Enthean: Full Album Stream & Interview
Lacertilian: Hi, first of all, could you please introduce yourself/selves to our readers?
Brian: I’m Brian Kingsland from the Greenville, South Carolina based metal band Enthean.
How long have you been making music together?
Adam and I have been jamming together since the 1940’s, but as a complete band for about 4 years. 2012-ish.
Haha! I noticed that three tracks from Priests of Annihilation first appeared as an EP released in 2013. Has the band’s sound changed much since that time?
Well, a few of the songs on this record were written years ago. We actually have enough new songs for another album, but yes, our sound has matured since that EP. We tend to focus on songwriting over flash these days.
That’s always a good thing in my books. Listening to the album I heard a wide variety of styles being incorporated across both songs and the album as a whole. Would you care to tell us some of your influences?
That answer will probably be different depending on who’s asked, but for my money nothing beats Emperor, Pantera, Morbid Angel, the Beatles, Slayer, Strapping Young Lad, Classical music, sushi and marijuana.
Sounds like it would make a killer playlist to me. Do you have a particular strain you prefer?
Sativa!
Priests of Annihilation has some awesome artwork, somewhat atypical of the majority of tech-death covers; it features a severe lack of both aliens and purple. Who created it? Did you offer direction? It befits the album remarkably well.
Haha, yea… machines, aliens and purple shit’s beat! Except for Deep Purple. That’s my jam. But Marco Hasmann did the artwork. He’s worked with Fleshgod Apocalypse, Atrocious Abnormality, Beyond Creation etc… I sent him a Gustave Dore etching that I was fond of. Asked him to put his own spin on it and he did an amazing job. He’s a total badass.
That’s excellent! As a group, our writers and readers alike have had a long-running mutual opinion that the world is simply running out of band names, as evidenced by the numerous bands with the same damn name, long convoluted names or just plain fucking awful names. Enthean, on the other hand, is a nice succinct and memorable name. How did it come about? Does it have any particular meaning? Or did you just go with the “Metallica method” and create something that sounds cool?
I think we just trolled the internet for cool band names. We were pretty picky about it. We narrowed it down to a few but Enthean sounds strong and just rolled off the tongue. It means “divinely inspired”.
Our resident tech-death author and all-round legend Spear has a question he’d like to ask – Regarding your sound and the current landscape of technical death metal, were you striving to achieve something that stood out, or did your sound come about naturally?
Totally natural. We write what we want to hear. We love all types of music and we’re not purists, so whatever comes out comes out. If a riff sounds like shit, we scrap it. If it has potential and we all connect with it then we find a home for it.
The band not only has a great diversity in terms of music but the vocals also display a healthy array of variety. How are the vocal duties split?
Adam’s a great lyricist so he handles 80% of the subject matter. I come in and kinda make things fit so to speak. In general Adam does more lows, and I do more of the highs. But we trade off here and there for a little diversity. It also depends on who’s guitar part is tougher to do vocals over. If I’m playing chords and he’s playing some crazy arpeggios it just makes sense for me to sing over that riff so he doesn’t implode.
The crazy gear-heads (..not drugs) who read our website will probably lambaste me for not asking an equipment related question, so… like… what guitars/beer/amps/drums/cheese do you guys use?
We use Fractal AxeFx and a combination of Ibanez/Jackson guitars, VHT amps, Mesa/Vader cabs, PBR, Yuengling, Honda motors, Wolverine Steel Toe boots and Durabond Fast Dry Spackling, sold exclusively at the Oconee County Jug and Loaf.
We have some regular readers from your region, do you have any local bands you’d like to plug? Also, any bands you’d like to tour with in the future?
Personally I’d love to tour with Nile, Lecherous Nocturne or Lust of Decay because they’re still local boys to us. But we’ve got a lot of killer bands in our scene. Marrow of Earth, Rapheumet’s Well, All Hell, Black Hand Throne, Azymyth, Mysteriarch, Beyond the Gallows, etc… the list goes on.
Will there be a digital format of the album to coincide with the physical release? I have a few cheap friends who don’t want to pay for delivery all the way to Poserville…
Oh yes! iTunes and Spotify for sure.
Thanks for your time, is there anything else you’d like to say to the dwellers of the bowl?
Thanks for having me and keep supporting hard working bands!
Well, what did you think? I know a bunch of you were already keen on pre-ordering just based on the responses from last month. If you haven’t already done so, you can get your hands on the album over at Enthean’s bandcamp page and keep up to date with them/thank them for their time on friendface.
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