“I only use my hands and my bass to develop a sound” – Matrass’ Bassist Corentin Lagrue on their debut album ‘Cathedrals’

Matrass, a progressive post-metal band from Bordeaux, France, have recently released their debut full-length album, Cathedrals, under the La Tangente label. Known for their fusion of metalcore with post-rock, the band has drawn comparisons to The Ocean, Spiritbox, and TesseracT. In this interview with Bass Empire, Corentin Lagrue, the band’s bassist, sheds light on the creative process behind the album and the equipment that shapes their distinctive sound.

Corentin explains his choice of bass, saying, “I chose a Chapman MLB1-5 Pro because it is fitted with double-winding, splitable pickups, Chapman Equinox JBuckers. It allows me to play with the power of the double pickups a-nd the precision of the single pickups. They are passive pickups, so I don’t need amplifiers. I only use my hands and my bass to develop a sound or play with the tone.”

The Chapman MLB1-5 Pro features an angled Serekh Five headstock with Wilkinson tuners and a 45mm Graph Tech Black TUSQ XL nut. The neck is made of roasted maple with an American black walnut stripe, finished with oil, and connected to the body through a neck-through design with a volute. The neck profile is C-shaped, with a width of 45mm at the nut and 68mm at the 24th fret, and a thickness of 20mm at the first fret and 23mm at the 12th fret. The wenge fretboard has rolled edges, a 300mm radius, 24 jumbo stainless steel frets, glow-in-the-dark side dots, and a pearl infinity inlay at the 12th fret. The scale length is approximately 34 inches. The body is made of American black walnut with an arched front and back, oil finish, and includes rear tummy cut, lower spoon cut, and heel contour. It is equipped with Chapman Equinox JBuckers Jazz Humbucker pickups (Alnico 5 magnets, 12.66k ohms at the neck, 13.23k ohms at the bridge), a coil split on the push-pull tone knob, master volume with treble bleed circuit, blend control, and master tone with push-pull.

Discussing his amplification and pedal setup, Corentin states, “I use a Darkglass Microtubes 900V2 amplifier and on my pedalboard I use a Darkglass Super Symmetry compressor with a Darkglass Microtubes B7K Ultra for the distortion. This is the base of the sound I create: the clean sound is dealt with by the amp and the distortion by the pre-amp. It allows me to play ‘old school’ and to manage the clean intensity and the distortion directly by hand. (I only use my fingers for Matrass.) For ‘Silence,’ I used an ‘octobass’ made by Back Elite, a local manufacturer based in Gironde. On ‘Shreds,’ the arpeggios are wrapped in reverie with a TC Electronic Hall of Fame.”

When it comes to song creation, Corentin elaborates on the collaborative nature of their work. “For ‘Cathedrals,’ the majority of the songs were created by Victor and Simon, our two guitar players. When they create a piece, they often include a placeholder bass line to give some weight to the first draft, so I can get the idea behind their guitar riffs. Next, I work on my own to rewrite the lines according to their idea. Sometimes I only follow the fundamentals of the riff and add a few light variations (like on ‘Reaching Heights’), and sometimes I take the liberty to step away from the fundamentals to phrase and give some colour and texture to the song. On the title-track, for example, I follow the main riff to have a heavier effect, and for the more aerial parts, I try to develop some lines to play between the guitars and Clémentine’s singing while I play with Baptiste’s drums. You could say I am the link between all of them.”

Corentin also reflects on the album’s creation process following their previous EP, Inner Wars. He notes, “Both these songs were amongst the first we created for the album, just after the release of our previous EP. Both songs show the two sides of Matrass, with the modern, quite head-on side and the post-ambient-prog side. I will let everyone follow their own journey while listening to the album, to make sense of it or to find a link between the different songs.”

The band’s approach to songwriting is instinctive and collaborative. “We start with a riff and then we follow our intuition to create the song. We all collaborate to create our pieces. We all have different influences, so when one of us has an idea, we all try and work on it, and then we all decide to keep it or not. It’s that simple,” Corentin remarks.

Matrass’ debut album Cathedrals is available for purchase through La Tangente.