Solitude is a volatile climate in which creativity can reside, but it is something Yellow Eyes revels in. Rare Field Ceiling is the band's fifth full-length album and their latest display of black metal majesty. The New York quartet—led by brothers Will and Sam Skarstad—are approaching a decade since the inception of their project. The last ten years have seen the band morph from a bedroom project into an eclectic and prismatic entity that stands as, arguably, the best representation of black metal's possibilities as a genre.
Their process never changes though. It's the members of the band who are more selective and savvy in their decision making for their sinuous arrangements. Yellow Eyes does it all on their own, living within their own technical limitations and collection of equipment in total isolation and self-reliance. Between the numerous months spent in their family cabin deep in the woods of Connecticut or their travels across European expanses, writing and recording music involves total immersion, spontaneity, and recklessness.
On Rare Field Ceiling, they're at their most jarring and unnerving. The brothers, joined once again by Mike Rekevics (drums) and Alex DiMaria (bass), tap into atypical riff structures and untethered narrative to paint a fractured drama of scaling to great heights then descending into mania. The album builds and folds from the opening drone of "Warmth Trance Reversal" to the extensive field recordings and wandering guitars in "Maritime Flare." It's a hypnotic progression built from madness, remote Siberian villages, and constant personal challenges.
Though Yellow Eyes' music portrays a dark and frigid tone, it's a warm, sunny day in New York when the Skarstads sat down to the call and talk about their new album with Metal Injection. The brothers sat on Will's rooftop porch—beers in hand, sunglasses on—and opened up about the recording process and the events that led to their sensational fifth album.
Read an immense, in-depth interview with the Skarstad brothers below and listen to an exclusive stream of Rare Field Ceiling now. The album is available this Friday through Gilead Media (US), Dry Cough Records (UK), and Deathwish (EU).
In a previous feature prior to the announcement of Rare Field Ceiling, I spoke to the brothers at length about their travels and what to expect from their then-unannounced fifth album. Read that feature here.
Metal Injection: I read that you two were raised by parents who were a composer and a violinmaker and were exposed to a lot of different kinds of music at home like Estonian choral music. From what it sounds like as well, your parents very much encouraged you to go out and see the world and live a different life. What other kinds of music were prominent in your lives at a young age?
Sam Skarstad: Our mother is a composer and she’s a really good composer. She did piano mainly.
Will Skarstad: She was always teaching piano lessons and working on projects late at night and when we were younger, we’d always hear bits of them. She was always hustling and working late into the night. She ended up winning a Guggenheim award. That’s when we realized, “Whoa, mom’s big. That’s a big honor.”
Sam: Yeah, and she was always playing classical music and trying to make us guess which composer it was. Our family was sort of living an “out of the mainstream” artistic life. They didn’t make a ton of money, but they valued working for yourself over anything. They would have been disappointed if we tried to be lawyers.
The Estonian choral music was just an example. I remember hearing Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer, as a kid and thinking they were alien sounds. Then hearing it way later, realizing these cyclical, strange, close harmonies—these beautiful, dark harmonies—and thinking this is nearly identical to what we’re trying for. The internal harmonies, the way a riff cycles or the way something throws you off or these unexpected melodic turns, it is just amazing to me how directly that stuck with us.
Will: That, combined with—you were talking about traveling—them saying, “Go somewhere, don’t go straight to college.” I did that. I went to Madagascar for a year, which was crazy. I was an 18-year-old living in a tent. Then I went to Norway and was stocking up on black metal records.
I know for a fact they never traveled nearly as much as we do now. I think they just gave us that gift to tell us this was an acceptable way to live our lives.
Sam: They did use to travel when they were younger. They lived in the mountains of Switzerland and did all sorts of cool stuff. These days, I think they’re happy to sit around and work on the garden.
Metal Injection: You mentioned a little bit already how those instances influenced where you are now, do you find those experiences or even some of the atypical or non-metal music that you grew up on has played a bigger role in Yellow Eyes’ overall sound?
Sam: We realized recently we’re almost at 10 years doing this band. I think back to when we first started and I’m pretty sure we just trying to make a straight-up black metal band.
Will: Definitely.
Sam: There was never a conversation about trying to make it weird. We were just trying to do a black metal band. We had just come back from living in the Czech Republic and we felt kind of directionless bumping around different parts of the city trying to find somewhere to live. I remember thinking, “What are we doing back in the States? It was so cool living over there. I think we have to make this metal band and get back over there.”
Will: Maybe in some distant way. More immediately, maybe it was playing the guitar in the same room together—which we never really did before—even though we grew up sharing a bedroom. We didn’t necessarily share the same musical tastes either.
Sam: There are a lot of ways to start a band. One is to talk about what you want to do and do it. The other is to just start playing and whatever it sounds like when you play together that’s your sound. That’s how it definitely was with us. I came to metal late, Will was real early to it. My instincts were to create real narrative songs and I think a lot of our early disputes were about how to hash out songs. It was always a balance of “What is this? What is this song?” It was creating riffs, deciding it wasn’t quite enough, and sitting on them a lot longer. Soon we realized that is the sound—that is our sound.
Will: Somehow, we had similar tendencies for sound and what we could consider good enough or not good enough rather. That’s our strength as brother songwriters, you know. All of that comes from some deep shared experiences with music growing up.
Sam: It’s hard to pinpoint but I can definitely say for sure that metal is only part of it. That’s what got us started but as we kept going we realized it’s just a giant funnel for all sorts of ideas, like any creative project is.
Metal Injection: As you’ve put in the repetitions and written albums, has this whole process of idea sharing gotten easier or do you find as you try to grow your sound it gets more difficult?
Will: Easier.
Sam: I’d say it’s easier.
Will: Because of the way we are, I don’t know if we actively try to grow the sound. I think our standards just shift as we grow. That might have been good enough at one point or another, but it’s not good enough now. Even now—thinking about what we may do next—who knows. Even now we’re definitely playing guitar parts that are at the upper levels of our ability.
Sam: I don’t think we’re going to be any more technical than this. We can’t.
Will: We can’t. [laughing]
Sam: Both of us are averse to stagnancy on an intuitive level. Why would we pour a year of our lives into making another one of the same albums?
Will: Especially now as we get older. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of time. If it’s not the best we can do at the time, we know that, and it would be game over if that was the case.
Sam: I am surprised how natural the whole progression has been over the years. We’ve demanded more from our output in a lot of ways. We’ve decided that there is no going back, there is only going forward, and we’ve locked into some sort of internal rhythm. We know how to write music together now. It’s very clear in ways that are hard to explain to anyone; it’s almost like some kind of language.
Will comes up with a pile of ideas that are wild, eccentric, and out of control. It’s like inhuman amounts of beautiful, weird riffs. Then, we sit down together and parse through them. We listen to them a bunch of times and wait for something to jump out. In that moment, it’s a formulation of a larger idea. It’s kind of a chemical process where things start congealing or like a puzzle where two pieces click in.
Will: Again, it’s a way we’ve gotten better. I can be precious about certain parts and insist they go together and then, at the end, the whole song doesn’t work because I am insisting these two things have to go together. Sam’s really good at it and I’m better about saying, “you’re right.” We’ve gotten very good at blowing it up and erasing it.
Sam: Any good band has something like this part of the process where you relish the destruction. I don’t think it’s unique to us. I would wager anyone involved in writing eccentric music of any kind has this joy of the destruction—something isn’t working so you blow it up. The hard part is challenging yourself every time you sit down and asking yourself every single time, “Have I heard this before?” If I have, it’s gone.
Metal Injection: I think that creative process really alludes to how strong your self-sufficiency is as well as this singular sound you guys are creating, especially over the last couple albums. When we talked last time–in addition to all the ideas for riffs, blowing things up, and rebuilding—Sam, you mentioned these non-musical stimuli that create specific musical feelings. Taking Rare Field Ceiling in isolation, were there any non-musical stimuli that really gave some ideas or direction for the album?
Sam: It’s a lot more quantifiable in terms of lyrical ideas. It was a crazy period of time and we were in the real intense stages of the album. I had just moved to the country to finish this thing and I hadn’t written any lyrics yet. It was very much this spiritual journey up there.
Will: He was alone in the woods up there for almost three months not just working on this but his normal Christmas commercial music as well.
Sam: My wife and I had just gotten married a couple months prior to this too. We were meeting in different parts of upstate New York and Connecticut on the weekends and then we’d go back to our respective places again.
Will: I guess that just speaks to how seriously we take this when we’re in record writing mode. It’s funny that Sam can just disappear from his life for three months. I’m the same way too. If Sam needs anything, I’m taking time off work and I’m going up there.
Sam: I have never felt as insane in my life as I did during that time. It was a dip into madness. That is what it really felt like. There was some crazy health stuff happening in our family and it almost felt like the end times. I would say that very much informed the album in ways that are very hard to explain. It felt like the entire family unit was imploding and I was up in the middle of nowhere taking long walks to think about those things.
Will: And writing Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Christmas commercials. In the early Autumn months, it was surreal. We would finally get the whole band up there for a minute then Sam would let out this heavy sigh and say, “I have to stop.” Suddenly you’d hear jingle bells ringing.
We would just go on these walks or swim in the lake and we’d come back, and Sam was very dark writing these cheery Christmas commercials.
Sam: It was like some dark comedy [laughing].
Though, for whatever reason, Rare Field Ceiling immediately felt like the right name. It seems like an extension of the way the band is. It’s part of challenging ourselves to write these songs we’re almost not capable of playing. The process of recording is wild because we’re often recording it when we’re playing it live for the first time.
Somehow this was the hardest one so far. There was a whole tenuous grip on reality and feeling like I was losing my mind—feeling like the songs could collapse at any time.
Will: It’s been changing since Mike and Alex joined the band. The two of us used to keep the writing process closed. We would write every single note but since they joined, we’ve loosened up and we have all the trust in the world in those guys. This was the first record where bigger sections of songs were made up on the fly.
Metal Injection: You talk about living in the cabin for months and this “dip into madness.” You’ve also mentioned before the album title relates to delusion and mania. This madness is where a lot of the thematic elements for the record came from, right?
Sam: The lyrics are the most intense part for me in a weird way. The things I do in complete solitary confinement—I light big fires and stare into the darkness—it’s an interesting thing to write them and have Will scream them. In a way, I’m the only one who knows exactly what I mean.
Will: I laugh when I read his lyrics. He’ll ask me, “What do you think of these?” Of course they’re perfect, I love them. In our current set—I started laughing the other day—two of our songs, I have to say the word “helicopter.” It’s unbelievable [laughing].
Sam: I wouldn’t have known how to explain this a long time ago, but looking back on how this mysterious process goes, it’s trying to find the line between coherence and incoherence—how close to incoherence can you get and still being affecting and haunting. To me, the best possible place to be is leading someone to a place of emotional impact and then dipping into this almost out-of-phase, incoherent area. That only comes from trusting the odd, indecipherable images that come from your subconscious and letting others reckon with it.
Will: Even for us, we’re deciphering it. Sam was writing lyrics for specific songs, but we didn’t know the order for the record, and they ended up falling into place. Reading through the lyrical arc of the record—I don’t think this has happened on earlier records—the songs are about going up in height and by the end it’s basically crashing back down to Earth. There’s definitely some sort of narrative arc, maybe it was on purpose or maybe it was subconscious.
Sam: It was all kind of a blur. It was such a crazy time. Also, the crazy thing is the songs were written and recorded in order. We didn’t even know they were. We tried them in all different orders, and the way we recorded it made the most sense. It goes for the lyrics too.
With a band like this, you never want to be too on-the-nose or conceptual. You just kind of want to let it happen. I like things that don’t have a resolution. That’s one of the main ideas with this band and the way we think in general. Sometimes, a resolution is disappointing. Sometimes, the best way to resolve something is to let it a little incomplete.
Metal Injection: With all the effort and the subconscious and conscious thought that goes into it, I think the field recordings—in addition to being a really unique part of your sound—enhance that entrancing, entangling vibe your music has. Where did your travels take you for these recordings and how did the selection process for them unfold?
Sam: We’ve gotten to this point where just about everything is recklessness. Anything can go on the album. It’s almost a challenge to ourselves. Most of those field recordings came from a couple of days driving around in a car.
Will: This is a reckless band because nothing’s done the way it’s supposed to be. We got a lot of these recordings when we went to play two shows in Europe in two different countries. The four of us ended up driving around to six or seven countries—to castles in the Eastern Czech Republic and Poland. We were telling ourselves we were going to gather field recordings, but, of course, when you try to do it, you don’t.
We got a lot of us stomping around on paths, but we were just having a great time most of all. A lot of that was used on the record, but we could have got those same sounds in Central Park [laughing].
Sam: We can’t place too much emphasis on where we got them. It’s more about the recklessness of it all. It was so incredible to us to have this untethered time together to drive around.
Will: Some of the moments we had—I don’t think we even had a recorder—I remember walking deep in the woods of Eastern Czech Republic on someone’s private property. I don’t even remember how we got there, but the sun was setting and then out of nowhere we started hearing this blowtorch.
Sam: A flamethrower in the middle of the woods!
Will: [mimicking a flamethrower] We started following it and then we found some wild boar hoof prints and a burned forest.
Sam: Someone was out there with a flamethrower burning the ground.
Will: We didn’t record a second of it! We were just having too much fun.
Sam: I’d say almost everything we recorded I threw onto that album.
Will: Except for we were in Russia around Christmas. We heard all of these women singing a style of Russian/Ukrainian music, I’m not entirely sure what it’s called. I asked my mother-in-law, who doesn’t speak any English, “What is this called? Can I buy this somewhere?” She said, “No, no, no it’s a holiday thing.”
She’s a wonderful woman and she planned out this trip, got me in a car, and drove two or three hours north into the middle of nowhere in Siberia. That’s where I got these recordings. There were all these people in military people uniforms and I asked if I could record and they were cool with it. I thought, “This is a gold mine! I can get so much cool stuff here!”
Then they started singing and it dawned on me it was so wrong. They were really old, really out of tune, and they were singing these really upbeat songs they wanted me to clap to. If I clapped it would ruin the recordings. All of the songs were so goofy and they were so happy. They kept saying, “This is for you!”
First of all, how did my mother-in-law organize this? We were literally in the middle of nowhere. People were coming out of their homes to see the Americans and all the singers were bummed out I was the only American there. At the end of it, I convinced them to sing very sad songs which they were very confused about. They thought I was sad, but there was no way I could explain why I wanted them to sing sad songs.
I didn’t even know if we were going to use any of it, but I sent it back to Sam. It’s funny we ended up using it as a whole song on the album. When we talked the first time, I really wanted to send it to you right then.
Metal Injection: That would have been awesome! I remember when I got the album, I had just gotten to work and it was 9 am and I saw it in my inbox and I remember thinking I just want to leave so I can go home and listen to it. On first listen though, I was blown away by that. It’s really great how you used the whole thing—and everything else—on the album. It was a great call.
Sam: That’s where we got a little wild with it. It felt like that needed to be some strange conclusion to this weird album. Those sounds on that part are everything. There’s literally us going up a stone staircase in some ruins of a castle. There is a tram in Prague. There’s rain on our rental car when we were stuck in a storm trying to drive back to Prague.
Will: That’s actually one of those weird experiences. The lyrics were about being in this shell floating in the ocean—I guess that could be implied—shooting off some maritime flare. Just hearing that rain slapping the roof of the rental car—it’s not on purpose, but it’s one of those moments where…
Sam: Well it’s kind of on purpose [laughing].
Will: I thought you did that before you did the lyrics!
Sam: Yeah, but to me, the way that end part felt inspired the last two lines: “A falling flight shell. Maritime Flare. The capsule sealed. No tear, no tear.” Those were the final lines I wrote, and it was because of the way that sounded.
I don’t know if it was a success or a failure in this surreal landscape, but whatever happened it’s still desperate and I don’t want it to be conclusive—it had to reflect something bobbing in the ocean, some sort of capsule in the ocean. The word “maritime,” I was chewing on that for quite some time.
Metal Injection: It works really well. Even talking about it now, it just makes the song click even more. You mentioned this earlier as well, in the best way possible, this is a weird album. It’s very different and very not the norm. I’m sure you’ve all dealt with this before, just being lumped into the whole US black metal thing.
Sam: Yeah, I never know what to make of it. [laughing]
Metal Injection: Yeah, it’s a very different album packed with strange juxtapositions and dichotomies.
Will: It’s funny even thinking about the early stuff. We were just trying to make straight black metal. On this one, we thought we were writing a pop album or something. Maybe we’re not good at making what we say we’re making. [laughing]
Sam: Maybe we’re just not good at making what we say we’re going to make. [laughing]
Metal Injection: It ultimately ends up being something way cooler and way more eclectic and unique. I know I’ve said this in things I’ve written before, but you guys are the best example of modern black metal given how immersed and drawn into the process you guys get, and you do it all on your own too. I think it makes you the best representation of what this genre should be.
Sam: Well, that’s an incredible compliment. Thank you.
Will: That’s amazing.
Sam: I’m not even sure what I would say to us 10 years ago, but what I’ll say now is it’s the result of not thinking too hard and being reckless. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s extreme amounts of obsessive writing. You’ve got to dive in. You can’t control what you make. That’s the key.
We can’t set out to make something and then make that. I think once you understand that, you’re free. Once you say, “I can’t make what I’m trying to make.” Then you can throw everything in there and that is the result. That is what we made.
Will: To give us some credit though. We know what makes a Yellow Eyes song a Yellow Eyes song now.
Sam: There’s a lot of work that goes into it. It’s easy to say now, but it’s a struggle, man.
Will: We’re very hard on ourselves and we’re very aligned so if it’s not right, it will eat us alive until we get it right. It takes over our entire lives, our significant others can attest to that.
Sam: One secret to writing music is don’t be afraid to harness different speeds of writing music. Take a long time on some things. Write for days or weeks and then challenge yourself to finish it in five minutes. That’s the secret. Write it—think about it and dream about it—forever then come together and say, “in one hour this song will be done somehow.” These are the reckless challenges that make everything crystallize.
Will: For example, on the last song, “Maritime Flare,” the guitar part on the outro—we didn’t have a guitar part. We didn’t have anything, we were just doing that on the fly. We wrote that entire part in 15 minutes.
Metal Injection: It’s really insightful and it’s really cool because you said it earlier because some people say, “I’m going to write this.” Then they make that doom metal or black metal album. This sort of spontaneity or this recklessness ultimately becomes a huge defining factor for your music.
Sam: The danger is we sometimes get a little too down with this impulsiveness. There will be a day that people are just going to hate something that we do.
Will: It might have been there since day one!
Metal Injection: It could be Friday for some people!
Sam: There are a lot of people who aren’t into it and that’s fine but there will be a day where we put something out and people will say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and that is okay. That’s a price to pay. I think that’s part of it.
Metal Injection: A the end of the day you’re making something that appeases your inner voices in a way.
Sam: Yeah, it’s an appeasement for sure.
