The doomsters who travel under the moniker Moss recently unleashed a second full-length CD on mankind since their birth in 2001. Their debut 'Cthonic Rites' from 2005 was a great success in the ultra slow doom scene. It was produced by Jos Oborn, the man behind Electric Wizard and it showed a band that can travel deep into your soul as sounds as spacey as they do. Three years of silence however followed, not counting a split EP with Monarch an the re-release from their ‘Tormented’ demo, with this 'Sub Templum' as a result. Guitarist Olly Pearson explains why it took the band this long to put out this extremely doom motherfucker.
‘Sub Templum’, your new record, is breaking the silence. Why did it take so long to release a new record? What have you guys been doing in the meantime? Is Moss a project maybe and not a real band? Will we have to wait again so long for new material from you guys? I guess we were just busy with our own lives, we all went back to work and Dom relocated to Canada, so it made writing and rehearsals a bit hard for a while. I wouldn't call Moss a "project", doing so would really cheapen our history and what we've done with this band. We are all involved with doing our own music, but not one of these bands is as important to us as Moss. We might start on something new next year, although I'm not sure it'll be the next album. I'd much rather bide our time between releases than rushing into anything. If you look at our discography we've totally slowed up since the earlier days with releases.
How were reactions to the new full length up till now? I don't know, I haven't read too many reviews and I don't really care to be honest. Of course there are probably a lot of bad reviews already, "too slow, too boring, one dimensional".I don't need to read these to know what they say, we're well aware! But it's what happens to a niche band that gets a bit more exposure, you get opened to more people who wouldn't be into this kind of thing. And the more mainstream metal press can really be a spiteful, unattentive bunch.
What is the biggest difference between ‘Sub Templum’ and you older work? It's more complete. Actually feels like a proper album this time. We did spend a lot of months rehearsing this. Not a single second is improvised, which may be hard to believe with such long tracks, but we really suffered for this record. Our last album 'Cthonic Rites' feels like a demo compared to this, just in that we didn't spend much time on it at all. If 'Cthonic Rites' was a culmination of everything we'd done up to that point, then 'Sub Templum' feels like the next phase.
How would you describe your style to someone who is not known with the doom genre or metal at all? I get this question from people at work sometimes, and I just say it's heavy and doesn't move much. Even the casual metal listener can't really imagine this kind of music. You say it's slow and they think you mean ballads or some shit.
So what exactly do you guys mean with ‘macrocosmic caveman crust doom’? Hah, that's just a bit of our sense of humour. There's plenty of bands with fucking ridiculous descriptions like 'anti-cosmic metal of death' for instance. It's just us taking the piss.
Are you satisfied with the end result of the recordings and the artwork? Are you happy with the new label (Aurora Borealis)? Why not release them on Rise Above Records? Aha, there seems to be some confusion here. The new album is on Rise Above. Aurora Borealis is the label we were on previously. Yeah, I've got no complaints, I think everyone in the band is happy with the album. The artwork is fucking amazing, best we've had yet. Roisin Dunne did the work from descriptions and ideas I suggested, but she totally does her own thing. And it turned out great. Suits the music perfectly.
Is artwork (like the metal frame…) important to a band like Moss? Yeah of course, our artwork and music go hand in hand, it’s always been so important to us to have the visuals to match the sound. It's all about the full package. I love listening to an album whilst staring at the sleeve, and I hope people do the same with our records. A lot of thought and conceptualisation is always put into our art, and I feel that with the massive, detailed pieces that we have used then it always adds more weight and conviction to our music.
I guess your main lyrical influence is the world of Lovecraft (seeing Cthulhu on your logo). What attracts you to him/his stories? Can you give examples of stories that influenced Moss, or is it the general feel that these stories call upon that interest you? What other lyrical influences are there for Moss? Are lyrics important to the band/ you? Our main lyrical influence is the occult, ranging from fiction to the real world. It' something that has always interested me since a young age, the unexplained, the weird. I got into Lovecraft when I was 13, around the time I started smoking weed and listening to doom metal. It kind of all came together for me there. There are no exact stories that have influenced us lyrically, it's always been the otherworldly feel and atmospheres, and I think it comes across more in the music and sounds. I like to write my own stories for the lyrics, usually inspired by the many reference books in my collection. I can cite 'The Secret Teachings of All Ages' by Manly P. Hall and works by Alistair Crowley as a particular influence on our more recent music, lyrically and also for our artwork and design which I'm heavily involved in.
What’s your most favourite story of his? And what story represents Moss the most? Mine is ‘The Tomb’, and I can actually relate Moss to the gnawing on my feet, but then musically. My favourite Lovecraft story is probably 'The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath', or 'The Strange High House In The Mist’. I think what Lovecraft would best represent us is proably the stuff he didn't show, the things he only hinted at and suggested. I think of 'The Statement of Randolph Carter' for instance, when Harley Warren descends down into that crypt, and it's the last we know of him... what happened down there? That, to us, is Moss through and through.
Something quite amazing (at least I think so…) is that you also release –still- on cassettes. I am a big fan of tapes, I actually bought the Sindrome and Thergothon demo’s not so long ago… Why do you release on tape? What’s your story behind it? You like the medium? What is the last tape you bought yourself? And what about the other formats like vinyl or CD? We're just big fans of tapes really! We grew up with tapes. The first albums I got were on tape and I still have a tape collection. I don't buy as many as I used to, seems only black metal comes out on tape these days, so it's kind of our contribution to keeping the format alive. Last tape I got was a Judas Priest one I think.
Most of your releases are very limited. I like the handcrafted metal box around the ‘Doomis Palustris’. Who came with that idea? Is it something you will do more often? Is being limited on purpose? Don’t you want to be a multi selling band? Or is the type of music you guys play too underground. Things like that HAVE to be limited, it's just too costly for whomever to manufacture a substantial amount of metal boxes. We're a band that will never sell millions of copies, but that is not the goal of this band anyway.
Can you tell us more about the Monarch split you guys did last March. Is doing a 7”different than f.i. the last full length? What do you think of Monarch? Is Monarch a band you guys like? If you could choose without limitation, which band would be the ideal split LP or EP partner? I've been friends with Monarch for a while, toured with them a couple of times. They're a good band. Their music is similar to ours, but I don't know how they do these long tours because I would get so fucking bored. Playing this kind of music isn't something I'd want to do every night on the road! For that 7" we did a Discharge song and they did a Turbonegro song, it was just a fun release that we recorded in a day, so the sound is quite raw. Ideal band for Moss to do a split with would be Antonius Rex playing 'Neque Semper Arcum Tendit Rex' material instead of their shitty 90's techno-rock they do now. Check out 'Neque Semper', it's like Moss in 1974!
You had to cancel a 7” planned with The Plague Of Gentleman. Not to go into details why, but have you used these songs further/released them? Yeah, that song came out on the split with Monarch.
Moss live on stage: is this a possibility? Do you like playing live (I hardly found dates of you playing live)? Any change to see you in the neighbourhood soon? We don't do gigs often. Once a year perhaps. And no, we don't really enjoy playing live. Thinking about it, our kind of music, in a pub, with people standing around drinking beer and chatting? It doesn't work, a lot of our atmosphere is compromised so much by a "social" environment. That said, we have done some great gigs, they've just always been not too satisfying for us. I fucking hate pubs or clubs, and when we turn up at one to do a gig the general feeling is always of "I want to fucking go home, why the fuck did we agree to this?" hahaha... I've said this nearly every interview, we'll play live more if people offered us shows in places like caves, forests, and churches. Places that are going to suit our sound and aesthetics down to a T. There's not a shortage of these locations, and it can be done. Someone just needs to fucking sort it out.
Is there a question I forgot to ask? No, that's fine. Cheers!!
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