A few months ago in Toronto, Knoll performed at a Tex-Mex restaurant that frequently hosts emo dance parties and Harry Potter trivia nights. The Tennesse act took to the stage with an antique lamp and funeral drapes, among other decorations from generations past, and told the crew to turn the lights all the way down. When the houselights merely dimmed, frontman Jamie Eubanks reiterated that they be turned all the way off. Basked in a single lightbulb’s glow, the self-proclaimed funeral grind outfit tore into a harrowing set of physical exhaustion, perverted trumpets and theremins, and patience-testing noise, scaring away a few concertgoers.
Knoll’s performance was as disfigured as it was polished, much like their latest album from this past January, As Spoken. The group balances technical grindcore with macabre overtones, evoking a communion with the spirits of the past, though these spirits are of languages and traditions–most notably those associated with funeral culture and the act of mourning–rather than of the dearly departed. They fixate on conclusions and how transient endings are, stopping not with death but with how ideas continue past one’s expiration. As Spoken takes more influence from opera, Simon Fisher’s theory of Hauntology, and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, than it does zombie rituals. As such, it possesses a hallowed texture, not a horrific one.
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The group’s music reflects this precise and inhuman vision. Each riff and gargled vocal line and bleating trumpet hit their marks without room for error but with enough space to evolve. Knoll takes grindcore’s tendency to pack as many ideas into a track as possible into a more fluid space. Sections still appear and disappear unpredictably, but each is given a chance to grow past its foundations.
The irony in all this is that Eubanks envies grindcore’s penchant to rip it and stick it. “I love it when people don’t give a fuck,” he says. Housed inside his deep interests in performance art is the punk desire to provoke audience reaction, whether that’s inciting a woman to toss her drink and evacuate the venue, obtaining ear-to-ear grins, or causing patrons to adopt the “stank-face.” Though Knoll’s performance is finely tuned, audience reception is always a surprise to Eubanks. “I adore all of them. We seek these reactions.”
In addition to his fascination with how people respond to Knoll’s music, Eubanks spoke with us about As Spoken’s concept, his vocal training, deathcore, and more.
Does it suck ass lugging all your stage equipment around?
Dude, I’m a total bitch about it. We have antique lamps and shit and we play in front of funeral drapes and I also have a big drafting table with my electronics rig. I bring it all to Europe too. I like for us to have a show and those things make me feel good and having the same thing every day makes me feel comfortable, especially when we’re touring Europe. It’s hard, but one of the greatest joys of being in the band is taking these things with me.
It justifies the effort because as we’ve continued to push our aesthetic direction, with the show especially, people have noticed us more. In a practical sense, it makes us more tangible and marketable. If there’s a feeling you are outright invoking that is inescapable, it leaves a lasting impression. That’s at least what I want to accomplish.
I read that you started out as a deathcore kid and then became a Nails fan. How do you look back on those styles now that Knoll has honed its own creative identity?
I’m definitely not a deathcore fan nowadays. However, I’ll forever hold a fondness for Nails. I adore the vein of powerviolence or grindcore or whatever you want to call it that still beholds a catchiness or elements of songwriting without giving complete way to the wall of sound that I think is inherent to the genre. Nails and Todd Jones write songs, you know. They’re memorable. That band has stuck with me for a long time.
I would say, being in rudimentary schools and listening to deathcore was my first gateway into extreme harsh vocals. I wouldn’t say those styles are influential to me nowadays, but I will pay respect to the technicality some of those vocalists hold. It was a good thing for me to aspire to as a child. None of those guys were ripping their throats apart, so it was good that I got my start there.
Now, more so, I’m looking to things that are avant-garde and taking less inspiration from conventional metal approaches and more from opera and their methods of projection and narrative conveyance within body motions, which I care about within the live aspect of Knoll. I find myself in isolation when it comes to taking inspiration from other vocalists. I think that trying to emulate other singers has not worked out well for me in the past. It’s a matter of finding your own voice and making yourself an apt conduit for your own music rather than trying to rip that from someone else because you’ll end up pushing your timbre and range into places it can’t go.
Do you believe that idea applies more to vocalists than it does to drummers or guitarists?
Definitely so. The voice is an instrument that’s so specific to you, and I’ve found great success and fulfillment in exploring where my techniques may take me by chance. The evolution of my style within Knoll’s framework has come more from improvisation than it has from the recordings themselves. Of course, I still get compared to other freaky overtone vocalists like Travis Ryan or the guy from Lorna Shore, Will Ramos. But, to be completely honest, I don’t listen to either of those bands. I like Cattle Decap; they’re cool. Where I take most from other acts and incorporate them into my vocals, and they may have a different voice and tonality than me, are qualities like an over-pronounced enunciation that gives them a sort of prophetic quality in their delivery. Or with opera, let’s say there’s warble in their higher frequencies that gives them a ghostly quality to the resonance. So I like to take that feeling and imbue it within my harsh vocals. But I’m not singing or breaking glass.
It’s hard to take from other vocalists because it’s a personal thing. It’s your own voice. Plus, in extreme metal, there’s not as much variance between styles.
I would agree with that. It’s very easy to fall in line with what some people may call the cookie-cutter death growl. It’s not that I’ve been ashamed of that or taking any sort of critique or heedance to being too similar to other vocalists. I agree with you that there are only so many ways someone can sound. You’ll always sound like someone else in one range or in another regard. But, I have found a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment in taking portions of my range or technique and bottoming them out, to say. There’s an absence of the traditional growl on our most recent album compared to our earlier works, where it’s been replaced by me taking the same technique I’d use for a higher frequency range and pushing it to its utmost depths. It creates what I call a blood gargle. It’s a deep crackle.
To me, being able to do those things with my voice is about what feels the most vile and what delivery I feel is the most key for the music at that point in time. Those techniques tend to be more difficult, in terms of physicality, but more expressive. I found the act of the traditional growl isn’t so intensive on the lungs. You don’t really feel it. You’re just blowing air. Whereas I feel a deep bodily sensation with just about every other technique I may employ within music.
Do your body motions tie into the negative emotions you try to express that feel so natural to you?
Absolutely. I’m a big fan of macabre opera. I feel like a lot of my time, especially with what influences me artistically, musically, or vocally, is spent within old films or opera or extreme performances and performance art. Knoll is largely an impersonal entity. I would not liken the majority of its lyricism to that of speaking. It’s an act of further conviction. I think it requires an extreme timbre and a dramatic mode of expression, so I find a connection to harsh vocals within that. Of course, I do plenty of experimentation that I wouldn’t put within the conventional walks of harsh vocals: asphyxiation, strangulation, whispering, and hoarseness. I’m not against singing or more conventional vocal expressions; I just haven’t found a home within them that conveys the negativity of Knoll’s music.
When it comes to bodily expressions and whatnot, there are certain positions and bodily convulsions that performing this sort of art forces you into. Within the live scenario, I unfortunately find myself writing parts where I am performing or exhaling for the entirety of the music, even if it’s a minute long, there’s hardly room to breathe. The pressure that puts on your physical being is immense. So, something that’s frequently employed within the live shows.
There was one point in particular where I was horrifyingly confronted with that reality when we were performing live in California, and this was when I never performed with shoes or a shirt. A lady approached me after the show and told me that she watched my feet for the majority of the set and noticed that my toes were curling every time I vocalized. After that, I’ve been unusually hyperaware of my bodily mechanisms when doing this sort of this. But, it speaks to where I am with this music and performance.
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You’re always perceiving how you’re being perceived?
I’ve distanced myself from it somewhat. Knoll being impersonal has detached me from the body and I find solace in being ignorant of my anatomy both when creating and when performing the music. It’s not to be so pretentious to say that I don’t think of myself as a human being, but it’s an effort towards becoming ignorant of that and escaping it.
It’s depersonalization, which is reflected in many physical acts. For example, marathon runners forget the human part of themselves because they’re so focused on the physicality of the act.
I like the marathon analogy. I can somewhat relate to a runner’s high. There is a euphoria in writing songs this way, so even if there aren’t hands around my neck, it feels like I’m being strangled by the sheer lack of breath and what I’m putting myself through. I receive a lot of questions at the merch table about how I can speak after a set. I always answer that it’s not the throat aspect that is difficult but the cardiovascular aspect. I’m not worried about the voice. I’m trying not to pass out the entire time. To tell you the truth, my vocal styles aren’t particularly difficult. I feel relaxed in the chest and head and voice when I’m performing. But trying to stay afloat and awake is the difficult part.
It’s crazy how much physical fitness can play into performances.
Absolutely. I went through a vigorous experience on our last tour, which was an amazing tour of North America, but I find myself, on whatever tour we do, getting sick at least once. I got violently ill in the southern Californian stretch. On the last tour, there ended up being 5 days in succession where I vomited profusely following Knoll’s set.
In a funny metaphorical sense, it’s fitting. I’m there mentally, but achieving that physically was terrible. I have a memory after playing San Diego where I had to rush off the stage and vomit beside our band immediately.
I don’t know what it is. I think it’s along the lines of losing bodily awareness when doing this sort of thing. There are some portions of the music where I gag myself into the microphone to do a horse whisper. That happened in Toronto. There was a foam emerging from my mouth. We closed with “Portrait,” which contains a climax that begins with vocals. Prior to that, I asphyxiated myself with a hawking motion. I don’t know how you’re going to include that (writer’s note: 
). Sometimes it’s involuntary, sometimes it’s provoked. But yeah, there’s a loss of bodily awareness.
I feel a deep sense of foreboding before we go on, but the doom and dread exit when I begin my portion of the performance. It’s replaced by terror and power. I feel a sense of perpetual unease when performing, but it’s less anxiety and more driving.
A statement I wanted to ask about comes from As Spoken’s liner notes. “…a lecture of dilapidated language & its propensity to become riddled with sickness when kept.” It’s beautifully written, but I wanted you to expand on it. I thought it was about how the sins of the past will manifest through our language if we don’t examine how we use our language.
I think it can be interpreted in many ways. Language as a mode of communication is largely bereft of the confine of words. Again, I think language is all modes of communication. As Spoken draws a metaphor to communication within speaking but there are bodily arts and visual arts of communication, and I think that message as a whole can be viewed as a wicked game of telephone. I think human nature has a tendency to corrupt itself, and its most powerful medium of doing so is with misdirection. I think much of that is held within language.
As Spoken resides at the end of this timepiece and this timeline. As you said, it’s an examination and a rumination on where these things where eventually settle and lie. I find a lot of power within this misdirection. There’s a manifestation of it on As Spoken within wordplay and whatnot. I wouldn’t say my lyrical constituents are lying to you, but there are double entendres and many meanings.
It’s written in a way where you can’t take it as is.
Definitely. I think that Knoll’s conceptuals and meanings provoke a very tangible element of verbosity. It is very difficult to convey these ideas, for me, within a shorter time span in music and even with speaking, I find myself deeply desiring to expand Knoll’s expression of art. Many of the tracks have short film accompaniments and a slew of graphics and arts associated with them. I would be at a total loss to convey these things without more tools at my disposal. So it’s an utmost regurgitation of these things into every medium I can get my hands onto. I think, for that reason, it has become somewhat inescapable and suffocating. Some people are turned off by the idea, but for those willing to receive that idea, there is much to be received.
Knoll’s lyrics language and the language with which you operate, from your music to your visuals to your performance, is an alternative to conventional forms.
Sure. I would say it’s somewhat of an homage to a lost period of art. I think of post-industrialization and the loss of emphasis on mourning culture–which is the namesake of Knoll, of relating to a funeral toll, an archaic one, at that. I find myself looking to older artists not because they’re old or because I’m paying respect to older art, but as mourning itself to what I view as a lost period of artistic expression and integrity. I find myself deeply saddened by the cheapening of visual and musical artistic mediums and the loss of artistic notions and expression within objects common to the common man, or belonged to the common man.
Knoll is an utmost cling to expression. Everything must be to the finest nuance, I think it can be too much for some people, and I completely understand that. But it is intentionally of dramatics and somewhat ridiculous and an acceptance of that and an embrace of things that are macabre to the utmost.
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As Spoken is available now.
