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.
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With this style of metal, the lyrics aren’t always obvious to the listener, what are the core themes behind ‘Come the Tide’?
Jaime: For ‘Come the Tide’ we mainly dealt with issues of personal identity, attachment to ideas and behaviours which are counterproductive to our own growth, acceptance and even a bit of politics and the use of nationalism as a means to control population in ‘Of Winter and Treason’, which is loosely based in Ursula K. LeGuin’s novel ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’.
Can you tell me a bit about the beautiful cover art?
Jaime: The cover art was made by French artist Leoncio Harmr. We put together the ideas we wanted for the artwork, we definitely wanted a maritime landscape, with some human figure standing on a beach facing the waves and a lighthouse in the distance as it fits nicely with the imagery in the lyrics. In a few days Leoncio sent us an almost finished version of it and we instantly fell in love with it. Not only did he get all of our ideas straight away, but the tones and colours he used couldn’t have been better to convey the atmosphere of the record.
Please check the guy’s website to see more of his art, dude is immensely talented.
Daniel: I found Leoncio’s art on No Clean Singing, one of my favourite metal websites and from the very moment I saw it, I knew he was the right guy for the job! He has a very distinct and atmospheric style which I think suits the album perfectly. It was amazing to work with him and I really hope we will collaborate with him again in the near future, we are super happy with his output!
On facebook recently you announced lineup changes such as the departure of vocalist/bassist Kheryon. Could you elaborate on his departure and what developments have occurred regarding new additions to the band?
Jaime: Well, as adulthood increased the level of complexity in our lives our lovely muscular singer needed to spend more time in the gym to be able to handle it. Nah, he just realized he was not able to give his whole to the band due to his other commitments and therefore the best thing for all of us was for him to step aside. It was sad cause we had been playing together for a lifetime, and we shared lots of fun moments, but it was for the best. There was nothing wrong, no bad blood or bullshit, we love the man and would love to hear more of his beautiful manly growls in the future.
Daniel: It was just that we had different priorities. He wanted to focus his time and effort on non-musical endeavours, so even though it is a bit unfortunate that the split happened one month after the album came out (which we had been anticipating for many years), we are happy it all happened in good terms. I spent almost half of my life playing with this guy, so I’m sure we will continue to share laughs and shitty jokes in one way or another. Actually, we are about to have dinner together tonight as soon as I finish this interview!
You are also planning to release a new album on the same label in 2020, what can you tell me about this release in terms of format and themes?
Jaime: Initially we were going to to record the new album in January 2020, but we realised we needed some extra time to work on the album, so at the moment we don’t really know when we’ll be recording the album. The core of the record is almost finished by now, but we want to use this extra time to work on the arrangements, sounds, vocal lines and polishing the structures. We are aiming for a more conceptual record than ‘Come the Tide’ this time, with all the songs flowing into the next one in a smoother and more natural way, as if forming one big track in a way, although they can function as separate tracks at the same time.
Daniel: We have decided to spend more time on the new album. It took us pretty much 10 years to release ‘Come the Tide’, so I think we can allow ourselves to spend 6 extra months working on completing the follow-up in order to come up with the best album we can do right now, hahaha. The album expands both extremes of our sound: it is more melodic, but also definitely more aggressive and extreme and at times, a bit more experimental. We are going to try more vocal styles (there are still a lot of growls, don’t panic!) and have the bass a bit more present. Other than that, people can expect to hear many of the elements found on ‘Come the Tide’ again. We can’t wait to share it with all of you!
I see Eternal Storm have toured in the past as well as some live shows in support of ‘Come The Tide’. What are some of your most memorable live performances?
Jaime: We did a small tour in Portugal and Spain back in March 2017 with the guys from Wolfheart which was quite a nice experience. It was the first time for us to do more than 2 gigs in a row and travelling with another band as well. I have really nice memories of the gig we played in Murcia during that tour; after a not so great gig in Madrid we made amends in Murcia and it helped us a lot to realize that no matter if you fuck up on stage, just laugh at your mistake and keep enjoying the energy of the show. We’re quite grateful to Mika from Wolfheart who gave us some good tips on the way to the gig!
Daniel: A couple of months ago we did our first European tour with our friends in Totengott and played in France, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland for our first time, so that one and the Wolfheart tour are definitely the funniest moments we have had so far. We also supported some bands we really enjoy like Septicflesh, The Black Dahlia Murder, Leprous, Nightrage, Stormlord or Ash Borer. I think that Murcia gig, together with our first time in Galicia and our show in Castellón last night are probably the craziest gigs we have played!
You have a slot on an upcoming 2020 festival, what’s the details for that one?
Daniel: Rock The Night will be, for now, the biggest line-up we have played in. We still don’t know which day we are playing but the line-up is pretty amazing! Plenty of bands we love on the bill: Devin Townsend, At The Gates (playing ‘Slaughter of the Soul’), Omnium Gatherum, Skid Row, Leprous, Dying Fetus, Napalm Death, Wormed, Heilung, Mercyful Fate, Avantasia, Angelus Apatrida, Stravaganzza, Foreigner, Haken…it’s quite nice, isn’t it? 🙂
We hope many people will discover us there…fingers crossed!
Is the live setup much different from the studio set up?
Daniel: Some of us (mostly, me) are using different gear live than on studio. Around two years ago I started using Fender Telecasters in order to get more dynamic and versatile sounds, so that’s the main change. I got a bit tired of active pickups, so I moved to passive pickups and now I finally have a decent clean tone. We are still looking for ways to improve our live sound, so I think there will be more adjustments soon.
Most bands come up in a local scene, what was the metal environment surrounding Eternal Storm like in the formative years? Care to mention any peers?
Daniel: I don’t think we could say there is a scene of any sorts in our city, but there has always been very good bands around. I often find more inspiration from local bands than from well established acts, you know? When we started playing, we looked up to local peers like As My World Burns, Human Mincer, Autumnal, Wormed or As Light Dies, but also bands from other cities like Vidres A La Sang, Foscor, Unreal Overflows, Asgaroth, the first Kathaarsys albums, Numen, Nahemah…just too many to mention. It’s a shame many of those bands aren’t around anymore nor got the recognition they deserved.
Luckily, we still have Wormed and Adrift around, who have been around for more than 20 years and still get even better with each new release, just like fine wine. We would also recommend other bands like Thirteen Bled Promises, Aathma, Jardín de la Croix or Teething who have definitely been around for a while and are amazing, as well as younger bands from our city like Tromort, Le Temps Du Loup, Sun of the Dying, Velo Misere, Aversio Humanitatis, Underwater Lights, Back to R’lyeh or Last Forest Rain.
Is there anything you would like to add before concluding this interview?
Jaime: Thanks for giving us the chance to say some clumsy words and spread our noise. If we ever find ourselves stranded in Aussie shores we’d love to make some noise for you guys! Cheers!
Daniel: Thanks again for your time and support, we are very thankful for that and hope we didn’t sound too boring, haha. Hope we will play in Australia some time in the future, have a great start of the year!
Merch via Bandcamp