Drainland | Interview

DRAINLAND

Words Andy Cunningnam
Photos Liadain O’Driscoll

Drainland have been an ugly presence skulking menacingly around the edges of the Dublin hardcore and metal scene for a number of years now.

Continuing the thread of darkness and negativity that was being nurtured under the guise of Serpents the band has really started to come more and more into their own.

So much so, in fact, that the prestigious Southern Lord saw fit to step in and re-press their debut album, ‘And So Our Troubles Began’, onto CD.

Armed with a sound that touches on many various styles while managing to brush off easy classification I though it was about time I gave chief grump, Jamie Grimes, a shout and see where these dirty bastards feel they fit in. Put on your wellies, it’s going to get messy…

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So, let’s start at the beginning and get a brief history of the band, what other bands you came from and what your motivation was to start up Drainland.

No, let’s not, I’m tired of repeating it at this stage. We’ve been around 5 or 6 years, and that’s as much of a biography as I care to give.

Fair enough. While Drainland would sonically lean more toward the hardcore end of things you guys really seem to exist in your own weird space on the periphery of both the HC and metal scenes. You have carved out a readily identifiable but tricky to pin down niche over the years so where do you see your sound sitting in the current musical landscape.

I don’t think we’re really sure ourselves anymore, but it’s really not our concern at this point, we just make the music we make. When it comes up in conversation with workmates or people who don’t spend every waking minute differentiating between subgenres, I just say we’re a metal band as that gives the general idea that it’s music that is loud and involves a lot of shouting.

You can call us a hardcore band or a metal band, we don’t really care too much at this point; we have elements of both. We certainly operate more like a hardcore band and I guess that’s our home, but musically I guess we have come to have more in common with someone like Pig Destroyer than we do Poison Idea  sonically at this point, whether we like it or not.

But even bands we loved in the hardcore scene, bands like Dystopia, Cattlepress, Noothgrush or Unruh - those were basically metal bands who were part of the DIY hardcore scene, and I guess that’s the lineage we’re part of. I keep thinking that if our band had been around in 1991, we’d  have been classed as “grindcore”, along with other bands who clearly weren’t that (and often didn’t even play particularly fast) but had no other tag that fit.

As if your music wasn’t already troubling enough to get a handle on, a more recent, and rather fruitful, addition to your sound has come in the shape of noise-meister Stu Von Geel. As I sit here and listen to the stream of your latest split with Trenches it is clearer than ever before that his addition to the band was a stroke of genius.

I can hear subtle waves of noise wash beneath the grinding violent gnarl of riffs, echoing the rather tasty artwork and some great intro/outro pieces tying everything together superbly. Had you always intended to add a noise element to the band and how do you envisage that marriage of styles developing in future?

Yes, we absolutely from day one wanted to have that element, it just took us a very long time to find the right person to do it. We were a band for about three years before Stu joined us, but he’d been coming to see us from our earliest gigs so he was extremely familiar with our sound and knew from a social point of view what kind of stuff we were into.

This was something we had been gradually introducing from the second demo on I think, but we were conscious of the fact that we wanted it to be another instrument rather than purely something for intro and outros - it had to be something we could do live, and it became apparent when we were recording ‘And So Our Troubles Began’ that we needed an additional member precisely for that purpose.

“Noise” to use a general term is important to us as an instrument for the atmosphere it can add to a piece. We can achieve things with electronics, sheets of metal, pedals, synths and samples that we can’t do with normal instruments, and we use it to heighten and add colour to certain parts of songs specifically.

I also need to stress, Stu actually writes parts for these songs, that are repeated when we play live. It’s not just some lad showing up making noise at random. Noise and industrial music had always been a big part of myself and Aonghus’ listening, as much as any hardcore band or metal band or whatever, so it was an element that was in our make up from our inception - I think that’s particularly evident in our imagery as well, but I’ll get to that later.

‘And So Our Troubles Began’ snuck out with little fanfare as a cooperative LP release through a number of small labels last year and may well have disappeared without a trace if underground goliaths Southern Lord Records hadn’t stepped in to reissue it on CD.

No mean feat for a mostly unknown bunch of ghastly, noisy bastards from Ireland to grab the attention of such a reputable label, so how did that particular collaboration happen? You must have been fairly fucking excited when you read that email!

Ouch. The initial run of 300 sold out of them very quickly, with the bulk going in the US and Europe. It was due to be repressed on vinyl in a bigger run when the SL thing came along. It wouldn’t have reached as big an audience, but it certainly wouldn’t have “disappeared without a trace”.

I think people seem to have this bizarre idea that we had no audience outside of Dublin until SL picked us up and I’m quite happy to say that wasn’t the case - we’d played in the UK and Europe a bunch of times over the years leading up to the release so while we were hardly a huge band, we did have something of an audience outside of Ireland already, definitely more so than here.

Mark at DeGraanrepubliek has pimped us ceaselessly to the Euros for the last two years, with great results. So perhaps we wouldn’t have received much recognition in the wider metal scene but we’d be doing okay regardless.

Yeah it was unexpected. We hadn’t really gone out of our way to seek out any attention from the more established music industry or labels so it wasn’t something we ever imagined. It came about because quite simply Greg got in touch after stumbling across our myspace page, I sent him a record, he loved it, and that was that.

Now I have a CD of my band with the same logo that’s on the back of records by Khanate, Winter, Repulsion, Nihilist, Noothgrush, Burning Witch, Goatsnake,  Thou, The Secret and Wolves in The Throne Room. So that’s a pretty nice feeling. A lot of people, myself among them had been sceptical of SL’s involvement in releasing hardcore bands, but I think it’s been made fairly clear recently that they know what they’re doing and it’s not just some little bandwagon hopping thing.

Greg and Aaron both have hardcore backgrounds and are genuinely huge fans of this music, and they’ve been bang on to deal with. It all makes sense when you consider the increased amount of HC bands who have incorporated the influence of some of the bands in the SL catalogue over the years. It’s come full circle.

Drainland is an unusual name for a band. It doesn’t really conjure up any particularly dark mental images or hint at what sort of style you play. Where did the name come from and what does it mean to you?

The name is from Michael Gira of Swans’ solo album. I liked the fact that it was bleak and evocative, but didn’t specifically sound like a typical metal or hardcore band’s name. It’s also a tip of the hat to a respected influence - Swans was about self annihilation through sound with no regard for the audience, which was a pretty good summary of what we had in mind.

Hardcore music often comes loaded with baggage and can come off as being highly preachy and self-righteous but Drainland don’t appear to have any particular message other than pretty much being a fist full of hatred and bile fucked squarely into the face of, well, everyone. What is it about the human race that gets on your goat so much and is there a hidden philosophy in your lyrics that is lost on me?

Interesting. I’m not really sure how much I agree with us being “hate filled” really, I think our standpoint towards humanity in general is one of indifference more so than hatred, regardless of the aggressive nature of the music. There’s a line in “Alpha Rat” that goes “I can’t accurately express the extent of how little of a fuck I could give about your life”.

That summarises my attitude to a lot of people - I don’t hate them, I’m just really not interested in them. I’d rather embrace and protect those I care about than waste my time on people I have no common ground with these days (though I guess there is a degree of fun to be had pointing out the flaws and foibles of the human race - not least my own sometimes). So I guess we don’t really have a “pro” or “anti” stance. We’re just reporting back on the odd little ends of human behaviour.

Hardcore tends to concern itself with the external, and with the idea of voicing what’s wrong with the world. We’re more concerned with the internal monologue, the uncomfortable little voices in your head that make your own life difficult. “And So..” was all about that.

In terms of philosophy no, there’s not a general idea we’re trying to put in people’s minds as much as we are trying to convey an emotion or create a scenario in each song that compliments the flow and tone of the music. There only “philosophy” we might have is in our approach to how we actually write and perform the music, as opposed to any kind of message or moral being put across via lyrics.

You seem to really have your own voice in a scene that seems to be loaded with the same old rehashed nonsense. Where do you draw your lyrical influences from either within or outside of the musical sphere?

It’s kind of changed from record to record - the first one as I say was all pretty personal, the second was an attempt at writing fiction that was inspired partially by reading a lot of true crime (esp. on the likes of Natascha Kampusch, Jaycee Dugard, and Sabine Dardenne and their experiences - I ended up watching a couple of hours of youtube footage of news footage and interviews about these too which was… well… I don’t recommend putting yourself through that much stuff to anyone).

I felt I’d exposed a little bit too much of my personal shit on that first record and wanted to camouflage things a little for the split LP. I ended up writing these songs to a story, with a vague plot about someone who’s abducted and what happens to them. It was a device to explore the same old themes of paranoia, fear, and desperation, but it just meant not doing it through my own voice if you get me.

It’s three songs but I titled it “The Abduction Diaries” on the record as a means of making it clear it was a running narrative. People seem to think it’s actually one piece of music though, so that kinda backfired on us. There were fictional influences too - “We Disappear” by Scott Heim was a big one, the film “Martyrs” was another.

Other songs for, say, split 7″s, have been about whatever the mood took me in at the time. There are songs about religious cults, banshees, and other random shit on the forthcoming split 7″s. The next album will have a more specific running theme, if not a consistent narrative like “The Abduction Diaries”. I couldn’t really tell you what that will be yet though.

General influences are writers and films moreso than bands: the authors Dennis Cooper, Raymond Carver, David Peace and Hubert Selby Junior, filmmakers like David Lynch and Gaspar Noe. Lyricists like William Bennett (Whitehouse - the last 3 or 4 records at least), Michael Gira, Lydia Lunch, maybe even Tom Waits.

Most metal and hardcore lyrics bore me to fuck, so I try and avoid them. I always like Tomas Lindberg’s lyrics in At The Gates, JR Hayes is always worth a read, and in terms of hardcore Andrew Nolan has been embarassingly on the mark for the last ten years in various bands, so those all get props.

I’m generalising, but it seems like in both metal and hardcore a lot of times, people stick to some unwritten rule book about how to write genre-specific lyrics without putting their own thoughts, feelings or ideas in there.

It’s fine most of the time - I don’t want the next Repugnant LP to be full of lyrics about the tedium of commuting, nor would I want to read Converge’s take on the Western Esoteric Tradition, but sometimes the sheer uniformity of a bands’ lyrical approach saps the music of spirit. Lyrics are vastly underrated and lyricists should make more of an effort. I’m not great at writing, but I try to invest some degree of conviction in both the writing and the delivery.

You have a fantastic eye for complimentary artwork. You often (though not exclusively) go for simple, powerful images/photographs that transmit an underlying tension, darkness and weirdness that really suits your music. Is art important to you beyond being merely a decorative adornment and what visual artists inspire you?

It’s of huge importance to us, increasingly so going forward. I like bands who create an aesthetic whole in their music, lyrics and artwork, they should all be entwined in my book, so we definitely consider artwork a big part of our general output.

We’re still finding a balance as we’ve been doing lots of split recently so we don’t always get our own way visually. We’ve been lucky with the splits - we’ve suggested people to the other bands who they’ve agreed with us on - take the cover of the split with Cellgraft for example: we’d wanted to use Emmet Connell’s photo of the pig head for a while, and would have used it anyway, but it worked well with the split overall.

My personal preference is for photography, yeah, and covers without text on them, but we’ve used line drawings before and so forth. We generally try and sort out our own flyer artwork as well though - I had a folder full of possible images for covers, shirts or flyers, so the bulk of those have been done by us. Being able to present a bunch of stuff like that to people you want to do art for you is a pretty good way of getting them to understand what you’re looking for I think.

As I said earlier, this is where the industrial/noise/power electronics influence is most apparent I think - the starkness and power in a single black and white photograph with minimal text can often be more frightening than some shitty photo-shopped picture of a dog fucking a beheaded hooker or whatever it is goregrind bands are using these days.

Coldness, simplicity and directness always wins in my book. Visually, I’m a dunce, but the photographer Miron Zownir is a favourite of mine, as is the collage artist Fredox. And again, I’m a big David Lynch fan. We all are pretty much.

The hardcore/ punk scene in Ireland seems to be going through a particularly vibrant phase at the moment with quality noise coming from all corners of the country. It is often mused that hard times create great art so do you see any links between the absolute fucking economic mire the country is presently in and the torrents of vile music being pumped out or is that assessment a bit too obvious? What other factors do you think may be contributing to this phenomenon?

I really don’t know. Perhaps deep down bands are working harder so that they’re good enough to tour and use that as an escape from the island! Maybe that’s it? Musically, some of the best heavy music of the last 20 years was being made by bands associated with the hardcore punk scene - look only at bands like Isis, Tragedy, Converge, or even more recently Trap Them, bands the hardcore scene nurtured long before the metalheads heard them.

Consequently the punks have been exploring heavier sounds. Similarly, it seems like over the last few years through metal people playing in crust bands like Wolfpack, Skitsystem, Genocide SS and Disfear, more metal people locally have been opening their ears to that sound, so it was really only a matter of time before it kind of blew up a little.

I’m generalising here, but I think there’s an element of truth: Punks are geared towards being feral, raw and in your face. They aren’t looking to get signed, or get in magazines, they just want to get up, plug in and destroy.

There’s a directness and no frills approach, a more honest approach to heavy music coming from this scene without the baggage of people trying to “make it” which I think people like. These bands are writing music to please themselves first rather than with an audience in mind, and I think that generally produces the best results.

I recently made the assertion on the forum that the punk scene is ‘out-metalling’ the metal scene in Ireland. There seems to be an exciting and highly fruitful cross pollination of metal and HC punk happening at the moment but the ‘punks’ seem to be leading the charge, at least in my eyes. Is it a trend or is it genuine? Why now? Am I making more out of it than is necessary?

I think other people are making more out of it than you are, Andy. Outside of a couple of whiners on the Metalireland message board. It’s not something I think people care about.

I witnessed you guys pretty much blow Neurosis off the stage in The Button Factory not so long ago. Your sound that night was nothing short of fucking colossal with the noise element heightening the harshness levels to near ear-drum-demolishing point.

If we were to separate the different aspects of the band into three groups, namely writing, recording and playing live, how do they differ from each other, what do you get from each and what aspect of playing do you find most satisfying?

We most certainly did not blow Neurosis off stage. We were pretty shocked by the response we received that night though, at how overwhelmingly positive it was. Having said that, we don’t usually feel the level of pressure to perform that we did opening for an audience as picky as Neurosis’, though.

That’s 600 people waiting for you to fuck up right there, and there were as many thought we fucking sucked as there were those who dug it. But the former were quieter than the latter.

Personally, I don’t enjoy playing live a lot of the time. We’re fussy about when, where and who we’ll play with, which makes it easier, but personally I’m hugely uncomfortable performing in front of other people and have always had a huge lack of self confidence in that arena.

My band mates are more comfortable with it. If the sound is good then that makes a huge difference, and it can be enjoyable when it all clicks and the sound has the required physicality to it, but often times I find it awkward and uncomfortable. Also we generally try and (literally) throw ourselves into, which is exhausting.

Having said that, I think we’re going to make more of an effort to make our gigs more of an event from here on, which will keep it interesting - and certainly the fact we have a full set of new material is making it a little more enjoyable after 2 years of playing the “And So…” material. Writing is what I enjoy most, followed closely by recording. Both can be frustrating but when they come to fruition it’s the most rewarding part of being in this band for me.

Split releases seem to be an important part of the Drainland modus operandi and you have recently unleashed two newies, both on vinyl. Tell us about them and why you choose to release your stuff on vinyl. Are you just being difficult?

We just all really like vinyl, that’s pretty much it. I suppose we kind of are being difficult too, in that most bands won’t give preference to a specific format for fear it isolates their audience but at this point, if everything we do is going to end up hijacked and posted on a blog anyway then why shouldn’t we put it out on whatever format we want? We’re going to lose money anyway. Let’s make something we’d buy ourselves. Artwork wise, vinyl definitely looks nicer because of the size of an LP cover verses a CD cover I guess.

As for the releases, I’ve talked about the split LP already. The split 7″ with Cellgraft had been brewing for a while and was recorded in the same session. We’re recording two songs for a split with Crows from Dublin, and one for a split with Enabler from the US in the next fortnight, will be doing a split 7″ with Column of Heaven next year, and that’ll be us done with splits for a while I imagine. A lot of the reason we’ve done so many splits this year is to resuscitate our writing process after a year or so of collective writer’s block.

You released an absolutely disgusting and riveting demo tape this year under the name Prison Chapel. Side A is a short sharp burst of distorted filth that captivated me instantly. Side B is even more fucked up… Give us the lowdown.

I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about here. At all.

Oops, I take it all back… So, what does the future hold for Drainland?

Aside from the splits I mention, a new full length is the main focus right now. We’re working on writing it now, we’re about two songs in and will be doing that for the next six months before we record, with a hope to have it out in summer 2012. I can’t say too much other than it will push things forward and introduce a couple of new elements musically and lyrically, and it will be a solid 45 minutes worth this time rather than 20 or so.

I know we want to make a really frightening, overwhelming record this time but we don’t want to do that at the expense of writing decent songs, so we’ll wait and see what happens. It’ll be a challenge if nothing else.