From the Philly Rock Guide, May 1994
Course of Empire
by Lorraine Gennaro
Everybody's pissed off.
The Zoo Records publicist is pissed because she flew a journalist all the way from
Philadelphia to Dallas for an interview, and the band is being less than cooperative.
The journalist is pissed because it's been raining all day, and on top of that the
band is dragging their collective butts on this interview. The band is pissed
because nothing has gone right since they arrived at the club at 6:30 a.m. to
oversee the lighting set-up, inluding 28 hi-tech Varilights. Twenty-eight? For a
club this size, three would be overkill; 28 is enough for a Pink Floyd stadium gig.
Drummer Chad Lovell seems the most annoyed with the situation. He thinks the lights
are unnecessary and definite overkill. But he's going along with it anyway for his
friend who works for the lighting company, because he's doing the Dallas-based
Course of Empire a big favor for this, the CD release party for their major label
debut, Initiation.
As odd as 28 Varilights may seem for a club this size, this is a band with a taste
for the grandiose and unusual. Take for instance that they have not one but two
drummers. According to Lovell, the idea of two drummers came from original
drummer Anthony Headley, who was really into tribalism and the Kodo drummers of
Japan. Lovell, who had been giving Headley drumming lessons, was eventually asked
to join Course of Empire as a second drummer. "Once we started playing around with
the double drum thing, the double drums were really cool. It seemed to work for
our sound. So when Anthony left the band, I wanted to find another drummer to keep
it going," states Lovell. Enter Michael Jerome. Lovell and Jerome are responsible
for the thunderous, tribal rhythms that give Course of Empire its colossal doomsday
sound.
The band formed in 1988, and in 1990 released their self-titled debut on Carpe
Diem. With two drummers and a fresh, original sound, Course of Empire quickly
became a big draw on the Dallas music scene. With a blend of eerie guitars, tribal
rhythms, and thought-provoking lyrics, it didn't take long for major labels to
catch onto what this band's rapidly growing cult following already knew. With gigs
bordering on performance art, this band could put on a great live show. Zoo
Entertainment signed them in 1992 and then remastered and re-released their debut.
Early on the band often distributed drums to fans at shows. It was during one of
these audience participation drum sessions that the album's first single,
"Infested," was conceived. Amidst Mike Graff's frenzied guitars and Lovell, Jerome
and bassist Paul Semrad's heavy, syncopated rhythms, vocalist Vaughn Stevenson
heralds a prophecy of apocalyptic images including a chat with Charles Darwin.
"Look Darwin straight in the eye, he says evolve or die/Like bees to the hive, so
must we to survive/This planet is infested, America's infested." The adrenalized,
industrial-powered, angry stampede is the perfect representation of Course of
Empire.
There's no denying a heavy Killing Joke influence. With songs steeped in dramatic
urgency, Initiation addresses every aspect of being. Musically and lyrically, all
11 tracks have a definite ethereal, haunted quality that more often than not
borders on the bizarre.
The title track is nothing more than recorded air. What sounds like a cross
between guitar distortion and a ghost in the machine is actually nothing more
than the product of recording air through an effects unit. Lovell says the track
was an accident. "I went over to the board set-up just to goof around, and the
effects were all hooked up wrong, and that song started coming out. It was
radically loud, and it was just the microphone picking up air. So we just hit
record. We realized that was the sonic representation of all the ideas we were
into. The great thing about it is it's the apex of the album, even from our own
interpersonal philosophies; that was was far greater than anything we could come
up with ourselves from some linear line of thinking. It's beyond anything we
could accomplish as human beings," states Lovell.
Lovell says the band watched Hellraiser prior to recording Initiation because
they wanted to get some really terrifying imagery in their heads.
The stategy worked, as evidenced by, particularly, "Minions," a simple blend of
eerie guitar riffs and a menacing drum roll, with Stevenson chanting in the
background. Downright spooky, it's not the sort of tune for playing late at
night, home alone. On The Cure-sounding "Apparition," Stevenson sings, "Reeling
from hallucination/I chatted with an apparition/Breathing deep I recognized him,
held on to and empathized him/Life weighed heavily upon him, just as he has done
to me/I swelled until I burst, and you fell down to earth." Stevenson likes to
keep his lyrics shrouded in secrecy. Ask him to explain a song's inspiration
and he squirms. "I'm always reluctant... I hate to be... I'm not trying to be
difficult, honestly, I just... you know, there have been several times when I
really like a song, and I have my own kind of idea what it's about. And then I
find out it's about something else in particular, and it just kind of bothers
me." It's hard to tell whether he's just being guarded or difficult.
Because of a highly percussive sound and use of effects and tape loops, Course
of Empire is usually mistaken for industrial, but digging deeper, the sound is
much more musical. "The energy behind industrial was really good, but a lot
of the vibe for most of it seemed to be really negative," says Stevenson. "We
always wanted to be a more organic version of that, where we play real
instruments, still going toe to toe with the energy level but trying to have
a more positive vibe instead of this hateful, negative vibe. I don't really
think industrial can go much beyond where it's gone now - this kind of just
disenfranchised, nothing phases me, nothing shocks me. It seems like to me
that vibe has gone as far as it can go. We just wanted to be on that playing
field, but an answer to bands like that."
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