An Interview With Scott Miller of Anthesis

by Kenneth Fury

Scott Miller is a beyond talented man. Vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, gear head, producer and vinyl enthusiast whilst being one of the kindest men I've met. I got to open up for one of his bands, Anthesis around this time last year. They completely blew us off stage (in a good way) and proceed to melt faces. His band is beyond talented. I bought a shirt and cd, and have never stopped endorsing them. I have confronted many demons over the year to his work. Not only does Anthesis know how to bring brute force, but bring a healthy amount of "what the fuck was that riff". Aside from Anthesis, he runs his own recording studio, Ancient Temple recordings. ATR also functions as a DIY label for not only his band, but others around the country. He also has other projects that focus on more ambient sounds. I idolized Scott as a guitar player and DIY musician. When I worked up the courage over a couple beers to ask for an interview, he happily agreed. I met him at his house, stared in amazement at his insanely large record collection and gear within the ATR rooms. Scott has been nothing but kind, honest and intelligent. I loved talking to him. The conversation went so long we'll break it up into parts. Please check out his work, he deserves everything in the music world. KEN: So, Anthesis - I know you’ve been friends with the others in the band for a while, tell me about that. SCOTT: Sure. So I started Anthesis on my own, it would have been 2004. It was just like me just demoing stuff on my own. KEN: Were you recording at that point? SCOTT: Yeah! Recording but like, nothing serious. Just, y’know, getting ideas down. And I’d program my own drums; just to get ideas, right? So, I had probably, I don’t know, three or four songs. Scott Lily who plays bass; he was over at my place one time and I showed them to him and he was like, “Oh, I’ll play bass on these if you want,” so that’s kinda how that started. But we still didn’t have a drummer so we went a while, couldn’t find a drummer, so we ended up, the two of us just being like, “Well, what can we do just on our own?” So we grabbed acoustics and ended up just playing acoustic stuff as a duo for a while. Finally, he was just like, “I met this guy a while ago who plays drums; I’ll see if I can get a hold of him,”. It ended up being Andrew. I didn’t even know Andrew, and when we grew up we went on the same school bus, we just didn’t know each other. KEN: Oh really, you just didn’t know? That happens so much around here. SCOTT: He’s like, three years younger than me but we went on the same school bus for years, like, high school and junior high years. So by the first time I jammed with him, I think it was January ‘06. So there’s a gap there where not much happened; I only had the handful of demos and that was it. KEN: Do those still exist somewhere? SCOTT: Oh yes. KEN: Do you look back on them fondly? SCOTT: I have demos from like, ‘06-’07-’08 and our first full length came out in 2010. So, I actually listened to them recently, and- I mean, they’re not bad for what they are, really, but they’re funny now. So we did most of that in Andrew’s parent’s garage, which, you’ve probably been in there. KEN: I have jammed in that garage- that thing is an absolute bitch in the summer. It’s basically a closet with a drum kit inside of it. SCOTT: So we would have, like, full stacks- KEN: Oh my god, how? SCOTT: So there’d be Andrew with his drums and we’d have speakers, just- KEN: How did you get them in?! SCOTT: Just, stacked in there. KEN: Oh my god. SCOTT: Yeah, no, literally like- two 4x12 cabs. KEN: His parents must have fuckin’ hated that. SCOTT: Yeah, I’m sure his neighbours did too. We were there for a while. At the time I had an apartment, none of us had our own spot. I bought this space in ‘08 so we’ve been jamming here. It’s been convenient, not bothering people’s parents. That’s how the whole thing kinda started. I never even met Andrew, not even once until the first time we jammed. And I remember showing up to his garage there, I showed him a couple of the songs and.. KEN: You just went off. SCOTT: Now it’s just the same three of us, twelve years later. KEN: How active do you consider yourselves being? You’ve put out a couple albums and you play shows once in a while when you can, right? You’re all working full time. SCOTT: That’s kind of the most frustrating part about it, I think, is where we put a lot of effort into the music and jamming and making sure that it’s, y’know, up to our standard I guess? But when it comes down to it, we’re never going to be a touring band. KEN: It’s just not possible. SCOTT: Yeah, and we accepted that from the beginning and we talked about it and said, “Alright, we’re doing this for fun, but we’re gonna do it seriously.” So if any conflict comes up, or any drama, we’re just going to check ourselves and step back, take it easy. So I think having that mentality about it first and talking about it helped that. It’s still frustrating at the same time because you do put all this effort in to it and you don’t get to play all across the continent and show everyone what you’ve been working on. We’ve obviously by this point accepted it. KEN: You guys are making a splash. You got into that magazine a while back. SCOTT: Yeah, Decibel. So that’s a huge thing- I’ve been a subscriber to Decibel for years and years and I really respect what they do for heavy music. I’ve discovered so much good stuff through them. So just the fact that we’re in there and it’s a bonus that they had good things to say- at this point it’s super cool to get recognition from someone like that, where they hear every heavy music ever and still thought ours was decent. Stuff like that makes it all worth it. So the label Hibernation Release who put out the cassette version of Age of Self; they’re out of Philadelphia. So the hookup to Decibel was through them. Hibernation Release worked with a promotional company called Perfect World Promotions which got us a lot of our early reviews for the album. KEN: So it was a pretty positive experience? In terms of listeners, did that help? SCOTT: It’s hard to tell? We had shipped an LP to California and a few CDs to Europe. So maybe those people heard of it through that? Otherwise I’m not sure. KEN: When did you find out you were going to do the interview? SCOTT: Probably just about a month before. KEN: And did you just like, hit the fuckin’ floor like, “holy shit”? SCOTT: It was funny because I got a text from Cameron who runs Hibernation Release, who was like, “Hey man, I hope this is cool but I got you guys in Decibel magazine next month,” and I was like- KEN: Fuck yeah, it’s cool! SCOTT: Yeah, you kidding me? Then your mind kinda goes, “Oh.. please say nice things, because it would hurt if you didn’t”. KEN: So you didn’t know what was going to be in it until the minute you picked it up? SCOTT: No, totally. KEN: Oh my god, I woulda fucking shit myself.

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