Opeth bassist Martín Mendéz has started up his very own death metal band, and it goes by the name of White Stones, an evolution of what began as a solo project. The band will be releasing their debut album, Kuarahy, in 2020.
Mendéz says that White Stones is more of a return to his roots both personally and musically, with the death metal band being named after his birthplace in Uruguay.
In an interview with Loudwire, he opens up about his impetus for starting his own death metal band, and his plans for the project.
“I feel strongly connected to Uruguay still,” commented the bassist. “I wanted to write music related to that — the sun on the Uruguayan flag I transformed into the White Stones logo; there are a lot of small things that connect the record to that place. ‘Kuarahy’ is the native Uruguayan people’s word for ‘Sun.'”
Mendéz then opened up about his ambitions for the project, saying, “I’ve always written music at home but never had the confidence to do anything like this. I never wrote a song, never presented something I wrote for Mikael (Åkerfeldt). I didn’t have any direction, I came up with the first song for fun. I used to sing death metal 25 years ago, and the plan was for me to sing, as I’d written it all, but when it came to it, I didn’t feel comfortable at all!”
“I really had one thing in mind —to be groovy,” he said in reference to the style of death metal fans can expect. “You have to groove, no matter what style of music you play.”
“I recorded with a Fender Stratocaster with just a tiny bit of distortion- that’s rare for death metal, and then made the bass really distorted and fat to bring heaviness to the music.”
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“I am 100 percent comfortable with what we’re doing with Opeth,” Mendéz reassured his fans.
“It’s the best thing we could have done; I don’t think we’d be around today if we had done another death metal record,” he further reflected.
“I love the challenges Opeth presents, we experiment a lot in the studio. When it comes to me writing death metal for White Stones, it’s the style of metal I like the most. I’ve loved Morbid Angel since I was a kid- death metal is inside me. White Stones is nothing to do with Opeth, I see no relation between the two. I played Kuarahy to Mikael a few months ago, he really liked it and was happy for me. Everyone in the band has side projects, it’s important. We tour so much you can become consumed by it; it has been really nice to do something different. White Stones has renewed my strength and energy.”
Check out the cover for White Stones Kuarahy below.
