Interview - Between Birth, Death and The Future with Jason Brown of Sunk Loto

  • Interview - Between Birth, Death and The Future with Jason Brown of Sunk Loto
    POSTED
    By Brenton Harris

    Sunk Loto 2023

    After a monumental rebirth in 2022, Australian metal icons Sunk Loto are dominating 2023. Having welcomed new guitarist Rohan Stevenson (I Built The Sky) and unleashed their first new single in twenty years The Gallows Wait, the band are out on the road to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their beloved 2003 opus Between Birth and Death.

    Bringing this special anniversary event to stages in Fremantle, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne these once-in-a-lifetime shows are offering both fans and the band a chance to revisit the prominent 12-track full-length still permeating in the psyche of metal purists.

    Ahead of the tour, we caught up with vocalist Jason Brown for a chat about the enduring legacy of Between Birth and Death and what Sunk Loto’s suddenly very bright future holds. 

    Between Birth, Death and The Future with Jason Brown of Sunk Loto

    Sunk Loto are about to go on tour to celebrate one of the most critically acclaimed records of its era Between Birth and Death. Are you excited to get out and play these old songs in new ways?

    “Definitely. I think I was sort of going last year, ‘fuck have we done the right thing by committing to telling our fans we're just going to play the whole thing from start to finish?’. I didn’t know how it was gonna translate. I think once we started rehearsing it that way, everyone was like, ‘fuck, I forgot how well this whole thing flows!”. And yeah, especially live, it just translates, it doesn't feel awkward. It feels like everything just is meant to be in that place. And it just flows through beautifully, from start to finish.”

    Has the significance of the record to you grown at all, given that you're revisiting it at a very different stage of your life?

    “I think certain songs definitely. Even last year, we didn't play a fair few tracks off Between Birth and Death. And the ones that we didn't play have become my favourites in the set this time. Songs like Past Tense Existence, and Inside, I'm like, ‘fuck, these songs were so good’. And they still stand up.”

    It’s interesting that the record has grown to be so beloved. At the time of release, the word on the street was that your record company and various other people in the industry weren't so sure that Between Birth and Death was the record they were expecting to get, as it didn’t fit in with the trend. Twenty years on, it has aged a lot better than most records from that period. Did you feel like you were setting the band up for the future when you were putting the record together? 

    “Oh, yeah, there was definitely talk around in the writing of that record that we wanted to definitely make something that was timeless. We thought that some records around that time, like Deftone’s White Pony and the Tool records, we thought that they had that quality. It was timeless music. That's sort of what we set out to do. 20 years later is still as relevant as it was back then. Nothing sounds dated. Nothing sounds like ‘Yeah, that was cool back then. But it doesn't really sound that good to these now’. A lot of albums that I listened to back then, I couldn’t say the same thing about now. I liked them when I was around them, but looking back now you sort of see holes in them. I think we've done a great job with achieving that timeless quality that we set out to achieve.”

    With full respect to a lot of bands of that era,  I would agree with you in the sense that a lot of the records that came out around that latter wave of nu-metal didn't really age that well, because they were quite clearly created within a trend to respond to one. 

    “When you set out to try and be something, I think you really risk falling into that thing. There's a fine line. We never thought we were a band of a certain style, we just were a heavy band. It just so happened that we came out very young with that sort of sound. It probably was a thing when we were younger that we were trying to sort of be like those bands but we sort of went ‘You know what? We really want to just stay heavy, but have our own sound’. It’s sort of like cracking open a time capsule. We buried this thing and in 20 years time we dug it up and it’s still good!”

    I was fortunate enough to see you play a few tracks off this record on your reunion run last year. The general consensus from those shows was that these tracks sounded better live now than they did at the time you put them out. Do you feel like the growth you’ve all undertaken as musicians and performers over the past twenty years has made you a stronger live proposal?

    “I think it's the finessing things that you learn. The more you grow, the older you get it’s that small stuff that you pick up on as a musician. It’s just 20 years of growing. So the songs are obviously still the same, nothing's changed there, but we’re delivering things with more experience and more knowledge. So I think that's probably what people are hearing.”

    As a vocalist, you would have learned a lot about your own voice during those twenty years. Have you found that you’ve been able to apply new approaches or vocal techniques to the Sunk Loto material?

    “I've definitely learned as a vocalist. Back then it was just an approach of ‘put in everything you have’. I would blow out a lot on tours, and sometimes even in recordings, I would blow out and I'd have to have breaks. now it's just sort of knowing where to push and where not to push. You just learn more about what not to do and what to do.”

    You have a new song out, The Gallows Wait that people have been losing their minds about. This is the first song to feature your new guitarist Rohan Stevenson. What has the experience been like of getting back into a recording studio again with Sunk Loto?

    “So good! It was definitely the unknown there, walking in, wondering ‘What can we deliver?’

    We go into every session wanting to deliver above and beyond every time. So that was the goal. We knew we gelled with Ro and everything was working great, we all got along and we collaborated really well, but there can be a difference when you get into the studio. But it was just a great experience. From the guys we worked with on the production and engineering, Forester Savell and Luke Palmer, to the pre-production which we did in Sean, our bass player's dad’s house, it was just a good vibe.”

    “Everything was flowing. We’re releasing another song soon, to go with The Gallows Wait and had these sketches of what we thought would make a good song, but we had two days to sort of pull it together. I think when you’ve got the right people and the right vibes and all the egos are gone, no one is trying to protect their guitar solos or their ideas, you’re just going to come up with gold.” 



    The addition of Ro to the band presents some interesting possibilities in terms of expanding your sound. The guy can pretty much play anything and everything, does that excite you? The prospect of writing new music with those new abilities and new perspectives in the band?

     “Absolutely. I think the possibilities are endless for us. I feel like the pressure is off me a lot as a songwriter. I felt a lot of pressure to come up with riffs and songs, trying to write full pieces as well as lyrics and vocal lines. There was a lot of pressure there, but all that's being alleviated on all fronts with Ro in our band, definitely. My brother Dane on drums has stepped up hugely too. What he was doing in the song was insane. Sean's doing a lot of the recording stuff for us and bringing all these great ideas, it is really in the truest sense of full collaboration between the four of us.”

    You touched on your brother just then. That must be cool getting the chance to do this again, with your sibling, at this later stage age of your life? Have you got more of an understanding of what Sunk Loto means in the overall totality of your own existence now, and is revisiting that with that context proving to be a special experience for you?

    “Absolutely, I didn't think I'd ever play in a band again, let alone one with my brother again. It was just totally off the table over that 15-year break. I couldn't imagine doing it with anyone else. You know, he's a key part. Sean's a key part Ro’s a key part. I wouldn't want to have it any other way. We've just got this amazing thing happening. It's just all good. And yeah as you touched on, we're not taking this for granted whatsoever. We’ve been given this second chance, and we just want to give it everything we have. We’ve got a second chance at our dream”.

    “When your dream is taken away from you, it’s the most heartbreaking thing, and you sort of never recover from it in a way. I had come to terms with the possibility that what we had was it, I’d still be making music, but not at this level. So it’s a huge thing. We’re trying to do everything that we can to preserve this and take it as far as we can.”

    How indicative is the sound of The Gallows Wait of what we can expect from a new Sunk Loto record?

    “I think it's a pretty good indicator. We also don't know where we're going to get to with these other songs though, we’re very open-minded as musicians and other things could come into the fold that we didn't think would be possible. We’ve never thought ‘Okay, that's us’, you know? We don't lock ourselves into a pigeonholed sound, as you can hear with everything we've done in the past. You can expect some similar stuff, but then also some stuff that maybe people won't expect. All I can say is it's going to be on that level of quality, plus some.”

    To my ears, it's got a real groove metal element to the track that calls to mind the likes of  Lamb of God and Gojira. Is that the direction you’re trying to move towards?

    “I think that's something we've always been close to. We had a lot of Sepultura and that sort of stuff going on in our life as teens. That's sort of what we grew up on. That influence just so happened to show itself, especially in Between Birth and Death. When we play that set when we rehearse, it is a very fast album. Then we actually play The Gallows Wait live after it, and it definitely feels different. It's got a pounding groove. The crowd have been going nuts to that song, by the way, and I think it is that groove we have to thank for it. It was nothing really intentional, it’s just sort of how things happened.”

     

    Sunk Loto Tour Poster 2023

    Sunk Loto

    Between Birth & Death

    20th Anniversary Tour

    With Special Guests

    Ocean Sleeper

    Red Bee

    Amberdown

    Friday 20 October - Freo Social, Fremantle*

    Saturday 4 November - The Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane^

    Friday 10 November - The Metro Theatre, Sydney^

    Friday 17 November - Max Watts, Melbourne^

    Saturday 18 November - Froth & Fury Festival, Port Adelaide*^

    The Gallows Wait has been added to our Metal Maniacs playlist listen now on Spotify. 

    Shop for Metal Merch

    Shogun Half Sumo T-Shirt + Milky Clear Vinyl

     

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Submitted by wordsbybrenton on

Sunk Loto 2023

After a monumental rebirth in 2022, Australian metal icons Sunk Loto are dominating 2023. Having welcomed new guitarist Rohan Stevenson (I Built The Sky) and unleashed their first new single in twenty years The Gallows Wait, the band are out on the road to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their beloved 2003 opus Between Birth and Death.

Bringing this special anniversary event to stages in Fremantle, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne these once-in-a-lifetime shows are offering both fans and the band a chance to revisit the prominent 12-track full-length still permeating in the psyche of metal purists.

Ahead of the tour, we caught up with vocalist Jason Brown for a chat about the enduring legacy of Between Birth and Death and what Sunk Loto’s suddenly very bright future holds. 

Between Birth, Death and The Future with Jason Brown of Sunk Loto

Sunk Loto are about to go on tour to celebrate one of the most critically acclaimed records of its era Between Birth and Death. Are you excited to get out and play these old songs in new ways?

“Definitely. I think I was sort of going last year, ‘fuck have we done the right thing by committing to telling our fans we're just going to play the whole thing from start to finish?’. I didn’t know how it was gonna translate. I think once we started rehearsing it that way, everyone was like, ‘fuck, I forgot how well this whole thing flows!”. And yeah, especially live, it just translates, it doesn't feel awkward. It feels like everything just is meant to be in that place. And it just flows through beautifully, from start to finish.”

Has the significance of the record to you grown at all, given that you're revisiting it at a very different stage of your life?

“I think certain songs definitely. Even last year, we didn't play a fair few tracks off Between Birth and Death. And the ones that we didn't play have become my favourites in the set this time. Songs like Past Tense Existence, and Inside, I'm like, ‘fuck, these songs were so good’. And they still stand up.”

It’s interesting that the record has grown to be so beloved. At the time of release, the word on the street was that your record company and various other people in the industry weren't so sure that Between Birth and Death was the record they were expecting to get, as it didn’t fit in with the trend. Twenty years on, it has aged a lot better than most records from that period. Did you feel like you were setting the band up for the future when you were putting the record together? 

“Oh, yeah, there was definitely talk around in the writing of that record that we wanted to definitely make something that was timeless. We thought that some records around that time, like Deftone’s White Pony and the Tool records, we thought that they had that quality. It was timeless music. That's sort of what we set out to do. 20 years later is still as relevant as it was back then. Nothing sounds dated. Nothing sounds like ‘Yeah, that was cool back then. But it doesn't really sound that good to these now’. A lot of albums that I listened to back then, I couldn’t say the same thing about now. I liked them when I was around them, but looking back now you sort of see holes in them. I think we've done a great job with achieving that timeless quality that we set out to achieve.”

With full respect to a lot of bands of that era,  I would agree with you in the sense that a lot of the records that came out around that latter wave of nu-metal didn't really age that well, because they were quite clearly created within a trend to respond to one. 

“When you set out to try and be something, I think you really risk falling into that thing. There's a fine line. We never thought we were a band of a certain style, we just were a heavy band. It just so happened that we came out very young with that sort of sound. It probably was a thing when we were younger that we were trying to sort of be like those bands but we sort of went ‘You know what? We really want to just stay heavy, but have our own sound’. It’s sort of like cracking open a time capsule. We buried this thing and in 20 years time we dug it up and it’s still good!”

I was fortunate enough to see you play a few tracks off this record on your reunion run last year. The general consensus from those shows was that these tracks sounded better live now than they did at the time you put them out. Do you feel like the growth you’ve all undertaken as musicians and performers over the past twenty years has made you a stronger live proposal?

“I think it's the finessing things that you learn. The more you grow, the older you get it’s that small stuff that you pick up on as a musician. It’s just 20 years of growing. So the songs are obviously still the same, nothing's changed there, but we’re delivering things with more experience and more knowledge. So I think that's probably what people are hearing.”

As a vocalist, you would have learned a lot about your own voice during those twenty years. Have you found that you’ve been able to apply new approaches or vocal techniques to the Sunk Loto material?

“I've definitely learned as a vocalist. Back then it was just an approach of ‘put in everything you have’. I would blow out a lot on tours, and sometimes even in recordings, I would blow out and I'd have to have breaks. now it's just sort of knowing where to push and where not to push. You just learn more about what not to do and what to do.”

You have a new song out, The Gallows Wait that people have been losing their minds about. This is the first song to feature your new guitarist Rohan Stevenson. What has the experience been like of getting back into a recording studio again with Sunk Loto?

“So good! It was definitely the unknown there, walking in, wondering ‘What can we deliver?’

We go into every session wanting to deliver above and beyond every time. So that was the goal. We knew we gelled with Ro and everything was working great, we all got along and we collaborated really well, but there can be a difference when you get into the studio. But it was just a great experience. From the guys we worked with on the production and engineering, Forester Savell and Luke Palmer, to the pre-production which we did in Sean, our bass player's dad’s house, it was just a good vibe.”

“Everything was flowing. We’re releasing another song soon, to go with The Gallows Wait and had these sketches of what we thought would make a good song, but we had two days to sort of pull it together. I think when you’ve got the right people and the right vibes and all the egos are gone, no one is trying to protect their guitar solos or their ideas, you’re just going to come up with gold.” 



The addition of Ro to the band presents some interesting possibilities in terms of expanding your sound. The guy can pretty much play anything and everything, does that excite you? The prospect of writing new music with those new abilities and new perspectives in the band?

 “Absolutely. I think the possibilities are endless for us. I feel like the pressure is off me a lot as a songwriter. I felt a lot of pressure to come up with riffs and songs, trying to write full pieces as well as lyrics and vocal lines. There was a lot of pressure there, but all that's being alleviated on all fronts with Ro in our band, definitely. My brother Dane on drums has stepped up hugely too. What he was doing in the song was insane. Sean's doing a lot of the recording stuff for us and bringing all these great ideas, it is really in the truest sense of full collaboration between the four of us.”

You touched on your brother just then. That must be cool getting the chance to do this again, with your sibling, at this later stage age of your life? Have you got more of an understanding of what Sunk Loto means in the overall totality of your own existence now, and is revisiting that with that context proving to be a special experience for you?

“Absolutely, I didn't think I'd ever play in a band again, let alone one with my brother again. It was just totally off the table over that 15-year break. I couldn't imagine doing it with anyone else. You know, he's a key part. Sean's a key part Ro’s a key part. I wouldn't want to have it any other way. We've just got this amazing thing happening. It's just all good. And yeah as you touched on, we're not taking this for granted whatsoever. We’ve been given this second chance, and we just want to give it everything we have. We’ve got a second chance at our dream”.

“When your dream is taken away from you, it’s the most heartbreaking thing, and you sort of never recover from it in a way. I had come to terms with the possibility that what we had was it, I’d still be making music, but not at this level. So it’s a huge thing. We’re trying to do everything that we can to preserve this and take it as far as we can.”

How indicative is the sound of The Gallows Wait of what we can expect from a new Sunk Loto record?

“I think it's a pretty good indicator. We also don't know where we're going to get to with these other songs though, we’re very open-minded as musicians and other things could come into the fold that we didn't think would be possible. We’ve never thought ‘Okay, that's us’, you know? We don't lock ourselves into a pigeonholed sound, as you can hear with everything we've done in the past. You can expect some similar stuff, but then also some stuff that maybe people won't expect. All I can say is it's going to be on that level of quality, plus some.”

To my ears, it's got a real groove metal element to the track that calls to mind the likes of  Lamb of God and Gojira. Is that the direction you’re trying to move towards?

“I think that's something we've always been close to. We had a lot of Sepultura and that sort of stuff going on in our life as teens. That's sort of what we grew up on. That influence just so happened to show itself, especially in Between Birth and Death. When we play that set when we rehearse, it is a very fast album. Then we actually play The Gallows Wait live after it, and it definitely feels different. It's got a pounding groove. The crowd have been going nuts to that song, by the way, and I think it is that groove we have to thank for it. It was nothing really intentional, it’s just sort of how things happened.”

 

Sunk Loto Tour Poster 2023

Sunk Loto

Between Birth & Death

20th Anniversary Tour

With Special Guests

Ocean Sleeper

Red Bee

Amberdown

Friday 20 October - Freo Social, Fremantle*

Saturday 4 November - The Tivoli Theatre, Brisbane^

Friday 10 November - The Metro Theatre, Sydney^

Friday 17 November - Max Watts, Melbourne^

Saturday 18 November - Froth & Fury Festival, Port Adelaide*^

The Gallows Wait has been added to our Metal Maniacs playlist listen now on Spotify. 

Shop for Metal Merch

Shogun Half Sumo T-Shirt + Milky Clear Vinyl

 


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