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Black Tide:
Too metal for Warped Tour?
August 3, 2009
It’s not easy being a metal band on the punk-based Warped Tour. It’s not easy being a metal band with teenagers in your lineup, either. Black Tide has learned both lessons as they wind down the touring cycle for their debut album, 2008’s Light from Above. But the band has kept plugging away, slowly but surely bringing fans around to their classic metal-influenced sound. When Warped Tour ends, the plan is to commence work on album No. 2. What will it sound like? You could ask bassist Zakk Sandler, but even he isn’t quite sure. The young band members have done a lot of living and maturing since snagging a main stage slot on Ozzfest 2007. Live-Metal.net’s Greg Maki caught up with Sandler when the Warped Tour came through Columbia, Md.
Live-Metal.net: So I’m from Live-Metal.net.
Zakk Sandler: Live-Metal and you’re at the Warped Tour.
Yeah. Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you. What’s it like being a metal band on the Warped Tour?
Different from what I was told it was gonna be. We had heard past stories like, “Oh, Avenged [Sevenfold], Bullet [for My Valentine], Killswitch [Engage], they were all the breakthrough bands, the only ones that people were really into.” I was like, “That’s cool. Maybe that’ll work for us.” [pauses] And it’s there. There’s definitely an interest in us just because most of these kids have no idea who we are, but it’s no Avenged Sevenfold on it, partially ‘cause we’re not as big as them, we don’t have that fan base. We’re the new guys. It might be premature for us jumping on a tour where we’re completely different, but at the same time it could help broaden our fan base, I guess.
Are you enjoying the experience of it?
Yeah. To an extent. I mean, dude, I’m not used to these bands. I don’t know who most of them are.
I don’t either.
So I’m just kind of walking around, like this is what all the kids my age are into? Wow, that’s really different. ‘Cause I just assumed every kid was like me, but I guess they’re not. So it’s a little surprising to see what, I guess, my peers are into. That confuses me a little bit. Because Jeffree Star is huge. Really?
I’ve never heard of him.
Apparently, he was this MySpace Internet sensation, didn’t play music, was like, “Well, shit, I better start a band.” And now all these people go watch him every day.
Who have you seen that you liked?
It’s a small list. Partially ‘cause I just haven’t been able to see every band. I don’t know who anybody is, what the stages are. Aiden I’m really into just ‘cause they’re like that old-school AFI punk rock kind of thing. NOFX has been great. Bad Religion was great. I’ve seen In This Moment a couple times. And After Midnight Project, like some hard rock band or whatever—pretty awesome.
What do you do the whole time you’re out here all day long?
Wander. Try and find meaning in some of it. [laughs] No, I hang out. I’ve become really friendly with a lot of the bands and stuff. Just trying to weigh through what I do like, what I don’t like and that’s all I really can do. I try to get into people, especially acts that I’m told are great. Like somebody was like, “Dude, you really gotta see Saosin’s set. They’re amazing.” So I went and watched them a couple times. I was like, “Alright, it’s pretty sweet.” I’ve seen Escape the Fate a few times. [pauses] It’s just so weird, so weird.
Have you seen Shooter Jennings?
No, I haven’t. Everyone’s like, “Why haven’t you seen him?”
He’s really good. I’ve seen him before.
That’s another completely different artist on the tour. And I love Waylon Jennings.
You should check him out. I’m interested to talk to him to find out what his experience has been like here this year.
I haven’t even seen him. He’s one of those dudes I guess sticks to his own circle or something. But I gotta catch his set.
It’s been a year, year and a half since the album came out. Are you guys looking to the next one yet?
Yeah, we’re starting to demo some songs and slowly write it. We’re working at it. It’s still really different to us just ‘cause we’re all a lot older now, so we have different ideas and views on just music, period. We’re growing. I’m curious to see what it’s gonna sound like. [laughs] You know it’s interesting when the dude in the band is like, “I’m curious to see what we’re gonna sound like.”
[laughter]
Last year, you changed guitarists. What happened there?
Other guitarist, just wasn’t his style of music. He was like, “I’m not stoked on this. It’s not what I believe in anymore.” We’re like, “Right on.” We don’t want somebody who’s gonna play with us and be half-assed ‘cause they’re not into it, so we just kind of accepted it, moved on and that was that. We tried not to make a big deal out of it. Everyone kind of gave us shit on MySpace. They were like, “Oh, you haven’t said anything. Are you guys trying to avoid it? What’s the deal?” I guess to us it wasn’t as a big a deal as it was to everybody else ‘cause we were just like, “Whatever, we changed members. It happens.” But I don’t know. Everybody’s got their own views on it.
So you guys obviously have an old-school metal type of sound. Who were the bands that influenced you?
Dude, everything. It’s not only just metal that we listen to, but I guess primarily for the first record, you hear that we listen to a ton of Iron Maiden, you hear that we listen to Priest, Megadeth, Metallica—fuck—Diamond Head. It’s obvious. You can tell that we listened to enough Black Sabbath and went, “Those are cool do-me riffs. Now let’s speed them up.” Nothing different than what all of our heroes were doing when they heard their favorite bands. But I think it’s just different ‘cause we’re young. Nobody wants to hear about a young band doing it.
Have you faced a lot of negativity like that?
Oh yeah. Dude, on almost all the tours we’ve been on we’ve kind of faced it just ‘cause people kind of give us shit. They’re like, “What do you guys know?” We’re like, dude, get off the age thing. Listen to the fuckin’ music. That’s what we’re all here for. That’s the focus. I know it’s gonna happen. I know we’re gonna get the age thing. And we’ll continue to get the age thing for at least another two years. But dude, Metallica didn’t start when they were fuckin’ 25. Black Sabbath didn’t. They were all 19.
I think people who say those negative things, I think a lot of it is that they’re jealous. They wish they could be doing what you guys are doing at your age.
That’s what I’m gonna go with. My biggest thing is everyone’s like, “Well, you have somebody underage. That’s what makes it so different.” I’m like, the first Zeppelin record came out when Robert Plant was 17. I’m not trying to compare us to Zeppelin, but I’m saying that it’s not that uncommon for it to happen.
What was it like having your first real, big tour be Ozzfest?
It was weird. It was one of those things where I guess the story was bigger than the actual us being on the tour playing. It was big, don’t get me wrong. We were on fuckin’ Ozzfest. I don’t think we gained that many fans off of it. We didn’t sell, really, any merch. We didn’t gain anything financially, number one. I guess the story was it. We gained this really cool story and this good start to the journey. I still think of us as our first big tour was with Avenged Sevenfold. That was it. That was where we were put in front of kids that were going to be into us and we just kind of made it work. We tried to fit in. I think we did. I think we fit in better than any of other bands that were on that tour. The other two bands that shared the bill with us besides Avenged aren’t even bands anymore. So I guess that means we’re doing something right.
I saw you guys play on the tour with All That Remains last year. I thought that was a really good tour. How was that for you guys?
See, that was one of those ones, it was kind of like this, like I don’t know if we’re gonna really fit with Chimaira and All That Remains and Light This City. We were definitely the softer band. We’re more traditional metal. It was a little awkward at first, but we actually came out on top. We did really well on that tour. We were originally offered to be on the Take Action Tour that year, which was like with From First to Last and Every Time I Die, and they wanted us to be first of six bands, Human Abstract going on after us—we were like, “Who?” We didn’t know if we wanted that to be the tour that started our album cycle. We were like, “We need to find something else.” And then we found the All That Remains tour. It turned out well. It was awesome.
You did Mayhem last year, too.
It was the greatest tour we’ve ever been on. Definitely in the top four. Hands down, great crowds, awesome bands, awesome people. There wasn’t anything bad about that tour. Well, we were in an RV with no AC for the first half, so that was pretty bad. But it was like we were kind of miserable personally, but damn, this is a great tour. We were having a fun time. I’m a little bummed that we’re not out with any of those bands again just ‘cause we gained this really awesome friendship with some of them. But it’ll happen again. I’m sure it will.
Do you know what’s next after Warped for you?
After Warped, we’re gonna start working on a new record, hopefully.
And you’ll be as surprised as the rest of us by how it sounds.
Yeah, I’m gonna be very surprised.
RELATED LINKS:
www.blacktidemusic.com
www.myspace.com/blacktide
©2009 Live-Metal.Net
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