Interview with vocalist Lenny Smith | By Christopher J. Harrington
Portland, Oregon’s experimental doom and post-punk slayers, Atriarch, are dark. Like the crust-infused midnight alleyways sprawled across America, the arty quartet summon a bleak landscape of despair strewn with hell-portal trashcans that stink up said alleyways. These guys know the pain—and the stench. The group’s newest record, Dead as Truth—out Aug. 11 via Relapse Records—continues the ascent: this time, carving below the surface even sharper.
“The theme became apparent unto itself,” vocalist Lenny Smith muses. “It crept out through the walls of noise and cathartic screams. There was no specific idea other than to make the vilest, most hateful thing we’ve ever created. The world is turning into shit right before our very eyes, and we simply wanted to reflect this.”
For every hipster thinking Portland is still the ultimate destination: think again. Times are changing. Cities across the world are becoming more and more plastic by the second. Record stores and community gathering centers are disappearing, and every possible thing imaginable is becoming more expensive. Wages certainly aren’t changing, though—and the crap is piling up.
“Portland is turning into shit with the rest of the world,” Smith surmises. “It’s awful here: lots of money and rich assholes forcing artists to the outskirts of town, raising rents to the point of absurdity. People are being murdered on public transit for trying to defend young women from racist slurs. But I don’t believe this is specific to Portland. Like I said before, the entire world is turning to shit. This is just my glimpse into the shit that is becoming our future. So, I guess it’s environmentally specific on a more global level. As for the entire universe, I believe it would be better off without humans.”
Dead as Truth bottles the rage and the agony of Smith’s philosophical insights and social predictions. It’s a record that fuses the angst of dark punk and the gravity of doom, creating a masterpiece of loss, detachment, and high art. Atriarch are, more than anything, purveyors of sound. There’s a lot going on between each high-rising, doom-crushing riff. These guys are listeners, and as listeners, eternal growers.
“We met through music,” Smith notes. “Portland used to be a small town. I’d say we bonded over the Swans, Neurosis, The Birthday Party, Bauhaus, [and] Christian Death, just to name a few. Our bond is deeper than music, and each record is absolutely a new beginning, but we can only distance ourselves so far from our past creations. They are still a part of us and deserve to be acknowledged as such, for better or for worse.”
Each member of the band is wickedly epic on the new album. The collaborative effort is particularly noteworthy: each accent and nuance, original and bound eternally, causing an endless path of continuity and power. Atriarch are utterly raw and loose. The music has a sort of sharp angle to it, never letting up and always driving you into the ether. There’s a deep connection between all four members, a level of respect and trust. Together, they’ll descend into the darkness and shit.
Dead as Truth is heavy, man. It’s the real deal.
“We definitely had specific visions for what we wanted on the new [record],” Smith explains, “but when you get four people together, those visions change through each other’s perception and execution. This can be both surprising and rewarding. You can’t force your art to be any one thing. It ceases to be raw and visceral if you try to cram it into a mold. This becomes a cage for creativity, and the results are often derivative and boring.”
Atriarch are never such. They’re as exciting and real a band as there ever was.
Purchase Dead as Truth here
Photo by Jame Rexroad
