By Andrew Bansal

The Ocean is a German progressive metal band that began in 2000 and built a reputation on the strength of their creative experimentation on early albums like Fluxion, Aeolian and Precambrian.

Subsequently, they recorded a massive double concept album, released in two parts as Heliocentric and Anthropocentric in 2010.

Now, led by guitarist and mastermind Robin Staps, they are taking their musicianship to a new depth — literally — with Pelagial, a concept album based on a journey to the murkiest depths of the sea.

I recently chatted with Staps about all things Pelagial and more. You can read the first part of the interview here. The second part is below.

Enjoy the conversation and visit the band online at theoceancollective.com.

REVOLVER: You’ve done so much with the “Centric” albums, and you’ve been pretty much all around the world touring. Has that opened up your mind to some extent? With more new experiences, do you become more creative?

It definitely has changed me a lot on a personal level in many regards because it’s a very different life when you’re not at home for months [futureusgallerylaughs]. You get to see so many different places and so many impressions to juggle, that a lot of times you just lose your sense of chronology. You just don’t know what happened first when you think of certain events, and if that person was in the bend at that point, stuff like that. It’s really weird.

But with regards to creativity, I guess I’m always employing the things I experience, and that also refers to places I visit when it comes to writing my music. I’ve never really had a shortage of ideas or creativity. As soon as I have time, a guitar, a place with an open horizon and the ocean not too far away, then I have ideas [futureusgallerylaughs]. It’s always been like that.

But I believe that traveling definitely has an important role. I can’t write at home. It just doesn’t work, and I can’t write on tour, for some strange reason. Well, I guess there’s never really any time to do that. We’re sitting in the van all day, and sound-checking and then playing a show. I have to be in a place that’s a bit away from all the everyday routines at home, and has a wide horizon, as I call it. I need distance, and I need to be able to look into the distance to write music. That’s somehow important to me and I can’t do that when I’m confined to a small room.

I read that you did shows in places like Hong Kong and Siberia. I’ve never heard of any band playing in Hong Kong. I don’t think even Iron Maiden have played there, and they’ve hoisted their flag in almost every place on this planet.

That’s right, and it’s a shame for them because it’s an amazing place to play! We’re going back to Hong Kong this year, actually, and to China as well. We did 12 shows in China, one in Hong Kong and this year we’re also doing Taiwan. All these shows were really, really cool. It was probably the most fun tour we’ve ever done. I was surprised by the level of professionalism there. The venues were really good, the sound systems were good, and the tour was organized was organized in a very efficient way. You don’t tour by van there because the distances are too large, so we took trains and planes.

But everything is like super high-tech. The train stations are six times as big as any German train station. It was a really exciting experience, and we had the best food we’ve ever had on tour. And Siberia was amazing too, surprisingly! We didn’t think anyone would know us there, but because so few bands go there, the people that come out to shows really investigate before they come to the show. They find out about the bands they’re going to see.

There were people singing along, and everyone knew the songs. We got fairly decent turnouts, 300 to 400 people in Siberia. It was the first time we’d ever been there and it was great. People are really passionate and really fucking into it. They don’t get many shows, so whenever a band comes along the whole town comes out and goes crazy. So those were some of the most rewarding experiences on tour. It’s usually not the major cities that are so exciting. It’s the more peripheral places that are at least equally interesting and exciting.

In terms of the new album, guitar-wise, did you have to bring about any change in your style, or was it just a change in concept?

I guess I wouldn’t call them changes, but there are things that have evolved since the Centrics in regard to playing guitar. Some of the riffs on this album are a lot faster and “fiddlish” than on previous albums, and I guess I have evolved as a musician and so has Jonathan, Luc and everyone in the band.

It always shows when you start writing new stuff, the way you approach writing riffs or drum patterns, making use of everything you’ve got that is constantly evolving and changing. So a lot has happened musically, also because we played together for such a long time now. We did so many shows in a short amount of time. We’ve played with this lineup since 2009, so it’s been about four years. In those four years, we’ve played 600 shows or something like that. So we all really got to know each other, personally and on a musical level, and now we’re much more efficient when it comes to writing too.

When I write drum parts now, for example, I program them only very loosely because I know what Luc is going to do with them and I want to leave him that space to really showcase his talent, and to write his own parts that are going to be so much better than anything I could program. So that’s something that has really changed and evolved over the last two to three years on tour. I really know how Luc plays drums and he knows how I perceive certain parts, how I write songs and how I want them to evolve. He works with that. Getting to know each other so intensely has definitely helped us evolve on a musical level and with regards to writing as well.

You wrote this as a single piece. As a guitarist, did that give you more freedom to do your thing, or did it make it more complex?

It certainly did not make it easier, having this concept from the beginning. It is a constraint at first. I’ve tried to approach it from different angles and I’ve tried a few things. I had to discard a few approaches because it just wasn’t working out with them. At first I really wanted it to be a linear progression, music that starts very lightweight and becomes really dark and heavy toward the end, music that starts more upbeat with a faster pace and then goes slower, music that starts higher in tuning and just continuously goes lower. All these things are happening with the album, but it’s not that continuous or linear.

I realized it doesn’t make sense to create a tempo curve that over 50 minutes just goes gradually slower and slower. That would be boring, and what makes music exciting is unforeseeable events. That’s something I realized through the process, and I didn’t want to write a boring avant-garde album. I wanted to make an album that rocks, and then you have to keep in mind that what makes music exciting is surprises. So I had to step away from that super-gradual linear approach. So there are some up and down movements now, which is totally fine because you have in the water column as well. There are vertical currents and stuff like that. So it’s not breaking the concept, and it makes things a lot more interesting. I think the general feeling is still there.

You feel where it’s heading toward, and you feel that it’s going down and getting darker and colder, somehow. That’s what was important to me in the end, but it was a constraint. I couldn’t just write any song depending on the momentary mood I was in. I always had to keep the overall feel of the album in place, and whenever I was writing riffs, I always knew where they would belong on the timeline of the album. So when I had a riff, I was like, “This is going to be a deep sea riff” or “This one is more like a surface, light-weightish kind of riff.” So that’s the routine I acquired fairly quickly and I kind of controlled my own writing that way, checking and knowing while I was writing it if it would fit and where it would fit on the album.

Have you practiced playing the album live yet? Do you think you’ll need to develop your stamina to play it in its entirety?

That’s what we’re working on right now. It feels great to play it. We are rehearsing on stage here at the local venue where we recorded our Heliocentric record release show for our upcoming DVD. We’ve done it back then and how we’re doing the same thing again for one week. It’s coming together. I wish we had more time, of course. We’ve never played this album together before. We met in Berlin a month ago, but we couldn’t rehearse with Luc because he cut up his finger and had to put it back together with like seven stitches, so he couldn’t play for two and a half weeks.

So we were all playing with drums from the tape machine or the CD. This is actually the first time we’re playing everything together live. You always realize there are certain things that work out great and other things don’t. You have to adopt volumes of sounds and samples to make it fit the live environment and adopt frequencies. It’s a ton of work. We’ve been rehearsing from 10 in the morning till 10 or 11 at night these days. But we’re going on tour Friday, and by that time everything needs to fit. I’m fairly confident that we’ll be all right for the first show.

Given the atmosphere and feel of the album, do you agree it would be perfect for a movie soundtrack?

Well, it is a soundtrack to a movie, because we are releasing it with a movie. There’s a DVD coming out with the special-edition box set of the album that has a 53-minute movie, which is basically like a massive video clip. There is a certain course of action and events going through the movie. The movie was written after the music, so it’s kind of like the opposite concept. It’s not that we wrote the music to be the soundtrack of a movie, but we actually made a movie that would be the movie to the album, so to speak.

But yeah, it is very much working out like that. I’m very fond of the results Craig Murray has created. It has really turned out amazing, I think, and to get the full experience of the album you should really watch the film and listen to the Dolby Surround mix of it. That’s what’s on the special DVD that’s coming in those limited box sets, and it’s an entirely new experience of this audio-visual kind of project that is this album.

I’m glad you mentioned that. It makes the special-edition box set even more “special.”

Yeah, I think it’s definitely worth it because so much work went into that too. Craig has been cutting and editing that movie for almost a year, and for the last three months he lived in a sleeping bag in a studio just so that he could finish it. It’s just a crazy project. We will show it live, too. We will have video projections that will be screening the movie while we play the album. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to do that in the US; hopefully we can. But here in Europe it’s an integral part of our live show.

That’s what I was about to ask for my final question. I’m sure you’ll want your live show to do justice to the album, so what kind of visuals you’re preparing? But I guess you’ve already done that!

Yes, of course. That’s the movie, and that’s exactly what we’re showing live in one piece. The contents of it is lots of oceanic stuff, visualizing all the separate depth zones, lots of stuff I shot myself in Australia, as I’m a SCUBA diver, and there’s some footage we took from old movies and stuff like that. And there’s also a protagonist, a girl who’s going through stage of emotion through the movie, which makes reference to the lyrics because, lyrically, the album is a psychological journey from the surface to the bottom of the human mind, and a journey from the surface to the bottom of the sea. In the movie, that is visualized by the girl who’s going through all different stages of joy, pain, terror and fear, while progressing toward the depths of her own psyche. So that’s what you’re going to get to see in the movie in a very artistic and abstract way. I’m super-excited about getting that out.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

Based out of Vancouver, Canada, Anciients play a blend of soothing acoustic rock melodies and crushing heavy metal.

The band released their debut album, Heart Of Oak, April 16 via Season Of Mist Records and hit the road on the Death To All tour.

I recently caught up with Anciients guitarists Kenneth Cook and Chris Dyck to discuss the making of the debut album, their live shows, future plans, the Death To All tour, gear setup and more. Read the conversation below and check out the band online at their official website and Facebook page.

REVOLVER: Judging from the songs on your debut album, your music seems to be an eclectic mix of musical styles. Do you let your creativity flow naturally on these songs, or is it more of a thought-out and planned thing?

KENNETH: I rarely plan stuff out when writing. It’s mostly all written on the couch at home or in my dungeon downstairs. Songs come from playing guitar or hearing a riff in my head and trying to recreate on the guitar. Listening to lots of different kinds of music plays a big part in writing for this band. I listen to everything from classical and jazz to death metal and everything in between. It’s basically just a matter of, if a part gets me stoked or if I can still remember it the next time I pick up the guitar.

Most songs aren’t all written at once, and certain parts aren’t written with intention of mixing it with another, they just somehow manage to fit or get forced to fit with another. With that being said, arrangements are another story. Once all of the parts are written, the band goes over them with a fine tooth comb and decides how to piece it all together and turn it in to a song, which is probably the hardest process of it all. It definitely takes longer than writing and is definitely a thought out process.

CHRIS: We listen to a lot of different music. This record was the sound of our collective mind at the time. There was no set idea for this band’s sound. The only thought out thing was that there is essentially no limitation. I say essentially because we have some boundaries, of course, and we really wanted to create something heavy as all fuck, but something with melodic clarity and decent songwriting as well, without ripping anyone off or rehashing the same old metal cliches, etc.

Mind you, any Craft, Neurosis, Tool, Pink Floyd sections are fully intentional [futureusgallerylaughs]. But, yeah all kidding aside, we have pretty trippy influences from all over the map, from Steely Dan to Gorgoroth. A lot of bands say this and a lot of bands want to say this, but we do what we want musically and could give a flying dump if it’s not hip or evil enough or whatever. We love creating, and with Kenny as the main riff lord, we have no shortage of material. We’re already working on the next one.

With this mix of styles, does it become hard to build a fan-base?

CHRIS: Doesn’t seem to have been an issue for us so far, locally, anyways. Perhaps once we get our stuff out to a wider audience. I think with us, either you will get it or you won’t. I don’t think there will be a ton of middle ground. I hope people can deal with some clean vocals with the black metal vocals and it’s not like metalcore clean singing or power metal vocals or anything really out of left field. Kenny’s clean vocals and even my own sound retro, if anything, in my opinion.

KENNETH: I could see that being a possibility, but I also think having lots of different styles within the music could attract a lot wider of an audience. I like to think we have a little something in there for everyone, and it could be a good way to broaden the musical spectrum of the average listener, hearing different styles being blended in with music they are already familiar with. At least we hope that’s what happens [futureusgallerylaughs].

You’ve toured with bands like High On Fire, Goatwhore, Boris and 3 Inches Of Blood. How did people react when they saw your performance and heard your music for the first time?

CHRIS: To be 100 percent honest, we haven’t had a negative reaction at any shows, and all fan feedback has been amazing, really. We have had a ton of live reviews and music reviews, and not a bad one yet. I’m sure it’s coming, though [futureusgallerylaughs]. At the shows we haven’t had it like where people walk away or don’t look interested. No one has come up to us after a show and told us we suck … yet! [futureusgallerylaughs]

KENNETH: The response we have received in the last two years has been great and better than we could have ever expected. We haven’t been booed off of the stage or hit in the face with beer bottles or flying objects as of now so that’s a bonus, but all in all I think that people are digging the material and enjoying the experience of seeing us play.

Do you think the positive side to being so eclectic is that you can fit on pretty much any touring lineup and play with all kinds of bands?

CHRIS: Yes, that’s the game plan. It’s been like that since we started playing shows, and we dig it.

KENNETH: It is definitely a positive to some degree. I could see us playing with a lot of different bands, but I am very curious to see how well we will sit with the strictly death metal crowds because of our clean singing and clean guitar parts, and lots of melody. Only time will tell, I guess.

You released a two-song EP called Snakebeard in 2011. How does that EP compare with the material on this album?

CHRIS: Those two songs are as good as anything on the record. We had less time to record them and were still figuring out our sound, but both are tough and fun to play. I think they were killer considering how early they came into play in the band’s development. Plus we have built everything so far on those two songs, the live shows and the hype around the upcoming record. It seem like people dig them, because the EP sold out, I think, so that’s pretty sweet.

KENNETH: It is very similar in a lot of ways with Heart of Oak, the way the songs were written and arranged was the exact same process of just playing what sounds good to us, and playing what gets us stoked. How it differs is mainly in the recording process. With the new record, we had a lot more time to experiment with different sounds. With the Snakebeard EP, we kind of just set up our gear and had at her. But with the new record, we took a good amount of time setting up and getting the best possible sounds with what we had or could borrow. The material is pretty much the same, but maybe a bit more of a rock vibe going on in the new record.

When you play live, how much do you focus on accuracy and how much of it is spontaneous?

CHRIS: For me, it’s a bit of both. There is no improvising, if that’s what you’re asking. In terms of being onstage, I tend to rock out a tad more than Kenny, but my parts are way easier. Down picks all day long, simple rhythm playing, so I can spazz out a bit. But in terms of playing, I’m pretty spot on, say more than 90 percent of the time. Accuracy and focus is crucial for me. But like I said, easier parts equals more stage spazzing. I have no pedals, either, so I’m free to fuck around.

KENNETH: We try to play the tunes live as close as possible to the record. We aren’t much of a jam band, although that would be awesome to incorporate. The only part of the set that would be spontaneous would be the guitar solos in some of the songs. I like to play them a little different from time to time. I find that soloing is a lot more fun when you’re not trying to precisely nail exact notes and just going with the flow.

There are acoustic guitar segments in your songs, as well as the regular heavy electric guitar parts. How much of a challenge is it to fit the two elements together so that they make sense?

CHRIS: We try to be able to replicate as best as possible the record in a live setting. Obviously, none of my parts are acoustic, and any of my clean parts on the record are neck pickup tone rolled back a bit on the SG, same as live. I just use the guitar knobs/pickups to create my three sounds that I need in all the songs. Kenny has cool pedals and an amp with several channels so he’s golden, he can replicate the acoustic parts quite well live, and most of the acoustic sections have electric cleans over or with them so we just drop the acoustic sound live. It sounds fine.

KENNETH: It’s never really been a challenge combining the two elements. It’s just a matter of if it works or not. We will sometimes have parts that get rewritten or used in other places, but it’s really just about the flow of the song and whether it sounds smooth on the transitions. I believe you can put different styles of any kinds of music together, as long as you setup the transitions properly and not just bluntly changing from one to the other. But that could also be my love of prog rock speaking [futureusgallerylaughs].

Do you compose the acoustic parts on acoustic guitar, or do you just play your electric guitar unplugged?

KENNETH: I usually always write the cleaner stuff at home on a acoustic. I just love the sound and resonance it has, and it puts me in the mood to write nicer sounding tunes.

What’s your current gear setup?

CHRIS: I have two Gibson SGs, a Soldano Avenger head (the best guitar head ever, period), and we use Olde Crow cabinets. I have a 4×12 and a 2×12 on top. For this coming tour, though, I’m using my Olde Crow 4×2 and a straight front 4×12. Just for a bit bigger of a sound, I like the Olde Crow Marshall blend. I use a Boss tuner. That’s it, no effects, nothing.

KENNETH: I use a Les Paul Standard (lefty). It’s a 2008, I believe, and an SG for backup. I run it through a Marshall JVM 410H and Olde Crow cabinets, which rule, by the way, loaded with Vintage 30s. For pedals I just use a Boss tuner, Boss chorus and a space echo pedal, fairly straightforward. My acoustic I used for the record is a $500 Simon & Patrick, and I just rented a cheap nylon string guitar for “One Foot In The Light.”

Where did you record this album, and were you using any of the studio’s additional equipment during the recording process?

CHRIS: At the studio in Vancouver, we used this crazy space echo a lot, Hammond organ, and I used a trippy old Telecaster for a clean section somewhere on there. We also used a couple of different guitar heads, but we brought those in.

KENNETH: We recorded at a studio in Burnaby, British Columbia, called The Hive Creative Lab. We recorded with our now dear friend Jesse Gander, who is a wizard behind the boards, to say the least, and has recorded numerous amounts of kickass records. The Hive has a great room for tracking drums and the all around vibe of the place is awesome! Unfortunately, it will no longer be an option because it’s shutting down soon, which is a huge bummer.

We mainly used our own gear on the recording of this record, except I think I used a Madison guitar head [futureusgalleryI'm not sure what model it was] but I know it used to be owned by my buddy Shane Clark from 3 Inches Of Blood. We did get to use some cool old effects, though, that Jesse had hanging around. We used an Echoplex that was super old and rad, and also we used his Space Echo on a lot of parts.

Some of these songs are pretty long, which reduces the number of songs in your set list if you play the longer ones live. Do you consider this at all while composing such songs, or are you comfortable with playing that kind of a set?

CHRIS: Nope, don’t care. The song is over when it’s over. We can do a lot with 30 to 35 minutes, so it’s cool.

KENNETH: It’s not really something we think about when writing. The songs kind of just write themselves and they are as long as they need to be. We don’t mind playing fewer songs. I think the tunes have enough going on in them to keep people interested, and we aren’t just hitting an E chord for 10 minutes [futureusgallerynot that there is anything wrong with that], but I like to think of the tunes as songs within songs. We just pick the ones we think people will like the best and the tunes we have the most fun playing.

You’ve been confirmed for this year’s Death To All tour. How does it feel to be on that tour?

CHRIS: It’s fucking insane. I’m a 35-year-old classic death metal nutcase. The Human album is my favorite, easily, and I get to see them play it every night. To even be associated with Death is mental. To be represented by Eric Greif is mental. Everything that is happening right now is blowing my little metal fanboy brain.

KENNETH: It feels amazing to get this opportunity! We could not be more stoked as a band right now. Death is a super-influential and amazing band, and it’s an honor to be invited along for the ride with them. The tour coincides with the release of our new record, so it’s just perfect timing for us. We owe Eric Grief the world for this. Eric, if you’re reading this, thank you!

What other shows do you have planned?

CHRIS: Scion Rock Fest! Check it out, so many rad bands, like the fucking Melvins! Plus we have another huge tour to announce soon, but we can’t spill the beans. After we finish the death tour we are home for 10 days then out again for three weeks on this next one. Stoked! Our record release show is May 11 in Vancouver.

KENNETH: We are doing an official record release show for Heart of Oak May 11 at The Astoria in Vancouver. Then we are heading back out for a cross-Canada tour with a very awesome band who we can’t announce yet. But here are some shows we are doing on the way to that:

5/15 Billings, MT @ Railyard
5/17 Des Moines, IA @ House Of Bricks
5/18 Indianapolis, IN @ Indy’s Jukebox w/ Glorior Belli, Wolvhammer
5/20 Pittsburgh, PA @ Belvedere’s w/ Glorior Belli, Wolvhammer

Vancouver seems to produce some great talent in heavy music, including 3 Inches Of Blood, Bison BC, Strapping Young Lad and others. How good are the local shows up there?

CHRIS: I book a ton of shows, and actually that’s my day job in Vancouver. So the scene fucking wails. Everyone is killer. So many amazing bands from all genres. I can’t say enough good things about Vancouver right now. People should fucking pay attention! [futureusgallerylaughs].

KENNETH: The scene around Vancouver is unbelievably amazing right now. With so many good shows happening pretty much every weekend, I definitely feel privileged to be from these parts at this moment in time. Aside from the names you already mentioned, here’s a list of bands you need to check out from Vancouver: Baptists, Tobeatic, Haggatha, Galgamex, Tempest, Rotting Hills, Burning Ghats, Cooked and Eaten, Wiser Fool, Weirding and lots more.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

Based out of Houston, Texas, occult rock band Venomous Maximus started out in 2010 and self-released their debut album, Beg Upon The Light, on their own label, Occulture Records, late last year.

The album is set to get a bigger release via Napalm Records this summer.

I recently spoke with guitarist/vocalist Gregg Higgins and guitarist Christian Larson about their recent tour with Down, the debut album, lyrical themes, guitar setups, Texas influences and more. Check out the interview below, and visit the band’s Facebook page.

REVOLVER: You guys recently did a tour with Down. What was that like?

GREGG: It was a pretty surreal experience for all of us, because we’re basically all around 30 years of age, and being from Texas, we’re just raised on Pantera, you know. It’s like in the water that we drink. So to actually get a chance to go on tour with those guys was great, and plus we’ve always grown up listening to their other bands. Even though it’s a different state, we kind of have a special relationship with those New Orleans bands. It’s the same kind of vibe.

You self-released your debut album, Beg Upon The Light. Are you satisfied with how it has been received?

CHRISTIAN: We’ve been getting a lot of good responses on it. As far as how it turned out, it’s probably the best record any of us has ever put out and put this much time into working on it, and just putting everything we had into it. It’s a big step-up from the last EP we did. We put this out on Occulture Records, which is our own label, and now it’s been confirmed that Napalm Records will be releasing it this summer.

GREGG: The reason the album was kind of, so “over the top,” you could say, and so full of stuff, is because those are the things I’ve always wanted to put into making a record. Just growing up being a teenager, you don’t have the money or the time to actually do such a thing. You just have the idea. But this record was when it all finally came together and hit. We always try to figure out a way to make all of our products as artistic creations. I also do tattoos, drawing and print.

I feel the atmosphere is created with the vocals and the theme is done with the lyrics. In terms of the guitar, do you also have to keep a dark vibe in that sense, or is it totally separate from the thematic part of the music?

GREGG: All the lyrical themes come in my head, before any of the guitar playing is done. A lot of the times it won’t even start with any kind of sound, it will start with a title or a theme. And then I sing a song on that theme. It’s almost like a little short story. So once the lyrics are made up, I just naturally hear the music behind me. But yeah, when it comes time to practice and play the song, it’s already done.

And for the vibe, does the guitar tone become as important as the songwriting?

GREGG: Absolutely. It’s not even so much about the actual tone of an electric guitar, it’s about where you’re playing it. A lot of our songs are able to hold up on the acoustic. If I can play our songs on acoustic and they still sound dark and heavy, then that’s good rock, you know. It doesn’t need the distortion. So the distortion, amps and all that is just something to amplify. That’s all it is.

Do you compose on the acoustic?

GREGG: A lot of the time, when I play my guitars at home they are not plugged in. And when I actually plug them in, I play them in clean tone. A lot of it is really just me humming and singing these songs in my head, weeks before I pick up the guitar. I mimic the guitar sound with my voice.

You said you use the amps simply to amplify. Do you just plug in the guitars to amp, or are there effects involved?

GREGG: Christian is the one who uses all the effects. Mine is pretty much straight to the amp. I plug in a tuner and that’s about it. But we’re Gibson and Marshall all the way.

CHRISTIAN: Yeah, everything we do is with Gibson and Marshall. For the effects, I kind of mess around with a little bit of flange, horizontal stuff and some wah.

GREGG: We always make sure not to go overboard on that stuff, because you want to keep it having the vintage sound. You have to realize what effects and possibilities existed in 1974. You don’t really want to go over that because you don’t want the machines to take over the people. You have to keep that in check.

There are a lot of dual lead guitar parts on the album. While writing or recording, how do you work with each other on that?

CHRISTIAN: Once we come up with a lead, we kind of just sit around the house and jam on the couch. It takes a while to figure out where we want to go with it. It starts with both of us playing the same thing, one of us then deviates off, and then go back to it to see what it sounds like. We finally get it to that spot when you know that it “hits” perfectly.

GREGG: It’s really cool that you mentioned it because we were actually playing guitar last night and we were working on all the new material. One thing we were working on was, our guitars always doing something different on the new stuff. We want that everybody does something different but it all goes together. That’s something we’re looking for.

In terms of the theme, how do you actually come up with it? Do you read a lot, watch movies or stuff like that?

GREGG: It comes from not being directly influenced by rock and roll bands and from getting influenced and being inspired by other things. One special thing for me is movies. They are a very big thing, specially with their soundtracks. This lady named Lisa Gerrard has done things for all kinds of movies. We like the epic movies because we like their soundtracks. At times we get jealous, and we’re like, “How come they get to do that? We’re musicians too!”

There are a lot of occult rock bands. Why is it all of a sudden we have so many bands playing this style? Is it a case of too many bands?

GREGG: One thing is (and I’m not going to get too deep into it), dealing with 2012 and getting past it, not just musicians but everyone is getting completely spiritually free. It doesn’t matter if it’s yoga or meditation or anything else, everybody is finding another way. For all us people growing up with punk rock and being into comic books and tattooing, the most natural thing is to go towards the dark. It’s stuff we’ve always grown up with. But of course it’s a fad, and it’s a new trend for everybody to be doing it, and that’s OK. The only difference is, when people actually live it, you can tell that in their music. There’s a truth that comes out in it. I’ve been into this way before this band. But yeah, it’s a new trend and it will go away, but that’s who I am.

You guys are based in Houston. There are bands from Texas playing a similar style, even if it’s not the same theme, like The Sword and Ancient VVisdom. You mentioned Pantera, but what other music were you able to absorb from the shows you went to?

GREGG: There’s old ZZ Top. That’s a big thing. We’ve really been influenced by people like Rocky Erickson, too. There’s this thing in Texas, it’s so damn big that you can travel around all the cities and it feels like you’re on the road. You don’t even have to leave Texas, you know. So that tends to be the thing with all of us. You go to Austin for a week, come back home and go to San Antonio for a week. You drive around and get a sense of seeing the small little world that is Texas. People like really Rocky Erickson capture that way of living that you really won’t understand unless you live in Texas.

I read about some kind of award you got for the best metal band in Houston. What was that all about, and does that stuff mean anything to you?

CHRISTIAN: It’s an award from the Houston Press. Honestly, it’s cool, but in the big scheme of things it doesn’t change anything that much.

GREGG: But it is good to be supported by your hometown. That’s one thing that we have to give to Houston, specially Montrose, which is the neighborhood we live in. We’ve always had a lot of positive support.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

Maryland rockers Clutch released their long-awaited 10th studio album, Earth Rocker, on March 19.

The album, the followup to 2009′s Strange Cousins From The West, was produced by Machine, who worked with the band on their 2004 offering, Blast Tyrant.

I recently spoke to Clutch guitarist Tim Sult about the making of Earth Rocker, songwriting, his guitar tone and more. Read the full interview below (and check out an Earth Rocker tune in the process). Visit Clutch at their official website and Facebook page.

REVOLVER: It’s been four years since the last Clutch album, which represents the longest time between Clutch releases. Was there any special reason for the long break?

You know what, I don’t think we even realized it’s been so long between albums until we started doing interviews for this album. At least I didn’t, anyway. I guess between the time of Strange Cousins and Earth Rocker, we were touring a lot, and we also worked up a bunch of acoustic stuff as well. We went into the studio and recorded a few acoustic songs for the re-release of Blast Tyrant. So we were doing that as well, and I guess time just got away from us. We didn’t realize it has been this long.

Clutch often has been associated with various rock sub-genres, but Earth Rocker is more of a straight-up hard rock and roll album. Would you agree that’s a fitting description?

Yeah, that’s a good description. The album definitely showcases the hard rock side of Clutch, for sure. The focus is definitely always on writing good songs, but we took more of a hard rock approach this time. We’re pretty happy with the result.

It’s also a great-sounding album in terms of the production and mix. Do you feel there’s a naturally successful pairing of Machine [futureusgalleryproducer] with your heavier rock?

Yes, I think Machine’s production absolutely helps out that style of songwriting. That’s one of the reasons we decided to use him for this album; with him, the heavier, faster material really stands out, production-wise.

I read somewhere that the aim was to capture the live energy of the band onto the album. Do you think you’ve achieved that?

Yes, definitely. It captures the live energy of the band better than possibly any of our studio albums.

It’s also the kind of album where almost all the songs lend themselves to inclusion in your live sets. It has a natural flow to it, almost like a Clutch set list rather than a studio album.

I agree with you totally. Out of all the Clutch albums, this will be the easiest one to play live, and the most enjoyable. We’ll be adding a lot of the new songs to the set lists for sure, but we do switch up the set list every night so there could be some shows where you get no new material whatsoever, or something close to that. We switch it up so much that you never know what we’re going to play. Knowing us, we’ll just get sick of all the Earth Rocker songs within six months and start playing new songs, you never know [futureusgallerylaughs].

How would you say your guitar tone has changed — or stayed the same — over the course of 10 Clutch albums?

My guitar tone is definitely a work in progress. This time, I was going for something a little more distorted and heavier than the tone on the last few albums, and I think I managed to accomplish that, at least in maybe some small way.

In terms of songwriting, is it more spontaneous and organic or does it take a long time to create?

For the writing process of Clutch, we just usually get in a room together and start playing, really. Sometimes one guy will have the riff or we’ll just start jamming and once we settle on something, we’ll keep it. At this point, we can all get in a room and start jamming, and we start writing something right there. For the past few albums, it’s definitely been a very collaborative process with all four of us working together.

Here’s a very specific gear question. Damian Fanelli, an online editor at Guitar World and Revolver, told me he bought a Gibson Custom Shop 1960 Les Paul in Falls Church, Virginia — and you were its previous owner. Why did you get rid of that guitar?

Sometimes I just freak out and get sick of guitars and sell them just to buy another one. Those Les Pauls are so expensive. I’d love to keep them all around, but if I want to buy one, I pretty much have to sell one before doing that. He must have bought it at Action Music in Virginia. That’s the one I played on the Bakerton Group’s El Rojo album. Oh, you know what? Now I remember why I sold it. I used that guitar on the Live at The 9:30 Club DVD, and at the time I thought it sounded way too clean. I wanted to go for a heavier sound.

Damian used that guitar on stage with Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz of the Monkees earlier this month. So it went from Clutch to the Monkees in just over a year!

Interesting! The Monkees was probably the second concert I ever went to when I was a kid [futureusgallerylaughs]. I’m glad it went to a good owner, because that’s a pretty good guitar, and sometimes I regret selling that one.

]

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

Canadian theatrical hard rockers Incura released their self-titled debut album February 26 via Coalition Music and Warner Music Canada.

As is evident from the lyric video of the song “Turning Blue” and the music video for “Who Your Are,” the band brings a refreshing touch of theatricality, which isn’t common among rock bands.

I recently caught up with guitarist Royce Whittaker to discuss the debut album and more. Read the conversation below, and check out the band on their official website.

REVOLVER: Your self-titled debut album just came out. How is the band feeling at this point?

For the other guys in the band, it’s been a lot longer of a dream than for me. I just joined the band in September 2012, actually. So what happened there was, I had to fill in for a trip the band was making to Germany, so I had two days to hear the record. Then we went to play for a bunch of publicists, management companies and things like that. So for the band, it’s been a huge journey of going down, working on the record and just being at it for months and months until it’s absolutely perfect. So it’s a big rush and a big feeling to finally have it done and ready.

You said you had a very short time to listen to the album and rehearse. What was that like? Was it a challenge or did you find it easy and natural?

It was a challenge. It’s all pretty theatrical and it’s got to be very animated in a way, so it was a big challenge for me to just learn the record completely by ear, just off of the recordings. There are tons of really intricate parts, and I had the sit down with the keyboard player quite a bit to just work over harmonized leads and things like that. It was a great experience for me, for sure.

It’s an epic album with a mix of styles. Where does that combination come from? How does it work?

Everyone in the band comes from a very different background. The singer, Kyle, is very into theater, and he’s a graduated theater student, basically, so that’s where a lot of the operatic stuff comes from, the operatic vocal styles and all of the classical vibes. The keyboard player, Jim, has got a very progressive background with bands like Queen, Rush, Genesis and stuff like that. And then for me, I’m 21 so I’m a bit of a younger cat. I’ve always been into things like Iron Maiden, which I grew up with. So there are lots of blends like that, the really hard theatrical aspect of a metal show and a metal production, combined with vocals that are accessible to everybody and making it just as epic as possible but still listenable.

With these different styles put together, is it harder to develop a fan base? People can be a bit narrow-minded with what they want to listen to.

Yeah, for sure! Even in the short time I’ve been in the band, I’ve already found out it can be tough to put this band on certain bills. We’re almost too soft for the extreme metal crowd, and we’re too heavy for the more laid-back rock crowd. We definitely have to find our niche a little bit, but it’s certainly very well received. Everyone who’s there to experience it really takes something away from it. It’s been really cool for me, to find people being so open-minded to it.

When you’re playing live, does it become difficult to make the guitar stand out among all the epic elements?

I’m the only guitar player, and Jim has all these harmonies and the synth background that really help to fill out the sound, but I need to make sure my guitar sound is just as big as possible, just making sure all the leads stick out and everything. We’re playing together and all working cohesively, but it’s a total challenge to still put on the theatrical rock show while making it look like we’re having a good time and nailing all these parts.

What’s your gear setup for the stage and studio?

I have this rig, which is bigger than what anybody wants it to be [futureusgallerylaughs], but basically I have the Mesa Boogie Triaxis; that’s my pre-amp sound. So I can use that and dial in tons of different tones and use various settings for each song, so I’m not just using the same patch all the time. I use that with a Mesa 4X12, and I run a GCX ground control system with a GCG major DBX compressor, just to have everything switching all the time. I’m doing a lot of the singing as well, so I just prefer to have the one button switching so that everything is just seamless, and I’m not tap dancing when I’m on stage.

The shows that you’ve played with the band so far — what kind of shows were they?

The first show I did with them was in Hamburg, Germany, for the Reeperbahn festival. It was kind of funny because I flew ahead of the band and they got stuck in Amsterdam overnight, so I was kind of wandering around Hamburg for a night, but it was good to get a feel of things. And then the only show we played was at 2 p.m. at the Canadian National House for German publicists and management companies. There were about 40 people there. It wasn’t open to the public or anything.

With our band, we show up in war paint and try to make it very theatrical, so we were getting a few funny looks when we were walking around, for sure. But the performance itself was just such a great experience. I’ve always really enjoyed playing this kind of music even though I’ve never been in this kind of band before, so getting on stage for the first time and playing the stuff was an amazing experience.

Before joining this band, what were you doing in terms of music?

I’ve playing in touring bands since I was 16. I live in Vancouver, British Columbia, and I have a studio here called Spinnaker Sound. So since I graduated high school, I’ve been on the road with different bands, doing lots of touring. I’ve done a record with another band, but up until this point it’s been basically just the steps I could take to make myself a better player and hopefully get to a different level one day. It’s been great for me to play tons of different genres, like I’ve played reggae for a while, did the pop thing and played in a super-heavy band. So I’ve really managed to get my playing to a very intricate, very disciplined style and being able to play that way has been good for me, and a great learning experience.

Before you joined the band, Incura opened for a few well-known bands like Apocalyptica. In your opinion, which bands would Incura ideally fit with in terms of the musical style?

It’s tough to say! There are lots of different options. At this point, we can see us playing with a lot of European metal bands like Nightwish. I think that would be a really good fit. But honestly, we’re prepared and ready to play to any market, really. It’s not hard for us to walk into a situation that we’re not really comfortable with and try to still be ourselves. We’re waiting to see what happens. We just want to get out there and play with anybody and everybody we can. We definitely won’t say no to anyone [futureusgallerylaughs].

What are Incura’s plans for the rest of the year?

We’re going to Canadian Music Week at the end of March, and then right now we’re just working on solidifying a bunch of tours for the rest of the year. We’re hopefully going to be out to Europe again before the year is over, and we’re setting up to do shows in the US as well. So it’s all kind of preliminary and filling in the blanks right now. But we’re definitely going to be out on the road for most of the year, for sure.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

New Haven, Conecticut-based hardcore-punk-influenced metal band Hatebreed released The Divinity of Purpose January 29 via Razor & Tie.

The band, which is known for its high-energy shows, truly delivered the goods on their new disc, successfully capturing the high-octane feel with which they’ve become synonymous.

They’ve recently completed a US headline tour with Shadows Fall, Dying Fetus and The Contortionist. During that tour, I chatted with guitarist Frank Novinec about the new album, live performances, his musical background and his love of Gibson Les Pauls.

You can read our conversation below and check out the band online at their official website, hatebreed.com.

REVOLVER: Right now you’re on a US tour. From what I’ve been hearing, the shows have been amazing. What has it been like for you?

We’ve been doing small shows in secondary markets, because at the end of last year we supported Lamb Of God in major markets and before that we also celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Perseverance record as well, so we thought why not go and play in some smaller cities and promote this record that came out on January 29 over here. It’s been fun! We’ve toured with Shadows Fall before, so we’ve had a good time with those guys, and Dying Fetus and The Contortionist have been out with us as well, so it’s been a good time.

I was looking at all your set lists and was surprised to see only two songs from the new album. Why is that?

We’re doing two or three songs every night, “Honor Never Dies,” “Put It To The Torch” and “Indivisible.” We have a lot of songs to play throughout the set, and a lot of staples in the set that we have to play. We have so many records out now and so much material, we have to balance it out by playing songs from every Hatebreed record. So that’s the reason for that.

The new record hasn’t been out for long, so we’re not going to bore everybody who doesn’t know it or just got it and aren’t familiar with the songs by playing half of the new record’s worth of material. When you go to see a band, you mostly don’t want to hear them play the entire new album. You want to hear the classics as well. So three new songs, I think, is plenty for our set.

I went to see Iron Maiden recently and they opened the set with five new songs. No one knew what they were doing, and it was a bummer. So we don’t want to kill the crowd like that. They want to hear us play songs like “Destroy Everything,” “To The Threshold,” “Live For This,” “This Is Now” and “In Ashes They Shall Reap.” So we have to play those and along with that we mix songs from other albums that we normally don’t play. As for the new record, we’ve included the three singles. We’ve already put out a video for “Put It To The Torch”; we’re making a video for “Honor Never Dies,” which will be out soon, and one for “Indivisible” as well. I think that’s enough, at this point, anyway.

In terms of the new album, what was the process like for you, especially guitar-wise?

We went back to the roots on this album. There’s definitely more meat and potatoes, and the songwriting comes from the root of Jamey and Chris, who’ve been writing the songs from day one. So they came up with the songs and then we went into the studio and changed a few things around if they needed to be. The one good thing we had about this record was, while we worked on it, a lot of times we were able to go back and review things. I don’t think we were blessed with that on the last record. On this record, we were able to have the time to go back over and over and make the record exactly how we wanted to.

Now that we’re on the road, there’s not going to be any more reflecting back along the lines of, “We could have changed this and changed that.” I think it’s perfectly how we wanted it. One thing I can say I’m proud of, which you said earlier, is that all the songs are strong from beginning to end. We call it “all killer, no filler.” That’s really what it is. It’s a strong record, and we’re happy with the response we’ve gotten. It’s been overwhelming, and it’s good for us to have a record out after three years now, to be able to play live and have new material for everybody.

You mentioned you’ve been playing “Indivisible,” my favorite song on the album. It has the typical old-school D-beat, and it’s a lot different from the rest of the album. Thoughts?

“Indivisible” is one of my favorite songs too, and D-beat is my favorite kind of music, the second wave of English punk, all the bands from 1982 and all that. So I’m glad we’ve been able to incorporate that song into the record and still have a song like “Dead Man Breathing,” which sounds like Slayer, to mix that with “Indivisible,” which sounds more like The Exploited to me, and somehow make it all work. We’re able to do that with the sound of Hatebreed, with the guitar tones. We try to make Hatebreed a universal band that’s appreciated by people that like punk rock, for people that like hardcore, metal or rock. We’re very lucky we have such a universal audience. We’re kind of like the Motorhead of our genre.

Your shows are always about the energy and the movement. Do you also like to get involved and move around on stage?

I’m moving around quite a bit on stage. Besides Jamey, I’m moving around the most. I just like to do whatever I can to put on a show. I’m a performer and I enjoy the energy in a show more than being a musician. Wayne is more of a musician and more of a player than I am. So I’m out there getting the crowd wound up, and Jamey and I have a good time just giving something visual to see, and making sure all the audience has a great time at our shows. They beat the crap out of each other, but as long as everybody leaves with a smile on their faces and has a good time, we’re happy. This is the best part of the day for us, to be able to play. The rest of the day is terrible. We just have that hour on stage and we want to give the most to the fans so they remember our show for a long time, at least till the next time we see them.

You said you’ve always been a fan of D-beat and the second wave of British punk. Is that what you grew up on?

No, I grew up in the ’70s, and I got introduced to music at an early age. My parents tell me that when I was a baby, I used to stand holding on to my dad’s tower speaker and play “Smoke On the Water” on it. I had a record collection when I was 5 or 6, which was Kiss records and things like that. Kiss is still one of my favorite bands. We ended up being direct support for them at the Graspop Festival in Belgium. I’ve met them a bunch of times and I’ve seen them 30 to 40 times. I’m a fan of all of it.

I’m an encyclopedia when it comes to music. I love the ’70s prog bands, I love the ’60s Motown music and Philadelphia soul music. I love the ’80s too, the one-hit-wonder bands. There are people in my band that love R&B. If you took all of our iPods, you’ll find every type of music that ever existed. If we go on a music trivia show, I think Hatebreed will pretty much crush any band out there.

So we’re listening to everything, but as you get older you do that anyway. You open your mind more. When you’re younger, you can be a little close-minded about these things. That speaks a lot about Hatebreed. We want everybody to open up their minds. Not everybody is going to like our band, but if you could just come and have a good time and open up your mind, you’ll realize it’s all aggressive music at the end of the day, and you don’t need to categorize or make these genres to divide the music into small parts. The music scene is dying, so it’s about time we realized it’s all aggressive music. The underground scene was thriving when we were going to shows in the ’80s and early ’90s because there were thrash bands, punk bands and hardcore bands playing shows together. So we try to do that too. We’ve toured with Five Finger Death Punch and now we’re out with Dying Fetus.

You joined the band in ’06, and Hatebreed put out a covers album in ’09 called For The Lions. I guess that must have helped you discover your band mates’ influences and backgrounds, true?

I’ve been friends with them since they pretty much started the band, so I’ve known them and their tastes. I saw Jamey and Sean almost every day during the early 2000s till the time I joined. I always knew about their influences, but the beautiful thing about the covers album is that we were able to showcase the talents of the members in this band without having to incorporate it into our own music [futureusgallerylaughs]. When you listen to the soloing on the Slayer cover, the drumming on that record is over the top. I think it surprised a lot of people who think we’re just a hardcore band and we can’t play, and things like that.

So that was cool to show what we’re capable of, and obviously paying respects and tributes to the bands that paved the way for us, whether it’s a big band like Slayer or a small band like Negative Approach. Also, it was aimed to open the ears of our fans to some of those bands that they wouldn’t have been familiar with, like Negative Approach, Sub Zero, Obituary and obviously Metallica, Slayer and Sepultura. We just wanted people to check out the bands we covered and check out our roots.

It was for fun, really, but it was tough to decide what songs to choose. Every member had his own choices, and we still always joke on the tour bus or backstage about which songs we should cover. Our list is endless. We haven’t even done Motörhead yet. So we’ll see. Don’t be surprised if we do another one down the line. It’s fun and it’s just another product out there from Hatebreed for people to enjoy.

Is the Gibson Les Paul your primary guitar these days?

I play Gibson SG, Gibson Explorer and Gibson Les Paul, all of them. I’ve been playing Gibson my whole life. Gibson and Marshall works for AC/DC, it works for me for sure [futureusgallerylaughs]. The louder I crank it up, the better it sounds, and that’s just something I’ve loved ever since I was a kid. A lot of kids dream about playing that kind of equipment. I enjoy it, and in fact I was just online on the Gibson website today before doing this interview, looking to get a Firebird or another SG. But yeah, Gibsons and Marshalls have always worked for me.

You brought up AC/DC, and the Les Paul is used by all kinds of musicians across the board. Is there something about the guitar that makes it so versatile, or does it come from the musician who plays it? What’s your take?

When I grew up, I was seeing a lot of bands playing it, and a majority of the heavier rock bands from back then were always playing Gibson. So, playing the heavy music that we do obviously, that guitar’s sound has had an influence on me for sure and with the EMG pickups and the Marshalls that we use, we’re able to get the desired tone. A lot of people in our scene are endorsed by other companies just because they wanted free guitars and stuff, but to me I’d rather play the best. To me, there’s Fender or there’s Gibson as far as guitars are concerned. That’s really it when it comes to this kind of music, and even the Fenders are tough to get to sound heavy. I grew up watching Angus Young and Ace Frehley, so obviously Gibson is where it’s at when it comes to heavy rock guitar. There was also Zeppelin, and the list goes on. Black Sabbath too. The best of the heavy music world are playing Gibson.

Hatebreed shows can get so crazy, especially the smaller shows with all the stage diving. Has your gear ever been seriously damaged during a show?

Fortunately, no. We were just in Europe and we had a rented backline. It wasn’t even the stage divers. The music was just so loud that something came crashing down and knocking the wall of amps, breaking the plugs at the back. But otherwise I’ve never actually had anything crazy happen.

But it’s funny that we’re doing this interview today and you’re asking about that [futureusgallerylaughs]. Today, we opened up one of the cases of my guitars and on one of my Gibsons the headstock broke again for the third time in the same place, so I think it’s time to retire that one and keep it at home. I’ve had it on the road a lot but it’s not staying together for me.

As far as the fans go, people do try to get on stage and not watch what they’re doing. They’re more concerned about clearing the barricade or knocking into you or the amplifiers. We have barricades for most shows so it doesn’t get too crazy. We don’t invite an entire crowd up on stage either. I think when you do stuff like that, obviously it’s a lot of fun and memorable but that’s when you really can get your equipment screwed up. So we’ve been fortunate with keeping our gear safe [futureusgallerylaughs], but we do so much touring and there’s so much wear and tear that it’ll get screwed up on its own. We don’t need the fans’ help.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

Dethklok and Metalocalypse mainman Brendon Small released a solo album last year under the project title Brendon Small’s Galaktikon.

What was supposedly a studio-only endeavor has become a massive undertaking as Small prepares for Galaktikon’s live debut at the Roxy Theatre in Hollywood on Sunday, March 3. The show will be part of WesFest 8, an annual concert to benefit the Wes Wehmiller Endowed Scholarship at Berklee College of Music.

A few days ago, I caught up with Small to discuss this event in detail. Check out Galaktikon here. You can get tickets to the show here.

REVOLVER: What is Wesfest 8, and how did you get involved?

I got involved through Bryan Beller, my bass player, who has been putting on this festival for the past seven years. He plays bass with me in Dethklok, and he plays bass on this solo project that I did called Galaktikon. So I’ve been friends with him. We also went to the same music school, Berklee College of Music. He finished before I got there but I’ve been following him for years because he played with Dweezil Zappa, then he played with Mike Keneally and all these great guitar players.

He was definitely on my radar. He said, “Hey, this Galaktikon record is something you never thought about playing live, but if we got enough musicians on stage you could do it!” I said, “Well, if we have enough guitarists and vocalists, then yeah!” It’s a pretty big undertaking, but what these guys are playing is pretty amazing. This is a benefit for a bass player who died of cancer a long time ago, named Wes Wehmiller. I never knew him, but Bryan Beller was really good friends with him, and so this is a scholarship in his name for the same school we went to. So that’s where all the money is going, for all young bass players. And that’s the whole idea.

You graduated a long time ago. Have you returned for any guest lectures?

No, but I would because that’s something I’m totally interested in. I’ve only gone back there to walk around and reminisce. I was there with my girlfriend earlier this year, just walking past the building. I spent a very important part of my life at that school and in Boston between becoming a learned musician and becoming a comedian. That was an important part of my growing up.

I’m surprised that you didn’t go back for lectures,; I’ve seen you giving lectures at NAMM and things like that, and you’re really good at it.

Oh yeah, I’m very comfortable speaking in front of people. I have fun doing it. Maybe I will do something of that sort at Berklee in the future. I would definitely love to do it. We just have to get our schedules together.

Obviously you work with Bryan Beller. Other than him, have you kept in touch with your fellow students?

Not necessarily. I’d love to know more about it, but I’ve been lucky enough to be working steadily since I graduated. In my last year at music school, I did something a lot of Berklee students didn’t do. I took classes at one of the sister schools, Emerson College, and they had a communication school. That’s where I started really taking seriously the idea of writing for television and becoming an actor and comedian.

So while I was taking classes on advanced jazz solo concepts, I would go over and write a bunch of stupid jokes in my other class, and I was very competitive. So even as a music student I wanted to be the funniest and best writer in the class. That was an important part. If I were to talk to any Berklee students, I would say don’t be afraid to go and learn other things, because music takes a long time to settle in. But to answer your question, I only have a few friends I’ve kept tabs on. I mostly hung out with kids who were actors and writers. I didn’t actually hang out with many musicians while I was there.

People who graduate from music schools often get into session work. What’s your take on that? Do you feel it doesn’t give the musician freedom? It’s just something they do for money, right?

That’s very true! Here’s what I did, actually. Before my last year at music school, I decided to go and get an internship. I didn’t know what I was going to do with music. I knew I loved guitar, I loved technique, I loved learning how to play and I loved metal. But it wasn’t really at the forefront. It hadn’t come back yet.

So I had all this technique and these guitar-playing skills, but I didn’t know what to do with it. But I really liked taking composition classes, and I liked writing music. I thought maybe I could become a film-scoring person, so I took a lot of classes for that. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I could get into the jingle-writing business, to write music for commercials and stuff. So I interned in that summer for two different jingle houses in New York, and that’s where I really made a decision about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I saw people who were really talented musicians, but they were at the mercy of a 30-second spot for Advil or something. It was pretty limiting and the people that were directing a lot of these pieces really didn’t challenge themselves to learn musical terminology, or to be able to express themselves musically. You’d get a director who’s not necessarily musically intelligent, and it was just a cluster fuck. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be the guy writing the piece, and the guy directing and acting in the piece, and then I want to be the guy making the music. So I was going to create a gig at some point where I get to do all of that stuff, and I wasn’t going to wait for somebody to hire me. That was my goal, and I ended up doing that with my first TV show and then with Metalocalypse.

The Galaktikon live debut is a big undertaking, and it’s not something you wanted to do or expected to do. How much did you actually have to prepare and rehearse?

We prepare a lot because first of all, this is something pretty fun because we have four guitarists on stage, and each one of those are amazing guitarists. We have the amazing Mike Keneally, who has played with Frank Zappa. He’s such a good guitar player, but he’s such a jerk because he doesn’t even really consider himself a guitar player. He’s like, “I’m a piano player, that’s my forte.” But he can do anything on guitar. He plays piano with Satriani and he’s played guitar with Steve Vai’s band. He’s just a guy who can do anything.

And then there’s this guy named Rick Musallam. I don’t think everybody knows about Rick. He plays with Mike Keneally, and he mainly does session stuff, but he’s also a guy who can pretty much do anything. He’s able to match Keneally note-for-note on everything he does.

And then finally we have Jude Gold, who took care of the guitar department at Musicians Institute in Hollywood. He tours with tons of different people and he’s just a guy that’s incredibly humble. So all four of us sat down and worked on all these harmonies and were going over the material, to divide all the moments in the songs. It took me a really, really long time to learn how to play. They can do it in a second, and I’m like, “That’s not fair. It took me five years to be able to do that and you’re just doing it right now.”

And then they can do stuff I simply can’t do. They have amazing ability and rhythm, and I have a great time working with them. One of the most important things when I consider working with anybody is, they’ve got to have a really good attitude and they don’t take anything too seriously. They can show up and they can goof off and laugh a lot, and that’s really important. I wish there was a class on that at the music school. Whenever I put a project together, I consider the fact that I’m going to spend a lot of time with the person I’m hiring, so they’d better be really cool and fun, and I should get excited about working with them. All these guys I’m working with are that. So, we have a few different days of guitar rehearsals, and a few days of vocal rehearsals. I’m singing a lot and then for some of the singing I had to divide up the vocals because of the way I recorded this album.

When I do a Dethklok record, I consider how I’m going to perform it live. With Galaktikon, I just thought it should sound what I wanted it to sound like. I wasn’t concerned about whether I could perform it live. So there are moments when I need to hit a high note and I have to rest all day and hit that high note. After that, there’s another high note. So my voice can start suffering very easily.

I thought if I have a few other vocalists with me on stage, I’m going to be able to divide that stuff up and everyone will get to have a moment to shine and it will be really fun. So that’s that, and next week we’re going through all the stuff with the rest of the band. We’re going to have five vocalists on stage, four guitarists, Tim Yeung who’s an amazing drummer, and Bryan Beller on bass. Musically, there’s going to be a lot of talent on stage, excluding myself.

This lineup, other than the guys playing with you in Dethklok, of course, was it handpicked or a case of whoever was available?

No, Jude Gold I had already thought of, because I’m also busy working on Metalocalypse stuff right now, so I’m not going to be able to be the musical director for this show and I need someone who’s a monster player, who’s completely organized and easy going, and the one guy I could think of was Jude Gold. So I hand-selected him. And then my first thought for drums was to get Gene Hoglan, but he’s playing with Testament right now.

He wished he could have done it, but then I heard about this guy Tim Yeung and I saw his videos of YouTube. I thought, “Oh my god, this guy has serious technique!” I’m excited to rehearse with him. I know Jude is good friends with him. So next week it’s going to be three days of rehearsal and then we’re going to do this thing once and who knows, may be we’ll do it again and more often if it goes well. But it’s definitely a good-sized undertaking.

How did you decide that you need exactly four guitarists?

I could have probably gotten away with fewer because I overdub a lot of guitars. I really like strong, big harmonies ala Brian May. I love Queen and all that stuff, so I recorded in that style. I do a lot of voice-leading traditional style of harmonies. On any big moment of a song, let’s say for the song called “You Can’t Run Away” in which there’s a break with a six-part guitar harmony, which is a triad.

I could technically put two more guitars on stage, but that may be too crazy. I thought it would be nice to have two guys covering rhythm guitar. I put some melodies on top of the guitar, and there will be parts where I can’t play and sing at the same time. I think if we do put four guitar players on stage, for the most part each person will have something to do and we can arrange these harmonies. For Dethklok it’s always two guitars, but sometimes it’s Mike Keneally coming up with a six-part guitar harmony-type thing.

Between he and myself, we have to make that sound really big with just two guitars. So he plays double stock necks and I play the melody on top of that. But it would never sound as cool as single notes on guitars. That’s why I wanted to do this. There are so many guitar parts in these songs, but I kept on overdubbing and putting on these little moments on them. I wasn’t worried about recreating it on stage, obviously. But here we are [futureusgallerylaughs].

When you play this material live, how much is the setup going to differ as compared to what you did in the studio?

It’s going to be pretty similar. For every sound we have on the record, we’re trying to recreate it with what we’ve got. I don’t think we’re going to deviate too much. The idea is to see how close we can come to the keyboard patches, the guitar harmonies, to how many vocals I overdubbed in one particular section, so the idea is to be pretty faithful to the record and to play it identically. It’s funny the way we approached this too, because between myself, Mike Keneally and Rick Musallam, we did a really fun thing about a year-and-a-half ago. We did a 20-year anniversary of Freddie Mercury’s death at the Roxy, where we had three guitars and six vocalists doing Queen songs. We did about two hours of Queen, and it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had on stage. Compared to anything to do, it’s always easier to do other things than it is to do Dethklok because I’ve got to sing, play guitar and all the other stuff. But this is so much fun to just play guitar or just to sing. I figured this is all going to be possible, after doing that Queen tribute show.

You wrote this as a studio-only project, so did you end up rediscovering your own compositions through these rehearsals because this is something new for you as well?

It’s true! Very often when I’m recording and writing in the studio, sometimes they are the same thing because when I open up a Pro-Tools session I consider it just a big sketchbook. It’s not detrimental to record a small idea and then to harmonize it and use it later on or interpolate it or invert it. Very often, I forget what I did in the moment, so I don’t remember anything that I ever do on guitar [futureusgallerylaughs]. There’s this big instrumental song called “Dangertits” on the Galaktikon record, and it was tricky. It’s got a lot of notes and tiny parts. It’s not something I can’t do, but keeping it all flowing nicely is just something that I’ve been making sure of, and I practice a lot. But yeah, it’s fun to rediscover and to see how accurate we can get. There are also moments where we’re like, “There are four guitarists but that part requires six, so let’s just keep the most important notes.”

Anything else you want to mention?

We’re giving away an Epiphone Thunderhorse guitar, which isn’t available yet. I think the guitar will be available in the spring. Whoever shows up at the gig enters to win one of those. It’s a really good guitar. We did a soft launch of that at Winter NAMM. So that’s very cool.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

Philadelphia-based modern heavy metal band A Life Once Lost released their fourth full-length studio album, Ecstatic Trance, on Season Of Mist records late last year. To support the release, they did a North American touring run with Revocation.

Now they’re gearing up for a short US headline run — dubbed The Man Machine tour — with support from Author & Punisher and Encrust.

I recently caught up with guitarist Doug Sabolick to talk about all things pertaining to him and the band. Read the conversation below, and visit the band online on their official facebook page.

REVOLVER: Let’s talk about your latest album, Ecstatic Trance. The title is pretty interesting. Does it aptly describe the music on the album?

I think it opens some doors for people who see that and expect a certain style of music, specially with the cover art and everything. But I think it’s almost a concept album in that regard, and it’s all based on just one thought.

Would you say it’s more melodic and steps outside of what you’ve done so far with the band?

Oh yes, it’s much more melodic, but not in a “singy” way. The guitar lines are more melodic and the songs are melodic, but they still retain their heaviness and their rhythmic attack.

For this album, you’ve used Andreas Magnusson, who has produced albums for Black Dahlia Murder and Impending Doom, who are more death metal-type bands. What was his approach when he was working with you?

He didn’t actually produce the album. He just mixed and engineered the album, and I produced it myself. I just felt that he captured a really modern version of what we were trying to do, and I think he is very good. He does a great job with the records he puts out. Lots of work he’s put out has been really heavy, and although I can’t really connect with the music of the bands he has worked with, when it comes to their mixes and production, I like his work. It was a really good fit for us.

Is there anything different in your gear setup this time because of the change in musical style?

I went to a 7-string, I lowered the tuning of the riffing down to D, and I kept my higher register strings tuned to standard. So I really had a wide range of notes I could hit that really wouldn’t drown each other out. You could have the leads going over the riffs. And then all the leads I played out of a little amplifier that my brother took out of a Hammond organ. It was like a reverb amplifier, little 18-watt amplifier out what might have been a P12Q speaker.

We’ve always used modern guitar amplification on our past albums, so this time I tried to set up something that would sound really vintage, cranked up and with a wah pedal. So that’s what I was using for this album. The gear’s a lot different for this album, at least for me. We’ve also included a lot of organ on the album. There’s organ on every song. It’s more for support, which I feel what organ should be for except in certain cases. When I played it, it was definitely for support because I’m not a real organ player. I just use it to craft songs. So the inclusion of organ on the album is a big difference.

In order to get all these instruments to work together, I had to write songs in a different way. Our songs have always been atonal, a pissed-off barrage. I didn’t want to be held to that anymore. I saw a bigger picture of what the band could be. I’ve listened to bands like Kraftwerk and said to myself, “Man, if there was a heavy metal version of Kraftwerk, that will be fucking awesome, with some psychedelically inspired leads over the top.”

It was the kind of thing I had in my head for a while and I was like, that’s what I really want to do. I want to be happy and proud of myself. At the end of the day, even if we ended up broke, at least I’d know that I followed what I really wanted to do. It’s scary to change it up so much. We had a solid fan base through what we were doing, but to me, I play music for myself, and the same goes for Bob [futureusgalleryMeadows, vocals].

We didn’t want to be pigeonholed playing to a certain audience. When you look at the artwork, do you really see metal bands with artwork like that? Do you see metal bands with album titles like that? It doesn’t happen because all metal bands are too afraid to step outside the box. We’re open to a lot of different kinds of music, so we wanted to incorporate all the things that we like about music, in our band and in our sound. And we’ve created something unique, and that above all is the No. 1 thing. You can create a great album but if you’re not the first one to do it, you’re just fighting for scraps from everyone else. But on this album, we’ve definitely created a niché for ourselves.

So you’re on Season Of Mist for this album, and they have such a different kind of roster. They have Saint Vitus and black metal bands. Does it feel weird at all for you to be on such a list where you stand out?

I think it’s cool, and I think it shows that the music we’re making is credible because a lot of the bands on their label are credible. They have a wide variety of bands I respect in all different genres. I’m more proud to be on there than I was to be on Ferret at the end. No disrespect to them. But with Season Of Mist, they are music lovers and they sign bands that they like, and they seek them out. So they like our music and I’m happy to be with them. I think it worked out.

Because of the heavy instrumentation on the album, how do you approach playing such material on stage?

We’ve been playing shows where we’ve pretty much played the whole album! There are no problems. I just have to use technology and do some things a little differently when it comes to running the organ tracks when we play. So in a way it makes the band sound huge but you also have to really be on top of it. If you mess up, it’s a problem and you can’t just cover it up.

You took almost five years for this album. Was it mainly because you were kind of redefining your sound, or were there other reasons for the gap?

There are a lot of different reasons, but the original reason was that we had toured hard for years. After a while, it starts getting old when people aren’t supporting you, like your label or things like that. When you’re on a tour bus there’s really not much money to be made, which is fine, but if you do it for five years straight, at some point you’re just like, “You know what? I can make the amount of money I do on tour in one night of working a regular job. So let’s just relax and have a personal life for a little while.”

So we did that, and then we thought of getting together to start working on a new album and it just seemed like certain members of the band were dragging us down and slowing the process. So we had to kind of take care of all these different things and member changes. It took me a while to be confident to do things for the new album. I was scared when we did that, because I wasn’t sure and there was no guarantee that this album was going to turn out good. I had to overcome every weakness I had. I had to just get through it all and I’m really happy we got this album out because it could have been way different, you know. And also it’s not like we took five years and then put out the same album. We took five years and put out an album that blows the other albums away, so that makes me happy.

Did starting out and learning your trade in Philadelphia have any kind of impact and did you absorb anything musically from the local scene?

We started this band when we were teenagers, and back then it was a crazy scene with all these people that would just come out of the woodwork for a metal show because it was just so underground at that time. There was no “mall metal.” There was none of this, really. I mean, it was there but were all going to hardcore shows. And it’s funny that 15 years later the people that pop up are in bands that aren’t metal bands, but I know them from that scene from a long time ago. In Philly, there’s music every night everywhere.

That definitely influenced me for this album. I wouldn’t say it did as much in the past and we weren’t really influenced by local bands in the past, but I work at a bar that has music every night, and I saw a lot of different things. If you see so much, you’re bound to develop a liking or a dislike for a few things you hadn’t heard before. I kind of just took the things that I liked, and it inspired me to do something more and not just pigeonhole my band as just another metal band, really.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

Texas-based heavy metal band Warbeast recently released a split album with Philip Anselmo titled War of The Gargantuas, featuring two previously unreleased Warbeast tracks — “It” and “Birth of a Psycho” — along with the first-ever solo material released by Anselmo in his 30-year career.

Of course, this album was put out on Anselmo’s own Housecore Records, and as a celebration of the release, Warbeast joined Down on a short US tour last month. Now they are preparing to release their second full-length album.

Just before the Down tour, I caught up with vocalist Bruce Corbitt to discuss all things Warbeast. Read the conversation below, and check out the official Warbeast website for more info.

REVOLVER: Let’s talk about the split-release with Phil Anselmo. It must be a big accomplishment for Warbeast to be on that, specially because Phil hasn’t put out any solo material before.

Yes, it’s a very big thing for Warbeast, and it was part of the idea Philip had when he came up with this thought of doing a split a couple of years ago, not only to give everyone an idea of what’s to come in our upcoming full-length, but he knew it would get more exposure for Warbeast. So yeah, we’re very grateful to be on it.

You said he came up with the idea a couple of years ago. What took so long for the release? Was it a delay on his part in terms of completing the songs?

Yeah, pretty much. Our debut album had just released at the time, and we were already writing a couple of new songs. Phil was still writing for his solo album and trying to figure out the musicians he was going to get to play on it. It’s just one of those crazy things about working with Phil is, any kind of wild ideas people spell out usually never happen, but a lot of times with Phil and Housecore, they actually come to life.

So he just thought it would be cool if we do this split when he gets his album recorded. So we went and recorded our songs a little over two years ago and there was kind of no timeframe on it. But we decided to have it there, waiting for when Phil finished his album and recorded his stuff. So it was like a long, planned-out thing and it’s a good idea to do stuff like that, you know, to think ahead and be ready when the time comes.

It must have been pretty easy for you to get those songs ready for the split album because, as you said, you already had them written.

Yeah, the band came up with the two songs and I was going to do the lyrics, of course. On one of the songs, I asked Philip if he was interested in getting together and working on the lyrics with me, to team up and write them. He said he would, so I waited till we went down to record. The band was recording their tracks and Phil and me got together and put the lyrics for the song “It.” So that was a really cool thing too, to collaborate with Phil on some lyrics. Then our drummer, of course, he plays on Philip’s solo album. So the whole thing is a brotherhood-type of album, and I think it sits together with two different bands. When you listen to it, it’s just a good album, you know?

Warbeast already has a strong following, but for people who are Anselmo fans and don’t know your band, they’ll definitely dig your music.

That’s the thing; we knew they’d be getting the album for Phil, but then Warbeast is on there too, so people can check it out, hopefully. It should get more fans for us if they like what they hear. I can’t express it enough just how grateful we are to be part of it, and I’m excited as anyone else for the new Phil Anselmo solo album, so to be on a release with the first tracks, you can’t beat that!

Speaking of your next full-length album, it’s also supposed to come out very soon. It’s called Destroy, correct?

Yes, sir. It’s going to be out April 2. It’s all finished, recorded, mixed and mastered. We’re just getting the final touches on the layout for the sleeve and the cover and everything. This full-length album is another thing we’re really proud of, and the two songs on the split-release are exclusive to that release, so everyone’s going to get nine brand-new Warbeast tracks on the full-length.

Yes, I was wondering if the songs are going to be different from the split. That’s good to know — so people are actually getting two releases this year from Warbeast.

Yeah, and then there’s also talk about doing a third because we recorded a couple of extra songs when we made the full-length, and we held them back to do a two-sided single thing. In one song I wrote lyrics about my brother, who I lost several years ago. And then Phil and me decided recently to team up again and write lyrics about our brother and bandmate Mike Scaccia, who we lost a few weeks ago. So that could be three releases right there for Warbeast within one year. I’m not sure when that’ll be out, maybe the end of 2013 or early next year.

You talked about the loved ones you’ve lost, and that’s very tragic, but it must be kind of satisfying to get closure by expressing yourself through your lyrics.

It’s very meaningful to me to be able to do this. My brother’s my hero and the biggest person in my life that I lost, and then Mike was like my most important friend and bandmate that I’ve lost. I’m just blessed to have known both of those guys and this is just my way of honoring them.

You have a US tour coming up in a couple of days. Can people can expect you to play the two new songs as well the old ones?

Actually, we are playing both songs off of the split — some from the debut album, and then we’re playing like over half of the new album, Destroy, even before it comes out just because we believe in the material so much that we think it’s going to go over well even though no one’s had a chance to hear it. We actually did that on the recent tours with Down before this, and there’s just been a great response to all the new material. So the people are going to get a bit of everything that’s been released so far, and some of what’s about to be released. Our set list just keeps getting better the more songs we have in the archives, you know.

On this tour, I’m pretty sure the split album will be on sale, but are there any other items being made specifically for the Anselmo-Warbeast thing or just the CD?

I know they’ll have CDs and vinyls, and I heard that Housecore was making some shirts to sell as well, hopefully with the cover art of the split on it. So they should be able to get us shirts, CDs and vinyl.

On January 16, you’ll be hitting the Key Club in LA. What do you generally feel about playing in LA? I’m sure it must be a good vibe always. I think I saw you open for GWAR in LA a couple of years back.

That’s always a very big highlight for me when I notice that we’re getting to play in LA. For one, I grew up a Los Angeles Rams and a Los Angeles Lakers fan, so I just always had that going. And then we, as in Rigor Mortis, got signed to Capitol and they were in LA. We’ve made a lot of friends in LA, the crowd is really cool, we usually get to go on KNAC and visit some people up there and do the interviews. It’s just always great to play there.

What other shows do you remember from LA?

The first time we played there was when we came through with Destruction, and that was just an intense show with the stage diving and everything. I remember Schmier from Destruction saying, “God, this is the most intense crowd of the entire tour!” And then of course before that, it’s so long since I played there back in 2005 with Rigor Mortis when we did our first reunion. But that tour wasn’t promoted very well and we set it up ourselves. I remember not seeing a lot of people there at the show, but the people that turned up seemed to be glad to finally see Rigor Mortis again. Anything other than that goes back to the ’80s when I was first in Rigor Mortis when we came out there a lot, finalized our deal with Capitol Records and went to the Decline Of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years premiere and all that. Some good memories there every time.

You mentioned the lack of promotion. These days, the main source of income for metal bands is touring. Are you extra careful now as compared to before in terms of what promoters you go with? You don’t want to travel to a different city and play for a small crowd, right?

We don’t want to, but sometimes it happens, and for that tour I mentioned, we didn’t have a booking agency or anybody. We kind of just lined it up ourselves. I know the club did the best they could or whoever the promoter was, but it just didn’t have the attention we’d get when we’re out on a tour with Down. They have everything already set up with booking agencies and PR people. They’re a big band, so the word just gets out easier for something like this.

The smaller tours are hard because you’ve got to rely on the opening bands, the club and the word of mouth, and you’ve just got to hope that it’s a night when Slayer’s not playing [futureusgallerylaughs]. It’s always hard to get people out on a Wednesday or Thursday, and people are hurting financially these days because of the economy and gas prices. So you know, that’s why we’ve been slowly working our way up, and going out with bands like Destruction, Gwar and Down has done wonders for Warbeast.

That’s also a problem with bigger cities — there are usually other shows going on at the same time. You never get an exclusive show in LA or New York.

Right, and we find that out easily when we get to town. It’s hard to sometimes know in advance when you’re booking something. Then we show up and find out who else is playing on the other side of town, and we’re like, “Damn! Too bad we’re not on the same show and too bad we can’t even see the show ourselves!” And when you hear something like that, we think there probably won’t be too many people at our show tonight [futureusgallerylaughs]. But then the people that are there are the true loyal fan base. It gets to the point where it doesn’t matter to us whether there are five people or 5,000. We still enjoy getting on stage and we do not change our performance just because the crowd’s smaller. You’ll see us giving everything we’ve got, no matter how many people are there.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.

By Andrew Bansal

French extreme metal band Gojira carved out a niche for themselves with their unique, atmospheric, environmentally themed early albums, including 2001′s Terra
Incognita and 2003′s The Link.

The band’s fanbase and reputation grew with subsequent releases, such as 2005′s From Mars to Sirius and 2008′s The Way of All Flesh. But it was their most recent release, 2012′s L’Enfant Sauvage, that catapulted them to worldwide success.

I recently caught up with vocalist/guitarist Joe Duplantier to talk about the band’s current North American headline tour, the new album, their recent India gig and more. Read the conversation below and check out the band’s official website.

REVOLVER: You’ve come to the last few shows of your North American tour with Devin Townsend and The Atlas Moth. How has everything been going for you guys?

Everything has been fantastic! We’re living the dream right now, you know [futureusgallerylaughs]. We worked so hard for many years with this band, on this music, and now finally it’s getting to a point where we feel we’re comfortable with the size of the venues we’re playing, the reaction of the crowds and fantastic openers like Devin Townsend and Atlas Moth.

I mean, this configuration right now is really, really good for us. Of course, we had these crazy dreams when we were younger, like one day we will be like Metallica. But we didn’t really know what we were talking about. Where we are at now is really good for us. We don’t wish something bigger than that. We feel comfortable in this configuration.

You were supposed to tour as openers for Lamb of God last year, but that got cancelled and you ended up doing this tour. Did you have to rearrange the set list when you shifted from openers to headliners?

Yeah, when it happened it was a pain in the ass for us. When the album came out, we needed to be on a high-profile tour and do something special. Our first thought was, “We need to headline right away,” because we felt it was time for us to headline. But then Lamb of God came to us with an offer that we couldn’t turn down, so we postponed the headline tour to now, actually, and thought that Lamb of God would be the starting point for this album cycle. And when Randy went to jail, of course it was cancelled and we were mostly worried for him, but it was hard to react to that. So we did a small run on the US East Coast, but nothing more than that. So this is a very important tour right now because it’s the first time for this album cycle we’re doing the West Coast, Texas, Florida and all that.

And I’m sure people must be more familiar with the new songs as compared to when the album just came out.

Yes, that’s true! Absolutely. It’s funny that people in the business tend to push us to play more and more, which I understand, because we have a common goal to grow and promote the band. We talk a lot and they tell us, “If you guys don’t play enough, people are going to forget about you.” And we always thought the opposite. If we stay quiet for two to three years, people will get more excited. That’s what happened for us, because last time we toured in California, for example, was in 2009. We would have 400 people at the shows and this time we have three times more without touring at all. So I think it’s not bad sometimes to take time between tours. So yeah, it’s good timing for us now.

I’ve seen the set list and I think you’ve been playing three new songs. How are they blending with the older songs? Does the whole set flow together?

It’s going pretty well, you know. There’s something very smooth, actually. We were a little worried, before we even started touring, about how we were going to put these songs together. The new album is very different, very atmospheric. Finally it was just a matter of picking the right songs from the old albums and the new album and we have something that’s very homogeneous in this set list. But we’re going to have to reinvent for the next tour and mix other songs from the new album with other songs from the old albums. Because we would like to come back to the States before the end of the year, so we would like to come with a different set list.

Purely in terms of the guitar, how do you compare this album to previous ones?

I remember back a couple of years ago when I was recording the album, I was mostly worried about the type of amps I would use and the type of microphone. But soon I started to understand that it’s the guitar that’s really the core of the sound. If you have a good guitar, it makes a huge difference on the album. We used a number of guitars. Of course, we used Jackson guitars, but we also used Gibsons for some parts to have something with a very tight low end and for the rhythm section. And I really love the Fender Telecaster, which is almost like a signature for our band now.

The Link, which is 48 minutes long, was your shortest album — until L’Enfant Sauvage. Why is that? Has your songwriting became more compact over the years?

We did this on purpose. We wanted a shorter album because our albums are most of the time very epic and draining. You cannot go through the entire album intact, you know [futureusgallerylaughs]. So I wanted to keep it short because I have an experience as a listener of albums like Metallica’s Master Of Puppets. It’s so short, it’s just eight songs. And other albums like Death’s Human also has eight songs.

When I listen to these albums, it’s so good, so intense and short that you want to listen to it and experience it again right away. I wanted people to have the same kind of feeling with our new album. Sometimes when it’s too long, you get turned off. So it helps the identity of a record to have something that is a little shorter with more impact. So this was done on purpose. We had a lot of material, and we could have done this epic, long album like we do usually, but we made it short on purpose.

Do you think you will continue with this same approach in the future?

You know, it depends on the mood. Maybe the next album will be completely epic and experimental and super-long [futureusgallerylaughs]. I really don’t know, but for now I kind of like the short albums.

You talked about Gibson guitars. Other than that, did you make any changes to your setup?

I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to talk about this because I don’t have a written contract with Jackson. But since it’s the same house, I don’t think it’s a big problem. But yeah, I made a very important move. I’m playing with Charvel now, and I’m working on a custom guitar for me to use on stage. But Jackson, Fender and Charvel are under the same company, so it was not a painful move. But I’m moving to Charvel because I really love these guitars and there’s more possibilities to make custom shop models and stuff like that. It’s interesting for me.

You guys recently did something unique. Not a lot of bands get to play in India, and you did that on December 15 at the Indian Metal Festival in Bangalore. What was that like?

It was completely amazing. Playing in India was something we didn’t even dream of, you know [futureusgallerylaughs]. India is so exotic, I wanted to go to India just for myself. At least once in my life I wanted to go there. But I never found the time or the money or the energy. It was a nice feeling to go there to perform and to play in front of people who are so excited. It was very, very incredible. Everything is so different there; I could talk about this for hours. We came back richer, and we feel like we learned a lot just from the experience of being there.

I believe your Wikipedia page says that you’re involved with an environmental organization called Sea Shepherd. Do you still do any work for them?

Technically I’m not part of that organization. The only thing I do is wear their shirts that I buy or the ones they give me, and I promote them and talk about them. Also, I make a donation every month. That’s how I’m part of the organization, because I give them a little something every month. It’s a very small donation, but I feel it’s very important. I do promote them in interviews, through just wearing a shirt on stage and stuff like that, and I think it makes a small difference. I’d like to think it does.

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. Up till February 2012 he was based in Los Angeles. After that, he had to move to India, but is still carrying on his heavy metal endeavors with the same intensity.