The Senseless pour l'album "In The Realm Of The Senseless"

Si vous aimez agrémenter le trio sea/sex/surf de blast beats déraisonnables et d'une douce folie furieuse, venez donc vous tartiner de crème solaire aux côtés de Sam Bean, maître nageur au Senseless Beach private club ...

Hi Sam, and thank you for answering this interview more than one year after “In The Realm Of The Senseless” release date (it's a long trip from Australia to France !). As many other people with interest in the metal scene, I have first heard of you as you were going berserk. Now that you're back on the frontline wearing the uniform of another metal army, you're doing things that don't make any sense at all … You seem to enjoy mixing music and slight mental disorders, don't you ? ;)

Hell yes. You see what happens when sane, normal people make music don't you? - you get bands like Coldplay and Nickelback. And honestly, I think the normals have invaded metal as well. The Senseless is here to get things weird again and send the robust institution of metal in a different direction, and I'm only getting started.


If I describe The Senseless as “a band whose fundament is The Berzerker's cyber violence, but whose idea is that slowing down a bit, incorporating groove and putting down usual musical frontiers is another effective way to make listener's spine crack”, does it sound OK ? What's your own way to introduce your band to people that don't know anything about it ?

'Blastbeats sans frontiers'! Your description isn't too bad, actually. We are as fast as Berzerker on a few of the songs but the normal drum sounds don't make the music sound as unstable and frantic. I avoid the 'cyber' thing a bit though....that word gives a cold, lifeless feeling whereas I believe the Senseless has a warm, welcoming feel to it. I put the welcome mat out instead of the woodchipper.
I introduce the Senseless as doing happy extreme metal, and although that doesn't begin to describe everything the Senseless does, it is a good starting point. I deal with feelings, melodies, lyrics, and music that no other metal band will touch. To me, extreme metal is a medium that mixes well with a lot of things and it doesn't necessarily have to be angry, unmelodic, or uncatchy. I think in the future, I'll be introducing the Senseless as non-genre. It's a new genre name I just thought up.


Side projects are usually aimed at wandering into new musical landscapes or releasing stuff that did not make it to the track list of the “main band”'s last album. How do you see The Senseless' material in this respect ? Besides, is it really relevant to speak about a “side project” for The Senseless ?

The Senseless has turned into a band that is as high a priority as Berzerker for me - probably a higher priority, as I haven't recorded on the last few Berzerker albums, and only help out occasionally playing live. Some of the songs were originally written for the Berzerker but Luke would reject them because they sounded cheerful! This first Senseless album was used to cover both those songs, other songs I had written when younger and wanted to release, and some songs that were more recently written. Examples - a rejected Berzerker song was 'Promise' (when you listen to it, you'll know EXACTLY why!), an old song was 'You Love it', and some of the recent material was 'Vacation' and 'Happy Ever After'. I want to release a certain number of CDs for the Senseless, I have a very fixed idea what I want to do, and I'm not wandering idly into new ideas - I've got a few worlds in mind I want to construct. There is a concept behind The Senseless which will only
become apparent around the third or fourth release.


I definitely find that some songs are really close to what The Berzerker has made us used to: « You Love It », « Evilicious » « No Bomb is Big Enough » … It seems as if you don't really want to draw a clear line between what you do in both bands, right ? ‘not afraid that fans are a bit confused ?

I am not afraid of not making sense, which is why the band is called The Senseless! The songs have a pretty different flavour but are still very, very fast and heavy and they're kind of a reward for any Berzerker fan that has taken the chance to buy my album...I know they'll enjoy them! 'In the Realm of the Senseless' was a chance for me to release songs without having them edited or touched by anyone else, and I didn't feel a need to make every song completely different to material I've done before.


To me, “Vacation” really stands for the true essence of what is The Senseless: it mixes everything from quirky humour to violent happiness as well as a more or less direct reference to the cover artwork. How do you see this song yourself ?

I'm surprised that something I wrote could give me so much pleasure. Most musicians feel discomfort when playing tracks off their CD to other people...they'll be thinking about the small mistake they made in their performance, or how it could be mixed better, or how they should have spent more time on the lyrics, it's too heavy, it's not heavy enough, etc. I can honestly say this track turned out just how I wanted, and it's the one I play people when they want to know if the Senseless is for them. Don't waste your time: if you want to know if you'd enjoy the Senseless, listen to Vacation. If you don't like that song, then you don't stand a chance of enjoying anything else I do.


Now that it's more than one year old (or maybe two years, given that you didn't have to wait for the official release in order to know them), what's your favourite song on the album, and why ?

That's a hard question. I like 'Wreckage'...the intro is creepy, the song explodes, that main riff is bottomless, and it has a really grand 'patriotic' sounding middle section which matches the lyrics and meaning of the song.


Can we expect some new material in a not too far future? Is there a song on “In The Realm Of The Senseless” that is representative for The Senseless' musical evolution – if it is relevant to speak about an evolution of course ;) ?

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES! I've been rehearsing the new album for the last year. All the songs are good to go, and I've been trying to write perfect lyrics and vocals since the start of this year...I really want to step up the vocal performance. The new album evolves from the more recent tracks off 'in the realm...' - songs like Vacation and Happy Ever After. I'm going to explore a few more moods and go for glad, wistful, melancholy, and ecstatic. I've made sure that there's a surplus of songs, so that the best mix of material makes it onto the album. I want millions of people bowing down to this album and hailing it as a work of genius, and riots at record stores when it's released. I want couples hooking up when listening to the album, and calling their children 'Sam Bean'.


The end of “In The Realm Of The Senseless” is really great, “Happy Ever After” being a great epic song, and “After Happy Ever” being a nice follow-up, shaped as a fashionable soft techno track. Did you carefully select these songs to offer the listener the perfect conclusion, or is it located at the end of the album in order for the closest-minded to easily skip the last track ?

If you put a trance song onto an extreme metal album, there is no place for it except the last track! I lined those two songs up together as they feature the same riff, and I wanted it so that it would feel like you had driven a truck off a cliff straight into a dreamworld. It makes for a great end to the CD, most people want some rest after being beaten about the ears for half an hour. And if I put those two songs together halfway through the album then people would be all tranced out before I was finished wrecking their brain.


How does look the future so far for The Senseless, as far as label deal, line-up and touring are concerned (we already talked about the next release ...) ?

I'd like to announce that I now have a drummer - Leon Macey from Mithras. We've been rehearsing the new album for a year and I've been making him play some impossible stuff, so the next release will have a live drumming performance on it. He's pretty amazing, we had a long planned Morbid Angel jam last year and when we ran out of their material, we started on the Senseless stuff. It went amazingly well, and he volunteered for next album - how could I refuse?
I had two solos contributed to the last album from Ol Drake (Evile) and Matt Wilcock (Akercocke), and I imagine I'll twist a couple of arms for some solos on the next album. Anticulture have the licence to the first album, Leon and I are deciding on how we'd like to release the next album. I won't decide on whether to play live until the next album 'The Floating World' has been recorded. Previously, I've said I'd never perform The Senseless live. These days, I'm not sure. I have a terrible feeling that some of these songs would be amazing live, especially the new material.


Have you any advice for Thrashocore readers about bands to check out, movies to see or sex toys to try ? :)

I've been getting into the band 'Melt Banana' a fair bit, their last two albums have been brilliant. They're a Japanese non-genre band who sounds like a cross between a mickey mouse cartoon, grindcore, and pop. I can't recommend movies, as much as books. My recent favourites are : 'Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates' by Tom Robbins - this book will make you feel high!, and 'Left, Right, Centre' by Tim Ferguson - a comedy about Australian politics. My all-time favourite is 'My Uncle Oswald' by Roald Dahl. I defy anyone not to enjoy that book.


Please feel free to use this last “question” to tell us about anything I might have overlooked and that would deserve some more exposure. Thanx for your time.

Nothing to add - thanks!