Vicious Alliance is a name that has been floating around quite a bit lately, especially here on the east coast. These guys seem to be quite busy these days, between writing tracks for an upcoming album and playing a number of shows including Industrial Festival in Detroit and Nuclearfest in DC. Last month I got the opportunity to talk with Elijah Arms, the found and frontman of this amazing militant terror ebm/futurepop project.  For more info on all things Vicious Alliance go to: http://www.myspace.com/viciousallianceebm

Introduce yourself; who are you/what do you do?

I am Elijah S. Arms and I am the front-man of Vicious Alliance. Some of the things that interest me besides hard electronic music are military history, horror films, and the fashion industry. For Vicious Alliance I do the programming and male vocals.

What is Vicious Alliance? Can you provide us with a brief biography?

Vicious Alliance is a terror ebm band that consists of myself, Elijah S. Arms, Natalia Kowalski, Tim Bridgeman, and Bryant Shunk. Vicious Alliance is the creative outlet of its members where we express our rage and anguish against our dying planet. We fuse the best elements of terror ebm with the smooth and catchy melodies of futurepop for a unique and original sound.

Vicious Alliance was formed in the fall of 2005. Originally it consisted of just three members, myself, Natalia, and James, and we worked on recording a demo CD. When we began to play live shows in the summer of 2006, James left Vicious Alliance and we added George to play live keys. We played various events in cities like Pittsburgh, D.C., Philadelphia, Allentown, and Baltimore.  Our notoriety grew and so did our live performances. In the winter of 2007, Bryant joined us on drums. Things really began to pick up and we released our demo Humanity Bleeds. In the spring of 2007, Tim joined Vicious Alliance, and we played large shows in Detroit and Cleveland. Recently we just concluded playing at  Nuclearfest in northern Virginia. Along the way we made friends with a lot of established bands and did remixes for quite a number of them including Dawn of Ashes, Tyske Ludder, and Pride and Fall. We continue to look towards the future as we develop and grow more confident with each new hurdle we jump.

Why did you choose this name?

In our music we stress the decay of modern society and the need to destroy the world around us and build a better one.  Naturally we wanted this to reflect in our name. Alliance is a militant word that stresses togetherness or a united sense of purpose. We are an alliance seeking to bring forth a better world. In order to do this we need to be vicious, strong, and without mercy. Vicious Alliance is what we want our music to inspire the listener to be. We want them to unite with our ideas, tear down the old rotten world, and build something greater.

 

What do you hope to accomplish with Vicious Alliance/music in general?

With Vicious Alliance I hope to release a studio mastered full length album on a major label. I want it to be an album with a full CD booklet too, none of that one page stuff! That would be an accomplishment I have worked on for a long time.

More importantly to me I hope to continue to play live shows and draw even more fans than we have right now. I want to increase our stage theatrics, increase our overall performance, and purchase better equipment.

I would also like to spread our message. Despite our negative imagery, the overall theme of our music is still uplifting. People should have something to fight for and ideas like saving the environment and reducing personal violence are good things to fight for.

What inspires you to make music? How to you keep your music fresh when there are so many bands out there making some form of terror ebm?

I am inspired to make music, because I love playing live shows and spreading a positive message through that medium. I am also inspired by my love for industrial music and electronica as a whole. It is something that has always fascinated me and brings me a lot of pleasure.

We try to keep Vicious Alliance fresh by offering good production, catchy leads, and a unique style to our work. We hope that when you listen to one of our tracks you will be able to know that it is Vicious Alliance. We offer what I hope is an interesting combination of both dark and light. We have the gorgeous vocals of Miss Natalia which are clean and crisp mixing with my standard distorted vox. We offer a lot of uplifting synths combined with hard drums and brutal samples. We want to hit you with conflicting emotions, and I think that helps us stand out of the ebm pack. We don’t use the same stock sounds that most bands who make terror ebm use. We don’t write our music on just one program, or just one keyboard.

I really enjoy your lyrics and I think that they add another important level of depth to the music. How do you write your lyrics, what inspires them, etc?

Thanks for the compliment! Lyrics have always been very important to me. Too many songs now have lyrics that don’t make sense or are completely trite and banal.

I always write the lyrics to a piece after I am done working on the track. This lets me write something that will fit the overall mood and atmosphere of a composition. I usually write about a topic that has recently caught my attention or a current obsession. The lyrics to Disease of Rotten Minds resulted from a combination of my love for horror films such as 28 Days Later and my fears about social collapse in the aftermath of a new disease. World Consumer was inspired by statistics about air pollution and Richard Bachman’s novel The Running Man. Recently I have been writing lyrics about nationalism and the collapse of modern values as we enter the digital era.

The one thing I am sure about is that this world will never give me a shortage of materials to work with.

Humanity Bleeds was an amazing demo. What are you doing to follow it up?

We are going to try and release Humanity Bleeds II. I am not too happy with a lot of the tracks on the original because they are older and not produced as well as our more recent work. Humanity Bleeds II will have a lot of the old favorites redone as well as several epic new tracks.

Of course we are also holding onto a lot of our more popular tracks for an eventual CD release.

You have the track “Surrender Your Mind” on the upcoming Wounds of the Earth compilation. Tell me about the inspiration/writing/recording process for this track.

Surrender Your Mind began as an old track that we decided to revitalize and bring up to the standards of a modern Vicious Alliance piece. In my sophomore year philosophy class I had to read a short story about a fantasy machine that would give the user an ultimate blissful life inside their mind but it would also put the user into permanent stasis. I pulled out the story, reread it, and turned my original idea into the much darker Surrender Your Mind. At the same time I was experiencing some personal problems and the aggression just flowed off into the lyrics. Its kind of a moody almost love song piece. I would describe it as a dark synthpop styled Vicious Alliance that I hope brings a lot to the compilation. Too often we choose to surrender our minds for comfort or security. We need to remember that freedom is more important than material wealth.

I recently had the opportunity to see Vicious Alliance perform live and I must say that it was an incredibly powerful and intense show. Tell me about a Vicious Alliance show: How do you prepare, what do you hope to achieve, why do you choose to play live, etc?

We  first prepare by creating our outfits for the event. Vicious Alliance always has a unique and coordinated look when we play. Secondly we gather all of the props and theatrical tools we will be using for the show. This includes our flags, swords, makeup, etc. Finally we get together to practice how the show will be run and what we will be doing together with our on stage dynamics. I think all this preparation leads to the power, enthusiasm, and energy that people see in our live shows.

We hope to shock people with the passion and fury of our performance. We want them to come away from our sets as true fans. We want to spread our message and to give people one of the best times they’ve had at an ebm show. We also want to involve them. This is why we bring crowds up on stage and fire them up so much. That includes why we play live and what we hope to achieve.   

How has living in/near Philly influenced you/your music?

Philadelphia is a great city. We have several nights for industrial music with notable DJs and a good club turnout. Its also an older city with deep roots in history. You can feel the age in the streets. There are a lot of places to perform shows in Philadelphia and in nearby cities too. It’s a good central location for travel all over the East Coast. It has had a pretty positive effect on us I would say.

Vicious Alliance has obvious military/political themes to it. How does the current US government and all related situations influence you/your music?

Vicious Alliance tries to reach beyond the current U.S. government policy for our musical ideas. So many artists today take issues such as terrorism, the war in Iraq, and George W. Bush and turn them into banal tracks with Bush samples either promoting the policies of the current U.S. government or decrying them. Our political/military themes are an odd blend of the old and the new. We are far more concerned with the destruction of the environment then we are with Bush foreign policy. The failure of the U.S. to sign the Kyoto accords and the global failure to regulate air pollution are a common source of outcry in our work. For our militarism we reach back to older totalitarian regimes, take their style and attempt to recast them in a future mold.  The dictatorships of the future will be states blending corporate bureaucracy with the destruction of the environment, and the destruction of creativity. We can already see this is the bland, materialistic and increasingly corporate nature of American youth. Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war protester who lost a son in Iraq, said what I want to say better than I can so I am going to paraphrase her. Americans are more concerned with who becomes the next American idol than the hundreds of thousands of people who are killed in a pointless war. In our music we can see the course of the future and we will do anything we can to change that course.

What is the future of industrial music? Where is there left to go?

The evolution of industrial music could go down a few very different paths. The one I am going to talk about is the path that I think the most likely.

Industrial might become totally mainstream. Look at all of the pop bands you see today who use vocoders, synths, and keyboards. Then look at the same pop bands dressing in uniforms, wearing club makeup, and talking about how gas masks are neat. On the other hand look at certain industrial artists using guitars, selling their merchandise in hot topic, and borrowing ideas from hipster culture. To me this kind of bastardization of musical genres really devalues the original ideas and culture of industrial music. However, it is definitely a path I can see industrial music going down.

Related to that will be the mass proliferation of industrial bands. Just like everyone you knew in high school was in a garage punk, hardcore, emo, or whatever band; so we will see the spreading of industrial music. This will be both a positive and negative theme as production quality and originality go down but artists with real talent become discovered.

Musically I can’t see the same formula being changed too much, unless some big innovation in sound happens. We will probably always relay on catchy leads and 4X4 beats. Certain styles will always be up and others will be down.

I don’t where else industrial can go. But I know that Vicious Alliance will hang around for the ride.

What are the top albums that inspire you?

Pride and Fall - Nephesh : This debut album from Pride and Fall is so romantic and epic that it has never stopped moving me.

Amduscia - Melodies for the Devil : I think this was their best release. It’s dark and powerful. Polo’s vocals on this album are some of the most powerful and well mixed I have heard. 

God Module - Viscera : This is my favorite God Module release and probably always will be. I can listen to it from the beginning to the end.

Tactical Sekt- Syncope: I know that this is a cliché album for terror ebm fans. But I also know that I have never danced harder than to Not Entertained or Bring Me Violence.

Some other artists that inspire me and who I support are my friends in Dawn of Ashes and Die Sektor. Both of these groups make amazing music and put on fantastic shows. I also want to say that Grendel and Life Cried make it high up on my list too.

What are the top movies that inspire you?

The movie genres that inspire me the most are Horror, Science Fiction, and most of all Dystopian. 28 Days Later with its infection and subsequent social breakdown is a prime example of a movie that really appeals to me. Gattaca is another film I have become obsessed with recently. Even thought it is an older film, it brings up points about genetic engineering and class division in a moving and emotional way. Some other films I enjoy are Stay, The Jacket, Children of Men, Starship Troopers, Jarhead, Dune, Hostel, Frailty, and too many others to list.

What are the top books that inspire you?

Without a doubt I am inspired by the works of Harry Turtledove, the leading author of alternative history. He will change an event in the past and create an entire world that merges our own history with his alternative. For example a Confederate victory during the American Civil War leads to a WWI fought between Germany and the United States versus The Confederacy, France, England, and Canada. His scenarios provide an interesting perspective on our own history and that is what is inspiring.

Some other books that inspire me are Stephen King’s earlier works as Richard Bachman. His four novels; The Running Man, Rage, The Long Walk, and Roadwork are dystopian and much darker than the horror novels he produces today. The Running Man in particular inspires me because of its depiction of a class driven world where the poor are slowly dying from air pollution while the rich prosper in gated communities.

The final book I will recommend is a work of non-fiction. Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century is a fascinating read and probably the best non-fictional book about Europe’s turbulent past.

What is currently on the Vicious Alliance agenda?

We are working on creating new and inspiring tracks, playing more live shows, and on improving our global network. We will be publishing our own website and we will be launching our own Vicious Alliance street team in the very near future. We have several great shows lined up and will be traveling to places such as Toronto and Puerto Rico. Always on the agenda is trying to find more time to promote ourselves.

Any final words?

I want everyone who listens to us to know that you make Vicious Alliance strong and give us the power to keep writing music. We thank you. Also keep supporting your local club night, bands and DJs. Always fight on.

Thanks so much for doing this interview. Wounds of the Earth wishes Vicious Alliance much success in the future.

- by [.d4n b4rr3tt.]

july 2007