Arsis
- Story by Chris Dick
With We Are the Nightmare, technical death dealers Arsis have no more goddamn regrets
Normally, I wouldn’t put into writing or make public my eBay addiction. Between winning (and paying handsomely) for the first Fall of the Leafe and losing the Drowned Productions version of Demigod’s Slumber of Sullen Eyes (in the final fuckin’ second to some tweaker with Auction Sniper), recent “You won on eBay!” emails haven’t been for items related to, or part of, Decibel’s very studied yet cleverly spry vernacular. No, I’m not talking about faux-porcelain tchotchkes or autographed Jade Hsu 8 x 10s. What I’ve paid hard-earned Decibucks for lately is normally bought by white-belted hipsters at high-end secondhand stores to make a fashion statement or to be moronically ironic.
So, what have I been winning? Vintage ’80s cock rock t-shirts. Dokken, White Lion, Ratt and Winger. You know, bands that rocked but looked like chicks. Dokken and Ratt usually get a pass, but fuckin’ Winger? And what does any of this have to do with Arsis?
“Winger was a great,” exclaims vocalist/guitarist James Malone after I divulge nabbing a 1990-1991 world tour shirt for less than a half tank of gas. “They’re solid all the way through. They were great musicians and songwriters. ‘Madalaine’ and ‘Headed for a Heartbreak’ were great songs.” Indeed they were, if you, like Malone and me, see past Kip Winger’s bass-lovin’ pirouettes and Reb Beach’s lip-lickin’, hip-shakin’ guitar solos. While Dissection, Carcass and At the Gates are some of Arsis’ many influences, it’s glam rock that shaped a young and musically-inclined Malone. “It was a huge influence on me growing up,” he continues. “In high school, Korn was all the rage, but I was collecting the most obscure glam rock I could find at local tape and thrift stores. I was really into a band called Banshee. They had an amazing guitar player. Their drummer was nuts as well. Quick double kick. A pretty awesome glam-type band.”
All this talk of hair metal and not one mention of the blistering tech-deathfests that were 2004’s A Celebration of Guilt or 2006’s United in Regret could indicate that Malone and his newly assembled crew of gifted misfits are pulling a Celtic Frost, eschewing all things dark and evil for shredded spandex, teased hair and cornball choruses. Could We Are the Nightmare, Arsis’ Nuclear Blast debut, be the next Cold Lake? “Yeah, it’s almost like hair metal with blast beats,” bassist Noah Martin posits, apparently unaware that his remarks will set the blogosphere alight with calls for immediate removal as death metal heirs apparent. “I know Jim’s always wanted something like that. That’s his vision. I’m really into power metal, so it makes things more enjoyable when [the songs are] more heavy metal. It’s really catchy music that you’ll never be able to play.” Seriously now. Martin is kidding, right? Maybe he’s correct in assessing We Are the Nightmare as catchy and obscenely technical—the melting strings riff in “Shattering the Spell” is absolutely wicked—but apart from a few “Lay It Down”-flavored riffs in the breathlessly quick “Servants to the Night,” he is, however cruel, overstating things a little. “I think some of that stuff is missing from death metal in general,” Malone shamelessly admits. “I don’t know how much it creeps in there, but for sure it’s on ‘Servants to the Night.’ It makes sense to have these crazy sections with something more laid-back and rockin’. It’s more interesting to me and more fun to play.”
Let’s rewind for a few. We Are the Nightmare isn’t just a smart compilation of insanely sweet riffs and unchecked soloing. Though Arsis are giving Finnish death metallers Mors Principium Est a run for their money, their roots are deeper and wider than that. In fact, We Are the Nightmare sonically and emotionally hinges on the very things its predecessor, United in Regret, lacked—as well as Malone’s own dissatisfaction with the final product. See, the Arsis frontman is a perfectionist. A humble one, but a perfectionist nonetheless. “While working on United in Regret, I didn’t feel I put everything into the writing and recording of the album that I possibly could,” he says openly. “I had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life that didn’t permit me to put 100% of my focus on writing and recording. A lot of the material on United in Regret is older than the [2005 A Diamond for Disease] EP. The songs were created more in a jam setting, so I don’t really think they sound as precise or well-thought-out as previous material.” United in Regret was far from complacent, and songs like “Oh, the Humanity” and “Lust Before the Maggots Conquest” don’t sound incomplete, but by not creatively centering on his own music, Malone feels somewhat guilty and regretful. “In the past, there was always something I wasn’t happy with. Like the amount of studio time we had or a note in a solo that’s out of tune. Nobody else would realize it but me.”
Personal problems now largely resolved, he thankfully views We Are the Nightmare from a more positive perspective. And he should. The album is a fuckin’ monster. From the opening title track to closer “Failure’s Conquest,” it’s like the best of Death’s Symbolic, Necrophagist’s Epitaph and Eucharist’s Mirrorworlds skillfully layered on top of one another to form what is arguably Arsis’ most accomplished work to date. “I feel with We Are the Nightmare, I was able to put everything aside to focus on creating the best album we possibly could. I feel in all areas that it’s the best job I could possibly have done. I feel confident in it and proud of it, and that’s why I think it’s the most accomplished Arsis album. I’m a little easier on myself with this record.” Then again, the album was mostly written on the couch in-between loads of laundry and dish duty, so Malone had plenty of time and little stress to perfect labyrinthine movements on songs like “Failing Winds of Hopeless Greed” and “Overthrown.” “I was leading a very domestic lifestyle at the time. Trying to come up with the craziest or most interesting riffs I possibly could was the only way I could pass time. Some riffs started out slow with a metronome. I had to practice to get them clean. ‘Shattering the Spell’ is a bit ridiculous. I remember the night I came up with the idea. It didn’t seem that hard to play. When I went back to it months later, I was like, ‘I gotta play this?’ It’s one of those songs on the album we’ll have to play live at least once so people will believe that we can pull it off.”
Written over the course of 2007, We Are the Nightmare’s sofa sessions eventually extended to Martin, new guitarist Ryan Knight and ex-Burn in Silence drummer Darren Cesca. Whereas most bands can meet, jam and re-think progress as a unit, Arsis are divided by geography, resourcefully resorting to, and collaborating over, the Internet. “As far as writing the music, I think it worked out great, especially with the distance factor,” Malone answers. “We all live up and down the East Coast. I would record all my initial riffs to a click track. I’d send those to Darren and he’d come back to me with his drum ideas. Ryan did the same. We’d then build the songs off the back and forth. The Internet became quite crucial.”
As a session player on United in Regret, Martin, who was introduced to a drunken Malone by the guys in DÅÅTH, wasn’t part of the writing team before, so this time around the four-stringer got more than he bargained for. “It was pretty blazing fast for the most part. If I had a problem, I’d put the file into a program that slows it down in order to learn it. If I couldn’t figure things out, I’d ask Jim or Ryan. The second song, ‘Shattering the Spell,’ is fucking crazy. We wrote over the Internet, so getting all these files and working on them was a cool process.”
And cooler still, Arsis are, for the first time, a full band. After founding member and drummer Michael Van Dyne left, Malone hired Martin, Knight and Cesca, banking on their talent to best United in Regret and touring ability to transform Arsis from minnow to mammoth. “He’s an amazing guitar player,” says Malone of his counterpart in Knight. “His solos are amazing. He definitely kept me in check. I don’t want to look like a chump who laid down something crappy when the guy next to me laid down something truly amazing. Just having someone like that to work with was a great experience.” Cesca, who plays with four different snare drums, also gets Malone’s approval for pushing the songs in a faster, more furious direction and for going above and beyond—like a Sandoval or Browning—with the size of his kit. “I knew he had a big drum set. I wasn’t 100% informed to what degree. It was a surprise when we got together for rehearsal. We practiced at his house in Connecticut. When I saw the set, I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh! We have to figure out a way to fit this in our trailer along with everything else. Great!’ But if the four snare drums help him sleep better at night, then it’s fine by me.”
While I think We Are the Nightmare will be Nuclear Blast’s best album this year and next—the Kajagoogoo tribute album is a hotly contested runner-up—Arsis fans should accept the fact that even though it’s produced better (by Zeuss, no less), has stronger songs than all previous works combined and features planet-uniting (or smashing) solos, Malone had to make sacrifices to get the job done. Like falling through the floor and getting chased by semi-rabid dogs at the video shoot for the song ‘We Are the Nightmare’ or including, for his ex-fiancée’s daughter, the first five notes of the Frosty the Snowman theme song in “Failure’s Conquest.” “It’s in the second solo, near the end of the song. I did it as a joke. I do some whammy bar flutters, so it sounds like Andy LaRocque trying to play children’s music. Zeuss thought it was pretty cool, but Ryan knew exactly what I had done. He was on the floor laughing. Half the population that listens to the record won’t even notice it.”
