INTERVIEW: Djamila Azzouz – ITHACA

With the likes of CODE ORANGE, KNOCKED LOOSE, and ever more recently, VEIN spear-heading the resurgence of metallic hardcore, it is a vibrant and exciting time to be part of metal’s underground right now. Given the surging popularity within the underground, and the sheer quality of bands on offer, for bands looking to make their mark, the stage has never been better set. Enter ITHACA, who look destined to join the ranks of underground metal’s growing repertoire of quality bands. We spoke with vocalist Djamila Azzouz to talk about how ITHACA are arriving on the scene at the perfect time with their crushing debut album The Language of Injury.

So, your debut album The Language of Injury is coming out on February 1st. How are you feeling about it?

Djamila: I am feeling equal parts excited and absolutely fucking terrified! [laughs]

There’s been quite a lot of hype surrounding this release, has it made you and the rest of ITHACA feel quite nervous about it?

Djamila: Yeah, I don’t know about the others but yeah. People have been really positive about it, the reactions we’ve gotten so far have been really positive and everyone has said really nice things which has obviously been really amazing. Also, just because we’ve been away for so long, it took us like three years to get to this point, there’s a level of expectation I think, even for ourselves. People have been waiting for this for so long, it’s a bit nerve-wracking!

Was the writing process quite meticulous in crafting this album?

Djamila: It always is. It is meticulous to quite the degree, I think we are definitely perfectionists. It’s difficult to describe I guess, we’d rather take our time and have everything how we want it to be than release something that is rushed. I think it will hopefully show when people hear the album but yeah, we are notoriously slow at writing anyway! I think people have always known that. Both EPs which we have released previously, it took a year to write both of those, so it’s not a surprise it took us this long to get an album out.

I guess by taking longer to write, it means it can allow the album to grow more and feel more organic?

Djamila: Yeah exactly. I think we found that some of the songs we wrote initially, the first songs we wrote for the album, you go back after a year and you’re still writing the album and you can then look at those songs again with what you got and be like “do we need to change this?” It allows a lot more time for editing.

Up to this point ITHACA have two EPs to your name, so when you were writing and recording a full-length album, was it much of a different experience for you?

Djamila: I don’t think so, not really. It felt quite freeing because both EPs are a little bit more compact where as with this it was like “we’ve got a whole album to play with here” so now we can do exactly what we want to do over the course of ten tracks or whatever. We’re not constrained in any way but the writing process itself was quite similar to how we normally write anyway. Also, we didn’t give ourselves any time restraints with it, we were just like “we want to write an album, let’s just write and keep writing and see what happens with it.”

The album title in particular, The Language of Injury, I think it quite catchy and a rather snappy title. So, what does that actually mean? What message are you trying to portray with that?

Djamila: That’s a very good question! [laughs] It’s quite nice that people have latched onto that, other people I have spoken to have given me some very interesting parallels and what they think it means to them, which is super cool! We don’t really write as a band conceptually and we never set out to write this album with a concept in mind. I myself don’t write lyrically conceptually but I’ve always found that by the time I get to the end of writing, whether it’s an EP or an album, by the time we get to the end of it it’s quite clear to me what it’s about. It’s a certain snapshot in time of how I was feeling at a particular point or during a particular period of my life. I think there is a lot of common themes and emotions that run through the album and one of them is very much about communication. The lack of communication and not necessarily what is said but a lot of the time what isn’t said. What is left unsaid.

It must be quite nice to see that people have taken their own interpretations from the album?

Djamila: Absolutely! When you are making music you never really want to tell people what it is about, it’s so much nicer to have people interpret it in their own way, that allows them to connect with it emotionally in their own way as well. It’s been super cool when people have spoken to me about what it means to them.

One of the things I really love on the album is that fine balance between the sheer chaos and then those subtle moments of tranquillity. How difficult was it to try and balance two contrasting musical elements?

Djamila: I feel like that kind of style of having both elements in our music is something that comes quite naturally to us. It’s something that we’ve always done, even though our sound has changed quite a lot over the course of our EPs and then to this album. We’ve always liked to have moments of reprieve in between the chaos. Just to have that contrast between things that are quite frantic and then certain sections that sound quite tranquil, I think that is quite reflective of the lyrics as well.

And it gives the listener a moment to catch their breath!

Djamila: Exactly, yeah. And we’re such big fans of heavy music but we’ve always loved to have things that sound pretty as well. That’s kind of a part of that I guess, you know, heavy music is our love but the kind of stuff that we write and the kind of stuff we like to write, you kind of have to have the peaceful moments in order to appreciate the force of the heavier parts.

So with this balancing, is it something you are going to develop further down the line?

Djamila: Yeah I guess. Who can say? With this album in particular, we’ve written stuff I’ve never even dreamed that we would write a couple of years ago. Because we write in that way, you never know what you are going to get! We’ve got tracks on the album, we’ve got a track that sounds like a straight hardcore song, and then we also have a really emotional interlude. And then we have a track right at the end that sounds like a blackened hardcore epic. So, we’ve always written for ourselves and we’ll just follow how we feel, that’s what we’ve always done.

By doing that, I guess you are never putting barriers up for where your sound can develop?

Djamila: Absolutely. I think with what people have said about how our sound has developed, a lot of that has a lot to do with getting a bit older. Getting to be a lot more comfortable with ourselves, personally, and musically. When you are together as a band for a certain amount of time, you really stop giving a shit about what people think! All of those expectations and barriers to what you feel you should put into your music or how you should sound, all of that just falls away. You can just be a lot more creative with it because we’ve always wanted to push the barriers a little bit! Push the barriers of what hardcore and metal could be. We’re really just at this point now where this is our sound, we’re so hard to categorise! [laughs]

You just touched upon pushing heavy music forward, ITHACA are signed with Holy Roar Records who are regarded as having a whole roster of forward-thinking bands. So how is that working relationship with them?

Djamila: It’s amazing! It is something we wanted to do for a really long time and we chatted to them about releasing our previous EP, Trespassers, with them but we had some issues with timings and stuff like that, so it never happened. But, they are really good friends of ours and they are really amazing people, they’ve got their heads screwed on and they know exactly what they are doing. It’s not a surprise to us at all that they are finally getting the recognition they deserve.

Last year was an incredible year for Holy Roar, so, with The Language of Injury being one of their first releases for 2019, does that put any pressure on you?

Djamila: Yeah I guess in a way it does. The beginning of the year in the musical calendar tends to be a bit of a dead time for releasing new music, so we were just like why not do that? Why not be one of the first out in the year. It gives us then plenty of time to do a lot of other stuff later in the year but you can tell by looking at their roster now, they have plenty of amazing bands on there and the rest of the year for them as a label, it’s going to be incredible!

It must be good to be a part of it?

Djamila: Oh for sure. I started going to Holy Roar shows when I was 17/18 years old, they’ve been around for a while. We never thought when we were that age that we’d end up being a band on their label. It’s super cool for us.

As this album drops, metallic hardcore has really enjoyed a creative boom in the last few years with bands like CODE ORANGE and VEIN leading the charge. So, do you feel with the release of this album, do you feel it’s arriving at the perfect time?

Djamila: Yeah I guess so. It’s kind of funny really, when we started the band, the kind of stuff we were writing was not in vogue at all. Metalcore was not popular at all. You’d say metalcore and people would go “ew KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, fuck you!” I’d be like “what?! KILLSWITCH ENGAGE are fucking great!” [laughs] But, we never predicted the resurgence. We never predicted it would come round again so we’re quite lucky that there are so many good bands coming up at the moment who are all doing something similar to what we are doing. So yeah, I think it has come at the right time.

I guess it invites friendly competition as well?

Djamila: Oh absolutely. In the past, we’ve had quite a few comparisons to CODE ORANGE and we’re always like “fuck, that band are way better than us! What are you talking about?” [laughs] It’s so nice to see that bands doing that because if say we were the only one doing this at the moment, we would not be getting this attention we’d be getting now.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me Djamila. Best of luck with the album release!

Djamila: Thank you so much! You’ve been very complimentary and I’m very grateful for that!

The Language of Injury is set for release on February 1st via Holy Roar Records.

For more information on ITHACA like their official page on Facebook.