Warseid: interview

Warseid (U.S.)

Given that Warseid (Madison, Wisconsin) works with longer song structures, those who are appreciative of bands on the more brainy side of metal should find in Warseid several aspects to delve into. The progressive melodic dark symphonic metal found on “Where Fate Lies Unbound” presents a treat for the patient ear willing to find out what the musical journey entails. Sounding black metal at times, and folky at others, frequently melodic, with both harsh and clean vocals, Warseid has made an effort to produce something to be proud of, and it shows.

For example, “Farewell” is 11 minutes long, so there is a lot room to explore for the listener. It is not really the type of song that can be absorbed well with the first listen, of course. For this reason, it is true that Warseid requires a bit of a patient listener, and that patience is rewarded later, with repeated listens. Warseid is not a fast food hamburger, after all.

This interview helps to understand Warseid. Kyle (bass) answers.

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Your recording “Where Fates Lies Unbound” seems to have surprised some reviewers, who did not expect the good quality. Actually, you have four recordings so far, correct? What type of activities have you been doing since you published “Where Fate Lies Unbound”? How often do you play Madison, Wisconsin? What about Oshkosh and Oconomowoc?!! Oconomowoc needs to rock, too!!

We do indeed have four releases: two demos and two EPs. The two demos were us experimenting and trying to find our sound and the prior EP was a collection of what we felt was our best songs from those two demos plus a few new songs. It wasn't until “Where Fate Lies Unbound,” however, that we found what is our niche in the metal world.

Since releasing Fate, we've been trying to push out of Wisconsin and into different regions in the Midwest between our terms at college. We really do enjoy playing live, most especially for new audiences. We only play Madison once every six months or so because of school being as it is and that we travel a lot to play. Don't get me wrong, Madison is one of our favorite places to play (not just because it's our hometown!), but this way, we will always have something new to offer our fans there.

We'd love to play Oshkosh and Oconomowoc! The last time we played up in that area was at Arbor's release show of The Plutonian Shore in Green Bay. It was a fantastic show and the crowd ruled.  

The song “Farewell” is some 11 minutes long and it has lots happening: prog, folk, blast, black, symphonic, to name a few. How do you start writing a song and end up with 11 minutes of a monster like that? By accident, “oops, this is now 11 minutes, what do we now?”

Haha thank you! Well, our keyboardist, Joe, had the idea for quite sometime, actually and wrote all of it shortly after the release of our “Sentry” EP before showing it to us. It was only a collective effort when we finally began rehearsing it as a full band.

Did “Farewell” have the same process of composing as the other songs? Did you write at home, together in rehearsal? Do you get together to play and write or only get together to rehearse a full song? 

“Farewell” did have a similar process of composing as the other songs on WFLU, but unlike the other songs, Joe had written more or less all of it before showing it to us. From there, we changed and wrote more, which really just amounted to telling Joe to do such, and thus creating what is now “Farewell.”

Typically, our writing process is each one of us coming up with sections of song ideas and transcribing them onto a program (we use TuxGuitar, which is the freeware version of Guitar Pro) before putting them up online for everyone to listen to. We do that so anyone can alter and add whatever they come up with and see where it goes from there and, more importantly, have total control of what is played in the song and have an idea of the final product. After probably months of reiteration, we have a more or less complete song and will finally rehearse it together, further tweaking and refining the song.

“Frost upon the Embers,” like your other songs, has what appears to be acoustic guitars? Are those acoustic guitars? Now, what about the symphonic sounds, how do you come up with that, studio samples, keyboards, etc.? I’m thinking that “Embers upon the Frost” is your best song, and then I listen to “Vengeance Pact” and I change my mind. Then again, “Shackles through Sand” and its melodies is pretty darn good, too. The reviews on Warseid have been positive, but did you have an inkling that you had done something this good?

It's a classical acoustic guitar with nylon strings. Our former lead guitarist, that recorded “Fate” with us, is majoring in guitar and has become a very good classical guitarist. The symphonic sounds were programmed by Joe.

And thank you for the kind words! I know that we were thinking that what we wrote for WFLU was the best we have written, but we certainly did not expect the amount of great reviews that we have received so far. It's really encouraging to read that so many people have enjoyed what we have created. I think it's more that the reviewers are surprised that our kind of music has come out of the US than anything. But even still, I think Wisconsin is more known for death metal (Putrid Pile) and melodic death (Luna Mortis) than other metal genres.

Are the growled vocals done only by one person on the recording? What about the singing, is that the same person? Have you used any vocal effects on the growling? Have you used autotune on the singing?! Stupid autotune! Would you admit it if you had used autotune?!

The majority of the harsh vocals were done by Logan, though there is that part in “Shackles Through Sand” where we all do screams. Joe also has a couple of his own screaming sections in “Shackles.” There are no vocal effects done besides vocal layering to make the vocals more dynamic. The clean singing was done only by Joe. And no, no auto tuning haha. Never auto tuning.

I thought it was refreshing that you guys were honest in an interview that I read recently. Y’all mentioned that some of you used to like Slipknot and nu-metal or whatever. What happens in your ways of thinking that one would go from Slipknot to playing progressive melodic dark symphonic metal? (That’s what I’m calling Warseid today, by the way! I might call it Badger Metal tomorrow.)

In my case, I had a friend introduce me to Mayhem and Cannibal Corpse right after I finished 8th grade, when I was 13. It was love at first listen. I still respect Slipknot and other bands like them for all of the years I spent listening to them because they were, ultimately, my foundation for getting into much better metal, but I don't have any predilection to listen to them anymore, let alone incorporate that style into Warseid's music. I don't think any one of us does.

How do you balance having a good sound and too much studio “magic”? If a band uses triggers, sound replacement and things like that, is it almost like using a drum machine? Are we hearing what the person played, or are we hearing not the drums (the snare, the double bass, etc.), not the sound of the drums recorded, but rather the sounds of a computer program? How does Warseid view these matters of technology and ethics? Some big names in metal have used drum machines and claim that it is a real person playing drums.

That's a great question. I'm actually not sure how to answer it that well. I mean, we polished the hell out of the tracks as best we could, but we do what we can to show what we can do sans "studio magic."

I don't think using programs that do sound replacement for find are like using a drum machine. The drummer still played the part, still their skill, but it may not have had the best sounding kick or whatever, so the sound is replaced so that it sounds better/can be heard.

We view a lot of these things as tools. We use drum machine for when we record demos for ourselves and it's much easier than going through the hassle of recording drums (which really is a pain haha) and we also use plug-ins and emulated symphonies for our recordings. I really don't think it's that much of an issue to use these tools that are available to musicians.

Are y’all college students? Do you want to make a living from playing music and would you be willing to move to do that? We are college students, yes. It unfortunately makes playing that much harder to do as we aren't together that often over the semesters. All we really can do is try and keep a steady online presence until the winter and summer seasons and hope that people remember us haha.

Even despite going to college, we really do want to "make it" in the metal world (read: get on a label and tour our collective asses off.) I don't think moving would be that much of a help to our careers, honestly. With online promotion and putting our music out digitally (and free!), we can do much the same. Besides, Madison is a fantastic city to live in and the metal scene is growing every year.

Do you have a website, ReverbNation, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace or anywhere that is the best place to find out the latest on Warseid?

We have all of those sans Twitter. And a fair warning to those who want to check out our MySpace, we have not updated it in quite some time. However, the two best places to listen to our latest release are our Facebook (www.facebook.com/Warseid) and Bandcamp (Warseid.bandcamp.com) pages. THE END.