Festival of Invocations is the new album from Seattle’s Society of the Silver Cross, the duo act featuring Joe Reineke and Karyn Gold-Reineke. Their bio describes the band as “Contemporary Gothic” and “Funeral Rock,” and I suppose either works, but it’s not quite that easy to throw them into a specific bucket.

The album was five years in the making, but it doesn’t feel overworked. It’s a cohesive and consistent set of songs, with diverse instrumentation, and great lyrics. The songs are generally slow and tribal, with droning, harmony vocals, pounding drums, and reoccurring themes born out of visits to India and beyond. This isn’t your high school throwback goth, though; mopingly staring at your shoes in black, oversized clothes and dyed black hair. There are engaging harmonies and melodic choruses, hints of Americana, and a sonic soundscape that rivals the production on your favorite metal album. There’s an underlying intensity, propelled by beating drums and reverb-drenched organs, painting an audio-landscape that increasingly engages the mind and spirit on consecutive listens.

It’s music that takes a couple listens to digest before the hooks sink in, and those are the albums that tend to have the greatest longevity. After a spin or three I found myself humming the Tom Waits-like “We All Belong to Time” and bobbing my head to the driving “Circle Cast Around” while walking around the house. It’s not necessarily in familiar company with my own record collection, but my Cheap Trick, Nancy Sinatra, and Montrose albums are acclimating to the new addition to the family like kittens slowly taking to a new puppy, disrupting their realm, but providing some excitement and wonderment as well. Festival of Invocations has a new place in there, and everyone’s playing nice now that they’re all acquainted.

I first met Joe in the mid-late 90s, shortly after procuring my very first email address, and in awe of the fact that I could communicate with a guy in San Fransico from one of my favorite bands (Meices) who I hadn’t met in person yet, not knowing that 30 years later, we’d still be in touch.

Side note: I was turned on to Meices by one of my closest friends, Dave “Milky” Miller, who gave me a cassette with Meices’ Greatest Bible Stories Ever Told on one side and a J Church album on the other. Dave ran Red Eye Growler Records, the Chicago-based label that SlugBug was on, and was our tour manager on a couple longer runs. We lost him in 2003, but he’s still with me, and I like to think he’d get a kick out of my enduring friendship with Joe.  

Joe dismantled the Meices and formed the equally awesome Alien Crime Syndicate before eventually moving to Seattle sometime around the turn of the century. He took up audio engineering, started a recording studio, and put out a few killer albums (and toured as Tommy Stinson’s band for a bit) before ACS broke up and he focused on the studio and formed Society of the Silver cross with wife Karyn. Joe and I crossed paths in person a number of times, usually when Meices or ACS would come though Detroit or Toledo, sharing our rock & roll releases and stories, and navigating the changing musical landscape as best we could.

Society of the Silver Cross’ debut in 2019 1 Verse was a solid album, paving the runway for the journey that would become Festival of Invocations. Joe and Karyn now have a second studio closer to their home, Temple of the Trees, and looking at the photos, it’s not hard to visualize the sounds on Festival echoing off those walls.

We were fortunate to get caught up with Joe and Karyn recently, to hear about the album, the studio, and what the future holds for Society of the Silver Cross.

JP/Pencil Storm: Hey Joe & Karyn! Thanks for talking to us here at Pencil Storm! As you know, Joe, I’ve been a big fan of your previous work with Meices and Alien Crime Syndicate, and now Society of the Silver Cross, which is your current project with Karyn. Each band has been a bit of a departure from the one before, but SotSC is a bit more of a drastic change in styles. Can you talk about the formation of the band, what you had in mind, and how it’s evolved since inception?

Joe: Happy to chat, thanks for having us, Karyn and I just started playing music together after being together for a few years. I was doing a solo tour in Europe and asked if she wanted to come play with me. We did the dates, but to be honest it was more of a tour-cation than a real tour, but we worked our way around a bit.

Karyn: We naturally started to write together on the tour during our off time, and a new sound began to emerge. As to the band name, we visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and were both struck by a cool painting of a stoic and rugged man, which was titled “Society of the Silver Cross,” which we learned were the 16th century Dutch Army medics. We’ve always felt our music had some healing qualities to it and we kept coming back to this name for some reason. We kept playing and writing when we returned home and recorded our first album “1 Verse” about a year later.

Joe: For me personally, I felt like I had walked down the same familiar musical roads a bunch in my life and had already worn those boots out a few times over, ha-ha. I really wanted to explore some different highways. Neither of us were interested in being bound to traditional song structures - just a tip: the song police will not arrest you if you don’t have a bridge and solo. For example, the last song on our new record “Rajasthan '' has 1 only chord and one lyric, you cannot have less than that!!!

JP/Pencil Storm: Your new album festival of Invocations is fantastic – your best yet. How did these songs come together and why did it take FIVE years???

Joe: Thank you, Jeremy you are a fantastic songwriter and singer and I very much respect you as an artist and your musical tastes. Five years seems like a long time, but we did have a pandemic and we built our own recording studio, Temple of the Trees, from the ground up to record this album and our future releases.

Karyn: We had roughly 120 ideas/demos we had saved during COVID, and finally decided on 9. We had an ongoing joke about writing the same song but slightly different over and over, and would say to each other, “Didn’t we write this one already??” In the end, it was worth the wait to record the album in its entirety at the Temple. We began tracking in May of 2023 and finished everything later in fall. It's also taken a while to set it up and have a proper release schedule.

JP/Pencil Storm: Festival of Invocations, to me, is somewhat sparse, instrumentally, but the sonics and sound of the record are huge. It fills the room but still feels very organic and spacious. Was that the intention, and how did you achieve that?

Joe: We used the live room at the Temple for everything, even vocals. It has such a lush yet controlled sound to it. My production style is somewhat subtractive, I only like to fill things out for dynamic purposes and leave space for the next present to arrive. For example, if everything (dynamically) is at ten there is nowhere left to go (besides eleven) but understanding that you can bring the song down to one you can play in more interesting areas. I’d say sometimes it was intentional but most of the time we tried to be good listeners of the song, they will tell you what they want if you really listen.

Karyn: I also think some of our instrumentation lends itself to this. The harmonium and B3 organ both have a lot of rich, mid-range to them, as well as some of the synthesizers we like to incorporate - so bringing them in and out within the songs helps to create a lot of dynamics. We also played more on this album with larger vocal stacks and natural reverb in the live room to create a feeling of expansiveness.

JP/Pencil Storm: I think my favorite song on the record (though I’ve flip-flopped a few times) is “When You Know.” I read that this was inspired by a visit to India and some advice from a spiritual teacher there. The song doesn’t quite have the Indian vibe that “Rajasthan” does, but that trip and your experiences there clearly had an impact on this album. Can you expand on that trip and how it affected your work a little?

Joe: I’ve been to India multiple times now, please ask me about the time Karyn was getting chased by monkeys! She screamed at me to ‘Do something!’ and I yelled back, “I am, I’m laughing.” Hahaha.

Karyn: Was not funny at the time, it is now!

Joe: Back to the question… By experience, I believe songs come through you and not from you. We are all conduits of our experiences and how we look at the world. Music is just like many things in life, it has to filter through our Samskara and through our egos. When I get myself out of the way I feel free.

JP/Pencil Storm: You were on the road fairly consistently in the 90’s and 00’s but not so much since you became more active as a producer/engineer. Any plans to support this record with some travel dates? Or will you be staying pretty close to home? What is the work-dynamic of the band as far as gigs, recording, touring, and promotion?  

Joe: I’m itching to get back on the road, I miss it very much. We are going to Japan and to Europe later this year and planning a big European tour in the spring.

Karyn: There is talk of a deeper dive into Asia as well. We did an awesome tour in Mexico right as covid started and we for sure want to go back there as well as South America. We’re planning some US dates too, but are most excited about having new experiences and adventures overseas.

Joe: I’m not super excited to play Tulsa on a Tuesday, if that makes sense.

JP/Pencil Storm: I’ve literally played Tulsa on a Tuesday, and I can confirm that this absolutely makes sense.

Your studio Orbit Audio has always beckoned me to schedule a recording session, but you now have Temple of the Trees - a new space you built from the ground up and it looks AMAZING! It’s on my bucket list of rooms I’d like to record in. You’ve come into your own over the years with an impressive list of clients and some incredible sounding music. Can you talk a little about the studio and your approach as an engineer/producer?

Joe: I have both spaces, Orbit Audio is downtown Seattle and has operated at the same location for over 20 years now! Temple of the Trees is just a few miles out from the city, and yes, Karyn and I built it from the ground up.

I take my cues from the artists I work with, mostly I’m doing production work on albums and recording and mixing them. Sometimes songs can be like puzzle pieces and fitting things together takes a little bit of trying things and turning things upside down. I have a pitch I give to potential clients, here it is “I don’t know what I’m doing….however I have a good batting average of going into those rooms (metaphorically) and finding out what to do.” This way I don’t have to know everything, what's the fun in that anyway?

Karyn: You have an open invitation to come visit the Temple anytime, Jeremy.

JP/Pencil Storm: Thanks Karyn! You can count on that, sooner than you may think! And thanks to both of you for your time and insight! Can’t wait to hang out soon and I hope the album finds its way to every corner of the globe!

Check out Society of the Silver Cross HERE and buy Festival of Invocations and the rest of their releases HERE!

Jeremy Porter lives near Detroit and fronts the rock and roll band Jeremy Porter And The Tucos. Follow them on Facebook to read his road blog about their adventures on the dive-bar circuit.
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Twitter: @jeremyportermi | Instagram: @onetogive & @jeremyportermusic