Bio: Temple of Void started when Eric and I decided to work together. We respected each other’s guitar style and we knew if we put our heads down we could write something massive. We hand-picked a line-up of dudes we wanted to work with who we thought would share our vision and each brings something unique to the mix. As it turns out, the five of us work incredibly well together and everybody contributes an essential aspect of the Temple.
We all had other things going on, but Temple of Void unified us all in vision. The band is unique in Detroit and unique in sound and style to each one of us. So it wasn’t hard to separate ourselves from our other artistic endeavors and channel a different vibe into TOV.
I come from Hellmouth, Eric was in Knife at the time, Mike is in Acid Witch, Harbinger, Failed, and Nuke, Jason is in Motorcity Troubadours and Feisty Cadavers, and Brent wasn’t in another band at the inception. We started with the goal of playing doom. But as things evolved it quickly became obvious that death was going to play an equal hand in shaping our sound and our future.
Genre: Death/Doom isn’t well-represented in Detroit. It’s a perfect mix of our writing styles and our musical interests. We all share a love of various death and doom bands. So we bring that together into one band and strike a good balance. I try and bring strong death rhythms to the table and Eric writes melancholic doom leads over it. Mike and Brent are writing now too, and they bring in their own style of riffing. We put it all together and the five of us fine-tune it into something we’re proud to call Temple of Void.
Evolution of the initial musical and thematic elements: We started with a British doom vibe in mind, but it’s in our blood to write death metal. Give me a Les Paul and I trem-pick. It’s just what happens. I was interested in doing a band that was apolitical. Something more fantasy based. And that’s one of the things Mike brought to the table. He’s hugely responsible for part of the ominous tones and horrific presentation. His vocals are cavernous. His lyrics are well-penned. He’s a great frontman. And bringing him into the mix was the last piece in the puzzle that gave TOV its identity.
Lyrics, themes and concepts: Mike is the sole lyric-writer and we’ll keep it that way. He’s a great storyteller. By and large we write the music as a five-piece and Mike tweaks the compositions slightly. But there’s a lot of room for the music to breathe, so it’s not difficult to put lyrics to the doom when your songs are 6 to 10 minutes long.
Ideas about the album: We’re all very happy with the new album. Every aspect from the artwork to the songs to the recording. Could it be better? Of course. If we were complacent we’d be wasting our time and yours. We want to push harder to create art that’s more substantial than what we did before. But that’s true of any artist.
Temple of Void is about conjuring a vibe, and we nailed that on ‘of Terror and the Supernatural.’
Reception: People remember us from our demo last year and from the looks of things no one is disappointed with our debut album. There was a good amount of praise heaped on the demo. People said we had great promise. I believe we delivered on that expectation and evidently so do the reviewers. We’re looking to capitalize on the positive momentum and roll with it.
Preference; live or studio: Each one is rewarding in its own right. I love both very much in different ways. Playing live is definitely less stressful. It’s a catharsis. But being in the studio is about creation. It can be more tense. And boring. But very satisfying upon completion. It’s a roller coaster.
Next step; live or studio: We’re looking at doing some East Coast shows in the Spring after Mike gets back from Europe. Doing more Midwest shows. We’ll see where the album takes us!
Future: It’s foreboding. Menacing.
Inspirations: Grave, Asphyx, Paradise Lost, Autopsy, Bolt Thrower, October Tide, Necros Christos, Sinister, Edge of Sanity, shit like that.
Preference; cater to the audience or music for its own sake: Fucking music. I write for me. And I write for my four friends in Temple of Void. If I ever start writing for someone else that would no longer be art. It would just be shitty commercialization. We don’t cater to an audience.
Greatest Accomplishment: If Temple of Void ceased to exist tomorrow, ‘of Terror and the Supernatural’ would be enough in itself to make me incredibly proud of what the five of us can accomplish when we put our heads together. The fact that it’s resonating with people is a bonus. We wrote it for ourselves and we don’t measure accomplishments by anything other than our own standards. We’re putting our own mark on death metal.
Anything else?
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