Anova Skyway just released a weird, trippy video for “Diet of Worms,” and we spoke with Garret West, vocalist, about their latest music.
How did the band get started?
The band was started actually just as a side project for our guitar player Mike Palacios who was in a thrash metal band called Bloodvoid (2002-2009) with our drummer Mike Marksberry at the time. Marksberry joined the Anova fold when Bloodvoid hit a hiatus (2009), and the band eventually became their main project (2010) with Andrew Alvarez joining on guitar.
The master plan was, just to do something different musically at that time. It started off as a Mars Volta-style project which was a huge departure from the thrash metal-style of BloodVoid. After trying a few different singers and releasing one EP in 2011 with one of them, Garret West joined. Garret spent his high school years in the same city as Palacios and went to the same high school (even though they weren’t friends back then) but was living in NY at the time and was a fan of BloodVoid when he was in high school (he’s a few years younger than Palacios and Marksberry).
A Great and Sudden Change was the first record released with Garret in 2015, and the band had found a different sound, but not quite honed it yet. Cory Miles joined on bass shortly after that release while the band was working on their 2017 release “A Light in the Darkness,” which was the first work done with now current producer Louis Abramson (of the band JOLLY).
What was the writing and recording process like for this album?
Pre-production is done at home in Texas (our studio in downtown Houston and Garret’s House in Haslet, TX near Dallas) while file-sharing with Louis Abramson in NYC who is taking our demos and dissecting the layers to help us arrange things in a way that reigns us in and keeps us focused on what works. He produced the last album and helped transform our sound immensely, which we loved.
After those arrangements were completed, we moved to final tracking with Houston/LA producer Dean DiChoso who is currently wrapping up production on the new Candlebox record. We were turned on to Dichoso through his work with our friends in To Whom it May. On this single, drums and vocals were done in LA. We recorded drums in Studio 2 of the famous East West Studios in Los Angeles and vocals at Deans own studio in Studio City, CA.
Guitars and bass were recorded at Dichoso’s home studio in Houston. Mixing was done by Dichoso and Mastering by UE Nastasi at Sterling Sound (Gojira, Lamb of God).
What are some of the lyrical themes of the album?
Overall, the music we are working on has an existential theme of where we belong in the universe and what makes existence beautiful.
In “Diet of Worms,” we have a lyric in the chorus that says, “enamored by sanctity, encumbered by brevity” which essentially means human beings use these ideas of religion, gods, and philosophies to make the short time we have on Earth a little more comfortable to the mind. We have sought higher meaning because we are the only creatures who understand our own mortality.
Have you had any major plans cancelled due to quarantine? How are you all holding up?
All of us are blessed to still be employed with the ability to either work from home or socially distance ourselves at work. We had planned to take March and April off before the quarantine from shows so I could welcome my newborn into the world and spend time with my family. Come May and June, we will see if it messes anything else up. Our priority is studio work right now.
Do you have any tour or release plans for after the fact?
We would be remiss if we didn’t have plans to move forward. We are continuing to hammer away at this EP we are working on and hoping to complete it by the end of the year.
What can we expect from you in coming years? Any future plans?
We are a band that is constantly looking forward. Each album cycle, we have done bigger and better things and worked with more and more influential people. We see higher numbers of attendance at shows, and things look pretty good. We don’t know what the future holds, but our trend is onward and upward.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
We find ourselves in strange times, and things are getting more bizarre daily. It’s important to not lose sight of what is important and inspiring in life. Diet of Worms is a reflection on what we choose to focus on despite our mere existence being nothing more than recycled matter.
Whether you are a Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Athiest, or you belong to the church of the flying fucking spaghetti monster; life is a shared experience, and we can all find similarities amongst each other. That’s the beauty of music. If we can translate common ground through our art form, and inspire others to use their brains, we can make a difference. Even if it’s just one person that feels inspired.
