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: Chris Latta of Lavaborne and The Skyspeakers

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

I’m the lead singer for Lavaborne, bassist/vocalist for The Skyspeakers, and the everything-I-can-get-my-grubby-hands-on player for my solo projects. I’ve also written articles for a couple different websites, most notably Indy Metal Vault and Ghost Cult Magazine, though I’m currently unaffiliated beyond Facebook takes and sporadically uploading reviews to the Metal Archives.

Music has been my life since I was fourteen years old, but I would describe myself as a writer first and foremost. I drew comics when I was a kid, my degree is in Creative Writing, and I was reviewing bands years before I was ever actually playing in any. I don’t have a lot of training as a vocalist beyond my time in school choir and my musicianship is just solid enough for me to know how to put a song together. I’ve never had much interest in being a technical player or getting a bunch of flashy gear unless it’s to service what I’m already working on.

Describe your first musical memory.

I started with piano lessons when I was younger, around six if I remember right. According to my mom, my teacher was initially skeptical about how I’d do at that age, but I took to it well and even had a couple talent show spots. Unfortunately, said teacher moved a couple years later and I lost interest in playing. It’s a shame since I could’ve been a keyboardist for a sweet prog band or making some whacked-out dungeon synth all this time, but I managed to find other ways.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

The release show that Lavaborne played to celebrate Black-Winged Gods last October is probably my favorite. There were so many family members and friends across different social circles who came out for it, and I spent so much of the time running around like a headless chicken trying to see everybody. I was stoned off my ass, so I came in early a couple times during our set, but the energy was there, and we even managed to compile a music video from all the clips that friends sent us of the performance. Overwhelming in the best way.

Releasing new music in general is deeply satisfying to me. There’s nothing like tracking an entire album and hearing it play back through a set of extra-fancy studio speakers, just basking in the accomplishment. I still remember getting the masters for the first Spirit Division album and listening to them three times in a row; I was switching songs around so I figure out a good track order but there was also just the thrill of making a legitimate recording that I could call mine.

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

My first serious band had a falling out between the other two members shortly after we recorded our first demo, which was done in an incredibly tense weekend session. I was caught in the middle and trying to figure out whose side I should take for the sake of continuing the band. In hindsight, we should’ve just called it a day and moved on to other projects. Especially since the band split up the following year anyway despite getting our first gigs with another guitarist. It was a toxic situation but one that I had to learn from. That’s what your early twenties are for, right?

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

As tacky as it sounds, I tend to look at my artistic trajectory as a sort of ongoing narrative with different arcs. I like to see where I can go to that I’ve never gone creatively or how I can do something that I’ve already done differently. Every project I start is rooted in me wanting to try out a new idea and every new release from a band is usually a reaction to the one before it.

Lavaborne is the doom/power metal hybrid that I wanted to hear when I was seventeen and The Skyspeakers was started because I’d been wanting to play in a band with a saxophonist for years. The first Spirit Division album was me combining Danzig vocals with Saint Vitus riffs, No Rapture added in some High on Fire, and Forgotten Planet was a whole bunch of Pink Floyd and Black Flag.

I think it also helps to have a healthy bucket list. I spend a lot of time wondering if the current batch of projects I’ve got in the works could be my last but then I remember some other random style that I haven’t tried out or a friend who I’ve wanted to collaborate with but haven’t had the chance to yet. Sometimes there’s actively seeking things out and other times there’s just seeing what happens.

How do you define success?

I define success as making a connection with someone through your art. Even if making art for a living is something that seems reserved for the aught-one percent of the population anymore and hustle culture is going to kill us all through seemingly mandatory burnout, there’s something to be said for seeing somebody talk about something you made whether it be a review, a random commentor, or somebody just directly telling you what something means to them.

But at the end of the day, I think there’s something to be said for having accomplished something and letting the universe know that you were here. I may have a couple crappy demos and there are some songs that I could’ve gone about doing differently, but I’ve yet to say that I regretted making something.

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

Every single fundamentalist shitlord who would accost me and the other folks I volunteered with at my local women’s health clinic asking why we didn’t have anything better to do on a Saturday morning than safely escorting patients when they were the ones standing out on the sidewalk, holding grotesque signs, and spewing harassments disguised as sermons and half-hearted cries of concern to anyone in earshot. The scariest part is knowing that lunatics like them have had the eager ears of several people in power for decades, as we have all seen with the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.

What do you believe is the essential function of art?

I think the two biggest purposes of art are self-expression and to be part of the larger conversation that we call the human condition. I still haven’t figured out which of the two is the more important.

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

Going down to Georgia this Thanksgiving to see my mom and brothers. I’ve been overdue.

https://lavaborne.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/lavaborne
https://www.instagram.com/Lavaborne/

https://www.theskyspeakers.com/
https://theskyspeakers.bandcamp.com/

Lavaborne, “Stones of the Damned”

The Skyspeakers, Echo Hall (2022)

Preorders for Lavaborne‘s debut album, Black Winged Gods, begin Aug. 13 ahead of an Oct. 1 release on Wise Blood Records. And as asserted by the PR wire below, the double-guitar Indianapolis five-piece do indeed bask in the traditionalist glories of classic metal — the victories of yore, and so on — however, this isn’t some post-Iron Maiden, clean-and-clear take on NWOBHM grandiosity. Lavaborne kick up a good amount of dirt — not to mention viscera on “Flesh, Blood & Bone” — on their way through Black Winged Gods‘ 10-song/43-minute run, and they’re by no means shy about getting themselves covered in it.

By the time “Call to Worship” shifts into chug of “The Heathen Church” (premiering below), the chug begins to betray three-fifths of the band’s roots in the sludgier Mask of Sanity, and they present their metallurgical analysis with a resilient current of grit throughout the procession that follows, guitars soaring and shredding in “Flesh, Blood & Bone” with double-kickdrum galloping behind even as the vocalist Chris Latta (ex-Spirit Division) brings a rawer Messiah Marcolin to mind. So maybe some grandstanding, some theatricality, but still down and dirty for that.

Later, the title-track signals a shift to longer-form craft, a quiet break in the middle edging toward Dio-era Sabbath considerations, but the edge returns, and though “Prove Your Worth” and “The Final Mystery” are both duly doomed, transcending or at least transposing some of the earlier thrashiness in “Mortal Pride” or “The Serpent Seed,” the sense that at any moment Lavaborne might break out into a full-bore shove never dissipates. Black Winged Gods is a less predictable, more satisfying debut for that.

Over its course, it establishes these extremes of meter and purpose, and then toys with them, finding a middle ground in “The Great Reward” after “Flesh, Blood & Bone” only to blow it away in “Mortal Pride,” or using “Master of Medusa” — there are guest vocals there; unfortunately I don’t know by whom — as a transition into the acoustic-inclusive title-track even as that song bridges to the already noted closing salvo of “Prove Your Worth” and “The Final Mystery.” And they’re not so filthy or raw that “Prove Your Worth” doesn’t provide ample payoff in its later surge, gang shouts and thuds and a big cymbal-wash finish on the way to “The Final Mystery” and its bass-led beginning, chugging-but-complex unfurling and defiantly metal-of-doom stance. I don’t know when they’re playing (okay, Sept. 8, Black Circle in Indy; fine), but in long songs or short, fast songs or slow, these tracks were made for the stage.

They are schooled in the metal they’re making, fans as well as artists, they’ve taken years to refine their approach, and that passion bleeds through the material. There is no contempt for the form here, and the progression from “Call to Worship” to “The Final Mystery” is thoughtful, linear and ably directed, turning rawness of presentation into an aesthetic strength and their unwillingness to compromise in their purpose into a steel that will neither bend nor break. Fucking a, headbangers. Hit it.

“The Heathen Church” is on the player below, followed by some words from Latta on the track and more info on Black Winged Gods.

Please enjoy:

Chris Latta on “The Heathen Church”:

Anybody who’s heard the demo that we released in 2017 may recognize “The Heathen Church.” The way we play it now is a whole lot faster and more theatrical, which has made it the best opener for our shows as well as a no-brainer for kicking off the album. The lyrics tell the story of a cult that engineers the birth of the Antichrist Rosemary’s Baby-style, only for the resulting spawn to team up with his dear old dad and annihilate them. Think of it as a pro-choice anthem in Mercyful Fate clothing.

Indianapolis warriors Lavaborne forge their riffs in the magma of classic metal. Their Black Winged Gods debut is a searing and soaring introduction to the band’s epic power doom. Lavaborne are champions of metal’s unique ability to project danger and triumph. Harmonized guitars and sensational solos slither amongst serpents. Tales of rogues and mages are drenched in Candlemass heaviness. Like a true epic, Black Winged Gods has the scope of a grand adventure packed with NWOTHM charm and puffs of stoner doom. Lavaborne will gallop from the fire when Wise Blood Records releases Black Winged Gods on October 1st.

Lavaborne is:
Chris Latta – Lead Vocals (ex – Spirit Division)
Brandon Signorino – Guitar (Scorched Earth, ex – Steel Aggressor)
Brandon Davis – Bass (Mask of Sanity)
Freddie Rodriguez – Guitar (Mask of Sanity)
Max Barber – Drums (Charonyx, Mask of Sanity)

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