Ov Dust
Interview/photo by Kim Stock

Who came up with the name Ov Dust, and what does it mean? Describe your music.
Damage-I came up with the name. It means absolutely nothing. Riott asked me to join up, we were looking for a name...the name generally fit the music really, really well. So we decided to take it and use it towards this.
Raath: The name "Ov Dust" to me, it sounds natural, like leaves, and dust...like nature, kinda...earthy...Our music is definitely some form of black metal, just our version of it, w/out all the silly makeup and spikes.
Damage: Dark, heavy, black thrash...

At the risk of labeling you, whom would you most likely compare your sound to?
Raath: And at the risk of sounding like the arrogant curmudgeon that I am, I will answer that question with this: Us.

Who writes most of the lyrics?
Raath: We all did in the beginning. When we had only three songs completed and we only had three members; Riott, Damage, and me, we didn't feel we should have a specific lyricist at the time so we all took a shot at it so we all picked a song and wrote lyrics for that song. With the current configuration of the band, the writing process has changed somewhat. We have a main vocalist now, Rage. He writes the words.

So you wrote the music first and...
Raath: Yes! It was almost like a homework assignment at the start cause it was like, "ok, you pick this song and GO!" When we got Rage in the band, I myself stopped writing lyrics. My reasoning was simply that he's the voice of Ov Dust, perhaps he should be writing about the things that he is going to be screeching about later... get some venom in his message, some passion, ja?

What are the themes?
Raath: It differs from song to song, for instance, "Eternal Return" would be about what, Riott?
Riott: It's about the different cycles that humanity goes through. Each generation has different attributes that lend to...
Raath: I thought that this was rock n' roll, not math class!
Riott: That's why I didn't want to get into it man! (all laugh)
Raath: Most of the things that I contribute to Ov Dust in the form of words or themes are almost always the results of reading a great story or seeing a great film. I don't write so much about personal issues as I do about the impressions I get from an amazing tale, be it fiction or non.
Here is a verse from the song "Red Dust". Can you tell us a little about it's meaning?

"Red Dust/dead sound
dry joints/the body is aching
under the eye of a laughing sun
indifferent/raw
Oasis scene/from the hills a watcher
gazing into the pool/the future reveals it face."

Raath: I got the idea for the words to this one after I read "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury, yet what I wanted the listener to picture through the lyrics was a human, crash-landed and all alone on Mars, a Mars that is saturated with the ghosts of many generations of the race that thrived there once before. As the human adapts to the isolation of his condition, the trapped energy of the spirits in the soil begins to commingle with his own genes, accessing his mind and heart thru his dreaming, so in time he becomes the first being in the new race to inhabit Mars, a hybrid of the 'martian' energies and a human being. The song closes with this new being watching a woman arrive as it did years before, as a stranded human, and she's gazing into that same pool, which is a pool of water.... and of course she's seeing the future, as the new being had so many years prior to her arrival: It's her, as it was also him, many years ago!

All of you are in other bands that sound very different from Ov Dust; what inspired you to do something in this genre of metal?
Raath: Basically, Ov Dust is pretty much the equivalent of the way you felt when you were a kid with a guitar w your friends in your garage, that solidarity of youth and the violent music that we loved back then and still do now! We still love all those old records we were playing.... I mean, I was 16 learning Slayer and Celtic Frost riffs, saying to myself "this is f'ng sick!"... that excitement that I got from learning "Angel Of Death" all the way through w/out stopping when I was much younger is the same level of excitement that I have for what we do today, savvy? Lately, another act that shaped my playing was Darkthrone from Norway...Riott kept giving me albums by this one particular black metal duo and I can remember being very unimpressed at first, saying "this is f'ng ridiculous, the production is awful, it's so tinny and screechy, these guys have go to be drunk.."
Raath: ...but he finally caught me with this one album called, "Hate Them" and it was kinda up there with like, Celtic Frost's "Morbid Tales" or Emperor and bands like that. My influences lean more towards the Norwegian black metal...as far as that goes.
So what are some of the other influences?
Damage: I like everything from Motorhead to Sex Pistols to Testament.
Raath: Some of the newer artists that I enjoy listening to are Wolves in the Throne Room, Mastodon, Storm of Light, Sunn O))), Earth, Jessie Sykes....
Rage: One thing I can say about all these guys is that no matter what our past is, or our influences are, as a collective, it's amazing...the music that comes out of us. They'll just play a part, Riott will pick up a beat, Crash will start playing and I'll just start screaming and it all just kinda fits in.
Riott: The song writing process is like us getting in a room and jamming different parts and then usually, Raath will take it home and then make this little arrangement out of the craziness and then bring it back in for fine tuning. We are comfortable with Raath handling that part of Ov Dust.
Raath: We've kinda written whole songs and shelved them before...we say "that's a creative riff, wow, we can do that?" and I'll take it apart and bring it back in to be used in something that REALLY has the balls and passion to be totally epic to us....compositional recycling!

You have a 3 track demo recorded now ("A Disturbance In The Goat Herd") What are your plans for the future?
Riott: Definitely record a full-length, which will be titled "With The Heart Of The Sun In My Jaws The Light Above Goes Out For Good". .....more shows…
Raath: Our music is very abrasive.... its not Converge or Pig Destroyer, yet it has its proprietary moments for a band that’s into sort of a splinter genre, black metal... Although at our last show the people that came out to see us were very appreciative of the group as a whole and I know that most of the crowd don't even know who Darkthrone or Emperor are yet for our second show and it came off really well, surprisingly… Rage is very unpredictable as far as what he's gonna do on stage....walking around, screaming like the Wild Ride itself, a foot away from someone on the floor.... classic. We had the place set up to look like a dirty humid basement... no house lights, just these bare white bulbs onstage and us. We wanted to make people feel disgusting, exposed.... usually, people are in a club and its all dark and they can hide out, be someone else, solicit others when they are this someone else, if you're into that sort of thing.. we wanted people to see the ugly, pathetic humans that they were underneath the drinks and babble.. it worked... I had people telling me that the combination of our super screechy heavy music and the harsh lighting made them feel filthy and penetrated....good job, I say!

Any last words?
Raath: When I said that we're doing something that nobody else is doing, in this area, I don't wanna sound like we're exclusive. We're not above it as much as we are removed from what I see most metal bands doing in New York State and it could be that black metal is either too stupid or too intense for them yet I don't care about anything like that. F*ck All. These are my friends and I love writing black metal songs with them. They are just really good guys... except for Damage....
Damage: I hate 'em all. I just show up to play cuz I love black metal.

So, wait...a band without egos??
Raath: For the most part, surprisingly, yeah. They may have them, or I may have one...
Crash: But nobody cares, so it doesn't matter.
Raath: Nobody tells anybody what to do... as a rule. It ruins everything when people start claiming that they are an 'artist' or something like that...who f*cking cares? What, are you Prince? HA. F*ck ALL! Ov Dust is too damn fun to worry about the other guy having an ego. Yet, like any band of passionate maniacs, there is a certain kind of tension...it's there, but it's kept in check....Ov Dust is a lot of fun and it's deadly serious at the same time...it just comes out that way, naturally. See for yourselves! ?