Interview: Edensong create a masterpiece of humanist prog on "Our Road To Dust"

 

"It’s both a recognition of the futility of trying to make something meaningful, but also the life-affirming essentiality of it." - James Byron Schoen

I am always a fan of bands pushing boldly forward and expanding or adjusting their sound, whether it be Scream adding even more herculean, ladder-like riffs to their No More Censorship classic or Gang Of Four expertly subverting pop through a post punk anti-capitalist lens on the underrated Hard. Shit, I even like Celtic Frost's Cold Lake! 

NYC's prog lifers Edensong have released their first record as a quartet, the compelling and perhaps career best Our Road To Dust. It is sure to be less controversial than some of the other stuff I just mentioned, but pushed the envelope nonetheless. 

The band took almost a decade crafting this masterpiece and third record overall. Edensong have shown beyond a doubt this time out that there are virtually zero limits to the imagination of even a small assembly of people if they apply themselves to the art. 

The warm and stunning "Black Crow" is a harmony drenched and heartfelt standout confession of love and life goals for a better life interwoven with cutting edge and slightly industrial flirting prog. It is honestly one of the most stirring musical moments I have heard on a metal adjacent album in a very long time. 

Fans of everything from Jethro Tull to Periphery to The Nice are sure to enjoy this band who are focused on making sure the art is a living, breathing sound that triumphs above adversity in the end. 

It was a pleasure to interview James, Barry and TD from the band on this moment in their lives. 

1. Hi and thank you for your time today. "of Ascents" starts things off so beautifully. The classical sounding guitar almost reminds me of Blackmore or something. Was starting the album in this sort of nostalgic sounding yet warm, sort of welcoming way a means of perhaps taking stock of where you have been mentally as people since the last one? Like, your "ascents" equating to personal growth? 

James: Thank you! That’s pretty spot-on! I think the quiet acoustic intro leading into bonkers heaviness is a pretty common trope in metal.  It can be really effective, but it’s also been done approximately 7 million times…  I wanted to sorta take that conceptual idea and stretch it a bit further.  Barry’s often complained over the years that there’s no Edensong music in a major key (I mean…it’s hard to think of much metal at all in a major key), so I really wanted to challenge myself to write something about as harmonically “major” as possible, but still somehow still set the tone for what’s to come with the rest of the record. 

I wanted to start this album with a “hymn” of sorts.  The few people familiar with our debut album may know I’m not a religious person, but I’ve always found something deeply moving in the traditional music of the Christian church and I wanted this to evoke the sound of those chorale harmonizations (but on acoustic guitars, rather than voice/organ).  I even went as far as selecting traditional religious text (Psalms of Ascents) that was in keeping with the themes of Our Road to Dust, to set the melody for the piece.  This inspired the song’s title as well. I love how Barry’s reprise of this melody later in the album is pretty much the exact opposite (sorta like the Zelda Dark World musical equivalent lol) and is just so chaotic and atonal.

2. 9 years is like Tool levels of time between albums, guys. With so much competition out there and people viewing music as this feral marketplace where you have to constantly produce art as content, what gives you guys the confidence to take your sweet ass time? Hahaha. I mean, Queensryche's Promised Land wasn't made in a day (I think recording took to yearsfor that one, lol). I get it.

James: LOL! As if we just planned these giant gaps for dramatic effect.  It’s indeed frustrating to push so hard with something, build up a band, new material, a live set, and then just go on an indefinite hiatus, only to have to start from scratch nearly a decade later. Fortunately, we didn’t have too many fans to begin with, so not too much lost in the downtime lol.  But, in all seriousness, we do have some amazing and dedicated fans who have been bearing with us and waiting patiently for new material. That feels good, to finally be able to deliver something we’re proud of.  

We were pretty exhausted by the process of making the previous album Years in the Garden of Years and the tour cycle for that - nearly half the band left in 2017 and we had to build up a new lineup and re-arrange/re-learn that material in order to fulfill our 2018 show obligationsl - so we we didn’t exactly hit the ground running with a follow up.  Add to that a global pandemic, career shifts, and the birth of 6 Edensong children and it just amounted to a crazy few years where life needed to take precedence over music for a while.  But we’ve already started discussing plans to start making the next record so I really REALLY hope we can break our 8 year curse this time!

3. How was the record release show at Main Drag Music? Did it feel good to see the faces of your supporters again and mark this chapter officially?

Barry: It was an absolute blast. Tightness was sacrificed in favor of exuberance. Former members and new members came together. I mean, we hadn't played onstage together in 7 years, so just coming together again in front of an audience was monumental. 

 Did it feel good to see the faces of your supporters again and mark this chapter officially?

It was so great to see our fans and friends and family all there in common support of the band and this new album. We've gotten to know our fans over the years through shows and social media so to see them all come together to celebrate the new album is just such a good feeling. We're lucky to have a fan base that brings such positive energy. 

4. "Book Of Complaints" is so epic and complex and yet so catchy! Not many bands can pull that balance off or even bother to try?! The new lyric video for "Book Of Complaints" was created by Wayne Joyner who has worked with Symphony X and others. Where did you get the pop up fantasy book idea for the video? I loved that part. And the falling pages. It kind of gave me the impression that we can count our days with gratitude and dreams or just bitch and moan, haha. 

TD: Haha, yeah... oh, "Book of Complaints". It's a weird one - in many ways, the strangest and most unconventional Edensong song... because it's so conventional! Thanks for the kind words - we tried to be as complex and epic as we could be for an incredibly short song that technically only has one verse! The truth is, we made some attempts to expand this song to typical prog length, but it just wouldn't work. This song wanted to be exactly this long, wanted to have exactly these lyrics, and really didn't respond well to too much tinkering. It's one of the two Edensong songs where I step forward as the lead singer and primary songwriter, and while I grew up with prog, I'm probably more influenced by grunge and even melodic indie like Belle & Sebastian. 

This song is about the psychically draining effect of people who chronically bitch and moan, whose only real creative output is the bullshit complaints they spew on internet forums, or the ways they try to belittle people. Of course, that's all of us at times, but there are people who really make being needlessly negative combativeness into an artform and persistent way of life. This song is a real 'shaking my damn head' response to the kind of mental gymnastics persistently antagonistic people must undertake in order to look at themselves in the mirror without horror. 

I feel you on that. I think negativity needs to be constructive and serve a purpose, not just make movie execs and music labels paranoid and uncertain because of dumb ass trolls. But yeah, what was the process like?

We're honored that Wayne did this video. Being part of his creative menagerie is a high water mark for us. You'd have to ask him why he chose those particular visual book-related motifs, but he absolutely nailed the visual concept, the tone and meaning rooted in this idea of a holy "book of complaints," the sacred receptacle of every possible nano-gripe, the "ledger that proves why I am right and you are wrong."

5. The intro to "Wykkr Basct" is pretty intricate and insane. How long did it take you guys to memorize all of that madness and the patterns? 

Barry: Yeah.....memorize.... we totally did that 😛

Honestly, we haven't played that one live yet so we haven't memorized it, but it's not the thorniest thing we've ever played, believe it or not. Each of us has our own method of committing this material to memory which has been honed over the last 20 years, so we tend not to worry about that. Pulling it off accurately and balancing all the transitions and dynamics? That's always the battle! 

Haha! It has a very medieval feel but also a dizzying rock element. Very cool sections in that one. The guitar playing...even listening to it made me feel arthritic, hahaha.

James: Barry wrote a lot of this tune based on a riff I wrote upon first picking up the guitarra portuguesa. I knew absolutely nothing about this amazing instrument and stumbled upon a music store that specializes in these while I was on my honeymoon in Porto almost a decade ago.  This was the first thing that came out of the instrument in my hands. Barry took that riff and developed some beautifully bizarre twists and turns that formed the basis for the first ⅔ of the song.  I then stepped back into the writing process for some of that heavy riffage at the end.

6. What were some of your favorite moments of collaborations with the guests on this album?

James: Edensong records have always featured some guest appearances.  Our debut album was almost entirely guest musicians before we had a stable lineup!  This time, we mostly tried to keep Our Road to Dust focused on the band itself and the contributions of the four musicians who comprise it, however some collaborations came up pretty naturally and spontaneously in the process of making the album.

Before we had started recording, I was in conversation with Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull) about appearing on the record, which he had seemed very open to doing.  We had a part in mind for the end of the title track and Barry was so inspired by the opportunity to work with him, that he wrote the song Wykkr Bäsct, which was initially intended as a flute duet (duel?).  Unfortunately, the timing didn’t end up working on that collaboration (by the time we were actually ready to record, Ian was very busy on the new Tull albums – one of the most regrettable casualties of our long production timeline), so we decided to go in a very different direction.  We thought violin would be a great fit for the songs, and I have long been a fan of Bent Knee and Chris Baum, so I decided to ask him to play on it.  He did such an incredible job, that it’s become very hard to imagine those songs any other way!

Similarly, I really enjoyed our collaboration with Shelby Logan Warne (of Kyros).  We had initially brought her on to mix the album, as she is a phenomenal engineer, but the approach wasn’t quite right for us and how we envisioned this album sounding, so we ended up going in a different direction for the mix.  However, her keyboard parts (on the title track) and arrangement contributions (Black Crow) remain fundamental to the sound of those songs and I’m so glad that bit of collaboration persisted. 

There were a number of guest appearances by happenstance from friends and family etc, and those were fun as well!  Some of the tracks on the album had roots in a project of TD’s called “Walk-ins Welcome”, which was initially conceived as an opportunity for spontaneous collaboration, so it’s only fitting that we carried through some of that spirit.

7. As a band from NYC, you see a lot of changes (and some constants) there every few years. There is always movement. Your album title 'Our Road To Dust'...does that represent the human arc towards destruction, natural life cycles, the sort of decay and rust lyrics mirroring that? I guess I mean, I was reading about Extinction Rebellion and the emphasis on degrowth and how we can possibly live more in harmony with the world. Do you think we are too selfish to actually enact this? It is strange to think of all our art and other stuff being sort of destined to the scrap heaps of time. I guess that is inevitable and we need to just love and feel and be our best in the moment for whatever the audience present or hopefully still yet to come? 

James: Yes, all of that, especially re: the ephemeral nature of art (and everything else!).  I also think Our Road to Dust functions on a more personal level. It’s both a recognition of the futility of trying to make something meaningful, but also the life-affirming essentiality of it. Like, I know this is something that is hard to do. I know it puts stress on my own well being at times.  It certainly puts stress on my relationships, my family, and certainly my finances. I’ve come to terms with the fact that there will never be a sensible level of return on investment to justify the effort and time and money that I put in. Yet, it is something that I deem so essential, that I keep walking that road to dust. I imagine creators the world over have experienced these same feelings. I think everyone in the band feels it to some degree. That’s why the lyrics are in first person plural and build on the concept of a traveling brotherhood. There’s an acknowledgement that we won’t be here forever, but while we are, we’ll be making some noise. 

Thank you!

James: Thanks so much!  I really enjoyed the insightful questions!

Band photoa: Kelly Robertson