There is always excitement when a legend like George Lynch announces a new project, especially one like The Banishment. Lynch teams up with Devix AKA and Joe Haze to form a new band that combines his trademark guitar with a more industrial sound and an underground art aesthetic. The band is looking for your help to fund the project through their Indigogo site. All three members recently took some time to talk about this exciting new venture.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with The Banishment. I apologize in advance for the audio quality, each member was in a different place, including a car:
On some of their former bands – Haze – I was in Lords of Acid, I was a guitar player. I worked with Chris Vrenna from Nine Inch Nails and a lot of that whole world, Pig, Primitive Rage. 2:25
Devix – I got lucky early, I met some guys from a band called Ministry, and I started recording a record with Paul Barker (bass, Ministry). It never saw the light of day and it’s sitting on a hard drive somewhere, but that record and that experience introduced me to this whole world of Wax Trax, pro-musician creativity, that’s what I’ll call it. These were the fucking pros. So, when I ran into Haze and George, it’s like, “Finally, people who are on the level”. They’re better than on the level, they’re above and beyond; they know what they’re doing, they know how to do it and I don’t have to build from the ground up with a group of musicians who are struggling like I am, 4:15
On how the band evolved – Lynch – Initially, I met Haze through Mandy Lion from World War III, who I knew from working on a record in 1992 called Sacred Groove. He co-wrote an important song with me called “The Beast”. So we decided to get together and start this project. When I started working with Haze it went in a different direction than I think Mandy had anticipated and when he got the material it just wasn’t a great fit. Nothing against Mandy, it just was not a great fit for whatever reason. He wasn’t feeling it and we weren’t feeling it, we just mutually decided this isn’t working and we went our own ways. I liked the way it was working and so did Haze so we kept treading water, did a variety of recording that was really fun, came up with all these beds, then we eventually hooked up with Tommy (Victor) from Prong. Tommy worked on a couple songs with us that we still have and may be released later after the record is finished and released as bonus tracks. They’re really good and Tommy did a great job. He got really busy and his manager was like, “Well, I don’t see a lot of traction with this thing. We’re gonna have to bow out for now”, I was like, “OK”. 5:22
Haze – Devix and I had a mutual friend, Erica, and she picked me up from the airport in LA…we went to this interesting cafe and I was drinking champagne at 10:00 in the morning, we were talking and he was helping out with some completely unrelated stuff and I think she suggested, “Hey, you should try Devix out”…I gave him a .mp3 of a rough mix we had on the cloud. That ended up being the first single. 7:40
On the darker, edgier side to George Lynch’s playing – Devix – I’m surprised people are surprised by it…Other than “Dream Warriors”, because the third Nightmare on Elm Street is one of my favorite movies of all time, I didn’t know anything about his work. But there was something about horror. I thought if (Dokken) was willing to do this absolute gore-fest horror movie then, of course, they should have been making this kind of music all along. When I heard George Lynch (was involved in the project) I thought, “This is gonna be awesome”. 9:40
“Lost Horizon”
On how the music evolved after Devix joined – Lynch – Once we got Devix on board it was really a matter of re-programming the music. It’s not the simplest arrangements, they’re pretty complex and I think the challenge was to make them digestible for Devix to address and put his stamp across. Of course, we had to deal with the limitations of the pandemic and how we can work, so that was very frustrating. It’s been a long process punctuated by intense periods of work followed by long periods of inactivity. On paper, we’ve been working on this project for probably seven years but we’ve really put about six months of work into it. 11:45
On the Indigogo campaign – Devix – We have a limited amount of time to get this thing out of our way. We’re all going to be sucked into different jobs, so we have to do the 30 days and it’s imperative in that nature. What we’re offering is everything we can think of. During the pandemic, I began painting. I didn’t expect that to happen. We were all suffering quite a bit in the beginning and one of the things that happened because I had nothing else to do is (starting to) paint. Lynch was supporting me the whole time as we weren’t able to work on music originally during the pandemic so we had to adjust and realize that everything stopped and our lives were getting uprooted, it was horrifying. We’re doing all the in-house art, I’ve been coming up with some pretty cool designs…I used to be a graphic designer, so I’ll combine the two gifts and my talent for formatting, and that’s hopefully what we are going to give away, actually give them some art, actually give them some records, some vinyl…This crazy situation calls for it, it’s the right time to grab something you can hold, look at it, turn it over, open it up, pull out the press, see each side, see what’s going on. It’s a story. That’s hopefully what we’ll be giving them as well, a record with an actual story. That’s my job as we’re finishing off the project. The basics are there as well, tee shirts…we’ve got a guitar incentive and we’ve got some pedals that were used on the record. 15:00
On the timeframe for releasing the record – Lynch – We’re shooting for February (2021) and that’s possible because the fact that there isn’t any touring going on kind of opens up some time for all of us. So we’re able to spend the time right after the holidays getting this out pretty quickly. We already have the artwork, Devix did the artwork for the album cover, so we did that in house. We already did photoshoots. We have just a few more songs to work on arrangements and vocals then get everything mixed and mastered, sequenced, then get the vinyl pressed and all the other things that we’re giving away. Our artwork we already have quite a bit done, we have more to do but that won’t take a lot of time. So we’re looking at February if everything goes according to plan. 19:50
