Nefarious Industries Artist- Blight House Interview is up
1. We're did the name come from to start?
We didn’t want something that suggested any particular genre, and for whatever reason we were thinking of local, Rhode Island references we could use. So, basically, the name is just a dumb play on “light house.”
2. I hear mix of Gore, industrial, death and grind. We're this modern approach of Gore death come from?
Frank and I have played together for a number of years in a doom industrial band, which in turn sprang from a grind band. So, it’s in our genealogy at this point. It’s part of the way we think, write, and produce.
3. Love the samples how do you feel the play into the psychosis of the album?
They help to keep the listener in a more cinematic, narrative mindset where the songs are more like dramatic “scenes” and less like a band trying to communicate some deeper message. As disturbing as some of them are, we do it to keep things light and fun relative to what extreme music fans are used to.
4 . The artwork is insane how does it play into the theme of album?
That’s all Andrew Grant’s design. He went and found photos from an actual summer camp where there was a massacre, then worked his magic on them to make a CD package that looks like a piece of crime scene evidence. It has a campy, direct-to-VHS horror movie vibe to it, which is perfect for us.
5. Rhode island as some sick shit musically going on load records , vomit arsonist, vital remains, drop dead and Tovarish to name a few. How does Blight house fit into it all?
Rhode Island is, of course, a small place, and that may be why it seems everyone plays in more than one band. Blight House is actually 2/3 of Tovarish. In some sense, Blight House is just Tovarish played fast. Andrew, who did our art, is also Vomit Arsonist and a collaborator with many other people in the area. The scene is small but very active and different from anywhere else as far as having a high concentration of crazy, noisy, adventurous music. Maybe it’s all the musical inbreeding.
6. This is your 2nd album how did you come to work with nefarious industry?
The album has been done for well over a year. We were going to simply throw it up on Bandcamp like our first album, but we thought that it might be worth shopping around. We got interest from some grind/noise labels, but we weren’t thrilled with the offers, plus timing is an issue when you’re marketing an album with “summer” in the title. But right before we were going to self-release, Greg from Nefarious Industries heard the album and offered to work with us. Nefarious released one of the early Tovarish albums, and we’ve been in touch ever since. They have a pretty amazing roster of heavy, genre-defying bands, so we’re thrilled to be included again.
7. Will blight house ever want to tour?
We only ever aimed to be a studio project. But we do have some feces-crusted tutus on hand in case Obscene Extreme gives us a call.
8. If you could make a proper video . Which track and why?
We’re not sure music videos are necessary anymore. They're not getting played on TV. They just get thrown up on Youtube. At that point, you might as well just put the song up. It has the same effect. Besides, we like to leave things up to the listener's imagination. Let them come up with their own visuals. What's in your head is usually better than what's on the screen. Overall, we’d be more interested in making original music for a horror movie than making videos for our songs.
9.long songs would never work for this style could blight house surprise us?
That’s an interesting observation, and it rings true. But it’s hard to say why that’s the case. We did try to make longer versions of some songs, and we didn’t like it. The songs are exactly as long as they need to be, as far as we’re concerned. If we find something that needs to be longer, it will be longer. But that’s unlikely. We’ll have to think more on why. Good question.
10. The vocals are nightmarish and epic how did you get such and over the top vocal sound and style?
We studied sound design techniques used to make monster voices for film and video games. Little things, like if you use a pitch-shifter, for example, you need to boost the highs before down-shifting. Other tricks from modular synthesis, like using an LFO to sweep a filter, which adds grit without distortion. Even mechanical techniques—we’re big fans of screaming down a couple feet of corrugated rubber tubing. The mixing strategies are also different, lots of layering and dimensionality. For example, we use fore-/mid-/background tracks to more easily move the voices around, making them narrow, widen, recede, whatever. A big misconception is that these techniques make it easy on the vocalist. It turns out to be uniquely demanding to work this way, and Frank is especially good at it. If you wonder what his “natural” voice is, it’s the mid-range voice that one reviewer called, appropriately, “goblin vocals.”
11. What music is impressing the duo of Blight house currently?
Some old stuff, some new stuff: Assuck, Tomb Mold, Outer Heaven, Tit Wrench, Blood Incantation, Zvi, Discordance Axis, Mammoth Grinder, Void Ritual.
12 . In 4 words explain the bands sound to me?
Fast. Loud. Dumb. Gross.
13.Social media blessing or curse?
I don’t think anyone would be listening to Blight House without social media. As for whether that’s a blessing or not, we’ll leave it up to the listeners.
14. We're do you want the next blight house album to take your listeners?
Thematically, we’ll continue to serialize our material. There will be a third installment of “Acephalophilia” and we’re planning a follow up to “Moms Away,” tentatively titled “Moms Away II: Dad Bod.”
15. Any closing thoughts here
Thanks for the interview!
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