Armed For Apocalypse: No Way But Their Own Way
ARMED FOR APOCALYPSE are done compromising. Admittedly, their previous releases don’t exactly scream of a band settling for second best, but as the Californians themselves tell it the past decade plus change has been far from straightforward. After releasing a couple of killer records in the late 00s and early 10s, life and line-up changes slowed the band’s progress significantly, with only the Palm Reader EP arriving in 2018 to help plug the nine-year gap between their sophomore full-length The Road Will End, and the album we’re here to talk about today: Ritual Violence.
“Everything that we’ve done as a band has always been no money, no time, no resources,” explains guitarist Cayle Hunter. “Even though we’ve had people helping us and we’ve done stuff, it’s always been not quite as much as we needed or wanted or whatever. So we’ve always had to compromise the whole time, like ‘we think we can get a really great recording for a little money’ instead of just going out and getting the recording that we wanted or vice versa.”
Refusing to be beaten however, the band were adamant that things would change this time around. Setting out to capture the true power of their live shows for this latest record, they were insistent that Ritual Violence would be the album that they had always wanted to make, no matter how long it took to make it. “Every step of the way, we were not going to stop until we got it our way,” continues Hunter. “We always wondered what it would be like if we didn’t compromise and so then we just stopped wondering and we did it the way that we wanted to and that’s why we’re so proud of the result. We did it our own way.”
It certainly seems to have paid off too. Ritual Violence is easily the best thing the band have done, a work of impossibly compelling sludgy violence that grabs its listeners with full-force from its very first riff. Our conversation actually takes place just a few days ahead of the album’s release, and the first reviews are starting to trickle in. Hunter is pretty clear that external pressure wasn’t a factor in the creation of this record, but he fully admits to finding this part of the process quite daunting.
“I get so nervous when reviews and things like that start coming back,” he confesses. “I think I can speak for the other guys when I say that the music we make is probably more personal for us than anything that we do in life. Even though it’s all loud and heavy and everything like that, it’s more of an intimate snapshot of our true selves than anything else we do in life. I don’t think we’re walking around being fake or anything like that, it’s just a very vulnerable thing.”
Of course, it really helps Ritual Violence‘s case that it was produced in the deft hands of Kurt Ballou – again the only man ARMED FOR APOCALYPSE wanted for the job. “He could see what our vision for the record was, and he was really good at holding us accountable to that” summarises Hunter. “He was basically like ‘this is what you guys told me that you want, so this is my job to make sure that you’re getting it’. With somebody who’s not a friend first I would imagine it would be tough to find that trust, but we loved everything that he’s done sound wise, and in CONVERGE and all these great records that he’s done, so it was easy for us to trust him.”
Ballou isn’t even the only notable name attached to the record. In what Hunter views as a couple of great full-circle moments for ARMED FOR APOCALYPSE, Ritual Violence sees them joined on separate tracks by Trevor Phipps of UNEARTH (“he was the first person to actually like our band!”), and Andreas Kisser of SEPULTURA – a childhood hero turned friend and colleague. “I just think that those moments make the short term sacrifice worth it,” Hunter smiles. “There are so few wins in music; you just hear no all the time and things are so hard, so when you have a moment like that I try to really appreciate it.”
It’s around this point in our conversation that we are joined by drummer Nick Harris, who catches us on what Hunter affectionately refers to as ‘Harris time’. It’s a shame we can’t include more of his contributions here, but after a heavy love in for everyone from CROWBAR and WILL HAVEN to BLINK-182 and MOTLEY CRÜE, the drummer concludes our chat with what feels like advice to his own band as much as anyone else. “Bands do not and will not make it from home. If I were to tell a young band anything I would say even without an agent, get yourself on the road, keep yourself relevant and if you find any stillness you write and you record a fucking record, and keep on going.”
“We’re already thinking follow-up,” he continues enthusiastically. “We don’t want to have that little bit of time where we need six more months to write this record. We need to start demoing stuff by December, getting it to desks as soon as we can ready to fucking go.” As Hunter completely concurs, all we can say is bring it on.
Ritual Violence is out now via Candlelight Records.
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