How Sri Lanka Brought Its Past Back to Life on Leviathan
Punk Head: Leviathan revisits songs from your earliest days. How did it feel to reinterpret material decades after it was first written?
Sri Lanka: Some of the material we wished we had recorded back then but never had band consensus as to what was going to go on one of the albums or EPs. As an example, we feel that "Solstice" was one of our strongest songs we’ve ever written, so it felt good to finally have that expressed with the maturity of our musicianship that we have today. Likewise, "The Haunting" was one of the first songs we ever wrote when we were about sixteen years old, so reinterpreting that gave the song a very different vibe and maturity than it had when we first wrote it. It was like finally giving a voice to something that never had the opportunity to live on its own in a proper way.
Punk Head: The band had a long hiatus, during which members explored other musical projects and life paths. How did those experiences outside Sri Lanka influence the new material?
Sri Lanka: Actually, one of the biggest reasons for recording the new material was that we just wanted to listen to music that we like again, and so much of today’s music feels formulaic and rote. So we decided to write music we wanted to hear. The song “Love Like Rust” really speaks to evolving in a world that has changed around you, while retaining that part of who you are that is the passion living inside you. The song “Leviathan” was the catalyst of the album and it is really an homage to the sound of gothic rock before it became a mockery of itself, harkening back to the sound of early Sisters of Mercy and The Cure.
Punk Head: Releasing live recordings from 1989 and 1998 is a bold choice. What stories or emotions were you hoping listeners would uncover through these snapshots of your past?
Sri Lanka: Releasing the live records was a way for our fans to reconnect with their past and relive some moments at a time when live music was raw, unproduced and filled with fog, clove cigarettes and dancing into the morning. There’s a romance to nightlife and music scene of the late 80s that unfortunately the youth of today just don’t get to experience. It’s a way of reliving your private moments through the music blaring through a dimly lit small nightclub in your own way.
Punk Head: Philadelphia’s underground scene is a recurring character in your story—what about it still inspires you today?
Sri Lanka: It was vibrant back in the 80s and early 90s and you felt like the people you met were your family, moreso in many cases than your real family. You felt understood, connected and part of a movement, when most people came from growing up in broken homes. You made friends with people that were in other bands and their was a friendly competition for an audience who loved all of you.
Punk Head: The album title, Leviathan, evokes something immense and almost mythic. Why that name now?
Sri Lanka: The album itself is something that’s risen from the depths of years past. We recognized that we had more to say after thirty years than we thought. We incorporated a theme throughout the album that we haven’t really seen before, one of the gothic melancholy vastness of the ocean. The song “Leviathan” is filled with real whale song that sits beneath the music that we’ve written. We hope that the album evokes the silent, dark beauty that comes with staring longingly out across the ocean and makes people feel that they’ve come home after a long journey at sea.
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