The Burden of Heavy, Melodic Doom: In the Studio with Pallbearer

photo by Diana Lee Zadlo

It’s an icy, appropriately-doomy Tuesday night in a typical Portland, Oregon February at Rotture, one of the city’s favorite venues for all things heavy, and the house is packed. Even in a town obsessed with metal and all its delightfully dark subgenres, it’s rare to see a night like this in the dead of winter. People are shoving each other in the front, some have found perches about the sides of the bar, standing on benches, trying to get a clear view of Pallbearer, who have trekked across the United States in their tour van from Arkansas to Oregon to record their new album. Foundations Of Burden will be out on Profound Lore later this year.

In the back of the room, a man standing on a table with his eyes closed sways with uninhibited awe. A black-metaller with a Venom back patch and tattoos all over his face opts for a both-arms-outstretched gesture of thanks to the band. Many just stand in disbelief, slowly shaking their heads in deep respect. The group hammers out three old favorites with more precision than ever before—no doubt a testament to nearly two years of touring their acclaimed first album, Sorrow & Extinction, that launched them into unexpected underground metal stardom in 2012.

"We're about to do a new one," bassist Joseph D. Rowland says, visibly moved by the crowd’s reception. "We're literally going to start recording tomorrow with Billy Anderson." The crowd cheers valiantly—fists in the air and grins strewn across the faces of every patron in the room, at not only the breathtakingly moving show put on by four southern gentlemen, but also at the mention of Anderson, the legendary producer/”Engine-Ear” who has spent over two decades at the recording console of some of metal’s most classic albums like Sleep’s Dopesmoker, High On Fire’s Surrounded By Thieves and The Art Of Self Defense, The Melvins’ Houdini, Eyehategod’s Dopesick and hundreds of others, and, as of a year ago, has made Portland his home. Indeed, Pallbearer might be strangers in Portland, but today they are welcomed into this family of Pacific-Northwestern, winter-chilled hearts. They finish “The Ghost I Used To Be,” a haunting and thoroughly heavy opus boasting Pallearer’s newer, cleaner, tightened-up progressive side, to an eruption of cheers. Even Rowland cracks a smile. "We're really excited to be here," he says. "Especially because we're going to be here for a month. "Come say hi to us—you'll probably be seeing us around at bars."

A week later, the band is holed up in Type Foundry studios, an oasis of world-class recording equipment and some of the best minds in the industry, located behind an unmarked door in an unassuming alleyway in industrial North Portland. If it weren’t for the outpouring of methodical riffs and Brett Campbell’s signature wails, it would be difficult to identify this recording session as a somber occasion. Billy Anderson stands behind the console on the opposite side of the glass from the band, arms outstretched like a madman maestro at the podium of a dark symphony. His contagious energy radiates from him as he constantly paces—and spouts puns with a wild-eyed cackle—from every corner of the room, his long, red ponytail bobbing along behind him. The band finishes their take and Anderson shouts, “I think you guys just scored my new porn. Do me baby? Doomy baby!”

I settle in and glance around at the walls, which are neatly yet chaotically adorned with the records that have been made there in the past, and ask Anderson if he ever gets a vacation. He shakes his head, giggles dryly and replies, “I hate my boss. He’s a slave driver. One of these days I’m gonna shoot him in the face!” It occurs to me moments later, of course, that he’s self-employed.

The band comes out from behind the glass wall of the studio and we pile onto the couches in the front room for the first-ever interview regarding Foundations Of Burden, recording with Anderson in Portland, and what goes into the making of a Pallbearer record long before any fingers touch an instrument.

Brett of Pallbearer at Maryland Deathfest (photo by Fred Pessaro)

NOISEY: So you’ve been in Portland recording the new record for almost a month now. What’s it been like working with Billy Anderson?
Joseph D. Rowland (bass): Working with Billy has been a really great experience. He does a really good job taking your ideas and approaching it in a modular way. Just a lot of stuff the might not have occurred to us. Not really changing what we’re doing in any way, just approaching it in a different way that ends up making it sound a lot better on recording than it would have otherwise. He has years and years of experience recording pretty heavy and experimental artists. And he’s also a pun master. He’s spits out at least ten puns an hour. That’s just an average. Sometimes it’ll be like ten in a minute. The whole thing with his “Engine-Ear” title totally makes sense now. It’s very indicative of his personality.

[Billy walks into the room. I gesture to him and say, “We’re talking about you!” Without missing a beat, he yells, “No wonder my balls were burning!”]

Billy, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the experience recording Foundations Of Burden this month?
Billy Anderson: These guys are trippy, man. They’re super, super nice guys, but when they play music, they’re really depressed, sad guys. You’ve been hanging out in the studio—no one would believe how much fun we have between songs. If you hear the music, you’d think, “Wow, these guys must be really depressed.” But there’s nothing but laughter between takes. It’s pretty amazing. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. They’re super amazing, nice guys, but their music is gargantuan. Really sad and somber. I’m jaded as fuck, but it still gets me, you know? There are certain chords—and mostly the way they’re played—that strike a chord with 99% of the people who hear them, I think.

Would you say there’s something different about Pallbearer that keeps you from having a jaded attitude?
Billy: Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely something unique about these guys. They’re influenced by different things than a lot of bands and they manifest it in a different way than a lot of bands do. A lot of bands tend to jump on bandwagons and these guys do the opposite of that. It’s refreshing to me. I’m not naming bands I work with because I choose not to work with bands who are bandwagon-y if I can help it, but these guys just have a new take on a lot of stuff. We were talking today and a lot of “doom bands” or bands that they get lumped in with have the cookie monster vocals, and they don’t treat that kind of music the same way these guys do. These guys have a really new take on it. Which is part of the reason they blew up so quickly. There are bands that have been bands twice as long and haven’t ever gotten heard by as many people. These guys just have some kind of magic that I really like. It’s hard to really even explain what it is. There’s something there for sure.

Speaking of “blowing up so quickly,” after Sorrow & Extinction came out, you guys had a ton of success that you weren’t expecting at all, and you spent a bunch of time in a whirlwind of touring. What happened in the interim that inspired this new record?
Joseph: Well, as forthcoming as I’ll be in how things inspired me in writing stuff over the course of the two albums now, there’s always been events in my life and a lot of dreams that occur that I pull inspiration from and I feel are a reflection of what’s going on with me at the time. In the first album, there was an element of personal loss going on and me coping with having someone really special to me and dealing with their decline and passing away. That was really the primary thing that influenced me on that album. This one isn’t such a fatalist kind of album. I’ll always feel like my music is going to be a manifestation of what’s happening in my life, and I just have a tendency to express that. It’s not even wholly negative—a lot of this album isn’t negative at all, but it still has a dark element to it. That’s just the music I enjoy and I would like to create. It’s definitely reflecting on some ups and downs in my life and me taking a stab at interpreting some of these dreams have come to me.

Pallbearer at MDF 2013 (photo by Fred Pessaro)

What types of dreams?
Joseph: There’s one song about a dream I had where I was a ghost—the ghost would come visit me and try to show me things, but I would never quite get there. It would be leading me to these hidden doors that needed to be unlocked, but I’d never get to find out what was inside. I was having those dreams all the time when shit was kind of falling apart with me. This is sort of my barely poetic attempt to try to interpret those things. Everything we’ve done so far has a meditative quality, I think. Because there’s such a singular focus in the music that we’ve done so far in each segmented part. This album is a meditation on regret.

It’s interesting that you say that these themes aren’t necessarily negative. That something so dark and heavy can also be something positive. That seems to be becoming a more widely accepted revelation in popular culture these days.
Joseph: I even try to address that in the lyrics in one of the songs. The album has a lot of balance. There are definitely some parts where I am looking back and letting go of things that I feel could be regrets in my life, and just accepting and moving forward. Also there’s kind of an element of not letting go of things that are really important to me regardless of how difficult life can be or how it can try to get in the way. It’s not such a singular focus as Sorrow & Extinction was. That was kind of like, “Okay, here’s five songs that all deal with mortality.” Watching that unfold and also seeing how it affects you and how it will eventually affect others when it’s you, when you’re the one in decline and passing on. Brett had a larger hand in the lyrics on Sorrow & Extinction when it came down to it. He and I would talk about stuff and I would have suggestions here and there for things to add in, but the only two songs that were totally mine were “Foreigner” and “Given To The Grave.” The rest of it was stuff that Brett and I would discuss and then he would write. This time around, I wrote the lyrics for three of the songs entirely, and Brett wrote the lyrics for three of them.

Brett Campbell (vocals, guitar): The lyrics are usually something I prefer for people to figure out what they mean than directly describing something. But in the general sense, with a lot of songs, I try to approach multiple subjects at the same time and speak in enough metaphor that it can address multiple ideas. This one’s not really drawn from any particular life event; It’s more just meditations on passage of time, and the nature of time an consciousness, essentially. And how everything changes constantly. The fact that the past doesn’t really exist except for in memory, and the future doesn’t exist at all.

Joseph: I guess I’m just a lot more into personal shit. I’m just a big drama queen. [Laughs.]

With a band name like Pallbearer, it seems like no matter what you do, you’re always going to be associated with some sort of mourning process. Even if you’re writing an album that is totally different than what you started out doing. Whether you’re mourning a death, or a relationship, or memories that have passed by, loss can be a powerful thing in heavy music. How have you learned to deal with various types of mourning differently?
Joseph: Oh, man. Well there are hundreds and hundreds of ways each person could do that differently, I think. For me, I’ve had to learn to not try to numb myself or push those things away and ignore them. Pallbearer is a really good outlet for me to sort of get that stuff out there. There’s a lot to be said for manifesting feelings and emotions you have and put them out into the world. Letting it take shape in that way is cathartic. I feel like everybody has a different way to mourn the loss of whatever—it’s a personal process for everybody, but this just happens to be the way that I like to deal with it.

Did you hear any specific stories from fans about Sorrow & Extinction helping them through really hard times?
Joseph: There was a guy in Baltimore—he asked us if it would be cool if he could get a picture with us, and he found me right as the night was wrapping up and told us that Sorrow & Extinction meant a whole lot to him because he had a really good friend who committed suicide, and the album has been one of the main things that he’s connected with in helping him cope with that. There was something about the lyrics that helped him put things into perspective and to move on from that. And we saw that guy again at Maryland Deathfest last year. He was working the VIP area bar and we got a chance to talk to him a bit more. There was another guy that we met at our recent Oakland show who said he got into a really bad car accident listening to “Given To The Grave.” He said that he was driving, listening to the album and got fucking creamed. That was really intense.

[NOTE: The lyrics of “Given To The Grave” are as follows: Carry me to my grave / When at long last my journey has ended / On the path that leads from here into oblivion / And no more sorrow can weigh me down.”]

Brett: We also heard a story about someone playing that record at a funeral. But for most people, it’s non-specific. Just like, “It helped me through a lot.”

Devin Holt (guitar): For me, the positive response has been locally. Growing up in Arkansas, you don’t see a lot of bands escape and be able to play outside of the state. When I joined this band, I had never played outside of Arkansas, ever. People think it’s cool that we’ve had a little bit of success. It gives them a little glimmer of hope. And we’ve always had that with Rwake. Rwake’s a band we’ve always looked up to a lot. And they toured a lot. So we knew we could get out, but that wasn’t really a goal.

Brett: We figured we’d release the album and tour regionally, I guess. Maybe play one-off festivals or something. Basically our biggest goal was to maybe fly out and play some Europe festival at some point. And we’ve done that now twice, which is cool. But we never really expected it.

How do you think Foundations Of Burden will affect people differently than Sorrow & Extinction did?
Joseph: Well, I think there’s a lot that people can relate to. That’s why a lot of people latched onto Sorrow & Extinction. A lot of the focus of the album was something that everyone can relate to because it’s something that happens to everybody. With this album, all of my inspiration that came from real life is also something that everyone goes through. I think anybody who spends time listening to the lyrics and can kind of catch onto what I’m getting at can apply that to themselves, too, and find something that could be moving or inspirational or meaningful to them. Something that they can have a little ownership of, you know?

Aside from that, I think it’s a much more dynamic record. The musical aspect of it is something that a lot of people can enjoy. It’s not as sluggish as Sorrow & Extinction. More people can find an element of it that they can enjoy, even if they just like classic rock. Listening to Sorrow & Extinction and Foundations Of Burden side by side, Sorrow & Extinction sounds like slow motion. While there are parts of the new album that are slower than anything on Sorrow & Extinction, there’s something that almost feels like Sorrow & Extinction was a record that was meant to be a 45, being played on 33. It’s slower than real life. The new album doesn’t have that feeling to me; it has more energy to it, but there are still parts that are really fucking slow. Sorrow & Extinction might be a little more niche than the new one. Pretty much anybody who likes rock and roll that can find something they like about the new album.

Billy: There’s a feeling of impending doom and darkness. But also just drama. That’s one of the main qualities I was trying to sort of exploit, for lack of a better word. To enhance. The drama. The difference between two different parts. When there’s a change in the music. I really love that aspect of my job and with these guys, it’s a necessity. You have to know when you’re gonna get your ass kicked by the next part. Drama, emotion, darkness. Epicness. Giganticness!

[He gets up to walk back into the studio, but turns around to look at me pointedly before saying, “Don’t tell anyone how much fun we have in here.”]