French prog-rock trio LIZZARD just released its energetic fifth full-length album Mesh. Bassist William Knox notes that the album is the “definition of interwoven,” with each track seguing into the next. Combining hard rock’s powerful riffs, the structural switch ups of prog, and Mathieu Ricou’s soaring vocals, Mesh delivers constant liveliness while veering away from the predictable. Knox talks about weaving together the songs, recording the album in an abandoned factory, and working with long-time producer Peter Junge.

Culture Flux: What is it like being a prog rock band in France? Was it difficult early on to find other musicians with the same musical taste when you wanted to start creating a band?

William Knox: It’s probably quite easy to find other musicians. I think every town in France probably has 10 or 20 people who are into some kind of prog rock or prog metal type stuff, so it’s quite common, but it’s way harder once you’ve got the band together compared to other countries such as Germany, the UK, or USA.

We knew before we started that it was going to be difficult because there’s like 50 or 60 percent of French music that is all chanson français, which is like traditional pop music, and then all of the other categories are divided by the remaining percentage, so it’s really quite hard to find your audience, and if you find it, it’s a very underground one. 

You’ve opened for Gojira, so what was it like seeing them perform at the Olympics?

It was quite impressive, because I had heard a rumor that they were going to be playing, and I wasn’t planning on watching the opening ceremony. I’m not really that interested in it, but I just switched it on whilst I was doing other things, and probably missed two or three hours of it already, so I didn’t know whether they were going to come on or not. 

When they did come on, I just thought it was really impressive and powerful. The way the song was written and interweaved into the activities going on around them… I thought it was really cool and I’m glad they did it. I think it was a really good idea. We only opened for them once at a little local festival and that was a long time ago now, but I’ve seen them maybe five or six times since then.

As far as the band, you’ve known each other for a really long time. How has that relationship and the connection between the band members changed over the years?

Well, I’ve known Katie the drummer way before the band, so our relationship hasn’t really changed. We’re kind of like family I guess you could say. With Matt, so we met him at the beginning of LIZZARD and I guess the same. We’re all sort of family members now rather than friends or colleagues, so it’s difficult to describe, but there’s always the colleague aspect when you’re actually working together on either the band or the songs, but we sort of communicate as you do with family members than colleagues. 

And because we see so much of each other, we don’t usually hang out as friends do, so it’s definitely a strange relationship. I think all bands go through that at some point, but as long as the chemistry is there, and we keep progressing with each album and with each tour, we’re all super-motivated to carry on. 

So as far as Mesh, can you talk about the name of the album, and why you chose it for that, because it’s interesting that you chose an instrumental track for the title of the album. So can you talk about that choice?

So as we got more and more of the songs together for the album, it became quite clear, at least to Matt who writes the lyrics, that there was a kind of theme around not only the songs, but the lyrics that he wanted to write on each song.

“Mesh” is kind of the definition of interwoven. Everything interlinked, which is how the artist Mickaël Andre, who did the cover…he got inspiration for using fingerprints and finger painting and stuff. So Mesh is trying to encapsulate those ideas. 

On the album, if you listen from start to finish, it’s kind of like a lot of the songs are joined with ambient music and I think “Mesh,”the title track, just seemed like the best song to give that name to.

So did you purposefully write with the idea of connecting all of the songs and weaving them together?

Yeah, what usually happens is we write the first three or four songs with like a clean slate and we don’t know what direction they’re going to go in. When the third or fourth song is finished, we generally have a kind of overview of what the next few songs could sound like to go with the theme of the first songs. 

So at some point, it’s never the same with each album, but at some point in the writing process, I think Matt, who write the lyrics and brings most of the song ideas, he probably orientates the following songs towards that theme that we’ve sort of created without even trying to. It’s like the theme sort of picks itself and we go along with it, rather than the other way around. 

The themes of this album are kind of a cyclical nature, especially with the last song “The Beholder.” Did you know that when you created that song, you wanted it to close the album, because it’s such a great way to kind of complete the journey?

“The Beholder” was originally, when it had a sort of work in progress title, it was called “The 20-Minute Song.” It actually started out as close to 20 minutes, and it sort of had three sections and the theme of the song was there from the start to the finish. 

And then, as we work on these songs, we sort of get rid of the long bits and repetitive bits and try to concentrate it down to the essentials, which is what happened to “The Beholder.” 

The song before that is called “Minim,” which is part of the same song basically. When the lyrics got written and the very last chorus, that only actually happened in the studio- the last chorus where there’s these backing vocals that come in. It was only when we finished it that we knew it was going to be a really good closer for the album.

And you recorded the album in an abandoned factory, so how did that setting affect the outcome of the album? Do you think that affected the overall choice of the album or how it sounds in any way?

Definitely how it sounds. This factory has been like our kind of base for 10, nearly 15 years. I’d say 12 years or so. We’ve moved around, so our practice room is in the factory and that’s been moved a couple of times. We do some of our videos there, but always in a different setting because this place so huge. There’s like an unlimited number of places to film. 

For a long time, I think for the last 2 or 3 albums, we looked at ways of recording it in our factory rather than going to a studio. We’ve never quite managed to do it because it just never seems to work out. We get talked into going into a real studio and getting really good deals with the guys we’re working with, so we always end up doing that. 

This time we decided early on that we’re definitely going to record in the factory. So we check out all of the rooms and how they sound, where it might be a good place to put the drums, where it might be a good place to put ambient mics to get a natural reverb, so that’s what we did this time around. 

We recorded it with our live sound engineer David Thiers. Yeah, we really really like the sound of the tracking, and then we work again with Peter Junge for the mix. We sent him some of the early demos that we recorded in the same place and he was really confident that he was going to have fun mixing. 

You’ve worked with Peter a lot, so at this point do you basically have a shorthand with him? It must be pretty easy to work with him since you’ve worked with him so many times, right?

Yeah, we’ve got to know each other really well. He knows what we’re after in terms of sound and production. When he’s mixing- so he’s in his studio in Dresden, Germany- and we set up, like a live stream so as he’s mixing it comes basically into our houses, into our home hi-fi. 

And that’s really good, because we know the sound of our hi-fi so well, that the slightest change he makes, we can really relate to that. We also set up, like we’re doing now, a video call, so it’s basically like we’re all in the studio together, apart from we’re listening on different systems. 

It makes it quite good from a mixing point of view, because you’re always after the perfect sound, and everyone has a different opinion about what the perfect sound is, but as we’re all used to our home hi-fis, we all have a good reference point. It makes things really speedy.

Is there a song from Mesh that you are particularly proud of?

“The Beholder” I think is my favorite song. I think it just really really works from start to finish and it builds up and there’s a great ending. When we play it- we’re going to be playing it live- it sounds really cool, so I think that would be my favorite song, as well as possibly “Black Sheep.”