ALCHEMIST
More Metal for the Brain
By: John Gnesin
Australia’s number one export for experimental psychedelic metal has returned with a new album, Tripsis, which harkens back to the headier and heavier days of the band’s earlier efforts, while all the while pushing the sonic agenda fearlessly forward. In anticipation of the fall release of their latest masterpiece, we chatted with Alchemist’s guitarist and vocalist Adam Agius about the new album and the band’s future plans.
Resound: The title of the new album is Tripsis, which I imagine in the spirit (ech) of previous album titles like Organasm and Austral Alien is an invented phrase of compound meaning. This one is a little harder to untangle though - would you care to share the meaning of the album title? Does it have anything to do with the odd hand-gestures that adorn the album cover and layout?
Adam Agius: “Well its dictionary meaning is: ‘To blend to massage in, the action of a mortar and pestil, grinding rolling together.’ We thought it was a great analogy of Alchemist writing music, The hand gestures are just simply Roy’s brilliant direction of the hand model used, really weird looking, I love it.”
Resound: You recently described the new material as “the most consistently heavy album” as well as “the fastest album delivered by Alchemist”. While the two above-mentioned albums certainly had their extreme moments, this new material goes back to the earlier material collected on the Embryonics disc in terms of raw heaviness and does indeed keep up a speedy momentum throughout. What was the impetus to bring the band back to this heavier sound and as a singer was it difficult to revert back to the more extreme styles of the past?
Agius: “We definitely wanted to head bang to this album. It was sort of a reaction to Austral Alien, which was as mellow as I think the band could get and we really wanted Tripsis to sound completely different in approach. The extreme vocals are actually easier for me to do than harmony singing. I put some nice harmonies in the background on Tripsis, they sound rely nice I think, but live I just love to scream.”
Resound: Can you expound on the themes of a few of the new songs? Is there an overall theme to the record?
Agius: “This time we tried to be a little less esoteric and write a little more about real topics and the human condition. ‘Wrapped in Guilt’ is about people in judicial positions that wrongly accuse or turn a blind eye, they can’t judge others properly because they are full of guilt themselves. ‘Tongues and Knives’ is about backstabbing, people talking shit and untruths behind your back. ‘Anticipation of a High’ is a song about dealing with addiction of various types and the struggle and lies one tells to themselves when they have drug problems or other addiction problems. ‘CommunicHate’ is about modern life and how we are all expected to be available for anything 24 hours 7 days a week, If you own a mobile phone and leave it on, sometimes you are never off that bloody phone, people cant hide or rest anymore.”
Resound: Looking over the band member profiles on the website I see a lot of classic metal bands along with some more modern heavy progressive acts such as PORCUPINE TREE and TOOL in the influences section. I am surprised not to see more progressive metal bands like CYNIC, ATHEIST, et al in these lists. Do you guys consider yourselves part of the progressive metal movement, or do you try to separate yourselves from it in order to maintain independent originality?
Agius: “To tell you the truth we are only interested in 70’s prog, we are really metal fans not prog fans. We find it a little funny that we get the prog tag, we are just a metal band doing our own thing, Bands like CYNIC and WATCHTOWER are a little overdone to us. When all those bands came about, we were into grind, death and thrash as well as the 60’s psychedelic movement. We really see ourselves as a psychedelic/surf-thrash band. I think that’s also why it’s hard to get promoters to book us: because we ain’t prog and we ain’t strict extreme metal… hard to classify means hard to book.”
Resound: In 2006, Alchemist performed at the final installment of Metal for the Brain, one of Australia's biggest fests. What was it like to take part in this event over the years and to be there for this final installment? How healthy is the Australian metal scene these days and how do you see Alchemist's role within it?
Agius: “We own M4TB so it was both satisfying and sad to be at the last and most successful yet, we may bring it back in 2008 just because its such a fucking big thing to let go of. We advertised it as the last because we wanted to concentrate on Tripsis and touring. The Aussie scene is like any other, the difference is that it is truly international now, with bands coming down under in the hundreds. There is a lot more competition now. We still have a pretty good hold on the audience but we are always trying to win new fans and it’s great to see so many new faces at shows.”??Resound: How is the touring agenda shaping up in support of Tripsis? Maybe finally some U.S. dates??
Agius: “Our schedule is looking good. We will do about 5 cities in Australia leading up to October. October 6th sees us headline the Prog Power Festival in Baarlo, Holland and (we) tour Europe for about 15 dates after that. Then we have to be home late October to tour New Zealand and the West Coast of Australia, then back to doing the East coast again and so far a few good summer festivals. We really want to get to the states but have no agent and small sales, no one seems to be interested. It would be alot cheaper for Alchemist to tour the States instead of Europe. One Aussie dollar is 86 US cents so it’s very cost efficient for us to do the states… I hope someone reads this and can help.”
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