With an arsenal of technical skills ready to unleash upon the world, Bay Area natives Aenimus have brought forth a unique and progressive style of music that is beginning to establish a serious sense of vibration throughout the heavy metal community. Longtime fans of bands such as Dream Theater, FALLUJAH, Suicide Silence, and Despised Icon, Aenimus is a collection of modern, unique, and transcendent sound that is not only capable of progression and change, but of a tenacity that is much required in this light speed generation.
Prepped and ready to be revealed to the world on February 22nd of 2019, Aenimus present their second, full-length offering. “Dreamcatcher” is an earth shattering, 11 song concept album revolving around some of the most intriguing and relatable subject matter of today’s modern society: Horror stories. We talk to bass player Seth Stone to find out more.
Steve: Hi Seth how’s it all going with you guys?
SS: Things are good man. Working hard, Nuclear Blast are keeping us busy and getting ready to go out for almost two months.
Steve: So you’re making the most of being at home?
SS: Yeah for sure!
Steve: It must be exciting to have the new album “Dreamcatcher” on the horizon?
SS: Yeah it’s definitely exciting, it’s been a long journey to get to here and the album release it’s been pretty crazy. It’s finally coming together, it’s kind of surreal.
Steve: I’ll bet! So I see in the press release that this is your debut album with Nuclear Blast records and that it’s an 11 track concept album, would you mind explaining a little bit about the concept of the album?
SS: Yeah totally so the concept of the album is retelling four different Stephen King horror novels “The Shining”, The Hannibal Lecter “Silence of the lambs” series, “IT” and “Dead Zone”. So lyrically we are retelling the stories in certain characters perspectives and kind of going through their mindsets and trying to do it in a way that people who might not be familiar with the stories can try and relate to them and then musically we wanted to try and match the music with the emotions that these characters are feeling throughout the songs. So it really created a diverse album that just has it’s ups and it’s downs so it will go really slow, maybe even melancholic parts to some really technical sporadic heavy dark moments and then on top of that to give it a nod to these amazing movies we wanted to have a very thematic cinematic sound to these songs. So we went back after we wrote them and created orchestral sense tracks that go along with it and it really just made it give that movie sound in certain sections, like if you sit down and listen to it with headphones on especially you’ll be able to hear all the orchestral parts in the background and they just really make the songs. It’s pretty rad!
Steve: Yeah I actually did that with a good set of headphones because I believe you get more bang for your buck for lack of a better term and it really takes the listener on a journey.
SS: I agree with you. That’s my hope for people with this album, that they would when listening to it. You can get a lot more out of it if you are just sitting there with headphones or maybe with the lyric book open and just following it ’cause it will take you on a journey in my opinion and probably move you in someway a little bit (laughs).
Steve: Yeah for me the track “Eternal” grabbed me with those ripping almost Steve Vai inspired solos.
SS: Yeah “Eternal ” has a guest solo by a young prodigy by the name of Sims Cashion. I believe he is 19 now, he had just turned 18 when he wrote and recorded that for us. I would say he’s not up and coming in terms of his skill level, he’s mastered it, he’s got some notoriety in the Prog scene and he’s working on a solo album and from the little bit I’ve heard it’s amazing so watch out for him.
Steve: I will! How did you guys come across him?
SS: I think our guitarist Sean Swafford befriended him simply because he was this young prodigy and Sean was like, ‘Wow! You are so good and so young’, and they just started talking and they got to be close friends and when we were on tour he came out to one of the shows and hung out with us and then it just went from there. We kept in touch, we knew when we started writing this album that we have to have Sims on it. He is amazing and such a good friend of ours and we aren’t the only ones, he also did a guest solo for Carnifex on the last full length album. Not the recent EP they just put out.
Steve: Oh I didn’t know that! I’m a big Carnifex fan.
SS: Yeah so there you go, “Eternal” is one of my favorite songs.
Steve: Cool so myself and my colleague at The Rockpit were having a discussion recently and I realize that no one can predict the future in terms of where music will go but do you believe that technical death metal can get faster? How far do you think the limits can be pushed with the exclusion of things like drum machines and things like that?
SS: Well I mean the beauty of music is that you can do whatever you want really. The thing is that you’ve got to write it realistic enough to where you’ll be able to play it if that’s what you are doing. I mean there are some bands who just write whatever they want for being internet projects but with us for the technical tech death parts that we are writing, we also make sure it’s something we’ll be able to play live really well and clean. I think that’s super important when writing tech death but because of technology and how good it’s getting I feel like it’s becoming crazier and crazier. I do wonder just how far people can take it with the live aspect but there’s also finding out new techniques, I feel like it’s been about four years that I’ve known about them it’s what’s called”doubles” when a drummer gets two hits out of one. That pretty recent in the last decade, something that’s pretty new so who knows what’s going to come next. Things just get faster and faster and more technical [so] I don’t know.
Steve: Yeah it’s hard to call, we were kind of having a mini debate on a podcast we do here and like yourself I was saying I’m not sure how far it could be pushed short of going the electronic route and then you look at bands like Rings Of Saturn and that’s almost another realm entirely.
SS: Yeah speaking about them and what’s funny about that is their now former guitarist and drummer Miles and Aaron, they were on the last album. They were both in “Aenimus” before Rings Of Saturn
and now Rings Of Saturn are no more, they now have a band called Interloper and we are doing our album release tour with them starting on the 22nd of February.
Steve: Oh what a show and some back history also.
SS: Yeah (laughs).
Steve: So I know this is a difficult one to answer as you are so engrossed in making an album but what is your favorite track and why?
SS: Hmmm that’s a tough one so it’s hard based off listening. It’s hard to choose one because I honestly feel like the album is really strong, not trying to toot my own horn. That was the idea when we went in, we weren’t going to have any weak tracks, it wasn’t going to be like, ‘Ok we’re going to have these killer tracks and we’ll just add these to make it a full length’. We all went in with the mindset of they all have to be A plus and I feel like we really achieved it simply for being the most fun to play live. I really enjoy playing “Day Zero”, it’s a really interesting song on the bass. I kind of went out of the box on ideas for that song and it ends with this really hard tapping section.
It’s funny because when Jordan [Rush, guitarist] actually wrote the outro he wrote this tapping section on bass and I saw him playing it and I was like, ‘Ok I can do this’, and then I played it and recorded it and then when I went back…because recording songs is different than learning how to play them live because you’re recording a song until it’s like, ‘Ok this is a great section of takes’, whereas live it’s like I have to get every section and I have to transition into these new sections so that tapping part initially gave me so much trouble. It was incredible how many hours I was spending trying to get this tapping part down, it ended up just being a simple technique issue. So Jordan was like, ‘Oh I see, instead of using your middle finger use your ring finger’, and it was like Ok and that was it and I was like, ‘Oh this is the coolest tapping part! I love this’ So I’d say that’s my favorite.
Steve: Great I guess it’s a tricky one to ask and that is your main focus, it’s almost like asking who your favorite child is if you have kids!?
SS: Laughs exactly right!
Steve: So one question that I do love to ask because it varies so much is are there any up and coming bands that have grabbed your attention or just in general on say something like Spotify?
SS: Ok so like a couple of local ones out here would be our buddies in Alterbeast. You might be familiar with them, they put out one of my favorite albums last year. Also a band from Europe called
Walking Dead on Broadway, they caught me off guard. I really enjoyed their music and then totally opposite spectrum lately I’ve got into R & B so for the people who appreciate other styles of music, there’s this new R & B kind of Hip-hop artist named Riley who is just absolutely amazing. He is my most played lately (laughs).
Steve: Great I have one for you, a band called When Plagues Collide. Sort of like a symphonic deathcore with a fresh take on it, they are my most recent find and they took the cake for me.
SS: Oh I’ll have to check them out!
Steve: It’s always interesting because it can go one of two ways, it’s either you totally immerse yourself in music in particular off the back of writing or you say No I’m going to read a book or do something else.
SS: Yeah completely. On that note while we were writing “Dreamcatcher”, we were trying to immerse ourselves within these books and movie scores to try and not grab influence from other artists in the metal genre, I just wanted to mention that.
Steve: Cool so finally would there be any chance of seeing you guys in Australia? I know that it’s difficult to answer given how expensive it is financially and logistically to get here, would there ever be anything in the pipeline for you guys?
SS: I mean the only way I can answer that is that we would absolutely love to. Our goal with “Aenimus ” is to make this a career and travel the world and tour we are pushing really hard and we have a strong team behind us now so I really hope so, I really hope it’s in the pipeline. I know they are talking about bringing us out to Europe at the end of the year so the sky is the limit in my opinion.
Steve: Absolutely it would be great to see you and maybe you could bring some of those bands we spoke about earlier.
SS: Yeah I know right!
Steve: Well thank you so much for your time today Seth, really appreciate it and good luck with this new cycle and we hope to see you guys a some point in the future.
SS: Thank you man have a great day!
Steve: Cheers!
