Since the release of their debut 'The Sombre Light Of
Isolation' (on Firebox Records) in 2004, Melbourne (Australia) based
melodic doom metal act The Eternal have been busy with plenty of touring
both nationally and internationally (as part of the 'Doomination Of
Europe II Tour' with The Prophecy), as well as compiling an independently
released compilation DVD 'Sombre Visions' (released in 2005, and featuring
a documentary, live footage and promotional video clips) and recording
their long awaited sophomore effort. Released internationally back in
October 2005 to overwhelming critical acclaim, The Eternal's new album
'Sleep Of Reason' was only available as an import for an extraordinary
six months in Australia before finally being picked up by distributor
Modern Invasion Music, just in time for the bands support to Finnish
rock act HIM and Swedish progressive death metal act Opeth.
With another string of dates just being announced for
a tour of the east coast, I caught up with vocalist/guitarist Mark Kelson
to find out the reason for a slight change of direction between albums,
what it was like working with producer Endel Rivers and artist Travis
Smith, the frustration associated with the lengthy delay between release
dates and the group's reaction to the growing support to 'Sleep Of Reason'
over their debut, or even Cryptal Darkness for that matter.
"Reaction wise, we were really happy with the way
'Sleep Of Reason' has been received, especially over 'The Sombre Light
Of Isolation'. We could always sell more though! (Laughs) Our debut
actually got more attention than we expected. I was satisfied with the
exposure it gave us to the international music market. Sure, we didn't
splinter the earth, but it did allow us to say, 'Hey! We're here!' and
thankfully a few people paid attention to that. 2005 was a great way
to start our career as a band, especially after struggling with Cryptal
Darkness (Kelson's former band, who managed to release three albums
in their nine year existence) for so long. I can accept that Cryptal
Darkness was part of the process leading up to The Eternal. On a professional
level we weren't quite there, and I guess I didn't have the guts to
take the bull by the horns at the time and turn the band into a fully-fledged
working machine. So yes, The Eternal is a major step up. We got a little
bit of good stuff happening for that band but it never really came through.
I honestly thought that the band was the end of my music career. It
was slowly wasting away. I needed a fresh start, something that was
strong and something that I could do exactly the way I wanted to do
it. That's where it all began for The Eternal. The change was a whole
lot better and the response to the band's debut was better than my previous
ventures, and it's only getting better as time goes on."
But for every step up, there are small hiccups to contend
with, and this time it was the lengthy six-month delay between the international
release of 'Sleep Of Reason' and it's eventual release here in Australia.
"That was very frustrating. That had a lot to do
with distributors not willing to take a chance on a small Finnish label.
We got dicked around to a certain extent by a few companies that continually
led us on with the idea that they would pick up Firebox Records, only
to pull the plug at the last minute. We we're left thinking, 'Holy crap!'
We literally reached a point where we had run out of both eggs and baskets.
So we basically took it upon ourselves to get the album released. We're
professional in our business ethic and we only want to work with people
who are straight up with us. We went to Modern Invasion Music and told
them who we were and what we wanted. We asked them to release our album
because we were committed to touring and planned on pushing our album
hard, and we were sick of being dicked around in our own country. The
contact was made with Firebox Records and we were stocked. The great
thing is that we got confirmation of our distribution here at the same
time we got the supports for HIM and Opeth, which brought out some distributors
who were keen to have another shot at releasing the album, but it was
too late by then. At the same time we were announced as support for
Opeth, we were finally getting other support with endorsements too.
That's been a great help to us because we all managed to upgrade all
our gear. So while it was a frustrating time, it's all worked out. Modern
Invasion Music is really behind us and pushing us really hard and it's
proving very beneficial."
While The Eternal's 'Sleep Of Reason' has been well received,
it's interesting to see a small minority of critics that have been unimpressed
with The Eternal's new musical direction (some of whom have claimed
the band have sold out), which has moved away from a strictly doom sound
to take in other musical influences.
"The whole sell out thing is pretty funny because
you're only selling out if you're doing something purely for the money.
Believe me; we're not out there buying Mercedes Benz's from the money
we make on the band. We're not doing it for the money. When you're nineteen
and you're playing in a grindcore band, you don't necessarily want to
be in a grindcore band when you're thirty. That's not selling out, that's
more about gaining appreciation for other styles of music outside that
one genre. In our case, it was about appreciating classic musicians
and acknowledging that. I'm now in a band full of worthy musicians and
everyone is into different stuff. We spend a lot of our time on tour
listening to all the things that we like and those varied tastes have
helped shape us into a more polished direction. I mean Marty O'Shea
(drummer) is into progressive rock bands, while Lincoln Bowen (guitarist),
who is also a music teacher, is more into metal and blues. I don't necessarily
see a broadening sound as a sell out because if you're still following
your heart and working on your vision of progressing upon your abilities,
it's only a good thing. There's things about 'The Sombre Light Of Isolation'
that we wanted to improve upon, such as the time we spent in the studio
and production techniques, which is something I'm really interested
in. And in making those changes, we knew it was going to give us a more
polished sound. I think that 'The Sombre Light Of Isolation' was more
about me saying to Cryptal Darkness; 'This is the album we should have
made if we had pulled our fingers out of our asses! This is the album
I wanted to make!' It still sounds like my type of riffing on this album,
but some of those songs were written around the demise of Cryptal Darkness,
and some around the birth of The Eternal. So we made the album, and
it was a good starting point for us, because I never considered The
Eternal a straight-ahead doom metal type of band. The Eternal right
from the outset have clean melodic vocals. I'm not sitting at home depressed
wanting to slit my wrists. I'm having a ball in this band. We have a
great time together so I want The Eternal to express that emotion, rather
than encouraging depression. Feelings and emotion are good. Depression
is pretty sad! (Laughs) When I recorded those Cryptal Darkness albums,
that's how I was feeling at the time. I was playing doom because I wanted
to. It tied in with my character. I was a depressed individual and pretty
upset and I expressed it by playing slow emotive music. I still find
to a degree The Eternal playing slow emotive music, but it's now on
a different level. When I made 'The Sombre Light Of Isolation', I was
really nervous about the clean melodic vocals. I was sure that the scene
wasn't going to accept this because I'm not moaning or doing death vocals.
In Australia, it's either death or power metal. There aren't any melodic
metal bands with male vocalists as such. At the time I was very scared.
I didn't think I was that fantastic. But it's a lot more revealing.
When you're doing death vocals, I think you're hiding a little behind
the growl. Growling is cool, and people dig it. But when you sing, that
to me is more emotionally exposing. I felt fairly exposed heading in
that direction. But I feel I'm getting better at it, and The Eternal
is getting stronger with every album. We still arranged all of our own
songs and did everything in a way that we wanted to do on 'Sleep Of
Reason', so those people saying that we sold out are the same people
that want to hear the same album over and over again."
That progression seems to be moving along at full swing
for The Eternal as Kelson reveals that work is well underway for the
band's third release. But it's hardly a quick follow up either, especially
given that it's been eight months since 'Sleep Of Reason' was first
released.
"If you think about it, between the last Cryptal
Darkness album (2001's 'Chapter II - The Fallen') and The Eternal's
debut, there was three years worth of writing there. And there was another
couple of month's worth of writing in-between the recording of 'The
Sombre Light Of Isolation' and it's eventual release. So when you're
not touring because the album hasn't been released yet, you're always
writing. So by the time we went on 'The Sombre Light Of Isolation' European
tour, I had a disc's worth of demos that I took with me that I had already
started working on. That contained about eight or nine songs. Within
three months of coming back from the European tour, we were in the studio
recording. So while it's been eight months since 'Sleep Of Reason' came
out, recording had finished three months before that. So it all adds
up to close to a year. You always have that time between the end of
recording and the album's release and you're not touring much. And that
has a lot to do with being here in Australia. We don't want to tour
too much and overplay the scene so when I'm not playing, I'm always
writing. I have a pretty good studio set up at home so I'm always dedicating
every minute I have to writing and recording new material. So far the
ideas haven't stopped so I'm slowly building a stockpile of material
ready for the next The Eternal album and some of the different projects
I have all over the place."
Just what can be expected sound wise from The Eternal's
third album remains to be seen. But what Kelson can guarantee is that
it will again move on from 'Sleep Of Reason', and that it's not likely
to see the light of day until midway through 2007.
"We set ourselves deadlines to a degree, so we plan
to be in the studio by November starting pre-production on the next
album. At this stage, we have thirteen complete songs for the next album.
I'm hoping to write sixteen and then pick the best ten. Since the release
of 'Sleep Of Reason', we've grown together as a band, especially with
the turmoil in the line up. Touring helps us sort out who was in the
band for real in that respect. Now we have a lot of a better idea of
what we're doing and where we're heading. So we're kind of ready to
move on from 'Sleep Of Reason' to a degree. Our new direction isn't
the same as 'Sleep Of Reason', but it's not shorter and catchier like
some people would expect either. I just completed another ten-minute
track. There's also one song that was there from demos before 'The Sombre
Light Of Isolation'. Before now, it just didn't seem to fit. We re-recorded
it from its original demo form and reworked it, and now it sounds like
it was meant to be on the next album. But most of the new album will
feature material that was recently written. We're not repeating ourselves.
We're experimenting with a lot of different methods of making things
sonically different. Not necessarily playing anything different, but
experimenting with different sorts of instruments, keyboards and analogue
stuff. We're talking about all the different sorts of music that we
like, and the way to achieve those things sonically. So in a way, there's
a bit of that '70s progressive rock mentality in us to want to make
sounds and trip out a little. We don't want to be a stoner rock band.
That won't happen, because we're a melodic metal act with a metal heart.
I won't allow this band to become Radiohead and make everything sound
weird for the sake of being weird. It will still be melodic metal but
it will be heading forward at all times, wherever that may be. Every
album is part of the transition. You don't want to get stuck. I've always
said that I never wanted to make 'The Sombre Light Of Isolation' part
two. I still enjoy playing those songs from the album and it was a very
positive time in our music career. I mean it gave us the chance to tour
Europe. I want to keep progressing. If people can't deal with that,
that's cool. I don't want to disregard fans. I just hope that they grow
with us and enjoy the sounds that we're making."
One aspect of The Eternal's past that is sure to make
a return is producer Endel Rivers (who is also guitarist for Black Majesty/Vanishing
Point), whose work on 'Sleep Of Reason' left a deep impression on Kelson.
"The making of 'Sleep Of Reason' was the most relaxing,
creative and professional time in the studio for us. It was a dream.
Everything went so smoothly. Rivers was just awesome to work with, down
to earth and we got along really well with him. He's an unbelievable
genius. I know everyone says that about the producer they use on any
given album, but he's actually an unbelievable musician and jaw dropping
as far as his own music and his concepts, without the ego. So much so
that you can kind of feel intimidated playing in front of him. What
he's brought to The Eternal has been invaluable. He is definitely part
of the sound change sonically rather than in the song writing sense.
He would actually sit there and produce, rather than just wishing the
session would end or not give a crap about the music. He was really
into it. It was amazing spending two weeks with him when I was recording
the vocals. Obviously it takes me a bit of work. I'm not a pitch perfect
singer! (Laughs) But he has a fantastic ear and he got the best out
of me. He was also always suggesting and encouraging the use of different
guitars in order to get different textures and participated like a band
member would. I think it's good sometime to have someone else's input
and perspective, and even better if it's someone like Rivers who produces
a lot of good bands. At the same time, we were very wary of not letting
Rivers overproduce us. For all the years that I've been making albums,
I just wanted one really clean, tight sounding album. To me, 'Sleep
Of Reason' is the cleanest and the tightest album that we've done. It's
not necessarily clean in the commercial sense, just cleaner in the guitars,
drums and the melodies. I like dirty stuff too but I just wanted a nice,
clean, smooth album this time. You see, Rivers is a European producer
and he understands the European sound. I'm not saying that we wants
us to be a European band, but a lot of Australian productions tend to
be a lot dryer sounding. A lot of the more affordable metal engineers
don't seem to use reverb. That's cool, but we were after that Anathema
sound, where everything sounds warmer and dream like. We wanted textures,
layers, and tastes. For the next album, I already know some of the things
I want to do in regards to the production to enhance and get things
more natural sounding. We don't want to be one of those bands with what
I like to call the Century Media production. It has a very triggered
drum sound and where everything is very digital sounding to the max.
It's all too perfect. We played around with some of the triggers on
the drums on 'Sleep Of Reason', but ultimately I still want to head
for that more acoustic rock band sound where everything is real. To
get the real good quality sound, it costs money, so you do the best
you can within your budget. We showed Rivers our budget, and he gave
us more than we could ask for. It's fantastic. But you learn so much
each time, and now I know have ideas of what I want to achieve in the
future. There's a very definite chance that we will be working with
Rivers next time."
Another interesting collaboration on 'Sleep Of Reason'
was The Eternal's decision to use renowned artist Travis Smith on the
artwork.
"I did the cover artwork on the first album but by
the time we were making 'Sleep Of Reason', it was a timing issue this
time around not to use more of my art. There was a shorter amount of
time to pull 'Sleep Of Reason' together. We had years to dwell on 'The
Sombre Light Of Isolation'. The concept was really clear on what it
was going to be, where as with 'Sleep Of Reason', it only came together
while we recording the album. In fact, we only had the track running
order sorted out prior to going into the studio, so the pre planning
of the concept wasn't figured out. It was weird, because we had just
got back from Europe and realised that we were going to go in to record
an album within three months! (Laughs) So we started recording it, and
we were really into it, and then we started talking about artwork. I
really couldn't motivate myself to come up with some artwork this time,
so I suggested that we get someone else's view on things. We thought
that we would give Smith a shot and see what he would come up with.
We came up with this idea of basing the artwork on Goya's etching 'The
Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters' (from 1799). It's a picture of a
person sleeping with the owls and bats all around him. So that was also
how we came up with the album title too. We liked the concept and we
have always liked Smith's work in the past, especially the whole Katatonia
and the ongoing raven's theme. That was always a pretty cool look. So
we thought we would give that a try. We told him to lose the owls and
go for a more sinister theme and he came up with the ravens kind of
coming in and out of the person sleeping. He kind of put a more sinister
twist on the original etching. It was good to get Travis because when
a lot of people are doing reviews, they tend to latch onto that kind
of stuff! (Laughs) We're thinking that direct marking isn't such a bad
juncture at this point of our career! (Laughs) And the cover artwork
ended up fitting well with the instrumental title track too. It all
just seemed to fit together thematically. I think its pretty cool. We
just got it all together just in time to hand it in to the label and
everything was ready to go. At the time I was wondering if it was cool,
but now it is what it is, and it's cool."
As The Eternal continue towards world domination with
two extraordinary releases to their name, I wondered if their label
Firebox Records had anything to say in regards to their continued success
and prospects for the future. I was surprised to find that if anything,
no news happens to be good news.
"They're Finnish, so they don't say much at all! (Laughs) They're
pretty quiet. If you don't get an e-mail from them, it usually means
that things are pretty cool. They may not be the biggest record label
out there, but they're slowly growing. It was great to see some of their
bands actually charting in the top forty in Finland and getting as high
as number four in the singles charts with a doom metal band. It's pretty
crazy. We've been with them for a while now - pretty much when they
were only a couple of years old really. At this point, we're technically
out of our contract. We haven't discussed the future as yet but I would
still like to work with them in one way or another. The one thing you
get with Finnish people is that if they say they're going to do something,
they'll do it. They pay the studio on time, release things on time and
ship things on time. They do everything they say they will. There's
no bullshit with Firebox Records and that's the Finnish mentality. In
Finland, when you meet someone who talks a lot, you tend to think they're
full of bullshit! (Laughs) You're always questioning what they're trying
to sell you. It's always yes and no. If they won't give us more money,
they won't. But they've been pretty good to the degree that where we
sometimes go over budget and past deadlines, they give us a little bit
of leeway. We met one of the guys when we toured over there last year
and he was a really good support to us. The only real problem with Firebox
Records in the past was with physical distribution. We had to intervene
and help ourselves out with a label here in Australia. But that's kind
of good because you get the feeling of being involved with the label.
I definitely support them and respect what they do, and respect that
they give me money to make records, and continue to do so. I wouldn't
say that we're the top sellers on their roster or anything, but they
still always feature us in ads when new albums come out. They're really
good with promotion. There's been plenty of interviews, and in big magazines
too. So in that respect, we get plenty of good reviews and interviews.
The only thing they can't help out much on is tour support. Firebox
Records tour support is more like a bit of extra promotion, help on
a few shows here and there and some extra CDs. There's no 'get on the
plane and come over'. Our touring doesn't affect album sales enough
for that yet. The same thing applies in regards to releasing a single.
In Finland, they know a Finnish band will chart and sell more copies
of a single than their album because they play all the time. For us,
we're just not there to support the single, so there's no point in releasing
a single. So in the end, Firebox Records offer what they offer, but
it's still better than some other labels. I have friends on some bigger
labels where they have to pay for their own recording budget, and wait
to get compensated from their label at a later date. We're lucky that
we don't have to do that. We book the studio time, and they pay for
it. I feel the relationship is good. We're not selling through the roof
by any means, but 'Sleep Of Reason' has sold more copies than our debut.
If they see that we can keep growing, we'll stick together. I'm pretty
happy to stay where we are because they have a good work ethic and one
that is similar to ours. We want to do this on a global scale and so
far Firebox Records' help towards that has been invaluable."
I would like to thank Mark Kelson for his generous
time, and making the interview possible.
For more information on The Eternal, check out -
http://www.the-eternal.com
© Justin Donnelly - justindonnelly@ozemail.com.au
