More Than Base Metal

Spiritech is finally out and it's mind-blowing, but according to Adam, Roy, Rod, and John, the best is yet to come.

By MOP and Penny
(Interview 2nd August 1997)

Alchemist's fusion of many different styles into a single and powerful musical force provides a breath of fresh air within a scene that can quickly stagnate. While some heavy bands are content to emulate what has already been done, Alchemist create a sound that is all their own.

You've written three quite different albums, each with it's own underlying vibe. When you're writing, do you have a vision or a particular feeling that you want to express through you music?
ROY: Song by song rather than album by album.
ROD: We'll generally come up with the feel of the riff or the beat, or whatever it is, and then mash 'em together.
ROY: If each song has it's own identity in the end, then hopefully each album will.

The keyboard and samples on Spiritech really intensify the mood and atmosophere of the songs; they add another dimension to the music.
ADAM: Yeah, they add flavour, y'know? They're only used when we think we need them. It's not like "Hey, we've got a keyboard, we've got to use it in every song". They're just used where it makes it sound good.
ROY: And also to do things that would be humanly impossible to do on guitars.
ROD: We call it Spakfilla. No more gaps.

Road to Ubar, with its tale of lust, greed, and decadence, seems to imply that humanity is paving itself a downhill path. Do you think we are really on the road to Ubar?
ADAM: These two (motions to Rod and John)actually came up with the main lyrical idea and I just added on to the end which was "Watch our modern life return to ancient ways". It just gives it a bit of a twist. Basically the song's about Ubar, the old city that got swallowed by lust and greed, and it looks like we're going that way.
ROD: It's from the Koran. It's Middle Eastern legend that thousands of years ago this city was destroyed by God because of it's evil ways. They actually just recently found it using sonar techniques, buried under the sand.

Is the use of more diversity in the vocals on the new album another step towards making Alchemist completely unrestricted, in terms of their sound?
ADAM: Definitely. The music's a million styles and the vocals are just following suit. Basically we thought it was really silly to have really well-written lyrics, and a mellow section with someone going "RAAA!" over the top of it. I think it really uplifts the songs with the vocals how they are now. Albums get really boring when they're monotone.
ROD: The previous albums were more monotone than this one.

Alchemist's lyrics deal with a wide range of subjects, one being the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. With all the hype that the topic has been recieving within the media lately, what are your views on this?
ADAM: We started writing that stuff before all that shit (Roswell, etc) was really popular.
ROD: I think what we're saying is that we believe in extra-terrestrial life, but we're not necessarily saying that we believe in all those cover-ups and shit. Basically, I think the main things I wanted to say on that song (Spiritechnology) was that you'd have to be naive to believe that we're the only living things among the millions of stars and planets alike.

Do all the members have input on the lyrics?
ADAM: Yeah, we all do.
ROY: I stay a bit out of it. It's not really my scene.
ROD: We all come up with concepts though. Like I was watching a documentary on Ubar and I thought "Great".
ADAM: I wrote Chinese Whispers and I didn't know what to call it. John read the lyrics and said "Chinese Whispers". So we all put in. Sometimes one of us will write lyrics and then another member will get something out of it that you didn't see. We all pretty much have input into what gets sung.

Has technology played a significant part in developing Alchemist's sound as it is today?
ROD and JOHN: Yeah, definitely.
ADAM: Not a crucial element, but we are always looking for new sounds and ways to expand, and with the amount of sounds available at your fingertips in the computer age of the '90's.....Yeah, technology plays a big part. It's all so easily accessible electronically these days.
ROD: Alchemist, as we present ourselves tonight, couldn't play without a power-point. Well, we could.....
ROY: Yeah we could definitely do it, but we'd have to write for it.

What sort of electronic percussion do you use?
ROD: I use Yamaha pads, a sampler, an Alesis D5, which is an electronic drum brain. I also use triggers in the bass drums which pick up vibrations off the skins. They turn an analogue signal into an electronic pulse. They're all used to get a better drum sound.

What's your reason for using different producers on each album?
ADAM: We can't find one that gives us a good sound! Well, the first album was a complete mistake. We wanted John Hresc, the guy we used for Lunasphere, bet he couldn't do it, so we got Brett Stanton, who really didn't have any idea about the type of music we were playing. The second time we used "Hrescy" and we were pretty happy with him.
JOHN: We used him again on the third album and this time we weren't happy.
ADAM: We were happy with the sounds he recorded, but not the way he recorded them. And the mixes we completely trashed.
ROD: We had to go further into debt because our budget had been used up.
JOHN: We were faced with the prospect of having a shit sounding album.
ROY: So we came down here to Back Beach Studios on the Mornington Peninsula to do the mixing.

What sort of sound do you aim to capture when you go into the studios?
JOHN: Just the fullest sound really.
ADAM: We've got a hell of a lot happening in our music and we want to capture it all, that's all.
JOHN: And just make it clear so you're not fighting to hear anything.
ADAM: Loud as fuck, basically.
ROY: We also don't record anything that we can't do live, so hopefully that is recording us as we are live.

I thought the female vocals on Jar of Kingdom sounded quite effective, adding something different again within the music. Have you considered using a female vocalist again in the future?
JOHN: On the last two albums we didn't really write for a female vocalist.
ADAM: But it's funny you bring it up because on the way down here we were talking about doing it again on the next album.
ROD: There's this awesome chick in Canberra. She's just left her band and she's looking to join someone that's serious about their music.
ADAM: So if she can cut the cheese, we'll chuck her on a few tracks. I think female vocals are really good for atmosphere.
Yeah, definitely. Cradle of Filth do it really well.
ROD: Yeah, and Paradise Lost used to do it really well.
ADAM: They were the pioneers really, weren't they?
(Rod and Adam go on in this vein for a while.....)

After being together for so long, have you developed a method for songwriting?
JOHN: Nah......
ADAM: There's no real method. Whatever comes out and whatever everyone thinks is cool. It could be one person's idea or it could be four.

Do you find a lot of songs come together by just jamming on a riff, picking up the mood and building on it? ADAM: Yep.
ROD: That's generally how we do it.
ROY: Yeah, generally. Just keep playing and find the mood, and sometimes it works itself out by itself.
ADAM: but sometimes you can be working on a riff and you'll think it's great for three days and you'll end up going "Nup, scrap it".

That sounds familiar. Do you usually write lyrics to fit the music rather than vice-versa?
ADAM: Yeah, basically we've only taken one approach so far, which is music first, vocals second. If we came up with a good vocal melody or something it would be the other way round. It's just that where our expertise seems to lie is music, so.....
ROD: We do have themes for ideas though. Like with Ubar we sort of thought, wrote the music then wrote the lyrics. But the theme was there too.
ADAM: It can just happen in a million different ways.

The songs always sound like there has been a lot of time spent perfecting each one.
JOHN: Yeah. Once it's written, we just keep going over it and try to male it better.

Awhile ago, there were some rumours floating around that the band was moving to England, and also that you were going to be involved in a movie soundtrack, or something to that effect. Is there any truth in this?
ADAM: Yeah, we were thinking of moving.
But you didn't...
ROD: Well, it's still in the back of our minds, but we don't want to go over there as no-ones because we haven't got jobs and and we don't have anywhere to live. We want to try and get a network over there. We don't want to go over there and fall on our arses, but we know that eventually it's not going to happen for us here. Melbourne's actually probably the best city in Australia at the moment...
ADAM: Not for crowd reaction I wouldn't say that. Nah, I wouldn't say that at all.
JOHN: I think we've sold more CD's here.
ROD: As for the movie soundtrack, that's something we want to do, but we haven't really publicised it. We definitely would like it to happen though.
ROY: No-one's approached us yet.
ADAM: Writing music fot movies would be bloody good though. We'd jump at the opportunity.
ROD: And we've got a new guy on our team, he's not here this weekend, but he's got all the equipment to do a video, so we might do something ourselves in the future. Some sort of bizarre, avante-guarde mini feature or something.

Do you think some of Australia's more extreme and diverse acts, such as yourselves, recieve more interest from overseas markets and industry than they do at home?
ADAM: Potentially I think, yeah, overseas is what it is - it's a much bigger market. Whether they'll like us more than than people over here.....we can't tell until we get a massive licence and get over there.
ROD: Also here, a lot of people don't take us seriously.
Why not?
ROD: Well because "They're just a metal band" and that's what we get categorised as. It's like "We don't want you on our festival" or whatever.
ADAM: Yeah, like we couldn't get on Recovery because we were too heavy, even though we've got three albums out and we pull steady crowds all around Australia.
ROD: We were watching Recovery this morning and we were looking at all these absolute SHIT bands. We just don't fit into what's happening in Australia at the moment.

You're quite unique.....
ADAM: Yeah, I'd rather have it that way. If you go on like, "We're a metal band, we're into the metal scene", you end up like Sydney, where they've got their little fucken' group.
JOHN: They cut each others' throats.
ADAM: Yeah, they cut each others' throats, and if someone starts doing something different they're like, "You're not metal!" We get really good crowds there, but if you're a Sydney band and you're trying to break into their little group.....Put it this way. Segression and Alchemist pull the biggest crowds of, let's say "heavy" bands, we won't say metal, and we're both from out of town. that's how fucked the scene is in Sydney. I'm sorry, but it's FUCKED! (By this time Adam was yelling into the microphone and virtually had steam pouring out of his ears.....)
ROD: We used to find that we were too alternative to be metal and too metal too be alternative.

Has much happened for the band overseas?
ADAM: Not enough. But it seems to be starting to happen now, like we're getting a good, full-page article in Metal Maniacs U.S. Jeff Wagner, the editor there, gave us a fucking rave review. But who can tell, we've just got to wait and see.
ROD: We've had a lot of false leads y'know; people saying that they want to bring you over and do this massive show and it just doesn't come off, so we don't say anything about it.
ROY: Yeah, we don't get excited and tell evertone.

A lot of bands tend to mould their sound to fit in with the popular, whereas Alchemist are always progressing and not conforming to trends. The second you hear their distinctive slide bars or Eastern melodies, you know it's Alchemist.
ROY: We've got to keep it interesting for us too.
JOHN: We like what we're doing, and we're not going to go, "Maybe we should make it more blah blah blah, we might get somewhere".
ADAM: Just because something might make us more popular doesn't mean we're going to jump right in and do it. That's why we started in the first place - to do what WE like.

Last time you played in Melbourne, there was a comment passed by a musician from one of Melbournes' more popular heavy bands that "Every muso in town will be here tonight".
(Much laughter from all the members)
ADAM: We're not a muso band are we?
ROD: What you said is right; we're not a muso band.
ADAM: We don't consider onrselves a fucken muso band at all!
ROY: We don't write our songs out in notation.
ADAM: Take the guitar for example. In technical terms it's fucken nothing.

Is it a lot of just one-string melodies?
ADAM: Repetitive note one string stuff, yeah. But it's what we want.

I think it sounds a lot more effective than some widdly-diddly crap.....
ADAM: Yeah! We stopped writing songs for technicality in the '80's.
ROY: the '80's had their flashy guitar stage and what-have-you, but it burnt itself out in a big way.
ADAM: I think people think we're technical just because we use slide bars and we're not just playing power chords all the time. But we're not! We're really simple, but we just use a broader range of fucken sounds.
ROD: That's what I admire about bands like U2. None of them could play when they started, and they were pretty much like us - just playing stuff because you loved it. Maybe it wasn't technically good, but you sort of had an imagination and tried to make an original sound.
ADAM: Trying to outplay yourself is also really important. Doing as much as you can on your particular instrument and just playing what sounds good y'know? Not going, "Oh fuck, that's not technical, better change it." A lot of bands, especially young bands have that attitude and it's fucken stupid. People who aren't musicians don't look for that kind of shit in music.

They just go for what sounds good.
ADAM: Exactly: what sounds good. It's all that matters.
ROD: That's what we go for. When we're jammin' away and something sounds good, we all know it.
ADAM: You get the vibe.
ROD: But it's a compliment that you say it, regardless.
ADAM: Yeah. We don't hate to be regarded by musicians.
ROY: A lot of them find all the equipment and sounds interesting, because musicians are interested in all that stuff too.

Where do you see the foreseeable future taking you?
JOHN: Mainly touring for Spiritech.
ROD: We're not really going to start touring properly until October because Roy's going overseas for a month, so we're going to have a break. Then we've got the Strapping Young Lad tour in October.
ADAM: Just touring leading up to Metal for the Brain, and then we'll probably take the first six months of '98 as part of the Spiritech push, and I think we'll just see where we go from there.
JOHN: And then we'll do the next album for sure. That's about it really.

Is what you're doing now, in terms of the style of music you're playing, what you envisioned when you first started out?
ROY: I never really pictured playing this stuff.
JOHN: I reckon the best is yet to come.
ROY: I envisioned doing this - cruising around, playing cool pubs and stuff.
ROD: Also meeting cool people such as yourselves. (Oh, shucks!)
ROD: We've been doing this for awhile, but a lot of our mates are getting married and having kids and shit, and we've just been having fun.
ADAM: We'll get to thirty and our lungs'll be buggered, but we've had a good time!

Alchemist: Four nice blokes and a bloody good band.