I have degrees from University in both Philosophy and Literature and really have a passion for such subjects. A Lower Deep comes from a poem by John Milton called Paradise Lost. In the passage Satan is speaking and says "Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell/ And in the lowest depth a lower deep still threatening to devour me opens wide/ To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven." Such a powerful and eloquent way of expressing the delima of hope and angst. Knowing that life is often less that we hope for, but because we are not the doomed Satan, we have hope in knowing there is always a worse place, things are not usually so bad as they seem in the moment, and always a higher place to ascend to. The concept incapsulates what our band is and aspires to be.

The scene here is improving slowing but surely. With events like ProgPower Festival in neighboring Georgia selling out every year and more tours coming to the south US it is improving. There are tons of fans for our genre of music here but opening up the venues to it and finding ways to make certain the fans are aware of it with no radio assistance is difficult. Popular US music is a far cry from what we do, but we are just looking for a label anywhere in the world that has faith in us and our music. The larger labels are signing bands similar to us from time to time, but a smaller label with passion can be just as effective. A great many of our fans are from outside the US, so we don't confine our ideas or plans to any regional basis.

David was a Godsend, without him we could not have done the last two albums. David is all the way across the country from us and through the miracle of the internet and programs like Protools and Sonor it allowed us to work together. We are so thankful and appreciate David for contributing his amazing talents to our projects. I meet David when he wrote to express how much he liked our first CD and we became fast friends corresponding quite often. So when it came time and we wanted to begin work on Parable we couldn't find a suitable drummer. Talking with David by internet about it, it turned out he used the same recording gear as us and asked if we would like him to do the drums. Of course we jumped on that and he did an excellent job. Now with Anthony on board we can once again hit the tour trail hard, which we miss and are ready to hit full on.

I would say we play melodic variation of thrash, but with alot of elements not normally found in traditional thrash, like elements for progressive metal, power, traditional, death and even alittle goth here and there for atmosphereic effect. Anytime you are compared with great bands it is a huge compliment, much better than being compare to crappy bands, ha. We are huge Nevermore fans, and really big fans of Iced Earth too. Oddly though, I guess it shows that people can hear something in anyone's music, because we weren't familiar with either or those bands as a whole when we wrote any of our albums. I was, and I introduced the rest of our band to both of those bands, but up until then the other guys didn't know them. Also we have been playing this kind of music for years and though bands like Nevermore and Iced Earth do inspire us, the influences on our writing were concreted in years ago. Still we understand that reviewers must use other bands to explain the sound of a band fans might not be familiar with, and both those bands are similar enough to us that we understand the comparison and indeed value it.

We have very diverse influences all around which is what I think makes our sounds quiet different. Troy comes from a thrash background in bands like Megadeth, old Metallica, etc., but also some classic rock. Tim is big into progressive metal and rock like Fates Warning, Dream Theater, Rush, Yes, Kansas, etc, but Tim also has probably the widest range of tastes among us. Anthony comes from a death metal background with bands like Morbid Angel, Obituary, Suffocation, etc. but also likes alot of progressive bands. I come from the more traditional styles of Queensryche, King Diamond, etc. but also alot of opera and classical music. So throw all that into a blender and you get A Lower Deep.

There are many parallels with the title Trinity. There were, at the time, the three main members of the band, it was our third album also. If you notice the imagine the character has three faces and three sets of arms. Each face and arm set represents a different state of emotion, from the peacefulness of the head on face, to the anger of the face reflected in the wall on the right, to the fear and angst of the face reflected in the wall on the left. All this is to represent the range of emotions included in the songs on Trinity. Also, I am very interested in theology and philosophy so many of our concepts have those themes.

Yeah, I think we covered the meaning above, but the cover concept was conceived by myself and Johnny Cargo a great friend of the band. Dan did an amazing job of really understanding the concept we had and bringing it to life. Dan is a great artist I found online and just wrote him and asked him if he would be interested in doing our cover art. He said he would love to too and over the next couple of months we revised and completed the concept and work.

No, I wouldn't say so. Tim and I are Christians. Tim is a bit more traditional than me, though he couldn't be considered a traditional or fundamentalist Christian. He studies alot and has alot of beliefs very different from most Christians. I'm way further out than that. I'm very much intrigued with spirituality and especially Christianity and find the philosophy very solid. Unfortunately, I hate religion. I believe religion is taking the spiritual and divine and making something manmade of it for the purpose of controlling people's minds and behavior. The major religions to me have all raped their spiritual texts and taken from them only the parts that continue their power base. I sympathize with the view of alot of metal fans about religion because we often judge an idea by those who claim to believe it. But when you divorce yourself from what you have heard or been taught by others and investigate for yourself, you find much of what you knew was either misunderstood and misinterpreted or worse a blatant lie. Still if you can rise above the confusion and approach it with an inquisitive and curious mind, there is a wealth of understanding to be found in the spiritual texts. So I guess I'm too Christian for non-Christians and too non-Christian for Christians, quiet the limbo I have made for myself, ha.

Thanks very much. We also had a demo previous to Parable of the Thorn and Trinity, and all three have been an evolution. On our first demo we hadn't been together that long and tended to pull from a small group of influences we all had in common. By Parable we had been together longer and we really beginning to bring in each members individual influences. The first demo was pretty straight ahead, though anything Troy has a hand in is going to be a bit unorthodox and weird, ha, he just has a very different way of hearing things and of writing and as we all write more and more, we all seem to be taking on similar vibes in the writing. Parable was alot of experimentation with bringing in alot of our styles and influences. Parable is very atmospheric where Trinity kept some of the progressive elements but is heavier in sound and style and perhaps abit darker over all. I think Trinity is the culmination of what had come before it, the natural next step.

Yes that's my little rock star. Melea is 11 and has a great passion already for being creative and singing. I came up with the part and showed her the melody and she just really embodied it and brought it across with such feeling and conviction. We were amazed that someone so young with so little life experience could so well bring out that feeling of love and loss. Yes, the song is very powerful to me, and quiet creepy for me to hear my daughter singing from the otherside as it were. But it's something we can all relate to if you have ever lost someone. The song is sad in a way but also has a beautiful hope and promise to it as well.

It's been great. Trinity has already passed everything Parable did. The reviews have been outstanding, alot of labels and management are starting to show interest, and the fans seem to really be getting into it. With interviews like this one and one coming up soon in Metal Maniacs, we hope alot of people will check us out and see what they think. Being apart of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, and on Knuckle Tracks, really helped as well.

Each new album sees us all contributing more to the writing. In general, Troy writes the basic music to a song. Then I write the vocal melodies and lyrics. We work as a band with the arrangement, and then Tim and Anthony write their own bass and drum parts. However, on Trinity, Tim wrote the music for Power of Why, and several songs had parts that were all of us putting in ideas. Because Troy is such a great writer he will probably always do the bulk of the writing musically, but we plan to work more with all of our ideas in the future even more than before.

I think we are very similar people. We think alot alike, meaning we process information in a similar way, which allows us to understand each other most times even when we disagree. Tim and I love to discuss politics and religion and rarely do we completely agree on anything but we value each other's opinions and learn alot from one another. Troy and Anthony are more in the reality of their own lives and don't concern themselves a great deal with things beyond their control, so Tim and my discussions usually bore them to tears, ha. We are a pretty lame metal band in that we are totally about the music. We don't care about the party scene or fame or money, though we would love to be able to play music exclusively as a living.

I read like most people watch tv, so it would take a year to list all my favorite books. Recently I've been impressed with The Master by Colm Toibin (a book about the author Henry James), The Willow Tree by Hubert Shelby, Jr., A Room for the Dead by Noel Hynd, and I'm really psyched and tired of waiting on the new George RR Martin novel- A Feast for Crows. Albums- I'm still devouring Nevermore's This Godless Endeavor and Opeth's Ghost Reveries. Also the Kamelot's Black Halo, and Morgana Lefay's Grand Marteria, and I've recently discovered Pagan's Mind who I like alot. Movies- Sin City is great, recently bought the director's extended version of Amadeus, and Passion in the Desert.

No, we might at some point down the road. We all have tastes that aren't quiet right for A Lower Deep, but right now all our energy and time goes into A Lower Deep. Really it always will, we see long running side projects as akin to cheating on your wife (if any of us had one, ha) We might do a one time recording thing on the side later on, but I doubt any of us do much more than that. We want to devote everything to this band and try to make it as big as it can possibly be.

We plan to release an EP in March/April of 2006. It will be re-recordings of a few songs from our first demo. That CD had some great material on it but just horrible production, so alot of fans have asked to hear those songs. We are out of that CD and didn't what to get more so we decided it would be cool to do a good recording of a few of them with Anthony on drums. Then we should have out our next full length disk late in 2006. Other than that we plan to play live as much as possible and keep trying to get a label deal. Get the music out to a wider audience in any way we can.

We really appreciate the support of metal fans all over the world. We ask that the Polish metal fans check us out and see what you think. Be sure to write to us, we love talking with new friends, and hopefully before too very long we will be able to come to your country and see you in person. Thanks so much.