Chris Grigg (Woe)
1. What are your top five albums that were released in 2013? (In order 1-5)
These are such different albums with such varied places in my year and life that ranking them is kind of useless. Here they are, alphabetically.
- Carcass - Surgical Steel
- Chelsea Wolfe - Pain is Beauty
- Fuck Buttons - Slow Focus
- Kanye West - Yeezus
- Queens of the Stone Age - …Like Clockwork
Gorguts, Inter Arma, Batillus, and Deafheaven are all on this list in spirit.
2. What band did you discover in 2013 (can be a brand new band or an older band) that had an impact on your life? What made them significant?
I think Sisters of Mercy would be the one. My girlfriend turned me onto Floodland and nothing has really been the same since. They hit me at the right time… I had just finished Withdrawal, I was burnt out on black metal, both sonically and culturally, and needed something that was still dark and intense.
3. How will you remember 2013? (In terms of music)
2013 will forever by my Year of Pop, or at least my Year of Unmetal. I bought a synth a few months ago and have started working on a new project that is a real departure from everything I've ever done. It's refreshing but also a little intimidating to consider that I am basically starting over, working with a different sonic palette, a stranger in a new land.
4. What can we look forward to from you in 2014?
Hopefully a new Infiltrator recording, possibly a release from my new pop project. I have something in the works that is related to music but not music creation that is taking up most of my time… With any luck, it will be my focus in 2014 and our next conversation will be about that.
5. What records are you looking forward to most in 2014?
Tombs. I think they are head and shoulders above almost every other band in metal right now and I am so excited to hear how this new album comes out.
6. There is a lot of debate over streaming sites and royalties, namely with Spotify. What is your stance on the economic policies behind the current streaming services? Do you have a preferred one?
Working as an artist on a label, I'm a bit disconnected from the payouts offered by Spotify and sites like it to have much of an opinion on it. I have a big issue with the entire music industry and the way it positions artists to fail and facilitators (the labels, the studios, the distributors, the press) to succeed, but that's another story. As a listener, I live by Spotify and credit it with altering my perspective in profound ways. Take Kanye West, for example. If I had to buy Yeezus, I never would have listened to it but because it was available online, I spent hours and hours with it, then moved onto the rest of his catalog, and I'm considering paying an unreasonable amount of money to see him in NYC the end of the month. The ~$50 I would have spent buying the albums in his discography I like will instead be (maybe) $200-$300 per ticket on seeing him live.
My preference? Every band should spend as little time and money on their recording as possible, put it on Spotify, and sell it directly through Bandcamp. Minimize investment, cut out middlemen, focus on strong material and performing live. We can't expect the industry or listeners to value our output the way we do. Instead of setting ourselves up for failure, we should adjust our expectations to match reality.
