Liz Ramanand, Loudwire Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta was the guest on Full Metal Jackie’s radio show this past weekend. Jasta spoke about the band’s upcoming album ‘The Divinity of Purpose,’ as well as his thoughts on how the metal scene has changed since the beginning of his music career with Hatebreed and much more. Read Full Metal Jackie’s interview with Jamey Jasta below: Jamey, you’re very much a student and fan of the evolution of Metal. What have you noticed that you like about the direction metal has taken since the last two Hatebreed albums were released in 2009 and how did that come into play while making this new album? I just like that there’s been more unity kind of how it was back when we started. I think it’s really important that metal and hardcore and punk should be inclusionary and it shouldn’t exclude people – it doesn’t matter, your religion, your race, how much money your parent make or how much money you make at your job. It really should be about bringing people together and that’s how it was when we started. We toured in 1998 with Entombed and in 1999 we toured with Motorhead and Dropkick Murphy’s and in 2000 we toured with Sepultura and bands like Soulfly and Danzig. We always try to bring different music scenes together. I think through the last five or six years as the Myspace fans exploded and as the internet and YouTube got really big I think it’s been more exclusionary. Certain bands only stick together and certain fans only want to see certain types of bands – especially the kind of more scenester bands. They all stick together and stay together and that’s fine but the fans in the last two, three years – since we’ve done the world tour with Machine Head and since we did a lot of Metal festivals in Europe and different festivals in the states like Mayhem Fest, which was a really nice eclectic bill – I think it started to change back to how it was in the late ‘90s where we would play with Six Feet Under or we would play with Anthrax, we’d play with Cannibal Corpse which we brought that back in 2009. We had us and Cannibal Corpse and Unearth on the same bill but now we’re taking out Shadows Fall and Dying Fetus again. We hadn’t taken out Shadows Fall since ’03 or ’04 we took out Dying Fetus in ’09 with Chimara and that was great. I just really want to promote unity and make sure that just because there’s some haters on the Internet that only want to see death metal bands with death metal bands or punk bands with punk bands, we shouldn’t listen to them, they’re trying tor divide us and we don’t want that. We want unity and abundance is key, we want the shows to be bigger and better. Hatebreed’s lineup has been extremely stable over the last four years, what have Chris [Beattie], Matt [Byrne], Wayne [Lozinak] and Frank [Novinec] brought to ‘The Divinty of Purpose’ that makes it classic Hatebreed? I just think having the good studio environment and having the good environment on the road has made it easier for everybody to be creative and just do better. When you feel better you do better, and luckily we’ve been on an upswing. And there’s been a resurgence with the band and we have been able to do a little bit less touring and have a little less of a grinding schedule which I think has made everybody happy and more focused on the creative process and on the performance. When Wayne came in and did this record and when he did the last record, too, it was a very good working environment and he picked up all the material very quickly and his performances were spot on. He works great with Zeuss and Josh [Wilbur] and all the great ideas Chris brought the table in the pre-production process and all my riffs that I brought to the table he picked up on very quickly. The same thing goes for Matt and Frank, just touring everybody gets along great and it’s just been a really good working environment. At the end of the day a lot of fans might not understand that it is a job, it is our career, touring, recording, being a fulltime musician and just like a regular job it can be a little bit of a grind. We’ve tried to keep it from becoming that and the last couple years has been really good for that, just being a good work environment and having fun. Jamey, what can you tell us about the song ‘Dead Man Breathing’? I’m just so happy that you’re premiering this song because it’s become one of my favorite tracks from the album. It’s definitely one of the more metallic songs and it’s just hard and heavy but it almost sounds like a new band to us. This was one of the songs that I guess created the bidding war and the stir in the industry when we were unsigned and it really helped us get our deal. A lot of people enjoyed the direction we were going in. The song is loosely based on how as a society we’ve become over medicated and we’re always trying to treat the symptom and not ever come up with a cure. The song says, “I don’t want to be another dead man breathing,” the lyrics are open to everybody’s interpretation but for me it goes a little deeper, from having faced certain addictions in my life. I hope everybody enjoys it, check it out. What’s the single most defining element of Hatebreed that absolutely had to be on ‘The Divinity of Purpose’? The lyrics just had to have a real impact, I think I didn’t focus enough on the lyrics on the last album, that I didn’t have a recurring theme throughout the whole album and I just needed to go back and spark a new thought within myself and hopefully within the listener. This is a band that all over the world, thousands and thousands of people have our lyrics tattooed on them. Although we had some bright moments on the last record like ‘In Ashes They Shall Reap’ and maybe a song like ‘Become the Fuse’ on this record, I wanted every song to have at least a big line or a big lyric that someone could really relate to. And because the title is ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ I really feel like that sparks a new thought within the listener. Maybe it would make someone say, “What is my purpose in life?,” and for me my purpose in life changed, for many years it was my daughter, for my teenage years it was music and now as an adult it has gone back to being music. Hope this record is like a compass where it could point someone in a new direction, whether it’s a direction of thought or an actual action – I don’t know, that’s up to the listener. As long as it’s inspiring which I feel it is then I feel like it’s a little bit more than moshing and headbanging and whatever else. If someone just likes the riffs and the tunes that’s great too, I feel like we really brought that back even harder than ever so that’s also a very defining part of the whole record. Hatebreed really put Conneticut and Southern New England on the metal map. When were you first aware that every step you took with Hatebreed was also a step toward making the regional metal scene bigger? I think I most realized it when I started hosting ‘Headbangers Ball’ and we started doing shows with some of the new wave of American metal bands. To me, Hatebreed was already a very big band, we had already crossed over and done big tours with Slayer and had gained this worldwide notoriety with ‘Perserverance.’ I always thought, “Oh I should have a backup plan” because music at that time was – downloading was huge and I didn’t know if music was definitely going to be my career and I thought “Maybe I’ll go into TV.” When I started hosting ‘Headbangers’ and I started to see this huge ground swell with the music I remember it was Stillborn Fest of ’03 and Killswitch Engage supported us and the whole place was signing along and I was like, “Man these guys are going to be huge,” and then it really started to bubble up with Shadows Fall and Unearth. The rest of the country started to react with Lamb of God and Chimara and on the West Coast with bands like Bleeding Through, Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold and bands we were giving a lot of airplay on ‘Headbangers.’ It really started making me think, “We really got to take this seriously” and that music can be this huge thing, bigger than we all expected it to be and that’s why we followed up quickly with ‘The Rise of Brutality” and we had this big resurgence in 2006 with ‘Supremacy’ and getting the Ozzfest main stage and since then. The fans have been so supportive of us and a lot of bands from New England and it’s a great thing to see because we always felt like it was going to be a big thing but I didn’t thing we knew it was going to be this big. Full Metal Jackie will welcome former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted to her program this coming weekend. She can be heard on radio stations around the country — for a full list of stations, go to fullmetaljackieradio.com .
Posts Tagged ‘jamey-jasta’
Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta on the Evolution of Metal, ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ + More
January 22nd, 2013 
Metalkult Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta Talks New Album, Upcoming Tour + Fan Interaction
January 16th, 2013 Metalkult Liz Ramanand, Loudwire After a massive tour with Lamb of God and In Flames, Hatebreed will kick off this year with a headlining tour in support of their sixth studio album, ‘The Divinity of Purpose,’ due out on Jan. 29 Hatebreed’s headlining tour will feature support from Shadows Fall, Dying Fetus and the Contortionist. When we caught up with frontman Jamey Jasta, he spoke all about the upcoming tour, past tours and how their fans influence their future touring schedule. Jasta also spoke about the new label they’re on, his view on the Randy Blythe trial and much more. Check out our interview with Jamey Jasta below. Congratulations on your new label home, Razor & Tie. How would you describe the process of working with this label in order to put out this new album compared with past labels in general. I think any time you put out a record, you just want to have the best team of people, and we’ve been very lucky that every label we’ve worked with always had a great team of people. Unfortunately, a lot of those people lost their jobs throughout the years because of the way that the industry has gone and because a lot of people just expect to get the records free – they can just go online on blogs and get the records for free, they don’t have to buy it. With the way that the industry has changed, some of the people from previous labels have moved to Nuclear Blast in Europe and to Razor & Tie in America and they’re a company that’s actually growing as opposed to shrinking. It feels good that we have a good team of people behind us and we’re looking forward to getting this record out and touring in support of it – that’s all you want, you want people that like the band, people that care about the band. We’ve been lucky with pretty much every label has had those people and now we’re continuing with that. Stoked to hear about your tour with Shadows Fall along with Dying Fetus and The Contortionist – how would you describe your relationship with these bands? Well I’m happy for Shadows Fall right now. I feel like their last record is one of their best records and we’re labelmates – when I see people from New England, people from Connecticut, Massachusetts doing well, I’m really happy. They went on the Killswitch [Engage] tour. It’s just cool to see, we all kind of came up together at the same time and we haven’t toured with Shadows Fall since ‘The Rise of Brutality’ tour in 2004, so it’s going to be nice to do this again. With Dying Fetus, we actually had them out with us in 2009 and I got to say they’ve just been one of the best bands that we’ve had out with us. Not only do they bring a great crowd and a lot of people that are more into that really brutal East Coast death metal sound, so our fans and their fans work well together, but also they are pleasure to have on the road with us. The Contortionist are a newer band and they’re on eOne Records, a label that Hatebreed has worked with and that I worked with on my Jasta album so it’s cool to help them out – that’s a good band with a different sound that compliments the tour. Any plans you can talk about after the this tour with Shadows Fall? Yeah, ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ tour, the pre-sales are really good, so we’re thinking about adding another leg, like a short two week leg to get to the cities that we’ve missed – especially cities that we missed on the Lamb of God tour and the ’10 Years of Perserverance’ tour. The first show we’re doing is in Flint, Mich., and it’s almost sold out, so when that show sells out we’ll be able to add say a show in Toledo which is like 90 minutes away from Flint – so now we’ll be able to add other cities for a second leg I think. It’s not definite yet, it’s not 100 percent, but I don’t feel like withholding the info helps me either. I do think if fans know how much buying a ticket in advance helps, especially in our case it can be the difference of adding the second leg or not. I think everybody who saw us on the Lamb of God / In Flames tour, they’re all tweeting us, saying, “Why don’t you do a headlining set?” Well this is your chance. I would love to add a New York City show, a Philly show, a Toledo show, a Cleveland show – there’s a lot of places that we missed on the Lamb of God tour and on this first leg that we could hit. I saw you guys on that Lamb of God tour when you came to New York City and it was just mindblowing. That was one of the best shows of the tour and because of that show we were like, “Okay let’s do Long Island on the first leg of ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ tour but now I could see, maybe we could do Brooklyn or maybe we could do Starland Ballroom. That’s the thing, there’s a lot of options for us but it really relies on the promoters and the demand from the fans – if Long Island sells out, we can add Brooklyn, if Allentown, Pa., sells out we can add the Starland show or maybe even an Irving Plaza show. So it’s important for fans to know to push your promoters and get on social media – that’s really how the Flint show got booked. Our Detroit show was the same night as Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson and even though it was the same night as that we still over 1,000 people at our show. That just goes to show how die-hard our fans are and a lot of people were from Flint and a lot of people were like, “You got to come back to Flint,” and we booked the show because they told the promoter they wanted to see us. That show is going to be sold out in advance so we’ll be able to add Toledo like I said. It’s a good thing when fans are super proactive. Also wanted to get your view and thoughts on the whole situation with Randy Blythe and if it ever came up in conversation with Randy during the tour, especially since his trial date was announced. I just want Randy to be cleared, I want his name to be cleared so the band can go on and tour the world. I just hope that he gets a fair trial. I think soon, we will go back into fundraising mode, we did really good beforehand. We did a couple Hatewear shirts for him if people want to support they can go to Hatewearinc.com – we will go into fund-raising mode again to help with any costs of the trial. We’re trying to arrange a benefit show, as well. It’s just been crazy because we did the tour and a lot of bands came together and donated guitars and things for his legal funds. We’re just hoping for the best outcome but really if you want to help as a whole – when you go to a show respect everbody at the show, respect security, respect people. People know that I’ve been saying this even before Lamb of God was around, I’ve been saying, “If somebody falls pick them up, if somebody dives, catch them” and we all have to be more responsible for that. We want shows to be an experience of value and positive experience at that. 2012 marked the tenth anniverary of ‘Perseverance.’ Why do you think Hatebreed has persevered throughout the years and been a powerful force in a crazy industry such as this one. I just think it’s because we haven’t changed the recipe too much. I think we’re reliable as a go to band if you’re looking for something heavy. I think we have a good catalog of good, solid, heavy songs and that’s all we wanted to be – we wanted to be like the Ramones of crossover or the AC/DC of metallic hardcore. We just wanted to keep it simple, keep the formula to the point. We’re just out here emulating the bands that we grew up listening to, giving our own take on it, our own approach. We’re lucky that it’s been meaningful to people and that’s what we want to do – we want to make sure that even though the songs are simple and short that they have meaning and that the lyrics hit home. Even if some of the fans don’t want to listen to the lyrics but just want to rock out to the songs, that’s there too and we want to be that institution that you can go to. Maybe it’s not something you listen to everyday but when you want to hear something hard and heavy I hope that Hatebreed is the band that people want to go to. Hatebreed’s ‘The Divinity of Purpose is available for pre-order on iTunes. VIP packages to the band’s upcoming tour can be purchased here . [button href=”http://loudwire.com/lamb-of-god-in-flames-hatebreed-sylosis-rock-new-york-city-with-vigorous-show/” title=”Check Out Photos of Hatebreed Performing in NYC” align=”center”] Watch Hatebreed’s ‘Put It to the Torch’ Video
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Tags: bands, cities, england, hatebreed, industry, jamey-jasta, jobs, metal 
No Comments »Daily Reload: Vince Neil, Anthrax + More
December 18th, 2012 Metalkult Tenth Street Entertainment Here’s a look at the top stories of the day on Loudwire and around the Web: – Motley Crue singer Vince Neil battled with some of his Twitter followers about gun control following the horrific Newtown Elementary School shooting. [ Loudwire ] – Anthrax have been named as the headlining act for the 2013 Metal Alliance tour with support from Municipal Waste , Exodus and more. Anthrax will also be playing one of their classic albums in its entirety. [ Loudwire ] – Exclusive: In This Moment release Sluggo Remix of their song ‘Blood.’ [ Loudwire ] – Machine Head ‘s Robb Flynn struck by taxi in New York City and later slams All That Remains onstage for an additional issue. [ Loudwire ] – Hatebreed vocalist and Connecticut resident Jamey Jasta offers heartfelt comments on the recent school shooting. [ Loudwire ] – Jason Newsted posts letter revealing his self-titled band’s ‘Metal’ EP. [ Ultimate Metallica ] – KISS characters to star in 2013 individual comic book issues. [ Ultimate Classic Rock ] – 49 Years Ago: First Beatles airplay on American radio. Find out which song it was here. [ Ultimate Classic Rock ] – Nirvana reunion rumors are “nonsense” according to rep of Dave Grohl. [ Diffuser.fm ] – Social Distortion announce additional West Coast dates. [ Rock Music Report ]
Posted in News Tags: 2013-individual, around-the-web, classic, daily-reload, headlining, jamey-jasta, jason-newsted, machine-head, metal-alliance, motley crue, music-report, school, street, tenth-street, twitter No Comments »Hatebreed Frontman Jamey Jasta Offers Thoughts on Connecticut School Shooting
December 17th, 2012 Metalkult Liz Ramanand, Loudwire We’re all used to seeing singer Jamey Jasta tear it up onstage with Hatebreed but the rocker we see in concert is also a prideful Connecticut native and a father of a young daughter. We spoke with Jasta earlier today (Dec. 17) about Hatebreed’s upcoming album, but we also took the opportunity to discuss the tragic elementary school shooting that took place on Friday in Newtown, Conn. Jasta not only offered his feelings about the horrific incident, but also relayed his own personal story of how his day unfolded, since it all happened so close to home for him. “I haven’t even really wrapped my mind around it yet,” Jasta told Loudwire. “I got my nephew off the bus on Friday and I was running around earlier in the day and me and my nephew we usually go get a snack right after school and then we go get my daughter at her school – both schools are about 20-25 minutes from Newtown.” Jasta continued, “When I went into the place where we usually get his snack, there’s a big TV above the register and the guy who we know behind the counter just had his hands over his mouth and he was just staring at the television in shock. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ and he was like, ‘I don’t know it looks like there was a shooting but they said that a teacher got shot and that the gunman is dead.’” “When we walked out I was like, ‘Wow, that’s disturbing’ and we walked out of there, I got gas, my nephew had asked me what happened and what was on the TV and he’s only five and I said that something bad had happened but we don’t know and we’ll have to see.” Jasta went on to say, “We went to my office and I started getting a couple of frantic calls like, ‘Hey are you near there? Where does your daughter go to school? Hey where do your nieces and nephews go to school? Is Everything okay?’ Then I got a call from someone who was crying and I knew something really bad had happened but I didn’t know the whole story yet.” “I got in my car and turned on the news and headed over to get my daughter and they had locked down the doors at every school in the area. Parents were already lined up early to get their kids out of school and I could see parents in their cars looking very distressed and upset. When the kids got out of school, there were definitely people rushing to hug their kids.” He then proceeded to describe his weekend as follows: “On Saturday, I had to get on a flight – I spent most of Saturday traveling and most of Sunday traveling. I was probably traveling eight to 10 hours each day so that was a little bit of a distraction so this morning when I got up and dropped my daughter off at school and finally got back and turned on the news I saw that funerals had begun and that’s when it really started to set in – the overall tragic, senseless feeling of it all.” Jasta concluded, “ I think today is going to be my day to really wrap my mind around it. I don’t think anybody, whether you’re a child or not – I don’t think anybody deserves to have senseless violence taken out upon them. It’s going to be bigger than just me and my thoughts, hopefully it will start a national conversation to make the kids safer in school.” Stay tuned for our full Jamey Jasta interview, in which he talks about Hatebreed’s upcoming album + more. [button href=”http://loudwire.com/connecticut-school-shooting-rock-musicians-condolences/” title=”Next: Rockers Offer Condolences” align=”center”]
Posted in News Tags: a-call-from, a-little-bit, a-snack-right, cars, jamey-jasta, mind, nephew, news, office, place-on-friday, rockers-offer, school, turned-on-the No Comments »Hatebreed Singer Jamey Jasta Talks Cover Art for ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ in New Album Trailer
December 11th, 2012 Metalkult Clay Patrick McBride, Razor & Tie Hatebreed fans are looking forward to the band’s sixth studio album ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ due out next year on Jan. 25 via Razor & Tie Records. In the album trailer below, frontman Jamey Jasta talks about the cover art of the new record by saying, “I feel like with everything being so digital and being in this computer age where everything can be found on the Internet, I felt like it would be cool to do a cover which is a painting. We’ve never had that before with Hatebreed.” Jasta goes on to say, “We wanted the title ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ to spark thought and have people interpret it and go, “What does that mean?” or “What could it mean?” The lead single off the record is the recently released ‘Put It To the Torch.’ The album ‘The Divinity of Purpose’ is the band’s follow-up to their 2009 self-titled release. Hatebreed recently wrapped up a stint on tour with Lamb of God and In Flames; check out photos of their stop in New York City here . The band has also announced dates for their 2013 headlining ‘Persistence’ Tour with Shadows Fall, Dying Fetus and the Contortionist. Check Out Hatebreed’s Album Trailer Below [button href=”http://loudwire.com/hatebreed-2013-u-s-tour-shadows-fall-dying-fetus-the-contortionist/” title=”Check Out Hatebreed’s 2013 Dates with Shadows Fall” align=”center”]
Posted in News Tags: a-cover-which, album, album-trailer, band, computer, contortionist, dying-fetus, internet, jamey-jasta, looking-forward, news, single-off-the, with No Comments »Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta Talks New Album, Touring with Lamb of God, Rowdy Fans + More
November 12th, 2012 Metalkult Liz Ramanand, Loudwire Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta was the guest on Full Metal Jackie’s radio show this past weekend. He spoke all about the band’s forthcoming album ‘The Divinity of Purpose,’ as well as hitting the road with Lamb of God and how playing shows has changed since Randy Blythe’s arrest. Read the full interview with Jamey Jasta below: You are obviously part of this awesome Lamb of God tour and you are probably doing 12 bazillion things, as you do? Metal is a life style and no one in the metal community is more immersed in that lifestyle than you. When did you realize that metal would become so prominent in so many aspects of your life, musician, songwriter, label owner, media personality. Coming from the punk and hardcore scene – I just saw that there needed to be more unity with metal. We always played with metal bands and we always enjoyed metal bands like thrash bands, death metal however you want to call the different sub-genres and I thought “It’d be good to just be more involved and bring people together.” I always liked the inclusionary aspect of metal whereas coming from the punk and hardcore scene a lot of it is exclusionary where there’s a lot of strong beliefs. So I thought “Man, it would be great to have a balance of the two” so very young I started learning about how shows were booked and how tours were booked and how different bands got signed and I just tried to learn so that if I ever was to be in a band, which I ended up being in – I had a little bit of an edge. Especially coming from the punk and hardcore scene there’s so many bands and it’s so hard to break especially in the Northeast – being from Connecticut we were sandwiched in between New York and Boston where there’s hundreds of bands, you really have to work super hard to get noticed. Growing up and having bands like Biohazard and Sick of It All but also bands like Anthrax and all of the Florida death metal bands, we ended up getting to play with a lot of those bands. You see how die-hard the fans are and how truly supportive and they stay with the band and now we’re seeing it more than ever with Testament and Anthrax and even Megadeth – they constantly keep having these huge rebirths in a way where the fans pass it along to younger fans. We just wanted to do that but for bands who were crossover bands who had roots in the hardcore scene and everything comes with that – the lifestyle aspect of it, trying to make a brand, have your own clothing, have your own label, have your own TV show or radio show or whatever it is. You want to have a medium to promote the stuff and it’s been cool and a lot of people are still doing things like that; Kerry King from Slayer had a clothing line, Scott Ian has a web TV show and it’s nice to see that through metal there are all these cool opportunities being had. I believe in abundance I’m like, “Share the wealth and have everybody express their views and interests and have the music be that medium to get the message across.” As you mentioned there’s a new Hatebreed record coming out in January and tell us what will fans love most about this new record? I just think if you like any one Hatebreed record there’s a little bit of something for you on this one. I feel like if you like ‘Satisfaction [Is the Death of Desire]’ and you’re in your thirties and that hardcore was a big part of your life, there’s some stuff you’ll like on this record. If your more ‘Perseverance’ type of person and from the last ten years onward have been a fan there’s a lot of themes that are similar. Then there’s the thrash and the crossover influence, as well. I think it’s got all of the cool elements of Hatebreed records in the past but has that identity where it’s fresh and new but you know when you put it in, you know it’s Hatebreed. Even if you hate us at least you won’t be like “Who is that? What is that?” you know who it is. You guys are celebrating an anniversary coming up right? We just celebrated the 10 year anniversary of ‘Perserverance’ and Nov. 11 [marks] the 15th anniversary of ‘Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire.’ I don’t think we’ll get the chance to do a tour or a re-release of the record or anything which would have been cool but the past is the past – we’re proud of it but it’s like we got to put this new record out in January and it’s onward and upward. This is a huge tour for us to play out to a new audience. It’s great to see Lamb of God – even though they might not be new to some people, we’re seeing a lot of young kids and I feel like they’re the new leaders of aggressive metal or modern metal. Both Hatebreed and Lamb of God are both powerful aggressive bands in an instant how did things change for you as a musician, entrepreneur and for metal as a whole when Randy [Blythe] was arrested in Prague? Well it was crazy because it instantly put this magnifying glass on how a concert should go as far as searching the fans, security, barricades and we come under a lot of scrutiny because we’re from the hardcore scene. There are some people who are very vocal about us becoming a big band – they don’t like that. There’s always been this kind of punk rock guilt in the scene like “You can’t be successful, you can’t make money or play big shows on big stages” but we’ve always been looking for the most success possible – we’ve never been ashamed of that. Randy getting arrested has really brought that out and people have said, “What are you going to do? Are you going to be able to play shows without a barricade.” We’ve been playing shows with barricades for the last 12 years it’s just people that wasn’t to cause a stir and act like we’re compromising our integrity in some way. They’ve brought all this stuff up like, “Everybody should be welcome on the stage” and all this stuff – not at a metal show maybe at a punk and hardcore shows and God Bless them if they can police the stage and be on top of it. God forbid somebody breaks their neck like we had happen at The Staircase in PA and that’s probably going back to 2002, 2003 – that club shut down, we almost got named in the lawsuit. Even before Lamb of God we were dealing with these types of issues before Lamb of God was even signed so they just brought it to the forefront – it’s such a unique incident where they feel Randy is at fault which he isn’t, he’s totally innocent. Regardless I think it’s a bigger question or a bigger thing where people just need to respect each other at a show, respect the security and vice versa. What do you want out of the show? Do you want to enjoy it or do you want to hurt people and hurt yourself? You have to ask yourself that. If you’re looking to hurt people or hurt yourself then maybe you should just stay home. As far as the bigger metal bands like Lamb of God, Anthrax and Slayer – don’t ever expect to be allowed onstage. Hatebreed has already done shows since this has happened without barricades and it was just a couple random shows like my birthday show in Switzerland and everything was fine. We took a risk by doing that and if could’ve gone wrong but we told the crowd “Look this is super important that everybody respects each other, if somebody dives you got to catch them, if somebody falls you got to pick them up.” I don’t see that being something that can still go on especially not in America, definitely not in America. I think that in America, especially after the ‘Perseverance’ tour which was probably our most violent tour we’ve done in a long time, with the exception of Pomona. Pomona was incredible, seeing all the unity and everybody picking each other up and really no fights – that was great but every other place was super violent and I’m not complaining. I understand it’s heavy music and a crazy show and we write some stuff that’s going to cause the kids to go crazy but at some point you have to say “Enough is enough, let’s respect each other.” If you get hit in the pit just deal with it and shake it off. At the Detroit show there were girl fights and it was crazy. I know when you involve booze and heavy metal you’re bound to have a couple fights but we had a lot of shows where it was literally like 30 fights – two, three fights every song and you’re like “Alright this has got to chill for a little bit.” That’s why with Hatebreed we try to do the bigger tours like Mayhem Fest where we can play to a ton of people, get out message out and not have to worry about people getting hospitalized. In terms of Hatebreed, what surprises people most about you in terms of their perception that’s based on Hatebreed and your music? Well now after the whole CNN debacle where they basically misreported us being a racist band or having a racist agenda – because our fans stood up for us and really just bombarded them with Tweets. It actually got us a little bit of mainstream attention and now people who might not know about Hatebreed at least they get it and they say, “Okay their negativity or the negative aspects that they see or feel in the world they’re trying to do something positive with it” and they get that we’re trying to have a positive agenda. So I guess when people meet us and we’re regular guys and we’re not out here beating people up or sacrificing goats or whatever they think that we’re doing – they get it. Also, when you perform at this level – we’ve done more shows than most bands who’ve been around for 20 years, 30 years, we’ve done a higher volume of shows. We’ve gotten out a lot of energy, when you scream your head off for 40 to 90 minutes a night – it’s hard to be upset during the day, that’s the therapy. That’s probably another thing that people don’t realize – I get all the bad stuff out, I have that release. That’s why with this whole record and going into this new world tour and everything, I have a really good outlook because I still get that fulfillment – that’s why I feel like we’ve had such long term success it’s a cyclical power, people get that from the show and we get that from performing. We just need now to make it be more of a fun experience and hopefully the next tour won’t be as crazy and violent. We write some heavy stuff so it is to be expected. Do you think looking back at starting out in terms of punk roots and you have to be in an angry mindset in general on that whole genre – thinking back then to now do you still feel that anger and rebellion in general? Yeah, but also I think it goes in waves now we have the election coming up and the way the economy is and as you get older you see so many people are down and out. People are dealing with depression and anxiety and struggles that you face throughout your life, it’s just constant fuel for the fire I think. I feel like life is never going to be a hundred percent peachy so you got to have that balance. You don’t always want to eat pizza, you can’t eat pizza for every meal, you want to switch it up just like you don’t always want to listen to Hatebreed, maybe some people do and God bless them – but for when you do need that release or you want that aggressive music whether it’s in the gym or on your ride to work hopefully we’re that band. Full Metal Jackie will welcome Dez Fafara of DevilDriver on her next show. Full Metal Jackie can be heard on radio stations around the country — for a full list of stations, go to fullmetaljackieradio.com .
