Say Your Prayers
"I can honestly say this was the most unpleasant recording experience I’ve ever had; I pretty much hated almost every part of it."
"I can honestly say this was the most unpleasant recording experience I've ever had; I pretty much hated almost every part of it,” LORD main-man “Lord Tim” Grose laughs, speaking about new record, Digital Lies, from his Wollongong studio. “We probably came back into it a bit too soon after the break (after taking 2011 off), and no one was in the right mindset to write or record. Then I went and made it hard for myself, writing parts I couldn't play properly yet. Then we had the usual fun LORD things like orchestras, two hundred-voice choirs, arranging voice actors.
“I wrote the bulk of this one and did everything in the process from the early demo recordings to the proper recording and production, mastering, artwork layout, video clips – everything. That's a good six months of hard work with no income because my studio and life is tied up doing this album. By the end of it, I was absolutely over it. I think it actually turned out pretty well, but I tell you what,” he adds, laughing again, “there was nothing I wanted to see the back of more when I was in the middle of it.”
This isn't surprising. The record incorporates countless styles, layers and nuances. Yet within the grandiosity is humour. For example, 2D Person In A 3D World, a shameless cock-rock anthem that's an amusing prod at anyone taking their devotion too seriously. “I used metal-heads as one of the examples because if there's one thing a true metal-head is, it's passionate about this sort of music and lifestyle. Let me just clarify that I absolutely love metal. I've been listening to it since I was a kid and playing it around the world my entire adult life. You'll rarely find me out of stretch jeans, high-top sneakers and band T-Shirt, so I'm probably right on the borderline of the people I'm singing about here,” he laughs. “But I also have other interests besides metal that I'm just as passionate about. Metal is something I love, but it doesn't define every aspect of my life. It's when you get people who wake up in the morning and you just know their jammies are denim and covered in patches, and they angrily eat their brutal Coco Pops while telling everyone how metal they are on Facebook every five minutes. They've crossed the line from a fan into a caricature of themselves.”
While not taking it to such extremes, their devotion has enabled LORD to become one of Australia's premier metal acts. Since Grose folded long-running favourites Dungeon in 2005 and renamed the band, they've toured nationally and internationally with artists like Queensrÿche, Saxon and Iced Earth. The frontman has said Dungeon's demise essentially set the quartet back a few years. Does he feel LORD is finally positioned where he initially envisioned it to be when he changed the name change? “Yes and no. Nostalgia's a powerful thing and to some people we'll never compare to who we were between 2002 and 2005, when Dungeon was at its peak. Which is ironic since we still play the same songs and we would have evolved into the same band we are now had we kept the name. We still have a bit of work to do in Europe, where Dungeon was fairly well-known, but we've taken a lot of matters into our own hands now and making a concentrated effort to change that. I think we made the right choice and think we're in a far healthier position now than we would have been if we kept coasting the way we were going.”
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