SOURCE – How do you look at the career arc for Sermon from the early days to the current incarnation of the group? What are some of the goals or bucket list items you would like to achieve that haven’t been accomplished to date?
HIM (Guitar, Keys, Vocals) – I feel they’re still early days, although the releases have taken double/triple the time to release than they ever did to write. There’s just so much preparation and calendar organising, to get anything part of the process to move is pretty painful.
I think I would like us to do some performances, but I genuinely have no idea how to make it happen. It will need more external interest.
SOURCE – Given that much time to work on the new material, was there a song or two that took on a massive transformation from the initial idea or demo to what we hear for the final output?
HIM (Guitar, Keys, Vocals) – That’s a good question. Often I have quite a clear vision for what a song is going to be, like a kind of blurred shape. I don’t have all the details yet, but I kind of say to myself ‘I want a really listenable song but with blast beats’ and because I kind of tightly define the parameters,it’s a good starting point.
That said, this album wasn’t planned to come out as aggressive as it has. Truthfully, I wanted to make something a bit more radio friendly I think? I still want to actually.
I would say though there are songs on the album which I don’t feel are resolved, but I think you’ve got to make your peace with it because potentially you may never finish them if you’re waiting for imaginary perfection. I don’t think that’s healthy artistically and it’s much more fruitful to be ok with not getting something quite right.
SOURCE – What did you enjoy most about working with producer Scott Atkins and his approach with the band? Are there specific areas you think he brought the best out of you guys as musicians and players?
HIM (Guitar, Keys, Vocals) – I love Scott. The thing with recording in this project is that I’m present for the whole thing and so you spend a shit ton of time together in the same room. As a result, you both become pretty comfortable with each other and It’s almost like a therapy session.
From what I hear there can be quite a tension with some producer/artist sessions usually to do with a difference in vision. I feel like though I’m fairly open to ideas from people, and most importantly, always want to try the thing that’s being suggested.
That said, Scott doesn’t really have to rewrite the songs. I think we added in a section in the Distance, as a bridge before it went quiet again. He was right, it needed that part and so I think it’s always important to listen and try these things. As frankly, I don’t truly know anything, everything I do is guesswork at best.
You’ve made a number of videos for the new record – how does the decision making process work when it comes to singles to deliver to showcase what the listeners can expect, and how do you feel about the video making process to promote your work these days through social media platforms?
Actually this is really down to a non-existent budget. The true vision for videos has been storyboarded and scoped every time but I can’t get the budget to do it, even if everyone works for free. Prosthetic are pretty supportive, and allow me to do what I want to do, and I understand that relative to the album recording costs, it’s often more to do a video. I don’t think they think it’s worth it at this stage, which I can understand.
That said, competition for media space in Metal publications is nuts and without a super high quality video that really captures the essence of the band, I simply don’t think we will ever reach a wider audience without one. We just aren’t on the scene enough.
SOURCE – Is it also a challenge for James Stewart to balance his work in Sermon and all the recording/touring he does with his other band e.g. Decapitated?
HIM (Guitar, Keys, Vocals) – James does this when he can, which is to say, not often, but he’s such an essential part of Sermon I’m happy to arrange round his timeline. I can’t offer him tour after your yet like Decapitated or Belphegor.
Sermon live will operate more like a network of musicians I think in the beginning until we find our stride on the scene and guarantee big enough tours to commit everyone.
SOURCE – How do you balance band activities with day jobs, careers, and personal relationships/family obligations? Do you think it’s possible to be able to make a living from the music endeavors alone for Sermon?
HIM (Guitar, Keys, Vocals) – In the past I’ve found it not really a problem. However life’s a fair bit more stressful nowadays, as I own a business that is quite creatively all consuming. So there hasn’t been much time for music. Instead of going on holiday the past 6 years, any time off I get is really to write a Sermon record, which has been ok to a point, but now it’s starting to feel a bit unhealthy.
In terms of personal relationships, it doesn’t affect it because we don’t tour. I know though from the grapevine that holding a relationship when you’re touring 6 months of the years takes a tremendous amount of strength and honestly, if that’s the choice I had to make between a band and someone I love, I wouldn’t do it. Music just isn’t important enough to me.
From the money side, I haven’t seen a penny, it’s only ever cost me money. I doubt in the immediate future it will make me anything, I do hope though that it will be able to financially support itself, then we can take things on the road and expand the art into places we can’t right now.
SOURCE – What types of advice do you try to give to these younger musicians when it comes to the music or business side that hopefully they take into consideration?
HIM (Guitar, Keys, Vocals) – I don’t understand the music industry honestly, but I do run my own company in my day-to-day life. From what I can tell (and I may be entirely wrong, but I’ll give my two cents anyway) the biggest problem is that currently the music industry runs more like a pyramid scheme, than a business.
What I mean by this is that at every stage of the pyramid; whether you’re young wide-eyed hopeful just starting a band, to a more established mid-tier artist, to record label owner, to a Spotify exec;
everyone seems to be buying into the idea of getting to the next stage, more than any hope of selling enough product to self-sustain within each tier.
The tiers might look a little like this; The young hopefully is paying money for equipment, vans, recording time to play shows and make EPs to get to the mid-tier, the mid-tier artist is getting the young hopefuls to buy onto a bus for a month for £15k to do a tour that exposes them enough to get into the upper tier of artists, the label is having to take 80% of royalties to stay afloat and hopefully make a Spotify playlist to shift enough merch to keep the art coming, and the Spotify exec is taking a 7 figure salary in the hope they can please the stakeholders so that one day they may be able to sustain the company off the actual listeners rather than a bunch of investors.
Ultimately, people don’t buy music enough because with all the cheaper options why should they? Until the cheaper options are more expensive, that’s the way it will always be. Because of that, every single piece of the artists output, be it merch, CD, vinyl, posters etc is scalped from every other part of the pyramid and only the few will ever be able to live off it.
With all that said, you should still do it. Money is a shit reason to do anything anyway. Do it for your sense of self.
SOURCE – May a new generation of fans will discover the band with this album. What do you want to say to them?
HIM (Guitar, Keys, Vocals) – Trying new things is hard, so if you did try, even if you didn’t like it, I thank you.
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