By Jim Barber
Steeped in mythology, drawing on influences that harken again to the late Nineteen Seventies heavy, doom-laden musical tomes of early Black Sabbath, with wholesome doses of the early psychedelia impressed sludge steel of Vanilla Fudge and Blue Cheer, Barrie, Ontario’s maestros of fuzz-infused, fantastical spacey steel music AAWKS are bringing their atmospheric depth and fantastical themes to an ever-widening viewers.
Their penchant for crafting music that’s as theatrically revelatory in its aural textures is undoubted. But it surely’s the literate storytelling that accompanies every chapter within the band’s new album On By means of the Sky Maze which actually units AAWKS out as a band to maintain one’s eyes – and ears – upon.
After forming with an preliminary lineup in 2019 and releasing their debut EP, a extra solidified lineup consisting of road-tested veterans of the Barrie and space music scene led to the band’s present roster in 2023, shortly after the issuance of their debut album, Heavy on the Cosmic.
That assortment of gifted and skilled gamers is headlined by main songwriter, vocalist/guitarist Kris Dzierbicki, together with his spouse, Randy, on drums, longtime good friend and musical confederate Roberto Paraiso on guitar, violin and a few synths and the newest addition, bassist Ryan Mailman, who additionally contributes among the guttural vocals and screams that punctuate among the tunes on the album.
In line with Kris, the band wish to maintain the true which means of their title a thriller, which inserts in fully with their aesthetic and overarching artistic vibe.
“It would imply one thing. It could be an acronym. And you’ll pronounce it nevertheless you need. Our guitarist Roberto at all times says that it’s a little bit of a play of phrases on the animal as a result of we’re large, heavy and gradual, like an ox,” stated Kris with a chuckle.
A lot of epithets have been thrown on the band to explain its fashion, largely to make issues simpler for music journalists and streaming platform applications. AAWKS has been dubbed as combos of Heavy, Psych, Stoner, Doom, Fuzz Rock and extra.
“What I say is, ‘hey, have you learnt Black Sabbath?’ And most of the people say yeah. I then say it’s like if Black Sabbath wasn’t as gifted and performed slower but additionally perhaps sooner at occasions. With bands and genres and sub genres, particularly in steel, the longer you dangle round, each week or two there’s one other subgenre that you may add on, one other adjective to throw in there,” stated Kris.
“And now the time period ‘Blackened’ appears to be developing increasingly, and its type of seeped into all of the totally different genres. There’s even Blackened Pop. However to me, for what we do, Black Sabbath was the birthplace. After which you will have all of the birthplaces of Stoner, like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, there’s a bunch. After which your start of Punk can be, say, The Kinks and later The Stooges. I believe what occurs is that individuals are so blown away by these pioneering bands they attempt to make their very own model of it, and it comes out sounding somewhat totally different. With us there’s Sabbath after which Vanilla Fudge and even some Cream.”
Randy and Kris have been a pair for plenty of years. When there was nonetheless some flux to the lineup of what would grow to be AAWKS, Kris requested Randy to take her pure sense of rhythm, exuberant persona and love for rock and roll and discover ways to play the drums.
Working with Zeus’ (one other band from Barrie) drummer and drum teacher Rob Drake, and with numerous hours of devoted apply, Randy grew to become proficient sufficient to document drum tracks for AAWKS’ first full-length album. The sophistication of the rhythmic side of the band’s new album On By means of the Sky Maze demonstrates that Randy has taken to her new instrument with aplomb and never solely improved however developed as a percussionist.
“I did a number of classes as a result of I had by no means performed a musical instrument, ever. Rob was actually nice at understanding how I’d study and be capable of play catch-up. And Kris was in a position to take that type of easy Meg White [White Stripes] really feel of what I may do and make it work. That’s what you hear on the primary album, it was a very simplified beat, in order that I may sustain with the remainder of them. I assume I’m a quick learner,” she stated, including that the proof within the proverbial pudding got here when the band began taking part in stay, the place one by no means is aware of from night time to nighttime what the onstage sound could be, making it doubly difficult for a relative newcomer on such an integral instrument because the drum package.
“I’d say that about 60 per cent of the locations we play don’t actually have a drum monitor. As a result of we’re taking part in in quite a lot of dive bars and underground basement golf equipment and no matter. So quite a lot of it’s simply expecting key moments with Kris. I type of feed off both his phrases or his taking part in, relying on the music. Every part is a mathematical sample for me.”
By way of the songwriting for AAWKS, Kris performs a main position, inviting his bandmates so as to add their solutions and explicit nuances on each music.
“When the music is in its child kind I’ll carry it to the band and that’s when it actually takes form quite a lot of the time. Solos or sure riffs may get adjusted as soon as the band begins taking part in them.” he stated, including that the lyrics are just about solely his area, giving him a chance to comb via his ardour for fantastical, mythological, epic storytelling, which is in abundance on On By means of the Sky Maze.
“A whole lot of it’s allegorical or symbolic and pertains to issues I’ve been via. However I’m not like a people, singer/songwriter kind, and I don’t actually wish to write about my private love life or anger or despair. I wish to coat it with one thing fantastical. And that’s perhaps the factor I like most about psychedelic music [or ‘Psych’] is irrespective of how heavy or smooth or regardless of the style is, you can also make something psychedelic – it’s a type of music that takes you someplace mentally. So I need my lyrics to try this too.
“So far as material I’ve at all times been into quite a lot of traditional science fiction like Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury and George Orwell – stuff that has a message. However I even have learn quite a lot of non-sci-fi non fantastical stuff like Charles Bukowski and Albert Camus, stuff that’s extra philosophical. I learn quite a lot of books after I was rising up. What I’ve finished during the last 10 years since I’ve grow to be hooked on the web is learn articles as an alternative of studying complete books. If I actually get into some topic, I’ll go down a rabbit gap on the web and, hey, perhaps it’s not all vetted, however I’m selecting up some data and getting concepts for tales.”
The precise assemble of a music begins with the guitar almost the entire time, Kris stated.
“I’d say 99 per cent of the time it normally begins with a riff. Typically I’ll provide you with a drum beat as a result of I’m writing the drum half after which educating it to Randy. So if I really feel a sure beat or rhythm I’ll begin constructing on that. However there are additionally occasions when a music comes nearly absolutely fashioned the place I could have one riff, nevertheless it shortly cascades into the entire music. That doesn’t occur typically, however when it does, it’s good,” he defined.
“Different occasions, you’ve obtained to wrestle them for fairly some time, like months and months and typically even years on finish earlier than they really grow to be a music that works. However, yeah, it’s normally a riff after which the phrases will come after that. I’m at all times writing verses and developing with fascinating takes on issues. If we’re watching a film or studying an article about Vikings or some type of occult factor, that may seep into the music. After we’re on the street I could get impressed and a riff or melody line or phrase will simply come, and I’ll document it. However I even have notebooks everywhere in the jam area which are all stuffed with completed and half-finished lyrics.”
The lead-off monitor on the album, ‘Celestial Magick’ is a superb introduction to the general tone, vibe and ethos of AAWKS, and relies on a very evocative, however little-known story from Norse mythology, which Kris, Randy and the band adapt to create a doom-laden, sludgy epic that pulls the listener into one other realm.
“That was a type of the place I used to be studying about some bizarre Viking stuff, and I obtained on this thread about Viking burial rituals and a few of their practices. That they had this concept that if you happen to don’t trim the nail tissue and the hair of the useless, which ought to have been trimmed when getting ready the physique to please the gods, it could go onto a ship referred to as Naglfar. This ship is manufactured from demons and ghouls and on Doomsday the ship can be forged out onto the world to create destruction and havoc and loss of life. And I believed it was a cool factor to put in writing about such an unbelievable visible,” Kris stated of the music.
Probably the most Sabbath-like music on the document – and unabashedly so – is ‘Misplaced Dwellers,’ which options one of the crucial hypnotically thick soundscapes and insistently potent bass traces this facet of Geezer Butler or Lemmy.
“We had been on tour with a fantastic band from Montreal referred to as Sons of Arrakis. They’re a killer band, in order that was me making an attempt to put in writing a Sons of Arrakis music. However then I additionally paid homage to – or ripped off – a part of [Black Sabbath song] ‘Youngsters of the Grave,’ that type of chunky half within the riff, which I’ve at all times liked. And like most of my songwriting, I had a visible, like a film taking part in in my head the entire time I used to be writing it,” he stated.
“It’s been most likely two and a half years since I wrote that music, however I can bear in mind picturing a planet that was on the verge of exploding – a dying planet. And this group of individuals got an omen, an indication that they wanted to depart the planet and had been provided this portal to a special place.”
One of the crucial evocative and stirring songs on the album is the hauntingly enigmatic ‘Caerdroia.’
“Caerdroia is a Welsh time period for labyrinth. And I didn’t know {that a} labyrinth was totally different from a maze till I began studying about them. A labyrinth has no improper turns. So that you go in and also you attain the center part after which come again out. It’s for meditative functions, not a spot to trick you and the place you will get misplaced. And in my thoughts, a labyrinth has excessive partitions and I imagined it through the summer season solstice and there was a pagan ceremony with this group of people that get caught within the labyrinth eternally,” Kris stated, mentioning how the influences already mentioned embody Norse mythology and Welsh folklore, however that among the songs, such because the cinematic ‘Cursed Soul,’ come straight from his affinity for the trendy horror style.
“Over the previous couple of years, I’ve actually obtained again into horror films. I watched loads rising up however went away from them for some time. This music is a couple of séance and, just like the theme of among the different songs, a personality will get pulled from one place into one other. And after I was writing it, I used to be absolutely invested within the visuals in my head and making an attempt to translate them right into a music. I bear in mind studying about one thing referred to as the Seventh Sense and utilizing it to raze the sky and naturally raze on this sense means to fully and completely destroy one thing. I used to be inquisitive about how this Seventh Sense is the attention of ourselves in three-dimensional area. So this spirit embodies the one who is within the séance after which destroys all the things round it. I believe it’s a really visible music,” Kris defined.
“A lot of the songs we’re speaking about are associated to the underlying theme of the album which is motion from one place to a different, or totally different variations of life and loss of life.”
Like many bands whose members have day jobs, intensive touring is a problem, however within the wake of the discharge of On By means of the Sky Maze, AAWKS will attempt to get out for runs of three and 4 dates at a time, which incorporates some reveals in Ontario later in Could opening for Montreal’s Sandveiss in Toronto on Could 23 on the Bovine Intercourse Membership, adopted by a present at The Mansion in Kingston on Saturday Could 24.
For extra data on the band, go to https://www.aawks.ca.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and writer primarily based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for greater than 30 years. Apart from his journalistic endeavours, he works as a communications and advertising specialist, and is an avid volunteer in his group. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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