{"id":17987,"date":"2019-08-20T11:17:51","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T18:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=17987"},"modified":"2019-08-21T09:06:26","modified_gmt":"2019-08-21T16:06:26","slug":"camosun-alumnus-drops-new-album-and-gets-ready-to-rock-metal-fest-with-scimitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/08\/20\/camosun-alumnus-drops-new-album-and-gets-ready-to-rock-metal-fest-with-scimitar\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun alumnus drops new album and gets ready to rock metal fest with Scimitar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Victoria melodic death metal band Scimitar is set to release their second album\u00a0Shadows of Man<\/em> a day ahead of the 2019 Vancouver Island Metal Festival, where they will be performing. Drummer (and Camosun and\u00a0Nexus<\/em> alumnus) Clayton Basi, who graduated from the Applied Communication Program in 2011\u2014calls the album a natural progression, one that was in the works for years before its release.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of the songs that are on the new album were actually written around the same time or even before [2010 debut] Black Waters<\/em> came out,\u201d says Basi. \u201cIt\u2019s a natural musical progression just to make those old songs better. The songs were written a long time ago, but we\u2019ve since changed them, amped them up, re-written them; just generally made constructive changes to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun alumni Clayton Basi (left) plays drums in local metal band Scimitar (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This was Scimitar\u2019s second time recording the album. The first attempt was in a basement studio; it wasn\u2019t bad, but it just wasn\u2019t quite what the band had in mind, says Basi. So when an opportunity to record at Victoria\u2019s Infinity Studios came up, the band couldn\u2019t say no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot different to go into a full studio, with a full board, and a designated sound room that\u2019s designed to be recorded in,\u201d says Basi. \u201cThat allowed us to be a little bit more creative in what we were doing with the mics and that kind of stuff.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing Basi noticed most was the quality of the sound that the recordings at Infinity have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s the drums. The drums sound way better,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a little bit more of a collaborative writing experience. [It] allows everyone to just focus and hone in on writing the best possible music.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basi says he loves how the drums dictate the pace of the songs, and he loves the control and release that comes with playing the instrument. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt feels great. I\u2019m a very active person\u2014I like running around, I\u2019m always tapping and having extra energy and stuff, so it\u2019s a really good release for energy,\u201d says Basi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The band\u2019s style\u2014particularly on the new album\u2014is focused heavily on rhythm and lyrics. And even though it\u2019s death metal, it\u2019s death metal with a heavy emphasis on melody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe write really heavy music, but it\u2019s also very melodically driven,\u201d says Basi. \u201cWe always seek to tell a story or create a feeling in our songs, and that is something that is difficult to do without melody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The band also puts a heavy focus on lyrics, which are written by vocalist\/bassist Angus Lennox. Lennox was a political science and history major at UVic; Basi says that\u2019s where a lot of Scimitar\u2019s historical elements come from, particularly with the new album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can still tell what he\u2019s saying but you can\u2019t follow along unless you have the lyrics,\u201d says Basi, \u201cso that\u2019s one of the reasons we created a lyric video for the single \u2018Knights Collapse.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The utility of human struggle, being able to see that there is a plight within that\u2019s part of what makes people able to do great things, is part of the album\u2019s message, says Basi, adding that there are some things that we all need to learn from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of the songs are based on things that happened in the past,\u201d he says, \u201cand we feel that there are lessons to be learned for the future in past human action.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vancouver Island Metal Festival
Various times, Thursday, August 22 until Sunday, August 25
Free, Centennial Square and Logan\u2019s Pub 
vimetalfest.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victoria melodic death metal band Scimitar is set to release their second album\u00a0Shadows of Man a day ahead of the 2019 Vancouver Island Metal Festival, where they will be performing. Drummer (and Camosun and\u00a0Nexus alumnus) Clayton Basi, who graduated from the Applied Communication Program in 2011\u2014calls the album a natural progression, one that was in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17990,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17987\/revisions\/17990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}