By Aniruddh ‘Andrew’ Bansal
Hailing from Karachi, Pakistan, doom metal band Dusk have been around for nearly two decades, easily one of the oldest South-East Asian bands in the genre, and this year they teamed up with fellow doom veterans Dying Embrace from Bangalore, India for a split album called ‘Through Corridors Of Dead Centuries’ which was released recently via Indian label Cyclopean Eye, featuring five crushing tracks each from Dusk and Dying Embrace. Last night, I had a Skype conversation with the ever-articulate Dusk frontman Babar Sheikh to discuss the making of this split, the Motörhead cover, doom as a means of liberation, his favorite doom bands and future plans. Read the conversation below.
It’s good to talk to you again. The last time we spoke it was almost two years ago and at that time we were talking about the split album that you were putting together with Dying Embrace, ‘Through Corridors Of Dead Centuries’, and now it’s been released. It was in the making for a while, wasn’t it?
Yeah, it is tough as it is for us South Asian bands. India is still opening up to the international scene a little more, but being in Pakistan I’ve always sort of felt a little tucked away in the corner because visas are a problem, commuting is a problem. Being a Pakistani metal band that has been around for 18 years now, our options are really limited. Even if you want to play live you’ve got to end up in Europe yourself and then try to work with promoters to get gigs and this and that. Likewise same goes for releases. I think ten years it was much easier to find record labels who would release your stuff. With this whole mp3 culture and the death of the tangible recording formats specially CD, I think it has just taken its toll for people who are working out of their garage. So, I really had to weigh my options two years ago. Three or four decisions came about at the same time. One was, having Sandesh Shenoy, who’s also the owner of the Cyclopean Eye record label, manage us. We’re not really a live act that much, so when I say ‘manage us’ it sort of means provide direction to us and help us go through whatever we were going through at that time. That was a time when I wanted to come back to the Dusk trademark style of death/doom metal. Sandesh was very helpful, and then I think because of his encouragement, I went out and recorded the material for ‘Through Corridors …’. And then we had the option of actually releasing it with several other bands, but I told Sandesh that it would be monumental if Dying Embrace comes out and does this with us. At that time, Dying Embrace were releasing something through France’ Legion Of Death label. So they were doing that and then were going to go straight into the studio. So it took us a while but I told Sandesh to speak to the guys. They said they would love to do it but not this time. I still wouldn’t give up and told Sandesh to play them a very initial draft of ‘Shadow Poet’, which is the second song on our side of the split. This was one of the first songs I wrote and recorded with my drummer Tremor. He made them listen to the track, and thankfully, the Dying Embrace guys agreed to do the split. I’m not blowing my horn saying the track was anything phenomenal, but I think the track definitely had some kind of honesty of coming back, from a long lost band. We always look up to Dying Embrace. They’re a few years senior to us and I really respect what they’re doing. It’s really not easy sustaining for such a long time in places like India and Pakistan. Anyone reading this interview out in the West wouldn’t even have an idea how fucking difficult it is to actually nail it back home here. So, it just sort of went on from there, Dying Embrace took their own time to record the EP and we didn’t want to rush anything. Their frontman Vikram Bhat is a very dear brother, and he always lovingly puts it to me and says, “Babar, don’t rush it. We’re doom bands. Let it be slow and steady.” (Laughs) It is a great analogy. But yeah, that’s how it pretty much came about, Andrew.
I think it’s a fantastic combination because Dying Embrace and Dusk are two of Asia’s oldest doom bands. The coming together of the two forces is special in itself.
Yeah, we’ve both survived in the scene for 17-18 years. Dying Embrace went into periods of hiatus and we also went through different phases and all that stuff, but to be honest, by this time I think you really realize what a band wants, and Dying Embrace and Dusk are pretty much similar in terms of the goals we want to achieve. We want to have fun with what we do, because metal is not our bread and butter but it is definitely our passion. When it’s your bread and butter it’s really tough to not go by the book. The advantage of bands like Dusk and Dying Embrace is we don’t go by the book. We go by our heart and what really feels right. If we feel right to mix some black metal into the riffs, we’ll do that. We won’t have our record label telling us what to do and there’s no pressure of finishing songs by a deadline. Those pressures compromise a lot of things, I believe.
And your part of this split is your first original material in four years since the 2010 ‘Eastern Assault’ split. That’s a fairly long time, and musically I don’t think this new material is going to be compared to anything in the past. This is what represents Dusk at this moment, isn’t it?
Exactly, you are very right. I think the songwriting process was much more stronger for me than the previous stuff I had written. ‘Eastern Assault’ was the outcome of me wanting to experiment, and the bad thing about me is, I don’t believe in side projects much (laughs). If I want to experiment with a style I just bring that style into Dusk and do it in that. I don’t believe in five side projects and things like that. May be that is not the best approach towards things but it’s my approach anyway. But you’re right, this is the first time we went into a thorough songwriting process in a long time. Looking at the material, it was a more holistic approach towards what an EP should be and sound like, going into the production facility of our choice and working with the engineer who I wanted to work with. So yeah, I had a lot of good choices and I’m glad I made those choices. Technically I spent a lot of time in the studio, something that definitely wasn’t happening with ‘Eastern Assault’. With that one I was just expressing my anger against all this polished new metal, not nu metal but the newer sounding metal. I just don’t like it and I hate how much processed it sounds. That was my angst because Dusk with our previous recordings like ‘Jahilia’ had pretty much become very polished. If you listen to it, it sounds so accurate and so much more mechanical. I didn’t like that. So for ‘Eastern Assault’ we worked with a punk producer, this guy who just records punk and crust bands and some crossover thrash. His approach towards recording with the levels, EQs and everything was totally over the top. Some people might not even call it a professional recording and we recorded in an almost garage-like setting. It was a studio but it was really beat up, really punk. I wanted to get that rawness out in Dusk. On ‘Eastern Assault’ it definitely sounded like that. But since the anger had come out, I wasn’t so angry in production anymore. We tried to keep the unpolished edge with the new recordings as well and I didn’t use any processors with the guitars or anything like that, but I think I spent a lot more time in the studio and if I may say so, it shows in some parts for sure.
Right, and aside from the original tracks you also did a Motörhead cover of the song ‘Bomber’ with Shyaithan (Ariffeen) from Impiety. They’re a very well-known underground band, touring globally including the States and all over. It must be great to have that name associated with your album. What’s your relationship with him been like?
Me and Ariffeen have known each other for a while, man. I’ve been associated with the Singaporean metal scene for a while as I’ve always been friends with really seminal bands like Graycode and all the early bands, and Impiety has obviously been there right from the beginning of the Singaporean scene in the early 90s. I got associated with it in the mid-90s. I had a lot of friends there and they used to help me spread demos and things like that. I got to know him fairly later in the early 2000s, and at that time he was taking a break after releasing ‘Kaos Kommand 696’. He was running a metal store in Singapore. I have really good memories of just hanging out at that store for hours and hours, just playing a lot of metal on the hi-fi player. It used to be a lot of fun, we would go out and get beers together. It was sort of a lifestyle. It was just kind of natural that when he wanted to write ‘Formidonis Nex Cultus’, the album that came in 2007, he contacted me to play bass, which I did. So I’m credited on that album even though I couldn’t stick around for the entire bass sessions. It’s a great honor to be associated with Impiety like that, and like you said, they are the biggest underground band from Asia right now, to be honest with you. I think they are right up there with bands like Sabbat from Japan, who really exploded in the underground. Impiety is taking it one step forward. For people that don’t know this about him, Ariffeen is really organized and professional, very very dedicated. The guy practices six hours a day which I don’t think I’ve ever done in my life. He has dedicated himself to the cause of underground metal, for sure. It’s funny you mention ‘Bomber’, because it was recorded during the Eastern Assault sessions, and this was a friend of mine Anthony Drago who runs a label called LA Riot Survivor Records. He’s the frontman of an Italian heavy metal band called Fingernails. He contacted me and asked me to record a song for a Motörhead tribute album they were doing. So, ‘Bomber’ was actually recorded as early as 2008. It’s been a good five years since we did it. The studio we did it in lost the master, I didn’t have the master for ages and ages, I thought I’d lost it, and initially Iron Bonehead Records from Germany were supposed to release this tribute album which they never did. I don’t know what went wrong between the guys who were organizing this and the label. And eventually, after five fucking years of having all this material with them Fingernails finally released it on their own record label, LA Riot Survivor. Two years ago, I just had an mp3 of this version of ‘Bomber’ and I shared it with Sandesh. The guy lost it when he listened to it. He went through the roof saying ‘What the fuck is this!’ I told him that it was my way of proving people wrong, people who say that you’re a doom band and that’s what you are. I said, no man, do not ever underestimate a doom band (laughs). We can play a cover like ‘Bomber’. It was a good time. Me and Tremor just went into the studio, put the amps on full with a real rock ‘n roll attitude, a lot like what Deep Purple did with the ‘In Rock’ record. That’s what I tried to do, take influences from original hard rock and heavy metal acts and just crank the amps all the way up. I mean, if you show this to a professional sound engineer, he would think this recording is fucked up because everything is high-gain. But you know, you get so much aggression in it. And when Ariffeen walked into the studio, he wasn’t expecting where I took him to. There were people lying around, drunk from the previous night. It was a very punk setup, but he really got into it. We played it back for him on the headphones, he went in and we did it in one or two takes. Most of what you hear on that track is first take. Somebody reviewed us recently and said that his vocals cut the mix like a razor. That’s really what it sounds like. 99 per cent of all metalheads are big Motörhead fans, so it’s a very honorable thing to be covering that song. So that’s the history of ‘Bomber’. And finally we found the master, the wav files and everything, and finally it saw the light of day, man.
That’s awesome, man. You did mention that people see you as a doom band, which you are. When I listen to doom metal, your music or other doom bands, I find it to be a very calming thing, very liberating in that sense. It’s strange because doom is depressing but for me I find it uplifting. Do you agree with that to some extent?
Yeah, I know where you are coming from when you say that it feels liberating to listen to doom. I’ll tell you why, because being a doomhead and playing doom metal for nearly 75-80 per cent of Dusk’s career, being a doom band you really don’t close doors on yourself, on your influences. You can pull anything off being a doom band. You can have direct influences from Robert Johnson and old Chicago blues things in your music, you can have vocals from the first Mayhem record or you could have punk-ish production values. Nobody would actually put you in a box. I think doom metal allows you to experiment quite a bit with different sounds, and you’re much more open as a musician when you’re playing in a doom band to listen to different songs. And obviously, giving complete credit to Mr. Tony Iommi because he came from a blues rock background. When he started Earth and Black Sabbath back in the late 60s, that’s what influenced him and he was so open to influences. I think any doom band in the world would be lying if they say they don’t cite Sabbath as an influence.
I agree! I don’t know if you’ve kept up with the scene or not, but what are some of your favorite doom bands right now?
To be honest, I have and have not kept up at the same time. I’ve been listening to some of the bands that have been around for probably the same time as Dusk, but they definitely have their own styles. I’ve also followed some of the newer bands but now they are sort of really big. I really get influenced by them in a lot of ways as well. For example, I like bands like Hooded Menace from Finland a lot. I love their production values and their approach to doom metal is really something I used to look for. I remember back in the day getting peeved off sometimes by clean vocals. Some bands just get carried away with clean vocals and forget how integral growling vocals are to doom metal. I think a band like Hooded Menace does it right, and another band to look out for is Coffins from Japan, for sure. Very very good. I’ve been listening to other stuff like In Solitude. They have more clean vocals and are more classic heavy metal sounding, but I like what they do. In the past couple of years, I listened to a side project by one of the most influential figures in doom metal, Scott ‘Wino’ and his band The Obsessed. I always follow all of his bands and side projects, I respect the man and hopefully will try to meet him one day in life. I know you did an interview with him and I was like blown away, man. Besides The Obsessed, something of his that got my attention recently was the Shrinebuilder project which I think he did with people from Neurosis as well. I listen to a lot of the other band he had, Divine Propaganda. Their debut release was very well done. Another US band that I look out for these days is Pallbearer. To be honest, I’m not all over the place listening to every second band, but after Sabbath if someone influences me it has to be Candlemass, Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, and as I said, Hooded Menace and Coffins. Pallbearer is doing a great job. I’m not too much into the whole drone doom trend that happened 8-10 years back. I’m still more for definition-sounding doom metal rather than just playing for 10 minutes all over the place.
Right, and talking of Wino, you mentioned that interview I did with him. That was one of the best experiences for me. I hung out with him in his tour bus, smoked a joint and he was great. We talked about all kinds of stuff. And then Saint Vitus played later that evening and he was just passing out joints in the crowd!
Awseome, man. The first time I heard him sing for Saint Vitus, I think it was the ‘Ice Monkey’ music video that they had released. I remember watching that video almost 15 years back on Viva, a German music video channel. Sometimes in Pakistan we used to get it way back in the day. I was like, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ It didn’t occur to me. But then I heard The Obsessed’s ‘The Church Within’ two months after it was released in 1994, and that was one of the first bands of that style that I got into after Black Sabbath. I was floored, man. It’s so intense and heavy. I just love his songwriting, and I don’t know if people would agree, but his voice is one of the best in metal right now. I don’t think there’s a more soulful voice out there than Wino.
And I think it has gotten better with age. Every time I’ve seen him over the last 4-5 years, it’s been better each time.
I know what you mean, man. With all of his cigarette smoking and whiskey, it’s a little bit like Rory Gallagher’s voice which became a bigger voice with age. It’s the same thing with Wino, may be.
Exactly man. And finally I wanted to ask you, what plans do you have now for Dusk and in general with your music?
Well, as I told you the options are really limited, but we are with Cyclopean Eye right now and I hope we can do a couple more releases with them in the years to come. The biggest challenge for us is obviously playing live, but I think one of my agendas for post-release of ‘Corridors’ is I want to get Dusk out there to some live audiences. So I don’t know if we’ll play a show in Nepal, Sri Lanka or Singapore where 50 per cent of the band is living right now, or Thailand. But definitely one of the agendas is to get out there, even if it’s a short set. Sandesh is very actively trying to do that for us. He was trying to get a slot for us in a metal fest that’s happening 10 days from now in Singapore, but unfortunately we were late to approach the organizers. So I’m sure eventually he’ll get us a gig somewhere or the other and I think that’s going to really open up a new spectrum for us. I haven’t played live with Dusk in almost 10 years now. I’ve played live with other bands, I’ve played in a lot of folk bands and recently I’ve been playing in a folksy psychedelic band and we do live gigs. But Dusk is going to be a new thing altogether. Besides that, I don’t want to have such a big gap again so definitely looking for a new release at the same time next year. I do not know if it’ll be an EP and it’s a little tough for me to say that it’ll be a full-length, but may be another split album because I really like that concept. We’ll try to do that with the best of bands who we honor and think as forerunners, like Distrust is a great crust/punk band from Singapore with crossover leanings. This release with Dying Embrace was a dream come true. I’ve also flirted with the idea of trying to get a trademark sound and with Dusk I think we’re kind of successful with our part on ‘Corridors’. I noticed that you were talking about the song ‘For Majestic Nights’. This track is very very special for me because I just performed it completely on my own with a friend of mine doing drums. This was a time where our drummer Tremor wasn’t feeling well. He was going through some medical treatments, so I asked a friend to come in and play drums, and I used some really old-school effect pedals to get that sort of psychedelic sound on top of the guitar layers. I think I’m going to flirt with that idea more on future releases. So, looking forward to all of that stuff, man.
Related: Album Review: Dying Embrace / Dusk – ‘Through Corridors Of Dead Centuries’ Split
Dusk links: facebook | twitter | metal archives