-fire education of the early Florida scene.

“A lot of it was self-discipline,” he says.

That discipline helped Monstrosity emerge during one of metal’s most fertile evolutionary bursts. Bands like Death and Obituary had a slight head start, but the scene was still wide open terrain.

“They were a generation ahead of us… we were kind of jealous of that,” Harrison laughs. “But I felt I had something to offer.”

History suggests he was right.

THE ARMS RACE OF EXTREME METAL

Harrison has a refreshingly clear-eyed view of how extreme music evolves. He frames it less as revolution and more as a perpetual athletic escalation.

“We wanted to be heavier than Metallica and Slayer and Kreator… so we ended up with death metal,” he says.

Then came the next wave.

“There’s a generation that came. They wanted to blow away death metal… now there’s kids playing 300 beats per minute.”

His tone isn’t defensive. If anything, it’s quietly impressed.

“I know right now there’s some kid sitting in a bedroom somewhere… five years from now he’s going to come out of the woodshed and blow everybody away.”

That’s the long view talking — the understanding that every pioneer eventually becomes part of the foundation.

NEW BLOOD, OLD DNA

One of the biggest talking points around the new album is vocalist Edwin Webb, whose range adds new textures to the Monstrosity attack. Harrison is quick to note the continuity beneath the evolution.

“Monstrosity has always had the high screams… it was part of the original formula,” he explains.

Webb, recommended by Obituary's Terry Butler, fit the bill immediately.

“He’s working out great… some of the longest screams we’ve had.”

There’s even one currently in the works pushing the 16–17 second mark — the kind of detail death metal obsessives absolutely live for.

THE BASS RECKONING

Perhaps the most interesting creative shift on Screams Beneath the Surface is the band’s focus on bass clarity. It's something historically neglected element in many death metal mixes.

Harrison is candid about past shortcomings.

“We even got to a point where we just didn’t care about the bass,” he admits.

That changed after he spent time playing bass in a cover band, which fundamentally altered his perspective.

“If the bass just follows the guitars… when you turn that up, it just creates mud.”

The solution this time around was intentional separation. It became about bass parts with their own melodic identity, breathing space built into arrangements, and careful automation during mixing.

Original bassist Mark Van Erp’s return only sharpened the approach.

“If we’re going to have them there, let’s make it worthwhile and really try to come up with cool parts.”

It’s a small philosophical shift that speaks volumes about where Monstrosity sits in 2026: not reinventing death metal, but refining it with the patience of veterans who’ve learned, sometimes painfully, what works.

LESSONS WRITTEN IN PARTICLE BOARD

Harrison’s memories of the early recording days are equal parts nostalgia and cautionary tale. One detail stands out: the drums on the debut weren’t even proper wood shells.

“They were like particle board drums,” he says, still half-amused decades later.

Budget limitations, inexperience, and a little too much backseat producing created mixes that in the beginning, the band has never fully embraced. The learning curve was steep and expensive.

“We drove Jim Morris nuts,” Harrison laughs.

But each record tightened the formula: better performances, better gear, better trust in experienced engineers. By the third album, In Dark Purity, the pieces finally locked together.

Since then, it’s been about incremental improvement - the slow, unglamorous grind that defines bands built for endurance rather than hype cycles.

STILL IN THE GAME

As our time winds down, Harrison remains exactly what he’s been throughout the conversation: grounded, pragmatic, and quietly driven. There’s no victory-lap energy here. No legacy-act complacency.

Just the work.

“I stay busy with music. Pretty much that’s what I do.”

In a genre obsessed with extremity, that kind of long-haul commitment might be the most brutal flex of all.

When Screams Beneath the Surface lands this March, it won’t just be another entry in Monstrosity’s catalog. It’s the sound of a lifer still sharpening the blade - wrists loose, ankles locked in, economy of motion intact.