Interviews

Get To Know: Blight - 'Unearthing the Underground Deathcore Upcomers'

Alex Nikolas Burgess

May 14, 2024

7 min read

If you’re ever looking to get a pulse-check on a heavy music scene, you’re best to turn your attention to the rabble loitering in the underground. It’s here, amongst the local horde of devotees seeking out these dissonant sounds, that the next wave of innovators are born, and get the opportunity to hone their craft before taking it to the masses.

Melbourne is one of these fertile breeding grounds – a city brimming with fresh talent eager to feed the voracious appetite of its domestic following, all of whom are clamouring for that next cathartic ‘hit’. One of the acts spearheading this movement is Blight, a rising deathcore force melding bone-crushing grooves with melodic death metal precision. Whether they’re tearing up iconic venues like Brunswick’s Stay Gold, or setting up guerilla gigs in hidden skateparks, Blight live to bring their intense show to all those game enough to experience it. It’s this tenacity and DIY ethos that is baked into the DNA of heavy music, which itself has always existed on the fringes of popular culture.

In the leadup to new tunes and a yet-to-be-revealed slate of shows, we caught up with Alister Roy (vocals) and Nick Robertson (lead guitar) to deep-dive into their world of music.

Take me back to where it all began with Blight – How did the band meet, and what sparked the interest to create a project together?

Alister – This month marks 10 years of Blight, which has existed in some form or another since 2014. It actually started as a bedroom project between myself and a guy named Luke, writing really bad post-hardcore, beatdown songs that were never going to go anywhere. There is still a Google Drive out there that has over 40 demo tracks, and they are simply awful!

From there, we cycled through members until Callum Grange (bass) was brought on board. Callum then signed up Liam Purser (drums), Mike Cantlon (rhythm guitar), and finally Nick (Robertson).

Nick – Callum, Liam and myself all attended the Australian Institute of Music together. Not long after we started, Callum was chatting to me about a whole bunch of Meshuggah stuff, because he knew that I was really into prog at the time. He just kept drip-feeding me new music; I distinctly remember him showing me ‘Suneater’ by Job For A Cowboy.

Alister – This formative period was taking place around 2018. We played our first show at the back end of that year, and released our debut EP, Night Terrors in 2019.

Nick – When I came into the band, most of that original EP had already been written. Mike had composed the majority of it – then I came in and sped everything up by about 20 bpm, and started adding in all these weird, experimental elements.

Alister – Yeah, like “what if we pull everything out of time just a little bit.”

That’s the Meshuggah influence right there! I especially hear it on the first EP’s closing track, ‘Songbird’. It’s quite an expansive composition, filled with experimental passages and gripping transitions. How did this song come about?

Nick – ‘Songbird’ emerged out of a jam at Mike’s place. We all went over and decided, “Let’s see if we can write something.” We probably still have the sheet of paper somewhere, where we wrote down the order of all the sections; and then they’re all the voice memos too. I believe it was done over the course of a single night, all of us just bouncing ideas off each other.

Like for a lot of our songs, once we piece together the song’s skeleton, I take the music home and play around with it in a music production tool, like Logic, and then notate it in Guitar Pro. From here, I present something that sounds more complete to the band. If it’s received well, we’ll try and learn to play it.

I’m hearing a strong influence of early, melodic death metal on this track – am I on the right track?

Alister – Definitely! For me, that is why I love this song. It draws so much from that combination of melodicism and heaviness synonymous with by bands like At The Gates, and even Opeth.

Following this theme of experimentation, I picked up on something quite unique on ‘Coward’; the opening track off Night Terrors. It has a real groove infused through it, particularly in the opening bass line. I can honestly say I’ve never heard that in a deathcore song before. Where did the idea come from?

Nick – The song was written before my time in the band, but I believe it started out as a bit of a joke. At the Australian Institute of Music, they make you study all these different genres of music. Given that a number of the band members studied there, including myself, we share a common language of sorts, and that allows us to jam on a wide range of ideas. Some of them stick, like the Bossanova section in ‘From Beyond The Mirror’ (from the second EP, Death Knows). That emerged from a very similar creative space to the shuffle you mentioned from ‘Coward’; a lot of it comes organically, but it’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek. It’s us showing off our diverse influences… and also using our degrees for something.

Alister – I do think a lot of it is about making fun of ourselves, like “Look how not serious this is, just us making silly music”.

At the same time though, these eccentricities actually make sense as part of these songs. I’m not going to lie – when I first heard ‘From Beyond The Mirror’, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “Surely that’s not a Spanish guitar in a deathcore song”. But sure enough, it really does work!

I know we’ve touched on it briefly, but I’d be interested in hearing about what your creative process is as a band – walk me through how a song idea comes to fruition.

Alister – What initially happens is that the band will work collectively on a range of potential song ideas. From here, Nick and Mike will then go away and pull them apart, and come back with what they think needs to happen.

Nick – We sort of iterate multiple times on a selection of core ideas. Mike might write a few minutes of music, and then I’ll get the notation for it, go through and do a part, and then send it back to him – “Hey, is this stuff cool?”. If we are in alignment on a concept, then I’ll start recording demos, where more things will begin to change, and that kind of sets our baseline.

But the creative process for the Death Knows EP was much more insular than the first record. I experienced a burst of creativity for a period of about 2 months whilst the band was not doing much, and wrote a fair amount of the EP during that time. I then presented the song ideas to the rest of the band to see what we could do with them together.

Alister – We all just immediately clicked on the ideas that were being presented. At that point, we also picked up a lot of the energy and language that Mike was using when he was vibing off what Nick had written, and the parts he was coming up with from that.

Nick – For sure – a lot of it was me writing the skeletons of the songs, and then passing over to Mike to write the breakdowns. ‘Piety’ off that record was, again, just a jam in the room. Everybody went out for cigarettes except for Liam and I, and we just goofed on a couple of those riffs. By the time everyone had come back into the room, we already had 3 minutes of that song together.

Alister – I love that song!

Alister, your vocals on that song, right before the breakdown at the 3-minute mark, are absolutely insane – you sound possessed!

Alister – That’s the trademark – a soft, little person at the front making the most demonic sounds imaginable!

Who writes the lyrics for these songs? And what comes first, the lyrics or the music?

Alister – I write all the lyrics to our songs. I’m going to call myself out a bit here… For both of the EPs that we have released so far, I pretty much finished the lyrics the day that I went in to record them. So, I literally roll off what I am feeling as I go into the recording booth. For Death Knows, we had an idea of what the concept of the record was going to be about, but as far as the lyrics were concerned, I just had pieces here and there, and then pulled them together when it came time to perform.

Nick (speaking to Alister) – You were sort of figuring all that out in the studio. Death Knows ended up having a few choruses, and they manifested once we nailed down those sections musically.

Alister – Nick and I recorded all the vocals together at his place, because we really benefit from being able to vibe off of one another, particularly when figuring out where certain parts should fit. We’ve both got our own unique perspectives and ideas on how a song should develop, so on-the-spot is the best time for us to get those vocal sections keyed in.

You mentioned that you recorded at Nick’s place – is that a full studio, or home set-up?

Nick – We’ve recorded drums at external studios before. For instance, the drums for Death Knows were done at the Wick in Brunswick. For our forthcoming single, we recorded at the base in South Melbourne. But for the majority of Death Knows, we recorded during lockdowns, so a lot of it was done piecemeal at our houses, whenever we had the opportunity to get together. For instance, all the string sections featured on that record were recorded in my lounge room; just a couple of mics overhead, spread out to capture that natural reverb.

The record sounds exceptional – I honestly thought it was recorded in a professional studio. To achieve the sound quality that you guys captured from the gear you had available is a credit to the production work.

Nick – We have to give some credit to Tom Cadden for polishing it up after the fact. He received a mess of tracks from me in mid-2021; when he had finished, they sounded amazing!

Alister – It took him about 6 months to piece them all together.

Nick – At that stage, I was fairly new to the whole production process, so there were a few blunders I made along the way. Looking back, I still love the way Death Knows sounds, but part of me questions “Should I have done this or that differently”. Particularly with the strings and pianos, I was hiding a bit, in the sense that we were going for that crunchy vinyl sound. It can sound a bit off at times. For one, you can faintly hear a tram going past in the background.

It adds to the ambience and overall feel of the record. As does the sample you guys use at the beginning of ‘Prelude: Lethe’, and to open the record. Where did you pull this from?

Nick – I really wanted to use spoken word, textural stuff to scatter throughout the record. I felt that it would contribute to the overarching story, and I was searching for ways to do it. Initially, we considered speaking to our own grandparents and taping it.

I don’t recall exactly what prompted it, but I was searching online, and I found these taped recordings on the Library of Congress website. There are a heap of old field recordings from the 1920s from people migrating to the South of the United States, talking about their life experiences. I ended up selecting a handful of these stories that I felt fit with the theme of our record. From there, I spliced a few of the conversations up and scattered them across the EP to enhance the narrative arc running through it.

Not sure if you’re aware of it, but Simon and Garfunkel did something similar on ‘Voices of Old People’ from their album Bookends. The song includes a sample of conversations between elderly folk, and these are layered over one another. Your use of the Library of Congress recordings reminds me of that song.

Nick – That’s interesting! We actually took the idea from ‘Everywhere at the End of Time’ by The Caretaker, which is a 6 hour ambient piece of music. That journey aims to create a literal sonic painting of gradually losing memory, but it takes place over six hours. We attempted to simulate that experience over 25 minutes instead, with heavy stuff.

Alister – The Caretaker’s narrative theme across all his work has been this interrogation of dementia and the loss of self, and each album is sort of a different stage of that deterioration. Everywhere at the End of Time is just the totality of that story, combined as one full piece of art.

The instrumentals on ‘Prelude: Lethe’ are absolutely stunning. Who performed the piano and string sections?

Nick – That was actually me on a Casio keyboard. In fact, a fair amount of Death Knows I wrote at the piano. For a lot of the initial ideas, I was just jamming and looking out the window, coming up with chord melodies. Once I had the bases, then I would write the heavy versions of the songs. What you are hearing through those piano and strings parts are actually the initial forms of the EP’s songs.

For the string sections, I gathered together a few friends whom I was studying with at university. They were part of a string quartet. I sent them the arrangement to learn, and invited them up to my house; we tracked for about 2 hours.

Alister (speaking to Nick) – I’m still amazed by how well that turned out just recording in your lounge room.

That’s what I mean – I can’t believe more things didn’t go wrong during recording / production.

Nick – I wouldn’t say things didn’t go wrong… For one, the headphone amp was not working, so it was an absolute mess getting everybody set up with headphones. Also, I was conducting without being able to hear the click track properly. In any case, a lot of what you hear is 4-5 separate takes layered on top of one another. Because of this, it sounds like there is more there than there actually is, creating a full lush sound.

Interesting – Another moment that really stood out to me on the second EP was the opening guitar riff to ‘Crushed Beneath The Weight Of The Self’. The first part of that riff sounds so euphoric, but then it abruptly transitions and crushes you. Who came up with that?

Nick – Again, that voicing on the guitar was originally written as a piano chord.

Let’s get nerdy – what are the chords?

Nick – It begins with a B flat minor 7th, which steps up and adds the C 9th, before resolving back to a B natural, which kind of contextualizes it over the A chord. So what you’re getting – in theory terms – is basically B flat minor 9, into A major 9. Funnily enough, I took that motion from an Adam Neely video, utilised in his reharmonisation of Ariana Grande’s ‘thank u, next’. I watched that video one morning and thought to myself that it was an interesting chord movement. Once I heard it, I went straight to the piano and came up with that riff, using those two chords.

Let’s zoom out a bit – you alluded a few times to an overarching theme that runs throughout the second EP, Death Knows. Can you elaborate on what this is?

Alister – It’s an exploration of the loss of self. It’s about no longer being able to identify yourself within your own memories; having recollections, but still not being able to pass that as ‘you’ in your own mind. And you sort of struggle in that paradox of coming to terms with existing inside of yourself, but not being aware of who that self is. It’s about the steady decline of recognition, not just in yourself, but also in others.

The fact that the themes are a little esoteric and hard to read between the lines is part of the reason that I loved writing these lyrics. Like – how are you supposed to distinguish yourself when you can’t even recognise who you are?

Nick – This thematic arc underwent a long evolution, as we were doing a lot of long drives down to rehearsals together and talking about a lot of this stuff. So, the evolution of the lyrics and where the other musical motifs and themes came from, was very organic, and occurred up until the final days of tracking. There are a lot of musical motifs where for instance, the main melody of one song will show up as a background part of another track, and this makes the entire record sound interconnected. Some of these connections were happening live in the midst of recording, and this allowed us to create a loose sort of organic web of ideas and motifs.

A band that is also doing this well is the US black metal act, Blackbraid. The same riffs and musical motifs will show up across multiple tracks in the same album. It’s very impactful if you can pull it off, as you did on Death Knows.

Nick – I love that sort of stuff! As I mentioned earlier, I came from the prog scene. It’s very much like what The Dear Hunter do, where melodies on one album will appear as chorus on another.

It’s important to have a common thread connecting the songs on an album, otherwise it’s just a collection of songs.

Nick – That’s the common knock-on albums these days. The album as an artform is diminishing, so if you’re going to put out an album or EP – against the advice of almost everyone in the industry, who instead suggest putting out a single every four months – there has to be a purpose to the collection; at least in my mind. In a sense, the whole has to be greater than the sum of its parts.

That’s one of the aspects that draws me to heavy music. Artists are still willing to take the risk and put in the effort required to make a full-length album, and fans are generally receptive to it; a notion that is sort of being lost in other genres of music.

Alister – It’s true! We’ve even been given the PR spin that we should focus on our image and pump out one song at a time, and ride that out before repeating.

Nick – It’s all stemming from the fast-paced nature of the content required to stay in the algorithm these days; you’ve got to be putting out new material every couple of months. For us, that is just too much, and personally, I’d be crushed under the weight of that workload and expectation.

Blight went on hiatus for a period of time. Fast forward to today, you’re back together and just announced a show, supporting Relapse at Stay Gold on 26 July. What triggered you guys wanting to start playing music together again?

Alister – Blight sort of disbanded at the end of 2022, mainly because we were all so burnt out. I made the call that I needed to pull away and work on other stuff. At the time, I felt completely detached, and lacked creative inspiration to take part in anything Blight related. What also contributed was that around the same time, I was starting my other band Latibulate.

Following an extended period away, I recaptured that spark. I remember thinking to myself “Blight has something that it needs to do, and I need to be a part of it.” There was a lot of music that we were just sitting on and weren’t doing anything with. I absolutely adore working with everyone from Blight; they’re all so easy to collaborate with, and of course the music we create together has always been one of the best parts. Playing shows is awesome, but getting together and sharing ideas has always been extra meaningful to me, and I just wanted to get back to that. I think it was 1am when I messaged everyone that I wanted to get back together and jam.

Nick – It’s true that we all reached a point where we needed a break from Blight. But once we received that ‘what if’ message from Ali, every single one of us was immediately back on board. To be fair, at that time when it was all going down, we were all pushing too hard and needed to back off a bit. And Ali was at the point of leaving indefinitely. The truth is that the only people I wanted to keep doing heavy music with were the guys in Blight. But at the same time, “Don’t talk to me about this band for the next 6 months,” because I also needed time off.

Callum and I have another project together that’s called Sweet Temper, which is geared towards a funkier, indie-pop sound. I had been wanting to do an EP with that project for a while, but Blight kind of kept pushing into that space. By taking time off, my intention was to really get that going, and once the ball was rolling, it would be easier to balance the two projects.

Then again, as much as I wanted 6 months off, in my head that was kind of the maximum. It was maybe a month and a half later where I messaged Callum and Mike, asking them if they wanted to come over to jam and write songs. So, it turned out that I only needed 6 weeks off. From that point, Mike, Callum and myself – without Ali involved – began writing stuff and sending song ideas back and forth.

There was something quite liberating about that period of time – no pressure of when we were going to release anything; rather, let’s just play together again and have some fun. Those sessions produced the new material that we will be releasing in the near future; and because of the unique environment in which the songs were created, they experienced a sort of organic growth.

Alister – That was one of the best parts of me stepping away for a while. Once I came back, there was all this new material for me to work with, and all with its own distinct identity.

Nick – The songwriting was directed more towards our passions and taking the approach of “where does this idea want to go”. For instance, there were quirky, world music elements that found their way into our songwriting. One time, I was annoying my housemate whilst recording a demo of auxiliary percussion; I literally spent the whole day layering different percussion elements on top of one another.

So you’re saying this is Blight’s version of Paul Simon’s Graceland?

Nick – I guess so! On the most recent demo, I was even trying out throat singing and doing choir parts, because that’s what I was hearing in my head.

Speaking of, what stage are you guys at with the new music?

Nick – We’re going to try a few bits and pieces live, and drip-feed it out. We recorded a single a bit over a year ago that we never got around to releasing, so that is on the backlog to go out. I feel confident that over the past couple weeks, we will have finished the first stage of the instrumental demos, for what is probably going to be a full-length album.

Alister – I can also say that the experience performing with my other project, Latibulate, has really helped me step into what I should have been doing with Blight in the first place – writing and practicing the lyrics before actually going in to record the songs. I’ve already started work on the lyrics for what this album will potentially be, and it feels so good. That track listing that Nick has worked on for the record, it’s so cohesive. I’m taking the approach of working on each song as if it has its own identity, distinct from the album as a whole. That way, when it all comes together, the record will hopefully be even more potent and powerful.

Nick – Each song is doing something different and fulfilling a unique role, whilst exploring something fresh. There is plenty on there to engage listeners for the whole runtime.

So it’s definitely going to be a full-length album?

Nick – We have an hour and 20 minutes’ worth of music that we ideally want to cut down to about 45-50 minutes. Death Knows had a decent 35 minute runtime, but the decision to make it an EP was the correct one. If we were going to go down the route of calling Death Knows an album, we probably would have stuck a couple more songs on the tracklist. But then again, that probably would have changed the whole experience, possibly not for the better; adding more would have most likely broken it.

We wanted to save the ‘debut album’ tag for something a bit bigger and more ambitious, which I believe this next record will be.

Alister – Whatever this beast is, it definitely feels more like an album, compared to Death Knows.

Prior to wrapping up – did either of you want to elaborate on anything else that might be happening with your projects, whether it be Blight or others?

Nick – (regarding Sweet Temper) Although we don’t play anything heavy per se, there are definitely some heavier elements to our songs; there is even a proto breakdown in one of them, which is quite funny. A lot of the project’s songs come from me writing in a very similar way to how I do for Blight; just using slightly different instrumentation, and not turning up the distortion. I also tend to use more jazz-oriented chords. Our debut EP is out on Spotify, and has been for almost a year now (click here for stream). We play shows at all the usual indie rock venues around Melbourne (e.g. Gasometer, Workers Club, Penny Black).

Alister – Latibulate have recently been performing at warehouse-type shows that we can’t really disclose the location of… but they are definitely around!

Latibulate’s music is out of this world, and its full of disparate influences. I hear a lot of Joy Division on ‘Demo Track 1’, old school Darkthrone on ‘Demo Track 2’, and heavy post-metal on ‘Demo Track 3’ (all currently unreleased). And the locations you’re performing at, be it under a bridge or a skate park, definitely fit the music’s aesthetic.

Alister – It’s also been great for me vocally, as I’ve taken an entirely different approach to what I generally do. Instead of being meticulous and technical in my delivery, I tend to just belt my absolute lungs out. And that’s a nice contrast to the vocal work I am doing on Blight material. Also, Latibulate was a good re-entry point back into vocals after having taken an effective hiatus for 2 years. Finally, some of the stuff I’ve been doing with Latibulate, I’m planning to bring it across to Blight.

Nick (speaking to Alister) – It’s quite captivating watching you on stage without the stress of trying to nail my own parts!

Interview by Alex Burgess @alexburgessmusic

Stream Blight’s latest EP Death Knows here