Philadelphia metalcore veterans A Life Once Lost have been making heavy, powerful music for over a decade now. They released five albums in the previous decade, each representing a stylistic growth and maturation. Since Iron Gag was released in 2007, though, A Life Once Lost have largely been absent from the metal scene. Founding members Bob Meadows (vocals) and Doug Sabolick (lead guitar) have been working steadily on a followup for years, amid lineup turmoil that saw every other member of the band replaced, and struggles with songwriting and studios that led to most of an album being scrapped. But earlier this year, they journeyed to Richmond to work with renowned local producer Andreas Magnusson, who owns Planet Red Studios and has worked with such bands as Black Dahlia Murder and Down To Nothing. This turned out to be a winning combination, and A Life Once Lost were finally able to complete their new album. Towards the end of the process, I headed over to Planet Red and spoke with Bob and Doug about their long absence and the new music they’ve created. We were joined for part of the conversation by Andreas, who gave his insights into the recording process. The interview featured some surprising revelations, many of which increased my anticipation for their new material. But before we could talk about where A Life Once Lost are headed, we had to talk about where they’d been.
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This is your first record in five years. What made it take so long?
Bob: We needed the space. We had spent a long time on the road. During the downtime we explored other things. I had two side projects, Doug had his band, and we just felt things out. But having that separation with each other has driven us to take this record a little more seriously. We definitely expanded our musical horizons within the last five years, and you'll hear it on the record. So I think [the downtime] is beneficial. At the same time, we've been gone for such a long time that it's gonna be a lot of fun trying to say hello again.
I noticed that the other three members had also all changed in the last year or two.
Doug: In order to take a step forward, we needed to kind of break off. When you're in a band with guys for as long as we had been, which was about ten years, everyone is gonna move on and do their own thing. We also were kinda burned out. We were just going for it for a long time, and then life catches up and you need to take care of other things for a while. So it wasn't originally our plan to [take five years off]. We were writing another record, and we couldn't all get on the same page in the room.
I had heard there was gonna be a record a year ago.
Bob :Yeah, we pretty much scrapped a record. I think we threw out six songs. We really just reevaluated everything.
Doug: At some point, I needed to go to sleep at night and be happy with who I was and how I was being portrayed. We had differences with some of the guys about what we like about music in general. And Bob and I started collaborating more and more, and feeding off of each other. It hadn't been like that in years.
Were you guys unhappy with the music you had scrapped?
Bob: I definitely had a hard time relating with a few of the songs. Writing the lyrics wasn't the problem, it was being able to groove with the song. I just couldn't groove with it.
Doug: People consider us a groovy band, and when I would listen to some of our stuff, I couldn't even find a groove in it anymore. When I think of groove, it makes me want to turn into an animal. It wasn't doing that anymore, for me. Maybe it was still doing that for some of the other guys.
So what's the new stuff like?
Bob: It's definitely another step elsewhere. I feel like on every one of our records we've tried to progress.
Doug: People try to lump us into a scene, and we think, “When we did that record, there was no scene for that. We were doing our own thing.”
Bob: But the new stuff though...
Doug: It's a mixture.
Bob: You're gonna hear the influence from A Great Artist, from Hunter and Iron Gag, and then you're gonna hear some other influences. From bands that within the last five years I was able to get into, that [Doug] was able to get into, not to mention Doug writing and touring with Snake Sustaine. The playing level has definitely stepped up, so you're gonna hear that in the record.
Do you feel like taking a break opened you up to more music you hadn't heard?
Doug: It opened me up, for sure. When we were doing those tours, all I listened to was heavy bands.
Bob: You're touring with heavy bands--even in the van, it's heavy bands. But being away from it for such a long time, the musical spectrum that I listen to is limitless now. I'll give everything a chance.
Doug: There's not one second on this album where the guitars are not brutal. The sounds are different, but that guitar riffing is always there. It's almost more animalistic and primal now. Some people might say accessible, maybe. But to me, it's just as good.
Since you kind of referenced it, I want to ask you about the new trendy subgenre of djent. I guess the genre name is a Meshuggah reference. I don't even completely understand it, but I did notice that you guys are mentioned on the wikipedia page for the genre. How do you guys feel about the whole djent thing?
Bob: It's always been hard to classify us. Even before djent, when it was metalcore, we never liked to be called metalcore.
Doug: With every trend, they call us something else.
Bob: Yeah, we're a groove metal band on wikipedia too.
Doug: We came from heavy music when we were younger, so obviously it's gonna be heavy. But we don't really cater to anything.
Yeah, when I first saw you guys, that was on a hardcore show.
Bob: I definitely came from a hardcore background, so I had that kind of mindset when I first started performing live. Doug listened to a lot of Pantera and Sabbath, so as he got older, you could hear more of that influence coming out.
Doug: You dig deeper and figure out more what influenced who influenced you, and you get closer to whatever the true feeling is.
So how'd you guys end up recording with Andreas? What led you to choose this studio?
Doug: I think our manager brought it up. She had brought up a few different people, and we were unsure of what we were gonna do. Originally we were gonna try and record it ourselves, which just wasn't happening. But when she brought him up, I was like, “Oh, I remember Andreas.”
Bob: We toured with his band [Scarlet]. He's recorded a lot of our friends' bands, like Black Dahlia Murder.
Doug: So we came down and did a demo, and once we heard the demo, we were into it. So that’s why we’re here.
Awesome. Andreas, how's this experience been on your end?
Andreas: It's cool. It's really relaxed, not having a full band here. When you get five guys in the room the whole time, it just gets really frustrating.
Bob: In terms of the babysitting?
Andreas: Yeah, you waste a lot of time. When you get too many guys in that all have their own ideas, you end up with...
Doug: Ideas clashing and all that?
Andreas: Yeah. I think stuff has more of a sound the less people that are involved. You get more of someone's unique style, rather than when everything gets so blended up. But production wise, there's a lot of space in the songs to do a lot of cool stuff.
Doug: Stuff that we never would have done before.
Are you experimenting in the studio? Doing things that you hadn't been doing live with these songs?
Doug: Well, we haven't played a lot of them live at all, really.
Bob: We've played four songs live. But we're mixing in the new components to the live show that no one's heard yet. Just having it on some of the tracks just brings a different element to what we do.
Doug: There's Hammond organ all over the album.
[laughs] You're not serious.
Doug: Oh, I'm serious.
Andreas: But a real organ, going through a real Leslie [rotating organ speaker].
For real? I don't know if I'm being pranked right now.
Bob: [laughs] No, you're not being pranked. See, that might scare you. You might not know what to expect.
That actually interests me. I'm curious about that.
Bob: Hammond organ is such a dark instrument. We're tuning down a little lower on this record as well, so it's opened up a wider spectrum of riffs that we can do. It's eerier. There are different soundscapes within it that a lot of [other] bands don't have, that really haven't been abused yet.
Doug: Abused. [laughs]
It hasn't been done to death.
Bob: Exactly.
So are you going to be bringing in somebody to play it live? If you took a real Hammond organ on tour, that'd be complex.
Bob: It's big, but I think it's still do-able.
Doug: It depends on the tour. It's like 500 lbs.
Andreas: It's got Yellow Pages holding the amp up. It's not necessarily tour-ready.
Doug: It's not roadworthy at all. When I drove it down here, I was so afraid when we first plugged it up. Like, “Oh my god, I hope it works.”
So what is your current lineup? Are you guys a five-piece again?
Doug: After the album is done, we're gonna go back to practicing as a five-piece for the first time in about two years.
Are you doing all the guitar tracks on the album?
Bob: This album's completely just the two of us.
Doug: Well, we have a drummer that we brought in. But it's cool because it's more of a straight collaboration. Bob and I are definitely different than your average metalheads. So the record you're gonna get when Bob and I are doing it is gonna be a little bit crazier than the record [by] guys who are just on their first album, and [are] scared to do anything different.
You guys have signed to Seasons Of Mist. How's working with them been? How do they compare to your previous label, Ferret?
Bob: All I know is that they've put out a lot of awesome records. The staff there is incredible, especially in the US. Their track record gets me very excited to be able to work with them with my music. Just seeing what they've done in the past, I'm fucking freaked out. It's gonna be awesome. Seasons Of Mist was one of our top choices for labels when we were sending things out. And they were very interested right from the get-go.
So what's the timeline look like for the album, leading up to the release?
Bob: We don't really have a set date for the album until we deliver the album. But we're hoping for the fall, October or November of this year.
Doug: It's gonna come out on vinyl, so it's basically artwork we're waiting on after we're done with it.
Bob: We've worked with Paul Romano in the past, but this time the stars just didn't align, and we went out and looked for somebody else. We found Brian Baker, who is from Baltimore. He did the painting [we’re using] over a span of something like eight years. This painting is incredible. It's massive. Doug went down to take pictures of it and he was blown away by it.
Doug: I was looking for artwork and I saw something I actually liked. I don't really like album artwork that much anymore. I always find old things that I like, but now...
Bob: It has a [Miles Davis’] Bitches Brew vibe to it, but there's a weird spiritual element about it. Mike Wahlberg, [who] does a lot of t-shirt designs for us, is gonna put [the packaging] together. He's gonna do a weird psychedelic collage.
The way you're describing the album sleeve, combined with the fact that you're bringing in the Hammond organ, makes me think that the album might have a retro 70s feel.
Bob: It's fucking heavy. But a lot of the leads do have a bit of that psychedelic tinge to it.
Doug: That's something that people are gonna notice. The leads are different now.
Bob: I really wanted to incorporate a lot of late 60s/early 70s psych and Krautrock influence within the solos; a lot of that improv stuff that was blowing minds at the time, mixed with some darker drone, ambient kind of stuff. The record has the A Life Once Lost signature sound, but there's just a different interpretation to it.
Doug: It's like Santana meets Meshuggah or some shit.
Andreas: It's got the Hammond, and all the leads that are going through an old combo amp, but then it's still really heavy. The tuning has been dropped, the rhythm tone is really thick and heavy, and the drums are hard-hitting. So it's kind of got both extremes--it's really hard-hitting, but it has a lot of that psychedelic sound on top of it.
That really sounds awesome. I can't wait to hear it now.
Doug: People will either like it or they won't, but it's a unique record made from me and [Bob], and that's the bottom line.
Bob: There's no status quo that we're trying to hit. Whatever happens with it happens with it. At the end of the day, I'm gonna be proud of it. That’s really all that matters, is that we’re happy.
After we finished the interview, Bob and Doug let me hear one of the new songs, and it was every bit as cool as their description made it sound. They’re now tuning to B, three steps below standard, and with the Hammond organ mixed in, the vibe is definitely darker and swampier than before. The complex time signatures and heavy, aggressive riffing on which they’ve made their name are still very much present, but they’ve incorporated a psychedelic stoner groove that puts a fresh new twist on their earlier sound. The new album should please all but the most narrow-minded A Life Once Lost fans, while bringing many new converts into the fold. I for one am totally on board. I’ll be looking for it this fall, and you should too.
Words by Andrew Necci
Photos by Glenn Cocoa