My first question would have to be, Jay, is what was sort of the thought process behind the inception of Serpentine Path?  You’d been in Unearthly Trance, and then what brought everyone else together?

I mean, for this group – obviously the three of us who were in Unearthly Trance had been playing for over twelve years together.  I guess it was basically the fact that Tim (Bagshaw from Electric Wizard) had moved to the states, and we, the band Unearthly Trance, had been friends with him for a long time.  The band started completely out of friendship.  Unearthly Trance did our first US tour back in 2002 with Electric Wizard, so we met Tim then.  Since then, we’ve done three European tours over the last decade with Ramesses, so we’ve gotten to be pretty friendly with Tim, and he just so happened to be moving here.  He moved to New Jersey which is only about an hour away from us, so it was just natural for us to get together and hang out and have a jam.  We messed around, played some music, and things gelled really quickly.  It started out simply as a jam.  We’re all like minded.  We all like the same kind of music. 

It’s interesting to see a lot of press outlets are referring to you guys as a sort of death doom metal supergroup or whatever, and I personally have a hesitation with that terminology.  For me, it kind of minimalizes the music that’s being created.  What’s your response to that?

I mean, we don’t really like that.  It’s not something we think about.  This is a friendship thing.  It’s something that’s come from people being like minded.  It’s definitely not the attention we ask for.  People are gonna tag it any way they want – in the press and stuff, you know.  But that’s not something we latch onto.  It’s far from the case of what we set out to do.  People are gonna spin it however, man. 

Well, Jay, regarding the metal genre itself it seems like the inclination especially American music journalism is to compartmentalize everything that’s being created.  I honestly think one of the biggest areas it does that in is in the metal genre.  I mean, you can’t read a review or even an interview sometimes without having to read the five or six subgenre tags before you even get to the band’s name.  This clusterfuck of terminology, in many way, seems to detract from the music itself, so my question for you is when you as an artist and musician step into that role, what’s your thought process?  How do you find your center?  How does a band like Serpentine Path find the way to encapsulate the emotions it does?

Well, it’s something that’s kind of natural for is.  Obviously we have our influences. But with Serpentine Path it wasn’t something we set out and said It’s going to be this specific style or this particular way.  I like to think that it comes from a pure place.  We’ve been playing this style of music for over a decade, so it feels very easy to me to get into the mindset to do it.  To approach it that way.  I just feel like it’s something that come natural to us.  As far as splicing things and putting it into subgenres and things like that, it’s just something to make things easy.  It’s a lazy way to describe a band, really.  For us, though, and the style we’re playing it’s just something we know from general influence and what comes naturally. 

On the subject of influences, Jay, let’s go back to your childhood and kind of journey up through to where you are now.  Why the metal genre?  What basically brought you to where you are? 

I don’t know.  I mean, I think it’s something that kind of resonated with me from early on.  At the very beginning just hearing the Led Zeppelin albums for the first time and Black Sabbath.  I had an uncle who had a record player, and I heard this music and something just resonated with me.  Also, as a kid – and I didn’t have a weird or crazy childhood or anything – I was kind of always drawn to horror movies and stuff.  I’m only thirty-three, so hearing bands like Metallica – that was kind of a big band when I was younger, and that stuff resonated with me.  A little bit further down the road I got into more death metal and hardcore music that was a little more extreme.  I just always liked music that was aggressive and fierce and has a strong energy to it.  On another side, too, I like all different styles of music, but that specific style was what hooked me, basically.  I mean, bands like Slayer, Metallica – things like that.  That stuff wasn’t hard to find, for me.  A band like The Melvins. I think they truly encompass the full spectrum of the underground in every way.  Just the aggressive punk and heaviness to their sound – the elements of all styles, metal, rock, doom.  They’re just, to me, the perfect band. Always been able to evolve and just constantly do what they want to do.  They are a huge influence on me.  As a player and a long time fan that’s my all time favorite band, so that’s a band that’s always been special to me.  They’re always a band who’s been relevant and influential, and they’ve always been in my life, so that’s important for me to mention. 

  One thing I’m always interested in, Jay, is to hear metal bands right now who’ve been in this game for years give their perspective on the sudden embracing of metal.  It just seems like in the 90s as if metal basically fell off the planet or at least in the mainstream, and there wasn’t  a lot of respect for the genre.  Here in the last five or six years you’ve got press outlets covering metal whereas just a decade ago they wouldn’t given some of these artists a second glance.  Is the music getting better, or are people paying attention?

I think it’s people paying attention.  I think there’s always been good metal bands.  I mean, there’s been plenty of shitty ones as well.  I think it got incredibly popular in the mid 90s when you could go to an arena and see Pantera or Metallica in their hey day.  I think metal did get popularity but with its popularity there were a lot of shit bands.  I think the music industry itself was thriving then too, and so they’re signing on bands just because they think they can sell them, but the talent wasn’t there.  It’s certainly not what you and I might consider “true” metal, but it sounded metallic, and it was just a sign of the industry wanting to get that next big hit, and there was a lot of compromise – not always, but that happens. I think things had to recede a little in metal, for it to come back up.  With the nu metal stuff and all of that you basically had a rethinking of the process, because there were better things happening.  It just needed exposure.   I don’t know if metal is as huge as it was at one point, at least at the mainstream level.  I think there’s a middle ground now where the more extreme stuff has become accessible.  I mean, I can’t speak for other bands, but when money comes into the mix, then what you’re creating is compromised.  Even with these small labels – these guys have a need to make money.  They’re not just in it solely for the art.  They want to sell you record.  They want to make money.

It definitely seems that once you introduce the monetary aspect into the process it fucks it up royally.  That’s not to say bands or artists or musicians should be doing this for free, by any means.  It’s simply a matter of the integrity of the art you create being driven by that monetary need rather than money being something of a peripheral entity for why you do what you do.  You know, when I read these well known zines and publications covering metal, they’re not just covering the high profile metal acts like Mastodon or whoever now, Jay.  There’s a sort of recognition happening for the underground by the mainstream press that I’ve not witnessed in my lifetime, personally.  These smaller, indie labels are producing some of the best metal and best music while the larger labels struggle.  I mean, you guys were on Pitchfork and, to me, that’s exciting if only because the kinds of readers attracted to that site are being exposed to a wholly different level of music than they were say five or six years ago. 

I think it definitely legitimizes it to some degree – the music, that is.  There are artistic elements to it.  I think when you get to that point where it could be looked at as being more pure that’s when that notice seems to come.  Of course there’s also the whole hip thing where the trend happens to be this or that, and a lot of that exposure is on metal right now, and I think if you just stick to what you do – trends be damned – people will find it interesting.  Some won’t, but you’re not making your music for them.  It’s hard to really predict trends.  It’s certainly not something I’m thinking about when I create music.  I don’t consciously think “Oh man, everyone’s gonna love this,” but I’m not naïve enough to not know you’re seeing the kind of exposure these metal bands are getting.  I just hope that once people hear what these bands have to offer they’ll see it as more than just something that’s cool and actually see the artistic merit in what we do.

I think a lot of the disrespect that was brought on by things like nu metal have certainly been done away with, Jay, and I think it has a great deal to do with what you said – that artistic element that’s been, for so long, overlooked.  Bands like Serpentine Path are not creating a scene or a theatrical platform – you’re creating art.  There are bands that are considered almost a joke, and I don’t mean that as a slight to any band in particular, because it’s not that their music is unlistenable, it’s the fact that it’s more about the image than the art, and I think there’s been a shift in that dynamic, and people are noticing. 

It’s got to come from a pure place.  It’s hard to get this purely original idea that’s all your own.  You’re going to find certain things that influence you, and you pay homage to that, but you kind of want to push beyond that.  One of the thoughts that occurred to me when I started playing music was that I wanted to be heavier than the bands I loved and listened to.  I mean, nothing specific, but how can it be heavier than that?  How can I be more extreme than that?  I mean everyone is going to have their opinion and perhaps even those who’ll say “Oh, you’re ripping off this band or that band,” but I think if you stick to what it is you love, and you’re not intentionally setting out to imitate a band, you can be successful at least in the realm of creating something different.  And I’ll say this, if you constantly listen to only the same things over and over again you’re going to get locked up in that, and all of a sudden you’re going to sound like those three albums you love and nothing else.  Just be a fan of music in general.  See the emotions and the range.  Once you know what happy music is you can understand the sad, more darker aspects of it as well.  There’s a full range of emotions that come with different styles of music.  Some will resonate with more than others will.  Like those metalcore bands where the guy is singing all happy about his girl, and then all of a sudden he’s screaming about dark shit – it’s kind of very manic to me.  But ultimately, you can create an emotion and a feeling in a song that you make. 

Well, there definitely seems to be a common thread with bands and musicians who are coming at this from the artistic perspective, Jay.  It’s simply about the process of what you create rather than the image of who you are as an artist.  If all you do is listen to one specific genre of music, what you create will essentially be a mimicry of that.  It just seems to me that these bands who are finding that artistic equilibrium are ones coming to the table with a myriad of influences rather than a streamlined sensibility of what they listen to. 

I think it’s definitely a matter of being able to congeal those influences in a cohesive manner, for sure.  That’s the difficulty.  I mean, bands can attempt to do whatever they want, but for me you can’t have these happy kind of cheerful melodies thrown into the same mix as something dark and brooding.  It just doesn’t seem to have that emotional honesty when it’s done that way.  There are a myriad of influences, and if you can draw from all of these different places, your music is going to be unique.  You know, like Joy Division and other bands like that – they had their own specific sound, and they’ve influenced a number of metal bands.  It all kind of trickles down the same line, man.  There are guys who are the purists, who are like “Oh, it’s gotta sound like this certain something” or whatever, and you may or may not sound like that band.  I think there has to be a good blend.  With Serpentine Path, we had certain parameters we set up, but we weren’t limited to one particular idea or whatever.  We approached it from the perspective that we all knew what sound we wanted to create.  We had that cohesiveness.  Nothing was forced.  I think the next record will be different.  Will it be dramatically or shockingly different?  I don’t think so.  It’s just that you have to constantly be willing to sort of expand what your thinking is concerning the music you create. 

My next question, Jay, is kind of a diversion away from the topic of metal and music itself, but it’s one I ask to kind of gain a grounded perspective on the artists I talk to, but what is that you do in your spare time when you’re not recording or working on stuff for Unearthly Trance or Serpentine Path?  What’s leisure time look like for you?

Man, I like all kinds of stuff.  I like sports.  Baseball or football.  I spend a lot of time with my wife.  We try to travel and do different things whenever the opportunity arises.  I went fishing last week.  I do work a lot (50-60 hours a week), so I try to find as much time as possible to just relax. [Laughs]  I love movies.  I love to read.  I try to keep a good balance with all the things I do.

  Yankees or Mets, man?

I’m Yankees. [Laughs]  I was born and raised right here in New York, so yeah.  [Laughs]

Now, on the topic of books you’re reading or have read recently, any suggestions?

I like everything from nonfiction to fiction to occult stuff.  Right now I’m actually reading The Game of Thrones series.  That’s actually pretty cool.  I’m working my way towards the fourth book, and I’ve really enjoyed reading that.  I read this really cool book recently called SONIC WARFARE.  It was about the effects on using sound in a physical way – the way the military uses it to attack people with or the way sound can have a physical or psychological effect on a person depending upon the different cultures they’re from.  That was a really interesting book. 

You know, I think I am one of six people in the entire nation that is not reading GAME OF THRONES.  I have to now [Laughs].

They’re really great, man.  Darren from Serpentine really got me into them, and I even watched the show, and it was okay.  The books are fantastic, though.  They’re really big, but I pounded through the first three like they were nothing.  Definitely check out that SONIC WARFARE book, though. 

Now, you guys haven’t played a show yet, correct?  And you just recently added a new member.

Yes!  Stephen Flam who played in the band Winter – a band I listened to when I was younger and absolutely loved – has just joined Serpentine Path, and we’ll be playing our first show at the St. Vitus Bar on October 27th, man.  We’re going to debut the lineup, and it’s really exciting.  It’s heavy, man.  We haven’t even debuted the album yet, and we’re already brewing up potential ideas for the next album. 

For me, it speaks volumes that a band who's not yet even played live is already conjuring up ideas for their next release.  There's a work ethic that must be present.  There's an attitude of purity in the art of what is being sonically pursued.  For Serpentine Path, that pursuit is an exercise in the heavy combined with an eerie sensibility of the listener's own fears and apprehensions.  It's not a super group.  It's not a side project.  It's Serpentine Path, and the beast is out today.