They have always been on the more interesting fringe of the local music scene, beavering away on their impressive self released music. Currently deep in the depths of recording Album number 3, which has been in the works for longer than they care to admit (which would be since 2019s Exit/Eject)I caught up with Sam Jansen from FOREST for a quick chat about the direction of their new music..
Exit/Eject was indeed our last record, but all that time has allowed us to flesh each song out a lot more than we usually would. Since releasing that one and taking it over to Japan we’ve all without a doubt, grown up a bit. When Exit/Eject dropped, Peter was the only 30 year old in the band, now 4/5ths of the band are 30+ and are having to take adult pills before bed because our bones hurt like they never used to. But to answer your question directly I’d say it’s considerably more mature both in terms of lyrical content and sound.
I think Exit/Eject had quite a proggy feel to it, does your new found maturity allow you to be not offended by the term “proggy” or would you prefer to be labelled as Post Screamo Anger Bunnies?
Haha, proggy is fine. We’ve always walked a strange line musically, I think Forest exists somewhere between Prog and Punk but I’ve never really been able to put a proper label on it.
That’s always a good thing, labels are for condiments. I know you guys have a healthy DIY approach and the last 2 albums have been impressive sonically, do you have a favourite piece of music equipment and why?
That’s such a hard question to answer, I could talk all day about my love for customizing my perfectly good guitars, or all the pedals Kyle and I go through, or all the synths Peter and I get way too excited about but I think if I had to highlight something it would be our Session SSM-1202 Analogue Mixer. I found this treasure at the local tip about 4 years ago, it cost me $20. I don’t know where it came from or why it was thrown out, I don’t even know if it’s considered a “good” product by audio professionals. There is no information on it anywhere, all I know is that it adds a layer of taste to everything we do and it has a fucking brilliant EQ on each channel. We used it to track most the vocals and guitars on Exit/Eject and now we are using it on album number 3 to track EVERYTHING and so far it is sounding incredible.
What is it that inspired you to get into music in the first place?
That is a hard question to answer because I don’t really know the answer, I think it probably has something to do with the fact that music doesn’t really have any wrong answers. Like film and art it’s a creative outlet that is only bound by the rules you define when creating it. I hope that makes sense.
Sure does, how far away are we from hearing the new stuff?
Well we have been playing a lot of new stuff live to help iron out the kinks and sort discover the songs a bit more. We’ll actually be debuting a new track at the Panda Room on the 3rd of Sept. But as far as our release schedule goes, we are going deep into the mines of Moria from Oct-Nov in hopes that we can get at least a single out to everyone by the end of the year, if that doesn’t happen it’ll be early 2023 for sure.
Looking forward to it!
Todd Macalpine
Pic by Allyson McGrory
https://forestheband.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/Forestheband
Forest will be playing Splendour in The Boatyard at The Panda Room on 3rd of September along with Lady Valiant, The Brazilians, Bigfoot Mafia, Heffa Lump and The Katie Richards Band. Tickets are available HERE.
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