EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SYLOSIS GUITARIST JOSH MIDDLETON
U.K. prog-death-thrashers (yeah, I said it) Sylosis are without a doubt one of the young bands that interest me most in 2009, thanks in no small part to the urging of several MetalSucks readers. Their Nuclear Blast debut Conclusion of an Age is a refreshing burst of modern thrash and death metal, rolled into a nicely accessible little package and sprinkled with prog influences that show the maturity and restraint of a band twice their young age. We’ll post an official MetalSucks review shortly, but in the meantime I was able to catch up with guitarist Josh Middleton to ask him a few questions about the formation of the band, the events that led to their deal with Nuclear Blast, their upcoming touring plans and their metal heroes.
You guys are newcomers to the scene — in the U.S., anyway — so I think that not very many people on this side of the pond have heard of Sylosis. Can you talk a little about the formation of your band, and how the deal with Nuclear Blast came about?
We formed as a bunch of kids at school when we were 15 back in 2000. We didn’t really play much live for the first few years, especially outside of Reading, and over time we went through all kinds of lineup changes trying to find people who can play this kind of music tight. The lineup now, our ages range from like 20 – 24. We released a couple of EPs in 2006 and 2007 on a small indie label in the UK called In At The Deep End and that’s when we started touring properly. We were on a UK headline tour in November 2007 and randomly got an email from Nuclear Blast saying they’d love to work with us and the deal happened really quickly after that. They literally just stumbled upon our myspace page.
What was it like to work with a “major” label this time around?
We wanted to save doing our first proper album for a label with worldwide distro and Nuclear Blast was like the number one choice so we’re stoked. They’re obviously so professional and not having to worry about covering our own recording costs was awesome, haha.
How is Conclusion of An Age a progression from your past albums?
The two EPs we did before were both recorded as demos to send out to labels to get bigger deals. We put the entire first demo up (which became Casting Shadows) on our myspace, and IATDE records said they’d like to release it as an EP and the same thing followed with The Supreme Oppressor EP.
Musically, we had all the same influences we do now but included some more European, At The Gates-y kind of riffing which then got assosiated with metalcore which wasn’t how we wanted to come across. For the album we tuned up our guitars to standard and just thought about all the classic thrash albums we grew up listening to like And Justice For All by Metallica or Arise by Sepultura and a lot of the bay area stuff so that’s where the focus is and I guess it’s the foundation of our sound. However, we like to include loads of different influences. Progressive stuff like Opeth or Symphony X, old school death metal like Morbid Angel and melodic shit like Soilwork.
You guys will be touring with Black Dahlia Murder, Cephalic Carnage and Psycroptic shortly. Is this your biggest tour to date? Are you excited?
I think this will be our biggest tour, yeah. We’ve done some in the past with bands like Cryptopsy, Suicide Silence and A Life Once Lost etc but I think the attendance will be the best on the BDM tour. We’re really stoked as we’re into all the bands on the tour. We’ve been huge fans of Psycroptic for like 6 years now so it’ll be killer to finally get to see them. I think our bassist Carl saw them live in the UK around 5 years ago. The A Life Once Lost dudes spoke highly of the BDM guys so I look forward to having some beers with them and talking to Trevor about ‘water zombies’ haha (it’s from the new Cannibal Corpse DVD).
You guys are pretty young; do you ever suffer from “imposter syndrome”? As in… you kind of question how you even got to this level, and if you’re worthy of it?
I don’t think so. I think because we were so young when we started I kind of wish we’d got to where we are much earlier as it’s been nearly 9 years now, but I guess I’m glad we didn’t get picked up sooner because we’re only just approaching settling on a sound we’re truly happy with.
Who are some of your influences and musical heroes?
For general songwriting Chuck Schuldiner from Death is probably the biggest. I love brutal music and I love melodic and epic music so there’s no denying a huge inspiration comes from Death. Especially albums like Symbolic and Individual Thought Patterns. Then next I guess it would have to be James Hetfield for kind of the same reasons I guess. Guitar-wise Dimebag’s always been my biggest idol which people don’t always realize because I don’t think there’s a noticeable influence in my leads.
Nuclear Blast seems to be touting you guys as “thrash.” Do you agree/disgaree with this genre categorization?
We completely agree. We’ll be the first to admit we’re not a ‘strict’ thrash band because we include influences from various metal genres but thrash is the foundation of our sound. Bands like Heathen and Forbidden – that really old school heavy riffing style, but never shying away from being melodic.
What do you think of genre categorizations in general?
I think they’re fine. Magazines and webzines etc all need to be able to catagorize bands so the readers get a rough idea of what this band sounds like. We’d rather be called thrash than anything else and that’s the easiest way to do it for us. We’ve been called thrash or modern thrash etc – it’s all good.
Van Halen or Van Hagar?
Van Halen.
What do you think you have to do to take Sylosis to the next level?
The second album. I guess the main thing we need to do is just tour our asses off for the next year-and-a-bit but we’ve gotten started writing the second album and it’s shaping up really well.
Any final thoughts?
Thanks for the interview. Our album hits US stores at the end of January. If you’re a fan of metal in general – pick up a copy! Hopefully we’ll being touring the US at least once before the year is out!
-VN
