Interviews : Beyond Terror Beyond Grace (Steve) – 30/05/2010

Sydney grind band Beyond Terror Beyond Grace have been a frequent topic on many metal forums lately with varying rumors flying around about their apparently disbanding and legal issues. Now, Steve sets things straight.

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Metal Obsession: Let’s set things straight with all of the break-up rumours and various conflicting stories going around the internet lately. Tell us the real story, what has changed, and what it means for the band.

Steve: OK, first things first, Ben Schueler and Barton Ware are no longer in the band. This was a long time coming, with both guys, especially the latter, getting involved less and less with band related stuff over the last 12 months. Circumstantially and personally there were many disagreements and differences ; Ben had a kid and was something like 16 years older than the rest of us, and never practised in his own time or rehearsed, which meant zero improvement, and lead to bad playing live, which brought all of us down. It was never a long term prospect, particularly after we had put so much effort into the last record. Barton had copious amounts of other priorities, including another band as of last year, and didn’t care about rehearsal either, and also failed to deal with any band related issue in an adult way.  All their enthusiasm and drive was gone, and plodding along with two absolute dead weights who contributed nothing but bad vibes was not something we wanted to do for the rest of our lives. Who in their right mind would? We all have external priorities, but it’s whether you care enough to put in the hard yards where it matters.

Basically, after the Ulcerate tour we had a discussion about rehearsing more and that prompted Ben to quit the band, which is one of many ridiculous incidents we had with that guy. After he tried to rejoin a few weeks later, we informed him that he would (as per his request) no longer be involved in the band. After Barton was also informed, he decided that it was all too much and he would rather not be involved either.

There was a bit of backlash on the internet when it became apparent they would be replaced and the band would continue, with the ex members plus their solitary crony making full use of their new found free time by posting that the band had broken up wherever possible. What was the saddest thing is that they started masquerading as myself and Alex (bass/vocals) on all these forums, spreading rumours and basically just trying to derail things – they failed to generate a response from us, and thus tried to manufacture one to bring us down to their level. Anonymous emails were sent to our labels/booking agents (who luckily just thought it was funny), it all just got out of hand. Both of them tried to prevent the band from continuing by threatening us with legal action, it was an absolute circus for a while. Bitterness, jealousy and emotions basically just took over – and all it did was just totally validate our decision to move on without them.

What none of them realised is that they just looked desperate and sad, trying to argue the toss in ‘public’ like that. One of these guys has a fucking kid, for fucks sake. Things may have turned out different if either of them had spent as much time practising as they did bitching on metal forums after the fact. Despite all that, I would like to say that I wish those guys all the best of luck with whatever it is they’re doing (forum posting aside).

The good news is while all this was going on we were rehearsing solidly. Within just a few days of them leaving we had two new members, Scott Heldorf and Blake Simpson, which starts off the next and most exciting chapter of the band.

MO: Will the new members have much of an impact on the sound of the band, and if so, what new influences will they bring in?

S: Both guys are very accomplished musically. Scott is a king-shit guitarist who has added a huge new dimension to the band. Blake is without a doubt the best young extreme metal vocalist in Australia. He also plays the guitar, quite well too.  Both of them have brought the atmosphere and ferocity of the band to whole new levels and allowed us to realise a lot of the potential we knew we had as a band. Best of all, they are great dudes to hang out with. It’s just good times when they’re around. That’s probably the most important thing of all. You can’t be in a band with people you don’t get along with, at least that’s what it’s like for us. It’s just a whole new band dynamic, and musically we couldn’t be happier with how things have progressed. It’s very exciting.

MO: So what’s next for the band?

S: We have a European tour with Cattle Decapitation, Incantation and Gorod throughout July, which should be killer. We’ll be playing shows in England, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, France, plus a few more countries on that tour, which will be great for us. We’ll also tour America at the end of the year, which is still being sorted out at the moment. We have already begun writing the new album, which is already shaping up to be a monster. We’ve allowed a lot more diverse influences to come in, with bands like Gorguts, Ulcerate, Leviathan, The Amenta, Arkhon Infaustus and Glorior Belli being stuck on our various Ipods. A lot more atmosphere, a lot more black metal and death metal influence, but still delivered within a grind-core framework, albeit an unconventional framework.

MO: Looking back a bit, you released your new album ‘Our Ashes Built Mountains’ earlier in the year. The album is a big conceptual step-up with a lot of different influences and ambient/noise sections. What made the band take that extra step?

S: Well, for starters we didn’t want to make an album that we would look back on later and cringe. We do that when we listen to the first one and we tried to avoid that at all costs. Whilst we didn’t accomplish everything we wanted to in hindsight, I think we did take a big step up, and we are proud of how it came out. What we hinted at throughout the album with songs like ‘Husk’ as well as the ambient sections is something we’ll expand on for the next CD. Conceptually, the themes and motifs lie in the samples/sound-scapes and artwork rather than the lyrics themselves, which were quite old in some cases. It all came down to the fact that we wanted to create something unique and stand out from the pack. There are more gore grind bands out there than grains of sand on the earth, and they’re great, but they already do their thing, and we want to do something different.  Tim Carr it must be said was instrumental in helping us take that step, and was a total joy to work with. He’s the man and young bands in particular should definitely seek him out, it’s well worth it.

MO: Can you see yourselves expanding even futher on those different sounds and ideas on future recordings?

S: Definitely.  As I mentioned, we want to stand out from the pack. Grindcore is a very stale, boring, and recycled style of music in all honesty and is in desperate need of a huge upheaval, and I really don’t care who doesn’t want to hear that. We would love to be the band that plays a part in sparking that upheaval, and the last album and the new one will hopefully reflect that. No album we make is going to sound the same, because we want to continue to develop and evolve as a band. No decent band sounds the same on every album (except AC/DC). But listen to Pink Floyd, U2, The Cure and even metal bands like The Amenta and Psycroptic with Observant have changed their sound from album to album, and it’s awesome to vary things up.

MO: In particular, the track “Murakami” was a huge departure from the rest of the album. How did that song come about? Was it a conscious decision to put something completely different like that on there, or did the track just come about on it’s own?

S: From memory we’d been having an argument about something, an occurrence that was all too frequent with the old line-up unfortunately, and we fluked upon the chord sequence and it all just came from there. We were trying to do something different, but not so different so that it sounded like another band altogether. If you listen to the main riffs, it’s actually quite similar to other songs of ours, just played slower and not distorted. We knew that when we listened to the final mix it would polarise people a bit, but it’s cool that people seem to like it. For our first foray into that sort of territory, it was cool, but we’d like to expand on it much further for the next CD.

MO: You had Tim Pope of The Amenta contribute several soundscapes to the album. Do you plan on continuing to work with him in the future or was that just a one-off guest for this album?

S: We’d love to work with him again if he’s down!! Tim is a genius at that kind of stuff. He sent us the tracks whilst on tour in the US, and put a huge amount of time and effort into getting it perfect, which we really appreciated. The tracks he made added a whole new dimension to the album, and gave it a distinctive edge, which was exactly what we were going for. I put overdubs on all the tracks he sent, like various samples and the like, but not much was really needed. Again the ambient tracks are something we will try and expand on more on the next release. The Amenta guys are all great dudes who have helped us out a hell of a lot. Anyone who doesn’t know them really needs to buy both their albums.

MO: When you hit the live scene again, do you plan on including many of the noise/ambient sections in your live set. Or will you be sticking to a more full-on grind assault?

S: The live set we’ve been rehearsing is all about variation – musical light and shade that all fits within a consistent atmospheric framework. A live band has to make a statement with what they’re doing, otherwise they’ll just be forgotten by an audience. We on the other hand, want to make an impression when we play. We’ll be incorporating everything from ambient tracks to atmospheric black metal. Touring Australia with Ulcerate was a big wake-up call for us – every time they played they blew people away, whether it be musically, atmospherically, or instrumentally. The lights would dim, Mike would start his guitar effects, and you just knew something awesome was about to happen. Those guys made a big impression on us, and the way they used variation in their set is something we really dug, plus they are all mad dudes too.

MO: Unlike so many grind bands, you seem to have taken a more serious lyrical direction. What are the themes present in the album, and is there an underlying concept that flows through them all?

S: The themes of the album are based around the idea of rebirth, and rising above negativity. All the art, sound-scapes and samples reflected this, but the lyrics didn’t really touch on it, or have any motifs. The lyrics are important to the band, and have been since early on. A tonne of bands do porn or gore lyrics but we don’t want to go in that direction. There’s a lot of influence taken from writers like Sylvia Plath, T.S Elliot, Albert Camus, those sort of people. The lyrics on …Ashes are very abstract in parts, more direct with others. However, if you’re looking for a motif or recurring theme amongst the lyrics, you probably won’t find one. I doubt Barton would able to put hand on heart and actually tell you what the lyrics meant. There’s no denying that there were some great lines delivered by him and Alex though. We are already working on lyrics and themes for the next album, which will have a lot more conceptual unity across the board, which we’re very excited about.

MO: Moving away from BTBG, what other bands in the Australian grind scene would you recommend are worth people having a listen to?

S: Bands like our label mates Blood Duster and Captain Cleanoff kind of go without saying. A Million Dead Birds Laughing from Melbourne are a cool band with a lot of potential. Check out The Day Everything Became Nothing, Doubled Over, Agents of Abhorrence also.

MO: To finish things off; I noticed one of the press reviews on your Myspace stated “The Australian metal scene is currently without an identity, without a binding sense of community that could promote it to international notoriety.” What’s your opinion on that, and how do you see the Australian metal scene in general?

S: I agree wholeheartedly. There is a hell of a lot potential with bands out here, but so few bands are actually creating an impression both nationally and internationally. For me, this is because of two things. Some bands can’t be fucked writing good songs, and other bands write great songs and just can’t be fucked doing the rest, like investing time and effort into taking it further. Then they complain on forums and whine about how it’s too hard, and why don’t people give a shit about my band. I find a lot of the metal community to be self defeatist, and just shoot themselves in the foot regardless of how good they are. We have always copped shit by people who think they know, that we are ‘too serious’ and ‘too ambitious’. What I’d like to ask these people is what the fuck is the point in plodding along to the same shitty venues with the same bands ad nauseum for the whole time you’re in a band? We sure as hell don’t want to waste our lives doing that, and we make absolutely NO apologies for wanting to avoid it. Sure it’s hard, with time, effort money etc, but all those things are secondary when you realise it’s all for the thrill of taking opportunities, and playing music you’ve written on the biggest stage possible. If I asked you, would you want to go play shows overseas with extremely influential bands in front of big crowds, and see the world while you’re doing it, any normal person would want to do that. But some people just have this major problem with seeing other people do exactly that. This is not to say the Australian scene sucks or whatever, there are some great bands with a lot of potential. But there has to be an attitude change within the metal scene in this country. Instead of sitting at home, hunched over a computer in your mums basement bitching about ‘myspace faggotry’ or any of that garbage, why don’t you get off your ass and do something that matters? Bands like The Berzerker, Psycroptic, The Amenta, The Red Shore, Ulcerate and Dawn of Azazel have proved, it is possible to make an impact overseas, even coming from this remote part of the world. These are the bands that paved the way for bands like us, and us going to Europe in July on such a strong lineup wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for these bands flying the flag. There’s something to be said for growing a pair and just doing it, you know?

http://www.myspace.com/beyondterrorbeyondgrace

Reviewer: Mitch Booth
30th May 2010