In this age of manufactured artists clogging the airwaves, Eye Empire is as fresh as a breath of air can be. Comprising bassist Corey Lowery (Stuck Mojo, Stereomud, Dark New Day), guitarist B.C. Kochmit (Switched), vocalist Donald Carpenter (Submersed) and drummer Will Hunt (Dark New Day, Evanescence, Black Label Society), Eye Empire has been a true independent, do-it-yourself project from the beginning. Without label support of any kind, they sold out the first pressing of their debut album, “Moment of Impact” (which features Morgan Rose of Sevendust on drums), and are now on a second run of 1,000 copies. A couple weeks before they were set to begin touring, Carpenter called in to talk to Live Metal’s Greg Maki about all things Eye Empire.
LIVE METAL: I know from the bio for the band that’s on the website that you joined toward the end of 2009. Tell me how that came about, how you hooked up with these guys.
DONALD CARPENTER: I tell you what, there was a little divine intervention, I think, that was taking part. Corey and Brad (Kochmit) had really been hammering at this from a one-sided place. They had this music that they spent a lot of time putting together and developing, and they still didn’t really know what that other dimension, that voice, was gonna be. So they were kind of drained in that process, and I was drained in the process of being out of music for a while.
So that’s when I turned to the social media, social networking, the Internet and was just kind of looking around to see what was going out there, communicating. I had heard about some of the projects that Corey had been working on, even the Violent Plan stuff. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Lowery and Kochmit formed Violent Plan in 2008 with singer Donnie Hamby and drummer Dan Richardson.] I knew that there were some Stereomud things going on, some possible shows. There was always that sixth degree of separation with me knowing the Sevendust guys from the old Mark Tremonti camp and Corey always being right there. I always knew (Sevendust guitarist) Clint (Lowery, brother of Corey Lowery) throughout the years and we always knew each other, and it was just ironic that when I happened to be at a point where I was looking for something and Corey and Brad happened to be at a point where there were really looking for—not just a voice. They might’ve been able to find some bigger name guys, but it would’ve always been a side project. I think, for them, they wanted to find somebody that didn’t just have the caliber of talent that they have, somebody that could kind of mesh with them, but in the same sense, could be the voice that they heard for the music.
It just so happened that I was searching and he was searching, and he found me on MySpace one day and sent me a message, and was just like, “Hey, if you’re interested in hearing something, give me a call,” and left his number. I didn’t hesitate. I had kind of started putting things together at that point, and it was a little ironic that he happened to be the guy reaching out. I called him up, and he sent me some tracks. The first one I heard was the music for “I Pray,” and I just gravitated to it. Probably within six or seven minutes, I pieced together the melody and the lyric concept for it. That’s why we put it first on the record. It was kind of like our first little insight into what Eye Empire was gonna mean to us, and we thought that was a cool thing to do for the record, was that be our first introduction to the fans.
When you first actually got together and played together, did you know right away that it was gonna be a good fit?
Yeah. Playing together was a process because we are separated. Everybody has to be a true professional in this situation in the sense that we don’t all live in the same city. When you’re coming up when you’re young, you’re in that local band session where you meet two or three times a week and you jam out for four hours and you get to know each other. For us, it was basically the recording process that introduced us to each other. Corey sent me three or four of the music tracks, and he was like, “Come on up. We’ll spend a couple days in the studio, and we’ll lay down some of your ideas.” And that was kind of my audition process. Rather than coming into a room and playing live, it was recording the tracks.
I went up there, and I knew “I Pray” was a stretch. I didn’t know how that chorus was gonna come out. I was writing things in my head, and I didn’t have the ability to go into the studio and just track it and hear the playback, or to go into the room and jam with the guys and hear how it meshed. We got into the studio, and in the first 20 minutes, he was like, “What do you want to try?” I was like, “Let’s start with ‘I Pray’ because this is either gonna rock pretty hard or it’s just gonna bomb.” We went straight to that chorus, and immediately it just came out, and we just kind of looked at each other, and we were like, “OK, I guess this is what’s gonna happen.” We finished the day out, burned the track down, sent it out to Brad, and he called us within a minute, minute and a half, and Skyped in on the computer. From that point on, it’s been pedal to the metal.
Once you officially came onboard, how did it work as far as writing the other songs. They had a lot of music already together, so how did that work?
It was a pretty unique experience. Clint was always in there. You have your friends that are musicians or brothers and everybody else, and it’s only natural. It’s like, “We have a day off. Let’s get into the studio and work up some songs and work up some ideas.” No real direction attached to it. So there were a couple tracks that Clint had written some versions of some choruses. “More Than Fate” was one of those. That was a Clint chorus. We kind of got in there, and I came in with my ideas. They already had those ideas recorded, so we would just mute them. I didn’t hear them at all, and I would record my version of the song. Then we’d have these other versions, so maybe this one verse was better for this chorus and that kind of thing.
Some of the songs were pieced together like that, and others, it was just a process of organically getting into the room and starting to jam out a riff or an idea. Corey is really good at starting with the root bassline and everything kind of syncing up with that. “Idiot” is a good example of a song that came about like that.
Right now, we’re still kind of feeling it out. We really jumped in feet first and haven’t looked back. I think once we kind of get out there and start playing this record and getting our stride, I think that’s where we’re gonna develop our writing style.
What kinds of things inspire your writing? Like “I Pray,” for example, which you said you started writing within a few minutes of hearing.
It’s all about life to me. I’m always questioning myself. I guess an artist’s nature is kind of bipolar. That’s just the way I am, period. I was at a point there where I needed music. I missed it. That song was just an expression of that type of war between good and bad. I think everybody finds themselves at those crossroads at one point or another. That’s what this record’s about. Each record will change; it depends on what’s going on in our lives. It’s just kind of about that personal struggle to achieve your dream.
Did they already have the name Eye Empire when you came onboard?
No. Once I came on, before that there was the Violent Plan scenario. Obviously, once I came onboard, it was a totally different type of idea that came about from everything. That’s when the daunting task of finding a name begins. They didn’t have that before. We came up with that once we figured out we had a whole new monster.
How did you come up with that name?
It’s never glamorous. I think if you talk to anybody in a band, coming up with a name is just a horrible process. I hate it. We were just sitting and trying to come up with some cool words. Empire was a cool word that we just thought sounded good. It kind of has a little political undertone, the all-seeing eye, e pluribus unum and everything. Once we put the Eye Empire together, just the way the two E’s came off, and there’s some other little, layered meanings to it, which I’ll just kind of leave to question. But it just fit perfectly, so we rode with it and I think it works.
On the song “Victim,” LJ from Sevendust makes an appearance. Was that just another thing where a friend was hanging around and you decided to have him help out?
Yeah. Obviously, we’re really close, for various reasons. We’re in this process where we’re able to make a record kind of on our own terms and creatively how we want to make it. We’ve all experienced writing records in different scenarios and there is a power struggle there that interferes with the creative process. This was an opportunity where we were like, hey, we don’t have to go through a lot of red tape to bring somebody in. This is somebody we respect that we’re close with that’s not looking for a payday or anything like that. It’s just real good friends getting together and laying something down on tracks. That song we just felt, obviously, has that Sevendust undertone to it with the meter of it, and then we had Morgan on the record playing drums.
Me and Corey were in the studio working on some other stuff, and LJ was coming into the studio to touch up some things that he was working on. We had talked about it before. “Victim” had some previous vocals to it before, and we were just trying, within the production process, to develop the song a little more and add a little more to it and definitely the story. We thought it had a pretty powerful chorus, and we just wanted to add a little more meat to the story. Once we started thinking about LJ coming in, we thought it was a great opportunity to fill in some of those holes in the verses and add a little more meat to it. Yeah, that’s kind of how it came about. We just said why not and we didn’t have anybody to tell us no, so we went ahead and did it.
As far as Morgan’s involvement goes, was the plan all along for him to play on the album and then for you guys to get a different drummer?
No, we did have a scenario where we thought we were gonna go in a different direction, and things didn’t work out. Morgan had been involved with Corey and Brad when they first got together and started this whole thing. So there’s a lot of original demos of these songs that Morgan actually played on. When the opportunity worked itself out to where we had the chance to have him play on the final recordings, we said why not. He has a lot of respect for what we’re doing and the position we’re in and where we’re at in our lives and we’re still fighting the good fight. They’re just great, great guys, and it was awesome that it came back around for us to have the opportunity for him to be on the finished product.
Now you have Will Hunt as your drummer, which seems like maybe a little bit of an odd choice given that he’s a really busy guy with his other commitments.
Right, right.
How is that going to work out working around his schedule?
We definitely knew going in. Corey’s no stranger to Will Hunt. They’ve been together long before he was busy. They’ve been doing it for a long time. We knew it was a unique scenario, but there’s a brotherhood that’s kind of going on here. For Will, and this is just me speaking from my perspective, it’s good to be busy, it’s definitely good to be wanted. But on the other hand, to have your own band, to have something that’s yours that you can say, “This is my band, this is my music, these are my songs, these are my stories” is a pretty important thing. I think for a guy like him who’s been in the business for as long as he has and been in the bands like we have that have gotten to a certain point but not to that level of the guys he’s playing with and to the level that he’s experiencing every night, to have the opportunity to work with some guys that he has a relationship with and have a chance to have his band attain that type of level, I think, is something that he wants to a part of as much as we want him to be a part of it. At this point in the game, we’re just gonna do what we can to make it work, and hopefully one day Eye Empire takes over all responsibility.
You’ve touched on this some already, talking about how Eye Empire has been a completely independent band to this point. What are some of the advantages and some of the disadvantages that you see in that?
Creatively, it’s a big advantage. Then, in the same sense, I do see where it’s a disadvantage from the standpoint that in a label environment you do get to bring in people that creatively can definitely enhance the production experience. There are a lot of incredible producers and collaborators and writers and things out there that it would be fun to work with. But it’s definitely pretty cool to be organic and unfiltered with the creative process. That’s kind of the plus on this end.
Disadvantage, again, could be the funding of the thing. It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money to be able to do things at a high level. That’s something that we have to find our way through at this point. That’s where fan support comes in. That’s where it’s so crucial. That’s why it’s so important to physically purchase and support the bands that you appreciate and love and, especially, most importantly, if they’re doing it on an independent level because you know where all that’s going. It’s going right back to the guys who are making the music. It’s plus or minus, and we just kind of look at it on a case-to-case basis. We’re making our decisions right now based on what opportunities are out there. The industry is definitely in a transitional period, and we don’t want to get lost in the shuffle, that’s for sure. In the same sense, we’ve gotta make sure that we’re making progress.
You’ve done a couple limited, 1,000-copy runs of the album, and the first one sold out. And you’re looking toward figuring out how to do more of a wide release now?
Yeah. The position that we were in was we were still testing the waters as far as label scenarios and what opportunities we had there. The last thing we wanted to do was release a record that possibly would get lost, i.e. signing some type of scenario and then starting a new record. We really feel like we have something that we want to introduce ourselves with. So that’s where, creatively, we were like, how can we put something out there that’s unique, that’s not a full, widespread release, that’s direct from the band, that has a personal touch to it for these fans that have been here right from the beginning? Not just from the beginning of Eye Empire but through the process of getting to Eye Empire. A lot of these fans have been around since Dark New Day and Submersed and Switched and all these different groups. That was just something that we thought would get something out there, do something nice for our fans and, obviously, buy us some time to really figure out what our direction was gonna be.
You’ve got some tour dates scheduled later this month, starting in Florida. I guess you haven’t played too many shows at this point, but what can the fans expect from an Eye Empire live show?
Definitely a raw and honest interpretation of the record. We’re definitely not coming out there with pyro and flashing lights or anything like that. We’re just gonna turn it up loud, and we’re gonna do it right. I think it’s pretty basic. If you go out there, you can truly represent what’s on your album, actually just make it more personal—‘cause you’re there, you’re face to face. There is an emotional factor that you can convey in the live setting that you can’t convey if someone’s listening to your record. That’s just what they’re gonna get, just an honest performance.
It’s probably been a little while since you’ve been out on tour.
A full-fledged tour, it’s been a bit. Yeah, no doubt.
Have you missed it, and are you ready to get back to that lifestyle?
Oh, man. I think it definitely is important to feel relevant, and I think one of the best ways you can do that, whether it’s small-time or big-time, is to be able to get out there and connect with the people that enjoy what you do. I think one of the reasons that people enjoy what we do, our music, is the fact that they can relate to what we’re saying or what we’re trying to convey in our music. To be able to get out there and interact with people that can understand you or appreciate what you’re trying to convey is one of the most fulfilling things that I think an artist can experience. Other than that, it’s just us sitting in a room, looking at each other, creating music. So that’s the whole other dimension. Have I missed it? Absolutely. Am I looking forward to it? Yes. Is it gonna be easy? No. It’s definitely gonna be physical, and we’ve all been working really hard to prepare ourselves for that.
Just from hearing you talk, you really sound like you’re ready for it.
I’m ready for it. I’m just excited to be talking. This is something that we’re all very confident in. We sit around and discuss a lot amongst ourselves about how much we believe in it. To have the opportunity to have people like yourself and readers and listeners to be listening and reading these interviews or doing whatever and wanting to know what we have to say and being able to get beyond the CD or get beyond the song and really get personal about it, gets me excited. I’m happy to be doing it and very, very appreciative of the opportunity.
LINKS:
www.eyeempire.com
www.facebook.com/eyeempire
www.myspace.com/eyeempire
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