Machine Music's Albums of the Decade: An Interview with Dead in the Dirt
This is the 53rd installment of the Albums of the Decade series of interviews. For the rest of the series go HERE.]
Artist: Dead in the Dirt
Album: The Blind Hole
Year: 2013
Label: Southern Lord Recordings
Favorite Song: "The Pit of Me"
The Bare Bones: The Blind Hole is the debut, and, to date, sole, full-length album by Atlanta-based grindcore project, consisting of Blake Connally (Infernal Coil), Hank Pratt (Slow Fire Pistol), and Bo Orr (Arbor Labor Union).
The Beating Heart: In the comings and goings of 2010s grindcore, The Blind Hole stands out as both a classic of the genre as well as a voice from its future. It was violent and fast, that it was, and it was as violent and as fast as the best of them. But along with that killing velocity there was a debt owed to emotional extreme music writ large, an intensity that was unmistakably hardcore in its essence that hinted at what might, at times, appear to be its polar opposite: the atmospheric, complex, brooding vibrations of extreme, at times exoteric metal. That path was to be fully realized in the spiritual successor to Dead in the Dirt, if not its artistic expansion, Blake Connally's Infernal Coil, which was the topic of an Albums of the Decade interview a few years back. But what sets The Blind Hole apart even from that later step is exactly its claustrophobic finitude – it was still hardcore, it was still grindcore, and yet somehow also dipps its gross toes into the absolute, abstract horror of metal. Well, good metal.
So, I was glad and honored to talk to Blake again, this time about that earlier stage of his artistic creation. I guess we tried to figure out what it all meant now, and whether or not there could ever be another Dead in the Dirt album. I hope you like what came of that conversation.
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So basically, so last time we talked, if you remember, we covered Within a World Forgotten, and Dead in the Dirt was kind of in the background. Just because I felt it was an easy contrast to make. They're very different albums, very different styles, not worlds apart, but still. It was easy for me to use that as a touchstone and then talk about why you chose the road less taken. And so I guess what makes the most sense to me, since I want to talk about The Blind Hole, is a kind of reverse engineering.
OK.
And one of the things we talked about was your answer to the question I had about a watershed moment you had with a band that changed your perspective on music. You told me that fantastical story, which I still don't believe actually happened…
[Laughs] Yeah. Oh it happened.
… of you finding Meantime in the dirt – speaking of "dead in the dirt" – and that went off on a tangent about our favorite 90s alt-ish metal bands like that weird Napalm Death period somewhere in the mid 90s….
The best Napalm Death, in my opinion.
This is true. Fear, Emptiness, Despair for life
Blake: Yes, absolutely.
I’ll have that tattooed in Gothic script on my back
[Laughs]
And that kind of gets at some of what makes Infernal Coil unique, because it has a kind of backbone of very intense music, but a lot of it is almost abstract. It's so extreme that it's abstract and yet at the same time…. Like, Helmet is such a catchy band too. What they do is weird, but they write really catchy songs. Did I interview Page Hamilton before we talked?
No, it was right after.
Yeah, side note: He hummed the intro to “In the Meantime” to me. So, I have that in life.
Nice.
Yes. So, I guess part of the Napalm Death / Helmet thing is that they drew outside the lines, and that, to an extent, explains a lot of Infernal Coil, but really the other half is that they’re very catchy bands that write very simple songs. And so I wanted to ask about that. I wanted to ask about that in terms of The Blind Hole, whether you find anything appealing in a very set formula? I know by now, musically, you're not necessarily concerned with that, but it seems to me like maybe during Dead in the Dirt you might have been more concerned with that, or at least more preoccupied with that. So, aside from your interest in breaking the rules, is there anything interesting to you about the rules?
Well, it's funny that you mentioned that word because I was going to say…. In Infernal Coil, when Brennan [Butler] and I were writing, that was a deliberate choice that we made to try to push those boundaries further than either of us had in our previous bands. The truth is, when I was working with Hank [Pratt] early on, Hank and I wrote the very first five songs, just him and I. Later on Bo [Orr] joined, but, to my recollection, even half of Fear was stuff that Hank and I had already written prior to Bo becoming a full-time contributor. And even in the early stages through Fear, Bo was primarily sharing odds and ends with lyrical content, but mostly with design and artwork. That was kind of his role. Hank had a major part in composition, and I think that has always been one of his big strong points. Because. if you take his background, and overlapping with Foundation…. And Foundation has, well, most hardcore has this very stern pressure to have some sort of formula – something that is known, rules that people follow – “This is how it's supposed to go.” There are liberties taken, but it's so nuanced, down to two bands can sound pretty much the same way, but the singer sounds a little different, or the drummer’s not as good as that drummer. That kind of thing. It's very minute, very small differences.
But when I was writing with Hank, I did feel as though there was some spillover from his writing style in Foundation and trying to organize my chaotic nature – as drummers typically do. That’s kind of the struggle of drummers, like: “I hear what you're saying, but I can only play so fast,” or “I can only do this beat for so long” and that kind of thing. It kind of reels it in and gives it a skeleton. But, in terms of rules, I feel like Hank, and later Bo, emphasized that. I would come in wanting to push multiple boundaries, but the end result was the compromise we were getting to from the pressure on their side.
And just a side note, it's funny because that was in the musical context, but I distinctly remember a conflict Bo and I had when it came to the design and formatting of the cover for Fear, he was like: “Oh well, I want to use these colors,” and I was like: “Look man, I just think we really need to send a strong message on the cover since we're a new band, and this is as big as we're ever gonna get. It needs to be very over the top, bone-head stuff, unmistakable or left to interpretation.” And he made this big argument about, “You know, that’s like me telling you that you can't use these certain amount of notes,” and I was like: “Well, I'm honestly doing that already because you guys are telling me I can't do that.” So that was kind of the give-and-take in the earlier period.
But, for me, to hopefully really answer your question, rules and music are a lot more difficult, but in a way that maybe people may not piece together. For me, writing a really catchy song, especially now, but even 15 years ago, writing a formulaic catchy song – verse, chorus, verse, chorus and that kind of thing…. It’s extremely difficult to carve out any sort of memorable experience for the listener. And then I think about it even further where bands go even simpler, like Corrupted, for instance. They'll ride a riff that's four notes for 15 minutes, and for some reason you can't turn away, you keep wanting to listen to that. I don't think I've ever written a riff where I'm confident enough that somebody would want to listen to it for 15 minutes. I think more in terms of I have to keep the attention. So, for me, rules and music, it's very difficult, personally. It's tantalizing, because I'm like: “Wow, I can't believe I'm engaged in a song that has four chords,” but it happens every once in a while.
I have a couple of questions. The first one is more chronologically relevant: You're saying it was as difficult for you even as a younger person. I highlight this because one of the things that I've noticed a lot is a lot of people end up venturing out into doing their own thing, whatever cliche shit I just said, they sometimes they first come up in a in a scene, and often it is a hardcore scene, just because there's something about either the ease of the song structures and the memorability, and the fact that you know what you need to do in a very short amount of time to fit into a scene, to write a song, to put something out, to do a show, and then after a while you do that and…
Right.
… as the pattern goes, and I guess that would fit in your case too. It’s kind of going: “OK, I get it. I can do the four-chord song and I can play that show, but I'm not satisfied as an artist. I want to do something else.” And so, if we're talking about you as a younger person and keeping Dead in the Dirt in mind, and you saying it was a difficult thing for you, then why is it that you felt the need to start there? Why didn't you go and listen to Stravinsky and write weird metal opera with 19 movements? Why did you go there?
[Laughs] Right, Yeah. I mean, I've always been a metal guy and I just found…. Because, you know, I wasn't really interested in getting wasted or doing illicit stuff, I found myself in hardcore with a lot of people who don't do that kind of stuff. And so then you kind of are a victim of: “Oh well, this is where I fit in on a cultural level.” And then you're pushed into… Me and Thomas from Foundation we were actually in our first real band together, this was right when I had turned 14 and he was 17 at the time. It's funny, because both me and the drummer were definitely more metal. He now plays drums in a band called Cloak, which is on Season of Mist – Sean Bruneau. We were both metal guys, but because Thomas was older and the vocalist, you know, he was trying to push us in certain directions. And even then we weren't doing the traditional verse-chorus, and we were kind of the odd man out in our scene, for various reasons. I feel like the ideas that I've had, it's always been kind of compromised up until Infernal Coil by some other contributing member. But if I really felt supported like I was in Infernal Coil, I think that opened up a lot of doors that I really wanted to open my whole musical career. So, with Dead in the Dirt I was pushing and trying my best to push in certain ways, but I was also really….. You know, with grindcore it's all about composition and speed variants and things like that, which was really tantalizing at the time. I mean, I love Insect Warfare, but I couldn't pinpoint one riff that is well known in that band, or most grindcore bands – it's all drums and vocals, you know, that's the thing that makes the song. So I think I was trying to take that and go: “Well, how can I make it a little bit more guitar-centric. So, how can I make a place for myself in a grindcore band.
Is there anywhere – this is not what I wanted to ask – but is there anywhere you feel like you succeeded with that? I mean because…. Actually, I want to make a general comment:
[Laughs]
Even now and in our previous conversation, it felt like the whole relationship with Dead in the Dirt is conflicted. That's how it feels like. And it feels like it's also linked with a conflicted relationship with Atlanta and with a conflicted relationship with hardcore, I even wrote down at some point that you said in that older interview Infernal Coil was a release from the pressure of being in Dead in the Dirt.
Yes.
And I remember thinking then: “You're a fucking 20-something year old in a hardcore band, where is this pressure coming from?
Yeah.
So, obviously there's something about how you describe that experience that feels like an oppressive experience. Like, sometimes when you hash it out with other people who disagree with you and you maybe come out with something that's a contribution of both sides that creates this other thing that maybe, even given all the conflict, you might think: “Yeah, this is a good process, despite the frustrations.” But there's something about how you describe that experience that feels like it wasn't. There was something throttling about that. Either the genre or the scene, or the specific people, there's something about that feels like you felt held back.
Yeah, I definitely think all three of those pieces were contributing factors. When we were approached by Southern Lord, that wasn’t something that I was planning on happening. And then, all of that learning the music industry at a higher level…. I remember talking to Greg [Anderson] and he's like: “You know, our lawyer used to be in Quicksand” and I'm like: “What?!” or “You know, our merch fulfillment guy is Despise You,” and I'm like “What!?” They had their hands in everything and I was just finding out about this whole other layer. You’re kind of entrenched in your squabbling little scene, trying to impress friends of friends, and the older generation of hardcore dudes called you mean names and stuff. When you're young, and they're only like three or four years older than you, but they seem so older than you.
[Laughs]
You know what I mean? They act like they know everything and are the authority on everything. And being able to surpass that and brushing shoulders with people who are making a real life from their art is very daunting. Because then you get laced with impostor syndrome, like: “Maybe there's some mistake, it surely can't be me that they're after.” And then you have other people whispering in your ear how to do…. I remember calling Bryan [Funck] from Thou on the phone shortly after we got approached, and I was like: “I don't know what to do. I never expected that to happen.” He is much older than me, and I respect everything he says, but he was like: “Go for it.” But, at the same time, I was like: “Well, it's easy for you to say, your band is good!” [laughs]
[Laughs]
“I don't know how to speak up or to say what I want or what I wish for.” And so a lot of the time it was kind of walking on eggshells.
And the writing process for The Blind Hole was extremely challenging, emotionally, because there was so much emphasis on that being my big shot, in my mind then, as a young person. So, I think there's a lot of factors that felt oppressive and constricting. I remember having conversations with Greg from Southern Lord when Fear was coming out where he’s saying: “Well, what do you want to do?” And I was like “Why don't we just press just 500 records?” and he's like, “No, I'm not gonna press 500 records. We have to press more than that.” And I said: “I’m just really worried that we're not going to sell that many,” and he's like: “Well, let's do like 1500” and I was like: “Ah, man.” That was so much to me thinking that 1500 people would…. It was just a lot of those tiny instances over those years that kind of piled up to where I was like: “Man, I just feel kind of trapped.” and I think both Bo and Hank felt that same way, and I probably gave them that stress as well.
I mean, it sounds like it was kind of like a “damned if you do and damned if you don't” kind of situation, because it feels like you kind of were already trapped. In that scene, in that context, in the musical style, in the restraints placed by the older generation, looking at you and judging you. So that's already one side of the trap, and then you break out of your local scene and you're trapped in expectations and a bigger market and whatever the fuck that means, and “I don’t have a lawyer” or “I don’t know what is a lawyer,” and all that stuff.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Do you think all that negativity, but all that like anxiety is a contributing factor into why Dead in the Dirt never released anything since? I mean, it was such a fraught thing.
No, I think that the true issue is that for a long time, a long time, I think going on a decade, Bo and I had not spoken. There's a lot of personal conflict in there – we lived together for a period of time, and a lot of spillover from personal matters into the band. Being that close and that intertwined in your home life, and then we also worked at the same place with Thomas from Foundation. We're driving from work to home to band practice – you're spending a lot of time with one another. Which on paper sounds great, you get to talk about music and stuff and plan and these kinds of things. But I think I may have been doing some damage being as driven or band-oriented as I was. I think that Bo and Hank maybe didn't realize it or know how to communicate it then, but needed more time for themselves. So I think there was a fair amount of resentment, because they kind of factioned off. They worked together, now they work at the same tattoo shop, and they've remained close friends after the fact. And out of the three, you know, there’s always a third wheel. And that was me. So I kind of got pushed out.
But even when I got sick two years ago, I was at a low point and I was thinking more about that and so I reached out to Bo, basically just to try and have a conversation about not necessarily super specific stuff, but kind of “What have you been doing for the past 10 years?” and that kind of thing, and “How do you feel about me now?” To be completely honest, I think that I've been ready to and wanted to be connected to them for quite some time, but I think that because they stayed in the same place and kind of went through the same trajectory, there haven’t been a lot of critical shifts in their lives to change their perspective, you know, like near-death experiences or becoming a father. Giant, forceful impacts on your life that force individuals to change their outlook. I'm somewhat of a, not close friend, but friends with Jef Whitehead from Leviathan and he's a father and you look at his music and his art and you're able to see him as a father, and we talk about those things in that context, lot of that stuff turns from a passion to like “Well, I'll get around to it when I get around to it.” There are a lot of layers there, anyway. I'm going off on a tangent.
No, you’re not, I just wanted to interject and ask a question about that. Because you getting sick, and obviously getting better, and you becoming a father are very recent.
Right.
But it sounds like those guys stayed in Atlanta, You didn’t, and you were maybe threatened by a very local tight-knit, in the negative sense, scene, and they might not have. Maybe they were OK with that. And also when you think about Infernal Coil, the themes that you’re touching on, it's not just an expansion of musical palette, you're really going all out – you're talking about big things, you're quoting big people, and you're making big music. Big is obviously the wrong word here, but…
Right. No, I understand.
… so is there a way in which it’s not necessarily only getting sick and becoming a father, that your antenna was already kind of looking for other frequencies, before certain dramatic moments in your life.
Yeah, definitely. I would definitely agree with that. I remember I would be writing all the time and I would come to practice and a lot of my ideas would get shot down or kind of quashed to a level where they're unrecognizable so that, from my perspective, Bo and Hank would feel like they had ownership over it. But my two cents, my thinking was: “Well you can write. We have the same amount of time as everyone else and you can carve out…. Instead of skating for that amount of time you could be writing music, or coming up with ideas or thoughts about planning and what you want to do with the band.” Most of the time it was me coming to them, being kind of squashed or watered down, or straight out being told: “That's not what we sound like. We sound like this. This is what we're supposed to sound like.” There's a lot of psychology there, obviously, but…
So, when you look at The Blind Hole, you don't see the product of…. So it's not like Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland fighting and then writing “Doo Doo Doo, Da Da Da” together? The Police being the model band for people who don't get along but write good music together, right? So, do you look at The Blind Hole and say that was a productive overall moment, or do you look at it and say “Even the stuff that I did feel like I contributed to this aren’t what I wanted them to be like?” Maybe a missed opportunity?
I think, for the most part, I'm proud of that record. We were under a deadline…. Bo has always been really good at words. And then it got into this thing of: “OK, who sings this? Who's going to say what?” and “Whose song is who's?” Like: “Is this Hank’s song or Bo’s song?” or whatever. But at the same time it was like them continuously having something to say about whatever I brought to the table, but if I ever brought up anything about what they bring I'm being”tyrannical.” So, it was very frustrating. The thing that I do wish is that there would have been a little bit more of my lyrics present, a little bit more of the themes that we all felt and agreed upon, if that really was the aim, compromise and mutual contribution. There's a lot of lyrical subject matter that I respect and I can get behind, but we never really had enough time to get on the same page about it.
But as far as composition goes – I've said this, not publicly because no one really asked about it, but to anyone who's asked in private I think Hank is one of the best musicians I've ever played with. I mean, he plays drums as well as he plays guitar, he has a real talent for music. And I mean, even his work in Slow Fire Pistol now is…
Amazing
… amazing stuff. I don't want to put this all on Bo, but I do remember writing music prior to Bo being in the band was a lot more seamless. And when I went into Infernal Coil, I was like “It should be just the two of us.” Because it will be seamless, and there won't be too many cooks in the kitchen or egos to appease, it'll just be easy. A compromise between two equals, rather than always creating these factions or whatever. So, regarding The Blind Hole, I’m very proud of that record, but I do feel like composition, music-wise, there were some pulled punches that I wish would have been a little different. But, all in all, it's pretty small in the scheme of things.
So, this is all leading me to questions I don't want to ask, but I'm asking. I have something in my head I feel like when I get out, and it has to do specifically with “Halo Crown.” I have a rule in life, which is if you listen to a grindcore album, look for the longest song.
[Laughs] Interesting, yeah.
Because usually the longest song has something in it that isn’t always in the rest. There's a reason why it's the longest song. And, I believe “Halo Crown” is the longest song.
Yeah.
And it's a weird song.
Yeah.
It makes me feel very uncomfortable. Like, there's an energy about the album as a whole, in keeping with the overall grindcore framework – obviously not all of the songs are like that – but still there's something about it that is this propulsion forward. When I interviewed Discordance Axis I talked about how grindcore feels to me like classical music, it feels like movements like you're not supposed to get everything when it happens.
Right.
You're supposed to be in the mood that's larger than the sum of very small, often very fast parts. So, the album as a whole is kind of throwing you forward. And then that track comes and it all turns into this gross black mist, and then the album ends and I just feel like I don’t really know what just happened. It’s obviously different: It's different in pacing, it's different in its overall vibe, and it ends on a very strange note, almost like an open, anxious note. So I wanted to ask if there was anything different about how that track was made?
Lyrically, that's all Bo. Lyrically, that song actually shares the same lyrics with a song from another band that he is in now – the identical lyrics. That band is like – if he ever hears this or reads this he’ll say I got it wrong – classic rock, folk….
Is this Arbor Labor Union?
Yeah. But it was called The Pine Cones when that song was released. So, those lyrics are his. I remember – because we were comparing lyrics journals – I read that and I was like: “Those are really good, we should use those, because I think they work in this band as well.” And as far as the composition, to be completely honest, what I remember is that the opening riff was kind of a non-starter. I couldn't really get it the way I wanted it, but I kept coming back to it, and I was like: “I'll use it to try to kind of lead into something that I really wanted to do.” The ending, that long drawn out aspect, I think, was…. It was one of the last songs that we wrote, and I think at the end of the writing process Bo and Hank had gotten tired of fighting with me on things to do…
[Laughs]
… and so they were just kind of like: “OK, we just want to get this record done. I don't want to talk about it anymore.” And so I was kind of able to do some things that I really wanted to do, drooping beats per minute towards the end, kind of that Portal-esque, sickening feel, because there's no real meter or grid, it's just based completely on feel. And then I was like “I can't get as low as I want to,” and Ethan [Lee McCarthy of Primitive Man and Vermin Womb, MM] can, and he's always been a good friend to me. So I was like: “Yeah, I think that's a perfect place for his talent to be there.” But it's kind of fumes, a lot of this, a lot of that song is remainders of parts that never really went anywhere.
[Laughs] I'm laughing because I could say that it sounds like it, but that would make it sound like a bad thing. I'm not saying it like it's a bad thing, I'm saying it's a good thing. It sounds like – maybe I'll use a Yeats quote! – It sounds like in “The Second Coming,” which is the Yeats everyone learns in first-year English, wait I’ll look for it. Here is the part I mean: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” That “slouches,” right? Nothing slouches toward anything.
Right.
It's a very interesting mix between active and passive. So, “slouches.” That’s what that song does. So, there’s something I have wanted to ask from the beginning, but there was no place for it. So I'll just use this here – using your story, I'll use the riff I can't fit anywhere at the end.
Right.
I feel very guilty as a writer. Very guilty. And it isn't necessarily impostor syndrome, I have imposter syndrome elsewhere. I feel very guilty because I feel like I'm not doing my job. And it feels like doing my job is kind of – and excuse the gender specific definition: “Man up, stop going on these random tangents that really only satisfy your need for variety or constant change and start communicating with people! Start reaching out!” And sometimes the parts that communicate to people aren't necessarily just what words you use, or the melodies you use, but how you present them. What's the context? What's the mold you're working with? Because when people recognize the mold, they say: “OK, I don't really know what's going on, but I can tell it's going somewhere because, you know, say in a scary movie, you're entering a dark space, scary music is playing, and you know something scary is about to happen. I don't know what is about to happen, but I know what to expect. And I don't know how to write like that. I write…. l I'm not going to say I write like an Infernal Coil, I probably write more like Portal.
[Laughs]
And I feel guilty about that. Because I feel like I should be getting better, whatever that means, at communicating on a human level. That it can't be just this arms race towards abstraction. that it has to have some kind of form. And so I have this fantasy that when I grow old and wise, I will go to the mountain and receive the commandments of writing a simple thing.
[Laughs]
Which, to me, is, kind of what you were saying about hardcore, torture.
Right.
Not only torture, it's uninteresting. But, on a deeper level, shouldn't I only care about other things than only what’s interesting to me? That's what I keep telling myself. It's not just about me playing with my toys, but also learning how to communicate. And I've encountered this problem everywhere in life, but my writing is very flagrant in that way. So, I guess this is my roundabout way of asking: What's your relationship with simplicity? Because on the one hand, we began with you saying it's hard for you and it never felt natural for you, and when you got to Infernal Coil all the floodgates were opened and you could do whatever the fuck you wanted, and it was an a true expression of who you were.
Right.
But does that change once you get that out of your system? Do you have a different relationship with that simplicity now? Do you, like me, wish you could have written a Beatles song but just can't? Or is it more a case of “I won't write a Beatles song because I don't care about Beatles songs”?
For me, I think there's an element of fear to it, of maybe not feeling capable of writing something that's noteworthy, and then wasting time, or wasting other people's time, and kind of putting up whatever tiny insignificant reputation I have and ruining it. Like: “Man, why did he do that?”
If you fail to do something simple, you mean?
Yeah. If I tried to do it and it didn't stand up to whatever anyone else may expect of me. I think I have a fear of letting people down, to a degree. So, I think there's fear there. I think that I've had a lot of times when a friend…. Say Andy Hurley from Fall Out Boy – I think about his role and I'm like: “Man, that's just such a dream job. I mean, obviously he has his place in that band, but I'm like: “Man, if a band like that ever called on me to do it, I would be like, ‘Oh yeah’” If I had to fill a role and help out where I can, and not have it all on me to steer the ship, I would 100% do something like that. Not as a way of artistic release, but because I just don't think I have enough talent to write something…. I don't think I know people enough [laughs] to do it.
[Laughs] Wait, what does that mean? Why would you need to know people to do it?
I realized later in life that I give people, in general, way too much credit. I think that when I try to talk…. Have you ever seen Idiocracy?
Oh, I think so. A while ago.
That movie, it's completely spot on with how I feel in America right now, you know, to a tee. Everyone is so dumb in the future, and you’re just being a normal person, not even extremely intelligent, you're perceived as effeminate or odd, off-puttingly so. And I feel Like that even now, where I'm not trying to be hyper intelligent or in any sort of way, but trying to connect with people…. For example, I get this question all the time, you know, you go to these doctors or whatever and meeting new people they ask: “Well, what do you do?” and when I say: “I'm a musician.” And I'm always faced with this question of “What do you play?” and I have no idea how to answer it.
What's that? What kind of music do you mean?
That's exactly it, that’s the question, but I don't even know if they think about what answer they're hoping to get, and I always go: “Do you mean instrument or music?” and then they get challenged and then reclusive, and go “Oh, well, both, I guess.” I guess they mean “instrument,” but then they don't realize that it’s the same sentence for a genre [laughs]. It's stuff like that where I'm not trying to be an asshole, I’m truly tying to understand what you want from me.
[Laughs]
So translating that and writing music on that level of simplicity, I have no idea how to reach people on that broad of scope, especially with the way what popular music is now, I have like no fucking clue.
I mean, I don't know either. I'm in the same predicament you’re in. But I've discovered something very interesting, which is what I think I'm doing when I'm “faking it.” I think what I’m doing in those moments is maybe dumbing something down or kind of joking and not being serious, is that part of my personality that communicates better. So, there's a self-demeaning aspect of it, right?
[Laughs] Right, sure.
Because what you're saying about what you're doing is just throwing some shit around and not really being serious about anything. And that also sets a trap, because if anyone connects with that, then they're dumb by association, because you weren’t really trying. So, it's really a very bad place. But if you act like you’re faking it and then allow it to be real, then it’s not dumb anymore. I had a dear online friend, and I really appreciated him. He was a great reader, like he would read, you know, he would read the interviews and he was also a musician, a brilliant musician and had….
I think I know who you're talking about. I read your write-up about him.
Ah, cool. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I wrote that entire thing. I don't know what you felt about that, but I wrote that entire thing in my mind going “I'm not even trying right now. This isn’t the point of this. I'm just writing something. I'm not trying to be clever.” And it got a lot of positive responses.
Right.
And I couldn’t allow myself to look down at those people, because I knew that even though it was so-called effortless for me, that kind of writing has a place. That kind of thinking has a place. The kind of model for metal in that space, to me, is Devin Townsend.
Sure
Because Devin Townsend never acts like he takes anything seriously. It's always off, it's everything's a big fucking joke. The biggest example is, City, the Strapping Young Lad album. That album sounds like a fucking joke, and it sounds like he's making it, at times, at your expense, because you’re the simple death metal dude who likes that kind of stuff. And yet what he achieved, I think, is his album with the most reach. Everyone listens to City, from knuckle-head metalheads to intellectual prog-heads. So there's something about – I'm not saying not taking yourself seriously, I'm saying kind of go on “autopilot”
Yeah.
Trying not to interest yourself or stimulate or challenge yourself. Just go on autopilot and see what happens. This is obviously not meant as advice for you, because you don't need my advice, but I think I'm going to try to do that more, whatever it is.
I think I feel the same way, you know. Not to try and hijack what you're saying, but there are times, and it may be why I have any inkling of success in trying to create, you know, unlistenable music, is that, just like you, or any artist, you probably get tired of digging and trying. There are some days where it just clicks, and it’s effortless and you just write. Something. Or that you create something and everybody likes it and it fucks you up, because you’re like: “I spent all of this time on this one and you guys don't like that, but you like the one that took the least amount of time!” I think that's everybody. There are definitely songs on both of the records we've been talking about that are that, that I remember being like: “Well, this took no time at all” and ends up what people like, those moments that kind of serve as the glue for the parts that are really difficult to listen to. For me, personally.
Yeah. I think that for me the kind of autopilot sentiment suddenly dawned on me…. I have a very close friend, and when I tell him I appreciate him and that I love him, he's really happy. And I'm like “But, you know this! I hang out with you. I choose to spend my time with you. And yes, I may make snide remarks that kind of mask my emotions because I'm that kind of person, apparently…”
[Laughs] Right.
“ … but you could read through that, you could see through that and know that we're friends!” But then I saw what a difference speaking directly made for him, when I actually came out and said it, I was like: “Holy shit! People like it when you tell them how you feel!” I don't know why, but in my mind those two things are related, this and how you said you wouldn't write a simple song because then you would be at risk of exposing yourself as a hack or not being good enough.
Yeah, sure.
There's something about exposing yourself. This sounds very Therapy 101. But there's something about exposing yourself- everyone sees you exposed anyway. They see you anyway, so might as well fucking…. This is all very ironic because I'm writing a book right now, and believe me, it's not a one-hit wonder and it does not have verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and it makes Infernal Coil look like Britney Spears.
[Laughs]
So it's kind of funny how I'm not learning my own lesson right? I'm still digging. I'm still trying to find what this is all for. Which is OK, I guess, people do that. But I really wish I could just sit my ass down and write on autopilot about the language of “I love you.” There. I said it.
I do understand what you're saying. I get it.
I'm sorry [laughs].
No, you're fine. No, no.
I wanted to ask you, I want to ask you what part of The Blind Hole you were the most proud of, and actually you just said you were proud of the album. But is there anything that you love the most?
Jef [Whitehead], from Leviathan, and a lot of my friends that are in bands that I look up to, they all have this thing of: “Don't show your hand,” like: “Don't give them everything, leave it up to mystery.” As for me, I feel like that gets you pretty far, and some people that's just who they are: “I don't want you to know who I am, really.” But there have been a lot of people in my career that I've looked up to that I've met or heard things about that shed light on who they were as a person, and it doesn't make me like their music any less. It makes me wish that they would be a little bit more open and vulnerable. Because I feel like the whole point of creating art is, no matter the medium, to connect with other people that may resonate or need that.
So the thing I'm proud of the most regarding The Blind Hole and then following it with Within a World Forgotten is that it gave me an opportunity and time and space to feel wounds that I think a lot of people don't take the time of reflection to understand what they're feeling, why they're feeling, the impacts it has on others, the impacts has on you currently, holding all of that that facade up, you know, the mask. So, for me, I think the proudest thing is that it was a way for me to address…. For The Blind Hole, a lot of that is youthful trauma, early childhood trauma. A lot of it is based on, and not even really the subject matter of the lyrics in general, but the time around it was a way for me to have that angsty revenge of proving that I'm not what any of those old hardcore dudes called me or, or anybody who was like: “Oh, you need to have a fallback plan, you really don't know if you're good at music or not. That and in addition to really getting to the root of a lot of my own personal struggle, pain, whatever you want to call it, and kind of giving that out to the world. I don't know how many letters or how many people reach out to other people, or to bands that are really not about anything – and I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing – but I don't think Corpsgrinder gets messages like: “Man, that Vile album really got me through my childhood trauma.” I'm sure it did. to a degree, even having that release and not feeling weird, but I don't think that the subject matter of the lyrics is that relatable.
Yeah.
I don't think that that's the point. I think it's supposed to be abstract and fantastical. Whereas I feel like with both of those records, I've gotten a lot of people over the years that have said that same thing, and I'm more inclined to believe it because I hope that my lyrics are a little bit more down to earth or reachable. That's my hope, anyway. But I think that's my most proud moment. And with The Blind Hole specifically, turning people on to alternative mediums of extreme art that may be more discrete. You know, we're talking about simplicity in this whole conversation and putting that Jim Harrison reading at the end of “No Chain” – so many people have come up and asked who's that, and being able to open that door where there's more to extreme…. It's not always overt, it's not always adjacent. Sometimes you have to reach over several steps to cherry pick things that you can adapt and make people feel a little bit more comfortable in their skin. But those are the two things I think I'm most proud of with that record.
So to what extent…. This is going to be the last question.
[Laughs] Are you sure? We can keep going
[Laughs] I have to wake up at some point. No, but I wanted to say that to what extent do you feel like a lot of the stuff you had to work out or express was pre-known. So you kind of knew that that was the space you were in and that was kind of the energy you wanted to bring out, and to what extent was it after the fact realizing that's what happened?
I guess I didn't really think about it as therapeutic or healing at the time. It was more like unearthing a lot of the things. But it's also kind of been a rule in that band specifically to not talk about anything that you don't really know about. And so a lot of the subject matter is – all of the subject matter actually – is things that have really been felt or known by one of us. And so, obviously I knew what I was talking about, but I don't think I realized the impact it really made on me at the time. I think I was a little too preoccupied to really have that realization. There are a handful of instances on that record in which I was cognizant that this is something that I really want to say and really feel like I have to say, for my own sake. Obviously “No Chain” is the big one, but “The Pit of Me” is another instance where I really knew what I was writing and I really knew that it was therapeutic at the time. That it was healing, in some way or another.
I wonder about that. I mean, do you feel like it did that?
Yeah.
Or at least you got it out of your system or or something?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I don't know about other people, but for me, I've had a list of things that I wanted to do with in life and when I checked them off it's not like I'm satisfied, it's that I don't have to continuously go and go and go. With Dead in the Dirt, hypothetically, wishful thinking, if we ever were able to bridge the gaps, which I really hope that we will, just on a personal level. But if there was ever an instance…. Left for Dead is a perfect example. I think they thought nobody cared about their band, and then when they did those reunion shows and they're like: “Oh! It's not so bad to play music! Let's write a new record,” and that kind of thing. But so many years after the fact, I know there are things that I would like to have said and like to have done with that band and I'm sure Bo feels that same way. I'm not sure about Hank, but I know that we both have ammunition, so to speak [laughs], to put something together, or we could if the situation arose. But I do think that that in and of itself did provide maybe not closure, but a means to heal and to bring things to light that were shoved down for a long time.
That's an important thing.
I think so.
