Interview

Lee Dorrian: "We Wanted To Make The Most Crushing Record We Could Possibly Make"

With The Dead consists of ex-members from two of the most recognizable and respected doom acts in the UK—Cathedral and Electric Wizard. Fans of both bands will delight in the group’s self-titled debut, which comes out tomorrow via singer Lee Dorrian’s record label, Rise Above Records. The album thrives on hypnotic down-tempo rhythms, raw guitar tones, bombastic drums and bone-chilling atmosphere, the kind heard on Electric Wizard albums—which makes sense because this is the former rhythm section of Electric Wizard. It also contains the voice of Cathedral—Lee Dorrian, whose deliberate vocal rhythms, shrieks and desperate cries add another dimension of psychosis. Imagine six songs of slow churning terror!

With the dawning of their debut album, Dorrian talked to me on the phone about his entrance into the band, something he wasn’t on board with in the beginning. He also details recording the album and dives deep into his nihilistic lyrical themes. Read further for more details about one of the great super groups in the realm of doom metal.

Rex_84: Now that your self-titled debut album is set for release in a couple of days, how do you feel? Did everything come out the way you wanted?

Lee Dorrian: Great, yeah. Better than I expected. Well, I don’t know what the anticipation was. We all decided we wanted to make the most crushing record we could possibly make. Hopefully, that’s what we achieved. There was no other major plans, desires or anticipation or anything, really. We’ve just taken the whole thing in stride and not gotten stressed about anything. We made the record that we made and we are pleased with it, so that is the first step for the new band. I’m quite excited about it, for sure.

Rex_84: Considering two-thirds of the band consists of ex-Electric Wizard members Tim Bragshaw (guitar/bass) and Mark Greening (drums) did you go into this project thinking it would sound like Electric Wizard or did it just happen that way?

Dorrian: Tim wrote all the music. I guess he wrote a lot of stuff in Electric Wizard. Obviously, you’re going to get comparisons to Electric Wizard and probably to Cathedral, too, because of the people involved. I don’t think there was a deliberate attempt to sound like anybody. It’s just the way Tim writes, really. They were together in Ramesses for many years, too. I guess they have some kind of chemistry between themselves and it’s obviously going to come through. I thought when Tim started sending me songs he recorded with his drum machine back home, I wasn’t thinking this stuff was really brand new and original sounding. I just thought it sounded fresh, which is the main thing to me. It sounded unpretentious and very direct and very heavy and straight to the point. I just wanted to keep it sounding spontaneous and raw. Amongst ourselves we said if we we’re going to make this record, we need to make it as destructive sounding as possible. The most heavy it could possibly sound and the most compromising it could possibly sound. That was the main focal point from the beginning. I think when you make this decision amongst yourselves it’s very easy to be forward thinking and not be distracted by trying to be too clever or have different elements. We just wanted it to be very focused and very one-directional, the record, without anything fancy. Without any frills.

Rex_84: When did the idea to start this group happen?

Dorrian: Before I was involved, basically about a year-and-a-half ago, Mark had that incident with Electric Wizard. He was in the band one moment and then he wasn’t. He played on the last record, but then he was out of the bang again. He had his hopes built up and then they all fell down on him again, and I think he felt like a bit of a loose end. We had a chat with Tim and discussed doing a new band, which initially I wasn’t going to be involved in. First and foremost, I left Cathedral after 20-plus years and I needed as much time as I possibly could to devote to the label, Rise Above Records. That’s a full-time job as it is, so I didn’t have any intention of joining another band after Cathedral. So those two talked and then Tim called me up because we’ve always stayed friends over the years. Tim called me up and asked if they were to get something together would Rise Above be interested in releasing it. I said yeah, for sure, just keep me updated and send me a couple of tracks when you’ve got them. So a few weeks after that conversation, he sent me a couple of tracks and I was instantly blown away by the tracks. They sounded unpretentious and straight to the point. It’s like I said, they sounded fresh to me. So I got back in touch with them and said I would definitely be up for doing something with the band. During which time, he had written a few more songs and I said, “Why don’t you just come over to the UK for a few weeks.” He didn’t come over for a few weeks, it was just a few days. I said come over and jam with Mark and work out these songs among yourselves and go into a studio and record them. Then at least we’ve got the backbone of an album, then you can just build on it from there. So he came over, it was this time in October last year, and him and Mark went into the studio and jammed and recorded what they had. I went down just to hang out with them for a couple of days. I was a bit disappointed by the way it sounded because the studio wasn’t that good. The recording sounded kind of amateurish. And it just sounded like the whole thing had been rushed. I think they were a bit stressed out about it because they wanted to get it done really quick, and they wanted something out. They didn’t want to waste any time. I was thinking, there is no rush, just take your time. At the same time they asked me if I would join the band. They had already asked me a couple of times. This time I said ok, I will because I thought it would be stupid not to. What I said was we should use these recordings as a demo. Just go, take these recordings home and let them sit with you a while. Just reproach everything and come back in a few months and start from scratch, which is what we did. We re-recorded everything in March this year. I think it sounded a lot more fresh, raw and energetic. That’s how I came into the band. I was asked after they had already gotten together.

Rex_84: How do you feel about the guitar tones?

Dorrian: They’re fucking insane! The guitar tones are the most destructive guitar tones I’ve ever heard, I think. Yeah, amazing!

Rex_84: Are there any themes to your lyrics?

Dorrian: Yeah, they are fairly nihilistic in most cases. When you’ve agreed among yourselves to make the heaviest record you can possibly make within the confines of the music you’re making, the heaviness has to come from all angles, so the themes of the lyrics have to be as heavy as the music. Because if you have semi-positive lyrics over stuff that heavy, it’s not going to be as suffocating. Most of the tracks are about the usual, end of the world. The first track “Crown of Burning Stars” is about how people are becoming more self-obsessed and less caring of others. Just becoming very one-dimensional in their outlook on life. As a result, there is a lot of love dying in the world. I can see us becoming more and more and more where they are becoming less caring about each other. As a result, the powers that be have more control over people and people just start imploding on themselves, and we’re heading for a bigger downfall than we were before. The second track, “The Cross,” is about the struggle to try to remain an individual in this existence when you’ve got all of these pressures thrown at you to be something that you’re not. Like the flesh of your existence is like a curse or a cross to bear to get through life. “Nephthys” is more of a dark love song. “Living With the Dead” living in a place like London sometimes it feels like you’re living in this existence and you’re surrounded by people. The pace of life is so fast and there are millions and millions of people around you, but you feel so alone because you feel like you don’t relate to what’s going on around you. You could feel like you’re the only one around you that is alive and everyone else is dead or it could be the exact opposite. You feel like everyone is alive and you’re dead. It’s just about fitting in, I suppose. Just the way people seem to ignore all the really bad things that are going on this world. And their only motive is to get by once things get worse around them. “I Am Your Virus” is a kind of drug-related song. It’s about bad comedowns and getting karmic revenge on people who fucked you over and stabbed you in the back through inducing bad trips. The last song “Screams From My Own Grave” is about the futility of existence, but sometimes you feel the struggle to find love or happiness when it all comes crashing down on you constantly and it’s a fight to stay positive. It almost feels like a lost cause sometimes. It’s not dwelling on that, just getting that stuff out of your system.

Rex_84: How do your lyrics compare to the stuff you wrote for Cathedral?

Dorrian: They’re probably less ambiguous. In Cathedral I did sometimes bury the songs in metaphors, so sometimes the real meaning of a song would be disguised to the point where you wouldn’t know what that meaning was. Then again, in Cathedral, I spent too much time on lyrics. I spent a month writing one line until I felt it were absolutely perfect. For this With The Dead record there is no room for perfection, really. I didn’t want the lyrics to be perfect. I didn’t want the vocals to be perfect. I didn’t want the instruments to sound perfect. I just wanted it all to sound real, from the guts and from the heart. Instinctive and spontaneous is how I wanted it to feel. So in that regard the lyrics are written in a lot more spontaneous way, more from instinct instead of sitting around and thinking about things too much.

Rex_84: Tim plays both guitar and bass on the album. Considering he does both, will the band find a fourth member to play live shows?

Dorrian: We didn’t have any definite plans to play live, but the last couple of days we’ve been talking about it and we are planning to do some shows next year. We’ve got a couple lined up. In the live situation Tim will be playing guitar, so we have to find a new bass player in the meantime. It shouldn’t be too difficult. We know plenty of people.

Rex_84: Going back a little ways, what’s going on with Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine? Was that a one-time thing?

Dorrian: Yeah, that was just a one-off. There was never anything going to happen after that, really. That was when me and Greg [Anderson], Justin [Greaves], and Stephen [O’Malley] just got together one time. We were all hanging out in those days and we thought it would be a good idea, since we used to see each other a lot, to do a band. There was no big master plan for that to continue. It was just a one-off thing.

Rex_84: What’s going on with your label? Do you have any new signees?

Dorrian: We just signed a band from Fresno, California called Beastmaker. They’re pretty cool. They’re very Witchfinder General, Pentagram kind of band, but they do it with some individuality. You can tell they really believe in what they are doing. They’re fucking great! We’ve got a new album from Church of Misery coming up. That’s going to be released in February/March. The re-formed Dream Death. We’ve recorded a new album by them. That’s going to be out around the same time. As we speak, Blood Ceremony from Toronto are actually in London recording their fourth album, which is going to be amazing because they are recording it at Toe Rag Studios, which is a totally analog studio over here. So yeah, things are going to be busy early next year.