Transcript of an interview I recorded with BEN SHEEHAN of ABSTRACT THE LIGHT - 20200422. Full article here. MAL-
Chatting to Ben from ABSTRACT THE LIGHT. Ben, thanks for joining me. BEN- Thanks for having us. MAL- One thing I've always wondered how did you come up with the name of the band? BEN- This is a kind of a bit of a weird one. The band name actually came to me in a dream. And I was talking to the former singer of an old band that Matt and I were both in with the singer and at that point, we were not far off from announcing our band and playing our first show. We still didn't have a band name. And Gregor gave me the band name in a dream. So there you have it. MAL- Take us back through the formation of this band. When was it and how did you all get together? We know about you and Matt in that other band. What about the rest of the band? BEN- Yeah, well, Matt and I first played together in DELUGE, which was back in about 98-99 roughly, so just over 20 years ago. I did another band, a few bands after that. About early 2015 I had approached Benny Veniamin, who was the curator of the Black Conjuration Festival, which was getting pretty big. At that point, I reckon they had had four of them. And I sent him a message and said, Hey, mate, do you reckon you could get my old band QUASAR on there as a reunion? We'd not played for a good number of years, maybe five, or seven, roughly, I can't remember. And he said, Yeah, sure, man. If you can get it back together. We'd love to have you on board. So the original concept was I was gonna bring Matt in to bolster the live lineup of a reformed QUASAR, which didn't end up happening, because for whatever reason, we hadn't played together for ages. My brother was the drummer in that band, and we didn't quite get it together. Anyway, we had the gig booked. Matt said, Well, why don't we start a new band, which was probably the last thing on my mind at that point, but I said, Yeah, sure. Why not? We got this gig was about five months away. And we wrote a set of music relatively quickly, which was the four tracks that became that first EP 'From Out Of The Void'. And then we managed to pull Brody in, who was our first drummer Brody Green, who, as you would know, is probably, you know, incredibly talented, gifted drummer in Adelaide, probably one of the best going around. He was happy to step in and and pick it up. We had literally a few months to get it all together. I reckon he started with us in about June, or July, and the show was about mid September. So we literally had, you know, a few months to pull it together. Everyone thought I was crazy, because you could never start a band in such short time and got the whole thing together in a really quick amount of time, because I guess it was just the right time. There we have it. That was sort of how it all happened. So yeah, Matt literally had just said, why don't we start a new band? So we did, and we wrote, we wrote a couple of songs. together. And I wrote a couple of songs by myself, which we sort of then brought in and we had our first bass player, Mark, who literally just sort of hung around for a little bit to help play live and did the first recording and then parted ways with us. And then we ended up bringing Ben into the band, who was the guy that booked us on our first show anyway, so it was kind of all just mixing in the right circles with the right people at the right time and just kept falling into place. MAL- Right. So tell us about this EP, ''From Out Of The Void''. BEN- Yeah, so ''From Out Of The Void'' was literally just that first sort of glimpse of what this band could be, which I suppose was the continuation of sort of some sort of psychedelic sort of black metal stuff that I'd worked on with QUASAR, which was my first band on guitar, after playing drums in all the bands I've been in, up until that point, pretty much 'From Out Of The Void' was, you know, I guess we didn't have a whole heap of time to gestate on it and it was very organic. I guess in hindsight, we still are happy with those songs we still played those songs live up until writing the new album worth of material which we we spent a lot longer to write which, you know, I guess the first one was really just a template of what we could achieve I supposee, and then have a bit more time to set aside to focus what we would want to say on the next album. MAL- Tell us about Talheim Records. BEN- Yes, so Talheim Records is an Austrian record label and they've been around for a number of years. I think he's coming up to 10 year anniversary if it wasn't this year, it might have been last year. MAL- How did you get onto them? BEN- You know, I'm always incredibly optimistic and positive about you know, we've got a great product and someone will love it. We've just got to find it just takes that one person to find to to have faith in us, I suppose. And we'd sent off quite a few demos to people and it wasn't quite the sound that was happening at that time. And even surprisingly, in the black metal scene, it can still be quite cliquey in terms of what's popular and what's you know what's going to sell. Even though you wouldn't think it, labels still think like that. So we shopped around that EP because we recorded it pretty much straight after we did the Black Conjuration show in September 2015. And Matt and I we sort of throw a lot of concepts around about in the way we'd like it to look. So knowing that we wanted to have a very specific sort of project and you know, like, the look of the band and everything would fit right for what felt true to us. We already had that product all ready to go. And I was working with an artist from Lithuania, who realised all the artwork for that first album, and he actually said I'm doing some artwork for another band from America who's trying to get signed to this label, you should send them a copy and that was Talheim Records. So, we'd actually, you know, I'm not afraid to say that we'd sent off about 50 demo copies of the the EP to 50 odd labels, we had a bit of a list. We got close with a couple, but it wasn't like I said, it wasn't their, their flavour, but Talheim loved it straight away and he signed us and he's putting out the next album as well. You know, the thing that we resonate with him probably most strongly is his ethos on quality material. The package is, you know, it's not just about the music. I mean, the music obviously is first and foremost what people hear, but if you're going to invest 20 bucks in a CD, don't just give it to him in a you know, plastic jewel case with no artwork, make it worth their worries. So, you know, we did a five panel digi pack with him with a 16 page booklet, you know, great big four panel fold out thing and it was quite luxurious and the next one's going to be a little bit different, but it's You know, moving in that sort of same realm. So that's why we are with Talheim. MAL- Okay, so tell us about when you decided to get things organised for this full length album. And tell us about the process of that. BEN- We wrote the first one pretty quickly, we played that for probably up until sort of into 2016. We had a few shows we played with a Mournful Congregation in Melbourne and we brought in Ben as a new bass player, some new music started to evolve pretty quickly. But I would say from, you know, for the last three years, it's probably taken three years to write it, record it and get it to now where it's literally ready to be put out. That might sound like a long time for a lot of bands and I know other bands, black metal bands have released three albums in a year. And that's kind of not our philosophy like I am a bit slower to get things finished because I'm a bit for lack of a better word, I'm a bit anally retentive about everything being just right. To me, it gives us the faith and belief in what we've produced that we're happy with it in between, you know, recording an album and doing film clips and producing merchandise and T shirts. You know, it all costs a fair amount of money that we put in. And that probably stretches out the recording process for us, unfortunately, but I think we're, we're happy with the result and if it takes a little bit longer to write and record then so be it. MAL- So the name of the new album is... BEN- We've got a bit of a long title this is called “MAGNA SAPIENTIA QUAERERE : to the depths of thy soul...” which roughly translates to the journey within to the depths of thy soul, which is you know, referencing the lyrical content and what is this album means MAL- You've got some guest musicians on this I notice. Tell us about them. BEN- We did have a guest with us last time we had Mel from IN THE BURIAL, guest vocals on one of our tracks on the first EP, so it was a sort of a natural thing that we would consider having guests on this album and one of my philosophies and I've sort of reiterated this to all our band members is that recorded music lasts forever. With that in mind, we sort of brought in a few different people to help flesh out what's an incredibly long album, and keep it interesting. So we've got our old mate Gregor Pikl guests on a track with another former band member Jason van den Driesen from DELUGE. So we've actually got four former DELUGE members in this one spot of one song, which was quite cool. We've got a cello player Hannah Yates, Sandra Morris from ALTAR DEFECATION pops up in a song and we've also got a bit of a coup with Rowan London from VIRGIN BLACK, doing really incredible vocal performance in one of our songs, 'Smouldering Black, Thy Heart'. And this is the first time he's ever guested on a recording for any band or appeared on anything other than VIRGIN BLACK material. So it was a real treat to have him and yeah, have his contribution and sort of wrote the part for him with that in mind and just knew that he had to do it. And he's been a big supporter of some of my music work. So yeah, we were really thrilled that he ended up saying yes, and contributed what he did. So can't wait for people to hear that one. MAL- Tell us about these video clips you've shot. BEN- Yeah, so obviously we live in a in a digital age. And you know, I'm a bit of an old fogy when it comes to the music scene and playing live gigs. But we know that, you know, the internet is this thing that people spend all of their lives on. So having a really cool video clips, or to us, cool clips are important because, well with a video clip, we can reach more people than we can playing at a little gig in Adelaide, that's for sure. So, we did a live clip for the first EP and then we set our sights high for the first track we released off this album, 'Waters Of Fire' which we filmed about two years ago, and that was released April last year, April 2019. We finally got that film clip out. That was a big epic production with about 45 cast and crew which I pretty much organised myself with my partner Lauren. She helped me do all the costuming and, you know, we knocked out all the costumes for that, shields and swords and fucking hell it was incredible. I was working on that for about five months. You know, we've just released a new one as well, 'H.U.N.T.E.R.'. MAL- Hmm, I saw that last night. Very good. BEN- So that's the opening track on the new album, bit of a shorter clip, 'H.U.N.T.E.R.' with just sort of some rougher sort of footage on change of pace compared to the first one, 'Waters Of Fire', which was definitely more cinematic. Yeah, they were both a lot of fun to make. MAL- What's the plan for a release date with this because it's been pushed back a bit already. BEN- We originally were hoping that it was going to be out in the first quarter of this year. And then just because of some final delays, it got delivered to the label a little bit later than was originally planned. So then we got pushed back to May. And then obviously COVID-19 has just sort of hit, that's put all his release dates back to the summer, European summer. MAL- Okay, apart from your good self, who else is in the band? BEN- Yeah, so from the start, Matt Brown and I are sort of like the main two main dudes and I guess you could call it our band because we're the guys that keep the heart beating and all that so yeah, Browny is the sort of like the lead guitarist, I suppose. He's a bit of a riff riff monster. Well, Brody obviously played drums on the album, that this album that's coming out soon, but since late last year, we were fortunate enough to have Alan Catman join on drums as Brody was going to be sort of taken up full time reins in one of these other bands, any you know, playing full time three nights a week. He just wasn't going to be able to do it any more. We sort of amicably amicably... MAL- Parted ways? BEN- Yeah. Well, it wasn't really a parting of ways so much as that. You know, it just wasn't gonna, you know, work anymore in that context. And we brought Alan in. We've known him for a long, long time, he was a big fan of ABSTRACT THE LIGHT when we did start, and it was really, just fit like a glove that he came in and, and stepped up to the plate. We also had Simon join us last year as well. Simon Joel Henderson, who's played in quite a few bands in Adelaide here. He also played in CHALICE for a while, back maybe 10 years ago. And when Ben decided to step down from playing live with us, it was really just a natural progression to get Simon to slot in and, and really with the two of those guys joining us, so Like for guys really feeling, you know, super connected and the musical connection that's sort of coming with this new lineup is really incredible. MAL- Tell us about the live shows you guys put on, the live look, I guess you could say, Tell us about that. Where did that come from? BEN- I don't know, I just have this thing where I just channel stuff and something just, you know, like these visions appear and generally don't overthink that sort of stuff. The detail is just there, it's in front of me and it's just a matter of syphoning that into to what we end up putting out. I don't know how to explain it any other way than shit just comes to me and I'm just the vessel for that. And that sort of part of the look, I suppose is part of being a vessel to thoughts and trying to convey I wasn't gonna say hope, but the light at the end of the tunnel, our genre can be quite a bleak and depressive place to inhabit but it's not all doom and gloom. It's not all misery. What I end up singing about is stuff that just comes from those thoughts in those places, and I just channel it into what we put out onto stage. And I guess the, to try to pinpoint your question a bit better is to say that if I was to go and watch a live band, I want to see something. I don't really want to sit like for our genre It's a bit more storytelling. You know, I don't want to go and see some dude just rock up and play in his t shirt. He was just down the street in five minutes earlier, but if you just spent that extra five minutes or that 5% to me, it's all about the little 5% of things that just help just really just make things just more engaging. I'm not a go off in your face singer. I'm really concentrating on the guitar and all the shit I'm doing and the lyrical delivery and all that sort and the passion trying to put that across that I'm just sort of standing there doing my thing. So that would be incredibly boring if I just did that in my T shirt and jeans, having that extra element of separation as well, I guess it to me, it's a bit of a security blanket that I can put on this facade, and I can go out and convey something that I would be incredibly anxious about 20 minutes before MAL- Okay, so we've got this album coming out, eventually, how can people get a hold of it? BEN- So, we have the 'H.U.N.T.E.R.' single, being released as a download single, but I'm just waiting for confirmation of that. It's all been uploaded and all the informations correct. But that will be a pre release single. But in time it will be available from Talheim Records and from us. And we got a Bandcamp and all that stuff set up. So all our merch is available now on our Bandcamp page. And you can sort of check out all our material there, we've got t shirts, and we've got the 'From Out Of The Void' is available there direct from us. And the address for that is abstractthelight1.bandcamp.com but likewise, any of your listeners that want to check it out, they could just search that and that'll come up. MAL- All right, Ben from ABSTRACT THE LIGHT. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today. And best of luck with the new album which will be out shortly, keep our fingers crossed. And yeah, thanks again for chatting. BEN- Yeah, thanks for having me. And yeah, all your listeners if they want to jump on the Facebook page and give us a like and check out the new film clip or the old clips and yeah, we'll see you at a gig at some point soon, whenever that shall be. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |