Welcome to In Conversation, a special interview column on the site where we sit down with artists and dive deep into everything music. This week Max chatted to Alice Guala and Blake Cornwall of Lake Malice to discuss their upcoming EP Post-Genesis, working with John Cass and touring with Skindred.
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Max: Let’s talk Post-Genesis, which is coming out this week.
Blake: Yeah, man. That’s nuts, right? We’ve been trying to release an EP for what feels like an eternity. I’m glad we finally got one out.
Max: I’m glad you’re coming to this as well, because you’ve been doing this as like singles pieced out over the past couple of years. Was that an intentional thing? Or did they just kind of happen like that?
Blake: Yeah, I think it was intentional; we weren’t in a rush. I don’t think we were in a major rush to do the EP. It feels great. We did intend to release singles because, obviously, it’s a new project and you’re not sure what [the] potential of it is at that point, and doing an EP is quite expensive. Also as well, I think musically as a new artist, you need to really find yourself a bit. I think those early stages, at least we felt like I think we wanted to do that. All the gigging experience and all the right experience we’ve had has enabled us to kind of create a bit of more of an identity for our sounds, and I feel like the EP has quite focused sound as a result of that. Which has lead to it being the right timing for us.
Max: I can definitely see that listening to the EP. I was literally just listening to it before we were on here, and there is a clear ‘This is what Lake Malice sound like’ in these tracks.There’s a pretty diverse spread of sounds, based around this very riffy and energetic blend. Mitsuko has a drum and bass thing going on and there’s these pop melodies all over the thing. And I think that combined with a heavy sound has a pretty strong identity.
Where do a lot of that influence comes from? I can see a lot of sort of broad reaching influences there, and I’m curious to know where they come from?
Alice: Definitely like two opposites of a spectrum in a way, because we both have our goth metal influences, or we’ll be listening to a lot of metal sub-genres, especially in our youth. To me, my first band to influence this being Linkin Park, like absolutely. You know, it’s my pillar, but then moving on to my older years, I started listening to pop music and electronic music quite a lot and replaced metal with that almost completely – with the exception of a few bands here and there. Interest for metal to me came back for events such as Spiritbox, but all the rest of me has been a lot of drum and bass a lot of hyperpop and pop in general. I’ve been listening to a lot of Charli XCX; especially the album she dropped during the pandemic has been a huge influence in just the way I write vocal melodies. Grimes, as well, to me is like massive inspiration, and Slatyer. There’s lots of artists within that sphere. Sophie was this like producer-slash-artist as well, [where] all these kind of pop sounds are taken to an extreme.
Blake: To be fair, it is weird, our music interests are quite aligned. Similar experiences growing up listening to metal, and then I was like, “actually pop’s quite good isn’t it?” Such like a taboo genre when I was younger, and I was breaking that taboo bit when I got older. I can actually enjoy all sorts of genres and not feel guilty about it. And I feel in that renaissance, that’s kind of the mantra for this project; it’s about what can we incorporate in metal tastefully that works and still would be something we listened to as people who like heavy music. Lots of pop sounds heavy, there’s lot of hyperpop produced stuff. It’s really like abrasive metallic noises that make it proper heavy. I felt you can get that in with metal combined, and with the production stuff we tend to go for, it makes for an interesting melting pot.
Max: I, as a big fan of Charlie XCX and similar artists myself, can definitely really appreciate the combination of that with the metal world. I feel like it’s something that we could probably see as fans of hyperpop. Within the hyperpop world, as you’re saying, it’s the opposite thing where it’s a lot of people who are making pop music that grew up listening to heavy music. They’re trying to combine metal elements into pop, whereas on this end of the spectrum is people trying to put pop stuff into metal. If you listened to that 100 gecs record that came out this year, there’s like a full on nu-metal song on there. That song is hilarious, by the way; production wise, it’s unbelievably heavy, heavier than like any shit going on with all the clipping. Makes me feel like I’m listening MySpace deathcore. Where everything is just make it as loud as possible. Sub drops 10,000% volume. Fuck it. It’s awesome, I definitely love that. and I see that influence 100% in there. I feel like it’s such a taboo thing. If you grew up listening to heavier music, you have to put that boundary up. And it’s like, “no, I don’t listen to that, I listened to this.” It’s like a pride thing, right? Then when you get into your 20s, it is kind of good though. Especially from like a production standpoint, I listen to pop music, and I’m like, “How the fuck do they make something sound that good?” And I feel like I can see a lot of that stuff in your music as well, because it says on the EP that you’re the producer, right?
Blake: I try to produce as much as I can for our music. We did work with John Cass from As Everything Unfolds. He came in kind of late in the process, and just kind of helped us get over the line of it a little bit, really, because I’m not someone who grew up listening to metal as I mentioned. I’ve not had a background in producing pop or EDM or, you know, whatever. I’ve been learning as we’ve been going on this project, and it’s not always the quickest way of working. But someone like John, who is such a genius, basically, when it comes to production you can make any sound that you possibly want him to make, so he just came in and helped a little bit with it. I also quite valued that I don’t know what I’m doing, because I feel like I end up with weird sounds that people probably wouldn’t normally choose to make, because I’m just like a just an idiot, like using his elbow against the keyboard. It’s kind of a learning experience for me, learning process along the way. It’s quite a lot of work, and sometimes you feel it would be quicker to work with someone else, but maybe it’s part of our sound.
Max: I think that’s interesting as well, because there is something like creatively freeing about having no fucking idea what you’re actually doing on a technical level. You will put a sound down and you don’t know if that makes any sense or not, and like the broader spectrum of sound, you’re like “fuck it, I’m gonna try it.” I don’t know if that is the thing I’m supposed to be doing, or if it’s that when you get down to the level of you’re an expert at something, you lose that entirely. At that point, you’re someone like John Cass, who knows exactly what he’s doing, or it’s like, you can bring a sound to life from from scratch, but there is something’s fun and creatively freeing and just like 100% opening the door and going, “yep, I’m gonna just do that.”
Blake: It’s just something to be said about what we’re hearing in music these days, when people just kind of like, it feels like lots of ice. It’s like 100 gecs, for example, I just kind of try to just tear up the rulebook a little bit when we have production. Why not just have a bunch of stuff just clipping and like, no one would ever normally do that, like in pop music. And I feel everyone’s got the tools at their disposal these days to produce music. I think there should be less barriers and less judgement for just trying stuff out and seeing what sticks.
Max: Removing all of the barriers, that is the best thing to do for any genre. If you’re limiting yourself to confines of a genre, then you’re fundamentally limiting what you can do creatively. And going into Post-Genesis there is obviously a boundary that your sound ends up converging to, but it comes from a place of grabbing elements from different parts of the spectrum and putting it all in one cohesive package, which is quite a laudable effort. Did you record all of this at the same time? Or did you record it over an extended time period and then ended up fitting together?
Blake: Well, funnily enough, we recorded “Blossom” back in 2021 as the first track we put out, and “Black Turbine” was like towards the end of 2022, and then the rest of it was 2023. We got Carl Bown (Sleep Token, Bring Me The Horizon) to remix those earlier tracks; shinier lick of paint paint on them, to bring them in line with how the other sounded, really.
Max: You’re probably home recording it. And that’s quite interesting and so much easier, so much less stress.
Alice: It’s the easiest thing to do. For stress, I don’t know. When you think about it, you should be that way, that you should be able to do it anytime, and it’s really hard to pressure yourself. Sometimes, just because you’re not looking at space that you’re paying for, it’s a bit like saying, “Oh, I’m gonna go to the gym”, but if you want to do it at home it’s hard to motivate yourself.
Max: It does make sense; if you’ve booked the time out, you’ve got to just go and do it. If you’re at home, you have so much time in the world, you’re not spending any money. It’s like, “well, I can take two years to make this song.” Yeah. Then because of that, you’ll push things back or whatever. It’s a natural human thing.
Blake: A lot of people put it that way. I definitely battle with that on a daily basis with work, where do you draw the line and go, “this has to be done now.” You could theoretically just keep working on the same track for like, 10 years.
I will listen to something so many times throughout the various production cycle; guitar, bass, synths, drums effects. And then eventually, I’ll be so sick of a certain part of it because I’ve heard it so many times.
Alice: I’m actually doing the opposite, which is getting so into the song straight away from the first demo. “Oh, perfect. Okay, let’s record it.” Then a week later, I’m reading on your version like, “oh, why did you have to do that?” I’ve tried to spice things up and we balanced each other in a way.
Max: My band’s producer calls that demo-itis, when you get the sound on your head from the original demo, even if the final thing sounds better. It’s like, “no, but I liked that one. I liked that one. That was the girl.”
Blake: When your music is mixed by someone else, and you’re used to how it sounded before, it’s really hard to get used to the new mix sometimes. A real issue I found a lot of the time is I can’t recreate the sound of the first take I did six months ago. There’s something about the sound of it, where I played it, the tone I had, or something I’ve done.
Max: I think there is something to that; I think the environment you record something in or write something in completely affects the way that you do that. I found that recording in my room here, I perform very differently to how I would in an actual studio. When you’re in the studio it is a pretty high pressure environment, which weirdly affects your mind. There was something about me sitting in this room and doing it that just doesn’t sound the same in this professional studio I’ve paid however much money to be in, and I don’t think it sounds as good there. It always feels like you’re just being silly. It’s completely valid though.
Blake: Who knows if the next EP we will actually get a studio. It’s certainly been affordable the way we’ve been doing it, so we will see. We would like to go and work in a different environment. It can transform what you do on an artistic level, when we’ve had people like John Cass come and work with us. Just having someone else in the room can change the dynamic and forces you to think differently or be more off-the-cuff with things. Your energy is different, our attitudes are different. We will probably experiment with that – we’re working with people more – but it’s been working so far what we’re doing.
Max: Clearly, it’s working so far. It’s a completely different process, to doing it with other people, that is something that I’ve learned over the years. It’s when you’re in a room with somebody else who has some sort of weight, if you trust that creative input, it can completely transform how you approach a song. Sometimes that’s really helpful, but sometimes it just adds so much pressure and nerves to what you’re doing and it’s kind of unnecessary. It’s good to just surround yourself with people you actually trust the opinions and input of.
Blake: Yeah, totally. It can be hard to find the right people sometimes. Fortunately, knowing lots of contacts now from music, we have people we can work with and are looking forward to collaborating more.
Max: It’s always fun. You’ve got to find your team though, that’s the thing. You’ve got to find the main group of people that you really trust, and given how much you’ve spoken about John Cass, that’s seems like a surefire thing. Speaking of collaborations, you have had a very busy year. You’ve played with Skindred, and Vukovi, who I saw you with in Milton Keynes, which was very sweaty.
Alice: There’s something about hot weather that I just ignore on a regular basis. The week of Download, I was wearing this stupid latex dress. I was sweating so much, it was inhumane. And every time there’s a show like that, I don’t have to wear that. Why did I do that?
Blake: The bit I hate is when you’ve worn all your cloths on tour and you’ve worn them all a couple of times and you’ve got to like start wearing the same stuff again. You haven’t washed it and you’re putting on that stage t-shirt and you’ve got to pull it over.
Alice: I just overpack. It is really stupid, though, because you end up having like massive luggage. Then I’m not smelling, so I don’t know who’s winning there.
Max: What’s the experience been like to play all those huge shows over this past year or so?
Alice: Amazing. It’s been unreal. Every artist we’ve opened for, all of them we like so much, every artist we supported we listen to their music so much. And because we’re so influenced by them, we felt really starstruck and honoured to be able to play to their audience. That’s something that we do not take for granted and massive in favour.
It’s an incredible help when you’re an emerging artists, and we are very appreciative of this current scene right now, because it’s very supportive across the board. It’s really nice to build these connections with other artists, as well, and get to truly get to know them for who they are behind the music that you were listening to. Overall, it’s just been incredible. I’m very happy about that.
Blake: We played with so many artists who directly inspired us to start this project, which is kind of mind-blowing. Because we only started a couple years ago, we didn’t quite expect to be in that position so quickly.
Blake: Everyone is really nice, too. Everyone I’ve met in music has been so lovely. I’m so grateful to be a part of that scene in a small way. That’s kind of why it’s good to just be as nice a person if you can, and try and get along, because everyone does know each other. And I don’t think there’s any need for egos or sass. Everyone treats us really well on tours; we’ve been on tours and we’ve been made to feel really welcome. We did a couple of days for Skindred, and they were so nice to us. I actually saw there’s a there’s a Facebook group for Skindred fans and there was one comment where someone was like, “I really enjoyed the bands tonight. I wasn’t sure on Lake Malice. It’s not really my sort of thing but it sounded great.” And then Benji from Skindred jumped in the comments and was like, “so they sounded great. So that means you are into them. See them again.”
Max: One final question: did you end up dressing up your Grandad as the Pope?
Alice: No, not yet but apparently no, not yet. He’s a big fan but we’re yet to find the right occasion. But that’s going to happen at some point!
You’ve got to get the right haircuts, like the little whole typical folk kind of style, ya know. My Granddad for some reason is more into like saints rather than the Pope. It’s the thing you need to learn like about religion or Christianity and all of that. They’re fixated on one particular saint that did one particular thing, supposedly this miracle like somehow and yeah, there’s one that he’s obsessed with dressing up as.
Many thanks to Alice and Blake taking their time to chat with us, and you can pre-order Post-Genesis here.