Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: All That Remains

Since the release of The Fall of Ideals (review) in July 2006, All That Remains has established itself as a force in the metal world. The band has supported the album relentlessly on the road with a touring schedule that has included Ozzfest 2006, support slots for bands such as Bullet for My Valentine and As I Lay Dying, and two headlining jaunts across the United States. Live-Metal.net caught up with frontman Phil Labonte at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., on the second-to-last night of a tour with Chimaira, Black Tide and Light This City. In a free-wheeling discussion, Phil touched on politics, touring, the music industry, the follow-up to his band’s breakthrough record and more.

Phil Labonte: Yeah, yeah, you know. I’ll be watching this no matter where we are.

No, I don’t. Unfortunately. There’s nobody I like. I mean, I like the process and stuff like that, and I like politics and stuff, but I don’t like any of the candidates, the options. It’s just a slew of bad options.

Jeff Maki: It’s like, before a few months ago, who would’ve known who Obama is? I had never heard of him.

He’s a great speaker. He’s a phenomenal speaker. I wish that there was someone that was a little more in touch with what I believe the country needs. Everyone says we’re on the wrong track and stuff, and I kinda agree, but I think what we need to get on the right track is completely different what your average person thinks or what it seems like your average person thinks, your average voter. I think they believe what the candidates tell them too much. I wish there was someone that had really, really good ideas to go along with the really, really good speeches that Obama can give. He’s the perfect first African American candidate for president. He would be perfect to be the president just from a social standpoint where it would be really, really good for people to get over the stigma of color and let it really be about the person that’s in the office or the person that is in question as opposed to their skin color or their gender or anything like that.

But I think that he wants too many social programs and he wants to raise taxes and he wants to have the government more involved in your life than it’s ever been. I think the government is sufficiently involved in my life as it is and I’m very anti-legislation. I’m a Libertarian. I don’t like the government sticking their nose into your business. I’m the guy that someday wants to own a ranch and it’ll be like in Montana where there’s no one and I can be like, “This is my land. That’s it,” you know? A couple guns to back up that statement.

But yeah, the options suck.

Jeff: Do you think that the candidates reach out to the youth like they should? I read your blog on your MySpace page. You’re really against Clinton, but—

Yeah, she’s the devil. She will do and say anything to get into a position of power, to be the president. I believe that of Bill Clinton, he would do and say anything. I think that truth is at times an inconvenience to them and it’s to be adjusted and skewed to suit their purposes all the time. That’s what I believe the Clinton organization really runs on. It’s just really bad news. I don’t like them at all. I think that they’re so full of crap that it just spews out of their mouth every time they open it.

Exactly. You think Bill Clinton’s gonna be in the White House and play golf every goddamn day? Fuck no, Bill’s not doing that. Best chance is Bill goes out and starts chasing girls again. That’s the best option. But I have a feeling that Hillary is going to be the president because I don’t think Obama can take the Clinton machine, the Clinton organization. I don’t think that McCain is conservative—I mean, just this morning Ann Coulter was on MSNBC saying that she’s gonna vote for Clinton. Ann Coulter, you know? But her points are valid. When it comes to social issues and inside the U.S., they’re gonna act the same. They both want to raise taxes, neither of them want to go ahead and do anything about the borders because they have too many constituents that are worried about an open border or whatever. She wants to have socialized health care, which I think is wrong and bad for America. I think even though everyone would love to have free health care—sure, it sounds great. Then you have to go ahead and figure out how you get that free health care. And what’s that going to do to the quality of health care?

The U.S. has the best health care in the world. It doesn’t have the best health insurance system in the world, especially when it comes to average people that ain’t making a ton of money. But the best options are in the U.S. because of the free market that the U.S. provides. Everything that the free market has provided—there are so many things where people are rewarded for excelling in the U.S. In countries like France—I don’t know if it’s still this way—but for a long time, there was a maximum work week of 35 hours. You weren’t allowed to work more because you weren’t allowed to make more money than someone else. Those kind of things are really bad for business, they’re bad for people in general. Because why try to excel, if you never get a reward for it? Honestly, I feel that’s the way that this country is going. And now I’ve run my face for about five minutes about politics here.

Jeff: I don’t feel like the candidates reach out to the youth enough. I don’t think they ever have. I know you’re really anti-Clinton, but I do remember him coming on MTV and, whether it was genuine or not, speaking in front of teenagers and stuff.

Yeah, but nowadays the youth is not watching TV anymore. The youth is on the Internet. The youth is on YouTube. You may not see it, but Ron Paul’s got a MySpace page. They all got MySpace pages and they all got a lot of friends on their MySpace pages. So it may not be on a national media like MTV, like that kind of outlet, but I think when it comes to the youth—and not just the youth, I think that it’s people in general. I don’t think it’s something that is selectively to young people. But I think that it’s people don’t go out and educate themselves. They don’t go out and try to find the information. They go ahead and turn on FOX News or NBC or CNN and they let them feed them the bits and pieces and the sound bites they want. Any sound bite that they play on MSNBC—MSNBC is the one that I prefer to watch—but any sound bite they play on there, you can go on YouTube and find the full statement in context. But nobody’s gonna go do that. Very few people do that because a lot of people don’t really realize how much it affects them and how much who’s in office and the way the votes go, how much it really affects your life.

Jeff: With that being said—this isn’t a knock on our music or anything—do you think the typical metalhead, metal fan is gonna go out and vote?

I would say no, but I don’t think the typical American is gonna go out and vote either. Like you said, it’s not a knock on our community because it’s no different than the rest of the country. You figure what, how many votes were cast in the 2004 election? Twenty-some million or something like that? Twenty-five million? There’s 350 million people in America . Seriously, unless 200 million people voted, that’s when a real good amount of Americans voted. So I don’t think it really has to do with the kind of music you listen to or whatever. I really think it’s just the state of Americans in general. And I love my country. I love what it’s founded on. A lot of people in our country, they don’t care anymore because it’s just “Am I fat, dumb and happy?” It’s like the fall of Rome. Just give them bread and circus, and that’s it. That’s all they want. They want to be entertained and they want to be fed, and that’s it. That’s a real good way to describe what the American people are like. I can’t say that I blame anyone because, really, what’s most important to you or me or anyone else is taking care of your family. That’s the top concern, is making sure that your family’s taken care of and they’re not wanting for anything. So it’s an interesting situation that we have going on in the United States nowadays.

Yeah, this is our second full U.S. headliner and it’s been amazing. We’re bringing 1,000 people a night in. We did 1,500 people in Worcester. We did 1,300 in Philly. We did 1,300 in Chicago. We did 1,000 people in Toronto. We did 1,000 people in L.A. We did 1,000 people on Monday in Spokane, Washington. On a Monday in Spokane, Washington, 1,000 people came out to see the show. It shows how good the package is. We really tried to keep the ticket prices down. You’ve got All That Remains and Chimaira. Both are headlining bands. Both are bands that go out and headline and are big bands, and you’re getting a 35-minute Chimaira set and we play for an hour. So it’s like you’re getting a little bit of one big band and then a full-on set with—and both bands are moving with lights. And I think tickets are averaging 16, 17 bucks before you pay your Ticketmaster fee and stuff like that. We tried to put together a really, really good package that people would want to see and really make it a fair price, so people could come out and they didn’t have to pay 25 or 30 bucks for the show. If your tickets are $23, then you toss in the Ticketmaster fee, it’s 30 bucks for the show. So it’s 60 bucks to get in for you and a friend? Come on, it’s expensive. It’s harder to do this kind of show with the low ticket price. It’s harder for us and stuff like that, but at the same time, the proof is in the pudding. People are coming out and people are pumped about the show, so you can’t complain.

They’re great. They’re 15. The singer’s like 15 years old, which is awesome. It’s great. The kid’s an amazing guitar player, great singer and they’re a really kickass band. I’m really happy that they wanted to do it.

Greg: I think about what I was doing at 15. It’s just ridiculous that these guys are out touring the country.

[laughs] I think that they’re out with their dad, but I’m not sure. Unfortunately, they couldn’t do the whole tour. They’re only doing half of it. They had some other stuff they had to take care of, which is—everyone’s got business. So I haven’t had a whole lot of time to hang with them and stuff. The drummer was just up on the bus yesterday and we were hanging out, talking a little bit and he’s a really good dude. So it’s really cool to have them be a part of it.

No, just when the tour gets over, almost every time we go home.

Yeah, that’s about the size of it. “We’re done? Alright, cool. See ya. Talk to you guys on Monday.” At least, that’s what we’re doing. The band will go home and we’ll get together—I won’t be there—but the rest of the band is gonna get together on Monday and start writing a new record. Sometimes after a tour, everyone’s like, “We need some decompression time” or whatever, yada yada. This time it’s like, “No, get over here and practice. We gotta write a record.” [laughs] Back to work on Monday. Different kind of work, but whatever.

They try to and then we fight with them about it.

Everyone has their own ideal situation. The label has an ideal situation and the band has an ideal situation. And so we kinda have to find the middle of the road and figure out what the important thing is. Is timing and marketing more important than writing the best record we can? From our perspective, obviously it’s no. So there was some pushing and fighting. We were supposed to record April 1, and we were like, “Yeah, that’s definitely not gonna happen.” And then they were talking about the 15th, and we’re like, “Yeah, seriously, that’s not gonna happen either.” So I think we’re gonna go in the first week of May.

Jeff: Speaking of new material, are there any details, direction of the new material, titles, any information you can throw out at his point?

It’ll be metal. It’ll be a metal record. There will be screaming. There will be double bass. There will be blast beats. There will be singing. There will be guitar solos, and there will be harmonies. And there will be distorted and clean guitars. And that’s about all I can give you right now.

It’s gonna an All That Remains record. We’ve got a new drummer, a drummer that we’ve never recorded with, Jason [Costa], who’s been with the band for about a year, and we’re still kinda feeling out how to work together and stuff, which is good. There’s nothing negative going on or anything. It’s just that me and Oli [Herbert] and Mike [Martin] have been the core of the way that everything worked and it was very dictatorial. We were always like—I’d come up with stuff, I’d be like, “Do this here, do that here” for the drums and stuff like that with both Mike [ Bartlett ] and Shannon [Lucas]. Shannon would come up with a couple ideas, like skips on the kicks and stuff like that, but essentially it was like, “Do this, do this, do this. We want a blast beat here. We don’t want a blast beat here. We want double bass here.” With Jason, he’s such a creative drummer. He’s by and large the most creative and capable drummer that we’ve had ever and we’ve played with like five different people now, I think. So yeah, we definitely don’t want to stifle his ideas, so it’s trying to figure out the best way for us to work together.

We’re not getting too worried about anything. We’re just trying to go ahead and be like, “You know, let’s see how it goes. Let’s go ahead and just kinda get together, and there are some riffs we have. What do you think?” Try out ideas and have it be a really open, flowing conversation about the songs. We don’t want ego to be involved. The last time we wrote a record, me and Mike and Oli were very, very open and very, very easily—Nobody had any concerns about approaching each other with disliking an idea or not feeling comfortable with the way something fit, and we want to make sure that we have the same kind of experience on this record because it really, really worked out really well for the record. You go into it with the mindset of there’s nothing off limits, there’s nothing that I can’t say to these guys, there’s nothing that they can’t say to me and it’s not about my ego or their ego; it’s about writing the best songs that we can write. If you can write like that, it makes it enjoyable for everyone and in our case, I believe it turns out the best songs.

Greg: Since The Fall of Ideals came out, your fanbase has grown so much. There are gonna be a lot of people excited to hear new stuff by you guys and they’ll probably have some expectations. Do you think about that at all?

Not really. It’s really weird being in this band now ‘cause we’re really a lot bigger than I ever though All That Remains would be. So I still kinda try and separate what’s going on inside the band and keep it separate from everything that’s going on outside. All kinds of shows that are great and our CD’s still selling like mad in a time when nobody’s buying CDs. Like last year, 50 percent of all teenagers didn’t buy one CD. Not one compact disc last year. Our label’s sweating, but for me, I don’t care, I don’t get paid on CDs anyway. We’re a metal band. Seriously, the way labels got it set up, you never recoup. You never pay back all the money that they invest in you. So whatever. When they die, whatever, fuck it. I’ll still come out and I’ll play shows, and hopefully kids will come out and see ‘em. And if kids come out and see ‘em, that’s all that matters. We’ll put out CD on a web site and be like, you can download it for six bucks or whatever.

Greg: Yeah, with CDs obviously dying out, where do you see the industry going?

Well, there’s two things going on. There’s the music business and then there’s being a touring musician. The music business? I don’t know and I don’t really care ‘cause I ain’t never been paid for a CD in my life. [laughs] Ever. At all. So I don’t care. Whatever. The days of bands signing record deals and getting millions of dollars thrown at them by the label, those days were gone 15 years ago. They were gone in the early ‘90s. The rock star stuff that you saw in the movie Rock Star with Donnie Wahlberg or Marky Mark or whatever, those days are gone. You don’t sign a deal and have a label throw money at you anymore. It just doesn’t happen because the labels don’t have the money ‘cause bands don’t sell—I mean, nowadays, selling a gold CD is equivalent to selling a platinum CD. A couple weeks ago, the number one record on Billboard was some pop star—I forget who it was—but they moved 60,000 copies the first week. For 60,000 copies to be number one, that is so small considering Metallica sold a million in a day. I’m sure they sold more than a million in a day. I don’t know the statistics exactly, but I know that there’s a lot of records that came out first week and they did over a million copies the first week. And nowadays 60,000 is the number one record on Billboard? It doesn’t say anything about the quality of music of that particular record or any other records that are on Billboard. It speaks about the industry, about the music industry. You know what? I don’t care. Whatever.

Jeff: So do you guys plan on sticking with Prosthetic for a while? If a major label approached you, what would happen?

There’s a band that I know really well and there’s a lot of bands that I’ve watched in the time that I’ve been into music and into bands and had the presence of mind to pay attention. A lot of metal bands go ahead and they put out a record, and some guy at some big label hears them and says, “I can do something with that.” And then they go to that big label and it just doesn’t work out. I can’t recall any bands that have gone to the big label, save for maybe Metallica and Megadeth, that have really hit a home run with it, really knocked it out of the park, really did well. I don’t know that there’s anything a big label could offer us. To be fair and honest, our label Prosthetic, they have a deal with Razor & Tie, who have distribution through Sony BMG, and they’ve had that relationship for a couple years. So for us there’s no reason to go to a big label because right now the people that make the decisions regarding the direction of All That Remains is me, our label, our booking agent and our manager. Obviously, the band has input, but the band tells me what they want and I go ahead and talk to the business side of it and we make a decision. I bring it to the band and say, “This is what we’re gonna do. This is why. What does everyone think?” And if anyone has any real strong arguments, then we’ll discuss it. For the most part, I make the calls with our management and stuff like that, and we’ve had the same team for a few years now. I’ve been with E.J. [Johantgen] at Prosthetic since we became a band. We’ve been working with Josh Klein for probably going on five years now at our booking agents. So these dudes are ingrained in our success, so I don’t see us actively looking for someone else.

I mean, if some label came to me, plopped down a million dollars, said blah, blah blah. A million dollars is a lot of frickin’ money, you know? At the same time, right now we can tell our label we want this and they get it because we’re the biggest act they have. When they’ve got all the money that we could possibly want because Razor & Tie backs Prosthetic and they write the checks and they make Kidz Bop and Kidz Bop is just like having a printing press downstairs, just money coming out of it—We don’t have the big record deal and we don’t need it because we’re a band that tours. I don’t see us going anywhere because I can go ahead and call E.J. and say, “E.J., we need this. We need to do this.” And E.J. says, “OK, let’s do it.” He’s backed us for a long time and I don’t see some major label coming to me with any kind of serious credibility and saying, “We know what’s better for your band.” ‘Cause that at the end of the day is the most important thing, what’s best for the band.

Greg: They re-released the first album last year. Were you involved in that re-release at all?

No. They said, “We want to release Behind Silence [and Solitude].” I was like, “Fuckin’ why?”

They’re like, “Well, because people might want it.” I said, “Yeah right, they think they want it. Then they’re gonna hear it and they’re gonna throw it away.” No, I was like, “Alright, whatever dude. I don’t care.” Basically, they just wanted to be able to get it in stores because it was out of print. I was like, “OK, if you wanna, that’s cool.”

ALL THAT REMAINS - BEHIND SILENCE AND SOLITUDE

I never listen to that thing.

We do “Follow.” We’ve done “Follow” on this tour and I kinda do a little speech ‘cause “Follow” is the first song that All That Remains ever wrote. That was the first song I wrote for this band when I was still in Shadows Fall. Two days after they kicked me out I went to Paul Romanko’s house, the bass player. He had a four-track and I was like, “Yo, let me throw some stuff down, so I can go ahead and give it to guitar players and stuff like that to kind of learn the stuff.” And so, yeah, the first song I actually laid down was “Follow.” I was writing that just to be a side project, which turned into All That Remains, which is a very fulltime project now, 10 years later. So it gives a little bit of history on the band and it’s also about the only song we can stomach from the record. [laughs] We redid it when we were in the studio last time. Japan needed a bonus track, so we were like, “We don’t have a cover song ready and we don’t really have any other songs ready” ‘cause we were really, really rushed for time. So we were just like, “Uh, yeah, let’s just do ‘Follow’ again. We’ll make it sound a little closer to what we are now.” We didn’t do a whole lot of changing. A couple things out there were kind of unnecessary. It’s still the same song.

Jeff: In “Six,” the song “Six,” the blast beat at the beginning, the screaming part, what are the lyrics? They’re missing from the book.

They’re not in the book?

Jeff: No. It sounds like you’re saying something about you wish, something about freedom—

“I wish I was free of this.” [sings lyrics]

Greg: A friend of mine has Guitar Hero. I tried playing that song on there on easy. I had to go into the practice mode and slow it down and I still was struggling.

I play that game and all I do is look for stuff to shoot at ‘cause that’s the kind of games I play. I play Halo. I play Call of Duty 4, Soldier of Fortune, a lot of first-person shooters. So I’m like, “Dude, I don’t see anything to shoot at on this game. I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.” I can’t play that game. Oli’s awesome at it.

Greg: That game is so huge. Do you think having that song on there helped you guys out at all?

Oh yeah. Absolutely. The funny thing is when they told me, they were like, “Yeah, we’re gonna put a song on this video game called Guitar Hero.” I didn’t really know what it was. I was like, “Alright, cool, I’d love to be on a video game.” I love video games. And then they’re like, “OK, cool, we’re gonna go head and put ‘Six’ on.” I said, “What?” They’re like, “We’re gonna put ‘Six’ on.” I was like, “You’re talking about the song that starts with the blast beat and the double bass and the blood-curdling scream, right?” They’re like, “Yeah, they’re gonna love it.” I was like, “Whatever, man. Do what you want. I don’t care. Put a song on there. I’d love to be on a video game, so whatever.” And then come to find out that in the game it’s the second hardest song in the game. The only thing that’s harder is “ Jordan ” [by Buckethead]. So it gets a ton of attention. It’s got a really cool guitar hook in it. [sings guitar melody]

That’s a great hook. It’s cool because it’s a guitar hook. Being the singer, I love vocal hooks and stuff like that. I want to have stuff that sticks in people’s ears. I want people singing along and stuff. But with a vocal hook, especially being a metal band, there’s so many purists out there, true metalheads that just would crap all over a band for having clean vocals and stuff. It’s cool that we get so much attention for that and really the reason we get so much attention is strictly because of the guitar. It helps because it adds to our credibility as musicians. All That Remains isn’t one of those bands that lives on breakdowns. We’ve got a couple, we’ve got some breakdowns, we like heavy parts. But when you think of All That Remains, you’re not thinking of kids moshing. You’re thinking of guitar solos. You’re thinking of Oli with the big beard and long hair—metal god.

We’ve got a photographer that rolls with us named Jeremy Saffer. He’s got a great eye and this is the first time we’ve got real lights with us. We brought our own lighting package and stuff like that. Between the smoke, the lights and Jeremy, we’ve got some of the most absolutely epic pictures of Oli, just hair everywhere, guitar up. He just looks awesome. He’s the most photogenic person I’ve ever seen. Seriously, he is. You take a picture of him and he just looks good in pictures. He just does. It’s like, he looks cool. I don’t know how he does it, but he does it.

GUITARIST OLI HERBERT

But that’s the thing. I’m the singer, so I get more attention than I need. So it’s cool that people don’t think of—when they think of us, they think of guitars and they think of guitar solos and they think of dudes that know they’re shit. We’re a band of musicians. We play metal, but we’re still musicians. We’re not five lucky dudes that figured out if you bang on your E-string and have a breakdown kind of drum beat, you can go ahead and sell some records. Oli’s got a four-year degree. He’s gone to school. He teaches. Mike and I both know music. Jason is an incredibly talented drummer and his actual ability is beyond anyone we’ve ever worked with, when you come up with overall drumming ability. Anything that Shannon could play, Jason can play and Jason is far more creative than Shannon. Shannon, he’s a death metal drummer. He’s fast and he’s got great chops, but anyone can get fast and have great chops if you practice enough. Jason’s very creative and, again, he’s a musician, not just someone who got behind the drums and started playing drums. He’s schooled. He’s had a lot of lessons.

It’s cool that people like the songs that we write and we still get credit as a—‘cause we do write short metal songs. They’re short, concise, to-the-point songs, and when you’re doing that stuff, a lot of times you end up taking out, pulling back and stuff like that ‘cause that’s what usually ends up working for the song. We do so much more taking away than we do adding. We never, ever are like, “This part needs to have more things in it.” No, not in All That Remains. It’s like, “Alright, we need to take this drum part out and we need to take probably 30 notes out of this riff, and instead of harmonizing the whole thing in fourths and thirds, we need to go ahead and just do the thirds.” Not to dumb it down, but just because when you try to do too much stuff all at once, it ends up sounding cluttered and then you lose the point of what’s going on in each of the songs.

Greg: That’s one of the things we were talking about on the way here. One of the things I really appreciate and like about your music is that you can hear the obvious musicianship in it, but it’s not like your just showing off with endless noodling and shredding.

Jeff: Oli’s not just shredding. The guitar parts, the melodies go with the songs.

[nodding] Yeah, yeah. Oli’s a great writer. There’s a lot of songs that I’ll come in with two or three riffs. Oli kinda turns into a firecracker. I’ll come in with two or three riffs. Like “The Air That I Breathe,” I came in with that beginning part and the main riff and I had an idea of some of the changes and stuff, and as soon as I gave it to him it was like lighting a match on a firecracker ‘cause as soon as he gets it, it’s like BOOM and just ideas and just stuff that he can do because he knows music so well. He can say, “I heard this and I thought this kind of feel, so I went and decided to use this mode, and if you don’t like that one, I think this one would sound good too. I started trying this, but I didn’t like the way this was going.” He knows music so well that he knows all of his options just by hearing something. If you tell him the notes, he knows the key, he knows everything. He knows the key; he knows where he can go; he knows where you go if want it to sound like this; if you want it to sound happy; you go here with a major key; if you want it to sound kind of Middle Eastern, you go do harmonic minor; if you want it to sound kind of sad, you do this minor key. He knows what to do given almost any situation because he’s so schooled. So there’s definitely a lot of times where we’re like, “Pull this out, pull this out, pull this out, pull this out,” and it makes for good songs, I think.

Yeah, probably like the second week of May.

Greg: Do you think you’ll be finished with the album by the time you head out on the Warped Tour?

Oh yeah. We’ll be done June 1. We’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna grind it out. We’re gonna spend the next three months just destroying ourselves to get this record done, just cramming and cramming and cramming. I’ve got some song titles and stuff like that and I’ve got some lyrics. I’ve got ideas, which is far better than I did on the last record at this point.

I usually wait until the songs have started to come together so I know where I have to go or where I should go, where I can go because, again, it turns into: I don’t want to fight with the drums, I don’t want to fight with a solo, I don’t want to fight with a noodly part. I want to make sure that everything has their place. So I go ahead and say, “Do this,” and then if there’s something that I really want to do, I’ll go ahead and say, “Let’s try and bring this back.” I need to see what they’re looking for before I really get worried about what I’m gonna do vocally. For the guitar stuff that I write—we’ve got like two songs musically written that I actually wrote. Again, when I say wrote, that means I came up with three riffs, gave it to Oli and he exploded. I’ve got some ideas vocally and stuff, but there’s not any preview or anything I can give you because it’s all still up in the air and so not done or not started, I guess.

No, it’s gonna be a new thing for us and we’re gonna show them that metal can play to these pop-punk kids or these punk kids … and it’s really not all that punk.

Yeah, I think we’re a far more metal metal band than Killswitch. You know, Killswitch is a great band. I love ‘em. They’re probably one of my favorite metal bands out there. But they’ve got a lot of very tame stuff and we tend to push the envelope a little more.

Yeah, we do. I think we do that intentional ‘cause [Killswitch Engage guitarist] Adam [Dutkiewicz] produced our last two records. We’re from the same area. I don’t want people to think that we’re—and I don’t think that people do think this—but I don’t want people to say that they’re a Killswitch rip-off band. There was a long time where we were considered a Shadows Fall rip-off band just because I used to be in the band and people like to just go ahead and talk and say stuff. I’m quite happy with the style of metal that we play and how aggressive we are. We were talking about doing some different style songs and stuff like that on the next record. You know, hey, we have a death metal song, so you never know.

Maybe. We’ve already done it, so maybe not. But maybe. You’ve got songs like “Indictment” which are kind of like—I mean, “Indictment” really reminds me of something off of This Darkened Heart. You could take “Indictment,” put it on This Darkened Heart and it would fit perfectly, which is something that I’m really happy about because it shows that even though we progress and change we’re still the same dudes.

No. Unfortunately, no. His schedule is retarded. It bummed me out because we had planned on having him do it, but he was like, “If we’re gonna do it, we have to do it at this time and not this time.” And I’m like, “There’s no way in hell that we’re gonna able to do it at that time. We wouldn’t have a record come out this year.” He was like, “Sorry, dude.”

No. Not yet. He’s done some other stuff. He’s done some other stuff that’s fairly well known. He’s done some other stuff that’s not really well known. I don’t know that people will be surprised, but I’m really pumped. It’s gonna be good.

Thank you to everybody that comes to our shows and buys our DVD or buys our CD. It’s pretty cool that I get to do this for a living and it’s because people come out to shows. So thanks. I appreciate it.