Faced with the harsh reality of a band imploding around them earlier this year, Nic Martin and Kody Naidoo from New Zealand hard rock outfit Seas Of Conflict were left with two options.
One inherently easy, but also terminal, the other to salvage the remnants and push on confident in their own ability as the backbone and essence of the band.
Out of this turmoil and uncertainty rose the seedlings of Seas Of Conflict’s recent single XII.IX, an emotion fueled beast of a song that showcases moments of mellow beauty laced with lashings of aggression that compliment each other in emphatic fashion.
Martin and Naidoo sat down with HEAVY earlier this week to discuss the new song and what is to follow.
"I wrote the music for it maybe three or four years ago now and I was going through a bit of a phase of ambient, progressive metal,” Martin began. “TesseracT was a big influence for me at the time, and, honestly man, I just opened up reverb and hit record and started playing some clean stuff and basic chords and I let it run for about six or seven minutes and went hey, that's a pretty cool skeleton that’s going on there, and slowly added some bits and pieces. At the time I wasn't even thinking of Seas Of Conflict, it was just having fun on a rainy day and putting a piece of music together. As I usually do, I sent through all my ideas to the band and Kody comes around to my place a week or two later and he had this whole song ready to go. It went from being quite casual and getting an idea in my head out there and very quickly turned into this raw and emotional journey of a song."
"From a vocal and lyric perspective, Nic sent the song through, and I remember sitting in my room just listening to it, and I thought you know what, this is cool,” Naidoo picked up. “I really vibe on the mellow vibe stuff, so I was reminiscing on some times in my life and the song sparked emotion in me. I started writing words down on paper and started formulating how I wanted the song to structure and how I wanted it to encapsulate the emotions of going through the loss of a person."
In the full interview the boys talk more about the song and it’s dramatic sonic transformation, the meaning behind the angst ridden lyrics, the possibility of an album and how advanced talks are, how close they came to calling it a day early this year and more.