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Beyond The Horizon With SCOTT IAN LEWIS From CARNIFEX · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:24
  Hey, my name is Scotty and Lewis. I'm the vocalist for Carnifex Beautiful
• 0:29
  Scott thanks to joining us today. Thank you for having me man, I
• 0:33
  appreciate it a pleasure to say kind of fixed. Returning with your new album
• 0:37
  Neckarmanchium on October the sixth, Mate, how you feeled about it? I'm
• 0:43
  pretty stoked. I'm I'm excited to get the full record out there. I
• 0:46
  know we got a couple of singles out there, but I'm still a full
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  record kind of guy, and so getting the record out to the fans is
• 0:57
  really what I look forward to the most. So tell us more about the
• 1:00
  album from a music a point of view and what you were gone forward with
• 1:03
  it. Well, it's a bit different than the last one you probably noticed.
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  I think a big part of it is we got a new member,
• 1:11
  you know, Neil, our newly guitarists. So we wrote this album as
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  a five piece compared to writing Great Side Confessions as a four piece. We
• 1:22
  were able to work with an outside studio. We worked with Jason Stukoff at
• 1:26
  Audio Hammer out in Florida, and then we also worked with an outside I
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  guess composer is the word for all the orchestral arrangements, which we had never
• 1:40
  done that before, and then lyrically and kind of the themes of the music
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  are are pretty different. It's a much more outward looking record, kind of
• 1:52
  more universal themes compared to the last album was very very inward looking and and
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  uh, kind of more of a self assessment, where this one is kind
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  of an assessment of the space that we all share. So your relations to
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  singles and neck Romantium and Disforgotten Children's, if I say, a good sonic
• 2:10
  representation of what do we expect? Yes, and no, you know,
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  I think you know. As I kind of said, it's like I feel
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  like the record is each of the songs is best enjoyed in the context of
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  the full album. Obviously, those are our great songs. I love those
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  tracks, but there's also other great songs on the album that we haven't got
• 2:35
  to put out yet that I want fans to hear. But really, I
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  guess we're still in that mindset of of writing full albums, you know,
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  And so each song, when it's written, it's written in the context of
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  it's going to be part of an album. And so some songs purposefully by
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  design have different looks, so to speak, we focus on different things or
• 3:00
  kind of give it a different tone, and that's because we think of it
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  in the context of a full album. So yeah, to me, it's
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  those songs are best enjoyed within the sequence of the record. But yeah,
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  I think they of course they stay on their own as well. And that's
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  Forgotten Children features Chelsea Grinn's Tom Baba and it's about a near death, the
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  experience of both of you guys, So I can you tell us a bit
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  more about that? Yeah, you know, that came about from Tom and
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  I were doing a tour together last year in Europe and we were they had
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  just finished their their record, the double record they did, and we were
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  getting close to the end of writing for this record, and Tom was working
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  on the Darko record getting ready. I think he's actually recording that one right
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  now, and so we were just talking about the music we were working on,
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  and I had brought up some of the themes that were on the song
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  and shared my experience, kind of my near death experience, and then he
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  had had one as well, and from there we just thought, why don't
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  we just do the song together. I liked what he was saying in the
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  conversation, and we were really relating, and I had never co written a
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  song with anyone before, so the first time, and so it just felt
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  very natural and just came together naturally. I kind of feel like guest vocalists
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  are really more about marketing lately and not so much about artistic contention, and
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  so for this to come together very naturally and organic, just with Tom and
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  I talking about themes and relating, it really made sense too. If we
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  were going to have a guest vocalist, now was the time. And you
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  started touching this a bit before made, but this album is more of a
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  conceptually based record around around sentence that of things to do with death and night
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  made, So can you go into that a bit deep before us like sort
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  of I read a little bit of it about the one way mirror, like
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  through another dimension, and it's just fascinating. Yeah. Well, it was
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  just kind of interesting to me that there was a point in time in the
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  not too distant past when we viewed we as a society, viewed the supernatural
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  as intellectualism. And I find that interesting because now I feel like supernatural is
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  kind of thought of as like just something you sort of have a laugh at
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  you know, not really very serious. And so I thought it was interesting
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  that that arc or that evolution of society when you know, just one hundred
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  years ago people were thinking seances were very scientific, you know, and there's
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  a lot of talk about science right now, and I wonder where we'll be
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  in a hundred years, right. I wonder one hundred years from now,
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  if we'll look back at what the science we're dealing with now and just kind
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  of laugh and say, well, that's funny, you know, kind of
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  how we do now, where if we look back one hundred years, you
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  know, it's like if you're doing a seance or trying to reach the dead,
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  you were like meeting with a doctor, which is very bizarre to think
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  about, but that's kind of what was happening. So I kind of ran
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  with that in and took it much deeper as far as exploring those timeless questions
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  of what comes next and if you are able to communicate with people from the
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  afterlife, you know, what would they say, what would you ask them?
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  How would you would you be able to relate to them? All those
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  types of questions. Did you do much research into it to get other paper's
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  points to be on that orders you take it TOOLLI from your garden. I
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  watched lots of Ghost Adventures. You have that show down there. I have
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  an out of that. Oh okay, Well, so up here in the
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  States, there's a really popular show called Ghost Adventures, and it's like a
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  group of guys, like four dudes, and they go around the world to
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  all these famously haunted locations and they have all these like tests set up,
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  and they try to be very scientific about it, and they try to communicate
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  with all these ghosts and these very haunted locations. You know, it's just
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  a fun show, but it kind of opened the door on the what ifs,
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  and sometimes they actually capture some stuff that is unexplainable that you're just like,
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  wow, what you know, what is the answer for that? There's
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  no answer for that. Like, they have these things, well, actually
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  there's a band named after it, called the spirit Box. So they have
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  a thing called the spirit Box that like it operates on these certain frequencies and
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  they'll be calling out names of like people that died in this building, and
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  they'll actually get answers and they'll actually be specific to their questions. And I
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  don't know if it's maybe it's just TV man, maybe the whole thing's fake,
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  you know, I don't know. But if let's assume they're not making
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  it up, I don't know what the explanation is for that. It's very
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  bizarre anyway, So that kind of piqued my curiosity into the supernatural stuff,
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  and then obviously I added to it and ran with it from there. And
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  there's so many rabbit holes you can go damn with this, So you can
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  be making albums about this forever. Yeah, yeah, I mean you definitely
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  could, you know, kind of and that's what I mean by kind of
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  more universal themes, like exploring those timeless questions. Really that's kind of the
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  whole foundation of religion, going back to you know, early man times,
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  which is you know, what's out there, what's kind of in the great
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  beyond, we still don't know all these centuries later. And you also type
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  produce the album with your drama show on Cameron. So what are some of
• 9:05
  the advantages and disadvantages to keep in that in house. Well, I think
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  the advantage is is that you shape the record the way you envisioned, you
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  know, and we definitely have worked with outside producers over the years, and
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  I don't know, our experience hasn't been particularly phenomenal. We had some producers
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  worked We worked with some producers on the early records. That was honestly a
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  very poor experience. You actually come to find out that these people have their
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  own lives, and if they come into the studio grumpy, not related to
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  you, and you suggest something, they just don't want to do it because
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  they're in a bad mood, and you're like, yeah, but like this
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  is our record though, like we only get one every two years. They're
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  just gonna go do another record next month, right, you know. And
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  so we kind of found ourselves more than once in this position where the record
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  is not overly important to the producer because they just did one, they're probably
• 10:13
  mixing one right now while they're tracking yours, and then they have another one
• 10:16
  they got to go do in a couple of weeks, and so you kind
• 10:20
  of feel like you're on this conveyor belt where they don't know the record you
• 10:24
  just did, so they don't really know how you're trying to maybe do it
• 10:28
  a little bit different, or maybe the last record you did. You're like,
• 10:31
  well, this worked, but this didn't, So this is what we're
• 10:33
  trying to do on this one. They don't know about any of that stuff.
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  And to be honest with you, I haven't worked with the producer yet
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  that cares about any of that stuff. And so that's kind of why we
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  stopped using outside producers, is because they kind of got their own thing going
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  on, and we just never really felt like we worked with someone that that
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  kind of gave themselves over to the big picture where obviously, you know,
• 11:00
  Sean and I we've been there for all the records, so we kind of
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  know what we tried already, what we haven't tried, what works, what
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  doesn't work, you know, etc. And so that's the plus. And
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  I guess I guess the downside of not using an outside producer is is,
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  uh, you know, maybe you don't have that that that extra insight.
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  But to be honest with you, I've never worked with a producer that I
• 11:24
  felt was particularly insightful. So I don't know what to make of that.
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  You know, maybe we just didn't work with the right guys. Very interesting.
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  We sort of touched on this before Save It. You've got Neil time
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  and I have I pronounced that Rody's been introduced as a full time member for
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  the album, So tell us a bit more about him and what he brings
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  to kind of effects. He brings a lot of awesomeness to the band,
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  you know, kind of actually that kind of works is a great next follow
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  up question to the producer question, because you're always it is important to have
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  like that outside ear, you know, and I think Neil coming in fresh
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  from the outside, right, this is his first Carnifex record. It was
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  a great counterbalance to maybe whatever bad habits me and Sean might have had,
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  you know, And so he almost kind of played a producer role, not
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  in that that was his title, but you know, it was another person
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  that was sort of outside of our little sphere that was giving us inside and
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  input. And he was also writing amazing riffs and helping us, you know,
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  we were all working together collaboratively to arrange the songs. So it was
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  kind of perfect in the sense that not only do we get a great writer,
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  but he was completely fresh and gave us great insight as well. Again,
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  we're touched on its briefly before, but I want to get a bit
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  deeper into it, like that's fair. The subject matter atmospherics play a big
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  pot of Nick Ramanci, And like you mentioned before, the orchestral elements that
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  came in, and the fact that you haven't used him before. How difficult
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  is it for a band as heavy as you guys working with an orchestra to
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  make Atmospheric Cyber record. Well, you know, we had used orchestra orchestral
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  arrangements before, but the caveat is they were always written by Sean, our
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  drummer, So you know, he he's self taught in that. You know,
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  he just figured out how to midi program orchestrations, whereas working with Spencer,
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  who was an actual composer, you know, completely different approach to to
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  writing that stuff. And also it took the burden off of Sean to have
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  to you know, write something else, like again, write another thing,
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  because he's he writes a lot of guitar riffs already, and then obviously he's
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  doing all the drums, and he's also doing all our pre production, so
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  he's got a lot going on. So to then also say yeah, and
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  you know, get up program all the orchestration as well, it's kind of
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  just like asking too much of one person, you know, and I really
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  wanted to just let him be more of a drummer because on Grave side that
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  was a self produced record. He tracked that entire album, He wrote,
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  you know, fair portion of that record musically, and then produced it as
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  well. So it was like, it's just a lot for one person to
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  do. And I think to be able to hand the orchestrations off to a
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  composer not only gave us a better result, but it probably gave him a
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  better experience through the record as well. And I understand you guys are off
• 14:37
  on a bit of a not a bit of a but a big tool promin
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  the record once she comes out, tell us about that. Yeah, we
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  were leaving October eleventh, so just a couple of days after the record comes
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  out for a US run with Signs of the Swarm to the Grave, which
• 14:52
  is an Australian band, and then Less than Seconds of Life. We get
• 14:58
  back from that in November, and then we're in South America for two weeks
• 15:03
  during a South America tour, and then we're in Europe March April doing your
• 15:07
  European tour, and then we're back in the States May June during another US
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  tour, and then Europe August of twenty four. Do you got a full
• 15:20
  schedule. Brother, Yeah, we're grinding, trying to make a limit.
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  Have a follow you. I saw the three new heavy Spotify playlists to over
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  the artist that we speak to you. So you're using your songs? Give
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  us a song for a party playlist to get the party started, one for
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  a playlist to save your marriage, and one for a playlistic could potentially end
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  your marriage. Oh my god, I don't even know if I know how
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  to answer those. Get a party started? Okay, let me think here.
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  Oh do you get a party started? You probably gotta go with that.
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  Have you this band chord Hill? All right? I gotta be your
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  songs right? Oh? Oh oh my songs? Oh okay, providing your
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  band as well? All right, get a party started. I'm gonna go
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  with h I'm gonna go with all roads lead to Hell kind of a I
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  think that's an underrated song from US off of World War X. Yep,
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  and the marriage wanted to save the marriage? Oh my god, save the
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  marriage? Uh? I don't even know. Maybe, uh hang on,
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  that's I don't know if I have any I have no songs about the relationship
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  working. I only have about it apart. Jeez, I don't even know,
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  man, that's a crazy one. Uh maybe uh I'm trying to thank
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  here. Oh maybe uh Countess of the Crescent moon eyes, okay, one
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  they could potentially end the marriage. Uh well, either heartless or light in
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  my face. I'll check a bath in there for you. Yeah four,
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  I discoverled Thanks very much for your time. I've been a pleasure as per
• 17:25
  usual. Necromantium is out on October sixth, and she's another pearl from Counterfects.
• 17:30
  So congratulations, broan like on that drill. I don't forget your vitamins,
• 17:33
  mate, you'll be away for a while. Yeah, I got you,
• 17:37
  Thank you mans I s chucked down a foot. The praise prays also
• 18:14
  the household price very worst, but all returned. All right, we have
• 18:19
  a way calf made mays all. Oh, I was just really your hearts
• 18:34
  as can't say once allway right all the time to be our joy. Oh
• 19:02
  ye yeahs you I ass I saw the house shies the sound of su hin
• 19:37
  and yes raw sws on your star or straws st yes gray all play ye
• 20:15
  gets this day short south Bay the house of right right away all right,
• 20:22
  all ye also right all lay all wars right wars. She was sor for
• 21:08
  tools. Else sings also Else