Machine Music's Albums of the Decade: An Interview with Howls of Ebb
This is the 54th installment of the Albums of the Decade series of interviews. For the rest of the series go HERE.]
Artist: Howls of Ebb
Album: All of them
Year: 2014-2017
Label: I, Voidhanger Records
Favorite Song: I won't pick one and you can't make me
The Bare Bones: Howls of Ebb was a Dallas-based extreme metal band, comprised of Patrick Brown on vocals, guitars, and bass, and Rotten Bliss on drums.
The Beating Heart: In now quite long and storied history of this interview series, there have only been a few artists whose entire artistic output was, to me, so complete and indivisible that I couldn't just go ahead and pick an album (Markov Soroka and Oranssi Pazuzu come to mind). Howls of Ebb is one of those rare cases. For a tragically short span of just a few years, the Patrick Brown-led project emerged fully formed as one of the most idiosyncratic, original, and inspiring voices in all of extreme metal, producing two full albums, one EP (well, really an album, but whatever) and one split of immaculate, one-of-a-kind metal. The kind of music that not only serves jagged pleasure into your ear (creepy metaphor, but OK) but inspires you to create and teaches you an important lesson about the essential magic of originality.
All of this is very much a theme in this lengthy conversation I recently conducted with the aforementioned Mr. Brown, who is currently still at the top of his game with the new and brilliant Herxheim release. It's a theme because it was originality and both its values and setbacks that I had set to interrogate, resulting in what to me is basically a lesson in artistic integrity. So, read it. And listen to Howls of Ebb. It's good for you, in a bad way.
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. On to Patrick and Howls of Ebb.
Do you remember a time when you were a younger person, where you heard a song or an album, or saw a band live, or anything having to do with music that felt like it was changing how you thought what music can do? Usually when I ask this question, I'm interested in being scared because often we're talking about metal and hardcore, so being scared, I think, is core sentiment. But anything to which you had a very strong reaction. The reason why you focus on younger experiences is that I think it happens a lot – if you listen to a lot of music then you're surprised with music all the time. But I'm interested in an early moment of that.
Yeah, of course I do. You have several. It was an accumulation of instances where I came across music from kids my age, I'd say my very first experience with heavy metal, which did in fact scare me…. I think I was nine years old. And I went to this kid’s house that was in my class. When I went inside, he had a record collection at that time, I only had cassettes I was buying. I had Huey Lewis and the News and some kind of top-40 cassettes that my sisters would listen to.
And then I came to his house and I looked through his record collection and the first thing I saw was Twisted Sister. And I think it was called Stay Hungry, the album with the big hits. And I saw the cover of that and there’s this guy with this makeup, but he's eating off a bone and I just didn't know what to make of it. It startled me a little bit. Not so much “scary,” but it definitely shocked me, like: “What is this?”
The next album right after that…. Granted, this is when I was nine, so my memory of it is not going to be as factual as it probably happened, but this is how I am. And so I saw a Shout at the Devil by Mötley Crüe. The cover art of that is pretty sinister looking: black, red, I think there's a pentagram on the cover, if I remember correctly. On a fiber. Remember correctly. That jolted me a little bit [laughs], as in: “Are these dudes satanists?” Because back at that time there was the big push in America…. What was it called? The PMRC, and there was this big satanic panic going on. As a kid I only heard about it, but I was curious and I asked him to play it [laughs], and it sounded pretty cool. I didn’t really pursue it after that, there was no pursuing it until probably I was about 10-years old. In another school, a friend introduced me to Metallica. No, wait. AC/DC’s Back in Black. And that was great. I loved it. But then when I heard Metallica and Megadeth – their early recordings. That's when I became a metal head. That was where the transition occurred, when I heard those two bands.
I feel obligated to say, because it doesn't come up that much ,that you are currently speaking to one of the Megadeth heads in existence.
Well, my friend, the first four first four albums are amazing. So, yeah. I like them better than Metallica…
That is correct. I'm glad I made this phone call, that was just worth the whole call.
[Laughs]
But I just wanna make sure, because when you said you talked about Twisted Sister and Mötley Crüe you seemed to focus on the image or the visual thing, right?
It was more visual.
That you saw something that looked sinister, this dude whacked out, dude eating from a bone…
Yeah, Shout at the Devil was much more startling, though.
But, the Metallica and Megadeth thing was more the music, right?
Yeah, I didn't care about the aesthetics of those bands. It was about the music.
Do you remember what it was about the music that made it exciting for you?
Power. I felt a power, a strength, like a courage that I didn't have before. I grew up in a pretty…. This is more of a side note, but I grew up in a pretty ghetto area, so there was lots of crime. I got mugged, even as a little kid. So, I just felt stronger and more courageous. There's something about the music that gave me some sense of strength, whether true or false. Whether it was fast or not, that didn’t make a difference. The musicality of it, the brilliance of how easy it was just grasp onto and kind of understand very quickly, rather than somebody showing me, you know, a classical piece. As a kid, that's just gonna fly over my head.
So, there was an immediate connection, like an immediate emotional connection with the music?
Yeah. It was immediate when I heard Megadeth and Metallica…. I'd say Metallica first, Master of Puppets. But then, over time, I grew to see the nuance.
In one of the interviews I did relatively recently the person I talked with [Phil Tougas of Chthe'ilist, MM] said that as a younger person he was shown the Judas Priest live video, the live show, and he went on for a surprisingly long time about how cool they looked when they were playing. Not even about the music. I mean, the music was a very big part of it, but it was obviously also the appearance of it…
I can understand that. I never saw that as a child, but that's a good point. When you mentioned appearances, and I'm sorry to cut you off…
No, no, go ahead.
But this was in tandem with MTV's Headbangers Ball. So not only did I get to hear it, every Friday night or whatever – my friend and I, the one who introduced me to it, would watch the whole thing for the videos of, say, Megadeth’s So Far So Good So What album. They were fantastic on MTV.
Yeah, “In My Darkest Hour” was one of them.
Yeah, which is a bloody great song. And then of course, you had your Metallica’s “One” that was dreadfully overplayed, and then some Seasons of the Abyss. I love Seasons of the Abyss. I don't know why people don't like it.
Yeah. That’s my favorite Slayer album.
It's the pinnacle. You know, some old heads – I mean, I'm kind of an old head, but there are older heads than me, and they kind of felt they dropped off after Reign In Blood. And I can kind of understand that because I didn't start with Slayer from Show No Mercy, I started with Seasons in the Abyss, and so it was easy for me to love. It's the pinnacle because it combines Hell Awaits and Reign in Blood. And it doesn't feel like a repeat of anything.
I mean, it kind of in a way it kind of feels like a slight repeat of Hell Awaits, but in a good way. Maybe not a repeat, a refinement. But I agree with that completely. Not to nerd out completely, but that whole era had something about it. Not only the songwriting but how albums sound in the late 80s and early 90s, it just that sound was never replicated ever again. Nothing sounds like Rust in Peace or Seasons.
Well, it was the end of the analog era, before it all went digital. I mean you can hear that the next layer album sounds absolutely terrible, Divine intervention.
It sounds very different.
I talked about this with other mastering and mixing engineers and they said that's when re-amping became the big thing, after that era. Everything was re-amped and re-sampled to make it technically “perfect.” And so, these musicians go in and record, but in fact, with the sound of recording, that’s not what’s going to be on the record.
What I wanted to ask you. Obviously you’ve had a long arc as a musician, but did you feel like those two elements that we just discussed, the image and the power, were things that you felt were important for you to have in your music and your art?
The visuals were and are very, very important. And I learned that aesthetic from the band Order from Chaos, because I kind of grew up in their shadow. Seeing them play every weekend, we would go to their house and see them put together the layouts for the music. They were DYI on all of it, and so I got to experience their aesthetic. And that experience being with Order from Chaos and seeing all this cool art and layouts…. Anything prior to that, I was not into, but that and having to put a demo out and trying to do it ourselves with Nepenthe, it became almost like a secondary obsession, to make sure that visually it was powerful, and that it fit what we were presenting in the music. It's very difficult to find the right image to go with how the music presents itself. So that's really important. I'm constantly looking at art for my own enjoyment online, but while I'm doing that, I'm only going to look out for something that I could use potentially in the future.
It feels like a silly question, and I hope it isn't, but why is that? Why is it that you think the visual element is so important? Because, it is music after all, right? I could have just said: “The music is what matters, might as well put a blank cover on your album and whatever, and write Patrick brown” as the band name.” Why does it matter? Or, why does it matter to you?
Because it's cultural. If you were got an album with a black disc you might as well just download it as an MP3. I guess it's not for everyone, but for the few who actually buy hard copies, it's a historical artifact. You can hold it, you can touch it. And if you're going to go to those lengths to provide that historical artifact, why on God's earth would you want to make it ugly?
[Laughs]
For example, I'm a big classical music lover, and the greatest thing about being a classical music lover is that you can vinyl for $1.00 or $2.00 on Discogs. I've collected a lot of that and analyzed the graphic design. I look at the graphic design on all of them because it is very important, just simply because when listen to the music I'm looking at the album cover, they just go hand in hand. The written word, the presentation with all aesthetics of it, and the music. That’s a trinity of culture. Much like classical music works really well in Hollywood movies. They go hand in hand. You could take the lyrics out, that's fine, maybe there's no lyrics. But I just think a musical release that doesn't have a good look to it – that could be anything – seems like a waste.
I mean, it's not just that it's a good look, is it? It's that it's a look that fits the music, right?
Yeah, of course. If you're putting a Devo-style cover on a piano concerto it’s not gonna look good [laughs]. On a Devo album it would look great. But, yeah, this obsession with visuals came about when we released our first demo and being around those OFC guys, who were also obsessed with that. And I looked up to them highly and wanted to do something as well as what they did. Of course not copy it, but do it in our own way. Learning how to cut and paste, and going to Kinkos, which is now FedEx, and do transparents, and really doing graphic design, learning all that at 14 years old was really cool and very fun. I get an intense amount of enjoyment from that. I wouldn't do it if I didn't like doing it. I would just give you a black cover with just a logo. I do actually like a cover that just has a logo that's very powerful too, but I just enjoy it. It's very fun. You know, in this age I wouldn't do it and one could argue why even do it, because there's really nothing good that comes out and I don't say that I'm putting anything out of that, but I don't care because I enjoy it [laughs].
Going back to something you said before, you could argue that in this day and age it actually matters more. It's so easy to get swept up by the abundance of digital music everywhere that people really enjoy the “artifact” aspect of it.
I think in human nature it's just pleasing when we can see something that looks pleasing and hear it at the same time and it sounds pleasing. That's just human nature. I don't think that's anything special. You know, when you watch a movie and it looks pleasing, but the soundtrack or the sound of the effects is way off and not mixed right, it's not pleasing.
So I have a question about that, because I read there was an interview you did a while back [shout out to From the Dust Returned for a killer interview] – actually 10 years ago now already – that I like very much. And one of the things you mentioned there in terms of Howls of Ebb was that you felt like you wanted to do a different kind of music and that different kind of music had to have a different name. that the new kind of music requires a new name. Do you remember saying something or feeling something like that?
I don't recall that, but, but, yeah, I agree with whatever I said [laughs].
That’s all that matters. And this is kind of a continuation of the same conversation about the visuals, right? Because you said the visuals have to match the music, but is it also true that the music then has to match other aspects, like the name of the band, the lyrics, it all has to be one cohesive thing?
Yes. A singularity, kind of. It has to all be singular. It has to all fit together like a perfect puzzle.
And how do you know when it fits?
Instinct.
So you just know.
I don’t know until I do.
Does that involve trial and error?
Yeah. Visually, like I said, I keep looking. Keep looking. I'm always looking, because I never know what I'm going to like or what's going to fit in the future. Musically…. Well, that comes first, and then based on how I feel about that music I design everything based on that. I don't come up with a concept. Actually, that's not true, I've been doing that recently. But for Howls of Ebb everything started with the music, and then from there I just kind of searched for what I instinctively felt matched visually. The lyrical representation was wild and kind of hard to understand, like the music, but there was a message there. Everything centered around the riffs that I created, the sections I created. Like: “OK, I got one whole song. This is making me feel a certain way," and images and images and ideas just come to my mind. It’s a natural process. I just start seeing things or thinking about certain things and I go search for it or write it out.
So I want to read your own quote back to you, which is like a shitty thing to do, but it's not to embarrass you, just to kind of get to something that I'm very interested in.
Alright.
And this is from that same interview. This is your quote: “Although I always see my own material as nothing out of the usual, I do think of it as original. I do hear or read a lot of people saying Howls of Ebb is strange, weird, experimental, and crazy. But I think in this particular case, these are typical words to use when hearing something original, but not actually fully realizing it yet.. "
[Laughs] Sounded Like my ego was on “high” there for me to claim that I'm doing something original….
I have to say I didn't read it as a cocky statement. I'll tell you how I read it, and perhaps provide some empathy for your former self. I read it as: “Look, I'm just a dude doing stuff I like. And it has come to my attention through years of making music that the more I focus on what I uniquely like, the more the end result confuses other people. But I'm so pleased with my process that I don't really care how other people deal with it. But I'm just saying that what I'm trying to do is not be “crazy.” What I'm trying to do is not kind of be an intentionally difficult artist. I'm just doing what I like.” That's how I read it.
That's exactly how I feel.
So I didn't read it as a cocky thing. I read it as an interesting thing, because I have a lot of empathy toward that statement. I feel like myself about my own stuff, whatever it is you want to call it, that there's a lot of joy, that’s the word you used before and I'm going to use it again. There's a lot of joy in just allowing yourself the utmost freedom to find out stuff about yourself and what you like. But sometimes that joy leads to a product that other people might think is kind of crazy…. What’s that?
Yes, I'm in agreement with that. Yeah, that’s a true statement. It sounds like what’s happening to you…. It's strange, you know. When I create music, it seems absolutely yours. Like, when I hear the riffs I create or whatever may be, and then I'll present it to the label or something or to my friend – my friends kind of know what to expect from me, so they don't want to use those words so much. But, if it's somebody that's not used to what I do they go: “Oh, this is very weird, and unorthodox, and avant-garde.” And I'm like: “What are you talking about? Avant-garde? No, please don't use that word” [laughs]. Because I'm just thinking this is just normal. I mean, this is what I’m used to. And so I've grown to accept it. It took me a while, and I thought “What are you talking about ’It's weird'? What does that mean? It's normal!” And then after a while I finally realized, yeah, I guess I do make weird unorthodox music for the discerning ear, and I just went: “OK, that's just the way it goes.”
Obviously that series of choices has side effects, right? You're not going to be headlining a major festival anytime soon, I don't think.
Which isn’t something I ever wanted to do, so I don’t care about that.
Well, in case you were after that, then I have some bad news. But, I mean, it's not necessarily the headline gig, but – and you don’t have to agree with this – but we all create things and to varying degrees would like our art to be appreciated by someone…
Oh, of course. When an artist says “I don't care if anybody likes my music,” I think there's some denial and mis-truth in that statement. Because we frankly have egos, and whether it's big or small, there always is this yearning of knowing that others appreciate it and enjoy what you've created. That's just human nature. And to say: “Oh, that doesn’t apply to me,” that’s just false bravado. Unless they’re not human, which I think they are. They're presenting an image, and that's fine. But yeah, of course, it's a difficult…. I've come to terms with that issue. It used to bother me. Back in that time, I think I was more sensitive to how people were labeling Howls of Ebb and my disagreements with. I kind of interacted more than I would have now.
Howls of Ebb became quite a success, to my surprise I was like: “OK, so this weird, unorthodox thing is something people like, and that’s great,” whether they call it “weird” or “progressive” – that’s another word I don’t like, or “avant-garde” – because those are none of my intentions. But that's fine if they're enjoying it. The realization I got was if they're enjoying it, what difference does it make what they call it?
I guess I wonder if there was ever a point where you had to also come to terms with not just how people called your music, but that you are kind of capping your audience in a way.
Oh yeah, the niche of the niche [laughs].
Yeah, that part.
I just have to accept that. I mean, I just came to the realization that whatever comes out of me is always going to have a limited audience.
The reason why I asked about the capping of the audience and about miscategorization and all that stuff was because…. I'll tell you what I feel when I listen to your music in general. I think a lot of your music fits into this, but Howls of Ebb and, and by the way, the most recent Herxheim which is probably my favorite from that project and my favorite by you since Howls of Ebb…
Are you talking about the most recent one, the EP?
Yeah, I got the promo. I love it. It's amazing. And so one of the things I feel like…. Do you know Virus?
Oh yeah, I loved their first album and second album.
So Virus and Howls of Ebb kind of live in the same building in my mind, in a way.
I’ve heard that before, yeah.
The reason I say it, I don't know why other people say it, I think part of it has to do with the fact that you're not afraid of spacey, clean-note heaviness, that you're not afraid of the quiet part, and you're not afraid to be creepy through those quiet parts. Sometimes the more subdued moments are the ones that are actually frightening. And I think that's kind of all a Virus, basically – all Virus to me sounds like someone is about to kill you and there's no heavy music in the background whatsoever.
Is that your impression? That's an interesting impression, that’s totally different than mine.
About Virus you mean or about just in general?
I never got that sense when I listened…. and I love Virus' first two albums. I've never gotten that feeling.
It just feels like…. It's not full-on attack metal, it's not trying to be heavy. It's just….
It doesn’t even sound like metal to me…
No, exactly. But it is sinister.
It is, yeah, you got that right. Well, yeah the minor chords and the vocals. Yeah. I mean, it's all minor. They're using minor black metal chords, but in a more kind of punchy way.
Yeah, I don't know what the fuck that means, but yes. So that kind of punchy way, that kind of weirdness they have is something that I feel very personally about. Like when I listen to Virus and Howls of Ebb, it feels like someone has a map of my brain. And is kind of using that map to talk to me, personally. It doesn't feel like “weird music,” it feels deeply personal. It feels like I'm talking to someone who gets me, even though that sounds like a very cliched statement, right? But it feels like a conversation that I very much enjoy having. And one of the reasons Howls of Ebb reminds me of Virus is in that all that meandering feels very cohesive. So, you said that you do whatever you want to and pursue your own artistic ends and it comes out the other side being that thing people call “weird,” right? But to me it feels like the map of a country. All those different spaces, they share a relationship with one another, everything makes sense, and it's kind of weird to say that because a lot of the parts of the music don't sound like each other at all. The music is very eclectic. But despite the fact that it's eclectic, it feels unified in some strange way. And I was wondering. How is that unity achieved? One possible answer to that question is that it's all coming from you, and since it's coming from you and you're the one writing the songs it makes sense that it would have a sense of cohesion. But I was wondering if there is something about the process for you that also involves a kind of editing or reverse editing that ensures that the parts fit together. Does that make sense at all?
Yeah. What you just said, right there. That’s it. And I know what you're getting at, and this is extremely important to me. It's one of the things I obsess about the most, the cohesiveness of the songs as a whole. And I will relentlessly revise, revise, revise, redo, redo, redo, take a break, try something totally different, trash that, go back and revise. And then once I feel like I got something…. So yeah, sometimes it takes hundreds of revisions.
And you're talking about revisions on the level of a complete track or even just sections of a track?
I'll come upon a part where I get stuck, and what I do, to a fault, is I push it too hard and then I end up going into other areas I feel do not represent where I'm trying to go with it, as a whole, for the entire work. So I'll trash it and start over again, until I get an instinctual feeling that I'm going too far. There's a very specific line in my mind of: “OK, I've gone too far out of the bounds that I feel are acceptable.” And if it has approached the progressive point of blending too many styles intentionally, that's bad, and I pull back. And that’s a simple matter of feeling when I've gone too far, and I usually know pretty quickly. Sometimes not. Sometimes I'm stubborn and I keep pushing and pushing, because I like the riff so much and it's so fun to play, but in the end I come to terms with and say: “Look, this isn’t it. It's just a smidgen off. It's just one or two degrees dissatisfactory.”
With Howls of Ebb I gave myself a wide berth, wider than Herxheim. For Herxheim I was very singular, I was very strict with how far I could go. But with Howls of Ebb, each release I set kind of a very loose boundary once I made a song that I liked that I felt I wanted to run with to build off the rest of the album. That I have a sound and a style, and parameters kind of already set before I even begin writing. And then once I get a song I really like that stays within there I build the rest of the work based on that song and the kind of vague vision…. Actually, it's not quite vague. I have a very…. I can't say it in words, but I have a very instinctive feeling of what I want to accomplish and of the boundaries I can't cross.
I mean you said something about going too far, is there or not going far enough?
Yeah, that's the challenging part. You know, I don't want to just put down a riff that just works. That's the thing I dislike most about metal musicians is you can tell when there's filler jiff just to make the song. I don't want to put just any puzzle piece in there that fits. It has to have a purpose. I mean, every piece of the song has to have a purpose. It can't just be a bridge for the sake of a bridge. If I gotta do a bridge right there, it's got to be really good, or else change the song.
Man. You know, in writing there's this basic idea of numbered drafts. That the first draft is just you writing whatever, and the second draft is you kind of going over it and seeing if it could be better. And then the third and fourth draft, are you – I'm talking about creative writing now – going: “Maybe there is a good idea somewhere towards the end that really should inform everything, not just the end,” so it's really going back and kind of rethreading the fabric of the entire thing so that everything that is good about it is throughout and not just in pieces, and that there's also kind of a new relationship between the parts. So it doesn't just feel like a random collection of paragraphs, there's actually something cohesive about it.
And for whatever reason Howls of Ebb made me think of that. I just gave you kind of the metaphor I gave you about Virus, that it feels like a map to my brain, right? And so that's a very organic kind of a feeling. As if it sprouted like that from the ocean, type of feeling. But then the more I thought about it, the more I thought about it in terms of knowing I was going to talk to you, I was like: “But that doesn't work that way, does it?” It rarely works like that. Usually if you feel that kind of a strong sense of cohesion, that's intentional. That's someone working very hard for you to feel that sense of cohesion. And since I'm writing right now, I'm always writing, but I'm kind of struggling with how much to take seriously the idea that whatever it is that I have to do that is good has to happen “naturally”? Just has to kind of flow out of me. And if it didn't flow out of me, then I'm not going to use it. And then I find that that's a bad instinct that I need to resist and I think this conversation is only strengthening that idea, that I need to be a better editor than I am to myself. Because it really requires, you know, being relentless, as you put it. And sometimes I'm chickenshit. Sometimes I don't want to chop off things I like.
Well, sometimes you have to chop off the things you like for the sake of the whole.
Yeah, that's true. But none of it comes easy, so you know, finally you get something you like, and then throw it out. That's a horrible feeling.
But you could save it. See, that's the beauty of…. You still created it.
Yeah.
Save it, save it for…. I mean, and I know this is you talking about writing writing, not musical writing, but the same principle applies, I would imagine
I think so.
I’m not a writer. But I certainly do write in the sense that I write lyrics and I write concepts and ideas, and I save them. And there have been times where I've had to dump lyrics that I thought I was going to use for an album that just totally did not work and I had to redo the whole thing. But I kept it for later.
I guess it takes a while until you realize that you're the final arbiter of everything. That this thing is going to be as good as you want it to be.
Yes and no. I give myself the allowance I give, but there is a point of madness where you have to stop.
The editing, you mean?
Yeah. And when I begin questioning myself: “Could it be better?” And then the simple question I ask myself is: “Do I like this?” And if I like it and it feels right then, and that comes down to a trust of instinct and knowing when to stop. And and and it will take long breaks and letting the mind settle and not be so obsessive about it and almost forgetting about it. I like to forget what I did. I'll come back to it a month later and totally forget what this all was, and then listen to it, because that's the only time I have the most unbiased way of looking at it is, when I nearly forget what I wrote. Because then it hits me like a fresh listen and I'll immediately hear where the problems are and what I don't like and I'll just cut them, delete them.
And do you have anyone other than yourself that you trust for that job?
No. Not for that early in the game. I only present things to people when they're…. And they're are only one or two people that I would say to: “Here's the song, I have this new idea.” Usually it’s the same kind of feedback: It's pretty cool. That's good.”
[Laughs] “It’s pretty cool” is funny.
I never get the feedback I expect to get. The one I like the most is “That sounds good!” I'm like: “Well, that's not helpful! I sent this to you so you can critique it!” [Laughs]
[Laughs]
They're my friends, and, hey, I can't expect them to take time out of their day, and so I stopped doing that because I just purely go with instinct. In Howls of Ebb I did more so than I do now. But, yeah. If you can find the right person that gives you the right feedback that you're hoping them to give you, I think that has value. But it's gotta be somebody that knows what they're talking about. That's hard to find. That's like a Unicorn person.
The thing about Howls of Ebb is that I'm not going to be able to talk about one single album because I feel like it's an experience. Those releases, I feel like they're interconnected. I can't really separate them. But one of the things that's interesting about Howls of Ebb as an entity is that from the very first note of the first album it was there, whatever “it” is. It was immediately present. It was mature and ready from the get to. Now, if I wanted to be a detective about it then I could say, well, you know, parts of it were already in stuff like King Carnage and parts of it were in Trillion Red, and I could see where it kind of ends up where it ends up. But it's like this definitive line that starts in the first note of Vigils of the Third Eye, this completely new thing is just right there. All there and it's there all the way up until the end. Which I guess begs the question, why did it even end? But that's a personal question, you don't have to answer that.
I'd be happy to.
OK, so answer that – why did it end?
Because, well. After the split that we did with Khthoniik Cerviiks – actually those four songs are probably my favorite Howls of Ebb songs, along with The Marrow Veil. And I really love those four songs. I began writing more and it got naturally kind of too bizarre.
Too bizarre?
Yeah. Well, there's two parts to this. One is that I felt like I did what I could do with that kind of – I don't even know how to describe it – wildness? Adventurous type of fantastical music? And I felt like: “That's enough,” you know? Because if I were to do it more, I just didn't want to do it then. I felt like if I released something else out of Howls of Ebb, yeah, people might like it, but I kind of felt like it was at an end. And once I feel that if I push through and try and make more stuff, it's not gonna come out the same, once I get that feeling -it's time to stop. I just don't like that, I'm done with this. I want to do something more straightforward and simple.
And that's why, you know, when I started writing for Herxheim, I was kind of yearning for my earlier years, as a young teenager. I just felt like doing something a little more…. Maybe it doesn't come across as straightforward to people, maybe it does, but in my mind I had to do something more straightforward and nastier.
I think it definitely comes across as straightforward, up until the current release. The current release sounds a lot more like Howls of Ebb. Not that it sounds exactly like it, but there's something about the energy…. I'm already embarrassing myself here on many counts, but one of the things that I felt that were singular about Howls of Ebb was what felt like stifled energy, pent-up violence. There are those creative flourishes and the weird turns that are kind of expressive, and they are, but they also felt like there was more beneath it, like an iceberg. As crazy as the stuff you can see is, there’s stuff you can’t see and it’s crazier.
Huh, interesting.
And actually, I wanted to ask you about that through a song lyric. So I'm going to read a text to you again, OK?
OK.
This is from “7 Ascetic Cinders, 8 Dowries of gA'nOm” off of Cursus Impasse.
Depriving depravity
A strobing irony in the loom
Seeking billows of cataclysm
Flickering the beguiling paths of doom
Shadows strafing in billows of light
For true vision to take shape
One must practice the Denial Rites!
Now, to me, what that text refers to is almost a negative energy. Like, you know what negative theology is?
No.
Negative theology is a weird, esoteric stream of, whatever, medieval and then later Christianity that believed that anything you could say about the divine is in what you can't say about it. So it's a kind of belief through withholding.
Well, asceticism in and of itself is an intentional discipline of withholding as a form of sacrifice.
Yes.
Why would you call that negative?
No, not negative as in as in as in “not good,” negative theology is the term, it's not my term. Say, a positive or expressive theology would be something ecstatic, right? You're glorifying the divine by expressing its glory, whereas the other way goes: “Well, I can't say anything about the divine, I'm limited, and the best thing I can do is what you just said, right? Something like offering a limit as a form of sacrifice.
Yes.
And that feels Howls of Ebb to me in a way. Which is kind of strange, I guess, because if you played Howls of Ebb to my mom she would not think of it as withholding anything. She would think of it as weird-ass music made by weird- ass people that probably should be committed. No offense, right?
[Laughs]
But to me it feels withholding. It feels like a lot of the power of that project is this kind of: “I'm only showing you a part of something.” I don't know if any of this makes sense.
It makes sense what you're saying. It's interesting to me, I've never thought of it that way or…. It's an interesting idea. I have to examine it, because there may be some truth in it and I haven't….
Or maybe not, maybe not. I just…. You know, in the same way when we talked about Virus you said they were using the same minor chords, but punchier, then at the same time they're also less distorted and less, you know, violent in that way.
Oh, OK. So, the withholding in this sense – I see where you're going with this and maybe I'm off base, but what I love about that aspect of making something that is truly powerful but not using the standard methods to do so.
Even to the extent of intentionally not doing those.
The absence of it.
Yeah.
The ebb and flow of it, that what's not said is equally as powerful as what is said. Sometimes what's not said is more powerful than what is said.
Exactly.
I'm a big believer in that philosophically and in every aspect of my life. You know, there are classical pieces that are way heavier than any metal I've ever heard.
I'm starting to learn that in the last two years of my life, yeah.
Yeah, the heaviness of it and the power of it. And it's taken me a long time to get to that point as well. I didn't take to classical music naturally, it was just over time. But you could arguably say it cannot be surpassed. And no electrified instrument or no methodology is ever going to be able to replicate that, and that's purely instrumentation from an orchestra. So, yeah, the power of the music has nothing to do with the Metallica power or the great power or the bestial black metal power. It has everything to do with the way it's expressed, whatever instrumenting you’re using. It's the absence of and the presence of, and there has to be a dynamic. If there's no dynamic, you lose the power. If there's no soft then there's no loud. I mean, if it's just all loud or it's all soft. At that point I wouldn't even call it power, you have an ambiance. So, bestial black metal to me is just an ambiance.
So you said you just relatively recently got into classical music, but do you feel like….
No, not recently. I got into classical music when I was about 18.
Do you know the band Disembowelment?
Yeah, sure.
So I did an interview with Renato. He's the guy who was the vocalist, and he wrote a lot of this stuff. And I said to him something like: “Look, some of the craziest parts on the album are when you're just strumming clean notes on the guitar and then growling over it.”
Yeah!
And then I said: “Where the fuck did you even come up with something like that? That was the era of death metal as this ultra-aggressive thing. Where are you coming off bringing these open, acoustic parts?” And he said: “Well, you know, I don't listen to only metal.” It was a little more elaborate answer than that, but he said basically: “I listened to Dead Can Dance and, whatever, Chameleons UK and I listened to stuff and I liked it, and so I thought maybe I could put it there and maybe it would fit there,” and kind of unintentionally bringing a whole new dynamic into what could be a very one-note kind of music. So I was wondering, I was wondering whether the inspiration to do that, to create that dynamic, do you think that came from non-metal sources?
Yeah. Definitely.
Classical music?
Well, there was a hiatus about…. I wouldn't even call it a hiatus, I just stopped listening to metal after 1996. The second wave [of black metal] just got really regurgitated and cliche already – within just two years there were just replicas of replicas. And death metal got kind of meh. I still think 1996 was the pinnacle of metal, and thereafter it kind of went downhill. But, so after that I stopped listening to metal, and that’s when I really kind of picked up a lot of…. I lived in another country and there was a place where I could buy musical CD's, pirated musical CD's, for a dollar a piece, so I would just pick up a bunch of stuff. And in college, of course, I took music class and got introduced to a lot of composers like Debusy and Wagner. So for a period of 10 years I was not listening to metal. I was just listening to classical music, some old rock, anything. I found Sonic Youth and I found the very first live album, which is disgustingly evil.
Sonic Youth is one of the best bands of all time.
I have it on vinyl, Sonic Death. It's the best work they've ever done. I mean, it's so nasty. It's so cool, and all the power in that band – in this particular recording, I'm not saying I like all Sonic Youth, I'm just talking about this particular recording – it was so dynamic, and the way Thurston Moore used his guitar to make noises and make music out of noises. And he used a Jazzmaster, and I was like: “Man you could do that with a Jazzmaster?” I bought one. I'm left-handed, so it was hard for me to find one, I got it in Japan, and I learned how percussive and how dynamic that guitar is.
It's one of the most amazing guitars ever made because of how finicky it is, and how percussive and how dynamic you can play. In fact, that guitar is the one I played on Howls of Ebb.
No shit!
Yeah, because of how dynamic it is. You know, once you're an established guitar player, it's easy to lay off on the pick and you can use your fingers instead of picking and it responds exactly how you want it to respond, because it's such a dynamic, percussive type of guitar. Very finicky, but once you learn how to use it, it takes a couple years to really learn how to use that guitar properly, then you can create a lot of what I thought was really cool with Sonic Youth, on that particular release.
By the way, a fun fact, which isn't really fun at all, – the reason I write this, whatever, zine or blog is because I was just completing my 10 years of not listening to metal.
Really? You did the same thing?
Yeah. My break was from around 2000 to 2009.
So we’ve taken very similar paths.
Yeah. And I think a lot of people were kind of sick of metal for various reasons in the late 90s, early 2000s. And when I got back, I didn't even get back to listening to just metal, I still listened to a lot of the old stuff I listened to, but I started writing the blog in 2010. And one of the main reasons was that I started listening to bands that were kind of heavy, but they weren't heavy metal in the same way that I was listening…. So, if the late 90s was me listening to Megadeth and Emperor, the early 2010s was me listening to Cobalt and ISIS, so a different kind of heavy. You know what you said before about how you walk away from your music and then you return it, it's like you're objective about it. So it's almost like I did that to metal as a genre. I kind of walked away from it and then returned, and then, like: “Man, I might like different things about this now. I still like the power and the violence, but I like them packaged differently or whatever.” So, end of fun fact. Do you feel like that non-metal thing was filtering into the dynamics of Howls of Ebb?
Oh Yeah. When I learned there were various other forms of music…. And not to say, you know, there’s very dynamic, great music in metal. For example, one of my favorites is Rotting Christ’s Passage to Arcturo. That's a very dynamic, cool album, and the power in that music is in the mysticality, but also it hits hard when it needs to hit hard and lays off when it needs to lay off. So, I don't mean to come across as saying that all metal is flat and singular and doesn't have dynamics, but rather that I learned there was an even wider or broader way of approaching it. And still being powerful and heavy.
So, I I sent you two images on your WhatsApp.
Yeah, that Sonic Death one and Shiner’s Lula Divinia.
Yeah. Those two albums really made me want to start writing again. And you'll probably hear that more in the Trillion Red, because when I first started coming back to music and writing again I wasn't interested in writing metal.
That Trillion Red thing – you need to do more of that. That was amazing.
Oh, I'm a terrible little singer. No one liked it.
I liked it. It's great.
Well, we probably have a similar….. I don't like it anymore cause I couldn't believe I tried to sing and it just sounds terrible. But you’d be surprised what's cooking down the pipeline. So I'll tell you about what I'm working on. Later, when you're ready to kind of give you a glimpse of where I'm headed and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Given that I like Trillion red?
No, it's not going to be Trillion Red. But we can talk about it later, I want to get to your questions.
I mean, I don't know if you caught on to the nature of this beast, but these are the questions [laughs].
Yeah, I was going to ask how you’re going to edit all this
I'm not going to. I'm absolutely not going to edit any part of it. That's the whole idea.
Oh, so you just write this out at.
I mean, I might make adjustments here and there to make it flow better, but basically – yes.
OK I trust you'll make the right calls.
Thank you. I appreciate it very much. I wanted to ask one last question. We never really got to talking about any specific Howls of Ebb album, and I actually feel good about that, because that would not have worked. Just because it all just fits too nicely together. But, given the fact that you chose that that was not something you wanted to do anymore and that that era of your life is basically done, is there anything about that project that time in your life, the albums you made that you're especially proud of? A song, an album, the whole feel? Is there anything about that project that you look back on and, despite your impulse to edit everything, say: “I'm happy about that”?
Most proud of…. Hmm. I could tell you which ones I enjoy the most.
That works.
That's a good question. If someone were to ask me now: “What should I listen to?” that would be, I guess, actually the two that I'd be most proud of would be The Marrow Veil and our side of the split with Khthoniik Cerviiks
Why?
The Marrow Veil came out totally different than what I expected. I don't listen to any of this stuff at all, but the last time I heard it was maybe about two years ago. Somebody told me it was on Spotify and I listened to it just because I was on my laptop and I was like: “Wow, this is really fantastical, kind of a long epic journey.” More so than I realized. Because, it takes time. It takes maybe 5 to 10 years before I can listen to something that I've created and give it any form of fair objectiveness, without the memories of the critiques. But those two would strike out in my mind as the two I would be the most proud of.
Just as a general question: Why don't you listen to your music?
Because I heard it so much and once I get done with the final product, I'm sick of it.
But, years later, aren't you interested to take a listen and see how it feels like?
It feels…. What's the word I'm looking for? Too self-involved…. It just doesn't feel right to me. I'm not very curious about that. I'm not wondering about that. I'm always thinking about what I'm doing next.
Yeah. That makes sense.
What's done is done. It's out in the world. I let it go. It's its own thing now. I don't own it really anymore, because I’ve changed. I mean, I wrote it, but I don't feel a desire to revisit it. To see how I think about it now, even though I could if someone asked me: “Hey, what do you think about it now?” I could do that for somebody, but I wouldn't take it upon myself to do that. It’s kind of icky.
[Laughs] Icky?
Yeah, I feel it kind of feels icky listening to my own stuff.
I can see that. I'm not going to read anything I wrote.
I’m not comfortable. I feel like it's too self aggrandizing or too self indulgent. That might be the word. It feels too self indulgent and it feeds into my ego and then I start thinking again about the critiques and I don't want to feel that.
The reason I ask that is because the most I've learned – not about what I write and how I write, but the most I've learned about myself was through other people reading my stuff and their questions about it. I guess that in a way kind of answers my question, because that does not require me listening to it or me reading it, just listening to other people react to it. But I feel like that has always been very productive for me. Not everyone, but some people have very good questions. Sometimes you meet someone and they ask a question about what you did and you're like: “Huh, I never thought of that. And that could later on turn into something that's productive for you, say, when you create something.
There's also an inherent danger to it, too, because what I've come across recently with Herxheim was that I forgot about riffs I had written in the past, and it comes out in expression with a new idea, and I think it's new, but then I'm like: “there's something wrong. I feel like I've done this before.” There's something in the back of my head and I have to go back and check Howls of Ebb and then go: “Oh, yeah, that's that freaking riff”
[Laughs]
That's the riff that I wrote for that. Basically, not necessarily exact, but the same feeling, same kind of progression. Even if it remotely resembles or mimics that I just won't use it. So that's the only downside of not listening back to my music, because I don't like to repeat myself again.
