Interview mit Bezaelith & Tal R’eb von Lotus Thief

Since your last album „Gramarye“ the line-up of your band has changed. How did that come about?
Bezaelith: I spent a lot of time focusing on building a team over the years of LOTUS THIEF, factoring in schedules, musical preferences and sensibilities and the big picture ideas. The goal in mind was each instrument would be represented by a live player, who would also have a hand in the composition and polishing process. For „Oresteia“, we wanted it to tell a story and to represent a collaborative effort where distinct personalities could punch through stylistically.

Could you briefly introduce the new members and their function in the band?
Bezaelith: Tal R’eb is another multi-instrumentalist and composer. He plays guitar, bass, synth, violin and likely anything we drop in front of him. He also does broad-scale composition of song structure. Kore (drums, violins on „Oresteia“), also does composition of parts because he’s taking on the drums drafts and making them his own. Romthulus (guitar, low vox on „Oresteia“), is interested predominantly in parts, specifically in refining guitar parts, re-composing them to be either neater, messier, tonally different, etc.. He proved crucial taking a magnifying glass to the record’s guitar sound. Ascalaphus does the harsh vox on „Oresteia“. He and I met on tour, and we’ve been buddies ever since. He is just the most insane harsh vocalist and he’s got so much stage presence. We are in a side project called Forlesen that will be debuting its record this year. He and I work out the styles of the harsh stuff when we are doing close-to-final drafting, because those types of vocals are super reliant on the guitars and drum sound. Last but not least, the new vocalist who appears in the ambient tracks of the „Rervm“ re-issue, and will appear in „Oresteia“’s successor, is Mohrany, a best friend from college, trained in several styles of singing, but frankly with a voice three times as powerful as mine. As vocals move forward, and as we do larger performances where we can get a stage to easily fit 5-6 players, you’ll be hearing her explosive vocals. She has almost a broadway meets-Janis-meets-power metal style. The blend of the both of us goes from soulful to hellcat depending on the piece.

How has the line-up change affected your songwriting and sound?
Bezaelith: I think that lies in what one hears in „Oresteia“. Most reviewers and listeners have said it’s a fuller, more produced sound, forward vox, bigger guitar walls, and a less fuzzy, riffy, or lo-fi mix. That doesn’t mean it’s a better record per se, it means it’s whatever style the listener prefers. Some have said they’re into „Rervm“ the most, some think the magic of „Gramarye“ is the best. That said, we have gotten very encouraging feedback this time around. Perhaps it represents the hard focus we had on getting that last mix dialed in to 6 sets of ears.

On your current album „Oresteia“ you deal with the three-part tragedy of the same name by the Greek poet Aeschylus. How did you first come across this story?
Bezaelith: I thought of it in the classroom. It’s one of the texts that is a staple in American public high schools. I wanted something familiar, even if that familiarity was remembered by listeners perhaps being delivered in school, maybe even in the form of „compulsory reading“ . We wanted to challenge the ideas in a way that made it real for us. At the time the idea came, I was teaching “Titus Andronicus” to my 10th graders. Shakespearean in origin, set in Ancient Rome, similar themes of violence and revenge, but an altogether different “flavor” of play. I got curious about “The Oresteia”, about the many influences of Greece upon the Roman Empire, in style, in mythology and archetypes. When I read the trilogy (what we now know as parts of a possibly longer work), I was sucked into how heavy it was. How much it tied to what I was teaching. Both “Titus” and “The Oresteia” are about fucked up families and political vengeance – things that often go hand in hand in dying empires. I found myself thinking about today’s world, where we are no longer shocked by school shootings. Where we value consumerism over knowledge. Where we look at our leaders and wonder: Has this repeated? When else in history have we sowed such distrust and bitterness? Perhaps the only difference between now and then, is Andronicus and Atreus did not yet have a half-destroyed planet on their hands.

What made you decide to deal with this trilogy in the form of a record?
Bezaelith: The theme of raw, uninhibited violence and revenge and its opposites… law, justice, retribution – perhaps compassion. These were concepts I was struggling with in my own life based on how I’ve seen people being cruel to each other. Cruelty is probably humanity’s most hideous face. I wanted to see that face, to feel the rage it bears, to rage against it. Everyone in the text feels the gravitational pull of that rage. It was about following the feeling like some blind animal at first, but then I started to see the narrative in my head. Not as it’s been staged by people, but by what Lucretius called “this darkness of the mind” and Rabelais called “monsters of the mind”. The play inhabited my curiosity, and eventually this became a discussion with the players on the record.

Originally, you had only planned a three-track EP. How did it come about that you developed it into a whole album?
Bezaelith: Originally I wanted something around 22 minutes consisting of three songs. I had the idea of a triptych. I was fascinated by the idea of the strength of three songs. But then we read more, and we started throwing ideas at the wall. Riffs started coming from nowhere, they attached themselves to places we found ourselves in the story. The wordless dark ambient tracks like tunnel vision from place to place, or back and forward in time. We came to know that the thing was meant to be moving forward, like a river or changing landscape. That become more important than the number of songs: getting to the story.

Even with an album that is almost 40 minutes long, it’s certainly not easy to summarize a source like this. How did you approach the structure of the album and the content of the individual songs?
Bezaelith: I think somewhere online I saw some satirist who re-imagined book titles in the form of short/spoiler-phrases. It made me laugh, but it was true enough. Because even the longest of epic pieces… like „The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner“ for example, can be summarized in their themes, in „Rhyme…“s case: „don’t fuck with nature.“ „The Oresteia“ boils down to shades of the reality that violence is cyclical and has immediate and often permanent consequences. You don’t need need much space to glean the moments in the text where the energy is high, where those themes are face to face with you. The words speak for themselves. It’s a text about breaking points. It became a breaking point for us perhaps in that way, because we knew we were dealing with something new, raw in a different way than „Rervm“ and „Gramarye“. The sting that comes with betrayal, the ugly emotions it conjures, the scenarios our choices lead us into.

According to the description of the album on your bandcamp website and to your label the concept concerns not only the ethics of killing but also gender roles. How is the latter one the case?
Tal R’eb: „The Oresteia“ is rather patriarchal by our standards today. Women are portrayed as either helpless (Cassandra, Elektra) or vengeful (Clytemnestra, the Furies). The motive of vengeance definitely slants towards men being able to enact justified violence against women, but not the other way around. Take Clytemnestra for example – why was it not justified for her to take vengeance against Agamemnon for killing their daughter Iphigenia in order to win the Trojan War? Bringing this ancient text to modern standards creates ethical tension, which informs our work.

Even in the metal scene gender roles are merely starting to break up slowly. Women mostly still play symphonic or gothic metal and are rarely creating more extreme music, and the differences between gender and sex are not really a widely discussed topic in the scene. What experiences have you had as a musician in terms of gender roles so far?
Bezaelith: I think these differences have been in active discussion for many years, but it’s contingent upon who is listening to these discussions and giving a damn. Women and men are changing the face of all music together. We inspire and drive each other, and have the capacity to lay ground for others to follow us without sowing the stupidity of gatekeeper culture.
I can give you countless examples of imbecilic men (and women) who have undervalued and underestimated me because I’m a girl. But why would I give those losers a platform? I choose instead to speak of the men and women who said, „Make your weird music.“ and gave me passage to do so. One fond example was a conversation I had with our engineer for „Oresteia“, Colin Marston of Krallice, Gorguts, Behold… The Arctopus. We met on tour, and I told him I was working on this album called „Rervm“. Later when I finished it, I sent him a file of it and asked his advice on how to proceed with labels that expressed interest in it. I still remember the first thing he said, something to the tune of „Welcome to the world of weird metal.“ which preceded some things that I still keep in mind now. That I was met with the word „welcome“ made all the difference, and there are lots of players and producers out there who do welcome new minds into music making. Who don’t employ exclusion and elitism for power trips. It is these composers and creators, and great minds of all kinds – those who admire and include different thinking – who deserve their praises sung.

In „Oresteia“ a deadly cycle of revenge is finally broken by a trial led by the gods. Nevertheless, vengeance is still an understandable motivation for many people today that is deeply rooted in them. In your opinion, is it even possible for human beings to rationally free themselves from such feelings?
Tal R’eb: Unlikely, which is why „The Oresteia“ still is a powerful work today (or should be). The desire for vengeance is probably so fundamental to human nature that it had its own deification in Greek mythology (the Furies). However, there are more civil and healthier methods of resolving such impulse to conflict than to succumb to pure violence.

Issues such as gender roles or the discrepancy between revenge and a functioning legal system are certainly difficult topics for some to digest. Do you think that stories like „Oresteia“ or albums based on them can help to bring such topics closer to people?
Tal R’eb: Yes, I believe so, as a work such as „Oresteia“ shows that we’ve grappled with some core issues since the ancient times. I believe these works give a foundational view to some of the ideas we take for granted today, and thus provide insight into what the rationale for such ideas (such as a trial by peer system) came from. Hopefully this will spark introspection as to whether such rationale continues to hold true today.

Would you say that your releases in general sometimes even have an educational effect on the listeners?
Tal R’eb: I hope so! Music I’ve loved has always had an education effect on my life, for example, the song “Orestes” by A Perfect Circle inspired me to pick up „The Oresteia“ in the first place. I hope that we can not only make music that other can immerse themselves in, but also benefit from the literary aspect as well.

You always touch upon very interesting topics in your albums, which are mostly based on historical sources. Do you see this as an integral part of LOTUS THIEF or could you also imagine creating an album without such a concept, maybe even a completely instrumental one?
Tal R’eb: For now, using ancient texts is an integral part of our ethos and aesthetic. There’s so much inspiration to draw from these texts and the importance and weight they bring I feel is a key aspect of our identity. One never knows the future, but we have other musical outlets to explore other concepts, which allows us to focus on this aesthetic when we convene as LOTUS THIEF.

Let’s talk about your music per se. On „Oresteia“ you also use screaming vocals and blast-beats for the first time. Was your intention behind that to take into account the violent aspect of the story you set to music?
Bezaelith: We use blast beats and harsh vox on several songs in both „Rervm“ and „Gramarye“. You may be picking up on stylistic differences in drumming or the mix itself. In the case of „Oresteia“, vox and drums are a forward beating heart. It is easier to pick up on them.

I also have the impression that the production of the album sounds a bit more tangible than on your previous releases. Do you think that a more ethereal sound like on „Gramarye“ wouldn’t have been as appropriate here?
Tal R’eb: We worked with Colin Marston this time around. We also wanted Bezaelith’s vocals to feel more forward – her singing feels present, it occupies a different bandwidth in the mix. As it is we’re feeling like „Oresteia“ is fairly ethereal already given its ambient passages.

The album contains a few short interludes, mostly in ambient style. Critics often complain that such interludes disturb the flow of an album. For what reason do you think that they are nevertheless an important part of „Oresteia“?
Tal R’eb: The interludes serve as a bridge linking songs together. Personally, I experience „Agamemnon“, „Libation Bearers“ and „Sister In Silence“ as independent, internal worlds. The ambience feels like moving from one location or time to another. Ambient passages tend to bring whatever the listener brings to the experience, instrumentals being more of a soundtrack than a driving narrative. For every reviewer who felt they could do without the ambient bits, there’s two others who felt they are crucial ebbs to the driving tracks. The experience seems personal.

It’s also noticeable that „The Furies“ starts as a dreamy post-rock song and only later gets more aggressive. What inspired you to you set the goddesses of vengeance to music in this way?
Bezaelith: The Furies/Erinyes are archetypes of retribution – the spirit of the conversation the play evokes. In some ways, they remind me of reverse Valkyries, bringing the spirits of those who die in honor to the next plane. Only in this case, The Furies are dragging traitors and killers to retribution. The Valkyries we sang about in „Idisi“ on „Gramarye“ were blessings of a battle well-fought. The Furies we sing about here in „Oresteia“ are called upon by a curse on behalf of a victim. For a song that’s going to somehow wear that mask, you’re going to need some dynamic shift.

What will happen next with LOTUS THIEF? Do you already have ideas about what subjects you could take up on your next record?
Tal R’eb: We do indeed, but that is to be revealed. Other than prep for our release show, most of our hourage has been spent getting us to the 90% mark composing and drafting „Oresteia“’s successor. Suffice to say, we’re having a devil of a time putting the next one together.

On Metal1.info we usually end interviews with a short brainstorming. What comes to your mind while reading the following terms?
Avantgarde: Semantics
Compulsory reading: Bad teaching
Atheism: Reddit
Music streaming: Revolution
Civil disobedience: Chaos Theory
Climate crisis: We Make Great Pets

Thank you again for this interview. Are there any last words that you would like to address to the readers?
Thanks for reading & listening. Keep searching for what inspires. Keep music alive as a true expression of our experience in this world.

Publiziert am 12. Februar 2020 von Stephan Rajchl