Interviews : Ulcerate (Jamie Saint Merat)

New Zealand’s Ulcerate have never been a band to write easy-listening music, and with their latest masterpiece, the dissonance has been turned to eleven. Eerie, oppressive and challenging, The Destroyers Of All is a unique experience within the death metal realm, and one that is bound to truly come to life on the stage. So, with the band heading our way for a few Aussie shows this weekend, Metal Obsession had a quick chat with drummer Jamie Saint Merat.

———————————-

Metal Obsession: Straight onto the new album, it seems the much heavier focus on dissonance and atmosphere has surprised a lot of people, in a good way. Was this a conscious shift in direction or simply how the music developed naturally?

Jamie Saint Merat: Yes and no – yes in the sense that we certainly wanted to progress that side of the sound, but no in the sense that I don’t really see it as anything but a natural step forward, given what we’ve done in the past.  We just literally just started jamming on ideas, and what came out came out.

MO: It seems to have really boosted the prominence of the drumming as well, both due to the style change and the guitars being pushed a little further back in the mix. Did you approach your writing and playing any differently for The Destoyers Of All compared to the previous releases?

J: I might be biased in that I mixed the album, but the guitars for me aren’t really any lower in the mix than before, or at least not to my ear – there is a little more transparency between instruments due to some new audio gear we acquired, so it might give off that illusion. You’re not the only person to say that though, so maybe I’m just deaf haha.  Drum-wise, my approach has always been the same, I think now I’m a lot more comfortable with subtleties and fluidity, which is just coming with more and more experience.  Still approaching the kit the same way as I always have, very improvisational and trying to keep things loose and interesting, and with as much melodic sensibility when it’s called for as I can.  Hopefully at least anyway.

MO: How does Ulcerate as a band generally go about writing an album?

J: We flesh out the initial melodic and rhythmic ideas outside of the rehearsal room, just myself and guitarist Michael Hoggard trying out different ideas.  Then we’ll take those roughs into the rehearsal room and start working out the finer details of the drumming and how parts transition through to each other.  We track parts into a DAW to review later on, and maybe cut out parts that are worthless and start to get a feel for how the song is coming together.  Once the shell of the track is written, we’ll loosely track everything from start to finish, and start working on counterpoint for guitars/bass, and lyrics and vocal patterns follow this.  We’re really methodical and meticulous/ruthless when it comes to what stays and what doesn’t.

MO: Do you have any personal predictions on the direction further Ulcerate material could head in?

J: Hard to say at this stage, we’re still coming to terms with the ‘Destroyers’ material with regard to objectivity and distance.

MO: As far as death metal goes, you guys certainly have one of the more unique sounds around at the moment. Are there any particularly influential bands that you can attribute that to?

J: We got our starting cues from Immolation, Gorguts, and early Cryptopsy for their bat-shit wild song structuring.  Immolation and Gorguts were the first death metal bands we had heard that weren’t just infatuated with playing fast all the time, and that had a vibe that could stand up to black metal in terms of an evil, desperate-sounding dissonant atmosphere. Today is the Day was also fairly high on rotation when we were youngsters trying to figure things out, due to the extremely fucking unsettling vibe they manage to give off.

MO: Have you read many reviews and public thoughts on the new release? Is the reaction what you expected?

J: Yeah we’ve read and been alerted to a lot of the reviews, and bits and pieces of squabbling on internet forums haha.  You never know what the reaction will be, you kind of just do your thing and hope for the best.  But the overall consensus is pretty humbling, a lot of people seem to really identify with what we’re attempting to do, which is really awesome, considering we just sit down and write stuff we’d like to hear, and really pay very little attention to what’s ‘in’ or ‘out’ sonically and trend-wise.

MO: You’re making your way back over to Australia very soon. For those who unfortunately missed your last tour here (myself included!), what can people expect from an Ulcerate live show?

J: Well we aim to replicate as faithfully as possible the desperate, oppressive and bleak sound that we try to capture on recordings, and hopefully just supply an immersive wall of noise for an hour or so. For these upcoming Aussie shows we’re doing 4 tracks from the new album and 3 ‘Everything is Fire’ tracks, so it should be something a little different from what we presented in February last year.

MO: We don’t hear a lot about the New Zealand metal scene over here. Are there any particularly great bands that you would reccomend people check out?

J: Sure – Witchrist, Diocletian, Creeping, Vassafor, Entrails.

MO: Across the globe, what were some of your favourite releases of 2010?

J: Year of No Light – Ausserwelt, Deathspell Omega – Paracletus, Svart Crown – Witnessing the Fall

Cheers for taking the time to answer the questions, any last words for your Australian fans?

Thanks for the continued support and interest in the band, it means a lot! We’re really fucking looking forward to getting back over the ditch and airing some of the new material.

To give Ulcerate a listen, click on these words.

For full tour information, click on these words instead.