Bast - Talk about really long songs with Music Trespass!

Get to know Extreme Metal's Bast!

Music Trespass reporter Joe Denby catches up with Bast vocalist / guitarist Craig Byrant, and talks to him about the music and length of their songs.

Music Trespass: Let’s start with the history of Bast, Your influences and your sound etc.

Craig Bryant: Well we formed with just me and our drummer Jon Lee to begin with back in 2008. We were just messing around. We then found our bassist. We then did our first demo in 2009. That Bassist split with the band and we then got together with our current bassist Gavin Thomas and that’s when what we consider to be Bast really started. Our influences range from anything to Post-Rock, Post-Metal, Doom, Grindcore and Black Metal….loads! It’s a bit of a melting pot.

Music Trespass: I’ve got to admit when I first listened to the album, I looked at the track list and saw it had just five songs and the average time length was tem minutes. I thought “Oh God, here we go!” but it was great. Long songs really divide opinion and I recently wrote in a review that if you notice that a song is long your in trouble. If done right however, the time flies by and you won’t notice the time. Do you see what I mean?

Craig: Yeah I do, I feel that way when playing the songs live actually. We have a fourty five minute set and play five songs and you wonder where the time went. I think with most Doom you get that repetition of the riffs and with that comes some sort of Psychedelic hypnosis. The thing with us is that we are a bit inpatient! We change things up and move the song along.

Music Trespass: So is it by design or do you just let things flow and take a step back when it’s finished.

Craig: Yeah that’s exactly it. I think the only we do as preparation is come up with the narrative. We have a thread going through the five songs on our current album for example 'Spectres'. Apart from that we come up with riffs or a certain piece reflecting the mood and take it from there. At some point we say “right we’ve got a song there.”

Music Trespass: Can you tell us about the lyrical concept of the album?

Craig: Well the concept of the album is a story of a young man walking into an ancestral cave. Essentially walking the footsteps of his ancestors in order to find answers. We think that’s a universal concept people can relate to. We throw him into unfamiliar situations with Spirits and rituals. It’s a narrative so it starts off kind of positive and slowly descends as the character goes into the cave. It goes a bit more Psychedelic and drug influenced. At the end, the climax it turns out that it wasn’t really a good idea! The lyrics are there in the notes so people can read them and draw their own conclusions.

Music Trespass: Any tours or dates coming up?

Craig: Well we have some festival dates lined up. We are doing Roadburn which we are really excited about. We’ve got Redsun in Cardiff. We have Incineration in London which is at three venues in Camden which has a lot of Black Metal and Extreme Metal bands. Then we have Bloodstock in August.

Music Trespass: What have you been listening to recently?

Craig: I’m still catching up with releases from 2014 actually! I’m listening to the Artificial Brain featuring guys from Revocation. The new Agalloch album. Pallbearer, Yob. Gavin is really into his Hardcore and Jon loves Black Metal he loves God Seed and other weird bands! I really like the new album from Elder as well.