- What’s behind the name of the band, and where do you find inspiration for your sound?
Necrytis is a made-up word. I read a book about the creation of the dictionary and thought it would be cool to make up my own word, so I did. Necrytis means ‘of, or pertaining to, the mysteries of the afterlife’. I started writing a story about a main character named Necrytis. He’s not the devil, but he knows the neighborhood very well, and he’s the one that helps the dead navigate their way out of here. In fact, the next album has a sort of ‘origin’ story about Necrytis on it. The inspiration for our sound comes from a genuine love of music. We don’t pick favorites; basically whatever sounds good is what we like. That’s why you might hear a Loudness riff that transposes into a Jethro Tull riff out of nowhere. Take Blood in the Well, for instance…there are probably four separate genres of music in that one song.
- How do you approach song writing? Are there any themes that you deliberately explore?
I can’t write songs, ha ha! If I sit down to write lyrics or to write a song it will turn out as a horrible mess. I wake up with melodies in my head, or when I’m about to fall asleep. I read every night before I go to bed and there’s always a radio on in my head. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s been there my whole life. I mostly ignore it, but sometimes when I’m reading I’ll hear something cool playing on that ‘radio’ and I’ll stop to vocalize the melody. Lyrics usually come to me as a lightning flash. I’ll write a whole song’s lyrics in 10-15 minutes…the other night I wrote two songs in 40 minutes…it just came out of nowhere. If I sit down with a plan to make up song lyrics I usually get two lines done and it looks like a child wrote it; it’s awful. As for themes, I like stories, even though it’s hard to tell a complex story in a song without coming across too vague. Alec Burgess, the guy that wrote A Clockwork Orange, also wrote a book called The Wanting Seed. A friend of mine gave it to me (thanks Paul!) and I already had Call Us Insanity written but it had no chorus. I thought the story concept was great, about fertility control and the government’s role in controlling us, so I used a bit of those ideas and meshed them into my own to make a sci-fi story of a society that has been contacted by ‘the other side’. Their children have been taught telepathy by these beings and have constructed a wormhole, so the plan is for a group of rebels to defect to who knows where? I like supernatural/occult themes the most. I couldn’t write a song about feelings or love or even partying; besides, that’s been done to death.
- With the new album, how did you approach writing and recording it?
Since Countersighns actually worked, we knew we could do this one easily even though we’re geographically separated. It was painless. We didn’t use a click either. I hate playing to a click. Without a click I can push and pull the timing subtly and get the song to breathe, but with a click it sounds too robotic. We kept the simple mistakes too and left the noise; it’s really a raw album but it has life! I recorded all of the drums and then sang the vocals. I had 53 vocal melodies recorded, just little pieces, some left over from the Countersighns sessions. It’s a bit difficult to sing without music, especially when the music hasn’t been written yet, and you’ll hear flat spots sometimes in the vocals, but for all I know they would’ve been flat anyway, ha ha! Once guitar was on I could’ve re-recorded the vocals but Toby and I agreed that they might lose the spontaneity and freshness. Toby recorded the bass because he said it’s easier to write that way, as he hears bass lines while he’s recording guitar. Mark was supposed to fly out and record his bass parts but when I got the tracks from Toby, it was the same issue as re-doing vocals. The bass was so much a part of the ‘vibe’ of the tune that we felt it was unnecessary to re-track it. Plus, they sounded great, very raw. If you listen to the bass tracks in isolation it sounds like Voivod’s ‘Blower’ bass! I felt horrible telling Mark we were going to keep it ‘as is’ but it was best for the album. I know he was fired up to get out here and record (sorry Mark!) There was an additional factor and that’s timing. We had just released Countersighns in September and it got a great buzz going underground, so we wanted to strike while the iron’s hot as they say, and get a second album out so people don’t forget about us. If we had waited a couple of months for Mark to learn his parts, then fly out and record, then mix and try to get on Jens’s calendar for a spring/summer mastering session (probably impossible), it would’ve been early 2019 before it got released.
- What songs from the record are you looking forward to playing live and why?
Starshine for sure because it has a cool intro, then kicks off into the main riff. The whole tune is just fun to play. Necrytis too, because it will melt people’s faces off. Blood in the Well, Odyssey Divine and of course Heresiarch Profane, but damn, that just leaves Call Us Insanity, and that song has the anthem chant in the breakdown, so we would have to play that. That’s the whole album, isn’t it, ha ha!
- What plans do you have for the future?
I’ll record Necrytis #3 sometime in July, then get everything up to Toby. He’ll have his parts finished by October for sure. Then a month of mixing, get it mastered and hopefully Pure Steel is on board to get it out there by April. That would be three albums released in 19 months! You don’t see that too much these days. I’ve already got three songs demoed, another two written and lyrics for two more. It will be seven songs, running 43-45 minutes. JP is doing the album cover again and I should see a preview soon. He’s a killer artist and we get along very well; hopefully he does every Necrytis cover to come. We might do a festival or two next year, but we will definitely need a drummer and a keyboardist. I couldn’t play drums and sing this stuff at the same time, there’s just too much going on in the songs.