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| Abriosis - photo by Kefkism Design |
Vessel: preparation for musical takeover
Two sides of metal connect and collide to discuss the prog death metal band Abriosis and their newest release entitled Vessel. Front woman Claire Carreras of Life Against Death has a talk over Bluebuck beer with front woman and artist, Alxs Ness of Abriosis, a name that has been swirling around the Vancouver metal community since 2007.
Claire: This Feb 1st release is the first to showcase you, Alxs Nesson on vocals. Recorded at Omegamediacore studios, it’s another pairing of the bands prog death metal styling with producer/engineer Jason Hywel Martin. Dude, how did you hook up with this band?
Alxs: Played a show with them at Pats Pub, while with another band. I got a copy of the previous album Tattered and Bound and I really liked it; I listened to it over and over. There was something about the music that just really hit me. There was an opening for lead singer so I put my name in.
C: What does the recording process involve for you, any pre-recording rituals?
A: We definitely work the songs over a lot before entering the studio, when you are hearing the songs back it sounds different than when you’re performing so, there are always changes made, but we make sure to do a lot of editing before we go in. I prefer to record in split days, rather than doing a full day of vocals, four hour shifts work well.
C: Tell me about your inducting experience into heavy metal music, assuming you weren’t born a metalhead. Or maybe you were?
A: As a kid I was really into music like KISS and Janis Joplin, stuff like that. In hindsight there was always an element of screaming that drew me to a song. Like James Brown, Little Richard and Joplin; their vocals displayed some screaming that reminds me of ‘false chord’ technique that you see in metal today. I started listening to heavier metal bands starting with Arch Enemy and stuff like that graduating into groups like Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus—that’s when I started really developing my death metal vocal style.
C: Where does your lyrical inspiration come from, and what drives you to say the words that you say?
A: In the past I’ve written music that was more aggressive, more you know (she makes a fist) but with this album I was thinking about things that scared me and interested me. Lots of it has to do with spirituality and the unknown, deeper aspects of being alive. I’m not religious in any way, but there’s a lot of spirituality in that there is more exploration of different ideas.
C: That’s probably what makes your vocal lines so intense. Of course I didn’t know what the fuck you were saying when I caught Abriosis at day two of Diecemberfest, but it slayed.
A: (Laughing) Yeah, that was awesome …. We will be releasing a series of lyric videos for all the songs on Vessel.
Look for the Vessel teaser on http://www.youtube.com/abriosisband out in January and the release February 1 through http://www.abriosis.com
-Claire Carreras
