Interview: Crawl Below Talks New England Lore, Working Solo, and '9 Mile Square'

Crawl Below.

Recently, Shameless SF had the opportunity to sit down with Charlie Sad Eyes, the man behind doom/post-metal solo act Crawl Below. Based in Norwich, CT, and having played in numerous bands like When The Deadbolt Breaks, Sentinel Hill, and Holding On To Nothing, Although, unlike those previously mentioned bands, Crawl Below has never limited itself to just one genre. Previous release have ranged from punk, to black metal, to progressive/post-metal stylings. It’s a project that allows Charlie to explore his musical tastes, as well as his penchant for New England history.

9 Mile Square is Crawl Below’s newest effort, a six-track metal-tinged exploration of the history of New England history and folklore, ranging from the birthplace of America’s most famous traitor (Benedict Arnold) to the infamous Lantern Hill location used in the Revolutionary War to signal the impending trouble that was about to hit the country’s shores.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity purposes.

 From what I’ve read, you started the Crawl Below project back in 2017. I know that you were in a number of other bands and projects throughout the years, so at what point did you decide to pursue a project like Crawl Below that was solo and didn’t necessarily have one confined genre of music?

I was asked to be part of a black metal band called Perpetual Winter that had been established for awhile [with members from] New Hampshire and Connecticut. I wrote a bunch of songs for that project, and then it kinda fell apart. The songs never got used. I kinda liked the songs so I held onto ‘em, and I finally said, “I’m gonna do them all myself.” And that’s where Crawl Below started.

So the first Crawl Below [record] was kind of a black metal thing mixed with Connecticut hardcore and punk. After that, I was just like, “you know, all I do is music, besides work.” And I had a bunch of different things that I wanted to do, so I was like, “this isn’t just gonna be a black metal thing; I’m gonna do what I want to do.” So this is more the stuff that fits my solo personality, rather than make it into a group that’s gonna play live or something like that.

Would you say that there’s less pressure when you’re writing for yourself, rather than for a full-band project? Does the idea of “perfectionism” set in, in a different way?

No, I find solo projects way harder when it comes to recording, because there is that perfectionism thing that comes in. Anyone who listens to any of my songs is not going to go…”perfect” is not the word that is going to spring to mind, but it’s got to clear that hurdle of, “is it acceptable to me [as a writer]?” I’m way harder on myself than I would ever be on any bandmates or anything like that, so it actually is harder. 

I’m working on an acoustic thing now, and it’s grueling. All of the songs are written, but I just…I’ll sing the same verse a hundred times and if I don’t have it exactly right, I’ll scrap it. I’d say that solo stuff is harder. 

I feel like that’s no simple statement when it comes to 9 Mile Square, because this is not only a new record with a different sound, but it’s a concept record. Going off of that, what made you want to pursue a concept album? How do you even begin with that?

Well these songs are actually, maybe, seven years old. I just re-recorded them. But you know, initially, Crawl Below was a black metal thing. There’s the Norwegian bands that sing about Fjords and snow and ice dragons and whatever else. I think that black metal is best when it’s about where you’re from. And there’s a lot of bands that do that now, like up in Washington state, they have their own sound, you know? Why doesn’t New England have a very specific style of black metal all its own? I still don’t completely understand because so many bands are still trying to do the “dark throne” thing, or copy this band or that band. That was my initial reason for mixing hardcore into black metal, because I came up in hardcore. I felt that it was probably a little more honest to do that than to try to be the next Emperor. 

That traveled over into this [album], which is definitely not a black metal album. But I wanted to do something that was regional and that was about this specific area, which is obviously rich with history and it just made sense. 

Was there a specific story that you had in mind going into it? I know that with some concept albums, they’ll have a bunch of songs all around a similar topic, whereas others are a straight-through story. How did you approach this? Did you have a full story from start to finish, or was it just little stories that all came together under a common theme?

9 Mile Square is about the city that I live in, which is Norwich, CT. It’s a bunch of stories from throughout its history, so each song is a different thing. For instance, Benedict Arnold is from this city. He’s one of the biggest American creeps that ever lived, so I wrote a song about him. There’s an annual festival around here every year where they burn him in effigy, so that was something that spurred my creativity. But each song is about a specific, different event in the city’s history from the last three hundred years. 

Was there anything about Norwich that you learned in the making of this? Were there any songs with subject matter or stories that maybe were more interesting to you than others? 

Yeah, it did cause me to research some of the subjects and a lot of it was eye-opening. There was one song called “Fire on the Hill” that’s about a local cliff that’s near the Foxwood Casino, which is one of the biggest casinos in the world. You can see it from the casino, it’s called Lantern Hill. When you get to the top of Lantern Hill, you can see the Atlantic Ocean from here, on Long Island sound. What happened was in the Revolutionary War, they could see the British ships sailing towards the harbor for an attack, and they lit fires on top of this cliff to let the militias know that an attack was imminent. So “Fire on the Hill” is the fire coming up to alert all of the residents that they better get ready to fight. 

They all went down to the shoreline and they were able to fight the British and push them away to the shore. That was a cool story. As soon as I read that, I was like, “that’s a song”. I’ve been up that cliff a hundred times, but that was a really cool thing to learn. 

What inspires you to write about historical events rather than more personal events?

I have so many projects and so many bands that I’ve been in, and I really don’t do a lot of personal stuff. That [love song] thing has just been done to death, and it’s just like, who’s gonna write that song into something better than the millions of songs that are already out there?

Plus, I’m kind of a black metal guy. I don’t like love; that’s gross. (laughs) I have a couple of projects that are like “sad rock” or whatever. It’s not so much that I wanted to write a historical album, more than I just didn’t want to write a love or emotional album. That kind of forces you to go looking in other places. Plus, like I said, I think that New England has a rich history of so many cool things that are just not sung about in metal. Except for [author H.P.] Lovecraft; Lovecraft has been done to death. 

I’ve done a couple Lovecraft [inspired] albums. I live sixty miles from where he was. But that’s so hack at this point.

To go back to something you said earlier, you said you’re surprised that a lot of people haven’t…like how Norwegian bands will write about the Fjords and all of the crazy Nordic legends. But New England…that’s where America started, and there’s a lot of history and a lot of dark history there. That’s interesting. 

Yeah, it’s not so much that nobody has, but like…there’s black metal bands, metal bands around here that sing about Satan. That’s one thing, if you’re doing it in a way to talk about the witch hangings and all that kind of stuff. But it’s usually not that; it’s your typical teenager, edgy, angsty stuff. There’s a band from Salem, MA called 1476. I don’t know these guys, but they get it right. They’re a mix of black metal and punk. It’s all New England lore. They’re an amazing band that are not well enough known that I would love to play with at some point. 

I noted this on the Bandcamp page, but it says that the music was written in 2013 and re-recorded [in 2020] and Black Mold Studios. This could be a multipart question, but why did you want to go back and record these songs specifically? Why hold them back this long and save them for this? 

Practically, it’s because the old versions were demos. They weren’t broadcast quality. It was one hundred percent screaming, too; there were no clean vocals and I just didn’t want to do that anymore. Technology has gotten to a point where I was able to record these tracks on my own, and then send them to my producer Dave Kaminsky to re-amp and remix. That’s his perfection; he worked at More Sound [Studios], he’s the real thing. It got to the point where I was able to make them listenable, from a production standpoint. 

And I’ve been so busy with actual bands during those years that were just sort of [put on the] back burner. 

What made you choose “Kingdom of the Ruined” as the first single for the album? This was essentially the first impression that fans and new listeners would get for this album, so what made you want to choose this one first?

I don’t have a good reason for choosing that song other than that I wanted to make a video for it. It’s about the Norwich State Hospital, which was a huge psychiatric hospital for the last sixty years. They started to tear it down in the 90s, but there is a lot of video and a lot of pictures out there on the Internet that would contribute to that video. I was like, “that’d be a cool thing to make a video about”. But there was nothing about that song that really stuck out [for a first single]. I would say that this album is very “same-y”; there’s nothing that really stands out sonically, like “this is the fast one, this is the heavy one”. They’re all slow and dreamy. 

It all flows well together. 

Thank you. Yeah, people talk about dynamics in their albums, where they go, “we wanna start with a heavy song first, and then we wanna have the epic one last!” I’m like, I don’t care. If this is a song that’s going to help people fall asleep, then it’s fine. It’s what it is. There was nothing particular about “Kingdom of the Ruined” that stood out [with choosing it for a first single].

What do you hope that people come away with after listening to 9 Mile Square. Is there a feeling, a message, an idea?

That’s a good question. That’s not necessarily something that I’ve thought about. I guess it’s a moment in time of my creative process, because I’ve been in doom bands, hardcore bands, death metal bands, black metal, all these different kinds of things. I wanted to do something that was a lot more melodic, maybe a little more mature than some of the things that I had done in the past, that reflected where I’m at now. I am getting to a point where I want to do less and less of the extreme stuff and be a little bit more experimental and melodic and, dare I say, accessible. So it was more about that than any particular thing I wanted to communicate, I guess.

9 Mile Square, the new album from Crawl Below, is available now.

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