Dead Rhetoric: Considering most of the members of Marrowfields also have other bands that they work on such as Dreaded Silence, The Fateful Hour, Vacant Eyes, and Norseth, how are things balanced out as far as priorities?
Green: At the moment I’m pretty damn devoted to Marrowfields. The Fateful Hour is doing well, but Kenny our drummer just had a son. And that comes first. He’s got to spend that time bonding with his family. We’ve been recording our third record. For Marrowfields I’m writing, getting things ready for the other members to sink their teeth into. The main thing is Marrowfields.
Gillis: As I get older, I don’t have as much time to dedicate to music as I did when I was a young person. I’m a single parent, raising my daughter myself, and she’s my main priority. I have work and all that stuff too. As far as music, Marrowfields is the priority right now. As far as Dreaded Silence, we are busy and spread out too. Our drummer moved away. Those guys are my best friends in the world, I talk to them every single day. I’ve tried to see if we can put together more music, but everybody has a lot going on. I’m hoping we can do some more stuff. For now, it’s the thing that’s not as active. I have a lot of stuff to sink my teeth into with Marrowfields as far as new music, working on lyrics and vocal arrangements for a lot of the new songs. The cool thing is it’s such a cool project that I don’t have to be always in a rehearsal room once or twice a week with the guys.
Green: It’s nice that we can go at our own pace. I have a full-time job as well, I have other studio work I’m doing. I don’t have a family yet, but the things I’m doing take up enough of my time. I only wish we could rehearse more, but with this quarantine and everybody being spread out, we do what we can. AJ rehearses all the stuff once a week on his own, all the stuff, new stuff. Everything is perfect like a metronome while I’m messing up all my guitar parts (laughs).
Dead Rhetoric: What has heavy metal meant to you personally, and can you think of any specific times where a certain band or album helped you through a difficult time in your life?
Green: I have to think a little bit too. I don’t know which ones to bring to the forefront. I’ll go on different ends of the spectrum. When Blackwater Park came out from Opeth, that was one of the biggest moments for me in terms of getting into underground metal. I was in eighth grade when that came out, and at the time I was basically homeless with my family. We were in between homes, we sold our house and were building the new one at the same time. The builder didn’t finish the home on time, so we had to move out and we were living in hotels for two months. It was really hard because, I was sleeping on a couch in a hotel room, no privacy for anything, an eighth grade metal head who wants his mom and dad to leave him alone. That’s one of the earliest memories of metal getting me through something, and I was very excited about it. That was the first time I heard someone take death metal, add clean vocals to it, and do these crazy time signatures with the long-form song thing. As a whole, front to back that album is unbelievable. It made me do what I want to do today. It’s in my top five albums list of all time.
Gillis: Metal has gotten me through so many difficult times. Growing up I was pretty shy, socially anxious high school kid and I heard bands like Paradise Lost that helped me get through some of that time. A band like Crowbar with Kirk’s personal lyrics helped me out a lot of the time. Katatonia – Discouraged Ones, when that came out, that album is amazing. That helped me deal with some of the thoughts I had where I was isolated. So many Judas Priest songs I can listen to that make me feel great, or just help me when I am sad. Ronnie James Dio is another one of those guys that can get me through rough times. “Over and Over” from the Mob Rules record, I can listen to over and over, or “Rock N’ Roll” by Motorhead. Those can lift me up.
Green: I’m kind of a 90’s gothic boy too – I love My Dying Bride – Turn Loose the Swans, Type O Negative – October Rust. Those have helped me through difficult times. I love Cradle of Filth – Cruelty and the Beast, that was one of my favorite albums to look into theatrical stuff with lyrics. The one album that isn’t metal is Coheed and Cambria – The Afterman. I had a friend that the time that came out had actually committed suicide, and for some reason I don’t know why, the lyrics on that record are strangely similar that he had said or felt. The emotions of that record resonated with me at the time of his passing, and helped me get through that.
Dead Rhetoric: When you think of success, has that word changed for you from childhood to today – and when you look at the metal community, who do you consider successful?
Green: For me, I’m always hungry and I don’t really ever stop. I don’t look at myself as successful yet. There are little successes along the way that keep me going along, but there’s also a lot of failures and lessons learned. I feel like the path to success is getting kicked in the face a lot. Making a lot of mistakes, doing things wrong, and learning not to do that again the next time. I feel like we are taking a lot of the successes of this record and feeding it into the new stuff we are writing. It’s hard to measure success, it’s goal oriented – is your goal to tour the United States and be on a good tour package? If that’s what you want, you need to be doing that. I’m not sure if that’s what we want, we can’t tour for months on end. Success for me in this band would be releasing some sort of timeless album that people resonate with, really love, want it on vinyl and talk about it for a really long time. That to me would be success.
Gillis: Success just as a concept, has taken on different meanings and been refined over the years. When you are a kid, people tell you what success is – and they think you need to measure up to a certain standard. I guess success is just being satisfied with things about your life and working on them, improving them. As far as musical success goes, I have never really had goals so the experience of just doing it to me is success. I’m pretty humble when it comes to that. I had no aspirations to be well known. I wanted to find some friends to have fun playing tunes with. Working on the process of music is fun. The success is enjoying it – if you like it, that’s success. Whatever happens, happens. It makes me happy when people can connect with music.
Green: To a certain extent, the success of this band is only starting. Everybody in the band is going to do their thing even more on the next record.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the agenda for Marrowfields over the next twelve months – or any other music activities with your other bands?
Green: For Marrowfields we are writing right now. It’s easy for me to write good structures at home with the home studio. I have all my guitars, amps, and record, program drums for pre-production demos of a baseline track to send out to the band. We are being productive right now. We have enough material for an album and an EP. The goal over the next few months, outside of the CD release show which is tentatively in September, we’ll see if that happens. The Fateful Hour is tracking vocals for the new album, it sounds awesome. I can’t wait to get that going on again. I’ve got covers on my own YouTube channel I’ve been doing. Staying hungry and working hard.
Gillis: Once the pandemic is over we are going to try to play more shows to support the record. Also, as Brandon mentioned we have a lot of new material. I feel like now with the new stuff, he’s sort of writing it with the rest of us in mind as far as influences and strengths as musicians. Bringing in some of our influences from each respective musician, to put my own stamp on things a little more. It’s cool to be able to express myself a little more on these songs. Have more of a connection to the material. This new stuff is even better and more exciting, developing our sound even further.