Now with that out of the way shall we get this thing started?
Here's the audio version up front: Arbiter Interview January 23rd 2012 by Alexander Everingham
And here's the text version:
BBSS: I guess I’ll start with where does your name come from
or what is the origin story of your name?
Connor: Well, you
know obviously the Arbiter from Halo pretty much. [Laughs] No, no, not really,
a lot of people think that though. [To Josh] Where did the real name come from?
Josh: Didn’t you
just pull a random page from the dictionary or something?
Connor: No…
[Laughs] We used to be called Barter In Blood in 2009 and while we were in the
studio wrapping up the Colossus album we were kind of thinking we should get a
name change going because the old name sort of attributed us to not showing up
to shows and we just didn’t feel like that band anymore we felt we grew into a
new band. So Jay was like ‘Connor what about that new song you’ve been writing
called The Arbiter, why don’t we just call ourselves The Arbiter?’ And everyone
was like ‘alright that sounds pretty cool’ and I was like ‘if we shave ‘the’
off, deal.’ So that’s kind of what we did and nobody could think of anything
cooler.
BBSS: How did you guys all meet?
[Pauses then laughs]
Connor: God, this
one…
Josh: Well I
might get the facts wrong but originally it started off with me and the drummer
Logan, we go way back. I grew up with the kid, and we’ve been hanging out since
we were like four years old. He moved away just when I was starting to get into
music and didn’t come back until like I was I think seventeen or eighteen. Then
he came back and out of nowhere he was a drummer and I was a drummer and then
we’d basically just hang out and just have a bigger penis competition to see
who the better drummer was. [Laughs] Eventually he was like ‘duded you should
learn to play guitar and I was like ‘but I’ve been playing drums for ten years
leave me alone’ but eventually he convinced me to play guitar so we just went
and started writing the heaviest stuff that we thought was cool at the time and
we got a band together called Odious Aura. We played one show together and then
broke up after that. [laughs] but yeah after that we were trying to set new
things up and originally I knew Jason from school. He was a bass player in this
terrible death metal band and I knew he had serious potential, he was just in
this terrible band and I was like ‘listen dude if you want to play in our band
as a bass player you’re welcome to come fill in because I know your band isn’t too busy right
now because they were kind of just lying dormant at that point [Laughs]
Connor: Yeah we
brought Jason in to fill in for our first show which was like Valentines Day
2008 and we were like damn it we don’t have a bassist and um… yeah. This was
after I met Logan and Josh some crappy band I was in… The Sunless Year, southern
metalcore… Anyways, I was a guitarist and we met up and we spent like, however
long getting all these songs ready and we were all ready with our EP for our
first show like I said in Valentines Day 2008 and we still didn’t have a
bassist, so we were like ‘Jason come on board!’ and I don’t know we ended up
keeping him. He’s really shy when you first get to know him but Jason’s an
awesome dude, a lot better than just his big hair that he swings around.
Josh: And then we
heard about Jay and I can’t remember where we heard about him him being a
studio producer, and we were just like alright—[to Connor] oh wait no you guys
were recording with him.
Connor: Yeah,
yeah.
Josh: and so we
heard about him and we hanging out over there and we were like man this
actually sounds good, we could probably produce something good through him. So
originally we were just recording with him--
Connor: --For the
Colossus album.
Josh: --Yeah and
we were like ‘man we’re recording a lot of different guitar tracks right now
for like a lot of different stuff that’s going on right now, how are we going
to do this live?’ and Jay was like ‘well I’m a guitar player’ and he was like
‘if you guys don’t mind, I wouldn’t mind kind of tagging along with you guys’.
Connor: Yep and
then everyone talked about it and basically we were just like let’s put him on
and try it out. And we just kept him too. Pretty much anybody we bring into our
band we just keep you know?
Josh: We’re all just
a bunch of Klingons.
BBSS: Just absorb everybody? [Laughs]
Connor: Yeah,
well that’s basically that story.
Josh: That could
have been wrapped up into a 30 second summary or something
[Laughs]
Connor: You can
edit that out.
BBSS: It’s all good. Well that kind of answered one of my
other questions already. I was going to ask if you guys were in other bands, so
that’s good.
Josh: There’s
actually been a lot of other bands besides the two that we just covered.
Connor: Yeah you want a real breakdown of that
because we could do that. [laughs]
BBSS: If you feel like it.
Connor: Okay-
Josh: Well I
guess for me lets see-
Connor: Lets-
keep it simple, maybe one line descriptions.
Josh: Okay, Chrio was like a Christian Rock band that I was in that was kind of moving towards
the screamo scene—
Connor: That’s a
line.
Josh: --Okay,
Odious Aura which I already described, Barter In Blood, Arbiter and then…
Connor: You don’t
remember Phoenix Ignition?
Josh: Oh wait,
yes sorry, Oh my god. Phoenix Ignition. That was like the first band I was in—
Connor: That’s a
sentence— [Laughs] And I was in a band called The Sunless Year which was
southern metalcore… [groans]
Josh: And on top
of that we’ve had like seventy five different side projects of just bullshit
stuff-
Connor: Yeah just
messing around making music, Now though we have Arbiter! So we get to joke
around and make a bunch of stupid shit with Arbiter like the Christmas songs,
the blooper run throughs, we just have our fun through Arbiter now instead of
making a bunch of side projects.
BBSS: Nice! Do any of you guys have formal training or are
you self taught?
Josh: --I’d have
to say no. Because Connor just learned how to yell at the top of his lungs one
day and that’s kind of how that came about. Me, I had a little training when it
came to drums, I guess that doesn’t pertain to this, but that’s what got me
into music, but my old high school music teacher—
Connor: It was
actually your lack on training on guitar that I think that kept us from being
too-- because I think when we started this band he was still new at guitar,
Josh was, and he happened to be the person who wrote almost all the material
for what ended up on Colossus so I think that’s what gives it- you know, it’s
really simple, it’s not as complex as it could have been compared to a lot of
other people in this genre, but I think that’s what people appreciate instead
of us being like ‘Oh look how techy we are with our guitars and stuff. It’s
like [recites the opening guitar riff to Death Or Glory] [Laughs] I think some people like that more.
Josh: It’s the
simplicity and the brutalness.
BBSS: Honestly that
riff goes through my head any time I think of deathcore.
[Laughs]
Connor: Exactly,
see? And I think that’s what’s perfect you know, Josh was still learning and
you that’s what really defines that feel of deathcore you know, it’s someone
that is still growing up has a lot of angst and is still learning how to play instruments.
[Laughs]
Josh: A lot of it
was too that a lot of the music you hear on Colossus was probably written, what
at least four or more years ago.
Connor: Yep,
that’s true. We just took a bunch of old demos for the most part and kind of
slapped em together. I don’t know—as far as training goes Jason, I think he—
Josh: Jason
learned everything from Cannibal Corpse.
[Laughs]
Connor: Jay has
had lots of bands on and off…
Josh: He gets
inspiration from Eddie Van Halen.
[Laughs]
Connor: Yeah you
know a bunch of Lamb Of God type bands… and then yeah Logan I think he just
picked up a drum set and learned how to flop all over it a lot you know?
[Laughs]
Connor: Yeah I
guess that’s basically it.
BBSS: Who would you guys cite as your biggest influences,
both metal bands and non metal bands… If that makes sense?
Connor: Well, let
me answer this question by not answering it. The only answer to that question
can be explained by our third album. It’s not even an album, you can’t call it
that yet, but we do have a third release that will show you rather than tell
you our influences personally, each one of our own personal influences because
you know I think every cool band has each member bring their own influences
into the mixture. We’re going to show everyone musically who all of us are
influenced by doing some music that goes along with our influences.
BBSS: Yeah, I think I
see what you’re saying.
Josh: I guess the
only way I could word it is that I listen to a lot of different bands and I use
a lot of different
influences, but I try to write music that doesn’t sound like
anything else which is hard sometimes because a lot of times it just ends up
sounding like something, someone will be like ‘that sounds like this, that
sounds like that’—
Connor: Josh
literally wrote Rational Gaze, you know that song by Meshuggah? One time we
turned in a demo and he was like ‘Oh my god this is so cool listen to this’ and
it was literally like [recites the opening to Rational Gaze] and I was like ‘are you fucking kidding me
dude? Have you not heard that song?’ [Laughs]
Josh: Yeah at
that time I actually didn’t listen to a whole lot of Meshuggah and he was like
‘you need to sit down and study this and not be dumb and write riffs that sound
exactly like it.’ [Laughs] Yeah good times, good times.
BBSS: I guess which bands would you love to tour
with if you could tour with anybody?
Josh: Ooh, I
guess I’ll answer that first. If I had to tour with one band I wish was still
together I’d have to say Pantera.
[Laughs]
Josh: As cheesy
as eighties rock and that is, they were such cool dudes who just loved to get
out there and fucking sling around and get down.
Connor: Well I
can’t speak for everybody but I’m going to guess who everybody would pick. Jay
would probably want to go out with Attila or Attack, Attack. Jason would
probably want to go out with somebody like Suffocation or Behemoth. Logan would
want to go out with The Faceless, definitely. My personal favorite would be
somebody like Nile or Between The Buried and Me.
BBSS: Nice I actually
just started listening to Nile the other day.
Connor: Nice,
that’s some incredible stuff!
BBSS: Yeah they’re
pretty crazy!
Josh: So all
together we just have to make a super tour to make our dreams come true.
[Laughs]
Connor: All those
bands have to come out now with us.
[Laughs]
BBSS: Just have a
giant tour.
Connor: Exactly.
BBSS: What would you say is the best show you’ve ever played?
Connor: That’s a
tough one too.
Josh: I would
have to say, back before I was in Arbiter we had a concert at this venue called
East Jordan, it’s a place about twenty minutes from us, and we advertised for
it quite a bit, I guess it wasn’t too extensive, but it was quite a bit and
just out of nowhere like 750 kids showed up to it. I think The Devil Wears
Prada was headlining it back then or something ridiculous like that, back
before they were even big and maybe fifteen kids in this area had heard about
‘em. But they came and played and it was The Devil Wears Prada, Bringing Down
Broadway and Us, and 750 kids in this venue was just ridiculous.
Connor: That was
back when people used to come to shows. People used to just flock to shows even
if it was just no one playing. I dunno, it’s seems like it flip-flopped kind
of. Anyhow, the best Aribter show though, [to Josh] what’s the best arbiter
show? Probably…
Josh: Probably
that first Traverse City show we played and a ton of people showed up—
Connor: Valentines
Day Show?
Josh: -- it was
all about having fun and just making music.
Connor: True.
Yeah the first show we played, no one even knew who the hell we were – Barter In
Blood – we were just like ‘WE ARE BARTER IN BLOOD AND WE DID NOT COME HERE TO
FUCK AROUND!’ and we just started playing all our songs and screaming at
everyone. You know, everyone knew we were local but they were really liking us
and they liked the difference in energy and just how we played until we wanted
to puke type of stuff. I don’t know, it was fun. It was a good show and since
then we’ve really only had like twenty shows in the last two or three years,
I’m not kidding. I mean I’ve looked in our database we have an average of like
ten shows per year so we still haven’t played many shows.
BBSS: Going along with that what would be the weirdest thing
you’ve seen at one of your show?
[Laughs]
Connor: The weirdest thing we’ve seen at a show we’ve
played?
BBSS: I mean we could make it any show. We could
turn it into that.
Josh: There’s
been a lot of weird stuff. Well I guess it wasn’t weird but King came up and
played a – Oh wait I don’t think we played that show.
Connor: We had a
raffle at one of our shows!
Josh: Yeah we had
a raffle.
Connor: Right in
the middle of our set. It was weird. There was Tornado warnings at some show in
Indiana right before we had to play, we were really pissed off about that. Only
two or three of us were there I think.
Josh: I’ve seen
two girls make out at one of our shows. [laughs] and that was kind of
unexpected.
Connor: I was too
busy stomping around for that.
Josh: Yeah I just
looked at ‘em, two butch lesbians going at it, like alright, that’s cool I
guess. Sort of metal, making out and shit.
Connor: Yeah I
guess we haven’t seen too much weird shit, but like I said we haven’t played
too many shows, that’s probably why.
Josh: I guess,
you say weird shit, we’ve seen a lot of brutality and people getting hurt, but
that’s not really weird.
Connor: That’s
just expected nowadays.
BBSS: I guess I’ll move into questions about the new album,
for people who don’t know can you explain the concept behind the split?
Connor: Yeah
actually, I’ll have Josh do this one—
Josh: No.
[Laughs] I’m not doing this one. Connors the mastermind behind all this, I just
write music and he’s just like ‘this goes here, and this goes here’ and I’m
like alright!
Connor: Okay
Basically as soon as Colossus came out Josh had a bunch of demo’s laying around
that he’d already been writing and he added a bunch more on top of that, and so
this has been almost a year or two now I think, he just you know, bounces
demo’s off of us and we all go ‘okay.’ So I originally had this cool idea- I
just got done playing The Elder Scrolls Oblivion: The Shivering Isles expansion
pack and in that game everything is split in half, so I was like ‘I kind of
want to do that.’ So basically the point is at one point last year, or two
thousand- I don’t care- [laughs] right after I don’t know when was this? Point
is at some point Logan, our drummer, moved to Hawaii and Jay, one of our
guitarists, went on hiatus, at the exact same time. We were really pissed. Me,
Jason and Josh, were the only three left. We were kind of pissed and wanted to
make this EP that showed everybody ‘We don’t care about this, we’re not going
to let it stop us’ so we wanted to write an EP called Ironclad and then in the
meantime, after releasing Ironclad, we had a full length album we would do
called Machinations. Well one day, after that whole split thing I was talking
about, I wanted to make a split album, and I called everyone up and said ‘what
if we make an album that is Ironclad and Machinations and each one is like the
same amount of tracks, but they’re the opposite of each other.’ They were like
‘Are you kidding me?’ I was like ‘just let me do this one guys, just this one.’
So they let me and from there I wrote the whole story which I think is what you
were asking about. I wasted a lot of time there, but anyhow, In the story there
are human people, this is set like 2030ish, a little bit in the future, not too
much though, there’s the humans, and then there’s basically these cyborg or
cybernetically enhanced humans called The Extropians. Extropianism is a real thing
so this isn’t too farfetched, but basically it’s a bunch of people years in the
future that have robotic limbs, robotic eyes, you know, really cool human
upgrades that make them almost more than human. In the story all the humans
don’t like all this [extropianism] stuff going on and they sort of become like
the new Amish people. They tell the Extropians to take a hike, and they force
them into exile and they [the Extropians] get really pissed off about that, and
by the time that our new album comes around in the story the Extropians are
planning to come exterminate all the humans that forced them into exile, so
that they don’t have to deal with them anymore, so that they can go on and
eventually colonize other planets, you know kind of Mass Effect 2 style. That’s
the quickest I can explain that. But basically it’s just two exact opposite
forces, you have the nature loving, spirit loving humans against the technology
loving, almost sinister Extropians and they’re both trying to kill each other
completely off and if you think about it a lot of things in life are like that. That’s what the concept of the album is.
Figuring out why there are always two forces trying to take each other out
rather than co-operate, and that’s what the whole split in half thing is about.
Josh: When it
comes to the actual sound of the music that’s where Ironclad comes around. It’s
going to be the human side, the more natural sounding side, more hardcore
aggressive organic type feel and the Machinations side is going to be very
mechanical, produced, and really technical side of the album.
Connor: Don’t
forget djenty! That makes everybody jump for joy.
[Laughs]
Josh: Yeah
there’s some djent on the Machinations side and raw aggressive power on the
Ironclad side.
Connor: And
that’s where it all came from, not to drag this question out another twenty
minutes, but we really liked the idea of being able to split Arbiters sound in
half and let it exist in two different opposite states, so people in bars
holding beers can be like ‘Oh I like this Ironclad album bro’ and then you know
kids that are all into djent are like ‘dude I love Machniations, but Ironclad
sucks.’ You know, we kidn of want to almost foster that divide in musical taste
too, just like in the story. We want people to be fighting to make it sound
like one half of the album is better, because that’s how everything works.
BBSS: Are any of you guys particular to one side?
Josh: Actually
each member of this band represents one side of the album, we all have our own
characters in the albums. I’ll let Connor explain this one.
Connor: Yep, I’ll
go quick on this one. Josh’s name is Cocidius, he’s the leader of the
Dreadnauts, which is the hardcore marine division of the Ironclad army. Then
Jay is Nirtok. He’s the leader so to speak of the whole Ironclad army, like a
war general. Then on our Machinations side we’ve got Jason, our bassist and
Logan, our drummer, are Xa and Xeno respectively. Xa is like the grand overseer
of The Extropian people like a king type of thing. Logan is Xeno, who is this
mysterious scientist who researches a bunch of weird shit for the Optima
Syndicate. Basically he’s a science dude. And then my guy is named Du’ah. He’s
this crazy guy that wrote this crazy book about trying to balance everything
instead of trying to lean one way or the other. We actually have a book,
literally that I wrote in real life called the Principia Du’ah which is the
principles of the Du’ah. It has like 50 pages of weird poems in a weird Du’ah
language that I did. [laughs] It kind of shows you the Du’ah philosophy about
balance instead of trying to defeat people all the time. That’ll be available
for our pre-order packages, they’ll be like ten of those available, I’m gonna
sign them and all that cool stuff.
BBSS: I know you said Colossus was written about four years
ago, so how do you feel you’ve grown musically from Colossus to now?
Josh: Oh my gosh-
Connor:
Immensely.
Josh: Yeah leaps
and bounds. We went from more- well it came from our earlier influences, a lot
of us in the band were more into Bury Your Dead hardcore music—
Connor: Yeah.
Carnifex.
Josh: Yeah
Carnifex too. If you listen to it [Colossus], it kind of has that feel—
Connor: We tried
to keep away from it—
Josh: Yeah we
tried to make our own sound, but it still has that type of aggression to it.
But now it’s more us having developed into our own sound and listening to music
we like and combined it into writing more I guess in-depth music than just
simplistic wanna be heavy type stuff.
Connor: I would
say now that it’s almost a fifty percent split between all the people we’re
still influenced by now, and the other fifty percent is taking influence from
what we’ve already done you know? We see what people like, like ‘oh keep that
kind of stuff, get rid of that.’ So we’re improving upon ourselves and still
bringing in influences from all the stuff the five of us like which is all over
the place.
BBSS: I read that you already have another album in the
works, but do you plan to continues to story from Ironclad and Machinations to
another album in the future?
Connor: Yep,
that’s actually one of the big things about Ironclad and Machinations. The
whole time we’re going to be watching to see, in real life and on the internet
you know, which side of the album gets more support. I mean everything, sales,
or just people promoting it or people liking it, or listening to it more. We
have a lot of ways to tell which side is getting more support, and in the long
run when our fourth album comes out, which is the next chapter of our story,
whichever side right now has much support is going to have a much better or
easier time on the fourth album when our story is kind of wrapped up, when the
first trilogy is wrapped up. Not many people know that Colossus was the first
chapter of our story, it’s kind of hard to explain. So that’s the fourth album.
Josh: It’s
something we were kind of in the works of doing, I had talked to Connor about
this- this is kind of an incite for something secret here- we were thinking
about writing songs about the different characters in the two sides of the cd,
to represent each one of the members in the band and write their story and
song. Not release any actual albums, just teaser releases between our CD’s
because we have a tendency of taking a long time to release our cd’s.
[Laughs]
Connor: That’s
true actually.
Josh: We were
thinking of releasing teasers in the mean time, kind of how destroyer was, but
that was more based on a crappy event that happened to me personally, and we
decided to write a song about it, but it’d be more just stuff that we could
release in between albums to keep people hyped on our music and keep everything
going and what not.
Connor: And that
works too because the new format of music – I mean this is more just general
music here- but you’ll see things happening now like the cd will probably be
dead by the end of this year dropped by most labels, things are shifting to
entirely digital. CD’s are you know, physical collectors items. As far as music
marketing goes, people are switching to digital marketing, so you know whole
albums aren’t as necessary anymore. Even from metal bands. The metal community
has been solely based on albums and that kind of thing, but it’s getting to the
point where just doing a single here and there, especially with djent bands on
soundcloud, it’s really shifting from ‘I can’t wait for your guys’ next album’
to ‘why don’t you just put a song out?’ And that’s how some people do it. So I
think Josh has a good idea when he says we should do more single songs in
between.
Josh: But they won’t
be based on just hey look our guitarist wrote a cool djent song, there’s an
actual story behind it. They tell the characters story or maybe a part of any
of the story line that we have in mind at the time.
BBSS: Do you have any details on the card game you were
working on?
[Laughs]
Connor: Yeah
actually, right now I’ve had little to no time to develop it, but basically
it’s a card and dice game. I’m getting custom dice made. You remember the whole
human Extropian thing? Well in each ‘starter pack’ they’ll be two custom made
human, or Ironclad, dice and two custom made Extropian dice. Basically you come
out, you draw a card, you have a hand—these are details I still need to play
test and work out- but the point is that at some point you’ll have a card on
the board and an opponent, and you both
roll your two die, one of those is your attack points for that clash, or round
of fighting and the other is your defense die. The higher the number, obviously
the more attack and defense you’ll have, but it also represents your
cumbersomeness. Whoever has the lower total dice score will attack first, because
it’s quicker. There’s lots of little intricate rules I don’t want to get into because
like I said I’m still working them out myself and I don’t have anything solidified.
But basically your card clashes against another. If you don’t completely kill
your creature you just re-clash, like in real battle you know. You get an arrow
to the knee—
[Laughs]
Connor:--your
creature isn’t going to die, it’s going to come back but it’ll be injured. The big
rule is that when you roll a one, either attack or defense die, each character
on their card has a special attack and defense ability. If you roll a one on
either die you’ll be able to use that special ability. That’s where it kind of
gets Magic the Gathering-y and you have special card things. Basically it’s
numeric dice play you know, mixed with Magic the Gathering card game influence,
so you still have the collectable card game element where you’ll try to get
Josh’s card Cocidius, he’ll have some super cool attack power you know that
some soldier isn’t going to have. But that doesn’t mean every single round of
play is going to have crazy shit going on that you can’t even keep track of,
and that’s probably the best description I can give for it now.
BBSS: My last question would be do you have an idea of when
the new album will be out, I’ve heard February?
[Laughs]
Josh: Actually I
was meaning to talk to Connor about this because I was thinking February too
until some recent post.
Connor: Yeah,
well here’s what’s going on right now. We’re doing vocals right now, and with
the intensity of my vocal style, I really can only do about a song a day, and
then I gotta take at least one day off to let my voice kind of chill out a
little bit. So right now we have a few songs done vocally and we have to get
through probably about nine or ten more. So that’s about twenty days minimum,
minus the fact that most of us have day jobs, lives, and things to attend to. So
there’s that and then there’s also the fact that once it is completely tracked
we still have to mix and master everything, and because of Ironclad and
Machinations that’s two completely different styles of mixing and mastering.
Ironclad is gonna sound raw, you have to mix that differently than Machinations.
Then after that’s done we have to get the CD’s in production and wait for them
to arrive, to be able to mail out and whatever else, then we also have to get
things submitted to digital distributors like iTunes and all that and we have
to wait for them to pop up on their stores. Not that we’ll wait for all of
them, but we have to at least wait for iTunes and such, then we can start
launching everything. So we’re looking at twenty days plus whatever plus
waiting, so realistically even if we haul balls on it at this point it’ll only
be out by March or maybe even April. But we have a lot of really cool
promotional stuff coming soon that you’ll all see too, really cool stuff that
we can’t spill any beans on but pretty good stuff involving Metalsucks. I can
say that.
BBSS: Sounds good.
Well that’s pretty much all I've got.
Connor: Alright,
cool man.
BBSS: Thanks for
giving me your time!
[Laughs]
Josh: Thanks for
having us!
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