Photo courtesy of Rise AboveOne does simply interrupt Lee Dorrian. Over a strained Skype connection, I connected with the legendary vocalist and label owner, only to interrupt him half a dozen times as crackles and pops reduced his powerful voice to an indecipherable, delayed croak. Ever the gentleman, Dorrian was still well up for discussing his new project, With The Dead, a power trio composed of former Electric Wizard members Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening.When conjoined, the three evoke a colossus of dirge-laden sound, conjuring the punk urgency of Cathedral and Electric Wizard's earliest recordings. The tone is filthy, the guitars glacial, the drums tectonic; Dorrian's characteristic gruffness delivers a gruesome counterpoint to the colliding compositions. Of course, Dorrian also touched on how his 27-year-old label is going, and briefly discussed the shit-talking elephant in the room—Rise Above's very messy, very public legal battle with former allies Electric Wizard.Sadly, given my 30-minute time slot, we never got around to Napalm Death or Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine. Next time, Lee.Noisey: It seems like your label Rise Above's visibility has really skyrocketed, which coincides with the visibility of doom doing the same. You've had some really high profile stuff released this year, including the new Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, the Lucifer release, and now this upcoming album for With The Dead. Do you see the label picking up even more given that Cathedral has come to an end?
Lee Dorrian: Well, compared to most labels, our output is really small. We only do maximum six or seven releases a year, sometimes only four. Most labels do that in a month. I mean, the way Rise Above runs is kind of the way it has always run, which isn't always easy as such because the label has become a lot more prolific in the last four or five years. It's become a lot more accepted as a proper label now, while before it was more like a fan's label putting out things randomly here and there. Now, it does fend for itself, but it's taken 27 years to get to this point, really. So, going back to the point, the releases we put out, we are only putting out releases that we are really sure of. We won't sign bands that we think have potential in them but we don't like ourselves, because that's lame. It's never been what we're about, and that's why it's always been difficult. I was signing bands at a time when we were the only label interested in them, or really the only label interested in that style of music. So it's always been hard for us to get things off the ground.What you're saying about the label really "coming into its own" in the last five years makes a lot of sense, because it does coincide with doom becoming more recognized. Hell, it's even become trendy in a lot of ways, and it's got to a point where a band like Pentagram who just trudged in obscurity forever is now being celebrated all over the world.
It's insane really! I mean, if you rewind back 25 years ago, a few people would know what you meant if you said doom, but there wasn't really a doom metal scene. Candlemass was the most recognizable band.,Trouble after them, then Saint Vitus if you dug a bit deeper and Pentagram if you dug even deeper. It was almost like a nonexistent scene, and there was a handful of people around the world who knew what it was and wanted more of it. There was obviously quite a few bands in the States recording demos, but there wasn't many bands putting out records. So if you imagine what it was like then and what it's like now, it's obviously a recognized genre. I mean, we used to get ridiculed by people in the industry, saying, "Why are you wasting your time, putting out that kind of music for? There is no demand for it." There was no demand for it, but that wasn't the point, anyway. The point was that it was what we believed in. Somehow, we managed to keep it all together and somehow we managed to get this far. The scene, if you want to call it a scene, splintered off into so many directions it's almost like there is more subgenres of doom than there is an understanding of what doom is. To me, doom is the classic doom:Witchfinder General, Pentagram, Trouble, the Obsessed, Vitus. Then there are a bunch of great bands that came around in the past few years—and Pentagram! I never predicted they'd be as widely recognized all those years ago as they are now. I mean, I knew they wrote great songs and knew they were a special band, but now they are headlining all their own shows all around Europe and it's crazy! It's great. But as far as Rise Above goes, well, Blood Ceremony are doing their new album at Toe Rag Studios in London; we've got the new Church of Misery, which is about finished; then there is a classic doom band from the US, one of the underground bands from the late 80s, a band called Dream Death.The label has become more popular and more recognizable, but it's weird because that ties in with the drama that Electric Wizard was perpetuating, and how your new band With The Dead seems like a musical expression of that frustrating period.
Yeah. It's inevitable that that is going to be thought about. It is a part of everything that has to do with this band, of course, because Mark was left out on a limb when he was fired, and he and Tim started jamming together again after a few years of not jamming with each other. If he hadn't been kicked out of Electric Wizard, this band wouldn't have happened, because he'd still be there. I wasn't initially asked to join the band, I got asked to after they'd been together for a little while. There was only some things I missed about being in Cathedral, and one of them was having a platform to vent on all this crap and anxieties that I feel. You know, having a crutch for the last 20 odd years, a place to let that all out, then suddenly it's gone, that's can be disheartening sometimes and you can be frustrated that you have no where to vent sometimes.With The Dead was the perfect vehicle to get all that out of the way and put an end to all of that. It is saying a "Fuck you" to all the people that stabbed me in the back. I suppose that helped drive it along, but it wasn't the first foremost reason why we did the record— I'd like to do more records, and if we did another one, it won't be so much entangled with all that stuff that's gone on in the last few years. And from my point of view, what am I supposed to do? Revenge is a strange thing, and I don't see it as revenge, but what goes around comes around and I see it as if you want to speak shit about me, and think I'm not going to defend myself, you must be pretty stupid. I'm doing this new band and people are going to ask me about this subject, so am I just supposed to take it? No!The best revenge is living well. You guys have this new album that's really strong, and the label is doing really well. Not only that, but your records are more available and a lot cheaper, so it's easier for fans to buy them!
That's because we've got direct distribution—we are trying to make it better for everyone. We went independent, Metal Blade licensed our records for a few years in North America, and after a few years we decided to go our own way because we felt like our identity was fading. When you're underneath another label, they have their ideas about how they promote you, and it just didn't seem to fit in with our ethos really. So I just thought we need to make a break after all these years, and stand independent over there, and get our identity back. We still have to print the records in Europe because printing plants are so ridiculously overworked these days that it's a complete nightmare. There are a couple of new plants that opened up, but I think a lot of people are scared to invest money in pressing plants because they think it's a fad. Who's to say in four or five years if there will still be this vinyl explosion? The interest for vinyl is here right now.Let's talk about the tone on this record: the album isn't reinventing doom metal, but it belongs to a lineage that is slow and crushing, and comes across a lot like Gates of Slumber given that your vocals are mostly clean. You joined the band after the rhythm section got together – what about the music drew you in?There wasn't hardly any time for the vocals at all in this record, they were very spontaneous. They were all done for the first time in the studio when the take was rolling. I had a lot of time to think about them, but I think we rehearsed a couple of days before we went into the studio, and I rehearsed "I am Your Virus" and "Crown of Burning Stars," but other than that I had no rehearsals. All the thoughts and stuff were in my head; I just let it all out in a couple of sessions after the backing tracks had been recorded. We are all focused, because we all made a conscious decision early on. When Mark and Tim asked me to join the band, I was very apprehensive for many reasons, the main one being that the label takes up such a large amount of my time. To be taken away from it, and not have the capability to oversee everything, is something that scares me. I've left it in the hands of other people before, and they've fucked it up. I'm not prepared to let that happen again, so I have to be very hands on with every decision that gets made at the label. And then, to be in a situation where I was in a band for over 20 years, and be out of that band, which gave me time to focus on all the aspects of that band I'm talking about, you know, the idea of getting into another band after that wasn't something I was planning at all. They asked me to join, and I thought about it, and at first I was a bit hesitant, but the stuff was so brutal and so heavy and so direct and unpretentious, I just though 'yeah.' It was something I really related to, it struck a chord with me right away.What were you looking to create?
When I agreed that I was going to be involved in doing the vocals on the record, I said to the guys that there is only one rule: that is to make the most crushing, oppressive heavy album we can make with the rawest performances. When we set that as a focal point, something to aim for, it sounds like a simple thing to say, but it worked. That's all you're aiming for, for the record to be heavy in every possible way. Lyrically, vocally, sound wise, tone wise, production wise, everything. If you have all these ideas about being clever, and think, "Oh, we have a song that sounds like this, or a mellow part here, or a jazz part there," you just get too confused. With this, it was very specific a sound from start to finish. That made it a lot easier to channel all this surging hatred into one place. Like you said, it's not reinventing anything whatsoever, but that's not the point. The riffs Tim was coming up with, they just sounded fresh. Unpretentious. I just wanted to go for it without thinking too much about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about the vocal style and thinking about the lyrics, but when it came to it, I spent no time writing them, thinking about them. We wanted to keep that sense of urgency. We wanted it to sound raw, the whole thing. We didn't want anything to sound perfect, tidy and tight. We wanted it sound raw and bombastic.In a perfect world, Sarah Kitteringham would be an amalgamation of Dark Agnes and Earl of Void. Instead, she's obsessing over records on Instagram.
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Lee Dorrian: Well, compared to most labels, our output is really small. We only do maximum six or seven releases a year, sometimes only four. Most labels do that in a month. I mean, the way Rise Above runs is kind of the way it has always run, which isn't always easy as such because the label has become a lot more prolific in the last four or five years. It's become a lot more accepted as a proper label now, while before it was more like a fan's label putting out things randomly here and there. Now, it does fend for itself, but it's taken 27 years to get to this point, really. So, going back to the point, the releases we put out, we are only putting out releases that we are really sure of. We won't sign bands that we think have potential in them but we don't like ourselves, because that's lame. It's never been what we're about, and that's why it's always been difficult. I was signing bands at a time when we were the only label interested in them, or really the only label interested in that style of music. So it's always been hard for us to get things off the ground.
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It's insane really! I mean, if you rewind back 25 years ago, a few people would know what you meant if you said doom, but there wasn't really a doom metal scene. Candlemass was the most recognizable band.,Trouble after them, then Saint Vitus if you dug a bit deeper and Pentagram if you dug even deeper. It was almost like a nonexistent scene, and there was a handful of people around the world who knew what it was and wanted more of it. There was obviously quite a few bands in the States recording demos, but there wasn't many bands putting out records. So if you imagine what it was like then and what it's like now, it's obviously a recognized genre. I mean, we used to get ridiculed by people in the industry, saying, "Why are you wasting your time, putting out that kind of music for? There is no demand for it." There was no demand for it, but that wasn't the point, anyway. The point was that it was what we believed in. Somehow, we managed to keep it all together and somehow we managed to get this far. The scene, if you want to call it a scene, splintered off into so many directions it's almost like there is more subgenres of doom than there is an understanding of what doom is. To me, doom is the classic doom:Witchfinder General, Pentagram, Trouble, the Obsessed, Vitus. Then there are a bunch of great bands that came around in the past few years—and Pentagram! I never predicted they'd be as widely recognized all those years ago as they are now. I mean, I knew they wrote great songs and knew they were a special band, but now they are headlining all their own shows all around Europe and it's crazy! It's great. But as far as Rise Above goes, well, Blood Ceremony are doing their new album at Toe Rag Studios in London; we've got the new Church of Misery, which is about finished; then there is a classic doom band from the US, one of the underground bands from the late 80s, a band called Dream Death.
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Yeah. It's inevitable that that is going to be thought about. It is a part of everything that has to do with this band, of course, because Mark was left out on a limb when he was fired, and he and Tim started jamming together again after a few years of not jamming with each other. If he hadn't been kicked out of Electric Wizard, this band wouldn't have happened, because he'd still be there. I wasn't initially asked to join the band, I got asked to after they'd been together for a little while. There was only some things I missed about being in Cathedral, and one of them was having a platform to vent on all this crap and anxieties that I feel. You know, having a crutch for the last 20 odd years, a place to let that all out, then suddenly it's gone, that's can be disheartening sometimes and you can be frustrated that you have no where to vent sometimes.With The Dead was the perfect vehicle to get all that out of the way and put an end to all of that. It is saying a "Fuck you" to all the people that stabbed me in the back. I suppose that helped drive it along, but it wasn't the first foremost reason why we did the record— I'd like to do more records, and if we did another one, it won't be so much entangled with all that stuff that's gone on in the last few years. And from my point of view, what am I supposed to do? Revenge is a strange thing, and I don't see it as revenge, but what goes around comes around and I see it as if you want to speak shit about me, and think I'm not going to defend myself, you must be pretty stupid. I'm doing this new band and people are going to ask me about this subject, so am I just supposed to take it? No!
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That's because we've got direct distribution—we are trying to make it better for everyone. We went independent, Metal Blade licensed our records for a few years in North America, and after a few years we decided to go our own way because we felt like our identity was fading. When you're underneath another label, they have their ideas about how they promote you, and it just didn't seem to fit in with our ethos really. So I just thought we need to make a break after all these years, and stand independent over there, and get our identity back. We still have to print the records in Europe because printing plants are so ridiculously overworked these days that it's a complete nightmare. There are a couple of new plants that opened up, but I think a lot of people are scared to invest money in pressing plants because they think it's a fad. Who's to say in four or five years if there will still be this vinyl explosion? The interest for vinyl is here right now.Let's talk about the tone on this record: the album isn't reinventing doom metal, but it belongs to a lineage that is slow and crushing, and comes across a lot like Gates of Slumber given that your vocals are mostly clean. You joined the band after the rhythm section got together – what about the music drew you in?There wasn't hardly any time for the vocals at all in this record, they were very spontaneous. They were all done for the first time in the studio when the take was rolling. I had a lot of time to think about them, but I think we rehearsed a couple of days before we went into the studio, and I rehearsed "I am Your Virus" and "Crown of Burning Stars," but other than that I had no rehearsals. All the thoughts and stuff were in my head; I just let it all out in a couple of sessions after the backing tracks had been recorded. We are all focused, because we all made a conscious decision early on. When Mark and Tim asked me to join the band, I was very apprehensive for many reasons, the main one being that the label takes up such a large amount of my time. To be taken away from it, and not have the capability to oversee everything, is something that scares me. I've left it in the hands of other people before, and they've fucked it up. I'm not prepared to let that happen again, so I have to be very hands on with every decision that gets made at the label. And then, to be in a situation where I was in a band for over 20 years, and be out of that band, which gave me time to focus on all the aspects of that band I'm talking about, you know, the idea of getting into another band after that wasn't something I was planning at all. They asked me to join, and I thought about it, and at first I was a bit hesitant, but the stuff was so brutal and so heavy and so direct and unpretentious, I just though 'yeah.' It was something I really related to, it struck a chord with me right away.What were you looking to create?
When I agreed that I was going to be involved in doing the vocals on the record, I said to the guys that there is only one rule: that is to make the most crushing, oppressive heavy album we can make with the rawest performances. When we set that as a focal point, something to aim for, it sounds like a simple thing to say, but it worked. That's all you're aiming for, for the record to be heavy in every possible way. Lyrically, vocally, sound wise, tone wise, production wise, everything. If you have all these ideas about being clever, and think, "Oh, we have a song that sounds like this, or a mellow part here, or a jazz part there," you just get too confused. With this, it was very specific a sound from start to finish. That made it a lot easier to channel all this surging hatred into one place. Like you said, it's not reinventing anything whatsoever, but that's not the point. The riffs Tim was coming up with, they just sounded fresh. Unpretentious. I just wanted to go for it without thinking too much about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about the vocal style and thinking about the lyrics, but when it came to it, I spent no time writing them, thinking about them. We wanted to keep that sense of urgency. We wanted it to sound raw, the whole thing. We didn't want anything to sound perfect, tidy and tight. We wanted it sound raw and bombastic.In a perfect world, Sarah Kitteringham would be an amalgamation of Dark Agnes and Earl of Void. Instead, she's obsessing over records on Instagram.