What Is Real, Neo…

Most of us have had those moments where an opportunity comes up that hits our senses so hard that there are three ways which things go down in our body: there’s a good feeling, a shady feeling and a bad feeling. There is a rush of blood that hits our brain so fast that the only reaction we get is of the gut.

When we found out we were going to be signed I got that GOOD feeling. The feeling of goose bumps. The nervous energy in the pit of your stomach we call butterflies. That was a good feeling. Those moments where you wonder,”Am I dreaming? Is this real?” Then there’s the fear that something can go terribly wrong and you don’t want to look like an idiot for having that feeling that things are going to be OK. Misery is an easy friend and feeling good has it’s consequences. In most cases, the better you feel the worse it can get.

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I’ve lost track of how many of these blogs I’ve done so far. I used to number them but now I don’t know what number I’m up to. Speaking on the phone with Vince, we both realized I’d been doing this blog for over six months and it blew my mind.

Where does the time go?

I let the cat out of the bag when I mentioned we were covering a MUSE song. I’m not sure if I should have told everyone but I don’t think that information needed to have a chastity belt on it. Just to clarify though, the cover is NOT going on the album. We just recorded the song for some extra diddies and maybe some extra sack action! Women love angelic voices and skinny dudes with pale skin. We’re the exact opposite of that but maybe sack action can be in our future because of that song! I’m sure MUSE will hear our cover and say in an English accent, “Ian, these niggas have ruined a fucking classic…”

Ok, enough heehawing. On to the real news! I was blown away by the Poison vs. Def Leppard debacle. I mean come the fuck on. What the hell is our world coming to? Remember East Coast vs. West Coast rap? Motherfuckers were getting shot. Back then it was who was the hardest most stone cold motherfuckers out there. With Poison and Def Leppard this shit reminds me of one of those Ben Stiller movies like Zoolander or Tropic Thunder. What are they fighting about? Who sucks worse? What over-40 chick wants you more?

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Please, Enough Already!

I don’t know about you guys but I’m getting sick of this presidential campaign. The moment Paris Hilton is giving advice on energy policy is the moment things need to take a ‘Slow Down’. I have an idea. Instead of people forcing Congress to have a vote on offshore drilling let’s have ‘W’ call congress together for a vote to force both candidates to take a month off. Not for them. But for us. The American people need some time off of this fucking campaign.

Now the two candidates are searching for shit to say and do. I’m an Obama supporter but I can’t even watch his speeches anymore. Speeches that once inspired me seem like reruns of a TV show I used to enjoy but now they just kind of annoy me. Why? He HAS to do them. He must stay out there and give these speeches because people aren’t ‘sold’ on him. Running for president is like a long, grueling, shitty job interview. But the people who hire you are mostly uninformed, scared and just plain following what their parents have done in the past. People say they are Republican so they vote Republican. Hey, I’m guilty of that shit too. I voted Democrat.

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Last week I talked about recording a record and how tough it can be. Some people were giving me props for being honest about how I felt about the recording of our new record and the doubts I had. I think this is a natural thing when you’ve been doing something for so long.

When we first started optimism was the name of the game. Every record we did it got better and better. It was like living in a dream. But now that certain things have bottomed out, from our scene to the music industry in general, there is a true question mark revolving around the release of our new record. Can our next record be bigger? Is it the right record at the right time?

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[That's right bitches, God Forbid guitarist Dallas Coyle's "The Hard R" blogs now have podcast brethren. We aren't really sure whether these will be in addition to or in place of Dallas' 'Hard R' column, or whether they'll evolve into some sort of MetalSucks official podcast, or something else entirely. But for the time being, enjoy it for what it is -- an audio version of The Hard R column that you've come to know and love. In this inaugural edition of The Hard R Podcast, Dallas plays some music, talks about politics, the latest God Forbid news, his thoughts on the Dino Cazares / Tommy Vext drama, Blabbermouth, and a whole bunch of other shit. Enjoy! - Ed.]

The Hard R Podcast #1 (click to download)

A sample excerpt from the podcast (thanks to Blabbermouth for transcribing!):

“I read Blabbermouth ’cause the shit is really just great. I mean, the guys on Blabbermouth, whoever is responding to this stuff, you guys are geniuses, really. I’m not saying that with any malicious intent either — I actually really love the disses. It gets really… Some people give you guys shit, but I respect the fact that you guys hate a lot of shit and you guys love Meshuggah. I love Meshuggah too. I love Meshuggah so much that I would like to scream it the way you guys type it in all caps and fourteen thousand exclamation points, but I have to keep my composure because I’ve gotta ‘act cool.’”

What’s up party peoples? I just got back from LA after finishing up the vocals for the new album. After hearing this record for almost a year now I can say I’m tired of it and excited for it at the same time. Is that possible?

We worked on the vocals for a month when we thought it would take two weeks. This has been the M.O. with this record. The label is pissed off because we didn’t meet certain deadlines, we’re pissed because the person who was supposed to mix it pulled out on us last minute. In all honesty, we deserved it because we did the same thing to him when we couldn’t finish up everything before the Death Angel tour. The tit for tat was well deserved. Karma.

With a ridiculously saturated fall schedule it may be a blessing. Metallica, Trivium, All That Remains, Mastodon, Gojira, Dragon Force, etc, etc. Would you want to put out a record with all of those records coming out too? We seem to be a band that gets lost in a shuffle if our timing is shit.

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The Past

After reading a lot of responses to my blogs I decided to do something a little different. I’m going to post a DRUG induced blog I did over a year ago. I could really give a shit what anyone thinks about me, especially if they don’t know me. So if my use of the word ‘nigger’ bothers you, or my political talking points annoy you — Good.

Maybe this will just cause you to be outraged…

Rock…

June 9th 2007

Armageddon: The Age of Aquarius

What up people?! I haven’t been up on here too much lately because I haven’t had much to say. But, now I think I’ve got a ton of shit to say. What will I say? I don’t even know. I talk a lot. Any of you who really know me, know that I’m a living mouthpiece and I love to hear the sound of my own voice. Even when I’m wrong. Actually, no, especially when I’m wrong — Have you ever convinced someone of something you knew was wrong but actually succeeded in convincing them? I have. It’s fun. And cruel. But that’s why I can usually always get what I want.

Now what am I actually saying here? What am I trying to project to you — The ones who are reading this? I have close to 2000 friends on myspace and it’s quite funny to me because I don’t understand why so many people would request to be my friend. But since I do have an “audience”; what am I trying to say about influence and convincing someone of something you know not to be true?

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Conservative Vs Liberal

Now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, things have become really boring with this presidential race. The best thing about it now is watching these Republican and Democratic strategists push their agendas. It truly is sad sometimes when you see a person give themselves a title that paints them into a corner so they have a place to fight from. Conservative. Liberal. Progressive.

These titles people give themselves show how hard it is for them to find their own opinion. Sometimes if you ask someone why they are voting Republican they’ll say,’I have conservative values. I’m a conservative.’ You ask them why they vote Democratic they’ll say,’Because Reagan was an asshole! He took a lot of jobs from people.’ Usually responses like this are from people who haven’t done their homework. In this day and age getting on a computer to get info shouldn’t be a chore. The info is out there.

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The Touring Problem

After doing the open letter to Light This City, which I don’t consider a true blog, I saw that The Fresh Meat Tour that Metalsucks sponsored was canceled. It didn’t surprise me at all considering the money problems we had on the latest tour we just finished. In my past blogs, I talked about how we went over budget on tours because of dumb mistakes. On this tour I can say we didn’t make any dumb mistakes. We were totally on budget but what put us over budget was the fact that gas went up about 50 cents a gallon in about a 5 week period. Diesel actually was close to 5 dollars a gallon towards the end of our tour.

One night on the road I was HAMMERED and we stopped at a rest stop to go get food after a night of drunken shenanigans. It was daylight and as I stepped out of the bus I looked at the price for diesel and I immediately became sober. It was like getting hit by a fucking car. This was two weeks ago and gas was cheaper then than it is now.

At that point, I realized that the touring world and the metal touring world specifically was in a very shaky position. I knew that God Forbid was not going to be able to tour. We’ll go on tours if we’re a little over budget these days because we generally do well enough on merch to balance out those sorts of things but with the oil market it’s just too much of a risk to go out there and piss in the wind. Now imagine going out as a band who doesn’t have the name to be able to go out and headline and must rely solely on support tours?

Fucking impossible.

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Open Letter To Light This City

Tonight was the last night of the “In Thrash We Trust’ tour with Death Angel, Arsis, Soilent Green and Light This City. The first thing I want to do is thank every single person who came out to this tour and rocked out with us. Some shows were packed and some shows weren’t but in the end none of that matters. The shows we played were for the people who came out to rock! I sound like a broken record but we get to play a show every day. Most of the people who come out to the show make this their one time of the week, their one time of the month — hell, their one time of the year to escape and lose themselves in some heavy fucking metal!

To those people, I THANK YOU!

After this six week run a lot of things have happened. No matter how many tours you do you never have the same story. You are always surprised. It could be the people you encounter that you haven’t seen in a long time. It could be the new bands you meet on tour who become new friends. There is a bond that is established between everyone on tour; from crew, to promoters, to bands, to fans. It really is an amazing animal. Honestly, if any of you out there are scientists in behavior you’d do well to do a study of the rhythm and mechanisms of a tour. I bet you’d find some anomalies that may coincide with the patterns of weather currents.

It is true energy.

Unfortunately, Light This City had to leave this tour early. It really sucked because I really liked everyone in the band. When a band leaves a tour prematurely it can affect you. Soilent left the tour early to do the Dethklok/Chimaira tour. I was happy as hell for them because that tour is kicking ass and they deserve to play for new people. When Soilent left we felt it. It was a blow. It was like our package had to reset itself.

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The Touring Game

Touring is a rough animal. Last week I went into a tirade about a promoter who stiffed us on cash. It may have been a little harsh but fuck it. Eventually we will be paid because there is a contract when we play. We get guarantees unless we’re doing bar shows where we do door deals. In all honesty, unless we’re getting a 3,000 and up guarantee, door deals can be fruitful.

Some of the comments about my last blog were eye opening because there is no ‘one’ way to promote a show. In our contracts it says we play and you give us X amount of dollars. There are options for percentage after a certain amount of money is made but usually if we play we get paid. If we don’t play, we don’t get paid. If you’re a promoter who’s done shows before, don’t act like you know our game because you don’t. The promoting game is just as rough as the touring game because it’s like the stock market. You win some, you lose some.

Case in point, we did a show on this tour where the promoter lost about a grand. He’s a guy we’ve known for years and he LOVES us, so we’re always welcome back. Our tour manager went to him and said, ‘Sorry about the show man. We know it was a loss!’ The promoter goes,’ Are you kidding me, we did Jimmy Eat World last week and I lost ten grand! That’s a loss!’ Look at that little equation. It’s a win some, lose some game. Sometimes you win big and sometimes you lose big. But imagine this: if you can lose ten grand and laugh about it, promoting could be a great way to do business!

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Promoters

What’s up motherfuckers? Yesterday [last Thursday, May 22 – Ed.] we played a show in Tempe, Arizona. Unfortunately, we played up against the Gigantour. Bad fucking idea. That was just the first bad idea involving yesterday’s show. Second bad idea was booking the show with a promoter who couldn’t cover his ass.

When you’re on the road most people would like to say it’s all about the music. Well, it is and it isn’t. With the cost of gas going up, the cost of crew and the need for the bands and clubs to make money, putting on a show is a risk assessment game. Yesterday the promoter skipped out on the show before we could get paid so we got FUCKED. We played in front of the people who came out so we held up our end of the deal. But this promoter, Gary Gingras at Faceless Music, who was the DUMB ASS who booked us opposite of Gigantour only 20 miles away is the one whose risk management was in the fucking gutter. Last time we played that very club we had a packed, almost sold out club. The show was utterly fucking brilliant. The cool thing was that The Sets crew, Kim and Steve, knew how fucked this guy was and they were ultimately fucking cool to help us get what we needed to have a passing grade show.

Ben and I from Soilent were talking about how good that previous show was. He was with Goatwhore on the bill when we played The Sets previously. It was amazing how far a good promoter and proper planning can make a show. For your info, Soilent didn’t get paid either. This promoter, Gary Gingras at Faceless Music, was a shitbag punk and I hope his balls get caught in a meat grinder. It definitely was “Faceless” Music cause his ass was nowhere to be found at the end of the night!

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Stage Presence and Kicking Ass

What is up my friends? Once again we’re here talking about the music business and hopefully you’ve been able to get a good idea of how crazy things get on the road and the type of mind it takes to endure this type of lifestyle. As we say on the road, ‘this shit ain’t for everybody!’ The good thing is it takes everyone to make a concert work. We need people to come to shows and rock out while we’re on stage rocking out for them. We are entertainers. We get to play shows every day but most people who come out make it their thing for the month or even the year. We’re privileged and we never, EVER forget it.

That brings me to what I’m going to talk about this week. This won’t be controversial so I’ll add something here:

George Bush is a Nigger. Barack Obama has black lips. Hillary Clinton looks like an unfuckable pug. I apologize to all the pugs I offended.

Ok, now that we have that out of the way let’s get into rocking out on stage so you can become a better showman after you have some kick ass songs.

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Growth: Inside and Out

Being an artist is a rough deal. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the best thing in the world to be a creator of things, but the hardest part about being an artist is the lack of having a manual or playbook. It’s not like sports where you have a play you run or working at Borders or McDonalds where there is a set turn-key program of how the business works. Whether you’re a musician, writer or painter you make your own playbook as you create over the years and start to recognize what your voice is. Once you have your guidelines of how your art works it becomes easier to a certain extent but it also becomes more difficult to stick to those guidelines.

Take Hatebreed or Motorhead for example. They have a way they do things for years on end while establishing a hardcore fan base because they respect their general guideline for what they do. Our band is a little different. This has been our first band for the most part, so through out the years we’ve been honing our sound and changing with each album. Our newest unreleased album is the most refined record we’ve done to date because we’ve been able to establish our own set of guidelines for ourselves. Throughout doing this I’ve noticed something that this is sometimes hurtful to personal growth. When you attach yourself to your ‘idea’ of who you are as an artist it can become anchored in the art you’re doing at the time and you sometimes forget that your talent spans all types of art.

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Music vs. Politics

The last blog about the writing of IV: Constitution Of Treason received so much feedback and it blew my mind for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons was the hilarity of most of the responses. The blog was more about song writing and how our last record was written but when I was looking at the responses I realized that a LOT of people were taking issue with the events that shaped the record. Most people took a songwriting column and turned it into politics.

I got a lot of, “I can’t believe you call your fans stupid because they voted for George Bush!” First of all, I didn’t call any of our fans stupid. This was a feeling I had about America as a whole, not one person specifically. Secondly, these events SHAPED our record in my eyes so how is there any possible way for me to separate these events from the writing of the record? How is there any possible way that I was able to separate the “politics” from the “music”?

In the nature of that last blog it was impossible to separate the two which got me to thinking (again). God Forbid as a whole endorses Barack Obama for president. I don’t know if we are big enough to actually “endorse” him but as a band we all like him and have voted for him. We send out videos or bulletins from our Myspace that show some things he’s doing or we might send out some Hillary Clinton tomfoolery to turn people off of her. Lately, people have been outraged. Some say we shouldn’t mix music and politics. Some say we should keep them separated. Well, I have to disagree to a point. While I can agree that music and politics shouldn’t be the same thing, I think it’s impossible for our band to separate the two completely. We don’t sing about women breaking up with us.

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It’s The Environment, Stupid, Part 3

Last week I talked about our near collapse to oblivion and how it affected our writing on Gone Forever. On Gone Forever we did Ozzfest and we did thirteen and a half weeks with our good friends in Machine Head. We toured for three weeks in the states and ten and a half weeks in Europe with MH. It was a crazy schedule.

On Gone Forever, we learned how to really write an album and how to grab live crowds by being on stage with the best bands that year. Watching Slipknot every day on Ozzfest and playing main support to Machine Head for three months really got our band to a new level. I’m sure many of you who saw us on Ozzfest to our more recent tours can say our band has become a much better band as far as live concert and making music is concerned. We’re a much more confident band because our experiences really allowed us to open up and become something more. Our environment of bigger and better truly catapulted us into writing our best record yet.

But this blog is more than that. This blog is also about Dimebag and how his unfortunate murder shaped Constitution Of Treason. On December 8th, 2004 a ton of shit was going on. The presidential election just happened and we all saw how fucking stupid Americans were on a general level when they re-elected the best comedian our soil has ever seen. I’ll never forget that stupid shit and how Europeans couldn’t understand how Americans could elect such a fool. I got tired of explaining the two Americas most of us know and why George W. was still our president. I live in NJ which is the melting pot of ALL things but in most places in America there is no such thing as a melting pot.

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It’s The Environment, Stupid: Part 2

Let’s go all the way back to our headlining tour of Determination back in 2002 and see how your environment affects your band. Our headlining tour for that record consisted of two unknown bands (at the time) by the names of Bleeding Through and Avenged Sevenfold. For us, the tour was terrible as hell. I can’t speak for A7X or Bleeding Through but the shit was horrible. No one came to see our band play and it deflated our aspirations and brought us back to earth.

We weren’t going to be the biggest band in the world. Back to the drawing board. The environment of Century Media pushing our band in all the magazines, doing big tours like Nevermore/Opeth, Cradle Of Filth/Nile and Gwar/Goatwhore put us in a place before that headlining tour where we thought we’d be THE SHIT. Since that wasn’t the case we hit a point where we were all thinking of what we wanted in the band. Without those experiences we wouldn’t have written Gone Forever.

I’m sure some of you have heard our band was on the brink of destruction during that time, and I’m sure everything you heard was accurate. We were thinking about quitting. We wanted to be something more than we were. Jump forward to a show my brother Doc and I went to at the M&M Hall in NJ. We’re watching Killswitch play at a hall and it sounded pretty awesome. Jesse was still in the band, Adam was playing drums, Mike and Joel were still in their same positions. After the show, Mike gave me a new demo of the new stuff they’d done. It consisted of “Numbered Days,” “Alive Or Just Breathing” and one other song that escapes me. It blew my fucking mind. And it changed the way I looked at doing our band.

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It’s The Environment, Stupid…

What’s up party people? When you do a blog every week you wonder what to talk about and this week I decided to talk about the progression from our first record (Reject The Sickness) to our second record (Determination). I have no idea how familiar any of you may be with those records but I’d figure a look into the inner thinking of how each record was made and how we approached making those records will help any of you aspiring to do music for a living to do it more efficiently than we did.

I believe that people are affected by their environment more so than the other way around. When we were writing Reject The Sickness we were just finding out about the hardcore scene in NJ, which at the time consisted of a lot of types of styles, mosh-core, thug-core, rap-core, emo, tech-core. In NJ, at that time everything was hardcore. There was no metal scene. We were the metal band in NJ at the time. We had a particular incident at Obsessions Night Club that ejected us from playing with bands like Morbid Angel and Testament to playing shows with bands like For The Love Of…, Train Of Thought, E-Town Concrete, Clubber Lang, NJ Bloodline, Candiria, just to name a few. We were all metal heads when we found this new form of aggression in the hardcore scene.

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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.

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[ Dallas just recorded a podcast for Issue Oriented along with Lou Koller from Sick Of It All. Check it out at Issue Oriented, or view a quick video preview at the end of this post. -Ed.]

Evolution & Becoming Who You Are

Every living organism goes through its stages of growth. Bands are no different. From an outside point of view we should look at every band as a living organism. I look at God Forbid that way. We’ve grown, we’ve faltered, we’ve succeeded, we’ve evolved. Our records are a testament to that.

I’d hope to give insight into the type of steps bands have to take to make each record better than the last. I would like this to be a guide for newer bands to take steps in making their own bands improve and creating larger fan bases by seeing the chinks in their armor and making their bands more powerful with each succeeding record by repairing those weaknesses. Every band has weaknesses and unless you recognize them you can’t move forward.

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