RED METHOD
From the ashes of UK underground favourites The Defiled and Meta-stasis comes a whole new twisted vision
FROM THE COLLABORATIVE
fucked-up minds of The Defiled and Meta-stasis comes Red Method, a genre-bending approach to dark melodic metal. Forged on the hallowed grounds of Bloodstock Festival 2008, where both bands met backstage, keyboard player Alex Avdis describes the chance meeting of industrial metal minds that resulted in a new era.
“My manager at the time said I had to meet these guys,” he reveals. “I felt like when someone sets you up on a date and expects you to get along with them. It turns out Jeremy [Gomez, singer] and the guys were dope and they took us on our first ever tour with The Defiled. We’d been talking about doing something together for many years, and it’s taken us a decade… but here we are!”
Drawing influence from the ruling classes of 90s metal as well as the members’ industrial backgrounds, the process of tracking Red Method’s sinister material has become a cathartic experience for the band members’ personal troubles. While Jeremy Gomez faced two near-death experiences in a matter of years, Alex Avdis faced a mental challenge, which their new outlet addresses with their debut album, For The Sick.
“It saved my life. It’s put my life in some sort of order and direction,” Alex explains. “I tried to be a normal human being, get a normal job and
SOUNDS LIKE: Tensionratcheting, industrial death metal carnage
FOR FANS OF: Slipknot, The Defiled, Bleed From Within
LISTEN TO:
Messiah live a normal life, but I missed playing live and getting that energy out. I was becoming an asshole, because I needed metal to get out the bad and be a good person. I nearly killed someone before Jeremy called me to start this band!
The happiest fans and musicians I meet play the darkest music, because they get to let it out.”
The album’s hard-hitting track
The Absent, featuring Sikth’s Mikee Goodman, tackles the ever-important issue of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and its continuing impact on families and loved ones. Vocalist Jeremy
Gomez chose the topic as a means of expressing his personal experiences losing two grandparents to the disease.
“It’s about going on a journey of how powerful, strong and absolutely horrible that disease is and there’s still no cure, there’s still so many people dying from it,” he says. “I’ve lived and breathed it for many years, and it’s a topic I wanted to explore with the band and get off my chest, as I’ve always been a person that’s never really opened up. I’ve not allowed my family to see me cry, so I’ve always kept it to myself. I had to express it somehow, and the only way was through music.”
IN RELEASING THEIR
first record song by song over the past year, Red Method have followed a trend previously used by dance DJS to gradually put out material, achieving a snowball effect and gathering a fanbase as well as building a history for a band still in its infancy.
“We’ve released nearly half the album now, and we’ll hold our horses until the album is released at the end of February,” Jeremy says. “You spend four years writing and recording albums these days, then you release it on a certain day and it’s gone, you don’t make the most out of it. Our idea was to drip-feed it into the cadavers out there until they get a sense of what the band is about.”
Inspired by their industrial roots, Red Method concentrate on disturbing visuals as well as dark musical content. The music video for Messiah is a prime example of the band’s shock value, featuring actors eating live maggots
and imitation flesh – a divisive decision Jeremy brought to the table.
“I had a lot of input in directing the video, and it was my idea to get the maggots,” he says. “We were skint and already spent so much money getting the video together, but we needed more special effects for something gory. We were going to buy plastic worms, but a friend bought fishing maggots. So the guy chucked it down, and vomited it all straight after. There’s also nearly 30 people queuing up like a holy communion and eating flesh – which was basically salmon with black food colouring! They were all spitting and vomiting the salmon right outside the venue afterwards. It was absolute insanity. It was like something [notorious cult leader] Jim Jones would do!”
Combining their years of experience in the music industry, Alex notes that Red Method’s approach is a culmination of successes and failures from their previous bands. And it has created a new voice that won’t be drowned out.
“We’re fast-tracking with Red Method. We’re already at the stage a band would normally be at after 10 years. We’ve learned from our previous bands exactly what needs to be done
“THEY WERE ALL SPITTING AND VOMITING. IT WAS INSANITY”
and we’ve done it all in a few months. We’ve also learned that aiming for the top is not what it’s about, because you never get to the top, there’s always another level.”
Not only a cathartic process for the band itself, Red Method hope to provide listeners and concert goers with a therapeutic musical experience unlike any seen before.
“We have our own unique fanbase, and it’s a brand new type of psychotic person that comes to see us, with a whole different set of problems.
You know how Slipknot do that thing making people sit down at shows? We should get people to lay down at our shows and tell us their problems!”
FOR THE SICK IS OUT ON FEBRUARY 28