Interview | DCHeavyMetal.com

Interview With Evan Harting After Maryland Deathfest XI

Maryland Deathfest XI ran from Thursday, May 23rd, 2013 through Sunday, May 26th in Baltimore and uncharacteristically there were some issues with the fest which left many people unhappy with the way things were run. I contacted Evan Harting, one of the two co-organizers of Maryland Deathfest, and he agreed to do an interview with me to address many of these issues. The following 30 minute interview was recorded in the evening of Tuesday, May 28th, 2013. My words are the ones in bold. You can listen to the interview by clicking the orange play button on the player below or you can download the 28mb mp3 of the interview by clicking here.

UPDATE: Ryan Taylor, the other MDF co-organizer, made a few clarifying comments about this interview on the MDF message board, which you can read here.

Hi, this is Metal Chris of DCHeavyMetal.com and it’s just a couple days after Maryland Deathfest XI. The four day festival in Baltimore, Maryland every Memorial Day weekend is the biggest underground metal festival in the United States and heavy metal fans come from all over the world to see dozens of metal bands play. For the most part I had a great time though there were a few bumps in the road. Maryland Deathfest has a reputation for being organized and run very well though this year there were some issues that came up. Attendees took to social media sites and there was a lot of anger and negativity towards the fest sometimes for things well beyond their control. I’ve seen rumors and misinformation along with some issues that I myself witnessed all being talked about on sites like Facebook at Twitter. I love Maryland Deathfest. It is one of the highlights of my year every year and so I reached out to Evan Harting, one of the two co-founders of the festival, to help clear up some of the issues and complaints about this year’s festival in his own words. So hello Evan, thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

No problem.

Now before we get into some of the heavier stuff I’d like to first thank you for bringing together such great bands year after year. Because of Maryland Deathfest I’ve gotten to see some bands perform live that I never thought I would see in my life and I’ve gotten the chance to check out some great up and coming bands as well. So my first question for you is: what were your favorite performances at Maryland Deathfest XI?

I didn’t get to watch any of them.

Alright, you were that busy.

Yeah. By far the busiest year for me.

Now ever since Sonar’s co-owner Daniel McIntosh was arrested and convicted on drug trafficking charges last year [details here] there’s been a lot of questions about where Maryland Deathfest XI would take place. It seemed like you and Ryan Taylor [the other co-organizer of Maryland Deathfest] kind of settled for Sonar this year, which is now rebranded as Paparazzi by their new owners, and the tent set up, which I don’t think many people were that happy about, seemed like you guys were just kind of trying to do the best you could with a bad situation. When exactly did you find out that Paparazzi did not have a suitable stage for Maryland Deathfest bands to play on?

We found out pretty late in the game. We were looking for new venue options and our head of security works with Paparazzi now and he came to us [and] said that the new owners would really like for us to have it there again and it seemed like some of the other options were kind of like falling apart and such. So we decided that we’d at least hear them out. Give them the chance to at least see what they had in mind. It seemed like it was going to work out fine [and we] might as well have it there another year. The biggest thing for us was just [that] we wanted to have an inside component and the proximity to the hotels is ideal for us. You know we want to have people near their hotels so they can just stumble home at the end of the night and not have to worry about it. Those are the biggest things for us so it worked out that way. And the new owners had lots of ideas of how we can expand and make it better and all this stuff so that’s what we decided to do. And they told us we can use the building the way we have in the past. Still have our inside stage and everything like that. So that’s what we were planning on and they did say that they were making renovations to the place and making it different but that was the extent of it. So we booked the entire festival and then we came down to the venue to check it out after the renovations had been made. And we walked into that room and were like, wow. We cannot use this at all. We are screwed.

Yeah. So how did the tent come up as a solution?

That was pretty much the only other option at that point. We couldn’t use the inside. We’d already sold a lot of tickets for Thursday’s [indoor only] show and the portion that was going to be inside and we didn’t want to have a completely outside thing. Certain bands count on having an inside show. That’s what they want. That’s a part of the agreement with them. Originally our first backup plan was [that] we were going to use part of the parking lot right there and kind of wall it in. So that would be kind of like a tented stage for us. But that did not come together and we didn’t know about that happening until kind of the last minute as well. So we, kind of at the last minute, decided we would have to put up an entire tent on the street.

Now was there any difference in regards to the fire code and noise curfew from the tent stage and the other outdoor stages?

No. It’s the same.

Are you considering holding the fest at the same location next year?

Absolutely not.

Many bands were cut off while still performing at the fest this year. Sometimes these were even the headliners. I saw Bolt Thrower, Kommandant, Pentagram, Venom, they all got cut off this year. What was the reason for this?

We have a very strict noise curfew. We have to abide by that. If we don’t then we get fined a lot of money. Venom knew about it and they continued to play so we literally had to pull the plug on them and it looked bad on our part but there’s nothing we could do about it. They knew they had to stop at that time but they decided to keep going. So when we pulled the plug, we’re the bad guys. So that sucked.

The one band I saw that didn’t get cut off was Sleep. They ran about ten minutes over so why weren’t they cut off?

I don’t really know to be honest. At that time I was in the middle of a million other things and I didn’t even know about that to be honest. But Venom also took their time setting up and I don’t remember exactly what the deal was but they should have gone on earlier.

I think everyone’s in agreement that the fest has really outgrown the streets outside of the Sonar/Paparazzi building. So what kind of options are you considering next year? Like maybe [the] Powerplant Live! area or a camp ground kind of set up or– I’m really hoping it’s not on a fucking cruise ship, that’s all.

Yeah it will be on a cruise ship actually… no. We don’t really know yet. You know we just wanted to get through this one before getting started on the next one. But we don’t give ourselves more than a week of rest before planning for the next one. Yeah we don’t really know yet. Powerplant area is unlikely just because there’s so many bars that have their own thing going on. It would be hard to work out a deal with that and also I know the people that are involved, the owners. I’m sure that they would want tons of money from us just to even have it there. I mean anything’s possible but I just don’t see that happening. And also it would be a lot smaller. Sometimes they do free shows in the outside area. It still doesn’t hold as many people as we would need. We could pretty much put it anywhere. A parking lot or park or something like that.

Maybe the parking lot between the two stadiums right there in downtown?

That’s one of the options we were looking at before deciding to have it at Paparazzi. So that’s also an option. We just have to weigh the options and decide which one will work out the best for us. Then we’ll have to deal with, are we getting shuttles to take people to and from the hotels because they won’t be able to walk to them any more? We really want to avoid that but I don’t really see any other way around it at this point.

Now I noticed that most of the security working the main festival grounds were some of the same team of guys who have been there, you know, the past several years. Many of them were wearing Sonar shirts which I thought was odd since Sonar doesn’t really exist any more. How exactly was the security team put in place for this year’s fest?

It’s the same security crew for the most part that we’ve worked with that worked for Sonar. The head of security, he’s awesome and he knows what he’s doing and his core group of guys, we’ve never had any problems with them. They know what they’re doing and they are, for the most part, very friendly to the people and everything. We enjoy having them. When he has to hire people from different venues and people that are not familiar with this at all, they are the ones we’ve had some issues with over the weekend.

OK so what happened with the no studded jackets or belts policy that suddenly arose early on Saturday? I had heard rumors that somehow Phil Anselmo of Down was involved in that or something. Is that true and if not how did that policy even get [put] in place?

It was basically a misunderstanding. It does have something to do with Down because they had a security rider that does enforce those things but I think that’s more for different types of concerts they’ve done. I have talked to their agent about it a while back and he said, “Don’t worry about it. We’re not going to enforce that at the fest it’ll be fine.” And then they get there and their security guy said that we need to enforce all of that and he didn’t know anything that I’ve worked out with the agent previously. So that’s why that was going on and we had to really talk to him about it and he eventually was like “It’s fine, at your discretion just do what you want” so we lifted that. But Phil himself didn’t seem to care about enforcing that at all so I’m not really sure exactly where that started.

Alright. Now one of the problems that affected almost everyone attending the fest at some point this weekend was the long lines, especially on Sunday. There seemed to be a lot of confusion about whether wrist bands got you into the venue without a wait, as they had previous years, or whether that did not happen. And this confusion wasn’t just among the attendees, it was also among the staff that were working the door. The security at the door seemed very under manned at many points throughout the weekend. I went to the SoundStage on Sunday to see Ilsa play and when I came back to the main grounds I walked over and there was this huge line wrapping beyond the parking lot down the street, and when I first walked up there were literally two people checking bags at the door, which I thought was probably the big bottle neck right there. Were there supposed to be more people searching bags and if so where were they?

Yeah there definitely should have been more people at the front handling that. There should have been people there earlier setting up a system and that did not happen. We seem to have an issue with that every year. As many times as we meet and reiterate how important it is that we get the line moving something always seems to go wrong and it just doesn’t happen when it’s supposed to. That’s just one of the issues that we know how we’re going to deal with it for the next year and that’s all we can really do with it at this point. Just learn from the mistakes and move on and know how to improve for the next [Deathfest].

Cause one of the things about these lines too is it made it very impractical to go back and forth between venues if you had the passes that let you. And it resulted in a lot of people missing a lot of bands because some of those bands were stacked very close to each other on that schedule. So you know you walk ten minutes and then you stand in line an hour and you’re missing stuff. I know you guys really trust, again, the security team but is it possible [that] like how Deathfest has outgrown Sonar that they’ve possibly outgrown the security team as well and is it time to bring in a new group of people that are used to bigger events like this?

Well one thing that we’ve briefly discussed even over the weekend and since the weekend is that we have to have a security company. We can’t just hire a bunch of our buddies to do it, there has to be a company. So we’re fine with having just a core group of guys that we’re used to. Just like, you know, even if it’s a very small number of them. We’re fine with that. But other than that, it’s likely that we actually are going to just hire our own people. People who actually know what’s going on and we know there won’t be any issues with.

OK have you considered maybe opening the doors earlier before the bands start? This year I think it was really underestimated how many people were going to be interested in seeing Speedwolf and they played very early on Sunday. They got that full page of worship, basically, written about them in the official MDF program and that probably got a lot more interest in them as well and it seemed like the door people were just not ready for that and with the door time being 1:15 and I think they went on about 35 minutes after that, there was just no way to get that many people into the venue that quickly so maybe earlier door times next year like before the first band?

Yeah, for sure.

OK cool. That’s sounds really good. One thing this year too, there seemed to be problems even just getting out of the venue, the main grounds at least, after the final bands played each night, especially after Venom played on Sunday. You heard people chanting, let em go, because they were just trying to leave. The way they had it set up was you could really only have two people standing next to each other, like a two person line, and people were trying to get out of there. This of course increased tensions and then this led to a lot of violence happening right outside the main gates as everyone was trying to leave. You’ve probably seen that video of the security guard choke slamming one guy out in the parking lot [see it here], it’s been going around. I’ve seen some other ones. You know it reminded me a lot of the pepper spray incident after Ghost closed the fest in 2011. So I’m wondering why didn’t security open up the gates and let as many people out as possible. Obviously nobody else was coming in at that point?

I’m not really sure what happened there to be honest. I heard that there was some kind of an incident and they had to wait to clear that up before letting people out. I’m not really sure. Normally either myself or Ryan are able to come and address issues like that as they come up throughout the weekend but we were just completely overwhelmed with everything over the weekend. We had zero down time. We were multitasking the entire weekend and it was just extremely stressful for us so we were not able to address all of these issues as they happened. Which was really unfortunate because [when] people are upset, it upsets us and we obviously don’t want any issues to arise at all.

I spoke with an actual off duty police officer who was attending the festival just as a fan and he was trying to video tape some of this and the security they told him that they were going to beat him down if he did not stop recording. That’s really weird to me. I can’t imagine that’s something the festival would actually endorse, telling everyone to turn off their cameras. Is that really the policy, that people should not be allowed to video tape anything like that?

No it’s not.

OK, good. I think a lot of people would probably argue that the biggest problem this year with Deathfest was the security however I would actually say that the biggest problem was the lack of communication with attendees. There was no official map or directions on how to travel between the venues, not even in the official program. There was no address given for the pre-paid parking lot entrance. There was no list of items that were banned from the festival. Nobody knew the signing schedule, or the location of the signing area, for Sunday until it was posted that morning on your Facebook page. I don’t think Broken Hope‘s signing session was even mentioned anywhere. On Thursday evening Carpathian Forest announced [here] that they would not be playing Deathfest but there was no official statement from you guys until Saturday. And then I think even that Facebook post was deleted at some point. There were other Facebook posts that were removed as well such as the photo of Down performing. Why were those posts taken down?

Just because of all the backlash that people were posting as comments. We were just completely overwhelmed. I know some things definitely should have been handled differently and we were just completely overwhelmed. You know it’s just us two dealing with this festival and it can be very overwhelming and we just were not prepared for all of this. Security, that kind of stuff, at least now we know exactly what we need to do and what we need to change. And I know some people left with a bad taste in their mouth after some of these issues and that upsets us just as much as them. All we can do is try to convince people, and assure them, that the next fest will be nothing like this. We know what has to change and we will definitely make sure that happens.

That’s really good to hear. Now the Maryland Deathfest Twitter account was reactivated shortly before the fest this year and I really hoped there would be a lot of up to the minute information coming from that and the Facebook page. These are really powerful tools that could have answered a lot of the questions I’m asking now, and they could have been answered in real time. That didn’t really happen and so I was wondering have you considered hiring a social media expert to handle this next year? Like someone that could just run your accounts for you and get information out and answer people’s questions.

Yes. That will have to be the case. Normally we have a lot more down time during the fest so we can do stuff like that but that was not the case at all this year. I had zero downtime. And I had no time to log on to Twitter and send updates. So yeah we’ll definitely have to get someone to do that kind of stuff for us.

Alright now why exactly didn’t Carpathian Forest end up playing Sunday night?

Well their singer was denied visa and one of the other guys was going to do it. The guitar player was going to do vocals but he also was not allowed over so three of the guys were there just hanging out but unable to play.

OK so why was Evoken moved from Thursday to Friday?

Because of work related stuff. It was something relating to work like they thought that they’d be playing later than that so they didn’t prepare for that and so they either would have to cancel or be switched to a different day.

OK so why did Vinterland end up playing at 10pm on Saturday instead of 5pm?

Because a couple of the guys had their flights canceled and had to fly in the next day and they didn’t even arrive until 8pm.

Oh wow. So they basically came directly from BWI [airport] and got on stage.

Yeah. Actually, quite a few bands had their flights canceled or delayed by a lot. So that was like a whole nother thing that we were dealing with all weekend. Just as an example, because of that stuff the shuttles were no longer there picking them up from the airport because their times changed. The hotels canceled their rooms because they didn’t show up when they were supposed to. It was just a whole lot of crap that resulted from that.

Is that why Tinner did not play at the SoundStage on Sunday as well?

No. Their tour fell apart or something so they didn’t end up coming. We hadn’t even heard from them in a while. We assumed everything was fine but then they wrote and said that they couldn’t play at the last minute pretty much.

Although it wasn’t really announced anywhere I thought it was really cool that you gave Speedwolf another set cause the lines had been so long Sunday and a lot of people had wanted to see them and by the time they got in they’d already played. Although their second set was during Sleep’s set. Is there any reason you put them on during that time slot instead of any other time in the festival?

That’s just when it worked out. We figured the least we could do was have them play again since a lot of people were in line before when they were playing but that just happened to be when we had that kind of time that we could slide them in during. And it’s unfortunate that it was during Sleep but it was all we could really do given the situation.

Also what happened with Golden West not being at the festival after they had been listed as a food vendor? I really like the food there a lot and I was looking for them and I never found them.

Yeah actually the girl that we have helping us, I don’t even know what to call her title exactly but, she’s like just under us, like she’s the only one helping us during the festival. She’s a manager over there and she got that together but I guess at the last minute they ended up not being able to do it. People were looking forward to having them there so that was unfortunate but they weren’t prepared for it and didn’t make it. A couple of them came for a few hours and set up in the VIP lounge and just made some tacos and stuff for some of the VIP bands that were in there but that’s it.

One other thing that I noticed about pretty much all three of the stages at the main grounds was there was a poor mix for a lot of the bands. The bass was often very high in the mix, particularly the kick drums for many of the bands playing. I actually left in the middle of Glorior Belli‘s set, a band that I was actually really excited to see, because it was pretty much unlistenable. I know some bands had their own sound guys like Pelican, who sounded great. Some of the bands due to their own sound could deal with the extra bass alright kind of like [how] Anhedonist did but you know when I’m watching a black metal band and all I hear is the bass there’s something wrong with the mix. Is there a reason so many bands were getting a mix that you’d expect of somebody like Obituary? Were there simply not enough high range speakers to counter the large amounts of bass coming out or was this something that was the sound engineer’s preference?

I don’t really know what happened there. They’re some of the same guys that have done it in past years. I don’t know what was wrong with the mix. I’ve heard conflicting stories regarding the sound as well, you know some people said that all of the bands sounded amazing and other people say that it was horrible so it goes back and forth but even any of the negative feedback, you know, we want to work to change it for the next one. So we definitely are taking all of that feedback under consideration. I mean we definitely want to make sure that bands get the best sound that they can. So even if some people thought that it wasn’t good that’s enough.

I think the main problem was it seemed like a lot of the bands were all getting the same mix regardless of what kind of band they were and that’s why [for] some of these bassier doom bands it wasn’t as much of a problem and then you see this black metal band and it should sound like a beehive or something not all kick drums and bass you know?

Right.

But these are people that have worked with you before and stuff, alright. Now this is something that actually kind of bothers me every year although this year I really noticed it a lot. Shots of the audience from the stage while major bands are playing at Deathfest. During many of the bands’ sets this year I saw photographer Aaron Pepelis of Return To The Pit shooting while standing on the stage itself with a professional camera flash repeatedly going off while the bands were playing. As a photographer myself I found this very distracting and also very unprofessional. Now I understand if you guys want a couple shots of the crowd like that during some of the bigger bands, whatever not a big deal. But I saw this going on throughout the fest at both venues. It was really frustrating and I’m wondering is it really worth the detriment to the show to be able to post a picture of Matt Pike’s coin slot on Facebook? Is this something we’re going to see more of in the future?

I’ve never heard anything about that so if it’s an issue it can definitely be addressed. That’s the first time I’ve heard someone express an issue with that to be honest.

Alright. Like I said there have been a lot of changes this year and we know that some people will bitch and moan about any change but some of them were actually very good. Which changes did you think worked the best this year at the fest?

It was great to have food there for one. I think a lot of people were happy just having more food options then there were in the past. Having a few less bands at the Sonar part made it easier for scheduling and stuff like that. Every little thing is planned you know, every little detail, so the things that come together and work out great and it’s awesome. But things that don’t are really hard for us to take.

One of the changes that I really liked was that you included the Baltimore SoundStage. I thought the venue had the best sound of all the stages at Deathfest this year and I don’t think I really heard any complaints about their security. Are there any plans to possibly work with them again or are you going to try to keep everything at one location next year so that people don’t have to go back in lines?

I think the line stuff and going back and forth could have been arranged a little better and that’s something that we definitely will work on but the whole concept behind it seemed to work out well and I did hear awesome things about the venue. The sound and everything. I wasn’t able to make it over there myself for anything but I’d be totally down to include them next year.

The biggest problem I actually had with the Baltimore SoundStage this year was the schedule. There were often several multiple hour long gaps between bands playing at the venue. And for people who had only purchased a ticket to one or multiple of the days at the SoundStage but not the main grounds, that must have been pretty frustrating. And it also would kill any momentum that say an opener band had started to build up with an audience because then you’re sitting around for two hours waiting for the next band. Why were there such large gaps in the schedule at the Baltimore SoundStage?

We just didn’t want to have certain bands playing during certain other bands’ sets at Sonar. There are some people that had tickets to only the SoundStage but not that many. Most people had both so we just were trying to avoid as much clash as possible especially with bands that are more likely for people to be into both that would hypothetically be playing at the same time.

Alright, while some of the food vendors this year were not that high quality there definitely were some great food options this year. The Zombie Barbeque was great. There was a half smoke sausage cart that was really good. Are you planning on getting more food vendors like this in the future?

Yeah, for sure.

Cool.

Yeah this was like the first time that we’ve really expanded to that whole thing. In the past couple years we’ve only had one because it was the owner of Sonar that owns a restaurant and we just kind of worked it out, a deal with him, that he would be the only food vendor to set up. They were there as well this year but obviously not the only one and I think it worked out much better that way.

OK now fans of DC Heavy Metal will know that I’m also a big fan of craft beer and instead of drinking these corporate Millers and Budweisers and whatever. I saw Flying Dog IPAs were available this year, but they were two dollars more than the corporate brands, and for a fan of dark beer like myself, I like stouts and porters, there was nothing available inside the venue, anything like that. Now Maryland actually has some great craft breweries like Heavy Seas, DuClaw, Union and even Baltimore’s own Brewer’s Art makes an actual Ozzy Osbourne beer which I’m sure would have sold well at Deathfest. Are there any plans to get some more local craft beers into the fest next year and possibly at a more competitive price point?

The reason why only those options were available is because the alcohol is completely up to the venue. We gave them suggestions many times, we should have this and this and this, but they don’t listen, they’re just going to do their own thing. We’ve had huge issues with these venue owners all weekend and that is really the icing on the cake that determines that we are definitely not doing it there again. Therefor, we’ll be pretty much doing all of this ourselves from now on. So we will have complete control over what kind of drinks will be served. So yes.

That’s great to hear. At a festival with so many of these just small, underground and independent bands it just kind of sucks to see all this corporate stuff going around when you’re looking at the beer you know when there’s so many small, underground and independent beers also in this area that could also be served there. So that’s good to hear. There were several bands that played Deathfest this year that also played shows in Baltimore during the festival such as Glorior Belli and Tragedy. Are you OK with bands doing this or are you considering having bands in the future maybe sign a contract prohibiting this or something?

We definitely do try to avoid that. The Tragedy thing was a last minute thing at the end. They asked me if it was OK and I was like “go ahead, it’s fine.” But the Glorior Belli thing was kind of a surprise. We knew about it before the fest happened but we were not very happy about it because we paid for their flights to play the fest exclusively. And then I saw they were not only doing a tour but also playing right around the corner from the fest on the same day as the fest. So yeah, we were not too stoked about that. We don’t care if bands do other shows and stuff but we just have to arrange that in the beginning. With bands playing the fest and then playing another venue in Baltimore that weekend is definitely is definitely something that we try to avoid.

The one thing from this interview that I’ve kind of heard over and over is that you and Ryan were both very overwhelmed all weekend. Do you have any ideas yet of what you’re going to do so maybe it’s a more manageable process next year so you guys aren’t just constantly overwhelmed?

Yes. A lot of it had to do with, we put too much faith in the new guys being able to help us out. They told us all along that they’d be able to like get us this and help us get this and etcetera. And they didn’t. All of that fell through so we were just not prepared for that. We put too much trust in them being able to make that stuff happen. So now we know that we cannot do that at all. We just have to take all the matters in our own hands and do things our way and not rely on anyone else to get things done. The specifics are yet to be determined because we’re still in full recovery mode right now but very soon we will start getting the gears in motion to plan for a better fest next year.

That’s great. Well thanks for answering all my questions here Evan. I really do appreciate you and Ryan Taylor bringing so many great bands to the area every Memorial Day weekend. So my last question for you is: when will you start announcing bands and a new location for next year’s fest?

Pretty much as soon as we have it confirmed. We don’t know. We’re going to start working on it pretty much immediately but we won’t announce anything until something is set in stone and we’re completely sure about it, and happy with it, so I don’t know when that will be. Regarding the bands, as many people know, we start booking pretty much immediately after this year’s fest so we definitely will start booking bands very shortly here and probably make our first group of announcements within a few months or so.

Alright cool, sounds good. Well thanks a lot for answering these questions. I know a lot of them weren’t the easiest and you’ve been really honest here and that’s awesome. I hope that you and Ryan do have a good little bit of time off. Actually relax and maybe get off your feet and have a couple beers or something you know?

Yes. That would be nice.

Alright well thanks a lot and I’ll be at the fest next year. Can’t wait for MDF XII.

Cool. We’re just stoked to basically now completely separate ourselves from a venue and everything and just doing… SoundStage thing is one thing but for the main festival grounds we’re just going to do it our own way and this will give us the freedom to do things exactly the way that we want. Every little thing can be premeditated and we can follow up on it and make sure that that’s the way it goes. I’m stoked to start a new chapter and I think it’ll be much better.

That’s great. Alright well thanks a lot and I’ll talk to you sometime soon.

Bye.

Take it easy.

May 30, 2013
Categories: Baltimore Soundstage, Interviews, Maryland Deathfest, Sonar . Tags: Evan Harting, Interview, Maryland Deathfest, Maryland Deathfest XI, MDF, MDF XI . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 35 Comments

Interview with Neil Fallon of Clutch

Neil Fallon, frontman for the band Clutch, was kind enough to give me a few minutes of his time to do an interview over the phone. We covered a wide range of topics such as the band’s new album, Earth Rocker, how being in the DC area has influenced Clutch, beer and even the Newtown massacre. You can read the 13 minute interview below or you can download it as an 12mb MP3 file here or stream it from Soundcloud by clicking the orange play button below. My words are in bold. Enjoy!

Hi, this is Metal Chris from DCHeavyMetal.com and I’m speaking with Neil Fallon the lead singer and rhythm guitar player for the Maryland based band Clutch. The band’s tenth studio album, Earth Rocker, is set to come out in March 2013. So my first question for you, Neil, is what can fans expect from the new album?

Well I think as a whole this record is probably faster than most of our recent albums. Maybe compared to some other bands it’s not the fastest thing on planet Earth. For us it was definitely a step up in the tempo. And I think the other thing that kind of stands out about this one is the blues influences that we’ve been flirting with over the past couple records is more or less absent in this record which didn’t really happen intentionally until we looked back at it. As a whole it’s just much more of a straight up rock and roll record.

Now do you have a specific date for the album release yet? I know it’s coming out in March. Do you know what day exactly?

Right now it is planned to come out March 19th.

Awesome. This will be the second studio release for Clutch on your own label, the Weathermaker Music label. Why exactly did you guys decide to ditch say a traditional label and instead create your own and put your own music out this way?

Well we’ve tried it many many times with many different iterations with labels and just to be frank about it the major labels are in the business of selling platinum records and even a gold record probably in their eyes is considered somewhat of a failure. Clutch is a band that, we’re happy to be a touring band and continue to do what we do but I don’t think we’re that band and we never were. But in the 90’s it did give us an opportunity to do a lot of touring, tour support and kick down a lot of doors that way to eventually put us in this position that we have now. And because of the internet and how easy it is to connect with people it’s very easy to cut out a lot of middle men and sell directly to the people that want to buy our records. It’s more work and you can make mistakes but if something goes wrong you know who to blame and it’s a lot easier to fix. And I think if any artist is in a position to do this, you know whether they be a writer or comedian or it doesn’t matter, you’d be foolish not to. Because it just makes more sense. I don’t see why you would subscribe to the kind of antiquated model of a major label. I think some people look at that as some kind of patron or home but we never certainly thought that way.

So has it changed the way you put your albums out, like the way you record it or anything like that as well?

Um, I don’t want to say it complicates it but we have to kind of wear both hats. You know on one hand we want to be the band and say well we want this amazing package. We want this to fold out. We want to do this, we want to do that. But at the same time we’re also the label and we’re looking, well that’s going to cost X amount of dollars, that’s going to cost Y. So we have to kind of find a happy compromise between those two. We certainly haven’t changed any of the writing aspect of it, or the recording. We haven’t tried to cut corners because of it. If anything it’s made our ability to do cool packages easier because it’s much more cost effective. But other than that not a lot has changed. It’s going very well.

Well you talk about the packages, you guys put out the Blast Tyrant, you re-released it with some bonus material and stuff. A whole nother disc actually. Are you planning on doing that with any of your other older albums in the future?

Well we’ve kind of exhausted that. Blast Tyrant and Robot Hive/Exodus and Beale Street were out on a label called DRT that was the last label we were signed to before we went out on our own. And to make a long story short they just stopped paying us our royalties and we had to go to court to get the money. We won the case but they still couldn’t pay us so in lieu of paying us what we were owed we were awarded those masters for those records. It was sort of a windfall to Weathermaker to get these three records back and we could re-release them. But the ones prior to that when you’re talking about Pure Rock Fury and Elephant Riders and the self titled, maybe in the distant future those records will revert back to us just because of the terms of the contract will expire. But that’s not on our to do list because trying to talk to Sony’s lawyers is like launching a spacecraft.

So no hope for an Elephant Riders vinyl any time soon?

No, sadly. That would be a great thing to do though but you never know. I mean, I think 25 years is going to come around quick for all those records. So, I’ll never say never but just not in the immediate future.

In September of 2011 you guys played a free acoustic show at the Red Palace in Washington, DC and I was there and it was pretty awesome getting to see you guys up close in a really personal setting like that. Do you ever miss playing venues that size or do you have any plans to play some smaller shows like that again any time soon?

I find at those smaller clubs the energy and intensity is much more concentrated. It seems easier to play a room like that than it would be a much larger room. Having said that, the 9:30 Club‘s pretty big but still has the character of being a small room in a lot of ways. When we go to Europe we play much smaller clubs there than we do here so they haven’t gone away. And playing acoustically is a good exercise because it’s a bit terrifying because you can hide behind distortion and you can hide behind gain but when you’re playing at a lower volume it’s a much more honest representation of what you’re doing. But it’s a good learning exercise.

Ok now that show was also a promotional tie in with the New Belgium Brewing‘s Clutch Dark Sour Ale. And it was a delicious beer but it was a very limited run. And I was wondering do you have any idea if they’re going to make any more batches of that or maybe you’re going to make another Clutch beer at some point down the road?

Well I would certainly hope they would entertain doing it again. I know somebody actually contacted them just a week ago and was trying to start up a petition to make that a regular brew over there, which we would be over the moon about if that was the case. But we don’t really have any say in it because it’s all New Belgium’s doing. We’ve got a lot of friends in breweries around the country [that] come to shows and drop off beer and if any one of their breweries wanted to do something like that I’m sure we would jump at it.

That’s awesome. I actually know a few guys at local breweries here in the DC area that are fans of yours as well.

Yeah we seem to have a lot of fans that work in the beer industry which is a good problem to have.

Yeah those are not bad friends to have.

No.

You guys played the Artscape in Baltimore this year. What did you think about the crowd there and the experience of the show there? I know that’s probably a different audience than what you’re used to. Did you feel you won some new fans there or maybe you were just playing to a bunch of soccer moms with their kids or how did you feel about that show?

I felt good about it. I mean I had that kind of trepidation beforehand cause I was looking around saying “Well this is a bit out of our element” but when it came time for us to play there was certainly a large contingent of Clutch fans there that came and helped support the band as they always do. It’s good to get out of one’s comfort zone. You can’t always preach to one’s own choir day in and day out. It was fun. It sounded good where we were at and the weather cooperated and it’s nice to do something like that, kind of a casual more stripped down family affair than let’s say your gnarly nightclub half past midnight.

Now you guys have a show coming up at the 9:30 Club on December 26th and it will be the first show of a short US tour here before you head over to Europe in 2013. You guys have played the 9:30 Club many times over the years. The last time I think was when you did the live DVD in 2009 that you shot there. Does performing there have any kind of special meaning to you guys?

Well I consider it my home club as far as when I want to go see bands play that’s where I might want to go see them. And we’ve been playing there for as long as the band’s existed and even when the 9:30 Club was at it’s former location. And I saw a lot of good shows there growing up even before I was in Clutch. It made a big impression on me. So that club’s near and dear to my heart and having been around the country to see what most night clubs are like I can safely say that we’re fortunate that we have this club because it really is one of the best in the country if not the world. To be able to call that our home club, if that’s the case, then even better. I have nothing but good things to say about the people that run that as well.

The first time I ever saw Clutch live it was at the 9:30 Club and that was in 1998 when you guys were playing with, I think Slayer headlined and the opener was an at the time unknown System Of A Down. Now those other two bands are considerably different than your sound. Do you remember anything interesting from that show or just the tour with those guys?

I remember that tour well because I got to watch Slayer every night. And we became friends with System Of A Down and I’d still consider them friends after all these years. They worked hard and you know have been enjoying the benefits of that labor. And Slayer, they were gentlemen. I’d heard stories about the Slayer crowd. I’d seen Slayer crowds before I went on tour with them but it was actually not nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be. That was an excellent tour. I had a good time on that one.

All four members of Clutch have been with the band since you guys formed in 1990. So I was kind of curious, what’s the secret to keeping a band together like that for so long?

A collective fear of getting day jobs is one. A sense of humor. I mean there’s been feast and famine but I think because we never talked about what kind of band we wanted to be we couldn’t really fail because we never set up a goal. And just a love of playing live music. I mean even if we were having troubles with the label or something was amiss in our camp we could always play live and I think if a band has that in their corner as part of their identity they can go as long as they see fit.

Alright now how did you guys actually settle on the name Clutch?

We were huge Prong fans and we liked the sound of the name Prong. We also we fans of a local band in DC called Swiz and we liked that name too. The mono syllabic thing I guess was really tickling our fancy at the time. And I know we’d intended to change the name at some point because we just kind of threw it on a flyer because we needed to and then maybe it was just a mixture of laziness or people started coming to our shows and we thought well it’s kind of too late to change the name, just keep it as it is. Who actually suggested it? I couldn’t tell you at this point. I know it was probably spoken about in the basement of Tim’s [Sult, lead guitarist of Clutch] parents’ house.

Now do you think being from Maryland and the greater DC area in general has influenced the sound of Clutch and the general direction of the band over the years?

I think we’ve been pretty fortunate to grow up here. Washington DC of course has a legendary music scene. Both harDCore and punk rock and metal, we listened to all those things growing up weather it was Bad Brains or Pentagram or Fugazi and Minor Threat. I know Jean-Paul [Gaster, drummer of Clutch] is a huge gogo fan and I think that’s informed his playing. And DC, you’re close enough to other cities you can go see shows outside your town but it’s not overrun so much like you find in New York and LA where you just get completely lost in the shuffle. It’s a manageable sized city. So I think that definitely played a big part in helping us out in the beginning.

So are there any bands from the greater you know DC, Baltimore and Virginia area that you’re a fan of right now?

Well let’s see here. Well we do quite a few shows with a local band from Wheaton called Lionize. Which they’re much more of a rock band. Initially they had a big reggae influence in their music but as they progressed they’re becoming much more of just a hard rock band. I’m a big fan of theirs. They’re good guys. Um let’s see who else? There’s another band called Black Clouds which is really good. I did some work with them not too long ago [specifically on their track Santorum Sunday School]. I know they play around. Those are the first two that come to mind immediately.

I’m actually going to see Black Clouds soon. They’re playing the Rock & Roll Hotel on December 29th.

Oh no kidding.

Yeah. With Warchild.

Oh dammit when I’m out of town, of course. That’s usually the way it goes.

Now there’s one thing that’s kind of been all over the news and stuff. In Newtown, Connecticut last week there were 20 children and seven adults who were murdered and I’m not asking for any kind of political statement here or anything but I was just kind of wondering if you had any kind of comment you’d want to make on that national tragedy.

Well I guess all those politics and things go right out the window for me because I’m a new parent. I have a two and a half year old son and just trying to even begin to relate what that must be like is impossible and in this day and age with the internet everybody’s got free advice on how to do things better. I just kind of opt to keeping my mouth shut and just letting this work its way out but like other people something’s got to give. I don’t think there’s any quick fix solution to it obviously but it’s no longer acceptable that that’s just a thing that happens here.

Well I know it’s kind of on a low note, but that’s for taking the time to speak with me here Neil. I know you’re hard at work mastering the album Earth Rocker right now and it’s pretty cool that you took the time out to let me speak with you for a minute and I can’t wait to see you guys play at the 9:30 Club on the 26th.

Yeah stop by and say hi if you have a moment.

I definitely will in fact I should be photographing you guys from the photo pit I think.

Ok, well I’ll see ya right there.

Keep an eye out for the guy in the Abraham Lincoln in King Diamond corpse paint shirt on cause that’ll be me.

Haha, alright that’ll be hard to miss.

Well thanks and have a good evening here and I’ll see you guys soon.

Alright, take it easy.

Have a good one.

Bye.

December 20, 2012
Categories: Interviews, Local Band Info, Stoner, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Clutch, Interview, Neil Fallon . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 2 Comments

Interview with JR Hayes of Pig Destroyer

I was lucky enough to get JR Hayes on the phone for a 20 minute interview where he talked about the new Pig Destroyer album, how the band almost broke up before it was even released, and even the upcoming presidential election. You can either download it as an mp3 here, listen to a stream of it by pressing the orange play button on the player, or read the full transcription of it below. The headshot photo is by local photographer Josh Sisk and is used with permission. As usual, my words are in bold. Now get to it!

Hey this is Metal Chris of DCHeavyMetal.com and I’m here talking with JR Hayes, the vocalist for the DC based grindcore band Pig Destroyer. Their new album, Book Burner, is their first full length release since 2007 and will be out on Relapse Records on October 22nd. Book Burner is one of the most anticipated metal releases of 2012 and Axl Rosenberg of Metal Sucks has already dubbed it “the best metal album of the year.” So to start off JR, why don’t you tell me what the fans can expect from the new album.

Well uh, I don’t know if we’re going to win any new converts cause we’re pretty much doing what we always do which is just try to make the craziest grindcore record we can make. I think that the trick with grindcore is, you know you’re trying to make it as chaotic as possible but then at the same time you’re trying to make it memorable and it’s kind of a difficult balance to achieve sometimes. I’m really happy with it.

So you’re having an album release show for Book Burner at the Ottobar in Baltimore on October 19th. Now are copies of Book Burner going to be on sale at the show?

Well you know we did a Terrifyer album release there and we thought that Relapse was bringing us copies and they didn’t know that so we actually didn’t have any copies of our record at our record release show and that was really embarrassing. So uh, I would hope that there would be copies there, yeah.

So is that why you’re doing it again in Baltimore instead of DC, because you had done one there previously?

Well we’ve probably played at the Ottobar more than any other one place. I mean we even go back to the old Ottobar when it was a little closer to the harbor. You know I’ve always kind of considered that our home stage. Two of our members live in Baltimore. I do love playing DC but I definitely have a very close relationship with Baltimore as well.

I don’t think you’ve played DC since 2008 at the Black Cat with Misery Index.

Yeah, yeah that was a sweet show. I really enjoy– used to enjoy playing the Casa House and [the] Black Cat’s always fun. The Warehouse was my favorite though. I was very crestfallen when it closed.

Yeah me too. So here’s another question about the new album: What is the Book Burner cover art supposed to represent?

I’ll be honest with you I didn’t really think it that far through. That photograph was taken by my friend Chris [Taylor] in Richmond and it was going to be a 7″ cover for a Richmond band. It never ended up coming out cause the band broke up and I always admired that picture you know when I saw it like seven or eight years ago, it might have even been longer I’m not sure. I was just hanging out with him one night and I just kind of randomly asked if he still had it and he did. As soon as I saw it again I knew that, at least in my mind, that was the cover of the album. I don’t know if I could tell you why. But just something about that image I was very passionate about and [I] felt it was very evocative and you know I had Chris dress it up a little bit in his unique style and Pat added some different colors and stuff and I think it turned out really good.

Yeah it definitely stands out, it’s very unique.

I think with the cover you know me and Scott [Hull, guitarist of Pig Destroyer] were doing the artwork for this record and we kind of more knew what we didn’t want. We didn’t want just a book burning, you know like just completely literal with it you know like cause that just wasn’t interesting to us. It wasn’t really all that important what the image was as long as it was a strong image.

Book Burner cover art by Chris Taylor

Ok so I read the story that you wrote, The Atheist, and I thought it was really good by the way. It sort of seemed like the first chapter of something maybe. Is there going to be more added to this or a continuation of any kind?

I’ve seen a couple people mention that. That was actually Adam’s [Jarvis, drummer for Pig Destroyer] comment when he first read it that he wanted there to be more. For me it all kind of wrapped up in a nice package and I don’t really see where else to go with it but I try to never say never you know? Maybe the inspiration will take me and I’ll want to do something with it. I think for me the most fascinating thing about it is that it starts out seeming like it’s not really fictional and then it kind of twists and becomes fictional all of a sudden and I think that juxtaposition was what made it interesting to me as a single piece.

I remember in the story there were these almost stormtrooper like characters that were called book burners and so it kind of got me thinking is the album Book Burner supposed to be taking place in the world of The Atheist or are there any other kind of tie ins with that other than the name?

Well there’s also a track called Book Burner on the album too and the lyrics to that are totally unrelated to the story. Because the story wasn’t going to be included with all the different versions of the record, it’s supposed to be a limited thing, I didn’t want the people who were just hearing the record to feel like they were missing something, you know what I mean? So I kind of intentionally wanted it to be a separate thing but I just put a couple of little minor tie ins like book burner obviously just to kind of string everything together but I didn’t want the two parts to be dependent on one another. You know what I mean?

Yep. Now, how has working with Adam Jarvis of Misery Index been because he’s a great drummer and it’s pretty exciting that he’s working with you guys now?

Yeah I mean it’s been great. When we parted ways with Brian [Harvey, former drummer of Pig Destroyer] that was probably the darkest period that we’ve had as a band. Everybody was really down in the dumps and we didn’t really know if the band was even going to continue at all. Cause you never know if you’re going to find– You can bring in a million drummers and never find the right one. The chemistry has to be right. We were just really lucky in that we already knew Adam as a person and he’s a really driven guy and he wanted the job from day one. I don’t want to say he like forced his way in there but he was ready when we came calling and from the first song that we played together with him I knew that it was right. I was sold from the first song that we played.

Now Phantom Limb came out in 2007 and you had the single track EP Natasha that came out in 2008 and then you guys hadn’t really put out anything until this new album. Was a lot of that because of the line up change?

After Phantom Limb we took a couple of years where we were just playing shows and kind of enjoying ourselves and just kind of supporting the record the best that we could. Then we lost our practice space so we turned Scott’s basement into like a real deal studio. You know we built it all ourselves and you know double dry wall and sound dampening stuff. You know we went the full nine yards and that took us about a year and then during that time me and Scott were both working on the last Agoraphobic [Nosebleed] record [Agorapocalypse] and that was very time consuming and then when it came time for us to record Pig Destroyer that’s when everything just kind of fell apart on a personal level and we had like a year where we just either didn’t practice or our practices sounded like shit. It was terrible. It was really awful and to be honest I would have rather not done the band at all than kept [it] going like that. When you’re killing something that you love like that it’s just a horrible experience.

So what was the big turn around then for you guys? What really got you back into it to the point where you’re now putting out an album like this?

You know even when Brian was still in the band we had like maybe five songs written from this album and I thought that they were some of the strongest songs that we had written. So I knew that the inspiration to do it was still there but we just couldn’t physically do it. So we needed someone else to come in and inject some youth and some enthusiasm into it and then once you kick it and it’s going then we’re off. You know what I mean?

Yeah yeah.

We just needed a kick in the ass basically and Adam’s a really enthusiastic guy. I’m used to Scott pushing everybody in the band but Adam’s definitely been pushing us as well. He’s also a very driven individual.

Alright now so who are some of your main influences in regards to writing the lyrics and performing with Pig Destroyer?

I think musically my influence is just all the great hardcore and grindcore singers. Jeff Walker from Carcass, Lee Dorian and Barney [Greenway] from Napalm [Death]. From a writing standpoint it’s kind of just pulled from all over. There’s a lot of people out there who write good lyrics. Leonard Cohen, [Bruce] Springsteen, Nick Cave, there’s a million people. The content of what’s being written doesn’t really matter to me as much as the style of the person who’s writing cause I think a great writer will get you into whatever it is that they’re talking about. So I’m just always looking for people with a very strong and confident style.

Ok now where exactly did the name Pig Destroyer come from and what exactly does it mean?

I remember that me and Scott were at an amusement park and we were standing in line to get on a roller coaster and we weren’t even talking about a name for our band, even though our band didn’t have a name at that point. We were just trying to come up with the most ridiculous band name we could come up with and I think he came up with Cop Destroyer and that kind of immediately morphed into Pig Destroyer and that was just the name of the band. Anybody who has ever started a band knows that coming up with band names really sucks. If you’re lucky somebody will say something that everybody just knows immediately that that’s it. It’s actually very much like how we came across the cover art. It was just a very random kind of– instinctually I just knew that it was right.

Just had the right feel.

Yeah it just felt right. It sounded right. Sometimes you’re in danger of over thinking things. I can be very picky and meticulous about working on some things but other things like album titles and band names it just has to be a moment of inspiration or creativity. It has to just feel… correct.

So what was the metal and grind scene like in 1997 when the band was just getting started?

Well anybody who was into metal in the 90s knows that the 90s weren’t really kind to metal. I wasn’t really paying a whole lot of attention to death metal stuff. I had already kind of gone through that phase. I was just fascinated by the whole Southern California grindcore scene and the Bay Area scene with like Spazz and Crossed Out. You had Assück from Florida. There was a lot of amazing grindcore bands that were out back then. A lot of American grindcore bands doing great shit so it was a lot of fun. Then of course you had the whole metalcore thing going on at that point too which is a whole nother can of worms.

So what’s the best concert you’ve ever been to in the DC area?

Oh man… Fugazi at Fort Reno was pretty amazing. I don’t know I mean it would be a list as long as my arm but probably my personal favorite show would be Nirvana and The Breeders and Half Japanese at American University [on November 13, 1993]. That was like probably when I was about 16 or 15. That show kind of set the tone for all of the shows I would see after that. That was a very important night in my life.

Do you have any favorite metal or grind bands from the area?

Well there’s Suppression from– well they started in Roanoke [Virginia] but then they moved to Richmond. I mean they’re kind of always, to me, the consummate Virginia grindcore band. You know you had Jesuit from Virginia Beach even though they were only around for a short time. Where I grew up in Sterling [Virginia] the big band was Pg. 99. I was at I would say probably at least 40 or 50 percent of their shows you know so uh, I’m very you know intimately familiar with those guys. They were very important to me personally just because they were from my home town.

How has being based in the DC area affected you as an artist or has it?

Oh yeah I mean uh, everything about this area influences me. The history– my family personally has a lot of history in the McClean [Virginia] area. I don’t necessarily like get down with all of DC’s music but it has a very interesting, one of a kind– I mean any city that can create stuff like Bad Brains and fuckin Rites Of Spring, I mean, there’s just a lot of unique bands from this area you know and very smart bands too.

Oh definitely. Being in DC here there’s always been a lot of political music here you know with Bad Brains and Minor Threat and then the Dischord [Records] bands. And you guys were a more political band when you started but you’ve sort of shifted away from that over the years lyrically. Why do you think you’ve evolved that way as a writer?

Well I was really political and then I started really getting involved in it to the point where I was going to all of these anarchist meetings and going out to protests and things like that. I just became really disenchanted with people and the attitudes. Then I think around that same point I got my heart broken really bad. That kind of set me off on a more personal direction I guess you might say. You know that’s just one of those phases that you go through in your life. I mean I still have strong political convictions but I don’t express them in the same kind of ways.

Now I wouldn’t normally ask this but since the election is coming up are you planning on voting and if you are would you like to say who you’re going to vote for for president?

Aw man I just really want it all to be over to be honest with ya.

Yeah I hear that.

I can’t get juiced about the Democrats because they always let me down but the Republicans are just so two faced and poisonous. I usually end up pulling the lever for the Democrats just because I can’t stomach the Republicans. It’s just too much for me. I feel like it’s almost a lose-lose. The only person who was– and I didn’t agree with him on a lot of issues but, I felt like Ron Paul was the only candidate who was proposing real change, even if I didn’t agree with it. You know these two candidates [Barack Obama and Mitt Romney] are kind of just like– it’s the old hot shit, cold shit argument. Take your pick.

Alright now back in April of 2009 David Rowell wrote a lengthy article about Pig Destroyer [link] in the Washington Post Magazine and I was kind of curious what effect did this have on the band?

The thing about us is we don’t play locally as much as a lot of other bands. We usually go out and play. So when I come home I’m kind of anonymous at my job and I’m just another dude which is kind of how I like it. But because that came out in such a huge publication that was local everybody I knew either heard about it or read it personally. So that was kind of unusual. You know like even my parents’ neighbors were coming over to me and being like “Oh we read about you in the paper” you know. So like you know those experiences are as cool as they can be.

Now way back in June of 2000 you were playing a show at the world famous CBGB’s in New York City and the microphone went out and you just kept on screaming at the top of your lungs. There’s a video of this that has been going around the internet for some time and has become a little bit legendary and on the video you can still be heard over all the guitars and everything. Do you remember anything about that show or was that a special experience to you? Because it’s kind of a legendary thing now and I kinda had to bring that up if I’m going to interview you!

Well at the time I was just– Cause I mean it wasn’t like the mic just shut off. The mic literally crumbled in my hand into like five different pieces. It was like it just gave up and died. It just fell apart and disintegrated. And so I was confused for a second and nobody really seemed like they were going to give me another mic so I just screamed. I didn’t really even think about it but the video is kind of funny. Any time you play at CBGB’s it a pretty awesome experience.

Ok well here’s something a little more recent that I wanted to ask you about. In 2010 there was another DC based grind act, Magrudergrind, and they had their album Crusher which was released by Scion A/V which is a branch of Toyota. Jay Randall of Agoraphobic Nosebleed wrote a blog post [link] saying that grind bands and metal bands in general shouldn’t be working with giant corporations and putting their logos on their albums and such. And I know that Pig Destroyer had played a Scion sponsored event prior to this in 2009 in Atlanta and I’m curious about what your take on all of this is. Do you think local grind acts should be working with big companies like this or that if they’re working with them it’s sort of selling out or what’s your take on all of this?

I just think that when you’re in the public eye, even if you’re just an underground band, when there’s people paying attention they’re going to get stirred up by certain things that they don’t like. And I definitely understand where people are coming from when they cry sell out or whatever. That’s just a risk that you take when you make a move. I was kind of uneasy about it. You know once we did the first gig with Scion and it was like– I felt that it was run really professionally. You know he promoted it well, like it was free for the kids to get in. I just really didn’t see any negatives and they seemed like they were really into what we were doing and I thought it was cool and we’ve done actually maybe half a dozen things with Scion. We played a show in New York at the Masonic Temple with Brutal Truth and I thought it was rad.

So is there someone at Scion that is just into underground grindcore cause it just seems really random that bands like Magrudergrind, Pig Destroyer, Brutal Truth…

The guy that we talked to, he is kind of in charge of putting these shows together, he’s just into all kinds of extreme bands. I mean I don’t know what his relationship is with Scion but he obviously has their ear as far as bringing out a bunch of money for promotion and stuff. When we played at the fest in Atlanta you know with like Boris was there Neurosis. Fuck it you know you get to play with Neurosis and there’s no negatives there for me. Plus I was upset cause I love the Magrudergrind boys cause they’re local and they’re a great band and I was really sad that they had to take shit on that. All of these other bands, including us, kind of got spared.

Yeah they definitely got the most attention for that.

Yeah you know they got singled out. I don’t think that’s really fair. Didn’t the Melvins just put out a free thing with Scion?

Yeah The Bulls & The Bees I think.

Yeah I mean if it’s good enough for the Melvins it’s good enough for me. I guess the times have changed a little bit. I remember in the early 90s it was if you put a bar code on your CD that was like a no no. Heh heh. You know so I mean, fuck it man, you know? It is what it is.

Now Pig Destroyer is going to be playing Maryland Deathfest XI in May of 2013. Do you know what day Pig Destroyer is going to be playing on?

Oh man I don’t even know if I’m going to be alive in 2013! [It’s] so far away right now. I don’t know what day. Hopefully it’s like a Friday.

Are you guys going to do anything special for Deathfest? Maybe have a special set list or a guest come out or anything like that?

I don’t know we’re really impulsive about stuff like that. It’s hard to say. If we were going to come up with something we wouldn’t do it this far in advance. I think we’re just kind of a band that we’re just kind of focused on whatever the next thing is that we’re doing. For me it’s like we’re doing these record release shows so that’s the thing that I’m kind of looking forward to and I’m not really looking past that. Luckily Scott has a little bit more of a vision as far as that goes. I tend to just get very focused on one thing at a time.

Are there any bands that you personally are excited to be seeing at next year’s Deathfest?

I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from a lot of people who is actually playing.

Well of course I’ve got them all listed on the DCHeavyMetal.com calendar of upcoming concerts.

Oh OK, sweet.

Some of the headliners are Bolt Thrower and Carcass and Venom I think.

Bolt Thrower was just absolutely crushing the last time they played. I think I’ll probably always remember that set the rest of my life. [It was] pretty brutal. I really wanted to see Godflesh last year but my pussy ass couldn’t make it up there.

Well that’s pretty much the end of the interview here I’m out of questions. Is there anything else you want to say before I let you get out of here?

I just hope people check out the new album and give it a chance and hopefully they dig it. We’re all really, really proud of it so we want as many people to hear it as possible.

Well it has been getting really good reviews in a few places and it will be reviewed here on DCHeavyMetal.com shortly as well. Thanks for taking the time to do the interview with me and I’ll see you at the Ottobar.

Oh right on. Yeah well come up and introduce yourself and we’ll have some beers.

Sure man, sounds good.

Cool man.

Take it easy.

Bye.

October 10, 2012
Categories: Grind, Interviews, Local Band Info, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Book Burner, Interview, JR Hayes, Pig Destroyer . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 7 Comments

Interview with Chicken Man Chris Penrod

If you have been to many heavy metal concerts in Washington DC or Baltimore in the past five years then you’ve probably seen the infamous Chicken Man crowd surfing or slamming in the mosh pit. At concerts where wearing black shirts with illegible band names is the status quo a guy in a bright yellow, full body chicken suit is certainly one of our metal scene’s most colorful characters. He’s sort of our metal scene’s brutal version of the San Diego Chicken and definitely one of the people who makes our metal scene unique. So who is this Chicken Man? Why did he start moshing in a chicken costume? Which bands does he think get the most brutal mosh pits? These questions and more are answered in the 12 minute phone interview I conducted with him on Tuesday, June 26th, 2012. You can read the full transcription of the interview below (my words are in bold) or download an mp3 of the audio (here) for free or click the orange play button below to stream it from Soundcloud or if you’re really feeling crazy you can read along as you listen. I’ve tried to add as many links as possible in the transcription below so you can tell what bands, venues, concerts or other things we’re talking about if you don’t know them already. This is the second interview on DCHeavyMetal.com, my allergies had me a bit stopped up but I hope you all enjoy it regardless.

All right this is Metal Chris here and I’m here talking to one of the more recognizable figures in the heavy metal scene in the DC and Baltimore area. Most people know him as the Chicken Man. His real name is Chris Penrod. I’ve got him here to ask him some questions. First I’d like to know, how did you get into the whole chicken suit thing and why did it start?

Ah well it all started as a giant, giant stoner moment about five years ago on the Eastern Shore. Me and a couple buddies of mine were all getting ready to go see Lamb Of God and my friend got a chicken suit and a gorilla suit so it kinda went from there.

Haha. So did your friend wear the gorilla suit?

Yeah he wore the gorilla suit but he only wore it for that night. It got way too hot. Full body suit.

Well that’s pretty funny. And what was that in like 2007ish?

Yeah it was the summer of 2007.

Is that the only chicken suit you have? Is that the same one that you’ve been using all this time?

No, no. I’ve gone through about four of them now.

Oh wow, huh. Is there one that’s been like really resilient or anything like that or they just kinda get worn out?

Actually one of the ones I’ve had for the longest time just lost one of the red flaps at [Maryland] Deathfest this year. It got ripped off in the pit for Brujeria.

Oh yeah, yeah that was a pretty wild time for them man.

Yeah it was awesome.

Have you seen the new Dying Fetus video [for the song From Womb To Waste (that you can see here)]?

Yes I did, haha.

Yeah I saw you made a few cameo appearances in that thing.

Yeah.

Did you know that they were going to include you in that?

Actually, believe it or not, after their set at Deathfest I was talking to John Gallagher and he said “Yeah we’ve got a bunch of shots of you. We’ll see if we can put that all throughout the video.”

That’s pretty hilarious.

I’m pretty stoked about that.

Yeah that’s pretty cool. It’s a cool video too. It’s all shot at Sonar at the Deathfest.

Yeah all the first day. Ah it was amazing.

So that thing gets pretty fucking hot doesn’t it man?

Yeah. Oh my god you have no idea but like I’m used to it by now in all honesty. I’m going to school for welding so that’s pretty much nothing.

There ya go. This summer’s been pretty hot as it is anyways though. Man those outdoor shows, oof.

Yeah, that’s kind of in all honesty another reason I’m not too sure about Mayhem Fest [on July 29th] just cause I know the temperatures are going to get hawt.

Yeah, yeah. Have you ever thought about switching to another kind of costume, like a different animal or a different anything?

You know, actually the same friend who I got the original idea with; I work at a seafood market and he visited me at work one time to drop off the chicken suit and I showed him the lobster I was pegging and his girlfriend flipped out and then they called me lobster for a while now.

Haha.

So they wanted me to wear a lobster suit once and I was like no dude I can’t.

Hahaha. Well you are kind of “The Chicken Man” now.

Oh actually I won two tickets to see the System Of A Down show [on August 7th] and I got a buddy of mine who’s going to dress up like Peter Griffin, if you see where this is going.

Yeah, yeah. So you guys are going to basically beat each other up in the mosh pit?

We’re going to straight beat the hell out of each other. None of this fake fight, we’re like broken nose, black eye, and even when the cops get there and ask if we want to press charges we’re just going to be like “eh nah we’re good.”

That sounds pretty entertaining. What do you dress up as on Halloween?

Funny thing, usually I’m working. I did go see Dethklok on Halloween at the Patriot Center a couple years back and I wore the chicken suit. I feel like if I wear the chicken suit for Halloween though it’s taking the easy way out.

Hahaha. So where exactly are you from around the area? Are you in DC? Are you in Baltimore? Are you in Northern Virginia? Where are you at?

I actually live in Annapolis. There’s not too much around here, just water and a lot of expenses.

I see you around DC and Baltimore a lot you know.

That’s the one thing I like about Annapolis is that it’s just smack dab like 30 minutes away from both of them.

I’ve been to lots of shows and I’ve seen sometimes the guys in the bands on stage, they’ll give you a shout out or something like that. What’s the coolest thing you’ve had a band say to you from being on stage?

One time I went and saw 3 Inches Of Blood with Gwar at the 9:30 Club and that was a long time ago but the dude from 3 Inches Of Blood couldn’t get enough of me. He was just like “Yeah I want to see that head on the floor with the chicken dude still running around!” I’m like oh my god these people are going to kill me.

Haha, that’s kind of hilarious. So have you ever had like a band get really pissed off or anything at you?

Huh yeah. At Deathfest Black Witchery got really pissed off at me.

Oh yeah, what did they do?

The singer thought that I threw a stuffed baby doll on stage.

I’m assuming you didn’t actually throw a doll on stage?

No it was some stupid bitch next to me. And he got all mad and then I went crowd surfing up and then I got to the front like past the barricade and he fucking kicked me.

What the fuck?

Yeah people were like “oh he kicked him in the head!” I’m like “no he just kicked me in the arm dude.” And apparently everyone else that saw that just got really angry at him. Like I heard people coming up to me after the show they’re like “Dude fuck them! They’re god damn coke heads!” I’m like oh my god dude. It’s a death metal festival, get over it. I got over it.

So what bands do you think get the best mosh pits?

Oooh, oh man that’s a hard one. Like at Deathfest or just in general in the area?

Anywhere ya know cause I’ll generally say Slayer pits are kinda the craziest but what’s your idea?

Aw I want to go see Slayer so bad. That’s like the one band I haven’t seen yet.

Oh man, gotta get out to Mayhem Fest.

It’s like them and Anthrax at the same show and I’m like oh my god and I’m missing it. Actually, in all honesty, out of all the pits that I’ve been in it’s a really close draw between Lamb Of God and Suffocation. I’ve seen Suffocation’s pits get way out of control. Actually nope, I’ve got one that tops it. It was at the Ottobar [in] 2010, 2009? I know it was Whitechapel and Job For A Cowboy that headlined but the pit during Whitechapel was out of control cause they had Cattle Decapitation opening and it’s just two really different crowds mixing in one tiny, tiny place. I love the Ottobar it’s so tiny. Like the smaller the better with me. It’s more up close and personal but I know a lot of fights broke out that night.

Yeah, yeah I’ve definitely seen that happen at a few shows too. But I figure you’re probably all up in that most of the time. Usually I’m just trying to keep everybody from smacking my camera ya know?

Right, hahaha. Oh I saw a lot of that going on during Deathfest.

Ah it’s what happens though man, just comes with the territory though.

Morbid Angel was pretty wild.

Yeah I had some chick land on me when I was shooting video [during Morbid Angel’s set]. She just dove off of like one of the speaker piles or whatever and just landed directly– I didn’t even see her coming. The next thing I know someone’s like landing on my head, like blindsided me. Ya know that’s Deathfest for ya you know?

Yeah and then there’s the crusties and I’m just not even going to get into that.

Well, it depends on the band I’ll tell you. Deathfest is a little weird too in some of that like, you know…

Like The Devil’s Blood? Like ehhh what?

Well it’s not even that it’s just like the way people react to bands there is different than they would any other time, I mean.

Than any other place yeah.

Yeah, yeah it’s like people there are circle pitting to Agalloch and stuff.

I know right? There was a lot of circle pits at Deathfest, I was surprised about that. It was like circle pit central.

Yeah I remember a couple of years ago Entombed was playing one of the big outdoor stages and they stopped their show and they were like “We don’t do circle pits! We only do mosh pits!” heh.

Yeah haha.

I didn’t know you cared that much.

If it was me on stage I’d be like they’re moshing dude, I don’t care. You wouldn’t happen to know any grindcore projects that are looking for a vocalist do you?

I have no idea. I mean you can always just start one.

Oh no I’ve got everyone we just need a drummer. That’s the problem.

I don’t know off hand. I don’t know. My best bet would be to go out and check out some of the local grind shows and stuff. You know Chris Moore, the drummer for Magrudergrind, he puts on a lot of shows and helps people promote local DIY shows and a lot of it is local hardcore and grind stuff. Check out some of his shows and stuff. [Facebook group here]

I definitely think that if I started performing though I’d be able to use the chicken suit as a gimmick.

There ya go. I’m sure you could man.

People would be like “What this dude’s in a band? They must be brutal.”

Hahaha. That would be kinda cool actually.

Oh yeah have a band with me in it opening up for just some ridiculous grindcore band, Suffocation or Aborted or something.

There ya go man. So do you have any feelings on Chick-fil-A?

Delicious. I’m all for cannibalistic chickens.

Haha. What did you say your next big concert is going to be? Are you going to Iron Maiden this weekend [on June 30th]?

Aw I can’t I gotta work all weekend.

Aw that sucks.

I think the next big concert I’m going to is Summer Slaughter [on August 4th] though.

Cool.

Actually I got a VIP pass to that one.

Sweet.

Yeah.

Do they really make you wear the pass in the chicken suit?

I don’t care. I’m just going to be like, you guys know me. Security there knows me.

I mean there’s generally not a lot of other people walking around in chicken suits that need to be identified as different than you.

Well actually it’s really funny because, I’m only 20.

Oh yeah, yeah, man you’ve been doing this since you were a minor.

Yeah I’ve been doing this since I was like 15.

Wow.

Yeah. But it’s funny because at Sonar this past Deathfest Thursday night I guess they were like keeping a tight rein on everything since it wasn’t outdoors cause they carded everyone. But then Friday, Saturday, Sunday when I went they were like “Hey what’s going on Chicken Man?”

That’s weird.

Especially like Sonar of all places with everything they’ve been going through lately with the new owners and the liquor license and all that stuff.

Yeah. You ever have any problems getting into any venues in your costume or anything like that?

Nope. Only thing that I will say though is that Rams Head Live hates it when I crowd surf. They’ll kick me out on the first time.

Oh really?

Yep, they hate it.

I wonder why.

Well I mean you know I’m a pretty big dude.

I know but still I mean, I don’t know it’s a metal show.

Exactly, like what they hell are you expecting?

Yeah. I don’t know. But you know honestly Rams Head isn’t my favorite venue anyway, so.

Yeah I definitely feel you there.

You going to go see Lamb Of God up at Pier Six [Pavilion]?

I haven’t been hearing too many good things about Pier Six.

Yeah it’s run by the same guys as Rams Head.

Ah it’s not even really who’s running it but the set up, seats only, and then the field.

Yeah I’ve never been there. I don’t know.

That’s all I’ve been hearing is that where the pit section would be it’s all seats.

Yeah I wonder if they’re going to have to change some of that for the show. Maybe I’ll try to call someone there and ask. [I did call later and ask, no pit section, only assigned seats up front and GA lawn in back for this and all other Pier Six shows].

You should find out cause that’s what’s keeping me from going. I’d already have pit section tickets if it wasn’t for the fact that it was at Pier Six.

Yeah I just wonder if they’re actually selling seated tickets of if it’s just GA anyway.

Ah I don’t know. I’d have a feeling it’s just GA first come, first serve but then if it’s seats only then I’m just going to hang out in the field the whole time, ya know?

Yeah, yeah. Do you ever get like recognized anywhere else for being the chicken man you know when you’re not in the costume?

Ahh, no I can’t say that’s happened to me. Yeah I can’t say that’s happened to me.

Well you gotta get a chicken man license plate or something.

Well actually I’ve been thinking about painting my car, whenever I wind up getting a new one that’s not a piece of shit, and I was going to paint my old one yellow with red trim and just drive it to concerts and that’s it.

Hahahaha.

I’ve been really thinking about it.

That’d be kind of ridiculous. I like that idea.

I know right.

Haha. Have you got any favorite local bands you like checking out?

Oh yeah. It’s a draw between Visceral Disgorge and Loculus.

So the real brutal bands.

Oh yeah.

Haha, that’s awesome.

I’m not for the whole hardcore thing. I absolutely despise hardcore dancing. I wanna burn em all alive.

Aw man, drives me nuts. I see people doing the hopping at shows too sometimes.

Oh my god. No there was actually this one dude, this old hispanic dude during Suffocation at Deathfest and he just kept trying to do that and I remember I just got shoved into him with all my force and just left handed drilled him right in the center of his face into the side of the crowd. And security saw it all and they were just like laughing at it. I will say though that security at Sonar and clubs in DC, they love me. Like the 9:30 Club, I can get away with almost anything I feel like. Yeah and I’ve seen it happen at the 9:30 Club like ya know, guys will be hardcore dancing and there will be a random crowd bystander [who] just shoves him over and security will be like “Oh no, no, stop. We’ll take care of it” and then when I do it they just laugh.

That’s always good.

Yeah.

There anything, there anyone you’d like to give a shout out to?

All the metal heads that keep this shit real.

Hell yeah dude, hell yeah. Alright man well thanks for talking to me and taking a few minutes here. I hope you like checking out the site once in a while and stuff.

I’m all over the upcoming shows.

Sweet dude. I put a lot of work into it. I always feel like I’m always behind on it cause there’s always more being announced as soon as I put stuff up.

Right. Nah you’re doing a great job though keep up the good work.

Yeah thanks man, and you do too man.

Haha.

Keep it real out there man.

Alright it was nice talking to you. I guess I’ll let you go then.

Yeah I’m sure I’ll see you at a show again here soon.

Oh yeah.

Alright man, take it easy.

Alright, peace.

June 29, 2012
Categories: Interviews, Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia Metal Scene . Tags: Chicken Man, Chris Penrod, Interview . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 4 Comments

Interview with Evan Harting of Maryland Deathfest

Evan Harting is one of the two co-founders and organizers of the annual Maryland Deathfest, the biggest heavy metal festival not only in this area but in all of North America. I thought he would be a great subject for the first interview on DCHeavyMetal.com and he was cool enough to speak with me on the phone for a bit on Tuesday the 24th of April 2012. You can download and listen to an mp3 of our 20 minute conversation (here) or you can simply read the transcription below (my words are in bold, Evan’s are not). Extra fun if you read along as you listen! We covered a lot of subjects like which bands he is most excited to see this year, what the food options will be like, what he thinks about people downloading music online, what happened with the pepper spray at last year’s fest, what the future holds for the event after this year and even what Morbid Angel might play during their performance. I hope you all enjoy it and if it is received well I want to do more interviews in the future.

Hey what’s up? This is Metal Chris from DC Heavy Metal and I’ve got Evan Harting here on the phone. He’s one of the promoters and creators of the Maryland Deathfest which is coming into its tenth year and is starting Thursday, May 24th over Memorial Day weekend up in Baltimore, Maryland at Sonar and I’ve got him here to ask him some questions for DC Heavy Metal.

First I wanted to ask, how did you and Ryan Taylor get to start up the Deathfest? How did you guys come up with the idea and how did you guys meet each other and just how did it get going?

We actually met in high school. We became friends through just being into the same kind of music and going to the same shows. Then eventually we started working in the same places. We were both cooks at the time. We were working at this place in Perry Hall, Maryland, when the blue prints for the fest came up and it just started from there. In 2001 we went to the Ohio Deathfest. I think that kind of got the gears moving a little bit and got us thinking about doing something similar on the East Coast.

Do you guys have any other day jobs you’re doing or are you just kind of doing this full time or are you doing promotions or what do you guys do otherwise when you’re not doing the Deathfest?

Well the Deathfest is definitely our main job, definitely our main focus throughout the year, but we do have other jobs sometimes. It really depends on the part of the year and how busy we are during the fest. Every once in a while I’ll do other shows and stuff but definitely the fest is the main thing and other jobs kind of we’ll work a few months out of the year but that’s basically it.

Cool cool, so Deathfest is definitely the main priority. That’s cool man. So as far as this year’s line up, you know this is the tenth show so it’s sort of like the big anniversary and I know you guys have an awesome line up. I mean you guys always have really good line ups but this year you guys really pulled out all the stops. Which band, personally, are you most excited to be seeing this year at the fest?

Well it’s kind of hard to say because part of how I book bands is also bands that I want to see. I would say most of them but if I had to pick out a few of the top ones I would say Electric Wizard, Sargeist, Church Of Misery, Bethlehem, Tsjuder, Confessor, Godflesh and Napalm Death. I mean I’ve seen them a few times before but they’re definitely one of my favorite live bands so they’re always good.

They’re playing the same day as the Nasum reunion thing or whatever is going on and I know Nasum announced that they were going to have guest vocalists on some of their sets that they were playing at different fests around the areas this year so I was wondering do you have any idea if Barney [Greenway, vocalist of Napalm Death] is going to be doing some songs with Nasum because that would be kind of awesome.

I don’t know if it’s… I thought I read something about a guest vocalist as well. I don’t remember who it was. I don’t think it’s Barney but don’t quote me on that I’m not sure.

Well I know they’re going to have different surprise guests come out so I was like, they’re playing right around the same time. I know you haven’t announced the times yet. What day do you plan on announcing the times for the actual running order?

We’re working on it now. Within the next couple of weeks we’ll announce it. It’s just that stuff changes at the last minute so we just tend to wait until kind of late to announce the set times.

Is it going to be the same kind of set up as it’s been the last couple years where you have the two outdoor stages facing each other in the middle of Saratoga Street or do you have another set up this year for the stages?

Yeah, it’ll be the same. Yeah that seemed to work out the best the same way we did it last year. We thought that worked out pretty well.

Now one thing I wanted to ask is, you know the big parking lot that everyone parks in, that’s now a metered lot. Baltimore City has changed that this year and you’ve got to pay to park there now. So do you know if that’s going to be lifted at all for the Deathfest or what people are going to have to do to park there?

I’m not quite sure yet. We’ve been trying to see what we can do it’s just that that’s completely separate from our operations. You know that’s the city and what they do. I’ve talked to the head of security at Sonar who is in close with the city and he’s trying to see if something can be done but it’s not going to be easy. But also I figure they’re going to have a hard time coming in to the parking lot and towing cars and giving tickets anyway. All the meters I think it’s until 6 or 7 you have to put a certain amount in, but after that it’s a flat rate of $7 or something like that.

Now usually Sonar has a small garage that you can park in for free now. That’s something they’ve been advertising on other nights when they have shows. But I’m going to guess that’s probably going to be blocked off as part of the back stage area for the Deathfest.

If it’s what I’m thinking of they have been advertising the parking lot that’s kind of on top of the venue…

Yeah, yep.

…when there’s like other shows going on but during the fest we kind of use that mainly as the staff parking lot because there’s so much staff that even including myself I park up there. Usually it’s pretty full.

Another thing I was going to ask you know last year after Ghost‘s set there was that big incident with the pepper spray or mace. I know somebody tried to start a fight with one of the security guards or something. So I was wondering are they going to be walking around with pepper spray and stuff again this year or is it the same security guards or what’s going to go on with that stuff this year? I’m assuming something has changed.

I mean that definitely never should have happened. I just heard kind of through the grapevine what happened from different people. From what I understand this guy was picking a fight with one of the bouncers and attacked him or something and then the bouncer used the pepper spray on him but since it was outside the pepper spray kind of floated around and got some other people at the same time. And they definitely should not be using that at all unless completely necessary. And that’s never happened before so, I certainly would not expect that to happen again.

What’s going to go on with food this year? I know they had vegetarian options last year and so is there going to be more of that kind of stuff cause you know a couple of years ago I had gone and there were a few different food vendors. And that last year I think, or maybe two, there was only like one actual in the fest vendor selling food. Now is it going to be the same kind of thing set up this year or are there going to be more options or what’s up?

Well in the past when we had a few different ones, that was when it was up to me and Ryan to hire food vendors from outside. And now the owner of Sonar, he owns a restaurant in Hampden, and he has wanted to work out a deal with us regarding the rental and everything so he would be the only food vendor. So that’s why it’s been that way for the past year or two. But we definitely have gotten like a lot of feedback regarding the limited options that were available and we talked to him for a while about it and it’s going to be his stuff again but there’s going be at least three different sections, like three different types of food.

Different kinds of menu styles or something right?

Right. He’s supposed to be able to give me some menus that we can post online but I don’t know we’ll see about that. Either way he knows that we need a much more extensive list of options for people.

There’s a few places you can walk to around that area too. So that’s one thing too is that it’s in a nice part of the city where you can actually walk to a couple places and get some food too. Now I wanted to ask, what’s the official photo/video policy of Maryland Deathfest this year?

People can bring in cameras and do whatever they want but if someone’s bringing in a huge professional video camera then that’s when we’ll tell them they gotta relax but otherwise we don’t care. Regarding press passes we don’t give them out to anyone. Obviously there’s a couple that we work with and we give it to them but other than that we do not. People ask us constantly like oh we have this web blog or whatever this little magazine can we have a press pass and we always say no because otherwise we’d have thousands of people in the press pit and back stage and stuff and that’s just ridiculous. So yeah we have our movie crew and maybe a couple of others that we have every year that are shooting pictures from the photo pit but that’s it.

So there is going to be a Maryland Deathfest: The Movie shot again this year also?

Yeah, this will be the final one.

Ok. Because I know there was an issue with some of the footage last year or something.

Yeah, it was a bunch of drama that I didn’t quite understand or have the time to try to comprehend but having something to do with one of the guys stealing some of the footage or a laptop with a lot of the footage on it so a lot of it wasn’t recovered. I don’t know. But it’s part of the same crew that’s coming this time and [we] decided it would be worth it since this is the tenth year to do a final one from those guys.

Yeah the line up is pretty incredible this year too.

Yeah. Hopefully it’ll end up looking pretty good.

Here’s one thing I wanted to know, now you’ve got Morbid Angel headlining I believe Saturday and that’s going to be with David Vincent. Now I saw them when they first got back together with David Vincent back in, I don’t know, 2004 or somewhere around there. All the songs they played were from Domination and earlier. Now do you know if they’re going to be doing that kind of thing again, or are they going to play some of their songs in the years he was gone or do you know if it’s going to be a heavy focus on the new album because, heh, because I know a lot of people were not impressed with their new album, heh, to say the least.

Yeah, heh, I’ve gotten a lot of comments about that too. Actually, when I’m out at shows and stuff like that a lot of people ask me, they say that they’ve heard that we have a contract with Morbid Angel to where, they can’t play any new songs and, heh, I don’t know where that started but that’s definitely not true. However, from what I understand, they only play one or two songs off of the new album and then mostly old stuff.

So probably Domination era and earlier.

Yeah. I ran into Dave Witte last night actually and he said he saw them not long ago and he said he was very impressed with their live show now and he thinks people will be stoked.

Now do you know who is drumming for them when they’re going to be at Deathfest?

It will be Tim Yeung.

Ok. Do you have any idea who’s going to be drumming for Suffocation?

Um… Oh I’m drawing a blank on his name right now. Um… Dave Culross I think.

Now here’s another one that I thought was kind of weird on the Fest this year was Anvil. I mean I know they’re a pretty big band they just don’t seem to fit with the other bands on the bill. So how did you guys decide to put them on because they seem kind of out of left field.

Kind of, but not really. They’re just an old school, legendary band. They’re not quite to Metallica status or anything but they’ve been around for a long time and have influenced tons of bands. There’s some people that think that it’s crazy that they’re on this but I think there’s also a lot of people, a lot of old school heads especially, that will appreciate seeing them.

And they’ll be playing on one of the bigger outdoor stages right?

Yeah.

I remember last year when Neurosis was getting ready to play a thunder storm started to roll in. Is there going to be kind any of preparation for that or what happens when we get another thunder storm like that this year or if there’s a longer one? Are we just going to have to just push stuff back because I’m sure there’s noise issues at a certain point where you just can’t keep having the outdoor stages play.

Our outside stages are going to be slightly different. They’ll have a slightly more boxed in feel to them but that doesn’t affect a whole lot as far as that’s concerned. It can rain all night long and that’s fine but if there’s lightning then that’s when we can’t because it becomes an issue.

Yeah, a safety issue there.

So basically we just have to hope for the best, really, and the noise curfew goes until 11 o’clock so we cannot run any bands past that point.

Outdoors at least.

Outdoors, yeah.

Cool, now one thing I always thought was really cool is every year you guys seem to get a few of the local bands from sort of the DC, Baltimore and Philly area and even just the Mid Atlantic region in general and I thought that’s kind of cool how you guys get these big bands coming from all over the world and doing these exclusive appearances and you still have some local bands. You’ve got like Coke Bust on there this year, Extermination Angel, Dying Fetus, they’re pretty big but they’re a Maryland band too. Is that something that you guys really try to keep is some of the local bands coming in too?

We don’t want to lose that feel completely you know? Even if the fest continues to grow we kind of want to look out for some of the local acts and some of the little guys. There’s tons of bands from around the area that are awesome and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t help showcase that.

It’s really cool that you guys do that and I’ve always noticed that every year. Now last year Sonar had some sort of snafu where they lost their liquor license and were closing and that happened about three weeks before the fest was supposed to take place last year. I know you guys were kind of scrambling at the time to try to find another venue and I was thinking it was going to be Bourbon Street, which is just across the street from Sonar. Well that venue is closed now so I was wondering do you guys have any other kind of back up plan in case something ridiculous like that happens again or they lose their liquor license or something?

Well last year it was an issue with the liquor license because the liquor license was still in another guy’s name and there’s just a lot of drama regarding that but this year it’s not going to be an issue. In the long run of what’s going to really happen with Sonar I don’t really know. I can’t say but I know for sure it will be around during the fest and even after for a while at least.

Have you been to some of those festivals over in Europe like say Wacken or Hole In The Sky or any of these big festivals they have over there. Has that influenced the way you guys try to run Deathfest at all if you have?

The only kind of bigger festival I’ve been to, overseas, has been the Obscene Extreme fest in the Czech Republic. I’ve been to that a few times. It’s all outdoors in the middle of the woods. I’m actually pretty good friends with the guy who organizes that and he’s now coming to Maryland every year for the fest. Ryan has been to a couple of others because you know over the years he’s been traveling to Europe a lot more than I have. At least the past few years he has so I think he’s been to a couple more but I don’t think it really affects too much how we do this because I would say that Deathfest is probably most similar to those in the States but in Europe I think it’s not that similar. Most of those fests are all outdoors and there’s camping and all that stuff going on and it’s pretty different.

Have you ever thought about trying to make Maryland Deathfest bigger like something like that? Maybe move to a larger location or a field or something where you could do that?

Well it’s not so much try to, but it would be like, well this is happening because there’s so many people trying to come. We definitely have been looking into those options. We don’t have anything set in stone yet but we realize that it may happen actually pretty soon here so we’re exploring what kind of options we can use. But we also don’t want to have it lose the indoor deal as well because the good thing of having it at Sonar is we have a stage inside and there’s the lounge area, stuff like that. [I] think that having part of it inside is really cool and certain bands in that kind of setting is just perfect. So if we were to move it somewhere else I think it would be important to have an indoor… at least like tents or something to give more of an indoor kind of feel.

Like a club kind of setting.

Right.

Now here’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you. What do you think about a lot of this, you know the peer-to-peer bit torrents and the other mp3 downloading because I know on one hand a lot of the bands and the labels obviously they don’t like a lot of that. They don’t want people downloading their music for free. However on the other hand, a lot of these bands at Deathfest nobody in America would even know some of these bands if it wasn’t for the availability of their music online.

Right.

So where do you fall on that line because I’d imagine lots of bands on Deathfest probably wouldn’t even be able to come over here and play that just because people wouldn’t even know who they are. But now we’ve got like Electric Wizard headlining and stuff so what’s your take on all of that?

I don’t know I kind of fall in the middle. I can see both sides of it. I think having at least some of your music available online for free is great and it gets your word out there. If you’re in metal to make money then you’re doing something wrong anyway. But that’s kind of the way it’s becoming now. More and more people are just downloading for free so if you want to make some money off of your releases it’s going to be more difficult. When I talk to bands they say that most of the money they make is made off merch now. There’s only so much you can really do about that because one way or another people will find a way to download your music free. I personally like to do both. I like to check out a band first by like downloading it and if I’m really into it I’ll go out and buy it next time I see it at a store or something like that.

Yeah you’re starting to see a bit of a resurgence in vinyl from some of that too because you can’t really download the vinyl experience you know whereas a CD is kind of easily copied.

Oh yeah, I definitely see vinyl coming back big time.

Anyways, speaking of free stuff, I know that you just put out the list of all the vendors and who are going to have tables and booths so I was wondering, what if you’re not one of the vendors? Are you allowed to hand out flyers, stickers, CDs of your band if you’re just walking around? Is that ok or is that not cool or what are people allowed to do as far as that goes?

Yeah that’s fine. People can feel free to promote their band and show or whatever. There’s nothing we can do about that and it’s no big deal. Every once in a while someone will come and set up a little table and try to like sell stuff and that’s when we’ve crossed the line. If you’re going to sell something then that needs to be worked out in advance. If you want to give stuff away, feel free.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years too is back when you guys started the fest it was mostly a bunch of grindcore bands and you’d have a few bigger death metal headliners like say a Suffocation or Zyklon or something like that. And now it definitely covers a lot more genres. You’ve got black metal and sludge bands and doom bands and there’s still some death and there’s thrash and there’s old school bands coming back and so like you were saying earlier a lot of the bands are just the stuff you like. Now is some of the line up changes just how you and Ryan’s tastes have evolved over the years to maybe expand more or is it just you’re now a bigger fest and you can get different genres or maybe you’re getting out of some of the death and grind metal some and you’re just more into some of these other genres now? How has that progressed and why?

It’s actually all of those things. The first couple years, actually a lot of it was brutal death metal and then some grindcore and goregrind and stuff. That’s what we were mainly into at the time and that’s just what we decided to book. But as the fest has matured over the years I feel so have we and our musical tastes as well so we’ve decided to expand not only our tastes but the bands that we get, the genres that we get at the fest. The more that we do that the more that we realize that no one wants to see one genre of metal all day long. You know you gotta mix it up. Even from a fan’s perspective I wouldn’t want to go to a fest and see all brutal death metal or all doom or something it gets boring.

Yeah well even one day is one thing. You start making it four days, that’s a lot. Haha. That’s a lot to take in.

Oh yeah, definitely. So I think people definitely appreciate the mix of genres as do we.

I think it’s kind of cool that some of these bands get to play on a bigger stage that they wouldn’t necessarily get to if they were just touring around the area you know.

Yeah definitely.

So that’s always something that’s really nice too. Not only do you get to see Electric Wizard this year but you get to see them on a big outdoor stage so that’s pretty cool. Is there anything big you’ve got planned for say, the next year? I know you guys are working on this stuff always pretty early and you start announcing bands usually about a month after the fest for the next year. So do you have any kind of stuff in the works already yet you might want to leak or anything? Maybe you’re adding an extra day or add an extra stage or I don’t know, change the venue, anything like that?

We have a little bit in the works and a little bit that we’re brainstorming on right now but it’s nothing that we can really say at this point. Basically we’re going to have to decide, you know after this one we’re going to have to decide if it’s too big to hold at Sonar first of all and then just kind of take it from there.

You guys want to keep it in Maryland though or…? Like you wouldn’t have any plans to move it somewhere else is what I’m asking.

Everyone knows it as the Maryland Deathfest so we definitely would not plan on moving it.

Alright well thanks man. Thanks for your time. It’s been cool getting to chat for a little bit here and thanks a lot. Have you ever checked out my site DCHeavyMetal.com?

I have a couple times briefly, yeah.

Ah cool man. I’m trying to cover everything in the area from Baltimore to Northern Virginia you know and get the word out. Deathfest is definitely one of the biggest metal events every year as far as festival things it’s pretty much the only one in this area. This was the first interview I’ve done for the site. I thought it would be really cool to talk to one of you guys as the first interview. Thanks a lot for doing this man and I guess I’ll see you in about a month.

Alright, I appreciate it man. I’ll see you soon.

Ok take it easy.

Bye.

April 26, 2012
Categories: Interviews, Maryland Deathfest, Sonar . Tags: Baltimore, Evan Harting, Interview, Maryland Deathfest, Maryland Deathfest X, Sonar . Author: Metal Chris . Comments: 1 Comment

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