Zoroaster: Hearing Voices
There’s something about Zoroaster‘s music that, as a schmuck who sits on his ass all day and writes about metal, makes me want to talk about monsters — giant aliens attacking from the sky, buildings collapsing like smashed Legos and huge tsunamis flushing away civilization. I think that’s how you know it’s good.
On Voice of Saturn, the Atlanta trio’s second full-length released through their own Terminal Doom Records, despite choosing to work once again with engineer Ed Rawls — who produced 2007’s Dog Magic as well –?Zoroaster show some obvious points of growth throughout the seven tracks present; the piano that makes its way into “Spirit Molecule” being the most glaring but by no means the only instance. Noises and drones fill out an extended cut like “Undying,” the vocals of guitarist Will Fiore and bassist Brent Anderson throughout are more present than either on the last album or the 2005 self-titled demo (re-released in 2006 by Battle Kommand/Southern Lord), and Voice of Saturn culminates in a drum circle hidden track led by drummer Dan Scanlan. Progress is all around, but nowhere is heaviness sacrificed.
Fiore called in yesterday (Wednesday, March 18) from Dallas, Texas to talk about Voice of Saturn, his experience at Scion Rock Fest, the band’s decision to stay independent and what life on the road is like these days. Interview is after the jump.
How’s Dallas?
It’s fuckin’ hot.
You guys are doing SXSW tomorrow?
Actually, tomorrow’s Thursday? We’re doing Friday and Saturday shows. After tonight in Dallas, we’re gonna head in there and just have a day off. We were going to pick up another show originally, but we’ve never just went there. We’ve always been running around and fuckin’ playing shows and we never get to fuckin’ see anybody, so we were like, “Fuck it, let’s have Thursday off and go and just relax, check these bands out, hang out with some friends out there.”
How was the Scion Rock Fest?
Umm… (laughs) It was interesting. We played Philly the night before and we just had to drive 14 hours or whatever the fuck. Of course, in Philly, we didn’t just end the show and sleep or start driving; we figured it would be better to go to a strip club until four in the morning and get wasted (laughs). We didn’t even get to Atlanta until probably seven o’clock that night, and then they wanted to do an interview about our album and then we had to load in our guitars and all that shit and it took an hour or so. I think I saw maybe 10 minutes of Neurosis and then pretty much had to get on stage, so that kind of sucked (laughs). It was like all our friends and all these fuckin’ cool bands that I wanted to see, and yeah, I ended up seeing 10 minutes of another band and then just fuckin’ playing. It was still cool. It was definitely not as chaotic as I thought it would be. I just imagined people just piled on top of each other, fights and brawls, drunks throwing up everywhere you look, but it was actually really easy to get around. It’s pretty cool in that aspect. We had gear issues, a bunch of our gear kind of crapped out, and I just figured I’d jump into the drums and call it a night (laughs). So that was kind of interesting. But it was really cool. Definitely after coming off tour and making that drive, it was really cool to get in my bed later that night — or earlier that morning, I should say. They pulled it off a lot better than I thought it would go down.
I remember seeing you guys were going right from Philly to down there. You were in Jersey the night before, in New Brunswick.
Yeah, we did a basement show. It was fuckin’ awesome, man. I think it was a dirt floor, I don’t know. All our shit is still filthy from that show. It was awesome. We were all crammed in this basement with our smoke machine and our lights and just blasting. That was our first time in Jersey. You’re always kind of wondering how it’s gonna be the first time, but it’s always best to do a house show the first time in town. They’re always way better; people are definitely going to be there, trying to have a good time. It’s great.
In general, what are conditions like for you on the road now?
It goes back and forth. You have your good nights and your bad, and you have good tours where nothing goes wrong and you have tours where fucking busses blow up. It’s been really good lately. The South By thing is just a 10 day — we just booked 10 dates around SXSW. It’s kind of gotten off to a rocky start. It’s only going to be the third night, but we showed up late to a show, so the first show was pull up, load in, play for like 20 minutes, then pull right back off, in 40 minutes it’s done. Last night we were in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and we played a St. Patrick’s Day party. There were five bands before us; an industrial band, a ska band (laughs). It was a weird fucking bill and this bar was part of some fucking pub crawl with all these fucking douchebags just coming in and out. And we just had a bad time where the owner of the club hated us and hated what we were doing and tried to get up on the stage and turn us off a few times. We had a buddy with us who held him off for a while, but eventually he got us. We haven’t had a good show yet, hopefully tonight will be better. Generally it’s been good though. People keep coming out and spending money buying shirts and CDs. That’s cool. As long as we get some gas money to roll on to the next town.
How has the reaction been to the Voice of Saturn material?
Overall it’s been really good. There’s a few people that kind of get a little confused with piano parts and whatever, but people have been loving it. We’ve played mostly Voice of Saturn stuff on this run and the last run, because we figured we’ve already started writing for the next record, so if we want to play these songs, this is the only chance we’ll get.
Actually, I wanted to talk to talk to you about that piano part in “Spirit Molecule,” and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who has. Even just looking at the album, seeing the art and everything, it’s pretty apparent you guys are doing something different. Did you come off Dog Magic purposefully wanting to try something new?
Well, we mostly wanted it to sound different than Dog Magic. Dog Magic was definitely different than the first one. The actual piano part was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. We were in the studio and Dan was just like, “Hey, we should put a piano part in there,” and we were like, “Okay.” So we tracked it and played that little interlude section a little longer and figured we’d try the piano there and if it doesn’t work, we’ll shorten it up. But we tossed it in there and it sounds pretty fucking cool. That was one of the only songs that was really written by the time we went into the studio. We played that on tour for quite a few months before we went in to record Voice of Saturn. It was cool just to make the recorded different than what it sounds like live. We know when we play any of these songs live, they’re all going to sound the same: loud and fuckin’ heavy. So it was like, “Yeah, we can put a little different twist on it for the record,” and we just went with it. As far as myself, when I went in to record, I just changed up all my settings on my amps. I just wanted to get a different guitar tone. Dog Magic, I just went in there with my amps pretty much set up how they are live. I thought it would be cool to just play around with it and make it so when you do hear it, you know what record it’s from, because it definitely has a sound to it. Then when you come out and see us, my amps are back the way they normally are (laughs), so if you don’t like the record, you might like the songs live. But we just don’t want to make the same record over and over again. We like Dog Magic and we’ll probably make another Dog Magic record, but not now. We just don’t want to get bored.
The stuff you’ve been writing now – how has that developed the sound?
We’ve got this one song that’s probably going to be the centerpiece that’s another song that goes way back to the beginnings with the first drummer. Me and Brent were kind of fucking around and we stumbled on it, like, “Oh man, I forgot about that song.” And we pulled out these old CDs and demos of it and were like, “We should really do this.” It’s definitely going to sound really fucking heavy and it’s just going to be in the same vein as an “Algebra [of Need],” “Undying” kind of song. Then we’ve also got some stuff that’s loose, jammy. It’s across the board. There’s slow stuff, fast stuff, short songs, long songs. I don’t know. It’s still really early with a lot of stuff. A lot of things are just riffs I have in my head that we haven’t played together as a band, but I’ve pretty much got the gist of what the album will be lined up in my head.
It seems like both your and Brent’s vocals are more prominent in the mix on Voice of Saturn. Just a mixing thing, or something done on purpose?
It’s just another thing to make the record different. We worked with Ed again. It’s the third time we’ve worked with him, and he’s just getting more of how we sound and how to work with it. It’s just one of those natural progressions. I think every engineer always wants the vocals louder. We had him lower it. There’s always that battle where they want the vocals up and we’re like, “No, we want them buried” (laughs). We definitely took them up a little more on this one, but all the engineers we work with still think they’re buried. I guess we’re getting a little more comfortable with our voices as well. Me and Brent, we can’t sing or anything, but we’re always trying to hide it under the music. We’re getting a little more comfortable with our voices.
The noises and the drones also stand out more. I know you said it was “Spirit Molecule” that was only written before you got to the studio, but I was curious as to when that stuff came into the songs, whether it was added afterwards or part of it in your head all along.
The weird thing is, initially when we came up with the idea for Voice of Saturn, it was going to be a more improvised record. We went in there, we knew we had a song or two, and we were just going to kind of take all our Moogs and noisemakers, and we were just going to try and make a really noisy record. Which we did, and it was cool, but after two weeks of listening to it, we realized it was cool for us but nobody else would want to listen to it, so we went back in and recorded more and rearranged the record and put more emphasis on the songs. Usually with the noise stuff, it’s always in the back of your head, but typically when we record, we’ll all get in there and record a basic track together, then we’ll add vocals and I’ll usually double up the guitar and do some guitar noise. All the synths and stuff like that, it really just comes on improvised, like, “Yeah we need a little something here,” and, “We want to do something here.” We just roll with it, just roll take and go through and if it sounds good we keep it and if not, we try it another time. Nothing’s ever written for it, we just take a stab in the dark, “Let’s try this configuration here,” and if that doesn’t sound right, we’ll try a theremin, whatever, a guitar. All that stuff is pretty much open until it feels right.
How does it work with the vocals? When do the lyrics come into play? Because the songs are still pretty much based around the riffs.
The lyrics. We’re usually pretty bad about that. I know “White Dwarf,” it was the same thing with “Brazen Bull” on Dog Magic. A lot of the time we don’t have any lyrics before they’re setting up to record them. Me and Brent are sitting there with notepads, trying to compare notes and finish out the lyrics and still trying to get vocal patterns as well. We’re really bad about getting that shit done, we just put it off to the last minute. It always works out, so it’s not too bad.
Obviously you must have had offers after Dog Magic was so successful. What’s the advantage of releasing through your own label?
You get to do what you want and when you want to. We definitely are not opposed to working with any other labels, we just haven’t reached any agreements with anyone that we thought were helpful to us and would give us anymore than what we’re doing for ourselves. We’d like to get better tours that I know we could probably get if we were with a different label, but none of the people we’ve talked to yet — I don’t know if it’s not the right time or what it is, but the things they wanted versus what they were offering, it just didn’t add up to us at this time. We’re definitely not opposed. That was another thing. We were talking to some labels and it was like, “We’ll give you a record but then we also want to put out another one six months later, on our label.” We’ve got all these songs we want to get out there, but a lot of people aren’t really into doing that. They want to put out one record and let it go for a year or so. We’ll see. Maybe in the future we’ll come to an agreement with another label. I’d love to do it. Kind of sucks paying for everything yourself (laughs). Would be nice to have tour support and stuff, all these things that go wrong all the time. We’re going to do it regardless, so if we can get it great, if not, whatever.
On the one hand it would be nice to have someone to call when something gets fucked up, but on the other, no one’s trying to screw you over. Unless you’re trying to screw yourself over.
Not yet (laughs). I’ll find a way to steal money from myself. But yeah, when our bus blew up in Arizona six months ago, it sucked. We dumped like fuckin’ five grand in a fuckin’ week, then having to rent shit to get back home and all that. It’s like, that shit’s on my credit card. It’s not like you can call someone from the label and get everything taken care of. But it’s fine. It’s what I chose to do with my life, I’m not going to complain about it.
Tags: Atlanta, Terminal Doom, Zoroaster
