STAVESACRE have become one of the most celebrated hard core-tinged alternative bands in the American scene over the last three years. Andrew Privett takes a closer look at the band.

Stavesacre

Vocalist Mark Saloman reveals that their second album's title deals with, not just moral absolutes, but absolutes in all areas of life, and the personal responsibilities we all have. "There are certain things where you have to be your own man, as far as, like, giving control of your life to God. We truly believe that God is righteous, and he is also a judge. So, with that in mind, a lot of things were going on that influenced this record. Just during the writing process, there were a lot of trials and tribulations, some pretty heavy stuff, where I had to do away with some idols in my heart."

The recording of 'Absolutes' brought important lessons. "We recorded at the same studio where we recorded the first album; the same studio and the same equipment, but in a new building. We kept getting delayed, and at certain points we all kind of got freaked out about it. We didn't really know why it was happening, or what we were gonna do. But we got in there and pounded it out and had an awesome time. I don't think we would've been ready to do the album. We had gotten so busy that we'd kind of forgotten God in the process. We thought we were ready, but obviously we weren't. All of this stuff we went through came from God, and that was a heavy thing to go through. We began talking to God, and all these delays that were there, one by one, fell away. God really showed us that we've got to slow down."

Stavesacre were formed out of seminal Christian underground bands The Crucified, Focused and The Blamed. But Stavesacre have a sound that is far from a facsimile of those early pioneers.

Saloman told HM magazine, "We didn't try to go, 'Okay, what's gonna please the Crucified fans? What's gonna please the Focused fans or the Blamed fans?' It was like, 'We're really not too concerned about it. We'll do what feels right and God, bless us whatever way you want to.'"

Stavesacre's music, although hard-core and often almost thrashy, has a sensitive almost ponderous quality. Mark Saloman said, "There's like this soft side to it and there's a hard side. I've been playing music since I was 15. I'm not into screaming and yelling every five seconds and running around. I want to see if there are any other emotions that are available to the music that we play." So Stavesacre have laid the ghosts of their past musical career to rest.

Jeff Bellow comments, "This is one of the first bands I've been in that has written a lot of the songs by just jamming together." He goes on to say, "One guy will just spill out an idea and start playing. A lot of the early songs were done that way. I just love that."

The band were formed quite by accident. Jeff Bellow admits, "It wasn't the plan at all. I've known Dirk Lemmenes (bass) forever and a day. Obviously we've known Mark Saloman for a while, and Mark was roommates with Jeremy Moffett (the band's original drummer) for a while. It was just a mutual friend thing. We decided to just get together and make some punk rock. And after playing together once, we just thought it would be more fun to do something more challenging. After the first couple of times (they dropped the first tune they wrote), I think it really started to click that there was some special chemistry."

"Jeff used to baby-sit me when I was a kid," remembers Dirk Lemmenes. "We've gone to church together and I've known him forever, and he's the one who kinda got me involved in music. We've always talked about doing a band and it just never seemed to fall together. Then when he moved away to play with The Crucified, it kind of hindered the whole band thing. And then I was in Focused. Mark and Jeremy and I were just friends who decided to play together. Me and Jeff kind of have similar tastes in music, and we're bigger than Mark and Jeremy, so we just forced our opinions on them (laughter)."

Stavesacre have some interesting views on the omnipresent 'are you a ministry?' question. "The whole assumption that a Christian band is supposed to be a ministry, I don't know where that came from. To say that 'a Christian band should use every opportunity they have to preach the gospel and try to get people saved...' Okay, that sounds perfectly cool. Only problem is that it's never that easy. There's a difference. Like, your relationship with God. Your number one priority is to obey God. That's number one. Number one is not to be a preacher or a teacher. Number one is to be pleasing in God's sight. Everything comes after that."

Yes, but isn't that a bit of a square dance? Of course you can't always preach the gospel, but when an opportunity comes, you know that it's there. This doesn't have to apply to rock bands, but it can.

Mark says, "There are some who are called to be preachers, some are called to be teachers and evangelists. But in that list Ephesians 4:11 says, 'And he gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till we come together in unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' That right there is scripture. Nowhere does it say, 'Some prophets, some evangelists, some musicians.'"

The unity within Stavesacre has developed tremendously in the last two years. Says Jeff, "Now, with the second Stavesacre record, we're more like a band and I think the goal that we've set as a band is to always write music that we like, music that comes naturally. Also, this is the first album to actually have Sam West's ideas, and he's really helped us grow, I think."

"When you hear the new album," Mark agrees, referring to Sam West's taking the place of Jeremy Moffett last year, "the difference between drummers is pretty clear. They're definitely two different styles of drummer. Sam was very involved in the writing process and his professionalism definitely relieved a lot of tension that we had put on ourselves. I think musically (the album) is a step past where we were before and I think, lyrically, the guys are a good filter for stuff that I write. Nothing gets done without all four of us okaying it. So when the album comes out, it's definitely all four of us. Like Jeff said, after the experiences we've had, I don't think we're real worried. There's also the fact that you can write a record that you totally love and that everybody else thinks is (rubbish)! And that's cool. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. We just have to be confident in what we're doing. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in your head while you're making a record and then when the album's done, you still aren't gonna see it in the stores for another three months.

"The thing that people don't understand about when a record comes out," says Mark, "is that the budgets that the albums are dealing with are of small labels, small bands - and for that matter, small magazines. We all have very limiting budgets and you just have to stretch it any way you can. And when you start shooting for producers like Bryan (Carlstrom) and studios like Eldorado, you really have to stretch it, because these people are used to making about three or four times what they're getting paid. And the amount of time they're used to having to work on an album is ridiculous. We finished the first Stavesacre album in about three and a half weeks, total. As we were leaving, Biohazard was going into the studio to do their album, and they had seven weeks just to lay the music down. And it's a much more comfortable budget. Everyone involved can work shorter days and have more rest to be fresher the next day. And situations like we were in, you're in there for 10 hours a day, and after about two or three weeks of that you feel like you've been on the road!"

Stavesacre's love for language is reflected in their unusual name. Jeff reads a lot and if he doesn't understand the meaning of a word, he looks it up in a dictionary. "I never just pass 'em over, because I don't like to assume..."
"He saw the name," continues Mark, "liked the way it looked and the way it sounded. It has no deep meaning..." Stavesacre n a larkspur, Delphinium Staphisagria, yielding seeds used as poison for vermin. (The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Oxford University Press 1990).

On their first album there is a song called "Anna Thema". For a while I was looking in encyclopaedias, dictionaries, etc trying to find out who this woman was, and then it suddenly occurred to me: anathema. Clever!