Interviews

Miki Simankevicius - Annihilist 'This Album Was Never Meant to Appeal to the Masses Or Algorithms'

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Heavy Metal Wordsmith

Nov 1, 2024

7 min read

We raved about Australian band Annihilist’s debut album, Reform, (review here) but it turns out they’re not exactly a new band.

KJ Draven got in touch with guitarist Miki Simankevicius to find out who they are, where they’ve been and where they’re going. What unfolded is a fascinating insight into a self-funded, self-promoted band whose patience might be about to pay off.

Miki, you're new but not entirely new, before we get into the chat, tell us all how you came to be.

For Harry [Pendock, vocals] and I, it’s basically been since our whole music journey started. We started our first band together in high school with some other close friends and some huge ambitions. It was shortly after that we decided we wanted to do something more serious and needed a fresh image in order to be taken more seriously. That’s when Annihilist was born. The music we were writing back then wasn’t simple, so we knew we had to find the right people to play it. I met Josh [Voce] because he worked at my favourite guitar shop at the time, which happened to be his family guitar shop, Guitars Plus. When we asked him to audition he chose to play a Machine Head song, so from that moment alone we knew he was a shoe-in. James [Sayers] and I met swimming at an abandoned quarry one summer and got along like a house on fire. After many adventures together climbing electricity pylons, cranes and any other dumb stunts I found out he also played drums - far better than anyone else I’d known at that time. We knew Toby [Peterson-Stewart] because he played in another friend's band at our high school, and he was the last piece to make everything fit together.

The group of us have got along super well ever since, with every member bringing their own set of skills and unique influences to the table. Above all else, It’s that family dynamic that has kept this project alive for all these years.

Reform is your first LP, but you’ve been around a while. What’s been happening between the EP and release of this album?

We learned a lot from making our first EP, but most importantly it gave us a chance to reflect on how to grow and where to improve. Bands generally have a very linear progression of releasing music, learning, improving, and repeating, and over time becoming more and more legitimate. This is how the whole creation of Reform felt - without the actual releasing stage of the process. We wanted to create music that would be comparable to the music of our idols at a global scale, and not just the local scene. To do this we really had to identify our strengths, harness them, and refine them. The foundation of this band is very DIY, but in order to create something world-class ourselves, we also had to upskill significantly. Learning to do our own recordings, content, and general management of the band on and off the road gave us the freedom of trial and error for a lot of ambitious ideas.

While it’s been close to 10 years since our EP where other bands would have had significant progression in that time with multiple releases, we feel like we’ve had a similar progression internally and finally have set a benchmark for the music we want to be outputting.

It hasn’t all been growth though, the reality is this is a self funded project, and everyone in the band has their own careers, projects, and lives we’ve pursued over the years which make it hard to make a passion project like this a possibility. As the time spent creating together became more and more sparse, the priorities when we’d eventually see each other became less about productivity, and more about reconnecting as friends.

Why was now the right time to reform Annihilist?

At this point we have had final masters for our album for about two years. We always knew we wanted to give this album the launch it deserved, but hadn’t had the resources, know-how, connections, or funding to be able to do it properly. It wasn’t until our drummer James let us know he’d be featuring in an upcoming ABC TV series playing drums representing Annihilist that now is as good a time as any to get it out to the world. This made us knuckle down, and finally push to release it by whatever means we had.

The album has a consistent sound but varies the elements song to song. What’s the band’s writing process? How do the different acoustic and electric elements come together?

It’s great to hear you acknowledge that, because finding the balance between consistency and creativity was probably the most gruelling part of the process. In the early days of writing, Josh and I actually debated over a lot of things - I always wanted to push to be heavier, more modern, more technical, and perhaps more accessible, where as Josh leaned towards more traditional metal flavours and influence from his Gypsy Jazz and Flamenco playing - styles that are quite unique in the realm of metal. We butted heads a fair bit, but never in a bad way. It was always constructive. He would find some ideas I’d present not to his taste, so for the sake of appeasing him I’d go back and revisit them to try and get the song over the line. I found it somewhat annoying at the time, but in retrospect it really did push me to think outside the box in order to come up with ideas that would work for us both, or incorporate some of his more out there ideas. It made me a better songwriter and overall resulted in some truly unique moments. Moments that would potentially be predictable became so much more.

There are also so many other factors to consider with the consistency of the album. This album was recorded over the span of years, in over 30 different rooms by my estimation. There is nothing consistent about it. Our major writing sessions would involve finding an Air BnB or a friend's holiday house and set up our gear for a weekend. We'd all work on our own stations or break off into groups. We would record bits of vocals all over the place and then re-write them and re-track them to make them more interesting. We’d do the same for guitars, drums, and all other bits of random instrumentation. Toby would also go off on his own during our writing sessions and come out with some amazing songs that were nothing like anything else we’d done. Towards the end of the writing of each song we'd always try to add some ideas that gave the album some slight overall consistency in style. One of the melodies n the album is repeated in 3 different songs. Everyone would have their own contributions throughout the process. Our writing styles are all so unique, but together meld into one vision that defines Annihilist.

Which song do you suggest to people who want to know what Annihilist represents?

I might be a little biassed, but to me that song is ‘The Host’. It has in my opinion great examples of everything I personally hold dear in music tied in one neat bow. It has the nicest clean and acoustic sections, the best melodic and growling vocals, some of the heaviest riffs in the album, some of the most crazy tech moments, and some of the most out there experimental stuff. The whole song has very dark themes and sounds which are my favourite too. But although it’s a taste of a lot of the things we represent, it can’t speak for any of the other songs, they all have their own completely unique identity.

There’s also a reason we opened the album with ‘Blood’, and released it as the single. It also showcases what we represent, but in a completely different way.

‘The Host’ really pushes your sound with more progressive elements and structure. What influences inspired you to push the limits on this one?

No direct influences inspired the song, although I could almost pinpoint every element of every section to its own unique subconscious influence. I’ve always been a fan of long epic unfolding compositions and wanted to do our take on that. This song went through so many iterations, and was probably the last to be finalised in the writing stage. The oldest section from the album is actually the acoustic section before the solo that Harry wrote before our first EP.

In my review I felt there’s a cinematic aspect to the album, between instrumental tracks and songs like ‘The Upsend’ and ‘The Host’. If you could get Annihilist onto a film soundtrack, which flick would be a good fit for your songs?

I personally get a lot of inspiration for writing from film scores and spend a lot of time listening to them, so that’s very cool to hear. I think the film would depend on the song, but would love the opportunity to write for one and utilise any unique themes from the movie in our writing. James says 300 or any film with a brutal revolution would suit the times of Reform, I think anything epic set in the bronze or Iron Age is a great fit.

The instrumental tracks feature some great acoustic guitars and synths but maybe they’re risky in a streaming world. What do they add to the album’s concept and how will they translate in a live setting?

We might be some of the few people on the planet who actually like album interludes. I actually have a playlist entirely made up of metal album soft interludes, so while I agree they’re not for streaming, they do have a place. This album was never meant to appeal to the masses or the algorithms, it was only ever meant to inspire a handful of other people the same way music inspired us all in our own lives.

What does the future hold for Annihilist? Is there a plan to bring Reform to life at gigs?

We would love to bring these songs to a live setting, we feel there is so much potential there. But we’re not in a hurry to do so yet. Getting set up for the touring scene is a big investment and most of us are already in other touring bands, so we currently prefer to focus our limited efforts online to grow our audience in the short term.

What three records should fans check out if they want to understand the bands that influence you?

This is a hard question to answer, but I think it comes back to the idea of the music you listen to in your teens being the ones that resonate with you most throughout life. For me, these were albums like The Blackening by Machine Head, Hollow Crown by Architects, and Nocturne by the Human Abstract. I have to give some honourable mentions to bands like Slipknot, Devildriver, Parkway Drive, Hatebreed, Children of Bodom, and Insomnium as well many of the classics and obscure niché giants at the time of our upbringing.

While we wait for their live debut, you’ll just have to check out Reform in all its glory. James Sayers will appear this month on the ABC program Headliners, hosted by Mahalia Barnes.

Interview by KJ Draven. @KJDraven

Stream TF out of Reform here