Keeping up their end of the deal

Sights & Sounds delivers on Monolith

With members frequently on tour with other bands, it’s harder than you’d think to get the guys from Sights & Sounds together for a photo.  Photo courtesy of Smallman Records.

“It’s a pretty captivating piece of rock.”

Sights & Sounds bass player Matt Howes is talking about the gargoyle-esque Indonesian statue pictured on the cover of Monolith, the band’s first full-length CD, but he might as well be describing the music itself.

Mixing hardcore, pop, punk, rock and atmospheric soundscapes, Monolith delivers on the promise Sights & Sounds showed on their 2007 debut EP. Alternately dissonant, melodic, crushing and beautiful, with smart musicianship and thoughtful lyrics, “captivating” might just be the best word to describe the 13-track disc.

“Hopefully it will properly represent our band, which we don’t feel we’ve been able to do yet,” singer/guitarist Andrew Neufeld said during an interview in September, when the band – rounded out by guitarist Adrian Mottram and drummer Joel Neufeld – was in Gibsons, B.C., recording the CD with producer Devin Townsend (Lamb of God, Strapping Young Lad).

Speaking by phone earlier this month, Howes described the recording experience as “incredible.”

“Devin’s really good at capturing those ambient sounds that make the album breathe a little more than just a straight-up rock record.”

The band spent 10 days on pre-production before recording the drums and bed guitars at The Warehouse in Vancouver. The band then moved to Townsend’s studio in Gibsons for four weeks.

“(Devin) just brought a really good atmosphere to the process,” the 29-year-old Howes said. “He added that extra texture we were looking for.”

When asked about the title of the CD, Howes said “monolith” describes not only the monolithic sounds on the record, but the band’s history.

“It was just this experience that kept growing and growing,” he said, noting that the band formed on a whim late in 2005 and that their EP was originally intended to just be a demo.

The band is currently opening up for Wisconsin metalcore quintet Misery Signals on their Weight of the World tour, which stops in Winnipeg at the Garrick Centre on May 28. Monolith hits stores two days before that.

“Hopefully we’ll just hit the road and keep rocking and rolling,” Howes said, adding that the band’s members are usually scattered.

Howes lives in Toronto, and at the time of the interview, Andrew Neufeld was in Thailand with his other band, Comeback Kid; Joel Neufeld was on tour in Edmonton with his other band, Sick City; and Mottram was at home in Vancouver.

“We’re definitely used (to being scattered) by now, so whatever time we do have together, we just plug through and go where we can, when we can.”

Published in Volume 63, Number 27 of The Uniter (May 20, 2009)

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