by Chris Barnes
March 22, 2008

The MASSSIVE low end frequencies that uttered forth from Black Shape Of Nexus' self-titled debut blew the front right speaker in my Jeep Grand Cherokee. OK, so it might have been the result of the Chrysler/Dodge folks putting in shitty speakers in the first place, but there is no doubt that B.SON is primal heavy material, as it is unique and innovative. Take equal parts Khanate, Iron Monkey, ISIS, Electric Wizard and the German penchant for engineering and you've just about covered the B.SON sound. Here, Hellride talks with electronics dude Jan and gets behind B.SON's burning ambition pummel fists of frequency deep into the earth of Mannheim, Germany.

Hellride Music: Jan, thanks for taking the time out for this interview. First off, I want to say that you and the band might have created some of the heaviest sounds laid to recording equipment in my 41 years of life. This is subjective of course, but ... my God, it's heavy. Tell us about the evolution of the band from it's genesis up until the present time.

Jan: Chris, thanks a lot for the kind words! Hope you don't kick our asses for busting your car speakers, though. Anyway, Black Shape of Nexus in its first outfit came together in 2005, when Geb, Ralf (both 6-string) and Jan (electronics) decided to form a band that's dedicated to slow, low and somewhat spherical soundscapes with a good sense of doom and drone in it. We rehearsed with several guys in the summer of 2005 until Michael (4-string) joined up and a few weeks later our first drummer Marco did. This was our first constant line up. February 2007 Marco left the band and we're rehearsing with various drummers, until Marius got in touch with us. Now he's the guy sitting behind the drums and we have a stable line-up again.


Hellride Music: I know it's tough to label music and there are arguments both pro and con on doing just that. But if you had to sum up the B.SON sound in one sentence, what would that be?

Jan: Hm, that's a tough question as we don't feel like labeling our music. Other guys have been doing that in the past and used catch phrases like "drugged and demented superrock doombeast", "funeral stoner" or "...sounds like a rat's fart". We don't care, just listen to the songs and if you need a label make up your mind.


Hellride Music: I can respect that. So, B.SON started off as mostly Drone-influenced, correct? What made you guys shift toward a more propulsive, misanthropic sound?

Jan: We started out playing without a steady drummer, so our first efforts were more drone-like (check out song "I" from our demo, which can be downloaded at our website). But even then I wouldn't call our songs "drone" in the classic meaning of the word as a musical genre. After we had our first stable line-up including drums and bass, it felt quite natural to shift toward the direction we've been heading in since then.


Hellride Music: How do you guys write? Does it come out of a jam session or do the individual writers come in with ideas that are built upon by the other members of the band? Does the band have an overriding creed regarding what you write and record? Like "No symphonics, no female vocals, etc"? Or do you just let the creative process take you wherever it happens to go?

Jan: Mainly the songs are built on ideas that the individual writes bring along to the rehearsals. Everyone else adds his ideas to that first riff and slowly a song evolves (if everything works out fine...haha). I guess we don't have a common idea about limits concerning songwriting. Surely we don't want to end up like a crappy goth band or something like that, but we're constantly trying to evolve. Recently we have been recording improvised drone/ambient songs, where we use way different elements compared to the "regular" Black Shape Of Nexus songs. We were messing around with vocoders, spoken words and lots of electronics beside guitar and bass. We'll be releasing four of the songs of that session soon on 2LP/CD.


Hellride Music: Cool, looking forward to that. Let's talk about James Plotkin. The sound he got on Black Shape Of Nexus" is remarkable. It's mind-numbingly heavy, but it's also very spatial, which is unusual. How did you guys hook up with Plotkin? Why the different approaches to mastering between the CD and vinyl versions? Which sound do you guys prefer and why?

Jan: We are fans of the DIY idea. Though Ralf our guitar player made the recordings and did the mix of the songs so far in conjunction with the help of the other guys of the band. James Plotkin knows how this kind of music should sound and feel like and we asked him if he could do the mastering job. Gladly he said yes. From a technical point of view vinyl is limited in the low and high frequencies. As you mentioned we like it bass-heavy and decided therefore to choose a different mastering for vinyl and CD to keep as much bass signal as possible for the vinyl mix. Both mastering works sound mind boggling and we like it a lot.


Hellride Music: Jan, your role in B.SON is both electronics and keys and what you do is one of the more interesting things about B.SON... you create stark and sometimes odd sounds that don't overpower the music but rather complement the mayhem that everyone else is creating. Tell me more about your role both in the studio and in a live situation.

Jan: Guess there's nothing special to tell about my role. I'm 1/6 of Black Shape Of Nexus and like the other guys I'm adding my ideas to the songs. I try to make no difference between playing live and recording in the studio. I think that it's important not to trick everyone with millions of FX in the studio, but only do what can also be played live. So everything concerning electronics and synths, that can be heard on LP/CD, will be there live, too.


Hellride Music: On both your website and MySpace site, you have pretty strong messages toward other bands of similar sound that have "fascist/racist views". I'm not familiar with that side of the music, can you fill us in on what that movement is all about?

Jan: We think it's important to point out, that Black Shape Of Nexus doesn't want to be seen in line with bands sympathizing with nationalist, fascist or sexist ideas. We're not into halfhearted arguments like "come on, the music is fine, let's forget about the ideology", as it's often the case with bands/ acts rooted in the Black Metal "scene" with stupid fucks worshipping something they call NSBM (We're not saying Black Metal equals Fascism or Racism, though!). It feels kind of strange, that an explicit antifascist point of view is rather rare in the "doom scene". Having a look at the personal history of all of the members of B.SON, it's just a logical conclusion to speak out against fascism, racism and nationalism.


Hellride Music: Understood. You also have a split with Crowskin out. The combination of bands is brilliant. Are you guys friends with Crowskin and what are they all about? They have a female singer I think, although she out-roars even Angela Gossow.

Jan: The Crowskin guys are some of our friends and pretty nice and funny people. We went on a short tour with them last year and it was a hell of a time. Hope you can also see them live one day, as their singer is really something special to experience, especially live. That smart lady, swing and grooving along to the rest of the band and suddenly she starts to roar and kicks your ass...haha.


Hellride Music: What is the next project for B.SON? Can you tell us of any new writing and/or recording plans or live dates?

Jan: As mentioned above, we have just finished recording some more drone/ambient influenced stuff, which will be released by the name of Microbarome Session on 2LP/CD soon. Furthermore we're writing new "regular" Black Shape Of Nexus songs at the moment and are playing out live every now and then. Everyone hanging around at Roadburn Festival 2008, check us out 18th of April, 7pm-8pm at the "Green Room". Furthermore we're playing the first "Stoner Hands Of Doom" Fest in Germany in September and do a little more touring in early fall.


Hellride Music: Good deal, thanks again for the interview, Jan. Keep doing what your doing, it's great, innovative and very fucking heavy stuff. Any last words for the readers?

Jan: We'd like to thank you, Chris! Hope we'll meet in person one day...Thanks to Vendetta Records, Ecocentric Records and most of the bands we've played with so far. In addition we'd like to shout out a big "THANK YOU" to everyone who supported us so far by booking a show for us, buying our stuff, came to our shows or just got in touch to communicate. YOU ALL RULE!!!


Purchase Black Shape of Nexus and B.SON/CROWSKIN split 12" at the Hellride Music Superstore

Listen to a MP3 of IV

Read the Hellride review of Black Shape Of Nexus

Visit the B.SON website at www.blackshapeofnexus.com

Doomboss

cheers for this interview!

Chris

Thanks - they're a good group of dudes, if anyone is going to Roadburn, please check 'em out.

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Shepherd777

2nded

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http://www.myspace.com/exileonmainstream

Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!

Charles Baudelaire

Voodoo_Uwe

PLUS check their great shirts! Love the album

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www.beehoover.com

Gustav

I will be in the front row at Roadburn. It was the best news of the week when I read they were going to play there.

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aubergine

looking forward to meet you TEKTHON guys at roadburn!

thanks to chris again for doing this interview!

winoguy

They're sandwiched between Witchcraft and Trouble, in a different room. There's a half hour gap in between them with neither of them are playing in which I'll try to catch a few tunes.

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PETE

http://www.myspace.com/doommetalpatches

Anyone interested in trading cdrs email me at peterlugo6@comcast.net I have around 3100 titles of doom, NWOBHM, thrash, hardcore, grindcore, black, death, 70's, classic, sludge, stoner etc.

aubergine

we´ll do our best to kick some asses...haha.

Adflictatio

Tubs and I watched a couple of songs from these guys. First thing we noticed is the singer looks like he's singing out of a tracheotomy hole or something. He has this weird device strapped to his throat and is making this gurgling sort of scream come out of it. The music was extra slow, sludgy and punishing. Very heavy but after a couple of songs it got to be a bit much for me. Definitely worth checking out if you're into the super slow doom/death stuff.

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www.myspace.com/chowderbaltimore

aubergine

he is using an old panzer driver microphone for live shows!

aubergine

roadburn festival was a blast! thanks to everyone, who attended our show!