Tallah: Sick New World
Concept albums are tough. It’s one thing to write a song, let alone a full record, but when you then decide to add in the constraints of a storyline, it’s a completely different ball game. The vast majority of bands around right now won’t write one across their whole careers; TALLAH, a bunch of nu-core upstarts from Pennsylvania, have now done three in as many releases.
Vocalist Justin Bonitz smiles when this fact is brought up, even more so when he’s asked if his band are gluttons for punishment for undertaking such a feat. “I’ve just always done concept albums!” He laughs. “I’m an author, and as a result find it very easy to write storylines! I also think a lot of people run out of material when they’re writing ‘normal’ albums because, you know, you can only write about your pain and loneliness so many times.”
Justin’s approach to writing crucially doesn’t involve trying to look at what he’s penned before. “I don’t really compare what I’m working on to what I’ve already done,” he explains. “Rather than thinking about ‘How do I top my last effort?’, I just allow myself to write a story and then view it from a fan perspective. If I like it in that regard, then I know it’s good enough to work on.”
In third album Primeval: Obsession//Detachment, the duo of nurse Ana and assassin Sheelah find their lives impacted by the same group of beings, pushed towards the brinks of their morality and building towards a mirrored finale. Unlike the works of, for example, COHEED AND CAMBRIA, where everything is set within the same universe, Justin has no intention of bringing his stories together in a similar fashion right now.
“I’ve always thought of the releases as more of an anthology,” he reveals. “There are little Easter eggs between them, and I’m sure the fans will end up finding them and figure out ways to connect the albums together, but that’s never been my intention.”
The record also sees Max Portnoy – son of DREAM THEATER legend Mike – make a permanent move from drums to bass, with Joel McDonald coming in behind the kit. As the meme says, you only need to take out two or three drummers to eliminate an entire local music scene, so why would you go looking for a new one of them and not a bassist?
“Funnily enough, it started when Max was asked to join CODE ORANGE back in 2021,” Justin relays. “We were due to go out on tour with AVATAR and realised we needed a new drummer, so we brought one guy in and that didn’t quite work out, but afterwards Max was still busy with CODE ORANGE and we were heading out on tour again, and Joel came on board after we saw drum covers of his online and it worked out so well that when our previous bass player couldn’t make a tour, Max jumped in and we decided to make it a permanent switch.”
Justin also concedes that Max probably didn’t want to forever be associated with the instrument that made his father famous either. “He’s wanted to play guitar or bass in TALLAH since about 2019, and he’s a nasty bassist; he writes a lot of the riffs for the record and he’s never liked being stuck behind the kit, so it’s worked out well.”
Max’s impressive talents on bass are all over Primeval, from the KORN-esque What We Know to the SLIPKNOT stylings of As Fate Undoes. Perhaps the most impressive thing, however, is that Justin recorded all of his vocals in one single take. “I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while without it working out previously” he divulges, “but with this record I practised the crap out of everything, went to the studio and said to Josh (Schroeder, producer) ‘Hey, I want to try this’ and it worked out brilliantly. I think I’ve also inspired everyone so that next time, maybe they’ll do the same thing.”
That ‘next time’ is a fair way off still, with the band doing a few shows in September before supporting KING 810 in the winter; UK and European shows will likely be announced for next year. “I’m so excited to play something new,” Justin confirms. “We played the material from (second album) The Generation of Danger for two years and I’m so sick of it now!”
Good job, therefore, that it won’t be too long before Justin is able to play those new songs and bring his audiences into another twisted world of his own creation. Quite where he gets the ideas from is, naturally, anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t sound like the tank is running empty any time soon, and that can only mean a bright future for TALLAH.
Primeval: Obsession // Detachment is out now via Earache Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS124 here:
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