- Divine Chaos
- Divine Chaos are a UK metal band with a
singularly focused sound and vision; inspired by classic thrash acts, yet aware of the
necessity to create unique, modern songs that will engage a live audience and stand the
test of time. Following a ferocious appearance at York metal clubnight ‘Raise the
Horns’, I spoke with guitarist and song-writer Chris O’Toole about the
band’s current situation, their inspirations and philosophies, and their not
insignificant ambitions for the future.
- Hierophant Nox: Hi
Chris, how are you doing?
Chris: I’m good thanks, I’ve just been listening to Entombed, whilst working out, ha.
Hierophant Nox: As you do! What have Divine Chaos been up to since we saw you in York back in November? I believe you are in the process of creating a full-length release; how is work going with this and what can your listeners expect?
Chris: Since York, well, we’ve had a few shows here and there, last week we played Bournemouth supporting Sylosis, this week we’re in Reading at the Face Bar playing Buk and Skits ‘Fcuk Christmas Show’, just trying to keep ourselves busy and on the live scene as much as we can, and of course working on material for our next release.
So far we have about ten complete songs that we are happy with. What we are trying to achieve with our next recording is a sound that isn’t currently available in the metal scene, we’ve always kind of just used the elements of metal we like best and arranged those ideas into songs. A typical DC tune can have parts inspired by like 5 different sub genres of metal, but they always seem to flow. I guess specifically so far it’s a thrash album, but with some heavier elements as well. We’ve also upped the technicality of the songs, not that we’ve striving to be a ‘tech’ band or anything but just so we’re offering more than just riff after riff type arrangements, for example there’s some progressive parts going on with bar timings, which we didn’t do that much on the last recording. We’ve put a lot into the new songs so it’s pretty hard to sum what its gonna be like, hell, there’s even some black metal stuff going on, its just a big mess! But an organised one, that sounds killer.
Hierophant Nox: The last recording which you mentioned there was 2007’s EP, entitled “Every Empire Shall Fall”; how were the responses from the fans and the press in regards to that release?
Chris: The response to that EP has been a lot better than we predicted, and word has spread to a lot of people earning us a good following and respect in the underground. Press has been the same, reviews have thankfully all been massively positive.
Hierophant Nox: You’ve described the EP as “no mere demo”, which is fair enough really, given that it was produced by Scott Atkins and boasts an art job by Tim Fox. How did you go about creating such a high-quality debut? What convinced you it was worth doing in this manner?
Chris: An old member of DC recorded with Scott in his other band, and we were looking to do a recording as we’d just won a fair bit of money in a band competition. I mean, there’s a lot of guys out there who produce metal, but Scott’s production just sounded so professional to us that we didn’t really even consider anyone else. We were after an art guy and Tim Fox was introduced to us, we thought his stuff on the Sikth album was cool so we ran with him and it turned out way better than we expected. I suppose like every other band who takes themselves and their music seriously, we wanted to produce the best product we could, also there’s stupid amounts of competition out there so without a solid release you’re dead in the water.
Hierophant Nox: What does “Every Empire Shall Fall” represent for you creatively; is it your earliest material, or a selection of songs you’ve put together?
Chris: It’s our first official release. We recorded stuff before but it never lived up to a releasable standard. “In Return We Kill” and “The Infernal End” were older tracks, but “No Mans Land” and “Path to War” were written very close to the time of recording and represent the direction we were looking to go in.
Hierophant Nox: The band has been together for a couple of years now; what was the initial inspiration to form? Can you introduce the band members to our readers?
Chris: Well, when we formed back in 2005 the metal scene was way different, classic bands like Maiden, Metallica and stuff had made a pretty big comeback and metal was on people’s lips again, but all the bands we really liked were all still pretty underground, so initially me and bassist Tom Baker went out to create the type of music that we wanted to hear and which was metal to us. We recruited various dudes along the way. The only other original member is our vocalist Benny. Gilmore is the second guitarist we’ve had, and James Stuart is about the millionth drummer
Chris: Benny came up with it, we had a bunch of songs but no name, we all thought it sounded cool it was pretty much as simple as that, I suppose there is some connection with the lyrical content though but it wasn’t intentional
Hierophant Nox: How does song writing work with the band? Does one person create a whole song or do you all collaborate with individual ideas?
Chris: Me and Tom deal with 99% of the song writing at the moment. I focus mostly on the music and him on the lyrics. In terms of how it normally happens, I’ll come up with an arrangement and pass it to him to write lyrics over, I’ll then give a recording to James without drums for him to come up with his parts, and once we’ve all learned the tune the next step is to come together in rehearsals to have a massive argument about it.
Hierophant Nox: Haha, I like it. Has the writing process been easy when creating tracks for your full-length, or have you run into difficulties? Have you set yourselves a limit in time or will it be ready when it’s ready?
Chris: The writing process is rarely easy, each song gets worked on till it’s as good as we think we can make it. We’re pretty adamant that each song reaches the quality of music that we would buy ourselves, and if that means kicking our asses till it happens then that’s how it goes down. I guess some songs come together easier than others but we don’t rush things.
With the next record we really don’t want to release it independently and we are pushing to get some label interest in the coming months, so I suppose if we are lucky enough to get a deal then that’s when we’d record. ‘Til then we’ll keep writing until we have a load of tracks to choose from. Don’t get me wrong, if its been ages and we don’t get any interest I’m sure we’ll just raise the cash and put it out.
Hierophant Nox: Your lyrics explore the themes of warfare, religion, boundaries and power; what is it about these subjects that you find particularly fertile? Is the writing and performance of lyrics an act of political engagement for you?
Chris: I will let Baker answer that for you.
Baker: These themes are pretty much just one theme, that of humanity's failures. A very bleak subject matter, but that is where the fertility lies, it's very well suited to our particular style of metal. The lyrics you can create about this stuff are epic, angry, violent but never triumphant or introspective, and this describes how we want our music to sound. As regard to a political engagement, not in respect to putting ideas forward or fighting anyone’s corner but definitely in regard to attacking ideas we feel are flawed, and hopefully they will be a bit thought-provoking to those who read them.
Hierophant Nox: Divine Chaos’s sound is a clever amalgam of many different styles, with the main theme identified by yourselves as being an updating of the spirit of thrash in its heyday. What do you mean by this? And how do you view the so-called ‘thrash revival’ of the past couple of years. Is this mainly a label-manufactured phenomenon, or are there bands who ARE reviving thrash?
Chris: Well back in the late 80s early 90s there was a collection of ridiculously good bands that created a scene and some of the most influential metal albums that will ever be; DC take from them inspiration to create and develop their blueprints into something that isn’t ignorant of what has happened to metal since the time those albums were recorded. The thing is that there is currently a flux of bands re-creating and imitating these old school bands to the point where they want their production to sound shit cause Testament’s production was shit back in the day. I feel these bands have missed the point, I mean, Testament wanted the best production they could get and that was the best they could get at the time. That along with copying albums like “Forbidden Evil” riff for riff and dressing like Metallica did in 83 to me just makes these bands another form of scene kids.
Hierophant Nox: You’ve hit upon several of my bugbears, so now I don’t feel the need to rant! Away from thrash, clearly there’s a death metal vein to what you do as well, and even a black metal edge sometimes in Ben’s vocal style. Which were the bands that caused you to be interested in metal in the first place? And who would you say are your greatest influences?
Chris: Erm, well initially there wasn’t a lot of black and death influence, Ben’s voice naturally just comes out that way. I like to think of him as a slightly deeper version of Chuck Shuldiner. James is well into death metal and black metal, I suppose that’s a lot to do with the drumming, but the bands that I would say have been our main inspiration are Death, Metallica, Testament, Symphony X, Fear Factory, Nevermore, Opeth but we listen to loads of stuff. Black and death bands we all listen to though would be Decapitated, Necrophagist, Dimmu Borgir and Emperor
Hierophant Nox: As hinted at before, Divine Chaos seem to be heavily into promotion through live assault- do you see performance as the central part of a band’s existence? In what way do you create a positive live experience for those who come to watch you?
Chris: Metal’s one of those genres that is about playing live, the aggression of the music and the over-the-top dynamic elements of it compliment live performance, so it is going to be a big part of any metal bands existence. Playing gigs is also one of the only ways for unsigned bands who can’t afford mainstream media coverage to let people know they exist. The type of show that we try to put on for people is the best delivery of the music that we can achieve, you know, things may speed up a bit, we love playing live and try to convey that to whoever is watching. We know it’s the best way to achieve long term fans so we put as much into it as we can.
Chris: The best shows are always in the areas where you haven’t played before and you get a wicked reaction. Quite a few places spring to mind- Banbury, and Brighton have had some great shows, but yeah, inevitably there have been some shitters. I’d say the worst was playing this all-dayer, we were on at 10am, there were 3 people there who we all knew, the backline was the most heinous piece of shit ever and the resulting sound was white noise. You learn from these shows though, we do play at every opportunity but there are certain guidelines we’ve come to follow and we are selective to a degree, I mean we don’t play for free anymore and if we’re not touring we tend to only play weekend shows.
Hierophant Nox: The way you went about creating your EP and your belief in live performance as the best promotion is at odds with the Myspace generation’s reliance on the internet. Do you see the net as a useful tool at all or is it just saddening that some ‘bands’ live out their whole existence there?
Chris: Myspace for us is a useful tool for getting shows and having a place for people to check us out and see when we’re playing, but that’s about it. It’s made things really fucking easy for bands though and it’s resulted in an oversaturated market. It seems pretty pointless to me; we’ve got something like 11,000 friends but what does that even mean? We certainly haven’t sold 11,000 CDs. I’m appreciative of all the people who’ve added us cause they dig the tunes but you know a massive proportion of it is just people trying to get their friend/play counts up.
Hierophant Nox: Most of it is me. I seem to partly inhabit Myspace these days. But anyway…these activities are garnering you quite a fanbase, but as mentioned the ultimate goal must be a label deal?
Chris: Well yeah, that is the plan, like I say, we really want to get some label interest before doing another recording so we’re gonna be pitching to as wide a range of labels as possible. We are aware that in the last year or so labels have been signing bands left right and centre and they are all getting pretty full, so it’s gonna be harder and harder to get a deal as time goes on. For any label that’s interested we’d have to look at the bands that they’ve dealt with and what they’ve done for them. I suppose the main thing we’d want out of a deal is the opportunity to tour as much as possible.
Hierophant Nox: How do you feel about the UK metal scene at this point in time? Is it positive being active within it, or is there a lot of cynicism?
Chris: It’s a mixed bag for me, I’ve been listening to metal since the late 90s and I’ve seen a lot of change, where metal is now in the UK certainly doesn’t enthuse me. The turning point was when bands like Killswitch Engage came along, which really turned things on its head. All of a sudden you had these amazing heavy riffs that were undoubtedly metal but which became bastardised by melodic vocals singing about emotions and love. The whole concept to me goes against what metal is about, it displays elements of weakness and vulnerability in the music but it seems to be very present in the scene today, I could go on all day about what pisses me off within the scene but it’s a waste of time I try just to ignore the bullshit and focus on the metal that matters. Saying that there are some UK bands that are pure class and flying the flag.
Hierophant Nox: Kapow! Actually, I agree. But you don’t hear it said very often.
What are your plans for 2009? Beyond that, have you set yourselves any particular goals that you wish to achieve?
Chris: Other than what I’ve already mentioned we are gonna start demoing up some of the new tracks, we are hoping to record one track with Josh Middleton from Sylosis, he gets wicked results and anyone looking to record should definitely check him out.
Hierophant Nox: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us; if you’ve any further messages for the world, please go ahead:
Chris: Buy our EP so I can get my cupboard space back!
