By Stephanie Castor

In a struggling economy, it becomes harder and harder for musicians of all calibers and genres to maintain successful careers as touring and recording artists. Raising a family — and maybe even working a day job — can work their way up the priorities list and leave little room for flexibility.

Through trial and error, Pig Destroyer guitarist Scott Hull has found his balance.

The Alexandria, Virginia-based grindcore band is scheduled to release Book Burner, their first full-length album in five years, October 22 via Relapse Records. Between fatherhood, marriage, lineup changes, construction of the fully functioning Pig Destroyer studio and rehearsal space, and gearing up for the launch of Book Burner, Hull continues to spout energy for one of the things he loves most: ugly, fast, loud music.

We recently chatted about gear, the new album and life in general.

REVOLVER: How and when did you originally take up an interest in guitar?

I was introduced to guitar very early on. I picked it up when I was 7, around 1978. My main interests for guitar were AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, a lot of the heavier rock at the time. I kind of learned by emulating those bands. I had lessons and whatnot, but I spent more time trying to figure out songs I liked from those bands, more than just music theory.

Book Burner is your fifth album and possibly your most refined. What spawned an album with 19 brief songs mirroring qualities of ’80s hardcore?

Book Burner is more of a return to where we started. We started out as a super-ugly and fast grindcore band where all the songs were short and had a very flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, improvised feel. Book Burner is more of a return to Explosions in Ward 6. That’s probably because there was such a long period of time between albums, so we felt the need to sort of go back and revisit what we started the band for, and the stuff the originally inspired us to play in Pig Destroyer. Getting a new drummer — Adam Jarvis from Misery Index — inspired us to go back to a shorter, faster and louder demo that we prided ourselves in early on.

Why was there such a long gap — five years — between Phantom Limb and Book Burner?

A lot of things came into play. I had another child, and we had to get out of the practice place that we had been in since 1997. We actually had to build a studio that would also serve as our rehearsal space, and that sounds trivial, but it’s definitely not. We built it from the ground up, and it’s a fully functional soundproof studio with an acoustically treated live room and a control room.

We spent a lot of time building the studio, and then we had internal issues with our drummer that we had to go through. Once you’ve had somebody in your band for a long period of time — in our case, 13 years — it’s kind of hard to come to the realization that someone has to go. When Adam [futureusgalleryJarvis] joined the band, he had extensive touring commitments with Misery Index, so that lasted about a year. To add all of that stuff up, it’s not surprising it took us so long to come out with Book Burner.

How do you balance your family life with being a professional musician, especially since recording this new album?

There is definitely a lot of juggling that goes on, and there also has to be a lot of understanding and patience from my family to give me the time and space to do it. Then, of course, there’s the sheer amount of energy you have to muster to maintain a career and your fans and to keep all of this stuff pushing forward.

Thankfully, I’ve got a lot of energy in me and a lot of fire to drive it forward. I’ve also got a great family, a family that affords me the flexibility to do all this stuff. It’s difficult, and that’s also why things take a little bit longer to get done. We don’t want stuff to be half-assed. We want to make sure we spend enough time to do things exactly the way we want. There is room and time for everything. You just might not be able to spend a whole week doing something you want to do.

What do you think of current metal trends? Bands seem to be fluctuating between pop hooks and dubstep, and then they’ll throw in some deathcore elements. As someone who has been in the same band for 15 years, what’s your take on the current state of the scene?

I understand that. There are examples of all these different forms of metal and extreme music that I think are good and that work, and there are some from the very same kinds of music I don’t like very much. I don’t like to rag on bands, because no matter what kind of band you are, you’re trying. And that’s better than not being in a band, you know?

I hate to disparage anybody from doing something that I might not typically like, but as long as things are moving forward and people keep doing things that are progressive and interesting, I like The Acacia Strain a lot. I think they’re very heavy and great, but I know a lot of people that probably wouldn’t like them because they’re metalcore-ish or whatever. I think people should be able to think what they want to think and not have to justify it.

Tell me about your gear and any endorsements you might have.

Yeah, I really owe my endorsement companies some props. I sort of renovated my signal flow for two reasons. First, because I wanted to change my sound, and second, because I wanted to be able to streamline my ability to travel with a minimal amount of backline required. That means I’d like to be able to travel with my own head, my own preamp and my own guitars. As you might imagine, if I were to take a typical guitar head or a big, heavy power block power amp, that stuff gets prohibitively expensive, especially with airline baggage fees.

Matrix Amplification is a company out of the UK that makes these very small but extremely powerful power amps, and I have one rack mount station called the GT800FX. It’s a 1,000-watt harness power amp that is about 10 pounds, but that means you can actually carry this thing onto the plane and travel anywhere in the world without having to check it. As any touring musician knows, once you check something, it gets destroyed. Not only is a fantastic sounding amp, it’s the one amp a lot of people use with the Fractal Audio guitar processor called the Axe-Fx, and it’s the one most regarded in the industry as an amp modeler. It’s purely preamp, but it’s the one processor that a lot of people hook up with the Matrix power amp to create their main rig.

I don’t use Fractal Audio yet, but I use the TightMetal pedal from Amptweaker. It’s a great pedal made by a guy named James Brown who worked for Peavey and helped them to develop the 5150 back in the ’80s. I use Vader cabinets. I’ve been using them for about 10 years, close to when they started.

Keep up with Pig Destroyer on their Facebook page.

By Stephanie Castor

Black Light Burns, the Los Angeles-based quartet fronted by Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland, released their sophomore album, The Moment You Realize You’re Going to Fall, August 13 via Rocket Science/THC Records.

Amid preparation for a fall tour with Psychostick and The Witch Was Right, Borland sat down to discuss the new album, gear, sonic experimentation and a lot more.

REVOLVER: Given your history in visual arts, does music travel similarly through your mind? When writing and producing, what do you see? Math and numbers? Colors and movement?

First, I’m sort of thinking about a lot of different things that have happened in my life as well as different cinematic landscapes or ideas. I’ll think about a lot of things I’ve seen recently, because I am a painter too. I’m always looking at other artists and trying to get inspired by different things. I just collect images from clippings from magazines or whatever.

I’ll sort of think about all of these things and start writing, and I think a lot of these visuals inspire me to think about what those images would sound like. Like, I know how it looks, but how does it sound? And I do that a lot as far as trying to paint things that I hear and make music that I see, I guess.

They kind of go back and forth and cross over into each other. It’s never about math. Ever. I’ve never really been schooled in music theory. I’m a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it’s more unique that some other people. I’m not a shredder, and I’ve never aspired to be a virtuoso player. I’ve always wanted to be a songwriter and a storyteller and somebody who conveys a feeling to the listener or the viewer.

As Black Light Burns and Limp Bizkit progress, do you find it more difficult to keep stylistic differences separate?

Not really, especially because they’re progressing further and further away from each other all the time. I feel like Limp Bizkit is going in a direction that allows me to access some wild and experimental elements of myself, but it is primarily aggressive hip-hop/rock/pop music. The feeling of it is more of a party and is, musically, how I’d spend my Saturday night [futureusgallerylaughs].

Like if I was with a bunch of people in Manhattan that wanted to go bar-hopping, it’s something I would normally do with Limp Bizkit, but it’s more of a light-hearted good time, whereas with Black Like Burns it’s more so like opening my chest up and vomiting out all of my emotions.

I won’t say Black Light is completely a mourning experience. It’s not a funeral. Our shows are definitely fun, and we are light-hearted about having a good time as far as when we play and put 100 percent into all of our shows. It’s still born out of despair and emotion. That’s the heart of it, and our albums get more and more experimental all the time.

I don’t think it’s hard; I think the first record, Cruel Melody, overlapped a bit with Limp Bizkit, but now if I write something that’s more experimental, I’ll pitch it to Black Light. The same goes for Limp Bizkit if I write something that is a bit more poppy and commercial sounding. Now they are just getting further and further apart.

To have people react to a song and just know it is so flooring. It is such an incredible feeling. It never gets old, either. Even with really old songs with Bizkit. We could be performing some of the first songs we’ve ever written together in front of an audience and have them react, and they’re still like, “Wow.” I’m sick of the song, but they make me not sick of it, you know? It’s like watching one of your favorite movies with someone who has never seen it before.

When playing any song in front of an audience, you’re watching them experience it, and it changes. In a lot of ways, it’s almost like the music is just the background buzz to what’s happening between you and the audience in the room.

What different guitars, amps, effects and various instruments were used for the recording of The Moment You Realize You’re Going to Fall?

We used a 1964 Gibson Thunderbird bass and an Ovation Magnum II, which is one of the only good things Ovation has ever done as a company, and they stopped doing it. It’s a really weird-looking bass, but it’s got a unique sound, and I just love them for some reason. They are really weird, and I guess they were just a failure at the time. I tend to gravitate toward instruments that were failures and that they stopped making because they don’t sound like a PRS or Les Paul. It’s something so different.

For the guitars, I think it was mostly Telecasters for the neck pickup position, a Hagstrom 3, an old Teisco Japanese Jaguar sort of guitar that sounds really nuts and has a bunch of electronic problems but it’s really rowdy. I really wanted to make a record that was heavy but not metal. I wanted a lot the heaviness to be in the bass and have the guitars be more of a bite-y rock sound. I think that worked out.

We used a lot of little amps, a bunch of 10-inch-speaker Epiphone and Gibson amps as well as a couple Fender amps. We were using a lot of Zvex pedals that are just kind of unruly and have a bunch of different types of fuzz. We were just experimenting a lot and chaining a bunch of stuff together. One pedal that was really cool was a green pedal called the Bag of Dicks. It actually comes in a paper bag [futureusgallerylaughs].

I think I found it at Tour Supply in LA. That thing just generates constant noise if you’re not playing through it. It only had two knobs, gain and volume, but somehow it just had all of these different positions you could put them in that just did terrible things. It was just like, “Why is that happening?” and “I don’t know why it’s happening, but hit record!”

There was a lot of that kind of stuff going on as far as experimentation, but it was really fun. A lot of it is improvised, even to the point of sampling circuit bent toys. We were careful about experimenting. It was controlled and edited. It wasn’t like we said, “Oh, we’re gonna go fart in a buck and record it.”

Many people will argue that anyone can pick up an instrument and learn how to play. You’ve always incorporated visual aesthetics and unconventionality into your music. How would your differentiate an artist from a musician?

I think there are people who aren’t artists who are musicians, and I think there are people who aren’t musicians that are artists. There are people who are both, but I don’t feel like there are things that are created from musicians. There are people who are amazing violinists, but they don’t really write very much. Or when they do write it all falls into these parameters that they’ve been taught — sequences. It’s the mathematical thing we talked about. Musicians can tend to get mathematical and just go, “Here you go. Sounds great.”

That works well for scoring film, but I think that a lot of those people don’t have a screw loose, and maybe that’s the difference. Maybe artists have something inherently wrong with their brains and musicians don’t. Artists have this handicap [futureusgallerylaughs], and that’s what makes them somehow digest things and spit them out in a way that only makes sense to some people.

Keep up with Black Light Burns at their official website and Facebook page.