An interview with Monstrosity's Lee Harrison

24 Φεβρουαριου 2015.Τα μελη του διαδικτυακου γκρουπ Repulsive Echo,ειχαμε την μοναδικη ευκαιρια να παρακολουθησουμε σε real time την πολυ ενδιαφερουσα συνεντευξη που εδωσε στον Κωστα Βαξεβανο ο Lee Harrisson.

(Ευχαριστω προσωπικα τον Κωστα που μου εδωσε την αδεια να αναδημοσιευσω την συνεντευξη αυτη,για οσους την εχασαν εκεινο το βραδυ!)


 Hello Lee!
Thanks for accepting the invitation! I will begin this interview with an old statement of yours from 1999 in UNHOLY TERROR magazine:
"We want to stay in that underground vein. Monstrosity will certainly not make changes like that. If there ever comes a need to change what we're doing we'll just grab on to a new name, but Ι wouldn't drag the Monstrosity name through that"…
We are in 2015 and you kept your promise! You are recording your 6th "monster"... what is the current line-up and give us some info about the studio, song titles... Are there great/guest musicians to contribute in this as they did in the forerunner release Spiritual Apocalypse?

Lee Harrison:The current line up is the one from Spiritual Apocalypse with Matt Barnes added as our 2nd guitarist. As for guests, Its too early to say at this point. I have a few ideas but nothing is 100 percent confirmed. 
This album is being done a little different. In the past, as with most recordings, the drums are recorded first. With this album we are recording all of the guitars first to a click. I've been engineering Mark English and we've been painstakingly putting this monster together. At this point in time we are wrapping up song 9 out of 11 of the guitar recording. 
We are taking our time and making sure everything is right. The other night we worked for 4 hours and only got two riffs completed. Not the writing part but the performance part. We want to get good performances and make sure its not too mechanical sounding. There's a happy balance we want to find with the modern huge productions that are almost industry standard at this point, and a real performance angle, like how records were made in the old days. 
We have all the guitar tracks set up with a direct signal so we will just re-amp the whole record. It saves us the headache of trying to get a performance while under the scrutiny of the clock at $1000 - $3000 dollars a day. This way we will solely be worried about the actual sonics of the record and not be stressed out trying to figure out how the songs need to be played. That work is being done now, off the clock. 
As a bonus for me, I will have the final guitar tracks to use as a scratch track to play along with when I record my drums. The last two albums I recorded my drums just imagining the riffs in my head from memory. So that will be a cool thing and maybe I can get a better performance that way.

 Recently you joined the line-up of the huge festival: 70.000 TONS OF METAL in Jamaica. How do you feel about this? We saw old members in this. There seems to be some kind of respect between old members and the band throughout the years... you enjoy the stage and there is no "drama" despite the line-up changes…

Lee Harrison: This was actually my 4th time doing this cruise. I did the first 70k as a guest, just hanging around, watching the shows, as we sailed to Cozumel. Then I contacted Andy, the main guy and he put Monstrosity on Barge To Hell, which is an offshoot of 70k, geared more towards death and black metal. On Barge, we went to Nassau Bahamas. The regular 70k has more of a mixture of styles of metal. My third time was with Terrorizer, and now this year I was able to do it again with Monstrosity. Its a good time and I recommend it highly. My biggest problem with it all, is its over so quick. I wish it went on for a few more days. Food is free, you have your own cabin with a balcony, its like a city on the ocean. You don't even realize you're moving half of the time. Plus its like "high school reunion" with all the other bands hanging and old friends from various tour stops since its people coming from all over the world. There's one guy from Saudi Arabia who comes every year and is the nicest guy. He brings a crew with him every year. That's just one example. There's a little community of cruisers that go every year and take it all way too serious. The merch lines are 3 hours long. Its crazy. They love it. They travel from far away places to be there and its sensory overload. You cant keep up with it all. You just pick your battles, I guess, since there is so much to do. 

As for our old members, yes, we still get along with everyone from the past lineups. As you can tell, we use Van Erp for this gig, Kelly for that gig, etc Poggione is our main bassist but sometimes schedules and logistics dictate we do different things. We all still get along. Sometimes schedules shift and other lineups work for different situations. We can work like that and make it work.

 About your other "brutal" activities with Terrorizer... was this a repressed feeling come in life since you were a guitarist in your early years? Many shows on the world map even in Indonesia! Are there any plans for recording an album?

Lee Harrison: It hasn't been a secret that I've always played guitar, I guess you just don't notice it if you don't see it. I wrote a lot of the Monstrosity songs on guitar. Songs like Shapeless Domination, All Souls Consumed, Dark Purity, Stormwinds, Slaves And Masters, Imperial Doom, Burden Of Evil, Rise To Power are mine ... a lot of the songs... I've got all kinds of riffs in Perpetual, Hymns, Suffering To The Conquered solo riff, etc.. the list goes on. Even going back to 10 Commandments from Malevolent Creation. Remnants of Withered Decay is my title and the first half of the song is my riffs. The whole end part of Decadence Within is based off of my main riff. I was writing with Phil back then and he would let me throw him riffs. You can hear the Monstrosity in those riffs if you listen for it. The Perpetual War ish marching E chug riff that is kind of my style. The tight cadences mixing it up on the E string is something I'm into. Some guitarists only concentrate on their fret hand where I was always into guys who could do wicked speed picking acrobatics and actually do both. 

So lately I've been writing with Pete and Sam putting together some new songs. We have four songs finished at this point and are working on writing more. Its been great for me. I've got riffs for days so its nice being able to get it out. I will just set a click and discipline myself to write riffs. I then go back and dig out the good and catalog them all. Usually its a 15 minute run on riff song. Just riff, then new riff, new riff, etc on and on. I listen to that for a few days and see what hooks me. Then I craft a song from that and just keep fine tuning everything to see what works. I will then present that to Pete and we will come up with an arrangement.. the hard part is figuring out whether it works for what we want to do. 
So yes, Indonesia just after next week

So, that "change" you were talking about in UNHOLY TERROR magazine came with your other one man project LAVOIZEN? You name this a rock project and I find a more sentimental essence in there...

Lee Harrison:That's probably my fault. I have like 50 Lavoizen songs and the majority of them are straight ahead rock songs. However, the first song I released was Waiting On The Sun which is more mellow so people probably think of that song. Now my new song probably wont help that since its kind of mellow too.

Lavoizen is more focused around my voice so I see it as a total natural extension. The rock songs I am doing are the influences from when I was a kid starting out. Its not some new sound I discovered and am now chasing. Its not that at all. Its just the straight rock influences of my youth shining through. I enjoy doing it so that's whats going on. I rehearse with a drummer in St Pete once a week so its coming together to hopefully start playing shows. 
Whats also cool is that I can get my experimental side out and not feel the need to try to incorporate it into Monstrosity. I can just focus on the brutal.

 After all these years what makes you improve as a musician and what would be a challenge for you right now? Would you ever do a side project as Chuck Schuldiner (R.I.P) did with Control Denied? If yes what would be the line-up of your dream-project?

Lee Harrison:I've got a long way to go to be where I want on the drums. It never ends. At this point I'm more into the craft of songwriting and the overall big picture. I don't have a big desire to work with anyone in particular. If anything, I want to do things the way I want to at this point and not have to compromise. I've been able to work with people like Jon Oliva, Obituary, Midnight (RIP), Pete Sandoval, Atheist, etc so I've been able to get that out of my system, I guess you could say. I still enjoy doing other stuff and I've been talking to Donald Tardy about working on some Tardy Brothers stuff. That's something Im looking forward to... so yeah there are things Id like to do just nothing super pressing.

 You also are label manager of Conquest Music. You recently released the last recordings of MIDNIGHT (ex-Crimson Glory) (R.I.P) in which you helped a lot to incarnate this material and to complete it as a swan song let’s say...

Lee Harrison:Yes I know its probably confusing to the fans of extreme metal that support me since its different from what I do with Monstrosity...but it was a great outlet for me and was cool to see the other side that so many missed. I enjoyed being the whole band on certain songs or playing acoustic guitar. Just mixing it up and not being locked in to the normal drums guitar and bass. Plus doing all of the engineering work was cool too. I literally recorded a whole discography with the guy within 3 years. We have a 3cd release "M2: Descending Into Madness" that we just released but we have a lot more stuff to come. A covers album, reissues of "All Souls Midnight" and "M" (called "Ultimate M"), a DVD etc so there's so much more to come. It was a huge loss losing Midnight and Matt but I'm glad we were able to get everything documented. 

As an aside to the story..... It was interesting watching Todd LaTorre take Midnights place in Crimson Glory and end up joining Queensryche too. That was a strange twist in the story for sure. I remember when Todd came to my house to work with Matt to make a demo for Crimson Glory and then to see Todd go from my back bedroom to the world stage with Queensryche was very cool. Todd is cool guy and I wish him all the best.

 Let’s return to the main band. Your last studio album was released back in 2007 and there always is a long "gap" between your albums... I mean you don’t release something every 1-2 years. Is that happening to achieve some kind of perfection technically and compositionally or to avoid become generic and repeated?

Lee Harrison: Its a few things. Its getting it all ready song wise and then getting the finances together to do a big album. Not only do you have to pay for studio time but you need new drum heads, new cymbals etc so it gets expensive real quick. We do like to kind of have everything worked out before hand so we spend a lot of time rehearsing everything. Another thing is the line ups... in the past we've been changing members so sometimes that held things up trying to get it all worked out. I consider it such a huge undertaking to record that I want to have all the pieces ready before we go in and the clock is ticking... plus it has to feel natural too... I have to be inspired to write the lyrics and sometimes it just takes time to get something worthwhile and not go with the first idea that comes to mind.

From In Dark Purity album I think your sound is shrouded in mystery... I still have those eerie sounds from "Triumph in Black" outro and your obliterating performance circling in my head. Is the new material in the same vein? Is there a release schedule

Lee Harrison: Yes lots of what made Monstrosity the band it is. Lots of pummeling double bass and the crazy riffs Monstrosity are known for. Cant wait until it is finally finished. The songwriting is more split up this time. Matt Barnes wrote several songs and he has been putting up some of the strongest stuff this time. Mark English has a few songs and his style really shines through so it has a unique stamp on it. Similar to something like Apostles Of The Endless Night or Remnants Of Divination. I'm working with Mike Hrubovcak on the lyrics so they will be a collaboration of both of our talents. Like I said, Ill be as happy as you guys when it is finished. The hard part will be pouring a ton of hours into this recording and all the heart and soul just to have some fans tell me how Imperial Doom is so much better...lol. Its like we could create the best album the universe has ever heard and somehow Imperial Doom will still be better hehe..

 Is there any tour or shows/festivals booked as yet for MONSTROSITY so people find a magic ticket?

Lee Harrison: We have a few things in the works but nothing is confirmed at the moment. I'm sure once the new album comes out we will be back out there. We've been off the radar for a little while and so were looking to get back and doing what we do. The market has changed so much I will be curious to see how it all goes. Its so hard because the competition is so fierce. Everybody and their brother has a band so its getting harder and harder. One good thing is we have a strong reputation for bringing the metal to obscure paces so hopefully we can conquer some new territories with the next record.

 Lee we would like to thank you very much for your time here….I really enjoyed it … I had 15 years to do this… you promised some SPECIAL material for this interview…..
Last words are yours and for anyone interested in merchandise and support….http://www.conquestmusic.com/

Lee Harrison:Thanks for the support! Hope everyone has a killer week and talk soon! Watch for new Monstrosity, new Terrorizer, the Midnight releases, and hopefully I can record my Lavoizen record and get that out. I'm really looking forward to that too. Thanks for everything !!!! Aaarrrgggghhh