Voilà près d'un an que cette interview de Leon Macey est prévue, soit cinq de moins que la sortie "imminente" du nouveau Mithras, mais tout de même, ça laisse le temps de travailler sereinement pour trouver des questions qui n'ont pas déjà été abordées dans leurs video diaries, qui couvrent déjà beaucoup de sujets propres à l'enregistrement de On Stange Loops. Heureusement, Leon n'est pas avare en détails et n'esquive aucun sujet qui fâche, y compris les problèmes qu'il a pu avoir avec Rayner ces derniers temps. Et si vous trouviez l'interview de Sam Bean trop longue, désolé, voici sans doute le plus volumineux article jamais paru sur Thrashocore. Mithras used to be quite active in the early 2000's, your first three albums were released over the span of five years. But it has been nine and a half years since the last album, Behind The Shadows Lie Madness was released, and more than five years since you recorded the Time Never Lasts EP. The first demo reel of On Strange Loops is now more than four years old. Do you realize millions of people died in the meantime? They probably weren't waiting for the new album, but still, that's a hell of a lot of dead people! Why did the Mithras creative process slow down that much?
Well, in the spirit of contrarianism, I disagree with the spirit of your comment! I started writing our debut album 'Forever Advancing...... Legions' way back in early 1998, and by the time it was recorded in 2001 we'd already been working on 'Worlds Beyond The Veil' for a few years too. 'Behind The Shadows Lie Madness' wasn't released until 2007, so it's closer to a decade working period across those three albums. Coming back to closer to the present, I didn't really start working on anything 'On Strange Loops' related until late 2010, but I still didn't expect the creative process to take as long as it did. Most of the delay between say 2012 and 2016 was from time taken to perfect the arrangements, drum parts and production, we really went to town on this album and scrutinised every last detail, which might have made it a bit painful for people waiting for the album to materialise but meant I was as close to 100% happy as was practicable this time around. We also spent a lot of time testing gear, buying new equipment, trying it but then reselling it if it didn't deliver the sound we desired. Towards the end of this long process I also got burned out a few times, as maintaining the momentum on a project like this is really quite hard when you're the driving force and are doing 95% of everything related to the band. Anyway, hopefully it was worth the wait.
Two of the tracks on the new album were on Time Never Lasts (the self titled track, and Inside The Godmind). What have you changed since the previous versions? Why didn't you chose to fill the album with entirely new material instead?
Both those tracks were designed to fit into the overall flow of the record conceptually from the get-go, and the versions we released on the EP were advertised as “demo” versions, so it should be no surprise that they would feature on the album proper, rerecorded. The tracks on the EP only featured first take 'impressions' of the drums, so I felt the tracks really needed polishing and improving for the album versions, where we managed to take every aspect to a new level performance wise, and I think they sound a lot, lot better.
Aren't you a bit of a perfectionist (one might say 'crazy maniac', instead), spending that long
working on this album? Could you ever afford such a luxury if you weren't recording everything in your own studio? Do you sometimes wish you could have spent just as long working on the previous albums?
Guilty as charged on both counts. I couldn't afford such a luxury if I was paying by the hour in a commercial studio, but luckily modern technology has meant you can make great recordings in your own place, assuming a modest budget. We built a studio before recording 'Shadows...' which is where everything Mithras did post-2006 including that album has been worked on and recorded. This meant I had near unlimited time to mess about with tiny elements of the songs and parts that almost no one else will notice. But the fact that I'd notice these details is what is most important to me, I really wanted this album to be as perfect as possible and I had a very specific vision regarding how it should sound and feel, which is part of why it took so long.
As to the previous albums, 'Legions...' was recorded and mixed in 10 days in a traditional studio, but the others were reasonably lengthy affairs where a lot of detail was put into them, so I don't think they really missed out on anything considering the level of performances I was after at that time, and my ability to critique back then. Back then my life was a lot different, so I was able to focus exclusively on the records when we were making them, whereas now I have to juggle a lot of responsibilities and as such the band has to fit in here and there when I have time, which obviously breaks up the flow of working on a record.
After a more straightforward Behind The Shadows Lie Madness, On Strange Loops sounds like a more diverse – yet still very dynamic – album, and surely comes back to an atmospheric feel similar to Worlds Beyond The Veil. Did you conscientiously try to make an album that would appeal to each Mithras fan through the ages?
After 'Worlds...' we wanted to do something much more direct and to the point, hence the more straightforward nature of '...Shadows' where I feel we boiled down the essence of Mithras and distilled it into a purer, more immediate form. However, this time I wanted to spread our wings again and do something new, something more epic, grander, more cinematic, but as you mention with a few nods to our previous records, so yes there's some elements of the feel from the 'Worlds...' album in there, as well as elements from all our previous works as deliberate tips of the hat if you will. I don't think we consciously tried to appeal to anyone other than ourselves though.
It seems you barely changed your gear since Behind The Shadows Lie Madness. Most of the instruments (but mainly the guitars) sound exactly the same, although the production obviously differs overall. How important to you is to keep Mithras' trademark sound?
The guitar tone in the mix is actually a little different this time, to fit in with everything else in the mix, but the essential tone is the same as it has been for most of our records; it's got to the point where I can hear if even the slightest thing has changed in my signal chain, and I am 100% happy with the tone I have so why change it?
On the 'Shadows...' album the production was really good but there were a few elements I was unhappy with, namely the snare drum and cymbal sound (which was limited in the final mix by the way I'd recorded it initially). So this time around I was determined to tackle those issues; which led to testing a multitude of miking methods, drum mics, heads and then moving onto changing a lot of my cymbal set up. The search for the “perfect” ride cymbal took up a lot of time on this record, and I think we tested somewhere in the region of 20 ride cymbals and rehearsed with each one before settling on one which had the sound we wanted; which looking back sounds a bit extreme but there it is! We actually used a different drum kit tone, with lower-tuned kick drums, so the mix sounds even heavier and more monolithic when turned up loud, and the snare tone is brand new with a totally different recording approach which I think works great this time; the snare on the record sounds snappy but really fat and solid, and still dynamic, but consistent.
We actually spent a lot of time changing the bass tone too, on 'Shadows' we had a great bass tone which was quite gravelly but still with a clear edge, but this time I wanted something different, something more synth-sounding and more massive, so we could really underpin the mix with it, and I think that's improved the sound too.
But getting back to your original point, even given all these refinements, I still think the essential “Mithras sound” is present on the record, and that's really important, as the band has a distinctive sound.
Did you approach the guitar leads differently on this new album? They sound less “improvised” than before. Did you ever write any of them down before the recording sessions in the past?
No, the guitar leads were approached the same way as all the previous albums and as such were mainly improvised at the demo stage and recorded then. Sometimes when writing the songs, I'd get a melody in my head and then record it into my phone, or I'd play about with ideas on guitar and something interesting would come from it, which is what happened on most of the past Mithras records too. When it comes to most of the actual recordings I've done, the guitar leads featured on the final records are almost all “demo takes” from when the songs were constructed. I think those original 'first impression' recordings have a certain magic that I couldn't improve on when trying to play the leads in a cleaner or more “correct” way, though there are some exceptions where I've practised something particularly tricky or modified a lead a little afterwards. I think part of what gives Mithras it's special atmosphere is the lead guitar approach, where I'll often have a rough idea of what I want a lead part to do, but I'm never quite sure of what's going to happen until I actually start recording. Generally, I'll try and get into an almost meditative mindset and start playing and recording, then from that (hopefully) a particular take will arise with a certain ineffable quality which is unexplainable yet really adds something unique to the song. The challenge for me has never been coming up with those moments, which just seem to happen spontaneously, but learning to play those leads and recreate the same feeling afterwards. For me the main point of the band is to create those moments and those almost transcendent feelings with the leads; those are the most enjoyable parts of it for me and the rest of the music is a framework to support and lift up those ideas.
About the production, aren't you afraid the very loud kick drums sound will drive away a few people (usually those who think “it's triggered so it's fake”)? Their sound has completely changed since Worlds Beyond The Veil.
The kick sample we're using is actually very similar to the one from 'Worlds...' which was a sample of my acoustic kick drum mixed with a few other samples, but as I said earlier the kick drums are a bit lower tuned on this record to give a different feel. I don't think the kick sound has changed that much from 'Worlds' really but the way the mix is built up has. The kicks are actually a bit quieter in terms of the overall mix this time than on the previous album 'Behind The Shadows...' so that completes my contradiction of your point, hehe. But yeah, they are loud, if you couldn't hear them properly it would totally invalidate the hundreds of hours of kick drum practice I did for this record! But being serious, I don't think the kicks are any louder than any number of records by bands similar to us.
As to people who think anything triggered/sound replaced is fake, that's unfortunate, but realistically speaking, there are very few extreme metal albums without triggered kick drums, and most even “classic” death metal albums back to the early 90's employed triggering on some or all of the drums. A lot of people are totally ignorant of that fact and like to argue about it online but it's not something I am really worried about these days. I guess this issue has arisen mainly due to a lot of “modern” productions where stuff is hyper edited and quantised, but you can hear our material still has the natural feel and the groove we worked really hard to make sure was present, so it doesn't sound too sterile.
How do you react when people say the drums have been programmed? Do you think it's funny one can doubt your drumming skills but never question your guitar skills, which are probably even more impressive?
Again, following on from the last question, I just think those kind of criticisms arise from people who don't have an educated enough ear to know what they are listening to. Fortunately it's a criticism that hasn't been as prevalent as time as gone on, as there are now more drummers hitting the kind of tempos we always have, and as such this style of drumming isn't as unusual these days. To me, I can normally hear if something is “too good to be real” and that unfortunately affects a lot of the technical and brutal death metal genres where the mix engineer has had his quantising tools out a bit too much. I'm not saying I'm totally anti any drum quantising or editing parts to get them sounding tighter, as that's a decision for each band to make, but it's often overdone to the point of ridiculousness. None of my drumming is programmed or quantised where everything is snapped to a grid, as drums that sound that programmed don't do anything for me generally, at least not in the genre we play in. There's no “motion” or “feel” that you get from a real human, and in my opinion the real magic is in the timing discrepancies, not in everything being so perfect and locked to a grid that it sounds unreal - those kind of records are just boring to me generally speaking, I like to hear a little natural acceleration in places (even at a set bpm), and some variation in the playing. My favourite drummers have a certain feel and rhythm that marks them out the pack, and that's something I've always strived to create for myself, hopefully more successfully with each release. As to my guitar skills, if you think they're even more impressive than the drumming then I'm humbled!
Mithras has always played at incredible speeds, and On Strange Loops is no different. What does speed means to you, in terms of music? Do you still try to reach your own limits like when you played faster than almost any other band, in the Forever Advancing... Legions days?
We've always been at the top end of the tempo range that's for sure. 'Legions' was horribly fast to the point that after tracking 'Tomb Of Kings' on drums the first time round, listening back in the control room I realised there was no way I'd be able to play the guitars along to the song so we dropped the tempos down a fair bit and I recorded it again. It's quite scary now to think we played the songs faster than they are on the record, as the entire record seems crazy fast viewed with the benefit of hindsight. I think speed is great if it reinforces a musical point and works within the framework of the song, but we've actually slowed down a bit over the years, though in my opinion we've more than made up for that by playing tighter and with a better feel on each album. I don't try and play as fast as I physically can any more, the last time I did that in recent years was on one song on The Senseless 'The Floating World' album where I played a blastbeat at something stupid like 350bpm+ in one place (for a short time). The fastest parts on 'On Strange Loops' are around 280bpm, and there's a kick drum run which is closer to 290-300bpm, but you wouldn't really notice it, which is fine as we're not trying to use the speeds as a gimmick per se, it's just what naturally works with the music.
After such a long hiatus in the band's mediatic presence, don't you fear most of Mithras fans will remain nostalgic no matter how good On Strange Loops is ? Ready for the “Worlds Beyond The Veil was better anyway” critics?
On every single album we've had people say “this album isn't as good as the previous album”. People seem to forget that when 'Worlds...' came out a lot of people were a bit horrified at how different it was to 'Legions...'. On the other side of the coin, each album has got a similar or better critical response than the previous record if you aggregate and average the reviews, so it'd be nice if that continues. As to fearing their reaction, I guess I'll be happy if people like the record but the main point of making the record was to satisfy my own creativity and to make something I wanted to listen to, if others appreciate it then that's fantastic but if they don't it's not like my world stops turning. If people love the 'Worlds...' album that's great, but they'd be best off just putting that record on and enjoying it rather than expecting every new record we do to be an identical rehash of it, which they most likely wouldn't enjoy anyway.
Don't you fear that being under the radar for so long probably means a whole generation of metalheads may never have heard of Mithras? Do you think the band could still grow in popularity worldwide with the release of the new album?
I'm sure there's loads of people who have never heard of us, but that said we constantly sell merchandise and CDs so people are obviously discovering us all the time and new fans are coming through. Us being “under the radar” was totally unavoidable due to the challenges the band has suffered, and to be honest it's amazing the band is still going given the amount of setbacks we've had. I'm confident the new album 'On Strange Loops' and the shows we are going to do to support it with the new live line-up will grow the band's popularity and reintroduce us to old fans and garner us some new ones.
Did you ever aim at becoming a popular death metal act at any point in the band's history? Do you think you could have had what it takes to be an active touring band, spending your life on the road and trying to make a living out of your music, like Morbid Angel or Nile did back then?
No we didn't. In the 1998-2007 years none of our live line-ups stayed together long enough to even really consolidate our popularity following our first three album releases, so we never had the chance to aim at becoming popular. Even if we had found a live drummer who wanted to stay in the band long term, it's evident Rayner would not have been interested in doing many live shows, so realistically speaking, touring with him in the band would have been totally off the agenda. I was always more much more interested in Mithras playing live than him that's for sure, I guess he preferred the band when it was just me and him working in the rehearsal room once a week for a few hours and that weighed on the live band to a point I think. All I can say is that once Rayner quit the band in 2008, the band started doing shows again, and that now he has departed (this time permanently) in 2016, we have more shows booked than ever before. As to whether we could have made a living out of the band, I doubt it given the type of music we play. I'm not sure the bands you mention really make much of a living out of their shows and music, but more power to them if they actually do.
Aren't you tired of being compared to Morbid Angel, or is it the best selling point of Mithras (“if you love them, you'll love Mithras!”)? I'm sorry to say, On Strange Loops probably won't change things much, you still sound like Pete Sandoval on steroids, and I've noticed Odyssey's End sounds more like Morbid Angel than most of what you wrote for the past decade.
I don't really care at this stage, as long as we're not being compared to more recent Morbid Angel records, which I'm not into at all. I'm not really sure why people make such a big deal about our similarities, such as they are. There are thousands of death metal bands who sound similar to Suffocation or Cannibal Corpse, and thousands of black metal bands who sound like Mayhem or Emperor, who don't get constantly slated for having similarities with the aforementioned bands. I suppose thinking about it, a possible reason it gets mentioned so often is that Morbid Angel are quite a hard band to copy compared to other bands due to the technicality, speed and atmosphere, so there's a smaller pool of bands with audible similarities to them. But if people think we sound exactly like Morbid Angel that's their prerogative - Morbid Angel were a great band on their early records, and I'd never deny that Pete Sandoval is my favourite death metal drummer and was a big influence on my drumming style, but they're not the only influence we've ever had like some people make out, even if they are one of the strongest death metal influences. I guess if people hear we are similar to Morbid Angel from a review or something then check us out then great.
You've been asked what are your musical influences in each interview you've ever done, I'm sure, but on the other hand, are you aware of any band that has been influenced by Mithras ?
Yeah thanks for not asking me my musical influences, because I'd just have said “only Morbid Angel” to be contrary, hahaha. I'm aware of a fair few bands who have taken influence from Mithras in some way, including a few pretty well regarded more popular bands, but I don't want to “name and shame” them. If they've taken an influence from us that has led to them writing some cool music then more power to them. I've not heard any band yet that has really captured the essence of what I'm trying to do with our music, so in my opinion we're in a field of one really.
You've been a guest musician for various bands lately. Except your somewhat small role in Contrarian, where you're only playing guitar solos, you've been drumming – still very fast – on the last The Senseless and Sarpanitum albums. How fun was it to try different things, despite the fact those musicians probably reached out to you because they liked your playing style?
I actually mixed all those recordings in my own studio too, as well as being a session musician, as part of my work is mixing other bands via my studio
www.dreamingstudios.co.uk. These recordings were all enjoyable to do and filled some of the downtime where Mithras wasn't as busy as we would have been if we were a live band, and kept me interested in working on music generally speaking.
Going through these recordings in order; it was really fun working on The Senseless record 'The Floating World', Sam Bean and I spent a very long time rehearsing that record, a few years, starting work in 2007. It came about as we met up to have a jam and things spiralled from there, though it was probably Sam's evil plan all along to bring me into his service as drummer, haha. I needed to train my drumming back up again at that point, so playing on the record was a great reason to do so, and we had a lot of fun times working on it all. Sam joined Mithras in 2008 as vocalist/bassist and that slowed down our work on the album a fair bit, but it eventually all came together.
Although Sam had drum machine demos of the tracks he wanted me to follow to a point, it was a cool experience as I tried a few things I'd not done before drum wise, the album had a real rock sensibility in some places as well as a real slow groove, alongside the mental crazy 300bpm+ stuff, which was the first time since 'Forever Advancing...... Legions' that'd I'd played anything that fast. As I mentioned in a previous question, there's even a bit which is 350bpm or something on that record, my hands hurt just thinking about it now! Working with drum machined patterns is a bit of a challenge, adapting them to a more realistic live performance with more nuances is quite a lot of work really. I think I was able to get across the ideas Sam had but also work a lot of my own ideas in there and really flesh the drum parts out. I think the track I'm happiest with is the slowest track, the title track 'The Floating World', which has a fantastic vibe about it. I ended up mixing the record and then the release was a little delayed by Sam moving back to Australia but you can check it out via all good digital distros and get a CD copy direct from Sam.
Me featuring on Sarpanitum's 'Blessed Be My Brothers' came about after Mithras live guitarist (and Sarpanitum main man) Tom Hyde played me the demos in 2012, and then asked me if I'd be interested in doing the drums on it and recording and mixing the album. He did have to spend quite a while convincing me to do it, as I was a bit reticent to take on a record where all the material was written on a drum machine at super high tempo, as I prefer to write the parts with more of a free hand. But after hearing the demos I was in no doubt how good the record would be, so we got straight to rehearsing and fine tuning the tracks. They had really rough drum machine ideas but Tom gave me carte blanche to totally change stuff if I wasn't happy, so to make the album playable by a human we dropped the average tempo from 280bpm to 260bpm and we rehearsed a fair bit and changed the songs around, and I tried to make the drums as monstrous as possible, which worked out pretty well! The album got a great critical reception which was fantastic as Tom did a great job writing the material on that record, it's really memorable.
As to Contrarian, that's the only band I've ever contributed leads to outside of Mithras. Jim (Contrarian guitarist) emailed me and asked if I'd be interested in doing some session lead guitar work for them on their EP 'Predestined', and I said “no” right off the bat. But after he played me some demos I could kind of see why he had asked me, as there were some interesting spots to add my lead style into. He also told me the band also featured George of Nile and some other great musicians, so I acquiesced as I thought it would be cool to do and something new to try, and I was really happy with how my leads came out. Unfortunately, the mix for the EP came back sounding quite weird, so I was tasked with doing a remix which improved things a lot. A bit later we did a second EP 'Polemic', and this time I was slated to mix it from the start as well as do leads, so we got a great sound that we were more happy with. After that EP was touted round to a few labels, the band got picked up by Willowtip Records who wanted to put out an album, so I was tasked with mixing the two recordings together to make a coherent album out of them, which was a good challenge given the recording sessions were all done differently, but the result was great. I was really happy with the leads I contributed to Contrarian, as the framework of the band as it was then allowed me to do some slightly different things to what I'd normally do, but still within the parameters I set myself for what I want to achieve musically.
Are you planning on doing more things outside of Mithras in the near future, or are you focusing on the band more than ever?
Although I've been asked by a few bands, unfortunately other projects are off the cards for the near future, as I simply don't have time. Given that the new Mithras record is out really soon I want to concentrate on promoting that in the time I have available to do music, and play as many live shows as we can to push the record, and to enjoy airing the songs live.
Why did Rayner Coss leave the band again, a few months before the release of On Strange Loops? Does it mean Mithras will be a one-man band from now on ? Are you still looking for a vocalist to play live?
If I condense it down, regardless of what the statement made at the time said, in my opinion Rayner left Mithras for the exact same reason he left back in 2008; because he didn't want to spend any time working on Mithras outside a short 3-4 hour window once a week, i.e. he didn't want to have to think about any band matters outside that time and practice his bass playing, work on ideas, or even learn lyrics for the shows... This was tolerable when we were working on the new album, as each week Rayner could turn up and give me some feedback on the work I'd done since the last time we'd met up and hopefully do some recording or whatever; and that's how the album slowly moved forward. But as the album completion got closer we started assembling a live band to support the album and thus started rehearsing every three weeks or so with the live line-up, and it became obvious quite quickly that Rayner wasn't interested in playing shows to the same degree as the live band members even, and was struggling to play a lot of the songs. I don't want to get into the details too much, but suffice to say I was not happy with the way things ended; although Rayner made some great contributions on the new record, I wish I'd stuck with the plan I had back in 2010 before he rejoined, me recording the entire album solo with me singing and playing bass, as I think the process of recording the new album would have been a lot easier for me and we'd probably still be friends outside the band. But live and learn I guess.
After Rayner announced he was going to depart Mithras we immediately started the search for a direct replacement for him (via video auditions) as we had live shows booked we absolutely didn't want to cancel and we weren't sure Rayner would stay about long enough to play the shows. We were looking for someone who could play bass and sing, or even two separate players. We had some great applicants but typically no one suitable, either due to their vocal style or logistics, which was disappointing. So it was decided that I'd try to handle the vocals alongside the lead guitar live, which was always our fallback position anyway. Back in 2010 before Rayner rejoined Mithras, I'd done demo vocals on the first few tracks I'd worked on for 'On Strange Loops', one of which, 'Time Never Lasts' was uploaded on YouTube, and my vocal got a great reaction back then, so I wasn't too worried about being able to handle the vocal style, rather whether it would negatively impact on the guitar playing live. Fortunately it's worked out great and we've been able to take our live performance to the next level now; me doing the vocals has tightened the live band up a hell of a lot as I'm hyper aware of the vocal patterns and lyrics, as I wrote most of them.
As to the future, I'm not totally sure at this stage but I expect I'll be doing most of any future recordings myself. The new record took such a long time to complete, I now need to concentrate on the live side of things for a while to give me a break from the studio, but perhaps next year I'll start considering future recording plans.
How much of a challenge was it to find live musicians, especially drummers, given how hard your parts were to play? Why has it been even harder to keep these musicians in the band?
It's always been a massive challenge to find and keep live musicians in Mithras. We've been fortunate enough to have had some great drummers come onboard over the years to help us do live shows, but for various reasons, so far it's never worked out long-term, either due to personality clashes, unreliability or them simply losing interest in playing music live, or all three problems together! When you factor in how hard the drum parts I write and record for Mithras are to play you have a very difficult challenge for any drummer, and a very small pool of drummers to choose from who could get close to playing it in the UK. Looking back over the band history we've actually spent a large part of the last 18 years trying to lock down a live drummer and it's led to a huge amount of wasted time and missed opportunities, even up to this year when we lost a drummer at short notice before a show in London, which caused a huge panic. But looking to the future; our current live drummer Julien Helwin is totally different to our previous drummers, in the sense that he is a 'proper' drummer and thinks about drums all day every day, really loves drumming generally and sessions for other bands too. He is a complete professional and a really reliable and nice guy, the only downside being that he lives a long way away in France. That's not to say our previous drummers didn't have any of those attributes, but they were all naturally talented guys who played drums in a band for enjoyment for a few years rather than guys who would practice drums every day like a professional and had drumming as a large part of their future plans.
As to the next question I'll answer these in turn as there's a few points there:
How do you approach the differences between Mithras on record and Mithras on stage?
Theoretically, there's no difference between the two incarnations, just that some of the recorded songs are so challenging to play live due to drumming endurance or weird guitar playing that we choose not to put them into the set so we can keep things more manageable live. This isn't a problem as we have so many songs to choose from it's already tricky to play all the songs we want to. Most bands have songs they don't play live for that reason.
Did you ever write a song thinking it would be better live than on record?
No, I don't think so, I generally aim at getting a particular vibe on the records which isn't related to how the tracks would sound live, but with the aim of having them sound identical live if played correctly, if that makes sense.
Did you ever limit your compositions to what you thought could be played live only?
To a point, in the sense that all our songs are reproducible by four people onstage, with perhaps some parts like choirs from the new album played on the backing track. I don't like to add lots of complex layering to the albums so they would be unplayable in a rehearsal or onstage with two guitarists as I feel that makes the live experience potentially underwhelming when bands have all the bells and whistles on record and then the live band sounds like something totally different.
Did you refrain from playing something on drums thinking that a session drummer could probably not play it live, or did you refrain from using more guitar tracks on record than you could play live?
No, all the stuff on the records is playable live with a skilled enough drummer, and I never hold back thinking about the live band when I track drums. The rhythm guitars are layered up on the new record but only to “double” them, so musically it's possible to play exactly the same notes live with two guitarists.
Do you expect to play more live shows in the near future? Could you afford a (little) European tour or will you solely rely on festivals booking you? Any plans to play in France?
Yeah, we're hoping to play a lot more live shows and will hopefully play a lot more festivals next year as well as some EU dates. We'd love to play in France, and we've got some plans regarding that which are being worked on now.
Do you fear the recent Brexit could make things harder for UK-based bands? You'd need to cross a frontier to play in the European Union, postage costs might go up, we may shoot Englishmen on sight if they set foot in France, like in the good old days...
Haha! In terms of the band I'm not worrying about it much to be honest, as it's totally out of my control. I've been to plenty of places where I have to cross a border and I already need to go through customs, passport control and cross a border every time I leave the UK to go to the continent as we're not in the Schengen zone, so I don't really think much will change as regards that. I can't see a situation where you'd need a visa to visit the EU for a short time or vice versa, as it would be totally illogical and with the trade balance being what it is (the UK buying more from the EU than the EU buys from the UK) I can't see the EU being that heavy handed in the negotiations as really, the EU is a capitalist organisation and once all the bluster is over, eventually the balance sheet will become the most important thing, especially with elections in France and Germany coming up.
After you parted ways with Candlelight Records, you've decided to found your own label, Galactic Records. What's your experience as a label manager? Do you understand the music business better, now that you've been on the other side of the contract sheet? Why did you reach out to Willowtip Records for the distribution of On Strange Loops? Did Mithras have any trouble dealing with labels in the past?
I actually started Galactic Records while we were still signed to Candlelight in 2006, I signed a few bands back then and did a few releases. We approached a lot of bands for future releases on Galactic but were actually turned down by a few bands; the DIY side of the business had really started to boom then and the traditional label model wasn't as attractive I guess, but this wasn't the end of the world as I only had limited time anyway so decided to put my energy into different things. Running the label, as small as it is, definitely informed my knowledge of the music business so that's been a positive side to it and we've done a few Mithras releases and reissues via the Galactic name, with more to come! As to the other side of the question, Willowtip actually approached us a long time ago and expressed interest, and we'd always wanted to sign to a label in the USA to cover that territory, as we have a lot of fans there but Candlelight were never able to market to them very well, so hopefully things will work out with Willowtip. Galactic hold the rights for the rest of the world so I've been handling the release in Europe, we've got good distribution so you should be able to get the new record most places. Yes, we did have quite a lot of problems while we were on Candlelight which I detailed a bit in previous interviews; in a nutshell we had a big communication breakdown with them which after a lot of headaches, fortunately led to them declining their option for another album and dropping us from their roster, which was actually a great relief at the time. A few years later I was able to get the rights back to our first three records from them which was great, as it meant I could re-release them digitally and do vinyl versions and perhaps even remastered versions in the future. The timing of that was quite fortunate as Candlelight was recently sold to Universal, which would have made getting the rights back really difficult if not impossible.
The music industry underwent profound transformations over the last ten to fifteen years, the sales declined and promoting a band is now nearly impossible without the internet. On the other hand, self promoting a band is now easier than ever. Do you still think the labels are a huge asset in the niche genre that is extreme metal? I know you're not a fan of downloads and you don't want any full Mithras record uploaded on YouTube, but isn't it the best way to promote the band nowadays?
I think labels still play a role, because it's fine saying you have the internet to promote your band, but it's still hard because every other band enjoys that exact same advantage, so now most bands are lost in a sea of other bands and it's really hard to get noticed. Also with the advent of cheap recording, anyone can make an album and put it out online so there are more bands than ever before. The internet obviously confers the upside that if you are great at promotion or already have a loyal audience you can manage without a label should you choose to go that route, but for some bands who don't want to manage every facet of their releases or don't have the ability, a label can still a good option, as the advertising clout and connections a label has can greatly increase your band's visibility, profile and the number of shows you can do. Regarding YouTube, I can't see a single upside to having our albums permanently available in full on YouTube, as the advertising revenue from plays on there is a pittance. If people want to stream our albums without buying them they can use Spotify, who at least pay us some royalties. The songs we have on YouTube already promote the band enough, giving away the product for free in full serves no purpose really, it makes it too easily available, especially if you expect people to buy it from legit downloading websites. People who upload our full albums to YouTube claiming they are “doing us a favour” are either really stupid (i.e. they think we don't understand we could put our albums in full on YouTube should we choose) or they are just being disingenuous and really just think everyone should be able to listen to our work for free but think by saying they are “helping the band reach a bigger audience” they can somehow gloss over that. This really used to annoy me in the past, but now I am more relaxed about it, and I'm generally fine with people putting up single tracks as I can easily claim the copyright on those videos without them being taken down, and some fans do some cool videos.
Aren't haters the best thing the internet brought to Mithras? Not only are they a sign of success, but they're also very funny, most of the time. Any good anecdotes to share?
Haha, yeah bless the haters! I wouldn't say they were the best thing the internet brought to the band, being able to interact with our fans and sell our music all over the world was probably a bigger boon, but yeah, having some haters can be a sign of success, or just a sign that you're a person who makes enemies and put people's backs up wherever you go, haha! We've had some good ones over the years and some feuds with some other bands, but the most persistent one is the myth that back in 2003 Terrorizer Magazine only gave 'Worlds Beyond The Veil' a 10/10 review because the editor/publisher Lisa was my girlfriend at the time, and/or that she wrote the review, both of which are totally untrue. The review was commissioned to the writer Stuart Banks before I even got together with my future wife Lisa, and was handed into and published by the interim editor after she'd already left Terrorizer (she left soon after we met). Anyway, certain people and bands have been spouting that falsehood ever since, which is hilariously ironic given the nepotistic relationships said people and bands had with Terrorizer at the time of making those accusations, and some people still try to badmouth Mithras with it. But now whenever I see it brought up, I always thank the people posting it and remind them that it's just more free advertising for that record and the band, and that the false controversy back in the day probably helped us get the records re-released on Candlelight which helped Mithras a lot financially! At the end of the day almost all those people and bands have vanished without trace and we're still going strong so we've had the last laugh.
Most people outside of the UK probably don't know your main job is being the owner of a metal magazine, Zero Tolerance. Did you always want to work in the music field, or did you simply take a shot at doing a magazine and see if you could manage to make a living out of it?
Well, after I met my wife to be Lisa and she left Terrorizer after a contract dispute with the new owner, we decided that as her career to that stage had been working on magazines and that she'd worked on Terrorizer for so long, that it was a good time to start our own music magazine, and being interested in the music field my whole life and having a pretty good idea about business and organisation I was more than happy to come onboard and lend my experience and energy to the project. So yeah, we basically took a shot at it in the way you said, launched Zero Tolerance Magazine and gave it our best, and we're still going 12 years later.
In your opinion, what does it take to make a good magazine? (Tell us, so maybe we can get some good metal press back in France). What are a magazines interests compared to, let's say, the webzine you're reading and the writer that's handling this interview like a professional?
That's a difficult question; you need to have consistently good content, good editorial direction and also a good relationship with labels and advertisers without becoming beholden to them, which is a bit of a balancing act. But beyond all that you need to have a product that appeals to your readership, and ZT has been lucky in that we found a core readership which has stuck with us all these years. Some webzines are great but due to the sheer number of them, often the quality control is a lot less, as there's no limit on the amount of stuff you can publish, and some webzines will take almost anyone on who can string a sentence together who is willing to work for free, whereas printed magazines normally pay their contributors something and thus have higher standards.
In France, nearly every metal magazine had to shut down in the recent years because of the concurrence of the internet : their sales declined dramatically. Why hasn't it happened in the UK yet (are your webzines that bad, haha)? Do you think you'll retire (in a few decades) while still being in this line of work?
The thing is, doing a webzine is great but it's exceptionally hard to monetise and it's hard to find talented people who are willing to write for it for free long term, and so the articles on a webzine are much less likely to go through the amount of refinements and editing that they would in a printed magazine, your fantastic interview being an exception of course :D . I think that due to short attention spans when using technology, people are still much less likely to browse through every recent interview and review on a webzine but they be much more likely to do that if they purchased a magazine as people like to have a physical product and savour it, as well as feel they have read it through to get value for money. To use an analogy; although you can get downloads which are identical in quality to a CD, people still buy CDs and physical formats, vinyl is more popular than ever for example as it's a tangible product. That's not to say print sales haven't declined over the last decade, but I'm not really aware of any UK based websites writing about extreme metal with a similar quality to Metal Hammer, Terrorizer and Zero Tolerance. Another thing worth mentioning is that magazines are quite difficult to pirate, even if someone bothers uploading a scanned pdf book of the recent issue or a pirated digital copy it's still nothing like the real product so it's been less affected in that way. As to whether we'll still be doing it in a few decades, who knows?
Why the name Zero Tolerance? Is it a tribute to the great Chuck Schuldiner, who wrote a great track called just like that back in 1995? Since I know the answer will disappoint me, can you just tell me it is?
I hate to disappoint you but the name came out of a conversation I had with my wife Lisa from when we were coming up with the idea of founding a magazine, the phrase “Zero Tolerance” just leapt out of the conversation and we were like “that's a great name!”. But if you want to think it's something to do with Chuck then go ahead – that's a great backup reason.
See you in ten years for the fifth Mithras album?
You're being generous now, I was expecting you to say 20 years! IF there is another Mithras record, I reckon 3-4 years tops this time. I think the line-up change we've had will speed things up and enable me to focus on a future album in a totally different way this time.
Since this interview is way too short, I'll let you conclude with whatever you want. Thanks!
Short? I'm not exaggerating saying it's probably the longest interview I've ever done! But it's been a pleasure due to the great questions you posed, so thanks for all the support you guys have given Mithras over the years. Anyone reading this, check out Mithras and our new album 'On Strange Loops', and like us on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/mithrasuk/ and add us on Instagram at the username
'mithrasuk'.
Ars longa, vita brevis!
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