EMBRYONIC DEVOURMENT (Eng.)

1- Hello, thanks for answering to our questions. What are you guys currently up to?

Lately we’ve just been writing and practicing a lot. We also just released our new album «Reptilian Agenda» on Deepsend Records and are really excited about that. So far, all of the reviews we’ve gotten have been nothing less than amazing. We’re dojng a U.S. tour in April/May 2014 and will be playing all the new material from «Reptilian Agenda» along with a few classics from our older albums as well. So the main thing is to just practice, practice, practice so that we can play the new material to perfection. There are some big elements that transfer to the listener when we play live and so we want to maximize that experience as much as possible. We also have a new singer to handle that department for our shows and tours. His name is Hunter Peterson and he’s by far a better vocalist than i am in my opinion. This allows for me to focus solely on my bass playing and give the bass my 100%. The end product sounds amazing when we play live. He’s young, energetic, and can keep a crowd entertained from start to finish. He will be making his official debut on our next release… that’s the plan anyways. We also have some other shows before April as well – just go towww.embryonicdevourment.com for full listings…

2- First off, could you make some history of the band?

Me (Austin Soence) and Luke met in high school in a small mountain town called Laytonville in California. I think we met smoking cigarettes with a group of friends while ditching school or something like that. I found out he played drums and asked him if we wanted to jam. He had heard Morbid Angel before but was more into playing Punk rock type of stuff back then. So i made up some death styled styled punk riffs and we made a band called Puke. We did that for a bout a year or so and then i moved to Los Angeles. I quickly found out that Los Angeles sucks, at least in my opinion, so i moved back to Laytonville after a year or so. I met back up with luke and also met another guy named Lauren Pike. He was interested in playing bass in a band so we formed a band called Ye Olde Skabbard. It was a pirate themed band that had a more old school sound similar to early DEATH. After a few months i decided i would leave Ye Olde Skabbard to pursue my passion of drumming. I formed a band along with a guy named Adam Weber called MUMMIFICATION. We released an album called «Runes Of Blood» on Brutalized Records and received some awesome attention. After a couple years or so i left Mummification. Not only was i losing my lust to play drums, but our singer Aaron Johnson was having troubles with the law and to put it shortly, he was on a destructive path. I decided to rejoin Lauren and Luke playing music again. By this time Lauren and Luke had decided to take a more brutal grinding approach and decided to change the name from Ye Olde Skabbard to Embryonic Devourment. They welcomed me back to the band and i’ve stayed true to it for 8 years now, plus the time i was in Ye Olde Skabbard, which is basically the same band with a name change. In fact, Embryonic Devourment continued to play a few songs from the Ye Old Skabbard set, including «Demons in The Sea» and «Mutiny» which appeared on the first Embryonic D. release «Beheaded By Volition». So ya, a couple years later we added Adam Weber (Mummification) to the E.D. lineup and the rest is history haha.

3- How could you describe your sound?

I would say its definitely on the technical side of Death Metal, but we try to incorporate our own originality, and are careful to not write stuff that resembles another bands riff or likeness. Of course there are bands we can be compared to … I’ve heard people say we sound a lot like Malignancy , Immolation, and Gorguts. We derive influence from those bands for sure, but we aren’t restricted to just those formulas. What we’ll do is write a section and then think about how we can fuck it up and have the idea be reborn in a sense. Another thing is that we mix each others ideas in one song to avoid a slant or too much attention to any feeling or style – basically we like to mix it up while maintaining the grind core and death metal sound we are known for. Its fast, intense, melodic, guttural, and soulful. We’ll keep you on your toes.

4- What are the band’s main musical influences?

There are soooo many to even say but here’s a few bands we listen to when were out on the road. Spawn Of Possession, Thinking Plague, Blotted Science, Sleep Terror, Ghost , King Diamond , Cephalic Carnage , Al Dimeola , The Beatles , Verbal Abuse , DRI , Possessed, The Faceless , Opeth , and Vale Of Pnath. Also my dad Ronny Lee Spence is a huge influence on me. He is also a musician and played in a metal band called Anomie about 10 years ago. The band featured Ivan Deprume (white Zombie) on drums and Duff Mckagen (Guns n Roses) on bass, So ya you can imagine the type of music world i grew up in. There wasn’t much to rebel against as a kid growing up in that environment so i naturally gravitated to Death Metal. Adam, our guitarist, said he knew he wanted to play metal when he heard the song «Barracuda» by Heart. So ya our influences are very eclectic

5- How is the feedback for your new album being?

We’ve been getting some awesome solid reviews. They are by far the best reviews we’ve gotten for any of our albums. One of the main things that helped

throw this album over the top is that we were able to work with such killer recording professionals. We had Damian Talmadge of Riff Gallery studios do the initial recording and engineering. Damian is a power violence punk rock guru. Having someone like him put his spin on things definitely helped us break away from any sort of death metal standards or influence during the recording process. After that we took the album to Colin Davis (VILE) to get his hands on Mixing, mastering, and adding additional guitars. He even has a guest appearance guitar solo on one of the tracks. Colin is an amazing force to have when it comes to the world of Mixing and Mastering. He deserves a star in the recording hall of fame… just brilliant! A lot of the feedback and response to our new album is because Colin made it sound so good. Sure we wrote the songs and played them, but really the delivery of the music has to sound good, and he understood the frequency that we needed to deliver to our audience. The response has been amazing

6- And are your personally satisfied with the final outcome?

Yes i feel like we’ve reached a new level. Our fingers are moving more elegantly across the fretboard and our drummer plays with relative ease when he gets into his zone. It seems like more people are hearing us too. Maybe there’s something on this album that finally clicked with people as a whole. Its like you write all these groupings of songs for various albums and you never know if it will have an impact or not. We got lucky with this set of songs. I don;t know what we were thinking when we wrote them but it just flowed out more naturally than any other album. We weren’t trying to be brutal – we just played from the heart. That as an outcome is enough for me… just attaining a new level of musicianship and comrade for this band.

7- How could you describe this opus in just 3 words?

Groove , Chaos, Soul

8- How has the production process for your new release been?

Just really organic and natural i guess. We all got together and set all our ideas on the table so to speak. All kinds of different riff idea’s were suggested and practically used every one of them .Then we made a beat map so that we could play the songs to it as a band, preventing us from wavering in and out of tempo. Once we drilled that for a few months we went in the studio and began tracking drums and bass. Luke actually played to just the bass with a click tempo in the studio and the guitars and vox were added after. All our songwriting and arrangement was done by the whole band at band practice. Its not like one guy is sitting at home writing and arranging this stuff. Its done by the band as a whole – A band of brothers.

9- And how do you use to work on the songwriting?

The collective approach to writing has always worked the best for us. I know there are bands that have one sole member writing most of the stuff and that may work for them and it sounds rad, but we feel that having a band is about compromise and brotherhood. Learning to change a riff here or there to please another band member and make everyone happy as a whole – thats what its all about, give and take, As a result our music is a mash up of misaligned puzzle pieces that make for some sort of twisted picture. Its a mash up of four people’s different ideals – a monster that has become attuned properly for this release.

10 – Finally, what are you near-future plans?

Someday, we would like to travel to Indonesia for some tour dates. We always get a lot of online response from fans in Indonesia and we owe them some killer shows. I’d also like to get more in tune with the Reptilian god Sobek. All Hail Sobek! May we one day be able to Shapeshift our dna to Reptilian Form and live as the ancient ones did

11- That’s all from our side, thanks again for taking your time to answer our questions. If you now want to add some final words; feel free to do it.

The main thing is, go and get our newest album «Reptilian Agenda». I can assure you that the new album exceeds and crushes all previous efforts and a new sound and band has arisen. We are at the top of our game right now and changed up the dynamics whilst maintaining the brutality. With each purchase Sobek becomes more potent and powerful. All Hail Sobek ! – www.embryonicdevourment.com

http://deepsendrecords.bandcamp.com/album/reptilian-agenda