After Sanhedrin’superb release, “Heat Lightining”, an interview with them was no brainer. So, we set up a “date” with guitarist, Jeremy Sosville, who talked about the album, the themes that run through it, rock and metal being timeless, their collaboration with Metal Blade, the metal scene in New York and other interesting stuff. Interview: Yiannis Dolas
Rockpages.gr: So, I won’t repeat the cliché that this album sounds like it’s your best so far. I will let you decide, or, let history decide. But, I’m going to say that it’s a very solid album, and I think it’s more focused than the previous one. What do you think?
Jeremy: Yeah, I think you’re probably right. I’d like to think that every album we’ve made was the best album yet. And so it’s good to hear, not just yourself, but some other people who have heard it say the same thing. It probably is more focused sounding, because the last time we wrote a record, there was the whole pandemic situation happening. I was dealing with some family tragedies and the three of us as individuals were just dealing with all kinds of insanity in our lives. This time around the world was a bit more stable, not much I guess, but in comparison anyway! And we were a lot more focused, just in general, with our lives. I think a lot of our lives had calmed down, and we were able to maybe put more attention to details of our music, as opposed to just clinging on to it for dear life, while everything else around us seems to be falling apart.
Rockpages.gr: The themes that drive some of the songs are, for example, getting away from nature, the struggle, the fight of your life, meaning that you stand for what you believe and what you live for. There are, of course, very true metal kind of themes to work on an album.
Jeremy: Yeah, well, we believe in standing up for your convictions. I think that comes across in the lyrical themes. And, yeah, in terms of that, the first thing you mentioned that there is a running theme here about, you know, people kind of losing touch with the natural world around them in favor of modern conveniences and modern life, and how maybe losing touch with those things is resulting in a less better world and less better society.
Rockpages.gr: Maybe it’s also losing yourself…
Jeremy: Exactly, yeah, just sort of…. So, in my case, I moved out of Brooklyn a few years ago and now live closer to nature, and so I’ve been able to reflect on both sides of that coin. And I know Erica (Ed, Stoltz, lead singer and bassist of Sanhedrin), who writes most of the lyrics, she spends a lot of time in nature too. She has a cabin in the middle of the woods that she spends a lot of time during the nicer weather. So, it’s something that we are as individuals. May be able to reflect upon that a lot of people maybe don’t have enough time, or had the luxury of getting away from the rat race, so to speak, to take a moment and reflect on the bigger picture in life.
Rockpages.gr: Well, actually, when I listen to you talking about all that it comes to my mind that maybe rock music, and heavy metal music, of course, is a way to connect with not nature exactly, but with the physicality of things. I mean, metal fans buy music. They love the physical product. They love the Thin Lizzy hat you’re wearing at the moment (Ed, Jeremy wears an amazing Thin Lizzy hat). They do get posters and put them on a frame, put them on the wall (Ed, behind Jeremy there’s rock and metal posters hanging from the wall). I’m not trying to imply anything about other fans, of other kinds of music and say: “metal is the best”, but I think it is a part of our identity, the need to connect with something, to own something.
Jeremy: Yeah, I think with heavy metal, there is that physical contact, whether that be the physical contact of holding the record in your hand and putting it on the turntable and watching it spin, using your imagination to conjure up images while the song is playing, and then the physical connection of going to the festivals, going to the shows, connecting with other people, discussing music in person, and experiencing live…
Rockpages.gr: …as well as arguing and arguing...
Jeremy: Oh yeah. Arguing! Which band has the best demo, or whatever? Yeah, exactly. I have a guitar student right now, who’s like 16, and she’s getting really into heavy metal, and there’s always like this, you know? It reminds me of when I was a kid at that age, and just that, those endless debates over who’s harder, who’s sicker, but it’s, it’s much more of a visceral connection in the heavy metal world compared to other more mainstream music forms, where people are just happy to be fed something and digested without thinking about it. In heavy metal, we seek new things actively and maybe want to find that thing that other people aren’t connected to and connect them to it.
Rockpages.gr: Also, I always thought that heavy metal music, classic rock music. Again, I’m going to refer to the Thin Lizzy hat you’re wearing. It’s like a time machine. When you’re listening to music, like from the 70s, you weren’t born, or even if you were born, you weren’t, in that age where you could appreciate music, go to concerts. But still, if you listen to that kind of stuff, it’s like you’re transcending to that kind of time and place of history, of your memories, or even your fantasies…
Jeremy: I think that that’s the best thing about it. One thing I love about this music scene, particularly as I become an older statesman of it, is that there doesn’t seem to be this ageism that there might be in more popular music. Like when Heaven and Hell put out their record a few years back, it was like these guys are in their 70s, and they made a heavier album than anybody else that year, and that’s all that mattered, was how heavy the record was. And then, there’s just something timeless about certain albums, which is something Sanhedrin strives to do. We want to make a record that if you do listen to it 10 or 20 years from now, it doesn’t sound like it was a time capsule. The same way that our favorite records are like when I I’ve been listening to “Master of Puppets” since I was like 11 years old, and when I put it on now, I still get this visceral reaction to that album. And as I get older as a musician, I even appreciate certain aspects of it more than I would have when I was first hearing it. And those are great experiences.
Rockpages.gr: You’ve mentioned Black Sabbath and Heaven And Hell, also Metallica… I guess as a band, you have some influences. It might be different ones, same ones. I want to talk about “Above The Law”. The gang vocals on the chorus, reminded me a bit of the punk rock from the 70s, but then the song goes into straight metal forms. Maybe a bit away from punk, and that’s a very interesting kind of journey. What do you think?
Jeremy: That was deliberate, like when we did the gang vocals, I wanted it to sound like a Sick Of It All record, because that’s a pretty influential band to me, and we all like those early New York hardcore records, as well as the punk rock stuff. We all as individuals, before we knew each other, we all came up separately through punk rock because it was like an aggressive form of music that you didn’t need to be as proficient as we now are in order to play and write music on, so even though we’ve all gotten better at our instruments and more refined as songwriters and stuff, we would that sort of sneer and attitude has never left any of us. And so it was a lot of fun to be able to incorporate that element into that song.
Rockpages.gr: You’ve been around as a band for 10 years. How do you manage to keep that relationship between you guys? Do you also hang out apart from music? Do other stuff, or is it just music?
Jeremy: I don’t live near the other two anymore, so it’s a little harder to hang out. The band started as three friends writing music together and the idea that we’d later be on Metal Blade Records and touring Europe and all this other stuff never occurred to us at that time. I think it’s just that as individuals, the band means enough to us that whatever challenges are happening outside of the band, we put the effort to make the band a life priority, and then whatever challenges happen within the band, we just sort of do our best to communicate to one another whenever issues come up. Because, we’re long time friends, it’s very easy to do that in a respectful way, as opposed to a way that could be more confrontational. So, it’s just a combined effort of the three of us. It’s a reflection on how much we all value what we’re doing together.
Rockpages.gr: Within 10 years you’ve maintained a remarkable pace on releasing new material. It’s four albums in 10 years. It’s like one album every 2.5 years! How do you do that? Aren’t you afraid that you’re gonna run out of creativity?
Jeremy: No, I have music going in through my thoughts almost every moment that I’m awake! So, I guess I’m blessed and cursed with a very active Muse personally. Writing songs is sort of the backbone of what this band is about, in terms of where we find our most satisfaction. And… to be honest, the songs we write, it’s not exactly the most complex progressive stuff in the world. So, if the moment of inspiration strikes, it generally doesn’t take too long to get a song from the initial idea to a vision of what it should sound like when it’s completed. So, I’ve been writing songs since I was 15 years old, and I, aside from this band, I have two other projects where I’m writing music for at the moment too, it’s just, it’s just one of those things. I have an endless reservoir, I guess.
Rockpages.gr: But still, Sanhedrin’s music might not be very complicated or complex, as you said, there are musical themes that run through each song. It’s not just, a verse and a chorus, right? How do you compose music? Do you have this idea, which you think how you can develop it, or combine it with another one? Or maybe somebody else from the band will suggest something or a change in a song? How do you compose your songs?
Jeremy: It varies from song to song. Typically, I’ll come in with a few parts on guitar that sound good together, and I’ll present it to the other two. And then, Erica (Ed, Stoltz, lead singer and bassist of Sanhedrin) will hear some melodies vocally. And then, sometimes a part that I think would make a good chorus, she thinks would be a good verse. And then with Nathan (Ed, Honor, Sanhedrin’s drummer), I don’t present him any ideas as to what kind of drum beat I want to hear. I just play the moment and then see what he comes with. So that, in that sense, it’s quite collaborative. And then, yeah, the songs are simple, but the devil is in the details. So, we put a lot of effort into little, small, minute details, whether it would be how a change is presenting itself, or maybe, for example, the song “Blind Wolf”, that’s the first single that was out. Typically, on a song like that, after the guitar solo, we’d go back into another chorus; that would be the expected move, but we’re like, “no, we’re just going to rehash the intro real quick and end it… boom”, leave you wanting more. So, just finding little devices like that to use to kind of keep it interesting while still keeping it a pretty standard, typical songwriting formula is kind of tricks that we like to employ.
Rockpages.gr: On “The Fight Of Your Life”, I guess the hero brings a guitar with him or her. What would you bring in the fight for your life?
Jeremy: I guess the same; a guitar and maybe 100 watt tube amplifier to blast away the enemies and convert those who need conversion to the religion of heavy metal.
Rockpages.gr: You are signed to Metal Blade, an historical and very important label. How do you feel about that? And how do you see the band developing and going further?
Jeremy: Well, I feel pretty honored. I think we, all three of us, are pretty honored… Honored and humbled by it. I agree with you that it is a historical label. Perhaps, the most historically significant independent heavy metal label of all time. It’s the example by which other heavy metal labels have come about and be inspired by. And so with that, we take our work very seriously. We always have, but we know that we have a great crew of people there working for us, and we don’t want to let them down by not doing our part. We still work just as hard as we did when we weren’t signed to anybody. But now what Metal Blade does is if the band were to scale up to any other level, beyond where we are, we don’t have to worry about the label being able to handle it, because they can handle a band at our level that’s quite small, all the way up to bands that sell out theaters and arenas, like Amon Amarth, Cannibal Corpse and some of the biggest bands in the history of the genre, in terms of attendance at shows and legendary status. If Metal Blade can handle their scale, they can certainly handle us.
Rockpages.gr: Coming from New York what do you say that it’s the condition of the metal scene in New York these days?
Jeremy: I think it’s fairly strong. I know that a lot of bands that aren’t from New York look forward to their tour dates in New York, because they’re some of the strongest shows of their tours. As far as the local bands we have, we’ve always just had a thriving scene in in New York, in terms of the bands from here, there’s a hunger for live music. New York is a live entertainment, capital of the USA and perhaps the world… People travel from all over the world to see a show at, say, Madison Square Garden. So, yeah, I think it’s in a good place. The difficulty is that a lot of these smaller clubs have a hard time staying open due to rent increases and regulations and stuff like that. But there, there’s always a group of people that are willing to take those risks, and we’re grateful for it,
Rockpages.gr: You visited Greece, like, four or five years ago and played at the Up The Hammers festival. How was that experience for you?
Jeremy: Oh, it was great. None of us had ever been to Greece before, and it was a treat to visit Athens and see what Athens is like, and the festival itself was a great festival to play. It was a very well orchestrated festival. We got to see a lot of really good bands. We played and then we had the rest of the day to just enjoy the show and enjoy the city. And we have recently spoken with the organizers of that festival in hopes to perhaps returning in the next year or two. I hope we can, because we had a great time.
Greece kind of reminds me of Germany in the sense that they have some very fiercely loyal heavy metal fans that are just all about it. And Greece has some good bands. I mean, one of my favorite death metal bands is Greek… Dead Congregation to me is one of the finest examples of death metal I’ve ever heard.
Rockpages.gr: I am always amazed when somebody from, you know, the other side of the of the planet knows Greek metal bands and the stuff they’ve done.
Jeremy: I think it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where there’s just a curiosity with heavy metal fans, where we don’t care where you’re from, we don’t care how old or young you are. If you’re creating something that’s super interesting, or pushing the boundaries, or you’re making just super very sincere music, that’s all that matters. And, it’s kind of a refreshing approach to living life when so many people are trying to create division among whether it be ethnicity or societal norms or this and that’s nice to be part of a community where the only thing that matters is the music, and we don’t worry about those other things.
Rockpages.gr: Worrying about things always brings to mind day jobs. Paying the bills, stuff like that. How do you handle that, while you are pursuing a career in music at the same time?
Jeremy: We just have to be very careful about what we choose to do when we decide to leave our home for however long. So, we try to minimize the risk of losing money. We try to do things that are going to perhaps even make us a little money. It’s getting more and more difficult to do that, but we probably aren’t going to be living in a van for six months out of the year, considering that two of the three of us have to pay bills in one of the most expensive cities to live in America and maintain a good, healthy home and work life and all that. So yeah, it’s just takes careful consideration, but it also takes a certain level of dedication to this project and what it can do. We’re not going to get heard by more people if we sit at home. So, we have to get out there as best we can and maximize those moments when we can.
Rockpages.gr: You’re a three piece band, which brings back memories of classic metal bands like Mötorhead or Venom. It’s not very common for a classic metal band to be a three piece. Usually, it’s four, five or maybe six people playng. How come did you stick with a three member lineup.
Jeremy: Uh, perhaps I’m just a very difficult guitar player to play with (laughs). Um, it just worked that way. We felt early on that we were making a big enough sound with just the three of us, and we quickly started writing our music around the fact that there was only three of us, and we really honed our sound around it. When you add more people, there’s more people you have to communicate with. And in the creative process, you can work much faster when it’s just a 1-2-3, saying, if you bring in a fourth person, or a fifth person, maybe the ideas that had a lot of momentum get slowed down and maybe don’t get finished to completion at times, whereas when there’s just three of you, you can really just get a lot done efficiently. And then on the other side of things, I’ve seen us. We’ve toured with bands that are five pieces, and one of my favorite moments is going to clubs that have very small stages, and knowing that my band’s going to fit on stage, no problem, and then the band with five members on it’s going to be all scrunched up together. So, you know, it has its limitations, but I feel like the limitations inspire a kind of side of our creativity that we wouldn’t explore otherwise. So it’s been a benefit to be just the three of us.
Rockpages.gr: Every now and again, there’s always talks about the future of music and the future of heavy metal, and that rock is dead, or is it dying? And also the argument of what’s going to happen when the big metal bands, like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Priest and the rest retire, what do you think is going to happen?
Jeremy: It’s hard to say. I’ve been getting into other like forms of music, like particularly jazz and jazz fusion in recent years, and I wonder if heavy metal and hard rock are going to go a similar route, where it still has a rabid fan base, but you’re not going to have these platinum selling artists filling up arenas anymore. You’re still going to have this thriving underground of curious music fans, similar to jazz music, where we listen to music. From all the eras, and if there’s a new artist that comes out that blows your mind, you support it. But, I don’t think you’re going to see fans like ours filling stadiums anymore. I mean, if that happens, that would be certainly incredible and welcome. It would be a good reflection on the state of the world. But ultimately, the people that love this stuff are going to keep making music they believe in, and the fans who want to search it out are going to find it. So I’m not too worried about it.
Rockpages.gr: Last question, my favorite song on the album so far is “Let’s Spill Some Blood”. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Jeremy: Yeah, well, we actually will be releasing music video for that song, because we think enough of that song ourselves. It’s a pretty straightforward song musically, but like you said, the devil’s in the details. So lyrically, I think it’s just about the idea about how lucky we are that most people, when they are wronged, will seek something other than violent revenge. So, I think it’s just has that element to the lyrics of calling out certain forces in this world that use what they claim to be forces for good as forces for evil, and the hypocrisy of that. And then, musically we just wrote a very straightforward kind of heavy metal-ishg, but I think it’s more of our hard rock side, and it’s a song we’re all very proud of and the video we made is really cool. We’re really excited about how it turned out…
