New Heaven is Inter Arma’s shortest and most sonically diverse album yet. It’s an epic and a challenging experience, created by a band that are not concerned with mastering the art of subgenres and staying true to themselves.
The smooth transition between their classic crushing moments and smartly placed flirtation with bluesy Americana whimsical personify Inter Arma’s strongest material, while their established sense of cosmic Death Metal (is that a thing?), Prog, Sludge and Doom Metal remains intact and thriving.
With the release of New Heaven, they have lifted the shroud a little, and this is how we caught up with drummer and songwriter T.J. Childers to discuss their unique approach to all things heavy.
Let’s start this. You’re one of the most interesting bands in recent years to really explore what can be done within the confines of psychedelic, progressive, dissonant, sludgy, doomy and death metal. What is it about these genres that makes them so well-suited for this kind of mutations?
I think all of those words have been used at one point or another to describe some form of heavy, aggressive music so to us it makes sense that these elements could intertwined with each other. That said, all of these areas are pretty well tread paths at this point and something that's always been a focus of ours is to, whenever traversing down one or more of these paths, try and take that road as it we can take it, hopefully into some relatively unknown new areas.
Your arrangements have become more complex over the years. How do you feel you’ve grown as songwriters, and what elements did you really try to push to a whole new level while writing New Heaven?
To be honest, I think we reached our apex in complex arrangements on Sulphur English. We were really pushing arrangement ideas into the "...and Justice for All" area on that one. Songs that have upwards of 10 parts sometimes. On New Heaven we tried to go for a more stripped down song arrangement and focus more this time on a primary idea in the song. That could mean a riff, a melody, a drum part, anything that we thought was cool and catchy enough to build a song around. You gotta have that "hook", as they say.
For me New Heaven is Inter Arma’s most raw, extreme and dynamic release. Do you agree?
Yes and no. In terms of raw, the lyrical content is probably some of the most personal stuff Mike has ever written but in terms of production and musicality I'd say it's pretty sophisticated but that's just my opinion. I don't think it's our most extreme, not to say that it's not extreme. I think Sulphur English is a much more extreme album in regards to just how heavy and oppressive it is. I would say that it's definitely our most dynamic record to date with songs that are full bore knock you over the head (New Heaven), quiet acoustic songs (Forest Service Road Blues) and lots of sounds and ideas in between.
"Gardens in the Dark" is a hell of a ride, completely outside the box, and after several listenings, I will come back to that track several times. What’s the story behind it? Correct if I’m wrong, but there’s a NIN vibe on it, right?
I bought Downward Spiral on cassette when I was 11 years old, right after it came out and I absolutely fucking loved it. Not only that, I listened to the whole record. To say that NIN is a huge influence on me is an understatement and everyone else in the band are big NIN fans as well. We'd been wanting to write a kind of "industrial" song for a while and the idea fell by the wayside for a little bit. One day before band practice I sat down behind the kit to warm up and the first thing I played was that drum beat. I recorded it on my phone because I thought it was cool and we built the rest of the song around it.
The album cover for New Heaven feels really open to various interpretations. What's the concept?
A lot of our music sounds pretty bleak and dark but with an underlying sense of light or hope. That's also the theme we try to convey lyrically. We know there are a lot of terrible things going on in the world these days but we try to focus on the positive while saying "We know things are bad right now but if we stick together and try to help each other out we can persevere". The figure on the cover looks like he's meandering through the dark, seemingly hopeless, and then stumbles onto a light or perhaps a portal to a new heaven. We thought the image was a fantastic representation of what we were trying to convey.
How do you view each new album in terms of what has come before it? Are there any overarching themes, either lyrically or in regards to technique, or is there still a desire to completely reinvent yourselves with every release?
I don't know if we're full blown reinventing ourselves but we always strive to not make the same record twice and always change things up a bit as well as try to write better and better songs through subsequent records. New Heaven was the first time we ever sat down before we started writing and said "Okay, let's try to trim as much fat as possible on these songs and make them as concise as possible". Other than that, nothing's really off the table and we'll try all kinds of ideas, riffs, etc. Some turn into something great and some get set aside.
There’s a big presence of the classic Americana folk element in Inter Arma's music. Was this a conscious decision to put in or simply just organically flows within you guys?
It just comes out naturally. We all love quiet, melodic, acoustic based music so it's only natural that those kinds of ideas come about. For example, I love country music and a lot of older singer songwriter stuff. Willie Nelson, John Prine, Bob Dylan, Billy Joe Shaver, Steve Earle. Not only that, we're all from the southeastern United States where all that music was born and raised.
Taking your music as a whole, what do you think are your biggest strengths and weaknesses?
I think one of our biggest strengths is the production of our records and the fact that when you put on an Inter Arma record, even though there are layers of synth, strings, theremin, percussion and who the fuck knows what else, the five main ingredients are always there and it always sounds like five (maybe more) human beings playing music. When I listen to a lot of metal records these days it kinda sounds like robots to me. Everything's quantized, everything's tuned and pitched and it just doesn't sound like human beings playing music a lot of times. I think the reason people listen to classic records over and over like Houses of the Holy, Highway to Hell or even Morbid Angel's Altar of Madness is because it sounds like human beings playing those songs and I believe people connect to that on a subconscious level. As far as weaknesses... I don't know if I'd necessarily call it a weakness but I wish we'd have been a bit more prolific and written even more songs in the past. That's not to say that we didn't write songs that didn't make records or that I think our songs are by any means bad, I'm just a firm believer in "practice makes perfect" and our songs have gotten better and better with each passing record. I'm already excited about what's cooking musically for the next record!
Aside from working on New Heaven, what has been keeping you all occupied in the past few years?
We've been through four bass players since 2019 (and two fill ins) and having instability in a band where there have been relatively few member changes throughout it's history can be a pain in the ass, to say the least. Once the pandemic and things came to a grinding halt we didn't do anything for a while. We did a couple small tours, I got into a pretty bad car accident last year... sometimes life has different plans, ya know? Luckily, once we got Joel playing bass for us things really started to click musically although that's not to say that the writing of New Heaven wasn't a bit of challenge.
Finally, what books and music have you been into lately?
I'll be honest, almost all I read are rock and roll biographies or autobiographies. I just finished reading Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen, Bon: The Last Highway and Brothers and Sisters: The Allman Brothers Band. As far as music, I'm the laziest music listener of all time. I just listen to the same shit over and over and it's all just classics: AC/DC, ZZ Top, Van Halen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Beatles. There's a Richmond rapper I really like named Nickelus F. I love that Thantifaxath record that came out last year. Oh, the new Eye Flys record is fantastic. I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff...
Words: Fausto Casais // Photo: Jonah Livingston – New Heaven is out now on Relapse Records.