Levi/Werstler ‘Went to War’ for ‘Avalanche of Worms’

For Levi/Werstler to pull off writing and recording their debut, 'Avalanche of Worms,' a lot of juggling had to take place. Guitarist Eyal Levi had to deal with his responsibilities in Daath and his production work; also having to deal with the day job of Daath is guitarist Emil Werstler. And then there was working with the schedule of Cynic drummer Sean Reinert. All in all, it took everything possible from the trio to get the instrumental prog album done.

"What we did was when we had the window of time to get it done, we attacked it like we were going to war," Levi explained to Noisecreep. "That's what you gotta do when you have a million different things to balance."

To help keep the layers needed for the albums guitar-based sound coming in, Levi attempted to write while on tour. "It didn't work," he laughed. "It's easier said than done. I got a rig together and tried writing. Writing on a van tour," he pointed out. "It's best to forget about it. It's not gonna happen. When we were in Europe, we were on a bus, so I figured we had the lounge to write. Yeah I wrote a little bit, but there's so much distraction and so much noise. Like sometimes you can't during the day, because some people are sleeping, and at night people are loud. Touring is not a really good environment for writing, at least not the way we tour."

He predicts that writing on the bus could happen in the future for Daath but only if they weren't sharing a bus with another band -- like what happens on most tours and the bus needs to have a committed part for writing he explained: a no-party zone. But another factor gets in the way and that's one of a musical morality. "Not everyone is on the same page," Levi notes. "For instance, for Emil and I to write for a project outside of Daath while on tour with Daath, how can we tell Daath guys to change their ways for our project? It's not fair. You don't do that. If we were on a Daath bus and writing Daath music and everyone was into it, then that's a different story."

Though finding the time made the album hard to put together, Levi did see one thing as a freeing part of the process: not having to write in parts for vocals. "Let's say you're writing for vocals, well you definitely have to leave room for them. You definitely have to take into account the length of time parts," he explained. "There is a bit of a guessing game when you haven't heard what the vocals will be. You don't know if having something go X amount of time is going to work out.

"One thing that is important to me is knowing how time will effect this listener, like at what point to do I start getting bored. When it's an instrumental project, you can just let the music take you where ever, there is nothing holding you to an idea."