The laws of gravity

Ask anyone 30 years ago what the world would be like in 2002 and the chances are the answer they would give you would be very different from the reality. Ask them what music would be like and they’d probably talk of computers and machines instead of wood and strings and to a certain extent they’d be right. Certainly when it comes to bands like Gravity Kills, currently storming the US with their industrial techno metal and preparing to do the same over here. Would singer and guitarist Jeff Scheel therefore consider his form of music to be truly at the cutting edge?

“I think you can be cutting edge whatever genre you’re in really,” he replies. “As far as rock music that incorporates guitars, we just use different colours to paint with. That’s what all the keyboards and computer stuff is. It’s tough for me to say that that’s the one cutting edge thing.”

Gravity Kills are certainly not the first to attempt this melding of styles, from Throbbing Gristle through to the genre’s previous watershed when Nine Inch Nails, Ministry and Consolidated all broke through into the mainstream. How does Jeff think that industrial music has developed in the decade since that explosion?

“If you call what we do that style of music, it’s become slightly more approachable. We put a twist on that kind of thing that probably incorporates melody more, that’s our particular spin on it. I’m sure that there’s twenty other great bands doing something completely different with it.”

Scheel is plainly not too comfortable at his band having the ‘industrial’ tag forced upon them, so how does he think Gravity Kills fit into the big picture?

“That’s tough, we sit in a purgatory between a lot of genres. We draw our fanbase from lots of different places. I think we’re in-between industrial and metal, and there’s pop influences there as well. I know journalists have to come up with a box to put bands in so their readers know what the hell they’re talking about, but I’m glad I’m not a journalist because I’d have a tough time with this band.”

Pop influences?

“Things that you can’t escape, whether you like them or not. I can’t say that Jamiroquai are an influences but you hear them on the record. They seep in somehow.”

Is it easier for a more extreme band to reach a wider audience now than it was for their predecessors?

“Maybe music fans are more open-minded, but people will still read your article and see the word industrial and it will immediately turn them off. Or pop influences and that will immediately turn them off. We’re a band you have to hear to get.”

If Scheel himself is unsure where his band are at, that would maybe suggest that there is more to come from them than their three albums to date have hinted at (“we’re still looking for our musical nirvana,” he agrees). In the meantime, he is content to keep his band open to all influences.

“As a songwriter I might be influenced more now by guitar, rock metal things. But I’m going to go home and play a Static X record. Who knows, I might throw on a Depeche Mode record at some point on Saturday night when I’m hanging out with my friends. Those influences will keep bashing me on the head until I stop listening to them.”