Artist Interview
Black-metal legends Immortal released the excellent All Shall Fall (Nuclear Blast), one of Revolver's Top Albums of 2009, last October. Starting Saturday in Toronto, the trio will be playing a four-date North American tour, including their first U.S. dates since 2007. Beginning a multi-part interview Revolver recently conducted with the band, frontman Abbath talks here about performing live. Check back in the coming days for more with Abbath and the band's lyricist and former guitarist Demonaz.
REVOLVER Are you looking forward to playing the States again?
ABBATH I can't wait. We did the States in 2007, a couple of shows, and I can't wait to come back there. I think the American audience is more into the new Immortal stuff than the old Immortal stuff. So can't wait to come over there and do 50-50. I can't wait to go out. It's really fucking awesome to finally play these new songs.
Have you ever thought about doing a live album?
We are also talking about doing a live album this year. I think it's about time. Also, we hired a German film team to film us in 2007. It is edited but not exactly the way we wanted it. So we have all the tapes and we're gonna fix a little bit of it, because if there's an angle and everybody can see how fucking fat I am at the point I will take away that picture. I love food too much, but I'm fit. I jog. I exercise, but it takes time to get rid of that stomach. [Laughs] I'm just kidding. I mean you can't see it all through the video, but there are some clips when the pyros goes off, and they don't film from the outside, you just see it like one or two from the wrong angles or something. Stuff like that.
Peter [Tägtgren, who coproduced All Shall Fall with the band] has mixed it, so it sounds a little bit better than it did on the original. He has worked in the studio, but it's nothing fake. I'm not gonna do like many other bands, I'm not gonna do like Kiss on Alive for example. If I play a shit solo, I'm not gonna go in and fix it. But we have fixed the levels on the sound, like, for example, in the opening, when Horgh goes into a blast beat, the snare was too loud, stuff like that. We're gonna work on that, and we're gonna also work on a bonus DVD* on the same—it's gonna be like a double, one of the concert and one with bonus stuff. With stuff people have not seen from the old days, which is not on YouTube. And if people still want to make fun of us after this, that's OK we don't care. [Laughs]
What sorts of older footage would you want to release of the band?
Me and Demonaz and Erik [a.k.a. Grim] did a video in the rehearsal room, but it came out real cool, of one of the songs from [Immortal's second album] Pure Holocaust, which no one has seen. It's just unbelievable no one has seen it. Other than that, maybe some behind-the-scenes stuff, not too much. It's not going to be like Immortal Exposed or anything like that, some special things from the reunion time, and maybe some stuff from the earlier days. Like you might find a Horgh drum solo on there from the Blizzard Beasts tour—from a drum solo we had in the middle of the "Pure Holocaust" song.
We have some footage from the release party of [Immortal's first record] Diabolical Full Moon Mysticism. It was filmed in Bergen, a very special concert. Stuff like that. There is more, we are working on it. The era up until Demonaz got tendonitis in his arms and he couldn't play guitar anymore was a struggle, finding the right drummer. But we had the spirit and we never gave up on Immortal.
* Upon checking with Immortal's label, the DVD mentioned above has no slated release date.
Interview by Kory Grow // Photos by Peter Beste
Armored Saint were one of the great L.A. metal bands to emerge in the early '80s. Like Metallica, who once asked Saint vocalist John Bush to audition for them (he declined), they broke out on Metal Blade's Metal Massacre series and joined the major-label ranks. Albums like 1984's March of the Saint and its follow-up, 1986's Delirious Nomad, showcased the group's knack for catchy, Judas Priest-inspired songwriting, and Bush's ragged howls about survival seemed were the band's lifeblood. They released the final album of their original run, Symbol of Salvation, in 1991—a tribute of sorts to the band's founding guitarist Dave Prichard, who had died of leukemia prior to recording the record. With an uncertain future, Bush accepted the offer to join Anthrax, and sang with that band through their decision to reunite a pre-Bush lineup. The rest of Armored Saint broke up.
Last week, they released their first album in 10 years, La Raza (Metal Blade), following up 2000's excellent Revelation, which the band members had recorded while their other groups were on hiatus. The current Armored Saint reunion began when bassist Joey Vera, who had been playing in Fates Warning, contacted Bush to work on some new songs. The singer had all but retired from music, but ended up having a lot of fun working with his old friend. Eventually the duo got the rest of the band involved. "We just realized, well look. It's you. It's me. It's rock," Bush says. "What are we gonna do? Are we gonna try to bullshit the public and tell you, 'Oh man, it's not Armored Saint'? Come on, man. It's not in me." Bush has since played a few shows with Anthrax again but remains committed to promoting Armored Saint. Here, he fills us in on the rest of the story.
REVOLVER What were you doing with your time between exiting Anthrax and restarting Armored Saint?
JOHN BUSH There was a couple of years I didn't do a whole lot of music. Well, no music, I should say. After I left Anthrax I was kind of in a good state of mind about not really doing anything. I've been in band over the course of—since, like, 1983 to, like, 2005, basically. It was a long time of being a rock guy. A lot had changed in my life. First kid. Was fairly recently married. And my wife has a business in the entertainment world doing casting. I kind of embraced working with her a little bit. I just was ready to not think about music for a while. And I think it was healthy.
So I got out of that and began a career doing voiceover work, and that's been really happening over the last couple of years. And, like I said, it was a good time to not really think about music, not that I don't love and always have and always will love music. But the process of being a guy in a band was nice to not do that. I'm sure that could be shattering to a lot of music fans [laughs]. But you know what man? Being in a band is like having five roommates in close quarters or four wives. Unless you're a gay polygamist [laughs], it's hard. I was good at just breaking loose at that and then just being a regular dude. It was all good until Joey said he had some ideas about writing some songs.
What voiceovers would people know you from?
Well, mostly I've done Burger King spots over the past three-and-a-half years. I've done a lot of radio and various television commercials. To me, it's another form of art. A lot of the commercials I've done are really funny. You can say, "Oh, you're selling a fucking fish sandwich," but you know what? To me, as long as there's some integrity with it—and to me there is—then I'm done. It's using my voice. It's like a natural progression.
So you were writing songs with Joey. At what point did it become an Armored Saint record?
Well, he gave me a couple of ideas and I kind of ran with the first one that I thought I liked. It actually made me feel really good about myself, because I thought, Oh, I guess I still have a knack for this. The whole obligatory thing of being in a band is not connected to it. I really liked it.
What were you looking forward to most about working with the guys again?
Taking the record out of the demo form and making it a record. The way we recorded it, the demos Joey and I made sounded incredible. People would be blown away that it's a drum machine from the way Joey programs it. I kept probably 50 percent of the vocals we recorded when we did them as demos. But I always approached them like, I'm recording this and putting everything into it. I'm not thinking of it as a demo, I'm singing this the best I can. When those guys came in. I think that Jeff [Duncan, guitars] played some rhythms that changed things a little bit. Joey kept a lot of the rhythms that he did, because he wrote them. Phil [Sandoval, guitars] played some leads and kind of put his style in it. And Gonzo [Sandoval] has just always had this little bit of a Latin style to his drumming and he was able to bring that out. It was good for them as musicians to be able to do that.
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How are you as friends these days in Armored Saint?
You know, the truth of the matter is that as time goes by, people kind of grow apart. It doesn't mean that you can't collectively make music or write a song or even play that song. But I'm not gonna lie and say that all the guys in Armored Saint have the same thought process that they did when they were 20 years old. That's just not reality at all. Not even fucking close. [Laughs] So it doesn't matter. The days of being in my Comet, my old car, smoking pot and cranking Priest and going to pass out flyers at the Troubadour for our upcoming show—it was a beautiful thing. I loved it. But it's just not where I'm at.
To be able to say, "Here's a song, put your thing into it. And let's play it together." There's still gonna be that correlation, especially in the guys in Armored Saint. Not only have most guys in the band played together for a long time, but we've known each other. I mean, I've known Joey since I was 9 years old. I'm going on almost 40 years of just friendship. The thing with Gonzo is I met him around the same time. So we've just known each other for a long time. That's not to say that we have the same collective thoughts about life anymore, because everybody kind of goes in different directions, but it doesn't matter because when it comes to that, you're just kind of like, let's just play the song and that will be your moment to put your thing in.
What inspired your lyrics on La Raza? A lot of your lyrics have been about persevering, especially in Armored Saint over the years.
Hey, thanks. And thanks for seeing that. Yeah, real personal this time. More than anything I've ever done. A song like "Head On," it couldn't be more of, like, a song to myself of, "Dude, just be straight about life and life will be a lot easier." So I'm just always challenging myself with that because in life I'm always trying to become better as a person. And now I'm a father. Every day is a challenge. A lot of the songs were really about trying to improve myself as a human being. There was other things, too. The song "La Raza" is a song about the state of the world, or the environment. It's really important to me, because I chose to procreate and I want to pass on a better earth to my kids. It's important to me. And then there's a song like "Get Off the Fence," which is a song about putting up or shutting up and believing in it and not waffling in life. Some of these songs, maybe one thing might have triggered it but I can see that there is a theme, to some degree, about the way I try to conduct my life. Real personal. I'm really proud of the lyrics. I'm not gonna say it's the best thing I ever wrote, but it's probably the most revealing thing I ever wrote.
Shifting gears, you've had one of those voices that's sort of stayed the same throughout the years.
Well, I've lost some highs through the years. If you go all the way back to March of the Saint or even Symbol. On Raising Fear, I was like a dog boy. [Laughs]
What do you do to keep your vocals fit?
I've taken lessons over the last couple years because I really needed to. I got to a point a couple years back where I was touring with Anthrax and I really fucked my voice up. Like, OK, if I'm going to attempt to keep doing this, I probably should take better care and I should figure out what I can't do. It's really helped me out a lot. I think I'm just trying to find the area of where my voice sounds the best, the thickest and the grittiest. I've kind of narrowed in on that.
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What have you been listening to these days?
Recently I went to Amoeba [Music, a record store in L.A.] and bought a bunch of records. I got the new Pearl Jam record, which I think is cool. I dig the band Kasabian. A little bit of TV on the Radio. As far as harder rock goes, I'm always a fan of Queens of the Stone Age. I didn't buy any music, but with Anthrax we just played these shows in Australia at the Soundwave festival. Faith No More had reunited recently for some dates and, man, I haven't been that inspired in a long time. They were just so fucking good. I've always been a huge fan of their band. And Mike Patton, he's like an alien or something. I'd look at him and I listen to him and I'm just sitting there with my jaw agape wondering how the fuck he does it. But it's a great band, great songs. Real fun, sarcastic, really inspirational.
How'd those shows go for you?
They were great. They were fun shows. It's funny. Being on the metal stage of this festival is always like, where's the stage? And it's way in the back. Fucking bastard child. They were great. The shows were fun. The crowds were great. Very receptive. Getting onstage is easy, playing familiar tunes. There's a great camaraderie there. So, you know, it's gravy. And the shows were fun. I was able to take my wife and my kids to Australia and we had a lot of fun there. It was a great trip. It was really positive as far as just being there.
Obviously a lot of the history of Armored Saint was tied in with Dave Prichard, and I was just wondering what your fondest memory of him was.
Wow, I have a lot of fond memories of Dave. Obviously I miss him a lot still. His presence was huge with his flaming red hair and his humor. And he's a great guitar player. Underrated, actually. Very, very soulful. He was just a comical guy.
The thing that Dave taught us, especially when he got really sick and went in the hospital to try to correct the leukemia that he had and he was unable to do, he always had this zestful way of looking at life. I try to take that with me. Because that guy died at 26 years old and that's pretty young. Never thought he wasn't gonna make it. He was talking towards the end of like, "OK, when we get out of here…" And you could see his health really declining. That's just very motivating.
One particular memory. He was a pervert, definitely. Girls would ask him for a pick, and he would say, "OK," and he would put a pick on the head of his penis and go, "All right. If you want it." I don't think he did that all the time, but there was one moment where we were all going, "Dude, you're such a perv." But he always had a little sense of humor with it. [Laughs]
On that note…
On that note, this interview is officially over.
Interview by Kory Grow
In Revolver's March/April issue, we interview Gorgoroth guitarist Infernus and drummer Tomas Asklund about the band's new album, Quantos Possunt Ad Satanitatem Trahunt (Regain), the band's new lineup (to read about the band's split with former members Gaahl and King, click here), and Satanism. For those of you who didn't get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here's the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.
REVOLVER You've taken a new direction toward more mid-tempo songs on this album. What led to that decision?
TOMAS ASKLUND I don't think we planned too much. We came up with riffs and started jamming, and I put my kind of drumming to it. It was a natural development.
INFERNUS I wrote the material and introduced it to him. And we arranged and rearranged and rearranged again until we were happy.
Did you write the lyrics as well? Or did Pest, the vocalist from an earlier Gorgoroth lineup who returned?
INFERNUS No. Two friends of mine have been contributing the lyrics this time. They are not musicians. They are committed Satanists and friends.
Whose names you don't want to say, right?
INFERNUS The album will have its credits.
You've told me before that the mission of Gorgoroth is to "spread the word of Satan." What guidance did you give your friends to write the lyrics?
INFERNUS We are very close. They are brothers in spirit. We socialize every day and we've been doing so for many years, so I don't need to guide them.
When you wrote this album, after everything that happened with Gaahl and King. Did you feel you had something to prove?
INFERNUS No. It's the duty of whoever the responsible person writing and performing music is to do his best. If not, he has the responsibility of removing himself from the market. So every day should be a test. I didn't feel more pressure than before. That's the wrong angle to have on it. But we have been working as hard as we could up until now. And we have an album which we can stand behind, which we're happy with.
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How did you two first meet?
INFERNUS The first time was in 1999, briefly, when we were in Stockholm to record the Incipit Satan album, and we stayed in touch after that.
I guess that's all you need. Talking about the history of Gorgoroth, why did Pest originally leave the band?
INFERNUS It was for practical reasons. The old cliché of a story, but he met a girl and to make it very short, he had to leave for the U.S.A. And he's been living there now for 10 years. When we needed a new vocalist [this time], we couldn't just pick whoever. And we wanted someone who could just come in and deliver. He didn't even take his time thinking about it. And he's back. But, of course, probably your next question would be an issue of logistics. We now have to plan our everyday life a bit more than before. We don't meet to have a beer or phone up every second day to talk about personal issues. But we do have to plan when to be where, and to be a bit more practical thinking, in terms of when to rehearse or something. Then again, it's a modern world.
Does that sense of responsibility detract from the times that you do just kick back beers?
INFERNUS I wouldn't say so. Personally, and I know [to Asklund] for your concern as well, we don't really miss all those social events.
ASKLUND No. I'm a serious misanthrope. I want to work when we get together anyway. To not waste any time. I never hang out in bars. I hardly ever drink at all. I'm just not that kind of social guy.
INFERNUS Of course, we talk a lot when we're working in the studio. We joke around of course. Speculate.
Any jokes stand out from recording this album?
INFERNUS No.
ASKLUND It was a good time. But there are some things to be kept within the studio and some things to be presented outside.
We were just talking about Pest coming back into the band. How about Tormentor?
INFERNUS Basically he's been one of my best friends since forever. I could probably show you stains of paint if I undressed; I even spent the last days helping him paint his house. Yeah! We hang together every day. We are close in spirit. We needed his presence, so we just asked him, and he was astonished and he said yes, because the reason he quit in the first place back in 2002— namely King ov Hell—was not in the band anymore.
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Talking about the album, what do you mean by the word in the song title, "Aneuthanasia"?
INFERNUS It means the opposite of euthanasia. It means to remove life from someone not by compassion.
ASKLUND But because it needs to be done.
Wouldn't that just be murder, though?
BOTH Mmmm…no.
ASKLUND It depends on how you see it, really.
Obviously I'm going off the title, but is the song "Building a Man" related to "Carving a Giant" on your last album?
INFERNUS No.
This is the first record where you can really hear the vocals a little bit more. On your last few records, the vocals were pushed to the back, I felt. But on this album, Pest's voice is much more piercing. Is that deliberate?
ASKLUND That's just Pest's approach.
INFERNUS Yeah, yeah. For sure he is, too. He's distinct and intense.
ASKLUND He's nice to work with and very deliberate. It's just the right pitch and the right approach.
I feel like you took the album a little slower, tempo-wise, except for "New Breed" and the first song. Is there a reason?
INFERNUS I would say there is no reason behind it, except for the simple fact that each piece of music demands being performed at its own optimal tempo, the tempo which suits that particular piece best. So we must do our best to do justice to this isolated piece of music.
ASKLUND We're just trying to choose the best tempo for any given part of the song. We're not trying to break any speed limits.
INFERNUS We don't have to prove how fast we are. We are too old to feel we have to prove anything tempo-wise. All we care about is creating good music. It just came naturally. There's a variety of music on this album, also in terms of tempo.
ASKLUND It's so boring when every song is pretty much the same. There's not much true dynamics in metal music, so you need to use the dynamics with tempos and such, and maybe different moods, so there's some movement.
INFERNUS It's the best key to make a non-classic, to be doing blast beats through the whole album, then you create something boring.
Interview by Kory Grow // Photo by Christian Misje
Since 2001, Toronto-based hardcore group Fucked Up have proven to be one of rock's most unpredictable live acts. Bloody foreheads, hairy butt cracks, puddles of vomit—there's very little that's off limits at Fucked Up concerts
, and as a result, more than a few have ended after two or three songs. As exciting as such instability sounds, though, it's also sometimes a shame since the band's gritty punk rock is well worth hearing in more than a few, short blasts. Frontchunk Pink Eyes (Fucked Up's members go by aliases) growls like Fear vocalist Lee Ving with throat cancer; the band's three(!) guitarists—10,000 Marbles, Gulag, and the group's newest edition, Young Governor—build distorted monoliths of noise; bassist Mustard Gas, the group's feminine faction, somehow keeps the momentum going; and drummer Mr. Jo has a harder task—getting the band to stop occasionally.
Fucked Up's latest album, The Chemistry of Common Life (Matador), is a bit of a departure, but not to the point that it will alienate their fans. The album recalls Pink Floyd as much as Pink Flag (the seminal album by post-punks Wire), and some of the songs devolve into psychedelic jams. But knowing Fucked Up, if they've become (slightly) mellower in the studio, they'll likely become something far more threatening live. With that in mind, Revolver caught up with the band members at their label's New York headquarters and asked them to retell stories of their most fucked-up concerts. In the interview setting, the band isn't nearly as intimidating as they are on onstage (they are Canadian, after all); Pink Eyes is even dressed way down in a hip-hop-like tracksuit. But the pictures they paint (indexed below by fucked-uppitude), tell another story.
ANOTHER KICK IN THE WALL (HAMILTON, CANADA)
MUSTARD GAS There's this band called Haymaker from Hamilton, which is just outside of Toronto. They're a heavy band and they tend to bring with them... psychos. Oftentimes they'll light off fireworks inside the clubs. Including the kinds that twirl up from the ground. At the show, they started playing and within a few minutes you hear a crack. Firecrackers are going off. There was a fire that started on a chair.
MR. JO They built a pyre in the middle of the room from all the chairs at the bar. And they were ripping the lighting fixtures out of the wall, which caused an electrical fire to spark up. Everybody was dancing around and shooting roman candles into it to try and ignite it. And the police showed up. And nobody in the band wanted to go out the front door and get confronted by the cops. There's also a side-door exit, but it was locked from the outside. The drummer, who is a huge tank of a guy—he's all muscle—he picks up his drum kit and basically takes the entire thing with two hands and kicks through the wall, Kool-Aid style. Busts open the door and loads into his van and drives off.
MUSTARD GAS Like everyone's running with their amps. Like, "Go! Go!" I remember this huge sense of urgency. It was pretty thrilling.
HEADBANGER'S BULB (TEXAS)
YOUNG GOVERNOR A guy smashed a fluorescent light bulb over his had and shards of it unluckily hit 10,000 Marbles and slit his face. It was the shortest Fucked Up set I've ever seen.
PINK EYES We stopped after that.
YOUNG GOVERNOR It was literally like 45 seconds and they were done.
PINK EYES Luckily, he was OK, so now we can look back and laugh.
LEGENDS OF THE FALL (PITTSBURGH & VANCOUVER)
PINK EYES I climbed up on top of this speaker stack…
YOUNG GOVERNOR And had a nervous breakdown onstage.
PINK EYES I was like, "I can't get off it."
YOUNG GOVERNOR He just lied there like a depresso madman.
PINK EYES I told everyone. I was like, "I'm not coming down. I'm just going to lie up here for a little bit."
YOUNG GOVERNOR And if he tries, he will fall, like in Vancouver. At our last show, he fell off the stage. Before we even hit the first note, he just fucking fell off the stage.
PINK EYES I went to jump on the monitors, because we're so used to playing these festivals with these huge monitors. So I jump on the monitor, and the monitor really can't hold my weight. So as soon as I jump on it, it's over. And the front of the stage wasn't attached to the rest of the stage. So once I started to tip over, I just fell right over into the crowd. Kind of humiliating.
REVOLVER Do fans typically catch you?
PINK EYES Because of my size, I'm surprised at how ready people are. When we played at Leeds and Reading, the front row is full of people literally about a third of my size. And they carried me around.
MUSTARD GAS They held him at shoulder-height.
PINK EYES It was insane. I've never been crowdsurfing like that before.
MR. JO That was like Iggy Pop in Detroit in 1970.
PINK EYES If Iggy had eaten a hundred years of Big Macs.
BLOOD, SWEAT, AND BEERS (CALGARY)
PINK EYES Somebody handed me a pint glass and I smashed it into my head. And as soon as I did, I was like, Fuck, something went wrong.
MR. JO I just look over, and it's like gushing.
PINK EYES Yeah, blood ended up getting everywhere. So I wrapped my head up and we played two more songs and I went to the hospital. We had three more left in the set list. And I went to the walk-in clinic. I still have glass in my forehead, because they didn't get it all out when they stitched me up.
REVOLVER What did the doctor say?
PINK EYES They were like, "How did this happen?" I'm like, "Funny story. I was walking to the bar after our set and I tripped and turned around and someone hit a pint glass into my head." You don't want to say, "Oh, I smashed a pint glass," because they'll put you in an institution.
ROOM WITH A SPEW (BOSTON)
YOUNG GOVERNOR I used to puke at every show we played. Just from adrenaline. And I guess I forgot, and I ate a bunch of chili fries once. And as soon as we started playing, I just started puking them up all over the stage. At every corner on every side. And people were stage-diving, and obviously the band is trying to get into it. And it just smelled so bad. And everyone's tripping in puke. Our guitar players are slipping, and one guitar player slipped in the puke and actually puked himself. [All laugh] It was completely disgusting. And then shortly after, we played a show and I puked again onstage. But I puked in someone's mouth. Some kid was singing along, and he got a mouthful of puke. And after the show, I was like, "Yo, I'm sorry I puked in your mouth." He was like, "No, it was amazing. It made me go crazy. I loved it."
RAINING BLOOD (MTV)
PINK EYES When we played on MTV, I must have hit a vein. There was so much blood. I've never bled like that. And kids were passing the mic, singing along, and I was bleeding into their mouths as they were singing along. I've been tested and everything, but it was still pretty fucked up to see.
Interview by Kory Grow
In 2003, to help them expand beyond the hatred, disgust, and total metal overload they had captured with producer Ross Robinson over their first two albums, Slipknot recruited studio guru Rick Rubin, who had previously worked with everyone from Slayer to Johnny Cash. The result, the following year's Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), is undeniably vicious and creepy, but also features enough mid-paced hooks and vocal harmonies to bring the band closer to the mainstream. It's still far from conventional or comfortable, however: Even unrepentantly radio-friendly numbers like "Vermilion Pt. 2" and "Duality" are filled with experimental touches and undeniable darkness. Below, the band members look back at the personal chaos and creative conflict that surrounded the making of the album.
JOEY JORDISON Me and Paul demoed a bunch of songs. I flew down to Los Angeles and arrived expecting to practice. I walk in and Corey says, "No, I'm going to the Rainbow [Bar & Grill, the famous L.A. rock-and-roll hangout]." And Shawn says, "No, I'm working on something else." I'm like, "What the fuck?! We're not fuckin' jamming?" So I go get a bottle of Jack Daniel's and drink myself into oblivion. Then I wake up at 3 o'clock the next day and say, "Right, let's jam," and no one wants to. It took us three fuckin' months before everyone came together.
COREY TAYLOR For the most part, I pushed everybody away. I would drink all day and then go to the bar at night. I was the quintessential lead singer. You were gonna cater to my ego and tell me everything was great. And that's so not who I am. Honestly. I never wanted to be like that. I would keep a bottle of Jack next to my fucking bed every day. Instead of figuring out why I was upset, I just drowned in it. I was cheating on my girl at the time—didn't give a shit. I just wanted to feel something other than terrible.
SID WILSON Like some of the other guys, I went through some relationship problems and started drinking and smoking reefer really heavily, nonstop all day to deal with the depression. I'd stay up for three days straight. Then I'd pass out for a day and continue the cycle until I realized a year later that there's a lot worse things than being on the pity pot. I started playing piano and that was a good release for me—getting rid of the depression through the keys.
PAUL GRAY I wrote a bunch of stuff—like I do every record—but I would spend half the time in the bathroom doing drugs. I'd try to play and I'd fall out of my chair a couple times and fall asleep in the middle of tracking a fucking song. It was pretty bad. I was severely depressed because, after Iowa, we were sick of each other and there was so much hate going around. I didn't feel that way. I wasn't mad at anybody, but everyone else was. And I kind of felt like, Oh, fuck, my family is moving away from each other. I thought the band might break up. I was like, What would I do? This has been the best thing that ever happened to me. I've never wanted to leave this. I'd hear someone say, "Fuck it, I'm quitting. I'm out," and that would fuckin' freak me out. I'd be like, Fuck, what are we gonna do now? Those problems always worked themselves out, but I'd dig myself in deeper holes. And then finally, all that had to stop or I knew I was gonna die. But once you get to a certain point, it's fuckin' so hard going through withdrawal. It's so bad. It's not that you don't want to quit. You just can't.
TAYLOR I was out of control for a while. One night, I was throwing shot glasses at people all night at the Rainbow. They were on the verge of banning me, and I had no idea I was so fucking out of it. We left and I was running down the street with my friend. We get to the corner of Sunset and Larrabee, right across the street from the Viper Room. And we see a big beeper-shop window, and my friend goes, "Man, I bet you could put your foot right through that." So I said, "Yeah?" Crash! Kicked it wide open. It was like slo-mo. I turned around and a cop was sitting at the stoplight. And I just wandered over and put my hands on the fucking hood. I've got black makeup running down my face. I'm barely dressed. I am fucking 200 pounds and I don't give a shit about anything. So they cuff me and sit me in front of the Viper Room and all these Hollywood people are coming up and laughing at me. I started spitting at them. The cop's laughing but trying to keep me from doing it. They took me to the station and all I wanted to do was piss. So I kept making them take me to the bathroom, which was delaying my fingerprinting process. In that time, my buddy managed to work out a deal with the owners of the beeper shop that if I paid for the window right away, they wouldn't press charges. So I'm just about to be processed, I'm on the verge of L.A. County fucking Jail and they get the call, help me put my clothes back on—because I was getting in the orange suit. I stumble across Sunset with a fistful of gnarly money and I drunkenly slur an apology. I go back home and pass out and I wake up and go, Oh my God, what the fuck just happened?
JIM ROOT I was in a horrible state of mind. I would lock myself in my bedroom because I couldn't handle talking to anybody. I had panic attacks so bad my entire body would shut down and I had to isolate myself. We had just come off tour with Stone Sour. All of a sudden we gotta do Subliminal Verses and I gotta be around these people I haven't talked to for a nearly two years. I had stopped doing drugs, I had stopped drinking, but my head was so fucked up that I saw a psychiatrist to help me cope. I would pick up on things that weren't even real and turn them into something that it wasn't. I was so inwardly focused I thought everything was about me. If Joey and Clown were talking, all of a sudden, in my head, they'd be talking shit about me.
SHAWN "CLOWN" CRAHAN Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) was all about healing. Rick Rubin sat us down and we talked things out. I heard stuff from the other members I don't care to repeat. I gained a couple friends. I might have created a couple enemies. I knew where I stood with everybody. And since we were rebuilding friendships, it was real easy to rebuild the innovation of our music. We took some chances, but it wasn't like someone was guiding us. These are things we'd been wanting to do. Listen to that fucking record. It's spiritual. I love it even though I still didn't get what I felt I needed as an artist. I was like, "I need to create." They said, "You ain't creating." I went to Rick and he said, "Why don't you have a Pro Tools rig down there?" Next thing I know, dude's in my room with the gear, and we wrote the song "Danger—Keep Away" and it got cut in half. The whole song is on the digipack [special edition] with my vocals and the music I was trying to do. The best way to describe it is salvation and rejoicing in working again. It's like being an alcoholic and saying, "I need to get help." We knew we were gonna rebuild and we did.
MICK THOMSON Rick helped open a dialogue. People don't just walk up and spill their guts and then say, "I'm sorry." Rick was good at getting us all talking. He recognized he needed to take charge of the situation and it was like, "Good, now that that's behind us, let's write some fuckin' music and get back to being friends."
TAYLOR I wouldn't know what it's like to work with Rick Rubin. I only saw him about four times. Rick Rubin is a nice man. He's done a lot of good for a lot of people. He didn't do anything for me. I'm not happy with the vocals on that record. I didn't get a lot of say in anything. There were a lot of takes that I thought were much better than the ones they used. It sounds amazing, the songs are great. My performances could have been so much fucking better. And part of is my fault. I was coming out of a booze-induced coma. But I wasn't asked about a lot of shit. My melodic vocals sound very cool, my heavy vocals don't sound that great. And I regret that Rubin just wasn't there. He had eight different projects going on at the time. We were being charged horrendous amounts of money. And for me, if you're going to produce something, you're fucking there. I don't give a shit who you are.
ROOT As dark as that [time was for me], it was really amazing how attentive Rick Rubin was to us as a band. He knew I was going through a hard time. I never told him, but I got a knock on my bedroom door, and his assistant came up and he had this herbal calming drop that you put on your tongue to mellow out. A lot of the guys in the band say Rick was unavailable. And, yeah, he takes on a lot of projects at one time, but he also does things that are beneficial. He was listening and having us retrack things that needed work. He's kind of like Big Brother up on the hill. Even though he wasn't there physically every day, he was. And that's my favorite record we've done. We tried some things that were different and took some chances and they came out great. I was hoping we'd be able to evolve from that. I'm not sure that we have.
THOMSON People always say, "Oh, that record was so different. Did you want to do something more experimental or more melodic?" No, shit just happens, and at that point that's what came out. There's no rules. Our musical scope is very vast. Do you think the only thing the fucking nine of us can do is what you hear when we're together as Slipknot? We're all musicians. We can pretty much play everything. Can we play Texas blues? Of course we can. Am I gonna put that on the record? Fuck no, it doesn't fit. I don't understand people who go, "Oh, I love Metallica so I'll only listen to them." Metallica would tell you that's the stupidest thing you could ever fucking do. The shit Metallica listen to doesn't sound anything like Metallica. But shit, I can hear a cello piece and be inspired and then write something ridiculously brutal. It's just something that moves me to want to create something else.
TAYLOR We were in the studio three months and I hadn't laid down a stitch of vocals that I could call good. I was just so frustrated I was about quit the band. I was on the phone buying a plane ticket. It took Clown to talk me down. He said, "Look, we're gonna figure this out." Clown has always been kind of a father figure for me in a weird way even though we're only four years apart. I was going through a constant cycle of abuse and it culminated with me at the Hyatt on Sunset almost jumping out of an eighth-story window. If my buddy Tommy and my wife hadn't been there [to talk me down], I'd be dead. The next day I quit drinking for three years until me and my wife split up. I had such clarity in those three years because I had nothing to hide behind, and it took that sobriety to realize that my relationship was not for me. We had done too much damage to each other, and as much as we cared about each other, we were such gnarly personalities. I listen to Vol. 3 now and it's harder to listen to for me than Iowa because of what I went through.
GRAY I ended up going to rehab halfway through Vol. 3. It was down the street from where we were doing the record. The band had an intervention on me. Going through rehab kept me good for a little while and then we got back out on the road and I just knew too many people and I started using a lot again. I had some near-death experiences—nothing I'm gonna go into any detail about. And I had a few more stints of rehab here and there. I got left in rehab at the end of the arena tour with Shadows Fall and Lamb of God. It was the same place Lindsay Lohan went. I missed the last six shows of the tour. All of our techs can play guitar and bass and they all learned the songs and filled in for me. And that's when I really started going, Fuck, I need to figure my shit out.
CRAHAN My favorite part of touring [for Vol. 3] was the arena tour, and that got cut short for me because of my wife's Crohn's disease. I had to take her places, and then get my own bus. It came right out of my fucking pocket. I almost lost her a couple times. And in the end, I lost my old man and that shaped me into who I am today. I'm a Jedi that is on a new path that is in the dark forest. I finally got my wings and now they're putting me on a path that I've never seen and it's the final phase.
ROOT There were times I wanted to pull my credit card out and book myself a flight home. When we were in Europe, I called up the airline and priced out a one-way flight from Paris to Des Moines. All I had to do was give them my credit card number. And I just couldn't do it. I had to see it through. And then the next day I took one of my custom Fenders and started writing all over it with a Sharpie. I wrote down the airfare from France to Des Moines. And I wrote "The Go-Homeacaster" on it and "Fuck this," "Fuck this band," and "Fuck all these assholes." But I finally realized that all the guys in the band were there for me, I just didn't see it. So over the next couple years, I started to clean my act up slowly but surely, and it took me until Ozzfest 2004 to figure it out.
TAYLOR At Christmas 2004, I had $2,000 in the bank. It's hard for me to talk about. Dude, we got fucked by our old management so bad. We were young, we were really stupid, and we were duped. We thought that people were looking out for us and they weren't. But by the time we got to Vol. 3, we had found our current manager, Cory Brennan. He had worked at Roadrunner and been around since the beginning. The guy is so savvy and so together and, because we all knew him, we believed in him. He helped us get focused again and find that passion. He helped us realize, "Fuck, dude, we're in Slipknot! We're the biggest fucking band on the goddamn planet." And that gave us confidence and maybe helped us rally for one another on Vol. 3. It showed me that everybody in the band wasn't against me. We were there for each other. But really, we were rebuilding bridges for the whole first year of the Vol. 3 tour cycle. And it took us a long fucking time to get to that point where we healed a lot of wounds.
With their ten-times platinum 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park fast established themselves as the voice of a new millennium. The Agoura Hills, California, sextet pounded out a Grammy-nominated mix of hip-hop, hard rock, and alt-metal that featured both the heartfelt rhymes of rapper Mike Shinoda and the impassioned screams of a gangly, tattooed Phoenix transplant named Chester Bennington. Linkin Park's follow-up, Meteora and Collision Course, collaboration with rap luminary Jay-Z also moved units in the millions. The group continued to explore new musical directions with their most recent full-length, 2007's Rick Rubin–produced Minutes to Midnight (Machine Shop/Warner Bros.), an album on which the band focused on a more traditional rock sound, and Bennington, perhaps ready to move beyond his adolescent angst, wrote more than a few songs about current events, like "The Little Things Give You Away," which condemned the way the government handled Hurricane Katrina.
Bennington doesn't just talk the talk: He and his bandmates have their own charitable organization, Music for Relief, which has helped victims of natural disasters including Katrina. Considering such altruistic inclinations, perhaps it's no surprise that the down-to-earth Linkin Park frontman was happy to answer your questions.
Why the dramatic change of sound between the first two albums and Minutes to Midnight?
—Christopher Gibson
We're a bunch of guys who don't like to be pigeonholed. When we released Hybrid Theory, people immediately started pigeonholing us as a nu-metal band. Right away we started rebelling against that. When we made Meteora, the success of Hybrid Theory was so overwhelming and powerful that it gave the record company a lot of weight to push us to make the same record again. Their whole thing was just because you had a successful first record doesn't mean you'll have a successful second album. So we kind of felt that pressure like that's what we had to do, not only from our label but also from our fans, too, in a certain way. So we basically made Hybrid Theory, Volume 2.
And we were pegged as nu metal, which isn't bad, but that's not all we do. That's something that we've been trying to prove to people by doing things like Collision Course and by writing songs like "In the End," "Numb," and "Breaking the Habit." So, with this record, we really felt like we'd been successful with not only our records but also our side projects. And so we had the power this time around, the same power we had before we got signed, which is the power to make music that we like, not that everyone else likes and wants us to make. But it's important to us, too, that we make music that's good and hopefully a lot of people will like. We just went with "These are the best songs, let's figure out which order they go in to give the record the right flow."
You broke your wrist while giving a concert in Melbourne, Australia, in 2007. What was your motivation to keep going?
—Kareen Vazquez
My motivation was that I knew it hurt and I knew it was broken, but was it something I needed to have checked out right away? That's the only thing that's gonna ever make me not do a show, if it's something that just can't wait. It was broken, and I knew it was gonna be just as broken in an hour. It wasn't going to kill me, and I could sing and I could concentrate, and it was tolerable. We're not in Australia very often, so it really would have bummed a lot of people out.
When will your solo project, Dead by Sunrise, be released?
—Matthew Cole
That's a really good question, because it all depends on what Linkin Park is doing and what [L.A.-based electronica duo] Julien-K is doing, because I'm in Linkin Park and the rest of the band is Julien-K. It's kind of a nice place to be, because it gives us a lot of time to sit on our material and make sure we really feel passionate about it after long periods of time.
What is the craziest thing a fan has ever done?
—Rebecca L.
Probably hack into my email accounts and my telephone accounts and try to take over and create new PayPal accounts in my name. And eventually sit in front of my house and stake out all of the movements of the people that lived in my home, and make files of the people that are closest to me through my telephone calls, whether it was family members or friends or business associates, and routinely check up on me. They caught her—mind you, she's now going to be sentenced and probably do some prison time. When they raided her office at her work, she had something like over 300 copies of my telephone bill, and on her computer it showed that throughout her workday, she was on her computer at work looking at my shit. So all my emails would be routed to her. She would go through my emails and read them and then send the ones she thought I would need, and then get rid of the other ones. She also had like shrines of myself and Linkin Park in her house. They confiscated over 800 pictures off of her walls. So, that was not cool. Needless to say, that unfortunate situation and a couple other unfortunate situations have made me and the rest of the band a little more guarded when it comes to fans.
I think you are really good looking. Tell me something about yourself that will make me stop swooning over you. A gross habit maybe?
—Sarah Gee
My wife is sitting with me and she said that I can't do it because I'm perfect. Here is something that's pretty awesome: I have four boys. I like to pin them down and fart on them as often as possible. It's one of those fun things you can do with little boys and not little girls.
I love all of your tattoos. What is your next one going to be?
—Tiffany Adams
I'm gonna sleeve my right arm… It probably will have something to do with pirate skulls and treasure maps.
Democrat or Republican? Barack or Hillary? McCain or Huckabee?
—Russel DiNaro
I've always been more on the Republican side on a lot of things. I think for a lot of younger people, there's a misconception of what Democrats stand for and what Republicans stand for. For me, it's really a difference of how you're going to run the government, and how big you want your government to be and how much control you want your government to have over you. Mostly Republicans want smaller governments and fewer taxes and basically want to let the people run things on a state-by-state basis and give more freedom of choice to the majority of people. Democrats like to have lots of committees, to raise taxes. They believe that it boosts the economy and that there are more programs that people can use in a social aspect. It's a little more of a socialist point of view on how the government should be run. Obviously, George W. Bush is just a complete maniac. I have to say, I'm not really too excited about my choices as far as Republicans go in this round. So I will most likely be voting Democrat, which really hurts my feelings. Sometimes change is good, and I think the person I'll be voting for could be an extremely positive motivating force. I don't want to tell anybody who I'm voting for, but it's not gonna be her. [Laughs]
Do you have any songs on previous albums you get annoyed with listening to?
—Cait
I would say "Run Away" from Hybrid Theory is pretty annoying. "Hit the Floor," "Nobody's Listening," those are pretty annoying to me. It's kind of like when you start playing a sport and you see yourself get better, you think you're really good. And you keep practicing, you keep playing, and then you get better and better, and then you look back at a couple of years ago and you're like, Dude, I could totally take that guy now. That's kind of how we feel about some of our songs.
What advice would you give to someone who struggles with depression regularly and feels like just giving up?
—Marla Blaire
I had to have a lot of support from the people that love me to get through all that stuff, and playing music is definitely very therapeutic for me. I get to scream. I get to flail around and do things I couldn't do in a regular public setting. I can't do the things I do onstage hanging out at a club. I would get arrested. If you suffer from really bad depression, that's serious business. A lot of people have a hard time even getting out of bed and functioning, and that's a horrible way to live, and the only way to get through that stuff is with the help of a professional. It's OK to go talk to somebody and take their advice and work on yourself. It's really important.
Do you have any tips on how to make songs feel alive? When I play songs, it feels dim and dull. Yours are like Chuck Norris roundhouse-kicking Hitler and ending wars.
—Manny Pedraza
Well, I think the best way to start doing that is to take songs from other bands that you already enjoy, and look at them like a surgeon. You don't just go in and start cutting people open and figuring out what to do. You gotta dissect things and see how they work before you can go in and start ripping people apart with a scalpel and sewing them back together again. You can hear the same chord progression over and over again all day long on the radio; it's the way they strum it. It's how long each measure takes, whether they're using bridges and pre-choruses, and how those things all tie together. And once you figure out how a song is put together, all of a sudden you're gonna start figuring out if you don't like a part because it's probably not good. If you do like something, there's something special there and you have to capture that.
You're from Phoenix, Arizona, and I just moved here about four years ago. How the hell do you get used to the heat?
—Segui
Well, I guess you don't notice it very much when you're born in hell. It's amazing because I have no idea how people live there. It's nice for a couple of months out of the year, and then for seven months it's excruciatingly hot. Most people will never experience 120 degrees with no humidity, when you get in your car and it's 160 degrees, and you drive and you roll your window down and it's just blowing hot air. It's like you have a giant hairdryer on high at, like, 240 degrees just blasting you in the face. Then you go into a building and you have it set to 70 degrees and your testicles shrink into your body cavity. It is the most ridiculous place to live. And that's why I got out. I saw my opportunity: There's a band in L.A. Maybe I can sing with them! I was like, I am out of here.
When Hatebreed vocalist Jamey Jasta came to New York this past February for a press tour to promote his NOLA metal project Kingdom of Sorrow, featuring Down's Kirk Windstein on guitar, we invited the hardcore stalwart into MetalKult's Manhattan headquarters for an exclusive video interview.
In the following clips from that interview, hear touch on a range of topics, including the formation of Kingdom of Sorrow, his guitar contributions to their self-titled debut and how Windstein's singular approach to vocals and guitar is inspiring Jasta to start a whole new generation of "Kirk-worship."
Check out that video below:
[playlist:mk-qa-jameyjasta]
This past January, MetalKult had the opportunity to catch up with Children of Bodom singer/guitarist Alexi Laiho at the winter NAMM convention in Anaheim, California.
Check out the following interview, in which Laiho describes his latest injuries, the inspiration behind Blooddrunk and how he planned to destroy George Lynch at the NAMM ESP shred-off.
Photo by Jimmy Hubbard.
[playlist:mk-qa-cob]
With a resume that includes membership in seminal post-industrial band Swans, collaborations with Neurosis, Byla, and Jesu's Justin K. Broadrick, and a prolific, provocative solo career, it's safe to say that experimental vocalist Jarboe has many stories to tell.
So when she came to New York on January 26, 2008, to play at a show celebrating the work of visual artist Seldon Hunt, which also featured performances by Unearthly Trance, Scott Kelly, James Plotkin, Steve Moore and Inswarm, we jumped at the opportunity to sit down with this enigmatic musician.
In the following interview, the surprisingly affable Jarboe talks candidly about her father's undercover FBI work, the steel-edge drive that allowed her to survive in the male-dominated metal world, as well as her recent work with Broadrick on J2 (The End) and her upcoming solo album featuring Phil Anselmo and Mayhem's Atilla Csihar.
Please enjoy. We sure did.
[playlist:mk-qa-jarboe]
Photo by Jimmy Hubbard.
Before they were creating proto-black metal in Celtic Frost, guitarist/vocalist Tom Gabriel Fischer and bassist Martin Eric Ain were members of seminal blackened thrash outfit Hellhammer. If you're a fan of Celtic Frost, Hellhammer, or extreme metal in general, you should definitely check out Hellhammer's new demo reissue, Demon Entrails (Century Media), which sheds new light on a band that influenced generations of aggressive music.
Active from 1982–1984, Switzerland's Hellhammer released three seminal demos, Satanic Rites, Death Fiend, Triumph of Death, one full-length, Apocalyptic Raids, one seven inch, Buried and Forgotten, as well making appearances on various compilations such as the Metal Massacre series. These early recordings, either by design or by sheer coincidence, sounded far more satanic, hardcore and metal-charged than most of the heavy metal at the time.
In fact, at the time, most mainstream music fans considered Hellhammer's sound to be formless noise. But this didn't stop the group from attracting a rabid cult following throughout the world—a following that would only grow after the group's demise. Even today, the impact of this "formless noise" can be heard in the black, death and thrash metal scenes, as well as in the hardcore and punk worlds.
++EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW++ | |
Listen to Tom Gabriel Fischer talk about Demon Entrails! | |
Right-click the questions below to download each track. | |
What do you remember about recording the Hellhammer demos? | |
Did you have a clear objective when you entered the studio? | |
When did the "myth" of Hellhammer begin? | |
Why are you releasing the Hellhammer demos now? | |
What did the remastering process entail? | |
Will these remastered demos reveal a different side of Hellhammer? | |
Why did the printer object to the Demon Entrails artwork? | |
Now after decades of only being available as low-quality bootlegs, Century Media is presenting Hellhammer's now-legendary first three demos in fine, re-mastered form and deluxe packaging under the title Demon Entrails. The demos contained on this release still sound raw and intense—conjuring up images of three dudes desperately laying down heavy, evil riffs in some cold room under the darkness of a European night—but the new mastering has greatly improved the quality over the bootleg versions (even though the original tapes were lost and what you hear is material taken from copies of the masters, which means there's still a definite necro quality to the music).
January 1983: Steve Warrior, Bruce Day, Tom Gabriel Warrior
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Photo by Andreas Schwarber
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Satanic Rites opens with an experimental-sounding, slowed-down "Intro" that bursts into "Messiah," which fires out of the murk like a hell-bound freight train. From there, it's a heavy ride through highpoints including "Eurynomos" and "Revelations of Doom." The album then closes in a nicely symmetrical fashion with the noisy "Outro." The overall vibe I get from Satanic Rites is one of urgency. I imagine the guy behind the recording console only needed to hit record—this is the sound of a band that was raging and ready to go.
December 1983: Martin Eric Ain, Bruce Day, Tom Gabriel Warrior
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Photo by Martin Kyburz
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The second disc collects the Death Fiend and Triumph of Death demos. Recorded in June 1983, six months after Satanic Rites, Hellhammer have become more confident in the recording process. For evidence, look to the sounds of dirty, black morbidity invading from every corner on "Decapitator" or the creepy Dracula-style organs that lead off the decimating onslaught of "Crucifixion." The hammering doesn't relent until the slow dirge section of "Reaper," only to have the pace quickly restored by the crushing "Death Fiend." The conclusion comes in the form of the breathtaking "Sweet Torment."
Demon Entrails is a crucial document for not only fans of Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, but also for extreme metal fanatics in general. In addition to the bare-bones retail version, Demon Entrails will be released as a deluxe CD media-book and triple gatefold vinyl versions. Both the latter versions will feature lavish artwork, lyrics, essays and photos. Also the word on the street is that German print shop supplying the inner sleeves and LP gatefold cover refused to print them due to the satanic content. Apparently, the extremity of Hellhammer still has the ability to shock and disturb, nearly 30 years after their breakup...and that's just the packaging. — Mike Hill