From its beginnings as an acoustic duo, Saint John band The Daisy Anthesis have swung in the completely opposite direction, creating some of the region’s most pummeling, heavy music with performance competencies that would make most musicians salivate.
The Daisy Anthesis is continuing to support its most recent release, Surface and the Sky, released in March 2010 via Halifax heavy metal label Diminshed Fifth Records. Though the record showcases the group’s knack for grindcore and heavy metal, the group also injects a generous amount of progressive tendencies into its music to keep the listener on their toes.
The Daisy Anthesis is slated to perform alongside Toronto’s The Isosceles Project at Moncton’s Plan B on Monday evening.
Daisy Anthesis vocalist-guitarist Scott Miller notes the musical change that the band underwent may seem like a drastic one to the casual listener but the group actually thought little of the musical shift.
As far as he is concerned, bands like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Deftones and Meshuggah were always influential to the group’s sound, even in its acoustic days, even though Miller would be the first to admit that he doesn’t feel as though The Daisy Anthesis sound anything like any of those groups.
“The first few songs we wrote were back in 2004-2005 when Scott Lilly, our bassist and I were going to college together,” Miller says. “We recorded a few demos but had no drummer so I programmed drums to the songs while we looked for one. We didn’t have too much luck finding a drummer so the two of us started writing acoustic songs. It was around Christmas 2005 when we found Andrew Martin to play drums and it was then that we pulled out the electric guitars again.”
One of the most incredible things about The Daisy Anthesis live and on record is just how full three guys can make a band sound. Miller says this was always the band’s goal.
“From the very beginning, our goal was to sound as huge and full as possible. Sometimes, something melodic will sneak into a song here and there, but it’s mostly loud and dissonant. The only rule we have largely had for ourselves was that the songs had to have groove, and I think we’ve accomplished that. We have never been fans of over-produced metal albums so we keep it quite raw and dirty as well.”
With Miller working full-time and his band mates enrolled in university, he admits that the band hasn’t played as much as they would like to but gladly take on whatever shows work around their schedules.
In addition to scattered live dates over the next few months, Miller shares that the group is currently looking forward to a split release with Diminished Fifth Records’ label mates Orchid’s Curse later this year.
Asked how the new material is shaping up in terms of sound, Miller says that the tracks will sound familiar to fans while not necessarily mining their past to recreate the same record all over again.
“These new songs are very cohesive but diverse,” he says. “I would say that we have simplified things a little bit and bumped up the groove factor a bit as well.”
Article published in June 3, 2011 edition of the Times & Transcript