Roadburn Deep Dives: Warning
Roadburn 2017, Saturday 22 April, 013 Main Stage
Don’t get us wrong – we’ll never knock wishlists. Wishlists have become a daily part of Roadburn, and it’s as exciting for us all to critique each others’ as it is to write them ourselves. We all have our own wishlists, too: this writer once handed Roadburn’s artistic director Walter a list, divided by categories, with 157 names – ranging from the absolutely impossible (like Darkthrone), to bands with 10 followers on Facebook.
The main thing that has to be managed when you make a wishlist – as well as stopping them from becoming their ugly cousin, a ‘demands list’ – is expectation. The booking process is often a long, bumpy and winding road, which more often than not leads to an insurmountable dead end, especially when dealing with inactive or ‘unlikely’ bands. We could write a book on the reasons why that band you really, really think would be so obvious to have at Roadburn hasn’t made it there yet. You have to learn to accept and deal with all kinds of situations. Getting your favourite band to play Roadburn can be a process that lasts for years until, in the best case scenario, it finally happens.
— José Carlos Santos
— Paul Verhagen (pics)
Sometimes, the best course of action is to just do nothing, as Walter learned when trying to get Patrick Walker’s old band Warning to reunite and play their classic album Watching from a Distance at Roadburn. We all wept with joy and raw emotion when the likes of Footprints and Bridges finally echoed through the 013 Main Stage in 2017, where Warning seemed like they’d always belonged. It was one of the most profoundly touching shows this writer has ever seen, at Roadburn or anywhere else. But it took an honest conversation in London to get the ball, well, not quite rolling, and then a relatively long wait to make it happen.
“For me, the biggest thing that I took from that Warning show is that you have to be patient with people,” Walter reasons. “Sometimes it’s no use pressuring an artist into doing something when you want them to do something. Some of our most special shows have taken years of preparation to put together, and sometimes that preparation just involves waiting for the right moment. With Patrick Walker and Warning, that’s exactly how it worked. He was very honest with me – he told me he would want to do it, he told me that it would happen at some point, but he asked me not to pressure him and not to put him on the spot. And that’s exactly what I did. I let it rest, I didn’t push it, and a couple of years after that first conversation he finally brought it up again and we were able to make it happen.”
That first conversation took place, at a Primordial show in London. “There is a photograph of the show where this conversation happened, that Becky [Roadburn’s publicist] took,” Patrick Walker recalls with a laugh. “I had been rehearsing for the weekend with 40 Watt Sun, and a friend told me to come down because Becky and Walter would be there. So I went down after rehearsal, and I spoke to Walter about the Warning thing. I don’t remember much about it, to be honest! But I do think that was probably the first time we brought it up. I was in no hurry to do it because we were rehearsing for the second 40 Watt Sun at the time, so my priorities were very much elsewhere. I needed a while to focus on other things, because I knew it would take a little time to get Warning back together.”
Even if it was going to take some time, it was clear to everyone involved that the first return of Warning would have to take place at Roadburn. “I knew I would tour it,” Patrick says, “but I had no interest or any thoughts about debuting the show anywhere else. I had two experiences of Roadburn prior to that with 40 Watt Sun, so I knew what kind of festival it was, and it would have been that or nothing. I just can’t think of another festival where it would have felt like that…” He makes a long pause to collect his thoughts.
“Roadburn is a festival where everyone is made to feel of equal importance,” he continues. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re the headlining band or if you’re playing in the Green Room at 3pm on Friday afternoon; everyone is made to feel as if they’re of real importance to the success of the festival, that they are of the same value to the audiences. And every audience at every show proves this. The enthusiasm is the same, and everyone is always very respectful of the bands. It’s also a much more leftfield festival than any other which specialises in heavy music. I just couldn’t imagine doing it anywhere else. I had no obligations to do the show there or anything, but Walter just treated me so well throughout the years and my experiences playing there were so good, that there wasn’t any question.”
The Warning chapter seems to be fully closed now, after the shows, reissues, and everything else that went on for a couple of years following that impactful reunion at Roadburn 2017. It was an important closure that the band needed to have. When Patrick asked Walter for a little wait before planning the reunion, he wasn’t pushing things into an indefinite hiatus – he knew it would have to happen.
“The thing with Warning is, we were one of those bands cursed with achieving a kind of cult success posthumously,” Patrick chuckles. “We got a kind of reputation after we split up, that we could never enjoy. I was eager to get that band and that music behind me while I was doing it, to move on to other things, but it did reach a point where I remember thinking, ‘I can imagine doing that again, I would quite like to do those songs again, with a proper, full band, in front of audiences now.’ Also, I wanted to play the album as it was recorded, to use two guitars and everything. There were things on the record which, in hindsight, I regarded as bad judgments on my part. While I couldn’t go back and re-record the album, I could certainly repair them in a live situation. I just wanted to do it, I wanted to travel with Marcus [Hatfield, bassist] again because he’s one of my best friends. After the hard work of doing the second 40 Watt Sun record, it felt right. And now I feel like I’ve done that record justice. It was good to be in touch with a lot of people whom that music has touched. It’s done now.”
The fact that Warning is a done chapter now isn’t any kind of dramatic gesture by Patrick. He’s just not the kind of artist to have different projects and outputs. “I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter what band I’m playing in, what band name I’m playing under. The music will always be the same,” Patrick explains. “Whatever music I’m writing and performing is always part of the same artistic approach. It’s not a question of stopping one thing and then going back and doing another. It’s a timeline that just keeps going, no matter what the name is. People associate Warning with me doing ‘doom metal’, but that’s just because that’s the record I did in 2006. Those shows merely revisited that period of my life. The record I made four or five years after that was still a ‘heavy’ record, but it was already different. It was one step away from that. And the next one was another step forward. If I would do music under the Warning name now – which I wouldn’t – it wouldn’t sound any different from what I’m doing now. I only ever make the music that comes naturally, that comes out of me.”
As for the Warning show itself at Roadburn 2017, the preparation wasn’t exactly peaceful, as Patrick reveals: “It was quite stressful, because the biggest thing that happened prior to the show was that Christian [Leitch], who was the drummer for 40 Watt Sun at the time and who had been the drummer in the last incarnation of Warning, he pulled out about four or five days before Christmas in 2016, so that was less than four months before the show.”
“I thought, fuck,” Patrick continues. “What am I going to do? I spoke to Becky, and she recommended Andrew Prestidge, who I didn’t know, but I listened to some of his recordings and watched some of his videos. I liked it, so I contacted him, explained the situation, which was a bit awkward – ‘Oh, we have a show on the Main Stage at Roadburn in three-and-a-half months, and we’ll be touring after that…'” Patrick laughs. “He had a listen to the album and he said he’d do it, and we only started rehearsing around the end of January, but everything ended up working very well. We still needed to do some rehearsing right before the show, because although I had been performing rather consistently, Marcus hadn’t been on a stage in about eight years, and Wayne [Taylor, guitarist] hadn’t performed to an audience in about 20 years! I did feel a bit vulnerable, so we also had a rehearsal the day before we performed.
“As for the day of the show itself, I don’t remember much, to be honest!” Patrick says. “What I remember the most is that I took about eight hot showers! There’s a lot of air conditioning in the backstage area, and it was really drying out my throat, so the only way I could lubricate my voice properly was to take these near boiling hot showers. I just kept walking out of the dressing room in a towel all afternoon, Andrew was saying, ‘Fucking hell, you must be the cleanest man in doom!'”
So it was a sparkling, squeaky clean Patrick Walker who stepped up on stage to deliver those mournful, exhilarating, transcendental songs we all know and love, and, according to him, “it went pretty smoothly, I think”.
“Pretty smoothly” is by far and away the most shining compliment you will ever hear Patrick say about any of his shows. And if any doubts remain that their Roadburn appearance was something special, the fact that not even Patrick can poke holes in that performance is the absolute proof of it. “I don’t remember beating myself up about it afterwards,” he says with a chuckle, before adding, very seriously: “When the show finished, all I remember is feeling incredibly proud for the rest of my band. I felt wonderful for Marcus and Wayne, and Andrew too, because he was a lifesaver for us.”
And now, as with most other artists that we’ve featured on this Deep Dives series, the story continues. The ongoing relationship is there. As many of you will know, 40 Watt Sun were one of the main choices in Emma Ruth Rundle’s 2020 curatorship that sadly never took place. But we are fairly confident (and we’re not pushing you, Patrick, don’t worry!) that we might see him in Tilburg a few times more.
“I’m not a prolific live performer,” Patrick says. “I don’t do a lot of shows, and that’s largely through choice. But the times I’ve done Roadburn, it’s always felt like a kind of a milestone. It’s always made to feel like an event. They’re some of the best shows I’ve played, and to some of the best audiences as well. When I think back to the 90s, the idea of playing this kind of music at a festival like Roadburn would be unfathomable. There’s just such great diversity and tolerance from everyone there. It will always be my festival of choice. And like I said before, none of this has nothing to do with the billing or the stage you’re on or anything like that. It’s down to the credit of the festival and Walter that everyone is made to feel equal. We’re all on the same path. We’re all on the same journey.”
Roadburn Deep Dives: Eyehategod
Roadburn 2010, Sunday 18 April, 013 Green Room (Setlist: Not even the band knows.)
Eyjafjallajökull. Icelandic for ‘motherfucker’. It’s not, really (it’s ‘glacier of the mountains of the islands’, if you must know). But after 2010, when its eruption led to the chaotic disruption of the European air space and subsequently the Roadburn lineup that year, we should have earned the right to change that particular translation. Roadburn would go on to have such a wonderfully close relationship with the Icelandic underground, receiving the cream of their various crops year after year but back then Iceland had other plans. Why, Icelandic nature, why?
— José Carlos Santos
— Paul Verhagen (pics)
But, there was a silver lining. Several, even. First of all, Roadburn managed to get all of the bands that had to pull out because of the volcano back the following year. Secondly, many bands stepped up to fill those slots in 2010 with such a desire to help, such a passion to make up for all the losses, that their performances turned into something legendary. So, perhaps, we should actually be thankful to motherf… pardon, Eyjafjallajökull. During those wild hours of 2010, Roadburn really discovered what its community is made of, and bonds formed there are unbroken to this day.
One particularly endearing and representative story from the 2010 edition is that of Eyehategod. The legendary NOLA band had played on Thursday, on the first day of the festival, before the full reach of that fateful ash cloud had made its presence felt, Then they went on their merry way, to fulfil the remaining dates of their European tour. However, when Eyehategod heard about the depressingly empty lineup that Roadburn was facing for Sunday, they reached out to the festival from thousands of miles away and offered to come and help make it right with a second performance, even if it meant driving all night from the North of Italy to Tilburg.
“My memories from that year are a mess, it was so difficult to reschedule everything and to find all the replacements; everything was chaos,” remembers Roadburn’s artistic director Walter. You can tell it’s still rather painful to bring back those memories of the year when the sky seemed to have fallen in on Roadburn.
“I remember on the Saturday night of the festival, I got a call that was either from Eyehategod or their tour manager,” Walter says. “They told me they were in Italy but that they would drive up to Tilburg and get there in time to play as Eyehategod, if we wanted. Since the Afterburner [the name previously given to the Sunday of the festival] had almost completely fallen through, we were totally at a loss, desperate to find bands to cover all the slots, so that was a huge thing for us, especially as they said they could even play a longer set than usual to fill up a bit more time on the schedule. I was incredibly moved by the offer. Of course we told them just show up whenever you can and we will make everything work. It was such a great thing they did for us, without asking for anything in return. We didn’t even discuss a fee or anything! All they wanted was to play, be a part of the festival and to help us out. They were super stoked to be there.”
Mike IX Williams’ memory of the event is, rather predictably, even hazier, but such a feeling is not erasable, not even by the many beverages the Eyehategod frontman was consuming at the time. “I was really drunk back then, man,” Mike says with a weary laugh. “I was drinking a lot of vodka at the time, so I don’t remember a lot of it. But what I do remember very well was getting word of what was happening, our tour manager telling us there was an opening, and asking if we wanted to go help out and play another show.
“I remember being really happy, because we absolutely love Roadburn, we’ve always loved playing there: it’s one of our favourite places in the world. We were very happy to do it. It was exciting. I think it was a day off that we had, so we decided to use that to travel back there and just play and have fun with the Roadburn people.”
After a couple of days of bonding together to overcome adversity as one, the Roadburn community was clearly, despite everything that was going on, at a high point when Mike and the boys got there.
“Man, we even played Fuckmouth, which should tell you everything about how that show was,” Mike laughs. “People still talk about that today. Fuckmouth was kind of a joke between me and Brian [Patton, ex-Eyehategod guitarist] and Joey [LaCaze, Eyehategod’s former drummer who passed away in 2013].”
Fuckmouth was the name given to what can only be described as something of a mutant sideproject. “We would just do these grindcore songs sometimes, we’d say it was Fuckmouth,” he says.
“Overall, it was a super fun show,” Mike says. “People were just yelling out songs, and we played them! I have no idea what songs we actually played, or how many; I just know we kept cranking them out for hours. We’re pretty loose anyway with that kind of stuff, we make up the setlists as we go along, but that show was like the extreme version of that. In a special situation like that, we thought we’d just keep playing until people were sick of us!”
We’re not sure that’s possible – if we had our way, they’d still be up there today, 11 years later, cranking out those wonderfully ugly-ass tunes of theirs.
“I just remember that everybody went completely berserk, it was insanity and it was amazing,” Walter says with a wide smile. “There was such a good rapport between them and the audience, it was a completely unified vibe. There was no difference between band and audience, it was all about everyone being there together in the room. It was a reflection of how that whole edition turned out in the end – the camaraderie was so strong and everyone was so connected: bands, staff and fans, and Eyehategod fit right in. The connection that band has with the Roadburn fans and with the whole staff of the festival is remarkable. They’ve always been completely in sync with us.”
The love, it seems, is 100% mutual. “We love Walter, he’s always treated us really well,” Mike says. “We haven’t played Roadburn in a few years, but when things are normal again we’d love to come back. The two shows we did with Corrections House [in 2014] were also so great, it always feels like a special place to be. Whenever we can come back, we will!”
As Mike talks about the 2010 Roadburn, more memories come trickling back; he even remembers a few post-show shenanigans that went on backstage. “Church Of Misery played that year, didn’t they?” Indeed they did. “I knew it, because that was the first time we actually met them,” Mike says. “We’re really good friends with them now, we’ve played with them a bunch of times, but we hadn’t met them yet back then. I remember being down in the dressing room area at the 013, and Joey started throwing bottles against the wall, there was broken glass everywhere, and the guys in Church Of Misery were looking at us funny and didn’t really know what to think of that. To us it was just having crazy fun and everyone was in a great mood, but it got a little too crazy, and the look on their faces was great!”
Karma was also kind to Eyehategod after their good deed, as they managed to nab one of the very few flights that made it to the US after their show. “We were nervous about being able to make it back home, but we got lucky,” Mike says. “Flying home after that happened, I remember we passed over near Iceland and they made us close the windows to the plane. I think they didn’t want us to see the smoke: that was really weird.”
All in all, Roadburn 2010 was all about unity, community, and facing trouble head-on. “That year was special because it cemented our community big time,” Walter states. “And Eyehategod was a really important part of that. Their attitude emphasised what Roadburn was all about. We faced adversity together, as a community, as a family, and we overcame it together. Everyone stuck together. And that show was the most visible representation of that feeling. It showed our true colours as a tight knit group. We’re there for each other, we have each other’s backs, always.”
A decade later, it was that same spirit of community that made Roadburners approach a festival cancellation due to a pandemic by communicating on a Facebook group where they pretended to be at the festival instead. A year later, we will keep going through it together with Roadburn Redux online. We’ll all be okay on the other side of this. Together.
Scene Report: Death Metal
"The presence of death metal at Roadburn raises another point: is the death metal scene changing, or are more people just aware of its existence?" - Tomas Lindberg.
Death metal is a relatively young genre, all things considered. When genre progenitors Death, led by the late Chuck Schuldiner, released their landmark debut Scream Bloody Gore in 1987, the genre was nascent and primitive. In just a few short years, these genre pioneers embraced melody and progressive elements alongside their blast beats and shock-value cover art.
Evolution and progression quickly became hallmarks of death metal. The spirit of change drives the genre as much as the musicians’ love for knuckle-dragging riffs and camo shorts.
— Emily Bellino
“Forming a new band, we were like ‘Yeah, let’s have no boundaries,” recalls Tomas Lindberg. “We can include violin, we can listen to King Crimson and try to incorporate that. That was the main starting point of the whole band and that’s still what we live by.”
In the early 1990s, Tomas and his bandmates in At The Gates found themselves at the forefront of the burgeoning melodic death metal movement in Gothenburg, Sweden alongside peers like In Flames and Ceremonial Oath. Though At The Gates initially broke up in 1996 in the wake of their legacy-making and subgenre-defining fourth album, Slaughter of the Soul, their place in the Swedish death metal scene was undeniable. Tomas remembers that time fondly and sees it as a creative period, though he admits that he didn’t foresee the legacy of the Gothenburg sound.
“When you’re that young, you’re very ambitious and almost pretentious,” Tomas reflects. “You think you have all the answers, you think you know everything, so we thought what we were doing was exactly how we want our music to sound. Of course, it was inspiring after a few years. Other bands in the area, Dark Tranquility, In Flames, started to pop up and there was a healthy competition in a way.”
Of course, the 1990s Gothenburg scene is but one of countless to emerge in death metal’s 35-year existence. A quick scan through the archives of Terrorizer, Metal Maniacs or Decibel reveals scenes in regions around the world: New York and Florida in the United States; the Gothenburg sound as well as the “buzzsaw” Swedish variant; scenes in Finland, the United Kingdom, and many other corners of the globe.
Today, melodic death metal exists around the world and Slaughter of the Soul is widely accepted as a stone-cold classic. But while the echoes of Gothenburg can be heard everywhere, the death metal scene – and extreme metal at large – is changing. For artists, the advent of services like Bandcamp and the internet in general has changed everything. Coupled with recording costs that are lower than ever before and the existence of social media, the distribution and consumption of obscure and extreme music has never been easier.
Reflecting on the band’s decade-and-change career thus far, Full Of Hell vocalist Dylan Walker attributes a portion of the band’s success – and general existence – to the internet.
“All the tools are more laid out for anyone than ever before and I think that’s important,” Dylan muses. “It can’t be a gated experience and it’s not; I think the barriers are all falling down and yeah, you could say that’s going to oversaturate things, but that’s fine with me. It’s like a rainforest – there will be a lot of dead plants on the bottom, but everybody deserves an equal opportunity to start a band.”
Dylan explains that when Full Of Hell began some 12 years ago, the band had no recorded music, and didn’t consider themselves to be very good. That didn’t stop them, however: strictly utilising social media, the then-teenagers got in the van and began to play shows. Seven years, a couple LPs and a staggering number of EPs and splits later, Full Of Hell met their creative equal in long-running experimental duo The Body, with whom they released the collaborative album One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache.
The two groups toured the album, which was an unorthodox and unsettling amalgam of noise, sludge, industrial, grindcore and death metal. As Dylan explains, The Body were invited to perform at Roadburn in 2016, and Full Of Hell “snuck on” the festival as their tourmates.
“It went really well,” Dylan says. “I definitely feel like we stood out but that was the year Converge did Jane Doe and G.I.S.M. played, and to me you could feel a different vibe just based on how it was curated.”
Full Of Hell’s inclusion at Roadburn in 2016, in addition to their planned residency at Roadburn 2020, is one of many indicators that the winds of change are blowing. The grinding death metal quartet, with their noisy trappings and shrieking, animalistic vocals, are not a “typical” Roadburn band. Traditionally, very few death metal or grindcore bands have played Roadburn, and the limited performances have generally been special sets.
With Roadburn’s roots as a stoner/doom and heavy psych festival, 2016 was a pivotal year for the festival, introducing Full of Hell and Repulsion to the mix. The inclusion stuck – in just four years, Full Of Hell went from outsider extremists to would-be artists in residence at Roadburn. Dylan doesn’t find it that strange, noting that he thought Japanese metal-punk weirdos G.I.S.M. were a far weirder act.
When considering At The Gates’ 2019 performance at Roadburn, the same year he was a featured curator, Tomas says that the band paid special attention to crafting a set that would appeal to a crowd unfamiliar with their music. In addition to classic material, At The Gates performed songs with cellist Jo Quail, and also performed covers with Swedish songwriter Anna von Hausswolff and Sleep guitarist Matt Pike.
“We did pre-productions, recordings, rehearsing in different places with different guest musicians and everything, writing scores for the strings,” Tomas recalls of At The Gates’ performance at the festival. “It was huge. When we stepped off that stage afterwards, we were happy and thrilled, but we were also very relieved because it was a huge undertaking.”
Still, it raises the question: does death metal belong at Roadburn, and if so, in what form?
“Anything could happen, but with At the Gates, we are aware of what a Roadburn band is, and we also know that we are not a 100% Roadburn band, but our music is 200% Roadburn,” Tomas says, perpetuating the idea that a “Roadburn band” is not about genre. The presence of death metal at Roadburn raises another point: is the death metal scene changing, or are more people just aware of its existence? The consensus seems to fall toward the latter: regardless of generation and role in the scene, every individual interviewed for this piece agreed that, while the scene is growing because of new technology and less-centralised scenes, forward-thinking and unorthodox artists have always been a part of death metal. It’s just more visible now.
Dark Descent Records has been crucial in death metal’s surging popularity over the last decade and change. Now approaching its twelfth anniversary, Dark Descent is responsible for introducing bands like Horrendous, Blood Incantation and Spectral Voice to the scene at large. Though he’s signed some of the most popular bands in the scene today, owner Matt Calvert explains that he chooses bands because he enjoys them and they fit on the label. Because Dark Descent has a rapport with its customers, fans are then willing to give new bands a try after seeing the label’s stamp of approval, harkening back to the days of old when longhairs put their blind faith in Earache Records (until the label “betrayed” them by releasing Heartwork).
“12 years to me is a long time for sure, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s a very large timeframe for others,” Matt says. “We’ve had customers say “Hey, I’ve been listening to your releases since I was 15, I’m in my mid-20s now.”
Matt also points out that death metal has always been able to endure surges and ebbs in popularity, noting that the underground genre has been around long enough to have developed a fanbase that ignores the larger trends. “You love this music or you don’t,” he asserts. “I’m 50 this year, and I still listen to it because I love it. All I’m going to do is keep putting out quality releases and if some people leave us, they leave us.
“I don’t know if we’d call it a fad,” he continues, thinking about the enduring appeal of death metal, and the waxing and waning of its popularity. “We might call it a lessening of the audience, and that’s probably different. At this point, death metal’s been established for quite a while.”
This endurance is what allows new strains to grow within death metal; Matt says that three decades is long enough for bands to develop diverse influences. In decades prior, the pool to draw inspiration from was much smaller. The access to those varying influences also allows for a much more dialed-in sound, in whatever direction that artist wants to go.
“I think it’ll get more intelligent, it’ll get dumber, I think every good little aspect of metal and punk and extreme music like that, everybody is gonna be able to pick exactly what sliver of the sound they really like, and bore into it,” Dylan says. In many ways, the desire to burrow into more and more specific and dialed-in sounds is the same desire that drives Roadburn curators, individuals who are crucial to the festival’s presentation every year.
“Every Roadburn is different depending on who is curating it a little bit,” Tomas says. “I was very meticulous about it. Every band that I chose for the curation would fit into the Roadburn audience’s frame of mind a little bit, but still challenge them.”
For At The Gates, it’s their influence from bands like King Crimson and orchestral instruments and grand instrumentation that drives the sound in a different direction. For Full Of Hell, it’s the way the noisemongers borrow just the pieces they want from other genres. “I felt like it was a badge of honor to just participate, because to me it was so carefully curated,” Dylan says. “I think that’s a really smart festival and we always wanted Full of Hell to sort of fit into that.”
Lindberg and Walker both express their belief that most death metal bands could play Roadburn under some circumstance. Prior to Full of Hell’s inclusion, Napalm Death performed a special set of slower material in 2014, Repulsion played in 2016 and in 2019, Ulcerate made their debut at the festival.
The At The Gates vocalist stresses the cross-pollination that already exists between scenes, pointing out the fact that Mono played the same year as the Gothenburg legends. According to Tomas, the two bands make an effort to catch each other when they perform in the other’s home country. He adds that he has also performed at Roadburn with crust stalwarts Disfear, whose sound is more traditional.
In the same way that Tomas believes that Disfear fit as a release from the eclecticism that bands like At The Gates and Mono provide, he suggests that both more progressive and more primitive variants of death metal can find a home at the festival. Dylan agrees: while his immediate response is to suggest that bands like Gorguts, Artificial Brain and Tomb Mold would be the best fit for Roadburn, he quickly adds that “ultra-brutal dumb stuff” fits in the outside-the-box expectations that he has for Roadburn’s yearly lineup.
“It’d be pretty out of the box to see Sanguisugabogg on there, but I think if Walter likes it, it makes sense” he says, referring to festival mastermind and artistic director Walter / Roadburn. “I think people would be into it. Who’s to say where the line is?”
Death metal has come a long way since the 1990s, and has continued to evolve since the genre’s popularity blossomed again in the mid-2010s. As the genre continues to grow, it makes room for bands both progressive and traditional; just as the old-school death metal revival rages on into the 2020s, bands are also releasing albums that couldn’t have been imagined when Cynic wrote Focus or when Roadburn opened its gates for the first time in April 1999.
Despite its reputation as a metal festival – generally one that serves a doom-oriented crowd – Roadburn has also spent over 20 years evolving into a multi-faceted festival. No longer is the festival a three-band, one-day event. In 2022, attendees will have dozens of bands to choose from over three days. No two Roadburners will have quite the same experience, much like no two bands on the festival sound quite the same.
The future of Roadburn and the future of death metal are yet to be written, but for now, the genre is growing and has found a home at the festival, with Full Of Hell planning to return in 2022. Whether attributed to progressive elements or a fortuitous choice in collaborators, the spirit of innovation and a love for heavy, alternative music have brought the two together.
“I think it still holds the same banner,” Dylan concludes. “It’s about progressive music and inclusivity and that’s about it. I don’t think it’s limited any longer. It definitely seems like there’s more of a variety. Who knows what to expect nowadays?”
ONES TO WATCH:
Necrot
For all this talk of string instruments in death metal, the old-school practitioners are showing that you can teach an old dog new tricks. San Francisco outfit Necrot earned their stripes through heavy touring and constant focus. Tours with Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Suffocation and the Black Dahlia Murder have confirmed that Necrot can stand with the greats. Their second and latest album, Mortal, charted on Billboard’s Hard Rock and New Artist charts, proving the genre still has plenty of life left in it.
Blood Incantation
Pink Floyd never imagined a trip like this. Cosmic raging death dealers Blood Incantation have always marched to the beat of their own drum—recording with analogue technology, resisting a presence on social media until absolutely necessary and writing 18-minute songs with 17-word titles. The final product is unlike any other: atmospheric, psychedelic, intensely technical and played with frightening precision, the death metal equivalent to a breakthrough mushrooms trip.
Outer Heaven
Morbid Angel knew Where the Slime Live, and it seems like Philadelphia’s Outer Heaven do too. On their full-length debut, Realms of Eternal Decay, Outer Heaven took the best parts of death metal’s classics and synthesised a slab of progressive, swampy death metal that tells the story of a primordial slime’s conquest of Earth.
Undeath
New York state has historically been home to some of death metal’s filthiest, heaviest bands and Undeath do those forefathers proud. Their debut full-length, Lesions Of A Different Kind, is a pure celebration of death, in both a sonic and conceptual sense. Lesions sounds like a remastered lost classic, with its boneheaded riffing, cavernous vocals and song titles like Phantasmal Festering and Chained To A Reeking Rotting Body.
Venom Prison
Venom Prison were formed in opposition to death metal’s most-misogynistic tropes. Their first album, Animus, features an assailant being force fed his recently-removed genitals, a good indicator for the brutality within. Their second album, Samsara, hits just as hard because it’s often rooted in reality. Vocalist Larissa Stupar takes aim at politics, sexual assault, hate crimes and mental illness against chugging, biting guitars and pounding drums with a touch of hardcore influence. The UK quintet call for change—both in the world at large and in the death metal scene—and battle tropes with no gimmick.
Sanguisasugabogg
For every Venom Prison, there is a Sanguisugabogg. The Columbus quartet appeal to the genre’s deranged, perverse side, writing songs about pornography, sex and excessive gore with all the finesse of a neanderthal and his club. Songs like Dead as Shit and Dick Filet betray a sense of humor that isn’t present in the horror movie lyrics of Gored in the Chest or Dragged by a Truck.
Scene Report: Psych
"Here we take a look at some of the highlights of the last year of mind melting heaviosity."
Some of the most magical Roadburn moments are primed with amorphous, free form chaos – the feeling that anything can happen at any moment. Terminal Cheesecake, 2015 was a glorious case in point: a maelstrom of dense, flowing noise, juddering subs, krautrock adjacent jams and, above all, a near medieval sense of mischief played at an ear bleeding volume. It felt all the more insane for the fact that it was happening on Sunday night, when most in attendance were already brain fried as it was.
Any Roadburners reading this will no doubt have a glorious cornucopia of their own such treasured memories and, after a year in lockdown, the need for mind transference has arguably never been greater. Luckily, a plethora of bands, labels and festivals continue, often against harsh odds, to fight the good fight through some of the toughest – and weirdest – years in living memory: offering up the sonic sacrament despite it all. Hypnotic, swirling, droning, noisy, beautiful, beatific – here we take a look at some of the highlights of the last year of mind melting heaviosity. Call it psych, call it noise – call it Susan if you like – take the following as crucial brain feeders.
— Harry Sword
Rocket Recordings have long been central instigators in heavy, noisy, trippy, joyous sounds of various persuasions. Over the past 20 years they’ve put out a welter of sounds that span everything from the gnarled hypnotic heaviosity of Gnod to the playful theatrical ritualism of Goat; the widescreen, epic instrumentalism of Hills to the driving electric pummel of Teeth of the Sea
The past year has seen a number of highlights on the label. Gnod and Joao Pais Filipe’s Faco de Fogo combines the former’s mesmeric sensibility with the latter’s idiosyncratic percussive chops (Filipe is a skilled metalworker who makes his own cymbals and gongs) to seriously immersive ends.
Initially meeting at the Milhoes de Festa festival in Portugal where both were playing (Gnod were intrigued by a gong in the shape of a skateboard that Filipe was exhibiting), they got together for a three day jam session at Filipe’s metalwork studio and then a further four days recording, which was laid down with hardly any overdubs. Riffing on the four elements – earth, air, water and fire, with each jam named after one – it’s a swirling, pulsating, often foreboding quasi industrial vibe they work up, tempered by a loose jazzy swing. Indeed, this is something Gnod are past masters of – living and working at the Salford Mill, they often (particularly on records like Infinity Machines and Mirror) riff on a gritty, tripped out urban vibe that is, even at its darkest. always imbued with a sense of humanity and soul. Here, Filipe’s percussion (check the frenetic hand held drums and windchimes on Faca De Ar) lifts the final mix into funkier, brighter territory: it’s all about the contrast.
Keeping with Rocket, Anthroprophh did what they do best – swirling, wall of fuzz, face melting riffage – on the rough as gargling moonshine Toilet Circuit EP, imbuing the whole thing with a rawkus, punky, in-your-face sensibility not dissimilar to Dinosaur Jr at their most full-on, albeit minus the melancholy.
Pigs X7 built on the Buckfast-fuelled Sabbathian thwack of 2017’s Feed The Rats and the (even) heavier King of Cowards – a rawkus, motorik chug-fest that combined the brute swing of sludge metal with an unhinged Stooges-esque vibe (the highlight of which was a rollicking, steamroller pean to, well, a stretch of motorway in the form of ‘A66’) with the roaring Viscerals. Pretty much all you need in the form of squall and grease and seedy riffage was present and correct, not least on the epic Halloween Bolson – nine minutes of descending grot, a hoedown for the encroaching dark ages.
One of Rocket’s long time bands Hey Colossus released a bone fide masterpiece in the form of Dances/Curses, this time on bassist Joe Thompson’s Wrong Speed Records. An epic double that hummed with otherworldly portent and dusky atmosphere, Dances/Curses traded on patient arrangements, haunting melody and driving, mesmeric rhythm. It’s one of those rare albums that exists very much in its own headspace – you need to listen beginning to end with no interruptions for full effect – and was, rightly, lauded by many as the album of 2020. Approaching a tribal, ritualistic vibe on tracks like Tied in a Firing Line and A Trembling Rose, Dances/Curses is the sound of a band at the absolute pinnacle of their creative powers – a shimmering, hypnotic trip that would well soundtrack rainy motorway night drives. Mark Lanegan even lent his Marlboro-blasted larynx to the dramatic call of The Mirror.
White Hills’ Splintered Metal Sky was, in the absence of travel, a passport straight to the still beating, blackened heart of grindhouse 1980’s New York City. A dilapidated, clanking, quasi-industrial vibe prevailed on tracks like Now Manhattan and Digital Trash that – while speaking of the stress and clatter of big city life – somehow suited the jittery, paranoid, anxious mood of a year in lockdown perfectly. Think Suicide, Stooges, No Wave, bedroom synth experiments. Bleak – but immense fun –this was an industrial vision of the city put through the sideways psychedelic blender, evoking a singularly cinematic vista of New York, like something out of Death Wish: the street prophets, humid summers, dealers, street punks n’ hustlers – it’s all threaded together amidst clanking beats, weird, fizzy, dial up modem samples, white noise, drones and the call and response vocal dynamic of Dave W and Ego Sensation. Another killer release from the ever dependable God Unknown Records – one of the mainstays of modern psych.
Moving from the gritty and resolutely urban into outer stellar orbit, a special mention must surely go to wildly prolific guitarist Mike Vest. Well known for his work in Bong, Blown Out, Drunk in Hell and the majestic 11 PARANOIAS (check 2019’s Asterismal, which is strictly for the headstrong – planetary collapse bass weight, wall of noise fuzz attack, titanic desert sand storms, asteroid impact, time collapsing in on itself… all that good stuff), he’s also lent his formidable chops to a welter of solo projects (not least last years dronal hypnofest Absolute released under his Zodan moniker, as well as the welter of Lush Worker releases that tend to focus on noisier lo-fi gear) and collaborations.
Last year’s Lost Bones of the Holy Butterfly by Mienkunaru, in particular, was stunning. A collaboration with ex Overhang Party guitarist Junzo Suzuki, it encompassed two 20-minute tracks: churning, noisy, questing, tripped-out instrumentals of the very highest grade. Vamping around pummelling tribal drums and squalling reverb laden riffage that melded both players’ styles to powerfully majestic effect, it was all wrapped up in that special Vest feeling – ever-rising epiphany through continually embellished repetition. God tier, head twisting gear to be played at skull cracking volume.
Indeed, Vest’s numerous collaborations – and it would be a fool’s errand to attempt to list it all – point to a spirit of singularly open-ended collaboration that personifies the fertile psych/noise scene in his native Newcastle Upon Tyne. Box Records – run by none other than PigsX7 vocalist Matt Baty – has provided something of a nucleus for a deluge of wild sounds in the city, and further afield, since 2009. Putting out everything from early records by Bong and Gnod, through to the demented noise of Terminal Cheesecake (not least 2019’s superlative La Sucre De Livre) to folksier fare by Richard Dawson and haunting drone excursions by Jospeh Curwen, one of the most essential releases of 2020 came on the label in the form of Luminous Bodies’Nah Nah Nah Yeh Yeh Yeh. A greasy, dunderheaded racket entirely befitting of a band composed of members of Part Chimp, Terminal Cheesecake and Melting Hand, this is roc’n’roll left to boil over until a blackened, chemical crust forms on the bottom of the pan; a punch drunk stumble through every dive bar west of hell (in Roadburn terms, we’re talking a debauched midnight session at the Cul De Sac made sonic flesh). What can you say about a band with a song entitled Fuck the Beatles other than, ‘Please sir, may I have some more?’
Talking of febrile city scenes, a special nod must also surely go to Svart Records. Mainstays of the wider Finnish psych world – and perennial Roadburn favourites – Svart were originally known for putting out beautiful reprints of black and doom metal rarities and classics (think Candlemass, Reverend Bizarre, Katatonia etc), before moving into more left field waters and signing bands from the wonderfully fertile and wonky late noughties Tampere scene.
With some of the most beautiful natural country in the world and an ancient history steeped in folklore and magical myth and legend, it’s no accident that music from this corner of the world is so often underpinned by a palpably ancient bearing: one that emphasises whimsical melody and haunting, circling, folk inflected riffs. Hexvessel are a perfect case in point. Long time Roadburn favourites, last year saw the release of one of their finest LP’s thus far in the shape of the ethereal Kindred. Driven by acoustic instrumentation and frontman Mat McNerney’s understated, melodically astute delivery, it’s a beautiful, foreboding record that speaks of forest rites and transcendent beauty in the failing light of dusk. Bog Bodies was particularly magical, patient finger picking and saxophone bedding down a story of an ancient body – a victim of sacrifice – appearing to the air once more, while opener Billion Year Old Being moved from ethereal acoustics to wild, fuzzy freak out in the space of seven minutes: total killer.
If Hexvessel are grounded by the earth, however – the mulch and mud; the twisted ancient tree roots – label mates Kairon; IRSE! are of the stars. Responsible for some of the wildest sounds in the global psych cannon, they meld electronic flourishes, understated vocals and a massive, juddering, post rock-esque wall of sound guitar tone. It’s a bewitching brew, heard to fine effect on the dense miasma of Polysomn – a record that sounds as if My Bloody Valentine had somehow stumbled through a timewarp and ended up jamming with Hawkwind at a free festival in 1976 – jangling guitars, elfin chants and frequent blasts of fuzz emanating from the warm speaker stacks.
Keeping things Nordic, a final note looking forward to the soon to be released second DJINN LP on Rocket, Transmission. Named after the North African supernatural deities that sit somewhere between good and evil, and featuring members of the wider Goat/Hills family, DJINN are a wild, free jazz-inflected combo who combine easy grooves, handheld percussion, wild sax and hallucinatory arrangements: proper head music that calls to mind the soundtrack to the requisite ‘acid scene’ in some crackling, long-lost 1970s biker movie. If the tracks heard from the album so far – Creator of Creation in particular – are anything to go by the album will be a treat; lounge music for a giant Zeppelin in the sky, mushroom tea served from a gleaming golden urn; the long haired, giant goggled captain lost amidst the clouds, as the sky turns a multi coloured hue… keep on truckin’.
ONES TO WATCH
Shem – Top draw, hypnotic krautrock flavours from Stuttgart. The just-released Shem II is a cracker, full-on astral motorik groove with a beat that goes on (and on) and spectral drones drifting atop like some rusting outer orbit chunk of space debris.
Cancervo – New Sardinian trio who specialise in downtuned, instrumental stoner gear. Their debut LP is a wall of mesmeric thrum inspired by the mountain from which their name derives, and the folklore associated with it: specifically a mythical half dog/half deerfigure said to prowl
Mong Tong – Taiwanese retro-focused, synth-inflected gear that carries a strong, freaky, 1980s straight-to-VHS soundtrack vibe. Beatles, creeped out, compelling. Their debut LP Mystery came out last year on Gurgurubrain Records – it’s simple, spacious, atmospheric stuff with plenty of reverb-laden guitars and satisfying aquiline bleeps and pings.
Interview: Mizmor 'Wit's End'
"I hope that there’s some food for thought in the words that can be immediately discerned and that it will speak to the moment for some people and maybe help others feel a little relief over similar frustrations that they have."
If there’s one writer that can get the best out of their interviewee it’s Cody F. Davis. We knew that there would be no-one better to dive into the brand new Mizmor track that we’re premiering later this weekend. It’s a long read, because that’s what Cody does best, and Mizmor’s A.L.N. has a lot to tell… so grab yourself a cuppa (or something stronger, we don’t judge) and immerse yourself in the inner workings of Wit’s End.
The world has greatly changed since the last time you and I spoke about your music. How has creating and crafting Mizmor’s music changed in isolation compared to when you were writing and recording Cairn?
A.L.N.: “That’s a good question. One thing that’s changed is I have collaborated with another artist. Andrew Black and I released a record called Dialetheia in November that was done through file-sharing, which was a whole new process for me – both the collaboration aspect in general, and recording and writing an album while apart.
“I’ve done that and I kind of have some sketches with another collaborator doing the same thing right now. I’ve also done more of my traditional style where I’ve just done everything myself. Being isolated at the house isn’t too different from what I was already doing. This piece, Wit’s End, is a piece that I’ve also made during this time just at home by myself.
“But I have been influenced thematically by the pandemic and people’s reaction to it. That has been a thought-provoking thing for me to reflect on. It’s been inspiring, I suppose.”
It gives you some different source material to work from in addition to the collaboration that you’ve done with Andrew already. How does either the collaboration with Andrew and what you’re working on presently, as well as your response to the pandemic, influence this new track Wit’s End.
A.L.N.: “Wit’s End is conceptual but not quite as singularly focused as Cairn was. There are a few things worked into it. But as far as the pandemic’s influence on it, I’ve been inspired by—I mean, it’s the pandemic but it’s also just kind of society at large right now and where we’re headed as a people. I’ve been inspired by, at large, how eager and willing the masses are to embrace misinformation, disinformation, cultism, conspiracy theories, and religiosity.
“A sense of there being a vetting process for determining facts—what is true and false—has completely split in two. I feel like everyone around me is at wit’s end in this sense. There’s no reason anymore in people’s brains and how or what they determine to be true. Just seeing how, at least in America, everyone has reacted to the pandemic, has kind of got me scratching my head.”
Very much so. Seeing how the last year is really unfolded has been very eye-opening, to say the least. It really is quite interesting to see, like you mentioned, how people are latching onto whatever truth they want to manifest.
How do these observations and your vision of what’s going on with pandemic apply to the Fermi Paradox and this idea of The Great Filter, which you also have mentioned is a source for Wit’s End?
A.L.N.: “They both, to me, relate to consciousness, which is kind of the broad theme of what the song is about. It essentially states with what we know about life and processes through the science of the Earth and the universe, the galaxies should be populated, and life should be everywhere.
“There’s a rift between that and there being any substantial evidence that we have already made contact with alien life. I know lots of people believe that we have, but canonically speaking in terms of good, solid evidence, we need to explain why we haven’t already come into contact with extraterrestrials since life should be everywhere.
“The Great Filter is the answer to that paradox. It says, ‘if what’s happening on this planet is happening everywhere in the universe, then something in that process must be difficult.
“Whether that’s abiogenesis—the initial formation of life—or the evolution of that life into a more complex, multicellular life then on to conscious, intelligent beings, and then having enough resources to make it off the planet to another planet. There’s a list of processes that would happen for that to take place and people theorize as to what is the unlikely thing.
“My own take on it, in sort of the science-fiction sense, is I think The Great Filter is consciousness. Not that it is hard for beings to become aware and conscious, but that consciousness has certain self-destructive inherent properties to it that would essentially cause the life-form to self-destruct due to their self-interest before ever being able to make it off the planet.
“That is definitely the biggest inspiration for Wit’s End. Consciousness is not some ethereal, eternal, metaphysical, or otherwise special and unique property. It’s ultimately just a product of physics and biochemistry and it will, like everything else, unravel one day as the universe continues to expand and comes to an end way, way, way, way far in the future.
“It’s kind of a reaction to so many religions and worldviews really having this grandiose idea of mankind and the spirit and the soul and that kind of language. I just think none of that stuff is real at all.
“I don’t know that it directly relates to what we were talking about before, but I see some crossover with where we’re headed as a people and where our own consciousness has got us and how it seems like we would rather believe in things that make us feel good than things that are true. We would rather reject the evidence of climate change for example, and we’re probably headed to a place where our planet can’t sustain us anymore and that would be our fault. That’s what could be the pattern for intelligent conscious life elsewhere in the universe.”
You mentioned climate change, and you can even look at it on an individual level with some of the ways people are handling the pandemic. There’s this almost grandiose view, this self-exception to the world around them. They think, “Oh, this doesn’t apply to me…”
But I think a lot of people do forget we are ultimately matter – we’re mass. We’re subjected to entropy and the laws of thermodynamics. With the pandemic and seeing this acceptance of false information or occultism or religion, do you think it’s a product of people grappling with mortality, or are we seeing people’s distinct lack of rationality in full frame because of this?
A.L.N.: “It’s hard to say. I think at a base level, if we look back in time, superstition starts with people grappling with mortality. That’s a huge part of it, but for this moment in time, I think that the internet and social media have really accelerated this problem of, ‘I see something and it’s automatically true. It fits with my narrative in my echo chamber, and I want it to be true. I choose to believe it.
“We’re all living in a fractured reality in that sense. It’s really disappointing to see the scientific method and such a thing as facts become a matter of opinion or subjectivity. I think it’s probably always been there under the surface, but it seems to be really exacerbated by how immediately connected we all are with sharing our ideas. I just see us as getting a lot stupider, for lack of a better word, with technology and all of these ideas at our fingertips.
“If you’re already a person that is religious or involved in a cult or just has that frame of mind that would put you in one of those groups already—a faith-based person—then they sky’s the limit of what you’ll believe.”
That’s a great point. Systems like religions and cults already have a distinct lack of emphasis on solid research and strong evidence so all it takes is a cousin on Facebook or their pastor at church to say, “COVID is the work of Satan or people in Asia…”
This can kind of tie back into the Fermi Paradox as well, right? There is a distinct lack of evidence for extraterrestrial beings as it pertains to the Fermi Paradox. It mirrors the lack of evidence as it pertains to other things despite people’s willful claims for other beliefs. Is this the kind of connection that you’re trying to make with these two ideas?
A.L.N.: “Kind of. There’s definitely a parallel there. I think more the connection is that I see people’s inability to use basic reason and logic and value strong evidence as being something that’s going to help us self-destruct faster.
“It starts with consciousness which seems inherently self-interested. We come online and become aware of this user interface that is ultimately a survival machine, then we become cognizant of it all and it seems to go in this direction to aid us in our own survival. As it continues on, we get more memes stuffed in our brain, develop language, and more intelligence and technology. Instead of us coming to a more enlightened position about our place in the country, the Earth, and the cosmos, it seems to bring us to the opposite—into a more fractured xenophobic tribalistic superstitious place.
“I don’t know if there’s any real link there. It’s kind of science-fictiony, but it’s just my reflection on where we’re headed.
“I think it’s probably not hard for life to start on a planet and if there were something to be getting in the way of making contact with life on another planet, it would just be ourselves. Which I relate to consciousness. Whether it’s because there’s a lack of resources because we mined them all for ourselves or whether it’s us killing each other in a war, there just seems to be something self-destructive about where consciousness goes.”
Shifting to the track itself and keeping in mind that idea of consciousness, Wit’s End opens with a spoken-word sample over some clean guitar chords. It encapsulates the message that you’re delivering with this song. Where does the sample at the beginning of the track come from, and how do you think it bolsters the impact of Wit’s End?
A.L.N.: “Well, the sample is actually me. I tried really hard to produce it in such a way that it sounded like a sample. I feel like the spoken part is really speaking to my frustration of watching people’s reaction to the pandemic and embracing conspiracy theories; having myself come from the greater part of a 10 year journey away from that kind of mindset to a place that values science, reason, and evidence that is ultimately atheistic.
“It’s been such a long journey that I finally got to the other side of, and then I look around and a large part of the population is totally going in the other direction. Maybe this is just a little setback on the otherwise upward trajectory of our morality as a species. But right now, it’s just really upsetting that so many other people don’t share these values that I’ve worked so hard to cultivate.
“o, that first part is just kind of my emotional reaction to people and faith. The second part, the heavier part with all the screaming, those lyrics are more about the cosmic stuff.”
What were your goals to marry your thematic ideas to your arrangements? What were you hoping to encapsulate with the musical side of it?
A.L.N.: “It’s kind of multifaceted with the Wit’s End theme. In one sense, it’s about consciousness cosmically coming to an end. In another sense, it’s about the masses becoming stupider and stupider, and in a third sense, it’s about me reacting to the masses and myself not being able to comprehend what’s going on.
“That third thing is where I’m emotionally writing from—me being at wit’s end. Watching people have no reason and logic anymore all in this system that eventually will come to nothingness anyway. It’s kind of three layers of wits ending. I just felt this depressing weight of the world and people’s reaction to, say, the pandemic, but really that’s just a catalyst for some of this stuff.
“I just feel so exasperated, exhausted, and disappointed by where we’re at as a country and a planet. Musically, the first part with the clean guitars and the spoken word is building tension. The heavy part is just releasing those negative emotions.”
So how does Wit’s End fit into the trajectory of Mizmor? You’ve previously mentioned following Cairn, new music subject matter may begin to take a different approach than it has historically. Is this a turning point for where you’re going to take some of your music going forward?
A.L.N.: “I think so. I think a big difference between Wit’s End and Cairn is that although I’m still writing from my perspective and reflecting on things and feeling emotional, I’m not writing about myself right now and my experience which is what Mizmor has been about up until this point. My emotions and thoughts as I struggle with my worldview and ideology changing. I said that to you in that interview about Cairn because I thought that album had a lot of finality to it, and I felt a lot of healing. I came to this place where I didn’t really need to explore that anymore.
“So now what I’m finding, thinking about, and feeling about are bigger issues. Writing about things that affect all of humanity—it’s still kind of centered around religion and I doubt that I’ll ever fully escape that—but it’s not this “me, me, me” thing anymore. Now, I’m just reflecting on what seems like bigger things that still affect me and inspire me, but I don’t really have the personal work to do anymore that I was previously expressing on those other albums.
“Another thing is the collaboration with Andrew, Dialetheia, even though that didn’t have lyrics, we still conceptualised on what it was about with each other. That was also kind of about consciousness and reacting to the pandemic, feeling really nostalgic and sad. I think I’m kind of a little bit fascinated by consciousness and that could also be a topic that I continue to explore.”
For Cairn, you referenced Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus a lot. Is there any reading or material that you’ve been looking into that’s directed towards consciousness?
A.L.N.: “Yeah, definitely. Nothing that directly inspired the music like with Cairn, but I read this book called Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. That book was from the 90s. He’s a philosopher, but he draws heavily on science—physics, chemistry, biology, the whole thing. It sets out to explain the phenomenon of consciousness from a materialist point of view and dispel the myth of the Cartesian theater—the ghost in the machine, the sort of leftover idea of the soul or the immaterial self that sits inside your head and thinks your thoughts and feels your emotions. That’s all really an illusion.
“So, I read a few books like that. There is another one he wrote called From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds. Waking Up by Sam Harris is a very good book that is about consciousness and also mainly about meditation.”
What are you hoping listeners and attendees of Roadburn Redux will take away from Wit’s End?
A.L.N.: “I’m hoping that honestly they just think it’s heavy. The spoken lyrics in the first part are more intelligible than the screaming typically is for people. So, I hope that there’s some food for thought in the words that can be immediately discerned and that it will speak to the moment for some people and maybe help others feel a little relief over similar frustrations that they have.”
Is there anyone or any performance that you’re looking forward to during Roadburn? Anything on your radar?
A.L.N.: “Yeah, I’ve seen that Primitive Man is also premiering some new music and I’m really looking forward to hearing that. I’ll probably watch a handful of things but I myself and not huge into the live set livestream which is why I’m doing this approach myself. So, I’m definitely excited to see the Primitive Man premiere and I think that’ll be fun to hear.”
Down below are the raw ideas that would become the lyrics of the song, scrawled over the course of a few months whilst inspiration was brewing.
