Interview with Yautja

- How has Songs of Lament been received so far?

Better than I assumed. Everyone's been really supportive. In our book it's an EP even though it's on a 12" so I thought it might get overlooked.

- The visuals on ...Lament are stunning, and really enhance the feel of the record. Did you just give Anderson carte blanche or did you have a specific idea of what you wanted going in?

We're all fans of Anderson Cook's art and trusted him to do something appropriate. He did the art for our demo tape as well as a large majority of the art on his label Tapes of a Neon God. We gave him a rough mix of the EP to listen to and let him do his thing.

- The three of you seem to be good friends. How long have you known each other?

Tyler and I met around 2007 or so playing locally around Nashville. I met Kayhan sometime between 2007 or 2008 seeing his band Legion play a house show in Nashville. He's from Birmingham so we didn't really get acquainted until he moved to Nashville around 2010.

- Any notes about your recent tour with Maruta?

We had a blast. One of my first bands ever opened for them years ago, and I've been a fan ever since. Coolest dudes.

- What was your favorite Yautja tour?

One of my favorite tours was maybe our first tour in 2010. In terms of it being successful, financially or otherwise, it was a shitshow. But was super fun and and a good learning experience. Our then bass player quit about a week before we left so we had a member of our tourmates in Dawn fill in super last minute. Tons of shit drives, days off, etc.
Also our first and only venture into Canada last year with our friends in No Brainer was a blast. Made a lot of new friends and saw some new things.

- Has Shibby always run two rigs live?

Yeah. Mostly to try and create the illusion of two guitar players.

(pieces from my personal Yautja collection)

- Both Songs of Descent and Songs of Lament have bold, impactful visuals that speak volumes to your artistic vision. At what point in your career as a band did you decide to push the visual side of your work in this way? 

I'm not sure. Once we were planning to have 500+ copies of anything, I think we probably wanted to be happy with how it looked.
None of the way our album art turned out has much to do with us though. We just let the artists do their thing 99% of the time. A close friend of ours, Caleb Gregory, did all of the art and layout of our first record. He's a local Nashville dude and wonderful person and musician. Out of the whole process of making that record, the art was the only thing I was completely satisfied with. I think we all really like the idea of having the artists listen to the record while preparing to or while creating the art itself.  

- Does Songs of Lament have a singular artistic idea to convey, or is it a collection of songs that represent your current state as a band?

Eh, kinda neither. All the songs on SOL are actually older than the Songs of Descent songs, for the most part. So while we haven't changed our sound necessarily, they aren't the most current songs we have written. There isn't one ongoing concept or theme in every song on SOL, but majority deal in a lot of the feelings and thoughts involved with loss, in many interpretations.

- I saw you in the back of Cafe Coco with Full of Hell and Weekend Nachos some time in early 2012. It was an incredible experience, as I don't think they had ever had a heavy show there and didn't know what to expect. Do you think that Yautja would still gravitate toward smaller venues if given the opportunity commercially to play larger ones?

Totally. We still play and often prefer house shows/DIY spots to venues with weird shaped stages and pushy sound people.

- There are a handful of obvious influences sprinkled throughout your discography, but most of the appeal of your work, at least to me, is its uniqueness. When did you realize you could be more than just another metal band?

I think we are just another metal band, but we all play and listen to a lot of different music, and tend not to try and categorize ourselves in any particular sub-genre.

- Are there any long-term plans for Yautja, or do you take it one step a time?

 

More or less one step at a time. We're planning to start jamming around and writing a new record this Winter. We have a split 7" with Fórn coming out before the end of the year. We wanna make it overseas sooner or later. More touring sometime in early spring.

Cult Leader - Lightless Walk (2015)

Salt Lake City iconoclasts Cult Leader recently released their much-anticipated debut LP, which has many claiming it to be the next Jane Doe or Calculating Infinity. Is it?

Artwork: The symmetrical tarot card-style artwork honestly didn't appeal to me when I first saw it, but as I have listened to the record, I see how it suits the atmosphere of the record.

Structure: Lightless Walk is 11 tracks, strung together in various ways, some as singles and others as pieces of the whole. Each song deals with a unique subject, exploring the emotions and headspaces surrounding it.

Sound: Cult Leader has found their stride. Nothing For Us Here was killer and Useless Animal was at least interesting, but here, Cult Leader is raising the bar and setting the standard for heavy records to come. Every song on Lightless Walk is perfectly crafted, smacking of Gaza and other progressive bands but wielding an animalistic ferocity and grit that makes Cult Leader stand head and shoulders above their peers. Many bands can play complex music, and many bands can play hard-hitting music, but Cult Leader does both simultaneously in an awe-inspiring display of emotion and artistic catharsis.

Lyrics: Anthony Lucero has written poignant verse after poignant verse in Cult Leader this far, but with Lightless Walk the bare openness of sadness and loss reads like Hemingway or Steinbeck. I typically enjoy bands with more poetic lyrics, but Cult Leader stopped me my tracks here with what feels, instead of a beautiful melancholy, swirling sky of depressive emotions, like collapsing with your face against a cardboard flooring, and struggling between giving up and getting up.

For Fans Of: Converge, Gaza, Thou

Favorite Lyrics: "Someday you will be at peace
Someday everything will be alright
Someday your heart will be full to bursting
Someday, but not now"

Favorite Track: Sympathetic

1. Great I Am
2. The Sorrow
3. Sympathetic
4. Suffer Louder
5. Broken Blades
6. A Good Life
7. Walking Wasteland
8. Gutter Gods
9. Hate Offering
10. How Deep It Runs
11. Lightless Walk

Rating: 10 / 10 

Merch: Deathwish // Holy Mountain Printing
Listen: Bandcamp
Follow: Facebook

Cool Hand Luke - The Fires of Life (2002)

When I was 14, a dear and now lifelong friend showed me this record. We were into lots of heavy artists and didn't take much time to explore alternate genres, but this one... this one.

Artwork: The Fires of Life presents itself as nothing more than what it is, finding its meaning in what it lacks. There is a beautiful image presented here, but nothing about it suggests that Cool Hand Luke takes itself too seriously. It simply is what it is, and it is beautiful.

Structure: The Fires of Life is a storybook, 11 stories long, worth listening to from beginning to end.

Sound: Blending 90's alternative with indie and emo presentation, all with a finesse that sings of lifelong dedication to each musician's craft.

Lyrics: Cool Hand Luke will sing to your soul. Each song wrestles with an imagined scenario that plays out as a metaphor for daily life. "Cinematic" is a tale of gratitude for one's friends, as they are the real heroes in your life (sidenote: I played in a band called HERO in college, named after the chorus of this song) and "Rats In The Cellar" is about sin and darkness in your life being like rats in a cellar that you don't want anyone to see. The highlight of the whole record is "Friendly Jas" - a 6 minute epic detailing a long friendship that has fallen apart. The song hits me like a ton of concrete every time because, on a personal note, it accurately chronicles my relationship with the person who showed me this band. It is about someone rejecting you and leaving your life but you still caring for them and being willing to accept them at any time. "Everything has changed / but my hope remains the same / and I want you to know that I'll be here / through a hundred years of rain."

For Fans Of: Third Eye Blind, Matchbox Twenty, Fuel

Favorite Lyrics: "I want to live in such a way
that when I'm gone, my friends will say
that if my life was turned to film
I'd be standing on a mountain shouting victory in the end"

Favorite Track: Friendly Jas

1. Sky Dive
2. The Foster
3. Rats in the Cellar
4. Cinematic
5. I'm Not Ready
6. Sequence #3
7. Friendly Jas
8. I'm Not Running
9. Zombie Song
10. Rest for the Weary
11. The Fires of Life

Rating: 10 / 10 

Purchase: Storenvy

Brian Hurt - Road Songs (2016)

A bit of shameless self-promotion - I'm working on a record right now of folk/singer-songwriter oriented songs, single released a few weeks ago. I'm hoping to have the record finished by December.

Required Listening Classics: Bad Brains

When I Against I dropped in 1986, it was unlike anything ever heard. The predominantly white network of hardcore bands had been slugging it out in dingy clubs and VFW halls, playing loud and as fast as possible, cramming as much emotion into a 30 second song as they could. Then, Bad Brains showed up on the Washington, DC scene like an atom bomb, bringing true musicianship and skill to the table, blowing everyone else away. Ian MacKaye and Brian Baker of Minor Threat recall being terrified when they were booked to play with the Bad Brains, as the bar was set impossibly high. Ironically, HR (singer of Bad Brains) took Ian under his wing after their DC shows and would act as a mentor to him for years to come.

The track actually begins at the 1:00 mark after some impressive riffing and bending of time signature. It's hard to pick a stand-out Bad Brains track, but this one shows the incredible nature in which they blends reggae stylings with straight-ahead juggernaut punk energy.

Issue 4

The Loser tape (BCT01) is still in the works, should be in hand by January. The reborn Sector 7G building, The Iron Heights, is on hold pending legal resolution of zoning problems.

Apologies for the delay in publishing this issue. I have recently become a part-time dad.

-Brian

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them...."
SK

Interview with Torch Runner

- Committed to the Ground is one of my favorite heavy records, possibly because it's the first thing I heard from Torch Runner, but you seem to have really found a distinct sound with Endless Nothing. Do you feel like Torch Runner has grown to be more than the sum of its influences?

You know, honestly I would have a hard time even telling you what our influences might be. We obviously listen to and love a lot of bands within and outside of our genre, but I don't know that we've ever consciously set out to do something because of something else that we've heard. There has been a definite progression through each one of our 5 releases, but I feel like every single song we write is a continual progression of the song before it. We are constantly trying to write good songs that progress and flow well, and in our minds that is probably the only definite goal we have when writing... Just please don't say we sound like Converge. That is a comparison we seem to get stuck with that I will never understand.

- Some incredible records have come out of Legitimate Business. Can you describe what working with Kris is like?

We've had the opportunity to know and work with Kris, and watch him and his studio grow, almost the whole time he has been recording bands. He is a goddamn work horse, and every penny he makes gets funneled right back into Legit Biz. He, his equipment, and his facility are constantly getting better. He has great taste, he knows what he's talking about, and he has a passion for what he does. Ideally we will make every record we ever do with him. I've never had a better experience with anyone else or in any other studio. And, obviously, the records he has been producing speak for themselves.

- What kind of influence do you think recording at Legitimate Business has on your sound?

Kris not only knows and understands heavy music, he knows how to record it to make it sound how you want it to sound. He's always done an awesome job of figuring out amp configuration/mic placement/all the other shit I don't know about to get the record to come out exactly (and in some ways better than) how we want it to be. Working with Kris at Legit Biz makes the initial process of, "tell me some records you like so I can get an idea of how you want to sound" unnecessary because he just gets it. For that reason, we're able to easily create the sound that we want.

- How long has your current lineup been active?

Well, the three of us have been playing together since November of 2007. Josh and Scott were playing together for a few months before that, and then I tried out for vocals on the same night that our friend Matt tried out for bass. At the time the four of us didn't know each other. Matt played bass with us through early 2009, and was eventually replaced by our friend Chuck who played bass (and guitar, toward the end) until early 2012... We had a couple fill-in second guitar player's for a while but eventually decided to stick it out as a three piece and it's been smooth sailing since then.

- Was Locust Swarm recorded as a three- or four-piece?

Locust Swarm was recorded as a four piece, but we only had one guitar player (Scott) at the time. Shortly after the recording of Locust Swarm, I started playing bass and doing vocals so that the band wasn't completely at the mercy of our old bass player's rigorous touring schedule.

- I noticed that you play your bass with your fingers. That is fairly unorthodox on this side of the music world, but your bass tone has a characteristic thickness and heft to it under the grime and grit. What made you decide not to use a pick?

 Haha... The honest truth is that I can't play with a pick to save my life. I started playing bass when I was about 13 years old and a dude who I thought was super-cool-punk-rock-god told me to "drop the pick, it's making your bass sound twangy" and I haven't picked it up since. When I started playing bass in Torch Runner, I started with a pick but had so much trouble trying to do it I eventually just said fuck it, what's the point in learning now. I definitely think that playing with a pick sounds better, but it's just made me be super anal and find a bass rig and tone that still sounds good.

- Your lyrics have a distinct style that seems to fit Torch Runner's music perfectly. Where do you draw inspiration from when writing? Do you usually bring lyrics to a song, or write to a song after it's written?

My process for writing lyrics always starts with me sitting down, clearing my head, and just writing whatever comes to mind... basically stream of consciousness. When I feel like I hit a wall, I go back through and read it all and try to pull out common themes. Any thoughts/lines/etc that seem to match all get pulled out, and that's the skeleton for a song. From there, I go back through and try to rewrite what I have as one complete thought with a beginning, middle, and end. I really like to have anywhere from 5-10 potential sets of lyrics when I start trying to find a song to work them into. After a song is written, we will usually try to do scratch recordings of them. I take the scratch recordings and try to read the lyrics I have written along with the song to see if they will roughly fit. Whichever ones I feel like match, feel right, and at least somewhat work from the beginning then finally get reworked one more time to fit the song

-What is it like being on/working with Southern Lord, alongside legendary bands like Black Breath, High On Fire, Sunn O)))?

Being on Southern Lord is great. It is our first experience with a bigger record label, and Greg runs it just like a small record label. He hasn't asked us to do anything differently than what we've always done, and he is just genuinely stoked on heavy music. Being on Southern Lord hasn't really changed anything for us, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't simply make everything we try to do a little bit easier. It's super hard to be in a band and try to start touring. Nobody wants to give you shows because nobody knows who you are, but no one is ever going to know who you are if you don't tour... That's not a problem we really run into as much anymore, which takes a lot of the stress of touring away.

-What do you attribute your success as a band to, as far as you measure success?

I don't know that I would really classify what we've done as success, but only because those are terms we've never really considered. The band/playing shows/touring has first and foremost always been an enjoyable way for us to be together as friends and do what we love. Any measure of success that we've experienced has come to us because we put it as a top priority in our lives for the past 8 years. 7 years ago we all quit school, sold our cars, bought a van, and just fucking tried. Scott moved to Greensboro and we shared a bedroom for about 6 months. We left home for our very first tour with $65 of band money that we immediately put into the gas tank before leaving town. We had no guarantees, no idea what any shows were going to be like, but to us there was absolutely no other option. If you aren't willing to take risks with your life and your band, you can't reasonably expect anything to happen for you. We've spent years touring and trying as hard as we can, and when you put in the time and effort things just eventually get easier- Whether that's because of a record label taking notice, or simply making friends that hook you up with shows the next time you come through. There are definitely bands that get "big" or popular without putting in the work... But fuck that bullshit. It's cheating, and what fun is the internet?

- Any advice to bands just starting out, e.g. what to do/what not to do?

I guess that last question really covers my feelings on it. You just have to fucking put yourself out there. No matter what your goals are- Whether they are to get on a big record label, get to tour with bigger bands, or whatever... No one is going to work for you if they haven't already seen you work hard as shit for yourself. Also, I've always been of the mindset that I'd rather try and fail then not try at all. Luckily, Scott and Josh are, too. There's nothing more annoying to me than people talking about what they used to do or almost did.

- Any touring plans through the rest of 2015?

We have one more show this year, which is on Saturday Nov. 28th in Greensboro. It is a record release show for a fucking sick band called Ivadell. If you haven't listened to them yet, you definitely should. Up to then and after that we decided to not play any more shows this year so that we can focus on writing. We have about 7-8 songs that are all partially written, and it's definitely time to start getting to work on them.

- When can we expect a new record?

There are no concrete plans as of right now, but we really hope to have one written by the end of the year. Our goal is to do at least 1-2 more solid tours on Endless Nothing early next year, and then start setting our sights on recording again. That's about as far as we've gotten in the process.