Whitechapel. To some it's the area of East London famed for Jack The Ripper, but in metal context it's an American Deathcore band with a splattering of various influences pocketed here and there from Black Metal to Groove Metal. However this quintet (drummer Ben Harclerode left this year) are more than your generic breakdown-laden, riff chugging clone that seems to dominate the ever-exasperated Deathcore genre. They are the leviathan of the genre, avoiding the cliches and common aesthetics found entrenched in most Deathcore bands and thus pose themselves as truly unique.

They were welcomed back to Bloodstock this year with open arms and certainly gave the punters their monies worth.

GMA took time out to talk to Gabe Crisp, the Whitechapel bassist about the band's history,

Credit goes to the Bloodstock Open Air Festival Team

It's always nice to see individuals or groups giving the their input towards a relief effort and Omotai are no exception. Having provided a track for the Hurricane Harvey Benefit Compilation, this Texas unit are committed to bringing charity to those affected by the hurricane in late August / early September.

GMA had to catch up with the guys to talk about this sensational venture, their origins and the extreme weather Texas has to deal with, that being tornadoes as well as hurricanes.

Vocalist / Guitarist Jamie Ross gave the honours.

Hi guys, firstly could you give us a brief history of how Omotai came about as a band? What does the name mean? 

     "It all started back in 2010, when Sam Waters (vocals / guitars) enlisted the help of Melissa Lonchambon Ryan (vocals / bassist) and then-drummer Anthony Vallejo to record the debut EP, Peace Through Fear. That line-up remained unchanged through the next two releases, 2012's Terrestrial Grief (the debut full-length) and 2014's Fresh Hell--both released on local label The Treaty Oak Collective. I joined the line-up as a second guitarist in 2013, pretty soon following the recording of Fresh Hell, but prior to its release.

     Anthony left soon after, his final show being at a 2014 SXSW appearance. Danny Mee took over drumming duties in time to complete some touring in support of Fresh Hell in 2014 and 2015. We've been hard at work ever since, writing and recording our latest double LP, A Ruined Oak, which is set to debut on October 6th on Tofu Carnage Records. A West Coast excursion is planned to promote the record. The name Omotai is the Japanese word for "heavy," which Sam felt was an apt designation given the artistic direction of the band. Credit for the idea goes to our friend Evan Jones, who taught English in Japan for a spell."


Would you say that the 2017 hurricane season has been one of the worst in recent years? 

     "Most definitely. Sam's family tragically lost their home in the Bellaire section of Houston, which was hit especially hard. The season would have been horrific enough if Harvey and its aftermath were the extent of it. But Irma came along and devastated much of the Eastern Caribbean and Florida, then Maria recently ravaged Puerto Rico (which is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis). Houston's had its share of weather-related disasters--especially in the last few years. But here we are a month out from the date that Harvey made landfall, and many areas are still impassable. Also, the waste from homes being gutted has built up into a logistical nightmare for removal companies that are still struggling to make inroads."


As you're from Texas, a state within tornado alley, have you ever seen a tornado? Has there been any notable ones hit Texas?

     "We're a bit close to the Gulf of Mexico to be in the heart of tornado alley, but there were several in the area while Harvey was stalled over Houston. One hit the neighbourhood next to mine on that first Friday night--I could hear, but not see it. North Texas is the unlucky recipient of most of Texas' tornadoes."


Tell us about you getting involved in the Hurricane Harvey benefit compilation, where are the participating bands located? How can people donate?  

      "We were approached by Miss Champagne Records about contributing a track to the benefit record, Making Waves, the week following the Harvey disaster. It was the brainchild of the MCR staff and Mercy Harper from Football, etc. All of the bands are local to Houston, so the cause is obviously very meaningful to us all. We think it turned out wonderfully and we're honoured to be in the company of so many stellar Houston bands included on the compilation. All proceeds from the benefit comp go straight to Harvey relief, so it's a perfect way to donate AND listen to some rad music."

They've been making a name for themselves since their inception a decade ago, not just because of their age at the beginning but also due to their bold move at performing live in Times Square which took the social media world by storm. Having racked up the press attention, fan numbers and even striking a monumental deal with Sony Music, it was about time that GMA gave the trio Unlocking The Truth an interrogation to find out what ticks these three lads from Brooklyn and what it means to 'unlock the truth'... all three lads - Malcolm Brickhouse (MB), Jarad Dawkins (JD) and Alec Atkins (AA) - gave their answers.

Hi guys, so firstly how did you get into metal music? Are you surprised by it's global spread?

MB: "We got into metal music by hearing the genre through the intro music to WWE and the background music of anime. No, I'm not surprised by metal's global spread. There's a crowd for every kind of music and I know from experience that people can really connect to this music."

AA: "I got into metal music through Ana, me, Jared and Malcolm ."

JD: "I got into Metal music, by an entertainment network known as the WWE. In addition, AMV also known as, Anime music videos, were a source of entertainment that introduced me to metal music. Bands such as, Disturbed, Linkin Park, Three Days Grace and more."


What did your high school friends and your family think of your choice of music? What do you aim to achieve?

MB: "My high school friends support me. They may not listen to metal, but they think it's cool that I am doing something unique and making something out of it. I aim to carve our own path in metal. Making it okay for people who are scared to stand out and be themselves, feel like they can show the world how unique they are. I also want our music to touch people's souls."

AA: "My high school friends think highly of my music and most of my high school friends like my music because in order for you to be considered my friend you have to like what I do"

JD: "They believe my choice of music is unique. I aim to achieve a platinum album, and a few Grammys"


You performed in Times Square, that surely must be a highlight of your career? Would you do it again? Perhaps organize a festival?

MB: "Performing in Time Square was a highlight of my career. It pushed us into the mainstream and got us used to performing in front of a large crowd, but I would not do it again. That was only chapter 1 of our journey. We have to keep improving and moving forward."

AA: "Yeah it would be cool to organize a festival but I don't see us going out to Times Square playing for four hours with a bucket."

JD:


Since NYC is steeped in music history e.g. hip-hop being a popular choice of music, was it hard to break out of that social convention and do something different? Do you / have you ever been subject to racial discrimination for playing what some still call a 'white man's music'?


MB: "I think the fact that hip-hop is so steeped in New York City, it was good for us because it helped us stand out from a lot of other artists. Also being black helped us stand out, so I can't complain. We did not necessarily face racial discrimination. We would show up at venues and people would automatically assume we were rappers or called us the Jackson 5. But they were surprised when we started playing metal." 

AA: "Yeah it was kinda hard to break out and do something different, but the real thing is people want different so it was easy for us to get our name out there and for people to get in on unlocking the truth. Some people think we play white people's music but that's not true because we know that the origin of the Heavy Metal table comes form rock 'n' roll, rock 'n' roll key from the blues and soul and that's black peoples music so we didn't care about what people said as far as race."

JD: It wasn't hard to break out and, do something different because in NY, people don't really care on what you do until they see it, and the improvements you make for yourself. I've also been subjected to racial discrimination, and it wasn't just for music."

Halloween is once a year, or is it? Not according to American quintet Eternal Halloween whose demonic stature is sure to garner attention from overseas as arguably the States answer to the UK's Evil Scarecrow. Moreover this Los Angeles (or as they might call Los Hellos), California-based horde have only been around a year and are already causing a buzz across the American Metal underground, let's just hope their name is not a reference to the Aiden song otherwise things could get quite confusing. Eternal Halloween were happy to spare some time to answer some questions GMA had in store for them...

Following their stint across their homeland, US Drone Metal purveyors Sun O))) were more than accommodating to sit down and talk to GMA, although we could only see Attila's face underneath the cloak.


Hi guys, how was the recent US tour? What did you enjoy about it the most?

          "Hi, the US tours went great. We split the US into 4-5 legs and we did separate runs. My favourite show was MOOG festival in Durham. It was pretty loud, they moved us to the outdoor stage cause they were expecting the building ceiling to fall down and I heard we still cracked some walls... also it was good fun to hang out backstage with the guys from Wutang Clan."


Will there be a UK / EU tour surrounding your European festival appearances? Or will it come later?


          "We will have a smaller European tour at the end of August. There will be no UK date this time cause it is mostly south / middle and east parts of Europe. Though I love to play in the UK with Sunn O))) personally so I am looking forward to more dates in the UK. Hopefully next year.."


For those who don't know, could you explain in simple terms what 'Drone Metal' entails?

          "I think it has something to do with the tradition of meditation, Indian ragas, mantras and altered state of consciousness. In a way it is a contemporary representation of the same ideas. It is called "Drone Metal" because it is heavy, loud, extreme and psychedelic... but the message is similar: open your sub / supreme conscious, open your mind, fall into a trance, leave your body behind, take a spiritual journey... "


What is the hardest part of touring for you as a band ?

          "For me it is packing at home and travelling, missing flights and connections all the time.
But once I made it up to my people I enjoy it still so much. I love all the guys in the band (and the crew) and it is super fun to hang out every single time! Once I am there I just love touring!"

The American Metal scene is so vast and so populated with metal bands that trying to name them all in one go would be near to impossible as you can get. That said, there are those who make progress and make a name for themselves, on the conveyor belt of progression are Pennsylvania's Corners of Sanctuary. GMA caught up with guitarist / keyboardist Mick to find out what drives this concrete force.

Being a female metal or rock musician over the course of history has always dragged up challenges and problems that otherwise might not be experienced by their male counterparts. Firstly the immoral and unforgiving stigma directed towards said musicians has always proved an issue, but it's one that has been been challenged head on through arguably a whole plethora of successful artists and bands.

From the likes of Siousxie & The Banshees to Annie Lennox, from Sabina Classen and Orianthi to Vanilla Ninja and arguably the most prolific all-female metal band, Girlschool. These are musicians who stood up to the male-dominated arena of rock and metal, stuck the middle finger up and alluded to the notion of 'who said girls can't rock or mosh?' As AC/DC once put it, 'for those about to rock, we salute you' and for the female rock / metal musicians and subsequent all-female bands, we do exactly that, we salute you. One of these bands is Conquer Divide, who are rampaging and setting the USA on fire with their own unrelenting and uncompromising style of Alternative Post-Hardcore / Metalcore.

Let's be honest, it does not matter who or what you are, as long as you are happy playing music then those who remark on it can stick their opinion where it should belong. As Tamara quite rightly put it when speaking to Blabbermouth, "We are all girls, and you cant hide that, but we want people to focus more on the quality of the music," (http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/all-female-metal-band-conquer-divide-to-release-debut-album-in-july/), so with that in mind we asked our own questions and Izzy (guitarist) duly decided to respond to them.

Will the ongoing debate about female musicians disappear or has it already seen the end? What about the youth of today, could Conquer Divide offer themselves as inspiration for female musicians (whatever style of music) to aspire to? Izzy believes they can (we do too):-

          "No, I don't think it's something that will fade away easily. I mean its pretty common for our musicality to be undermined because we are girls, that's the sad reality. On the flip side being an "all girl band" in a male dominated industry has given us an edge to create something different and stand out from the crowd. We definitely want to have a positive impact on young girls and show them that there is always room for girls in metal, you just have to dedicate yourself to do it!"


It would seem logical that giving girls instruments would open doors for newer creativity and ideas, just like the Japanese Metal scene has recently experienced with the phenomenal yet completely unforeseeable rise of Babymetal; well they did go completely viral in a very short space of time, truth be told not many people knew of their existence outside of Japan. Here's hoping that more and more females worldwide grab hold of an instrument or harness some sort of musical skill and form a band, or at least join one. So what about their heritage? Well they do have members originally from the USA, the UK and Serbia and so did this work out for them? Well clearly it did!

          "The concept for Conquer Divide was originally formed in Michigan, USA. However to complete the line up the band had to outsource to different areas. It's hard enough finding dedicated musicians to create bands, and when you're specifically trying to find female musicians that's even harder, so that's why naturally we are from different areas. We write music with each other via the internet! Yay technology!"


With their debut self-titled album already out, surely the chances of a tour to support it's release seemed likely, well actually this is not the case. See, Conquer Divide have done the opposite and toured prior to the album release in support of it as Izzy goes on to explain (as well as speaking about current endeavours):-

          "We released our album last summer whilst we were on the 2015 All Stars tour, so I guess that was our album release tour! We just came off tour with Slaves, Capture The Crown, Myka Relocate, Outline In Color and currently we have no tours coming up. We are busy doing some writing but we would love to hit the road again soon!"

With the band essentially coming fresh off the block on the international stage, we asked Izzy if she could describe the album's sound without the ill-fated genre tagging, what track(s) are her favourites and why. Most musicians have a stand-out track and usually these take the form of a single or music video as a way to showcase the track(s) they're most proud of. Logically speaking differentiating your song styles offers you greater choice at electing a song you like the most, moreover it allows a plethora of fans from different style preferences to come to like the release in question. However Izzy offered some unique advice when it comes to their album, "We just would advise fans to listen to the album from start to finish to really get a taste of what we are about." before adding:-

"Our album is pretty varied, we have heavy songs like "Heavy Lies The Crown" and "Despicable You" which are more screaming / guitar orientated and then lighter songs like "Broken" and "What's Left Inside" which really focus on Kia's singing abilities. I honestly like all the songs on our album (I know I know, a cop out answer) but for different reasons, for example "Heavy Lies The Crown" has awesome riffs, which for me being a guitarist is fun, "Nightmares" has some sweet synth sections in it."


Creating music as a musician or band, or working in the music industry in one of many outlets such as PR or record labels, show promoters or engineers etc., can be a strenuous job sometimes and as a result it can take toll on your body to the extent you just want out, so to avoid this dilemma musicians often indulge in other interests and or hobbies to take a break from said profession(s). So what does Izzy like to do?

          "We all have different hobbies which is pretty cool, I know Kristen really likes travelling because on tour we don't really get to "see" a lot. I still like jamming guitar outside of tour, I'm pretty into working out and I like snowboarding!


And obviously by travelling you are able to take your music with you and not just on tour. Naturally with the internet lending itself as a major driving force for globalization, bands are finding that their music is being picked up in the unlikeliest and remotest parts of the world unbeknownst to them. Even for GMA as a media outlet we see people from the likes of Greenland to French Polynesia take note in what we do, so we have to thank the internet for that. But what of Conquer Divide? Has Social Media aided them well, and what does Izzy think of it's darker side?


"We seem to have a lot of fans in South America which is pretty sweet, our album actually debuted in Japan as well and people seem to dig our music there too! We are actually hoping to tour Japan soon so that's super exciting. I feel social media has been nothing but positive for bands, but modern technology kind of killed CD sales which makes it harder to make a living from music... but as a musician you just have to go with the flow and constantly adapt to the changes."

And with changes in mind, could we see Conquer Divide's debut album take on the form of being released in vinyl format as it's unprecedented resurgence continues to grip tighter on music consumerism?

"We have talked about it yes, but we haven't got any solid plans for it because we are unsure how much demand we have for vinyl..... so if anyone is reading this and wants our album on vinyl let us know!!!"


So what plans alongside the potential for their self-titled debut album being released on vinyl is there and what greetings does Izzy want to send out?

"More tours (hopefully outside of the USA), writing an acoustic EP and getting stuck into writing our second album! I think I can speak for all the girls when I say we want to thank our team at Artery, our supportive family and friends and of course our awesome fans who inspire, motivate and have created a platform for us to live our dreams on."


Check out their lyric video for 'At War' by clicking the inserted video above this text.

Conquer Divide's self-titled debut album is out via Artery Recordings

https://www.facebook.com/ConquerDivideUSA

Gone In April started in 2011 through their debut album "We Are But Human", culminating in the band playing across North America and Asia; the latter seeing this group co-headline 'The Great Indian Octoberfest' held in Bangalore. They also headlined the WaveTransform Festival 2014 (North America), as well as other events in the USA.

Following Gone In April's second album "Threads Of Existence" which saw new members joining from the USA and Canada, and another appearance at the WaveTransform Festival, GMA decided it was time to collar this group and excavate the facts behind this multinational facade.
 
So we bound Julie to a chair in a leather catsuit and placed Yanic in confinement, at least that way they could not escape... mind we did not give Julie the catsuit in the first place... another story for another time. Read below to see how it went.

So whilst Hard Rock / Post-Grunge / Metal outfit Red Sun Rising are in the midst of their US / Canada tour, GMA decided to catch them off guard on route 66 and interrogate them by the wayside.
Not only are they touring, but there latest single 'Emotionless' is now out for your listening pleasures.
So here is how the interrogation went, suffice to say it was less horrific than interrogations undertaken at Guantánamo Bay.

Since the American Metalcore / Post-Hardcore / Screamo unit Alesana unveiled the second part of their "Comedy of Errors" music video / mini-movie, GMA decided it was about time to take the band to the grill and interrogate them via the use of pincers. The conclusion of this chapter highlights a critical turning point of "The Annabel Trilogy" (the story in which their three album concept was based on). "Comedy of Errors" (from the new full-length, "Confessions") and it's accompanying video series is complete with an intriguing storyline of love, mystery, and time travel.


Let the interrogation begin...


Overall how hard (or easy) was it to construct and release the "The Annabel Trilogy"? Will there be any more trilogies?


"The trilogy was definitely an involved venture but one that has been very rewarding. I think that over time fans, both new and old, will really begin to appreciate the level of care that went into writing these albums and stories this way. I've been finishing up the complete short story and it has reminded me just how cool and involved this idea was and how proud I am that we were able to stick with it and see it through."


As you guys call yourself 'Pop Metal', do you feel the term has had backlash over the years? Is there a stigma towards pop music that metalheads generally have?


"If there has been I have not witnessed it first hand. Genres are, and always have been, a way to categorize and pigeonhole art. On one hand, it allows for people to siphon through things and get to new things that they may appreciate more quickly. On the other hand, it causes pre-emptive opinions to be formed. For me, if somebody doesn't like my art or music solely because of a genre lent to it then that is most likely a person I wouldn't want to invite into our creative world anyhow."


You've just released your second part of the "comedy of errors" music video, would fans of your music need to listen to the trilogy to understand the mini-movies?


"It certainly wouldn't hurt. I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys the videos to try to submerge themselves into the whole universe that we have created."


What plans do you have for the year ahead? Any tours over in the UK / in Europe?

"This year we are scaling back and taking a break to focus on our families and some other ventures. You haven't heard the last of Alesana just yet, however."


What challenges do you feel up-and-coming bands these days face more than ever? Is social media too heavily relied upon?


"Social media is 100% too heavily relied upon. Back at the beginning of our career we were immersed fully in the MySpace revolution. It was a huge help for us but that is because we used it to compliment our grass roots approach, we didn't rely solely upon the internet. A lot of young bands these days write a record, record it, take some photos, slap everything on Facebook and Bandcamp, sit back and wait, and then wonder why their band isn't blowing up. Playing shows, meeting people, and building relationships both with new fans and other bands is so important and a point that I think too many bands are missing these days."


A Heavy Metal movie hasn't really been done before, so could you imagine a film being made with purely metal musicians acting out characters? If you could remake a film, what one would you choose and why? Who would act the parts?

"That sounds like a fun idea. I'm a huge fan of movies and good television and honestly I do not like remakes. A part of what makes a piece of art beautiful is that it is one of a kind that is meant to be experienced a certain way."


Finally have you got any hello's, greetings etc you wish to send out?

"Shout out to my entire Revival family of artists!  You can check everything out at revivalrecs.com"

https://www.facebook.com/alesana