Interview: Pallbearer

Emerging from the rich underground metal scene of Little Rock, Arkansas, Pallbearer‘s unique take on doom, desert stoner rock and cosmic riffs has seen them become a celebrated four-piece of the genre and won them legions of fans all around the world. Their debut album Sorrow And Extinction belied their short few years (and several drummers) playing together, and its funereal yet uplifting noise not only put them on top of the doom and metal scenes, but landed them in many “Best of Year” lists.

Their marathon expeditions and drawn-out structures suggest a band dedicated to their craft – a dedication they took further with the ambitious layers and complex arrangements of their second LP, Foundations of Burden. In this excerpt from their recent interview with RBMA Radio, the quartet talks about Little Rock, the frustrating recording process of Foundations and Kidz Bop.

Can you sketch out what the Little Rock metal scene was like at the time that you guys formed?

Joe Rowland

It was thriving. Since it was sort of isolated, there was lot of really good, creative and unique bands. Little Rock, geographically, was a good stopping point for a lot of bands that were on tour. There were a few really great venues that were a lot more actively involved in booking heavier and weirder bands back in the late ‘90s and through the mid-’00s.

Brett Campbell

It was a small scene. Everyone who is into metal, particularly the kind of stuff that we were doing, we all would go to shows. There’s only 60 people or something that are actually actively participating in it, so you’re bound to meet everyone eventually, you know?

Was there a record store or something that was also serving as a hub?

Mark Lierly

Yeah, we actually had a really cool metal club called Downtown Music for a long time, and it doubled as a record store.

Joe Rowland

Bands that are huge now, like Baroness and Mastodon, would come play in this tiny club. The capacity was probably only 250.

Devin Holt

Early on, it was a really unique environment because you could walk all around the drums; see exactly what was going on. Some of the shows would last until ungodly late. 2, 3 AM. People would be passed out, having drank Robitussin or something all night, and you had to step over them to get outside. It was a really wild venue. I think bands came back because it was just a surreal thing to see people attending shows so honestly and without judgment.

Joe Rowland

It was a gnarly environment, too. There was another club down the street, and there would be gun fights that would break out. Another time this guy was in a high speed chase on his motorcycle, and crashed into the building and died.

Did Pallbearer come out of Sports?

Brett Campbell

Essentially. It was Joe and me. It was, in a sense, just hyper, intense, psychedelic, drone-type stuff. The core was two guitars and bass, but we would also switch around. I would do vocals plugged through my guitar effects and through the amplifiers.

Joe Rowland

And I had an array of analog synthesizers and I would trigger different sequences.

Brett Campbell

It was immensely loud, and we’d run racks of strobe lights that would just be going the entire time. We were really good at clearing rooms. Only extreme diehards would stay around. It was a lot of fun to make. We got tired of having to tote around a wall of amps every time we wanted to play a show that generally no one cared about anyway.

Joe Rowland

It also ending up being prohibitively expensive. We were basically playing to no one and bringing out thousands and thousands of dollars worth of rare, vintage stuff and it would break on the way to a show that was only ten minutes away.

Brett Campbell

We’d have to get our friends mom’s minivans to get stuff around. Joe had a beat-up old station wagon, which could only carry one bass cabinet.

Joe Rowland

Basically, the only people that would stay for the show were only there because they had the responsibility of helping us get the stuff back home.

Was there a similar sonic foundation from Sports to Pallbearer?

Joe Rowland

Yeah, there’s a direct correlation because it’s the same tuning that we carried over. We’re not even sure why.

Brett Campbell

That’s the tuning the guitars were in, so we just kept it.

So what is the blueprint of Pallbearer?

Brett Campbell

It’s essentially rooted in the Arkansas sound, but also our own influences like psychedelia, the Sports tonality and then progressive rock.

Joe Rowland

It’s really hard to describe what the Arkansas sound is like. There’s constant guitar harmonies, lots of dual guitar interplay and the song structures are really unusual. There’s very few bands that utilize the verse-chorus, verse-chorus structure.

Brett Campbell

Also stupendously heavy. The thing that I guess most people would compare it to is somewhere between Neurosis and the Nola sound, but a lot more rooted... Just weird and psychedelic, but not in a good way. Bad trip psychedelic.

Joe Rowland

Another staple for me is the fact that all the musicians that were in the key bands would be really fucked up when they’d play, so it would almost be like a trainwreck.

Brett Campbell

Every performance was teetering on the edge of disaster, but everyone’s really talented to begin with, so somehow it holds together.

Prior to Sorrow and Extinction you guys recorded a demo. Were you handing that out at local shows?

Brett Campbell

It was more the internet. Joe posted it on two or three message boards, and it started circulating on its own.

Devin Holt

I don’t think we ever gave out physical copies or anything like that.

Brett Campbell

We started making them when we realized that people really wanted them.

Joe Rowland

We made some totally DIY CDRs that had a custom stamp that I ordered that said, “Pallbearer 2010 demo.”

What was the genesis of Sorrow and Extinction?

Brett Campbell

When we were making Sorrow and Extinction we always intended to make an album. We were trying to fit it all on one vinyl, so we tried to keep it under 42 minutes, but that didn’t work out.

Joe Rowland

I think we got to a point, too where we just knew that we needed go record stuff. I think we had been just writing, not with any real trajectory in mind, but then we got to a point where we like, “I think we actually have an album.” It was a huge goal for us, actually having something released on vinyl.

How do you approach the lyrics?

Joe Rowland

Up to this point, all the lyrics have been written after the music has already been composed.

Brett Campbell

It’s usually just whatever the song feels like it needs to be about. Once it’s done instrumentally, it might take weeks to finally figure it out, but whenever it hits, I’ll sit down for two or three hours and focus on getting it all in one go. I’ve never been a big writer for fun. I take writing the lyrics very seriously, but I only do it for very small chunks of time compared to how much time I spend writing the music.

Are you listening to recordings of the music?

Brett Campbell

Yes. I’ll just gibberish sing over the songs when writing them, and then develop sort of a cadence. Then I’ll figure out what words would fit in the pre-established melody, or at least close to it. It’s a strange, backwards way of writing lyrics but it works somehow.

What was the first show you guys played where you felt your music was really reaching people outside of Arkansas?

Joe Rowland

The first show that we played that was a bigger deal for us was this horribly structured festival in San Antonio that was pretty much an utter disaster for a lot of people involved.

Brett Campbell

But it was a lot of fun.

Devin Holt

A lot of bands didn’t get paid.

Joe Rowland

I actually literally shook him down, just so we could get paid. We got like 50 bucks or something.

Devin Holt

And then we went and blew it at Denny’s right after. Such a small victory, but a good one.

Billy Anderson recorded your second album. How did you guys connect with him?

Joe Rowland

He just happened to see us a play a show in Little Rock, and came up and was like, “I really want to do your record whenever you do a new one.” Then, three years later, it actually happened.

That working process was pretty natural?

Mark Lierly

Yeah, it was great.

Joe Rowland

Recording with Billy was awesome, but it was also maddening because we were stuck in the studio for 12 or 14 hours a day for over a month. But that had nothing to do with Billy.

Brett Campbell

It was more of our own mad scientist approach.

Mark Lierly

It was rainy the whole time.

Brett Campbell

So it wasn’t like you could just walk out and get some nice fresh air.

Joe Rowland

We were also recording the most complex album that Billy’s every done. It had, according to Billy, more guitar layers than any record that he’s ever done in his entire career.

Brett Campbell

Which is a very dubious honor, because it was a fucking pain in the ass.

Devin Holt

There were whole days that we would lose. I guess there was some kind of techno-ghost or something.

Mark Lierly

There was some corrupted files. Luckily it never happened to me on the drums, but their guitar tracks... At one point I remember hearing Billy saying, “Man, I’ve never seen this happen before.” It’s like, “Oh, God, if something’s going on that he’s never seen before...”

Can you talk about the process behind writing Foundations of Burden?

Brett Campbell

It’s so hard to put the process of what we do into words, because it’s really rather boring.

Joe Rowland

Yeah, it’s just months of writing riffs, and getting stuff to a point where we’re ready to share stuff with each other, and then building it out more. It’s a very slow process.

Brett Campbell

The writing process is a lot of fun, but it’s not fun to talk about.

Joe Rowland

We do like talking about other people’s music though. [laughs] We had the opportunity to see Magma, the French prog band, maybe a month ago. About halfway through the show Christian Vander, their bandleader and drummer, just erupting into this unaccompanied vocal scat solo for seven minutes.

Brett Campbell

It got more and more intense.

Joe Rowland

It was one of the most euphoric things I’ve ever seen.

Brett Campbell

It was incredible, my jaw hit the floor. By the end he was just screaming. He’s like a 70 year old man.

Joe Rowland

When we’re on tour, we always get really fixated on one or two things for months and months. We beat it to death. Just wear it down into the ground to the point that people aren’t sure if we’re still possessing any level of sanity anymore. Somebody made this audio compilation of Paul Stanley stage banter, and on this tour we’re constantly quoting stuff from that.

Brett Campbell

We do it to the point where we don’t even discover good new music. We just find really dumb stuff and just run it into the ground.

Joe Rowland

Like Kidz Bop.

Brett Campbell

We found one singer who sounds like somebody’s drunk uncle. He’s not a kid, he’s definitely not a kid.

Mark Lierly

Listen to the Kidz Bop version of “All the Small Things,” by Blink 182. And let those vocals swirl around in your head.

Joe Rowland

There’s also a new one that we’ve discovered which is, “I’m in Love with the Coco.” The Kidz Bop version of that. That singer sounds like it’s a 2-year old. It’s actually really disturbing.