"Said And Done", the first track released from the record, is a punishing stoner battering ram that finds Kylesa nodding to old fans of the band while tripping out into deeper waters of brainy psych-metal by song’s end. I would have maybe gone with "Unknown Awareness" as the first single, but that's just because it is my favorite here, a roaring lion of a song. Every track on Static Tensions jams like a motherfucker and proves why this band, even when searching and pushing at their edges, is better than almost all the other heavy groups out these days. They may be a bit too much for your average hardcore fan, but that don't mean jack. When I first heard Kylesa a few years ago I was hooked right away. They are their own, perfect little world of crushing moods and volcanic vapors.

Metallica needs to do their more mainstream fans a favor and introduce them to Kylesa. The Sword is awesome, but Lars and the boys should take Kylesa on the road as openers and really flip some people out. In the meantime, some fans were lucky enough to recently catch Kylesa with the tres influential and gritty Euro-legends Amebix. (Quite the pairing!) Upcoming dates with Skeleton Witch as well as a tour with The Haunted and the Pink Floyd meets Black Metal sonic freak out that is Nachtmystium will also surely be incredible experiences.

I caught up with guitarists and co-vocalists Laura Pleasants and Phillip Cope to find out about all the tensions, all the static and all the rest that somehow birthed this monster. It's not just a key Prosthetic release of the year, but a key release for good music, period.

MORGAN Y. EVANS: This record has the most clarity of all your albums but the band still sounds so heavy. There's a bit more shine almost like Lamb Of God's Sacrament, but not too much that you lose the punch.

PHILLIP COPE: That's not easy to come by, man. [laughing] That's taken a lot of experimenting over time to figure out where to get to that point. We're using some nice equipment and everything but it's not some super deluxe studio. It's just a bunch of really dedicated people working together to see what we can try and do with heavy music, you know? Time Will Fuse Its Worth was all straight up energy. We were really excited about having two drummers for the first time and we started writing and all of a sudden, "Wow!" We were ready to make an album. We were just riding that energy so hard. We weren't really thinking about refining what we do. This time, I've had more time between albums and a lot more time to reflect on everything and think of how to make it better.

LAURA PLEASANTS: Yeah. It was a total experiment with Time Will Fuse Its Worth. We went in there not sure of how we were going to be recording, and we have a much better idea of how to do it now. It's balanced more.

MYE: About the writing, what did you have in mind going into this one? What did you want to accomplish with Static Tensions to add to public perception?

LP: When we were writing the songs we wanted to envision them in a live setting because we've always been known as a live band. Sometimes in the past we've never played certain songs live if we thought they weren't proper live songs. This time we wanted to go in and write these songs for how we would feel playing them live. That gave more of a straightforward approach to some of the songs. We wrote them in the form of a set, what would flow well.

MYE: That's very cool. I've never heard of anyone doing that before.

PC: We attempted. We came pretty close. Not every song made it in the order we intended. We'd get a song done and think about what would be a cool song to come after that. It helped with writing a lot, like, "What were we thinking making this intro so long? We could never play it live."

MYE: Any stuff that will be hard to pull off live, now that it's complete?

LP: I'm not sure if the last song "To Walk Alone" is a live song. It was written more as a closer and kinda mellows out. It certainly could be pulled off live, but I don't know if we'll play that live or not. Another thing is. We also wanted to make sure we had a solid structure for the songs before we added crazy stuff to them, where the blueprint was string alone, before adding other guitar parts and vocals. We wanted to strip down some of the songwriting so we get to the point faster. Some of them are still long.

MYE: Like "Running Red", which is like straight up, epic metal.

LP: Yeah, but I feel everything is in place with that song. Parts don't run too long. We structured the songs making a conscious effort.

MYE: What were you happiest with about Time Will Fuse Its Worth? Last time I saw you a few years ago you'd just gotten the two drummers going. It worked well last record but this time you've really got the hang of it.

PC: I immediately admitted I wasn't happy with the drums on that last record. We didn't have a lot of time in the studio and had no idea what we were doing. That came out the best it could in situation. This time we had more of a game plan for experimenting and thinking about how we could approach it.

MYE: Any other things with the new record you're happiest with or obstacles you feel you've conquered?

LP: Philip has learned a lot and he spent hours and hours with the engineers mixing and getting the tones right, making it sound clear and heavy and good. Making the separation of the drums sound good was really hard. Getting the toms and kick separated. They did a lot of hard panning on the drums but it doesn't sound really hard panned. It sounds cool together. We also worked on our guitar tones and we tune down so low that it's really hard to record that. It sounds great live but it's hard to record that low and not have it be complete fuzz. It was involved.

PC: I felt good about getting the drums better. It was the hardest part to pull off and when I played it to John Baizley (from Baroness) who did the album artwork he could instantly tell who was on each side of the mix, 'cuz he's seen us enough times live. He said, "Ok, Eric's on this side/Carl is on this side." I was like, "OK, phew..."

MYE: With the drums panned, you can hear it separated but it's hard to pan it and still have a bed for the guitars to sit on well.

PC: That was really difficult. We sat through many different mixes until we got it. They aren't hard panned every song. It has the feeling of being hard panned but some songs it's not. We do bring it back up in the middle at some points. That might have something to do with it. Also at first it was bothering Jay and Steve, our engineers. They thought it sounded really weird. I fought hard for it. They took my tenacity, I guess, and found a better approach. We found a common ground and sat on that mix. It took a long time. It was real difficult. I'm not gonna pretend.

MYE: The psychedelic parts are still present in your songs, but there is still a tighter reign on the structuring. It's not too much or too little of everything.

PC: At this point it comes from experience. We work off each other's strengths.

MYE: What songs are happiest with right now?

PC: It's really hard to tell right now because I've had to listen to the songs so many times and approve different masters.

MYE: You haven't had the space yet?

PC: Yeah, I haven't had time to get away from it and go back to it yet. Of course there's already things I wish I could've done better. I'm happy because everybody busted their asses and there's a lot of excitement on it. The whole record feels really good.

MYE: It's like a mother in hard labour for hours and you're happy to hold the baby and later on you can deal with feeding it and shit. [laughing]

PC: [laughing] Exactly.

MYE: The title Static Tensions evokes fighting against being stuck or energy sitting in a confined space? How does the music tie into the lyrics?

LP: The theme of tension was apparent in the record in a lot of the lyrics. Static tension is the breaking point where it snaps. I thought it went well with the lyrics. I came up with it and the past few record titles. I don't know why but I usually come up with the album titles.

MYE: To Walk A Middle Course was kinda zen.

LP: It kinda came from our name and what it meant and where we were as a band during that record, but Static Tensions is good for this time. Sometimes you always wonder when the breaking point is and you're gonna snap.

MYE: And then at the same time you've managed to make your biggest statement yet.

LP: Thanks. We're really proud of it.

PC: For me, this goes with the title--Laura came up with the title, but I really liked the idea of "Tensions" being in the title. There was a real end of the decade sort of tension going on and all this change around the corner. Everyone of course has hope for the future but things looked grim. At the time, it was stressful. Everybody was walking around wound up. Maybe it is just being in Savannah, but there was a lot of tension.

MYE: Is there less racial tension with Obama taking office? Are people more hopeful visibly?

PC: Too soon to tell; it's one of those gray areas. There's no easy way to talk about that stuff. I prefer to stay away from it. It's a tough area to discuss. We'll see. I haven't heard of anybody getting shot in a couple of days.

MYE: I like that you used the word "grim". In Kylesa, the music has grim feelings and matter of fact qualities but the band sounds really determined. You're fighting through it but acknowledging how things can be bad that shouldn't. It helps people who are going through something.

PC: Things are grim and it's not to be Mr. Depressing but it's just the truth. If you can't see [laughing] how fucked up things are in the world, then you are just blind! At the same time, life doesn't have to be only miserable because of that fact. A lot of times with my vocals I'm reminding myself to hold on and get through the day. Then you get older and you get through tough times and get stronger and another one comes and you know you'll get through it.

MYE: The claymation video for "Hollow Severer" from Time Will Fuse Its Worth was so cool with the claymation and a message that fit the song well. It was cool you went old school. Movies today, for example, sometimes have too many special effects of the wrong kind and your video was just classic clay manipulation.

LP: It was a fun video to do. As far as how many times it got played, there's so much red tape and politics involved. It's never easy. We're gonna do a new video at some point for this record but haven't talked about it yet. if we had the budget we'd have a sick animation.

MYE: While we're on the subject of art, I loved your cover art for TWFIW, Laura. I know you all talk about artistic elements. The new cover by John from Baroness is really scary! How'd you decide to go with him this time around?

LP: He's an old friend and I didn't have time to do the art this time around. John's albums are always striking.

MYE: And he's done a lot of your t-shirts, of course.

LP: Yeah, we've been working with him a long time. He'd done a lot. I sent him all of our lyrics and he picked out some symbolism.

MYE: "Unknown Awareness", that song name made me think of Jungian Archetypes, collective memory and the subconscious. Things we don't know that we know.

LP: A lot of times Phillip and I write straight from the subconscious. Phillip wrote that particular song. We write freehand and whatever comes out is what comes out.

PC: When we sent John the words, he thought our lyrics were pretty dark.

MYE: They must be, coming from him, considering he does fucking Skeleton Witch art!

PC: He definitely thought they were pretty brutal. I didn't think they were that bad! I guess they are pretty brutal. He gave us an artist’s statement and let us know what everything was in the art and how it referred back to the songs and I felt he nailed it.

MYE: You should put it on a message board or in a boxed set, someday.

PC: I think we will. We have to get his permission.There's some pretty tripped out stuff in that art. I can't wait to see the vinyl.

MYE: Static Tensions' songs feel a bit more condensed at times but you don't feel cheated. It still has a wealth of ideas. “Bottom Line" from To Walk A Middle Course was your previous most straightforward, sort of punky song and then you've also had stuff like "Motion and Presence" with a lot of sick ass riffs and movements in one song.

PC: We've been around for almost this whole entire decade and now it's ending. In a way for me this was looking at everything we've done and making a final statement for that period of time, almost. Trying to perfect all the different ideas we've done over time. Make the best record we can.

MYE: That's interesting you are looking at it in terms of the decade. On this record you also utilized higher guitar frequencies.

LP: That's something I personally wanted to work on a lot. More melodic and not just focused on the riff or noise, more clear melody.

MYE: People love a crushing riff but sometimes something ghostly can add or control the mood just as much.

LP: I was listening to a lot of early Cult records and early New Wave with spooky guitar sounds and I've always loved that guitar sound.

MYE: People sometimes think of you as just a sludge band and obviously you're loud as shit [laughing] so that's not totally out of line, but there's so much else going on with ambiance, too.

LP: That stuff is just as fun as playing a brutal, heavy riff.

MYE: But speaking of it, "Nature's Predators" opens up with a riff old fans will like but then just rocks into the most monster, stomping riff that I think is hands down the riff to beat this year already, in my book. I heard it after the intro and was like, "Oh No!"

LP: [laughing] Thanks. Because we have such a back catalogue we wanted to incorporate and give a nod to the first record here and there and we did try and do that.

MYE: "Said and Done" has familiar sludge aspects.

LP: We did that on purpose. We didn't want to stray from our last record to alienate our fans. We have a solid following of fans that have been with us from the beginning, but some fans are from Time Will Fuse Its Worth. Being that it's been three years since the last record it would've been really easy to completely stray if we weren't careful just because of the natural progression of the individuals involved and playing ability, playing together. We almost nailed it with the last record but it wasn't quite what we wanted it to be.

MYE: You're also expanding the range of what the band does. I remember, I don't remember which drummer I talked to, I'm pretty sure think it was Eric, at the Albany show I last saw you, cuz I broke my foot that night and was drinking it off at the bar waiting to leave, but he had said you were going to maybe incorporate melody more sometimes. "Insomnia For Months" is a bruiser and has a lot of attack, still with classic crust elements but you've added cool, ethereal accents vocally, more melodic stuff to draw people in.

LP: I wanted to experiment more than just shouting randomly and tighten that up more on this record.

MYE: Were you nervous showing that side?

LP: Physically it was a lot easier tracking that stuff than it was to scream. It always takes awhile to break in my voice and get the tone I want for a good scream or shout. Singing wasn't as hard as I thought it was gonna be.

MYE: There's more traditional warm ups for doing singing, like you said, but people underestimate how hard it is to warm up your voice to scream and be able to do it for a long time.

LP: And everybody is different. I know there are a lot of DVDs out there, but I've never watched them. Some of my friends in bands swear by them. Usually it just takes warming up my voice, that and a little bit of whiskey in my tea. It works out alright, even though it's supposed to be bad for your voice. It works fine for me!

MYE: What's changed most about Kylesa's chemistry?

PC: That's a hard one. Artistically, again, we know ourselves better. That's gonna have some effect. On the second LP no way would we have done songs where we'd let somebody step out and work the whole song vocally. We'd always be jumping in. We've gotten more comfortable with space.

LP: A big difference was that Eric joined us playing drums. Immediately that made a better chemistry. He and Carl really clicked. It's weird to say now, but he's one of us. He's got a similar background and we get along well. We had a different bass player as well but mainly it was me, Carl, and Phillip that buckled down and just started jamming together. Since the three of us wrote the record together it was less distractions. But with Eric stepping up the drumming, he and Carl were worked in more to the songs, the two drummers. We'd let a riff really be a riff and really let the drums do the talking over it.

MYE: "Scapegoat" starts things off strong with pounding drums. It's real punk metal.

LAURA: Yeah. We were focused and really excited and had lots of fresh ideas. We were back from a European tour and started working.

MYE: The Curse Of Lost Days release was so tribal sounding on its own, maybe the most tribal in some ways, but your new thing with two drummers almost absorbed that EP's sound into the band more as a whole.

PC: It's tricky. We try not to dictate the most expected route. The more tribal stuff, it's weird that the more tribal stuff we did was actually with one drummer! When we added the two drums we thought about what we could do that would be off-beat. The first one we didn't know Melvins were doing two drummers [for their A Senile Animal release and ever since] until most of our album was already written. Our albums came out the same month when we both started it. That was not awesome for us. We were like Damn! You can't beat them out, they're the masters. Of course, we got compared. We're not trying to beat anybody out. I heard their last album and knew we didn’t want to do anything similar and be compared. Melvins are doing that and have that approach, so hopefully people will notice that.

MYE: Anyone who is a fan of both will realize it's not copying and it's in context of your own beasts.

PC: We have enough respect for them that we would never try to rip them off. That's just disrespectful, so anything that ever happens like that is coincidence.

MYE: Gas prices are down and I wanted to talk about your band's DIY ethic. The last time I saw you live you were touring with Converge, Some Girls, and Modern Life Is War. Since then two of those bands have broken up. None of those groups or you are easilly classified. Is it hard in this business dealing with all the bullshit?

PC: If you're gonna play the kind of music we play, you've got to do it 'cuz you love it. There's no way the business end is gonna be easy. At the end of the day you have to really give a shit about what you’re doing. Laura and I made a deal early on in the band that we would never put ourselves in a situation where we couldn't express ourselves how we wanted to. When you have this outlet to express yourself, it helps to not get sick of doing it. It's rewarding. Both of us come up with some ideas that are pretty far fetched and we give each other enough space to try it out. When I was explaining what I wanted for what I wanted for "Almost Lost" or she was explaining "Running Red' those could sound like weird ideas until put into action.

LP: We've been dealing with the bullshit since day one and this is something we love to do. It's more of a challenge now with things being the way they are. We hope we'll have continued support to be able to do this.

MYE: "Almost Lost" is so striving and relentless. It's melodic and heavy and the vocal sits in a cool spot.

PC: Right on. You never know. With that song I was probably the most self-concious. I re-did the vox several times until I could settle. It felt important to do that song but I felt like people might hate it. I'm stoked you dig it. Luckilly some of the other band mates said it was good and keep it.

MYE: Does the new song title "Insomnia For Months" reflect the touring lifestyle?

PC: No. It reflected me having insomnia for months. I had it the whole time we were in the studio.

MYE: Man, I get it too sometimes. At least you were in the studio and could bug out.

PC: [laughing] Four in the morning in the studio by myself doing whatever I wanted. It was perfect.

MYE: A lot of bands can't stand being in the studio, but if you get into the studio life, as a musician I feel ripped off if it isn't a 12-hour session.

PC: When I get into the studio I don't wanna leave. I sleep in the studio and don't do emails or phone calls. All I think about is recording.

MYE: Maybe a phone call for some take-out.

PC: I'm lucky enough to have other people to do that. [laughing]

MYE: Awesome.

PC: I generally try to do nothing but focus on the record.

MYE: How does it feel being hard to classify but having your "star" rising?

LP: We've always done things our own way, especially when we were starting out. Not a lot of bands were doing psychedellic stuff, especially in the underground punk scene and metal scene. We will continue to do what we do if it's popular or not.

MYE: As a fan of Nausea it didn't seem so alien to me. Not to just compare you to them because you get that a lot, but I hate it when people only like stuff in a strict category. It's not so unheard of to combine what effects you.

LP: It's more common now to have a cross-pollination of styles, and it's cool. I love it when bands do that, but I feel like we've made our strongest to date and it happens to be our fourth. Luckily we aren't out of creative ideas.

MYE: People don't want the roots of what made separate movements special to be lost. There's a lot of "purists" that want things separate. At the same time, people say everything has been done and I don't think that's true. There's more collage-ing. People have told Jimmy Page before that he shouldn't play the blues and should play harp or follow his own ancestry back and play that. There's something about history that has merit but combining is a cool way to make things new.

LP: I agree with you. A lot more bands are combining in the indie and metal and punk scene and it's the only way to move forward,if you can reinvent yourself. Push boundaries. I wouldn't be happy as a player to be just in a punk or metal band playing just thrash or whatever. Or just psychedelic. To be able to combine Pink Floyd and Bolt Thrower and see if it works is a challenge!

MYE: You should check out SubRosa, they are girls and are really Sabbath-y but with like gospel, slave song type vocals. They are amazing and sludge. How does it feel to be playing with Amebix and The Haunted?

PC: We got really lucky. I’m looking forward to it all. Amebix, I never thought I would see them play, let alone play with them!

LP: Playing with Amebix, yeah, it's a true honor. They've been a big part of our music experience. We're going to Japan, too, next week. Right after Amebix we're flying out to Japan.

MYE: Eat some real sushi for me!

LP: I will! Then in March we're hooking up with Skeleton Witch. We haven't announced the dates yet, but that'll take us South East.

MYE: While we're on the topic of the underground, I feel like the underground has such a wide scope. You can never know about everything. Regional scenes are cool, like Black Tusk is from near you and a lot of other bands and you find out more and who is connected to who and it goes on and on nationally and in movements. Even historically, you realize how bands broke up and went on to other stuff. A lot of snobs are out there and say, "Oh, you don't know this band?" But I might know all about some other awesome one they don't. It's like a spiderweb and draws you in more and becomes a family. You can never know it all but almost want to.

LP: So much information is out there! Everytime I think I know about this or that band or scene there is a billion more I get turned on to. Even just stuff from the ‘70s in my collection has gotten to be so huge and I never would've known these bands existed, you know? I would say Flower Travellin' Band influenced me a lot for this album and for a few years. They aren't as rare as some of the others. A friend turned me on to a band called Electric Orange.

MYE: I just found out about Atomic Rooster recently, who were a big ‘70s band. They're monsters!

LP: Oh, yeah! They're great. Yeah, it's like how does it get lost behind you!?

MYE: Your band is forward thinking but still nods to the past.

LP: It's rare people can create good music in a vacuum.