The Prophecy
By: David E. Gehlke
Blistering.com: Your guitar work has gotten more and more aggressive, especially on “Waters Deep” and “Belief Means Nothing.” Was this done in part to better suit the live arena?
O’Shea: Subconsciously yeah, since stripping down the band each new song has to be worked into a format that’s going to create the soundscape we became known for when we were a six-piece. Playing live as a quartet was hard at first, probably to do with my confidence at being in a completely new sonic environment and not really understanding how to affect the changes we were going to have to go through to make it successful. But over time, I’ve grown to like the extra pressure and it’s focussed my playing 1,000 times - I’ve even started to practice scales and shit again!
It raised some difficult guitar issues getting a fat sound and it still means twisting my fingers into knots to get as many notes down in a chord as possible - especially as when play live we tune up to F, which sort of happened by accident. Our old pianist had the internal tuning on her keyboard set a “tone up” and for years we all tuned to her…even though she isn’t part of us anymore we keep it up as an anti “drone-doom” statement!
But seriously, by bringing the darker, heavier elements of our art into this album, it has let us create the emotional balance that we wanted between the beauty and the brutality, the dark and the light. It enabled us to tell the story we need to tell at that time. It’s also allowed us to boogie a lot more when we’re on stage…when it’s the beats [that] got the fat balls we all dance like we need the dollars. We’re there to have a good time and share that feeling around and when it does happen, it makes buying the gas for the bus easier!
Blistering.com: “Hope” just drains the spirit and is a great way to close the album. Did you have to put yourself in a particular headspace to get this one out?
O’Shea: I needed a very peculiar "handspace" to record “Hope.” It was a seven fret stretch on a nylon guitar and keeping that up to record the four acoustic parts on that song meant I couldn’t play guitar properly for about eight weeks. All the rest of the lads were looking through into my booth and laughing - the videos show why - I am shaking like a shitting dog with all of the strain desperately trying to keep the notes clean whilst fighting the urge to tell them all to fuck right off!
Blistering.com: How does the music factor into this? Is the band a haven for your emotions and have you found a way to channel everything? What are your pursuits outside of the band?
O’Shea: Every aspect of being in this band is bloody brilliant, even during an 18 hour drive when you wake up and the ache in your body is becoming unbearable you look back into the bus at all of the other guys laughing and “preparing” anyone who is asleep or too small to fight back for when they shall be unveiled to public scrutiny at the next service station (the process of preparation can be revolting!) and all of a sudden everything is looking good!
This is my first and last band as there is an unbelievable musical chemistry between the four of us that I don’t reckon I could find anywhere else and none of us would be able to share our emotions so clearly and with such empathy if we lost anybody. Away from the music, we still spend a lot of time together and I think that really helps us to understand each other. Matt and I, who have been fencing partners for the past few years and love pretending to be anything from medieval knights to ninjas and then having a few pints of ale to keep the calorie burn down, all the band love playing football (proper football!) and we are still annoyed at the American guy who we had a kick-a-bout with years ago in the Long Beach Arena car park who picked it up and ran with it. He could run ten times faster than us, so we had to let him get some points on the board! Ha-ha!
Blistering.com: With the band getting bigger, do you find it more of a challenge to juggle the band and your personal life?
O’Shea: We’re all really lucky that our families, partners and the places we work are really supportive of what we’re doing and understand how important it is that we spend so much time away from them to make sure we get the music right. Another bonus is that three of us are teachers so not only do we get massive holidays but, The Prophecy also kick ass at pub quizzes! Ha-ha!
Blistering.com: You did an immense amount of travelling in support of Revelations. Any crazy stories you’d like to share? I read you got stranded in Portugal, which must have been fun.
O’Shea: Hmmm, “fun?” I’m not entirely sure that “fun” would be the first word I would use to describe it. I think through becoming slightly delirious with the 10 billion degree sun (which us guys are not used to in the slightest) and developing a generally bemused “too tired to get upset so might as well giggle” attitude, it became fun. It was laugh or cry time and we chose to drink our way through it. We have got to be the most cursed band when it comes to touring and shit going ridiculously wrong and a lot of the bands who are our close touring buddies are becoming slightly scared of coming on board with us!
Blistering.com: Finally, what are you plans for 2009?
O’Shea: I can’t wait for the Moscow [Doom] festival, it’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go and it also means that we can play our versions of the Rocky IV soundtrack songs for sound-check…they’ll like that, I think.
www.myspace.com/theprophecyeng
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