According to band members Imix Shish and Mike Mollura, Equal Conquest started in 2005.
“We had been playing music together in other bands since early 1998, most notably in the PA area based punk band the Afterglows from 2000-2002. We had been stockpiling material outside of that group that was much less aggressive. During the summer of 2005, we had a window of opportunity to record a lot of it while fleshing out additional tunes.
Those sessions resulted in their debut album Manifest Destiny (2006) and a good portion of the follow up album Rummager, which came out in 2011. We didn’t have any kind of hiatus between that album and this album even though 10 years have passed. We both have careers and families so creative progress could be slow going. Things culminated early this summer with Imix finishing a very intense session of reworking some thematic/lyrical items on the album and putting those ideas down.
At the Heart of the Empire was recorded over the span of a little over 5 years. When we started recording these songs, there were a few missing pieces that needed time to figure where they would end up. That actually worked to our advantage, as we recorded and produced everything ourselves mostly remotely but with pockets of collaborative sessions sprinkled in. After a breakthrough marathon session by Imix recording remotely this summer, it was quite apparent that the record was finally ready to be released. We sent the set to Tom Conran to mix and then was mastered by Tom Vopacelli at the Mastering House.”
