Blighted Eye, a melodic blackened death metal band from Seattle, formed in 2019 when longtime friends Chris Jones and Kyle Chapman joined forces. After their debut EP Wretched in 2020, they released their first full-length album, Agony's Bespoke, in 2024. In this interview, Chris and Kyle discuss the band's evolution, their influences, and their creative process behind the music.
Serial Metalbums: Could you introduce yourselves to our readers and tell us about the formation of Blighted Eye? How would you define your musical style? What emotions do you aim to convey through your music?
Chris Jones (guitars): So our initial formation was in 2019 when I had some material I had been working on and I asked Kyle if he would be interested in contributing vocals and guitar on it. Shortly after that during the pandemic in 2020 I approached John about tracking drums, but at the time I didn’t know if he was going to be a full-time member or if this was just a one-time thing as he was already in a lot of bands. Fortunately, after the E.P. “Wretched” was recorded he came into the fold full-time. At the time of the E.P. we were just a 3 piece since no one could play live at that point in time, so I recorded bass for our first release. We asked Ben to join on bass guitar in 2022 when we could finally play live and do normal band things. 2022 kind of felt like the real beginning of the band in a lot of ways and since everyone in this band has been friends for a long time it felt like a long time coming to finally all do something together.
Kyle Chapman (guitars & vocals): Yeah, the four of us have all known each other for many years. I had been hounding Chris for the better part of a decade to start some sort of project together, so when he approached me about starting Blighted Eye, it was kind of a no-brainer. John and Ben rounding out the lineup was really just the cherry on top. Ben and I have been playing music together since we were 13 (we’re both 33 currently) and all of our old bands had played together so much back in the day, so it only made sense.
As far as our musical style goes, it’s been a hard one to nail down since there is so much at play. The closest we’ve been able to get is melodic blackened death metal with some progressive tendencies, but that’s quite a mouthful. That being said, I think the emotions we strive to convey with our music is a powerful sense of melancholy and gloom that compels our listeners to some level of introspection.
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Chris Jones: Oh man, there are a lot of bands and musicians that have shaped me over the years, but I’ll try and keep it relatively short. I got my first guitar when I was 12 years old in 1999, so I was definitely influenced by what was popular at that time. So, bands like Metallica, Korn, Alice In Chains, Pantera etc. but I also I got into more technical guitar players like Yngwie and Van Halen. As I got older, I would say bands like Opeth, Katatonia, Dissection, Arch Enemy, Nevermore, Moonspell, Morbid Angel were all pretty influential. I mean, there are a lot more, but for metal those were all very influential. I would add Chris Amott from Arch Enemy was in particular a huge influence on me as a lead guitarist. Of course, I liked a lot of classic rock too as well as music not rock related like Paco De Lucia and Al Di Meola. Friday Night in San Fransico is such a great live album. I definitely like contemporary bands as well, one of my favorite albums that I discovered this year is “All Nighter” from this French gothic rock band called Sang Froid. Really good if you like gothy stuff.
Kyle Chapman: Similar to Chris, the 90’s grunge and nü metal scenes definitely had their influence on me as far as serving as my gateway into the more extreme side of metal. My dad was also a big fan of bands like Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Scorpions, and Judas Priest, so there was also quite a bit of influence from that. I started playing guitar in 2004, so other than bands I grew up listening to, the NWOAHM band and 2nd wave of melo death bands were everywhere. Eventually I found bands like Morbid Angel and Death which sent me further down the extreme rabbit hole and the rest is history. As far as my songwriting and playing goes, I think two artists that I look to as inspiration are Ihsahn of Emperor/solo act and Luc Lemay of Gorguts. I feel you would be hard pressed to find two more innovative and forward-thinking figures in the extreme metal world.
Serial Metalbums: Your first EP, "Wretched," was released in 2020 and your first album, "Agony's Bespoke," in 2024. How would you describe the evolution of your music between these two projects?
Chris Jones: I think the last two tracks off “Wretched” are closer to what’s on “Agony’s” when compared to the first two tracks. You can sort of see where it might go from there. I think “Agony’s Bespoke” is more intentional in its sound and is a lot denser in its atmosphere and layering. There are a lot more synths and soundscapes on the album, even when you may not recognize there are things going on in the background. I think everything from the flow of the tracks to the story it tells is more thought out. Overall, I would say “Agony’s Bespoke” is us getting closer to what is our own unique voice as a band. I think we are still getting there, but we may be still shaking off some excess emulation in my opinion. Overall, I am excited for where we are headed musically.
Kyle Chapman: Yeah, “Wretched” definitely feels more like a sort of proof-of-concept whereas “Agony’s” feels like the more realized vision. You can definitely see the connective tissue between the two, but there is so much more thought and deliberate choices that were made in the writing, production, and overall presentation of “Agony’s.” There’s a level of confidence in the songwriting and performances that we didn’t quite have on “Wretched” which I think is to be expected as we were still more or less figuring out where we wanted to take the band musically.
Serial Metalbums: Can you tell us about your creative process? How did the songs on "Agony's Bespoke" come to life? How was the recording of "Agony's Bespoke" done? Did you choose a specific studio or did you work more independently?
Chris Jones: When I am writing I record demos of songs and ideas in my home studio. For me I like writing everything at once to get a full picture of the song. So, I will record guitar, bass, synths, and program drums just so I can see the whole thing. Sometimes it’s a bass line or a drum part that inspires a guitar part or vice versa. I tend to think of all the instruments rather than just the guitar riff. Of course, bass and drums parts aren’t written in stone at this stage and I like to give room for my band mates to change things. I like to have a mood or circumstance I am trying to convey and the more specific I can get the better. So usually, it takes longer in the beginning when writing an album and speeds up along the way. There are always throw away songs at the end of it and that was very much the case for “Agony’s.” It took a few songs to get to the track where I felt like I was happy with the direction and that first song ended up being “Tragoedia.”
As for the tracking of the album we all did that ourselves. John tracked his drums in his studio and sent the raw tracks to me and Kyle and I recorded the guitars and vocals at my place. Kyle and I both worked on the synth arrangements at both of our home studios. Ben recorded his bass parts at his place. All the tracks were sent to me and I got all those together and I sent those off to our mixing/mastering engineer Alex Sedin. Alex sent us back a lot of notes and I did quite a bit of additional parts. All in all, there were over 100 tracks in total across the whole record. Alex was very instrumental in what this record became and even though he wasn’t there in person (he lives in France and we are in Seattle) he absolutely deserved a producing credit for the album.
Chris Jones: I think in general recording everything yourself can always be a challenge. Especially drums, sometimes it’s tough to get a good room sound not going to a proper studio. We are talking about going to a studio for drums on the next record for this reason. But overall, nothing really comes to mind that was especially challenging. Or at least not more than I expected it to be. Drum editing is the thing I look forward to the least as it’s very tedious. Kyle may say recording vocals as that’s always intense and he really pushed himself on this album. He recorded vocals in my closet that was a makeshift vocal booth so I ‘m sure my neighbors loved that.
Kyle Chapman: Recording vocals and guitar at Chris’s was a little strange. I’m a lot more used to recording at my home studio, so recording somewhere else while someone else is driving the engineering chair is a little nerve-wracking. Even when it’s your bandmate who you play live with constantly, there’s a weird sense of pressure you feel when your part of the overall performance is held under a microscope. However, that kind of pressure can help bring out a great performance. I will say, recording vocals in that small poorly ventilated closet was not a particularly enjoyable experience.
Serial Metalbums: How do you feel about the final result? Are you satisfied with the way "Agony's Bespoke" represents your music? And What are your plans for the future?
Chris Jones: I think on every record there are things you wished were different or you could have done this or that, but yes, I am very satisfied with the end result of the album. Much more so than our first E.P. It’s important to understand that’s normal to feel that way and recognize that each release is a time stamp in your life and it’s never going to be “perfect.” In fact, imperfections are something I try to embrace as that’s just a result of being human. “Agony’s Bespoke” is a good steppingstone to where I see us headed musically. We plan on doing some touring next year to support the release so keep an eye out for news on that, but I am also already working on the follow up album.
Kyle Chapman: Yeah, I don’t remember where I heard this from, but definitely subscribe to the idea that an album is never truly “done” – it’s simply released. You can always find things that you can add or tweak during the recording mixing process, but you’ll never release anything at that rate. I think given the massive leap we made from our EP creatively and how much we pushed ourselves as musicians during the recording of this record, I’m as happy and satisfied as I could hope to be and am eager to see where we go from here.
Serial Metalbums: How do you perceive the evolution of the metal scene? Which bands or metal subgenres are you particularly interested in right now? Why? Are there any emerging bands that you would like to recommend to our readers?
Chris Jones: Hmm that’s a good question. I certainly can’t predict the future, but I would say I see some trends in metal that feel to me like they are getting oversaturated. It feels like a bubble that’s about to pop, kind of like glam in the 80’s or Nu Metal in the late 90’s and 2000’s. Which I think is normal when trends become popular in any genre. Maybe it feels more amplified because of the access to new music people have now and how many new bands are coming out every day.
The short attention spans are a little concerning to me. The medium for the way people consume music has always influenced how artists end up writing music. Think of how music was written during the Baroque era or during the 60’s or 70’s compared to today and how much investment you put into listening to music. You paid to get into a theater and not only listen, but watch the musicians perform very long pieces of music and that was the only way you could hear new music. You saved your money as a 16-year-old to buy the new Sabbath record and you drove to the record store and brought it home and couldn’t skip songs easily. You put it on listened to the whole thing multiple times.
The level of investment in music today is almost nothing and it’s essentially expected for free. I think the quality of music today has largely reflected this. And that’s not to say there aren’t amazing artists coming out, I like a lot of new music, but it gets harder to weed through and find exciting music in my opinion.
Metal isn’t immune to this, but since it’s always been a more underground style, I think there is a little more hope there compared to say Pop music. A more recent band I found really interesting and unique is this band from Colorado called Wayfarer. Really cool blend of black metal and gothic country, which sounds kind of strange but they blend it really seamlessly. Their newest album “American Gothic” I’ve listened to a lot. I’ don’t really get too caught up in the sub-genre name game, I am open to a lot of music and don’t really care what it’s classified as.