With our last album, Engines of Decay, we got to explore our influences a bit from the early days of metal and hopefully redirect people to some music that is, at times, heavier than any doom metal, more brutal than any death metal, and more evil than any black metal. Which was fun. It's been a long time since we've been able to bust out riffs like that outside of sound checks and things like that.
With our most recent album, Autumnal, which came out a couple weeks ago, we went back to our doom/post-metal sound to explore some sonic areas that came up. It was, honestly, mostly born from riffs we put on tape during the Decay sessions but didn't fit the vibe of the album. Not saying that the album was born from scraps; they were just the nucleus. And it's a great album, one we are definitely proud of. Songs like "Prickle Heart Laden With Weights", "Black Dome, Empty Bowl" and "In Dreams He Wanders" let us stretch out into more melodic terrain while still carrying a very heavy, rhythmic approach to the genre we love. And it's mighty progressive in the way we structured it, and I'm not referring to the song lengths there. It is in the interplay of the instruments, the subtle shifts of texture and the shifting time signatures used not for technicality's sake but to evoke something. And we're eternally grateful that we've become the poster child for progressive metal.
But we've been finding with working on riffs for this next album that a lot of things are getting thrown into the pot. The Lamb is stepping up his contributions on the keyboard side of things, an instrument he hasn't been too heavy on recently (his choice, not ours). Derek has been writing some incredibly speedy, technical and evil riffs lately. Meanwhile, Harry, Baph and me have been dropping by to have jam sessions with Jack and Rick from the Black Gates for the past couple of months, whenever time allows, and that has brought some new elements in. Baph has been going in two different directions, either blast beats or devilishly complicated fast shit. Harry has been touched by working on infant Sisyphean material again and has been going in a dark, atmospheric direction. And I've been writing more complex folk and prog rock-influenced guitar numbers on the acoustic guitar.
So, from the sounds of the way our writing has been bouncing off of each other for the last couple weeks in sound checks, we will likely be heading in a very black metal direction. But more along the lines of the more progressive black metal bands, like mid- to late-period Emperor, Arcturus, or Ihsahn's solo stuff. Touches of Enslaved or early Opeth might be a good idea. These aren't really capturing it, because we still sound like us, it's just... I guess the best way to describe it is that I imagine our new stuff will be like Reflections on a Mountain only with a black metal sheen to it instead of a doomy, death metal sheen.
In other news, Derek is likely going to start work on a new series of Tremors EPs and the Lamb is thinking about releasing some of the ambient work he's been doing recently that's just him on synths and guitar. It depends largely on interest, though.
- Daniel
PS: A quick shout out is due to Mind, who are very near and dear to us in Sudan. They are rather fearless in their approach to metal and make truly progressive music with the way they touch on almost every realm of extreme and technical metal. And while I hope that in the future, they bring in elements that are not necessarily heavy to their music, like a touch of psychedelic rock or classic prog rock a la Genesis, Yes, or Gentle Giant, I have yet to be anything but pleased with what they do. Great fucking band. I highly encourage everyone to dig into them. They're going to be great.
