photo by Daryl Darko

Aaron Gregory of Giant Squid wears so many hats that he’d easily clear out a headwear shop. He’s a former fish store owner, a student, a scuba diver, a graphic designer, and the guitarist and vocalist of Giant Squid. Gregory and his bandmates, including his partner Jackie Perez Gratz (also of Grayceon) recently released Cenotes, a more than worthy follow to the critically acclaimed album The Ichthyologist. Cenotes is also a key component to a storyline Gregory is creating for a graphic novel. Gregory’s fascination with the sea started when he watched Jaws as a kid. It scared him shitless, but changed his life. The new father discussed his aquatic fascination and Giant Squid’s new album recently with MetalSucks.

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Oh my fuck, you guys, IT IS 71 DEGREES OUTSIDE. I was gonna stay home and watch Vanilla Ice’s underrated cinemetallic classic, Cool as Ice, but instead I am getting stoned and going for a long, long walk in the sun. Quickly, before I ditch you losers to actually enjoy life, here’s what we did this week:

• God Forbid’s Doc Coyle weighed-in on Sergeant D.’s “band life is for losers” theory.
• We broke the news that hardcore supergroup S.O.S. has signed with Good Fightand got an exclusive report on the status of He is Legend from the band’s manager.
• We debuted new music by Napalm Death (thanks, Decibel!), The Haunted and Clutch.
• We said cel-lo to Grayceon’s Jackie Perez Gratz and got the skinny on the new Today is the Day album from drummer Curran Reynolds.
• We checked out the latest release from Total Fucking Destruction.
• We wondered if women make better metal singers than men.
• We examined the Kid Rock-Confederate flag controversy.
• We watched the worst video of 2011 so far.
• Dummy Nosenothing listened to the new Meshuggah song and then chased an ice cream truck.
• WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK…

Alright, I’m gonna go have some ice cream! ICE CREAM! YYYYAAAAAYYYYY!!!

-AR

Grayceon‘s recent Profound Lore release, All We Destroy, is an album that’s more that worthy of your attention: cellist (!!!)/vocalist Jackie Perez Gratz (who’s also a member of Giant Squid, and has played with Agalloch, Om, and a bunch of other killer bands), finger-pickin’ guitarist Max Doyle, and a drummer Zack Farwell have created an album that’s as haunting and emotional as it is heavy. The top-notch songcraft, combined with Perez Gratz’s ghostly vocals and elegiac cello playing, ensure that there is truly no other band that sounds like Grayceon in the modern metal scene. And that fact increasingly seems to be a miracle.

Grayceon are playing three shows at SXSW this week — you can get all the details here — so now seemed like an ideal time to e-mail Perez Gratz some irritating questions. Luckily for us, she seems to have a good sense of humor.

After the jump, read all of Perez Gratz’s thoughts on the cello, the songwriting process for Grayceon, the cello, the lyrical themes of All We Destroy, the cello, Revolver‘s “Hottest Chicks in Metal” issue, the cello, the ukulele, and the cello.

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Grayceon
All We Destroy
Label – Profound Lore
Release Date – March 1, 2011

To quote a Coalesce album title, there is nothing new under the sun. Wait, shit – that was actually a passage from Ecclesiastes. See what I mean? Forty-odd years since metal’s birth, it’s tough to innovate beyond folding in a genre or influence that you wouldn’t think would work in metal. While I don’t believe that “originality” always trumps craftsmanship and verve in importance, I do miss the early days of my metal listenership, when everything sounded new to my virgin ears (as opposed to my current whore ears).

That’s why I was so stoked to have my face first fucked off by San Francisco’s Grayceon, around the time their self-titled debut came out on Vendlus a few years back. Here was a band that was unique through and through. You don’t find many metal bands with a female lead singer that refuses to play the siren role in some dork’s maiden-rescuing fantasy LARP. You’ll find even fewer bands with a cello as a lead instrument, and even fewer than that which utilize finger-picked electric guitar. Grayceon feature all three. More important than those eyebrow-raising bullet points, Grayceon make a wholly new music, one that grafts medieval cadences and the pastoral textures of early British prog onto a bedrock of supremely headbangable, ornate riffing. And there are no seams. Grayceon make metal, yes (and amazingly heavy metal at that), but they draw equally on …And Justice for All as they do Guillaume de Machaut.

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Blame it on the rigors of moving home cities yet again, or changing drummers as frequently as Spinal Tap, or trying to best their universally hailed first album Metridium Field: Giant Squid sound exhausted on The Ichthyologist. More depressed than angry. Not so overtly metal. Lethargic in their rhythms, loose in their playing. Maybe it’s all intentional, given the stark emotional terrain of the source material – based on band leader Aaron Gregory’s graphic novel of the same name, The Ichthyologist records the thoughts of a numbed narrator as he turns to the sea to escape the pain of personal tragedy and loss. Gregory’s lyrics dwell in dank, lightless places. If on Metridium Field Giant Squid were skimming the sea’s surface in search of their namesake seabeast, this one finds them sinking, pulled down into the fathomless depths.

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