North Carolina Progressive Metal outfit Stellar Circuits have recently released their second album entitled Sight To Sound on June 9th. Stellar Circuit’s bassist Jared Stamey and drummer Tyler Menon took the time to talk with Metal Express Radio about their latest album, their favorite bands on Nuclear Blast, favorite memories with the band, and more. Check out the chat below!
Metal Express Radio: Your band, Stellar Circuits, released a new album entitled Sight To Sound on June 9th. What can you tell fans about the new release?
Stamey: This album has our heaviest material to date while also being very well balanced. From start to finish, it has every bit as much dynamic and emotional range as Ways We Haunt, maybe even more. Every song is richly layered; equal parts intensity and subtle nuance. The fans can expect to be fully engaged with this album for a long time and still pick up on something new every time they listen.
MER: How was the writing and recording process having this being your second full length album?
Menon: The writing process for Sight to Sound was a bit different than our last album. For many of the ideas on this new record, we built from the ground up. Drums and bass, followed by guitars, and finally vocals. A lot of the foundational ideas on this record came from a rhythmic place, which has found its way into our current writing style. Many of the songs on Ways We Haunt (“Sleepless Goddess,” “Goblin Valley” and “Go With Your Ghost“, to name a few) started with guitars. Other songs like “Skylights” and “Fell Under a Spell” started with drums and bass, as is the case on just about every song on Sight to Sound. One element that has always remained the same is that Ben writes his vocal parts once all the instruments are there and we all agree that the song is in a good place structurally. Usually, Ben doesn’t even like to hear a new song until it’s completely finished.
MER: How would you compare Sight to Sound to your first album Ways We Haunt?
Menon: Sight to Sound is definitely a different album from Ways We Haunt. We came into the writing process of this record having much, much more experience playing and touring together. I think that by the time we recorded Ways We Haunt, I had only played maybe 5 or 6 shows with them. Most of that album was just us getting to know each other and trying to make something special. I think we’ve honed our sound a lot more since then and moved into territory that we feel is more unique, and representative of the time we’ve spent together. It was important to me, going in to record this album, that the drums had space to breathe in the mix. A lot of modern drum production feels so overly edited and compressed that I feel like I’m listening to a machine, even when an actual person sat down and played drums on the recording itself. I wanted it to feel like me. I want it to feel like you’re listening to an actual human, with all their imperfections, sit down and play a drum set. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors in modern music production, but I think people have a sense of what’s genuine and what’s not. I always want to maintain that human element in our music.
MER: You’ve released two singles from Sight To Sound, what kind of feedback have you received?
Menon: The feedback we’ve for the first two singles has been pretty positive. I think, though, that a large portion of our listeners value the album experience and are waiting for that. I think that the album always says more as a whole than each song can individually.
MER: What do you see as plans for you and the rest of the band for 2023?
Menon: I hope that we can continue to write, even as we prepare to play these new songs for people. We’re well into the writing process for our next record and I’m hoping we can keep that momentum. That said, I’m excited to bring these songs to life after so long.
MER: Who do you hope to tour with that you haven’t yet and why?
Menon: There are too many bands to list that I’d love to tour with, but Between the Buried and Me will always be at the top of that list. They stoked that fire in me to write music at a very young age, like no one else could, so it would be a bit of a full circle moment in my life if we ever were to tour with them.
MER: Who are some of your favorite artists on Nuclear Blast Records?
Stamey: Lamb of God is one of my all-time favorites. The label is rife with great bands. They’ve got giants that have been around a long time like Rob Zombie, In Flames, Exodus, Hatebreed, As I Lay Dying, Ministry, Behemoth and Sepultura. And then they’ve got a ton of killers that I found out about within the last decade like Thy Art Is Murder, Fit For An Autopsy, Bleed From Within, Textures, and The Halo Effect.
MER: What have been some of your favorite releases of 2023 so far?
Stamey: Sleep Token’s Take Me Back To Eden is brilliant. Voyager’s singles are amazing and their EuroVision performance was a great global representative for prog metal. The singles from Humanity’s Last Breath are brutal. Periphery and Veil of Maya’s newest albums are both awesome and gnarly.
MER: Since forming the band in 2015, what have been some of your favorite memories?
Stamey: Our 2021 tour with Chevelle was unforgettable. They treated us really well and all the venues and crowds couldn’t have been better. Being in the studio with Jamie King to record Sight to Sound was a great experience. It brought us even more together as a band and as brothers. Shooting the new videos with Erez Bader and is crew was super fun and creative. Being on the road in 2019 with our friends in Four Stroke Baron gave us our first real taste of prolonged touring so those are very special memories. And, of course, signing with Nuclear Blast was huge and we’re still pumped on that.
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