Interviews

Interviews: Morbid Angel

This is from an hour of discussion with Trey. As some of you may know, he is a very verbose man, but he is also very profound and deep-thinking. Rather than cheat his brain or yours by cutting any of the important content out, this will be run in two parts. The second half of the interview will be up on Smother’s next update, or maybe before. So, sit back and enjoy.

Jeremy: It’s interesting that Morbid Angel is playing with Pantera, a very well-known act. A lot of the audience for this tour probably isn’t very familiar with Morbid Angel. How are you attacking that problem? Or are you even seeing it as a problem?

Trey: I’m not approaching it as a problem. The main reason we’re here is because Phil is a really big fan of the underground music—Black Metal and Death Metal—and has liked Morbid Angel and other bands for a long time. He really got into us when “Blessed are the Sick” came out. It was something that he got a lot of feeling out of, so he really liked Morbid Angel’s style. We’re here for him to present to his fans as the other kind of music he likes. The next level of Metal. The underground, what the underground’s about and all that kind of stuff. We’re just doing our thing in front of them.

Jeremy: How did Erik Rutan get back in the circle for “Gateways…”?

Trey: He’s always been in our circle, in our family. After Domination, he had two projects which he was pursuing and now he’s got both of them recorded, one being Hate Eternal and one being Alas. When David left, I really wanted to do all the writing and play all the guitars on “Formulas…” to clear up in the scene how a lot of people thought with David leaving the band, Morbid Angel should just finish or change the name or some crap like that. The thing is that I started Morbid Angel and David entered three or so years after. Basically, I just wanted to show what I was on about. That’s why I did al the writing for “Formulas…” Of course, Erik did the tours with us for that album. And then we just all talked about it and it worked out great for him to come back and play on this new album and co-write some stuff.

Jeremy: How do you feel that you’ve grown as a player and Morbid Angel as a band since “Formulas…”?

Trey: I think what a lot of people miss is that Morbid Angel always puts back to back different types of albums. The difference between “Altars…” and “Blessed…” is the same difference I see as with “Formulas…” and “Gateways…” It’s the same with “Covenant” and “Domination”. One’s more raw and focused on speed and more underground and one’s more focused on atmosphere and heaviness and trippiness. It’s about having contrast from album to album. As far as growth, I don’t know. I guess going into this album, I was listening mainly to The Gathering and Pink Floyd. I wasn’t even listening to Metal. The kind of stuff you get high and listen to and trip on. It doesn’t have to be fast. It’s the kind of thing where the feeling of one note is everything as opposed to it needing to be a bunch of notes. It’s like identifying with the vibrations of something really basic and letting it slow down and flow with it as opposed to it being just a big string of notes, abstract and chaotic. On this album, there’s a lot of weird variations with the rhythms and guitar parts that are doing different motions but the thing that ties them together is the drums. We’ve done stuff like that in the past, but I think on this album is probably the most of trying to get rhythms that are not even in the same key to somehow meet in the middle. Like in the middle of the frog song where one guitar part is doing a complete different thing, different motion and different key. It’s like totally different worlds colliding in the middle. The beginning of “Open the Gates” is another part with totally different guitars, not even thinking about keys or trying to keep it together in any kind of rule or anything like that. The creative process started out with one rhythm and a drumbeat on the computer and then getting high and letting something else come out. The ultimate aim is for it to just be the most fucked-up sounding shit. Trying to really go beyond anything that would be considered what music’s supposed to be, but make music out of it, not let it stay in this realm of noise because there’s different musicians that will do just noise. It’s not just normal harmonies. It’s not like just doing a fifth on top of a root. It’s not simple polyrhythms because on “Formulas…” there are polyrhythms in “Covenant of Death”. With those two parts [at the end], they were still in the same key, but there a couple of passing notes like if you hold those two notes together, it would sound just horrible. On this album it’s all just this madness. But it’s not really new because back in the beginning that’s when I was probably getting the most high. All my music comes from being high. It’s not about learning music, it’s about trying to make sounds and feelings and using the guitar as an instrument to create worlds as opposed to just writing a song. I think one of the main things that’s different about “Gateways…” is that a lot of the songs are based with trippy groove type of drum beats. On “Formulas…” it was basically just playing as fast as we could and just real chaotic riffing, but more of an old school Death Metal approach, but still Morbid Angel. There was still some trippy stuff. Another thing about this album is that most everything is on the seven string guitar.

Jeremy: Didn’t you dabble in that back on “Covenant”?

Trey: Yeah, we did on “Covenant” and “Domination”. On “Covenant” it was three songs and on “Domination” it was four. On this one it’s basically everything except for one. The only song on this new album that’s on a six string guitar is “Ageless”. That’s one of the differences. We all wanted the singing to be somewhat dramatic so it’s not just always the same level, but up and down, high stuff and low stuff. Growling, roaring, but with a singing melody so the syllables are hitting against the music as notes. As far as soloing, I took pretty much the same approach as I did with “Formulas…”, it’s just that maybe against these songs it might come out different or maybe the sounds got mixed better. We worked with a different producer this time. Even on “Formulas…” I was doing these three different miking techniques to make the guitar sound different at the stage of going into the microphone as opposed to effects. There was the guitar, the technique, the effect and then b etween the speaker and the mic. That just comes from trying to do stuff that’s way out there. So, using a fan to make the guitar [pixilated], I did that on “Formulas…”, too. On “Formulas…”, I used more. I used what I call the “Anti-Vacuum Culture” which is a glass bubble over a microphone and then turn up the input really high and, since the microphone works off air and vibrations, the glass thing sealed around the mic totally changes the sound. You can hear that in the solo in the solo in “Nothing is Not”. When that solo comes in, it smothers stuff. It’s got that sound, plus the normal sound. Mixing those two sounds together is something we did back then and on this new album. The one with the fan is called the “Windrift” and there’s another one which was like taking a big, metal mixing bowl around the mic like big satellite dish and putting that up against the cabinet. Some of it makes no sense. Why was it done? It was all done because it’s supposed to be fun and explorational. That’s what keeps this stuff fun is exploring. Also, it’s the kind of stuff people like Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix did as far as just having fun and playing and doing weird shit. Just think up some weird way of making a sound that might have never been done before and just do it and stick it on the album for fun and for offering new sounds. That’s the main reason we do all this stuff is for fun, to keep it fresh, don’t want to burn out on it, don’t want to sell out. I’ll play this kind of music as long as I can do it with some conviction. Once I can’t do it with conviction, then I would want to do it anymore because then I feel that I’m just posing or whatever. It’s all from the heart. I look at myself as I’m the instrument. I’ve got my instrument, but I’m also the instrument for this energy from the universe to just flow through. A lot of it like doing solos, I just didn’t have any idea what I was going to play for a solo. In my house I have a real basic studio with an ADAT and I would have tracks of the drums and rhythms and then have a track open and I would listen to a track, get in this state of mind and just bust some shit out and try to let it come out more random without the mind getting in there and making it a pattern.

Jeremy: Did you use a guitar synth on this record?

Trey: I did. I used it in “At One with Nothing” in the first solo thing. It’s a stacking. The guitar synth by itself doesn’t sound good. So the guitar synth track with a regular guitar track in a big layering of stuff. The fan is in there, too and the glass bubble. [They have] silly names I just made up for them. That’s part of the idea of having fun, trying to do it as a kid. I’m 35 years old, but inside I feel like I’m a little kid. I feel that a lot of people if they start to buy into that when you get to be a certain age, things are different and you have to be a certain way and you get bogged down with responsibilities you didn’t have when you were a little kid, then the creativity changes. When you’re a child, you can look at stuff that other people thing is boring and you can find some interesting stuff about it. It’s about the innocence and having a clear mind and thinking everything’s great and not being jaded or in patterns. It’s like when I used to listen to music before I played guitar, I’m trying to take that same excitement of being a fan and carry that 20 years later into what we’re actually recording and also trying to add those special extra things. When I was a fan before I played music, I looked for special things in the bands I liked in interviews or stuff about the recording or what do their lyrics mean or what are they about? I want to bring a lot of that out. I’ve turned out to be kind of eccentric, abstract. So, I try to let that stuff come out as much as possible. Like our albums being in alphabetical order, that’s something I think is pretty cool. The “Love of Lava” CD is another thing. To make a CD of just those solo recordings is almost like a fan being able to sit in the soundbooth a way he’d never be able to hear it because you can’t lift the solos out of the CD. It’s giving people a closer connection to the feeling. My Quake III clan is another thing. I love gaming. On the third album [Covenant], I thanked all these people from games like Chung Lee and Sailor Moon. I’ve always liked that kind of stuff. Whenever I play Street Fighter, I play Chung Lee because I think he’s the coolest looking character and it’s beautiful to watch this character do these upside-down-spinning moves. Robotech, I like that. I don’t like Dragon Ball Z and stuff like that. I know they’re probably more popular, but I don’t get the same vibe. I made a clan and the clan is based on how I like this Japanimation stuff and the girl characters. I think they look great when they’re walking around. It’s cute. My clan is the girls out of Quake III. It’s the lighter side. In Morbid Angel, we’re very extreme, very serious, very fucking punishing. When we play it’s very mean and attacking and hard. What balances that out is my silly side. There are some bands that are so mean and brutal that’s all they are, but for me, I like to do all of it. I can be as mean and brutal. I drank my blood on stage and did all that kind of stuff way back when. As soon as I’m finished with that, I can play some silly game and have fun with that, too. When you study the occult, spirits, or life, balance is important. The hardness and softness, fire and water. In all people, we all have positive and negative, the hardness and the softness. It’s important to let it all come out. Each person is the creator of themselves. I’m not my personality; I’m the creator of it. I’m pure spirit. It’s beyond all dualism. It’s nothing, but it can produce all things. It’s like being God yourself, but not an ego. God is not the mind, God is above the mind. We’re all connected through this spirit. We’re able to use these vehicles to have fun in life. The purpose in life is to have fun. The meaning of an event is the meaning you give that event. Some people base their meaning on what majority thinks because they don’t want to be the only guy on their block that thinks it means one thing. Our main message has always been to think for yourself.