INTERVIEW: Phil Pendergast – Khemmis

You may recognise the name KHEMMIS from when their last album 2016’s Hunted was hot on the lips of many a music publication. After that record came out and wowed the doom and traditional metal fans simultaneously by sounding like the product of Randy Rhodes joining PALLBEARER, the band had to face some of the all too common struggles of life such as mourning and mental health bouts, which is why new album Desolation (read our review here) sounds as dark as it does. We caught up with guitarist and vocalist Phil Pendergast about this darker side as well as their incredible album artwork, his sociology PHD and Tom Waits.

We were massive fans on Hunted and love Desolation even more!

Phil: Great! Glad you like the new one too! We were a little worried we might lose some people but at the same time we also didn’t care that much, we wanted to do something different.

I was going to ask due to the very positive reaction the last album, was that on your mind during recording or did you just think screw it?

Phil: We kinda said fuck it! We’ve always been doing this to make the music that we wanted to hear that we didn’t think other people were making. Which at the time of when we started we didn’t really know of any other bands doing this traditional metal and doom metal so we want to always do new versions of that and uncover new facets of our sound and incorporate new influences we wanted it to have a more sinister tone and hoped people would like it but it wasn’t too much of a concern. We thought it was better or as good as Hunted so we didn’t really care too much beyond that.

It’s such a great combo of like THIN LIZZY and MERCYFUL FATE with JUDAS PRIEST and IRON MAIDEN with doomier stuff. Are there any more contemporary influences on this record though?

Phil: For this new record for instance I was listening to a lot of DEATH, especially Symbolic. And Dismember’s Like An Everflowing Stream. I can’t speak for everyone else but I’ve been on a death metal kick for the last couple of years. Also revisiting CELTIC FROST and and a TRIPTYKON trip as well. So wanted to incorporate some more elements of death metal and black metal into the songs. I feel like a lot of that music is not tied to doing song arrangements that you would expect and trying to adopt some of that approach to the arrangements for our songs. I think the first song on the album bloodletting is a good example of that, it basically has a verse chorus verse chorus format but it has an intro that’s completely separate, and an outro that’s completely separate but gets alluded to several times in the track and that structure of music was inspiring for us to do for this record.

I feel the album feels a lot colder and darker than the last one, especially lyrically. When you mentioned DEATH it actually clicked that was the influence I was hearing. Especially on Isolation, and loneliness feels like a common theme throughout the album. Was there anything that influenced this tone.

Phil: All the lyrics I try to write have been a reflection of wherever I’m at in my life and whatever I’m dealing with. They’ve always been really personal to me and the last year and a half we’ve really gone through a tumultuous time. Politically the world is changing a lot in ways that are very disturbing and also in our personal lives we’ve had a lot of losses and griefs as a band, and struggling with retaining good mental health because of being overworked and having all these things happening so a lot of it is a reflection of that. When we were writing the album I was feeling more hopeless than I’ve probably ever felt I’m my entire life and one of us lost a really close family member and it ended up being the inspiration for Isolation, the idea of when you’re grieving and you feel totally isolated from everyone else in the world it’s the days that are the hardest when you have to put on a face and interact with people and pretend that everything is fine then in nights where you almost wallow in how shit your life is right now and that it can kind of become a saviour for you because you process your feelings.

You’re forced to feel them.

Phil: Yeah, that’s definitely what I was shooting for with that song. Overall the record is very hopeless and dark, only by the last track is there any release from that and I feel like the last track is the most optimistic thing we’ve ever written.

Was there anything that directly influenced that last track or make you want to end on that note?

Phil: Because I was really reflecting on how fucking good we have it and people give a shit about our band and something we’re creating means something to somebody else and to a lot of other people really. I started feeling really proud and that I had a purpose again and I wanted to express what it’s like to feel that when you’re at rock bottom and the darkest point so that song is pretty explicitly about hope and a renewed sense of purpose.

I think a lot of people are going to relate to the darker parts, especially the mental health struggles and mourning of close one, because it’s happening to so many people, so I think it’ll be an album people are drawn to because of that.

Phil: I really hope so, I genuinely believe that when you open yourself up and are really honest about your feelings and the things that you’re struggling with, it’s not only therapeutic for you but for other people if they’re willing to listen and if they can relate to those feelings. It’s really terrifying to commit to explaining something so personal to yourself in a way where you know thousands of people are going to be judging it and hearing it. But with the experience of the last two albums, I’m more used to the idea now and in a lot of ways I thought it was more terrifying to express positive emotions in the last song rather than anything else in the proceeding ones, that was sort of a first for us. It’s really hard to write something that comes off as uplifting or positive that doesn’t come off as being cheesy, especially in metal. So that was something I wanted to take on as a challenge almost and prove to myself that I can still be honest in that way and not have it come off as cheesy. So I hope, like you said, that it resonates with people and if it even helps one or two people out and they can get some relief from whatever they’re dealing with that would be my biggest hope I suppose.

I think it will. I was wondering if any of the stuff you teach and study in your PHDs sneak its way into influencing your lyric writing?

Phil: For the most part I keep it pretty separate but if you’re studying sociology you definitely are aware of how people’s actions affect other people who have less privilege and you become more aware you have to keep up with the news more to see what’s happening to people so in a lot of ways that can feed into your own negative emotions. Also pretty explicitly a couple of times now with the song Serpentine on our first album and Maw Of Time on the new one, I’ve explicitly tried to write songs that are expressing anger about how women are treated in society and about how often sexual assault occurs and how many important women in my life have been victims of rape and my anger about that whole hierarchy. That’s something I don’t have any shame in admitting is a political aspect for that because I don’t think it’s political, I think it’s a fucking human rights issue. I’m not huge on making political music per say, at least personally, because I think it can be alienating and you don’t lose people in terms of having an emotional response to what you’re doing but I do think women not being raped and killed around the world is important enough to warrant singing about and being angry about and wanting to express an opinion about. That’s the only example that’s really explicit that I can think of. Anybody who’s a potential fan who would be turned off by me saying that can fuck off anyway you know? I don’t really care that much if we alienate people like that.

I was wondering about KEHMMIS’ album art. Is this wizard dude like a character in any of your stories? Is he a metaphor for anything? I got those vibes on Hunted when you sang about a bony outstretched finger which really. I personally imagine him as a character in the songs, is that the case?

Phil: I don’t really want to demystify anything for anybody who wants to take the art and lyrics and run with it and form their own opinions, but I definitely feel like he’s a representation of me and that using the idea of fantasy to create allegory and metaphor in lyrics that deal with something real can be an effective way of making a very personal statement sometimes be something that more people can read into with their own stories and that’s more where fantasy song writing comes into play. I wouldn’t say I explicitly write stories about this wizard character or anything but I definitely on Hunted with the song you’re referencing Candlelight, all those songs are based off weird dreams I’ve had my whole life which have been terrifying and when you’re in dream state the lines between fantasy and reality and yourself and characters are really blurred, so probably with that record more than the first one or this new one could it would be pretty easy to imagine this wizard character being a central figure in those stories. So I don’t really disagree or want to answer your question that directly I guess but I think there’s some truth to it. For me I resonate with this character and draw strength from being a badass wizard I I feel like I’m nobody.

What’s the process for the album artwork for KHEMMIS?

Phil: That’s one of my favourite aspects of doing this, that we get to work with really good artists and I take it upon myself to get really involved in that artistic process and working with Sam Turner is amazing because he has this Frank Frazetta-esque style that you saw on Molly Hatchet and NAZARETH album covers and fantasy books in the 70s. We wanted to have there be some continuity between the album covers where you can read in a story and imagine what’s going on in this world. Not necessarily having it be part of what the music is necessarily but there’s always tie ins to the lyrical content. What we’ve done for all three of KHEMMIS‘ albums now is I’ve had a general idea of what we wanted the art to show, what kind of characters and images and things and usually draw a rough draft with some kind of idea of the arrangement and I send it to Sam, we usually meet up over some beers and talk about what he sketches stuff and I usually send him the lyrics for the album and he cleverly incorporates some of the aspects. Like for Hunted he has his fingers outstretched and that’s coming from the line “three tall bony fingers stretched into the night” from Candlelight. But also thematically the album is called Hunted and really about being hunted in your dreams by an unseen malevolent force that crosses over into your real life and cover depicts this evil wizard with a skeletal army and on the back you have good wizard and the woman from the first album cover and they’re in battle together. Then with the new one you have the woman looked subservient to the wizard on the first album cover on the throne and that has implications related to what I was talking about with some of the songs earlier. And on the back side you have the evil wizard in shackles being lead to the throne by an executioner. So we’re trying to continue the story line and keep some of the characters there as well as relate it to the album themes but not have it be a literal depiction and let it have its own life as well. We kind of wanted them to be separate but related like how album covers used to be a lot of the time in the 60s and 70s and don’t really tend to be anymore. It’s something we’re all missing from the music in our collections and that was the inspirations for trying to do this over several albums instead of just having each cover be completely different.

I can’t think of anyone else really going to that much effort and that much storytelling in their covers right now. Stuff like DIO used to do.

Phil: Exactly and IRON MAIDEN with Eddie. There isn’t necessarily a story there but they’re some of my favourite album covers because like a new MAIDEN album gets announced and you’re like “oh shit, what’s Eddie going to be up to?” So there’s a lot of stuff that are throwbacks to the storytelling aspects from looking at our parents record collections and you’d be sitting in front of an album whilst it’s playing and trying to figure out what’s going on, we try to carry that on.

One fun hypothetical question before I let you go. You’re at a bar and your mission is to get everyone drunk as fast as possible, what record do you put on?

Phil: Oh shit! I’m gonna give you two different answers. One is for Denver specifically, there’s this band called SPEEDWOLF from Denver. If you’ve never heard of SPEEDWOLF you should definitely check them out, they’re MOTORHEAD reincarnated, they’re fucking awesome. They have one record that came out 10 years ago or something. I would absolutely put that on in Denver and everybody would be drunk. The other one would be, if I was out and just wanted people to get drunk I would probably put on one of the first three Tom Waits albums cause they’re immensely indebted to the idea of staying out late at the bars until they close and it’s very romantic ideal of getting drunk and spending your last dime on booze. It’s really hard to listen to Waits in the presence of alcohol and not drink that alcohol and feel a little worse about yourself but also a bit better.

Pleasure talking to you man!

Phil: You too! If we make it to your neck of the woods let’s get beer and listen to Tom Waits!

Desolation is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.

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