6/13/2023 0 Comments Stream cast away![]() So I’ve had the depths of those illnesses in the past few years. When you deal with anxiety and depression even leaving the house can be a chore. And, I’ve been dealing with my own issues liked depression. When the album was coming together it was a struggle at times to go out the door. I feel like I’ve reached a point in my life where dying is a regular thing. PT: My grandfather passed away and there have been some friends who passed away from suicide or addiction issues. I understand that there were some difficult personal circumstances for band members in the lead up to Cast Away Souls? I don’t think people have totally lost the ability to stick with something like an album. Some people do seek out immersive experiences like long-form video games. There are streaming services where people share five-second music clips. Now, people are taking five seconds or going on Snapchat. PT: People are distracted to the point that they often just look for parts that they like within songs. It should take you different places but on a common river or thread.ĭo you feel like records have lost that ability to tell a story? PT: We want the album to work as a whole – it should be a journey. I hope people will be enthusiastic about the different types of styles and sounds that are represented on this album. For us, it’s not as much about trying something new as this is what comes out. NV: There are a limited number of colors to the music and it’s all about how people approach it. Now, when someone hands me a doom album I get apprehensive because I think all of the songs will be twenty minutes long. Sabbath is still my reference for doom metal. With the harmonizing, it definitely helps they we have two people who really know music. PT: I will come up with a vocal melody and a basic idea for a riff and we sketch and work around it. Most of the time with the writing it is more of a mnemonic process for us. NV: I’m not sure how much reading music goes into playing in bands. Nate and Leila have conversations and read sheet music and laugh about it. They have pushed me to learn more about music and get better. Drums are my first instrument and I’ve been working on my vocals in the past few years. You are both multi-instrumentalists, correct? PT: Nate and I love metal but we like other kinds of music, too, and we are always willing to look at other genres. Neither of us wanted to be like “we are a doom band” or “we are a thrash band.” We didn’t want to be a genre band. We’re always willing to let something fail to find the common wavelength and then shape it into songs. NV: There’s an openness to experimentation. There have been other people involved in the songwriting but it’s always been us. PR: The core of the band has always been Nate and me. We have a whole buried album of stuff, although some of it has been repurposed. NV: The first iteration of Cardinal Wyrm was finalized around 2011 or 2012. It still wasn’t a band – it was two of us jamming – but it was something. We eventually got a space when we thought it could go somewhere. So we started playing at Nate’s house along with some electronic drums. We both had been in bands before but I hadn’t gotten anything together here. We’d meet up now and again and finally decided we should start playing music, not just talking about it. Nate was wearing a Candlemass shirt and we started talking about music. PT: It was both of our ex-wives. We met at a potluck, funnily enough. NATHAN VERRILL: Someone said ‘you should talk to him because he is into metal.’ (laughs). But it wasn’t too long before we start playing. Some of the songs were actually based on older ideas. We first sort of went through the riff bin and then mixed ideas. We often get together and work on riffs and ideas. I moved here in 2006 and we started jamming in about 2007. ![]() ![]() We’ve worked together for a lot of years. ![]() Nate and I wrote the bulk of the material on this record because Leila was involved with a bunch of other bands. In terms of writing, it was earlier than that. It just takes that long and there were extenuating circumstances. PRANJAL TIWARI: About this time last year. When did this album start coming together? You can order Cast Away Souls in digital and physical formats. ![]() Decibel is streaming the entire album below while you listen to it read our Q&A with band founders Pranjal Tiwari (drums and vocals) and Nathan Verrill (guitars) about the challenges they faced in the run-up to the record and the addition of powerhouse Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum and Hammers Of Misfortune). Their new record Cast Away Souls – due this Friday – contains sections and sounds that you would never associate with doom like vocal harmonies. The end result is an engrossing listen that touches on the transience of life and the universal feeling of being stuck with nowhere to go. The Oakland band Cardinal Wyrm offers a dilettante’s take on doom. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |