The War Inside My Head: An Interview with Cabinet

Somewhere up in California's Mammoth Mountain, beyond the shadowy mists and through mighty snow storms, there's a dark cave in which foul odors will choke you and where gross, echo-y riffs hatch out of yellow-ish (maybe green?) reptile eggs. That's at least how I imagine the putrid nest that is Bloodymountain Records looks like. It probably looks somewhat different, but none of that matters. And what are Bloodmountain Records? Essentially the brainchild of Sxuperion AKA Matthew AKA M., an evil entity and also very nice dude that seems to function as a never-ending well of sick, from-outer-space-sounding and beautiful music. I first caught onto the ugly magic with the incredible 2002 Sxuperion album, Omniscient Pulse, that absolutely rocked my world with sickly, tastefully atmospheric death metal. It was one of my favorite albums of that year, and remains fucking amazing and totally unique. Since then, Matt and his darkened associates have continued to churn out ghostly excellence with projects such as Cabinet – who released an unbelievable new record this year – and Oreamnos, joining other existing projects such as Valdur, SAXP, and many others. If you've been reading this blog (!?) long enough, chances are you've seen some of those names before.

All of which led me to really want to pick the humid, rotted brain that either made or released so much incredible, varied, and, yes, sick, sick music. So, here we are! Below you can find the TWIYH interview as conducted with the aforementioned and brilliant Sxuperion AKA Mattew. Enjoy his musical obsessions and go support Bloodymountain Records in whatever ungodly endeavor their partake.

As always, check out my various interview projects and other cool shit. And if you'd like to keep abreast of the latest, most pressing developments follow us wherever I may roam (FALSE!) (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify and now also a tape-per-day series on TIK TOK!), and listen to my, I guess, active (?) podcast (YouTube, Spotify, Apple), and to check out our amazing compilation albums. You can support my unholy work here (Patreon), if you feel like it. Early access to our bigger projects, weekly exclusive recommendations and playlists, and that wonderful feeling that you're encouraging a life-consuming habit.

What was the first album you bought with your own money, and where did you buy it?

Iron Maiden’s Live after Death (double vinyl) at Tower Records in Bellevue, WA around 1985. I was 12-13 years old at the time, and it was almost an hour's drive from the rural area where my family lived (I think my brother drove me there). I had already owned records and cassettes that had been given to me as gifts because I was still so young. They were pop/rock records. I’m glad I hung on to all of them and it’s cool to put those old records on sometimes. Anyways, I had just become a metal head and I bought the Iron Maiden double album because it had two records, hah. Also the best cover art ever. Little did I know at the time that still to this day, it’s one of my favorite albums.

What 2-3 albums did you hear the most growing up?

This is hard to answer. There are too many. When I was young, it was all about radio rock and what everyone else was listening to. Like riding in my mom’s hatchback in central Oregon with ∫ or ABBA or some such thing playing on the 8-track cassette player. But once I got into heavy music on my own, it was on. AC/DC was kinda the gateway drug at first. I instantaneously got into Slayer, and Mercyful Fate’s In the Beginning and Melissa. King Diamond and Mercyful Fate were and still are really important to me. I also bought Metallica’s Ride the Lightning on vinyl with the Megaforce label logo on the back around the same time at that Tower Records in Bellevue. I still have that too. I was obsessed with that album. I grew up on early 80's pop music because it's what I knew before I got into heavy music. A good 80's pop song can still be fun and nostalgic to listen to. Destruction and Kreator were huge to me back then as well, and still are (the old stuff). I still have all my old metal cassettes and records from the 80's.  And lots of Rush because I started playing the drums around 11 years old.

What albums taught you the most about the technical aspect of making music?

Producing and mixing music really just takes hundreds of hours of practice and desire to get better at it.  When I first heard Iron Maiden before I bought that double album… a friend of the family up the dirt road behind our house (rural Washington state by now, early to mid 80's) had an 8-track cassette (not kidding) of The Number of The Beast I think? I remember hearing it for the first time and I couldn’t believe how much was going on with the music. I was captivated. Possibly my favorite deathmetal album ever would be Incantation's Onward to Golgotha. Being able to get into that album really opened my mind up to being able to dissect that heavy wall of sound. A great ambient style album that I learned a lot about layering and sampling from is The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld. An old friend of mine, who fell to his death in a climbing accident, he and I would play that album and drive through the high desert here in the Eastern Sierra and drink cheap beer (we'd also jam old Helloween – Walls of Jericho!) after a long day of running around in the high country being adrenaline addicts. The ambient layering, atmosphere and fade in/out’s of that kind of music helped motivate me to get into experimenting with the electronic/technical side of creating and mixing music. Sepultura's Beneath the Remains made a big impact on me. And lots of VoiVod.  I've been in a ton of bands over the years so just lots of practice with making songs as well as learning to produce and mix them on my own. Plus teaching myself how to do the artwork and layouts, I wanted to learn about every aspect of creating albums.

What is the last album that absolutely shocked you?

Deicide's Legion or Cannibal Corpse's Butchered at Birth. Since then nothing's really been that shocking. The first three Deicide albums are still some of my favorite albums ever. I remember I was living in Montana at the time, and I bought Butchered at Birth when it was just released, walking out of the record store with it in my hand, a little girl was walking in with her mother. She saw the cover art and screamed and cried, haha. I would put that album on and be freaked out at how brutal and gross it was.

What album relaxes you or centers you the most?

I am really into ambient/space ambient/drone music. I make my own as well (some of SXAP and the Spice Breather stuff). I really dig a lot of stuff on the Cryo Chamber label lately. Anything from Steve Roach, Brian Eno, etc. Robert Rich's Bestiary or Trances/Drones. I'm a huge fan of the Variant [echospace] stuff like Aurora's Dream and Deep Sky Network. Anything from NAMANAX and a huge nod to James Plotkin. Rod Modell's Mediterannea is amazing. I'll have that on repeat for hours. That album probably answers this question the best right now. Also something like Aphex Twin's "Stone in Focus" from Ambient Works always hits the spot. His ambient stuff is great, but much of his blip blop stuff, not so much for me. Although his "Milk Man" song is cool. Check out David Firth's animated version of Milkman on video, hahah.

What are the 2-3 albums you’ve listened to the most recently?

My winter job is operating a Piston Bully snowcat, grooming nordic and snowmobile trails in the backcountry lakes basin outside of Mammoth Lakes. So I'm just by myself into the late evenings in a huge snow tank plowing through the woods in snowstorms listening to music. Anything by Paysage D'hiver hits the spot. Azarath's Praise the Beast. Esoctrilihum's Eternity of Shaog is great.  Sedimentum's latest album is good stuff. Cerebral Rot. Cryptworm. That's some more recent stuff I'm throwing out there. Still always listening to the classics I grew up on: Bolt Thrower, old Morbid Angel, Incantation, Dismember, Archgoat, Godflesh, old Darkthrone, old Gorgoroth, etc, etc… thousands of bands, all of them!  Plus tons of ambient music.

 


What album is grossly underrated?

I have no idea. Sodom's Persecution Mania is a somewhat overlooked masterpiece. Or Voivod's Angel Rat? Mortician's Hacked Up for Barbeque?

What album would you recommend from your local scene?

I live in the small town of Crowley Lake at 8000 feet in elevation in the middle of a huge mountain range that's right near the Nevada border. I have a small house on two acres in the woods with creeks and all that. There is no metal scene here. In my live band, Valdur, we would play a couple times a year locally and everyone would come out of the woodwork like crazy, but otherwise it's all mostly quiet mountain towns around here (except for Mammoth Lakes where the ski resort is… it's a busy tourist town now).  Valdur would always travel out of town and go on tour to play. The music "scene" here is local mountain drunks or shitty bands from out of town that come through to play at one of the bars or up at the ski resort. It's mostly terrible dirt-twirl, bar band hippie shit or classic rock cover bands or ska-skank reggae or some such crap. Sometimes some OK music comes through the area, but it's rare. The closest city is Reno which is about three hours North. Sometimes killer bands will pass through there, like Incantation or something. Or we'll travel farther to Sacramento to see a show. L.A. is fun sometimes for shows. We have some good friends there in bands that we've toured with so it's fun to go to the big city and hang out for a day or two and see a good show a few times a year. But that's like a sox hour drive one way.  I mostly avoid urban areas anyways. Abhorrency from Sacramento rips!