INTRODUCING: Urzah
Bristol-based URZAH are making huge a noise through the UK scene with their exceptional sludge stylings. We caught up with guitarist/vocalist Tom McElveen and bassist Dan Bradley on their new album A Tranquil Void, on twin songs, the importance of face to face time as a band and the gradual cohesion of the record.
With a name inspired by the Dark Crystal, and a collective love of horror and fantasy, URZAH are brimming with cosmic themes and ideas. With many heavy tracks that intertwine and overlap, while other elements soften through and add a lighter texture. “That’s kind of what we’re aiming for,” Tom agrees, “[to] have things that were really super heavy and then things that were very calm as well, really playing with the extremes and making sure we introduce plenty of variety throughout to make sure that it remains interesting, but still feels like part of the same kind of cohesive piece. […] the love of elevated fantasy definitely bleeds into the writing of everyone music.”
“We try to be really patient with space and dynamics and the way the songs flow together on the album. I think because we’re trying to create that kind of music we want to listen to – as much as we all love sludge and doom and riffy music, we kind of want to keep it interesting for ourselves and our listeners as well.”
URZAH manage to balance the epic expanses of progressive space and the frantic intensity of harder, more aggressive sludge in a way that immediately grabs your ear and doesn’t let go. They’re bold and adventurous writing sees pairings of songs that compliment and contrast with each other, as well as seeing huge behemoth tracks that swell out into these wonderfully immersive pieces.
“I think something like Entwined Twisted Roots Of Chaos, the last song on the album plays for thirteen minutes, it’s a very, very long run up,” Tom continues, “but it’s a deliberate build to what we think is a really cool ending. But I think it’s the confidence to just like create that space, not feel uncomfortable with everything. Yeah, we’re really proud of how it came out.”
Dan gives us a perspective of the whole process as the newest member of URZAH. “Yeah, I think like a lot of our writing is months and months and months of just like pushing and pulling sections,” he reflects, “I joined the band about 18 months ago. And you can test the dynamics in the room and see what’s working and what’s not. On the album we always wanted to get like layers of drum and cello and things on there. I think like a lot of the stuff we do, we don’t write very quickly.”
The process of writing evidently is an important one, with the themes and ideas coming through gradually, revealing themselves as the band develop their sound and the intentions behind each song. “I always think of heaviness as really only as being relative; something is only as heavy as the previous bit wasn’t,” Tom muses on the dynamics of the record. “So you can build heaviness in different ways and heaviness works in so many different ways, with melody and sound and structure. With Mouth of the Wolf for example, we kind of felt like we’re quite particular with that bit of the album. We knew that it had been quite busy up to that point and we really wanted like a palate cleanser to come in before I kind of thought we need something atmospheric, so we wrote the prelude to that, Bark and Branches.”
“There’s something quite nice about a song having a twin, a partner to sit next to in a way. It means you sort of separate [A Tranquil Void] into four chapters of an album, rather than it being a lot of different songs. And I think that really assists with the cohesion of it all as well, which we always try and really concentrate on.”
“It wasn’t planned like this, but [the songs] do connect very well in terms of the pacing and the melody and the kind of sense they create,” Dan considers. “I think that the engine of the band is working really well together. Yeah, it’s nice that there is that cohesion because obviously, it’s hard enough just getting time to rehearse, never mind write and get material that feels confident and full and real enough. So I think having that time in the room, even if we spend two hours of it rehearsing, two hours chatting about plans for the next tour, I think that contact time is really important. It’s good to instantly be able to get across what it is you’re thinking at the time and hear it in its entirety instantly as a concept. If you want to add something straight away, it’s easy to do.”
“The narrative of the whole thing itself kind of starts to form in its own way, almost kind of like a collective subconscious and by the end it’s clear what the idea is, and we never really had to really put a finger on exactly what it was we were trying to do. It just kind of happened, and there it was.”
A Tranquil Void is out now via APF Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS130 here.
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