When I was a kid, growing up in a house with Cat Stevens,
Neil Diamond, and Simon and Garfunkel, the first time I ever heard Kiss's
"Detroit Rock City,"
it was a moment of musical epiphany. It was just so vicious, aggressive and
mean. It changed the way I listened to music. I've had a few minor epiphany's
since then, when you come across a band that just brings something new and
revolutionary to your ears.
What have been your musical epiphany moments?
I grew up on classic soul and country music. Some my first
loves in music were Otis Redding, Elvis Presley, and Marty Robbins. I had an
older sister who was really into the hair metal scene in the 80s, and the major
one that stands out for me was hearing Guns n' Roses for the first time. My
sister had gotten a copy of Appetite for Destruction, and I heard the song
Nightrain coming from our living room stereo, and ran out to ask her and her
friend who it was. It started me down a path of loving guitar driven rock and
heavy metal.
Talk to us about the song-writing process for you. What
comes first, the idea? A riff? The lyrics? How does it all fall into place?
We generally start with the riff. Chris and I are both
fairly prolific riff writers with this band. We both write and record riffs to
our phones and share them with each other all the time. We jam a couple times a
week at our practice space, and in between working on our live show, we will
bust out random riffs and jam on them to see how they feel with the band, and
what might come of them. The overall process of finishing songs tends to be
very easy. Once we find a good groove
and jam on a riff for a while, the next step will come to one of us, and we
will start seeing where things should go to turn it into a song.
The lyrics and vocals tend to come at the end of the
process. Several of the songs on our debut record had the lyrics and vocals
only partially written upon entering the studio to record them.
Who has influenced you the most?
We all have our own individual influences that we draw
inspiration from, but as a band I would say some of the common themes are bands
like Alice in
Chains, High on Fire, The Sword, Mastodon, and Black Sabbath of course.
Where do you look for continuing inspiration? New ideas, new
motivation?
One of the best parts of being in this band is that we tend
to inspire each other I think. We all have our own reasons for doing what we
do, and we all tend to feed off of each others energy. I have never felt
stagnant at any point since this band started.
We're all a product of our environment. Tell us about the
band's hometown and how that reflects in the music?
I think one of the biggest influences you'll see in us from
where we come from is the energy in our live shows. Cincinnati has a vast music history, and has
always had a very strong live music scene. We have great venues, killer local
talent, and a lot of great music coming through the city all the time. We have
all grown up as musicians within that scene, and it has showed us how to
present a live show that is engaging, fun, and high energy.
Where'd the band name come from?
The common thing people think is that Blessed Black is
derivative of the High on Fire album Blessed Black Wings. I absolutely love
High on Fire, but that was the farthest thing from my brain when we came up
with the name. When Chris and I started
this band, I told him that I wanted to write lyrics for the first batch of
songs based around the Elric of Melniboné books written by Michael Moorcock.
Chris and I are both big time fans of fantasy fiction literature. When we started throwing around name ideas,
we made a list and just added anything we could think of to it. One of the
things I put down was "Black Blade", and then "Blessed Black
Blade" because the character in those books carries an enchanted black
sword. We went through and kinda went back and forth on things, and then out of
that came the idea for just calling it Blessed Black. We both liked it, and the
homage to one of our favorite bands was just a bonus in the end.
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