Akercocke

Thu 23 Feb 2006

Slice His Face Off With A Spoon

Akercocke

Towards the end of 2005, one of Britain’s acclaimed death metal (used in the loosest term) acts, Akercocke, who would even have the dark lord on all fours wearing a gimp mask and ball gag released their fourth album ‘Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone’ a more prog rock inspired, overall textualised approach to their own unique attack at extreme metal. Which despite it’s late coming in the year rated very highly in most magazine readers & writers polls.

I gladly got the chance to put a few questions to bassist and pretty haired ruffian Peter Theobalds hoping that he wouldn’t make me his bitch or get Matt Wilcock to melt my face.

Lee - The last 4 months has seen the release of your 4th album "Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone”, how did you anticipate this album would be received amongst press and fans? Especially with the more obvious progressive whims of the album.

Peter - The reaction has been amazing! We were so unsure about the reception of it, as it was written in a rather disjointed fashion. We weren’t as confident with it as we were with previous albums but it has been really amazing, and people really seem to have come onboard with us and our weird ever changing sounds. It’s very reassuring. There has been some awful reviews too, which i always love to read as they make me smile. Muwhaha

Lee - Overall what was your goal if any when it came to the creative process of this album?

Peter - The same as it always is, to please ourselves. The whole point to the band from day one was to write music we wanted to hear and it’s gonna be that way for the rest of its duration I am sure. Unless Nickelback want to do a split EP with us then I would write anything to be able to get closer to Chad Kroeger to enable me to

Akercocke

slice his face of with a spoon. Did I say that out loud?

Lee - The uptake in production comparable to your last album (Choronzon) is fairly blatant, and arguably an improvement? What different techniques were used in the making of the album that you didn't explore before?

Peter - This time round we had a Matt Wilcock unit to plug into the desk, his knowledge is quite extensive as he has studied and worked as an engineer quite a bit back in his native Australia, and to be honest i think we have managed to initially record everything in a good clean way to begin with, so that when it went to (Neil) Kernon to mix it was just gonna get even better sounding. Technically the main difference was that we changed from VST to Protools which is an amazing box of tricks.

Lee - You are a band that has built a solid reputation to being a progressing band with each output. Is this a conscious effort or is it just something that happens naturally?

Peter - It's difficult to be objective at the time of writing each new song, so it's easier and more fun for us to try to outdark/weird ourselves. It’s always the riffs and parts that make us laugh the most or get the hardest horn for playing that end up in the final mix.
I can hear the progression though in hindsight, each album, for me, flows from one to the other and seems to make sense somehow.

Lee - As I said earlier, what musical influences if any did you draw from regarding the more obvious progressive and melodious parts of the album?

Peter - We are all massive fans of Rush, they have been a huge influence for us for many years and with all the albums. Bands like Gong and King Crimson have played a large part in our youth too so that’s maybe where some of it stems from. To be truthful though I think its a lot more down to the disparate musical fetishes that we all have making a kinda 'car crash' effect on the writing process. I hardly listen to any death and almost no black metal at all so I will not come to the studio with a frostbitten necro riff, I'm more likely to throw in a Sonic Youth style idea and when that comes head on with say one of Jason's bizarre Killing Joke riffs or Matt’s maniacal speed metal Jazz outs its bound to sound a bit 'experimental'
Basically I guess we can't play very well so it always sounds experimental haha.

Lee - Would I be wrong in saying the album is somewhat conceptual? Especially with the title track and following song "Intractable".

Akercocke

Peter – No haha, well the two tracks you talk about here were written separately, it was only playing them together that we figured hey! It segues nicely from one into another! Lets do it! Apart from that its as conceptual as the last album and the album previous to that, in that its all about Satan and Tits...mainly.

Lee - Would you ever consider an Akercocke Rock Opera, I dunno something revolving around a story of Satan and lots of cum guzzling biatches? Ha ha ha

Peter - David and I were previously working on 'Space Wankers' a huge west end style smash hit show featuring my alter Ego - Jaz Volcano, psychedelic guitar hero from mars and David’s intergalactic Breast Surgeon - Dr Les Lesbian. It was kinda like a rocky horror but with a lot more class A drugs and hordes of naked huge breasted alien warrior women. We have had to shelve that project for a while though pending funding, so if Ben Elton wants to chuck us a couple of million quid at us we would pick it up, who knows maybe even make a movie.

Lee - You toured fairly extensively for "Words...", how was that even with the situation with Will Rahmer (mortician)?

Peter - I don't think we have toured nearly enough for this album, so far just a handful of UK shows and about 21 European dates doesn’t quite cut it for me. We're looking to get out a lot more this year hopefully some festivals and a more extensive UK tour to take in all the places we seem to miss a lot. (sorry Exeter).

The situation with Will was quite a tough one, to see a Brother go off the rails like that was really difficult to deal with. But we managed to pull together and in the end, even though i am sure Sam and Rog (Mortician) were not having the greatest time of their lives, it was still a pretty successful tour, Czech Republic sticks in my mind as a fantastic show, and Vienna too.

D

Akercocke

espite the worry for Will's fate in Poland it was an absolute honor and pleasure to go out again with the Mortician guys, they looked after us so well in the US that it was nice to be able to lend a helping hand to them when they needed it and how cool to play Drilling for Brains!!!

Lee - With a rather capable new axeman on board how would you say Matt has settled in to the Akercocke camp?

Peter - Yeah we have a new(ish) guitarist in the family, Matt Wilcock formerly of Australian blasting maniacs The Berzerker who, apart from his ridiculous haircut & ill prepared winter wardrobe, fits in rather well with the band, an amazing guitarist, a total fucking shred machine and his leadbreaks have been known to actually melt the faces off people who stand too close to his fretboard. He's a great drinker too and one of my favourite people to abuse physically and mentally, especially in public.

Lee - Are their any ideas floating about the next album yet?...and what are you looking forward to in 2006?

Peter - We have actually just the past few weeks begun to throw ideas around and we're already laughing, so that’s a good sign. 2006 is hopefully going to be a year for more touring to take our sounds to new places. It’s so very important for a band to tour as we have learned from the last 2 years as people can see you, talk to you and not just see a magazine or a cd in the shop. It makes a great difference to be performing for and making friends all over rather than to just sell records to strangers.

Lee - For any Akercocke fans reading this on RockBeast, what would like to incite them to do? Just kidding, what would you like to say to them?

Peter - Eat your greens, don't bunk of maths classes,  be nice to your Mum and thank you all!

Interview by Lee Macbride

All pictures taken from www.earache.com