It’s a mild, quiet Sunday in Hyde Park, the perfect opportunity for some Funeral Doom from the aptly named 4 piece Pallbearer to rain down from the PAs of The Brudenell. I meet with Brett Campbell, the band’s vocalist. They have just driven in from Glasgow’s more appropriate, grey and dreary climate. He’s sinking into a sandwich through his mouse brown beard outside Hyde Park Picture House. I start by asking if he was enjoying his stay, each word feeling like I was invading a moment.
“I’ve only been awake for like an hour,” he tells me. It’s half past three in the afternoon. “Leeds is a nice place. I’m from Arkansas.” Brett slows, “It’s pretty grim up there…”
I could tell this wasn’t a comment about the weather. “There’s a lot of violence.” He explained that there was a socio economic divide that birthed tension and hostility. “There’s just a big split…a lot of it’s racial.” This seemed an acceptable opportunity to jump the gun and investigate about the recent Ferguson shooting. “It’s fucked up…and it’s happening all over [USA].”
We’re now under the shade of Brudenell Social Club and he stops just outside to finish his food. He tells me the news of Kajieme Powell, a mentally unstable man caught on a phone camera yelling at the police to shoot him after he stole two energy drinks from a store last month. “And they did. They just kept shooting him. He was clearly mentally ill.”
The direction of our initial conversation was natural. This is what Pallbearer’s music is about. Not necessarily racism and police brutality, but darkness and struggle; lyrics like ‘In this harsh world of deception, I will stand up once more and find within myself the strength to stumble again’ exude a feeling of despondency.
A few minutes later, me and Brett are sitting across a small round table near the bar, the mood changed so I deviated, “You’re going to Camden Underworld next?” I ask. “Yeah, straight after this. It’s a big change from America where we’re driving hours on end to get from show to show.” I warn him about the noxious toilets at that venue but he’s unphased. “I’m used to bad toilets. I remember once we were at a show in New Orleans. They had red lights in there, I was just like ‘is that blood or shit I’m seeing?’”
The mention of blood and red lights triggered my memory, a house hunting disaster that involved a basement, red lights, bad graffiti and a mouldy mattress. The topic turned to hygiene. “We know these guys…two brothers, they have a place like that. They ended up getting fleas in one of their rooms. They just decided ‘well that’s one less room now!’ Every time I go there it gets worse.”
An exchange of flea extermination tips proceeded, debunking the myth I had formulated in my head that they’d spend days on end meditating in stillness away from the outside world without washing for inspiration.
“We made it hard for ourselves,” he admitted, “the guitars are tracked with layer upon layer. We’d play the same riff with about 6 different guitars,” which explains the fat, encompassing spectrum of sound they’ve achieved on their records. “Alice In Chains had a similar technique…it was practical for them because they were doing really big shows. We always try to go analog. [Sorrow & Extinction] was all analog, the [recorder tape] was full so we ended up recording the album over whatever was on it. Some of the recordings ended up in the background of the tracks.”
‘Metal doesn’t compromise’ as they say (or at least that dude from Skins said).
Ivan Yohuno
photo 1: theobelisk.net
photo 2: thrashhits.com
photo 3: brooklynvegan.com