press photo
Course of Empire
Vaughn Stevenson- Vocals
Mike Graff - Guitar
Paul Semrad - Bass
Chad Lovell - Drums
Michael Jerome - Drums
The recent past has been a period of both free-flowing creativity and frustration
for Dallas-based Course of Empire. While they continued to be a Texas touring
favorite, the lack of a timely follow-up to their last album might have actually
caused their fans outside The Lone Star State to imagine that Course of Empire
had broken up. They haven't.
It was about a year ago this time when the band was sitting around their studio
in Deep Ellum wondering when their new album Telepathic Last Words would be
released.
As guitarist Mike Graff recalls, "We had our suspicions that Zoo's (former record
label) days were numbered, so instead of blowing the budget for our third album
on one month of recording in LA, we decided to build our own studio." This turned
out to be a sizable task. It took six months to build the studio and complete
writing the new songs. The band then hired Jon Fryer (NIN, Gravity Kills) to come
down and produce. By the time the album was finished, however, the label which
had released the band's first two albums was preparing for extinction. It took
another year for the band to extract themselves from the Zoo deal and sign with
their new label, TVT.
Their previous album, Initiation, was born out of fascinations with the growing
conspiracy movement (with the Branch Davidians siege occurring in nearby Waco as
backdrop to recording sessions). Buried beneath layers of feedback and dense
drumming were ideas of a universe manipulated by hidden forces. And in keeping
with America's growing obsession with secret plots and treachery, it contained no
less that three hidden tracks as well as Ids numbering to 23, the number of the
"Illuminati." (A cosmic joke for conspiracy buffs).
"Eventually we had to step away from those pursuits. We saw too many people
losing themselves in a spiraling loop of paranoia."
Bassist Paul Semrad adds, "I found it to be much more interesting to look at the
psyche of someone who had been more or less swept away by all the paranoia, than
the actual 'conspiracy' itself."
As the single Infested! began getting airplay around the country, the band
embarked on tours with industrial rock acts such as Prong and Sister Machine
Gun. A remix of Infested!, containing Benny Goodman horn samples, became a
minor club hit, influencing other industrial remixes.
Mostly, however, Course of Empire is known for their chaotic live shows. The
band has consistently remained as a top concert draw in Texas since bursting
out of Deep Ellum. (A scene which has spawned countless other Texas acts such
as Rev. Horton Heat and The Toadies). Early Course of Empire shows were more
performance art driven. With the band throwing drums into the crowd, shows would
degenerate into free-form jams, blurring the line between band and audience.
Eventually, as crowds grew, and stage-diving became more popular, the band had
to discontinue the "drum thing". As vocalist Vaughn Stevenson recalls, "Kids
started throwing drums across the room and people were getting hit in the face.
I still have a flyer from one of our shows with blood all over it."
In the two years between Initiation and the completion of the new album,
Telepathic Last Words, the band has had time to pull away from the outside
influences at large and focus on their more humanistic views.
"The last record was about getting caught up in looking for answers in this pile
of information that was being passed around in the underground - conspiracies,
whatever. This album is more about just trying to find your own little spot of
sanity in the middle of it all," says Stevenson.
Nevertheless, the new record still explores the band's obsessions with the
future. Songs like Houdini's Blind and Automatic Writing #17 satirize the mass
media's unwitting propensity for evil, claiming, "If you light yourself on fire,
the world will pay to watch you burn." Statements as such come out on top of the
mix without the overwhelming barrage of instrumentation found on earlier
releases. John Fryer's production on other-worldly songs such as New Maps and
Persian Song displays the band at their heaviest yet, counter-balanced by
Stevenson's crystal clear vocals. Kaptain Kontrol and the Rodgers and Hart
classic Blue Moon (twisted beyond anything resembling its famous doo-wop
rendering; think PIL backing a spaghetti western or Dick Dale in a Berlin
cabaret) are uncharacteristic departures for Course of Empire.
The band's heavy sound is often augmented by Middle Eastern melodies and
psychedelia. The Information takes its metallic disco tendencies into an abyss
of power chords and chanting - while Ride The Static starts with a simple pop
melody, but soon echoes into a sliding tunnel of weirdness.
Finding a new home on TVT, the band returned to the studio and recorded a few
new tracks to add to the album. These songs were recorded by the band
themselves with drummer Chad Lovell in the producer's seat. "We removed one
track and replaced it with three more, re-mixed two others, then re-mastered and
re-sequenced the entire disc," states Chad. With new mixes by David Bianco,
Telepathic Last Words proves to be the band's finest recorded work to date.