Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of May 21, 2013. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.

30 Seconds To Mars – Love, Lust, Faith + Dreams (Virgin/Universal)
Alpine – A Is For Alpine (Votiv)
Amos Slade – Hungry Earth (Sodak Media Group)
Baptist Generals – Jackleg Devotional To The Heart (Sub Pop)
Christopher Paul Stelling – False Cities (Christopher Paul Stelling)
Club 8 – Above The City (Labrador/Universal)
Daft Punk – Random Access Memories (Columbia)
Darius Rucker – True Believers (10 Spot)
Dead Gaze – Dead Gaze (Fat Cat Records)
Dirty Beaches – Drifters/Love Is The Devil (1-2-3-4-GO!)
Extrema – The Seed Of Foolishness (Scarlet Records)
FACT – Burundanga (Good Fight Music)
French Montana – Excise My French (Interscope Records)
The Front Bottoms – Talon Of The Hawk (Bar None Records)
Have Mercy – The Earth Pushed Back (Topshelf Records/Universal)
Japanther – Eat Like Lisa Act Like Bart (Recess Records)
The Joy Of Painting – Tender Age (South Division Records)
Linda Draper – Edgewise (Linda Draper)
LVMRKS – Pale Fairytale (LVMRKS Records)
Majical Cloudz – Impersonator (Matador Records)
Man Or Astro-Man? – Defcon 5…4…3…2…1  (Warm Electronic Recordings)
The National – Trouble Will Find Me (4AD Records)
NK – Nothing To Be Gained Here (Triple Crown Records)
Palisades – Outcasts (Rise Records)
Radiation City – Animals In The Median (Tender Loving Empire)
Red Hare – Nites Of Midnite (Dischord Records)
Saturday Looks Good To Me – One Kiss Ends It All (Polyvinyl Records)
Scout Niblett – It’s Up To Emma (Drag City)
The Story Changes – Static And Trembling (I Am Shark)
Ten Kens – Namesake (The MuseBox Records)
Thrift Store Talent – Evergreens (Pirate Our Music!)
Weerd Science – Red Light Juliet (Horris Records)
Young Benjamins – Less Argue (Young Benjamins)
Zed – Desperation Blues (I:and:I Recordings)

——————————————————————————–

Album Streams:

30 Seconds To Mars – Love, Lust, Faith + Dreams

Daft Punk – Random Access Memories

The National – Trouble Will Find Me

——————————————————————————–

SputnikMusic’s Most Played Artists of the Week (according to Last.FM):

Staff :

1. The National
2. Arcade Fire
3. Laura Stevenson and The Cans
4.  The Dillinger Escape Plan
5. Kurt Vile
6. Bibio
7. Vampire Weekend
8. Waxahatchee
9. Mikal Cronin
10. Modest Mouse

Contributors:

1. The National
2. Burial
3. The Dillinger Escape Plan
4. Opeth
5. Deftones
6. Orchid
7. Boards Of Canada
8. Queens Of The Stone Age
9. Rob Zombie
10. Meshuggah

There is a moment right after the first chorus in “Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace” from which the song can go anywhere.  Two piano chords wobble on a tightrope, back and forth, and one can’t help but wonder if perhaps the song is just going to end at that point, the soft heartbeat of percussion pulsing more weakly until it goes unheard, succumbing to the implacable fade.  This is the world in flux – lives waxing in and out of their parallels, possible futures vying for dominance.  Think about how rare it is these days to be genuinely surprised by a song, to sit with bated breath as you wonder where the music is going to take you.

Think about how rare it is for a song to imitate life so exquisitely that it hurts.

—

What I am trying to delineate here is why I feel bothered when people say something like, “The Mountain Goats are still great, but nothing compares to Darnielle’s output pre-2005.”  I can’t count the number of posts I’ve read saying something similar to that.  The phrasings may change a little from person to person, but the general idea is that Darnielle made better music when The Mountain Goats consisted mostly of one or two people.  Of course, any Darnielle – old or new – is good Darnielle, so my annoyance can never be too great.  But his output from 2006-2012 is one of the greatest musical runs ever, and some of the those albums are wrongly given short shrift among Mountain Goats fans.

It is hard for me to understand why anyone would prefer an album like Sweden to Get Lonely or All Eternals Deck. His lo-fi albums are great but they are simply a chore to listen to at times because of the number of songs and the production (Zopilote Machine in particular is one I can’t listen to unless I’m in a certain mood).  Additionally, they all suffer from a sameness that, although it was unavoidable due to the nature of the recordings, gives the albums a tendency to blend together.  But, again, the purpose of this is not to denounce earlier Mountain Goats recordings as bad, because they aren’t, but to extol the virtues of their later works.

—

[As an interesting side-note before diving too deeply into this, the early Mountain Goats recording I find myself coming back to most often is the unreleased Hail and Farewell Gothenburg, which Darnielle has publicly denounced as wrongly mixed and as something that was never meant to be heard (it was leaked onto the Internet in 2007).  Its unfinished state of only ten tracks makes it much more similar to later Mountain Goats albums, and there is something about the writing and singing on that album that elevates it to more than just another lo-fi, lyrically excellent collection of Darnielle songs.]

—

The thing that always confuses me (in the best way possible) about Get Lonely is how a record so lush and full can also sound so fucking desolate and detached.  The album, honestly, is one of the most shining examples of songwriting I can think of, by which I mean the lyrics and music complement each other so perfectly that it doesn’t seem as if the songs could exist in any other form or version.  Covering or re-recording them would be a futile gesture, because it would be impossible to recreate what Darnielle did on that album.  You can hear sounds that aren’t actually there – the wind that bends the trees in “Woke Up New” – or you can see things based on what you’re hearing.  The strings in “Moon Over Goldsboro” are the push and pull of the tides and moon, a force so strong that it makes known its presence even over the hard-scrabble, dry desert sun of Darnielle’s acoustic guitar.  I’ve never heard anything like it before.  Closing the album is the exquisite “In Corolla,” in which Darnielle drowns the album’s narrator without ever explicitly saying that he’s doing it.  I credit that subtlety to the fifteen years of writing prior to Get Lonely, and it’s also why I give the album itself and its descendants more credit.  “In Corolla” is the purest form of the hundreds of songs that came before it.  The song couldn’t exist without them, but its existence also gives them more value.

—

[A very short list of symbolism that you would have a hard time finding on anything other than an album made by John Darnielle:  an autoclave, a white-chalk baphomet, a mandolin, grapes in the netherworld, a Marduk t-shirt, a compost-filled hole, mason jars of preserved brains, a cathedral in a dream of the future.]

—

Heretic Pride has always seemed to me like the essential distillation of everything that makes The Mountain Goats so great, which is kind of interesting because of its anomalous standing in their discography.  The lyrics are steeped in modern mythology – in pulp comics and urban legends, in metal music and H.P. Lovecraft.  Some of Darnielle’s more typical personal writing is still present in songs like “San Bernardino” and “Autoclave,” but the real standouts are when he gives himself over to the gleefully campy imagery that is given a legitimate and somber weight by his writing talent.  A heretic finds triumph in his own stoning, Michael Myers finds heroic redemption in a cleansing fire, the Tianchi Lake monster finds its magnificent beauty in the dark water’s reflection.  Darnielle is a writer that can give a credible voice to any imaginable person or object or creature, and never is that more apparent than on Heretic Pride.  The album is also Jon Wurster’s first with the band, and his addition signified an era of truly amazing drum work in The Mountain Goats’ music.  The biggest thing to take away from the album is that a song such as “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” simply wouldn’t have been possible on earlier Mountain Goats albums, with its distorted guitars, highly energetic drums, and the high whining of strings that seems to herald the world’s inevitable doom by forces unseen and unknowable.

—

[And now the deaf approach, trailing the dark smoke

Of their infirmity behind them as they leave it

And move toward the prayer that everything

Is praying:  the summer evening a held bubble,

Every gesture riveting the love,

The swaying of waitresses, the eleven television

Sets in a storefront broadcasting a murderer’s face—

These things speak the clear promise of Heaven.

- Denis Johnson, “The Confession of St. Jim-Ralph”]

—

I am rapidly approaching the word limit that I set for myself, so I will be blunt here:  The Life of the World to Come is the best Mountain Goats album.  It is more lush than the most desperately imagined desert oasis and more lyrically expressive than most novels.  There has been and always will be a generally pretty nerdy debate about whether or not songs can be considered poetry, and I don’t mean to contribute to it, so I’ll just say that the best quality of poetry is how it can utterly disregard reality in the most real way possible.  Gods and Man commune in poetry.  Nature speaks.  Objects are personified in ways that only make sense within a poem.  If the poem is good, then one hardly has to suspend any disbelief because it all feels real.  In that respect, songs are similar, and they also have the added benefit of vocal tone.  Listen to “Psalm 40:2.”  It’s pure menace.  The dissonant acoustic guitar riff after each chorus should be unpleasant but somehow isn’t.  But it is Darnielle’s voice that makes the song so good, and his snarling basically results in a perversion of the bible verse he’s quoting (David’s “He” was God, but who is Darnielle talking about?).  I am brought now again to “Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace.”  It is the best song Darnielle has ever written, hands down.  It sounds like it was written in constellations across the night sky and given voice by the ringing of the stars.  I will live my whole life without making anything that comes near to the perfection of that song, and I guess I could say that about countless other songs as well, but “Ezekiel 7” is a balm in Gilead, something that stands so far above something I could conceivably achieve that I don’t even feel the need to strive toward it.  But it is a song that makes me feel as if I am up to life’s simpler challenges, to facing the interminable slouching toward the end.

—

[Overlooking late-period Mountain Goats albums also means missing out on several amazing EPs that contain some of Darnielle’s best songs:  Babylon Springs, Black Pear Tree, Satanic Messiah, and Moon Colony Bloodbath.  Black Pear Tree, recorded in collaboration with Kaki King, is probably the best of them.  Its bookends, “Black Pear Tree” and “Thank You Mario but Our Princess is in Another Castle,” would be well-served by being high up on any given list of the best Mountain Goats tracks.  The former is certainly one of the most desolate songs ever recorded, with whirrs and clicks fading out and in under Darnielle’s gorgeous piano and King’s delicately frank vocals.  Moon Colony Bloodbath is a similarly bleak affair, but Babylon Springs isn’t.  In fact, it contains some of Darnielle’s most joyfully poppy material in “Alibi,” a perfect summer cruising song complete with handclaps.]

—

What all of this boils down to is that those lo-fi albums were building to something, and to me it seems unfair when people discount the destination.  The characters in Darnielle’s discography, whether they were going to Georgia or Scotland or Kansas, were always headed eventually to Jerusalem or San Bernardino or the Lakeside View apartments.   Or, maybe most of all, to that swampy beach in Corolla, seaweed coloring the water green and beckoning with its undulations, the muddy ground untouched by footprints, where that unnamed character – it could be any of them, it could be me or you – marches into the water in a transformative daze and becomes something else.

Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of May 14, 2013. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.

The Abramson Singers – Late Riser (Copperspine Records)
Adult. – The Way Things Fall (Ghostly International)
Agnetha Fältsko – A (Verve)
Amy Grant – How Mercy Looks From Here (Amy Grant Productions/Sparrow Records)
Anamanaguchi – Endless Fantasy (Redeye)
Andy Cato – Times & Places (Redeye)
Army Of The Universe – The Hipster Sacrifice (Metropolis Records)
Beams – Just Rivers (Beams)
Benga – Chapter 2 (Sony UK)
Bibio – Silver Wilkinson (Warp)
The Blank Tapes – Vacation (Antenna Farm)
Bobby McFerrin – Spirityouall (Sony Masterworks)
Calibre – Spill (Signature)
Candace Bellamy – In My Lane (Candace Bellamy)
Captain, We’re Sinking – The Future Is Cancelled (Run For Cover)
Deep Purple – Now What?! (Eagle Rock Entertainment)
Demi Lovato – Demi (Hollywood Records)
The Dillinger Escape Plan – One Of Us Is The Killer (101 Distribution) – Jacob Royal
Dungeonesse – Dungeonesse (Secretly Canadian)
Eluvium – Nightmare Ending (Temporary Residence)
Eve – Lip Lock (From The Rib Music)
Extinction Protocol – Aeonic Obliteration (P2)
George Strait – Love Is Everything (MCA Nashville)
Gold & Youth – Beyond Wilderness (Arts & Crafts)
Heart In Hand – Almost There (Siege Of Amida)
Immolation – Kingdom Of Conspiracy (Nuclear Blast)
John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts (Partisan Records)
Kisses – Kids In L.A. (Cascine)
Koji – Crooked In My Mind (Run For Cover)
Laura Mvula – Sing To The Moon (Columbia)
Mindless Self Indulgence – How I Learned Not To Give A Shit & Love (Metropolis Records)
Mr Ms – Secondhand Rapture (Columbia)
pacificUV – After The Dream You Are Awake (Mazarine Records)
The Phoenix Foundation – Fandango (Memphis Industries)
Pure X – Crawling Up The Stairs (Acephale)
Saltland – I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us (Constellation)
Scott Tournet – Ver La Luz (Illusion Tournet Music)
Small Black – Limits Of Desire (Jagjaguwar)
Snowden – No One In Control (Serpents & Snakes)
Surgeon – Chemical Reign (Surgeon)
Steve Von Till – As The Crow Flies [2013 reissue] (Neurot Recordings)
Tectonic – Tectonic Plates: Volume 4 (Tectonic)
This Century – Biography Of Heartbreak (This Century)
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats – Mind Control (Metal Blade)
Var – No One Dances Quite Like My Brothers (Sacred Bones)
Vampire Weekend – Modern Vampires Of The City (XL Recordings) – Alex Robertson
Wampire – Curiosity (Polyvinyl Records)
The Wonder Years – The Greatest Generation (Hopeless Records)

——————————————————————————–

Album Streams:

The Dillinger Escape Plan – One Of Us Is The Killer

Dungeonesse – Dungeonesse

Immolation – Kingdom Of Conspiracy

Small Black – Limits Of Desire

Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats – Mind Control

Wampire – Curiosity

——————————————————————————–

SputnikMusic’s Most Played Artists of the Week (according to Last.FM):

Staff :

1. The National
2. Arcade Fire
3. Laura Stevenson and The Cans
4.  The Dillinger Escape Plan
5. Kurt Vile
6. Bibio
7. Vampire Weekend
8. Waxahatchee
9. Mikal Cronin
10. Modest Mouse

Contributors:

1. The National
2. Eluvium
3. Altar Of Plagues
4. Hammock
5. Anberlin
6. Rob Zombie
7. Seasick Steve
8. The Flaming Lips
9. The Dillinger Escape Plan
10. A$AP Rocky

Once upon a time, I honestly hadn’t heard a proper hip-hop record. I was perusing through Sputnik’s recent releases, and lo and behold, a hip-hop album with cool artwork! Sobhi’s review for Dark Time Sunshine’s Vessel sounded promising enough, and so I decided to go out on a limb for the album. I found it on Amazon for a penny, and three days later I experienced the thrill Sobhi did– my experiences with it really lacked that pivotal context, though. I think one appreciates Vessel the most when they’re aware of hip-hop’s history, and understand how many new things the record brings to the table. This is drastically different than my first– and rather superficial– interpretation of the album: “Whoa, these cool beats, man!” In the beginning I saw the diversity of the album, as well as the fact that it traversed both optimistic and grimy territory with the flick of a switch– and really well, too. But there’s more about Vessel to consider.

One of the biggest things about Vessel that I’ve come to appreciate is what rapper Onry Ozzborn brings to the table. His lyrics are personal, but not too revealing– although we can all tell “E.R.” stems from a personal experience he’s had, we aren’t being drowned in the details. We can understand where he’s coming from, and that sense of relatability is what makes songs like “E.R.” really stand out. But on the other hand, Onry sometimes removes himself from the narrative, and paints gruesome pictures. “Little Or No Concern” is a drug-addled glimpse at death itself, through the lens of a suffering mother and daughter, and Ozzborn does an excellent job at portraying the brutality of the situation, but as the middleman. He doesn’t get involved with the story himself– he instead decides to present it from afar, and with interjections of the mother and her daughter’s bandmates. And while Ozzborn doesn’t get involved in the emotional ties of the storyline, he still conveys the sense of loss incredibly well, through his meticulous use of description. I mean, that way he describes the daughter’s death at the end of the track is heart-breaking (spoiler alert?.) So while I initially chalked up my enjoyment of Vessel to producer Zavala’s phenomenal work at blending so many differing musical styles into a cohesive work, I’ve realized lately that Onry does just as much for me.

Dark Time Sunshine’s second release, ANX, was my album of the year for 2012. It’s funny, then, that I’ve realized I don’t enjoy the album as much as Vessel anymore. To be clear, Zavala’s work on ANX is phenomenal. The album has a happier mood overall, and it’s all because of Zavala’s ability to inject optimism into the beats at hand.  On “Take My Hand,” “Prarie Dog Day,” and “Never Cry Wolf,” the beats are simply infectious, and I give the man props for making this happen so fliudly. But my biggest gripe with ANX is that it sacrifices the paranoia frequently found on Vessel for a more complacent musical setting– there’s not much tension here. The dark and grimy “View Items 3” worked really well for me on Vessel, because the ominous atmosphere it created meshed particularly well with Onry’s stories about losing control.

The funny thing about ANX is that it’s about anxiety– it has a much more cohesive theme than Vessel, and is one that seems to call for darker moods. But as a whole, the album doesn’t seem to connect the dots of anxiety like it should. ANX seems to pretend it doesn’t exist for half its runtime instead, focusing on happy tracks that, while exciting alone, serve a purpose on ANX that’s curious at best. One could certainly argue there’s reason for these songs to be there thematically, that they convey the flip side of anxiety– or the mood that a person with anxiety is really aiming for– but those types of explanations don’t really cut it for me. If Dark Time Sunshine wanted to make an album based on anxiety, it would make far more sense for them to elaborate more on the grittiness of tracks like “E.R.” and “Great Dane,” and not to embrace the joyous eccentricities of “All Aboard” (as much as I love that song.) It just feels like there’s a very clear dichotomy between what ANX is, and what Dark Time Sunshine wants it to be.

And Onry Ozzborn would sound much more at home if this happened, too, because in carefree tracks like “Can’t Wait,” the lyricist doesn’t offer any of the important stories that made his work on Vessel so special. He instead gets outshined by the guest artists– Aesop Rock’s eccentric work on “Take My Hand” is the song’s definite highlight, and “Valiant” wouldn’t be half as compelling without Child Actor’s contributions. I just think Ozzborn works best when writing about the dark things, which is why I find it so strange that much of ANX sidesteps these topics.

There are times when ANX focuses on anxiety very acutely, but they don’t feel half as vivid as they should be. It’s near the album’s end, with tracks like “Look Forward” and “Forget Me Not.” And while I am glad that ANX comes back to its motif, these tracks don’t have the passion that the other songs on the record possess. They’re simply outshined by the radiance of other tracks at hand, and it gives the impression of the anxiety theme being less important than other topics the album covers.

I don’t mean to make this sound like an anti-ANX rant, because I still adore the album. I just feel like it’s for the wrong reasons, considering what the album’s ultimate purpose is. Dark Time Sunshine is an interesting duo to think about, though– they’re probably my favorite hip-hop group, although one wouldn’t really be able to tell that from my ratings (about a 4 average.) I think that goes to show how ratings aren’t the end-all, be-all with music, because even when DTS does something musically that I’m not a huge fan of, I still enjoy the process of analyzing it– especially because there’s a lot of substance to consider. We all have initial opinions on albums, but they seem to change frequently with time.

So I suppose if you’re going to take anything from this post, let it be this: our opinions on music shift rapidly, and if anything, I’d argue that to be an indicator of truly lasting music above all else. When we can’t decide how much we enjoy a particular piece of art, it means that in a way, we’re oddly committed to figuring it out. And through that experience, we’re spending more time with it than any other piece of art we consistently love. I’m not sure exactly how I feel about Dark Time Sunshine’s albums as of right now, and something tells me that won’t ever change. But regardless, I’ll keep listening, trying to decipher what it all means. Maybe I’ll get somewhere, or maybe I’ll end up overthinking it (if that hasn’t happened already!.) But either way, it’s good to think about how much these albums mean to us, and what parts of us they really speak to.

From May 11 until May 18, Sputnikmusic has the exclusive chance to stream Enshine’s debut album Origin, which will be released on May 15 via Rain Without End Records.

Enshine is an atmospheric metal project that got its start in 2009 under the hand of Jari Lindholm (guitars, ex-Slumber, Atoma). Soon enough he teamed up with Sebastien Pierre (vocals) of Fractal Gates and Inborn Suffering fame, with Oscar Borgenstam (drums) and Siavosh Bigonah (bass) completing the recording line-up. Origin was over two years in the making and the production of the album was finished in the summer of 2012. After that, the band started searching for a label and finally teamed up with Rain Without End Records in December 2012.

With their debut album, Enshine present the listener a charming atmospheric metal journey full of lovely melodies and brisk ambient soundscapes. The album sounds like a perfect mix between Pierre’s Fractal Gates (melodic death metal) and Lindholm’s ex-band Atoma (atmospheric metal), as an airy and meditative atmosphere collides with tasteful melodic riffs. “A musical exploration of the world within” is the tagline the album is being promoted with, and it couldn’t be more accurate, as Origin is a metal album for the thinking man.

Origin:

“Stream of Light”
Stream of light

“Refraction”
Refraction

“Cinders”
Cinders

“Astrarium”
Astrarium

“Ambivalence”
Ambivalence

“Nightwave”
Nightwave

“Immersed”
Immersed

“Above Us”
Above us

“Constellation”
Constellation


Enshine’s facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enshine.band

Bandcamp: http://enshine.bandcamp.com/

Pre-Order: http://naturmacht.com/shop/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=680

Sputnik’s review of Origin: http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/56643/Enshine-Origin/

For the life of me, I’ve never quite been able to figure out which elements of Gold Panda’s music speak to me the most. I’ve always been fascinated with the orientally-focused electronic producer, because he has this way of expressing Asian culture in a distinctly relatable lens, but what about it works best? “Brazil” answers these questions with a (probably warranted) eye-roll, reminding us it’s all about the textures and percussion. Because ultimately, what’s most important here is the mood the reversed sample creates, the serene and almost angelic vibe it gives off. But damn, does the percussion complement it– as confident as ever, the tom hits are as important as the basic drum-&-snare pattern. The two merge in a marvelous way that’s characteristically Gold Panda, assuaging any remaining anxieties about the producer’s upcoming release. The only complaint about the track is the sub-par sample used, a man apathetically saying the song’s title. It wouldn’t be an issue if it weren’t utilized as the primary voice of the track, but its monotony detracts from the overall mood “Brazil” presents. But annoyances aside, the track continues to tread the same path Gold Panda’s been working towards for his whole career. Maybe by the time he stops messing around with all these teasers of releases, he’ll have built the worthy and telling compilation of oriental culture his talents have always demanded of him.

Keep your eyes peeled for Gold Panda’s upcoming full-length, titled Half of Where You Live. It’s set for release on June 10th, and something tells me it’ll be just as fulfilling as we hope it to be.

Facebook // Soundcloud

Wellington-based Beastwars are already a powerful force in the realm of sludge metal. The quartet’s second full-length Blood Becomes Fire continues the path taken by their audacious debut with the colossal sound that makes their contemporaries look insignificant by comparison. On top of that, the album is told through the eyes of a dying traveller from another time who finds the contemporary world destroyed, which places the band’s style in an intriguing futuristic context. I’ve recently approached Nathan Hickey who plays the drums for Beastwars. We’ve discussed such issues as the origin of the band, the process of putting out the new record, internet piracy and the new means of music distribution among others.

As most SputnikMusic users may not be familiar with Beastwars, could you tell us how your musical path started? What inspired you to play sludge metal in the first place?

Me and Clayton (Anderson, guitarist) met in a bar and formed a friendship over red wine and stoner rock. We wanted to form a band that sounded a bit like Kyuss, but with the big hooks of The Cult. When James (Woods, bass) and Matt (Hyde, vocals) joined that plan went totally out the window. James’ massively distorted tone shaped the sound of the band just as much as Matts vocals did. We pushed harder, played louder and it all came out heavier than we had imagined it would. We were just 4 guys that met up on a Monday night to have a jam and drink some beer. In those early days we never thought that we’d be making albums and playing the shows that we get to play. When we supported Kyuss Lives!, just after our first album came out, it was such a surreal feeling. We were supporting a band that I thought I’d never get to see live in my life, and they’d chosen us to play with them.

Your maxim “Obey the Riff” fits numerous sludge metal and stoner rock bands. What exactly does it mean when it comes to Beastwars?

“Obey the Riff” is just a simple idea. Everything begins and ends with the riff. The riff has a huge weight on its shoulders. It should be obeyed. Our aim is to write better and better songs that make people feel something in their guts. The drums, the bass, the vocals are equally important, but the riff is born from the guitar. It’s the seed of everything.

Your debut was exceptionally well received, and I can imagine it’s difficult to balance the willingness to evolve with the expectations of your fans. What did your creative process for Blood Becomes Fire look like?

We had made a point of playing the songs on the new album live a lot before recording them. There were 3 or 4 songs that we were playing on the release tour of the debut album. So, these songs felt pretty worn in by the time we recorded. There were also 2 or 3 songs that hadn’t been played live at all, and the first time we’d ever played them all the way through was when we were recording them. We knew we had to evolve, but I think the first album was such a good representation of what we sound like that any evolution was going to be very subtle. The main thing for me was making the songs sound tighter and more direct. Make them as short as possible which kind of goes against what a lot of heavy bands are doing these days.

The music on Blood Becomes Fire sports a futuristic vibe with the lyrics revolving around sci-fi themes. As regards the artwork, you once again teamed up with Weta Workshop’s Nick Keller to splendid effect. What does your cooperation usually look like?

We’re really lucky to have Nick on our side. His artwork is truly mindblowing. It’s really hard trying to get heard over every other metal band in the world, but his artwork opens eyes and ears for us. One look at the cover and everyone wants to know what the album sounds like. We work really closely with him on concepts. Then, he’ll go away, paint something and show this to us. We are huge fans of his art and feel really honored to have such a great relationship with him.

Putting out a record can be a complex process that requires a lot of patience. What was the most difficult aspect of crafting your new album?

You have to celebrate all the little triumphs when putting out an album because if you don’t, it all becomes a blur of spreadsheets and emails. Then, you might lose sight of why you’re in a band to begin with. I think the most difficult part of creating the album was naming it. And I can’t believe how hard it was because now Blood Becomes Fire seems like the most perfect name in the world for the album.

Sonically, your music tends to be quite bass-centered, which reminds me of AmRep noise rock. How did you guys come up with your distinctive style? What are your prime influences?

James said he wants the bass to sound and feel as though you’re standing at the end of a runway as a 747 takes off over your head. That’s a pretty good description. He uses 2 Rat distortion pedals, a New Zealand made Hotcake pedal and a big tube amp. The rest of us just turn up and work our noises in around him. Jesus Lizard, Sonic Youth, Kyuss, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and a lot of the New Zealand Flying Nun stuff are all big influences on our sound.

Which song of yours are you particularly happy about?

My personal favourite track is “Tower of Skulls.” I love the way it crawls along, slowly evolving, getting heavier and heavier.

Unfortunately Blood Becomes Fire leaked several weeks before its release date. How do you feel about that?

Unfortunately that’s the state of the music industry these days. We offered the album to a few reviewers, and for some reason one of them thought it’d be a cool thing to leak the album a month out from release. I have no idea why someone would do that. But in saying that, a bunch of people downloaded the album for free and liked it, told their friends and now we’re sitting at #1 on the metal charts, and number 20 overall on the bandcamp sales charts, and at #2 in New Zealand top 40 behind Michael Buble. So, it wasn’t totally detrimental. It just freaked us out that someone thought it was worth leaking. Everyone these days has put their own personal value on music. Some people want to support the band to make more music, tour overseas etc. and will buy the band’s music. Some people don’t.

Nowadays such websites as bandcamp and facebook are playing a major part in the promotion process. Are you pleased with the changes that have recently been taking place in the music industry?

Yeah. Facebook is a great way to connect with fans. The band formed just as Facebook came around and we’ve seen how it can be used for good and for bad. I lost interest in Myspace all those years ago because it just turned into pages and pages of spam. Hopefully, Facebook doesn’t end up the same way. Bandcamp is brilliant: I love it how someone buys your music, you basically get paid instantly and you can keep in contact with your fans through their email addresses. Itunes feels a lot less personal. Streaming sites like Rdio and Spotify are an interesting development. We’ve done an experiment with this new album, and have only let Side A of the album be streamable. If people like it and want to hear the rest, they are welcome to buy it. I genuinely believe that we have sold more albums because we took that stance.

It’s an easy way to sit on the fence over the streaming issue. One side is that fans get to hear your music, which is great. The bad side is that the royalties you receive from those services are so minuscule that it brings me back to contemplating what music is actually worth. The time, money and effort that goes into creating it and what value people are willing to put on it. We all know CDs have been overpriced for years, and for us to press LPs living in New Zealand is so expensive because A: we don’t have a label paying for them, and B: there is no pressing plant here in NZ. So, we have to get them pressed in the States and shipped back over here. It all adds up.

There are only 4 million people living in New Zealand, and so I suppose you can’t tour extensively over there for a long time. Do you have any plans to tour abroad then?

We’d love to play through Europe and anywhere else that would have us really. Like every good heavy band in the world, Roadburn and Desertfest are 2 festivals that we’d love to play. Hopefully this album reaches those guys’ ears and maybe you’ll see us there.

Getting more people to listen to the band and play live for them is a huge part of what we do. Everything happens at its own pace. When the right offer comes we’ll be off.

What do you think the future holds for Beastwars? Do you already have any ideas for the new record?

We’ve got a bunch of ideas already for the next album. Just like how Blood Becomes Fire has evolved from the first record I’m expecting this one to take another step forwards and sideways too. We’ve always had a pretty good plan on how we want the band to evolve, and hopefully we can keep building on the momentum that Blood Becomes Fire has given us.

Sputnik’s Review Of Blood Becomes Fire

Beastwars’ Official Site

Beastwars’ Facebook Page

The first half of Blood Becomes Fire is streaming at this location:

Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of May 7, 2013. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.

98 Degrees – 2.0 (Entertainment One)
AM & Shawn Lee – La Musique Numerique (Park The Van)
Ann Pragg – Bitter Fruit (Wonderland Archives)
Banquets – Banquets (Black Numbers)
Bob Oxblood – Oxblood (Bob Oxblood)
Boxer/Eyes Wide – Split (Reveille Records)
Bracher Brown – Broken Glass And Railroad Tracks (Rock Ridge Music)
The Child Of Lov – The Child Of Lov (Domino)
Co La – Moody Coup (Software)
Courtney Jaye – Love And Forgiveness (1-2-3-4-GO!)
Dead Silence Hides My Cries – The Symphony Of Hope (Artery Recordings)
Deerhunter – Monomania (4AD Records) – Hernan M. Campbell
Destroid – The Invasion (Rottun Records)
Devour The Day – Time & Pressure (CD Baby)
Eksi Ekso – Archfiend (Retroversal)
First & Thorne – Left Of Center (FATindie Records)
Fitz & The Tantrums – More Than Just A Dream (Elektra)
Fokuz Recordings – Fifty Five (Fokuz Recordings)
Grenades – Heaven Is Empty (Red Cobra Records)
Grime – Deteriorate (Forcefield Records)
The Hussy – Pagan Hiss (Southpaw)
Jim Guthrie – Takes Time (Static Clang)
Joe Satriani – Unstoppable Momentum (Epic/RED)
Joshua Radin – Wax Wings (Glass Bead Music)
Karl Hyde – Edgeland (UMe)
Lady Antebellum – Golden (Capitol Nashville/Universal)
Little Boots – Nocturnes (Kobalt)
Michael Feuerstack – Tambourine Death Bed (Forward Music Group)
Mikal Cronin – MCII (Merge Records)
Mother Falcon – You Knew (Creme Fraiche)
Mylets – Retcon (Sargent House)
Natalie Maines – Mother (Columbia)
The New Regime – Exhibit A (COMMAND! Music)
Night Birds – Maimed For The Masses (Fat Wreck Chords)
Noah And The Whale – Heart Of Nowhere (Mercury)
Northcote – Northcote (Black Box Recordings)
Patty Griffin – American Kid (New West)
Pentimento – Pentimento (Paper & Plastick)
Pistol Annies – Annie Up (Sony Nashville/RCA)
The Reflections – Limerence (Arc Recordings)
Rod Stewart – Time (Capitol)
Savages – Silence Yourself (Matador Records)
She & Him – Volume 3 (Merge Records)
Sidious – Ascension To The Throne Ov Self (KAOTOXIN)
Sodom – Epitome Of Torture (Steamhammer)
Still Corners – Strange Pleasures (Sub Pop)
Straight No Chaser – Under The Influence (Atlantic)
Talib Kweli – Prisoner Of Conscious (Blacksmith Music/Universal)
Tim & Adam – Tim & Adam (Tim & Adam)
To The Wind – Empty Eyes (Pure Noise Records)
The Uncluded – Hokey Fright (Rhymesayers)
Vicious Rumors – Electric Punishment (Steamhammer) – Voivod
We Are Loud Whispers – Suchness (Hardly Art)
ZoLLE – ZoLLE (Supernatural Cat)

——————————————————————————–

Album Streams:

Deerhunter – Monomania

Mikal Cronin – MC II

Natalie Maines – Mother

She & Him – Volume 3

——————————————————————————–

SputnikMusic’s Most Played Artists of the Week (according to Last.FM):

Staff :

1. Laura Stevenson & The Cans

2. Phoenix

3. Baths

4. Passion Pit

5. The Thermals

6. Justin Timberlake

7. Streetlight  Manifesto

8. Radiohead

9. Vampire Weekend

10. The National

Contributors:

1. Laura Stevenson & The Cans

2. Streetlight Manifesto

3. Ghostface Killah

4. The Ocean

5. Daft Punk

6. Summoning

7. The Flaming Lips

8. Deftones

9. Sadistik

10. El-P

2. KEN mode – The Terror Pulse (taken from Entrench)

3. Coliseum – Black Magic Punks (taken from Sister Faith)

4. Blaak Heat Shujaa – Pelham Blue (taken from The Edge Of An Era)

5. Loading Data – So High (taken from Double Disco Animal Style)

6. Audrey Horne – The Open Sea (taken from Youngblood)

7. Alice Smith – Cabaret (taken from She)

8. Laura Mvula – Make Me Lovely (from Sing To The Moon)

9. John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts (taken from Pale Green Ghosts)

10. The Knife – A Tooth For An Eye (taken from Shaking The Habitual)

11. Flat Earth Society – Experiments In The Revival Of Organisms (taken from 13)

12. The Body – The Ebb and Flow of Tides in a Sea of Ash (taken from Master, We Perish)

13. Pissed Jeans – Cafeteria Food (taken from Honeys)

14. Beastwars – Realms (taken from Blood Becomes Fire)

15. Batillus – Concrete (taken from Concrete Sustain)

16. Deville – Burning Towers (taken from Hydra)

17. Intronaut – The Welding (taken from Habitual Levitations)

18. Hookworms – Form And Function (taken from Pearl Mystic)

19. Purson – Leaning On A Bear (taken from The Circle And The Blue Door)

20. Pinnick Gales Pridgen – Lascivious (taken from Pinnick Gales Pridgen)

21. Kylesa – Unspoken

22. Gozu – Bald Bull (taken from The Fury Of A Patient Man)

23. Komatsu – Kamikaze (taken from Manu Armata)

24. Amplifier – Matmos (taken from Echo Street)

25. Riverside – Escalator Shrine (taken from Shrine Of New Generation Slaves)

Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 30, 2013. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff or contributors.

!!! [Chik Chik Chik] – THR!!!ER  (Warp Records)
Adelaine – Currents (Mosaic Artistry Group)
Adventure – Weird Work (Carpark Records)
The Airborne Toxic Event – Such Hot Blood (Island)
Akron/Family – Sub Verses (Dead Oceans)
Alessi’s Ark – The Still Life (Bella Union)
Alice Russell – To Dust  (Tru Thoughts)
Amorphis – Circle (Nuclear Blast America)
Ark Of The Covenant – Self Harvest (Facedown)
Beacon – The Ways We Separate (Ghostly International)
Big Black Delta – Big Black Delta (Masters Of Bates)
Big Country – The Journey (MRI Associated)
The Body – Master, We Perish (At A Loss)
Bring Me The Horizon – Sempiternal (Epitaph)
Buckeye Knoll – Lovecreek (Up On A Hill)
Cathedral – The Last Spire (Metal Blade)
Cayucas – Bigfoot (Secretly Canadian)
Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! – Pardon My French (Fearless Records)
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 3 (Constellation)
Coliseum – Sister Faith (Temporary Residence) – Greg Fisher
Daughter – If You Leave (Glassnote)
Daylight – Jar (Run For Cover)
The Earth And Everything In It – We Wander At Night (Minerald Sound Recordings)
Famous Last Words – Two-Faced Charade (Invogue Records)
Guided By Voices – English Little League (Guided By Voices)
Hanni El Khatib – Head In The Dirt (Innovative Leisure)
Heaven Shall Burn – Veto (Century Media)
HIM – Tears On Tape (Razor & Tie)
House Of Heroes – The Knock-Down Drag-Outs (House Of Heroes)
Howl – Bloodlines (Relapse)
Iggy & The Stooges – Ready To Die (Fat Possum Records)
Jessica Campbell – The Anchor & The Sail (Little London Records)
Jessica Sanchez – Me, You & The Music (19 Records/Interscope)
Jim O’Rourke, Oren Ambarchi & Keiji Haino  – Now While It’s Still Warm Let Us Pour In All The Mystery (Black Truffle)
Kenny Chesney – Life On A Rock (Blue Chair Records/ Columbia Nashville)
Lights – Siberia Acoustic (Last Gang Records)
LL Cool J – Authentic (429 Records)
Mechanical Swan – Black Dawn Romance (Bakerteam Records)
The Melvins – Everybody Loves Sausages (Ipecac Recordings)
Neon Neon – Praxis Makes Perfect (Lex Records)
The Ocean – Pelagial (Metal Blade)
Os Mutantes – Fool Metal Jack (Varese Sarabande)
The Postelles – …And It Shook Me (+1 Records)
Purson – The Circle and the Blue Door (Metal Blade)
Randy Rogers Band – Trouble (MCA Nashville)
Rollin Hunt – The Phoney(Moniker Records)
Shannon McNally – Small Town Talk (Sacred Sumac Music)
Sharks – Selfhood (Rise Records)
Solar Bears – Supermigration (Planet Mu)
Streetlight Manifesto – The Hands That Thieve (Victory Records) – Eli Kleman
Ten Foot Polecats – Undertow (Hillgrass Bluebilly Records)
Tom Keifer – The Way Life Goes (Alternative Distribution Alliance)
Valleys – Are You Going To Stand There And Talk Weird All Night? (Alternative Distribution Alliance)
The Weeks – Dear Bo Jackson (Serpents & Snakes Records)

——————————————————————————–

Album Streams:

Alessi’s Ark – The Still Life

Cayucas – Bigfoot

Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 3

Daylight – Jar

Iggy & The Stooges – Ready To Die

Jessica Campbell – The Anchor & The Sail

Os Mutantes – Fool Metal Jack

Shannon McNally – Small Town Talk

Tom Keifer – The Way Life Goes

Valleys – Are You Going To Stand There And Talk Weird All Night?

——————————————————————————–

SputnikMusic’s Most Played Artists of the Week (according to Last.FM):

Staff :

1. James Blake
2. Deerhunter
3. Kurt Vile
4. The Thermals
5. Major Lazer
6. Laura Stevenson & The Cans
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
8. Yuck
9. Wu-Tang Clan
10. Sigur Ros

Contributors:

1. Deftones
2. Laura Stevenson & The Cans
3. Streetlight Manifesto
4. Explosions In The Sky
5. Ghostface Killah
6. James Blake
7. Daft Punk
8. Wu-Tang Clan
9. Death Grips
10. Eminem

Colin Stetson has released a few tracks off the upcoming album thus far, but the one that’s probably most representative of the overall album’s sound is “High Above a Grey Green Sea.” Listen to the track, and see where it takes you. If nothing else, you’ll at least be damned shocked at how much sound one man’s capable of making.

Keep an eye out for New History Warfare III: To See More Light, out on April 30th, 2013 on Constellation Records.

Australia’s black/death/industrial metallers The Amenta released their third studio album, titled Flesh Is Heir, on March 22. In celebration of them releasing their third record in 13 years, I had a little chat with the driving force behind the group, Timothy Pope (lyrics, samples, programming). Even though he describes himself as an arrogant bastard, Tim’s actually a very down to earth guy who gladly shared with me his views on the band, the hard-hitting new album, touring, and life in general.




Hello, I’m Magnus Altküla from Sputnikmusic and I will be conducting the interview. How are you doing and what have you been up to lately?

I’m very well, thank you. I’ve basically been doing this sort of thing (interviews). The album’s been out in Australia and near it almost a month, so we’ve been doing a lot of interviews. A couple of them have been live interviews, but there have been a lot of e-mail ones as well. I handle most of them, so that has basically been my life for the last few weeks.


Which kind of interviews do you prefer: the e-mail ones or the live ones?

I think they both have their benefits. The live ones are probably better because they’re quicker. Sometimes you can be a lot more clear in text, though, so I guess both of them have their own benefits. But I prefer personal contact because you can work a bit better with questions that way – you can play off answers and I like how it’s like a real conversation. I prefer the lives one because of that.


Not many people on Sputnikmusic know about you guys. How would you describe The Amenta as a band to someone who hasn’t heard of you before?

To give us a genre we’re an extreme music band. I don’t really believe that we’re a death metal band, I don’t believe we’re a black metal band, and I certainly don’t believe we’re an industrial band, though there are definitely elements of those genres in what we do. I like to say that we’re extreme music, because the only unifying factor in what we do is that it has to be extreme. By that I don’t mean that our music has to be the fastest, or possess the lowest vocals and the most grotesque of lyrics. I mean extreme in a way that it’s a new idea and it’s always pushing things forward. We’re always trying to challenge ourselves, as well as the listener. That’s my definition of an extreme band. I believe that’s what we do. I think we’re quite experimental and quite different than a lot of other extreme metal bands that people might be aware of. I hope that there’s something about us that would appeal to people across a lot of interests and backgrounds.


What’s the thing that makes you so special? What’s the one thing that makes you stand out as a band?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot actually and in some ways I’ve answered this question over the years in interviews in my own way, but it’s only recently that I’ve realized what I was really trying to say, which is that I think we’re unique and different because we’re a very honest band, and we’re representing ourselves honestly. I think that in itself is quite unique. A lot of bands aren’t really trying to represent themselves, but their genre or an idea. We’re are trying express ourselves as artists. So in that way we’re unique, but the other side of it is that we are also completely unlike other people as individuals, and as a band. We’re different, obviously, as every single person in the world is different, so our music being an honest expression of ourselves is going to be unique and different compared to an honest expression of anyone else. We’re different in that we are actually trying to do something honest and something with integrity, but also, by doing so, we are representing a completely different kind of person. I think that there’s something that other people could find in our music that which will hopefully appeal to them in some way. They’ll never understand the band the way we do, because it is something that is us, but with all art the artist is expressing himself and you just hope for somekind of a cross-pollination with other peoples interests to spark something in their mind.

In my review I described your sound as being akin to a mix between Meshuggah, Psycroptic and Red Harvest. Who do you (as a band) count as your biggest influences who you respect and draw ideas from?

There are definitely a lot of bands that we respect, but I wouldn’t call them influences. This is possibly me being a little bit semantic, but a lot of people ask the question about influences and I think it’s a mark of a terrible band that is influenced. On the other hand, inspiration – we try to harvest it and try to cultivate. Influence is a negative thing. It’s when you hear something and you say “I want to sound like that,” as opposed to inspiration, where you hear someone expressing themselves in a new way and finding their own language. That makes you think “I want to do that, I want to express myself in my own language.” There are thousands of bands and other artists like film-makers and writers that inspire us, but I don’t think we’ve really had an influence, or if we have had, we’ve tried to work it out of our music and be quite honest with the music that we want to make as people. There are bands that I’m sure people will say we sound like, but that’s never been a conscious thing, as we’ve never gone out and said that we want to sound like Meshuggah, for instance. They have never really been a touchstone for us at all, so it’s interesting that you hear them, but that’s the great thing about art: people can hear things and relate to things completely differently, so where you hear Meshuggah, someone else might hear something else. This time around a lot of people have been referencing Gojira, for example, which we find really bizarre. So there’s a lot of people hearing a lot in our music that we are not putting there, but it’s not our job to dictate how it appeals to them.

But yeah, there are millions of bands that we find very inspirational. Back in the (band’s) old days there was a lot of second generation black metal and a lot of death metal, obviously, but then, over the years, there have come other things that inspire us. Recently I’ve been really inspired by Swans and their album The Seer, as well as Stars of The Lid, and I’ve also been listening to quite a bit of more avant-garde hip-hop – things that people probably wouldn’t hear in our music at all because we’re not influenced by it, we’re not trying to sound like a hip-hop band. It’s just the idea of the way these people express themselves that excites me and makes me want to find more in my own way of expressing and writing lyrics that I can bring forward.


About your similarity to Gojira: I have noticed that a lot of people have been comparing your riff patterns and stuff and I don’t really follow it either. Why I compared you to Meshuggah is because you have those crazy rhythms going on and you have like the technicality of, say, Psycroptic mixed with Meshuggah. When I made that comparison (in my review) I didn’t really mean that your sound is like Meshuggah’s, but that there are similar elements in your music.

I’m aware of that, yeah. I think all metal bands have a similar genesis and (when it comes to) Psycroptic, we’re really close with those guys and we’ve toured with them and played with them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there has been some unconscious rub-off there, but definitely not conscious.


The Amenta is a strong, catchy band name, but what does it represent? What is the story behind the name and does it possess a special meaning to you?

“Amenta,” the actual word, was originally a song title when we were in another band. It comes from ancient Egyptian and it means “the hidden earth.” In Egyptian mythology, it represents the doorway to the temple of judgement. Initially we picked it because we liked it and thought it was a strong and catchy name – I think it’s very important to have a simple but catchy name – but it’s come to mean quite a lot to us. The one thing I used to talk about was that, because it means “the hidden earth,” it represents a small intellectual underground of people who are able to think beyond animalistic reactions. I think a lot of people are essentially animals, they’re motivated by really basic instincts like fighting, feeding and fucking, whereas it’s the aim of a true human to use his brain, to try to elevate himself as close as he can to god status. So there’s that side of things. The other is that it’s (the “Amenta”) the doorway to the temple of judgement and we’re really judgmental people. All of our lyrics have over time become very cynical and there’s a lot of analysis of our souls and how we fit into the world in them. I guess we are judging our souls and the world, and that’s sort of the journey we’re currently on with our lyrics.


You are in charge of samples and programming – basically the industrial side of your band. How do these apocalyptic soundscapes you produce for the band come into being?

It’s different for each album. On the first album it was a lot more keyboard based and as we’ve always hated the idea of traditional keyboards, it’s always been something that I’ve attempted to move away from. Eric (who is the guitar player) and I have spent years, literally years, trying to find ways to make the keyboard sound uglier and nastier. Over time we’ve experimented with different things – I’ve played keyboards through guitar pedals and through amplifiers and that sort of thing. And then on n0n, the second album, everything was very programmed and that’s when (during n0n’s recording process) I learned about programming and synthesizers, so I made a whole bunch of sounds.

But for Flesh Is Heir it was very different. I wasn’t interested in the idea of sitting down and being very meticulous like I was with n0n. I spent months per song, making tiny little changes and plotting out these really meticulous sample parts, so this time I wanted to avoid that and do something that was more quick and organic and really in the moment. I spent some time creating a sample library with an SM57 microphone. I would walk around the house and find things that I could either bash or play with a violin bow, or something like that, and record all these samples. Also, I stole some little samples from some modern composers. Then I loaded all of them into my live setup and created keyboard patches out of these samples. And then I mapped all the controllers of my keyboards to various effects like distortion, delay, reverb, pitch-shift and all that sort of stuff. Then, when playing it into the recording computer, when we actually went to record, I was playing samples that I had previously created and affected/perfected them in real time. I think that way you get something that’s a lot more organic and a lot more human, which hopefully is coming across on this album. I think the album’s a bit more live and a bit more warm. There are these rough edges (on this album) that are coming out, so for me it’s a constant process of learning, experimentation and trying to find ways to essentially keep myself interested. That’s what it’s always been about – finding something that’s going to keep me inspired and motivated to write my parts for the album.

Tim Pope, in all his glory.

You guys took quite a while to release a follow-up to n0n. How did the writing process look like for Flesh Is Heir? Was it an immediate breeze of inspiration that’s responsible for the material on this album, or was it a continuous process during the years where there were a lot of ideas thrown back and forth?

A little bit of both. There’s always a long time between our albums because we work so hard on them that we get burnt out, and the idea of writing another album immediately after is really distasteful. The other side of it is that we are in some way blessed and some way cursed by the inability to write a song that we’re not really inspired by. So if you write an idea that sounds like the last album, then the idea of actually writing a song out of it is really boring. So we’ll just keep trying to find that little spark that’s going to give us that excitement, which is going to allow us to write a song. Writing this album – there was a lot of experimentation, a lot of false starts. We’d write an idea, write a riff, then work on it and then we wouldn’t really be feeling it, but just sort of repeating ourselves. Because we worked so hard on n0n, the second album, everything was starting to sound like that. It took a while for us to find the idea that we wanted to pursue, which was the more live and immediate sort of thing, so we had to work quite hard to find it. Eventually, when the ideas actually came, the album came together quite quickly.

Then the other side of things was the recording process. We all live now in different cities in Australia and Cain, the vocalist, lives out in Perth, which is about a six hour flight and a three hour drive between the cities. It was hard to get everyone ready and all the parts together. The recording process itself was a logistical nightmare, but the writing was quick, once it got started.


Flesh Is Heir boots a really interesting concept. Tell us more about it.

It’s about the war between the two sides of the human psyche. We’ve given them names. The name of the side that seeks obliteration is called The Obliterate. That’s the side of the human that wants to be swept up in something greater than itself. When you are an I, when you are yourself, that comes with a whole bunch of problems and issues and troubles. Obviously, it’s not necessarily a pleasant thing to be alive. So people find things that they can throw themselves into and it annihilates the self, and therefore all those troubles. By becoming something greater than themselves, people stop thinking, their minds stop being conscious of themselves. It’s a bit of a survival thing. Some people do that through religion, drugs, sex, mob-violence – there’s a whole bunch of different options and everyone’s got their own thing. But then the other aspect is the part of people that wants to further the I, the ego, it wants to carve out a niche for the individual, so it would be possible for the individual to differentiate himself from everyone else. That’s the survival side and we call that one The Realist. Between The Obliterate and The Realist there is this constant war. Everyone is somewhere on that continuum, constantly oscillating between the two, and that tension is essentially what life is. Some people lean further towards one side than others. People like junkies and shamans, they are the obliterates as they spend much more time being obliterated and a lot less time being conscious. On the other side you’ve got the philosophers, manic-depressives and people like that who are a lot more conscious. Everyone sort of exists on that continuum, but everyone have both sides and it’s a constant war. The lyrics examine that idea; they’re trying to find which one is more noble. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no nobility, there only is that war, that constant struggle, and that’s just life, really.


How does the album’s title tie in with this concept?

That actually comes from a famous speech in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, which is the “To be, or not to be” soliloquy. In that speech Hamlet is debating whether he’s going to commit suicide and obliterate himself, essentially, or fight to try and find his father’s killer, which is the realist side. As I was writing the lyrics, I realized that it playing out as a kind of debate between the two sides, and that led me to the actual song “Flesh Is Heir”, which is loosely based on that soliloquy. It just seemed to sum up the idea perfectly: the flesh is heir to a lot of troubles and issues. That’s essentially the crux of that war, that’s what The Obliterate is trying to escape and that’s what The Realist has to embrace in order to survive. That’s why Flesh Is Heir seemed as the most appropriate name (for the album) that we could think of.

What kind of a progression does Flesh Is Heir represent for the band, compared to Ocassus and n0n?

I think all of our albums are part of a journey. Obviously we’re not the same people we were when we wrote Ocassus. I think we started writing that when we were 18, so we were very different people compared to now. I think the older we get the more refined our ideas and our music becomes. We are attempting to create something that is pure self-expression, that would represent us completely now. We as people are constantly growing. I’m not the same person I was five years ago when n0n was released. We’re documenting different people, basically, but it’s always about musical growth and musical experimentation as well. I don’t know about progression in the sense that we’re going somewhere specific, but we’re always moving forward and we always try to find new ways to do things and new ways to express ourselves and keep ourselves entertained. Once again, it’s about keeping ourselves inspired. We’re not inspired by doing things that we’ve done before, so the only way to continue is to move forward and find something interesting and new.


All of your albums have had different vocalists and all of your records are quite different from each other due to that as well. What does Cain Cressall bring to the table compared to your previous vocalists and how has his inclusion affected the band’s evolution?

I think that Cain is very different compared to our previous vocalists in that he’s a lot more involved in the process. We really, in the past, haven’t allowed anyone other than Eric (guitar player) and myself to do anything with the band. It was our band, we wrote everything and came up with the esthetic ideas. Cain is probably the first person we’ve had in the band who has taken a part of it from us. He’s now quite a strong part of the band. On this album he actually wrote two sets of lyrics: to “Sewer” and “Disintegrate”. Normally I would write 100% of the lyrics, so he’s having a lot of input, plus he, with the help of Jess Mathews, who is a friend of his from Perth, has been really involved in the esthetic idea of Flesh Is Heir. They created the “Teeth” film-clip and shot the photo for the cover, so it’s been really good to hand over some stuff to him and get a fresh pair of eyes. This is a guy who has an excellent aesthetic sense. He’s also the best frontperson I’ve ever seen. When we played with him live on the n0n tour we played alongside his other band (Pathogen). We just stood in the crowd and thought “we’ve got to get this guy; we’ve got to somehow get rid of our current vocalist and get this guy,” because he just blew us away. Thankfully not long after that Jared, the other vocalist, quit, so it worked out very well for us.

In the past, as I said, it’s just been Eric and I, and we’ve brought in these other people to further our vision. We used them like instruments. We got people who we knew could do what we needed, and we made them sing what we wanted them to sing. With Cain it’s very different. He’s a lot more involved in the process, he’s got a lot of ideas, he tries things. A lot of the album’s sound owes its birth to Cain and his brain. You definitely can’t say that about our early vocalists. Mark, who did the vocals on the first album, worked with us for a long time, but he didn’t have a lot of input in terms of aesthetics or the creation. Jared, in his turn, came in at the end of n0n and he wasn’t really involved in the writing at all. But it’s nice to start getting a band together. It’s been 13 years now that we’ve been writing material, and it’s only now starting to feel like we have a band.


So we can expect Cain to stay for a while?

Well, we certainly hope so. I think every interview I’ve ever done has asked me the question about the line-up and I always say that “this is the strongest line-up we’ve ever had” and that “these guys are going to be in the band forever.” But I don’t know if that’s true. Things change, people change and people often promise things they can’t deliver. All I can say is that at the moment we’re very happy with Cain. He’s a very strong part of the band. There is certainly no intention to get rid of him. Hopefully everything works out, because at the moment we’re very happy.


About your “Teeth” video: it looks really murky and twisted. Is it like that mostly for shock value, or rather, is it a symbolistic piece? What is the band’s goal with the video?

The goal was to create something striking that would appeal to people. If you look at it commercially, then that’s what’s going on. There’s definitely symbolism in there too, though. We gave the lyrics to Jess Mathews – the girl who actually directed, shot and edited the video. We gave her the lyrics, and I explained what they’re about. “Teeth” is about the use of drugs and how you can use drugs to scrape your mind of high human faculties and almost become reptilian, which is a really base level of the brain that you can get to. It was about that, and about using drugs to deliberately devolve, and then coming out of it, as you sort of wake up in the morning and you’re coming down a little bit, that’s kind of the re-evolution. So it’s about that process and I explained that to Jess. The video is her interpretation of that. You’ve got Cain, who is this sort of creepy, lustful monster. He is the reptile, this sort of real basic, horrible creature. And then he’s got these girls who are probably overdosing and he’s leaning over them in control. So you can kind of see the power of drugs and what they do to the human side. On the other side, it is a striking, strong image. Cain is a great performer and he inhabits characters really well, so it was also a chance for us to show Cain’s mannerism off, because the guy is not normal. He’s a creepy, creepy dude! Him on stage is not that far from what actually goes on in his brain when he’s off stage. He’s a lot politer about it, but he’s still this quiet, twisted and strange person.

This is what we know about Cain Cressall: he can be a very polite young man, but he doesn't really want to

In your biography you guys describe the sound of Flesh Is Heir as both „ugly and beautiful“. The harsh, so-called ugly part is easily identifiable as your sound is really coarse and heavy, but where does the beauty aspect lie in Flesh Is Heir?

Beauty is a funny thing. I find there is beauty in harsh sounds, as they’re sometimes the things that make you smile, and isn’t beauty supposed to make you smile? I find discord quite interesting and exciting to hear, and therefore, isn’t that beauty? The other side of it is that we’ve always been pegged as a band that doesn’t have any melody, which seems bizarre to me. In some ways that (the bio) was a deliberate play on that. We wanted people to sit down and actually hear these big choruses and big melodies in our songs. It’s something that seems to happen when you put out a press release – people will pick out a couple of words and they will color the album even before they’ve heard it. As an experiment with this album I laced all of my communication with the press with words like “organic,” “human” and “melodic” just to see how it would affect reviews. And it does. People read that and I know I do the exact same thing: it colors the way you hear music. So by saying that there is beauty in it, I’m hoping it’ll force people to understand that there really are quite pleasant sounds in there (on Flesh Is Heir). There is harmonic resolution, as well as oddly and harmonically twisted choirs with quite melodic sounds. To me that’s beautiful and exciting. I hope that other people who are hearing the record hear it the way I do. I understand that maybe they’re not going to, but I would hope that people can appreciate both the ugliness and the beauty in our record. There’s ugliness and beauty in everything, in life, and that’s what the album’s trying to be about – those two sides, that dichotomy of life. I think the beauty is there, I hear it, and I hope others do too.


I agree, as I for example did hear them. They were really dark melodies, but there were definitely melodies on Flesh is Heir.

Definitely! I think the dark melodies are quite often the more beautiful ones, because they tend to be more intellectual, whereas happy melodies tend to be a bit more physical. I don’t think you can really get beauty out of that physicality, because it is a reaction. Beauty is something that needs to be appreciated and I find that the darker and sadder melodies allow your brain to work a bit stronger when it comes to the appreciation side of things. That’s why I think of them as more beautiful, but it’s subjective, of course.

It is subjective, but I agree with you. When you’re younger, a lot of people tend to say to you that “oh, you’re in your metal phase, but you’ll grow out of it,” but I think the melodies in metal are exactly what keep people glued to the genre. Darker melodies have this kind of a deeper, more complex and more affective vibe to them in my opinion.

I definitely think so, and I think a lot of people get turned away because of the harshness that you talked about. The first thing their brain hears is blast beats and growling, and they won’t hear anything else. Their brain will not allow them to hear deeper. It’s like with any kind of complex music – you have to learn how to appreciate it, but once you do, you’re hooked.


N0n was a chaotic, nihilistic record that represented The Amenta way of thinking really well. Would you care to share your views on society and modern culture that influence The Amenta’s music?

I think I’m like a lot of people. I read a lot of news, I watch a lot of news on TV, and I don’t think you can really watch them without understanding that the world is a pretty terrible place. The other side of it is that I’m also aware that news is biased. It’s presenting an idea, so when we see images of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, we’re seeing one side’s interpretation of what’s going on, while we’re unaware that the whole idea is not being presented. There’s always the possibility behind all that information you’re being provided that perhaps you’re not being given the truth. I’d like to think that I’m a cheerful and happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but I don’t think that you can be a man of conscience in this world and not agree that we’re living in some pretty fucked up times. I’m not a bully and I’m not a religious man at all, but I can understand why religious people believe that we’re coming up towards the end of the world. It seems like everything is speeding up and everything is falling apart, and it seems like it’s going to keep going that way until something terrible happens. I don’t see any saving grace. I think people individually can be really beautiful and great, but as a group and as a mass they’re terrible. They make terrible decisions, they torture eachother, they’ll beat eachother up on the street for a loaf of bread. And that’s terrible. The older I get the more I realize that people are just animals. We’ve dressed ourselves up in civilization, but at the end of the day we all just want to eat, fight and fuck, and that’s it. That’s what people are. We can dress it up however we like, but as soon as you put people in a time of trobule or stress them, then the animal comes out and culture just drops away. We’re getting to a point where the media is constantly bombarding us with images of people doing horrible shit to other people, and I think that people are becoming more and more animalistic. The culture is starting to rot off people’s bones. It’s like people are just regressing constantly. I actually think that it’s quite a scary time to be alive.

You talked about the animal coming out of people. In my personal view, in the animal kingdom there is this kind of a perfect balance (well, at least there was before humans came along). Even if all animals did was eat, fuck and sleep, then everything was in balance at least. Thanks to us everything’s pretty much in chaos, and there is no balance.

This is true. The lack of balance is due to the culture we’ve spun up around ourselves. Things like capitalism, for instance, are about one person getting more than someone else, which is not the way it works in nature. Nature is about survival of the fittest, yet, but it’s also about eating only as much as you need, and then moving on. So I think that we have created that lack of balance. The problem now, as we regress back to animals, is that we’re not going back to achieve the balance ( at least at the moment). I guess we will eventually, actually, but we have to go there by tearing down the system, and with that comes a lot of pain and hurt.


What’s the one thing that pisses you off the most in the world of today; what’s the one thing that really gets under your skin?

Ignorance. For example the bombings at the Boston marathon. The amount of people who immediately assumed that Muslim terrorists were behind it – I think that’s insane, especially coming from a country like USA, who has so much domestic terrorism. It’s insane! That just blows me away, because there are so many other options and ways, but people have been sold this idea of external threat, and it’s the first thing they jump to. It’s kind of pathetic really, It’s like being a hungry man and thinking “I just need McDonald’s,” because you’ve been told that McDonald’s is this amazing thing. You’re getting ads thrust in your face all the time, and it’s the same with that kind of reaction. Because of the scheme-mongering that people have been using to sell McDonald’s to essentially give you this nice feeling of safety in your home – that’s (also) why people jump to such a (rash) conclusion (about who is to blame for the bombings). That’s one example that’s fresh in my mind, because that’s something that has just happened. But you see it across all countries and cultures – this knee-jerk reaction and fear, which has nothing to do with the intellectual side of things. I find that the most frustrating.


Kind of a hard question to answer, but what is more important to you, your music or your message?

I’m going to say that the music. The message is what I believe, but if I didn’t need to write lyrics, I wouldn’t. I don’t feel the compulsion to speak about it (my views). I think beliefs are something that you can keep internal – they’re not something that get stronger by expressing them. Sure, it helps sometimes to be challenged, to have to prove. It forces you to think deeply about things, but I don’t feel the need to preach. I don’t care if no-one agrees. It’s not about converting people, it’s not about making people sit up and go “oh wow”. All I’m trying to do is work everything out for myself. If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t be writing lyrics, but for me the music needs vocals, and the idea of having lyrics that I don’t believe in doesn’t work for me. I’d be quite happy just writing music instrumentally, if that would serve the music well, but I think that the kind of music that seems to push our buttons needs vocals, and therefore it needs lyrics and a message that we believe in. They are (the music and the message) intrinsically linked.

I’m also aware that most people don’t care about lyrics. Most people who listen to death metal and black metal – lyrics are secondary, if even in the consideration (for them). It’s all about the other side of things (the music). And that’s fine by me. I don’t care how people appreciate the music, all I care about is expressing myself, and hopefully it triggers something in other people, whatever that is. And as long as people are appreciating it, it’s not my job to say that you can or can’t appreciate my music for different reasons. It’s quite an odd thing. Obviously, if you’re going to holistically understand The Amenta, you need to appreciate both (the message and the music), but there are people who love our music who I’m sure have never read a word or don’t understand what the lyrics mean. And that’s perfectly fine, because at least they’re getting something out of it.

What lies ahead for The Amenta now that Flesh Is Heir is released?

I guess the next step is that we’re going to try and write something more. We’d like to cut down now that time we have (in the past had) between our albums. It was four years between our first two (albums) and five between the last two. We’d like to be a bit quicker. We were just talking the other day of doing another small EP, just something to blow out the cobwebs and try some different ideas. So we’ll do that and then we’d like to get to writing another album and speed up that process. For the first time ever I have actually got ideas for lyrics before we start writing an album. I’ve got an idea of what I want to do, so I’ve started jotting down fragments that I’ll piece together a bit later. We’re kind of starting very slowly (with the new album), but hopefully it should happen a lot quicker. We also have a bit of touring coming up. We’re playing around Australia and also supporting Cradle of Filth on some shows here. Then we will be heading over to Indonesia to play the Hammersonic Festival, and after that we’ll be looking for more international opportunities in order to get back over to Europe and the US.


Regarding touring, are there any cool tour stories that come to mind?

There’s a few I guess. Just trying to think of one that’s appropriate (laughs). One of the funniest shows we’ve ever played was in the US, in Detroit. We were supposed to play in upstate New York, but the show got moved a couple of days beforehand to Detroit, so into a completely new state, even if it was quite close. They (the organizers) didn’t really have time to advertise, so we ended up playing in Detroit in this absolute slum of an area. I think there were literally five people in the audience for the entire show. And this was Vader, Decrepit Birth, us, Augury, Warbringer – you know, bands who could pull crowds playing to five people. We made the decision to play a real rock ’n’ roll show and I think we did one of the best shows we’ve ever played. At one point Cain had his arms around the entire audience – it was pretty funny. And then we went and had beers with the entire audience. So that was pretty cool, that was our punk rock moment.


Any other stories that come to mind instantly? I read that you once had trouble in the US getting payed for your shows.

Haha, I didn’t even think about that story. That was in a place called Virginia Beach. That was a ridiculous gig! We turned up, though it was another one where the gig got changed to a different venue on the day of the gig, but thankfully there were a lot more people on this one. We ended up playing in a bar in the middle of a shopping center. It was so strange. You’d walk into the shopping center and into a door and all of a sudden there was a pub with a venue. So in there, we were playing the show, and on the first few notes the PA (power amplifier) blew, so we couldn’t hear anything, but we still had a really good time and it was a great gig. Afterwards the promoter refused to pay us, so Eric and I got a little bit aggressive, and we ended up running away from the police. We ended up getting payed, though, thank god. It goes to show that if people are being dodgy and are trying to rip you off, then if you punch them, they’ll generally give you money.


One thing I’m now interested in: you said that the show with five people was actually one of the coolest shows you’ve ever done, but you also said that the other show you mentioned “thankfully” involved more people. How much does the size of the crowd affect you? Do you like to see bigger crowds, or is it all about how much the crowd is into your music, in which case it doesn’t matter if it’s ten or ten thousand people?

At the end of the gig it doesn’t matter. If they (the crowd) have really gotten into it, then that’s all that matters. But there’s nothing more daunting than when you get up on stage and there’s no-one there. That’s a horrible moment. But if you play through it and there’s a couple of people there who love it, then it’s worth it. But on the other hand, when you get up on stage and you see a few thousand people out there and you think “wow, this is gonna be a great show,” and you get no response – that’s terrible. So at the end it’s all about response, but the initial reaction is that the more people you see, the better you feel.


Thank you very, very much for your time. For closure, is there anything you’d personally like to say to the Sputnikmusic community?

I’m a very arrogant bastard (laughs), so I think that Flesh Is Heir is the best album that will be released in 2013. I think people should check it out. If they don’t agree with me, that’s also fine – I didn’t make it for them, I made it for me, but I think it’s the best album of 2013, so I recommend that people check it out. If you sleep on it, you miss out!

You recently wrapped up your first ever acoustic tour. How did playing those shows compare to playing with your full band?

It was a much more intimate experience and in some ways a greater challenge, but I enjoyed the connection with people at the shows.

How was being on the road without the rest of the band?

Well each tour is a little different. I missed the bandmates who didn’t come this time but I enjoyed being with King Dude on this tour – they’re like family.

Best meal on tour?

Great American Music Hall takes great care of bands.

You have a pretty sizable European and Russian tour coming up in April that will feature a mix of electric and acoustic material. Have you gotten the chance to play any of these countries before?

We’ve been to some of them, yes, but never Russia.

Back in November was the Leave Them All Behind festival in Tokyo, featuring three of the best live acts on the planet, sequentially: Sunn O))), Boris, and yourself. How was that experience?

Playing with bands that good is overwhelming sometimes but also really inspiring and motivating. Tadashi who puts together the festival is really great.

Stoked to play with Swans in June?

Of course!

Any albums or artists that have been on heavy rotation for you lately?

Wardruna, Abner Jay, The Knife

Ah, yes, Gaahl’s folk project. The new record is pretty cool. Also, props for repping a fellow Georgia native. You’ve already done a lot of impressive covers (Rudimentary Peni, Burzum, Nick Cave, etc.). Are there any songs or artists that you plan to or would like to cover in the future?

There are many! But I won’t tell you yet..

Haha, thanks. We seem to be on the same wavelength on design aesthetic, both owning [Aoi] Kotsuhiroi bracelets and some Bevel jewelry. Are there any great new pieces (jewelry, clothing, or otherwise) that you’ve recently acquired?

I’ve been really into my Kill City jeans, All Saints heels, and these rad horn and porcupine quill necklaces from K/LLER Collection.

Any designers or collections lately that have made an impression on you recently?

Nicolas Andreas Taralis, Ann Demeulemeester, Ann-Sofie Back

Very talented lot. Helmut or Margiela?

Margiela

Dead or Attila?

ATTILA

Knew you’d get that one right. Been glued to any books lately?

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

I really love your Fender Jag. How do you conjure that otherworldly tone out of it?

I bought it stock and I just play it. It plays well with my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe.

I find the most striking thing about your music to be the juxtaposition of very human and very relatable narratives against a sonic palette that so often reaches the surreal or even mystical. How would you say that’s relative to your personal life and the art you love?

You summed it up well. That’s my sort of worldview – the contrast between all things.. the macro view and the micro view at the same time.

What do you think the future holds for the sound of Chelsea Wolfe?

I have a new album coming this year so you will hear soon.

Can’t wait. Thanks again for taking the time to chat with me. Hope to see you in Atlanta again soon.

The French trio Blaak Heat Shujaa certainly know how to capture the laid-back vibe of California on their new full-length The Edge Of An Era (Tee Pee). The band delivers psychedelic desert rock that’s equally indebted to the Eastern mysticism of Om and the groove-laden jamming of Kyuss. After all, the record was produced by Scott Reader himself, and it makes for a trippy, if at times overly familiar ride.

The song that clearly stands out amid the haze is penultimate “Pelham Blue.” The tune sees the trio collaborating with legendary Mario Lalli of Fatso Jetson’s fame. Needless to say, it’s sheer bliss. The style of the band superbly compliments Lalli’s dreamy vocals and trippy imagery, which momentarily bring to mind the best Fatso Jetson songs. Lalli’s knack for crafting spellbinding melodies is in a class by itself, and Blaak Heat Shujaa accompany his performance with their most evocative intrumental work to date. The effect is one of the most ravishing songs of the year. Don’t forget to breathe, don’t forget to open your eyes…

But “Que Que” is by far the most solid moombahton track I’ve heard yet. It’s a solid mix of keen vocal sampling, varietal instrumentation and irresistible percussive work. Ultimately, though, it was most likely made for sexual purposes, so act on that. Don’t even be careful– just go for what you’re thinking.