Xanthochroid

Style and lyrical themes

Xanthochroid combines many styles into their own sound, taking influence from bands like Emperor, Opeth, Moonsorrow, Wintersun, and many others.

Through their studio albums, the band tells the story of a fantastical universe created by front-man Sam Meador, who wanted to combine the desire to create moving stories with a love for pagan mythology. This imagined world called Etymos is the context for a long power struggle between Thanos and Ereptor, two brothers who are heir to a deceased king (King Xanthochroid, the king of the northern realm) fighting over the rightful kingship of the land of Septentria. Xanthochroid is the formal name of the relic Xanthos, the rightful ruler of Septentria and the holy city of Thule.

Thanos is immortal, and in Etymos he is called a "Relic". Ereptor, who is mortal, has forcefully claimed the throne in the holy city of Thule, and it is Thanos' destiny to dethrone him. The crown that Ereptor wears carries a weight he cannot bear; causing him to become weak and sickly, and ultimately covered in painful boils and a myriad of other illnesses, yet he continues to rule until Thanos comes to dethrone him. Instead of killing Ereptor, Thanos banishes him. Ereptor, disfigured and alone, seeks to trade his soul away in exchange for eternal life and beauty, traveling to the Putrid Sound where his mind is lost to the spirit of the swamp. When Thanos hears of his brother's fate; he realizes that he is alone.

While the story was originally presented as a side aspect of the group's 2010 EP Iced, In Extremis, it gradually became the focus of their music, their 2011 EP Incultus further developing the mythos. In the band's debut album, Blessed He With Boils, they expand the mythology behind the music, as well as the depth of the complex composition of earlier releases.

In further releases the band plans to deal with the events leading up to those outlined in "Blessed He With Boils" and "Incultus".

Origins

Back when Vallefuoco alias "JailBait" was eleven, he wrote music in a pop-punk band called Seekers Fade with old friends of his. Vallefuoco used to work as a sound engineer for a punk label called Gitbam Records. He is now the lead guitarist in Xanthochroid and the frontman of Godbless Thee, Mooseheart, a progressive rock project which he created when he was only 14 years old. He also records his own music and others' at both Hear No Evil Studio in Orange, California, and his home studio, Mooseheart Studios. Apart from music, he is passionate about photography and cinematography, and films all the band videos.

Earl started music when he was about 5 or 6. His mother taught him piano though he lost interest until 6th grade, when he started drumming in his school's jazz band and joined his first rock band. He seemed to have a natural affinity towards music and he spent his time learning instruments and writing music. After high school he went to Saddleback College and studied composition with Dr. Norman Weston. It is there where he met the band's founder. Meador offered him to drum in Xanthochroid when they lost their drummer. Earl plays several instruments, like the Irish whistle, flute, acoustic guitar or drums. He works as a composer at Broken Circle Studios, and he also does composition and sound engineering for Erthe and Axen Studios, Xanthochoid's label. He became a music teacher at DanMansMusic where Meador also teaches.

Meador has been playing piano since he was nine. His parents had him take lessons at a young age. At the end of high school, he started to study music theory and decided that writing music was what he wanted to do. Today Meador defines himself as a composer, arranger, pianist, guitarist and vocalist. He also plays several instruments including accordion, piano, and acoustic guitar, for which he became famous due to his "slap guitar" or percussive guitar technique. He is a music teacher along with Matt in DanMansMusic, where they teach classes on guitar, piano, drums, bass, and flute. He and Earl do all the vocals for the band. Meador sings with clean voice and also death growls. His growling tone is high and he prefers to vocalize clearly, a technique also used by other respected singers in the metal community as Ville Sorvali, Ihsahn or Angela Gossow.

Huizenga, the bassist and Vallefuoco's cousin, works at an insurance firm owned by Brent's father, and Bodenhoefer works at a local sandwich shop.

Early years

In 2005, Meador's friend Sean Culver introduced his drum set over to his house because he wasn’t allowed to play it at his parents house. At first they jammed on their own versions of certain video game themes, and shortly thereafter his neighbor Harrison Reese brought his guitar over. Then Culver asked his brother William Culver III to play bass. It wasn’t long after they had been jamming a couple of times per week and writing authentic songs. The composition of the music has always been made first and foremost with them four. Band founder Meador claims that by 2010 they found their "sound" as most people know it today.

There had been a lot of line-up changes in the band. Culver joined the Army in 2006, the year Meador began to develop the Xanthochroid "lore". Reese and William were still in the band, as well as old guitarist Chris Levack, so they were in need of a drummer. Earl, the current drummer/sound engineer, joined the band when guitarist Levack left, and later, Reese left to continue his schooling. Now they needed two guitarists. Brent Vallefuoco auditioned and was instantly accepted into the band, and then got his friend David Bodenhoeffer in for an audition. Vallefuoco and Bodenhoeffer are the youngest members of the band.

Incultus EP (2011)

Their first single "Iced, In Extremis" was launched in 2010, followed by their EP Incultus, released in 2011 thanks to Matt's production expertise. Directly after that, they started recording Blessed He With Boils. At that point, William Culver III also left the band to finish his schooling and Vallefuoco brought in his cousin Bryan Huizenga on bass.

The album included an 8bit version of the first track, "The Last Relic of Axen", as a recognition of the influence that video games have had in the development of the mythos and music of the band.

In just one week's time, they achieved #1 on the daily metal charts and #2 on the weekly metal charts of Road Runner Records sing me to page.

The year couldn't end better for the band as they played as supporting band with the legendary Mayhem, along with other bands like Keep of Kalessin, Abigail Williams and others at the Galaxy Theater in Santa Ana, California, on November the 26th.

Blessed He With Boils LP (2012)

The band was not quite satisfied with the release of their previous EP "Incultus" in 2011, since they had put so much work into it but wasn't getting much recognition, so they started recording their next album, Blessed He With Boils, at the end of 2011.

Earl and Meador were working on some new material almost as soon as they released the EP. The idea was to record a full-length album titled "Blessed He With Boils", a song that old guitarist Harrison Reese had started to write several years ago. Although the recording took almost a year, Meador had been working on songs like "Deus Absconditus" and "Leper's Prospect" for as many as four years, so when the album was finished, he confessed:

[...] what a long, arduous, yet incredibly rewarding task it was recording and writing this entire album. It is our crowning achievement as a band, and continues to surpass our expectations as each new piece of the puzzle comes together.

[...] The last year producing this record has been a huge journey for all of us, and to be finally unveiling our creation which we have been so close to for so long now.

The album was sent to be mastered by Jens Bogren, notable in the metal community for his work on the albums of Opeth, Katatonia, and many others. Then it was set for release on December 21, 2012, in the so-called "doomsday", according to the Mayan calendar.

The artwork of the album cover, T-shirts and other merchandising was made by artist Natacha Nielsen.

Gigs in 2012

As well as producing the new album, the band was busy booking gigs. On March 2, they played at the Riff Haus in the release show for the "Maleficent" album of band Madrost, with which they were playing again in April 28 of the same year, due to the big success of their previous gig.

In May 5 they played at Cinco de Bradstock festival in Lake Elsinore. Six days later, on May 11, they were playing with Nekrogoblikon, Ana Kefr, The Manx, DJ Darcy and others at the Old Towne Pub. Later on, in August 4 they were at The Kosher Koncert Series at The Vibe with their long time friends Ana Kefr, as well as Nekrogoblikon, SANGRE and more.

If the big hit of 2011 was playing with Mayhem, for sure the big hit of 2012 was opening for Finnish traditional folk metal pioneer, Korpiklaani, in their "Manala North American Tour" on September 13, which also featured other important bands in the pagan metal scene like Moonsorrow, Tyr and Metsatöll at the Observatory (former Galaxy).

The year finished with three other concerts in Cobalt Cafe Canoga Park with Nekrgoblikon on September 27, Through These Gates at The Doll Hut - Anaheim on September 29, and with VENGEANCE: The Condemned to Suffer Tour on December 10.

XanthoChristmas

For the release of their album, the band recorded one video per day showing their activities for 21 days starting on December the first and ending on the album release date. They called it "21 Days Of Xanthochristmas".

Wintersun Cover

On December 19, few days before the release of "Blessed He With Boils", the band released a Wintersun's "Land of Snow and Sorrow" folk version cover that helped the band to be known worldwide, as Wintersun shared the video on their official Facebook page wall. The cover has surpassed the number of views of the original Wintersun video and the band was praised for its quality. Many of their new fans knew of the existence of the band through it.

Wish come true tour (2013)

Although Meador was worried because he had found that December was the worst month to release a new album, it actually did very well in all polls and received good reviews throughout the whole year.

At the beginning of the year, the band released the songs off of their recently published album with only the orchestra, choirs, piano, and vocals. According to Earl, it was "a really cool and fun way to listen through the songs again and a chance for you to hear some hidden things that you might have missed in the album version".

They continued with the gigs at Silver Factory with Through these gates (and others) on February 23, the Keep it Heavy Show on March 28, the Cinco de Bradstock festival in May 11, and a concert with Mysidia (and others) on June 20, and then announced they wanted to tour the west coast and play with the local bands in there. It was something that the band was wanting to do for a long time, so they called it "Wish come true" tour.

The touring was a success regarding new fans, but not economically. However, following the trend of previous years, they had another big gig with an important band at the end of the year, this time with the acclaimed Finntroll, on November the 24th.

After this, they performed on the Empyrean Throne CD Release Party on December 14.

Opeth Cover

In April 12, 2013, the band released a new cover, this time for Opeth's "Harvest". They made a videoclip that was filmed an edited by Vallefuoco, and that had former band member Sean Culver as the main protagonist. The cover was praised again and a German online magazine even thought they were Finnish, although the Wintersun cover's phenomenon was not repeated.

Recording Wintersun cover

Note: Xanthochroid is NOT a Nuclear Blast recording artist.

When the band returned from their "Wish come true" tour in August 2013, they were approached by a representative of Nuclear Blast Records. They were asked to do another cover of a Wintersun song along with a video in promotion of Wintersun's tour that was happening at the time. The band agreed and chose to do "Sleeping Stars", and the Nuclear Blast team did a live video of their performance. They went to the YouTube Space in LA and despite a lack of equipment, they recorded a live take of this cover. The video was supposed to be posted on Nuclear Blast's YouTube channel, but for unknown reasons it was never allowed to be made public. The video of the live performance disappeared, but there is a studio version available online.

Of Erthe and Axen (2014-2015)

As the band gained more popularity, they continued playing gigs, and in February 9, 2014 the band joined Abigail Williams and other bands at the Black Castle.

The band announced that they will spend the year producing their next album "Of Erthe and Axen", that tells the story of the events that happened before Incultus and Blessed He with Boils.

Co-release with Blood Music

On April 24, 2014, they announced in their official Facebook page that Erthe and Axen Records will work together with Blood Music record label in order to co-release their album "Of Erthe and Axen", and make vinyl versions of their records. They hope to reach more international exposure by doing so.

Fake bands and other gags

Xanthochroid's sense of humor, and their love for goofing around, is an important part of who they are as a band. They constantly upload gag videos for their fans on their official YouTube channel, create fake bands or play April's fools. The band has also been compared several times with Dethklok of the TV show Metalocalypse.

Estonian alter-egos

In December 2011, they created the fake band Epic Dragon, featuring themselves as a group from Tallinn, Estonia. The lyrics of their songs were written in broken English, and they created Estonian alter-egos (for example, Mathew Earl became Matti). The band goal was defined by them as "For educate world of lord dragon Allasaur!". They released some songs as Epic Dragon, like Ancient Heart or Never Die. The band is a mockery of conventional music construction, as it pretends to demonstrate how easy it is to make mainstream-sounding metal.

German alter-egos

They also turn themselves into German alter-egos creating a band called M.E.G.Ä. The songs where written in broken German.

Recording with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra

In one of their 2012 album teasers, Xanthochroid announced that they would team up with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra for their upcoming debut album, with all music composed by Xanthochroid. In the video, said orchestra is seen playing with Xanthochroid symphonic pieces in the background.

Guerrilla marketing

As part of the Xanthochristmas videos for their fans, they filmed themselves going out at night with their spare Incultus EP CDs, which they pasted on walls and left inside books in libraries or T-shirts in clothing stores.

April's fools

On April the first, 2013, Earl announced that he was leaving the band to go on a four-year mission trip to Nepal to help those less fortunate than him. Days after, he confessed it was a lie.

The next year they announced an upcoming collaboration with "a band that is a huge influence on us and a huge force in the metal scene", and promised an exclusive track. Six days later, they were announcing that "there was a leak", and linked an article on Kosher Metal about a track by Dimmu Borgir supposedly featuring Matthew Earl doing clean vocals, and apparently called "Bipartisan Apostasy", that had been leaked. They even made a video which is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Nuclear Blast Records. They later confessed in their Facebook page:

"HAPPY APRIL FOOLS (month)!!! Alright, The "Dimmu Borgir new song 2014" video has been taken down. We may have taken this joke a little too far but we sure had some fun with it and that is what we think music is about! If you haven't heard by now, the "Bipartisan Apostasy" song is really us just poking some fun at a fellow metal band. We did not mean to offend anybody by this post and we apologize to anyone that was. If you didn't like the song, forget it ever happened. If you did like the song, laugh. We will probably upload the song to our channel titled "In the style of Dimmu Borgir" to not cause confusion."

Kosher Metal confessed right after.

Video games

Another important aspect to understand the band is their love for video games. Meador has stated that he plans to make the Xanthochroid tale into a videogame in the future.

He and Earl have participated twice in the BlizzCon's Talent Contest, once in 2013 with the song "The Argent Crusader's Hymn", that took them to the Grand Final, and that they ended up recording in video, and in 2014 with the song "The Great Sundering", in collaboration with vocalist Ali Tassinello.

Interviews

Awards