Voices: Intimacy In The City

There are artists who create music which seems to come from nowhere. They assemble abstractions built on abstractions, which exist far beyond our lived experience, or else within the enigmatic core of the artist’s own mind. Then there are artists who create music which is indelibly tied to a time and to a place. Lyrics and textures which are lifted from our everyday reality have a way of pulling us deeper into it: providing new perspectives on something which has become all too familiar. For London’s VOICES, their muse has become the city in which they live, and the lives which they lead within it.

“The second record London really embodied that,” explains guitarist Sam Loynes. “It’s a concept record built around our surroundings in this city, and whilst we chose to present it through the experiences of fictional characters there are, at the same time, large parts of each member of the band in these characters and scenarios.” The band was formed from members of AKERCOCKE past and present, with drummer David Gray and Antichrist bassist Peter Benjamin joining their new keyboardist in his other project. “It was obvious to us when we started to rehearse as VOICES that we had an interest in our common experiences here: working in a very expensive city, living on the breadline, burning the candle at both ends with our creative pursuits. Our music has been informed by the positive and negative influences of being here, hence the London-urban sound.”

As much as the urban landscape informs much of the visual language of VOICES, the band is lyrically attentive to the darker corners of our internal landscape. “Pete came up with the title, Breaking The Trauma Bond. He is studying psychology in some capacity,” Loynes explains. Trauma bonding develops through cycles of abuse, and produces a maladjusted form of attachment. “Human intimacy is a kind of antidote to trauma; at least, it can be,” continues Loynes. “That is often represented in art. Antichrist by Lars von Trier springs to mind.” That antidotal intimacy is represented in the album’s artwork, which reprises the band’s signature high-contrast style. “When I saw the image I had to spend some time decoding it, because I had my own ideas about how it would look,” remembers Loynes. “I assumed it would be rooted in something quite abstract to do with mental illnesses, and how they might be manifested, but this is a very real-life, concrete image. It certainly provokes a conversation, which is all you can ask of a piece of art.”

Breaking The Trauma Bond’s artwork was produced by drummer David Gray, who also works as a comic book artist. “He has a very overactive imagination, it’s fair to say!” Loynes beams. “Looking at the history of his work with AKERCOCKE in the early days, which branched into satanic-erotica, he definitely has his style. I haven’t quizzed him on it,” he admits. “David was fairly detached from the themes of this album (it was mainly myself and Pete writing the lyrics) but this vision was how he saw it. It’s a ROXY MUSIC-meets-Batman sort of thing. Maybe I wouldn’t want to ask him too much about it…” he concludes.

VOICES‘ progressive skew on extreme metal could be described as cinematic, incorporating both narrative and imagery into their work. “We’ve always been an audio-visual band,” agrees Loynes. “Apart from the first album: that was a reaction to the slowing down of things with AKERCOCKE. Then we just wanted to make music as extreme as possible, but with London and into Frightened, and now with Breaking The Trauma Bond, the things which inspire us are often visual,” he explains. “London, for us, was a film. This album is a bit of harks back to that, and it feels very cinematic too. For me, getting that cinematic quality from the sonic elements of a band is great. That’s how we engage with what we do, so if that’s being felt then that’s great.”

VOICES’ progressive sound is influenced by wide-ranging tastes within the band, as Loynes explains. “We love bands that make really extreme music, but we engage with a much wider spectrum than that. We listen to the first four SCOTT WALKER solo records and anything from Tilt onwards, all the way over to NAPALM DEATH. Post-rock and post-metal I’m very in and out of,” he continues, “and CONVERGE are now doing something which is more expansive, which I adore. KILLING JOKE are a massive influence, too. Heavy metal fans are generally very encyclopaedic with their interests,” he observes. “Often it’s very reductive: there are thrashers out there just listening to the first four SLAYER albums, but I find that heavy music fans are often more ready to engage with experimental and left-field music than most.”

For their fourth album VOICES chose to leave their major-label for the boutique charm of Church Road Records: overseen by the talents of Sammy Urwin and Justine Jones of EMPLOYED TO SERVE. “I suppose the perception is that Candlelight is the bigger label, but it’s just one of those things,” says Loynes. “We’ve been working with them since the first record, and they have their formula – which worked. I’ve known Sammy and Justine for years, when we were playing gigs for one man and his dog,” he smiles. “It just felt right to do something more DIY. This was the ultimate opportunity to work with two people I really trust, who will put the work into VOICES that I think is needed. They think of interesting and new ways to position a band,” he continues admiringly. “If enthusiastic people are willing to help us bring this music to the people that want to hear it, then that’s an opportunity we couldn’t turn down. Give it another couple of years, and Church Road is going to be the next Deathwish!”

Breaking The Trauma Bond is out now via Church Road Records.

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