Thrall Interview is up

http://www.thrallofvoid.com/

1. For those new to Thrall, give us a brief history of Thrall and your experimental black metal sound...

T. Thrall was originally a solo project known as Thy Plagues. In this form I recorded the Wrath Eternal demo on a Yamaha MT4X. Only 20 copies were ever released. After playing Wrath to Alex Pope (of Ruins) he invited me to perform live alongside Ruins, Psycroptic and ABC Weapons. At this time I enlisted Em to play bass. Trent Griggs offered to record us after seeing one of these rare shows. During the recording process many of the songs were reworked (Enormous Night, Black Hearts… Burn!), and some new material was written in the studio (To Velvet Blackness, Robe of Flesh). The project may have never ventured ‘out of the bedroom’ if it wasn’t for Alex, Trent and Em. I decided to change the project name from Thy Plagues to Thrall due to the shift in scope and style of the project.

In 2008 Em and I moved to Osaka, Japan. During our 2 years in Japan we wrote material for our sophomore album, Vermin to the Earth and played numerous shows in Osaka and Kyoto. Chew from Corrupted introduced us to Ippei Suda at LM studio where we tracked the drums for Vermin.

E. We then returned to Tasmania to finish tracking vocals and guitars with Trent again. It came out pretty well, and captures what we had been working on in Japan pretty well.

T: Thrall’s sound is the melding of many musical influences. Thrall is primarily intended to be dark and hypnotic.

E. Tom has really broad musical tastes and influences, whereas my interest in other people’s bands waxes and wanes – to the point where I will sometimes stop listening to music altogether for months at a time. Sometimes I think stopping the chatter of other people’s influences in my mind helps me distil my ideas.

2. You were working with Total Holocaust, and now have signed with the mighty Moribund.  How did you come to work with them?

T. Actually, Away from the Haunts of Men was released by both Total Holocaust Records and Moribund Records; and Vermin to the Earth will be released worldwide by Moribund Records, with the exceptions of Australia and New Zealand where it will released by Obsidian Records.

E: It was a case of sending demos and seeing who wanted to license the albums – both of which we self-financed. We DIY everything we can and keep our creative team close to us.

3. On your last album Away from the Haunts of Men - Tom, you did this solo.  Now, with new album, you're a duo.  What made you to add another member to the project?

T. It was intended for Em to play on the first record, much to my regret things didn’t go as planned.

E. I was very busy at the time and was unable to attend the necessary tracking session. Now that I’m playing drums Tom can’t substitute for me!

On the next album (Aokigahara Jukai) we intend to use the live line up in full. The creation of a full Thrall lineup is a natural development that we have been careful and methodical in progressing. Ramez and Leigh really add to the creative back and forth and I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather play with.

T: Yeah, after many years trying to find the right members we finally have a four-piece line-up that includes Leigh Ritson (ex - Disseminate) on bass and Ramez Bathish (ex – Whitehorse, ABC Weapons, War Widow) on second guitar. Ramez and I previously played together in a grind/crust band back in the 90s when I was still primarily a drummer. Leigh became our live bass player in 2010 and this year Ramez became our additional live guitarist. I am very pleased to have a full lineup. I now have the opportunity to write songs in a less restricted form, and realise them more fully live.

4. Is it hard to perform live as a duo, or do you bring session members to perform as well?

T. Performing as a duo was very portable for touring, but also very restrictive in terms of song writing. When one rhythm guitar has to carry the entire melodic and harmonic content of a song (other than drums) it is so restrictive. The first two Thrall records are in part defined by this limitation. Live, I used to use a line splitter to play through several amplifiers each with different gain and effects chains in order to fill out the sound. We’ve previously used live guests such as Rob Crompton on bass in Japan and Trent Griggs on additional vocals in Tasmania.

5. Your music seems to have a mix of post-black metal, doom, hardcore and crust elements.  How did you come to this very interesting sound?

T. In short, naturally. I’ve previously played guitar, bass and drums in 20-30 bands of varying styles.

E. This is my first metal band. Feels like a total musical re-birth, deliberately playing within a genre and being faithful to it. It’s a fine balance. On the one hand, having the provenance that we do, it is only natural that some of the music of our former lives has snuck into Thrall - but we try to colour within the lines. I love black metal, and that is the music I want Thrall to play. I don’t want Thrall to just turn into some punk rock in long robes and corpse paint, or psychedelic post-rock shoe gaze with screamy vocals. I like black metal because the music’s got grit. It’s got aesthetics. Why fuck with the formula until it’s no longer the thing you liked in the first place? But conversely, why make music that sounds just like another band? There’s a fine line between being too experimental as to become irrelevant, and being so in-genre that you become a clone. Either way, we are very deliberate about what we put in and what we leave out of Thrall.

T: We throw out at least a third of our material before recording. We’re selective and deliberate. We’ve experimented with adding even slower tempos and d-beats but so far the balance has remained fairly consistent.

6.  What are your thoughts on the modern digital age? Do you miss print zines, CDs, tapes and radio, or are you fans of webzines, digital audio and social networking?

T. Yeah, I definitely miss getting my hands on a nice shitty photocopied zine like Slayer for example. I have mixed feelings about the modern digital age. Thrall would probably still be entirely unknown without the Internet. In general, the current state of play for musicians is very grim indeed. Most of us have to hold down-down jobs that we despise in order to support ourselves, scrape together meager savings to finance our recording/touring activities, as well as put in the dedication required to maintain a band. Musicians are expected to self-finance the production of their music so that ungrateful cunt-holes can steal the fruits of their labours for free via downloading. I have no problem with downloading a band to ‘try-before-you-buy’ - that’s sensible, but if you like a band, especially a small band, you should fucking well show support and buy their work if you can. Sometimes it’s not possible to buy a band’s music, and in that case I see no problem with downloading it. It’s sad to see so many amazing record stores closing down, and the milieu associated with these stores is left somehow poorer as a consequence. However, there are some over-priced assholes in retail that need putting out of business.

The prices of CDs, LPs and musical equipment are insanely inflated in Australia and New Zealand due to high shipping costs, overblown taxes and high retails mark-ups. Seriously, people in North America should really appreciate how good they’ve got it! I can order an amp from abroad, pay extortionate shipping rates, plus the cost of having voltage changed, and I still end up paying less than half as much as retail in Australia.

Another issue for Australian musicians is impact the current liquor licensing laws. These laws have put ridiculous financial pressure on venues, and in turn, on bands. Add to that a relatively high proportion of exploitative booking agents and venue owners and all of these factors/forces go a long way toward making sure that bands get ripped off. Don’t get me wrong they’re not all bad.

Getting my music out there is more important to me than the format, but the format is also important. I’m a physical person, I used to be a sculptor, and I much prefer having an artifact, such as a beautiful gatefold vinyl cover. There would be ecological and financial advantages to purely digital releases, but they just don’t have any ‘magic’ or ‘ritual’. Vinyl baby, all the way.

E. …not to mention the improved fidelity and harmonic range. My Dad was an obsessive record collector, and some of my earliest memories are of him teaching me how to flip through the bins, gently unsheathe the vinyl and check the play surface… He had over 4,000 records when he died, but the roof leaked when he was sick and by the time we were going through dividing up his possessions, they’d all gotten wet and were ruined. I still have a few of his old records that luckily hadn’t gotten mouldy yet, but it’s nothing compared to what he had. They’re amazing artifacts… There’s power in those grooves. Ain’t no power in some corrupted, digital popping and clicking, piece of shit mp3. “I inherited my Dad’s iPod” – just doesn’t have the same gravitas, does it?

7. What is the theme of  "Vermin of the Earth," or is it just a collection of dark haunting songs?

E. Vermin to the Earth was written when we were living in Osaka, Japan. We wrote it as a suite of songs dedicated to the end of mankind. Living in the concreted Japanese cityscape, riding our bikes into the industrial estates of Taisho-ward and choking on the emissions, seeing the poisoned rivers, concreted streams and the barren parkland, traveling miles into the countryside to find little speakers in the trees piping in fake animal noises. Patchwork hills of plantation timber, latices of concrete holding every hillside up, and these bizarre tetrapods all around any inhabited piece of sea-shore. Japan’s landscape all through Honshu is thoroughly and irreparably scarred by humanity, and compared to the Tasmanian wilderness, it is a stark and undeniable contrast.

Any animal except humans will find equilibrium between its population and the environment – but not man! Oh, no! We tamper with the natural order – keep changing and destablising our environment to suit our short term aims – until we are now on the brink of wiping ourselves and the rest of the planet out. I don’t need to wish for the end of humanity because it is inevitable, and I imagine that if every human were to disappear tomorrow, the Earth would not be upset in the slightest.

T. If the Earth is a type of network of organisms, then, perhaps the various plagues that have beset humankind have been the Earth’s equivalent to an immune system trying to suppress us?

8. I remember in the 90's Australian bands like Bestial Warlust, Abyssic Hate & Destroyer 666, but I know little of Tasmania... what is the scene like there?

T. Tasmania has a very small population of 500,000 people or thereabouts. Geographically it’s about the same size as Scotland or West Virginia, so there’s not much of a ‘scene’ to speak of. There is more so a collection of disparate individuals. However, the isolation helps mould distinct artists of all disciplines, and this can be exemplified in terms of BM by acts such as Striborg, Ruins and Throes.

E. I’ve recently become aware of some other Tasmanian BM bands like Nuclear Winter and Kill the Kristians, but I’ve never heard any of their stuff and know very little about them. Obviously don’t live on the same mountain as I do.

9. Is there a religious or political backdrop to the music of Thrall?

T. Yes. There are overt and latent anti-religious, political and philosophical themes within Thrall’s music. However, Thrall is comprised of four individuals, all with their own distinct agendas. We’re all evolving and we’re not static in our positions. We’re not revisionists. We don’t reinvent the past to support our current beliefs and actions. So, there are commonalities amongst us but we’re not a fucking cult! Ha ha.

E. People who have too much faith in either religion or politics are modernist relics. Human nature is savage, selfish and destructive - and artificial moral frameworks that attempt to harness mankind are ironically as destructive as the nature they seek to tame.

10. Your website has a dark minimalist feel to it, but has all the info you need.  I'm glad to see you're not just using Facebook or Myspace. Do you feel people are missing out on having official websites in 2011?

T. We use Facebook and Myspace only out of necessity. I particularly despise Myspace due to its perpetual technical issues! Em made our website from a desire for more autonomy in our web presence.

E. My advice to other bands would be “it’s not that hard: give it a crack!” I don’t know fuck about web design, but I made our site. All it took was a couple of afternoons of swearing at the computer, and volia!

11.  Do you feel image and art play a large role in the black metal style and sound, or is more just about the music for Thrall?

T. Artwork is very important. In my opinion a recognisable visual identity enhances a band immensely. As cynical as it sounds – branding is important when you have limited resources. However, some bands focus so heavily on ‘dressing up’ they forget to write memorable songs, or have any menace or stage presence. After all, would you rather have great make-up or great songs? In a live context, I don’t care about your corpse paint or your battle-jacket - I care about your music and your delivery.

E. I saw a band once that had corpse paint and matching outfits, a smoke machine, all sorts of props – but then they just stood on stage like stunned mullets. Barely moved aside from their fingers. Can’t remember a single note they played. Conviction and sincerity behind a song make it stick. If you’re spending all your time playing with a sewing machine of course you’re going to end up playing irrelevant music. Get your priorities right! It’s not a black metal sewing club, you poofs!

12. Will there be any videos or DVDs coming from the band? 

T. I want to make at least one film clip to accompany Vermin to the Earth, so far I haven’t had the time or resources, and no one has offered to do it. We don’t have any plans to release a DVD at this stage, but I would love to do so in the future. The idea of a complete unified album/dvd appeals to me, but the budget is totally out of my reach!

E. There was a clip made to one of our songs by our mate Janssen for one of the songs from the last album. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_tBBmdRS4A We gave him instructions: “NO HUMANS.” But he put an actor in the clip! Ha! Well, can’t complain. It’s a pretty high quality affair for a BM clip.

13. Thank you for your time, any closing thoughts here:

T. Thanks for the interview. Keep an eye out for our third album Aokigahara Jukai in 2012 or 2013.