I might’ve said one or two, but it’s a genuine surprise to realize three years have passed since the release of Sedentary (review here). That record was a vicious return from the Chicago outfit with Georgia roots, and three years between albums for them is down from the five it took to get to Sedentary, so actually that’s even less. I’d say that’s probably a good sign for American Heritage‘s future, as well as the fact that they have a permanent bassist, which they didn’t going into the last record, but apparently guitarist Adam Norden (interview here) has quit the band since Prolapse was recorded, so there might not be a future at all.

That’s how the PR wire has it, anyway. Nonetheless, the band is signed with Solar Flare Records and will have the album out in November:

AMERICAN HERITAGE To Issue Sixth Album Via Solar Flare Records This Autumn

Clermont-Ferrand, France-based Solar Flare Records proudly announces the signing of Chicago-based quartet, AMERICAN HERITAGE, for the release of the band’s recently completed sixth full-length album.

Since 1996, AMERICAN HERITAGE has relentlessly dispatched their ripping concoction of technical, mangled metal/hardcore backed with their cynical, lowbrow music and human relations, both on record and on the stage. Their self-titled 1998 debut EP released on The Rosewood Union was chased by the full-length, Why Everyone Gets Cancer, released in 1999 on the same label, and their Through The Age Of Quarrel And Into The Era Of Putting Up With It album released in 2001 by Troubleman Unlimited, and then the Bipolar album through Escape Artist in 2004. Two subsequent albums on Translation Loss followed — 2006’s Millenarian and 2011’s Sedentary, the latter released in Europe via Solar Flare Records — among EPs on Class-B Records, Delboy Records and more including split 7″ releases with Thee Plague Of Gentlemen, Mastodon and others. Their most recent Sedentary album, recorded while the lineup was void of a full-time bassist, included guest contributions on each track, involving their partners in crime, collectively hailing from Sulaco, Murder Construct, Exhumed, D.I.S., Fight Amp, Nachtmystium, Buried At Sea, Mastodon, Primate, Lioness, Sweet Cobra, Dark Fog, Plague Bringer, Black Cobra, The Swan King, Beak, Surachai and others. On the road, AMERICAN HERITAGE has toured and performed alongside the likes of Baroness, Black Cobra, Floor, Mastodon, Pelican, Burnt By The Sun, Misery Index, Coliseum, Dysrhythmia, Saviours, Origin and countless others.

Following the departure of original guitarist Andrei Cabanban back in 2002, through a continually revolving array of bassists, AMERICAN HERITAGE has been steadily comprised of drummer Mike Duffy, vocalist/guitarist Adam Norden and guitarist Scott Shellhamer, and for the past several years, completed by bassist Erik Bocek. This lineup raided SOMA Studios in March of this year with producer Sanford Parker, with additional recording by Che Arthur and Mike Lust, to record their sixth full-length, Prolapse. Once the caustic madness of the bruising album was recorded, Parker mixed the final product, the thirty-three minute album displaying some of the band’s most diverse material to date. After the recording of Prolapse, core member Adam Norden left the band, and after eighteen years of abuse and racket, this move makes it foreseeable that this will be the final album from AMERICAN HERITAGE.

Prolapse will be let out of the cage this November, on digital, CD and vinyl formats via Solar Flare Records, home to Pigs, Sofy Major, The Great Sabatini, Pord, Stuntman and other high-quality acts from the noisier end of the underground rock/metal community. A confirmed street date and additional release details will be announced in the coming weeks.

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http://www.twitter.com/fuckingheritage
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American Heritage, Sedentary (2011)

According to that great purveyor of all interwebular knowledge whose name I don’t even need to mention because you all know it, it’s at least 12 hours in a car to get from Gainesville, Georgia, to Chicago, Illinois. Taking into account that that’s the trip drummer Mike Duffy had to make every time he wanted to show up to band practice, it’s kind of understandable why it’s taken American Heritage six years to issue Sedentary, the follow up to their 2005 Translation Loss debut, Millenarian.

Not only that, but the then-three members of the band — Duffy and guitarists Scott Shellhammer and Adam Norden — also had to deal with the issue of a bassist. As in, they didn’t have one. Most bands would either hit up Craigslist or go without, but perhaps in an effort to contradict the album’s title, American Heritage decided to call upon a host of players, from Bill Kelliher of Mastodon to Sanford Parker, who also recorded the bulk of the record.

So on top of their drummer’s hellacious commute, they wound up with the task of chasing down a bass player for each track on Sedentary, while also recruiting Erik Bocek to fill the role full-time. Oh, and Norden — who also handles vocals — completely reinvented the way he sings, moving from gruff hardcore growls to a semi-melodic cleaner approach, still rooted in shouting, but infinitely more decipherable than on the last album.

Come to think of it, maybe six years between releases isn’t that bad. I’d go on about the record, but you can read the review here if you’re so inclined. Better to get right to the Q&A with Norden, since there was a lot to talk about, including the lyrical thematics at play on the songs and the roots of the band’s choice of Sedentary as the album’s title, the sonic changes American Heritage has undergone in the last six years, the process of rounding up all those bassists and much more.

Complete Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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Let’s say you’re American Heritage. You hail either from Chicago or Gainesville, Georgia, depending on who in the band you are, and you put out an album that gets some pretty sizeable critical response in 2006 called Millenarian on Translation Loss. Two years go by and you decide it’s time to start putting together your next album – but wait, your bass player isn’t with you anymore. Sure there are plenty of bands who go without these days, and with two guitars, you would probably be heavy enough in any case, but some people just like to make things difficult, and apparently you’re that kind of person. Or band.

Instead of going without a low end, which is almost never the right move, or finding a permanent bassist in time to make their new album, Sedentary (also Translation Loss), American Heritage recruited a variety of players from the landscape of modern metal, including such luminaries as Bill Helliher of Mastodon, with whom American Heritage released a split way back when, Rafa Martinez of Black Cobra/Acid King and the ubiquitous Sanford Parker, who also recorded the basic tracks for the three remaining members of American Heritage – guitarist/vocalist Adam Norden, guitarist Scott Shellhammer and drummer Mike Duffy.

It’s a huge project, and with several other outside contributions as well – Lon Hackett who handles bass on opener “City of God” also plays keyboard, Kelliher also rips an added guitar solo on the grinding “Fetal Attraction,” Josh Rosenthal is lead vocalist for the wonderfully titled Martinez-bassed “Morbid Angle,” etc. – it’s a wonder American Heritage came out of it with anything close to a cohesive album. To their credit, and to the credit of Parker who mixed, they did. Norden’s vocals, which are cleaner on Sedentary than they were on Millenarian, are a tying factor, but even more than that, the changes Sedentary presents — there are plenty – are more related to toying with different genres than some kind of tonal inconsistency. Usually something with this many guests involved is either a wreck or a compilation. American Heritage have managed to pull an album out of what must have been a nightmarishly convoluted process, and before any measure is taken of how the thing actually sounds, they have to be commended for that.

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Coincidentally, I was thinking about these guys the other day, in a “What ever happened to American Heritage?” sort of thing. Turns out they’ve got a new record dropping in the New Year. Needless to say, I’ve been wondering what ever happened to my millions and millions of dollars ever since this press release arrived. So far, no word on that.

Behold! Another album on which Sanford Parker has left his mark!

American Heritage will release Sedentary, their first album since 2006’s critically-acclaimed Millenarian, on March 1, 2011, via Translation Loss Records.

Recorded at Chicago’s Semaphore Studios with Buried at Sea‘s Sanford Parker once again behind the boards, the 11-track album features a different bass player on each song including contributions from the aforementioned Parker, Mastodon‘s Bill Kelliher and Black Cobra‘s Rafa Martinez. After recording Sedentary, American Heritage added Erik Bocek (Joan of Arc, Ghosts and Vodka) as their permanent bass player.

Adam Norden, singer and guitar player for American Heritage, explains the lyrical ideas behind Sedentary, “The idea is from the concept of a sedentary society, meaning, one that no longer is nomadic. I was thinking of what changed at that point in human development.”