By Andrew Bansal
Chicago-based doom metal band Indian have been in existence for more than a decade now, bringing their punishing brand of extreme music to ears worldwide. The band just released their fifth full-length album ‘From All Purity’ via Relapse Records on January 21, an album that comes across as more dynamic and cohesive than the last couple of Indian albums, and has been garnering high praise from fans and critics alike. On February 18, Metal Assault spoke to guitarist/vocalist Will Lindsay to discuss the making of this album, the Chicago scene, the band’s live sound, gear setup and more. Read the conversation below and check out a music video for ‘Rhetoric Of No’, a tune off of the new album.
Will, it’s good to have you on Metal Assault. Your new album ‘From All Purity’ came out last month, and I believe it’s more powerful in the way that it’s more refined but at the same time it’s harsher as well. Would you agree with that?
I’d say that’s a fair assessment. Most of the last record ‘Guiltless’ was written when I lived on the west coast, so we were writing it in little spurts whenever I could find time to travel out here. But during the making of this new record I was living in Chicago the whole time, so it has more of a sound of Indian as a real band as opposed to guys that are just trying to write music together.
That’s interesting. So it was a much smoother writing process for you this time, then.
Yeah, I moved to Chicago right before we recorded ‘Guiltless’ but we had pretty much written all of it by that point. Since then we’ve spent time together as a band. We don’t live together but of course living in the same city and just being around each other, being a band.
You worked with Sanford Parker who engineered and co-produced this album. He’s such a well-known figure not only in the Chicago scene but in metal in general. What’s it like working with him?
He’s such a good friend of ours. He’s been recording the band since the first album. Sanford is one of my buddies and I don’t really think of him as Sanford Parker the engineer that’s known by everybody or anything like that. I like working with him, I’ve recorded several records with him and I’m sure I’ll do several more with him. He’s great at what he does!
You talked about your move to Chicago. There’s such a large number of great bands coming out of that city, and I’m a huge fan of the scene there even though I’ve never been there. Has the atmosphere in Chicago influenced your music?
It’s hard to say! I mean, the surroundings as far as the local music scene goes has minimum to no impact on what we’re doing. There’s really cool stuff going on in town, but I think everybody in Chicago is just trying to do their own thing. It might not necessarily be the most original music but they’re not necessarily taking that much musical influence from their peers. That’s the case at least amongst the people I know.
I’ve never seen you guys live, so in terms of your live sound as compared to that of the studio albums, what is the difference? Do you think the albums captures the live sound or is it more the other way round?
I think that this record caught some of the live sound, definitely more so than ‘Guiltless’. The way we recorded, there was a lot more bleed between the amps. Dylan and I were standing right in front of our amps right next to each other. The drums were isolated but the bass and guitars were all in one room just roaring at full volume. Being able to get that natural feedback and just being there hearing the amps blaring at you, listening through headphones and feeling it and whatnot, I think it helped a lot. Indian is a live band, and I’m not sure about the other guys but I don’t really like recording.
Well, I’m glad you’re being honest about that! I can only imagine how much less fun recording must be as compared to playing live in front of people.
Yeah! I mean, I like having records done and whatnot. There’s occasional times when I’ve enjoyed recording, but it’s just so goddamn tedious.
You’re mainly categorized by people who seek sub-genre labels as a blackened doom band. In your opinion, do you think there’s more to your music than that?
Yeah, I wouldn’t say we are ‘blackened’. I know it gets thrown around our name quite a bit but I’m not entirety sure what it’s supposed to mean! I don’t know, people ask us what kind of band we are and we just tell them we’re a metal band. I’m not really interested in playing the sub-genre game.
That’s how it should be. So, the album has been out for a few weeks now. What’s the plan in terms of touring?
Yeah, we’ve got a few things on the books right now. We’re flying down to SXSW to play the Pitchfork showcase in March, then we come home and play a local show a few days after that, and then two days after the local show we’re flying over to Europe for three-and-a-half weeks. And then when we get back, we’re still kind of planning on doing a short run through the North-East, probably in June. We don’t quite have the specifics worked out yet, but we’ll swing it through the major cities in the North-East and then come back through Canada, may be play Montreal or Toronto or something before heading home.
Coming back to the album, in terms of your gear did you make any changes as compared to before?
I’m using different pedals from when we recorded the last album. I guess one big difference on this record was, I used my JCM 800 for most of it. My rig as it stands right now, I’m running an early 80s Canadian JCM 800 through Mesa Boogie cabinets right now but I’m still not sure what I’m going to do. I have a couple of Emperors but I’m not sure if I’ll keep using them or not. I might, specially that they’re now out of business. For pedals I use a couple of Black Arts Toneworks pedals, a Boss reverb and an Ibanez delay. My guitar is a Monson Doomsayer. Brent Monson is a custom guitar builder from Washington and he’s built a few guitars over the years, really really great stuff. We fired our noise guy before this record, so I’m going to be doing the noise live as well. My live noise setup is going to be a modular synthesizer controlled by foot pedals, and then probably interspersed with some stuff from the computer.
That’s awesome, man. I have just one more question for you. With your style of music, it’s pretty much an acquired taste if I could put it that way. Is that something you guys are satisfied with or would you want your audience and reach to expand in the future?
Well, there’s no stated plan or mission for this band. I’m not really interested in trying to appeal to any one particular person or group or scene, or anything like that. I’m not trying to be disingenuous about it, I know that what we’re doing is in general a pretty limited-appeal kind of thing and I’m perfectly comfortable with that. But at the same time, I’d really just prefer people who’re into it to seek it out. I don’t give a fuck if that person’s into black metal or death metal or pop music. So I really just want people to approach it for what it is and take it for what it is.
Visit Indian on the web:
IndianDoom.com
facebook.com/IndianDoom
youtube.com/IndianDoom
IndianDoom.BandCamp.com