Interview with World Eater

Hi! What inspired the unique blend of Death, Doom, and Thrash elements in your music, and how do you ensure that each genre is represented in a cohesive and impactful way?
Dan (Rhythm Guitar/Backing Vocals): We all listen to so many different bands, it was inevitable that things wouldn’t be straightforward. It keeps things more interesting when you just write without trying to keep to one genre, so what we ended up with is a blend of all of the things we love.

Ed (Vocals): We didn’t really think too much about genre representation in our music. Our main goal was to create music we like, and I think we achieved that goal. A lot of the bands we draw inspiration from drift between genres, and I think it’s most natural for us to do the same.

Evan (Bass): It ends up being a mix of a few things, really. When I think of death metal, I don’t think of your typical standard Cannibal Corpse-esque sound. I think of stuff like Spectral Voice and old school Paradise Lost where they can do the typical death metal riffage and balance it out with those crazy dynamics. Thrash comes into play by being fast, but not too chaotic in its composition. All three factors really serve to create balance between one another.

“An Insidious Remedy” is filled with raw and muscular riffs. Can you tell us about the songwriting process behind crafting these intense and bludgeoning guitar parts?
Dan: Evan wrote a lot of the initial material, besides my track Gardener of Men. On that song specifically, I took influence from Doom Metal bands like Yob who use massive chords and let each section they write breathe until it’s time to move onto the next thing. It’s a more organic songwriting approach that I admire a lot.

Evan: Oh man, yeah, that really goes back to what I call the “Nails mentality.” I think there was an interview with Todd Jones where he said Nails were all about “No bullshit” and I have to agree. We don’t have grindcore-length songs, so we have to be consistent!

How do you achieve a balance between creating a chaotic atmosphere while maintaining a sense of control and structure in your music?
Dan: I love contrast in music. I think blending things on two extreme ends is always more interesting than trying to find a middle ground. Combining that with a real grasp on coherent songwriting helped us structure the songs without losing our footing.

Ed: The basis of each of the songs were created so that we could stack on top and create a sort of controlled chaos. Evan did a great job writing so that everyone can shine on their own while coming together as one cohesive unit. From a production standpoint, we tried to make this album both musically dense while also retaining clarity.

Evan: I think some bands don’t bother to create some kind of melody to balance things out. Death always had these riffs that you could hum along to, and it never diluted the brutality of it. You gotta spice it up with something chaotic to offset the melody.

https://youtu.be/JOGYlMh1VrI

Could you discuss the significance of the album’s title, “An Insidious Remedy,” and how it reflects the overall theme and lyrical content explored throughout the record?
Dan: Like I mentioned, it’s all about contrast. I think the album title, while being an obvious reference to the title track, gives you an idea that this is a different record with different themes than you would normally find in Death Metal. One of my favorite album titles is Opeth’s Still Life. I love how it stands out, and still manages to convey what the record was trying to accomplish.

Ed: Lyrically, this album is about exploring different worlds through the eyes of their respective villains. “An Insidious Remedy”, at least to me, means a solution to a problem with unintended, dire consequences. As an example, the title track “Insidious Remedy” is more or less based on trading your soul for mortal gain and the suffering endured as a result. Other songs like “Gardener of Men” and “Zealotry” deal with the madness involved in an endless pursuit of knowledge by any means necessary.

How do you approach crafting the drum parts to enhance the heaviness and impact of your music?
Wes (Drums): I’m a classically trained percussionist, so I always look at a drum part as a full score and see what will best fit the music. Whoever is writing the song will usually include a bare bones drum part, so I take my first inspiration listening to that bare demo. Then I’ll listen to the song both with and without drums to see where a groove needs to change, where to put a specific fill to build into an upcoming section, or where I even need to lay back a bit and let the riff breathe more. I usually write multiple parts as well to see if something might click better than others, and for the other band members to listen to and chop away with to find the perfect fit. Lastly, I always try to slip little snippets of fills and grooves from some of my favorite drummers into the mix somewhere. Listening through, I’ll hear that the song has a certain vibe, or I imagine one of my drum heroes playing the part and I try to fill in the gaps with something they might do.

Can you share any specific challenges or obstacles you faced during the production of “An Insidious Remedy,” and how you overcame them to bring your vision to life?
Dan: Producing your own album is going to have a huge set of challenges. Trying to keep distance from the music while you’re mixing is crucial, and being able to take breaks and pick it back up when you feel like your ears are refreshed on your own time helped us out a lot. There wasn’t any deadline until we decided on one for ourselves.

Ed: I agree with Dan — We are all very critical of our individual musicianship, and it was hard to come to a point where we were all happy with the album and ready to put it out. Eventually we decided “this is it, we’re done whether or not we want to be” and the rest is history.

With ten distinctive tracks on the album, how do you ensure that each song stands out individually while also contributing to the overall flow and cohesiveness of the record?
Dan: We’re constantly writing new material, and most of the time when we write we aren’t going to think about how previous songs sound unless a new one is sounding too similar to an old one. I think that mentality of treating each song as its own standalone piece helps create variety, and when it came to the flow of the record, the track order was the biggest thing we discussed in order to keep it an interesting listen.

Ed: Song individuality wasn’t really a part of the songwriting process, honestly. For all of the songs, Evan (or Dan with “Gardener of Men”) came to the table with a riff or sometimes even a completely written song, and we tweaked as a group to make them their own song. We never really had a moment where we thought “these two songs sound too similar, let’s make them sound different”. For track listing, however, that was a conversation that lasted a week or two before we came to a final conclusion.

Evan: Making sure each song is unique is a huge deal for us, so each one had to do something different. For example, “In Becoming God” is very straightforward and was going to be much more so initially, but Wes came up with the slow down section at the end. That, in my eyes, really pushed the song over the top. It also helped separate it from other fast and punchy songs, like “Uroboros,” and gave it its own identity.

How does the cosmicism concept influence your artistic vision and the messages you aim to convey?
Dan: I’m drawn to surrealism, and the cosmicism aspect we try to incorporate into the lyrics gives us the opportunity to explore more abstract concepts.

Ed: Our vision is tied so heavily to fictional works from different universes, so the concept of cosmicism is at the core of how we approach our lyrics. The ability to borrow from these vastly different universes is fundamental to our creative process.

Death is a recurring theme in many extreme metal genres. How does World Eater approach the concept of death, and what deeper reflections or philosophical questions does it raise for you as artists?
Dan: I like the idea of death as a nebulous concept rather than something finite. Exploring what happens beyond death or different perspectives on what dying means are more interesting than death itself.

Ed: Death is such an interesting concept because it’s something we all will experience but nobody knows what really happens afterwards. Death is very obviously a topic in our lyrics, but not necessarily as an ending or beginning. On a philosophical level entirely separate from World Eater, I really like the short story “The Egg” by Andy Weir. It’s such a cool concept to think about: we’re all one person and death is more of a step in our growth.

Evan: I think death really conveys a sense of finiteism to everything we, as people, do. Knowing what our song topics are and looking at it from a cosmic horror perspective, you have to set yourself apart from, say, Lovecraft. We’re tapping into that vastness, for sure.

Being from New Jersey, how has your geographical location influenced your music and overall artistic direction as a band? Thank you for your time!
Dan: We’ve had a lot of amazing bands come out of New Jersey, lots of Metal and Punk acts especially. Misfits, Fit for an Autopsy, the Banner, lots of dark and intense music. It’s such a fast paced place to live with a lot of geographical variety in such a small place. You can go from a big city to complete isolation in the woods very fast, with that juxtaposition and quick change of environment it’s very easy to find inspiration. Thank you so much for talking to us!

Evan: New Jersey is great! It sucks and it rocks! We have a great music scene here, like Dan said, and that’s very connected to NYC and Philly, too, there’s a lot of grindcore and hardcore bands in the underground. We like that stuff and we have plenty of friends in those bands, but we’d be faking it if we tried assimilating that style. We definitely want to be true to ourselves instead of trying to contort our musical ideas into something they’re not.