From the Daily Texan (Austin), Friday January 30th, 1998
Empire Rising
Course of Empire returns to add Austin to its kingdom
by Michael Chamy
Rising from the ashes of a Dallas music scene that has begotten very few
worthwhile acts in the last few years is Course of Empire, for nearly a
decade one of the most challenging and ambitious bands from the area.
Armed with a new album and record deal, COE is playing Liberty Lunch
Saturday night in a release party for Telepathic Last Words, the band's
first release since Initiation in 1994.
The gig will be one of the precious few the band has played in Austin in
recent years. Their October show at the Electric Lounge drew only a
small contingent of fans, most of them making the drive from the Metroplex.
Guitarist Mike Graff, however, is appreciative of the group's loyal fans,
especially on the heels of consecutive sold-out shows at the Curtain Club
last weekend in Dallas.
"I feel really lucky that people have stuck with us," Graff said.
"Especially after not having any records out since '94."
Their fan base doesn't seem to extend to Austin, mainly due to a dearth of
Central Texas shows. The band hasn't played Austin with any regularity
since they frequented the Back Room around the release of Initiation,
playing shows with the Skatenigs and other industrial rock acts.
"We're going to start playing Austin a lot," Graff said. "We just haven't
made it there in a while, we've been so busy with the new album and all."
COE has fought an uphill battle to get Telepathic Last Words on the
shelves after building their own studio to make the record and dealing
with the subsequent demise of their label, Zoo Records.
The album was completed in early 1996, Graff said, but the process of
selecting a new record label took time.
"It took us two years to get out of the Zoo deal, sign with TVT, and
record new songs and remaster the album," Graff said.
The band was courted by several labels, but it was ultimately personal
contacts with TVT President Steve Gottlieb that locked up the deal.
Now with the proper label support in place, Graff and company are faced
with the challenge of getting the product out to an audience who perhaps
still connects them to a dying industrial music scene.
"I think we've been considered part of the industrial rock world somehow,"
Graff said. "We tend to have toured with bands like Sister Machine Gun
and Prong."
"Since then, industrial music seems to have played itself out. How many
times can you reinvent clanking metal sounds and drum machines turned up
to 10?"
COE's sound skirts the edge of industrial, while presenting a live show
that simply rocks more than anything else. Vaughn Stevenson is a unique
performer and vocalist, and his lyrical poetry explores themes of
corruption and control, occasionally delving into the realm of the
ponderous and mystical. His presentation gives the band a gothic tinge,
with his vocals somewhat evocative of Peter Murphy and Bowie.
Behind Vaughn, Graff's screeching sheets of distortion meld with the twin
drum attack of Chad Lovell and Michael Jerome. COE uses the pounding
skin attack not so much for tribal interplay, a la Martin Atkins' Pigface,
as they do for lending authority to Vaughn Stevenson's and Graff's musical
themes.
The band's self-titled 1990 debut on Dallas' Carpe Diem Records, however,
provided glimpses into even more, with music as diverse as the darkly
acoustic "Sins of the Fathers," the flute-driven "Peace Child," and
moments of tribal skin-pounding.
"People who listen to Metallica would put our record on and be confused as
to what the hell we were doing," Graff said. "They'd say, 'Is this a
metal industrial band, or are these guys new age artists or folkies?'"
Graff maintains that the band has since seen the wisdom of presenting a
more unified piece of work, such as Initiation or Telepathic Last Words.
"In order to punch through the veil of media, you have to do one type of
music, express one type of mood, have one type of attitude," said Graff.
"If you try to dabble in all sorts of different styles of music and stuff,
it'll just be hard for people to understand who the fuck you are."
One thing the group has retained over the years is their trademark anthem
"Coming of the Century," usually the last song of their live show. They
have included a re-recorded version on Telepathic Last Words, something
Graff said the band was excited about doing.
"When we originally wrote the song, it was 1989 and we thought, 'What kind
of strange shit will be happening when the millennium rolls around?'
"But now it almost is the coming of the century, so for us to go back and
record the song the way we wanted - it's sorta like saying, 'Fuck yeah,
we're still here.'"
The new version includes some notable changes from the original, including
more cymbals and some distortion on Vaughn Stevenson's vocals.
"The original had '80s-style production with really long reverb and
stuff," Graff said. "We wanted to make it a lot tighter and more raw, so
we took a lot of the reverb out."
So, does the band have any plans to play a New Year's bash to celebrate
the coming of the century and the new millennium?
"That would be pretty cool," Graff said. "I think we should start
booking our show in Dallas."
On the song, Stevenson sings, "This is the end of the mystery," thus
helping to perpetuate many of the rumors concerning the end of the world
on the eve of 2000.
"Everybody thinks some kind of supernatural psychic alignment of the
universe will occur and some vortex of time will open up and we'll all
change into some new evolution of beings or something. Who knows?"
[images with the article: a '97 photo of the band, plus the cover of TLW]
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