Subscale's Last Submission..... Or is it?

Zagreb, Croatian's Subscale was started as a home project long ago, through the years as many band it faced band line-up changes among other changes, during this time they managed to release an EP "Fictional Constructs" in 2012 and their debut album "The Last Submission" released just this year. Now who knows what will be on the horizon for these guys only time will tell.


1. Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.

Well, it all started in the summer of 2010. We started experimenting with home recording and got really interested in what Misha Mansoor aka Bulb was doing at the time. It was ground breaking since it was all home recorded and sounded really good. So we started combining riffs we both had laying around and came up with 2 or 3 song ideas. We wanted to keep it simple and avoid all the stress and pressure that came with a real band, we just wanted to make music. Subscale was just a project for us so we were able to try out anything we wanted to musically. This gave us freedom to experiment with samples, drum programming and restructuring songs even after they were recorded. At the time we were joined by Hrvoje as our third guitarist and decided to write more songs. We were approached to do a Metallica cover for a compilation that never got released, but has given us the opportunity to ask Karlo to do vocals for it. We were blown away by his vocal skills and realized that we could ask him to do a whole record with us. As they say, the rest is history. We wrote 9 songs and were joined by Igor who layered them with awesome samples and here we are now.

2. How did you guys come up with your band name?

As we explored home recording we started a home recording studio that we simply called Subscalar Studios. It had something to do with a CPU and since we were doing everything digitally we thought it sounded cool. We wanted to use the project to promote the studio so we abbreviated the name Subscale from Subscalar Studios and just went with it. A subdivision of a scale would be the exact meaning for it.

4. Do you write your own songs? (Discuss the songwriting process in detail.)

Yeah, all the music you can hear is written, recorded, mixed and mastered by us. There is no blueprint we use to make song. It can start from a riff, a drum pattern, sometimes even a sound sample. We just work our way from there, try to keep it both interesting and groovy but also listenable. Although we all like complex music, we try to make songs that bring both groove and atmosphere to the listener.

5. What lyrical theme do you guys use in your music? What message do you want to send?

We don't have an agenda or a general idea or message we want to put out there. The lyrical themes are mixed but they do follow emotions and thoughts we have towards certain aspects in life. We all got betrayed, we were all lost and still are, we all lost people we loved...but we would like the listeners to interpret the emotions and lyrics on their own.

6. What bands have influenced your band and its sound?

Well, there are a lot of bands that have influenced us all, some more some less, but they are all in there somewhere. We all love Fear Factory and Meshuggah, but there are also Slipknot, Korn, Soilwork, Whitechapel, The Acacia Strain, Tesseract, Periphery, Mnemic, All Shall Perish...aw man, there are so many bands that we like, we can't name them all.

7. Was your songwriting and recording process any different than usual for this CD?

Well, it did differ to the approach we had while we were writing music before we started Subscale. Usually the music was done with our drummers and other band mates. The process was long and never fully satisfying. But now we can record and arrange the music in detail, leaving nothing to chance. We can work out hooks and patterns till they perfectly fit the part or entire song.

8. What inspired the album title? Is it a concept album?

The title "The Last Submission" was the first song idea we had when we started. I (Jay) wrote an early version of the song and saw it as a personal goodbye to music making - the last submission to the listeners, since my band fell apart back then. But that song has somehow laid the foundation for the record we did and connects everything we've done so far.  It can be seen as a conceptual album and we have connected both lyrics and song parts to describe the journey that is captured by the record. This is something we want the listeners to discover on their own.


9. What are your expectations for the CD?

Well, first of we are so happy that the record is finally out, we kept it 2 years under a microscope and did a million revisions on it - that had to stop. We hope the people will react well to it and we hope to play live as much as possible. Everything that comes with it we will welcome with open arms.

10. What can the fans expect to see from you in the future?

More music and even more music. We have so much material waiting on our HDD-s, we hope to work them out ASAP.