esoteric

Not many bands are ambitious enough (or skilled enough) to mix genres as dissimilar as hardcore and reggae. But the spirit of Pantera, Leslie Kong and Bad Brains shows itself in the music of Esoteric. Hoping to garner attention and a major label contract, Kenny Williams (vocals) Josh Mossi (bass) Doug Fletcher (guitar) Chris Anderson (guitar) and Matt Chomistek (drums) have been playing a huge amount of shows from Seattle to SoCal. They're about to release their third album, The Way, and Sythesis spoke with guitarist Chris Anderson about musical change, mingling and Orwellian politics.

For your last album, Contradiction System, you worked with Eric Broyhill (Deftones, Cake) in Sacramento and for the new album you worked with Tim Narducci (ex-Systematic) in Oakland. What was the difference in working with the two?

Eric Boyhill didn't offer much producing he mostly just recorded the album and we self-produced it, but Tim had some input and helped us produce by taking riffs out here and there- cutting and chopping, cutting and pasting a little bit. It's all our own music of course, but he was just amazing. He knows how hit songs are supposed to go and he kind of just chopped some of our stuff up and made it really good. We owe a lot to him, we thank him a lot. And now he's really helped us for our future albums. Also, when we did go down to Oakland to record, some of Tim's friends came by. He's friends with Paul Bostaph the drummer for Slayer back in the day, and he helped us tune our drums. He has a lot of friends who are pretty big in the music business and we're getting to meet all those people and start mingling with them. That's really exciting for us, too. Our drummer was really happy he got to meet his favorite drummer and have him help tune his drums on the recording, so it was pretty awesome.

In general, it seems to be such a different enviorment...

Yeah, recording in Oakland is like going to a whole other world. From Chico to Oakland, there's a big difference. We really liked it; actually, even though it's kind of a slum down there, it really helped with inspirtation for the record.

Even with this more honed sound, you didn't seem to compromise any of your music or the direction of your lyrics.

He didn't make us compromise anything. That's one thing we were scared of going in, being a band that's never been produced. We were scared that he was just going to take all of our good stuff and thow it out the window. It didn't really work like that. He really liked all the material we had, and he told us what to do with the important spots. It's hard to explain. He's genius. We learned a lot from him.

Have you gone through changes as you become more high-profile and share with big acts?

We've taken notes on some of the professionals that we've seen play. We've played with Kottonmouth Kings, opened up for Superjoint Ritual, we opened up for Pepper...we've gotton to see how real professional bands do it and we've taken notes and acted it out ourselves.

Are there any particular artists, new or old, who are influencing the direction the band is heading?

We like everything....One of our main influences, as far as the metal goes, is definitely Pantera and now we listen to all kinds of reggae. We've always listen to Bob Marley and now there are a lot of new artists that probably nobody will hear about or know of- Capelton, Michael Rose- guys like that are some of the reggae guys we get some of our influences from to change over from the heavy metal to the reggae.

I've always been a fan of artists like Mikey Dread and Lee "Scrath" Perry...

Oh yeah, all those guys.

You've been in Chico area since about 2000 and it seems like a good home base for you.

Other towns have a lot more to offer as far as big shows, but we always like coming back to Chico because the people here are really nice and we like the enviroment up here.

Arguably as a means of control, our country has suddenly traded fear of imminent global disater. How do you and the rest of the band feel about the current political climate?

Well, it definitely helps by giving us a lot of topics to write about. We don't like the political processes these guys use-we believe in a brotherhood of man and you should pretty much know what's right and wrong without any books or any laws to tell you how to live and that's why try to write songs: to share what we know with the rest of the people. That's what makes us feel good.

- Synthesis-Matt Matlock

A few issues back I had Esoteric as my feature band of the month, and now with their new CD coming out this well deserving band gets an interview to help spreak their remarkable talent. Now if you know me, then you know I love a good mosh pit and I love heavy fucking metal man. Esoteric is one of those bands that has created a genre of their own, I really cannot compare them to anyone else expect Esoteric and that's what makes them something special that will start a new path of others to try and follow.

Can you state your name and Band name for the record?

Chris Anderson, guitarist with Esoteric

How do you feel about the finished product of the new CD?

We are totally excited about the new CD "The Way", which reflects the bands personiality and we feel has the full potential to take us to much greater heights than we've ever attained before.

Can you tell me about the recording of the album, and what were some of the ups and down's during the process?

Recording the new album was much more of a undertaking than Esoteric has ever done before. It took from February until October to get the finished product down, but that's what it takes when you have the deveolpment of an album under the professionalism of someone like Tim Narduccci who was our producer for this album. We were very glad to have worked with Tim and record at his studio in the Bay Area, even though it meant many, many days on the road to make the album. Tim is very much a perfectionist, so certian things required a lot of takes to get them right, while others were done on the first take and sounded killer!

Who was the female I have seen at some of the recent shows, and actually appears on a couple of tracks on the new album, and what is her future with Esoteric?

The lady on the tune "I-Freedom" is a Chico gal named Becca Neunuebel, who had been singing since she was a little girl and has a dynamite voice. We do plan on writing some other tunes with becca invloved in the future and including them on future recordings. Also, we were able to procure the services of a local cello player to record on a couple of tunes that sound good. His name is M.O.B.

Describe Esoteric music for the people that have no clue yet about the band.

If you listen to an Esoteric album, it's really hard to pigeonhole and describe the music into a certian genre. We could just say that it is a unique sound that morphs metal with a dash of reggae and an underlying funky rhythm. Let's just leave it at that.

What message, if any, is Esoteric trying to send out to their fans?

The Esoteric message is totally about peace and harmony, not war and hate. Leave the other shit to the assholes.

In the event that Esoteic gets a record contract in the near future, is it going to be an issue to keep the band name since there is another band called The Esoteric?

Remember they are called The Esoteric. We are simply called ESOTERIC. And we do have some interested labels from what I gather.

What can we expect from Esoteric in say, the next 6 months.

One hell of a lot of touring and playing and getting the new album out to people.

What's one thing about playing music, that will keep you playing music?

Playing music is the most fun thing in the world to do, and if you can make a living at it and have fun at the same time, more power to you.




- Your Music Magazine- Benji Womack