Belfast’s Slomatics are the Masters & Johnson of the wumgasm. They know this stuff forwards, backwards, slower, and lower. BF-ORs? Uh, yeah dude, BF-ORs. Enormous ones, in fact. The kind forcing you to circle the parking lot because you don’t want to cut short the bass bath. The ones you hum until you find oneness, letting your chakras feed upon the amp’s howling power. The type of riff that ROF pisses off ROF ROF a dog a couple miles away ROF.
Boy, the things these three men can do with six strings, skins, and some electricity.
So, if you thought last year’s The Future Past and its hell’s-boiler tone set the standard for speaker S&M, start anchoring your valuables with earthquake putty. Because, good lord, is Estron heavy. We’re talking a family of blue whales after Thanksgiving thirds tubby. It comes, it wums, it leaves you to pick up what’s left of your house. And, it does it with that classic, desert-y, Man’s Ruin flair. Your body is punished, but your brain loves it, mainlining snnnrts of hooks and sending catchy sext shivers to all pleasure centers.
What else do we have to say to get you into this Slomatics today? Oh, yeah, right. We should just shut up. Here:
Of course, we had to know more. We got in touch with David, six of Slomatic’s twelve strings. We asked five questions, he gave us five answers.
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Estron, your fourth LP, is an absolute crusher. It has definitely attributed to some hearing loss on my side since I can’t stop jamming it. Over the span of my spins, I’m picking up on a sort of continuity between the tracks. Is there a theme present? An underlying concept? And is it tied at all to the killer cover art? (I love it, it looks like a ’70s SF book jacket.) If not, is it possible to give us a rundown on each song?
Thanks for the kind words! You’ve absolutely right, there is a theme, in fact there’s a fully developed concept. We’ve been asked quite a bit for the details, but we really want to allow the listener to make up their own mind what it’s about and get their own take on it. The idea, however pretentious it sounds, is to take the listener on a journey, and create a certain mood throughout.
Yes, the artwork reflects the story, or at least part of it. The songs are meant to flow in a certain way, and the intention is that they lead into each other – I guess it’s up to you to decide whether or not that works! Sorry to avoid answering the question!
What’s the studio process like with you guys? All bands have the opportunity/ability to be loud, but Slomatics is one of the few able to convey that heft at any volume. (i.e. In the car: huge. Dialled down before bed: huge.) Are there any knob-twiddling tricks you guys can impart?
We have the studio process well nailed down now, having used the same studio and engineer for several years. I’m really pleased you get a sense of volume from the record, that’s certainly the aim. We record live and at full volume, and there’s no cheating with plug-ins or anything. We use our own gear in the studio too which helps. We try to separate the guitar tracks a bit, by overdubbing both guitars with a second track, and we usually go for takes which have more bass or treble dialled in than in our live sound, just to try to bring out all the frequencies.
There’s a couple of things we do to try and augment the sound, on Estron we used a synth to thicken the lows, and a piano and kettledrum quite a bit to add depth to the sound. We’re always on a tight budget for recording, so I guess we make sure we’ve thought it all through before we get there.
Going hand-in-hand with the last question, we’d be wasting a golden opportunity to not inquire about your set-up. Mind taking us through your rig?
Have you got all day?! Actually, mine isn’t that complicated, it’s just that most of it has been modded or tweaked. I play a Gibson SG, and old special from ’92. I replaced all the hardware and rewired it, and use Bareknuckle pickups. We use a sort of Neil Young meets Neurosis tuning, and only ever play flatwound jazz strings. It’s really the only guitar I’ve used in the band right from the start.
Pedals have changed a bit over time, but the main ones stay on the board. I’ve a couple of delays, an analog MXR and a Space Echo re-issue, a GH Retro-Sky, a modded Phase 90, and a Micro-Pog octave which I only really use on clean stuff. I’ve got an E-Bow which I need to be told to stop using; I’d have that thing everywhere. I used a pile of fuzz pedals, my old DAM Meathead and an EFE DopePriest, along with a few newer ones – a couple of Dunwich Cthulus, an Eldritch Kraken and a Moose Dobsky.
My amp/cab haven’t changed in years, I use an Orange/Matamp 120, into an Orange 4×12 with Vintage 30 speakers. Chris uses the same amp, but has this weird oversized 4×10 guitar cab fitted with bass speakers. He plays a Gibson Les Paul standard, again heavily modded. He only has one pickup, a custom made Bulldog P90 in the neck position. Sounds insanely bassy. He uses a bunch of delays, a Teese Wah, and used a DAM Superbee, the Dopepriest and two Dunwich Cthulus. He has this Greenhouse Chorus/Vibrato pedal which he uses a lot, too. Oh and we used an Ampeg V4 and an 8×10 to double a track, too.
I’m honestly not sure of the synths, I know Marty uses a Micro-Korg, but we had a Moog Voyager, a Farfisa organ, piano, and I think an MS20 too. Marty’s kit is a custom build, built to the spec of John Bonham’s. Specifically the Madison Square Gardens kit, now that’s nerdy!
Why are you into big riffs? What I mean is, do you derive catharsis from walls of distortion? Is it, like Boris said, a prayer to the amplifier. Do you remember your first big riff or the time when it clicked and you thought, Yep, I’ve got to do this?
A prayer to the amplifier, that’s a good way to see it! It’s definitely about that sound, yeah. The Part Chimp guitar players said they felt they played their amps rather than their guitars, and I think that maybe applies to us too.
Catharsis, absolutely. We all live very normal lives, have families, kids and jobs, so to hook up every week and feel that wall of fuzzy noise is something that’s a total release. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s something we need – regardless of whether we were recording or gigging, we’d absolutely have to do this. I’m not suggesting it’s like meditation, but it really does clear the mind and allow you to focus on one thing alone, just the riff.
I actually do remember when it all clicked. I was a very late starter to playing guitar, in my late 20s. I’d tried sporadically to play guitar over the years but just couldn’t get it. The stuff I liked as a teenager, like Voivod and Metallica, was just so complex. I had some time on my hands, and had just hooked up again with our drummer Marty, who had disappeared to London and had a few “lost years.” I knew he played drums, so decided I’d force myself to learn a few chords and write some songs. Through sheer force of will we came up with some two-riff songs in dropped tuning, then bought an old Marshall head and played them at loud volume. A lad in the practice space we used offered us a gig opening for the hardcore band Catharsis, and from that moment on I think I realised this was something that I was always going to do. You’re absolutely right, it really is a case of got to do this.
From a compositional standpoint, you guys put a ton of sweat into your hooks where other outfits might just let the decibels do the talking. Possible to take us through your writing process? Do you guys start from humble beginnings, a single acoustic guitar, maybe? Or, do these things just congeal through jam sessions?
That’s very kind of you to say, and it’s great you think so, as we do put a lot of effort into being as melodic as possible, although I’m sure that to the casual listener that may not seem to be the case. I think quite a few bands in the doom scene really have their roots in hardcore punk, whereas, to be honest, we’re a lot closer to the indie rock thing. We all grew up listening to metal, but pretty early on got into bands like Ride, Pavement, Mudhoney, Sonic Youth, and all that noisy indie rock. Bands like Fugazi were a huge deal for all of us, that sense of melody and ultra heavy aggression, too. Then stuff like the Melvins and Kyuss came along, and we all gravitated towards those riffs again.
In the practice room we jam all the time, usually big long half hour jams, it’s not like any of us come along with fully developed ideas or whatever. I suppose we may each have ideas for dynamics or whatever, but those tend to change once we start playing. If we hit on something that sticks, we’ll focus on it a bit more, like maybe just a riff if it could be something a bit more developed.
With Estron and the whole concept, we had quite a specific idea of how we wanted the record to flow, so we wrote with clear ideas about the feel of the songs, which actually made the whole process much simpler. Like we needed the longer songs for the end of the record, so once we’d nailed a couple of ideas for those songs we focused more on shorter, more uplifting stuff. We’re our own harshest critics too, and thankfully no one takes offence at ideas being voted out. Genuinely everyone contributes equally to the process, although the vocals and vocal melodies are entirely Marty’s. He works really hard at getting melodies that fit, and aren’t just randomly shouted words. For us the difference between bands like Melvins, or even Electric Wizard, and the other more generic doom bands are the vocals, so we try to get something in there which adds to the songs and gives it a lift. Who doesn’t like a song they can sing along to?
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Slomatic’s Estron is available now through Head of Crom Records.
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