Boy, oh, boy is the world a tad fucked. I’ve had a hard time finding any sort of positivity or encouraging news to tell me any different recently. Hell, I’m going to be welcoming a baby girl into the world in roughly two weeks time, and I’m on tenterhooks trying to make sense of the inherent cruelty that I see around me.
Will I one day have to explain to my child, whose mother is from North Africa, why a group of people hate the colour of her skin or her mother’s family because of their religion? Will we have to explain why children who look like her are being starved or bombed to death? Will she ask me why we didn’t try to stop this from happening? I don’t have an answer for these questions.
At times like these, turning to a community is fundamentally important, if not for answers, then for support. For years I considered myself a part of the metal community because I thought it to be inclusive and open minded. However, I’ve found myself becoming more and more detached from the tag of ‘metalhead’ as it was too personality defining. My other issue is that the metal community, unfortunately, has a bit of a problem with allowing right wingers a safe space, and those fuckers have already been given too many inches.
With that lengthy, overly personal, but topical intro out of the way, I can finally come on to our Weekly Featured Artist, Malevich, a group who fittingly piqued my interest for two reasons that I think reflect some of my above concerns.
One being their newly released album, Under a Gilded Sun, is a visceral and emotive album that boldly re-imagines the band’s blackened sludge sound to further defy the genre that they are lumped in with. The second reason is because the group vehemently describe themselves as anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian, and pro-creative, labels which, I feel, both artists and the general public should be wearing on their sleeves, considering the current political climate of the world.
Hailing from Atlanta, Malevich is made up of Daniel DeSimone (Bass, vocals, synths), Connor Ray (guitar, vocals, synths, piano), Josh McIntyre (guitar) and Sasha Schilbrack-Cole (drums, vocals). The group, who take their name from art theorist and painter, Kazimir Malevich, are simultaneously easy to categorise yet hard to define. Musically they pull from a few different genres. While the group have attributes of blackened sludge and grind with their ferocious off-kilter drums and dissonant, enveloping guitars, they also have elements of their sound that delve into emotive skramz territory, while they also explore the use of synths and dreamy ambient noise as a wonderfully contrasting textural component.
Rather than a focus on employing the otherworldly tornado of chaos that generally defines any sort of heavy music that has the ‘blackened’ descriptor ahead of it, Malevich infuse a lot of angular, yet organic melodic textures into their music, something that they explored on their Trembling and Dowsed EP (which we premiered here on EIN just last year), yet they’ve fleshed out further on Under a Gilded Sun. I wanted to understand a bit more about the band and reached out to them. Josh was happy enough to respond to some questions about the new album and musical direction, saying:
‘The EP was basically a bridge to see where we wanted to go after our last record, Our Hollow. We’ve always had a bit of sonic diversity but we really wanted to go from sounding like an angry black wall to something more emotionally captivating that sets us apart from other artists doing similar things. The ‘dissonant black/death’ aspect is still there but it’s far from the sole focus. Besides our dislike of repeating ourselves we are also big believers that dynamics and juxtaposition make the separate pieces stronger.’
On Under a Gilded Sun‘s opener “Blossom in Full Force” we hear a group that would rather carve their own path by bringing in elements of slowcore and post-rock to offer up contrast to the bludgeoning, raw sound that they usually peddle. The band have created a coherent sound that seamlessly melds melodic nuance with furious riffs and anguish ridden tri-vocal attacks.. Josh discuss this move towards a homogeneous melody-centric sound:
‘There’s synths and piano and other sounds throughout the record, as was the case with the last EP, and they’re used in more textural ways. Neurosis was doing this in the 90s so we’re far from pioneers but we see them as tools to add nuance to what we write. It’s a way to get away from ‘the riff’ being the centerpiece.
‘There’s a bit of hesitation to call ourselves ‘experimental’ in this aspect when bands like Botanist (who use hammered dulcimers instead of guitars) exist. We like to play around with different things and see what sounds cool. All of us have a history of playing in slowcore, post-rock, emo-adjacent bands before Malevich started. This has been the natural extension of us being people who are fans of that stuff and our desire to challenge ourselves.’
It’s a testament to the band’s commitment to their craft that they didn’t just continue down the path of dissonance for the sake of extremity. While other groups are trying to figure out how to become more chaotic and challenging for the listener, Malevich have worked hard to implement more melody into their already visceral sound.
Fundamentally, Under a Gilded Sun seems like Malevich are, more so than ever, channeling the philosophy of their namesake. Kazimir Malevich wrote in The Non-Objective World, the Manifesto of Supermatism: ‘An artist who creates rather than imitates expresses himself; his works are not reflective of nature but, instead, new realities.’
Malevich (the band) by discarding aspects of the wall of chaotic sound that is almost necessary to the ascribed genre they were previously defined by, and embracing melody in one way or another, they are creating music that is based on feeling rather than what is natural to the genre they are usually defined by. Josh shared the band’s approach to the writing process and how they achieved this, saying:
‘We kinda started out that way and then diverged from there after finding it limiting. There’s certainly ‘wall of sound’ moments on UAGS but they’re utilized more as cresendos. It goes back to what was said about juxtaposition and dynamics. Contrast makes separate parts stronger, especially for full albums. Whether you talk about Rumours or The Downward Spiral or Jane Doe, those aspects really made those albums what they are. As a heavier band it’s easy to focus on the anger part of it but as people we feel more than just that. Anger itself is a complex emotion, connected to both grief and hope. We strongly believe that art is the expression of our humanity and so we want to present those complexities. Screaming, singing, blast beats, heavily distorted F# bass, clean guitars, piano, noise, synths, reverb, sidechaining; these are all tools for that expression as well as just making things that sound cool to us since at the end of the day that matters most.’
While Malevich may seem unsure about whether to call themselves experimental, one thing they certainly are is measured. There is a lot of wonderful push and pull across this album. They expertly find a balance between their extreme roots and their newfound melodic focus. Fevered screams are backed by beautiful piano (“Supine, Under the Gilded Sun”), and frantic pieces like “Cross of Gold”, which lean more in to the wall of sound trope, are balanced by the mostly clean sung and airy pieces like “Illusion Never Changed”. This is an album that has a number of layers to it that add splashes of colour to what would normally be a very dark and chaotic wall of sound. Josh adds:
‘A lot of the textual sounds come from a mix of Connor, Daniel, and our friend Terence playing around with things and then either building around it or incorporating it into something already brewing. The songwriting process itself was very much controlled but we kept open minds to let little things happen and shape them. We did extensive pre-production at the home studio before traveling to Rhode Island to record with Seth Manchester, where we continued to play around with ideas and toys. There’s the piano that makes many appearances, synth gadgets, and even a zither. Seth had his hand in making our ideas come to final fruition via studio magic, such as the intro to “A Sun That Only Sets” and the way that the album closes by sort of falling into itself. We love fucking around and finding out.’
Thematically, Malevich aren’t ones to shy away from discussing issues in their lyrics that hit close to home and showcase the band’s morality. “Impasse” features the lyrics, ‘’We must kill them to be safe‘ / Security in mass graves / Simple, total deceit’, the quote in particular voicing one of the many heinous arguments put forth by Zionists to justify the bombing of Palestinian women and children. It’s more than apparent that this a band that tries to be aware of what is going on in the world and Josh talked a bit about this:
‘We really feel that it is a duty, especially as Americans since we are the center of the hegemonic machines and our taxes fund it. Spotify has money flowing into investments in military weapons. It’s almost certain that every streaming service company has some kind of connection to making money off of other peoples’ suffering. It’s inevitable that our collective political economy is going to be a complex web where money/capital flows back and forth but under capitalism the profit motive ensures that there’s a connection between exploitation and preventable death to the ballooning financial accounts of corporations and shareholders. To exist under this is to take part in that and there’s a lot of reflection on that. We oppose a system that we have to take part in. Even if we take ourselves off of Spotify, which accounts for pennies, we still pay taxes and buy food. That involves a lot of feelings of guilt while holding onto a small light of hope that humanity will create a better future, eventually.’
Where does that leave us though? Malevich are a niche band within a niche community, from a big state in a big country with far and wide views, thoughts, and feelings. No matter my own enjoyment of this album and the resonance that their message has with me, it’s hard to not feel both hopeful and cynical. Josh seems to agree in some ways but expands on the group’s place in it all, explaining ‘There’s rage in there and contemplation but we’re not under an impression that someone in power is going to be persuaded by some band. What we can do is put our voices out there to be heard by people in this community. Someone who may be turned off by a lot of the ignorance and macho aspects of metal/punk might be able to see someone like us (or Sunrot or Thou or Immortal Bird) and feel welcomed, as they should. Community is everything and real, meaningful change comes from the bottom-up.’
Our lives on this planet are all entwined. We didn’t make that choice, it’s a product of being born. Every day I have a bit of hope that one more person will wake up realising that ‘the other’ isn’t the enemy. Malevich say as much in their lyrics for “If We Sing Towards the Heavens Maybe They’ll Let Us In” – ‘The wrong people are setting the world on fire / They should know the terror they’ve wrought / It’s their homes that should be ablaze / We should all be ashamed’. Josh shared further thoughts to this effect:
‘We fully believe that some kind of social revolution is necessary. If there’s a fence it’s on the line of believing that, yes, a better form of society is possible but also that we are staring devastation in the face, whether that refers to what’s happening in Palestine, encroaching fascism at home, or the worsening results of climate change. It’s hard to comment on people putting their differences aside when being a ‘moderate’ tends to mean compromising with racists and TERFs in power. Ideally, yeah, people who are not part of the capitalist class can come to the realization that they have more in common with immigrants of different religions, ethnic backgrounds etc. than they do with the Forbes 500, their bosses, their politicians, or whatever shitty person is on TV or Twitter complaining about trans people existing.
‘Holding onto that hope is what keeps us going. It is possible, though not inevitable. There’s a lot of historical and anecdotal evidence for this. People helping each other out after natural disasters, for instance. A lot of David Graeber’s anthropological work, especially in The Dawn of Everything shows that people have an ability to collectively decide what kind of society they want to live in. In many ways it can be argued that our most significant barrier is the idea that capitalism and nation-states are the consequences of human nature rather than historically recent inventions.’
If you’ve enjoyed Josh’s, and by extension the other Malevich members’ thoughts, as well as connected with their music, please show them some support by picking up their newest album Under a Gilded Sun, which released on August 22 through Church Road Records, on their Bandcamp. Keep an eye on their social media (Instagram & Facebook) to hear about any touring plans and to generally show them some love.
