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Nether Regions Sign to Abnormal Gait Records; Vinyl Reissue Due in November

Posted in Whathaveyou on August 30th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

Congratulations to Portland, Oregon, thunderthrashers Nether Regions, whose bassist/vocalist Joseph Wickstrom (interview here) checked in to let me know the band has signed to Abnormal Gait Records, previously responsible for a host of Hour of 13 merch and music, which you can see in their BigCartel store.

The label will be issuing a remaster of Nether Regions‘ first album, Into the Breach, on gatefold vinyl come November, topped with new artwork by the very, very metal Hal Rotter, who has worked with Skeletonwitch and Cattle Decapitation in the past and whose Rotting Graphics enterprise/gallery can be found here.

Kudos to Wickstrom and the rest of Nether Regions. All the best to them in getting the reissue together and the inevitable next project to follow. Here’s a live video for the song “Pale Faced God” from Into the Breach to celebrate with:

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Nether Regions Book West Coast Tour

Posted in Whathaveyou on July 7th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

Recently-interviewed Portlanders Nether Regions reached out to inform that they’ve booked a run of West Coast dates. Not necessarily surprising, since they’re from the West Coast and they’re a good band that people would want to see, but what is a shocker is just how soon they’re headed out. The tour starts next week! If you’re lucky enough to live in one of these cities, check this out and let me know how they are. Would love to see these guys live at some point, but, you know, that whole “other side of the country” thing.

Joining Nether Regions — who are also working on a vinyl release for their excellent Into the Breach album — for the tour is fellow Portland outfit Lord Dying, whose demo can be heard here.

Nether Regions/Lord Dying West Coast tour:
07/16 Seattle, WA Rendezvous w/ Smooth Sailing, Serial Hawk
07/18 Portland, OR East End w/ Acrassicauda, The Guild
07/20 Sacramento, CA The Blue Lamp w/ Cura Cochino, Times of Desperation
07/21 San Francisco, CA Thee Parkside w/ Pigs, Asada Messiah
07/23 Los Angeles, CA Three Clubs w/ Lightning Swords of Death
07/24 Oakland, CA Hazmat w/ Owl, Dopapele (CO)
07/25 Arcata, CA The Alibi

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Six Dumb Questions with Nether Regions

Posted in Six Dumb Questions on May 11th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

Hard-hitting Portland, Oregon, four-piece Nether Regions made their debut in 2011 with the self-released Into the Breach. Previously streamed in full on this site, the album pummels through 45 minutes of riff-minded thrash, elements of doom and blazing double-guitar work. It’s funny, but with so many trios out there and it being so simple for single-guitar bands to add infinite layers in the studio, it’s easy to forget what a band with two distinct and dynamic six-stringers sounds like. Nether Regions are a solid reminder.

Portland has no shortage of quality metal exports these days. Bands like Red Fang and Agalloch have earned acclaim from critics and audiences alike, and as Nether Regions founder, bassist and vocalist Joe Wickstrom informs, what you see on the national circuit is just the tip of the iceberg. Wickstrom is pro-Portland for sure, and his regional patriotism comes with years in the fertile scene as a member of acts like Ditchliquor and SubArachnoid Space. That said, Nether Regions is unlike either of them, fostering a sound that’s grittier, more metal and aggressive.

Part of that has to be chalked up to Wickstrom‘s intent in forming the band around himself, guitarists Kyle Bates and Todd Pidcock and drummer Shawn Davis (since replaced by Ryan Moore), and between his involvement in Portland‘s community of artists and getting my ass kicked time and again by “Pale Faced God,” I thought Six Dumb Questions were in order. Wickstrom was both gracious and informative.

If you missed that album stream the first time around, I’ve included it at the end of this post. Please enjoy the following Six Dumb Questions:

1. How did Nether Regions get started? Tell me about moving on from Ditchliquor and bringing Kyle into the fold.

Well, Ditchliquor just kind of disintegrated in 2006. First our original guitar player Evan Enge moved from Portland back to NYC. We replaced him with Jimmy Taylor from Poison Idea and even recorded another album but Jimmy left after a year and a half and we just called it a day.

Shawn and I took a couple years off to do other things. In early 2009 we decided that we wanted to get back together and play some more heavy stuff. We recruited Todd who was one of his old friends from Kentucky to play guitar and found another guy called Tony Pacific for a second guitar. After a few shows Tony quit in order to marry which left us without a lead guitar player.

I had met Kyle at the music school I was teaching at when he was just getting started in 2006. Kyle always impressed me with his ability to improve rapidly but more importantly his open mindedness regarding all kinds of music. What’s funny is that he was 14 at the time I think and weirdly enough he looked exactly like I did when I was his age. He had long hair, concert t-shirt, and denim vest with a fucking Exodus patch on the back. It was weird as hell but needless to say I liked the dude immediately.

Over the years he became as good and as unique of a guitar player as anyone I know. I would suggest bands for him to check out bands such as Joy Division, Coroner, Sonic Youth, and YOB. He in turn would suggest stuff to me like Russian Circles, Explosions in the Sky and a shit ton of modern black metal.

Once Tony quit it seemed like a good idea to see if Kyle was into it. At the time he was just turning 17 so I had to have a sit down with his parents and assure them that we had no intention of force-feeding him heroin or educating him on the virtues of unprotected sex with fast women before sacrificing them to the fucking devil. Actually his parents had paid the bills for his musical education and were really cool about it. They just wanted to know that we had his best interests at heart, which we truly did. He is 18 now so we are off the hook and I am pleased to say he didn’t run out and celebrate by doing lines off of a Satanic Priestess’ ass.

2. Was there a specific stylistic change you wanted to make after Ditchliquor? Did you come into Nether Regions with a sound in mind, knowing what you wanted the band to be, or was the aesthetic of Into the Breach just what came out of the rehearsal space?

The main thing that I was interested in was adding a second guitar. It seems like every band I have ever been in had been a three-piece configuration. Around the time Ditchliquor broke up, I played in Subarachnoid Space with guitarists Melynda Jackson and Rus Archer for about six months and it was great. I loved how the melodic and rhythmic possibilities increased exponentially with two guitars and I really wanted to have the new band be able to experiment with that. I wasn’t sure what the band would end up sounding like, but I wanted it to be dynamic and heavy. We purposely didn’t throw out any genres or labels and just let it evolve organically into whatever it would be. We expanded the palate with two guitars and double bass drums.

We did our best to record the album as a true representation of what we do live. There are a few little overdubs but essentially it’s pretty much what comes off the stage.

3. What’s the significance of the title Into the Breach for you? Is it just about starting over with a new band? And the album art is striking and more than a little gross. How did that concept get worked out, or did Sam Ford’s painting come first and the cover later?

Damn, I am unsure how to properly answer that question. I guess part of it is that it seems so many people live their lives governed by fear. My personal belief is that diving headlong into the unknown is the whole point of walking around on this planet. Certainly there is danger in the world but if a person just skulks around trying to avoid it then they will most assuredly miss out on the most beautiful and terrible aspects of life. In the larger scheme of things we are here for such a very short time and to me it is counterintuitive to not throw myself into the gaping maw of uncertainty just to see what is waiting for me.

The cover art is indeed gross and we hope a little unsettling. Sam Ford is a friend and major contributor to the community around here with both his visual art as well as his drumming in the excellent band Wizard Rifle. I just gave Sam an advanced copy of the record and asked him to feel free to paint what he heard. We met with him for about 15 minutes beforehand but purposely tried not to steer him in any direction. We didn’t want to be that band that gives an artist specific directions to what we wanted. I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to me. When he delivered the final painting we were very pleased with what he came up with. I said, “That’s what you see when you listen to our record? Fucking awesome.”

We intentionally had only Portland people contribute to the record. The engineers, artists, and the photographer are all people I know and respect deeply on an artistic level.

4. Tell me about the Nether Regions songwriting process. There are so many disparate styles working on Into the Breach, different influences at play. How do the songs come together?

Well, all four of us have vast and differing musical tastes and the hope is that those influences will find their way into the music. I have always believed that if all you listen to is metal then your subconscious will just spit out a bunch of the same.

As far as the mechanics of how the songs come together, it happens a few different ways. I have a home recording studio and I spend a lot of time in there when I am trying to write songs. Sometimes I will show up at rehearsal with a bunch of riffs for the other guys’ approval and we will arrange them together. Other times Kyle and I will get together and jam a bunch of stuff out and bring that in with us, I think that is the most satisfying method. Sometimes songs come together in 20 minutes and sometimes we kick them around for months, even years.

The cool thing about having multi-track capabilities at home is that I can lay down two differing big riffs on top of each other with a separate bass line and the result has to the potential to be much more than the sum of its parts. In truth everyone contributes parts and ideas.

We definitely make an effort to write songs which are structured and interesting. To what degree we are successful in this is hard to say but we really try for it. I don’t believe that just because a song is crushingly heavy it need be categorically devoid of hooks. I don’t mean hooks in a pop sort of way either. Hooks can be anything from a certain tone, a time change, or a dark melody that won’t leave you alone.

5. What do you think it is that’s allowed the Portland scene to foster all these killer bands? What’s the environment like there and how did the scene develop to what it is today? I’m assuming it’s not all as it appears on IFC.

The easy answer is that it rains incessantly for nine months a year but that isn’t it.

Portland has a long history of having a great many excellent bands that nobody ever knows about. Of course YOB, Witch Mountain, and Diesto have been keeping it alive for more than a decade each. The thing that I have always loved about this city is that in many ways it is culturally isolated and the people who live here tend to have pretty open minds and that is the biggest factor has allowed the heavy music scene to blow up. The one thing that I see with a lot of the heavy bands in Portland is a willingness to break from metal tradition. A lot of the bands have an aesthetic that is not apparently metal. I mean if you walk into a bar and see Red Fang sitting around you won’t immediately think “that’s a metal band.” That is until they pound in your fucking earholes in for an hour. The fact is that a lot of bands here shun the “metal” label in an effort to try to avoid being pigeonholed. We don’t all wear conventional metal uniforms but that doesn’t mean we don’t do this with every bit as much conviction as anyone. I think most of the bands choose to let their music do the talking and believe everything else to be bullshit.

I am glad you asked this question because I want to urge anybody reading this to check out some Portland bands. Of course there are the ones that are, or are becoming well known such as YOB, Red Fang, Witch Mountain, Danava, Agalloch, and Rabbits. There are also several other bands in town that I would put back to back with any band on the planet completely confident that they would hold their own such as Wizard Rifle, Lord Dying, Mongoloid Village, Atriarch, and Diesto. All of these bands are excellent, sound nothing like one another, and are packing houses locally.

It’s true that Portland is one the most progressive and liberal cities in the country and it may trickle down into the metal subconscious. We all know and support each other. There is a lot of respect between bands here and we are quite proud of what’s happening. We are also really lucky that there are tons of people here that attend shows and buy records.

That whole Portlandia thing on IFC is just silly. The only people that seem to find it funny are those that don’t live here. It’s true that we have some fairly ridiculous things going on here but as with any culture there is an equal and opposite subculture and that is where I live, its where all of my friends live as well.

6. What’s next for Nether Regions? Any big shows coming up or other releases coming out this year?

We are beginning the process of writing the next album. The idea with this one is to further attempt to develop our sound into something which is ours alone. We will also be shopping around to see if any labels out there have any interest in what we do.

Our former drummer Shawn Davis left the band directly after recording the album and we have replaced him with Ryan Moore, who is a complete monster. The split with Shawn was amicable and he is family.

As far as shows go, we are going to be doing some west coast dates in July with Lord Dying. We wanted to go out with another Portland band to try to get people hip to what’s going on up here and Lord Dying are GREAT.

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Nether Regions on Facebook

Nether Regions on MySpace

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audiObelisk: Stream Nether Regions’ Into the Breach in its Entirety

Posted in audiObelisk on March 29th, 2011 by JJ Koczan

Go ahead and click the player below to launch into an Obelisk-exclusive stream of Into the Breach, the debut full-length from Portland, Oregon‘s Nether Regions. No, that’s not a section of the city, some trendy neighborhood in the middle of everything with an ironic name. It’s a band. The four-piece is led by bassist/vocalist Joseph Wickstrom (ex-Ditchliquor, SubArachnoid Space), and they play a righteously heavy brand of riff-thrashing doom.

The first thing you’re going to think of when you hear it is High on Fire, but keep listening, because there’s a lot of subtle technicality and dynamics to what Nether Regions does that’s not so easily traced. Into the Breach sounds both under and out of control, and the two guitars really go to work on some of the tracks. Dig the harmonies at the end of “Do You Live,” or the dueling leads in “A City Far Enough Away” and you’ll hear what I mean. It’s a record that opens more with each subsequent listen, and I’m pretty sure that you’ll find it’s worth the time.

Hope you enjoy.

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Nether RegionsInto the Breach was recorded Mike Lastra and Mark Ellsworth at Smegmatone in Portland, OR, and is available now. Click here for more information. Nether Regions is Wickstrom, guitarists Kyle Bates and Todd Pidcock and drummer Ryan Moore.

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