When they made their debut in 2008 with Embrace of the Narrow House (Eichenwald Industries), the then-duo of multi-instrumentalist Steve Mills and vocalist/guitarist George Birch inserted themselves into the ever-growing sphere of bands with a direct line to Black Sabbath‘s darkest moments we commonly know as traditional doom. Though subgenre designations are debatable (endlessly so), what comes across centrally in the material of the UK‘s The Wounded Kings is not the band paying homage in the form of imitation, but rather, striving to bring something new to the foundations on which they’re working.

With their follow-up, sophomore effort, The Shadow over Atlantis, on Sweden‘s I Hate Records, Mills and Birch have developed this ethic even further, incorporating linear songwriting and threaded themes running the course of the record’s six tracks. Not only is the sound (recorded by Mills) working within and beyond the parameters of doom, but by injecting elements of darkened psychedelia and classical compositions, The Wounded Kings are ensuring none who hear The Shadow over Atlantis will come out of it without realizing the individuality driving the band who wrote those songs.

Though The Wounded Kings have since made permanent their two live members — bassist Luke Taylor and drummer Nick Collings — and are scheduled to participate in this year’s Roadburn Festival in The Netherlands, and though The Shadow over Atlantis was recorded nearly a year ago, Mills recently took some time out for a cross-continental phone interview to discuss the album, its concept and the band’s motivations and outlook going forward. You’ll find it available for reading after the jump. Enjoy.

You’re obviously schooled in doom. Where do you see The Wounded Kings fitting in with the doom lineage?

Ah fucking hell (laughs). You know, I’ve never really thought about it. I grew up listening to Saxon and Dio and stuff like that, and it was only a few years later I started listening to Candlemass and then onto Black Sabbath and stuff like that. Whether we fit anywhere between there, Electric Wizard, Solitude Aeturnus and all those people, I don’t really know. Where do you think we fit in?

There’s a lot of old school stuff about the record, but the way it’s recorded — the layering of the guitars — there’s a lot that’s modern about it.

It’s weird. If I’m honest, I’ve got a real soft spot for the old stuff like Dream Death and the very early Cathedral and everything, but when I’m recording the albums, I’m pretty much listening to Pink Floyd and classical music and classical soundtracks. Have you seen the film Perfume? There’s a real dark soundtrack to that, and I’m pretty much not listening to any doom at all when I’m writing or recording. I suppose, because I come from that early doom background, that sort of playing, when I’m writing I just don’t bother listening to that. Maybe I bring in some weird Pink Floyd and some classical aspects to it that gives it something a little bit different. It’s very difficult analyzing, because I just start writing, and George comes over and we just get together, and it spews forth, and that’s how it ends up.

In the finished product, can you hear how those influences come into the songs?

Definitely, say, with “Into the Ocean’s Abyss,” I remember I was listening to Erik Satie quite a bit at the time, and his compositions on the piano are so unbelievably dark. I remember I’d been listening to that for a few days, and I just came up with that sort of piano line, and that had an influence. Some people, they say, “Oh yeah man, I’ve been listening to Fu Manchu and I love Monster Magnet,” and then you can really hear that coming through. I think with our stuff, I think we’re quite difficult to categorize. I think people try, because you have to, don’t you? A reviewer, you have to have a reference point so people can have a quick understanding of where the music’s coming from.

Yes, you do (laughs).

But I think we don’t sound like any of them. We may have little individual parts, but when they’re put together, I think we make up something new. When I put it on, I don’t think we sound like anybody else. I don’t think there’s a vocalist who sounds anything like George in doom, really. Somebody might pick up on, oh, there’s a slight bit of operatics and Candlemass. Somebody picked up on Scott Reagers, but I can’t really see that myself. They’re a little different, and people pick up on different things. I think we’re a bit different. I think when you put a Wounded Kings album on, you either say, “Who the fuck is that?” or people will say, “Oh yeah, that’s The Wounded Kings. I fucking know that band.” Sometimes you put something on and think, “Is that Electric Wizard?” Or someone puts on something and you think, “Is that a new Candlemass track?” and it’s something completely different. When you put our album on, you either haven’t got a clue who it is, or you know. I don’t know how you feel about that, if you think I’m talking bollocks or not.

I think, especially coming off the last record, there’s a lot more of a definite personality to this one. It’s a lot more individual, which I think is what you’re saying too. The band is in the process of developing into its own sound within that doom framework.

Yeah. The next recording is already done, with the full band, with Luke and Nick, and that’s another sound altogether as well. That’s a split that’s coming out in the summer with Cough, so you should get your hands on that at some stage. I’m not sure when it’s coming out. It’s off being mastered, so I haven’t got a clue when it’s actually coming out, but again, that’s recorded. That’s a different thing, but it was recorded in a studio rather than in my basement studio, so it’s a whole different process going on. We played it live with four musicians straight away, and it’s got a different sound again. It’s evolved. I think you’ll find that the musicianship is definitely better (laughs) on the next release. We got a much better drummer. I’m not putting myself down too much, but I play practically all the instruments on the album, and I play what’s needed to get my point across of what I’m trying to convey. On the new recording that’s coming out, there’s a drummer who’s a drummer. He lives for drums. And there’s a bass player who loves his bass and so forth. It’s evolved again, on a musicianship level of play.

Do you look at the album as being obsolete already?

(Laughs) It’s a weird thing, because The Shadow over Atlantis was finished over a year ago.

Recording-wise or writing-wise?

Writing definitely. Recording-wise, it finished about eight months ago, so it’s taken that long to get it together to come out. In a way, I’m kind of on to the next thing again. To a certain extent, it’s a new band. There’s four of us in the band rather than two, so the development there is definitely moving on. I’m sure when you speak to other musicians, other guys, once they’ve recorded an album and listened to it a few times, it goes away for ages, and then they bring it out again when it comes out and think, “Shit, I’ve got to learn it to play it live, and I’ve got to acquaint myself with it to talk to [press].” It feels a little bit old, but as you say, the album sounds fucking old (laughs). I’m very pleased with it and I’m pleased with the progression the band has taken, especially from our first album. That was pretty much an experiment, the first album. It was me and George, we got together and did a demo for it and he did a lot of weird desert/folk music, and I said, “Man, we ought to get together and do some stuff because your voice is great.” The first album was a total experiment and it was all the riffs that had been going about in my head for 10 years and I just had to get them all out. Then, the second album continued on from that, but there was a definite, “Right. I’m now going to start writing new stuff. I’ve got rid of all the riffs that were there floating about and I’m just going to start formulating a concept.” I think when you hear the first album, the idea started off as a concept, then you add stuff like “Master Witches” and I think it sounds more song-based, with “The Hours” and these other ones. The new album, it has a continuation. The songs are running into each other until they reach “Invocation of the Ancients,” which is the end of the album. I consciously wrote something with that idea in mind; that it would start in one place and work its way through to finish in another one with a running theme going through it.

You can feel that listening. The album sounds linear, like a concept record.

If I’m honest, I actually prefer writing the way I did for The Shadow of Atlantis to getting a lot of individual songs together and putting them together. It was much harder for the first one, working out the order to put them in, whereas, this album, I knew which had to be first, second, third, fourth and fifth, because I knew the direction it was going. I think I’ll do that again for the third album. I don’t know what the concept’s going to be yet, it all depends on what takes my fancy when I’m reading stuff.

What was the spark for the concept of this one?

The narrative of the album, the idea was, while I was writing it, my newborn son had just come into the world, and it made me way more conscious of what’s going on. Before, I’d just get on with my life and I wouldn’t really worry about politics or what really was going on to a certain extent. I’d be recycling and that sort of stuff, but that’s about it. But when you bring a new life in, it makes you aware of society in general and how we treat each other as people, and then I started reading about Atlantis and how it was the perfect society for a long time, because there the male and female psyches were in complete balance, and that was the golden age of Atlantis. I kept thinking that in this day and age, everything is way more violent and there’s way more greed in the world. People just want to fuck each other over all the time, and that’s the male and female to me, the balance of who you are is completely out of whack. It just got me thinking, and I started reading more about Atlantis, and eventually the same thing happened to them, the power-hungry, the greed, people starting wars and wanting to fucking conquer other areas and put their beliefs onto others. I just took that and put a bit of an H.P. Lovecraft vibe to it, and thought about some people’s souls being reincarnated from the souls of Atlantians. I think it’s one of Edgar Casey’s ideas. I thought, well, how about you take that on a fantasy level, if that was real and they actually found all we were doing is mirroring exactly what was happening to Atlantis, but we’re doing it now, and in doing so, rather than bringing the souls down, we’re actually dragging the real buried Atlantians up from the see, and they’ll come and help us or show us to our end of days, our complete doom. The doom of man. I thought it might make a good concept with the message that, obviously that isn’t really gonna happen, but… we are fucked in one way or another. As a race I think we’re past the point of no return. I know that’s doom and gloom (laughs).

Well, it’s doom, so that works.

I’m actually a really happy person, believe it or not (laughs). I know it doesn’t sound it. I think you harbor this stuff up, it lays in there pretty deep, then I think it’s the music that brings it out. I’m generally a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke. It’s when I’m writing music that it comes to the surface. I just thought, writing the album, you hear a lot of people and they say, “Man, this fucking doom album, you gotta hear it. It’s real doom.” Maybe it’s just me, but a lot of it just leaves me thinking, “Well that was a bit cheerful.” That’s sort of hands in the air, do the horns, you know, all the little bits, and it’s too cheerful for a doom album. I just thought, fuck it, that’s not what we do. It’s fuckin’ slow, heavy fuckin’ doom. I think some people have had a real problem with that this time around. Some people think it’s too slow. I’m thinking, fucking hell. Some reviewer, he said, “Man, this is just terrible. It’s like shoot-yourself-in-the-fucking-head slow.” That’s fantastic, mate! That’s one of the funniest reviews I’ve ever read!

Finally, someone gets it!

(Laughs) Yeah! It’s a weird time. There’s so many forms of doom – traditional doom, funeral doom, stoner doom, this, that and the other doom – but really, if the record’s dark and it fucking gets to you, that’s doom to me. When Johnny Cash did that track “Hurt?” That’s fucking doom. That is doom. There’s a heck of a lot of labels going around. People are saying we’re traditional doom. Well fine, but what the fuck is traditional doom? Is it Cathedral? I haven’t got a clue. I think you’re either doom or you’re not, aren’t you? I don’t know how you feel about that.

I kind of have to do the segmentation thing, like we were saying before.

Yeah, I can appreciate that.

Traditional doom, I think a lot of it derives from, yeah, the old Cathedral, slower Sabbath, that ultra dark original metal sound. Not like your faster guitar rock stuff. But really, it varies almost by band.

I know what you mean. It’s a matter of opinion. You read it or hear it and somebody says, “Oh yeah, Wounded Kings, real, heavy traditional doom.” Then someone’ll say, “Oh, Gates of Slumber, really heavy traditional doom.” I really like The Gates of Slumber. We played with them in Birmingham and they’re a fucking awesome band. But I would imagine if somebody went and bought a Gates of Slumber and they fucking loved it, and they went and bought our album basing it on that, they’d be thinking, “Eh? This is weird. Where’s the similarity here?” Because there isn’t one, really, is there?

It’s a different approach.

At the end of the day, who really gives a shit?

Tell me about the writing relationship between you and George, and now with Nick and Luke, with the whole band. How has that been changing?

I pretty much write all the music, and I write most of the lyrics. George is quite good. I’m not a major lyricist by any stretch of the imagination. Some people, that’s their main thing, and that’s not me. I get my point across, but George does help with the lyrics. Generally I write most of the stuff. George’ll come over and we’ll jam out and I’ll say, “This is the sort of thing that’s going on” and we’ll just play, almost like a two-piece we used to play and then we’d do our overdubs on top of that. That was always the writing process with George. Up to now, now we’ve got the other two guys in, I would say that I find it difficult saying this, but you always need a leader of a band in a way who’s got the focus on what you’re trying to achieve, and then just allow the other guys to do their thing and add to it and put their own identity into it. You’ve got to have somebody driving it in a direction. I’ve tried before where you have four people all banging their ideas in and it ends up a fucking disaster. The writing process is still pretty much I come up with all the riffs and the guys add to it or just tell me, “Man, that’s fucking shit,” and I’ll go back and rewrite or start all over.

I know you have a couple shows coming up and you’re doing Roadburn, but are you in writing mode again now?

No, not at all at the moment. We wrote this track for the Cough thing and since that, we have just been rehearsing for the live stuff. For ages, we’ve had a half-hour set, and for Roadburn, we’ve got a full 60 minutes, so we’ve been working pretty hard in getting that stuff together. We’ve literally just focused purely on the live set. We’ve not played that many gigs. I think in total we’ve played four gigs, and we just want to make sure when people see us they’re blown away. I think that after we’ve got this year out of the way, whereas when we’ve been writing the two albums before, we’ve had no shows so we can just write. This year, in April I think we’re going to Ireland for a couple dates, pre-Roadburn, so we can break the set in nicely. Then we’ve got Roadburn. Then we’ve got Hell’s Pleasure in Germany. Then we’ve got a European tour at the end of the year with Fall of the Idols coming up. I think after that we’ll come back in November and start writing again. This year we want to focus on taking the material we’ve already done out onto the road and playing some good live shows for people.

Is playing live any different now that the other two guys are actually in the band?

To begin with, when we got the other two guys in, it was just gonna be like, “You guys are here for live.” Originally, the guys were just gonna come in to play live, and particularly the drummer, I waited for years to get him. I’ve known him, and he had other commitments, and I just thought, “Fuck it, me and George have this dynamic and we’re just going to wait for other people to share it live.” And they came aboard as we finished recording The Shadow over Atlantis, and we gelled so well. I remembered the first rehearsal, we’d done two songs straight away, perfect. No changes required, jammed it out. We’ve got loads of new guitar parts and new riffs to add in, to emulate the keyboards. It’s a real different experience when you see it live. I just remember at the time with the guys, we were thinking, “Fuck me. This is almost too easy.” I said to George, “We’ve got a good thing here, they may as well just join,” because I could see we all gelled musically well together. I said, “Fuck it, let’s evolve The Wounded Kings as a four-piece now.” They all like the same stuff. You just know when somebody’s got the feel. Drummers, for instance. You can have some really amazing drummers, some fantastic, thrashing drummers, but they can’t play doom because they can’t play slow enough and keep the time and keep the space and the feel of it, a cymbal crashing at just the right time and enough space left there. We just thought, “Fuck it. Perfect. Perfect bunch of guys.” The bass player isn’t a virtuoso putting fucking Flea shit in there. He’s exactly what’s needed in there, heavily. Beautiful. That’s The Wounded Kings. Done and dusted.

The Wounded Kings on MySpace

I Hate Records

Tags: I Hate, The Wounded Kings, UK

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.