At the incredible Roadburn Festival, writer Sam Christelow and head honcho Jake Longhurst were lucky enough to catch both members of doom metal masters Bell Witch for a lovely extended conversation!
Jake and I had the honour of chatting to Dylan Desmond (bass, vocals) and Jesse Shreibman (drums, vocals) (yes that's right, a metal band with no guitarists!) the day before they performed and they were thoroughly lovely! In homage to their musical style we had an extended chat which I've left largely unedited - enjoy!
Sam: How does it feel to be at Roadburn?
Dylan: Good! We’re both a bit jet-lagged still but everything seems to be kicking off now so there’s a good buzz in the air. It’s nice to run into people, although especially after the pandemic I’m often looking and people and thinking “I remember that guy’s face… oh and he’s looking at me, I probably know him!” which has been fun
S: Have you been over to Europe much since the pandemic?
Jesse: Once, we did a pretty badass tour for Stygian Bough (the band’s “side project” with Aerial Ruin) with Incantation and Wolves In The Throne Room In October/November. It’s cool to be back doing what we love, especially when we’re playing all new material tomorrow (their latest album, Future's Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Gate, released on the day of their performance, as shown right below!) and at such an awesome place to do it.
S: Diving a bit more into your music, doom metal, incredibly long tracks - are you guys both ok? Do you need a hug?
Jake: It’s not regular to write an 80 minute song, what’s brought that about?
Dylan: Well I guess there’s not an easy answer, but the thing that makes the most sense to me is that on the first record we had a song that we ended up cutting in two parts even though the second one was kind of just a riff from the first one, then on the second record we had four tracks that were kind of like two movements each split into two tracks and I don’t think we executed that too well. I think the tracks are good individually, but the connection wasn’t that strong. Mirror Reaper was almost like a furthering of that idea; we weren’t setting out to write a certain length of song, but we were trying to write one piece. Originally we wanted to make movements for it, working with the four phantoms model.
Jesse: The amount of parts kept getting smaller and smaller, originally we had seven in reference to The Kybalion (a 1908 book detailing Hermeticism, in particular the seven Hermetic principles) but then it kept getting reduced down because it wasn’t naturally happening, until we realised it had become one song rather than different movements. It still had sections and there are different motifs, but they weren’t separate songs
Dylan: Now with our latest album, we thought why not stick with that idea, why can’t a whole album be a movement? *laughs* so that initial idea just keeps expanding
S: It is really interesting hearing a metal band talk about movements and motifs - you make your music sound very classical, in terminology at least. Do you feel the way you write is closer to composing than writing?
Dylan: I guess it kind of is. When working on this album we were talking about classical music and lots of other things. People use the word “soundscape” all the time, which is kind of a modern way of talking about something that’s more of a classical piece. Not all the time of course, there are lots of times when a classical piece isn’t a soundscape, but there are a lot of times where it is - with orchestration and everything moving around fluidly.
Jesse: I don’t think we’re being directly influenced by classical music necessarily, it’s not like we are pulling from a specific composer and modelling on that, but there also isn’t traditional rock ‘n’ roll there - no A B A B C B A going on necessarily. However, if you zoom out there are little bits of that going on in tiny segments of the piece
J: Almost fractal-like?
Jesse: For sure! I do think it is more like a composition in nature, at least more than it is a traditional song form. There’s not a hook, there’s not a bridge. Even on the drum end of the spectrum to me it is more percussion than it is drums. Of course there are moments where I am playing the drums like I was in a rock band, but then more often it is accentuating this larger thing rather than like “check out this sick fill!”
S: So you’re thinking more about the macro than the micro with your instrumentation?
Dylan: Yeah, and building off what you just said, the idea originally was to record an album in within this triptych structure, tour it, then go back and do the same thing again with album two and three, then the pandemic hit and we thought maybe we should try to write an outline for the entire thing and piece it together from there record by record. There was even talk of doing all three at once! Probably good we didn’t do that.
We could look at civilization, how over history certain thoughts are happening at different times. Music does that same thing all the time, it’s not like we are reinventing the wheel with what we do, maybe we are just focusing on it in a different way.
Talking of movements, a lot of that developed when certain things we were going to put one record one before the pandemic, seemed to make more sense as a resolution that would fit conceptually at the end of record three. Ideas that didn’t fit as an initiation anymore, and that didn’t align with what record one is supposed to be - a big build. There are plenty of peaks and valleys going on, but it is supposed to be building up to something whereas record two will be hitting that peak and going back down and record three will be more declining. Movements ended up being a natural way to fit this concept, it all came from the concept.
J: To talk about the concept again, you have mentioned these are meant to be three albums that not only join into each other, but flow cyclically. What was the idea behind creating a cyclical set of pieces like this? That is not something I’ve seen before, especially across such a long run time!
Dylan: Well the idea of a cycle, representing dawn, midday and dusk is fundamental. When you think about it there are cycles to everything, spring, summer, fall, winter etc. We could look at civilization, how over history certain thoughts are happening at different times. Music does that same thing all the time, it’s not like we are reinventing the wheel with what we do, maybe we are just focusing on it in a different way.
S: That makes perfect sense, linking into the idea of “Eternal Return” which you have already identified as a key theme for your latest work
Jesse: Absolutely. There is also something about cycles that makes things feel very small, but also very big at the same time. So despite the music being very large and having it continue/cycle, you can still pick out little things that continue and cycle on, it’s like a “macro-reduction” for lack of a better word. One other thing we were doing on this specific record was seeing how much we could fit in while doing the least. Like we really added in a lot of elements that weren’t necessarily there on the last records, for example there are more synthesisers, organs and more vocals - but despite this I don’t think it feels busier
Dylan: Interestingly I think that the initial sketches we had for it were busy, we had lots of weird time signatures and stuff, but then we kept chipping away at it, trimming the fat, so that kind of naturally emerged from that process. I agree it doesn’t sound busy when we play it, we trimmed so much away that what is left is just the essence of what’s going on. That took a long time!
Jesse: But that… is a cycle! Also, it might sound strange but when we’re doing that, we haven’t heard it yet. When you’re writing, you don’t really hear it all until it’s done being recorded. So we don’t know what that cycle at the end is actually going to sound like, and once it is done there might be a resolution, but there also might not be - maybe you are just looking for the resolution over and over and over again in a cycle. I think that is one of the other ideological motifs. Even in life, once you have a resolution for something do you feel resolved? And how long do you feel resolved for?
J: Well you have got plenty of time to search for that resolution with two more records at 80 minutes each, that’s quite a long way to go there!
Dylan: Well we aren’t necessarily limiting ourselves to each record being roughly 80 minutes, some might be less, some might be more
Jesse: The vinyl limitation is a factor, that’s basically where this 83 is coming from. How much music can you actually squeeze onto vinyl records
Dylan: It’s interesting with this record because it’s roughly the same as the last one, but it just kinda ended up being that length. We were a bit like “What the hell? How does it end up being the same length?” it’s just odd
Jesse: Within a second.
S & J: Wow
So we don’t know what that cycle at the end is actually going to sound like, and once it is done there might be a resolution, but there also might not be - maybe you are just looking for the resolution over and over and over again in a cycle.
Dylan: I think part of it was we just got used to playing the other one, so we have a feel for about when we ought to be winding up. I think a lot of bands do that though, they will write a song and the next one comes out with remnants of that previous song in it
J: To within a second though, that’s mad
Jesse: On the recording, it’s within a second
Dylan: I think that was a bit of us trimming again. In the studio we had little bits of empty space here and there, at the start and the end, so we were trying to trim that down before realising “Woahhh it’s the same length, but let’s leave at least one second extra”.
Jesse: Just so we really outdid ourselves!
S: With these lengths of tracks I am really interested to hear what a band practice is like for you guys?
Jesse: *laughs* Long.
S: I’m sure! Do you end up playing full songs? Or pick sections and tackle those? What’s the process
Dylan: Sometimes we end up talking about it more than we do playing… We usually take one section and hone in on it and just poke at it for, in the case of the latest album, months. Sometimes we will work on it for months and months then just decide it doesn’t fit in the song and then it’s gone
*Jesse takes a deep, long breath*
Dylan: You hear him breathe like that? It’s really frustrating sometimes! But also one of the things I think has been really cool about this project is if some of these parts don’t mash up with what we have for record one, the mood of it might fit in with our concept of what record two should be. So we have ended up with this whole bank of ideas and this whole structure of what is supposed to come afterwards.
Jesse: Yeah, we really didn’t start playing this song in its entirety until a couple of months ago, because we were still in that hyperfocus stage. Then we would play it through a couple of times and think about which parts still needed work - it’s like a never ending nit-pick.
S: It’s a cycle!
Jesse: Yeah, but after a point you have to say you’re done. I think us mixing this record is a good example, we ended up going into the studio multiple times, more than we were maybe planning, but there still is a point where you have to just say you are done.
S: We were lucky enough to get the album early and see the artwork, very excited to see it performed tomorrow! On the artwork, who is in charge of that? Do you work together?
Dylan: Yeah we both talked about it a lot, we ended up finding the artist because he has so much cool stuff, and out of all the people we considered he seemed the most unique. He’s working on this Divine Comedy thing which had some thematic overlap with the album. He absolutely delivered as well, I think the painting is f***ing awesome
J: It is an amazing cover
S: I think it feels like a Hieronymous Bosch painting
Dylan: Totally!
Jesse: Oh yeah, definitely one of the influences. I think we’re lucky, we both have a similar taste when it comes to art. It’s not like that in every band, it can become a pretty weird conversation sometimes if you disagree with someone’s taste and trying to figure out how to deal with that. So we have certain frameworks we try to work within: oil, surreal, darker, you know. Obviously the cover for Mirror Reaper was such a thing, we wanted to make sure this one was equally epic
Cover art for The Clandestine Gate, painted by Jordi Díaz Alamà.
S: That’s all I’ve got, so I’ll let Jake loose with some silly ones
J: Two questions; if you could have a band of anyone, alive or dead, who’s going into your supergroup?
Jesse: Like The Highwaymen kinda supergroup? (Who knew Bell Witch like country music) Do we have to be in it?
J: Can be, don’t have to be
Dylan: It’s so tough! Well if I could get Waylon Jennings to come alive again, since you’ve already brought up the Highwaymen, and somehow recreate Lonesome, On’ry and Mean (1973) or Honky Tonk Heroes (also 1973) and play one of those live I’d be happy as a clam
Jesse: I would have Jimi Hendrix, Levon Helm playing drums and David Gilmour playing bass.
All: *in amazement* Gilmour on bass…
Jesse: I just wanna know what he’d do on bass! Then they can all fight over who’s singing. It might be the worst band you’ve ever heard
J: Bell Witch vocals?
Dylan & Jesse: Ooooooh
J: Finally, the most serious question you’ll be asked for some time I assure you - if you were a cookie, what cookie would you be?
Jesse: Snickerdoodle
Dylan: Oatmeal raisin
Jesse: What would you be?
J: Well I’ve thought about this a lot
Jesse: You better have!
J: So for me it’s a British one, a chocolate Hobnob
Jesse: Oh sure yeah! We know those. Do you guys remember Mallomars? It’s like marshmallow with a cookie, it’s chocolate covered
Dylan: Is it like a brown packaging, kinda yellow?
Jesse: That’s the one
Dylan: Oh yeah I’m with you
S: Is it circular? We have things called Wagon Wheels that might be the same?
Jesse: Yeah I think so, they’re great
*(We were all wrong! Mallomars are what we would call Tunnock’s Tea Cakes)*
Jesse: Maybe this doesn’t count, but have you guys ever have an Its-It? It’s two cookies with ice cream in the middle covered in chocolate
Dylan: Dude!
J: Sounds amazing, you can definitely be that!
And with that, that was all the time we had with Bell Witch! We let them go on their merry way, and as you may have read in our enormous Roadburn review, we thoroughly loved their live set!
Sam Christelow
Edited by: Jake Longhurst
Cover image courtesy of Bobby Cochran, video courtesy of Profound Lore Records on Youtube, album art courtesy of Bell Witch and Jordi Díaz Alamà.
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