Battlesnake Are Triumphant On Album Number Three…

Battlesnake will deliver their new Opus upon humanity on Friday; Dawn of the Exultants and the Hunt for the Shepherd which is the prequel to Rise and Demise of the Motorsteeple. The inception of the Exultants and their search for the second messiah ‘Sanctum Robotos’ (The Golden God) who becomes the pilot for the Exultant’s greatest machine The Motorsteeple.

Expanding on the apocalyptic grandeur of its predecessor, the bands third album sees Battlesnake push their signature blend of virtuosic metal, theatrical bombast, and mythic storytelling to new heights. True to their reputation for relentless creativity, the band once again captured the raw intensity of their live performance by recording much of the album together in a two-week window. The result is a record that feels alive, ferocious, untamed, and cinematic in scope.

Already the album has singles, The Fathers Of Iron Flesh, Shepherd Hunter and Murder Machine being instantly added to playlists around the world making a huge impact. Dawn Of The Exultants And The Hunt For The Shepherd marks a new chapter in Battlesnake’s ever-expanding saga. Daniel Willington and Elliot Hitchcock talk to Hi Fi Way about the album and their massive UK/European tour.

Congratulations on album number three, you have to be stoked with that?
Daniel: Thank you very much. It’s just getting used to the idea that it’s gonna be out. I guess it’s always very nerve-wracking and exciting.

Was there always the plan for a follow-up album so quickly?
Daniel: Yeah, I guess we tried to not force ourselves. But we want to try and make an album every year. So yeah, it was an interesting process this time, we pushed ourselves to make something as exciting and spontaneous as we could and I think we did that, which is good especially when you work on something for so long.

This might be the album that the world starts to take notice of Battlesnake I reckon.
Daniel: We certainly hope so. Yeah, we feel good about it. It feels exciting. It feels like we’ve honed in on what it is we do on this record. I feel like we found what that was on the last record, and then we focused it on this record quite a lot.

Was it clear to you that going for the prequel concept was something that was needed for this album?
Daniel: Not really. A lot of the lore development of the band comes from our singer Sam. He creates a lot of the characters, builds a lot of that world, and that was just where he was sitting when we started talking about making this record. He had this whole crazy brainwave of, “Oh, it’s a prequel,” and this is what spawned the Motor Steeple, and this is the building of the world before that, you know, the Motor Steeple segment of the universe and he just ran with it. Once he started talking to us about it, we all got inspired and worked from there.

Did the ideas start to come a lot quicker once you had that concept in mind?
Daniel: I think the music comes first. Usually, Elliot, Benny (the other guitar player), and Sam get together for about a week and brainstorm a whole bunch of music, just come up with a whole bunch of ideas. They get inspired by different things. I know this record was inspired a lot by early 1990s video games and their soundtracks. It kind of just spawns from there. So the music comes first, and then I guess the conceptual stuff follows.

Elliott: Yeah, it was definitely inspired by 90s video game soundtracks and late 80s arcade game soundtracks.

Was it hard sticking to the concept of a prequel?
Elliott: It’s easier. It’s way easier. When you don’t have parameters, it’s much more difficult to achieve something. You need something to exist within in order to create something that makes sense. As soon as we’re like, “Oh, okay, it’s a prequel,” then it’s easier to think of other ideas off the back of that, as opposed to creating from a vacuum of limitless ideas. When we figured out that’s what it was, we were like, “Okay, well, then, there are these auto-exultants, obviously. Then there’s Jesus’s long-lost brother, and the auto-exultants are hunting him.” It all becomes very obvious.

In terms of the ideas, did you find that you had too many? Do you think you’ve got enough there for albums four, five and maybe even six?
Elliott: Yeah, in terms of the world and the lore, it’s kind of limitless. We’re very inspired by the world we’ve made, so there are all these different characters and stories we can work on. But I’m curious, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. I’m curious to see what the next album sounds like because I know we’ll have stories and fantasy and character, but the sound… that’s interesting. But anyway, we’ll focus on this one for now.

Sonically, how do you think Battlesnake has evolved?
Daniel: I think we were talking about this recently, listening back to our first few singles like Nightmaking and The Atomic Plough. Seeing a few of the current members, like Elliot wasn’t in the band at the time, he came on just before The Atomic Plough was made. So, as time has gone on, everyone’s creative identity has been forged within this greater idea of the band. I think we kind of found what that collective sound was on the last record, and then on this one, we honed it a bit more. It feels like we understand the parameters of what this band sounds like, and we’ve found a more focused version of that, which feels great, it’s really exciting. I think we’re all really proud of the music on this record.

What was the energy like seeing these songs start to come together in the studio?
Daniel: Honestly, no, it was hard. It was really hard. We tend to have really full-on deadlines.

Elliott: No, no, no, you’re right, Dan. And yeah, I mean, there are so many reasons why it was a difficult time in the studio. I think the overarching reason is exactly what Dan’s saying, we have really lofty goals, and each time we make a new album, we set really massive standards for ourselves. This time around, we were like, “Okay, yeah, we’ll record in the same amount of time, but we’ll record more tracks, with full orchestral arrangements and all these massive guitar harmonies.” Just so much more work and we were like, “Oh yeah, we can get it done in the same amount of time, easy-peasy.” Turns out, not easy-peasy at all.

Daniel: If only we’d known.

Elliott: Yeah. So we actually finished recording in the studio, and then it took probably another three months, it was almost like we had to start the record again. We put ninety percent more work into it. Once we left the studio, we were only ten percent done. It was wild. But we got there, and we’re super stoked with the final product. It was a really long journey.

Daniel: I think something I really love about this record is that because we did it so fast, it feels like a really condensed picture of where we are as a band right now. At least speaking for a lot of the guitar solos, we didn’t have time to write anything until we got to the studio and were like, “Okay, we need a guitar solo here.” Benny and I would have maybe an hour or two to sit down and figure it out. We’d put everything we had into it, then move on because there was so much else to do. So, it feels like a really intense capture of where we are right now as musicians and as a band, which is really cool.

Were there many clashes of opinion, given the pressure of the deadlines you put yourselves under?
Daniel: They always happen. I mean, comparatively to before, I think over the period of making these records, we’ve put a lot of effort into learning to communicate and understanding how we all work in these situations. I mean, we bicker like cats and dogs, but what band doesn’t? I think we were pretty focused. But come the end of final mixing, there was definitely a lot of “Can the guitars be louder?” “Can the bass be louder?” “The toms aren’t loud enough,” and so on. But that’s just part of making a record.

Were you blown away as a band listening to the album for the first time with headphones on?
Daniel: No!
Elliott: No!

First time I’ve ever had a “no” on this question!
Daniel: The story of finishing the record is wild. We all mixed it together, but I was the one behind the board. We ended up mixing most of the record in about a forty eight hour period, where I was in a studio and everybody else was on a video call. I think I finished the final mix of the final song at about 4 a.m., got in an Uber to the airport, and then we played a show in Perth the next day. So, we actually sent the album to mastering from the Virgin Lounge at about 8 a.m. Perth time. It was such a frantic push towards the finish just to make sure we got it done in time. We were all just a bit exhausted. But, like, a week or two later, I sat down and listened to the whole thing and was like, “Wow. This is a body of work,” which you can’t really see when you’re looking at the micro details, but we had that moment later.

Elliott: The first time I really enjoyed listening to the record was when I listened to the test pressing of the vinyl for the first time. Not only because it was the first time it had ever been heard in that medium, but because there’s such warmth when you play something on vinyl, it brings this richness to it. It was just me and my fiancée sitting in a room listening to this record, and it sounded so nice. All of the exhaustion washed away, and I felt kind of like I’d been baptised or something.

Do the new songs hang together with older songs when piecing it together live?
Daniel: We’re kind of just figuring that out now. They’re feeling really exciting. We’ve been in pre-production for the last couple of weeks or so, and they’ve started to come together. We’ve built the show as best we can before actually getting in front of people. I think we’re all just anxious to play them to people and see how they react, how they fit in the show within the live show, they certainly fit in the same universe as everything we’ve done before. We’ve taken a lot of time to craft a show that highlights the best of the new stuff and the best of the old. We love our live show, and we love to make it as bombastic as possible, so we’ve kind of let our imaginations go wild with what that can look like.

Touring overseas and playing festivals like Download in UK must be a dream come true?
Elliott: For sure. I feel like we’ve been flying by the seat of our pants for the last three years. We’ve released three albums in three years. We will have done three European tours in the last twelve months and I think there have been three or four Australian tours in those three years. So there’s been heaps going on. In the lead-up to this, it’s felt really abstract, like we’re playing these amazing things that have been on our bucket list for so long. To play Download in the UK is clearly on any metal band’s bucket list, and I don’t think it’s going to hit us until we arrive in the UK to play the show. That’s the way it works, or at least on the plane. It’s really only dawning on me now. What is it? Monday? Our first show is on Sunday, I think, and it’s only dawning now that, holy fuck, what are we about to do to ourselves?

Can you honestly see yourselves playing a show in Australia in the short term being so busy touring overseas?
Elliott: Well, we are the dumbest band in the world, so we do have some Australian shows scheduled towards the end of the year.

Also, touring with Eagles of Death Metal is super cool as well.
Elliott: Yeah, yeah, for sure and those are the first shows of the tour, so it’s not like we get a nice, easy warm-up into it. Straight off the bat, we’re playing these massive rooms with a massive band and playing songs that we’ve never played live before. I think that’s where a lot of the anxiety for this tour comes from, the unknown. But I know that as soon as we start playing the first song of the first show, it’s just going to feel so good.

Daniel: I think I’m starting to get there now, just in the process of rehearsing and actually coming to grips with it. This is a really brand-new version of a show that we’ve been developing for years. But it feels like we’ve kind of started afresh and built something new. It’s just getting to the point now where we can play through the whole set as a whole and that’s when the excitement starts to build. There’s all sorts of work that goes into what this means for us, but getting into some big rooms with an amazing band in Germany, where we loved playing last time is exciting. Now, four days out, it’s starting to feel real. It’s not just this theoretical idea of something, it’s actually happening.

New costumes, new production as well?
Elliott: Well, they are new costumes, but they’re the same design. But they are brand-new costumes because after the last twelve months, the last ones were a little worse for wear. There’s no getting the smell out of those ones! So, my mom actually made brand-new costumes for everyone. Took her way too long, very kind of her. Thanks, Mom, appreciate you. She’s like, “What the hell is my son doing?” Anyway…
brand-new costumes, brand-new production, brand-new shows. So it’s all feeling very exciting and fresh, which is cool for us.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Dawn of the Exultants and the Hunt for the Shepherd is out Friday June 6. Pre-Order/ Pre-Save HERE...

On tour on the following dates…