Aristocracy arrives at its Seventh Interview with the American Death Metal Band Ysilik. The band showed us last year their debut album entitled Eunoia.The band have this formation:Chester Yourczek ON Vocals,Paul Wallace Esch On Guitar,Greg Feinberg On Bass and Aaron Lanik On Drums.All band answer our questions.Let´s go to the interview in all our emotions.But,before that,we see a song for the band.
A1:Talking about the composition work in Eunoia?
Ysilik:Paul is a musicologist and professor so a lot of the composition and ideas start with him. He's very fond of different scales, modes, and both eastern/western influences for how he attacks an idea or song.Greg also comes up with some of the core ideas for a song that we'll play along to, for example he composed the intro of Paleblood.Aaron's drum parts become the foundation to most of our ideas and allow each member to get out of the box at times when the part feels right.This has helped our music have this concept or notion that we have both a lead guitarist and a lead bassist in the same band. So that's high level how the music gets written and how we wrote the music for Eunoia.When a song is done, then I'll hop in and write lyrics and vocals because there's a lot of counting involved to land the words at the right times. It's a very organic process that we have for writing.
A2:How band put progressive in your sound?
Ysilik:Our progressive sound comes from our approach to experimentation. During our writing process we try everything we can think of during our time together playing the riffs, ideas, etc and even if it doesn't make sense, we'll put the time and effort into trying it.We have a lot of fun with this creative process and it allows us to find interesting ideas or approaches to a section of the song we normally wouldn't consider at first.A great example of this is the coded message that happens at the end of 'Reptile Intelligence', that ending is a puzzle or encrypted message that the guys made and so far nobody has been able to solve it.
A3:Does the first song on the album have a philosophical connotation?
Ysilik:Yeh,I did dabble in existence and existentialism a bit with this song.It's a little tough to explain though because this song had several rewrites and kinda became a little of all of the ideas.I used to be in a post metal band and we would write about dystopian planets or places. The track started there and then moved more into existence and thoughts around freedoms, or lack of freedoms, etc.So,definitely has a bit of philosophy sprinkled in there.
A4:What video-games inspire the band?
Ysilik:I picked up the name 'Ysilik' while playing a video game.Darksiders 2,there is a shadow realm that they hint at called 'Ysilik' where one of the villains is from.It's not really prevalent in the game as you never actually go there but when I heard it, thought it was cool so we tried it out. One of our tracks 'Paleblood' that song title came from Bloodbourne.Paul's riffs are influenced by a lot of video game scores, he'd have so many to name.
A5:Some literature or films also inspire the band?
Ysilik:Definitely. If there are any True Detective fans out there, you'll see a bit of that sprinkled into my thoughts and ideas.I was binging the show just before I started writing so it was in the forefront of my mind as I was getting through the lyrics.Also several mental health books and theories that I was reading at the time were influencing the writing process too.A lot of the time it didn't feel right or it felt forced so I would take some of it out but there are times that some of it remained and fit pretty well.I know the bandmates would have a few additions to this too, Paul is always mentioning some film, show or video game that he pulls from to write riffs.
A6:How is Ysilik different from your previous bands?
Ysilik:Ysilik is sort of an amalgamation of our previous bands but also very different in that we experiment with any idea we can, even if it means moving away from our aggressive sound at times. I know I can say for the first time I'm in an actual heavy and aggressive band that I wasn't in previously. My previous bands were flirting with this style but they never fully committed to death metal so screaming over the music didn't always feel right.Also I don't have to play synths as the music is pretty full with ideas and parts from Greg, Paul, and Aaron. I can commit to vocals and feel pretty content with the results.
A7:What´s the bands influence ours?
Ysilik:Between The Buried and Me, Dillinger Escape Plan, The Faceless, The Black Dahlia Murder, Car Bomb, Fallujah, Video Game Soundtracks, Film Scores, Ambient/Noise artists,etc.
A8:What profound lyrical content band doing in Eunoia?
Ysilik:As we were writing the album I was struggling with so much at that time. Losing a job, a relationship, COVID-19, George Floyd, protesting police brutality, death of friends/family, etc and used this album as an outlet for as much of that as I could. Because I was sharing a lot of this pain with everyone around me or even those in the world struggling with Covid19/police brutality, etc it made more sense to dedicate the lyrics or theme to everyone.So the title 'Eunoia' just made sense for that. The lyrical content gets deep and intense with a lot of these subjects and that's why we would call it profound.
A9:How close are we to seeing alien creatures?
Ysilik:How incredible would that be to experience the moment that we get our first glimpse of alien creatures! I'm hopeful for it to happen in the next 50 years but to be safe I'll say in the next 200 years we'll spot life on another planet.
A10:What´s the idea behind artwork´s album?
Ysilik:Our bassist Greg makes all the artwork for us and we've been big fans of his style from the start. We sorta call it 'gothic naturalism' but of course it's open for interpretation. If I remember correctly he was looking to make it sort of cathedral-like and it has some of the characters that are in the music video 'Midnight Hour' in there too.My favorite thing about his artwork is all the little details you notice each time you look at the art. At face value it looks symmetrical but as you continue to dive into the details you'll notice that there are slight and subtle differences everywhere.
A11:The band thinks this album is conceptual?yes or no and why?
Ysilik:We made a decision earlier in the writing process that 'Eunoia' wouldn't be a conceptual album. I don't recall the exact reason why but it was just how we felt at the time and where we were headed when writing the album.
A12:Which subject would never deserve a song of Ysilik?
Ysilik:This is interesting to think about but I don't know. Rainbows, teddy bears, puppies, lol.I tend to avoid hateful or discriminating subjects.I'd flirt with the idea of hate every now and then lyrically but it's not really who I am so delivering the message vocally to music can be a challenge at times.Romantic relationships are a tough subject to pull off lyrically when you're a death metal band,so maybe that too.
A13:Before music,what the bands loves to doing?
Ysilik:When we aren't doing Ysilik stuff,we like to hang out and throw epic meal parties where we make dishes only made up of meat and bacon.
A14:Explain the song five,please?
Ysilik:Track 5 on 'Eunoia' is called 'Your Sorrow Pins You To This Place' and it's kind of unofficially the sequel to the track 'Vanity Wounds'. It's an anthem to blaming yourself for everything that happens around you or when things fall apart. It was originally titled 'A Curse For The Empaths' I believe but changed the title when we were in the studio because I didn't feel like it was as strong of a song name. There is a lyrical theme throughout the album where even though I dive into a lot of pain, grief, and negativity with the lyrics, I still present moments of relief and better mental health - and that's how this song ends. Sort of a 'This too will pass' type of thing because that's how the music felt like to me as we were writing it.
A15:What band mean with Laurentian Divided?
Ysilik:I grew up in a small town north of the Laurentian Divide and it's such an interesting divide when you research it. Water flows in a different direction or north and the magnetism of the planet is special here. I eventually moved away and started living south of this divide. Over time I grew apart from my family, including my Dad who this song is about. As I was writing lyrics for the album he passed away. The song is about dealing with his death, some of his war stories he'd tell me, and the time I was able to spend with him.Also living in Minneapolis, I was going to the protests for George Floyd and watched as my city was dealing with death and pain as well. So the song is a bit about this too.
A16:Is the men an experience going wrong?
Ysilik:It makes for better content when anyone says yes. I thrive on writing about humanity's wrong doings and present these thoughts in music. I do so because I believe that we have faults, concerns, and issues that need to be brought up and discussed. Personally though I'm not really for either end of the spectrum - I'm more for balance. We aren't perfect but we can always try to do better, be better, etc and even though that isn't the story that sells or makes media businesses the money they need to profit I do believe it is happening and with time we'll be better for it. Minneapolis is a working example of this as the people are trying to be better and we sometimes take steps backwards. There are still wrongful police killings happening in our area, along with gun violence, death, etc. So taking steps backwards is hurtful when you are already in a lot of pain or suffering from hardships but we are also working on taking steps forward to be better about it and I believe that we eventually will be there and lead others through example one day. Our experience is ongoing, it always will be.
A17:Based on the songs of album and your own opinion,is it better to think the human being as agony than an animal for health?
Ysilik:This is an excellent question and is something that I'll continue to play around with throughout my creative journey in metal. If we put 'Eunoia' under the microscope I would definitely say agony was a huge part of where I was coming from inside. There was so much pain with the world and you'd see it in the streets, on tv, social media, through conversations, etc and it played a lot into what the album ended up being. I do know that instrumentally there was a bit of animal in there and when talking to the guys about their emotions for writing some of the parts they had that sentiment. So even though I added a little bit of that into the lyrics and performance of the words, the agony and suffering washed it all out. When we work on the new material and as we continue writing the balance of these themes will change significantly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcpLSx0nxRU
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