Born from the noise-rock and art-school scenes around Detroit and Ann Arbor, the band’s “tendrils have spread” across America and even further afield. A tangle of shared servers and Google docs tick away in the background. Dan Greene acts as “air traffic control” and “final arbiter of taste”.
Speculation that they are some sort of musical cult is wide of the mark, Adam insists, though Dan’s recent creation of The Book Of The Book Of Daniel – getting people involved through a cryptic website (with its own .church domain) – has made those claims harder to deny. “It’s his cynical take on a cult of personality,” Adam ventures. “You have to climb the mountain to speak to him directly.”
So, is there at least a fun initiation?
“The initiation is that there's a shitload of NDAs Dan makes everyone sign,” Adam laughs. “Beyond that, it's a lot less formal than a lot of people think. People come and go. They’ll take breaks when what we’re working on no longer speaks to their vibe, and they’ll come back when it does again. Very few people have ever [officially] left The Armed.”
More and more notable contributors have become involved, too. Queens Of The Stone Age / Gone Is Gone guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and his fellow QOTSA alumnus Mark Lanegan both crop up on ULTRAPOP. The latter’s collaboration on haunting closer The Music Becomes A Skull, Adam explains, saw Dan Greene’s observation that the song demanded a singer of Mark’s timbre answered by completed vocal stems less than 24 hours later. That these contributors are named, rather than being assimilated into the collective, he continues, is a little bit about acknowledging their one-off contributions, and a little bit about taking advantage of name recognition.
Drummer Ben Koller has stuck around, too, despite having claimed he was tricked into recording Only Love. “Ben has a very unique relationship with Dan,” Adam offers, sparingly, while teasing a “weirdness” due to other sticksman Urian Hackney re-tracking many of the same parts. Ben’s Converge bandmate Kurt Ballou, meanwhile, has responded to claims he started the band by shifting job title to Executive Producer. “He’s had a very creative role in shaping the concepts,” Adam smiles, wryly. “He’s played on some of the songs. He's very involved in the situation.”
To pry, Adam reiterates, is to miss the point. The point of this project is to nullify presupposed identities in this scene, from famous players to the rank-and-file fans at their shows: the front-row guys grabbing the mic to scream along, the crowd-killers, and everyone further back.
“We’ve always been about trying to break down that idea of gatekeeperism. When you can level everyone into being a beginner in that situation – when people genuinely don’t know how to act – it can lead to profound moments of self-realisation and connection with the art.”