Heavy Metal Musicians

"Half the reason that we asked Chris to leave was because a lot of the stuff he’d come up with.. If we’d left it on, the album would not have sounded as good. That’s our firm opinion, and we wouldn’t have kicked him out if we hadn’t thought that the album would have sounded as good. So when it came time, we thought ‘well we have to make sure these lyrics are killer’. Not just a killer read, so much as they just sound good with the music [...] I think a lot of the problem was that Chris didn’t practise with the band too much, that he didn’t really pay attention to the riffs, and he would just write stuff that went over the top of it instead of actually working with it. And now that the band is helping write the lyrics, I think that you can hear that they mesh better."

"We had to fight with him to make lines fit in the song. Barnes wrote his lyrics and didn't want help from anyone. We were okay with that, but when he was in the booth, Alex and I started saying to each other, "Man, this doesn't sound right." Then we would suggest to Barnes, "Hey, if you took out this syllable or if you took out 'uh' or 'the,' then the line would fit better." But Barnes pushed back like we were stepping all over him like it was his poetry we were ruining. [...] I'll never forget Alex telling Barnes while he was still in the booth, "Hey, Chris, I'm going to rewrite the lyrics." Barnes did not want to hear that, which was hard for him. He removed the cans [headphones] and left the studio. We'd never said those things, but it needed to be said. Otherwise, the song would have been ruined. That was the last day in the studio with Barnes."

"Oh, it was a problem with new stuff I was writing. I walked into practice and had re-recorded it and changed notes here and there for three or four songs that I had. It was stupid at the time. But he's, like, 'Hey, I changed the notes so I get writing credit.' And I'm, like, 'That's not how the songs go, though.' And 's like, 'It is now.' [Laughs] So I literally walked out and ghosted them. [Laughs] Later on, it was like, 'Hey, dude, you're out.'""

"We were just kind of writing the record, and we were going over the songs. Me and Glen, we were, like, 'We wanna redo the songs.' It's like we had completed them — about nine or twelve, whatever how many songs. They were all right, but we weren't really psyched about them. So we decided to rewrite them. And Jack didn't really like it. And he kind of left one day and just never came back. So that was that. He's not on [the new album]. I haven't talked to the guy in almost a year."

"I use drum triggers on the kicks, but not on the other drums–otherwise you just sound unnatural, like a machine. [...] For the blast beats, timing is all important. Practice slowly and build up to full speed so you can insert fills and rolls. Keep your lower extremities loose, too. Kick back, breathe properly, and let the sticks do the work."

"If anything, moving your limbs as a drummer keeps them lubricated. Look at Buddy Rich: He was whaling the hell out of his drums until he was an old man. Although it wasn’t metal music, he was doing blasts on the snare–he was a blastmaster!"

"I was always a metal head. [...] My influences back then were Clive Burr with Iron Maiden and Tommy Aldridge, who did amazing things with Ozzy Osbourne. And then when music started getting a little more extreme, I enjoyed Dan Beehler of Exciter, Gene Hoglan of Dark Angel, and, of course, Dave Lombardo of Slayer."

"Stuff [in the world] is just amazing. Whether somebody created it, I just don't know, maybe somebody did. Maybe it just worked out that way. Even if there is a God he don't give a shit. People think he's keeping track of everyone's individual lives but that's ridiculous. People have ideas implanted into their f---ing brains so early that, of course, they say, 'Oh, it's a lake of fire, it's eternal pain, it's being up to your neck in piss.' I personally think that when you're dead you're just moss in the ground. It's a sad reality but you're just a corpse and you're going to turn to dust."

"We were just kind of writing the record, and we were going over the songs. Me and Glen, we were, like, 'We wanna redo the songs.' It's like we had completed them — about nine or twelve, whatever how many songs. They were all right, but we weren't really psyched about them. So we decided to rewrite them. And Jack didn't really like it. And he kind of left one day and just never came back. So that was that. He's not on [the new album]. I haven't talked to the guy in almost a year."

"The whole point of Satanic music is to blaspheme against the Church. [...] I don't believe in or worship a devil. Life is short enough without having to waste it doing this whole organized praying, hoping, wishing-type thing on some superior being."

"I don't know ANY secrets about playing guitar, and there's no fairy dust that you can sprinkle on your guitar to make you good or great. To master an instrument requires suffering. It is also a process, not something that can ever be finished... If you REALLY want to play great, there's only one way — work. It's like trying to take down a mountain with a toothbrush — you can never finish, just scrape a little more every day."

"I think alot of these stupid fucks who are so up in arms about bands like Deicide [...] It's stupid. If they want to like really worry about evil and shit like that they shouldn't be worrying about a metal band, they should be worrying about child molesters and fuckin' Darfur and things like that."

"The thing is, I hardly know anyone that I share a view about religion on. Every person's different, and Glen absolutely fucking hates Christianity. Who am I to tell him what to think and what to do? I'm just as fucked up as anybody else. The thing with the death threats starting was because of this: when we were supposed to play in Chile, the fucking douchebags that worked for the promoter plastered the poster — the one that had a picture of Jesus with a bullet-hole in his head — all over the city when they had specifically been told not to do that. They put it on churches and everywhere else and so the mayor got pissed off and he had the show cancelled. Then in the hotel, some girl came up to me and asked me for an interview. I asked her who it was for and she told met that it was for some webzine, which later turned out to be a major newspaper. She asked me how I felt about that, and what I said was that I was pissed off that those idiots did that and got our show cancelled. Not that they made the flyer look like that. And in the article, they twisted it around and misquoted me. She also asked me what I thought about some fan who had murdered a priest in Chile last year. Now, I'm not a very patient person, and I have a really low tolerance for stupidity. I was like: 'What the fuck kind of question is that?' Of course I don't condone some asshole murdering a priest. Then suddenly a bunch of people started sending me all sorts of messages on MySpace, threatening to kill me, and a lot of those people are probably pretty serious. Personally I'm not afraid and I'm not intimidated, and all those people can fuck off. I'll tell you this though, a couple of months ago we were playing with Vital and [Dave] Suzuki came running up to me on stage and grabbed me, just to kind of fuck with me. I didn't see who it was at first, and when it happened, I thought it was some guy who was coming up to stab me. So that was funny, but it freaked me out. Then when the cops pepper-sprayed me in Texas, the first thing I saw was someone holding something to my face and I thought I was about to get shot. That freaked me out a little bit. But, you know, I'm not worried about those people. If somebody wants to shoot me, they can shoot me."

"I'm not going to tell people that what they believe is wrong at all. I'll drink and I'll party more than ten fucking black metal bands put together. I'm definitely not a choir-boy. I have my own thoughts on religion, but at the end of the day, I just want to play my guitar and play metal and have a good time. The rest of that shit is none of anybody's business. What I'll never do though — I'll work at McDonald's before I pretend to be someone I'm not just so that people accept me. I guess that attitude is what's caused a lot of the problems in my life. But there are two kinds of people in this world. One kind — and Glen is one of them — aren't afraid to be themselves. There's another kind that, for some reason, that offends them, and that pisses me off. I will be myself, and I don't really give a fuck what anyone says. I know who my friends are, and that's all I need. The funny thing is that these metal kids are constantly ripping on me on Blabbermouth, and I'm really close friends with a lot of the bands whose T-shirts they're wearing. I'm not going to pretend to be some dark and angry and evil person so that people think I'm metal. I have all of that in me, but the most important thing is that I play my guitar, and you either like it or you don't. I really don't care one way or another."

"We kept giving [him] chances because we’re nice guys. Well, not so much me. I was the one totally against him coming back and forth like that. It was more like [drummer] Steve [Asheim] and [guitarist] Jack [Owen], who are friends with the guy, wanted to keep giving him chances. I’m not the type of guy to give chances. I just kind of went along with it reluctantly. Finally, there was an issue in Europe on one of the tours and I chucked his ass off the bus and called it a day. [...] Man, without going into great detail, let’s just say the guy’s a trainwreck and leave it at that."

"Ralphie was a character. He was a crazy person. He always liked to party. He maybe partied too hard. That's a [price] you sometimes have to pay when you party too hard in life. I was very sad last year that he wasn't in a band anymore; he wasn't in an active band anymore because he was such a great player. His background was always more the '70s stuff like and . He loved all of those '70s players, but he brought this stuff into death metal. He was one of the first really skilled lead players in death metal back in the day. He was always funny, also, and had a very black humor. Every time we played in Florida, he came to the shows and brought his great humor and great entertainment to the shows. It was very sad for me to see; I think the fact the tragic ending had to do with everything involved in his music business. When you kind of don't play in a band anymore and you're used to it and you stay home all the time, and you see all your friends touring and you don't, and you're such a passionate musician as him. That was really something that killed him also in a mental way. I was talking to him often and he was always hopeful for a new project. It never really happened. It's very sad because Ralphie was one of a kind. He was one of the guys you met, you meet him once, you'll never forget him."

"My heart is broken, but I know he loved me unconditionally and will always be with me [...] It is the same with all of us, he will be with you everyone, everyday and his love will surround us now and forever."

"Unless you’re an experimental metal band by nature, people don’t really want that experimentation, I don’t think. They want us to try and out-do what we’ve done – I don’t think people want us to stand still and put out the same album again and again but I think what they want is something stylistically consistent and hopefully even a little better than the last album. When bands go too far away from their style it’s generally not well received in the metal community. Consistency is a big part of our genre."

"With Cannibal Corpse, it’s always a ‘song first’ kind of thing for me. Some of the side projects I’ve done have allowed me to stretch out a little bit more [in terms of style], but Cannibal is really about being a big, heavy rhythm machine, and stepping out too much might detract from that."

"The shed we rented smelled like rat shit and it was hotter than f–k. We had an air conditioner that didn’t do shit and we’d be totally soaked by the time we were done practicing. But we were determined."

"This kind of music helps people get through negative things. I mean, you're taking something negative and turning it into something positive by making it into music -- instead of actually going out and doing something violent. There's plenty of ways to turn things around, and that is what death metal did for me. [...] It got me through alot of negative things in my life -- it was always there for me."

"If you really saw someone get their brains bashed in right in front of you, I think it would have a pretty dramatic impact [...] you'd react to it, no matter how many movies you've watched or how much gore metal you've listened to [...] even though we've got crazy entertainment now, our social realities are actually a bit more civilized than they were back then [...] we're not hanging people or whipping them in the street and I think that's positive improvement for any society."

"I couldn’t hear the bass in a lot of the thrash [metal] I was listening to. It seemed like the bass was doing exactly what the rhythm guitar was doing, so that’s what I tried to do. I think that shaped my righthand technique, having to learn how to play the really fast stuff with three fingers. I didn’t realize a lot of these guys were cutting things in half [playing half the notes] or doing something a little different. I’ve always played fingerstyle since we got Cannibal going, just trying to keep up with the guitar players. In thrash, there’s not as much of a bass–drummer connection as there is a bass–guitar connection—at least I didn’t see it that way in the beginning. [...] When I started, I played fingerstyle with two fingers, and not very fast. I could get going to a respectable speed, but not something crazy like Jeff Berlin or Juan Alderete. But then we did a show with Cynic and Malevolent Creation. Cynic’s bass player, Tony Choy, played with three fingers, and Malevolent Creation’s bassist plucked with four. I said, “I have to be able to keep up, and I’m not going to use a pick. I have to be able to figure out how to do it with my fingers. [...] Around that same time, I was listening to Sadus a lot, which is the band that Steve DiGiorgio originally came from. I could tell the bass was played fingerstyle, and it was really fast. I managed to track down Steve’s phone number, so I called him up and asked, “Dude, how do you do that?” He explained his technique, which was going from the ring finger to the middle to the index back to the middle—there’s your four notes. I was very grateful, and we’ve been friends ever since. I tried to learn that way and got it down, but as I would start to drift off in doing muscle-memory practice, my technique would start to fall into a different technique. That was the one that I described in the book, where it ends up being a 12-note cycle. You’re basically playing a triplet pattern, but it ends up feeling like straight 16th-notes. So Steve’s tip helped get me started, but I ended up developing my own thing."

"[Learning music theory] can spur your creativity. I’ve found that the guys who don’t know as much theory tend to write things in 4/4 most of the time. The guys who know theory are the ones who end up experimenting more and having music that sounds a little more out there, which I like. The more you know, the more you can mess around."

"People who don’t know this music think it’s just a bunch of noise and it’s really easy to play. That’s totally untrue. You may not like it, but death metal is really complex. You have to have a really fine-tuned ear to appreciate it and a lot of the guys in these bands are incredible musicians."

"Even though we record to Pro Tools with a click track, I think we’ve learned how to use it in a way where everything still sounds organic. I feel like we managed to capture an old school death metal vibe. It doesn’t sound like one of those modern metal productions where everything is overly precise."

"The part is all on the C# string [E tuned down a minor 3rd], so it’s really easy to keep it going. Things get a little trickier when you start skipping strings. I didn’t think it was necessary for the part to make it harder than it needed to be, so I kept it all on the C# string so I could pedal along nicely. I kept it at a tempo where I can comfortably play 16th-notes, which is 172 beats per minute. It’s still fast, but once I start getting past 180 BPM, it gets tough."

"We saw that a lot of bands in Florida seemed to have more of a darker, anti-religion thing going on, so we decided to do the gore thing with the art and lyrics."

"It got to the point where it entered global politics. That's something I never imagined, and I never heard [Senator] actually say these words, but he said this about us: "[Cannibal Corpse] is deplorable. They have a song about having sex with a severed head." I wish I could have heard him say that shit. I'd love that sound bite."

"Most Western music is people singing from the heart — singing to a girlfriend, so a lot of people are freaked out by our songs [...] But our lyrics are just stories. They’re just written to be as gross and disgusting as we could make them. At night we’d get a case of beer and watch gory horror movies. [...] We just play extreme music so we figured we needed extreme lyrics."

"We do not mind writing hooks, as long as they are super heavy hooks, you know what I mean? We want the songs to be memorable, as long as there is no sacrifice in the level of heaviness. [...] And those two things should not have to be exclusive. I think you can have really catchy things that are all really heavy. I mean if we can manage to write some lyrics that are going to make you want to remember them and sing along to them each time they come around, then mission accomplished I think right?"

"His wife’s head breaks his jaw Bruised flesh becoming raw"

"Awake, I’m being disembowelled Rotation pulling out the guts Tortured by this tool Intestines on the spool"

"Alex has always been 100 percent tech, using his finger trying to get all five going. He was driven as a musician. I've never met anyone as driven as Alex when it comes to trying to learn an instrument. That's for real, man. He was always trying to outdo guys he thought were amazing. He pushed himself. On Tomb, Alex became more vocal, as far as being a songwriter and being involved in the recording process. He really got on Scott Burn's nerves. He wanted the bass turned up. Scott walked out of the room a couple of times. Alex was pushing Scott to the limit as far as how loud the bass should go. That went on into the next album, The Bleeding, too."

"I really look up to Alex when I’m mixing an album. I just love the way his bass sounds."

"(on O'Brein's returning to performing) Having not been onstage for a while, he wondered, 'Are these people going to want me around?' We were, like, 'Come on, Pat. You're Pat O'Brien. These people want to see you.' I can appreciate how he felt about it after all he had been through. I could imagine there was an intimidation factor about it. We got up there and he said, 'I think I'm going to lay low in the back, get up and play and be done.' As soon as we got onstage and people saw him, the place went nuts. I said to the crowd, 'Hey, look, you all know Pat, right? Show Pat some love.' And they went nuts. They adore this man. Who wouldn't? If you ever met him, he's one of the nicest people you'd ever meet. He's one of the greatest at what he does, too. Then he started taking pictures with people and talking [after the gig]. He had a big smile on his face. That was so worth it. Here was a guy who needed a good break in his life and we needed help from him to get the show done. It couldn't have been any more perfect."

"He definitely brings a more technical side, as far as playing goes. He usually writes the crazier songs and the more technical-sounding songs and probably technically hard-to-play songs. [...] I know, usually, vocal-wise, they definitely are [the most challenging to perform]. [...] His songs are usually fast, but when he slows down, it's pretty much heavier than fuck, heavier than anything you're going to hear."

"When you don't have the original singer, then you are the official cover band. You wanna make yourself look even more stupid than you already do, by all means, go ahead. [...] We've done wondrous things since their departure — we don't have the problems of canceled tours and missed performances and things like that. This thing runs smooth, everybody gets along, everybody's happy, there's no ill will. It's just like a bad... When you're in a bad marriage, it just ain't working out. So people have to go on their way."

"Those two are a couple of idiots, man. I hate Eric and Brian Hoffman more than anything in this world, and I will not rest until I put shit straight with the fans. Up 'til now, everybody thinks I kicked them out of the band, but nobody kicked anybody out. They quit on their own, and I wanna set the record straight in regard to those two fuckin' pricks. [...] It's real simple: Eric Hoffman has a fucking steroid problem, and he's bi-polar. Brian married some young broad who's running his life for him. What initially happened is that when our publishing deal ended with Roadrunner, and our new deal started with Earache, we put them on notice that our publishing was no longer gonan be split four ways — it's gonna be based on who writes what. That's the industry standard. Brian writes one song for the album, Eric writes two songs and they wanna get paid for all the songs Steve [Asheim, drums] wrote. That's not fuckin' fair. And I wrote all the lyrics, so I'm entitled to 50% of the publishing. Why should I give those two money? They've been losing thousands of dollars for me and Steve for ten years now. If it was one of those things where they showed up and did their jobs, we wouldn't have a fucking problem. That's why the deal we signed [with Roadrunner] in '90 was set up like that. Back then, everybody wrote and contributed and it was a fuckin' group effort. But now me and Steve are the Lennon and McCartney of the band, doing all the writing, and those two wanna get paid for our hard work. Fuck that. [...] When they got their first publishing checks and didn't get paid for all the songs me and Steve wrote, they fucking quit. And now we gotta deal with Eric threatening Steve, driving to his house and screaming outside his window at 10:30 at night, making threatening phone calls, talking shit on Blabbermouth about Steve's dad dying, and all this other bullshit. Eric knows better than to come over here, though — he knows I shoot first and ask questions later."

"Slipknot: ‘Oh we’re going to take you guys out man, we’re going to take you guys out dude.’ Yeah, blow me. That’s what I say to you. F—ing blow me Corey Taylor and all you f-gs. OK. ‘Oh we’re going to take Deicide out on tour with us and blah blah blah.’ Blowing air up our asses, back in the day. You know what, you never did a f—ing thing for us. You introduced us at a show once. Great, thanks. How about a f—ing tour? How about f—ing helping us out a little bit? I mean we’ve only been doing this for several years. You guys were like, ‘Dude you were what got me started.’ Well you know what, return the f—ing favor. You know what I mean?"

"Religion is a three-legged dog, and it’s on its way out. I think people know how to treat each other, and don’t need a book full of bullshit to tell them how to do it."

"When I was eight years old and forced against my will to participate in the Christmas play at the church my mother was a Sunday school teacher at, I was singing at the front of the church thinking, ‘How did I get myself into this shit?’"

"I was always referred to as ‘the evil little bastard’ in my family. I just fell into it, and it’s the persona I’ve had ever since I was a little kid, through school and through everything else. I don’t even really know why, but do I get off on raising eyebrows and ruffling feathers? Fuck yeah, I do! Fifty-six years old and I still love getting a reaction out of folks. Most kids rebel, and I wanted to fight the powers."

"I think I was only 22 when I burned the inverted cross into my forehead. The spirit moved me, man! To this day, I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking, but I knew that I had been christened Catholic as a child, and I felt that the best way to take care of that would be my symbolic way of taking that Catholic mark off of my skin. I’ve always been that kid in the picture who’s got that twisted look and the smile on his face, and when I got to an age where I could start being me, I just started being me. Now that my two sons are both grown and off in the world, I find myself back to being that guy again, the guy that branded the cross on his forehead."

"The way I look at is “who cares?” [laughter]. Who gives a fuck anymore? Does anybody even read the lyrics anymore? It’s like they’ll release the first SoundScan numbers and it’ll be like 2900 copies sold the first week, but there are like 50,000 downloads. Does anybody even read the packaging anymore? I was going to put in the album this time, “If anybody’s reading this, thanks for not ripping me off!"

"[Religion is] beaten into me, so I can’t sing about anything else. If I try to sing about other things, I draw a complete blank. I let the universe speak through me, and if I have to force it, it just won’t come."

"Neil Peart, I’ve seen an interview with him, and he felt uncomfortable in those situations, and I just feel the same way, man. I just don’t like being put in those positions where I’m sitting at a table and people are gawking at me like I’m in the Jim Rose Circus or something. I guess I’m just too real and too deep for that kind of shit. To me, I think it’s — pardon the expression — I think it’s a poser kind of thing. That’s for posers. And Steve’s like, ‘I feel the same way. I feel like I wanna climb out of my skin when I’m in those situations.’ And like I say, I’m just not into that kind of thing. ‘Cause I’m up there, if I’m wrangled into these things, I’m thinking to myself as I’m up there and everybody’s saying all the compliments and everything, and I think to myself, ‘Man, if they can only see me when I’m outside mowing my grass, washing the car and cleaning the bathroom. If they could only see me now.’ So that’s kind of how it makes me feel uncomfortable, ’cause I don’t think of myself like a rock star or anything like that. I just don’t put myself in that [frame of mind]. I can’t. I really don’t. I can’t relate. [...] I was having this conversation with the guys in the band the other day, ’cause we were talking about meet-and-greets and doing that kind of stuff. And I’m just not a fan of the whole charging fans for a signature. I give a fan a signature out of kindness of my heart, not because I wanna make money off of them. The fact that they’re a fan and they listen to our material… I know things are different — most people get [music] for free now — but I still can’t come to terms with that, to charge somebody for my signature, especially a fan… And it makes me feel kind of weird."

"Well, people don't understand that the album cover that we did, it was done with Photoshop and with some A.I., but it's a more modern version. It's like Legion — when I did the Legion album cover, computers were still fucking new. Nobody knew anything about three-dimensional artwork or any shit like that. And I was the first person to even fucking fuck with that when I designed the Legion album cover. Now I've been in the computers and all that shit since they all came about. So I may be ahead of a lot of people when it comes to computers. I have two iMacs and MacBook Pro and iPad Pro. So I'm a little versed with the whole computer age and in Photoshop and all that stuff and that. [...] I like to do something different and provocative. And I know the whole A.I. thing, everybody's [up in arms about it]… But it was meant to stir. People don't understand. It's a modernization of… It's a sign of the time that we're in. People just can't — their first [reaction] is, like, 'Oh, he's trying to put all of us artists out of work. And I'll be stuck drawing penises in men's bathrooms for the rest of my life.' So everybody's up in arms and thinking that this is the end of the fucking world. And it's really ridiculous, man. It's just a form of art and expression. So I think people should just really stop being ridiculous and accept it for what it is, man. It's a sign of the times. [...] But here's the thing, how hypocritical it is, because my art was being stolen [illegally downloaded] and stepped all over in the '90s. Metallica had seen it come and they tried to stop it. But all these wannabe mercenaries for artists and all these idiots out there, they were the same people right there stealing my art back then. So where were all you guys at to defend my art being stolen and taken advantage of? [...] So, all I did was just did an album cover, really, that just focused on the whole modernization of the modern time and, really, it's just a reflection of the age that we're in right now. I can't spend my days trying to explain this. I have a saying: I don't try to convince stupid is dumb and I don't try to convince dumb is stupid. So I just let it do its thing and piss people off. I have a great time with it. It's hilarious. Yeah, it is what it is, man. It's meant to stir the shit paddle, and that's what I do."

"I didn’t think playing shows with rotting meat as part of our set-up was gonna cause that much of a shitstorm. Within three shows of that stuff I had the authorities bearing down on me, so it was a very short-lived moment in Deicide history."

"As a parent, it really weirds me out when people bring their children and babies to the show. They’re like, ‘Sign my baby’s forehead!’ I’ve pretty much seen it all; from chicks squatting and pissing backstage to whipping out their tampon and throwing it at me."