Big news, doings and transpirings in the world of dynamic death metal demons and friends of Decibel, Undeath. Following a run of fan and press favourite albums Lesions of a Different Kind, It’s Time…to Rise from the Grave and More Insane, the Sons of Kodak City — that’s Rochester, NY, for those of you not up on the history of photography — have inked a deal with Relapse for the release of their next record and presumably for the foreseeable future. While everyone is still being cagey regarding the name of the band’s forthcoming fourth album, rest assured it’s going to be a rager, if the following studio report/update with frontman Alexander Jones is any indication.
*pics by Sabrina Joy
When was writing completed and when did you start recording?
We probably finished writing back in December and tightened everything up by January. We started recording with Colin Marston at the new Menegroth in Pennsylvania in the middle of March and wrapped up all the tracking about two weeks later.
When it came to writing this new album, was there anything you deliberately did different? Mistakes previously made that you wanted to avoid? Elements you wanted to experiment with?
There was never a conversation about wanting to do anything differently, but the general feeling in the air seemed to be that we wanted to make a much darker, nastier, meaner record than we had before. We don’t really ever have those “let’s try this now” conversations out loud because when you spend as much time together as we have over the last seven years, things like that tend to not even be said. There’s definitely more blasting on this album than any other Undeath record, which I’m stoked about. Definitely the most straight up evil Undeath album to date. Evil and fast and pissed – you know, death metal. The good kind.
I recently found myself in a conversation with [guitarist] Tommy [Wall] (which he likely doesn’t recall) during which he detailed some of the “less-than-ideal” circumstances surrounding your time touring on the other side of the planet (especially Australia) and the subsequent North American run. What sort of impact do rough patches like these have on the creative process or just band life overall (if any)? Was any part of the writing and recording affected by tough times?
I mean, look – all I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid was make music and be in a band. Getting the opportunity to travel the world and play that music for literally anyone who might give a shit about it is something I used to dream might happen to me someday, so the fact that it’s happened for us is something I will always be grateful for and I’m positive the other guys feel the same way. Yeah, we had back-to-back-to-back 15-hour drive days packed like sardines in an ancient van with no room to stretch out, but we were playing death metal in Australia. Five years ago Australia might as well have been Mars to me in terms of places I thought I might go someday, and now I’ve been there twice. Yeah, the North American tour that followed had a litany of things blow up in our faces along the way (one of the bands dropping off the entire tour with less than a week’s notice, far-less-than-expected attendance at a ton of the shows, not having copies of our new record to sell for over a week after it was released, a Hurricane cancelling our Florida shows, Matt getting pneumonia cancelling others…I could go on), but what else can you do besides see it through, go home, lick your wounds and get back at it as soon as possible? I’m not scared off by that shit. None of us are. Yeah, it can be demoralizing while it’s happening, but the crawl of time is relentless and puts everything, good and bad, in the rearview eventually. There’s only this present moment. Our expectations when starting this band were “let’s make the kind of death metal we enjoy listening to and play as many shows as possible” and that has never changed. So, that’s a long-winded way of saying that, for our creative process, the hard parts of devoting yourself to a band have just about the same impact that the good parts do: hardly anything. The mission remains the same.
Where did you record the album and with whom? How long did the recording take?
We recorded the album at Colin Marston’s new studio, Menegroth 2, in Cresco Pennsylvania. It took about two weeks and change.
What can you tell us about your time in the studio this time around? Did you do anything different when compared to past studio sessions? Did you learn any new studio tricks this time around?
With More Insane we wanted to try much more of a “let’s live in the studio for a while and get hyper-granular about everything” kind of approach, simply because it was something we had never done before and we thought it would be a cool experience. It was definitely worthwhile to do, and I have nothing but positive things to say about Mark Lewis and the way he pushed us in all aspects when tracking that record. We were even initially considering going back to him for this new album, but once the songs started coming together it became readily apparent that the vibe of the material better lent itself to the kind of studio approach we employed on Lesions of a Different Kind and It’s Time…to Rise from the Grave, which is something darker, rawer, and less fussed over. I think the magic of those first two records largely comes from how tightly we prepared the songs versus how relaxed we were when we tracked them, and we thought this new album would shine the best if we returned to that approach. When we realized that going back to Mark probably didn’t make the most sense for these songs, Colin was the very first name we thought of. Not only do we love the bands he plays in (Krallice, Gorguts, don’t make me list them all as much as I’d love to), but his production has been something we’ve admired from afar as fans since long before Undeath was a band. Thankfully he was happy to work with us, and it was a terrific experience top to bottom. When screws needed tightening he wasn’t afraid to crack the whip and offer creative and technical advice, but for the most part he just let us do our thing and rip through the songs, which is a perfect working dynamic for us. The whole album took about two weeks and a couple days to track, which is about as long as It’s Time… took, only I think we’re a much, much more seasoned band at this point. We’d get up every morning, drink some coffee, get to work, wrap up around 8 or 9 at night, smoke some weed, play some tetris, maybe drive out to the local bar and bother the townies (shout out to The Pour House), and go to bed ready to do it all over again the next day. It was wonderful. When you’re recording you just want to get it the fuck over with so you can finally listen to the songs you’ve been practicing for so long, you know? Colin let us do that, and he helped us sound natty and brolic in the process.
What can you tell us about what you have planned for the album’s cover art?
[Drummer] Matt [Browning]’s painting it as we speak, although by the time this runs I’m sure it’ll be done (and if it’s not…god help him). It’s going to be sick. He showed us sketches of what he had in mind and I’m sure it’s going to be another masterpiece born from his perverse and twisted mind of madness.
At what point did Relapse come into the picture and what pointed you in their direction as opposed to other prospective labels?
I guess it’s kind of a long story, but I’ll do my best to summarize. As soon as our deal with Prosthetic ran its course we started talking to all sorts of labels. Some of those conversations were great and went on for a while, but nothing really seemed to be clicking in an organic way. We all were looking for that a-ha moment where you’re talking to someone who wants to sign you and it really feels like they have a genuine understanding of where you’re coming from and where you’re trying to go, and it just wasn’t happening in the way we were hoping for. Sometimes we’d talk to an individual at a label and while it would seem like while they were stoked about us, the label they worked for wasn’t on the same page (someone even told me that we should consider changing our logo to something more legible, which…I guess everybody’s got a first day at Death Metal School). Finally, when I was totally burnt out on the whole process, I started thinking about labels I loved when I was a kid who a) were still around, b) were still doing cool shit and c) still possessed a real contextual understanding of the death metal we make, and Relapse leapt into my mind immediately. They’ve also signed a bunch of bands I love in the past couple years like Poison Ruin, Malthusian and Warning, which is exciting to me. I felt stupid for not thinking of them sooner, but in the back of my mind I guess I thought they were too cool for us and would break my heart if I reached out – haha. I shot them a line on a whim and, much to my surprise and delight, they hit me back the very same day and said that not only was the Relapse staff full of Undeath fans, but that they’d be hyped to work with us. We got the ball rolling soon afterwards, and here we are. I didn’t even wait until the ink was dry before I started asking them to send me records either LOL (I needed that Onward to Golgotha box set, sue me).
With a new label and team behind you, what are you hoping for with this album and cycle that may have felt unattainable in the past?
We’re all just excited to work with a label with skin in the game and decades of credibility under their belt, and one who’s actively invested in us and wants us to succeed. Prosthetic signed us off a demo when we were three guys in Rochester who didn’t have a pot to piss in, and I’m grateful for that, but that relationship was solid for us until it wasn’t, you know? I think once they realized we weren’t planning on re-signing and wanted to explore what else was out there they really took their foot off the gas at a very crucial time for us (while also planning on selling the label), which really rubbed us the wrong way. It is what it is, and I’m not going to mudsling about it, but I can already tell for the few months we’ve been on Relapse that they’re the kind of label who’s going to push us, get us out there, and help us through doors that weren’t available to us before. I’d love to get over to Europe again and do many more of those big metal fests, and when I brought that up in our early conversations with Relapse, they laid out a whole roadmap for how we could do that. It’s stuff like that where you can point to it and say “these aren’t just empty promises – this is a label with plenty of experience with bands like us who know how to help us reach our goals” that makes all the difference. We all want to take this thing as far as we can and we’re not getting any younger, so it feels great to have a stable foundation under our feet and a fresh tank of gas for the first time in a while. And maybe if I ask nicely they’ll take me into the vault and show me the safe they keep the Through Silver in Blood first pressings in. And when they’re not looking I’ll swipe one.
Wherever the Relapse vault is, we hope it matches up with one of the dates on the band’s upcoming tour and that Jones is welcomed with open arms and doesn’t have to resort to swiping. The rest of y’all, come on out and enjoy Undeath along with Archspire, Crown Magnetar and Mutilation Barbeque:
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