American modern progressive metal innovators The Contortionist return to Australia as part of their Clairvoyant Tour, joined by special guests UK djent-metal pioneers SikTh – who will be making their first ever Australian appearances. We talk to The Contortionist vocalist Mike Lessard ahead of the tour to discuss what the fans can expect at the shows plus we get into some of the inspiration behind their latest album “Clairvoyant”.
Andrew: So how’s things with you guys at the moment? Are you on the road at the moment?
Mike: Yeah we’re currently doing a headliner in the U.S. but before this tour we were actually out on the road for a little over a month with a band called Nothing.
Andrew: How’s it been going so far?
Mike: Amazing! We’re always having a good time whenever we’re out on the road.
Andrew: And we’re excited to have you guys here in Australia in May along with Sikth so should be a fun tour I think.
Mike: Yeah we’re excited because this is going to be our first proper headliner in Australia so it’s a little nerve wracking because all the weight is on us but it’s going to be a good time I think.
Andrew: How has your previous experiences been like in Australia?
Mike: Amazing! We love Australia and anytime we get an offer or it’s brought up going back, everybody is 100 percent down. Not only is it an amazing place to come and play because I feel like the rock scene there is very passionate, not only do you guys have some of the best rock bands coming out right now but the fanbase down there is kind of a reflection of that as well.
Andrew: Yeah and I guess because it is a smaller country compared to a lot of places, that passion comes out of the fact that bands don’t come down here as often as other places I suppose.
Mike: Yeah and it’s cool too because I mean I wish you had more cities which unfortunately you don’t but yeah it’s good to come down there. Over the course of the few tours we’ve done over the years, we made so many friends down there so coming down there, not only is it that we get to play awesome shows but we get to see all our friends. Over the years even outside of this band, I’ve toured with Dead Letter Circus and Northlane and the sleepmakeswaves guys so anytime we get down there we see all our friends as well so it’s two positives.
Andrew: Have you toured with Sikth before anywhere else?
Mike: No we actually haven’t. We met them a few times just from they were touring through our area with some of our friends and we’ve always been kind of fans of them so we went out to the show and met them there. They came out and saw us at a few shows when we were in the UK last year and we’ve always just kind of hit it off with them and talked about doing a tour together and this just happened to be one that came together.
Andrew: Perfect timing so should be a great tour. Obviously you have a new album that came out last year, ‘Clairvoyant’, what’s the feedback been from the fans and the critics so far?
Mike: Amazing! Every time we put out an album, you kind of worry about what the reaction is going to be, maybe it’s the end of your career. But from the first tour we did which started before the album actually came out, everybody has been singing along to these songs. So already the newer songs people sing along to more than the older songs so that’s an amazing indication of how it’s going.
Andrew: Absolutely and are you playing a lot of songs from the new album? What’s the setlist looking like at the moment?
Mike: Yeah currently it’s mostly the new album but we’re also touching base on a couple of the earlier albums as well. We like to keep the set pretty diverse for people who have been fans of the band for a long time that get into the old classics and then playing the new stuff because we just put the album out and to us it’s interesting and fresh still.
Andrew: The new stuff is maybe a little different to what you’ve done before in the past, how are they fitting along with the older songs?
Mike: Amazing, we’re pretty loose to at this point, taking a bunch of songs that might not necessarily fit together and bridging them all together to make it feel like one long ride through the course of the concert.
Andrew: Yeah and I guess putting together a setlist can be a difficult process, how do you work that out?
Mike: For the most part we kind of base it off who we’re touring with. Now with a headliner we can be a little more I guess with what we choose but depending on who we’re touring with, the album just came out so it’s a little heavier on the new stuff. But for the most part we sit down and kinda vote on what songs we want to do, there’s songs that have to be on the set and there’s songs that we want to try that we haven’t done live. But we always try to keep it interesting because what we’ve noticed over the years is as we’ve gained new fans we have this core fanbase that some have seen us over 12 times. But we also want to try and make it interesting not only for the first person that has ever seen us but for the person that is coming for their 12th time.
Andrew: Sure and also for yourself as well, you play some of these songs multiple times!
Mike: Yeah exactly!
Andrew: What songs have been over well the most with the fans off the new album?
Mike: Definitely the singles, ‘Reimagined’ and ‘Return To Earth’. Those definitely just because whenever you release a single that’s the first song that people hear, it tends to be the ones that even if somebody isn’t a diehard fan of the band, they always tend to know those songs. I mean ‘Language’ has always been our biggest song from the previous album so whenever we hit that, that’s usually when the crowd gets the loudest. But from the new album ‘Return To Earth’, ‘Reimagined’ and Clairvoyant, the title track seems to be a pretty popular one as well.
Andrew: That’s quite a long song as well! What was the idea behind this album? Because like I said before it’s maybe a little different to what you have done before, a lot of cleans on here. Was there a certain thing that you wanted to achieve with this album when you first went into the studio to write and record?
Mike: I think musically we wanted to do something that was not heavy in the sense of like loud guitars, but heavy vibe wise in terms of dark like a dark heavy vibe. It’s something that we haven’t really touched base on before, at least not to a large extent. So the subject matter for the album seems to suit that mood as well so the essential theme for the album, straight to the point the album is it’s about my friend who lost his battle to drug addiction and it’s a continuation of ‘Language’. “Language” is an album I wrote lyrically after he had passed and I wanted to make a positive album. He lost his battle with addiction after his mother had passed away due to cancer so after that he kind of had a downward spiral with drugs and ‘Language’ I wrote right after his death and is kind of my way to put a positive spin on it and I needed something positive in my life at that point and so that was the album I wanted to make, I wanted to make a very positive album. So “Language” came from that and “Clairvoyant” is very much the continuation of that, not so based in metaphor dressed up as story, very much grounded realistically in the lyrical approach which was about his battle with that on the darker side of it. For me I wanted to make an album that maybe somebody else was going through that or had been through that, that they could relate to and it’s been pretty crazy with the reactions and messages I’ve gotten from people who said that not only ‘Language’ was the same way but that people have said it helped them realize that they need to stop what they are doing or have been through that. It’s pretty crazy.
Andrew: Yeah and that must feel great to express yourself like this and to be able to connect to people who relate to the ideas that you are trying to put out there.
Mike: Yeah and it’s also amazing that people can relate to it and pull some positives out of it, because it is such a dark album in a lot of ways. It was never made that way for people to feel sad, it was made that way because it’s meant to try to be a positive thing.
Andrew: Do you consider yourself then to be a much more positive person? Especially since you joined the band a few years ago, how has that affected your life in that respect?
Mike: I’m a pretty positive person, I’m always cracking jokes. I’m a very serious person as well when it comes to the more creative side of things, that’s when my humour kind of goes out the window. But joining the band has changed my life in a lot of ways, I was already in a band before joining this band that toured a lot and I actually met this band through touring with them, with my previous band. But joining this band took it up multiple few levels and now this is all I do, I eat, sleep and breathe music and the creative process and I produce all the music videos and do a lot of other stuff so that keeps me busy on the sidelines. So I’m always thinking about what we can do in the middle of an album cycle to keep things fresh, so like the last album cycle we decided to do the new discovered sessions which is something I wanted to do to try and keep everything fresh. Right now I’m brainstorming some things we can do for this album and then we’ll start writing the next album, so yeah since joining this band it’s been nice to be able to be creative at all times.
Andrew: Well it’s great what you guys are doing by pushing the envelope so to speak. Thanks for your time today, really appreciate it and we are excited to see you in Australia again so see you soon!
Mike: Hey thank you for taking the time to interview me.
Touring May 2018
Wednesday 2nd May – Brisbane, The Zoo
Thursday 3rd May – Melbourne, Max Watts
Friday 4th May – Sydney, Manning Bar
Saturday 5th May – Adelaide, The Gov
Sunday 6th May – Perth, Rosmount Hotel
Tickets: www.davidroywilliams.com/tours/the-contortionist-sikth/
