EVERY TIME I DIE’S ANDY WILLIAMS: “WITH NEW JUNK AESTHETIC, I’M FINALLY HAPPY.”
Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 2:00pm by Sammy O'Hagar
As one of the chief riff providers for swaggercore titans Every Time I Die, Andy Williams takes pride in making the discordant into catchy. For a perfect example of this, look no further than the band’s latest (MetalSucks-approved) album, New Junk Aesthetic. Distilling the band’s decade-plus essence into a tight half hour, it’s a satisfying mix of thunderous heaviness and easily the most appealing material the band have put to tape. But while he’s often overshadowed by vocalist Keith Buckley’s relentless wiseassery, it’s his and Jordan Buckley’s Skynard-by-way-of-Dillinger-Escape-Plan guitar work that make the band stand out and ultimately worthwhile.
A self-described “chatty Cathy,” Andy Williams was remarkably frank and refreshingly earnest in a recent interview with MetalSucks on the eve of the release of New Junk Aesthetic. Among other things, he discussed why he can listen to the new album and none of the band’s other material, his thoughts on the new Converge record, the changing landscape of the scene he came up in, and life over at ETID’s new label, Epitaph.
Protest the Hero just finished up a massive 1.5 year touring cycle for their fantastic record Fortress, and they’ve celebrated with yesterday’s release of a live DVD/CD filmed in their hometown of Toronto, Canada. Guitarist / World Beard Championship competitor Tim Millar took some time out of his day to answer our questions, via email, about the new DVD, the success of Fortress, the band’s sudden popularity in the metal community, life on the road, and the next Protest the Hero record. Our questions, his answers, after the jump.
Thrice are something of an enigma, a band that’s refused to ever stay the same. The Irvine, CA-based foursome started out as a metal-influenced heavy punk band that incorporated more and more progressive elements into their music with each album. 2005’s Vheissu took a complete left turn by adding indie and electronic elements, a path down which the band ventured even further on their 2007/2008 4-part album suite The Alchemy Index. Beggars, their latest offering, incorporates all of their prior influences and stretches their indie wings still wider, still experimenting with new sounds and expanding their fanbase.
Guitarist Paul Gilbert is a renaissance man, a master of performance, composition, rhetoric, and ahem playing guitar with a drill. He’s the creator of blinding shredgasms as part of Racer X (“Scarified”) and of one of history’s most charming singles in Mr. Big (“Green-Tinted Sixties Mind”). But as a self-proclaimed man on a mission, Gilbert’s passion is to put play back in guitar player through both his teaching (at GIT) and his riotous and bizarrely informative columns (in Guitar Player, Guitar World, Total Guitar, Total Fucking Guitar, and Guitar Out The Yingyang). Meanwhile, Gilbert and fellow Pittsburghian Freddie Nelson are responsible for United States, a scrappy, infectious melodic rock record that, if not for the mind-mangling fretwork, would be claimed happily by Cheap Trick, Jellyfish, U2, and Stone Temple Pilots as their own work.
Talking to Skeletonwitch guitarist Scott “Scunty D.” Hedrick was like talking to a long-lost bro. The dude is just so incredibly down to earth, straight-forward and easygoing that I felt like I’d already known him for years despite the fact that we were speaking for the first time. Scott spoke a whole lot about Skeletonwitch’s roll in the metal community, about that community as a whole, and the general “we’re all in this together” attitude of pretty much everyone who’s involved in metal right now. We also chatted about the new Skeletonwitch record Breathing the Fire (October 13), working with producer Jack Endino, being able to tour with so many different types of metal bands, Twitter, and Scott’s fanboy reaction to praise bestowed upon his band by Enslaved.
Full confession: I missed my pre-show interview slot with Bigelf’s eccentric frontman Damon Fox because I fucked up with directions on the subway. I’ve lived in this city for 22 of my 27 years on this planet and it still happens from time to time… oops. Doesn’t help that the Beacon Theater, the host of this year’s Progressive Nation tour (Dream Theater, Zappa Plays Zappa and Scale the Summit in addition to the aforementioned), is in butt-fuck nowhere compared to our usual stomping grounds.
Sitting down with All That Remains frontman / Affliction-wearer Phil Labonte was a tad bit uncomfortable, for all the not-so-nice things (but not terribly offensive, either, comparatively speaking) we’ve said about his band. I’m actually not even sure that Phil knew with whom he was conducting an interview — the on-site press coordinator at the Rockstar Mayhem Festival simply introduced me by my birth-given first name, Phil said, “Hi, I’m Phil,” we sat down at a table and that was that. It’s probably a good thing too, since Phil is really into his iPhone, Twitter (which I asked him about) and claims to “read a lot of stuff on the Internet.”
Having 
Candiria needs no introduction, but even those familiar with the band might not know that guitarist John LaMacchia is one of the most hard-working men in underground metal. In addition to his work with Candiria — who are releasing Toying With the Insanities Volumes 1 and 2 this September — LaMacchia runs 
The second-to-last night of Summer Slaughter — the first of two nights at NYC’s Irving Plaza — was a fucking party. Axl and Vince arrived before doors opened to interview Darkest Hour mastermind Mike Schleibaum and were summarily handed beers. “New York City . . . oh god. Suffocation, and also sharing your dressing room [with Suffocation]. . . there’s going to be a lot of drinking. Beer is going to be hard to get. We should really start right after this interview!” mused Schleibaum before handing us a couple of Bud Lights to get things started off right. “It’s just a Bud Light, my friends,” he responded after we thanked him for the hospitality; true, but somehow “just a Bud Light” turned into “just a bottle of Jack Daniels” being completely polished off in the DH / Suffocation dressing room shortly thereafter. “The thing is – it’s going to get all drank by the time Blackguard’s finished,” prophecized Schleibaum. And so it went. The men of DH like their Jack (and their weed) and the endless stream of Suffocation ladies — 40-something Lawngisland bleach blondes with giant, fake tits — that paraded through the room all night provided much amusement for our chemically altered brains.
