Recently I was given the opportunity via Mayhem Radio to send some interview questions over to Chris from Conan about their newest release Existential Void Guardian.
What can you tell us about the recording process & for the new album and the experiences you had this time around?
This time, the initial writing and recording process was very intense. We knew we wanted to create a record that would transfer well into a live environment, get people headbanging and going crazy but we hadn’t any material. Johnny had just joined the band before we went on a European tour with Monolord last October. We started jamming ideas during sound checks over those 3 weeks and then immediately after we got home we went into Skyhammer Studio and wrote and demoed the album. 2 weeks later we went back to the studio to record the drums properly but the bulk of track Paincantation was actually from the initial demo session.
Some ideas came together very quickly, Volt Thrower was written by Jon and Johnny pretty much on the spot whilst I (Chris) was making everyone a cup of tea! I came back into the studio and we put the track down. It’s simple but has a great energy about it. Other parts took longer of course and needed refinement. We lived with recordings over the next few months and started incorporating some of them into the live set, chopping and changing the arrangement, adding lyrics, overdubs etc. I feel the end result manages to capture the fresh energy that came from Johnny joining the band, and also the spontaneous way we wrote it but doesn’t have any rough edges.
How will Existential Void Guardian differ to Revengeance & what can fans expect?
I feel the album is more direct than Revengeance, we tried some new ideas on the last record that were really fun to incorporate. We wanted to expand on the bits we knew work well in a live environment as well as continue the progression musically but this time we wanted to make the whole thing more cohesive, cut out the fat.
The record still sounds like a Conan album, but one that doesn’t meander on its way to evisceration.
It’s great to see a great mix of upcoming live dates, what can current and new fans expect to experience from a Conan show?
We’ve been really pleased with the reaction from fans to the new songs, so we are going to be putting in a lot of them into the set, as well as playing the older songs we know people enjoy. But if you’ve ever been to a Conan show before, you’ll know you can expect plenty of crushing, heads down heavy metal played at bone shaking volume.
Existential Void Guardian is out now via Napalm Records
