southern records

WORD: Moss was formed in 2001 and Cthonic Rites is your first full-length album. Why have you waited so long before putting an album out?
Because so many bands these days get together, and then jump straight into doing an album... We're all big fans of the old school way of doing things - do a few demos and whatnot, then attempt doing the album. We wanted to establish and develop our sound to others and ourselves before we make a defining statement such as the debut album - even though it seems we are quite prolific and work a lot, we are not ones to rush things.

WORD: What’s the feedback on Cthonic Rites so far?
Feedback so far has been totally positive - I think the general concensus is that you'll either love it or hate it, no in between..that's something we can live with. We've received really high marks and positive reviews even from the mainstream press - Cthonic Rites received 4/5 in Mojo and 8/10 in Vice, which surprised me considering the magazines don't even touch metal bands. If our audial terror happens to reach more people because of that, then great. We want to infect as many minds as possible.

WORD: What’s your music background?
I've been in a few noise, metal and punk rock bands before Moss, but Moss is the first serious band I've been in. Being a vocalist I have pretty much zero musical ability and I've never been able to play an instrument the way it's supposed to be played, I just know what I like and what noises appeal to me.

WORD: How would you describe Moss’s music, “Misanthropic music for misanthropic people”?
I suppose it is. I think we cover a lot of themes and emotions, I wouldn't say it's total hatred and doom and depression..although some of those themes are very prominent (although I don't think Moss is particulary depressive, pisses me off actually when people say we're depressive). I don't really like describing the music, because it sounds so crap on paper - "it's slow, and heavy". Hahahah. Doom is always better experienced than described I think.

WORD: Basically are you just playing music for yourselves or is there a darker purpose behind Moss, like… sinking people into doom meditation, gloom, pain and filth?
First and foremost we're playing the music for ourselves - this is why we formed the band, because we weren't hearing much of the kind of stuff that we liked to hear. I don't think it's about making the sickest stuff as possible anymore, that just kind of happens. It's ingrained in us I suppose.. If other people want to join us in sinking deeper into the depths then they're more than welcome.

WORD: What would be Moss without Lovecraft and Cthulhu ?
Maybe exactly the same... even before I started to get heavily into Lovecraft I always had similar kinds of feelings inside - that man is utterly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and that there are unknown forces that control us every day. Straight up, Lovecraft has a minimal influence on the Moss lyrics to be honest, but the influence is definitely there. I think it's in the atmosphere where our Lovecraft influence shines most blatantly, and the artwork of the recent releases reflects that indeed.

WORD: Tell me about how each of you is involved in the composition process.
We all contribute to the songs.. Dom being the guitarist, he is the principle songwriter of course, but he's open to our ideas and suggestions - some riffs I've composed by yelling them at Dom then he'll work them out on guitar, and Chris (drums) always has ideas... so it's very much a group effort.

WORD: Why did you feel the need to get produced by Jus Oborn from Electric Wizard ? Did he bring a lot to your sound?
We had been in contact with Jus for a while and he's a big fan of our stuff... from what I recall, he asked us if he could produce our album, knowing that we were writing for it at the time. In his own words, he thought that if anyone else did it it would sound gay... and being such big fans of the sound on 'Come My Fanatics', Jus was pretty confident that he could capture that for us. I think it went way above our expectations really. He brought to our sound what we'd always wanted - something raw but massive and crushing, like on our demos but x10. We'll definitely be working with Jus on future recordings.

WORD: You seem to be a die-hard devotee of the split-record form. How do you come across these bands you’re working with? I’d like you to tell me a bit about your past, present and future collaborations. I’ve heard there will be a split 7’’ with Thee Plague Of Gentlemen (with a cover of Discharge) for Rise Above , and another with Monarch, right?
The bands that we work with are our friends or just bands whose music we like.. although our first collaboration, a split 3 inch with Nadja, was put together by the label and we had no prior knowledge of Nadja's music. Nice surprise though! Our split with Bunkur was all our idea, but the label was more than willing to cash in...I can't say we're so close to Bunkur these days, a lot has gone on between us. I think they're a good band though. The split with Torture Wheel was again our idea, and was interesting for us as we seem to come from different sides of so-called doom music, but we admire each others work a lot... and the same goes for the split with Wolfmangler , a very interesting and unique band to work with, very different yet somewhat similar.

Yes that's right about the split 7 inch with TPOG on Rise Above, and I think it's great that this label is willing to take a chance with two largely unknown-to-the-mainstream bands. TPOG is a fucking great band, hope to share the stage with them again soon. And the split album with Monarch will hopefully be out before the end of the year on Parasitic Records, both bands planning to record during the summer.

WORD: What regard do you have for the actual “extreme” doom scene? Are there particular bands you like or you feel close to?
A lot of what gets called extreme doom doesn't interest me a bit. Not to suggest that we're some kind of elite, but it seems these days that just about anyone can plug in a guitar and play really slowly and scream a load of random crap over it, although obviously it takes a lot more skill than that - atmosphere plays a huge part in this music, which some bands in this style seem to have no grasp of.

Bands that we feel close to, definitely Esoteric , Indesinence , Monarch, Electric Wizard, Eyehatelucy ... just bands that we've been in contact with for years, we know personally, or we've shared the stage with. And we love their music of course.

WORD: How did you get in touch with Aurora Borealis ?
I'd sold merch with Andy on the 2004 Sunn O))) winter tour when we supported them in Bristol. He took some CDs off me and contacted me a few weeks later asking us if we'd like to do something on his label. And here we are. I wouldn't say we're "exclusive" to Aurora Borealis, but we're more than happy with their work for us and we're very keen to release future albums or whatever through this label.

WORD: Few months ago, you were complaining about the lack of gigs in UK due to the fact you didn’t have any label. Are things easier now you’re on Aurora B?
No, they're still the same... I don't think it's much of a big deal though. We'd realised a while ago that it's best that we don't play live that much, perhaps to retain some kind of "mystique" about the band, and also because it's very hard for us with our schedules. And for sanity’s sake, it's not good that we go on tour for months with this music, I am sure something bad would happen hahaha.

WORD: How’s Moss on stage?
We summon the hyper-cosmos!

WORD: What’s about your side-project 'Graveyard' ?
Graveyard was started as a joke , it was 2003/04 and the amount of one man "funeral doom" bands coming out and posting their demo on the internet was ridiculous.. and even though there was to be three of us in this band, this was intended to be a parody of that - cheesy sub-Shakesperian growled lyrics, more keyboards than guitars, and a snare hit every 3 minutes, all played horribly out of time and tune... never got off the ground though, which was a good thing hahaha. I think some people would've seen it as a serious project, (which it was unintentionally promoted as) whereas it was just a chance for me to take the piss out of this form of doom music I totally despise.

WORD: What’s next for Moss? What are you expecting for the future?
We'll be recording for some things in the summer.. one of these will be for the split with Monarch, the other things I can't really reveal yet. I say this every time, but I expect it will go way beyond what we did before, as it always tends to...

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