Interview with Cammie Beverly by Carina Lawrence

Progressive metallers Oceans Of Slumber are back, armed with their new sixth album, ‘Where Gods Fear To Speak’, their heaviest and most ambitious opus yet and their first under-label, Season of Mist. I spoke to vocalist Cammie Beverly four years ago in 2020 (read here), during the COVID lockdown/pandemic, when they were releasing the self-titled Oceans Of Slumber album, which remains one of my favourite albums, so it was great to speak to her again about the upcoming new release coming out 13th September, which will hopefully earn them their rightful place in the metal scene as they continue to expand and go from strength to strength with each album and ‘Where Gods Fear To Speak’ is immense musically, structurally and conceptually and will undoubtedly be one of my top album releases of the year. Read on to learn more about the new offering.

So, going straight into the new album, ‘Where Gods Fear To Speak’ has been described as like a movie soundtrack and dark cinematic music. What made you decide to approach the album and concept, and what inspired this?

A lot of reading and movie watching. I feel like the albums formulate as they go along, and Dobber (Drums, Piano) had been doing a lot of reading and inspiration from movies like The Book Of Eli, The Road and Blade Runner, so this reoccurring theme of dystopian future entering our minds and the things around us. It’s very fitting; with AI coming out and being so prolific so fast, it may have exaggerated some of these dystopian films. We know what direction we are going in, so it started to merge around those things, and Dobber is spearheading his own relational views on things. He writes the music, and he and I discuss it, and it sets the tone for where my mind will start to race.

Was it inspired by a particular theme or film, or did you create the story/concept and then write songs around it?

It all definitely plays together. I talked with Dobber often, and it was like, okay, we take all these films. You look at something like Dune, and it is so expansive, and it’s this world that the author created that is its own thing. Maybe it has predictions for modern society, but whenever Dobber comes up with the songs, he lays out the motivation and inspiration behind them for himself. Then I play off from that with the lyrics, and so as we develop this sort of dystopian landscape, it’s this religious dogma the protagonist is trying to overcome and detach themselves from and by doing that, they reach a new realm of self-realisation. They find their own divinity within, so to speak. So my lyrics chase Dobber through the soundscape he creates, and together, we sort of manifest this world.

Following on from the cinematic soundtrack theme and inspiration from books and films/TV. I always felt like the song ‘Pray For Fire’ on the self-titled album would have been the perfect soundtrack to the last season of Game Of Thrones with Daenerys and her Dragons. Are you a fan of the show? I would love it if somehow inspired partly by that!

Totally, there was a lot of inspiration from Game Of Thrones for the Oceans Of Slumber album. There is another song, and it is all about the…my mind is blank now. But the people that lived at sea and they would tie people to the shore, and the tides coming in would be like how they killed them, and that impacted me so hard. That song was fully inspired by the people of that town or clan or whatever, but yeah, I was deeply enmeshed in Game Of Thrones when that album was written so yeah there’s a lot of inspiration from that.

(I feel like maybe the song Cammie was referring to could have been ‘To the Sea (A Tolling of The Bells)’)

How did you arrive at the album title ‘Where Gods Fear To Speak’? What does it mean to you?

It’s a philosophical question, like ‘What is the meaning of life?’ depending on who you ask, they will tell you different things, and it’s not so much a destination. When we gave the album title, it was a hard question for us to answer, and I remember we were talking about it when it first came up; like the phrase, I can’t say exactly where it was pinpointed. Still, I remember we were driving out to the country, and Dobber asked me about this title. I thought that was great because I love open-ended and philosophical questions and the fact that we couldn’t answer or give them a singular definition. It was perfect because that’s how albums should be; they should be thought-provoking and open-ended, leaving people to their own inspiration and self-discovery, not just like this concise thing. So when we announced the title, I was surprised how pushy some people got about it, like ‘Where is it?’ and ‘What’s this place?’, ‘What’s the answer?’ and I’m like ‘, Ahaha, I can’t tell you, you have to ask yourself what it means to you’. It’s not meant to be easy to answer, so for me, ‘Where Gods Fear To Speak’ is like, in the face of suffering, and it’s often easy for the onlookers to be like, I pray. I take hope, and I lament over their losses. Still, I know that my God protects me; as the onlooker, it’s easy for you to say that, but what do you say for that person in the midst of suffering and turmoil? Where is God for them, and how have they been delivered? You ask different people. They are going to tell you different things about that answer, and some people will be like, ‘Well nowhere, my God will speak everywhere’, but yet here we are, this faceless voiceless entity that we search so hard to find yet again eludes us. Hence, it’s a big, controversial, fun conversation piece of a question. It’s the best kind of question. It reminds me of what I think of coffee houses and college campuses, like what they used to be, and people debate these tough questions.

The new album title track, ‘Where Gods Fear To Speak’, revealed your death growls for the first time. What made you decide to feature death growls? Was that something you always wanted to incorporate, and the new album just paved the way for it?

I can’t say there was a lengthy deliberation about it. Still, I have been wanting to do it because I don’t always like giving the parts over to the guys because they will change them. They don’t mean to, but if they are playing a really difficult part and the vocal line goes against it, they can’t work out doing it like I would do it over what they are playing at the same time. So here and there, it has been changed, and it annoys me, but obviously, the songs still turn out fine. But I really wanted to do it all on the album and to have a lot of the vocals to myself and show, I guess, like, how do I put it, not cheeky but okay, you’re a woman in metal, and a lot of the most popular metal bands, while they have a woman, I feel like growling is like unisex, Let’s say for the sake of argument that it’s a masculine sound like it is but the most famous women in metal and known for making a very masculine sound and their like well that’s not ironic, it’s a unisex like sexless sound because its everybody’s like loud, harsh tone, and so there is no distinction, your like is it a guy or is it a girl if they are doing growls? But yet they love to put such a stamp on it, like you’re a woman in metal, like a disclaimer everywhere I go. So I have always found it kind of funny and frustrating to have a voice that’s very iconically feminine that brings a different element to a male-dominated genre but with a feminine voice and not be celebrated to the same extent as women who do a non-feminine voice, but you want to label me so hard and make sure every knows I’m a woman. I just find it stupid. So I was like, I’m going to growl now, so I figured it out. I have always dabbled and played around with it because Dobber has his death metal and black metal bands, and I know the songs. I have been there where they are recording, so I have figured out how it’s done, and I love it. It’s incredible fun, and I didn’t want there to be anything vocally that was off limits because, at the same time, people will say we are a symphonic metal band, or they have in the past. We are not a symphonic metal band, but it’s because you are either like Arch Enemy or Epica and it’s like these are the two camps. These are where we want our women, and your one of the other, like there are no other female-fronted progressive metal bands, your deathcore or symphonic metal or a lot of in-betweens, so we get shit on all the time. So I made sure on this album to show these contrasts, make no mistake, I’m not that and I’m not this either, so I felt like by doing these styles, I’m like, here I did growls, and you see I don’t do growls often, but when I do, here they are. So you can’t say that everything else we have done is death metal right, or the part when I do like a symphonic metal singing. I’m like, here I am singing operatic; it’s very distinctly different from how I usually sing. I wanted it to just be on there so I could say I did it all, and people can hear the distinction.

I loved your previous album, ‘Starlight and Ash, ‘ even though it is not musically heavy, it is still heavy in a different sense. I like the contrast of how the previous album wasn’t strictly metal, and this new album is the heaviest one.

So many people got up in arms with this weird concept of like they are changing direction, and we are like, we are just having a different conversation; we don’t have to say the same thing on every album. ‘Starlight and Ash’ is heavy in an emotional way; it’s an intimate album, and it is what it is, and then you switch to something like this, and it’s heavier in a practical musical way, that’s say, more stereotypical of metal, but it brings a lot of heat with philosophical elements and cinematic elements of it. So it’s a conversation that’s meant to be enjoyed in different ways, just like you don’t eat at the same restaurant every day.

Following on from that, was it intentional to go heavier on this album or just how naturally progressed when writing/recording?

Very much naturally, it came with the concept and ideas and as it evolved, some of them got even heavier and heavier and then your, like, it’s too much. They are colossal, but they manifested that way from the experience, what we were trying to do, and the stories we were telling. It’s never so deliberate, it just all comes together.

What was the recording process like? I believe you recorded it in Colombia. What was it about Colombia that made you decide to record there?

We deeply believe in what has come to be a very old-school way of being inspired and making music, that it’s not as profound to sit in your bedroom or your home studio and churn something out. Sure, some wonderful, deep, dark things can come from that, but as a band, we really felt called to get out of our city, get out of our comfort zone, find inspiration and include where we go and what we are doing. Our friend Joel (Hamilton), who was the producer on the last two albums, has worked extensively at a studio audio vision in Bogota (Colombia), and he was like, let’s go there; it’s a wonderful place, and you will find what you are looking for and so we went and it has been one of the most profound experiences that I have had so far. I think that all of us have had. To just be somewhere so different and it’s like a vibrant intense culture and place, and it worked so wonderfully in contrast or in complement to the elements that we were trying to bring to life and really dive into, and the meaning of this shows in this album. Just because you can do everything sort of paint by numbers, instructional videos from start to finish DIY, it doesn’t mean that you’re not missing something when you just try and get out there and back into the real world and real-life connections to create. We wanted raw sounds. We had native instrumentalists and native vocalists contribute, and beyond the album, you can’t get that just by staying at home.

You often feature a cover song on your albums (I love the ‘Wolf Moon’ Type O Negative cover). What made you decide to cover ‘Wicked Game,’ especially as it is such a well-known and covered song?

We always love to do a cover; it’s like our ode to Type O Negative as they always had a cover on their albums, and we are big fans, so Dobber always likes to include a cover, and I feel like it’s such a great way show your respect and reverence to other artists that you love. We were all set to do ‘Crying’ by Roy Orbison, but Jimmy Gnecco’s version, and I still hadn’t learned it honestly because I thought I could just go at it and you kind of have to do it line by line anyway, and especially being up in that altitude I wasn’t doing as long of as passes as I would usually like to do but that’s not why. It turned out that we went out to eat and there was a terrible house dance remake of ‘Wicked Game’ and Dobber was like this is gross negligence that has happened and he was not amused so Joel was like, you should cover this song and we were like, we will and had been meaning to, so fast forward to the last two hours of the last day that we had there and I’m tired and spent and I still need to record the original cover that we had planned on and my emotions are all over the place and Dobber was just like come in the room with me and our play some stuff on the piano and you can calm down and we will just take a moment and so he goes and starts playing ‘Wicked Game’ and I love ‘Wicked Game’ so I’m just singing along and a friend of ours who had come down there to hang out with us, she was recording it and she was like this is so beautiful, I’m crying, you should cover this and Dobber is we will, like right now and he is like we are going to do it live and like no one has practiced it or knew that was what were doing and I knew it loosely but not like I’m ready to record it, but he was like we have two hours, we are professionals we can do this so we pulled everything into the big room and set up some go pros and its actually on YouTube and we did like four or five passes and the last version is the one that’s on the album and we pulled it off and it was the most impromptu cover as usually it’s a lot of practice but it just came naturally and felt so right and it sort of served as like the end credits at the movie when the credits are rolling and you are like wow, what a journey and it’s a cover that is familiar but a nice signature touch of a good movie.

From the press releases and the passion displayed in the band, you want to take things to the next level. What would you like to achieve with this new release, and what are your ambitions for the future?

I suppose it’s what we have always hoped but I think that the industry  and consumption of music has changed quite a bit and its in a kind of precarious and weird place where things need to fit in algorithms and they need to be spectacles and I feel like people used to say, we want something different, I feel like everyone just wants their version of the same, so for a band like us, I’m not sure there is always space for us at the table and I don’t mean in like the grand scheme of streaming and fans but when it comes to festivals and tours and industry connections we are kind of like a stepchild in it all because we are not trending and we aren’t flashy. We are like a good homemade meal that you don’t realise you need until you run in from a storm and you are like, oh wow, that’s nourishment but we take our place in that, and that’s why we make it such a point to get the experience that we need out of recording the album, and then when they go out there, they do what they do, but we don’t try and put expectations, but we obviously hope that they mean as much to the people and that the songs are what people are wanting but otherwise just leave it at that.

Are there plans to tour in the UK with this new album? Or if not, are there any other tour plans elsewhere?

We are working on it; it’s so incredibly expensive; touring has gone crazy, and it’s such a weird time to try and tour. Getting overseas has been so elusive since the pandemic, so it’s expensive, but we are always trying and looking for opportunities. We have Metal Injection Fest in New York, and we will do some album release shows in October but locally, nothing too far.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Pre-sales are still up for the new album, and we will be mailing them out. We have some more videos to release that should be really cool.

‘Where Gods Fear To Speak’ is released 13th September via Season Of Mist. You can Pre-order & Pre-save the album here: https://orcd.co/oceansofslumberwheregodsfeartospeakalbum

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