All bands go through hardships: broken vans and instruments, arguments, creative differences, losing members, gaining members, getting dropped, getting signed, ad infinitum. But for Kenny Cook, co-founder, vocalist and guitarist for BC-based progressive metallers Anciients, the years since the band's 2016 release, the JUNO Award-winning Voice of the Void, have been particularly tough.
"Things were just not really happening in that period of time. It was a lot of focus on other things," he says.
Since then, Cook has experienced a few emotional waves: helping family members recover from health issues, having a child, relocating, losing a founding member and co-writer, losing a bass player, and, of course, dealing with the pandemic.
"As far as health issues, that's kind of where the band's hiatus began," he explains. "There were some health issues within my immediate family, which basically caused me to have to focus on making sure everyone was happy and healthy. As much as I'd have liked to be out touring and gallivanting, it was a good couple years of recovery for my wife. Then, once we got out of that, Chris [Dyck, founding member, co-writer and guitarist] left."
Then, just as the band was gearing up to begin the recording process for their next album, the pandemic hit. Cook and his family made the decision to move four hours outside of Vancouver to the Columbia–Shuswap Region, and it was there that work on the band's new album, the monolithic Beyond the Reach of the Sun, began.
With most of the band's members now scattered (including drummer Mike Hannay, rhythm guitarist Brock MacInnes, and newly added bassist Rory O'Brien, who stepped in to help the band when their previous bass player left a month before the recording sessions), it meant that this was Anciients' first time writing completely remotely.
"A vast majority of the new record was done remotely from different places on the map," reveals Cook. "Myself and Brock and Mike, we were just kind of working on tunes at our own convenience. And it seemed to be a pretty good way of writing material, because we weren't forced to be in a jam room at six o'clock every Monday, Wednesday and Sunday. With writing remotely, you would get an email from someone at four in the morning with a new part. You could tell we were all pulling late nights and early mornings, but it was just more convenient, and you could work on it at your own leisure. Inspiration comes at the strangest times after midnight. It gave us a good chance to lay the foundations for the material for the new record and have time to listen and share back and forth. When we finally got together in the same room, we took that groundwork and expanded upon it and could feel it out. How would we be able to play it live with the guys? And so it was quite a different experience for us this round. But all in all, I think it was beneficial to our writing process."
At his new home, Cook built himself a studio, a small respite from the outside world where he could sit and be with his intricate riffs and racing thoughts. The studio "is a great place that I have, where I can go, lock the door and escape and just focus on music. Whereas, in other circumstances, you've got a three-year-old running around and running in as you're working on stuff," he says with laugh. "It's easier to separate and balance life and music making, and it wasn't until I moved up here that we figured out the remote recording approach. We had a crapload of material that was half done, but once I got up here and in this environment, I found I had a lot of time to focus and get down to business."
The freedom to record wherever and whenever gave the band the opportunity to explore sounds, structures, and moods that they'd never approached in the past. The sound shifted over to something even more progressive, expansive and epic. Although Anciients have repeatedly been placed in the sludgy-prog metal camp with bands like Opeth and Mastodon, Beyond the Reach of the Sun should comfortably put those redundant comparisons to rest. There's the '70s dual guitar worship, as well as doom and stoner elements. You hear snippets of Deep Purple, King Crimson and Yes, as well as the proggier sides of Judas Priest and Metallica. There's Pallbearer, YOB, Cathedral and Kyuss, with a little bit of Queens of the Stone Age peppered in. "Celestial Tyrant" even has a groovy, Southern-fried edge to it, overflowing with slithering, pull-off riffs, while parts of "Candescence" sound like they would have fit comfortably on a Berlin-era Bowie, New Order or Cure album.
The music is still complex and heavy as all hell, retaining the band's trademark crushing moments, but there is also a lot more restraint and nuance. It pummels, but it also sways with eyes closed in reverie. Unsurprisingly, this diversity in sound led to a diversity of tones and atmospheres, yet it never sounds busy or overbearing; instead, these compositional and emotional juxtapositions make for stronger, more interesting and tighter songs.
"Ever since the start of the band, we've had the feeling that we're not really trying to pigeonhole anything," Kenny reflects. "And with the vast number of influences we have, what it all comes down to is: does it sound good while you're writing it, and do you really like this part? If you really have to try and force something together, it never puts me in a place where I feel stoked. You can try and make something happen in a certain spot so many times for years, and sometimes, it just doesn't work. There's no ending as far as our influences are concerned. And I think a lot of the new sound came in when Brock joined the band, because we've added a grunge element. [And while] it still has some metal sides to it, it feels like more of a rock record, or a classic rock record."
This classic sound can be attributed to the moody, restrained keys and synths added by Justin Hagberg, guitarist for Vancouver's heavy metal stalwarts 3 Inches of Blood. While keyboards in metal might mean a potential dip into cheesy, melodramatic territory, here they're tastefully employed. The band wisely uses them as accents rather than as "symphonic" elements, and, as Cook succinctly puts it, "They add this whole other crazy element to these songs."
With the departure of Dyck, Cook was also left with writing all of the lyrics on the album himself, something he'd never tackled before.
He says, "On previous albums, Chris did a lot of the lyric writing. This time around, I found that, once I got going and figured out how to write lyrics — hopefully — it was actually an easier process in the end. It was far easier [to write words to go along] with the melodies that I was hearing over the music and how I was singing the songs, as opposed trying to crowbar someone else's ideas in there. Sometimes, it felt a lot more natural. And actually, Brock probably wrote four of the songs off the new record, so I definitely have to give him credit there. But it's definitely been a new experience for me — in some ways frustrating, and in other ways, easier."
Cook's lyrics are awash with themes both terrestrial and celestial, conjuring up a psychedelic, Lovecraftian journey through personal issues, traumas and the self, all by way of the universe. And, as Cook explains, there is a definite conceptual thread connecting these songs.
"Big, grandiose things have always been present in a lot of rock and metal. It might sound corny if you're rapping about celestial tyrants or making fantasy country," he jokes. "But when I was starting to write, I was trying to think of a way to put my thoughts and feelings into some sort of storyline. Masked without literally saying it. So I came up with this big, crazy storyline about a society that was taken over by a celestial tyrant, and then they find this special knowledge. I was studying what DMT trips involve and stuff like that, just writing about experiences [through which they could] escape this thing. It's way too long to get into."
While a lot of metal can be exhaustingly misanthropic or cynical, Anciients don't exclusively write from that point of view. Their music and lyrical themes are not necessarily positive, but it's also not an onslaught of nihilism or bleakness. Although the album certainly features some "the world sucks" vibes, it also takes an internal approach to combating the world's woes. It's downright vulnerable at times.
"All in all, the album's theme is perseverance — rising above the travesties that happen within your life," Cook offers. "Some of the lyrics are about the dark times, but a vast majority are just about these people getting past all the darkness, and, in turn, finding happiness, and a happy ending."
For a band who have gone through their fair share of adversity, Cook certainly knows what he's talking about: one must wade through the darkness of the cosmos to see the starlight. You must travel a long, arduous road before you can reach the safety of your galactic destination.
It's a journey, which is why Cook wants listeners to experience Beyond the Reach of the Sun uninterrupted, from start to finish, in all its raging glory.
"Just try and give the whole record a listen to at least once. We're still stuck in the full-album phase of life, not necessarily the single. It's got a lot of variety throughout, peaks and valleys, and I hope people will set an hour out for it and just have a listen."
Anciients have earned your time. It's the least you can do.