Interviewing A.L.N. of MIZMOR and Andy Gibbs from THOU
This week, Doomed & Stoned brings you a double feature, interviewing members from the bands Mizmor and Thou, which recently split an LP for the ages in ‘Myopia’ (2022). Check out Shawn Gibson’s interview with A.L.N. of Portland’s מזמו (Hebrew for “psalm,” transliterated Mizmor) and guitarist Andy Gibbs from the storied NOLA band Thou.
In Conversation with A.L.N. of מזמור
The idea to work together was born organically from being longtime friends. I wanted to do a split though and Bryan insisted on doing a collaboration because it was more interesting, which I now totally agree with. I wanted to take the quick and easy route, each band make a song and swap vocals on it, sort of thing, but I am so glad we took the time to write a full double album from the ground up with each other. I really feel what we made is special, simply due to the process of creating a music baby with loved ones. (laughs)
Myopia is nearsightedness and or lack of imagination, foresight , or intellectual insight. Who has Myopia? Can or will they be able to see in the future?
All of humanity, I’d say, though some folks more than others. Due to the collaborative nature of the album, there is more than one point of view expressed in the lyrics. On the whole though, the album is about identity, the self, and the inner and outer conflict this construct creates. It’s about the formation of the mind as a conglomeration of ideas and ways of doing things that are picked up over time. These bits of information propagate, but not based on the good of the host, rather for their own sake. Basically, destructive behavior can still become prevalent in a population and every person would be wise to identify intellectually cancerous bits and eradicate them. That’s the zoomed-out view of the record’s theme. The more zoomed in view explores character defects and flaws through reflecting on personal experience.
“Prefect” gets me pumped up! It’s the perfect blending of sounds of both Mizmor and Thou! great opening track to punch you in the face. Please tell me about this song.
Thank you! I see this song as an effective overture for the rest of the album, giving you a sampling of the different sounds that you are about to be subjected to for the next 75 minutes. It’s also the shortest song. Lyrically, this is a song that Bryan took the lead on. It’s about discipline, obedience and failure in the face of ideals. It also touches on recognizing personal flaws and being incapable of change.
So you and Brian both do vocals, right? Tell me about writing this album and the logistics of writing and recording this behemoth album of devastating heaviness!
Yes, Bryan and I share the vocal duty. We divided the songs in two and each took the lead in half, leaving space for the other on each one. The music was written by Andy and I myself. I wrote five songs and he wrote three. We traded riffs via email for a while and taught each other full songs over Zoom eventually so that when I flew to New Orleans to practice, we already had an idea of what we were doing so as to not waste time. I made three trips, two for writing and rehearsal and one for tracking the record. The schedule was jammed packed – very tiring and very fun.
Are there any previous collaborations with Thou?
There is one extra song that came from these sessions: “Night” (Zola Jesus cover). Emma Ruth Rundle is also on this song. We made this recording for a Scared Bones compilation. Thou has done other collaborations but this is my first time working with them.
Will there be future collaborations in the future?
I will definitely be collaborating with other artists in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thou and I did something else too.
“Drover of Man” is an awesome blackened doom song. Please tell me what it’s about.
This song is about what separates mankind into tribes, what polarizes us and gives us our identities. There is a sense of sheepishness expressed in this song, as if we are mostly blind to this process even to the point of being herded off a cliff. We are impassioned and radical these days and I think it can be helpful to zoom out and understand why, making any necessary changes to improve our wellbeing as a people.
Who did the album artwork?
Aaron Horkey. I love how his work displays natural growth coming out of human heads. So perfect.
Will the “Manifold Lens” help the Myopia?
Not directly. The “Manifold Lens” refers to the myriad of perspectives in interpreting reality. I personally think there are better perspectives than others to hold, given data and evidence. The song is about a couple different things, but my lyrics within the track are about how ideas can either kill us, enslave us, help us or save us. Something with that much power deserves to be understood.
You are one of my favorite heavy bands that I consider very heavy. What heavy bands are you listening to these days that you feel is crushing it?
Thank you! I see so many homies out there crushing it like Primitive Man, Full of Hell, Thou, Yob, Emma Ruth Rundle, and Lingua Ignota.
Tell me about your brand of tea!
Wit’s Friend is a collaboration between myself and the tea company Pitch Black North out of Canada that we released in promotion of my last release, Wit’s End. It’s a spiced black tea influenced by Constant Comment and earl grey. It’s got bergamot oil, orange peel, clove, and cinnamon mixed with black tea. Very yummy and kind of Christmas-y tasting.
Interview with Andy Gibbs of Thou
How was Oblivion Access Fest?
It was good. Honestly it was a little overwhelming. There was a lot going on. There were a lot of bands there. There were people we knew. A lot of people I wanted to see.
Is that chaos as a performer at a festival where you have so much to do and so much you want to do?
Yeah, it’s kind of hard. When we first started doing festivals and stuff’ I would feel like I had to do everything. I had to see all the bands I wanted to see. If we had friends, I made it a point to see every friend. Really show up for all the sets, all that stuff. I don’t have the same energy anymore. I try to be selective with it.
It’s a lot to keep up with.
Plus the travel too. Wears me down. But it was really good. We did 2 shows in a day. One was in the afternoon, and one was at midnight. We had this crazy 10-hour window of downtime. The first show was outside in the heat. It wasn’t too bad we had fans on stage, but the crowd was right in the sun. Honestly I didn’t see a lot of people drinking water.
I was a little concerned for them. I even said something like “y'all need to drink some water!” It was pretty good. I was surprised how it all went. It’s a really ambitious festival with so many bands. I thought it might be a logistical nightmare, but it went pretty ok.
Awesome! Who had the idea for Myopia?
I can’t really remember how the collaboration initially came out. It kind of happened organically, I guess. I want to say that Liam had reached out to us first but I’m not positive if that’s true. We had talked about it a little bit. He had sent some demos to us. He had a lot of material already, already to go.
I took some of that and I wrote a couple things. He came here and we had these few days of practicing and writing and then we would go in the studio and cut a demo. We did that a couple times and then he came back and we did the record for real. He really did a lot of the work, honestly because he had so much material to work with. I think I only contributed two songs. Three, three of them were mine. He really brought a lot of material to work with which was refreshing because I was in a bit of a rut at the time. I found it hard to bust out material. Very well appreciated.
The first song on Myopia is “Prefect.” This song really blends Mizmor and Thou together perfectly! Still blown away by the whole album and the collaboration! “Prefect” is a brilliant opening track on the album!
Yeah, that was kind of the easiest of the songs to get down. It was almost like, I don’t want to say it was obvious but most natural of the tracks, you know?
Also because of the way it’s structured, the riffs involved, it was the easiest one for us to play. It’s a good one that we can break out of. We knew that would be one that we would do at Roadburn. It was easiest for us to get together, there are only a handful of parts in that song. That was a good thesis statement on what we wanted the album to encompass. It touches on a lot of areas that are covered later on in the album.
How was the actual writing and recording of this collaborative album, Myopia? I think you guys are in the Louisiana area and A.L.N./Mizmor is in Oregon right?
Yeah he came down here. just because he is one person and we weren’t all going to travel up there.
We just had these long writing sessions in our practice space and then he would stay over at my house and afterwards we would all go out and have a beer and hang out. It was good. The writing sessions were pretty long because we wanted to get as much done as possible. The first trip he came down, I think we were doing like 2 or 3 songs a day, writing wise. They were already structured. The songs I wrote were pretty much finished. The songs he wrote were pretty much finished. It was a matter of teaching everyone and moving a part around here or there with a harmony here or there. We recorded everything here as well. Our guy who records all of our stuff, he lives here and his studio is right down the hall from our studio space. He is the same person we did all the demos with. He already knew what we needed. We recorded everything in a week or less. Five days maybe.
We did all the basic tracks in like two days. Then did everything else, overdubs and vocals. Stuff like that. It was fairly painless. Some of these songs are really long with a lot of twists and turns.
We had to record some of the songs piecemeal. Record half of it and people are having to go back. We had a lot of mistakes to fix because the songs were pretty new to us and there are a lot of moving parts. Uh overdubs and re-recording. It took a while to get it just so.
I would imagine on an album like this.
The main thing was really getting good drum takes, which we were able to do in a few days. That was pretty good. The recording experience wasn’t too different from what we would normally do. It was fun!
It’s neat to hear Bryan’s vocals and then Mizmor’s vocals. Bryan has great vocals for Thou’s brand of sludge and then A.L.N.’s voice sounding great for black metal vocals.
It can be tough. You have to figure out how to make room for both of those things. It’s a challenge in the mixing too. Where to put everybody when you have that many people. but yeah, I am happy with how all that turned out. There was a lot of compromise and discussion about how loud things would be and how the vocals would be, how they would be distributed and all that stuff. I think everyone is happy with how it turned out. I hope so.
I hope so too! It amazed me just seeing the album artwork with it saying Mizmor and Thou! These guys got together and made a collaborative album! Can you tell me some of the gear you used in the writing recording of Myopia?
Mostly I think, mostly. I know what I used. I did the same thing I always use. I used my Music Man HD 130. I had that going through my rat pedal, the '80s rat with the chip in it. I had that and an Earthquaker avalanche run reverb combo thing. The way we always record we do a clean DI as well for re-amping. Everybody had that in case we needed to double up a track. Matthew played an EVH model. It’s basically the PV 5150 but they changed it now. Now it’s like a different thing. Maybe it’s still the 5150 but it looks different. Anyway, one of those PV EVH 5150 amps. I think he had a delay pedal but a lot of times he doesn’t even do that anymore. He just goes straight in. He uses the distortion too. Liam(Mizmor) used a combo amp. I know he uses a Fender combo amp. I’m having trouble remembering if it’s a Deville or not. That’s something you can find on your own. I don’t want to name the wrong amp. (laughs) He’s got a pedal board full of shit that I don’t know! Can’t even speculate on that.
It’s crazy these days guys just build their own petals for their needs and sound they want!
Matthew (Thou) and I are not petal guys at all.
I would say it could get carried away.
Some people make good use of theirs. Honestly, we really never had the money to spend on it.
So for us we just use a lot of stock gear. I still have the same guitar. Peavey 4x12 with stock speakers that I have been using since 2006!
For people like Liam or Emma, she has a big ol’ spaceship pedal board. They both make good use of it but it’s a bit too much for me. I don’t want to carry that stuff around anyway.
The bass, I think he just played through a SVT amp head. one of the Boss distortion pedals.
Awesome. Drover Of Man is another song that stuck out to me. What can you tell me about that song?
That was the first thing I wrote for the collaboration. I wish I had some inspiring story. I can tell you how I wrote it. What I do is what I’m doing right now which is sit on my couch and noodle around until I hit on something like a chord that sounds cool. Then I go over to my practice amp and then turn my phone around and hit record and get myself playing it.(laughs) When I get to practice, “what do you think about this?” It was hard for me to figure out what kind of thing I wanted to bring to the table. I knew that Liam was going to bring; I heard his material which was really reminiscent of Thou’s older records. I heard a lot of Hell-sounding riffs. I wanted to make sure what I brought was going to be different and kind of balance some of that out. I knew he was going for more of an old school vibe with some lumbering riffs. I specifically wanted to bring something more emotional sounding. I’m just pretty sick of writing riffs. I mean (laughs) it’s been like 18 years or something! I wasn’t just going to pull out another stoner riff. I wanted to do something complicated.
That was a good blend of things. There really wasn’t much that we changed with it after I brought it(Drover Of Man) to everyone. Pretty much it was as exactly as I wrote it. I was happy how that came out. I was worried it was going to be too boring and that there weren’t enough riffs and people would want there to be more heaviness going on.
I think you need that. To create that balance like you said. It’s one of the songs off of Myopia that stuck out to me and I am a big fan of it!
A.L.N./Mizmor his answers for what that song is about, I was blown away. He is very in-depth about the meanings of songs.
Yeah. (laughs) for sure. He puts a lot of thought into it…
Very philosophical. Very deep.
It’s funny, the contrast. He’s coming at this song with a sophisticated approach. I know he put a lot of thought into what he wanted to say. Then you ask me “ so uh what do you think of that song?” “I don’t know man!” just like fucking around. It’s good to have that contrast.
Definitely. That’s how it comes together organically.
It’s not even something I think about. It’s just the way I’ve been writing music for all my life. Just fucking around until something sounds good.
I had a good friend Jody that would play guitar and it would be tough to talk to him because he is listening to his music. We couldn’t even pass a joint to him sometimes because he was so into the guitar and what sound was coming out. We left him alone and he hung out when he was done.
Is this the first collaboration with Mizmor?
Is there maybe something in the future?
I never want to rule anything out. Aside from The Body we have never collaborated with anybody twice.
Maybe, maybe not. The way Emma (Ruth Rundle) answered this with someone one time was like, she was saying" I don’t know if we’ll do another record ever, but someone will probably come rip a solo on a record or I’ll throw a vocal on someone else’s record.“ Even if it’s not a full collaboration, these are our cohorts, we do stuff together. We haven’t put out a full length in a while. We should probably be getting on that! (laughs)
I’m a fan of all the stuff you have put out there. The Nirvana covers, Sabbath, big fan.
Thanks! People don’t realize all this stuff.
Thou has put out many albums.
Historically, yeah. Some of it was like one big session that covers a lot of material. Like the Nirvana covers for instance. The oldest recording on the compilation of Nirvana covers is probably from like 2008.
Some of those are old. It’s a whole bunch of different shit. It seems like we did a lot of stuff but some of that stuff is old.
Always neat to have that in your pocket. Songs, EPs, full albums, etc.
We did a lot of shit before Bandcamp and Spotify. So, it’s like we have to catch up. We were just keeping records in print, and you could always download digital directly off our site. We had no streaming presence until a handful of years ago. We had to come up with a way to integrate all those recordings into one digital thing. People are like, “My favorite Thou record is probably Algiers.” I’m like well” that’s not an album to me at all.“ (laughs) It’s like a collection of a bunch of shit we did in like 2009 or whatever. We have so many different sessions on there, it’s not cohesive.
To me it’s like the little EP’s and full lengths are what’s real. The covers are fun and the compilations are cool but I have to make sure we balance it out with some meat and potatoes, you know?
Andy that is all I have for ya.
If you have anything in the future coming out I will gladly do a review or interview to spread the word of thou!
Thanks again, means a lot!
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