Rosetta, who formed almost fifteen years ago, is not only still releasing quality material, but also expanding their post-metal, space rock style with this recent LP, Utopioid. The group are currently touring with the oh-so sludgy North across the country. We sat down with the band's guitarists, Matthew Weed & Eric Jernigan, before one of their shows and discussed the new record, the post-metal subgenre, and more. Check it out below.
This is the third date of your tour with North. How’s the tour so far and what’s your take on North?
Matthew Weed: We did five weeks in Europe with them last year. It was a very amazing and gruelling thirty-three shows in thirty-five days tour. We shared a van so we got to know each other really well. Although, to be honest, we’ve been friends for well over ten years now. Rosetta toured with them in early 2008 and we were in touch with them prior to that actually. When they were an instrumental four-piece, our singer was a big fan of their band and talked to them on the internet. So we’ve been friends with them all through their evolution across the years, which has been pretty fun and they’re great people.
The new album came out about a month ago. Can you discuss the writing and recording process compared to your previous LPs?
Eric Jernigan: The hallmark of this album was us rallying around this concept. We felt like we wanted the story to exist as an interesting experience by itself and we crafted the music after we already had drafted the path this character would travel.
Matt: It’s hard to describe it without using corporate boardroom terms because we were just brainstorming and writing stuff on whiteboards and flip charts and posting notes all around the practice space. There was a huge amount of verbal discussion that went into it before we were even really writing the music. We wanted to discuss the feelings people would have and what parts of the album were about and would communicate. And then we would have that conceptual foundation to build the music and lyrics up on top of that. Even production decisions related back to the stuff we had discussed.
Eric: We were very up in each others business quite a bit with this one like criticizing each other and pushing each other to go further. We collaborated on the lyrics really openly for the first time. Usually in the past, it was whoever was singing the words would be writing the lyrics. But this time in order to keep the concept as the key focus of the record, Matt and [Michael] Armine and myself had some uncomfortable round table discussions about each other’s lyrical suggestions. It was a really good learning experience and the content came out much stronger as a result, so we were all pretty happy about it.
Eric, this is your second full-length with the band. Did you feel more challenged or comfortable in your writing contributions this time around compared to when your first joined and wrote Quintessential Ephemera?
Eric: I think both. Our friendship is pretty deep. We had been on the road many, many times before I joined the band, so it was a pretty easy, fluid transition. No matter how well you know someone, creative collaboration is always going to feel shaky at first while you find out how to communicate in a new way with each other. With this album, there was far less trepidation on everybody’s part in terms of speaking openly and honestly of what we wanted from each other and how to meld the music to prop up the concept.
Your first three LPs were released via the Translation Loss label and your last three records were self-released. For other artists considering taking the independent route, what are the pros and cons you’ve encountered?
Matt: I think it wouldn’t be fair to contrast those two models in a vacuum because part of the reason of being an independent, self-releasing band was successful for us was that we had been on a label and already had a fanbase. I don’t have a formula to suggest because things are changing so rapidly, even since we went independent in 2013. Music distribution has changed in these really dramatic ways. When we shifted, Spotify wasn’t really a thing. A few people had it, but there wasn’t much stuff on it and it certainly wasn’t the dominant way people listen to music. So at the time, we didn’t think about streaming platforms and thought it didn’t provide revenue and just stuck with Bandcamp only. Here we are in 2017 and putting things on streaming services because giving people access is important. I guess it is both a pro and con that it is up to you as an independent band to stay abreast of what is happening in the industry and be nimble about responding to the changes in technology and the way people access music. I think the main downside is that labels function as industry gatekeepers in a lot of respects, so you don’t have access to networks of subcontractor relationships that a label would give you, but at the same time, your access to fans and their access to you is significantly more direct and intimate and more rewarding ultimately than it is with that additional layer of abstraction.
Eric: The interesting part about the self-release model that we all have learned the hard way is that the band basically necessitates almost full-time job level commitment despite the fact that it doesn’t really typically pay any bills for us. The independent model is rewarding because we do get that direct contact with people who care about our music, but at the end of the day there’s no one outside of the band helping us figure out how to chart these waters. Sometimes that feels really good when you have a victory you achieve only as yourself and your friends, but other times it’s really frustrating and you lost a lot of sleep over it.
So, if you had a time machine would you take the same route in terms of record labels and self-releasing?
Matt: I think we would do the same thing. I think it was actually not only the right decision, but also the right moment at that particular time in 2013. The things that I would want to change would only be minor tweaks, not major direction type stuff. I wish we had been more proactive about trying to find out what is the best date to release on. These sorts of things you don’t think about when you’re not running a label, you have to learn by trial and error. But in terms of the actual direction, I have no regrets at all.
Although the term post-metal may have a flexible definition, I think most would say Rosetta belongs under that subgenre. Can you recall maybe the first time you heard post-metal and who it was?
Matt: I think Isis is that first band for a lot of people. Our singer’s favorite band is Neurosis. I was not a person who connected as much with Neurosis as much as I did with Isis and obviously the two bands are really, really similar, but there’s different nuances in the way that they communicate emotion, dynamics, and texture. I don’t listen to that much heavy music anymore, but certainly Isis was my favorite heavy band when I was in college, which was right about the time Rosetta was starting. I actually was a fan of Isis in high school when the word post-metal didn’t exist and they were just a sludge band. I loved Red Sea and Mosquito Control in tenth grade. I was mail ordering Escape artist releases with concealed cash in an envelope because I didn’t have a debit card. I was really intensely about the privileging of texture. And when people use that term, maybe what they’re getting at is, yes this is structured heavy music with certain markers in metal and hardcore, but there’s a privileging of texture over things like virtuosity and technicality. And if that’s what it means, I’m all about it. If it means you have to dress a certain way or your album artwork has to look a certain way, then I’m definitely not about that. The incorporation of drone, tape, found sounds, and trying to get really into timbre as a music element rather than melody or rhythm is super cool.
Eric: I think I was exposed to it for years before I knew there was a name for the genre. I heard Neurosis at the tail-end of high school and I have to admit, it was way too dark and intense for me. The drummer in my high school band was super into Celestial by Isis and kept telling me to check it out. It wasn’t until Oceanic came out that he burned me a CD and I was soaked in immediately. I have this memory of being in Florida in this gas-guzzling, enormous van without air-conditioning and I listened to the album and was wowed by the opening fill. I have to say it was Isis as well. A lot of my friends to this day, regard Celestial, Oceanic, and Panopticon as really important records.
Matt: The thing about Isis in particular is that it felt like, beyond just being a band that people liked, they head a curatorial influence in people’s lives, probably largely because of the Hydra Head connection. I didn’t hear about Isis in a vacuum. I heard about Isis because they were associated with Hydra Head and I was really into the sound of what Hydra Head was releasing in the late 90’s like Botch, who were my favorite hardcore band in high school. I think people who originally got into heavy music thrtough punk and hardcore, there was a way that a lot of those bands were using dynamics, texture, and dissonance in really innovative ways. I guess Isis went in one specific, slower, more meditative direction with that experimentation. Because of me being into Isis, there was a bunch of other stuff that I was being exposed to like when they did remix discs, I ended up encountering some electronic artists for the first time. They weren’t just a band you liked, it was a band that introduced you to other cool stuff that you ended up being into.
Although some of the pioneers of the subgenre have either disbanded or are busy with side projects, there’s definitely a good amount of quality bands keeping the post-metal sound alive. Besides yourself, what bands do you think are the current groups at the forefront of this style?
Eric: Honestly, some of the other luminary bands from the heyday that I’ve been lucky enough to catch recently are still kicking ass. I saw Pelican while I was traveling in Arizona and they were on tour with Inter Arma, who is an amazing band. They’re maybe not regarded as post-metal, but their willingness to just go for it when it comes to experimentation allows them to be a band we respect a lot and hope to do shows with down the road. But anyways, Pelican was the headliner and I haven’t seen them in many years and they fucking ripped that place apart. I have been a huge fan of them for a long time. I saw the Cult of Luna and Julie Christmas tour in New York recently and it was just amazing. Our friend Mike from Junius was there and made a comment something to the effect of “I think they just did it for this genre. I can’t imagine anybody doing anything more amazing as that” after that show. And I had to agree, it was really special. It’s good to see that bands that are fifteen or maybe pushing twenty years old, who maybe don’t tour as much as they used to, but they use the opportunities to get on the road, make records, and continue to put a lot of thought into their art.
Matt: I think Russian Circles obviously comes to mind. When I think of them as a band, it’s not so much that they are carrying the torch, but it’s more that they continue to do what they want to do and continue to be a band without vocals that’s just out there crushing it and keeping things interesting with pure instrumental skill with only three people making it happen. I have a lot of respect for those guys for their commitment to originality.
You guys have done previous split releases with Year of No Light, East of the Wall, Junius, and more. Are there any plans for an upcoming split or collaboration?
Matt: We are always talking about split releases, but it seems like these days it’s harder and harder to do. I don’t know if we have anything in the pipeline right now that’s definitely going to happen. There’s totally multiple ideas that we've been batting around for awhile. We’re kind of an album band in some ways and a lot of time it’s hard to compose at that scale. A lot of what we’ve contributed to splits has been stuff that’s either connected with something else we’ve done or cover songs. It might be cool to return to that format as a change of pace, but it's definitely a format that we’ve neglected for the last few years.
What are plans for Rosetta after this tour?
Matt: We’ve been batting around ideas for a video. We’ve actually never done a video before, it just was not a medium we had specific ideas for. We didn’t want to just put out a video because it was something you’re supposed to do, we want to put out a video because we have something to say through it. And I think that might materialize soon. Now that Utopioid is out, it’s just touring, but we are exploring some stuff that’s a little different for us. There should be some more US and European tour dates next year. We have a tour coming up where we’re hitting Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore, which is really cool because several of those we’ve never been before.
Eric: We’ll probably do an East coast tour in February or March.
