 |
| Photo Credit: Alex Wright |
If you’re a fan of Down, EYEHATEGOD, Crowbar and the likes, Gold Coast metal band The Black Swamp will go down like a cold beer on a hot day for you. The guys say they draw inspiration from various genres of music, but these self-proclaimed traditionalists confirm their roots lie within the organic foundations of metal and heavy blues. No synthetics, no fancy effects, just old skool heavy riffs and thick sludgy bass lines are what these lads are all about. We caught TBS live at Metal Heart III in April and they were killer, we can’t wait to see them again @ Wallapalooza in June.
The band was kind enough to answer a few “getting to know you” questions, and as a result the boys have left us hanging on the exciting things to come from The Black Swamp in the near future….we recommend that you stay tuned!
It took a long time to come together. It started about 8 years ago with just a couple of us, throw in a few mutual mates along the way and eventually we thought we’d play in a few dank pubs or whatever and we’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. Rick decided to leave the band to join the Mortal Kombat league of Australia at the end of last year and we’ve now got our bud Rohan sinkin beers for us and playing some bass as well.
How would you describe the band’s style and who are your influences?
We’re all inspired by different bands, of course by a lot of metal and also other genres but our for somebody who hasn’t heard us, the best way to lay it down would be ‘anything from Sabbath to Pantera.’ We’ve never been about re-inventing the wheel, we are playing to the roots of heavy metal and we think that is what people enjoy about us.
What inspirations do you draw on?
As far as themes go we started out just to enjoy the riff and let that lead the way. That was the main impetus to write music. Originally we had avoided being too opinionated with messages. It really is a band to get together over a few beers and nod your head to the groove and that mentality rings true for us in the band as much as it does for anyone listening. Of course like most songwriters and artists we draw upon current events, issues that concern us, but we also like to offset that with more narrative based messages which lend themselves to our more major key stuff.
Tell us about some highlights or low points of the bands career?
The Cold Dead Hands tour we ran at the end of 2014 was a real kick, had a lot of fun on those shows with some great bands like Azreal, Evil Eye and In Death... some of whom we're excited to play with again on the coming Wallapalooza trail. Metal Heart Festival was awesome too, great crowd, great venue, great beer, great burgers. Great.
Are the songs a collaborative effort or does the band have a main songwriter. How does the music affect the lyrics and vice versa?
This is something we’ve been talking about a lot more recently as we are in a songwriting cycle as we speak. We have a few main writers but no song is brought to the band with a finished stamp on it. We’re getting better at recognising moments to let each instrument or voice in the band breathe or dominate a passage. For example on our most recent single ‘Cold Dead Hands’ there are several passages where any one instrument will give way in favour for another. The whole second verse of CDH is a more subdued version of the first verse where Stewart gets to add a bit more grit to highlight his vocal rather than us all bash senselessly away at our instruments, which of course can be fun at times too. Something we’ve talked about is putting all the ideas out into the open before we begin to collaborate so in the future we think you will see more Swamp that will be even more lyrically and vocally driven. Even our artwork is beginning to play a part on the music we are writing with concepts being formed ahead of the music and lyrics. Just quietly, we’re excited about what we’ll release next.
How would you describe the evolution of the band’s sound?
The band started out with more of a hard-rock to blues style in mind. When Stewart completed the band lineup it kind of lent itself to a heavier vibe. We started writing slightly heavier riffs but we still always find a way to fall back on that blues sound which some people will identify as the southern metal genre or perhaps sludge metal.
What’s different in the music industry today compared to when you first started and what would you do differently if you were just entering the industry today?
Nothing much has changed for us as a band in our relatively short lifespan but we’ve seen how it has changed for other bands. It seems as though there was a tipping point with the internet where there was so much excess. There was a saturation of image over actual music and this seems to have finally simmered down a little which probably favours a band like us. We are five pretty normal guys who don’t really feel any need to dress up our music with any gimmicks. I don’t think we’d do anything differently, we’re all pretty happy where our path has led, we really enjoy what we are doing and that’s the most important thing.
Which of your song/s are the most fun to play live, or which songs are you most proud of?
‘Cold dead hands’ is a driving force for us because it’s the most current track we’ve put out. It’s got a pretty simple riff, easy to follow and has a few of the song writing tricks we lean into through most of our work. Bastards of the Universe is a crowd favourite that everyone in the band seems to really dig into. Bastards is a bit of an anthem you could say, probably the most fun to play live along with ‘Foulness’.
What should we expect from the band in 2015, or what’s the plan for the band moving forward?
We’ve just introduced Rohan into the band so we’ve been welcoming him to the band (drinking beers) So the focus at the moment is to write more music with a few live spots here and there. The stuff we are writing at the moment has us all excited and the ideas that are forming through it have moved to another level for us. Not sure when you’ll see new stuff but we think we’ll be raising our own bar a little so hopefully it come to fruition sooner rather than later.
No comments:
Post a Comment