EMQs with Phaeton

EMQs with Phaeton

Hi everyone! Welcome to another EMQs interview, this time with Canadian Progressive Metal band, Phaeton. Huge thanks to their Bassist, Ferdy Belland, for taking part. 

What is your name, what do you play and can you tell us a little bit about the history of the band?

I’m Ferdy Belland, bassist for Phaeton. Our drummer Colin Righton formed the band in Spring of 2017 by gathering together like-minded musicians he had played with separately over the years. Our lead guitarist Kevin Thiessen had recorded several solo albums of ambient psychedelic prog under the name Azsension, and Colin was Kevin’s go-to drummer. Our other lead guitarist Daniel Airth had played with Colin in the tech-death quartet Chaos Logic. And I’d been playing rootsy blues-rock with Colin in the Bison Brothers, although both of us were long-haul metalheads from way back. It was a natural fit when all four of us came together. Kevin and Dan had already been writing instrumental prog-metal songs on their own, unbeknownst to each other, and Colin saw the potential instantly. There were more than enough points of musical connection for us to immediately click and get progging! 

How did you come up with your band name?

We’re all fascinated with astronomy and cosmology, and when we all decided that our fledgling band was a good thing and was going to work well, we started discussing what the hell we’d call ourselves. “Bludgeoned Coprophagist” didn’t fit, or “Knuckles Clenched White” and such, but we stumbled upon the theory of the proto-planet that collided with the primordial Earth billions of years back. The orbiting shrapnel from the cataclysm eventually coalesced gravitationally into what is now the Moon, and the shock of the impact galvanized amino acids and such to create life on the molecular level. How’s THAT for a cerebral prog-metal concept? The colliding proto-planet in question has been named both Theia and Phaeton by various cosmologists, and in 2017 there were already a few bands named Theia, so Phaeton we became if only to narrow down any confusion in the prog-metal community. And the name “Phaeton” stands out in a scene where metal bands are usually named “Asmodeus” or “Shattered Mandible.” 

What Country / Region are you from and what is the Metal / Rock scene like there?

We hail from the Key City of the Kootenays – Cranbrook, British Columbia! We’re tucked away in the very southeastern corner of the province, in the towering mountain shadow of the Canadian Rockies. It’s a former sawmill town of 22,000 people, and we’re only a short drive away from the American centers of Spokane and the Idaho Panhandle, and the Montana Rockies, so it’s not as if we’re all bummed out and trapped in some remote former Hudson’s Bay Company trading fort or anything. The regional music scene in the Kootenays is surprisingly bustling – there are a number of busy ski-resort towns surrounding us that are ultra-popular with tourists and dreadlocked Australian snowboarders, so the nightlife is thriving. And there is a pulse to the punk and metal scenes, especially in Nelson and Fernie, and it’s growing in Cranbrook too. We’re the only prog-metal outfit around these parts, and we’re respected and accepted, so there are lots to be said for being unique and following the beat of your own (double-kick) drum. 

 What is your latest release?

Our forthcoming sophomore album is “Between Two Worlds,” which will be released to the public in its entirety on Bandcamp on Friday, April 21st! We’ve already received an exciting number of views for the videos we’ve released for the tracks “Monsoon” and “Refraction,” and there will be other singles to come! 

Who have been your greatest influences?

As a bassist, my heroes are Cliff Burton of Metallica, Geddy Lee of Rush, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, Chris Squire of Yes, Gene Simmons of KISS (say whatever the hell you want about KISS; yes, Simmons is a Grade-A asshole, but he’s a way better player than he gets credit for, and besides, nobody begged for the Paul Simonon action figure when they were a kid), Sting (when he was in the Police, thanks – I can’t stand his lame-ass solo output), Tony Levin of King Crimson, session god Leland Sklar, Joe Lally of Fugazi, Eric Avery of Jane’s Addiction, and way too many others for one measly Internet to list. I’m drawn to bassists who not only know how to be fundamental and supportive in their basslines but of course, I love melodic adventurousness and bursts of technical flash when it’s needed. I try to balance myself that way as a bassist, whether I’m composing and performing with Phaeton or anyone else. No-nonsense meat-and-potatoes bassists like Cliff Williams and Dee Dee Ramone mean as much to me as Billy Sheehan or Jaco Pastorius. It’s all about doing the job that’s needed at the time it’s needed. And I keep discovering new bassists that thrill and inspire, especially in the worlds of metal and prog, where there’s no room to be a slouch. 

What first got you into music?

I grew up in a musical household. My Mom was an OG Rockabilly Queen and an aspiring songwriter who wanted to be Wanda Jackson when she grew up. And I had two older brothers who were already in high school when I was in elementary, so my earliest memories are hundreds of LPs shelved around the living-room stereo — Mom would play Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Charlie Rich while my brothers were spinning Nazareth and Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac and Cheap Trick and the “Grease” soundtrack. So music was a universal element in my everyday life, and I was indoctrinated early… Like the Jesuits say: “give me a boy until he’s seven and he’ll always be a Jesuit.” When I became a teenager in the 1980s, Pink Floyd was the first band I ever fell in love with and I was utterly fascinated with and deliberately sought out their entire recorded output, so I was bitten by the prog-rock bug early, too. When I entered Senior High, I discovered thrash metal – Slayer’s “Reign In Blood” and Metallica’s “…And Justice For All” were the albums that inspired me to cross the line from diehard music fan to diehard participating musician. It’s all been a crazy whirlwind ever since. 

If you could collaborate with a current band or musician who would it be?

I’d like to work with Beyond Creation – those guys are some of the best tech-metal players to come out of Canada in years, and their bassist runs rings around me. I have mutual friends who know Devin Townsend, and him being one of the brightest lights in Canadian metal ever – well, that would also be a dream come true. 

If you could play any festival in the world, which would you choose and why?

Wacken, hands down. Even if Phaeton couldn’t wrangle an anonymous 20-minute side-stage set, I want to attend one of those events just as an excitable metal fan. That’s my version of a pilgrimage to Mecca. To see tens of thousands of tangled mops and bristly beards and black T-shirts all surging in one big happy messy mass. Besides, I look for any excuse to visit Europe, and if I’m seeing the autobahnen roll by through the windshield of a rented Mercedes tour van, then that’s when I’ll say that I made it. 

What’s the weirdest gift you have ever received from a fan?

We were playing Colin’s birthday celebration gig in the mountain resort town of Kimberley BC, which is where he’s originally from. A nice, pretty girl came up to me after our set and introduced herself. She’d heard I was a big record collector and passed me over a Chuck Mangione record. I couldn’t be a jerk about it. Nobody wants to say awful shit like: “you call THIS a GIFT???” So I thanked her sincerely for her generosity and her kindness and gave her a big hug. I still have that record. I usually purge all the unlistenable crap out of my library, but I can’t in good conscience turf that one. It meant so much to her to give me that. I have no idea why. 

If you had one message for your fans, what would it be?

I’d like to thank anyone who finds enjoyment in the music Phaeton creates. Even with the worldwide explosion in popularity of all these various genres and subgenres of the overall metal family, certain strains of prog-metal can still be a hard sell for certain listeners. Especially all-instrumental prog-metal where there’s nobody singing or screaming or croaking out demonic gutturalisms. We’re certainly not the only band out there who’s writing in that particular vein, so we don’t consider ourselves to be alien or post-exotic or anything. So when we receive praise, whether it’s at a show or through email or on our social media outlets or whatever, we take it with pride and joy. Sure, we songwrite to please ourselves, but it means so much to us that we truly reach others, as well.  

If you could bring one rock star back from the dead, who would it be?

It’s a toss-up between Chris Cornell and Jeff Buckley. 

Chris Cornell was one of the all-time greatest rock vocalists of the past 35 years, and his vocal range seemed limitless – he sang as high as he needed to, like a human trumpet. There was true emotion in his voice, whether he was shattering glass on “Jesus Christ Pose” or the softer and more somber stuff he did on the “Temple of the Dog” album. I never tired of hearing him sing, even with his Audioslave stuff. He was inventive as a guitar-driven songwriter, the place where psychedelia, punk, and metal all met, and he’s still one of the only people who could write riffs in odd time signatures and maintain a human groove to them. His suicide was shocking and saddening to me. I didn’t see it coming. I don’t think anybody did. It was one thing for an emotionally unstable musician like Kurt Cobain to crack under the pressures and strains of suddenly being declared the John Lennon of the 1990s, but Cornell killed himself in 2016 – long, long after Soundgarden’s global heyday, and as far as the layperson knew everything was going great for him. He shouldn’t be gone.

Jeff Buckley’s untimely death was a massive loss for music. That standalone 1994 album “Grace” is one of my all time favorite albums. Here was this alternative-rock version of Lord Byron, with a stunning vocal range and emotionally gripping vocal delivery, applying delicate and intricate psychedelia and world-music influences and proggy touches into a rock framework, and nobody else sounded like him. Nobody. Buckley was the only recording artist of his time who could convincingly project the classic Bohemian Artist persona in an admirable and appealing way – that was truly who he was. And he died in a swimming accident, of all things – he decided to take a dip in the Mississippi on a whim and the undercurrents pulled him down and away and he joined that “Dead at 27” club without overdosing. There were a lot of people who believed Buckley was going to evolve into a majorly influential superstar, with a long and promising artistic career ahead of him. I was one of them. And now he’s captured in amber forever on that one album. 

What do you enjoy the most about being a musician? And what do you hate?

Even after 35 years at this, I am still swept away by the wonder of watching my hands race around the bass in a detached state of hyper-awareness, creating thunderous low-end melodies out of an overdriven amplifier and meshing it all with three good friends, either in the studio or on the stage. I love connecting with audiences, up close and hot and sweaty. I love the overall musical culture, and the metal community exudes camaraderie, for the most part. It gives me enormous satisfaction to pick my bass up from its stand and sling it over my shoulder and be confident that I can make it walk and talk, especially when I remember being a wide-eyed teenager who gaped at tablature sheets the same way I gaped at Egyptian hieroglyphics. The downside is having to deal over and over again with fragile egos, and those who radiate more obnoxious attitudes than true talent… The world of music would be a whole lot better if there weren’t so many damn musicians involved in it (laughs).

If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

I’d like to see more and more recording / performing artists take the self-contained, do-it-yourself approach to their careers, as opposed to moping alone behind their household DAW and expecting upper-echelon movers and shakers to suddenly recognize their genius and swoop in and do all their work for them. A lot of people still have this skewed idea that professional music is a fast road to Easy Street, and it’s due to all this wistful nostalgia for pop-music decades of yore where there was more money being flung around to the undeserving and the undertalented. It would separate the wheat from the chaff. I would also like to see more and more people flip the bird to all the arena rockers. Nobody needs to spend five hundred to a thousand bucks to see Metallica live. The world is gradually moving into a digital version of the Victorian Age, with an ever-widening gap between the Haves and the Have-Nots, and I don’t want the struggling members of the Working-class to be denied live music because of it. I’d like to see growing attendance in smaller, intimate shows in bars or pubs or coffee houses or theatres, regardless of whatever style the music might be. It would keep the musicians humble and down-to-earth, and it would keep the audience members happy in anxious times.

Name one of your all-time favourite albums?

“Siamese Dream” by the Smashing Pumpkins. Still, the best thing Billy Corgan ever did. He combined elements of prog, psychedelia, shoegaze, and classic rock into this one-of-a-kind musical statement. His lyrics on that album’s songs were the most emotionally honest and revealing he ever recorded. With all of the majestic guitar-overdub orchestration, it was almost as if he was channeling Brian May into an alternative-rock setting. That was when Corgan’s guitar playing was at its most expressive, and most viscerally convincing. It hit me hard as a 22-year-old, and even these days when I give it a serious listen, once every 18 months or so, the genius and the pain still leap out of the speakers. A remarkable achievement from a remarkable talent, and he reached deep into my young-adult mind with a velvet glove cast in iron. 

What’s best? Vinyl, Cassettes, CDs, or Downloads?

I’ll always champion the vinyl LP format. I have long arguments about this with my recording-engineer friends, and yes, digital recordings are superior to analog recordings, but the magic with the vinyl sound depends entirely on whether or not you’ve actually invested hundreds of dollars into a good direct-drive turntable with a new stylus and adjustable weighting and pitch controls for your 33 and 45 speeds, as well as good speakers and a powerful amp component and such. If you’re getting caught up in the so-called “Vinyl Resurgence” – and I laugh at that term, since records never went away — you won’t understand what the fuss is about until you ditch your crappy Crossley fold-out portable picnic unit and get a Technics or a Gemini or whatever. The nuances of vinyl, with the true bass frequencies and such, will only come alive if you’re serious about your high-fidelity home stereo system, the same way the old-school audiophiles did it in the 1970s and 1980s. And yeah, the artistic possibilities of the 12-inch physical format are endless. A lot of it is the unconscious human desire to have something real and tangible that’s grasped in your hands, and with the rise of the Internet and online streaming and such, a lot of times music gets reduced to disposable background murmurings. People will stream in their cars, or stream in the kitchen, but more and more people are building kickass home stereo systems and retiring to the living room with the bong or the wine bottle to spend an evening with a relaxing yet immersive Listening Experience… Again, which is what hundreds of thousands of people did 40, 50 years ago. Vinyl is Final. 

If you weren’t a musician, what else would you be doing?

I would be a writer, which I already am, but I’d be working on fulfilling my adolescent dream of bashing out alternative-history science-fiction epics. Dare to dream, people – dare to dream. 

Which five people would you invite to a dinner party?

Stephen King. Les Claypool. Robert Fripp. Johnny Depp. And Wheeler Walker Jr., for inflammatory colour. 

What’s next for the band?

World Domination. In lieu of that, we’re sharpening up our live set so we can reignite our touring presence, which was slammed shut due to the pandemic. It’s not far for us to zoom out from the Rocky Mountains and play the major Canadian cities of Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton, where much of Canada’s prog and metal communities are centered. So in the meantime, we’ll be pushing the awareness of “Between Two Worlds” the best we can – not just nationally in Canada, but as internationally as we’re able. And one day we hope to tour the UK, where much of all this prog hullabaloo erupted in the first place! 

What Social Media / Website links do you use to get your music out to people? A. 

Facebook – www.facebook.com/Phaetonband
Bandcamp – www.phaetonband.bandcamp.com  

Time for a very British question now. As an alternative to the humble sandwich, is the correct name for a round piece of bread common in the UK either a Bap, a Barm (or Barm Cake), a Batch, a Bun, a Cob, a Muffin, a Roll or a Tea Cake?

As a proud citizen of the Dominion of Canada and the British Commonwealth, I am imperially ashamed to admit out loud that I do not know the answer to that striking query. God Save the King. 

Thank you for your time. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

The United Kingdom holds a particular fascination for us barmy colonial tossers in Phaeton, musically and culturally, and we hope to bring our music to Old Blighty sooner than later.

Disclaimer: This interview is solely the property of Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.