FRONTIERER - Pound & Confound
Words and graphics by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Monday 26th September 2022
Press photo by: Nick Neuenhaus
Scottish Extremists Inbound to Pound and Confound with Sound
When a guitarist describes an album as an “endurance trial,” you can safely assume they aren’t what you would call “easy listening”. Disorienting, relentless musical battery that sounds like the soundtrack to a triple homicide, Scotland’s FRONTIERER is not for the faint of heart. Ahead of their national tour with APATE, guitarist Dan Stevenson spoke to SENSE from Scotland about Brexit, and why he owes his marriage to Australia…
What’s the metal scene like in Scotland?
In Scotland, ten, fifteen years ago, it was really big, to the point where BRING ME THE HORIZON were coming to small towns to do shows, and a lot of bands came off the back of that. We had bands like BLEED FROM WITHIN and CENTRILIA … even BIFFY were born from that scene. BIFFY CLYRO are now one of the biggest rock bands in the world. But in the U.K., the political situation is causing a lot of unrest in a lot of different areas, so punk is probably one of the biggest things in the U.K. at the moment, because it’s a way for people to express themselves in quite a quick and clear way. Outside of that, hip-hop is absolutely huge again in the U.K.. The metal scene is kind of a few rungs down the ladder, and again, an issue with the political system just now, is that for us to get out of the U.K. and even get into Europe now is near impossible due to Brexit fees and paperwork and admin and all the shit that comes with that. Unfortunately for metal bands that really rely on being in venues all over Europe, it’s died a death. It’s really struggling. We’re lucky we’re at a stage where we can take the financial hit and get out to Europe and still continue what we were doing, but for small bands, unless something drastic changes, I think, unfortunately, it’s going to be taking a big old hit for the next five to ten years.
So before [Brexit], you used to be able to travel around Europe for free, yeah? You didn’t have to pay for visas or anything? And now Brexit has removed Britain from that?
Yeah, that’s it. And it’s also, because it’s effectively you working in a different political landscape, you then have to have customs documents. It’s so boring, but yeah, basically, if you want to leave the U.K. and go to Europe, you have to have a document called a carnet, and that costs about £600 … and you have to list the weight, the serial number and the country of manufacture for every single piece of equipment for the entire band, so guitar strings, leads, pedals, amplifiers – you name it, you need to list it – and you need to get that stamped when you go into the countries. It’s like a whole thing. So small bands can’t afford to do that, and if you get caught, you get fined, and your equipment seized, because a bunch of racists in the U.K. didn’t like brown people in their shops. That is the knock-on effect. That has effectively caused an entire industry to suffer until there’s some kind of solution. Yeah, hence the reason why punk is one of the biggest things in the U.K. at the moment. There’s a lot of people very unhappy with how their lives have turned out, through no fault of their own, unfortunately.
I’ve known FRONTIERER for a few years. Spotify was nice enough to recommend you guys. I’m a fan of an American band called THE ARMED, and their album Only Love that I’ve listened to a thousand fucking times … My first exposure to you was a track called Bunsen. You know that old-timey footage of the guy in the wind tunnel? [Laughs] That will be how I will look in the front row seeing you guys at The Zoo.
Oh hell yeah, man! That’s awesome.
Dude, FRONTIERER’s music should be legally classified as assault. It’s fucking full-on. What is the writing process like? You guys pack more riffs into one song than I reckon most people do in an album.
Well thanks, that’s really kind man. So, Ped [Pedram Valiani] the other guitar player, and Chad [Kapper] do all of the writing, and then they give us all their ideas, and we kind of give them a bit of feedback, say what’s good, what’s bad, this doesn’t work, maybe not for this record, blah-blah-blah … But Ped’s kind of writing style is that he approaches writing music like fast food. He wants that immediate hit of, “Oh damn, that’s a lot of sugar. That’s indulgent. That feels great.” And then you don’t want to hang around too long, because it starts to make you feel sick if you do too much of it. So he wants to basically write the pop version of assault-based riffs. Really fast and smash-y chaos, a big, catchy kind of thing that takes your attention off of that, because you don’t want to be too fatigued, and it’s just variations of that, with a lot of experimentation with guitar pedals. He’s a really incredibly creative guy, so he wants to kind of find sounds that other people haven’t found yet. So you tie all that into an obsessive knowledge of metal and guitar playing, and that kind of fast food approach, and then Chad will add his version on top of that. So they’re a great writing team. I think they make some really interesting music.
It reminds me of the band CAR BOMB, from the States.
We love those guys. We’re good friends with them, and that’s the direct comparison we always get. It’s CAR BOMB or a MESHUGGAH diluted with THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN. That’s the usual two comparisons.
I had the latest album on in the car ride home, which is about a half-hour car ride. By the end of the trip, it was almost exhausting.
It is. It really is. Oxidized is the only FRONTIERER record I’ve ever got through in one sitting, from start to finish. I don’t know if that’s a measure of me being desensitised, or that it’s a bit more palatable, but I think Oxidized definitely has a little bit more respite, and some sections that you can latch onto, whereas Orange Mathematics, the first record, is kind of like an endurance test. It’s like, “Can you get through it?” Not, “Are you enjoying it?” [Laughs]
I’m glad you said it, because I wanted to say it, but I didn’t want you to think I was being mean, because I absolutely love your band. [Laughs] But fuck, man!
Yeah, it’s really, really dense. It kind of feeds into how we structure the live shows as well, because when we did our first handful of tours, we were doing 55 minutes to an hour kind of thing, and we really noticed in the last twenty minutes that eyes were glazed over, and the attention span was kind of waning. Forty-five minutes is about the maximum, even live, that you can take it. There’s obviously the lighting show, there’s the samples, and four grown men jumping on you for forty-five minutes. So it’s like, that is the threshold. It can’t be much more than that.
The footage I’ve seen of FRONTIERER live looks fucking intense. It reminds me, vibe-wise, of DILLINGER … How do you keep the timing of a band like that? Are you guys going off a click track or something? Because I’m listening to the drumming and I’m like, “They can’t possibly be following the drummer!”
[Laughs] That’s funny. No, nobody plays to a click track … It’s like old-school, like a band. All the amps are tube amps, there’s no computer changes for MIDI or anything. That’s the reason a lot of people want to come and see us, because the new wave version of what we do is, everything click-tracked or click-mapped through a MacBook, drummer sends that signal to lights, that’s all time-coded, everyone’s on in-ears with kempers, and then they change all the pedal settings in real time. That is a really efficient, mechanical way to do it, but it really removes the live feel from anything. It makes it robotic, and overly mechanical. We basically just rehearse until it’s muscle memory. We don’t have to think, we don’t have to look, no cues … it’s in the bones of each of us now. So yeah, it’s just old-fashioned hard work and get it learned properly, and then an element of chaos live. We know if we fuck up that we can come back in. And it’s not overly calculated. This is the thing. People think that me and Ped are really immensely technical guitar players. Obviously there’s an element of it that is technical, but the reality is, it’s more about giving the audience a memory and a feeling of, “Wow, that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We won’t see that again.” Moreso than standing still and making sure that we don’t hit a bum note, because that’s really boring to me.
Have you been to Australia before?
Yeah, I was really lucky. I lived there for a year, and met my wife when I was over there. We were just young backpackers. So I love Australia. I can’t wait to come back. I’m really, really excited about being there next month.
A Scottish backpacker in Australia …
… Meets a German wife …
… And falls in love with her, as opposed to just getting chlamydia. I’m impressed! [Laughs]
Yeah, it was wild. I flew into Sydney … Basically, I finished university and I was just fed up with what was going on in my life, so I booked a one-way ticket with the equivalent of $600 Aussie dollars in my bank. I had no plan, nothing. I had a friend over there that could get me a job as a landscaper, so I went to Manly, outside of Sydney. I did that for a while, saved up enough money to go to Melbourne, and then I met my wife in a hostel, and we really hit it off. So then we travelled around Australia for a bit, and then I moved to Germany, and we’ve been together ever since. We’re married now. That was, like, eleven years ago. So I’ve got a lot to owe to my time in Australia!
FRONTIERER tour Australia in October. Tickets onsale here.