Exclusive Interview: If These Trees Could Talk

 Last Thursday, I had the incredible opportunity to see Akron, OH's instrumental post-metal masters If These Trees Could Talk live at the Beat Kitchen in Chicago.  Before the show, I was fortunate enough to take a stroll around the Roscoe Village neighborhood with guitarists Mike Socrates and Cody Kelly and drummer Zack Kelly; during the stroll we chatted about their incredible new album The Bones of a Dying World, Maynard James Keenan, the hotbed of musical talent from northern Ohio, Maynard James Keenan, their upcoming tour, and Maynard James Keenan.  It's a pretty great conversation, so you should listen to it all,  as well as check out my sub-amateur photography skills below!  Most importantly, do not miss out on ITTCT when they come through your city over the next three weeks!

If These Trees Could Talk - The Bones of a Dying World

If you ask a dozen different people to define instrumental post-rock/metal and give you a band that best fits that definition, chances are you'll get some different answers.  From the heavy riffs of Pelican, to the proggier leanings of Scale the Summit, to the ambient/intense duality of Explosions in the Sky, to any other band you can think of, the post- genre seems to lend itself to a litany of sounds while defining none of them.  Personally, my baseline for post-metal is ISIS, so my baseline for instrumental post-metal is "take Aaron Turner's vocals away from ISIS, and go from there."  It's a fascinating genre that allows for quite a bit of experimentation, subverted expectations, and deviation from the norm (like all music should), and I think it's cool that so many different yet similar sounds can fit under one umbrella.  Now that you know how I feel about post-metal, let's talk about If These Trees Could Talk and their new album The Bones of a Dying World.  If These Trees Could Talk hail from Akron, OH, and have been around for a little over a decade.  They first crossed my radar when I heard some songs from their second album Red Forest, all of which I enjoyed.  The Bones of a Dying World comes at a perfect time, as post-metal has seen a lull in quality releases this year compared to years past and other genres.