Interview: 04.09.2008
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Before we get to the music, how about this beautiful painting used for the cover. How did you come to notice this?
Graveside: We found it on the internet. We knew we wanted something striking, and because of the title of the CD, nautical. This image totally fit the bill, and the people at the National Maritime Museum were great to work with while we hashed out the licensing.
Who is the artistic person in the band as the whole design of the sleeve, including the blood corpuscles visible through the back plate is very attractive. It's a really smart design?
Graveside: Thanks for the compliment. Cruella is a visual artist and I am a graphic designer, so we collaborated. We both picked out the cover image, I doctored it (sort of "grunged" it up) and did the overall layout. The blood cells were Cruella's idea and the image was stock art. I feel silly that the idea of having blood cells on the cover of an album called "Seas of Blood" never occurred to me! As a designer I see way too many indie CDs with mediocre cover art, very generic, poorly executed stuff that doesn't say anything about the music inside, and I don't care for the concept that cover art will disappear as we move away from physical media to a market where all music is just a downloaded file. If we don't have cover art, what will we look at while we listen to the music?
Cruella: Originally when I was thinking about what our album cover should be for Seas of Blood...I wanted it to be gruesome. But then settled on the ship/ocean idea...and it just happened that John had the same notion. The blood corpuscles was my way of being gross in a beautiful and subdued way.
Nautical imagery seems to have gained favour these past few years. Any idea why?
Graveside: Hopefully, because a lot of people are writing about nautical themes! If not, then it's just a trend on it's way to becoming a cliché.
Cruella: I haven’t noticed the gain in any favour. I believe that nautical images have always been prominent. I know for me especially because of my geographical location and my pure love of the sea. My grandparents ,who were painters, consistently used the sea and its accoutrements as subject matter.
Obviously you have a weird mix of influences in this band it’s a Goth Metal Prog hotchpotch – does that make it a very argumentative band to he in, with people sticking up for their side, as it were, or do you all have to learn the art of agreeing to disagree?
Graveside: We don't really disagree at all. Everyone in the band has adventurous tastes, so we push ourselves to be multifaceted.
Cruella: Not too many disagreements at all. Arguing can be so counter productive. If one of us really had a strong opinion about something we certainly would work it out. John and I have very different writing styles and our creative process is at opposite ends of the scale. But it seems to work for us.
You all seem pretty busy, as in constantly active during most songs. I guess that helps keep irritations at bay?
Graveside: I think merely being adults keeps our irritations at bay.
Cruella: More like, boredom at bay.
‘Serpentarius’ – how does your approach differ noticeably from Orchestral Metal, which is generally overblown? By which I mean what do you strive not to do?
Graveside: Most orchestral bands don't actually have an orchestra to bring on the road, and I think that there's a tendency to let the orchestra become so prominent on the records that the live, orchestra-less version is a bit of a letdown - either there's a cheesy synthetic orchestra or just nothing there at all. Since the orchestra on our record is primarily an embellishment, and a not a key part of the melodic structure, we can somewhat sidestep that issue. However, if we had an unlimited budget, we would tour with a string section. They ARE a nice addition.
The other thing that bands of our type tend to do is incongruously leap from song section to song section. As the primary writer/arranger, I work really hard to make sections flow together, though an occasional jarring transition is fun in an unsettlingly dramatic way.
On the roving guitar front, how do you instinctively know how far is too far in the excess stakes, or is it when during a rehearsal you realize everyone else has stopped and is staring?
Graveside: As the only guitar player, I have to shoulder my share of the burden along with the rest of the rhythm section to keep the song moving forward in terms of rhythm and dynamics, so I have little time to devote to extravagant solos. Another reason that I refrain from flashy guitar playing as that I can't play like that! Part of me wishes that I was the next Steve Vai or Yngwie Malmsteen, but it's just not in the cards. Maybe in the long run that's a good thing - it keeps things focused on the song, and that's the most important part.
‘Wants Me Dead’ has a nice historical lilt where that’s from?
Graveside: It does? How so?
Cruella: Not sure where the rhythmic and joyous cadence came from. Collective Consciousness?
Another guitar break, but quite restrained. Embellishment, rather than dramatic assault?
Graveside: Stretching my limited chops, one might say.
‘Undead Friend’ is genuinely creepy, Poe-esque with an unnerving sense of contentment, what with seemingly enjoying looking forward to slowly rotting. Where did this idea originate?
Cruella: This idea first comes from my fascination with zombies in general. Then I thought...wouldn’t it be interesting if your loved ones would come back...but not as a spirit, as rotting flesh and bones? A kinder gentler zombie, not the brain eating blood thirsting variety. I was also inspired by the French movie, Les Revenants, were every ones deceased family and friends rise from the dead and want their old lives back. Wouldn’t that kind of be annoying? I mean...you would miss these loved ones...But they really need to move on! Their dead! And you certainly can’t have them hanging around stinking up the place. The slowly rotting bit is meant to be romantic. Falling into the earth...A waltz into the ground.
‘Nidhogg’ – is that a well known story put to music? Are dragons misunderstood? I’ve never met one so can’t say.
Cruella: I became very interested in Norse mythology for a little while. A friend of mine loaned me a book… and when I heard the song that John wrote I immediately knew that I would write about Nidhogg. In Norse myth, Nidhogg ("tearer of corpses") is a monstrous serpent dragon that gnaws almost perpetually at the deepest root of the World Tree ,Yggdrasil, threatening to destroy it. The serpent is always bickering with the eagle that houses in the top of the tree. Nidhogg lies in Nifheim, the lowest level of the Universe, and eats corpses to sustain itself. I love the idea of this dragon living to destroy the earth…. And then the earth dies and then goes thru a genesis. My commentary on the ecological state of our planet today. And yes…I think dragons are widely misunderstood… oh… that reminds me… time to feed Falcor….He is up to 30 goats a day!
‘Lovely Lies’ – dour, then sweet, but hardly the happiest lyric for such surroundings. This is the song where I think you lose impetus after the big rock bit, by essentially repeating what we’ve already heard. There needed something more lyrically, and with emphasis, to carry it along without dipping the way it does.
Cruella: What can I say? I was angry! Maybe, I should write from a place that is lighter? I don’t always have that luxury. Love is dour, sweet, incredible and miserable regardless of its surroundings. And maybe I am a just a nag and I will repeat myself...over and over and over and over and over and...
‘Seas Of Blood’ – a charming thing, done with quaint vocal rhythm at the start. I must admit I was expecting a happy end.
Graveside: I think that IS a happy ending. The love interest goes down with the ship, yet somehow he is able to convey his undying love. Better that than going out without speaking your final piece.
Cruella: Certainly is a happy ending! At the risk of sounding cheesy….
Love transcends all…even death and the sea.
‘Deny Yourself’ – rocky bluster here, on your most straightforward song. By comparison it seems a bit dull.
Graveside: You think so? Admittedly it's fairly straightforward at the beginning, but then it goes into the quiet part and finally that turbulent, uber-orchestrated ending. I'm not seeing this straightforward thing.
Cruella: I am pretty happy with the transition from rock to slightly hymnal/spiritual to rock orchestra at the end. Not dull in my book.
‘Little Lady Lillit’ – again, a curiously horrible for a dainty ditty. What inspired that?
Cruella: I am a huge fan of the comic Lenore created by Roman Dirge. Lillit was inspired by the character Lenore. Nursery Rhymes and rounds are also so awesome to sing and I really wanted to create my own twisted one, Grimm’s Fairy Tales meets Mister Rogers. I would love to write more. The idea of a whimsical so song with deranged lyrics is so appealing to me. The composer, Danny Elfman,(mmmm…. Oingo Boingo) is also a huge influence. I would love to have one of my songs used by Tim Burton in one of his movies. The urban legend of “Ring around the Rosey” being about the Black Plague is such a great idea and I was drawing from that as well.
You’re better played to have a theory than me, so a) why is there so much Goth Metal around and b) why do 99% of the bands have female singers.
Graveside: I think that for years even though there was a lot of animosity between the two camps (goth and metal), each side had a secret affection for the other - a guilty pleasure, and after the breakthrough of a couple of brave artists, those who love both have come screaming out of the closet. The female vocalist can be an important part of the sound - a feminine side to offset the masculinity of rock guitars and drums. I can't speak for other artists, but personally I'm really sick of the boys club that is rock and roll, and equally sick of the cheesy gimmick that is the all-girl group. It's time for these silly divisions to end, be it goth vs. metal or girls vs. boys. (or punks vs. skins, or what have you.)
Cruella: Chicks Rule!
You are to one side of this, I realize, and you weren’t blackmailed into using the term Prog either. How many bands have you encountered doing similar things to yourselves?
Graveside: There are a lot of bands that SORT of sound like us, but none who are really close. I could say band X for this reason and this reason, and band Y for that reason and that reason, but in the end we're unique, and that's a good thing, since it widens our appeal and we can claim that we offer an angle that's original but people can still get their heads around it. The prog thing comes from a refusal to be limited by the traditional 4-minute song structure. True, part of the reason that it IS tradition is that it works, but it can be so much more. Not every part we come up with screams that it's a verse or a chorus, so why should we discard them just because tradition insists that songs be only verses and choruses, with an occasional bridge? And once you have all these disparate parts, how do you make them fit together without sounding like a incongruous mess? There's a lot to be learned from the prog world in this area.
What next for you, what does this years hold?
Graveside: Hopefully we will be able to get out on the road and support the new cd. Last year was a bit of a bust, since just as we were finishing up the record, Cruella was diagnosed with breast cancer, so we pretty much had to put the band into park while she went through chemo and radiation treatments. Now, however, her treatments are done, and she's feeling great, and we have a lot of new material written. We can't wait to get out there and start doing our thing again.
Cruella: 3 words! Road, Ruling, Rocking!