interview with Anthrocene

Welcome to the music of Anthrocene! This is a band from the state of Washington, U.S. They are quite the eclectic metal bunch as you will find out in this interview, which is answered by their bassist Keith. Thank you, Keith and Anthrocene!

What is going on in the world of Anthrocene? What is an anthrocene, by the way? Who is in the band and what are their responsibilities?

Hello! We're playing a few shows over this holiday season and doing some studio work. The name Anthrocene just kind of came to us one day. It's meant to be something like “the time of men” in a geological sense. It's conveniently shorter than the official Anthropocene era. A lot of our music tells the story of the destructive relationship of people and their surroundings. More on that later.

As for the band members, we’re a five piece. We’re lucky to have a good dynamic where everyone is a creative contributor and brings part of their style to the mix. Our guitarists have also both taken up a mantle of recording, mixing, and mastering and our singer has to work the crowds while we're busy with our instruments and writes the lyrics. Our drummer handles a lot of the communications with venues and logistics for the band. Our bassist doesn't do much other than show up and play.

I saw Anthrocene live, without knowing much about your band. Your singer was wearing overalls. Why does your singer wear overalls? Why does the rest of the band not do that? Is there disagreement about your theme or about the importance of overalls?!

The overalls relate to the lyrical content. Our story arc follows a character named Lumberjack Daniels through blundering accidents, dark transformations, and ventures above his meager humanity into sublime territory. We're saving the details for liner notes.

There's no disagreement about this theme, we just don't all need to be in overalls and plaid. I doubt most of us even own overalls.

Live, the music sounded like power metal, prog, thrash, metalcore, or like a mix of various sounds. Do you hate the question?: "What style/genre do you play?" Also, Anthrocene features the bass prominently, unlike some bands who don’t seem to care about the bass.

We don't really hate the question, but we're not going to answer it. We like the freedom to explore all of these styles, but we think we're converging on some elements that tie them all together and make them sound like Anthrocene.

Lots of metal has great bass parts. From War Pigs and Iron Maiden to Beyond Creation and Gorguts, there are a lot of counterexamples to the idea that bass shouldn't exist in metal.

There are four songs online. Eclectic, but you manage to make it all sound like normal Anthrocene music. What is next on your recording agenda?

We're hard at work on an LP. We have about an hour of material and we're excited about getting it done. You mentioned that the material managed to sound like “normal Anthrocene” music, and we think we'll be able to sustain that through a full length despite some other style curveballs in the mix. We're not trying to be gimmicky by switching gears constantly and we hope the songs will speak for themselves.

Any other news?

We've told you about our album progress.

Come see us live readers! Our next show is at Tony V’s wingfest on December 9th in Everett.

facebook.com/pg/anthroceneband/

anthrocene.bandcamp.com/releases