Long-running power-doom two-piece Thetan (that’s bassist-vocalist Dan Emery and drummer Chad L'Eplattenier) has a gift for vivisecting sonic textures and reassembling in them disgustingly heavy ways, something you’ll find plenty of on their new full-length Grand Ole Agony. The group is well-known for their unremitting aural assault as well as their knack for collaborating with some of hip-hop’s most famous (and infamous) voices, like Lil B and Kool Keith — and Crunchy Black, who appears on Grand Ole Agony. The record dropped, appropriately enough, on Friday the 13th, and they’ll celebrate with an all-ages party Wednesday night, Oct. 18, at East Side pinball palace No Quarter; the show starts at 7 p.m. and Burning Death and Act of Impalement open. Ahead of the gig, we caught up with Emery. Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How is preparation going for the record release?
Exciting. Good. We dropped a video today. We don't do a whole lot of those, so it's always a special occasion when we do. I think this is actually technically our second one as Thetan, though the first one was compiled of a lot of live footage and edited together in a really interesting way. We did one for the collab album we did with Kool Keith, but I consider that more of a Kool Keith video than a Thetan video. This one was just us — strictly us with intention.
When did you guys start working on Grand Ole Agony, and what were you thinking about when you were planning it?
So a lot of the stuff that was written for the album was written kind of during quarantine and shortly after — so around 2020, we were actually writing it. We didn't really rush anything, because we didn't really know when we would be able to release it. We didn't really know when it would be practical to release it, really, because it just seemed like everything was at such a standstill. So, I mean, I would just be sitting in the living room with my son playing around with the guitar and making up riffs, and then trying to figure out how to play 'em on bass.
And that's pretty much how the majority of the music on the bass side of things came together. It's just bass and drums. So Chad plays his parts — he helps me fine-tune whatever it is that I'm working on. He'll tell me if something could be better, and I'll make changes to what I'm doing, and then he'll make up parts that sound really cool to go along. … I'd say we finished writing everything probably a year-and-a-half ago. I did most of the lyrics in one big, bulk writing week. I was working and I was stuck in a hotel in Mexico, and I just sat there listening to the rough mixes and writing lyrics.
That sounds like a very Sam Peckinpah vibe.
I wish it was that cool. I definitely don't think that we're quite on that level.
So you get back from Mexico with all these lyrics. Where do you go from there?
I get an upper respiratory infection and try to record them. It seems like that's just the way things work. Almost every time we've recorded an album, something will happen to my voice right before we have to record it, and I'll just lose my voice. And instead of waiting it out and coming back in a month or two, I'll try and power through it. So usually when I listen back to our recordings, and I reflect on how we usually sound and band practices and shows and stuff, to me it doesn't quite sound the same. But I don't know that that's something that is really picked-up on by anybody else.
I will say though, with this one, it became sort of as a blessing in disguise, because it forced me to try a different approach to some of the songs. … It made me practice restraint in ways that normally I wouldn't — probably just have tried to go as all-in as I could. And I think as a result, the record probably would've just sounded like a bunch of songs with the exact same vocal takes plastered over it, and that would've been a bummer.
When you are powering through, are you worried about hurting your voice or doing long-term damage?
I don't really know. I mean, I've played in bands and sang in bands since I was a teenager, and I've had pretty much the same vocal approach in all of them, and that's been over 20 years. I think I've found the spot that works for me in my vocal range, and I can kind of ride that. We'll go out on tour and shit, and I'm still able to do vocals on day 10. So I feel like I've found a range, or a place in my range, that works for my approach to vocals.
How did you guys end up making Space Goretex with Kool Keith?
Keith was just really approachable, and I'd been hassling his management for a while about doing something a few years ago. And I guess I just had an idea that made more sense later on. And so we did a Record Store Day release together, and it ended up being one of the singles off of the album. And when we finished that, everybody was happy with the outcome of it, and Keith was just like, “We should keep doing it.” So we made a whole album around it.
He's always been a super productive and adventurous guy, and I thought the collaboration was one of those not-surprising surprises. What was the reaction like from a wider audience?
It was pretty good. It's really hard to gauge, because it came out on April 10, 2020. So we did all this buildup and we went to New York and filmed a video with him, and we'd done all the promo, PR, everything. We sent promo materials everywhere, hyped up the release date and everything. And then two weeks before the album was supposed to come out, the entire world shut down. So no record stores were open. All of the plans for shows were off the table. So everything changed on that end.
It was still received pretty well, I think, in the digital world, which is kind of where a lot of stuff is right now. Anyway, I guess if you've got a good handle on the digital world, then you could probably exist as a musician and really not do anything outside of that. I don't know. I don't really live totally in that world, but I think that that's a way that a lot of people function — like, Tiktok artists and shit.
So after COVID wreaked havoc with the release plan for your Kool Keith collab, you started work in earnest on what became Grand Ole Agony. It’s been a fucking crazy few years. What have you learned?
That nothing is what it seems. And it changes every day. Don't put all your eggs in any basket, just scatter them out on the floor and hope some of 'em hatch. Everything is weird. [The music business is] the Wild West all over again. And there's some semblance of normalcy in it, but it's very few and far between. Everything is changing every day. So make records to have fun. I have to say, if making records is your career, I hope you've got a bulletproof plan. It's scary.
