Interview conducted by Carcassbomb
Eternal Storm made one hell of a splash in 2019 with Come The Tide, a sophisticated album that made its way into many end of year lists including my own. I still listen to it every week and cannot recommend it enough. It’s cumulative of it’s inspirations while also maintaining its own identity throughout. There’s a strong sense of voice across this album matched by strong musicianship and song writing. Come The Tide is essential listening for fans of Swallow The Sun, Opeth, Amorphis or anything good that has the duality of melody and death growls. This is an exceptional release in a long living genre.
You can find the album and merch here on bandcamp.
Now for my interview with Daniel and Jamie from Eternal Storm. We talk about it all, from the song writing to the artwork, member changes and the future of the project.
Left to right: Jaimie, Kheryon, Mateo & Daniel
Thank you talking to Noob Heavy about your new album ‘Come The Tide’, which is Eternal Storm’s debut LP. How was the journey of getting here and where did it begin?
Daniel: Hello! First of all, thank you for spending your time on this interview, we really appreciate it!
The first drafts for what would become ‘Come the Tide’ came up around the time the band started to roll (late 2009) while we worked on our debut EP ‘From the Ashes’ as well, that’s when we wrote some of the parts of an early version of ‘The Mountain’. We resumed the writing sessions for the record in 2013 but it was during 2014 and 2015 that the majority of the material was created. Unfortunately, we couldn’t record it until early 2017 as we parted ways with our former drummer and, as always, it takes a while to work with a new line-up, teach the songs to the new member, re-arrange them to his playing style and also we had to save enough money to afford the studio we wanted to book as well…first world problems, as people usually say, hahahaha.
During that time we had a few drummers, did an EP, a 4-way split and played a good bunch of shows. I know it sounds like a long period of time but the band never ceased its activity, we were always working on the new album and polishing our sound, and some of us were also busy with our other projects.
What are some of the biggest influences on your writing process, musical or otherwise?
Daniel: We all listen to a huge variety of genres, so it’s always a hard time to choose just a few bands. The classic melodic death/black metal from the early to mid 90’s were very influential to the core of our sound, from the big names like Dissection, Dismember, Edge of Sanity, Hypocrisy, Dark Tranquillity, At The Gates or the first In Flames records to more obscure bands like Sacramentum, Eucharist or Gates of Ishtar. Some more traditional death metal like Death, Morbid Angel, Vader or Bloodbath (plus Gojira, Strapping Young Lad etc) also were quite important for our most extreme parts, and other bands like Amorphis, Opeth or Sentenced were always among our favourites. Black metal bands (Emperor, Enslaved, Immortal, Keep of Kalessin, the black metal albums from Ulver, Rotting Christ) were always present, and so was doom in the vein of Katatonia, Daylight Dies, October Tide, Rapture, Anathema or Paradise Lost. We can’t deny some classic metal acts like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne or Megadeth also inspired us to try our best in order to come up with solid riffs, memorable melodies and try to focus on the song as a whole, instead of displaying some technique we most likely don’t have. And I can’t forget about Vidres A La Sang, one of our biggest influences even to this day who also had very solid song structures!
As we started to expand our sound, we started trying different things and gathering influences from more atmospheric acts like Alcest, Cult of Luna, God Is An Astronaut or Neurosis, who became very important to our sound, but also proggier stuff like Porcupine Tree, Pain of Salvation or Riverside. Even non-metal bands like Radiohead, Placebo, Thrice or Massive Attack appeal to some of us and I would say have left their print on some of our stuff. See? I could be mentioning bands for years! 🙂
Jaime: As Daniel said, we listen to many different styles of music, but I’d say that at the core of our sound there’s still the Scandinavian scene from the 90’s, from black and death metal stuff like Dissection, Vinterland, Eucharist or Emperor to more proggy things like Opeth and more modern acts like Insomnium or In Vain. As time went by we let ourselves be influenced by other styles of music and tried to find a way to inject them into our extreme metal core, so now we also get inspiration from post rock and post metal bands like Russian Circles or Isis, the 70’s prog of King Crimson or Pink Floyd, ambient and electronica like Solar Fields, and some bits of blues and jazz.
Your style of melodic death metal incorporates a lot of interesting elements, even jazzy instruments, what is the wider musical background of the band’s members?
Jaime: None of us has any formal musical education apart from a few lessons during our teens, we just like to listen to different genres and try to incorporate them into our sound, but in terms of music theory and all that we are a bunch of losers.
Daniel: We have pretty elemental notions of musical theory, but as Jaime has mentioned, the use of most of those “different” elements comes from ideas we get from listening to other styles.
What sort of gear setup does Eternal Storm use in studio to help create that “epic” feeling in the music?
Daniel: We used a fairly standard setup for recording the album, I think most of that feeling comes from the compositions and Carlos Santos’s talents : p
The main guitars we used were Jaime’s ESP LTD MH-400 with EMG pickups for most of the rhythm guitars and overall distorted tones, a friend’s Fender Telecaster Cabronita for clean parts and some arrangements and a Caparison Angelus property of Carlos Santos (the engineer we worked with) for the solos and other arrangements. We used a ESP LTD MH-1000 and a Ibanez S7320 for just a few, very specific parts. We used a combination of Peavey 6505 and Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier with a Randall and a Mesa Boogie cabinet for the majority of the guitar sounds, and a EVH 5150 III for the clean tones and solos and finally my Peavey XXX for some arrangements. Effects-wise, we used a combination of plug ins, my Joyo digital delay, a Boss DD-20 and a Taiwanese Boss HM-2 for the filthiest parts in ‘Detachment’ and ‘Embracing Waves’. We used a custom built classical guitar for the intro from ‘Of Winter and Treason’ and, if I remember correctly, a Fender acoustic guitar for ‘Embracing Waves’. Can’t remember the exact model, though.
For bass we used my Ibanez SR705 with Carlos’s Ampeg SVT-2 and a 4×10 + 1×15 Ampeg bass cabinets with a Darkglass B7K and drum-wise the studio’s DW Collectors kit with an incredible Steeldrum snare owned by Mateo’s father, a DW-9000 pedal and Zildjian cymbals (mostly K series). I think that was most of it! Again, I think the gear didn’t play a big role this time, but for the next album we are certainly going to try other combinations and experiment a little bit more to make the most out of it.
‘Come The Tide’ was released via Transcending Obscurity Records, one of my favourite labels. How did you end up on their roster?
Daniel: I’ve been in touch with Kunal for many years before he started the label, when he was running his webzine. I saw that he was doing good with TO and both Raul from Memento Mori and Dave Rotten from Xtreem Music told me he did a fantastic job taking care of the promotion of their releases, because he also offered PR services for a while. Around the time we finished the record he was working with bands that I know personally, like De Profundis, Drug Honkey, Gaerea, Paganizer or Come Back From The Dead and all of them gave me great feedback. Because of this I decided to send him a digital promo even though I knew we were more melodic than many of the records he put. Luckily, I was wrong. He got back to me really quickly and send us a honest contract with legit conditions.
Continue reading
I like this one.