Steel for Brains

credit: Gary Copeland

Giving ample offerings of the finest in rock n’ roll with shades of metal and punk, Valient Thorr have been obliterating the heavy music landscape since their arrival on the Earth metal scene in 2003.  A decade later finds the band upping the ante with every release with their newest, Our Own Masters, set to be released next month.  I had the opportunity to chat with mastermind and throat for Valient Thorr, Valient HImself, who was ready to get down to business and talk about shooting a video for one of the new tracks.

And what song is the video for?

Well, we are…I’ll tell you first – I’ve told no one else – it’s all completely different, each song.  Every one of us has a favorite couple of songs [from the new album].  So we couldn’t agree…so we just asked…basically, we let our buddies help us decide, and they chose “Torn Apart,” so we’re doing a video for “Torn Apart,” but the first song we’re releasing is gonna be released next week.  We’re gonna let people hear a couple of different things, and not focus on one single.  It’s so diverse, so just let people hear different things.

Everyone knows you guys are from Venus.  I’m curious as to what your Earth journey has been like in regards to you being a musician, Valient?  What brought you to the point where you are now with Valient Thorr?

Well, I mean…on Earth – once we decided that rock n’ roll would be the best way to get our messages out, it was a long process.  We started playing…I mean, it could be something that’s a unique story, and it could be something that’s not at all.  If you want to look at it like an alien who’s here…I always think about that for a long time – I don’t want to say it was a crutch to speak about us being from another planet.  We didn’t have it tough.  It was just something we decided to do when we were all in art school together.  No matter what path we chose, we knew we had to get this message out to people everywhere.  So, we were in this skate park and hanging out, and we had other projects that turned into this project, and we had other gigs that turned into this one.  There were a couple of things that came together, and you know – this is pre-MySpace and pre-cellphones – right on the cusp – I mean, you’re talking ’98 or ’99.  This is pre-Google.  I mean, looking up things on the internet, looking up cities like Mobile or Birmingham and putting “rock club” or “rock bar” into Lycos [laughs] as a search engine and trying to piece together things for a tour. 

We’re really lucky in that we had a ton of bands coming through in this skate shop that we all hung out at.  We kept as many addresses and phone numbers of buddies that worked there as we could.  And then we basically cashed in our favors.  Say we let you crash, and then we piece together a 52-city tour, and literally anybody can do that now.  I encourage people to do it now, but back then it was a pretty big feat to do a 52-city tour in 60 days.  Nobody was doing that shit.  I have magazine articles that we would laugh at and read from like Spin or Alt Press where they’re talking about these bands who were being compared to MC5 at the time like At the Drive-In and You Will Know Us By The Trail of the Dead…, and they’re like “Oh, you gotta see this band live!”  And these bands were like “Man, we just did a two week tour across America.”  A two week tour?  Are you kidding?!  C’mon, man.  That’s not that impressive.  The same thing happened when we were out…like it was literally three years from the end of 2004 all the way through 2007.  These bands were like “Oh man, we just did a grueling two-month trek,” and we’re like “We live on the road now.”  It’s just so funny how it happens.  I guess before all that, before moving and all of that, we decided we had to get out of this small town and be able to get the message out.  Better bands come through Chapel Hill and Raleigh than they do in Greenville, so we’ll move this band here.  So we moved the band over.  

I haven’t really told a lot of this stuff, because we kept it a secret for such a long time.  We didn’t want people to know.  Everybody knows we’re from Venus now, though.  The key to us figuring it out…it wasn’t like moving to a smart town and getting along with some band that had tons of tours that came through there.  It was giving up everything and getting on the road and getting out there.  And that was the beginning of our arch up.  Once we gave up everything, and we started doing those 52-date tours, and once we figured out we had this chance, we just got rid of all our shit, we put our comics in storage and our records, and we got the fuck out of there. We actually just stopped for the first time.  None of us had houses since 2004 until October.  Basically all of us have places to live now, and it’s spread out all over the place, because we didn’t slow down for so long that we didn’t have to deal with any kind of family stuff.  And then Earth father passed away, an Earth child was born, and all these crazy kinds of things happened.  It kind of…we needed to stop and do some adjustments and then get ready for the next phase of the band.

credit: Will Dozier 

Do you find the audience here on Earth is more receptive to rock n’ roll and heavy music than the Venus audience?

Well, we didn’t do music on Venus.  On Venus, we were meteorologists.  We had a totally different education, a completely different skillset, and a completely different mindset.  Once we got here we had to figure out…the whole thing was we were in space for years.  For eons.  We were doing the same thing, and it became a grind.  I used to say “It’s really complicated,” and it is unless you put it in the context where someone can understand it.  I could talk all day about timelines and how confusing they are – wormholes and the infinite grid that the universe is on, and that can be really confusing, but if you just look at it, man, we were just doing a job much like a meter reader is.   If you just pretend like, “Hey, we had to stop at all these houses,” which is basically all these points on a timeline.  We had to stop at all these points and places and check the meter.  We had to make sure that things were going right in these timelines for this species of Venusians – which are basically like the human Earthlings now.  I mean, all Earthlings are descendants of Venusians. 

You know it’s funny, because there’s a new Superman movie coming out.  I was always kind of describe the history of the Earth as a Superman story.  The Earthlings were seeded here, you know?  And then the first ones – the reason there’s a Thorr god is because at some point one of the meteorologists – one of the checkers – or meter readers that we kind of were, stopped along a certain point and everybody had the same last name – Thorr.  That’s where the whole Thorr mythology came from.  Somebody came from the sky, and that’s how all that worked out. 

I’m sure you’ve noticed the trend in popularity that heavy music on Earth is taking, Valient.  What are your thoughts on that growth?

Well, I mean…I don’t know that.  I can see things happening.  I can things from a very weird perspective that things are happening, but I’m in the middle of it.  All the time that these things are going on, I’ve spent being inside of it.  And I’ve seen things going on.  I’ve seen things happening.  But what I really see, and it’s kind of what I’ve seen all along, is we know we’re a certain – I can only speak for the things that I’ve seen.  The things that you see and the things you experience make up who you are.  I’m led by my habits, beliefs, and desires.  That’s where I find significance.  There’s two ways I feel like you can look at things.  You can look at it as things happening on some sort of autonomous universal transcendent wavelength, or that things happen because of your own habits, beliefs, and desires.  Those are the things that you’re drawn to, and those are things that bring you to that.  So, being inside of it and understand what’s happening…I can only get reminded of it when I come back home to where I live in North Carolina or hang out with old friends that I’ve known for so long.  They see it in a different way.  They see it outside of where we see it.  They’re outside of it looking in. 

From outside, they see it bigger than what it is, because they see us doing all these things.  That kind of reminds us, “Oh wow, we are doing kind of wild ass things,” but when you’re inside of it you don’t think of it that way.  You’re inside of it, and you think “I’m doing what I have to do.”  I have to drive six or twelve hours.  I have to unload.  I have to rock.  I have to packup, and then I have to go to sleep, and get up in the morning and do it again.  I can be in a really good mood or a shitty mood, but hopefully all those moods link up [laughs].  You keep doing it.  Sometimes you play things that are huge and wild experiences happen.  But they happen so fast – you have to leave and go the next place so fast.  You quickly forget about all of the wild things unless you have some kind of reminders like mentions on Twitter or Facebook, so you can go back and remember.  Someone tells you a story, and you forget half of it.  I’m really glad to get reminded of these things, and like I said, my perspective is skewed, because I’m inside it.  I don’t experience it the same – like underground music growing and blowing up.  I can tell that underground music that I’ve always loved and cared about in the US is way bigger in Europe than it’s ever been in the US.  I pay attention to histories, and I think at a certain point in the US rock n’ roll fell off. 

You know in the 80s with hair metal, a lot of dudes starting listening to something that was more innovative at the time like hip hop.  Now you have hip hop, RNB, and alt-country that have ruled those charts since that point.  I see it getting bigger over there.  Now, I see a lot more fans here.  I see bands we take out on tour with us, and they become bigger than us [laughs].  I don’t want to become Montrose – let’s just say that [laughs].  I don’t want to have all the bands that are awesome just pass us by.  I’m not in charge, so I don’t know what’ll happen.  There are some awesome bands that are huge now that opened for us, and if we went back on together right now we’d probably be opening for them. 

As far as the creative process for you guys, Valient, what kind of things work as influences when you’re writing?

Well, always for me – it’s been current events.  I like to stay abreast of what’s happening in the world.  I think it fuels my desire to write.  I don’t think you can ever be bored or get writer’s block.  If you can take a look around at what’s going on, and it doesn’t make you furious then you’re asleep, basically.  So I always use that as fuel.  The other dudes are different.   It’s not always the case with everybody else.  And now more and more I’d say each album that we’ve made – this is our sixth one – each one we’ve made has been less one person doing this and one person doing that and more of a collaboration in the fullest sense.  Stranger was that way where I was first getting songs from different people – lyrical ideas and stuff – but I was just listening to the record on the way down.  I try to listen to it and put it away, so it seems fresh every time, but it’s so funny I listen to it and I think of each line and who brought that line to the song.  Each song and every line has a different person who’s brought that to it. 

I had 85 demos for this new record.  Insane.  I don’t think we’ve ever done more than twenty for a record.  85.  These songs have transformed over and over and over.  The choruses – I was thinking about all the different version of choruses and different things that they could have been or would have been.  There were critical decision made on this record that were like so thought out on so many different ways that it could be.  And it was everybody.  Lucian the drummer wrote bass parts, and guitar parts, and he wrote lyrics.  There’s a song where almost all of the lyrics are written entirely by Nightwolf, the bass player.  All of us helped with everything this time.  This one is completely – it’s nuts because every song sounds different.  I used to say that we all had different influences, and that’s what brought it.  Now I think it’s the way we’re writing is we’re all taking it upon ourselves to write whatever and fix it and try it.  Some of it is bizarre [laughs].  I think this is probably our most bizarre record.  I encourage everybody to listen to the whole thing, because a lot of the times – and I’m guilty of this – I’ll hear a new album by somebody, and if it doesn’t get me by three songs I’m over it.  You get deadened to things.  I know what this is like.  I know what this is gonna sound like, but you won’t be able to tell what our whole album’s about by listening to one track.  There’s no way. 

I feel like our society is so – my analogy for it is if you put something out there these days – no matter what forum: Twitter, Facebook, whatever kind of thing you use – anything you put out in the social sphere, though – you give it five minutes, and it’s completely covered up.  And probably in some cases it’s not seen again, because information’s so fast these days you really have to hammer it home and hope that people don’t hate your guts for it, or you have to make something that immediately hits with everybody, because it’s really hard to keep people’s attention anymore.  It either gets covered up, or they’re so numb and so ready for something new we don’t digest things anymore.  I made a joke a long time ago that the world of music in the early 00s – especially in hip hop – people who are buying the records are just eating it up and shitting it out.  Now people don’t even swallow it.  They take a bite, they chew on it, and then they spit it out.  It’s not even going through their system. 

What do you think is the greatest challenge facing anyone who wants to make viable art in 2013?

Besides the plethora of problems that we already have faced as artists over the however many years it’s taken us to get to this point, because everything is moving and speeding up.  Whatever amount of people that were on the Earth in 1970, they finally reached one billion, and then less than forty years later there’s seven billion people on the Earth.  It took all of the whole time humans were on the Earth to reach one billion people, and then now we have seven billion people.  That’s how fast things move.  Not only do you have all those problems up until then, now you have problems coming that you don’t even have time to think about.  I get caught up sometimes.  Number one, you want somebody to listen to something.  You want somebody to see something as an artist.  Then you have to deal with their reaction to it.  What are they gonna think about it?   The thing about it is you have the people who don’t give a shit at all, and you try to get people to give a shit.  You have people who give a shit, but they’re so overly opinionated about it that they feel like they’re the critics now.  We live in a comment society. 

It doesn’t matter what a review says or what an interview says.  Now, you live in a society that’s ruled by trolls.  If you’re not praised, they jump on the bandwagon of “Yeah!  That’s terrible.”  If you are praised then they jump on the bandwagon of “Man, that’s bullshit,” [laughs].  I was mentioned on this website called Metalsucks, and I was voted the number two man in metal which is a whole lot of problems for a whole lot of people.  There’s like thousands of comments.  I myself would have never put myself at number two. Number three was Bruce Dickinson!  He’s like my hero.  So, it’s a little skewed in the first place, but there’s all these people who were like “I’ve never even heard of this asshole!”  “Who gives a shit?” 

It’s funny, because we’re not even metal – I don’t think.  We play heavy music.  We play rock n’ roll.  Who cares?  We play a crossover kind of music that puts us in two camps, basically.  We’ve never been reviewed at all on Pitchfork, which I think is for pop music or dance type bands.  I just found out it’s gonna be reviewed on there.  Now we’ll have these guys that are like “Oh, those are the hipster metal guys.”  I don’t even know what the fuck that means.  We try to make smart music.  That’s what it is.  I want to make something that’s gonna live on beyond my own death.  A piece of art that’s gonna make somebody think if they actually pay attention to it.  That’s all we’ve ever set out to do.  I’m always happy when someone gets it in their hands and pays attention to it.  The Thorriors know what we’re doing.  They get it.  

Thanks to Valient for his time.  Our Own Masters will be released June 18th, courtesy of Volcom Entertainment.

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credit: Wojtek Dobrogojski

Watching Mike IX Williams saunter onto the stage, whether with his cult adored Eyehategod or the newly formed project Corrections House, can be misleading.  He’s not an imposing figure, and he doesn’t present himself as some sage for the jilted generation of 2013.  Once the PA hums, though, and the feedback tears through the speakers, his is the voice of disillusionment and disgust with what he sees as a world gone to shit.  It’s not enough to simply ‘talk about the issues’ with Williams.  For over twenty-five years, Eyehategod has been his bullhorn through which to scream and speak his message of sheer savagery and to expose the raw nature contained within those dark recesses of our humanity.  I had the opportunity to chat with Mike about his own place in the heavy music realm and how he arrived where he is today. 

Obviously there’s a story concerning your life as a musician from the beginning to now, Mike.  Tell me a little just about your journey from where you began to where you are.

Oh, I mean, a lot.  I grew up, as a teenager, a total punk rocker.  You know, like skateboard and shaved head – the whole thing.  Black Flag worshipper and all of that stuff.  I got into metal later.  It all comes from when I was a kid.  I guess just always being interested – my older brothers just had tons of records in the house – always.  There was always vinyl laying around and books.  They were always into books.  I used to draw a lot when I was a kid.  I guess it comes from all that.  That’s where the stem started.  I wanted to either be an artist or a musician or a writer or something of that nature.  And I was always better in school at spelling and reading.  Math was my hardest subject.  It still is, actually.  So I went more the artistic route rather than the technical route.  It started off listening to my parents listen to Elvis.  You know, they’d listened to Elvis Presley and the old rock n’ roll stuff.  My dad was like an old greaser guy.  Until the day he died he slicked his hair back and carried a weapon, always.  My dad was never without a knife.  They had these things back then called Blackjacks.  You hold it in your hand, and it’s got a rubber end to it, but inside the rubber is a huge piece of lead you can just bash somebody in the head with.  My dad was crazy.  He came from the 50s, and he was definitely a scrapper.  He was a fighter running around in hot rods and stuff like that.  They listened to that type of music, though, and my brothers got me into The Beatles.  My one brother got me into The Beatles and early Elton John and stuff like that – some more of the hippie stuff, too.  My other brother listened to Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, and stuff like that. 

I gravitated toward the stuff that he liked, mostly, because he liked this crazy, sick, weird stuff – for then it was.  It still is, actually.  He read a lot of crazy book too, my brother.  Books about the mafia, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Hitler – he was obsessed with World War II and the Third Reich stuff – just reading it, though, and not being obsessed with that stuff as a person.  So I gravitated towards the darker side of things, I guess.  At that point.  Just always looking for something darker and heavier.  That’s just the way it’s always been.  Then I got into KISS, and they were even too – they were too extreme for my brother [laughs].  From KISS it was just everything like the early bands like Zeppelin and Aerosmith.  There’d be a little article in the KISS magazine about this “UK Punk Explosion,” and I’m reading about KISS and how extreme they are, and this article’s talking about the Sex Pistols, the Damned, and the Clash, so I immediately just – there was no question that that was what I wanted to do and be into.  That’s how it all started.  I love the whole trajectory of music itself.  It just goes on and on.  That’s the greatest thing about music, I think, is the evolution.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the kind of surge in popularity that heavy music is experiencing just over the last few years.  I’m curious as to what your thoughts are on the heavy music trend, Mike.

Well, the way you put it – the heavy music trend – I noticed that when I would see these garage rock guys who were friends of mine, and I realized it was happening all over the world, too – I’d have these guys who were into Jay Reatard and like some of the older garage type bands – The Oblivions or somebody like that.  They started getting into like black metal and doom stuff.  This was kind of strange.  This whole college kid group started getting into this really aggressive stuff – I mean, more aggressive than like indie rock or stuff like that.  I guess the internet has a lot to do with that – spreading that around.  It was a phenomenon back in the day, too.  You had the Rolling Stones starting out in the 60s, and they were kind of an underground band at that point.

It seems like back then things became mainstream quicker, to me at least.  I know that the state of the world today has a lot to do with it.  People aren’t as shocked by things anymore.  So when a band with a name like Eyehategod – when we first started 25 years ago, believe it or not, people were honestly shocked at the name.  It caused problems.  We couldn’t play shows and things like that going on.  Now it seems like – it goes along with the state of the world.  It kind of looks like the world collapsing.  I’ve always said that I didn’t think the end of the world would be this big explosion or something.  I knew it would take hundreds and hundreds of years to just decay, and humanity would just rot away.  We’re just a bacteria here on Earth anyway.  We’re not even supposed to be here.  I really think humanity was some sort of accident.  People just want to hear more extreme things.  They want more extreme things.

In my mind, Mike, some of the best art that’s been created has come out of those darkest times in humanity’s history.  Specifically, I think of the film era of the 70s as we were coming out of the Vietnam War and even the music during that time as well.

I totally agree with you.  That’s a given.  I guess it makes people want to create more – out of frustration.  The frustration comes from anger.  People were poor, and there was nothing to do but create art, and it just becomes more extreme as time goes on. The consciousness of the public gravitates to that. 

credit: Freetoeknee Photography

You mentioned Eyehategod’s early years, Mike.  How have you seen the band evolve over the last 25 years? 

Nowadays I think we take it a lot more serious [laughs], and realize that this is what we do now.  This is our living.  I don’t do anything else.  I play in bands and try to make a living somehow from doing art – which is hard to do.  Back in the day we were just out to piss people off.  I mean, that’s the bottom line.  We loved the type of music we were playing, but there wasn’t any sense of being professional at all.  We were just out to annoy people and aggravate everyone within arm’s or ear’s reach.  That’s where all the feedback came from.  The feedback comes from bands like COC – they used in their early hardcore stuff, but we basically took it to a different level.  Listening to bands like SPK and Throbbing Gristle and some of those more industrial, or at least what industrial was back then – but bands like that.  We just started using feedback as another instrument in the band.  That was something done pretty much to aggravate people, but now it’s become part of us.  It’s part of what the band is.  Besides member changes and personality changes over the years, that’s pretty much it.  We’ve been doing this so long it’s like second nature to us.  If you can make a living doing something like that it’s a great way to live. 

What do you think the biggest obstacle facing anyone hoping to make viable heavy music in 2013 is?  

I guess the biggest challenge is that you have to put everything into it.  If you want it to be successful and you want to do stuff with it and end up making money from it, you’re gonna have to quit your job and go tour and put records out and end up losing a lot of money in the beginning just putting stuff out and touring on your own.  Record labels aren’t necessarily – even when we started out the record label thing was still going on.  We got signed – our first album came out on an independent label, but after that we got signed to Century Media in like 1990, and they immediately just threw money at us.  They sent us to Europe and rented us a van.  It was easier back then.  Our new record that we’re doing right now – we’re paying for it ourselves and then seeing who wants to put it out after that.  People will want to put it out – we’ll just have to choose who to go with.  I guess the biggest obstacle, though, would just be putting everything into it.  Besides that, the world is out there for the taking.  You can make your own tours.  DIY, you know.  It’s just having the dedication to do it, and keep trying to write better music all the time – not commercial music – just better in your own head. 

We always said, as Eyehategod, we’re just playing and writing these songs for ourselves.  We never cared what people were thinking.  That’s kind of another thing you have to get over.  People have to quit worrying about bad reviews or opinions of other people.  Especially nowadays with things like YouTube.  I could get on YouTube right now and probably find a hundred videos in twenty minutes saying “Eyehatedgod sucks,” and stuff like that.  You just have to get through to the people who like you and stick with that.  And keep touring.  I love to tour.  Some people hate it.  I find it soothing.  Some people don’t like traveling around in a stinky van, but I love just being there hungover and half starved.  There’s something comforting in that. 

credit: espyvisuals

One of the things I find incredibly fascinating is your lyrics, Mike.  Either with Eyehategod or even the recent Corrections House project.  Are there certain literary things that work as influences for you?  What’s the writing process like?

I’ve written since I was younger, and I’ve never cared what people thought about my lyrics.  That’s one thing I think that helped me get them out there.  If somebody thought it sucked I didn’t care.  It’s not from one place, though.  It couldn’t be.  I don’t sit down and say, “I’m going to write lyrics.”  I don’t think I’ve ever done that.  I’ve sat down with an idea, and then that once sentence bled into ten paragraphs.  I can be in the middle of a dead sleep and just wake up – I’ve got pages of stuff right now that I can’t even read, because I wrote it when I was wasted drunk.  Waking up in the middle of the night and just scribbling stuff down, and I’m still trying to figure out what this stuff says.  I can be riding in a car or walking down the sidewalk anywhere – city or country. 

I live in the country now, and that’s a whole different thing for me.  I grew up in the country, but I’ve always been a city person.  There’s more stimulation in the city as far as writing lyrics, but they come to me either way.  It’s just something that kind of has to pop in your head, and then once you get that one word you like, and that one word will have a whole vibe to it.  You’ll have that one word or that one sentence or that one phrase, like “Hoax the System,” and it just goes from there.  You don’t know where it’s gonna go, or how much you’re gonna write, but it could come at any time.  Things just pop in my head, and I try to always carry a pen and paper with me.  Even if it’s a napkin or whatever.  People will sometimes ask me, “How do I write book,” and I have my book Cancer as a Social Activity, and people ask me how I wrote it.  It took years to do it.  You get the ideas and you get the words, and it just keeps evolving.  I just tell people to edit.  Edit, edit, edit.  You’re gonna end up editing things, and even when I look at my book now I’m like “I should have taken that out,” but sometimes it’s good to be like stream of consciousness and just let it ramble on. 

Do you find that your approach to writing has evolved over the years?

I’d say it’s changed, because I think I’m better at it now.  I think I can structure things a little better.  I guess I should take back the thing where I said I never sit down to purposely write.  That’s not true.  It’s just that I never sit at a desk and think “Okay, I’m gonna write this thing.”  When I’m in the studio – like with Arson Anthem and with the new Eyehategod – in the studio sometimes I’ll go through my words and realize that none of this fits.  The timing pattern to the songs and the syllables don’t fit.  In that case I will come up with something on the spot – just thinking about a certain word or vibe I want.  A lot of my lyrics – a lot of them you can’t understand on the record just because that’s the nature of the style of music – but a lot of the lyrics I’m saying are there – as abstract as they are. 

When you’re not writing or composing, what do you typically like to do in your spare time, man?

I have a lot of projects going on all the time, but when I make free time for myself it’s just watching television or going out to see a show.  Nothing super exciting.  I live out in the woods, and we’ve been setting traps lately.  We have these humane traps where we just catch and release, and that’s kind of been my hobby for a couple of weeks now.  We’ve been catching possums here and taking them down the street and letting them go.  There’s so much stuff.  I’m reading books.  I’m always reading magazines, studying stuff on the internet.  I like hanging out with my animals.  I’ve got three cats and dogs.  There’s always something going on.  It’s usually always just planning to do the next thing, you know?  I like to always have something on the burner ready to go.  If I don’t have anything set for the next few weeks, I tend to get pretty depressed and think, “Shit, I gotta make something happen.”  

Thanks to Mike for his time.  Eyehategod have a few tour dates you can check out here. 

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Read any discussion online about post anything concerning music, and you’re more than likely going to be inundated with a flood of useful (read: pointless) terminology and misguided declarations.  Throw heavy music into the conversation, and then the hyperbole reaches infinite proportions.  Battlelines are drawn.  A dry wit and only the most in depth knowledge of the most obscure bands who’ve never even heard of themselves win out in those discussions.  Whatever it is about that post terminology that tends to garner heated debate, I’m not sure.  What I am sure about is that the affectionately labeled post black metal groups Smohalla and Omega Centauri created seven songs of absolute madness, beauty, and intricate devastation with their split Tellur-Epitome. 

While much of post or avant garde black metal tends to lend itself to Blut Aus Nord or Deathspell Omega worship, both Smohalla and Omega Centauri essentially hollow out their own place in that realm with progressive stretches of melodic transcendence complimented perfectly by the howls of the vocalists and the surge of instruments including surprisingly effective use of synthesizers.  Smohalla take the realm on the first four tracks blending synthesizers and flawless technical metal savvy.  The choral atmosphere of the vocals speaks to Smohalla’s ability to utilize unsettling methods in their compositions without resorting to hokey nuances.  Omega Centauri’s contribution to the split comes in the last three tracks which, while complimenting the technical work of Smohalla’s song, delve into their own space entirely.  Omega Centauri’s songs, while technical, are far more focused on the atmosphere and use of the negative space of sound.  While both groups are somewhat grouped together due to the constraints of genre, their differences are so marked here that the split works incredibly well allowing each the space to weave their own sonic pattern.

Tracks like “La Main d’ Abel” perfectly showcase Smohalla’s incredible ability to create a conglomeration of sounds that hearken to the black metal aesthetic while still spiraling into the realm of the avant-garde.  “Ô Déluge” is a fantastic example of Smohalla’s prowess with allowing the music to escape the confines of its supposed definitions.  The song has those touches of industrial with a constant undercurrent of electronica.  The last three tracks find Omega Centauri, whose essential debut Universum Infinitum was easily one of the best metal releases of 2012, furthering its reach into the expansion of black metal at its most equally ambient and unsettling. Despite being only three tracks, Omega Centauri’s contribution to the split feels positively gargantuan.  The track “Submission” finds Omega Centauri creating a soundscape that is hauntingly gorgeous and quite possibly one of the most beautiful black metal songs you’ll ever hear.  Tellur-Epitome is available now courtesy of Duplicate Records.

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Read through just a few of The Body’s lyrics, and you’re likely to find yourself immersed in a sort of neo-apocalyptic gospel.  It’s message?  We’re doomed.  Its messiahs?  Two Arkansas-bred guys hellbent on enlightening the uninformed of all the decay the world has to offer.  The Body are spreading the Good News of the End, and no one knows how to preach that sermon quite like them.  I had the opportunity to speak with drummer Lee Buford about his place in heavy music and what makes The Body tick.

How did you guys come together to form The Body?  What was the thinking behind the two of you coming together to create what you do?

I don’t know.  I mean, we…Chip’s older than me.  He’s a few years older than me, and he was in a lot of punk bands in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lived.  And then we both ended up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and we were just hanging out all the time anyways, so we just started playing music.  In the beginning…I mean, it was kind of the same in the beginning.  We both were just in Fayetteville and ended up playing together.  It was just kind of natural.  He’d just been my friend before that for years. 

Was it pretty much the idea from the start that it would be only you two involved with the band?

Yeah, pretty much.  Just because we hung out so much it just ended up being us two, but we’ve had people play with us on tour.  Like we’ll get our friend to play bass or something.  In the beginning it was more like that. 

Just concerning The Body’s music, there’s the apocalyptic aesthetic.  How do you and Chip approach composition?  What does that look like when you guys get together to write?

At this point, we’ve been playing together for so long it’s kind of hard to make anything that doesn’t sound like what we do, if that makes sense.  A lot of it now is more conceptual stuff like I’ll have an idea for song, and it goes like this, and so Chip will try to write something like that, and we’ll try to figure something out.  Or, we’re going in to record next month, and we don’t have half the stuff written yet, because it’s all concepts like we’ll just use this sample and then build from that.  A lot of it is just ideas that we figure out in the studio, or the guitar-oriented stuff we just jam and sort of figure it out.  Me and Chip are both not that great at playing music, also.  I mean, we’re good at what we do, but if we play with other bands, it’s…terrible. 

[Laughs]  At least you’re humble, Lee.

Oh yeah.  You know.

I think a technical prowess tends to be overrated in the heavy music scene.  In my mind, bands with guitarists who are doing sweeps and shit or overusing their double bass are a dime-a-dozen.  There’s a lot to be said for simplicity and the ability to manipulate and distort what’s considered normal. 

Yeah.  That’s the way we feel.  I love some stuff that’s super technical, but when it comes down to it, I’d rather listen to something I could feasibly do myself.  Because then it just means more to me, I guess.  I love Swans, and there’s like a million Swans songs where it’s just one-guitar line, y’know?  And they’re fucking awesome. 

With Master, We Perish, how long did it take you guys to record?  What went into creating the EP?

On that one we had…I had some money right before I moved from Rhode Island and Chip was living in North Carolina at the time, and I moved down to North Carolina for a little bit for about four or five months before we moved down here.  So he [Chip] came up, and I had some money, so we just recorded three songs.  I got like taxes or something.  The super long drum song we wrote in the studio.  I just had an idea for a drum thing I wanted to do.  The first song – we kind of had it written out, but mostly it was like studio stuff.  The second one was our only song we had written.  And then a couple of months later I added the samples and stuff.  We kind of tweaked it a little bit more.  It was pretty easy.  We record everything with our friends in Rhode Island.  At this point, they know exactly what we’re doing.  It takes them like an hour to set up everything nowadays. 

In talking about heavy music, I’m curious as to what your thoughts are on the kind of surge heavy music is seeing in popularity over the last few years.  It’s exciting to see press outlets give heavy music its due finally.

It’s cool.  I think…the most metal stuff I listen to nowadays is black metal stuff.  It’s cool, because they’ve got…like Lars [Gotrich] at NPR – he’s super awesome.  He’s a really great guy.  And like Grayson [Currin] at Pitchfork, and Kim Kelly is working there now.  So, that’s cool, because those people know what’s going on.  It would bother me if it was someone who didn’t know what was going on, and they were talking about it.  I mean, that happens sometimes, and it’s kind of annoying.  I feel like they get people…the outlets get people who know what they’re talking about. 

It’s been equally as exciting to see the audience change for metal shows, man.  Just over the course of a few years there’s more interest from a wider array of people.

Yeah, definitely.  I think a lot of it is just like…a lot of our shows a lot of punk kids come out.  We did a tour with Thou, and so many weird hardcore punk kids come out for them.  It’s insane.  It’s mostly that over metal kids. 

That’s like going to see Crowbar and seeing a sea of hardcore kids.

Yeah [laughs].  I think with Thou it’s the political thing…they’re so political and punk kids feel like they relate to them more.  Which…I don’t know how I feel about that so much.  I feel like a lot of people take metal that’s safe for them – which I don’t always agree with.  I love Thou.  They’re an awesome band, but there’s a lot of awesome bands.  I don’t know.  I think a lot of the punk kids take punk ethics and bring that into it, which I don’t know if I always agree with – just because it’s two completely different worlds. 

What drew you in initially with heavy music?  How have you seen the arc of that take you to where you are now with The Body?

I think me and Chip have a similar background.  We both came from punk stuff.  I started out playing punk when I was like seventeen or something, and Chip is the same way.  From that, it just…Chip had always loved Neurosis from day one.  We both just started playing punk and ended up doing what we’re doing now.  It was pretty natural. 

What do you think the allure is for those who love heavy music, Lee?  What draws us into the music from your perspective?

I think just like not being a part of normal society.  That’s why I got into punk, and then after a while…punk is so optimistic about changing things, you know?  And after a while you kind of…at least me and Chip are like “Eh, things are probably never gonna change.”  It’s gonna suck all the time, and so that kind of evolved into what it is now.  I think for us, personally, we’re both pretty unhappy people as far as our world view goes.  It’s just an extension of that. 

The worldview you guys have definitely pours into every ounce of the lyrics.  Who’s responsible for those?

Usually Chip does.  I have some for the new record.  I don’t know if we’ll use them or not, but Chip usually writes them.  I actually think that’s the best thing about our band – Chip’s lyrics.  I’m perfectly content with him doing that. 

I know you don’t want to speak for him, but what kinds of things work as catalysts for the lyric composition?

I think a lot of biblical stuff for Chip, and aesthetically we do that too.  Just in the sense of Revelation-style biblical stuff. 

Having grown up in the Bible Belt, do you guys have a pretty firm rooting in being exposed to that organized religion?

I think I definitely have more than Chip.  His parents aren’t like crazy religious or anything.  You know how it is.  Just growing up there.

credit: Art Closet Studios

Now, you guys just signed to Thrill Jockey, and the record drops…

I think they’re saying…well, next month we’re recording the Thrill Jockey record, and then also a collaboration with our friend Neal who does Krieg.  So, we’re doing recording for both of those next month.  The collaboration, I think At A Loss is going to put that one out.  The Thrill Jockey one – I think they’re saying early October, but you never know with us.  We record really fast, but we have so many other artists contributing.  Like when we did All the Waters…, it took like a year to complete.  I think this will be a lot faster, but you never know with us.  We did four songs with Thou when we were down in New Orleans for Christmas, so that should be coming out pretty soon. 

When you’re not writing or recording, man, what do you typically like to do in your down time?

Me and Chip hang out every day together.  We usually just hang out and get food and stuff.  We lead pretty minimal lives working minimum wage jobs. That’s about it [laughs]. 

What was the last good book you read?

I read a lot of comic books.  The last one I read was Scene of the Crime by Ed Brubaker.  I read a ton of comic books.  It’s pretty much all I read.   

Thanks to Lee for his time.

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