Bmore Tunes
Posted by Greg Szeto on November 30th, 2007 link

GS: Could you say a little about your background and how the band got together?

MP: We started together about 2 years ago. Mike, Brian, and I had been playing with one line-up that never really came together. So I count the birth of this group in 2005, when Kevin joined.

KB: Just about 2 years this past September. I knew Michael and Mike from Towson and I had just gotten back from Berklee College of Music that summer. I was looking for a band and got an email from Mike about this project with Michael. I came up and played and it all just kind of clicked.

GS: You are easily the most accessible progressive metal group I’ve heard. What are your opinions on how the genre is progressing?

KB: I think prog metal is kind of having a resurgence. The difference is really the accessibility that is there. The internet and Myspace have really opened the doors and bands that no one would have gotten the chance to hear about at all are getting exposure so I think in general the genre is growing.

MP: I’ve been encouraged lately because of the opportunities for bands like Kevin mentioned. The thing I like about being in the prog community is that prog kind of gives you carte blanche to do what you want to do. If we want to write something low key and extremely melodic and has more influence from the direction of Genesis, jazz or fusion…the audience will sit there and listen to and accept that. On the other hand, if we want to write a riff that’s absolutely punishing, drawing more from our heavier influences or thrash metal background we can do that. The prog world has provided a schema for all that to fit together, flowing from one genre to the next seamlessly.

And I think that’s what people come to the genre looking for. I like the fact that on the majority of prog rock/metal albums you buy, within those 12 or 13 tracks, you go everywhere from acoustic ballads to absolute thrash punishment.

KB: Punishment in a good way. What really excites me is so many people are paying attention to it…that gives us an opportunity to surprise people a little. The heavier prog is heavier, noodlier prog is noodlier, people are really taking extremes to the extreme. We are really looking for that accessibility and moderate listenership, which gives us opportunity to be unique in the prog sense in that we are a little more stripped-down.

GS: What are some of the negatives to being associated with prog?

KB: Some people have the stigmatism that it’s all art rock. The whole self-indulgence thing. A lot of people you tell them you are in a prog metal band and they say “Oh I’m not into all that…the scales, the noodling, all that playing in 12 minute songs…” You hear some of the bigger bands like Dream Theater being criticized for being too technical and there’s no feel. But that’s where we try to ride up the middle there, not too much in one direction.

MP: What’s funny about that is all of the things that are stigmatized are the things I was seeking in music. I was seeking musicians with virtuosity. Different tastes for different people, but that was what I was seeking.

GS: Do you feel you can get too technical and lose the passion and message of the music, which is a common critique for the genre? How do you approach that?

MP: To try to accommodate for that in our music, I think we have a very good sense of stepping back and shift our perspective to that of the listener. I think it’s important to step back and say “If I didn’t have the sheet music or rhythms scratched out in front of me…would this convey?”

For example, a character that is agitated…odd times are great for that because they are irregular and evoke that kind of irregularity, panic and chaos. And you use it to tell a story.

KB: I think intention is the biggest thing, balancing technical skill with writing a song. Local bands, even national bands, will write something and it will seem like stock. Here’s the twin guitar harmonies, then the obligatory odd time signature…it’s almost like a paint-by-numbers technique. We engineer our songs from the ground up with deliberate direction.

GS: That’s interesting. So you start with a theme and then write the music based around that. Quite different from many bands that start by making the music or riffs then they just have lyrics develop.

MP: I think a lot of prog bands look at lyrics as obligatory. For me on the other hand, I grew up listening to what I think are some of the best lyricists in rock music…Steve Harris from Iron Maiden, Neil Parrot from Rush. So I usually start with the lyrics first. For 90% of the material I’ve brought to the band I’ve had an entire set of lyrics or an idea…something I want to say lyrically to start off with.

KB: I think that vibe or feeling is the measuring stick for adding more music or lyrics. I think having that fed by the music rather than straight up just created by the music helps the consistency come through. Sometimes There’s been times we’ve been writing something and said OK this section really stands out…it sounds cool by itself, on paper its in the right key, but it doesn’t fit…so we kinda pull that stuff out.

MP: We do a song “Shame of it all” which is the closest thing to a prog epic we have. In the middle of that, there is an instrumental section. But I justify that by the drama of the song…the song is about the struggle of the big guy versus the little guy.

In that section, the dramatic elements are seeking diplomacy and there might be peaceful resolution…then we pull back a theme from earlier. So we have one section with diplomacy and then when diplomacy has failed we are right back into thrash oriented music.

GS: Why should the casual listener go after more technically complex music? What’s the bait, the reward?

MP: The way that I look at it, like John Coltrane, an absolute master at his instrument, there were no lyrics to any of the songs when he performed. He was able to convey so much because he had mastered his instrument and had a vocabulary on it. I look at that as a way to expand the way we can communicate to the listener. Here’s what we have to say lyrically but also here’s what I have to say musically.

KB: I think people would be surprised what they can get from listening to disjointed music, with an odd time signature. That’s kind of a goal of ours…to see how much music we can cram in an interesting way without being too heavy-handed about it.

GS: Let’s run down your EP track by track and say a little about each song.

MP: “Mona Lisa” was my first real contribution. That was a really neat tune. Number one, we’re rocking out in major which you don’t hear very much. It’s a big fat heavy D major riff. The other thing is you get a little bit of the instrumental virtuosity you hear in progressive music in the fact that we have the big unison section in the middle…but it’s concise. We opted out of the big guitar solo, thinking we have 70 seconds of this already and we’ve said what we want to say instrumentally. Let’s get back to the message.

KB: I think a lot of times we think what would another prog band do with this? Add a guitar solo? We won’t.

MP: And often, just in the interest of being tasteful. Lyrically that tune talks about the instant pop star culture we have. People are thrust into stardom and aren’t prepared for the attention they get. You wind up with someone who gets attention from every media outlet, but there just aren’t that many dimensions to them.

“Just Call My Name” was what Kevin brought to the group, already demoed.

KB: I think this is the poster-child for Concrete Prophet. It has the kind of classic guitar solos. Musically there are a lot of meat stuff going on. The chorus doesn’t feel disjointed but there are a lot of interesting things going on meter-wise. It’s kind of hidden in there, if you’re digging for it you’ll find it. But if you just want to sit and sing along, it’s got that too.

Lyrically we were just going for the feeling of someone going out on their own…and the person who is waiting behind with that “I’ve got your back” sentiment. “Conquest” is the third track.

MP: I think it’s a great example of how we write, we are very deliberate. We’re missing a real strong live opener. I had written that riff a while ago, Mike Newberry and I had two sets of lyrics we were collaboratng on and said these work very well with this. This gets across that Spanish conquistador feeling we were going for with this riff. So we basically crafted the riffs around the lyrics.

KB: Arrangement-wise I think again a lot of interesting things are going on. Odd times again, playing with the amount of verse repetition.

MP: The thing I think is really interesting about this tune when Kevin joined…with the accessibility thing…you want to present something familiar in a new way. People are used to virtuosity in prog metal. Kevin comes in with a pianistic approach to tapping. He employs almost every digit except his thumbs when he goes for that solo. It fills the role of shred guitar solo but in a completely different way. And it’s exciting that we have something that’s a little bit different.