Review Fix chats with SVLPHVRVS frontman and bassist Jason Goldberg who discusses the band’s origin and creative process. With a wild blend of influences and a new drummer, SVLPHVRVS has big plans for 2017.
Review Fix: How did you guys get together?
Jason Goldberg: Svlphvrvs was birthed out of a challenge by a friend to make a punk rock record that consisted of 7 one minute songs on a 7 inch record. 7 songs in 7 minutes on a 7 inch. Clever right? It was taken seriously. I vowed to write the songs on bass guitar, and said there was one a friend had left behind in my basement. I hadn’t played bass guitar until I started writing Svlphvrvs songs. It had always been vocals and keyboards up until then. Seven songs quickly turned into 25. The friend who made the challenge was playing drums (a new instrument to him as well) quit around song 8. So Jon, the guitarist and I (Jason) found a new drummer. Jon and I have been playing in bands together for over a decade, and currently have another, atmospheric post-sludge band called Beak. Beak I guess would also fall in the ‘Neur-Isis’ category. The new drummer, to our fortune, is James Staffel from the Eastern influenced, experimental metal band Yakuza. His spastic style really brought the songs together. So there we were.
Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?
Goldberg: Glad you asked. All Svlphvrvs songs start with a riff, or more basically, a rhythm. It’s a rhythm I’ll involuntarily pick up from walking down the street, grinding my teeth, cutting vegetables. Then the rhythm gets translated on bass guitar with notes that sound appropriate to attach. That will make a riff. Subsequent parts are generated mostly by a motivation of an element of surprise, or something that makes the listener say, ‘aw, that was dope’, or at least, ‘hey, that was clever’. Sort of like a DJ mix, where, if the guy or gal are on it, the thing that comes next is the reward. A lot of times if there’s a dip or hike in tempo, it has nothing to do with the previous tempo; like, it’s not halftime or double time. It just sounds right, or more importantly, organic. The entire song is written on bass. Then I kinda map out what I think the vocal rhythm and structure should be over each part. I’ll typically pick a news article that had induced such a degree of anger in me, that instead of strangling a random idiot on the street, I’ll write the lyrics. The words get plugged in to the hash marks on the page. Figure out which words I sing, and which words Jon will sing and which ones we’ll sing together, clean, screaming, both, whatever is appropriate. Once I believe it’s done I show Jon and Jim the riffs, and they lay down guitar and drums over it. Jon gets his copy of the lyrics and we steamroll it down until it’s frog asshole tight. We don’t jam, it’s all predetermined. The more it’s practiced, the more the guitar and drums can tweak themselves into organic perfection.
Review Fix: What do you think makes this band special?
Goldberg: Good question. How much modesty does one exercise in this scenario? This band is special because it’s 25 years in the making. Not the record but the band itself. When I was 15 (I’m 44 now), I started singing in crappy punk bands. Some friends had a thrash band and some others made electronic music. Being all good friends, we started making music together, all styles and influences mashed together to make sort of a punk/metal industrial sound. Years later it morphed into an instrumental post-rock band, The Timeout Drawer, and after more years of perceiving ourselves too polite, we started screaming and dialing things back to our metal roots and became Beak. Then came the call of catharsis (sounds like a deity put like that!), and all the side projects out of our camp started. It became more and more difficult to express the entirety of yourself with just one project. It would be like eating tacos for the rest of your life. Sure they’re delicious, but sometimes you want pizza…y’know? I had wanted to make music like Svlphvrvs for a long time. The challenge of the 777 idea came and I went to work on it. After Jon and I enlisted Jim on drums, things started taking shape and coming to fruition. More than two decades of sub-conscious angst built up. See the next question!
Review Fix: How would you describe your style?
Goldberg: I think this band is genre-defying. Most of my projects have been. I’ve never wanted anything to sound like anything else, or be the next this or that after this or that. That is boring. I genuinely believe Svlphvrvs to be art, and art is to be interpreted. Unfortunately and fortunately it has to be put into a category for people to check it out, buy it, get it reviewed, land an interview, etc. It’s crossover thrash. It’s future crossover thrash, because crossing over from punk and hard core to metal, already happened…a long fucking time ago. It’s too late for a different version of the same blab. It’s gotta be too new for anyone to grasp right away. It’s peppered with psych, doom, art-core and crust. Names people throw at things they don’t know. The Boogeyman. The Tall Whites. The Greys. Grandmama Lily’s ghost. The style is motivated, purposeful, violent and full of conviction. It’s a genuine article that’s not gonna fit into any particular scene, but that’s not my choice to ultimately make.
Review Fix: What are your goals for this album?
Goldberg: I just hope people get it for what it is, which will take a bit of patience for music that doesn’t sound like it should need any. It would be nice to break even on production costs with album sales. It would be nice to spot-tour the U.S. Midwest, and expand when and where it becomes justified. That’s about it.
Review Fix: What’s the standout song? Is there a story behind it?
Goldberg: Being that there’s 25 songs, averaging about a minute each, all bashing into each other like drunken, possessed bumper cars, there’s no real standout song. Different ones become my favorite, depending on my mood or the day. There is, however, the title track, ‘The Surfeit’. This song encompasses the theme of the record, the definition, the concept, the excess, the human overreach, the cows. So many fucking cows on the globe, bred, slaughtered, sliding down people’s gullets, tamping down the rain forests, scattering and endangering so many others, for the sake of more of them, sliding out everyone’s assholes, half of them being discarded right off the plate because everyone’s too full already. The cow is the world’s biggest problem, in every respect. A very human problem. Greater than all the other problems combined really. I could talk about it forever. There’s people that are even paid to not talk about it.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Goldberg: Depends on the climate, depends on the next president of the United States, depends on the European Union, the availability of assault rifles and just how upset I get at the next headline that comes across my sight. Aspire to achieve. Pray to survive.
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