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BIO | INTERVIEW
2008 - Alex Wade about 'This Is Exile'
Hey! Your new album ‘This Is Exile’ is soon to be released. What can the people out there expect?
They can expect something new and different. Not just for us but for the genre of deathcore as well. Our album isn’t groundbreaking by any means but I think we stepped it up and added a breath of fresh air into the genre by incorporating some new elements into the album. We still retain our old dark and brutal sound with heavy breakdowns but there are a lot of new ideas thrown in with different effects and new styles of writing.
What are the differences to your debut album?
As mentioned before on the new album we tried playing with some effects and stuff to give it an almost industrial type sound in some parts, something new and unique to the deathcore genre. There are also a lot more epic melodic metal parts like AMON AMARTH, BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, etc. I think this new album’s sound is different enough to attract a new crowd of fans for us while at the same time it still incorporates our old sound enough to please our old die hard fans.
With leading band JOB FOR A COWBOY bands like you, BRAIN DRILL and FATE are seen as a new wave of extreme metal. What do you think about this Deathcore movement?
I think it’s great. It just shows the progression of metal and even music as a whole. With metal it just keeps getting heavier and heavier and in my opinion the heavier the better haha. This new wave of death metal is incorporating the old brutal style of death metal from the past with the energy and abrasiveness of hardcore/metalcore. I think it’s a winning combination for this moment in music history.
Please name your influences and describe how songwriting is done in WHITECHAPEL camp?
Some of our main influences musically would be ABORTED, DYING FETUS, NILE, AMON AMARTH, CANNIBAL CORPSE, MESHUGGAH and BLOOD HAS BEEN SHED. Song writing in the CHAP camp usually starts with the guitars writing and jamming out different riffs and ideas. When we get something we like we map out drums on a drum machine in our recording program and then record some rough guitars to it. We then show these ideas to the rest of the members and if we like what we hear then we move forward with the completion of the song. Once the song is solid as a whole Phil will take the recorded version of the song and write lyrics to it because he crafts his lyrics around the song rather than prewriting lyrics and forcing them into their parts.
You feature three guitar players in your ranks which is quite untypical. What can you do with three seven stringers what band with only two guitarists can’t do?
A lot of bands on CD record rhythm guitars and harmonize the leads over them as well. When they get to a live situation they either don’t have the harmony on the lead or they lose thickness in their sound when the rhythm player goes to harmonize the lead. That doesn’t happen to us because while two guitarists are harmonizing a lead, one can continue doing rhythm with the bass. Or for breakdowns all three guitars and the bass can be doing the same thing and it’s just a huge massive wall of sound.
Please explain the role myspace played for your band.
I’ll be honest I don’t even think we would be playing shows out of our hometown if it wasn’t for Myspace. I love it, it’s the greatest marketing tool that has ever been invented for bands. Without it all of our fans wouldn’t even know who we were, and even more Metal Blade probably wouldn’t have even caught word about us and been able to check us out to sign us, hahaha.
In November you will be touring Europe alongside label mates UNEARTH. What can the fans expect from your live performances?
High energy, heavy hitting, and brutal. We’re definitely more of a live band, not saying we’re bad on CD. But I think our live show really demonstrates our raw power, energy, and heaviness more than the CD.
How would you describe WHITECHAPEL to people who have never heard of you before?
A band playing a modern form of death metal, including the old brutal style and groove of classic death metal mixed with modern forms of metal and hardcore elements to create a heavy hitting and abrasive new wave of extreme metal.
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