AN NCS INTERVIEW: THE GATES OF SLUMBER

photo by Marshall Kreeb

(Indiana-based doom metal behemoths The Gates of Slumber have revived and return with a new self-titled album that’s set for release on November 29th via Svart Records. Our Comrade Aleks needed to find out more, and the band’s founder Karl Simon graciously took his questions.)

There are the bands who are long inactive, and after some time checking their profiles on social medias or metal-archives in hope of finding any new information, you just give up. The same was true for me with The Gates of Slumber. I loved the heroic doom metal they played in the first album …the Awakening (2004); Suffer No Guilt (2006) was a blast; and I still listen to other albums too – especially Hymns of Blood and Thunder (2009).

Karl Simon (guitars, vocals) disbanded The Gates of Slumber in 2013 only to form Wretch, which didn’t last long. So Karl’s last official full-length was Wretch’s self-titled debut released in 2016, and I was surprised when Svart Records announced that a new The Gates of Slumber album would be released on November 29th.

Of course, it was a natural necessity to learn the album’s background, and the result of my curiousity is this interview with Karl.

Hi Karl! How are you doing? What’s new in Indiana?

Hello! I’m good, all told….  And nothing much is new here.  Just another day.

 

First of all, accept my congratulations for the forthcoming release of The Gates of Slumber’s new album. And as each album starts with the artwork, here’s the questions: Why is it so minimalistic? You had Vebjørn Strømmen and Ken Kelly, and Arik Roper’s artwork is damn good too, so what happened now?

Well, this cover idea is something that Chuck [Brown] and I had wanted to do way back when in 2003; we felt after 20 years it was time to do it. And we do have some great art in this, I think, just not the cover….

 

Do you feel that the band’s name and reputation still tell everything after all these years?

I don’t know, people seem to be liking what they have heard, I think that’s a good sign, lol. I don’t know what the name and reputation are worth in the end, really.  I mean we changed sounds so often.  Four different eras and now a fifth, with Chuck back and now Steve [Janiak], writing and playing and singing – it’s cool… in a way I guess it does live up to the reputation: constantly changing. lol

 

Karl, you worked under the Wretch title for about eight years and released one self-titled album (2016) and the EP (2017). Both records got positive feedback, so why did you return back to The Gates of Slumber? What didn’t work with Wretch?

In 2018 I tore my Achilles tendon and Chuck was coming around to check on me.  Convalescing is dull and it was nice to talk and catch up.

Wolf from HoH fest [Hell Over Hamburg] had been emailing me about TGoS playing and I’d been forced to say no, because the band was gone.  One day Chuck had left after a fun visit and there was an email from Wolf. And I got the idea… why not a reunion?  Just some shows, have some fun…. And it went from there.

 

Were there any reasons to keep both bands alive at the same time?

Oh yeah!  I loved Wretch, we were doing some very cool music that was related to TGoS, but was not a continuation of TGoS… it was different.  Just was never going to work out.  What can you do?

 

 

Well, how did you spend this period after the Wretch (2016) release?  What made you actually slow down your activity to almost a zero level?

In 2016 I moved back home to help my dad care for my dying mother.  Wretch managed to get a small Eastern US tour in 2016, and in the Spring of 2017 we did Roadburn and a tour of the UK which were both amazing.  Great times. And then the rot set in with the band and my mother’s health declined.

She died in August and the band fell apart a few months later.  In 2018 or so we started again with Dustin from Skeletonwitch on drums and we played a few shows and did an abysmal tour…. We tried and I think the second Wretch record would have been interesting.  It was totally different from anything that I’d done before in some ways…. But everyone quit and that’s ok.  We did a good LP and a not so good EP. It was a band I had high hopes for. But that’s it. I doubt I’ll ever get it going again.

To be frank, watching my mom die and then watching my dad’s health decline and caring for him now has changed my values a lot, as you’d suppose. I don’t have the time for little dramas anymore.

 

Well, what did motivate you to keep playing doom after all? Does it bring some relief or help to keep inner balance?

I play music constantly… it’s one of the ways I process life.  I’m lucky to have Chuck and Steve to play with!

 

 

What’s the story with the Hell Over Hamburg festival? Was it really the main point to return the band to life?

It was!  If it hadn’t been for that opportunity, I wouldn’t have asked Chuck to do the reunion.

 

How long did you work on the new songs? What was your vision when you started recording?

We started writing at about the same time we started rehearsals for the tour. It wasn’t the plan but it was inevitable.

 

Your first new single “Embrace the Lie” from The Gates of Slumber album deals with the lying news media and political talking heads. What was the push inspiring you to write a song like this? What was your last straw?

Probably seeing George W. Bush hailed as some kind of beloved figure. Sharing snacks with fucking Michelle Obama and shit.

I know it’s very easy to hate Trump.  And obviously the man lies about stupid shit constantly.  But let’s not get it twisted.  No lie he ever told, nothing he did in his 4 years, was anything close to the whoppers told by the Bush administration. Lies that destabilized and destroyed the Middle East, killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions.  Crippled and maimed tens of thousands. For lies.  And Obama was no better.  The man used drones to kill whole families to get someone who lit Bin Laden’s cigarette one time. Both of them violated and codified law that contravenes our constitution. Ran CIA torture programs and a bunch of shit that people used to swing from a gallows for.  But they get tongue baths from pundits and fucking Nobel Peace prizes.

So yeah.  Fuck em.  All of them.

 

It’s interesting how fast people forget the wars that happened just one or two decades ago, I don’t even mention catastrophes like WW I and WW II. What makes people follow politicians blindly? A lack of education? A damaged critical thinking?

People really don’t have critical thinking skills anymore, it’s all a binary, at least in the US.

Our fears have been played on and we willingly consume propaganda through our phones fed to us by algorithms designed to create our own personal echo chambers.  Pushed into political tribes…  and each election cycle absolves the system of its sins as the outgoing government is scapegoated and somehow no one is ever accountable. And the people are no help.

People are lazy, they like being spoon fed…. They like any opportunity to mock and blame.  And this isn’t partisan.  I haven’t voted for either major party in a long time.  I’m not part of that, hell I don’t even think the democratic process can work anymore.  Which is fine: the solutions to our problems aren’t in Washington DC or in Berlin or Paris or in any capital city or government building. It’s us, individuals looking for real things, doing and creating real things and helping each other. We need fewer activists and more volunteers in this world.

And anyway this is just me talking, I don’t speak for Chuck and Steve, but yeah these are the thoughts surrounding “Embrace the Lie”…

 

 

One of your new songs, “Fog”, is based on the horror movie with the same title, right? How does the band’s sound benefit its concept? Why does this movie resonate for you?

I don’t know if the band’s sound benefits the concept or not. Steve had these riffs and we jammed an arrangement. No one had any words so I sat down and came up with some words. It’s my favorite horror movie. It doesn’t do too much. It’s understated and harkens back to the Golden Age of Hollywood. Great cast. Great story.

 

I mean… didn’t you work like, “let’s play this riff slowly to make an emphasis on atmosphere or the vocal lines,” and things like that?

Oh yeah sure!  We altered the phrasing of the riffs to allow a call and response sort of thing between the music and the vocal. And the whole middle/solo section is dedicated to Penance. Lovingly borrowed from them too….

 

Speaking about the album’s sound, it’s quite the same The Gates of Slumber, a work with the quality we may expect from a member of “the Circle of True Doom”. How do you see the individuality of this album?

This was a tough one for me. I had been working on Wretch for some time. And lyrically it’s totally different. The Gates of Slumber writes songs about things. Whereas Wretch was much more personal. This record is a reset of sorts.

 

You started Wretch when another wave of doom metal was on its peak, or so it seemed. Do you feel a difference between then and now? Does the new album already attract some attention?

To be honest I don’t have a clue what’s been going on in the “scene” for years and years.  From what people say I guess doom got overpopulated and has kind of fallen off. Which is fine.  The world and trends just kind of flow around us like water, if we hold to what we are.  So far people seem to like the new one, but I don’t expect it to change the world.  lol.

 

You released the Live in Tempe Arizona (2020) album four years ago, and two members of that lineup passed away. How do you see the necessity of playing live nowadays? Do you have the motivation to play gigs?

It’s fun. But I’ll never extend myself like I did back then again.  I’m not interested in sleeping on a floor anymore. I’m not interested in starving to play a show or do a tour. I went into debt to get Wretch to Roadburn and I’m glad I did it. But I won’t do that again.

 

Were things that bad during your gigs in the US?

It’s hard to tour the US. I’m sure headlining bands have a different story. But our time on the road back then was full of a lot of sleeping in the van and crashing on floors.  Which was mostly fine. I wouldn’t change a thing back then. We loved it.  But I’m not a kid anymore.

I can’t imagine sleeping in the van on a hot night in a shitty part of Oakland with a ball bat and a knife to protect the shit from being stolen anymore than I can imagine crushing an oxy up to mix with some blow….  I’m not the same man I was back then, and the world isn’t the same either. I’m sure we’ll get back on the road when the stars align, and it’ll be great.  But I won’t be eating peanut butter sandwiches for months to pay for it, lol.

 

What are your further plans for the rest of 2024?

We are finishing up writing for a split and more new material.

 

Is it too early to share some details?

Well, on this split for our side the centerpiece is the last song Jason [McCash] wrote, which has been good to work up.

But the rest of the details are best kept quiet for now. We are also working on more new material all the time…. So much stuff. Frankly, I’d like to see this all recorded before I think about playing shows again.  Some of this stuff has been waiting for a decade or so…

 

Thanks for the interview, Karl! I wish you and The Gates of Slumber all the best on your quest to promote the new album. I hope that we’ll hear more news from the band soon.

Thank you!  I hope you’re well and I’m sure you’ll hear more from us soon!

https://orcd.co/thegatesofslumber

https://www.svartrecords.com/en/product/the-gates-of-slumber-the-gates-of-slumber/12760

https://www.facebook.com/thegatesofslumber

https://thegatesofslumber.bandcamp.com/

https://thegatesofslumber.bandcamp.com/track/embrace-the-lie