Sam Bean – The Senseless – Interview Exclusive
Written by Röss Welförd
Sunday, 18 March 2012 04:00
If you read the ultra-violent Gig From Hell that we published last week that featured Sam Bean on tour with The Bezerker, punches, blood and chaos, then you’ll know what to expect as Ross Welford cornered the Australia-based anti-hero and got him to spill the beans instead of the blood on his new band, The Senseless, and his refreshingly honest opinions on the state of the music business. Are you ready to discover just what “Progressive Happy Grind” sounds like? Then read on….
Tell us a little bit about the Senseless – Who are you and why and how did you come into existence?
Heya! I’m Sam, I’m originally from the aussie grind collective The Berzerker. I had a bunch of demos that I was giving out to friends I made on the road – death metal bands give tracks, not christmas cards – and these got picked up by UK indie label Anticulture and turned into the first Senseless album, ‘In the Realm of the Senseless’. I never really intended to do it as a serious band – hey, I was kind of trying to get back to the tape-trading scene feel where you just hand out music to people you think are gonna love it. Since then, I’ve left Anticulture and recorded the second album, ‘The Floating World’, with Leon Macey from Mithras on drums and this is where I’m at now.
I’ve seen the Senseless described as ‘Progressive Happy Grind’ – that in itself is a pretty far out thought for most doom merchants. Would you say that’s an accurate description?
Yep. The ‘happy’ thing is the one that raises the most eyebrows. I fucking hate the death-metal-I-can’t-have-fun image that the scene is built on. It’s not me. And if it is me, I need a smack in the face and someone to tell me to raise my sights a bit.
When I was gearing up to put out the first album I knew that I had to do something radically different to the rest of metal, or why bother? You’re either giving the world something new, or you’re a glorified cover band. So the biggest change I could think of making with a metal release was to drop the whole metal tough guy charade, and replace it all bit by bit…have a bandname and logo that was legible and not too serious, music which wasn’t all in minor scales, lyrics about something other than feeding people into woodchippers or society injustice and so on. Still make music more extreme than everyone else though. It has turned out pretty good, I’ve got a completely different direction to the rest of the metal scene and a totally unique sound. I’m as happy as my music.
Apparently you struggled to find a label to release this album? Would you say that was due to the record labels no longer taking chances on less radio friendly metal, the global market or just you going all Lars Ulrich on us?
Hahahaha, I can only guess, hey! It’s strange, between me and the contributors there’s like over eight Earache releases and the straggler has ‘only’ been on Candlelight records and owns a major UK metal magazine….I would have thought we would have been seen as a nice tactical score for a metal label or a small indie. Then again, they’ve probably seen the interviews I’ve done where I’ve raged about the entire metal scene and music industry, or heard about how I reneged on my Anticulture contract one album into it.
If I was running a label, I’d want a young band who was into touring and who’d chew broken glass to succeed. That used to be me. For music I missed school reunions, family events, weddings, birthdays, I broke up relationships, quit careers, moved countries, punched faces, threatened murder over the phone, chased bootleggers down the street. Not any more. If music business even so much as gets in the way of a good meal, I’m cancelling or rescheduling them. A label doesn’t want someone like that no matter how good or different the music is, or how much experience the band may have.
How would you say that this release has been received so far?
People who have heard it, love it. I reckon metal is crying out for someone just to do something different, I mean it has been cannibalising the same ideas, riffs, and aesthetic for the last twenty years now. So people are pretty receptive when you go out on a limb, chasing a totally different vision. The problem is that I’m releasing it very low-key, so not many people have heard it!
It’s funny though…in terms of sales I have so far sold a miniscule amount. Smallest amount of sales by far of anything I’ve ever done. Like, my lowest ever sales figure with a zero taken off the end. But it has made more money than I got when selling thousands and thousands of Berzerker records! CDbaby, eh? Strange days indeed.
Is a tour likely to happen to help promote the album?
I don’t think so. I was lucky to survive all the touring I’ve done so far. I also reckon that music lives forever, but a gig is pretty ephemeral. I’d rather take the massive amount of time and resources you put into one tour, and use that to record some kickass music instead. I’m gauging how much I give to fans of the music by how many sales I get hey. At 150 sales I’ll press physical CDs, at 200 sales I’ll do a filmclip…at 600 sales, I’ll assemble the freaks required to play these insane tunes and do one-off shows. Don’t know if I’ll get there, and no drama if I don’t. I don’t want to go foisting shows and products and look-at-me-look-at-me media bits and bobs at a market that actually isn’t that interested.
Double and triple headed bills seem to be the saving grace of many bands at the moment due to touring costs etc; Who would you love to share a stage with both realistically and idealistically?
Oh god, good question. Idealistically, I’d love Australia’s Damaged to reform with their original line-up even though it’d mean getting blown off the stage. They’re another band with a really really original take on extreme metal and they influenced so many people down here…their EP ‘Passive Backseat Demon Engines’ was released mid-90s and was about a decade ahead of its time.
Realistically, a double-bill with us and Mithras would be best as we could share Leon! (The Senseless drummer, and both drummer and guitarist for Mithras). They do a very psychedelic Florida-style death metal show that’s brutal and trippy, and I think we’re kind of alike in that we realise anger isn’t a necessary emotion when you’re trying to make the heaviest music possible. And they dislike touring as much as I do, so that’d be a bonus.
What with the global recession and the ‘stealing’ of bands’ songs from the internet, how do you look at the music world these days?
I look at the music world these days and I see anything but music. I try to ignore it as much as possible, there’s too many unpleasant associations. Just reading metal magazines can make me feel angry and nauseous. There’s been too many times I’ve seen a band hyped as being totally different, totally original, and I hear their stuff and it’s more of the same old shit, and I know how those deals go down. It makes me sick.
Obviously a lot of the money has drained out of the music industry itself. I think there’s still ways of making money from selling music as opposed to just gigs and t-shirts. Books are selling as much as ever even though you can download them too, you just gotta change how you go about it. It doesn’t help that the quality of metal has taken a bit of a dip over thes
e few years. A lot of the visionaries wandered off in the direction of straight electronic music and it’s no coincidence that their scene is doing extremely well in comparison.
Many will know you from your work with The Berzerker – how did it start and why did it finish?
Berzerker started with Luke Kenny back in the late ’90s. He was DJing a death metal/gabba crossover style dubbed speedcore and did some Morbid Angel remixes for Earache Records. He had some demos, they gave him a recording contract and told him to go find some musicians. He came back to Australia and met me. That’s roughly where the modern-day version of Berzerker that everyone knows started up. I just wanted to play fast, mental, crazy guitar, and didn’t care if it was in a bedroom by myself or around the world on stage.
The band is in cold-storage now. The Berzerker completed the recording contract with Earache Records and did one self-release called ‘The Reawakening’. I had left the band full-time to move to England and was only involved in the occasional show. And Luke was having the same problems I had, that music wasn’t giving back enough. A full touring musician can’t maintain relationships, a healthy lifestyle, a healthy income…not at this level. Luke packed it in to work in the fashion industry, doing photo and filmshoots and running a lifestyle magazine. I asked him if he’d go back to full time music and he was like, give up all these women? All this money? This flat I have on the beach? Fuck no.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we appeared for another show though.
You don’t strike me as your average stereotypical grindcore musician so, with that in mind, I’m intrigued by your tastes in music: Is it all Godflesh to Napalm Death with a bit of Ministry and Akercocke thrown in or have you a secret love of Richard Marx and Roxette?
I’m totally non-metal. I love the music, hate the lifestyle that goes with it.
I fell in love with early ’90s death metal, stuff like Morbid Angel and Carcass. I’m intrigued by Portal although their music isn’t what I’d call satisfying or enjoyable. The last metal band I fell for where I had to play their song again and again was Nox, ‘Satan Ex Machina’. These days though, let me see…I like Lamb and Goldfrapp a lot. Deftones are awesome, they’re on something so different. Someone played me the Libertines’ ‘Up the Bracket’ a couple of years ago and it blew me away.
What I listen to really depends where I am, what I’m doing, who I’m with. I’ve been hanging with my nieces this week so that meant nonstop Emiliana Torrini’s ‘Jungle Drum’! I’ll work out which niece shows the most promise, she’ll get Morbid Angel’s ‘Blessed Are The Sick’ for her thirteenth birthday.
Now you live in Australia, was it inevitable that the sunny climate added a smiley face to your outlook of the grind genre or am I just being hopeful that the sun does make us all happier as it’s pissing down outside as I write this?
Move to Australia, son. It’s lovely here now. Yep, the sun helps. I actually was even more bitter about grind before I came back, so you can imagine how that was!
Haha, I can only imagine! Thanks for the interview Sam, a pleasant change from the usual blood and guts of grind. Good luck with The Senseless.
To pick up your copy of ‘The Floating World [Explicit]’ – CLICK HERE
