Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: God Forbid

Blood of the Earth: An interview with God Forbid’s Doc Coyle

August 17, 2009

God Forbid is not one of the bigger names in metal, but it should be. When many of their peers were mired in the metalcore rut, they released the concept album Constitution of Treason (2005). After many months of relentless touring and a DVD release (Beneath the Scars of Glory and Progression), they followed it with an even more ambitious effort, Earthsblood, in February 2009. The album has received near universal praise, with one rave review after another. Spending the summer on the Jager Stage of the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival put them in front of the large audiences they deserve, and fall touring plans should be announced soon. When the tour came to the Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, Va., the Live-Metal.net crew caught up with guitarist Doc Coyle to talk about the tour, the new album, the sudden departure of his brother, guitarist/vocalist Dallas Coyle, earlier in the year and more.

Doc Coyle: Thank you very much.

It’s going really good. I’m actually kind of pleasantly surprised how well we’ve gone over. We did Ozzfest like five years ago, so it’s been kind of a big gap between tours like this. It’s good to see that people still know who we are. We’re actually even more well known now and still have that continued support from older fans, as well as every day getting to play in front of thousands of people who’ve never even heard of us. It’s an invaluable opportunity, so I think we’ve done really well.

Greg: Who are some of the bands you were excited to get to tour with and see play every day?

It’s weird because a lot of these bands we’ve already toured with. We toured with Slayer on Ozzfest, Killswitch. Bullet for My Valentine actually we never toured with. Trivium we toured with, All That Remains. Actually, I’m fans of pretty much every band on the tour. I have their records, I’m fans of everybody, so I try and catch almost everyone when I get a chance. I’m always trying to get over here and watch a little bit of Bullet or Killswitch or even Manson—it is a good show. I watched almost the whole show yesterday.

I haven’t met him. I’ve kind of walked past him a couple times. I don’t really like to bother people. I think we’re having a meet-and-greet the next show. He’s going to be there, and supposedly, we’ll all meet him then.

Jeff: I think it’s probably your best work to date. I think I gave it 9 out of 10, 9.5 out of 10 for a review. In the press release leading up to the album, it said that you guys were kind of struggling financially. You had to go back and get jobs after touring and whatnot. How much of all the personal struggles played into this album?

Well, we did a DVD telling our story, which is a story of a working band. We’re not as big as some of these other bands, but we’re not no one either. We’re kind of somewhere in the middle. It’s just about, the fact is, when you’re at that level, you’re always one bad record, one stretch of bad luck or whatever from basically not being able to do it as a fulltime thing. If you want to be able to do it, you have to make a living. So the business side of it is important. It is important that you sell T-shirts and sell CDs, all that stuff, and it sounds shallow to an extent, but it is important. I think it fed our album in a good way. I think we felt a lot of freedom and that we didn’t feel pressure like it had to be this or it had to be that. We just went and made the album we wanted to hear because we really don’t have anything to lose. Anything we can always say, we had a great career, we got to live our dream and that’s a wonderful thing no matter whether the band goes on forever or ends tomorrow.

Greg: When you went into writing and recording, did you set any goals, things you wanted to accomplish with this album, other than what you were just talking about?

Maybe not anything 100 percent definitive. I had a vision of what I wanted the record to be, which is kind of like this mixture of traditional songs and kind of progressive metal, where songs would be a little more adventurous and not as predictable, but at the same time really focus on hooks, things people can really sink their teeth into. I think it ended up being pretty much what I wanted it to be. I think the other thing was just to make an album that would set us apart from our peers. There was a certain time, probably between like 2003 and 2006, where a lot of the bands were doing similar things and we kept getting lumped in with that. Our last album, Constitution of Treason, which was, I think, a really good album, but people said, “It’s too much Killswitch. It’s too much Shadows Fall or Trivium” or whatever they want to bring up. So it was like, “All right, what can we do so that people don’t say we sound like this band or we’re doing this?” I think it was that, just kind of being ourselves a little more.

Greg: Constitution of Treason was kind of like a concept album. The new one’s not, but it sort of works well played as a whole. Is that something you set out to do?

I just think we like to make albums. We’re not a band that writes singles and then strings them together. We write a lot of diverse material. When you write like that, you say, “How do we want to tell this story? How do you want to present that?” I think it’s done in a way that’s very—I don’t want to use the word cinematic—but in a way that it feels like there’s peaks and valleys, and there’s dynamics. There’s a lot of dynamics to this record. We’re not trying to pummel you for an hour. We want to hit you in the face and rub your shoulders [laughter] and then get back to the beating a little later.

I think if there’s any album we could’ve done it with, it was this album. But unfortunately my brother left the band and a lot of the stuff—it’s a lot of vocal stuff, a lot of harmonies—and I wouldn’t want to do it in a way that we couldn’t represent it 100 percent. So I think with Dallas not around, that has become less of a reality.

Yes and no. It’s just the way it happened was really tumultuous. He literally quit the day we were leaving for tour, so yeah, I was surprised. But he’s quit or threatened to quit so many times that in some sense it wasn’t really a surprise. At the end of the day, I really don’t have a problem. If anybody wants to leave the band, I’m not gonna be mad at someone because they want to pursue other things or they have other commitments. I would never begrudge them that. I just think he could’ve handled it better.

Greg: Yeah. I guess it would be better for him to leave than to be miserable.

Yeah, exactly. But I just rather you not do it the day we’re leaving for tour.

A guy named Matt Wicklund. He used to be in Himsa, and he also wrote and recorded stuff for the Warrel Dane solo record, the guy from Nevermore. So he’s pretty accomplished.

Matt’s playing with us now, and I don’t think we’re looking to make a change any time soon. I’m not really gonna say any more than that. Matt’s playing with us now and we’ll see what happens. Right now it’s just the next thing. Right now we’re trying to plan our fall touring schedule and as soon as that comes around, we’ll work on that. Maybe, I’m sure early next year we’ll start thinking about a new record and stuff like that.

Jeff: Back to the album, you talk about it being adventurous. There’s almost like some spoken word, almost reggae-type part.

Reggae? Which part is this?

Jeff: Kind of like spoken word parts. You know what I’m talking about? Soul kind of parts.

Soul parts—Every time we sing it’s with soul, baby!

Jeff: Anyway, I was gonna ask—and even some hardcore—what other influences other than metal in your lives played into this album?

I’m into a lot of really progressive rock music. I love Muse. I love Radiohead. Porcupine Tree. We’re big Opeth fans. So a lot of that stuff. The Beatles are probably one of my all-time favorite bands. I’m just into good music. I don’t necessarily differentiate where it comes from because it’s all the same elements. It’s all melody, beats and lyrics. It’s just different ways of presenting it. In a sense, I think I’m becoming almost outdated. Some of the new trends or things kids are into these days isn’t very musical to my ears. Especially a lot of young kids, I think, are really losing the concept of a song and what that’s about, and I think it’s unfortunate. I’m all about the song. If you’ve got good songs, I’m on board with you. If you’re presenting fresh ideas—I don’t like unified kind of momentum. I appreciate bands that are brutal and heavy all the time and I think that’s great, it’s fantastic what they do. But I’m not necessarily gonna listen to that band all the time. Even though I’ll listen to them if I’m in that mood. Like that last Black Dahlia Murder, when I’m lifting weights or I get amped up, I put that shit on. I’m excited. But I don’t necessarily want to be in that band, even though I might really enjoy that. My tastes are more diverse bands. Bands like In Flames or Machine Head, Metallica and Megadeth—that’s kind of my forte, I guess. I feel like we’re a dying breed now.

I’m actually filling in for Mark Morton from Lamb of God when they open up for Metallica about a month after this tour ends. And then right now we’re basically trying to work out our next tour. More likely, we’re going to be doing another U.S. tour in the fall. It’s not planned yet, though. It’s not completely set. Hopefully, by the time this airs, in the next few weeks, we’ll have something ready to go.