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How did the tour with Eyehategod go?

Yeah, it varies, but overall I think it went fairly well. Touring with Eyehategod has its pros and cons, but generally because of the climate of professionalism and pandering that there is these days, they become of sort of even more relevant as a band. For a band that plays fairly big venues with big sound systems, they have no interest in early load-ins and sound checks, or anything like that. And they're still pretty punk and unhinged in their own way, so it was good to be part of that.

They don't do any rehearsal or anything?

No, they don't do anything like that. At most they might back-line. They try to if they can get to the show before doors. Pretty straightforward. Some of the shows they cancelled at the very end of the tour, so that's kind of the disadvantage. So we played a couple that still went on despite them. So the couple that were cancelled we had to arrange house shows in place of.

Do you know why they cancelled?

Two separate reasons. They cancelled the last three shows because the third of those shows was cancelled on them, or they weren't going to get the money that was originally promised. So it was kind of like they would go home, and then those last three shows were after being home.

So it's like, what's the point?

Yeah, so. Then two shows in Florida because there was weather warnings. And I'm not from that area so I'm not used to it, but supposedly the highway that runs along the panhandle of Florida will get closed anytime there's a hurricane in that area, or it's just longer than I'd be used to. So they basically didn't want to get stuck in Florida in the event that the hurricane hit the coast. In the end, that issue didn't come up at all, but at the time they were just trying to play it safe. So those shows still happened for us in Florida, but probably a lot of people didn't come out knowing that Eyehategod wasn't going to play, so they were probably considerably smaller than if they had made it.

What prompted kind of a change in sound on Chronoclast? I know you could see hints of it sort of coming, where you guys were going to go, but I don't think anyone expected it to be as full blown as it is.

Well, I guess the record was written a long time ago, and then the stuff that was written before that was written even longer ago. Basically, the band got together and recorded and tried to do some touring and stuff, but everyone had other commitments, several years ago. So we took a two year almost hiatus where we played maybe two dozen shows in two years, and only three or four in the U.S. The rest were just locally. We had written that record...it was just gaps of time between writing, I guess. And even now, what I'm trying to say is, the Chronoclast record was written a couple years ago, so we intend on writing and recording this year, later. And who knows what that'll be like, just from having the huge gaps in being an active band.

Obviously it's got to change a little if you don't touch it for a while.

Yeah. I don't know, it was also written, like I said, without touring or anything. Being really isolated and segregated from playing shows or being around and...just being isolated in your basement.

I've read that the writing process for you guys is pretty intensive, actually. Obviously it is for any band, but I've heard it's more calculated.

Generally it's a group effort. Basically almost everything we do we do it as a collective in a practice situation. It's not like certain bands where a member will write a song and then bring it to the group, etc. So it's a mix of just...practicing, sort of someone starting something and just seeing if a part will come out, and calculating, like you said, we have a board where we would sort of predetermine certain things we'd want to do. Like with Chronoclast, a lot of the parts mirror each other on side A and side B, like it's written that this part will come back in another version at the exact same point on side B. And if you go through track by track, one through five, versus six through ten, it kind of works like that. Each track is, in a way, a mirror of the other side. So in that way it's calculated, but I don't know.

Would you have rather had the album divided up that way?

Oh no, it's fine. I think that...when we actually recorded we had certain pressures. We were under some economic restraints that lead to temporal restraints. So the actual editing was sort of left out. We ran out of time, basically. Maybe things could've been a little more cohesive if we had more time, but in general I think it turned out the way we had planned besides that.

As far as lyrical themes go, for anyone who's unfamiliar with them, could you give us a little insight into it?

Yeah, well, I can just give you the broad ideas of the record. There's two main, broad points. One was that time is a primary socializing tool, meaning that we all learned and are inculcated into society through learning certain time systems, you know we interact and socialize through those time systems. And two, that whether you're paying attention or not, time politics are power politics. Every system, model, and tool of time serves a certain bias and ideology. So the record is supposed to act as a reminder, it says in the introduction to The Chronoclast what is important is how is time perceived, controlled, exploited, institutionalized, and internalized. What are its biases and who benefits?

Can you give an example of some of the biases you're referring to?

One I always bring up is sort of...I may not be Christian, but I have to live under certain...you and I and everyone, North America at least, live under a Christian time system. In the model of the calendar of the seven day week.

Yeah, even in something as simple as Sundays...

Yeah. So that's just an example of a historical Christian imperialism and the bias in it.

Was the conceptual ideas around the philosophy of time, was that kind of a collaborative effort by everyone, or is that just one individual of the band?

It was originally something I brought to everyone a few years ago for the record. But it was something that I originally brought because it's something I know collectively everyone could be a part of, and everyone fully agrees with me on that. There's other things that I have personal interest in that I'm sure don't expand to everyone else in the band.

Are there any authors or anyone's work that sort of inspired the lyrics, specifically? Anything that sort of pushed you to compose an album centered around that concept?

In a way. It was probably about five or six years ago that I was really interested in a lot of what the record is about. There are books that are cited in the record, so I can mention some of those. There's no book in particular that follows the exact opinion of the record. There's no book that I can say I fully support in its entireity, but there are books that I think have some relevant things to say. Some of the books that I think are referenced are like, Time Wars and The Age of Access, by Jeremy Rifkin. Most of his books reference time in some way. Other one is The Seven Day Circle by Eviatar Zerubavel. Let me spell that for you. Anyway, he's got an interesting book out. And there's Empires of Time, by Anthony Aveni, Technopoly by Neil Postman...they all touch on things that I think are, like I say, somewhat relevant.

So they deal with more the society constraints that time puts on, or more of the metaphysical side of things?

They all deal with, I think, more tangible things. I don't think any of them are fully metaphysical or philosophical. It's more socially tangible.

How was working with Matt Bayles, and are you generally satisfied with the end result?

Yeah, I think as a group we support Matt in everything he does. We had met him before recording but weren't close or anything. Like in a lot of recording processes, we got to know him and how he works. He was living with us because he flew up to Ottawa to record at a studio here called Sound of One Hand, which I guess there have been other bands...Union of Uranus recorded there in 1994...so there's been a few Ottawa hardcore bands that have recorded there before, but not many. But it's one of the few studios in Ottawa that have at least some level of professionalism, in terms of being more legitimate. But Ottawa's a lot smaller of a city, especially when it comes to the music industry. It's a lot more limited than larger Canadian or American cities.

What's the next closest city to where you are?

The closest city is Montreal, and then Toronto is only four and a half hours. So both of those cities are extremely well-equipped, probably two of the better cities in North America.

Yeah, I'm sure they offer more but you don't want to have to commute back and forth all day.

Yeah. It was not within our budget either. So basically Matt flew out here and we did it in town. We did it in just under a two week period, every day. I think a lot of people who've worked with Matt say he pushes bands and is very strict. I think it's just what most people say about all producers or all engineers. But basically he has his way of doing things, like he likes to wrap towels around his head like a turbin and concentrate. And he just likes things to be tight. I think that's his...what he offers the most, and what he's most interested in. No, I take that back. Not most interested in, but what he does best. Probably one of the more mundane things he has to do. But just forcing bands to play tighter. And in a live-er setting, everyone playing at once, not drums with a click track or anything like that.

That's exactly what most people I talk to have said about him, is that they'd want to keep a take that was sort of sloppy, but he'd push them to do it again.

Yeah, he's extremely anal. A lot of the times, it's things that I couldn't hear a problem, I'd be like, "oh, that sounds great," and he'd just say, "listening....listening....no."

That's what he'd say?

Yeah, hah. He'd just pause you and say, "listening...." And then basically he'll make you do it again. [laughs] He can be a real ass too in terms of, if you're the one doing the actual recording, he loves putting on his mic and saying "oh, great job, let's try it again," and when he pulls off his mic he's like, "fucking asshole." [laughs] But it's all in fun. Anyway, Matt is totally reliable. He’s very supportive, absurdly patient, and has the benefit of generally being a good communicator. I don’t think he has a choice. That social equipment is a prerequisite for the job.

For a band that's usually mentioned along with Cult of Luna, Isis, Neurosis, I'd say one of the things that primarily sets you guys apart is the amount of variation in the songwriting. As far as, you don't have an album that's just droning, you pick up the pace and that sort of thing. What would you attribute the more aggressive material to?

Yeah, well, we were subject to our circumstances, so we were always, I think, much more affected by the local music community in Western Ontario and Quebec, especially in the 90's. So specifically, bands that we saw often, or played around here often, like Shotmaker and Drift. Bands like that. And...One Eyed God Prophecy. And so the original sort of inception of the band, although it doesn't sound exactly like any of them, was just sort of...to spawn something new from the same area. Which we're still coming from sort of a post-Rorschach world. And the other big band that sort of was influencing a lot of people around the area a decade ago or more was Neurosis. I remember when Neurosis used to actually tour that they'd play in Vermont, or Connecticutt, or Syracuse. And a couple times they'd play a show in Toronto, they never actually came to Ottawa. They were supposed to on the Enemy of the Sun tour, but it got cancelled. Anyways, I just remember it was pretty common for people to do trips to go see Neurosis anytime they came near. And that was twelve years ago. So that's the kind of long lasting band they've been. So, you know, you get sort of seeped into the general music community around here, and it's still sort of affected us in a way. But, I mean, the interest has always been also in that sort of Rorschach vein, so it's never been a band that's been interested in doing slow, Neurosis-type music.

I think the only band that I could make a decent comparison to is Breach, who I don't know if you're familiar with.

Not at all.

Oh man, you should listen to them. Relapse has some of their stuff around. They're definitely worth listening to. They're...I don't know...they've....just listen to it, trust me.

[laughs] Okay.

How did the deal with Relapse come about, and were they sort of your first choice, or did it just sort of fall into place?

I guess we had an interest in Relapse. It kind of came about from Drew, who used to run a mail order at Relapse. He had contacted us and talked to us before in the past. Basically, we went in to record, at the time we were recording without any label attachments, it was just out of our own interest just because we had songs we were sitting on and we wanted to record. I think a lot of it had to do with having Matt come and engineer, because Matt has worked with Relapse before, and at the time had been talking a lot to Mastodon and a couple of people on Relapse organizing a new recording for them and trying to schedule it. Basically, he was the one that suggested that we talk to Relapse about doing it. So we called them and sent something. Somehow they weren't opposed to the idea, and that's how it happened.

What do most of you guys do when you're not on tour or playing gigs around?

Pretty much only one of us has a really legitimate job. Mike, the drummer, he works as a sleep technician at a sleep lab at a mental health hospital in Ottawa. Basically his duties are undressing, strapping up, and monitoring patients in an overnight sleep lab for diagnosis and various research projects. A couple of us work part-time at record stores when we're in Ottawa. So we have various job troubles. Touring a lot obviously brings a strain on all that. A lot of us had to give up apartments and move, as well as store stuff. Some people live with their parents because of the restraints of touring now. But before other people did other things, like everyone had certain projects. I know Steve, the bass player, was involved in various environmental groups. His goal for a while was to stop the development of a hog factory farm in the area. But the same thing, from touring, he's had to sort of relinquish those duties.

Were there any other bands that you guys were previously involved in, or still are as side projects?

Somewhat. Steve, who I was just mentioning, was playing in a band called The Grey, who have an LP coming out later this year on Lovitt Records. It also has Matt from Shotmaker, and Matt and Hayden from Three Penny Opera in that band, but currently Steve isn't playing with them. They got someone else to fill in for bass for now. I guess we all have small projects. I was playing in sort of a thrash-punk band called Experiment In Terror, but that band isn't playing because of the same thing, Buried Inside touring, and the drummer is now drumming in Exhumed, so he's commuting to California every couple of months to practice or play shows with them. So that's pretty much it.

How did the tour with Coliseum come together?

That was mainly Ryan from Coliseum and Rich Hoak, who helps book at Relapse. It was somehow organized between the two of them. We had wanted to tour with Coliseum and we were lucky enough to convince them to do it.

Lastly, are there any bands you're currently into or really excited about?

Let me think. Well, I mean, everyone listens to divergent things. A lot of what we listen to in the van or together is older music. But currently, I like Wolfbrigade, or Disfear, and a lot of those Swedish Discharge-influenced punk.

Is there anything you care to add?

Thank you, of course, for the interest in calling.

And thank you for the interest in answering.