Mountain Caller: Scaling The Summit
For all its challenges, 2020 has been a truly banner year for rock and metal, with a multitude of bands releasing truly amazing works. London instrumental collective MOUNTAIN CALLER are on the verge of releasing their debut album Chronicle I: The Truthseeker. We recently got in touch with guitarist Claire Simson to discuss how the band came to be, their writing process and the themes behind it.
Musically the band are tight, locking in a gargantuan groove and conjuring an expansive soundscape that echoes the desert ahead. “The concept grew slowly and organically – we built on the story with each song we wrote,” she muses. “Sometimes the music would lead the story and sometimes the story would lead the music.” Their debut is a prog/post-rock concept epic that tells the story of The Protagonist who, in the band’s words, journeys across the Twilight Desert, compelled by an indefinable but urgent need to set forth on an Odyssean journey to rediscover her memory and her voice.
The song-writing process was organic but not uncontrolled; echoing earlier comments, Claire remarks, “we’ll try lots of different ideas and eventually we’ll get to where we’re going. Sometimes it feels like the song writes itself and is done pretty quickly but other times it feels like a song is taking an age and we’ll hit blockers.” With a clear theme of The Protagonist and her journey both fleshing out some songs and being explored more deeply by others, the themes and vistas conjured within depended on what stage of her journey The Protagonist was on. Of the story itself, Claire describes Journey Through The Twilight Desert as “[conjuring] up images of a sprawling psychedelic desert where the sun never fully sets or rises, sandstorms and a sky full of stars and distant galaxies”, while Trial By Combat sees the band exploring a “long wait in the tunnels of a giant coliseum before [The Protagonist] is forced to battle, and eventually defeat, a monstrous beast”.
A core part of the concept is The Protagonist being a woman; MOUNTAIN CALLER chose this very deliberately, stating they are “hungry for storytelling and perspectives of women. There is so much still unsaid and there are so many paths untrodden. Half the world has yet to speak.” It’s a feminist allegory created in tandem with their music, the story of a woman who starts “from a place of now knowing herself and not knowing her power, and then [beginning] to discover things”.
Such a sprawling, epic concept could be hard to find the words to accurately describe so instead the band settled on telling the story through instrumental soundscapes (“we love being able to paint pictures and tell stories with just music”) – though this was partially accidental. Of their decision not to include a vocalist, Claire says, “we actually did find a vocalist at the same time we found Max [the drummer, recruited via Twitter] but they didn’t show up to the first rehearsal. We felt what we had was great as it was and so didn’t end up pursuing vocals any further.” Such confidence is well-deserved; Chronicle I… has a stellar grasp of dynamics, melody and knows when to be heavy and when to back off. It evokes winding roads, brooding valleys and all manner of strange encounters.
Tying into the lush instrumentation and epic concept of the album is the stunning artwork itself. The band acknowledge this is another piece of the puzzle to tell their story, describing the process as “a labour of love” as they try to ensure everything is one part of a cohesive whole. To hear them tell it, “the album art depicts The Protagonist walking through the Twilight Desert. As she approaches the Half Light City hewn from the canyon walls, she is watched from a distance by the Mountain Caller.” The band worked with artist Hannah Templer for this who “absolutely nailed it”.
The band are also very enthusiastic about tying in other mediums to tell their story as well – their new music video is directed by a “stupidly talented friend of the band” Tom Le Bon who helped to bring elements of the story to life. Clearly happy with how it’s turned out, Claire enthuses, “we can’t wait for everyone to see it. We’re so stoked with the end result”. They’re also considering expanding into other mediums – they’ve considered graphic novels, as “El is a huge fan of [them] so I’m sure this is something she’d love to do”. Given the band all work and have limited time and resources they can’t necessarily do everything they want, but if they could, Claire is ambitious, exclaiming “we’d probably make a Battlestar Galactica-esque miniseries and then full on TV series if we could!” That said, they make clear that they will always prioritise music over such vast ambition.
Finally, we asked what they wanted people to take from the album they’ve poured years of effort into creating and despite their lofty ambition, it’s clear the band are keeping themselves firmly grounded: “we really just want people to enjoy the music and feel like they’ve been on a journey. It might sound cliché but we all need a bit of escapism at the moment, don’t we? Hopefully, they’ll want to hear album number two. That’s shaping up nicely too.” After an unrelentingly bleak year, Chronicle I: The Truthseeker looks to accomplish just that and lays some very solid foundations for the next chapter in MOUNTAIN CALLER‘s tale.
Chronicle I: The Truthseeker is out now via New Heavy Sounds.
Like MOUNTAIN CALLER on Facebook.