Formed at the end of 2004, the fledgling audio entity entitled ENOCHIAN THEORY (Pronounced E-KNOW-KEY-AN) began to work hard, practice harder and progressed quickly from the start, with the aim of pushing themselves as musicians and expanding their sound as far as possible (from last.fm).

  • Interview with Enochian Theory

This interview was made with Ben Harris-Hayes, vocalist and guitar player as well as songwriter in Enochian Theory, Described in the band’s website as “Throat & Guitar” player; Ben’s signature throat is a very interesting instrument for sure…

  •    Tell us briefly, how did the band get together? What do you guys aim for?

 Greetings, LebMetal readers. Thank you for giving us this chance to introduce the band. In answer to your first question, I think the bio on our website could probably answer this most accurately… 😉

Official Website

We formed in 2004 and met through the guys asking for a vocalist, I applied and the rest is history, as if to say. Like most bands, we do this for creative purposes and to get some warped sense of enjoyment from it all! I guess we aim to satisfy some sort of need to ‘expel our demons’, for want of a better word…a cathartic process of release, if you will.When people can relate and find their own meaning within our songs…that is an amazing bonus in our eyes. To be able to relate our efforts…and have other people enjoy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xeJ5Q8G4aM]

  • What about the latest album “Life…And All It Entails”.How did it come to existence through all phases? How do you compare it to “Creatio Ex Nihilio” ?

The new album came into existence through the same reasons we’ve always written music…for ourselves. It’s a selfish thing, but such is art, no? We basically felt we had to start again…despite our ‘elevation’ to a bigger record label and the press from our own campaign for our debut efforts. We felt we were not done with the musical journey that we started with our debut E.P in 2006, we felt we needed to continue to refine our music and complete a record that showed progress, refining and perhaps a maturity in the song writing…without ever losing what we were about, as a band. So…that is what you have from us.It’s perhaps…a little more ‘chilled’ for the most part than our debut record…but I think it’s technically more accomplished in many ways.We try not to compare…that is what we leave for other people to do. We prefer to look at each record as a reflection of where the band is as people…’Life…And All It Entails’ catches up with us at this current stage.

  • Do you compare your work to other bands like “Opeth”, “Porcupine Tree” or even “Anathema”?  Are they some of your influences?

 What would be the point in a comparison? We’ll leave that to other people to do. All those bands do what they do and we do what we do…it just happens to be in the same sort of vein…but doesn’t mean those bands are an influence, despite what people may think.In 100% honesty, our knowledge of those bands is limited to maybe a couple of albums…and in some cases, merely a few songs. It doesn’t mean we don’t respect those bands and what they do…hell no…they’ve worked hard and produced great things…but we don’t really listen to them regularly enough to class them as a true influence.We just write whatever comes to ourselves…and whatever we feel is where we are at. We firmly believe a new record should be a reflection of where we are at that moment, as songwriters and as band…and this record is just that. There are other bands that we feel are maybe a tad more apparent in our music, that maybe aren’t as well known…and some that are very well known! I could name about 3-4 bands that are a bigger influence on us that most the bands mentioned in reviews about our new record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRPI0X_RG1M]

  •     What makes Enochian Theory a unique band? Why do you think the band has not got the success it deserves? (because as I see it, It should be a major band)

We’re glad you find us ‘unique’ and that is a very kind comment. I’d like to ask what you feel makes us unique?

(In simple answer to that, it’s the band’s unique way of adding drama to the tracks, melody, the guitar effect and simplicity…the mix of clean and growl vocals)

As mentioned before, we’ll leave it to other people to decide what they think…that is what anyone who releases an ‘artform’ into the public arena has to deal with.
Throw it out there…see if it floats…if, that is what you’re aiming for. We can honestly say that we have to be very happy with the response to the new record…it’s been as overwhelming as the press for the first record and our debut E.P. We’re getting contact from a lot of people saying that they enjoy the record…and that is simply great to hear.Success is a funny thing to gauge. For us, right now, just being able to get another record out is a great form of success. Anything that comes from this now is a bonus. We work hard with what we have to expand the bands fan-base…and alongside the label, we’re trying to get the band out to as many people as possible. Of course, every band wants to push on and do better…it takes hard work, luck…and lot more hard work!

  •     The album is an amazing work and I would like to congratulate you for the amazing release. How are the feedbacks so far? Any concerts in plan?

We’ve been asked to play ‘Night Of The Prog’ in Germany, come early July, alongside bands like Steve Hackett, Spocks Beard, Katatonia and many other great bands. We’re looking forward to that, alongside a few other select shows in the UK and Germany..but we’re hoping to be able to do shows in other countries in the near future. We just need people who like what we do to actively demand us play venues near them…then maybe promoters and booking agents will get involved. Sadly, it’s a business that needs people buying records and requesting bands to play venues…we’re no exception, all we can do is ask people to listen to us and hopefully they will enjoy what we do…and if the demand is enough, we can get out there and play some more shows. Maybe a lovely bigger band will ask us out on tour or something…who knows!

  •    Tell us about the Progressive Rock/Metal scene in the UK. Are there too many active bands? Is there a fellow band who you think also deserves International recognition?

     I don’t think you can have too many active bands in any scene…as, to me, that merely means it’s a healthy scene and that it is something that people want to see…which is positive for the bands…and more importantly, for the venues that put these shows on.It’s a VERY tough business…and getting shows…decent shows…is hard. We like a lot of different music…and we truly appreciate any artist who works hard to better themselves and produce a product in what is essentially, a ridiculous industry to get into! Sure, we’ve met some nice people in bands we’ve played with…but everyone keeps themselves to themselves and simply works on their own business…and we have no problem with that, as that is what we do.

I could mention a lot of bands that I feel deserve more recognition overall…but that is something that people out there have to discover for themselves…but, being that you’re asking…some bands and artists that we appreciate/respect the work ethic/music of, are:

Jurojin
Bloodshot Dawn
Belligerence
Joe Black
Dakesis
Dragon Eye Morrison

     Offkey Records (Raiden)
Tony Haven

    …and many more amazing acts that I could spend all year talking about.

     Please take the time to listen to music from all these acts…you may come across something you weren’t expecting…yet, something you like.

  •      What are your future plans after the album? Is there a video clip in preparation?

We’ve just shot a video for  what we think will be our first ‘single’ from the new record,which will be the song, ‘Inversions’. It was fun to shoot and I have to thank Shaun and Sam for their efforts in getting the video sorted. Those guys came up with some rather ingenious ideas to create a workable set for us to use 🙂

You’ll be able to view the video pretty soon. We’re also continuing to work on the lengthy ‘ The Fire Around The Lotus’ video, which is why that track has been re-mastered on this new record.It’s been a mammoth undertaking by the small team putting it together…but the end is in sight…and we’re hoping that the world created by our friend and talented artist, Robin Portnoff, alongside VG visual experts, ‘Team Lotus’, interests a lot of people not necessarily associated with ‘prog music’. We want to branch out further than confines of a genre. Mixing audio and visual is an obvious, yet difficult thing to work with…but I believe that is where we are heading.Besides promoting the hell of this record…we have plans in store for some remixes of the new record, what form they take will be for you all the find out. As I said before, we like a lot of different music…so, we’ll be tapping up our friends who make other styles to see what they do with our songs. We rather enjoyed the ‘Movement’ remix, created by The Dig Deeper Collective from our last record, which is floating about online and on the ‘fan area’ of our website.

Stream “Movement” on SoundCloud

As well as many other things, we’re starting to look into re-interpretations of our current songs, in a more stripped down form. We’ve been discussing doing some acoustic versions of songs…or, at least see if we can strip them down to a usable level! It’s something we’ve wanted to try…to strip back our songs and make them work in a very minimalistic capacity…guess we can only see what happens with that 🙂

These are our initial plans…the plans we have for the next 2-5 years are certainly too much to explain now…but it’s something we’re excited about it and will continue to push forward in every aspect.

Thank you for reading and we hope you find time to get involved in our world…

  • Overview

By far one the most versatile, most creative albums released this year. An album of progrock/metal/accoustic/doom in the finest way the cocktail can be made. An album with depth and meaning with feelings and logic. When is comes to bass melodies, guitar solos, piano lines, vocal feeling, the depth in that music is just too amazing to be left unnoticed, barely heard and forgotten… Although the band refuses to compare its music to other band’s and leaves that to the reviewers, as a reviewer I do compare the tracks to work of “Anathema/ Sieges Even/Opeth/Porcupine Tree”. Each track, easily stands out but can still be recognized as Enochian Theory music through the signature guitar melodies and piano lines and the recognizable voice of Ben Harris-Hayes. The videos posted in this article cannot represent the album but can only give a hint of what the album contains. This album is recommended to all Progressive Rock/Metal fans.

I will leave you with this “making of” video focusing on drums at start and later on other instruments including Throat… It includes some samples of the music and shows the effort put in each track and the magic of each…