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By: Sander van den Driesche
Earlier this month Inter Arma was back in the UK for their second string of gigs after having toured Europe and the UK in April with Windhand. This time on their headlining tour with German two-piece sludge monster Mantar as support, they played Audio in Glasgow (you can read my review here). Their recently released one song album The Cavern is an enormous 45 minutes long track, which is one of the nicest pieces of music the band’s released to date. I had a chat with drummer T.J. Childers and singer Mike Paparo before the gig about The Cavern, song writing and Mike’s other band Bastard Sapling.
(((o))): How are you guys doing? Has it been a good tour so far?
T.J.: Yeah it’s been killer so far.
(((o))): You had some troubles coming over to Europe right? Like massive snow fall in the States and then an airline strike which made you miss your Athens show?
T.J.: Yeah it sucked, but all things considered all we really had to do was cancel that show in Athens, which sucks as it was gonna be an awesome show, but it was looking much more worse there for a second and then the way everything ended up wound up being okay. So, it wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought it was gonna be.
(((o))): Anyway, congratulations with your new release The Cavern, which I think is amazing. It’s an awesome record, which brings all the Sky Burial elements together in one enormous track that progresses through so many different sub-genres. How was The Cavern written?
T.J.: I usually write the riffs, and then I bring them in and we all figure out how many times you go through each progression and what part goes next. You know, it’s pretty democratic in that way.
(((o))): How long does it take to write such a huge, 45 minutes long track?
T.J.: I started coming up with those riffs… I actually hate saying “I came up with them”, as most of the time I’m like hungover in my underwear and half out of it! (laughs) The riffs are just, you know, presents that the music deadites just present to me or whoever. The Cavern actually all started coming around like late 2008 or early 2009.
(((o))): Oh, so it’s actually quite old?
T.J.: Yeah it’s been around for a long time. And then we worked on it some and on our first US tour we played the first half of it, cos it wasn’t complete, and then we would play stuff that wound up being on our first record and then we came back from that tour and finished it. We didn’t play it too many times in completion live, maybe 6-8 times or something like that. It wasn’t a whole lot. It’s a 45 minutes song and we usually only have a half hour to play.
(((o))): How do you go ahead to record a song that long? It’s not a one take does the job thing is it?
T.J.: (laughs) No, no.
Mike: That’s kinda the reason why it was abandoned after a while because we had no idea how we would record it (laughs)!
T.J.: Basically, where there are nice breaks in the song, I would just play the drum tracks through for that section and stop and go back and listen to it, make sure everything was cool and then play you know where the drums would pick up again, play through it and then listen to it and go back. It’s basically three big drum sections and then some of the rest was recorded later on. And obviously all of the guitars, bass and vocals were all overdubbed along with all the 8 million other overdubs that there are on the record.
(((o))): Regarding your music, you have a lot of progressive elements in there. Do you listen to any classic prog music, like do you have any prog influences? Or is it more like the way your music came together naturally for you guys?
T.J.: I know Trey (guitar) listens to quite a bit of Yes. He likes some either proggy stuff. (looks at Mike) You like some proggy stuff too don’t you?
Mike: Yeah. I like some of that strange stuff from Finland, like Circle and things like that. I don’t get way into it though, I’m not like “Oh I love Van der Graaf Generator you know, woo!”.
(((o))): You do seem to appeal to the prog fans a lot, who expect to hear a metal band when they start listening to you guys and then come back and say they really like it because of the more proggy elements.
T.J.: I know when I pick up a guitar and I play like a heavier riff, sometimes, because I play drums, a guitar player who doesn’t play drums would say “Oh but that starts in a weird spot”, you know. It would not be in normal 4/4 it would be something different, but I almost don’t even think about that when I’m playing music or listen to music, because I gotten used to it so much, So, maybe all the rhythmic shit over the years has snug its way into the guitar playing.
(((o))): This year has been another great year with lots of great releases. What releases have impressed you?
T.J.: A record that came out this year? I’m so out of the loop!
Mike: I liked quite a few records this year. Some of my favourites were that Thantifaxath record. And I really liked the new Emptiness record a lot. The new Blut Aus Nord is great as well.
(((o))): So Mike, basically you’re listening to a lot of black metal then?
Mike: Yeah! I’m one of those guys. The new Godflesh record is pretty awesome too.
T.J.: The new Godflesh record is really fucking heavy. And the new Yob is fucking great. But they don’t put out anything other than excellent shit. And that Bastard Sapling album that came out this year, that was very okay! (laughs)
(((o))): What are your plans for next year? A new record for example, like another full-length?
T.J.: Yeah it’s in the works, it’s not hammered down yet as far as when we’re gonna do it, but we already have almost 40 minutes worth of material. It’ll probably wind up being another double album. More than likely at this point, it’s hard to say for certain, but it’s what it’s looking like.
(((o))): It means quite a lot for people over here in Scotland for a band like Inter Arma to come over to the UK like once every couple of years or so, but you guys are now on your second tour through the UK of this year, which is really awesome. Is this because you released The Cavern that you felt you had to promote that?
T.J.: Basically as soon as we came back from the previous tour we were already kinda starting to get the ball rolling to come back over here again. It’s just that the timing sort of worked out, because actually The Cavern was supposed to be out a little bit earlier. And because there were pops at the test pressing they had to send it back to the factory 2 or 3 times or something. The way everything worked out, the timing sort of worked out when it came out, and then we came over here.
(((o))): Mike, how’re things going with Bastard Sapling? Is that your main band now, or is Inter Arma your main band and Bastard Sapling like a side project that comes along when it comes along?
Mike: Both bands are my main focuses. Bastard Sapling isn’t capable of being a full time touring entity. We just do stuff when we can. This year we toured like 20, 22 days or something like that. We don’t have any immediate recording plans or anything like that. Bastard Sapling is basically the brain child of this guy called Drew Goldy, the guitar player. I know that he started to write new songs and once he gets rolling it’s like we get together for practice and he’s like “I wrote 3 songs” and I’m like okay.
(((o))): Okay guys, the gig tonight is about to start so I just like to thank you for your time and have a good gig and rest if your tour! And come back soon again!
