Band: RAYLEIGH
Genres: Punk / Noise / Grind / Thrash / Sludge / Hardcore / Skramz / ScreamoRelated artists: Mahria and Detroit.
Country: Edmonton, Alberta CANADA
Years Active: 2012-2013
Song: "Archauthoritarians"
Album: "Rayleigh"
Year: 2013
Label(s): Zegema Beach Records
This post's artist is from the January 2014 Mix. This is track #6.
You can download the January 2014 Mix right here.
For fans of: Jeromes Dream, Phoenix Bodies, Amber, Callow, Cassilis, Ampere,
Capsule, Creeper, Moxiebeat, Loma Prieta, Mahria, For Want Of, Tentacles,
Graf Orlock, Phoenix Bodies, Jungbluth, Carrion Spring, Neil Perry,
Orchid, Loftus, Rats Into Robots, мища, and Totem Skin.
***GOOD NEWS!!!***
My label, Zegema Beach Records, will be releasing the RAYLEIGH self-titled album on cassette in August. I should probably give a quick history...
Mike from Mahria posted about his side-project on a community page, which I clicked incessantly whilst sweating and praying my computer didn't explode - simply because I was so excited. It paid off and then some, as the band was self-described as dark and chaotic skramz and did not disappoint.
Unfortunately in the past tense, RAYLEIGH played caustic, rustic, dark, sludgy, ominous and sometimes ambient screamy hardcore. The opening track "Coming to Terms with Being Born an Ape" may well have fit on Old Man Gloom's first LP - booming/bellowing vocals over massively eerie guitars. "Drones", my personal favourite, mixes the catchy, cleaner riffing with heavy and abrasive parts that remind me of Jeromes Dream. Whatever you decide to listen to, if you like your music dark, chaotic, relentless, with lotsa yelling and coarse screaming, then grab this from their bandcamp page here and pick up a copy if you want the physical release in March from ZBR!
Below is in an exclusive interview that I had with Mike, who played guitar in RAYLEIGH and currently plays mad axe in Mahria.
INTERVIEW - Mike (guitar)
What interesting
information can you share about the band members?
Paul (guitar/vocals) plays in both Rayleigh and Mahria, but was in Rayleigh first. Cory (bass/vocals) and I are really good friends and he was the first vocalist Durell and I jammed with in the beginning of Mahria for a couple weeks. Isaac (drums) plays in a grindcore band called Detroit that Cory, at the time we started jamming, did vocals for. Also at that time Cory, Isaac and I lived in a house together where we jammed. So there is a lot of crossover of band members and interpersonal relationships within the band, and there's a lot of members that were already part of other well-established bands.
Why the name,
RAYLEIGH?Paul (guitar/vocals) plays in both Rayleigh and Mahria, but was in Rayleigh first. Cory (bass/vocals) and I are really good friends and he was the first vocalist Durell and I jammed with in the beginning of Mahria for a couple weeks. Isaac (drums) plays in a grindcore band called Detroit that Cory, at the time we started jamming, did vocals for. Also at that time Cory, Isaac and I lived in a house together where we jammed. So there is a lot of crossover of band members and interpersonal relationships within the band, and there's a lot of members that were already part of other well-established bands.
Rayleigh waves are surface waves that are produced by earthquakes and are characteristically slower than other waves and very destructive. When naming projects I often draw upon science references or something that has appropriate symbolism or both when it's possible.
How would you
characterize RAYLEIGH?
Chaotic, dark, european-inspired skramz.
I really do feel like the album and songs are “dark”. Not in a depressing way, though. Was this an intention? - as I see you described the music as “dark screamo”, which I think is pretty damn apt.
Definitely. I think it's important when you play in two bands that play a similar genre that you don't repeat yourself too much and make them sound the same. So for me when writing for Rayleigh the intention was to make it really dark and French emo-esque and to have a lot of chaotic and ugly riffs to separate it from Mahria's style.
Was there a concept behind the album? What would you like to say abou the lyrics? I didn't write any of the lyrics for Rayleigh, to my knowledge a lot of them were political in nature though.
Songs like “Scaffolding” are unrelenting. How do these songs generally translate in a live setting vs. the recording process?
I'm really proud of our recordings, and think they turned out sounding really heavy. But it's not a perfect representation of how we sounded in a live setting. All of us play out of pretty loud amps, mostly Sunn and Orange gear, so our shows were very loud, very crushing and the newer unrecorded material we started to play was tuned lower and was more mathy and chaotic.
There’s usually so much going on in your songs, so I’m wondering who generally writes the first part of a song?
Our approach to songwriting was identical to Mahria's, either Paul or I would write a song start to finish and then everyone else adds their own parts with some direction given by the person who originally wrote the song. One or two songs I wrote with Isaac contributing to the structure of the song, but for the most part Rayleigh is Paul being a menace on guitar and me trying to add to it - another reason to be excited about Mahria's new material now that Paul is part of it.
Was there a specific person who generally is pushing for a 'slow' or 'fast' part?
Not particularly. I think at points we all agreed, "let's have more sludgy parts" and then whomever was writing a song next would consciously put one in.
What were the band members’ favourite songs to play and why?
"Archauthoritarians". "Scaffolding" and "Drones" were probably my favorites and would often be played back to back with one another. I felt like those were our more intense songs. Isaac really enjoyed one song that wasn't recorded, largely because it had a lot of powerviolence inspired parts. As for everyone else, I'm not sure.
What are the band’s plans for the release of the new album? We intended to put it on a tape, we might still do that, but at this point it's unlikely. (***NOT TRUE! Rayleigh and Zegema Beach Records will put this out on tape in March 2014!)
Is there a possible tour in the works? Another album, perhaps?
Unfortunately no. Our EP was recorded about a year before it was released, and by the time it was ready to show people the band had already lost our jam space, stopped practicing and fallen apart. We were going to do a couple more splits and had 3-4 songs written and a Hatred Surge cover, but Isaac quit recently so it wouldn't even be a matter of, "hey let's just get together for a month and try to make this happen again." Rayleigh is done, but Paul and I intend on using some of the riffs from newer Rayleigh songs and reworking them into Mahria songs, so those songs aren't completely lost. Plus the idea of combining the styles of Mahria and Rayleigh is pretty exciting to me.
Chaotic, dark, european-inspired skramz.
I really do feel like the album and songs are “dark”. Not in a depressing way, though. Was this an intention? - as I see you described the music as “dark screamo”, which I think is pretty damn apt.
Definitely. I think it's important when you play in two bands that play a similar genre that you don't repeat yourself too much and make them sound the same. So for me when writing for Rayleigh the intention was to make it really dark and French emo-esque and to have a lot of chaotic and ugly riffs to separate it from Mahria's style.
Was there a concept behind the album? What would you like to say abou the lyrics? I didn't write any of the lyrics for Rayleigh, to my knowledge a lot of them were political in nature though.
Songs like “Scaffolding” are unrelenting. How do these songs generally translate in a live setting vs. the recording process?
I'm really proud of our recordings, and think they turned out sounding really heavy. But it's not a perfect representation of how we sounded in a live setting. All of us play out of pretty loud amps, mostly Sunn and Orange gear, so our shows were very loud, very crushing and the newer unrecorded material we started to play was tuned lower and was more mathy and chaotic.
There’s usually so much going on in your songs, so I’m wondering who generally writes the first part of a song?
Our approach to songwriting was identical to Mahria's, either Paul or I would write a song start to finish and then everyone else adds their own parts with some direction given by the person who originally wrote the song. One or two songs I wrote with Isaac contributing to the structure of the song, but for the most part Rayleigh is Paul being a menace on guitar and me trying to add to it - another reason to be excited about Mahria's new material now that Paul is part of it.
Was there a specific person who generally is pushing for a 'slow' or 'fast' part?
Not particularly. I think at points we all agreed, "let's have more sludgy parts" and then whomever was writing a song next would consciously put one in.
What were the band members’ favourite songs to play and why?
"Archauthoritarians". "Scaffolding" and "Drones" were probably my favorites and would often be played back to back with one another. I felt like those were our more intense songs. Isaac really enjoyed one song that wasn't recorded, largely because it had a lot of powerviolence inspired parts. As for everyone else, I'm not sure.
What are the band’s plans for the release of the new album? We intended to put it on a tape, we might still do that, but at this point it's unlikely. (***NOT TRUE! Rayleigh and Zegema Beach Records will put this out on tape in March 2014!)
Is there a possible tour in the works? Another album, perhaps?
Unfortunately no. Our EP was recorded about a year before it was released, and by the time it was ready to show people the band had already lost our jam space, stopped practicing and fallen apart. We were going to do a couple more splits and had 3-4 songs written and a Hatred Surge cover, but Isaac quit recently so it wouldn't even be a matter of, "hey let's just get together for a month and try to make this happen again." Rayleigh is done, but Paul and I intend on using some of the riffs from newer Rayleigh songs and reworking them into Mahria songs, so those songs aren't completely lost. Plus the idea of combining the styles of Mahria and Rayleigh is pretty exciting to me.
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DISCOGRAPHY
2013 - Rayleigh digitalEP (stream/download here) which will be released on cassette by
Zegema Beach Records
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(2013) RAYLEIGH - "Drones" (from 'Rayleigh')
(2013) RAYLEIGH - "Scaffolding" (from 'Rayleigh')
(2013) RAYLEIGH - "Archauthoritarians" (from 'Rayleigh')
RAYLEIGH additional link
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