Photo: Brittany Vaughan
When it comes to doomy, sludge-oriented metal with death inflections, there’s quite a buzz going around for this Canadian act Absorb. Together since 2013, they’ve released a series of albums and EPs while establishing a presence across the Hamilton, Ontario live scene. Smog is the group’s latest EP, another three-track effort that carries more than its weight in crushing riffs, slower to mid-tempo drumming, tons of reverb, tremolo, and tortured screams that channel all those deep seeded emotions in the right direction. We were able to have a great conversation with guitarist David Eckmeier and vocalist Erik Thorkildsen regarding the work behind Smog, the importance of color and cover art to convey a good first impression, their live performance outlook and favorite shows, insight into the Hamilton heavy music scene, why shorter releases seem to have a bigger impact in today’s marketplace, as well as what’s in store for the group for the next year or so.
Dead Rhetoric: What are some of your earliest memories surrounding music growing up in childhood? At what point did you start moving into heavier forms of music, and eventually the desire to want to play in bands?
David Eckmeier: I was listening to heavy music since I was a kid. My dad, he got me into music. I remember when Countdown to Extinction came out, because my dad was just so excited to bring the record home and talk to me. I grew up listening to Megadeth, White Zombie, then my mom was listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin. The moment where I really wanted to pick up a guitar and play, I was eight years old watching the nu-metal scene. I watched lots of music videos on MTV, they really looked cool, and I really liked music. I had my own CD player and my own records. I said to my parents I wanted to play guitar, so they bought me a guitar. They were throwing everything at me, whether it was sports or music, let’s see if guitar sticks. And sure enough it did.
My parents did give me lessons, I took lessons for about two years or so. I learned theory. My guitar teacher at the time, he was a brilliant teacher. He also listened to a lot of metal, so when I asked to learn certain songs, he knew how to play it, and he showed me how to get things going. It took off from there. When I was in high school, I did join a band called Clarify the Hit. I think I was in grade nine or ten. There was a guitar class and I had already been playing guitar for a number of years. Some of the other students picked up on that, invited me out to rehearse and practice with them. I ended up being one of the first guitarists in that band, and it was the first band I ended up playing gigs with when I was 15. That was at the Underground in Hamilton. From there, you network and get with groups of people that listen to similar kinds of music, it grew from there.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you remember the early days of Absorb and how that worked out?
Eckmeier: Yeah. I not only used to play guitar, but I also used to do vocals. We were in a death metal band called Laser Piss. I was in that band with Jeff and Jay, it was pretty cool. We were in our early twenties, and it was kind of hard to find a drummer who wanted to blast beat for an hour straight. That project, we wrote a bunch of tracks and played a bunch of shows, then we decided to change the direction of our writing. I think Jeff, he wrote a song called “Hatred” – it’s actually on our first self-titled album. We recorded it primitively with an audio interface, programmed drums, and put that out there on the internet looking for a drummer. At that point I only wanted to do guitar, and not vocals, so we looked for a vocalist. Aaron, our current drummer, picked up that track and we invited him to rehearse. We were able to find Cole, he was our first vocalist on the first record. That’s when we got more serious into writing, finished that first record, and just kept going from there.
Dead Rhetoric: Smog is the latest EP for Absorb. What can you tell us about the songwriting and recording sessions for this set of material? Where do you see the major differences between this EP and your previous efforts, including last year’s Rot EP?
Eckmeier: Smog was a continuation in my mind. As musicians, we are always growing, and we are always getting better at our craft. When we were putting together Smog – even when we were putting together Rot, we were using a small little recording set up to listen to scratch tracks, to go back and critique on our own. In terms of direction, we are doubling down on the atmosphere. Jeff, he does the leads and we decided to stray away from traditional guitar solos and have him do a tremolo with lots of reverb, lots of delay, just to create that type of atmosphere on top of my heavy beatdown, sludgy riffs. It’s where things came about as we were writing, just trying to let the distortion do the talking, and it was kind of our thought process when putting this material together.
Erik Thorkildsen: I think that the length of the songs is upwards of eight minutes or longer – but just the overall flow of the tracks is for lack of a better term, concise. I always appreciate it when I listen to a band that has long songs, but it doesn’t really feel like it. I could listen to a fifteen-minute song, and it feels like it’s gone by as fast as a five-minute track. I think that all comes down to the way you structure, and how things flow.
Eckmeier: I always looked at it as akin to not necessarily writing and thinking about it as a song but putting things together like it’s an arrangement – a piano arrangement or what have you.
Thorkildsen: Or how somebody would structure an electronic tune – it’s chunked out in blocks and just building things up.
Eckmeier: It blends into the next part or the next section.
Dead Rhetoric: How did the artwork come about through Indonesian artist Poisondust for Smog? Do you believe that cover art plays an important role in making proper impact on what people will hear from Absorb when they press play?
Thorkildsen: Absolutely. He did our artwork for that last EP Rot as well. It was a layup for us. We were happy with the way Rot looked; it suited the music perfectly. I’m glad we did; I think it’s the same or even more on this one. We’ve been told a couple of times there’s a feeling of like coldness to these three tracks in particular, and I think Poisondust picked up on that very quickly. Down to the color profile of it, off blue, purple, whites, and blacks – that was just the color palate that these songs sent through. It was the look of it from the jump, we had tiny little adjustments to it but that was the album color. He hit the nail on the head, which goes back to why we like working with him.
It makes a huge impact. Let’s say record stores are here and there nowadays, but let’s say this record ends up in a record store, and we are lucky enough to have a band name that begins with the letter A. It really is judging a book by its cover, as much as people don’t like to admit that. I’ve done that, where I picked up a record that looks cool, and then I pop it on and it ends up being a favorite record, where I’m glad I checked it out. The artwork can get $10 out of me.
Dead Rhetoric: What qualities do you believe are absolutely necessary to convey in an ideal Absorb composition? How much revision or transformation has to take place from the initial demo or riff / melody ideas to what we hear on the final product?
Eckmeier: I always call it our formula. I try to keep it simple on the rhythm section, this way Erik will have room to breathe, Jeff has room to add something to it. There’s always a tempo, we are always trying to keep things low and slow, although a lot of the times we do peak at over 100 beats per minute. That’s the idea when we are going into songs. We change it to what sounds good at the end of the day to us. “Smog” for example, there’s a section after the bridge I call it the smog riff, it bounces back between that and a slide with a little note section there. The second time it comes around, originally, I was programming the drums, I didn’t feel like taking a snare bit out. It ended up being a faster snare, and after we circulated it around, Erik said he liked the faster snare, it picks up a little bit, and we kept it like that.
Thorkildsen: It added a little bit of a genre crossover just by literally switching things with the snare drum. It leans back to what I was originally saying, the difference between Rot and Smog is these songs just flow more easily, it makes a little more sense to me. Not that any of the songs have ever been structured badly, I think these ones really move and spend the time really efficiently.
Eckmeier: When we were getting ready to get in the studio to record this, we threw around the idea of recording a fourth song. But then we just put that idea aside because we felt that these three songs standing together alone is just a perfect record. We didn’t want to throw a fourth one in, we made the decision that this is what we like, and we went and did it.
Dead Rhetoric: You’ve released more EP’s as of late versus the album length format that was an early part of your career. Do you take into consideration the ability to put more songs out sooner in these shorter formats – and also keep the profile of the band higher due to this type of release schedule?
Eckmeier: Releasing things often is a pretty good thing. We write the material, and we go and play it live. If you were a person in Southern Ontario, you’ve definitely heard this record last year played live. We are also writing as often as we can, sitting down, coming up with ideas, riffs or whatever it may be.
Thorkildsen: I think especially with the level that we are at, it’s hard to have consistent, compelling content that we feel people will stay with. Not just throw things out there to post things, staying in the algorithm thing. You can promote yourself through Spotify, Instagram, and all that stuff – I think releasing shorter formats more consistently, you stay on top of people’s algorithm if you have already interacted with them.
Eckmeier: I see a lot of bands, release just singles. They may have one record in their discography over the course of five years, but have another record and a half, just released as singles.
Thorkildsen: I remember when the pandemic hit one of my favorite bands The Acacia Strain, they put out Slow Decay I want to say over the course of two-three months, releasing one or two singles every two weeks. Just because of the way that time was, it was a smart play because people were stuck in their homes, they couldn’t do anything, but absorb your content. I don’t know if they would do that again, but time specific, that was pretty smart. It speaks to where we are at, how we want to keep our release schedule for now. If we can bump up to a little bit longer of an album, or we feel that we need to or should and have the musical content to fill that up, we will.
Eckmeier: The quality of a release, we want to have it be worthy instead of release something and have half of it not be enjoyable or up to the standard that we’ve set for ourselves.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you hope to get across to audiences when they see Absorb perform live? What have been some of the more outstanding or memorable performances to date for the group?
Thorkildsen: I want it to feel very visceral for people. I want people to know that I love to play this stuff. I want to channel that in my live performance. As a musician I started as a drummer first so I’m very animated. As a drummer you are always sitting down. It was nice to join Absorb and have a little bit more free space to flow around and have fun with the act of playing live music. For my angle, I want people to not expect and know nothing about us, just watch us and be engaged. We clearly give a shit about what we are doing and playing well of course. It’s not just about twirling your guitar around; you have to play the songs as best or as closely as you can to the way they’re originally intended. That’s rule one in my opinion. Having a very engaging live show where people get their hearts pumping a little bit.
Eckmeier: There is energy on both sides of the stage, whether you are in the crowd or you are on the stage performing. A lot of times the audience matches your energy. As the rhythm guitar player, I try to find that balance of playing very tight so people listening when they take that record home so that hopefully they can say, these guys sound incredible live, just like the record – even better. But also at the same time, I’m having fun and enjoying myself, and people pick up on that, getting rowdy and having a great time.
Thorkildsen: I don’t want to waste people’s time. Everybody has busy lives, everybody in this band does. Everybody that comes to a show does. I want to make their ten, fifteen, twenty dollars for the show absolutely worth it. If we can be that band that people are like, wow, they made that show – I’m super happy. That means the most to me. I would say of recent memory, this last CD release show at Doors was really good. We went on very late, but people stuck around for us, which was great. Again, everybody has busy lives, and nobody really wants to stay up until one am listening to a doom band, but the fact that these people did, as crazy as they are, it was great. We just played in Windsor last weekend, the 27th, that was a really cool show at a venue called Meteor, we have never played there before. The venue owner/ sound guy was nice, the bartender was nice, the sound was nice, all the bands were giving it their A game. Opportunity to meet new people and plant a seed in that community, hopefully be back and just grow it organically. And also, one last one that sticks out to me. We work with a local promoter from Hamilton from time to time called Black Throne Productions. They put on a doom fest called La Rhüne Mountain Doomfest, and it was Hamilton and local bands – two stages, food vendors, they made it like a Vans Warped tour for all these slow, sludgy bands. It was very uncommon, especially in Hamilton. I hope it grows year after year. Engaging with people, new bands, sold a bunch a merch. When you play, get off stage, and then have all these random people that want to buy a t-shirt and CD, it’s very cool and humbling.
Eckmeier: I’m always thankful I have the opportunity to do what I enjoy, and very grateful to everyone that enjoys listening to this as well.
Dead Rhetoric: How would you describe your local scene for metal, hardcore, and other forms of heavy music? Do you believe you receive the proper promotion, respect, and support from other artists, venues, promoters, and so forth?
Eckmeier: I do. The scene is fairly diverse in Hamilton. There are other sludge bands, like Itus who’ve we played with a few times. There are very technical death metal bands in the scene. Just a mix, and there are varying degrees of rock – Loversteeth comes to mind, a hardcore element to them that’s really cool – I love a lot of their riffs on their latest single. It’s very diverse, and I think the promoters do their best to structure any given bill, so the night flows through into each different set. That’s pretty cool.
Thorkildsen: I find a lot of the promoters in Hamilton, especially the ones that we work with, they have been in a band before or are now. They understand not to frontload the heaviest band and everything else is softer. It would be a little bit strange. That’s how I listen to music on any given night, I start with some rock tunes or electronic music, then I move into some heavier, riffier music. The fact that they are intelligent or intuitive enough to structure bills that way, I appreciate it.
Hamilton’s venue situation is a little sticky right now. We’ve lost a couple during the pandemic. One of them Absinthe was kind of the metal and hard rock venue. For a good chunk of the scene, we’ve found other venues to pick up. It’s still alive and thriving. There are a handful of touring Hamilton bands that are legit. It’s always been a music city. Maybe it’s the proximity to Toronto and everything, it’s very authentic and healthy right now.
Dead Rhetoric: Who do you look to as mentors when it comes to the music scene – specific bands that you use as a template either in their discography or the way they carry themselves that influences you as a whole?
Eckmeier: If you asked Jeff, he’d probably say Primitive Man, if you asked me, I’d probably say Korn (laughs). I was a nu-metal kid.
Thorkildsen: In terms of local bands, I would say Loversteeth again. Especially playing right next to them, I hope this partnership sticks around for both bands benefit. They are softer but still heavy, so them going right before us is just a really good one-two punch. I think people get it. It’s a natural flow. Their work ethic is very inspiring. They do a lot of stuff in house, designing their own merchandise, Karl their guitar player, he works on booking really good shows for them, and he’s done that for us. We are super appreciative. In terms of a band that’s at our level, Loversteeth is an inspiration for me. Other than that, I’m not so sure. A lot of the bigger bands I look up to aren’t necessarily from Hamilton. That’s just stylistically the stuff I’m into. You have Counterparts out of Hamilton, I don’t listen to them a ton, but they are an A level touring band, constant. They play major festivals, and it would be cool to get to that level. I don’t know if I look at them as a point of inspiration or anything.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the schedule for activities with Absorb over the next twelve months?
Eckmeier: We are writing right now. We are working on the next record. We do have two shows, back-to-back shows, booked for November. Toronto and Hamilton, we have another show in December. We kept our schedule a little bit open for September and October, so if anyone wants to book us, reach out. We will get in the studio hopefully for January. In the new year we are looking at potentially a tour, a lot of us would like to go all the way out to the East Coast of the US, but I would be happy to do Windsor all the way through Quebec City. The new year will be getting out there, presenting us and our music to as many people as we possibly can. With a new record under our belt after Smog, keep the train going and love every minute of it.
Thorkildsen: One of our priorities is to have a war room meeting with Hypaethral Records – talk to them about a twelve-to-sixteen-month plan. In my mind, one of those goals is to get some type of visa to play in the states, hit up Buffalo and come down to the East Coast of the states to make things worth it. That may be a little far-fetched. East Coast of Canada will be good – everything else after Ontario becomes harder and harder to make a tour work in that regard, you are driving for so long it’s next to impossible to break even. Gas is so expensive now; it becomes tougher and tougher. I think going to the states would be worth it – on our Spotify we have a lot of listeners in the states. It might be painful, but to get things out of the way and keep things moving. Keep our home base not oversaturated, work more on expanding the camp as best as we can.