Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Tech Trek Mayhem With DEAN LAMB From ARCHSPIRE

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Tech Trek Mayhem With DEAN LAMB From ARCHSPIRE · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  Hey, my name is Dean Lamb. I play in the technical death mental
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  band arch Spire from Vancouver, Canada, and we were going to be on
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  Australia doing a headlining tour pretty soon in October twenty twenty three. We're very
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  very excited about it. And yeah, with support we have the band Ingested
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  and were Wolves, so hopefully you see there. Yeah for day. Thanks
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  for joining us today, Hey buddy, thank you for having me pleasure.
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  So as you say us Spire returned to Australia this October for a run of
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  shows, starting in Brisbane on October the eleventh, wait and Canberra, Sydney,
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  Melbourne and Adelaide and then finishing in Perth on October seven eight. So
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  I know it was still a month. Have you packed? You packed and
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  ready to go? Oh my goodness. The tour is only a month away
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  and we were very very excited. We haven't totally packed yet, but what
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  we did recently, we just got back from a tour in Europe, so
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  we were just across Europe doing festivals at this point at the time of this
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  recording, I think we were. We've been home for like three weeks maybe
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  something like that, and we leave really really soon to go to go do
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  Japan and Australia immediately afterwards. And the craziest thing is is that our vocalist
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  is also getting married in Australia at the end of the tour, so we
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  have like a nuts sot trip coming up. I'm very very excited about it.
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  But the last time we were in Australia was twenty eighteen supporting Psychoptic,
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  who are like our bros, Like, we absolutely love those they love those
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  dudes, and so you know, it's just it's really cool to be actually
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  be able to go back and headline I mean, that's uh, it's pretty
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  amazing coming from a band who I mean, we play such a niche kind
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  of style of music, and to be able to go halfway across the world
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  and actually like headline show somewhere and have people care in any way, it
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  makes us very very excited. So yeah, And and Australian fans are just
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  like some of the best we've ever met, so yeah, we couldn't be
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  more excited. It's a pretty grooling run of six shows in seven days,
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  so sols of things to do to mentally and physically prepare for run of shows
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  on six shows and seven days. Yeah, the amount of flights that you
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  have to do is I mean, it's pretty staggering. Over the course of
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  the week, we'll do you know, we'll fly every single day pretty much.
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  I think we have one day one show where we just we drive between
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  the two the two cities. But other than that, it's fly, fly,
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  Fly, which is pretty crazy. Mentally. You have to be ready
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  to get lobby call at about three, four or five in the morning some
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  days and just fly every single day. Try to get sleep wherever you can.
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  But I mean it's like the whole experience to go to someplace that is
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  like for us, really really far away and really interesting. It's really cool.
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  One of my favorite things about Australia is the wildlife. The birds that
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  I saw last time when I was in Australia blew my mind. Dude,
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  even just the regular what you guys call beIN chickens. I mean even just
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  those birds, I'm like, what the hell is that thing? Dude?
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  Like every single it just it was super cool. So yeah, I mean
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  the wild left there. Yeah, it's you get tired. I mean,
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  sure, I'm not gonna be sitting here to be like I'm gonna be tired,
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  like, yes, of course, but we're gonna have as much fun
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  as we can. You're lost out here in two thousand nine eight, So
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  what's changed with the band since then? Yes, So the last time we
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  were there is in twenty eighteen. Here's what's happened since then. So we
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  were supporting at that time our album Relentless Mutation, which was out on season
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  missed records back in twenty seventeen. Since then we put out an album and
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  then also the world shutdown. So now we're back after five years, which
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  is nuts. I mean the amount of markets that we tour where we don't
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  hit it more than the amount of markets that we hit more often than every
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  once every five years. I mean most of them. I mean most of
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  the ones we hit. Europe we do at least once a year generally US
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  Canada, I mean most of the time we hit these markets lots With Australia,
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  it feels like a major market for US and we just rare league get
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  to go. So what I think has happened in the in the intern between
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  the last tour and this one is we've built up a bit bigger of a
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  fan base and and Australia seems to me like a great market for extreme death
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  metal, and there's something I don't know unique about that. It's really interesting
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  when a country just they give you the vibe that they like your style of
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  music more. I don't really know how that comes to be. I imagine
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  that you know you have. There's murder the Psycroptic gives so many great bands
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  in the genre from Australia that have sort of beefed up the scene, the
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  local scene there. But yeah, in terms of us, we're five years
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  older, we've all lost our hair, and we we look considerably worse.
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  So so yeah, prepare yourselves for just hideous men on stage. That's the
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  That's the biggest thing for me or what could Australian fans expect from this Runner
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  shows? This time we're playing plenty of new music. So if you saw
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  us last time, we played a lot of stuff from our older catalog.
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  Now we focus quite a bit on newer songs, and these are songs that
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  were extremely proud of, mostly from our last release, Lead the Future.
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  So if you like that album, I think you're gonna like what you hear
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  when you come see us live. You guys play a brand of technical death
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  metal and the tour dubbed the Trek Austria Tour, So just say our technical
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  of things going to get brother, all right. So yes, the tour
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  is called Tech Trek Australia and this is basically our branded headliner tour. We've
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  been doing these tours since I don't even know twenty twelve. Maybe what we'd
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  like to do is sort of give the audience an expectation of what they're gonna
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  be able to hear when they come see us live. And this is a
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  technical death metal party basically, So we've been doing them enough and what we
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  love to do is include a band or two or three that sort of fit
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  the vibe and really support the entire the entire experience. So we've we've picked
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  to have us have along with us on this tour. Awarewolves a local Australian
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  band and has Dave Dave Haley from Psycroptic on drums, and the UK deathcore
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  band Ingested. Both of these bands are really really awesome. They sort of
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  both reflect certain aspects of our band without going too much over the same treaded
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  ground. So we are basically as much as we possibly can, we try
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  to be the fastest band in the world. This is our goal, the
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  fastest most technical band that we can possibly be while still trying to write music.
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  That that is how I guess you could say listenable. I wouldn't say
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  it's necessarily accessible, because if you've heard it before, it's just it's just
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  as fast as we can play, and then we'll throw in a couple of
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  milides that maybe hopefully you like. I don't know, it gets about it
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  as technical as if you like really really fast drums, if you like really
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  fast guitar playing with lots of strings on there, and if you like if
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  you like speed rap mixed with death metal, I think you're going to enjoy
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  it. And that's a really that's a really unique kind of weird blend.
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  Maybe even throw a little bit of classical music in there. The whole thing
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  is is kind of strange. So if you'd like you where you're hearing me
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  describe some weird mishmash of music, then hopefully you can check it out.
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  That was intriguing. So it's actually difficult for you guys to play in music
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  live well and actually play such intricate nights at the same job. So our
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  style of music is not necessarily easy to play. Here's the thing we practice
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  quite a bit at home. We make sure to prep quite a bit for
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  these kinds of tours. And what we also do is we play with the
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  system where we can. We basically put on headphones in your monitors on stage,
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  and we have wireless rack units and all this kind of gear so that
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  we can hear ourselves as absolutely clear as possible. So this is something is
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  very very important to us. We want to put on a very live show
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  that reflects the album, so that when you listen to the album you hear
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  us live, you go that that's actually sounds pretty similar. Now, of
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  course, in a live setting, you're always in a venue, there's it's
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  a different vibe, it's more energized, it's more raw, all that kind
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  of stuff. But what we love to do is we love to play a
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  show and have people say, wow, that sounds exactly like the album.
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  Now, it's not always possible sometimes you I mean, I'll be the first
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  one to say I'll mess up plenty on stage. But let's say hopefully you're
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  I'm playing fast enough, or maybe you don't notice some of the wrong notes
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  that I'm But regardless of all that, We're going to do our best to
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  play as fast as our tiny little fingers and limbs will allow us to us
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  to be afformed in Vancouver Beach back in two thousand and seven, mates,
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  So what was the musical climate like back then? They gave birth to the
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  band and where did you fit in? So band Artspire actually formed in two
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  thousand and nine here in Vancouver. Here's here's what we joined. Here's what
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  we did when we first started the band. We wanted to mimic bands like
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  and this is extreme death mental kind of stuff here. There's bands like Origin,
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  bands like Flesh Gout Apocalypse, There's a band called Brain Drill, band
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  called the Faceless, a band called Immolation, all these extreme death mental bands.
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  That's what we wanted to do. And we found that there wasn't a
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  lot of other similarly minded groups in Vancouver at the time, and we thought,
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  you know what, this is what we all want. There's only a
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  small amount of us that really, I mean, for lack of a better
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  word, give a shit about this kind of music here. We want to
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  do this. We want to play as fast as we can. We want
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  to we want to play very very technical music. So let's do it and
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  let's push as absolutely hard as possible. And being in Canada, it's it's
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  not nearly the type of isolation that you have in certain Australian cities like Perth,
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  or if you go down to Hobart in tasm year or something. But
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  being in this side of Canada it is kind of tough because either you go
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  down into America to tour, but that's a whole big thing of paperwork and
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  expenses where you go all the way across Canada, which takes days and days
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  and days of driving. So one of the things that's tough about starting a
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  band where we are here in Western Canada and Vancouver, BC, it's just
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  a little bit tough to get going for us. We decided to tour across
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  Canada quite a few times and that's where we met amazing like minded individuals,
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  especially in Quebec, specifically Montreal. You have beyond Creation your bands like Cryptopsy,
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  bands like Despised Icon, all of these amazing death metal bands, and
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  that's kind of where the epicenter of the style of music is in Vancouver,
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  Western Canada. It doesn't really exist quite as much. Now there are more
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  and more bands nowadays, and we love to hear bands that are from Western
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  Canada that are doing extreme death, mental deathcore, anything really that's extreme.
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  But at the time, there wasn't really much that was starting up. One
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  thing that we love here in Vancouver's we're also the birthplace of bands like Strapping
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  a Lad or Zimmer's Hole or three Inches of Blood and those are all great
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  bands, but those are kind of like a generation before us, so we
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  were kind of like in the middle and the lull of things as it goes,
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  as far as death meantal goes. But now, I mean, the
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  scene is booming and we love to see it. We'd love to see bands
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  that we know two or more and more, especially just extreme, as extreme
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  as possible and try to push that into more people's awareness so we can all
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  kind of get a little bit more successful. Every band that does it helps
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  everybody helps everybody else out. So what was your early vision for the band
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  back then and how's it changed suits Our first vision for the band was to
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  be as technical as possible, as fast as possible, and that is it.
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  And since then all we've done is at a couple of sprinklings of melody
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  and let's hope that people like it. But yeah, for the most part,
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  it hasn't changed. We haven't really changed what we're going for. We're
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  still the same group of dudes that that started writing a disgusting, damp,
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  moldy jam space and you know, not much has changed since then. So
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  you guys released your last album Blade the Future back in Sweet the outand and
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  twenty one, so you're gonna have any new tracks to your new music.
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  You test it out on the story and fans. So the last album we
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  released, yes, was in twenty twenty one, was completely the Future.
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  At this point, we are still in the in the throes of writing.
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  We are trying our best to write as much music as possible, but we
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  have been quite busy on on tour. So when we get back from this
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  tour, we're going to continue to writing. We're going to continue writing since
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  our last tour, we've been writing. At the current point time, we
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  do not have any new songs to play, but hopefully here's what my hope
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  is. You haven't heard this stuff live because we haven't been in Australia since
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  this album has come out. So if you like the album, I think
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  you're gonna enjoy what you here. Hey, Well, before we let you
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  go, we're just gonna ask you a couple of questions. If we started
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  up and new Spotify and playlist, three of the in fact made up from
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  artists that we speak to. So can I get you to give me songs
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  from bands, any band that you've been in over the years. One for
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  a playlist to get the party started, one for a playlist to save your
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  marriage, and the other for a playlist to potentially end your marriage. And
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  these are just artspire songs. Yeah, yeah, just get a fun way
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  to do it. Okay, One to save your marriage, one to end
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  your marriage, and the last one and then the last one is one okay,
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  party started, save your marriage and your marriage? Oh my goodness.
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  Okay. The song that I would suggest from our catalog to get the party
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  started, I'm going to give you sort of a It's a song that I
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  consider a bit of a warm up. This is like an introduction. This
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  is not dipping your toes entirely in the We're not getting in the deep end.
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  We're just kind of putting our twinkling our toes here in the shallow.
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  And so the song called it's called the mimic. Well, it's from our
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  album Brilliant. This mutation h one to save our marriage. You know,
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  there's some romantic kind of aspect about this song. If you're looking to save
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  your marriage, you feel like you're in the on the rocks. You have
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  you have issues you want to work out and you want to bring this spark
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  back. You want to light the spark again. The song called a dark
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  horizontal that has a nice romantic middle, and that's what you need. You
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  want you want to reignite the passion in your marriage and want to end your
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  marriage. We're going to use the song Drone Corpse Aviator because it's just an
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  obnoxious song and there's no way anybody's gonna want to listen to that when they're
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  well, like you're gonna force people to listen to it, Honestly, they're
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  gonna leave. I think it's going to be too extreme for most people.
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  So well, Dan, what thanks very much for your tom Today might be
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  in a pleasure speak thank you, Yeah for sure the eleventh and probably pop
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  along the Brisbane Show and say today