Sylosis Interview
With recent tours under their belts with the likes of Lamb Of God, Trivium, Killswitch Engage and DevilDriver, along with widespread acclaim for their latest release Monolith, it seems things are going well for Reading based Sylosis. Birmingham Live caught up with vocalist and lead guitarist Josh Middleton before their set in Wolverhampton.
BL: How are things?
J: Yeah, really good thanks.
BL: I hear it was an interesting night last night with some issues with the van?
J: Oh, that was Bleed From Within, I was oblivious to all that!
BL: So you guys abandoned them and left them to it? [laughs]
J: I heard that they snapped their key off, but my girlfriend came to the London gig so I saw her for a bit and then just went to bed in my bunk. [laughs]
BL: So, the tour is going well?
J: Yeah, really good, probably the most fun we’ve had in a while I think, well I mean, it’s the first tour we’ve done in seven months and that last tour ended a bit abruptly!
BL: Yeah, I heard! Glad this tour’s going well, and touring with DevilDriver?
J: Yeah it’s a really good package.
BL: You seem to be becoming the go-to band for supporting the big names?
J: Yeah it’s nice, it’s really good. We’ve been really lucky with this whole album cycle since Monolith came out, we went straight on tour with Lamb Of God in America, then we were main support with Killswitch, then DevilDriver and Trivium in America, yeah it’s been unbelievable.
BL: It does seem that the big names are all picking up the phone and getting you guys on their tickets, but are we going to see some more headlines from Sylosis?
J: I think the next time we do a tour will be a headliner, but I don’t know when.
BL: Are you thinking UK at the moment, or continuing with America?
J: I think the next tour we do will definitely be UK and mainland Europe, all one tour. We will go back to America; I don’t think we’ll do too many more support tours though. We just want to do more headline stuff and I think our fans do as well, they’re like “we want to see you do a full set” and we’re like “we do too”.
BL: With support sets always being shorter and the way that your music seems to consist of longer tracks that contain a narrative, is it tough to pull a set list together when you are supporting?
J: Yeah, ‘cause you want to try to cram as many different songs into a set, and we find we’re playing a very similar set because we have to pick either the songs that are well known or the short songs. We do end up playing a lot of the same stuff live, so it will be nice to do more headline stuff so that we can mix it up a bit.
BL: Your music, having that narrative, tends to give your songs an epic feel, is that something that is difficult to get across live?
J: It’s not something that I’m that bothered about, that’s just more interesting for me to write as a lyricist. I’m not really worried about it live, in then main it’s more the length of the songs, it definitely does effect the feel of the album and the flow, but live it’s just difficult to fit a lot of the songs into a half an hour set.
BL: So, is the set that you have pulled together at the moment one that’s fun to play live, an enjoyable one?
J: Yeah, it’s fun. Some stuff we found from Edge Of The Earth to be a bit technical and you just get bogged down in trying to play it properly and it can be a bit of a pain to play, but this set has been fun.
BL: When you took over lead vocals for Sylosis, and having that very technical edge to your music, how did that work out for you? Is it difficult to balance doing both?
J: Yeah it is tough; I spend ages just practicing each song. If I haven’t played a song with vocals, because we don’t really write albums in a practice room all the way through and then go straight to the recording studio. We write all the songs then make demos and stuff, we’re sort of learning them as we go into the studio. Then we like “we need to learn how to play it live”, so we all sort of learn it afterwards. So, one song will take me a good while to get down, I’ll do it just whispering and playing guitar in my room, phonetically trying to get the rhythms. It’s sort of like patting your head and rubbing your stomach a bit at times. The vocal rhythm might go against what your right hand is picking. It can take a while, but once it’s done it’s like muscle memory.
BL: I’m really interested in the doom kind of edge that you guys have to your music, which is not something that you really see too much of if you’re not involved in that scene. How do you think that has come across with the audiences of the bands you’ve been supporting?
J: I think maybe some of it goes over people’s heads a bit, rather than see the influence, they’re probably like “oh cool, that was a slow bit” or “that was a bit dark”. It’s seems to be going down well. I was always a bit apprehensive in the past because we like a lot of different types of music and we’re a bit progressive here and there, so we didn’t really want to sound like a big mess of styles, we wanted it to sound cohesive. It was one of those things where I loved all of that kind of doomy and more raw sounding stuff, bands like High On Fire, a bit more stoner and doomy, and it was really hard to bring that out back in the day when we had really tight and pristine production. It just didn’t really seem to fit in, I think now we’ve found a way to do it, make sure that the production is nice and organic sounding, so all of that stuff can come through a bit more, it’s just trying to bring it in in a way that doesn’t make it sound like it’s been crowbarred together, in a big mess of styles.
BL: When I first heard Monolith, one of the things that really impressed me was that way that you guys blend thrash all the way through to doom without it sounding like a band ‘trying’ different things.
J: That’s exactly it. It’s not tough to write, you sort of find ways to make it flow into each other, but then the title track on Monolith, that was the most ‘out there’ thing we’ve done, well maybe not ‘out there’ but just very different from what we’ve done in the past, it’s probably the most doomy song we’ve done.
BL: And you were all pleased with how Monolith came out?
J: Yeah, yeah.
BL: So, I guess I have to ask the question about the RV accident.
J: It’s not a touchy subject at all.
BL: Everyone’s ok? No lasting effects?
J: Yeah, we’re all cool. Got some scars here and there. [Reveals a rather impressive scar on shin]
BL: Nice!
J: That, and I split my eyebrow. It was very flukey, the crash itself was about as bad as a car accident will get really, but we just fluked it. There’s just all sorts of stuff in an RV and the whole thing just imploded on itself. Like the water tank in the back just burst out through the bed, all sorts of stuff happened. We just dodged all of this stuff that was flying everywhere, like I could have gone straight through the glass shower but because of the angle we crashed at, I just missed it.
BL: So have you guys changed any of your rituals or routines or anything for travel because of the crash?
J: We’re just more fussy, we probably won’t tour in an RV again! They’re not built for safety and we don’t get them over here and in Europe.
BL: Do you feel that the accident slowed Sylosis down at all, it terms of the ‘grand plan’ and the progress you want to make?
J: Not really, we had a good month and a bit on that tour to do, so it cut that tour short by a little bit and then we didn’t really have that much planned anyway, we had some UK shows in November which we did do, and then this tour. It just took a little while to get relaxed again, and we wanted a bit of a break anyway. So it was all fine.
BL: Just skipping back to the topic of you taking over on lead vocals and the band coming down to four members, do you think you would ever consider re-adding a fifth member?
J: Nah, I think it’s more fun with four people, and it seems to be working out for us.
BL: Like being easier to get reservations in restaurants and stuff?
J: [Laughs] Yeah, all that, and the little money we make goes further! That’s obviously not the key factor in it at all, but it’s definitely a plus! I don’t think we will.
BL: I was looking online at the side-project that you have going on at the moment [Shrine Studios], you have some fantastic artwork, so I wondered what that meant for artists that do work for Sylosis?
J: Oh, they’ll still be doing it.
BL: As an artist yourself, does it mean that you give them a pretty hard time?
J: Totally, yeah. I’m an absolute pain to work with, I always have been. The guy that did our last two, Dan Goldsworthy, he’s amazing and he’s a good friend of mine, he’s just really patient with me. He actually does nail stuff pretty quickly, but I’m very specific in micromanaging! I am a pain to work with [laughs], I can see exactly what I want the album cover to look like in my head, and I can do a really quick rough sketch for him, and he’ll be like “yeah, I’ll do that”. I could do our album covers, but I’m too much of a perfectionist and I’d rather someone else do it, and I can say “yeah, that’s cool”, rather than me spending however long on it, I’d just stress over it too much.
BL: Do you tend to do that [stress] with everything creative then?
J: Yeah, especially with our band. I always want it to be perfect and there’s too much pressure when it’s your own band.
BL: Will you pick up Shrine Studios as Sylosis allows?
J: Yeah, people always say we’re really busy and we tour a lot, but it really doesn’t feel that way, we always have the majority of the year at home to work. I think the most we’ve ever done in one year is four months. Last year we had the UK tour and then we went to Australia for two weeks, then Killswitch for about a month, then festival season, then even if we’d done the whole Trivium tour, it seems like we’re really busy, and we are constantly touring but you do actually get a nice chunk of time at home. We all have normal jobs, so I have plenty of time to do it, and I use a graphics tablet now so I can draw while we’re on tour.
BL: You mentioned festival season then, what can we expect from Sylosis this year?
J: I don’t know, I really don’t know. I know we’ve confirmed some European ones, there are a few, but I’m useless. I’m always available so I’m just “yeah, book it whenever and I’ll be there”. There’s one in Belgium and one in Portugal, but yeah we’ll be doing some, hopefully a UK one, but I don’t know.
BL: Any other plans you can tell us about for 2014 yet?
J: We want to do a new album, hopefully this year. We’ll try.
BL: Has the creative process already started for that yet?
J: It’s always going, yeah. Once an album, or even before, is completed, we’ll be writing straight away.
BL: Thank you for talking to us, really appreciate your time, good luck tonight.
J: Cheers!
Interview – Steve Kilmister