{"id":2029,"date":"2013-03-09T01:40:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T20:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/?p=2029"},"modified":"2013-03-11T22:20:27","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T16:50:27","slug":"orchid-guitarist-mark-thomas-baker-talks-about-new-releases-writing-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metalassault.com\/Interviews\/2013\/03\/09\/orchid-guitarist-mark-thomas-baker-talks-about-new-releases-writing-process\/","title":{"rendered":"Orchid Guitarist Mark Thomas Baker Talks About New Releases & Writing Process"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andrew Bansal<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>San Francisco-based doom rock quartet Orchid started out in 2006 and have slowly worked their way towards gaining a fan-following, more so in Europe than in America by their own admission. They signed to Nuclear Blast last year and released the ‘Wizard Of War’ EP on 10-inch vinyl a couple of weeks back as a teaser for their upcoming second full-length album ‘The Mouths Of Madness’. coming out on April 26th in Europe and on May 14th in America. Although this is a style of music which has been done before and is still being done by lots of other bands, there’s just that sense of honesty about Orchid, and the sheer quality of their songwriting, which makes the listener take notice. Recently, I spoke to guitarist Mark Thomas Baker to discuss these two releases, the writing process and more. Check it out below along with the new single, and visit Orchid online.<\/p>\n

First of all, I wanted to talk to you about the \u2018Wizard Of War\u2019 EP, which is a 3-track release. What\u2019s its purpose? Is it just like an appetizer for the full-length album coming up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, it\u2019s the first single for the album. We did the 10-inch vinyl format with the Heretic EP and Nuclear Blast really likes Theo\u2019s artwork so they didn\u2019t want to do just a 7-inch single, they wanted to do a 10-inch so that they could have a bigger format for the artwork. And then, that lent itself to finding a few other songs to put on there. So it\u2019s really it\u2019s just the first single with a bonus track and an old track in a gatefold cover.<\/p>\n

So, is it only on vinyl? I don\u2019t think you\u2019ve really put out any CDs for this, right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, no CD on that. It was very limited. I believe only 750 total between the three colors, and I see that they released the \u2018Wizard Of War\u2019 track digitally as well. But the bonus track was not released digitally.<\/p>\n

Right, and talking of the full-length album \u2018The Mouths Of Madness\u2019, it\u2019s coming out in late April in Europe and in May in the US. I believe it\u2019s going to be a completely different list of songs, except for the single? It\u2019s like two different releases for people interested in collecting both.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, definitely. Nuclear Blast really like doing that, to make some collectors\u2019 edition or some special things available. I see that they do it with a lot of their bands regularly. They really do that well, with special packaging and stuff.<\/p>\n

Listening to your past music and the new EP, I feel there\u2019s a very jam-room type of vibe. Is that how you compose your music?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it happens in a lot of different ways. There are times when whole songs are written and brought in, and that\u2019s usually by Theo. He writes a lot of songs that are kind of like journeys with a lot of different parts in them. And then the ones that are simpler usually come from jam situations or having a riff at practice and someone else coming up with a part that they can add to it, interpreting it into a song. But a lot of our songs that have jams in them are usually things that we work out over time. We\u2019ll have something we\u2019re jamming on and after months and months of doing it, we kind of have certain things that we work out and keep intact, and may be there are other areas where we leave room to do a little more free-form, with 8 or 16 bars or something like that.<\/p>\n

Another striking feature of the music is Theo\u2019s vocals. It has a very resonating feel to it, kind of like early Sabbath or Pentagram. Does that make it more enjoyable for you to play your guitar parts, because these vocals are almost like an instrument on its own?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I absolutely love Theo\u2019s singing. It\u2019s really a pleasure to work with somebody who\u2019s a great singer and really has a personality in his voice that stands on its own. It\u2019s definitely a special thing and I\u2019m really glad to be a part of it, honestly.<\/p>\n

Would you say that your music on the record sounds close enough to how you sound live? I\u2019ve never had a chance to see you on stage, so I was just curious about that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know, people usually when they see us live for the first time after listening to recorded stuff, a lot of times they say, \u2018Wow, you guys are way heavier live!\u2019 I think there\u2019s not as much subtlety live. When we record, there are a lot of different parts layered, like a couple of different guitar amps stacked together to kind of make a unique tone. And live is just kind of a \u2018go for it\u2019 situation. So I think we\u2019re probably a lot more direct and heavier live, and we play with a lot of energy live. It\u2019s like everybody is full-bore head-banging, and just a ton of energy. You try to make that come through in your recording but it\u2019s just a completely different situation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s very true. So, here\u2019s one question I like to ask because every band seems to have a different answer. How did you actually get signed to Nuclear Blast?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, we had the first EP \u2018Capricorn\u2019 put out on a smaller independent label in Germany called Church Within, and at some point bigger labels started contacting us and asking what we were doing and what our contract commitment was, and this and that. Our contract with Church Within was just album to album, so we were free to do whatever negotiations we wanted for any upcoming albums. It got to the point where I think there were four bigger labels we were talking to, and Nuclear Blast was one of them. It just came down to us choosing them because we felt really confident in the people we met from the label. We felt like they had a plan for us, and that they were really honest about their intentions. We got a great deal. We were in no hurry to sign anything. We talked to these bigger labels for almost a year before we ended up signing. And I think that showed them that we weren\u2019t in hurry or trying to rush to do anything. We\u2019re just making music that we want to make, and we\u2019ve found the right partner to help us get it out there to the world.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s great that you mentioned the fact that you waited around and did not rush anything. Even for the releases on Church Within, you guys started out in 2006 and the releases came about in 2011. So do you think that\u2019s an important aspect, waiting to get things done on a professional level rather than rushing into it just because you\u2019ve had the songs written for a while?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, it\u2019s definitely important for us to get everything right. Theo is really kind of a control freak, but not in a bad way. He won\u2019t say anything is finished until it\u2019s exactly like he wants it. He\u2019s really involved in the production and the mixing, and he does all the artwork. The whole thing is his baby. Capricorn took almost two years to make. We worked on the recordings of that and we ended up re-recording some of the songs a lot of different times over the course of a year because we just grew so much as a band and got so much better at playing them that the original recordings just didn\u2019t stand up. So we ended up going back in, cutting new basics and doing our parts over again. This new album came a lot easier because we\u2019ve been playing together for so much longer, but it still had some very, very challenging things in it that really caused a lot of growth, specially in my guitar playing. There were times where the part that needed to be recorded wasn\u2019t something that was in my vocabulary. And there was one time when I even had to take a guitar lesson to really try to understand a jazzier feel and a different approach in my timings to get the part that needed to be on there.<\/p>\n