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What You Can Expect From “Nationalistic Savagery”

Writer's picture: Lee RoachLee Roach

With “Chemicals of Annihilation” and “Nuclear Winter” Pestilent Age wanted to experiment with a raw sound. Every riff was recorded in its entirety straight through, drums were left as natural and unproduced as possible, and even the vocals were left alone save for a touch of reverb. We were pleased with the end result, and to be honest it felt really good to record songs the way that bands did back in the 80’s and 90’s. Now that we’ve accomplished this feat our quest to find “OUR SOUND” has taken us in a different direction. This time around we decided take a swipe at a cleaner, more refined, and harder hitting sound.

“Nationalistic Savagery” is the title of our next single. Much like the track “Black Death” “Nationalistic Savagery” was written by all three of us simply jamming out riffs in a room and arranging them as we went. Although all of us play pivotal roles in the writing process of every song “Nationalistic Savagery” owes the lion’s share of credit to our bass player Spud. When we wrote “Medieval Holocaust” Spud had almost no experience on bass. Since that time he’s spent countless hours working diligently and these singles shine light on all of that hard work. Having Spud bring riffs and songs to practice has helped us experiment with new musical concepts in ways we would otherwise have never been able to fathom. More perspectives brought to the table means more musical possibilities, and Spud has been nothing but instrumental in that. Bass leads can be heard right from the get-go, a continuing theme we’ve worked on with this new music. Spud’s unorthodox riffing doesn’t quite sound like anyone else and “Nationalistic Savagery” is full of these riffs. Fast, heavy, and different we wanted to capture the aggression and intricacy of such a piece with clarity and precision. With the help of Kyle Langley we think we have achieved just that.

While in the studio with “Nationalistic Savagery” we recorded both our guitar and bass tracks in smaller sections. Spud and Roach were able to focus more on getting the perfect tone out of their fingers. Accenting proved to be of the utmost importance. Naturally previous singles placed accenting on the top of the priority list but the end result of recording in smaller sections seems to place an indisputable advantage to getting this just right.

Steve’s drums were recorded using our brand new Alesis Strike Pro E-Kit. Cymbal bleed has finally been eliminated and the toms at long last are as loud as we’d like them to be. On “Nationalistic Savagery” drums were recorded in record time with the new kit. An E-Kit allowed us to get right down to business. Steve and Kyle didn’t have to stop and tune drum heads between songs, we didn’t have to spend a ton of time micing up the kit and finding the best tone with the least amount of cymbal bleed. Even with all of these advantages the biggest benefit of this kit is we get to decide what the drums sound like from scratch. Tonal options for the entire band really open up when we can change what the drums sound like at any point in the mixing process.

Continuing with the theme of small section recording the vocals were recorded line by line. Pronunciation has become an area Roach has improved on over time with hard work and “Nationalistic Savagery” is the first song we hope to showcase this. Improvements in modern technology have also afforded us the ability record with a condenser mic and then go back and model that mic after some of the best mics in the world with stunning accuracy. This once again leaves us with a ton of room for experimentation and gives us a wider creative space to work with.

All of this hard work and constant recording is yielding results. By the end of this, not only will Pestilent Age bring our fans 8 new songs but we will have figured out both a creative and tonal direction we wish to pursue when we record our next full length album. Both our creative freedom and our fans are important to us and we work hard to push our creative boundaries as far as we can in order to bring the listener something both brutal and unique. Stay tuned because “Nationalistic Savagery” will be released before too long.

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