Doom metal lords YOB have hit the road on a tour of the US, continuing to tour behind last year’s astounding Clearing The Path To Ascend (Neurot) release. Ghost Cult Chief Editor Keith Chachkes caught up with front man Mike Scheidt recently to preview the tour with Enslaved, Ecstatic Vision and Witch Mountain. Mike also chatted about touring in general opening for Tool in arenas versus small clubs.
Mike started our chat with some kind words about Enslaved and his being a fan of theirs:
“I’ve listened to Enslaved… I think the first album was Eld (Osmose), the first full-length album. I did have an Emperor/Enslaved album on CD as well. Over the years they have changed on pretty much every record. I am a big fan. My favorite is Monumension, and Below the Lights and Eld still hold a real candle for me. Mardraum (Beyond The Within) too. We are definitely fans of them. We got to see them one time at Roadburn, which was mind-bogglingly good. So just being able to go out with them is an honor for sure.”
Witch Mountain, playing a western US run of dates with YOB, holds a special place for Schiedt from a personal and professional standpoint.
“We’ve probably played with Witch Mountain 40 or 50 times. Our very first Portland show YOB ever played was with Witch Mountain played. So we have very old roots there. And their drummer Nathan Carson owns Nanotear Booking, and he has been booking us for the better part of 10 years too.”
Speaking about the coast-to coast spanning tour of North America, he was reflecting on the cities and people: “We have a lot of friends all over the place. I think in most places we are playing we have people we are stoked about seeing, as well as playing for all the people coming to see us, and making new friends, of course. Los Angeles, we have a lot of friends down there. Same with Seattle and Victoria, British Columbia. Vancouver. Chicago, we have a lot of friends in Chicago. We haven’t played Boston in a while so it will be great to play there again. We have a lot of good friends in Little Rock Arkansas, and Austin too. We haven’t been to Toronto or Montreal since 2011, so it’s gonna be great to go there. I don’t think there is one city we aren’t really excited about on this tour.”
Speaking about the challenges of touring, Mike offered up this assessment of YOB’s time opening for Tool.
“We toured with Tool for two weeks, and that was kind of like jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute every night. Still, we just approached it… our view of it was “these guys picked us”. Some of those guys are our friends too, and they picked us for a reason. So we totally just threw every calorie of energy into our set. Arms raised, screaming. Instead of a 500 person club, it was a 20,000 person arena. We didn’t change anything about what we do. It just takes a little bit longer to connect with the room, that’s it. We were ready to be booed every night. We didn’t get booed, but I think some people were clapping that we were getting off stage! (laughs) It was just a crazy scenario to accept that we would even be in a place like that. But who knows?”
“We’re getting ready to go out with Enslaved, and some of their crowd is, I’m sure, not our crowd. The work of the band is two-fold. Of course we want to be received well. It’s also personal work. There’s stuff that we do, and stuff that we do for ourselves. It’s a discipline. We climb onto the stage and climb into ourselves. We climb into us and we let the music take us where it takes us. We want to share that with anyone who wants to come on that ride. Whatever happens is fine. We have no control over that. All we can be is ourselves.”
WORDS BY KEITH CHACHKES