Following the radiant complexity of Lux Libera Me, The Crypt plunged into darker, experimental terrain with Beholden to No One. We spoke with Nate about contrasts, chaos, and creative liberation.
1. You
released Beholden to No One less than a month after Lux Libera Me. Was this
planned all along, or did the ambient album emerge more spontaneously?
It wasn't exactly planned. I knew that there would be a bit of downtime between
Lux Libera Me and the next big Crypt album, and we had planned to do an ambient
album of some sort in a very spontaneous way. The original idea was that we
would go to Adam's (Haste, lead guitars/keyboards) cabin, on a neighbouring
island, and record it all over a weekend. Instead, Dan (Smrz,
percussion/synthesizers/mixing and shit), Adam, and I each came up with a few
individual chunks, then layered stuff over the top, so it took a few weeks, but
really not much.
Just the mixing of Lux Libera Me took almost four months, and the entire
process of writing and recording Beholden to No One was well under two months.
It was unreal—one of the most complex and difficult albums to one of the
simplest and easiest.
2. Nate, you mentioned that Lux Libera Me was your most complex work to
date. What were some of the most challenging aspects in creating and mixing
that album?
Just challenging myself to write differently was the first hurdle—I threw away
loads of material just because it kind of sounded like something we had done
previously. Then finding the musicians was a close second. There really aren't
many vocalists who can write a song in Georgian or Albanian. Male vocalists
would have been difficult enough to find, but women were even more elusive. In
the end though, the only thing that had to be adjusted was doing a song in
Welsh rather than Irish Gaelic. If you hear the great job that Gillie Rowland
did on “Y Bryn Aur,” I think you can agree it was a blessing in disguise.
The mixing was insane because of all the non-metal elements, and the fact that
there is so much stuff going on in the songs. I used my usual mixer, Daniel
Pavlov, as well as our frequent lead guitarist, Aliaksandr Kubyshkin, and
though they said they enjoyed it, mixing Lux Libera Me was very challenging.
The Crypt is already kind of hard to work with because my bass work is atypical
of metal bands, but Daniel really gets our sound, so that should give you an
idea of the complexity!
3. In
contrast, Beholden to No One had the fastest turnaround in your discography.
What did that rapid workflow do for the creative process—did it feel liberating
or chaotic?
Liberating and chaotic, absolutely! The pieces that I wrote (with the glasses
and acoustic guitars) really came together spontaneously...I only knew that I
wanted a certain sound. Everything else happened in the studio. Someone would
say, “hey, I can put a weird sound on top of that,” or “let's record the sound
of the oven door closing,” and we were able to use it. The rest was a fair
degree of studio trickery, manipulating the sounds to such an extent that we
haven't done since Выкадиш (Vykadish). It really is the antithesis of Lux Libera Me in terms of
composition!
4. Both albums defy typical genre expectations, but Beholden to No One
especially strips away metal conventions. What drew you to using objects like
wine glasses and rusty metal as instruments?
Just the fact that these things sounded cool and creepy. Sometimes I hit a
random object and think “huh, that sounds like a musical sound,” so that's
exactly what we did. With a little bit of trial and error, I found that I could
tune the wine glasses by adding or removing water (and using a Snark gutiar
tuner), so I picked a few notes from a Japanese pentatonic scale used in
meditation, and layered them on top of one another. There was also the weird
acoustic guitar thing on that last bit of “Intronaut,” where I tuned a guitar
to D-A-D-A-A-D and just hit it with a wooden spoon. That sounded a bit like a
traditional Persian instrument, like a tar or hammered dulcimer.
5. Even
without traditional guitars or drums at the forefront, Beholden to No One still
has your signature darkness. How did you manage to maintain that atmosphere
using non-metal tools?
We're always play something dark and mysterious, so that was an easy common
thread with metal. Also, that weird guitar tuning gives your guitar the sound
of drop D—one of my favourite “heavy” sounds. To me the whole album feels
“doomy” and gloomy with the crawling paces, and when you get to the final
movement of “Intronaut” with the wrathful vocals, it has the drive of a war
dance. Plus, what could be more metal than an actual sheet of metal, covered in
rust and sharp edges? Adam and I risked our health, holding that tetanus-ridden
monstrosity in front of a microphone for Dan to bash with various mallets. I
guess it could have been even more metal if one of us had gotten seriously hurt
by that thing...
6. With Lux Libera Me being sung entirely in non-English languages and
featuring such diverse vocalists, what inspired you to take that linguistic and
cultural leap?
It started with just my fascination with languages—doing stuff in other
languages has always been a hallmark of the Crypt, and in doing so, I'd say we
sound different from most metal bands, including ourselves. The other thing was
listening to other types of music. I'm a huge fan of Mauritanian music, with
its odd time signatures and seemingly labyrinthian rhthyms, so the music for
“Al Nur” was hugely inspired by Noura Mint Seymali and Didi Mint Abba. Adding
in Rim's Arabic vocals and lyrics were the perfect addition, and really took
that song in a direction that it had to go—it just wouldn't have sounded cool
in English!
Another factor was that in putting the lyrics into a foreign language, they
take on an almost “mystical” quality to a non-native speaker (like me). It also
helps the listener to focus more on the actual music, than attaching themselves
to every word, although if they do pick the lyrics apart later, they might be
able to get a broader interpretation from the lyrics.
7. Is
there a thematic or conceptual link between Lux Libera Me and Beholden to No
One, or are they meant to exist in completely separate artistic spaces?
They're connected only in the sense that they were conceived to be absolute
departures for us—I had somewhat of a clearer idea of what Beholden to No One
would become, in that it would be almost “non-musical,” but there are certain
unintentional connections between them. In many ways they are mirror opposites;
Lux Libera Me is very bright, sunny, and features a lot of women and
international performers, whereas Beholden to No One is a very dark, creepy
thing, with only a single woman (Anhelina, who did the cover art), and mostly
local performers on it. I guess after making that almost happy, sunny music, I
needed to make something really dark...which makes sense, seeing as how Lux
Libera Me was composed mainly in early summer, and Beholden to No One in late
winter.
8. How did working with so many international musicians on Lux Libera Me
shape the way you approached collaboration on Beholden to No One, which was
more locally produced?
From the gobs of files everywhere to the language barriers, I think I needed a
break from that—I was juggling so many different things with Lux Libera Me that
it was a colassal pain in the ass. It was very intentional to do something
completely different. Dan had contacted me earlier that winter, as his main
bands were kind of hibernating at the time, and it just fell into place.
Beholden to No One was so weird as far as the elements going into it, not to
mention the difficulty in capturing the sounds, that Adam and I had to pretty
much be present for the mixing of it—the sound was going to be very subjective,
so having Dan just a few miles away was really conducive to the sound it
needed.
9. From
found sounds to global instrumentation, your approach challenges listeners'
expectations. Do you see yourself as part of the metal world still, or are you
carving out something entirely new?
I still consider the Crypt to be a metal band, absolutely! Metal is my first
musical language, so there will always be the the basic framework to our music,
we're just pushing the boundaries as far as we can. I love Alice in Chains' Jar
of Flies and Opeth's Damnation, both of which really eschew metal elements, and
they're not any less heavy, so we're just doing that type of departure more
often with our material. I think we apply the language of metal to all of our
endeavours, so metal fans could easily enjoy some of our other styles.
10. You mentioned wanting to alienate your audience. Is that an artistic goal—to unsettle—or a kind of test of open-mindedness?
It certainly elicits a reaction, which is what you want people to do when they experience art. I hate it when a band puts out a new album and they're like “it sounds like us.” Why the hell should I buy it, then, if it's just the same sound? As much as I hate Metallica's Load, which was the first real heartbreak I experienced at the age of 15, I can understand them trying to do something different, even if it sucked—it definitely make me appreciate Ride the Lightning even more! The last Slayer album really sucked, because it just felt like they were going through the motions. All those great albums by Death are totally different from each other, and Chuck was so good at assembling the perfect line ups for them. All my friends who are Death fans have different opinions on which is the best Death album—that's what I want to hear about the Crypt.
I always have the feeling of throwing a brick through a car's windscreen when I make a new, crazy album. Nothing's going to be the same as soon as that glass cracks, and I'll never be able to put things right again!
11.
Kadeem Ward’s appearance on Beholden to No One is brief but impactful. How did
that collaboration come about, and what does his contribution bring to the
album’s overall sound?
I've been a big fan of his band, Conrad, for about three years now. They're a
really unique band from Barbados, with a legit take on the whole Afro-Caribbean
sound with metal, and we had a song of theirs on our split album, Subverting
the Golgotha.
Kadeem is a super creative guy, a really unique guitarist, and I always wanted
to have him on some Crypt stuff. He's got a lot of Hendrix style chaos, so that
little bit with Adam's guitar feedback was the perfect place to put a super
tripped out Kadeem solo. He keeps getting better with his music, but if you
want to dive into Conrad's music, get your hands on Exu 21. The Caribbean has
some super cool metal bands coming out (Conrad and Satan's Anger are my two
favourites), and that part of the world has both a dark past, interesting
spiritual practices, and a musicality that lends itself very well to metal.
12. With two wildly different albums just released, what’s next for The
Crypt? Will you continue down this experimental path, or do you foresee a
return to more traditional metal roots?
At the moment we're working on a new album called Gichigami, which will be five
instrumental, metal “symphonies” about each of our American Great Lakes. You
might have noticed from our artwork that the nature from my homeland is a big
inspiration for me, and this will be even moreso. It will sound more “metal”
than both Lux Libera Me and Beholden to No One, but it's not going to be a
typical metal album. I think lots of people will find it boring, especially if
they love our death metal stuff like Crystallized and Истребитель!
Dan will be joining Adam and me once again, and it looks like we're going to
use a whole host of musicians, hopefully some of the locals in our area and the
neighbouring island. It's a rather complex project, so I'm not sure when it
will be completed. It's possible we might come up with some other EP, split, or
single before it, if one of us comes with a good idea.
After Gichigami, however, we'll most likely do something super heavy
again...I'm feeling some doomy, Finnish inspired death metal album for the
winter months, with super depressed melodies, oppressive keyboards, and stuff
like that. But only time will tell!
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