(Hier geht’s zur deutschen Version)

 

With „Hijo Perddido“, SHADED ENMITY have just released another ferocious piece of Melodic Death Metal. Why are these guys to angry? And why are record labels so deaf and dumb? Joe Nurre (v/g) tried to come with some answers for us.

 

Hello there! How is Washington this time of the year?

Hey, and first off thanks so much for the coverage that you have given SHADED ENMITY over the past couple years with www.metal.de.

Washington is great right now, I don’t like hot weather and it has been raining and very gray here and I’m happy with that.

„Hijo Perdido“ is your third album, it’s a great piece of work once more, but still you are releasing it on your own. Why? Don’t you want a label or are labels just too stupid?

I can’t tell you how hard it has been for us to get any exposure here in the United States. Most labels do not give us the time of day because of the style of music that we play. I sent our 2009 album „Like Prayers on Deaf Ears“ to 40 labels in the United States and I didn’t get one response. Not a single response. We have had one positive response from Season of Mist Records, however, they told me that they had no room in the budget right now for a new band. I don’t necessarily share the opinion of a lot of people that think you can „just do it yourself“ and the people who think that you don’t need a record label. Because quite honestly, in this day in age, I believe you need to be on a record label in order for your band to be somewhat successful because there are a million bands out there with myspace, and facebook and reverbnation pages that for a band to get noticed out of that is extremely difficult. If we were able to negotiate the right deal with the right label, we would definitely like that.

In your opinion and experience, is the never-ending Melodic Death Metal boom rather helping or hurting bands that basically play MeloDeath, but not exactly the standard formula? Is it opening doors or limiting creativity?

I would have to say that the never ending „Melodic death boom“ has really been struggling for originality and creativity the past few years. I used to listen to a lot of melodic death metal. Now, I consider a lot of it to be „cookie cutter“ or „recycled riffs“ that are perhaps slightly altered from an AT THE GATES or IN FLAMES album. A lot of people consider us to be Melodic Death and in a way, that is true, but it also is not. We play death metal with melody, however CHILDREN OF BODOM is also considered Melodic Death Metal, and I don’t believe our two bands fit in the same genre. More people call us Melodic Black Metal, but I quite frankly couldn’t care less about genres. A lot of my inspiration used to come from bands like ARCH ENEMY, ETERNAL TEARS OF SORROW, IN FLAMES, AMON AMARTH, however nowadays my inspiration comes from Reggae, Jazz, and even a singer such as ADELE. I enjoy listening to a good female singer.

It’s now been two years or so since „Like Prayers…“. In hindsight, how happy are you with that album? How has it been received by the press and by the public? How much have you done in terms of live shows to promote the album? And a very delicate question: How many units can a band like SHADED ENMITY sell without professional label help (feel free to ignore this one if it’s too intrusive)? A very persistent urban legend has it that metalheads are still buying records. Can you confirm this?

„Like Prayers on Deaf Ears“ was a very special album for me. I was going through a very difficult period of my life, and the music just flowed from me and I remember being so relieved when the album was finally out. In hindsight, i wish the production was a little better, but I was funding the entire project and spending thousands of dollars of my own money to record this album that i felt very strongly about. To be quite honest with you, I have not seen or read one interview from here in America. That sucks. There is an Italian webzine that has been very good to us with a review, and of course metal.de. I get many many emails from over in Europe (mainly Germany) saying how much the band means to them, and how much they enjoy the music. That is a great reason to get up in the morning and open your email and you have some guy in a different country telling you how much your band means to him. It gives inspiration.

We have done maybe 20-30 shows since „Like Prayers on Deaf Ears“ and they have all been in Washington State, except for one in Oregon. We would love to be able to go over to Europe as that is where our target audience is, haha.

To answer the last question, I made the mistake of pressing 1,000 units of „Like Prayers on Deaf Ears“ and we have probably sold 300 and I have given away many.  It has taken us since 2009 to do that. However we are still getting slow CD sales through cdbaby.com as well. To even further answer your question, most of the CDs that I have sold have been to overseas. In fact, 90%. Just the fact that we are an independent band and even have people that will buy our music, is great and I am happy with that.

Now, what do you want to tell us about the new album? (insert promo speech here, hehe)

I am really happy with the way this album turned out, the lyrical content is a lot darker than the last album and so are the songs, and Simon really went above and beyond the call of duty in performing his drum parts. He has such dedication to his instrument that it shows in his playing. We were able to achieve a lot better level of production this time around, and the drums sound a lot heavier. The songs are more aggressive, and we have a lot of different melodies going on in the music.

Where do you, from an insider’s point of view, see the main differences between Prayers and Hijo? How much of an impact did the line-up changes have?

Probably the biggest difference between „Hijo“ and our last album would be the production quality and the addition of several guitar solos. Our engineer Aaron Smith did such an amazing job mixing this record. Of course we had also been playing together a little longer as a band, and I think that obviously shows. My songwriting obviously matured a bit from „Like Prayers…“ but I still kept things in the same style.

The lineup changes didn’t affect the band at all. SHADED ENMITY is Myself and Simon Dorfman. I handle 100% of the song writing.  The only difference on „Hijo“ was we had Zach Palmer play bass for the session and he did a great job. Came in and nailed his takes. Rob left the band shortly after we recorded „Hijo“ and so it was just a matter of finding a guitar player and bass player for live shows that could learn the parts.

 

The album offers yet again quite a lot of in-your-face aggression. What makes you so angry? Does it help playing this kind of music?

I grew up in an extremely religious family and I lived a lot of my early life in isolation, spending lots of time by myself because I was frustrated that i didn’t see things the way I was „supposed“ to see them and I couldn’t relate to anyone. Years later I find out about things that went on in the church and the very people I was supposed to have trusted were dirty liars that have no place in religion. You had married choir leaders impregnating members of the congregation and keeping children a secret. You had 13 year old boys molesting 8 year old boys; you had youth leaders fornicating with 13 year old girls. All in the church I attended.  This left me confused, and from 16-21, I had a horrible drug addiction, and I was unhappy with myself and unhappy with the way I was living life. Right before we recorded our „Thought and Remembrance“ album, I was showing up to rehearsals with Rob and Eric completely high off my gourd, and coming down hardcore. Excusing myself to go to the bathroom to vomit. I was able to write the entire „Thought and Remembrance“ album during this time despite the hold drugs had on me. I do not remember writing it at all. Rob and Eric threatened to kick me out of the band before we recorded the album and I cleaned up. After about 9 months or so, I was high again. Around the age of 21, I made it my goal to get clean, and I did.

Several years go by and things happen in life. You go through bad relationships, you make poor decisions, you have trouble with law enforcement, and all of these things become the anger that is in my music, and these are why I am angry. I think about things from my past and present when I write SHADED ENMITY songs. I can’t ever write when it is sunny outside, and quite honestly I can’t ever write songs when I am happy. These things are what have fueled „Like Prayers on Deaf Ears“ and „Hijo Perdido“. To play this music is so therapeutic for me, it feels good, I feel content inside when I am screaming into the microphone and playing my guitar.  I look forward to the practices and shows because I know I get to release the energy. Simon’s drumming adds an even angrier dimension to the music, and when everything comes together, it’s very powerful.

To me, „Prayers“ and „Hijo“ are quite similar in style. Now this is not meant as criticism at all, but how long do you think you can keep this approach interesting? How much and in which direction can the band change while still sounding like SHADED ENMITY? Have you ever considered adding new elements? How will you sound say three albums from now?

I can understand why you would consider them to be fairly similar in style seeing as both albums were written by me. I also wrote „Hijo Perdido“ about six months after I wrote „Like Prayers on Deaf Ears“. A while ago I played a couple shows with the band NEVERMORE, and I started playing seven strings a lot more after that, and I can tell you that the new SHADED ENMITY material is going to feature seven strings, and we are definitely wanting to get a little more technical as far as our music goes. However, one of our key elements is the melodic harmonies which I will always keep in our music. So despite any new material I write, I believe it will always sound like SHADED ENMITY even though one or two elements may change. Three albums from now, I would like to have developed our sound to the point where you can pop in a record and say „Oh, that’s SHADED ENMITY“, and so I will always strive to write the best music that I can while still trying to keep it as unique as possible. I would like to experiment with some synth stuff in the future, but I believe that gets over done a lot in music, but if done tastefully can add a lot.

You have promoted the album by streaming the whole thing online. Yet on the other hand the album does not seem to be available for digital purchase. While I personally don’t care to buy music as bits and bytes only, I still wonder about this contradiction and why you don’t offer the option. Is there any particular reason? I mean, there is no label telling you how to do things…

We actually offer „Like Prayers On Deaf Ears“ on the website www.bandcamp.com for digital download at a low price, and I will be putting „Hijo Perdido“ up there as well as soon as our „physical“ CD is made available here shortly. I am also going to the get albums up on iTunes as I know a lot of people don’t actually buy physical albums anymore and just want something they can throw on their iPod without ripping it from a CD. I haven’t done the best job of getting promotion stuff done for this band; I hate dealing with computers as I am not very technologically experienced.

And going into the opposite direction: Will there be a vinyl release of the new album? With 40 minutes and eight songs it certainly has ideal measures. And some people might even appreciate the little break to recover from your relentless onslaught.

You know, I would love to release this album on vinyl, but I am broke. I barely had enough money to press 100 CDs of „Hijo Perdido“. Maybe someday?

Besides Seattle grunge, Cascadian BM, and SHADED ENMITY, what are Washington’s most noteworthy contributions to guitar music? Are there any bands or projects you feel the rest of the world should be aware of? Any well-hidden secrets that would deserve some more publicity?

If there is any band that deserves some publicity it would be a band called PHALGERON. They share a practice space with SHADED ENMITY and I was just listening to some of their new album the other day (not finished yet) and I thought it sounded really good. I believe out of all the bands in Seattle right now, PHALGERON has the most potential. Their guitarist Tyler is killer and a clean player, Lane the bassist is an extremely solid and on point bass player; and drummer Ian can keep great time and has nice hand work and has the most potential out of most of the drummers in Seattle.

Also, check out a band called ATISA, more of a straight melodic death style.

That’s it for now. The last words are yours. Feel free to have another promo speech. Will you play in Europe anytime soon?

I appreciate the interview; this is the first one I have given in years. I want to thank everyone who has ordered our albums, and also to the people who have pre ordered our new album. We would love to play in Europe soon. I would like to set up a small tour their next year but I don’t know how possible that’s going to be?
Thanks again for all of your support, without www.metal.de a lot of people wouldn’t know about us.