Blackened Horde; How did the band get started?
Zach: As some people may know, the band started because I was writing lots of music by myself and making demos of the songs, the first proper one being The Door. I asked Ben Bertrand, my then-bandmate in Whispers in the Maze, to play bass on the demo. From there we wanted to be able to present the music as a live show, we got another guitar player and a drummer, and we began playing shows as Messora.
Blackened Horde: What kind of music do you play?
Zach: No one seems to really agree on what it is that we play and how we sound, I just call it progressive death metal because it’s such a wide umbrella term and we must fit somewhere inside of it.
Blackened Horde: How has the fan response been?
Zach: The existence of fans alone is a godsend, and the response to The Door from said fans has been better than I could ever ask for. I’m extremely pleased with how the album and the band overall have been received by people in Canada as well as abroad.
Blackened Horde: Where did the band name come from?
Zach: I wanted to call the project Messorem, which is Latin for the word Reaper. There are however already a few bands named Messorem, so I couldn’t really get away with using the name. I still liked the sound of it so I just changed it up a little bit and ended up with Messora. It really doesn’t mean anything, I’m not trying to make a connection to the word reaper or anything like that.
Blackened Horde: Introduce the band members and what they do in the band.
Zach: As I mentioned in the beginning, the band started as a solo project and remains so to this day, save for the presence of live members. Those members are Ben Bertrand on Bass, Graham Murphy on Guitars and Joey Larivière on Drums. Ben and Joey played on The Door.
Blackened Horde: Who writes the music? Lyrics?
Zach: I am the one who writes all of the music and lyrics, however Ben wrote his bass lines for The Door.
Blackened Horde: And where do the lyric ideas come from?
Zach: The lyrical concept of The Door took me a long time to straighten out, but the general idea and key themes were inspired by me having had frequent dissociative episodes at the time, partly due to drug use. The album isn’t about drugs or anything like that, but the idea of not feeling like yourself and wanting an escape are central themes of the record.
Blackened Horde: How many albums/CD’s have you released?
Zach: Only one so far, The Door.
Blackened Horde: Tell me about some of the songs on the latest CD?
Zach: I’ll talk about the songs that I call the “inner bookends” of the album, being the second and second to last songs Tethered and Untethered. They were both meant to be interlude-type songs to introduce a calmer atmosphere in between some of the heavy songs. Tethered is a solo guitar piece, originally written for classical guitar but I ended up opting for the sound of the electric guitar. Untethered ended up developing into a more fully realized song as opposed to an interlude, incorporating sung vocals, layered guitars, acoustic guitar and spoken word, but the basic idea remains the same. Them being the only two interludes and being placed in the “inner bookend” positions, I thought that it would be fitting for their names to match.
Blackened Horde: Do you have any side projects?
Zach: I don’t have any side projects myself. The live members I mentioned previously all play in other bands: Ben plays bass in Whispers in the Maze and Misshapen and does vocals in Projekt Gothenburg, Graham plays guitar and vocals in Serene Dark and Ominous eclipse, and Joey plays drums with Domination and Maou Mindu.
Blackened Horde: Who are some of your musical influences?
Zach: There are starting to be too many to count, but I can talk about the ones that influenced the sound of The Door. It’s no secret that Opeth is the band that I hold closest to my heart and they probably remain my most prominent influence. I don’t think that The Door sounds like Opeth all that much, but the form and structure are somewhat similar. Vocally I take a lot of influence from Mikael Akerfeldt, but also Phil Bozeman from Whitechapel. Lamb of God, Slayer and Gojira had a big impact on the way that I conceived lots of musical structures and the way that I would string them together. There’s also the residual memory of Pink Floyd which is always in the back of my mind and close to my heart, influencing everything that I do in one way or another.
Blackened Horde: Which current bands?
Zach: Current bands that have made an impact on me and influenced me would include King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Ghost, Ignominy (friends of mine from Montréal) and Daughters. Not really an influence, but I’m also really into this Belarussian synth-pop band called Molchat Doma.
Blackened Horde: What is the band like when you play live?
Zach: There are lights, smoke, makeup and flashy clothes. The lights and smoke nearly render the makeup and clothes redundant, but it can’t hurt to keep them. I always wanted Messora to be a “local band” that stood out and went the extra mile to put on a really cool and elaborate live show.
Blackened Horde: Have you guys ever played in another country?
Zach: We have not played in any other country than Canada, unfortunately. The bright side is that we’re located in a nice place with plenty of cities nearby which have great metal scenes and are great to play.
Blackened Horde: How big of a crowd do you normally get?
Zach: This is sort of like being asked how big of a fish I caught… I’d say if Messora is headlining we get between 40 and 75 people, and the last few shows we played were definitely on the higher end. We’ve obviously played to bigger crowds when opening for big bands, like Carach Angren for example.
Blackened Horde: How is the crowd response when you play?
Zach: No matter the size of crowd, people always seem really into the music when we play, which I find very rewarding. It’s exceptionally satisfying when you see people who already have an appreciation and knowledge of the band coming to shows. For example, at the release show for The Door I could see plenty of people mouthing the lyrics I was singing and air drumming the fills perfectly in time with Joey.
Blackened Horde: What do you think of the US Metal scene?
Zach: I can’t say that I’m very familiar with the US scene in an intimate way because I haven’t ever been to any local shows or anything like that in the country. I’m obviously a fan of plenty of bands from the US but I don’t know if they’re necessarily representative of the respective scenes from which they came. I can say however that I’m a fan of a little cluster of bands who come from the east coast hardcore/experimental scene who share a similar fan-base, like Converge, Dillinger, ISIS, Swans and Daughters.
Blackened Horde: What do you think of the Overseas scenes?
Zach: As I said with the US scene, I don’t know enough about what’s current overseas for me to give my opinion on it.
Blackened Horde: What are some of your new favorite black metal/death metal bands?
Zach: I’ve said it before in interviews before but my friends from Montréal have a band called Ignominy and they make the most legitimately dark, dissonant and heavy death metal I’ve ever heard. They’re one of my favorite modern bands and it’s not only because they’re local to me and I’ve played shows with them. I also really like what Imperial Triumphant are doing, it’s very creative and I think that metal needs to be continually exploring new sounds.
Blackened Horde: When do you guys plan on writing any new material?
Zach: I’m never not writing honestly. I don’t want to say too much and need to live up to it later but there is plenty of material to come, some of it to come pretty soon.
Blackened Horde: What does the future hold for the band??
Zach: There are going to be releases in the near future as I just mentioned. I don’t know when Messora will get to play live again, so I think that that will still be up in the air for a while. There is also a collaborative type of project between myself and other musicians from Montréal that is currently in development. It’s not a collaborative album or band or anything like that, I’ll just leave it at that.
Contact them at:
https://www.facebook.com/MessoraBand/
