Project Description

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The Amenta

Image by Emanuel Rudnicki

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Interview with
TIMOTHY POPE
from
THE AMENTA

(27th January, 2021)

Interviewer – Dave Bruce

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The Amenta

Photo by @emanuelrudnicki

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How did you all find each other and decide to share your musical talents as a group?
Timothy Pope:  It took a while to get to this iteration of the band. We formed the band around 2000 and in the 20+ years since there has been a substantial change in the line-up. Erik [Miehs, guitars] and I (on keys, noise and samples) are the only original members of the band. Just before our first album we decided to replace our drummer and we went looking for the best we could find. Luckily, around this time Erik was asked to record the bands at a festival called Bloodlust, for a DVD release. I went along to help; we set up a computer to record everything and then went to get drunk. Later, we listened to what we had recorded and heard the recording of PSYCROPTIC which was some of the wildest, tightest drumming we had heard. Off the back of that, we approached David Haley, that drummer, and asked him to play session drums on the album. During that process we all got along very well and convinced him, one drunken night, to join full time.
Our vocalist, Cain Cressall, joined sometime later, after our second album. We had been touring with the line-up that recorded that album and happened to play in Perth, where Cain is based. We stayed at Cain’s place as he was a friend of a friend and found him to be an excellent host. We were told that this polite, friendly man was actually a demon onstage and later we got to see it firsthand when his band MALIGNANT MONSTER supported us at a Perth show. Watching Cain on stage, our jaws were on the floor. He was the most charismatic and entrancing front man we had ever seen. Erik and I talked then about getting him if anything should happen with Jarrod, our vocalist at the time. A year or so later, we were off to tour the US and Jarrod had to pull out, so we contacted Cain and he was up for it. Since he has joined the band, he has become the equal third creative partner and his voice and artistic ideas have become a very valuable part of THE AMENTA’s process.

How would you describe your sound? Why do you think people resonate with your music?
TP: I’m not certain that it is helpful for artists to describe their own sound. We all think that we are doing something completely sui generis.  But obviously that’s not particularly helpful in this context so let me give it a go. We are heavily rooted in extreme metal, particularly death and black metal. I think that is probably the key fundamental from which we are working outwards but we also incorporate electronic and noise elements. We tend to make very dark and ugly music, but there are elements of melody. On this new album there is a mix of different vocals styles, with Cain branching out from traditional extreme metal styles to bring in more clean vocals inspired in part by traditional heavy metal and doom. I think there are other elements that might have similarities with death rock and post-punk as well.
I think, or at least I hope, that the reason people resonate with our music is because we are following our own inspiration completely, as honestly as we can. There is no attempt to sound a certain way, only to chase the sounds and ideas that we find exciting. I hope that this translates for other people. I know the music I really enjoy is from bands who are trying to forge their own language for their music instead of relying on the tropes of previous bands. I hope we are doing that, and I hope that people are responding to it. But then, maybe they like us because we are fast and heavy. Who knows?

Which artist’s music and/or performance, past or present, inspires you today? 
TP: There are so many and I’m constantly finding new inspiration but if I had to pick just one example, I would say that I’m currently extremely inspired by the work of Diamanda Galas. She has that unique musical language I was talking about before, but within that she can do so many different sounds. From the leichenshrei of the “Masque of the Red Death” trilogy to the interpretations of blues and jazz standards, it all sounds uniquely like her and her alone. I think she is one of the greatest blues vocalists I’ve ever heard. Where most blues singers have a warmth, her voice is cold and hard, like gravel. It’s tough as nails. And her piano playing sounds like Cecil Taylor in a New Orleans R&B band.
In most of the artists I am really inspired by there is a seed of something similar. I think they all tend to be out on the borderlines, trying new things, failing as often as succeeding but even the failures are fascinating as they plumb new depths. There is also a fearlessness in these artists that I find very inspiring and has certainly been inspiring for the band. We aim for that same fearlessness and disregard for anything outside of the art itself.

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Your new Album is about to be released! Describe its origin and evolution. 
TP: “Revelator”, like all our albums, is a reaction to the music we have previously released. We’re not interested in making iterations of the same album, repeating ourselves ad nauseum to diminishing returns. Each time we make an album we are searching for new and exciting ideas that inspire us to push forward and nurture that spark into the final flame of a song. When we come up with an idea that is too like something we have done before, it tends to get dropped because it isn’t exciting. So “Revelator” is the antithesis of our previous albums.
We came to the writing process for this one after going into what we presented as an indefinite hiatus. We were burnt out from touring and knew that we didn’t have the inspiration yet to create the next chapter of THE AMENTA, so we took away the public pressure and actually started writing music for a new project so there were absolutely no historical expectations at all. That seemed to do the trick and we very quickly found a way forward and put together 10 or so skeletons of songs. At some point in that process, we realised that the whole time we had been writing THE AMENTA songs, or at least very close. We began working with that in mind and took the best of those skeletons and began bringing them closer to our idea of the next THE AMENTA album.
The songs changed significantly in that process. Our songs are always malleable right up until the mastering stage. There were certain tracks we wrote that were broken down and reassembled in different ways. One song started out as a guitar-based death metal track, then morphed into a Trip-Hop-like track based around percussion made with an amplified typewriter and then finally became a murky, noisefest. When we came to demoing the vocals, Cain really exploded the sound of the album with his varied vocal sounds. We experimented with all sorts of vocal harmonies and effects.
The final part of that whole process was the mix, where Erik ran almost everything through a brace of guitar pedals and treated the sounds like he was mixing a dub track, sounds changed and morphed and became stranger.

During the songwriting and recording process, no two band members were at the same place at the same time. You had band members spread across 3 different countries and even within Australia, you had band members in different states. How challenging was it to put together this album, given this fact?
TP: For a short time, at the start of the process, Erik and I were both living in Sydney, so we were able to start the writing process together. While he was still here, we were able to get most of the skeletons of the original versions of the track written. But he then moved to London and we finished the rest remotely. We’ve always been a ridiculous band in a geographic sense. Even in the earlier days when most of us where in Sydney, we had David on drums who lived in Hobart and then Melbourne. Our first vocalist loved in Newcastle, which seemed a long way away at the time but now it feels like next door. At one point we were working with a South African vocalist who was between Johannesburg and London. Now we have Cain in Perth, Erik has just moved back to Australia but to Adelaide, David is in Melbourne and our bass player Dan [Quinlan] is in L.A. We’re quite used to working remotely in that sense. We were doing Covid creativity before it was cool.
It’s a lot simpler now, in some ways, as there are so many internet tools available for collaboration. We used Google Drive and Dropbox to transfer Logic files between us so we could all work on the same sessions. We were constantly sending work-in-progress mp3s so we could give each other feedback on ideas. There were Skype calls to catch up, keep everyone motivated and inspired and to talk through ideas. We’re also lucky that we all have our own recording set ups, so rather than flying people into a studio to record, we just made sure that everything was tightly demoed and then trusted people to get it recorded in their own studios. During some of the demo process, we were lucky that Erik had to come back to Sydney for work so we took that chance to fly Cain over from Perth so all three of us could get in a room and jam on some ideas but must of it happened over the internet. It has its challenges, certainly, but I think because we were all really motivated and had the same ideas around how the album should sound it ended up being a relatively painless process.

What are the signature pieces on the album, and which is your favourite track?
TP: I think the centrepiece to the album, the song that all the other songs orbit around, is ‘Twined Towers’. It’s a very different song for us and our longest song to date. It’s a much slower and more measured song than we have recorded in the past, I see reflections of mid 90’s English death/doom in there which is a new thing for us. I think it’s one of our more crushing songs, despite it being a more measured pace. It’s a monolith. Another obvious highlight is the second track ‘Sere Money’, which introduces a rocky groove that certainly through some of our listeners initially.
My favourite song changes I think, depending on what I have been listening to. I listened to ‘Sere Money’ and ‘An Epoch Ellipsis’ a lot recently because they have just been released so they are everywhere. While I love those songs, I am leaning towards some of the tracks that people haven’t yet heard. Today, my favourite would perhaps be ‘Parasight Lost’. It’s a track that has a kind of post-punk feel in the rhythm, mixed with some almost dublike bass moments in the breakdown. I think it’s one of those tracks that doesn’t jump out at you initially but with repeated listens becomes a favourite. I think people will dig that one.

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What inspiration lead to the album title and artwork and who is the artist?
TP: The artwork was created by Metastazsis, an incredible artist who has done work for ULVER, BEHEMOTH, MORBID ANGEL, GHOST and LIABACH among many others. He’s a very interesting character whose website opens with a disclaimer saying he doesn’t listen to his clients and does what he wants whether you like it or not. Last time we tried to work with him he told us to fuck off, because we don’t cede control lightly, but everything we’ve seen of his has been excellent, so we decided to trust him. We sent him some lyrics and a document that broke down some of the themes and ideas of the album. Contrary to his disclaimer, we found him very easy and inspiring to work with and he sent through a few ideas based around his interpretation of our themes. The heart image that we used for the cover was the one that immediately jumped out to us as it incorporates a few primary ideas behind the lyrics and our band. What they are, we’ll leave for people to interpret because that’s just more fun.
The title, “Revelator”, is another term that represents a few different things to the album, which again I think is better to leave unexplained so people can interpret its meaning and relevance for themselves. Obviously, there are references to the Book of Revelations and John the Revelator (both prophet and song) but how they apply is not necessarily something that we think should be spelled out in black and white. The greyness is where the interesting interpretations come from.

If you could perform with any music artist, Alive or Dead, who would you choose? And why? 
TP: One artist I would love to perform with, just so I could go behind the scenes and see how things worked, would be Einsturzende Neubauten. I’ve always been fascinated by their music and how they use non-instruments to create such brutal and elegant music. I’d love to stand behind them and watch what they play and how, to see how they are amplifying these springs and bits of sheet metal. I’d love to combine eras of the band too, so I could see them in their mid 80’s total chaos version, as well as the more modern playful version. They are a fascinating band.

Do you have any long-term aspirations as a music artist? 
TP:  I don’t really have any long-term aspirations for music anymore. When I was younger I wanted to tour the world and all the rock star stuff but these days I see it not as an aspirational craft, it’s more about just working. I have short-term aspirations, which are generally based around making the project as strong as possible and hoping it will be received and appreciated by the right audience but I don’t expect, or even really want, any long-term “success”. We’re happy to just keep working away on our version of extreme art. We’re so wrapped up in the process that we don’t look up at the horizon. The satisfaction for me is in the day to day, in the moments of excitement when you discover a cool new idea. But a million dollars would be nice.

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What is the best thing about performing to a live audience? What’s been the career highlight so far?
TP: I think the best thing would have to be those rare times when everything, playing, atmosphere, sound, lights etc, all comes together and clicks and it feels like you’ve transcended the whole band/audience thing. There are times when we feel like we played like shit or just weren’t feeling it but the crowd love it and tell us how amazing it was, and the reverse is also true: we think we nailed it but the audience is apathetic. But those times when everything gels are incredible, spine-tingling moments.
The highlight of my live career was one of those moments, on our first tour of Europe with DEICIDE, SAMAEL, VADER, DEVIAN and ORDER OF ENNEAD. We were opening the tour, so we were playing to smaller crowds and we were a relatively unknown band; it was a battle to get the respect at every show, which was definitely fun in its way! We got to the second last show at Katowice in Poland. The Polish and the Russians have always seemed to dig us more than other countries for some reason. We got up on stage and the place was packed, there were dudes in the audience with Australian flags. We played what felt a great show and as we left the stage, walking back towards the backstage, we could hear the crowd chanting our name. For a bunch of Australian yobbos to hear that over the other side of the world was a special moment.

Finally, a few questions for some quick answers –
FAVOURITE:
Album – Maybe “Close to a World Below” by IMMOLATION because I was listening to it this morning.
Artist – Currently Francis Bacon
Movie – Inland Empire
Place to visit – Switzerland
Venue to play – The Gaelic Club, Sydney, circa 2008
Food – A great, simple, burger.
Drink – Shiraz from the Barossa Valley
Person in History – Dimitri Shostakovich shouting his name musically at the Soviets.
Tattoo – (If you don’t have one, what would you get?) – Only have one, of the early band logo, courtesy of cheap vodka, death metal and Pantera videos.

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Vinyl, CD & digital pre-order: HERE

The Amenta

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Check out THE AMENTA below
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Merchandise

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Press Release 5th December 2020 below

THE AMENTA
New album details
& first single + video
‘SERE MONEY’

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Seven years after the critically acclaimed “Flesh Is Heir”, whose vanguard approach brought to life a mesmerizing mixture of Industrial and Death Metal, EVP Recordings are thrilled to announce the fourth THE AMENTA opus, namely “Revelator”. As depicted in the cover artwork, the heart of the Australian Extreme Metal innovators might be crooked, but full of energy and will to transcend and further expand the limits of the Metal genre.

THE AMENTA have, therefore, used their 7-year hiatus to methodically deconstruct and reimagine their already distinctive core sound: incorporating maximalist Industrial Black Metal ballast, disturbingly cinematic Ambient/Noise textures, treated violin, dread acoustics and circuit-bent electronics into a labyrinthine set of infectious hymns to societal collapse which juxtapose dreamlike moments of strange calm with sensory overload, savage discord and unease.

For THE AMENTA frontman Cain Cressall it was clear from the beginning that ‘Sere Money’ needed moving pictures to accompany the tunes: “I think the main thing why we chose ‘Sere Money’ as our first single was its cinematic, infectious energy which pulses throughout the track. It has a very strong “visual” element to it that inspires the imagination and takes the listener on a ride. The opening hook grabs you by the throat takes you on a descent into deeper and deeper levels of cathartic discomfort. That “grab-factor” just seemed to appeal to all of us as a great way to introduce our new sound to our listeners.”

However, one may also understand ‘Sere Money’ as a necessary and conscious disruption for the listener, making sure no one believes that “Revelator” is simply sounding the same as “Flesh Is Heir”, as keyboard player and composer Timothy Pope states: “I think in some ways we chose this song to introduce the band because it is such a huge step away from what came before. If we had come back from a 7-year hiatus with something that sounded too close to a continuation of what came before, we personally would be bored and uninspired by it. I’m not sure if that is the case for listeners to our band, but for us as artists that would have just been a waste of time. Who knows if it will work, but imagining myself as the ideal consumer of our music, I would prefer to be somewhat confused by an initial song but be intrigued enough to dig into the album to try to understand it. In my experience with other bands who have gone through similar evolutions, this has been the most rewarding way to understand and appreciate their art. I hope this has the same effect for others.”

Recorded by the band and mixed by guitarist Erik Miehs, “Revelator” is the most openly organic and crushing the band has sounded to date. Mastering has been meticulously crafted by Maor Applebaum (FAITH NO MORE, SEPULTURA) and the album features artwork by the legendary Metastazis (MORBID ANGEL, BEHEMOTH). Graced with an incisively dynamic pummeling from drummer-extraordinaire David Haley (PSYCROPTIC, ex-PESTILENCE) and an avowedly contemporary, genre-defying performance from vocalist Cain Cressall, “Revelator” sees a band always dead-set on boundary-pushing reveling in a fresh sense of renewal as they combine harrowing concepts, inventively virtuous musicianship and immediate song craft into the landmark record of a lauded career.

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AMNPLIFY – DB

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