HoD: Merchant.... Great name for a band, makes me think doom
merchant or riff merchant. Given that you guys are a fairly new band, at least
to my knowledge on the live scene anyhow, please introduce yourselves and let
us know a bit of the history of how all this came together...
Wilson: Ben, Nick and
I got together mid last year with the idea of doing a heavy, uncompromising
band where we play exactly the kind of music we want to play. We'd all played
together in a band, Rainbird, before so it was pretty easy working together
from the get go.
Ben: We are all good mates and have been playing music with
each other since we were teenagers, and all in the same band at one point or
another. We had a lot of the music nutted out by the start of the year but were
sans vox. Mirgy came along a few months ago, and it honestly only took one
practice for us to realise he was the dude to 'sing'. We looked at what had
been written really objectively, as we had no vocal patterns in mind when we
wrote them, and took it from there. There weren't a lot of changes to the
songs, Mirgy just did his thing.
HoD: How would you describe your sound?
Wilson: A lot of people have mentioned Graves At Sea as a
band with a similar sound – which is really cool to hear and I can agree. In my
mind, it's somewhere between Graves at Sea, YOB, Dopesmoker-esque 12th fret
worship and early High on Fire. I feel weird mentioning all those dudes in the
same breath as us, as it probably has no basis in reality...
Ben: Yeah I would agree, it’s pretty difficult to describe,
especially to people who are still laughing at the fact that there is a silly
sounding genre known as ‘Doom Metal’. But yeah, I generally prefer to use
broader words that can be interpreted differently, so that people can form
ideas themselves and then eventually join the dots when they can actually hear
our music.
HoD: Seeing your debut gig you played three tracks, around
about 40 minutes all up roughly - all of them twisted, low, slow, epic riff
adventures. Do you have more tracks up your sleeve or under construction
currently?
Wilson: That's it for now. We just got out of that embryonic
stage where you're trying to build a set list, so all of our time has been
spent on getting onto a stage and getting the music in front of people. Now
that we've done that, it’s back in the writing phase. We've got heaps of riffs
and heaps of ideas about what kind of music we want to create so now it's just
getting that all pieced together. Easier said than done, however.
Ben: Yeah we are pretty eager to start getting our name out
there a bit now and start to play some shows now that we have a medium length
set ready to go. Which is awesome so now we can combine our writing with
performing and start to operate like a real band?
HoD: You have the
track 'Seismic' up on Bandcamp at the moment, a live demo to give people the
vibe of the band. What plans do you have in store for Merchant for the
remainder of 2015 and beyond?
Wilson: A physical release is definitely the big goal before
the end of the year. How long it is or what songs feature on it remain to be
seen, the writing process will hopefully guide us and solidify what we want to
go forward with. Ideally, plenty more shows too.
Ben: It would be awesome to start playing some shows with
the more established bands such as Watchtower, Horsehunter, Yanomamo only to
name a couple, and yeah just to get our name out there, build a little fan base
and fill our head with delusions of grandeur, haha.
HoD: Do you have some gigs coming up you'd like to tell us
about?
Wilson: We're playing with Frozen Planet 1969, Borrachero
and Olmeg at The Tote upstairs on the 22/5.
HoD: Thanks heaps for your time guys, and all the best with
the band. Will catch you guys on stage soon no doubt.
Wilson: Thanks to you too, Hand (if that is your real name).
Cheers for supporting the local scene and cheers for programming a crushing
radio station day in, day out.
Ben: Yeah it’s absolutely awesome to see how much support
there is in this little scene, and it’s all cause of legends like you Hando!
Cheers!
Not at all - it's all thanks to the creative talent of
people such as yourselves.
Get along to the gig on the 22nd of May at The Tote in
Melbourne, or check out the band at their Facebook and Bandcamp pages.
