Alright, alright, we got ourselves an interview with doomsters Huntsmen,
and the band did take the interview seriously (much appreciated, boys!) and now
we can learn about the Chicagoland group’s unique take on doom by way of
braiding American folk music and postmetal into the fabric of their sound on
the album American Scrap, which is
now released and you can hear the entire work at the first link below.
Greetings to your band in
Chicago. How are things going for your band now that you finished everything
related to the recording of the album? Do you feel a sense of relief? How
anxious are you all to find out if the people will understand your
“storytelling doom”? Does it cross your mind that maybe your music is too out
there?!
Thanks for taking the time to interview us! Things are going great with
the band. Honestly, it’s really unexpected. We’d hoped at least some people
would connect with it, but had basically zero expectations. Instead, we’re
getting lots of really positive response from all around America and Europe.
Some killer thoughtful reviews, interview questions, messages, comments, etc.
that show people are getting it and connecting with it, and more importantly
that it’s feeding them energy and excitement. All we care about.
There’s some relief now that the album is out, but we’re always looking
forward. The concept and like… 50% of the next record are already written,
haha! The biggest relief was wrapping up the tour we did to support the
release. With that behind us we can focus totally on the next record.
I didn’t worry much about whether people would understand storytelling
doom. I think we all understand storytelling, and we know when a story is told
well or poorly. So we tried to just tell a good story, and we used the language
we felt most equipped to use in the telling.
By the way, who is
answering this interview? Can you clarify something about the album? Do you
have multiple people on vocals? Is the growling and the singing done by
different people?
This is Chris (guitar/singing/lyrics). Right you are, Marc (bass) and
Ray (drums) contribute to all the vocals, though in some cases I’ll sing all
the harmony lines on the recording of a song, but even for those tunes, we
arrange it so the harmony can be sung live among the three of us. It’s
important to us that we recreate those live. That’s what performers did in the
old days, feels like such a missed opportunity to skimp on it today. And yeah,
we all shift around between singing, screaming, shouting, etc. Ray is
hilarious, he can sing like Geddy fucking Lee but sounds like a gore fueled
berserker when he screams.
Now, what about the live
shows? How do you handle the various vocal styles in the live environment? What
has your experience been so far with the vocals during shows?
Between the 3 of us (and sometimes 4 with Aimee on the Last President),
we recreate every harmony on the record live. We’ve been playing every month or
two around Chicago for the last 5 years, and just wrapped up our first tour
around the Midwest/east coast!
Congratulations on your new
album! I have been listening to it and trying to join your wavelength. I’m
curious about it. It’s just the right amount of heaviness and strange that I am
interested, but I’m not very sure what you boys are doing! How many years ago
was it when you began feeling like you guys had a good idea about what your
sound is, what your brand of doom is?
Thank you very much! We really appreciate you giving it a solid listen
and I hope you find something that you connect with on it. We initially had a
vague concept of writing post-apocalyptic cowboy doom. This was maybe 5 years
ago? By “cowboy doom” I mean we wanted to set a mood that makes you feel grimy,
stuck out in the wilderness, alone and surviving off the land. Growing up in
the U.S. South helped with some of the regional elements like folk, bluegrass,
and country influences (Marc’s from Louisville, KY and I’m from Richmond, VA).
I guess like most things in life, you realize there’s a reason you were pulled
toward that thing, and eventually it turned out to be just the right home for
us for exploring all kinds of emotions and concepts… isolation, yearning,
revenge, hope, bitterness, indomitability, cruelty. As we were writing songs
for American Scrap, we realized we
were telling stories from the past, present, and future of America… what it
was, and what it will be, if we don’t stop fucking up. So we leaned into that
concept for the record.
How much is your sound of
doom + postmetal + American folk is a coincidence? For instance, many bands
have screamers and growlers, but it just so happens that you have someone that
can sing, too. Is your singer a folk fan of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, James Taylor,
Joni Mitchell (Oh, I know, Canadian), Peter Paul and Marry, Simon and
Garfunkel, Woody Guthrie and so many others?
If I can sound like a tool for a minute, I think that when bands stop
wondering “what should we sound like” and go with “how can we tell our best
understanding of the truth”, you end up with the kind of coincidence you
mention, and that’s my favorite kind of artist to experience, because it puts
the listener in direct contact with the musicians, without a layer of artifice
or manipulation. Between the four of us, we have a massive range of influences,
including those you mentioned. Marc and Ray in particular have a crazy
encyclopedic knowledge and love of both classical and contemporary music, all
the way up to doom/stoner/post/black metal, and basically whatever bubbles up
based on our instincts when writing is what comprises the song. A more
straightforward answer is that we happened to be listening to a lot of Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young leading
up to writing this record, haha.
“Bury Me Deep” begins the
album in a very nice way. You would think I’m listening to James Taylor. I find
that I’m a little bit angry at you for making the song so short! You missed
your chance at a radio hit, man ha ha! No, seriously, that’s a beautiful melody
right there. It’s such a tease! Why so short?
Dude, glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the compliment. It isn’t meant
to be a tease or anything else, really. Trying to think about why it’s so
short… it is maybe the saddest, most personal and vulnerable song on the record
for me. By the end of it I feel frankly really bitter and exposed, and just
want to shut up and be done with it. We Americans aren’t very good with
openness and vulnerability… that’s a window that closes quickly. So the length
of the song reflects that, probably.
I feel that “Pyre” is a
good representation of the melodic singing, the doom and overall sound of the
album. Can you explain some basics for us? Why is the album called American Scrap? For instance, do you
mean, “American Garbage”? I'm pretty sure that's not what you mean, but one of
the reasons I have been listening to the album is because it is ambiguous and I
am a bit uncomfortable with it, too.
Well, ya fucking nailed it, my friend. I didn’t even know why I named it
what I did at the time. But some reflection leads me to think I wanted to take
something that’s a lofty, vast, grandiose idea, a dream and impossibility, a
living contradiction- America- and sit it next to something you can see and
hold in your hand and go “huh, how about that.” But maybe what I’m happiest
with is that basically any definition of scrap works in this case, and that’s
pretty cool to go through and think of each one. I tend to like scrap as in
scrap heap. That makes me think of a junkyard with an old rusty Thunderbird in
it. You just look at it and you think of our country and it makes sense in a
bunch of unsettling and exciting ways.
What is it about the story
of the United States that attracted you to approaching your lyrics and concepts
this way?
We all live here every day ignoring the gravity of our history, the
richness of it, the intense varied beauty of the land populated by all manner
of weirdo humans. Richness doesn’t have to mean morally good… it’s just
intense, intricate, horrifying, fascinating, deep. It’s beautiful in its spectrum
of humanity and inhumanity. My dad came here from China on a cargo ship in
1950, from great hardship, self-educated, by the skin of his teeth, to study at
Duke and then some crusty old dude “quite racistly” blocked his PhD... and then
he went on to open two of his own businesses. If that isn’t a story of the
American Dream stumbling its drunk ass down the street and somehow making it
home, I don’t know what is. And actually there’s something sublimely American
about how that all went, in its awfulness and awesomeness.
As far as the record itself, I think exploitation- of workers
(especially immigrants), of wars and the soldiers who fight them- is one of its
biggest support struts and one of its deepest ironies. That’s why those things
get so much airtime conceptually on the record.
Say, do you feel like you
are, in part, anti-American? This is not exactly “This Land Is Your Land, This
Land Is My Land,” is it? Having the president kill her family and then herself
at the end of the album, isn’t that taking the folk straight into the abyss of
cynicism and negativity? Or maybe, you don’t feel like you are just another
cynical metal band?! How do you feel about this country? How do you feel about
Chicago as a city that you have experienced?!
One of my favorite reviews of the record so far recognizes the hope and
optimism within it. I know they’re buried pretty deep (heh heh). I love and
hate this country, and I think to say one is pro- or anti- American would be to
enlist in the lack of depth and critical thinking that we are so often
notorious for. Like… well what does America mean? What are you for, what are
you against, specifically? I’m the son of an immigrant and my first record was
Houdini by the Melvins. I grew up in the former capital of the Confederacy down
the street from a statue of Stonewall Jackson and swam in the waterfalls of the
Blue Ridge Mountains as a kid. I grew up breathing clean Virginia air and
there’s nothing like it anywhere else. I never fit in anywhere because I was
neither Chinese nor Caucasian, and yet somehow I found my niche and became my
own person. I guess I hoped to offer my perspective of trying to figure out my
place in this country, and observing her many contradictions, to the tapestry
of stories we have about her.
Chicago… I’ll never get used to the winters, but I love the people of
this city, I love their down-to-earth nature, work ethic, realness, community
and commitment to one another. There’s something about it that makes me feel
like I don’t have to pretend to be somebody I’m not. Easily one of my favorite
cities in the world.
Regarding the song “The Last President”, the use of nuclear apocalypse,
euthanasia, and suicide are meant to emphasize how dire the situation is. But
when I think of her, I actually think of how much fortitude she must have had to
endure those times, the courage to do what she did- to be able to speak the
truth to the country about the impending end, to love her family so deeply that
she spared them from the horror of death by atomic fire via a brutal act of
self-sacrifice. I think she was maybe the best President.
Alright, well, I could you
ask many more questions, but let me stop here, with some practical questions.
What do you have planned for touring after this recent run with Livid? Will you
be venturing outside of the Midwest?
It’s been a real pleasure, man. We’re playing Doomed and Stoned Fest in
Chicago on June 2nd, which is going to fucking rip, along with
Whores, The Skull, Sixes, and a whole bunch of our Chicago buddies like
Scientist and Of Wolves. You’ll want to check that out if you’re in the area.
Outside of that, we’re planning to do some targeted long weekend stints,
regionally and then eventually out to the west coast. Keep an eye on our
website for those to come up.
What do you feel are the
next goals for the band after the album?
Write the next one, baby! And just keep getting the word out there.
Do you have more videos
coming? I know you did one already for “Bury Me Deep”, but I mean a video with
footage of the band on the stage.
We might have quite a lot on the way… but I can’t say too much yet,
probably. I’ll say that our friend Hank Pearl (Black Pearl Photo) came along
with us on our tour with Livid and shot tons of killer live footage that’s
going to find its way to you, one way or another…
Thanks for your time!
thank YOU!
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