Goatwhore is one of those bands whose sound is hard to define, because they mix so many different elements together. Often categorized as “Blackened Death Metal”, this qualification doesn’t do their sound justice. Sure, they blend elements of Death Metal and Black Metal into their sound, but you can also hear traces of Thrash Metal, Traditionnal Heavy Metal and even hints of Sludge and Hardcore Punk that they mold into a coherent sound they can proudly call their own.
An impressive touring and recording schedule over the past 20 or so years has made them an amazingly tight and energetic live band. At the center of it all is vocalist Ben Falgoust, whose stage presence is always dynamic. He just looks like he’s having fun and is really into it! We talked with Ben for over an hour just before their set in Montréal at the Foufounes Électriques, and if it wasn’t for time contraints, we probably could have talked for another hour easily, as Ben definitely has a lot to say about music! Read on and be sure not to miss their show next time they play in your city!
The interview was edited for clarity.
So first, a bit of context. Right before we started the interview, I was wearing a Bolt Thrower shirt and Ben noticed it so we ended up talking about our favorite Bolt Thrower merch designs. That lead us to asking this first question:
That’s not typically in the interview, but do you have any favorite band shirts?
You know what? I really don’t wear a lot of band shirts because I have so many of them and I’m just random, like every now and then I’ll pull out some odd shirt, like on this tour I bought a HELLSHOCK shirt… just some odd shit I have because I have so many of them. When I go to pack for tour I’m like “alright, let me just grab all the plain black shit”, and then I’ll pick out three different band shirts. So I have like a Hellshock, a VALLENFYRE shirt and an AT THE GATES shirt.
What have you been listening to lately? What’s been on heavy rotation?
A little bit of everything. You know, when I get on tour, I don’t listen to music as much because you’re at a show every day, a lot of bands are playing and then you’re trying to get rest and you drive and it’s your moment of clarity. But let’s see. Lately I’ve been listening to, definitely the new JUDAS PRIEST record, Firepower. I think it’s fucking amazing. I was really surprised by it. You never know! It feels like it should have come out like right after Angel Retribution or something. Some people say Painkiller but I like Angel Retribution as well, so I feel like it could have come out right after that. It’s got a lot of good songs on it, and it sounds like early Priests and it’s crazy because the guitar player, Faulkner, is a new guy, and to actually project that within the writing… I mean, I know it was him and Tipton, but still, to have new blood in there and to create something that sounds like traditional Priest is pretty unique.
I go back to old shit a lot. I like QUEEN a lot. Especially now that they put that movie out. I haven’t seen it yet, but…
I saw it this weekend. It’s pretty good. It’s the standard biopic formula but it’s good.
But it doesn’t tell the full proper story, does it? Nothing ever really. They’re gonna leave out the full details. No one can know everything, and I feel that way about all kinds of stuff. Especially with band, you know? When you go back to older stuff you see a lot of shit…let’s say, LED ZEPPELIN: there’s a lot of mysterious stuff about them we want to know. But if you ever found out, it would kind of ruin the whole thing. And I think a lot of bands nowadays, they reveal so much shit, you know, with all the social media stuff, and you lose this sense of mystery. You lose this sense of “what are these guys really like?” Now you know how everybody really is and it’s not so mysterious, not like it used to be.
I used to love to go see a band and you had no idea what they look like, you know? Sometimes, it’s cool but then sometimes you get real disappointed! (laughs)
You go see a band, and you’ve seen the pictures of them, but when you see them in person, it doesn’t quite look the same, know what I’m saying? And you show up and you’re like “it looks like the dudes in the band, but I’m not too sure?” And then when they’re finally on stage, you’re like “That was him! I knew it! God Damn it! I knew it!” It’s like that. Some of the pictures, I don’t know. You get to a show and they look all worn out and shit. “Is that really that dude? Doesn’t look nothing like the pictures” When you’re three weeks in the tour looking like “yeah… I think they’ve had it rough!” (laughs).
UADA. Have you ever heard of them?
Yeah. The black metal band. They actually played here at the Deathfest a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah. That record, their latest is really good. We’re good friends with those guys too. We just saw them and some of the guys came out to the show in Portland. Yeah, that record’s really good.
Let me see. Latest PARADISE LOST record, Medusa. I thought the last one was really good as well, The Plague Within.
I thought it was one of their best.
I’ve been into Paradise Lost since way back. When I was younger I had the demo, I had Lost Paradise, Gothic, and Gothic was such a moving record, it shifted so many different things within that style of music. But somewhere in the middle it got kind of weird. I’m not saying that in a bad way because I do feel like sometimes bands need to explore themselves, and Paradise Lost is definitely a band to explore themselves. But I feel like the last couple of records really came into perspective and are kind of reminiscent of earlier stuff and a mixture of how they evolve as a band and so I really liked those records.
I also like VALLENFYRE. I think it’s just a Greg Mackintosh project, you know, the guitar player (note: for both Paradise Lost and Vallenfyre)? Because the Vallenfyre thing he did was fucking totally insane too. I saw them recently. We were in Europe and we did a festival in Holland called Into The Grave Festival and they played and I talked to them before, but I saw him there and every time I see him I’m always like “all right, one minute I’m going to be a fanboy and I will tell you these things, and then after that I’m just gonna be this regular dude. But I’m gonna geek out for just like one minute on you!” He’s an amazing person too. He’s really cool, really down to earth. It was awesome, he was laughing. He’s like “Okay, go there! Do it!” I know they’re not doing anything anymore, but the records they did were just great. I think it’s the thing with Vallenfyre that was awesome was partially…I don’t know necessarily fully if it was that, but just from reading interviews and stuff like that, his father died and a lot of those records were involved in that whole culmination of losing his father and then, building up after that as well. I think it’s really unique and I think he utilized that band and this thing to kinda cope with his father’s death. I could be wrong, but it kind of seemed like that. When you read the lyrics, especially with A Fragile King, the first one, and then you go on and then I think as it went on he just finally came out of his shell and opened up more and went beyond that. Apparently he has another band that he’s doing and I’m interested to see what that’s gonna be like!
Let’s see. The new BLOODBATH. I’m really into that because they use that Entombed distortion pedal that everyone likes to use, you know, the HM-2?
So mainly Paradise Lost related projects, right?
Oh yeah! Because Nick Holmes is in it! It’s so weird how that’s kind of come to a full circle like that, because I was such a huge fan of Paradise Lost when I was younger. Now I’m coming back. The thing about it is I never got to meet Nick Holmes and I heard he’s really kind of low key and one of the other guitar players in VALLENFYRE’s a good friend of ours, his name’s Sam, and he was telling me “yeah, you know, Nick doesn’t really look at himself as this person that influenced things”. And I was like “you’ve got to be crazy man! What he did, vocally, within Paradise Lost and what he still does is so awesome, you know!” I mean, it’s awesome to be a modest individual within the industry with such enormous egos and stuff, especially with bands that don’t make money, we don’t sell out places all the time. Sometimes you’re like “where are people’s heads in all of this!”. It’s so fucking weird. But I think he did an amazing job on the BLOODBATH stuff because after so many years you think you have this idea and you just think people just got to move on and they lose this element of what is heavy and how it flows out. And when people like that step into the realm again and create something like that, your mind just goes like “holy fuck!”. It doesn’t matter. Age doesn’t matter. People have it in them. They know that it’s there. It’s just that at one point in their life they decided to go off on a little path and do something slightly different.
What’s the album you’ve listened to the most in your life?
Shit, that’s a hard one! I don’t know if it would be METALLICA – Ride the Lightning or DARK ANGEL – Darkness Descends. Trust me, there’s tons of good records. We could do the typical thing and say, IRON MAIDEN, JUDAS PRIEST, etc., you know? Yeah, okay, those are the ones. Records that really impacted me but are really typical answers. I mean, yeah, we could say the same about Metallica I guess, so let’s cut them out also and put them with the whole Iron Maiden/Judas Priest thing. I’m gonna go with Dark Angel – Darkness Descends. There’s just an element about that record. When I was younger, I had this thing where I was into finding bands that were fast. I mean of course nowadays there are bands that are way faster, but back then when those albums came out, that was fast. D.R.I., CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER, you know. Bands like that. That was the speed and that’s what I was looking for.
Darkness Descends had so much fucking life to it. It was just amazing. I can still put it on now. It’s one of those records you could still put on now and be like “Holy Shit! This record’s fucking awesome!” All of a sudden it’s like heavy as fuck and it just cuts through!
And it’s not been overplayed.
No, no, no. It hasn’t been. What’s unique about Heavy Metal and just extreme music in general is there are so many records like that. You can go back to them. It’s like when you’re growing up, your parents are like “Whatever, he’s going through a phase, she’s going through a phase” and then you get older and you still like it. You’re like, “no, it’s not a phase.” There’s something about it. And so as time goes on, you listen to newer things that come out because you want to keep up with what’s going on, and of course there are good bands that are coming out nowadays, but every now and then you stop and you push it all the way and you go back to those records from when you were young and you’re like “let’s see how much these stand up to things now”. And you’re like “Fuck! This record’s awesome!” It’s still sounds fucking clean as fuck. So it’s awesome that you can go back and all of these records are still staying up to the strength of what’s coming out today. And especially when you start thinking about the caliber of recording and everything everybody went through back then and how things were and how thing are… I want to say a little easier now. People can do the whole digital thing now vs. how they used to do it and you’re like “man, these, these records are fucking amazing!” Like all the early Scott Burns records, the Death Metal classics. I think there’s an interview or maybe it was in a book but Monte Conner from Roadrunner Records was talking bad about Scott Burns and I was like “Dude!”. The dude had a niche. He helped Death Metal.
He helped define the sound and the production style.
Yeah! He just, you know, he busted his ass. Every other record that was coming out on Roadrunner that was Death Metal was involved with fucking Scott Burns. And then you had the whole Swedish front. You know, Sunlight Studios and all those bands are coming out and that whole… like I said earlier, the Entombed pedal. Or maybe I should say the Nihilist pedal!
How have your music tastes evolved through the years, starting from when you were young?
When I was younger, it was more like everyone just hanging out, having a good time, listening to stuff you like. We were just drinking, hanging out, doing shit like that and just having a good time listening to the music. And then when I got in bands, as time progressed and I got better as a musician, per se, you go back and you listen to those records and you see them in a different light. Because of being a musician, you would hear different elements in it. Going back to QUEEN, I would never be able to sing like Freddie Mercury or anything like that, but it’s always nice to listen to it and hear the diversity in it, how they created that music in the era they created that in.
And knowing, as a recording musician yourself, how much work it was to get that done. Especially in the 70’s.
Yeah, yeah, of course. Especially recently, with VENGEFUL ASCENSION, the last record we put out. We did it on a two inch tape which now is actually kinda hard to do because the tapes are hard to find. It’s hard to find studios with the machine and it’s hard to find people that know how to work the machine. And then you take that element and you go back to all these Metal bands and everybody that used to record on tape and you’re like “Holy Shit!” Back then they had certain small restrictions of time to get all this shit together and make it fucking work.
And it’s really unique. So I think through the progression of getting older, you know, I got a little… You know I drink whiskey now instead of beer so, that changed too! haha. But the element of listening to it I think changed a lot because now you listen to elements within the songs. You still listen to it and have a good time, but also you’re like “Holy Shit, I didn’t notice this before!”
What makes you go from one “listening mode” to the other, between listening casually and listening analytically?
When I’m with friends, I don’t think I analyze it as much. Unless it’s with friends that know when you hear something. When I was younger, nothing against bass players but I didn’t really pay attention to the bass much. It’s there and it’s funny because a lot of people don’t really notice it, but later on you start to really listen, and it really comes out. Like if you listen to And Justice For All and you don’t really hear the bass and start to realize the element of the bass, you know. So when I went back to a lot of records and listened to them on a decent stereo, you can actually pick out the bass and you can pick out if a bass player is really good or not because of his playing and everything like that. There’s an old FLOTSAM AND JETSAM record, Doomsday For The Deceiver? I love it. It’s fucking amazing. Jason Newsted played on that record. The bass on that record is fucking phenomenal. That’s why it makes me weird when he’s not really on And Justice For All, whether they didn’t turn him up or whatever the fuck they did, because he was fucking really good, man. I still listen to that Flotsam and Jetsam record. It’s fucking awesome. It’s got kind of like a Power Metal / Heavy Metal center, and listening to that record, the bass on it, I’m like “Holy Shit!”. He was ON! I understand why they got him, but then I was like, I don’t understand why they didn’t utilize him. But then they utilized him on the Garage Inc. record, you know? It’s just a weird thing.
Name 5 perfect songs and what makes them special.
Let’s start with QUEEN. The Prophet’s Song from A Night At The Opera. It’s amazing because of the stories behind it, because I know that when they were doing reel to reel and they had to splice tape and the tape was about to just fucking go. In the middle of the song there’s a vocal overlay that Freddie Mercury does to connect the two halves of the song and just the whole way it was ramped. I mean even Brian May, if you really go back and listen to early, early Queen, even before Night At The Opera and everything like that, you can hear the Heavy Metal in Queens. It was Heavy Metal before Heavy Metal, you know? I’ve always wanted to ask Rob Halford how much Queen influenced JUDAS PRIEST, you know what I’m saying? I mean I’m sure it’s probably a lot, actually. He’d probably just backhand me and be like “What, are you stupid? It’s Queen!” Anyway that song is just phenomenal. All elements: vocally, musically, everything. I remember someone mentioning it when I was younger just like “oh you ever heard The prophet song?” And it always stuck in my head, and now whenever anybody’s like, we’re listening to Queen and putting on all the basic songs like Bohemian Rhapsody and so on, I just put on The prophet’s song. It’s got to be The prophet’s song. Definitely that song is amazing as far as the ability of showing the elements of every single member in a band. It’s phenomenal.
Okay, let’s go to something a little… let’s go obscure. Let’s take NAPALM DEATH, the record From Enslavement to Obliteration. The first song on the record, alright? Let’s take the first song and the second song because it’s kind of a mixture because it works together, because the first song was slow as hell, and then when the next songs starts, it took off! I was younger and I was on that quest for speed, not the drug of course, but just a fast element within the music. When I bought From Enslavement to Obliteration, it was sealed, you know, with the little plastic wrapper and on it in black sharpie it said “fastest band in the world without question”, and I was like: “I think I need to buy this!” And I bought it. I didn’t have a record player yet, so I went to my friend’s house and we put it on his record player and that first song came on and it was a slow, just like drawn out, and I was like: “wait a minute. Was I just fooled? Was I just tricked here?” And then I would check, because they had the speed, 33 or 45, and I was like: “Maybe it needs to be played at 45… Wait, let me look at the record. Okay, what’s going on here? … Alright, let’s get through it.” And it went and it went and then the next song started and it just took off and the rest of the record was just complete chaos after that. It blew me away and it totally got me into Grindcore like…fully. After that I was just a Grindcore freak, just going after everything Grindcore related. I was just totally blown away. I think it was fabulous because none of us knew, in the group of we all hung out with. We would each buy something and we’d go back somewhere and we’d listen to it and would share shit. But when I got that record, nobody knew about it, so I’m just sitting there, listening to that first song, scratching my head: “I mean it’s cool…but it said fastest man in the world!” (laughs) But it ended up being a perfect fucking purchase.
CELTIC FROST – Into the Crypts of Ray. That was the first moment that pulled me into that realm of Celtic Frost, VENOM, BATHORY, that whole cycle. I call it traditional Black Metal because it was the early stage of seeing how everything was. You had the sound that Celtic Frost was doing, you had what Venom was doing, and then you had what Bathory was doing. And then it progressed and you had what the Norwegian scene did. I’m sure a sound person would not say it’s the most perfect sounding thing, but that element of it, the tone of it, the groove and the nature of the music was just mesmerizing. It had that whole intro part to it and then it just kicks in. Celtic Frost always had this point in the middle of the song, I guess people would call it a breakdown, so you were going through the song and then this part keeps you in trance throughout the rest of the song. I bought it on tape and I had no idea who Celtic Frost was. I saw the cover and when you were younger, that was all you had to determine: cover, picture of the members. So I bought it and I listened to it and the song was just astonishing. It’s like those moments when you hear something you’re like “Holy Shit! This. This!” I can’t tell you what it is, but it definitely makes me go “Holy Shit!”.
When you get older, those moments tend to get rarer and rarer. I try really hard not to have the old man in me come out. You know, some people are like “oh, when I was younger! Back in the day!” I don’t want to have that, so sometimes I do step away from things and then I’ll come back to them fresh. I’ll come back to things that are newer that are coming out. Like when I first heard, say VALLENFYRE, I didn’t know anything about it except that it has this guy from PARADISE LOST. So I was like “I’m going to go in with an open mind”. I’ve heard it and I was like “wow, I’m kind of blown away by this”. I want to still have that feeling. I don’t want that to go away. I want to be able to listen to something and be like, “Damn, that shit blows me away! It’s fucking really good!”
When was the last time that you discovered in a live setting that gave you that feeling, that blew you away?
That’s hard man, because we play a lot. What’s crazy is you do all these tours and there’s a lot of really good local bands everywhere. You know what I’m saying? Like you play places and you’re just hanging out and you’re waiting, and a local band comes on and you’re like “damn! These fucking dudes a really fucking good!” I mean I couldn’t really tell you the last one I heard, but it happens a lot more than 10 years ago. People have gotten really good. There are so many good bands out there. Especially as a musician, I think it’s becoming more of a musician recognizing the ability of another musician. I mean, I’m seeing both. There’s the me that just wants to have a good time and listen to someone jam, but then there’s the me that’s hearing the different elements within it too.
What’s the most memorable show you’ve ever seen?
It’s funny we were just upstairs talking about that! We were talking about shows when we were younger. So when I was a kid, I lived in the suburbs and a lot of my friends, we were all growing up in the suburbs.
Are you from New Orleans?
Yeah, but I lived in the suburbs outside of New Orleans. New Orleans isn’t a huge city, so from the suburbs it takes like 15 minutes to get to the city center. It’s not like New York City where if you live outside it takes like an hour and a half to get downtown.
So there were these shows in the city and my dad would actually drop me off. A lot of my friends couldn’t go, their parents wouldn’t let them. My Dad would drive me, drop me off and after a show I would call him from a pay phone and he’d come pick me up. So I saw a lot of really cool shows when I was a kid. Two of the shows that stand out a lot and were totally monumental: I saw DRI, KREATOR and HOLY TERROR. I think DRI were touring for Four Of A Kind and Kreator were touring for Terrible Certainty. Holy Terror were really good, actually. I really enjoyed them. They have one of those Power Metal type singer. That show, I remember, it was this place called Storyville Jazz Hall. It was in the French quarter, right in the city, on Decatur Street. It was a decent size and I remember the show started, and Kreator started and there was this huge pit, and there were lines of people going behind the PA and stage diving. It looked like a carnival and they just kept going, there was a constant rotation, even when DRI hit the stage, and I remember there was that moment, I just stood there and I was watching going “Holy Shit, this is fucking insane!” and I was like: “I got to be a part of it!” and I just took off straight into it. I was just like “I’m gonna do this”, because I’m going to shows but I wouldn’t know anybody because a lot of my friends wouldn’t be allowed to go. And then I started meeting people in the scene like that, hanging out at shows. And then there were these old VFW Hall I used to go to, there were a lot of shows there, and I saw COC on the Technocracy tour and there was this band, you ever heard of a band called CONFESSOR?
Nah, never heard of them.
Okay. Alright. You gotta look this up. They had a really high pitched singer too. They were from, I think Raleigh, North Carolina, somewhere like that. Close to were COC were from, so they brought them out on the road. And I remember the skinheads heckling Confessor, and it was funny because I was like: “why are skinheads at a COC show because COC talks nothing but shit about the skinheads”. So COC came on and they were just fucking awesome and it was just this little VFW Hall, the stage was just pallets stacked with plywood, with a PA set up and there was this little bar off to the side and these two old vets would work the bar. They’d sell sodas and shit. They’d sell beer but they weren’t id-ing anybody so you could go have a beer and the old vet would just be like “Yeah. Sure. Two bucks!”. But it was just fucking phenomenal. People were going completely crazy, having a good time. In those years, I was just like “I love this. I love the feeling a lot, I love how everything is represented and the aggression in it”. The thing about those early days, you had people at the shows who knew what it was about. It wasn’t like some jock showing up looking to like “I’m going to go in the pit and just gonna fuck somebody up”. Everyone who was there, there was a purpose. It was chaotic but it was order. They had an order to it, you know what I’m saying? Guidelines in a sense. You know, not written rules, but you had rules. Everyone was cool. You fell down, someone helped you up. Everyone moved. Everyone fucking made things happen, you know. So those early days were unique with that, you know. You’d have these shows and no one ever left hurt! Whatever, maybe a busted the lip, a little blood. But no one ever outright beat the fuck out of somebody just for the hell of it. It was all a fucking good time.
I mean, you could have shows that had madness. Those shows were just so relevant and everything that I do now…I mean we’ll play like a little fucking crazy venue and when things start to get to be a Ruckus, I think back like “wow”, I was a kid and I was watching this and now I’m part of this and the creation of how things get done. And I think that’s what the unique element is. I mean we all know it’s not money really, in really extreme music, unless you’re a higher tier, but I think that element fulfills you in a certain sort of way. When you do shows like that and those things happen and you kind of reflect on how you were the one there, and now you’re the one here, and what it’s doing for people and it’s really fucking awesome.
Is there a band that you’ve always wanted to see but never got the chance?
Oh, DARK ANGEL. I never got to see Dark Angel. I’ve always wanted to see Dark Angel, but I don’t wanna… I know they do stuff now, like here and there, but I don’t really want to see them. I wanna see them when that happened. I just had this connection with them when I was younger. I think there was a tour and they were supposed to play New Orleans but the whole tour got canceled. And I was so stoked about it, but I never did ever get to see them. I think, for one, Gene Hoglan, I feel like he’s one of the most underrated drummers, ever. He’s fucking phenomenal. I’ll read things about drummers and they’re like “oh, this drummer”. And I’m like “what the fuck”? Gene Hoglan, the shit he’s done in his career. Not just the whole fact that he was in Dark Angel, l mean he played with DEATH, he played with fucking TESTAMENT, he played with DETHKLOK HANDS, you know. And he’s a fucking awesome person. I met him numerous times. It was amazing and he’s an awesome individual, but besides that, as a drummer, he’s fucking phenomenal and he always gets overlooked.
But yeah, there’s an element in me, and it’s just like “I don’t want to see it”. I never got to see it, and I want to leave it like that. I think there’s these things in lif that you just had to be there. I mean, I’ve seen it on video, the one that they put out with RAVEN, Death, Dark Angel on Ultimate Revenge 2. That’s it. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen Dark Angel in a live setting. I want to see them live, but I don’t want to see ’em now.
It’s just like BLACK SABBATH. I’m a huge Black Sabbath fan, and when they did their farewell tour and I was like “No, I don’t want to see Ozzy at 70, I wanna see him in ’70”.
Yeah, I agree. I think that’s unique. I think there are some things that should be kept that way. I think it keeps some sort of thing internally with a person…
It won’t be on the same level as what you imagine in your mind.
Yeah. Yeah. So you don’t want to ruin that, you know. I mean I’m sure they are… I mean trust me, I’ve seen a lot of bands that the guys who are older and they’re really good, but for some reason I’m just like, “no, I want to keep that”. I think we even played a festival and they were on it and I was like “I don’t wanna see it”. I said “I’d love it but I don’t wanna do it because I want to keep this idea of Dark Angel for me”.
What’s the band you’ve toured with that impressed you the most, that you had to watch every night?
Probably CELTIC FROST. We got to tour with them before, on that Monotheist tour. We were with them for like four, four and a half weeks. The thing about touring with a band that influenced you and that you were so into in your younger years is, when you get older, you start to get weary that you’re going to meet the person and they’re going to be somebody different from what you imagined and it makes you look at them in a different light. So we went out on tour, I was like “Ah, I hope these guys are really cool”. And when we got on tour with them, every one of them, Tom, Martin Ain, they were all fucking awesome. There were all awesome individuals, really down to earth. And then you watch them, and you think “When I was a kid getting that Morbid Tales tape, did I ever think I would be here, touring with them, you know, in front of this guy, just talking to them?” And it’s just crazy, sometimes.
It’s those moments, like I said, you never know how something’s gonna turn up. And then you go back to it. We did shows with EMPEROR, we did shows with EXODUS. I used to listen to Exodus like crazy when I was a kid and now you tour with the guys and then you start to find out about the people in the band and how cool they are and you’re like “wow, this is fucking awesome!” So as a kid, if I met this dude, I’d look retarded talking to this dude but now, I feel like I can talk to him in a proper fashion but still inside me there’s this little fan kid that’s going ” Oh my God! I can’t believe I’m talking to this dude!”
What are the five hardest riffs of all time in your opinion?
Oh, shit, that’s hard man! There are so many of them. Alright… let’s go. Let’s start with DARK ANGEL – The Burning of Sodom. The center part, the breakdown. You know the song right? In the middle of the song it goes *hums the riffs* and then kicks in and goes back in to the fast part. That riff. Definitely a major Metal fucking riff. Totally fucking crushing. It’s like you’re hanging out with your friends and then suddenly everything gets spilled on the table! (laughs)
Then, let’s see… definitely a METALLICA riff, you know, something from Ride The Lightning or Master of Puppets for sure. You could even do like Master of Puppets *hums the first riff*. The thing about Metallica was, on all those early records there were so many fucking riffs. Metallica had long songs. Any other band you would listen to, you’d be like “this song’s been going on too long”. All the Metallica songs, they were long but throughout the song you felt like it wasn’t getting old, all the riffs were just fucking awesome. The way it came across. I still go back to Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets and I’m just like fucking mind blown. Dudes coming up with this fucking shit, you know? So we’ll say Master of Puppets, Damage, Inc… I mean you can go at any single fucking one on that whole fucking record. You can go to any single one off of fucking Ride The Lightning. Now even Kill ‘Em All. You can give Dave Mustaine some credit here, for that era. We’ll just say all of those, because we can’t pick a solid, definitive one.
Let’s go to a band called CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER, record Money Talks. That record was definitely something that influenced the fuck out of me. I remember buying it on tape. I was in high school. I went all the way to this high school football game, to find my friend in the stands to give the headphones to him, to hear the fucking thing. Because I was like “this fucking shit is awesome”. There was a song on it called Freedom Of Expression, and like a lot of their stuff it was really fast paced but every now and then it would have these different slow riffs like *hums a riff* and in this song during this part the lyrics he said was “fuck you!” I mean when you’re younger that’s cool, you know. But the riff is awesome. Because all of their stuff was really fast, upbeat, like a mixture between Punk and maybe like a Thrash Metal basis. Definitely Crossover. So definitely that song, from Money Talks, that would be the one. That’s three. Let’s see… It’s funny, as soon this is over, I’m gonna think of 800 of them. (laughs). It’s always like that!
We can stick with three if you want!
Well let’s try to find at least one more! Ok so we said, METALLICA, DARK ANGEL, CRYPTIC SLAUGHTER… let’s go to CELTIC FROST then! Might as well. Actually Into The Crypts of Rays! That’s the same thing, the break in the center of the song! The transition, the riff change. You see, that was the thing though, in that era. So you have bands now that do so-called “breakdowns”. What they did was they took all the elements of bands that write songs but in the middle of the song have the moments, the riffs to keep it going and they said “oh, we’re gonna take this middle moment and duplicated throughout our song”. But it’s like, “come on!”. What about song structure? What about songwriting? You hear the song, you get into, and then there’s this moment in the center where all of a sudden you get backhanded in the face. It’s heavy because it shifts, but then it goes to the next element. So definitely Into The Crypts of Rays, right in the middle part, the transition, and it kicks in and the vocals too because it’s got this delay on the vocals and it adds to the moment. So yeah, that will be our fourth.
Do you have any favorite song lyrics?
I like variations because I’ll really like thought-out lyrics but then I like really tongue-in-cheek lyrics, kind of punkish but they’re not like, serious shit. So I like A.A.’s lyrics from PRIMORDIAL and he also has another band called BLOOD REVOLT. It’s two guys from the band REVENGE, and it’s A.A. from Primordial singing. It’s totally whacked out. But his lyrics are just…he has this weird approach about things and he’s really smart too. I mean, you find that a lot with Metal bands nowadays. You find that it’s not stupid. Metal really is intelligent, there’s a lot of deep subjects… even in the aspect of doing something more punkish, you know, “fuck you” type.
So being a vocalist and writing lyrics, there’s a lot of perspective I can look at, that’s fucking awesome. A.A’s lyrics are really good in that era. Also another band is THE RUINS OF BEVERAST. I really like that guy’s lyric style, how every record is different in its own sort of way. Sometimes lyrics can explain something that creates this picture in your head. It’s cool. So on the record that The Ruins Of Beverast did called Blood Vaults, it’s kinda based on the Malleus Maleficarum and Heinrich Kramer and it’s when you read the lyrics and you’re listening to the songs and then you read about the Malleus Maleficarum and the history behind it and everything dealing with Heinrich Kramer and how he connected everything and wrote lyrics based on these ideas, it’s really ingenious, you know. Even the title of the band, The Ruins Of Beverast is fucking cool, you know. People say: “well, what is the Beverast?” Well Beverast, in Bavarian culture, is the bridge leading from the mortal world to heaven. So the idea behind it, The Ruins Of Bevarast, is fucking sick as fuck! I really get into all those deep aspects, So The Ruins Of Beverast has definitely a lot of fucking elements that are lyrically fucking interesting for me.
It’s funny because sometimes I’ll sit down with Sammy and he’s like “Dude, you’re thinking about it too much!” I don’t know, man! With Goatwhore, when I write lyrics, there’s certain songs that have more of that punkish, direct thing and I kinda just go after it, like the song Fucked By Satan. But then we go to a different song and I have a more deeper element. I kind of dwelve into a little deeper and get a little bit more philosophical, a little bit more idealistic about it, and I go after it, and I think it’s that influence from the variations of reading different lyrics from different styles of people and seeing where they go with it. I mean there’s a lot of people out there that write really good stuff. I think lyrics are really fucking important too, you know. A lot of people think, oh, whatever. This music, it’s just “uuuuurrrrgggghhhh” (done in a generic death growl). No, I mean, there’s another level. If you listen close enough you can decipher.
Do you have an artist or a band that you like in a genre that you typically don’t listen to?
I like AFI. I like a lot of early AFI stuff, like Black Sails In The Sunset. A lot of their early stuff is fucking awesome. I mean whatever, what they did afterwards, you know, they just transitioned. Good for them. I think Davey Havok is a fucking awesome frontman, you know. I listen to a lot of different stuff outside of Metal. I think I was wearing an AFI shirt at one of our shows once and somebody was like “You’re into AFI??” and I was like “Yeah, I’m into a lot of their earlier stuff!” I mean, it’s got some fucking pretty heavy elements to it.
I like a lot of TSOL, but TSOL had two different kinds of eras. The Punk and then it got to that thing when they did that record Revenge. But I like both fucking eras. I love the gritty, nasty, early punk shit. But then Revenge came out and I got it and I was like “I really like this record!”. It was interesting. I like a lot of Power Metal type shit, you know, people would never think I would listen to it because of me playing in GOATWHORE and doing the vocals I do. Like I said, I like a lot of Power Metal type vocals and shit like that. Early FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, shit like that.
The thing is, I grew up with a lot of different Hardcore, Punk, Metal, Thrash Metal songs. I was going to see THE VANDALS and then a week later I was going to see KREATOR or whatever. I just grew up more so as a Metal kid than I did as a Punk kid, but I grew up listening to all of ’em and I would go to all the different shows. I’d be the Metal kid at the Punk show. So I was just like, whatever, I liked both of them. I saw The Vandals like three times. I like this shit.
There’s a lot of old Punk shit that I really fucking love and I think the thing is, if you listen to Goatwhore, you can hear all these elements. There’s punk elements, mixed with Metal, D-Beat and stuff like that. So there is that element because we grew up on shit like that. POISON IDEA, THE EXPLOITED, all that kind of shit, you know.
Is there any band that you didn’t like at first but grew to love over time?
This was the deal. This wasn’t like a specific thing, but when IRON MAIDEN put out Brave New World, I wasn’t into it. I was like “alright, he left, he came back, whatever. It’s not gonna be that cool.” So I blew it off for a couple of years and then one day I just happened to be somewhere, and it was playing. And I was like “This is Iron Maiden but… what is this?” and they were like “this is Brave New World!” and I was like “it can’t be! Are you fucking shitting me?” and they’re like, “No, seriously!” and I was like “this sounds like early Maiden shit!”. I blew this record off because I figured they were just trying to do a money grab and to boost ticket sales and whatever. So it wasn’t like I wasn’t into Maiden initially but I guess at that point I separated away and just stayed with the earlier stuff. And then when it came back and did that, I just kind of ignored it. But then a couple years later I heard it somewhere and I just totally missed out on this and I didn’t even realize it was this good!
Any last words?
Just go on bandcamp and look up bands and have a good time and follow the rabbit hole of all these different bands. They got so much shit out there. I find myself up at night for three hours, just going “oh my God, listen to this band! You might like this, or you might like that!” and then I realize “oh shit! I’ve been on his computer for three hours! Time to go to fucking bed!
Take the opportunity to explore. If you hear someone say: “Hey, have you heard this thing?” Don’t ask “what is it like?” Just go listen to it. It’s the Internet, you can go listen to whatever you want. Just go listen to it and see. Because I feel like people tell each other now, like “oh they sound Black Metal” and then somebody will be like “Well I don’t really like Black Metal” and they won’t listen to band because they shut off an entire genre. But then you listen to it and you’re like “it has elements of Black Metal, but other things too” and you might end up liking it! So fuck that, just go check it out!
When I go on tours with bands and I’ve never heard of them, I’ll go listen to it because I want to be familiar with what’s going on. Whether I like it or not, I still want to go see what this band is doing and keep up with that’s going on. Maybe I’ll think they’re awesome, maybe I won’t, but they do what they do and I know what’s going on. And at least I won’t be the guy just standing there not knowing what their band sounds like!
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