From the Philly Rock Guide, May 1994 Course of Empire by Lorraine Gennaro Everybody's pissed off. The Zoo Records publicist is pissed because she flew a journalist all the way from Philadelphia to Dallas for an interview, and the band is being less than cooperative. The journalist is pissed because it's been raining all day, and on top of that the band is dragging their collective butts on this interview. The band is pissed because nothing has gone right since they arrived at the club at 6:30 a.m. to oversee the lighting set-up, inluding 28 hi-tech Varilights. Twenty-eight? For a club this size, three would be overkill; 28 is enough for a Pink Floyd stadium gig. Drummer Chad Lovell seems the most annoyed with the situation. He thinks the lights are unnecessary and definite overkill. But he's going along with it anyway for his friend who works for the lighting company, because he's doing the Dallas-based Course of Empire a big favor for this, the CD release party for their major label debut, Initiation. As odd as 28 Varilights may seem for a club this size, this is a band with a taste for the grandiose and unusual. Take for instance that they have not one but two drummers. According to Lovell, the idea of two drummers came from original drummer Anthony Headley, who was really into tribalism and the Kodo drummers of Japan. Lovell, who had been giving Headley drumming lessons, was eventually asked to join Course of Empire as a second drummer. "Once we started playing around with the double drum thing, the double drums were really cool. It seemed to work for our sound. So when Anthony left the band, I wanted to find another drummer to keep it going," states Lovell. Enter Michael Jerome. Lovell and Jerome are responsible for the thunderous, tribal rhythms that give Course of Empire its colossal doomsday sound. The band formed in 1988, and in 1990 released their self-titled debut on Carpe Diem. With two drummers and a fresh, original sound, Course of Empire quickly became a big draw on the Dallas music scene. With a blend of eerie guitars, tribal rhythms, and thought-provoking lyrics, it didn't take long for major labels to catch onto what this band's rapidly growing cult following already knew. With gigs bordering on performance art, this band could put on a great live show. Zoo Entertainment signed them in 1992 and then remastered and re-released their debut. Early on the band often distributed drums to fans at shows. It was during one of these audience participation drum sessions that the album's first single, "Infested," was conceived. Amidst Mike Graff's frenzied guitars and Lovell, Jerome and bassist Paul Semrad's heavy, syncopated rhythms, vocalist Vaughn Stevenson heralds a prophecy of apocalyptic images including a chat with Charles Darwin. "Look Darwin straight in the eye, he says evolve or die/Like bees to the hive, so must we to survive/This planet is infested, America's infested." The adrenalized, industrial-powered, angry stampede is the perfect representation of Course of Empire. There's no denying a heavy Killing Joke influence. With songs steeped in dramatic urgency, Initiation addresses every aspect of being. Musically and lyrically, all 11 tracks have a definite ethereal, haunted quality that more often than not borders on the bizarre. The title track is nothing more than recorded air. What sounds like a cross between guitar distortion and a ghost in the machine is actually nothing more than the product of recording air through an effects unit. Lovell says the track was an accident. "I went over to the board set-up just to goof around, and the effects were all hooked up wrong, and that song started coming out. It was radically loud, and it was just the microphone picking up air. So we just hit record. We realized that was the sonic representation of all the ideas we were into. The great thing about it is it's the apex of the album, even from our own interpersonal philosophies; that was was far greater than anything we could come up with ourselves from some linear line of thinking. It's beyond anything we could accomplish as human beings," states Lovell. Lovell says the band watched Hellraiser prior to recording Initiation because they wanted to get some really terrifying imagery in their heads. The stategy worked, as evidenced by, particularly, "Minions," a simple blend of eerie guitar riffs and a menacing drum roll, with Stevenson chanting in the background. Downright spooky, it's not the sort of tune for playing late at night, home alone. On The Cure-sounding "Apparition," Stevenson sings, "Reeling from hallucination/I chatted with an apparition/Breathing deep I recognized him, held on to and empathized him/Life weighed heavily upon him, just as he has done to me/I swelled until I burst, and you fell down to earth." Stevenson likes to keep his lyrics shrouded in secrecy. Ask him to explain a song's inspiration and he squirms. "I'm always reluctant... I hate to be... I'm not trying to be difficult, honestly, I just... you know, there have been several times when I really like a song, and I have my own kind of idea what it's about. And then I find out it's about something else in particular, and it just kind of bothers me." It's hard to tell whether he's just being guarded or difficult. Because of a highly percussive sound and use of effects and tape loops, Course of Empire is usually mistaken for industrial, but digging deeper, the sound is much more musical. "The energy behind industrial was really good, but a lot of the vibe for most of it seemed to be really negative," says Stevenson. "We always wanted to be a more organic version of that, where we play real instruments, still going toe to toe with the energy level but trying to have a more positive vibe instead of this hateful, negative vibe. I don't really think industrial can go much beyond where it's gone now - this kind of just disenfranchised, nothing phases me, nothing shocks me. It seems like to me that vibe has gone as far as it can go. We just wanted to be on that playing field, but an answer to bands like that."