Psyopus – Chris ‘Arpmandude’ Arp
Posted on January 29, 2009 at 8:00 am by Selvin
Psyopus is one of the most technically inclined bands out there in today’s heavily saturated metal scene. They stand as one of the fastest bands that I’ve ever seen perform live and as Psyopus‘ chief songwritter, Chris ‘Arpmandude’ Arp is one of most brilliant dudes out there crafting music in metal today. Having talked to him beforehand at previous shows, I was pretty stoked to have the opportunity to interview him before his band’s performance @ The Annex Wreckroom in Toronto a few weeks ago.
Way Too Loud!: Soooo, introductions; who are you and what do you do?
Chris ‘Arpmandude’ Arp: I am Chris Arp and I play guitar for the band, Psyopus.
WTL: You have a new album coming out, “Odd Senses”. Anything different between the studio and the writing process behind this album and your previous releases?
Chris: For sure, the musicians are better on this album, but you know how a band would get together and go into a rehearsal space? Sometimes you bring material, sometimes you write it there. Very little of the material was written in the rehearsal space. More of it was, “here’s these songs I wrote; do what you want on drums with them, do what you want on bass with them.” With this kind of material, there really has to be a preconceived direction with where the arrangement goes. There was a lot of mailing stuff to each other via the internet. Going into the studio, the tool of protools was definitely utilized due to the fact that we didn’t get to rehearse a lot of stuff. We got together and got to practice some stuff, but for the better part of the album, most of the material had not even been played from beginning to end together as a band. Actually, there isn’t one song played together as a band before going into the studio. It was just the way it had to be because I live in Rochester, the drummer lives in Buffalo, the vocalist lives in Binghamton, New York, and the bass player lives in Washington, DC. We did the best we could and I really like the new album. The writing process was definitely different and the kind of music that I wrote was different because of that too. A lot of it is more conceptual and abstract, which is something I try to do with all these albums, but I think it balanced out more in that direction than it would’ve had it been us jamming in a rehearsal room together.
WTL: So it was never the case were the four of you were stuck in the studio for twelve hours writing music?
Chris: A lot of the material was already written for the album, but for the last album we utilized the fact that we lived together in Rochester and we did just that. Some of the material is a little more developed that way because we could play a song, and there’s ideas that you’d get from playing a song over and over. Like, the kinds of ideas you get after playing the same song for a year live. Like, I might do a whammy bar noise in a live song every night that I did not on the album, but had we re-recorded it a year later, it’s something I would’ve certainly done.
WTL: From previous interviews, you’ve said that this album is definitely different from your previous releases in regards to its sound and direction, where is “Odd Senses” going with that?
Chris: One of the fundamentals to the, “Psyopus mission statement” is to re-invent yourself as much as possible. Some bands re-invent themselves and put out bad Metallica albums or some bands keep putting out the same shit over and over again and everyone starts getting bored. The material had to be different, or at least we tried to the best of our abilities to make it different, yet still keep the integrity of the material. You know; the craziness, experimentalism.
WTL: So, it’s not the case where Psyopus has found a definitive sound, but is instead still evolving?
Chris: Ya, that’s going to be the goal, like the fact that we’re tech-grind. Like, at the most simple, superficial level we’re always going to sound like a crazy band to a degree. I mean there’s definitely material on the album that ventures a little away from that, but if you look at some of the music theory put into the album there’s a lot of exploitation of dissonance, the rape and the killing of wide intervals to the extreme, using the most dissonant chords in so many fashions, and the particular chords that we do use are going make it sound like us – you know, the spasticness of it. This new album also has other ideas. Like, for example when “Calculating Infinity” came out or even Meshuggah, everyone knows the patented Meshuggah sound and everyone knows the patented Dillinger Escape Plan sound *Chris hilariously imitates definitive Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah sounds*. Like, if you listen to “Calculating Infinity” or some of the earlier Meshuggah like “Destroy Erase Improve”, they had cool ideas, but then for me Meshuggah just got boring as they’d only do the same thing over and over again. If you’re doing what you want to do, then you’re doing what you want to do, but that’s not what I want to do. So, with the new album, I think that we kept our patented spastic, crazy stuff going for the most part, but there’s other avenues we took so I think that we’re inventive with new territory that has been challenged by the band. It was an advantageous thing for the writing of the new album with it sounding different and with us coming up with other stuff, and continuing to be creative and coming up with new shit instead of rehashing the old shit.
WTL: I remember seeing a myspace bulletin from you guys months ago seeking some kind of stringed player like for a violin, did you manage to get one for the new album?
Chris: Yup, we got a violin player, a cello player, and a person to play classical guitar. There’s track ten on the album called “A Murder To Child”, and it’s this nine minute piece I did, an independent study I did back when I was in college, and the whole idea behind it was this chamber-esque piece that was supposed to tell this story where the different instruments represent different people or characteristics. This particular song is supposed to represent child abuse scenarios, bad child upbringing scenarios through inter-personal transactional analysis, understanding it through different ego states where the violin would generally be the emotional state of whomever the main subject is of the particular movement in the piece, the cello would be the parental state ego, the classical guitar would be the adult state ego, and the electric guitar would be the child state ego. The way they inter-mesh is really abstract. There’s definitely emotional dips and pulls, and it goes different places. I don’t know if anyone would know what the song’s about right off the bat. I would be blown away if someone did, I wouldn’t even know. It was like, “I got this idea for a story, how do I communicate it the best I can through music?” I think it’s a really cool piece. It’s the last listed track on the album.
WTL: Last listed track meaning?? So are we expecting another Red Chord cover or another surprise?
Chris: There’s a surprise for sure. There’s twenty minutes of what I term “LSD hangover” after track ten, where there’s two Psyopus originals inter-meshed between instrumentals that are also not listed on it. One I’m doing the vocals on, so we could never do that live, and the other one I took a bunch of other shit that we played as a band, but then we incorporated a lot of samples that we otherwise wouldn’t do. So, that was kind of like we did it on a recording, but we put it as a hidden track so there’s no expectations of it. No one’s going to be like, “play that song” or if they do, we probably won’t really care.
WTL: “Odd Senses”, what’s the most unorthodox track off of the album?
Chris: “Imogen’s Puzzle Pt. 3″ was written to be played along with “Imogen’s Puzzle Pt. 1″. Like, “Imogen’s Puzzle Pt. 1″ in a CD player and “Imogen’s Puzzle Pt. 3″ in a CD player, and they both play together at the same time. What we did was the piece that you play along with part one at the same time, we learned to play it backwards. So we went into the studio and recorded it backwards, and then in mastering we flipped it all around so it’s played in the right direction. That was kind of unorthodox in itself that we did it so they would sync up note-for-note on time with each other and then we learned it backwards, which was a huge pain in the ass. People are like, ya people have done this poly-stereo shit before, but ya, they never recorded the piece backwards and then made the songs do that. I think that on a superficial level is kind of cool with some kind of objective of like, “how can we be weird in the studio?” The song, “Boogeyman”, is this six minute collection of nursery rhymes and grind songs that is supposed to be similar to “A Murder To Child” because it’s a story about the shattering of the ego due to child abuse and stuff where the kid cannot comprehend what’s exactly going on. It’s kind of like child abuse and a multiple personality disorder. The idea is that it’s one piece made up of all these different grind songs representing different personalities and with the nursery rhymes, each word is said by a different person trying to express the multiple personality disorder. I think that track rips a lot and then “Choker Chain” is about post-relationship obsession and how you’re obsessed with somebody and you can’t get them out of your head. It has these little segments spazzing of first-person control by a third-person party on someone, and in between are these repeated words of, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” It’s like what I was saying before, there’s more conceptual ideas with this album as opposed to pure, “look what I can do with my guitar,” but it still sounds really intense. Even with the writing of the album, I tried to pay attention to a balance of variables. Like, “if I’m going really crazy here, I want to make it a little bit more simple over here” and, “if I’m going a little simpler over here, I should make it really crazy over here.” Riffs stand out, riffs can be more memorable. We are a noise-ish band and as much as I like to push the limits and boundaries of music to the best of my ability, I also have to recognize the physics of music and what they really are. Like, “this is what it is, but how can I take it for what it is and how it works and mess with it?” Sometimes when I’m in the experimental side of my shit, I sometimes forget the more rational end of it. I usually don’t get to lost in the rational side and forget to experiment, but it’s always good to take a step back. For example, a lot of time in music you have a theme or melody that gets repeated and one way of finding emotional meaning in music is the manipulation of that theme, but you have to establish the theme first. Like, sometimes in our music we don’t establish a theme, we’re just going off crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. It’s an idea we have, it’s exciting and it’s cool where we’re feeling the energy and all the different emotions that come from it, but let’s pay attention to a theme and make sure that we’ve actually established it.
WTL: At the end of 2009, where do you hope Psyopus and “Odd Senses” is going to be?
Chris: I hope that the band continues touring and that I don’t have to do anymore line-up changes. I’d love for the audience to pick up on it, relate, and go, “this is fucking great,” and feel the same way about the album as I do. Making a connection, they’re into it, and even on a monetary level. The more success you have on an album, the more that you get to tour, the more you get to experience great things, play shows and being able to see the world. The more that the underground supports you, the more you as a musician gets to share what you’re doing with people. Like, we just got back from Russia, that was the coolest shit. Like, the kids were fuckin’ amazing. Russia was cool, the kids were awesome, and we gotta get to Europe, that’s next on the agenda. It’s gotta fuckin’ happen. It’ll happen, and hopefully we’ll rock the world. Hopefully people pick up on it and support us, that’d be just great. I mean, I love the material and I’ll stand behind it to the end, but I hope people feel good about it and get excited and pumped about it. I hope that the scene supports it.
WTL: Favourite album of 2008?
Chris: I don’t even listen to music anymore, man. I don’t even remember what came out in 2008.
WTL: What do you listen to now-a-days?
Chris: Um, Jeff Buckley, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin. Actually, 2008? I liked the new See You Next Tuesday album, it was pretty grindy. I’m so used to not listening to anything, man. I think that’s about it.
WTL: And stand-outs for 2008, tour highlights?
Chris: 2008 was a really “write material” year. We toured a little bit, but we had a lot of fun. The last tour that we did in November were Psyopus “one-offs” that we did for two weeks and we had a lot of fun just hanging out, low profile. The shows were fine, the people were fine and we met a lot of cool people. We played places that we would normally not think to play. We played three or four shows absolutely in the middle of nowhere, but kids still came out to them . With the line-up changes and the writing of the new material, we really weren’t able to continue touring as much as we normally would, but it was a good tour.
WTL: Outside of the metal genre, a band or an artist that you’d love to tour with that you haven’t had the opportunity to yet – dead or alive?
Chris: Led Zeppelin for sure, Jeff Buckley would be amazing, hanging out with Morrissey, Fleetwood Mac.
WTL: “Rust In Peace” or “Peac”–
Chris: “Rest In Peace”!
WTL: Really? I don’t even have to name the other album?
Chris: “Rust In Peace” just because it just did something with thrash metal and Marty Friedman– Marty Friedman and Dimebag Darrell are my two favourite guitarists. “Peace Sells” is a close second because even when “Peace Sells” came out it was doing some different from what was going on in thrash then. “Rust In Peace” for sure though. Megadeth was my favourite band, after I got into hard music, Megadeth was definitely my favourite band, way before Metallica. It was Megadeth and then came Pantera, they were the only band that took Megadeth away from me eventually.
WTL: Any last thoughts, final words?
Chris: I hope our band doesn’t break up, haha.
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