Failure, by Boston Chuck Photography
Los Angeles post rockers Failure released their first new album in over 17 years titled Heart Is A Monster earlier this year. While the album has 18 songs and much longer than most releases in the modern era, drummer Kellii Scott explained how adding the segues on the album became an unintentional way to section off portions of songs at a time to listen to.
“The segues aren’t intentionally designed to break up the record. But I know when we did Fantastic Planet, the segues, when you listen to the record, it has that strong impression. When I listen to that record, I feel like I’m listening to three mini records.”
“I think the true intention was just to add a little bit of a narrative to help balance it because it’s so long. It’s a lot for someone to sit down and listen to a record for an hour and change. I think on the new record the segues actually help the record move along and makes it sound like one complete piece of work.”
He explained how this album was not the first time they attempted the segues on a record, and did so on this one after discovering how it worked well on a previous release.
“The segues did chop up Fantastic Planet and I don’t think that was intentional. That was just an added effect and I think that it does help the listener listening to the record by splitting it up like that because it is such a massive work.”
“The opposite happened on the new record. The segue really made the whole record blow into one large record. The listening experience, I think there were some unintentional consequences, but a consequence of having the segues was definitely intentional, if that makes any sense.”
“Sometimes you do things and you really can’t predict what the outcome is going to be. It was intentional but not intentional.”
What they discovered was that Heart Is A Monster became a long-playing release that flowed well and became a listening experience more than simply a record with a lot of songs.
“On the new record, I was pleasantly surprised the first time I sat down and listened to it. I was really surprised at how quickly such an obviously long record went by.”
“When I listened to Fantastic Planet, I feel like I’m listening to a very, very long record. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think sometimes testing your audience towards a listener, like making them commit to sitting down and listening to this. I think it endears it to the listener even more. I think that’s probably a large part of whether they know it or not so many people love listening to our records.”
Lastly, Scott explained how the album’s title came together and like many of their other releases the meanings behind them can be left to the listener.
“I don’t think there’s any one meaning. I think when Greg [Edwards] came up with the title he just said it and it sounded really big. A really, really big, ambitious title and it also sounded like something that none of us could believe no one had used that title before. We had seen it as obvious.”
“In true Failure fashion, the beauty of the concepts and lyrics and things like that, it’s a different meaning to a different person. I don’t think there is any one meaning for anything. I think it is and always has been open to interpretation to the person listening and holding the record.”