The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Dan Blomquist of Conclave & Benthic Realm

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

I currently play drums in two bands from Massachusetts, Conclave and Benthic Realm. I grew up in a musical family with both my parents being performing violinists. I took piano lessons first growing up, played hand bells at my Dad’s church, then trombone and saxophone in grade school band but ultimately found my sweet spot with smashing things in the drums around sophomore year of high school. Been my drug of choice since.

Describe your first musical memory.

How about my first musical memory of when my musical taste changed from what I was raised to listen to and learn to play, to the heavier side of music. Around 1979 or so, my Dad and I made our ritualistic trip to Radio Shack. He was an electronics engineer and a hi-fi nut so this was like his second home. This particular trip I had enough money that I bought myself a small handheld AM/FM radio. As soon as we got home I headed out to Anne’s Variety Store to go purchase some penny candy with my totally badass handheld radio.

I ran to the top of the hill on the way to the store and BOOM! I had FM Rock Radio on! KISS was playing and I’d never heard anything like them before. That was the moment my tastes changed. My Dad would break my balls after that about every single band I would introduce to him, but he always encouraged me to play… and to play “quieter.” When my Dad passed away five years ago and I had to go through his belongings at his house, I found the radio was still there in a box with all kinds of other radios and gear. I took it home and have it to this day.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Being a kid helping my Dad by carrying his music stand into what ever music hall, conservatory or orchestra pit he was playing in. He always made me feel like I was part of the orchestra or ensemble he was playing with and it felt amazing, like I was 10 feet tall.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

I’m actually coming up empty on this one. I suppose I could go back to when I stopped believing in God, but I’m not really sure that I ever truly believed in it to begin with. I’d like to be spiritual, but we’re all just organic matter that will rot away so what’s the point. My whimsical essence isn’t going to travel through the cosmos for eternity. Make the most of the time you’ve got. It’s all you’ve got. Believe that.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Ultimately, where it’s supposed to I would say. Progression in the arts can be very different from one person or form to another. So how and where you progress is kind of organic, evolutionary and unavoidable. Plus progress is the route of all evil they say, so there’s bonus points for being evil.

How do you define success?

I’d define success as being able to take something positive away from everything you do even if you seem to fail at it. In other words, if you set a weight loss goal of dropping 50 lbs in a year and lose less than that in a year, you still succeeded in progressing towards your goal. If you don’t lose sight of that, you’ll continue on and reach your ultimate goal which was to lose the weight, even if it took a longer amount of time. To fall short of your goal and stop before finishing the journey is to be unsuccessful. Don’t stop, don’t give up and you’ll always succeed.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Family and friends die from alcohol, drug abuse and suicide.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

Inner peace.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

Feeling. Whether you’re creating it or taking it in, it’s about how it makes you feel. The artist, the viewer, the listener, the reader, all of it, all of them, everyone.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

NON-musical in the immediate future would have to be my daughter and the youngest of my three, graduating high school in June and beginning her college stem classes this summer. She’s had more than her fair share of struggles and obstacles in her life leading up to this point and I couldn’t be more proud or grateful for the beautiful and incredible person she is.

https://www.facebook.com/conclaveband/
https://www.instagram.com/conclave_ma/
https://conclave1.bandcamp.com/music
www.argonautarecords.com
https://www.facebook.com/ArgonautaRecords/
https://www.instagram.com/argonautarecords/

https://www.facebook.com/benthicrealm/
https://benthicrealm.bandcamp.com/
http://www.benthicrealm.com/

Conclave, Dawn of Days (2021)

New England’s Conclave deliver a harsh lesson in ’90s-style brutality with their second album, Dawn of Days, on Argonauta Records. The four-piece band made their debut some five years ago with Sins of the Elders (review here), and with the intervening time resulting in the limited cassingle “War Stalks the Land” (video here) and numerous appearances on the Eastern US Seaboard in clubs and at fests, the band has earned a reputation for their blend of classic death metal, sludge and melancholic doom. Dawn of Days delivers all of these and more in a relatively efficient five-song/45-minute LP-ready package, finding the band — bassist/vocalist Jerry Orne, guitarist/backing vocalist Jeremy Kibort, guitarist Chris Ciguere and drummer Dan Blomquist — with an approach it’s still fair to call refined despite its outward grit and the glee with which Kibort gurgles out the end of eight-minute centerpiece “Haggard,” which is nothing if not a song for our times.

The band’s pedigree is well established, with Ciguere having done time in thrashers PanzerBastard, Blomquist doubling in Benthic Realm and Orne fronting then-and-now incarnations of WarHorse as well as having been in death metallers Desolate with Kibort. All of this is relevant but perhaps not crucial to understanding where Conclave are coming from on their second record — that is to say, the band’s deathsludge is their own regardless of what members have done in other projects, and the quiet guitars that begin the intro to the opening title-track establish a bleak but thoughtful atmosphere at the outset that is maintained no matter how pummeling things get; an answer back later provided by 13-minute closer “Suicide Funeral” for good measure. But things do get fairly pummeling, and by “things” I mean riffs, vocals, tones and drums. Orne‘s throaty shouts are recognizable and raw from their first arrival, and they cut through the relative fullness of the surrounding guitar distortion all the more for that, giving way to first solo and slowdown-into-chug that’s all the more sludged for its inclusion of wah-bass. Somehow, the song is catchy.

Eric Sauter recorded at Blackheart Sound in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Monolord‘s Esben Willems mastered in Gothenburg, Sweden, at Studio Berserk, and the intention toward heft — as well as the accomplishment thereof — is unmistakable. “Dawn of Days” is not so much content to ride its groove as it is gleeful, and as the band transitions into the mostly-speedier “Death Blows Cold,” the theme holds firm, machine-gun drums and galloping guitar placed first to lead into the tumult of the first verse, impact and aggression at the center with Kibort backing Orne on vocals before the chorus pays off the tension built with an overarching echo of guitar lead. There’s a solo yet to come, and they finish with double-kick and clench-teeth-circle-headbang chug, but they don’t forget amid the melee to bring back that lead either, and it serves well to tie the track’s progression together even as they move toward arguably Dawn of Days‘ most brutal stretch, with little momentum sacrificed as “Haggard” picks up where its predecessor left off. Kill, kill, kill, gentlemen. Fast or slow.

“Haggard” is a highlight for the added complexity it brings after the relatively simple pleasure of assault on “Death Blows Cold,” but all the more so because of what it leads to in “Thrown on Spikes” — nobody ever accused Conclave of subtlety — and the aforementioned “Suicide Funeral,” the two songs comprising the entirety of side B where side A had three. “Haggard,” then, is the transitional stretch, and it returns to some of the method of “Dawn of Days” but is faster and leaning toward the more extreme end of the band’s sound, their effectiveness at not only being willing to go there, but conscious of tipping to one side or another a further asset to coincide with the drive that emerges in “Haggard”‘s second half. Mirroring in some fashion the beginning of the record, “Thrown on Spikes” begins with a section of quiet guitar to which a significant plod is added, and the adjustment of expectation as the band shifts into a massive chug ‘n’ crash is immediate — the song’s name perhaps deriving from the feeling of what they’re doing to the listener at that point, as well as the title line in the chorus.

One way or the other, it is the stuff of tape-trading daydreams, which makes it even more notable that Conclave shift immediately into the comparatively modern-feeling “Suicide Funeral,” allowing the guitar to flesh out some of the more depressive echo across its span and resulting in a feel that brings Pallbearer-style instrumental emotionalism into the context of Conclave‘s own brutality. It is a fascinating meld, almost surprising in its level of engagement, but not at all out of place for how well they set up the progression that moves toward it across the previous cuts. The layered leads around on either side of the 10-minute mark are a rousing crescendo for a build that’s both wistful and righteously heavy, and it’s further to the band’s credit that, as much bludgeoning as they’ve already done — nothing left to prove there — they end with something willfully melodic and drifting, a long fade leading to an acoustic closeout, calling back to the start of the record for completeness’ sake as well as that quiet start to “Thrown on Spikes,” bringing symmetry to the one-into-the-next structure of side B.

That sense of Dawn of Days as a whole work, meant to be taken in its entirety, isn’t to be understated, however much a song like the title-track or “Death Blows Cold” might stand out along the way. It speaks to the underlying purposefulness that Conclave bring to this awaited sophomore effort, the execution of which is fluid and immersive despite the outwardly punishing aspects of its aesthetic. Though the years since Sins of the Elders saw Orne revive WarHorse, what’s made clearest throughout the proceedings here is that Conclave have not been left behind in the wake of that reunion’s success, and neither has their growth as a unit been forgotten. It may be that they’re speaking to ends-as-new-beginnings in the album’s title, and if so, what unfolds throughout could hardly be more encouraging.

Conclave, “Dawn of Days” official video

Conclave, Dawn of Days (2021)

Conclave on Thee Facebooks

Conclave on Instagram

Conclave on Bandcamp

Argonauta Records website

Argonauta Records on Thee Facebooks

Dawn of Days — one assumes as to the end thereof — will serve as the title for the second full-length from Massachusetts-based death-sludgers Conclave, who made their debut with Sins of the Elders (review here) in 2016. I’ve been lucky enough to have heard a few snippets along the way from Conclave, works in progress and that sort of thing, and if you’re thinking something along the lines of, “well shucks that’s probably going to be very very heavy,” you’re not that far off at least as regards what I’ve encountered to-date.

Some particulars unveiled today — the title, the recording info, the lineup; that’s more than you get sometimes — but the real news here is that the Spring 2021 release is being handled through Argonauta Records, which makes Conclave labelmates to other East Coast acts like Clamfight, Dee Calhoun and Shadow Witch, never mind all the bands from everywhere else on the label. It’s a good fit either way, and I’m looking forward to the album whenever it might show up.

Announcement follows from the PR wire:

Heavy Doom Collective CONCLAVE Signs With Argonauta Records!

New Album To Be Released In Spring 2021!

Massachusetts-USA Heavy Doom collective, CONCLAVE, have signed with Italian record label ARGONAUTA RECORDS for the Worldwide release of their forthcoming album, entitled ”Dawn Of Days”. CONCLAVES sophomore full-length will be released on colored and black vinyl, CD and digitally in the Spring of 2021.

With a musical resume that includes such acts as WarHorse, PanzerBastard, Desolate, Tenebrae, and Benthic Realm, along with several other bands and projects over the decades, ”Dawn Of Days” will be the crushing culmination of all the members’ longtime experience. Continuing to be anything but categorical in their song writing, combining melodic doom, pounding sludge and heavy grooves, their sound appeals to fans of all genres of heavy music.

“We feel fortunate and thankful to have Gero of Argonauta Records welcome us into his label’s family during what has likely been the worst year in the history of the arts and entertainment industry.“ Says the band about their upcoming label collaboration. “It really speaks volumes to Gero’s dedication and support of musicians, bands, and the art they create. We’re friends with some and fans of many of the bands on the Argonauta roster and are very excited to join their ranks.

Our last album “Sins Of The Elders” was released in 2016. Since then our sound and writing style has evolved along with our line up, with the addition of Chris Giguere on lead and rhythm guitar. The new album “Dawn Of Days” has something for all fans of heavy music. From the cadence of the riffs, to the dueling hypnotic and frenzied lead guitars; the melancholy acoustic parts to the crushing bass lines, it all rounds out our brand of punishing doom. We’re very proud of this album. To be able to work with Gero at Argonauta Records and Mona of All Noir PR, Bookings & Management on its release in 2021 is everything we could have hoped for. We can’t wait to share it with the world.”

CONCLAVE’s upcoming album was recorded and engineered by Eric Sauter at Blackheart Sound in Manchester New Hampshire, and was mastered by Esben Williams at Berserk Audio (Monolord) in Gothenburg, Sweden during the Spring and Summer of Rona, 2020. With an endless supply of depressing uncertainty and rage coursing through the United States in 2020, CONCLAVE used that energy to forge 5 new staggeringly heavy and atmospheric songs. There is no catering to trends or watering down the riffs with this band. It’s pure and honest metal in an uncompromised form.

Stay tuned for many more updates and album tunes to follow in the weeks ahead!

CONCLAVE are:
Jerry Orne – Bass and vocals
Jeremy Kibort – Rhythm/lead guitars + backing vocals
Chris Giguere – Rhythm/lead guitars
Dan Blomquist – Drums/percussion

https://www.facebook.com/conclaveband/
https://www.instagram.com/conclave_ma/
https://conclave1.bandcamp.com/music
www.argonautarecords.com
https://www.facebook.com/ArgonautaRecords/
https://www.instagram.com/argonautarecords/

Conclave, Sins of the Elders (2016)