To Die In Your Arms

REVOLVER What’s this song about?
SAL ABRUSCATO A guy’s ultimate goal to commit suicide and die in his girlfriends arms.

Which part of it did you come up with first?
The music happened at the same time as the melody. Then I followed through with the lyrics.

Was this an easy song to write?
For me, it was easy because it was natural and just fell out of me. It wasn’t forced or contrived in any way.

What sort of feedback have you gotten on this song so far?
Very, very positive so far. I am so pleased about the fans and how they have supported me through my endeavors.

Listen for the new single, which will hit radio in late June. For now, McCoy fills us in on the album’s progress, his stance on Christian rock, and what it’s like to be a Navy SEAL for a day.

REVOLVER How’s it going in the studio?
PAUL McCOY It’s going great! We’re finishing some stuff up now. We’re doing some last-minute vocals, some guitar stuff. We’re in the last week of it.

What can fans expect from the new album?
One of the things that I love about this record is that there are so many different things. We’ve got some songs that are really heavy and then some really nice songs that have a full orchestra behind them. There’s a lot of variety on this record. Those 12 Stones fans that like the heavy stuff, we’ve got something for them. And the 12 Stones people who like “Lie to Me” and stuff like that, we’ve got plenty of songs in there for them as well. This album’s our most mature for sure.

Rumors suggest that you had enough material for a full-length last year. Why did you release an EP instead?
It wasn’t our decision. We were with Wind-up at the time. They wanted a five song EP, and we did what they told us to do. When we came in to do this record we’re working on now, we showed up with over 40 songs that were pretty close to recordable. So we picked from that and wrote some more stuff when we got here to Nashville, Tennessee. I think we have a great record because of it.

Some of your older songs have been used in the WWE. Are you a wrestling fan?
I watched wrestling a lot when I was younger, but lately I don’t watch too much of it. We got to meet a bunch of wrestlers. We met the Nexus guys and John Cena when they came to New Orleans. We sat ring-side. It was really cool. I enjoy the fact that a lot of people who are really into wrestling become 12 Stones fans because our songs are used.

You won a Grammy for your personal work on the Evanescence song “Bring Me to Life.” Is that a goal for the entire band?
Absolutely. I would love to go to the Grammys and get an award with all these guys. These are guys who have been putting in blood, sweat, and tears right next to me for ten years. The thing I did with Evanescence was great, but it was done in a couple hours for me. When it’s your band doing the same thing? When that’s rewarded, that’s got to be one of the best feelings ever. But as an award winner, I’m actually able to vote for the Grammys, so that’s pretty cool.

If all that wasn’t enough recognition, you guys were also nominated for Christian music GMA Dove awards earlier in your career. Does religion still play a big role in your writing?
It plays somewhat of a role. It’s tough for me because we’re not a Christian band. We get played on Christian radio and sold in Christian bookstores because for some reason everyone latches on to the lyrics in a religious context. That’s great, but it gets bad when they get mad at you for something like having a picture with a beer in your hand. Being or not being Christian shouldn’t matter. If you hire a plumber, and he does great work, but he’s not a Christian plumber, are you not going to hire him anymore? Now that you know we’re not a Christian band, does everything you heard and all the meaning of our music for you just go away? I don’t understand how that works.

Have you kept up with any of the members of Evanescence?
By way of Facebook I talk to Ben Moody and a couple of those guys. The strange thing about all that is none of us really knew each other. We were on the same label, and it was one of those, “Yeah, awesome, I’d love to be on another record.” We honestly at the time had no idea it was going to do what it did. It was just one of those things where I flew in and tracked for a couple hours. Then I had to fly out at 5 in the morning to go back to Texas and start a tour with 12 Stones opening for Sevendust.

Speaking of tours, what are your plans for the coming months?
At the end of June, we’re actually going to Japan to play for the troops overseas. We’re playing a show on July 4 in a military base in Japan. So we’re super stoked about that. We’re very big supporters of the troops and the families of the troops.

What’s your most memorable moment from performing for military?
When we were working on the last record, we went out and played a free concert for the U.S. Navy SEALs out near San Diego. They walked us through their daily routine, and we actually got to take one of the rafts they use for training. We got to paddle it out in the ocean with a Navy SEAL. For training, you have to paddle out in the boat and get past where the waves are breaking, then turn around and come back in. They said that eight out of 10 rookie SEALs flip their boat the first time they try. A bunch of fat, tattooed rock guys went out there and kept the boat right side up and road the wave all the way into the beach. But I got embarrassed on the obstacle course, obviously.

Interview by Cody Thomas / Photo by Mark Anthony Jeffries

The Golden Gods issue of Revolver is available here now and everywhere else on May 24. An hour-long special featuring highlights from the show will air on VH1 Classic at 10 p.m. EST on May 28. View the trailer for that below.

Enslaved – The Sleeping Gods EP
1. “Heimvegen”
2. “Alu Misyrki”
3. “Synthesis”
4. “Nordlys”
5. “The Sleeping Gods”

But you don’t have to take our word for it. VH1 Classic is airing an hour of highlights from the show on Saturday, May 28, at 10 P.M. ET. View a trailer below. The broadcast will feature appearances by Cooper, Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo of Metallica, Jerry Cantrell and Mike Inez of Alice in Chains, Mötley Crüe, Rob Zombie, Corey Taylor, Sebastian Bach, Dave Navarro, William Shatner, Duff McKagan, Scott Ian, and Max Cavalera, as well as mind-blowing performances by A7X, Asking Alexandria, Volbeat, and more. Don’t miss it!

The Golden Gods issue of Revolver is available online here now and on newsstands everywhere. Enter here for your chance to win a Golden Gods prize pack!

REVOLVER What’s “2012″ about?
TYLER “TELLE” SMITH I watched the movie Law Abiding Citizen and knew that the vibe of that song would be perfect for the lyrics. Basically it’s my point of view from the main character’s perspective. It’s pretty violent and intense so I hope it translated right!

What does the title reference?
It’s actually a inside joke with the ban. We used to call our old sound guy “2012″ because he represented the end of the world to us. But truly I don’t believe the world will end in 2012. I think whenever the world does end, it’ll be gnarly and more insane than anyone could have predicted.

Which part of it did you come up with first?
The music almost always comes first for us. The inspiration behind the musical side of things, since I just told you about the lyrical side, came from us wanting to write a heavy song with some catchy synth that would be fun to play live. The result has become our most popular song to date!

Was the original version an easy song to record?
It was probably the easiest of the songs on the record but one where we all got to focus on the live energy of the song being translated into the recording. I think because of that it stands out on our CD.

What do you think of the remix? Are you ready to hear the Word Alive in clubs?
I would love to hear this in a club, I think that would be rad. We’re currently on a European tour, and after the show the other night, the venue turned into a club but it was playing heavy music and people were dancing. I would love to see that happen in the States. I think this is my favorite remix of the re-release as well.

Interview Highlights

Bello Interviews Rob Zombie and John 5

Bello Interviews His Bandmates

Bello Interviews Himself!

Bello Interviews David Coverdale of Whitesnake and Deep Purple

Bello Interviews Duff McKagan of Loaded and Velvet Revolver

Bello Interviews Comedian Craig Gass

Bello Interviews Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed

Bello Interviews Fozzy Frontman and Golden Gods Host Chris Jericho

Bello Interviews Machine Head

Bello Interviews Pretty Reckless Frontwoman Taylor Momsen and Adult Entertainment Star Jenna Haze

Bello Interviews Ozzy Osbourne Drummer Tommy Clufetos

Bello Interviews Volbeat

Bello Interviews Alan Robert of Life of Agony

This installment comes from Swedish multi-instrumentalist Skold, who has worked with KMFDM and Marilyn Manson. Anomie (Metropolis), Tim Skold’s second full-length as a solo artist and first in 15 years, comes out today. He shares one song off the album, “The Hunger,” here. Skold fills us in below.

REVOLVER Our readers might know you best from your work with Marilyn Manson, KMFDM, and Shotgun Messiah. How has working with those groups affected you as a songwriter?
TIM SKOLD Working with those groups has allowed me to make a living writing and making music, and there’s no doubt that has affected me as a songwriter. But how is hard for me to tell. My creativity is a mystery to me, and I think it is best kept that way. Trying to analyze it might very well jinx it. As much as I enjoy collaborating, working that way will automatically limit the engagement. When I am working with other people you will get pieces of me. But with Skold it’s pure and unadulterated. I have no one to blame but myself.

What’s this song about?
Thematically, it is about the pleasure of suffering and the suffering of pleasure. Those two, sitting in a tree… I like to write for the listeners imagination, more like conjuring a story rather than straight out telling it.

Which part of it did you come up with first?
As soon as I wrote the first few notes to “The Hunger,” I knew it was going to be a ride to a dark place and that I was going to have to fight the darkness the whole way. I wanted to see how far I could bend it in some ways. The song is in itself the inspiration. To me it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, almost passing for a real pop song.

Was this an easy song to record?
Very few things about making music solo makes anything easier. Although I don’t have to worry about scheduling and such and I can just work when I feel like it, it very easily becomes more complicated. One of the problems, and I know it may seem kind of schizo, is that I find myself wearing several different hats during the day. For example, when I record guitar I very much focus on the guitar and everything about the guitar as a guitar player would. But at the same time I am also producing and engineering this recording so I have to make sure everything is working on that end. I think I have a decent handle on escaping mentally and engaging with the different musical roles with complete dedication.

Photo: Jim Louvau

This installment comes from industrial duo ohGr, who feature Skinny Puppy’s vocalist Nivek Ogre. They release unDeveloped (Metropolis), their fourth studio album, on May 10, but they share one song off the album, “Crash,” here. Ogre fills us in below.

REVOLVER What’s “Crash” about?
OHGR “Crash” gives feeling to the continued disconnect between sustainability and that unflinching need to define oneself through possessions, whether devoured, inhabited in, or continually coveted. How many angels, dancing on a pin’s head, popping various economic bubbles while pricking the skin of Michael Jackson, will be needed to allow the prince sleep? This star struggles with insomnia lost the plot. He was living on his own headlined fumes, now bankrupt, in a self-made world now barely livable. A masthead tied to an economic ghost ship created when many of life’s larger mechanisms began withdrawing, wasting away.

“Crash” is about the very idea of death panels. this abstract form of the inhumane mind bending of people, asserting socialized medicine somehow meant death panels. This horrendous portrait of doctors maliciously holding back treatments from any poor uneducated fool that allows for regulation of one of the most dirty of hippocratic industries. The blue healer in wolf’s clothing? Wouldn’t it be a truer statement that not having socialized medicine for the poor is the purest, most poignant, definition of death panels?

Michael Jackson, who I am sure had seen more corruption of wealth than most, seemed the body politic for a slipping point to which symbolized the beginning of the “Crash.” Who then holds the gun?

Which part did you come up with first?
The idea for the song did not spring from any mechanized nod to verse, bridge, chorus. The motivator in any piece of music comes from the roots of “What do you have to say?” and “How are you going to say it?” Everything else, more or less, falls into place.

ohGr tend to write from the point of supporting the vocal. This does not have to be the starting point however and, as in this case, “Crash” seemed to evolve in a linear mode based on the concept inspired by the emergency call and the healthcare debate at the time. And of course the “blanket!”

Was this an easy song to write?
The whole album was fairly easy to write. There are, as with the first three songs on the album, those rare moments of creativity seemingly flowing with an ease that gives one pause to the gratuitous moment. A tapping into the rich conscious source that exists just outside the 4G broadband driven cellular low wave world we exist in. It’s in those moments that, for me, there is a connection to the very act of trapping, as if in amber through recording, a moment in time. It’s very special.

What sort of feedback have you gotten on this song so far?
As I write this it’s still over two weeks to release so it’s a bit premature to ask for the ejaculation ratings. I like it. ohGr likes it. We no longer possess it. unDeveloped is in the eye of the beholder to feed the back on. Enjoy the trip down.

Photo: Dan Santoni

“I don’t remember when the last time I was that nervous,” said Nergal. “I’m still not 100 percent in shape so I didn’t know how my body would react.” Nergal was diagnosed with leukemia this past August, but the vocalist/guitarist underwent a successful bone marrow transplant and is on the road to recovery. Behemoth plan to be back onstage this October.

“What a blast, I have to tell you. I had a serious adrenaline rush, and it was such a boost of energy I can’t even describe,” Nergal said about Friday’s performance. “I’m counting days until we come back with Behemoth full time. Five months to go.” Check out a video of the performance below.

Photo by Maciej Boryna