tp://www.planet-loud.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/goatwhore.jpg” width=300 height=200 align=right vspace=5>Goatwhore Interview
New Orleans extreme metal titans Goatwhore are all set to release their latest record ‘Blood For The Master’ and, as per usual, it’ll tear your fucking face off. We recently spoke to founding member and all-round riff lord Sammy Duet to talk uncompromising producers, bass player complex, and burying records in the woods…
Planet Loud – Cheers for your time today – how are you doing? What are you up to at the moment?
Goatwhore – Sammy Duet (Guitar/Vocals): We’re real excited about this new record coming out, and we leave for tour very soon, so we’re getting ready for that. We spent the last year writing and recording the new album so for a band who tours a lot, a year off seems like five years – we can’t wait to get back on the road. First and foremost we’re a live band, you know, so recording is just a way of refreshing people’s ears with our music so we can continue to play live.
Planet Loud – Absolutely, that’s where so much heavy music is at its best.
Goatwhore – Definitely – but on the other hand there are so many bands out there who can’t pull it off live, and that’s disappointing. When you go see a band you really like and they sound nothing like on record… that sucks. We take pride in making it work live.
Planet Loud – How did you piece together the new record then?
Goatwhore – Well, we had a lot of ideas around before we started rehearsing and writing the majority of the album. Basically, we just fleshed the songs out in a rehearsal room, and if they didn’t feel right… we threw so many songs out the window because they felt wrong at that stage. When we write, we like to take time to make sure it’s up to our standards, before anyone else hears it. We won’t rely on studio tricks to flesh stuff out or make it work – if it doesn’t sound good in the practice room, it doesn’t go any further. If we can’t make something work live, it’s not worth recording. You don’t want to get yourself into a position where you can’t pull off these songs outside of the studio, so you limit your options live. It’s important that we can play every single song on an album if we want to.
Planet Loud – You worked with Eric Rutan (Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel, Nile) on production again this time… what draws you to him as a producer?
Goatwhore – As always, working with Eric was a great experience. This was the third time we’d worked with him, and he enjoys working with us as much as we enjoy working with him. He’s really hard to work with… not personality wise, but in that he will make you work really hard in the studio. He won’t cut you any slack, he just gets us to work, which is what you need in the studio. We don’t like to use technology as a crutch, we want to do it all as live as we can, and Eric is great with getting the best out of us through that. You can tell when a band’s taken that approach because it comes out more organic, it sounds more real. It’s the end result that matters. As long as the album comes out awesome in the end, we really don’t care what kind of hell the producer puts us through (laughs).
Planet Loud – What kind of point in the process do the lyrics come into play?
Goatwhore – Well, the lyrics are a really important part of what we do. This is an extreme form of music, and so it requires extreme lyrics. A lot of people don’t understand that. When some of the music is down, Ben (Falgoust – vocals) will come in and analyse it, put together some lyrics, and then sometimes we’ll adjust or extend stuff to fit to that. The lyrics aren’t an afterthought, you know? We put a lot of work in to make sure that all of us are happy with every part, including the lyrics and the vocals.
Planet Loud – Awesome. So, this is your first record with James Harvey on bass – how’s his joining affected the dynamic in the band?
Goatwhore – I think the main thing is that he plays more with the band. Some bass players try to make themselves stand out –they have what you might call ‘bass player complex’. James understood what our music needed before he even joined the band. He knows his role as a bass player… It’s the rhythms, basically, adding another layer. He fits in really well in terms of providing a solid foundation, and that is what we’re after. The bass is the glue that keeps everything together, and it needs to fulfil that role, you know?
Planet Loud – How do you feel that spending so much time on the road has affected the way you write and work as a band?
Goatwhore – One big thing is that you realise which kinds of songs you’re comfortable with, which ones work, and that comes into play when you hit the rehearsal room. Our album ‘A Haunting Curse’ was extremely fast, almost every song was a blastbeat-fest. After touring that for a while we realised that some of that shit is really fucking hard to pull off (laughs). As a result, we approached things slightly differently with the next album, and it worked for us. It’s not like we’ve pussied out or anything, we’re writing stuff that remains extremely heavy, but the difference is that it sounds good live. You can write stuff that’s all fast and shit, but when you’re playing in a tiny club, with a poor sound system, it’s going to sound awful. Slower and mid-tempo stuff comes across with a lot more power live. I’ve got nothing against bands who do blastbeats all the time, I just feel like we can do a lot better as a band by stepping back and trying different things, rather than just showing off. We focus on trying to write good heavy metal songs.
Planet Loud – Absolutely – and I’m sure that’s a policy that few will disagree with! So, it looks like the last few years have been pretty full-on for you, and you’ve been, with the exception of the recent writing process, pretty much glued to the road. What’ve been the highlights of that time, for you?
Goatwhore – We’ve had some really surprising and awesome stuff happen to us. For example, in 2006 we got to tour with one of our favourite bands, Celtic Frost, in the US, and I never thought in a million years that would happen. Another thing was that right after that we got to tour with Venom, another of our favourite bands. That was a really monumental time for our band, it felt like ‘wow, this is really happening’. Then in 2010 we got to do Ozzfest, and that was insane, so awesome. There have been a lot of good times in this band.
Planet Loud – It seems like the more mainstream metal press pay more attention to extreme stuff these days… how do you feel about the recent progress of extreme music?
Goatwhore – I feel that extreme metal, whatever genre it might be, is more publicised now than it’s been in a very long time, particularly the more underground styles. It’s more in the public eye: whereas for a long time it was very underground, now there are extreme metal bands everywhere. It’s a good time to be into extreme metal. For us as a band, the fact is, we won’t ever change whatever happens. We could get as big as fuckin’ Metallica, which I seriously doubt, but we still wouldn’t change how we sound. This is what we do, you know? Whether people hate it or love it doesn’t matter to us, what’s important is that we like it. Being in the public eye doesn’t hurt though, you know. It’s about spreading the message to more people. So many bands bitch and cry because the underground isn’t underground anymore, but that’s a stupid way to look at things. When you start a band, you want people to hear your music, you want as many people as you can to hear you. A lot of these people with attitudes seem really stupid to me. ‘I’m going to start a band, but I don’t want anyone to hear it. I’ll make a cassette and then bury it in the woods… the first person who writes me an essay I think is cool enough, I’ll send them a map to go dig up the cassette’ (laughs). It’s like, wow, really? I’ve heard of a band actually trying to do that, too. Some people have way too much time on their hands, I suppose.
Planet Loud – Definitely. So, to round things off, what’ve you got lined up for the rest of 2012 – back on the road?
Goatwhore – Absolutely. We’re actually in talks with another band at the moment about getting over to Europe at some point. They’re a little bit of a different band to who we’ll usually play with but I think it should work really well – I’m not able to say any more than that yet, though. I think the general idea in 2012 is to play anywhere and everywhere that we can.
Planet Loud – Great stuff, cheers.
Goatwhore – Thanks.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Goatwhore/106192729412740?sk=info
Interview by Rob Sayce
