New Zealand sludge metal legends Beastwars dropped by The Void to chat with Christina Rowatt about their incredible and long-awaited new record, “The Death of All Things,” living dangerously and being susceptible to a good time, their history, what happens when you die, why heavy metal has gone underground again, what The Melvins did differently and much more. Interview presented, produced and edited by Christina Rowatt. Features footage captured at Beastwars’ show at Frankie’s Pizza in Sydney.
Beastwars on the three year journey to the new album:
Christina: The new album is amazing. It’s like a little world in itself.
Matthew: It was three years of insanity and craziness. A song on the album ‘Black Days’ is a reference to … even though we’re old we’re susceptible to having a really good time.
Christina: Susceptible to having a really good time – you’re still at risk?
Christina: We’re still at risk and we love it.
Christina: Did you live a bit dangerously?
Matthew: When I was younger I definitely did. When I was younger I totally did. When I’m older … there’s a sadness to being wasted. Being that high, I think the comedowns, us arguing at the airport about irrational things that actually aren’t happening.
James: It’s just us coming down. [laughs]
Matthew: On this record there were a lot of moments like that. At the end, when we were actually recording it, I was drinking and I fell down the stairs and I was like, fuck this. I’m not going to drink like this anymore. And then I went back and did the whole album, my vocal stuff, sober … and I think I got an amazing result out of it.
James: I think it gave you a different perspective on what you’d been doing. You didn’t change what the songs were about but they came from a different place.
Matthew: When I was younger I loved alcohol. It was awesome. I just loved it. But as you grow older you do look back. Blacking out at 45 was another reason. [I just thought] I’m sick of this, I’m sick of this.
James: It’s part of the learning process. We’ve learned as a band. It’s also been that, I’m the same …
Matthew: James particularly likes a good time.
James: I love a good time … but you know, learning how to balance that with life. Because when you’re young and you do that, you bounce back. But when you’re older you still have the things that you need to do.
Matthew: I’m really proud of it because I let go of a lot of stuff. They’re all people and places and events, those songs, to me.
Christina: Have you ever told someone you wrote a song about them?
Matthew: No, I still say that it’s never about them. I’m not going to give them the satisfaction that they may have short-circuited me.
Christina: Which songs?
Matthew: Witches is definitely a song … I was at this party in Auckland and I had just met this person. It was an awesome night, a great night, and at one point I swear I saw this woman doing incantations, in my mind’s eye I’m thinking this is bigger that what they’re seeing here, there’s a lot of magic going down here … there are elements of dark.
Beastwars – “Witches” (2016)
Beastwars on punk rock, The Melvins & musical evolution:
Matthew: If you spend your life only going to festivals or big arena shows, you’re so missing out. Because some of the craziest magic I’ve ever seen has been in small bars, in small clubs.
James: When I was a kid I used to scour and read the back of records I liked, the Buttholes [Surfers] and the Sonic Youth and the Black Flag records and see who they thanked, who Big Black thanked, and then I’d go and look for records by them, I’d look for records on that label. And I’d find the music I wanted to hear because I wasn’t necessarily interested in what was being handed to me, I was looking for people who were challenging themselves, or just playing stuff that they felt. Time and time again you see that the people making music they want to make, that means something to them, they’re still here making music that is meaningful to them thirty or forty years later. There’s this amazing video on YouTube of the Melvins playing with Jeff Pinkus, the bass player from the Buttholes, playing this live gig. And they’re in their fifties playing old Buttholes songs and old Melvins songs and these songs have so much life in them. They’re such a joy to listen to.
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Matthew: Metal is the new jazz. It’s played by a period of people who are getting older. Jazz was very popular at one stage, and then it sort of disappeared into whatever you want to call it. Heavy metal and grunge music were very popular once and now its just there. It’s a beautiful thing.
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On the holy trilogy of records:
James: Someone said let’s do three albums and at the end of three albums we’ll eitherthis was a fluke and the third album was a real hard push and it was rubbish, or it was something else.
Matthew: We became better players and we all sort of mastered the craft of Beastwars and who we were. This is just the beginning of what we’re capable of. We recorded it with James Goldsmith, who doesn’t drink, a great way to work. We brought other people, other instruments. Matt Reeder our guitar tech in Melbourne wrote a bit of a riff for Black Days. We brought in cello, we bought in flute. I would like to do more of that, that Bad Seeds sort of thing.
Beastwars on what happens when you die:
James: Your body rots and all of the individual particles, the elements and the atoms that make up your body get broken down and separated into their component pieces and get split back around the universe, because the thing that makes you, the thing that is universal to all living things- any substance – all of the atoms of it are harmonising and oscillating in resonance together. That oscillation will ring on through … if you resonate strongly enough, that will resonate through.
Matthew: I have a different perspective.
James: You rot and you turn to dirt.
Matthew: I have dreams of Hell. On the first album, when we finished it, I walked down to Dunedin Art Gallery and there was all these paintings of the Devil and huge crowds in these auditoriums. And I thought, this is totally bizarre. Around that time I used to have dreams about a really, really old God. I can’t describe it. My dreams … I’ve seen lights and symbols … we’ll find out about death.
Christina: We will, that’s one guarantee we get in life … you don’t get out alive.
Matthew: Somebody close to me died and some crazy stuff happened.
Christina: Like they died in your arms? Overdose?
Matthew: My mother dying of cancer.
Christina: I feel really terrible now.
Matthew: You shouldn’t. They have the hospice, where they do inject you with drugs … but so much happens.
Christina: You holding her while she died, that’s pretty powerful.
Matthew: [Not just me]. Her two sons, her mother and her partner at the time. And when she did die, heaps of crazy stuff happened that allows me to think there is energy after life, but everyone will find out. I don’t know.
Christina: At least you were there with her.
Matthew: I walked out and I had one of those MD players, minidiscs? I just turned it on and it was Queens of The Stone Age with Mark Lanergan, “You Have To Live Until You Die.” I’ll never forget that.
James: Whatever happens we’re not going to be conscious, we’re not going to be aware of it. So you better do what you’ve got to do now.
Matthew: Life’s pretty short I think.
Watch the interview on YouTube
Listen via the podcast: Riffing With Christina on iTunes
YouTube interview content guide:
00:00 Why rock bars like Frankie’s Pizza matter
00:28 Sex, drugs and rock and roll – the making of the new album
03:14 Have you ever told someone you wrote a song about them?
03:47 Witches, the occult, the video
06:48 The return of the underground, the rise of polished pop & heavy metal, the new jazz
10:28 When it started to work for them
11:51 Frontmen falling off stages & making magic songs
16:15 Singer Matt Hyde’s escalating input
19:18 Giving birth, taking risks, immortality
21:05 What happens when you die
+More:
Get Beastwars’ spectacular new record “The Death Of All Things” on Bandcamp here.
Subscribe to The Void with Christina on YouTube here.
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