ATAVIST'S 666 DOOM! "With the first track 31:38 and the two new tracks we ended up [unknowingly to us] with an album that was 66 minutes and 6 seconds long with the gaps between tracks!!!" Atavist are a doom band from the UK who have been playing some acclaimed shows on the scene -the band supported SUNN O))), High on Fire and 5ives Continuum Research Project amongst others, and have shows coming up with Church of Misery and a UK tour with Khanate in November 2005. Atavist has ex-members of Burning Witch and Thorrs Hammer in their line-up, and the band's S/T debut release is coming out through Invada Records / Cargo in the coming months. Words | Chris Naughton Atavist started around mid 2004 when I [Chris - guitars] met Shane [bassist] at a Khanate show in Nottingham UK, we started hanging out listening to music we liked and jamming songs we knew to get a feel for each others playing style. After a few weeks we started writing early versions of some of our album tracks. It was around this time we were first contacted by Jamie via e-mail after he saw a post I had written on the Southern Lord Records message boards about the kind of music that I was writing and the sort of music I was listening to. He noticed we were from nearby and gave me an email asking if my band needed a drummer as he was looking to play doom again, having drummed in the now disbanded Burning Witch and Thorrs Hammer some years before. We sent e-mails backwards and forwards for a while, then we decided to meet up for a practice sessions at a local rehearsal space [Audio zone] to see how things went. At the practices we were playing him the early versions of what became "31:38" from our upcoming record. We were all surprised how well we worked together and how quickly Jamie picked up the song and things just went from there really. Subsequently we added Toby [vocalist] to the line-up and we are now on with the mixing and mastering of our debut album -slated for a release near the end of the year. ATAVIST > The making of... When we set out to make the Atavist record we knew we wanted it to have a big heavy sound, and that we would need to record it live, so after some advice from our friends in the band Marzuraan we opted to record the CD at a studio called "The Soundroom" in Newcastle UK. The album was recorded in 2 x 7 hour sessions over a period of six months from December 2004 to June 2005, and features three tracks. The first song on the album titled "31:38" was recorded whilst on tour with SUNN O))) in December 2004 as we had a free day after playing a show at the Cluny in Newcastle the night before. We booked the Soundroom for a session the next day and after setting up / working on the sound we recorded the song live in one take [which was really pleasing as the song is 31mins and 38 secs long). Atavist are not the sort of band that would be comfortable doing an album track by track as timing and structure are important features in our songs and we all need to watch each other closely to make things work as planned. After doing a rough mix and master on "31:38" we started sending it out to record labels, promoters and reviewers to try to get some feedback on the tracks, some shows and possibly a record deal. After a near miss with Meteorcity Records from the USA [due to some contractual issues of touring we couldn't agree to] and a couple of other prospects in the UK / Europe we decided to sign to Invada Records [The Heads, Ramesses, Gonga] to release the ATAVIST album on CD/2 x LP. It was around the time we signed to Invada that we had the final songs complete for the album. After doing some touring with Esoteric and Unearthly Trance in early / mid 2005 we found ourselves ready to record the two new songs for our album, in June 2005. Having liked the sound of 31:38 from recording it at the sound room we opted to finish the recording of the album there to keep some sort of consistency in the sound of the album even though it was recorded in 2 sessions. The products of the second recording sessions at the Soundroom were the tracks now titled "20:11" and "14:12". With the first track 31:38 and the two new tracks we ended up [unknowingly to us] with an album that was 66 minutes and 6 seconds long with the gaps between tracks!!! 666 DOOM! In the final stages of production we are mixing and mastering the album at Portisheads "State of Art" studios in Bristol UK with Paul Horlick [Whitehouse / Consumer Electronics] / Stuart Anderson [Ramesses] / Geoff Barrow [Portishead] and we are aiming for a November 2005 release of the CD in the UK. We are also planning a vinyl release which should be out soon after the CD which we are mastering at Optimum Mastering, which is a beautiful new mastering studio in Bristol that even has its own vinyl lathe!! ATAVIST > The tracks, a breakdown... 31:38 This was the first track we wrote as a group and was initially only meant to be about 15-16minutes long. But when we were writing it we wrote this nice ambient / harmonic section that is now in the middle of the song, and what was a shorter song ended up being nearly 32 minutes long. The track itself was quite difficult to write as it was written to avoid the "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, end" structure that most bands seem to opt for when writing songs. The song itself was written in an almost classical sense having several movements through out the song that range from slow, bleak doom and discordant melody to ambient harmonic guitar work. We set out to write a song that did not repeat riffs after the section they were played in and aimed to be always moving forward instead of going back to a specific chord sequence or lyric which I think shows through in the final recorded version. 20:11 This is probably the heaviest song that Atavist has recorded to date. Although 31:38 is heavy on the whole, the feel and pace of the song changes throughout and is a lot denser in the number of riffs and sections it contains. By contrast 20:11 has a slower and less melodic feel than the previous song, and ranges from a slow and intricate introduction to a heavy and bleak structure from there onwards. I think we allowed this riffs in this song to breathe a little more than on the previous track and we really worked more on chord structure and changing drum patterns rather than the overall volume of riffs in the song. The vocals on this song were also used as more of an instrument than a means of preaching from a soapbox as they are more geared around tone, feeling and atmosphere than lyrical content. That's not to say that there aren't lyrics which there are but they were used in a less conventional manner in this instance. 14:12 This track is probably the most conventionally structured song we have written as it is heavy and punchy in style and has a more obvious drum and vocal pattern within the context of the individual riffs. This song started off as a 6-7 minute song but we extended it when we were playing it live in the studio and now features a 7-8 minute drone / feedback outro that has layers of guitars / bass as well as dual vocals and faster drumming, which is unusual for this style but works really well as part of this song.