Interview with Jake from BOOK OF WYRMS

We're all Wyrm food in the end, or something. Whatever. Until then, Richmond's Book Of Wyrms is here to indulge you with a mind-expanding new album, Occult New Age. GRIM fact: Necrosexual and friends were set to play a show with Book Of Wyrms in May of 2020, but the great menopause shut everything down before we could announce it. The one that got away!

Book Of Wyrms new album soars across a galaxy of sounds, with bass-line driven hooks, and synthesizer heavy psych rock. "Hollergoblin," for example, rollicks with a catchy bass part that sounds like Blur or Radiohead at their most potent. 

 The power couple at the core of this four piece is bassist Jake "Jay" Lindsey  and vocalist Sarah Moore Lindsay, whose ethereal vocals sing the cosmic sonnets of Occult New Age like the second coming of Kate Bush. 

Jake Lindsey from Book Of Wyrms goes One On One with the GRIM-1 in this email interview below. 

What's one song everyone should drop their shit to listen to immediately off your new album?
I think Colossal Yield. It's got a New Wave of British Heavy Metal riff and sort of a big dumbass bassline I'm pretty proud of, and then Chris and Sarah get featured a bit on drums and vocals. Kyle wrote it, by the way, while he and Chris were jamming and I was preoccupied on the toilet.

What's the inspiration behind Occult New Age? 
It's a double pun kind of thing - on one hand there's the "Occult/ New Age" section of the used bookstore - everything from hermetic alchemy and tarot to meditation and ancient aliens, all lumped together. So the title evokes that whole vibe but also kind of makes fun of it, like it's such a touristy thing and we throw parts of real cultural traditions (like shamanism or the kabbalah) in there like it's all a big LARP session. On the other hand, the title references our shitty times - occult can also mean obscure or obstructed from view, and it feels like we are in a new age of horrors and wonders. I think you see it in the way people are turning away from reason and towards all kinds of crazy shit. So it's like a new dark age and an uncertain future.

This album is all over the place in terms of musical styles. What are your influences?
 We started life as a pretty traditionally doomy band, but over the last record and then now this one, we've just gotten more confident in our ability to bring in other styles we like. So there's obviously Black Sabbath, but that includes more than the stereotypical Volume 4 worship, and gets into Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage, along with the Dio records, and that one discography alone covers so many styles. Everyone in the band loves Soundgarden and KISS and ZZ Top, and Sarah and I listen to a lot of funk - Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, and George Clinton, plus hippie shit like Jefferson Airplaine, the Doors, and Santana. Kyle's riffs are really influenced by UFO and Victor Griffin, and Chris's favorite band is Primus. So all of that mixes in, on a subconscious level, with some more abrasive sounds, which are influenced by Bolt Thrower, the Melvins, and some of the NWOBHM bands like early Judas Priest and Witchfinder General. Mash all of that together and it still kind of sounds like Hawkwind/ Sabbath worship, but much fancier.

You guys blast off into space HARD thanks to lots of synth parts. Have you listened to Yanni much?
He's a badass for sure, but Vangelis and Jan Hammer are sick too. We have always had a bit of synth but it really does step to the front this time. I think a big inspiration for our synths was the 70s prog bands like Yes, Genesis, and ELP, but we also listen to Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea and Bernie Worrell from P Funk, so just lots of 70s synth, which we are trying to reproduce with 2010s remakes of 80s tech. It's cool because you get a sound like "What a Lucky Man" by ELP that would've cost them a few grand in synths and Sarah can get it on that little Korg pad. One thing I learned over the years is that there really aren't any cheesy sounds - they just come in and out of style, so if you dig a sound and don't give a shit about fashion, go for it. That especially true in any druggy or psychedelic genre - so it's really fun to mine those retro sounds and juxtapose it with heavy riffs. A lot of heavy bands try to make their synths heavy, but I think I like the opposite approach. 

What's your secret for those extra dank bass parts?
I'm only going to say this one time so listen up - sativa strains will destroy your groove. Indica and indica dominant only, unless it's grindcore.

A couple of less obvious tips though: I worked really hard on my tone and technique. I added a compressor pedal, audited various pickups and pickup positions, switched to my clean preamp channel (still have my germanium OD and a slow chorus on at all times) and switched to flatwound strings. It all contributed to a very specific tone, especially on the higher frets, which is where I do a lot of my playing nowadays.

I describe the tone as the voice of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets. I started taking lessons with a local bassist named Todd Herrington. He taught me some  brutal warmups and had me going at pretty advanced tempos, and would correct my technique and relaxation while playing. We went over what I felt like I wasn't good enough at, which is holding down the groove while adding melodic ideas, and I studied some Carol Kaye and Wilton Felder (70s soul jazz) basslines. It's insane how similar those lines are to what Geezer Butler or Al Cisneros do, in terms of laying a heavy groove with leads and fills just tastefully woven in.

So my secrets are better gear and more practice. 

Did you encounter any happy little accidents in the creative process of this new album? 
Yeah, for sure. Kyle's fast riffs were one of those - he was just fucking around and I loved the riffs, and so we used them and it ended up adding a lot of the classic metal sound the record has. It also kind of freed me up to write at whatever tempo I felt like, so it just nudged us towards a more diverse sound. A lot of the synth patches were happy accidents, where Sarah and I were just farting around on her keyboard and made something that just spoke to one of the songs. Neither of us is super experienced at programming FM synthesizers, so we were like reading the manual and tweaking shit but usually it comes down to messing with the sliders until something sounded cool. There were other things like that, where we'd be jamming and Chris or Kyle would do something just messing around and we'd be like "please memorize that thing."

There's not really any hacks unfortunately, but I'd say it always pays off to save up a little something for the chorus. It can be subtle but find a way to goose that mother up. Tension and release, my pretties. Oh, and do some breathing exercises before you play. 

What was your favorite part of recording this album?

We had a kind of fuck-it attitude this time, fussing less over takes, and just being more judicious with adding extra layers of stuff. So it ended up being a really efficient session and everyone was just so motivated and positive. It was kind of the only thing we had going on, so it felt even more important than it usually does. 

What about the most challenging?

Doing this during the pandemic was hard. The writing was done more remotely and independently than on previous ones, and there wasn't the opportunity to try the songs out on the road before we recorded them (except for "Meteoric Dagger" and "Colossal Yield" which we've gotten to play live a few times), so we had to make up for that with extra rehearsal, just taking a whole day to drill one song, that kind of thing. And then of course getting together for overdubs and mixing was a little hectic because of the social distancing stuff, but we figured it out. But we were so busy I don't think I even got drunk once.

If you could compare your new album to a munchies-induced snack, what food would it be?

Occult New Age is like Peruvian chicken, where it's got a crusty exterior but there's some real juice to it, and a distinctive smoky fragrance you're sure to notice right away.  

THANKS FOR GOING ONE ON ONE WITH THE GRIM-1! Any last words?

First off we want to thank you for years of support and brew crushing. And to all you little necromaniacs out there, keep dreaming those disgusting dreams and one day maybe you'll rage hard and crush brews like your heroes the Necrosexual and Book of Wyrms.

Book Of Wyrms new album Occult New Age is available via Desert Records. Listen to it here.