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July 20, 2008 |
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Randy Piro and Derek Roddy
July 25, 2005
By Brian Davis
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This is where I'm supposed to spend the intro telling you how exceptionally brutal HATE ETERNAL are, etc, etc. But that's more obvious than Geraldo's hair plugs, and if you wanna hear the juicy details feel free to read the review. This particular moment is for the side of Extreme Metal that many don't seem to understand. People hear a name like HATE ETERNAL and imagine a bunch of blood swilling Luciferian lackeys who are so wickedly evil that they beat their neighbors' wives and spray paint "Jesus Is My Mexican Gardener" on freeway overpasses. They don't seem to understand the music as a form of pure expression, a cleansing outlet of anger, angst and driving emotion, crafted for the purpose of healthy, therapeutic release for both musician and fan alike. Bands like HATE ETERNAL are a message to the fans, an all access pass to truths and potentials of will that society would much rather you didn't know;
and they are dedicated to such a cause, regardless of the blind labeling and blame shifting imposed at every random opportunity. And so it is a great shame that it must come as a surprise to most that the majority of Extreme Metal bands are some of the most honestly friendly, open, humble and considerate people in the world, let alone in the music industry.
On Saturday July 9th, at the Ash Street Saloon in Portland, OR, I had an exceptionally impacting experience as to just how sincere a band like HATE ETERNAL is. I was on hand to conduct the interview that follows with bassist Randy Piro, and upon my immediate arrival was invited inside to hang with the band (a hospitality that persisted throughout the evening) as they set up and prepared for sound check. As the band finished setting up, had tuned their instruments and farted around a few minutes with humorous covers of various parts of IRON MAIDEN songs, a deaf gentleman came to stand in the middle as the floor's only spectator. As the guy arrived, the mad kings from HATE ETERNAL launched into two loud, ripping, and viciously executed songs from "I, Monarch", much to the extremely ecstatic delight of the gentleman in the middle of the floor with his fist pounding fervently in the air.
As it turned out, the man was a big fan of HATE ETERNAL, and at loud enough volumes he was able to discern a good amount of the music through the vibrations. The smile on the guy's face was one of pure, blissful euphoria and was a sight I will never forget. When I talked to Randy afterwards, he expressed the band's unabashed joy at the honor of having a hearing impaired man be such a devoted fan. They had even contemplated inverting the monitors to direct more sound and vibration towards the guy.
So hopefully as you read this interview with one of the coolest guys in the Extreme Metal scene (actually two, as drummer Derek Roddy drops in at the end to add his two cents worth) you will understand the highs, lows, influences, perspectives and experiences that dictate the life of a devoted Extreme Metal musician, and most importantly grasp the honest, determined intention of the aggressive music that this amazing band plays.
So you guys have had a pretty hellacious road trip...
(hissing air through his teeth) Yeah. Yeah, that's for certain!
INTO ETERNITY sent out a tour update a while back saying that in Quebec City you guys got stuck at the border for like 4 hours, then broke down an hour away (from the venue), and the promoter came and picked you up just in time for the gig...
Wow, you know the whole story. Well, let me give you the whole background. We're on vehicle #6. So the promoter came and picked us up, took us to that show; our van blew a head gasket there, we were in the middle of French Canada, and no one spoke English. So Mike (Gaytan), who plays for PREMONITIONS OF WAR - he's our tour manager and selling merch for us - he called his friend Carl (Bouchard) from A PERFECT MURDER to come and kinda be our translator for the rest of that thing. So he hooked it up so we got a rental van - that was vehicle #2. We were able to do a couple more Canadian shows, then a friend of ours, Vinnie, arranged for a friend of his, George - that we previously didn't know - to drive all the way from Long Island to Quebec to haul our trailer back. So here comes George in a 1993 Ford Bronco and we're just like, "Oh, great..." We put the trailer on; sure enough the thing dies down. So we replaced the fuel filter, we get that thing running a little bit; dies again.
So Mike, again to the rescue, has his singer Nate (Johnson) come up, grabbed us up and brought us to New York and then was able to bring us to Erik's mom in New Jersey. That's vehicle #4. (smiles) Mike and Nate and the bass player from PREMONITIONS OF WAR, Danny (Garcia), come out from Ohio and pick us up in Jersey. That's vehicle #5; that one didn't work, we had issues with that, and # 6 is the van we rented (parked outside the venue) from Chicago. So we've been having ISSUES on this tour for certain, but that's what touring is all about.
And you're making it, too. I mean, it's bad enough to encounter something like that once or twice, but...
Well, you know, you run the gambit, man. I'm still new to the whole touring experience, but I've done enough tours now to know that this is what you sign up for. You sign up to be stranded in the middle of nowhere where people don't even speak your language; that's what happens. It ain't all fun and games; it's some hard work, man, but it's worth it. Every night it's so worth it.
ALL SHALL PERISH dropped off the bill.
Unfortunately, yeah.
Was it because of situations like that?
Pretty much, but not...they're actually gonna be playing some shows with us in California, but they just had some problems.
Just didn't work out.
Yeah, sometimes that shit happens. It sucks, because they're a great band and a cool bunch of guys. I really liked hanging out with them.
I saw the "I, Monarch" video. Very awesome. It felt like watching the original Headbangers Ball, it has a real flashback kind of retro feel.
Really? Thank you. When we saw the finished product it was totally awesome, all the way. I never knew how much hard work a video was until this. We started filming at like 2:00 am and I swear to God until like 9:00 or 10:00 at night. It was brutal.
Pretty tedious; going over the same thing?
Not even that, it was painful. Just going off, you know what I mean? You're just going off like you do live. We were all SORE for like a week after. It was rough. It was still cool though, man.
Will it be a repeat experience?
Oh absolutely, absolutely.
Do you have any idea what (song) you're going to do next?
We have...it's great because the label and between the three of us in the band, when the possibility of a video got mentioned everybody was throwing around different songs. The label wanted different songs - like the American side of the label wanted a couple songs, the European side of the label wanted a couple songs, and the band wanted a couple songs; so it was really awesome that everyone felt that every song had the potential to be a video. I think if we do another one, I personally would want either "Behold Judas" or "To Know Our Enemies". Those are my two favorite songs on the album. "To Know Our Enemies" is actually my favorite song on the album - I'd really like to do that one, but...
That's the one with the didgeridoo.
Yeah. That's Derek's friend, "Chip" Staples. He works with Derek at Resurrection Drums in Ft. Lauderdale; He is one of the sickest musicians I have ever met in my life! He's a cool guy too; he just totally hears and feels music the same way we do, one of the coolest people to hang out with. We knew he played didgeridoo so Derek brought him up to the studio one day and he had all his toys with him. What you hear on "To Know Our Enemies" and (the tabla on) "Sons Of Darkness" he literally just walked in, played, over. It was awesome. We love jamming with him and we wanna use him more in the future. He's just...the level of musicianship he operates on - it's just totally mind boggling. It's that Erik and Derek level, you know what I mean? It's just like, "Oh, damn!!"
Can you talk about the ZERO KAMA stuff?
ZERO KAMA - yeah, that's Michael Dewitt, Austrian gentleman in the '80s who recorded this album "The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H.", which was this one time musical ritual. I guess he learned from Tibetan monks how to construct and play drums and flutes made of skulls and fibulas. Erik got that album when he was young, and his whole time playing guitar he's always jammed to that, that always influenced him; we always use it as our intros live and between the songs - it's always been the ZERO KAMA stuff. So we really wanted to use one of his pieces in a song for a long time. Actually, we wanted to collaborate with him, but shortly after he did that album the Austrian authorities started pressuring him, "Where did you get the bones?", so he got rid of all of it and he paints now. He has a website - we listed it on the back of our album - check it out, there's a lot of cool stuff on there. It's www.zosdewitt.com.
He just paints now and comes up with this awesome stuff.
And that's used at the beginning and end of "I, Monarch" correct?
Yeah. And the video actually...we wanted him to do the video, because all the concept shots of the video are based on the ZERO KAMA idea. You have the teacher preaching to his Padawan learner about how to make these bones, and in the middle section there's actually a shot of him jamming, and the director spliced it so it kinda looks like he's playing along; it's a little off, but it's like, "Oh ,cool! It looks like he's jammin'!" But the whole idea of the video is definitely from ZERO KAMA.
Did you come close to being able to get him to participate?
He just wants to paint and do his thing now. He's kinda like, "I've already done that." Luckily enough we were able to get him on the album and he was happy to be a part of that. I love ZERO KAMA. Ever since I finally got Erik to give me a copy of the album it's...oh man, I love it!
Is that even available?
You can find it on e-bay, but you're gonna pay for it. I've looked and I've seen copies of "The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H." going for like $75. There's actually one other mini - album he did ("The Goatherd And The Beast"); there's all kinds of cool stuff. There are actually ZERO KAMA t-shirts! We all wanted to get 'em, but it didn't pan out.
I see there's no Eric (Hersemann).
He's a weather balloon. (laughs) No, I'm just kidding, man. It just didn't work out.
That petered out pretty quick.
Yeah. You know, it sucks, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Well, it's not like you guys aren't used to being a 3-piece.
No, and we'll be a 3 piece from now on, most likely. We're not actively looking for a second guy anymore. If some guy comes up and says, "Look, I can play this stuff" and he's cool, then we'll talk to him. Erik has been looking for a second guitar player since the band started; I was even trying out for guitar, but this stuff is hard, it's hard; Erik's a perfectionist. He wants it right, and why not? He wrote it. But we'll probably just be a 3-piece; I like being a 3-piece.
And why not? I mean it obviously works.
Yeah. I don't mind a 4-piece either; it would have been cool, but it didn't work out, so what do you do?
Can you tell me about concept of "The Victorious Reign"?
"The Victorious Reign" was actually one of the first arrangements that were together for the album. When you say the concept, what do you mean?
I mean lyrical approach, where was the band coming from, what does it mean to you?
Actually, all the lyrics on the album are really personal. Erik really wanted to be connected with the lyrics this time; all the lyrics really mean a lot to him, coming straight from his soul, stuff that he deals with in his daily life, but at the same time they're vague enough so that hopefully people can read the lyrics and identify with them in a way. "The Victorious Reign", to me - I didn't write the lyrics, but just my interpretation of it is: Overcome. Achieving. There's a goal, there are the obstacles that lie within that goal, here is what I have to do to overcome those obstacles.
Which is a primary theme with the music in general and the album titling: The monarchy over the self.
Exactly - that's the whole point. We're all into achievement and personal evolution in our personal lives and in us as musicians. So obstacles and achievement are a goal within our daily life. We're always facing them every day and just doing what we gotta do to get through them. That's my personal take, anyway. I might be wrong.
It sounds good. (laughs)
(laughs) Yeah, it sounds good, that's all I know! Sounds like I know what I'm talking about.
Maybe you can elaborate a bit - you were saying something earlier about the European release of "I, Monarch" that's got a mini.
Yeah, I think it comes with a picture disc - I may be wrong; but it's a little 7" vinyl that has a jam on there. There's pretty much two things on there - there's the pre-production version of "Sons Of Darkness", which is just a little bit different drum-wise, but we wanted something wanted to just...you know, we were going back through some stuff we had and we wanted put different versions of songs on there. The jam actually was one of the first things we had arranged song-wise, and it has parts from "The Victorious Reign", parts from "Two Demons", parts from "Sons Of Darkness", even stuff that didn't make it on the album. We put it on there so people could see the evolution: here was something we put together feeling that it might be the first song for the album when in actuality it spawned 4 songs. So hopefully people will be able to get that and be like, "Oh, cool!" You know what I mean? Like, "There's the process."
It's a process; like there was stuff with Chip that was literally done right at the last minute; "To Know Our Enemies" - last minute. The middle section of "Behold Judas" - last minute; that was me and Erik sitting there late one night in the studio holding guitars in our hands. We just started playing something and were like, "Dude, that's awesome!!!" So stuff just comes on the fly, and if it feels right, we do it. We play in this band because we love this music and this is what we wanna hear. Hopefully everyone else will be able to dig that. All we wanna do is write good songs, and at the end of the day listen to something and say, "Hey, that's really good." But a lot of that stuff comes on the fly; you just feel it and its like, "Yeah, YEAH!!! GO!"
What's the name of that song?
(shrugs) I think we titled it on that album as "First 'I, Monarch' Jam"; there wasn't really a title. We don't really come up with titles and lyrics until...well, titles sometimes come first - we'll think of something and go, "Hey, that sounds cool", but the lyrics never, ever come until we write the music first.
Was there any certain song in the studio that you guys had difficulty laying down?
(grinning sheepishly) Personally speaking, this is my first recording experience ever. I've been in bands before, but this is my first time in a recording studio laying down my own tracks, and I was...I thought I was prepared. Wrong! WRONG! (laughs) No, I wasn't prepared. Yeah, fuck it, I'll lay it out on myself - the second song that Derek wrote, "It Is Our Will" - I'm not gonna say what section, but there's a section in that song that...and it was so simple, SO simple; one of the simplest ideas I had, SO hard to execute. But we're human, you know what I mean? We're human. We don't mask stuff, man. We're not a studio magic band. When we go in and we track, we track the whole song straight through; if we screw something up we might go in and punch in something here, but we're not like a punch in, studio magic band; we're not about editing.
There are human moments on the album, and I'm sure if people wanna listen hard enough they'll hear a section where' I'm flubbin' or they'll hear a section where there's a little pick noise from Erik or Derek flutters on the double bass - we like that.
It makes it real.
Yeah. I personally don't like this whole computerized style of Extreme music where drums are all triggered and edited, and you listen to it and you're like, "Come on, you did not play that." We want to be the opposite of that; we wanted to have a very - and this is Derek's term - a very "breathing" sound. We want the music to feel organic, and the only way you can get that is by playing it honestly. So there's moments; there's moments. But we're proud of those moments; I'm proud of those moments.
Do you plan on doing anything else, or is HATE ETERNAL enough?
That's an odd question. I've never been asked that before. I'm...man, I'll be playing music for the rest of my life. I've been playing music since I was 12 and music will always be coming out of me. I tell ya, if I did anything else it wouldn't...I mean HATE ETERNAL is enough for me metal-wise, there's no reason for me to do anything else metal. Erik gives me free reign to write, Derek digs the stuff I'm into, so IF I ever did anything it would be the polar opposite of HATE ETERNAL. But I see no reason at this point. I've never even thought about it.
Now on a similar line, if for some reason you weren't able to be a musician - for example I just interviewed Peter (Wildoer), the drummer from DARKANE, and last year he had this horrible. I don't know if it was Carpal Tunnel, but he just tore his wrists up.
(hisses through his teeth and cringes) No! Oh, oh........
He kept touring and they just kept wreckin' and wreckin'. He couldn't pick up drumsticks for 6 months.
Damn. That's horrible.
You could just sense how tangible the threat was, I mean he's a drum teacher, it was just in everything he did. So - God forbid - if something like that happened, what would you fall back on?
Well, whenever I get a chance, whenever I'm at home, I'm studying to be a teacher; but I'm kinda at that crossroads where I'm like, "Alright...what do I wanna do with my life?" But I have to do something outside the band. Extreme Metal doesn't pay the bills, you know what I mean? But I don't know, man...I'd like to work with animals; I like animals a lot. I keep snakes - Derek got me into them. I've always wanted snakes and then once I started hanging out with Derek I started getting snakes. If I was ever gonna study and I wasn't in a band and I had 100% of myself to put into something like school I'd go into animal biology and studying reptiles or something like that; or be a teacher. Right when I got out of high school and into college I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to be a history or a science teacher; so one of those. I like to write too; I like to write short stories and stuff but they never pan out (laughs) I get so far and I'm like, "Ehhh..."
(laughs) But I'll hopefully start writing some lyrics on the next album and I'll be able to break some of that stuff out.
Alright, I don't know if you even know him, but being from the Florida Extreme Metal scene, what do you think about everything that's been going on with (missing MORBID ANGEL/MONSTROSITY guitarist) Tony Norman?
Wow. Wow. That's some shit, ain't it? I have no idea, but I hope...I've never met Tony, but I just hope he is ok.
It doesn't seem like just a flake-out incident.
No, it doesn't. A lot of people I know are friends with him, like our normal sound guy, Richie, grew up with him in South Carolina, and from what I understand he wasn't into drugs or anything, so I just...I don't know. I just really hope he's ok. That is some shit. I heard about it right before we were leaving to go to Australia. I know Erik still talks to [Morbid Angel], and the first thing we said is, "I hope that he's ok." That sucks.
Yeah, as if we don't have enough tragedy in the metal community right now. Like the stabbing at the COC concert. Did you hear about that?
No, I didn't hear anything.
Some dude pulled a knife in the mosh pit, stabbed 4 people and killed one guy. Just crazy.
People...damn. People...I guess there's always bad apples, but shows ain't about that! Everyone's here to have a good time. It gets a little rough in the mosh pit, but that's the same reason why we play this music - it's a release, it's a release from your daily life. (At this point Derek Roddy steps in the room, flips Randy off with a cheerful grin, and sits down.)
Welcome! Alright - If you had to pick one thing that's missing from today's scene or today's sound, what would it be?
Randy: (thoughtful pause) Yeah, I could think of a lot. Um...
Derek: (interjects) I can think of one big one.
Randy: Go for it.
Derek: Exposure. That's a BIGGIE, because you can't buy our record. I mean, there are ads for it everywhere, we're all over the place. Problem is you can't walk into one damn store and get it.
Randy: And it's the same across the board, it's not like it's just us. Definitely exposure, for one thing, because there's a lot...especially nowadays, there's a lot of newer bands coming out and getting signed. I think there are a lot of viable things being said in Extreme music, from a musical standpoint.
There's been a shift - I don't know if you could necessarily call all of it "metal", but there's a heavier slant on mainstream music; do you think that's helping?
Randy: Absolutely, I think so, yeah. I think just that alone, that burst of Heavy in music, shows that people want to get into that stuff.
Derek: Well, that's the thing. How old are you?
I'm 29.
Derek: I'm 33. So when I heard the heaviest thing at the time, I was always looking for something heavier. First it was MAIDEN, after that it was METALLICA; after METALLICA it was SLAYER; after SLAYER it was NAPALM DEATH; after that TERRORIZER, MORBID ANGEL, DEICIDE, etc. So why wouldn't the kids of today be any different? That's the thing that pisses me off, because there's a market out there that is so untapped. These kids, man...they are so starved for this dream music; I was, I don't know about you. And I think that's a big problem with the scene, because if you don't know about it how are you going to find it? I guess it was kinda the same thing for us when we were kids; we had to search for it. But then again it was available; if I heard about SLAYER I could go right to the store and buy it. It's not like that right now; everything is so oriented around marketing and money that music itself has changed. Even modern, contemporary music - what's accepted - has changed. What happened to bands?
Who has a band anymore that is actually, really a band? There's not a lot out there, not with any real certainty. There's usually one guy, like Rob Thomas of MATCHBOX TWENTY - that wasn't really "MATCHBOX TWENTY". Now he's doing a solo record. Dave Matthews, same thing - there was a band but now he's doing a solo record, so what does that tell you? His band is getting the shaft basically (laughs), that's what that tells you. It's really kinda cutthroat, but at the same time people are easily brainwashed into believing what's cool and who's going to make them cool. If you had a record company willing to sink $50 million into radio promotion, put HATE ETERNAL on the radio 40 times a day and brainwash people into thinking it was the next biggest, best thing and if you didn't listen to this then you weren't cool anymore, then everybody would be at the store buying it. If they could find it.
(laughs) But these people don't know; I mean, look at 90% of the listening public - what they listen to on the radio, what they listen to on the ride home from work - if you were to go home with each of these people into their house and look at their CD collection, you'd see the same crap they listen to on the radio. I research a LOT of music, I mean I’m constantly looking for music - when I walk into a Tower Records, I've heard maybe 3% of it. So what have these people heard? The music scene is in a bad way, it really is. The fans are not controlling it anymore, that's the problem with it. In the '70s, FLEETWOOD MAC and KANSAS and BOSTON, all these great bands, were great bands because people liked them! (laughs) You know? They genuinely liked them. Now it's not like that. "If I don't like this band, I'm not cool."
The whole younger generation of musicians and everything is...music is not something that people do for fun anymore, it's an agenda to get them somewhere and do something for them that should normally just be happiness, but it's not. (laughs) But what can you do? I can only play and do what I do. [FIN]
» Official HATE ETERNAL Website
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