Conversation with Burial Etiquette
by Joseph McCain
26 September 2024
Burial Etiquette is a non-binary band from Canada at the forefront of the emerging Skramz scene. They have a signature sound that combines the intensity of screamo with beautiful vocals and vulnerable lyrics.
I had a conversation with guitarist/vocalist Jaccob a couple weeks ago to talk about the band and some of the stuff that comes with having one.
Subscribe to their Patreon, which they just launched today, here.
What have you been up to?
This week actually has been a super busy and productive week for me. I recently quit my job, about a month ago, and I've just been doing music full-time. I started doing lessons and recording sessions specifically for beginner to intermediate or younger people, or neurodivergent people who have really good ideas of music, but don't feel comfortable in a studio or something like that. I'm opening up this recording studio in my house where it's all about no music theory. I will teach you how to make huge sounding records with a $40 budget. It's all just DIY, emo punk, just recording people's stuff and teaching them guitars. For the past 10 years, I've taught myself all this stuff, just digging through forums and getting advice from people online and stuff. And I want to condense that all into easily digestible information, and then just spread the word.
Do you think being from Ontario has shaped your sound?
Definitely. I would say being in Ontario and Canada is probably one of the biggest impacts on our sound, because when I was 14, I found this band Eric's Trip, they're not from Ontario they're from New Brunswick, and their sound embodied what was special about Canadian alternative music— a Lo-Fi, warm production emphasis on atmosphere and tone, songwriting over like professionalism or efficiency, music as art versus music as a sport. In their recordings they'll have the sound of the wind, birds chirping, people talking, and maybe someone is taking a pee in one of the songs. There’s so much random stuff in there that gets cut out of regular records because it seemed not proper or something. In a way, if you cut too much of that stuff, I think you can make a record sterile, where it seems like it was almost made in a laboratory, rather than a bunch of emotional hardcore kids just trying to figure it out. You don't necessarily need a lot of money or natural talent to make a good song. You just have to have a good idea and a passion to execute it.
What other genres, or artists from other genres, do you get musical inspiration from?
With Burial, when we first started, we were really inspired by Coma Regalia, I Would Set Myself On Fire For You, City of Caterpillar. These are bands that helped me shape my guitar style, but then I fell in love with those bands, and it was all I was listening to, and I found my kind of guitar voice. Then I wanted Burial in a different direction and taking inspiration from a lot of different stuff– heavily produced and almost 100 tracks of little details and nuances, but it's all kind of smushed together. If I hear a Carly Rae Jepsen song, in the chorus, I hear her singing with these huge melodies, but then in the left or right ear, I hear this reverse melody that pans in and out, I'm like, oh shoot, that's cool. What if I put that in a screamo song? So I'll take that production trick and see if I can make it Skramz. The origin of that idea was me cleaning my house and listening to Carly Rae Jepsen.
That’s super cool, I've never heard someone say they're inspired by a background element in a song.
I'd say with Burial, it's a lot like, pop production that we find really, really interesting. And then we're like, okay, how do we combine that with super home-recorded, warm sounds? We want it to sound like you're friends with the band and you go on Tuesday practice and just hang out and smoke a joint on the couch while they play.
Is there a specific moment that you think of that a song came from or are they more general feelings, and you’re just portraying what you've been going through?
With our lyrics, we really want to say something and be transparent with emotions that are hard to talk about without the context of a song behind it or something. We like to talk about grief and all the sentimentality and hardships that come from that as well as more hopeful feelings– finally feeling understood in your gender for the first time when maybe you've had to hide it or something. Maybe you knew that there were people out there that would accept you for who you are, but you were in some small town so you didn't have any of them. That's what we wrote Solace for because we wanted to be that for people who didn't have that. With the rise of the Internet, so many people are discovering their identity and who they are but they might not have that anywhere near them in real life, which could be an alienating thing. So we wanted to make a representation record with Mis Suenos Split. That was the first time that I set out to do something for other people the way music has done things for me in the past.
So lyrical coherence sounds like something you value. Or do you usually just come up with melodies and fill the gaps with words that fit?
Honestly, lyrics are probably the most important aspect of Burial Etiquette. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. I read all the time, non-stop, I would write short stories and stuff. And then when I found music, I found that with lyricism, I liked it a lot better than short storytelling because with one or two lines, you could break somebody's heart, if you know what you're doing. I carry a book around with me and I just write any idea I get in it. Some lyrics I might be writing for six months and then we find the song that's perfect for it, and then another song I might grab the mic, hit record and improvise and take those rhythms that I have and fit the syllables to lyrics that I have in my book. When the song is on, you're instinctively doing the vocal rhythms that are ear-pleasing and you’re not bound to the grid of the lyrics, but it's also super important. The lyrics need to be written to be good without the music and vice versa. They need to benefit each other to become greater than the sum of their parts.
How has this band changed you and your relationship with your bandmates over the years?
I've been playing in and out of bands since I was 13 and I've always seen Burial Etiquette as a continuation of that. Burial Etiquette was something I needed to do for myself and for people that I loved and had lost. It has opened me up so much. I used to be the most anxious, agoraphobic, shy kid ever. And then with music and meeting people that had similar passions, interests, and politics, and getting involved in scenes and meeting friends not just like, oh, this kid's on my street, so he's my friend, but we're into the same thing and we're trying to accomplish this thing together. We like hanging out and jamming and going skateboarding in between sets and stuff. When we're writing this music together, at the core of it, it's about having fun and expressing yourself. If you're really shy like I used to be, you might just need to have re-correcting positive experiences to realize that you do have stuff to say. It's just maybe hyper-specific because you're neurodivergent. After every local show, people should be going home like, this is where I belong, I was a part of something today.
For your mental and physical health, do you ever feel any intensity? How do you handle the potential pressures of having a band and all that?
I feel like I don't even have a choice in whether I make music or not. I do have a choice whether I share it and all that other stuff. But I would be making all of this regardless because I need to do it just to get through the day. It's just a void in me that I need to fill and it’s one of the only things that works to fill it. When my sister passed away last year, I couldn't even pick up a guitar for a couple of months. If I'm hurting or going through things, I use escapism. But what was difficult about that was I had no refuge. Then Mis Suenos Split was released 10 days after my sister died and started taking off. After what I had just gone through, it felt like nothing. I was just like, I've been doing this my whole life and now it happens. The act of picking up my guitar wouldn't be for me, because every time I did that, I felt guilty that I get to continue on my dreams, but my sister doesn't? Then I thought, I could do this for other people. That's what I want to do with Burial Etiquette, is make it part band, part blog, where I'm platforming all the stuff we love, and artists we love, and people look to Burial Etiquette, not just for music, but as a lighthouse that shines on maybe lesser known stuff that is easily just as good.
I love that. That idea is kind of in the same vein when you repost people's covers. That probably means so much to them.
100%. And we actually just started a discord. We made a channel with people posting all their covers. And people are commenting on each other's covers, like, Oh, I love your guitar tone. And it just warms my heart so much because I'm like, that was me back in the day. I would learn an emo song on guitar and post it or whatever. So that is super fulfilling and that's what really gives me the motivation and passion to do this six hours a day.
What do you hope your fans take away from your music and how do you want your band to be remembered by them?
What I hope our fans take away from our music is that anybody can do it. We want to be the most anti-gatekeeping band possible because we needed that when we were younger. We needed people to just accept us and not call us slurs or anything. We want our fans to know that we're on your side, we're not playing it safe to have the biggest audience. If you don't properly pronoun your friends don't listen to our band. We need to stop being billed as a female-fronted band. This is a problem for us so definitely for other bands too. When I was growing up, I discovered that art has the power to make you feel empathy for a life experience you've never, maybe even considered. You could read a book about a black, trans, queer Marxist and you'll never fully understand what that person went through but you could try, and you should try to, not in some victim mentality. Your accomplishments are your own but acknowledge that even if you weren't lifted up, you weren't blocked. So we are trying to give back 150% and not act like we got it all figured it out because we don't. We're just making music and skateboarding and smoking weed and playing video games. Any Burial fan that has been inspired by our music, means the world to me. And I wholeheartedly believe that you could write stuff better than us, you just gotta give it your all.
Patreon
Instagram
Spotify
Apple Music
I feel like I don't even have a choice in whether I make music or not. I do have a choice whether I share it and all that other stuff. But I would be making all of this regardless because I need to do it just to get through the day. It's just a void in me that I need to fill and it’s one of the only things that works to fill it. When my sister passed away last year, I couldn't even pick up a guitar for a couple of months. If I'm hurting or going through things, I use escapism. But what was difficult about that was I had no refuge. Then Mis Suenos Split was released 10 days after my sister died and started taking off. After what I had just gone through, it felt like nothing. I was just like, I've been doing this my whole life and now it happens. The act of picking up my guitar wouldn't be for me, because every time I did that, I felt guilty that I get to continue on my dreams, but my sister doesn't? Then I thought, I could do this for other people. That's what I want to do with Burial Etiquette, is make it part band, part blog, where I'm platforming all the stuff we love, and artists we love, and people look to Burial Etiquette, not just for music, but as a lighthouse that shines on maybe lesser known stuff that is easily just as good.
I love that. That idea is kind of in the same vein when you repost people's covers. That probably means so much to them.
100%. And we actually just started a discord. We made a channel with people posting all their covers. And people are commenting on each other's covers, like, Oh, I love your guitar tone. And it just warms my heart so much because I'm like, that was me back in the day. I would learn an emo song on guitar and post it or whatever. So that is super fulfilling and that's what really gives me the motivation and passion to do this six hours a day.
What do you hope your fans take away from your music and how do you want your band to be remembered by them?
What I hope our fans take away from our music is that anybody can do it. We want to be the most anti-gatekeeping band possible because we needed that when we were younger. We needed people to just accept us and not call us slurs or anything. We want our fans to know that we're on your side, we're not playing it safe to have the biggest audience. If you don't properly pronoun your friends don't listen to our band. We need to stop being billed as a female-fronted band. This is a problem for us so definitely for other bands too. When I was growing up, I discovered that art has the power to make you feel empathy for a life experience you've never, maybe even considered. You could read a book about a black, trans, queer Marxist and you'll never fully understand what that person went through but you could try, and you should try to, not in some victim mentality. Your accomplishments are your own but acknowledge that even if you weren't lifted up, you weren't blocked. So we are trying to give back 150% and not act like we got it all figured it out because we don't. We're just making music and skateboarding and smoking weed and playing video games. Any Burial fan that has been inspired by our music, means the world to me. And I wholeheartedly believe that you could write stuff better than us, you just gotta give it your all.
Patreon
Spotify
Apple Music