YOB founder, vocalist and guitarist Mike Scheidt doesn't like to “dwell in the dark.”
"I think everybody has some kind of fascination with, y'know, violence and hate and giving up. I think everyone has their moments, or lives in that to some degree,” he says when reached on the phone in Oregon. “But I tend to want to transcend and move through those feelings in myself. Not right, not wrong, I just don't want to stay there."
YOB's 2014 album Clearing the Path to Ascend – which won the unexpected honour of being named the No. 1 metal album of its year by Rolling Stone magazine – is itself a good example of what Scheidt is talking about. Written in the wake of a divorce and Scheidt's decision to wean himself off antidepressants, it's not a particularly happy record. The music is what some might describe as "punishingly" heavy, and the lyrics – for example, in the most straightforward song on the album, "Nothing to Win" – talk of things like taking a "weary heart" and "bleed[ing] it out”, of "clutching trusted lies / feeling sick inside", of living a life where "everything we love / is everything we break."
It's powerful, it's painful, and it's not exactly pretty – but that's only part of the story.
Each of the album’s four tracks – each one long enough to claim a side of the double vinyl release – works as a sort of therapy, entering the darkness only to release and rise above it. The ascension of the title is a personal one, Scheidt explains. "[It’s] not letting the stuff that I was struggling with beat me, ascending, moving beyond it, and maybe even transmuting that energy into something more workable and kinder."
So how does Scheidt approach writing these songs? Does he tap into his own demons, seeking primarily a personal release, or does he craft the songs with the needs of the audience in mind?
"I kind of feel like it's a balance,” he says. “When you're potentially working on music there has to be a suspension of time, and almost memory, where things kinda disappear. And when that happens, that's kind of where music starts happening."
As with past YOB albums, there are references to various spiritual practices. The first song begins with a sample of late British-American Zen philosopher Alan Watts, saying, "Time to wake up." There's also a lyrical reference to Rigpa, a Tibetan concept that refers, Scheidt explains, to both "compassion" and "transcendence"; of being aware that the drama of the world that we live in is only one level of existence.
"We can zoom out farther and farther, and we don't really know what any of this means," he says. “[So we should] try to have a little bit of a lighter touch."
Given how reflective Scheidt is, does he ever find himself at odds with the metal scene? Audiences can, after all, be kind of violent, kind of drunken, kind of self-indulgent, no?
"People are expressing what they have in them at that time," he answers. "And it's not always pretty to look at. But it's real. I don't support certain kinds of behaviours, for sure, but then you go to the shows and there it is. Go to a Travis Tritt concert if you want to see violence, and watch a bunch of drunk hicks beat the shit out of each other all night.”
Those things can certainly happen at metal shows, Scheidt notes, but they typically aren't as violent as the stereotype might suggest.
“But there is, of course, a lot of unconsciousness," he says, referring to the lack of enlightenment and attentiveness, and not to the general level of intoxication at metal shows (especially ones on New Year’s Eve).
“I don't think it's just metal,” he says. “I think it's humanity in general.”
• YOB plays a one-off gig Dec. 31 at the Rickshaw Theatre, with local bands Bison and Astrakhan.
