Exclusive: Ray Suhy Shreds a Cacophony of Unsettling Metal in Cess Pool
If you’re into the metal scene, you’ve most likely heard of the bands Cannabis Corpse and Six Feet Under. What those two share is guitarist Ray Suhy, who we’re highlighting today with an interview as well as a stream of “Cess Pool”, the fourth track from his upcoming EP Fulmination.
The song opens up innocently with an almost Indian sitar-like effect. However, it soon devolves into a chaotic frenzy of aggression, ferocity, and pure metal. Blistering leads sweep and shred over a foundation of extreme rage. This is the opposite of safe listening. This is madness harnessed and released through music.
You can pre-order Fulmination EP through Ray’s website or through iTunes.
Dread Central: With your EPs, you’re obviously allowed total creative freedom. That’s a lot of power and it offers a great deal of possibilities. How do you restrain yourself to get to the final product?
Ray Suhy: You really hit the nail on the head as to what can stump my creativity sometimes. The fact that there are so many possibilities and different roads you can go down. It can really get you stuck. For myself, I try and set some limitations on the project. For this EP, I wanted to make a “guitar” record that had heavy riffs and songs and that also had sections where I could totally let loose and rip a little. For example, on “Cerulean” I limited myself to only four notes and tried to create the main riff using only those notes. I also try and set a theme or mood in my head before I start a project. For “Fulmination”, I wanted the songs to be chaotic, explosive and unsettled to reflect on the current state of the world and how thats been making me feel.
DC: What does Fulmination allow you that Six Feet Under doesn’t afford you the chance to do?
RS: ‘Fulmination’ basically is a total self serving thing for me. This EP is all about heavy guitar for me and a way to showcase some of the techniques that I’ve been working on for the past few years. Also, I’ve never done a heavy project without vocals before and I wanted to see if my compositions could hold up in an instrumental form and not get boring or tiring. That being said I bet Chris Barnes would sound pretty menacing over these kind of tracks!
DC: Is there a reason you decided to go with an EP rather than a full-length release?
RS: “Guitar” records can get a little tiring for me when I listen to them. Some times there’s only so much shredding and busy playing you can take. I figured a 14-15 minute EP would be a good little nugget of heavy-ness and complexity and would still convey the mood and energy I wanted to get across.
DC: There’s a marked genre change from Tesselations to Fulmination. Any particular reason for this?
RS: I love all styles of music and truly love playing everything from jazz and fusion to blues, classic rock, 80’s metal, thrash and death metal and beyond. I’ve spent a lot of time studying different genres of music as deeply as I can and, depending on what kind of mood I’m in, I’ll compose or play in whatever genre will most accurately express what vibe I’m trying to get across.
DC: Even though Fulmination is just about to come out, what are your future plans? What’s next for you?
RS: This year is going to be a busy one. My other band, Cannabis Corpse, is releasing our new record in September on Season Of Mist records. I’ll be doing some touring on that as well as with Six Feet Under later in the year. I also have a jazz record coming and duo record I did with a friend who plays Hapi drums with loops and various pedals.
Ray Suhy online:
Official Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Cannabis Corpse Facebook
Six Feet Under Facebook
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