Latest Release: A Sign of Things to Come
Label: Nuclear Blast
Tour: https://thephoenix.au/sylosis/
Artist Website: https://www.sylosis-band.com/
British metal band, Sylosis, are intense purveyors of modern thrash metal. Formed in the 2000, within Reading, Berkshire, nearby the meeting of rivers well known to the British, the flow of music from Sylosis has spread widely, with stylistic maturity, and impeccable guitar technique from frontman Josh Middleton, who has also leant his service to East Sussex metalcore outfit Architects, which has obviously kept Mr. Middleton occupied.
Now with Middleton back at the helm of Sylosis in a full-time capacity, the band are currently tearing their way through the country, alongside Canadian deathcore band, Angelmaker. The pandemic negated the opportunity to tour their 2020 release Cycle Of Suffering, so with their most recent release A Sign of Things to Come under their belt, and more tour hardened than ever, their combination of ferocious metal mixed with dashes of melodicism and elements of progressive virtuosity, should appease fans who’ve been waiting for a solid musical hammering from Sylosis. They are returning to Australia for the first time since their appearance at Soundwave in 2013, so we sat down for a pre-tour chat and catch-up with Mr. Middleton.
You are coming back to Australia after almost over a decade. You’ve obviously been busy.
Josh Middleton: Yeah. I’ve personally been there a bunch since then, but, yes, not with Sylosis.
Have you had much of an opportunity to test out the latest album material live?
JM: Yeah, yeah. So, we’ve done a couple of tours since it’s been out, and we just got back from a European festival tour, including Germany and then all over the UK. Yeah, it’s been great. I genuinely think. I mean, the songs were written with playing them live more in mind than we had done in the past. In the past, we just write the songs and play them and then realised, ‘oh, this doesn’t actually translate as well.’ So, they go down so much better live, even if I’m sure there are definitely fans out there that have that specific album from our back catalogue that they prefer. I think there’s no denying that they just go over better the way the new ones are.
Have you changed the arrangements of the songs at all as a result of playing them live?
JM: No, I guess with our type of band, that’s not too easy to do.
Is there a particular track from the album that you’re most happy with playing live lately?
JM: Yeah, I really like playing “Poison for the Lost” and “Pariahs” at the moment.
There are quite a lot of speed runs in the solo with a bit of whammy work as well. Are your solos improvised, or is it kind of mapped out? Because there are variances between each song.
JM: Yeah, I’ll improvise in the studio when I’m recording, and then I’ll stumble on things that I like that I did, and then we kind of learn what I’ve done, and then it’ll be like a set thing. Sometimes I might change a few things live, but for the most part, I try and keep it as it is on the record.
You’ve got alternate picking going on that one, plus a few sweeps and whatnot. It’s sort of like this middle eight solo, in a sense, in that it’s very packed in. Is that one of those things that producers pretty much instil in you, saying, ‘you’ve got this amount of time and that’s it’?
JM: Yeah, yeah. See what I can get done in 20 seconds or whatever.
On this most recent album, you had Scott Atkins [Amon Amarth / Cradle of Filth] doing some production as well. How do you find co-producing? Do you mutually pick the songs to produce accordingly?
JM: Yeah, and on this record, more so than ever. I was really looking for that outsider perspective and for people to give more input in the songs. I think when I was younger, I was just a bit more protective over it. I was like, ‘this is how it is. This is how it needs to be.’ I’d like to think. Not in an arrogant way, but I was just more precious and protective over what I’d done. Now I’m just, ‘tell me what’s up, tell me how we can make this better.’ I want the album to be as good as it can be. So, we got Scott involved months ahead of being in the studio, just giving us feedback on the songs, and then I could rewrite things and have time to focus on writing them or rewriting before going in the studio. So, yeah, we sent him way more songs than we needed, actually, we recorded way more songs than ended up on the record as well, and then narrowed it down, with the label management, in terms of what songs would appear on the album.
You also did the mix for this one?
JM: Yes. I send myself crazy a bit with the mix. I go around in circles. There are so many options, or abilities these days to redo things, change the guitar tone and all that kind of stuff. But I kind of know what I want to hear, and I tried to get other people to mix the album, and it just wasn’t sounding how I wanted it to sound. It’s kind of a necessity for me to do, I think.
How have you found that the metal genre, mix wise, has changed in the last decade?
JM: I think there’s been a lot of improvements and going across, like, a big, heavy line that was always a bit of a struggle back in the day, and I think that’s kind of a good thing in some ways. But I also feel like people, at least more in the genres that I kind of listen to, people have kind of pushed things quite hard in terms of how saturated and how overhyped and over produced things can sound as well. So, my favourite producer is, and you’re wearing a Saxon shirt there, Andy Sneap, who also worked on all the records I grew up listening to in the mid two thousands, early two thousands, particularly all the Testament stuff – that’s my holy grail of tone. So I’m as big a fan, and I speak to him, whilst very rarely or occasionally, but I’m just a fan of him as I am like some of the musical artists I look at, because the way he shaped guitar tones, the modern production in heavy music. I think, he played a big part in how good records sounded. Like, if you look at, starting from The More Things Change by Machine Head record and so on, there are all these albums that Andy Sneak’s been a part of, so he’s kind of the godfather of the tone.
I understand what you’re saying. I mean, a similar sort of thing with, I suppose, Kevin Shirley for Dream Theater and Iron Maiden. It’s part of their sound now, whether they realise it or not.
SM: Yeah.
If you look at this album as a project in itself, do you ever get a sense of unfinished aspects listening back wishing you’d mixed in a different solo? When does it stop being creative? When do you know the album is finished?
JM: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think, you can always tweak things. I think you’ll get a song to a point where it’s like, it’s good to go. I mean, we spend a lot of time on the song structures and, on the music, and I always want to have everything as good as it can be. But, you know, I think you just kind of know intuitively, when it’s done and try not to overthink it when you feel like you have finished it. But, yeah, if I listen back, I sometimes ponder if I could do that differently or take that section out, or that kind of thing, but I never get too caught up on that.
How do you approach the vocals these days? You’ve been doing it for around ten years.
JM: I put so much more effort into the vocals. I think I was guilty, especially on the first record [Conclusion of an Age] I did, of just thinking, like, ‘eh, as long as there’s some screams, this doesn’t matter.’ I thought the riffs were the most important thing because I was a guitarist first and foremost, and now I put so much more effort into the vocals lyrics, making sure the vocals are catchy, memorable and with hooks, and that kind of thing; delivering them more convincingly and putting more expression into what I do. So, yeah, I definitely, as a front man think I’ve stepped up a lot, but in particular, in these last few years, on the last record, I think I made a big leap.
I suppose there’s also the difference between, your clean, your unclean or harsh vocals and even backing vocals, which a lot of people underestimate the power of backing vocals in a track.
JM: Yeah, definitely.
So, did you change your songwriting approach lately, or has it pretty much been the same thing all the way through?
JM: I guess it has shifted. I definitely went through a phase of trying to be a bit more progressive with stuff. I’m a huge fan of …And Justice for All, and Death’s Symbolic. All these records that have really long songs, complex arrangements. But if I’m honest, I don’t think I have the same attention span, and I don’t think many people do. I think society in general, maybe attention spans are a bit shortened as everything’s instant these days. So, I definitely still want to cram as many riffs in as possible and make the song a bit of a journey and not just dumb things down at the same time. We also found that when playing live, we play, a festival where we’ve only got 25 minutes or 30 minutes, and when we’ve got six, seven-minute songs, you can’t play many songs. Also, if there’s too much repetition so in the live environment, I hated playing longer songs, so that’s kind of been honed down a bit on this record.
Do you find it that tremolo rhythms, are they harder to get really tight?
JM: It depends on the riff. I don’t think so. I think it’s harder to get more of a gallop to be intricate; patterns that we do where it’s not just consistent. Yeah, I don’t normally struggle with that. I tend not to write anything that we can’t play, if it is going to push us out of that comfort zone.
Understood. I thought “Judas” was a great track with the variety in there because you’ve got this sort of atonal, almost arpeggio, of flattened fifth figures. It’s a bit Slayer-ish in the intro, and then it goes into a totally different rhythm figure. Does it take a lot of rehearsal to get that down?
JM: Yeah, I mean, that one in the studio, I do remember, but it depends. There are certain tracks when you’re recording, where we typically try and down pick everything, but when you’re up at 220 bpm, which I think that song is live, I wouldn’t down pick it, at least not all of it, especially with doing vocals. But admittedly, I’m not doing vocals over the down picking, so I might be alright in that because the reverse riffs in the chorus are pretty straightforward. So, I’m also a lot more mindful of what I write these days, having to do vocals over the top of it. So, I can ideally, hopefully, play all the songs live because there’s many songs from our back catalogue where it’s too confusing to do both.
We all look at say James Hetfield or Dave Mustaine, and we don’t know how they do it.
JM: Yeah, yeah.
Did it take you a while to get used to it, though?
JM: Yeah, I spent a lot of time on it. If I’ve got to learn a song that I haven’t played live vocals and guitar, it can take me like a month. That’s just one song, a month to just get that right.
Whereas I suppose remembering solos is probably not quite as challenging if you’ve already written it and you kind of know the melody line.
JM: I can usually remember the solos for the most part, not too badly. But, doing vocals and guitar can be the hardest thing.
Presumably the reason that you got into singing was from lot of line-up changes early on? I gather it was just one of those things where you thought, ‘it’s easier if I sing lead vocals’?
JM: Yeah, with the first record we gained some momentum. We didn’t want to lose momentum. It’s really, really hard finding people that you get on with the on tour, all of these factors, and I was just like, I don’t want to just put the band together, do a record, get some hype, and then just go away for a year or two to try and find the right person. So, I’ll do it. I’ll figure it out as I go along, and I’ve only really just figured out now; vocals and playing guitar.
Is there a particular tour that stands out? You toured with Australia’s Psycroptic.
JM: Yeah, we did a seven-week tour in America. That was long and that stands out as the longest chunk of touring that we’d done at that point. Soundwave was really cool. That was the first time we came to Australia, in 2013. That included Metallica and Slayer. The first night, Metallica hosted a barbecue for all the bands, and that was really cool. Yeah, we have been lucky enough to have been to India as well. But, yeah, there’s been a lot. The tour we did last year, we did a tour with Malevolence in the UK and Europe; that was a ton of fun.
What were your initial influences in getting you into guitar in the first place?
JM: My dad is a huge, huge music fan in general; he’s an obsessive fan of music. He was just always playing stuff in the house, and he’s gone through various phases of what he listens to in the car. As a kid, there’d be a lot of Beach Boys, Crowded House, and he loves Motown stuff. But more recently, in the last several years, when Sylosis started releasing albums, and he had listened to it, he’d kind of dip his toe into metal and stuff. Now his favourite bands are Porcupine Tree and Opeth – that kind of stuff. So just the fact that he had music on and had a guitar in the house, he didn’t really play or anything, but I was kind of was into music in general. I wasn’t into any bands, and then started having guitar lessons, and then it was stuff like the first two Oasis records, The Bends by Radiohead, and OK Computer, just kind of simple stuff, which is great when you’re beginning. I think a lot of players are getting to metal, and then they want to play guitar. They skip over all the basics and it’s a weird way of doing things to me.
Your current touring line-up includes Ali Richardson, the drummer from Bleed from Within. That’s some pretty serious blast beats going on there.
JM: He’s amazing. One of the best, I’d say.
Do you go to a drummer like that and say, ‘here are my arrangements. This is what I want you to play’? Or is it the case of just, ‘this is the time signature, do what you like’, to an extent?
JM: I demo everything I’m up to, to quite a finished standard to present the rest of the guys in the band. I used to play a bit of drums, and I have a good understanding of what drummers play. So, most of the beats, if it’s a fast song, he’ll know that that’s what it calls for, that kind of stuff. But I try and give him as much freedom as possible, to do his thing, and to come up with his own cool drumbeats or amazing fills. So, he’s definitely putting his stamp on all of it. But with the basic tempo of a beat, I’ll kind of have that in mind with the rest, which I guess had come a common way of doing things.
The track “Absent” was a bit of a different track to the rest of the album. How’d that one come about?
JM: We’ve always had, say, quiet songs on the records, and usually at the end. We had albums like Monolith and Dormant Heart, where we had acoustic songs, which we wanted to do. But I’d rather, instead of making it an acoustic thing, try to make it a bit more atmospheric and industrial sounding, which would be a bit different for us, and not hide it away at the end of the album, which is what we’ve done in the past. We’d have, like, a metal focus record and stick something at the end, whereas we figured we’d put it in the middle and kind of break it up a bit.
Somewhat of a palette cleanser, I guess.
There’s one guitar solo in there, on “Pariah” where you’ve got these really wide stretches.
JM: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I have a signature model guitar with ESP [LTD Josh Middleton Signature Series JM-II] which is like a super Strat kind of guitar, with just two Fishman pickups, alder body, roasted maple bolt-on neck, and a reverse headstock. I use that for everything, and I think I prefer the bolt-on sound, tuned to C sharp standard.
Yeah, because there’s so many metal bands now where it’s the baritone guitar, and it’s just down tuned, and then it’s competing with the bass, and it just becomes sludge live.
JM: Yeah, I’m personally not super, really low tuning things. The first bunch of records we did were all in just E standard, and then being a lower tuning, I’ve got a baritone voice, so I can’t sing as high. So, C sharp standard works better for my voice, but it’s also just a bit heavier, and it sounds good for the wrist that we’re doing, but it’s still high enough and tight enough to have that kind of fresh vibe. Testament is a huge influence, and they’re in C sharp standard on a lot of their records, either E flat or c sharp.
Indeed. Everyone’s using digital now. So, have you gone to the Kempers?
JM: Yeah, Kemper for a while. I still have it, but I was using it live and then moved to the Quad Cortex about four years ago. I’m kind of sad that people don’t use amplifiers, but the convenience is just through the roof.
Angelmaker, are touring Australia with you. Have you played with them before?
JM: We haven’t, no. We just kind of figured we’d pick another international band that were super heavy and they’re kind of bringing something different to the table, and they said, yes. We’re trying to give a bit of diversity. I mean, it’s obviously only a two-band lineup with local supports on some of the shows as well.
See if Psycroptic are kicking around.
JM: I’d love to, but I don’t think they’d be opening up our shows. I think they do very well.
I get what you’re saying. Thanks very much for having chat. We’ll see you here soon.
JM: No worries. Thanks for having me.