Old Man Gloom

“I wanted to see how quickly I could put a project together,” says singer/guitarist Aaron Turner (cult leader of Hydra Head, also guitarist/vocalist for Isis) on the inspiration behind Old Man Gloom. Written and recorded in less than a week during a trip to New Mexico, Meditations in B was recorded as a two-piece, with Aaron handling everything save drums (supplied by Santos Montano). Musically, OMG focuses more on quick, jagged, sonic barbs and drawn out ambient experimentation, rather than the brooding, atmospheric destruction Isis is known for. “The whole premise behind OMG was just immediacy — we wanted the whole thing to be fast and short.” What started as a one off side project has grown into something a little more serious with the addition of two of Boston’s heaviest hitters. “Santos and I wanted to see what we could do just as a two-piece and we ended up coming out with something that sounded pretty big. When the opportunity to play with Nate Newton [Converge] and Caleb Scofield [Cave In] came about we decided to dispense with the novelty. OMG is definitely concept driven. In the first album the packaging theme is monkeys, the split we’re doing with Crash Activated is monkey versus robot, sort of primitive human culture versus modern technology. We have a couple concepts for the next record but we’re trying to keep them veiled.”