Doom/Stoner Rockers ORBITER will be releasing their second full length album Distorted Folklore which continues the great work the band achieved with their acclaimed 2022 EP - Head Wounds. Where that EP was influenced by the great sounds of FLOOR and TORCHE, Distorted Folklore sees the band adding an Indie Rock/Alt Rock vibe whilst keeping that winning "DOOM POP" sound that gives the band an extra level of heaviness.
Once again, Jonathan Nunez of TORCHE fame has recorded the album and gives the album a fresh sound that's quite different to their previous records.
I caught up with the band to for this great interi
Hi guys. Thanks for doing the interview. How are things with you today?
You’re very welcome and not too bad all things considered. Most of Florida and the SE was hit hard from Hurricane Helene. We’re all safe here thankfully and hoping everyone recovers quickly from it.
For folks not in the know, can you give a brief history of how the band came together and where it is today?
Matt and I started out at as a two piece called The Yams with him on guitar and me on drums sometime back in 2008? At some point I just started singing. We were both really into this band Federation X at the time so that was a big influence, and Black Sabbath is one of my all-time favorite bands so that’s the base of that era of our band. I was drumming for a lot of other bands at the time, so it was a slow start. Eventually we found a bass player and a 2nd guitarist.
We changed our name to Orbiter as it seemed like a more suitable name for us. We went through some line up changes over the years and our good friend Jonathan Hamilton (Escape Grace, Cutman, Allsalt) joined us on bass. He brought some heavier elements with a more Neurosis/The Jesus Lizard sound overall. And from there we released Southern Failures. Just as we released Southern Failures, I was still drumming but our 2nd guitarist moved on and I took the opportunity to jump into that seat as it was much easier to play guitar and sing than play drums and sing.
We then reached out to another good friend, Brad Purvis who played in some amazing bands around town. Averkiou, Moonbeard, and Supertwin. Also played in a band called I Love You (members of Dove). This current lineup is the most cohesive form since we started out many years ago. Much different than what we had in the past to the point where it almost made sense to change our name, but that’s a big effort these days! Starting with Head Wounds to what we’re about to release, Distorted Folklore is pretty much an entirely different band to me.
How would you describe your own sound?
That’s a tough one! It’s still heavy and doomy in places but there’s some more melody in this version of us. We all have a lot of different influences as a band, but that would be my best guess as to what we sound like.
Congrats on your upcoming new album Distorted Folklore. Loved it from the very first listen. What can people expect to hear from this album?
Thanks so much! We’re stoked you like it! Expect a lot of dark tones, epic intros and outros and plenty of space to compliment the walls of sound. There’s more of an emphasis on melody too with guitars and vocals.
This is quite a different record compared to Southern Failures (2019) and Head Wounds (2022). Was that your plan to create something different to those two great records?
Absolutely, but not too far away from Head Wounds. We were really focused on continuity between songs but still having them stand out on their own.
What is the album about and did your real-life experiences help make this record.
Oh boy you opened a can worms here! Each song tells a little story. Safe as Houses is about being confined in our homes during the pandemic, conflicts around the world, being controlled by your government, ignoring genocide and the anxiety we create for ourselves staring at social media all day. Time Rips is a quick little lament on how time can take its toll on us all and I tried to make a weird little folksong vibe to it lyrically. Coil shares a similar vibe, but more drug related.
Lightning Miles is special to me. It’s a loose take on the life and times of my grandparents and the struggles of being in a long-term relationship with anyone. My grandpa Norman migrated from Norway as a boy and met my Grandma Lynne at a very young age and despite navigating through a lot of heavy times along the way they built an amazing family that I’m proud to be a part of. When I was writing this, I thought about his passing a few years ago surrounded by family he loved very much and sitting in that moment I was feeling great loss, but at the same time admiring his timeline from a boy up until the very end.
Timeworn is a sci-fi sort of tale that reaches well past the end of civilization with the last two human clones remaining on the planet that are about to die, and one is trying to comfort the other during this process. I’ll see you on the backside of water is for a very dear friend of mine, Ivy that passed away a couple years back after a hard-fought battle with breast cancer. I owe a lot to her for getting me into playing music in my early years. When I first moved to Gainesville her band (Backside of Water) with some friends of mine practiced where I lived at the time, and they ruled although they never recorded or played a show. She went on to drum in many great bands.
Cicada Hymn is about my younger brother, Daniel who passed away many years ago tragically in an accident, and my hope to find him on whatever there might be on the other side. He left behind two amazing children that give me glimpses of him every time I see them. Svalbard Lights was the very last song written and I was struggling to find lyrical inspiration. At the time I was reading this book A Woman in the Polar Night about this Austrian woman in the 1930s that travels to meet her husband on a remote and dangerous Arctic Island with months of darkness and she some how finds beauty in the harsh land she was stuck in for a year straight. It pointed me in the right direction and fit perfectly with the music.
Yes! We couldn’t be anymore stoked on what he did for us on Head Wounds. At one point he was sharing a space up in Gainesville with Ryan Williams from Blackbear Studio who recorded Southern Failures. I had reached out to him then but never set a date. I didn’t feel confident what we were doing so far anyhow. He ended up moving back to Miami and we recorded with Ryan eventually. After that album we heard about his new studio down there and heard some of what he was doing down there and although it was tough to travel 5hrs each way for weekends at a time it was very much worth it. We’ve all been fans of Floor and Torche over the years. They played a lot up here and share a lot of the same friends.
What does Jonathan bring to the overall ORBITER sound.
I feel like he’s an additional member of the band at this point. He brings a gigantic wall of tone and heaviness. The most important thing he brings to us is how he pushes us while we’re tracking. There’s no such thing as one take with him and by the time we’re done with it we really feel like he captures this perfect moment in each of us. I can be very emotional at times! We use his very own Nunez amps and pedals for the base of the tracks and this time around we used this sick vintage Tama he had just purchased. He created some massive drum sounds with it. His outboard gear is also amazing, he has lots of cool analog shit that is different than what we’ve seen in a lot of other studios. The end result is so worth it, and we owe a lot of that to him. We strive to emulate whatever we did in the studio with him live.
Where did the name for the album come from and what does this mean to the band.
I love Robert E Howard’s Conan the Barbarian. When he’s describing the different tribes in the beginning, he speaks of the Hyborians God, Bori and how most of that became Distorted Folklore. That term stuck with me, and I quickly related it to our world and thought it would be a great name for an album.
What bands and artists influenced you when recording this album.
For me it was the last two Sweet Cobra records Earth and Threes. Highly underrated band. Not necessarily their sound or anything but the way they changed their sound and weren’t afraid to be totally different than what they previously sounded like, which was more brutal and heavier with less emphasis on songwriting. Still, plenty of rippers in their earlier work too.
Black Sabbath is always a huge influence. I thought a lot about The Cure’s Disintegration a lot during the whole process. Most of us are big into Failure, Neurosis, Swervedriver, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Hot Snakes, The Jesus Lizard, True Widow, Windhand, Fu Manchu, early Pink Floyd, MBV, HOF, GBV, and the list goes on and on! Tons of great music to pull some influence from. I wanted to take a moment to mention a big influence during writing this as well.
A good friend and a bandmate, Brian Busch (Hamilton and I play in his band Allsalt) was in the middle of writing too and we would trade tracks back and forth saying things like “Could you give this a quick listen? Am I wasting my time here? Wtf am I doing? I hate my life!” and we’d kinda prop each other up along the way. The bands are totally different, and he he’s very well versed in music theory. He was also the original drummer for Cloakroom which is an influence on this album as well. He also sings the beautiful background and choir vocals in Lightning Miles on the recording.
What formats is the album being released upon?
Digital (which includes This Must Be The Place” and a small run of vinyl which we unfortunately could not fit the cover on.
You’ve recorded a cover of Talking Heads classic track “This Must Be The Place” for the album. Why did you choose that track to cover.
I love the original and one day I was listening to it and thought “what if this was dark and heavy?” the lyrics are heavy to me at times so I just kinda dove in and hoped for the best. We’re very stoked on the end result.
What is the creative process or setup within the band? Do you all write the music together or do certain people within the band do that?
At one point we just threw riffs into a pile and worked them out at practice. It’s not a bad way to do it, but when you’re only getting together once a week or longer at times it’s just too long of a process. Over the pandemic I learned how to record some decent demos and program some drums and I’d just punish the fuck out of my bandmates with sending them songs and then we’d get into the space and hash it out what everyone was stoked on.
I was able to focus on guitar hooks and melodies. Work out the vocal parts etc. The demos were different because most of the time it was just me tracking the basic ideas. There were times when Matt or Jonathan would come over and we’d track stuff. Everyone had their hand in it at the end of the process and made it their own. But overall, one person focused on songwriting gives it a more cohesive feel and you can churn out a lot of ideas in a shorter amount of time.
How did you get involved with music? Was it a particular album, group or artist that made you want to write and play your own music?
I was a little skate rat growing up in Southwest FL pre internet days, and I relied on sharing punk and metal tapes with other kids. I moved to Gainesville when I was 22 or so and picked up the drums and started playing in punk and hardcore bands. Lots of great folks live in this town that are still huge influences on me and the rest of us in the band.
Can you advise if you’ve played or currently playing in other bands so folks can check out your other musical projects?
For sure. I still play drums in a country band called Whiskey & Co and we’ve been around for the better part of two decades. I also recently started playing bass in a band called AllSalt along with Hamilton that was our good friend Brian Busch’s recording project that is now a fully functional live ass band 😊
What is the current state of the Gainesville, Florida Rock/Metal scene? Do you perform gigs on a regular basis and do you have a local scene that you're actively involved with?
Great question! Gainesville has an incredible music scene that is still very alive and well. We normally play around town with buds once a month or so. It’s always a blast to get out and play in our own town with our good friends. We’re all older with families so it’s hard to really be at shows these days, but we fully support the new bands that have come out of here. Supertwin is a local favorite. They have two drummers and play heavy af psych rock and put on an amazing show.
Loris is a new band that has come around and they give off some sick Mogwai vibes. Amazing musicians. Drosera is an insanely good metalcore band also amazing live. Curleys is a sick garage punk band, and the guitarist is my barber. Rad dudes! Antagonizör, Plasmodulated, TVA, Wired Up, Waylon Thorton, Stunner, Seeker, Bad Dog, Thrush, Makeup Remover, Thunderclap, Ill Star, and there’s so many others I’m forgetting right now but the music scene kicks some serious ass here still.
Will you be performing any gigs to promote this album locally or further afield.
We’re playing the Fest 22 which will be around our release date. We are hoping to do a west coast tour earlier next year too.
Before you go, do you have any words of wisdom for your new and potential fans out there.
We appreciate you and hope you do as well.
Words by Steve Howe and ORBITER.
Thanks to Purple Sage PR for arranging this interview and to ORBITER for their time doing the interview.
ORBITER links
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