Introduce yourselves.

Russ: I’m Russ, I play bass and vocals.

Ray: I’m Ray and I play drums.

Steve: I’m Steve and I play guitar.

Jason: I’m Jason and I play guitar.

Taylor: I’m Taylor. I play guitar and vocals.

Who’s the lead vocalist or do you guys trade off?

We’re both in the front pretty much.

Oh, so you guys switch off then. I like that.

Yeah, he likes to be center stage. I like to be in the corner.

Were you a bad child?

Yes.

What are some of your musical influences?

In Flames, Dimmu Borgir, Children Of Bodom. A lot of Scandinavian metal.

Children Of Bodom is fucking awesome. I love those guys.

A lot of people say we sound a little bit like them.

They’ve got such really good intricate guitar work.

We’re all really big Iron Maiden fans. That’s probably the biggest metal influence.

Yeah, I grew up on those guys. When you guys got together how did you decide on playing a mixture of black and death metal?

It started off as rock. We sounded like Godsmack when we started out. We were overloaded with classic rock. We hated it. It was a natural transition because we were all listening to more heavier stuff so we wanted to play heavier stuff. Then we started screaming and then the guitar parts got heavier and the drumming got heavier. It just kind of grew to this.

You guys finally found your niche as it were.

Yeah, we actually enjoy this stuff now.

I find that the older I get the heavier I like my music. I don’t know if that’s loss from hearing from 50 million concerts or what.

Motherfucker, all our fans are deaf. We do play it very loud.

Deafness helps a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your CD that you’re basically supporting.

Which one of them? Oh, the only one. It’s called Dawn Of A New Age. Those are actually the first songs we wrote. Our old band was called Last Standing and we basically just kept writing new songs and using the old names so redoing the songs. So we have a couple of songs like “Waste Of Life” and “Here’s A Line”. Those we wrote when we were about 15 and just kept changing it. We recorded that album in a week total. It came out pretty good. The next CD is going to be all the recently written songs. Most of the songs on the last album were written for two guitars and then later we brought Steve in and he does his thing. Aside from the most popular ones like “Crown Of Thorns”, “Dawn Of A New Age”, and “The End Draws Near”, those were actually written for three guitars.

Why did you decide to have a three guitarist shindig?

It actually started out because he went into rehab.

You’ve already been in rehab?

He’s been in four times.

How old are you again? Jesus.

He’s already quit once. We kicked him out maybe twice.

You just keep coming back like a bad disease.

One of the times we kicked Jason out, he came back and Steve was playing with us. He quit and then he went into rehab and we had a whole ton of shows and we needed a guitarist. So we asked Steve because we knew him from his other band so we got him in to play guitar for us. We really liked his guitar playing but we liked Jason’s too so when Jason was coming out of rehab we decided to keep them all.

You might as well. How long has the band been around?

This group of five for a little over a year and a half now or two years. The total of us three have been together for six or seven years.

You guys will be together for 20 years. What exactly were you being rehabilitated for anyway?

Uh, let me think. I’ve been in three times. Except for marijuana, that’s not a drug.

That’s not a real drug. You’ve been living a really exciting life.

Pretty much, yeah. Police chases.

Tell me about that. Let’s liven this up a little bit.

To make a long story short I’ll just start with the chase. I’m driving down the street and there’s a cop waiting there. I pull around him and I pull a left onto a street called Woodridge. There’s a cop coming down the street so I take a right and a left and go onto a busy street called 75th. There’s three cops behind me already. There’s a roadblock at James street but I go through the middle. I’m doing 120 miles an hour already and there’s a roadblock at the next street so I go into oncoming traffic and start hooking it down there. The cops are on both sides of the street and all of a sudden there are no cars on the street and I’m gunning it. I’m looking and looking and then I see a fire truck, ambulances, and cop cars on all the streets. I go to the left and a cop throws out a spike strip and I flip my car.

Did that ever make it on an episode of Cops?

He was a minor.

You thought you were doing a Hollywood car chase?

He still doesn’t have his drivers license back.

They don’t let you drive the bus.

I can buy it. I can re-register it but I don’t want to pay for that. I’m the poorest member.

Don’t marry this guy. He doesn’t have any money. Unless you just want a broke rock star.

That could be an exciting marriage.

Yeah, it could be. Tell me about two or three of the songs on the record.

Russ:

I like “Dawn Of A New Age”. I have a sweet bass solo on the intro. I like “Crown Of Thorns”. That one’s cool. I think “Dawn Of A New Age” is probably one of the best ones on there. I really like those songs the best.

Ray: I like “Waste Of Life” because I can show off my drumming.

Ah, that’s his song.

The one we never play. Everyone else plays it.

When you put your set list together you need to get more aggressive.

We have the set list eight days in advance. We’re trying to do a different set list for every day of the tour so we don’t kill each other. Instead of having one person write them all, unfortunately it’s him. We’re just screwing it up.

That definitely makes things more interesting. How long is your set?

We just assume it’s a half hour to 45 minutes. We get six or seven songs.

Do you have a pretty good should I say wealth of material to choose from?

I bet we could fill about a two hour set if we remembered all the really old songs.

Do you feel that now you’re not 15 years old anymore that your songwriting is a little bit better?

Oh, definitely.

What kind of stuff do you guys like to write about?

Currently we’re going through this thing with Vikings. Basically a battle of the Titans kind of thing. Like Manowar without the loin cloths.

Not quite as geeky.

I’m not the only one bashing that band.

Their music is cool and their songs are cool but they seem kind of fucking geeky. I’ve got that Hell On Earth DVD thing.

Yeah, we have that on the bus. I tried to hide that before we jacked the thing.

They just come across so geeky. I don’t quite know how else to describe these guys.

The boobs. That’s the only reason we’d watch the thing.

That would probably be the only worthwhile part of that thing for you guys. They just seem kind of dorky. It’s a good thing that they’re good musicians. Tell me about how the tour has been going.

Oh, my God. Money is a problem with gas. Except for here. I’m so surprised how cheap gas is here.

What?

$2.80 for gas? We’re paying $3.40 up in Chicago.

Are you serious?

Yes.

And I’m sitting around bitching. I’m like why am I paying so much fucking money for gas.

I looked out and said I’m filling the whole tank. We ran out of gas all the way through Oklahoma because it’s $3.20 or $3.30 for gas. Three times we ran out of gas in one day. A total of probably four hours sitting around. Money wouldn’t be such a problem if that show just before here wasn’t cancelled but the Kansas City one got cancelled. We drove all the way from Chicago to Kansas City. It’s a six and a half hour drive.

And you didn’t know the show was cancelled.

No, we got there and the sound guy cancelled the show once we got there.

That was nice.

We thought that was just great so we started driving to Dallas.

I would have been like “you fucking need to pay me anyway, asshole.”

Well, in the beginning we were in the mini van heading toward South Dakota. I was attacked by a deer. It was one hoof from kicking me in the face. It’s Wisconsin. I guess that shit happens there all the time. Oh, it was Minnesota.

There was all this black fog rolling in and we couldn’t see anything and all we heard was a thump. All three of us were asleep in the back and all you hear is “shit, pull over! Pull over!” The deer was splattered all over the car. It broke our tire and axle which we drove for five hours. By the time we got to South Dakota the whole thing was ready to give out. Nicest people on earth though.

Don’t you like driving through the Dakotas? It’s this total flat expanse on both sides of the road. Of nothing. Fences on both sides of the road and wide expanses of nothing. I visited a friend up in St. Paul and she was dating the bassist in Firehouse at the time. So we were going to different shows that they were doing in the Dakotas and we’re driving along and I’m like “God damn, don’t you people have any fucking trees out here?”

Yeah, there’s nothing.

It was in the winter too so it was kind of weird. How did you guys wind up with a red school bus?

I was at a funeral. It was one of my distant cousins, the Gambinos. He walks up to me.

He’s related to Da Gadfadda.

I’ve never spoken to this guy. He said he had a bus for me and I told him I had never even spoken to him so how did he know. A few months later we end up checking it out. We like it a lot. It’s pretty cool. It’s got everything. He hates driving it.

Did you have to go out and break some arms to collect some money?

Almost, yeah. We negotiated with him.

You’re related to a well known Mafia family. I just recently acquired all three movies in the Godfather series on DVD finally.

I want to know what the Gambinos think of this band.

That movie is going to take on a whole new meaning now. One of their distant cousins is in a death metal band. Yeah!

And we came by a red school bus at a funeral.

That’s a pretty good damn story. People ought to enjoy that.

We’ve had a lot of trouble with that bus so far. We’ve only been driving it for two days.

It’s a Mafia bus, what do you expect?

Right out here we dropped our sewage tank. It fell off once we got off the highway. All of this piss was all over the highway at two in the morning. We’re just like “keep going, keep going.”

Nobody will ever know. Well, it’s been raining so fucking much. We’re having rain in July. It never rains in Texas in July.

Everyone was telling us to be careful driving there. The whole family is calling us to tell us to be careful because there’s a flood warning. Then we get here and there’s no rain the whole drive in. We’re really confused now.

It decided to let up for you guys.

Just for us.

How long have you guys been out on the road?

It feels like seven weeks so far but I think it’s the fourth day.

Oh my God. How long are you on tour for?

28 days. July. Let’s go with it.

We’re on July 14th right now. Right as we speak.

I only know all the dates in order. I don’t know where we’re going or what day of the week it is. I am so confused.

I can imagine. I would be too. Where are you guys off to next after you play here?

I think we’re going to Alice next. I think it’s an hour south of San Antonio. It’s dead center of Mexico and Corpus Christi.

Woo, you can go across the border and get some cervesas.

We were thinking of going to pick up some illegal drugs in Mexico and sell them on the rest of our tour.

You’d probably do better doing that than getting paid apparently. That must be the worst part of any tour. Always having to get your money.

Oh, yeah. We might have to wrestle for our money. If we’re arrested, yes.

At least not yet.

We’ve talked to eight cops and we’ve never gotten into trouble. Because we initiate it. Hey, officer.

Can you come over here for a minute? What do you guys have planned after you survive this tour?

We’re planning on surviving I think. My mom has this huge party for us the day we get back. We’re all underage too and she’s going to throw us a party with a keg and everything. It’s house rules. After that we’re just going to do local shows once a month because we’re going to be writing and trying to record. We have six songs done now. We plan on doing another 12 songs or 13 total. That’s the plan.

That is the plan if they survive the tour.

If no member quits by the end of the tour.

You can’t do that. This tour is going to test and prove your manhood, damn it. You will know that when you survive this you are real men and you can go forth in the world.