originally written by Erik Highter
In a just world, Argus would roam across the landscape, laying waste to every village they pass like the great rock gods of yore. Like Conan, they would crush their enemies, see them driven before them, and hear the lamentation of their women.
But this is not a just world; it is a fallen one, where a band as consistently great as Argus gets sneered at by the djentry. This hasn’t stopped Argus from laying down album after album of the highest quality classic metal, or from tearing it up live whenever they can.
It’s been three years since we last reached out to anyone from the band, and though Cap’s long talk with Brian “Butch” Balich is timeless, we felt that we had been remiss. Thankfully, the band was more than happy to answer a few questions from Craig Hayes and myself in between rehearsals for upcoming gigs and writing songs for their fourth album.
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I don’t know if you guys would agree, but from this listener’s perspective, you’ve become a more streamlined band over the years. Not in terms of bringing less grunt, energy or ideas to the table; but your sound has become even steelier, more directly classic metal. Do you have have an end goal in mind regarding your sound, an exemplar you’re aiming to reach?
JASON MUCIO: I agree with you, on Beyond the Martyrsthis was a bit of a conscious goal. We kept some doomy elements in there, but, overall we wanted something with a little more energy in the way of the tempo and riffs. In some ways, this approach was less inhibited in its conception from the perspective that we wrote the music we wanted to without trying to fit into any specific genre. We all love classic metal and the way we do it just ends up being a bit heavier and “Argus-esque.”
ERIK JOHNSON: I think the less doom/more metal turn that Beyond the Martyrs took was part of a natural progression for the band – a desire to write fairly concise/more immediate “rockin” tunes. We’re all a bunch of old farts who grew up listening to rock and metal during the classics era of the late 60s, 70s, and on through the 80s, and, I think that shows through here.
My first cassette tapes at age 7 were Quiet Riot’s Metal Health, Def Leppard’s Pyromania, and a compilation that had a host of great metal on it including Maiden’s “Run to the Hills.” Before that, it was my older sisters’ hand-me-down 45s: Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc.
Lately, I’ve pretty much alienated myself from most newer music/releases coming out – I’ve grown quite weary of listening to music in general, truthfully. If I do listen to music, it’s usually something nostalgic from my childhood or from that era that I missed out on (eg. older Riot, UFO, Scorpions, ZZ Top) for one reason or another. So I guess this is where I was coming from during the writing process and my contributions to BTM.
Also, the production on the new album is more straight-forward than its predecessors. Whereas the debut and particularly Boldly Stride had a definitive atmosphere to the recordings – with Beyond the Martyrs, it was a conscious decision to make a more in-your-face “rockin” sounding record – similar in production to the classics without being lo-fi sounding if that makes sense. I think in terms of the end goal for Argus, it’s always simply been about writing good songs that we enjoy playing and listening to; however, throughout the last decade, we’ve gotten better at cutting the fat so to say.
While Boldly Stride the Doomed was not exactly an album full of sunshine and lollipops, Beyond the Martyrs is a much weightier listen, with both a heavier musical tone and darker lyrical content. Butch sounds like he’s rending his soul on “The Coward’s Path,” and “Trinity” makes it seem like Oppenheimer underplayed his hand with the “Destroyer of Worlds” quote. These are some of the bleakest songs in recent memory; they’re doom in a literal sense. If you don’t mind me asking, what fueled this turn? Was this a case of darker lyrics requiring a change in musical tone, or vice versa? Or was it something else altogether?
BUTCH BALICH: As anyone in the band will tell you regarding my writing habits – I’m usually flying by the seat of my pants. Heading into vocal sessions I had maybe 70% of the vocal melodies done…maybe. I had very few lyrics written. I struggled over the time between albums with writer’s block. I had so little idea of what I wanted to sing about.
My usual process is those guys write the music. I’ll give my input on what I like as we all do, and, then when we’re happy with the riffs and general layout, I take recordings of the songs and hum and sing along. My first goal is to figure out the mood I feel the music suggests to me. From there I develop lyrics to fit that mood and emotion. Then we tailor the arrangements so it all fits. I prefer to mix it up a bit from personal to historical to literature – keeps me from becoming overbearing with the personal and challenges me when I am adapting fiction or history and keeps it interesting for me as a writer and I’d like to think for listeners.
I know I wanted “By Endurance We Conquer” to be about the Shackleton expedition – for whatever reason that song from the start suggested an epic struggle and the man versus terrible conditions in the ice and sea just fit in my head. I’d been wanting to work with the Oppenheimer quote for a while, pre-dating this album actually….and once I realized it fit as the chorus and the tone of the song was so heavy I went that direction. I’m very happy with how that one came out.
My personal life has really been a mess for the last several years and that fed into this album quite a bit …. “Four Candles Burning,” “No Peace Beyond the Line,” “The Hands of Time Are Bleeding,” and “The Coward’s Path” are all reflections of that…all autobiographical really. And this is why an otherwise more in-your-face album is darker lyrically. It’s the headspace I was in. Leave it to me to take some of that material and emerge with darker melodies and lyrics than others might have.
I find that two things push my writing into the zone I want it to be in – personal turmoil and the chaos and pressure of recording. Yes, I become an insanely difficult person to deal with when I’m on deck in the studio. I’m writing words up to the minute I start singing sometimes.
It gets worse every album too because I’m competing against myself to be a better writer melodically and lyrically and I’m very hard on myself. So, it really was more a case that my own moods informed the lyrics rather than changing our music to fit them. There were much happier directions we could have taken some of the songs but that’s just not where I am creatively. And I can tell you now – the next album is going to follow in that same vein.
ERIK: I will attest that Butch is an absolute procrastinator when it comes to the writing process – especially when it comes to finishing up the lyrics. We give him a ton of shit about it because at the end of the day you have to finish the album and deliver it to the label.
But, in all fairness, even the music was still being written right up until we hit the studio (with some final ideas being fleshed out during the sessions). This has been the case for both BSTD and BTM.
With regards to Beyond the Martyrs, we also had the added pressure of a two week EU tour booked. Both the label and the band wanted the album out prior to going over so we could properly promote it. So, with all the stress of needing to finalize the album on schedule (and let me tell you we cut it very close this time), I think we all fed off of this and redirected that energy during the recording process.
Perhaps this added a sense of urgency/aggressiveness to the tone of the music. I would like to believe in the metaphysics of that being the end result. But, being a smaller band with a finite budget for the studio, you can’t think about it too much – you just have to do it and hope for the best. In the end, I imagine being a bunch of slackers, combined with a less than tranquil few years for some of us, had some bearing on how those albums turned out.
Like your contemporaries in Slough Feg or Pharaoh, Argus draws and builds on the sounds of hard rock, doom, NWOBHM, and US power metal. Do you guys feel any kinship for what’s happening in the wider metal scene these days, with metal seemingly intent on splitting into never-ending sub-genres and featuring hot topic hit bands every week?
ERIK: I can’t speak for the band, but I personally don’t think I have a strong connection with much newer metal being released these days. Anything newer that’s remotely mainstream, i’m typically not fond of at all. Even some of the fringe/underground stuff – bands that I may have liked at one point, are a chore to listen to.
This wasn’t always the case. I used to be into a bunch of different stuff throughout my life spanning the complete metal spectrum from glam to grind. I worked in a record store and would listen to tons of releases coming through the shop in the late 90s/early 2000s. Many of these from the bigger “underground” labels at the time (Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Relapse, etc.) as we received many promo discs from local reps in the Pittsburgh region. I started to notice the stratification of the genre continue as the years went on. Not sure what the purpose of this was – I suppose people, in general, like things to fit neatly filed into some kind of box. Either that, or on the flip side, it’s a marketing angle to make a band sound more interesting than it actually is or appeal to a broader audience base.
I’ve stopped looking for and researching bands. Lately, I can’t find much enjoyment in listening to newer bands or even older bands (I’ve liked all my life) releasing new material for that matter. There are some exceptions, but, they are few and far. If I come across a band and it’s labeled something absurd like “occult/doom/blackened thrash/noisecore/a la mode,”
there’s a 100% chance I’m not clicking on any link to their site, streaming media, etc. The scene/genre demographics and “cult” mystique factor hold little interest for me at all anymore. I don’t know if I’m just bored/annoyed/impatient with it or just too old and lazy to care. Probably all the above.
Touring and selling albums is obviously a really important component in keeping a band moving forward. However, it is harder than ever to mount a tour that will recoup its costs, and people seem more inclined to stream a record and quickly move onto the next thing. How much has this affected Argus? Is it disheartening? What can the metal scene – bands, fans, press, etc. – do to change this state of affairs?
BUTCH: All the big magazines are in the pocketbooks of the big labels. We have friends and supporters at several of these publications, yet, we can’t get an interview? Why?
Because our European PR company sucks for starters. Because our label is smaller and can’t spend the ad cash the big dogs can? There comes a point where magazines start to become catalogs for the majors rather than actually trying to push good, newer bands. We’re well into the digital age. No one wants to pay for anything anymore, and what fans don’t or won’t recognize is that for every time they download our album on some shyster’s blog site that hurts us badly in terms of gaining support from promoters, hurts our label, keeps us from moving to a bigger label…because the industry is still working from the notion of sales driving everything.
So, if fans want to help, they can please consider buying the album rather than downloading it. Come see us live when we’re in your town. Buy merch. Spread the word about our show. Shit – FILM us at our shows PLEASE. Spread that shit – we’re a great live band – we are getting little to no respect from promoters for touring opportunities and getting on festivals, yet, our reputation and word of mouth about it is good. It needs to grow. Email festivals and request us. Write our label. Write the magazines, e-zines and fanzines. All of that helps us tremendously and does not go unappreciated.
It can be disheartening, but we’re realistic in our expectations. And though I’m not as good about it as the others in the band – we just hold our heads up and keep doing what we do the way we know how to do it.
No Q&A with Argus would be complete without a mention of Brad Moore’s “Vagina-man,” as Butch called him in our last interview three years ago. He keeps growing in stature and creepy malevolence from album to album. In an album or two he’ll rival Cthulhu in scale. How did “Vagina-man” come about? Was he Brad’s creation? What role does he now play in the bands image? Can we expect Argus to break out an Eddie-like version for the festival circuit?
ERIK: Vagina-man was a Brad Moore creation stemming from the concept pitched for the debut album. I think we asked Brad, who originally was working on this sword and sorcery warrior type thing for the gatefold, to switch gears and create this Lovecraftian beasty. We really liked what he had created for us, so for the next few albums, it was decided early on in the process of each release that he would be a part of the cover art thematic.
BUTCH: Kevin and I just discussed this a few weeks ago. We all love vagina, man. I mean Vagina-man… But we’re already discussing moving from it for the next album. We’ll see if he makes an appearance. I don’t know how we’d build a costume or who we’d put in it LOL….or how he’d turn up live. Fun idea, but we get enough comparisons to Maiden as it is. “Too much Iron Maiden. You are very gud band but too much Iron Maiden…do it your way.”
Live photos by Patrycja Becker.
