(Andy Synn recently scored an interview with Colin and Lev from Krallice – whose new album, Inorganic Rites, is out now)
Somehow, as the years have gone by, I’ve ended up being our “go to” guy when it comes to Krallice.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan (though perhaps not a typical one, as my favourite albums are Ygg Huur, Prelapsarian, and Psychagogue – not necessarily in that order) but I’ve not exactly been shy about being critical about what I think does and doesn’t work when it comes to the band’s increasingly experimental output during my time here at NCS.
That’s the thing with making music of a more “experimental” bent though – it’s not necessarily all going to work, nor will it necessarily give you the results you were aiming for even when it does.
But, like any good bunch of sonic scientists, Krallice have clearly learned something from each and every experiment (especially over the last several releases, which have found them flirting with more and more synth, drone, and ambient elements), with the result being that the band’s new album, Inorganic Rites truly feels like the culmination of everything they’ve been working on for the last 4-5 years.
It is, perhaps, the most “cinematic” of all the group’s records to date, successfully achieving (despite what its title may suggest) an unexpectedly organic balance between the many different elements of the band’s signature blend of kaleidoscopic mathemetallic chaos, as well as an almost seamless fluidity which makes it possibly the band’s most accessible work – despite its inherent darkness – in a long, long time.
So when the band themselves reached out to us to ask if we’d like to talk to them about the record – and not, as I first assumed, to yell at me for what I wrote about Mass Cathexis – you know we jumped at the chance, with the results of my conversation with drummer Lev Weinstein and vocalist/guitarist/engineer Colin Marston now being made public for the first time.
To start with, let me ask you this… who are Krallice? And I don’t necessarily mean who the individual members are but, in a more “existential” sense, who are you these days, compared to who you used to be? Let’s face it, you’ve been together (with a remarkably stable line-up) for seventeen years now, so even though you’re the same people, you’re probably not still “the same people” as you were when you started out.
Colin: We are people who really like creating music and are happy to have a band which focuses mostly on that, rather than all the other things a band can spend its time doing. I think that’s been consistent for us. We all go through phases and age and change, so we are also very inconsistent.
Lev: This question gave me an existential crisis right off the bat, so thanks for that? Who are we?! Who am I!? But in all seriousness one of the joys of this band and having been kicking for so long is that we’re just…us. A bunch of silly fucks who take nothing seriously except for occasionally music. I think we’ve all of course done a lot of growing and growing up, but I think we are fundamentally the same people as we were 17 years ago, in a wonderful, not problematic, kind of way.
I’ve often thought of Krallice as “the introvert’s Black Metal band”, and while this is probably on oxymoron (since Black Metal as a genre already attracts more than its fair share of introverts) it’s generally seemed to me that the band’s sound/style is particularly “non-performative”, in the sense that every release stems from a series of purely internal drives and impulses, rather than a response to external trends and pressures – is that assessment in any way accurate and, whether it is or not, what actually is the internal life of the band like and much of your time is spent actually thinking about Krallice as opposed to… everything else in your lives?
Colin: Personally, I spend a lot of time thinking about and listening to whatever music I’m developing or recording at any given time. At all times. Its pretty much all I do besides engineer other people’s music. That doesn’t mean its always Krallice, since I have many projects, but Krallice is always working on music, so in a sense I’m thinking about our current music all the time.
Songs are brought by me, Mick or McMaster. Initial demos consist of either guitar, bass or keys alone, or some combination of those instruments with finger drums or programmed drums for one of my songs. Other members write their instrumental parts to the initial demo, and then we work collaboratively at practice to fine tune or outright change structures, orchestration, drum parts, tempos and numbers of repetitions.
Then we record, usually live together and then overdub vocals and extra guitars and so on. We’ve also done a few recordings in a more “studio” way with us all recording separately (Demonic Wealth, Mass Cathexis 2, some of Go Be Forgotten, and the first 2 albums if memory serves.
Lev: I think that’s actually a totally fair assessment of what we’re about. There’s a lovely communal lack of care about “going for it” or “press” or “whatever”. The drive is having fun making music.
I’m also extremely lucky that all three of the other dudes are songwriters, meaning a) there’s a constant flow of material and b) the process is constantly different based on the song and the songwriter. I don’t know how to quantify time at the best of times, but I’d say Krallice is a huge chunk of life, but not an oppressive one?
In a similar vein to the previous question(s) – what have you learned, both about yourselves and the lessons you’ve applied to your music, over the years? You’ve always been known for experimenting with your sound, especially in recent years, but how do you decide what direction to take, how do you collate and formulate all your different ideas, and when/how do you decide when you’re done exploring one thing and ready to move on to the next?
Colin: Everything we do is pretty intuitive. Sure, one of us might get inspired to try an abnormal idea (like the Dave Edwardson album [2017’s Loüm], or Demonic Wealth, switching instruments, etc), but even in those cases there’s not much super deliberate planning in terms of what it will sound like. We just dive in and see where it leads.
Lev: One of the great lessons gleaned over the years from this project has been the vital importance of stepping out of one’s comfort zone in all ways (while still putting fun and joy above all). We’ve never sat down and conferenced about direction, it’s more just a free flowing thing.
Building on that, why this album, and why was now the right time for it? Although you’ve hinted at this sort of thing in the past (Mass Cathexis 2 being both a sequel and an album of two distinct halves, for example) this is one really feels like an album made up of distinct, yet complementary, chapters, all telling a much larger story.
Colin: No big exciting reason. This is just the music we happen to be making now. And we had a pretty big batch of songs this time.
Its possible we would have done it as two shorter albums if the clock wasn’t running out on Menegroth. Also we wanted to do Mass Cathexis as a big long album, and that got split in two with Covid. So now we get to do a longer album again more like the old days. I guess Crystalline Exhaustion and Demonic Wealth are also pretty long.
Lev: Sorry which album? I lose track. Too many albums. Mass Cathexis 2 certainly was a little bit of “what should we do with this material? Actually these two tastes taste pretty good together!”
With Inorganic Rites, I think the only artifice was the time crunch of losing Colin’s studio, and wanting to capture everything we had left in the tank before doing so. But unlike MC2, the provenance of all this stuff is the same.
Expanding a little on the previous question – what separates Inorganic Rites, in your mind(s), from your previous work? Oddly enough, I kept thinking about the subtitle of Ulver‘s seminal Perdition City (“Music to an Interior Film”) in that it feels very soundtrack-like in the way it flows and progresses over the course of those 66 minutes.
Colin: To me the new album is darker for the most part than the last bunch. The darkness is interrupted by “Universe Ancestral Talisman”, but that probably makes for a nice contrast. The other keyboard albums also have plenty of darker moments, but I think there’s just a bit grimmer of an atmosphere for longer this time.
I think the longer running time and larger collection of songs, and inclusion of 2 instrumentals also make it feel more epic, and possibly cinematic, too. Sure.
Lev: I think of Inorganic Rites as a kind of a culmination of the ideas we’ve been kicking around these past couple of years. It feels like a lovely synthesis of that experimentation. I guess I see it along the lines of Years Past Matter in that respect. I’ve always thought of that album as a culmination of the early sound, and I suppose I think of IR in a similar vein for where we’re at now
To continue on this theme – what does Inorganic Rites represent for the band? Is this the end of an era, or the beginning of a whole new phase?
Lev: I guess I sort of answered this one above, but really I’m not sure! We’ll see what the future holds, but I’m excited to find out!
I’m also curious, as I’m sure many are, about your thoughts and feelings regarding the closure of Menegroth Studios? I’m sure Colin must be absolutely gutted (though I’m hopeful he can find his feet and rebuild elsewhere) but how did the rest of you react to the news? After all, it’s been pretty much synonymous with the band since its inception and must have felt like a second home, in a way?
Lev: It sucks, hugely. Obviously a big personal blow for Colin, and just the end of an era in a lot of ways. I mean, he’s been there for 18 years and we’ve been working there as a band (every practice, every recording) for 17 years. That’s a kind of staggering amount of time. It absolutely felt like a second home, and it’s been utterly bizarre to walk by every day and know that the studio is no longer beyond those doors.
On the topic of the band’s history – and on a more positive note – what are some of your favourite Krallice albums (and why) from your career so far? Not necessarily the “best” or most “successful”, but the ones which represent a particular time or resonate in a particular way?
Colin: Ygg Huur is an obvious favorite since that’s when we stopped feeling like some form of “Black Metal” band and started just feeling like a band playing whatever music the 4 of us would play. And, of course, Years Past Matter was such a smooth recording session and featured such confident playing from all of us (I think it’s all first takes on that one).
Loüm is also a personal favorite since it was such an amazing and fun experience getting to hand off vocals, lyrics, and synths (and even album cover duties) to Dave Ed (I love that guy both as a person and singer/bassist). I also wrote the majority of that album, but the 2 best songs ended up coming from Mick and McMasters.
Go Be Forgotten was a blast since it all came together in 2 seconds. I always loved that Beastlor song, so getting to play and rearrange that was great. And having 2 songs where i just did synths was so much fun and obviously a preview of what was coming later.
And Demonic Wealth is particularly near and dear to me, since that was making the best of a shitty situation at the time. It’s also a weird Krallice record overall in that I wrote all the songs, played all the guitar and keys, arranged all the drums (from Lev’s phone recordings) and even played like 40 % of the bass. So its the closest thing to one of my solo albums even though it was still very collaborative. There’s just more of me in that one than usual.
Lev: My favorites are the aforementioned YPM and YH. Years… is where we finally felt like a fully realized band firing on all cylinders, and Ygg Huur just hits this sweet spot for me in terms of musical intensity and experimentation.
I think my enjoyment of albums is also strongly colored by the experience of making them, so those where I felt really good in the studio tend to hold a better place in my heart than those where I had less of a good time.
My final question, perhaps predictably, is… where do Krallice go from here? You’ve been so prolific over the last few years (releasing four albums in the last two years alone) that I’m sure a lot of us are wondering how you sustain such a pace (how do you do it?) and how long you’re going to be able to keep it up.
Colin: Now we go on the world tour! Then maybe back to the old instruments and just play the hits? I don’t think there are hits… oh well.
Lev: I don’t know precisely where we go from here. We’re getting together now to prep for tour next month and we’ll figure out next steps as they come. There’s no grand strategy
I think we’ve been able to sustain that pace in part because of Menegroth, but also simply because our priority has always been creating new music over for instance road dogging. It certainly helps to not be beholden to anything or anyone, and just being able to do what we want, at the pace we want. I suspect things will slow down a little as we figure things out going forward, but I hope not too much!
Inorganic Rites is out now.
Krallice will be on tour next month at the following locations:
August 07: Cambridge, MA: Middle East
August 08: Portland, ME: Space
August 09: Providence, RI: Alchemy
August 10: New Haven, CT: Space Ballroom
August 11: Queens, NY: Trans Pecos
August 12: Philadelphia, PA: Underground Arts
August 13: Richmond, VA: Cobra Cabana
August 14: Baltimore, MD: Metro
August 15: New Kensington, PA: Preserving Underground
August 16: Cleveland, OH: Beachland (tavern)
August 17: Chicago, IL: Reggies