One of the more tedious facets of being in a touring band, especially one lacking the clout that comes with a larger fan base, is the endless succession of terrible opening bands. Night after night, uninspired promoters add on uninspired groups who have no interest in musicianly camaraderie and whose friends only stay for the opening bands. A band I was in embarked on our first tour in 2006 and we experienced a good amount of this. After a few shows, we ended up in New Haven, Connecticut and were shown around town by Tom, who booked the show and was in an opener that evening, a metal band called Sea Of Bones. As he drove us around town, fed us, and got us drunk, he kept complaining about his band and apologizing in advance for how terrible they were going to be that night. Never having heard them, I had no reason to doubt him and, despite his uncommonly gracious hospitality, I wasn't exactly looking forward to witnessing the band for which he so profusely apologized.
That evening, after Sea Of Bones' three members set up enough amplifiers for five times as many musicians, they launched into a set of viscera-rumbling, down-tuned dirge that made me wonder if Tom had confidence issues, or if he was just full of shit. Turning to another member of my band, our simultaneous reaction of “holy fuck” summed the experience up pretty succinctly. Sea Of Bones sidesteps many of the cliches that have clung to heavy music in the past few years, with a volatile and unsettling aesthetic that calls to mind Corrupted, Buried At Sea, early Neurosis, and His Hero Is Gone. Over the successive years, Sea Of Bones have remained good friends and an amazing band that seems to constantly slip by the attention of the larger listening public. I had a chance to sit down with the always gregarious trio of Tom (guitar/vocals), Kevin (drums/vocals), and Gary (bass/vocals) to get some insight into their existence and creative process.
So you guys have been around for five or six years now. How has that experience changed over time?
Kevin: Well, we went from being really into the band, to not being into the band, to being into the band again. It's a beautiful karmic circle. I'm just waiting 'til we can hate the band again. Still, we've learned a lot. We've learned how to write songs that are less shitty.
Tom: We work better together now.
Gary: Yeah, after Tom decided to stop bringing random people into the band whenever he felt like it.
Tom: I brought them in but I also pulled them out.
Gary: I'll give you that.
What motivated the shifting lineup over the years?
Tom: I basically just wanted to add more textures to what was going on. We wound up with one guitar player that fit in perfectly but just wasn't into the band, but we've had a bunch of other members that were just mistakes and just wasted our time. We're more cohesive as a three-piece. [all three applaud]
Has your songwriting process shifted from your earlier days as a trio, to your expanded lineups, back to the three-piece arrangement?
Tom: When we first started, we just played. We didn't pay much attention to writing songs or even being in tune. It was just “let's play.” We did that for a while and realized that our songs were just riff after riff, no real...
Kevin: ...Direction.
Tom: More or less just nonsense. As opposed to now, I think we have a better grasp of ironing things out so that they flow together a little better
Kevin: I think an easy way to sum it up is that we started a band and we were writing simple, basic songs – what was easy and comfortable for us. Then, we wanted to step up the game and write songs that were more technical, but we got bored with that, so we're back to writing in our old style...
Tom: ...But with what we know now. We got out of the way we wrote partly because of me, because I got bored and started learning different styles and trying to write stuff just because I could. But things got a little too complicated, just not fun to play. Whereas the stuff we're working on now, what we're about to record, is more fun to play, but not boring.
I've noticed that all three of you contribute vocals to everything. Is that a collective writing process or do you come up with lyrics individually?
Gary: It's pretty much individually.
Tom: Well what happens is, we'll write a part and people will sing where they're compelled to sing. Then we'll wind up giving the song (these days at least) a title and an idea of what the song's about, then everybody just takes it and goes their own direction with it.
What sort of thematic ideas do you draw from when writing lyrics and devising song concepts?
Tom: For me, it's a lot of outward anger towards the world with, not necessarily people, but how we treat each other in the underground system, the politics, the hidden agendas, religion. Crap like that, the stupid stuff in the world, the stuff that bothers us as people, stuff that gets on our nerves and under our skin is what we tend to lean towards. A lot of it is, what's the word...
Gary: ...Apocalyptic.
Kevin: All my lyrics are about outer space.
Tom: And a lot of the stuff's metaphoric as opposed to just taking an idea and being like, “We don't like God. Arrrggh. Anger. God!” I'd rather explain it in a story where we can go over the perspectives of different people.
I noticed that all the song titles on both your albums are titled with a chapter number. Is there an overriding concept to your music, and is that something that'll be continued on subsequent releases?
Tom: No, on the next album all the songs are titled.
Kevin: We might've had an idea initially for the chaptering, but part of it was that we could never agree on song titles. But we also like the idea of the songs not necessarily having names.
Gary: They also all flow together. The first two releases could've been one song with the way they flow, so we titled them based on that.
Tom: The songs that we have now have taken their own personalities, and a lot of the titles we have now came out of what the songs sound like, certain shifts and moods in the songs. We don't guess on the names. We'll be sitting around, and then all of a sudden a name will come up that's pretty much how the song sounds. I like the chapter thing but...
Kevin: …At the time, as Gary said, for both Grave Of The Mammoth and The Harvest, we didn't have to do chapters. It could've all been a single thing, since all the songs are basically a movement of one basic theme whereas now the songs are more self-contained.
So it's not difficult to maintain a sense of continuity?
Tom: [With] the new songs? Yeah, we could still play all the new ones in pretty much any arrangement and they would flow together. It's just how our songs are. They work together. That's just how we write, up and down, back and forth...
Kevin: ...A little left and right
Tom: It's organic, the way they flow for us. The first two albums were definitely one song split up, but these all have their own life.
Gary: They all came about at different times, two are older songs that were reworked a lot. We're actually about to bring back a song from two years ago as part of a newer song. Re-worked and chopped in half, re-structured. Everything is constantly changing with us.
Kevin: A lot of deconstruction.
Gary: Yeah, building up and breaking down then re-building.
Tom: We're really critical. We don't want to have filler parts, stuff that gets from Point A to Point B. I don't see the point in having stuff that's there to get you somewhere. I think everything should have its own purpose in the song.
Kevin: Are these the longest answers you've ever gotten?
Um... Yes. Without a doubt. Is this songwriting process behind the four-year gap between releases?
Gary: [over everybody laughing] Oh yeah, 100%. That's it.
Tom: But that's not necessarily it--I added a bunch of members. Which is entirely my fault.
Gary: But also, we wrote and recorded a 45-minute album that never saw the light of day.
Tom: We spent way more time sitting around, smoking weed, and hanging out than we did playing music. Our motivation just wasn't there. But once we got back to being a three-piece, we got right back on track. We all decided we needed to actively do something, and not just sit around.
Both your albums have been self-released. How does the DIY ethic factor into Sea Of Bones?
Tom: The creativity involved. I'm more likely to buy somebody's album, regardless of whether I like them or not, if I think they made something really cool. And I wasn't like that before--I didn't care what it looked like, I just wanted to get it out. But these guys got me more into the DIY side of things. I've made all our shirts, and we've done our own CDs. We've always just done it. If you can, I think it's cool. Most of the time it's out of financial need.
Gary: Yeah, we're broke.
Kevin: And nobody else is going to...
Gary: ...If nobody wants to release our stuff, we're going to do it ourselves. We don't know if people want to hear it...
Tom: ...We're putting it out regardless.
Gary: And that's essential to metal, hardcore, or anything really. Because the music industry could give a fuck about what a band's doing or what their problems are, they just want to make money off their fuckin' sweat and fuckin' hard work. That's both bigger and smaller labels, they're just there to sell records for them. So even if they're not infringing on you as an artist or a person, the bottom line is that they want you to sell the fuckin' record. That's why it's important. It's nice to get help now and then. I guess DIY is never truly doing it yourself because you're always asking other people for help, whether that's another band or a promoter. You're always counting on other people.
Tom: I think that even if some label ends up putting our records out, we're still going to do a lot of it ourselves, no matter what. It's a way to be creative other than just playing music. If we do the artwork, and screen the CDs, it puts a part of us in everything we do, as opposed to just being in a band and having somebody take care of everything. I wouldn't be comfortable with that.
There seems to be more of a commercial element to heavier, underground music – for whatever that term might be worth at this point – that's led to a lot of really uninspired, derivative bands who only want to be on a big label. Are there any trappings of this that you've gone out of your way to avoid?
Kevin: Yeah--writing stock riffs.
Tom: The thing with that is that when we write music, there's no method to it. We're not trying to write verse/chorus/verse. If there's a hook, it's there just because that's where it ended up. We let the songs take their own shape. We'll jam on a lot of parts and that's usually where our songs come from, instead of trying to write something in a certain vein. I mean, there's a lot that bothers me about plenty of music, but I don't think we're trying to stay away from anything because that's not what we do.
Gary: All those bands today wearing their influences on their fuckin' sleeves... With us, you kinda know what we're into by some of our riffs and songs, but you won't know exactly what our favorite bands are.
Kevin: There's been such a resurgence of sludge and doom amongst a lot of people and a lot of bands start with that sound in mind. When we started playing, we never called ourselves a doom band. We just naturally gravitated towards a particular sound. And now, we've got people calling us funeral doom. The closest thing to funeral doom we've done was to play a fuckin' memorial.
Tom: We get some comparisons I just don't get. And it's not like we think we're some great people doing something super original, because that's not the case. We're just playing what comes out of us. It just happens that we like what it is. When we're working on a part and one of us thinks a part sounds generic, we'll go out of our way to make the other person feel like shit.
Gary: We've scrapped a bunch of shit.
Kevin: I think having to name your musical genre is tedious and demeaning. I mean, we play really slow music, but sometimes we play really fast songs.
Gary: And most of the time, it's all the same song.
Tom: And sometimes we're kissing. [kissing sounds and clamor ensue] So I guess that's the short answer. Did we even answer your question?
More or less. How well is Sea Of Bones received around your area? Most people don't really think of New Haven as a big metal town.
Kevin: Surprisingly, our friends really like us.
Gary: We have some good friends in some great bands who have been really supportive. But there's never really a lot of people out at a show around here. We're usually well received, even if the crowds are small.
Tom: It's odd some of the people who even like us...
Kevin: ...His mom...
Tom: …Come from weird parts of the spectrum.
Gary: There's maybe four or five bands playing heavy music around here, but each one plays a different version of it.
Tom: There's lots of shitty bands too.
Kevin: But it's slowly getting there. A lot more people are open.
Tom: More people are starting to listen to music as opposed to just hearing it, if that makes sense.
Yeah, sometimes it seems like the areas that don't have the highest concentration of bands will have people that are more receptive just from not being so jaded and burnt out from a show every night. Are you trying to tour more since you've got a more stabilized lineup and new recordings on the way?
Tom: Baby steps.
Gary: I'm trying to get these guys to want to do that. These four days we're going out with Elitist will be the first time we've been out for almost two years.
Kevin: It's honestly money. Just the economy being so shitty, how can we go on the road just to come home broke and have to pay bills?
Tom: My idea is to get our shit together, to get a CD together, see how many labels laugh at us, and see if we can get people on board to be supportive and promote well enough that we're not driving eight hours to play for nobody. I mean, I will. Don't get me wrong. Baby steps, like I said.
Kevin: But we're recording next month with Scott Amore at Innerspace Sound Labs. It's good to have a deadline to know that it's going to get done and to give these songs their physical outlet.
Gary: A little finality with these songs is pretty much what we need right now.
Well thanks for talking to me. Anything you guys would like to add?
Kevin: You know, you probably could've gotten more concise answers if you'd just asked your iPhone.
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Sea Of Bones will appear at Strange Matter with Cough, Elitist, and Balaclava on Wednesday, October 26th.