National Sunday Law

Along with their foundation of guitar and drums, this Los Angeles duo utilizes live looping, synthesizers and samples for additional bass, textures and ambience. Derek DONLEY (drums, vocals and synth) and Darin TAMBASCIO (guitar, keys and vocals) create music that ranges anywhere from ambient soundscapes and melodic synth passages to dissonant metal and powerful screams?sometimes in one song. The band has been compared to NEUROSIS, ZOMBI, BOTCH, DON CABALLERO, FAILURE, HELLA, JESU and KAYO DOT.

I got in touch with the band and Derek answered my questions.

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When and by whom was your band born ? Did any of you, past and present members, play in any other bands before joining up in your band ? Why did you choose that name and which bands were you influenced by?

We met about 10 years ago through musician wanted ads. At the time we were both guitar players looking for other like minded people to start a band. We played with an assortment of different drummers and bass players for about 4 years while continually writing and recording ourselves. After recording an EP that we were happy with, but not actually forming a real band, we realized that the band that we imagined was not going to become a reality. That project was called Lux Medium.

There was an overlap of a few months where we were still working on Lux Medium but on Sundays we starting writing heavier songs that featured Darin on the Celloblaster (5 string baritone guitar) and me (Derek) on drums. Then one day Darin got this ridiculous 7th Day
Adventist propaganda pamphlet called National Sunday Law, the name made sense but for all the wrong reasons.

At the time, we were really influenced by Kayo Dot's first album, Godflesh, Don Caballero, Shiner, and a lot of other progressive leaning metal and rock.

Over to your two releases so far. Your debut album La Storia Di Cannibali was released two years ago. Please tell us more about this album.


We're both really proud of this album, it was our first long play recording, more than just the 1 - 3 songs like we had been doing until this point. We learned a lot from this one about pre-production and what we could really do ourselves even though our friend Alex Pasco engineered and mixed the vast majority of it. The drums were tracked at a studio in Burbank, CA over a few days. Darin and Alex would pick me up from work at 5, we'd drive 45-1hr in traffic to get to the studio, I would usually take a nap on the way, then we'd track drums until midnight or until I tired out.

We recorded the guitars, vocals and synths at our home studio, then did some reamping, overdubs and mixing at a friend's place called Casa Distortion. We sent it to Colin Marston in NY to master it. The title is Italian and translates to "The Story of Cannibals", the lyrics are
generally about false gods, delusion, atheism and the apocalypse.

The EP The Fifth Ape was released last year as pay as you want at Bandcamp. Please tell us more about this EP.

Lyrically we were a bit more focused on delusion and atheism than "La Storia...", we also worked on the lyrics together much more than we did on "La Storia..." We tracked drums with Josh Newell at NRG studios. The drums were recorded in one day and guitar re-amping was done the next day. We had much better pre-production demos for these songs, so most of the vocals and synths were recorded before the drums. We had a hand shake deal with a small label to release a CD but as the release date got closer we came to the conclusion that ultimately more people would hear our music and possibly even buy our music if they could have a taste for free.

For those of us unfamiliar with your music; how would you describe you music and which bands would you compare yourself with ?

We would describe our music as a mix of metal, math rock, prog and ambient. We've been compared to Mastodon, Neurosis, Kayo Dot, Botch, Rush, Zombi, Intronaut, Jesu, and others.

After three years on the road and these two releases, you have taken a break. What is the plans for your band in the future ?

We're slowly working on more recordings to be most likely released for free via bandcamp. Hopefully sometime before next summer.

To wrap up this interview, is there anything you want to add to this interview ?

We also have another band with our friend Sacha Dunable fromIntronaut called Graviton.  Graviton's first album Massless was released in April 2011.  Derek and Sacha are also member of the doom supergroup called Bereft.  Bereft's first album will be released in 2012. National Sunday Law are also working on new material.

Thank you to Derek for this interview

The PA profile is here and the homepage is here