#will lindsay

In our conversation last year, Will Lindsay (vocals/guitars) of Chicago’s blackened doom bastions Indian remarked that he’d been mainly listening to power electronics before the recording of 2011’s Guiltless.  It’s clearly a listening habit that’s only intensified since then as Indian’s latest release, From All Purity (Relapse), shows the band fusing their cauterized doom with the discordant sterility of electric noise. In the same interview Lindsay wasted no time in saying that he had just wanted to make “a really unhappy record” with Guiltless.  The obvious understatement gives a little perspective on the simplistic, albeit unwelcoming, origins of Indian’s music.  They are the sounds born from a despairing dread that’s both genuine and purgative.  Lindsay’s summation of From All Purity as a “really dark, ugly, fucked up record” might at first read like metal grandstanding at its best, but a few seconds of the album’s forty minutes reveals the disquieting reality of his statement. 

  Opening with the nearly eight minute track “Rape,” the album begins by showing Indian’s methodical approach to sonic disorder.  The song festers in a push/pull dissonance before mercifully, if only briefly, untying the knot with a chord resolution dirge and thudding percussion.  All the while, screams of the track’s title hover over the noise like a mutilated descant birthed from the pitch that’s been created.  The song provides a clear statement for the album’s direction and tone of unabated malevolence.  “Rhetoric of No” serves as the album’s closest approach to being ‘catchy’ with its percussion momentarily breaking the surface of the otherwise electronic slough haze that fittingly shrouds the other tracks.  The incorporation of abrasive electronics on From All Purity works beyond just a postscript for Indian’s style of blacked out doom.  Otherwise benign feedback and static both take on roles malicious and sinister to chew the already mutilated edges of Indian’s music. 

What was the thought process behind the last album, Guiltless?  Was there a frame of reference you guys were working with?

It’s kind of complex, because I’m not a founding member of the band.  Guiltless was actually the first album I played on.  I was playing in another band, and I lived out in Washington at the time, and I spent a couple of years out there playing with them.  I was really unhappy, and it was a bad time for me mentally and emotionally.  I was coming out to Chicago, and I had a big fucking chip on my shoulder, man [laughs].  I was a really unhappy person, and I wanted to make a really unhappy record.  The record certainly wasn’t fully my creation by any means.  Just speaking for myself, personally.  I joined the band, and I kind of wanted to make a statement with the album, and it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done.  I’m really happy with the way it came out.  For a year leading up to recording the album, I’d been listening to a lot of noise and power electronics, and I honestly just wanted it to be as unpleasant as possible. 

So with the new album you guys just wrapped up recording.  What was the direction this go round?

When we were writing Guiltless, I was still in Wolves in the Throne Room, so I was pretty busy.  I was coming out to Chicago to do stuff with Indian in between doing stuff with Wolves.  We recorded over half the album between Wolves tours, really.  With the new album it wasn’t really an easy record to do.  It was a really difficult writing process this time, actually.  There was personal problems with one of the guys in the band who’s no longer in the band anymore.  Leading up to and parting ways with the guy was difficult, but it was hampering things as far as creativity goes. 

Was a lot of that angst and frustration poured into the writing process for this newest album?

Yeah, man.  It’s a pretty fucked up record [laughs].  When we sent it to Relapse not too long ago, the three main guys that we talked to from the label all wrote us and said it was a challenging listen, so [laughs].  Only a few people have heard it, but the few people who have are saying it’s a really dark ugly fucked up record.  No doubt about it. 

  When’s the expected release date?

We don’t have a date yet.  We still have to submit the artwork which we’re going to be submitting – I just saw the proofs for it, actually.  At a rough guess, I’d say sometime in the fall.  The original talk was August or September, but we didn’t expect everything to take this long to get together. 

Any touring plans in the works?

We’ve been talking about it, but we haven’t gotten anything too solid yet.  We’re gonna wait and find out the release date and start going from there.  Hopefully we can make it out to Europe next year. 

When you see a band like Indian getting press from outlets traditionally dedicated to non-metal genres, what are your thoughts?  There seems to be a pretty frequent discussion of “hipster metal” and other nonsense.  What’s your take?

I know NPR streams metal albums and things like that.  I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it.  On the other side of the token, I’ve seen articles written about bands I know personally, and there’s the whole “Hey look, I’m valid, because NPR or MSNBC or whoever the fuck is covering my band.”  People want to embrace the fact that they’re being covered by these traditional press outlets and then feel like they’re suddenly “real” or something.  I just don’t understand why people feel like that commentary from that specific place is any more valid than someone doing a blog or something like that.  I mean if you make The New York Times’ end-of-the-year list that’s cool, but I don’t think it makes the music more valid.  It doesn’t need any validation.  I’m not an elitist or a snob or anything where I don’t want certain people listening to my music or whatever.  I want anyone to listen to my music and find out what it is.  People can like it and be into whatever scene or any of that. 

  As far as someone whose career hinges on being known and heard, what are your feelings on the need for reliance on social networking for musicians today?

I don’t know.  I guess it’s some good and some bad.  It’s leveled the playing field in a lot of ways, which is a good thing.  Kids in Indonesia and Russia and far flung places where a band’s not going to go, and where they don’t really have a record store there can discover all these different things, and I think that’s pretty neat.  It’s a good thing.  By the same token, though, it’s made it really easy for people to not have to put a lot of work into what they’re doing.   There’s bands that have gained pretty much all their popularity through internet forums.  I don’t know if that’s bad or not necessarily, but I think that’s pretty pathetic.  It’s a lot easier to book a tour now.  I started playing in bands and touring and putting out records in the mid 90s.  There wasn’t cellphones or internet.  It was a very different thing then, and there wasn’t nearly the number of people doing it, because you had to work a lot harder to do it.  My laptop and GPS back then going on tour was a prepaid phone card, a phone booth, a map, and a notebook.  Every time a band would come stay at the house or you’d stay at their place, you’d sit down and copy all the contents of their notebook of contacts.  I mean, what ten years ago I’d check my email once a week, and now I have like six fucking email accounts I carry around in my pocket.   

  Obviously technology and our way of communication has evolved, but how do you see the evolution of the metal genre itself, Will?

I can kind of generalize, but I’ve never really kept up specifically with the metal genre.  There was a period in the 90s where I felt like the hardcore scene had a lot more to offer me personally, emotionally, and intellectually than metal did.  I’ve been listening to metal for a little over twenty years now, and I really feel like it’s evolved up to the point where it’s become a little more DIY.  I’ve only been on labels or in contracts for the last half of the last five years, but I really feel like some of the labels now are putting out viable music and adopting the same kind of mindset, at least, of what a punk label would.  There’s four or five guys at the most running it – they don’t have like a huge fucking office with thirty interns.  

What do you enjoy reading when you have the time?

I always make time to read.  Reading is probably the most important thing in my life.  I read a lot of World War II history.  That’s been a thing for me the last couple of years.  Most recently, I’ve been reading a couple of books Gitta Sereny wrote – one of which is called Into That Darkness.  It’s based on the interviews she did with Franz Stangl who was the commandant of one of the extermination camps.  If you ever read one book about the holocaust, I’d say that’s the one.  You won’t get the full story of it, by any means, but just understanding it from a moral level – you won’t find anything better than that book.  She did another one that’s really amazing.  It’s the best biography I’ve ever.  It’s Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth.  She spent several weeks at a time with him interviewing him.  It’s a powerful read.  It takes some time to read, but it will reward you in the end.  Like I said, it’s the best biography I’ve ever read.  Kind of on the lighter side, I just read A Mencken Chrestomathy by H.L. Mencken.  The man’s got a gift for language. 

What’s some music you’ve been listening to lately?

My favorite band playing music right now is this band called The Devil Makes Three.  They’re kind of a country band, I guess.  They’re good friends of mine.  There’s a local band here in town called Anatomy of Habit that I’m quite fond of.  There’s this industrial-sounding band out of Germany called Genocide Organ which I like quite a bit.  Waylon Jennings is always an old standby.  Hank Jr., Johnny Paycheck, Dave Dudley.  Primitive Man’s new one I absolutely love.  It’s a great record.  I just got the new Body record a few days ago.  I love it.