#Heavy Temple #heavy metal #stoner metal #occult rock #doom metal #psychedelic metal #music video
Heavy Temple have been fighting the good fight since 2012, but they’ve kept the world waiting until 2021 for their debut album. Fortunately, it was well worth the wait: Lupi Amoris is a finely streamlined record crammed with awesome riffs, soaring vocals and memorable songwriting. Singer, songwriter, bass player and all round head honcho High Priestess Nighthawk was kind enough to take some time out to answer our questions.
Sadly, stage names seem to be on the wane these days so kudos to you for keeping the flag flying. Where did High Priestess Nighthawk come from and how do you decide on names for new members?
There’s a Tom Waits album called Nighthawks At The Diner, and I guess it just stuck with me. Every member gets to choose their own name. Unless they really don’t want to, in which we try to come up with something that reflects their personality. I structured it around the religious nomenclature system because I always wanted Heavy Temple to feel like rock and roll church, where you go to worship the riff.
Heavy Temple have gone through a plethora of different line-ups. Could you give us a potted history of the ins and outs of the band? How did the current line-up come together?
It’s certainly been a revolving door. People’s lives and priorities change, and I wanted a band with that flexibility so we could always keep playing and touring. When we started almost ten years ago, we were a three piece. Bearadactyl was kind of on loan and Rattlesnake moved to the west coast. Saint Columbidae joined on drums, and we were a two piece for a while. Then I found Tempest, or perhaps I should say she found me, and honestly, she really saved the band. Good drummers are like mythical creatures, and they’re always all in multiple bands, so I got very lucky. Then we added Barghest, who ended his tenure to work for NASA (hopefully making Heavy Temple the first band to have a member in space). Thunderhorse stepped in almost immediately, and that brings us to 2019. We were able to do a lot of touring, despite not having been able to record Lupi Amoris, which was intended to be tracked with the previous line-up. Parting ways was not easy, and it was a very hard decision to make. I don’t expect anyone to understand it, but I think we just had different expectations and creative goals. I knew that Paisley and The Baron were great musicians, so it was a no-brainer to ask them to join. Every iteration of Heavy Temple has shaped what we are right now, and as objectively as I can say so, this line-up is probably the closest to what I envisioned when I started.
I absolutely loved Lupi Amoris. It touches on a wide range of musical genres but is really hard to pin down. How would you describe it?
I always laugh a bit at this question because I have a hard time describing it myself. I suppose I’d just call it heavy rock and roll. I think that Heavy Temple has always had a wide array of influences, but if I had to pin it down I guess psychedelic doom. We like kraut and classic rock, psych, stoner and sludge, desert rock, black metal. I think we’re just an amalgamation of those genres we like
One thing I particularly enjoyed was the interplay between the riffs and the vocals – you don’t just follow the riff melody like Ozzy did and I found the dynamics very striking. Could you talk us through the process of how a Heavy Temple song comes together?
I still struggle when writing vocal melodies because I’m also playing the bass, so generally they are last to develop. The composition and arrangement are the easiest parts for me, but I do like to nurture them and let them take their own shape. As for the vocals themselves, I like to let the music breathe a little, so I just sing when I feel it’s appropriate. What I do like about Ozzy is that he kind of does the same thing. Sing on the verse and chorus, then let the band take the reins. I’m very excited about writing the next album as a band. I’ve been the primary songwriter so I think creating collectively will lead to some sonic exploration for all of us.
Clearly a lot of thought went into the lyrics and artwork for the album. Could you tell us about the broader themes underlying them?
At its core, Lupi Amoris is a collection of love songs. I met my partner at a festival in the woods, and they were the one to show me the Angela Carter story. A couple tracks on the album pre-date our relationship, but this album as a concept didn’t start to take shape until maybe three years ago. Sometimes you meet someone, and it changes the whole trajectory of your life, so I wanted to write about that using the Carter’s story as a skeleton. My confidence, independence and autonomy are of great value to me, and there was something about the narrative that just spoke to me.
From: https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/interviews/heavy-temple/
