DATE OF INTERVIEW:

CRIPPLED BLACK PHOENIX

3rd May 2012

JUSTIN GREAVES; KARL DEMATA

Time Out recently summarised Crippled Black Phoenix as: "Unconventional post-rock American duo CBP favour doom-rock and 15-minute edits, balanced with spoken-word overdubs." "Unconventional" is the only accurate word within that sentence in what's an inexplicably erroneous description of the band from a supposedly respected publication. However, such ill-researched, misinformed and fallacious accounts seem to have plagued CBP throughout their career, so much so that they've bothered to list the most common misconceptions on their Facebook page (which would surely provide an easily accessible primary source of information for journos). "Supergroup" they are not. Nor "collective". And the perennial insistence of lazy scribes who place them under the equivocal "post-rock" umbrella term is surely appropriated by those who've never bothered to listen to the actual music. "Vigilante" is CBP's descriptive label of choice which is apposite on so many levels from their genre-defying, innovative compositions and songs' conceptual themes to the band's general attitude. Fresh off a lengthy tour around mainland Europe, Metal Discovery met up with guitarists Justin Greaves and Karl Demata at the beginning of May a short while before CBP were due to hit the stage at The Garage in London for a one-off UK gig...

METAL DISCOVERY: It was quite a lengthy European tour in March/April but this is your only UK headline show. Is that because the band’s more popular on mainland Europe would you say?

JUSTIN: Probably more to the point, we’re less bothered about England! [laughs]

(Justin Greaves on how vocals fit into CBP's overall aesthetic)

"…this band has never been about the vocals. The vocals are another instrument. It’s very difficult because we don’t want to force people to understand it but you want people to understand it."

Karl and Justin in The Garage bar, London, UK, 3rd May 2012

Interview & Photography by Mark Holmes

Photograph copyright © 2012 Mark Holmes - www.metal-discovery.com

KARL: It just seems to get around mainland Europe much better. We play long sets but I think here in England, they’re not used to that. They’re after a quick fix of gratification.

MD: You hit number 43 in the charts in Germany for the new album so obviously you have a bigger fanbase out that way?

JUSTIN: I suppose it looks like it’s getting that way. Like Karl says, I think just about every other country apart from America is geared up more towards the band who do things like we do. We don’t really fit into the English way although we come from here, or based here.

MD: And a lot of your influences are maybe from England originally.

JUSTIN: Well, all over the place really but I think we have, essentially, an English sound.

MD: So that’s an irony in one sense.

JUSTIN: Yeah.

KARL: The English sound is more popular in Europe than in England I think! [laughs]

MD: Countries other than the UK seem to be a lot more open-minded to genuinely progressive music – has that been the case in your experience?

JUSTIN: Yeah, definitely. You see a difference in the demographic of the audience as well. Germany, predominantly, is more classic prog-rock guys and slightly older, and then we go to Poland and Eastern Europe and it’s like teenagers and stuff. It’s completely different. And then some places we get a complete mix. But I think everybody, no matter who they are or what they’re into or what they like about the band, they seem to be open-minded about all the other aspects.

So the classic rock guys, they like the rock stuff but they kind of like the noisy stuff or the ambient stuff. And the indie kids, they’re open-minded to the guitar stuff for instance. It doesn’t work quite like that in the UK. I think in the UK, the classic rock guys seem to be more open-minded than anybody. I was quite surprised, at first, how they welcomed us with open arms in that world because I’ve never regarded ourselves as a classic rock band. But I think they tend to be a little more open-minded and have a bit more spirit of progressive music…not as in tagged ‘progressive’ music…but the spirit of prog.

MD: Yeah, not the genre of prog but music that’s actually progressing something. You’re a multi-faceted band with your styles so your appeal seems to stretch to lots of different scenes. And you can’t categorise Crippled Black Phoenix at all.

JUSTIN: No, but that’s what I’m saying about Europe; people seem to come together for something like that whereas in England it’s more divided.

MD: Yeah, it’s more scene oriented in this country. People who are into prog generally just get into generically categorised prog bands…

JUSTIN: But they wouldn’t go and see an indie band or some other kind of band that has progressive tendencies. It’s the other way around. In fact, it’s worse than the other way around. I think that the indie crowd in this country just wouldn’t go to a prog rock gig. They seem much more divided.

MD: So you have a guy called Matt Simpkin who’s been standing in as vocalist on the tour you’ve just done and the show tonight – is he going to become a permanent member of the band or can’t you say yet?

JUSTIN: We can’t really comment on that at this point.

KARL: It’s still a kind of grey area right now but, in any case, he’s done a great job. He just jumped on and learned everything and he’s a great guy as well.

MD: Have you had good feedback from your fans about Matt?

JUSTIN: For the most part, yeah. I mean, there’s always gonna be dissenters but it doesn’t matter if it was Matt or anybody, people sometimes don’t like change. The thing is, with bands, it’s tricky because if you change a bass player or drummer or something, they’re just as valid as the singer. The way we do it, everything’s equal but the way the fans perceive it, you could change a bass player or a drummer and they wouldn’t have much to say but change a singer and it doesn’t matter who you get, they just don’t like the change. It’s because they get used to a certain voice.

But that’s the dichotomy that this band has because this band has never been about the vocals. The vocals are another instrument. It’s very difficult because we don’t want to force people to understand it but you want people to understand it. So you’ve got to try and do your thing and just hope people actually understand what’s going on. But yeah, there’s not much we can do about people’s opinions.

MD: ‘(Mankind) The Crafty Ape’ is an amazing new album…

JUSTIN: Thank you very much.

MD: Was it always intended to be a double CD?

JUSTIN: No, we put together an album that makes sense dynamically and everything else, and the songs that need to be on there and the bits of music that need to be on there and let that dictate the release. So when we got 86 minutes of music, or whatever it was, we just had to basically go up to the label and say: “We’ve got 86 minutes of music, that’s what you’re gonna get, we’re not taking anything out because that’s what makes sense.” And they were totally cool and, straight away, they said, “no worries, we’ll do a double CD.”

MD: You’ve been quoted as saying that the songs are linked through themes involving “the corruption of mankind and injustice, but also ultimately in the hope that all is not lost”. For me, the music itself actually reflects that pessimistic/optimistic paradox so were you very conscious when composing songs that concept and music were at one?

JUSTIN: The way it works is that I’ll start with a bunch of music and then have a bunch of ideas about…it’s all to do with whatever mood I might be in. I tend to write a lot of ideas down and ideas for song titles so it’s almost like the song titles come first. But when you get closer to making the album, you start thinking about the songs to go on the album and, sometimes, it’s more about luck really because the songs find their titles and their themes. With the title comes the theme, you know, and the concept of that song. And hopefully, fingers-crossed, if it turns out right, like I say, there’s an element of luck, the music finds the titles and the titles find the music and it all starts to make sense.

If you have a song like ‘Faced with Complete Failure’, the big long song at the end, that is a pure dichotomy; both sides of the coin in one song. And to have a song title like that which is quite gloomy sounding, but it’s full of hope, and then you think, okay, it’s a perfect match. And that’s how it works. I don’t think anything’s ever forced because I don’t think we could do it that way! [laughs]

MD: There’s a very natural feel to the songs where all the instruments, and vocals, play off each other in a very intrinsic kind of way. How much were the songs rehearsed as a full band before hitting the studio and did they continue to develop through rehearsals from when they were originally written?

JUSTIN: They’re written, demos are recorded and, sometimes, they’re not even demoed either.

KARL: But you can tell. You can tell there are a few that are structured and those are the ones that were demoed and pretty much the same. And some were a little bit more like good ideas and then we did more in the studio. But none of them changed radically and there was never a point where it was like, “oh, we have to add another chorus because it doesn’t work” or something like that. The songs were there.

JUSTIN: Things can develop in the studio but the development actually also includes the fact that we take things out as well. So when you say things play off each other, most of the lyrics were reworked as they kind of felt like they were competing with thing, like “we’ll take that out and that out”…that’s development right there. When you think of development, you think of you’re adding stuff the whole time but that’s not how it works.

MD: Do you add stuff in the studio in terms of…because the instrumentations are nicely layered with lots of different stuff, if one of the musicians says, “this might sound good if I add this bit on top of this”, do songs develop in that way?

JUSTIN: No. Nobody’s got that much control!

[laughs]

JUSTIN: No, I mean, there is a bit of that. Each musician obviously plays the parts their way but, ninety per cent of the time, the parts are already written. It’s just down to how they play it and that’s where you kind of bounce off each other. But you’ve got to understand the song so it’s not come along and play what you want. The basis of the songs, the songs are pretty much complete; it’s how you work with the sound when you record it. In the past, I’ve had demos where I actually prefer the demo versions to how it’s actually turned out on the album. They’re two different things so it’s a judgement call. When you’re in the studio, it’s very much a judgement call and you kind of use your instincts a lot as well.

MD: The album was recorded in Chapel Studios which is a residential studio of course, so did you stay there for the whole of the recording process?

KARL: Yeah.

MD: Was the local pub open?

JUSTIN: No, it was shut!

MD: I interviewed Paradise Lost last week who recorded their new album there and they said part of what attracted them back to Chapel was the pub but it was being refurbished! Must’ve been a similar time.

KARL: We didn’t mind because we were working 24/7 kind of thing. We were eating and drinking the songs, you know!

MD: How many hours were you working per day then?

JUSTIN: As many as we possibly could. Ewan, the engineer there, he’s a great guy. I’ve actually known him for a long, long time. That was really why we ended up in Chapel in the first place because I know the guys from a long, long time ago. And I always thought that Chapel would be the perfect studio for this band so the first chance we get, you know, with the new label saying we could pick the studio, and we go there. The whole relationship between everybody was really cool. All the other guys came to play their parts and went home but me and Karl were there all the time. We didn’t really communicate with the outside world, to be honest.

MD: There’s a very organic sound to the production so is that why you chose Chapel as well because of all the vintage gear they have there?

JUSTIN: Yeah, they’ve got good equipment and outboard stuff but, more than that, it was the fact there’s the live room there that lets the instruments sound like instruments. So there was actually very little production involved. We spent more time in setting up and making the sounds before it goes into the desk. It was more of a case of mixing, really, than producing.

MD: As I think I wrote in my review, it sounds like actual people playing instruments rather than the whole thing being overproduced and massacred by Pro Tools.

JUSTIN: We were concerned not to polish it up too much, I’ll say that. A place like that, you could go so technically correct, you’d lose all the song. Sometimes, some of the little nuances of weird stuff coming up…

KARL: Yeah, sometimes you can hear the pedal kicking in for the guitar and it’s like, yeah, we didn’t want to take it off.