BURIED INSIDE
Time Bandits
By: John Mincemoyer
Buried Inside is the newest addition to the Relapse label roster. They hail from Canada and on their Relapse Records debut, 'Chronoclast,' their dynamic, tension-laden sound wraps around some rather profound concepts.
The concept of time is not a new one, but Buried Inside views this concept as a negative form, or force, of control. With 'Chronoclast' they attempt to unravel this idea and expose time as an enemy.
If you think about it, do we not take time for granted? It exists because we believe the History books. We, humans, are objective creatures-we know that someone built the watch we wear on our wrist or the clock that we stare at on the wall and we trust that both are correct.
We fear time because we understand, at least think we pretend to understand, that we are mortal, and when death arrives-our time in this plane of existence is up. A woman's birth years are referred to as her "biological clock." Once that clock stops then she, technically, should no longer be able to bear children although science is pushing this idea out the proverbial window. The "Doomsday Clock" was set during the Cold War...Has it stopped now that the Cold War is over or is it still ticking? If Armageddon arrives you can bet someone will diligently record the time.
Remember the dreadfully slow, yet silent clock ticking away in your various classrooms during school? Remember the tension you felt, as the hands seemed to "creep" around the clock's face? Remember the relief you felt when the clock struck three? Time as control...
We cannot control time-it creeps ever onward-at least in our imagination. You might balk and say that the sun rises and the sun sets and the moon goes through its phases, which was one way the Ancients reportedly told time, but what would happen if we stopped believing or bowing to these ideas and constructs?
Realize this: John Mincemoyer supplied the questions and Steve Martine (bass/vocals), Nick Shaw (vocals) and Matias Palacios-Hardy (guitar) supplied the answers.
Tell me when the band formed?
Steve: The band formed in the summer of 1997.
Is there a meaning to your moniker Buried Inside?
Nick: Well, firstly, it's the only name out of about a million that we could all agree upon. But it does have a certain amount of meaning to it too...I mean it's an aggressive style of music with a lot built up emotionally. The name recognizes a certain level of individual and social repression, to which we are all subject. Basic repression is universal and inescapable. However, surplus repression, I would like to believe, is not. Many have argued that surplus repression is fully internalized oppression. The name is in reference to the idea that the repressed is always striving to return, and that we, as humans in repressive society, are always trying to come to terms with this.
Sell your band to me. Describe what you do (sound-wise) in detail...
Steve: We have always tried to push our music, and ourselves in order to do something different. We are all lovers of heavy music, and were originally inspired by bands from Ottawa and Quebec who were fucking loud, and played with incredible energy. As we have matured we have continued to try to write the heaviest parts we can, while maintaining a clear melodic presence that is catchy. The newest recording 'Chronoclast' has the most quiet, and slowest parts, as well as the fastest and most relentless sections we have ever written, and again we've tried to set a mood throughout the record, one that is darker, and almost apocalyptic.
If I understand correctly, "choronoclast" would, in essence, be "rebelling" against time, correct? Explain this idea in detail.
Nick: The word "chronoclast" comes from a combination of two Greek words: Khronos, meaning "time," and klan, meaning, "to break." So literally, chronoclast means, "to break time." As a noun, a chronoclast may be a person or thing, which attacks or destroys popular images, concepts, or physical tools of time. Rousseau was a chronoclast for smashing his watch, Einstein was a chronoclast for challenging absolutism, David Blaine is a chronoclast for being two places at once or whatever, and our record is a chronoclast because it shits on time.
Would it be safe to say that 'Chronoclast' is a concept album?
Nick: Yes and no. Every record is conceptual to the degree that it was put together by a specific group of people at a specific moment and thus relates to the specific interests of those people at that time, but the capital "C" concept album is a muddy categorization-and often comes attached to things worth avoiding.
Explain the concepts in the subtitle "Time-Reckoning" and "Auto-Cannibalism?"
Nick: Time-reckoning is any system of time discipline people are inculcated into and auto-cannibalism is any form of self-cannibalization, either literal, like in the film Anthropophagus, or metaphoric. In this case, unfortunately for all the gore-grinders, the subtitle may be more in reference to symbolic cannibalism but it would probably be even more interesting if we tried to make a connection between time-reckoning and incorruptible old-fashioned meat-and-bone cannibalism.
Explain each song, or "treatise."
Nick: Well, the 'Chronoclast' record is basically a shopping list of time issues. Different sections deal with different aspects of time reckoning: time as idea, as method, as pathology, as religion, as currency, as imperial power, as measure, as automation, as subversion and so on. The important questions are what is time? And how is it used? Further, what are its biases? And who benefits? These questions have become more and more important as spatial politics, commerce, and technologies give way even more to the temporal. In dealing with these questions, we're using this record as a reminder of past solidification in the development of time-reckoning systems. What I mean is how if you look at all the arbitrary time measures and systems we follow you can see a pattern of chauvinism and imperialism, from Judeo-Christian, to British, to capitalism, et cetera. Those with power make the rules. And you and I and everyone else will live under them, and internalize them, and base our whole lives around systems we had no part in creating.
Would it be wrong to say that you are, in essence, attacking the "norms" that rules Western civilization?
Nick: Of course not, this is a punk band. We will always be attacking certain so-called "norms" and screaming about chaos while everyone bangs their fists and we all go home sweaty.
Explain the idea behind "time war."
Nick: A time war is any strain between opposite forces directly related to time reckoning. At its most simple, an example would be the disputes the French and English governments have had over the length of a week or the placement of the Zero Meridian for time-zones.
Is the acceptance of time, in most people's eyes, much like religion-blind faith? Is this what you seem to be trying to destroy?
Nick: Blind faith is exactly the issue here. And nothing seems to be more invisible than time. Of course, it generally manages to evade our attention because we take it for granted. Having blind faith in anything can be dangerous, so it's important to recognize and remain suspicious of that faith. In this case, if we don't recognize this blind faith in time, we'll inevitably become its victims.
The quote attributed to Dafydd ap Bwilyn, "A curse on its weights, a curse on its wheel," is rather interesting. Was the mechanical clock looked upon (c. 1380) as the "Devil's work?"
Nick: Yeah, it was actually called "the Devil's Mill" by many. I mean you have to understand that the mechanical clock was the first automatic device of its kind. And back then, a clock was extremely expensive and only certain monasteries, rich people or royalty, or town squares had them. So it seems that when a lot of peasants and farmers encountered them, they dreaded the automatic, living machine quality of the clock and the slowly growing authority people were conceding it.
In the "Table of Contents" the songs are listed in Roman numerical order, but they are also listed with Arabic numerals that begin with 1, end with 14 with the song VI not "numbered," but representing the center, and the other song number denominations doubled-up? I'm confused...
Matias: The Arabic numerals are the page on which the lyrics / quotes for each song appear. The number denominations doubled-up are pure coincidence.
Explain how the album art, which is quite beautiful and striking, correlates with the music?
Matias: The theme of the artwork is the dominating effect of time on the natural world. As the lyrics indicate, there are several different consequences of a regimented time system, but visually, the most obvious is that of the natural world. The clock compliments the human obsession with putting order to nature, so the artwork reflects this desire to take the natural world, dissect it, and resurrect it within an organized structure. Therefore, the artwork consists of icons of human organization and construction like buildings and cities juxtaposed with the more chaotic systems of nature.
Explain "Newtonian mechanics" and "Promethean mandates."
Nick: Isaac Newton was an absolutist who believed time was "absolute, true, and mathematically equal," flowing independently from anything external. His beliefs were expanded by some, like Descartes, into a theory that the world functioned as one big mechanical clock, where, for example, dogs existed as mechanical appendages devoid of feeling. Newtonian mechanics are sort of the basis for "objective science" and standardization and reductionism and other things I remain suspicious about. Prometheus was a titan from Greek myths who was supposed to have made clay beings with fire. He ended up being bound and cut by Zeus or Neptune while vultures ate out his insides. Greece seemed pretty wild back then. Prometheus has since been used as a symbol for self-serving technological invention, something else worth suspicion.
George Woodcock, author of The Tyranny of the Clock is quoted as saying; "It is a frequent circumstance of history that a culture or civilization develops the device that will later be used for its destruction." Is this related to time? Yes, we have invented nuclear weapons-will this device be our destruction? Do you speak of "Armageddon" in a Biblical sense?
Nick: Woodcock's essay was specifically about time. He thought that this "tyranny of abstraction" was a seed for social destruction. Giving some context though, that essay was published in 1944, so it was written in the middle of the Second World War as a backlash to fascism, war, and so on. Woodcock was definitely a doomsayer. I don't think there is anything Biblical about it-just cynical.
Is technology evil? You have used a certain amount of technology to produce your music? Explain this paradox if you will?
Nick: Yeah, technology is pure unbridled evil, especially rock instruments! How do you think bands like Venom came to be? And Robert Johnson didn't have to go to any crossroads to sign a deal with the devil, you sign a deal with the devil the second you pick a guitar. So like those before us, we're just trying to harness some evil tools to make some evil music. The disparity of technology seems to be more that some of it is gloriously evil and some of it is obnoxiously evil.
Time as we seem to know it, has always existed, but hasn't always existed by definitions...Does this make sense? Is "before time" chaos? Is time a way to control chaotic forces?
Nick: Time as we know it definitely has not always existed. I am told things grow and die and celestial spheres move around, and so on, but time is foremost an idea. It's a developing idea too, so the way we know it now wasn't the way people knew it a hundred years ago. And the week, the hour, time zones, and the accuracy of computer clocks are all ideas totally apart from nature, designed instead, in the interests of control.
Can mankind govern itself without such forms of control, e.g. time, laws, et cetera?
Nick: Not in a globally connected setting.
Besides the authors quoted in the CD booklet, are there other works of literature that you could (would) recommend for others to read and try to learn more about these concepts?
Nick: Sure... The Seven Day Circle by Eviatar Zerubavel; Empires of Time by Anthony Aveni; Technopoly by Neil Postman; Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism by E.P. Thompson and Men Against Time by Douglas Wood.
Most of the great thinkers and "scientists" of old were considered mad, heathens and witches. Do you think this type of mentality is still present today? I realize that people are not being burned at the stake, but there are definitely movements against any type of iconoclastic behavior or belief systems.
Nick: There's always going to be dominant ideas and less dominant ideas. With more dominance comes more authority. With more authority comes more power, and that is how the Christian church could get away with burning heathens. It's the same today with something like sex. There are dominant ideas about sex and less dominant ideas about sex, and the dominant just keep on trying to crush the other. What's great though, is to imagine bizarro [sic] universes where dominance is reversed and heterosexual marriage is profane and Mortician are playing the Superbowl halftime, again.
An old Rolling Stones song (I think) stated, "Time is on our side," but you state, "Death comes in time." Is time really on our side? Your expression is rather morbid, although we all know that human life is fragile and finite.
Nick: In a lot of paintings time has always been visually represented as death. I can picture one where time is a cloaked skeleton with a sickle in one hand and an hourglass in the other jumping out of some cornfields to reap death. "Death comes in time" is actually more of a fantasy that Death/time will one day get carried away and harvest itself.
BURIED INSIDE website: www.buriedinside.com
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