Grady Avenell Returns for first new Will Haven album in years

A calming flow of synthesizer builds gradually, luring in all curious listeners. And for the moment, everything’s serene–but secretly there are other intentions. The role of the antagonist for this song’s tale has become apparent and all are vulnerable; no one is safe. Unexpectedly, the once soothing hum is quickly ambushed by the constant, albeit macabre, pulse of keys chiming steadily like an old grandfather clock at a slightly higher pitch. The sound instantly signals the mood has now changed and there’s no turning back. Melodic guitar suddenly strolls by, equally not to be trusted as the composition is then met by shrieks grave enough to raise the hairs on one’s arms and neck. The screams forever burn images of neck veins into your psyche, and then the music fades. For now, you’ve survived this six-minute dark opus written by one of Sacramento’s most respected longtime metal veterans, Will Haven.

What should have been the perfect theme song to Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street had it been written 20 years ago, the track (“Lost” off of Will Haven’s newest full-length album, Voir Dire, translated as “Speak the truth”) is only a snippet of what’s to come from this band in the future. With original vocalist Grady Avenell back at the mic, the addition of keyboard and synthesizer courtesy of Adrien Contreras and a new bass player who happens to be the percussionist for a little band called Slipknot, Will Haven is back on the scene and in full force.

“This record is the starting point to what we can do,” explained Jeff Irwin, guitarist and founding member of Will Haven, at their practice space off of Marconi Avenue. “To me, this album is definitely deeper. When I listen to our old records, I see the skeleton of what we’re becoming. We’re getting older and we’re taking our time now. Before, we put out a record just because we knew we were going to go on tour, but now, recording days have slowed down, we don’t play as many shows and that energy is put into the music and we feel we have a deeper passion for it.”

According to Irwin, throughout what most might see as a four-year stint of silence since the band’s release of new material, the guys of Will Haven have never stopped playing music completely. Whether they were playing in alternate side project bands to fill their musical voids, or deciding to come together to play music in support of a close friend in a coma, Irwin credits the return of original vocalist Grady Avenell for ultimately fueling Will Haven’s passion to once again begin writing and rekindling the family vibe the band was built on.

“We played some of the Chi benefits and I just got the itch to do it again,” Avenell said of the shows developed to support Deftones bassist Chi Cheng, currently in a minimally conscious state after a 2008 car accident. “We talked about it and went forward from there. I’m excited. It’s been almost 10 years since I’ve put an album out and here we have an album coming out. I’m just looking forward to playing some shows and having a good time.”

Formed in ‘95 right after high school, Will Haven have since paved a hard road releasing countless albums and EPs, touring the world with the likes of Deftones, Earth Crisis and Slipknot, where they would find a new member to welcome into their family unit of pure metal: Chris Fehn, percussionist for Slipknot turned bassist for Will Haven.

“He’s been in the band since this record. We toured with Slipknot in 2000 and we just became good friends with him and we’ve been close ever since,” explained Irwin. “He’s really passionate about music, he’s not in it for anything else and that’s hard to find nowadays. With him, he’s like, ‘I don’t give a fuck who you guys are. I love the music. I love you guys. I just want to play.’ And that’s exactly what we want, someone who has passion, loves the band and is here for the right reasons.”

However, touring with world renowned bands such as Slipknot or Deftones kept the band grounded. And instead of rolling up to venues with tour buses and crews of roadies, Will Haven took the more punk rock approach, pulling up in an old van with one goal in mind–to share their music with a crowd of thousands.

“When we did tours like that, I think that made the band what it is. We’d go on tours with Deftones or Slipknot and there’d be thousands of people there, but for us, it would be almost like a punk rock show because they’re in buses and have crews, and we pull up in this crappy, little van and our goal is to try and kill everybody. We aren’t there to sell tickets. We’re there to show people that this opening band just kicked your ass even more than the headliner did. I think that’s what drove us and what kept us grounded; we’ve put in our work,” Irwin said.

With the band’s average age being in the mid-30s, Will Haven recall the days when self-promotion was solely up to the musicians. A time prior to social networks like MySpace or Facebook, where one didn’t just Google a band and decide whether or not they’re worthy, but actually visit a music store, purchase an album and research them at their own discretion. A time when tacking flyers to poles and actually speaking to people in person was prevalent–which later turned into inviting fans personally out to shows. Those days, go figure, are now gone. To the members of Will Haven, this has become a lost art form and they blame the ever-evolving monster that is social networking.

“Before, it was all about the music,” says Irwin. “We started before Myspace, and we’re kind of new to the whole Internet thing, but when we started, you made a demo tape and gave it to a record label and see what happens from there. At our age right now we’ve seen the decline of the ‘rockstar days.’ The labels and getting signed for a crap load of money doesn’t happen anymore. In the late ‘90s it just seemed like that took a shit. It’s a whole different world. So, we got to see the height of [the music industry] and we saw the crash of it, too.”

With more than 10 years of music behind them and an unwritten future ahead, the guys of Will Haven have become a well-respected entity within Sacramento’s tight-knit music scene. Whenever their name is mentioned, conversations of praise and an air of respect are present. Irwin said the band’s local popularity stems from the guys choosing to be true to themselves and to their music, but other local musicians say Will Haven have earned respect because they’ve always kept it real.

“These guys have been grinding it out since ’95, always doing their own thing,” explained Jesse Mitchell of Red Tape/Kill the Precedent and longtime friend of Will Haven. “Since the beginning, they have been following their own path, but still staying true and recognizing Sacto as being home base. We as fellow Sacto musicians respect what they have achieved, not just locally, but worldwide. They have always been good friends with my bands and are cute as buttons to boot. Will Haven will be sonically slapping your face for years to come.”

Will Haven’s Voir Dire will be released Oct. 11 on Bieler Bros. Records.

Local four-piece difficult to define

Happy 4/20. If only you were in Arcata, you could be ZuhGin’ out.

After CD release parties in Sacramento and Roseville last week, the four-piece from the City of Trees cruised the ZuhGmobile to Humboldt for a weekend lineup of shows capped off by a 4/20 celebration Monday at the Humboldt State University Quad.

ZuhG will perform at noon at Sierra College in Rocklin on Thursday. The evening before, on Earth Day, they have an all-ages gig at Pyramid Alehouse in Sacramento.

On the April Second Saturday Art Walk, in Sacramento on April 11, ZuhG lured the audience away from the art and the couches in the back of the Blue Lamp to the dance floor with their set that featured songs from their new album ZuhG Life. A heap of jackets piled onto one couch beneath the artwork of Brian Nichols, ZuhG’s frontman.

“Listen to OutKast,” Nichols said while they played a “So Fresh So Clean” interlude.

Shoeless, Nichols led the band on guitar and vocals. Justin Vance opened their set with his bassline for “Accessories,” an homage to the mundanity in life.

Brian “Bot” Swart was the highlight of the night and, in a way, he is in ZuhG Life, playing tenor saxophone, giving the band the sound they want—”to be unlike others,” how they define ZuhG.

Self-taught drummer Matt Klee said in an interview at Nichols’s house that in order to get better he had to get uncomfortable. So, with Nichols, he took a jazz ensemble class at Sierra College a year ago. That’s where they met Bot.

In that class, Nichols said he met a mentor of sorts who taught him jazz guitar.

“I wanted to play jazz guitar, and he played way sicker than me,” he said. “Now, it’s all about practicing daily. We’re trying to get better every day as a band.”

A semester’s worth of jam sessions and Bot was a part of ZuhG. Though it wasn’t their intention, he replaced the band’s cello player, Jarrod Matthews, who left the band after Bot’s sax was added. (ZuhG Life’s bonus track features an improv session with Matthews and Bot.)

The youngest in the band at 19, Bot gives ZuhG its jazz element that makes the funk-rock-reggae-jam—whatever you’d like to call it—band a little hard to categorize. Last year ZuhG was nominated for a Sammie in the SN&R in the R&B category. This year, they earned the nomination in the Jam Band category. Recently, High Times Magazine online added them as an unsigned band of the week.

Both Bot and Nichols are studying music, though Nichols is at Sacramento City College now.

Local radio station KWOD 106.5 plays their song “Shangri La,” because it’s “reggae enough,” Nichols said at his house. “I wanted them to choose ‘Lately,’ but they said it was ‘too jazzy.'”

Bot and the guys laughed it off. “Too jazzy is a compliment,” Bot said.

Surely their music wasn’t too jazzy, or maybe it was, to make enough cash to produce ZuhG Life at Sacramento’s Pus Cavern Studios. The recording is great.

“We’d like to thank Northstar and Sugar Bowl for funding this album,” Nichols joked, because they were able to book a couple shows a month at the Tahoe resorts during winter.

Tahoe in the winter. They’ll see the coast for spring. From San Jose to Ocean Beach they have shows lined up along the coast for two weeks until they return to Davis to play the G. St. Pub, May 16 at Beatnik Studios Boobie Bash and May 23 at Marylin’s on K.

Coheed and Cambria Grow Stronger in the Face of Adversity

At this point in its career, Coheed and Cambria isn’t taking anyone by surprise. They’ve taken an unconventional path on their road to notoriety, to be sure, but despite they’re dazzlingly technical prog epics and baffling sci-fi concept, the group is firmly entrenched as part of pop culture’s subconscious, even if they’re just a hair off of the mainstream’s radar. Now, the group is currently embarked on its first arena tour as main support for rap-metal superstars Linkin Park. Their stint with Linkin Park will finish up in Sacramento at Arco Arena on March 10 and is part of a larger world tour that will see Coheed and Cambria roam the Pacific Rim with dates in Australia and Japan before heading through Europe.

“We do what we do, no matter the size of the audience,” says Coheed’s singer/guitarist Claudio Sanchez of his band’s approach to making the leap into playing arenas. “Definitely you can’t help—entering into Madison Square Garden, us being from New York—you can’t help but have some nerves.”

Though the stages are much larger, Coheed’s first arena tour actually reminds Sanchez of simpler times.

“It reminds me of when we first started out in a band and traveling around in vans, working to this level, no one knew who we were and you were relying on your live presentation to try to win over fans,” he says. “It feels that way again, but on a much larger scale.”

And though the crowds they’ve been playing to may not have been their own, Sanchez reports that he is happy with their response thus far.

“When we go out there and do our thing from the beginning of the set, you can see that it’s definitely new material for a lot of people out there,” he says. “It’s kind of hard for them to wrap their heads around, but by the end of the set, everybody’s super enthusiastic, and it really feels like we went out there and did what we needed to do, and we’re walking away with some new ones.”

It’s been a long road to get to this point—and they almost didn’t make it this far. Late 2006 was a tumultuous time for Coheed as both drummer Joshua Eppard and bassist Michael Todd left the band in November of that year for “personal reasons.”

“That whole time that we went through as a band—losing Josh and Mic—and trying to figure out, do we continue, do we not continue,” Sanchez says.

Dillinger Escape Plan drummer Chris Pennie eventually replaced Eppard (because of a contractual obligation, Foo Fighter Taylor Hawkins was called in to man the drums, playing off of Pennie’s demos, during the recording of Coheed’s latest album Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Part Two: No World for Tomorrow). Todd, however, was struggling with substance abuse. After some time in rehab, the bassist rejoined the group in April 2007. Sanchez says the decision to let Todd back in wasn’t an easy one.

“We were definitely hurt,” Sanchez explains. “There was a sense of betrayal, of course. But at the end of the day, he is our brother, and we just wanted to see him well. When he came to see us that day, before rejoining, he came with no expectations. He just came to apologize”¦ When we met and did our thing, we realized that we missed him, and that we wanted him back.”

Sanchez, Coheed’s primary songwriter, says that these tribulations definitely affected his writing of No World for Tomorrow. Set in a fictional universe and following two lovers (Coheed and Cambria), the band’s songs are tied together by a singular concept. However, this doesn’t mean that real life doesn’t work its way into the lyrics.
“I understand that at the end of the day, it is a piece of fiction, but a lot of it stems from reality—a lot of it is fed by things that have happened to the band and things that I’ve endured, personally,” Sanchez says.

“I knew how these stories were going to begin and end, but how to fill in those gaps, that was the hard part, and I’ve looked to personal experience to help feed that stuff,” he goes on to explain. “For this album [No World for Tomorrow], I certainly saw the parallels between what these characters had to endure and what we were enduring as a band.”

This difficult stretch seems to be behind Coheed. When Submerge spoke with Sanchez, he was on the band’s bus stopped in Kentucky (in what city he was unsure), and he was happy to report that he had just tracked some new material in a hotel room the night before. The next Coheed album will be a prequel of sorts, telling the origins of the story’s two main characters. This will effectively bring an end to the saga of Coheed and Cambria, and Sanchez says he’s unsure of what will come next; but fans shouldn’t get too worried about that just yet. It’s clear that Sanchez has plenty of more work left in him. During our conversation, he touched on a few of his other creative pursuits, such as his comic book work and also some of his other musical endeavors such as the Prize Fighter Inferno (“Inferno is definitely on the back burner,” he says. “I do want to put out another album for that project, just to conclude the story.”). He also mentioned a new project called Spencer Doll that will feature a female vocalist, though he wouldn’t elaborate further.

In addition to being the final stop on their tour with Linkin Park, Coheed’s show at Arco will also fall just a couple days before Sanchez’s 30th birthday—a milestone for most young adults that’s usually approached with a good mix of fear and anticipation. Sanchez seems to be taking it in stride, though.

“You know, I’ve got to tell you”¦these are the best years of my life so far,” he says. “I’m very fortunate to be in the position I’m in right now. I’m able to create; I’m creating a lot, whether it be musically or just anything. Every day I find myself doing something creative, whereas when I was 18 years old, I was kind of trapped.”

He continues with a laugh at the thought of his own mortality, “I’m getting to that point where I’m like, ‘Yeah, I could go,’ but I’m kind of excited. I like to be busy just creating stuff”¦ That’s just where I find my sanity and my happiness.”