War at the Warehouse

SABRETOOTH is a band that needs little introduction on the Cape Town scene. Formed in 2009, the band has delivered unique, blistering performances and have gained an impressive following in a relatively short space of time. In the run up to War at the Warehouse, we sat down with lead guitarist, Charles, and got to the bottom of what Sabretooth is all about.

WarAdmin: For starters, who is Sabretooth and who (or what) do you guys sound like?

Byron

Charles: Sabretooth is a muscular powerhouse of a beast with teeth and claws ready to “Murder at Will”! It’s a well oiled machine that will mow down any who dare oppose it!

We are firstly a Heavy Fuckin’ Metal band, with a huge focus on melody. Most bands I hear these days have lost a melodic approach and space in their music, I think that’s pretty retarded. So we are a Heavy Fuckin’ Metal (which, I guess, is a genre now? – WarAdmin) band with elements of 80’s hair metal, neo-classical, power metal and maybe some death metal influence.
The band consists of 6 (just cos 666 is overkill) members – vocals, two guitars, keyboard, bass and drums – and could best be described as an intelligently woven fabric of sound in which each member is of great importance.
In a world where the bassist, keyboardist or drummer may not be the main focus we put added emphasis on what others may merely view as supportive roles in a band. We are definitely something different in the Cape Town music scene!

WarAdmin: What can fans expect at a typical Sabretooth show? What is your stageshow like?

Charles

Charles: We really go “all out”, keeping in mind that some of our stuff is pretty technical. I feel we give off a high energy performance without looking like a bunch of pretentious posers. Yeah, we’ve got 2 industrial fans on stage which may be a little gimmicky to some, but it’s functional and makes my hair look killer! The gear we use is really important to us too, we’ve all got good equipment. It’s really important and is something that a lot of bands don’t bother with or just don’t care about. We bring AK47s to a knife fight!
Every band grows in many ways the longer they are together, so we’re also always thinking of ways to better our live performances. On a good night we’ll probably have dudes up on stage singing along and head banging and shit. We are very fan-based and really dig the energy we get from the crowd!

WarAdmin: Why did you adopt the “neoclassical” sound for your music? In a scene dominated by more traditional strains of metal, people might not be interested. Do you think this has paid off?

Charles: I wouldn’t say that we’re a neo-classical sounding band, but rather that we have classical sections in some songs. If there is an arpeggio or scale-based neo-classical section it’s generally not very long and it works in the context of the song. I studied classical music at UCT, so I guess it comes from that. Look, even though the neo-classical metal stuff may not be as popular as past decades it’s still something that sounds impressive, like: “We know our shit”. It’s something nostalgic even though it’s been really overdone, so you’ve gotta be careful with it and use it sparingly.

We’ve got a good response from people in general. I’ve had people come up to me and comment on the classical sounding stuff and say they really love it, I’ve never had the opposite so I guess it’s paid off. I’ll write songs and draw from various styles of metal in one song, so it’s more about what is good for the song. Obviously we have some styles that we focus more on, otherwise you wouldn’t know what’s going on. I’ve got a very wide taste in music, as do the rest of the guys, but we’re not trying to be some fusion band or something. So with this band it would just be cool if we could maybe open people’s ears to various sub-genres in metal and get some close-minded assholes to loosen up a bit. The motto is: “Keep things simple, but interesting…” from a listening perspective, anyway.

WarAdmin: You guys have a keyboardist, something that’s more and more common in the progressive and “epic” styles of metal. The keyboards however are lead-based, rather than geared around atmosphere. Can you explain what prompted this decision?

Damian

Charles: We just love keyboards man! We’re also really lucky to have Nikolai on our team, ’cause he is fuckin’ amazing; he can play just about any style and is blindingly fast. I write most of the keyboard stuff, obviously not the solos, so I guess it’s my fault that it sounds that way. The thing is, keyboards add more in terms of melody so they should be contributing towards the melodic side of things as well as the rhythmic and chordal side. I think we’ve got a good balance of the two. I mentioned earlier the “intelligently woven fabric of sound”, it all comes down to that. It is important that each instrument plays different roles and is not limited to what it’s traditionally thought to be able to do. Pianists and keyboardists are, most commonly, better trained musicians than the average guitarist. It’s also alot easier to play faster on a keyboard than bass or guitar, so why people wouldn’t use that attribute is kinda mind-numbing to me. I guess I would have to agree that the keyboard parts are more melody based than many, let’s say, power metal bands.

WarAdmin: Sabretooth started off as a five-piece, but recently you added a second guitarist in the form of Dean Bailey. Tell us why.

Dean

Charles: We actually started out as a six piece, but it just didn’t work with two guitarists. It really does take a lot of thought and effort getting two guitarists tight and making sure that they each know what the other is doing; down to “What note’s an upstroke and which is a downstroke?” kinda stuff. Many bands get this wrong.
Dean is great!! he’s very tight and is a perfectionist. He owns his own studio and is always recording bands, so he’s got his stuff down. I was always against having another guitarist after the first attempt just because of the effort it takes and it actually just sounded better with me as the only guitarist. Dean fitted right in; he made the band sound more guitar orientated and just really beefed up the sound – it helps having two good tube amps on stage. He originally just wanted the music to our songs because he wanted a challenge, something new to learn. I said if he got the stuff down he should come to a practice and jam. He came to a band practice and we were like “Whoa Dude!”, it sounded killer! So two practices later we had our first gig with him. We’ve only had two gigs with the current lineup so far but we’re all fucking happy!

WarAdmin: Your song titles and lyrics seem to be inspired by epic tales and mythology. Is this true? Take us through a song and what inspired it?

Charles: We’ve got some mythological themes, but I guess most of our lyrics just focus on the dark side of things. “Death” would be the most obvious and also the human nature of it all. I wrote the lyrics to “Burn Away My Guise”. I really wanted an 80’s sounding, catchy type of song, kind of like Van Halen’s “Jump”. I’m not sure if you’d get this from the lyrics, because they’re not too obvious, but I’ll take you through the storyline.

Ryan

It’s basically about the thought-processes of a man trying to convince a woman to have sex with him. It starts out with them at some party and they notice each other, soon they’re talking and drinking and stuff. They get into each other and start making out and decide to go somewhere to have sex. On the way there the woman decides that she doesn’t want to go with him, so she asks him to take her home. He clicks and is sent into a rage. He takes her to the forest and rapes and kills her. It starts out with him strangling her and realizing what he’s done. It may sound like a bit of a lame story, but it deals with the idea that people will do and say anything to get what they want: “I’ll make you believe my lies, so easy is your conditioning”. You can listen to our stuff on our Facebook page and the lyrics are up there too. We also have three demo tracks up on our website, www.sabretoothband.com, free for download.

WarAdmin: Lastly, why should people come and watch Sabretooth at War at the Warehouse?

Charles: You should come because it’s gonna be different, interesting and totally brutal! It’s going back to the old school type of gigs you never see anymore and it’s at a fucking warehouse (How metal is that?!). All the bands are friends (which always makes for a better party), it’s already well organized and each band will have a proper sound check and time to sort their stuff out – which guarantees a better performance. There’s also the At the Gates official DVD screening, a full bar and some other surprises. Even if you’re a new comer to Heavy Metal, you can expect a hella cool night with a group of really great people, I’m fucking amped! It’s gonna be an awesome vibe with killer music, so come on down and party!!

Sabretooth is presently touring in Port Elizabeth with Reverse the Sands.

Photo Credit: Danielle Karallis, Matt Keeson, Ryan Fourie, Rory Molyneux