What makes the world go around are relationships, and today CVLT Nation is extra stoked to bring an artist to artist interview between two friends – Ralph Schmidt of Planks and Mike Hill of Tombs. This conversation is an insight into their minds, and it is a perfect example of why we started this series in the first place. Humans that share a common history tend to open up more to one another than they would with a stranger, and that’s what makes this such an interesting read!
Introduction by Ralph Schmidt:
Mike Hill and I have been friends for a long time – which is awkward, since we are both no good with other people. We met when his old band Anodyne was touring Europe in 2004. The drummer for my old band booked the tour and they had several days off. They crashed at my apartment and Mike and I got into good conversations and ended up becoming good friends. This friendship lasted, and lasts over the years while other parts of our lives fall apart. My old band broke up, so did Anodyne. Tombs and Planks started around the same time. Pretty fast, we had the idea to do a split. This happened and so did two tours together: one in the UK and one in the US. Planks is often compared to Tombs, which I can see, as both Mike and I are the main songwriters and have relatively similar views on music, life, negativity and our dislike for winky metal bands. This is a chat we started for CVLT Nation. Thanks to them for giving us this platform…
Ralph: Hey Mike. Let’s skip the basic interview A-Z questions and cut to the chase! You and I have been good friends for a number of years now. There is hardly anyone I credit for having an ace taste in music and knowledge of the matter – you get that credit. In my book, Tombs, amongst very few other bands (for example Amen Ra, Circle of Orouboros, Breach aso.), really deserves the term “dark” when it comes to describing the band. Nowadays, two-thirds of the hardcore and metal bands claim to be “dark”. They put upside-down crosses on the their shirts, use images from old occult horror movies – still they play music I wouldn’t brand “dark” or even slightly carrying that mood. Please give me your thoughts on this development, if you see that too, and how you would define darkness in (Tombs/general) music.
Mike: Ralph, yeah we’ve been friends for a long time. I remember meeting you back on the Anodyne European tour back in the murky past. As far as darkness goes, I agree that there is a trend in music and band imagery to use these symbols to add some kind of weight to the music. I think the distinction is that a lot of it is solely decoration, like wearing a coat to somehow transform yourself into someone else; a disguise. With Tombs or any other band that I’ve played in, I’ve never set out to create “dark music”, I just followed the muse and created what naturally came out of the process. I agree that there are a lot of pretenders out there, but hopefully the trend will go away soon. Both you and I have a long running admiration for bands that have a dark sound such as Bauhaus, Joy Division, even the Smiths are a band with a somber vibe despite the catchiness of their music. I think that we both are attracted to this and it has found its way into our musical creations. It’s natural. Hardcore has always been a trendy scene, ever since Unbroken and all of those San Diego bands started referencing Joy Division, there has been this fascination with decoration.
With that said, do you think that darkness should always be associated with negativity? I feel that there is dark beauty in the world. I love dark, rainy days and I see beauty in that.
Ralph: Yes, absolutely. There are two sets of darkness. The really depressing, cold darkness, and the moody, welcoming one you said you embrace. I see, or better feel, that too. I just talked to my fiance today about this. On my way to work today, for the first time this year, I realized it’s fall. The sky was covered in clouds, gray and gloomy. A cold wind was blowing, but it didn’t rain. I was listening to The Cure’s ‘Pornography’, my favorite record of all times – and everything just clicked. I felt this melancholy and darkness that actually makes we feel good and “home”, if you know what I mean. You say “there is a dark beauty in the world”, I would go a step further for my perspective and say: there is a dark beauty in nature. I feel this welcoming dark mostly when I’m alone and take a walk through the woods or just empty streets. I think this solitude, which is a thing that frightens most people, encourages this darkness in me. The feeling of wandering around alone just feels wonderful. Mostly, for my life, it’s people that create this cold darkness in me. Or at least they did. Ever since I abandoned most of my personal relations or shifted them to a surface level, I feel better. On my way to work this other darkness takes over. As you know, I’m a teacher and surrounded by huge crowds most of the times. I feel uncomfortably alone in this mass and often just want to go away. It’s hard to deal with this at some points but professionalism leaves me coming back.
I know you are not a friend of crowds, parties or forced human relations, as much as I ain’t. But on the other hand, you struggle with inter-human relations at times. Broken relationships, betrayed friendships – we both can fill books. This has always been a big motive for me to write music/lyrics/texts and it influences my art. I’m not asking for personal details, but can you describe to the readers how these things influence you and your creative life? “The Darkest of Grays” has been an autobiographical record about what I went through, I understand “Path of Totality” comes from a different perspective.
Mike: “Path of Totality” is less personal; in general, the Tombs material is getting more and more abstract. Mostly, the record has to do with fear, death and the revealing of truth in a cosmic sense. My personal experiences act more as a lens through which to view these things. I have pretty much given up the literal approach to lyric writing, but there were many intense personal upheavals going on in my life during the period that we wrote “Path”; a long-term relationship ended, and the weight of that ending obscured my true path with someone new. It was a very difficult period for me, and I’m still dealing with the fallout of that situation. In a lot of ways, this past relationship was eclipsing every other relationship in my life and I was living in shadows. There were long stretches of depression and blackness during a lot of this, punctuated by glimpses into a possible future that seemed just forever beyond my reach. I’m hoping to move past this.
“The Darkest of Grays” is a personal record, but do you think that it offers any chance of hope, or is it a descent into blackness? Was it directed at anyone in particular, or was it a study of several different people in your life?
Ralph: I guess the process of dealing with my past mistakes and my descent into the Maelstrom was triggered by the relationship I was living in. To say it was her single fault wouldn’t suit the situation back then. She made mistakes, so did I – I did more. Overall, there was too much heavy carriage from past endeavors with people. Never did I deal with these things, and just moved on and on and on. The same mistakes occurred time and time again. The feeling of being on the run, where the past comes to bury you after all, dominated the better half of almost two years. I felt that I was descending into a pattern that felt uncontrollable. I’ve lived with nightmares for 17 years now, 90% of my nights – in this period they got worse than ever before. When this relationship took place, everything around me collapsed. To write these lyrics kind of took the pressure of my chest. We broke up, I moved away and on, we did the record. Ever since that, a movement away from the past finally took place. So for your question: “The Darkest of Grays” marks a path of falling. It’s my “No More Dreams of Happy Endings”. That was that phase, this is now. I’m still here, and we’re doing a new record right now. This proves that there is always a shed of hope. I found a person to call home, a job I can accept, and I even let a few old friends back into this life. I’m still not a positive person, maybe never will be, but it’s better. That’s why on the record we’re just doing, lyricwise, I stepped away from my own point of view for the fist time.
Now, Mike, we spoke about different shades of darkness. When we spoke at Ieper Fest, we spoke about depression in general. I compared us to our “Idols”, mine being Ian Curtis and yours Henry Rollins. Both of them suffered from depression, but paired with other emotional contributions. In my mind Rollins was/is very claustrophobic, intense, frustrated, angry – a very New York, or let’s say American way. He’s rough, straight to the point in his negativity. Curtis on the other hand is more quiet, weaker, fragile, emotional in his depression. He seems very European. We both admire both artists – did you ever think about or see these mindsets as different? Can origin determine the way you feel these things?
Mike: I never really considered it before, but it kind of makes sense I suppose. In the U.S., there’s this constant pressure to succeed, expand, have bigger muscles, increase sales etc. Of course, none of it is sustainable, yet the the mentality of constantly trying to do better is ingrained in us from childhood. Maybe it’s the immigrant mentality of trying to find a better place which defines the American experience; maybe it’s that spirit driven completely out of proportion but ego.
Ego and drive are not always negative things, but when they are allowed to run unchecked, it creates conflicts within us which leads to guys like Rollins: anger, frustration, intensity, work-obsessed, achievement-obsessed. My impressions of Europe is that ego and hubris aren’t as front-and-center as in the States, there is a bit more introspection, there’s less of that Wild West bravado.
Do you feel that meditating on all of this darkness and depression create a sort of “self-fulfilling prophecy” where you are continually looking at things through a pessimistic lens, or is it more therapeutic in nature?
Ralph: There may be people that benefit in a therapeutic way. The classic “learning from your mistakes” approach helps a lot if you have a certain background of hope. I guess I have this ratio of hope, too. Otherwise I’d given up a long time ago. Still I don’t see a happy end to all of this here. I don’t trust people, because the darkness in our minds searches until it finds – and it is a willing hunter. Often I have tried to break this cycle and start looking at things differently, but found it impossible cracking mistrust and pessimistic views. Whatever I start brings the imminent awareness and fear of possible failure. The statistics, in my book, speak for themselves. So yes, for me, I think this train has left the station for good. Even though right now my life, besides a shitload of stress, feels pretty good. I even found the right person that I want to marry next year. People that know me and hear this news go like “You?” She hears the same thing. Maybe that’s the recipe: if you tag along with someone who knows these patterns too well, you might actually change something – together. I’ve thought about this quite a lot in recent weeks.
Even though I changed my status from loner to ally, I won’t stop embracing solitude. She does too. There is this German quote “Zu Zweit ist man besser alleine.” Approximately it means “together you are better in being alone.” I know you wrapped your head around this topic no too long ago. Do you see chance in this “right” person, or do people in the end just struggle to steal from loneliness a few desperate moments of belonging?
Mike: Humans are by nature pack animals that form groups and communities, our physiology hasn’t changed for thousands of years, so I believe all of this alienation is a reaction to modern society and possibly to monotheistic religious concepts, unnatural constraints placed on us in order to control and make us easier to manage. I feel that man’s natural state is to be surrounded by a small, tight group of individuals. That’s why there are all of these different “scenes” that people latch onto.
The loner archetype is a reaction, a way of running away from the challenge of opening yourself up. I’ve spent, wasted, most of my life in this state, and I can honestly say that it’s a self-fulfilling type of cliché. I always escaped inwardly, even when I was a young boy, I didn’t have many friends until I started getting involved with music. I would spend the weekends reading comic books at my Grandmother’s house, drawing and living inside my head. This has been my coping mechanism. When people get close, I run away, but ultimately that’s not a healthy way to be in the world.
The Buddhist concept of Dharma and Karma comes to mind. They believe that we are destined to relive our lives, making the same mistakes and running through the same cycles until we get it right then we can move on to the next life or phase of life. I’ve tried to apply this to my life
Do you think your new fortune – a lovely woman in your life, someone to share with – might signify a closing of one cycle and the entering of a new cycle for you?
Ralph: Absolutely. She is the best thing that happened to me in, like, forever. It was a rough struggle to get to this point, as at first she didn’t want me by her side at all. I think this fight I fought to get to this “we” was a kind of cleansing process. This period brought abandonment to things that imprisoned a will to step forward. As said before, I wouldn’t call myself a happy person. Maybe never will. But with her a feeling of optimism returned that I had lost for almost ever. There are still things to stumble and fall upon, but it’s getting better.
So with this being said, I think we made a nice turn through our souls’ histories to the present. Again, I have to say this “brother from another mother”-thing with us often seems pretty accurate. This whole piece here was a fun thing to do, especially being untypical for regular interview of people in bands. Nevertheless, let’s give it a “classical” touch by ending it with this:
“Name one book, movie and artist/album that you are hooked on right now”. I will start and yours is the privilege to speak the infamous “last words”.
So for me: I’m currently re-reading Feral Houses book “Love.Sex.Fear.Death – The Inside Story of The Process Church of The Final Judgement” in preparation for the new book about the cult that has just been published. The last movie that really did it for me was “Melancholia.” It’s not as weak as “Antichrist” and combines two aspects that seem like a red chord throughout my life: failing in love and nightmares of the end of the world. Musicwise, the debut of Oakland’s “Alaric” is probably one of the records of the year. Ex-members of Noothgrush and UK Subs play a super dark and heavy mixture of Killing Joke, Amebix, Rudimentary Peni and The Cult. They are unlike any other band right now, and I have high expectations for their next outputs.
Mike: The Alaric stuff is good, I enjoy it as well; likewise “Love, Sex, Fear, Death”. I ordered that back a few years. Robert Moore lives in Staten Island, which I find to be very funny, because that particular part of New York City is, shall we say, unenlightened. One of my favorite hardcore bands from New York, CR, hail from Staten Island, but that’s about it.
As far as books go, I’ve been really into Graham Hancock’s “Supernatural”. It’s an extremely detailed analysis/speculation of psychedelics, shamanism, religion, alien abductions and spirituality. It’s intense. I’ve been listening to a lot of Samhain, particularly “November Coming Fire” and Rowland S. Howard’s final record “Pop Crimes”, two really good Fall records.
I just watched “Don’t Look Now,” the Nicolas Roeg film. For over a decade, people have been telling me to check it out, and I finally set aside some time to watch it. It was a very unsettling film about guilt, death and grief, made in the 70’s with Donald Sutherland and some English chick. It’s the kind of film that sticks in your mind and you catch yourself thinking about it for days afterward.
Anyway, it’s been great doing this, I think we could have gone for months with this, but that would be a little self-indulgent I suppose. I’ll be back in Europe for Roadburn next year, so I’m hoping that we could hang out and hopefully play some shows together.
Ralph: Totally! I hope this comes together. Thanks to CVLT Nation for letting us do this. And keep up the good work.
New Comments