Exclusive Interview: A Titan, A Deity talk writing and recording “Descendant”!

Progressive Metalcore merchants A Titan, A Deity have been working tirelessly at the grindstone to perfect their sound, their vision that of a collection of like minded musicians with a wealth of experience from previous endeavours. Their sophomore EP “Descendant” was recorded during the great plague of 2020 and 2021, a more refined and polished piece when compared with debut “Animate / Redefine” and yet having all of the same hallmarks. So now it has finally seen the cold light of day, we discussed with the band what went into it…

How did your previous experiences writing and recording 2018’s “Animate / Redefine” help to smooth the path of the new record? “We pre-prodded and recorded Animate / Redefine with our good friend Alex Lucas who we work really well with. On the stand alone singles we continued to pre-prod and track with him but sent them to Daniel at Terraform audio who is awesome too. For Descendant we still threw ideas around with Alex, but because of covid we were tracking a lot of stuff individually at home. Then when the world opened up we went in the studio with Jigsaw Audio to finish everything off.”

How does the writing process of a new track start? Melody, riff or rhythm first? How does it evolve from there before you consider it the finished article? “It really depends, sometimes a member will bring a complete song to the table other times it may develop over time between us. We’re lucky that we have a lot of writers in the band so the process is super collaborative”

Part of your sound is made up of programming; how do you go about getting the balance right when using that element to enhance the sound? Would you feel comfortable as a band playing the songs live without a backing track of programming should there be technical issues? “The programming element was something we’ve definitely evolved and developed over time, particularly with this release cycle, and we’ve really enjoyed adding these elements to our sound. On the whole we could play the majority of tracks without them if needed, but like a lot of modern bands we think that the programming enhances the sound. But we do make a conscious decision to get the balance right as you said”

If you could bring a guest on board next time around, who would you like to work with in the studio? “There are so many people we’d love to collaborate with. Rory from Dayseeker or Andy from Monuments would be absolute dreams of ours”

For us gear nerds out there, can you tell us what you’re using gear wise (pedals, strings, drums etc) to get your sound? “Amp wise we’re using the Axe-fx FM9 and Line 6 Helix through poweramps and Zilla cabs live. Ben uses Mayones, and Vandermeij guitars live, Ash uses Ormsby and Ibanez and Mitch uses Carillion guitars. As we’re tuning quite low (F#), we use pretty heavy strings and the multi scales become quite important”

What difference would it make to you as a band if you could land an endorsement from a gear manufacturer? “It would be great to have endorsements from the brands we use every day and love, both from an ambassador point of view and that it may give us a larger audience for our music”