I think we live in a world where people would be more up-in-arms about the absence of Diet Coke than they would be the [existence of the] Patriot Act.

—Laurent Lebec, Pelican guitarist

          Laurent Lebec is about as French a name as you can get. The man who makes up one of two guitar slots for instrumental metal act, Pelican, is surprised, though, when I tell him there's a French connection to the name of his band.

          Back in the late 1600s, the British and French were fighting for control of North America. The French sent out a fleet to deal with the British in the Hudson Bay area of Canada. One ship, the Pelican, was separated from the rest of the French fleet and met up with three British vessels. It single-handedly defeated all of them, sinking one, capturing another, and causing the third to retreat.

          “To know that there’s some history behind it seems pretty cool,” Lebec responds. But for those who ask, What’s in a name? he states that, “We came up with the band as an appropriate moniker to get across the vibe that we wanted to with an instrumental band, and we always liked the idea of naming our band after a bird—and that was the one that just came up. It seemed fitting.”

          While Pelican’s music may seem similar to the sea-faring bird in some way, with its inspirational soaring and atmospheric relationship, it certainly can't be denied as metal music. It's brutal and compelling, while simultaneously finding delicacies upon which to build. And in contrast to the standard violence and male aggression of your typical contemporary metal band, Pelican ultimately creates beauty, musical poetry even.

          The music’s complexity is a natural outpouring of who the four members are as individuals. “I really hope we’re reflective of how diverse our tastes in music are,” Lebec shares. “I can listen to anything from old school country rock to demanding black metal. We never set out to write music a certain way, we just set out to write the music that was coming out of us. There was a certain frustration at the idea of thinking the music through too much. I think we are a heavy metal band as much as we are a rock band. I think these are all categorizations that are all very applicable, while at the same time being very limiting. So, I don’t really pay too much attention to them. But we all grew up as fans of pretty extreme music, and I think I find more identity affiliation with that, as opposed to stuff like Bad Company. As far as influences, it’s all over the map, but as far as who we are as musicians and who we pledge solidarity to, I think it would be the DIY, hardcore metal scene. That feels more like home than many places.”

          Lebec thinks Pelican has found acceptance among its chosen audience and peers, despite the band’s musical departure from what’s usually expected. Yet he also says that changes could be in store for his band.

          "I hope that music can shape-shift on its own, and it evolves in a way that is hopefully more organic than predictable,” Lebec muses. “I don’t think five years ago I could've predicted we would've done somber, melodic things. I couldn't have predicted that the stuff we're writing now is a lot faster and more urgent than a lot of the other stuff we've done. That's an outgrowth of some of the touring we've done—with bands like Breather Resist and These Arms Are Snakes."

That's the main thing I appreciate with a lot of instrumental bands: space in between notes, room to let a rhythm breathe, and you can be dense but you can also know when to let certain things have more room to stretch ... and I think that's something [Turner is] able to do with the art.

            Having been in existence since about 2000, this Chicago-based band remains the complete package. For all of their releases (two full-lengths, a DVD, and a handful of split and regular EPs), the artwork used is crisp and clean. It's modern without being futuristic. And it always matches the music well. Lebec says that is intentional and comes from the top down.

          "Aaron [Turner] at Hydra Head does all the layout, with our cooperation. He’s a tremendous artist with a really unique vision, both for his label, his band (Isis), and as an artist in general. I really admire a lot of the work he does. He's really listened to what we wanted to do with our music and always found the appropriate visuals for it."

          Aside from the new full-length on Hydra Head, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw, one of Pelican's latest releases is a 12" limited-edition split release between Temporary Residence Ltd. and Hydra Head—Japanese band Mono sharing the vinyl. Lebec says that even on something like the split, the artwork is kept consistent and following the same vision. In this case, it helps that both bands are of a similar style, thus the artwork encapsulates their general sound.

          "It's from the same batch as the photos from The Fire in Our Throats,” Lebec explains, “and it's just this picture of a sunset over an Alaskan landscape. It looks great. It's fitting for music with a lot of open space in it. And that's the main thing I appreciate with a lot of instrumental bands: space in between notes, room to let a rhythm breathe, and you can be dense but you can also know when to let certain things have more room to stretch ... and I think that's something [Turner is] able to do with the art.”

          The mention of Alaska suddenly brings to mind the documentary Grizzly Man, which leads me to wonder what Pelican might bring to a documentary soundtrack. It’s an idea the band is already playing with, albeit hesitantly.

          “I have no idea how to go about doing that,” Lebec admits. “We’ve gotten offers to do some films, and we're considering a few of them now, and we're really eager to contribute to that, but without an agent how do you really break into the documentary scene? I think it would be fantastic to lend our music to that. Certainly some things would work better with others, but I think there are some open, pastoral, blissful moments [in our music] that would work well with a nature documentary. What is modern life and city life but a return to nature, both conscious and subconsciously? You can see that just in the way people will decorate their apartments, the colors they choose or the music they make, the vacations you take—all of that. We're all enjoying the fruits of this existence, but I think we're all romanticizing and idealizing getting back to simpler times and being surrounded by more nature. And then when you get there you like it for a couple of weeks, but it's not my thing for all year round."

          With a slew of recent releases, Pelican has been doing what one might expect—lots of interviews, and lots of touring.

          "I think in conversation it's not as tiresome, but in email interviews it can get frustrating,” Lebec states when asked about the process of submitting to numerous different interviews during a promotional period. “The best interviews are the ones where the person went and looked up and got background information that you can get just about anywhere. The questions like, ‘Who’s in the band? When did you get started? What records did you guys put out?’ ... With how much information that a band puts out on the internet I think it's, like, ‘Come on, you should be able to find that kind of stuff.' So, I usually just put the URL to our band's website, no questions asked. It's not to be a dick, it's just that if I have to do interviews I'd rather spend it having actual conversations.

          “Some of the best interviews have started talking about the band and moved on to current affairs,” Lebec continues. “But most of the questions we get asked usually have to do with being an instrumental band, which scene do we feel a genre affiliation with, why did we name the band this, why are the song titles this, etc. I think it's an effort for interviewers who are used to talking to bands that have lyrics. I find it's a lot harder for them to talk to people about song structure or what it's like being musicians. That always comes up and it's always fun to talk about that. You kind of find trends, and even though we're an instrumental metal band, which you wouldn't think is part of a trend, you start to realize there's a trend to the type of questions you get asked after a while."

          Touring is becoming more of a lifestyle than a promotional duty for Pelican, and compared to a few years ago, the band has made staying on the road a steady gig.

          “It's always really awesome," Lebec states eagerly of the excitement of hitting the road at the beginning of a tour, "and I always find myself getting drunk on the plane just because I feel like I got to my first party and I'm going to relish in the moment. I put on my favorite CD and crack a bunch of jokes that are totally inappropriate and order Schnapps on the plane and just act like a total idiot. It's always exciting.

I've always listened to music that I felt was triumphant, and I can hear that in everything from Iron Maiden to ZZ Top's best moments. For me, it's a quality in music that involves this surge of Yes! Life is good! I'm having a blast! It's an influx of hope you can get listening to music.

            “You only feel the emotions slide about three weeks into it, and you can feel you're on the road, and every day starts to blend and get similar. Then it's easy to get the droney cabin fever where you feel like you want to do stuff every day, but you can't, so you just stare out the window and not do much of anything until you get to the show. It's still enjoyable at night, but during the day all that kind of stuff gets really boring....

          “The stuff that's really hard is the separation,” Lebec continues, “and when you come home it can take a few days to get adjusted again. If you have a significant other they start to feel like you're leaving about four days before you're gone, and you're like, 'Uh, I'm still here.' It's always really hard. We're not 18. The average age in the band is 27. By default we just find ourselves entering a different stage of life. We're still young in so many ways, and we're aspiring to avoid the trappings of adulthood very arduously. But there are things you can’t help but feel, like how you get domesticated at a certain age. So, that part's hard. I find that the more tours you do the easier it gets, and the more supportive your friends and family and partners get, too, and the more understanding they get of why you're doing it. As opposed to the first few times you do it ... where they’re like, 'Are you sure you want to do it? This seems so crazy.'

          “But then you can come home after three or four tours and you can write checks to pay the bills, and when you're at home you make the time you're at home count. And then it starts to make sense as part of the fabric of your life, much as truckers have to go to work and fishermen have to go out to sea.... It's not even like we're talking about a lot of money, it's more like the security of a job, almost. Even if you say you want to follow your dreams you can only follow your dreams if you're not getting evicted and you do not have to sell your gear to make enough money for food!”

          Lebec then jokingly admits to using a giant dollar bill as a towel and swimming in a room filled with cash, a la Scrooge McDuck of “Duck Tales.”

          Preparations for a Pelican tour are quite different than they once were. Guitarist Trevor de Brauw has moved to North Carolina, but is still a member of the band. “It's actually done more to benefit the band than it should have, probably,” Lebec thinks. “We're finding that instead of practicing once or twice a week and then not practicing for a week or two, now everything’s a lot more systematic. He comes up a week before tours and we practice our asses off before the tour, and we're on tour so much now that it just really hasn't effected us that much. It's effected the writing process, but if anything it's encouraged us to be more democratic in our songwriting, so that it's not always the same person writing, and we're all bringing more ideas to the table. It's pretty great."

          When I jokingly suggest de Brauw could have easily been replaced by a robot, Lebec responds in kind, “Well, that seems to work for the majority of the bands on the Billboard charts, so why not for us?"

          On tour, Pelican likes to keep things concise, a set list of no more than 45-50 minutes worth of music and little to no improvisation of the epic tunes they blast forward. Of course, with many songs clocking in at 5-10 minutes long, it means that the set list is usually only five or six songs.

          "Anything longer than that at that volume would just be annoying for the audience and for us, and we'd just feel battered by our own music, which just isn't the point," Lebec explains. And with little left to improvisation in the live show, Pelican’s songs still retain the feel of what one would hear on record. “It's all really structured. I think our fans have grown with us, so at the beginning they might have not been as able to identify a part of a song as opposed to another. I think our song structures have changed, too. There's a lot more dynamics than there used to be before. There's a lot more repetition than there used to be. That's the normal outgrowth of being a band.”

          Near the end of our conversation, Lebec says that he has to catch a flight to Europe soon for the start of Pelican's tour with Cave In. With time for one final question, I bring up something I read in the band's bio—a statement that Pelican is a self-described “fucking triumphant band.”

          “Yeah!” Lebec responds. “I've always listened to music that I felt was triumphant, and I can hear that in everything from Iron Maiden to ZZ Top's best moments. For me, it's a quality in music that involves this surge of Yes! Life is good! I'm having a blast! It's an influx of hope you can get listening to music. Although I can listen to music that's a little more depressing or sad, it's never been the music I've created. I can never stay in a sad progression for too long. I've always wanted to get somewhere more positive. I'm almost thinking it's genetic at this point. I think that's a quality of music that I relate to and find important and want people to find in our band. It seems to have worked, because it's like there's finally an adjective to describe our band and I see it all the time now in regards to interviews and articles!"