There’s no mistaking KYOTY’s kinetic riffs and sprawling post-metal sound. The sheer force of their booming industrial oscillations is enough to pulverize eardrums, while their atmospheric shoegazing captivates the mind. In 2009, Nick Filth, Nathaniel Parker Raymond, and Robert Brown began a musical exploration that reached a new level this month with the release of “Geomancy I,” the first album in a three-part series. A year and a half in the making, it reveals a powerfully accurate representation of the band’s intense live shows. KYOTY celebrate the release of “Geomancy I” with a show at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth on Saturday, Sept. 5, with Vultures of Cult and Thunderhawk. The Sound recently sat down with the group at their practice space in Dover.
How did KYOTY form and what was the goal?
Nick: Me and Nat started the band, how many years ago?
Nat: I was just doing the math, I think it was 2009.
Nick: Me and Nat met; I tattooed him. I had just moved down here and I wasn’t in a band and I wanted to be in a band around here and he was the only person I knew really that was into making art. You know what I mean? It wasn’t just being in a band; I could tell he wanted to do something. So I actually tried to be in a band with (Nat) but I ended up being in a band with this other guy, who’s the singer of Host. And it was awful and Nat didn’t have any interest and I just stayed on you (Nat) enough to finally make you actually do it (laughs). I rented a room and I was playing with Machete Joe and then KYOTY was this other thing. I started playing this spacey stuff and then you came in and we started doing that with Machete Joe. … Then Rob joined after a while and that is when we started being like, “OK, now we can do what we set out to do in the beginning.” … I think what we just did on (“Geomancy I”) is what we were trying to do years ago. … I think (the song) “Nine” is a really good example of the change. “Nine” is the total mix of where we were going and where we came from. I don’t think there was any goal or mission statement when we first started it.
Nat: No, I knew when we first started playing what I wanted to do. There was a handful of bands that I was listening to then, that I’m definitely still listening to now, that I wanted to, I don’t know —
Nick: There was a sound that we were going for but there was no artistic statement.
Nat: Yeah, did you ever hear the band Tides?
Nick: Yeah, Tides is a great example of what I was listening to at that time, too.
Nat: Yeah, I think that’s what we wanted to do, we just didn’t know how to do it (laughs).
Rob: I think that’s what you told me when I first joined the band. Before I started actually playing, I got tattooed by you.
Nick: Yeah, I was really putting it to you (laughs).
So, Nick, did this whole thing came together more or less through you tattooing them?
Nick: Totally, yeah.
KYOTY stands for Keep Your Opinions to Yourself. What’s the significance of the name?
Nat: We had been fishing around for a name for a while. (Nick) pitched it to me; there was something related to “Cheers” in that. … The story you told me was pretty far out. You (Nick) were like, “I think it’d be great if we called the band this and then Norm said the exact line.” That’s the story I remember. You were like, “That’s it, it’s a sign” and I was like, “I love it.” You pitched it as that sentiment, but also as KYOTY, which I thought was brilliant. It was a weird synchronicity thing with “Cheers.”
Nick: I don’t remember that at all. That’s news to me (laughs). I remember watching “Cheers” a lot around that time.
How do you feel about it today?
Nick: I actually don’t really like the full name anymore. Now I like KYOTY; I think it’s more suitable to what we sound like, being an acronym, being symbols, and the fact that our new album is completely based on symbols. I actually wish that it was not Keep Your Opinions to Yourself anymore. I’m not bothered by it, but I prefer to be known as KYOTY.
Rob: Plus it’s easier to say out loud. Instead, we’re Coyote (laughs). Woo! Coyotes! Woo! (laughs).
What are you most proud of about the record?
Nick: The sound. It sounds fucking nuts. And I credit (recording engineer) Dean (Baltulonis) 100 percent on that. I think our last album would have sounded great if we had more money and a better idea of how the process worked. Dean really just took it in the right direction.
Nat: He had the benefit of seeing us live a couple of times, too.
Nick: He got it. And he liked it.
Nat: When we recorded the full length, they had never seen us live, they didn’t know, they just knew what we had when we went into the studio and they did their best. It sounds good, it just —
Nick: Now we know what it takes to make an album and we didn’t know at the time. The sound that we want takes a lot more.
Rob: It was eight songs in three days.
Nick: And this album is three songs in a year and a half. Maybe longer, I think I’m being generous.
Nat: Yeah, from stepping into the studio to completion, just the process of finishing recording, that was a year.
What’s your writing process?
Nick: I tried writing on my own, putting drums down, doing bass, writing a song and bringing it here and learning it. I’ve got almost an album’s worth of KYOTY stuff that’s just sitting there whenever we want to use it, but we never do. We work on it and we come in here and we jam. We’ll come in here, not say anything, open a beer, and fucking play and that’s the next song. And it’s way better than anything I sat and wrote. It’s spontaneous.
Rob: Sometimes we’ll play a song and do that kind of spontaneous jamming like, “Oh, that’s really cool, but is it a KYOTY song?” and sometimes it’s like “No, it’s some really cool stoner rock thing that sounds awesome.” A lot of times it turns into that — writing, writing, writing until you find the right things that fit.
Nick: Yeah, we’ve thrown so much away. Especially now since we have more of a direction. Now we’re like, this is what we want to sound like so there’s way more harsh criticism on our end where we’re throwing away songs that I know we would have kept back in the day. That’s why we have three instead of an album.
Nat: Those were all written in fragments; we all came in with fragments for that, the current album. You’d come in with some stuff and I’d come in with some stuff, Rob and I worked on some intro stuff. And then they kind of all expanded from there.
Nick: It’s spontaneous now in the sense where we hit record on the Tascam, record, and then listen to that and that’s pretty much what we work on. That’s our writing process now.
Rob: Anytime we come in with too much written, it never works out.
Nat: If we just embrace the “let’s come in and jam” (idea) and then make that the song, I feel like that’s kind of what we do. It’s when we try to write the song, that’s the problem. If we just let stuff lie and be like, “This is how it came out, how do we make it a little more coherent as a song?” You know.
Nick: The loose stuff, I think is what always ends up on the album. When I’m writing, I never use it.
Where did the inspiration for the industrial elements come from?
Nat: I don’t know where it came from. You and I agreed on it.
Nick: Certainly. But you say the wo