| Interview with Ciaran By: Herlaka Rose |
| Compared to most extreme bands, Vex has captured a sound of their own. The Texas based band has gained an audience throughout their years of existence and is currently working on releasing their new album Thanatopsis, in early August. |
| Herlaka Rose: Vex has done shows with national touring acts such as Moonspell, Katatonia, Daylight Dies, Deicide, Immolation, Hate Eternal, Krisiun, Goatwhore, Vehemence to name a few. What highlights can you mention from this experience? |
| Ciaran: There are many that come to mind, the most significant of which were Ross from Immolation dedicating a song to us and more recently, receiving compliments from the members of Katatonia, which was of immense significance to me because they have been one of my favorite bands for over a decade. Their performance that night was so mesmerizing I forgot ever having been onstage. |
| Herlaka Rose: In early 2003, Shadows Fall guitarist Matt Bachand personally selected the track "Eyes of Wrath" to appear on the annual compilation released by his label Lifeless Records; how has this affected the band in emotion and exposure? |
| Ciaran: It honestly didn't really affect us in any way that I can recall. This was around 5 years ago before Shadows Fall had virtually exploded; Matt had taken an interest in our music and had considered releasing our "Sphereith" MCD on his label but it fell through. I remember being very impressed with his dedication and work ethic despite whatever irrelevant opinions I have about his musical output. |
| Herlaka Rose: Vex has a new album coming out this summer July 2008 called Thanatopsis. What's the titles significance? |
| Ciaran: My brother/drummer Eoghan came up with the title around 2003; it's from a poem by William Cullen Bryant that seemed to summarize where we were going with the overall concept at the time. We finished recording that album around in early 2004 but were dissatisfied with the results so we decided to scrap it and try it again with newer material. However, with the conceptual nature of the songs we had added, we decided to keep the original title because it began to achieve an entirely different kind of significance. Around the time that I started writing the lyrics, I had been reading a lot of psycho-analysis focusing on the process of 'thanatos' as the destruction of both the self and the other as a means of resolving internalized trauma, and I began to see a connection between that and the overall concept of the album. A lot of the lyrics I write are an attempt to seize that purely desperate stage of human experience that comes before rationalization, where one is simply raging at the universe - where questions are raised and internal contradictions are realized without any attempt at resolution. |
| Herlaka Rose: How did you get in contact with the others as musicians? |
| Ciaran: We've been very fortunate in the sense that a majority of our membership has been pulled directly from our greater social circle. We’ve always been surrounded by talented and driven individuals who would never hesitate to fill-in if one of us couldn’t make it to a show for whatever reason. Luckily this also held true after our relocation to Central Texas. |
| Herlaka Rose: Vex has had a revolving door of band members since 1998 when you started; what remaining original members are still in Vex to date? |
| Ciaran: Bill, our current bass player and I originally founded the band in August 1998 but he retreated to Montana from '99 to '02, during which period his vacancy was filled by Jason Hord from the local thrash band Celestrium, so technically I am the only original member. The original lineup was an entirely different band with more of mainstream approach which was fun for us at the time, but ultimately not at all what we wanted. The only reason we didn't change the name when the original guitarist, vocalist, and drummer left was because we had already built somewhat of a local fanbase at that point and there were no other decent names that came to mind. So to me the fully realized version of Vex was born in 2001 with the addition of Ted Evans, Harvey Barquera, and my brother Eoghan. |
| Herlaka Rose: What festivals has Vex played in if any. What festivals would you like to be booked on? |
| Ciaran: We played the Milwaukee Metalfest in 2004, as well as various other festivals in McAllen, Harlingen, San Angelo, Austin, Houston, Laredo, San Antonio, Dallas and one in Los Angeles in the summer of 2006. We also had a decent shot at the Heathen Crusade festival in Minneapolis this year but it has been postponed until sometime next year I believe. As to what festivals we'd like to get booked on, there are a select few in this country really, since we haven't really had the kind of experiences that would justify the incursion of travel expenses. If everything goes well with our recording schedule this year we may look into some UK festivals next summer. |
| Herlaka Rose: Your new album "Thanatopsis" is released on which label? Can you give more info about your label. |
| Ciaran: The album will be released on August 1 on a small upstart label called Aethena Records run by some good friends of ours in Austin. We had originally wanted to work with an outside label but we were less than satisfied with the kind of responses we were getting, to say the least. With the direction that the industry is going in we just felt it would make more sense to play an active role in the release, distribution and promotion of our album. The label roster also includes my black metal side project Nosferion and the local psychedelic death metal group Ramgoat. |
| Herlaka Rose: Vex had a one year cooling off period. What side projects came out of this if any. |
| Ciaran: Most of our recent period of hibernation was spent writing new music, working on our album and for me personally, trying to devote more time to the completion of my Master's Degree. However, I did also use the time off to resurrect the primitive black metal project Nosferion that I had started with an old friend back in 2002. Our recently departed guitarist Harvey also used the time off to form a satanic death/thrash project called Death Rites 666 that has also generated a substantial amount of interest in the short time they have been around. I honestly believe that they will soon become one of the biggest names in the state and everyone reading this should give them a listen if they haven't done so already. |
| Herlaka Rose: How do you feel about Black Metal in connection to the Metal Mainstream? Is it a good thing that it is in the mainstream as it is now? |
| Ciaran: I am personally not too concerned with it; I think the generic and orthodox nature of most black metal is a far greater problem. The success of bands like Dimmu Borgir and Behemoth is amusing to watch but it's of relatively little importance to me since I don't really care for either of them. However popular black metal does or doesn’t get, it will still continue to stylistically and aesthetically move forward in the underground with the help of innovators like Deathspell Omega, Woods of Ypres, Wolves in the Throne Room, Leviathan, Antaeus, Inquisition, etc. |
| Herlaka Rose: There is still continued controversy over Varg Vikernes and his sentence. Do you feel as though he is as influential in the Black Metal world nowadays? |
| Ciaran: I can't really say for sure because I don't really follow that kind of thing too much anymore, but if I had to venture a guess I would say that he doesn't have near as much influence as he did a decade ago. The metal side of his recorded output will always be held in high regard by myself and many others, but beyond that I think his comical racism, adolescent Nietzschean daydreaming and general raving lunacy have reduced his support down to that small circle of fanatics who find some kind of redeeming value in his ideology. |
| Herlaka Rose: What did you want to do differently on this new album than your last recordings? |
| Ciaran: They were many things we tried to do differently, the most important of which was the use of click tracks to keep everything properly synchronized, but we also wanted to take the time to make sure that our performances were as perfect as we could make them without sacrificing the raw energy of the music. Although our relative lack of recorded output might suggest otherwise, we have actually accumulated a good degree of studio experience throughout the years, and that combined with the patience, experience, and technical skill of our engineer Tim Bartlett made the recording of "Thanatopsis" a very pleasant and creatively engaging experience. |
| Herlaka Rose: What is the driving force behind Vex? its been 10 years..how long to you plan to take this? |
| Ciaran: That’s a great question – it’s difficult for me to pin down what the driving force actually is, beyond that artistic kind of necessity that always burns at my core. When I made the decision to start graduate school I had thought that my musical pursuits would slowly phase themselves out of my life, but this is most certainly not the case, for better or for worse, because I always have music playing in my head and I simply can’t survive without trying to write, record, and/or perform it. It’s really that simple. In the last 2 or 3 years I would honestly say that a big motivating factor is the sense of shame and regret I feel regarding our lack of progress and the fact that I think we have finally arrived at something original within our form. |
| Herlaka Rose: Is it hard to hold on to your roots in the new face of subgenres now a days? |
| Ciaran: Absolutely not. If nothing else, it actually gets easier for me to hold on to our roots as I gain a greater understanding of what our style actually is, particularly how it stands in contrast to the plurality of subgenres around right now. I've been particularly bad about this in the past, with too many songs that amount to little more than an incoherent journey through my CD collection, but I felt that was a necessary process to arrive at the dynamic extreme metal style that I can now claim as our own. |
| Herlaka Rose: What have your last few shows been like, fan wise, party wise etc. |
| Ciaran: The last show was phenomenal for us actually; I personally selected the other 3 bands, Death Rites 666, Enemy of Mankind, and Ethereal Architect, all of which delivered solid and powerful performances. We tend to have a very cynical approach about everything that we do but we were all very pleased with the show, in terms of the turnout, the sound, and the crowd response. The last show before that was a secret gig in San Angelo that wasn't that great for us in terms of the performance but the response was overwhelming. We never made any announcement concerning our addition to the bill but the club was filled to capacity by the time we started and the response was incredible. It was a great source of encouragement for us because we hadn't even so much as played together in about a year. |
| Herlaka Rose: What would you say is your fav song to perform live? |
| Ciaran: Good question - I enjoy different aspects of all of them but I would have to choose "The Past is Frozen" because the dynamics are very challenging to pull off live and the lyrics are of immense personal significance to me. |
| Herlaka Rose: Do you usually work with the music before the lyrics? |
| Ciaran: It really depends on the nature of the song. I generally tend to write a good deal of lyrics for no purpose other than my own catharsis, so when I'm putting a song together I'll mentally sort through all of them to see if anything fits the overall vibe I’m getting. However, more often than not a completed song will evoke a set of images so potent that I will use them as the basis for a new set of lyrics. |
| Herlaka Rose: When you write for a new album, do you get material left from the last album or demo; or do you just start completely fresh? |
| Ciaran: Traditionally, we have had songs that bleed over from past recordings because we wanted to try to perform and record them better and/or to reflect an arrangement that had been slightly refined over time. However, with that being said, after the release of "Thanatopsis" we are going to write and record an entirely new set of songs for the first time. The next album is tentatively titled "The Circular Ruins" and will be comprised of a set of personal narratives inspired by the Jorge Luis Borges short story of the same name. |
| Herlaka Rose: Are you involved with the business side of things as well or is your manager the one who strictly deals with that? |
| Ciaran: I have been almost exclusively involved in the business side of the band since our inception, although I will occasionally receive help with merchandise and online promotion from my brother/drummer Eoghan and our bass player Bill. It would certainly be nice to have a manager take care of this side of things but it would ridiculous for me to assume that we are anywhere near well-known enough to even worry about it. |
| Herlaka Rose: How has myspace changed the way you did things before when there was no myspace? |
| Ciaran: I would say it has helped tremendously, mainly because of the networking possibilities, but also because it allows web-language illiterates such as myself the chance to have unprecedented access to our fanbase, and also because it allows us to literally reach into the fanbases of more popular artists. |
| Herlaka Rose: What advice would you give to new comer bands? |
| Ciaran: Spend as much time in the garage/living room as possible, keep writing until you find something original that can move your respective genre forward to some extent, record what you have, and promote it. Don't even worry about playing live until there appears to be sufficient demand for it. I wish I could’ve gave myself this advice 5 years ago. |
