With the Bay Area showing no sign of letting up on the onslaught of fuzz and scuzz, sea-monster conquerors GLACIERS are preparing to release their new album Mirrored Through the Ancients July 30 with a release show this Friday, July 12 at Bottom of the Hill. Following up 2009's And the Sea Won the Battle, the quartet takes their maritime myth voyages into the grounded riddles of earth and the ancients on the featured album cut “Veil of the Phoenix”.
The four warriors reach the land of scorched earth after a long spell at sea that rivals the epics of Conrad's The Secret Sharer and Melville's Moby Dick. Met with the new ordeals of dragons and veiled phoenix birds, Wig brings forth both hell and sky with his bass, Chuck Pettry and Matt Youdall use all the amplified electric guitar ammunition they can muster while D. Remsing's drumming plunges all chords forward ahead to slay the new beasts in their path. And once you think “Veil” has come to an exhausting conclusion at the 2 minute mark lull; the quick gasp for air propels you back to health and back into the fray as the perilous fight intensifies in the song's second half of decisive action in the form of an epic battle jam.
We had the opportunity to talk briefly with GLACIERS about monster jam sessions and their upcoming new album.
How do you all keep that doom and drone energy burning and churning on cuts like “Veil of the Phoenix”?
As a band, we try to push our musical boundaries and comfort zones to expand our sound. It's easy to just go with what you know. But creatively, it's not a very inspiring approach and tends to stifle the creative process in the end. With “Veil of the Phoenix”, we set out to do something a little different and ended up with exactly that. It's different than all our other songs but it still sounds like us. The challenge helped us grow as musicians as well.
The new album Mirrored Through the Ancients has been in the works for sometime, what are some of the inner creative workings of Glaciers that you can share on creating a sound loud enough to knock down the constructs of rock?
Our writing process is definitely a slow one but it seems to work for us. Most of the time it begins with a guitar riff that we try jamming for a while, then improv from there. It ends up becoming a mess a lot of the time. But sometimes either the planets are aligned or we have the perfect amount of beer in our systems. Whatever the case, we end up writing something really great. Some of our best songs came together this way. A key ingredient is good chemistry within the band. We all work very well together.
For our new album, we worked on close to 100 different song ideas over the course of three years. A lot of different approaches helped us evolve and mature as a band. The end result is a much heavier sound than before.
GLACIERS' album release show is this Friday, July 12 at San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill with their new LP Mirrored Through the Ancients available July 30 on their imprint, Sound of Glaciers.
