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The Canadian band Unexpect have explored a full range of provocative sounds in their music, everything from extreme metal to prog to medieval music. Their lineup of Syriak on vocals/guitar, Artagoth on vocals/guitar, ChaotH on bass (especially known for his 9-string bass wizardry), Leïlindel on vocals, Landryx on drums and Blaise Borboën-Léonard on violin fiercely challenge the listener. [Keyboardist Exod recently left the band in 2010].

The band has sold many of their albums successfully in a very underground and independent fashion. And their latest, 2011’s Fables of the Sleepless Empire is perhaps their most rewarding.

ChaotH was kind enough to give Powerline some time about recent Unexpect activities.

For the uninitiated, tell us a little bit about Unexpect, how you came to be, what you are trying to accomplish as a musical outfit.
(Frederick) ChaotH: Well, the band started initially as a four-piece in or around 1996 by Artagoth and Syriak… the elders. It quickly morphed into a seven- piece with the addition of violin, femme vocals and keyboard as the band was migrating towards a more melodic/symphonic european metal influenced feel and then released the first effort Utopia in 1999. Then some band member changes, some shows and an EP later (We, Invaders… 2003) we got signed to The End Records in 2004 and released In a Flesh Aquarium in 2006

And what we try to accomplish is probably what everybody that’s playing music is trying to accomplish. Just trying to make music that we feel is interesting and is challenging ourselves as musicians. Just enjoying the ride of where are minds will guide us.

You guys have released a new record Fables of the Sleepless Empire. It has been out for a little over a month, how do you feel about the reception?
ChaotH: Very good! All the reviews I read so far are very positive and interesting. It’s fascinating to see what people perceive in it and how they read into it. Some of these reviews where litterally poetry. The next step for us is to take it on the road and I just can not wait for that. It’s been recorded nearly 2 years ago already and I want to dive back into it and live it on stage.

Tell me a little about the album’s title, and the lyrical content. Having given it many spins, I must say I find myself a little… perplexed. This is some truly “out there” stuff.
ChaotH: (Laughs) ‘Out there” it is then, sure. The main lyricist of the band is Syriak. I wrote the lyrics for “The Quantum Symphony” and Artagoth wrote “Silence this Parasite,” otherwise, it’s all Syriak. There was no specific directive line as far as the topics of the album. It’s not a concept album. The title ”Fables of the Sleepless Empire” is more a eloquently unifying phrase compiling all of these crazy stories in some kind of ”book”. A Fables collection if you may. Our very own ‘best of” 2007-2010.

I have a particular love for this line: “She tasted spontaneity with a honorable mission in mind just to spit out intense squares of uncolored ink in the face of a pulsating mass of flesh talking nonsense on its throne …daaaaamn well she did!” It seems so random and yet flows so well. Who does the majority of the lyric writing? What are some of the sources that inspire this kind of thought process?
ChaotH: Like I mentioned earlier, that would be Syriak and, to be honest, I have absolutely no idea where he went and what he was aiming for with these lines but… I love it. As far as inspiration … well, everything we encounter in life is inspiring and we are all the product of what we have been exposed to and what we learned from life. Our ideas, our anguish, our fears, our questions, our love, our drunkness, our intellect…

Your last release In A Flesh Aquarium literally baffled me the first time I heard it. I had never heard anything that sounded quite like it, with the huge well of genres being tapped. While still retaining that feeling of spontaneity, Fables sounds quite a bit more focused, more digestible if that is possible.
ChaotH: This is precisely what all of the critics are saying so far about the album and, well, I guess that makes it true. I would say it was somewhat of a conscious effort to go towards something that would flow more easily were the parts would help each other instead of screaming against each other and pulling in seven different directions. That said, after all the shredding and all the crazy orchestration we have done, it’s seemed like the ”edgy-est” thing to do to write a couple chorus and some simpler lines.

Aquarium, which was as stated above, was so dense, so schizophrenic that despite loving it, it took me more than several listens for it to really sink in. Fables immediately grasped me. There is a thread of sorts that flows through it that “feels” more direct and consistent, like each song is part of a very specific whole. Do you have any thoughts on this?
ChaotH: It was never intended to be a concept album or a whole but the songs were mostly all written within the same year or even the same six month period so, if anything, I guess that the flow of inspiration that we were in at that time would be the main connecting line. What really brings all of it together in the end is the title, because each piece and each story don’t really relate to one another so the idea of collecting them in the sonic verion of a Fables book is what makes it what it is. A kind of creepier version of these stories on cassettes with a book of image and a sonic ”biiiipp” between each page…. how interactive and fun…… innit ?

I am particularly enamored with “Orange Vigilantes” and “Quantum Symphony.” About half way through Vigilantes there is a jazzy piano/drum/bass breakdown with some staggeringly groovy vocals from Leïlindel that literally blows my mind every time I hear it. You guys must have some favorites now that everything is completed.
ChaotH: Well, of course I love all of them because they are our babies but I must admit “The Quantum Symphony” was always one of my favorite as well, especially after I heard what Syriak and Lei did with the vocals on the ”chorus” when we were doing preproduction before the studio. I guess that somehow selfishly I would prefer the songs that I’ve been more involved in the composition which are “Words,” “The Quantum Symphony” and “Mechanical Pheonix” but like I said, I love all of these songs and I want to give them life on stage… can’t wait. “Orange Vigilantes” was initially brought by Artagoth who usually delivers the fast, technical, brutal guitar parts and we were quite enthousiastic about it and surprised of the colours he added in that jazzy breakdown as you say. For some reason, latin grooves came back more than once on this record… it’s just fun to play and always interesting rythmicaly.

Do any members of the band have professional training?
Frederick (ChaotH): We all have some level of music training, yes.

I have heard you guys are a fairly democratic band when it comes to writing music. This must contribute to the diversity and unpredictability of your sound.
ChaotH: Absolutely. Everybody brings some music and ideas and everybody’s colour are used on the canvas. It’s always what defined the sound of the band I feel, now more than ever before. FOTSE is the perfect example for that. It was the most ”democratic” composing experience if I may where everybody brought different aspect to the same level.

You most certainly get this question a lot: A nine string bass. Whoah. That certainly opens up some interesting avenues for musical experimentation. Does it have a name? Does ChaotH spend more time with it than his family?
ChaotH: Sadly, YES. I spend way more time with the instrument than with the family… which is not necessarily good… let’s face it… I suck at family stuff. The name of these instruments would be ERBs which stands for Extended Range Bass… simply. And yes I do get a ton of question about it. It’s a ”trend” that started in the late 90’s on the west coast of the US… Bill Dickens would be the first guy to use the 9 string bass and then it was later popularized by Jean Baudin formerly from the californean quartet Nuclear Rabbit, a sort of Bungle-esque progy-funky band, I was a bit fan (RIP). Jean became somewhat of a youtube superstar with his Nintendo adaptation songs now with 11 strings, no less! I was a follower of that wave of experimental instruments and was a lot into tapping so I grabbed the 7 string bass in 2002 and switched to a custom made 9 string Bee Bass in 2005 and it’s been the only thing I use ever since. Check out BeeBasses.com for more info. And yes, it certainly opens the door for new sounds. It’s always a challenge to know what to play actually because there is so much instrumentation in the band. I have all these crazy avenues opened up with this instrument and I also have to fill the bass players rôle so it’s always a challenge to find a balance in this.

This music is most certainly a niche sound, but you guys appear to be gaining quite a bit of traction over the last few years, particularly critically.
ChaotH: Yes, I’ve been reading every single one of the critics for FOTSE and all of them are very flattering. For now I can’t really tell where we’re at in terms of exposure which is a good reason why I want to get our asses on the road so we can connect with the public and guage the impact we had. Everything is 100% self released so I’m not expecting the world but it would feel good to connect with the fans and get in the action.

You have decided to self release this album almost exclusively online, with a few select physical stores carrying it locally. Tell us about this decision. Is your relationship with The End Records entirely over? Any particular reason?
ChaotH: We parted ways with The End because we had that idea of being completely indie but we end up still working with them in some way. They are not our label now, they do not promote us nor help with finances but they do carry FOTSE and sell it on their online store with the Omega Order. We basically have the opposite business relation that we had with them for IAFA meaning that when you are on a label, you basically buy your own albums from them to a certain price. Now we sell them the new album and it’s a great way for us to make some income for many more band expenses. Indie is hard… but exciting.

Going back and listening to Utopia there are some pretty drastic stylistic changes. Has this been a concentrated effort or simply a natural evolution of the sound introduced back then?
ChaotH: Utopia was now what…. 12 years ago!! A lifetime. After Exod’s departure, the 2 remaining band members from that era are Syriak and Artagoth. Everybody else would be new blood that came in the band sometime this past decade. This album is special in the way that they were only 17-18 when they wrote it which still blows my mind to this day. Such mature muscianship and songwritting skills at such a young age. That was the foundation to a weirder, more complex and experimental turn of event that came with all the addition of the new members along the ride.

Even early on there was some pretty intense, musically complex composition going on. Obviously the more you play the more technically proficient a musician gets as time goes on. Do you feel that this has that affected the way you approach constructing a song in recent years compared to early material?
ChaotH: Yes, of course… what we did in the past will always influence what we’ll do next because you don’t have peace of mind if you didn’t spew the inspiration out. Then and only then you can step to the next stone. For example, we wanted to go crazy with IAFA and open the door as wide as possible and that’s what we did. If we didn’t put this album out and then watch it live we probably would’ve written something different with this last record. And now that we’ve done that, the next one will be different to and evolve in whatever direction we will take it. So of course your approach to writting a song changes with your personnal evolution as a musician and as a songwritter. That said, I don’t necessarily agree that a musician gets more technically proficient with the years. In fact, very often the musicians get softer and try to write softer and more ”mature” and ”posed” material as they grow up. Not that they are not better musicians than they were but simply because songwritting becomes more important than technical ability when you get older and have been fooling around with music long enough.

You guys certainly leave yourself a lot of room when it comes to what you can do musically. As in, you can pretty much do anything and it would fit with Unexpect. That must be extremely liberating, having little, or in my eyes, no boundaries or genre conventions to adhere to. Few bands can say this about themselves, despite many claiming to.
ChaotH: The actual name of the band will always justify everything we will ever do and that is indeed very liberating. The concept, if anything, will always be to do something different the next time. My favorite example for a band evolution is Radiohead. A band that started with brit-pop to go into experimental electro-jazz and they were loved for it. Incedible musical journey. Nobody can expect a band to stick to the same music their whole career. It would be sad if we didn’t evolve as musicians but also as music lovers and I can only hope that people will get it and will follow us wherever we go.

More to the point… how do you do it? Tell me about the process of recording an Unexpect release, maybe focusing on Fables. With everything that is going on in a song, it must be an immense undertaking.
ChaotH: It is but… sadly, I don’t think I have your answer. I’ve never been able to answer this one… how does UneXpecT write a song ? Maybe the reason that it sounds like it does is because we don’t have a specific technique. We all use music recording software and have personnal preproduction and we send each other tracks back and forth and then we bring a part of a song in the rehearsal space and beat the shit out of Landryx and figure out how we could twist things around. The fun thing is that everybody writes for every instrument and that always brings an interesting aspect where, I don’t end up playing what I would have usually come up with and it takes me out of my zone of comfort which is usually when a musician grows the most.

Do any of the ideas you come up with while writing ever prove to be difficult or impossible to realize once the actual recording process commences? How do you decide when a song is “finished,” that it has enough textures, enough layers.
ChaotH: Well, no ideas are to difficult, it’s really just a matter of putting it down. And a song is done when a song is done… I don’t know… still working on that…

How do you harmonize the individual song structures with overall vision of what you want the entire album to sound like?
Frederick (ChaotH): We never had an overall vision of an album I don’t think. We just put down what we have been playing with and fine-tune it until we have an album.

You do a fair amount of touring. I have seen bands with far less members and far simpler music blow it on stage. Unexpect seems like it would be a logistical nightmare. Do you guys have intensive rehearsals or is it a simpler process than that?
ChaotH: We don’t rehearse as much as we should I guess (laughs). On tour, the first show always suck, it’s a general rule… Not that it has to suck… but it usually does. The best way of getting ready for the road is to BE on the road and play a couple shows and after that, you’re set for the whole ride. As long as we don’t drink to much, we can usually pull it off pretty good. Since the departure of Exod, our live set up did become a bit more complex as we play with a laptop and some sequences and that means more wires and more everything but… it’s fun to play with a robot.

Do you have a contingency plan if, say the airline loses a ukulele, a violin or that sax that is so essential to your sound? That would probably be a pain, I don’t know if many metal bands carry a spare ukulele.
ChaotH: We don’t… it’s all effects. That would suck if Borboen would lose his violin but he always has it very close to his heart and carry it with him on the plane so, I don’t see that happenning.

You have shared the stage with some prestigious acts. I recall reading Dream Theater, one of the more notable progressive bands in the scene today was particularly impressed with what you do. Do you have any artists you have connected with in particular on tour?
ChaotH: Well, Mike Portnoy would definetly be one of them. We owe him a lot and I sure wish our paths are gonna cross again. When a name like that tells you his fond of your music, it’s very gratifying and let you know you are doing something right. Other bands we connected with would be… well… pretty much every single band we’ve ever toured with. We usually make friends pretty easily on the road and we love everybody with our warm french canadian love to name a few: Augury, The Faceless, Tub Ring, BigElf, Nile, Trail of Tears, Sigh, After Forever and so many bands from Quebec that we played with over the years.

I have yet to see you guys play live, but I can imagine there are some interesting reactions from those unfamiliar with your work. What are some of the common responses you get while performing in a new area or on a bill with bands that may not be as unusual as you are.
ChaotH: Stares. So many times I thought the crowd was bored out of their mind until we get off stage and they shake our hands saying that it was the best show they’ve ever seen. That’s the thing, people have to watch and there is so much time changes that it’s hard to get a jump-up-and-down feel going. Maybe more with this new record…

I have a demand. Come to California. Now. With Emperor, or Ihsahn. That said, I have a canned question I must have answered: Dream tour, any band, any style?
ChaotH: TOOL, METALLICA, DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, MIKE PATTON, BTBAM, pffhh… I don’t know really… just a good prog metal line-up and a hundred dates and friends and packed shows…. yep… that’s the dream tour. But… to be honest… we’ve done the dream tour already (no pun intended). The Progressive Nation Tour in 2009 was something out of a movie. It was absolutely unbelievable to play all the biggest venues all accross Europe with the biggest prog metal act on the planet. Doesn’t get much better than that. I bless life to have given us these 6 weeks. The road, The beers, The bus, The fun, The friends, The fans, The shows… and fucking Bruge…
I’d do it again tomorow.

I have noticed you guys haven’t yet had any “guest spots” from say, label mates or established bands. Are there any artists you would be interested in collaborating with in the context of Unexpect?
ChaotH: It will happen probably on the next record but… not telling….. Mainly because we don’t know yet hehe but it is definetly something I’d want to do.

Shifting gears a bit, some of my favorite bands of the last couple decades have become inactive or in some cases called it quits largely as a result of the state of the music industry and the lack of financial sustainability. Do you guys feel affected at all by this, being a relatively new band that has spent a good portion of its existence in this environment?
ChaotH: Oh yes,of course… If we’d all live comfortably out of our music, we wouldn’t wait 5 years to get an album out but the reality is that we have to have more than music in our lives to be able to continue to do that. Exod’s departure is a good example of that. This constant tension of juggling with your life and the band sacrifies is not for everybody.

As is pretty obvious at this point, you guys have an immense variety of musical influences that stretch out across the board. Why do Unexpect? You could go for something more commercial, like country or maybe pop… I’m sure I heard country somewhere in the mix at some point.
ChaotH: I don’t think we’ll go country anytime soon… anything but that…. I think that there is enough country in the world without us toying with that. And we want to make music that we love and that challenges us as musicians and songwritters so… I don’t think pop would be our avenue.

Winding down, I must present the usual inquiry about the immediate and long-term future of the band. What’s next?
ChaotH: Some dates in Quebec and… I don’t know… some more shows. We’re waiting for offers. I wish more than anything to go back to the States and fly the Interstates again with the Unexpect mobil.

Thanks for your time, are there any words/thoughts for readers and fans?
ChaotH: Yes, here’s some homework about was probably is the most important question of our time, research it, discuss it, have an opinion: The Disclosure Project

Oh and… see you on the road!

Interview by Marc Garrison

For more information, go to unexpect.com