Splitting Heirs

TIM SCOTT talks indiscretions, demons and addictions with Damian Coward and Brent Stegeman of Melbourne “instrumental post-rock metal” outfit Heirs.

The music of Heirs crawls from a dark place. The tenebrosity of the Old Testament. The murkiness of addiction. The repetitive slow drum beat that curls like the smoke from cinnamon-scented incense sticks side of stage. Their name stands as metaphor, to be “Heirs” of their musical history. Of Gira and the Swans. Of the Japanese. Of static.

What started as a brooding solo project for Damian Coward in late 2006, a means to salvage some pride and meaning in a music scene and industry that he had all but given up on, Heirs has morphed into something larger. It’s still brooding instrumentals, it’s just that there are now more people playing them. The band currently consists of Brent Stegeman (Whitehorse) and Ian Jackson (Damn Arms) on guitars, Laura Bradfield on bass guitar and Coward on drums.

“The way we decided on how to form the band was pretty much opposite to how most people form bands – we pretty much chose the most degenerate people we could find,” says Coward to the amusement of Stegeman and Jackson.

Honest degenerates, Coward and company are candid about past indiscretions, demons and addictions. They are not here to win more Facebook friends. Heirs is a band built on old-fashioned straight talking. Stegeman lays it on the line. “We all knew the worst of each other before we started. You can always get a band together by placing ads and then say, ‘Well this guy is really good.’ But what are you going find out about him in six months time? Is he going to blow everything up?”

Their debut record, Alchera, released on Melbourne’s EXO label, consists of intense instrumentals that build from embers to roaring infernos of noise. It’s both dark and light or, as the band explains, “The pain and hopelessness of addiction versus the elation of freedom.” You could call it metal if you wanted to, but you’d be kind of wrong. “We are metal … if you are speaking to someone who has no idea about any of the genres that we deal with,” says Coward, matter-of-factly. “But then, if you said instrumental post-rock metal they would look at you blankly,” he jokes.

Before Heirs, Coward and Stegeman were in Maps, a band that he describes as “a Rye Coalition meets Shellac kind of post rocky thing”. Despite good intentions the band ran out of momentum and ran its course. “We just tried to make it a bit darker and a bit heavier and it just wasn’t working. It just lacked a little direction. At that time I had very definite ideas as to what I wanted to do.”

“Live, we burn incense which is warming and calming and contrasts with the music and imagery which can be quite unsettling. To marry dark and light, beauty and brutality is the ultimate goal.”

The break up of Maps saw Coward moving to Adelaide with head full of ideas and a bag full of pot. “I grabbed Pro Tools, bought seven or eight ounces of weed and sat in my girlfriend’s parents’ back room and recorded a bunch of stuff.”

The result of this “artistic retreat” was a four song demo that Coward sent out but received little response to. “The only person who gave me a high five was Brent. I think I went through a bit of a stage like, ‘Fuck this country.’”

So he left. This time to Europe with Jackson and Damn Arms. “We went to Japan and had a blast then we went to the UK and had probably the most miserable experiences that anyone touring can possible have. Thirty-five shows in every shit hole and ended up abusing ourselves with a lot of pharmaceuticals and alcohol and what not.”

Alcohol, drugs and fucked-upness are themes that crop up regularly with Heirs. Whereas some musicians skirt or duck questions surrounding their addiction or drug use, Coward and his bandmates tackle these issues candidly.

“It has been part of our lives. I think it’s part of a lot of people’s lives, it’s just people aren’t very honest about it. They like to skim over the fact that they are addicted to something or they try and point the finger at someone else, or blame something else. I think that we are all in a state of mind now where we don’t blame anyone else but ourselves. If we do something stupid and get back onto some sort of stupid wagon I don’t blame my parents or my failed job,” Coward says.

“I’ve struggled with drug addiction for years. I’m still hopeless, yet I don’t really care what people think. Brent and I have known each other for over 10 years and Ian and I are just as close. There’s nothing that could happen now that would really shock anybody.”

Even the aesthetic of Stegemen’s art and design work, which is just as much a part of the band as the music itself, deals with addiction and dependence. The band play live with video and film projections, screening images that are there to confront. “The design and imagery we came up with was of a person being haunted by addiction, in this case a ghost. The ghost is a visual depiction of that,” says Coward.

“The albums title, Alchera, is the word for dreamtime used by the Arrente tribes of Central Australia,” adds Stegeman. “It relates to the artwork by referring to a parallel reality, in this case, the specter of addiction, and being 'haunted' by weakness.

“Because we are an instrumental band the design is important. We have a story to tell and the way we do that is through our visuals and artwork. Live, we burn incense which is warming and calming and contrasts with the music and imagery which can be quite unsettling. To marry dark and light, beauty and brutality is the ultimate goal. In doing so, we can explore the good in bad and the bad in good, which to me, are the most interesting aspects of humanity.”

The music of Heirs isn’t for everyone. Nor is their frank approach to the music industry. “I think we’ve always been a little left-of-centre with everything we’ve done or any scene, for lack of a better word, that we’ve been involved in,” says Coward. “For example, with our old label (Building Records) we just released stuff that we thought was good. We weren’t genre specific and in turn we received a lot of backlash. We made an effort to sit outside the circle and in turn we received a lot of criticism purely because we didn’t do the genre thing. Not to discredit any other labels because I understand the pure marketing motive of releasing a genre of music and riding with it.

“We’ll explore every avenue possible in the nicest possible way to get our music heard,” he continues, “but I think what it comes down to is that we’ve written a bunch of songs that stand on their own.”

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