White Stones: Dancing Into Oblivion
Since the late 90s Martin Mendez has poured his efforts into being a key component of the Swedish progressive metal heavyweights OPETH. As times have progressed and the style of OPETH’s music began to shift further away from the more extreme side of the spectrum and more into the prog rock territory, Martin has found himself with a drive to continue venturing into the realms of death metal. Cue the arrival of WHITE STONES.
An opportunity which started to gather momentum very quickly. “My intention at first was nothing other than writing music. I normally do a lot of writing during my time off from OPETH but this time round I wanted to actually finish the ideas I had and get them written and recorded,” explains Martin. “Every time I wrote music it tended to be unfinished and just ended up on a hard drive and I thought this was very boring. I had six songs at the beginning but didn’t really know what to do with them but I showed them to a few people, I was very happy with the results and the opportunity came for a contract with Nuclear Blast so that was when I realised things were getting a bit more serious. That was how the band begun. I don’t write any of the music in OPETH so this is a relief to me as an artist and a musician to put all my ideas into the music.”
After becoming part of the Nuclear Blast roster in the latter stages of 2019 their debut album entitled Kuarahy was released in early 2020. A release which really kickstarted the project and spurred on Martin’s passion even further. “I didn’t realise just how important it was for me until I released the first album. I gained a lot of experience doing Kuarahy as I was involved in pretty much everything, the writing, the recording, the mixing so I had a lot more experience going forward.”
The pandemic derailed OPETH’s touring plans for the foreseeable future so Martin took this opportunity to get write back into writing mode and focus on putting together a second WHITE STONES release. This was to become what we now know as Dancing Into Oblivion. “Due to me writing the second album just as we went into lockdown my emotions were completely different and this was reflected in the music. I didn’t have a particular vision in mind of how I wanted to approach it but I knew I wanted to make it a bit more technical and a bit more complex. Nothing much had changed with regards to the lineup but the new drummer (Joan Carles Marí Tur) which featured on this album I actually only met him for the first time when we met going into the studio. I didn’t know him at all but I had saw some clips of him and I knew what he was capable of and he was amazing so it felt really good to have him on board. We have great chemistry both personally and musically so it made things very easy. I changed a few bits and pieces in the studio as I purposefully left the music unfinished so I could come up with some new ideas in the studio and I really liked that approach.”
As far as the future of WHITE STONES is concerned it may be too early to say what will come next and when, especially when there will most likely be another OPETH album cycle looming on the horizon but Martin may look at doing a select run of shows if the opportunity presents itself. “I have no plans to take WHITE STONES out on big tours or anything like that as I think that would make my schedule too demanding but I’d like very much to be able to play some shows at some stage, maybe do a few festivals.”
Dancing Into Oblivion is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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