That is perfectly fine.

Okay, good.

Most people call really, really late.

I’m very prompt on everything I do.

Awesome. Tell me a little bit about your band.

We started it almost seven years ago. Six or seven years ago. Something like that. Basically we all knew each other throughout high school. We all liked to smoke pot and drink together. We all played some instruments and we decided to start a metal band and that was really it. Just high school friends.

All right. You guys sound like a fun bunch. Smoking pot and drinking. That’s cool.

Not in a bragging way. Hey, we like to have a good time though. We don’t like it to be all serious all the time. It’s 75 percent serious.

I just loved the way you said that. So cool, calm, and collect. I dug on that. That’s cool.

Awesome. That’s funny. Usually people are like “oh, are you guys drug addicts?” No, no, we just like to get drunk a little bit. Nothing wrong with that.

Absolutely not. I think people are so fucking anal retentive these days. It makes you crazy.

Oh yeah, it’s pretty terrible. If you say “hey man, I smoke weed when we’re on tour”, people are like “oh, I bet you do other drugs.” No, I can say no to that stuff. I just like to smoke a little bit of weed. Nothing serious. I like to vege out after a gig.

They always say that people who start out smoking pot go on to harder drugs. All of my friends who smoke marijuana, that’s all they do.

Yeah, it’s funny that they say marijuana is the gateway drug but then it totally isn’t for a lot of people so it’s crazy.

You guys just signed a distribution deal recently with Prosthetic Records.

Yes, ma’am. That we did. They just put our record out in the stores for us. We’re more of a DIY band where we put out our records ourselves and such and I actually work for Prosthetic which is how the deal came about. E.J. the owner just offered to put it out in stores for us and luckily it’s been in a good amount of stores and kids can find it which is the good thing.

It’s got some good sales then.

It’s not doing bad. It was released last September so a long time ago and then we re-released it in March. There have definitely been kids who already have the record before Prosthetic released it. Altogether I’m happy with how much it’s been selling. It’s not doing bad.

They sent me The Nature Of Betrayal in the mail and it came across my desk and I reviewed it. I fucking loved it. On Wednesday nights I have a show on www.rocknationradio.com called Twisted Metal and one of the CD’s that I spun last night was yours.

Oh, thank you very much. I’m glad to hear somebody likes it. That’s good.

I thought it was fucking killer.

I’m glad you enjoy it. We’re kind of in between. People that really, really like it give us the response you just said. Then some people are like “dude, that’s the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever heard.” It’s funny and I like it that it’s both extremes. I like that better than someone going “oh, it’s all right.” I’d rather somebody just totally love it or totally hate it.

I thought it was fucking killer so I had that on my show last night.

Awesome.

You guys are a combination of melodic death metal and black metal. Coming from California, you’ve got that Norwegian sound going. How did you manage to do that? Are you influenced by a lot of Norwegian bands?

Yeah, actually a lot of us are. We’re heavily influenced by the Swedish and Norwegian scenes.

The Gothenburg thing?

Well, more like Swedish black metal. Bands like Dawn and Dissection and even Dark Funeral. It’s funny that they’re all named after D’s. Any band like that who is black metal but their style of riffing that they had was what we were way into. We really liked that but then for the Norwegian sound, we just liked how pissed off and angry a lot of the Norwegian bands are like Gorgoroth and Darkthrone and whatnot.

Those guys are fucking badass.

Yeah, that’s why we like them. We like how angry the Norwegian bands are but then we love how melodic the Swedish bands are. We’re definitely influenced by both scenes as well as American hardcore stuff. We’re influenced by a lot of stuff.

When you do the vocals on a record, you have that nice growly thing going. Does that ever bother your throat a little bit or is there a certain way you do that?

No, it never bothers me. I’ve also been singing like that for almost an entire decade so I’m generally used to it. Some nights it’s a little bit worse than others like if you’re playing five weeks straight and you’re three weeks into it, sometimes your voice gets a little tired but other than that, it’s never ever given me a problem. Luckily I’ve had a good voice or a strong enough voice to tour a lot.

I remember interviewing Shagrath from Dimmu Borgir and it was so funny interviewing him. He’s a very soft spoken quiet guy and I practically had to put my ear to his mouth to be able to hear him. He gets on stage and growls.

It’s funny. A lot of bands like that are much more passive than anybody would even guess.

Oh yeah, I’ve come to find that out. A lot of these are just absolute teddy bears. I’ve even interviewed one of the guys from Gorgoroth before.

I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with them yet but I’ve definitely done a lot of reading about them and seen all the stuff on the Internet like the YouTube documentaries with Gaahl and stuff like that. I love that band. I love the way they are.

Gaahl is a very intelligent, well-spoken guy and he even sat there and discussed his Satanism stuff with me because I was curious about that.

Yeah, that’s something that I like him for. He’s very well-spoken and especially representing extreme metal, I think he does it better than anyone. People call him insane or whatever which is their thing. I don’t think he is. I just think he thinks the way he does.

He didn’t come across that way to me.

Yeah, people are definitely scared of that guy but I think he’s a genius and I love that band.

The last thing on earth you should ever be afraid of is another human being.

Yeah, I hear you.

That’s just my outlook on that. Why is your nickname Grandpa?

Well, because generally when we’re at home I work so much that I’m usually not the late bird. I’m always up early in the morning and generally in bed by a reasonable hour when we’re at home just because I’ve got tons of work to do with Prosthetic and the band and just making sure everything is good to go. They just call me Grandpa. It’s like their little asshole joke.

I finally got to meet Bob from Prosthetic.

Oh yeah, Bob is sitting 10 feet away from me right now.

Hi Bob!

Angela says “hi, Bob“. Bob looks back and waves.

It was really cool to meet him. I was really excited about that. So you guys played in the Metalfest back in April.

Yes, we played the New England Metal And Hardcore Fest. It was our first time and it was a great time.

I bet it was.

Yeah, that’s one of the only times we’ve ever felt even a tad bit intimidated but other than that it was amazing. We had a great time. I hope we get to do it next year.

I hope you do too. You guys were supposed to come through town here on your tour and you’re not going to. That makes me very, very upset. You guys were supposed to play in Lewisville where I live.

Yeah, the biggest bunch of crap happened with that. We’re actually playing Ft. Worth though if that’s not far from you. I thought that was right next to Dallas.

Yeah, it is.

We’re playing on Monday in Ft. Worth actually. We booked the show in Lewisville about two months ago and then another booking agent booked the show. He didn’t know that the show was booked and basically the club told us to get lost. Our show got canceled so then I was scrambling for another show. On June 11th we’re playing a placed called Competition Music in Ft. Worth. I believe it’s a record store. There are going to be eight or nine bands playing and it starts at four. It should be a good show.

That sucks. That venue you were going to be playing at it is five minutes from my house.

That was just perfect for you.

Yeah, that would have been fucking righteous.

I was real excited to play at that place because we had heard good things.

It’s a fucking awesome place to play at. The only bad thing about it is that it doesn’t serve any alcohol but there’s a bar across the street. I thought we could go get a few beers.

Yeah, go have a few beers and then go in and watch the metal. Sounds like a good night. Yeah, we were excited to play that venue and then unfortunately we got kicked off the show but that stuff happens when you’re a smaller band. We talked to the owner about it and she did apologize but it just sucks when you have something booked for two months and it’s already on all your itineraries and you’re getting all your directions ready. You’re gearing up and they’re like “oh, you can’t play here. Sorry.” Then you’re like holy shit, how do we get another show? What goes around comes around.

Yeah, that’s right. Let’s talk a little bit about The Nature Of Betrayal.

Go for it.

I know it’s re-released but how long did it take to do the record and what were the thought processes behind doing it?

We recorded it in five days. We actually recorded it in a practice studio with our friend’s computer. It was basically done with literally no money. They weren’t even full days. We did it throughout five days but we were only there on each day for four or five hours. We did that and then the artwork and everything took only a couple of weeks from this artist Ben West. Then it was out. It was pretty quick actually.

Yeah, I love that sword through that guy.

Yeah, it’s all artwork by Gustave Dore, this famous French artist. My friend Ben West does design stuff. He thought it would be cool to take basically a collage of that guy’s art and apply it to our CD packaging and all that. Luckily it came out amazing so I’m definitely into it.

That’s one of the things I like about people’s CD’s is the artwork on them.

That’s half of the selling point right there.

That’s one of the things I miss about vinyl. Vinyl used to come in those big sleeves and you could get a lot more shit on them.

I still collect vinyl all the time. I buy a lot.

I still have some of my old vinyl records too. I always used to love sitting there looking at the covers.

I love vinyl. It’s a great thing.

The song I played on my show last night I believe was “Plague That Leads To Extinction”.

Yeah, that’s generally I guess you can call it the single. I don’t really know if we have a single but I guess that might be it.

That’s the one that everyone likes.

Yeah, it seems to be that one and I don’t even know what else. Yeah, that one people generally take a liking to.

When you were writing the songs, what were you thinking about when you were doing them?

I write the lyrics. Lyrically it was just more of a, I guess you can say I’m a pretty big liberal. A lot of it has to do with government issues and religious issues. Certain aspects like that. For me anyway.

Yeah, we’re fucked.

Generally that’s kind of what it’s saying. That’s what I try to say. Some people see it as another way but yeah, that’s generally what I’m saying. Hey guys, keep doing what you’re doing and we’re all screwed here.

What songs off the record do you guys play live?

Usually we play “200 Years” which is the first song. We’ll play “Plague That Leads To Extinction” and we will play…I’m trying to think. What do we play? Then we play the title track “The Nature Of Betrayal” and we will play “Victims” which is the sixth song. Sometimes we’ll play the song that we did on a seven inch which isn’t on that record. We like playing it live so we’ll throw that into the mix.

What tour dates do you guys have? Where are you going on your venture?

This is just basically down to the South from California, follow the border centrally through Yuma, Tucson, El Paso, Corpus Christi all throughout Texas. Then up until about Nebraska, then over to Colorado, Utah. It covers the Mid West mainly.

What plans do you have after you’re through touring?

No idea just yet. We’ll talk about it on this tour. Thinking about what we want to do next. We have no idea. We already started writing the next record which is about halfway done so I think we want to try and get to the studio and do that by the end of this year. There are no guarantees but that’s what we’re trying to work out the most right now.

For a record that you guys did in five days with no money, it’s fucking badass.

Yeah, we did it in five days for a thousand dollars out of our pockets.

Well, I tell you what, that’s fucking badass. That’s all I can say.

We like to keep it pretty simple and try and do what we can with what we have.

I’m definitely going to be spinning this on a few more shows.

Awesome. See, I like to hear that. That makes me happy. So, it’s your radio show though, right?

Yeah.

That’s awesome. I very rarely get a chance to listen to metal radio or anything so I’m glad that people are paying attention.

I’ll definitely be playing this.

Awesome. I thank you very much for giving us the time of day.

No problem, I love black metal. That’s just my favorite thing right now.

Awesome. Thank you very much.

Any other thoughts or comments?