Perhaps it’s telling of my age, but it’s not very often that a band composed of youngsters impresses me. Too often, I feel they’re trying too hard and, too often again, I feel they fail badly.

Not so Ashes for Nought. These young guns blew me away when they shared the stage with my band Loathe at a Boxing Day gig last year, quickly becoming fast friends after that and with more enjoyable performances.

I wonder what sets these guys apart, so I spoke to Ben Mifsud Joslin, Ashes for Nought bass player and singer, to set the record straight.

Drummer Mark Azzopardi is the true founding member of the band, having crusaded to get a band together way back in 2010.

Mifsud Joslin and guitar player Karl Fiteni joined shortly thereafter, and the band became an instrumental trio, even playing live in this format and winning the 2011 edition of the Junior College Battle of the Bands.

Shortly thereafter, Daniel Warrington, the band’s second other guitarist, joined the ranks, completing the line-up.

Ashes for Nought are good friends of the Salesians in Sliema, this after taking part in one of their Battle of Bands compet-itions in 2012.

The performance at the Salesians served as a stepping stone to the band playing proper gigs. It landed them an opportunity to play with 26 Other Worlds, which essentially was when they started asserting themselves on the metal scene.

As far as the music goes, Ashes for Nought are unique, at least locally. I ask about the genre label the band has adopted, which is that of ‘experimental metal’. How did that come about?

“Our genre is something else that is hard for us to define,” says Mifsud Joslin.

“We’ve given up on trying to do so and quite frankly we don’t really care about labelling our music. That being said, the experimental metal tag was the closest thing we could think of that represented our sound. We try not to think in concrete formulae when songwriting; we’ll do what feels right and natural in any given song. Honestly, we don’t think that it would ever work if we were to decide to add too many boundaries to our sound.

Adding our own individual touches is what makes each song a fully-fledged Ashes for Nought song

“We’re more comfortable including elements from any genre we deem fit, so we incorporate anything from brutal death metal to jazz in our sound, so long as the context calls for it. We blend modern and traditional styles together, as well as face-melting riffs with more melodic stuff; this helps us achieve the variety we’re looking for.”

What about influences then? What and who has helped most to shape the band’s sound?

“Perhaps the reason why we sound the way we do is that everybody in the band listens to vastly different genres within the metal realm and beyond,” continues Mifsud Joslin.

He then confirms that there is a prominent commonality in the members’ musical tastes in the form of progressive music, from classic bands like Rush to newer bands like Tesseract and Protest the Hero.

Ashes for Nought songs are written collaboratively; somebody would have come up with an idea and worked on it, but by the time the song is done everybody would have added some kind of input.

“Everybody has a particular playing style, so adding our own individual touches is what makes each song a fully-fledged Ashes for Nought song.”

And what about the fact that, rather than going for a dedicated singer, the band uses its bassist Mifsud Joslin? How did that come about?

“That was definitely a natural progression for us. When we decided we didn’t want to be an instrumental band anymore, we also realised we wanted to remain a quartet, just because we were so comfortable with the format.

“So Mark and I started experimenting with adding vocals to the songs, and by and by the approach stuck.”

What are the band’s goals? Any recorded music hitting our ears any time soon, and any view to the future beyond that?

“We’re actually thinking about recording an EP soon,” says Mifsud Joslin.

“We don’t want to give away too much information for the time being, but more announcements should be made in the not-too-distant future.

“As for goals, we’re definitely goal-centred as a band, but at the same time we feel like there wouldn’t be much point in doing this if we weren’t having fun with it too.

“Our goals are the same as most other bands’; we want to write good music, release it and hopefully get our name out there.

“However, there’s almost as much satisfaction in the process as there is in the product.”

And lastly, what’s in a name? Turns out the name is something that the band members often get asked about, and it’s not something that’s necessarily easily explainable.

This is mainly because “we don’t really feel that there is a concrete meaning behind it.

“More than anything they wanted a name that reflects our music on a stylistic level, and so we thought a name that could be interpreted differently by different people would be apt.”

Ashes for Nought will perform on September 27, alongside War Trigger and Loathe, at Razzett l-Aħmar, Ta’Qali, limits of Mosta.

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