Straight outta New Jersey comes the black/death/pagan/progressive metal monstrosity known as Helcaraxë. Taking its name from an icy wasteland in JRR Tolkien’s Middle-earth saga THE SILMARILLION, the band, which has existed since 2003, has managed to release four platters (2 full lengths and 2 EPs) without ever performing live…that is, until a couple of weeks ago.
Helcaraxë’s performance is calculated and ferocious, while its lyrics blend fantasy and irreligious themes. It’s members come from all walks of New Jersey’s extreme heavy metal scene, culling its roster from the likes of Open Grave, Aborted Jesus, and even Swashbuckle.
Read on, as we spend some time with guitarist Bill Henderson as the band gears up for an ambitious new album and some regional concert performances!
How is it that Helcaraxë was able to build up such a substantial catalogue in the black/death metal realm without ever playing live before November 5 of this year?
We, Jesse (Traynor, the singer) and I had been playing in a band when we were in college called The Procedure, which was a metal-influenced hardcore band. And Jesse was heavily into black metal and death metal and was constantly pressuring me to start a side project in that vein when I had the time. One night, when I did have a couple of free hours, I caved into his peer pressure, wrote a couple of songs and sent them to him. He felt they were too good not to pursue, and they ended up becoming the first couple of songs off of the first LP we released, TRIUMPH AND REVENGE.
We ended up writing and recording that entire album in the span of about ten days. We then threw together some lyrics and had the whole thing completed in less than a month. We played it for a friend of Jesse’s named Joe, who runs a NJ-based black metal label called Regimental Records. It was a little bit removed from the stuff that he normally releases, but he liked it so much that he wanted to release it for us anyway. And before we knew it, we had an album for a band that didn’t previously exist.
We’ve been fortunate enough from getting the word out with new songs on MySpace (when MySpace was still relevant) that we actually had offers to release our albums on three different labels to this point, without ever being asked to play a show. We actually wouldn’t have been able to at the time if we wanted to, since it was just the two of us. I think this notion is becoming more common these days, with the pervasiveness of home-recording and people like me being able to simulate an entire band without anyone actually being involved.
Yeah, but a lot of those types of bands are simply happy to write, record, and pop their stuff up on iTunes and let social networking do all the promo work. You guys still go that extra “old school” step (well, old school by 2010 standards) and produce physical CDs, without utilizing the traditional CD push of touring behind it.
I’ll tell you what, it’s been weird, but it’s cool that people are actually enjoying the music that we’re recording. I’ve been a part of so many bands over the last 15 years, and the ones that actually played shows and tried to go out and actively promote the music, nobody cared or bought the CDs. And with Helcaraxë, we’ve always had a steady stream of people that were interested in buying our music without ever having to put out any legwork for it.
So what was the straw that broke the camel’s back that made you put together a “touring lineup?”
It was a gradual process, because we accumulated extra members one at a time. It started with Pat [Henry, AKA Admiral Nobeard of Swashbuckle] joining on bass a few years ago, halfway through the recording of the NO GOD TO SAVE YOU EP. Then the same thing happened a year or two later with Jon [Tarella, lead guitar], while we were recording the BROADSWORD LP.
I think the thing that actually forced us to get a drummer and have a full lineup that could play live was that we got an offer from a friend of mine to record a couple of songs for free in his studio. I was in the mood for trying something else and not waste so much time recording and mixing by myself. So we took him up on that and asked Mike [Donatelli], who plays drums in another band with Jon and I, to get together with us and record at this guy’s studio. That was the first time that Helcaraxë ever got together and practiced – this was about 14 months ago. We had two practices just to write those two songs and then record them, and we didn’t play together as a band until this year.
That’s something that often goes unlooked in the American metal scene. There are so many bands in New Jersey with members that play in other bands, and yet, so few of them ever rise to the surface and successfully shill their wares on the national platform.
Yeah, I think that’s pretty accurate. There is definitely a lot of incestuous member relationships across multiple bands, and even across multiple genres. The other band that Mike and Jon are in with is is a prog-indie rock band. And I’ve been in hardcore bands, folk projects, and as you know, Pat’s bands run the gamut, as well.
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