Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / The Cutting Edge Of Metal With JAMIE SAINT MERAT From ULCERATE
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 3: Jamie from Ulcerra.
- 0:02Speaker 1: Good afternoon mate, thanks for joining us today, chess Man.
- 0:06Speaker 2: So I'll straight have our run of shows coming up,
- 0:09Speaker 2: starting in Christchurch on April eight eighth, then hitting Auckland
- 0:12Speaker 2: and Wellington, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney for finishing in Brisbane.
- 0:16Speaker 1: I made the tempt so sorry that far away bro Zinland.
- 0:20Speaker 3: We're good. We're just in preparation mode. So just yeah,
- 0:23Speaker 3: just ramping up rehearsals and it's good. It's end of
- 0:26Speaker 3: the touring cycle for this this album. Actually it's the
- 0:29Speaker 3: last last shows we'll do actually before we start start
- 0:33Speaker 3: writing the next album.
- 0:34Speaker 2: Yeah, as you say, it isn't widening up the touring
- 0:37Speaker 2: cycle for your twenty twenty four album Cutting the Throat
- 0:40Speaker 2: of God. So how are the rest of your show's gone?
- 0:42Speaker 2: And people started taking to the album.
- 0:44Speaker 3: I mean it's it's been phenomenal, to be honest. You know,
- 0:48Speaker 3: we went, we've kind of we've been a lover the place.
- 0:51Speaker 3: Actually been to Europe twice, well, Mainland Europe up through
- 0:55Speaker 3: Scanning Avia, went to India, went through the States and
- 0:59Speaker 3: then did a whole run through South America just at
- 1:02Speaker 3: the end of last year as well. So Yeah, really,
- 1:05Speaker 3: like it couldn't have been better really, So we're yeah,
- 1:08Speaker 3: And this is the second time touring this album for
- 1:11Speaker 3: Australia as well, so and those the last shows we
- 1:14Speaker 3: did yeah, twenty twenty four. We're phenomenon as well, So
- 1:18Speaker 3: ye're looking forward to it.
- 1:20Speaker 2: Did you mentioned some of the places you've been too
- 1:22Speaker 2: on tour with this album? So have you feel like
- 1:24Speaker 2: you would have been playing like different songs off but
- 1:26Speaker 2: in different areas? But have you found that some sort
- 1:28Speaker 2: of countries gravitate more to some songs and not on
- 1:31Speaker 2: other ones and then it's reversed somewhere else.
- 1:35Speaker 3: No, No, not really. Then it's it's like, it's pretty
- 1:37Speaker 3: it's pretty consistent of the board. It's some of the
- 1:40Speaker 3: some of the tracks we play a little bit surprising
- 1:42Speaker 3: in terms of what what we thought would go down
- 1:45Speaker 3: better live versus whatnot. But it's it's actually usually it's
- 1:49Speaker 3: pretty consistent in fact oside's probably completely consistent.
- 1:53Speaker 1: Right. The tour is called the Absolved in Perdition Tour,
- 1:58Speaker 1: But i'd look through the album on there's not a
- 2:00Speaker 1: song called that on Cutting the Throat of God. So
- 2:04Speaker 1: what does it mean? Is it like a hit? Just
- 2:05Speaker 1: something in the future.
- 2:07Speaker 3: No, it's just it's one of the last lines out
- 2:09Speaker 3: of the track on the album. So yeah, it's I
- 2:15Speaker 3: don't know, it's a kind of a summation of sort
- 2:18Speaker 3: of bring everything to a close basically, So it works.
- 2:21Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned you're out here last in twenty twenty four,
- 2:27Speaker 2: was studying a couple of years ago. But what's changed
- 2:29Speaker 2: would demand in that time side during.
- 2:33Speaker 3: I mean, we've just been really focused on the live
- 2:35Speaker 3: performance and trying to make it as good as possible really,
- 2:38Speaker 3: so we like to take if we're we are either
- 2:41Speaker 3: in like live mode or writing mode. So and to
- 2:46Speaker 3: be honest, we kind of after yeah, after our album
- 2:50Speaker 3: kind of creation, we we always need at least a
- 2:53Speaker 3: year off from thinking about writing music. It's it's yeah,
- 2:57Speaker 3: it's a fairly intense period of time, so that the
- 3:01Speaker 3: live live angle of it is. Yeah, it's nice to explore.
- 3:07Speaker 3: But now it feels that that's coming, that chapters coming
- 3:09Speaker 3: to a close as well. So it's you know, it's
- 3:12Speaker 3: a couple of years now, it seems to eighteen months.
- 3:14Speaker 2: Yeah, so running through a typical ulcer in live show
- 3:19Speaker 2: people can expect from you.
- 3:22Speaker 3: So, I mean it's where we're we're really going for
- 3:25Speaker 3: total immersion. So it's like it's from start to finish
- 3:28Speaker 3: it should be it's like a black hole, hopefully in
- 3:33Speaker 3: a in a positive way, or at least for us.
- 3:36Speaker 3: So it's it's quite it's quite meditative, should be extremely intense,
- 3:41Speaker 3: but it's also like, I don't know, it's like there's
- 3:46Speaker 3: an atmosphere that we're looking to create, which is very
- 3:50Speaker 3: much on the albums as well. And we we we
- 3:53Speaker 3: totally think that the symbiosis between us live and what
- 3:57Speaker 3: we what we can actually produce on on a record
- 4:00Speaker 3: is actually very very flows and the sense that our
- 4:05Speaker 3: albums are actually just a really accurate represents representation of
- 4:09Speaker 3: kind of what we sound like in a room. So
- 4:11Speaker 3: and we've kind of been told that a lot as
- 4:13Speaker 3: well as like, shit, you guys sound like the album's basically,
- 4:16Speaker 3: so that's that's exactly what we're raining for.
- 4:19Speaker 2: How does someone that work mate, like, do you write
- 4:22Speaker 2: the album and record it just sort of shoot your
- 4:24Speaker 2: live show or do you adapt your live show to
- 4:27Speaker 2: shot what's.
- 4:28Speaker 1: On the album?
- 4:29Speaker 3: Yeah, totally yeah, that way around. Yeah, because you can't
- 4:32Speaker 3: you can't hinder your creativity based on a on a
- 4:36Speaker 3: live setup and and the other side of it is
- 4:39Speaker 3: like for us that the writing of the music is paramount.
- 4:43Speaker 3: That's it's the most it is the expression you know,
- 4:47Speaker 3: the live is playing live is a performance of that expression.
- 4:51Speaker 3: It's not it's not that, it's not the other way around.
- 4:52Speaker 3: We're not writing music to play live. It's we are.
- 4:56Speaker 3: We're bringing a live version of the album essentially, so
- 5:00Speaker 3: we we don't have any any barriers when when we're
- 5:04Speaker 3: writing it. All it's we write it and then we
- 5:05Speaker 3: try and figure out we figure it out later on
- 5:08Speaker 3: how to how to actually do it.
- 5:10Speaker 1: Yeah, is that a difficult process or does it sort
- 5:12Speaker 1: of usually fall into place?
- 5:14Speaker 3: No, I look, we're we've been doing this for twenty
- 5:18Speaker 3: five years, so it's very back of the hand. It's
- 5:21Speaker 3: very back of the hand. We just for us, it's
- 5:23Speaker 3: just it's mostly it's it's transposing really well, like reorchestrating
- 5:30Speaker 3: instrument lines that you know, we're running a three piece
- 5:33Speaker 3: so and we there's obviously more than that on the albums,
- 5:38Speaker 3: so it's about us figuring out how how can we
- 5:40Speaker 3: do that. So a lot of that actually falls on
- 5:43Speaker 3: like our guitarists, So it's a lot of live looping.
- 5:47Speaker 3: We have a really strict line in the sand against
- 5:49Speaker 3: we're not use backing tracks. There's literally the what you
- 5:53Speaker 3: see on stage is three people playing making all the
- 5:56Speaker 3: sound that's that's generated on stage. So that's that's our
- 5:59Speaker 3: biggest hurt really.
- 6:01Speaker 2: Yeah, you've got a busiss a huge support in New
- 6:04Speaker 2: Zealand and the Amenta in Australia. So tell us a
- 6:07Speaker 2: bit about each band and why they were chosen to support.
- 6:13Speaker 3: The mentors longtime friends of ours. We we we played
- 6:17Speaker 3: shows with those guys two thousand and eight or nine,
- 6:22Speaker 3: so and it's and it's we've always been trying to
- 6:25Speaker 3: line something up. We were both on Dibbi More Marty Records,
- 6:29Speaker 3: same label, and it's just we've always been trying to
- 6:33Speaker 3: align schedules to try and do something together. This time
- 6:36Speaker 3: it worked out, so I'm really happy about that. The
- 6:39Speaker 3: Scissitude is just a fucking deadly Kiwi band and we
- 6:43Speaker 3: just wanted one for at least for the New Zealand shows.
- 6:46Speaker 3: We just wanted to have ourselves and a special guests
- 6:49Speaker 3: and no other bands. So it's just basically two banned
- 6:53Speaker 3: package if you call it that. Yeah. Yeah.
- 6:58Speaker 2: The press release schools Ulcer right, an unorthodox death metal band?
- 7:02Speaker 1: Can you love rate on that? How do you become
- 7:04Speaker 1: an unorthodos band?
- 7:07Speaker 3: Well, simply because the the I don't think. I don't
- 7:12Speaker 3: think we fall under the confines of the genre. You know,
- 7:14Speaker 3: if you've got Cannibal Corps at one end, we're firmly
- 7:18Speaker 3: at the kind of other you know, And our approach
- 7:22Speaker 3: to death metal is unorthodox, Like it's not, it's not
- 7:27Speaker 3: the kind of meat and potatoes doesn't fit strictly to
- 7:31Speaker 3: the genre framework. Not saying that we didn't start out
- 7:33Speaker 3: like that, but again with as far and I don't
- 7:36Speaker 3: even know if it's death metal anymore, to be honest,
- 7:38Speaker 3: it's it's so and that seems to be the closest
- 7:44Speaker 3: fit for us. I'm fine being called that. I'm not
- 7:48Speaker 3: the one writing the press releases, but you know, it
- 7:54Speaker 3: fits better than anything else, I guess, you know, if
- 7:56Speaker 3: one has to write write a fucking genre around you know.
- 8:03Speaker 2: So you've spent basically the last couple of years living
- 8:05Speaker 2: and breathing cutting the throat of God. So have you
- 8:09Speaker 2: given thoughts to the next one yet? Or have you
- 8:10Speaker 2: just sort of put that to the back of minds
- 8:12Speaker 2: where you get over this cycle.
- 8:14Speaker 3: No your box actually so yes, we've been thinking, but
- 8:17Speaker 3: we haven't acted on it yet. We're going to actually
- 8:19Speaker 3: start acting on it within the next couple of weeks.
- 8:22Speaker 3: Like I said, it's for us, it's a very binary thing.
- 8:25Speaker 3: It's we're either in writing mode or in live mode.
- 8:29Speaker 3: We don't like those two things. Those two things currently
- 8:31Speaker 3: cross over. For us. It's it's a completely different headspace.
- 8:35Speaker 3: We've all got like side projects and other things that
- 8:38Speaker 3: we do in between, but for this it has to
- 8:43Speaker 3: be one or the other.
- 8:43Speaker 1: So yeah, all right, mabe, Well thanks for your time today.
- 8:47Speaker 2: Ulceraight Chure kicks off April eight eight did christ Church,
- 8:51Speaker 2: It's New Zealand for three shows and over to Australia.
- 8:53Speaker 2: So where's the best place for people to get tickets
- 8:55Speaker 2: to find out more information?
- 8:57Speaker 3: You can actually just official website is the best place
- 9:01Speaker 3: that has everything kind of listed out there. So that's
- 9:03Speaker 3: alter Raightofficial dot com. Beautiful man.
- 9:05Speaker 1: All right, we'll enjoy the reat the evening and put
- 9:07Speaker 1: the area.
- 9:09Speaker 3: Jus Man