The Rising Tide

When last we left our heroes (and heroine), The Minus Tide had dropped an impressive debut, The Rock Autopsy Has Begun, and had started to take their intricate blend of metal, hardcore and science fiction to the masses (or at least the coffee shops, bars and basements of West Virginia and Ohio).

Well, a lot has happened since then. The band has weathered line-up changes, dropped some serious aural science by-way-of splits with Turn Around Norman and Pankration, played dozens of regional shows (including a couple of trips to Macrock), self-recorded their first full-length effort that will see the light of day via Action Driver, and narrowly avoided getting peed on by a sleepwalking, wannabe on-line journalist (sorry about that guys).

After two-plus years, Bettawreckonize finally caught up with guitarist Mikey Iafrate, one half of the bands twin guitar assault team, to discuss the band’s latest adventures as one of the Midwest’s most genuine and skillful underground metal bands.

Interview conducted via e-mail by Tim Anderl. Pictures taken by Tim and Anne Anderl.

Band: The Minus Tide
Name: Mikey Iafrate (guitar)

Bettawreckonize: A lot has happened in the two and a half years since we last interviewed you guys. What have been the highlights?

Mikey: Last time we talked, I think we were just getting started. I believe we had self-released our first EP at that point and had played a handful of shows. Since then we have been wokring with a record label, released a couple more records and played a lot of shows, done a couple short tours. I think highlights would just be the fact that we hooked up with Action Driver Records and have had the opportunity to travel around a good bit playing shows, getting our name out there, and getting a little bit of attention.

BW: How did you guys get hooked up with Action Driver? Were you talking to other record labels? What ultimately swayed you toward making a deal with Action Driver?

M: We talked to a couple smaller labels, but nothing seemed to go anywhere until Joseph from Action Driver got in touch. He is originally from West Virginia and he was familiar with some of the bands we used to be in, so he wrote us one day and wanted to meet us. He drove to Wheeling from Toledo to hang out one day and offered to re-release our first CD. There were a lot of reasons for us to choose to work with Joseph. We liked that he lived pretty close to us and that we could interact with him easily. We liked that his staff consisted of pretty much just him. We liked that he doesn't deal with contracts and he shares a lot of the same ethical principles that we have as far as how the "music business" should work. He also had a lot of really good contacts, especially in terms of distribution. Plus, he was really into our band and just genuinely wanted to support us by releasing our records, so it seemed like a good match.

BW: Your first record on Action Driver was a split with Kent's Pankration, right? How did this come about and how do you think your bands complemented each other?

M: Well, technically, the first AD release was the re-release of The Rock Autopsy Has Begun, but soon after that we were already talking about what was going to be the follow-up. When we first started talking to Joseph, we had already agreed to put out a split 12" record on Mountain Records with our friends Turn Around Norman, but it hadn't come out yet. We recorded five songs for that record, but we left one called "Freeze a Brain For a Rainy Day" off because it didn't seem to fit with the others. We had been playing a lot of shows with Pankration who we had met through The Party of Helicopters and one day we just got the idea to approach them to see if they'd want to do a 7" split, since we had a song recorded that wasn't being used. Joseph heard Pankration and was into them, and he liked the 7" idea as a way to get people excited about the upcoming full-length. As far as how we compliment each other, I think we're both bands who are taking metal and doing some different things with it. Pankration and the The Minus Tide are both metal bands that can appeal to metal fans as well as people who don't really like metal all that much.

BW: Having been friends with you for some time now, I know that you have strong religious, political and social ideas. Does The Minus Tide's music steer clear of these realms or are their underlying metaphors present in your seemingly sci-fi lyrics?

M: We're all six different people with six different views of life, six different sets of values, etc. Our beliefs overlap sometimes, but we really are six very different people. My particular beliefs are probably more visible and strongly stated than the others in the band, but we aren't the sort of band where we operate on some kind of shared social, political, or religious vision. My views are certainly not the band's collective views. We pretty much let Dallas handle all the lyrics and storytelling, so no, my personal beliefs don't really factor into the lyrical content. He tells stories. Who knows where he gets it from; I have no idea. That said, I don't think they are stories devoid of any point whatsoever. He's not simply singing nonsense. There is certainly a good amount of humor there, especially on the newer material, but there are some common themes and threads of ideas that tend to repeat themselves.

BW: The Minus Tide differs from a lot of the current punk and hardcore crop in that you guys have careers outside of the music arena that seem to keep you from doing extended stints on the road. Will TMT always be a part-time pursuit? If so, why?

M: The word "part-time" makes me feel weird, because it's hard to talk about music, which we all love so much, in terms of quantified units of time spent, but yeah we are pretty much restricted to doing things part-time right now. Three of us are finished with graduate degrees that we pursued in order to begin certain careers, and three of us are in school pursuing specific degrees for specific reasons. There are things we all love outside of music, and outside of this particular band, so we do what we have to do. Will the band always be part-time? Who knows. No predictions there. Conceivably, we could probably do this full-time, but there is a lot more to each of us than just the band.

BW: You guys have had a few line-up changes since the release of The Rock Autopsy? Who is your new bass player and where did the other guys go?

M: Yeah, we have had several bassists since that record came out. After Sean left the band, a guy named Rob Horner joined who was in the band for a little over a year. He's on the two vinyl things we released, and he went back to play with his old band when they got back together earlier this year. Our friend Geoff Hoskinson joined after that and was with us for several months and he is the one you will hear on our new CD when it comes out. After we recorded the record, Geoff moved to New York for graduate school and our friend Ryan Hizer joined in late summer.

BW: Quite a few of you have musical projects outside of the band? What are those and how do those fill a void that TMT doesn't occupy?

M: Dallas has a project he's been doing for years called Drown Culture. The last few years or so Rosie and Dave have joined as full-time members, and it looks like Drown Culture might end up being an actual active band pretty soon, with some more of us joining in on various instruments. Dallas has even had some pretty cool offers from labels for Drown Culture, so it looks like it might be time to bring it to life in a live setting. Chris studies music in school and plays classical guitar, so he's sometimes busy learning pieces and doing recitals and stuff. Ryan does some solo work too, but I am still getting to know about it. I do know he has a project called Le Pterodactyl. I have been doing acoustic stuff for years and have released a few CDs. Lately some members of The Minus Tide and some other friends have been playing live with me and we have been going by the name M Iafrate & The Priesthood. I can't really speak for everyone in the band, but for me, it's not necessarily that the other music projects "fill a void;" it's just that I love music and find that there are so many things that can be said through music, so many voices to bring to life, so there's just no end to the possibilities. I have always been so impressed by musicians who have several projects going at once, or bands that trade members back and forth, so there is a sort of history and an almost endless process of discovering what projects are in that musician's "family tree." That's just sort of where I'm at when it comes to making music and coming up with new contexts and new relationships with other musicians.

BW: Has TMT made any plans for 2004?

M: The big news is that our first full-length release will be out March 30 on Action Driver Records. Ten all new songs, and the thing is called Anakuklosis. We have been slaving over it for over a year now, so we will be really excited to get it out there and see what people think of it. Other than that, we're just going to try to keep playing shows as much as possible, visit new places, and meet more people. That's really what it's all about.

BW: Where was the new record done?

M: Dallas and Dave recorded the new record themselves, at our practice space, like we have for all our other records. We had talked about going to a studio, and had even talked to some well-known producers, but in the end we thought it would be best to work on our own time-line and not someone else's. We were able to take our time refining the songs and making them sound the way we wanted to.

BW: Was there a producer or engineer who had some influence on it?

M: We really like the way some of Matt Bayles and Kurt Ballou's stuff has turned out, so production-wise, they were an influence.

BW: Having seen some of the songs from the new record live, I've noticed that you guys are moving in more progressive directions (the use of more samples, etc.). Your collective guitar work also waves to classic metal (overlapping octaves, etc.). Have you guys had success balancing elements of both progressive and classical metal; do the ideas behind those sounds mesh?

M: I think this new batch of songs balances what you'd call "classic" and "progressive" metal a bit better than, say, the 12" split did. I think with those songs we were still working out how to mix the two sounds together. This record has a little bit of the "classic" metal dual leads and stuff, but we're using them much more sparingly this time around. In fact, much of the time, Chris and I are playing the exact same thing, and instead of the usual traditional metal riffs-going-up-the-neck thing, we're playing really low, fat riffs that sound like a drunk snuffleupagus or something. Some of the songs on this record were written and rewritten many times because we were sort of forcing things a bit too much, but as they are now, this batch of songs turned out really well. But to me, anyway, it sounds like we're relying on the Iron Maiden type stuff significantly less this time around.

BW: What is the idea behind the title for the new record?

M: Anakuklosis is a Greek word that can be translated a lot of different ways. "Eternal return" is the most commonly seen translation, but it basically means "to circle around again" and it refers to the ancient myth that the cosmos and the history of the universe goes in an endless cycle of destruction and rebirth, as opposed to the traditional Western notion that history is linear. In his book The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade talks about how that idea is at the heart of all our myths about the universe.

BW: Is that a theme that ties the record together? How do the 10 individual tracks work together to comprise the singular effort?

M: That's something probably best left to the listener. In trying to come up with a title, a unifying theme is something we all tried to think about. We all settled on Anakuklosis to kind of express the theme. Each song is a story, and each story takes place in seemingly different times, places, even dimensions maybe. Across the board, though, the same sorts of things seem to be happening in each story. There are beings and creatures being born, fighting with each other, killing, and rebuilding themselves as something new. Between the music and the stories Dallas tells, it sounds like a record that talks a lot about power and something very primal and dark. I don't know... It probably means something different to each of us in the band. To some of us, the idea of "meaning" might not be all that important.