GODS OF EDEN Interview.

Interview Dave Mullins.

Gods Of Eden are a technical metal band from Sydney, Australia. They last played at R.U.D.E Festival in Berlin (2013) but will this year will finally see the release of their debut album. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Danni Perez (guitar) and Ian Dixon (vocals) about the new album and what’s been happening the last 12 months.

Dave Mullins: Gods Of Eden released the self-titled EP come out in 2012, 2013 was a really big year where you went to Europe and had a lot of success in Germany, then early 2014 your video clip (From The End of Heaven) debuted. But the rest of the year was quiet, was there a particular reason, and was that something that was planned?

Ian Dixon: No, it was totally unplanned. It was something that we were hoping not to have to deal with, but because we were looking for a drummer for the full period of 2014 pretty much, we weren’t able to do anything. We had the album there ready to go from about May and it just took us so many months to find a drummer. We’ve looked all over Australia, we were talking to guys in Germany, we were talking to guys in Canada…

Danni Perez: Italian guys…

Ian: Italian guys… The U.S. We were just trying to find a drummer for that period of time so we could get it back on the road and do stuff.

Danni: We were actually so close to bringing a guy from Italy over here, but it gets too messy, too crazy. The immigration system here is just fucked.

Ian: His band was actually touring supporting Exodus…

Danni: He was getting lessons off George Kollias from Nile so he was pretty up there. But getting it to happen was just a logistical nightmare.

Ian: But now we’ve got Frog, we’ve got Robin Stone ex-Amenta drummer and he’s fucking awesome, he’s a machine. We’re looking to get back out and playing shows as soon as we can. It’s been killing me man! The last show we played was R.U.D.E. Festival in 2013, so it’s been about a year and half now and it’s been fucked, absolutely fucked… oh sorry, let’s put it more…

*laughter*

Danni: It’s fucked… that’s putting it nicely and it’s been fucked.

Ian: It’s really gone against what we were planning, I was hoping, from the shows in Germany we could come back, finish recording the album and still play shows so we could hit 2014 with the video clip ready to go, and go for it, you know? But unfortunately it just didn’t work out that way, our drummer at the time had other plans and that just kind of left us a bit stuck. But we’re ready to pick up the ball now, and hit 2015 running.

Dave: That’s awesome. So you’ve got the new album on the way, can you tell me a bit about that?

Ian: Well, it’s a bit more epic than what we had with the EP.

Dave: More epic?

Ian: *laughs* yeah, there’s some sections in there that make me visualise the world stopping in some of the choruses for the first song which we’re going to be releasing soon as a lyric video.

Danni: We recorded with Jens Bogren, over in Sweden he’s done bands like Opeth, the new Arch Enemy, the new At The Gates…

Ian: Devin Townsend Project…

Danni: When we heard some of his stuff we thought it’d be awesome to get this guy, this was back when I was recording the album here, then we sent him an email, he replied back and said he’d be happy to do it. So we went with him, he’s made the songs… he’s just put this new dimension into the songs. Now every instrument you can hear, it all comes out. It’s basically like the EP, but a much more professional sounding version. Every instrument’s got its place, just a massive sound.

Ian: He’s a hell of a producer and what’s he’s done with what we gave him is just fantastic. The film clip of From The End Of Heaven, that was a Jens Bogren mix. We ended up giving him a hundred tracks for a couple of songs

Danni: Yeah, there were some songs that actually broke the Pro Tools count

*laughter*

Ian: So we gave him a lot to work with, and he’s really done a hell of a job working with it to be honest. And it’s been frustrating, so frustrating, ’cause we’ve had it there, it’s been just sitting there since March staring us in the face, mocking us, mocking our lack of ability to do anything.

Danni: In terms of the actual album. We decided, this time around, from a song writing perspective to go a bit more of a soundtrack way. I guess the EP was too, but we were still finding our sound. The album is more of our own sound now. I kind of discovered what makes a Gods of Eden song, in a way. I’ve been trying to push songs that are a lot more soundtrack based.

Dave: How do you bring all of those elements together? You’ve got all of that obvious heavy metal influence, but there’s sci-fi, soundtracks – a lot of composition – especially now that you’ve got a producer who is bringing that extra element. How do you approach that as a band, or as a songwriter?

Danni: Well I write every song like as if it’s a story, or like a book you could say, every single part of the verse, the chorus has got to have a flow to it, it’s got to come up, it’s got to come down, every part has to have its own place. So I kind of write it from that perspective, more of a story. Or say if you were watching a film; it would give you that same vibe. I start off with the basics, the choirs and the orchestras, from then on I build. I build it with the drum beats… it’s a massive process. It probably takes up to 3 months per song, and beyond that I’ve probably got 30 or 40 different versions. I’m a full on perfectionist when it comes to all that *laughs*. It basically takes everything out of me.

Dave: I can imagine. And how about the vocals? When you come in, is there a plan, or is it just “go for it”, or somewhere in between?

Ian: Well for me it’s more organic. I usually wait until Danni’s finished the song, so I know where it’s going, where it’s finishing. I get an idea over a period of time, Danni will have bits and pieces saying “this is what I’m thinking for this, this is what I’m thinking for that” he’ll develop that, and then from there – the finished scratch product – I’ll take it and just listen to it for a while, and everything
just forms organically. I don’t actually start with lyrics first, I actually start with the feel that I’m going for, then the melodies will come out from the core of the song. So I’ll actually work with the melodies and come up with the lyrics last. I’ll get the concept from Danni, what he thought for the song, and I’ll also develop my concept for the song of how the song feels to me, and I’ll blend those two together.
It’s a different sort of process, but I like it more, it feels more organic. If I was to actually have stuff written down first, it would feel like I was trying to jam a square peg in a round hole. For the kind of music that we’re doing it kind of needs to have that organic vein running through it. Because there’s so much going on, I like to think that it can tie it together a bit more – with a common melodic theme.

Dave: And it obviously works really well. I think that the songs have a very unique feel to them, and I think that’s what people can appreciate about them is that there’s a story – something happens, you’re changed – from the time you listen from the start of the song until the end, it’s an experience in itself.
So the new album, I’m assuming it’s ready, are we going to be seeing that early in the year, later in the year, is there a plan for a launch or anything you can offer that I can tell the people about?

*laughter*

Ian: I dunno man, it’s killing us. Now that we’ve got Frog, we’ve got a new guitarist Shaun Thompson, he’s currently living in Darwin, on his way down, he’s coming down to Sydney, which means that we’ll actually be able to hit the studio and get back to practice. We’re also starting to put the word out for shows in April/May and we’re looking to get the album out around that same time. Ideally, I’d like to have the album out, doing some work, before we do the shows because we don’t just want to hit people with songs they don’t know. We can give people an opportunity to know what’s coming up. Instead of going “This is Overseer” and people being like “What the fuck is Overseer?”

*laughter*

So like I said, we’re going to release the first track “Overseer” which is being done at the moment, a friend of ours is putting together a lyric video. So hopefully over the next few weeks we’ll have that out. We’ve got a guy Chris Maric, the former head of promo at Riot Entertainment who is doing some work with us for promo and we’ll be meeting with him next week to discuss how we go about actually putting the album out, and what steps we’re going take to get the ball rolling again. Because it has been a year, we’ve been off the circuit for a year; we need to have everybody remember us. So it’s happening, I don’t want to put out a timeframe that we’re going to miss, because we’ve already done that with the video which was an unfortunate thing, but… it’ll be early this year

*laughs*

Danni: I think that the most important thing at the moment is to make sure that we get as much attention as we can, so we want to make sure that we take all of the right steps this time, before we actually do a release for it. The worst thing we can do is to have spent all this time working on it, and then have no one there to push it.

Ian: 2014 was a massive hole in our plans. From the release of the film clip we actually had a follow up we’ve been contemplating, Ganesh Rao the guy who actually did our film clip, he’s already got the concept ready to go. He just needs us to pull the trigger. That’s just something we haven’t been able to do. We didn’t want to put the album out there and not be able to follow on with shows.

Dave: Sure, so do you think you’ll be touring the country in support of the album? Would you be looking at a national tour, or is there a worldwide plan, or nothing – just the small pieces of a plan?

Ian: We’d love the opportunity to get out and play more of Australia. We’ve played Brisbane, Melbourne, and Gold Coast… I’d like to do Adelaide; I’d love to do Perth. I was actually born in Perth; I just haven’t actually been there since I was 6 months old. I’d like to see it; we’d like to do that. We just need the right things in place. We’re also discussing other places overseas. But that’s all a matter of if those chips fall into place. At the moment we’re dragging back a whole empty space of infinite possibilities. Just trying to drag each piece, and put it into line.

Dave: Wonderful. So any closing statements, anything you want to say about the new album, or the new year that you can put out there to the readers?

Danni: I think this year is the year we’ve been waiting for. Ever since we finished writing the album… this year it’s going to happen, we’re going to be able to put it out there and be touring with it. Hopefully we can get it to as many people as possible, to as many listeners as possible.

Ian: I’d actually like to thank everybody for their patience as well. Because I understand how frustrating it is when you’re waiting for a band to bring out something and nothing happens. Like, we don’t want to be the Australian version of Tool or anything *laughter*, like ten years between albums. It’s just been a situation that’s been out of our control. But I really appreciate that there are people out there really keen to hear what we have, and they’ll hit us up on Facebook saying “what’s going on” and that’s a really positive thing. I find a lot of reassurance in that, because hopefully it won’t just go into indifference. Hopefully people will take it and like it. Hopefully people will see the time they’ve waited for it as actually worth it and not just say “oh fuck, well that was useless”.

*laughs*

I think they’ll really like what’s coming next, you know? Hopefully they dig it!

Dave: Awesome, thank you for that. It’s all awesome to hear.

Ian: Thank you!

Watch out for Gods of Eden over 2015 and check out their video below!

Gods Of Eden: Site // Facebook // Twitter // Youtube // Bandcamp // iTunes // Spotify // Google play // Amazon.