Just minutes after coming off stage following a brutal Ungraven set at The Black Heart in Camden I sat down with Jon Paul Davis in the back of his tour bus to discuss all things Ungraven.
Jon onstage at The Black Heart
Jules: Jon, many thanks for doing this interview about your new band Ungraven. Your debut ep “Language of Longing” comes out in March so the first question has to be, as you’ve already got Conan and DOS going on, what was the inspiration for you to start up a new band with Ungraven?
Jon: Well some of the Conan tracks or riff ideas I now come up with whilst playing along to a click track or just humming a song in my mind as a lot of people do. I then started thinking that I could set up a drum machine and play along to that so it’s not just a click track but drums that sound like the real thing. I then downloaded some software and started playing along with it and thought it was cool. I started creating my own drum patterns and beats, putting them together and mixing it and changing the sounds. Then all of a sudden, I got really inspired and started writing some cool riffs!
Conan released “Existential Void Guardian” around that time and I thought whether I could start something a bit more industrial so that first of all I can tour independently of Conan and it also gives me more freedom and scope to tour when I want to without putting pressure on Johnny and Chris. In between Conan tours I might be able to do a few small shows with Ungraven, which is exciting. I just wanted to do something that was simple and I could be self-indulgent with. Something that I don’t have to bounce ideas off other people because sometimes that feels nice. I really value the input from Chris and Johnny and Conan wouldn’t be the same without them both. Chris has had a long, long history of influence on how Conan sounds and the way we write. I just wanted to write something a bit different so started writing Ungraven at home and before I knew it, I had six songs written that sounded quite good. It was just the drums at first but I had some riffs in my mind that sounded cool. Before I knew it, I had six demo songs recorded with Chris and I released them on Bandcamp, iTunes and all that. I then started writing lyrics and getting ideas for more riffs and compositions, which changed the structure of the songs a little bit. A do a lot of flying and traveling and wrote a lot of these drum sections on the plane.
Jules: Is this the first time that you’ve used more technology in your song writing?
Jon: Yeah. We’ve never used anything like this in Conan, where the idea is playing simple heavy metal. This is much more of an industrial feel. Andy Swan from Khost has helped me with making the drums sound as they do. He’s made them sound a lot more nasty and thicker sounding, which is exactly what I want. I want the drums to sound like an industrial version of Des Kensel from High on Fire because he’s one of my favourite drummers of all time. I really admire his playing in High on Fire and I wanted to do something a bit like that to sound a bit like Godflesh but not copy Godflesh.
Jules: You’ve mentioned the word industrial a few times and are sitting here in a Fudge Tunnel t shirt and have also mentioned Godflesh. I can definitely hear the Godflesh influence in the demo tracks. It comes through in the sound and I know that you love the band.
Jon: Yeah, I really love Godflesh and had the pleasure of meeting them, which made me warm to them even more. It made me enjoy and appreciate the music more too. I can’t really put my finger on why that happened!
Jules: I’ve just watched you playing there and you’re probably the second person that I’ve seen do that type of one-man set and the first was Justin Broadrick with his Final project. That was just Justin on stage with a laptop and guitar (I think he was supporting Pelican) but it had the same type of feel as your set.
Jon: I think I may slow down a bit with future material to sound a bit more like a dirge but with a groove to it still. The stuff I’ve released at the moment has a certain feel and on the next release I might make it sound a bit more difficult to listen to – a bit like the intro that I used tonight called “Deep Rest”. My girlfriend Sarah and I were in Talin and we went for a walk to the old town and there was a gay pride march on. We went to watch it and the police there were separating the marchers from some anti-gay pride protestors. We were stood behind the police lines because the policing was really intense. The sirens were going off all around us and I thought that it would sound really cool if I could record it and use it for Ungraven. It came out really good and what you can hear on the intro is the siren from Talin. I thought it would start the set with a certain feel and then in addition in the background you can hear a guy that we met on our European tour in October when we played at a DIY venue in Antwerp. There was a guy there doing like art installations in which he made percussion instruments from old bin lids, cymbals and pieces of metal. We spent an hour in there with my stereo recording him tinkering around with the instruments. We recorded some cathedral bells and slowed them down so that’s in there as well with a bit of reverb on it. There’s also the sound of the loading noise from an old Spectrum computer in there.
Jules: I remember it well! That loading noise used to go on for half an hour!
Jon: I tried to find a Commodore 64 one because that’s what I actually had but all my friends had Spectrums at the time and were convinced they were better although I disagreed. But anyway, I managed to find a really good example of a ZX Spectrum loading so put that in there and doubled it up, fucked it a but with some reverb and did one channel like an octave below. It was sounding really good so I thought “what could I do to possibly make this better?” I thought, “I know the bit on Altered Beast where the guy says welcome to your doom” That will be the icing on the cake so I put it on the end there. I put in some echo and time stretched it out so it came out really weird. But because I time stretched it and multiplied it by 6 channels you’ve got that voice but 6 times and you can hear the individual nuances of the digitally created voice that you can hear on the game. I thought it sounded cool so put it all together and got a song – it was really inspiring!
Jules: It sounds to me like it’s the total opposite to how you record with Conan maybe. Much more down to earth and using the technology that’s out there now.
Jon: Yeah, it’s cool to do both. It’s very refreshing. I’ve never been nervous about playing apart from the first time that we played Roadburn when I had to have a couple of shots of Jägermeister before going on. Maybe Hellfest too. Then when I played Ungraven for the first time in Hull at the start of this tour I was shitting myself and it was awful actually, I played really bad!
Jules: It must be quite strange for you to be playing with no other band members on stage with you. Just you on your own and the crowd in front of you.
Jon: Yup. Even if I can’t hear Johnny because of the feedback I can see what he’s doing out of the corner of my eye. There’re no visual cues with programme drums unless you have a visible click and I don’t have that if there is such a thing! If you don’t get the mix right in your headphones then you can also lose the drums in your ears. I wear in ear monitors now and without these I wouldn’t hear the drums and it would be truly awful as I found out in Hull.
Jules: So how has it gone since the Hull date? Has it got progressively better and how were the nerves before the London show tonight?
Jon: I was a little bit nervous but felt confident because I cut out the song that was giving me all the hassle. I wanted to leave it in because it would make the set length spot on.
Jules: What was the hassle with that song then?
Jon: The drums and guitar were written before I wrote the vocals. So, when I wrote the drums and guitar it sounded great. Then when I went into the studio and wrote and recorded the vocals I never jammed it out myself and sung along to it. When I did the vocals over it in the studio it sounded really good but then playing and singing is like patting your head and rubbing your tummy sometimes.
Jules: You said that the last time I spoke to you too!
Jon: Yeah the Conan song “Eye To Eye To Eye” was a bit like that at first to play too because of the way the riff is at the beginning. You’ve got to kind of sing it and play it in your head first and when you’ve got that right you can do it on the guitar. I just haven’t cracked that song yet (it’s called Impale Lore) but hopefully I will. Because I’ve only got a handful of songs I feel under pressure to perform them all and I think that’s a bit unrealistic given that it’s so soon.
Jules: So, this is the fourth Ungraven gig tonight?
Jon: It’s the fourth gig of the tour but I actually didn’t play in Brighton. I bottled out but we were a bit late too so I just said that I didn’t fancy playing. It was the right decision because I would only have had ten minutes to set up and I still had to make changes. I have to put the drums on my backing track and edit them on the computer. Then I have to go into the computer programme, import them in to the programme, create a playlist with them and then export them to my thumb drive and then put that in the backing track player. That takes a little while and I’m still not fully fluid with it yet.
Jules: As far as influences are concerned, we’ve mentioned Fudge Tunnel and Godflesh already, I’m also hearing a bit of 80’s influences such as Celtic Frost in the riffs in particular. Would it be true to say that that’s a band that’s influenced the sound of Ungraven?
Jon: Yeah Celtic Frost, Bathory – just like simple mindless stuff. Even if it’s just one note for a while. Conan does that but slower and I just wanted to do a bit more of that with this. Look at some of the riffs on “Beneath the Remains” by Sepultura or Nailbomb – just that sort of thing. I can’t sing like Max Cavalera but on some of the songs like “Territory” for example or “Chaos AD”, they were the inspiration behind “Targetted” if I’m honest with you and I think I’ve got that type of groove and feel with that song. It was a huge influence on me, so all those things combine. You mention Celtic Frost and High on Fire sound a bit like them too. Motorhead were a big influence also. Celtic Frost will probably influence a lot of bands or certainly influence the bands that influence a lot of bands! They are right at the centre of the spider’s web I think with Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin etc.
Jules: The first time that I heard “Morbid Tales” I was about 15 and it just blew my brains totally. So, you mentioned trying to do stuff in between Conan gigs. Are there any concrete plans for more Ungraven gigs going forward?
Jon: I’ve got some shows coming up for the rest of the year, which I’m excited to play. I’ll be arranging some tours for Ungraven. I’m encouraged by tonight actually as I think I cracked it. It felt like it was a better performance. Nowhere near perfect obviously but if I can definitely get more used to the in-ear monitors I’ll be totally fine.
Jules: That’s great to hear. Cheers Jon and all the best for the future mate.
Check out the Ungraven Bandcamp site by following the link below:
Jules Throne 