How was the taping with Vinnie?
It was great, it was so much fun, and on a Tuesday night after Memorial Day weekend to have this incredibly energetic, great, enthusiastic crowd, it was unbelievable for us. Especially because this was the only time our schedules were going to line up, we were like, we gotta do this, May 27 in Dallas with Vinnie while he’s home, get the whole rig together, the live mobile rig, and do a little mini-movie that’s going to come with it, just explain the who, the how, the what, the why, which is going to be a cool little bonus. A 20-30 minute movie that will come with it. I think fans are going to be pumped about it because it’s not just your average live CD.
I feel like you guys have been around so long, it seems that you should have had a live record or two by now.
Totally. We thought about doing it with Universal, but I just want to stress—and I’ve been saying this in every interview—we don’t want to do projects that are going to be half- assed by the label, you know. The way that the industry is, it’s hard for a label to get pumped about putting out a live CD. Of any band. Because we’ve been on three different labels, there’s red tape, there’s clearances, there’s all sorts of stuff that stands in the way. Luckily with Koch, they know how die-hard our fans are, they know that we want to put out a quality piece of Hatebreed catalog that is not going to get overlooked. Even with this covers album, there’s going to be a twenty page booklet where everybody writes about each band, why we chose [each song]. [Producer] Zeuss is doing the mixes, recalling some of the mixes now, and we did Misfits, Metallica, stuff like that, and the thing is crushing.
You’re doing a solo thing too.
Yeah. Those songs I’ve been compiling since late 2005. And I have so many that are kind of in their own world where they don’t fit with Hatebreed or Kingdom Of Sorrow or Icepick, although I do have the majority of another Icepick record done. I have Pete Steele of Type O Negative on an Icepick track, Mike, the other singer from Scarhead, on a track, and we have a bunch of other really big guest appearances for that album. We’re just staggering all the releases because we don’t want to confuse people. With the Kingdom Of Sorrow, that did really good on Relapse, and we’re going to do Ozzfest and a bunch of stuff at the end of the year. But people will hear that, like I had a guy hear it on Sirius and he was like, ‘Yeah, I liked the Kingdom Of Sorrow, but I thought it was Hatebreed.’ I don’t want to confuse people with the solo record. I want to make sure it’s when it’s Hatebreed downtime.
I did a bunch of solo shows before we left for this tour, I played some of the material and people went berserk, so I was really pleased with the reaction. I got to play these little bars that I haven’t played in eight years, and that’s what I want to do with the solo record. It’s going to be more about small town USA, getting out there, getting back in the grime in the small clubs, the VFWs, and doing shows with DIY promoters.
I guess you should probably take a vacation somewhere in there too.
I’m going to. I’m definitely going to. But you know, it’s been like a year since I’ve done Headbanger’s Ball and I’ve been working on a book about that, and it’s just freed up my schedule where stuff isn’t so hectic anymore. It’s great for me, because we got to really tour on Supremacy, more so than we did on Rise Of Brutality, and we really just hammered this record home, and I feel like we’re ending this record on a real high note. Every one of these places, our attendances are way more than the last two times we went through, so that says a lot. You hear about all these other tours that aren’t doing so hot, and you wonder if it’s a good choice, and like you said, you’ve even heard about bands that are going to take the summer off, so we just feel really grateful now that everything’s going so well.
With all these other projects, does that put any ideas in your mind for the next Hatebreed release?
Well, the cool thing about the next Hatebreed release, is that a lot of it is already put together, and the concept has been spoken about since Supremacy was done. Also, keep in mind, we did Supremacy ourselves and then we did the deal with Roadrunner and they put it out. So we’re always working DIY regardless of what deal we’re in. Right now, since we’re free agents, and we’re talking to a bunch of labels, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to wait for a label to give us a budget to go into the studio. We’re going to go into the studio regardless, because it’s all we know at this point. We don’t want to have another three year wait in-between records, which it’s probably going to be now, but we want to make sure that the material that we’re working on only gets more focused and more aggressive and just makes for the Hatebreed experience that people want.
This tour, especially, people come up to me and they’re like, ‘I’m so glad you guys came back, I need my fix.’ I’ve heard that like ten times already on this tour. ‘I need my Hatebreed fix.’ So when we do this record, we want to make sure everybody gets their fix. We want to make sure that the people that love it, fucking love it. That they’re gung-ho about it. And that’s what we’re going to do.
You guys are playing New Jersey, right?
We’re doing Terminal 5 actually, ended up being a New York show, something with Jagermeister. Just so you know, I want to thank all the Jersey people, I love Jersey, we’ve been playing Jersey for 10 years, Jersey’s the greatest.
We announced that this is our last tour of ’08, and we’re not going to tour again until ’09. Well, we had so many people from New Jersey going, ‘What the fuck? No way, this is fucked up!’ I don’t want to promise anything, but I think because we did Stillborn Fest at Irving Plaza and now we’re doing Terminal 5 in New York, I think we owe it to Jersey to do Stillborn Fest in New Jersey. So I’ll tell you right now, the exclusive, with you, that now this probably won’t be our last tour in ’08, and we will do Stillborn Fest at the end of the year, and it should be in Jersey.
Jersey will come out.
Yeah, well everybody was up in arms, and we have to make sure that we keep the Jersey people happy, because they’ve supported us for over a decade.
Hatebreed will be performing on the Jagermeister Music Tour with Type O Negative at Terminal 5 in NYC on Saturday, June 28. For more info, visit hatebreed.com
Photo Credit: Mark Johnston
