‘Nothing could be better’:
An interview with A.J. of Mutiny Within
May 8, 2010
With a monster of a debut album,
Mutiny Within has stormed the American metal scene in 2010.
Heavy, technical and majestic, the band has been described
as a cross between Dream Theater and Killswitch Engage (members
of the former count themselves among their fans). After introducing
themselves to the masses last fall on tour with Soulfly and
in early 2010 on the road with Arch Enemy, Mutiny Within’s
touring schedule has continued with opening slots on tours
with Sonata Arctica and Dark Tranquility, and will include
a summer run with Soilwork. At a recent stop at Jaxx in Springfield,
Va., bassist (and sole remaining founding band member) Andrew
“A.J.” Jacobs sat down with Live-Metal.net’s
Greg Maki to discuss his band’s self-titled debut, touring
with his musical heroes and more.
Live-Metal.net: Well,
this is the last show of the tour. I know your metal roots
are with the Finnish bands, so what has it been like to be
on tour with Sonata Arctica?
Andrew “A.J.” Jacobs: It’s
perfect. With those influences, to be on this tour just makes
a lot of sense for us. And Sonata’s fan base, I’m
glad that we’re able to reach all of them. We take a
lot of inspiration and influence from European metal, Finnish
metal especially—Bodom, Sonata, Norther, Nightwish—all
those bands. Sonata Arctica, that was one of my early metal
records. Probably my second or third record was Silence, and
that’s when I started Mutiny. So now, to tour with them
is just surreal. It’s really cool, and they’re
all super nice guys. We gave ‘em copies of the record
and they all dig it. I told them, “You guys influenced
this from the early days,” and they were very flattered.
It’s been a great tour, and now I’m gonna go home
and sleep.
It seems like their audience
would be a better match for you than some of the other bands
you’ve toured with before, like Soulfly, Arch Enemy.
Well, it’s different. Luckily, our record has a lot
of different sounds on it. There’s some diversity on
it, and it kind of goes on a little bit of a rollercoaster
ride where it’ll be fast and heavy, and then it’ll
be shreddy, and then it’ll be more chilled out and cleaner
parts. Touring with Soulfly was really just getting our feet
wet, and we did great on that tour. We reached a lot of people.
The Arch Enemy tour was great because—yeah, it was an
all-screaming tour; all the bands were screaming. Chris [Clancy]
was the only one singing clean notes on it. The reactions
were great. We were just blown away. The crowds really went
for what we were doing. Plus, Arch Enemy’s like a shreddy
band, so our guitar work really touched a lot of people. So
that tour worked in that sense and we also played more aggressive
songs, where on this tour we have a longer set ‘cause
we’re direct support. So we’re able to bust out
songs that we have, like “Forsaken” and “The
End,” which are a little bit lighter, and they’ve
been going over great, as well, I think for different reasons,
with this crowd. We’ve never played for a power metal
crowd before, so these crowds are appreciating our singer
and, again, the shred guitar work and all that. I don’t
know, I think it’s all worked for different reasons,
and all year—and some that we haven’t even announced
yet—these tours that we’re going on are all different
genres of metal. I’m very happy that we’re able
to tour with all kinds of metal.
That first tour with Soulfly,
since it was your very first tour, how did they treat you?
Did they give you advice, pull any pranks on you or anything
like that?
Well, kind of. The crew for Prong—we left stuff behind
all the time at the venue, and he was always the last out,
so he would look around and find our backpack or whatever,
and he’d hold it ransom. We learned some lessons the
hard way. [laughs] They were all great. That tour
had Cattle Decapitation on it—they’re a death
metal band. I’ve known them for years, so to tour with
them was cool, and they were all nice guys. They work really
hard and they taught us so much. We hung out the whole tour.
The Prong guys were great because they’ve been doing
it for so long and they’re, like, legendary, and we
heard a lot of cool stories and a lot of what to do, what
not to do. And the Soulfly guys, as well, Mark Rizzo’s
from New Jersey, so we’ve known him through the grapevine.
It was cool to hang out with those guys, as well. A lot of
advice.
The biggest thing we learned is just to be good people. There’s
no room for assholes. There’s no room for big heads
or anything like that. All these guys that we met on this
tour were just humble and really super nice. They’ll
help you if they see you—you need help lifting something,
you need help getting back behind the stage, whatever—they
were always there. I think that first tour, we learned, wow,
these bands that we looked up to for years, they’re
not a bunch of assholes. They’re not a bunch of stuck-up,
big heads. They really are genuine dudes, and we kind of wanted
to fall into that, as well. And ever since we’ve made
sure we’re good to everybody.
Next, you’ve got Dark Tranquility
and then, later in the summer, Soilwork. I’m sure you’re
looking forward to those tours.
Yeah, that’s huge. Same story: Dark Tranquility was
a huge influence for me. I had Damage Done, The
Gallery, Projector, and all those albums influenced
our writing. I think we covered “Cathode Ray Sunshine”
off of Damage Done back, like the third Mutiny cover
ever, back in 10 years ago. So yeah, to tour with them is
sick. And then Soilwork, same story: very huge influence we
take from them, and inspiration. I know every lyric to every
Soilwork song ever. So yeah, I’m touring with all of
my favorite bands. It’s weird, man, ‘cause these
are shows I’d be going to anyway.
Are there plans to go overseas?
We’re hoping. Definitely on this album cycle I hope
we get overseas. But this year, we’re booking up really
fast and it’s all over here. We would like to shoot
over to the U.K., though.
I’ve been watching online
some of the documentary series. I’ve never seen anything
like that from a new band before. Whose idea was that and
how did that all happen?
That’s Tommy who you just met, Tommy Jones [Mutiny
Within’s tour manager]. He did the All That Remains
DVD, he did Lamb of God stuff. He’s been doing video
for a long time. He did Black Eyed Peas. We met him when we
were doing our showcase for Roadrunner trying to get a record
deal, and he was filming just ‘cause they had hired
him to film or whatever. So we met him, he followed our story,
we kept in touch, and when the record was done and coming
out, Soulfly tour got locked in, he called up and said, “Look,
I want to come on the road with you guys. I want to document
this band’s first tour. I want to document the second,
third, fourth. I want to film your entire career.” He’s
a fan, he knows our story, he wants to see the British guys
in our band see America. He just thought it would make for
some great footage, and he wants people to be able to connect
with us. So he did and he came out and filmed, and then he
made this two-hour documentary, all in HD, footage from like
60 shows. And since that documentary, he’s also filmed
the Arch Enemy tour, this whole tour, he’ll film the
next tour, the Soilwork tour. It’s a lot of footage
and it’s really exciting. He made a live music video
for us. He’s done interviews for us. All kinds of stuff.
It’s just really exciting. I think not enough bands
have quality video footage for fans to get to know them personally.
It’s a really cool thing. We’re noticing it, people
coming up to us saying, “Hey, I know you like oversized
pizza slices.” So it’s a good time.
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Are you gonna do anything else
with that, any kind of other release or anything?
I don’t know. The documentary right now is separated
into 12 episodes, but it actually is one long documentary.
So I’m hoping one day we can release that. There’s
also a lot of live footage he’s done, and Chris, our
singer, has mixed some live footage, so we’re hoping
to synch it all up and get live music videos out there.
It’s in the bio that when
you first started, you were a Children of Bodom cover band.
Is that right?
Yeah, kind of. We covered Children of Bodom songs, maybe
four or five, and that was the spark for this band. And then,
like I said, we covered Dark Tranquility, we covered a Norther
song. We just kept covering songs, and then eventually we
started writing our own. But yeah, that was the early influence.
What was it about them in particular?
That was just like my first real metal record. I was into
punk rock through middle school—I dyed my hair green
and all kinds of stuff. Then high school hit and my friend
showed me Children of Bodom. He was like, “You gotta
check this out. It’s not punk or anything, but it’s
really cool.” So I checked it out and immediately I
was floored. I was like, “Oh my god. The double bass
is so fast and the keyboard solos with the guitar in harmony,
and it’s so technical.” I was like, “How
could anyone humanly play this stuff?” I wanted to do
that. So that kind of really blew me away. And even today,
I listen back to that stuff and I see why it sparked the whole
technical, fast metal thing.
Is there any kind of a story
behind the band name, Mutiny Within?
The band name was Mutiny for like eight years. Only recently
we put the Within on it because of copyright issues—there’s
a lot of Mutinies out there. The story with the name is like,
mutiny is just a cool word we found in the dictionary—I
don’t know. [laughs] It’s rebellion against
authority, they use it on pirate ships, whatever. And then
we had to change it. We wanted to keep the name Mutiny because
we had built such a fan base around it. Mutiny Within kind
of sums up the lyrical content very much. Chris talks about
personal conflicts and internal struggle. Mutiny Within just
made sense.
How did you hook up with Roadrunner?
Well, we played a show opening for 3 Inches of Blood a long
time ago. We didn’t even have Chris in the band. I was
screaming for the band at the time. Mike Gitter was just the
A&R at Roadrunner who signs bands, and he saw us open
for 3 Inches of Blood. He gave me his business card, and I
kept in touch with him for the next two years and sent him
demos and sent him videos and had him come out to shows. We
eventually got Chris as a singer and all kinds of stuff. We
became really great friends and we talked every day. We honed
the band, we got good songs together and eventually it was
like, “Alright, I think it’s time for you to play
for Roadrunner.” So we did and we landed a deal. It
took a long time, though.
You mentioned you were doing
the screaming. Did you always want to find a real singer?
We had singers before me—I’ve been through a
million lineup changes. But they just screamed and we always
just wanted to scream—until we heard Chris’s voice.
Seriously. We didn’t want singing, really. We thought
about it. I tried it a couple times, but we just wanted to
scream. And then Chris sent back his vocal audition on our
song, and once we heard him sing, there was no question. It
was just like, we have to do that. He’s such a good
screamer and singer. Why would we put ceiling over his head
and say, “Alright, we’re just gonna follow the
rules and we have to scream”? That would be dumb.
You got to spend a pretty long
period of time working on this album. Was Roadrunner right
with you on that the whole way or was there some back and
forth?
No, they were the supportive ones. They’re the reason
that we were able to spend so long on it. Debut record, it
was very important and they knew that. They let us go to two
different studios. They let us try a few different mixers
before we locked in one. They were just so supportive. They
knew that the songs were there and that they needed to sound
right. We’ve been working at this for so long. We’re
just so thankful that they were supportive, not just financially,
but they were on the phone with us, saying, “What do
you guys need? Let’s make this exactly the way you want
it.” It was really amazing. We got to spend almost a
year on it, and if we didn’t, it wouldn’t sound
like this.
Yeah, you can tell a lot of work
went into it when you listen to it.
Thank you.
The songs on the album, were
they written specifically for this album or are the songs
from through the years?
We just wrote songs. A lot of them were written before we
even had a record deal. We wrote 50 songs with Chris on vocals.
Before Chris was in the band, we wrote a lot of songs, as
well. So we wrote 50 songs, narrowed it down to 20 and then
to 15, then eventually to 11. Of course, we wanted to put
songs on a record, but we just kept writing and writing, sometimes
with no purpose, just writing music, until we got the deal.
They said, “Alright, you’re making a record,”
then we started honing in on “OK, what’s this
album gonna consist of?”
Back in February, on the day
it came out, did you guys do anything special?
Yeah, we played a release show at Vintage Vinyl in Fords,
New Jersey , which is like five minutes from my house, and
I’ve been going there since I was a little kid buying
records. Bands have been doing signings and performances there
forever. I saw Lamb of God there, Nightwish. Ozzy Osbourne
went there. So to do a signing and we played for a couple
hundred people—it was awesome. It was really great.
You’ve been out on tour
since last fall. What have you found to be the best part of
touring and then, the worst part?
The best part’s playing, of course. These stages, some
of them are excellent. They sound great and the lighting.
The crowds have been amazing. They know the words now that
the record’s out, hands up in the air, mosh pits. People
are just having a blast and so are we, sweating every night,
screaming these lyrics, playing my heart out—nothing
could be better. It’s the best thing in the world. And
the worst thing? Some of these drives are long, man. We went
from Oklahoma to Atlanta in one day for the next show. All
of the bands had to do this drive. We literally had to leave
once the show ended and you would arrive there at load-in
time. Sleep in the van overnight, drive straight through—it
was really awful. So that’s the worst part, but once
you get there and it’s time to play and you do play,
it makes it all worth it somehow.
Anything else you’d like
to add?
Thanks for thinking of us. I’m glad you like the record.
Shout out to all the readers of this. Come see us. We’re
gonna be playing America and Canada all year long.
LINKS:
www.mutinywithin.com
www.myspace.com/mutinywithin
www.twitter.com/mutinywithin
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