Gozer: Breaking Through The Static
Someone somewhere must’ve said something about how every ending is a new beginning right? Well, that’s certainly true enough in the case of GOZER anyway. Birthed in 2020 from the ashes of their previous project ARCHELON, the UK post-metal trio are days away from releasing a decisive opening statement in the form of their debut full-length An Endless Static when we dial into their rehearsal space via Zoom. A release two years in the making – and a remarkable one at that – the excitement is palpable from all three members as they look to finally hit the ground running.
“Obviously we hope people like it and we hope people find something in this to enjoy it,” smiles drummer TJ Fairfax. “But at the same time we write music because it’s what we want to write. We don’t write stuff to go ‘we hope people like it’. Obviously that’s a wonderful bonus when people do and they want to come to our shows and stuff, but we wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t want to just create something and then put it out.”
If anything, Fairfax is being a little too modest here; to our ears, anyone who enjoys the works of post-metal’s holy trinity of NEUROSIS, ISIS and CULT OF LUNA should find plenty to like about An Endless Static. We don’t just throw those names about either; with this record GOZER have produced a work of phenomenal craft and staggering weight, to the extent that they aren’t even dwarfed by those admittedly towering comparisons. For a debut full-length, that’s no mean feat at all.
“I think the big thing I have noticed is that when we’re experimenting or playing around with recording stuff, we just try everything that we have,” offers bassist Kieran Sockett. “Like for every idea that we have, if it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. For a while I’ve said it’s better to do 100 things and only keep 40 of them than just do 40 and be like that’s enough, we’ve filled the quota.”
It sounds like a sensible approach to us, one that’s yielded five lengthy compositions for An Endless Static, with the band decidedly unafraid to take their time with each and every idea that comes their way. “With a lot of what we play and write, and even when we recorded the album, we don’t go ‘right we’re going to do this for eight bars,’” explains Fairfax. “We’ve always done it where we’ll just do what feels right, and we don’t set out necessarily that it’s this many bars every single time. So I think that adds to it as well, when we’re all really feeling a riff we’ll just kind of go until it feels right for the next passage.”
“We’re a little bit more open to other people coming into it too,” adds guitarist Craig Paul. “It’s not like we’re these three people and it’s just us like you get with your MOTÖRHEADs where you get those three instruments and they do their thing. We like to add little bits here and there and get other people in, so there may even be times when we’ll go out and play a few gigs with a second guitarist or we’ll take [An Endless Static contributor] Richard Spencer on a tour with us so he can play viola. We’re very open to collaboration and allowing other musicians to have their influence on our music because then it kind of becomes part of the community spirit in that way.”
In An Endless Static’s case, those other musicians include the aforementioned Spencer, who lends his hypnotic viola playing to two tracks on the record, HUNDRED YEAR OLD MAN’s Tom Wright, who contributes synth and French horn to lead single Fading Light, and TORPOR vocalist Simon Mason, whose lyrics and screams lead the charge on fourth track Desiderium. Every one of these elevates the record in their own right, but there’s never any doubt that at the album’s core sits the trio themselves, with all three members contributing lyrics and vocals in what the band have described as a search for catharsis “buried within the noise”.
“One thing that we always say is that this is like therapy for us,” suggests Paul. “We each individually have struggles with life, the universe and everything, just like everybody does, and everybody has their way of translating that into creativity, be it music or art or anything like that. This is our way of expressing that. When we get together in a room it’s almost like we’re in session, basically, because we don’t just make music, we also talk about our problems and anything that might be happening in our lives and it filters into the music because it’s the environment in which we do that.”
“That’s been a benefit of all of us wanting to have a hand in the lyrics and the vocals as well,” continues Sockett. “It’s not just one person’s story, it’s the amalgamation of three to an extent similar stories, but told through those three different voices.”
Wrapping up then, it’s clear this is very much just the beginning for GOZER, a sentiment all three of the band share as we come to conclude, with Paul perhaps putting it best as he summarises, “We like it to take us on its little journey, we’re along for the ride. It’s like GOZER exists as something else and we just kind of hop on.”
An Endless Static is out now via Trepanation Recordings.
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