For those unfamiliar with your band, please give a brief one liner about your sound and a quick FFO (For fans of…).
We’re a 3-piece death/doom metal band and our style is a mix of slow, heavy and melodic in equal measure. For fans of October tide, Daylight dies, heavier Katatonia, Swallow The Sun, Shape of Despair and Rapture.
What was the writing process like for your album?
When I began the writing process in summer of 2010 for the debut EP, Hollowpath, I was the only member of the band. The idea for playing doom came to me 8 or 9 years before and I had actually demoed 3 entire songs that still have not seen the light of day. Hollowpath actually came together over the course of one single weekend, at least the initial 70 percent, minus vocals and later changing small details. I actually wrote all the lyrics and did the guide vocal tracks on the entire EP before I had any intentions of getting a vocalist to participate but I was never satisfied with my own voice so I put much thought into finding someone to do the vocals, to no avail at first. These 4 songs mostly just sat on my hard drive for about 3 years since I had a dire need for a vocalist who could growl very deep, as I cannot do such demonic feats. I was a member of the Andy Sneap forum at the time, so one day I decided to put a collaboration ad up in the ‘buy/sell/trade/collab’ part of the forum and within a day or so, Caleb Bergen answered it and sent me a demo of his vocals and I was highly impressed with it so I sent him the 4 tracks. He did one song as a test and I was blown away so then immediately sent him the rest and what you hear is the result of that.
What do you think sets your band apart from the rest? What does Sleepwalkers bring to the table that no one else does?
A focus on melody. Many of the other death doom bands have that as well but I tend to add more lead guitars and counterpoint harmonies to my music. For example, many bands will have one lead guitar in the center of the mix doing the various lead work. I have two guitars doing some sort of harmony in this case. This of course would present a problem live since it would take 3 or 4 guitar players to recreate the sounds on the EP. Other than that, one of the main things I want Sleepwalkers to be is HEAVY. It’s heavy metal at it’s core so it should be heavy. Chugs, palm-muted low parts etc.
What sort of things inspire you to create music?
My life, other music, art, written stories and films. I’ve had tragedy happen to me in my life, with my father being killed in an automobile accident, not having life insurance and my mother losing her home because of it. I use making music as both an escape from hard reality and as a way to channel that tragedy into something creative. When I hear a cool spooky piano phrase from Hanz Zimmer in the film The Ring, I take that feeling and turn it into something remotely similar on my guitar or a synth patch with similar reverb. Things like that.
How do you feel about the current state of the music industry, in particular streaming services, “illegal” downloads and such?
It’s still here! I used to download albums a very long time ago, when Napster was the new thing but over the years as I became a gigging musician I started to understand that these people often work very hard for pennies and if art and music is going to stay with us, we need to support the making of such things. As for the music industry, I feel that because of illegal downloading that it’s made things harder and harder for serious musicians to make a living from their music which is sad. It seems to me that the mainstream is sucking the life out of art and music in general, taking over and having such a loud, obnoxious voice that the underground, the ‘little guy’ as it were has a rough time getting their due. i have no delusions of ever being a rock star or anything of the sort but it would be great to be respected within our small (yet growing) scene.
If you could share the stage with any other musician (dead or alive), who would it be?
Chuck Schuldiner, simply because I idolize the guy. He was doing it the right way before it was cool haha.
Which albums are in your top 10 right now?
I’ll do 5 because i really don’t do best of lists and this is in no particular order:
Shape of Despair – Angels of Distress
Archspire – Relentless Mutation
Believer’s latest ‘album’ which is a set of 5 2-song EPs
Exodus – Let There Be Blood
The Haunted – Strength in Numbers
Fast forward 5 years from now, what’s Sleepwalkers doing?
Working on album 2 or 3. I’m notoriously slow going, being the only writing member at this time. Our first album is still being worked on although it’s 95% completely written at this point. If I could find another guitar player that was like-minded i think things would probably go somewhat faster as far as the writing phase goes.
Craziest thing you’ve ever done together with the band?
Unfortunately nothing at this point but who knows what the future holds. We’re an international project with our 3 members all living in different countries, Daniel being the farthest away in Spain. It’s exceedingly difficult to get together but if i had my way we’d all live near one another and play gigs and tours regularly.
Thanks for your time, anything else you’d like to add?
Thank you for this opportunity to say something about our process and history. We are very excited to release our official debut album and although I can’t say exactly when it will be released, we’re definitely eyeing this year at some point. We’re perfectionists and revising things often is sort of our way of going about creating music. You can purchase our first EP Hollowpath from www.transcendingrecords.com or bandcamp in digital form and we also have a free 7-song covers EP that we released in December of 2017 to tide fans over until our original material is ready to release. Cheers!
