Different factions of death metal penetrate the landscape these days. Some artists going in more progressive or technical directions – others just submerging themselves into the old school style that put this genre on the map. Birmingham, England outfit As The World Dies live for the latter sentiment in their albums – of which their second record Nebula establishes a sound that may be a forward thinking take on what put acts like Asphyx and Carcass on the map. We reached out to guitarist Scott Fairfax for this quick talk about As The World Dies, the new record, his riff parade that he develops with this band as well as Memoriam and other projects, thoughts on the current death metal scene, the challenges for UK bands to play abroad because of Brexit, and what people can look forward to from him over the coming year.
Dead Rhetoric: Can you tell us about your earliest memories surrounding music growing up in childhood? At what point did you start discovering heavier forms of music – as well as the desire to pick up an instrument and perform in your own bands?
Scott Fairfax: I think it was at school, one of the music teachers had an old guitar, an SG, and we would just stop over there after school and write songs with that. There were keyboards there too – that was my earliest creation of music. And then I gave up on music – I still listened to it though, obviously. By the time I was 17, I started a death metal band. That is when I decided to go into heavier forms of music.
Dead Rhetoric: Nebula is the second album for As The World Dies. What did you want to accomplish through this set of material in terms of songwriting and performances that maybe differ from your Agonist debut record in 2022?
Fairfax: Agonist was very much a collection of songs through the ages. Some of them are a little old, some of them were quite old. With Nebula, apart from one song, they are all quite new. They were all written around the same time, outside of the second track “Consumed” which is around 11 years old now. I didn’t have the right format to release (that song). It was knocking around. The main difference is this material all fits together a little bit better.
Dead Rhetoric: Were there any particular songs that were a bit more challenging either in the writing or recording stages than others?
Fairfax: Uh… no, not really. I have a habit of making songs too long. So, at the start, I wanted to condense some songs – but some songs, you can’t really condense because then you lose the whole idea of the song. That is a bit of theme on the whole album, to condense things instead of having a lot of eight- minute songs on the album. That’s the hardest part for me – I like to overdub a riff with something else, so four bars turn into eight bars turns into sixteen bars. Adding to the same riff – and I’ve learned that I can’t keep doing that, because at the end it will be an eight-minute song. It was all quite easy to record, because I do everything at home. I can try another way of doing things, because I’m not paying for anyone else’s time or gear.
The most fun one to record would have been “Playing God”. Especially with the middle section, that was very good fun to play around with.
Dead Rhetoric: Where did you want to come across with the lyrical themes for Nebula?
Fairfax: It’s the same. What we are aiming for is a mixture of this one lone survivor, in his own head of what he is going to do – but you can also switch the lyrics out to your own problems with what he is saying. You can feel what he is going through, some of the words and some of the lyrics may be what you are thinking right now. It’s a bit of both. The main thing is being a lone survivor, that’s what we are trying to get over.
Dead Rhetoric: How did the cover art come about for Nebula – as it seems like a very simple concept that’s executed brilliantly?
Fairfax: Well, it’s a bit of a story. The angel’s head, which is in my place, in Wales my girlfriend loves this little thing. It was in a tree, the whole body and everything, and every winter she would say he’s getting cold. When that relationship went wrong, I took his head. We’ve always wanted an actual photo. With Memoriam we’ve always gone with Dan Seagrave to do our fabulous artwork, but we wanted an actual photo. We had a good friend take this photo. I like the Carcass album with the vegetables surrounding the heart (Torn Arteries). That stood out – and also Devin Townsend’s Christeen effort, that was a different cover. We wanted something totally different that would sit on a record shelf and stand out, and I think we’ve done that quite well.
Dead Rhetoric: Vocalist Karl Willetts of Memoriam (one of your other bands) has referred to you in the past as a riff machine. What is the process like to work through your numerous ideas and decide what goes where for each outfit – do you get into certain modes for a specific band/project or just let creativity flow and capture things in the moment, then work through riffs from there?
Fairfax: No, not in the moment. I don’t sit out to write a song for Memoriam, or As The World Dies, or for another project I’m doing. I just start writing the song. The main key element of that would be what tuning I’m in. In Memoriam we are in drop B, in As The World Dies it’s drop A. I have various guitars – on the last Memoriam album, I had the demos in drop A, and the producer did some magic to turn them into drop B for the demos. What I do now, I try to keep it into tunings.
It’s not hard. Sometimes if I’ve got too much going into it musically, like a tune, it might be Memoriam. With them, we have only one guitar live, which is me, so we can’t play with lots of guitars on the record. The more overdubs with two or three guitars going on, that will go to As The World Dies because we can actually pull that off live.
Dead Rhetoric: What are some of the biggest challenges facing As The World Dies in terms of moving up the ranks to establish yourselves – not only within the UK, but on an international level?
Fairfax: I think we’ve just got to work hard. Let the music speak for itself. We have two new videos – we want to take things on ourselves to make proper videos as well. Just get a lot more exposure. We are looking at doing more on our YouTube channel as well. We want to put some weird clips up there, our daily lives, rehearsals and what you have to go through. We’ve all got day jobs, we are not sitting at home writing and playing music all day. We want to show the human side as well.
Dead Rhetoric: How would you describe As The World Dies in terms of a live outfit compared to what people hear/experience on the record? What do you want the audiences that see you to take away from your live performances?
Fairfax: The difference live compared to the vinyl or the CD – at the moment, we’ve stripped back the keyboard elements, so I play some of those keyboard elements on the guitar. We are looking into adding some of those elements in the future. It’s a lot more energetic live, I think. On the album, there is a certain pace that live we can switch things up a little bit. It depends on how the crowd’s reacting.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel being a part of the Reaper Entertainment roster?
Fairfax: It’s brilliant. We’ve been talking together for a few years. On the first album, Reaper couldn’t take a chance on a fairly unknown band at the time. We let the first album come out, and I think it’s a brilliant album. They may do a re-release in a couple of years to get the album our properly.
Dead Rhetoric: What are your thoughts on the state of the death metal landscape – considering you have your toes in outfits like Massacre and Memoriam beyond the work of As The World Dies? What is exciting to you – and would you make any changes, if you could, to better the movement?
Fairfax: I think it’s great to watch all these death metal bands grow. I love Massacre, I was always a fan of theirs when I was a kid. To go out, we’ve played festivals, and Massacre would play on an opposite stage as Memoriam, and it was brilliant. (They are) childhood heroes, and getting into doing an album with Massacre was also a great thing.
(Death metal) has gone back underground in a way, which is the way it should be. I don’t want to hear this on the radio, on the popular radio stations and stuff. If you want to listen to that band, you’ll go and watch them (live). Or you will buy the vinyl or CD’s. It’s quite good, there are a lot of great up and coming bands as well. I can’t say I listen to loads of death metal anymore, because when I’m in the garage working on cars, I hardly listen to metal. Especially if I am recording an album, because I don’t want to be influenced by other heavy metal music. I keep away from that, I would put some drone bass on, just something to have in the background for noise.
The UK gig scene at the moment is a bit lax. There are hard times, no one has the money to go out to spend for the night, really. It’s hard to pay for a taxi to a gig, pay for the gigs, drinks. At the same time, you’ve still got to support the underground.
Dead Rhetoric: Has Brexit made things difficult for international bands to try to play gigs in your country?
Fairfax: I can’t say for people coming into here. My friend’s band came over from Belgium, they did dates in the UK, and they said no problem. It’s us going into Europe that’s the problem – especially if you are going to take all your equipment. It’s a shambles, and costs you 700 pounds (over $900) just to get your equipment over there. As The World Dies hasn’t actually gone over there yet, but when we do go over, we’ll just take our guitars and use the opening band’s gear to save money. It is a lot harder – the airport, the queue is 700 people long, you are running towards connecting flights, overbooking the flights as well. Even if you have a ticket, they end up selling it to someone else. It’s chaos because of Brexit.
Dead Rhetoric: What would you consider some of the standout moments in your musical career? Are there specific albums, tours, festival appearances, or other events where you knew you were making a stronger impact with your music?
Fairfax: Wow, there’s been loads of moments. Lots of funny moments as well. The ones that weren’t good, so when you have a good gig, sometimes you forget about those good ones. I enjoy the chaos, things going wrong as well. That’s what live music is about, things could go wrong, but how you bounce back from those moments. We played Wacken once with Memoriam, we spent the whole night in the hotel drinking, we were very sauced. We were on at 1 am in the morning, and we were so hungover, it was shocking. The hotel manager had to open our room, we ended up falling asleep, he had to get us up. Everything was really slow. Every album release, those are top moments. I like any reviews.
Dead Rhetoric: You have been chronicling your restoration work of vehicles (all types) on your social media platforms. Has this always been your passion, and what do you enjoy most about this work that helps fuel your other endeavors?
Fairfax: Yeah, I think I’ve liked working on old British cars. When I was going off music for the first time, after my first couple of bands, I just carried on doing the car thing. When I was doing the car thing, I got a phone call from Frank, we were going to South America for a bunch of gigs, here are a bunch of Benediction songs, can you learn them? I’d given up by that point, I knew most of that material. Two weeks later, I was off to South America. From then, after that I’ve been nonstop. That was 2015, I think. We got back from that tour in December, and we met up with Karl, Andy Whale, and Frank in a pub and they wanted to do a covers band. It was not really my thing to play cover songs, so I had loads of songs in my riff archives. We didn’t do the covers band, and that’s where Memoriam was born.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the schedule for all of your outfits over the next year or so?
Fairfax: The main thing is I have to get As The World Dies up and running. We have had a couple of shows recently to test the waters – we will have slightly bigger ones coming up in April, headlining in Birmingham. And then we are looking for promoters really. We hopefully will get some good reviews for the new album. I want to get the lads over in Europe. There are only two members of this band, me and Chris the drummer, who have actually played over in Europe. The main idea is to get my mates out there. Get them to experience what I’ve experienced. We want to start writing another album as well.
On the Memoriam side of things, I’ve got two albums ready. We need to get something recorded. We are also doing another project with Karl as well. I am busy, I have loads of stuff to do, and no time to do it (laughs).