Empire State Bastard’s debut album Rivers of Heresy adventurously probes almost every dark crevice imaginable from the myriad sounds of metal and genre-adjacent extremity. Their terrifying tourist trail visits slamming hardcore in the vein of Siege; frenetic thrash in Slayer’s ballpark; the claustrophobic sludge of Melvins; the freeform vocal dexterity of Mike Patton; and the gargantuan stoner riffs of Sleep. It’s a sound with roots inspired by metal’s forefathers, but more deeply influenced by the weirder, darker and unconventional leftfield twists that the genre has since voyaged into.
The band’s most recent single The Looming is an oppressive slow crush in which Mike Vennart’s grinding, maximum fuzz stoner rock riffs take on a hypnotic intensity as the track unfolds, its apocalyptic tone becoming more sinister as Simon Neil layers feral vocals with guttural death metal growls. It’s the final song on the Rivers of Heresy album as well as the band’s regular set closer for good reason – what could possibly follow it?
Rivers of Heresy will be released digitally as well as on limited edition physical formats, including a CD with an exclusive 24-page fanzine, poison green vinyl, red/black marble vinyl and cassette.
HEAVY caught up for a Q & A with Mike Vennart and Simon Neil to discuss the key influences behind Rivers Of Heresy.
Simon: For Rivers of Heresy, we kind of tried to pull together all of our influences since we were teenage metalheads. So for myself, in terms of my vocals and my screaming, I’ve always been hugely influenced by Jacob Bannon from Converge and Grady Avenell from Will Haven. I remember when I heard El Diablo by Will Haven in 1997, which I paid 22 pounds for, remember those days? But it changed my life! I hadn’t heard any songs, I’d read a couple of reviews and when I heard Grady screaming that – it’s the first time I heard someone actually scream and roar with emotion. It felt like up until that point it was kind of bravado and manliness that a lot of metal singers and screamers were doing, and I didn’t really connect with that. So, when I heard someone really crying from the pit of his soul – that really connected. And that’s what I’ve tried to channel into my portion of this record.
Mike: From a guitar point of view, and I guess from a compositional point of view, it is kind of all over the place a little bit. But two of the main sort of driving things in my head was a band called Siege, they were kind of like the proto-grindcore band from the early 80s. And it was just such a barrage. And when it came to having the idea for this band, it was like: I just want to make a band that does this horrendous, blast beat, barrage of noise that just sounds like absolute chaos, but it’ll turn a corner and you’ll suddenly realize that this is all very, very structured and very organized and very thought through, there’s a real intelligence behind it. And there’s a record by the Melvins called Gluey Porch Treatments, which again…the patterns in it? There’s no patterns in it! I still don’t understand how this record exists because there’s just so much content and so much going on that I don’t understand how a human brain can contain this
information to be able to recite it like that. But that’s the Melvins all over, they’re just mad geniuses and it is that kind of heavy metal that doesn’t make sense. And every time I hear that record, I’m trying to make it make sense – but it never does. They’re just an absolute bewildering force of nature to me, and I think we kind of embraced that for Rivers of Heresy.
Simon: I think we’ve always been attracted to heavy music and everything that kind of does the wrong thing. We’ve been big fans of stuff that [Mike] Patton’s done over the years with Bungle and Fantomas and Faith No More. And me and Mike, we’re always drawn towards: what’s the kind of last thing we should do here? And that kind of incongruity is kind of what excites us. So, a lot of the bands and music and records that have influenced us over the years have always taken you on these sharp turns – and that’s what turns us on. We would try to challenge each other with that as well when we’re making the record, just almost trying to make each other laugh to a certain extent and say: I can’t believe that Mike did this, or vice versa. So yeah, the inspiration of the fearlessness of kind of the edges of music is very, very important and integral to this band. It should be a feeling, you should just know whether you’re drawn to something or not. And this record’s definitely that, you’ll know pretty quickly whether it’s something you want to get involved with or not.
