Anoxide are one of Europe’s most promising upcoming death metal outfits having recently shared the stage with Deicide and Krisiun at 3 Days of Death in London. Anoxide are working on their new album which will be released early next year and they will be hitting the road around Europe later this year and the US in 2020.
ANTIHERO: Describe the driving force behind Anoxide and how do you harness that force and deliver it to your fans?
Anoxide: The driving force is primarily the fact that we love creating and playing music. Having said that, the love is fueled by the fires of hell so you know, you could say Satan drives us. Harnessing the powers of hell is always a tricky one, but we found the best approach is through alcohol abuse and giving stupid answers to interviews. We then deliver that power to our fans through drunken performances and inside jokes only a handful of them will understand……we’re pretty elitist like that.
ANTIHERO: What was the process of finding the exact tones and pitches of your instruments before landing on the Anoxide sound?
Anoxide: We tune to B standard; we chose B because we feel it’s the perfect middle ground between being low and heavy, whilst keeping clarity. Maintaining clarity also helps due to the fact Alex and Callum use pretty hefty guitar strings, (13 – 68). In terms of guitar tone we like a very bright and mid-range sound, something that really cuts, let the bass take care of the low end, that’s why it’s there. We’re really into the modern guitar tones, tight gain structure, heavily gated, we like a tone that djents……..but we then play death metal with it, makes sense right. As far as the process of finding it, that was merely trial and error, growing as a player and musician, finding out what you like and dislike. For instance, I’m not a fan of playing heavily saturated tones, nothing wrong with the way it sounds but I find the lack of clarity extremely off-putting when playing. In terms of drums, we’re all about a massive drum sound, big booming everything and bright as fuck cymbals. Our producer, Jack Stephens, is also a professional drummer (drummer for EMF) so he has done a great job sculpting a massive yet tight drum tone, just wait until you hear the drum sound on the album, you won’t be disappointed.
ANTIHERO: Anoxide played an event called Passing Through Metal with a group of women knitting. How did you find that gig and what made you want to do it?
Anoxide: That gig found us, Oreet Ashery, the artist contacted us asking if we wanted to do it. Passing Through Metal was actually the second performance we did with her, the first was one a couple of years prior with a performance art duo called New Noveta. Both gigs were extremely weird and unique, but that was the whole reason we wanted to do it. One of the most interesting things to witness was the divide in the crowd between fans of ours/ people that are into metal and the people that were there as fans of performance art. It was funny to see everyone’s faces like, WTF is this shit. That’s the whole point of it though, to get a reaction out of people and make them feel uncomfortable. We fully intend on working with Oreet in the future.
ANTIHERO: You’re working on your new album at the moment. How is it progressing?
Anoxide: It’s progressing well, slowly though. We’re leaving no stone unturned and scrutinizing over every detail. Because of this and the fact we have lives outside of the band such as day jobs and other commitments it’s taking it’s time to record. We’ve also hit some speed bumps along the way, such as our bassist, James leaving the band. His reasons for leaving are nothing personal, he just didn’t have the same passion for it he once did, traveling across the country to play shows became more of a chore for him than enjoyment and once the enjoyment has gone it’s pointless continuing; not like we’re doing this for the money. We have found a new bassist now.
ANTIHERO: Where are you recording, who is producing and what is the expected drop time-frame?
Anoxide: We are currently recording at Envy studios, in Portsmouth with our producer Jack Stephens. We don’t have an exact release date yet, but it should be released by early next year. We aren’t in a rush to get the album released, simply because we want it to sound as perfect as possible and have the right promotion behind it.
ANTIHERO: Please name some of the highlights of the album so far and what song are you most proud of?
Anoxide: There are multiple highlights in our opinion, it’s a very diverse album, for death metal at least. There’s everything you would expect from a death metal album, blast beats all over the shop, gutturals, anyone who is familiar with our previous releases knows we are great lovers of a big guitar solo and melodic passages, this element is certainly prominent. As far as highlights and something that’s different, we’ve explored a more progressive element with certain tracks, one track being around 50% acoustic, in the vein of a classical guitar piece, and another track being around 11 minutes long which goes through multiple stylistic changes, with some beautiful clean passages whilst not compensating on the brutality.
ANTIHERO: Who have been your favorite band(s) to play with?
Anoxide: Favourite band to play with, in what sense? In terms of bragging rights, it has to be Deicide. In terms of having fun hanging with the bands, we’ve played with Blood Red Throne from Norway a number of times and they’re a right laugh, they know how to get on the sauce.
ANTIHERO: What has been the biggest obstacle you run into when performing/getting ready to perform?
Anoxide: Honestly, getting the balance between drinking enough but not drinking too much. Having a few beers always loosens you up but too many and it becomes increasingly hard to play………not that we’ve ever done that……
ANTIHERO: Has your music career given you any opportunities that you normally wouldn’t have?
Anoxide: Yeah, the opportunity to create music and travel around to perform it for people.
ANTIHERO: What’s up next for Anoxide and what are the plans for the rest of the year and 2020?
Anoxide: For the rest of 2019 we have a few shows/tours lined up, the main priority though is finishing the album. As far as 2020 goes, nothing is confirmed yet but once the album is released, a US tour is definitely what our eyes are set on.
