Returning after an absence is always somewhat of an interesting experience. Regardless of the background of the events, whether it be returning to an old home, seeing an old friend or arriving back to a creative situation the entire process can be somewhat unexpected. Welcomed home after their decision to reform in their native Canada Despised Icon began their first steps towards a new chapter the bands career. Ressurecting the band and all it stood for the group endeavoured to create a new album that was harder hitting, more brutal whilst also being exactly what Despised Icon stood for. After a seven year absence the band once more deliver unto us a brand new record. We were lucky enough to have a post set chat with Eric Jarrin the bands guitarist to talk Beast and the bands reawakening.
Listen to the full unedited interview in our Soundcloud file below or read the transcript underneath!
So today I have Eric from Despised Icon with me, how are you?
Good, good great set today man.
Excellent how does it feel to be back in London?
It is great, I mean we haven’t played London since 2009 or 2010. Its been quite a while so its great to be back in the big city.
Definitely and the response from the crowd was incredible!
Actually very very surprising. Because we haven’t played in quite a while so its great to see that people still care about us!
Your new record Beast is coming out soon, could you tell us a bit about the record?
Absolutely! Its coming out on Nuclear Blast on July 22nd,this is our first record in seven years, its very brutal and the idea to come up with a new album actually started when we did those reunion shows in 2014. We didn’t have any plans to bring back the band or anything, we just did those reunion tours and the reaction was so good and we had such a good time playing back together as a band that we decided to give it a shot and just write some new tunes, see how it goes.
The plan was to do a four or five song EP, self released you know? Then as soon as we started to write some songs it just poured out of ourselves easily and naturally. So we actually had a full length, the amount of work that you have to put into a proper distribution and publicity and stuff so we thought what would be THE label that we would like to work with and Nuclear Blast was at the top of our list. We did those two UK shows last year in 2015, we played Ghostfest in Bristol and then we kept all the money that we made from those shows, invested it in album production and recorded everything and then we just hit up Nuclear Blast last December with a fully mixed and mastered album. From there they just said “Wow! Cool, it sounds great, it sounds like you guys haven’t missed a beat so lets put it out and lets work together.”
It wasn’t not intimidating but kind of tough when you went back to writing after seven years of not playing together?
That was the thing that we were a little bit apprenhious about. Being inactive for such a long period of time you never know how its going to come out you know? The main writers are Alex the singer and Alex Grind the drummer and I, either I write songs with the drummer or the singer and as soon as I sat down with Alex the singer it took us about an hour an hour and a half and we already had a four minute song. The chemistry was still going, it was still there it came out super easily. We didn’t force anything it was just like easy and natural, pretty stoked about it!
What about recording the album itself, what was that process like?
We just went with the usual way of recording, Yannick our original guitar player has been behind every album’s production with us so we just called him up and and said we will record with you and then we asked Andy Sneap who mixed and mastered our third album The Ills of Modern Man if he was interested in working with us again and he was super excited to do it again. Its like a go back to the roots thing you know? Producing the whole thing with Yannick, having Andy Sneap on board to mix and do the mastering and the result is just great! It sounds really natural really organic, whatever you hear on the album is what you’re going to get when we play live, you hear the band you know?
That was going to be another one of my questions, because its been such a long time you’re at a bit of a crossroads. You could kind of go in a more experimental direction or you could go back to the roots, what kind of sound is it? Without giving too much away!
Hahaha! I think that the die hard fans will be pleased. We have the earlier slam riffs and brought back the pig squeals from the earlier albums but it still has the technicality and the more faster stuff that we had on the latest albums. All in all its just a great balance of everything that we did before and I feel that its one of the most extreme albums we have recorded so far. We haven’t softened up at all even though we are old dudes now haha! Its very, very brutal!
Well you can always say that you can have hindsight when you’re older, there’s wisdom in there!
Hahaha
What about the album’s artwork, its kind of like a biomechanical sort of Beast.
It is! When the time came to get the album title, I guess it all came from Alex the singer when he started to write the lyrics for the songs. Its almost as if the beast is an image of the actual band, all the lyrical content revolves around the fact that there was a beast lying dormant for a couple of years and then it awakens and sees how the world has changed and is fucked up and just destroys everything hahaha! So we were in hiatus, we were sleeping for a couple of years so the band is back and we are hungry to destroy everything hahaha!
Speaking of destroying everything, whats your plan after the album is released?
The way now that the band operates is, I guess we don’t have to prove anything, we have been around for a while… Everything so far since we have reunited is on our own terms. Obviously we will never be a full time touring band again but we really want to try and get everywhere and play as much as we can every year. We are in Europe right now for these Impericon festivals. We have major North American festivals in the summer, we’re going back to Japan in September for the Asian market, probably try to do some US shows as well in support of the album. Be back in Europe at least like once a year.
Is that kind of one of the ways that you came to an understanding to bring the band back? It would be slightly different you would be more conscious of family life.
True most of us have kids and we have different career back home. Its just to have a good balance in life and also Alex has Obey The Brave which he has a commitment to, he has to do some tours and some albums with his other band as well. We’re just trying to fit everything together and we will do it on our own terms. One of the reasons that we broke up, when you tour like eight or ten months a year and the business side of things it takes its toll on you. You feel pressued, whereas now its more like we’re doing it on our own terms, enjoying ourselves having fun and I think thats the way it should be.
Its hard! One of the ways that I have kind of seen it sometimes almost when soldiers get used to this sort of lifestyle and they can’t decompress. Was it hard when it first stopped, was that a difficult thing to come to terms with?
Well yeah! I mean you have to dedicate your whole life to it for the first years to get the name out there. Its a lot of effort and thats one of the advice that I can give for the younger bands, you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to put yourself out there and dedicate yourself to it. I mean for Despised Icon I think that we are at the level where the brand its there and we have our strong fan base. I feel like we are able to do it on our own terms and yeah so if you ever see a Despised Icon show advertised in your city you better show up because it might take a couple of months or a year before we come back!
What about your own influences as a guitarist, what would you say were some or what would you say are some of your biggest influences?
Its funny as you grow older I guess, you kind of like to discover some new stuff but you always go back to the older roots or your own roots. We always listen back to the sort of stuff that we used to like when were teenagers, good old nineties bands like Slayer, Sepultura and Pantera these are like our main influences, Morbid Angel, we still listen to those bands from time to time but I like some newer stuff as well. We have very diverse tastes in music, we certainly don’t just listen to Metal. I have a classical guitar degree, our drummer listens to Classical, Jazz, Blues, Alternative Rock whatever, both our singers are into Hip Hop a lot. I guess we are just music lovers.
What about lyrics and things like that is that solely Alex is it a bit of a democratic thing?
On this new record Alex is the main lyric writer he wrote the majority of the songs and from what I can tell I think he is a little more mature now. Its more introspective lyric content, I guess being in another band for a couple of years and going back into Despised Icon changed him a little bit. I’m pretty stoked on the lyrics that we have on the album.
Is it going to be a long album?
Actually its not that long because some of the songs are very short because some of the songs are real fast haha! So I mean when you play at like 300 bpm.
There’s only so long you can keep it up!
So yeah its like a 2:30min long song or whatever, its close to half an hour, thirty something minutes. Which is fine for me, for that kind of music after thirty minutes of intense grinding, blast beats and breakdowns.
You need some classical!
Yeah hahahaha! Thats right!
You said loosely that its based around a concept of a Beast waking up, is that a specific concept that is in the album in the lyrics?
It is certainly for the title track “Beast” but it is for a couple of other songs as well. Thats why we chose that to be the main theme for the album, like I said earlier it reflects where the band is at right now. It works out!
To finish off what has been album that you have really like over the last six months to a year?
This will come from the leftfield for some of our fans but Pale Communion from Opeth was really, really great album for me. I have listened to that album a lot lately and Opeth are one of my favourite bands now. Thats whats my jam lately!
What is your opinion on the whole going into uber Prog mode and leaving Death Metal vocals behind?
I’m cool with it because as much as I enjoy more Metal albums like Watershed and Ghost Reveries, I think their new sound and their new album is just great because I grew up listening to Rush, King Crimson and Genesis and all those Prog bands so I’m cool with it and hopefully most of their fans are as well!
Despised Icon’s brand new album Beast is set for a July 22nd release via Nuclear Blast.
