"Last year, when everything crashed, like many others, I ended up losing my job," says musician Jarret Beach. "I was really bored just sitting at home, and I was no longer playing shows or recording with Ashes of Yggdrasil or Destroy My Brains because of the pandemic. I decided to keep moving forward with writing music."
While he couldn't go out and play gigs with either the aforementioned Ashes of Yggdrasil or Destroy My Brains, like many other people No Echo has chatted with throughout the last 12 months, Jarret birthed a new musical endeavor during the lockdown.
"I wasn't planning on starting a project, I just wanted to basically lay out some new riffs and vocal ideas for fun. At this time, I had an overflow of creativity, and it didn't take long before I had 4 solid songs written and recorded. I could tell right away that the stuff I was recording had potential so I decided to launch Discarded Self, my solo project.
"I’m not a drummer so I recruited all the best drummers in my town to lay down beats for my songs, and after that was complete, I finished the tracks with vocals. That's basically how it all came to be!"
The results of Jarret's work can be heard on Discarded Self's forthcoming self-titled debut record:
Jarret breaks down the stylistic direction he took on the Discarded Self material: "I believe the sound of the project is very much centred around the sludge genre as far as attitude and lyric content is concerned, but it also has elements of black metal, thrash, doom, and even hardcore.
"As far as musical influences, I'll name drop a bunch of bands I like: Acid Bath, Sepultura (old with Max Cavalera, and the new with Derrick Green), Crowbar, Wolves in the Throne Room, MLGA, Eyehategod, Mudvayne, Tool, Fistula, Dystopia, but nothing influences me more than all of the shit that goes on in the world.
"These days, the world doesn't seem like a happy place to be a part of, full of oppression, racism, control, fear, hunger, murder and much worse things than just that. These are the things that influence me to make the music I do. My music is a hate-filled attack on those things. Always has been. I carry a lot of weight and hate in my heart and it comes out in my music."
The Discarded Self EP is being released by Sarcophagus Recordings. "I was actually only about two weeks away from releasing the album myself on Bandcamp, so I was reaching out everywhere to sites, blogs, YouTube channels, and radio stations.
"Luckily, I’d done some stuff with Cvlt Legion previously with Destroy My Brains, and when I asked them if they would do an exclusive album stream for the Discarded Self album, I ended up getting contacted from Piers from Cvlt Legion, and he asked if I wanted to have Discarded Self on his new label, Sarcophagus Recordings.
"We did a Zoom call and talked about it, and we went for it! Discarded Self is actually the first band on the label, and the label was new so I thought that was really cool. Someone was willing to dive in with Discarded Self as their first band made me feel pretty good."
Jarret is based in Lloydminster, Alberta, so No Echo asked him for his take on how he thinks he fits into the local underground music scene in his region. "In my town, even before 2020, our music scene in my city was totally dead. There’s only a few metal bands where I'm from, and I’m a member in those bands.
"The only shows are ones we put on, so it's a real struggle sometimes when it comes to wanting to have a metal scene, although when we do put on shows we usually get a decent turn out and everyone has a great time, but other than us, there is no others doing anything."
What else is cooking in Jarret's area? "As far as local bands I have kinship with, like I said above, I'm in all the metal bands in my town, so there really isn't anyone in my city that I'm not in a band with.
"In western Canada, there are a few bands I’d like to do stuff with one day when things with the pandemic straighten out. I would love to play shows one day with the bands Culled, Bloated Pig, Heron, Weeper, Wrought, and Lavagoat, to name a few."
Before our chat ended, Jarret wanted to show some support for someone else in the Canadian scene: "I have a friend who does the Deliverance of Doom show every Wednesday on Broken Neck Radio named Brien, who is a gnarly hot pepper and fireball-eating bastard and is awesome as hell, and he always turns me towards awesome bands. So check all those bands out and Brien's show on Wednesday if you’re reading this!"
The Discarded Self EP will arrive on April 30th via Sarcophagus Recordings.
Discarded Self on social media: Facebook | Instagram
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Tagged: discarded self
