(Demisery is a two-man death metal project consisting of noted guitar whiz Keith Merrow and his partner in crime, guitarist/vocalist Gord Olson. TheMadIsraeli raved about their 2011 debut album Hive of Misery in his NCS review last November — an album you can stream and buy HERE.  Today, we’re happy to publish his interviews with Demisery’s dynamic duo. In this post, he talks with Gord Olson and  in the immediately preceding post, Keith Merrow.)

Mr. Olson — you have a voice that sounds like a grotesque swamp monster and the shred skills to eviscerate an entire army of demons.  Why ARE you so fucking awesome?

Thank you very much, sir. I can only say that my skills either came to me through many long years of study and practice, or perhaps that creepy guy dressed up as the devil at that Halloween party had something to do with it… As part of a gag, I “sold my soul” to him! (laughs) But of course, that stuff isn’t real though, right? RIGHT???
 

I’m going to start this interview with the same question I asked Keith: How did you and Merrow hook up, why form Demisery, and how do you feel about Hive Of Mutation in retrospect?

Sometime in late 2010, I had stumbled across a couple of Keith’s videos on YouTube, and I was impressed by certain aspects of his sound. Actually, one of the videos I saw was of him doing a guitar cover of a Cannibal Corpse song, which I thought was really cool, so I wrote to him. I was wanting to pick his brain a little bit about his production techniques. I mentioned that I was a huge fan of old-school Death Metal, and sent him a couple of tracks that I was working on at the time. We found out that we had a near identical list of influences and favorite music, and it was kind of a trip to find that we had many other things in common as well, so I guess that was the start of the friendship.

While Keith was working on his “Awaken the Stone King” album, he was sending me some of the new songs to check out, and asked if I wanted to write a solo for one of them. I actually wrote and recorded a solo for “Heart of the Sea Nymph”, but unbeknownst to me, Jeff (Loomis) was already writing one for that spot! So I ended up recording the solo in the song, “Beheading the Manticore”. At that point, we began talking about further collaborations in the future. Fast-forward a few months, after the release of AtSK, Keith was on a break from school, and the band that I was in had just dissolved, so with some free time on our hands, we started writing together, and within just a couple of weeks, we had something like 7 or 8 songs in various stages of completion! So we decided to just go ahead and make a full-length album out of it. And that was the start of Demisery! Looking back, it was a great time, all of our material fit together perfectly, and I think we created a kick-ass, true Death Metal album! I’m very proud of it.
 

What is your story?  You’ve just kind of come out of nowhere.  The most I had heard of you was that BRJ shred contest you were involved in, and now you’ve been propelled to being fairly well known and respected.  How does that feel?

Hmm… Again, it might have had something to do with that party…

No man, it’s been really, really awesome. I’ve been playing and writing music for years around the Calgary scene, but the last couple of years had been pretty quiet for me. Winning that Rico Jr. contest got me quite a lot of exposure, and then this Demisery project has really surprised me with how it has spread so far, in such a short amount of time. I get emails from people all over the world, and I’m constantly blown away by the cool things that people say to me. It’s pretty surreal at times!
 

Do you delve into any other musical projects that aren’t Demisery that publically release material?

In 2010 I was playing lead guitar in a Black/Death band called Malismic, we recorded an EP, but the band dissolved before any official release. I think there are still a few songs on Myspace, if anyone is interested to hear it. I’ve also been working on another full-length album in a project called Ye Goat-Herd Gods. I didn’t write any of the songs, but I performed the vocals and recorded some solos for the album. I’m currently finishing up the mixing and mastering on that one, hopefully it will see the light of day soon; it’s a very cool album! What else, I just recorded guest vocals for a song by a UK tech-death band called Celestial Void. I don’t know yet when that will be coming out. And on top of all that, I have several songs written that I intend to release as solo material when time permits. I’ve been fairly busy as of late…
 

I was left with the impression from various videos and the like that you are the one who did the majority of the awesome shred on this album.  Is that correct?

Actually, Keith and I have almost exactly the same number of solos on the album. Most of my solos do incorporate fast picking or sweeping arpeggios, though. Keith’s funny, he was always telling me that he can’t solo, but clearly, the dude can! He’s just naturally gifted with an ability to write cool melodies and phrases. We kind of pushed each other during the writing of the album; he would write a solo, and I would then feel like the pressure was on me to write something just as killer, and vice-versa. In the end, I think we were both happy with the results!
 

Everyone knows what gear Keith uses, what about you?

Well, one of the things that made the Demisery recording much easier to pull off was the fact that we had virtually the same gear! I’m endorsed by Rico Jr. Guitars, so I have a couple of those that I use. I also use the Axe-FX by Fractal Audio, Toontrack’s Superior Drummer 2, and PreSonus’ Studio One 2 recording software. Those four things supply the majority of my sounds.
 

What top 5 bands are blowing you away right now?

Fleshgod Apocalypse – Agony

Septicflesh – The Great Mass

Entrails – The Tomb Awaits

Vicious Art – Demo 2011

Dark Fortress – Ylem (it`s from 2010, but I just discovered it, and it`s blowing me away!)

And just like I asked Merrow, top 10 death metal albums of all time?

Oh man… That’s such a tough question. I can`t put these in any specific order, so I`ll just list them alphabetically. But honestly, this list would probably change day to day, there are so many great albums that I love…

And this is restricting myself to only one album per band, as well!

Atheist – Unquestionable Presence

Behemoth – Demigod

Carcass – Necroticism

Death – Human

Decapitated – The Negation

Dismember – Indecent and Obscene

Entombed – Clandestine

Malevolent Creation – Retribution

Morbid Angel – Covenant

Pestilence – Testimony of the Ancients

Bah! I`ll never be happy with a list of only 10 albums…
 

What do you think of djent?  The scene, the style and the developments it’s been undergoing?

I’m honestly not familiar enough with the style to say much about it…
 

Will we see more Demisery carnage in the future?

Absolutely! We both have other projects to finish up first though, but plans are already being made for the next release, and I guarantee you, it will be crushing!
 

It was awesome interviewing you man!  Keep up the brutality full force.

Thanks, MadIsraeli, for having me! Much appreciation!

(Demisery is a two-man death metal project consisting of noted guitar whiz Keith Merrow and his partner in crime, guitarist/vocalist Gord Olson. TheMadIsraeli raved about their 2011 debut album Hive of Misery in his NCS review last November — an album you can stream and buy HERE.  Today, we’re happy to publish his interviews with Demisery’s dynamic duo. In this post, he talks with Keith Merrow and  in the next post, Gord Olson.)

This is so fucking cool to be doing an interview with you.  How are you today fine sir?

Hey thanks man, things are fantastic right now. Happy to chat with you!
 

Alright, so let’s get to the nitty gritty here.  How did you and Gord hook up, why form Demisery, and how do you feel about Hive Of Mutation in retrospect?

I met Gord a couple years ago. He had emailed me for some production tips, and I ended up doing a Skype lesson for him. We just basically hit it off after talking about our musical influences, and found that we had so much in common, musically. We’ve talked nearly every day since we met, and he’s just a great guy. He’s a wicked guitar player and has a knack for writing awesome old-school DM. We had talked about doing a collab on a death metal project for a long time. After he sent me a couple riff ideas he had, we basically just dove into it, head first. I’m really happy with how it turned out, in the end. We set out to make a traditional DM album, and that’s just what it is. It was cool to pay homage to our influences.
 

You’ve stated and have told me in conversation that death metal is really where your heart lies.  This is obvious when listening to Demisery, but there is also the solo material you’re known for.  Why is a brutal man such as yourself banking his name on progressive groove metal instead?

I think that there’s a bit of balance going on there. Everything I know, I learned growing up playing DM riffs. I also really enjoy groovy metal. I just play stuff that’s fun on guitar. I still think there’s quite a bit of DM influence, even in the more progressive stuff I like to write. While I’m definitely fond of old death metal, the groovy stuff is just where I ended up finding a more unique sound. The solo stuff feels a lot different to play, and it’s just fun for me.
 

Hive Of Mutation came crashing through the gates announced as an old school death metal album.  I certainly understand, sharing an almost unfair affinity for the bands of old.  Which raises the question, how does Keith Merrow feel about the modern death metal landscape?  Do you even pay much attention?

There are a lot of great, newer bands these days. Almost too many to keep up with! I’m just a fan of all types of metal. I try to enjoy it all. Some of the newer stuff is hard for me to get into, but I can definitely appreciate it. I’m not too picky, really!
 

You recently posted a video of yourself running through new material.  I’m assuming a new Merrow album is in the works, but are there ideas for a next Demisery record floating around already perchance?

Yes and yes. I’m currently working on some solo stuff, and there will undoubtedly be another Demisery record. It was far too much fun to not do it again. I’ve been stockpiling some riffs for both projects.
 

Any plans for you and Gord to make Demisery a live act?

As fun as that would be, I don’t think it’s in the cards. My life has become so chaotic the past couple years with college, that I don’t think I (or my family) could handle it.
 

If you could pick anyone to take the remaining positions to be filled, who would it be?

Bass- Alex Webster, Drums- Gene!
 

Name the 5 bands you think may very well be changing the face of metal right now, or that you at least are digging the shit out of right now.  New or old, doesn’t matter.

Tough question man! The face of metal has changed so many times, it’s hard to even imagine any more game-changers. But, these bands are definitely going places-

Kartikeya - A breath of fresh air to me. I love what they’re doing

Periphery - Great guys, and it’s not hard to see the waves they’re making. It’s been fun to see how far they’ve come, and where they’re headed.

Gojira - I’m just a totally gay fanboi for that band. They’re keeping metal real.

Fleshgod Apocalypse – You’ve all probably heard it… insanity.

Meshuggah – I can’t think of another metal band since maybe Metallica that has spawned so many “inspired” bands.

An essential question for a brutal man.  Top 10 death metal records?

Cannibal Corpse- The Bleeding

Obituary- Cause of Death

Malevolent Creation- Retribution

Deicide- Legion

Morbid Angel- Gateways to Annihilation

Death- Symbolic

Suffocation- Pierced from Within

Carcass- Heartwork

Decapitated- Nihility

Nile- In Their Darkened Shrines

Napalm Death- Harmony Corruption

Entombed- Left Hand Path

Nocturnus- The Key

Pestilence- Consuming Impulse

Hate Eternal- I, Monarch

…I could go on all day. I have way too many favorites!
 

I had an awesome time doing this dude!  Keep us all informed about what’s going on in the Demisery and Merrow camps!

For sure! Thanks a lot for the chat!
 

We’re as proud as a three-balled tomcat to bring you this very special NCS interview, conducted by e-mail. The victim was Sven De Caluwe, the frontman of Aborted, System Divide, and grindcore trio Bent Sea (which also includes Dirk Verbeuren and Devin Townsend). In part because of his well-known demented sense of humor, we decided to tag-team him with an interviewing duo of Andy Synn and Phro — both of whom also wrote reviews for NCS of Aborted’s ass-ripping new album, Global Flatline (here and here), which is out now on Century Media Records.

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Phro: Global Flatline. Holy fuck. This album impregnated my ears, impaled the aural baby with a clothes hanger, and roasted it over an open flame. This album was originally slated for a 2011 release . . . WHY DID IT TAKE SO FUCKING LONG???

We were too busy jerking off for the past 2 years. As you can imagine, the fine art of auto felatio can take up quite some time. In all honesty it took this long because we wanted to take our time to come up with the best album we could and not rush things out like we have on some past records.

Andy: So first off, can you give us some of the themes behind the title Global Flatline? (the less obvious ones I mean, more what it means to you personally).

As you can tell, it deals with the end of man through man. Different probable causes are taken on topics through the album, such as extremists and religion, drug abuse, social apathy and whatever else causes mankind to show its fantastic attributes to the world—and oh yes, let’s not forget feces. The album talks about feces too.

Phro:  Aborted was one of the first death metal bands I got into. (I believe Archaic Abattoir was the album.) I’ve loved all of your albums I’ve gotten so far, even Strychnine.213 which was not all that well received by many in the metal community. Did you go into the studio with that in the back of your mind? Did that prompt the massive line up changes? How do you feel about the album? What is its place in the Aborted oeuvre?

Why thank ya! As far as Strychnine goes, I would say it’s not really a terrible album but it’s not really an Aborted album perhaps. I don’t mind flirtations with more melodic elements and more modern elements as well, but this just took it a step too far, in retrospect, and also toned down the intensity too much. Aborted has always been a band that is to me about intensity and energy, combining brutality with groove, and that record just didn’t have the “rage” other albums had. If that makes sense. The line-up changes didn’t really occur because of the criticism about the album. It was due to clashes of which direction to take, personal issues and just unrealistic expectations from band members.

Andy:  What are some of your personal favourite songs on the record, with regards to their lyrics, etc?

That’s a tough one, but if I had to choose, it would have to be “The Origin of Disease”, “Global Flatline”, “Expurgation Euphoria” and “Fecal Forgery” (the latter for just being fun and catchy haha).

Phro: How much of the lyrics did your wife help you write? Also, how does she feel about songs like “Nailed Through Her Cunt”?

None, and she’s fine with a song that an old guitarist wrote about 11 years ago haha.

Andy:  Speaking of “Nailed Through Her Cunt”, what was the motivation behind re-recording the song?

We actually re-recorded two songs, “Eructations of Carnal Artistry” also got re-done for the occasion. The reason was we wanted to have some cool bonus material, and the album had its 10^th anniversary in 2011, so it seemed like the perfect way to give a tribute to that album and the people that helped to create the album– as well as being a nicer bonus to the fans of the band, instead of some random covers.

Phro:  Any ideas on what to do with bodies after they start rotting? I think I read somewhere that lime doesn’t help much, and I can’t find any acid, so…

Cut it up and sell it to the closest kebab place.

Andy:  How did you hook up with the various guest vocalists?

Well, we went through all the official stages of courtsmanship: sent them flowers, asked their parents if they were cool to go out and shit. That, and since we have all been friends for forever, just sent them an email and they were excited to get involved with this slab of bwootal death metal!

Andy:  And was there anyone you wanted to get but couldn’t?

Scarlett Johansson, but that’s beside the point.

Phro:  I just realized that Aborted has been around since 1995. If Aborted were a human, it’d be allowed to drive, join the military, and get married in the United States. It’d also be about to graduate high school and go to college. Give us some good boozing and drug tips.

Kill yourself, murder the world.

Andy:  Samples have always been a big part of setting the mood and tone for Aborted, so I’d like to know what are your favourite samples off the new record?

Ummm, I think my absolute favorite would have to be the one in “Global Flatline” that really sets the tone: “I’m going to rape your fucking soul”. Hahah it just fits perfectly and is hilarious. Other than that, the samples on “Endstille” worked out pretty creepy, and I always have to smile at the Human Centipede samples on “Fecal Forgery” haha.

Phro:  Have you ever considered some chick flick sound clips in the songs, instead of horror movie stuff? Just to mix things up a little? I think it would have worked well for “Nailed Through Her Cunt”.

It surely would have, and I would have picked What Women Want with Mel Gibson, not only for the irony that it’s with Mel Gibson, but that movie altogether is an abomination to man.

Andy:  How is the new line-up gelling? I’m aware of Ken Bedene for example from his phenomenal drumming with Abigail Williams. He’s a great catch after Dirk was unable to commit the necessary time.

Yeah, I mean Ken has been with us for over two years now, he joined right when Coronary came out. Things have been great, everyone is a great musician and has been working hard to get everything worked out with the record– so here’s to hoping!

Phro: If you were gay, what male celebrity would you stalk, kill and masturbate all over? (I’d go with Brad Pitt, personally.)

Brad Pitt is a good choice, no homo.

Andy:  What does the rest of the year hold for Aborted? I’m looking forward to your UK tour with Decapitated that’s coming up shortly.

The year looks goddamn busy so far! First off, we are going to Brazil with Exhumed in a few weeks, then UK with Decapitated and Neurotic Death Fest, then some headline release shows in Europe, followed by some festivals. After that, we are going to tour the US in April/May, then back to Europe for more festivals, then back to the US, then I am going to shoot myself in the asshole.

Phro:  What’s the best alcohol from Belgium? (Beer or otherwise.) My girlfriend wants to know what the best chocolate in Belgium is, too.

I would go with Delirium Tremens, Leffe and Duvel for beer. Wortegemsen Jenever for liquor and best chocolate is Callebout.

Andy:  People might not be as aware, but you actually do a lot of art/design work for various bands (including Aborted) – is there any work you’re particularly proud of you might want to showcase to our readers?

Umm, well I haven’t been able to do much of that lately due to the busy schedule and my dayjob, but I did  a ton of that stuff through the years. The latest thing I did was Benighted’s Asylum Cave (which turned out great), some merch for The Black Dahlia Murder, Whitechapel, Kataklysm and Neuraxis.

Phro:  Fuck dubstep! (Why?)

Keep that garbage out of my metal.

Andy:  You’ve been instrumental in working with several bands besides Aborted (In-Quest, Leng Tch’e and currently System Divide).  Do you have any other projects lined up or is Aborted simply taking up too much of your time these days (not that that’s a bad thing)?

These days, it’s all Aborted and System Divide. I have a grindcore project with Dirk Verbeuren and Devin Townsend called Bent Sea, and I’m working on another grind project with our ex-bass player JB called Razorgrind.

Phro: Word association time!

Penis . . .? I have one

Tentacles . . .? Sexy

Balls . . .? Big ‘n sweaty

Anus . . .? Poopoo

Cum-covered shitstains . . .? Disturbing

Doctors . . .? Overpriced assholes

Andy:  Last question (from me at least) are there any bands out there you think our readers should check out, or any bands you’re particularly hoping to play with this year?

Yes, check out Benighted, a brutal death metal band from France. They released a killer album last year. Besides that, I really enjoy Dyscarnate and Fleshgod Apocalypse lately.

Phro: I was at a metal show in a really rural area of Japan, wearing an Aborted t-shirt. The singer for one of the bands immediately recognized it and we had a nice, brief chat. Do you think metal can cross international boundaries and bring us all together into one big incestious family? If so, what kind of lube do you all use?

Absolutely, it’s a cultural phenomenon that brings people together, much like love and Britney Spears! No lube, you go raw, doawg!

Phro:  According to Encyclopedia Metallum, you now live in Isreal. How is it? Can I crash at your place if I visit?

It’s pretty cool, pretty warm most of the time, and there is a good sense of social life and partying…If you don’t smell like shit and clean after yourself, sure!

Phro:  Once more, I just have to say that Global Flatline is fucking awesome. Any final comments you’d like to leave us with?

Thank you very much, dear sir! Please buy the album and then kill everyone before killing yourselves, thanks!
 

(Xerath’s 2011 album “II” was one of our favorites last year — check out TheMadIsraeli’s review of it here. Recently, he caught up with the band’s stellar guitarist Owain Williams for this real-time interview conducted via Facebook chat — a conversation to be continued at a later date.)

TheMadIsraeli: Hey Owain, totally random ass question…

Owain: Fire away

TheMadIsraeli: interested in doing an on the spot interview right now?

Owain: I’m game

TheMadIsraeli: Xerath. How did it start and why?

Owain: It was actually the brainchild of Andy Phillips, the old Xerath guitarist. Myself and Michael Pitman were merely there to facilitate his ideas. His vision was to marry classical music to technical heavy metal. All Mike, Rich and I have done (as well as recruiting Chris) is understand and realise that goal and try our hardest to make it our own and achieve it. While Andy’s no longer in the band, I think we were in agreement in the first place about how the band should sound

TheMadIsraeli: And Andy was on “I” and you were on bass at the time. So in a sense you’ve kind of taken the helm of a band you were just assisting along in its goal originally. How does that feel?

Owain:  I was credited as bass/guitar for “I”, so there are some songs that Andy or I would call our own. “Alterra” for instance was all Andy, “Right to Exist” was me, some we played about 50/50 guitar.  We’re such a multi-instrumental band, it’s hard to put a finger on who’s responsible for what anymore. For example I think the first song we ever wrote together was me showing Andy how you could have different tiny Polymeters on drums over different limbs which ended up as “Intrenity”. Rich (vocals) wrote a LOT of riffs on “II”, like “Sworn to Sacrifice” (my favourite!), and Mike (drums) wrote probably the most technical “guitar-wise”, “The Call to Arms”.

TheMadIsraeli: Ah I see. So obviously you were behind Andy’s idea at the time of forming the band, but what made you all decide to continue on with it and soldier on with Xerath after he left? It’s not very often that the originator of a band’s concept leaves and the band continues on with it. And on that note, why did he leave anyway? Odd for someone to be like “I have this really awesome idea” and jump his own ship shortly after it gets going.

Owain: He’s a talented Graphic Designer and programmer. Although it’s fucking alien-speak to me, he wanted a wage and a pension and stuff out of life. Grueling tours didn’t appeal to him, and to be honest I don’t blame him! Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he left, I get to play guitar! Who wants to sleep with the bass player? (Except we got a handsome bass player)

TheMadIsraeli: So why soldier on with Xerath? Is it as simple as “cause orchestral groove metal is a fucking sweet idea”?

Owain: It’s an idea we’re all behind. We wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t second on our agenda. It’s a direction metal has failed to embrace besides Dimmu Borgir! And some others, but we want to do it best.

TheMadIsrael: Orchestral extreme metal is a thing that has started surging as of last year. You had the new Fleshgod Apocalypse, the new Septic Flesh, the debut of Gromth, you guys, is this the future of metal?

Owain:  I wouldn’t like to pigeonhole metal like that! That’s about as silly to me as liking one style of music! Music provides a range of emotions, with metal to me being the aggressive side, but what’s aggression without having a tender side?  I also hope that comes across in Xerath’s music.

TheMadIsraeli: Still, I’m assuming you love seeing that particular development going on…

Owain: Totally! I’m ever so slightly jealous when I see “such and such” is recording with “x” symphony orchestra and we’re stuck with keyboards, but given the big picture I’m all for the progression of music, let alone metal!

TheMadIsraeli: Djent: Bullshit or what is keeping metal interesting right now?

Owain: Hmmmmm, I’m half and half at the moment. There have been 5, maybe 6 djent bands that have offered something new!

TheMadIsraeli: And who would those be?

Owain: Periphery and Tesseract are bands that I’ve been following for (no bullshit) about 6, maybe more, years now!  I remember when I was a bit sore about Tesseract getting Abi in on vocals because I loved Atilla’s style.  I went to the very first Tesseract gig in Reading (or Aldershot, I can’t remember) with Abisola on vocals, and now people are doing impersonations. I greet it with a half-hearted kind of applause, well done, but, couldn’t you have written your own song?  It was all borne of progressive music, it’s just stopped progressing.

TheMadIsraeli: So who else is out there that isn’t Periphery or TesseracT who grabs you? For me I’d have to say Vildhjarta and Uneven Structure, but mostly Uneven Structure because I feel they now do TesseracT’s sound better than they do, or they’ve tweaked it to perfection, rather.

Owain: I don’t think I’ve listened to enough djent. The very first thing I heard of Vildjharta, I thought they were a bad Tesseract, but LOADS of people have told me I need to listen to them more. Also, bands aren’t the same forever, I’m sure they’ve found their own style. Uneven Structure I’ve not listened to.  I’ve heard good things about Februus though!  I don’t really listen to much metal anymore.

TheMadIsraeli: Haha, you’ve apparently only heard Vildhjarta’s old stuff.  I’ll have to throw some shit your way sometime.

Owain: I guess so. Please someone lend me some shit! I only really listen to fusion etc. I’m literally in the middle of a blog about 8-10 (I haven’t decided yet) songs you need to hear.

TheMadIsraeli: Yeah that’s right, you started blogging recently. What prompted that idea?

Owain: That’s a personal thing, I’m just trying to improve myself. I’ve started running 4-5 times a week, I’ve started a business doing corporate logos and websites. I’ve also started forcing myself to write at least a little bit every other day. I’ve been a fat, lazy bastard for too long, even though I’ve been blogging drunk, and that’s almost as bad as drunk dialing!

TheMadIsrael: That’s always good, I’m trying to do the same thing starting this year.  And yeah, blogging drunk is uh… russian roulette with words.  So what do you think about the idea that metal is classical music reincarnated into a modern form?

Owain: I think that’s either a great analogy or a terrible one!  It depends on what you call classical music.  I love Debussy, he is very much what you’d call romantic music.

TheMadIsraeli: Let’s look at more Romantic and Baroque then, I think those are fair comparisons.

Owain: Ok, romantic and baroque are polar opposites.

TheMadIsrael: But I think we have metal bands that embody those contrasts. I look at a great deal of tech death as more baroque whereas looking at old Opeth, that reminds me of a romantic approach.

Owain: While I learned almost all I could ever learn about 4 part (SATB) harmonies from the Bach Chorales, I think it cuts the music community in half.  There is beauty in math…

TheMadIsraeli: Indeed

Owain: And there is beauty in chaos.

TheMadIsraeli: In-fucking-deed

Owain: The listener is the final decision, you have to decide whether you want to be the listener or the math teacher.

TheMadIsraeli: Fair enough answer, Mr Williams.

Owain: =) Dude, can we carry this on tomorrow?

TheMadIsraeli: Haha no problem, are you finding this tiresome?

Owain: To be honest, it’s one of the more interesting interviews I’ve ever had.  As opinionated as I may be, I’m glad you’re pretty much impartial.

TheMadIsraeli: Well, what do you say to publishing what we have thus far and we’ll do a part 2 later?

Owain: Sounds good.

TheMadIsrael: Alright, we’ll focus more on the band and directly related shit then.  I appreciate the time you took to do this A LOT!  I so prefer this to email question lists.

Owain: As long as you don’t make me look like I’m “bashing” Periphery or refusing to acknowledge certain types of music =p

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TheMadIsraeli:  And that’s that folks.  Stayed tuned for part 2 soon.

(In this interview conducted by phone last month, NCS writer BadWolf caught up with Bob Meadows of Philadelphia’s A Life Once Lost, who have a new album in the works — the first since 2007′s Iron Gag. The band played the inaugural Metal Suckfest in New York City last November (reviewed by BadWolf in a two-part feature here and here), and the live photos accompanying this interview except for the one above were taken at that show for NCS by Nicholas Vechery.)

Bob Meadows is angry.

And why shouldn’t he be? As vocalist for A Life Once Lost, it’s part of his job description. More than that, his band has been jerked around within the industry on a near-continual basis for their entire career. It’s a common story, but a tragedy nonetheless. It’s been nearly five years since 2007’s Iron Gag album, and since then A Life Once Lost has gone through innumerable lineup changes.

But all that’s in the past. This year, the Philly bastards will release a new album on Season of Mist. They’ve already done some smaller gigs, as well as played the Metal Suckfest.

So why is Bob so angry? Maybe it’s got something to do with the toxic in-fighting that pulls our great art-form into infamy. It might also have something to do with the youngsters following in Bob’s footsteps. These Djent youngsters owe him some credit as well: A Life Once Lost mixed Meshuggah-like math grooves with melodic hardcore sensibility (before Hot Topic co-opted that sound) over a decade ago.

His views on these and other subjects, after the jump!

BadWolf:  So how’s the new record coming along.

Bob  Meadows of ALOL:  It’s taken three years, one guitarist, one drummer and one bassist to write but it’s finally coming along. We’re all very excited to play some shows, soldier on and get things moving.

How many songs are we looking at?

Around nine at this point. About a half hour or forty minutes—nothing too crazy. The songs have this completely different attitude that I think people responded to in New York City. It sucks that we lost one guitar player, but at the same time it’s kind of cool. Before, each guitar player wrote songs and they traded on and off, so you could hear who wrote which material. This will be our first record with one consistent attitude all the way through.

I was anxious at first when I saw you live and I only saw one man setting up, but from where I was standing you pulled everything off really well. It doesn’t sound like having one guitar has really hurt you live.

Yeah we haven’t missed out on much live as a four-piece. In the past, I think what made us unique was two very complementary guitar sounds, and we might miss that.

Really, it took us up to that show [Suckfest] to fall into step. We did a little four-day run and it was fun but it wasn’t anything to write home about. We just wanted to see what people thought of these tunes. Some people liked it, some people didn’t.

Isn’t that how every release is with an artist.

Well yeah, but you’ll always get these douchebag kids yelling ‘play “Flies”!’ Come on, man. If you haven’t matured past that then you’re wasting your mom and dad’s money and your fifteen minutes of fun. You miss out on originality if you at first glance dismiss something and not give it a chance.

I don’t think you’re going to pull a Morbid Angel by any stretch.

Oh nonono. I’m not ‘gonna be singing, we won’t be an industrial band, that’s for sure! We do have one song that’s just straight pummeling with industrial-style riffs, but it complements us. That song will melt people. The idea of the riff was to pay homage to other influences that we haven’t before—like Ministry.

Does the new record have a title yet?

Not yet, I keep throwing things at walls and they won’t stick.

A little cognitive dissonance?

I’m frustrated. You spend all this time working into a musical scene and so quickly get swept aside in favor of this new wave of bullshit which plagues us. I mean these bands that feel they need keyboards and vocoders and bullshit. They loose touch on what makes them metal, that you couldn’t really understand it. Now all these kids are being forced by independent record labels . . . well labels that pretend to be independent . . . making these bands into pop bullshit they never wanted to be.

I feel like Djent may be the death knell of metalcore because there’s so many preconceived notions about what it should sound like that it stifles people from making any real creative decisions. It’s so homogenous.

It gets tagged back to Meshuggah, but to me all these bands are more poor man’s versions of Fredrik Thordendal’s Special Defects. In my thinking that record was revolutionary and it came out so many years ago. To see people turn around and rip that off all these years later is sort of revolting. Of course we also get compared to Meshuggah, but when we put out A Great Artist back in 2003 we took that band as more of an influence that we blended with other influences like Pantera, Black Sabbath, and Candiria, while these kids blatantly rip just one man’s sound off.

I can like the people. Misha from Periphery is an awesome guy, but I can’t stand his music. It’s too Coheed and Cambria, too Circa Survive. It doesn’t have anything I enjoy in music. I want to like you as a person, not as a guitar player. I’m glad to have had the chance to get to know them—they’re cool dudes, I just dislike their music.

Does that happen often, where professional musicians like one another as people but not one another’s music?

I don’t know. There’s sort of a veil. There is an absurd amount of fake people that sort of salute the scene to this point where . . . I don’t know. You can’t like every band out there. It’s just not possible.

For me, I look for more of a human contact or personality than anything. If I can’t carry on a conversation with you then what’s the point? Maybe your band’s sick as fuck, but I’m 32 years old, after a while that wears thin. But I’m going to be a bit more real to you than some of these fake as fuck people who headbang to everything. You don’t need to kiss my ass!

I’m sorry it has to be that way.

It’s unfortunate but that’s just human nature. There’s always a guy to look out for and that’s usually #1.

This is going to sound cynical, but bear with me. If people didn’t suck, you wouldn’t be making the music you make and I wouldn’t be writing about it.

[laughs]

That’s a good point. We all need shitheads in our lives to enable us to write music. The same with the album—some people will get it, some won’t, but I’ll be doing my job regardless.

It’s cool that you’re still angry enough to write music with a certain conviction. A necessary one, I think. Lyrically, though, what’s the new record about?

It’s always about my relationships with people. Some songs collectively talk to a bunch of different individuals, compared to a song directed at one person. I’ve experienced some crazy things in the past few years that I didn’t really plan on experiencing. I don’t feel as though I bait myself for these events where the outcome is completely out of my control and I feel defenseless and helpless. So I have a lot of revenge-based songs. [laughs] It’s funny that people can come at me on a message board and think that’s it not going to come back to me, but in person act like nothing happened. These people are cowards. I’ve been inspired by a lot of situations like that, lyrically.

The older you get, you see the true colors of people more. I have seen the absolute scum of people and the things they will do to have themselves step up within a scene. Politically, when a group of people hate on one person or thing it becomes more of a clique, more ‘elite,’ and people get off on that. I was in a side project and was kicked out through reading things and hearing things; and the man never said anything to my face. Shit like that shows people for what they’re worth. I’ve sort of lost faith in humanity at this point.

I mean, why put all my eggs in one basket if this is the way you will treat someone you could at one time call a friend? I see no point in it. I don’t have the time for it. I don’t have the patience anymore. I can’t wait to be still doing this at forty years old, and that much more bitter than everyone around me.

Y’know, the night before I saw you at Suckfest, I saw Today is the Day. I have never seen anyone look so pissed as Steve Austin, and he’s got to be 45 or older now. I love bands that age who get more pissed.

Look, if you’re in a metal band you’re not supposed to be happy. You’re not supposed to be funny. You’re not supposed to have stupid song titles. I know I sound like a nazi when I say shit like that, but Metal has always been aggressive. It’s always been the music that you play when you want to take a brick and throw it through your neighbor’s window. I don’t know one true metal singer out there that appreciates life in that way. I don’t enjoy waking up at 5AM to go to work and bust my ass for minimum wage, and I don’t see how someone who does can go onstage and pretend that they’re so fucking happy that they want to laugh and giggle and squat in unison. Fuck you. Get out of my scene.

[laughs]

 You’re so honest—it’s a breath of fresh air.

I’ve done it. My band has been stepped on, alienated, blackmailed, been told that if we don’t take a certain band on tour we’d be dropped, and then dropped anyway. Fuck you, man.  Just be straight up with me.

Is there anyone you still do respect?

I respect my parents! When everyone else sold me short, my family was always there for me. The guys in my band have my respect. I learned you need to give respect to get respect.

So, on Suckfest, I did not one hear one song off Iron Gag. What went into that decision?

Well, as a four piece we had to play within reason. It’s not as if we’re never going to play anything off Iron Gag ever again, but for that set we wanted to be lean, fierce, and pissed. I don’t think Iron Gag was that fierce or that pissed. We played three new songs, three old. We want that new material to fit in with our old material—we’re proud of all of it. Iron Gag is a good record; it has some good songs and sick grooves all over it. And great production. These are all things that have been crossing our minds.

I feel we’ve only just hit our stride a few months ago. The stuff Doug has been writing is consistently above and beyond my expectations.

And Seasons if Mist is putting it out. Any thoughts on your new label?

I was kind of nervous at first, but it grows on you. The label has an amazing metal roster of the sort we’ve never been associated with. Ferret was more of a hipster or hype label.  Deathwish was a hardcore label. Robotic Empire was a punk label. We’ve never had a label full of metal bands. We finally have people working with us that are awesome. Working with Maria Ferrero and her amazing track record is a sudden reassurance. I would say Season of Mist is the European equivalent of Relapse Records, which is good because we’ve never had a European push. Well, Rise Above did some promotion for Iron Gag, but it did nothing for us. So, we’re excited to see how this first record goes. I think our deal is one with an option, so if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. I have a decent feeling that something cool could happen.

Who’s producing?

We’re doing it ourselves. Writing, producing, and recording ourselves. I handle all vocal production—I’ve been working on it two or three days per week. I’ve developed my own thing by working with people like Randy Blythe from Lamb of God and of course Melissa Cross to develop my own ‘thing.’ There will be no guests of any sort on this record, at all. Vocally, I want this to be the record where I really step up to the plate. I’m looking forward to having it done.  There’s going to be lots of layering–a huge influence of ours is bands from the late 60′s, early 70′s. Think psychedelics over pulling, groove-oriented riffs, but you’ll still hear the old A Life Once Lost in there.

We’re shooting to release in the middle of the summer. You’ll get some tidbits around April. We’re going to play some shows, but not over-extend ourselves, at this point. When the record comes out we might hit the road harder.

I think one of our faults in the past is that we were constantly on the road. I think these younger bands don’t understand that. Over-touring hurts a band, you saturate a market, you hit a ceiling.

People want something to look forward to.

It’s not everybody; there are diehards that will be there every show. Diehards make it worth it for the band to come back emotionally, but you hit a point where it doesn’t make sense anymore and you burn out. Being on the road ten or eleven months out of the year doesn’t help unless you’re going overseas or at least crossing some sort of border. Markets are like plants—if you over-water them they die.

 (Rev. Will’s interview series focusing on metal bloggers and metal print journalists continues today with Erik Thomas, one of the founders of Teeth of the Divine.)

Finding a part-time metal writer with a day job that freakin’ deals with the law is like fantasizing about the existence of a zealous Christian pastor who has an obsession with researching about witchcraft—it is just a combination that comes off as extremely unlikely and weird to many. Well, such a weird occurance does exist.

A law enforcer by day, and a metal writer by night, Erik Thomas is not only one of the founders of Teeth Of The Divine (one of the Internet’s leading metal e-zines), but an ex-contributor to the now-defunct Metal Maniacs magazine and a current writer for Hails & Horns magazine as well. He has a family to boot! It’s just so cool when Papa writes about metal, isn’t it?

From his Missouri dwelling, the fervent devourer of traditional Swedish death metal sheds some light on the workings of Teeth Of The Divine and some of the social stigmas of metal—a topic banally discussed on various metal and non-metal news media during the days of yore.

Also, he is one of the last few surviving robots from the same batch as Islander, only with much more than a head missing than our benign NCS editor. Both of them may be old, but check out their cool arm tattoos! A legacy of and testament to their robotic past (perhaps they are cyborgs now), these unique markers were originally meant as identifiers, something very much akin to a barcode. Luckily for them though, they are fashionable statements now that just scream “Hot geezer alert!”.

Rev. Will: “Basically, we’re not re-inventing the wheel. Only making it rounder.” This is stated on the ‘About’ page of Teeth Of The Divine. There are already a ton of online metal publications out there doing the standard reviews-and-interviews format in terms of content, so why this approach?

Erik Thomas: As you stated, there are a ton of publications out there. Webzines are a dime a dozen, and while we may not be truly making the wheel rounder, we like to think we are doing things a little bit different and making reviews and interviews slightly more informative and entertaining.

Rev. Will: Can you tell us how the name “Teeth Of The Divine” was conceived? Is there a meaning behind it?

Erik Thomas: Well, after Digitalmetal.com, the previous iteration of the site, was hacked a few years ago, the decision was made to move on with a new site and name. Myself and the then ‘staff’ of the site Chris Dick (now with Decibel Magazine) and current co-owner Mikko simply brainstormed. We tried to come up with something that was just metalXXXXXXXX or something blatantly metal or cheesy. I actually came up with the name as it seemed metal and had an air of superiority and confidence. Plus, I thought it just sounded damn cool. A lot of people have mentioned it sounds like the UK band, Teeth of the Lions Rule the Divine, but I had not heard of the band until someone mentioned that fact.

Rev. Will: Who made up the founding team, and what was the vision you guys had for Teeth Of The Divine?

Erik Thomas: As I touched on above, the original TOTD team were holdovers from the Digitalmetal.com days, as are some of our current writers. I guess if there were a founding team, it would be Chris Dick, Mikko and I. We determined the layout, style, name and manually transferred a lot of the Digitalmetal.com content to new servers and databases. However, Chris has since moved on to bigger and better things, though we are still in contact. Me and Mikko kept things going at a simple message board until we got the new site up and running. So right now, TOTD is the little baby of Mikko and I. As for the vision, speaking for myself is simple – to bring our love of metal to the masses in a format that’s both informative and entertaining.

Rev. Will: I really like the modern look of the current incarnation of Teeth Of The Divine. In terms of layout design and content quality, how were the early days of the site like compared to now?

Erik Thomas: All the credit for the design goes to Mikko. There really wasn’t much tweaking, the color palette was the first choice, then we just played with the layout. As primarily a reviewer, I wanted the focus to be on content and reviews. But we obviously had to modernize the site’s look and content, and add links to Twitter, Facebook and such. The design phase was actually pretty easy, it was making the move to new servers, getting the domain name and transferring old content that was the biggest pain. [Rev. Will: Dan Grover will agree with this.]

Rev. Will: I won’t go into too much detail about your day job, but as someone whose main career involves law enforcement, what are your views on the rebellious and anarchic themes of metal music in general?

Erik Thomas: I obviously have to keep my day job and my metal lifestyle separate. I try not to get too much into what I do for a living, but as far as the metal aspect goes, it’s easy to make sure those rebellious and anarchistic themes of metal stay in the music aspect of my life. As most metal fans do, you have to compartmentalize, and there are appropriate outlets to share your metal side like message boards and such; It’s just music to me. I can’t get deeply connected or swayed by the stuff I listen to. The stark reality is that the stuff I deal with on a day-to-day basis is much more disturbing than anything I listen too. Where it gets iffy is bands like Arghoslent [Rev. Will: A cult American death metal band from Virginia infamous for their racism and affiliation with white supremacist groups] where it’s such a touchy subject you’ve got to be careful what you say in this day and age of the Internet.

Rev. Will: Do you really think Marilyn Manson’s music has the power to induce high school kids to bring guns to school and initiate a shooting massacre?

Erik Thomas: To some extent yes, but to purely blame any violent acts on music or video games alone is just idiotic. There has to be some responsibility from the parents. I listened to metal my whole life, and like a vast majority of metal fans, I am a normal functioning member of society. Obviously, the bad apples make for a better story and get all the press. However, for someone to blame violence on solely music is insane. The music is the fuel I think, but there are obviously other deeply seeded issues going on that parents, teachers and others missed. I was working in Law Enforcement right after Columbine [Rev. Will: The Columbine High School Massacre, refresh your memory here], and the knee-jerk reaction to anyone listening to Marilyn Manson or wearing a trench coat was ridiculous.

Rev. Will: What about “evil” stuff like black metal? Do you really think it can lead young fans of the genre astray?

Erik Thomas: Again, MOST people have the ability to separate or compartmentalize the music. Listening to Marduk or Darkthrone should not be what dictates an individual’s personal path or how they primarily act. Sure, it’s a part of that person, but anyone who lets music primarily dictate the way they act in society has far deeper issues than music.
 
Rev. Will: Will you encourage your kids to listen to metal?

Erik Thomas: My daughter likes metal. She likes Alestorm, FInntroll, Korpiklaani and a lot of the bouncy, folky happy stuff. Now, as a responsible parent, am I going to force Devourment or Cephalotripsy down her throat? No. I’m going to let her choose her own path and be her own person. If she happens to throw up the horns once in a while to “Keelhauled”, I’ll simply be happy that she’s chosen to like my music. [Rev. Will: In the name of my Future Wife, and of my Future Kid, and of the Lucky Sperm Lying In Wait, Amen.] I’ll certainly never force my child into listening to it. Maybe a gentle nudge though…..

Rev. Will: Do you contribute to any other metal publications?

Erik Thomas: I used to write for Metal Maniacs Magazine and Unrestrained! Magazine, as well as Metal Review, but with the death of those two print publications and my recent departure from Metal Review, my focus is on Teeth Of The Divine. I do a little here and there for Hails & Horns, but with work and family, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to be contributing to more publications.

Rev. Will: Wow, so you contribute to Hails & Horns magazine. How did you get your stint there?

Erik Thomas: Gosh, I can’t remember how that came about. I think a fellow metal journalist wrote there and he either gave them my name and they approached me or he told me to approach them. I can’t remember which.

Rev. Will: Do you actually need the money you earn from them?

Erik Thomas: I haven’t earned any money from writing for a long time now—not since the Metal Maniacs and Unrestrained! days.

Rev. Will: Did you start out in Law Enforcement or metal writer first?

Erik Thomas: Well, considering I was into metal way back in 1989 when I was 15 or 16, I’d say metal came way before my career.

Rev. Will: As Teeth Of The Divine is largely a serious metal website, does it receive any hate mail at all?

Erik Thomas: Well, we try not to intentionally prod or antagonize our readership or the bands; whereas, say, Teufel’s Tomb (an awesome site) has a niche for really laying into bands with some great insulting humour (a fact still lost on many readers of that site), we don’t do that. I can’t really say that I used to get hate mail in the early Digitalmetal days, but now, with Facebook and ‘Comment’ sections, readers vent there. Either way, you’ve got to have thick skin, which was something I didn’t have early on in writing.

Rev. Will: Will you ever want to expand Teeth Of The Divine into a more opinionated blogging type of metal website like MetalSucks?

Erik Thomas: I doubt it. Other sites can do that and they do it well. I think we will stick to informative reviews and features.

Rev. Will: What about sponsoring tours?

Erik Thomas: DIgitalmetal sponsored a Sounds of the Underground tour way back in the day. We have not yet been approached about sponsoring a tour, but depending on what it will entail, I’m sure we could be up for it. TOTD isn’t really a business venture or a money-maker—it’s just a webzine where people who love metal can come together and read some reviews or interviews without a ton of bullshit.

Rev. Will: Who did Teeth Of The Divine’s logo? Were you the one who came up with the concept of the final art though?

Erik Thomas: The logo was by a TOTD reader called Brandon Duncan, and he did an excellent job. He came up with the idea, and I just had him tweak the teeth a little. His other work can be found at his website: http://corporatedemon.com/

Rev. Will: The first most unique aspect of Teeth Of The Divine is the very noticeable lack of advertisements. Is it because advertising charges are high, or is it just the website’s policy to not run more than 1 advert at the same time?

Erik Thomas: That’s really two-fold: Firstly, we are pretty lazy and new at this whole owning-a-website deal, so we really don’t do as much aggressive advertising as we should. We got some banners to help pay for a recent server upgrade, but that’s about it. We don’t get banners to pay ourselves or staff. Like I said, we are a hobby, not a business. But if anyone does want to advertise with us, feel free to inquire at ads [ at ] teethofthedivine.com and talk.

Rev. Will: The next most unique and noticeable trait is that all the interview articles are accompanied by a custom-made image. Combine this with the clean look of the site’s light sepia background and the interview articles really read like actual interview articles featured in print magazines. Was this the effect you desired for all along?

Erik Thomas: Errr, sure. That was the whole idea all along, to be as professional-looking as a print magazine. It wasn’t sheer luck at all……

Rev. Will: So who’s the graphic designer who does all those interview graphics?

Erik Thomas: I kid, Mikko is our graphic designer and he’s the one who is responsible for all the graphics you see accompanying those interviews and features. He whips them up quickly too. Honestly, the site wouldn’t be what it is or exist without his help getting the thing going and his continued assistance with graphics. I don’t know anything about designing graphics or Photoshop, so his input is invaluable. Now, if only I could get him to write more—he’s really gifted at reviewing, but doesn’t get the time to write as much as myself.

Rev. Will: Another unique feature is that the reviews don’t have any numbers or symbols used to rate the album that is being reviewed. Do you eschew this standard feature of album reviews in order to make readers focus on the words to understand the writer’s opinion on an album rather than to make a quick judgment on the album based on superficial numbers? Or is it because you simply think that mere numbers alone cannot determine the worth of any music and just see no point in putting them at the bottom of Teeth Of The Divine’s reviews?

Erik Thomas: That’s a holdover from the Chris Dick/Digitalmetal days, and trust me, it’s been discussed to death at both sites. Some of the other publications I have written for have scores, such as Metal Review, and it’s always a point of contention. Having done both, I feel that assigning scores either detracts from the content of the review or simply seems like an over-simplified reflection of the music. My 10 isn’t going to be a reader’s 10, so we want the reader to read the review and get more insight other than a simple figure. Plus, assigning a score can be stressful, and it often gets the brunt of the readership’s ire if they don’t agree.

Rev. Will: Do you set a high benchmark for potential newcomers to the staff roster of Teeth Of The Divine?

Erik Thomas: It depends, really. We like to try to keep our reviews a cut above the rest, but the reality is that it is hard to find quality writers who will stick around for no pay other than free music (not even CDs anymore, as it’s all digital promos now) and their name online. I try to keep a very high standard, but the reality is that we need content pushed out, and sometimes, the handful of super high quality writers aren’t as productive as I’d like; but that’s the price you pay for having quality writers. So often, you compensate with writers that might not be as top notch, but are more productive and consistent with regular output. Though to be honest, those guys don’t last long; finding and keeping quality, consistent and regular writers is one of the hardest aspects.

Rev. Will: Teeth Of The Divine has such a clean and professional look that it is practically an e-zine in every sense of the word. Hence, will you ever consider turning it into a print magazine someday?

Erik Thomas: It’s been casually discussed as perhaps releasing a TOTD compilation CD or financed label of sorts, but again, none of us are businessmen and we are in it for the love of metal, not to make money or be a company or brand.

Rev. Will: In fact, Teeth Of The Divine is based in Philadelphia, the birthplace and home of North America’s leading extreme metal magazine, Decibel. Haven’t you ever considered collaborating with Decibel magazine on anything at all?

Erik Thomas: As I stated earlier, Chris Dick, the founder of Digitalmetal now works for Decibel. I’d be up for any sort of collaboration that got our name out there, but again, Decibel is a money-making magazine. We are just a little ol’ webzine—I doubt they’d be interested in dealing with small fish like us. Bastards.

Rev. Will: Do you think that it is absurd for metal websites and blogs to have their own line of merchandise? Where can fans get their hands on Teeth Of The Divine shirts?

Erik Thomas: No, it is not ridiculous—it’s up to each site/blog. We have  a limited number of TOTD shirts, but they are for staff and maybe a contest in the future at some point. They are rare collector’s items.

Rev. Will: Here’s the staple question of this column. I have always thought of the metal music industry as a food chain starting with the rockstar/cult figure at the top, followed by record labels, then the press, the gig organizers, and then the merch retailers and metal stores all over the world. Do you agree with this view that the metal community is simply not as anti-establishment and homey as many prominent figures in the industry like to frequently make it out to be (with their politically correct stances)?

Erik Thomas: Yeah, metal is much more of a corporate business than it would have you believe. But the top of the food chain for me is the fans. Without the fans, there’d be nothing.

Rev. Will: How do you feel about bands and musicians who bash reviewers who give them bad reviews?

Erik Thomas: It’s fair game and it’s a two-way street. If you are willing to make music and put it out there for  self-absorbed, opinionated pricks like me and thousands of fans to listen, it’s fair game—and be ready for the opinion. By the same token, if I’m willing to put my name on an opinion and put it out there for fans to read, I have to be willing to take flak for it too. Musicians pour their heart into their work, and it’s understandable that they would get upset if someone pisses all over it. However, you can’t send hate mail to a reviewer who simply doesn’t like your product—there are plenty [of reviewers] that do, so focus on them.

Rev. Will: Interview articles typically follow a standard Q&A format (like this one) or a narrative one with quotes from the interviewee being injected in between the interviewer’s own passages. Do you think that there are any other ways to spruce up the interview format and make it less rigid?

Erik Thomas: Metal Maniacs used to have the narrative format rather than a Q & A, but it was a pain to write; especially since the phone or email interview is in a Q & A format. I don’t know how else you would do interviews to make them different. Semaphore? Smoke signals? It’s a tried-and-true format that gets to the goal of the matter, no need to mess with it.

Rev. Will: Who are your favorite interviewees thus far?

Erik Thomas: Gosh, there have been so many. I’m always surprised how nice, well-spoken and intelligent these guys are when not behind a mic.

Rev. Will: You seem to be a sucker for dirty-sounding, old school death metal. What are the best labels for such music at the moment?

Erik Thomas: Right now, Dark Descent Records, FDA Rekotz and Pulverised Records are kicking out the best stuff as far as old school death metal that imbues the classic Stockholm Sound goes.

Rev. Will: Why should people read Teeth Of The Divine?

Erik Thomas: I don’t have a big sales pitch, but for honest, intelligent, (mostly) in-depth reviews and interview that aren’t about getting traffic, making money, or being better than you or getting headlines, give us a try. I mean, why not?

********

Get judged by the supremely self-righteous pricks at:

Teeth Of The Divine

(DemiGodRaven reappears to tarnish our metal cred with this interview, though I admit that it’s a very interesting read about a very interesting musician. The music turns out to be cool, too)

Back when The Number of the Blog was still a website I was very luck to receive the opportunity to pick the brains of five or six of my favorite musicians all within the same month. I drafted a variety of interview questions for each of them and, surprisingly, about half came back with responses, which is always an incredible thing to me. However, two or three never responded, for whatever reason. The musician got busy, something happened in the press pipeline, and you can’t really blame anyone for it. You just chalk it up as a loss and move on. The fact that TNOTB went down didn’t help either.

However, while combing through messages to the old email address (don’t ask me why, it just bothers the shit out of me seeing 200 Unread on the inbox), I came across a response from electronica musician Blue Stahli (featured here as recently as yesterday), who was one of the interviewees I had originally chalked up as a loss. Somehow, my old interview had been recovered and a response received over the vast reaches of time. I didn’t have the old site at which to publish this, though, which is why you’re now looking at it on NoCleanSinging’s page. So, I introduce you to electronica musician Blue Stahli.

Blue Stahli is a project that has been gaining steady momentum since 2008. A then-recent signee to the Fixt music label, he immediately buried himself headlong in a variety of projects, including an instrumental disc known as Antisleep Vol.1 (Vol.2 saw release in late December), a self-titled debut that our own GroverXIII listed as one of his pleasures in 2011 (here), and a variety of amazing remixes . . . many of which have been used as the backing to movie trailers.

In addition to being certifiably insane, Mr. Stahli is a pretty amicable guy, so even though some of the questions must have seemed like head-scratchers to him at the time, he still tried to answer them the best he could. Even better, I may have triggered the next Fixt Remix contest.

DGR: Before we begin, could you please introduce yourself so that our audience can get to know you?

Bret: Certainly.  This is Bret from Blue Stahli.  I am the sole perpetrator of the ridiculous noise you hear on Blue Stahli albums, remixes, and productions.

 
DGR: I personally became familiar with the Blue Stahli name due to the Birthwrong remix back in ’08, but you’ve been making music for a little while under various names. When did you decide on the name Blue Stahli and the musical direction you were going to head in?

Bret: Ah, that remix was a blast to do.  It originally began as a joke and wanting to play with some new production ideas and spiraled out of control into a full-on remix.  Indeed, I had a few various outlets, and all the while there was this idea in the back of my head for what Blue Stahli has eventually become (though at the time, I didn’t have the name, or a concrete direction).

The name “Blue Stahli” came about during a time when I was looking for Christmas presents for people years ago.  I was not in a good place in life and really had a bit of a bleak outlook on my present and future, so I was in full-on “I’ll-get-some-fantastic-gifts-for-some-key-people-now-in-the-event-that-I-careen-my-vehicle-off-an-overpass-later” mode.  I was in this shop that was half home decor, half artwork and prints.  Nothing in the art section grabbed me at all.  Everything felt very monotone, and to this day, all I can picture is frame after frame of various strips of sandpaper (at least, that’s how my brain is choosing to recollect “drab”).

Amongst all the seemingly single-color works was one painting that stood out, an abstract blue piece that stopped me dead in my tracks.  I don’t know how long I stood there staring at it, but I’m more than positive the employees of this shop were figuring out which one of them would eventually have to call security on the skinny motionless guy in the gallery.  What drew me in to this piece was that it was like the perfect visual representation of the songs I found to be the most cathartic.  I often see music in colors and I remember having the feeling that I could step inside this painting and feel every bit as enveloped as I did during long night drives spent listening to music for escape.  The name of the painting is “Untitled Blue” by the artist “Susanne Stahli”.

Though it’s a bit on the nose, the name “Blue Stahli” is less about the literal reference to the work and person, and more about the inexplicable transformative and cathartic power of art and music.  It’s why I do what I do.  I want to do for other people what certain songs and pieces of art have done for me.

As for musical direction, that was something that was always in flux, changing wildly depending on my mood, experience, and current obsessions.  There was never a “this will be a rock band” or “this will be an electronic outfit” hard and fast statement, the ultimate dream was to have all of this varied output under one name, so it’s not boxed in.  I came out of the gate with wild genre hopping, everywhere from the smooth electronic vibe of “Kill Me Every Time”, then to the more fist-in-the-air heaviness of “Scrape”, all the while writing Antisleep Vol. 01 tracks that ranged from upbeat funky breakbeat material to styles I had never tried before.  Your emotions throughout even a single day are more than just “I’m facepunchingly mad at…just everything!”  or “I’m terribly melancholy and require a fainting couch”, so why restrict the artistic output?  The goal with Blue Stahli is that there is truly something for everyone, and it is FOR everyone.

DGR: A broader question but If I recall correctly you wound up moving to Detroit to be closer to the Fixt headquarters. Did you ever think that Detroit would be such a hub for electronica?

Bret: Well, Detroit does have that history of electronic music with Derrick May and the like.  Though I was told when I arrived that that particular boom had died down considerably with the exception of the Detroit Electronic Movement Festival.  I know that labels like Ghostly International are located here and are part of a vital and thriving scene beneath the typical.  But honestly, I wasn’t thinking in terms of the local arena.  From the outset, I wanted this to be global.

DGR: You’ve made a name for yourself as a huge remix artist. There’s been some that have just come out, like the release of your Feed The Monster by BT remix. Is it always exciting to get your hands on a track and experiment on it like a mad scientist?

Bret: Absolutely.  I love stripping things down to just the vocal (and maybe a few little extra bits) and building up something new around it.  The foundational elements of songwriting are always the hardest part for me, so with that already done and taken care of, I’m free to wreck havoc.  My most recent remix is of Celldweller’s “Shapeshifter” which just came out on ‘The Complete Cellout Vol. 01′, and the funny thing is that I actually remixed it twice.  I originally reworked that song so Klay and I could play it in the Celldweller live show.  When the opportunity came to release it, it was great to be able to approach it again from another angle entirely while still retaining the elements I liked from my previous remix.

Currently, I’m working on a remix for My Brightest Diamond’s “She Does Not Brave the War” off her new album All Things Will Unwind and will be out soon.  I’m a huge fan of My Brightest Diamond, so doing this remix is even more of a treat.  Shara is a completely otherworldly talent and I’m in awe of her songwriting.  This is only a sign of more to come as I’ve also appeared in her music video for “High Low Middle” and we’re devising some plans for things that fans of both My Brightest Diamond and Blue Stahli will love.

DGR: You also had a debut come out earlier this year that followed a similar model to Celldweller’s “release songs as they are done and then put out a full disc with four or five others”. I imagine that you had each song already somewhat planned out from the get-go, but which songs did you find yourself more focused on for single release and why?

Bret: Actually, nothing was really planned out that much.  A while into the album I eventually had a stack of demos that I went through with Klayton (who was in producer role for the album).  He would say “well, you already have an idea like this one represented in your current releases and contenders, so save that for later” and so on, and whittled it down to a more manageable number of tracks.  I believe the song that took the longest was “ULTRAnumb”, and I can’t exactly put my finger on as to why that is, but it’s most likely due to the fact that I was still finding my voice as Blue Stahli and that may very well have been the flag in the ground.

DGR: Also, the artwork to that disc is very interesting. It looks like you wound up covered in black latex paint for that photo shoot. How was that experience?

Bret: The experience of shooting that was a blast (though it was not without it’s uncomfortable moments).  The paint was tempura paint, I had never messed with latex and had just assumed that this would work the way I wanted it to.  We shot in the B room photography studio of Acme Pixel Movers (who also does the live backing video for the Celldweller live show).  The photographer was Grant Mohrman (who also mixed “Metamorphosis”, “Takedown”, “Doubt”, and “Give Me Everything You’ve Got” on the debut album).  I met a makeup artist a few days before named Trini Biliti who mentioned that she wanted to work in bodypainting a bit more, so she helped with paint application.  I said “You take the back, I’ll take the front”.  The shoot was hours upon hours of contorting into various yoga-esque positions completely naked, except for the paint, which would dry and crack so often I had to constantly keep reapplying it (though the natural cracking did yield some great visual happy accidents).

What was great was the experience AFTER the photoshoot.  Everyone else had things to do, leaving me alone in this building, naked, covered in black paint, with a cow’s heart and general mess lying about.  This building didn’t have a shower to wash off all the paint and the farthest ahead that I planned was to bring a cheap disposable pair of painter’s coveralls meant to just go over your clothes for home projects.

What I *didn’t* count on was that all of the many layers of paint had now dried and were fully adhered to me.  Trying to get the coveralls on was excruciating, as it felt like it was trying to pull the skin from my body.  It was clear that if I got the coveralls on, my motion would be extremely limited and painful at every step, so I improvised.  I took a trashbag and poked three holes in it, one for my head and two for my arms.  Trouble is, it only barely came down to my waist, leaving me fully exposed like I had planned to enter a costume contest as “Pervert Mud Creature In 60′s Mod Dress”.  I took another bag and poked two holes for legs, put two shopping bags on my feet and set about cleaning up the B Room.  So anyone looking over their fence would see “Pervert Mud Creature in trashbag ensemble, running back and forth from a nondescript building, throwing cow parts into the trash”.

DGR: The song Anti-You had another version of it released with some more hostile lyrics titled Burning Bridges. What made you decide to change the lyrics into what became Anti-You? I remember when you made the blog entry on your site announcing that you were going to, but I don’t recall many details as to what inspired you to do so.

Bret: An issue of vocal performance.  The original version of the song “Burning Bridges” was immensely cathartic to write and get out (as it had been putting my insides through a meat grinder for many months already), but then the question became, “Can this song musically sound cooler with only changing the vocals?”.  So in addition to readdressing the way the vocals were approached, I also took that as an opportunity to widen the crosshairs for the lyrical subject matter.

DGR: Blue Stahli has had a couple of remix contests now. Which song did you enjoy letting people play around with the most and which one did you enjoy judging?

Bret: As I type this, I’ll be getting the remix entries for the “Anti-You” remix contest, and the “So So Bad” contest will follow next month.  I hate to be that cheesy all-inclusive guy who says “Oh, just everything!“ then grins uncontrollably in a way that begs a good smack.  But really, each song that people remix in the contests is interesting to hear.  I have my personal experience with each song and I really enjoy hearing all the different interpretations people have.  The Metamorphosis contest is the first one that I judged, and the only one that I’ve judged so far, so I can only speak to that experience.  But I DO look forward to the constant surprises.  Really, I’m just glad people are having fun doing it, getting some more mileage out of my music, and getting an opportunity to win some extra cash by making a badass mix.

DGR: We already asked Klayton this, but since both of you guys were involved on the soundtrack to the video game Dead Rising 2, what is it like having your music attached to some of the most ungodly frustrating boss battles in history? Your song “Scrape”, in particular, seems to have a PTSD-style effect on those who made it to the fight with the character Brandon Boyd. I played your debut once for some friends and when “Scrape” hit, they all spoke of their nightmares about that particular fight.

Bret: Ha, I wish I could empathize in that war torn, battleweary way, but I’m always so busy I don’t really have time to delve into gaming, though there is a lot I’d like to explore if I did have that time on my hands.  Luckily, I have friends who show me the latest and greatest and are far better than I would be, so I get my own personal guided tour every now and again.  As to sparking some digital PTSD…Hey, I’m glad I evoked a reaction, even if the twitch-response now is “KILL ALL OF THE BASTARDS!”.

DGR: You seem to have a sense of humor about your music, as demonstrated by your recent Beach Boys experiment, so I’ve always wanted to ask: What’s this I hear about an experiment involving Tool and Elvis?

Bret: Wow…the Elvis/Tool thing is going back *quite* a ways.  That particular experiment came about back when I was working on various shipping docks and the like, years and years ago.  I had a friend at one of the locations I travelled to who made an offhand remark that the stuff I do is so ridiculous, the only way it could be topped was if I were to mix an Elvis song and a Tool song into one cacophonous union.  I believe we wagered something stupid on it, so I went home that night and constructed a very poor representation just to prove that it *could* be done (also because I wanted to win whatever nonsensical thing we agreed upon).  Did I succeed?  Oh yes.  Did it suck?  Why, even more so!

As for the Beach Boys thing, that came about from a hip hop choreographer friend of mine needing a short three to three and a half minute mix of six Beach Boys songs with full beat action for her to set routines to for her dance company’s performance.  I enjoy helping my dance friends out when I can, brings me back to when I was doing music for a burlesque troupe.

The inherent sense of humor in Blue Stahli output is really just a natural extension of how I create.  I don’t take myself too seriously.

DGR: Are there any plans for a Blue Stahli live show? Do you happen to need a out of shape, slightly out of practice drummer? Because I happen to know a guy who knows a guy.

Bret: I *do* have some ideas on how I want to pull off a live show, but it’s still in the formative stages.  It will be a one man deal and will be very different arrangements of the album material.  Though if the requirement for said out of shape, slightly out of practice drummer arises, I will shine a signal into the night sky outside the venue most in need of solid facerocking.

DGR: I know you’ve fully admitted to having let both Twitter and your Facebook page become the main source of updates for your music but things seem to have become fairly quiet on all fronts. I’ve heard that there’s some Antisleep Vol 2 stuff in the works. What all are you working at the moment?

Bret: That has gone in waves, I realize that I’m a bit late in even finishing this interview, so the ebb and flow may look somewhat different now, but the quieter times on the social media front have stemmed from times when I wasn’t able to update (such as trying to find a place to live and the subsequent single-handed move into that new place), to taking care of some family issues, to the biggest culprit…thinking “who in the hell would want to see any of this?”  I’m a very solitary person, and have never been the “Hey, look at me!  Look at what I’m doing RIGHT THE EFF NOW!” type, so it’s a bit of an unlearning process to find that balance.

That being said, I am pushing myself to keep creating new content and have been doing some experiments with YouTube that went over extremely well.  Recently, for the release of my new (mostly) instrumental album Antisleep Vol. 02, I wanted to simultaneously do a worldwide listening party, but also something that felt personal and one on one.  So each day was a new video of the viewer taking a night drive with me while I play a song from the album and give behind the scenes info and strange tidbits.  Though seemingly unrelated, the video preview series did actually have a short film-esque conclusion (http://youtu.be/lOBl4oc2pUY).

I *really* enjoy the bits of absurd surreality that I’ve been able to play with, with the lo-fi video angle when not in a straight “talking into the camera” vlog format.  I am fascinated by video installations and experimental shorts, so making the Blue Stahli YouTube home to more exploration of that sort is something I intend to push more.  I had teasers to announce the release of the debut album (http://youtu.be/CabaIJJkIPk) and a more involved way of giving people the album’s tracklist rather than just posting it on Facebook (http://youtu.be/jU7pL6CXqRY).  Though it all started with me announcing the ULTRAnumb remix contest in a bit of a different way, trading in regular “here’s my dumb face in the camera” vlog stuff for strange characters, hyperediting, and non-consensual surgery (http://youtu.be/libEAcbL3Bc).  It’s also a good excuse to do more ambient sound design as underscore.

DGR: You’ve also made some 2 AM drive mixes of various songs for people to listen to. What do you think goes into making the perfect 2 AM drive song?

Bret: Well, it’s certainly not a question of genre, as there is anything from purely electronic, to purely organic, from the noisy to the pristine to the avant garde and everything in between.  I don’t know that I’ve ever tried to analyze it in terms of formula.  Usually I know when a song is right because something “other” will hit me when I listen to it.  It’s beyond words, a je ne sais quoi and that’s the magic of it.  It’s funny you mention the “2am Drive To Nowhere” mixtape, I’m working on some sonic experiments that I will release through inclusion on new installments of the mix series for all your “lost on a single lane road in the woods” or “only car on the highway” moments.  I’m not there to judge you on the purpose of your drive into the woods, or who you happen to have in your trunk, I’m just providing the soundtrack.

DGR: So how much fun was it to record vocals for Give Me Everything You’ve Got? Ever thought about putting it up as a remix contest so we can hear the inevitable heavy metal remix of it? I happen to enjoy the stuff that artists like Paul Udarov [one of the guys who have made heavier versions of the songs they've remixed] make when they enter a remix contest.

Bret: Recording the vocals to “Give Me Everything You’ve Got” was an extremely purgative experience and it’s amazing how healing a creative ritual like that can be (even if that “creative ritual” is rhythmically screaming at the top of your lungs).

Actually, “Give Me Everything You’ve Got” will be the next remix contest beginning February 27th.  This is specifically happening because Ry, the FiXT Remix mod, hit me up to ask what song should be next while I was finishing up this interview.  So, purely because you asked.  Enjoy the ensuing heaviness.

DGR: And finally, in case we missed something. Is there anything you’d like to add? Stuff to look out for in the future? Changes to your hair color? Books? Movies?

Bret: I’ll give the somewhat succinct wrap-up for the TL;DR crowd.  In addition to working on Antisleep Vol. 03 (which will be much more on the darker and more sound designy end of the spectrum than the more upbeat Volumes 01 & 02), I’m also working out some completely retooled versions of the debut material to present an alternate side and have something to play live in the weird way I’m envisioning it.  Check out my remixes on Celldweller’s “The Complete Cellout Vol. 01″ and be on the lookout for my remix of My Brightest Diamond soon!

I also just released a track simply titled, “Blue Stahli” for free as a thank you to everyone supporting Blue Stahli (you can grab that saucy business at the Blue Stahli Soundcloud (http://soundcloud.com/bluestahli). Another full vocal album will be in the works after Antisleep Vol. 03 is completed, and as always, a plethora of extra goodies, free tracks, mashups, mixtapes, and experiments will be released to those who follow along (not to mention the upcoming YouTube video voodoo).  There are some freakishly cool new useful Blue Stahli gadgets and sexified apparel at the FiXT Store (http://fixtstore.com/bluestahli/) that are sure to make you 200% more attractive to the sex of your choosing.  There is a hell of a lot more ridiculousness to come!

DGR: Thanks so much for this interview, we appreciate the opportunity. Best of luck in the future.

Bret: Thank YOU.

********

EDITOR’S NOTE: Everyone knows I obsessively insist on including music with virtually everything we post around here, so here are a couple of Blue Stahli tracks I’ve been jamming, based on what I read in DGR’s interview:

“Scrape”

“Give Me Everything You’ve Got”

“Blue Stahli”

(For the last 5 days we’ve been re-publishing an interview series by Rev. Will that originally appeared at now-defunct The Number of the Blog and that focused mainly on metal bloggers. Beginning today, the series continues here at NCS with new interviews, beginning, fittingly, with the creator of TNOTB — groverXIII.)

Classic metal albums + Metal blogging = ?

When one thinks of that, one will no doubt arrive at 2 answers: Reign In Blonde (the gals must have dyed their hair black, which would explain the inactiveness) and The Number Of The Blog (R.I.P.). When one thinks of anime and metal blogging, one will no doubt think of Full Metal Attorney, since it could possibly be a reference to the wildly popular Japanese anime, Full Metal Alchemist, but I digress.

Blogging about metal (or any other kind of) music is not as easy as many would like to think. If done properly, it can actually start to feel like homework once the commitment starts to kick in. Deadlines? Research? Being constantly “marked” and judged on your worth by others? The similarities are all there, but the big difference is that blogging about music doesn’t really get you anywhere in life like school does (or is supposed to), unless you can turn it into a career like Axl and Vince of MetalSucks.

Frontman and founder Dan Grover of ex-The Number Of The Blog may not like to toot his trumpet, but he sure did contribute a unique voice to the metal blogosphere while The Number Of The Blog was still alive and well. Labeled by some critics and even by themselves (probably in jest) as “hipsters”, the blog was really anything but that. It will always be remembered for its one-of-a-kind daily columns, which had humorous and catchy names, yet dealt with serious as well as playful topics. From underground black metal in “Wintermoon Wednesday” to random, everyday topics in “Sunday Shit Shoot”, there was literally something for everybody. Hell, there was even a Pokemon-obsessed Devin Townsend fanboy contributor called Ziltoid; needless to say, he posted about the vastly varied species of colorful critters on more than one occasion.

So read on folks, if you want to get inside the mind of a hipster metal blogger with a very big and secretive plan to launch something new in the near future. I’m hoping it will be a hydrogen bomb filled with confetti.

Rev. Will: I’m probably asking a stupid question, but I just want to hear it from the man himself: Was “The Number Of The Blog” so named as a tribute and reference to Iron Maiden’s landmark 1982 album, The Number Of The Beast?

Dan Grover: Yup. I was trying to come up with a good, metal-sounding blog name, and initially I was going to call the site Reign In Blog, but that was a little too close to the then-active Reign In Blonde, so I went with another iconic album title. Worked out pretty well.

Rev. Will: What roles did you play for the site back when it was still up?

Dan Grover: Admin, Editor-In-Chief, graphic designer, writer, reviewer, HR guy, press liaison… pretty much everything.

Rev. Will: Was it you who envisioned and designed the blog’s iconic banner displaying a shield (with “666” imprinted on it) with blood red wings spread out?

Dan Grover: Indeed. That was actually the fourth or fifth revision of the site banner. My original idea was to have the site name in the familiar Iron Maiden font, but that looked like shit; so for a few weeks back when the site was still a WordPress.com blog, it was just Old English text. Then I found a picture of the old US Route 666 road sign (which is now 491 because of superstitious idiots), which inspired the road sign font that TNOTB used up until its demise, the review images, and the various logos that followed. The wings came from a need to fill the empty space in the banner, and they looked pretty cool.

Rev. Will: Who were the people who made up the founding team? What were the founding principles and vision of the blog?

Dan Grover: The founding team was myself. That’s it. I started the site because I had some spare time and was inspired by MetalSucks, and I wanted to see how far I could take things. To say the least, it exceeded any expectations I could have possibly conceived.

As for the founding principles, it was always about listening to what you like and not giving a fuck about what other people think. I’ve always been a little sick of the elitism that runs rampant among metal fans, and so I decided to be the un-elitist. I still made fun of a lot of music, which I suppose was a little elitist, but it was all in the interest of entertaining people.

Rev. Will: What is your real job?

Dan Grover: I make the internets. All of them.

Rev. Will: TNOTB was a blog that didn’t seem to focus much on album reviews and interviews, which is the standard fare found on countless metal blogs out there on the Internet. Was this done on purpose as a unique trait for the blog?

Dan Grover: Not really. It was more out of laziness than anything else. We still did a decent number of reviews and interviews, but after a while, despite the number of writers we had, most of the legwork on everything was handled by Dave (better known as DemiGodRaven) and I. And after a while, I realized I was running out of good ways to say “I really like this album,” and so I was only really reviewing stuff I really liked. I listen to a lot of music, and unfortunately, if an album doesn’t grab me on the first few listens, it tends to fall by the wayside. To properly review an album, I need to listen to it enough to really get a feel for it, and I just don’t usually have the time.

Rev. Will: Instead, you guys had daily columns with attractive names that included the names of every day of the week, such as “Monday Massacre” and “Throwback Thursday”. I thought it was very unique and something that all the other notable metal blogs out there didn’t have. Which was the most popular column based on hits?

Dan Grover: I don’t know the exact numbers, because the site is a smoldering wreck now. Shitty Music Saturday was the original weekly column, and it seemed decently popular while it was running. Wintermoon Wednesday got some love, because DGR and I aren’t big into black metal, which is pretty popular these days. If we were going by pure numbers, I would guess that Stoner Sunday would win out, but that’s skewed because a while back one of the articles was linked by someone on StumbleUpon and so it managed to garner a fuckton of traffic.

Rev. Will: Since TNOTB is gone forever now, can you tell us briefly what were the names of all the daily columns, and what kind of content each one of them had dealt with?

Dan Grover: Um… hmmm… Shitty Music Saturday was the original, as I mentioned, and it featured me (usually; sometimes there were guest columnists) listening to an album and writing out my thoughts on it. Everyone voted upon the album in Trainwreck Tuesday, where two or three albums would be presented.

The Monday Massacre was Ziltoid’s column, and he usually dealt with old school death metal. Focus On Film ran on Tuesdays for a while when Quigs was still writing for us and dealt with movies. Wintermoon Wednesday was Tr00 Nate’s column and often dealt with black metal. Throwback Thursday was Snagon’s column and dealt with classic albums. Briefly, we also had Thunderground Thursdays, written by False Nate, but that lasted about three weeks before he got distracted by something shiny and moved on.

Hipster Friday was Sophus’ column, when he actually remembered to write it, and was almost always about Swans. Stoner Sunday was Gaia’s column and covered all things stoner, although it started as Witchcult Wednesday before the Wintermoon column. And we had Sumeriancore Sunday, originally started by TNOTB’s second-ever contributor, ECDEU, and then taken up by Heavy Blog Is Heavy’s Alkahest for a while before it was retired. After all, Sumeriancore is a pretty limited subject.

I think that covers everything. I may have forgotten some.

Rev. Will: Which reminds me, were you the one who designed all of the graphics found at the top of every one of those columns? I especially loved the one for “Wintermoon Wednesday” by the way.

Dan Grover: Yup. That was all me. I did all of the graphics for TNOTB, from the author images (back when we had them) to the post banners.

Rev. Will: Allow me to be shameless for a moment here. How did you find my column “Keyboard Warriors” (a homeless bastard given a new lease of life over at No Clean Singing now), and how was the response to it?

Dan Grover: I found it when you started writing for us a few months before the site died. It was pretty entertaining, just because it gave me some insight into how my blogging brethren out there operate.

Rev. Will: When a new metal blog decides to go dot-com, it doesn’t guarantee immediate fame. What factors led to TNOTB becoming one of the most “kvlt” metal blogs out there when you guys first started out?

Dan Grover: You know, I have no fucking clue. I just tried from the beginning to give it a unique voice, and I guess that resonated with people. I’m just hoping to continue that with our Next Stage project (not the real name, of course).

Rev. Will: Being one of those metal blogs that did not take itself too seriously, TNOTB must have gotten a decent amount of hate mail over its short, 2-year lifespan. Can you tell us some of the craziest, random shit you and your ex-TNOTB brethren once blogged about?

Dan Grover: Shitty Music Saturday always led to weirdness. I’ve listened to full albums by Nickelback, Brokencyde, Taylor Swift, Hellyeah, Hollywood Undead, Miley Cyrus, Creed, and too many other terrible artists to remember. That was always an adventure, but in the end I got pretty burned out from all the negativity.

Rev. Will: Which were the most memorable pieces of hate mail?

Dan Grover: You know, we never really got hate mail so much as hate comments. We tended to get a lot of hate any time we gave poor reviews to big bands like Korn, Linkin Park, or Limp Bizkit. A Shitty Music Saturday piece on a group of stoner rappers called Psycho Smokaz led to rage-filled comments and threats of bodily harm from (I believe) all three members and all seven of their fans. And then there was Gdubya/glezzery, who trolled us for months over a few subjects. He bitched, for three weeks, about my year-end list because it didn’t have enough metal on it, obviously missing the entire point that it was a) a list of my favorite albums of the year and b) not entirely a metal list. He was some crazy old dude with some hilarious political views, and he was a big fan of doing the same thing over at MetalReview. After a while he disappeared. Senility must have gotten him finally.

Rev. Will: Which were the most memorable pieces of fan mail?

Dan Grover: Didn’t get a lot of fan mail either, so much as comments. It always made my day when a member of a band would comment on something we posted about them, and such an occurrence led to my interview with Powerglove’s Chris Marchiel. I also got to know guys like Steve Henningsgard (Iron Thrones) and Arthur Von Nagel (Cormorant) because of comments.

Rev. Will: On to the sad part of TNOTB’s short life. Please do tell us how the Internet cruelly gobbled up and digested TNOTB’s ENTIRE archive of 5000+ posts when you tried to change hosts last month (December 2011)?

Dan Grover: Honestly, I’m not sure. If I had a better idea I probably would have been able to salvage the site.

Rev. Will: Here’s the question I ask everyone interviewed in this column. I have always thought of the metal music industry as a food chain starting with the rockstar/cult figure at the top, followed by record labels, then the press, the gig organizers, and then the merch retailers and metal stores all over the world. Do you agree with this view that the metal community is simply not as anti-establishment and homey as many prominent figures in the industry like to frequently make it out to be (with their politically correct stances)?

Dan Grover: Yes and no. There is that established hierarchy, especially when it comes to labels and bigger bands, but with the Internet, it’s become a lot easier for bands and artists to get their music directly to the people, thus circumventing a lot of that hierarchy. The label system is changing, whether labels recognize it or not.

Rev. Will: Do you think that musicians and bands who bash reviewers who write bad reviews about their albums are childish and utterly naïve for not expecting such a phenomenon when they decided to get into the whole music business?

Dan Grover: Yeah, probably. If you’re going to be making music, you have to expect that there are going to be people out there that don’t like it, and some of those people are going to make their opinions public. It seems like most artists have a pretty thick skin about that sort of thing, but every once in a while you get some hilarious results; like Five Finger Death Punch caring so little about their critics that they decided to write an entire song about how little they care; or Design The Skyline releasing a hilarious YouTube video about how different they are from all the other assholes with silly hair and makeup.

Rev. Will: Which interviewees have totally blown you away with unexpectedly chillout personalities or completely humbled you with their star power?

Dan Grover: I’ve enjoyed all of the interviews that I’ve done. I was pretty blown away that we got the chance to interview Cynic (something that we opened up to the fans), and guys like Chris Marchiel (Powerglove) and Canadian rapper Jesse Dangerously gave some fascinating, informative interviews.

Rev. Will: Thanks for your time, ex-boss. Can you please tell everyone what are your rates and the services you provide as a blogging mercenary at the moment?

Dan Grover: For the moment, I will write for anyone who asks, if I can find the motivation. And there’s no charge, although if you want to pay me, you’re more than welcome to. Thanks for listening to me babble, and remember, kids, it’s never too soon to be prepared for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

********

Get all sniffly about TNOTB’s demise at:

TheNumberOfTheBlog

 (Shortly before The Number of the Blog met its sad demise, TNOTB began publishing an interview series called “Keyboard Warriors” written by a relatively new TNOTB staffer who called himself Rev. Will. Because the archive of TNOTB posts seems to have exploded in a spatter of bits, never to be seen again, we agreed to give these interviews a home here at NCS. We started on Sunday and have been posting one per day this week. Today’s interview was originally published late last year.)

Surprisingly, most professional metal writers actually don’t sport long manes and subscribe to heavy metal fashion like many of their writing subjects do. Maybe it’s because sitting down for hours and slogging it out on the computer keyboard, rushing out multiple reviews and features like a drone, can get really tiring and warm around the rear end; and the fact that long hair causes an itchy hotness to prickle the area around the ears, eyebrows, and the back of the neck as well doesn’t help much.

Being a journalist of any kind is actually quite a daunting job. It is pretty safe to say that journalism related to stuff-that-ain’t-important-from-a-macro-point-of-view (meaning subjects that aren’t essential to a normal human being’s ability to survive in the practical world out there) is a largely unnoticed (and hence, thankless) job that is strictly reserved for the extremely passionate only. And extremely extreme our dear interviewee is when it comes to metal journalism.

This is the easiest interview I’ve edited in this column so far by the way. The power of a magazine’s Editor-in-Chief is not to be taken lightly, folks. The dude even bothered to italicize all object names; I guess being Decibel’s Editor-in-Chief really made him attentive to such small details that usually only matter to metal writers themselves. Damn, interviewees like him really make a budding keyboard warrior like me as happy as a TFD missile warhead.

Anyway, Albert Mudrian needs little introduction. The Napalm Death diehard first became well known in the extreme metal community for his 2004 magnum opus, Choosing Death: An Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore. It was widely praised and well-received for its comprehensive coverage of the origins and development of the two most aggressive and morbid metal sub-genres right up to the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century, earning itself many accolades from the press.

Terrorizer magazine even went so far as to say that “Choosing Death is a revelation, no matter how much you think you know.” Indeed, with so much meticulous hard work put into it (over 100+ interviews were conducted!), there was no doubt that it would go on to become a classic. True enough, it has become the go-to textbook for the current generation of young metal fans who hunger for a little historical knowledge about the soundtracks to their rebellious teenagehood, although it might be interesting but trivial to know that Arif Rot of Wormrot only recently purchased it and had not read it at all back in Wormrot’s pre-Earache days.

Astonishingly, the first-time author did not just stop there. He quickly established North America’s only metal magazine to put out printed issues on a monthly basis within that same year, and hence, Decibel was born.

Read on to see how my interrogation of the newly-minted father of one went. There’s stuff about Choosing Death, Decibel’s highly collectible Flexi series, advice for budding metal writers, and a confirmed rumor of him quitting Decibel to join Rolling Stone when the New Year comes around. Okay, I was kidding about that last part.

Rev. Will: Congratulations on your newborn! How is it like trying to balance fatherhood with the heavy responsibilities and commitment of being the Editor-in-Chief of the most hardworking extreme metal magazine in North America at the moment?

Albert Mudrian: Thanks, man! Honestly, it’s been tricky. I work most days from home, and—as of this writing—my wife is home with our daughter on maternity leave, so I generally don’t get more than 45-minute blocks of non-chaos each day to concentrate on Decibel. I thrive on routines, but infants aren’t particularly interested in conforming to your regimen, but making the adjustments to her schedule has been awesome. Anyway, please excuse the brevity of some of my answers—I’ve got diapers to change!

Rev. Will: Let’s hit the rewind button on the time-control remote here. You first became well-known in the extreme metal writing community when your book Choosing Death was published and released in 2004 to critical acclaim. How long did you work on it before it was published and what were the main difficulties you encountered while writing it?

Albert Mudrian: I started working on Choosing Death in January 2002—wow, I can hardly believe it’s been ten years now—and finished in early 2004. This, of course, was back in the internet days before MySpace and Facebook (and, no, I never had a Friendster account), so emails and cold phone calls were the only sensible ways to track down ex-band members. Also, back in ’02 and ’03 the reunion bug hadn’t bit Carcass, At the Gates, Obituary, Atheist, Brutal Truth, Autopsy, Cynic, or, um, Resurrection, so you were looking for a lot of folks who hadn’t played death metal for the better part of a decade. When I first made contact with a lot of these musicians, most of them were surprised that anyone cared enough to write a book about their “misspent youth.”

Rev. Will: That book’s title was coincidentally cursed and eerily prescient to say the least. I mean, late BBC Radio 1 luminary John Peel (who wrote the book’s “Foreword”) and Mieszko Talarczyk of deathgrind band Nasum (which you brought up in the book as well) both passed away in 2004. Being someone who has had the opportunity to interact with such prominent figures in the extreme music industry, can you tell us what these two figures were like when they were alive and how significant their contributions to the extreme music scene were?

Albert Mudrian: I only met Mieszko once in 1999 on Nasum’s first (and only?) U.S. tour. So I can’t really tell you all that much about him. He seemed liked a great guy, but it was the band’s drummer Anders Jakobson, who I became pals with. As for John Peel, I first wanted to interview John when I started putting the book together because he was such an important part of how things developed over in the U.K. I eventually got a hold of his agent, who at the time kept brushing me off and kept saying, “He’s busy,” or “He’s on holiday,” or “Try back in a month.” I kept at her, and one day she said, “I spoke with John, and he said to just give him a call at home.” So I called him at home and had a great interview with him. As we were getting off the phone, he said, “If you ever need anything, just give me a ring.”

About six, seven months later, as I was putting things together, it dawned on me that it would be great to get him to write the book’s introduction. So I just called him up one day at home and I asked him to do it, and I had this big windup, as I was very nervous. And he said, “Oh yeah, sure, no problem.” So it was great. It took three, four months of me having to hound him to finish it up and get it to me, but he was fantastic. He refused to accept any money or anything at all for it. I said, “Look, can I donate to charity in your name? You’ve obviously put some work into this, and I feel like you need to have some kind of compensation.” He said, “No, don’t worry about it”. That’s the kind of person he was.

I eventually talked to his wife, and I asked her, “What does John like?” She told me that he was a big red wine fan, so I sent him a couple bottles of red wine from some winery near his house. A few months later, I sent him a copy of Choosing Death, but he passed away within a few weeks after I mailed it.

Rev. Will: While the book was really educational, it only focused on the origins and development of American, European, and Scandinavian death metal and grindcore. Why didn’t you include Middle Eastern and Asian death metal and grindcore?

Albert Mudrian: I wanted to keep the focus contained to the most influential bands and players in the scene. Even though there have been many Middle Eastern and Asian death and grind bands—with the notable exception of S.O.B.—very few had an impact on the formation of the genres.

Rev. Will: Prior to Choosing Death and your imminent creation of Decibel all in the same year of 2004, have you ever written for any online or printed publications in the past that are not necessarily related to metal music?

Albert Mudrian: I started writing about extreme metal “professionally” in 1996 and started working for Red Flag Media as a magazine editor in 1997. I edited a general audience music magazine, which was given away free in indie record stores in regions of the U.S. Think of it as like the indie version of Tower Records’ old magazine Pulse. Anyway, it was pretty small in size and recognition, but large in quality. I wrote all of the magazine’s extreme metal reviews and features from the time it started until I stopped working on the magazine sometime in 2003 or 2004. Along the way, I wrote a few articles for such forgettable publications as the unintentionally hilarious Pit and rightfully short-lived Juggernaut. But that’s about it.

Rev. Will: What were the early Decibel days like in terms of forming connections with record labels, fellow magazines, bands, gig organizers and other miscellaneous stuff like readership and putting together a writing team? Do you still keep the first copy of Decibel magazine which had The Dillinger Escape Plan on the cover as a remembrance of your magazine’s origins?

Albert Mudrian: Since I’d been writing about extreme metal since 1996, I already had relationships and a positive reputation with most of the metal labels and publicists. And the friendships that grew out of assembling Choosing Death definitely carried over into the launch of Decibel as well. I was fortunate in that I already knew the scene and most of the people working behind the scenes. So, when I approached labels like Relapse or Metal Blade and said, “I’m starting a new metal magazine,” they actually took it somewhat seriously. Though there’s obviously a lot that is cringe-worthy about Decibel #1, I’m still immensely proud of it. Not only do I still own it (along with all 87 of our other issues), but I still have the Decibel prototype that we printed a few hundred copies of and mailed to people in the industry to drum up excitement before the magazine’s launch.

Rev. Will: Who came up with the idea for Decibel’s iconic “Hall Of Fame” section? Can you enlighten us on how much work goes into that section’s article in every month’s issue?

Albert Mudrian: The “Hall of Fame” is my bastard child, conceived as a nice excuse for us to talk about our favorite records. I’m a pretty nostalgic guy and I still love dozens of the albums that I worshipped in high school, so the success of the “Hall of Fame” articles suggests that there are actually plenty more dorks just like me who can’t really grow out of certain classic albums. I always wondered why other publications never did anything like this until I discovered what a complete bitch it is to assemble every month. I honestly can’t remember the last time one of these features went smoothly. There’s always some unwilling band member, or someone who’s since left the band who proves difficult to track down. Some of the HOF pieces like Megadeth’s Rust in Peace, Mercyful Fate’s Melissa and Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come literally took years to assemble. But in the end, I hope people feel that it is worth the work of our staff writers.

Rev. Will: Metal magazines usually give away compilation CDs or simple freebies like patches or an extra issue thrown in for free with their newest issue. Again, who came up with this unique idea of the Flexi series of mini-vinyl giveaways included in every issue starting from January 2011? How do you persuade bands to record exclusive songs for these Flexi mini-vinyls, and has the response from Decibel’s readers to it been good so far?

Albert Mudrian: The idea for the flexi first came about during a phone conversation with Decibel columnist and Brutal Truth/Primate/Venomous Concept vocalist Kevin Sharp. He was talking about how awesome it would be if we could include a flexi in the magazine. A few years prior to that, I actually looked into getting a Pig Destroyer flexi pressed for our first Pig Destroyer cover (January 2008, #39), but I couldn’t find anyone who was printing them at the time. After speaking with Kevin, I looked into it again and found a company who was just starting to press them. I figured since Kevin was part of this from the beginning, it was only fitting that Brutal Truth produce the first tracks in the series. Fortunately, they had a couple songs ready to go, so we rolled out DB001 with the January 2011 issue (#75) and the series has taken off since then, as subscription numbers have increased considerably since the series was introduced.

I haven’t had to twist too many arms to get bands involved. About 75% of the artists I’ve approached to take part in the series have been into it. Just being able to release new music from bands like Napalm Death, Agoraphobic Nosebleed and Autopsy has been a total dream for a music nerd like me.

Rev. Will: Being someone who helms a magazine that has no qualms about tearing apart records which you and the rest of the magazine’s writers think are bad, what do you think of musicians and bands who bash reviewers when they receive bad reviews about their own works from them?

Albert Mudrian: They have every right to disagree, I suppose. Most musicians invest so much of themselves in their bands that I understand why they feel like negative reviews are a personal attack. However, 99% of the time, they are not. But while I get it, they’ve got to understand that once you put something out into the world, you’re gonna get feedback of all kinds. I’ve been on the receiving end of harsh criticisms with regards to both Decibel and Choosing Death. Basically, you just have to get over it.

Rev. Will: Interview articles typically follow a standard Q&A format (like this one) or a narrative one with quotes from the interviewee being injected in between the interviewer’s own passages. While video interviews have unorthodox (and very hilarious) interviewers like Nardwuar, what do you think can be changed in the current format of written or typed interviews to make it less rigid and more engaging?

Albert Mudrian: I’m not sure anything needs to be changed within the current written interview format. As long as you have creative writers interviewing interesting subjects, there’s always a great possibility of amazing pieces. I’m not discounting what can be accomplished with video or audio interviews compared with print, but I don’t necessarily feel that one needs to replace the other.

Rev. Will: Do you actually interview any bands yourself anymore these days? If yes, who have been the most interesting interviewees so far. If not, is the work of a magazine’s Editor-in-Chief that demanding?

Albert Mudrian: Maybe once a year at the most. If my Decibel demands were limited to just Editor-in-Chief, I’d obviously write more. However, I’m in charge of all ad sales, marketing and currating the flexi series. It’s basically about three full-time jobs rolled into one.

Rev. Will: Everyone who read Choosing Death and every issue of Decibel so far all know that you are a huge fan of both Death and Napalm Death. What do you see in them that makes them so special? Any up-and-coming new faces you have your eyes on at the moment?

Albert Mudrian: Well, Napalm Death and Paradise Lost are my two favorite bands of all time. I know there have been a few complaints over the years that too much of Choosing Death’s focus was on Napalm Death. In fact, I remember one message board warrior suggesting that the book should have been titled “Choosing Napalm Death,” which is actually pretty funny.

Anyway, I wasn’t really trying to justify Napalm Death as being the most important band in extreme metal history (though, I think one could make that argument). The band has existed, in one form or another, for so many years that their successes and failures have often mirrored the ups and downs of the death metal and grindcore movements themselves. Just as the scenes were gaining mainstream popularity in late ’80s England (through John Peel’s radio show), Napalm were the focal point. When death metal rose in popularity in the early ’90s, Napalm reflected that in the style of their 1990 LP, Harmony Corruption. They were also part of the ill-fated Earache/Columbia deal in the U.S. Their “experimental” mid ’90s records were not well received and released during the scene’s darkest creative and commercial periods. And when they returned revitalized with 2000’s Enemy of the Music Business LP, death metal and grindcore was beginning its own return to prominence.

As for Death, Chuck Schuldiner is obviously one of the progenitors of not just death metal, but extreme metal in general. He wasn’t “the first name in death metal” for nothing! As I write this, it’s only two hours away from the ten-year anniversary of Chuck’s death. Hard to believe he’s already been gone that long. His legacy, however, will never leave us.

R.I.P., Evil Chuck.

Rev. Will: What albums have been hogging your ears lately apart from the recent spate of Death re-issues?

Albert Mudrian: Ha, pretty much Paradise Lost’s entire recorded discography! I guess I’ve been on a bit of a bender with them lately. Apart from that, I’ve been enjoying the soon-to-be released new LPs from Goatwhore, Asphyx and, of course, Napalm Death (all out in February). Also, I’m kind of obsessed with Vallenfyre’s A Fragile King record at the moment. You don’t need to be a PL junkie to enjoy that either.

Rev. Will: In an industry where putting out printed magazine issues every month is already a very financially taxing thing to do, I’d bet that taking on paid writers is a decision that is not made very often, since I’ve heard that metal writers have to slog it out much more than your average newspaper or music journalist before they might have a chance at making a living out of their writing. What do you think young and budding metal writers out there can do to differentiate themselves from the writing masses and spark the interest of printed magazines in taking them in?

Albert Mudrian: Very few music journalists—and even fewer metal journalists—are able to turn freelance writing into a fulltime gig. In fact, only a handful of our staff writers don’t have some other fulltime job, which pays their bills. My best advice is to write as much as possible—even if it’s material that stays on your computer and never gets published. Regular practice will help refine your voice and skill set. Obviously, starting a blog could be a good idea as well, as it allows you to not only hone your craft, but to acquire feedback from others in a public forum. Don’t worry so much about breaking into higher profile magazines out of the gate—just concentrate on developing your voice.

********

Get extremely extreme at:

Decibel Magazine

Deciblog

Choosing Death

Also, Albert’s holiday marketing ploys are still available via these links:

Extremely Extreme Bundle

Death Tribute Shirt With Subscription Bundle

Special Collector’s Edition Bundle

Thrash Bundle

Opeth Bundle

(Shortly before The Number of the Blog met its sad demise, TNOTB began publishing an interview series called “Keyboard Warriors” written by a relatively new TNOTB staffer who called himself Rev. Will. Because the archive of TNOTB posts seems to have exploded in a spatter of bits, never to be seen again, we agreed to give these interviews a home here at NCS. We started on Sunday and will be posting one per day this week. Today’s interview was originally published late last year.)

It’s the New Wave of American Heavy Metal Blogs!

Just one or two years ago, a slew of new metal blogs burst onto America’s metal blogosphere and joined the eponymous MetalSucks on their largely unoccupied bandwagon. Though not exactly giving MetalSucks a run for their money since most of these blogs don’t have anything superbly special to offer that would help them poach all of MetalSucks’ fans, and not to mention that they don’t even earn as much money (or none at all) as Axl and Vince who are having a blast blogging and hauling in heaps of moolah, these NWoAHMB’s have been instrumental in giving bored metal nerds a wider variety of online reading options to choose from, as they do compensate for their late foray into the fray by specializing in certain areas.

Enter Heavy Blog Is Heavy, the blogchild of college student Jimmy Rowe, which already has a decent readership base and is even earning him some money only two years after it was started up. Although not as insanely successful as MetalSucks, a website Jimmy obviously looks up to, Heavy Blog Is Heavy can be said to be the MetalSucks of the Second Wave of American Heavy Metal Blogs.

Rev. Will: A good and heavy day to you, Jimmy. What madness compelled you to conceive Heavy Blog Is Heavy even though there is already a tonne of metal blogs out there on the Internet?

Jimmy Rowe: And a heavy day to you too, squire! Back in 2009 when I started Heavy Blog, my knowledge of metal blogs was limited to MetalSucks and those blogspot sites that linked to pirated material, so I didn’t think I was doing something that had been done as much as it was, naïve as it sounds. To be honest, it didn’t cross my mind in that aspect. It definitely started blowing up around the time I got into it though, with The Number Of The Blog, Hook In Mouth, and No Clean Singing popping up shortly after/around the same time. It’s just a good time for heavier music!

I started Heavy Blog with a good e-friend of mine, Mitch “Dethcaek” West, who no longer writes for us because he’s busy with school and listening to electronic music. You see, I live in a sort of rural area where next to no one was listening to the music I was listening to. I couldn’t see shows at the time due to my location and inability to drive and I had no one to talk to about the more extreme and underground music genres that I was taking an interest in. I created Heavy Blog as a means to be more involved and communicate with anyone who cared enough. Obviously, I wasn’t getting the discourse I wanted in real life, so I took it to the Internet!
 

Rev. Will: Do you aim for Heavy Blog Is Heavy to be the next MetalSucks? Or do you think that Heavy Blog Is Heavy has something else to offer which MetalSucks does not have?

Jimmy Rowe: I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reach that level! I think Heavy Blog’s focus is just a tad more specific than MetalSucks. I see MetalSucks as a sort of broad and all-encompassing site, whereas Heavy Blog definitely caters to the sort of crowd that enjoys progressive metal, djent, and ‘whatever’-core. Obviously, there are some exceptions, but it ended up that way over time as my tastes developed. When it came to the point where I opened Heavy Blog up to more writers, the people who took me up on the offer were readers of the site because we happened to have similar taste. We’re definitely much broader than ever, but we’ve got our niche!
 

Rev. Will: Okay, I honestly think that the name “Heavy Blog Is Heavy” is playing along with the current trend of Internet memes and viral catch phrases. Was that how you came up with the name? Or is there actually some kind of deeper significance behind this seemingly literal name?

Jimmy Rowe: I spend most of my day in front of my laptop, so I’m all about the Internet, man. Yes, the name came about because of the meme. It was back in 2009 and I spent a lot of time on 4Chan so that’s where the inspiration for the name came from. I wish I had spent a little longer on coming up with the name, as I had no idea the site would end up as big as it is now. While Heavy Blog Is Heavy is kind of catchy and memorable, I hate having to say it out loud to people who don’t “get it”.
 

Rev. Will: You are still studying in college if I’m not wrong. How do you strike a balance between your studies and blogging time while not screwing up either one of both sides too badly? Also, are you actually studying something in college that might be of some practical use to your running of Heavy Blog Is Heavy in the future?

Jimmy Rowe: It’s hard, man. I’m terrible when it comes to doing my school work, and I procrastinate like no one’s business. In fact, I should be finishing up a technical essay for a Psychology class on the Greek god/goddess archetypes and how they apply to my own persona, but this is more fun. That paper was due last week. I’m a terrible student and my priorities are not in order at all. However, since it’s the end of the semester and I’ve got all these papers to complete and exams to study for, the site’s content has slowed considerably. I need to better manage my time!

I’m currently working towards a Bachelor’s Degree in both Psychology and Social Work, so it’s not exactly something particularly relevant to Heavy Blog. I was going to write up my thoughts on the recent controversy regarding metalheads being depressed, but I didn’t have the time or energy to tackle it. Plenty of other folks were already tearing that study a new one, so I avoided it like the plague. It felt too much like homework!
 

Rev. Will: Do you aim to blog about metal for a living like what Axl and Vince of MetalSucks are doing at the moment?

Jimmy Rowe: That would be amazing, but I’d imagine that their environment and timing helped make it a possible career choice. Being from NYC, they’re a decent walk or a subway ride away from meeting bands and seeing shows. I’m at least four hours away from every show, so it’s hard. As it stands now, Heavy Blog does pull money, but only small supplemental income. Perhaps over a few years as readership grows, but I’m not keeping my hopes up too high.
 

Rev. Will: So tell us, do you actually have any metal writing experience prior to the founding of Heavy Blog Is Heavy in the summer of 2009? Have you ever thought of moving from being a mere metal blogger to a metal journalist who writes for printed metal magazines?

Jimmy Rowe: I had absolutely no experience in writing about metal prior to founding Heavy Blog. Other than the “Distinguished” that I managed to pull out of my ass when putting together my high school English portfolio, I had very little experience in writing at all. I guess I have some sort of natural “talent” at it since I’m able to do it without really trying very hard.

I would love to parlay this whole blogging thing into a more “legit” job as a metal journalist. It’s certainly helping me build my knowledge, writing chops, and my portfolio. As much as I doubt I’ll ever be seen writing for Decibel, I would be stoked on the opportunity.
 

Rev. Will: It’s only been 2 years since the inception of Heavy Blog Is Heavy as at the time of this interview, and yet Heavy Blog Is Heavy has already shot to Internet fame as one of the more prominent metal blogs there is at the moment. How did you achieve this level of readership within such a short span of time even with the titanic MetalSucks being alive and well on the Internet?

Jimmy Rowe: MetalSucks were a MASSIVE help for that, for sure. They’re consistently one of the highest non-social networking sites that are sending us traffic, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Vince and Axl really inspired me to do this whole blogging thing and they’ve always been helpful, with Vince giving us advice several times.

It’s also due to the help of bands who link to us on their Facebook pages. We’ve had the likes of All Shall Perish, Animals As Leaders, Last Chance To Reason, White Arms Of Athena, and most recently, Betraying The Martyrs link to us and give us spikes in traffic, which is nice. The thought of musicians I admire even knowing of my existence and reading my words has got to be the best feeling ever.
 

Rev. Will: Being another one of those metal blogs that try not to take itself too seriously, Heavy Blog Is Heavy probably has received tonnes of hate mail to date. Which are the most humorous and memorable pieces of hate mail you have ever received so far? Do you try to get anything positive out of hate mail apart from having a few laughs?

Jimmy Rowe: Oh man, this is a story I love telling. This was either late 2009 or early 2010 (I have terrible memory when it relates to time) and my pal Mitch ran a post regarding that blackened death metal band Enfold Darkness and how they dropped their bassist AJ Lewandowski. Mitch had some not-so-nice things to say about the band and this decision, but what else is new in the blogosphere? Eventually, the band’s guitarist Matt Brown found the post and started a flame war with Mitch. Eventually Matt says (I shit you not) “Keep suckin that P P, buddy.” We lost it and we used the tagline “Suckin that P P since 2009” for the better part of a year. Mind you, I actually like that band and own one of their shirts!

Other than that, it’s basic stuff. Everyone who lets their opinions fly on the Internet on a regular basis is bound to capture the attention of folks who disagree and take it personally. Even though we’re a pro-good-deathcore website, people are constantly giving us shit for being too hard on the genre. Sure, we hate generic brocore, but we adore tons of bands that can be considered deathcore. It’s mostly anonymous scene kids flaming us for not enjoying Asking Alexandria or for disliking the production on that new Structures album. It comes with the territory.
 

Rev. Will: What about fan mail? Does it feel great to know that even though you are just a blogger, there are actually people out there who enjoy reading your online rambles and rants?

Jimmy Rowe: Just the fact that people know we exist is extremely flattering to me! People email us every now and then telling us they’re fans and how we helped them find new bands and everything like that. It’s a nice feeling!
 

Rev. Will: Who came up with the design of Crunchy, Heavy Blog Is Heavy’s mascot? Were you guys thinking of critters like In Flames’s Jesterhead and Iron Maiden’s Eddie The Head when this idea lit up the floating light bulb?

Jimmy Rowe: Not many people pay enough attention around the site to know the name of our mascot, so I have to commend you on your top notch research! I had nothing specific in mind when I came up with Crunchy. I didn’t even set out to create him as our mascot; it just sort of happened as I was playing around with Photoshop! He was my happiest accident.
 

Rev. Will: So whose mouth is that on Crunchy?

Jimmy Rowe: Hahaha. I have no idea. I picked up that mouth on some stock photos website.
 

Rev. Will: Does Crunchy contribute reviews and interview articles?

Jimmy Rowe: It’s inside me, I’m inside it.
 

Rev. Will: How was Crunchy like as a cocoon and caterpillar before his/her eventual metamorphosis into a butterfly? Which reminds me, is he/she a male or female?

Jimmy Rowe: He was kind of cute. He was quiet and kept to himself, but ever since his evolution, he won’t shut the hell up. He’s also manlier than I’ll ever aspire to be. I should have given him a beard.
 

Rev. Will: Have new contributors to Heavy Blog Is Heavy ever been freaked out by Crunchy? Oh yeah, where do you find your contributors from?

Jimmy Rowe: No one has ever brought him up, as if nothing was out of the ordinary! I usually advertise on the site when we are open for contributors. One time I advertised on Reddit for new writers! Even though we’ve been closed for a while, we’ve added two writers in the past 6 months or so whom have been excellent!

I must say though, opening up Heavy Blog to new blood was the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ve made some excellent friends and found a co-editor in Chris “Disinformasiya” Grenville, and that has kept me on my toes and helped further develop Heavy Blog into what it is today.
 

Rev. Will: MetalSucks has started the blogs-can-have-their-own-festivals!!! ball rolling with their inaugural Metal Suckfest in early November. What do you think of such an idea? Will you consider coming up with Heavy Blog Is Heavy’s very own metal festival in future?

Jimmy Rowe: We’ve sponsored a tour once before that featured Aliases, Chimp Spanner, and Cyclamen, which was amazing. There was actually an obscure grindcore festival that happened in the UK earlier this year that I was sort of connected to, but as far as actually starting one like MetalSucks, that’s kind of a long shot. Those guys have inside connections that I currently do not, so I don’t think I’ll ever get to that point. I may be mistaken, but shit like that takes time and money that I can’t imagine having available any time soon!
 

Rev. Will: Do you think that it is absurd for metal blogs to have their very own merch, like shirts and stickers et cetera? Which metal blog would you definitely want to see coming out with its own shirt (which you will definitely buy and wear proudly, for me, it is Invisible Oranges) and will Heavy Blog Is Heavy ever come up with its own line of merch someday?

Jimmy Rowe: I love the idea. The only reason I don’t own a MetalSucks shirt is because I just keep forgetting! I was going to run a limited number of Heavy Blog shirts done by our writer Dan “Dormition” Arena (who is also a graphic designer who has done work for Towering Filth and Big Chocolate), but some other stuff came up and that had to be put on hold.
 

Rev. Will: This will be one of my staple questions for all interviewees in this column. I have always thought of the metal music industry as a food chain starting with the rockstar/cult figure at the top, followed by record labels, then the press, the gig organizers, and then the merch retailers and metal stores all over the world. Do you agree with this view that the metal community is simply not as anti-establishment and homey as many prominent figures in the industry like to frequently make it out to be (with their politically correct stances)?

Jimmy Rowe: The metal community is definitely important. This is our culture and we’re in this sort of symbiotic relationship where the community and the industry are just feeding off of each other. The community are the people who are buying merch (and sometimes music), going out to shows, and promoting the artists. Sure, there are tons of people pirating out there now, but it’s so widespread that if you’re going to paint the whole fanbase as a bunch of morally bankrupt pirate scum, then you’re simply doing it wrong.
 

Rev. Will: Do you think that musicians and bands who bash reviewers who write bad reviews about their albums are childish and utterly naïve for not expecting such a phenomenon when they decided to get into the whole music business?

Jimmy Rowe: I think the bands that do that are few and far between. To make it as a musician, you have to be able to take criticism well, and if you can’t, you’d better learn to hide it. That said, I get it. Music is one’s bread and butter; their heart and soul. Having someone rip it to shreds has got to suck and I understand the frustrations. Once I began to have musician friends and realized that there are real thinking and feeling musicians behind the tunes, I’ve been trying to do better at constructive criticism and less needless bashing. It’s something that many people don’t consider, myself included at times, unfortunately.
 

Rev. Will: Interview articles typically follow a standard Q&A format (like this one) or a narrative one with quotes from the interviewee being injected in between the interviewer’s own passages. Due to your mostly informal approach towards writing, do you have any good ideas on how to spruce up the interview format and make it less rigid?

Jimmy Rowe: I’ve tried doing the more narrative form of interview before, but that’s just so hard to frame right. It’s great if there’s some interesting story involved, but more often than not, the Q&A format is good enough. To do it right, I’d imagine you need to frame the questions in a logical manner so it seems more conversational.
 

Rev. Will: Which interviewees have totally blown you away with unexpectedly chillout personalities or completely humbled you with their star power?

Jimmy Rowe: I’m in a perpetual state of humbleness, but that’s my own fault. I’ve only ever done two in-person interviews, and both times I’ve gotten sick to my stomach. I’m quite shy and awkward in real life, but that’s neither here nor there. I don’t think there are many “stars” in metal that I’d care to interview in the sense that they’re aware they’re on another level than the rest of us plebes. Between The Buried And Me are my favorite band ever and I had the opportunity to talk with vocalist Tommy Rogers for a good 20 minutes. He was incredibly chill and humble, and it really rested my nerves. That whole band is just awesome and friendly. I also recently interviewed Valentin Hauser of Betraying The Martyrs. Incredibly nice dude!
 

Rev. Will: You seem to favor Basick Records a lot. Tell us why Basick Records rules and which bands on them should be looked out for over the next year?

Jimmy Rowe: We absolutely adore Basick Records for several reasons. I know this might open us up for some complaints of being biased and having some conflict of interest or whatever, but we consider Basick [Records] friends to the site. Lisa Coverdale, who is in charge of marketing and PR over at Basick, has been nothing but kind and friendly to us, and apparently she’s a fan of the site! Also, James Monteith, who also does PR, is one of the guitarists of Tesseract, one of our collective favorite bands. It also helps that there isn’t a single bad band on their roster. Go ahead and find one, I dare you.

This year, they released Aliases’ debut album, Safer Than Reality. It really fills the hole that was left when Sikth disbanded and features their guitarist Graham Pinney. Uneven Structure’s Februus is easily one of the best albums put out this year, and one of the most exciting debuts I’ve heard in a while. As for next year, they’re putting out a new Chimp Spanner EP and they’ve just announced two exciting signings in [the forms of] The Algorithm and Skyharbor, who will release albums at some point! They’re bound to have some other stellar releases as well, as I’m sure Monuments will finally put out their record.
 

Rev. Will: Ever had the ambitious thought of expanding Heavy Blog Is Heavy into a metal magazine someday?

Jimmy Rowe: When it comes to printed word, physical formats are practically dead. As far as I’m concerned, the metal mag starts and ends with Decibel. We might put out some limited special edition printed materials, but there’s not a chance we’ll jump into Heavy Mag. That just ties up too much time and money for me to handle.
 

Rev. Will: Why should people read Heavy Blog Is Heavy and when will Crunchy be mating to reproduce more copies of itself for use in Heavy Blog Is Heavy’s album review ratings?

Jimmy Rowe: Well like I said before, we have our niche in prog/post/core, so if that’s your area of music, we’re your area of web opinions! We also pride [ourselves] in trying to be as fair as possible, giving constructive criticism and finding positive things to say about Limp Bizkit and Design The Skyline.

Our reviews have been slow recently due to end-of-semester school work and a terribly slow trickle of new releases. It’s always slow around the holidays, so our little bundles of weekdaily Crunchy litters will resume in a burst the week after Thanksgiving. Hopefully, we’ll be able to give our regular reviews to you folks at the beginning of 2012.

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