In Waves is not just the debut album of Fall off Leviathan. It is an immersive journey that connects them to nature, at times it is minimalistic and serene, beautiful in its harmony. At others tumultuous and powerful, savage, and primal. It is a true connection to the ocean and its might and beauty that has created Fall of Leviathan.
Emma: At the start of the project, our main inspiration was the novel “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville. Then we decided to open the window of inspiration to the seas and oceans because it is such a vast and fascinating world that there is a lot to say about it. The parallels to be drawn with the terrestrial world or life in general also work.
David: He haunts me with his absence. It humbles me because it highlights the fragility of
human beings and represents the limitless strength of nature. It also represents.
unconsciousness, the fact of diving deeply to discover oneself.
Régis: We all have different connections with the ocean in the group. Some are drawn to it, others fear it. In fact, I think we all feel a bit of both in the band. It's true that living in
Switzerland, we're not used to seeing it very often. But for me, for example, it's a need to go to the seaside whenever I get the chance. Its mysteries, its power and immensity, both on the surface and in depth, all this attracts us and inspires us a lot in our music.
Loïc: For me, the ocean is the materialization of several human emotions. Calm, sadness,
rage, anger, nostalgia, hope or even fear. When it comes to putting layers, melodies, or noise. on our compositions, I try to know exactly what feeling we are in so that my playing sticks as closely as possible to the message that the music wishes to convey, thus reflecting itself. in the ocean waves.
Marc: Finally, each of these emotions, each of these appropriations means that we imbue
our music with it, making it oscillate between all these representations.
The decision to use Leviathan? Is it the lurking beast that is also used to metaphorically
describe your music and its chaos?
Emma: Yes, completely but it's also a nod to the novel "Moby Dick" when Captain Ahab
alludes to his worst enemy as Leviathan.
Régis: This is where we began to draw inspiration from this mythical creature. I think it
represents the music we play quite well. The Leviathan is a harbinger of cataclysm, of the
end of the world, but the fact that its fall is mentioned in the end evokes hope. This duality between light and shadow, hope and despair, chaos, and rebirth, is central to our music.
David: Leviathan represents the struggle between balance and chaos. Our music reflects thejourney to achieve serenity through chaos but its goal is to tend towards light.
The decision to leave it a primarily instrumental work? Were voices not necessary to the
emotion the music conveyed?
Loïc: It is the desire of the project to offer something instrumental. The music therefore takes a completely different place, from accompanying the text to the role of narrator. The singing lines and the will of the lyrics are not present on an instrumental piece, it is up to the music to take up these elements thus giving more richness and possibility on the harmonies, the atmosphere, the structures, and the possibilities of arrangement. It is also an environment that the listener can appropriate more freely and thus interpret the work according to their desires, their moods and their feelings.
Régis: I think it was an obvious choice for us to compose instrumental music. Very often,
vocals are used as the central element of a piece, leading and guiding the audience's
listening, with the music only there as an accompaniment. We didn't want to offer our
listeners a ready-made route. As our music is quite contemplative, we wanted the listener to be able to immerse themselves in it and take our tracks and make of them what they will, imagining their own narratives, images, and colours. The fact that there are no vocals helps a lot to produce this effect.
David: Not putting vocals on our music allows it to remain free and not be fixed in a style.
The idea of musically capturing the ocean and its might and peace? Is it a duality that crosses over into other parts of life?
Loïc: The basic idea was to echo Herman Melville’s novel “Moby dick.” Certain pieces were
directly inspired by the book and served as a basis for reflection for the rest of the album.
The theme having been established, we moved away from the basic concept to let our
creativity and our imagination come up with a coherent sequel.
Emma: The oceans can take on all possible shapes and sizes, making them an
inexhaustible source of inspiration. It can evoke vacations as well as a shipwreck. These
dualities are very interesting.
Régis: I believe this duality runs through every part of our lives, and not just us as a group,
but every single person living on this earth. Everything is never black and white, that's the
essence of life. We have moments of great chaos and others when all is peaceful. Our
music is the image of our lives, even if when we compose, we don't deliberately try to reflect that. It's just in us, and it comes out in our music.
Waves crosses the musical spectrum. Was it just inspiration that created the music rather
than trying to tie it to a genre?
Régis: If I go back to the starting point, we had a very clear desire to compose instrumental music, mixing very melodious and harmonious elements with others that were, on the contrary, very saturated, and dissonant. From there, we naturally gravitated towards a style somewhere between post-rock and post-metal, but that's also because these were two styles we listened to a lot, of course. The maritime aspect only came later, even though it had been in the back of our minds from the start. It has to be said that these styles of music lend themselves quite well to the illustration of maritime themes. But when we started out, I don't think we had any ambition to create a very definite style, or to make songs or a record about the ocean. We just wanted to play the music we love and enjoy ourselves.
Emma: I don't listen to much post-rock, and I found it interesting to try my hand at a genre that I don't know much about. Our common inspiration means that we can all appropriate the music and try to put our emotions and our playing into it.
Marc: It’s undeniably post-rock, post-metal music even if we didn't compose it thinking that it had to sound like that. But for someone who doesn't know these categories of music, it simply becomes contemplative music and that suits us perfectly.
The use of minimalism and grand soundscapes to create each individual chapter? Like a
movement or tide?
David: That's it. I like to tell myself that we have an organic mode of composition.
Régis There's a lot of movement on the record, which is why we called it In Waves. The
order of the tracks has been thought out in terms of intensity, to recreate the movement of waves. We start slowly, then build up the intensity, then go down, then up again, ending with a dramatic conclusion.
Is Red Bay a real place?
Régis: Yes, it's a village and a fishing port on the east coast of Canada, and also a former
whaling station that was very active between the mid-16th and early 17th centuries. It's a
place that evokes the peace and security of a harbour, sheltered from storms. But there's also something dramatic about this place, where the destinies of men and whales were sealed, giving rise to much suffering and death. This duality hovers over the track Red Bay, which is both very gentle and not at all peaceful.
Emma: In my opinion, Red Bay has two sources of inspiration. On the one hand, yes, it is a
real place. It is a fishing village in Labrador. It was a place where whaling was in full swing at the time. It is also a place where many ships sank, and many sailors died. There are red
granite cliffs there which would have given the name to the village.
But for us it is also a way of referring to barbaric rituals like Grindadrap (Viking tradition)
which still take place in some places in the world where unfortunately the massacre of
whales and other marine mammals is authorized. Every year thousands of animals are
massacred in bays and their blood turns the water of the sea red. We find these traditions
very sad, especially since no one really talks about them.
What can we learn from the ocean and its cyclic nature? Is it the only permanence when
everything landbound seems temporary?
Emma: Resilience I would say. Despite all the shocks that our planet has suffered and that
the oceans undergo every day, they are still there. They regenerate as best as possible. And despite everything we have inflicted on the world, the oceans will continue and will revive once Humanity is wiped out.
Loïc: More than learning something from the oceans, we experience its moods, calm and
soothing, violent, and destructive. We never stop learning from nature, and it is the same for the oceans. When everything is destroyed, and every good thing has disappeared from this earth, the ocean will still be there oscillating between each wave movement as if to remind us that we are not eternal and not essential to nature whatever it may be.
Régis: Personally, I don't believe in permanence, either on land or at sea. There are cycles, but they too are in motion and evolving, whether through natural phenomena or human intervention. The ocean, too, is bound to evolve. Will it be for the better? I'm not sure...
However, if the ocean were to retain something permanent, it would perhaps be its
fascination for mankind.
David: Wisdom is one of the keys to happiness and accepting this impermanence is
essential. However, having our album present on a physical recording etches it in time.
Will the ocean theme continue in the future? or are other forces inspiring you to create
something else?
Régis: Who knows... Why not, as long as the theme inspires us and allows us to create new songs. After all, I don't think we feel stuck in this theme just because we're called Fall of Leviathan. The Leviathan is a sea creature, but it could just as easily be an asteroid from deep space or an earthquake from the depths of our planet. What seems fairly certain to me is that, should we tire of telling stories about the ocean, the themes that will inspire us in the future will no doubt always have a link with nature, be it the forest, space, the mountains, and always these questions of duality between shadow and light and chaos and peace.
Final thoughts?
Marc: Finalizing this record, as we were telling you a story, was an incredible adventure. We want to thank everyone who took their time to immerse himself into it.
Tops 6 albums of all time?
Emma: Paranoid - Black Sabbath
Loïc: White Poney - Deftones
Régis: The Dark Side of The Moon – Pink Floyd
David: Paranoid - Black Sabbath
Marc: Times of Grace - Neurosis