In a quiet residential neighborhood in Encino, there is a room where five young men convene to make deafening amounts of noise. This room is on the second story of Sean Sykes’ home, at the end of a wing, as if the architect knew that someday the rest of the family would need some peace and quiet in the rest of the house.
The air smells vaguely of dust and marijuana smoke, and a banner for a 1994 Thin Lizzy concert hangs on the wall. In this room, Sykes and the rest of the extreme metal band Statius gather for practices, joined sometimes by Sykes’ Irish wolfhound mix, Hayden. A few leftover pieces of carpet are tacked on the walls, which seem to be sufficient soundproofing; they haven’t received any complaints from the neighbors.
Statius formed in 2007, when Ronny Marks and Wyatt Bentley decided they wanted something more serious than the band they were playing in at the time. That band’s bass player joined them, along with Sykes, his high school classmate. They advertised on Craigslist and found Nick Vidmann, a guitarist from Culver City, and they went through one other bass player before Dusty McAdams joined last summer, completing the band’s current lineup.
Marks, the group’s lead singer and guitarist, took the name from “The Divine Comedy,” in which Dante meets the Roman poet Statius in purgatory.
Marks wasn’t sure how to pronounce the name ““ many of their fans still can’t. But Bentley, who became the band’s drummer, asked his English teacher, who was teaching Dante Alighieri’s poetry. It sounds like “stay-tee-us.”
Bentley is a lanky kid and an energetic and dexterous drummer. He’s the only member of the band with short hair and the only one still in high school. He said his parents support his musical ambitions because they’ve seen how passionate he is about it.
“They like to see that I’m so focused on something, because school’s never been my gig,” Bentley said.
McAdams’ mother not only supports his lifestyle, but she also raised him on it.
“My mom was a thrasher in the day,” McAdams said. “Before I was even born, my mom when she was eight months pregnant went to a D.R.I. show. So I’ve been raised on thrash and death metal since I was born. I was raised on Suicidal Tendencies, Slayer and Death.”
Almost a year after forming, Statius played its first show at the Cobalt Cafe, a small venue in Canoga Park that hosted AFI, Jimmy Eat World and Avenged Sevenfold before they hit it big. Soon they began opening for bands in Hollywood, and in the spring of 2009 they recorded a seven-song EP, “Arcane Fables,” during five days at Love Juice Labs, a recording studio in Riverside popular with up-and-coming rock and metal bands.
The songs are dark and intricate. Sykes’ keyboard-playing lends them an ominous, gothic atmosphere, while Marks’ vocals run somewhere between a bark and a growl. One of the songs, “Deep Into That Darkness,” was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” but Bentley said the band’s gothic tendencies do not extend beyond the lyrics.
“There are people who are going to take things too seriously, there’s probably a kid that’s sacrificed a goat or two, but it all depends,” Bentley said. “There are people who are really into it and take it seriously, and there are people who can just appreciate it as another art form.”
Many fans, in fact, appreciate metal for its difficulty. The genre is known for its impressive musicians who push the boundaries of speed and dexterity for their instruments.
“I think once you play metal, because it’s so technically demanding, maybe other things are a little bit easier,” Bentley said. “Although I’m sure if I took on jazz it would be totally different.”
Sykes said he believes the songs Statius plays challenge each of them as musicians, and their fans seem to think so too.
“A lot of people have this idea that because we have really intricate songs … we have really intricate equipment,” Sykes said. “But the shit is broken.”
Bentley’s drum set is still intact, but he did acquire it, he said, by trading a broken paintball gun to a friend. Though the band does occasionally make a profit from one of its shows, that money ends up being used for equipment or merchandise. The members’ plan for the next year, they all agreed, was to record a follow-up to “Arcane Fables” and secure a deal with a record label.
But Sykes said that the band’s journey has already had its share of high points, the highest for him coming at the band’s headlining performance at the Cobalt Cafe in September, and not even because their fans filled the room.
“We had played another show at that same venue, and … there were a couple of kids who were blind, and they came with their family,” Sykes said.
Sykes said he guessed the kids were around 16 or 17 years old.
“They came to see us. They came really early, they waited the whole time, and then we started playing, and any time any keyboard stuff would kick in they’d start bouncing. It was so touching,” Sykes said. “And then, the more touching thing, more touching than that, was when they came again.”