Tiberius: A Peaceful Annihilation

As we are progressing through the various stages of easing lockdown the future of musician’s is still very unpredictable. Whilst some have had the luxury of being able to entertain their fans with live streams to produce a bit of revenue during these turbulent times there are others which have been able to take this opportunity to reflect, hone their craft and push forward. Edinburgh’s own progressive metal trailblazers TIBERIUS have been beavering away behind the scenes, putting the finishing touches on their highly anticipated debut full-length release.

“I don’t want to say it’s been a blessing in disguise because it’s obviously a tough situation for many,” states guitarist Chris Foster. “It has however given us the time to really focus on the things we needed to do for the album release. It’s also given us a head start on writing album number two which is already in progress!”

“Being on furlough has been a very scary proposition for me but it has actually given me time to work on the release and create now content to keep folk entertained during lockdown,” adds guitarist Jahan Tabrizi. “Grant and I have been writing covers together, I’ve dabbled in live streaming as well as binge-watching Netflix, doing irreversible damage to my waistline through home-baking and so far I’ve sported three different haircuts and two different moustaches!”

The quintet’s debut album entitled A Peaceful Annihilation is now hot off the press and witnesses a host of new creative approaches to their repertoire. “It has a familiar feel but is also more refined and is produced to a very high standard,” explains Chris. “The unofficial band motto has always been ‘get real weird with it’ so I think we’ve allowed ourselves to get creative and branch out into some other sounds based on our collective musical influences. We also wanted our lyrical content to be meaningful on this release, it covers some pretty heavy themes but we also wanted a sense of playfulness and fun to shine through in the music which hopefully balances this out.”

“With previous releases we’ve always somewhat rushed to release them and I’ve always regretted not just taking that little bit longer to get them right,” admits Jahan. “This time round we’ve really upped our game in terms of arranging and songwriting. This is what we’ve always envisioned in our heads but could never quite get down onto tape. I think the biggest experimentation for us this time round was the introduction of synthesizers, it’s something we haven’t really done before but they’ve made a massive difference. Chris and I are big John Carpenter fans so it was only a matter of time until we pulled out the creepy square wave noises! We’ve also been more conscious about dynamics within our songs and giving ideas a space to breathe.”

Whilst being the consummate jokers, never afraid to show their comedic traits TIBERIUS have endeavoured to create particularly poignant and provoking subject matter which perfectly depicts the current situations we all encounter on a day to day basis. “A Peaceful Annihilation represents the fact that in many ways we’re hurtling towards mass extinction without even realising it,” discusses frontman Grant Barclay. “It reminds me of The Matrix in some ways and the idea that we’re all oblivious to the horrors that exist beneath the surface. It’s really cheery stuff! There are several messages in the album, tied together by one unifying theme of apathy and wilful ignorance. In each of the major issues affecting the world today there is a sense of blindness with which we seem to walk head long into them, and this really worries me. We blindly follow political leaders, we silently coast towards mass extinction of species including our own, we ravenously consume content and material possessions with very little thought to the underlying stories these things possess. I wanted to try and get across this message without being too preachy about it. After all I’m just as guilty of many of these things. In that sense, the lyrical content of this album has been a bit of a wake-up call to me and I wanted to share this. None of this is what we don’t already know in some capacity, rather the message is that we need to keep reminding ourselves what we’re fighting for.”

With many of their plans for music videos being scrapped due to ongoing restrictions TIBERIUS have had to think outside of the box and get creative with their media. This is something that Chris was particularly excited about. “I’ve actually been trying to convince the rest of the guys to let me produce the videos myself from day one so it’s nice that their hand has now been forced,” he laughs. “We’ve had to get especially creative to keep things interesting within the limitations imposed during lockdown as we’re all in separate houses, so hand drawn animation, models/stop motion and green screen saved the day. I’m a big film guy, so when the chance came up, I bought a camera and dove right into making some videos for the new tracks and it’s been really enjoyable. The reception has been good so hopefully it’s something we can continue doing more of in future, I’m certainly keen to do another.”

As well as their accompanying music videos the band have been utilising the wealth of technology we have at our fingertips to devise new ways of engaging with their audience. “We put our heads together to come up with fun ideas to keep people up to date with us as a band, and all of these things are just the sort of stuff we’d enjoy seeing from bands/artists we like,” explains Chris. “We obviously also needed to get creative as a small band to get our name out there, so it just seems like the natural thing to do. Whether it’s Q&A, live chats or the studio updates we were posting on our YouTube page during recording. It allows us to keep in touch with people we’ve met from doing gigs around the country which is nice as well, especially when we can’t travel or tour at the moment.”

“We think that showing our personality is really important to the success of this band, otherwise I think there’s a real concern that people just won’t ‘get it’,” informs Grant. “We have a very Scottish dry sense of humour that carries into the songs so it’s important to let people see what we’re actually like as people to add context to the songs. I hope that, at least lyrically, the songs stand by themselves, but it’s nice to have different ways to immerse people in the content we’re creating.”

A Peaceful Annihilation is out now via self-release.

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