Interview with Col Cadell (Vocalist with Schoenberg Automaton)

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Interview with Colin Cadell from Schoenberg Automaton - Part 2

So the guys have been together for just over 3 months; they've released a demo and have been gigging in Brisbane and interstate. Here's the next part of the interview:

A.P: Interests other than music?

C.C: Film. I obsess over cameras & optics, film cameras, photography cameras, movies and the aesthetics of films. Any aspect of film - I’m pretty fanatical about. Which is what I think gives the vocals that I do with this band [Schoenberg] a lot of differentiation from what I’ve previously done. Apex [Null] was always very sci-fi themed and a bit out there because we were a lot proggier, and it was just fun to write. With Cross The Lips I was singing someone else’s lyrics as well as the ones I wrote; because of the genre & the medium it was fitting into I tended to write a lot more very abrasive, straight up, harsh & offensive lyrics because that’s more the way I felt how it should be expressed and more what people within that genre would prefer to listen to. Well, I know I do when I listen to that particular niche...
With Schoenberg my biggest influences are probably people like Kurt Vonnegut (author of Slaughterhouse Five, Cat’s Cradle), Brett Easton Ellis...and then add to that the images from a lot of Japanese filmmaking such as Takashi Mike, Akira Kurosawa and Shion Sono. People like that who pushing that extreme envelope in Japan but still keeping some taste to it. The lyrics have ended up being a lot more psychological and a lot more thought out. I often set out not to repeat lines in any of the songs, other than maybe a word that might be repeated because it’s the same rhythm build.

A.P: If someone chucked you a bunch of money and told you to make a video for one of your songs, how would it look?

C.C: It would be odd. I think bands when they’re starting out should focus on doing something so experimentally weird that they’re not even involved with the video; almost like a short film –I’d love to do that but having said that I’d kind of like our first one to be a performance type thing...

A.P: Well, people do like to get their faces out there...

C.C: Exactly, and people want to see the band on the first video because they don’t even have a clue what the band looks like when they’re playing.

A.P; You could always do a T.I.S.M and play with masks on...

C.C: Because we’re monstrous fans of games like Bioshock, a cool thing would be something like us falling into a massive lake, then coming up out of the water and then wandering out onto a beach with all the equipment set up, and then start playing. It would kind of fun and silly. It could combine the mystery of the opening scenes of Bioshock; and as people have seen with our artwork aesthetic; there’s a lot of bio-mechanical/steam punk influence. We’re really into the whole idea of robots that look really worn out and used up, like they’re incremental to the environment as opposed to being created for a purpose...

A.P: Sound like a good description of humans...the artwork I’ve seen so far almost reminds me of art nouveau and the movie Metropolis...

C.C: A lot of our aesthetic comes from Shane & my obsession with art-deco (laughs), which people find kind of weird because we’re people in their mid-twenties, living in Brisbane and playing death metal...we like it because it’s so quirky and it looks wrong. Cool but wrong.

A.P: There’s something inherently stylish about it too.

C.C: That’s the thing; they had so many ‘off’ angles and disgusting shapes but at the end of it, it looks so much more human and creative than something you’d see now. Everything now looks like a fucking ipod commercial; polished to buggery and what are you doing at the end of it? You’ve got the same product...now it’s pretty much just a case of what label do you want to buy; what label looks coolest to you – and that’s not for us. We really want an aesthetic that is ‘us’, which is something that I think a lot of bands have lost.
When I was 13, listening to bands like Pantera & Slayer, I thought it was awesome. Slayer had that aesthetic of (adopts comedy metal growl) ‘We’re all about warfare and Satan’, and they looked pissed off and it worked. Pantera – dudes claimed to be massive party rednecks; all their videos – party rednecks. They had this aesthetic and they went with it. We don’t want to portray ourselves as something we can’t be.

A.P: But you don’t want to get yourselves locked into a category?

C.C: No, no...which is why we keep that robotic side to it, with the bio-shock and the steam punk; having those semi-organic robots. We can progress the image if we want to.

A.P: Or retrogress?

C.C: Exactly. Whose to say with the album we don’t go forward 300 years and all of a sudden it’s Blade Runner style cyber-punk? The aesthetic will still be very similar but the key lines and definitions will change. But it won’t change the way the band looks as an aesthetic image; it will just be a different shape.

A.P: But what about how the band will sound?

C.C: Musically I don’t think it would change either, that’s what works so well for us; if we had that image in play as we do now, it would still work because you would still have those weird, old fashioned bits coming in with the mechanical and very modern parts. While we like to have progression in our music, we also like to have progression with the aesthetic of the band as well. There’s nothing worse than seeing a band constantly with the same aesthetic and mentality, writing the same music. Everything should be progressing somewhat.

A.P: ‘Should’ being the operative word; people feel safe with what they know...

C.C: That’s it. If you’re having the same aesthetic with every album but the music is only changing differentially then you’re going to start losing fans.

A.P: Well, if you don’t change then you stagnate. But then again look at Motorhead – they haven’t really changed their ‘formula’ for 30 years...and they’re still fucking awesome.

C.C: But they hold true to their aesthetic. Lemmy is rock and roll. There is no other way to describe the man. He is rock and roll in essence.

A.P: You talk very eloquently; I can imagine you being interviewed on the telly by some famous person.

C.C: It probably sounds obnoxious but I do feel more comfortable talking about myself.

A.P: It’s a subject that you know well.

C.C: (laughs) Yeah, I find it a lot easier talking about myself as opposed to trying to bullshit about something else.

Interview with Colin Cadell, vocalist with the Schoenberg Automaton

A.P: OK, we’ll start with the basics; give us a bit of background on bands you guys have previously played in.
C.C: I played in a lot of jazz ensembles, playing clarinet (laughs) but metal bands; there’s been three; the current one is Schoenberg Automaton, then prior to that was Cross the Lips of Grace, and prior to that was Apex Null, which is sort of a sentient band at the moment; we just write & record but we’re not going to play live very often. Zimi Shabanay (bass) was in Cross the Lips of Grace, Shayne Johnson (guitar) played in Empyrean, Damien Boorman (guitar) from Lytic Cycle, and Nelson Barnes (drums) was in Function Cease.
A.P: What are the influences that you and the other band members have taken into this project? C.C: Shayne (guitar) & Nelson (drums) sort of started the project, with a lot of the influences coming from the modern side of death metal from bands such as The Faceless, Necrophagist, and Cephalic Carnage – the more chaotic stuff. Then on the other side, you have the whole ‘Djent’ influence from bands such as Mesuggah, Periphery, Ion Dissonance...Ion Dissonance is probably the biggest influence on Schoenberg.
A.P: As much as I hate the use of genres; which one does Schoenberg fall into?
C.C: A lot of people are throwing us into the Djent movement, but as a band we say we’re a technical death metal outfit; the only reason we say this is because we’re using a lot of death metal standards such as blast sections into slams, but none of the sections are constant and solid; it’s very rare to have a part that’s the same for more than 15 seconds. We try to change it up a lot more, which is another reason why we get put into the Djent category because we’re a lot more chaotic. We also get referred to as noise core by some...
A.P: So Schoenberg’s playing their first gig tomorrow (Fat Louies, Albert St, Brisbane) – you pooing your pants?
C.C: No, I’m looking forward to it, not so much nervous about performing but just working with new people. It’s that whole thing of playing with people that you haven’t played with before, people you haven’t worked with before; it’s a very different kind of structure. Once you’ve played with the same people for a year, you know exactly what they’re going to do on stage; where they’ll speed up, what parts might get stuffed up.
A.P: Have you seen any of the other guys playing with their previous bands?
C.C: Yeah, I’ve seen everyone’s previous bands; I have a good understanding of what their performances are like; the worst you’ll see is Daimo (Damien Boorman) in footy shorts. He has a habit of wearing stubbies when playing live...
A.P: Nice...a little bit of nut action...
C.C: Yeah, he likes the rugger shorts...
A.P: The music is pretty technical so do you think there’ll be any issues reproducing it live?
C.C: To be honest; no, all the stuff we’ve been jamming has come out 100% perfect; nothing has come out ‘odd’ if that makes sense...it’s all falling together really well – which is why there’s the slight trepidation of how it’s going to go live because in the jam room it’s worked out really well. We’ve had to approach learning the songs a lot more progressively than some bands would because eight seconds of a song may have six rhythm changes...it’s quite chaotic. We work section by section and then try and piece it together as a whole, and when we have the whole piece we can start to see where the weak areas are, and then we enhance those. We just keep moulding it until we’re happy with the final piece. But one of the advantages we have is that all of it’s done digitally prior to the actual gig; Shayne tracks all the guitars to a click, those are sent to Nelson who digitally programs the drums so he can learn them on both his electronic and ‘real’ kit. Before we even hit the jam room, most members have already been playing the songs so that’s an advantage; everyone already has an idea of how the song sounds. I just come in once the vocals need to be applied. It’s a bit different to how I’ve approached it previously, as with my old bands I’d normally had more input with the song writing side of things but it’s really cool – the Schoenberg guys are good enough song writers on their own.
A.P: What was it like recording the demo?
C.C: With Schoenberg, the recording side is so meticulous and we want it to have the attack; we approached the vocal recordings in syllables as opposed to words or complete phrases, which means that every syllable has attack on it, and gives us the advantage that we can perfectly multi-track every syllable. Some of the sections on the demo are multi-tracked eight times so there are four vocal layers with two in each layer. It was definitely a lot more intense and laborious than I was used to; it was lot more full on.
A.P: How many songs are on the demo, and who produced it?
C.C: Three songs; produced by Darren Cruickshank, a bloke from Aberdeen, Scotland. He has a solo project called Bleeding Skies, which is where he honed his production skills. The version of Pineapples which is up on our MySpace page is the mix that Darren did a while back.
A.P: When will the demo be available?
C.C: We’re hoping mid December; I’m finalising the artwork at the moment, so once that’s done...