Slang of Ages Interview: Mark Anthony K discusses The Dark Monarchy album, ‘Weigh Of The World”

Mark Anthony K discusses The Dark Monarchy album, ‘Weigh Of The World”

Preston Frazier:  I've been listening to Weight of the World for a while, and I know the first single is also out, “Solitaire.” First of all, congratulations.

This is the fourth full Dark Monarchy album, not to mention the three E.P.’s. That you and Joe Bailey completed is as many years.

Mark Anthony K: Yes, usually with each album, we would do an accompanying EP of a couple of songs because we typically write about eight or nine songs, and usually, to keep our albums to  40-45 minute length, we usually have leftover songs.

PF: These are hard-hitting from beginning to end.  Let's start at the beginning. How did this album start?

MAK: Usually, Joe Bailey and I  have some time to plan a schedule of what we will do because Joe is pretty busy as well. He releases a lot of records. I believe he's on album nine. We decided in late  2023 that on January 1st of this year, we would start writing for the new Dark Monarchy record. Once we started writing, everything started falling into place rather quickly.

I was finishing up the mixing and mastering the Projekt Gemineye album, “What’s On Your Mind,” at that point. It was perfect timing because once that was done, I had a lot of time to work on this new record with him, and it went smoothly.

PF: How does the album differ from the last Dark Monarchy album, ‘ Chiaroscuro’?

MAK: There's maybe a bit more guitar on this album than on ‘ Chiaroscuro.’ There are a lot of keyboards and a lot of sequencing stuff on the last record, too. There's a little bit more of a divide with the vocals. Joe was very much the vocalist proper on the previous record, but we share the vocals a lot more in this one. There are two songs where I entirely sing by myself on this record, which is sort of odd. I ran it by Joe when we were doing it. I said, ‘You sure you want me to do it this way?’

He said, ‘ I'm loving it. Just don't worry.’  He is very supportive that way.

It turned out good. And especially with the songs we did together, I always think these are the ones that I like best because we have different styles, but they complement each other vocally. Some of our songs, like “On Trial With The World,” showed it.

It was one of those songs where we split the vocals up, and it worked for the better.

PF: Let's start with the first single, “Solitaire,” which is out, and I think Joe sings most of that. One of the things that jumped out at me was the prominence of the guitars and your guitar approach.

Could you talk about crafting the song?

MAK: I think the guitars on this one are solid. Joe had a great idea with the beginning of the song to add the vocals right at the top because I initially wrote that introductory piece, and I thought at first maybe it would just be an introduction with a guitar solo. He had the idea to come in right away with the vocals, which I thought was great.

The difference with this album in the guitar tones compared to the last one is I've picked up a little neat device, and I'm sure all you guitar geeks out there that are well aware of this is there's a universal audio pedal called The Lion 68.

It's a recreation of the Marshall 1968 Plexi Amp. It comes in this pedal form now and has these sorts of impulse response speakers in there.

If you close your eyes and don't know better, you're plugged into a 1968 Marshall Amp.

Technology is so fantastic for guitar players. It's unbelievable. So, I use this pedal for the guitars, distorted guitars, and clean guitars. You can even do bass guitar with old Marshalls. And it sounds fantastic.

PF:  I think it shows in the guitar soloing, the rhythm guitars, and the clean guitars .

How do you come up with your plan for the guitars?

MAK: I've tried to learn over the years how to make complimentary guitar sounds for different things. As you mentioned, one thing is obvious: other guitar layers are in various sections of the songs. So you don't want to have, for example, a multiple-layer guitar in every part of the song because there's no difference within the song.

In the verse, there might be only two guitars, a left and right guitar, semi-distorted; in the pre-chorus, you might add another guitar, like a clean guitar. Underneath it, there's another layer.

All of a sudden, you have a different sound. Now you get to the chorus, add some more prominent guitars, and suddenly, you have this grandiose thing in the chorus going on. I very much try to do that.

That's a thing that Robert “Mutt” Lang, a famous producer, is very much known for doing, layering, stacking, taking things away in certain parts because then your ears always think, ‘What happened there? I just heard something. Oh, what happened here?’

It's essential to do that because you want to keep the listeners interested. In this day and age, listeners have no attention span.

We wanted to be inspired and hear different things in music. I think it's essential to do that in music today, just like in the old days.

PF: Though five songs are on the album ‘Weight Of The World, ’ repeated listening is needed to pick up on the nuances.

One of those nuances that have expanded since the last album is the orchestration programming and keyboards that Joe did.

MAK: Yes, Joe brought a different feel.

Joe and I started working on the album separately. The Dark Monarchy is very much more orchestrated, very much more symphonic. Joe does a lot of brilliantly orchestrated parts. I could listen to that by itself. And you bring up an excellent point, Preston, because even for me, as a person who's been writing music, there've been so many times where I went back and listened to the songs, and I said to myself, oh, I forgot about that part. There's so much in there that sometimes you forget and lose track of where and what it is.

When you have to mix it, you must keep what you will feature in mind. What am I going to put in the background? What needs to be brought up more? What needs a little bit of effect? It's a bit of a puzzle sometimes, but I enjoy doing and mixing.

PF: Has your approach to writing with Joe changed since the Dark Monarchy self-titled debut?

MAK: That's a great question because how we started writing these songs has not changed. The formula has been something that people find fascinating.

I'll write the first three minutes of the song, and I'll stop; then, usually, at that point, I'll have the introduction verse, pre-chorus, chorus, and maybe another extra part, and I'll send it to Joe, and he'll complete the song.

He adds whatever he thinks works to complete it. He'll add a guitar solo section. Maybe he'll bring back a pre-chorus in the section or add back the choruses at the end, but he'll construct the song's ending.

He does the same thing with me. He does the first three minutes of his song, bringing it over to me, and I conclude it. That is probably why our songs are usually about seven minutes long. We typically have about three and a half minutes of parts each, so it always ends up being seven minutes long because we want to add all our parts to make it happen. That formula has never changed. We like doing it that way because it gives it the twist nobody expects.

I don't tell him what to do on bass or keyboards or anything like that. He doesn't tell me what to do on guitars. It ends up being an authentic representation of both people in the music.

PF: Have you changed your approach to the drums? I know both of you and Joe worked on the drums.

MAK: The drums are something that we approached a bit differently this time. I like using the Easy Drummer. It sounds perfect.

It's not robotic. It is a sample of real drummers. These patterns are recorded beautifully in professional studios, and they're loops of them.

They'll give you these little packs like I just bought now, one called the Modern Metal Pack. And what they did is they'd have like a whole section of verse parts.

So he might play a verse section with high-hat. The next time, he'll do a little bit of an open high hat, then an open high hat, and then he'll do something on a ride cymbal. Then you have 17 different variations of a verse part than 17 of a pre-course of a bridge part. You have to construct this and make a song out of it.

The drums we used for the album are nice and open.

I usually have about 15 tracks for drums. It's ridiculous how many drums I can put into a drum thing.

However, I took a kick snare and a stereo pair of Toms for this album. Instead of having every snare or tom on a separate track, I had them on two. Then, I have overhead mics and ambiance, all in stereo pairs.

That's just something that Pink Floyd producer Bob Ezrin likes to do.

I love the way the set the drum sound on this record is very nice and full. You can hear them all.

PF: I like to dig back into the writing process. You mentioned how you would trade off with Joe about the writing of the songs, the lyrics, and the individual vocal approaches.

MAK: The vocals and the lyrics are something that is left to each person who's singing the song. “Solitaire” we knew Joe was going to sing it. He was in charge of all the lyrics and all the vocals. The only time that something changes with that is if Joe messaged me and said, ‘Hey Mark, I got an idea for a bridge part, but I want you to sing it. Here's a ghost track of how I think it should sound.’ He'll leave it very minimal and say, ‘ I'll just give you this verse or vocal line.

If you want to do it this way, that would be great. If not, do it your way. But I would like you to find some harmonized vocals with these parts.’

Other than that, it's up to the person who's singing.

PF: Tell me about the song “On Trial With The World.”

MAK: Joe came up with the theme. It’s about having the world watching you and judging you, feeling like you always have to be at your best and doing your best at all times—the constant pressure of living under a microscope.

Whether it's personal or topical, the lyrics are very relatable.

Joe likes writing about real-world stuff, and I do, too.

We love bands like Kiss, but we can't see ourselves writing songs about going out on Saturday nights and picking up girls.

PF: How about “Your Dead Sea”? Your approach to guitar is fantastic.

MAK: That song is one of the more heavy songs on the record, and right away, when we completed it, Joe and I knew that that would open the record. We wanted something hard-hitting, something That makes a definitive musical statement. Right away, at the beginning, Joe wrote that neat sequence part. Joe wrote the lyrics. The song is about being surrounded by negative and hateful behavior but trying to be positive and loving and how life can feel heavy, like you're drowning sometimes.

PF: That brings us to “ The Changes We Make”.

MAK: I started that song lyrically and handled the lead vocals. I did all of it.  I like those clean guitar verses.

The song also has space to breathe. I remember hearing Roger Waters saying It's important to leave space in the music for vocals so it doesn't get trampled, and you can listen to the message.

The song’s theme is about life and how life changes given the choices we make and the people we meet along the way. Sometimes, meeting someone in your life can radically change your life in a good way or sometimes in a wrong way.

Always these changes are needed.

PF: The song “ Three Months to Live” has Joe's unique orchestration and keyboards.

MAK: Joe did a great job with that. It’s one of the songs that I started writing. He completed it, and I knew that it would be substantial when he brought me back his parts.

I thought the orchestration complimented the music and gave you such excellent ear candy. The song captures the listener.

We're always conscious of doing something different: a guitar solo or a bridge section.

Lyrically, the song refers to a gentleman diagnosed with a terminal.

He found it difficult to tell his loved ones that he was dying.

The song reveals how he almost didn't want to tell his family so that they could have a more enjoyable time together rather than dwelling on it.

It might be looked at as a little dark, but I think it's also a message of love because this person cared about the other person so much that he'd rather keep it a secret and have this person believe that everything is good and let's go through on with our life.

PF : Overall, it is a thrilling, cohesive album. Is it out on July 1st?

MAK: Yes, we will have digital and CD versions of it coming out. We're trying to pull to do a vinyl version of this album. The album is available via Bandcamp. Thanks, Preston

https://thedarkmonarchy.bandcamp.com/album/the-weight-of-the-world