Vulturic Eye are an oddly interesting bunch; confident – or maybe even slightly confrontational? This conundrum, along with the inclusion of their track ‘Mars Sector 6’ on one of our covermount CDs led us to dig around in their musical manifesto for more information.
“There is no hierarchy in Vulturic Eye, there is no personality. We could claim to be called Jason and live our life as a chivalric knight but that would be a fiction,” comes the answer from the UK’s Vulturic Eye as we approach the collective to find out more. “We have been circling the underground for many years and continue to do so in various guises, you have seen us, admired us, despised us; the EYE is simply the latest incarnation.” But how do they go about their business: “Unhindered by labels or financial necessity the Vultures are free from the suffering of definition and expectation. It is the nature of fandom to cripple, of popularity to poison, audiences never know what could have been if they hadn’t been so tied to the notion of what a band is. The irony of this is that the stronger desire or affection, the more inevitable the spiral into disappointment. We exist for ourselves and proffer nothing but disappointment to those who seek to define us.” OK, so we won’t attempt to define them. Tell us about the band name instead? “The power of the eye as a window to the soul has been noted across civilisations of all denominations; the vulture’s eye, a ‘vulturic eye’ if you will, shows nothing, not remorse, desire or intention. It is a perfect metaphor for our mission.”
So what is their mission, musically speaking: “We are a DIY band, we are ‘signed’ to a DIY label. There is no growth in any other path than the one you plough for yourself. We are a metal band, we have been called progressive but the term is so mired in dogma it is difficult to unpick what that means. Fundamentally we write songs, they may be ‘progressive’ in structure but we reject the masturbation that passes as modern prog, just as we deny the pastiche that the genre became. Lyrically we are obsessed with the human condition; we have a special place for our love of cults and the desires that drive them.” OK, so…. “We stand alongside bands like Morbid Angel, Rush, Dismember, Emerson Lake and Palmer, artists like Tom Waits, Peter Gabriel. We live in an increasingly diverse and diffuse age of music, in many ways the notion of contemporaries becomes increasingly irrelevant, where do we stand? Alphabetically with Voivod or nestling alongside Bonnie Tyler on your Mp3 player of choice.” That being the case, what makes them stand out then – how do they differentiate themselves? “Increasingly the problem that faces metal is that it has turned in upon itself. We see our peers forming bands for ‘fun’, turning profit from some misguided nostalgia. If I want to listen to mid ’90s death metal I don’t need you to form a band, I’ll go to my record collection. Metal is full of amazing players who stand so far in awe of their heroes that they’re clipping their own wings. We have no heroes.”
We included one of the band’s tracks on issue 072’s covermount CD, why did they make this particular selection to introduce themselves to ZT readers? “The track ‘Mars Sector 6’ was picked as the single, we created a video and used that as the initial launch pad for the band. Musically this is for the few, not the many – so we picked this track as a difficult entry point – it simply made sense to weed out the weak early.”
“The truth is that everything we do is bound by the same musical input, drums, bass, guitar, vocals, so tonally there are strong similarities. However the nature of the songs – lyrically, harmonically and rhythmically is substantially different. Musically we are constantly pushing the boundaries of our songwriting ability, attempting to narrow the gap between intention and experience. As a painter it’s easy to see your work develop, realism allows you to easily chart the distance between the original image and the final piece. In music the struggle is abstract, transposition of emotion through chords, melody and rhythm. This is the challenge and one we’ve faced for decades. There is a romantic notion of music being some gift from the muses but it’s not, it’s graft, sweat, experimentation and restlessness.”
And how about away from recording to live performance? “We do play live but shows are limited due to other touring commitments. We have a recording booked for the end of the year so the current focus is writing and preparation. We have recently released the first of our Vulturic Variations singles which will eventually combine to become an EP. These are homage (or hatchet job depending how attached you are to the originals) to artists we are aware of. The discussion at the moment for the next single is centred around Marvin Gaye and Type O Negative. The second EP will be out before the end of the year.”
Band name: Vulturic Eye
Formed: From detritus and resentment
Origin: The mother Earth
Current release / demo: Vulture Manifesto
Connect with Vulturic Eye
www.vulturiceye.com and “head to Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, iTunes, all of these parasitic hubs contain our blood, sweat and tears.”
