What’s up everyone! Welcome back to another Sputnik interview! This week, I had the privilege to talk with Ryan Vail. He is currently the vocalist of Larcenia Roe and Synestia. Larcenia Roe just released their debut album Extraction on Friday, and so I was able to sit down with him on a Zoom call and talk about who Larcenia Roe is and what the album was about. He’s truly an awesome guy, and it was great hearing about his different approaches to vocals and how they influence the way he writes lyrics and vocal segments. So please, sit down, give this a deep and thorough read or listen to my lovely voice below, and show some support for Larcenia Roe. Even if you don’t want to listen to us talk, listen through the first few seconds and listen to my how professional I sound messing up Larcenia Roe’s name in literal seconds of the recording starting (I swear I’ll be better next time).

Just to get started, for people who may not know who you guys are, could you tell a little bit about the band in general and how Larcenia Roe got started?

We’re a five-piece deathcore band from Raleigh, North Carolina. None of us are actually natives of Raleigh, but this is where we all met. We’re all from different places, and somehow we all came together here in Raleigh. The band started with Henry Koster and myself. We decided to kind of put together, almost like a marketing experiment of like, if we put together some ridiculous music, just randomly put it out there, do you think anyone will respond? The take is people responded, and we were forced to formulate a full band, and that’s where we met Morgan, Mike and Rob, they’re our touring crew. But yeah, we’re just a band based on straight, just standard, heavy stuff, very weird, off-putting stuff, experimental stuff, and everything in between. So we’re a band without rules, and that was kind of the main goal of starting the band, is, hey, let’s not have all these rules that our past bands may have had, or these boxes. Let’s put our brains out there.

Looking back to 2023 with the release of Dereliction, what was it like for you guys to see your debut EP pay off with all of the positive reaction? What was it like to see something that was initially a “marketing experiment” end up being something successful?

I mean, it was obviously great, right? Because every band wants to get attention, right? It’s really “make some noise in a sea of loud things.” And there are a lot of really good bands, a lot of loud bands. Too many bands; the surge of TikTok bands. You had the surge of all these reaction channels. We weren’t really a TikTok band at all, even though I wish we were, because I’ve seen some of the numbers those guys have pushed. But reaction channels really grabbed hold of our jarring music, the jump scare stuff, and a lot of the way we write music is purposely placed for those things, or maybe just to get somebody to feel a certain way, or weird somebody out, you know? When we saw that people were reacting to the music, that was the goal, right? But to see it kind of take off in its little way that it has and put us out there to be able to get signed and tour and that type of thing. I mean, it was amazing. It happened relatively quick, so we’ve been grinding in bands for a long time before this. So it was really cool to see all of our experience come together, put it all out there in a way that we felt comfortable, that we felt like it was us. When you have that happen, it’s pretty cool, whether you’re doing music or press work, or whatever it may be, whenever you can have your name on it, and people are like, yeah, that’s sick, I mean, you can’t, you can’t beat that type of thing in life.

So it seems like Dereliction became a foundation for Larcenia Roe moving forward. In what ways do you feel like the band has improved and refined their songwriting moving into the writing and composing of Extraction? How did you find your style building upon Dereliction?

There’s our base layer of what Dereliction was, the birthing stage of Larcenia. And I still think we’re kind of in a birthing stage, because we’re still kind of building that identity out, mainly with our relationship with the fans and everything. But one thing that I would say is quality of the music. We wanted to increase quality a little bit. We did self-produce the new album fully. I learned how to mix and master real quick, and I love doing it, but we really want to kind of hone in on specific sounds and the way that things hit people’s ear. If we keep jump scaring people, people are going to expect it. We wanted to change the route a little bit. We want to toss in some other influences in there. If you listen to the new album, there’s songs like, “Cary Ain’t no Raleigh,” there’s “Lullaby (Special)” where they’re generally almost pop or rap songs with slam and deathcore elements. There’s songs in there that don’t really have any jump-at-you breakdowns, like “Carolina Crowd Killer” are actually just pretty straightforward. We tell you when there’s going to be a beat down part or two-step part. Sometimes that’s what bands just need to do, being able to guide listeners a little bit more rather than trying to scare them. We wanted to do that while still having our little fun trick in there. Some of the endings of the songs like “Calcium Closet,” we want to balance it. We want to make sure that we’re pleasing our OG listeners that kind of helped us build it, being able to kind of hone in on what worked.

One unique approach I noticed to your music was the unsettling feeling of not knowing what happens next. Deathcore is always fun with its breakdowns and riffs, but that added element of stop-start structure is what makes it even more interesting. On top of that, the horror-esque influence found within your music videos adds a nice touch to your style. How does that influence seep into Larcenia Roe’s work musically, lyrically, and visually?

I think when you when you approach kind of any type of art, whether it’s visually or in a soundscape type presentation, I think what you’re looking at is how you can create dynamic and within that dynamic; how can you really milk certain things to make the other things more powerful? I think that’s something that’s really built Larcenia’s sound other than us saying weird things in our songs or telling you that we love good listeners. We like to say uncomfortable things, because that’s easy, but when you can take music, notes and rhythms and cadences, and those are the things that make you unsettled, you have a lot of control. So when you’re delivering an experience to anyone that’s listening or watching your music video, traditionally, we don’t put out that visually pleasing of music videos. We want you to feel like some psychopath may have made this. Everything we do is mapped out, is thought out, but they happen within accidents as well. So I’m not going to say that everything that’s worked was an idea, but I’m definitely going to claim it was an idea. But all joking aside, we do our best to try to plan things out. To me, I’ve said this a few times, the heaviest thing in all music is nothing, because when you have a bunch of sounds, you’re already maxed out. But if you have nothing, you can have anticipation, that’s what’s going to scare the crap out of you. For us, that’s why there’s so many stop starts. That’s why there’s so many build ups. Timings are off. We don’t record on a grid at all, or I don’t. Henry does. He does most of it, but I chop up all of our music like a DJ would, and I don’t use grids for that reason, because when something’s on a grid, you’re going to know when the drops going to happen. I don’t want anyone to know. I mean songs like “Calcium Closet,” for instance, the very, very ending, you have no idea something’s coming, and then it comes.

On the record, you guys decided to put three intense features back to back to back with Lwandile of Vulvodynia, Dustin of Filth, and Alex Koehler. All of them are absolutely insane vocalists with their own unique style. What was it like bringing them onto the album and work with them and fitting their vocals in with Larcenia’s music?

When it came to selecting features, we wanted to handpick people that we felt would be either meaningful to us, maybe has something to do with some of our influence, or maybe location, for instance, Dustin from Filth in “Carolina Crowd Killer.” We had to get somebody else from Carolina, and we love what they’re doing. The song had some hip-hop influence in it, and it’s something that they have really nailed, combining that rap and deathcore element together, so there is no one else we could have picked but Dustin for that. When it comes to mixing vocals, mixing his vocals was really fun, because they came in really good. The raws were insane. His voice — he’s one of the most underrated death core vocalists there, his high vocals are insane. It literally took me like an hour to be able to level out his high screens. That’s what I’m talking about. Then the Vulvodynia feature makes all the sense, because we wanted somebody from the label. we love Vulvo, amazing band, the slam stuff and “Eggy Mess,” the song that we got him on, it really is straight to the point, heavy fun. I wanted somebody that could hang, that can put their own energy while still keeping the same intensity, and his voice is amazing for that. Then Alex Kohler, I mean, the history tells itself with him. In old Chelsea Grin, his high screams were always a major influence of mine. I wanted that raw, kind of unsettling scream that when you hear it, you know that’s what the early 2000 or late 2000 deathcore really was. It was just these raw screams that didn’t sound great for your voice, but it sounded terrifying when you heard it, and that’s something that I’ve always tried to do within my vocals safely, so having him on was super. Super easy to work with, super great guys, super nice.

Like you said, one of the big things about Extraction is that you chose to take up mixing and mastering and self-produce the album. With all of that work and experience of chopping up the music and figuring out song structures and styles in the production sense, what was your favorite moment during the process of creating Extraction?

Other than when we were finally done? I would say probably my favorite moment was writing “TEETH.” That song wasn’t supposed to be on the album. That was a last-minute thing, like let’s do an intro now. Henry sent me this random demo he made, or was meant for the band. I was like, where have you been hiding this? Within like an hour, I stitched together a song from the files he sent me and recorded some vocals on it, and within two days, I just sent him over a finished track. This is what we’re doing. This is gonna be the first song of the album. And we’re like, oh, this is cool, good. The song is different. You can tell it does have a different vibe than the rest of the album. It has, I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s very non deathcore, really it’s more metalcore-ish, which is cool, because I love metalcore as well, and I would love to play with metalcore bands someday.  I wanted to do this weird in between of like, we could be the heaviest, scariest band there is, but we can play with any metalcore band as well. That was probably my favorite moment, because it was so easy, unexpected, and that’s probably a song I listen to the most because it’s so simple.

We talked about it briefly when talking about how Dereliction was a foundation for Larencia Roe moving forward, but I want to ask again in a different way. With Extraction out now, and as you reflect on all the songs and the hard work you spent on the album, where do you think you guys have improved the most and what are you most proud of looking back at where you started?

I would say probably the thing I’m most proud of is us just being able to put together a song that isn’t just based off of the “Vocal Olympics” stuff. To me, I pride myself in having range and just doing what I want to do on a song. I’m not trying to compete with anyone. I don’t think there’s like a competition that I’m in. I think I’m just trying to write a Larcenia Roe song, so maybe I’m in a competition for myself, which sucks, but I think being able to write songs where it’s just extra salt, it’s not the point of a song. I think there’s a lot of bands out there today that aren’t doing that. They’re just doing it for the breakdown part to put on TikTok to hopefully go viral. We’re not really trying to do that. We want to go viral. Band wants to go viral, but we’re just trying to find a way of planting this weird thing I got going on within some heavy music, so just writing complete songs. I felt like Extraction was just a little bit more grown up, in a sense, just a little bit cleaner, a little bit also dirtier at same time. I don’t know, it felt bigger. It expanded more genre in general, and overall production is way, way better in my opinion. Everything from the way that the snare sounds, the bass levels, just overall width of the songs, everything around I just feel it’s a generally better product. But most of our fans in a couple years, they’ll say, nothing beat Dereliction, and then whatever we release after that, nothing beat Extraction. It’s just putting out whatever our brains and our skills are at the moment, that’s what we gave people, and we’re happy with it.

What a great transition into my next question! One of my favorite things you said from your video with Kardavox Academy was that you use your voice as an instrument that fits with the song. Instead of making something crazy sounding, you choose what sounds craziest with what you have. How did that approach to your voice influence the way you went about writing your vocals and how you mixed them into the record?

I share this with a few other vocalists that are also probably considered in the same realm as like these next guys that are doing all these crazy things, whether it be production or vocals, and the approach is to, when you track vocals, don’t worry about the lyrics right away. Worry about what sounds you want to hear at certain parts, experiment, go back and then write the song. Maybe you sound like an absolute doofus. You’re sitting there with a microphone and you’re just making all these weird sounds and cadences, almost mumbling, and then you go back and then rewrite lyrics. I feel like when you do that, you’re worrying more about what is hitting the listener’s ear rather than what you’re just trying to say. Because I’m sorry, guys, no one really knows what the heck you’re saying in extreme music 90% of the time, unless you’re in one of those hardcore bands, and at that point you’re just doing the same note over and over again, which is cool, because I was still love a lot of hardcore, but that’s what that is. This is what this is, and at the end of the day, my lyrics do have meaning to them, but I don’t really care so much about that approach. I care about what you hear in your ears. I care about making a decent marketing moment. Maybe that’s just my brain. I’m highly influenced by things like rap and dubstep and how they do stop starts in their music and how they use cadence. When I listen to a rap song, I have no idea what the heck they’re saying, even though they’re speaking somewhat clearer. Arguably, it’s just too fast for my dumb brain, but I love the rhythm and the sound and the tone of their voice. Future is one of my favorite artists, and his tone is amazing, nothing beats his tone. When it comes to even the mixing portion from what you’re doing rhythmically with your voice or how you’re mixing it, it’s all about how it is hitting the ears, period. You can write the most beautiful song ever, but if the performance or the mix isn’t right, no one cares. No one will ever care. Maybe you will, and maybe that’s all you need, and that’s freaking sick, too. But for me, I’m trying to grow something. So, it really comes down to I want somebody to go back and listen to this, or maybe they’ll watch it when they’re drinking with their friends and laugh, because it’s so insane. Either way, somebody clicked on it and listened to it, and maybe they’ll come and see us play, and maybe I can share a cool experience with them.

I mean, I love diving into lyrics, but like you said, if it doesn’t sound cool in deathcore it doesn’t really matter all that much. You do some crazy stuff throughout the record, like that stupid tunnel throat high in “Flesh and Brine” that makes no sense and that weird blend of mids and gutturals in “Happy Fingers.” No matter how many times I listen, I have no idea what’s going on with your voice during those moments.

The one trick a lot of the best vocalists in the world use is learning how to layer properly. I don’t think I’m that good at layering, because I’ve seen how other producers work with layers and are working with 16 different layers of one vocal. Give me like maybe a low and a high together, and I’ll see what I can do with it. I like to keep it simple, but the one thing that I’ve learned from the best of the best, the guys that everyone listens to, is watching how they produce and how people are mixing them, and it’s pretty cool. That’s a whole other art form that no one really thinks about is when you do this guttural by itself, it sounds like this. If you do this high on top of it, or by itself, it sounds like this. But when you put them together, it sounds completely different. But can you do a sound that resembles that in one take? That’s the one thing I always try to do, no matter what, is I need to be able to perform this live, and if I can’t, people are going to call me out. That’s the stuff that keeps me up at night. So if I put something out there, I’m going to do something at least 90% close to it, or I’ll try. Maybe won’t be as good, and you can talk about that on Reddit or something.

Also in that Kardavox video, you mentioned that you’ve done your research on all these different vocal techniques and styles and figuring out what works best for you. Who would you consider your biggest influences as a vocalist?

I would say, when it came to just the idea of using cadence, Phil Bozeman was the one who historically always mentioned rap cadence is the go to. When it comes to trying to sound like him, that’s something I can’t do to this day, really to the extent that I want to, but sounding absolutely unhinged — like Darius from Spit. His vocals and just his energy. When it comes to live shows, if I could be a quarter of the performer that he is, then I’ll be successful, because that dude is something else. Then when it comes to the basic foundation of where my voice comes from, it’s Randy Blythe from Lamb of God. I mean, there’s no one that has influenced my voice more. The amount of times before I even got into performing screams and bands, I was driving to the gym late at night after I finished my day, three scoops of pre-workout in, and I’m blaring “Omerta” over the my SOB speakers, and just absolutely blowing the speakers out, and I’m sitting there using my voice. Those are the years that I’ve learned how to scream, for sure.

One thing I love about Larcenia’s music is that it just seems like you’re having fun with your vocals. It doesn’t feel like you’re trying to show of your versatility, you’re just doing what feels right with the instrumentals. How have you learned to be able to just let loose and have fun with your vocals and let it guide the music rather than forcing your vocals to work with the instrumentals?

Especially this album, I’m highly influenced by just slam in general. Slam music’s my favorite because it’s kind of comical in a sense, because they do these inhale, exhale screams — I’m trying to learn how to inhale right now. That’s been, like, something I’ve been really learning how to do over the past few months. Just their ability to just put whatever they the heck they want out there, and it sounds so cool. When I start listening to that stuff, I just think that at end of the day, I think I could put anything on a track as long as it sounds cool. That’s why slam is my favorite. Because these dudes doing all these, you know, inhale, gutturals and stuff, and then they have this beautiful, poetic lyric sheet. I’m just like, dude, you’re not saying a single word on there and you know it. So to me, that’s the type of fun stuff that I think deathcore should be at times, and you can have your emotional side. I’m fortunate enough to be in two different styles of bands. I’m in Larcenia, and then I’m also in Synestia. With that, those are two polar opposites, but both extreme. On one side, I have to be little bit more serious, like I gotta focus. Synestia is a beast, I love what we’re doing, and I love the shoes I have to fill for some of those songs that I’m learning. When it comes to Larcenia, I can kind of just do whatever the heck I want, and at the end of the day, finding any place where you can have freedom of expression or creativity you do whatever you want is rare these days. So that’s what Larcenia is. It’s just Henry and I. We just put our weird brains together. We have some fun. You listen to “Sickly Sweet,” and I’m inspired by Patrick from Spongebob, that’s my inspiration on that song. At the end of the day, I want people to mosh. I want people to shake their booties. I want people to hate my music as well. I want people to love my music. I want people just to see my music and react to it in some way and acknowledge it. To me, it’s like oh, I was able to touch somebody in a non-weird way. It’s just cool to be able to interact and reach so many people across the world.

Now that Extraction is out, and you have a tour with Oceano on the horizon, what is next for Larcenia?

Touring is a big thing it’s a big discussion. If you looked at my DMs, that’s all it is. “Hey, when  are you coming?” Anytime you post something. We really want to push that. That’s going to be the goal for the following kind of 24 months is, let’s establish ourselves as a band that can tour. We do want to be somewhat selective, because we do all have jobs, we have families, we all have mortgage payments, we have those types of things. We are blessed with the support that we get now, and our fans buy our merch or streaming our stuff — it’s paid for us to be able to play the shows that we have done so far and upgrade our equipment. It really does make a difference when somebody shares something, and I don’t think people realize that. That’s why I always say I’m fine with some haters, because if you comment on it, thank you dude, you’re helping, whatever you got to do. Whatever can make my passion become a means of income, I’m super game for whatever route it takes. We’re going to probably release some more music videos as well. We’re going to try to maybe do some collaboration. There’s some stuff in the works I can’t talk about. Given the Oceano tour, we’re super excited for that, but we still have a whole part of the country we haven’t visited yet, so that would be kind of the next checklist.

—

I hope you guys enjoyed the interview! Please go support Larcenia Roe and Synestia, and be sure to give Extraction a listen ASAP if you’re a fan of intense and fun deathcore stuff. Thanks again for checking these interviews out, and I’ll see you in the next one!