{"id":17290,"date":"2017-09-29T01:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T05:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=17290"},"modified":"2017-09-29T09:04:22","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T13:04:22","slug":"interview-thomas-corpse-of-jess-and-the-ancient-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=17290","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Thomas Corpse of Jess and the Ancient Ones: “We are all metalheads when we were younger because we were renegades and rebels and wanted to be outside of society but then we play this music which has the most rules you will ever find.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are a reader of this here blog, you will know what a huge fan I am of Jess and the Ancient Ones. They are without a doubt one of the most exciting bands I have heard in my life. When I heard them I was so intrigued and infatuated with everything about them. Their sound, lyrics, musical arrangements, everything about them connected with me on more levels than I ever knew possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jess and the Ancient Ones is also a band that shrouds them in a bit of mystery. They do very little press in the form of interviews so the opportunity to speak with guitarist\/songwriter Thomas Corpse was something I couldn\u2019t pass up. This is a marathon interview but it was so much fun getting to know what makes him tick, what inspired Jess and the Ancient Ones, his other band the Exploding Eyes Orchestra and a new Jess and the Ancient <\/strong>Ones album due out this year. Thomas is a really intelligent and funny guy so this interview was a real treat.\u00a0 It’s a long one but a truly great one so kick back and enjoy this journey.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thomas, it\u2019s so nice to talk to you finally.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thank you, Don. Same here. Same here. Yes, it\u2019s nice to talk to you as well. I usually keep to myself and I must admit that I don\u2019t like interviews that much but I\u2019m doing nice with them now I must admit and it\u2019s nice to talk.<\/p>\n

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What is it about interviews that you don\u2019t really like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s because a great deal of the interviews are usually done through an email and it\u2019s always this list of questions that are all the same and, for me, it takes like 5 hours to type answers and it\u2019s just, blah.<\/p>\n

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Jess and the Ancient Ones is a band that I have been obsessing about for years now. I\u2019ve always wanted to ask you how this band was conceived and born.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, of course. I think that I have to start a bit earlier. When I was younger until when I was about 28 years old when Jess and the Ancient Ones was founded I was always more into really, really hardcore stuff; black metal, death metal, thrash metal. I was always listening to Pestilence, Morbid Angel, Kreator, Sodom, and all this Norwegian black metal, everything. I also always had a soft spot for The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath. When I heard Roky Erikson for the first time maybe 10 years ago or so from a friend, that brought rock music back to my attention and I realized that this is how I like my rock; raw and really eerie lyrics. That got me into garage rock and from there I\u2019ve been traveling back through the 60\u2019s to Captain Beefheart, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, and everything. I got excited about rock music again and with guitar playing again. I\u2019d been playing only death metal for so long that I was getting quite bored of it. I started to learn blues guitar and more traditional stuff like the stuff that you should maybe begin with.<\/p>\n

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You told me once that Jess and the Ancient Ones was the beginning of a healing process for you. Can you tell me a little more about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I went through a rebirth as a guitar player and at that moment Jess and the Ancient Ones was born as an idea. I wanted to play something not so heavy; something more rock, and something more personal lyrically. Something that I could write about how I feel and not just writing about tales of HP Lovecraft or making up horror stories. I have been suffering from low self esteem all of my life. My father died when I was young and I started gaining weight and I was a really big boy and I always felt bad about myself. These things made me want to write more personal stuff and make a good soundtrack to go along with it.<\/p>\n

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That is definitely something that I can relate to and something I still deal with in my adult life. Anxiety, low <\/strong>self esteem, they are all things that are so ingrained into our psyche but somehow come out through our art.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is so true. I have always been so unsure of myself and I like to keep my distance. I\u2019m not always happy with myself but when I found rock music and guitar playing I started processing all that shit from my past and kind of let it go and looked to the future instead of dwelling in the past all the time.<\/p>\n

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One of the things that drew me to JATAO in the first place was the lyrical content. I\u2019m a lyricist so lyrics are very important to me. I was just so interested in the fact that there\u2019s a bit of esoteric content in your lyrics. Is this something that you just dabble in or is it a serious belief system for you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a serious belief system for me. From my background, it comes from the more underground extreme and black metal that I used to play. When I was in that world, everything I was reading was more left hand path philosophy and these darker ideas of how things go and how things are and how things they have been. I don\u2019t belong to a church. I divorced with the church when I was 18 years old. I don\u2019t care for religions but I understand why people want to believe. I don\u2019t think that I know better but for me this is the only way it\u2019s going to be. I think the lyrical side of Jess and the Ancient Ones is kind of the mixture of the things that came from my old life, like the philosophical side. I have keen interest in the occult and I love reading this stuff. It has mixed in my mind though in a more hippie way. It\u2019s kind of like a hippie state of Left Hand Path philosophy.<\/p>\n

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I think that\u2019s a perfect description. It\u2019s like you\u2019ve managed to take these dark subjects and present them in a beautiful way. I\u2019ll be honest. I have printed out the lyrics just to read them and it\u2019s some of the best reading. With that being said, are you the primary writer and how does the creative process work within the band.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh wow, that is so great to hear. Tuomas (Karhunen; former guitarist) wrote a few songs on the first album and also on Castaneda he wrote \u201cAs to be With Him.\u201d I love his lyrics. Tuomas writes beautifully but all the rest are from my pen. Nowadays I write all the lyrics and I also write all the music. We have this nice system. I have the song, I have the lyrics, and of course everybody can arrange their own parts and give ideas and so on. I just do the basics back home by myself and then I take it to the band and we start connecting the dots and trying out different melody lines. It really works out nice that way. You have to keep everybody satisfied in a band. It wouldn\u2019t work that way if you told everyone what to play and not let anybody bring their own thing spices into it. I think the bass player knows best how to play the bass and the drummer knows best how to play the drums and so forth.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s how I do things in my band as well. I must imagine that much like it is for me, as the creator it\u2019s more fulfilling to see my band mates so passionate about something that I\u2019ve created and to see them put their own heart and ideas into it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, it is the same with me. I notice sometimes when we practice. I just say, \u201cOk, here it is.\u201d and I just step back and notice that the others will all take it on themselves and start trying all kinds of different things and great ideas just fly all around. Then you just pick the best pieces and try them out and at the end of the day we usually end up with a nice version of a song. It\u2019s definitely the best way to work within a band. You need to have everybody doing some because soon you\u2019ll be playing by yourself if you are the ultimate dictator and you don\u2019t let anyone else give something to the song.<\/p>\n

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The first song I ever heard by Jess and the Ancient Ones was \u201cAstral Sabbat.\u201d That was the song that really pulled me in and I knew right away I was hearing something really special. What gave you the insight to release that song with hopes that it would hook people in?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thanks, Don. I love all this really groovy, Halloween themed, 60\u2019s monster-a-gogo stuff. It\u2019s really simple and kind of like a children\u2019s melody but combine it with a more surfy sound. I just thought that maybe people would enjoy it because it\u2019s a simple, catchy rhythm. I thought people would enjoy it and it seemed to be the song that gave us leverage to get to the next level. The video for \u201cAstral Sabbat\u201d was seen by King Diamond so yeah, that song did a lot for us.<\/p>\n