Hey, how are you?
I’m doing great, thanks!
Some readers might not be familiar with Malacoda and you guys have a unique experience with your albums, maybe you can give them a bit of your backstory and catch them up a little bit with who you guys are!
Originally Malacoda was a solo project that I and a producer worked on. The first album was mostly played by me, we were more of a darker alt-metal band that was compared a lot to Tool. When I decided to give it a shot and make this thing into a band I reached out to some of musicians from some of my favourite bands and we eventually came out with our most recent release. We’ve gotten heavier than the first album and expanded into a sound that people are calling “horror metal” thanks to our “Penny Dreadful” music video.
You guys released “Ritualis Aeterna” not too long ago, how has the response been?
The response has been alright. People are either really loving it or are picking out a few things that I had mixed thoughts with during the production of the EP and giving it a bit harsher of a review. We were definitely experimenting with some things on this release that I hadn’t really worked much with in metal. With the amount of stuff that had happened during the production of this EP it’s a miracle it even came out to be honest. I think I jokingly told the keyboardist that we were the “bad luck band” after a particularly bad week.
You guys have a lot of different sounds blended into the album as well, it’s almost impossible to pick out all of your influences. Would you be able to name a few that are mixed into your songs?
Yeah it’s a little over the map but it’s still somewhat focused. Organized chaos I guess. I’m a huge fan of goth rock and goth metal, bands like Fields of the Nephilim, Type O Negative, Katatonia, Paradise Lost are huge influences of mine but I’m also a super huge Iced Earth fan and love Megadeth- so I’m a thrash head too. I’m into Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Opeth, Skinny Puppy- lets not forget movie scores too. We get compared a lot to bands that most of us weren’t into enough to be considered influences- like King Diamond or Dimmu Borgir. I guess it was the over the top keyboards and super layered vocals that attributed to those comparisons.
Now I haven’t been able to follow the songs to the fullest extent yet, so I’m curious is this release a series of short stories or is it one large overlapping story/a concept album?
I’d probably say it’s more of a themed EP than a concept album. I’ve always wanted to do a concept album, but you can’t just crap one of those out and call it a day. I think even more planning needs to be done for one of those, you got to write music that really captures the emotions and mood in the story you are trying to tell- among other things. Rituals Aeterna mostly deals with exploring what horror is. Penny Dreadful is inspired by the since cancelled Showtime TV show of the same name and is about horror as entertainment, I Got A Letter was loosely inspired by the video game Silent Hill 2 and explores the emotions that permeate from horror- dread, sadness, guilt, fear. Linger Here is about being a psychologically abusive romantic relationship and the horrors that come with that. I think we’ve written one of the first Anti-Ballads with that one.
Recording can be one of the biggest issues in a recording cycle and with so many different parts to all of your songs there was so much for everyone to key in on, did you guys have any real problems when it came to recording?
It was a really interesting process this time around. I’ve been in and out of recording studios for a long time as a musician, engineer, assistant and producer. It’s fair to say I feel more at home behind a recording console than on a stage. The first album was done at the producer’s home studio, but this time around I decided to finally just build my own. Gutted half the basement, built a control room and then a live room, soundproofed it and called it Old Haunt. I had amassed quite a bit of equipment over the years so it was just putting it together in a way that made sense. I’m still tweaking some things here and there but that’s how it always is. The studio took a long time to build since I did it myself with a friend and some family members helping out. Old Haunt hadn’t had all the kinks worked out by the time we were ready to track and we had already put it off by so long so we recorded the drums at Jon Howard of Threat Signal’s home studio (Woodward Studio). Old Haunt was done a month later, I think I tracked the bass in a day, did the rhythm guitars over the course of a week or so and then Jonah did all his keyboards in a studio in the states. He sent the files over here, I got Brad to do his solos over a few weekends. Jon mixed it, wrestled with a mastering engineer for a few months and then got it mastered within a day by another dude. All the hang ups we had came from people outside of the band to be honest and had nothing to do with the recording. Now that we have Old Haunt up and running I don’t think we’ll ever need to worry about hangups here.
Obviously every band tries to better themselves with each release, although that might be giving some bands too much credit, how was recording this EP different from your debut? Was it easier or harder to finish?
I can’t really say either of them was easier or harder to finish. I mean, I engineered and produced most of this EP whereas on the first album I just wrote everything and performed most of it and left the engineering to the producer. I guess in that respect that was more work I had to do, but I honestly didn’t feel like it was harder. The difficulties came from outside forces. This EP cost less than the album thanks to having my own studio, but that doesn’t necessarily affect difficulty or quality of music these days.
Are you guys looking into setting up shows in and across Canada or even the US? Would be great to see you up in the KW area!
We’re actually thinking about hitting the studio and writing a full length. We’ve had some lineup changes and some of the new stuff I’ve come up with is super different than either release we’ve come out with so far, and some of the new guys we’ve got now have some sweet ideas. Chris, our old bassist, decided to rejoin when we got Cooper to go on guitar. We’ve got a second guitar player now opposed to just the one we had on Ritualis, so we’ll see how things go with him in the songwriting process. We’re just solidifying things with a drummer now actually. Canada will definitely be getting gigs, we’ve got some long term plans for those. I’d love to play the states- I love going to Florida, not just because it’s always hot but just the whole vibe of the place is cool and very different than Ontario. If someone can get us to Florida, then I probably wouldn’t hesitate much on that! My real interest for shows is in Europe however, but I really can’t say anything at this point on if we are going to get there anytime soon.
To close up, do you have any parting words for your fans old and new?
We’ve got some cool stuff in the pipeline, I think we’re working on quite possibly the best Malacoda release by far. We’re welcoming some old faces and ideas and blending it with a new outlook. We’ll see you soon!
Thank you very much for your time, I hope to see you on the stage sometime soon!
Thank you for the interview- we’ll see there!
- Lucas Di Mascio, Vocalist of Malacoda
