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Interview with Page Townsley of Vore
February, 2006 by Ryan Ogle
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If you’ve never had your face slowly peeled off by the razor-sharp claws of blood-thirsty imps that hail from the deepest and fieriest bowels of hell, you have no
clue what kind of fun you’re missing out on. If the long term scarring of this extreme pastime sounds a bit too over the edge for you then you should do the next best thing and turn yourself on to Vore. Based out of Arkansas, Vore has spent the last decade bulldozing over the underground with their de-tuned sonic wave of destruction. Despite sharing the stage with names as big as Shadows Fall, In Flames and Manowar, Vore’s much deserved global recognition has alluded them thus far. However, with the release of Maleficus, which is arguably the heaviest album to hit the independent scene in 2005, things are about to turn around. While we were introduced a few years ago at a shared gig in my hometown of Topeka, Kansas, I figured it was high time to get reacquainted with the beast called Vore. Check it out, fuckers.
If the alcohol from that night hasn’t clouded my memory, the last time I saw Vore, you guys took to the stage without a bass player. You’ve since found Jeremy Partin to fill the void. What led to the vacancy and then Jeremy’s introduction into the band?
Our original bassist and drummer exited the band in 2002. Through courses of action and/or inaction on their parts they showed us that Vore wasn't where they wanted to be. Our original bassist missed practice on a consistent basis and as a result Vore honestly always had more of a three-piece vibe. When Remy joined as drummer and we were rebuilding things we had a really great chemistry clicking between the three of us and that trio vibe was there again. We wanted a bass player but we knew there was no-one locally that would fit with us. Good chemistry within the band is very important to us so we decided we were going to wait until we found the perfect fit. In the interim we used a bass synth module, which we were using when you saw us in Topeka. John had one of those Roland guitar synth pick ups and we ran that into this thing called a Poly-Octave that transposed everything he played down an octave and we ran that signal into a dedicated bass amp. We named it "Phill", our ghost bassist. It helped fill in the bass frequencies and give us a fuller sound live. It wasn't as good as having a bassist, but it was better than playing without one. We fooled a lot of people but it was more of a band-aid than any kind of a permanent solution.
Jeremy Partin is someone that had been a friend of ours for a few years. He lives in Little Rock and used to play guitar in the black metal band Fallen Empire. FE had dispersed and we asked him if he'd be interesting in filling our bass spot. He was all about it and was willing to convert into a bass player. He busted his ass and was only in the band a few months before he was in the studio recording the bass lines for the new album. He's a really cool guy and an awesome fit for Vore musically and personally.
Maleficus also features new drummer Remy Cameron. What’s his story?
Remy used to play for the band Apnea out of Springfield, Missouri. He moved to Fayetteville in 2002 to play for us. He's done a lot of studio work and has some jazz drumming in his background. He’s one of these guys that are really serious about drumming. Just before he joined Vore he spent a couple weeks in New York City at this thing called the Drummer’s Collective, which is like this big drum workshop with all these accomplished drummers giving seminars and one-on-one instruction. He's really solid and committed to the band. We’re very glad to have him as a part of Vore.
So tell me about Maleficus. How would you compare it to your previous efforts?
We’re proud of our past output, but Maleficus is a step forward for us in almost every aspect. From a compositional standpoint Maleficus is a reflection the experience we’ve gained with our years of writing and performing. We also have a new drummer that brings a different approach and more disciplined focus to the band and its material as well as a new bass player. That new blood has been invigorating. Also, with Maleficus we had a death metal professional playing a huge part in the production of the album. All the way around, Maleficus is a tighter and more refined distillation of the Vore metal essence.
Tell me a bit about the writing process for Maleficus. Did you and John write the majority of the music or did the new blood contribute as well?
A couple of the songs on Maleficus had been written right after we finished recording our previous disc Lord of Storms and we had many parts pre-written for others that got fleshed out and nailed down when Remy joined. “The Line That Divides” is the newest track on the album. There were no leftovers or
pre-existing concepts involved with that track. It is one hundred percent brand new Vore from concept to completion.
You recorded the album locally but brought in Colin Davis to master. How did you become involved with him?
We’ve recorded all of our stuff with a guy in Tulsa, Oklahoma named Aaron Allen. He’s a friend and has always done good work for us at a generous price. With Maleficus we really wanted to step things up in the production quality aspect. We contacted Colin originally just to master the album. We were looking for someone that had experience with death metal and we thought a having a pro in that area with a new set of ears towards the project would be beneficial. When it turned out that Aaron wasn’t going to be able to get the mix done for us, we asked
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Colin if he could mix it. Luckily for us he could and things really turned out for the best as a result. Colin’s a great guy, we’re very glad to have had him work on this album. His mix is killer; nothing's being buried or overpowered. It’s very clear. He engineered the mix for maximum performance at high volumes so when you've got Maleficus in your stereo you should crank it up for the full effect!
I love the artwork on the new album. Where did the design/concept come from?
We wanted to get the artist that did our Lord Of Storms cover to do one for us again but he wasn’t able to do one for us this time. We had various different designs lying around in a folder that we presented to another local artist. He took them and pitched a few different ideas at us. We have this seven-eye graphic that we’ve used for years and this was a revamped version of that. We really |
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Being based in Arkansas, do you feel at all isolated from the death metal scene? If so do you view this isolation as a pro or con and why?
Yes and no. Being a death metal band from Arkansas is almost like being from a foreign country. People are like “you’re a death metal band from where?” This area of the country certainly isn’t a death metal mecca but death metal is an underground form of music and so much of what happens in the underground these days takes place online, in print and through word of mouth. We’ve worked hard to get our name out in those circles over the years. Things would no doubt be easier and have moved quicker for us if we lived in a larger population center, but I think there have been some unique opportunities we’ve scored here as well. We’re a stand out band in this region which has given us opportunities that might be harder to get in a more competitive area. I think a pro to our relative isolation is that we have existed in a vacuum where we’ve been able to mature and evolve musically without a lot of outside influences.
After 12 years of existence, you have seen trends come and go but you guys have stuck to your guns the whole time. Is the Vore of today what you envisioned it to be back in ’94?
Vore set out to create the darkest, most powerful heavy riff infested music we could. There has been refinement and evolution to our style over the years but our vision and intent have remained intact.
Maleficus is getting some pretty impressive media coverage (i.e. Metal Maniacs, Blabbermouth.net, and so on) Are you finally feeling all those years of hard work pay off?
Yes, definitely. This wave of media attention definitely gives us a feeling of validation and accomplishment. The recognition has been great. Hopefully a good label will take notice and provide us with a home and some support.
Have you been speaking with any labels recently or would you prefer to do things on your own terms?
We were just contacted by a couple recently; we'll see how it goes! We want to get picked up by a label. We just sent a bunch of promos off to European labels and will be hitting the US labels in a couple weeks once our radio campaign takes off. We’d really like for the right label to pick us up. We’re going to keep doing as much as we can on our own regardless but there are limits and barriers. Distribution is a serious hurdle for us. We’re sending stuff out and doing trades with many underground metal distros around the world and that’s a great network but we want to get our album into stores. We’ve been doing good so far selling our CDs on our website at
www.vore.org and we’re up on amazon.com as well. We’ve invested quite a bit into promotion for Maleficus. We were lucky enough to hook up with Earsplit PR and Skateboard Marketing is going to service our album to metal radio this spring, so around March or April you’ll be able to call your local metal station and request some Vore!
Looking at your bio, the band has shared the stage with some fairly big names, Cannibal Corpse, In Flames and Shadows Fall just to name a few. Were those local shows? Are there any shows in particular you could name as your favorite?
Some of those gigs were local. Most of those shows were out of town in places like Tulsa, Oklahoma City and Little Rock. We’ve been fortunate in scoring some killer gigs playing with bands like that in our region. The In Flames and Cannibal Corpse gigs stand out because the members of those bands were so friendly and outgoing towards us. Corpsegrinder really dug us. He gave me his home address and phone number. Anders of In Flames came up to us after the show and asked what label we were on. He couldn't believe we weren't signed. Joey Demaio of Manowar was a super nice guy too. He came up to us after their sound check and asked if we were the local support and he talked to us for about twenty minutes.
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Any chance on going on a tour of your own any time soon?
We’re working on our show calendar for the year right now and plan to set something up. We really want to take Vore out on the road to new audiences. We’re at our best live. Keep checking our website or our myspace page at
www.myspace.com/vorefare for info.
What are your thoughts on the current metal scene?
There’s more killer metal out there today than ever before. The fans are still passionate and supportive of metal and are keeping it alive. I wish more people would come out to shows, but that’s a trend across the board afflicting live music these days.
Any final comments?
Thanks for the interview Ryan! We appreciate you giving us the opportunity to expose Vore to the readers of Live4Metal.com! I’d just like to take a few moments and hawk our stuff and talk about Vore’s future plans.
In late March we’ll be servicing Maleficus to metal radio all across the US, Canada and a few stations in the U.K. via Skateboard Marketing, so call your local metal station and request some Vore this spring! Later this year we plan to re-master and re-release our previous CDs Dead Kings Eyes and Lord Of Storms (we’re currently sold out of both) and put them together as a digipack later. Right now we’re writing for the next Vore album. Not sure when we’ll get into the studio to record it at this point, maybe early next year.
Our new CD Maleficus is available through www.amazon.com or on our website at
www.vore.org for $10 North America/$12 Rest Of World. You can send a money order to us (US funds payable to Page Townsley) at VORE, P.O.BOX 8425, FAYETTEVILLE, AR 72703, USA. We always throw some Vore stickers in with each order.
Got that, www.vore.org
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