Photo courtesy of Daniel Meyer.
Best known for his work as a guitarist and vocalist in Agriculture, the Los Angeles-based transcendental black metal band, Daniel Meyer brings the same ecstatic intensity to his solo project, Kneeling. Where Agriculture focuses on soaring, cathartic compositions, Kneeling turns inward, embracing dense textures and raw, layered recordings that blur the line between beauty and abrasion.
According to Meyer, “I wanted these songs to sound like huge piles—big leafy piles that you could just jump into. I wasn’t worried about fidelity and actually wanted weird audio artifacts to pop up from all the layering. My rule was just to record everything as many times as I could before I had to get up… I kept a lot of bad takes in the mixes too. Everything was recorded on a vintage Tascam 4-track and then transferred to my computer. I just wanted them to sound huge and small at the same time.”
The debut album, Kneeling (incoming digitally on March 28 via The Flenser [physically to follow]) is a collection of songs that stretch beautiful melodies over increasingly rough surfaces. Each song features towering layers of at least a dozen guitars, many layered voices, and even doubled bass and drum parts. It’s divided into two halves (Side A, Side B): the first is a collection of thick indie rock songs, and the second half is atmospheric black metal.
Kneeling Side A is full of curious biblical imagery. After getting sober a few years back, Daniel went looking for God in the Old Testament and was inspired by all the strange stuff he discovered. Opening track “Ugly Man“ is a fantasy of how a biblical writer might have described God punishing the pornstar Ron Jeremy. “16 Angels” is a fantasia describing a man donating blood to a group of angels. In “Omen,” Dan watches the apocalypse unfold with his beloved dog Shiloh. “Sacrificing a Calf” is a literal description of the ritual for cattle sacrifice described in Leviticus.
Side B is six atmospheric black metal songs about Los Angeles. Meyer never wrote lyrics for these songs, rather he improvised shrieks and howls and superimposed them onto an enormous stack of distorted guitars and basses. Broadly speaking, the songs on Kneeling try to articulate the experience of driving around Los Angeles at night. It’s a huge city, but it looks kinda empty.
The vinyl edition of Kneeling will be available exclusively through The Flenser’s Series Six Membership edition. The Flenser’s Series Membership is the label’s way of releasing limited / special editions of records to die-hard fans as well as special exclusive releases like Kneeling that might not otherwise get a proper release. For more information, check out NowFlensing.com.
