Interview: Bathe

Image courtesy of Bathe

Bathe is a post-hardcore band out of South Carolina with a unique aesthetic and a pretty great sense of humor. Bands who trade in the volatile arts of fast, loud and aggressive tend to come across as overly serious at times, especially when the "post-" modifier is tacked on to whatever genre they've adopted as a fair description of their sound. This is unfortunate, for as Dillinger Escape Plan and Enter Shikari aptly proved over the course of their careers, being good at your job doesn't require that you get up every morning, look in the mirror, and hate the person staring back at you. It's ok to have a laugh now and then and enjoy yourself while playing music (it's called playing for a reason), even while performing music as thick with cacophony as Bathe's is. 

On Bathe's third album A Field Guide to Dead Birds (not affiliated with Sibley), the group knits together dissident, contorted grooves and talons-toed riffs, that spring up from a sludgy filament of bone-soup beats, like the spring-loaded jaws of an enormous bear trap, submerged in the mossy peat of a marsh, waiting to snap into action and leave a lasting impression in your vulnerable flesh. The instrumentation acts like an amplifier for the agonizing rasp of the sullen death vocals, which lurch around within the confines of the mix, bloodying its foreheads and joints as it snarls and clamors against the obtuse walls of its enclosure. After witnessing such a devastating creature of sonic mayhem in action, you'll be extremely grateful for the few chuckles the band makes room over the course of the album, if for no other reason than to cut the intolerable tension. 

When I came across Bathe's A Field Guide to Dead Birds late last year, I was so confused and delighted by it that I reached out to the band via email to see if I couldn't get some insights into the project and the people behind it. You can stream the entirety of their new album and read our conversation below: 

Interview conducted over email on February 11, 2021. It has been edited slightly for clarity.

How did you all meet, and what are your backgrounds?
We are all in other bands and met playing shows together. Paul and Alex are in Abacus, the Brothers Scott (Jon and David) are in Sein zum Tode. We went on tour together and one night, drunk as fuck and yelling over a bonfire in Texas, we formed Bathe.

What is the metal and hardcore scene like by you and how has it fared through COVID?
Like most places, there is no scene anymore. Not in the traditional sense anyway. There are still rad bands here that put out awesome stuff, but still no shows. We have one main venue, New Brookland Tavern, that has managed to stay open during all this, albeit not doing shows, so we do as much as possible to support them. Our local alt-news paper, Free Times, recently did an annual festival called Music Crawl, which Abacus played. It was a livestream event this year with no audience. The scene here, much like everywhere we imagine, is still holding on, but without shows, ya know.

Where are the best places to see birds by you?
Any gutter, most curbs and road shoulders & the chicken plant caged trucks are best for viewing birds at their most miserable. If you want to see them have a good time or whatever, any river entrance or riverwalk park in Columbia would be swell.

You seem to have access to an unusual number of dead and taxidermied birds. How do you come to have so many specimens laying around? I'm assuming the answer is nothing nefarious.
Are you a cop? A bird cop? Are you a bird pretending to be a person who is also a cop?

The birds were found dead and then preserved by us. We also encourage people to bring dead birds to shows for free admittance. We didn’t kill any of these birds, we are recycling what nature has chosen to discard. We might start killing birds though. When we are ready to take that step, we’ll accept a handsome ransom to not kill the birds.

Can you ID the birds that are on the cover of your latest album, A Field Guide to Dead Birds?
Hummingbirds, a grey heron, some finch and a mockingbird.

Who does your album art and how do they go about constructing such strange, dramatic scenes?
Holli Strickland does our album art. For previous releases, she made dioramas of a bathroom and a hanging gallows while our friend Jamie Clark took the pictures and edited them for release. Holli did everything for this newest release. She gets our motivation: stark and unsettling art, audial and visual.

What bird calls did you incorporate into your new album and on what tracks?
David, our drummer, does all the samples for Bathe. He records a lot of stuff on his own. He also used an album we found a thrift store called Guide to Bird Sounds by the National Geographic Society. There are too many birds to name, I’ll send you pic of just some listed. [See pics below]

Are there any humans you believe deserve to be sprayed with Avitrol?
We’d rather just use Avitrol on birds. The way Zod intended.

Why was it significant for you to name a song after Wasaga Beach, and what is the message of that track?

The great bird kill at Wasaga Beach is an insane event to imagine. Thousands of birds plummeting from the sky. There is no message, more of a narrative reimagining of what it’d be like to be there.

You did a very good job of making that beach scene from The Notebook sound deranged and ominous on "Cloacal Kiss." Is there some deeper commentary going on there, or was this just for the hell of it?

Jon, our bass player, was made to watch The Notebook with his fiancé, now wife. The only thing he took from the movie was that some crazy woman was yelling about wanting to be a bird & how the dude was not having it. We listened to it after smoking tons of weed & we all agreed that Dave could make it sound real weird.

What have you been doing to promote your new record since it's been out?
We made an initial online push, Sludgelord Records put it on CD, it got reviewed by some rad blogs, then nothing.

Get a copy of A Field Guide to Dead Birds here.