Faster. Heavier. Best We’ve Ever Done!

How many of us have seen the news where bands are informing their fans the direction of their new album? If they are metal, it is always the same bullshit. ‘This new record is the fastest, heaviest, most aggressive, most brutal thing we’ve ever done. We can’t wait for you to hear it! Your faces will melt off and you’ll eat your own brains,’OH MY GOD! It’s so heavy!’

Let’s get something straight, if you’re in a metal band, you’ve obviously heard and listen to Meshuggah. After Chaosphere, why the fuck would you ever tell people your new album is heavier and faster and more aggressive than anything you’ve ever done? Meshuggah just shit all over your band’s existence if that’s your selling point. And now with ObZen, you’re triple fucked on your selling point. I’m very happy about our bands evolution over the years because we recognized what we do well. We decided to do what we do best. We went away from heavier, more aggressive. When you hear Meshuggah and you compare it to your own band, it’s very foolish to try and get heavier than that. We dropped crazy time signatures from our sound because Dillinger was the best at that. Why would we try and compete when we lose in that department? We don’t even lose, we’re disqualified for not having the credentials to compete. We knew that about ourselves. I wish other bands would be more honest about what their best attributes are.

This whole notion of heavier, faster, more aggressive just plays into the problems with our metal scene as we know it. It’s a living cliche. Like I said in my last blog, a band is a living organism and so is a scene. The fact that our scene is littered with cliched bands with no original point of view goes to show that eventually when the music is no longer ‘HOT’ the bottom falls out and you’re left with the real bands who in most cases, if you’re not Meshuggah, have become more melodic, less harsh and more efficient with the tools they used to shape their sound. Honesty in their craft keeps them playing for a long time.

I’m not afraid of telling people what the real deal is with God Forbid. You can quote me on this, Blabbermouth: ‘Our new album is not heavier, it is not more aggressive! In fact, you’ll probably hate it more than our other records!’ The fifth GF record is more diverse and more commercially viable than our other records. We didn’t do it on purpose. This just happens to be the songs we wrote this time around. There isn’t one song under five minutes. We have two that are over seven minutes long and one that’s ten minutes long. There may only be eight songs on the record when we’re done. Not enough for you? Fuck off, it’s our record!

To tell you the whole truth, we have no idea what the end product is going to be. We never do ’til we get the finished master. But we are happy with what we’ve done so far and we’re anxious to hear the end product. We can’t wait for you to hear it because we are kicking ass with these songs. That’s what it’s really like when you’re doing a record.

That is what we know so far!

I’ve invited Metalsucks.net to the studio to listen to the new material when we’re farther along so they can tell you if I’m full of shit or not!

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On a weird sad note to end: Do you guys realize that John Lennon and Dimebag were both murdered on December 8th?

It’s an odd coincidence considering they were the most revered icons of their respective genres. The world is a very strange place.