PHONER CHATS WITH MIKEY FROM GLOOM IN THE CORNER
The Gloom In The Corner are a concept band exploring the depths of human melancholy through a vessel of their own creation. The past few years have been a meteoric rise for the band, where they performed at Bigsound 2019, at Unify Gathering 2020, won the triple j unearthed competition to play Download 2020 Melbourne (which was unfortunately cancelled), and then took out a spot on The Faction’s Hardest 100 of 2019 with their song Misanthropic.
I was lucky enough to score an interview with The Gloom in the Corners vocalist Mikey, on the launch of their powerful new single ‘Violence’.
Dan: So, to start things off; where does your new song ‘Violence’ fit into the Gloom catalogue and which aspect of it are you most proud of?
Mikey: Which aspect? Okay, we’ll do the easy part first. It fits in right at the start. The best way to think of violence is like a theme song for a TV show, or a theme song for a movie. It introduces the band and the story at a pretty face value that people can mosh along to. As far as the aspect I’m most proud of…fuck! I mean the artwork is definitely up there…. Sam smashed it. I think the breakdown too…because of how ignorantly heavy it is. I remember when we got the mix back from Jeff and I’m just sitting in my car and it just shakes because it can’t handle bass or anything below 80 hertz.
D: That’s how you know it’s good…
M: One hundred per cent.
D: You have such a rich lore and a heightened sense of world building within your songs, does that come from a love of books and if so what are some of your favourite authors?
M: It very much comes from books, but not just books but also TV shows, comic books, video games - we try to implement subtle little nods to them throughout our music. Favourite author? I’m looking at my shelf now…I think the Scarecrow series by Matthew Reilly. And Skulduggery Pleasant; Sherlock is my love note to Derek Landy from that series. I think, definitely if I was going to point it at one book I would definitely say Skulduggery Pleasant. I think everybody else in the band would agree with me.
D: Everyone likes the same book?
M: It’s more so they all know I cherish the series. Punisher as well…especially the Netflix series, especially characters like Jay. I wanted them to be able to relate him to somebody like Frank Castle or Sherlock with Skulduggery. Our recent Australian and American markets, not many people are too super familiar with Skulduggery pleasant. I’m one of three people that I know who’ve actually read it.
D: It was a very specific time in Australian books.
M: It just kind of fell under the radar, unfortunately.
D: When you first started the storyline that has continued throughout the years, did you expect it to be where it is now? And if so, did you have it mapped out?
M: Look, yes and no. It’s a complex answer, about as complex as the lore.
D: Let’s hear it!
M: I had an end goal, more or less. I had an ending to where I wanted this story to end up, it’s just the journey that kind of gotten me there. For example; when I originally wrote Fear Me, the original plan was, at least in my head, for it to jump into the next arc. I kind of expected Fear Me to be its own thing and then we’d move on from there. Then we kind of realised, okay we wanna do an EP and I can talk about Ethan, James’s brother and that’s what became of Homecoming. And then we decided again that we were going to push back the record and so I was like what are we going to do here, and that’s where Sherlock came up. So, even though Sherlock has been in the story for a long, long time (since Fear Me started), he didn’t actually have a name until Flesh and Bones became an idea. I was very careful in the way that I implemented him into the story and kind of wove him in to make sure that nothing contradicts or retcons itself or anything like that. And then here we are again with the three singles coming up; we’ve pushed back the album again so I’m like, okay cool I think we can finally end this arc before we move on to the next arc.
D: What made you want to take a conceptual or narrative approach to music even from an early stage?
M: I think it comes from a mixture of my love of storytelling, and storytelling in general. On top of that, around the time we started doing Fear Me, I was kind of just sitting there like, so many bands doing stuff like Villains or Sworn In or down tempo heavy bands, etc. and I thought how could I make this different to everybody else….I’d already semi-written the story before when I was in high school. I used to write short stories so I kind of just picked and chose characters and events that I wanted to incorporate into the story and kind of completely rewrote it. And so it came from a mixture of my love of story telling and also being like, cool I want to do something different here and something that people are going to go “Oh okay, this band is different for this reason”.
D: Now, ‘Violence’ is one blood-soaked ride into the history behind The Glooms. What events inspired the writing of the track?
M: Me playing a fuck load of Doom 2016. I mean if you couldn’t hear that in the influence then like you need to go play that game…I’m not biased against saying that Mick Gordon’s writing definitely influenced the track, as some people have picked up on (thank you Music Feeds.) We had thrown around ideas for how we wanted to start these three tracks and I said ‘fuck it let’s just do something absurdly heavy’, and to me one of the heaviest records came out in 2016-and still to my opinion holds up as one of the heaviest records in later years--was the Doom soundtrack. Violence was kind of a little love sonnet to that game; I’d been playing Doom for years and years even before 2016 came out… It’s my little love note to that.
D: It’s so cool you can weave all these creative outlets into a song.
M: I try to do it as subtly as possible. The Witch Hunt breakdown is the time warp code for Futurama. The tabs for the guitar is that time warp code. I’ve got a few subtle game quotes, etc. hidden throughout songs as well. It’s my little way of giving the nod to those games that have very much so inspired me growing up. Same thing with TV series’ and books and movies, etc. As far as stuff that actually influenced Violence, I think I just sat down and said ‘fuck it, I’ll write something as heavily as possible’ and that’s what came out of it.
D: What was it like working with Jaime Marino (whose worked with bands such as Alpha Wolf) and what does he bring to the table as a producer?
M: He’s basically there to make sure we’re not doing anything dumb-
D: As all good producers should.
M: It was awesome working with him. He understood what we wanted to do from him being in his old band Sentinels, which was a concept band too, so he understood what we were trying to do and why we were trying to do it, so it was refreshing. He made sure if anything didn’t fit--or if anything stood out that he thought was weird--that we’d go back and revise it. Thankfully, not to toot our own horn, I mean this in the most modest of ways, but I feel I don’t actually have to do that much to these songs which is so refreshing to hear because all the way throughout the process we’ve been told ‘you need to change this, you need to change this and this’, and I feel like this time around we did something semi-right? He was awesome to work with.
D: What are the main differences from working with a label (I know you guys have signed to Collision Course) on this record as opposed to self releasing?
M: It’s interesting. Collision Course came about because we went to Tim for marketing. He’d been wanting to work with us for a while and we’d been wanting to work with him and he said I’m starting a record label and I’d like you guys to be the flagship of it to get things started and that’s how that deal came about. I can’t speak for every record label but Tim has been super flexible to work with and it’s been an absolute pleasure working with him for this release. He’s been super encouraging of our ideas and understands what we’re trying to do and how we’re different to other bands that are doing heavy music in the aspect of the story and everything. And he’s fully on board; he’s a huge nerd too and he gets it and loves what we’re doing. I can’t speak for every label like that, some labels will be like ‘you need to rewrite songs like this’ or ‘you need your marketing to be like this’ etc. etc., but he’s been super flexible and understanding and it’s been super awesome working with him.
D: What can you tell us about the cover artist?
M: We’ve consistently had Sam Mayle from the U.K. He’s done everything since Homecoming and if we ever re-did Fear Me I’d love for him to do Fear Me well. The art is the first piece of the three singles, so you’ll get three standalone pieces of artwork that make up one big picture. If people haven’t picked up on it already it’s basically our recreation of the last supper. It’s going to include old characters, new characters, and it’s our nice little way of finishing up the story and showing everybody’s characters that haven’t had proper artworks done for them before and everything, as well as bringing back a few old ones and showing people like ‘Oh yeah I recognise that character, that’s cool’ and that kind of thing.
D: Gloom In The Corner has been around for a few years now. Have you noticed any significant changes to the Melbourne music scene (prior to the pandemic, of course)?
M: I mean some of my favourite bands have come and gone. It’s kind of hard to pinpoint one defining thing. You’ll find this in every music scene wherever you go, there will always be bands that try to emulate other bands in the scene. But that’s going to happen with every scene. Not going to pinpoint that to just Melbourne. My main take from it as well is that all ages shows have dropped off, which is sad to see, but from my understanding, a lot of the demographic who would go to all ages shows now all go to 18 plus shows. So, there’s not enough entry level all ages shows for kids who were my age to go to. And so they just say ‘fuck it, we’ll just wait till we’re eighteen’ and go to eighteen plus shows…which sucks. Hopefully after Covid-19 it kind of revitalises because all ages shows are a hell of a lot of fun to play.
D: What is the craziest thing that you’ve witnessed as a front man?
M: After a show I had a kid come up to me, say hi and proceed to do a death core scream in my face and walk away like it was nothing and said ‘Thanks man’ and I’m kind of standing there like what the f*ck just happened. I also saw someone eat sh*t real bad at that same show, that was a real bad one.
D: What’s in store for Gloom in the aftermath of the pandemic?
M: Hopefully touring and hopefully we get to do the full length as well!
D: Well it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
M: Thank you for having me, it’s been awesome.