With over 12,000 readers a month here at The Elks I can't help thinking that what should have been possibly one of the best posts I ever did might have gone a little overlooked - and so therefore I am doing a "Swedish TV" and repeating it again not so long afterwards =)
Interview with Rob "Baron" Miller from Amebix about the new album SONIC MASS and a reduxed review of the album.
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You should all know by now my weak spot for AMEBIX - in fact I think along with Acid Reign, Carcass and Bolt Thrower they are one of the bands featured the most times here! (I swear that soon I'll move onto my fave bands that begin with "D", "E" and "F").
I was quite lucky to have the guys read my recent review of their outstanding new album SONIC MASS and managed to pin down bass-abuser, throat-user and Norton-cruiser Rob "Baron" Miller with one of his own swords and agree to an interview.
Sonic Mass revealed, a bit behind the scenes of the reformation, ghostly visitations in the night and Rob's next project - a trilogy in three parts, in D-Minor.
AMEBIX originally hadn't thought of reforming. From what I can make out from reading around it all started off with reissuing the albums, and then the DVD "Risen" - and "Redux" was originally going to just some bonus tracks on the Risen DVD ......and that led to Roy getting in the band, a tour and a new album. How did this "evolve"?
I met Roy Wallace when he visited Skye to interview me for 'The Day the Country died' and that led to a conversation about Amebix and the material that I had collected. So i contacted Stig to get his old scraps and photos and made a couple of journeys down to Antrim to help out with the editing. It was really only when it was almost done that the suggestion came about that it should have a definite end, maybe some of the songs done today, 20 years on. I was very reluctant initially but things conspired to change that. I had made an attempt to contact Roy Mayorga as a mutual friend had suggested some time ago that we get in touch. She,meanwhile had been having a few big problems including hurricane Katrina, so was unable to contact me with Roys number until literally the day I returned from Antrimn with this bee in the bonnet, so i took the hint and phoned Roy to ask him if he would like to help us record some old songs to finish this project,thats how it began.The problem was that it all went too well,and we ended up sort of looking askance at what we did and thinking hmmmmm...where does this lead.
Since the break up of the band in the late 80s Amebix have enjoyed a level of iconic status which encompasses not only the music but a philosophy/way of life - although you say yourselves that Amebix were never so much appreciated when you were together. Do you think Amebix the logo and the artwork have reached more people than the music itself?
Maybe so. From our point of view there wasn't much interest back in the day, maybe its like the Misfits, the majority of their sales comes from that one shirt design. Fuck knows how many people have actually listened to the band.
With that in mind why do you think Amebix took off so much "posthumously"?
Everybody loves you when you're dead,wasn't that a Stranglers song? I dont know, I think we succesfully ticked all the boxes for 'cult' - poverty, unrecognised, drugs, madness and magick, a sense of mystique and intrigue. There was so little information available before the Internet, whereas bands like Crass or Discharge were pretty well documented Amebix slipped between the pages.
Obviously the reformation was appreciated, playing sold out shows all over the US. Would you say that if you ever were going to reform that now was a good time to do so than say if you had done it in the middle of the grunge explosion or another time?
Of course I want to open up your head and poke around in your mind a little about Sonic Mass. Now to make an album that is a "grower" rather than an instant hit is something you have managed to do with every Amebix album. I wouldn't say any of them were "hard" to listen to but they are certainly almost layered, subtle and can need a closer examination in order to appreciate - why is this? It can't be something you do consciously, can it?
Consciously no, but I do think that if you are really passionate about what you do then you will seed ideas within it, a quality that is almost numinous. On one level we have attempted to make this a rich and engaging work but also the importance of the lyrical journey is what gives it a depth for the listener, these ideas are perrenial not temporal so it is something you can return to again and again and get a new experience from.
After all the time apart you've managed to create something with Sonic Mass that is basically an Amebix album like before but with much better production. Your tastes and influences must have changed over these years. Is the Amebix sound just in your blood? You write something and it just comes out like that? Or did you knowingly go for that sound?
I think Stig and I tend to have a particular mode of expression, also being siblings its kind of weird that we understand the same things and try to manifest the same type of ideas. To be totally honest we didn't start off with any ideas about how to make an 'Amebix' record, we just wanted to go with the flow and see what arrived. I feel much more that we have just done our job and interpreted the stuff that was given to us, in our own way, just being open to ideas and to hell with anyones expectations.
I want to know more about the story of Sonic Mass, the album itself. Would you say that it was a concept album on the whole?
What is the concept behind the story and the imagery? It almost seems at times that there is a positive message trying to break out of Sonic Mass, almost "spiritual" in some ways. It's very dark but it's filled with what I translate as very positive messages such as in Knights Of The Black Sun "you were always free" and The One "all sense of separation, this is your illusion".
Exactly. That's one of the things about Amebix that people didn't really understand. Its not about 'post apocalyptic misanthropic gloomsludge' or whatever tag people want to hang on it, we are the enemy within in one sense, in a side of the music world that deals primarily in negative imagery and lyricism I think we have always tried to bring a positive message across. I would want people to feel uplifted by music, like great art, to bring forward creative and aspirational ideas, not an obsessive pursuit of death, if all we had to say was another litany of helplessness or anger then I would not bother.
The song "Visitation" however is still confusing me - enlighten me on it!
It is really Roy's story to tell, but I will briefly summarise. Whilst recording in Ireland we stayed in a particularly strange place on the edge of an ancient oak wood, which itself contains the grave of the inspiration for Bram Stokers Dracula as well as having some very strange electro magnetic anomalies ,so spooky...dude. On one night both Stig and Roy were visited by two entities in the room in which we stayed, one in the form of the classic 'hag' the other a black dog with the face of a man. Both incidents separate. Roy had a conversation with the dog which shook him up for days. He spent some time writing the tune out for this and when it came time for lyrics I asked for details of the coversation which are incorporated in the song, it was quite a hair raising incident at a very dark time for us.'Visitation' is not really a song, it is an interlude, atmospheric, that centre point of the darkness that leads out again.
You've said yourself in the film Risen that the thing that first attracted you to punk was the freedom and the acceptance - do you still carry this with you today? Especially if I have understood some of the lyrics of Sonic Mass as I think I should have, is this what you would like to spread to others?
I have pretty much made my life on my own terms,and whilst it may not be the most conventional it is also ultimately an expression of all the things I believe - do what you are meant to do, be true to yourself, manifest your own nature.
Even though as far back as the 80s you were saying that punk has become a "cult of conformity" - do you think this is still true today? Worse, better, the same? (hey it's like going for an eye test!) - Can you find pockets of "the original idea"?
There will always be pockets of the original idea, although they won't neccesarilly be found within the narrow confines of any scene or genre. Spirit is like water, it will flow through your hands and not be owned by any one, the Spirit of Punk Rock was one of the things that inspired me originally and I suppose we eventually find that it was just a reflection of the spirit we already had...so better with...or better away? Better with? Away?...Sorry got fixated on the eye test there.
What music do you enjoy yourselves these days? Do you pick up anything new or old? Do you bother to try and "keep up", what would we find if we went through music you have absorbed over the past year or so?
Oh dear, I think the Metal Militia and the Punk Police would both be at my door with burning torches if they found out what I listen to. I am attempting to make in roads into more modern music, two teaspoons of Sabbath to one teaspoon of "Johnny young person's music".
The new Amebix album and reformation has excited the punk world very much, if I go round some of the forums and websites you can find a lot of people getting very excited about it. What do you think about being so well thought of and respected. And sub-question, you've risen very much above your peers of the time, for example Disorder, and Antisect - who has also just reformed but instead of the huge impact that Amebix got Antisect was faced with a little less of an "explosion".
Antisect were great guys and fun to play with, miserable looking sods but we were all secret metal heads really. I remember fondly us subjecting the Bristol gigs to Mob Rules on tape before going on, gawd...they hated it. Anyway, obviously very honoured that we are so well thought of, I have to be a bit arrogant though and say that it is deserved, we were always 110 percent about what we did, right or wrong and I think that shows. It is important to be your best, manifest the best possible stuff you can, simple as that. Most people we knew back in the day were playing at being in a band, we were entirely ernest about it as a life.
How do you find what people are saying about Sonic Mass, is it as divided as I see? And do you think those that wanted "No Sanctuary pt2" never understood Amebix in the first place? On the flip side do you think those that are going really deep into the album and giving it almost an art-school type review are reading too much into it?
I can't be too objective about this question. I am seeing some instances of absolute rage and indignation, whilst I can understand that people can like or dislike there are some who make it sound like you've just raped their granny and poo-ed in their pillowcase. People who maybe like the security of being able to order their music like they order their meals, plate of 84-87 crust with a layer of death/dark/doomsludge and some septic sauce, sorry to dissapoint...but no need to get into an incandescent fury about it. Some others are so locked into a nerdy approach that they have to list what perticular styles or nuances they hear in the music to justify an opinion - just chill the fuck out and listen, don't try to diagnose. I sense a genuine frustration in people who dont 'get' it, because I suppose they know that they never will, and they never did, they just like the idea of a splathead logo and No Gods No Masters. The music that means the most to me in my lifetime has always and invariably been that which hits a note on a soul level, it doesn't have to be clever or complex or too pre-conceived, it just has to have that quality that you cannot manufacture.
Now....You've had many drummers, some of them left, some of them died in bizarre gardening accidents or choked on "vomit" - and Sonic Mass does have something representing Stonehenge on the cover......am I seeing a connection here?
Actually I see myself as doing rather well in the shoe selling trade if needs must...at present I am working on an operatic arrangement of 'Lick My Lovepump'
Sticking with that theme - have you seen the movie "The Story of Anvil"? Since you guys never had the intention of reforming I'm guessing that you never had the "we're gonna be rockstars" attitude, but do you think this is an attitude that can be found quite often? People way past their prime who have had some minor success still clutching on trying to one day get there? I'm guessing this was never the aim of Amebix in the first place?
Ah don't be cruel. Actually Stig and I were watching that film on the flight back from Montreal, a real tear in the eye thinking...fuck...thats us!!! The genral mis-management and rip off was so much like our own story I could relate to that a lot. I actaully bought Anvil records when they came out, but there are some themes that are just plain out dated. Kind of like punk bands singing their Thatcher songs or repeated fuck the system stuff, I would really hope that what we have to say will still be relevant in another 20 years.
You've had many bands singing your praises - Neurosis have shrines to you that they offer cider and glue to every morning, Max Cavelera has Amebix pyjamas and bed covers and Vivian Slaughter of Gallhammer was never pictured without her Amebix t-shirt. This must be quite an honour that so many of such status say they got it from Amebix?
Pyjamas and bed covers..shit!! Really? I want some of that stuff to match my 'Arise' penis pump and 'poo's the enemy' eau de toilette. Seriously though,they all send cash contributions at Christmas, even the pagans!
Sticking with the cider and glue - you've grown up a lot since those days of spiking your hair and wearing the safety pinned clothes Risen claims you were always "the straight one". Do you feel there is an emphasis on substance abuse, alcohol, drugs etc in the music world and how do you guys deal with it? Rat Skates (ex-Overkill, that's my next featured interview by the way - ELK) is currently making a documentary on how the music world can lead to dragging people in to this sort of lifestyle and can prove a danger.
Well, I suppose that statement is in context, 'straight' means maybe taking less than everyone else around but I certainly dipped more than my toe into the water, it's just that I was also pretty focused even then and tried to make things happen rather than get swept away in the deluge of navel gazing .We were on the border of a time where drugs were definitely 'rock n roll' and glamorous. Stig and I were almost the only people in our town who even smoked dope when we were growing up, where as now it is ubiquitous. I dont have much time for that anymore, if I look around I see the damage done.
Contrary to me saying I found Sonic Mass to carry some quite positive messages - if you look back at your time in Bristol, which you seem to remember as a time of depression and desperation, would you say this was what formed your sound on the early recordings?
Yes I think the early stuff was a lot colder and maybe a bit desperate, we were living in a kind of surreal madness at that time, it wasn't until we got out to Bath that we had time to focus in a bit more on the songs. No Sanctuary is just like an asylum.
Finally - I know you have some up in the air plans for touring and stuff but so far what can the world expect from Amebix live-wise in the near future?
At this point it is very uncertain, I suppose the best advice is just to keep an eye out, these are strange times.
- Thanx Rob! - SONIC MASS is out now - go get it! Visit AMEBIX at AMEBIX.NET
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This is an updated version of a review of SONIC MASS, after time to let it sink in and now know a bit more about the album!
We should all know the deal by now, legendary band AMEBIX have gotten back together and recorded their first album since 1786, SONIC MASS.
I'll just come right out and say that I am a huge fan, and have been since the 80s yet (sadly) I personally believe that the legend and patch-wearing-yet-never-heard-the-band status of Amebix actually outweighs the band itself at times. Now, I have read a few reviews of the new album and so far it seems like everyone is divided, there is the "this isn't Amebix" side and the rest are writing these long in-depth almost pretentious reviews of the dark and lonely pagan souls of the kings of crust, most reviews read more like a school essay than a record review. Thankfully since the release of SONIC MASS it seems that Amebix fans old and new have been reunited and are loving what they hear and waiting (with little patience) for a tour. Any cries of "sell out" can be thrown out the window. Anyone arrogantly saying so should stop to think that SONIC MASS is released by the band themselves, guitarist Stig and his girlfriend are running the merch store themselves and don't even have a fixed residence, Rob humbly lives on his own hard work making swords and drummer Roy lives in a cardboard box in his mum's garden who won't let him in until he cuts his hair. I may have made that last bit up. Point being that everything around the release and the band is still 100% DIY and include a very large amount of blood, sweat, soul and hard work.
Now that I've heard the album and given it time to sink in and work it's magic I can safely say that it could be the best record of 2011 if not the past 10 years.
So, lets start off with a little background. I first heard Amebix sometime in the late 80s way back when me, Kajagoogoo and two of the three Bros brothers were at school. It was a few years after I guess they had broken up when my guitar teacher at school got sick of me always bringing in thrash metal and death metal tapes to learn and thought it was time I got into some punk. He chose an album for me to absorb:
Amebix - No Sanctuary as he'd apparently made a video for the song "Control". I recently bothered guitarist Stig for any truth that might have surrounded this and apparently my old guitar teacher just fed me this, possibly in order to think he was cool. There is no truth behind it, at least not that the band know of. Anyway, the album (EP) was something else, very different to everything I had been listening to before. It actually reminded me a lot of "Blood Fire Death" era BATHORY and maybe VENOM more than what I though a punk band should sound like, but the strange warp-like discordant guitars and the tribal drums made it a real experience. This wasn't your average "punk". The lyrics spoke to me too, I really could understand this band and what they were saying, of course, like me they are born in the Devon/Cornwall area, lived in Bristol and have connections to Clevedon, and I guess we'd fill out the same age bracket on forms so it's not surprising. I didn't know any of that then mind you.
So...I continued to love the band, getting their other albums and absorbing them. Arise, Monolith, the odd bootlegged tape in the mail etc. So, fast forward to now and they have got a real cult status, people read very deeply into the band, maybe more than they should, or....I don't know, If I as a kid could feel how a band could "connect" with me then, why not.
Amebix, aka Rob and Stig Miller plus new boy all-star drummer Roy Mayorga (Soulfly, Shelter, Nausea, Sepultura, Stone Sour and more) reformed a few years back and were off playing again, wowing audiences young and old.
A new album was in the pipeline and the buzz started around the internetz. Sonic Mass was on the way. We got the single "Knights Of The Black Sun" with it's dreamy video made by the talented Andy Leffer and the punk world went...."huh?". Amebix divided opinions with the sword that was that video/song and drove it in hard.
And so is the same with Sonic Mass, on one side we have the patch-wearing-trve-crust that are saying Amebix have "sold out" and are no longer Amebix (see above) to them I stand on the arse-licking side and say that they never got Amebix in the first place. They wear the patch and love the logo but never really "got" the band, possibly has an album tucked away somewhere just in case anyone comes round and checks, but it's still in the plastic wrapper - they expected an album of generic crust punk. Nopes. But go back and listen to the albums, are any of them really "crust" as we know it? Undoubtedly the basis and inspiration behind many but not crust as it has been defined these days. Amebix were always flirting with metal and that tribal blast and other influences from another place than the rest of the accepted, really Sonic Mass is no different, just better produced. Amebix were always darker and deeper and something else, even spawned imitators such as the (still worth your time) Axegrinder and later down the line bands like Neurosis.
Amebix ARE dark and involved and have a lot of imagery and poetry in their music, they were always about soundscapes and painting with music. It's just they never had the tech to do it like this before.
The album kicks off with "Days" a mellow acoustic/orchestral track when Baron actually SINGS, right off the bat it sounds different, but it sounds....like something is coming, and then it kicks off with "Shield Wall" which is a bass-heavy double-bass-drum chuggy instrumental attack which eases you in. Like a blast from Arise or Monolith but with tight production which leads into "The Messenger" which is our first "real" track, chuggy, heavy, almost industrial with synth and all. This is obviously where a lot of people are getting the lazy comparisons to Killing Joke from as it does have that feeling but is far beyond anything KJ ever came up with, maybe a bit Ministry or even Sepultura but.....does it sound like them or do they sound like AMEBIX? Full circle. SONIC MASS comes sans-lyrics but I think the "battle cry" across the song is "BARAKAH" which is the Sufi version of "chi" - the life force that flows through everything, could be hearing this wrong but as the whole album is littered with ancient and new symbolism this might not be wrong. As Rob said in the above interview - a large part of the album is positive and inspiring as well as dark. Positive change, get with it people! Following this is the super-treat that will please even the crustiest of the crust elite is "God Of The Grain" a fucking full-blown rocking, stomping attack with monster riffs that would shame most of the best.
Next track "Visitation" took a while to get into, it's a slow-paced churner with spoken lyrics. At first it felt like a filler, but after hearing the story behind the song (see above interview) it sends chills all over me.
But then comes the sweet and sour of Sonic Mass pt1 and pt2, starting with acoustic loveliness (anyone slaying Amebix for flirting with acoustic guitars etc I point you towards "Sunshine Ward", they've always been doing it!) pt2 is back off again with it's slaying riffage by now we're starting to see a bit of a pattern in the songs, mostly "chuggy E......Rob shouts, anthemic chorus, chuggy E" but that's kind of how Amebix always were right?
Then it goes right off in another direction with "Here Comes The Wolf" which has a very similar riff to Face To Face's "I Won't Lie Down", it's almost pop-punk, so there goes the chuggy E theory. Here Comes The Wolf was my undecided track for ages, it became my favorite after a while. "The One" gets us back on track with a fuck-you-up-before-breakfast heads-down mid section that I defy any metal head not to start playing air guitar and head banging to. The imagery behind this paints a Lovecraftian picture but also one of "all is one" no race or difference, no separation between anything, get your crust on kids, the A is for Anarchy, the E is for EQUALITY - Amebix taught us this several decades ago and they are still teaching us now. Some Hawkwind pops up before the single "Knights Of The Black Sun" which most of us have heard before now, the Pink Floyd-esque journey.
Was it worth the hype? Well, like punk should really be it's open to interpretation and how you see it. As an older guy now I appreciate all of it and see it as Amebix should sound in 2011, possibly how they would sound if they had never broken up and just carried on. I feel like my tastes since I first heard them back in the 80s have evolved and Amebix have kindly evolved beside me. It is a journey, it is an experience, it is dark and it is mythical, yet it's also heavy and destructive and blasts through you - it's an Amebix album with guts and production just as I'm sure they always would have made, if they went back and re-recorded their older albums at the same studio with their age and experience now it would sound like Sonic Mass, in fact if we listen to last year's Redux 12" (a re-recording of older Amebix tracks) then you're not far off.
So - SONIC MASS, one of the best albums this decade. REJOYCE, THE GREAT GOD CRUST ISN'T DEAD!
We read the 
The mixtape is a crucial part of our subculture, and is solely responsible for the spread of punk influence worldwide. Mixtapes have introduced myself and many others to so many amazing bands, and the act of making them is one of the most sincere forms of friendship that exist in our world. So, we are asking our friends, our community, and anyone else who remotely gives a shit to make and donate one mixtape cassette to the kids in Aceh who were forced into detention solely for being punk. It’s a small gesture, but it means a lot to people who need our support. The content entirely of their choosing as long as it’s somewhat falling in the punk/hardcore/crust genre. If you have an awesome tape you never listen to anymore, or would like to make a new one specifically for this endeavor, that would absolutely rule. We are collecting these tapes to send out in early January, so your deadline to submit is December 30th, 2011. We know that the post office is fucked right now with holiday shipping, but right after xmas it frees up largely, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Please try and pack as much music onto these tapes as possible, and try to avoid sending a short 10-min long demo cassette. This is an out-of pocket initiative for me (Rob) personally, and I’d like to make what we send as substantial as possible. And include your address in the tape, you might just make an international buddy out of the process!
