Dead Rhetoric: The newer tracks are a bit more experimental – do you see yourselves moving further in this direction as you keep going?
Chuzhik: We started off just being kind of limited to the equipment and it limited in our vision for the band. As soon as we were able to get all the effects in and build the atmosphere, that’s when we were able to progress the sound further.
Pinkster: I remember when I incorporated the Echo Park – the delay pedals, because I had delays. There’s a whole backstory as to why we went digital, but I remember I had the pedals and I was experimenting with how to make atmosphere. I was always trying to incorporate little atmospheric lines and stuff. I guess everything just evolved from that little part of the band, and once we got the Axe FX, everything just blew up tenfold.
Khutortsov: In the beginning, we were hesitant to use synthesizers more than we were towards the latter half of the album. At first it was like, does this sound metal enough? And it took some time before we incorporated more and more synthesizer work. More sounds that may not be stereotypical of a metal sound; certainly not of a stateside metal sound.
Pinkster: Actually the early stuff was all orchestral? You used violin strings…
Khutortsov: It was strictly strings and piano. Very classical –that was it. Towards the latter half…
Pinkster: Like you hear on “Bleed the Ocean”…strings and piano?
Khutortsov: There’s some synthesizer work that we added later on in the recordings, to add color to the song.
Pinkster: Like the end of “Bleed”…you want to give the secret away?
Khutortsov: There are synthesizers in behind, you can’t hear them but there are synthesizers there.
Pinkster: They’re techno…
Khutortsov: I wouldn’t call it techno, most people would recognize the sound as a techno sound, but I think it adds a little bit of color to the song without making it corny or ‘not metal.’
Chuzhik: We don’t even care about what’s metal or what isn’t metal.
Meyerson: We’ve had a lot of discussions about that. For a while we all argued that we were different things. I think metal is something that runs through all of our veins but it’s not necessarily about just being metal. It’s about having the strength and consistency that demonstrates the sound is there without having to be ‘this sound.’ That’s a lot of what we are trying to do.
Dead Rhetoric: If you are doing that, you are just confining yourself anyway…
Chuzhik: I was thinking about Opeth. They always put out an album that’s different from the last one. Do they really give a shit about what they sound like? No, they just want to put out music that they enjoy. I think that a lot of what this band is what we enjoy. We are lucky enough that we have been received so well, especially for a doom band that doesn’t play sludge or stoner doom. The writing process is always going to be confined to what we enjoy. As long as we enjoy it at the end of the day and other people can share with us that feeling – the emotion behind the lyrics, the music, the keyboards, the downtrodden drums. That’s what we aim for and we want people to enjoy that with us. We are just fortunate enough that it has happened. It could have been the other way, and we were received extremely poorly, but we are going forth with it. As long as people are receiving us well and they want to hear us, we will keep going.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned about ‘being metal’…has there been anything that has come about based upon making a song inspired by Frozen?
All: Oh man! [Laughs]
Meyerson: I’ll be completely honest about this – originally the song was just written out of a really rough time in winter. It was a rough time for a lot of people. It may have been right before Hurricane Sandy – it may have been written in the summer. There was just a coldness to it. One day, Raphael was like, ‘someone needs a quote about what the song is about.’ The thing is – based on themes and feelings and ideas, there are so many reflections of metal in so many other aspects of the world. I was thinking about it and I was going over the lyrics in my head: did I really write a song about Frozen? It reflects the same themes – the song wasn’t necessarily inspired by the movie but I realized that oftentimes, I very much believe that, metal can be found in other genres. The idea of metal – this strength, overcoming darkness and existing despite of it. I happen to like Disney movies. Frozen is pretty friggin’ metal – let’s make this song about Frozen. We were quite afraid it would become gimmicky but it ended up okay.
Pinkster: The TL DR version of that is it was pretty much a troll. But it was one that worked out I guess.
Meyerson: It wasn’t necessarily meant to be a troll, it was meant to get a reaction. They quoted it and said, ‘Frozen is about a person who lives in this coldness and has all these powers, and pushes people away and that’s pretty metal concept.’ That’s kind of what it was about. Getting people to realize, well this movie Frozen is just as brutal as anything else. I don’t want to talk too much about Disney… [laughter].
Part 2 of our interview with Fin’Amor will post Monday, August 10th