Lividus Lives: The Return Of Uta Plotkin

From 2009 to 2014, Uta Plotkin was the vocalist for the Portland band Witch Mountain. Those years in American doom had the shape of a miniature heavy metal epoch. A half-decade is an eternity in scene years: The term "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" was coined in 1979, and that movement had petered out by 1984. There were also just five years between 1986, the Year Thrash Broke, and 1991, the year Metallica broke thrash. Between 2009 and 2014, Pallbearer, Khemmis, Windhand, Dark Castle, Occultation, Usnea, and Un all released their debuts, and the slightly older SubRosa, Elder, and Yob put out some of their most celebrated work. 

Witch Mountain tore off a three-album run – 2011's South Of Salem, 2012's Cauldron Of The Wild, and 2014's Mobile Of Angels – that still stands among the most essential music of the New American Doom Revival (trademark pending). Plotkin's voice was their ace in the hole, an earthy, bluesy contralto that could contort itself to summon venomous death growls and mellifluous high notes alike. Listen to "Can't Settle" from Mobile Of Angels for a small taste of her range. There still isn't anybody else who can convincingly evoke Janis Joplin turning into Gollum, which is why the 12 years she didn't appear on a full-length metal album have felt so damn agonizing.

Now, finally, Plotkin is back. Her band Lividus just released their scorching debut album, Scarabaeus, following a pair of proof-of-concept EPs in 2022 and 2023. (Plotkin has also released music with the tongue-in-cheek "satanic pop" group Inverted Crosses.) Scarabaeus is not a doom record; it's not entirely clear what it is, at least in genre terms. Lividus touch on death metal, black metal, thrash, and prog, but Scarabaeus feels gloriously unbound by rules. In part, it's a showcase for ex-Dark Castle axeman Rob Shaffer's jagged, off-kilter riffs, and for the fullest expression yet of Plotkin's massive vocal range. She's growling a lot more than she did in Witch Mountain, but her cleans are also as impressive as ever. Her long layoff from the metal world seems to have rejuvenated her. There's a clarity of purpose to Lividus that comes screaming out of the speakers, an energy that she could only recapture by taking a break. She left Witch Mountain in 2014, citing burnout. She returns to metal as a phoenix ablaze.

"I spent maybe a year trying to heal my relationship with music, post-burnout," Plotkin says. "I actually tried to make a solo album, and it was so depressing. The music that was coming out of me, I didn't want to share it. I recorded some of it, and I was like, 'I don't even want to listen to this.' I was just really trying to figure out what to do with my life next. It was one of those times in life where I wasn't really sure what the next step was going to be."

It's important to note that Witch Mountain was never Plotkin's band. It was founded – and still exists – as a collaboration between guitarist Rob Wrong and drummer Nathan Carson. Plotkin didn't even especially want to be in a doom band until Carson persuaded her to try out. "I love the music that we ended up making, but I needed to do something that felt a little truer to me," Plotkin says today. In Lividus, where she's joined by Shaffer, guitarist Christy Cather (ex-Ludicra), drummer Pierce Williams (ex-Skeletal Remains), and bassist Connie Wang, it appears that she's found it. 

"It's my favorite music I've ever made," she beams. "It really feels like I'm finally making the music I've always wanted to make. It's been such a journey, and I'm so happy to have all these people in the band, too, because finding people for this band has been really hard. And now, I just have some of the nicest people in metal in my band, and it's a joy to spend time with them."

Below, stream Scarabaeus and read our lightly edited conversation.

Inverted Crosses was the band that marked your return to publicly releasing music again, in 2017. When you started that band, after that little break, what was the spark that made you say, "OK, I'm ready to do this again"?

PLOTKIN: I didn't start that band. Two of my friends started it. Actually, one of them was the former bass player in Witch Mountain [Chuck Thomas]. I had a major knee injury and a knee surgery, and these two friends had started a band, and I was just hanging out with them, and it looked like so much fun that I was like, "Can I play with you guys?" And it was fun. We did a couple short, silly albums, and it was a lot of fun. I needed to be able to have fun with music again.

I think you started Lividus around the same time, but you didn't put anything out for a little bit. What were those first few years like?

PLOTKIN: I was going to yoga teacher training when I decided that I really wanted to start an extreme metal band. I could feel all this rage that had nowhere to go. So I was like, "You know who would want to rage with me? My friend Connie." So I hit her up, and she was like, "Hell yeah, let's do it." As soon as I got back from that teacher training, which was in California, I came back to Portland, and we just started writing riffs, and finding riffs that had been in riff purgatory for a long time. Her boyfriend at the time contributed some riffs, too, and we just kind of mashed them all together and made a few songs. But it was just me and Connie, so it was vocals and bass. It was really hard to find members with just this idea, and some vocals and bass. So we relied on the kindness of some friends to record a demo and get those actually fleshed out and recorded.

This was before the EPs, then. I guess I haven't heard whatever the demo is.

PLOTKIN: The demo was really rough, recorded at home on Reaper, just enough to start showing some people. We did find a guitar player and a drummer after that. Funnily enough, the drummer was our current drummer, but we have since had another drummer in between. It's been a real rollercoaster of members.

As you said, this was a band you started. How important was that for you creatively, that this was gonna kind of be your and Connie's thing?

PLOTKIN: Very important. I've never really wanted to join in other people's bands. I never would have gone the doom route if circumstances hadn't come together like they did. I wasn't looking to join Witch Mountain. During Witch Mountain, I did have a band that was mine [Aranya], where I had a lot of input into the music and everything. I really like to create. I like to make things. It's a part of me that comes regardless of what's going on in my life. So it was important to me to have my own band, and to have a little more control over the sound.

Yeah, let's talk about the sound. It's super hard to pin down, which I think is one of the cool things about it. It's a little death metal, a little black metal, a little prog, a little thrash. You can't pigeonhole it. How did that blend of styles end up being what you gravitated towards?

PLOTKIN: The first couple EPs were basically riff salads.Riffs contributed from everyone in the band and then stitched together. Basically, we were like, as long as we liked the riff, it went in.Andit just turned out to work that way.

Your vocal range is also quite wide in Lividus. We've heard you do death growls here and there in the past, but on this, you're doing faster death growls, but also doing your clean vocals, sometimes layering them. It's a pretty wide spectrum that shows what you can do as a singer. What made that the way you wanted to approach this band?

PLOTKIN: Generally, the way I approach any band as a singer is I want the vocals to fit with the music, and it's just appropriate for this music to have a lot of growling. And it's something I want to do because it feels good to me. But I'm not gonna go and do a band that's all growling when I can sing like I can. I really enjoy singing, too. So this is great, because I do about 50/50 in this band, and I really enjoy both. And I think it fits with the music pretty well, too.

How is it live? Has it been a challenge to be doing such a wide range of things?

PLOTKIN: I don't find it challenging to switch back and forth, if that's what you mean. But actually, I did end up taking some vocal lessons from a local guy, Quinton Gardner, who's also a death metal vocalist and an opera singer.

And he does the spoken word piece on this album ["They blew the flies from their lips before they spoke"], right?

PLOTKIN: He does, yeah. I really wanted him to do something on the album. He's actually taught me how to do all this stuff that I'm doing in a way that is a lot less work for me. I'm not sure you can hear any difference post-vocal lessons, but I can feel the difference.

Had you ever had any kind of classical vocal training before?

PLOTKIN: I'd had a few lessons in middle school, but that was about it. This was the first time, especially with my adult voice, that I'd really worked on it, and I have a lot of bad habits from being mostly self-taught, so it's been really helpful.

Tell me more about that. What did you have to unlearn?

PLOTKIN: Oh, boy. Well, I was pushing way too hard, and I still tend to do that when I'm not really careful about it. Because you think volume equals pushing, and that can really strain your voice and hurt your voice. The most important thing that I think Quinton taught me was how to make your voice resonate, and find your volume that way, instead of pushing.

The opera side of things. I'm sure there was a lot of stuff with breath and how to use the actual, physical instrument of your voice.

PLOTKIN: Yeah. So now there's, like, 15 things going through my head, all in Quinton's voice, while I'm singing. Sometimes I just have to remind myself to stop thinking about it. But it's been really helpful.

Let's talk about Scarabaeus. It's been 12 years since the last record you did with Witch Mountain, so it's been a minute since there's been a new metal full-length that you've been the vocalist on. How's everything feeling? Any nerves?

PLOTKIN: Nerves are okay, I think. We have played a few shows here and there, and put out the EPs, and this album has been ready for about a year and a half. We've been shopping it around to labels. Nameless Grave was the first one to bite.

They're great.

PLOTKIN: Yeah, I love working with [label owner] Brandon [Corsair]. It feels really good to have this full-length coming out, and to have the people involved that we do.

You talked about the writing process for the EPs. I'm guessing the process was a little bit different for this. Maybe a little more thought-out, or controlled. How different was it?

PLOTKIN: The big difference there was that Rob Shaffer joined the band. Oh, boy, we were just pinching ourselves when he said yes, that he wanted to play with us. I was just looking it up. It's been about four years now that he's been in the band. So first, he learned all the old songs, and we were playing those live, and then he started writing new songs, so there's two old songs on this new album, and the rest are songs that mostly Rob wrote. Rob was obviously inspired by the riff salad-ness of the first two EPs [laughs]. A lot of the riffs that he contributed to the new album were already written. His style just fits really well with what we're trying to do. So it might be a little more cohesive, this album, because it's mostly Rob writing the riffs now.

A little more cohesive, but not wildly different. It's kind of interesting that his involvement was the way it was, because Scarabaeus feels of a piece with the EPs. It still sounds like the same band to me.

PLOTKIN: I think he really got it. He really understood that we wanted this kind of mixed-up, eclectic sound.

You play viola on the record. I know that's an instrument that you started playing as a kid. Had you played it in a metal context before?

PLOTKIN: I played it in my band Aranya, which was really avant-garde, and some of the songs were kind of metal. This was a little different, but it feels similar, so bringing it back and planning it with Lividus feels kind of familiar. I had actually wanted to play it to begin with, which is why we play in drop C, because the lowest string on a viola is a C.

The song on here that I think really illustrates what you're doing with the viola is "Sulphur," where it's kind of dueling with the guitar and bass in that solo section. What do you remember about putting that song together?

PLOTKIN: That's one that Rob brought to the table mostly formed. And it had this big section that I had no idea what to do with vocally. So I was like, you know what? This would be a good place for me to play viola. In Aranya, I did a lot of second-guitar harmonies with the [viola], so I was like, "That would be good here." I'm hoping to do more of that on the next album.

Have you been writing for the next record yet?

PLOTKIN: We haven't started actually writing. I know Rob has some things in mind. He has some riffs on the back burner. I have some ideas, content-wise. I think we're all pretty eager. Our drummer, Michael Thompson, just rejoined pretty recently, so we are kind of getting him caught up on the material before launching into writing again.

We haven't really touched on lyrics yet. Did you keep up a writing practice over the years that you weren't actively releasing music? 

PLOTKIN: I'm always writing. I'm actually working on a novel right now. I'm always writing, whether it's in a journal, or lyrics, or short stories. 

How would you describe the lyrical identity of this band? When you step into Lividus mode, what's at the top of your mind?

PLOTKIN: Similar themes tend to come up over and over in my songs, in general. Themes like liminal spaces, being stuck, not knowing what path to take, not understanding the world, or trying to understand the unseen world. Things that are hard to process as a human being. So that's continuing into Lividus, and this particular album is more specifically addressing tower moments. Moments of change that come immediately and brutally and will change your life forever. How do you process that, and how are you transformed by that?

I noticed a lot of second person, a lot of songs addressed to an unnamed you. Is that you? Are you talking to yourself from an outside perspective, or is there another person that you are addressing?

PLOTKIN: Yes, both. All of the above.

You can stay cryptic.

PLOTKIN: A lot of times, things are coming out, and then I look back, and I read over it, and I'm like, "Oh…" And it's only after it's on the page that I really understand where that's coming from, and sometimes it's pretty personal.

Do you write lyrics to songs that are already partly formed, or does the writing that you're doing sometimes guide the way the song is structured? Because these are pretty complex little songs to find the places to put vocals in.

PLOTKIN: Usually, I'm writing once the song is formed. And then I always have some say over how many times things are repeated, or if something comes back in the song later. But ideally, I'm writing the lyrics and sculpting them into the music.

Is that tricky in this band? Because they're warped little songs, you know? They're kind of odd.

PLOTKIN: It definitely is tricky, but it's a challenge I love.

I know you haven't really started writing with the current lineup, but Christy Cather is in the band now. Ludicra is one of my favorite bands ever. I imagine they must have been an influence on Lividus as well, because I think there's some similarities.

PLOTKIN: And Ails.

And Ails! Another great band with her and Laurie Sue Shanaman. How did she end up joining? Did you guys know each other already?

PLOTKIN: Yes. Christy moved up here from the Bay Area a few years ago, and just because of the nature of the scene, you end up running into people and meeting people. I had already been hanging out with Christy. We knew each other, and Connie knew Christy. And we've been looking for a second guitar player for as long as we've had the band, basically. And we were like, "What about Christy?" We'd asked so many people who were like, "I don't think I could play that music." And she ended up saying yes, so we were really, really happy.

How's it been having two guitar players on stage instead of one? Does it open things up a little bit?

PLOTKIN: Space-wise, no [laughs]. But it really fills out the sound, like any second guitar player would. And it frees Rob up to do more.

It'll be different when you're writing. Having two guitars in the arsenal from the point of creation is gonna be totally different than adding a guitar to a song that already exists.

PLOTKIN: That's true, and that's something we haven't really had to contend with yet. And also, I'm going to be wanting to add more viola in, so we're going to have to figure out how to weave that in with the second guitar as well. But I think we're up to the challenge. We all love complicated music, and we've all been doing this for a long time, and I have no doubt that our vision will be realized.

TEN NAILS THROUGH THE NECK

JOURNEY TO THE WORLD BEYOND

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