Genre(s): Progressive/Technical Death Metal
Location: Ohio
Location: Ohio
PSAB: Why did you choose "Intervoid" for your band name?
Intervoid: Besides being the primary definition of effective crack growth occurring by plastic collapse, i.e. purely geometric softening of the intervoid ligaments without incorporating material separation? Band names are hard to develop, especially when you're trying to not take "verb the noun" approach. How many bands do you know these days that are just a pluralized word?
Not to take away from their talents, but I know almost immediately when I hear a post-hardcore band just by hearing their name. I can anticipate their sound at this point if the band name includes a season, a girls name, an obscure road, or a series of words with no spaces. In short, we just like how it sounds and looks, though at times having to assure people that the name is not actually "in-her-void" can be tiresome. Or "Dinnervoid". We get that one a lot too.
PSAB: You include several different types of genres in your music? Why did you choose to play so many different genres in one band?
Intervoid: Our band is made up of four people. It's hard enough to find four people who get along, let alone have identical mindsets about musical opinions. We don't have that. We all have different ideas and styles we want to employ, so after some time, you'll notice stark differences between songs, even inside of songs. Part of why I feel that Intervoid is truly unique in today's scene is because we embrace these quirky and sometimes conflicting sounds, it's a true amalgamate of four peoples brains gnashing together consecutively at a single point and having it never sound the same. Sometimes we give birth to a monstrous wall of sound, and other times, we're nurturing a gentle guitar serenade over some subtle strings, genuine picnic music. It's got an unpredictability that I think modern metal needs.
A bad sign for a band is when they have 6 people and they all decide to play the exact same thing. In my opinion, I feel that's a great platform for stagnation. I see this a lot with deathcore bands today. A group of kids who write songs solely to include a breakdown. It took six people to do that, not to mention it meant that every single one of them has the same idea. So, if we bust that down into percentages, only 16% of the kids have an original idea. The other 84% had the same idea/don't want to change the formula. The only real value you can draw from those figures is that it's exceptionally common. And you can't have quantity AND quality in the music industry.
There's only one Cynic, one Nile, one Carcass. You can name 30 deathcore bands right now with damn near indistinguishable from one another. How much of that can you tolerate before you just give up on listening? Currently Intervoid has one "breakdown" to speak of, and even then I'm nervous about it because of the stigma surrounding deathcore today, which, honestly, is probably rightfully earned at this point has changed the way specific musical progressions are viewed today. Now obviously we have nothing against the genre itself but rather the abundance of the playing style. I still enjoy a good deathcore band but a good deathcore band is getting harder and harder to find as time goes on.
PSAB: You're currently unsigned, if you could be signed to any record label, which label would that be and why?
Intervoid: That's a tough one to really pinpoint because being signed these days isn't the be-all and end-all for a band. Sometimes you hear about how labels operate more like greedy slave drivers than a truly valuable asset to the artist. While I won't explicitly say who or what labels I hear this about, I'll assure you, if you know metal and follow it to any degree, you know of them.
Not to imply I wouldn't love to be signed, I just would prefer to have a LOT of control over the details. I like marketing our band, I like doing our artwork, I like creating an image to accompany the music. I try to take different approaches for all of these things. I feel like if the band has the most control, it's the most accurate representation. Which is where the purity of the art comes into play. I think part of why a lot of bands sound so similar is because labels have some guidelines they want the artist to follow, and if there's only 20-30 really sizeable labels, you're limiting the scope of your music significantly, especially since the larger labels have the reach and influence over substantially larger areas. It's easy to hear an artist on Nuclear Blast or Roadrunner, but for a small town label in Fargo, their music will probably go unnoticed. What hope do you have to run in lockstep with an established label with 25 years of domination? Not much. This is where the discrepancy occurs. Truly unique bands who may not be the ideal artist for a huge label with the capacity to showcase them will be much more inclined to go with smaller labels. While useful for their area, the small labels are forever doomed to be limited in their range.
I guess with that being said, being signed is a double edged sword. There are great positives to it, and some unfortunate negatives and these both have to be weighed meticulously. If I had to answer, I would probably go with one of the labels that aren't mega sized, but not miniature. Perhaps Candlelight or Relapse. Maybe even Century. It's hard to tell, I'd have to see what they can offer us before really settling on it.
Intervoid: That depends, is it 2007 still? If so, then it's doing spectacularly. If it's not, then it isn't as great. I think Ohio has hit a plateau and we're having a little bit of a problem un-sticking ourselves from it and getting back into the real dirty grit and anger for which us Ohioans have a bit of a reputation. By and large, our state is a dump. We're neck deep in overbearing politics and corruption, the weather is like being seated underneath a 220 mile wide diarrhea spewing asshole. The people are shallow and malevolent. Ohio is under a perpetual shit fog, and you hardly ever find anyone who has moved INTO the state. And when you ask about peoples plans for their future, the first thing they say is "I want to move OUT of Ohio."
With our state being so foul, where have all the truly angry bands gone? This kind of odium is a nursery for the development of metal band. Did they actually move out of Ohio to start playing bluegrass or rockabilly? I worry that they have. All we have left is a bunch of angst pop punk kids who perpetually complain about relationships. I am confident that we can bring it back.
Part of the underground scene is that for it to work, it always has to be on the brink of dying off. Part of what keeps people so into it is that it's not an over saturated thing. It's not blown out of proportion. Egos haven't come into play yet. It's just a bunch of pissed off kids taking their parents shitty instruments and hauling off to a garage, a house party, or a local dive bar, hooking up their jenkem-ass instruments and making a goddamned ruckus for 45 minutes to the chagrin of the bartenders, the owners, and the unfortunate patrons who did not anticipate, on their post-work drinking binge, to hear "The Shit Filled Cunt Experience". There's a mystifying charm to that kind of expression. Untainted by the politics and business, it's still a fresh and painful exposed nerve ending that they pluck at like an obsessed idiot.
"The scene" is always going to exist, and it will always thrive so long as people keep becoming a part of it. Time will tell if Ohio has a chance of a true resurgence.
PSAB: What one band plays the most influence on your music?
Intervoid: I think a more accurate question is "From what bands do you take NO influence?"
We listen to everything. Asking any member of the band will yield highly schizophrenic and nonsensical answers. Personally, I can have days where I listen to nothing but classical music/film scores (Two Steps From Hell), others EDM/Breakbeat/DNB (Venetian Snares, Pendulum, Current Value, Black Sun Empire). Sometimes it's more straightforward rock (Clutch, Steel Panther). Needless to say a lot of metal music (Devin Townsend, Strapping Young Lad, Behemoth, Hate Eternal, Carcass, Gojira, Fear Factory, Meshuggah, etc).
Though I think ultimately we take inspiration from life, from our experiences. We all live very different and separate lives, we each have unique perspectives to add to the music through their respective instruments, I feel that we all do a superb job saying what we want to say.
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