Tera Melos' Nathan Latona on stripping down and growing up
A Q&A with bassist Nathan Latona of experimental rock trio Tera Melos.
- Ron Herrel
- X'ED OUT AND TIRED: Tera Melos flirt with minimalism on their latest record
Ten years ago, Tera Melos was nothing but a glimmer in the eyes of guitarist Nick Reinhart and bassist Nathan Latona. Even though now the group eschews its initial math rock classification more and more with every release, its 2005 self-titled debut was a blueprint for tangled guitar parts, intricately twisted rhythms, and disorienting melodies that exploded and fizzled out by the second. After multiple EP's, a new drummer, and an insatiable thirst for sonic exploration, the Sacramento three-piece have finally started to settle down. Its latest release, 2013's X'ed Out, found its sound flirting with sugary hooks so adolescent you could almost hear the sound of skateboards clacking over the cracks in the pavement. Latona spoke at length over the phone about the joys of less torturous songwriting, the influence of tour buddies the Dillinger Escape Plan, and the confusion of being ten years old.
How weird is it being a decade old?
It's strange because I think we just kind of realized we're ten years old but, I'm not sure if that's the exact date. It's a little ambiguous of when this band actually started. We definitely didn't play our first show ten years ago. That's still coming up. If you're going by our fist show we haven't been a band for ten years. We haven't been playing with this band for ten years. When we started playing with our drummer John Clardy it kind of became a different band. Yes there's been something called Tera Melos for ten years now but what we are now is different. To answer your question, it feels confusing to be ten years old. It's also really cool to still be doing this. When we started out we had this the goal of trying to make funny, crazy noises and things we culd do with these complex parts and structures and songs. There was no thought of how long it would be around.
For X'ed Out, you've said you wanted to shoot for a minimal stripped down sound. Looking back, do you think you achieved that goal?
Oh yeah, definitely. While we were recording it was going so easy and we weren't over-thinking a lot of parts and ideas. For Tera Melos records there's lots of guitar layers getting added on the fly and lots of vocal ideas being thrown in during recording. But this record was recorded very quickly. Drums were added in a matter of three to four days. Bass and guitar in the same time span. It was a really quick record because we didn't stress over the little details.
Does getting boxed into that math rock label ever make you feel the need to be less complex?
It's not really like 'oh man we really need to distance ourselves from that label,' it's what we naturally do. To be under that umbrella is a very limiting thing and you might get people that say 'oh did you do this because you didn't like the label?' No, it's a natural progression. I get really flattered when people say that they don't know how to classify us and they can't say 'oh it's a math rock band'. When I think of math rock I think of people who are flexing their muscles to perform really intricate stuff. There's a little bit of technicality to our music, but I don't think of math as playful. There are pretty finite rules to math and I feel like what we do is more expressive as opposed to being as rigid and finite as a mathematical creation.
X'ed Out sounds like a really joyous album compared to some of your more conceptual stuff on your debut and Patagonian Rats. What influenced that more summery feel?
I can definitely see how it has those moments but there's definitely darker or heavier moments on the record. There's kind of a subdued feeling. I think it runs the spectrum. I don't feel like any of our records have the one kind of feeling to them. I feel like they all run the gamut of being able to evoke different emotions. 'Slimed' is a very droney, heavy song on the record. Then there's an acoustic song that sounds more pensive. Earlier there's 'Bite,' which has a darkness feeling to it. It's really cool that that's how you hear it. I like it that that's how you hear it as a happy, summery record. To me it's all over that spectrum.
So you have two new songs ready, do you have a new album in the works?
We don't. There were these two ideas that Nick had come up with and he sent John and I some ideas and he said it would be cool if we had two new songs ready on the tour. We got together and had like 5 practices on tour to make sure the parts gelled and that was it. It was really cool to know we could come up with two songs in that short amount of time. I hope it makes the writing process go by fairly easily and not be so grueling. Patagonian Rats was a little bit of a torturous event, but for these two songs, I don't think we're in that mind set yet. We've been touring since X'ed Out and I think it's pretty amazing we had two songs that fast. Songwriting isn't something that comes quickly to us for the most part. A few songs like 'Slimed' came quickly, a lot of it has a lot of thought process and a lot of picking it apart and learning what's happening at certain parts.
How has the heaviness and brutality of the Dillinger Escape Plan influenced your songwriting?
Well, we definitely put together a set that was the best effort for us going on a Dillinger tour. It's been great. We've been well-received by the audience every night. I feel like we definitely have a presence who knows us every night who are just as excited to be on the tour as we are. We've loved Dillinger since before we started Tera Melos. They were a band that we heard and we were like 'woah, these guys are doing something different that's interesting and they're not just being heavy for the sake of being heavy.' The intensity matches the heaviness of the music. I always grew up listening to punk music, but I never got into metal. Dillinger is something that maybe didn't seem to fit in one category. They're an inspiring band to watch because they go very hard for their music every night. There's never a down night for those guys. They're never complaining about something like 'we didn't get enough chips and salsa in the green room.' They can't wait to get up there and thrash the place.
Is Idioms Vol. 2 ever going to happen?
We haven't talked about it. The reason we did Idioms Vol. 1 was to be able to put something out quick. We just wanted to show we have a new drummer and make sure that people weren't forgetting about us. We've got two skeletal cover versions we've done, but they're not finished. One we recorded during X'ed Out and one in the studio. We have some stuff in the works that would be cool for that. We're a band that's always getting asked about our influences. It's sometimes not easy to answer and I think a good way to answer that question is by doing a little series of covers. I think we've been focused on other things like putting out an actual record, but that would be fun.
What covers have you been working on?
I don't want to tell you laughs. I think it's cooler to wait. I think they'll see the light of day at some point.