On Oct. 2, The Daily Aztec published an album review on the local band Earthless, a psyche-metal band that blew away audiences at the Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland. The album, “Live at Roadburn,” was a live recording of the mind-melting adventure that took place, where the band unexpectedly got bumped up to the headlining slot, and it truly didn’t disappoint.
To give a crash course on the band Earthless, it is a fusion of the seemingly incompatible genres of psychedelic and metal, blending the sounds characteristic of metal guitar and smoothly flowing bass rifts.
“Epic” is an appropriate word to describe the sight-bending music that is produced by the power trio, as the two songs on the album venture into the range of 35 to as long as 47 minutes, without the addition of lyrics in either song. Recently, however, drummer Mario Rubalcaba granted The Daily Aztec an interview, where he answered a number of questions about the band. When first asked about his experience of playing live at the Roadburn Festival, Rubalcaba explained the whole ordeal with detail.
“There were three rooms at the whole Roadburn, and we were supposed to headline the smallest room. We were just about to start loading our stuff on, then the event organizer pulled me aside and explained they wanted to move Earthless to the main stage. It was pretty surreal,” Rubalcaba said.
Without a doubt that moment was huge for the band, as its audience multiplied tenfold, increasing from 200 to 2,000 people. The most amazing part of the performance by Earthless is that a good deal of its material is improvised, including its two songs that are off the album. According to Rubalcaba, a loose bass rift is what most of the song is based off of, but the rest is just jamming out. This technique isn’t new as he points out in the interview, noting that bands such as Black Sabbath or performers such as Jimi Hendrix would extend live songs by about 20 minutes. However, there is a method to the madness, as Rubalcaba explains that there is indeed structure to the improvisation. When asked about the writing process, Rubalcaba said, “Sometimes when we step into the practice room, either Isaiah (Mitchell) or Mike (Eginton) will be playing some riffs they set up at home. They’ll just be warming up, one of us will be like “what’s that?’ It’s a lot of brainstorming, it just sparks more ideas.”
Overall, it is simply encouraging that a band exists today that keeps up the spirit of artistry in music. Those who want to find amazing musical artists outside of the mainstream should definitely check out the band Earthless.
