Self-described as a slow & heavy two piece with anti-oppressive and fantastical leanings, Ontario’s doom metal duo Vile Creature signed with Prosthetic Records. As guitarist-vocalist KW explains, however, signings aren’t always as sudden as they may seem. “We agreed to work with Prosthetic probably in August of last year, and they don't usually announce until they have a release.” Since the band wasn’t planning on recording a new album until late 2019, early 2020, the signing announcement would have been on hold for almost a year and a half. But as KW confides, with Preservation Rituals in the works before they had piqued Prosthetic’s interest, an alternative solution was suggested.
“We've done two full-lengths and an EP. They were always on vinyl, cassette, digital. ... So we've been spit-balling the idea of self-releasing a CD of all of our records together. When we talked with Steve [Joh] and E.J. [Johantgen] at Prosthetic, agreeing to work together for future records, Steve was like, ‘Hey I’d love to be involved in [that CD release], aside from the stuff we’re already doing together.’ That helped us push up our time table to announcing [the signing].”
While hard work played a role in Vile Creature’s agreement with Prosthetic, KW made it clear that staying true to your art should hold the most weight in your career. “In no way give a fuck or have being on a label as your carrot,” he explains. “If you're not playing music because you love the people that you're being creative with, and you just want some awesome version of expression ... you're doing it for the completely wrong reasons.”
KW doubled down, expressing how important it is to understand the label’s role in your career equation. “A label is basically another person who's spending money on you doing your own thing. ... You have to have mutual respect because that's somebody spending thousands of dollars on you. If you don't play shows and work hard to get that person's money back, they're not gonna like you, so there's no point in doing it ... As long as you enjoy playing, it’s gonna be rad, but if you like the carrot [dangling] in front of your faces, ‘I need to be on a big label and do big tours,’ 99 percent of the time it’s never going to come and I’d never stress it. Most people luck into these things. Just be a really rad person, have a really rad time playing music, and be really rad to other people.”
Preservation Rituals dropped in March.
Date Signed: Sept. 13, 2018
Label: Prosthetic Records
Band Members: KW, guitar, vocals; Vic, drums, vocals (They/Them)Type of Music: Blackened Sludge Metal
Management: N/A
Booking: Ethan McCarthy - Heavy Talent
Legal: Neil Shulman - Ploegsma & Shulman LLP
Publicity: [email protected]
Web: vilecreature.bandcamp.com
A&R: Steve Joh, [email protected]
