A Ripple Conversation With Joshua Murphy From Blessed Black

When I was a kid, growing up in a house with Cat Stevens, Neil Diamond, and Simon and Garfunkel, the first time I ever heard Kiss's "Detroit Rock City," it was a moment of musical epiphany. It was just so vicious, aggressive and mean. It changed the way I listened to music. I've had a few minor epiphany's since then, when you come across a band that just brings something new and revolutionary to your ears.
What have been your musical epiphany moments?
I grew up on classic soul and country music. Some my first loves in music were Otis Redding, Elvis Presley, and Marty Robbins. I had an older sister who was really into the hair metal scene in the 80s, and the major one that stands out for me was hearing Guns n' Roses for the first time. My sister had gotten a copy of Appetite for Destruction, and I heard the song Nightrain coming from our living room stereo, and ran out to ask her and her friend who it was. It started me down a path of loving guitar driven rock and heavy metal.
Talk to us about the song-writing process for you. What comes first, the idea? A riff? The lyrics? How does it all fall into place?
We generally start with the riff. Chris and I are both fairly prolific riff writers with this band. We both write and record riffs to our phones and share them with each other all the time. We jam a couple times a week at our practice space, and in between working on our live show, we will bust out random riffs and jam on them to see how they feel with the band, and what might come of them. The overall process of finishing songs tends to be very easy.  Once we find a good groove and jam on a riff for a while, the next step will come to one of us, and we will start seeing where things should go to turn it into a song.    The lyrics and vocals tend to come at the end of the process. Several of the songs on our debut record had the lyrics and vocals only partially written upon entering the studio to record them.
Who has influenced you the most?
We all have our own individual influences that we draw inspiration from, but as a band I would say some of the common themes are bands like Alice in Chains, High on Fire, The Sword, Mastodon, and Black Sabbath of course.
Where do you look for continuing inspiration? New ideas, new motivation?
One of the best parts of being in this band is that we tend to inspire each other I think. We all have our own reasons for doing what we do, and we all tend to feed off of each others energy. I have never felt stagnant at any point since this band started.
We're all a product of our environment. Tell us about the band's hometown and how that reflects in the music?
I think one of the biggest influences you'll see in us from where we come from is the energy in our live shows. Cincinnati has a vast music history, and has always had a very strong live music scene. We have great venues, killer local talent, and a lot of great music coming through the city all the time. We have all grown up as musicians within that scene, and it has showed us how to present a live show that is engaging, fun, and high energy.
Where'd the band name come from?
The common thing people think is that Blessed Black is derivative of the High on Fire album Blessed Black Wings. I absolutely love High on Fire, but that was the farthest thing from my brain when we came up with the name.When Chris and I started this band, I told him that I wanted to write lyrics for the first batch of songs based around the Elric of Melniboné books written by Michael Moorcock. Chris and I are both big time fans of fantasy fiction literature.When we started throwing around name ideas, we made a list and just added anything we could think of to it. One of the things I put down was "Black Blade", and then "Blessed Black Blade" because the character in those books carries an enchanted black sword. We went through and kinda went back and forth on things, and then out of that came the idea for just calling it Blessed Black. We both liked it, and the homage to one of our favorite bands was just a bonus in the end.