Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Rolling Out The Welcome Mat With JARRYD RODGER From ROSWELL DEATHSQUAD
Transcript
- 0:00Yep. So my name's Jared, vocalist for rosewelld death Swad. We're a
- 0:06four piece from Melbourne City. More or less. Yeah, we're like a
- 0:13technical, death metal, deathcore, proggy kind of band. I guess like
- 0:18we don't really sit in a genre, so's it's a bit of a weird
- 0:23one. But yeah, we've got We've got our release show coming up on
- 0:28the thirtieth of March for our album Welcome Home. Technically we dropped it in
- 0:35January, however, doing like a I guess a relaunch for it to actually
- 0:41showcase the actual album itself, which is down at the Workers Club in Melbourne
- 0:47on the thirty. I think tickets are fifteen bucks for pre sale or twenty
- 0:51five on the door, So come down for East Long Weekend, a couple
- 0:57of bebes and some death metal. So good brother, thanks for joining us
- 1:02today, jan Thank you my pleasure. So ros Well Despot released your debut
- 1:07album, Welcome Home, back on January the fifth. Mate, so she's
- 1:11been out a couple of months now, saiday, how's it been received?
- 1:15Pretty good? A lot of the feedback that we have had has been absolutely
- 1:21phenomenal, you know, from whether it be you know just old mate down
- 1:25the street or you know a few people overseas. Had had a few reviews
- 1:32come through from overseas and everyone's been loving it. Yeah, I guess it
- 1:38hits the heavy mark, It hits the metal corey kind of chorus e mark
- 1:42as well and gives it it gives everyone a bit of everything rather than just
- 1:47being stale, so which is kind of what we aim for. But it's
- 1:52been great. It's it's been received a lot better than what we didn't anticipated,
- 1:57and especially releasing like just randomly, it's out of the year, you
- 2:00know, Like our Spotify numbers are sitting at like two to three thousand every
- 2:05month, and for a new band that you know, no one really knows,
- 2:08it's pretty pretty good market the moment. So doing pretty well. Oh
- 2:13so tell us a bit more, like a bit deeper into it. First
- 2:15prayer, In the musical side of the album, what are you going for
- 2:17with it? So musically more or less the boys from like a guitar you
- 2:25know, like from a musicality side of things, they were more going for,
- 2:30you know, like the technical death metal, thrash metal kind of proggy
- 2:35sound, and that's what that hard. Before I joined the band, last
- 2:38year. Last year, when I joined band, it was pretty much at
- 2:43like very straight tech death They just wanted, you know, like a vocalist
- 2:46that did like some weird noises and you know, to meet up with the
- 2:52death core kind of scene and you know, try and get the music to
- 2:58work with like a death core vote. So it's kind of where I came
- 3:00in. I walked in and more or less went for with this with these
- 3:07tracks, went more with the metalcore voice or like you know, harsher metalcore
- 3:14kind of like for ice screamy kind of stuff to add in. I guess
- 3:20a bit of variance between just being straight death technical death metal and you know
- 3:25your classic fucking guttural oil a bowl vocals like give it some give it some
- 3:34some life or some feeling into it, and bring in that like you know,
- 3:38more emotional vocal. So that way you can get a bit of emotion
- 3:42across and a bit of a storytelling side of things. So I feel like
- 3:46that's that's kind of where both things have kind of come together, and you
- 3:51know, we don't necessarily sit in that type of genre where it's you know,
- 3:53straight technical death metal or it's death core or its metal core. It's
- 3:58something a bit weird, something a bit different, which is, you know,
- 4:01kind of what I look for in music myself, and that's what the
- 4:04boys also looked for as well, so I think we'll get the mark there
- 4:09as well. These days made like probably more so than ever before, there's
- 4:14so much music out there for people listening. So as a fresh band going
- 4:18into your debut album, like, what sorts of things do you focus on
- 4:20to make sure that you're not just going to get lost in the masses?
- 4:24I guess. I guess for me personally, it's keeping up with, you
- 4:31know, with the with what's being released or what the what the new big
- 4:36thing is so like at the time of writing, especially like the lyrical content
- 4:42for this album. Lorna Show were a huge, like a huge thing at
- 4:46that point in time last year, And one thing that kind of worked for
- 4:50me really well is like it's a band that I actually really looked like look
- 4:55up to. So keeping in mind, like you trying to work out how
- 5:01he like Will does all those crazy US vocals and stuff and all the stranger
- 5:05sounds that come out of that guy's mouth is interesting in itself, but just
- 5:12keeping up to date with, you know, the music that is out there
- 5:15because you don't want to come across I guess like you're recycling something as someone
- 5:21else has already done, or not keeping things fresh, especially like within the
- 5:27scene, because it's ever growing and it's always so fast paced, especially with
- 5:31you know, like new bands coming out or new sounds or this, that
- 5:35and the other. Like there's always something that comes into the mix. So
- 5:38it's just keeping up with that new sound just coming out every week, or
- 5:42you know, keeping it and keeping an eye on what's local and what's big
- 5:45and what's working in the industry at the moment, so that way, you
- 5:48know, you can be on part with that. Yeah. So I always
- 5:53said Bra that time is the best judging character. So the album's been out
- 5:57for two months now, So are you personally still happy with it or the
- 6:00things that they think you could have done different? I mean I'm stoked with
- 6:04it overall, Absolutely stoked with it. Yeah, there are obvious like there's
- 6:09always going to be that critical point for any musician or just anyone that's an
- 6:14artist in general that can critique their own work. So you know, like
- 6:16if I could do it over again, I'd love to go back to the
- 6:19studio and re record vocals or go and re record guitar or you know this,
- 6:25that and the other, and you know, change a little bits and
- 6:27pieces here and there, but overall like pretty much like pretty happy with it
- 6:32overall. Now, the press release is Welcome Home is a breathless leap into
- 6:39the unknown. Can you elaborate on that a bit for us? Yeah,
- 6:43So, I guess more or less like what we're going for, like storytelling
- 6:48wise and just lyrical content wise, was just a bit of like an introduction
- 6:55into where we're going to go with the story arcs. So part of Welcome
- 7:00Home is literally welcoming home our alien overlords, just being that, you know,
- 7:09Like I guess a part of the subtext of the band itself is,
- 7:13you know, it's very alien influenced or kind of sits in that like alien
- 7:19metal subgenre. So a few songs like say, for instance, like Part
- 7:27one and Part two, So the last two songs on the album, they
- 7:33come from a story that myself and our guitarist Jack have written together more or
- 7:41less about aliens coming through like a portal or like a wormhole in existence and
- 7:48trying to trying to salvage what their lifetime was in their world by taking over
- 7:57hours and exterminating the human race to pretty much utilize our world as theirs or
- 8:03our earth as theirs. And yeah, I guess like going back to the
- 8:09breathless step into the unknown, the unknown is the you know, these beings
- 8:15that might exist or do exist, or to us they do exist, and
- 8:22just exploring that that idea or the existence of something higher power than ourselves.
- 8:31That's well, that's one beautiful thing about music, bro. Like everything that
- 8:33you've just said then, because you've woven it into the concept of an album,
- 8:37like, someone will sit there and go, yes, that's pretty interesting
- 8:41theory. But if you're sitting the pub talk to someone about it, they
- 8:43go, fuck, I've made you're off your head. So along those sides
- 8:50of those two songs that you mentioned, mate, like the press says that
- 8:54the last song hard of the Universe to Flatline brings to a close person we
- 9:00perceive like it sounds beautiful and romantic on the surface, but it's dark as
- 9:03funk when you think about it. Yeah, yeah, so it's look,
- 9:09I went more for the emotional feel of it, and it is extremely like
- 9:16like if you read between the lines, it is extremely dark, omnious,
- 9:20ominous, and like just terrifying. What could happen or what would happen if
- 9:28we were to step into that unknown and that is you know, obviously having
- 9:31them come and take over the universe. You know, a part like the
- 9:37last line of that that song is just undefined. So the final word of
- 9:45that song is undefined, and the meaning of undefined is yeah, more or
- 9:50less, the universe itself will implode within itself to then be undefined within our
- 9:56existence or within our capability of nderstanding. So you know, as as someone
- 10:03comes through like wormhole, they try and pull something through that, whether it
- 10:09be their universe or their world or their spaceships and so on, and then
- 10:13the universe employes within itself, and that in itself is undefined, because then
- 10:18we are undefined and we're just back to square one. More or less cool
- 10:24Rose Rod Descoy only came on the scene last year. They formed out of
- 10:28past and present members of bands like Bestationan, Harlotte Karpa's Mistress of Misery and
- 10:33Fear the Fall and made say, what parts of each of those bands did
- 10:37you just bring to the table to create the sound that became ros Or Descott.
- 10:43So I guess the drama his name is Dan. He came from the
- 10:50band Harlot a couple of years ago. He was a touring drama for them
- 10:56for like Big four or five years. So more or less, he's brought
- 11:03in that like that thrash technical death Natalie like drum technique with into the band.
- 11:09Festation was the guitarist Jack his old band as well. He's brought in
- 11:16a lot of that more tech, deathy, technical run slot kind of guitar
- 11:22work, so he doesn't he doesn't like to play a lot of single notes
- 11:28throughout songs. He plays on an eighth string and does things that aren't technically,
- 11:33you know, allowed to happen on a guitar, but for some reason
- 11:37it fucking works. Yeah, he's absolutely mad Men. And then the bassist
- 11:43he's from Carthlas, he's you know, just brought in his smooth, groovy
- 11:52based hone into the band, very thrashy background as well. And then myself
- 11:58with Mistress and Misery fore of the Fallen. They were both very like metal
- 12:01core death core bands. Mistress and Misery more so much from more so from
- 12:07Melbourne scene, and then Fear the Fallen was from the Gold Coast back in
- 12:11Queensland. More or less. Yeah, that those two bands were very like
- 12:18metalcorey hardcore death core, kind of like bands that I fronted as well,
- 12:24And yeah, I just kind of brought in that that kind of sound back
- 12:28into the tech death side. Now you sort of touched on this before made
- 12:33but you blame metal core, thrash metal, death metal and a bit of
- 12:35prog in there that somehow all sounds really good together. Bro. But in
- 12:39the writing process, how hard does it to strike the balance between all of
- 12:43them? Like is it is it your trial and error or how do you
- 12:46know what enough's enough? Look, it is very difficult. Like at the
- 12:52moment where we're in the we're in the process of currently writing another EP,
- 13:00which we have three songs for at the moment, but we're trying to get
- 13:03to the fourth or fifth currently. It's been a bit of a difficult step
- 13:09just being that we're trying to one up what we've already done. But yeah,
- 13:15that's tech like doing the tech death stuff and then you know, trying
- 13:18to add in a bit of like you know, a breakdown here or there.
- 13:22So it does come back to that like more death called metal core sound
- 13:26and having that space in between the songs whereas like if you listen to you
- 13:31know, classic technical death metal, it's just consistent, just not like absolute
- 13:35nonsense for way four or five minutes and you're just blown away by it.
- 13:41But we're trying to add in like the craziness, but also let the music
- 13:45breathe, so that way, you know, the fan or the punter at
- 13:48the show can then you know, utilize that space to breathe to you know,
- 13:52whether it be thrown down or th hands or do whatever start appear,
- 13:56do the whole thing, you know, like give it, give it a
- 13:58little bit of breath, so that way there's that opening for it. Now
- 14:03announced an album launch party called Unsacred Saturday on March and thirtieth the Worker's Club
- 14:09in Vizory. So tell us a bit more about that. Yeah, So,
- 14:15been working with a company called Outcasts Bookings for the better part of three
- 14:22or four years now, and more or less they've reached out to me in
- 14:28order to set up like a show. You know, we've been in contact
- 14:31for a couple of months just about an album release show in general, and
- 14:37the guys over there, Scott and Finn, have graciously added us into their
- 14:43work list in order to get us on some shows down here and get the
- 14:46word out about it more or less. This show that's coming up, we've
- 14:50got a Discovery on headlining which are like, I guess, a death metal
- 14:56thrash metal kind of band from Melbourne. It's got a band called three or
- 15:00eight from Queensland that are coming down to help us out with it a couple
- 15:05of weeks ago. Bloody good Yeah, good shit. Yeah, I've been
- 15:09I've been jamming them out last couple of weeks and they're a good time,
- 15:11good time that. We've got Rise from the Ashes, which are a metalcore
- 15:18earth or like a death metal outfit from Melbourne. Then ourselves Roswell deathk Squad,
- 15:24as well as Pendall Hill and He Who Seeks Vengeance which are a huge
- 15:31like kind of like Parkway Drive, Frankston Band, and a new band called
- 15:37boyd Out. This is their first ever show and they are top tier metal
- 15:43core at its finest, so it's going to be a good time. Blackgan
- 15:46probably the best thing about that bro The doors open at four point thirty and
- 15:50the last band finishes at eleven, so he could feasibly be home drunk and
- 15:54passed out before midnight. Yeah, it's literally literally just get on the pisce
- 15:56all weekend and just keep the bender going, mate,