Green Altar

2022 | Metal

— track 1: “Rise”

Cannon (Harlan) the Green: There is an overarching story that we don't have time to go all the way into, but the first record [Idle Worship and Ill Will Towards Man] is very lore based, like building a universe Green Altar exists in that's sort of off from ours. And then going forward, Heavy Side of the River, that whole record was sort of like, “If we don't get our shit together [nature is] just gonna wipe us out,” and Green Altar’s take on it was, “We're on that side that will be wiping out mankind because we've already chosen the side of nature.” And so this [self-titled] record is thematically about, "We're here now. It's happening." Like on the song "Rise," you know, "Rise as one of us, or die not one of us." The whole song is written from the perspective of a lioness talking to her cub. The cub is like, "Oh, should we go help these animals? They look like they're hurt." And the lioness being like, "No. They're not one of us. They're food now."

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Cannon the Green: The band started around seven years ago as a stoner metal project, and from there it just evolved. My buddy, Fetus, and I were just out of high school, and we were smoking a blunt at the Boss' Pizza over where Bagel Boy is now, he was supposed to go out to delivery, and we ended up sitting in the parking lot for like an hour and a half with the pizzas in the backseat just listening to his Bongzilla record. He didn't get fired somehow. And then it just sort of snowballed from there. I actually started out in a country band with John Berkness — who's another country singer around town — called The South Dakota Whiskey Boys, for a number of years. Actually, We All Have Hooks For Hands had their first show in my basement, it was the same show as the Whiskey Boys’ first show. And then then I was in punk bands, a couple of them, one called the Dirty Clergy in Vermillion. I can't remember if that band actually played a show. And then I played in a band called Tin Buckle Shoes with the lead singer of Master Bladers, they're a band right now. And then Thode and I were in a country band called Knife In A Gunfight for five years and we were not good.

Keats (Keaton Miller): I can attest that, you guys weren't good.

Cannon the Green: But we did learn how to, like, fucking grin and bear it on stage when we're tanking. So no fear of that. I actually met Rachel in a Tin Buckle Shoes show for the first time.

Rachel (Hurley-Harlan) Purps: Our bands played a show together, yeah. So yeah, I started playing bass when my best friend, Erin Snow, her band needed a bass player because she kicked her bass player out. That was here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So I learned how to play pretty quickly and joined a band called The Curtsy. I was just always really inspired by female-fronted bands. I liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Bikini Kill, and stuff like that. I'd always gone to shows and loved it. And then I met [Cannon], and we were in a band together [Judas Cow] in California. I just liked playing fast, heavy, “how I feel sometimes inside” music.

Keats: I started playing guitar when I was 13. I joined a cover band when I was 16, played live with that until about 18. And then I started a bunch of punk bands in Sioux Falls. Playing around at Total Drag and shit. These three came to see my punk bands a bunch and we became friends. The first one was a band called Androgynous Squash. That and Angie Hosh were the two main ones I was in. Then I was doing merch for [Green Altar] in Fargo and the other guitar player was having some issues, and these guys were like, "Hey, tentatively, would you want to join?" And I was like, "Yeah, sure." Didn't think it was gonna happen, then a week later they hit me up, "Hey, come over and practice. We'll do some fun stuff."

(Chris) Thode: I started playing bass in high school. When I got to college, I joined a metal band with a few friends. I think we were called Caligra, not to be confused with the Sioux Falls band Caligari [laughs]. But Caligra, we mostly did Metallica covers and just a lot of early-2000s metal. I also went and helped out some friends in folk bands, none ever did too much. I play banjo, mandolin, and stuff like that. Any stringed instrument I can get my hands on. And then eventually me and Cannon started Knife In A Gunfight, which was an interesting experience to say the least [laughs]. And then yeah, I switched from playing bass primarily to guitar primarily when I joined Green Altar. [Our drummer] Myyyles (Myles Gosmire) isn't able to make it. He's also been in an absolute ton of bands, too.

Cannon the Green: He plays drums and keys in Later Babes. He was in a band called Alabamarama, which he'd be pissed if we didn't mention.

Keats: We just got a text from Myyyles saying “don't mention me at all.” [laughs]

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Thode: [Green Altar’s sound] comes from adding aspects of bands that influence us and kind of driving it further from there. I'm a big Bongzilla fan, and an Eyehategod fan. So I bring a lot of sludge and stoner aspects to a lot of the riff creation. And then we've been pushing each other to add more of a black metal twinge to things, just because we find it interesting, and it's kind of fun to play off Cannon's ability to emulate the lead singer of Celtic Frost. I don't know if he does it on purpose sometimes, but he does. I'm also a huge fan of the bands Trouble and St. Vitus, so it was a lot of thematic pieces of having music that pushes that sound of anxiety, but also impending doom. And then, obviously, the love affair with big, crunchy sounding guitars that sound chaotic with all the overtones to it.

Keats: Whenever we're down there in the basement writing the records, we just are having fun. So I'll have people be like, "Yeah, I heard this part that was very black metal." Or "I heard this hardcore riff" and I'd be like, "It was just a riff we wrote, man," Thode is the tone guy. Thode knows more about tone — like, I know my tone, I know how I set it. He has a bigger picture idea of Green Altar and these soundscapes he crafts.

Cannon the Green: We took a more somatic, like, [the songs are] more in movements than a verse-chorus-verse sort of structure.

Thode: A lot of that comes from a riffage idea. We'll start, and we'll jam it out, and we'll play around with it and see how it goes, and we'll keep tweaking that riff for a little while. And then once we feel like, "Okay, this is going somewhere. What's this go into?” There's always this conversation about, “Thematically, how does it shift? How does it change?” And then as we got the imagery down, then it changes meter or pace with the images or thoughts we have going on in our head. When we did "Plague of Man," Cannon kept coming down with this idea of mushrooms devouring flesh, basically. What does it sound like if you put the concept of mushrooms eating flesh into a song? [laughs]

Keats: I was a fan of Green Altar before joining. I had joined bands that had existed before, but in this instance I was like a little nervous, I was like, "I don't know if they're gonna want me to write" Pretty much from the get go, Thode and Myyyles and Rachel were like, "What do you want to do? How do you want to craft this?" Myyyles is a huge, important part of writing in Green Altar too, because he's the biggest critic. He'll be like, "No, that's fucking shit." And then we'll throw it away. Or like, "Oh, shelf that for now." Or there are a couple riffs on the album that one of us was just jamming to ourselves to warm up. And he's like, "I like that. Keep playing that" And I'm like, "I don't know what I was doing." And he's like, "Just keep doing it." And then, you know, we all start kind of doing our own thing off of that.

Cannon the Green: In the past I have been down in the basement when they're writing the music pretty heavily, and on this one I took a step back during the music writing — I was still there, but less than usual. I just sat up here, and listened to it, and spun the story in my head. And they'd play something awesome, then I'd run downstairs and be like, "We have to fucking keep doing that. That's amazing." But this record is really a flex from these guys. They worked really hard on it. It was really difficult to write lyrics to because I was afraid of putting something up that wasn't as good as the music they created. These guys gave me complete freedom to do whatever I wanted. So if you listen to it, it's pretty blatantly just a sermon, from start to finish, complete with hymns and a couple of homilies or whatever you want to call them. So the whole thing is supposed to feel like a giant cult ritual.

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Thode: We [recorded at] Wyatt Bartlett's place. He's been putting together a studio up there. Wyatt Bartlett's the main guy from RIFFLORD.

Cannon the Green: Astral Pasture. It's in the middle of bum fuck South Dakota. As bum fuck as you can get. Outside of Burke. He did a great job.

Thode: Lyrics were written in studio. Some of the lead parts I put on songs were done on the spot, because I never really came up with things until we worked it out in the studio.

Rachel Purps: I was prepped and prepared [laughs]. I will say, things did change once we were in the studio. So I can't say that I was completely prepared [laughs].

Cannon the Green: I was not prepared at all [laughs]. Some of the songs I had some lyrics for. And then "Plague of Man" I did without any lyrics, I just did it off the top of my head, because it's supposed to be like a sigil. I pretty much did that in one take with no preparation, but I knew what I wanted it to be based off of. But yeah, I still don't really know the lyrics.

Thode: We had to do this over three different recording sessions, because the first one Keaton had Covid. So the second one was to finish that up. And then we wanted all the music parts done to do the vocals.

Keats: Plus we were incredibly hungover that second time. By the time it was time to do vocals, Wyatt and Canon were like, "Yeah, no, we're good. We'll finish this later."

Cannon the Green: Yeah we drank literally 100 beers and a bottle of whiskey the first night, so there's a lot going on, on the record as far as like, chemicals.

Keats: Well, there's a lot going on in general.

Rachel Purps: A lot of emotion, anxiety.

Cannon the Green: Yeah, if I'd say there's a theme to the record, it's like, we're all very anxious people in different ways. I actually remember a specific time Keats actually saying like, "No, we should foster that anxiety."

Keats: A big part of art is expressing yourself, and especially with writing in the pandemic, like, I already have anxiety and that just heightened it.

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Keats: So right when the pandemic started, when we were not practicing, I actually drew a comic for Green Altar. We're releasing that on June 24th with the album. It's just a fun thing. I lived with Marc Wagner, who's from Sioux Falls, he's one of my best friends, super dope cartoonist. He really inspired me to start creating more, and to try to create differently, and think about creating differently. I've always loved comic books, loved reading them. The Green Altar comic is definitely my favorite I've done. And like I said, with it being during the pandemic, I wasn't seeing these people, it was a way to be like, "I'm still in this band, even though we can't write our album because we could die.”

Thode: The new album has a lot to do with like, "What's the anxiety around knowing that what you leave today will be destroyed tomorrow? Because it's just going to get worse." More talking about the ecological impact of what's going on right now. I think of imagery like the volcano explosion in Iceland. I think of giant sinkholes opening up.

Cannon the Green: During the pandemic, all that nature coming back.

Thode: Yeah, the iridescent dolphins, that was a big piece. Yeah.

Rachel Purps: We also practice in a garden backyard that is lush in life. That inspires me, personally. I'm a huge green thumb, plant person. I have a big garden. So when I think of Green Altar, I just think of how I tend to my garden. Or like, when I'm in there I'll sing songs to my plants, and then sometimes those songs become bass lines or whatever. But we'll hang outside, and there's this big garden, and I just see the dudes, and I just think, “With all of the crap out there, we're constantly putting out things to try to help our Earth and Mother Nature.” I don't know. I like kind of balancing between music and playing with dirt. They coexist for me.