Tim Charles – Ne Obliviscaris

Ne Obliviscaris are one of my favourite bands in the world. Ever since I listened to ‘The Aurora Veil’ and the perfection created by the combination of heavy and melodic sounds, this band has never ceased to amaze me. Two years after the release of their debut album ‘Portal of I’, these Melbourne progressive metallers have returned with their second record ‘Citadel’ and I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with the awesome Tim Charles, violinist and clean vocalist of the band. We talked about the new album, their roaring success of a World Tour crowd-funding campaign, some behind-the-scenes tidbits about ‘Citadel’ and heaps more!

Greeting me like an old friend would ( I have met Tim a couple of times and he’s just the kindest soul! ) Tim updated me on what the band was up to at the moment. “ Hey! I’’m not too bad, everything’s going very well – we’re just looking forward to getting this album out and also looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks. We’re going to be getting back on the road, doing lots of touring and  new things with the band, so pretty excited!”

In celebration of the release of Citadel (out a week from now), Ne Obliviscaris are touring Australia with label mates from Quebec, Beyond Creation, which Tim and the band are really stoked about. “Yeah, we’re rehearsing a lot at the moment because I guess one of the things we haven’t had to do for a while is play a set where half the songs we’ve never played before, its great to have all this new material to add to the live shows, and it’ll be fun to see what everyone thinks of the new songs live too! We’re definitely really excited about getting back on the road and playing what looks like our biggest ever Australian tour.”

Tim also told me how the idea to have Beyond Creation as supports and why they invited them to do the tour. “Essentially because its our second album, we’ve done a lot of shows here in Australia before, we really wanted to try and do something bigger than what we had done before. We wanted to make the show special so we decided to look into the idea of we wanted to make the show special so we decided look at the idea of bringing out an international band to support us on this tour. And we looked at a few different bands but Beyond Creation were a band that we really love because a few of us in the band are really big fans of theirs, they’re on the same record label as us , their new album is out two weeks before ours and that really made sense to us. We figured our styles of music would work well together so we invited them over and with the help of Destroy All Lines we managed to get them on board!”

Getting to the making of their magnificent new album, Tim shared his thoughts first on how the creation of ‘Citadel’ differed from that of ‘Portal of I’ and how the two albums are quite different musically.  “I guess the making of the two albums have almost nothing in common because they were made in very different ways especially from the songwriting perspective. As far as the production goes, we recorded the album in the same studio, it was produced by Troy McCosker and myself again, mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren again. But with the writing it was really different – the first two songs that we wrote for Portal Of I were ‘Forget Not’ and ‘As Icicles Fall’ which we wrote in 2005 and the last song was ‘Of Petrichor Weaves Black Noise’ which we wrote in 2009 – so the album was written over a five-year period. Each song represents a different era of the band whereas with ‘Citadel’ we wrote most of it under a year which resulted in a bit of a different record – the album really flows from start to finish, we had so many ideas which is how we ended up having a 22 minute song opening the album. We started actively piecing them together where as with ‘Portal of I’,  every song was its own short story where as with ‘Citadel’ it’s one big story.

How is it one big story? “We sort of realized that we could make ‘Painters’ work all as one thing and then when we were writing ‘Pyrrhic’ and ‘Devour Me Colossus’ – those songs had some similarities. The last chord of Pyrrhic is in the same key as ‘Devour Me Colossus’ and those two went really well together. Essentially  there’s a break halfway through the album after the acoustic Part three and so that’s basically the first half of the album. Then the guitar screech in ‘Pyrrhic’ kind of signals the start of the second half and that’s pretty much it; it flows all the way to the very end, straight through.”

We also spoke in detail about the writing process for the album which was the result of a collaborative effort from all sic members but mainly from one member in particular. “I guess one thing that was different on this album was that our lead guitarist Benji  was heavily involved – the first ideas we started working on  for the songs were based on some ideas that Benji had and I think that really influenced the direction of the album because some of the riffs that he had come up with were different to anything we had done before. We absolutely loved it – for us, if we like it, it’s in we don’t really care what it sounds like as long as everyone in the band likes it. So he had about four minutes of a song written at home and then he brought that in, we worked on that and then rehearse any week we went on tour. We’d always get together, sit down, put in our thoughts – we always had a song that we were working on. Once we’d work it out, and knew where we wanted to go with it, everyone would go their own separate ways and have an idea of what they needed to do during the week.  So it was really that collaboration of working together as well as on our own and then piecing everything together plus definitely, the influence of Benji who wrote more than anyone else on the record.”

What intrigued me the most when they announced ‘Citadel’ was the album artwork , the name of the album, song titles and just the mysticism behind it all. “Well, the titles, lyrics, artwork etc was all done by our vocalist Xen who does an amazing job with that side of things. After a while, the music we were writing started flowing together so well and I started talking to Xen about how the music was almost like a concept album and whether we could tie in a theme for the music and the lyrics to reflect how unified the music is and so instead of doing a concept album like a story, which a lot of bands do, this album is  more based around the theme of the Citadel which the way Xen describes it is that the three tracks on the album symbolize   the points of a triangle; there’s a symbol for fire and each song is a psychological and emotional exploration  each of the songs relates to these sorts of things. For instance, ‘Painters Of The Tempest’ is an anti-war song while  ‘Pyrrhic’ is about the struggle for perfection in something and the sacrifices that have to be made to reach it. ‘Devour Me Colossus’ then explores that battle of psychological issues and trying to overcome these moments with  clarity – in the end reminding us that there will always be black holes in our life.”

This band’s tremendous achievements doesn’t stop with just two outstanding albums – in the quest of doing a world tour in support of ‘Citadel’, Ne Oblivscaris called on the help and support of all their adoring fans – the response to which was stunning. ‘When we set it up and had only 60 days to reach our target we didn’t even consider the possibility that we would reach that target in only 38 hours or that we would beat Eskimo Joe’s Australian record. We ended up with more than $86,000 which truly blew us away. We feel extremely fortunate and humbled by the fact that we have such an incredible fan base across the world who helped us get the finances to be able to do this huge world tour. It’s coming together really well and we’re all extremely excited about it!”

They’re also playing their first gig in Israel which Tim is psyched about! “We’re doing this one show in Israel on our way to Europe. It’s really exciting because we’ve got a bunch of things in the works for Europe for their summer – a few festivals! We’re basically looking at playing in as many places as we possibly can and really that was the whole idea behind the campaign – to not just go to the US or Europe and try to do some very different countries and cities. We’ve got plans for Asia as well – and India is definitely on our list! We’re actually talking to some Indian promoters at the moment!” *died*

The interview got more exciting when I brought up Soundwave 2015 and got Tim to share his thoughts on NeO being the first band  announced on the line-up for the festival next year – a massive achievement for any Australian band! “We definitely hoped that it was coming, we knew sort of late last year that AJ Maddah had been put on to us and that he was a fan of the band. Also we had a new album coming out and we knew AJ was a fan of ours but with things like that you never take anything for granted because there haven’t been very many Aussie metal bands on SW. But when we managed to get announced as the first band and all the publicity we were definitely honoured and excited to be part of a festival that we attend pretty much every year ourselves as fans so it’ll be great to be performing out on such a big stage!”

Timmy had one last message to all the NeO fans around the world! “I just want to say a massive thank you for the amazing support you’ve given us over the years especially this year with the crowd funding campaign which really will make a huge difference in the band’s career and help take us to the next level. As for ‘Citadel’ it’s out in stores on November 7th , buy it and support the band and hopefully we’ll see you on the road at a show, sometime very soon! Cheers!”

Catch the amazing Ne Obliviscaris on their Australian tour along with the mighty ‘Beyond Creation’ in support of ‘Citadel’ on the dates below! Grab your tickets at http://www.oztix.com.au/ or http://tickets.destroyalllines.com/

Friday, 21st November
170 Russell, Melbourne (18+)

Saturday, 22nd November
Uni Bar, Adelaide Lic (AA)

Wednesday, 26th November
The Basement, Canberra (18+)

Thursday, 27th November
Bald Faced Stag, Sydney (18+)

Friday, 28th November
The Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle (18+)

Saturday, 29th November
The Brightside, Brisbane (18+)

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