Dearth of the Earth: The Fifth Law of Thermodynamics
Count your downbeats and bang your heads with the “dear-eth” of bands in Ogden this weekend.
Photo of Dearth of Earth, from the making of their video "Journey to Sgr A*" filmed at the Ott Planetarium at Weber State with the help of Dr. John Armstrong. From top left to bottom right are band members Morgan, Matt, Rocky, Jon. Photo provided by Dearth of Earth
Music NewsQ. & A.
Ogden math rockers Dearth of Earth released their inaugural album “Time and a Place” this year (June, 2021), which if you’re not into instrumental post-rock you just might turn into a full blown headbanging beat “nerd” after giving it a listen. The four piece band, Ogdenites Morgan Thomas (guitar), Jonathan Ramanujam (guitar), Rocky Schofield (bass), and Matthew R. Johnson (drums), are playing a show in Ogden at Funk ‘n Dive this Saturday night with rockers Uma Fuzz from Salt Lake. So get it on your to-do list to “pick sweep” your way to this “trilling” show.
We sent five questions to Matthew Johnson who started solo as “Dearth” in 2017 before enlisting the other three to the project. Here’s the story of Dearth, in their own words:
What were your earliest influences?
I'm sure we'd each answer a bit differently, but my personal early influences came mostly from my older brothers. At a pretty young age they got me into bands like Tool, Queens of the Stone Age, Kyuss, Primus, Soundgarden, Incubus - all the great 90s rock - and a lot of the classics like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Yes, etc. King Crimson was the band that really sucked me in from that period, and they continue to be a huge influence on my writing style. I was fascinated by music with rhythmic complexity, especially odd meter and polyrhythms. But mostly I loved music that felt like it had real emotion behind it. By the time I was in high school I was really into bands that were mostly labeled Post Rock or Math Rock. Bands like Pelican, Isis, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Don Caballero, Giraffes? Giraffes!, ... The 2000s really were a golden era.
Why progressive metal (or what do you call your sound)?
I never know what to call us. I think some of what we do rhythmically often fits in with a prog metal or djent kind of description, but I'm not sure I'd call us a metal band. My favorite artists are usually ones that dip into multiple genres. I don't know though, I guess Post Rock if we had to pick a bin. We play nerdy emotive upbeat instrumental music that's kinda heavy.
Tell us about your new album!
We put out our album Time and a Place in June of 2021. Jon and Morgan I worked on the recordings over the better portion of 2020. We recorded guitar parts track by track in Morgan's rehearsal space and Jon's home studio. Drums were recorded at Archive Recordings in October of 2020. This was our first release as a full band, and under the name Dearth of Earth. I originally started the project (just called "Dearth" at the time) as a solo project, writing and recording a self-titled release back in 2017. Later I recruited Morgan and Jon to learn some of this material for a handful of shows and to begin working on the new album.
How did you come to be a band?
Our friends from the band Hemwick reached out to ask if I could play a Dearth set with them one fateful All Hallows Eve. I had no real band to play the material, so I reached out to Morgan and Jon. Before they knew it they were stuck with me. I was eager to work on new material I had written, so the three of us dove right into recording. After the release we enlisted Rocky to play Bass, and began getting ready to perform the new material live. I'm originally from New Hampshire. I moved to Ogden 11 years ago, following a friend who moved here for Weber State and fresh Powder. Morgan and I played in a band called The Highway Thieves together, and I also played drums in his evolving project Morgan and the Mountain. Jon and Rocky both play in a progressive metal band called Machines of Man.
Where did your band name come from?
The band name came when I stumbled on the word dearth in a physics journal article. I had just finished my science degree at Weber State and was nerding out on physics podcasts and PBS Spacetime videos, fascinated by all the weirdness of relativity and quantum mechanics I learned about in Physics II class. An episode pointed me to that paper and it was the first time seeing the word 'dearth'. Dear and Earth in one word, how perfect. Looking up the word I learned it meant a lack or scarcity of something, but also that it derived from a contraction of dear-eth(dear'th), meaning precious. Dearth of Earth sort of sums up this general idea or outlook I had after learning more about our effect on ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole. It means we only have so much of this precious time and place we call home, and that we ought to take care of that.
Dearth of Earth Halloween show at Funk ‘n Dive 2021. Photo provided by Matthew Johnson
WATCH THISDearth of Earth video “Journey to Sgr A*”
Follow Dearth of Earth on IG @dearth_of _earth, adearth.bandcamp.com, FB , Spotify, Apple Music, iHeart, and Deezer.
—By Deann Armes and Paddy Teglia