Veil Of Maya: Staying Pure To Your Progress
We can pretty much all be in agreement that seven years is a long time. For the metalcore stylings of Chicago’s VEIL OF MAYA, it felt more like an eternity. In the absence of their last release, the group have been working hard touring and writing, all to culminate in bringing us their new offering [m]other. It’s an album that begins to revolutionise their pulverising synth-based sound, throwing their fans in to this new era of melodic vocals and pulsating synths headfirst. We spoke with the band’s guitarist, and one of its founding members, Marc Okubo to get the lowdown on all things [m]other.
“For this particular album, we didn’t come in [to the studio] with very much material. I was living with my friend who’s a producer; he works together with another friend, his name’s Zach Jones. They worked together a lot and Zach had asked me to help write a song for a band he was working with called JYNX. I enjoyed working with Zach quite a bit,” says Okubo. “The song came together really quickly and so I was like, ‘whoa, if we work this well together, maybe I should do a veil of my record with him, and it’ll happen really quickly’. And it kind of did. We just started hanging out and then making songs really.”
“I’m the majority of the music side of it. So, lyrically, I’m not the most contributive,” says Okubo. “For this album, there’s no set topic on the songs. Songs are about different things but, at the same time, I prefer for most of our material to be open to interpretation. I think that if we talk specifically about what songs are about, it’s a little bit polarising, and I think it takes away from the magic of it a little bit.”
“I feel like if it means something to you, then that’s the right answer. It shouldn’t just be one thing or one way, and I feel that the album title can have maybe three different meanings. So, I don’t want to even let people know what it means to me because it can mean something completely different to them.” Unlike so many of their peers, VEIL OF MAYA seems to thrive off the open-ended nature of their music. Instead of telling people what their tracks are about, they are given the opportunity to make their own minds up. In turn, this creates a deeper connection with the tracks for fans who are given the chance to share their own interpretations with others.
VEIL OF MAYA capitalised on the trend of bands pretty much living in a studio together in order to create new music, bouncing influences and riffs off each other to create what we now know as [m]other. “It just felt good. It was fun and it just kind of happened,” he says. “There was a lot of other stuff that happens with records; being on a label and making vinyl. During the pandemic it became much harder to make vinyl quickly, so that kind of held the album back for a while. The majority of it has been finished since 2011, so it’s been a long wait and I’m ready to write another one right now.”
It’s no secret that the music industry has struggled in every sense of the word post-covid, in part due to the sudden hindering of vinyl pressing that came as a knock-on effect of the overproduction of a certain vinyl record that will remain nameless. In turn, this pushed back an already overdue album by VEIL OF MAYA. After seven years of near-constant touring the band, especially Okubo, is chomping at the bit to get back out there with new material.
“It needs to be out. I’ve been dreading going on tour and not having new material for everyone, but for some reason that keeps on happening. I’m ready to write the next one and get the next one out as quickly as possible,” he reflects. “I don’t like that there’s such a big gap in between and I don’t want to ever let that happen again. I mean, I’m excited about this record; I’m proud of it, but, for me, it’s almost two years old and I’m ready to show where I’m at right now, so I want to keep it moving.”
Regardless of how liberating this new material and new sound has been for the band to create, its reception has proved difficult in the age of the chronically online. The beauty of the internet is that everybody regardless of position, status or career can share their opinions. But it also means that literally anyone can share their opinions. “If I look at online comments since we’ve started our band, there’s been people fighting about what we’re supposed to sound like since day one.”
Though VEIL OF MAYA’s sound has changed with the rest of the industry and has been anything but drastic or overnight, those diehard “I was there first” fans have wormed their way into the thoughts of the group with their negative opinions. “It’s weird because everyone’s like, ‘it needs to go back to this’. But then when we put any record out, people complained about it. So, it’s like, we’re never going to really win online.” Like many other artists, VEIL OF MAYA are truly stuck between a rock and a hard place, constantly trying to appease their fans and critics online (who many times come wrapped in one neat, band-tee wearing package) whilst still staying true to the music they want to create. There is a natural progression of their sound that flows with that of the industry as a whole, yet it still isn’t enough for the few but will definitely prove enough for those that have stuck by their every step.
[m]other is out now via Sumerian Records.
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