Interviews : Untruth (Mark van de Beek) – 06/12/2009

A heavily active member of the Melbourne live heavy metal scene, Melodic Death Metal band Untruth are gaining a good following through their powerful live performances and their recently released EP titled ‘Act 1: The Absence of Beacons’. Metal Obsession recently caught up with drummer Mark van de Beek!

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Metal Obsession: Welcome to Metal Obsession, and to start off with the obligatory question, did you partake in Movember, and will you be attending Decembeard?
Untruth: Glad to be here. I believe our bassist Ryan and vocalist Ben got involved in the mighty movember, but the rest of us would have had to combine all of our facial to get something resembling a mo’. I personally am growing right now for decembeard, next years that is.

MO: Given the band has all but exclusively played to the Melbourne hordes so far, could you give a brief introduction to our interstate readers as to who and what exactly your band is?
U: Well, i suppose you could categorise us as a melodic death metal band, but after playing a lot of shows to both a metal and hardcore audience, some would argue that we have ‘core’ aspects in our music, whether we intended to put them there or not. We’ve been together for about 3 years, and have just released our debut Ep ‘Act 1: The Absence of Beacons’. We’re all about playing for the love of music and metal and having a great time doing so.

MO: You recently launched your debut EP at iconic Melbourne venue The Esplanade alongside The Berzerker and Be’lakor, how was the evening and how has the reaction to your new material been?
U: That show was A-MAZING! It was such a great bill and the crowd size and response was great for us. We know the guys from Be’Lakor fairly well after playing a number of shows with them, and The Berzerker killed it as always. We played through our entire debut EP and got a great reaction from the crowd and from all the other bands, we couldn’t have asked for a better night. The feedback from the brand new song we’re playing has been nothing but positive, it’s always nice to hear.

MO: Some of the bands guitar melodies and rhythms are very ‘Gothenburg’ sounding, clearly a major influence on the band. What is the writing process for the band in terms of initial concepts and inspiration?
U: Indeed, well we’re all massive euro-metal (if you will) fans so basically we just do a Jet and find a riff we like and re-use it. Haha. No, initially the Taylor brothers, our guitarists, bounce some riffs and structural ideas off each other, when they have agreed, or semi-agreed, on something they bring it in to the practice space and we work from there. Inspiration wise, it runs from metal, to rock, folk, acoustic, blues, even reggae.

MO: The genre to me, with its layered melodious guitars often comes across a little messy in the live environment, even for bands that have been around for many years. You guys certainly sound great on your debut EP, with well mixed material, but how have you noticed the band coming together in a live environment since the bands inception?
U:  From the time we started playing as a 4 piece until our recent shows at the Espy and Hifi as a 5 piece there has been a phenomenal improvement. Obviously over time you get tighter and better as musicians, and the writing process for us has become better so you can realise when a riff is too busy or when vocals or drums could fit better with a certain passage of music and you can change that.

We have recently settled on a permanent live sound tech, a good friend of the band’s, and so far, he has done his job very well, we’ve heard a lot of good feedback about our live sound. So hopefully all continues to go well and we get our intended sound across both recorded and live.

MO: Has the band got any immediate plans to tour interstate, or will you be biding your time in Melbourne, writing a full length album perhaps?
U: We’re starting to organise some interstate stuff right now for early next year. We can’t go into much detail but we’d definitely deciding on it. We’ll try and fit as much in for the first 6-8months of next year and then most likely sit down and write for our debut album towards the end of next year.

MO: You supported Static-X in Melbourne on their recent Australian tour. How did the opportunity come to be?
U: I was emailed the offer from the promoter a month or so before the show date. I’m assuming it was just word of mouth that that show came about for us, as we hadn’t yet sent them a copy of our debut EP or really spoken to them at all. We were extremely grateful to be given that sort of show and opportunity so we obviously accepted and busted our asses making sure it was one of our best performances. We ended up having a ball! Great energy and crowd response and just had a lot of fun in general.

MO: Any local metal bands that you’ve played with or caught live that we should know about?
U: The one band that always stands out, whether we play with them or just go and see them, is Ne Obliviscaris. Those guys are simply amazing! If they don’t go somewhere with their music I’m quitting the music industry all together haha.

MO: Thanks a lot for your time, and all the best for the future!
U: Our pleasure, thanks for having us. Hopefully we’ll catch up for a beer soon! 😀

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Band: Untruth
Date: 06/12/2009
Origin: Melbourne, Australia
www.myspace.com/untruth1