Professor Emeritus have spent more than a decade shaping their place within Chicago’s heavy and epic doom metal scene, developing a sound rooted in atmosphere, tradition and the collective experience of musicians long active in the city’s wider metal community. With that history in mind, we opened our conversation by asking the band to introduce themselves to readers encountering them for the first time.

Interview

TheNwothm: To start things off, could you introduce yourselves for anyone discovering Professor Emeritus for the first time and tell us abit about who’s in the band and where you’re all based?

Lee: Hello! We are based in the Chicago area. I’m Lee Smith, and I play guitar and have been in the band since the beginning, around 2010. Tyler Antram plays guitar and Jose Salazar plays bass. They’ve both been in the band since 2017. Chris Avgerin plays drums and has been with us since 2019. Esteban Julian Pena has been our vocalist since 2024. 

The Nwothm: Take us back to 2010. What brought the earliest version of Professor Emeritus together in Chicago, and what convinced you that this was the right moment to form a heavy and epic doom metal band?

Lee: The real inspiration behind starting this band was the debut Argus album. I was fascinated with how they fit perfectly in the space between Iron Maiden and Candlemass. That blend of styles allowed their music to feel more exciting to me than most straightforward traditional metal or doom bands. I started writing the music that would become songs like “Burning Grave” and “Rats in the Walls” due to this wave of inspiration.  

The Nwothm: Your name has a very distinctive academic weight to it. How did Professor Emeritus become the banner for the project, and what did it represent to you at the time?

Lee: The name definitely seems to be something everyone has questions (and complaints) about. It came from me seeing the “emeritus faculty office” during college. I thought Professor Emeritus sounded like a cool name, and didn’t seem to have been used by any other bands. Some might say there’s a good reason for that! I still like it though. 

The Nwothm: Are there particular parts of Chicago’s culture, history or creative scene that you feel have seeped into the band’s identity over the years?

Esteban: Chicago is the best city on Earth, but there’s a heaviness and darkness to it that, subconsciously, I think imbues our music with a sense of despair and resilience.

The Nwothm: Many of you have played in a wide range of Chicago metal bands over the years. How have those experiences influenced the way you write or collaborate within Professor Emeritus?

Esteban: We all have our own styles and preferred ways of doing things, and our experience in the scene allows us to combine our workflows seamlessly. 

The Nwothm: Growing up, were there particular books, historical figures or stories that left a mark on you and later found their way into your lyrics or concepts?

Esteban: I’ve always loved studying history and draw a lot of my ideas from historical events, myths, and legends of the past. I’m also a huge fan of cosmic horror and Dungeons & Dragons. 

TheNwothm: Outside of music, what are the passions or hobbies that keep you grounded or spark ideas for the band?

Esteban: Traveling and video games.

TheNwothm: Your first full-length,”Take Me to the Gallows”from 2017, arrived after several years of the band quietly building its foundations. Looking back, what was driving the writing of that record, and what did releasing it mean for you at that stage?

Lee: It all goes back to the first Argus album, and wanting to do something with a mix of doom and traditional metal. For the first several years it was really just a solo idea on the back burner. I didn’t expect to ever put a full “real” band together. When we recorded the music in 2014, it was still going to be more of a project than an actual band. It wasn’t until maybe late 2016 or early 2017 when I decided to put a full lineup together. Jose and Tyler remain in the band from that initial lineup. 

TheNwothm: Your second album”A Land Long Gone”,released in 2025, arrived eight years after your debut. What ideas, research or inspirations shaped this record, especially given your interest in history and literature?

Esteban: In my case for this album I picked every song as a different painting, or scenes from a movie out of my imagination. For one song I drew inspiration from the novel Gormenghast, though. 

TheNwothm: With two albums created across very different periods of your lives, how has the process of writing and recording changed for you as individuals and as a collective?

Lee: The writing process was fairly similar. I had the majority of the music, but for the second album there definitely was some development that took place in the rehearsal room prior to recording. I look forward to more of that moving forward! For recording, the main difference I can think of is that I played most of the guitars and all of the bass on the first album. But on the second, I only played half of the guitars. So there was a lot less pressure on me. After my stuff was done, I could sit back and watch the other guys record their parts. 

TheNwothm: Your releases have a strong visual identity. When developing artwork, how do you approach the process?Do you treat it as an extension of the themes, or as its own creative space?

Lee: While the cover artwork for both albums was done by Adam Burke, the circumstances were very different. For the first album, we had the title already and I came up with a pretty literal interpretation. We gave Adam a shoddy sketch and he turned it into the great piece of art that it is. For the second album, there was no title or concept. I happened to be scrolling through Adam’s gallery of paintings available for license, and when one of them jumped off the screen. We immediately grabbed it for ourselves and are still very happy with it. This was before Esteban was in the band. He later came up with the album title, and I think it really fits the artwork.