The Dreaming – Puppet (Ephocal Artist Records/EMI)
Illogicist – The Unconsciousness of Living (Willowtip)
Krisiun – The Great Execution (Century Media)
Lou Reed & Metallica – Lulu (Warner Bros.)
Megadeth – TH1RT3EN (Roadrunner)
Mike Patton – Music From The Film and Inspired By the Book The Solitude of Prime Numbers (La Solitudine Dei Numeri Primi) (Ipecac)
Orphaned Land – The Road To Or Shalem DVD (Century Media)
Sick of It All – Nonstop (Century Media)
Slipknot – Iowa: 10th Anniversary Edition (Roadrunner)
Steel Panther – Balls Out (Universal Republic)
Taake – Noregs Vaapen (Candlelight)
Terror – Keepers Of The Faith (re-release) (Century Media)
Throne Of Katarsis – Ved Graven (Candlelight)
Trillium – Alloy (Frontiers)
Vallenfyre – A Fragile King (Century Media)

REVOLVER What did you want to do differently on this album from your last, 2008’s Etched in Blood?
CHRISTOPHER HALL I felt our last album strayed away from the sound we originally set out to make. This was a combination of influences from our producer, mixer, manager and newer members of the band. I really liked our first record but I feel like Puppet better captures the vision Johnny Haro and I originally had.

We set out to make music that was heavy and dark but very melodic with strong songs. We really wanted to recapture some of the electronic sounds that were a part of Stabbing Westward and Econoline Crush that seemed to get lost on the first Dreaming album.

So my goal on this record was to learn everything I could about producing and engineering, so I could maintain creative control over the album and not let too many outsiders get involved. The one outsider who really helped was Eddie Wohl who mixed the record. He helped make my production work sound polished and helped shape the overall sound of the record in the mix. We had several members come and go during the recording process and each of them left their mark on the songs in different ways. It was a very long record to make due to my learning curve on how to record and produce, but I think it was worth it in the end.

How do you approach the Dreaming differently from what you did in Stabbing Westward?
Stabbing Westward went from being a band of two guys writing industrial music in our bedrooms into a monster that took on a life of its own. I seriously did not even recognize Stabbing Westward by the last album. In the Dreaming we wanted to get back to that feeling of making music for ourselves. Not for a label or an A&R guy or a manager or even for fans, but just the music that we wanted to make. It took away a lot of the stress and anxiety about making music. I think once you get to the point that fear of losing your success rules your creative process you should stop making music and become a banker. The Dreaming has nothing to lose so we make whatever music we feel like making; it’s very liberating and cathartic.

What are your favorite tracks on the new album and why?
My favorite song on Puppet is “End in Tears.” I love the hypnotic feel of the groove and love listening with headphones. There are a ton of cool creepy ambient sounds on that track and its fun to discover new sounds with every listen. I recorded several songs that I had written before or during the first album that ended up not getting used first time around. Either they were unfinished demos or the producer didn’t like them because they weren’t pop metal enough for the sound he was going for. These were songs I was very passionate about and fought for but ended up on the producer’s chopping block. It was great for me to be able to revisit them with a fresh perspective and with a different group of musicians. Some of these songs got a second chance at life kind of like the Dreaming.

In the past you’ve covered artists like INXS, Depeche Mode, and the Cure. How do influences like those figure into the heavy music you play?
These were my favorite bands growing up. Not INXS so much but the Cure and Depeche Mode, along with heavier bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. I think Depeche Mode were the most influential band to electronic music. I know there were earlier bands and noisier bands and more abrasive and cutting edge bands but nobody took pop song arrangements and orchestrated them using synths the way Depeche Mode did, and they did it consistently album after album with amazing songs and sounds that never grew stale. Covering a song like “It’s No Good” is great for a songwriter. The act of deconstructing it and figuring out how it was built and then making it your own gives you lessons on how to write a great song. Then you just apply those lessons in a non-plagiaristic way and you have the building blocks for better songwriting.

What is it you want people to take away from listening to this record?
I’ve never really known what I want people to take away from my music. I used to try to tell people what my songs were about. I remember once in Stabbing Westward getting in an argument with a fan about the meaning of one of my songs. I was very offended that they didn’t get what my song was about. Later on, I realized that they were right. It doesn’t matter what I think my songs are about.

What’s important is how the listener feels about it. If they connect to it in some ultra-personal way that I never intended then that is great. Why should anyone care what the song means to me? That’s my pain and my story. Everyone has their own pain and their own story and if I can somehow connect to that and give them an outlet for that pain or a moment of feeling less alone in the world then I’ve done my job. I know not everyone is going to love every song but I hope that our fans find something good on the album that they can connect to. Thanks for listening.

REVOLVER What’s this song about?
CHRISTOPHER HALL “Every Trace” is all about ghosts. Not the spooky Casper kind but the ghosts of our past that just refuse to stay in their graves and rest in peace. “Everywhere that I go I can see you, your ghost won’t die…” You could take that literally like you keep seeing this same person out at clubs and in traffic or walking down the street but I meant it more symbolically. Everywhere I look is a memory of a life we had that I want to forget. We used to go to that coffee shop, my car still smells like you, we bought that couch together, or you chose that ugly ass color for the bathroom.

Everywhere I look there is a ghost of you to remind me of what I’ve lost; both the good and the bad. I like the imagery of the funeral pyre and burning all these things to try and get them gone once and for all. Ghosts. I hate them.

How did you come up with the concept for this video?
“Every Trace” was used in a great fight scene in the movie The Hammer about a deaf UFC fighter named Matt Hamill. The movie follows his life growing up deaf and competing against other fighters as well as against prejudice. It’s a great film and we proud to a part of it. So we combined scenes from the film with footage of us in a cool old fight ring. It was a really cool shoot. We were all bouncing off the ropes like our favorite wrestlers; unfortunately no one got hurt.

Was this an easy song to write?
Some songs are really easy to write; you sit down one day with a melody stuck in your head and two hours later you have a whole song. This was not one of those songs. I wrote the chorus first. There was this model/singer named Nina Bergman that my manager wanted me to write songs for but I wasn’t really interested, but she kept bugging me so finally I sat down and strummed an acoustic guitar and sang her this chorus. She said and I quote, “I don’t really want to do any cheesy ballads.” Well ballad was hardly what I was going for, so I figured I should sit down and figure it out. The problem with the song was the groove. It has a natural Marilyn Manson–like shuffle to it like the beat to “Beautiful People,” but Johnny, our drummer, doesn’t naturally play that way. He likes to play everything more like Billy Idol techno punk. I tried playing the song very 6/8 kind of an Iron Maiden, “Run to the Hills,” gallop. It was not pretty. Then I heard a song by Muse on the radio and was instantly, “That’s the groove of my song.” So I listened to that a few times and figured out how they were laying out their groove and started with that as the foundation. It had a very ’60s Dr. Who feel to it. It took Johnny more than a few tries to figure out what he wanted to play on the drums but once he got it the song just came together quickly.

What sort of feedback have you gotten on this song so far?
So far the fans have been really positive about “Every Trace.” So far everyone seems to like it. It was not our first choice of singles, but our manager also works with Jada Pinkett-Smith and one day he played the song for Will and Will declared, “This is your hit right here!” So we went back and listened to it again and we agreed it was the best choice for our first single. Who’s gonna argue with Will Smith? He was one of the Men in Black, he punched an alien in Independence Day, and he fought vampires in I Am Legend. I’m not arguing with him.

But every time a band does a new record, it’s always a stressful time for both the band and the fans. Is it going to sound totally different? Is it different in a good way or bad way? Is it stale and repetitive and too much like the old stuff? Some fans want you to grow, while others want you to stay the same. In the end there is no pleasing everyone so I just aim to please myself and hope other like it, too. This record was the first that I have produced on my own, so it was liberating to have the freedom to exactly what I wanted but also scary because there is no one to blame if it all goes to hell.

I tried to recapture some of my lost heritage from Stabbing Westward on this record. I felt like Stabbing Westward had lost its way on the last album and kind of felt the same about the Dreaming’s first album. I really liked it, but I felt like it got pulled in all sorts of different directions by people outside the band and even by some of the guys in the band. This is my attempt to reconnect with my love of ’80s and ’90s electronic music combined with rock guitars and good songwriting, which was in my opinion the strength of Stabbing Westward.

Photo by Epochal Artists Records