Former NEVERMORE/TESTAMENT Guitarist Discusses THE ESSENESS PROJECT

Zero Tolerance webzine recently conducted an interview with guitarist Steve Smyth (THE ESSENESS PROJECT, NEVERMORE, TESTAMENT, DRAGONLORD, VICIOUS RUMORS). A couple of excerpts from the question-and-answer session follow:

Zero Tolerance: How's everything going with your projects? And what about your health?

Steve: I'm happy to be back in good health as well! I am now one year and one month post-transplant, and getting back to being busy again, after taking it easy last year during my recovery. We are busy right now, with promotion for THE ESSENESS PROJECT, and I am also doing some guest solo sessions for a few bands around the world, in addition to putting a new vocal band together as well, among many other things upcoming this year! I am looking forward to getting back to what I do as much as I can this year!

Zero Tolerance: How come you named the band THE ESSENESS PROJECT. What's the story behind that name?

Steve: The name is actually a play on words. My buddy Steve Hoffman and I are both named Steve. We used to hang out a lot back in the day, and every where we went, people would say, "Hey, it's Steve and Steve!" We decided to name this project S and S, and decided to mix up the wording a little bit, and the end result is ESSENESS. Contrary to what I've heard, rumors about the name that go around, there is no link to anything else. It's just a play on how you would say S and S! Ha ha.

Zero Tolerance: Could you please make a short introduction to THE ESSENESS PROJECT to those readers of ours who are not familiar with your band?

Steve: This is an all-instrumental project, and for me, a delving into the world of progressive rock. It's not metal, but myself being from a long background of metal music, you know it's in there as well! There are different styles of music that find their way into our songs, plenty of shred from myself, Steve Hoffman on bass, and our special guest drummer, Atma Anur! Atma has a long history as a session drummer for Shrapnel Records. Most here may know him from the first CACOPHONY record, or Jason Becker's first solo album, "Perpetual Burn", or maybe even Greg Howe's debut album. We just released our debut album in November 2007, on our own for now, and are currently shopping for deals to release the album worldwide in 2008, and just this past weekend, Steve and I had the opportunity to perform at the NAMM show in L.A., at several booths of equipment companies I hold endorsements with. We look forward to doing more of these later in the year, and hopefully some full band performances as well.

Zero Tolerance: When did you start recording THE ESSENESS PROJECT? Have there been any difficulties when you were writing those songs? How did you develop the songs?

Steve: We began tracking Atma in April 2004, and naturally, when you have three guys who all have crazy schedules (Atma regularly does session and live work, Steve Hoffman teaches bass, and also plays concert double bass for various symphonies and theater productions, and my schedule at that time was NUTS!),we took our time getting him tracked, and by the end of April 2005, we had Atma done. I had a crazy schedule during this time; touring with TESTAMENT, then NEVERMORE, then writing and recording albums with both NEVERMORE and DRAGONLORD at the same time, and teaching guitar, it seemed impossible! But we got Atma done, and proceeded to record ourselves from there. As far as the writing process went, we had a few of these songs written already. Steve Hoffman and I had this project started back in 1993, after we were both featured in Mike Varney's "Hometown Heroes" column in 1993 (I was in October 1993, Steve Hoffman was in November 1993). We were very inspired to record and album, and we got together four songs to start off with, and through the studio we recorded at, were able to contact Atma to record on those songs. He was into it, so we did those four, and released that as an independent release in 1994. We received very favorable response, and continued to write songs for an album. In 1995, I got the VICIOUS RUMORS lead guitar gig, and we put the project on hold.

When we started this idea back up in late 2001, only two of those songs from that four-song EP made it on this album: "The Afterlife" and "In God's Hands". It wasn't difficult to write for the album; this is something I always wanted to do, as well as Steve, so we were always writing instrumental songs, only at this time we were able to weed through, and pick out ideas we were both into respectively, and between my crazy schedule and Steve's, we made demos, and passed them on to each other, for each guy to add his parts to, back and forth, over a few years. It took us probably two years to get the demos done, with everything else going on! ha ha But once we were done, we contacted Atma immediately, he was very excited to do this, and we were in the studio getting his drums down as quickly as we could from there.

I would say the most difficult thing was the time involved, and finding it, in between everything else I had going on, from my view point. I had to get into the mode of writing for this album, which, given my diverse musical background, wasn't that hard to do. When you're involved with other people in another band, you're in that mindset while you're there. When you're done, you're back to yourself, so that was the experience I learned in doing this.

Zero Tolerance: How are fans responding to the new material?

Steve: It has caught a lot of people by surprise; they didn't expect this much diverse material from me, given my metal background! But, I have always studied all music, and taught for years as well, so it's in me, and I had to get this out! As for the response, it's good, and we're looking forward to raising more exposure for the album this year, and expanding our potential audience. If you're into guitar, this album won't disappoint you, I feel!

Zero Tolerance: I'd describe your sound as a jazz fusion and rock progressive, shred. How would you describe your sound? What did you set out to do?

Steve: I'll take that! It's a mixture of styles, so fusion fits in there. Steve and I both have a jazz education background, and he has live experience with jazz, so I can see that as fitting as well. But, it's not snobby jazz, it's still listenable! Prog rock, and shred, most definitely there in spades! There's some heavy riffing in there, some atmospheric stuff, sound-scape type stuff that we went for. We set out to have an album of instrumental music that had atmosphere, mood, and musical diversity, as well as chops, and I think we achieved all of that!

Zero Tolerance: What inspired you for creating THE ESSENESS PROJECT?

Steve: Just a love of instrumental music, and always wanting to do something in that realm of music, but something a little more unique, hopefully, rather than the usual shred over once chord type of thing. I can listen to that, but I have always wanted to get a little more into the compositional side of things, as had Steve H. It's showing another side to me that I don't think people knew I had in me.

Read the entire interview at Zero Tolerance.