SOMNILOQUY IN THORNFUL TONGUE: An Interview with Liam Wright
This May, Kyle Newman embarks on a special four-issue interview series with four artists of different origins yet connected by a common thread called the Hanoi extreme metal scene. This is Issue #1.
Even after three or four years since the resurgence of the Hanoi extreme music scene, a character like Liam David Wright – the frontman of Rêvasseur, the premier driving force of melodic death metal in Hanoi, as well as the newly-resurrected beatdown band GAI – is far from common. If anything, he is someone who can be considered the embodiment of the two words eloquence and vigor.
I have only known Liam for around two years, yet in him I have found a deep sense of camaraderie and even brotherhood, not only in the mutual passion for the arts but also in life.
This interview serves as an introspective discourse to shed light on being the voice of two stylistically distinct entities and how that affect his own distinction between the two personas, musical and literary inspirations, and more!
Liam! My repeated yet greatest gratitude to you for joining this (not so) little conversation!
My absolute pleasure, mein brüder. I am ready to glue my brain to your brain.
The most recent show SCUMFEST 3 saw you debuting alongside the guys (or should I say, GAIS) of the recently-revived beatdown band GAI. How does it feel to grace the stage with them?
Fucken fantastic, man. Was great to finally show our music to Hanoi. I was bricking it massively before going on stage since it’s a new project of mine with a very different feel to my other band, Rêvasseur, but the crowd moved when we played so that’s a good sign!
Do enlighten me as well as the readers on how exactly this collaboration came to be!
I had expressed interest to a few people in the scene about starting some sort of beatdown/rapcore project + then I got approached to do vocals for what would be the second incarnation of GAI with a new sound + lineup. We initially ummed + ahhed over the band name but we settled on GAI, which I think was a solid decision because 1.) it has a link to VN (‘gai’ = ‘thorn’ in tiếng Việt) and 2.) it is a mono-syllabic one-word band name which is just infinitely more memorable than the string of “Verb The Noun” band names which tend to saturate this particular subgenre.
Contrary to the more organic and natural approach to live performances of Rêvasseur, GAI opted for a far more methodical and technical both in music as well as their live setup – in short, surgical one. What was it like to be a part of such a massive ensemble, and were there any difficulties when it came to conducting yourself on stage?
Ah yeah, the tech low-key frightens me. My biggest anxiety about it is that if something goes wrong with the tech we’d have to restart the song…which we wouldn’t have to do if we were playing the track more organically. It’s helpful having the in-ears so that we can all hear each other properly though and the tech was alright with some areas to work on, of course (first show blues), so that’s a ‘win’ in my book!
It must definitely be a refreshing experience to perform with a group of musicians who are quite of your junior. How does it feel to play with them, and what do you enjoy most in that experience? On that particular tangent, what are your musings on these younger, up-and-coming generations of metal musicians?
I’m 29, ya cheeky git! 😉 Dude, the more the merrier. Putting on these shows n seeing all these young lads n laddettes going mental at the front warms my cold fucken heart. I hope that, in some way, our performances can inspire even just a few of them to pick up an instrument or (if you’re instrumentally talentless + tone deaf like me!) pick up the mic.
It is not hard to notice that there is a clear difference between the Rêvasseur Liam and the GAI Liam, specifically in the vocal technique and expressivity departments. Would you like to let us know about your thoughts and feelings regarding this distinction?
Vocally, GAI is a lot more in the vein of hardcore so the style is probably more akin to my usual speaking (shouting?) voice as well as some narrsty toilet bowl gurgles for the lads. With Rêvasseur, I’m channelling a lot more of that old school 90s sound + focusing more on pushing power into my low range but contrasting that with shrieking highs.
I saw you doing your warmup routine before GAI’s soundcheck. As a fellow vocalist – and this is also for any aspiring throat-rippers to take note – what is your warmup routine before doing harsh vocals?
I used to just grip it + rip it but that does not equate to vocal sustainability so now I do this vocal warm-up which is from David Benites at Extreme Vocal Institute. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen in the burgeoning extreme vocal training industry who don’t quite SHOW or EXPLAIN how to do this vocal style but this guy is tops. Once I started doing this particular warm-up, I noticed a massive difference in my vocal stamina. Like night n day. So, yeah, it’s common dog sense shit but I think a lot of people neglect it. Like, you wouldn’t start running or lifting without warming up, right?
Onto the topic of themes: I do understand that for every project, there ought to be a different, um, “persona”, per se. And in your case, the immediate impression is that there is considerably more of a “personal” feeling injected into your work with GAI, as opposed to Rêvasseur, which I would claim to be almost imperial in cadence. What are your thoughts about this?
Yeah, man, Rêvasseur is far more informed by things I am reading which is usually writers of Dark Fantasy literature or World History (which tends to be pretty fucken dark). GAI, by contrast, is more about my own life + experiences distilled into songs.
Francophone is an uncommon thing in contemporary, predominantly Anglophone Vietnam, doubly so in contemporary music, and quadruply in extreme music: I do not recall anyone within our circle writing in anything in French hitherto, except you. Before going deeper into that tangent, may I ask how did you come across French as a language, and what enticed you to be so versed in it?
Honestly, I had a really hot French teacher at school haha. So, that kept me engaged! Later, I started falling in love with French music (and, after that, more French women) and here we are. If you want to learn a language fluently, there needs to be…how can I say…motivation. 😉
Specifically in a GAI track, Vive la déception – conveniently named in French, there was a whole verse written in that language, which created an aesthetically magnetic effect for the track. What was your inspiration behind this artistic choice?
Straight up, French is a sexy language, but it can also sound fucken nasty + super aggressive cos it has all these guttural phonemes + throaty /R/ sounds so I thought it fit perfectly at that part of the track.
Now this is definitely a more personal question: you mentioned Vive la déception is dedicated to your family and “based on a true story”? If allowed, may I ask about the story behind the narrative of the track?
It’s a story about 7 years of mental + emotional manipulation at the hands of someone who was once very close to me but who I no longer recognise. Thankfully, he no longer affects me since I was able to channel all of my baggage into GAI. I’ll be forever grateful to the lads for this opportunity because it has pretty much been my therapy.
Gritty and heavy in its social commentary and personal experiences, contrasting the metaphysical energy found in Rêvasseur: was this something you were conscious about when you write for GAI, or did it come naturally?
GAI is more a personal diary whereas, with Rêvasseur, I’m commenting on a wide range of topics I read/hear about. As well as that, I tend to go for vocal patterns first and THEN figure out the lyrics. Surprisingly, the lyrics for GAI flowed out of me at a time when I was unsure of how to articulate what I wanted to say. Then it was just a case of figuring out vocal patterns and making it all fit. So, kinda the opposite way around.
Rapping is a new element brought into the GAI sound, and this is barely out of the blue for metal: from the quirky gateway Limp Bizkit to even the crushing Whitechapel (THE SAW IS THE LAW!). Was this inclusion another natural occurrence for you when it came to GAI?
Yeah, Bozeman’s verse on Saw is fucken insane. What a monstrous vocalist. The rapping was definitely something I wanted to bring in partly to piss off all the closed-minded old-heads but also because I’ve always thought that rap and metal can blend really well together. I am a product of the late 90s/early 2000s after all, so I am no stranger (+ definitely not a hater) of methed-up nu-metal.
I do know from our conversations prior to this one that hip-hop has a major influence in your life, but we never got to take a deep dive into that. What sort of hip-hop are we talking about here? American gangsta rap? French and/or German, perhaps? Or modern UK drill, even?!
To be honest, I’m kinda all over the place when it comes to rap/hip-hop but I tend to gravitate more towards UK rap or dumb ignorant af American trap rap à la Juicy J these days. Having said that, I’m not so much of an album guy with this genre, I’ll just jam a track here + there but will jam that particular one to death until I get sick of it. I just like anything that has a greezy af flow or hard one-liner, ya know? For UK rap, I really dig D Double E cos he has this madcunt energy + some of his lines are just bizarre af but they kinda work. Of course, Skepta is the king of one-line flows + I can’t answer this question without mentioning the don.
As well as that, when I studied in France, I really got into French rap through some friends I met there. I was obsessed with PNL, Kaaris + SCH for a minute because there are some similarities in their aesthetic + the lyrical content with UK rap. I don’t really listen to this as much these days but the particular pattens + flow of some of the rappers in the group XV Barbar massively informed that of the verse on Vive La Déception.
On the topic of music-finding, what was your first encounter with metal music like? And do you remember what was your very first metal band?
Rammstein, aged 7. Straight up. I distinctly remember seeing the MV to Sonne on Kerrang TV + just being blown away by the powerful voice of Till Lindemann along with the drama + theatrics of the main refrain. It was like the missing piece of a puzzle I didn’t even know I was putting together had fallen into my lap.
My first metal band was some dreadful amalgamation of thrash + metalcore and those demos will never ever see the light of day, my friend!
And how did the descent into the extreme a la Vitriol or Gaerea happen?
I was always into metal but I was definitely more into the more mainstream bands back in the day. I mean, I saw Mayhem on their revival De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas tour back in Auckland which was insane but it took me moving to Vietnam to get as obsessively into the more extreme spectrums of Black/Death/Grindcore. On a whim, I went to a local show + was blown away by the latent talent in the scene here + the energy of the spectators. Then, I met all the [House of Ygra] boys who basically strapped me naked to a chair before kicked the shit outta me until I said ‘Ok, yes, Ok, I renounce Parkway Drive + from now on will only listen to Immolation, please, make it stop!’
Let us get back to Rêvasseur for a split second here: as mentioned above, there is definitely something novel and metaphysical about the band, especially in its lyrical content. Being a bibliophile yourself, how great of an influence do you think literature have on you regarding penning lyrics and verses for Rêvasseur, and perhaps for GAI by extension?
Books for Rêvasseur = yes. For GAI = no. It’s something about the different sound of both the bands which merits putting different topics into the lyrics. That doesn’t mean Rêvasseur is in no way personal, it is more that, for this iteration of GAI, I felt it made more sense to discuss a particular part of my life. However, who knows what I’ll write for the next GAI release.
Books! Had we not invented this means of articulation, our imagination and intellectual brilliance as advanced simians would have been stunted. Would you like to talk about some of your favorite books?
Does the Pope shit in the woods? Be very careful what you wish for, my friend, as we may be here all day 😉 I’ll keep it short. My favourites have changed over the years + what we enjoyed at age 16 will be different at 20 and then at 30 and so on. However, the ones from which I constantly stand back in awe would be Steven Erikson + R. Scott Bakker. I have found that their writing has informed most of Rêvasseur’s lyrics + continue to illuminate my life in so many ways. Honorary shoutout goes to China Mieville, too, who writes some of the most unique fantasy literature out there.
Perhaps in the foreseeable future, with subsequent releases of both Rêvasseur and GAI, we would see more literary references injected into the lyrics?
Again, Rêvasseur = yes yes yes. But GAI = not too sure. It depends whatever the music feels like. I would love to do a concept album one day. Technically, GAI’s upcoming record is a ‘concept record’ about a period in my life though.
Lastly, what can we expect from these two bands in the coming time?
Keep an eye out for some MVs ahead of the first GAI record. I have seen the finished version of MV #1 and it looks VERY slick so I can’t wait to put that out soon. For Rêvasseur, our next gig will be with Indonesian titans, Pure Wrath, on 26.05 + then we are going to continue writing for our next record. If you’re a good boy, you might hear some new tracks as part of our setlist for the PW show!
Once again, my most sincere thanks to you for being a part of this interview! Do you have anything you would like to tell everyone before we wrap this up?
My utmost appreciation to you + to the words you keep giving us, my bro! Really enjoyed your questions + looking forward to more engaging yarns with you in the near future.
For everyone else, well done if you have made it this far! Give yourself a pat on the back or pour yourself a nice dram or something. Chur!
LINKS:
https://www.instagram.com/revasseur_official/
https://www.facebook.com/revasseurband/
https://revasseur.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/gai.wav/
https://www.facebook.com/gaiband888
https://gaidownvn.bandcamp.com/
