Scale the Summit
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And so the instrumental metal worm turns. Buoyed the immense popularity (and all-around awesomeness) of Pelican, metal without vocals has come a long way since its halcyon days when we had Karma to Burn and… no one else. Wonder if the long-overlooked West Virginians are kicking themselves now...
By way of Houston, TX comes Scale the Summit, bringing forth the technical side of the instrumental metal spectrum. Parlaying a melodic, cohesive, yet dangerously complicated approach to the style, STS were of good enough quality to land on indie metal giant Prosthetic Records after one self-released album in the form of Monument. Using the “Adventure Metal” tag (yes, it’s really gotten to that) at their disposal, the band quickly eludes any and all comparisons to Pelican, Red Sparrows, or the metalgaze contingent. 2009 brings forth Carving Desert Canyons an 8-song progressive metal workout, stocked with weaving guitar lines, odd-time changes, and song structures embedded with deep hooks. Mountainous tunes like “Sargasso Sea,” “The Great Plains” and “Giants” demonstrate an advance technical front (the band plays 8-string guitars, mind you), seen mostly in the progressive metal spectrum, but don’t call them “prog."
With the mid-February release date right around the corner, Blistering figured now was the right time to catch up with Scale the Summit (who consist of guitarists Chris Letchford, Travis Levrier, bassist Jordan Eberhardt, and drummer Pat Skeffington) for a quick run-down on how exactly one makes dazzling, vocal-deprived metal work, the audaciousness of their riffs, and what the hell is “Adventure Metal.” Letchford gave us the lo-down…
Blistering.com: I like the “Adventure Metal” tag – it suits you. When/where did you first draw up the concept for Scale the Summit?
Chris Letchford: Travis and I first started working on the idea of creating an instrumental band while attending M.I. [Musician’s Institute] in Los Angeles. After the very first song we wrote, which was “Rode in on Horseback” (off the band’s self-released album, Monument), we really started realizing that things would work perfectly all instrumental and it was something that we both really wanted to do. After finishing that one song and playing it around the M.I. campus we had a lot of people telling us that the music we were writing took them on a journey. That's when "Adventure Metal" came into play, and it has stuck with us since.
Blistering.com: Any hesitation toward being an all-instrumental band considering the popularity of say, Pelican?
Letchford: I think seeing and hearing about all the success that Pelican had/has been having, it was definitely something to keep us all positive about the idea of being an all instrumental band... even though I think we are two very distant sounding bands when it comes to the music we both write. Tour maybe? I think it should happen.
Blistering.com: Any fascinating story behind your decision to become all-instrumental? Any nightmare situations with singers? Anything?
Letchford: Ha-ha, there were. We had tried out a few ideas for a singer and it just didn't work. We already had the idea of being an all instrumental band burned into our heads that I don't think even if they were good, that we would have given them a chance. We write all of our music to be full without vocals that we would have to change the way that we write to even come close to having it fit in.
Blistering.com: Your sound is perhaps way more proggy and melodic than most would expect from a band of your style. Do you worry about falling into the progressive metal trap?
Letchford: I don't think we will… not really too worried about it either. One of the reasons why we started our own niche. Having the words "Adventure Metal" to describe our sound instead of just saying, "Yeah, we're a progressive metal band" will help not place us in any select genre. All people will obviously have their own views of where we should be placed, but one thing we'll stick with is that we are just writing music that we all enjoy listening to and playing, and then share it with the world!
Blistering.com: The pairing of you and Prosthetic appears to be a solid one. How did this come about?
Letchford: It's definitely solid. We actually had a roommate while living in Los Angeles that was interning there for a while. We had always been joking about it, "Hey man, bring our demo to Prosthetic one day, see what they think.” We all agreed they would never sign an instrumental band. But one thing that we understand is that the "hard work" is one of the most important things that labels want to see. We have always worked hard, since day one. I always told the guys, let's just keep growing and writing, promoting and eventually that stuff we'll come. We ended up getting their publicist our demo that we recorded at Musicians Institute. So from then on out he followed our progress as a band, we moved back to Texas, recorded our self-released full length Monument They emailed me a few months after its release requesting a press kit. We of course sent it, ha-ha, and then the talking began.
Blistering.com: How long were some of the songs for Carving Desert Canyons in the works?
Letchford: The last track on the album, "Giants," I wrote over a year ago. I'm constantly writing, like all musicians will tell you. We probably had about half the record finished before Prosthetic booked our studio time though. As for the individual song writing process, they all range in the time it takes for us to finish them. Some of the songs I'm able to write all the guitars for in a week's time, sometimes longer. I was definitely able to get in and fine tune a lot more for this record, than the last. Which I really liked.
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