{"id":4414,"date":"2012-02-14T00:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T00:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=4414"},"modified":"2013-07-20T12:05:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-20T12:05:22","slug":"feature-pilgrim-02-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/feature-pilgrim-02-12\/","title":{"rendered":"PILGRIM – Adventurers (February 2012) | Features \/ Interviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

PILGRIM – Adventurers<\/strong><\/span>
\nAnthony Morgan<\/span>
\nFebruary 2012<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pilgrim (l-r): Nick Nosach, Jon Rossi and Eric Dittrich<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Provisionally titled Big Cheese during a grunge phase, Rhode Island-based doom metal trio Pilgrim formed in 2009-2010 and consist of guitarist \/ vocalist Jon Rossi, bassist Eric Dittrich, and drummer Nick Nosach. The Wizard, Count Elric The Soothsayer, and Krolg, Slayer Of Men the trio are respectively better known by, the names formerly their Dungeons & Dragons monikers from the days they used to play the fantasy role-playing game. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanna say that we formed in 2009, but the dates are a little fuzzy. Again though, I have the worst memory. I don\u2019t remember,\u201d chuckles Jon Rossi, vocalist, guitarist and co-founder of Pilgrim. \u201cWe got together when we were all in high school and we used to listen to a lot of bands from the grunge era, Nirvana and all those bands. We started off as friends before we were a band. We listened to grunge for a long time and that\u2019s why we got together, because we wanted to make that kind of music. It might not sound like it, but I think that there is a grunge influence in our music. I think it had a big impact on how we play, but it might be subtle. It\u2019s in the riffs that we resonate well with and the grooves that we like, and I guess our overall attitude to people and as a band is heavily influenced by the 90s. We don\u2019t take ourselves very seriously. We liked grunge music, but then as we got older though we started to discover doom metal and got totally into that. Doom metal bands are the greatest of all time. We\u2019ll always say that because they make the best music; in my opinion, those bands are really, really awesome. And their style? Doom metal is just the best. That\u2019s untouchable to us, but we also like stoner stuff from the West. We all like Pentagram, Revelation. Saint Vitus of course. Doom metal bands really influence us a lot, but not so much the funereal, sad doom. We like our doom a little more triumphant and powerful.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody says that we\u2019re a doom metal band because we listen to doom metal and we like to play things dark and heavy, but we have a lot more influences than that that make up what we sound like though. A lot of it is \u2013 like I said \u2013 from the 90s, a lot of grunge bands and things like that. I guess if you had to choose a genre and describe it, I think doom metal would be the best. But yeah, it\u2019s just rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. It\u2019s just the same stuff that you heard in the 70s; it\u2019s simplified, and just a lot more volume and distortion. I listen to a lot of 70s prog stuff. I really like Pink Floyd, and I like some classic rock like Led Zeppelin<\/a>. A lot of modern bands have also influenced us a lot too, people that we know, that we play with. We play with a band called Natur from New York, and their style of metal really has a big impact on us and also our friends Ice Dragon. They\u2019re awesome and we\u2019ve played music with them a lot. They\u2019ve definitely influenced us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Synonyms for the word \u2018pilgrim\u2019 include \u2018traveler\u2019, \u2018explorer\u2019, \u2018wanderer\u2019, and \u2018sojourner\u2019. \u201cAt first it was just a name that we chose \u2013 a good one-word metal name \u2013 but then eventually we started travelling to New York a lot,\u201d the axeman remembers. \u201cBeing in New York, we would think of it as taking a pilgrimage to New York City. We spent a lot of time going to New York, because nobody knew who we were. Public Assembly I think is our favourite place to play; it has the best stage, and the best sound. We played The Acheron a lot, which is small. I don\u2019t know how you would describe it. It\u2019s like a tunnel, a small tunnel with actual people, but the people there are very cool. Those are some of the good ones, the ones that we like. We were trying really hard to make a name for ourselves, and it took a really long time. So yeah, a lot of it was spent just trying to play live as much as possible so that people actually knew who we were. That\u2019s when the band name really started to fit, but originally I think it was inspired by the Om record Pilgrimage<\/em> (October 2007, Southern Lord Records). I think that was the original inspiration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two-track demo Forsaken Man<\/em> arrived in 2011. \u201cThat was made in my parents\u2019 basement when we were a lot younger,\u201d Jon notes. \u201cIt was recorded on a computer microphone which you\u2019d use to talk to people online, and we had the worst programme, the worst software like Windows 95 stuff. It was really bad; it took a lot to get the sound good, a lot of EQ. We were really, really proud of it at the time when we finished it, but now not so much. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s very good now, but at the time we liked it. That was the demo that Alan heard. That, and surprisingly some other earlier demo material that wasn\u2019t released. They were just on our MySpace page. I\u2019m really surprised that he was enthused because they were awful. They were God awful, really bad (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jon Rossi<\/em><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n<\/td>\n
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Alan \u2018Nemtheanga\u2019 Averill oversees Poison Tongue Records, a Metal Blade Records subsidiary who announced news of Pilgrim\u2019s signing on November 22nd. \u201cWe got an email from Alan, and he was very interested in the music and wanted to release something,\u201d the singer recalls. \u201cAt the time we were like \u2018Yeah, whatever.\u2019 We didn\u2019t know who Alan was, and we didn\u2019t know who Primordial was. To be honest, we didn\u2019t even know what Metal Blade was. Six months to a year later, we had another email saying \u2018I\u2019m ready to do this.\u2019 We really wanted to put our music out there, so we were like \u2018Yeah, let\u2019s do it.\u2019 We took a chance with it, and didn\u2019t know what to expect. It turned out for the best, and then he gave us a lot of money to record which was very generous.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Boston, Massachusetts-based doom metal group Ice Dragon and limited to 300 copies, the split ten-inch vinyl single \u2018Astaroth\u2019 was issued through Yersinia Pestis Records on December 3rd. \u201cWe became really good friends with that band Ice Dragon, because we went to go see them in Boston,\u201d Jon enthuses. \u201cThere was one night in particular that we went to go see them, and nobody was there except for me and \u2026. the bass player. Because nobody else was there we talked to each other and found out that we both had bands, and we became really good friends. We started travelling to Boston to hang out with them and make music, and then eventually we got the idea. We happen to both have songs called \u2018Astaroth\u2019, so we were like \u2018Dude, let\u2019s put out a split with both of our songs on it.\u2019 Astaroth is a lesser demon of Hell. I guess he\u2019s just a mythological creature that both me and Chris from Ice Dragon resonate with. He\u2019s also into a lot of Hammer Horror films, so we were really partial to the name and we liked the idea and the psychology. We spent a lot of time on the internet reading, reading too much shit. Our friend Josh \u2013 also from Boston \u2013 has a label called Yersinia Pestis, so he wanted to put the split out for us. We\u2019re so proud of that; this record is a symbol of a friendship between two bands, and it really is. It\u2019s the best \u2013 I love that record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Produced by Henry Yuan, Misery Wizard<\/em> was recorded at Emandee Studios in Brooklyn, New York in September 2011. \u201cWe got given a pretty handsome cheque by Alan I guess you could say,\u201d the co-founder beams. \u201cWe went into our friends\u2019 studio whose name is Mark Emandee, and he runs Emandee Studios. We got to the studio, and we banged out the record really fast. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve heard the stories of Black Sabbath<\/a> when they first went into the studio, where they just cut all the songs track after track in one take. It\u2019s pretty much as close to that as you can get; it was recorded in three days, really fast. It was quite the experience. I think we were all on amphetamines at the time (laughs), so we were playing faster while recording it. It was very quick, and to the point. We had a lot of fun, and we got to work on our sound. We learnt a lot from being in the studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

Journalists and fans alike tend to neatly confine groups to specific categories. Some musicians are comfortable with this, and others not so much. \u201cI go back and forth every day,\u201d Jon confesses. \u201cI don\u2019t know, because it\u2019s one thing to be playing music for the purpose of doom metal. It feels triumphant and you feel like you\u2019re doing it for something very important, but at the same time you don\u2019t wanna be tied down to a genre. It\u2019s weird. I really don\u2019t know how I feel about that yet (laughs). I\u2019m still trying to work it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lifting stage names from Dungeons & Dragons, lyrical content of the wizard-type ilk inevitably surface. \u201cA lot of the lyrics are about wizards and magic, demons and sorcery, aliens and UFOs and ancient religions,\u201d the guitarist discloses. \u201c\u2018Adventurer\u2019 is an autobiography of the band, and it also touches on some ideas of being isolated. Solitude, and the craziness that that can cause someone. The experience of being alone for too long. \u2018Forsaken Man\u2019 is the story of the character Forsaken Man who is also the Misery Wizard who the record is named after, which is all basically an autobiography about myself. It\u2019s the story of this guy who\u2019s just totally detached himself from society, I guess. I know it sounds very generic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul McCarroll of Unhinged Art designed the cover artwork for Misery Wizard<\/em>. \u201cThat guy is awesome,\u201d Jon reckons. \u201cWe gave him the idea for the cover, and he came back with something that was way beyond our expectations. It\u2019s actually a parody image, an almost exact replica of this one painting called Jesus Heals The Lepers<\/em>. It\u2019s definitely in the style of Renaissance artwork. I found the image on the internet so I\u2019m not sure who the artist is. We thought we were going to get a pencil sketch from Paul, but he just went all out and it\u2019s amazing. He\u2019s really easy to work with, is really nice, and is an awesome dude who makes awesome artwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

Misery Wizard<\/em> was released on January 27th, 2012 in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, on the 30th in the rest of Europe, and subsequently on February 14th in North America, all through Poison Tongue Records.<\/p>\n

Interview published in February 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PILGRIM – Adventurers Anthony Morgan February 2012 Pilgrim (l-r): Nick Nosach, Jon Rossi and Eric Dittrich Provisionally titled Big Cheese during a grunge phase, Rhode Island-based doom metal trio Pilgrim formed in 2009-2010 and consist of guitarist \/ vocalist Jon Rossi, bassist Eric Dittrich, and drummer Nick Nosach. The Wizard, Count Elric The Soothsayer, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-pilgrim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4414"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13137,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4414\/revisions\/13137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}