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Hungry For Change With JIM From HEATHENSPAWN · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:13
  Speaker 1: So I'm I'm Jim. I'm the lead singer of Heathen Spawn,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Sydney based melodic death metal band, and we've just released
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: a new single called the Ravenous Earth and we've got
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: a music video for it, and it came out two
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, I think, and yeah, hopefully if you haven't
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: already heard it, give it a listen.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Fantasy Jim, thanks for joining us today.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Nice to be here.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: As you say, heathen Spawn released your latest single, the
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Ravenus Earth September eight, so what's a couple of weeks ago.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: So how's the early reception been for it?
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It seems like it's been really positive. It's yeah, the reception.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: The reception has been good. So we've played two shows
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: to support the release. The people seem to like the
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: new material because we're playing like the Ravenous Earth is
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the new single, but at the shows we're playing pretty
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: almost all new songs as well, so we're building up
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: a bit of a catalog of new stuff as well.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: People seem to like the new stuff. The merch was
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: selling well. We got art done by a London based
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: artist called Alex and he's he also we put that
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: on a T shirt as well, that's that's been well received. Yeah,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: so so so far, it's it's all been positive.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Wait, so run Us through the Ravenus Earth a bit
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: deeper musically, and what you're going for with it?
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: You mean you mean in terms of lyrics all.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Or that we'll get into the lyrics next. We're just
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: sight of it.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is why I said when we were
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: talking as a band about who was going to do
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: the interview, I've recommended that at least one of the
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: people in the band who are actual musicians might want
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: to join, because I am not that I am a
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: go who screams, but I think if you can, if
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you were to compare it to Heathen Spawn's previous material,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: it's probably a bit of a divergence away from that.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: So it's probably a bit darker and a bit more aggressive.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So we were going for something. I mean, the band's
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: main influences. Steve, one of the guitarist who writes all
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the music, his you know, his main influences are very
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: much in that Swedish melodic death metal vein, so you know, Insomnium, Sacramentum,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Dark Tranquility at the Gates Edge of Sanity. So sort
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: of got those in mind when riding riffs and the
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: music's probably become you know, there's always a bit of
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: black metal influence as well, but I think that I
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: don't know, I mean, there's not there's there's definitely a
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I think it's probably the way that I do vocals
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and write lyrics as well. There were and the subject matter.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: There was this intention to from from the original demo
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: that I got sent that I started to write for.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: It transformed a bit from that and it became a
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: bit darker and a bit more aggressive as well. So
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I I, my, my, the vocalists that I
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: really gravitate towards as well have quite a sort of
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: aggressive delivery, and so that's sort of that probably ended
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: up influencing how how everything came together as well. So,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I mean when I started as a vocalist, when the
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: band asked me to join, basically during the pandemic. You know,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the band had being on hiatus and Steve had written
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of demos and so a lot all these
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: songs sort of started out as demos that Steve had
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: sent sent to me and then started to work on
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: it and they transformed from there.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Oh well, you'd probably be out to answered this one
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: a bit easy then made about the subject matter like
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: it's pretty deep and pretty brand.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, so the the theme of the song is
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: essentially that the simple like the simple summary is, it's
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's about it's about a vision of the world after
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: humans are gone, and that is, you know, as as
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: every you know, almost every organism that's ever lived here
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: is extinct. Now this is it's just a it's a
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: biological and geological reality that we will we think we're
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: going to be here forever as a species. You know, humans,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: they sort of conduct themselves in a in an arrogant
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: way where we think that evolution has ended with us,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: and it's it's about that vision. So that the song
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: is sort of about the ravenous Earth come. The idea
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of it comes from, you know, the Earth consuming humanity
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: and all humans and you know artifacts, so society, buildings,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: everything that we and everything that we think is really important,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: ultimately the Earth doesn't care about. So it's partly about that,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: and it's also particularly the lyrics in the first part
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of the song hang on, I've Got.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: A Walking Past if you tail, particularly in the first
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: part of the song, it's sort of about that arrogance
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: of humanity and that you know seeming you know, we
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: get really I guess I'm guilty of this as much
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: as anyone as well.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: You get wound up in the trivialities of like everyday life,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: and you don't think about these things because you can't
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: think about them because you need to move forward, you know,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you need to. You can't wake up every day and
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: think about the extinction of humans exactly. I probably think
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: about it more than the average person. But so the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: song is a little bit about stepping back from that
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: and taking this this sort of almost like a like
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: a like it's looking forward in time to a point
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: in time when where there's nothing and imagining what that
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: world would look like. Right.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: That makes a lot more sense with the video clip
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: now when you run through the music video, and that
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: ties in with pretty much everything you were saying.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So the vision that we that we came up
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: with for the for the music video was was basically
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: like we just wanted something simple, you know, which is
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: basically the you know, we we were playing in a
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: in essentially a big shed out in out in western
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Sydney on this on a like a property basically and
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: like it's set up for film shoots and stuff, but
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: that's basically what it was. But what we so it
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: was basically just meant to be a sort of intense
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: live performance of the band, but at the same time
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: to give some insight into what the song's about. We
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: had an idea to take images from you know, lots
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: of a lot of it is about, you know, sort
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: of his like ruins of ruins of buildings, ancient buildings,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: modern buildings. There's footage from you know, civilizations that have
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: essentially been taken over by the jungle. It's all been overgrown.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: There's images from Chernobyl with the all of If you
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: look at photos from modern Chernobyl, it's all been overgrown
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: as well. So it's that idea of the earth just
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: reclaiming whatever whatever we'd put there before. So we were
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: sort of projecting that with a big projector onto the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: band while we were playing, so it would it would
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: be a little bit of the lyrical content for those
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: people who wanted to look and sort of work out
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: what was going on, but we wanted the focus to
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: sort of be on performance and on the band. Nice
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: so you.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Sort of grave this up a little bit before. But
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: is the Raving Us a standalone single or part of
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: a bigger picture.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: So it is a I mean, for now, it's a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: standalone single. So the band really thought that it was
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: important to just get some new music out there, you know,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: sort of drive interest you know in the band. I
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: mean the band, you know, it was around in a
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: sort of previous incarnation, I think from like twenty sixteen
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to twenty nineteen, something like that. But because the band
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: was on hiatus, we wanted to put something out to
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: sort of, you know, mark the fact that we've got
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: a new singer in me and also that we're just
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: making new music, so that we weren't going out and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: starting to play shows where we had new material but
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: sort of nothing recorded. So but we weren't in a
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: position where we could put out a full album straight away.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: So the idea was was get a single, but do
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: a proper release around that, so get artwork. There's no
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: plans for a physical release of the single at this stage,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: so the artwork is sort of just you know, it's
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: sort of nice to have visual that captures the themes
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: of the song and then also do a video clip,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: which at the time, honestly, I was like there's anybody
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: watch video clips. I used to watch Rage. I used
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: to enjoy coming Home. I would watch Rage. But do
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: people still watch it? But having done it, actually actually yeah,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: it's great and it's great to know that people still
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: do so, but it will be part So this is
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: but this is not a sort of a one and
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: done deal, which I guess is what you were asking,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: which is, so the plans for next year are to
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: record an album, right, And.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: You mentioned that this is a little bit different to
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: material from the band in the past, Like, is this
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: more of indication of where you're going in the future.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean we still play in our
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: current set list, We're still playing a couple of the
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: older songs. So so there was some songs that the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: band wanted to keep in the in the sort of
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: set list, and I guess they sound different because the
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: band sounds a bit different these days. But I I
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: also sound sound different, so my delivery is different on
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: those songs. But the new material is more in line
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: with more in line with the Ravenous Earth. Having said that,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: there's they're not all they don't all sound exactly like
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the Ravenus. Some slower songs there's probably some there's some
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: songs in there that you could almost describe as more
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: death doom. Part of that is just the way I
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: do vocals as well. I don't I don't like to
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: fit a whole lot of lyrics. Maybe I'm just lazy
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: as a lyrics half the number of lyrics and then
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: sort of sink into it and and gurgle it out slowly.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: So we've got probably mixing it up a bit in
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: terms of tempo as well an atmosphere. So I think
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the new material is definitely more aggressive, but it's it's
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: still it's it's quite diverse, and I think I think
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: that people that go and see us live will appreciate
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: that as well, because we're playing six new songs, so
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: its a band. We feel like we're most of the
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: way there to having material for an album. Probably got
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: to nail down a few more a few more tracks
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and then go into the studio next year.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Now, speaking of Librain, you recently did a couple of
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: single launch shows in Newcastle and Sydney, So how they.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Got down great? Really good. I'm originally from Newcastle, so yeah,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: it's funny and we played a couple of shows last
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: year as well, and they were also played in Newcastle
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and Sydney and weirdly at the same venues as well.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: But the recent yeah, the recent shows have gone really well.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I mean because so we played the two shows last
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: year and then as a band made the decision that
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: essentially we can either try to play more shows, but
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that will slow down the process of writing new material.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: So we decided to really just focus on not playing shows,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: write new material, get new songs under our belt, and
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: then get the recordings done, get the releases done, and
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: then and then the shows will come and we'll have
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: a new live set to play. But the shows went
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: really well. The audiences were great. We played at the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the Hammo Hammo Station Hotel in Newcastle, which has a
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: really really great stage setup. The bands we played with
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: were all awesome and yeah, people, we've got some new
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: merch out as well. People seem to like that, so
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a new direction for the band that
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: people are responding, well.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: That's all right, brother, Well that's all I've got here,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: but thanks for your time. The Ravenous Earth is out now,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: can people check it out.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: It's on all streaming platforms, so it's on our band camp,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: it's on Spotify, et cetera. And the video is the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: videos up on YouTube. And yeah, also I noticed that
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: Andrew Hope played it the other day on his radio
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: show as well, so you may hear it on some
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: I know, and there was some other internet radio stations
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: as well playing it, So you may hear it on
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the radio, but your best bet is to just you know,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I guess most people use Spotify or band camp. I
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: like band Camp because it's sort of you know. First
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: of all, I find that Spotify is a bit overwhelming.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: It's all the music in the world, all available at once.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: It's crippling to me. But also I like, you know,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: go on to band camp. It supports the artists as well.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: But I like being able to buy things one album
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: at a time and then you get to enjoy it
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: as well. So uh yeah, but streaming services and YouTube right.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: All right, Cheery, Well, thanks for your time again, brother,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: and thank good luck with all the new material. And
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: next time you making up a bridge, let us know,
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: pop down, have a beer and check it out.
• 15:00
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• 15:12
  Speaker 5: Day doll?
• 15:18
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• 15:22
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• 15:31
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• 16:12
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• 16:18
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• 16:33
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• 16:57
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• 17:02
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• 18:27
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• 18:44
  Speaker 4: Joe's bay by day.
• 18:46
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