Thanks For Caring Either Way
Madis Jalakas on Thunraz's newest album, 'Incineration Day'
Despite layering numerous sonic touchstones within his music that will delight those who prefer the obscure, Thunraz's Madis Jalakas maintains his distinctive voice pretty easily. "I've only had to think about influences once people started asking me about them," the singer and guitarist writes about the musical foundation of his duo with drummer Sean Rehmer in an email. "During the actual songwriting process, I just write what sounds good. I guess I feel that I have enough of my own voice that it's never been a problem. No song is strictly one thing that sticks to preset parameters."
Throwing off the yoke of preset parameters has elevated Thunraz's newest album, Incineration Day, into the Estonian/USA meeting metal's best release thus far. It turns out that writing what sounds good is a smart way to make a record. Part of what sounds good is a stew of superlative metal spices, each adding its own unique umami flavors, such as tasting notes of Gorguts, Morbid Angel, and Disembodied. And there are a ton of other delectable morsels swimming around in there, too.
"The sludge riffs with the bends in 'Tyrant' and 'Compactor' are definitely from Cattle Press, which is a band I listen to often," Jalakas explains. "Most of the other riffs are equal parts '90s death metal (various bands we all know) and math/noise rock like Dazzling Killmen. 'Fragile Automata' and 'Eastern Promises' are a mix of early Helmet and Godflesh, while 'Spiritual Self-Surgery' is something like '80s Swans by way of Primitive Man. Tomas Haake of Meshuggah would be a frequent reference for drums."
But the other part of what sounds good is, as Jalakas indicated, Incineration Day being shaped by the artist's own experiences. "Fragile Automata"'s thrum, "Incinerator"'s bouncing groove, and "The Day After"'s Derek Bailey-playing-shoegaze atmospherics could've only come from Jalakas. And the musical metadata that carved those songs' contours harkens back to Jalakas's earliest days.
"It was a place to escape into, away from my childhood anxieties," Jalakas remembers when asked how he got into music. "I could listen to cassettes on a portable player and be transported somewhere else. I did that a lot."
Those transportive experiences triggered a series of revelations that still reverberate today. What's interesting is that there wasn't a musical big bang for Jalakas. It was something that lasted far longer and was more all-encompassing. "There wasn't a singular moment like that for me, more of a series of explosions that expanded my horizons of what was possible while narrowing down what I was looking for. Roughly speaking, I went from '70s and '80s pop music (thanks, mom's cassettes) to techno and nu metal (thanks, cable television) to extreme metal and various lesser-known genres (thanks, internet)."
Ah, yes, the internet: a critical component of a certain generation's musical maturation. In an interview with Decibel, Jalakas said, "There was just no way to do what I wanted and no way to find new sources of inspiration until we finally got an internet connection several years later." So, how did that period of intense discovery play out?
"All I did during this period was peruse various review sites and forums to try and find music that would connect with me somehow," Jalakas writes. "The farther you get from mainstream culture, the closer you get to truly individual experiences, which became vital the more I disconnected from my surroundings. I'm shocked by how much of that stuff (from 10-20 years ago) is almost completely forgotten/ignored by modern audiences, even by people who would be into it."
Jalakas hasn't forgotten, giving him a seemingly inexhaustible well of ideas from which to sate his creativity. In a way, it's what got Thunraz rolling. "It started as a sudden, rather impulsive decision to write songs after being enamored by a few one-man projects (Convulsing, Jute Gyte), leading me to realize it was now totally possible to make music on my own without too many compromises," Jalakas recalls. "I'd also just learned to play Close to a World Below by Immolation."
Soon enough, Jalakas put his hand in the fire and "wrote four tracks in a short amount of time that sounded cohesive and not overly derivative of other bands." Thunraz was on the board. But, crucially, Jalakas kept evolving his vision, looking inward to find creative inspiration. "My earliest songs are on the Hinterland album, and I think pretty quickly things became less bombastic and more close up and personal. Less black metal influence, more tempo variation, more experimentation."
That experimentation bears fruit on Incineration Day. Not only are there the quickly shifting structures that have become a hallmark of Thunraz, along with the typical diversity of styles and timbres, but Jalakas is reaching for something grander and more emotionally resonant. That goes for the vocals that add some Dave Vincent-like cleans into the mix. Ron Ben-Tovim of Machine Music wrote, "I don't know if this is the era of clean vocals in harsh metal, but the clean vocals here really drive home the overall sense of alienation and dispassion."
Jalakas has other admirers, too. "I think it's his best / most complete work to date, certainly the most 'enjoyable' for me — if one can stop worrying and learn to love the incinerator..." Convulsing's Brendan Sloan writes in an email about Incineration Day. "It's said that this will be the last Thunraz for a while (ever?), but tracks 5/6/7 kind of hint at where I think he is headed. I think that it's only a matter of time before he synthesizes all the parts even more to create a much deeper work than perhaps even Madis himself thinks he's capable of. Whether it says Thunraz on it or not is anyone's guess. We've spoken a bit over the years, and his emotional/philosophical outlook, like mine, has shifted pretty drastically. Following such a shift can only reward the brave, just as it has with the back half of this record."
So, about that shift. Was reaching that state of intense catharsis that comes via deep introspection challenging for Jalakas? "Not challenging per se," he explains, "but on the track 'Fragile Automata' I felt I reached some kind of true emotional core that made me feel genuinely sad instead of just angry, which seems like progress in the 'art as therapy' sense."
"Fragile Automata" is heavy in a lot of senses, a beatdown that may remind one of Bloodlet if it suddenly got into Negativa. Sean Rehmer drums with an almost Neurosisian intensity, lifting Jalakas's riffs aloft. By its middle, both musicians are lashing the listener with discordant strums and crashing fills. "Tried so hard to climb out," Jalakas roars, "but it wasn't enough." And, like metal can do, the din these two create is therapeutic, something that will ably shoulder your baggage, releasing you from yourself, helping you climb out, at least for its three minutes and thirty seconds runtime.
Jalakas has spoken of "art as therapy" before, particularly in the aforementioned Decibel interview when he said, "Thunraz is evocative of somebody who grew up in the post-Soviet '90s, experiencing intermittent poverty and various forms of mental and physical abuse." How does that manifest on Incineration Day and across Jalakas's career, then?
"It probably manifests less than on my previous records in terms of the subject matter, which this time has mostly to do with other people I've known and the world in general," Jalakas writes. "It's all going to shit now in a way that everyone can see. Experiencing those things did make me utterly indifferent to fitting into any scene or subculture, though. I'm sure that also impacts the music I make."
Maybe because Incineration Day doesn't fit the cookie cutter shaped like the current scene, Thunraz's impact on metal hasn't been as immediate. For now, it's more of a cult band, as Brendan Sloan explains when asked when metal will catch up to what Jalakas is laying down. "There are many reasons for it (some of them geographic, some of them pure luck) but I honestly don't think it needs to 'catch up' so much as slow down and pay attention to what's already around it. "Metal" as a cultural organism is weird. The closest analogue I think about with where Thunraz sits is something like Sulaco, right? Kind of 'if you know, you know.' Sulaco are justifiably beloved, but nobody ever really 'caught on' to them as much as something like Burnt By The Sun or whatever, and instead they just keep digging away in relative obscurity when objectively they should be a much, much more widely recognized band. Madis has said to me that it's frustrating Thunraz fails to penetrate, but I usually reply in the same way: who are you seeking to penetrate?"
Incineration Day's liner notes contain an ominous line: "For everyone whose gift became a curse." And Jalakas is on the fence if there will be any additions when asked what's ahead for Thunraz. "There may be future releases and/or reissues if discussions with certain interested parties pan out. In general, expect much longer breaks between records. I've hinted at Incineration Day being the final one, and there's definitely a chance it will be. There are six records now. Maybe that's enough. Thanks for caring either way." And yet, that gift will mean so much for those who want to know, penetrating whatever is weighing them down, cracking it open, and allowing those who need the art as therapy to lift themselves up. Those are the people who will thank Thunraz for making them care.
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