Digital Diversion

West Virginia horror punk outfit, Blitzkid, just released what is arguably the best album of their fourteen year career (Apparitional), only to have to have the release prempted by the announcement back in March of the departure of founding member T.B. Monstrosity. Brought back together by their current tour with musical influences Face to Face and Strung Out, I caught up with the other half of Blitzkid’s song-writing and vocal duo, Argyle Goolsby, to discuss the new record, the current goings on with the Blitzkid line-up, and living the American nightmare as a DIY touring band.

You guys have been on the road for several weeks now with Strung Out and Face to Face.  How’s it going so far?

AG:  We’re on the last leg right now.  We started the tour on the twenty-fifth of May and we’ve pretty much gone coast to coast.  We’ve been playing really good venues and had a pretty good reception every night.  We’ve toured long enough to where we have our own crowd established so it’s nice to see a lot of familiar faces coming out to see us in each city.  We’re getting the added benefit of having a new audience seeing us every night.  Hopefully when we come back on our own headlining tour we’ll see some of those faces. 

 It’s been a while since you’ve been out to the west coast. 

AG:  Yeah.  The last time that we were here I believe was 2008.  The last time we played San Francisco we actually played Blake’s on Telegraph in Berkeley.

I don’t think they do live music any more.

AG:  Wow, that’s a shame; that was a really cool venue.  Cool part of town too.  You know it’s hard for us a lot of times to get out west.  We do it but we’re a DIY band for the most part.  The past few years we’ve accumulated some support through the label, booking agencies and we have management … all these extensions that we never had before which make us a little more mobile, give us a little more time to do things.  But still it’s a process to get out to the west because you have to go across the Midwest and it’s a lot of nothing.  A lot of times it’s a lot of driving.  Just trying to synch up your east coast shows with your west coast shows for a band of our level is kind of hard sometimes.

And sometimes it’s easier to get to Europe.  You do seem to spend a lot of time there.

AG:  Yeah, one perq is we’re right on the coast.  We’re in Virginia … we’re actually in West Virginia … our town is bordered on the state line of West Virginia and Virginia.  It’s the same town.  There’s a Bluefield West Virginia and a Bluefield Virginia and I live on the Virginia side.  But it’s pretty easy to get there [Europe].  We have friends that live over here [west coast] and we’ll meet up with them on tour in Europe and we’ll be like, “how long was your flight?”  For us, we’ll be on the plane for eight hours and they’re sixteen, seventeen hours with layovers. 

It seems like European crowds have been receptive to Blitzkid as well.  How would you compare the European crowds to the U.S. crowds?

AG:  They’re all very supportive and they’re all really into it.  The one thing that I have noticed is that in Europe we do have more of an expanded fan base just because we’ve been primarily focused on, as a band, the European market more so than here in the states.  A lot of that is attributed to the fact that we’ve not really had until recently a U.S. label or support.  We were doing everything DIY on our own as I mentioned, burning CD’s and just mailing them out blind to publications.  I guess one got in the hands of Fiendforce Records and they were doing a compilation.  They weren’t a label that was really releasing albums yet and they had a compilation that they were wanting to do called “This Is Horror Punk” and we submitted a track to it and it went really well and they said that the reception to our band on the CD was really good.  They asked if they could license the album that the song came off of and before we knew it we were in Europe.  The last tour we came home from marked our eleventh, maybe it was our twelfth, over there since 2004 and that’s really good considering the fact that it’s not advisable to play the same market a lot because people get tired of you after a while no matter how much they may like your band.  It was interesting … we’ve had an interesting run with Europe.  It’s kind of an anomaly that people are so supportive of us over there.  I’ve felt up until recently more like an import band in our own country.  People still to this day don’t really know who we are.  And I don’t expect everyone in the world to know who we are … I know we’re not U2 or anything … but we’ll come to cities like San Francisco and people are like, “I’ve never heard of you guys.  Have you ever played Blake’s On Telegraph, I go there all the time.”  Or we’ll go to Dallas and people will say, “Hey, you guys ever played here?”  I’m like, “yeah, we played here and there was no one here the past three times.”

There have been some changes in the band lineup; most significantly TB announced he was leaving the band a few months ago.  Who’s actually playing in the band now?

AG:  It’s a complicated situation.  Everything in life hits transitional periods.  The thing with TB leaving the band originally was … it wasn’t any sort of ill will or not getting along.  He and I have been the primary backbone of this band since day one and between the two of us, we each have certain investments in this band.  For me, I’ve put a lot of time and a lot of things such as after college I put off a career.  I was teaching for a while and then I put off my job at a tattoo shop.  They needed me there full time and I couldn’t be there full time if I’m touring.  So I’ve kind of put a lot on hold for this band.  When it came to the point that he needed to leave the band, I understood.  But we talked about it and he understood my position as well.  I couldn’t necessarily end it nor did I want to.  But it put me in a precarious situation because he and I are the primary song writers.  A lot of Blitzkid’s music we write individually … I’ll write a lot of the songs that I sing and he’ll write a lot of the songs he sings … we bring them to each other and add our own interpretations and basically create a Blitzkid song that way.  It’s not a necessary element.  We’re both capable songwriters on our own.  He’s like, “I suggest that you go on with the band,” because he knew the situation and my attitude towards it still.  And that was the plan.  We had a couple of other guys who played in the band at the time and they left here recently and TB and I talked he understood the situation.  We had just been offered this tour with Face To Face and they’re a huge influence on our band and that, for both of us, was a realization on an individual level … like an affirmation.  Like wow, we’ve kind of reached a level that we personally feel is an accomplishment.  You can’t really state what success is, you know what I mean?  It’s relative to what you want so for us it was a hallmark of success to be invited on this tour.  With the new album being out, we felt like the best thing for us to do is to work through our situations outside of the band.  And those situations are nothing internal.  He lives in Massachusetts, I live in West Virginia.  He’s married, I’m engaged.  I have a job, I’m a tattoo artist working more.  He’s doing other things more.  It doesn’t synch up as much as we’d like it to.  I think the reality of us trying to split the band up the way we did kind of had time to sink in in the months following the split.  And we both realized that this band is the two of us primarily and if there’s going to be a band and a Blitzkid, it should be this way. 

 So he’s back?

AG:  Yeah.  The thing with us is that we try to tour as much as possible and we’re working it out.

I think you use the word transition earlier.  To me it seems like Apparitional is a transitional album for Blitzkid.  Would you agree with that?

AG:  I think so.  From my perspective, we’ve had pretty transitional albums from album to album save the first two because we were still feeling out what we were doing … what we wanted to do.  There’s nothing revolutionary about what we’re doing but we needed to find our own market for it and it took a couple of albums.  For Apparitional, though, we learned a lot from our previous record, Five Cellars Below.  We branched out a lot on that album.  Again, in no way is it the Beatles, like the White Album or anything, it was just for Blitzkid … and what we stood for and what we did and what we interpreted our music to be … we decided to go out on a limb, in our opinion, and expose more fringe elements and influences.

Listening to it [Apparitional] for the first time I was pretty surprised but it sounded to me like what Blitzkid is supposed to sound like.  Did the new label have something to do with that?

AG:  They’re solely responsible for releasing it so they had a lot to do with the band over the past year, year and a half.

What about the sound, though?

AG:  The last album, Five Cellars Below, we experimented with some stuff that we necessarily hadn’t tried before.   Then on Apparitional we kind of, I don’t want to say got it out of our system, as much as we incorporated it into our system … decided we’re capable of that sound, let’s combine that now with what we’re more familiar with.  That’s how Apparitional, the songs and the sound, came about.  We took the time to go to a really good studio.  The label was pushing for that.  Actually we wanted that as well.  If you listen to our albums in sequence, they progressively sound better in quality because when we first started there was no idea or foresight that we were ever going to do anything with this band beyond our town.  We were always conscious of that as we grew and tried to expand with it.  We had no real studio experience before this so this is the only band that I’ve really been in.  This is first band and I’ve been in it for fourteen years.  The studio we went to was SRG Studios in Hamilton Square New Jersey.  We worked with the guy, Sean, the engineer on the last album we did, Anatomy of Regeneration.  He understood what we wanted and he understood how we worked.  We were able to go in and eliminate all of the middle ground and the feeling of everything out … just get to work.

Was there a new element brought in or did you think of advance about the sounds you were trying to merge?

AG:  Yeah, we wanted basically to accentuate more of the punk element of the band.  That’s why if you listen to a lot of the songs like “She Won’t Stop Bleeding” or “They’re All Dead,” we kind of brought back more what I consider our roots before Blitzkid.  For me personally, I was always into everything from Bad Religion to T.S.O.L. to the Adolescents … real driving, cool music.  TB was always into metal.  If you listen to a song like “They’re All Dead,” you can hear both elements combined.  It’s a very punk-meets-metal kind of song.  We’re just more comfortable, I think, with our influences.

And you brought the sax back…

AG:  The thing with the saxophone is, where we were recording, we have a friend there named Ceilidgh Madigan and he’s seriously hands-down the Jimi Hendrix of saxophone.  That guy’s insane.  He played in the band Cryptkeeper Five and they’re all friends of ours and it’s been really cool to have those guys in our location when we’re recording because they’re all phenomenal musicians.  They’ll come in and lend viola or they’ll come in and do slide guitar, lap steel, backup vocals and all that stuff.  We saw Ceilidgh and after “Starlight Decay,” that was fun, we asked him if he wanted to come do the saxophone on “Casque of Amontillado.”  It’s cool the way that happened because I gave him the demo of the song two weeks prior to us getting to the studio and I just told him, “listen to this … whatever you want to do … I trust your judgment.”

How do you decide that song needs sax?  Is it one of those “needs more cowbell” moments?

AG:  No, for “Casque of Amontillado”  that was admittedly not so much a Blitzkid song as much as it was something that was a random train of thought that turned into a song for me.  My influences go out to so many branches like old new wave and I like stuff like Madness, the Specials, and all the old first wave ska.  I also like new wave … all the old stuff like Thompson Twins … admittedly I just grew up on it.  It was some of the first, associative music I had as a child.  Like turning on MTV.  When I wrote “Casque,” I had that riff and I wanted the drum beat just to be a four-on-the-floor, consistent almost like dancy song.  And the more I listened to it, it was “alright, this thing needs saxophone.”  It wasn’t really a plan, it wasn’t really, “okay, which song needs saxophone?”  That was there and I knew that we had someone that could do it.  He came in and just laid it down in two takes.

And you’ve got Doyle playing on “Mr. Sardonicus.”  How did that come about?  Obviously you know Doyle from Gorgeous Frankenstein.

AG:  Originally I had given Doyle a bunch of songs most of which ended up being on Apparitional.  When I was in Gorgeous Frankenstein, I had so many songs demoed … I gave him a whole CD full of songs and I was like, “listen to this and if there is anything that grabs you or anything that you’d like to add to the catalog of Gorgeous Frankenstein, let me know.”  As you can tell with Apparitional, a lot of the stuff is more punk, I guess you’d say.  Gorgeous Frankenstein kind of has a heavier edge.  But surprisingly to me he really dug “Mr. Sardonicus.”  We were going to do that song in Gorgeous Frankenstein and we actually traded back and forth like he was playing guitar on it and I was singing and he put drums to it.  There’s a Gorgeous Frankenstein version of that song.

Will that ever see the light of day?

AG:  I don’t know.

Does it have a real drummer on it?

AG:  No, it’s a drum machine.  The thing with that is, when I left Gorgeous Frankenstein, I was basically, “If you want to use it, you can use it.”  And he’s like, “no, we kind of have a different catalog, different direction,” because they got a different singer/songwriter through Alex [Story].  It just didn’t work with my style.  He said if you’re going to do that song on the Blitzkid album, just let me know.  I did and we worked it out.  I guess he was a fan of it.

Have you actually heard any of the new Gorgeous Frankenstein?

AG:  I honestly haven’t.  I have probably thirty-two songs unreleased that were the demo that when I was in the band I was singing and handing back to Doyle, back and forth, before Alex was in the band.  I know the songs, but I haven’t heard them as they are now. 

The other day I saw “Living the American Nightmare.”

AG:  Oh you saw it?  That’s awesome, I haven’t seen it yet.

You haven’t seen it?  I was going to ask you about it.

AG:  No, I haven’t.  My friend J.V. [Bastard] from Gotham Road and Darrow Chemical Company, he texted me the other night.  He saw the premier in New Jersey and he’s like, “This is awesome.”   They used a lot of both of our footage between he and I.  They used some of our music, too.  I can’t wait to see it.

It’s a cool film.  I assume you know the premise.  What are your thoughts on it?

AG:  Conceptually I think it’s a great idea because, as the title states, it’s how it is to tour.  It’s living the American nightmare.  It’s not hard to tour but it has its challenges.  You do something for fourteen years like we have and it’s not like there’s a comfort zone.  You’re continually trying to progress and get ahead.  I actually kind of latched on to what he was trying to convey.

The film is aligned around the tightly knit New Jersey, New York horror punk scene … 

AG:  It’s funny because that’s how I ended up getting my spot in the documentary.  The director, Pawl, was speaking with J.V. and he said, “Do you know any other musicians who fit what I’m trying to do here.”  He said, “You have to talk to the guy from Blitzkid.”  I’ve been neck deep in this for the past thirteen-fourteen years.  It’s not been a hobby.  It’s not been anything that I’ve passively let happen.  It’s been a full-on driving thing for the past thirteen, fourteen years for me.

So are you still driving around in the rusty van?

AG:  No, I scrapped that van for $400.  That’s all I could get out of it.

I was going to ask if you had to pay someone to take it off your hands …

 

AG:  I actually had to have someone come and tow it.  We do have a van now which is awesome.  We have a big box truck that we converted into an RV.  We’ve stepped up a little bit in the transportation department.  The van was just a complete death trap.

It is featured prominently in the documentary.

AG:  It was a random moment.  We were doing some interview scenes at Dingbatz and he [Pawl] was like, “Can I get some shots of your van?”  I had no idea.  He told me the same thing, “some of the best footage that we have is of your van.  It sums up so much of what I’m trying to talk about.”  It’s what people put themselves through sometimes just to play music.

Hopefully when you get home there’s a copy waiting in your mailbox for you.  You guys are finishing up the tour in a few days now.  What comes next?

AG:  We have eight more shows on this tour; our last one is in Las Vegas and we drive home after that.  Basically we’re going to take some time off, probably do some one-off shows here and there. 

On the East Coast?

AG:  Yeah.  We’ve actually not done much on the East Coast this year save back in February-March when we did some Northeastern dates.  We’ll inevitably be doing a full headlining tour this fall.  I hope it will be coast to coast.  Right now, I have to go back and pay some bills, work, do some tattoos … back to civilian life for a little while.  We’ll be back out for sure.

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Touring juggernaut, DevilDriver, hasn’t let up since they dropped their latest release, Beast, back in February. Headlining in the U.S., then off to Europe and now supporting Danzig on his latest North American jaunt. I sat down with DevilDriver front man, Dez Fafara (DF), before their April 30 performance at the Majestic Ventura Theater in California (view pictures of the show here). Freshly inked from a trip to the tattoo shop around the corner and visibly stoked for playing the new stuff at a hometown-ish show, we covered topics ranging from the new album to trials of the road. Here’s a guy that’s found his zen place and makes the most out of his passion for music … and is a very cool dude as well.

Hey Dez, thanks for taking the time.

DF: Hey, thanks for coming out man. It’s good to be in California. We leave tonight and won’t see California for another month so it’s good to be here right now.

And this is kind of a home town show for you guys, right?

DF: Yeah, we formed in Santa Barbara. None of us live there anymore. We all live in the Inland Empire or L.A. now but this is a hometown show. There are a lot of people outside our bus right now that are great friends.

So what is the expectation for the show tonight? Is it going to be pretty crazy?

DF: Just have a fucking great time … just have a good time. Ventura can get rough which is good. I hope that they do get rough tonight.

Like rough in a brutal, fun way.

DF: Like rough in a brutal, fun, bad-ass, DevilDriver, let’s do this way.

So you guys have been pretty busy. I know this is just the second show of this particular tour [with Danzig] but you guys were recently headlining a tour with Cancer Bats and Baptized in Blood. How do you prepare differently for a supporting slot than you do for a headlining slot?

DF: Yeah, we do. If we’re going to put in different new songs, we’re going to rehearse those.  That kind of things goes down, otherwise it’s just business as usual.

So new songs for the tour?

DF: Definitely new songs. With Danzig we only have forty minutes so we’re only doing one song off of the new record [Beast].

Which one?

DF: We’re doing Dead to Rights, the first track. But we headline tomorrow night because he [Danzig] has an off night. When he has his off nights we do an on night. So tomorrow night we get to play two or three off of off Beast which will be great.

And where are you playing tomorrow?

DF: Flagstaff, Arizona. A little college town. My brother went to college there, actually. We’re going to meet him at Solitaire.

How many off-night shows are you able to squeeze in?

DF: I think that there are thirty-something days on this tour and he [Danzig] has maybe seven, eight, nine days off. We’ve filled them all so I think we’re pretty much going straight through unless we have to drive. I personally don’t take a look at the schedule any more. I like to just wake up and just, “where are we? Oh.” It makes it new to me.

You just got off tour and then did the Golden Gods performance. How did that go?

DF: It was incredible. We did Dead to Rights off of Beast and then we did four Black Flag songs with Jamey Jasta, Mike Vallely and Max Cavalera. And it was incredible because everyone at the Golden Gods was kinda doing this 80’s thing … bringing out Duff McKagan to do It’s So Easy or Sebastian Bach to sing a Skid Row tune … and we were like, “well, how come no body’s bringing punk rock to the table here?” In ’79 and ’80 Black Flag was king so we brought that to the table and the crowd really loved it. They went off!

So you did Jealous Again, what else did you guys play?

DF: Jealous Again, Thirsty and Miserable, Six Pack and Mike Vallely did … what’d Mike do? … I can’t remember but he killed it. He’s a great dude and a great vocalist.

I think I saw the Jealous Again video on YouTube

DF: We created our own definition … there’s some double bass in there and the higher vocals, but it was a tribute nonetheless. I’m a huge fan.

How did the tour with Danzig come about?

DF: We found out that he was going on the road and we put in the call. I don’t know if people know this but Glenn gave me my first tour ever in Coal Chamber.

I did not know that.

DF: So I’ve known him for quite a while and he’s always been a total gentleman to me. It’s like full-circle him taking DevilDriver out now. He’s just a great guy and everybody in his band … Tommy Victor, all those guys … are just amazing people. I’ve known them since I was a kid. Tommy Victor who used to be in Prong lived right next door to me.

He still is [in Prong].

DF: If he still is, cool, I love Prong. Big fan. But they lived next door to the Coal Chamber house and Tommy Victor actually gave Rayna [Foss], our bass player from Coal Chamber, her first bass. So that’s how long I’ve known Tommy. So it’s cool to be out with all these guys.

What goes on behind the scenes with those guys?

DF: What’s on the road stays on the road, man. [laughs] I’ll write the book somewhere in my mid-sixties and then I can tell everything but right now I’ve got another twenty-five years so I’m waiting to tell stories

Fair enough. Jon your bass left the band a couple of months ago. What are your plans to fill that position?

DF: Aaron is filling in right now and he’s done over 75 … 80 shows with us.

Already?

DF: Already. ‘Cause he did two European tours, he did Golden Gods, he did Canada with us. Actually Jon Miller’s here today hanging out. You just saw us out there right now taking photos with him. You know, look … Jon’s suffering from a battle that all of us have waged once in a while in our life and I just hope that he comes through it on the other end. He’s one of the sweetest, greatest guys. He spent nine years in the trenches with us and I just hope he beats his battles and wages his battles right and throws off his foes and punches them in the fucking chin, you know what I mean?

So he’s doing better now?

DF: He looked like he was doing good just now when I saw him outside. That’s great, that’s all I really wish for him. None of us have any other feelings and [we're all] wishing the best for Jonathan. I wish he was still here but he needs to conquer some things. You gotta learn how to conquer boredom out here, you gotta learn how to say no out here.

Do you envision him rejoining the band one day?

DF: I don’t know. I don’t think so at this point. He made it very clear that he’s done right now with touring and he’s gonna figure himself out. I don’t know what that means. We’ll see, man. I don’t have a crystal ball but I have Tarot cards and I haven’t read anything with my Tarot on this subject. I’m going to let the chips fall where they fall.

I think that you point out that it’s part of the threat of the road. How do you manage that, yourself? The stuff that Jon faced is obviously the same stuff that you face every day.

DF: We’ve all faced it. Look, you gotta learn the yin and the yang of it. I’m a family man with a wife and children, I’ve got a business to run and then I’m also a guy that likes to have a good time with my friends. I just don’t take it over the top … I don’t do any hard drugs and I don’t allow any of that going on. If somebody is really partying to the point of they’re going to fuck up the show or fuck up what we’re out here doing … let’s face it, in economic times people are playing twenty-five, thirty dollars for a ticket … they don’t want to see somebody out there stumbling around and fucked up. They want to see you on it, doing your thing. So that’s how I do it. I manage to have a cocktail here and there but that’s about it. I don’t go overboard.

Switching gears to the new record [Beast], you guys strike this balance between really heavy record without having the guitars turn to sludge. Is that something that you went in beforehand thinking you wanted to achieve?

DF: I don’t think that anything has been thought out in this band.  We started jamming when Coal Chamber was together, nothing was thought out. We were together six months before we made our first record. It’s kind of the reason we’ve put out five records in eight or nine years. This big body of work is just to define who we are to ourselves and to our fans. Most bands have five or six years before they get a record deal. So they define their sound, they know exactly what they’re going to do, where they’re fitting into a certain scene where they’re blowing up at the moment. We don’t. We’re like the square peg in the round hole. We don’t fit in with anything, we do our own thing, and I think that’s part of the appeal of DevilDriver.

It sounds like from a writing perspective, it’s an organic process.

DF: We write what we write and that’s it. And that’s why every record sounds totally different. If you listen from the first record to Beast, it’s all completely different. That’s because we’re challenging views, really looking at new sounds and trying to figure ourselves out. I told the record label when they signed us, actually … Monty Conner … I said, on the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh records, that’s where you’re going to see us shine. And he said it after he heard Beast … Monty called me and goes, “hoooollllly fuck.” He got the demos and he’s like, “this recording is fucking great. You guys are doing a great job.” And I said, that’s because we’re growing. We’ve only been together eight or nine years. That’s not a long time.

Longer than some bands, I guess. Some bands have their sound, like you said, they’ve been playing a long time before the record deal and they’ve got it figured out. It seems like with DevilDriver we’ve been able to watch that happen as it comes out through your records.

DF: Totally. And it’s kind of cool for fans that have been with us from the beginning to see the growth. And it is definitely an organic growth that nobody’s thinking about. We’re just making records and making tunes that we like for ourselves and it just so happens that it doesn’t really fit in with any genre. You can’t label us. That’s a really great thing at this time in music because it’s very convoluted … tons of heavy bands … everybody’s got a sound that relates to somebody else’s sound or a look that relates to somebody else’s look. Well if you really look at us or hear us, we don’t fit in with anybody’s genre.

Do you see that stabilizing at some point?

DF: I don’t know, man.

Or is that just part of who you guys are?

DF: We’re just doing what we’re doing. We don’t worry about anything. We just make music and the only thing we care about is going on stage and throwing it fucking down so that it’s hard to follow. That’s all we care about.

How does your time with DevilDriver compare to your time in Coal Chamber?

DF: Totally separate because Coal Chamber was a different entity. We were more punk rock and goth put together. We came out in a scene that eventually got labeled as ‘nu metal.’  People don’t know … it was Korn, Deftones and us at the same time unsigned. I look back at that with fondness. I had a great time with those guys and I’m still good friends with them. All the Coal Chamber guys are coming tonight. They’ll all be here and they party with my boys when they see them out. But it’s a different thing musically completely. And my journey with DevilDriver thus far has been a much more revealing life journey than the clouded vision that we all had in Coal Chamber which was really absolutely taking drugs, alcohol … everything was to the limit with us. Everything. There’s a story of me climbing out of a bus window and riding on top of the bus at sixty miles an hour at night drunk out of my fucking mind on whiskey.

You didn’t save that for the book!

DF: [Laughs] That’ll give you a little inkling of where I was at that point in time which was, “who cares what happens.” I’m not that way anymore about it. I think it’s important to not have a clouded vision when you’re out here on the road.

Is part of that being married, having kids …

DF: No, I was married at the time and having kids. It just comes with saying, what do you really want out of life. And I want to jam for a long time. I got a lot of years left in me and so do these guys. I got players around me, I’m surrounded by great friends. I think that’s the unique thing … is we’re actually close friends. A lot of bands that you run into that have been together ten years, they hate each other. They don’t hang out in the dressing room, they just gig together. And I don’t want any of that. It’s not what I want. We’re all close friends.

I’ve seen those bands that you’re talking about. It seems to me that if you’re going to be spending literally twenty-four hours a day with these guys for months out of the year, it’s gotta be tough to do that while not liking the people.

DF: I spend more time with these guys than I spend with my wife and my kids. I always say, I’ve been married fifteen years and only home six years of that.

I happened to notice you were at the Big 4 show last weekend. What’d you think?

DF: It was killer. I’m friends with King … I went with Kerry. It was really put together well, that’s what I thought. The backstage and everything was put together well. Everything was done great but the bands were killer. My personal favorite that day was Slayer although Metallica really busted it out. They opened up with every old tune that they’ve done. That’s who I am; I like the old Metallica. Good for them that they’re changing because it’s growth. A lot of people will say stuff about that but not me, I appreciate the growth. But it was good to hear the older tunes as well. I thought Slayer took the day, to tell you the truth. And when Hanneman came out and played two songs people went insane. And he had his arm hanging out showing his spider bite and I saw it up close and it was like, “wow! A spider can ruin your fucking life!” And that guy is a legend … all of them are really cool people, down to earth.

That was a huge moment.

DF: We were side stage when he came out and people went fucking nuts.

You must have known it was going to happen, though.

DF: Yeah. Well I said, “I heard you’re going to do four songs.” He goes no, he motioned at me no, just two. I thought it was killer. Tom [Araya] sounded amazing. He came back off of neck surgery and Hanneman’s got a spider bite, it’s just good to see them all up there jamming. It’s fucking Slayer, dude!

How do you think Gary [Hold] did?

DF: Gary’s amazing. Gary is so tight on guitar it’s unbelievable.

I would have thought that he was in the band for years just watching him play.

DF: Yeah, Kerry made a comment to me that when they were rehearsing he would stop playing because it was so tight he didn’t know if Gary was actually playing. Good for them and good for Gary coming out. Kerry’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. I love the Exodus guys, fantastic people. Personally I thought Testament and Exodus should have been on that … should have been the Big 6.

Chuck Billy [Testament] was there [at the Big 4 show].

DF: Chuck was there … it’s great when you can meet your heroes and then say things like, “that’s the sweetest guy in the industry.” But he’s really the nicest cat in the industry.

One last question just to wrap things up … most memorable moment from the road?

DF: Most memorable moment is just over years being able to play shows and have a good time and do what I do for a living. I barely support my kids and wife at home but I’m doing what I love to do. I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’m really pleased. Beast came out with no commercial airplay and it debuted [in the] top 40 … debuted top 10 in Australia … number one rock overseas. It’s crazy.

I guess that says something about how off radio is.

DF: It just goes to prove that people have their ear to the ground and that we’re doing something that’s right and something that’s touching the people. I couldn’t be more proud.

The new album is awesome.

DF: Thank you very much. I lot of humility goes into what we do so the compliments are really taken to heart, so thank you.

It’s one of those records that you can put in and listen to the whole thing through and then it’s over and you want to start from the beginning versus some records where all the songs kind of blend together.

DF: We really wanted something that was like that. We really slaved over that. We slaved over the sequencing of the songs and everything else. Then we had three b-sides left over; two of them were A-sides for me. I song called Lost, especially, is on the special edition. I was like, “I can’t fucking believe it didn’t make the record.” But we do things pretty organically with a vote here and if everyone’s got four hands and there’s one hand up then I lose.

So are we going to hear those other songs at some point?

DF: I would love to. There’s eventually going to be a time when we play everything off of Beast including the stuff from special edition and recorded. There’s definitely going to be a time when we play the whole record. I’m thinking it’s not going to be this year because we’re so backed up right now. But next year, without a doubt. And it will be somewhere cool … the Whiskey, the Roxy … somewhere small where we can just pack it in and just do a recorded show and make it crazy.

I’ll keep an eye out for that.

DF: Yeah, we got to get the label to come to the table. We want to do a live record and we want to record Beast live too. They just say, nobody buys live records any more; we’re not going to put up the money for that. And that’s not art to me. You need to put out art. And what you may think is a good painting or a bad painting, someone may think, “that’s the fucking bomb. I want to buy that.” The thing is, you just gotta put out art. So we gotta get them to come to the table for us and let us do a live record. That’s where we shine. So we really need to put one of those out.

I’m looking forward to hearing some of it tonight.

DF: Tonight’s gonna be great. We’re playing with a fucking legend. Glenn Danzig is a legend. And a nice cat.

© 2011 Alan Snodgrass | www.digitaldiversion.net. Please do not use without express permission (contact). If you like what you see, leave a comment below and subscribe so you can be notified of new posts. You can also become a fan on Facebook for access to exclusive photos.

If you’re a regular reader of Digital Diversion, you’re probably already aware of Volbeat.  If you’re new to the site, let me boil it down for you … Volbeat is a Danish rock band that turns an unlikely mash up of punk, metal, country and rockabilly into something truly unique.  Having already reached rock-star status in Europe, they have their sights set on conquering America in short order.

Returning to the Bay Area for the first time since their  latest release (Beyond Hell / Above Heaven) with a Friday night show at the historic Fillmore, I had the honor of sitting down with Thomas Bredahl (guitar) and Jon Larsen (drums) before the show to discuss their progress towards domination.

Enjoy the interview and check back soon for live photos from the show.

Let’s start out by talking about your latest release which is arguably the most diverse Volbeat album to date.  Was that what you set out to do or is that how it came out at the end of the process?

TB:  [During the recording process] At one point Jon is like, “we need more hard hitting songs.  Like more metal, more riff oriented,” because there was a lot of those songs that we do … like more punk, plain rock songs.  We need a few of them so maybe at that point you had something that was a little bit more “together” and then we actually tried to add something that was different to give it that perspective as well.  That’s all we do, blend everything. [laughs]

I think that part of what makes it diverse is that you brought in a number of guest musicians.  I look at songs like Evelyn and 7 Shots … I think that those are vocal parts that Michael could do himself yet you chose to bring in some guests.  Were those songs written for those people in particular or did you record the songs and say “he would be perfect for that?”

JL:  Evelyn was definitely written for Barney [Greenway ,Napalm Death] with his voice in mind.  It was definitely written for him.  I’m not so sure about 7 shots, though.  Evelyn was definitely based on what Napalm [Death] would do if they would sound like us.  I’m not sure about the other one though.

TB:  I think the other one, 7 shots, was written and then because we’ve had for a long time an idea of Mille [Petrozza, Kreator] play guitar or sing or something like that because we hook up with him every once in a while.  We got this kind of old school part that we thought, “wouldn’t it be cool to have Mille sing something on top of this.”  So I think actually that song was written without him in mind.  But then again, I’m not sure.

JL:  I’m not really sure because he [Michael Poulsen] kept on saying, “well, I got this riff that may suit him,” but if that ended up being the riff I’m not really sure.  Maybe the song was already done and, “oh yeah, that’s the part for him,” but I seem to recall that Michael said, “I got this, this would be for Mille to do.”  Was it guitar or vocals I really don’t recall.

TB:  It was even before Guitar Gangsters that we talked with Mille … it was a couple of years ago.  Three years ago we played the same festival up in Norway and we were like, “we should do something together one day.”  And he was like, “yeah, just give me a call.”  And he always drops by our show whenever we play on his home turf if he’s home.  We knew we were going to do it at one point so it was basically waiting for the right part or the right song.

How often have you been playing those particular songs [Evelyn, 7 Shots] live?

JL:  Evelyn was actually played throughout the whole European tour last year in Scandinavia because we brought out Entombed as a support act and we asked LG if he wanted to do it.  I think he at some point really regretted saying yes because he was so nervous and so scared the first few nights that he did it.  So that was played.  I think 7 Shots was only played a couple of times … we played it on the Danish part of the tour.  Michael Denner joined us for that.  And I think we did it in Dusseldorf which is close to Mille’s home and I guess that was basically it.

TB:  I don’t really remember.

JL:  I think that we did it a few times and decided it take it off because …

TB:  … it just doesn’t work.  There’s only one Michael Denner and we can’t do what he does and make the guitar sound that way.  Some vocal parts can be … I did Mille’s part which is doable.  It’s also a short thing [the vocal part] but that signature sound you gotta have it to actually play that song.

Have you thought about touring with any of those bands?

JL:  I think definitely Napalm Death could be fun but, especially in Europe, they are way too extreme for the crowd that we pull in now.  Maybe we could do it in Europe but in Scandinavia they are too extreme.  Kreator … ah, I don’t know … maybe.  It could be done, but who knows.  Maybe.

Never say never, right.  The new album came out in the U.S. about three months after Europe.  What was the delay?  I know people were anxious to get it here and were ordering from Europe.

TB:  Well it’s a normal thing that you don’t have the same release dates, it’s just normally the other way around so we gotta wait over in Europe.  So we basically just wanted to give you guys a hard time.  [laughs]  I think they have to set everything straight with the label … we’re not a household name band yet over here so there’s some thoughts back and forth about which label to use.  So I think that’s actually the main reason.  And then also our touring activities … you know we can’t be everywhere at the same time.  So for us touring-wise, it’s cool to release an album, tour one part of the world and release it somewhere else so it’s still new and fresh, instead of people having to wait another half year or something to have the band playing.  Well now a days everybody gets their music from that big free library.  [laughs]

For the record I picked mine up at a show in Munich.

TB:  You’re okay.  But the stupid thing is, of course, that people are ordering it through Amazon or something from Europe and they pay 10 or 15 Euros and then the same amount of money for shipment.  So it’s actually UPS and Fedex who make the most money out of our albums.  We’ll see next time … hopefully they can align the release schedules a little bit more.

That Munich show was a sold out … I was told 7000 people.  About a month later you were out doing club shows in Denmark.  Do you like going back and forth between the big shows and the club shows or do you have a particular preference?

TB:  As musicians and human beings, it’s like one night you want a blonde, one night you want a brunette.  [laughs]  That’s how it is with shows as well.  For us, if you do just those big arena shows it becomes a routine, and I wouldn’t say you don’t appreciate it … it’s just another day at the office at one point.  And when you play in front of 10,000 people and it’s just another day at your office, that’s when you start thinking something’s a little bit wrong here.  So you want to do something that’s different.  And that was why we did that Danish tour.  We said, “instead of just playing the major cities, let’s play like 12 cities,” and I think that 500 was the smallest place and 1500 was the biggest one.  So basically the same venue capacities as we do over here now.  And then playing cities that you don’t normally play as well.  Some of them are places that you are like, “is this a city? Where is it?”  You gotta Google the city yourself to find out where you’re going.

Now that you mention that, I have a Danish friend that had a question for you.  He noticed that you went from playing in Nakskov straight to New York.  Was that a strange adjustment?  Apparently Nakskov is one of those small towns that you talked about.

JL:  Not really because we went home for a week or something before we flew to New York so it wasn’t really a difference.

TB:  One thing is the city that you actually play but that’s not what you think about when you’re on stage.  It’s not like, “we’re in the middle of Manhattan” or “we’re in the middle of nowhere.”  It doesn’t really matter because you’re on stage, you got your crowd going, you got your crew going, you got the gear … so that’s what you focus on.  I don’t really think about that, but it might be a little bit weird … I’d say more weird just flying into New York and you’ll be on European time and just start playing.  That’s weird.

So you’ve been touring here in the U.S. for about two weeks or so.  I understand that this is your fourth tour of the United States and your second headlining …

JL:  Yeah

So I’m curious how the U.S. crowds developed over the course of those years and their reaction to Volbeat?

JL:  Well they’ve gotten slightly bigger because now we’re playing bigger venues than we did the last time.  But apart from that, it’s basically the same I think.  They’ve just gotten bigger … there’s just more people.

Do you find that people are more familiar with the music as well?

TB:  They might be more than when we first started out as a support act.  We supported Nightwish, Finnish whatever band, on the first tour of course there are some people there for their music.  So of course they didn’t know the band [Volbeat].  But I think that already at that point we had people singing along, wearing t-shirts even though they weren’t available over here.  But of course now you have a full crowd that knows all the songs and sings along.  People seem really conscientious about it… but you know we haven’t been here that much.  I think it’s still a fresh thing and a new thing for them.

I think that this tour has maybe 2 or 3 times as many dates as your last headline tour that you did in the summer [2010].  Are there any particular cities that you’ve been really looking forward to on the tour?

JL:  I don’t know because it’s still a new thing even though we have played here before … not in this venue … but we’ve been here before.  We’ve played in Los Angeles and New York before but it’s still kinda new.  So to say, “oh, I’m really looking forward to this and that city” … not yet.

TB:  After doing California we’re going to do Arizona and Texas and Florida … places we haven’t been at all.  And we did the same on the way over here which is stopping in Montana or something like that.  Places you’ve never visited so are there going to be any people?  Especially that Montana show … that was insane.  It was one of the best shows on the tour.  You roll into a city and to a state you’ve never been before … excuse me, but probably never even heard of that city before it’s on your tour schedule … and there are 1500 people rocking out and one of the most intense shows we’ve played in a long time.

I’ve heard the same thing about Missoula Montana.  Whatever it is, it’s a great rock town.

JL:  Well, it seemed like it was, actually, because that was really a surprise.  Because, again we said, “what is Missoula Montana?  Is it gonna work?”  But it definitely did.

Do you see a big difference between the U.S. crowds and the European crowds?

JL:  I think that they’re a bit like central European crowds because, here in America, now we’ve got the mosh pits going again and stuff like that.  We haven’t seen that in Europe that much on the last tour.  Some places yeah, but it’s more like it was 3 years ago when we toured Europe.

TB:  Of course you play to 10,000 and they’re not all really used to going to shows and moshing out and crowd surfing and all that.  There’s a lot of, let’s say, normal people in the crowd as well [laughing] so that’s also one of the good things for us over here.  The crowd we got here is so much into it.  You don’t really have anybody just being there to see the thing.  They’re there because they like what we do and they know the music.  So that’s a difference.

How do you tailor your setlists between those different audiences, or do you?

TB:  Not really.  It’s a crowd and we’re Volbeat and there are certain songs that we know people wherever we go want to hear.  Actually this time … normally we are just dictators and we play whatever we want …. but this time we actually used Facebook or something and put up, “what do you guys want to hear?”  We put up a list of songs that we wanted to play, or know how to play, and people could choose from that so that got us an idea about what people like to hear over here.  But I think it’s not that much of a difference what we actually play.  There are some songs that you gotta play but we also left a few out.  We left out … for once in like five years … we left out The Gardens Tale which we can’t do in Europe, they’ll kill us.

JL:   Well we could but, we figured that the Garden’s Tale wouldn’t mean anything over here because of the Danish lines but actually a lot of people have been asking, “why don’t you play that song?  That’s what got me into you guys!”  Well we didn’t think it would mean anything … “What, are you kidding, it does!”

TB:  Every night when we play a show we always go out and have a beer if the venues don’t throw people out right after the show.  We normally hang out with some of the fans and everybody’s like, “why didn’t you play that song, that song, that song …” and we’re like, “sure but we’re playing one and a half hours.  Which song tonight did you not want us to play?”  And they’re like, “well you should just have more songs!”  [laughs]  So every once in a while you get to pick something and it’s also for us, let’s stick something in that we didn’t play for a while.  But we get a good idea about what works and what doesn’t.

One last question before I let you guys go.  Why do you think Denmark is the happiest place in the world?

JL:  I’ve never lived outside Denmark so I don’t know.  I have no idea.

You’re aware of the surveys, though?

JL:  Yeah. Yeah.

TB:  It’s like a small hobbit society or whatever.  We’re five and a half million people living in a country and we got our own weird language and weird customs.  I don’t know, but it’s a totally different thing.  Our whole welfare system we’ve got going … all that stuff that a lot of people over here that we talk to say, “how can you guys live like that?”  I think it’s kind of like one big family actually that you kind of take care of each other.  I don’t know, it’s hard to make it to the top because we don’t really have any top.  But there are a lot of middle class people that are doing good and I think that that makes people happy instead of having a too divided society.  Let’s not talk politics…

I was going to say it was because they have Volbeat …

TB:  That could be, that could be.  But now you guys are having it.

DD:  Right now San Francisco is the happiest place on earth … Well thank you both, I’m looking forward to the show tonight.

© 2011 Alan Snodgrass | www.digitaldiversion.net. Please do not use without express permission (contact). If you like what you see, leave a comment below and subscribe so you can be notified of new posts. You can also become a fan on Facebook for access to exclusive photos.

London, Ontario-based metal band Baptized in Blood first got my attention when they released their song Last Line Lady as a free download.  Their self-titled debut Baptized In Blood features pummeling double bass, melodic leads and enough crunch to get even the most discriminating head banging.  Skeptical?  Scroll to the bottom and listen for yourself.

When it was announced that they would be hitting the road with Cancer Bats and DevilDriver, I made it a point to get there early to check these guys out live.   I later learned that BiB took an unusual approach to putting together their set list …  six tunes selected from the comfort of their tour van based upon the shirts people in line were wearing.  Unfortunately I must have been wearing the wrong shirt because they missed a couple of my favorites, but I was certainly not complaining after being blasted by a band I am sure that you will be hearing more of.

I caught up with front man Johl Fendley after their set to learn a little more about the band.  Hit the play button below to hear the interview which includes  their connection to metal legend Dave Mustaine.

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© 2010 Alan Snodgrass | www.digitaldiversion.net. Please do not use without express permission (contact). If you like what you see, leave a comment below and subscribe so you can be notified of new posts. You can also become a fan on Facebook for access to exclusive photos.