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Surving The Plague With TIMOTHY POPE From THE AMENTA · HEAVY Music Interviews

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  My name's Tim on the keyboards and noise and samples and all ridiculous stuff for
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  the extreme metal band The Amenta. We've just released Plague of Locusts, which
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  is a pretty much a covers album, covering a whole bunch of classic Australian
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  metal stuff as well as some international stuff, and we're about to go on
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  tour with Low doing our first headline shows in ten years. Beautiful Tim,
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  thanks for joining us. We'll start off by talking about the new EP,
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  Plague of Lakers, which was released on October the nineteen. So how's the
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  earlier reception been for it? Yeah, it's been really good. Obviously,
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  you never know what to expect with any release, but also with covers and
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  things like that, and people might not know a lot of the bands we
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  covered, or maybe they knew the songs too well and don't think we did
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  a good version. You know, you never really know how people are going
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  to receive it, but so far it's been almost exclusively really positive, so
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  pretty happy with it. Sign The EP features a couple of new tracks,
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  but as you say, it's generally a selection of cover that stead of inspired
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  the band. So what made the thing that now was the right time to
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  do an like that. It was just it's something we had we kind of
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  almost started doing accidentally when we started recording our last album reve later. We're
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  always been a band who basically anything we write, we record and it gets
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  released. So there's not a lot of additional stuff floating around. There's no
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  sort of b side, nothing you can kind of put together a special release
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  with. So it was a deliberate decision Let's try and record a couple of
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  songs that we won't put on the album, but we'll just use the fact
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  that we're wording to get them done as sort of efficiently as possible, and
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  then you know, if we need to do a Japanese import version with bonus
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  tracks, not that anyone does that sort of stuff anymore, but then anything
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  like that, you know, we've got some tracks, we can do some
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  stuff. And so we recorded the drums of the Alison Chain's song Angry Chair,
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  and also the drums for the Halo song Rise. We recorded those at
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  the same time as we recorded the drums for Revelata, and then at one
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  point we've been talked about having those songs on the album anyway, but as
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  we went through and going through the process of doing the album, it's always
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  such a nightmare. Those kind of dropped to the wayside. We thought,
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  right, we'll just concentrate on the songs that we know we're going to be
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  on the album. So they kind of sat there for a little while not
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  doing anything, and then we're talking about doing something with those songs, and
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  I thought we'll build it out to something a bit more rather than just dump
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  two tracks on band Camp, We'll add a couple of others in And as
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  we kind of discussed it, we kind of came up with this idea of
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  all these bands we want to cover, and we decided to to pin them
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  all around a new song which we wrote especially for it, and make it
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  into a bit more of a solid release. So it's something that people can
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  actually sort of get their teeth into a bit. And you cover everyone from
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  black metal bands like I Can't Say This, Nice fool and z XUL how
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  do you pronounce that? Oh? Yeah? So then else you got alternative
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  back to like Alison Chains Yelling Joke to Halo and My Dying Bride. So
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  it's a pretty broad spectrum of genres that you're covering. Yeah, I mean,
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  were I think probably like most people, we listened to so much different
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  music, and you know, everything we everything we listen to kind of gets
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  thrown into the melting pot for our own inspiration. So we listen to obviously,
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  we listen to a lot of extreme metal, and specifically that extreme metal
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  of about the sort of you know, nineties to maybe early two thousands Australian
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  extreme metal was really big for me because that's what I grew up too,
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  So that's like always been a big part of us and who we are.
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  But then there's all this stuff like DM Marti Glass, who's a an avant
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  guarde kind of artist, I guess from New York. Halo are kind of
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  an anoised doom band. You've got My Dying Bride who are doing more.
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  All this sort of stuff gets thrown in and it kind of inspires us to
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  kind of create the music that we do. So it was kind of a
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  deliberate attempt to open the curtains of it and show people how it all works,
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  how we get to where we get to, and how much did you
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  actually change them from the originals to your version to put your slam on them.
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  It was a fair bit of change, I think, So it depends
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  on the track, but I think generally, if you're got to cover a
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  song, you've kind of got to get in there and rearrange it a bit
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  and do some crazy things. Otherwise you might as well just listen to the
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  original. Yeah, so, which changed some quite a lot. So obviously
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  the version of Alison Chains, which is probably the that's probably the most popular
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  song that we recorded that one. There's no in doing it completely straight because
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  everyone's heard that a million times, and just to do another version of it
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  we'll just be boring. So we got in there and completely stripped down turn
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  it into a more of a kind of atmospheric, noisy kind of thing,
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  and I think that suits our version of it much much better and allows people
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  to hear a kind of another side of the song, which is kind of
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  cool. And what was the process like reworking him to your own stylie?
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  Did you break down every song completely and start from scratch or did you work
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  on sections at a time. It was kind of so the way we all
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  we all have our own home studios and all do it kind of by ourselves,
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  So it was kind of everyone would just kind of get the song and
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  do what they reckoned you know, it was just a really organic process of
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  just I'm gonna I'm going to try different things. I'm gonna try these instruments.
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  It'll go to Eric who does his guitar stuff, and he'll try different
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  ideas. We communicate quite a lot about what we're doing, but it's basically
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  everyone just working in their silos and just knowing having enough trust in the other
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  members to know it's going to work and it's going to sound right, and
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  I know whatever I do, they're going to do something that's complimentary or vice
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  versa. So it was really everyone just kind of working on their own and
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  when it came to mixing, Eric who mixes everything, he had to kind
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  of pull it all together and make something coherent out of it. But I
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  think he did a really really good job. Yeah, which runs are the
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  most fun to do? Do you think? I really enjoyed the Wolfire's cover,
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  which is probably the song that people are going to at least enjoy,
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  which I enjoy. But that one's you know, bashing on bits of metal
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  and there's some homemade synthesizers in there. There's a lot of ridiculous sounding violin
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  and some crazy vocals and all that sort of stuff. So that was a
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  really fun one to do it because it was sort of really open and odd.
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  I think also, I think everyone enjoys playing the Killing Joke song Asteroid
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  because it's such a sort of unstoppable groove. It's just the coolest rift.
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  Like basically the entire song was this one riff, but it just fucking rules.
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  So that was that's a lot of fun. I think that one as
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  well. Yeah, and you've got the one original on there as well,
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  So tell us a bit more about that and why you actually decided to include
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  one of your own in there instead of just all covers. I think it
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  was We've always wanted to have at least something of ours on there, because
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  I think it gives it a little bit of weight. If it's just just
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  covers, it's a little bit throwaway. But if you've got some original stuff
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  on there, you can kind of build a bit more of a serious release.
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  So that was when we when we first started building out this this release,
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  that was always we'll have a song on there that's ours. We'll do
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  an original, and that one was the basic thing of that was all knocked
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  together by Eric really really quickly, just he kind of put together this idea
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  which I think he and I were sharing the first two riffs at one stage
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  together for a little while, and then he tacked on this whole other section
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  where it goes into the blast beats and it's all kind of this odd distorted
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  guitar and things like that, which really kind of lifted the song. And
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  I think it's one of the best we've done in a little while. It
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  really reminds me of some of our old older stuff, so particularly two thousand
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  and eighth nine album, which was our second album. It's got to me
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  it has that kind of vibe, but I really enjoy it. I don't
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  know if it's necessarily going to be indicative of the next release, but it
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  was, you know, a song we all heard and I meet it went,
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  yes, that's that's right, that's good. Teld some more about the
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  EP cover, mate, like it's just what the face with a heap of
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  golden locusts all around it? Like, what was the inspiration there? So
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  that was the same guy who did our last couple of releases, a guy
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  called vale Noir from Metastatist Studios, which is this design studio in France,
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  and he's done a lot of different stuff. He's got a really great eye
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  for things, and so sending the lyrics to the original which is called plague
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  of locusts as opposed to locusts, which a lot of people get confused about.
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  But there is a lot of a lot of kind of insect and bug
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  references in it. Deliberately obviously it's playing on the idea of a plague of
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  locusts, and so he obviously he picked up on that and he presented a
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  couple ideas. I guess the lyrics loosely kind of based around are kind of
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  an aging of the body and body falling apart and all that sort of stuff,
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  and so he took that idea and you know, created this image with
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  this old man who was like basically scrawling out of his face. But it's
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  got that kind of I guess sucks feel with the gold, which almost makes
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  it look like a ritualistic thing or something like that to me. So it
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  really suits the vibe. I think of the release, mate and just start
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  a headlining tour on November the sixteenth in Sydney and to go through Melbourne,
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  Adelaide and Brisbane and finishing Perth on December the second. So what can fans
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  expect from that tour? Well, it's it's been a long time since we've
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  done a headlining tour, so it's it's it's going to be a lot of
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  pent up aggression and all that sort of stuff. Obviously, we played recently
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  with Emperor, which was which was great, but it was their show.
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  So this time people are going to kind of see the really sort of unadulterated
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  version of what we do. There'll be some new songs in there which would
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  be good, some of the stuff if plague of Locus and we're you know,
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  we're we're going into rehearse. I think next week this is where we're
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  going to start pulling it all together. So pretty excited. It's going to
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  be pretty intense, I think. And you mentioned it as your first headlining
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  running shows in around ten years mate, So what's changed for the Inventor since
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  the last time you did your headline and short of now? I think where
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  where? I mean, everyone always gets better, don't know, but I
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  think we're the best. Yeah, it's you know, it's we have always
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  been a very aggressive, I guess visually can fronting band, Lots of lots
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  of strobe and smoke, and trying to get in people's faces. So all
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  that stuff kind of stays the same. We're a little bit older and move
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  slightly creakier, all pretty similar. At the Adelaide show, sees you play
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  it Froth and Fury first of all, my life. That looks absolutely massive
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  this year. Yeah, huge, blown away by the bands. Jason Scott
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  on that it's just incredible. It seems like every year he grows it and
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  this year to have have like suicidal tendencies on there is unreal. So I
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  know there's there's a lot of guys in the band that are pretty excited about
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  that. We really looking forward to. It's going to be massive, playing
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  with a bunch of bands that we know, but a whole bunch of bands
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  we don't, and a lot of great international bands. It'll be huge,
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  huge show, I reckon. But aside from that, you're actually taking Low
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  with you for most of the tourso white see those guys come along. So
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  we we went and saw them playing Sydney. The guys obviously we're spread out
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  all around the country, but three of us living in Sydney or you know,
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  hit thereabouts. We went into We saw Low play a few months ago
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  and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. It was phenomenal.
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  They were just so good. They played with Black Lava, who were
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  also amazing, but they just came on and they owned the stage. Sam
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  the vocalist, is incredible. The band is just absolutely top notch, and
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  we're like, that's the band We're going to have them. That's if you're
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  going to have a good one two punch. You want a band where potentially
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  people are going to go I don't know if the mentor can top it.
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  And that's kind of where we wanted to. We wanted to band that there's
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  going to really really challenge us, and I think they will. Hey man,
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  that Chaw finishes up on December the second. As we say, so
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  what's next for the Amenta after that? Where do you go? Playing before
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  Christmas? So before Christmas probably not a lot of recovering. As I said,
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  we're old, so when were twenty, we could just jump into the
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  next one. Now that we're forty plus, it's a few weeks worth of
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  recovering. But then next year the plan is we'll get cracking onto writing a
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  new album. Historically we've been very very slow between albums. We write quite
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  quickly, but the recording processes, so we want to we want to try
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  and speed that up a bit and try and get another album out as quickly
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  as possible. All right, very well, thanks very much for your time.
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  It don't been absolutely pleasure. The tour kicks off on November the sixteenth,
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  so ay your selves tickets and head along to see the boys on their
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  treker out Australia as well Water at PA called ball got st go to a
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  sty touchair, I said, yun so like Goya saw servis got tell so
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  feel I was like gotcha those bars to jos a bum your sir guy as
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  by blow balls lame last got once a job, SI said to start by
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  blow balls la set no f s stas s time to say I can't tag
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  around the FI. Sid do my side of time say loss a call that
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  soft? All right, said so allod sos your don't trot stch a sun