Indesinence
become rock stars, and we’d rather take however long it needs to produce something that will mean something of value to us and, hopefully, the listener.
Indesinence’s second album Vessels of Light and Decay has been in gestation since 2006. The London death/doom band has experience line-up shifts in that time and the unerring desire to truly create something special and worthwhile took precedence above all else. Guitarist and vocalist Ilia Rodriguez discusses how this all came to be. Words: Jonathan Keane
Vessels of Light and Decay has been six years in the making. Why has it been so long? There are a number of reasons, and the main one is also probably the most obvious: we wanted to make it good. Music seems to happen so regularly these days and it feels like bands are expected to simply churn records out… but I wonder how much life experience
most musicians can have amassed in less than one year for them to honestly think they are ready to make yet another musical statement in the form of an album. Start writing on auto-pilot and the lack of quality control starts to become evident, yet most bands are content to do precisely that, presumably in the pursuit of greater popularity or some absurd projection of prolificacy. Indesinence goes the opposite way and we always have done; we didn’t start doing this to
What happened in the interim? The main event is probably the fact we lost a pivotal founding member in the form of Chris James, whom we firmly remain friends with, but who increasingly felt being in the band was no longer in tune with the lifestyle he sought. He is still a fan of music, and now lives happily in the countryside with his long-time wife and soon-to-be first child. To be honest, the future of the band was critical for a couple of months, but we soon found a suitable replacement in our friend Andy McIvor, whom we knew personally and through his activities in Code and Blutvial. He was already a fan and, in retrospect, it was a true stroke of luck he wanted to be involved, as we honestly could not think of a single other person who could have filled Chris’ shoes, both in terms of ability and of outlook. He was a truly unique personality and musician, and so is Andy. So we were lucky there.
“Start writing on auto-pilot and the lack of quality control starts to become evident, yet most bands are content to do precisely that, presumably in the pursuit of greater popularity or some absurd projection of prolificacy.” ghost cult magazine | 30